Same area of brain affected as seen in drug-addiction studies UPTON, NY— Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have produced new evidence that brain circuits involved in drug addiction are also activated by the desire for food. The mere display of food — smelling and tasting favorite foods without actually eating them — causes increases in metabolism throughout the brain. Increases of metabolism in the right orbitofrontal cortex, a brain region that controls drive and pleasure, also correlate strongly with self-reports of desire for food and hunger. “These results could explain the deleterious effects of constant exposure to food stimuli, such as advertising, candy machines, food channels, and food displays in stores,” says Brookhaven physician Gene-Jack Wang, the study’s lead author. “The high sensitivity of this brain region to food stimuli, coupled with the huge number and variety of these stimuli in the environment, likely contributes to the epidemic of obesity in this country.” The study appears in the April 2004 issue of NeuroImage.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Obesity
Link ID: 5318 - Posted: 06.24.2010

INDIANAPOLIS – Indiana University School of Medicine is taking a close look at the faces of children with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism is paying for it to do so. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, the only preventable birth defect, can have a devastating impact on its victims, but in some cases the effects are so minimal children are denied needed assistance and benefits. The NIAAA awarded IU two grants totaling $784,334 to conduct the research and manage the data. To better define the visual characteristics of the syndrome, IU researchers will use sophisticated technology and facial recognition techniques to examine the faces of children from across the globe. "Some children exhibit classic features of FAS and other children have a more mild, less visually obvious version of the disorder, which may not be as recognizable but still can result in learning disabilities and behavioral disorders," said Tatiana Foroud, Ph.D., associate professor of medical and molecular genetics at the Indiana University School of Medicine and the principal investigator of the study.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5317 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Drug could help curb excess drinking. HELEN PEARSON Cutting back on drinking could be helped by slapping on an 'alcohol patch', say US researchers who are planning trials of a drug to combat alcohol cravings. The skin patch was originally developed to help people quit smoking. But one of the drugs it contains, mecamylamine, appears to curb the desire for alcohol as well as that for tobacco. Jed Rose and his team at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, plan to examine whether it can help drinkers cut back on booze. They have reason to suspect that it will. In preliminary investigations, people who typically drank more than ten drinks a week cut down to six after four weeks on mecamylamine pills, he says. The team is now trying to obtain funding and ethical approval for a proper trial. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 5316 - Posted: 06.24.2010

— Howard Hughes Medical Institute scientists at The Salk Institute have discovered a new class of optical illusion that they have studied in detail to show that humans use both the timing and spatial context of a visual stimulus to judge brightness. The researchers said the discovery of the illusion, which they call the “temporal context effect,” suggests that the human brain has separate, parallel circuitry to process brightness. One circuit pathway adapts to a stimulus that is constant in intensity, while the other assigns a brightness to an object and does not adapt, they said. The researchers said their findings offer an experimental approach for teasing out new information about how the brain processes information about an object's brightness. The researchers, led by Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Terrence J. Sejnowski, published their findings in the April 15, 2004, issue of the journal Nature. Sejnowski and his colleagues at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies collaborated on the studies with researchers from the University of Texas and the University of California, San Diego. ©2004 Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 5315 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Terry Jones Everyone agrees that President George Bush's lobotomy has been a tremendous success. Dick Cheney, the vice-president, declared that he was fully satisfied with it from his point of view. "Without the lobotomy," Mr Cheney told the American Academy of Neurology, "it might have proved difficult to persuade the president to start wars all around the world without any good pretext. But the removal of those parts of the brain associated with understanding the outcome of one's actions has enabled the president to function fully and without hesitation. Even when it is clear that disaster is around the corner, as it is currently in Iraq, the chief executive is able to go on TV and announce that everything is on course and that he has no intention of changing tactics that have already proved disastrous. Similarly, Donald Rumsfeld regards the surgery as an unqualified success. He writes in this month's American Medical Association Journal: "The president's prefrontal leucotomy has successfully removed all neural reflexes resistant to war-profiteering. It is a tribute to the medical team who undertook this delicate operation that, no matter how close the connection between those instigating military action and the companies who benefit from it, the president is able to carry on as if he were morally in the right." © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 5314 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Autism may be linked to hormone levels circulating in the developing foetus, research suggests. A team from Cambridge University found babies who produce high levels of the male hormone testosterone in the womb are more likely to show symptoms. The finding suggests the condition may be genetic - and raises the possibility of a screening test. It also lends weight to the theory that autism is basically an extreme form of the way men think and behave. The research, led by psychologist Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, focused on 70 children whose mothers underwent an amniocentesis test while they were pregnant. This enabled the researchers to measure levels of foetal testosterone in the samples. When the children were four, their parents were asked to complete a checklist designed to record any signs of behavioural and social difficulties - which are associated with autism. (C)BBC

