An unusual experiment with monkeys who were switched between mothers shortly after birth has demonstrated the importance of nature over nurture in behavior. Young monkeys reared by a mother other than their own are more likely to exhibit the aggressive or friendly behavior of their birth mothers rather than the behavior of their foster mothers, a University of Chicago researcher has shown for the first time. The discovery of inheritability of social behavior traits among non-human primates has important implications for people as it reinforces other research that suggests that such characteristics as sociability and impulsive aggressiveness among humans may have a genetic basis, said Dario Maestripieri, Associate Professor in Human Development at the University. The work with monkeys may help other researchers understand the biological origins of characteristics that promote socialization among humans, he said.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 4638 - Posted: 12.04.2003

(Bethesda, MD) – With the holidays come the traditions of sharing meals, desserts and treats with family, friends and co-workers. But the need to reduce the amount of food we consume daily – during the holiday season and throughout the year -- has acquired a greater sense of urgency in the wake of America’s obesity epidemic. As scientists look for ways to help us battle the bulge, a new study suggests that our own hormonal makeup may offer promising clues. A team of researchers has tested the hypothesis that gastric distension in humans can enhance the effect of cholecystokin (CCK) on the reduction of food intake. The researchers conclude that CCK's suppression of food intake is enhanced when the stomach is distended. CCK is a hormone released when digested fats and proteins are present, and reduces food intake. CCK stimulates enzyme secretion in the pancreas. The process eventually leads to inhibiting gastric emptying of the stomach’s foods, thereby causing gastric distension. It has been suggested that increased gastric distension, induced by slowing of gastric emptying, may be the method by which CCK reduces food intake.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 4637 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Not to add to your stress level, but accumulating research indicates that continuous or intense stress may sometimes negatively influence the brain and its function. Studies find evidence that severe stress may sometimes alter brain cells, brain structure and brain function. As a consequence memory problems and the development of some mental diseases, including depression, may erupt. On the positive side, research also suggests that methods under investigation may be able to help ward off or even possibly reverse some of the stress effects. Tuesday it was tornadoes. Saturday, SARS. Today, terrorism. Increasingly worrisome headlines make the effort to understand how stress affects the brain take on a new level of importance. When we experience a stressful situation, our stress system activates a slew of biological mechanisms that boost our strength and energy, among other functions, to help us cope. Accumulating research, however, indicates that perpetual or intense stress sometimes may harm the brain and its function. These insights are leading to: Copyright © 2003 Society for Neuroscience

Keyword: Stress; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 4636 - Posted: 06.24.2010

CHICAGO – Sights and sounds cross paths abnormally in the minds of dyslexic readers, according to the first functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of multisensory processing in people with the disorder. "Dyslexic readers appear to process auditory and visual sensory cues differently than do normal readers, and these differences may be the cause of their difficulty in reading," said the study's lead author, Jonathan H. Burdette, M.D., assistant professor of neuroradiology and associate in the department of bioengineering at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. Dr. Burdette presented his research today at the 89th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Dyslexia is a learning disability characterized by difficulty with word recognition. Up to 8 percent of American elementary school children may have the reading disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. While the underlying neurological basis for dyslexia is still unclear, previous studies have shown that people with dyslexia cannot distinguish the sounds in spoken words. However, reading is a complex mental task, requiring a series of interactions among areas of the brain that control auditory, visual, language and memory processing.

Keyword: Dyslexia
Link ID: 4635 - Posted: 06.24.2010

CHICAGO – For the first time, researchers have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate infant brain activity in response to speech and have found that, almost from birth, the brain's left hemisphere plays the leading role in processing most language functions. These preliminary findings, presented today at the 89th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), challenge the previously held belief that left-hemisphere dominance isn't fully developed until puberty. "Language lateralization seems to be established almost from birth," said Shantanu Sinha, Ph.D., associate professor of radiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles, where the study is ongoing. Lateralization is the localization of a function, such as speech, to the right or left side of the brain. "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time fMRI has been used to study infants," Dr. Sinha said. "Using fMRI, we can noninvasively study the neuronal response of newborns to stimulation of different kinds, without any ionizing radiation or pharmaceutical injections."

