ST. PAUL, MN – Using MRI scans can help make the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS) more quickly, according to a guideline developed by the American Academy of Neurology. The guideline is published in the September 9 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The point at which MS can be diagnosed has been under debate, according to guideline author Elliot Frohman, MD, PhD, of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. “Before, the criteria used to diagnose people required neurologists to show that disease activity had occurred in the brain over time,” said Frohman. “People would have to wait for a diagnosis. Now that we have evidence showing that early treatment can reduce the entire course of the disease, we really needed to ask the question about how early the diagnosis can be made.”

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 4263 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A bat echolocation system, adapted for human ears, has been used allow people to locate objects in a virtual reality environment. The researchers behind the project hope that a similar system in the cockpit of fighter planes could allow pilots to track some controls using their hearing, freeing up their eyes for other tasks. "When you drive, you can't look at the speedometer and the road at the same time, but you can listen to the radio at the same time," says Dean Waters, a bat expert at the University of Leeds, UK. Humans cannot generate or hear the high frequency sound waves generated by bats. So Waters created a virtual system that sends out bat echolocation sounds and returns echoes that are slowed into the human range of hearing. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 4262 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By STEPHEN S. HALL In the spring of 1992, out of the blue, the fax machine in Richard Davidson's office at the department of psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison spit out a letter from Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. Davidson, a Harvard-trained neuroscientist, was making a name for himself studying the nature of positive emotion, and word of his accomplishments had made it to northern India. The exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists was writing to offer the minds of his monks -- in particular, their meditative prowess -- for scientific research. Most self-respecting American neuroscientists would shrink from, if not flee, an invitation to study Buddhist meditation, viewing the topic as impossibly fuzzy and, as Davidson recently conceded, ''very flaky.'' But the Wisconsin professor, a longtime meditator himself -- he took leave from graduate school to travel through India and Sri Lanka to learn Eastern meditation practices -- leapt at the opportunity. In September 1992, he organized and embarked on an ambitious data-gathering expedition to northern India, lugging portable electrical generators, laptop computers and electroencephalographic (EEG) recording equipment into the foothills of the Himalayas. His goal was to measure a remarkable, if seemingly evanescent, entity: the neural characteristics of the Buddhist mind at work. ''These are the Olympic athletes, the gold medalists, of meditation,'' Davidson says. The work began fitfully -- the monks initially balked at being wired -- but research into meditation has now attained a credibility unimaginable a decade ago. Over the past 10 years, a number of Buddhist monks, led by Matthieu Ricard, a French-born monk with a Ph.D. in molecular biology, have made a series of visits from northern India and other South Asian countries to Davidson's lab in Madison. Ricard and his peers have worn a Medusa-like tangle of 256-electrode EEG nets while sitting on the floor of a little booth and responding to visual stimuli. They have spent two to three hours at a time in a magnetic resonance imaging machine, trying to meditate amid the clatter and thrum of the brain-imaging machinery. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions; Stress
Link ID: 4261 - Posted: 09.14.2003

By John Roach Female moa birds had a sweet spot for the little guys, according to two papers appearing in the September 11 issue of Nature. The research teams, led by scientists in New Zealand and England, applied a pioneering technique in genetic analysis that allowed them to determine the sex of extinct moa by analyzing nuclear DNA extracted from fossils. The results from both teams show that moa were characterized by reverse sexual dimorphism—the females were bigger than males. In one case, females of the same species of moa were at least twice the size as their male counterparts. © 2003 National Geographic Society

Keyword: Evolution; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4260 - Posted: 06.24.2010

From Ann Kellan (CNN) -- Shorebirds known as oystercatchers may provide evidence not only that birds, like people, get "divorced," but that those getting dumped are more likely to land in a shoddier home in a more dangerous neighborhood. The bird that flies the coop first, usually the female, ends up with a nest closer to food and with 20 percent more chicks, said University of Bern (Switzerland) scientists, who studied the habits of oystercatchers on a Dutch island for eight years. The partner that is dumped ends up in less-ideal habitat and has to travel farther for food, leaving its chicks vulnerable to predators, said the research team in a recent edition of the journal Nature. © 2003 Cable News Network LP, LLLP.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 4259 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A simple blood test could be the first objective measure of how much pain someone is experiencing, the test's inventor claims. As well as revolutionising pain research, the assay could prove invaluable for doctors treating young children, people who are not fully conscious, and anyone else unable to communicate properly. Many pain researchers are sceptical about whether such a test is possible. But inventor Shaun Kilminster claims his test has already been shown to work in headache sufferers. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 4258 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Visual noise dampens images that feed tobacco habit. JOANNE BAKER Watching a flickering chequerboard pattern curbs smokers' cravings, a new study finds1. It stops the mind dwelling on the visual images that conjure the anticipated pleasure of tobacco. "We hope to come up with a programme for a handheld computer that can be used as a crutch," psychologist Jon May of the University of Sheffield told this week's British Association Festival of Science in Salford. May's team made smokers imagine different scenes and sounds, such as a sunset or a baby crying, while monitoring their cravings. Others watched an abstract grid of scrambled black and white squares flickering on and off 1,000 times a second. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 4257 - Posted: 06.24.2010

