By Bob Beale, ABC Science Online — Languages evolve and compete with each other much like plants and animals, but those driven to extinction are almost always tongues with a low social status, U.S. research shows. The social status of a language is the most accurate way of predicting whether it will survive, argue researchers in a paper appearing in the journal Nature. They also suggest that active intervention to boost the status of rare and endangered languages can save them. "Thousands of the world's languages are vanishing at an alarming rate, with 90 percent of them being expected to disappear with the current generation," warned Daniel Abrams and Steven Strogatz, both of Cornell University in New York. Copyright © 2003 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 4143 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Sequencing project reveals two different versions make a female, one a male. JOHN WHITFIELD Researchers have discovered the gene that controls honeybees' sex. The finding could help us understand insect behaviour and evolution, and keep beehives healthy1. To become female, an insect needs two different versions of the gene, called csd. A male has one, occasionally two copies of the same version. There are at least a dozen different forms of csd. Such a gene was mooted 50 years ago, and entomologist Robert Page of the University of California, Davis, has spent the past 15 years looking for it. "I expected it to take ten," he says. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 4142 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Findings reported in Science may offer clues to eating disorders, addiction There's a little of Pavlov's dog in all of us, according to new research. Instead of using meat and a ringing bell, scientists have trained humans to hunger for vanilla ice cream, at the sight of an abstract computer image. Not only do we mentally connect the enjoyment of certain foods with unrelated stimuli, our brains can also relax these connections once we're full of that food, the researchers discovered. They report their findings in the journal Science, published by AAAS, the science society. If that mental relaxing process doesn't happen properly, it might leave us with the urge to eat even once we're full. An inability to disconnect the anticipation of food from various sights, sounds, or other stimuli may play a role in compulsive eating, according to author Jay Gottfried of the Institute of Neurology in London.

Keyword: Obesity; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 4141 - Posted: 08.22.2003

Rehovot, Israel--- Is it possible to intentionally forget specific memories, without affecting other memories? Many would undoubtedly be happy to learn that unpleasant memories might be erased. This ability could be especially significant when it comes to the kind of traumatic memories that are debilitating to those experiencing them. It may well be that in the future, we will be able to wipe out, or at least dim, certain types of memories with controlled accuracy. A new fundamental rule governing the workings of the brain, recently discovered by a team of scientists in the Weizmann Institute of Science, headed by Prof. Yadin Dudai of the Neurobiology Department, constitutes a step towards reaching this goal. Every memory that we acquire undergoes a "ripening" process (called consolidation) immediately after it is formed. In this process, it becomes impervious to outside stimulation or drugs that would obliterate it. Until recently, the accepted dogma was that for each separate item of memory, consolidation occurs just once, after which the time window that allows for "memory erasing" closes (usually about an hour or two after the memory is acquired).

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 4140 - Posted: 08.22.2003

By Aaron Levin, Staff Writer Most of the reported health benefits of moderate drinking on brain functioning in middle age become moot when a person’s mental abilities as a teenager are factored in, a new study suggests. For years researchers have debated the pros and cons of moderate alcohol drinking. No one suggests that alcoholism is healthy, but there has been evidence that having no more than one drink a day may actually bolster the heart or the brain, compared to drinking too much or not at all. The connection between alcohol consumption and cognition — the processes of thinking, learning and memory — remains controversial. “Studies have reported negative, positive and nonsignificant effects of alcohol consumption on cognition,” say Dean Krahn, M.D., M.S., and colleagues from the University of Wisconsin. So Krahn decided to test whether the apparent differences in cognition in middle age corresponded more closely to drinking habits or to cognitive abilities in youth.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 4139 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences have identified a gene called RFX4 that is responsible for the birth defect hydrocephalus in mice. Loss of a single copy of this gene in mice leads to a failure of drainage of cerebrospinal fluid from the brain cavity which causes the skull to swell. About one child in 2,000 worldwide is afflicted by hydrocephalus. Identification of the mouse gene provides a means for researchers to study the possible genetic origins of this common birth defect in humans. The gene was discovered when researchers noticed that pups in one line of transgenic mice from a completely different study developed head swelling and neurological abnormalities shortly after birth. The NIEHS research team then cloned the defective gene and found that it was responsible for development of a critical structure in the brain that controls cerebrospinal fluid drainage. All of the mice with the defective gene developed the classic symptoms of hydrocephalus, whereas none of the littermates with the normal gene developed this condition.. Although the head-swelling led to rapid neurological deterioration and death in many of the transgenic animals, a number have survived to reproduce and propagate the line.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 4138 - Posted: 08.22.2003

