Being in love is physically similar to the buzz of taking drugs and also has withdrawal symptoms, an expert on addiction has said. Dr John Marsden says dopamine - the drug released by the brain when it is aroused - has similar effects on the body and mind as cocaine or speed. "Attraction and lust really is like a drug. It leaves you wanting more," the National Addiction Centre head said. His findings will appear in a BBC programme to be broadcast next month. "Being attracted to someone sparks the same incredible feelings no matter who you are. Love really does know no boundaries," he said. According to Dr Marsden - a chartered psychologist - the brain which processes emotions becomes "fired up" when talking to someone it finds attractive. (C) BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 4606 - Posted: 11.26.2003

Larry Arnhart The power of biotechnology for changing human nature has been exaggerated. The most fervent advocates of biotechnology welcome the prospect of using it to transform our nature to make us superhuman. The most fervent critics of biotechnology warn us that its power for transforming our nature will seduce us into a Faustian bargain that will dehumanize us. Both sides agree that biotechnology is leading us to a “posthuman future.” But this assumption is false. It ignores how evolution has shaped the adaptive complexity of our human nature—our bodies, our brains, and our desires—in ways that resist technological manipulation. A Darwinian view of human nature—one truer to the facts of human biology and human experience—reveals the limits of biotechnology, so that we can reject both the redemptive hopes of its advocates and the apocalyptic fears of its critics. Biotechnology will be limited both in its technical means and in its moral ends. It will be limited in its technical means because complex behavioral traits are rooted in the intricate interplay of many genes, which interact with developmental contingencies and unique life histories to form brains that respond flexibly to changing circumstances. Consequently, precise technological manipulation of human nature to enhance desirable traits while avoiding undesirable side effects will be very difficult if not impossible. Biotechnology will also be limited in its moral ends, because the motivation for biotechnological manipulations will come from the same natural desires that have always characterized human nature. In the first issue of The New Atlantis, Leon Kass suggests that if biotechnology were to transform human nature, it would do so to satisfy the human dream of physical and mental perfection—“ageless bodies, happy souls.” But how likely is that? As an indication of what he foresees, Kass says that with drugs, “we can eliminate psychic distress, we can produce states of transient euphoria, and we can engineer more permanent conditions of good cheer, optimism, and contentment.” He refers to those “powerful yet seemingly safe anti-depressant and mood brighteners like Prozac, capable in some people of utterly changing their outlook on life from that of Eeyore to that of Mary Poppins.” Similarly, psychiatrist Peter Kramer—in his best-selling book Listening to Prozac—described patients using Prozac who were not just cured of depression but so transformed in their personalities as to be “better than well.” Shy, quiet people were apparently turned into ebullient and socially engaging people. “Like Garrison Keillor’s marvelous Powdermilk biscuits,” Kramer observed, “Prozac gives these patients the courage to do what needs to be done.” This was the beginning, he concluded, of “cosmetic psychopharmacology,” by which people could use chemicals to take on whatever personality they might prefer.

Keyword: Evolution; Depression
Link ID: 4605 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JERE LONGMAN LANO, Tex., — After recording one save last season, Taylor Hooton expected to join the starting rotation next spring for the baseball team at Plano West Senior High School. "You could count on the kid to throw strikes," said Billy Ajello, Taylor's best friend and a catcher at Plano West, which is located amid the affluent sprawl north of Dallas. By all accounts, Taylor was popular and ebullient. He was a cousin of Burt Hooton, the former major league pitcher, and his brother pitched in college. Next spring, he would make his own mark during his senior season. But on July 15, a month past his 17th birthday, Taylor Hooton killed himself. The authorities ruled the death a suicide by hanging. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Depression
Link ID: 4604 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Coordinated begging extracts more food. JOHN WHITFIELD Children accompanying their parents on Christmas shopping trips: take a tip from black-headed gull chicks, and team up with your siblings to increase pester power. Gull nestlings put aside their differences and coordinate their begging to extract the maximum amount of regurgitated food from mum and dad, French researchers have discovered. It flies in the face of conventional wisdom - children should fight each other for the biggest share of parental care. "Competition should increase with the number of chicks, but that's not what we found," says Nicolas Mathevon of Jean Monnet University in Saint-Etienne. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 4603 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Children usually spill if trying to drink from a full cup, but adults rarely do. How we learn to almost automatically complete complex movements -- like how to lift a cup and tip it so the liquid is right at the edge when we're ready to drink -- is one of our brain's mysterious abilities. Now, by conducting experiments with robots and humans, scientists at Johns Hopkins have solved part of this mystery and created a new computer model that accurately reflects how the brain uses experience to improve motor control. "Now we have a much better idea of how the brain uses information from a variety of sources to create a model of the world around us, and how errors modify that model and change subsequent movements," says Reza Shadmehr, Ph.D., associate professor of biomedical engineering at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "We don't just know how to control objects around us, we have to learn how."

