Helen Pilcher Exposing isolated sheep to photos of other sheep lowers their stress levels, shows a recent study. Researchers suggest the practice could be used to soothe solitary and sick animals and hope the work will help elucidate the brain mechanisms behind the ability to link faces with emotion. Like many of us, sheep do not like being alone. They are also excellent at recognizing individual faces, and can remember the features of up to 50 sheep and 10 humans over a two-year period1. So Keith Kendrick and colleagues from the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, UK, wondered if photos of sheep faces could be used to appease lonely bleaters. Their findings are reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B2. The team took 40 sheep of a Welsh lowland breed called Clun Forest, and isolated them one at a time in a funnel-shaped enclosure. For the first 15 minutes, four identical pictures of a white inverted triangle were projected on to the rear wall. For the next 15 minutes, the animals were shown either four photos of an unfamiliar sheep face or four photos of an unknown goat face. ©2004 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 6009 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Does language sometimes define the content of thought? Are there people who cannot entertain certain ideas because their language does not have the words to express them? Are there concepts that cannot be translated into some languages? These questions have vexed linguists and neuroscientists for years. The general feeling has been that language does not limit cognition. However, a new study in the online version of Science suggests that the prevailing notion may not be correct. Peter Gordon, a behavioral scientist at Columbia University, conducted an unusual set of experiments with seven adults of the 200-member Piraha tribe of Amazonian Indians in Brazil. The tribe's counting system consists of three words -- one that means "roughly one," one that means "a small quantity" and one that means "many." Gordon asked the Piraha subjects to perform various tasks in which performance would be greatly enhanced by the ability to count. These included laying out the same number of nuts or sticks that he had laid out; distinguishing two boxes whose only difference was the number of fish drawn on their tops; and knowing when a tin can was empty after watching the researcher put nuts into the can and then withdraw them one by one. © 2004 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Language; Intelligence
Link ID: 6008 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By STEVEN JOHNSON A few months before retiring from public office in 2002, the House majority leader Dick Armey caused a mini-scandal when he announced during a speech in Florida, ''Liberals are, in my estimation, just not bright people.'' The former economics professor went on to clarify that liberals were drawn to ''occupations of the heart,'' while conservatives favored ''occupations of the brain,'' like economics or engineering. The odd thing about Armey's statement was that it displayed a fuzzy, unscientific understanding of the brain itself: our most compassionate (or cowardly) feelings are as much a product of the brain as ''rational choice'' economic theory is. They just emanate from a different part of the brain -- most notably, the amygdala, the almond-shaped body that lies below the neocortex, in an older brain region sometimes called the limbic system. Studies of stroke victims, as well as scans of normal brains, have persuasively shown that the amygdala plays a key role in the creation of emotions like fear or empathy. If amygdala activity is a reliable indication of emotional response, a fascinating possibility opens up: turning Armey's muddled poetry into a testable hypothesis. Do liberals ''think'' with their limbic system more than conservatives do? As it happens, some early research suggests that Armey might have been on to something after all. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions; Intelligence
Link ID: 6007 - Posted: 08.25.2004

By GARDINER HARRIS A top government scientist who concluded last year that most antidepressants are too dangerous for children because of a suicide risk wrote in a memo this week that a new study confirms his findings. The official, Dr. Andrew D. Mosholder, a senior epidemiologist at the Food and Drug Administration who assesses the safety of medicines, found last year that 22 studies showed that children given antidepressants were nearly twice as likely to become suicidal as those given placebos. His bosses, however, strongly disagreed with his findings, kept his recommendations secret and initiated a new analysis. In his memo, dated Monday, Dr. Mosholder said that the results of the new analysis, undertaken in part at Columbia University, matched his own. Though the two studies used different methods and different numbers, they came to similar conclusions, Dr. Mosholder wrote in the internal memo. A copy of the memo was made available to The New York Times. In the new analysis, Paxil, which is manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, and Effexor, made by Wyeth, have been found to be even more likely to lead children to become suicidal than Dr. Mosholder's original analysis found, his memo says. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6006 - Posted: 08.21.2004

