By JANE GROSS Lisa Krieger proved herself the equal of any presidential advance team in planning a first communion for her daughter, Gina, who is 8 years old and autistic. Months in advance, Ms. Krieger recruited other children to rehearse walking down the church aisle with Gina, and videotaped the procession so she could practice at home. She begged the nuns not to change Gina's place in line, because she might scream or wander off if faced with the slightest deviation. Ms. Krieger made sure Gina's communion dress was not itchy and let her try it on for a few minutes every day so she would not yank it off when the time came. She found a supplier of unconsecrated communion wafers so Gina would learn the taste and not spit the host back at the priest. And, on the big day in May, she stationed people throughout the church in Washington Township, N.J., to whisper instructions if Gina got confused. "The end result was she did beautifully," Ms. Krieger said. "But you have to think about everything, know what you're walking into and what's going to happen. I can't prepare her for everything, but I try to eliminate as many variables as possible." Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 6289 - Posted: 10.22.2004

When all the color drained from Judith Niosi's life, not even the childhood cheer of her seven-year-old son seemed to make life worth living. "At that time, I felt that he was better off without me because I just felt so hopeless and helpless," recalls the 37-year-old graphic artist. "And if I couldn't help myself, how could I help this child? I felt that I was doing him more damage being around him." Where joy ran from her so too did the energy required to accomplish seemingly simple tasks. "I couldn't get out of bed at all," she says. "I didn't want to do my hair. I didn't want to shower. I didn't want to do anything. It's not that I didn't want to, I couldn't. I didn't have the energy." Finally, she sought medical help. But that consisted of round after round of trial and error treatment with antidepressants that left her even more depressed and frustrated. A few agonizing months later, her doctors finally hit on a drug that cleared Niosi's mental fog. Researchers say Niosi's experience isn't by any means uncommon. Many psychiatrists lament the fact that there are currently no laboratory tools in place to determine who will—or who won't—succeed on the most popular antidepressant medications. © ScienCentral, 2000- 2004.

Keyword: Depression; Hearing
Link ID: 6288 - Posted: 06.24.2010

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- A University of Florida scientist has grown a living "brain" that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network. The "brain" -- a collection of 25,000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat's brain and cultured inside a glass dish -- gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level. By watching the brain cells interact, scientists hope to understand what causes neural disorders such as epilepsy and to determine noninvasive ways to intervene. As living computers, they may someday be used to fly small unmanned airplanes or handle tasks that are dangerous for humans, such as search-and-rescue missions or bomb damage assessments. "We're interested in studying how brains compute," said Thomas DeMarse, the UF professor of biomedical engineering who designed the study. "If you think about your brain, and learning and the memory process, I can ask you questions about when you were 5 years old and you can retrieve information. That's a tremendous capacity for memory. In fact, you perform fairly simple tasks that you would think a computer would easily be able to accomplish, but in fact it can't."

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 6287 - Posted: 10.22.2004

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Alzheimer's. Parkinson's. Lou Gehrig's. Huntington's. These neurodegenerative diseases exhibit loss of nerve function in different ways, from memory lapses to uncontrollable muscular movements, but it is now believed that these diseases share many common molecular mechanisms. A team of Northwestern University scientists, led by Richard I. Morimoto, John Evans Professor of Biology, has made a key discovery toward understanding one of these mechanisms. In studying toxic proteins involved in Huntington's disease, they discovered that the disease-causing protein severely interferes with the working of the proteasome, the cellular machine responsible for eliminating damaged proteins within the cell. The findings, which could lead to an understanding of how to prevent neurodegenerative diseases and to the development of effective drugs, will be published Oct. 27 in The EMBO Journal, a publication of the European Molecular Biology Organization. The proteasome is responsible for cell homeostasis. In healthy cells, proteins perform their function and then, with the help of the proteasome, disappear. If idle and damaged proteins remain, their presence can affect cell behavior.

