Christen Brownlee In many ways, 9-year-old Jacob Sontag is much like his fourth grade classmates. He loves reading, watching movies, and listening to music, and he's well liked by a large circle of friends. However, Jacob is not a typical boy. He has Canavan disease, a rare neurodegenerative disorder that has gradually depleted the myelin, or electrical insulation, in his brain and confined him to a wheelchair. Jacob and his family are looking to a controversial experimental approach to cure him someday. "We hear a lot of talk about the hope and the promise of stem cells," says Jacob's mother, Jordana Holovach. Jacob's doctor, neuroscientist Paola Leone of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Camden, N.J., says that if today's early research pans out, stem cells transplanted into the boy's brain eventually might replace the myelin-producing cells that he lacks. Researchers seeking cures for many other medical conditions—including type-1 diabetes, Parkinson's disease, osteoporosis, and heart disease—are also looking to stem cell transplants for cures. Copyright ©2005 Science Service.

Keyword: Stem Cells; Regeneration
Link ID: 7129 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Janet Raloff Too busy to cook, you drop by the neighborhood café and treat yourself to fried chicken with a side of macaroni and cheese. You wash it all down with a bottle of apple juice—to balance the high-fat entrees with something healthy. Although you've put away far more calories than usual, you still don't feel really full, so you select a slice of chocolate torte from the dessert case. Recent studies have begun pointing to a wide variety of factors, including body weight, food choices, and lack of sleep, by which we can unwittingly alter not only when we experience hunger but also what items appear appetizing and how much food it takes to trigger a feeling that we've had enough. Our bodies rely on a host of involuntary cues to regulate food consumption. In 1999, researchers discovered a hormone that contributes to strong feelings of hunger. Throughout the day, its concentration in our bodies rises and falls. Although we're not aware of these ups and downs, they drive our behavior, either moving us toward the table or letting us get on with the rest of our lives. Cycles of this powerful hormone-dubbed ghrelin, after a Hindu word for "growth"—reflect a complex interplay of chemical signals that scientists are now beginning to untangle. In the last 2 years, research has also begun pointing to an array of diet and lifestyle factors that modify the body's production of ghrelin and other eating-related signals. Copyright ©2005 Science Service.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 7128 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A new study suggests there may be a better way to sharpen the eyes of radiologists, military pilots and other professionals for whom identifying objects or patterns in a monitor or visual display – often quickly and with pinpoint accuracy – is a critical part of the job. According to the study, the new approach involves rethinking how the eyes are trained to filter out clutter and focus in on a target. Previously, scientists believed these two perceptual skills intermixed and worked simultaneously. This study, however, demonstrates that they are in fact independent and best practiced in a specific order. The study, by UCI cognitive scientist Barbara Anne Dosher and USC colleague Zhong-Lin Lu, is published in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “This research demonstrates, for the first time, the independence of these two learning mechanisms, and suggests new methods of training for people who must pinpoint targets in busy images,” Dosher said. The researchers tested six volunteers with normal vision. Half of the volunteers trained first on clear, or low-clutter, displays, identifying targets or patterns ranging from dim to strong using the “amplification” or focusing in process. Then they trained on “noisy,” or high-clutter, displays, exercising their filtering mechanism. The other three volunteers started with the noisy displays and then switched to clear. Over five days, the volunteers made nearly 4,000 practice judgments in each condition, with accuracy measured every 180 trials. © Copyright 2002-2005 UC Regents

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 7127 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Anti-impotence drug Viagra increases the risk of blindness, doctors believe. Researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School in the US identified seven men who developed vision problems after taking Viagra. The team, writing in the Journal of Neuro-ophthalmology,said it brought the total number of reported cases to 14. But Pfizer, the makers of the drug which has been used by more than 20m men since its launch in 1998, said the cases were a coincidence. The seven men, aged between 50 and 69 years old, had all suffered from a swelling of the optic nerve within 36 hours of taking Viagra for erectile dysfunction. Pfizer takes these reports very seriously, as we do anything concerning the safety of patients Six experienced vision loss within 24 hours, although only one had problems with both eyes. The condition, known as nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION), causes a rapid reduction of vision and can, in the most serious cases, lead to blindness. Report co-author Dr Howard Pomeranz said the drug had long been linked to sight problems. "For years, we have known some men who take Viagra will experience temporary colour changes in their vision and see things as blue or green. NAION is a much more serious condition because it can lead to permanent vision loss." (C)BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Vision
Link ID: 7126 - Posted: 04.02.2005

