A traumatic brain injury from a sudden blow to the head is a major public health problem. Currently it’s a leading cause of disability among American children and young adults. Many face lasting impairments that affect their independence and daily lives. But now, thanks to recent studies, these patients’ futures may eventually improve. A line of research finds that new strategies centering on transplant techniques show promise for repairing the brain following an injury. A slip on the ice. A crash into the windshield. A collision during a football game. The scenarios are endless. Yet each year, for an estimated 1.5 million Americans, the result is the same. A traumatic brain injury. Characterized by a blow to the head, this type of injury suddenly damages the brain and its function. Survivors can experience a range of lasting impairments, including problems with speech, emotion, sensation, movement, or thinking. And due to inadequate treatments, many face the prospect of experiencing significant disabilities for the rest of their lives. Increasing research, however, now points to new strategies that may eventually improve the future of these patients. Techniques that may hold promise for traumatic brain injury (TBI) include the use of special cell transplants. Specifically, recent animal studies provide evidence that cell transplant strategies may promote the repair of an injured brain and help restore lost abilities. Copyright © 2004 Society for Neuroscience

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Stem Cells
Link ID: 7089 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The genetic basis of a distressing neurological condition that prevents people from recognising faces has been pinned down. The finding may help people cope with the impairment, which the researchers believe may affect 1 in 50 people from birth. People with prosopagnosia, or face blindness, cannot easily tell faces apart, even if they belong to people they know well, and so often see their friends and family as strangers. The condition is usually associated with brain damage, for example from a stroke, but numerous anecdotal reports have suggested that it also runs in families. Now a team led by Thomas Grüter at the Institute for Human Genetics in Münster, Germany, who is a prosopagnosic himself, has found concrete evidence of its genetic basis. "I realised I had prosopagnosia quite early on in school," Grüter says. He has trouble recognising faces of people he knows and sometimes thinks he recognises strangers. The team recruited members of a prosopagnosia support group and their families into the study, plus Grüter's own relatives. Using a questionnaire to identify prosopagnosia symptoms, the team found 38 prosopagnosics in seven families. By plotting the condition on family trees, the team showed that the inheritance pattern is consistent with the trait being carried by a single gene: just one defective copy of the gene could make the carrier face-blind. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 7088 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Providence, RI –Some families with new babies face excessive infant crying, or colic. And some new mothers go through maternal post-partum depression (PPD) following childbirth. Neither situation is considered healthy, but a recent study published in the Infant Mental Health Journal has found that the combined impact of colic and PPD can have a highly toxic outcome. Researchers have linked colicky babies and maternal depression to decrease in overall family functioning. "We found that severe depressive symptoms in the mothers were related to fussy, or difficult infant temperament, more parenting stress, lower parental self-esteem and more family-functioning problems," says senior author Barry Lester, PhD with the Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center (BHCRC) and Brown Medical School. Dr. Lester founded the Colic Clinic at the Infant Development Center at Women and Infant's Hospital in Providence, RI, and is the foremost colic researcher in the country. His new book Why is My Baby Crying? was published last month by Harper-Collins and is touted as 'the parent's survival guide for coping with crying problems and colic'. "Colic is ultimately defined by the parental threshold for infant crying," says Lester and his co-authors, "so one possibility is that cry-related problems like colic act as a catalyst for dysfunction in already stressed families."

