Ben Harder The first appearance in the United States of the cattle-killing ailment known as mad cow disease has rocked the beef industry and raised fears of an outbreak of a similar deadly brain disease in people. However, the threat to both people and animals in the United States remains low as long as the government enforces specific feed-processing and slaughter regulations, risk analysts say. The most crucial safeguard, according to the researchers, is a ban put in place in 1997 that prohibits feeding potentially infective animal parts to cattle. That practice, which provided cheap protein for animal feed, is the main route of transmission of the misshapen proteins that cause mad cow disease, which is formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The proteins, called prions, may spread when animals consume brain, spinal cord tissue, bone particles, eyes, and small intestines of infected animals. In people, prions occasionally cause the lethal brain condition known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or vCJD. New safety measures that the government has announced in recent weeks might further reduce the odds of a U.S. outbreak of vCJD in people, says George Gray of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis in Boston. One of these rules would delay the sale of meat from cattle carcasses until they're tested for BSE, and another would ban or restrict the use of processing technologies that may mix bits of nerve tissue with meat. Copyright ©2004 Science Service.

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 4786 - Posted: 06.24.2010

BY JULIA KELLER, Chicago Tribune CHICAGO - (KRT) - There was a story he loved to hear. Sometimes it was the only way to settle him down, telling that story. When Jim Kane was so agitated that he looked as if he might vibrate right out of his wheelchair, his wife would tell him the story. Jill Kane had told it almost every day of his six-week stay at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. She told him the story again on his final day, as Jim, like research into brain injury medicine itself, headed down an uncharted road. "Do you remember, Jim, when you worked at the racetrack?" she said. "You were 18 years old, and your job was to take care of two horses. Mr. Brown and Scotch Run. You'd walk them around and around, and Mr. Brown - do you remember this, Jim? Mr. Brown loved Snickers bars." She laughed. "A horse who loved Snickers bars! Isn't that funny, Jim? And you took care of them." © 2004, Chicago Tribune.

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Regeneration
Link ID: 4785 - Posted: 06.24.2010

MRIs in Stanford study show active suppression of memories Keay Davidson More than a century after Sigmund Freud's ideas first stirred controversy, they've won partial support from Stanford University laboratory experiments involving technology that was unimaginable in his time. One of Freud's key claims was that humans "repress" unpleasant memories. Such memories continue to lurk within the brain, and they occasionally resurface in disguised form -- say, in the eerie symbolism of dreams or in embarrassing "slips of the tongue," he argued. But skeptics have questioned whether such repression really occurs. Now, using a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging, or "fMRI" for short, researchers have caught human brain tissue in the act of suppressing simple memories in the form of paired words. The scientists report the findings in today's issue of the journal Science. ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Brain imaging
Link ID: 4784 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Historical figures including Socrates, Charles Darwin, and Andy Warhol probably had a form of autism, says a leading specialist. Professor Michael Fitzgerald, of Dublin's Trinity College believes they showed signs of Asperger's syndrome. Scientific geniuses Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein have also been previously linked to the condition. Asperger's is associated with poor social skills, and obsessions with complex topics such as music. However, people with the condition are often bright, and have above average verbal skills. Professor Fitzgerald said the number of people being diagnosed with Asperger's had significantly increased as doctors had become more aware of the condition. (C) BBC

