By JANE E. BRODY For decades I've been pleading with my readers to adopt healthy habits to prevent heart disease and possibly some cancers. Now there's another organ, the brain, that these measures may protect. Growing, scientifically sound evidence suggests that people can delay and perhaps even prevent Alzheimer's disease by taking steps like eating low-fat diets rich in antioxidants, maintaining normal weight, exercising regularly and avoiding bad habits like smoking and excessive drinking. Several other practices - including remaining socially connected and keeping the brain stimulated by reading, doing puzzles and learning new things - also appear to protect the brain against dementia. Achieving such protection is no minor matter. Nearly half of the people who live past 85 develop this devastating disease that ultimately divorces them from reality and those who love them. With 77 million baby boomers headed toward advanced age, much can be gained from postponing this most common form of dementia, if not preventing it entirely. An estimated 4.5 million Americans now have Alzheimer's, and the number has doubled since 1980, as more people reach older and older ages. Alzheimer's already costs Medicare three times as much as any other disease. By 2010, Medicare costs for people with Alzheimer's are expected to rise by more than 50 percent, to $49.3 billion from $31.9 billion in 2000. Now, half of all nursing home costs are related to dementia. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 7069 - Posted: 03.22.2005

By ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG When the legless man drove up on his own to meet Dr. Michael First for brunch in Brooklyn, it wasn't just to show Dr. First how independent he could be despite his disability. It was to show Dr. First that he had finally done it - had finally managed to get both his legs amputated, even though they had been perfectly healthy. Dr. First, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, had gotten to know this man through his investigations of a bizarre and extremely rare psychiatric condition that he is calling body integrity identity disorder, or B.I.I.D. "This is so completely beyond the realm of normal behavior," he said of the condition, which he estimated afflicts no more than a few thousand people worldwide. "My first thought when I heard about it was, Who would think this could go wrong? Who even thought there was a function that could be broken?" Dr. First is among a small group of psychologists and psychiatrists who are trying to define the disorder, understand its origins and decide whether to include it in the encyclopedic bible of psychiatry, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or D.S.M., as a full-fledged disease. At the same time, the disorder is turning up as a plot device or documentary subject in a handful of films, plays and television shows. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 7068 - Posted: 03.22.2005

By BENEDICT CAREY Sometimes when talking to people, I'll tell them that I've just had a lot of coffee, even though it's not true, because I know I fire off in all directions, and I can talk to you about anything - literature, string theory, rock guitar - I once worked for Leo Fender - and one thing I say to people is that, of course, I live near the edge; the view is better." Laurence McKinney, 60, who lives near the edge of Boston, is a business consultant, a Harvard graduate and self-described polymath who has had a career that is every bit as frenzied as his conversational style. Among other ventures, he said, he has started pharmaceutical companies, played in rock bands and helped design electric guitars, and written a book about the neuroscience of spirituality. This month, for the first time, he helped start a Web site for people like himself. They are known as hypomanics. At some point, almost everyone encounters them - restless, eager people, consumed with confident curiosity. Researchers suspect that their mental fever shares some genetic basis with that of bipolar disorder, known colloquially as manic depression, a psychiatric disorder characterized by effusive emotional highs and bouts of paralyzing despair. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 7067 - Posted: 03.22.2005

Risk with valproate four time greater than with alternative medications Use of the anticonvulsant drug valproate during pregnancy may pose a significantly great risk of birth defects than does use of other antiseizure medications. In the March 22 issue of Neurology, researchers from the North American AED (Antiepileptic Drug) Pregnancy Registry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) report that women taking valproate alone had a fourfold increased risk of having a child with a major malformation, compared with the risk among women taking other anticonvulsants. "The basic message for women who take valproate is to plan ahead if they want to have children. Discuss the risks with their physician and consider taking alternative drugs," says Lewis Holmes, MD, chief of the Genetics and Teratology Unit at MassGeneral Hospital for Children, director of the registry and senior author of the Neurology paper. Sold in the U.S. under the brand names Depakote and Depakene, valproate is used to treat seizures, migraines and such psychiatric disorders as bipolar disorder. Earlier studies have suggested a potential risk of birth defects, primarily neural tube defects such as spina bifida, but none had definitively established the level of risk and the types of malformations that most frequently occur.

