You know the location of your cousin’s house. How to prepare a grilled cheese sandwich. When to wear rain boots. How to calculate a tip for the pizza delivery guy. The list goes on and on. Thanks to memory you can easily navigate life. Many people, however, are not so fortunate. Alzheimer’s disease (AD), for example, which affects some 4 million older Americans, destroys memory and thinking capabilities. Individuals with AD may have trouble recalling addresses, major events, or the name of the president. Making meals and managing finances can become difficult. Over time problems with memory and thinking get even worse. Speech abilities diminish. Dressing and other simple tasks require assistance. For years, the biological basis of memory was unclear, which hindered the search for treatments to improve memory and thinking in those with disorders like AD. Now, a series of recent discoveries have advanced the field. The studies uncover several brain components that appear to play significant roles in memory. What’s more, evidence indicates that methods that target the components can enhance memory. Copyright © 2004 Society for Neuroscience

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 5603 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Expressing high levels of a sugar-adding protein known as LARGE in mice that lack the protein can prevent muscular dystrophy in these animals, according to studies by researchers at the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine. Furthermore, the research suggests that LARGE protein also can restore normal function to a critical muscle protein that is disrupted by glycosylation (sugar-adding) defects in several different human muscular dystrophies. The team's findings, which appear June 6 in an advanced online publication of Nature Medicine and online in the journal Cell on June 3, might lead to new treatments for this particular class of muscular dystrophies and other muscle diseases caused by glycosylation defects. A group of muscular dystrophies, which include Fukuyama Congenital Muscular Dystrophy, Walker-Warburg Syndrome and Muscle-Eye-Brain disease, are caused by mutations in glycosylation enzymes – proteins that add sugars to other proteins. In these diseases, defects in the sugar-adding mechanism disrupt the properties of alpha-dystroglycan, a protein critical for normal muscle function.

Keyword: Muscles; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 5602 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Local snoozing implies that slumber makes for better learning. TANGUY CHOUARD A good night's rest is hard work for parts of your brain, say US neuroscientists. Regions related to learning show increased activity in sleepers who spent their evening mastering a new skill, they say. The discovery shows that sleep is valuable for consolidating new information and is not a simple 'standby' mode. Local brain processing during the night led to new skills being more firmly cemented, the research indicates. Giulio Tononi of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his colleagues measured electrical brain signals in subjects who learned a simple computer game before going to sleep. The kind of activity that occurs during sleep was increased in a penny-sized region in the brains of slumbering subjects who had learned the game. Just playing the game did not have this effect. The researchers conclude that sleep falls on brain circuits that have been changed, not just used, during the day. (C) Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

Keyword: Sleep; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 5601 - Posted: 06.08.2004

Scientists are working on a new decontamination method to kill the proteins that cause the human form of mad cow disease. They hope their work eradicates even the tiniest potential for patients to contract vCJD from surgical equipment. The technique, a form of electrolysis, has been successfully tested on some forms of protein. Its developers, from Exeter University, hope it will also prove an effective way to kill the superbug MRSA. Lead researcher Dr Claus Jacob told BBC News Online the technique took advantage of the fact that surgical instruments were made of metal, and so could conduct electricity. It works by connecting the instrument to a battery-type device, and feeding through a very low voltage electrical current. This produces a series of chemical reactions on the surface of the instrument, which generate highly reactive oxygen particles that destroy biological matter clinging to the surface of the instrument. In some respects, the technology mimics the way that the body's immune system generates similar oxygen particles to fight off bacterial infection. (C)BBC

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 5600 - Posted: 06.06.2004

It may sound like a load of quackers but according to new research ducks have regional accents. "Cockney" ducks from London make a rougher sound, not unlike their human counterparts, so their fellow quackers can hear them above the city's hubbub. But their country cousins communicate with a softer, more relaxed sound, the team from Middlesex University found. Ducks, like humans, are influenced by their environment, said Dr Victoria De Rijke, who has been nicknamed Dr Quack. Her research team discovered the difference after recording the quacks of ducks at two separate locations. The birds at Spitalfields City Farm in the heart of the cockney east London, were found to be "much louder and vocally excitable" than the ducks recorded on Trerieve Farm in Downderry, Cornwall, said English language lecturer Dr De Rijke. "The Cornish ducks made longer and more relaxed sounds, much more chilled out. "The cockney (London) quack is like a shout and a laugh, whereas the Cornish ducks sound more like they are giggling," she added. "London ducks have the stress of city life and a lot of noise to compete with, like sirens, horns, planes and trains."