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 4783 - Posted: 01.09.2004

The present situation where scientists are caught between political manipulation and public incomprehension must end for all our good Colin Blakemore Not a squeak. No sign of communication. Sitting in a strange environment, remote, mysterious and invisible. Microscope and mass spectrometer at the ready; ultraviolet sensor, thermocouples and three-axis accelerometer poised for action. Thirty-two-bit processor eager to crunch numbers. Centuries of scientific knowledge, years of preparation and investment were needed for its work. Yet it remains silent, a source of fascination to the public but unheard. No, not Beagle-2 (although as I write it is, alas, still silent). This image is the stereotypical, faceless British scientist - a grey, male personage in a white coat. He works long hours and shows a vocational devotion rare in other professions. His primary targets are gaining tenure in his job, publishing before his rivals in the States and getting his next grant. Telling anyone about his ideas (except through the medium of an academic paper) is very low on his list of priorities. In the pub, he will talk politics or Manchester Utd rather than bosons or genes. Who would listen, who would bother, who would understand? Was it ever thus? Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 4782 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers are finding that it may be easier for teenagers to become addicted to cigarettes than adults because teens seem to react differently to nicotine, the addictive substance in cigarettes. "The more nicotine you take as a teenager, the more likely you are to become a smoker,” says George Koob, professor of neuropharmacology at the Scripps Research Institute. "And what smoking does for you is, it kills you." Koob says that, like other drugs, nicotine produces a withdrawal state. "If you don't believe in the nicotine withdrawal syndrome, just watch people getting off a flight from Paris to Los Angeles, which is eleven hours long, and you’ll see the cigarette smokers can't wait to get outside and have a cigarette because they’re in full-blown withdrawal after eleven hours of no cigarettes," he says. "When [smokers] stop taking cigarettes, when they stop smoking, they are very uncomfortable. They're irritable, they have a malaise, like a fatigue, they are cranky, they are dysphoric, they don't feel good about themselves, they have trouble thinking properly, their work performance deteriorates, and they're basically in a state that we call a motivational withdrawal state." © ScienCentral, 2000-2003.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 4781 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANAHAD O'CONNOR Unwanted memories can be driven from awareness, according to a team of researchers who say they have identified a brain circuit that springs into action when people deliberately try to forget something. The findings, published today in the journal Science, strengthen the theory that painful memories can be repressed by burying them in the subconscious, the researchers say. In the study, people who had memorized a pair of words were later shown one of them and asked to either recall the second word or to consciously avoid thinking about it. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 4780 - Posted: 01.09.2004

Two personas trigger different brain networks. HELEN PEARSON One human brain can have two different personalities dwelling in it, according to a new imaging study - and each personality seems to use its own network of nerves to help recall or suppress memories. Alternative personalities are typically developed by children who suffer severe trauma or abuse. The condition, called multiple personality disorder, or dissociative identity disorder, appears to help people cope by cutting off difficult memories, making them seem as if they happened to someone else. A team led by Simone Reinders of Groningen University Hospital in the Netherlands used positron emission tomography to scan the brains of 11 female multiple-personality patients while they listened to autobiographical stories in each of their two personality states1. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 4779 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Tiny particles enter the brain after being inhaled. JIM GILES Nanoparticles - tiny lumps of matter that could one day to be used to build faster computer circuits and improve drug delivery systems - can travel to the brain after being inhaled, according to researchers from the United States1. The finding sounds a cautionary note for advocates of nanotechnology, but may also lead to a fuller understanding of the health effects of the nanosized particles produced by diesel engines. Günter Oberdörster of the University of Rochester in New York and colleagues tracked the progress of carbon particles that were only 35 nanometres in diameter and had been inhaled by rats. In the olfactory bulb - an area of the brain that deals with smell - nanoparticles were detected a day after inhalation, and levels continued to rise until the experiment ended after seven days. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

Keyword: Neurotoxins
Link ID: 4778 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Of Normal Brain Connections Resulting From Sensory Input By Sherry Seethaler Biologists at the University of California, San Diego and the Johns Hopkins University have discovered a gene that plays a key role in initiating changes in the brain in response to sensory experience, a finding that may provide insight into certain types of learning disorders. After birth, learning and experience change the architecture of the brain dramatically. The structure of individual neurons, or nerve cells, changes during learning to accommodate new connections between neurons. Neuroscientists believe these structural changes are initiated when neurons are activated, causing calcium ions to flow into cells and alter the activity of genes. In a paper featured on the cover of the January 9th issue of the journal Science, biologists at UCSD and the Johns Hopkins University medical school report the discovery of the first gene, CREST, known to mediate these changes in the structure of neurons in response to calcium. Copyright ©2001 Regents of the University of California.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 4777 - Posted: 06.24.2010

