By NICHOLAS BAKALAR At one time, any surgery under general anesthesia practically mandated a stay in the hospital, often to recover not from the surgery but from the effects of the anesthesia used during the operation. Patients were woozy for hours, unable to get out of bed, nauseated and vomiting, and even if they wanted to eat, they couldn't because their digestive systems were paralyzed. People receiving anesthesia were also at risk; a significant number died not from their disease but from the anesthetic drugs themselves. But new drugs and procedures developed in recent years have made anesthesia not only more comfortable, but much safer. Despite two recent highly publicized deaths from anesthesia in a New York hospital, such events, shocking as they are, do not constitute a trend. On the contrary, deaths from anesthesia in generally healthy patients have made a startling decline in the last two decades, decreasing to an estimated 1 in 250,000 cases from 1 in 10,000, according to the American Society of Anesthesiologists. And new drugs have become so easy to tolerate that many patients can undergo general anesthesia in the morning and be home, completely recovered, in time for dinner. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 5889 - Posted: 07.27.2004

Using satellite tracking to study the paths pigeons take on homeward-bound journeys, researchers have obtained strong new evidence to support a long-held theory: in some environments, pigeons instinctively learn to follow major roadways in navigating their flight. The new findings are reported by a research group headed by Dr. Hans-Peter Lipp of the University of Zürich. Anecdotal evidence from breeders of racing pigeons as well as initial aerial tracking studies together suggested that pigeons may follow roadways and use highway landmarks as turning points in their flight. However, the challenge of accurately tracking the birds stood in the way of solid quantitative analysis. In the new work, miniaturized GPS "flight-loggers," which pigeons carried on their backs, allowed researchers a clear and reliable picture of the birds' flight paths. Over three years, the researchers analyzed more than 200 flight paths of 20-80 km in length made by pigeons travelling toward their home loft from numerous release sites located in the general vicinity of Rome, Italy. They found that, when released from familiar sites, pigeons with homing experience were significantly attracted to highways and a railway track running in the approximate directions home. When these structures began to veer significantly from the beeline to the loft, some birds tended to break away and head in a more homeward direction, but others took a detour by following the highway until a main junction, at which point they followed a valley road in the direction of the loft.

Keyword: Animal Migration; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 5888 - Posted: 07.27.2004

Rearing experimental animals under special illumination, researchers have found new evidence that early visual experience is indispensable for the development of normal color perception. The wavelength composition of the light reflected from an object changes considerably in different conditions of illumination. Nevertheless, the color of the object remains the same. This property, so-called "color constancy," is the most important property of the color visual system. It has been unclear based on previous work whether the attribute of color constancy is innate or acquired after birth. In work reported this week, researcher Yoichi Sugita of the Neuroscience Research Institute, Tsukuba, Japan, shows that visual experience in early infancy is indispensable for normal development of the color constancy. He raised baby monkeys for nearly a year in a separate room where the illumination came from only monochromatic lights. After extensive training afterwards, the monkeys were able to perform color matching tasks, but their judgment of color similarity was quite different from that of normal animals. Furthermore, they had severe deficits in color constancy; their color vision was very much wavelength-dominated, such that they were unable to compensate for the changes in wavelength composition. These results indicate that early visual experience is indispensable for normal color perception.

Keyword: Vision; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5887 - Posted: 07.27.2004

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- For nearly a decade, scientists have known that leptin plays an important fat-burning role in humans. But the map of leptin's path through the body – the key to understanding how and why the hormone works – is still incomplete. Now a small but critical section of that map is charted, based on new research conducted at Brown Medical School and Rhode Island Hospital and at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The research team found that leptin triggers production of the active form of a peptide – áMSH – in the hypothalamus, the small area in the base of the brain that controls hunger and metabolism. Researchers say this peptide, or small protein, is one of the body's most powerful metabolism booster signals, sending a fast, strong message to the brain to burn calories. This message is then sent to another part of the hypothalamus, where another peptide is produced and released. This stimulates the pituitary gland, which secretes a hormone that relays the message to the thyroid, the master of metabolism. Once activated, the thyroid gland then spreads word to the body's cells to increase energy production.