Leon Trotsky's Great-Granddaughter Is Following Her Own Path to Greatness By Guy Gugliotta, Washington Post Staff Writer Nora Volkow was born three years after Stalin died, and 16 years after the Soviet dictator sent a student with an ice ax to kill her great-grandfather. Her grandmother committed suicide, and her grandfather was shot to death in a Stalinist prison. She grew up in Mexico City knowing that her family was both steeped in greatness and marked by tragedy. Today, Volkow is the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and one of the United States' leading experts on the science of drug addiction. "I've studied alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, marijuana and more recently obesity. There's a pattern in compulsion," she says. "I've never come across a single person that was addicted that wanted to be addicted. Something has happened in their brains that has led to that process, and I want to know what it is." By all accounts, Volkow is an inspired, and sometimes electrifying, thinker. Oh, and she also is the great-granddaughter of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. © 2003 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 4137 - Posted: 06.24.2010

St. Paul, MN –Fifty-year-old museum specimens of the Guamanian flying fox may shed more light on why Guam’s Chamorro people once had an extremely high incidence of ALS-parkinsonism dementia complex (ALS/PDC). At the same time, the study, supported by the ALS Association, introduces the role that biomagnification of neurotoxins might play in the development of symptoms similar to those of ALS, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. The Chamorro people once had an incidence rate of ALS-parkinsonism dementia complex that was 50 to 100 times higher than the rate of ALS elsewhere. The decline in the incidence of ALS/PDC among the Chamorro mirrored the decline of the population of flying foxes (a type of bat), by the 1960s and 1970s. Researchers report in the August 12 issue of Neurology that skin tissues of the flying foxes contained elevated quantities of BMAA (ß-methylamino-L-alanine), a non-protein amino acid that has shown to kill neurons in cell culture, and is believed to be a possible cause of ALS/PDC.

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 4136 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers have identified a genetic factor that may predispose young people to harmful drinking habits. A team of scientists interviewed college students about their alcohol consumption and then analyzed their genetic profiles, or genotypes. They found that students who shared a particular variant of the serotonin transporter gene (5HTT) consumed more alcohol per occasion, more often drank expressly to become inebriated, and were more likely to engage in binge drinking than students without the variant. The study appears in the current issue of the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism. "This research provides important new evidence that the risk of developing a maladaptive pattern of alcohol consumption is influenced by genetically determined neurobiological differences that exert their effects during young adulthood," says Ting-Kai Li, M.D., director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). NIAAA clinical investigators Paolo B. DePetrillo, M.D., and Research Fellow Aryeh I. Herman B.A., along with researchers from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., conducted the study of 262 male and female college students and analyzed data from the largest homogenous group: 204 male and female Caucasian college students aged 17 to 23 years.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 4135 - Posted: 08.21.2003

A cannabis-based drug could help people with Alzheimer's disease by giving them the "munchies", researchers say. Patients with the condition often experience weight loss because they stop recognising when they are hungry. The study does not suggest they should be given cannabis to smoke - instead, they tested a synthetic version of a cannabis extract. It was found the cannabinoid led to weight and reduced agitation, another symptom of the disease. The researchers from the Meridian Institute for Aging in New Jersey looked at a drug called dronabinol which is an artificial version of delta-9 THC, the active ingredient in cannabis. The drug has already been approved in the US for the treatment of anorexia in patients with HIV/Aids and nausea associated with chemotherapy. (C) BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 4134 - Posted: 08.21.2003

