By JEREMY PEARCE Dr. Sidney Goldring, a neurosurgeon and educator who was an early advocate for a brain operation that he helped to develop for patients with severe epilepsy, died on Nov. 3 at a nursing home in Chesterfield, Mo. He was 81. The cause was complications of Alzheimer's disease, which was diagnosed seven years ago, said his wife, Lois. In the 1960's and 70's, Dr. Goldring worked to develop a procedure using general anesthesia for brain surgery on patients with epilepsy, a disorder set off by abnormal discharges of the brain's nerve cells. Those discharges can cause seizures and loss of memory and control of the body. Previously, surgeons experimented with operations under local anesthesia and obtained inconsistent results. At a time when patients were being treated mostly with drugs, Dr. Goldring believed that electrodes could be placed on the brain to determine precise areas involved in setting off seizures. Once that was done, the patient was put under general anesthesia and the tissue could be cut out without damaging the surrounding brain. The procedure remains in use today. "Sidney Goldring focused national attention on the benefits of surgery at a time when people were worried about any surgical intervention in the brain," said Dr. Gerald D. Fischbach, dean of the faculty of medicine at Columbia University and a former colleague of Dr. Goldring's at Washington University in St. Louis. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Epilepsy
Link ID: 6433 - Posted: 11.17.2004

Body language may be as important as facial expressions in communicating emotions such as fear, a new study shows. Much imaging research has been done on how the human brain responds to facial expressions, including fearful ones. But few studies have looked at how people respond to bodily expressions of emotion, which are more applicable when subjects are viewed from a distance. Psychologist Beatrice de Gelder and colleagues at Harvard Medical School in Boston selected 24 photographs of actors in poses that were fearful, happy, or emotionally neutral. They then blurred out the faces so subjects would only react to bodies. The pictures were randomly presented to seven subjects while their brains were being scanned. Looking at brain activation in emotional, visual, and motor areas, the researchers found that whereas happy bodily expressions (such as spreading the arms in a welcoming fashion) spurred more activity in the visual cortex, fearful ones (such as a cowering position) revved up activity in emotional centers such as the amygdala, and in areas involved in movement and in perceiving movement. This network of brain activity may help explain how fear spreads quickly through a crowd and helps get the body ready to flee, the authors note in a 15 November paper appearing online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. De Gelder says studies on the relation of emotion and movement could offer insights into movement disorders such as Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases, which also are characterized by emotional disturbances. Copyright © 2004 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 6432 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Barry Yeoman Some 20 years ago, in front of a frenzied and antagonistic crowd, Harry Carson hurled his entire bulk—240 pounds—into an equally massive human body racing toward him across the field at Washington’s RFK Stadium. A middle linebacker with the New York Giants, Carson was a celebrated defensive football player, smart and agile, selected for the Pro Bowl even during years his team couldn’t eke out a winning season. Above all, he was known for aggression. Once, walking off the field after a game, Carson felt a tug on his jersey, turned around, and found himself eye to eye with O. J. Simpson. “Man, I’ve been hit by some of the best,” the running back told him. “But I’ve never been hit as hard as you hit me today.” That day at RFK Stadium, Carson’s quarry was John Riggins, a Washington Redskins fullback with a similar reputation. Helmet against helmet, shoulder against shoulder, the players crashed with a concussion-producing impact that Carson would remember for decades. “It was like two trains colliding,” he would later say. Dazed, Carson dusted himself off and walked back into the Giants’ huddle—and as he stood holding his teammates’ hands, everything went black. He didn’t faint. He didn’t stop playing. For a few minutes, though, he found himself unable to interpret his coach’s signals from the sidelines. He couldn’t call the next play, as the middle linebacker is expected to do. He just remained in the game, doing the best he could until he regained his wits. © 2004 The Walt Disney Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 6431 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New Haven, Conn.--The same receptors in the brain that are activated when a person smokes cigarettes also play a critical role in the effectiveness of antidepressants, according to a study by Yale researchers in the November issue of Biological Psychiatry. What this means, particularly for patients who are suicidal, is that finding a way to activate these receptors will make anti-depressants work more quickly. Most anti-depressants now take up to three weeks to bring emotional relief. "Just the ability to block the reuptake of serotonin isn't enough, otherwise it wouldn't take two to three weeks to be effective, " said Marina Picciotto, associate professor of psychiatry, pharmacology and neurobiology at Yale School of Medicine and senior author of the study. "This finding has implications for those patients who are depressed to the point of being suicidal, and for the 30 percent of people who are not responsive to anti-depressants that are now available." The primary pharmacologic treatment for depression over the past several decades has been drugs that inhibit synaptic reuptake of monoamine neurotransmitters. Recent evidence indicates other neurotransmitter systems might play a role in the mechanism of action of antidepressants, Picciotto said.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Depression
Link ID: 6430 - Posted: 11.17.2004