Keyword: Language; Laterality
Link ID: 4634 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ATLANTA – Researchers led by Jason Jaworski, PhD, and Michael Kuhar, PhD, both at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University, have shown that CART peptide, a chemical that occurs naturally in both the rodent and human brain, reduces some effects of cocaine when additional amounts are administered to the region of the brain that is associated with reward and addiction. These findings, which were presented on November 8 at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans, appear in the December issue of the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics and suggest CART peptide receptors in the brain could be targets for developing medications to treat cocaine abuse. For their study, Dr. Jaworski, a post-doctoral fellow, and Dr. Kuhar, chief of the Neuroscience Division at Yerkes and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, infused CART peptide into the nucleus accumbens (NA) of rodents to determine how it affects the increase of body movement, or locomotor activity, that is widely seen as one effect of psychostimulant drugs. The researchers observed that the cocaine-induced movement was reduced after the rodents received CART peptide. "This is the first study to demonstrate CART peptides in the nucleus accumbens hinder the effects of cocaine," said Dr. Jaworski. "Our findings open a door to develop potential treatment options for cocaine addiction."

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 4633 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Buck Institute researcher says findings may aid Alzheimer's fight David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor Scientists seeking to restore brain function in patients with Alzheimer's disease have discovered that as the disorder slowly destroys the brain cells of the victims, new cells form that may provide a novel strategy for therapy. "This work is a long shot, but following up on long shots is what you have to do to make progress," said Dr. David A. Greenberg, a neurologist at the Buck Institute for Age Research in Novato. Greenberg is the senior researcher on a team of seven scientists who are publishing a report on their new Alzheimer's work in the current online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the first to concede that their findings have already raised more challenging questions than answers. ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Alzheimers; Neurogenesis
Link ID: 4632 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists claim to have found evidence that exercise may be physically addictive to some people. A study of mice found that when the exercise was denied to certain animals, brain scans revealed activity in areas normally linked to drug withdrawal. University of Wisconsin researchers suggested that the same might be true in "extreme" individuals who tended to exercise more heavily. Many experts believe that "exercise addiction" is not a physical condition. However, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence from frequent exercisers who report feelings of craving when they miss their regular exercise session. The study, published in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience, used a special breed of mice which, if given a running wheel to use, tend to use it for longer periods than ordinary mice. (C) BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Muscles
Link ID: 4631 - Posted: 12.02.2003

There are new concerns about college students hitting the bottle instead of the books. As this ScienCentral News video reports, researchers say the problem could be bigger than previous studies indicated because the drinks are getting bigger. To most people, one beer is twelve ounces. But ask a college student to pour you a beer and you may get much more than you bargained for. "There's been an increase in a sort of heavy binge type drinking [among adolescents]," says Aaron White, assistant research professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center and a research psychologist at the Durham Veterans Administration Medical Center. White says this may be partly due to the size of the drinks the students are pouring. © ScienCentral, 2000-2003.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 4630 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By MARY DUENWALD Sir Walter Scott was an author, not an evolutionary theorist. He wrote his poems and historical novels 40 years before Charles Darwin described the process of evolution — and well over a century before scientists began in earnest to apply principles of natural selection to the study of human nature. Yet Scott, a 19th-century writer, apparently shared with modern evolutionary scientists the general notion that men tend to follow two basic mating strategies. The new research is part of the fledgling field of Darwinian literary studies, in which scholars try to draw connections between literature and evolutionary science. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 4629 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. In September, the journal Science issued a startling retraction. A primate study it published in 2002, with heavy publicity, warned that the amount of the drug Ecstasy that a typical user consumes in a single night might cause permanent brain damage. It turned out that the $1.3 million study, led by Dr. George A. Ricaurte of Johns Hopkins University, had not used Ecstasy at all. His 10 squirrel monkeys and baboons had instead been injected with overdoses of methamphetamine, and two of them had died. The labels on two vials he bought in 2000, he said, were somehow switched. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 4628 - Posted: 12.02.2003