Dr. Gabor Maté has lived several lives in one. He's most decidedly a risk-taker: the bestselling author of a controversial book on attention-deficit disorder called Scattered Minds, Maté is a political activist known for his (even more controversial) views on the Middle East, and a physician/psychotherapist who gave up his family practice several years ago to work with HIV-positive heroin addicts on the Vancouver's downtown east side. Unflinching in the face of criticism, this is a man who will not keep silent about his multiple passions. In his latest book, When the Body Says No, he goes out on a medical limb with his passionately-argued thesis that certain types of chronic disease can be triggered by stress. And not the garden variety stress we usually think of (the job, the kids, the mortgage), but internal stress generated by the repression of powerful emotions, particularly anger. In his many years as a palliative care physician, Maté observed in his dying patients certain eerie similarities in personality. Many of them were cheerful and agreeable to a fault, never seemed angry, placed everyone else's needs above their own, and were harshly critical with themselves. Their personal boundaries seemed fragile and uncertain, as if they did not know where they left off and others began. In many cases, it was nearly impossible for them to say "no," to the point that their bodies had to say it for them.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 6005 - Posted: 08.21.2004

Yesterday I phoned our local cinema to book some tickets for The Stepford Wives, a film in which women are ruthlessly replaced by robots. The phone was answered by a computer with a female voice, which failed to understand a word I said. As a roboticist and AI researcher I'm often asked how close we are to achieving the level of artificial intelligence portrayed in The Stepford Wives, I, Robot, or some other film. But what can I say? It doesn't work like that. The invention of the wheel wasn't presaged by months of headlines saying "Axle breakthrough imminent" or "Round is better than square, say scientists". One moment the idea hadn't occurred to anyone and the next it had. AI is much the same, except the right idea still eludes us. AI is to natural intelligence what alchemy was to chemistry: we're valiantly mixing things together to see what happens, but we lack the right conceptual framework; we have no periodic table. If it hadn't been for alchemists there would be no chemistry, so I mean no slur. It's simply that the problem is incredibly difficult. The sad thing is that people really do believe what they see in the movies, and this suggests they badly underestimate their own intelligence. Anyone who thinks they could be replaced by a jumped-up laptop needs help with their self-image. © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Keyword: Robotics; Intelligence
Link ID: 6004 - Posted: 06.24.2010

HANOVER, NH - Seeking a cure for an inherited disease that causes blindness in over one million people worldwide, Dartmouth Medical School researchers have discovered a critical role for zinc in retinitis pigmentosa. The amount of zinc, a trace metal naturally absorbed by the body, can determine whether a key protein for vision functions normally or misfolds, they found. An inability to successfully bind zinc to rhodopsin, a light receptor protein in the eye, can trigger retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a degenerative disease that leaves many patients legally blind by the age of 40. The findings parallel similar progress in harnessing essential trace metals in the body to treat several neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Lou Gehrig's Disease. The research, appearing as the "Paper of the Week" in the August 20 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), is the first confirmation that zinc is present and plays a significant role in the normal folding and functions of rhodopsin, and if defective, leads to retinal degeneration. Copyright © 2004 Trustees of Dartmouth College

Keyword: Vision; Parkinsons
Link ID: 6003 - Posted: 06.24.2010

DALLAS – – Teenagers suffering from depression improved more with a combination of an antidepressant and cognitive-behavior therapy than they did when treated with either separately, a multicenter study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows. Results of a national, yearlong government-funded study in which UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas researchers participated also showed that depressed teens treated only with cognitive-behavior therapy did little better than teens given placebos. Cognitive-behavior therapy is a form of psychotherapy that emphasizes the role of thinking in creating subsequent feelings and behaviors. The study, designated the Treatment for Adolescents with Depression Study (TADS), is the first to directly compare psychotherapy and medication treatment for teenagers, said Dr. Graham Emslie, professor of psychiatry and director of UT Southwestern's child and adolescent psychiatry division.

