High levels of estrogen found in the most responsive females David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor A new mystery in the saga of Sausalito's humming toadfish has finally been solved: It's hormones and hearing all the way. For more than 25 years, houseboat dwellers along the Sausalito waterfront have been awakened every summer night by loud humming noises resounding beneath their homes. Even local folk in nearby houses on land complained: They sound like an orchestra full of mournful, rasping oboes, they say. It took five years back in the 1980s for John McCosker, a marine biologist at the California Academy of Sciences, to pin the blame on the mating call of the male plainfin midshipman -- an ugly foot-long creature also called the toadfish but known scientifically as Porichthys notatus -- who nests beneath rocks along the shore and summons willing females to deposit their eggs so the males can fertilize them with sperm. Now a team of aquatic neurobiologists has discovered why some females of the species eagerly spawn near the males, while others literally cannot hear the mating call at all and ignore its loud vibrations completely. ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Hearing; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 5840 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer People with a common memory disorder that often leads to Alzheimer's disease (news - web sites) may be able to briefly delay that fate by taking a drug normally prescribed for Alzheimer's, a new study indicates. But ultimately the drug Aricept doesn't cut the risk of getting the feared illness, despite an average delay of six months. The lead author of the study, Dr. Ronald Petersen of the Mayo Clinic, said it was too early to make any recommendations for doctors and patients. He called the new results "a foot in the door" to finding more effective treatments. The same study found no effect from vitamin E, long viewed as a possible weapon against Alzheimer's. The experiment is the first to show that Alzheimer's can be delayed in people with the memory disorder, mild cognitive impairment, Petersen said. So researchers might be able to find other treatments that will produce more than the "modest" effect of Aricept, he said. MCI may be at least as common as Alzheimer's, which afflicts some 4 million Americans. Petersen said it might appear in some 18 percent to 20 percent of people older than 65 who do not have Alzheimer's or other dementia. Most of these people go on to develop Alzheimer's, with about 10 percent to 15 percent receiving an Alzheimer's diagnosis each year, Petersen said. Copyright © 2004 The Associated Press.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 5839 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A global research project is aiming to pin down the genetic causes of autism by studying 6,000 DNA samples from families affected by the brain disorder The US National Alliance for Autism Research project involves 170 experts from the US, Canada, the UK and Europe. Researchers will use a new technology called DNA microarray to scan the human genome to locate key genes. UK experts said the research offered "great hope", but added environmental factors were also a likely cause. Over the next six months, the researchers will analyse 6,000 DNA samples from families where two children have an autism spectrum disorder. Their parents' DNA will be analysed as part of the study. The "gene chip" which they are using to carry out the DNA microarray testing contains thousands of strands of synthetic DNA, allowing genetic patterns which are common to the families to be identified. Results from the study, believed to be the largest study into autism genes in history, are likely to be available in early 2005. Autism is a complex brain disorder that often inhibits a person's ability to communicate, respond to surroundings or form relationships with others. There are no specific medical treatments for autism or a cure. Around 535,000 people in the UK have an autism spectrum disorder. (C)BBC

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 5838 - Posted: 07.19.2004

ATLANTA- Difficulties in performing more challenging cognitive tasks, such as managing one's finances and medications, preparing meals and traveling independently, could be early warning signs that indicate the presence of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), according to Emory University researchers. Other more basic and well-rehearsed daily tasks, such as bathing, grooming, and dressing, can also decline in patients with MCI, but to a lesser extent. The findings will be presented at the 9th International Conference of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders in Philadelphia on July 18 at 8 a.m. MCI is a term described as a subtle decline in thinking abilities. A person with MCI, for example, may experience memory problems greater than normally expected with aging, but that person does not show other symptoms of dementia, such as impaired judgment or reasoning, according to the Alzheimer's Association. Little research has been conducted on whether well-rehearsed activities of daily living, known as ADLs (feeding, dressing, grooming, walking, bathing and toileting) and instrumental activities of daily living, known as IADLs, (laundry, shopping, transportation, driving, meal preparation, managing medications and finances) are compromised early in the disease process.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 5837 - Posted: 07.19.2004

