By BONNIE ROTHMAN MORRIS Dyslexia appears to be caused by two distinct types of brain problems, a new study has found. The researchers, from Yale, used scanning devices to examine the brains of 43 young adults with known reading disabilities while they performed reading tasks. Another group of 27 good readers were also studied. All the subjects had been tracked for reading ability since elementary school. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Dyslexia
Link ID: 4008 - Posted: 07.08.2003

By NATALIE ANGIER Suppose that dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia was right when he fulminated recently that, by overturning the Texas antisodomy law, the Supreme Court was paving the way for "same-sex marriage." What's the big deal about gay nuptials, besides the fact that Canada got there first? After all, when two people with matching sex chromosomes select each other as long-term partners, they're being only slightly more emphatic in a strategy that scientists say may explain mate choice among a great majority of heterosexuals, too. As a new report demonstrates with the no-nonsense zing of the phrase "I do," humans often seek in a spouse the sort of person they know best: themselves. Beautiful people want beautiful partners. The well-heeled covet Prada-clad companions. Those who are devoted to kith, kids and unabridged Passover seders expect no less from the person who adorably snores beside them each night. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4007 - Posted: 07.08.2003

Detergent delivers genetic medicine to mice with muscular dystrophy. HELEN R. PILCHER A mouse study raises hopes that injections of the DNA-like molecule RNA might one day help to treat the muscle-wasting disease Duchenne muscular dystrophy. For the first time in a live animal, RNA therapy has produced improvements that last for up to three months1. Duchenne muscular dystrophy is an inherited disease that affects 1 in 3,500 children, mainly boys. Sufferers inherit a fault in the gene encoding the protein dystrophin, causing most to die in early adulthood. The new approach effectively corrects the flawed gene. It targets RNA - the intermediate between DNA and protein. Snippets of RNA, injected directly into the muscle, help edit out damaged pieces of host RNA. Muscle cells can then produce the missing dystrophin protein. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Muscles; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 4006 - Posted: 06.24.2010

First evidence of neurochemical basis for obstructive sleep apnea and REM behavior disorder found ANN ARBOR, Mich. – The first tantalizing clues that chemical imbalances in the brain may be partly to blame for certain life-disrupting sleep disorders are being reported in two new studies by University of Michigan Health System researchers. In two papers in the July 8 issue of the journal Neurology, the team reports apparent links between deficits in brain chemistry and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD). Both are relatively common sleep problems that disturb the slumber -- and daytime behavior -- of millions of Americans. The new findings were made using two types of neurochemical brain scans and detailed sleep studies in 13 patients with multiple system atrophy (MSA), a rare and fatal degenerative neurological disease almost always accompanied by severe sleep disorders. Their results from the MSA patients, who all had both sleep apnea and REM behavior disorder, were very different from those of 27 healthy control subjects. Specifically, the researchers found that MSA patients had a far lower density of certain brain cells, or neurons, that produce the key chemicals dopamine and acetylcholine. The greater their lack, the worse their sleep problems were.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 4005 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Not looks or money but rather life-long fidelity is what most people seek in an ideal mate, according to a Cornell University behavioral study that also confirmed the "likes-attract" theory: We tend to look for the same characteristics in others that we see in ourselves. The study began when Cornell University students in an animal-behavior class conducted a scientific survey of 978 heterosexual residents of Ithaca, N.Y., ages 18-24. Hoping to learn whether likes attract, students asked their male and female survey subjects to rate the importance they placed on 10 attributes in a long-term partner -- and to rate themselves on the same attributes. The student-gathered results, reported by their instructors, Peter M. Buston and Stephen T. Emlen, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS early edition July 1, 2003), are raising eyebrows among scholars of evolutionary psychology, making news and sparking debate around the world.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 4004 - Posted: 07.08.2003