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 4602 - Posted: 11.26.2003

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Children with unusually delayed speech tend to listen with the right side of the brain rather than the left side of the brain, according to a study published in the December issue of the journal Radiology. Preliminary study results were presented at the Radiological Society of North America's (RSNA) Annual Meeting in 2002. The research represents the first time functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used to investigate brain activity associated with speech delay. "With the advent of neuroimaging, we saw a new way of looking at language disorders," said Nolan R. Altman, M.D., co-author of the study and chief of radiology at Miami Children's Hospital. The researchers completed fMRI studies on 17 abnormally speech-delayed children and 35 age-matched children without delayed speech to compare the brain activation patterns between the two groups. To study the brain's reaction to passive language, the children's brains were imaged as they listened to audiotapes of their mothers. The children were between ages 2 and 8 with a mean age of approximately 4 ½ years.

Keyword: Language; Laterality
Link ID: 4601 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Findings suggest olanzapine’s advantages may be limited WEST HAVEN, Conn. - A study at 17 Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals comparing an older, pennies-a-day schizophrenia drug with a newer, far more expensive one found little advantage to the high-ticket drug. The researchers, who report their findings in the November 26 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, say this is the first long-term, rigorously designed experimental study of the newer drug, which boasts U.S. sales of $2 billion annually. The researchers compared haloperidol, one of an older class of schizophrenia drugs called typical antipsychotics, to olanzapine, the most expensive among the newer atypical antipsychotics. Used alone, the older medications are more likely to cause troubling side effects such as tremors and twitches. But the study had doctors prescribe haloperidol as they would ideally in actual practice-accompanied from the outset by another drug, benztropine, to minimize side effects. "We gave the benztropine prophylactically along with the haloperidol, as is needed for a fair and clinically informative comparison," said lead author Robert Rosenheck, MD, director of VA's Northeast Program Evaluation Center in West Haven, Connecticut, and a professor of psychiatry and public health at Yale University Medical School.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 4600 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers tracking the ebb and flow of cognitive function in the human brain have discovered surprising differences in the ability of younger and older adults to shut down a brain network normally active during periods of passive daydreaming. The differences, which are especially pronounced in people with dementia, may provide a clear and powerful new method for diagnosing individuals in the very early stages of Alzheimer's disease. "In young adults, there are parts of the brain that are very active during a passive free-thinking state, but these areas appear to shut down dramatically or 'turn off' when the person is asked to do something," said Cindy Lustig, research team member and post-doctoral fellow in psychology at Washington University in St. Louis. "Interestingly, older people, especially those with Alzheimer's disease, don't show this same kind of brain activity during free- thinking, resting conditions." In a study published Nov. 25 in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, Lustig and colleagues detail results of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) tests conducted on groups of young adults, older adults and adults experiencing early signs of Alzheimer's-related dementia.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 4599 - Posted: 11.26.2003

