A woman's heavy episodic drinking during pregnancy triples the odds that her child will develop alcohol-related problems at age 21, according to a new study that has been tracking young adults since before their birth. The paper, published today in the April issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, points to fetal alcohol exposure as a risk factor in a person developing alcohol-related problems at 21. This relationship persists even when other demographic factors, including family history of alcohol problems, prenatal exposure to nicotine and other drugs, and other aspects of the family environment, are taken into account, said the University of Washington's John Baer and Ann Streissguth, the paper's lead authors. "It appears that exposure to alcohol during pregnancy can predict the amount of alcohol problems that a child will have in adulthood," said Baer. "It takes us a step further in understanding why some people have alcohol problems.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 3688 - Posted: 04.15.2003

Keyhole operations to deal with scar tissue inside the abdomen have surprisingly little effect on pain, says a study. Patients, particularly women with endometriosis, develop "adhesions" - patches of scar tissue that can attach to major organs and distort them. These are often a source of extreme pain - but there is debate about the benefits of operating to remove them. Doctors suspect much of the relief experienced by patients following "adhesiolysis" - is unconnected. Researchers in the Netherlands studied 100 women with chronic abdominal pain caused adhesions. Half were given adhesiolysis operations, and most reported some improvement in their symptoms. But the other half enjoyed an equal improvement, despite having only a diagnostic laparoscopy. (C) BBC

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 3687 - Posted: 04.14.2003

NewScientist.com news service A caffeine and alcohol cocktail similar to an Irish coffee could prevent severe brain damage in stroke victims, new research has revealed. The experimental drug, called caffeinol, has the potency of two cups of strong coffee and a small shot of alcohol. When injected into rats within three hours of an artificially stimulated stroke, brain damage was cut by up to 80 per cent. Neurologist James Grotta and colleagues from the University of Texas-Houston Medical School have also now demonstrated the safety of caffeinol in a small pilot study in patients who suffered ischaemic strokes, when the artery to the brain becomes blocked and cuts off the blood supply. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Stroke; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 3686 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A young bird that goes hungry too often isn't likely to grow up to be an avian Caruso, a new study finds. Later in life, these males warble meager repertoires, potentially compromising chances with the opposite sex. Female birds often look for extravagant plumage or brightly colored beaks when selecting a mate. That's because these features can hint at a male's overall vigor (ScienceNOW, 3 April ). Females also prefer males with virtuoso singing, but researchers haven't understood how musical ability might reflect health. One possible explanation, the so-called nutritional stress hypothesis, is that males that go hungry at key times early in life, when the brain structures associated with singing are developing, end up with lame songs. Females looking for the best mate, the theory goes, would do well to avoid males who have fallen on such hard times. To test this idea, Kate Buchanan, a biologist at Cardiff University in Wales, and her colleagues reared 48 male and female European starlings. Half of the birds were fed around the clock as much as they could eat. The other half was fed at irregular intervals for 80 days, beginning approximately 1 month after they hatched. Nine months later, males that experienced nutritional stress spent less time singing and they produced shorter song bouts. Copyright © 2003 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Stress; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 3685 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Saint Louis University study suggests new approach to treating obesity ST. LOUIS -- Obese people are not getting critical chemical signals to their brains that tell them to stop eating, findings from Saint Louis University suggest. The review of research was published in the March issue of Current Pharmaceutical Design. Normally, a protein called leptin is released from fat cells and hitches a ride across the blood vessels that feed the brain, known as the "blood-brain barrier." The protein then is in the right place to tell the brain that the body has had enough to eat, to eat less or to burn calories faster. However, among those who are obese, the brain doesn't seem to be getting the message. This could be because the blood-brain barrier doesn't properly transport the leptin or because the brain isn't interpreting the signals properly.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 3684 - Posted: 04.14.2003

