A group of scientists at The Scripps Research Institute, at the University of California in San Diego, and at the Oregon Hearing Research Center and Vollum Institute at Oregon Health & Science University have discovered a key molecule that is part of the machinery that mediates the sense of hearing. In a paper that will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Nature, the team reports that a protein called cadherin 23 is part of a complex of proteins called "tip links" that are on hair cells in the inner ear. These hair cells are involved in the physiological process called mechanotransduction, a phenomenon in hearing in which physical cues (sound waves) are transduced into electrochemical signals and communicated to the brain. The tip link is believed to have a central function in the conversion of physical cues into electrochemical signals. "In humans, there are mutations in [the gene] cadherin 23 that cause deafness as well as Usher syndrome, the leading cause of deaf-blindness," says Associate Professor Ulrich Mueller, Ph.D., who is in the Department of Cell Biology at The Scripps Research Institute and is a member of Scripps Research's Institute for Childhood and Neglected Diseases.

Keyword: Hearing; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 5198 - Posted: 03.30.2004

By SUSAN MORSE, Washington Post The next time you lock horns with your boss, your friend or your spouse and she tells you to leave emotion out of it, tell her that science proves that's a lousy idea. Block that emotion and all you're likely to produce are bad decisions. That heretical insight is at the heart of a revolution today in neuroscience and psychotherapy. The story, as told at the Psychotherapy Networker Symposium in Washington by Chicago-area marital therapist Brent Atkinson, starts with a 19th-century medical patient. Phineas Cage was a railway worker who in 1848 had a 3 1/2-foot iron rod blown through his skull in an explosion. To the surprise of doctors, he survived. Though he recovered physically with his intellectual faculties and motor skills intact, he was a changed man. He swore constantly, appeared fitful and abandoned plans as fast as he made them. Not until the 1990s -- when scientists produced computerized brain models based on photos of his skull -- was the reason for his character change confirmed: damage to the prefrontal cortex, a brain region that processes emotions governing social behavior.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 5197 - Posted: 03.30.2004

Low levels of electrical activity in the brain may cause some people with epilepsy to have seizures, say experts. A team of international scientists carried out tests on 14 people with epilepsy and two without. They found that activity in the outer part of the brain slowed significantly when those with epilepsy were asleep. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they said it may explain why many have seizures after falling asleep. Doctors have known for many years that sleep can trigger epileptic seizures. However, they have been unable to explain exactly why this happens. Previous studies have suggested it may be linked to very slow electrical activity in the brain. However, scientists have been unable to confirm this theory, largely because they were unable to detect very slow brain waves using conventional machines. (C)BBC

Keyword: Epilepsy
Link ID: 5196 - Posted: 03.28.2004

By D.T. MAX Janet Skarbek is 36 years old and lives in Cinnaminson, N.J. She is the author of ''Planning Your Future: A Guide for Professional Women,'' a book about managing the unknown. It was published in 2001 by the Professional Women's Institute, a small networking and support organization that Skarbek and three other women jointly ran out of their homes. ''Planning Your Future'' presents a world where exemplary order and control are possible. It urges working women to get ahead by thinking ahead: choosing a career with their children in mind, timing pregnancies so as not to lose traction at work. It tells them to fend for themselves in a society they may sometimes perceive as unsympathetic to their needs. Skarbek herself turned down a plum corporate job for the sake of her two kids. ''I knew that I wasn't willing to work the hours that a vice president of a Fortune 500 company would require to get the job done right,'' she said. Skarbek resembles Lewis Carroll's Alice -- the same short stature, broad forehead, straight, long hair and grown-up gaze, as well as the same touching, plucky personality. And like Alice, she, too, was about to fall down a rabbit hole. On January 2000, a friend of Skarbek's named Carrie Mahan became ill. One evening, Mahan, 29, went with her boyfriend to a party and came home unusually tired. The next morning she started hearing songs in her head and had trouble using her key to unlock her car door. At an emergency room in Philadelphia, doctors gave her medicine and suggested rest. But she was back the next day, complaining of anxiety, nausea and hallucinations. She was admitted, then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center. Things got worse quickly. She faded in and out and began to suffer body twitches called myoclonus jerks. Soon she fell into a coma and was put on life support. About a month later, on Feb. 24, 2000, she was allowed to die. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 5195 - Posted: 03.28.2004

By GINA KOLATA YOU might think if questions were raised about whether antidepressant drugs can make patients suicidal during the first few weeks of treatment, that scientists would turn to animal testing for further investigation. After all, suicides are rare enough that there are no firm human data on whether the drugs can cause them. But you can do experiments with animals - examining their brains, giving them high doses of drugs - that you could never do with people. That might seem like a reasonable course of action, especially after the Food and Drug Administration announced last week that it was so concerned about a possible, though very slight, suicide risk that it wants antidepressant drugs to carry warnings on their labels. But it turns out that animal experiments are not an option. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Animal Rights
Link ID: 5194 - Posted: 03.28.2004