Scientists have uncovered further evidence that an ingredient of cannabis may trigger miscarriage. US scientists found that anandamide, at low concentrations, appeared to play a vital role in the implantation of the embryo into the womb lining. However, writing the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they said that even slightly higher doses might interfere with that process. The researchers say that the embryo is a "target" for cannabis chemicals. Anandamide is a substance which occurs naturally in the body, as well as being one of the cocktail of chemicals released when cannabis is burned. The strong suspicion that it naturally plays a role in fertility is boosted by the fact that the body produces more just before an embryo is meant to implant in the womb wall, and less at the time of implantation. (C) BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 4598 - Posted: 11.25.2003

By BARRY MEIER Over the past two decades, conflicting medical ideas have surfaced about narcotic painkillers, the drugs that Rush Limbaugh blames for his addiction while being treated for chronic back pain. And both of them, not surprisingly, have centered on the bottom-line question: just how great a risk of abuse and addiction do narcotics pose to pain patients? Throughout much of the last century, doctors believed that large numbers of patients who used these drugs would become addicted to them. That incorrect view meant that cancer sufferers and other patients with serious pain were denied drugs that could have brought them relief. But over the past decade, a very different viewpoint has emerged, one championed by doctors specializing in pain treatment and drug companies eager to broaden the market for such drugs. It held that these medications posed scant risk to pain patients, and some experts now believe that it also had unfortunate consequences because it caused, among other things, physicians to develop a false sense of security about these drugs. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 4597 - Posted: 11.25.2003

By NICHOLAS WADE Fossil bones record the history of the human form but they say little about behavior. A richer source on the way human social behavior evolved may come from chimpanzees, with whom people shared a common ancestor as recently as five or six million years ago. From knowledge of chimp behavior, biologists can plausibly infer the social behavior of the shared human-chimp ancestor, and from that reconstruct the evolutionary history of human social behavior. Such reconstructions are subject to much uncertainty and debate, especially when they imply a genetic basis to human behaviors like living in communities based on male kinship, or conducting lethal campaigns against neighbors. But the goal is to shed light on the full sweep of human social behavior, tracing its evolution from an apelike community with separate male and female hierarchies five million years ago to the family-based societies of today. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 4596 - Posted: 11.25.2003

Chimps are the most notorious swingers among the great apes. Their wanton sex lives, in which males compete to impregnate females, have led males to evolve huge testicles, three times the size of humans'. Now a study finds that the effects of promiscuity extend inside the testes as well. The research uncovered the genetic footprint of rapid evolution in a male protein that helps block the sperm of subsequent flings from entering the vagina. It's not unusual for female primates to mate with more than one male in rapid succession. In response, males have evolved large testes that make voluminous ejaculates of sperm and cocktails of proteins. One of those proteins, called semenogelin, coagulates into a kind of vaginal plug (gelatinous in humans, solid in chimps) that keeps out sperm from the female's subsequent suitors. But another ingredient, an enzyme that rides in the front part of the ejaculate, can breach the plug. That kind of reproductive head-to-head means that new and improved versions of the gene for semenogelin ought to constantly appear and spread as they give their owners the edge in sperm competition, says evolutionary biologist Sarah Kingan, then an undergraduate at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. This would lead to reduced variability in the gene, as more effective versions sweep through the population again and again, each time replacing outdated ones. To test if such an evolutionary sweep has actually happened, Kingan and her faculty advisors determined the DNA sequences of the gene in 12 humans, 10 chimps, and seven gorillas. Copyright © 2003 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 4595 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ST. PAUL, MN ? A 33-year study of all births by women in Norway with Myasthenia Gravis (MG) confirms that MG is associated with an increased risk for complications during pregnancy, including a threefold higher incidence of preterm rupture of the amniotic membranes, and twice the occurrence of delivery by cesarean section. The study is reported in the November 25 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Data for the study was collected from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway, based on compulsory notification of all births in the country. The study included 127 births by women with MG and the 1.9 million births by women without MG. Women with MG had twice the rate of cesarean section (17.3 percent) when compared to the control group (8.6 percent). Preterm rupture of amniotic membranes occurred three times more often ? or 5.5 percent ? compared to 1.7 percent of the general population.

