COLUMBUS, Ohio – Women are better than men at remembering the appearance of others, a new study shows. The gender difference in appearance memory was not great, but it shows another area where women are superior to men in interpersonal sensitivity, said Terrence Horgan, lead author of the study and research fellow in psychology at Ohio State University. “Women have an advantage when it comes to remembering things like the physical features, clothing and postures of other people,” Horgan said. “This advantage might be due to women being slightly more people-oriented than men are.” The study also found that both men and women did better at remembering the appearance of women than they did remembering how men looked. Horgan conducted the study with Marianne Schmid Mast and Judith Hall of Northeastern University, and Jason Carter of the State University of New York at New Paltz. Their results were published in a recent issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 5358 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Issues from fertility to contraception can be challenging SAN FRANCISCO-- Anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs) are powerful medications that help women with epilepsy control their seizures; however, when these same women have to deal with reproductive issues and their epilepsy drugs, a myriad of problems can crop up, according to Mark Yerby, M.D., MPH, a leading expert in women's issues and epilepsy. About 1 million of the estimated 2.5 million Americans with epilepsy are women. Dr. Yerby is associate clinical professor of neurology, public health and preventive medicine, and obstetrics and gynecology at the Oregon Health Science University and director of the Epilepsy Program at Providence St. Vincent's Medical Center, both in Portland, Ore. He spoke today at an American Medical Association media briefing in partnership with the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) and the American Epilepsy Society at the AAN's annual meeting in San Francisco. Hormonal changes may be responsible for some of the specific difficulties encountered by women with epilepsy. Many women find that their seizures change in severity or occur more frequently during puberty, pregnancy, when they are menstruating or during menopause.

Keyword: Epilepsy
Link ID: 5357 - Posted: 04.27.2004

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Why is it so annoying to watch someone else make a mistake? Maybe because it affects the same areas of the brain as when a person makes his or her own mistake, Dutch researchers say. Experiments in which volunteers tried a computer task and then watched each other do the same thing showed the brain reacted in a similar way whether the observer made the mistake, or watched someone else make it. Writing in the May issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, the team at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands said on Monday their findings help shed light on how human beings learn by watching one another. For their experiment Hein van Schie and colleagues hooked up 16 men and women to electrodes to measure brain activity and then sat them in front of a display screen with a joystick. The task was simple -- to move the joystick in the same direction as certain arrows appearing on the screen. Copyright © 2004 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 5356 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Gregory M. Lamb | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor It's the holy grail of translation, a goal one researcher has called "more complex than building an atomic bomb." Smooth, immediate translations between people speaking different languages would be a remarkable achievement of enormous economic and cultural benefit. Some suggest that it won't happen until computers can express true artificial intelligence - something like C-3PO of "Star Wars" fame, whose knowledge extends far beyond mere vocabulary to an understanding of customs and cultures. Still, researchers are chipping away at the problem. Universal translation is one of 10 emerging technologies that will affect our lives and work "in revolutionary ways" within a decade, Technology Review says. In one promising approach, researchers are concentrating on phrases rather than individual words, which can have various shades of meaning and result in awkward translations (just try one of the computerized text translators on the Internet). Phrases pose fewer problems. Copyright © 2004 The Christian Science Monitor.

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 5355 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The Guardian In January 2003, as America prepared to go to war with Iraq, the US surgeon general, Richard Carmona, warned the nation that it faced a far more dangerous threat than Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction. Rather than focusing on the danger posed by nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, Carmona told his audience, "Let's look at a threat that is very real, and already here: obesity." Carmona is merely the latest in a series of surgeon generals who have treated America's expanding waistline as the nation's leading public health problem. In doing so, they have merely reflected the language of much of the medical establishment, which for decades has treated "overweight" and "obesity" as major health risks. Fat is on trial, but until now the defence has been mostly absent from the court of public opinion. At bottom, the case against fat rests on the claim that the thinner you are, the longer you will live. Fat Kills, and the prescription is clear: Get Thin. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 5354 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Discovery shows how single genetic mutation can cause complex disorders Bardet-Biedl syndrome (BBS), characterized by obesity, learning disabilities and eye and kidney problems, is caused by genetic mutations in the BBS family of genes. Now, researchers who've long studied the condition have discovered that genetic mutations in one of those genes, called BBS4, lead to cell death by disrupting the cells' internal "highway" system. In experiments with human and mouse cell lines in the lab, the researchers found that the BBS4 protein normally transports molecules that help guide the cell's internal highway system -- a network of so-called microtubules along which tiny motors push and pull proteins, cellular packages and even chromosomes. When the BBS4 gene doesn't work correctly, the highway system falls apart, cell division halts and the cell dies. "But our experiments also revealed something really interesting about pleiotropy -- genetic diseases that severely impact only a smattering of tissues," says Nicholas Katsanis, Ph.D., head of the team's contingent from the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins. "Once we knew faulty BBS4 prevented correct microtubule construction and led to cell death, the big question was how do people survive when every cell contains these mutations?"