Worker ‘burnout’ is triggered by a drastic re-setting of sleep patterns, rather than high levels of stress per se, according to a study of patients in Sweden. A new treatment based partly on these findings is among the first to show clear success, researchers say. Burnout is not recognised in the classic manuals of mental health disorders. But the main symptoms are taken to be long-term, excessive fatigue and cognitive impairment. “It usually affects people who are very committed to work. One day they wake up and they just can’t get out of bed. Then they take a few weeks’ sick leave, but they don’t improve,” says Torbjörn Åkerstedt at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who led the new work. While stress is clearly involved, the precise causes of the symptoms have been unclear. A high level of the stress hormone cortisol has been blamed, for instance. But based on his team’s recent work, Åkerstedt says: “We think that people can function quite well on high levels of stress - it’s only when their sleep is disrupted that you get burnout.” The team took regular sleep EEG readings of 35 patients who had been off work for a minimum of three months. The tests consistently showed extreme sleep fragmentation and disruption. These patients were living on as little as four or five hours of sleep each night, with a 40% reduction in slow-wave sleep compared with healthy people. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 6429 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By HARRIET BROWN We were at the county fair the night I realized my 8-year-old was having panic attacks. She and her 13-year-old sister had gone on a ride, the kind where a round room spins, the floor drops away and centrifugal force holds the riders to the walls. I stood outside and watched the ride start to spin and then, puzzlingly, slow down. The door opened and my 8-year-old stumbled out, in the midst of what I thought was yet another temper tantrum. She had been having them since the previous winter, when she'd been hospitalized for several days and then convalescent for months with a rare and potentially lethal disease. Thankfully, she had recovered. But she'd been, well, cranky ever since, subject to unpredictable bouts of rage far worse than any she'd had as a 2-year-old. That night at the fair, something clicked as I watched her body stiffen and her brows sweep together. "Are you scared?" I asked. "No!" she said through gritted teeth. "I feel like I'm going to throw up or pass out!" I got her to breathe deeply, and the tantrum eased. At home that night, I thought back over the last eight months. There had been more and more of these tantrums, and they had affected her life, I now saw, on just about every level. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6428 - Posted: 11.16.2004

Heavy computer use could be linked to glaucoma, especially among those who are short-sighted, fear researchers. Glaucoma is caused by increased fluid pressure within the eye compressing the nerves at the back, which can lead to blindness if not treated. The findings, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, are based on 10,000 Japanese workers. The authors and experts recommend more research, particularly because being short-sighted is a known glaucoma risk. Dr Masayuki Tatemichi, from Toho University School of Medicine, and his colleagues tested the sight of workers in four different Japanese companies, employing over 5,000 people each. The employees were asked to complete questionnaires about their computer use, both at home and at work, and any history of eye disease. The researchers then divided the employees according to how much they used a computer, labelling them light, medium or heavy users. Computer use was categorised in four blocks of five years, ranging from less than five years to more than 20 years, as well as four blocks of the average amount of time spent at the screen per session, ranging from less than one hour to more than eight hours at a time. Those classified as heavy users tended to be men and younger. Overall, 522 (5.1%) of the employees were found to have visual field abnormalities. Workers who were classified as heavy computer users were more likely to be long-sighted (hypermetropia) or short-sighted (myopia). Around a third (165) of these workers had suspected glaucoma. (C) BBC

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 6427 - Posted: 11.16.2004

Christopher Reeve's death saddened many, but those who work in the field of spinal cord injury felt it on another level. "I think that he is probably the most courageous person I have ever met in my life," says Margaret "Jo" Velardo, a neuroscientist at the Evelyn F. & William L. McKnight Brain Institute of the University of Florida. "I think there was sort of a generalized denial on the part of everybody that somehow he really was going to live longer and he was going to make good his pledge of walking again. So the death was unexpected and also it made us sad because he was an icon of hope and now, he's gone." Velardo's research into the genes that could heal spinal cord injuries was published in the Journal of Neuroscience the week Reeve died. She was in the process of putting together a package of materials to send him when she heard of his death. "I really admit that I cried all day on Sunday when he died," she recounts. "I had made a pledge to him about this work that we were doing...so it added to my sadness because I felt that I would have liked him to have seen the work before he died." Studying the spinal cords of rats, her research group used computer chips containing genetic material, called microarrays, to see what genes are turned on or off in the injured tissues from hours to months after injury. The microarrays let the researchers see 8,000 genes simultaneously. © ScienCentral, 2000- 2004.