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7087 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bruce Bower Kids make some unusual friends. Take Simpy, an 8-year-old girl with blue skin and black eyes who likes funny clothes. Then, there's Skateboard Guy. He wears cool shirts and performs amazing tricks on his fancy board, even though he's small enough to chill out in a child's pants pockets. Alicia is only a couple inches high, too, and she has a great sense of humor—for a talking dog with green fur and blue eyes. These are just a few of the imaginary companions that 7-year-olds have described to psychologists led by Marjorie Taylor of the University of Oregon in Eugene. The team was surprised by how common invented friends are among kids that age. Nearly one-third of the 100 7-year-olds that the researchers questioned were playing with pretend pals. The psychologists report that, overall, 65 of the children that they tracked from age 3 to 7 reported having hung out with an imaginary buddy at some time in their lives. Many children who had imaginary friends at age 3 later dropped them only to invent a new such friend by age 7. About one in four of the kids who described a pretend friend had kept it a secret from parents. A diverse cross-section of kids played with make-believe buddies, the team found. Although preschool girls described imaginary companions more often than their male peers did, that sex disparity vanished by age 7. Copyright ©2005 Science Service.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7086 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By GARDINER HARRIS A 30-year-old drug to treat hyperactivity made by Abbott Laboratories should be banned immediately because of its toxic effects on the liver, a citizen's group said yesterday in a petition to federal drug regulators. At least 13 patients have died since 1975 taking the drug, known as Cylert or pemoline, according to the group. Reports given to the Food and Drug Administration show that at least 193 patients have suffered serious consequences from the drug, said Dr. Peter Lurie, deputy director of the group, Public Citizen. Dr. Lurie said that several newer drugs worked as well as Cylert without its potentially lethal side effects. "This is an outmoded drug," he said, "and there is no reason for it to be still on the market." Melissa Brotz, a spokeswoman for Abbott, said the company planned to discontinue selling its version of the drug "in the next several months" because of declining sales. A spokesman for the drug agency said the petition would be reviewed. Copycat versions of the drug are also sold by generic-drug manufacturers. Sales of all versions have declined substantially since 1999, when the drug agency stiffened warnings on the drug's label. Last year, doctors in the United States wrote about 117,000 prescriptions for Cylert and its generic equivalents, the petition said. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 7085 - Posted: 03.25.2005

CINCINNATI--Scientists at the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Medicine have discovered the cause of a deadly type of secondary stroke known as cerebral vasospasm. A constriction of the blood vessels in the brain, cerebral vasospasm usually occurs three to 10 days following a massive brain bleed known as hemorrhagic stroke. Sixty percent of patients who survive the initial stroke develop vasospasm, and 40 percent of them die from it. Vasospasm, says neurology department researcher Joseph Clark, PhD, results from a buildup of toxins caused by bleeding from the initial stroke. "Normally the cerebral spinal fluid that envelopes the brain carries off wastes and exchanges them for nutrients at what's called the blood-brain barrier," Dr. Clark says. "After a hemorrhagic stroke, however, toxins given off by the brain bleed contribute to the development of specific molecules that later causes the constricting vasospasm." A research team led by Dr. Clark has now identified the molecules that trigger vasospasm, a breakthrough, he says, that "raises hopes of developing not only new ways to treat the condition, but also a diagnostic test to determine which hemorrhagic stroke survivors are at greater risk."

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 7084 - Posted: 03.25.2005

A pair of leading scientists who study songbirds as models for understanding the human brain and how humans acquire language say it's time for the burgeoning field to begin singing a different tune and study a wider variety of species. Michael Beecher and Eliot Brenowitz, University of Washington professors of psychology and biology, say that while a great deal of knowledge has been gleaned by studying songbirds over the past three decades, a narrow focus on just a few species only provides a fragmentary picture of how the brains of nearly 4,000 songbird species function. Writing in companion papers in the March issues of the journals Trends in Neurosciences and Trends in Ecology and Evolution, the two UW scientists argue that there is much greater diversity in how and when birds learn to sing than is generally recognized. They say the value of the birdsong system as a model for studying how the brain controls the learning of language would be greatly enhanced by taking into account the diversity seen among different bird species. "We are interested in comparative approaches," said Beecher, who is an animal behaviorist. "There are many patterns of learning, but most studies are on zebra finches or white-crowned sparrows, in which song learning is restricted to the first year of life. People are not taking advantage of the wide spectrum of bird species. There probably are more species learning songs into their third and fourth years than those who only learn in the first few months or first year."

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 7083 - Posted: 03.25.2005

WASHINGTON -- Even our grandmothers told us fish was "brain food"--and now scientists have evidence to back the claim. Researchers with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) found that a diet high in docosahexenoic acid, or DHA--an omega-3 fatty acid found in relatively high concentrations in cold-water fish--dramatically slowed the progression of Alzheimer's disease in mice. Specifically, DHA cut the harmful brain plaques that mark the disease. The results appear in the March 23 online edition of the Journal of Neuroscience. Senior author Greg M. Cole, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the Greater Los Angeles VA Healthcare System and UCLA, said that unlike many studies with mice, this one points to the benefits of a therapy that is easily available and already touted for other medical conditions. DHA--either from food sources such as fish and soy, or in fish-oil supplements--is recommended by many cardiologists for heart health, based on scores of previous studies. "The good news from this study is that we can buy the therapy at a supermarket or drug store," said Cole. "DHA has a tremendous safety profile--essentially no side effects--and clinical trial evidence supports giving DHA supplements to people at risk for cardiovascular disease."