BY WILLIAM G. SCHULZ The sugar maples in Southwestern Ohio glow fire-engine red in late autumn. On sunny days, they light up the gently rolling landscape of farm towns like Camden with an exquisite and memorable beauty. I last visited Camden on such a day in November 2001. Detective David Lindloff, whom I had met on the phone two weeks earlier, had invited me to his office. He had information for me--some of it comforting, most of it quite disturbing. "We found this next to your brother's body," Lindloff said, handing me a small brown bottle. The label read Thomas P. Schulz, and the medication prescribed--and long expired--was the pain-relieving narcotic OxyContin. Tom, at 39, was dead from an overdose. Copyright © 2003 American Chemical Society

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 4256 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientific researchers who use human subjects in their work rely on their ability to speak or write to find out what they want to know. But as this Sciencentral News video reports, researchers who learn from babies don’t have that luxury. “Anybody who has raised an infant knows that it’s very difficult to get this kind of information out of a baby," says Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the University of Washington Center for Mind, Brain and Learning and professor of speech and hearing sciences. "We can’t as parents ask them what they know, what they see, what they perceive, or what they’re learning. So you have to be very clever in the laboratory to capitalize on the things kids do naturally." In this case, Kuhl and her team are capitalizing on infants' natural tendency to turn their heads when they hear a change in sound, by using an adaptation of a procedure invented at the University of Washington originally designed to test infants for hearing loss. "In the original design…it was just silence in the background, and babies were encouraged to turn their heads when a sound was presented," explains Kuhl. "If they did so, the animal in the box would light up and dance. It was very, very effective in diagnosing children with hearing impairment." © ScienCentral, 2000-2003.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Language
Link ID: 4255 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NewScientist.com news service Women are better at instant counting than men, a mass mathematical experiment has revealed. Over 18,000 people took part in the research, using touch screens inserted among interactive exhibits at a science exhibition in Bristol, UK. The study confirms that the brain has two distinct ways of counting, an idea first proposed 50 years ago. "If I hold up three fingers, most people don't need to count how many there are," says lead scientist Brian Butterworth, from University of College London. But for more than a handful of objects, the time needed by people for their calculation jumps and increases as more objects are added. This suggests people use two different mechanisms to assess small and large numbers. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 4254 - Posted: 06.24.2010

-- Dirt may help scientists answer a question that has baffled them for decades: How does chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer and elk spread from animal to animal? By turning to the land, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers show that prions - infectious proteins considered to be at the root of the disease - literally stick to some soil types, suggesting that the landscape may serve as an environmental reservoir for the disease. The findings will be discussed during a poster presentation on Wednesday, Sept. 10, in New York City at the 226th national meeting of the American Chemical Society. Copyright © 1992-2003 Bio Online, Inc

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 4253 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ATLANTA–Emory University researchers have found that paroxetine HCL (Paxil) produces measurable improvement in verbal memory and also increases the size of the hippocampus, a key area of the brain involved in learning and remembering, in persons suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Their study, which will be published in the Oct. 1 edition of Biological Psychiatry, also found that Paxil significantly reduces the three main symptom clusters of PTSD–re-experiencing the traumatic event; avoidance and emotional numbing related to experiences that recall the traumatic event; and hyperarousal at inappropriate times. The study was directed by J. Douglas Bremner, MD, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Department of Radiology at the Emory University School of Medicine, and Director of Mental Health Research at the Atlanta Veteran's Affairs Medical Center. Eric Vermetten, MD, former research fellow in the Emory Psychiatry Department and now at the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands, was first author of the study. The study, conducted over a 12-month period, was based on 23 persons who suffered with PTSD from a variety of causes, most commonly childhood abuse.

Keyword: Stress; Depression
Link ID: 4252 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New nerve cells put fall foraging on fast track The "senior moments" that herald old age, and the ability to forget where we put something we held in our hands just moments ago, give us humans much cause to envy a species like the black-capped chickadee. Especially when fall is right around the corner. Every autumn, the chickadee roams a territory covering tens of square miles, gathering seeds and storing them in hundreds of hiding places in trees and on the ground. Over the harsh winter that follows, the tireless songbird, which weighs about 12 grams and fits inside the typical human hand, faithfully re-visits its caches to feed.