People are needlessly suffering from headaches because they are not getting access to treatment, say experts. Headache disorders must be given higher priority by health providers around the world, say campaigners launching a new global initiative. The Lifting the Burden campaign says better education among health professionals will improve care. The initiative, backed by the World Health Organization, will target both developed and developing countries. Headache disorders are a huge cost to society in lost productivity and sickness absence, say campaign organisers. However, many people are being denied access to effective, low-cost treatments. This is partly because headache disorders are not recognised as health conditions in some countries. However, it is widely recognised that on a global scale, headache disorders have low priority when it comes to allocating health-care resources. (C)BBC

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 5193 - Posted: 03.27.2004

Using neurochemistry to try to unravel the experience of romantic passion By Barbara Smuts A male baboon named Sherlock sat on a cliff, unable to take his eyes off his favorite female, Cybelle, as she foraged far below. Each time Cybelle approached another adult male, Sherlock froze with tension, only to relax again when she ignored a potential rival. Finally, Cybelle glanced up and met his gaze. Instantly Sherlock flattened his ears and narrowed his eyes in what baboon researchers call the come-hither face. It worked; seconds later Cybelle sat by her guy, grooming him with gusto. After observing many similar scenarios, I realized that baboons, like humans, develop intense attractions to particular members of the opposite sex. Baboon heterosexual partnerships bear an intriguing resemblance to ours, but they also differ in important ways. For instance, baboons can simultaneously be "in love" with more than one individual, a capacity that, according to anthropologist Helen Fisher, most humans lack. Fisher is well known for her three previous books (The Sex Contract, Anatomy of Love and The First Sex), which bring an evolutionary perspective to myriad aspects of sex, love, and sex differences. This book is the best, in my view, because it goes beyond observable behaviors to consider their underlying brain mechanisms. Most people think of romantic love as a feeling. Fisher, however, views it as a drive so powerful that it can override other drives, such as hunger and thirst, render the most dignified person a fool, or bring rapture to an unassuming wallflower. © 1996-2004 Scientific American, Inc

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 5192 - Posted: 06.24.2010

From loner to attentive parent Susan Milius If the word snake pops into your mind in social situations, you're probably not thinking of a legless reptile. Indeed, the prevailing opinion among animal behaviorists for years was "very dogmatic that snakes weren't particularly social," says Harry Greene. "They courted, they mated, and that was it. Mothers abandoned the babies." Although Cornell University herpetologist Greene describes himself as a "total snakeophile," he says, "I was as blinkered as anybody else." But his view began to change one morning in 1995. "I was sitting in my house in Berkeley reading the newspaper when the phone rang," he begins. It was David Hardy, a retired Arizona anesthesiologist who worked with Greene on radio tracking black-tailed rattlesnakes. "His voice was practically quivering," Greene remembers. Hardy described a rare sighting of a rattler, accompanied by newborns. Even more surprising, the mother and young ones would remain together for more than a week. The behavior of this radio-tagged mom, known to the scientists as superfemale 21, started Greene and Hardy toward revising their view of snake parenthood. They focus on pit vipers, the group that includes rattlesnakes and their relatives. Suddenly, old anecdotes and a rare study or two scattered throughout the literature became relevant. Copyright ©2004 Science Service.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 5191 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jill U. Adams Recent work has revealed a potential physiological role for amyloid b, often considered a major culprit in Alzheimer disease (AD) pathology. This suggests that Ab, an ordinarily upstanding protein, turns bad as the result of a mob-type effect, when the physical buildup into plaques promotes neuronal damage and loss. "There's been a growing awareness over the last three or four years that it's not just a toxic peptide," says Hugh Pearson from the University of Leeds, UK. Pearson used specific enzyme inhibitors to block b- and g-secretase, which produce Ab through the sequential cleavage of amyloid precursor protein (APP).1 Death occurred in neuronal cell lines but not in other cell types. In another study, Roberto Malinow at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY, traced electrophysiological signaling in rat brain slices overexpressing APP.2 He found that neuronal activity induced formation of Ab and that the peptide fragment depressed neuronal activity. Taken together, the two studies indicate that a suspected malefactor might contribute to neuronal health and regulate neuronal activity. © 2004, The Scientist LLC, All rights reserved.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 5190 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Alex Kirby, BBC News Online environment correspondent The brains of children in many parts of Europe are suffering greater damage from environmental risks than previously recognised, scientists say. The WHO claims lead continues to be a menace - up to 30% of urban children show high blood levels in some places. It says the emphasis from now on should be on the precautionary principle, putting safety first. The WHO says "the vested interests of industry and free trade" have worked against this approach so far. Its call for caution came at a meeting in Malta of European delegates preparing for a ministerial conference on environment and health, The Future For Our Children, being held in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, in June. The Malta meeting has been given preliminary results from a comprehensive study on environmental threats to children's health, being conducted by the WHO and the University of Udine, Italy. (C) BBC