Keyword: Obesity; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 5353 - Posted: 04.26.2004

Do you want to block traumatic memories from scarring your mind? Perhaps you do, but would you be happy if someone else did it for you? Or how about receiving marketing messages beamed directly at you in hypersonic waves? Mind control is getting smarter by the minute, says Richard Glen Boire, co-founder of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics in California. And, as he told Liz Else, we ain't seen nothing yet... Should I be worried? Freedom of thought is the basis of a lot of our existing constitutional rights in the US, as in many countries. With the burgeoning of neurosciences and the neurotechnologies they give rise to, we can see great opportunities but also great perils, because the law on freedom of thought is so underdeveloped. It is the most important of all legal freedoms, but the least articulated. Here at the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics (CCLE) in Davis, California, we try to provide legal theory and principles to guide courts, policy makers and civil liberty experts. What kind of neurotechnologies are there? On the near horizon are a slew of new pharmaceuticals we call memory management drugs. Some of these aim to improve memory safely. Others are designed to help dim or to erase the memories that haunt people suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 5352 - Posted: 06.24.2010

WASHINGTON — Among healthy people over the age of 75 who have the genotype associated with higher risk for Alzheimer’s, low levels of vitamin B12 are associated with significantly worse performance on memory tests. This finding is published in the April issue of Neuropsychology, which is published by the American Psychological Association (APA). David Bunce, PhD, a psychologist at Goldsmith’s College, University of London, Miia Kivipelto, PhD, MD, of the Aging Research Center at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and the Stockholm Gerontology Research Center, and Åke Wahlin, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Stockholm, conducted the study as part of a long-term multidisciplinary project that follows older people living in Stockholm’s Kungsholmen parish. Scientists already knew of a genetic predisposition for Alzheimer’s disease, and that low levels of two B vitamins— B12 and folate—were also linked to problems. However, few had examined nutrition and genotype together relative to cognition, to reflect what real people carry into old age – a mix of inborn traits and environmental factors such as nutrition, including undiagnosed vitamin B deficiencies. © 2004 American Psychological Association

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 5351 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By LISA SANDERS, M.D. The radio crackled to life with a burst of static. It was a Saturday night, and the emergency department was packed. An E.M.T.'s voice silenced the harsh electronic noise: ''We've got a 35-year-old Caucasian man with an altered state of consciousness. His friends think he might have been slipped some drugs.'' Minutes later, a young blond man was rolled into the E.R., screaming and shouting obscenities as he struggled against the straps that held him in place on the stretcher. ''I want to go,'' he yelled. ''I want to go.'' The physician, a man in his 50's with gentle brown eyes and a neatly trimmed beard, approached the three men standing at the patient's bedside. ''I'm Dr. Shavelson. Can you tell me what happened?'' All three began speaking at once, then stopped. A young man began again: ''He was fine this morning. I had lunch with him. Then he went to the sauna. He called me a few hours later and said he felt like he'd been drugged.'' He told the friend that he was hot, nauseated and lightheaded; he was having a little trouble walking. By the time he got home, he felt worse, not better. So he called friends who lived nearby. He was having trouble seeing, he said, as if he were in a very narrow tunnel. His arms and hands felt strange and tingly. By the time his friends arrived, the young man was confused and disoriented. ''He looked at me, and I could tell he didn't know who I was,'' another of the young men reported. They all nodded. ''He's not like this,'' one of the friends said to the E.R. doctor. ''He's never like this.'' Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 5350 - Posted: 04.25.2004

By JIM HOLT Last month, a team of scientists at the University of Pennsylvania announced that it might have discovered a crucial event in the evolution of our species. The news was surprising and not a little deflating. The mutation that lifted us above the other apes had nothing directly to do with our brain. Rather, it had to do with our jaw. What led to the emergence of modern humans, in all of our culture-creating, science-discovering, globe-dominating glory, was a chance defect in a gene responsible for the formation of our jaw muscles. So, at least, the scientists speculated. Why should the size of our jaw make us the intellectual species par excellence? The next time you are chewing a mouthful of food, feel the side of your head with your fingers. You'll notice the muscles there moving as your jaw opens and closes. The jaw muscles are attached to the top of the skull. The larger those muscles are, the thicker the skull bone needs to be to anchor them. That is why apes, with their powerful, jutting jaws, have a bony crest running across the top of their heads. Anything that caused the jaw muscles to become smaller would also allow this thick bone to be shaved away over time. That, in turn, would free up space for the brain to expand into -- ''room for thought,'' as one of the scientists whimsically put it. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5349 - Posted: 04.25.2004