EUGENE, Ore.-Researchers at the University of Oregon and Stanford University have located a mechanism in the human brain that blocks unwanted memories. This is the first time that anyone has shown a neurobiological basis for memory repression. The findings, by lead researcher Michael Anderson, associate professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, and his colleague, John D.E. Gabrieli, professor of psychology at Stanford, will be published Jan. 9 in Science. The research provides compelling evidence that Freud was on to something 100 years ago when he proposed the existence of a voluntary repression mechanism that pushes unwanted memories out of consciousness. Since then the idea of memory repression has been a vague and highly controversial idea, in part because it has been difficult to imagine how such a process could occur in the brain. Yet, the process may be more commonly applied than was previously thought.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 4776 - Posted: 01.09.2004

EUGENE, Ore.-Researchers at the University of Oregon and Stanford University have located a mechanism in the human brain that blocks unwanted memories. This is the first time that anyone has shown a neurobiological basis for memory repression. The findings, by lead researcher Michael Anderson, associate professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, and his colleague, John D.E. Gabrieli, professor of psychology at Stanford, will be published Jan. 9 in Science. The research provides compelling evidence that Freud was on to something 100 years ago when he proposed the existence of a voluntary repression mechanism that pushes unwanted memories out of consciousness. Since then the idea of memory repression has been a vague and highly controversial idea, in part because it has been difficult to imagine how such a process could occur in the brain. Yet, the process may be more commonly applied than was previously thought.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 4775 - Posted: 01.09.2004

A new Center for Behavioral Neuroscience study has determined that social stress adversely affects digestive function in subordinate cichlid fish. The finding appears in the January issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. In the study of Central American convict cichlid fish, CBN scientists Ryan L. Earley, Ph.D. and Matthew Grober, Ph.D. of Georgia State University, and Lawrence Blumer, Ph.D. of Morehouse College, compared bile retention and gall bladder size in dominant and subordinate males that had eaten equal amounts of food. The scientists discovered not only were the gall bladders in the subordinate fish much larger, they were filled with dark "bad bile," unlike the pale bile in the dominant fish. The difference in gall bladder function also likely contributed to subordinate fish growing more slowly than the dominant ones. Cichlids have rigid dominance hierarchies, providing excellent models for the study of social stress. Previous cichlid studies have determined that the chronic stress of social subordination has other physiological consequences, including changes in body weight and hormones.

Keyword: Stress; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 4774 - Posted: 01.09.2004

The state of Arkansas has executed a man with a severe mental illness. Charles Singleton, 44, was forcibly given anti-psychotic drugs which made him lucid enough under court guidelines to be put to death. A diagnosed schizophrenic, he was given a lethal injection in the state's death chamber in Varner for killing grocery store worker Mary Lou York in 1979. The Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, had refused to issue a stay of execution. The European Union and Amnesty International had urged the governor to commute the death sentence, saying it was morally reprehensible to execute a person with a severe mental illness. Singleton's lawyer, Jeffrey Rosenzweig, said the execution left him "frustrated, disappointed, saddened". (C) BBC

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 4773 - Posted: 01.08.2004

Two deaf women in the US have become the first people to undergo the risky procedure of having implants in their brainstems. The devices are designed to restore hearing by directly stimulating nerves. Some deaf people have been given implants that sit just outside the brainstem, but these do not work very well. Feeding auditory signals directly into the brainstem should work better, but because the brainstem carries signals from the entire body to the brain, any damage caused by an implant could be disastrous. The procedure is far more risky than, say, placing implants in the cortex to try to restore some vision. "If you damage the cortex it's not that big a deal. But at the brainstem level every neuron you damage could damage function," says Bob Shannon of the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles, the surgeon who pioneered the procedure. "We took 15 years to convince ourselves that this could be done safely." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 4772 - Posted: 06.24.2010

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Purdue University researchers have shown that extremely thin carbon fibers called "nanotubes" might be used to create brain probes and implants to study and treat neurological damage and disorders. Probes made of silicon currently are used to study brain function and disease but may one day be used to apply electrical signals that restore damaged areas of the brain. A major drawback to these probes, however, is that they cause the body to produce scar tissue that eventually accumulates and prevents the devices from making good electrical contact with brain cells called neurons, said Thomas Webster, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering. New findings showed that the nanotubes not only caused less scar tissue but also stimulated neurons to grow 60 percent more fingerlike extensions, called neurites, which are needed to regenerate brain activity in damaged regions, Webster said.

