By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Just a modest amount of mental stimulation can go a long way toward warding off Alzheimer's disease, according to researchers who created mice genetically modified to get a condition similar to it. Researchers at the University of California-Irvine studied hundreds of mice altered to make them develop abnormalities known as plaques and tangles in brain tissue that are considered hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease in people. Writing on Tuesday in the Journal of Neuroscience, they said periodic learning sessions -- swimming in a tub of water until finding a submerged platform to stand on -- slowed the development in the mice of those two abnormalities. "The remarkable thing was that just by learning infrequently, they still had a very dramatic effect on the Alzheimer's disease pathology," said Kim Green, one of the researchers. "So it suggests that in humans, if you learn more and more and more, it's going to have a huge, beneficial effect," Green added. The findings highlight an idea that also has emerged in other research -- that exercising one's mind is important to staving off Alzheimer's disease, the degenerative brain malady that is the most common form of dementia among the elderly. © 1996-2007 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 9871 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Roxanne Khamsi The smaller a fish’s mouth, the longer its snout – and vice versa – say researchers who carried out a mathematical analysis of feeding in seahorses and other fish. Like most ray-finned fish, seahorses feed by suction and approach their prey by swimming and jaw protrusion. An elongated snout is an advantage because it allows the animals to snatch their prey more swiftly, by turning their heads rapidly sideways. But it only makes sense in terms of energy-expenditure for those fish that dine on small prey, such as minuscule crabs, the new study shows. Marc de Lussanet at the University of Münster, Germany and colleagues used high-speed cameras to film razor fish, Centriscus scutatus, and greater pipefish, Syngnathus acus. They then analysed each film frame, plotting the location of the fishes’ snouts as they lifted their heads to capture prey. Based on those observations, de Lussanet produced a mathematical formula linking snout size and capture speed for the two species. Razor fish and pipefish both have long snouts, and therefore need to raise their heads only slightly to reach relatively distant prey quickly, De Lussanet explains. Fish species with rounder heads must move closer to their prey before making their final move, and are therefore slower to snatch their meal. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 9870 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A patch which delivers a vaccine against Alzheimer's disease through the skin has been shown to be safe and effective, a study has found. University of South Florida researchers reported the patch was able to clear brain-damaging plaques from mice. They say it may be a simpler way of protecting people against the disease than a conventional injected vaccine. UK experts said the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study was "potentially very exciting". Alzheimer's is linked with the build up of a protein called beta amyloid in the brain, where it clumps together to form damaging plaques. The vaccine - given transdermally - works by triggering the immune system to recognise beta amyloid protein, attack it and break it down. Earlier research into an injectable Alzheimer's vaccine was suspended indefinitely when the initial clinical trial caused brain inflammation and death in a small percentage of patients. It also triggered an autoimmune reaction, which occurred when immune cells turned on proteins produced by the body in response to the vaccine. In this study, the researchers tested the skin patch on mice with an age-related brain degeneration similar to Alzheimer's. They found it did not have the same toxic effects as the injected vaccine. The team suggest that specialised immune cells present in the skin called Langerhans may direct the body to respond positively to the vaccine. (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 9869 - Posted: 01.23.2007

