NSF-funded study suggests paternal care may be ancient trait in primates In a finding that surprised researchers, a recent three-year study of five baboon groups at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya reveals that baboon fathers overwhelming side with their offspring when intervening in disputes. The study, which appears in the Sept. 11 issue of the journal Nature , was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Chicago Zoological Society, the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation and the National Geographic Society. Not that baboons have a bad-dad reputation, but their links to females and immature baboons is rather loose by primate standards. For example, females and males have multiple mating partners, and they do not form permanent bonds with each other.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4243 - Posted: 09.11.2003

UCSF researchers have identified a biochemical feedback system in rats that could explain why some people crave comfort foods - such as chocolate chip cookies and greasy cheeseburgers - when they are chronically stressed, and why such people are apt to gain weight in the abdomen. The finding, to be published this week on-line in the Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focuses on a glucocorticoid steroid hormone (corticosterone in rats, cortisol in humans) that plays a key role in the stress-response system. In their study, the researchers determined that 24 hours after activation of the chronic stress system - which stimulates a flood of hormonal signaling from the hypothalamus to the adrenal glands – glucocorticoids prompt rats to engage in pleasure-seeking behaviors, which include eating high-energy foods (sucrose and lard). The animals develop abdominal obesity, and the negative aspects of the chronic stress response system, otherwise ushered in by the glucocorticoids, are blunted. The researchers suspect that the metabolic signal to inhibit the stress system comes directly from fat depots. The finding offers an explanation into how chronic stress can be inhibited, or curbed. While the body's acute response to stress - say to being cut off in traffic by a speeding car - diminishes through a naturally occurring inhibitory feedback mechanism of the adrenal stress system, its chronic response to stress - in which a barrage of threats, scares or frustrations occur over days, weeks or months -- becomes chronically excited. Over time, the elevated stress level can initiate a host of deleterious effects on the body - a loss or gain of weight, depression, obesity (associated with type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease and stroke), and a loss of brain tissue.

Keyword: Stress; Obesity
Link ID: 4242 - Posted: 06.24.2010

People suffering from Asperger's syndrome are not getting the help they need because doctors are not accepting the diagnosis, it was claimed today. Asperger's - a condition similar to autism - was only recognised relatively recently by experts. Conservative MP Angela Browning says that too many psychiatrists do not have the right training to recognise it. MPs have the chance to use a debate in the House of Commons on Wednesday to discuss the issue. Patients with Asperger's have a normal IQ, but often have particular obsessions or preoccupations which lead to unusual behaviour. They can have trouble with social skills, perhaps in interpreting body language - although occasionally the syndrome manifests as a remarkable talent in a particular creative area. Asperger's patients can also have heightened sensations of touch, taste or smell which may disturb them. (C) BBC

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 4241 - Posted: 09.10.2003

By Kristine Krug, in Salford When and how did the human mind evolve? These are two of the big questions researchers from the UK universities of Liverpool and Southampton will tackle from October. They will undertake a project called Lucy To Language: The Archaeology Of The Social Brain. It is being funding to the tune of one million pounds by the British Academy, the largest single research grant the organisation has ever handed out. The project will bring together archaeologists, evolutionary psychologists, social anthropologists, sociologists and linguists. They will attempt to reconstruct the social lives of our ancestors - to work out precisely how they behaved using archaeological evidence of their bones and tools and making comparisons with modern humans and other primates. New models developed for understanding primate behaviour can now be applied to the hard evidence of our ancestors. This should help us better understand how our brains have developed since the famous early hominid called Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis), who lived in Africa about four million years ago. (C) BBC

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 4240 - Posted: 09.10.2003

A vote to permit stem-cell research is a vote to alleviate suffering, says former MP REGINALD STACKHOUSE By REGINALD STACKHOUSE Let's call him Jack. Let's also admit he's serving a life sentence. Jack will spend the rest of his life behind locked doors. But not for murder. Not for child abuse. Nor any other crime. Alzheimer's disease has taken over Jack's brain and he can't be trusted to live outside a security-controlled care centre. It's a pathetic fate for an academic whose life had been dedicated to the mind. Pathetic to be cut off from family and friends. Pathetic never to know his first grandchild. Pathetic most of all because this could be prevented. © 2003 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc.

Keyword: Stem Cells; Parkinsons
Link ID: 4239 - Posted: 06.24.2010

MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) -- Mysteriously snuffed out candles, weird sensations and shivers down the spine may not be due to the presence of ghosts in haunted houses but to very low frequency sound that is inaudible to humans. British scientists have shown in a controlled experiment that the extreme bass sound known as infrasound produces a range of bizarre effects in people including anxiety, extreme sorrow and chills -- supporting popular suggestions of a link between infrasound and strange sensations. "Normally you can't hear it," Dr Richard Lord, an acoustic scientist at the National Physical Laboratory in England who worked on the project, said on Monday. © 2003 Cable News Network LP, LLLP.