By PAUL TAYLOR Rams, with their big horns and head-butting behaviour, have long been considered a potent symbol of masculine virility. And if you happen to be a sheep rancher, you want your rams to do their stuff when it's breeding season, or else you're not going to have any baby lambs in the spring. But ranchers have occasionally found that their prized rams just didn't perform. So, for more than a decade, scientists at a remote sheep experiment station in Dubois, Idaho, have been trying to figure out why some rams are "duds." At first, the researchers examined sperm counts and hormone levels, but they found nothing unusual. However, when they applied a little animal psychology, they concluded the non-performing rams were, to put it in human terms, gay. "You can have the best sperm in the world, but if you are not interested in inseminating females, it is not going to get delivered," said Anne Perkins, who worked at the sheep station in the early 1990s. She found that 8 to 10 per cent of the rams would shun willing females and try to mount other males. © Copyright 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 5348 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A novel photoreceptor system solves one mystery while stirring up a few more By Josh P. Roberts THE EYES HAVE IT-SO DOES THE BRAIN: At top left, an X-gal stained retina from a mouse heterozygous for a LacZ knockin at the melanopsin locus reveals axons coursing toward the optic disc. At top right, a melanopsin antibody labels cell bodies, dendrites and initial axon segments of roughly 1% of ganglion cells in the rat retina. At bottom left, a coronal section from the brain of a heterozygous animal shows bilateral innervation of the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). At bottom right, a stained whole brain cleared with a Benzene-based solution allows visualization of the optic nerve fibers and the optic chiasm with concomitant view of the two SCN nuclei visible in the background. I see," said the blind man. Outlandish as it seems, people lacking functional rods and cones can receive and process visual information. At least two decades ago, scientists began speculating that there may be another, "nonclassical" photoreceptor responsible for synchronizing the mammalian circadian clock with the light/dark cycle, and evidence for the idea has been building ever since.1 This issue's Hot Papers added to that body of evidence by demonstrating that melanopsin-containing retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) are intrinsically light sensitive, and project to the brain's "master clock," thus cementing melanopsin's role as a key component of a novel photoreceptor system. © 2004, The Scientist LLC, All rights reserved.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Vision
Link ID: 5347 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jane Salodof MacNeil Physically and behaviorally, few creatures have been measured, tested, and probed as much as the laboratory mouse. Yet what do scientists know about making mice happy or free of pain? Often, the answer is not nearly enough. This is a knowledge vacuum with ethical and experimental ramifications. Pain management and environmental enrichment are hot topics in laboratory animal science. They are also conundrums defying easy fixes. Researchers may want to mitigate pain and suffering in their charges, but animals of prey hide their pain. Moreover, researchers do not agree on which medicines to administer, or at what doses. Making the animals' living conditions more stimulating is also problematic. Doing what comes naturally, some social animals turn their new communal housing into boxing rings. And even if they don't, the new environment can change animal physiology in ways that confound experiments and undermine comparisons to previously obtained data. © 2004, The Scientist LLC, All rights reserved.

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 5346 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Hyperextending the neck can damage an artery A widower has urged women to be careful when visiting the hair salon after his wife died from a stroke. Malcolm Crabb believes his wife Pamela, 51, suffered so-called Beauty Parlour Stroke Syndrome after her head was bent back while being washed at a salon. Mr Crabb, 49, said he wanted to "alert others to the dangers of Beauty Parlour Syndrome, especially those with high blood pressure". "I think there should be warnings in hairdressers about it," he added. Mrs Crabb suffered her first stroke following a hair appointment in September 2000, but died last week when a second stroke proved fatal. Her grieving husband says she never fully recovered from the first stroke, which he blames on Beauty Parlour Stroke Syndrome. After the hair appointment in September 2000 Mrs Crabb felt ill, her speech became slurred and her hands became claw-like. Hospital tests showed that she had suffered a stroke. A spokesman from the Stroke Association said: "There is no real research to support it as yet but cases have been published in medical journals. "Although there is not yet a proven link there is anecdotal evidence and we would welcome research into this area." (C)BBC