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 7082 - Posted: 03.25.2005

Narelle Towie Two tiny species of tropical octopus have demonstrated a remarkable disappearing trick. They adopt a two-armed 'walk' that frees up their remaining six limbs to camouflage them as they slink away from trouble. "When we noticed one was walking, I thought my gosh, this is amazing. It's the first underwater bipedal locomotion I know of," says Christine Huffard of the University of California, Berkeley, who captured the behaviour on video. Huffard's team filmed the apple-sized Octopus marginatus in the tropical waters of Indonesia. Instead of its usual sprawling crawl, O. marginatus fled from divers by striding on two arms, with the rest of its arms wrapped around its body, giving it the appearance of a walking coconut. By rolling its rearmost arm out along the sea bed, and then repeating the action using a second arm, the octopus walks as if it is on a conveyor belt. "It's like a backward walk," says Huffard, who reports the discovery in Science1. ©2005 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 7081 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sarah Williams In the weeks since Harvard President Lawrence Summers made a number of controversial comments about women in science, the American public has been pressed to find an explanation for exactly why women remain underrepresented science careers. Previous studies have found pronounced differences between the ways that men and women's bodies work. According to a 2003 article in the magazine Psychology Today, women produce more saliva than men, learn to speak at an earlier age, are more likely to become depressed and are more able to tell how people around them are feeling. In addition, differences in brain structure give scientists the idea that there may be major differences between the way that men and women think and acquire knowledge. Men typically have larger brains than their female counterparts. However, women's brains possess more grey matter, which consists of highly packed nerves. The problem with researching differences in the way that men and women think is that it is hard to determine whether these differences come from actual brain disparities or simply cultural trends. © 2005 The Johns Hopkins News-Letter

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 7080 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY The death of a child not only alters a family forever but also sharply increases the risk that parents will later be hospitalized for a mental illness, researchers are reporting in the largest study to date of parent bereavement and mental health. The risk is greatest during the first year after the child's death but remains elevated even five years afterward, the researchers found, and includes higher rates of schizophrenia, depression and abuse of drugs and alcohol. The overall rate of psychiatric hospitalization among bereaved parents in the study was less than 3 percent over five years, but, experts noted, doctors do not usually admit patients for mental illness unless their condition is urgent. The paper appears in the current issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. "This is a very important study, because bereavement traditionally has been way underrecognized and undertreated in medicine and psychiatry," said Dr. M. Katherine Shear, director of the Bereavement and Grief Program at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research. Because a vast majority of people who grieve the death of a child do so without lasting mental health problems, psychiatrists have not had a good sense of how much, or even whether, the deaths can increase the likelihood of psychological illness, she said, adding, "This study is large and rigorous enough" to put those questions to rest. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress; Depression
Link ID: 7079 - Posted: 03.24.2005

STANFORD, Calif. - Scientists have believed that neurons need a long period of fine-tuning and training with other neurons before they take on their adult role. But after using new technology for the first time to watch these cells develop, a team of researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine found that neurons come into this world with a good idea about what they'll become as adults. The work, which is detailed in a paper in the March 24 issue of Neuron, took place in the brain of a small see-through fish called a zebra fish. Stephen Smith, PhD, professor of molecular and cellular physiology, and graduate student Christopher Niell immobilized a young fish at an age when the nerves first grow from the eye to reach the brain. Then, with the aid of a 6-foot-long laser and some fancy microscopy, the researchers were able to watch individual neurons as they matured in real time. The pair specifically monitored hundreds of neurons in the region of the brain that respond to images. Niell set up a tiny LCD screen showing squares the size of the fish's favorite planktonic food moving up and down or left and right. They expected to find that young neurons fire in response to a variety of different images, then refine their role over time so that in the adult fish the neurons only respond to images moving in a certain direction or near the left or right side of the visual field.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7078 - Posted: 03.24.2005