Keyword: Huntingtons; ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 6286 - Posted: 10.22.2004

SAN FRANCISCO – Researchers are conducting a groundbreaking new study that may help stroke patients regain greater use of their hands or arms through treatment with electrical stimulation. Preliminary results of the feasibility study that precedes this new study have shown that the use of electrical stimulation, called motor cortex stimulation, may be both safe and effective, according to Robert Levy, M.D., Ph.D., a neurosurgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Dr. Levy presented this feasibility trial data at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons Wednesday in San Francisco. The trial showed that study participants – stroke survivors suffering impaired hand or arm movement – who underwent physical rehabilitation accompanied by motor cortex stimulation showed greater improvement than participants who received physical rehabilitation alone. Twenty-four subjects participated in the feasibility study, 12 in the electrical stimulation group and 12 in the control group. "Participants in the electrical stimulation group experienced meaningful motor recovery gains," Dr. Levy says. "It is our hope that by stimulating the surface of the brain we can permanently reverse paralysis and rekindle patients' function, returning them to their normal lifestyle," says Dr. Levy, who is a professor at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and who is leading the study at Northwestern Memorial, which is being conducted in tandem with the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. "Unfortunately, when patients have had a stroke, there is not much we can currently offer beyond physical rehabilitation to improve their motor functions."

Keyword: Stroke; Regeneration
Link ID: 6285 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Paula Gould The small group of genes long believed to cause Down syndrome are unlikely to be the real culprits, according to recent research in mice. The finding is bad news for those devising therapeutic strategies, whose job would be simplified if blame could be laid at the door of just a few genes. Down syndrome occurs in around 1 in 700 live births. The vast majority of people with the condition are born with three complete copies of chromosome 21 instead of two. But a small proportion of individuals with Down syndrome have only certain portions of chromosome 21 in triplicate. Although chromosome 21 contains over 200 genes, comparison of people with complete and partial repetition led researchers to believe that most features of Down syndrome are caused by a so-called 'critical region' of chromosome 21, which contains just 30 or so genes. This idea has held sway for the past 30 years. Now researchers have used genetically engineered mice to disprove the theory. They bred mice with one, two and three copies of the mouse equivalents of genes from the critical region of human chromosome 21. They then compared visible, Down-like characteristics of these animals, such as face, head and growth measurements, with those from a known mouse model of Down syndrome. ©2004 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6284 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have discovered the gene for a form of Joubert Syndrome, a condition present before birth that affects an area of the brain controlling balance and coordination in about 1 in 10,000 individuals. Their study, published in the November 2004 issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics*, pointed to mutations in a gene called AHI1 that lead to the production of a protein the scientists named Jouberin. Separate research by a team from Harvard Medical School concurrently identified the same gene in a paper published in the November 2004 issue of the journal Nature Genetics.** Both the UCSD and Harvard studies were published online prior to the print publications in November. The AHI1 gene mutation is responsible for a form of Joubert Syndrome manifested by absence of part of the cerebellum, the part of the brain controlling balance, and by excessive folding in the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain controlling consciousness and thought. The results from both UCSD and Harvard involved a gene-by-gene search of chromosome 6 DNA from three families studied by UCSD and three separate families studied by Harvard. Researchers believe the disorder linked to chromosome 6 is the most common of the three known forms of Joubert Syndrome.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6283 - Posted: 10.21.2004

Receptors in the brain that are highly sensitive to alcohol may function differently in a person with a family history of alcoholism, according to a Yale study published this month. The study included 45 healthy subjects, some with a family history of alcoholism and others with no family history. None of the study participants had a drinking problem. All of the participants were administered a placebo or ketamine, an anesthetic that induces alcohol-like effects. Their behavioral responses were then observed. People with a family history of alcoholism were less sensitive to ketamine. "This study confirms a hypothesis that people with a family history of alcoholism are more vulnerable to alcoholism because they are less likely to get the 'warning signs' of when to stop drinking," said Ismene Petrakis, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry. "In the right environmental and social context, the loss of a potentially important 'brake' on drinking may promote heavy drinking."