Keyword: Regeneration
Link ID: 6426 - Posted: 06.24.2010

UPTON, NY - A second, small-scale clinical trial of a proposed addiction treatment originally investigated at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory has produced favorable results in the treatment of long-term addiction to methamphetamine and/or cocaine, with no visual side effects in any of the 30 patients enrolled. This research on vigabatrin (a.k.a. gamma vinyl GABA, or GVG) was conducted in collaboration with doctors from the New York University (NYU) School of Medicine and the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research at a national addiction treatment center in Mexicali, Mexico. The results are published in the February 2005 issue of Synapse, now available online. “We now have additional clinical data to back up our belief that GVG can be used safely and effectively to treat people suffering from drug addiction,” said Brookhaven neuroanatomist Stephen Dewey. Dewey and Jonathan Brodie, a professor of psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine and this study’s lead author, have conducted extensive brain-imaging and behavioral studies on animals at Brookhaven Lab showing that GVG attenuates and in some cases blocks neurological and behavioral changes associated with drug addiction. Last fall, they published results from the first small-scale human clinical trial of GVG for this indication, showing it to be effective in treating cocaine addiction. “The fact that this drug appears to be effective in treating addiction to both cocaine and methamphetamine is particularly promising, given that methamphetamine abuse is one of the fastest growing drug problems in this country,” Brodie said.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 6425 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Teenagers raised by lesbian mothers show no developmental differences compared to those brought up by heterosexual parents, according to the first large national study in the US. Previous research has focused mainly on younger children and found no significant disparities in child welfare between same-sex and heterosexual families. But few studies have been done on adolescents, who some researchers think may be more prone to - or conscious of - discrimination against their families. Others have speculated whether a teens' own sexuality is affected by that of their parents. "There's been this debate about whether being raised by single-sex couples is good or bad for children," says Stephen Russell, a sociologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, US. "We would call into question suggestions that growing up with single-sex parents is somehow problematic." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6424 - Posted: 06.24.2010

People with a gene variation that dulls their taste buds to bitter flavours drink twice as much alcohol as those with more sensitive palates, suggests a US study. The discovery may assist doctors in the battle against alcoholism, which is strongly connected to early drinking behaviour. People generally fall into three categories of taster. Supertasters have an acute sensitivity to bitter chemicals, while nontasters only sense bitterness at higher concentrations. Medium tasters fall in between. Previous studies have shown that nontasters find alcohol - such as whisky, wine or beer - more pleasing and sweet than supertasters. There is also evidence that alcoholics and their relatives are more likely to be nontasters. But results have been contradictory, probably because grouping people into taster categories is partly subjective. The bitter chemical 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) is often used in taste tests and in 2003 a gene influencing the sensitivity to PROP was discovered. The gene, TAS2R38, codes for a taste bud receptor and has several natural variations. Valerie Duffy at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, US, and her colleagues set out to see if the TAS2R38 variation could accurately predict sensitivity to bitterness, and whether that in turn influenced alcohol consumption. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 6423 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists have produced compelling evidence that autism may in some cases be linked to inflammation of the brain. They found certain immune system components that promote inflammation are consistently activated in people with autism. Autistic children have difficulties in social interaction, may show repetitive behaviours and may have unusual attachments to objects or routines. The Johns Hopkins University research is published in Annals of Neurology. Autism is a disorder of the developing brain that appears in early childhood. It is estimated to afflict between two and five of every 1,000 children and is four times more likely to strike boys than girls. The condition has a strong genetic component. For instance, identical twins with autism are both usually affected. However, the number of children with autism appears to be increasing more than expected for a genetic disorder. This suggests to that genetic abnormalities require the influence of other factors to cause the disorder. Birth complications, toxins, diet, and viruses and other pathogens have been suggested, though there is no strong evidence for any of these. In recent years, there have been scientific hints of immune system irregularities in children with autism, but not all studies have confirmed this. The Johns Hopkins team sought a more definitive answer by looking not at the immune system overall, but at immune components inside the relatively sealed environment of the nervous system. They examined brain tissue from 11 people with autism, aged five to 44 years, who had died of accidents or injuries. (C)BBC