Opposites attract, as the saying goes. But a new study suggests this adage may only hold for one-night stands, not long-term relationships. Decades of research indicate that people tend to trust those with faces similar to their own and are even more likely to marry them. Evolutionary theory provides an explanation for the first tendency: we are wired to recognize and help our kin because they are likely to share our genes. But evolution should also protect us against the dangers of inbreeding by preventing us from hopping in the sack with close relatives. To find out how these conflicting motivations play out, Lisa DeBruine, a psychologist at St. Andrews and Aberdeen Universities, Scotland, presented 144 college students with 36 pairs of computer-generated faces. The faces in each pair were of the same race and the opposite sex as the viewer, but one was manipulated to have facial features more similar to those of the viewer. As in earlier studies, the students found faces more trust-worthy if they were like their own. When it came to the prospect of a one-night stand, students found facial similarity a turn-off, DeBruine reports online today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. She concludes that people are less sexually attracted to individuals who look like kin in order to avoid inbreeding. Copyright © 2005 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 7077 - Posted: 06.24.2010

While lithium treatment has proven to be a godsend for many of the two million Americans with bipolar disorder, it is not without its downside. People on the drug may develop hypothyroidism, tremors, cognitive impairment, and excessive thirst and urination and gain weight. However, better treatments for bipolar disorder depend on a better understanding of the still-mysterious mechanism by which lithium damps the highs and lows of the disorder. Now, researchers led by Philip Brandish of Merck & Co., Inc., and Edward Scolnick of the Broad Institute (formerly of Merck and Co., Inc.) have identified genes whose activity appears to be switched on by lithium, suggesting more direct targets for drugs to treat the disorder. Lithium is known to inhibit the production of an important cellular switch, called inositol monophosphate, so the researchers set out to find genes that were activated by this inhibition. They treated slices of rat brain with lithium chloride as well as a chemical that depletes inositol. The also treated other slices with the two chemicals, but added inositol. The researchers used DNA microarrays--so-called "gene chips"--to detect genes that were unequivocally activated when inositol was depleted in the brain slices. They discovered several genes that they concluded "suggest new directions toward the treatment of bipolar disorder."

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 7076 - Posted: 03.24.2005

UCSD/Salk team gains insight into neural basis of perception, finds evidence of cross-activation in brain regions of people who see letters and numbers in colors To most people a "red-letter day" is merely a metaphor. But it's everyday reality to a synesthete who sees the alphabet in colors. Synesthesia, a condition characterized by one sensory experience generating another – so that shapes have tastes, for instance – is estimated to affect between 1 in 200 to 1 in 2,000 people. The most common form involves seeing specific letters or numbers (graphemes) in specific colors. For these individuals, known as grapheme-color synesthetes, an ordinary "5," in black ink on a white background, always appears red or a "k," greenish-blue. According to research published in the March 24 issue of Neuron, not only do these grapheme-color synesthetes really see the colors they report, as measured in behavioral tests, but functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of their brains also shows activation in the color-selective regions of the cortex when they view black-and-white letters or numbers. The results, say researchers from the University of California, San Diego and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, lend support to the hypothesis that cross-activation of adjacent brain regions is the mechanism underlying synesthesia.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 7075 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Michael Hopkin They say that elephants never forget. Now the creatures have shown that, when it comes to the fine art of vocal mimicry, they're not averse to learning new tricks either. Researchers have recorded two African elephants (Loxodonta africana) that are adept mimics. One does a decent impression of an Asian elephant, and another is, remarkably, a dead ringer for a passing truck. The skilful impressions are far from the traditional grunts of an average African elephant. The discovery adds elephants to a notably short roll call of animal mimics, which includes little more than humans, sea mammals, bats and birds. "The surprising thing is how few mammals show an ability to modulate their sounds," says Peter Tyack of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, who led the study. The two elephants in question are Mlaika, an adolescent female living in a semi-captive group in Kenya, and Calimero, an adult male who lived for 18 years with two Asian elephants at a Swiss zoo. Calimero, perhaps unsurprisingly, mimics the typical chirp noises of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus). "But Mlaika seemed to be making noises like a truck, of all things," Tyack recalls. ©2005 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 7074 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists have transformed stem cells from adult human bone marrow into nerve cells by transplanting them into damaged chicken embryos. The University of Oslo team hopes the breakthrough could lead to a new source of cells to treat brain diseases such as Parkinson's. It appeared that the embryos' internal repair mechanism acted on the cells to profoundly change their make-up. Details are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Stem cells are master cells with the ability to form different kinds of tissue. But those from adult bone marrow normally produce blood and immune system cells. However, experiments have suggested it might be possible to coax them into becoming nerves. Attempts to achieve this have, in the past, been relatively unsuccessful. In a small number of cases, scientists have managed to identify the molecular hallmarks of neurons - but they have not been able to create properly formed interconnected cells. However, bone marrow stem cells implanted into chicken eggs developed fully functional physical features. They were also converted at a high rate of about 10%. Writing in PNAS, the researchers said: "This may open new possibilities for a high-yield production of neurons from a patient's own bone marrow." The Norwegian team used a micro-surgery technique to cut out a small section of the developing spinal cord within the chicken egg. Human haematopoietic stem cells (hHSCs) from bone marrow were then implanted into the damaged area. The eggs were incubated before the embryos were removed, and spinal cord slices containing human cells dissected out and analysed. Damage to the developing brain and spinal cord of the chicken embryo is automatically repaired through a process called regulative regeneration. (C)BBC