By Jennifer Huget So, you think you're stressed? Get a load of this dream I had last week. In my waking hours, I thought I was getting along just fine, despite an abnormally heavy workload (lots of assignments -- including this article -- due at once) and the daily travails of a work-at-home mother of two. But I knew it was time to reassess when I woke, panting, from a nightmare in which: ˇ Out-of-town guests appeared unexpectedly in my home and needed a ride to the airport. ˇ Only I couldn't remember where the airport was. ˇ Nor could I find my purse. ˇ So I couldn't drive my car (no purse, no keys). ˇ And when I set out on foot to find the airport, I found it was raining baby frogs, which got caught in my hair and everywhere else. The following morning, after shaking off those baby frogs, I followed two of my therapist's most enduringly useful tips. First, I smiled big and said, out loud, "Hello, anxiety!" Confronting my stress on friendly terms makes it less ominous, says my doctor, psychologist Joe Brown, who practices in the Hartford, Conn., area. Plus, the ritual is so goofy it takes the edge off. © Copyright 1996-2007 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 9868 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY A graduate school application can go sour in as many ways as a blind date. The personal essay might seem too eager, the references too casual. The admissions officer on duty might be nursing a grudge. Or a hangover. Rachel Riskind of Austin, Tex., nonetheless has a good feeling about her chances for admittance to the University of Michigan’s exclusive graduate program in psychology, and it’s not just a matter of her qualifications. On a recent afternoon, as she was working on the admissions application, she went out for lunch with co-workers. Walking from the car to the restaurant in a misting rain, she saw a woman stroll by with a Michigan umbrella. “I felt it was a sign; you almost never see Michigan stuff here,” said Ms. Riskind, 22. “And I guess I think that has given me a kind of confidence. Even if it’s a false confidence, I know that that in itself can help people do well.” Psychologists and anthropologists have typically turned to faith healers, tribal cultures or New Age spiritualists to study the underpinnings of belief in superstition or magical powers. Yet they could just as well have examined their own neighbors, lab assistants or even some fellow scientists. New research demonstrates that habits of so-called magical thinking — the belief, for instance, that wishing harm on a loathed colleague or relative might make him sick — are far more common than people acknowledge. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 9867 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY In the movies amnesia is bizarre, and thrilling. The star is usually a former assassin or government agent whose future depends on retrieving the bloody, jigsaw fragments that restore identity and explain the past. Yet in the real world, people with amnesia live in a mental universe at least as strange as fiction: new research suggests that they are marooned in the present, as helpless at imagining future experiences as they are at retrieving old ones. The new study, reported last week in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first rigorous test of how brain-injured people with amnesia mentally inhabit imaginary scenes. The results suggest that to the brain, remembered experience and imagined experience are reflections from the same mirror, rich inner worlds animated by almost identical neural networks. The findings provide a glimpse into what it might mean to truly live in the moment. And they feed a continuing debate about memory. Some researchers say that the brain region central to forming new memories — the hippocampus, a sliver of tissue deep in the brain where the day’s memories are registered — is not necessary for retrieving those experiences, once they have been consolidated elsewhere in the brain. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Compan

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 9866 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Andrew Stern CHICAGO (Reuters) - Older adults who take the most popular class of anti-depressant drugs worsen their risk of developing fragile bones, a study said on Monday. Tests on a group of Canadians aged 50 or older found those taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors had 4 percent less bone mineral density in their hip bones. Millions of people take the anti-depressants commonly called SSRIs that include Eli Lilly's Prozac. The 137 people in the study who took the anti-depressants also doubled their risk of suffering a bone fracture, compared to more roughly 5,000 participants not taking the drugs. About one in 10 of those who took the anti-depressants fractured a bone over the 5-year study period -- often from minor falls -- said the researchers from McGill University in Montreal, writing in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine. The doubling of the risk of bone fractures held true even after taking into account the mostly elderly subjects' reduced bone mineral density and higher risk of sustaining falls. "Fracture rates remain elevated despite adjustment for these two risk factors, indicating that other pathways, such as impaired bone quality leading to reduced bone strength, may be of particular relevance," wrote McGill researcher Brent Richards. © 1996-2007 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 9865 - Posted: 06.24.2010

PITTSBURGH, -- Misstatements and ignorance claiming that families "cause" eating disorders is like blaming parents for diabetes or asthma or cancer says an international group of eating disorders researchers. Recent damaging statements by fashion model Gisele Bundchen stating that unsupportive families cause anorexia nervosa only perpetuate misconceptions and further stigmatize eating disorders. Contrary to her claim, there is no scientific evidence that families cause anorexia nervosa. In fact, the researchers are finding that anorexia nervosa is far more complex than simply wanting to be slim to achieve some fashionable slender ideal. The data show that anorexia nervosa has a strong genetic component that may be the root cause of this illness. "An uninformed opinion such as Bundchen's causes harm on a number of levels. By contributing to the stigma, it drives sufferers underground and creates obstacles to seeking help. It damages attempts at advocacy and hurts parents who are desperately fighting for their child's recovery," said Allan S. Kaplan, M.D., Loretta Anne Rogers Chair in Eating Disorders at the University of Toronto. "Such thinking also misinforms third party payors who may not want to pay for the treatment of these biologically-based illnesses if they think its primary cause is family dysfunction." Dr. Kaplan is a member of the international group of researchers attempting to find which genes contribute to anorexia nervosa through a National Institute of Mental Health-funded study of families with a history of anorexia nervosa. The current study, which is being conducted at 10 sites across the world, hopes to further clarify which genes play a role in anorexia nervosa. The study builds on data from ten years of groundbreaking research on the genetics of eating disorders sponsored by the Price Foundation.