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 5313 - Posted: 04.19.2004

Washington, DC – Most weight loss experts advocate a sensible diet and regular exercise to shed unwanted pounds. Americans are accepting that advice: low-fat meals are the staples of many diets and both sexes are now engaged in an exercise regimen. As evidence of the latter, marketing experts claim that membership growth in health and fitness club facilities will soon outpace capacity, with almost 12 percent of the population belonging to health clubs in 2000. This figure is expected to reach 41.1 million members, or 14 percent of the population, in 2006. Previous research has demonstrated that, in general, quality of sleep improves after regular physical exercise. However, a number of factors such as the particular exercise training routines and various individual subjective characteristics complicate this overall conclusion. Army researchers set out to quantify the quality and length of sleep obtained after non-habitual acute resistance and aerobic exercise. Of interest was whether a single workout would be beneficial or harmful in obtaining restful sleep the night following the exercise.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 5312 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Washington, DC -- Are you annoyed by cheerful "morning people?" Do you ever wonder how "night owls" can keep going? Most of us ask these questions because we are in between these two extremes, and take a while to get going early in the morning and tire long before midnight. This entire spectrum reflects the broad, normal variation in sleep patterns in humans that is rooted in the very genetic foundations of how our body works. Because these variations occur within our population and differ with age, the presumption exists that the differences in sleep patterns are controlled by complex mechanisms with contributions from multiple genes and influenced by environmental factors. Linking our genetic make-up and sleep related disorders require data that compare genetic differences that might explain the basis of sleep disorders. Knowing what causes these disorders is important -- getting a good night sleep is now a challenge for some 50 to 70 millions American of all ages. A 2002 National Sleep Foundation annual survey reported that nearly 40 percent of adults 30 to 64 years old, and 44 percent of those age 18 to 29, reported that daytime sleepiness is so severe that it interferes with work and social functioning at least a few days each month. Excessive daytime sleepiness has been blamed on interference in cognitive functioning, motor vehicle crashes (especially at night), poor job performance and reduced productivity. While researchers have learned much about the basic mechanism underlying the control of sleep and its importance on our daily function and health, they have only just begun to examine the complex genetic and environmental interactions that shape sleep and health.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 5311 - Posted: 04.19.2004

Snoring affects 3.5 million people in the UK and is an affliction which can ruin friendships, marriages and lives. It is an embarrassing condition for sufferers and often an endurance for family and friends. As well-rested snorers and their bleary-eyed partners mark the British Snoring and Sleep Apnoea Association's national Stop Snoring Week, BBC News Online's Melissa Jackson spoke to one man whose problem has forced his wife into the spare room. Rex Sils knew he had a problem when he woke up in his armchair one afternoon to find his family sniggering at the sound reverberating from his nostrils. The 58-year-old project manager from south-east London, has a sense of humour as well developed as his snoring. "One of the worst moments I ever had after dozing off was on a cross-Channel ferry," he said with a chuckle. He recalls: "I fell asleep reading a book and was woken up by people around me laughing. "I eventually had to move somewhere else on the ferry because it was so embarrassing." (C)BBC

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 5310 - Posted: 04.18.2004

Scientists are to implant tiny computer chips in the brains of paralysed patients which could 'read their thoughts'. US researchers from Cyberkinetics Inc are to be allowed to implant the chips underneath the skulls of patients. The chips will map the neural activity which occurs when someone thinks about moving a limb. Scientists will then translate those signals into computer code that could one day be fed into robotic limbs. The company, based in Foxboro, Massachusetts, has been given Food and Drug Administration approval to begin the trials of the four-millimetre square chips. The 'Brain Gate' contains tiny spikes that will extend down about one millimetre into the brain after being implanted beneath the skull, monitoring the activity from a small group of neurons. (C)BBC