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 4238 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Learning disabilities result from general problems in the brain rather than specific genetic or neurological defects, the British Association Festival of Science in Salford was told on Tuesday. A large but unidentified group of genes, each with very small effects on overall brain function, work together to determine most of mental ability, says Robert Plomin, at the Institute of Psychiatry in London. If Plomin's theory proves correct, common learning disabilities such as dyslexia will need a dramatic redefinition. Dyslexia is commonly defined as a reading problem in someone who has otherwise normal intelligence. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Intelligence
Link ID: 4237 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A small group of genes on the X chromosome regulate the brain's "threat-detector" and might explain the high prevalence of autism among males, researchers have discovered. Some people lacking these genes have problems recognising fear in another person's face, a common trait in autism. They also have abnormal amygdalas - a brain area known as the "fear centre". The results provide a possible genetic mechanism for the sex bias of autism. Other recent research has identified a gene in the same region of the X chromosome that correlates with the severity of autism. However, confirmation of this explanation of autism's sex bias is still far off - researchers have not yet determined which specific gene or genes are responsible and have not looked at the function of these genes in autistic people. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 4236 - Posted: 06.24.2010

When a plane arrives late to an airport, it affects more than just the frustrated passengers on the tardy plane – the ripple effects could throw the entire day’s timetable off schedule. Similarly, in a new study, North Carolina State University geneticists have found that changes to genes regulating olfactory behavior in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, a popular insect model for genetics, have far greater implications than previously appreciated. The study is presented in a paper published in the Sept. 7 online edition of Nature Genetics. Dr. Robert Anholt, professor of zoology and genetics, director of NC State’s Keck Center for Behavioral Biology and the paper’s lead author, said that in the study of how genes affect behavior, the days of thinking about genes in a linear fashion are over.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 4235 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Stacy Finz, Chronicle Staff Writer The two pipe bomb explosions at an Emeryville biotechnology firm last week were part of a surge of extremism by animal rights and environmental militants that activists predict will increase as fringes of the movement grow more frustrated with peaceful protest. Though the threat may be nothing more than bravado, FBI agents are taking it seriously. "It is true that we've seen an increase in the intensity and level of damage," said Phil Celestini, a supervisory agent in the FBI's domestic terrorism unit in Washington. "And the Emeryville incident was certainly an escalation in their tactics." ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 4234 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D. Not long ago, I received an exasperated call from a colleague who is a kind and skilled internist, begging me to see one of his patients. Despite her complaints, he could find nothing physically wrong with her, but she kept insisting on more medical tests. When I met his patient, she was emphatic that she didn't need a psychiatrist. "This is real, and this is not in my head," she said. "I can feel my heart beat constantly, and I'm afraid I'll have a heart attack." In my psychiatric consultation, I discovered that the woman, in her mid-40's, had troubling physical sensations — palpitations, headaches and muscle pain. Minor aliments, like colds, were invariably taken as signs of life-threatening illnesses. In short, she worried constantly about being sick. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 4233 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NANCY WARTIK Dr. Katharine A. Phillips thought she knew a lot about mental illness. As a psychiatric resident at Harvard from 1988 to 1991, she was well versed in ailments like depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. But one day, when a distraught patient said his hair was the cause of all his misery, Dr. Phillips was stymied. Searching the psychiatric literature, she found references to an obscure diagnosis known as body dysmorphic disorder, or B.D.D. Its sufferers, she learned, are tormented by the notion that some part of their body — hair, nose, skin, hips — is ugly, abnormal or deformed, when it actually is not. Their obsessions with the imagined flaws may cause them to spend hours staring in mirrors, to shun other people, to seek unnecessary cosmetic surgery or even attempt suicide. "If you haven't known someone with B.D.D., it's easy to trivialize it," she said. "But if you see how devastating this disorder can be, you take it very seriously." Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia; OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Link ID: 4232 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bats inspire vibrating walking stick for visually impaired. JOANNE BAKER A bat-inspired sonar walking stick could help visually impaired people sense their surroundings. The lightweight device emits sound too high-pitched for the human ear to detect. It also picks up the reflections of these waves to map obstacles up to three metres away in three dimensions. Buttons on the cane's handle vibrate gently to warn a user to dodge low ceilings and sidestep objects blocking their path. So far the cane has been tested by 25 visually impaired people in Britain, Germany, Canada and Australia. Participants received 30 minutes of training. "Feedback was very positive," designer Dean Waters told this week's British Association Festival of Science in Salford. "Plus, people on the street were really interested in these modern gadgets." © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 4231 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Durham, N.C. -- People who begin smoking in their teens may be particularly vulnerable to long-term nicotine addiction, according to an animal study conducted by Duke University Medical Center pharmacologists. The study emphasizes that the age at which individuals begin using nicotine can have a major physiological impact to encourage later use of the drug. In their study, the researchers compared the amount of nicotine self-administered by adolescent rats to the amount used by animals first exposed during adulthood. Young rats showed nearly double the rate of nicotine use compared with those initially exposed as adults, the study found. The adolescents' heavier nicotine use persisted into adulthood, the team reports in the September 2003 issue of the journal Psychopharmacology.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 4230 - Posted: 09.09.2003