Keyword: Stem Cells; Regeneration
Link ID: 7073 - Posted: 03.23.2005

A major study will examine what limits should be put on the continued use of non-human primates in UK experiments. The review is being undertaken by four of Britain's leading medical and scientific organisations. It follows the fractious arguments between the research community and the animal welfare lobby over the need for new testing centres in the country. Some 3,000 primates - mostly marmoset and macaque monkeys - are used in British labs each year. Three-quarters of them are employed in toxicology tests - checking to see if new drug compounds are likely to be harmful if carried forward into human trials. Mainstream science has taken the view that monkeys' physiological similarities to humans - we are also primates - make them powerful tools to investigate the diseases and fundamental biology of people. But that closeness also raises an acute ethical dilemma - and there is growing pressure for the relatively small numbers of non-human primates used in tests to be reduced still further. Now, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal Society, the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust are setting up a working group to examine the recent, current and future scientific basis for biological and medical research involving non-human primates. (C)BBC

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 7072 - Posted: 03.23.2005

Susan Milius In a colony of tree wasps, workers on nursemaid duty crawl this way and that along the bottom of their nest, tending the youngsters in the comb. Most of the workers dutifully look after the queen's offspring, stopping only to spit a runny meal into the mouth of a pale, lumpy larva snug in its cell. But one of these workers is up to no good. This selfish worker stays still for a minute or two in a suspiciously crouched position. She's laying her own egg in an empty cell. Such rogue egg laying is a crime against insect society. The wheels of justice, however, don't require a special caste of investigators and prosecutors. Punishment among insects is meted out by ordinary workers—and sometimes the queen herself—says biologist Tom Wenseleers, who has watched dozens of hours of black-and-white videos from infrared security cameras that he's trained on nests of tree wasps. In the most dramatic episodes, the egg sneak finds herself surrounded by a posse of vigilante workers. "They're grabbing on to her; they try to sting her," says Wenseleers of the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. Copyright ©2005 Science Service.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 7071 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Helen Pearson The bitter wrangle over the fate of an American brain-damaged woman has thrown up both legal and ethical conundrums. But it has also highlighted neurologists' dearth of knowledge about the brain's workings after injury. Terri Schiavo was severely brain-damaged in 1990, after her heart temporarily stopped and starved her body of oxygen. Her husband has fought to allow her to die; her parents have opposed this on the grounds that she shows some signs of awareness and might recover. The debate escalated dramatically after a Florida judge permitted Schiavo's feeding tube to be removed last week, prompting President George W. Bush to sign emergency legislation ordering a review of her case. But on Tuesday 22 March, a federal judge turned down a request to have the tube reinserted. Brain specialists say that those hoping for Schiavo's recovery are ignoring medical consensus: that the widespread damage caused to her oxygen-deprived brain, and the length of time she has been sick, make the probability of any recuperation close to zero. "There is no evidence that there is anything we can do," says neurologist Nicholas Schiff at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York. ©2005 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 7070 - Posted: 06.24.2010