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5189 - Posted: 03.26.2004

Discovery of GPR56 sheds light on evolution of frontal lobes BOSTON -- With the identification of the gene responsible for a newly recognized type of mental retardation, researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have also discovered what appears to be the key target in the evolution of the frontal lobes of the brain's cerebral cortex. The findings, reported in the March 26, 2004, issue of the journal Science, offer a key insight into the complex puzzle of human brain development – and the evolution of human behavior. "The cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that distinguishes humans from other species," explains the study's senior author Christopher A. Walsh, MD, PhD, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator in the Neurogenetics Division at BIDMC and Bullard Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. "And the frontal lobes are the part of the cortex that govern social function, cognition, language, and problem-solving. Patients with damage to the frontal lobes exhibit changes in behavior, and frontal lobotomies were once performed to alter aggressive behavior." Bilateral frontoparietal polymicrogyria (BFPP), a recessive genetic disorder characterized by mental retardation, gait difficulty, language impairment and seizures, results in severely abnormal architecture of the brain's frontal lobes, as well as milder involvement of parietal and posterior parts of the cerebral cortex.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Evolution
Link ID: 5188 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Expressive muscles could be the key to face recognition. JIM GILES Mapping the muscles that shape smiles could lead to better face recognition systems, a team of physicists has suggested. E Guan and colleagues at Stony Brook University, New York, say current techniques are easy to evade. Computers can, in principle, match two images of the same person by comparing the pictures pixel by pixel, or by calculating the distances between major features such as the eyes and mouth. But criminals can avoid detection simply by wearing make-up or dark glasses. The Stony Brook system, which was unveiled this week at the American Physical Society meeting in Montreal, relies on probing the characteristic pattern of muscles beneath the skin of the face. Guan takes two snaps of a person in quick succession, asking subjects to smile for the camera. He then uses a computer to analyse how the skin around the subject's mouth moves between the two images. The software does this by tracking changes in the position of tiny wrinkles in the skin, each just a fraction of a millimetre wide. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 5187 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NICK MADIGAN SANTA MONICA, Calif., — For many unrepentant smokers — a vanishing species here — the Santa Monica pier and the wide, white beach it overlooks was one of the last public places in Southern California where lighting up was not met with scorn. Those days may be over. At a meeting on Tuesday night, City Council members, citing concerns about health, safety and pollution, gave initial approval to an ordinance that would ban smoking on most of the 95-year-old pier and on all of Santa Monica's four miles of beaches. It is expected to pass upon a second reading on April 13. With that step, Santa Monica became the third city in California — the others are Solana Beach and San Clemente, both north of San Diego — to push for a ban on smoking on its beaches in recent months. The move to outlaw smoking on the wooden pier itself, except for designated areas, follows a ban in Seal Beach, just south of Los Angeles, after a fire, believed to have been caused by a cigarette, trapped diners at a pier restaurant four years ago. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 5186 - Posted: 06.24.2010

One in three people around the world are not getting enough vitamins and minerals, a report suggests. Officials say it is preventing millions of people from meeting their physical and intellectual potential. The report, by Unicef and The Micronutrient Initiative, calls for urgent action to tackle the problem. It says efforts to eradicate poverty, reduce child mortality and improve maternal health all hinge on ensuring better access to vitamins and minerals. Vitamin and mineral deficiencies can cause a range of problems ranging from lower IQs to weak immune systems. A lack of iodine, for instance, is estimated to cause as many as 20m babies to be born with mental impairments. (C)BBC

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5185 - Posted: 03.25.2004

Scientists believe they may have solved one of the mysteries of how humpback whales successfully hunt - and their findings may help beat cancer in human beings. It has long been known that some species of whale hunt by creating a cylindrical column of bubbles in which fish are corralled. But until now, no-one knew why the fish had refused to swim out. However, Professor Tim Leighton, of the Institute Sound and Vibration Research at the University of Southampton, UK, has said he believes the whales use sound to scare the fish into staying put. "If sound is propagating through water, the most potent, naturally occurring entity it can meet is a bubble," he told BBC World Service's Discovery programme. The bubbles slow sound down - a beam of sound aimed towards the bubbles will be trapped, bouncing around within the column at a speed of 1km/s. "If they ever try and leave the net, what they encounter is a very loud wall of sound," Professor Leighton added. (C)BBC