Obese people who undergo gastric bypass surgery may lose weight quickly because levels of a hormone controlling appetite fall away, research shows. The hormone, ghrelin, is released into the blood from the stomach and upper intestine and triggers hunger pangs. It is one of two-dozen hormones thought to help regulate hunger. The Archives of Surgery study, by Atlanta's Emory University, found ghrelin levels dropped by nearly one-third after gastric bypass surgery. The researchers focused on a particular type of gastric bypass surgery known as the Roux-en-Y procedure. This involves dividing the stomach to create a pouch that is attached to the small intestine. It reduces the size of the stomach and bypasses parts of the gastric system that absorb food and may trigger releases of the hormone. However, it is considered to be risky and is usually only offered to patients who are severely overweight and who have been unable to lose weight using other methods. The researchers checked levels of the hormone in 48 obese patients, 34 of whom had undergone gastric bypass surgery. Another eight obese patients had other types of weight-loss procedures that did not divide the stomach, and six non-obese patients undergoing surgery were monitored to provide a base level of the hormone. None of these 14 patients showed any reduction in ghrelin levels. (C)BBC

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 5836 - Posted: 07.18.2004

By ANAHAD O'CONNOR Dr. Loren R. Mosher, a former National Institute of Mental Health official who developed a drug-free approach to treating schizophrenia and argued that psychiatrists should rely less heavily on antipsychotic medications, died on July 10 at a clinic in Berlin. He was 70. The cause was liver disease, his wife, Judith Schreiber, said. In the 1960's and 70's, as psychiatrists were beginning to prescribe powerful new antipsychotic drugs to treat schizophrenia, Dr. Mosher advocated using little-known alternative therapies instead. From 1968 to 1980, while chief of the Center for Studies of Schizophrenia at the mental health institute, he began a long-term study that compared drug-free treatments with conventional hospitalization. Through decades of research, he found that patients who were randomly assigned to live in a psychotherapeutic, residential setting with few medications did just as well as patients given drugs. In some cases, when the person had never taken any medication, he found the outcome was even better. "Loren believed that you couldn't just give drugs to someone who is in deep distress and ignore them," said Dr. David Cohen, a professor of social work at the School of Social Work at Florida International University and a former colleague of Dr. Mosher. "He said that there was therapeutic value in just being with someone and bearing the discomfort of it. Just giving the patients drugs would only distance yourself from them." Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 5835 - Posted: 07.18.2004

By LISA BELKIN When Vivienne Sales finally broke her silence, she did so loudly, losing her temper in the hushed library where she worked. It was August 2003, and she had been hanging on to her job as a reference librarian by the most fragile of threads. For more than a year her supervisors at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz., had been warning her that she was sometimes sloppy and inaccurate. She was late for work too often, they said. She didn't dress neatly and appropriately. Her desk was always a mess. Sales knew all this. She also knew why. Three years earlier, when she was 36, she was told she had attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder. (That's the full name of the condition, and while its initials are technically a.d.h.d., not all who have it exhibit the hyperactivity symptoms, so it is often referred to conversationally as simply A.D.D.) The news was a relief because it seemed to explain everything -- why she rarely seemed to fit into a workplace, why she left nine different jobs in 1999 alone, why, despite two master's degrees and years of dogged hard work, she never seemed to get anywhere. Although the diagnosis was illuminating, Sales was determined to keep her condition to herself. ''Work isn't like school, where they have to give you more time on the tests'' if you have A.D.D., she explained. ''In the real world, if you tell during the interview, they won't hire you. And if you tell after you're hired, they can fire you.'' Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 5834 - Posted: 07.18.2004

By WALTER KIRN One of the least persuasive doctrines of the religion I belonged to as a teenager held that temptation was a gift from God because doing right would have no meaning if people lacked the freedom to do wrong. The idea, as I understood it at the time, was that even though it would be a sin to pick up a pretty girl at the church dance and drive her to the dark abandoned chicken farm known as ''the coop'' where we Mormon kids held our makeout sessions, I should nevertheless feel grateful for the fact that I desperately desired to do so. Except I didn't feel grateful; I felt confused. That good actions often felt deeply frustrating and bad actions supremely pleasurable seemed to me to be creation's greatest flaw, not its crowning virtue. My old confusion came back to me when I read a recent series of articles in the science journal Nature concerning the genetic and chemical roots of sexual behavior in the vole. The study in question involved the prairie vole, a rodent species whose males are naturally monogamous and enjoy spending time with their partners, and the meadow vole, whose males prefer to mate with many females and then like to wander off and be alone. What could account for this difference, the scientists wondered, between the two groups of closely related creatures? And could the naughty, randy voles be civilized? Yes, it turned out, they could be. It wasn't hard, in fact. To make the meadow voles act like prairie voles when it came to so-called pair bond formation, the researchers merely injected a gene harvested from the ideal-husband voles into the forebrains of the rock-star voles. (The forebrain is the seat of passion? Who knew?) Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 5833 - Posted: 07.18.2004