Keyword: Epilepsy; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7066 - Posted: 03.22.2005

Whether war or violent crime touches our lives directly, or whether we are subjected to it secondhand through the media, on some level we experience the connection between our own biology and our emotions each day. Anyone who’s been cut off in traffic, even once, has felt the connection between that first perceived insult and the flush of anger, the spike of adrenaline, the body’s fight-or-flight mechanisms that seem built into human nature. Aggressiveness of character, early nineteenth-century phrenologists believed, could be judged by observing bumps on the skull; modern scientists peer into the brain beneath the bone. The idea that violence just might be hardwired into our genes has grown ever more acceptable as the technology, including gene mapping and brain scans, has grown more sophisticated. By the mid-1980s, according to one study, about forty percent of students believed war was intrinsic to human nature. Moreover, Wesleyan University psychology professor David Adams found that these students became less likely to engage in activities for peace. To challenge the alleged biological findings being used to justify violence and war, he convened a group of scientists at the Sixth International Colloquium on Brain and Aggression held in May 1986, and together, twenty of them drafted the Seville Statement on Violence. It concluded that, “Just as ‘wars begin in the minds of men,’ peace also begins in our minds. The same species who invented war is capable of inventing peace. The responsibility lies with each of us.” The statement was endorsed by the 65,000-member American Psychological Association at a 1987 meeting in New York, but of 400 invited reporters, only four—from the APA Monitor, Tass, ADN from then-East Germany, and the People’s Daily World of the U.S. Communist Party—showed up to cover the event. © 2002 Science & Spirit Magazine.

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 7065 - Posted: 06.24.2010

— By Daniel Woolls, Associated Press MADRID, Spain — When male animals strut their stuff -- the rainbow plumes of peacocks, the mighty tusks of an elephant -- they might be flaunting their potential for fatherhood, researchers in Spain say. Biologists working for Spanish government's top scientific research body say they have found evidence of this phenomenon in deer that might apply to other species. Features long considered to be only for show or self-defense might indicate the quality of an animal's genes. In the case of deer, for instance, it was believed antlers were simply a weapon for head-knocking battles with rivals, often over a female, and the winner got the doe. But the Spanish team found a direct link between the length and complexity of a buck's horns and the quality of its sperm. Long, multi-pointed antlers on a buck signal that it is a potent mate and females might seek out such males for this reason, said Montserrat Gomendio, a biologist at Madrid's Museum of National Sciences who is part of the team that did the research.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 7064 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Reading is something most of us take for granted. But many people struggle everyday of their lives to read and understand simple words and phrases. "I avoided reading because I would have to read a sentence over and over and still not understand what I read," explains Dee Register from Kernersville, North Carolina, who wasn't diagnosed with dyslexia until she was in her early 40's. If left untreated, childhood dyslexia becomes an adult problem. "It's not something that's outgrown," says neurophysiologist Lynn Flowers from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. "Ten percent of the child – and therefore the adult – population is affected by dyslexia to some degree," she says. "It isn't an all or nothing kind of disorder, it comes in shades as well." Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability that tends to run in families. "People without dyslexia process information in certain ways, in certain brain systems and certain neural pathways, and dyslexics do it differently and less efficiently," explains Judith Birsh, President of the New York branch of the International Dyslexia Association. People who suffer from dyslexia find it difficult to sort out the sounds within words, which make reading, writing and spelling very difficult. "If you’re stuck at the word-reading level and you’re laboring intensively over decoding [sounds], then you have nothing much left to work on comprehension and certainly you’re not going to speed along because you’re struggling along decoding the individual words," says Birsh. It can also have an affect on other aspects of a person's life such as short-term memory, mathematics and concentration. © ScienCentral, 2000-2005.

Keyword: Dyslexia
Link ID: 7063 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The young brain is adept at making fine distinctions, between language sounds for instance, that elude adults. With a little exposure to a foreign language, they can keep this ability longer. Now a study shows the same thing is true for recognizing faces. Babies quickly advance from promiscuous babbling to articulate gabbing, but along the way they lose the ability to distinguish between some spoken sounds, like "r" and "l" in English, which trouble some speakers of East Asian languages. A little exposure to a nonnative language allows infants to retain their verbal flexibility longer, so a team led by infant researchers Olivier Pascalis of the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom and Charles Nelson at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis wondered if the same applied to face recognition. The researchers had mothers show photos of Barbary macaque faces to their 6-month-olds for about 10 minutes per week over the course of 3 months. Before and after training, the team tested the babies using pairs of monkey mug shots, some they had seen before and some new. When the babies looked more at one photo, the researchers assumed it was of an individual unfamiliar to the infant, as infants are drawn to novelty.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Language
Link ID: 7062 - Posted: 03.22.2005