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 5599 - Posted: 06.06.2004

By LESLIE BERGER TWO years after a bombshell dropped on hormone replacement therapy, there are signs that the rush away from the drugs is ending. In July 2002, a federal study, part of the Women's Health Initiative, was halted when its data showed the dangers of hormone therapy outweighing its long-term benefits. Sales of the drugs — estrogen and estrogen-progestin — plunged. But new figures show that in recent months the drop appears to be bottoming out. Some doctors report an upswing in demand from menopausal women unable to find other sources of relief. Drugmakers, who have introduced low-dose versions of the products, are making their first new marketing forays. And some prominent doctors are even beginning to argue that women have been needlessly scared away from treatment. Of course, the grand hope of the past is gone: that giving older women a substitute for the estrogen they produced in their youth could stave off heart disease, strokes and dementia. The new approach emphasizes the lowest dose for the shortest time — and only for relief of hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 5598 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Loss of cones in the retina may cause some types of colour blindness Scientists have found that some colour blind people are missing as many as one third of the normal number of specialised light-detecting cells. However, apart from colour blindness, the general quality of their sight appears unaffected. The researchers hope their work will enable earlier detection of eyesight disorders. The study, by the University of Rochester, is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Rochester team used a technique called adaptive optics to study the retina of the eye in much closer detail than has previously been possible. It was originally developed to help astronomers see more clearly through the Earth's atmosphere. Lead researcher Dr Joseph Carroll said: "Not only are we excited to show how this method can reveal us living cells in a way never before possible, but it's revealed a mystery with profound implications. "If a third of the light-receiving cells in your eye are absent and you don't even notice it, it means that when a patient complains to a doctor about waning light sensitivity, then the damage must already be very serious." (C)BBC

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 5597 - Posted: 06.05.2004

By BARRY MEIER The two drug trials were known within SmithKline Beecham as Study 329 and Study 377. Study 329 suggested that the company's popular drug Paxil might help depressed adolescents. Study 377, completed not long afterward, indicated that Paxil provided no more benefit than a sugar pill in treating depressed young people. But only the favorable study was widely publicized by Paxil's maker. The company chose not to discuss publicly the trial with negative results, and those findings came to light only when an outside researcher on the study team decided to disclose them at a medical conference. "That particular study would have been buried," said that researcher, Dr. Robert Milin of the Royal Ottawa Hospital in Canada. "It would have been buried to the public." Federal regulators in this country are now scrambling to reassess the effectiveness and safety of antidepressants like Paxil, after British regulators touched off a controversy last year by asking drug companies for unpublished data from antidepressant trials. That data suggested that several antidepressants, including Paxil, might give rise to suicidal thoughts in some young users - a potential problem not revealed in any published studies. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5596 - Posted: 06.05.2004

Not all sugars are equal, at least when it comes to weight gain and health Philadelphia, PA -- Researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, the University of California, Davis and other collaborating colleagues report that drinking beverages containing fructose, a naturally-occurring sugar commonly used to sweeten soft drinks and other beverages, induces a pattern of hormonal responses that may favor the development of obesity. It is estimated that consumption of fructose has increased by 20-30% over the past three decades, a rate of increase similar to that of obesity, which has risen dramatically over the same time span. Data from the present study suggest a mechanism by which fructose consumption could be one factor contributing to the increased incidence of obesity. In the study, reported in the June 4 issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 12 normal-weight women ate standardized meals on two days. The meals contained the same number of calories and the same distribution of total carbohydrate, fat and protein. On one day the meals included a beverage sweetened with fructose. On the other day, the same beverage was sweetened with an equal amount of glucose, another naturally-occurring sugar that is used by the body for energy.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Obesity
Link ID: 5595 - Posted: 06.05.2004

Dementia in AIDS patients is caused by a large, late invasion of HIV-infected macrophages--large, long-lived cells of the immune system that travel throughout the body and ingest foreign antigens to protect against infection--into the brain, according to researchers at Temple University's Center for Neurovirology and Cancer Biology (http://www.temple.edu/cnvcb/), debunking a longstanding "Trojan Horse" theory that early infection by macrophages remains latent until the latter stages of AIDS. The results of their study, "Macrophage/Microglial Accumulation and Proliferating Cell Nuclear Antigen Expression in the Central Nervous System in Human Immunodeficiency Virus Encephalopathy," was published in the June issue of the American Journal of Pathology [June 2004; Volume 164, Number 6] (http://ajp.amjpathol.org/). The study was funded by the National Institute of Neurodegenerative Disorder and Stroke and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "Basically, one of the longstanding models for how HIV causes dementia is the 'Trojan Horse' model," says Jay Rappaport, Ph.D., a professor of biology at the Center, who led the study. "According to this model, early during HIV infection, there may be a few macrophages that are infected and get into the brain and establish an infection in the resident microglia [long-term resident macrophages of the brain]. Then, late in the disease, there's a resurgence of the HIV virus from the macrophages." Rappaport and his collaborators believe that this longstanding theory does not hold true, that the early invasion of HIV-infected macrophages are controlled and cleared away by the body's immune system.