A vitamin found in a range of common foods could protect against Alzheimer's Disease, researchers have claimed. A team from the Chicago Institute for Healthy Aging found niacin - vitamin B3 - was also linked to a reduced risk of age-related mental decline. It is found in dairy products, poultry, fish, lean meats, nuts, and eggs. The team said their findings, published in the Journal of Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, could help prevent Alzheimer's developing. The US researchers looked at the diets of almost 4,000 people aged 65 and over between 1993 and 2002. None had any history of Alzheimer's disease. The researchers then monitored for any signs of decreasing mental agility. After three years, a sample of 815 people were checked for clinical changes and their dietary intake was assessed. Among this group, 131 were diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. The researchers, led by Dr Martha Morris took into account other risk factors such as age, gender, race, educational levels and a gene known as the ApoE. They found that those with the lowest food intake of niacin - around 12.6mg a day - were 80% more likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's than those with the highest intake - around 22.4mg a day. When they examined the mental agility of the larger group after six years, the researchers found cognitive decline was "significantly reduced" by 44% among those with the highest niacin intake compared with those with the lowest intake. (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 5832 - Posted: 07.17.2004

By ERIC NAGOURNEY This time of year dermatologists are wringing their pale, smooth hands in dismay and frustration: Why don't people listen to the warnings about the risks of sunlight? Vanity and the recklessness of the young usually get the blame. But maybe there's more to the urge to bake than looks and youthful abandon. A small, provocative study seems to say so. It links the penetration of ultraviolet rays to the release of pleasure-inducing endorphins in the brain. Writing in The Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, a group of researchers reported that they sought out volunteers who regularly went to tanning salons and invited them to lounge in tanning beds at no charge over a period of six weeks. The 14 volunteers - 13 women and a man - came in twice a week and were directed to one of two seemingly identical tanning beds. But one of the beds was equipped with a UV filter and the other wasn't. When the volunteers were given mood assessments afterwards, those who had not been shielded from the ultraviolet light consistently seemed more content and more relaxed. And when the group was given the opportunity to come in on a third day and choose one bed or the other, 11 of the 12 people headed straight for the bed that provided ultraviolet light. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 5831 - Posted: 07.17.2004

Infant pacification may have led to the origins of language By Kate Wong When a staff member brings a baby into the offices of Scientific American, a small crowd inevitably forms around the infant, and although the onlookers all have rather different personalities and mannerisms, they tend to talk to the baby in the same singsong way. Vowels are lingered over, phrases are repeated in high-pitched voices, and questions carry exaggerated inflections. Sound familiar? This is motherese, the distinctive speech that human adults across the globe instinctively use when addressing babies. And according to a new theory, it holds a key to the emergence of language. In a paper slated for the August Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Florida State University physical anthropologist Dean Falk proposes that just as motherese forms the scaffold for language acquisition during child development, so, too, did it underpin the evolution of language. Such baby talk itself originated, she posits, as a response to two other hallmarks of human evolution: upright walking and big brains. In contrast to other primates, humans give birth to babies that are relatively undeveloped. Thus, whereas a chimpanzee infant can cling to its quadrupedal mother and ride along on her belly or back shortly after birth, helpless human babies must be carried everywhere by their two-legged caregivers. Assuming, as many anthropologists do, that early humans had chimplike social structures, moms did most of the child rearing. But having to hold on to an infant constantly would have significantly diminished their foraging efficiency, Falk says. She argues that hominid mothers therefore began putting their babies down beside them while gathering and processing food. To placate an infant distressed by this separation, mom would offer vocal, rather than physical, reassurance and continue her search for sustenance. © 1996-2004 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 5829 - Posted: 06.24.2010

No one can learn how to play solitaire by simply watching a player's hands. The trick is knowing where a particular card is supposed to go. In new research, monkeys learned a task almost as sophisticated--they learned a sequence of images by figuring out the successful strategy of another monkey. The results suggest that rhesus macaques learned with their thinking cap rather than merely copying the hand movements of other monkeys. For more than 100 years, scientists have tried to determine whether animals learn by copying what they see others do or by suffering through trial and error. Although many experiments have shown that they can mimic others, they might not be actively thinking about the process. Anthropologist Herbert Terrace of Columbia University in New York City and colleagues decided to remove the motor aspect of behavior imitation and find out if monkeys could imitate by thinking. To do so, the team put two rhesus macaques into side-by-side soundproofed chambers, each with a touch-screen computer. One monkey learned to touch four images on the screen in a particular order, earning a banana snack. Each time the images came up, however, they were placed differently on the screen. Copyright © 2004 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 5828 - Posted: 06.24.2010