CHICAGO – Using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to look into the brains of children with schizophrenia, researchers have discovered abnormalities in the white matter of the frontal lobe that disrupt the transmission of signals regulating behavior, according to a study presented today at the 89th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). "Until now there's been no sophisticated method of finding abnormalities in the white matter of the brain," said the study's lead author Manzar Ashtari, Ph.D., associate professor of radiology and psychiatry at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System and Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. "Conventional magnetic resonance (MR) imaging is limited in its ability to reveal brain myelination, but DTI enables us to measure the myelination process." Myelin is the covering of nerve bundles that protects neurons and increases their transmission efficiency. The accumulation of myelin around these neurons is called myelination. In the human developmental process, myelination correlates with maturing patterns of behavior. In patients with schizophrenia, the cells that carry out the process of myelination are defective.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 4627 - Posted: 06.24.2010

BY JEAN LUND Men are such a funny species. My last boyfriend split up with me, saying he was jealous. He walked out of the door with the words: "You don't need me to have an orgasm. You do it all yourself." What can you say to something like that? There is no answer when you suffer from a medical condition such as mine. I have what doctors have recently identified as Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome. I experience up to 800 orgasms a day and I have no control over it. I could orgasm every minute of every hour if I let myself. I turned 'round to my boyfriend and said, "Sorry, buddy, but I can't help it. And even if you thought you could satisfy me, there aren't enough hours in the day." I haven't dated since he left more than five years ago. Copyright 2003, Digital Chicago Inc.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4626 - Posted: 12.02.2003

By JANE E. BRODY Few people would disagree with the observation that this is the most stressful time of the year for most people, men as well as women. Holiday preparations, planned vacations, gifts to buy and wrap and send, homes and yards to clean and decorate, bothersome relatives you "must" spend time with, kids home from school, end-of-the-year deadlines. Let's see, have I left anything out? Oh, yes, painful reminders of lost loved ones who won't be around to share the joy — and stress — of the weeks ahead. To experts in the relatively young field of medicine called psychoneuroimmunology, or P.N.I., it is no surprise that many people get sick or experience flare-ups of chronic illnesses while struggling to cope with the stress-inducing demands of the holiday season. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 4625 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The Observer For some, the fear can drive them out of their own home. Others have to avoid feathers, subways, glass lifts or city squares that are filled with pigeons. Phobias appear in many shapes and forms, affecting at least a quarter of the population. But doctors believe that a cure may soon be on hand from the most unlikely quarter. They have discovered that a drug on the market for tuberculosis helps phobics to overcome their worst fears within a week. They believe it could be the anti-phobia pill which scientists have been searching for. Early results from trials have been greeted with some excitement. The medication, D-cycloserine, works alongside traditional talking therapy and speeds up the process through which sufferers can learn how to beat their irrational panic. © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 4624 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Amanda Dunn, Health Reporter A Melbourne-designed computerised test will be used to assess brain function in a large American study of people with HIV who are taking antiretroviral drugs. Using a card game similar to solitaire, the test assesses memory and planning ability, and maps changes in a person over time. It is used to detect neuro-degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. Paul Maruff, chief science officer with CogState, the company that devised the test, said the US study aimed to uncover the natural history of the virus since the introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in the 1990s. Copyright © 2003. The Age Company Ltd

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 4623 - Posted: 06.24.2010

MADISON - Like junkies without drugs, mice without running wheels crave what they lack, suggesting that some animals can develop an addiction for exercise, report scientists in the Dec. 1 issue of the journal Behavioral Neuroscience. We all know someone who can't get enough exercise: the marathon runner who jogged 26 miles in all 50 states, the neighbor who speed walks at the crack of dawn or the cyclist who zooms by every Sunday. We might say these people are addicted to physical activity. But the debate on exercise addiction has remained largely unresolved - until now, that is. The new study, conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, adds evidence that the same brain circuitry involved in other types of craving - such as for food, drugs or sex - is activated in mice that are denied access to the running wheel. The findings, say the researchers, lend support to the addictive nature of exercise in some animals.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Muscles
Link ID: 4622 - Posted: 12.01.2003