By Beth Greenberg, Globe Correspondent, It's no great wonder that books such as Oliver Sacks's "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" become bestsellers. They are about us, or who we fear becoming if we are the unfortunate victims of undetected brain tumors, epilepsy, or car accidents that result in brain hemorrhages and brain changes. Sacks's books, and a new, captivating work by British neuropsychologist Paul Broks, draw the curtain back on what happens if, as a result of accident or fate, our brains -- or the brains of people we love -- are altered to the degree that the world, and the many things in it, become unfamiliar. Much like Sacks, Broks uses case studies to illustrate the many directions our brains can take us without our permission. But Sacks is a neurologist, and his domain is biology. Broks, in contrast, is a neuropsychologist, whose field focuses less on the physiology of the brain than on its emotional, behavioral, and cognitive manifestations. © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 4229 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Experts who gave a dramatic warning that ecstasy led to brain damage based their study on a huge blunder, reports health editor Jo Revill The Observer It was billed as the one of the most dramatic warnings the world has ever received over the dangers of ecstasy. A study from one of America's leading universities concluded that taking the drug for just one evening could leave clubbers with irreversible brain damage, and trigger the onset of Parkinson's disease. The study, published in the eminent journal Science last September, had an immediate impact. Doctors and anti-drug crusaders spoke of a 'neurological time bomb' facing the young. Others suggested that taking one of the tablets was the equivalent of playing Russian roulette with the brain, and demanded tighter 'anti-rave' laws to deal with it. But today, scientists are facing up to the humiliation of admitting that the stark results they reported in the study were not a breakthrough but a terrible, humiliating blunder. © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 4228 - Posted: 06.24.2010

An international research team led by Drs. Berge Minassian and Stephen Scherer of The Hospital for Sick Children (HSC) and the University of Toronto (U of T) has identified a gene responsible for the most severe form of teenage-onset epilepsy, known as Lafora disease (LD). The discovery is reported in the September issue of the scientific journal Nature Genetics. "Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders affecting over 40 million people worldwide," said Dr. Berge Minassian, one of the study's senior authors, an HSC neurologist and scientist, and an assistant professor in the Department of Paediatrics at U of T. "Lafora disease is one form of epilepsy that occurs during early adolescence and is characterized by seizures and progressive neurological degeneration. Death usually occurs within a decade of the first symptoms." Fifty years of investigation led doctors to suspect that Lafora disease was caused by problems with carbohydrate metabolism in the brain. Beyond this, however, the fundamental defect triggering the malfunction was unknown. In 1998, the HSC team identified the first gene implicated in Lafora disease, called EPM2A.

Keyword: Epilepsy
Link ID: 4227 - Posted: 09.08.2003

CPAP therapy can improve couple’s mental and physical health (NORTHBROOK, IL) – Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) for the treatment of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) not only improves patients' lives, it can improve the lives of their bed partners, says a study published in the September issue of CHEST, the peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP). The study found that when patients with OSA were treated with CPAP, the mental and physical health, and overall quality of life (QOL) of patients and their bed partners significantly improved. OSA is a common disorder that is characterized by repetitive episodes of upper airway closures during sleep that result in arousal from sleep and can often lead to daytime sleepiness. CPAP prevents upper airway closure, improving sleep quality and, subsequently, reducing daytime sleepiness. "Snoring and sleep apnea interfere with the quality of sleep of both the patient and the bed partner. Many bed partners choose to sleep in separate rooms rather than endure continuous sleepless nights caused by sleep apnea," said lead author James M. Parish, MD, FCCP, Chair, Division of Pulmonary Medicine and Director, Sleep Disorders Center, Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, Arizona. "With CPAP therapy, patients and their partners can experience restful nights which can ultimately benefit them physically and mentally."

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 4226 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Pouring your emotions out on paper could help wounds heal quicker, researchers say. It is thought that writing about troubling experiences helps people deal with them. This could then help the immune system work more effectively, researchers told the British Psychological Society conference in Stoke-on-Trent. They say their findings offer a cheap and easy to administer way of helping patients heal faster. In the study, which involved 36 people, half were asked to write about the most upsetting experience they had had, spelling out how they had felt. The rest of the study participants wrote about trivial things, such as how they spent their free time. (C) BBC

Keyword: Neuroimmunology; Stress
Link ID: 4225 - Posted: 09.07.2003

Susan Milius For the first time, scientists have found a poisonous frog that takes up a toxin from its prey and then tweaks the chemical to make it a more deadly weapon. At least three species of the 4-to-5-centimeter-long Dendrobates frogs of the New World tropics modify an alkaloid to create one that's about five times as poisonous, according to a team led by John W. Daly of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) in Bethesda, Md. The souped-up poison, one of a class called pumiliotoxins, ends up as a protective agent in the frogs' skin, the researchers report in an upcoming Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "It's an important thing, showing how chemistry connects the life of one organism to another," comments chemical ecologist Jerrold Meinwald of Cornell University. Although scientists have found that some creatures other than frogs customize a basic toxin for various purposes, "I don't know of any other examples of improving a defensive weapon," Meinwald says. Copyright ©2003 Science Service.

Keyword: Neurotoxins
Link ID: 4224 - Posted: 06.24.2010