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6002 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A clinical trial of 439 adolescents with major depression has found a combination of medication and psychotherapy to be the most effective treatment. Funded by the NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the study compared cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) with fluoxetine, currently the only antidepressant approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in children and adolescents. John March, M.D., Duke University, and colleagues, report on findings of the multi-site trial in the August 18, 2004, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The results of the first 12 weeks of the Treatment for Adolescents with Depression Study (TADS), conducted at 13 sites nationwide, show that 71 percent responded to the combination of fluoxetine and CBT. The other three treatment groups, of participants between the ages of 12 and 17, also showed improvement, with a 60.6 percent response to fluoxetine-only treatment, and 43.2 percent response from those receiving only CBT. The response rate was 34.8 percent for a group that received a placebo. The difference in response rates for the latter two treatment groups was not statistically significant. The $17 million study is the first large, federally funded study using an antidepressant medication to treat adolescents suffering with moderate to severe depression. TADS was conducted between the spring of the year 2000 and the summer of 2003.

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6001 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Findings point to a different way to treat sleep disorders and anxiety Irvine, Calif. — UC Irvine pharmacology researchers have found how a recently discovered brain protein plays a major role regulating sleep and stress – a discovery that can lead to a new class of drugs for treating ailments ranging from sleep and anxiety disorders to attention deficit disorder. The UCI team conducted tests to see how neuropeptide S (NPS) affected behavioral responses in rodents. They found that NPS increases alertness, suppresses sleep and even controls stress responses. This establishes NPS, which was first discovered in 2002, as an important modulator of sleep and alertness. This study also suggests NPS has potential as a target for new drugs to treat sleep disorders. The study appears in the Aug. 19 issue of Neuron. "Since our knowledge of NPS is so new, we may be at the tip of the iceberg in understanding its function," said Rainer Reinscheid, assistant adjunct professor in pharmacology and lead researcher in the study. "We've found NPS to be so active with sleep and anxiety behavior that it can be a very attractive drug target, both to enhance and to suppress its function." In testing how NPS is involved with both sleep regulation and stress behaviors, the researchers found that NPS is produced by previously unidentified neurons in a brain stem region known for regulating arousal and anxiety. Further tests demonstrated that rats injected with NPS showed increased alertness and reduced slow-wave and REM sleep over untreated rats.

Keyword: Sleep; Emotions
Link ID: 6000 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Language may shape human thought – suggests a counting study in a Brazilian tribe whose language does not define numbers above two. Hunter-gatherers from the Pirahã tribe, whose language only contains words for the numbers one and two, were unable to reliably tell the difference between four objects placed in a row and five in the same configuration, revealed the study. Experts agree that the startling result provides the strongest support yet for the controversial hypothesis that the language available to humans defines our thoughts. So-called “linguistic determinism” was first proposed in 1950 but has been hotly debated ever since. “It is a very surprising and very important result,” says Lisa Feigenson, a developmental psychologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, US, who has tested babies’ abilities to distinguish between different numerical quantities. “Whether language actually allows you to have new thoughts is a very controversial issue.” © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 5999 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The idea that studying music improves the intellect is not a new one, but at last there is incontrovertible evidence from a study conducted out of the University of Toronto. The study, led by Dr. E. Glenn Schellenberg, examined the effect of extra-curricular activities on the intellectual and social development of six-year-old children. A group of 144 children were recruited through an ad in a local newspaper and assigned randomly to one of four activities: keyboard lessons, voice lessons, drama lessons, or no lessons. Two types of music lessons were offered in order to be able to generalize the results, while the groups receiving drama lessons or no lessons were considered control groups in order to test the effect of music lessons over other art lessons requiring similar skill sets and nothing at all. The activities were provided for one year. The participating children were given IQ tests before and after the lessons. The results of this study revealed that increases in IQ from pre- to post-test were larger in the music groups than in the two others. Generally these increases occurred across IQ subtests, index scores, and academic achievement. Children in the drama group also exhibited improvements pre- to post-test, but in the area of adaptive social behavior, an area that did not change among children who received music lessons.