And sheds light on motivation and reward in male sexual behavior How does the body know it has had an ejaculation? And why does it care? Anatomically, it is more complex than it seems, says the University of Cincinnati scientist who last year identified the spinal cord cells that control ejaculation in rats and the neural pathway by which signals travel between the body's sexual organs to the brain. At the Experimental Biology 2003 meeting in San Diego, Dr. Lique Coolen reviews work her laboratory has done in understanding ejaculation and then discusses her current work in how chemical signals on this pathway contribute to pleasure and reward, key elements in sexual behavior. Dr. Coolen is this year's recipient of the American Association of Anatomists' C. J. Herrick Award in Comparative Neuroanatomy. Scientists had known for years that there must be a group of cells in the spinal center that control ejaculation. Following spinal cord injury that prevents sensation from reaching the brain, humans and other animals remain able to achieve erection and ejaculation upon stimulation. But the location of this spinal ejaculation generator remained a mystery until last August when Dr. Coolen and a postdoctoral fellow in her laboratory, Dr. William Truitt, reported their findings in Science . Dr. Coolen had targeted the lumbar spinothalamic neurons in the lower back because these neurons appeared active only after ejaculation and not during sexual arousal or mounting. When the researchers used a highly selective toxin to destroy the thalamic neurons in adult male rats, the rats appeared not to notice. They continued their sexual interest and behavior, including penetration of the female. But they no longer had ejaculations, confirming that these were the cells the researchers had been hunting.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 3683 - Posted: 04.14.2003

CHAPEL HILL -- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scientists working with colleagues at Duke University have discovered that even after dopamine and norepinephrine systems are disrupted in specially modified laboratory animals, cocaine still provides reinforcing "rewards" to animals that ingest it. Their study, reported Saturday (April 12) at a meeting of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics in San Diego, shows the brain's ability to process the addictive drug is more complex than many researchers believed. It also brings medical science a bit closer to the day when effective therapies will be available to treat cocaine addiction, the scientists say. "What we call transporters normally take up biological chemicals known as neurotransmitters such as dopamine and return them to neurons to be reprocessed," Dykstra said. "When transporters are blocked, however, dopamine will remain in the synapses of nerve cells."

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 3682 - Posted: 04.14.2003

By NICHOLAS WADE Deep in the recesses of the human heart, lurking guiltily beneath the threshold of consciousness, there may lie a depraved craving — for the forbidden taste of human flesh. The basis for this morbid accusation, made by a team of researchers in London, is a genetic signature, found almost worldwide, that points to a long history of cannibalism. The signature is one that protects the bearer from infection by prions, proteins that can be transmitted in infected meat and attack the nerve cells of the brain. Prions can be acquired from eating infected animals, as in the case of the mad cow disease that in 1996 spread to people in England, but they spread even more easily through eating infected humans. This fact is known from study of the Fore, a tribe in the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea that started to practice ritual cannibalism at the end of the 19th century. Dr. D. Carleton Gajdusek, who later received a Nobel Prize for his work, noticed that the Fore were being devastated by a neurodegenerative disease known as kuru. He linked it with their practice of eating the brains of their dead in mortuary feasts. When the feasts were banned by Australian authorities in the mid-1950's, the incidence of kuru declined, and no cases have appeared in anyone born after that time. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Prions; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 3681 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Physical Mimicry of Others Jump-starts Key Brain Activity A child falls from his bicycle and his father winces. A bride says "I do" and the maid of honor grins from ear to ear. A mother frowns with displeasure and her infant son frowns back. UCLA neuroscientists using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are the first to demonstrate that empathetic action, such as mirroring facial expressions, triggers far greater activity in the emotion centers of the brain than mere observation. Reporting in the April 15 edition of the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the researchers also identified the brain's oval-shaped insula as a key to translating active imitation of others' feelings into meaningful emotion.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 3680 - Posted: 04.11.2003

Revised DNA sequence homes in on break points. HANNAH HOAG A revamp of chromosome 7's DNA sequence has brought to light genes associated with autism, several leukaemias and lymphomas1. Geneticist Stephen Scherer, of the University of Toronto, and his colleagues identified the site of more than 100 new mutations linked to genetic disorders after studying the genetic makeup of more than 300 new patients and reviewing 1,570 published studies. Doctors will be able to log onto a new dynamic database in which the sequence anomalies are held, and determine whether a patient's genetic make-up matches those of others. As information is added to the free-access database, more mutations may stand out. "It's a quick way to identify candidate genes for a disorder," Scherer says. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 3679 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Human flesh may have been a fairly regular menu item for our prehistoric ancestors, according to researchers. They say it's the most likely explanation for their discovery that genes protecting against prion diseases -- which can be spread by eating contaminated flesh -- have long been widespread throughout the world. The genes, which are mutant versions of the prion protein gene, show key signs of having spread through populations as the result of natural selection, the researchers report in the journal Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Such mutations, or "polymorphisms," could have provided prehistoric humans a better chance of surviving epidemics of prion diseases, similar to modern day diseases such as Creutzfeld Jacob disease, or kuru. "What we're showing here is evidence that selection for these polymorphisms has been very widespread or happened very early in the evolution of modern humans, before human beings spread all over the planet," said study author John Collinge of University College London. "We can't say which of those it is; but the obvious implication is that prion disease has provided the selection pressure."