What can studies of pornography, prostitutes, and seedy truck stops contribute to society? By Barry Yeoman Yorghos Apostolopoulos was at his office at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta last October when his red voice-mail light started glowing. When he picked up the phone, he heard a somber voice. “We need to speak,” said the caller, a program officer at the National Institutes of Health, which funds Apostolopoulos’s research on infectious disease. Her voice was drained of its usual casualness. “Don’t have any of your assistants call,” she said. “I want to speak with you personally.” Apostolopoulos is a confident Athenian with a mop of salt-and-pepper hair and an intensity that belies his compact frame. With the NIH’s help, he has been pursuing a cutting-edge question about human behavior: How do networks of people—in particular, long-haul truck drivers—work together to accelerate the spread of an epidemic, even when some of them don’t know one another? Epidemiologists have long connected the spread of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa with truckers who get infected on the road and bring the virus home to their wives and girlfriends. But does the same hold true in the United States? Working with a team of ethnographers, who study different cultures, Apostolopoulos and his partner Sevil Sönmez burrowed into the hidden world of truck stops, first in Arizona, then in Georgia. They began mapping the overlapping groups of people who come into contact with drivers: prostitutes (sometimes called lot lizards), drug suppliers, cargo unloaders, and male “truck chasers,” who fetishize drivers. The researchers conducted extensive interviews to understand how truckers’ occupational stresses led to depression, drug abuse, and unprotected sex. And they have collected blood, urine, and vaginal swabs from drivers and members of their social network to map how infection travels from state to state. © 2003 The Walt Disney Company. All

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 5827 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Despite promising new studies, concerns abound over high-fat diets Janet Raloff One in six U.S. households includes a low-carbohydrate dieter, according to an ACNielsen poll conducted earlier this year. Until last October, Jody Gorran of Delray Beach, Fla., was among them. Despite having followed a sensible, low-fat diet most of his life, Gorran says that by his 50s, "middle-age spread" was developing. So, he decided to try a new diet. Picking up a book by Robert Atkins, Gorran embraced the low-carb lifestyle and avoided foods containing sugars and starches. For 2 1/2 years, he says, he lost weight, felt great, and bragged about his diet to anyone who would listen. That was until Gorran experienced chest pain last fall, and an X-ray scan of his heart showed 99 percent blockage in a coronary artery that had been clear a few months before he started on the Atkins diet. Gorran underwent balloon angioplasty to clear the artery, and then on May 26, he filed suit against the Atkins company and Atkins' estate. The Atkins diet "gave me heart disease," he claims. Gorran, a millionaire businessman, isn't asking for much money, and he pledges that anything he receives will go to charity. He says he mainly wants to force labels onto Atkins products that low-carb diets can cause heart disease in susceptible individuals. Copyright ©2004 Science Service.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 5826 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News — Hidden behind the Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile could be a trick of the light, according to new research on so-called visual noise. The equivalent of snow on a TV screen, visual noise is a major but poorly understood part of the daily input into our minds. The noise can have many sources, including changes in the number of light particles hitting cells in the eye, which can alter people's perception of facial expression, Chistopher Tyler and Leonid Kontsevich at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco wrote in Visual Research. The researchers digitally manipulated an image of Leonardo's masterpiece, superimposing it with filters of random flecks. "The portrait was chosen because it is the best known example of an expression at the ambiguity point between a happy and a sad dimension," wrote the researchers. In the experiment, they asked 12 volunteers to look at the image of Mon Lisa modified with a greyish filter of random visual noise and rate her expression on a four-point scale: sad, slightly sad, slightly happy and happy. Copyright © 2004 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 5825 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Docosahexaenoic acid, or "DHA," is a nutritional compound (an essential fatty acid, or lipid) that has many effects in the body, including the development of the eyes and brain. Prior to birth, fetuses obtain DHA from their mothers, with DHA primarily accumulating in the brain during the third trimester. DHA is also found naturally in breast milk and has recently been added to some U.S. commercial infant formulas. Some research indicates this postnatal DHA improves vision and some cognitive functions in infants and toddlers, although the evidence is mixed. In this study, we measured DHA levels in mothers' blood when their infants were born. We then followed those infants for the first two years of their life, evaluating them on different tests of attention during the first and second years. We found that infants whose mothers had higher blood levels of DHA at birth showed more mature forms of attention during their first two years. We also found these infants were less distractible during play and tended to be more engaged over time with toys than infants whose mothers had lower blood levels of DHA at delivery.