Keyword: Intelligence; Hearing
Link ID: 5998 - Posted: 08.21.2004

WASHINGTON — Smoking may be on the rise again, especially among adolescents and young adults. The statistics are alarming: About one in five high school seniors smoke cigarettes daily. Yet nearly half a million Americans die prematurely from tobacco-related disease and smoking is projected to in some way kill one third of all smokers. Two new studies report on how well nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) helps two important groups: teenagers and women. The research appears in the August issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, which is published by the American Psychological Association (APA). In the first study, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have found that the nicotine patch seems to work as well, at least initially, for teens as it does for adults. In addition, the patch, the top delivery form of NRT (followed by gum, an inhaler and a nasal spray) worked equally well with or without supplementation by an anti-depressant given to the teens. The study may be the first randomized controlled trial of drug therapy to help teens stop smoking. © 2004 American Psychological Association

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 5997 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS An obese Massachusetts woman and her 8-month-old fetus died of complications 18 months after the woman had stomach-stapling surgery, an apparent first that is leading to warnings about the risks of pregnancy soon after the surgery. The deaths, in 2002, raise concerns because most of the 110,000 people who have gastric, or stomach, bypass surgery each year in the United States are women in their child-bearing years, say doctors at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston who tried to save the woman and fetus. They reported on the case in a letter in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Edward E. Whang cared for the 41-year-old woman nearly two years ago, when she was brought to the Brigham emergency department after two days at another hospital, where the cause of sudden pain in her upper stomach had been misdiagnosed. "She was nearly dead," said Dr. Whang, who noted the woman had the gastric bypass and prenatal care at other hospitals. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 5996 - Posted: 08.15.2004

Development of a molecular timetable by analysis of circadian gene expression – A look inside a wristwatch reveals that timekeeping is a complex affair, involving the coordination of mechanical parts providing the impulses and feedback needed to achieve precisely recurring movement. Biological clocks are equally complex, regulated by a network of genes and transcriptional factors that interact to stabilize the rhythms of numerous physiological systems. Unlike the wristwatch, however, there is no visible readout or display showing an individual's body time, a lack which has stood as one of the major barriers to realizing the promise of chronotherapy, which seeks to deliver drug treatments at optimal body times. A new study by Hiroki R. Ueda (Laboratory for Systems Biology, RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology; Kobe, Japan) and colleagues has provided proof of principle that just such a display of individual body time may one day possible. The report, published in the August 3 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes the analysis of the expression of more than 100 time-indicating genes in the mouse. The results of this genome-wide study enabled the authors to develop a "molecular timetable" that provides an accurate representation of the animal's body time based on the sampling of gene expression levels at a single point in time.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 5995 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Cannabis extracts may shrink brain tumours and other cancers by blocking the growth of the blood vessels which feed them, suggests a new study. An active component of the street drug has previously been shown to improve brain tumours in rats. But now Manuel Guzmán at Complutense University, Spain, and colleagues have demonstrated how the cannabis extracts block a key chemical needed for tumours to sprout blood vessels – a process called angiogenesis. And for the first time, the team has shown the cannabinoids impede this chemical in people with the most aggressive form of brain cancer - glioblastoma multiforme. Cristina Blázquez at Complutense University, and one of the team, stresses the results are preliminary. “But it’s a good point to start and continue,” she told New Scientist. “The cannabinoid inhibits the angiogenesis response - if a tumour doesn’t do angiogenesis, it doesn’t grow,” she explains. “So if you can improve angiogenesis on one side and kill the tumour cells on the other side, you can try for a therapy for cancer.” © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 5994 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A type of protein which helps increase lifespan in yeast and worms could offer hope for new treatments in diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Researchers from Washington School of Medicine say it appears to help prevent damage to nerve cells in the brain which occur in such diseases. The team say it may be possible to create drug or gene treatments which can mimic this action. The research is published in the magazine Science. The scientists, based in St Louis, looked at nerve cells in mice. They looked at axons, which connect nerve cells to other cells. In diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, it is thought these axons may start to "self-destruct" before the nerve cells actually die. It was found that a protein called SIRT1 appeared to block some or all of this process. The effect was confirmed when the scientists administered a drug which shuts down the activity of this type of protein to the nerve cells - and found the protective effect disappeared. The proteins have previously been linked to extending the lifespan in yeast and the tiny worm C. elegans. Jeffrey Milbrandt, professor of medicine and of pathology and immunology at the medical school, who led the research, said: "It's becoming clear that nerve cell death in these disorders is often preceded by the degeneration and loss of axons. (C)BBC