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 6422 - Posted: 11.15.2004

Although recent reports on mercury have focused on the dangers to humans, some researchers feel that public health could be better guarded if standards were enforced that protect wildlife. Gary Heinz, a research biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Md., has found that some bird species are much more sensitive than humans to mercury. “To a large extent, researchers in human toxicology ignore the work that is being done in wildlife toxicology,” he says. “The reverse is also unfortunately true.” Human dietary guidelines for mercury range from a high of 1.0 parts per million (ppm) in the United States to a low of 0.4 ppm in Japan. However, birds can show ill effects at much lower dietary concentrations than humans. Mallard ducks, for instance, experience harmful influences to eggs when fed as little as 0.1 ppm of methylmercury, and ring-necked pheasant show effects at 0.2 ppm. Yet, only four species of birds have been well studied, because captive breeding experiments with wild animals are both daunting and expensive, say USGS researchers. Heinz has used direct injection of methylmercury into eggs as a quick and effective means to test chick mortality in 20 bird species. While mallards have increased chick mortality at 0.8–1.0 ppm, the most sensitive species is the white ibis, whose chicks begin dying at methylmercury concentrations of only 0.1 ppm. He also notes that these are mercury levels that birds are likely to encounter in the wild. Copyright © 2004 American Chemical Society

Keyword: Neurotoxins
Link ID: 6421 - Posted: 06.24.2010

David Berlinski At some time in the history of the universe, there were no human minds, and at some time later, there were. Within the blink of a cosmic eye, a universe in which all was chaos and void came to include hunches, beliefs, sentiments, raw sensations, pains, emotions, wishes, ideas, images, inferences, the feel of rubber, Schadenfreude, and the taste of banana ice cream. A sense of surprise is surely in order. How did that get here? If the origin of the human mind is mysterious, so too is its nature. There are, Descartes argued, two substances in the universe, one physical and the other mental. To many contemporary philosophers, this has seemed rather an embarrassment of riches. But no sooner have they ejected mental substances from their analyses than mental properties pop up to take their place, and if not mental properties then mental functions. As a conceptual category, the mental is apparently unwilling to remain expunged. And no wonder. Although I may be struck by a thought, or moved by a memory, or distracted by a craving, these familiar descriptions suggest an effect with no obvious physical cause. Thoughts, memories, cravings—they are what? Crossing space and time effortlessly, the human mind deliberates, reckons, assesses, and totes things up; it reacts, registers, reflects, and responds. Copyright 2003 Commentary

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 6420 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Among the many genes that may contribute to an individual's susceptibility to alcoholism, those in the dopamine system are of special interest because addictive substances can activate this system. In particular, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) can influence both dopamine and serotonin neurotransmitters, which are heavily linked to addiction. New findings, published in the November issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, suggest that variants of the BDNF gene may not only play a role in a person's committal of violence while intoxicated, but may also play a role in vulnerability to alcohol withdrawal-associated delirium tremens. "The cell bodies of the dopamine system originate in the ventral tegmental area and send projections to the dopamine receptors in the nucleus accumbens and basal forebrain," said Sachio Matsushita, chief of psychiatry at the National Hospital Organization in Kanagawa, Japan and first author of the study. "Alcohol can activate this system. For example, alcohol consumption increases dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens from ventral tegmental neurons. Furthermore, animal studies have shown that BDNF influences both dopamine and serotonin levels." These and other results led Matsushita and his colleagues to investigate the role of BDNF in certain characteristics of alcoholics.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Trophic Factors
Link ID: 6419 - Posted: 11.15.2004