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 4594 - Posted: 11.25.2003

Brain researchers would dearly love to reliably identify changes in brain structure and metabolism associated with early Alzheimer's disease -- before symptoms emerge. Such information would buy precious time and perhaps permit potential therapies to delay or even prevent the memory-robbing disease. Now, a new study by NYU School of Medicine researchers brings this goal one step closer to being realized. Using a new technique to measure the volume of the brain, they were able to identify healthy individuals who would later develop memory impairment, a symptom associated with a high risk for future Alzheimer's disease. The study is published in the December issue of the journal Radiology.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Brain imaging
Link ID: 4593 - Posted: 11.25.2003

Scientists have identified four new drugs which they believe could provide powerful weapons against brain tumours. One of these drugs may even fight three different types of brain tumour. The results follow tests on animals but scientists at the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center in the United States say they expect similar results in humans. Presenting their findings at a conference in Boston, they said the drugs could transform treatment for people who develop brain tumours. "Despite our best efforts in the laboratory and the clinic, the survival rate for glioblastoma - the most common and lethal brain tumour - hasn't changed in 10 years," said Dr Jeremy Rich, who led the study. "This new class of drugs has shown great promise in treating human tumours that were grown in mice and we feel these results are indicative of how the drugs may act in humans." (C)BBC

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 4592 - Posted: 11.24.2003

by Paul Collins In 1994, no eight-year-old girls died in Sweden. Not from poisoning or bone cancer; not from meningitis or car accidents: none. In 1994 there were 112,521 eight-year-old girls, and the following New Year's Day they had become exactly 112,521 nine-year-old girls. This, evolutionary biologist Armand Marie Leroi admits, is a statistical fluke. But it represents centuries of medical progress against childhood mortality. Historically, we live in a uniquely safe time. For all our fears of murder, plagues, and plane crashes, the vast majority of us will live long and die of drearily familiar ailments: heart disease, cancer, and so forth. We die from internal failures—from aging, a series of slowly unraveling genetic vulnerabilities. "Were it not for aging's pervasive effects," Leroi notes, "95 percent of us would celebrate our centenaries; half of us would better the biblical Patriarchs by centuries and live for more than a thousand years." If conquering death is medicine's ultimate goal, then perhaps the ever shortening genetic sequences called telomeres, where a cell's regenerative powers trickle away like hourglass sand, are the goalkeepers. But—surprise!—there are cells whose telomeres don't shorten, and they thrive vibrantly with endless life. Cancer cells. Copyright © 2003 Village Voice Media, Inc.,