Keyword: Obesity; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 5886 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Arline Kaplan Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) replacement therapy may be efficacious in treating mild-to-moderate midlife depression, particularly where traditional antidepressant treatment has failed, is undesired by the patient or is not well tolerated, an expert in behavioral endocrinology reported in March. Robert J. Daly, MB, MRCPsych, senior lecturer at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, described findings from a study on DHEA sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health at the 2nd World Congress on Women's Mental Health in Washington, D.C. Daly was formerly a senior staff fellow in NIMH's Behavioral Endocrinology Branch. While DHEA is found naturally in the body as a steroid hormone secreted by the adrenal cortex, its supplement form is extracted from the barbasco root or wild Mexican yam. In the United States, DHEA is one of the most commonly used dietary supplements, according to Daly. Supplement marketers claim it is capable of alleviating depression, slowing aging, improving memory, boosting energy and building muscle mass. Several countries, however, have banned over-the-counter (OTC) DHEA sales. Last April, the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously approved the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004 (HR 3866), which would make 43 steroid precursors controlled substances instead of OTC supplements, but DHEA was exempted from the list. Still, as a precaution, the bill requires the U.S. Attorney General to evaluate the health risks of dietary supplements similar to anabolic steroids not included in HR 3866 and issue a report within the next two years. © 2004 Psychiatric Times.

Keyword: Depression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 5885 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by John M. Oldham, M.D. Although the term borderline has been in clinical use since the late 1930s, it only became an official Axis II diagnosis in 1980 with the publication of DSM-III. Currently, DSM-IV-TR emphasizes that patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) show a "instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts," and any five out of nine listed criteria must be present for the diagnosis to be made. Gunderson (2001) portrayed DSM-defined BPD as a diagnostic category layered between neurotic and psychotic disorders, and he differentiated BPD from Otto Kernberg, M.D.'s, theoretical concept of intrapsychic structure referred to as borderline personality organization, an umbrella concept that encompasses a number of Cluster A and Cluster B personality disorders that are characterized by the presence of primitive defenses and identity diffusion, yet with the maintenance of reality testing (Kernberg, 1975). It is now clear that DSM-IV-defined BPD is a heterogeneous construct that includes patients on the mood disorder spectrum and the impulsivity spectrum (Siever and Davis, 1991), in contrast to the original speculation that these patients might be near neighbors of patients with schizophrenia or other psychoses. Patients with schizotypal personality disorders are, instead, the genetic cousins of those patients with schizophrenia. © 2004 Psychiatric Times.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 5884 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Stephen I. Deutsch, M.D., Ph.D., Richard B. Rosse, M.D., Lynn H. Deutsch, D.O., and Judy Eller Treatment of a cholinergic deficiency has informed the development of much of the current and approved pharmacotherapy of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The foundation of the hypothesized etiology of AD is based on the assumption of a cholinergic deficiency, wherein there is degeneration of cholinergic projection pathways and reduced levels and activity of choline acetyltransferase (ChAT), a biochemical marker of cholinergic neurons. In early stages of this disease, functional changes in synaptic neurotransmission mediated by acetylcholine can be shown, whereas actual anatomic degeneration of cholinergic projection pathways can be demonstrated in later stages of the disease. In the first part of this two-part series, the clinical pharmacology of tacrine (Cognex) and donepezil (Aricept) was reviewed. This installment will consider two additional cholinesterase inhibitors, rivastigmine (Exelon) and galantamine (Reminyl), and memantine (Namenda), a medication whose primary pharmacological action does not involve restoration of deficient cholinergic neurotransmission. Rivastigmine may offer some unique advantages because of its ability to inhibit butyrylcholinesterase (BuChE), in addition to acetylcholinesterase (AChE). The activity of BuChE increases in the brains of patients with AD and, thus, may be an important additional therapeutic target. © 2004 Psychiatric Times.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 5883 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Strange body movements may reveal whether infants have a mild form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome, say researchers in the US. Earlier diagnosis may one day lead to a better prognosis for children with Asperger's syndrome. As many as one in 200 children in the US suffer from either autism or Asperger's Syndrome, which both appear to have genetic roots. The conditions are marked by difficulty relating to other people and repetitive behaviour. But autism is usually diagnosed much earlier than Asperger's – by the age of three - because it hinders language development. Asperger's Syndrome, however, has more subtle effects on language and usually does not become apparent until the age of seven. So researchers at the University of Florida in Gainesville, US, set out to see if body movements could betray the disorder in infants. They asked parents of children who were later diagnosed with Asperger's for videos of the children when they were less than a year old. The researchers then scrutinised the videos of 16 children frame by frame. Certain physical characteristics stood out, such as falling to one side while walking. Eight of the infants had a "Moebius mouth", a sign of neurological damage that appears as a tented upper lip and flat lower lip. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 5882 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Helen Pilcher Transplants of human fetal stem-cells may help repair stroke-induced brain damage. This has long been a goal of stem-cell researchers, and now a study in rats has produced the most promising result yet, by showing that grafted cells can home in on injured brain regions and form replacement nerve cells. The next step is to prove that the cells can reverse paralysis in the rodents, before moving on to primate and human trials. "We're not saying we can treat patients immediately, but it is a big step forwards," says Gary Steinberg from Stanford University, who led the study. Stroke is the main cause of disability in adults, and is the third biggest cause of death in the United States. The condition occurs when a blood vessel carrying oxygen and nutrients to the brain becomes blocked or bursts. Brain cells then start to suffocate and die. It is hoped that stem cells, which can turn into many different types of cell, will be able to replace the damaged tissue. ©2004 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Stroke; Stem Cells
Link ID: 5881 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers have found a delivery method for gene therapy that reaches all the voluntary muscles of a mouse – including heart, diaphragm and limbs – and reverses the process of muscle-wasting found in muscular dystrophy. "We have a clear 'proof of principle' that it is possible to deliver new genes body-wide to all the striated muscles of an adult animal. Finding a delivery method for the whole body has been a major obstacle limiting the development of gene therapy for the muscular dystrophies. Our new work identifies for the first time a method where a new dystrophin gene can be delivered, using a safe and simple method, to all of the affected muscles of a mouse with muscular dystrophy," said Dr. Jeffrey S. Chamberlain, professor of neurology and director of the Muscular Dystrophy Cooperative Research Center at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. He also has joint appointments in the departments of medicine and biochemistry. Chamberlain is the senior author of the paper describing the results, which will be published in the August edition of Nature Medicine. The paper describes a type of viral vector, a specific type of an adeno-associated virus (AAV), which is able to 'home-in' on muscle cells and does not trigger an immune system response. The delivery system also includes use of a growth factor, VEGF, that appears to increase penetration into muscles of the gene therapy agent. Chamberlain said the formula was the result of about a year of trying different methods.