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 6282 - Posted: 10.21.2004

High stress levels during infancy and early childhood can lead to the poor development of communication zones in brain cells – a condition found in mental disorders such as autism, depression and mental retardation. These are the findings of Dr. Tallie Z. Baram and her collaborators at the UC Irvine College of Medicine, Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc., and the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry. For the first time, the researchers have identified how increased amounts of a key messenger for stress, the neuropeptide CRH, can inhibit the normal growth of dendrites, which are branch-like protrusions of neurons that send and receive messages from other brain cells. The researchers believe CRH ultimately may be responsible for these poorly developed zones in brain cells. Results of their study appear in the current online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “These findings may prove to be highly relevant for understanding the origins of several human brain disorders, and they also point to some potential preventive treatments,” said Baram, the Danette Shepard Chair in Neurological Studies. “The activation of stress hormones and molecules seems to initiate a complex cascade of brain effects that is related to depression and dementia. This study reveals a novel role of CRH in this cascade.” © Copyright 2002-2004 UC Regents

Keyword: Stress; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6281 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The living arrangements of parents at the time a baby is conceived may play a role in determining its sex, research suggests. A US study found parents who were married or living together before conception were slightly more likely to have a boy than those who were not. The study, by the US National Bureau of Economic Research, is based on data from 86,436 births. Details are published in Proceedings of The Royal Society. Overall, the study found that 51.5% of babies born to couples living together at the time of conception were boys, compared to 49.9% among parents who were not. Although this might seem like a small difference, it is actually statistically highly significant when considered across a whole population. When the researchers looked at brothers and sisters, they found that couples who were living together before conception were 14% more likely to have a male child than when they were not. The researchers say their finding could explain the fall in the proportion of male births in some developed countries over the past 30 years. Previous research has suggested that women who are not in stable, monogamous relationships might be less likely to give birth to boys. There are reports dating back to the 19th Century of a lower percentage of boys being born to women who were not married. And studies in modern Kenya have found a similar trait among polygynously married women. Male embryos are less robust than their female counterparts, and so require a greater degree of nurturing through pregnancy if they are to survive to full term. It may be that a woman who is in a stable relationship may be in a better position to provide this care. (C)BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 6280 - Posted: 10.20.2004

Emma Marris She sees colours emanating like haloes from her friends and foes. Blocks of colour form in her mind when looking at names of acquaintances, or even at words like 'love' and 'hate'. And no, she will not read your aura for a low introductory fee. She is not a charlatan, or a psychic - she's a synaesthete. People with synaesthesia, perhaps one in 2,000 by conservative estimates, get two-for-one sensory experiences. They feel music, taste art, and often see colours around words or things. A new case study now raises the possibility that cases like this are the origin of the new-age belief in 'auras', a coloured emanation of energy that can be seen only by the spiritually in-tune. G.W. is a young woman who sees colours around words or things only when the object has an emotional association for her. Many synaesthetes see letters as coloured, for example in the word 'love', 'l' might be green, 'o' might be cream-yellow, 'v' might be crimson, and 'e' royal blue. But instead G.W. sees the whole word 'love' as pink or orange because it is a positive word. She sees the word 'James', or James himself, as pink for the same reason: she likes him. Her case is described by Jamie Ward, a psychologist at University College London in the latest issue of Cognitive Neuropsychology1. ©2004 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 6279 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Roger Dobson discovers Take a 50-year-old IQ test and it's likely that you will emerge a genius. In fact, most of the population would almost certainly be classed as super-intelligent if they were scored on tests originally set half a century ago. "If people taking an IQ test today were scored with the norms of their grandparents' performances 50 years ago, more than 90 per cent of them would be classified as geniuses, while, if our grandparents were scored today, most of them would be classed as borderline mentally retarded," says Dr Stephen Ceci, who is professor of developmental psychology at Cornell University. The reason is that average IQ has increased around 20 points with every generation over the last 60 or so years, an increase that has been seen in more than a dozen countries, including the United Kingdom, United States, Japan, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Just why is unclear. Genetic factors, better-educated parents, more sophisticated toys, television and computers have all been given the credit, but with little supporting evidence. ©2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd.