By Peter Gorner Tickling rats to make them chirp with joy may seem frivolous as a scientific pursuit, yet understanding laughter in animals may lead to revolutionary treatments for emotional illness, researchers suggest. Joy and laughter, they say, are proving not to be uniquely human traits. Roughhousing chimpanzees emit characteristic pants of excitement, their version of "ha-ha-ha" limited only by their anatomy and lack of breath control, researchers contend. Dogs have their own sound to spur other dogs to play, and recordings of the sound can dramatically reduce stress levels in shelters and kennels, according to the scientist who discovered it. Even laboratory rats have been shown to chirp delightedly above the range of human hearing when wrestling with each other or being tickled by a keeper--the same vocalizations they make before receiving morphine or having sex. Studying sounds of joy may help us understand the evolution of human emotions and the brain chemistry underlying such emotional problems as autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorders, said Jaak Panksepp, a pioneering neuroscientist who discovered rat laughter. Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 7125 - Posted: 06.24.2010

US scientists say they can tell whether one person trusts another, by using a brain scan. The results suggest that a brain region called the caudate nucleus lights up when it receives or computes data to make decisions based on trust. The Baylor College of Medicine team based their findings on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans of volunteers playing a money game. The research is published in the latest edition of Science magazine. During the money game, one player, designated the "investor", received $20. They then had the option of sending some, all, or none of the $20 to the other player, the "trustee". According to the rules of the game, which were known by both players, whatever money the trustee was given would triple. The trustee then had the option of returning a portion of the new sum to the investor. The study authors looked at what happened in the brains of both players during 10 rounds of the game. They found the extent to which the players trusted each other with their money depended on the recent history of the exchange. (C)BBC

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 7124 - Posted: 04.01.2005

A mass experiment which aims to test the emotional intelligence and intuition of people living in the UK is being launched in Edinburgh. Professor Richard Wiseman will detail the test at the start of the Edinburgh Science Festival on Friday. Photographs of people smiling will be on display at the festival, with participants asked to identify which are genuine grins and which are fake. Everyone taking part will get feedback about their own intuitive abilities. People can also view the specially commissioned photographs and take part in the study online. Participants will be asked to complete a short questionnaire on intuition, allowing researchers to examine the types of people who are especially good at recognising emotions in others. Certain parts of each face will be masked in the pictures to help discover which provide most information. (C)BBC

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 7123 - Posted: 04.01.2005

A paralysed man in the US has become the first person to benefit from a brain chip that reads his mind. Matthew Nagle, 25, was left paralysed from the neck down and confined to a wheelchair after a knife attack in 2001. The pioneering surgery at New England Sinai Hospital, Massachusetts, last summer means he can now control everyday objects by thought alone. The brain chip reads his mind and sends the thoughts to a computer to decipher. He can think his TV on and off, change channels and alter the volume thanks to the technology and software linked to devices in his home. Scientists have been working for some time to devise a way to enable paralysed people to control devices with the brain. Studies have shown that monkeys can control a computer with electrodes implanted into their brain. Recently four people, two of them partly paralysed wheelchair users, were able to move a computer cursor while wearing a cap with 64 electrodes that pick up brain waves. Mr Nagle's device, called BrainGate, consists of nearly 100 hair-thin electrodes implanted a millimetre deep into part of the motor cortex of his brain that controls movement. Wires feed the information from the electrodes into a computer which analyses the brain signals. The signals are interpreted and translated into cursor movements, offering the user an alternative way to control devices such as a computer with thought. (C)BBC