Italy is considering screening all newborn babies for heart abnormalities after the initial results of a pilot study suggested this could prevent up to 30 deaths in infancy and childhood in the country each year. The aim of the pilot study is to screen 50,000 newborns. Based on the 21,000 screened so far, and an ongoing genetic study, the team calculates that between 10 and 15 per cent of all cases of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) are due to fatal heart rhythms, meaning identifying and treating these babies might prevent more than a tenth of the 300 SIDS cases per year in Italy. “The critical issue is that some of these are avoidable deaths,” says the lead researcher Peter Schwartz at the University of Pavia. Schwartz presented his latest findings at the American Heart Association’s meeting in New Orleans this week. He has been arguing for national screening programmes since 1998, when his team published a controversial paper suggesting that many SIDS cases are caused by a rare inherited condition called long QT syndrome. This causes abnormal heart rhythms that can kill without leaving any clue to the cause of death. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sleep; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6418 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Current debates about marriage of same-sex couples often lead to discussions regarding the health and well-being of any children involved in such relationships. Although considerable research on young children of same-sex couples finds they fare as well as their peers with opposite-sex parents, there have been fewer studies of adolescents. We examined romantic relationships, school adjustment, and psychological well-being among 44 adolescents whose mothers had same-sex romantic partners, comparing them to 44 adolescents whose mothers had opposite-sex partners. Our study also examined the association between the quality of parental/adolescent relationships and school achievement and psychological well-being. We drew information for our study from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, in which researchers conducted interviews with and collected information from thousands of American adolescents and their parents. The two groups we studied had several similar characteristics, including age, gender, ethnicity, level of parental education, and family income. There was an equal number of girls and boys, and an overall average age of 15. We found that adolescents whose parents had same-sex romantic partners were developing in positive ways. We found no significant differences in their school achievement or psychological well-being when compared to their peers with male/female parents.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6417 - Posted: 11.15.2004

The illnesses suffered by veterans of the first Gulf War appeared to be linked to toxins including nerve gas, according to a US report. The US Veterans Affairs Department said stress or mental illness did not explain most veterans' complaints, but there was a probable link to toxins. British campaigners are demanding the government recognise "Gulf War Syndrome". The UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) says there is not enough evidence to prove its existence. The report, by the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, said up to 30% of US Gulf War veterans had been afflicted by a "complex of multiple chronic symptoms over and above expected rates seen in veterans who did not serve in the Gulf War". "A growing body of research indicates that an important component of Gulf War veterans' illnesses is neurological in character. It added: "Evidence supports a probable link between exposure to neurotoxins and the development of Gulf War veterans' illnesses." It found veterans had developed Lou Gehrig's disease at about twice the rate of veterans who did not serve in the Gulf War. Symptoms include headaches, memory problems, confusion, dizziness, blurred vision and tremors. It said reports indicated a large number of Gulf War troops were exposed to a variety of potentially toxic substances, including low levels of chemical nerve agents, pills taken to protect veterans from the effects of nerve agents and insect repellents and pesticides, that can adversely affect the nervous system. The Pentagon has previously acknowledged that some troops may have been exposed to the nerve agent sarin when Iraqi munitions were destroyed. The MoD said it was aware of most of the material in the report. (C)BBC

Keyword: Neurotoxins
Link ID: 6416 - Posted: 11.13.2004

By SCOTT SHANE The government will spend $15 million over the next year for research on the illnesses of veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, the secretary of veterans affairs, Anthony J. Principi, announced Friday. He said it would concentrate on the role of neurotoxins, and not the stress and psychological conditions often implicated as a cause of the veterans' health complaints. Mr. Principi also said the department would establish a research center to develop treatments for gulf war illnesses. "The men and women who fought there deserve our undivided attention to their questions, to their symptoms, to their futures," he said. "They have been frustrated far too long." He said his decision was guided by the findings of a committee of scientists and veterans that he appointed in 2002 to study the ailments of thousands of servicemen and women that persisted after the war. In a report released at a news conference here, the panel, the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, broke with earlier study groups by pointing to chemical exposures during the war, not the effects of combat stress, as the primary cause of what has sometimes been called Gulf War Syndrome. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Neurotoxins
Link ID: 6415 - Posted: 11.13.2004

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — When killer whales sound off, mammals listen, according to a recent study that found seals, sea lions, dolphins, porpoises and other marine mammals eavesdrop on the killer whales that like to eat them. The study suggests some animals pay attention to other animals communicating when it is in their best interests to listen to the enemy. It also reveals how call patterns of animals can co-evolve because of eavesdropping. Marine biologists conducted the extensive study from 1999-2003 in Johnstone and Queen Charlotte Straits, British Columbia, and in Glacier Bay, Icy Strait and Stephens Passage, southeastern Alaska. From a boat or from an elevated point on shore, the scientists used binoculars to locate transient and killer whales and then followed them by boat. An underwater microphone called a hydrophone picked up the whale calls. The findings are published in the current journal Animal Behavior. Although the two types of whales are from the same species, Orcinus orca, they have very different lifestyles. According to the research, resident killer whales live in large, stable groups and feed only on fish, especially Pacific salmon. Copyright © 2004 Discovery Communications Inc

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 6414 - Posted: 06.24.2010