Keyword: Intelligence
Link ID: 6278 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By SALLY SATEL, M.D. On February 1999, Dr. Frank Fisher, a general practitioner in Shasta County, Calif., was arrested by agents from the California state attorney general's office and charged with drug trafficking and murder. The arrest was based on records indicating that Dr. Fisher had been prescribing high doses of narcotic pain relievers to his patients, five of whom died. He lost his home and his medical practice and served five months in jail before it was discovered that the patients had died from accidents or from medical illnesses, not from the narcotics he prescribed. All charges were dropped last year, and Dr. Fisher now has his medical license back. Yet his ordeal lingers as a cautionary tale of what can happen to doctors who treat pain aggressively. Over the last decade or so, pain specialists and patient advocates have diligently educated doctors about the undertreatment of persistent and debilitating pain. But as physicians have expanded their use of opiate painkillers like oxycodone and hydrocone, the abuse and diversion of the drugs has also increased. This, in turn, has led the Drug Enforcement Administration to intensify its scrutiny of physicians. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 6277 - Posted: 10.19.2004

Sitting on a couch is Melissa, a woman in her mid-20s who has just taken 125 mg of methyllenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), or ecstasy, in a glass of juice. Sitting in a rocking chair to the left of Melissa is licensed psychotherapist Dr. Jane, who will work intensely with her patient over the next few hours, as Melissa's brain bathes in the surplus neurochemicals brought on by the MDMA. Melissa and her therapist aren't part of any currently approved research. They consider themselves to be conscientious, law-abiding citizens, but have decided to augment traditional psychotherapy with what the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency currently classifies as a Schedule I substance – an illegal drug. But, illegal or not, Dr. Jane (not her real name) has a rationale for using this drug with her patient: MDMA eases anxiety surrounding traumatic events, allowing them to be recalled with extensive clarity, then amplified by a desire to discuss them, perhaps for the first time in the patient's life. © 2004 Independent Media Institute.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 6276 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Method may help halt A-T, cancer, other genetic diseases UCLA scientists have devised a novel way to repair one of the genetic mutations that cause ataxia-telangiectasia, (A-T), a life-shortening disorder that devastates the neurological and immune systems of one in 40,000 young children. Reported Oct. 18 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the findings could hold far-reaching implications for treating A-T, cancer and other genetic diseases. Often misdiagnosed as cerebral palsy, A-T usually strikes children before age 2 and confines them to a wheelchair by age 10. Many lose their ability to speak and die in childhood. One in three children also develop lymphoma or leukemia. Adults who carry the mutated A-T gene (ATM), including up to 15 percent of breast-cancer patients, are eight times more likely to develop cancer than the general population. Dr. Richard Gatti, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, and Chih-Hung Lai, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, created a new strategy for tricking the ATM gene into overlooking certain types of mutations called premature termination codons (PTCs). "PTCs are like irregular stop signs located in the middle of the block," explained Gatti. "They stop traffic before it reaches the intersection. We made these stop signs invisible, so traffic continues until it sees the proper stop sign at the end of the corner."

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 6275 - Posted: 10.19.2004

Transplantation of human brain cells corrected involuntary muscle spasms in rats with ischemic spinal cord injury, according to research published online October 12 and in print October 19, 2004 in the European Journal of Neurosciences by investigators at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine. Ischemic spinal cord injury, caused by reduced blood flow to the spinal cord, occurs in 20 to 40 percent of the several hundred patients each year in the U.S. who undergo surgery to repair an aneurysm, or sac-like widening of the aorta, the main artery that leaves the heart. A subpopulation of patients with ischemic spinal cord injury develop a prominent muscle spasticity, or jerkiness of the legs and lower body, due to the irreversible loss of specialized spinal cord cells that control local motor function. During a 12-week period in which the animals were followed, the UCSD team found that rats receiving the brain, or neuronal cell transplants displayed a progressive recovery of motor function and a decrease in spasticity in the lower extremities over a period of several weeks following the injections. Fifty percent of the animals experienced a significant improvement in motor function. In contrast, the “control” rats that did not receive transplants exhibited no improvement in motor function or spasticity. A post-mortem study of the animals showed a robust growth of neurons and an increase in neurotransmitters in the spinal cords of rats that received the transplanted neuronal cells.