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 4591 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Survey finds mercury in 4 species at markets in Bay Area Jane Kay, Chronicle Environment Writer Four popular varieties of fish sold by high-end markets in the Bay Area contain toxic mercury at levels suspected of causing health problems, a Chronicle/CBS5 survey has found. Recent reports have raised new concerns about the mercury content of such big, ocean-caught fish as swordfish and tuna, including a study last year of local residents who ate fish several times a week. The Chronicle and CBS5 wanted to find out just how much mercury a consumer might be getting from fish sold at some of the Bay Area's best fish markets. The results underscore what many longtime fish lovers and health- conscious consumers may not completely understand -- that consuming large amounts of certain types of fish can jeopardize one's health. And for some people, particularly children and pregnant women, no amount of these fish would be safe. ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Neurotoxins; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 4590 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A quirky phenomenon that scientists once dismissed could help explain the creativity of the human brain By Anne Underwood, NEWSWEEK — As a child, Julian Asher had a theory about the symphony concerts he attended with his parents. “I thought they turned down the lights so you could see the colors better,” he says, describing the “Fantasia”-like scenes that danced before his eyes. Asher wasn’t hallucinating. He’s a synesthete—a rare person for whom one type of sensory input (such as hearing music) evokes an addition-al one (such as seeing colors). In Asher’s ever-shifting vision, violins appear as a rich burgundy, pianos a deep royal purple and cellos “the mellow gold of liquid honey.” IT WASN’T UNTIL Asher began studying neuroscience at Harvard six years ago that he learned there was a name for this phenomenon—synesthesia, from the Greek roots syn (together) and aesthesis (perception). Almost any two senses can be combined. Sights can have sounds, sounds can have tastes and, more commonly, black-and-white numbers and letters can appear colored. For Patricia Lynne Duffy, author of “Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens,” five plus two equals green: her color for seven. Sound crazy? For most of the last century, scientists dismissed synesthesia as the product of overactive imaginations. But in recent years they’ve done an abrupt about-face, not only using modern technology to show that it’s real but also studying it for clues to the brain’s creativity. “Synesthesia is not a mere curiosity,” says retired neurologist Richard Cytowic, who helped spur the current interest. “It’s a window into an enormous expanse of the mind.” Scientists have devised ingenious tests to prove that synesthetes didn’t simply invent their unusual associations. In a 2001 study, Dr. V. S. Ramachandran and Edward Hubbard of the University of California, San Diego, showed volunteers a display of black-and-white digital 2s hidden among 5s (illustration). Most people took several seconds to find all the 2s. To synesthetes, they popped out immediately in contrasting colors. “This proves that it’s a real perceptual phenomenon,” says Ramachandran. Brain scans are confirming the findings. At a Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans two weeks ago, Colin Blakemore and Megan Steven of Oxford University showed that a key color-processing region of the brain really is being activated in one synesthete who says he sees colors when he hears certain words. “What makes this interesting is that he’s been blind for 10 years,” says Steven. © 2003 Newsweek, Inc.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 4589 - Posted: 06.24.2010

If you’re helpless without your glasses, try using your ears. For some tasks, hearing can augment poor eyesight, according to research reported by Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center today at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans. “It has been long known that blind people often develop more acute hearing,” said Dr. Mark Wallace, senior researcher. “What we’ve shown is that hearing can also help people with mildly impaired eyesight and that it works immediately — it doesn’t take time to develop. This suggests that we could find ways to reduce disability in people with vision problems such as cataracts by teaching them to use both senses.” © 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 The Pilot LLC

Keyword: Vision; Hearing
Link ID: 4588 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bacteria, viruses and parasites may cause mental illnesses like depression and perhaps even autism and anorexia By Janet Ginsburg, NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL - Olga Skipko has had the good fortune to live most of her adult life in the Polish village of Gruszki, in the heart of the Puszcza Bialowieska, one of Europe's most beautiful forests and home to wolves, lynxes and the endangered European bison. Unfortunately, the forest is also a breeding ground for disease-carrying ticks. Skipko, 49, thinks she was bitten about 10 years ago, when she began having the classic symptoms of Lyme borreliosis, a tickborne nervous-system disease: headaches and aching joints. She didn't get treatment until 1998. "I was treated with antibiotics and felt a bit better," she says. THAT WAS only the beginning of her troubles. A few years later, she began to forget things and her speaking grew labored. It got so bad that she had to quit her job in a nursery forest and check herself in to a psychiatric clinic. "I hope they will help me," she says. "I promised my children that when I come back home, I will be able to do my favorite crosswords again." Doctors ran a battery of tests and concluded that her mental problems were the advanced stage of the Lyme disease she had contracted years ago. Scientists have long known that some diseases can cause behavioral problems. When penicillin was first used to treat syphilis, thousands of cured schizophrenics were released from mental asylums. Now, however, scientists have evidence that infections may play a far bigger role in mental illness than previously thought. They've linked cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia to a variety of infectious agents, and they're investigating autism, Tourette's and anorexia as well. They're beginning to suspect that bad bugs may cause a great many other mental disorders, too. "The irony is that people talked about syphilis as the 'great imitator'," says University of Louisville biologist Paul Ewald, "but it may be the 'great illustrator'-a model for understanding the causes of chronic diseases." © 2003 Newsweek, Inc.

Keyword: Depression; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 4587 - Posted: 06.24.2010