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 7122 - Posted: 04.01.2005

By HENRY FOUNTAIN In a finding that could help explain why a sucker never gets an even break, scientists are reporting today that they have succeeded in visualizing feelings of trust developing in a specific region of the brain. In the study, pairs of anonymous subjects were strapped into magnetic resonance imaging scanners 1,500 miles apart. The participants played 10 consecutive rounds of a risk-taking game that involved balancing monetary profit and trust. While they played, the scanners, synchronized through the Internet, measured how the subjects' brains reacted. With the development of trusting feelings, increased blood flow occurred in the caudate nucleus, an area in the rear part of the brain that is involved in processing rewards. Over time, this increased blood flow appeared earlier as an expectation of trustworthiness was established. The study's authors, from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and the California Institute of Technology, say their work shows that, at some level, the process of building trust is as basic as obtaining food or other rewards. The caudate nucleus appears to play a central role in evaluating the fairness of another person's actions and in signaling the intention to trust that person. Future studies, they said, may prove useful for understanding autism, schizophrenia or other behavioral disorders where the ability to form internal models of other people may be impaired. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 7121 - Posted: 04.01.2005

Alzheimer’s disease has stolen one of Frances Goldstein’s favorite past-times – reading a good book. Unable to remember parts she’s already read, picking up a book has become too frustrating. “It bothers her greatly, because reading has always been her love besides me of course,” says Jacobo Goldstein, Frances’ husband. Unfortunately, because current drugs simply slow the progression of Alzheimer’s, little can be done to restore memory in Alzheimer’s patients like Frances Goldstein. Alzheimer’s is a degenerative brain disease that starts with memory loss and can end with severe brain damage. It is believed that about 4 million adults in the U.S. are stricken with Alzheimer’s and if no effective therapies are developed it is estimated that by 2050 14 million Americans will have the disease. But researcher Lauren Billings of the University of California, Irvine believes she‘s discovered what triggers memory problems before Alzheimer’s sets in. Scientists know that deposits called plaques build up in between cells in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients and cause memory loss. The plaques are made up of a protein called ‘beta amyloid’. “Once you've got plaques you've already got memory loss and it might be too late to intervene and sort of halt the progress of the disease.” Previous research has focused on mice engineered to develop Alzheimer’s – called ‘transgenic’ mice, only after they’ve developed plaques. Billings however, followed these mice over their entire life span, and saw that the protein first collects inside their brain cells before the plaques form in between the cells. At the same time the mice began to have problems remembering tasks they’d learned. Billings’ work suggests that the protein’s affects might start even earlier than anticipated. “We think that that initial trigger for memory loss is the accumulation of beta amyloid inside cells.” (C) ScienCentral, 2000-2005.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 7120 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers trying to tease out the genetic basis of dyslexia have discovered a location on chromosome 2 that may contain one or more genes that contribute to the reading disorder and make it difficult for people to rapidly pronounce pseudowords. The team from the University of Washington, headed by medical geneticists Dr. Wendy Raskind and Ellen Wijsman and developmental psychologist Virginia Berninger, cautioned that the new findings do not mean that scientists have found "the gene" responsible for dyslexia. "Just as with heart disease, no single gene will provide the answer to what causes dyslexia," said Raskind. "When you look at something that is inherited there could be multiple genes, perhaps as many as a hundred, that contribute to it. And when you look at any characteristic of a person, you must consider the environmental background. There are other factors besides genes that could modify a behavior." The study, published in the March issue of the journal Molecular Psychiatry, is noteworthy for two reasons. First, it points to a new location containing genes that contribute to dyslexia. Second, the gene or genes at that location are involved in speed of decoding – changing written words into spoken words without clues to their meaning – a basic and persistent component of dyslexia.