By CANDICE REED I thought my husband, Ralph, was having a stroke. What else could cause a healthy 54-year-old man suddenly to become disoriented and confused? More than eight hours after the onset of his symptoms, the attending doctor at our local E.R. diagnosed a very strange disorder — amnesia — or transient global amnesia. It is a temporary brain affliction that affects about 23.5 per 100,000 people every year. After a second and third opinion, we were convinced that Ralph had experienced this rare but real phenomenon. "I see about 150 cases a year," said Dr. Thomas Chippendale, a neurologist in San Diego and research director at University of California at San Diego. "There are probably many more cases out there that have been confused with symptoms of a stroke." Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Stroke
Link ID: 4133 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Are there 'social behavior' genes? La Jolla, Calif. -- A rare genetic disorder may lead scientists to genes for social behavior, a Salk Institute study has found. The study zeros in on the genes that may lead to the marked extroverted behavior seen in children with Williams syndrome, demonstrating that "hyper-sociability" – especially the drive to greet and interact with strangers -- follows a unique developmental path. The path is not only different from typical children but also from children with other developmental disorders of the nervous system. The study appears in the online version of the American Journal of Medical Genetics.

Keyword: Language; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 4132 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NHS patients are to be given cannabis as part of a government-funded trial. The study, which is being run by the Medical Research Council, aims to find out if the drug really can help to relieve pain. Scientists will randomly select 400 patients who have undergone surgery from 36 hospitals across England to take part in the study. They will be given one of four pills after undergoing surgery, two of which will be a form of cannabis. They will receive a capsule containing standardised cannabis extract or a capsule containing tetrahydrocannabinol - the active ingredient in cannabis. The remaining patients will receive either a standard pain-relieving drug or a dummy pill. (C) BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 4131 - Posted: 08.20.2003

We’ve heard that Botox can help fade those frown lines. But as this ScienCentral News video reports, neurologists say it can also help children with cerebral palsy. About 500,000 Americans have some form of cerebral palsy, a developmental disability affecting body movements and muscle coordination that results from an injury to the brain before, during, or shortly after birth. "There is too much excitation from the central nervous system, meaning the brain and the spinal cord are telling that nerve to continuously fire," explains Dr. Marc DiFazio, a child neurologist at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. "Typically, this results in an increased amount of muscle tone. Generally what that causes is an impairment in function, meaning it’s difficult for children to walk who have too much tone in their lower extremities. Likewise, they have difficulties reaching for objects, picking up objects, holding their bottles, that type of thing. They often remain very much dependent on caretakers and parents for a lot of the normal daily activities that we often do independently." © ScienCentral, 2000-2003.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 4130 - Posted: 06.24.2010

An emerging understanding of the brain's stress pathways points toward treatments for anxiety and depression beyond Valium and Prozac By Robert Sapolsky Over the centuries, society's approaches to treating the mentally ill have shifted dramatically. At present, drugs that manipulate neurochemistry count as cutting-edge therapeutics. A few decades ago the heights of efficacy and compassion were lobotomies and insulin-induced comas. Before that, restraints and ice baths sufficed. Even earlier, and we've entered the realm of exorcisms. Society has also shifted its view of the causes of mental illness. Once we got past invoking demonic possession, we put enormous energy into the debate over whether these diseases are more about nature or nurture. Such arguments are quite pointless given the vast intertwining of the two in psychiatric disease. Environment, in the form of trauma, can most certainly break the minds of its victims. Yet there is an undeniable biology that makes some individuals more vulnerable than others. Conversely, genes are most certainly important factors in understanding major disorders. Yet being the identical twin of someone who suffers one of those illnesses means a roughly 50 percent chance of not succumbing. Obviously, biological vulnerabilities and environmental precipitants interact, and in this article I explore one arena of that interaction: the relation between external factors that cause stress and the biology of the mind's response. Scientists have recently come to understand a great deal about the role that stress plays in the two most common classes of psychiatric disorders: anxiety and major depression, each of which affects close to 20 million Americans annually, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. And much investigation focuses on developing the next generation of relevant pharmaceuticals, on finding improved versions of Prozac, Wellbutrin, Valium and Librium that would work faster, longer or with fewer side effects.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 4129 - Posted: 08.20.2003