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 5184 - Posted: 03.25.2004

Did mankind trade chewing power for a bigger brain? MICHAEL HOPKIN Researchers have proposed an answer to the vexing question of how the human brain grew so big. We may owe our superior intelligence to weak jaw muscles, they suggest. A mutation 2.4 million years ago could have left us unable to produce one of the main proteins in primate jaw muscles, the team reports in this week's Nature1. Lacking the constraints of a bulky chewing apparatus, the human skull may have been free to grow, the researchers say. The timing of the mutation is consistent with rampant brain growth seen in human fossils from around 2 million years ago, says Nancy Minugh-Purvis of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who helped with the study. "Right at the point you lose power in these muscles, brain size evolution accelerates," she says. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 5183 - Posted: 06.24.2010

It is relatively common to hear an object described as being "bigger than a breadbox," and most people have little trouble making this type of comparative judgment. However, how the human brain makes such comparisons based on continuous quantities is quite complex and not completely understood. Now, a new research study published in the March 25 issue of Neuron provides significant new information about how the brain interprets spatial and nonspatial sensory information to make comparative judgments about quantities such as number, size, and luminance. Previous work suggests that a region of the brain called the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) is active during comparative operations. Dr. Philippe Pinel and colleagues from the Unit of Cognitive Neuroimaging in Orsay, France designed a study to investigate how the brain processes the information that is used to make comparative judgments about numerical information and nonnumerical stimuli like size and luminance. Specifically, the researchers were interested in determining whether comparative judgments on each continuum involve the activity of specific defined regions of the IPS. Human subjects were scanned using a sophisticated brain imaging technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they made comparative judgments about pairs of Arabic digits that varied in actual physical size, numerical size, and luminance. This experimental paradigm allowed the researchers to examine interference evoked by the other two irrelevant dimensions as well as specific regions of brain activity.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 5182 - Posted: 03.25.2004

By DENISE GRADY and GARDINER HARRIS The government's warning on Monday that people newly taking antidepressants can become suicidal and must be closely monitored grew at least in part from a concern that the drugs were being handed out too freely and without enough follow-up, especially in children and teenagers. Dr. Wayne K. Goodman, chairman of psychiatry at the University of Florida College of Medicine and a member of an expert panel that advised the Food and Drug Administration, said, "I think many physicians, and particularly nonpsychiatrists, have been lulled into the notion that these drugs are safe." He emphasized that the drugs carried few serious physical side effects and a low risk of overdose. But, Dr. Goodman added, "I think what's been underestimated is this behavioral toxicity, which can indirectly lead to problems, including possibly suicidal behavior." Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 5181 - Posted: 03.24.2004

By JANE GROSS Ask any woman who has had a difficult menopause if she thinks that Mrs. Rochester, locked in the attic in "Jane Eyre," was actually insane. The answer is likely to be a resounding no. Poor Mrs. Rochester, living in an era before hormone therapy, has been on my mind lately, as I have tried, unsuccessfully, to wean myself off estrogen. Like me, she was probably dazed from too many sleepless nights, frightened by palpitations with no apparent cause and unable to concentrate on the simplest task or read a sentence from start to finish. Hot flashes? No doubt Mrs. Rochester was peeling off clothes and putting them back on, feeling hot and clammy one minute and cold and clammy the next, waking in a tangle of damp sheets. But, chances are, if anyone had asked her, Mrs. Rochester would have said her wayward thermostat was a minor inconvenience compared to being unable to think straight. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 5180 - Posted: 03.24.2004

Chantal Martineau Many a writer knows the pain and frustration of writer's block. The looming presence of the blank page, the gripping fear of creative sterility are only too familiar to journalists, poets, diarists or avid pen pals. Few of us, however, have experienced block's bizarre counterpart: hypergraphia. Imagine living with the compulsive need to scrawl away constantly, scribbling on notebooks, napkins, walls, even skin. "Scientists don't want to discuss creativity," claims Harvard neurologist Dr Alice Flaherty, who both studied and lived with the condition. "It makes them feel intellectually unhygienic." Her own experience with hypergraphia began when severe postnatal depression took over after she gave birth to premature twin boys who died. Paralysing grief spawned in her an uncontrollable obsession with writing. A year later, in a twist of fate, she gave birth to healthy twin girls. This second, happy pregnancy also resulted in a bout of hypergraphia. Her musings developed into a book she says she could not stop herself from writing. The Midnight Disease, released in the US earlier this year and about to be published in the UK, is a memoir-cum-study of what underlies the human drive to put pen to paper. © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 5179 - Posted: 06.24.2010