Why do some males smell better than others? Scientists at Cardiff University, in collaboration with colleagues at Max-Plank Society, Germany – and the help of stickleback fish - have identified the chemical responsible. The researchers found in a study of sticklebacks, that males with body odour that is particularly attractive to females produce small protein fragments (known as "peptides"). To prove this, the researchers produced a synthetic "perfume" containing a mixture of protein fragments. By manipulating the combination of fragments in the perfume, the sexual attractiveness of males could be increased. In the experiment none of the females being tested could see the males. Even males previously rejected by females were rendered irresistible after the synthetic perfume had been applied. Smell is important when choosing a partner, not only for humans but also fish. To fight disease, the body's Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) molecules identify a disease as a foreign invader. Different MHC molecules fight different diseases, so it's important to have a mix of MHC types. Females use smell to identify partners with suitable MHC molecules: choosing only males with the correct mix of immune genes critical for the survival of future offspring.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 7061 - Posted: 06.24.2010

(Boston) -- What's bad for your ticker may be good for your bean, according to a research from a team of scientists at Boston University. The team looked at 18 years of data from the long-running Framingham Heart Study and found an association between naturally high levels of blood cholesterol and better mental functioning. The results were recently published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. The research team, led by BU Department of Mathematics and Statistics Research Assistant Professor Penelope Elias (now at University of Maine at Orono) and including Merrill Elias, research professor of epidemiology in BU's Mathematics and Statistics Department, found a link between naturally occurring high cholesterol and modestly better mental function in areas such as visual organization, memory, attention, and concentration. Unlike previous studies, the current research isolated blood cholesterol from other well-known risk factors. Along with high blood pressure, diabetes, and hypertension, high cholesterol has long been known as a risk factor for heart disease and stroke. However, the results of the new study showed that the higher the natural level of cholesterol, the better participants did on tests of mental ability. High cholesterol was defined as > 240 mg/dL as measured in blood samples.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 7060 - Posted: 03.22.2005

Depression appears to be a major cause of insomnia in people with HIV, according to a new systematic review of 29 studies on the topic. Steven Reid, Ph.D., of Imperial College in London, lead author of the review, says that "given the prevalence of anxiety and depression reported in HIV infection, it is not surprising that psychiatric disorders should be associated with sleep disturbance in this group." Patients in the last stages of HIV infection with full-blown AIDS and those who have suffered some kind of brain impairment as a result of the disease are also more likely to suffer from insomnia, the reviewers conclude in the current issue of Psychosomatic Medicine. "The studies reviewed here illustrate that although insomnia is a frequent complaint in people living with HIV, there is considerable uncertainty about its cause and significance," Reid says. Earlier studies suggested that patients with HIV had changes in periods of REM (rapid eye movement) and non-REM sleep, along with other sleep rhythm changes, that may have led to insomnia. When Reid and colleague reviewed those studies, however, they found that very small numbers of participants and inconsistent findings.

Keyword: Depression; Sleep
Link ID: 7059 - Posted: 03.22.2005

By STEPHANIE SAUL Tony Soprano's psychiatrist is talking about her own case of depression. Lorraine Bracco, who plays Dr. Jennifer Melfi on HBO's "The Sopranos," has previously mentioned her depression, but she is now disclosing details about her history with the illness. And, like many other celebrities, she is doing so under a contract with a drug company. Last week, Pfizer, which makes the antidepressant Zoloft, introduced a Web site featuring Ms. Bracco, who has also discussed her illness in a series of media interviews with People magazine and the Associated Press, among others. Television commercials will soon feature Ms. Bracco, who has said she was treated with Zoloft during her illness. Pfizer declined to disclose how much the company is paying for her endorsement. Ms. Bracco joins a chorus of actors, singers and athletes with such deals. In the last year alone, folk singer Shawn Colvin has talked about mental illness in a national education campaign sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline, the manufacturer of the antidepressants Wellbutrin and Paxil. A former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback, Terry Bradshaw, has ventured across the country on "The Terry Bradshaw Depression Tour," also sponsored by Glaxo. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 7058 - Posted: 03.22.2005