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 5309 - Posted: 04.18.2004

By STEPHEN S. HALL AMONG many exquisitely rendered moments in Jonathan Weiner's ''His Brother's Keeper: A Story From the Edge of Medicine,'' a simple daily act of fine motor skill early on quietly explodes into a moment of heartbreaking significance, when a young carpenter named Stephen Heywood inserts a key one morning into the front door of a cottage he has been lovingly restoring in Palo Alto, Calif. A self-described slacker, a brown dwarf of a star in an otherwise brilliant constellation of familial ambition, Stephen has struggled to find his niche, professionally and perhaps emotionally, in a family of overachievers based in Newton, Mass. His mother, Peggy, is a retired psychotherapist; his father, John, is director of an engineering lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; his younger brother, Ben, is trying to make it in Hollywood as a producer; and his other brother, Jamie, two years older, is not just an M.I.T.-educated mechanical engineer of uncommon vision and intuition, but a larger-than-life personality who has yet to meet a challenge he cannot overcome. The family's greatest challenge begins to announce itself that morning in December 1997, when Stephen discovers that try as he might, he is unable to turn the key in the lock with his right hand. It is an early sign that he is suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (A.L.S.), often called Lou Gehrig's disease. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 5308 - Posted: 04.18.2004

The brains of very premature babies may be damaged by the use of steroids to prevent and treat chronic lung disease, research suggests. Researchers from the Royal Hospital, Belfast, found babies who had been given steroids showed signs of impaired brainpower as children. They say the benefits of the drug must be balanced against possible longer term damage. The study was presented at the British Psychological Society annual meeting. The researchers compared 77 premature children who were treated with postnatal steroids with 66 premature children who did not receive the drugs, and 25 siblings who were not premature. The results showed that the children who were treated with steroids performed less well on a range of tests designed to assess eight areas of mental ability. However, the researchers stress that steroids have been shown to be an effective way to treat chronic lung disease, a common problem in premature infants, who are often born before their lungs are fully developed. (C)BBC

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5307 - Posted: 04.17.2004

A patch is being developed which could cut drinkers' desire for a tipple. The patches will contain both nicotine, to help smokers quit, and a compound called mecamylamine, which tackles the temptation to drink. Alcohol consumption in drinkers was reduced by using the patch, researchers at Duke University, North Carolina, found. However, alcohol campaigners said it was better for people to simply stick to recommended amounts of alcohol. The patches would be worn at all times, which has the benefit of keeping medication levels in the blood constant. A patch purely for drinkers who do not smoke could be developed at a later date. The most common current treatment is antabuse which causes drinkers to have the symptoms of a bad hangover. (C)BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 5306 - Posted: 04.17.2004

By DENISE GRADY Despite studies in recent years finding that hormone therapy after menopause did women more harm than good, researchers at a group of major medical centers have decided to test the treatment again because they still suspect it may have benefits, particularly for younger women. The researchers hope to find out whether hormones can protect against artery disease if women start treatment early in menopause. The scientists also want to find out whether there is any advantage to giving estrogen by a different route, skin patches instead of the usual pills, and changing the schedule of the hormone given along with it, progesterone. The hormones must be taken together because estrogen alone can cause uterine cancer; adding progesterone counters that risk. The new study is expected to start in September, last five years and include 720 women at eight medical centers around the country. The women will be ages 40 to 55 and in early menopause, defined as six months to no more than three years past their last menstrual period. They will take estrogen in pill or patch form, or placebos, and those taking estrogen will use a vaginal gel containing progesterone for 10 days a month. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 5305 - Posted: 04.17.2004

A large, multi-center heart disease prevention study, part of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), found that estrogen-alone hormone therapy had no effect on coronary heart disease risk but increased the risk of stroke for postmenopausal women. The study also found that estrogen-alone therapy significantly increased the risk of deep vein thrombosis, had no significant effect on the risk of breast or colorectal cancer, and reduced the risk of hip and other fractures. The WHI is sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The estrogen-alone study was stopped at the end of February 2004 because the hormone increased the risk of stroke and did not reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, a key question of the trial. The study was to have ended in March 2005. Initial findings appear in the April 14 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association. A separate report on the WHI Memory Study of estrogen alone's effects on dementia and cognitive function will be published soon.