Keyword: Miscellaneous; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 5594 - Posted: 06.05.2004

PORTLAND, Ore. – A peculiar form of a gene mutation known to increase a person's risk for Parkinson's disease is puzzling doctors about how to counsel patients who have the anomaly. A study by researchers at the Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine's Parkinson Center of Oregon, the University of Washington School of Medicine and the New York State Department of Health, Wadsworth Center, raises concerns about whether patients testing positive for a single mutation of the parkin gene, rather than the two mutations typically required for developing Parkinson's, can be accurately informed about their risks of developing the disease or passing it on to their children. The study represents "a call for getting more information about the gene," said John "Jay" G. Nutt, M.D., OHSU professor of neurology, and physiology and pharmacology, and Parkinson center director. "What are the clinical implications of finding this gene?" What's alarmed doctors is that in the clinical setting, the single mutation appears to be common: 18 percent of patients with early-onset Parkinson's disease – those diagnosed before age 40 – tested positive for parkin gene mutations, and of that group, 70 percent had only one mutation.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 5593 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Zeroing in on the genetic basis of language By Gary Marcus From our common ancestor with chimpanzees, it took only six million years, give or take, to develop the ability to speak. And, as we now know, the vast majority of our genetic material has been inherited unchanged. Language, and whatever else separates us from chimpanzees, has its origins in alterations to no more than about 1.5% of the nucleotides in the genome,1 a pretty neat trick, when you consider how handy talking can be. How did evolution pull it off? Some important clues have already come in, such as a recent study showing that there has been an important change in a gene relating to jaw structure that may have opened the way to the rapid expansion of the human brain,2 which is about four times the size of a chimp's. But size isn't everything. While a human-sized brain might be a necessary prerequisite for language, it is hardly likely to be sufficient. Whales and elephants have significantly larger brains than ours, but they don't have anything as complex as human language. Only with further evolutionary changes to our brains, perhaps in the last 100,000 years,3 did our ancestors begin to talk. © 2004, The Scientist LLC, All rights reserved.

Keyword: Language; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 5592 - Posted: 06.24.2010

| By Nicole Johnston In the relative quiet following the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the United Kingdom, BSE returned to the headlines recently with a sole case found in the United States and new strains of BSE prion protein identified in France, Italy, and Japan. And, in May, French researchers said they found scrapie prion in sheep muscle, showing for the first time that prions have a direct path to the grocery store.1 While these events made headlines, other discoveries in the prion world also were occurring. Researchers have started, and only started, to get to the core of some fundamental questions involving prions. One of these is whether infectivity can be established in mammals using purified prion protein; the answer appears to be no. Investigators can isolate the protein from diseased animals, but they cannot reestablish infection in an uninfected animal. Researchers aren't sure why, but theories abound: The purified prion protein may not refold correctly, or perhaps other cellular factors act as accomplices. Answering the infectivity question would help confirm the role of prions in neurodegenerative diseases associated with mammalian transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). "With mammals, the difficulty is that nobody has been able to take normal prion protein [PrPC], convert it in a test tube, and then infect animals," says biophysicist Witold Surewicz of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. And that crucial missing link is what bothers prion skeptics such as Yale neurophysiologist Laura Manuelidis. "Nobody has shown that the protein is infectious." © 2004, The Scientist LLC, All rights reserved.

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 5591 - Posted: 06.24.2010

An alternative treatment has been licensed in the UK to treat children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Charmaine Wainwright, whose son Andrew - now 15 - was diagnosed with ADHD seven years ago, tells BBC News Online how atomoxetine has helped them. "I noticed something was different from an early age, probably even before he went to school. "I was working as a child-minder, and the other children would sit down and read, or paint, for hours on end. But he would do it for two minutes and then he'd be off." Andrew continued to behave in the same way when he went to school. It was only when Charmaine read a newspaper article about ADHD that she realised her son could be affected.

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 5590 - Posted: 06.04.2004

Anger dies hard—in some over long stretches of time, in others not at all. Michael Van Burger understands this better than anyone. After years of therapy he still stuffs down anger over the most negligible slights. "I just smile and nod and it really internally is very unpleasant," says the 32-year-old Manhattan hair stylist. "My heart races. I start to stutter. I feel like the blood is boiling out of my face. And I get a major headache." People like Van Burger who have a history of headache and hold in or onto anger may be exacerbating the problem by triggering chronic headaches, clinical psychologist Robert Nicholson told Discover Magazine. "Little research has been done on the role that anger has and managing your anger has in relationship to headache," explains Nicholson, of St. Louis University School of Medicine and lead researcher of a study on anger and headache. "Some choose to manage their anger by holding their anger in. We know from research that that can have some negative impacts on their health." © ScienCentral, 2000-2004.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 5589 - Posted: 06.24.2010