Keyword: Muscles; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 5880 - Posted: 06.24.2010

One of a Neanderthal baby's first words was probably "papa", concludes one of the most comprehensive attempts to date to make out what the first human language was like. Many of the estimated 6000 languages now spoken share common words and meanings, notably for kin names like "mama" and "papa". That has led some linguists to suggest that these words have been carried through from humans' original proto-language, spoken at least 50,000 years ago. But without information on exactly how often these words occur across distantly related languages, there has been little evidence to support that claim. What is more, some words of similar sound and meaning, such as the English "day" and the Spanish "dia", are known to have arisen independently. Now Pierre Bancel and Alain Matthey de l'Etang from the Association for the Study of Linguistics and Prehistoric Anthropology in Paris have found that the word "papa" is present in almost 700 of the 1000 languages for which they have complete data on words for close family members. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 5879 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Britain is the new training ground for animal rights activists, with anti-vivisectionists travelling here from all over the world to learn techniques of unarmed combat and how to evade arrest. Up to 300 young militants from abroad, including about 50 from the United States, will arrive in Britain next month for a training camp. They will be taught to climb using ropes - useful in scaling buildings - plus skills required by hunt saboteurs. The four-day training workshop for aspiring anti-vivisectionists, in Tonbridge, Kent, has been organised by the two most prominent and militant groups - Speak, which is campaigning for the closure of Oxford University's new science laboratory, and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) which targets Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), the leading animal testing company. A SHAC website gives a timetable of workshops for the camp, one of which is titled "unarmed combat". As guest speaker they have invited Ronnie Lee, who is credited with founding the Animal Liberation Front, a group notorious for its extreme tactics. Both groups deny they promote violence, although their followers have been blamed for a series of attacks on the homes and properties of scientists. © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 5878 - Posted: 06.24.2010