Keyword: Dyslexia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 7119 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Mark Peplow A bionic eye that allows blind people to see has now got a protective coat of diamond that should significantly improve its performance. The silicon chip retinal implant is being developed by Second Sight, a company based in Sylmar, California, along with a consortium of university researchers. The device needs a hermetic case to prevent it from reacting with fluids in the eye. "It's as if you're throwing a television into the ocean and expecting it to work," says the company's president, Robert Greenberg. "The approach until now has been to lock it in a big waterproof can, but it's very big and bulky," he explains. So researchers have developed an ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) film that is guaranteed to be safe, long-lasting, electrically insulating and extremely tough. The coating can also be applied at low temperatures that do not melt the chip's microscopic circuits. The UNCD film is the first coating to meet all the necessary criteria for the implant, says Xingcheng Xiao, a materials scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois, who developed the film. The tiny diamond grains that make up the film are about 5 millionths of a millimetre across. They grow from a mixture of methane, argon and hydrogen passing over the surface of the five-millimetre-square chip at about 400 °C. Xiao and his colleagues have already tested the implants in rabbits' eyes, and saw no adverse reaction after six months. He will present the results on 1 April at the Materials Research Society meeting in San Francisco, California. ©2005 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Vision; Robotics
Link ID: 7118 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Winning, not losing, triggers violence among supporters after a sports match, a study suggests. Welsh researchers found more victims of assault were treated at Cardiff's A&E department after Wales won at rugby or football than if they had lost. The same was true even if the national teams were playing away. Writing in the journal Injury Prevention, the researchers say alcohol is a major factor - and add their findings should help prevent violence. Cardiff has a population of about 300,000, and international rugby and football matches often attract in excess of 70,000 fans. A team from the Violence Research Group at Cardiff University looked at the number of assault cases seen at the city's only casualty department between May 1995 and April 2002. The unit is about a mile from the national stadium. During this time, 106 home and away fixtures took place - 74 rugby matches and 32 football matches. Almost 27,000 assault cases required emergency treatment over the course of the study. On average, 30 cases of assault required medical attention on the day of the match and the day after. On days when no match had been played, the average number of assault cases fell to 21. (C)BBC

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 7117 - Posted: 03.31.2005

Brenda Maddox Going Sane by Adam Phillips Adam Phillips's favourite pronoun is "we." He assumes an audience of like-minded people who have read the same books and who warm to generalisations such as "we don't think of babies as sane," and "we have become the only animals who cannot bear themselves." In his latest book, Going Sane, this prolific psychoanalytic populariser develops the idea that "we" need a new definition of sanity. "We can't quite work out how our lives would be better, or even different, if we were sane." Whom is he talking to? Not me. Certainly not in his claim that madness is artistically fascinating, that "sanity doesn't quite come to life for us in the same way: it has no drama." Tell that to any admirer of Leopold Bloom, the Dublin Jew who holds Ulysses together with his humane ordinariness. And what about Jane Eyre, sitting in the windowseat at Thornfield Hall while the upper classes frolic at charades? And Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer? The honest life reasonably led is as much the essence of literature as the disquiet of Hamlet or the murderousness of Raskolnikov. © Copyright 2004 - Prospect Magazine

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 7116 - Posted: 06.24.2010

It may not be one of life’s deepest mysteries, but as scientific conundrums go, it has a peculiar staying power. Why is yawning contagious? Researchers recently found that yawning isn’t only catching among people; it is also among chimpanzees. (Click here for a brief video from this research.) No one has devised a fully convincing explanation of why. Compounding the mystery is the odd way in which the contagious power of yawning is largely unconscious. We can see someone yawn, yearn to replicate the action ourselves, and do it, all without thinking about it. Other times we’re aware it is happening, though it still floats somewhere beneath the realm of reason and of purposeful actions. So what gives? In an effort to find the answer, the Finnish government recently funded a brain scanning study. The results turned up some hard-to-interpret, possible clues. It also confirmed the obvious: yawn contagion is largely unconscious. Wherever it might affect the brain, it bypasses the known brain circuitry for consciously analyzing and mimicking other people’s actions. This circuitry is called the “mirror-neuron system,” because it contains a special type of brain cells, or neurons, that become active both when their owner does something, and when he or she senses someone else doing the same thing.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 7115 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Sleeping woes may explain why children with epilepsy are often so hyperactive, say researchers with the University of Florida's Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute. Characterized at its extreme by physical convulsions, epilepsy has long been thought to cause excitability and contrariness in children. But UF researchers writing in the journal Epilepsy & Behavior believe the real reason some of these children cannot sit still or pay attention is because they don't get enough shut-eye. “When we treated kids with sleep disturbances, not only did their epilepsy get better, their daytime behavior, concentration and capacity to learn increased,” said Paul Carney, M.D., chief of pediatric neurology at UF's College of Medicine and a professor at the B.J. and Eve Wilder Center for Excellence in Epilepsy Research . “Many kids with epilepsy aren't being adequately assessed for underlying sleep disorders. We can significantly have an impact over their cognition, learning and maybe even improve their epilepsy by improving their sleep.” Epilepsy describes a group of disorders that occur when electrical activity in the brain goes haywire, resulting in bursts of frenetic activity that cause seizures. It strikes more than 2 million people in the United States, according to the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke. Copyright © 2004 | University of Florida