(Philadelphia, PA)—Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that norepinephrine (adrenaline) plays an important role in animals in determining behavioral effects in some of the most commonly prescribed antidepressants, regardless of which biochemical pathway the drug uses to alleviate symptoms of depression. This finding -- published in the May 2004 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -- should help scientists design more effective drugs for patients. Using genetically-altered mice unable to produce norepinephrine, they tested behavioral changes brought on by two different antidepressant classes. With the exception of one drug, they found that those lacking norepinephrine did not respond to the drugs. “Millions of Americans suffer from major depressive disorders and this study helps us understand how antidepressant drugs are processed to produce clinical therapeutic effects. It helps us understand how to redesign better drugs and which treatments will work better for which patients,” says the study’s lead author, Irwin Lucki, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology and Director of the Behavioral Psychopharmacology Laboratory at Penn.

Keyword: Depression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 5588 - Posted: 06.24.2010

More pavements may encourage Americans to walk. HELEN PEARSON Public-health officials in the United States are proposing a new and drastic way to fight the onslaught of obesity: they want to redesign entire towns to make them exercise-friendly. The suggestion comes amid increasing concern over the population's growing girth: around two-thirds of adult Americans are now classed as overweight or obese. Many recent health campaigns urge people to walk, cycle or be otherwise active during the day. But that's easier said than done; in a typical US housing estate, the only way to reach workplaces, shops and schools is by car. Many streets lack pavements, and cycle paths are virtually unheard of. To really fight the flab, US public-health officials are now realizing that they may have to change the entire layout of towns. The suburban mansion and sport-utility vehicle(SUV) may fulfil the American dream, they say, but it is taking an unforeseen toll on health. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 5587 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Neuroscience can at last explain why we can't see faults in our partners or children. Raj Persaud reports Can science help us to understand love? Many argue that a Shakespearean Sonnet, Rachmaninov piano sonata or Jane Austen novel is much better at communicating insights into why we become irresistibly drawn to one person. But now neuroscience promises to offer revealing new insights that could solve some of the mysteries at the heart of love. A study of whether there are different forms of love has been launched by Dr Andreas Bartels and Prof Semir Zeki from the Wellcome Department of Neuroimaging at University College London. They have attempted to unravel for the first time whether the love between a parent and a child is the same as the emotion shared by lovers and whether all forms of intense attachments are basic variations on the same theme. Scientists have a cold eyed view of the purpose of love. The tender intimacy and selflessness of a mother's love might be celebrated by inspiring music, literature and art. Many great artists have been profoundly affected by the relationship between mother and child, as depicted by Da Vinci's Virgin and Child, Van Gogh's First Steps and so on. © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.

Keyword: Emotions; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 5586 - Posted: 06.24.2010

State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed a lawsuit yesterday charging one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world with hiding significant information about risks of its antidepressant medicine Paxil for use in teenagers. Last year the Food and Drug Administration warned that patients under age 18 should not take Paxil because of a possible increased risk of suicidal impulses. The warning followed a similar action in England. In 2002, more than 2 million prescriptions for Paxil were written for children and adolescents in the United States. The lawsuit, the first of its kind from a state attorney general's office, states that GlaxoSmithKline engaged in "repeated and persistent fraud by concealing and failing to disclose to physicians information about Paxil." The only antidepressant medicine approved for children is Prozac, yet once a medicine is federally approved for adults it can be prescribed "off label" for any medical or psychiatric condition, including use in children. Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5585 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Dr. Luanne Metz, an associate professor of neurosciences and physician-scientist in the Neuroscience Research Group at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Medicine, has found that minocycline, a drug currently used to treat such conditions as acne, decreases the activity of lesions in the brains of people suffering from multiple sclerosis (MS). The results of her study are published in the May edition of the Annals of Neurology. The randomized study looks at ten people with active relapsing-remitting MS - characterized by clearly defined attacks (relapses) followed by partial or complete recovery (remissions). It assesses the effect of oral minocycline on people with active lesions in their brains. Each participant was given an MRI at the onset of the study, and then every four weeks after that, to determine whether or not the lesions caused by MS were getting worse or stabilizing. "For reasons that are still unclear, people with MS suffer from immune system malfunctions which trigger attacks of the nerve cells and myelin in the central nervous system,” says Metz, Director of the Calgary Health Region’s world renowned MS Clinic. “Current treatments being used today do not eliminate MS completely – they only lessen the severity and slow progression of the disease. Our new findings are exciting because we discovered that minocycline significantly reduces the activity of the lesions in the brain. These findings offer us the possibility of a new and safe treatment option for people with MS.”

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 5584 - Posted: 06.24.2010