What, precisely, is so bad about sex between adult siblings, bestiality, and the eating of corpses? Most people insist such acts are morally wrong, but when psychologists ask why, the answers make little sense. For instance, people often say incestuous sex is immoral because it runs the risk of begetting a deformed child, but if this was their real reason, they should be happy if the siblings were to use birth control - and most people are not. One finds what the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt called "moral dumbfounding", a gut feeling that something is wrong combined with an inability to explain why. Haidt suggests we are dumbfounded because, despite what we might say to others and perhaps believe ourselves, our moral responses are not based on reason. They are instead rooted in revulsion: incest, bestiality and cannibalism disgust us, and our disgust gives rise to moral outrage. Some see disgust as a reliable moral guide. Leon Kass, chairman of the President's commission on bioethics, wrote an article in 1997 called "the wisdom of repugnance" where he concedes that this revulsion is "not an argument", but then goes on to argue: "In some crucial cases, however, it is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond wisdom's power completely to articulate it." This conclusion has practical implications: Kass argues that the idea of human cloning is disgusting, and he sees this as good reason to ban it. Some from both sides of the political spectrum, would agree. © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 5877 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists say they have found a drug which could treat some of the most distressing symptoms of dementia. As many as half of patients can become agitated, and may scream at their carers - or even hit them. University of Rochester researchers treated patients with quetiapine, usually used to treat schizophrenia. But UK experts said the small study, presented to an international dementia conference in Philadelphia, America should be treated with caution. Quetiapine (Seroquel) belongs to a class of drugs called atypical anti-psychotics. Professor Pierre Tariot, who led the research at the University of Rochester, is also a paid consultant to AstraZeneca, which makes Seroquel. The team studied 333 people in nursing homes for 10 weeks. They were given either quetiapine or a dummy pill. It was found the active medication reduced agitated behaviour in patients around 20% more often than the dummy pill. (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 5876 - Posted: 07.24.2004

Are you a superstar? Just stick out your tongue and say "yuck" There's good taste, and according to scientists, there's supertaste. Blue food coloring is going to tell me where I lie on the continuum. Armed with a bottle of blue dye No. 1 and a Q-tip, I paint my tongue cobalt, swish some water in my mouth and spit into the bathroom sink. In the mirror I see a smattering of pink bumps—each hiding as many as 15 taste buds apiece—against the lurid blue background. Now I'm supposed to count how many of those bumps, called fungiform papillae, appear inside a circle a quarter-inch in diameter, but I don't need to do that. Obviously, I have fewer than the 30 that would qualify me as having an extraordinary palate. I am not a supertaster. Thank goodness. Normally, people prize highly acute senses. We brag about twenty-twenty vision or the ability to eavesdrop on whispers from across the room. But taste is not so simple: supertaste may be too much of a good thing, causing those who have it to avoid bitter compounds and find some spicy foods too hot to handle. This unusual corner of perception science has been explored by Linda Bartoshuk of Yale University, who first stumbled upon supertasting about 15 years ago while studying saccharin. While most people found the sugar substitute sweet and palatable, others sensed a bitter aftertaste. She went on to test hundreds of volunteers with a host of chemicals found in food. About one in four, she discovered, qualified as supertasters, a name she coined. Copyright 2004. Smithsonian Institution.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 5875 - Posted: 06.24.2010