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 9864 - Posted: 01.23.2007

By Virginia Morell The close quarters of a rookery can be a lot like a crowded row-house neighborhood: Every now and then, there's bound to be a fight. And after a nasty squabble with a neighbor, what better way to smooth those ruffled feathers than with a kiss at home? Bill-twining, which looks remarkably like kissing, is rooks' chosen way to ease their tempers, reports experimental psychologist Amanda Seed from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. Such behavior has long been known among primate species, such as chimpanzees, but this is the first time it's been documented in birds. Animal behaviorists have studied squabbling among numerous mammalian species, particularly primates, which after a fight often seek comfort through mutual grooming with an animal not involved in the row. This tactic is believed to reduce stress. Chimps, bonobos, and a few other mammals go a step further: They even engage in grooming or other forms of affiliative behavior with their opponent, which is seen as a form of reconciliation. In the wild, rooks nest in treetops with thousands of rook neighbors. Pairs typically mate for life and return to the same nesting site each year, giving the group a degree of social permanence. A big social group has its advantages--more eyes to watch for predators and to find food--but there are also drawbacks: Every rook wants the best sticks to build their nests, and the best morsels of food. "It's like walking a tightrope, trying to find a balance between those group benefits and your own," says Seed, "and of course that leads to arguments." © 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 9863 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Kerri Smith Acupuncture, used for thousands of years in the Far East to treat pain and illness, has many followers but little scientific rigor to explain whether it works or not. Now, an unusual study suggests that acupuncture has a marked effect on the type of brain inflammation seen in Parkinson's disease — in mice, that is. Studies of the effects of acupuncture in animals are few and far between. But mice can't tell whether they are being treated or not — potentially yielding a much better idea of whether the treatment might actually be working or whether any improvement is just a placebo effect. Parkinson's is a movement disorder that affects more than 6 million people worldwide. It is associated with low levels of the chemical dopamine in the brain. To investigate the protective effects of acupuncture in the brain, a team led by Sabina Lim at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, South Korea, used a standard mouse model of Parkinson's disease, in which injections of a chemical known as MPTP kill off brain cells that manufacture dopamine. Some of the injected mice then received acupuncture every two days in two spots, one behind the knee and one on top of the foot. In humans, says Lim, these points are traditionally considered to be involved in muscle movement, and thus could potentially be seen as targets for treatment of Parkinson's. Another group of mice received acupuncture in two spots on the hips, not believed to be effective for acupuncture. A third group had no acupuncture at all. ©2007 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 9862 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A study from the February issue of the American Naturalist is the first to demonstrate that male fish are more likely to eat their offspring when they have been cuckolded during the act of spawning. Moreover, the more males that are present during spawning, the more likely it is that a male will try to eat the eggs when they are laid, as it is less likely that he fertilized them. "The most drastic decision a father can make is to cannibalize his own offspring," writes Suzanne Gray (Ph.D. candidate at Simon Fraser University), Lawrence Dill (Simon Fraser University), and Jeffrey McKinnon (University of Wisconsin – Whitewater). "These results support and extend previous findings suggesting that confidence of paternity is a key factor in determining a male's behavior toward his offspring, including whether or not to eat them." Predicted by theory, this pattern had never previously before been demonstrated. Studying Telmatherina sarasinorum, a small, colorful fish found in Lake Matano in Indonesia, the researchers found that females, who can be sure of their relationship to their eggs, never cannibalized. However, an increased level of cuckoldry led to an increased rate of cannibalism among males.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 9861 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists say they have found the part of the brain that predicts whether a person will be selfish or an altruist. Altruism - the tendency to help others without obvious benefit to oneself - appears to be linked to an area called the posterior superior temporal sulcus. Using brain scans, the US investigators found this region related to a person's real-life unselfish behaviour. The Duke University Medical Center study on 45 volunteers is published in Nature Neuroscience. The participants were asked to disclose how often they engaged in different helping behaviours, such as doing charity work, and were also asked to play a computer game designed to measure altruism. The study authors say their work could have important implications. They are now exploring ways to study the development of this brain region in early life and believe such information may help determine how altruistic tendencies are established. Researcher Dr Scott Huettel explained: "Although understanding the function of this brain region may not necessarily identify what drives people like Mother Theresa, it may give clues to the origins of important social behaviours like altruism." Dr George Fieldman, member of the British Psychological Society and principal lecturer in psychology at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, said it was conceivable that there would be a region of the brain involved with altruism. (C)BBC