Keyword: Neurogenesis; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 4251 - Posted: 09.12.2003

Reviewed by Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer It's been said that anybody who claims to understand consciousness clearly doesn't. Undaunted, neuroscientists have been offering at least partial solutions to the consciousness "problem," building machines that can learn and maybe even "think," analyzing what's different about brain-damaged patients, designing clever brain-imaging experiments that explain at least a little something about the "neural correlates of consciousness" without ever resorting to introspection. Introspection, after all, is what philosophers do. They may do it in formal ways, with impressively technical results, but lately the experimentalists seem to be taking the lead, tackling the age-old questions of mind and self-awareness with remarkable gusto. ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Laterality
Link ID: 4250 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The National Academies’ National Research Council released a much-anticipated report on Tuesday, September 9, 2003, on combating underage drinking. One recommendation, reducing young peoples' exposure to alcohol advertising. As this ScienCentral News video reports, neuroscientists have studied alcohol ads' appeal to underage drinkers. Underage drinking is a serious problem in the United States, costing Americans $53 billion each year. A report released by the National Academies’ National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine says, “More young people drink alcohol than use other drugs or smoke tobacco”. The report calls for better policing of alcohol ads because “a substantial portion of alcohol advertising reaches an underage audience or is presented in a style that is attractive to youth”. © ScienCentral, 2000-2003.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 4249 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A device akin to an inflatable sleeping bag could make the difference between life and death after a heart attack. Called a "shock sheet", it works by squeezing blood out of the legs, which boosts blood flow to the heart and brain. If the heart stops beating - a cardiac arrest - brain damage can start after just a few minutes. When medics reach the patient they use defibrillators to shock the heart into restarting. If that fails, they try cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), which involves manually pumping the patient's heart and inflating the lungs. But CPR delivers only 10 to 15 per cent of normal blood flow to the brain. The "shock sheet" is designed to be wrapped round a patient and inflated to raise upper body blood pressure within 30 seconds. And it can be put in place while normal CPR is being carried out. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 4248 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By GARDINER HARRIS A federal drug advisory panel yesterday rejected pleas from members of Congress and drug enforcement officials that sales of the widely abused painkiller OxyContin be severely restricted. But officials from the Bush administration told the panel they were seriously considering even broader rules requiring doctors to get special training before being allowed to prescribe OxyContin or any other controlled narcotic. The changes are intended to stem a growing tide of prescription drug abuse. OxyContin is responsible for 500 to 1,000 deaths a year, a panel member estimated yesterday. Some two million people used narcotics recreationally in 2001, the last year for which figures were available, up from 1.5 million in 1998 and 400,000 in the mid-1980's, according to data presented to the panel. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 4247 - Posted: 09.11.2003

Picky paternal protection questions evolution of promiscuity. JOANNE BAKER Baboon fathers rush to protect their kids in fights, a DNA study has revealed1. Somehow the males spot their sons even in spats between the offspring of mothers both of which they have mated. The finding means that researchers must re-examine why multiple mating occurs in primates, and the reasons for paternal care when it does. In bird societies, where promiscuity is the norm, having several supportive dads was thought to secure more protection for juveniles overall. "It reopens the question of how natural selection favours recognition mechanisms," says Paul Sherman of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who studies the social behaviour of animals. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 4246 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston and Jefferson Medical College have found that the body’s natural biological clock is more sensitive to shorter wavelength blue light than it is to the longer wavelength green light, which is needed to see. The discovery proves what scientists have suspected over the last decade: a second, non-visual photoreceptor system drives the body’s internal clock, which sets sleep patterns and other physiological and behavioral functions. “This discovery will have an immediate impact on the therapeutic use of light for treating winter depression and circadian disorders,” says George Brainard, Ph.D., professor of neurology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. “Some makers of light therapy equipment are developing prototypes with enhanced blue light stimuli.” ©2003 Thomas Jefferson University Hospital

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 4245 - Posted: 06.24.2010

DURHAM, N.C. -- For the first time in any animal, Duke University Medical Center researchers have linked a single pheromone receptor in the fruit fly to a specific sexual behavior. Pheromones are chemical signals exuded by many animals -- including humans -- that serve as stimuli to evoke behavioral responses in other individuals of the same species. Pheromones often attract members of the opposite sex and provide important cues during courtship and mating. Yet little is known about pheromone receptors, which are the protein switches nestled in cell membranes that trigger responses to pheromones, said Duke Medical Center geneticist Hubert Amrein, Ph.D., senior author of the study. © 2001-2003 Duke University Medical Center.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4244 - Posted: 06.24.2010