By ANDREW POLLACK When Amylin Pharmaceuticals won federal approval on Wednesday for its first drug, executives celebrated by jumping into the reflecting pond at the company's office complex in San Diego. Some also called to thank a little-known software entrepreneur back east in Washington who had helped make it all possible. The entrepreneur, Allen Andersson, invested in Amylin in early 1999, when the company was facing collapse because the drug, a diabetes treatment called Symlin, failed to demonstrate statistically meaningful effects in two clinical trials. "We had an actual shutdown plan already mapped out," Joseph C. Cook Jr., the chairman of Amylin, recalled in an interview. "If Allen hadn't brought the money forward, there would have been no other choice." While Wall Street had written off Symlin, Mr. Andersson thought the drug would help his daughter Rachel, who has diabetes. "I loved the medicine and the market hated it," he said. His action ended up being good not only for Amylin and diabetics, but also for him. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 7057 - Posted: 03.20.2005

Some children who are very thin are being misdiagnosed as anorexic when they have the gut disorder Crohn's disease, a leading expert has warned. Child health specialist Professor Ian Booth told a conference that treatment can be delayed for months as a result. He said teenagers with Crohn's - an inflammation of the digestive tract - could present with growth failure but no digestive symptoms. Professor Booth said doctors should be aware Crohn's was a possible diagnosis. The diagnosis problems arise when children and teenagers are extremely thin and failing to thrive, he told a British Society of Gastroenterology meeting in Birmingham. Doctors may assume the patients have anorexia when they are actually having problems eating and digesting food because of Crohn's disease. Crohn's usually affects the small intestine. People with the condition may develop obstructions in their bowel, making digesting food painful. Professor Booth told the BBC News website: "This is an issue which is numerically very small, but individually very important. "Growth failure in the absence of intestinal symptoms can be an important presentation of Crohn's in adolescents. "The other important presentation is in wasting - as in malnutrition - so much so that presenting this way in adolescence, it is sometimes confused with anorexia nervosa." (C)BBC

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 7056 - Posted: 03.20.2005

By Julianna Kettlewell, BBC News science reporter Farm animals have feelings which should be respected and catered for, academics at a London, UK, meeting have said. They believe animals should not be dismissed as simple automatons - cows take pleasure in solving problems and sheep can form deep friendships. Delegates from around the globe were speaking at the Compassion in World Farming Trust (CIWF Trust) conference. They shared ways of exploring the minds of animals, as well as monitoring their suffering and alleviating their pain. "The study of animal sentience is one of the most exciting and important in the whole of biology," said Professor Marian Dawkins, of Oxford University. "My plea is that, when we make decisions and regulations about animals and campaign for them, the animals' voices should be heard and heard strongly." For whatever reasons, we humans tend to draw a charmed ring around ourselves - we suppose we are the only ones that think thoughts and feel feelings. We are happy to ascribe emotions to a tiny flailing inarticulate baby, while denying them in a sheep or even a chimpanzee. Talk of animal sentience is often brushed off as fluffy and sentimental - not the stuff of science or the real world. But perhaps we have been too hasty in our dismissal - perhaps consciousness does not peer through our eyes alone. "They are not unfeeling objects," said Professor Marc Bekoff, of the University of Colorado, US. "And what animals feel matters very much as they try to negotiate their lives in a human-dominated and often abusive world, in which they are mere pawns in our incessant and obsessive attempts to control their lives for our and not their benefit. (C)BBC

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 7055 - Posted: 03.20.2005

By KATE ZERNIKE AT the Congressional hearings last week investigating steroids and baseball, players were scolded not just for taking substances that are unsafe, but for doing something immoral. Those who use performance enhancing substances were called cheaters, cowards, bad examples for the nation's children. But if baseball players are cheating, is everyone else, too? After all, Americans are relying more and more on a growing array of performance enhancing drugs. Lawyers take the anti-sleep drug Provigil to finish that all-night brief, in hopes of concentrating better. Classical musicians take beta blockers, which banish jitters, before a big recital.Is the student who swallows a Ritalin before taking the SAT unethical if the pill gives her an unfair advantage over other students? If a golfer pops a beta blocker before a tournament, is he eliminating a crucial part of competition - battling nerves and a chance of choking? Beyond baseball and steroids, where do you draw the line on the use of performance-enhancing drugs? President Bush said in his 2004 State of the Union speech that steroid use in baseball "sends the wrong message: that there are shortcuts to accomplishment, and that performance is more important than character." Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; ADHD
Link ID: 7054 - Posted: 03.20.2005

By Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience Senior Writer New research into how the brain controls movement reveals a location of thoughts that determine what you will do. Don't worry, the scientists can't read your most fantastic or lurid imaginings. What the Caltech researchers can do is spot the flicker of activity that occurs while you contemplate moving your hand. The research is expected to improve efforts to build neural prostheses, devices that link a paralyzed person's mind to an external device with the help of brain electrodes and a computer. Several research programs are making progress on similar aspects of mind control over movement. Patients have shown the ability to move a cursor on a screen with nothing but brainpower, for example. And a monkey has been trained to feed itself with a robotic arm. But the new study, announced this week, predicted where a patient would move his hand based on brain activity the instant prior. It promises a more effective way to convert desire into movement for paralyzed patients. © 1999-2005 Imaginova Corp.

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 7053 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Early treatment with a drug can delay the onset and progression of heart failure in children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, research suggests. DMD is an incurable genetic disease causing muscle wastage, which often leads to fatal cardiac problems. The study shows the drug, perindopril, can slow heart muscle degeneration - and thus ward off heart failure. The research by Paris's Cochin Hospital involved 57 children, says the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Lead researcher Professor Denis Duboc said: "For the first time, we have shown that it is possible to slow progression in this rare degenerative disease. "In DMD, the heart muscles are affected and cardiac problems are fatal in around 40% of children." The five-year study focused on the effect on perindopril, a drug from a class known as ACE inhibitors, widely used to treat high blood pressure and heart failure. Some 57 children with DMD received either perindopril, or a dummy drug. Eight in the dummy group went on to develop signs of heart failure, and three died from the condition. In contrast, just one of the perindopril group showed signs of heart failure, and none died from the condition during the study. Professor Duboc said the results suggested early treatment with perindopril might also benefit other people genetically predisposed to heart failure. DMD, one of the most common forms of muscular dystrophy, is caused by a lack of a protein called dystrophin which helps keep the muscles intact. It strikes children at a young age, and affects almost exclusively boys who rarely survive beyond their early 30s. (C)BBC

Keyword: Muscles
Link ID: 7052 - Posted: 03.20.2005

Young adults who take virginity pledges as adolescents are as likely to be infected with sexually transmitted diseases as those who do not take virginity pledges, Yale and Columbia University researchers report in the March 18 issue of Journal of Adolescent Health. The virginity pledges may even encourage higher risk sexual behavior among young adults, say study authors Hannah Brückner, assistant professor of sociology at Yale University and Peter Bearman, professor of sociology at Columbia University. "We were surprised by the findings," said Brückner. "Pledgers have fewer sex partners than non-pledgers, they start having sex later, and they marry earlier, so they should have lower STD rates, but they don't." One reason is that sexually active pledgers were less likely to use condoms at first sex than non-pledgers. Because most pledgers are sexually active (88 percent of the pledgers), lower rates of condom use increases STD risk. Brüeckner and Bearman also note that pledgers were less likely to seek and obtain STD-related health care, possibly because of increased stigmatization or misperception of infection risk among pledgers. Because pledgers are less likely to be diagnosed and treated for STD infections, they may be more likely to have those infections for longer periods than non-pledgers.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 7051 - Posted: 03.20.2005

Rats might not seem like picky eaters, but if their diets lack key amino acids, they'll search for the right food. Now researchers believe they have discovered the molecular process that guides this finicky, but critical, behavior. The findings may help researchers figure out why people eat what they do. Proteins are made from various combinations of 22 amino acids. Humans and rats produce most of these in their cells but have to get eight of them--known as essential amino acids--from their diets. Rats eating a diet devoid of an essential amino acid will stop eating after 20 minutes and look for other food. The clues to this behavior originate in yeast. Experiments had shown that yeast detect nutritional deficiencies with the help of a gene called GCN2, which sends up a red flag when molecules that transport amino acids, called tRNAs, are empty-handed. Fast forward to 2003, when biochemist Tracy Anthony of Indiana University School of Medicine, Evansville, fed an amino acid-lite diet to rats whose GCN2 had been knocked out. The rats didn't notice the dietary deficiency, suggesting that, like yeast, they might rely on tRNAs to plan their menus. Anthony teamed up with neurophysiologist Dorothy Gietzen of the University of California, Davis, and colleagues to test the idea. Copyright © 2005 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 7050 - Posted: 06.24.2010