Keyword: Attention; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 5824 - Posted: 07.17.2004

A study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine revealed that physicians sometimes misattribute ill-defined physical symptoms to causes other than what may actually be depression. Patients complaining of physical ailments related to depression may not receive appropriate treatment from their doctors, as compared to patients who present with psychological symptoms. Palpitations, hot flashes, chest pains, or problems with appetite, can be overlooked as signs of depression, according to a study of 200 adults. The study focused on a secondary analysis of patients beginning a new treatment episode for depression, and evaluated the effects of treatment as a result of physical versus psychological symptoms presented. "While we are aware that current depression treatment is most often ineffective," offers author Dr. Robert D. Keeley, "we attempted to define the patient group that does not receive appropriate treatment, or does not respond to adequate treatment, by returning to the basic medical tenet of listening to the patient." The findings pointed out that physicians sometimes misattribute ill-defined physical symptoms to causes other than depression. The most effective treatments, regardless of symptoms, were successful because they matched patient preference. Patients who had physical symptoms of depression were less likely to agree with a medical diagnosis of depression and thus tended to be nonaccepting of antidepressants, while 72% of patients with psychological symptoms who were presented with antidepressants as a treatment showed improved outcomes.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 5823 - Posted: 07.17.2004

Bruce Bower A rodent mother can't scold or praise her offspring, but her approach to mothering lays a genetic foundation for her pups' life-long response to threats, neuroscientists have found. Rats raised by moms who frequently lick and groom them undergo permanent changes in patterns of gene activity, leading to a penchant for exploratory behavior in stressful situations, say Michael J. Meaney and his colleagues at McGill University in Montreal. In contrast, rats raised with little maternal contact end up with gene activity that fosters fearfulness in the face of stress, the researchers report in the August Nature Neuroscience. From an evolutionary perspective, having both behaviors in a population is beneficial. "Early experience can have lifelong consequences on behavior, and [this new report] reveals the genetic scaffolding of this phenomenon to an unprecedented extent," remarks neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University. Meaney's group previously showed that female rats express either a high- or a low-contact mothering style. Animals raised with lots of physical contact later react to stress by secreting small amounts of glucocorticoids, a class of stress hormones. These rats also possess large numbers of glucocorticoid receptors in an inner-brain structure called the hippocampus. Rats raised with little physical contact secrete large amounts of glucocorticoids when stressed and possess relatively few receptors for these hormones. Copyright ©2004 Science Service.

Keyword: Stress; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5822 - Posted: 06.24.2010

BY JAMIE TALAN, STAFF WRITER Scientists say they have unearthed a clue to solving the mystery of obsessive-compulsive disorder - the trait characterized with humor on the TV detective series "Monk." But OCD, as it's known, is rarely a laughing matter. Rather, its hallmarks are three behaviors: hand-washing, checking and hoarding, each carried out in the extreme. Now a study points to an understanding of the condition - and goes on to say the different behaviors may actually represent distinctly different syndromes. Scientists have demonstrated that each of the three behaviors activated a different brain region. Their study was published in the latest issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry. They found that patients with hand-washing obsessions experienced activity in one brain region when presented with thoughts of dirty toilets and other germ-infested objects. The brains of patients characterized as "hoarders" experienced activity in a different brain region when presented with piles of papers. And "checkers," who compulsively check on such things as whether appliances have been turned off, experienced activity in yet another brain region when shown pictures of kettles and irons. Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

Keyword: OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Link ID: 5821 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A new genetic model for a motor disorder that confines an estimated 10,000 people in the United States to walkers and wheelchairs indicates that instability in the microscopic scaffolding within a key set of nerve cells is the cause of this devastating disability. The study, which is published in the July 13 issue of the journal Current Biology, provides a provocative new insight into the molecular basis of the disease called hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) and suggests a new way to treat the inherited genetic disorder. HSP--also known as familial spastic paraparesis and Strumpell-Lorrain syndrome--causes the ends of the nerves that control muscle activity to deteriorate. These nerve cells run from the brain's cerebral cortex to the spinal cord where they connect to "downstream" nerve cells that excite muscles throughout the body to control coordinated movement. HSP causes weakness, spasms and loss of function in the muscles in the lower extremities. More than 20 genes have been linked to HSP. However, more than 40 percent of all cases have been traced to a single gene (SPG4) that produces an enzyme called spastin. Previous studies have shown that this enzyme interacts with microtubules, the tiny protein tubes that provide structural support and transport avenues within most cells. Microtubules are dynamic structures, continually growing and shrinking, and their stability is closely regulated by a number of associated proteins. In nerve cells, microtubules carry cellular components to distant regions of the cell, regulate the growth of cellular branches and provide a substrate for important protein interactions. All of these functions are critically dependent on dynamic changes in microtubule stability.

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 5820 - Posted: 07.16.2004