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 9860 - Posted: 01.22.2007

Typically, when someone places a bet—be it on a sporting event, obscure trivia or where the ball in a roulette wheel will land—he or she is fully aware of the decision to do so. And now scientists at Oxford University in England have discovered that they can better determine if decisions in general are conscious (or subconscious) by having subjects literally gamble on, well, their decisions. The researchers, reporting in this week's Nature Neuroscience, found that study participants were reluctant to wager big bucks unless they were confident in their choices, indicating that they knew full well what they were doing. Previous methods used by brain researchers to assess whether a subject was aware of a decision he or she had made—such as having them rate their confidence in their choices—were indirect at best, says researcher Navindra Persaud, a University of Toronto medical student who is on leave studying experimental psychology at Oxford. "That forces you to introspect and see whether or not that decision was more like other decisions that you are aware of or if it's more like guessing—and that's a rather difficult thing. You're not seeing if people are aware if they made the decision, you are seeing if they're aware of their awareness." Persaud and his colleagues performed three experiments to determine whether gambling could better elucidate a person's awareness during the decision making process. © 1996-2007 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Attention; Emotions
Link ID: 9859 - Posted: 06.24.2010

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke University Medical Center researchers have discovered that activation of a particular brain region predicts whether people tend to be selfish or altruistic. "Although understanding the function of this brain region may not necessarily identify what drives people like Mother Theresa, it may give clues to the origins of important social behaviors like altruism," said study investigator Scott A. Huettel, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center. Results of the study appear Sunday, Jan. 21, in the advance online edition of Nature Neuroscience and will be published in the February 2007 print issue of the journal. The work was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Altruism describes the tendency of people to act in ways that put the welfare of others ahead of their own. Why some people choose to act altruistically is unclear, says lead study investigator Dharol Tankersley, a graduate student in Huettel's laboratory. In the study, researchers scanned the brains of 45 people while they either played a computer game or watched the computer play the game on its own. In both cases, successful playing of the game earned money for a charity of the study participant's choice.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 9858 - Posted: 01.22.2007

Michael Hopkin On a summer evening last year, more than a billion pairs of eyes were fixed on footballer David Trézéguet as he stepped up to take his penalty for France in the shootout against Italy to decide the world championship. A supremely talented goal-scorer, he inexplicably crashed his kick against the crossbar. France lost. Fast-forward six months, and psychologists say they have explained why: the pressure got to him. Their results indicate that the psychological burden of a penalty shootout is the most important factor in whether or not a player scores — more so than skill, fatigue or experience, which are so crucial in other areas of the game. That's the reason why some of the world's most gifted players have come a cropper in this pressure-cooker situation, says Geir Jordet, a sports psychologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, and a member of the research team. "Players prepare for the physical aspects but not the psychological aspects," he says. The format of a soccer shootout is simple: each team picks five players, who take turns to take shots from the penalty spot. Whichever side scores the most of their allotted five wins; if scores are tied, further 'sudden death' penalties are taken until one side gains a lead. ©2007 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Stress; Emotions
Link ID: 9857 - Posted: 06.24.2010

HOUSTON, -- Michael Stern's latest research into the formation of neurofibromatosis tumors reads something like a federal racketeering indictment, except that Stern's tracing proteins instead of laundered money, and he's looking not at offshore accounts but at biochemical paths of cause and effect. The research, which appears in the Jan. 10 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, seeks to find the biochemical pathway that's responsible for tumors in people with the genetic disorder neurofibromatosis. Stern built his case much like a prosecutor, compiling evidence from dozens of painstaking experiments on mutant fruit flies, each with a specific genetic flaw that testified to the power of one or more proteins involved. Neurofibromatosis is characterized by the formation of tumors of peripheral nerve cells. Scientists know the disease is caused by defects in a gene called Nf1, but they have yet to find out precisely how the defective genes cause tumors to form. "Our results suggest that having a defect in Nf1 begins a kind of biochemical domino effect that eventually leads to tumor growth," said Stern, professor of biochemistry and cell biology. Stern's research group used fruit flies for several reasons: the insect's genome has been sequenced; it takes only two weeks to grow an new generation of fruit flies; and scientists know which fruit fly genes are analogous to the human genes associated with neurofibromatosis.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 9856 - Posted: 01.19.2007