Keyword: Glia
Link ID: 4771 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Washington, D.C. -- Georgetown University Medical Center researchers today published the first ever fMRI study of hyperlexia, a rare condition in which children with some degree of autism display extremely precocious reading skills. Appearing in Neuron, the case study uncovers the neural mechanisms that underlie hyperlexia, and suggest that hyperlexia is the true opposite of the reading disability dyslexia. Hyperlexia is found in very rare cases in children who are on the "autism spectrum," meaning they display some characteristics of autism. Like autistic children, children with hyperlexia have extreme difficulty with oral communication, social interaction and expression, and yet can read surprisingly well at a very young age. By some accounts, hyperlexic children can read at 18 months, sometimes two years before they have ever uttered a single word. They are drawn to print, sometimes reading all the signs and license plates they might encounter during a brief walk through the parking lot. The child in this case study, Ethan , reads six to eight years in advance of his age. He read dictionaries in his twos, but spoke his first word at age three and a half.

Keyword: Autism; Language
Link ID: 4770 - Posted: 01.08.2004

Long-lasting depot medication appears safe and effective for treatment of narcotic addiction A study in the January issue of the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence reports that a long-lasting depot medication appears safe and effective for treatment of narcotic addiction. In the study a single injection prevented withdrawal discomfort for 6 weeks in heroin-dependent patients, reduced the effects of injected opiates, and provided a comfortable detoxification as it gradually wore off. The study medication was an experimental injectable sustained-release depot formulation of the medication buprenorphine. The injection is a suspension of biodegradable microcapsules each containing small amounts of the buprenorphine medication. As the microcapsules gradually disintegrate they provide a long-duration sustained release of buprenorphine. A tablet form of buprenorphine that is taken by holding it under the tongue is already used in the U.S. and around the world as an analgesic and as a treatment for opioid dependence; the tablet normally needs to be taken every day. The recent study was the first to test this new long-lasting depot formulation in humans. The study examined the safety and pharmacokinetics of the depot medication, and tested its effectiveness for reducing the opioid withdrawal syndrome and for reducing the effects of opioid challenge injections.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 4769 - Posted: 01.08.2004

Amyloid beta protein may trigger mental decline. HELEN R. PILCHER Researchers may have pinpointed the cause of Alzheimer's disease - a rogue protein called amyloid beta (Aß) that forms plaques in the brain. Dementia-prone mice with low levels of Aß are spared the disease, research reveals1. Drugs that reduce this protein in humans may have the same protective effect. An estimated 15 million people worldwide suffer from Alzheimer's disease, a progressive, neurodegenerative disease that clouds memory and causes impaired behaviour. Scientists have long known that clumps or plaques of Aß are present in the brains of Alzheimer's patients, but the links between the protein and dementia have been unclear. No one was sure if the plaques were a cause or symptom of the disease. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 4768 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Many people with Alzheimer's disease may be being denied access to drugs which could slow their condition, a study suggests. Statisticians from pharmaceutical firm Pfizer found some parts of the UK spent £10 a head on drugs for the over-65s, but others spent just £1 a head. Campaigners say patients deserve much better, and have called for action from on Health Secretary John Reid. Alzheimer's drugs are supposed to be available across the NHS. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) issued guidance in January 2001 which said anti-dementia drugs were clinically and cost effective. The Pfizer team found that overall spending on the drugs had increased sharply since 1991. (C) BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 4767 - Posted: 01.07.2004