Keyword: Regeneration; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 6274 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The poetry in Lee L.'s voice as he describes his great love is hypnotic. "I loved Crystal," he gushes. Lee's not speaking of a person, but methamphetamine, known by its street name, Crystal Meth. "It gave me a sense of power. It made me feel hungry. It made me feel sexual. It made me feel virile. It was like all of the switches in my body and in my brain felt like they finally got turned on." Lee—a 42-year-old composer who asked that his last name not be used in keeping with his involvement in the twelve-step program, New York Crystal Meth Anonymous—hunted down the drug as the days dragged between runs, even though he knew it was doing considerable bodily damage. "The physical body collapses a little every time, certainly in my case, every time that I used," he recalls. "The reward that it got was it hit upon a pleasure center in the brain." For the first time, scientists have seen exactly which brain areas in the recovering methamphetamine addict change in the immediate days after they begin recovery. Edythe London, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, along with her colleagues, used PET scans—or positron emission tomography—to image how glucose is processed in the brains of 17 methamphetamine abusers who had stopped using the drug nearly a week before they participated in her study. She then compared those brain images with the brain images of 18 non-abusers, who completed the same attention task as their brains were measured. © ScienCentral, 2000- 2004.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 6273 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Supposed psychic powers that enable people to see auras around others may simply be a quirk of the brain, according to a University College London (UCL) study of a rare form of synaesthesia where some people see colourful 'auras' around their loved ones. The case study, reported in the October issue of Cognitive Neuropsychology, shows how some people can experience colours in response to people they know or words that evoke emotions – a condition known as emotion-colour synaesthesia. Dr Jamie Ward, author of the study, says: "A popular notion is that some people have a magical ability to detect the hidden emotions of others by seeing a colourful 'aura' or energy field that they give off. Our study suggests a different interpretation. These colours do not reflect hidden energies being given off by other people, rather they are created entirely in the brain of the beholder." In the study, Dr Ward of UCL's Psychology Department documented a woman known as GW who could see colours like purple and blue in response to people she knew or their names when read to her. Words triggered a colour which spread across her whole field of vision, whilst people themselves appeared to have coloured 'auras' projected around them. For example, "James" triggered pink, "Thomas" black and "Hannah" blue.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 6272 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Antidepressants on sale in the United States will have to carry a stark new warning of their link to suicidal behaviour among young people. America's Food and Drug Administration has ordered manufacturers to display a message that such drugs may increase the chance of suicidal thoughts. The "black box" warning will also say if the drugs have been approved for use by children and teenagers. But critics suggest such messages may actually exacerbate health problems. The FDA said it was not seeking to prohibit the use of antidepressants but merely trying to strike a balance between the risk of suicidal behaviour and "clinical need". "Antidepressants increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behaviour... in children and adolescents with major depressive disorder and other psychiatric disorders," the warning begins. It appears inside a black box in bold letters - the strongest warning the US can put on prescription drugs - and is expected to start appearing in the next month or two. The FDA's announcement follows a Congressional hearing in which the agency was criticised for being slow to recognise the link between antidepressants and suicidal thoughts in some children. (C)BBC

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6271 - Posted: 10.18.2004

By ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG A stinky old conch shell is what finally convinced my husband that I had lost my sense of smell. He was horrified to watch me stick my nose right into the opening of the shell festering on our friends' back porch, something he couldn't bring himself to do because the rotting stuff inside was so revolting. Jeff had been listening for months to my complaints about not being able to smell, and I think he found the whole thing mystifying -- and maybe slightly annoying. The conch shell showed him. I felt vindicated, sort of. But mostly I felt vulnerable. Smelling is what told me not to eat spoiled egg salad and to stay clear of skunks. Without it, how could I know where the dangers lay? Smell is the stepchild of the senses, the one that many think they could do without. But when I couldn't smell things, I couldn't fully inhabit the world, and my movements in it were somehow, almost imperceptibly, more clumsy. This month, when the Nobel Prize was awarded to two researchers for investigating the science of smell, it brought back my mixed feelings about my own sense of smell's protracted disappearance. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Regeneration
Link ID: 6270 - Posted: 10.18.2004