Keyword: Epilepsy; Sleep
Link ID: 7114 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A few rare people who consistently nod off early, then wake up wide-eyed much before dawn, can blame a newly-found mutant gene for their sleep troubles, Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers announced today. This odd “time-shift” trait — called familial advanced sleep phase syndrome (FASPS) — was studied in one affected family by neurologist Louis J. Ptacek, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher, and Ying-Hui Fu, at the University of California, San Francisco. Their report appears in the March 31, 2005, issue of the journal Nature. The sleep-shifting mutation they found is in “a gene that was not previously shown in mammals to be a circadian rhythm gene,” Ptacek explained. It's not yet clear how the mutant gene works to shift people's sleep time, their circadian rhythm, he added. But follow-on experiments in fruit flies and mice yielded results that are intriguing. When the mutant gene was inserted into the flies, for example, it did the opposite of what was seen in the human family: it lengthened circadian rhythm. Yet in genetically engineered mice, the same gene change made the mice early risers — mimicking what was seen in humans with FASPS. © 2005 Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 7113 - Posted: 06.24.2010

When survival is on the line, sex may be the answer. So says a new study that sheds light on the mystery of why sex evolved as a reproductive strategy, despite the time and energy drain of mating. Biologists have shown sexually reproducing yeast adapt more quickly to stressful conditions than asexually dividing yeast do. A century-old theory suggests sex evolved because it increases genetic variation in offspring, accelerating natural selection. But this theory remained untested because comparing sexual and asexual reproduction under identical conditions was a tricky experiment to do. Matthew Goddard of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and colleagues at Imperial College London solved the problem by genetically altering yeast cells to be incapable of reproducing sexually. Normal yeast can reproduce by dividing either asexually, producing daughter cells with little genetic recombination, or sexually, producing spores with only half of the parent's chromosomes. These spores must "mate" with other spores and combine genetic information to create normal yeast. Goddard's group found that both the altered and unaltered yeast grew at the same rate under non-stressful conditions. But when the team stressed cultures of each type of cell by increasing the temperature and adding salt to the mix, the sexually reproducing strain grew faster than the asexual strain. Copyright © 2005 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 7112 - Posted: 06.24.2010

In a finding that opens new doors to determining susceptibility to antidepressant side effects, researchers at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute report that changes in brain activity prior to treatment with antidepressants can flag patient vulnerability. Published in the April 2005 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Neuropsychopharmacology, the study is the first to link brain function and medication side effects, and to show a relationship between brain function changes during brief placebo treatment and later side effects during treatment with medication. The study's unique design compares brain function changes in healthy research subjects with no history of depression while taking an antidepressant vs. placebo, a pill with inactive ingredients. In addition, all participants took only placebo for one week prior to randomization to medication or placebo. Using "cordance," a quantitative electroencephalography (QEEG) imaging technique developed at UCLA, the research team found changes in brain function in the prefrontal region during the one-week placebo lead-in were related to side effects in subjects who received an antidepressant. "This finding shows the promise of new ways for assessing susceptibility to antidepressant side effects," said Aimee M. Hunter, lead author and research fellow at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 7111 - Posted: 03.31.2005

If athletes, soldiers and drivers must perform every day in visually messy environments, common sense suggests that any visual training they receive should include distractions and disorder. New research from the University of Southern California and UC Irvine suggests common sense is wrong in this case. The human vision system learns best in "clear display" conditions without visual noise, said co-authors Zhong-Lin Lu and Barbara Anne Dosher. Their findings appear in a pair of articles in the current issue of PNAS. The research has long-range implications for rehabilitation therapy, treatment of individuals with "lazy eye" or related disorders and training of soldiers, police officers and other personnel who must make split-second decisions in chaotic situations. "Now you can simplify training a lot," said Lu, a professor of psychology in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. "Soldiers, for example, have to operate with goggles and all kinds of (visual) devices. Pilots have other kinds of goggles, video displays. They operate in different environments with different kinds of noise and different kinds of interference." "What these results show is, in fact, you only need to train them in a clear display environment."

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 7110 - Posted: 03.31.2005