By ALAN SCHWARZ Since the former National Football League player Andre Waters killed himself in November, an explanation for his suicide has remained a mystery. But after examining remains of Mr. Waters’s brain, a neuropathologist in Pittsburgh is claiming that Mr. Waters had sustained brain damage from playing football and he says that led to his depression and ultimate death. Chris Nowinski, a former Harvard football player and professional wrestler, contacted Dr. Bennet Omalu after he read about Mr. Waters’s suicide. The neuropathologist, Dr. Bennet Omalu of the University of Pittsburgh, a leading expert in forensic pathology, determined that Mr. Waters’s brain tissue had degenerated into that of an 85-year-old man with similar characteristics as those of early-stage Alzheimer’s victims. Dr. Omalu said he believed that the damage was either caused or drastically expedited by successive concussions Mr. Waters, 44, had sustained playing football. In a telephone interview, Dr. Omalu said that brain trauma “is the significant contributory factor” to Mr. Waters’s brain damage, “no matter how you look at it, distort it, bend it. It’s the significant forensic factor given the global scenario.” He added that although he planned further investigation, the depression that family members recalled Mr. Waters exhibiting in his final years was almost certainly exacerbated, if not caused, by the state of his brain — and that if he had lived, within 10 or 15 years “Andre Waters would have been fully incapacitated.” Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Depression
Link ID: 9855 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Anne Harding NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Trichotillomania, a poorly understood disorder in which a person repeatedly pulls out their own hair, leading to visible hair loss, can have a crippling effect on its sufferers, and treatment is rarely effective, according to a new survey of patients with this condition. "It has a much larger impact on people than I think even most mental health practitioners understand," Dr. Douglas W. Woods of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health. "A lot of people will look at this and say it's just a nervous habit, but it's not, really." Up to 3.4 percent of adults may suffer from trichotillomania, Woods and his colleagues note in their report in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Hair-pulling appears to help people relieve tension, but little is known about why people develop the disorder or if it is related to other psychological problems, such as depression and anxiety. To better understand the condition, Woods and his team surveyed 1,697 people with symptoms of trichotillomania who had been recruited through the Trichotillomania Learning Center's Web page (www.trich.org). Forty percent of survey respondents reported having avoided social activities because of their hair pulling, 36 percent said they had avoided group activities, and 20 percent said they avoided going on vacation. © 1996-2007 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 9854 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Even as children, we find that certain things just come easier or are more important to us. It's a type of specialization that is an element in creating who we will become as adults. But research now indicates that some specialization happens very early in life. In research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Erin Hannon found such a specialization in the area of music and rhythms. She says, "At six months infants respond to familiar and unfamiliar rhythms -- so, rhythms from their own culture, and other cultures -- equally well. By 12 months however, we find that infants have a very culture-specific way of responding to rhythms." Studies like this are shedding light into infants' early learning patterns in a number of areas, not just music. Hannon says, "We see it in language, in sort of speech perception; we see it in perception of faces." She adds, "Perhaps, for a number of different things infants have highly flexible ways of responding to the world. And they are very rapid learners. And this ability to learn may change as we get older. The questions about why this changes are complex. It could be sort of a critical period type of effect." Hannon adds that it appears that even at ages of around a year, we are already filtering out information, adding, "It may arise from the fact that as we acquire more and more knowledge, we've already shaped the way that our brains deal with information. And so when we try to introduce new things there's sort of more resistance. And so this makes it more difficult to change the basic ways that we respond to things." © ScienCentral, 2000-2007.

Keyword: Hearing; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 9853 - Posted: 06.24.2010

When we think of barcodes, the supermarket checkout usually comes to mind. But as this ScienCentral News video reports, they may soon show up at the doctor's office, in the form of a new test for Alzheimer's disease. We all misplace keys and forget things. But when does simple forgetfulness indicate the start of Alzheimer's disease? Even clinicians have trouble answering that. "The best available techniques we have right now, which are based on clinical judgment, depending upon the individual who does it, can be between 50 to about 85 percent accurate," says Norman Relkin, a behavioral neurologist at Weill Cornell Medical College. Currently, the only 100-percent accurate way to diagnose Alzheimer's is an autopsy. But Relkin and Cornell University's Kelvin Lee may have found a way to diagnose Alzheimer's in living patients almost as accurately. Using a technology called proteomics, they compared proteins from the spinal fluid of 34 people who died of autopsy-proven Alzheimer's with 34 who did not have the disease. Out of the 2,000 different proteins, they identified a unique pattern of 23 proteins in the Alzheimer's group that could serve as something like a barcode for Alzheimer's. "By comparing the barcodes from patients that have Alzheimer's disease from patients that don't have Alzheimer's disease, we're able to recognize certain patterns that tell us whether the subject has the disease or not," says Lee. © ScienCentral, 2000-2007.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 9852 - Posted: 06.24.2010