Insect uses moon as nocturnal compass Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer The moon is a quarter of a million miles away, and it may seem irrelevant to the evolution of life on Earth. It isn't totally irrelevant, though: Many a dung beetle owes its survival to the baleful rays of the moon. Without those rays, new research shows, the dung beetle couldn't find its way through nocturnal, predator-haunted terrain. True, you may not care what happens to dung beetles. They are among the more embarrassing members of the insect world, given their taste for, well, excrement; it's a prime source of nutrition for them. Upon finding fecal matter, they roll it into nutritious clumps, which they laboriously push to a safe place. ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Animal Migration
Link ID: 4003 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists are encouraged by the early success of treatment which may eventually help patients with a form of muscular dystrophy. Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a wasting disease caused by mutations on a particular gene. It is the most common muscular dystrophy, affecting one in 3,500 children - most of whom die early in life as a result. The mutations on the gene stop it producing the chemical needed to protect muscle cells and prevent wasting. Some experts believe that it may be possible to alleviate the disease by replacing the gene entirely. However, a slightly different strategy has paid dividends for researchers at the Medical Research Council's Clinical Sciences Centre Instead of trying to insert an entirely new version of the gene - called the dystrophin gene - which is problematic simply because of its large size, scientists are trying to issue the body instructions to ignore the faulty bits. While this, if successful, does not completely correct the problem, it does mean that a body chemical is produced that is almost as effective as the normal version. The technique, called "anti-sense" therapy, might also be easier to get working in a drug than full-blown gene therapy. (C) BBC

Keyword: Muscles; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 4002 - Posted: 07.08.2003

Long-term stress may cause illness by prematurely ageing the immune system, research suggests. Scientists have discovered stressful experiences can boost production of chemicals that regulate the body's immune system. One of these, interleukin 6 (IL-6), naturally increases with age, and is linked to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis and other age-related conditions. A team led by Dr Ronald Glaser, from Ohio State University College of Medicine in Columbus, US, measured levels of this chemical in 119 older men and women who were caring for a spouse with dementia. Over six years, levels of the chemical increased four times faster in the carers compared with 106 people not providing care. Former carers continued to have elevated IL-6 for up to three years after the death of the spouse they were looking after. (C) BBC

Keyword: Stress; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 4001 - Posted: 07.06.2003

By ALEX BERENSON On a motorcycle, the border between dangerous stupidity and the pursuit of happiness can blur to the vanishing point. No other form of transportation is so pure an expression of freedom. Cars and trucks insulate their drivers behind walls of glass and steel, and airplanes are cattle cars with padded seats. But motorcycles are little more than engines with wheels, and even the average bike has a power-to-weight ratio comparable to that of a Porsche . Brightly colored rockets like the Ducati 999 or Kawasaki Ninja can accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour in barely three seconds. And every bike offers an unmediated experience of the world, sweeping away the BlackBerrys and cellphones that fill up our lives. There is little in this imagery that leaves room for helmets, which is why the debate over them rages on. On Tuesday, Pennsylvania legislators voted to eliminate the state's mandatory helmet law, giving experienced riders over the age of 21 the option to go without. The state's governor, Ed Rendell, has promised to sign the bill, which would make Pennsylvania the 31st state to modify or eliminate helmet requirements for adults since 1975, when most states required helmets for all riders. The anti-helmet activists make claims that helmets block a rider's peripheral vision or inhibit hearing, but their main argument is one of personal choice. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 4000 - Posted: 07.06.2003

-- An increasing number of doctors and other health experts have been encouraging older adults to rise from their recliners and go for a walk, a bike ride, a swim, or engage in just about any other form of physical activity as a defense against the potentially harmful health consequences of a sedentary lifestyle. "Exercise is touted as a panacea for older adults," said Jeffrey Woods, a kinesiology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who noted that fitness programs are routinely recommended for people with various health problems -- from diabetes to heart disease. Health experts generally recognize that this population benefits from physical fitness, he said. What they don't know is why exercise appears to have certain preventive and restorative health effects. Also unknown is what -- if any -- relationship exists between exercise and immune functioning. Copyright © 1992-2003 Bio Online, Inc.