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 5993 - Posted: 08.13.2004

Dolphin groups, or "pods" rely on socialites to keep them together, scientists have claimed. Without these individuals, the cohesion of the dolphin group falls apart, researchers have discovered. The finding may mean that capturing wild dolphins or killer whales for marine parks could have a serious impact on their companions left behind. Details of the study, by a UK and US research team, are outlined in New Scientist magazine. Ecologist David Lusseau, from the University of Aberdeen, UK, studied the social interctions of a community of 62 bottlenose dolphins living in Doubtful Sound, New Zealand. From 1994 to 2001, he tracked individual animals and worked out which ones appeared together more often than would be expected by chance. His colleague, Mark Newman from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, US, then applied a mathematical technique used for probing complex networks. What emerged were two sizeable sub-communities joined together tenuously by just a few common members. (C)BBC

Keyword: Animal Communication
Link ID: 5992 - Posted: 08.13.2004

NYBORG, DENMARK--The next time you step on a cockroach, you may be committing an act of mercy. At least its end will come quicker than it would have if the insect fell prey to the parasitic wasp Ampulex compressa, which delivers a paralyzing sting to the brain so that its hungry brood can devour the living roach from the inside out. Now researchers have found receptors on the wasp's stinger that may guide the neurotoxic strike. The sting of A. compressa paralyzes its prey, the cockroach Periplaneta Americana, for 4 or 5 weeks--enough time for the wasp's eggs to hatch, feed, and pupate inside their helpless host. For this strategy to work, the wasp must deliver its venom--a cocktail of neurotoxins--directly to the roach's brain. To investigate what guides the sting, Ram Gal and Frederic Libersat of Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheva, Israel, first introduced the wasp to roaches whose brains had been removed. Normally, it takes about a minute for the wasp to find its target, sting, and fly off. But in the brainless roaches, the wasps searched the empty head cavity for an average of 10 minutes. A radioactive tracer injected into the wasps revealed that when they finally did sting, they used about 1/6 the usual amount of venom. The wasps knew something was amiss, says Gal, who presented the findings here on 10 August at a meeting of the International Society for Neuroethology. Copyright © 2004 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Neurotoxins
Link ID: 5991 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Theory May Increase Understanding of Eye Disease, Sleep Disorders The pineal gland — which regulates the cycles of sleep and waking — appears to have evolved as an indirect way to improve vision, by keeping toxic compounds away from the eye, according to a new theory by a researcher at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health. The theory has implications for understanding macular degeneration, a condition causing vision loss in people age 60 and older. The theory is described in the August Journal of Biological Rhythms and represents the work of David Klein, Ph.D., Chief of NICHD's Section on Neuroendocrinology. Dr. Klein studies melatonin, the pineal hormone that regulates sleep and wake cycles. Briefly, the theory holds that melatonin was at first a kind of cellular garbage, a by-product created in cells of the eye when normally toxic substances were rendered harmless. Roughly 500 million years ago, however, the ancestors of today's animals became dependent on melatonin as a signal of darkness. As the need for greater quantities of melatonin grew, the pineal gland developed as a structure separate from the eyes, to keep the toxic substances needed to make melatonin away from sensitive eye tissue.

Keyword: Vision; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 5990 - Posted: 06.24.2010