By DIRK OLIN Roses are red; violets are blue. But if we called a violet red, what color would it be? This is not a rhetorical question. How we label things can affect how we perceive them. Naming can impose meaning. And though science and anthropology have provided significant support for the proposition that color perception is basically identical across societies, recent studies have found evidence that we also see our rainbows through cultural lenses. Theories about color were developed at least as far back as the time of Socrates, in the fifth century B.C. But Aristotle's notion of seven basic colors -- with primary hues, related to the four elements -- held sway through the Renaissance. No enduring paradigms for the organization of color emerged until Sir Isaac Newton, building on the laws of refraction discovered by Willebrord Snell and Rene Descartes in the early 17th century, shone light through a prism and revealed the spectrum. This was not a purely scientific result, however, since Newton sorted out seven major colors to ''harmonize'' his categories with the (then known) seven planets and the seven notes of the diatonic scale. In the 1720's J.C. Le Blon's treatise on color revealed how mixtures could create secondary colors. As findings in recent years have demonstrated, however, color is in the mind as well as the wavelength. Yes, physical objects have intrinsic properties, and their absorption and reflection of particular wavelengths have an existence independent of the observer. But color is a neural response triggered in our eyes, a biochemical reaction processed in our photoreceptors and a psychological phenomenon occurring in our brains. Categorizing colors is also affected by culture and by our very acquisition of language. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 4621 - Posted: 11.30.2003

By ELLIOTT SOBER Fifty years before Darwin defended his theory of evolution in ''The Origin of Species,'' the French biologist Jean Baptiste Lamarck put forward a theory of his own. For Lamarck, life has an inherent tendency to develop from simple to complex through a preordained sequence of stages. The lineage to which human beings belong is the oldest, since we are the most complex of living things. Present-day worms belong to a lineage that is much younger, since they are simpler. For Lamarck, today's human beings and worms do not have a common ancestor, even though human beings derive from wormlike ancestors. Darwin's theory was radically different. All the organisms alive today trace back to a common ancestor. And Darwin found no merit in the vague idea that lineages have an ''inherent tendency'' to develop through a set sequence of stages. Rather, he proposed a concrete mechanism -- natural selection -- to explain why lineages change through time and why they diverge as each responds to different environments. No wonder he was irritated when some of his contemporaries dismissed his theory as a mere restatement of Lamarckism. Darwin's successors further advanced the idea that evolution has no pre-established sequence of stages. Lineages evolve in response to accidental circumstances. Where Lamarck's theory sees the history of life as the unfolding of an inevitable pattern, Darwinism gives pride of place to contingency. In ''Wonderful Life,'' Stephen Jay Gould provided a vivid metaphor for this thought, drawn from the 1946 movie in which the character played by Jimmy Stewart gets to see that his world would have been profoundly different if he had not existed. Gould contended that life would have been profoundly different if conditions at the start of the evolutionary process and along the way were only modestly different. Human beings, and the features we have that we most prize, are radically contingent. Replay the tape and there would be no human beings, and nothing remotely like human intelligence and language. Indeed, there would be no mammals and no vertebrates. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 4620 - Posted: 11.30.2003

Inflammation of the placental membranes may increase the risk of cerebral palsy (CP), research suggests. The University of California found that the condition, chorioamnionitis, was four times more common in mothers who gave birth to a child with CP. CP covers a wide range of physical problems in which poor brain development or damage has affected the ability to control muscle and movement. The study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. CP is the most common cause of severe physical disability in children in developed countries. It occurs in up to 2.4 per 1,000 live births. The condition is associated with premature babies, babies with a low birth weight, and multiple birth. (C)BBC

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 4619 - Posted: 11.30.2003