Keyword: Stroke; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 5304 - Posted: 04.17.2004

John Travis When injected into the brains of mice, a hormone produced by fat cells induces the animals to burn more energy than normal and lose weight, according to a new study. The finding bolsters the view that body fat carries on a complex chemical conversation with the brain, one that physicians might tap into to treat obesity and other weight disorders. Until a decade ago, scientists largely viewed fat cells, or adipocytes, as mere sacs of fat. Then leptin made its surprising debut. Researchers found that this hormone is secreted by fat cells and recognized by brain regions that control food intake. Some people hailed leptin as the key to defeating obesity. Although that early enthusiasm faded as experiments failed to show a role for leptin in most human obesity, the hormone's discovery set the stage for a reassessment of fat cells. They've since been found to secrete several additional chemicals, including adiponectin, the subject of the new study. Copyright ©2004 Science Service. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 5303 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bruce Bower Adult male baboons are bad dudes. They regularly square off in bloody fights over access to food and females, whom they will also attack. In this vicious pecking order, males at the top bully bottom dwellers into a demoralized state of submission. So, it startled Stanford University biologists Robert M. Sapolsky and Lisa J. Share to find a baboon troop in which even top-rung males exhibited remarkably peaceful behaviors. The big honchos often left weak males alone and refrained from attacking females, focusing instead on fighting each other. It's a uniquely "pacific culture" among wild baboons, Sapolsky and Share conclude. A decade earlier, the most aggressive males in this troop had died. The current top males arrived later and have no close genetic ties to the other members, past or present. Male baboons typically migrate into a troop as adolescents. Copyright ©2004 Science Service. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 5302 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Some people are better than others at remembering what they have just seen – holding mental pictures in mind from moment to moment. An individual's capacity for such visual working memory can be predicted by his or her brainwaves, researchers funded by the NIH's National Institute of Mental Health have discovered. A key brain electrical signal leveled off when the number of objects held in mind exceeded a subject's capacity to accurately remember them, while it continued to soar in those with higher capacity, report University of Oregon psychologist Edward Vogel, Ph.D., and graduate student Maro Machizawa, in the April 15, 2004 Nature. Analogous to a computer's RAM, working memory is the ever-changing content of our consciousness. It's been known for years that people have a limited capacity to hold things in mind that they've just seen, varying from 1.5 to 5 objects. "Our study identifies signals from brain areas that hold these visual representations and allows us to coarsely decode them, revealing how many objects are being held and their location in the visual field," explained Vogel.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 5301 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Tim Radford, science editor, The Guardian Migrating songbirds check their direction each night before take-off - by taking a bearing on the setting sun. Many migrating creatures - honeybees, certain fish, many birds, and even monarch butterflies - possess built-in compasses to follow the lines of the Earth's magnetic field, and today in the journal Science ornithologists report on how they tried to mislead thrushes by exposing them to magnetic fields distorted towards the east. It seemed to work. Released after dark, the birds flew west instead of north to their summer breeding grounds. They were fitted with radio transmitters, and the German and American ornithologists followed them by car for up to 1,100km (680 miles). However, once free to decide where they were, the birds noted the direction of twilight and corrected their flight northward. The conclusion: thrushes steer by compasses at night, and update them from the setting sun every 24 hours. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Keyword: Animal Migration
Link ID: 5300 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists have pinpointed how toxic protein deposits kill off nerve cells in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease. The international team hope the breakthrough, published in Science, could lead to new treatments. Alzheimer's is linked to the build up of amyloid protein plaques. The new study has shown that these plaques inflict damage by interacting with an enzyme produced in the cell's energy-producing power plants. The interaction damages these tiny structures - known as mitochondria - and causes toxic substances to leak out into the rest of the cell, leading to its destruction. It is thought that this loss of cells directly leads to the memory less and other symptoms associated with Alzheimer's. The new findings are based on an analysis of brain tissue from Alzheimer's patients, and genetically engineered mice. The researchers hope that it may eventually be possible to block or reduce the interaction between the amyloid plaques and the mitochondrial enzyme. (C) BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers; Apoptosis
Link ID: 5299 - Posted: 04.16.2004