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 5345 - Posted: 04.24.2004

An analysis suggests science really is trying to reduce animal experiments. A comparison of almost 3,000 research papers published over 30 years in major biomedical journals found a 30% fall in the number of studies using animals. The analysis by Dr Hans-Erik Carlsson and colleagues also showed increasing use of alternative testing methods, such as experiments on cultured cells. The team told the Veterinary Record there was now better reporting of the welfare of the animals kept in labs. The Uppsala University researchers conducted their investigation because they wanted to get a clearer idea of the extent to which the international "scientific culture" was adopting the principles of the so-called "three R's" - the replacement, reduction and refinement of the use of animals in experiments. Dr Carlsson's team says the changes over time are encouraging. (C)BBC

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 5344 - Posted: 04.24.2004

Jo Revill Rhythms of Life by Russell Foster; Do you want your handshake to be firm when you are first introduced to the new director? Make sure you arrange the meeting for between 6pm and 8pm. Faced with a crucial but complicated dilemma, time the decision-making moment for noon. The best hour for lovemaking is at 10pm (your wakefulness levels are at their peak) and most natural childbirth will happen between 4am and 6am, just as dawn is breaking. Our bodies move to a daily rhythm which governs every single gesture and hormone, but about which we are stupendously ignorant. Ticking away inside each cell is a highly intricate timepiece, its genetic pendulum swinging steadily on, regardless of the frenetic lives we lead. Our sluggishness, our running speed, our susceptibility to pain, our liver's ability to process alcohol - every bodily function, down to the strength of our handshake, is governed by this rhythm. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 5343 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The ability to empathise is often considered uniquely human, the result of complex reasoning and abstract thought. But it might in fact be an incredibly simple brain process ­ meaning that there is no reason why monkeys and other animals cannot empathise too. That is the conclusion of Christian Keysers of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and his colleagues. The team used a functional MRI scanner to monitor volunteers while their legs were touched and while they watched videos of other people being touched and of objects colliding. To the team's surprise, a sensory area of the brain called the secondary somatosensory cortex, thought only to respond to physical touch, was strongly activated by the sight of others being touched. This suggests that empathy requires no specialised brain area. The brain simply transforms what we see into what we would have felt in the same situation. "Empathy is not an abstract capacity," Keysers concludes. "It's like you slip into another person's shoes to share the experience in a very pragmatic way." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Emotions; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 5342 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Ed Edelson Viagra and its two newly marketed rivals, Levitra and Cialis, help men achieve erections by acting on the muscles of the penis, explained Dr. Jorge Brioni, a project leader in neuroscience research at Abbott Laboratories. The new medication, developed at Abbott and designated ABT-724, "targets the central mechanisms in the brain that control erectile dysfunction in humans," Brioni said. The drug has been successful in animal tests and has moved into human trials. The full set of trials needed for marketing approval could take seven or eight years, said James P. Sullivan, regional vice president for neuroscience discovery research at Abbott. There is a need for a different approach because the Viagra-type drugs are not effective in a substantial percentage of men who try them, Sullivan said. "In particular, the response rate is not as great as we would like in patient with diabetes," he said. Copyright © 2004 ABCNEWS Internet Ventures.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 5341 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANDRÉ PICARD British researchers have unearthed more damning evidence that it may be inappropriate to prescribe a popular class of antidepressants to children -- unpublished data that show the drugs can increase the risk of suicide and suicidal thoughts. The research shows that published studies about drugs such as Paxil and Zoloft -- known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors -- paint far too rosy a picture of the benefits. The only drug that consistently showed benefits in treating children with depression was Prozac, the researchers said. Based on the information, it is "inappropriate" for physicians to rely on published research and they should rethink how they treat patients for depression, said Craig Whittington of the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health in London. The research is published in today's edition of the medical journal The Lancet. Last year, more than 450,000 Canadians under the age of 19 were treated by a physician for depression. Antidepressants were prescribed to 75 per cent of them. © Copyright 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc.

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5340 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Drug companies have been accused of failing to publish drug trials which do not give the "right" result. Regulatory bodies found it harder to make balanced decisions when negative information was not available, the Lancet medical journal said. Published research suggested a type of antidepressant drug was safe for children, but unpublished data indicated it was not, a study showed. The pharmaceutical industry said it was taking steps to solve the problem. A study by the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health in London looked at previous research on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) for children. It found that in published studies, all SSRIs appeared to have a favourable ratio of risk to benefit. But, after also looking at unpublished trials, it was found that, with the exception of fluoxetine, the risks exceeded the benefits. (C)BBC

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5339 - Posted: 04.23.2004