The brain is still an enigma. But that won't stop us from trying to enhance mental functioning By Gary Stix The Decade of the Brain came and went quietly. For the promoters who conceive and execute campaigns to raise public awareness and research dollars, duration is measured only in days, weeks, months or, rarely, years--never more than a decade. Any longer would exceed the natural life span of the potential audience and sponsors for the message conveyed: The Century of Kidney Disease Awareness? One Hundred Years of Schizophrenia? Organizers of the Brain Decade coped with the difficulty of deciphering the world's most complex machine by setting out a series of comparatively modest challenges for the 1990s. A representative of the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, which established a series of research objectives for the Decade, assigned generally high marks for meeting the stated goals: the identification of defective genes in familial Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease and the development of new treatments for multiple sclerosis and epilepsy, among other advances. The realization that the brain is more changeable than we ever thought has transformed neuroscience. © 1996-2003 Scientific American, Inc

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 4128 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By DENISE GRADY and GINA KOLATA Do I have a hard head?" asked Nathan Klein. "My wife always says I have a hard head." "No, it's pretty average," said Dr. Michael G. Kaplitt. "This is one of the few situations in life where you want to be average." Dr. Kaplitt had just bored a hole about the size of a quarter through the top of Mr. Klein's skull, in preparation for an ambitious experiment: the infusion deep into the brain of 3.5 billion viral particles, each bearing a copy of a human gene meant to help relieve the tremors, shuffling gait and other abnormal movements caused by Parkinson's disease. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 4127 - Posted: 08.20.2003

By Lauran Neergaard, AP Medical Writer Susan Sheridan recalls frantically racing her days-old son to doctor after doctor because his skin was so yellow -- only to be assured that jaundice is a rite of infancy. But as pediatricians looked on, the baby's neck suddenly arched backward and he began a strangely high-pitched, catlike howl. "We all watched Cal suffer brain damage before our eyes," says Sheridan. Jaundice strikes 60 percent of newborns as their livers slowly begin functioning in the first days of life. The vast majority recover easily. But a small percentage of babies suffer extreme jaundice that, if untreated, drastically damages their brains. Like Cal Sheridan, now 8, they're left with a severe type of cerebral palsy -- his intellect untouched but trapped behind unworking muscles -- or injuries such as hearing loss. © 2003 The Associated Press

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 4126 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NewScientist.com news service Copper may increase the growth of the protein clumps in the brain that are a trademark of Alzheimer's disease, according to a new US study on rabbits. Researchers first noticed that the rabbits they use to model Alzheimer's disease developed fewer plaques in their brains when they drank distilled water rather than tap water. These insoluble plaques, generated in the rabbits via a high-cholesterol diet, are a trademark of the degenerative illness. The tap water contained significant amounts of copper, so Larry Sparks, at the Sun Health Institute in Sun City, Arizona, and Bernard Schreurs, at West Virginia University, then gave the rabbits distilled water spiked with copper supplements. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 4125 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Ben Harder The popular muscle-building supplement creatine can boost performance on mental tests. Students preparing for exams might benefit from taking creatine in much the way that some competitive athletes do, an Australian neurochemist suggests. Creatine, an amino acid produced by the body and also obtained from meat in a person's diet, helps cells store ready-to-use energy. When taken during weight training, pills containing synthetic creatine accelerate gains in muscle strength. Creatine's popularity among athletes and body builders fuels a market of more than $200 million per year for the pills in the United States. Increased blood flow to the brain accelerates metabolism when someone confronts a challenging mental task, but an energy debt in taxed brain cells can last for several seconds. To see whether extra creatine could help meet the brain's demands during quick thinking, Caroline Rae of the University of Sydney and her colleagues gave a daily pill to each of 45 university students who were vegetarians. The researchers suspected that creatine might help vegetarians more than omnivores, who acquire the compound from their diets. Copyright ©2003 Science Service. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 4124 - Posted: 06.24.2010