James Bowman There are at least two good reasons why Hollywood is so fond of movies about memory loss. One is that the movies are always and inevitably tempted by voyeurism, and exotic illnesses or injuries, including psychological ones, promise voyeuristic thrills aplenty. The other reason has to do with visual paradox. The movies are supremely realistic-surrealistic, you might almost say-in their capacity to look more like life than life does. Human life is always writ large on the big screen. But life as most of us experience it depends utterly on knowing who and where we are on earth, on placing ourselves in relation to the rest of the world. The central task of the mise en scène is to place people in some context. But what if the people themselves don’t recognize their context? This is interesting to moviegoers who know what the characters don’t, which is the case in most such movies, or moviegoers who have to figure out the context just as the characters do, as in Memento or Mulholland Drive. But memory is also shorthand for identity: we are our memories in a way that everyone instantly understands and that the movies have been happily exploiting at least since the classic 1942 amnesia flick, Random Harvest. We all instinctively feel that to lose our memory is to lose ourselves, a prospect that stirs audiences with mixed feelings.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 5874 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bruce Bower In the past 2 years, public and government concerns about a widely used class of antidepressant drugs have grown. There have been indications that these selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, may cause people to try to kill themselves. In March, the Food and Drug Administration instructed the makers of 10 such medications to include in their labeling a recommendation for close physician monitoring for suicidal tendencies. Into this charged atmosphere comes an unprecedented attempt to evaluate suicides in a large population of depressed individuals taking antidepressant drugs for months or years. The study analyzed data collected on more than 2,500 patients prescribed any of four antidepressants: two SSRIs and two older drugs. Both attempted and completed suicides displayed a notable jump in the month after patients started antidepressant treatment, report physician Hershel Jick of Boston University School of Medicine and his colleagues. These risks were similar among people treated with an SSRI—either fluoxetine (Prozac) or paroxetine (Paxil)—or a tricyclic antidepressant—either amitriptyline or dothiepin. Copyright ©2004 Science Service.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 5873 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Family of presynaptic organizing molecules could eventually yield new brain therapies - Researchers have found a family of molecules that play a key role in the formation of synapses, the junctions that link brain cells, called neurons, to each other. The molecules initiate the development of these connections, forming the circuitry of the mammalian nervous system. Scientists from Harvard University and Washington University in St. Louis describe the findings in the July 23 issue of the journal Cell. "This is very basic work, far from any clinical applications at this point," says author Joshua R. Sanes, professor of molecular and cellular biology in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. "Still, one can think of lots of cases, from normal aging to mental retardation to neurodegenerative disease, where making more synapses or preventing synapse loss might be beneficial. This finding may eventually point the way to new therapies." Synapses are the sites where neurons communicate with each other to form the large and complex information-processing networks of the brain. These networks are highly modifiable because the synapses between neurons are plastic, leading to changes that underlie learning. Synapses are also the targets of nearly all psychoactive drugs, including both prescription medications and illicit drugs.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5872 - Posted: 07.24.2004

JOHN INNES BEING fashion-conscious is not confined to humans, research has shown. Animals copy one another when making choices about places to live, where to eat and acquiring a mate. Such behaviour allows the rapid transmission of non-genetic traits, giving rise to a form of "cultural evolution". Researchers reviewed the evidence for animal fashion in the edition of the journal Science that appears today. The team, led by Etienne Danchin, from the CNRS research institution in Paris, wrote: "Psychologists, economists and advertising moguls have long known that human decision-making is strongly influenced by the behaviour of others. "A rapidly accumulating body of evidence suggests that the same is true in animals ... Public information can lead to cultural evolution, which we suggest may then affect biological evolution." Following popular trends can help animals to evaluate the world around them. ©2004 Scotsman.com

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 5871 - Posted: 06.24.2010

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. – A Tufts University study has shed light on how some inherited diseases such as Huntington's and muscular dystrophy develop in humans. "Our findings show a possible reason that cells with a certain type of mutation (expansion of repetitive DNA) die prematurely," said Catherine Freudenreich, assistant professor of biology at the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts. "We may be able to use this information to stop or slow the development of some of these degenerative diseases that affect thousands of people every year." She and her colleagues – post-doctoral fellow Mayurika Lahiri and former Tufts undergraduate researchers Tanya Gustafson and Elizabeth Majors – published their findings, "Expanded CAG repeats activate the DNA damage checkpoint pathway" in the July 23 issue of the journal Molecular Cell. Freudenreich, a molecular biologist, studies the unstable elements in the human genome, particularly the type of unstable element called "trinucleotide repeat sequences," whose expansion causes numerous human genetic diseases such as Huntington's disease (a degenerative neurological disease) and myotonic dystrophy (a type of muscular dystrophy). There are more than 15 repeat expansion diseases, all of which are of special interest because they are caused by a highly unusual DNA mutation, one in which a repetitive DNA sequence expands from a small number of copies to a larger number. For example, 20 copies of a DNA sequence (such as CAG) could expand to 70 or 100 copies to cause disease.

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 5870 - Posted: 06.24.2010