Keyword: Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 3999 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Do you believe what your eyes are seeing? Take our test. Put your senses to the test. This quiz includes 20 timed questions and takes about 10 minutes to complete.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 3998 - Posted: 07.05.2003

Bruce Bower Seniors whose lives revolve around caring for their incapacitated spouses often feel older than their years. It may be more than a feeling, according to a new study. Over a 6-year period, marital Samaritans caring for a spouse with Alzheimer's disease or another brain disorder exhibited a dramatic average increase in blood concentrations of a protein involved in immune regulation, concludes a team led by Janice Kiecolt-Glaser and Ronald Glaser, both of Ohio State University in Columbus. During that same time, seniors with healthy spouses displayed a much smaller increase in blood concentrations of the substance, interleukin-6 (IL-6). As people age, they typically produce IL-6 in larger quantities. Earlier investigations linked particularly high concentrations of IL-6 to heart disease, osteoporosis, arthritis, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers, periodontal disease, and intensified reactions to viral infections (SN: 3/27/99, p. 199). Copyright ©2003 Science Service

Keyword: Stress; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 3997 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By GINA KOLATA Dr. Susan Hendrix, a gynecologist at Wayne State University in Detroit, recently saw a new patient, a middle-aged woman who, it turned out, had been taking double the normal dose of hormone therapy for menopause. Dr. Hendrix asked her why and she said she had had terrible hot flashes and needed the hefty amount. Then, Dr. Hendrix told me, the truth came out: the woman thought the extra estrogen would help her look younger. I have a feeling that would have been no surprise to Barbara Seaman, whose book "The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women" takes on the estrogen industry. Her lively and impassioned manifesto, while not always distinguishing between good science and anecdote, certainly makes her point. The advertising and promotion of estrogen have invested the hormone with an allure that goes far beyond medical evidence. That effect was hard to miss last year when many women and gynecologists rejected findings from the Women's Health Initiative, a large and rigorous federal study on hormone therapy in menopause. It found that there were health risks with Prempro, a popular combination of estrogen and progestin, that were not balanced by benefits. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 3996 - Posted: 07.05.2003

by Patrick Haggard This year marks the 100th anniversary of a series of experiments that had enormous influence on scientific views of consciousness and bodily sensation. Much has changed since those pioneering studies, but their legacy lives on. Our experience of our own bodies is an essential part of self-consciousness. A central question for neuroscientists is to understand how the brain handles the barrage of signals that the body produces, and links them together to produce a coherent sense of the body as "myself". Neuroscientists have just celebrated an important centenary in this quest. On 25th April 1903, Sir Henry Head and WHR Rivers began a series of experiments, which had an enormous influence on scientific thinking about bodily sensation, but also more generally on scientific views of consciousness and human nature. On that day, Head arranged for a surgeon colleague to cut and re-sew the sensory nerves in his own left forearm. Immediately afterwards, Head could not detect touch over a large part of the hand and forearm. Over the next year and a half, Head travelled weekly to Cambridge, where his colleague WHR Rivers performed a meticulous series of psychophysical tests to measure the gradual recovery of sensation in the forearm, as the nerves regenerated. © Elsevier Limited 2003

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Regeneration
Link ID: 3995 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ST. PAUL, MN - A rare type of stroke can occur as a result of long airplane flights, according to a study in the June 24 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The type of stroke can occur in people who have a patent foramen ovale, or an opening between two chambers in the heart. The opening is present in about 30 percent of the general population. Air travel increases the risk of developing blood clots in the veins of the legs, which can then enter the bloodstream and block an artery in the lungs, a condition called pulmonary embolism. In some cases, the opening can allow the blood clot to enter the arteries of the brain, causing a stroke. For the study, researchers examined all passengers over an eight-year period who had a pulmonary embolism when they arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, France, and were transported to a hospital by a medical transport team. Of the 155 million passengers during that period, 65 people with pulmonary embolus were transported by a medical team. Of those, four people, or six percent of those with pulmonary embolus, had strokes. All four had patent foramen ovales. Patent foramen ovale is a known risk factor for stroke. No other cause of stroke was found in the four patients. All four were on flights lasting at least eight hours.

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 3994 - Posted: 07.04.2003

NewScientist.com news service New research on the sense of touch shows that learning, and the brain rewiring necessary for learning, can be significantly enhanced by drugs. The findings could help to restore touch sensation in the elderly or injured and lead to treatments for some forms of chronic pain. "Everything is chemical in the brain. If it becomes feasible to manipulate certain brain processes on a finer scale by using drugs, this changes everything," says Hubert Dinse, who did the new research with colleagues at Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany. In the new research, volunteers were asked to decide whether they were touching one or two hidden, pin-like points. When two points are placed less than 1.5 millimetres apart, subjects often mistake them for one. But people can be coaxed into making much finer discriminations via a special form of stimulation devised by Dinse's group. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 3993 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Many victims of strokes or other brain injuries lose the ability to speak or write. But as this ScienCentral News video reports, researchers are looking at other ways to help them find their voices. About one million Americans suffer from aphasia, a speech disorder caused by damage to the areas of the brain that control language that leaves patients with little or no ability to communicate. About 25 to 40 percent of stroke survivors have aphasia, but it can also be caused by brain tumors and head injuries. “Some people may have difficulty understanding what is said to them, some people may have difficulty expressing,” explains Joanne Marttila-Pierson, a speech-language therapist and associate director of the Center for the Development of Language and Literacy at the University of Michigan. “People may have difficulty reading and writing as well. They may have difficulty putting words together to say what they need to say, and some people may have severe problems with listening, but their speech remains intact, although it may not always make sense.” © ScienCentral, 2000-2003.

Keyword: Language; Stroke
Link ID: 3992 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Nerve cells derived from human embryonic stem cells and transplanted into paralysed rats have enabled the animals to walk again. The findings add to a growing number of studies that suggest embryonic stem cells could have a valuable role to play in treating spinal injuries. The researchers, whose work was funded by stem cell giant Geron of Menlo Park, California, say trials on people could start in just two years. But the first trials are likely to involve patients with recent spinal cord injuries and localised damage. Treating people who have been paralysed for years or suffer from degenerative nerve diseases would be far more difficult. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Stem Cells; Regeneration
Link ID: 3991 - Posted: 06.24.2010

AFP — One of nature's curiosities, the African dung beetle, gets its remarkable sense of direction by using the polarisation of moonlight, the first time that this ability has ever been spotted among animals. Scarabaeus zambesianus is a picturesque scavenger that feasts on the tasty droppings of elephants. It moulds the dung into a ball, using its front legs and head, and then rolls it away home, taking a straight line from the dung pile and its swarm of competitors. But how does it do this fast and efficient exit trick? Copyright © 2003 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Animal Migration
Link ID: 3990 - Posted: 06.24.2010

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- Saltiness often enhances our enjoyment of certain foods -- think French fries or a Margarita. But salt is an essential nutrient for humans and other animals, and far from being a trivial matter of taste, the ability to detect salt is critical for survival. A University of Iowa study provides insight on how humans and other animals are able to detect salt. The study appears in the July 3 issue of Neuron. "Given that salt is essential for survival, it is not surprising that animals have developed the ability to detect salt, even at low concentrations. This sense allows them to seek out, and then consume salt," said Michael Welsh, M.D., the Roy J. Carver Biomedical Research Chair in Internal Medicine and Physiology and Biophysics, UI Professor, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. "We were interested in identifying the receptors that detect small quantities of salt." The ability to detect when something is too salty is also important. Consuming very high concentrations of salt could be potentially harmful. Previous research suggested a role for a specific type of protein in salt-sensing. Lei Liu, Ph.D., UI postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the study, and colleagues turned to the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) to investigate these proteins, known as ion channel proteins.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 3989 - Posted: 07.03.2003