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 3678 - Posted: 04.11.2003

NewScientist.com news service Tiny magnetic iron crystals in the brain may be linked to the development of Alzheimer's disease, suggests preliminary research. If further work confirms the hypothesis, it could be possible to diagnose patients with early Alzheimer's disease by measuring the level of iron oxide crystals, called magnetite, in their brains. Jon Dobson at the University of Keele, UK, and his colleagues examined six brain samples and found that magnetite levels increased with Alzheimer's disease severity, the first time such a link has been shown. "If the data continues to go this way, the implications are quite profound," he told New Scientist. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 3677 - Posted: 06.24.2010

In the United States, one out of every 100 people over 65 years of age will develop Parkinson's disease, an incurable, degenerative brain disorder that destroys its victim's ability to control muscle movement. Now, thanks to a mix of anthropology and genetics, researchers have found a gene that influences the risk of developing the disease. Parkinson's disease has a perplexing pattern of incidence, affecting men at least twice as often as women, and Caucasians more than people of Asian or African descent. For decades, the disease has baffled doctors. In the last few years, however, studies have shown that people with Parkinson's have malfunctioning mitochondria, the power generators within cells. This suggested an interesting way to track Parkinson's susceptibility to neurogeneticist Jeffery Vance and molecular geneticist Joelle van der Walt of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Anthropologists study mitochondrial DNA--which is passed from mother to child--as a roadmap of human migration and have developed a system of lineages that defines a person's ancestry. Copyright © 2003 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 3676 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Caring spinsters reckon on relatedness. MICHAEL HOPKIN Ornithologists have uncovered a neat trick that birds use to ensure they feed only family. The Seychelles warbler (Acrocephalus sechellensis) lives in cramped conditions on just three small islands in the Indian Ocean, making opportunities to fly the nest scarce. Many females stay behind to help feed the next brood. "If you can't breed yourself, it makes sense to help your parents," says Terry Burke of the University of Sheffield, UK, who led the study. In this way, barren birds still help those that share many of the same genes. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 3675 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The increases in muscle fiber cross sectional area produced by dairy protein supplementation correlate very highly with superior increases in muscle strength (San Diego, CA) – Elizabethan England preferred it to milk; Miss Muffett enjoyed it on her tuffet before the spider showed up; now professional, collegiate, amateur, and recreational athletes combine it with creatine to supplement resistance training, with the expectation of improving gains in strength and muscle mass. The “it,” of course, is whey. Whey is a naturally occurring dairy protein found in bovine milk. Whey isolate, the highest quality form of whey that is extracted and purified during the cheese making process is shown in research to possess some extraordinary nutritional properties. In 2001 creatine supplement consumption in the US alone exceeded more than 2.5 thousand metric tons Researchers at Victoria University in Australia have previously shown that supplementation with creatine or a 100% whey isolate formulation significantly (P<0.05) increased levels of muscle force and mitochondrial energy production in rats as well producing significantly better (P<0.05) improvements in strength and body composition in bodybuilders during resistance training. Copyright © 2003, The American Physiological Society

Keyword: Muscles
Link ID: 3674 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists have long known that some drugs, such as heroin and morphine, can cause changes in the immune systems of drug abusers that make them more susceptible to infection. However, Dr. Donald Lysle and Stephanie Ijames from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have now found that in rats, the environmental cues associated with drug use also may induce alterations in immunity. Their study is the first to demonstrate that cues associated with heroin use cause a reduction in the enzyme, inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), which affects nitric oxide production by cells of the immune system. Nitric oxide plays a key role in the ability of immune cells to fight and kill microorganisms and tumor cells. The researchers conditioned male rats to associate heroin administration with placement in a new environment by administering the drug to the rats as soon as they were placed in that environment. On the test day, the rats were re-exposed to the environment in the absence of heroin and then given an injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS), which induces iNOS production by immune cells. Six hours later, the rats' spleens, lungs, and livers were analyzed for the expression of iNOS messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) and iNOS protein. Control groups were used to determine if any step in the conditioning process, such as the injection procedure, re-exposure to the conditioning environment, or a combination of injection of heroin and exposure to the environment, contributed to alterations in iNOS production. The researchers also used an unmanipulated control group to provide a general comparison for all the control groups, as well as the experimental group.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 3673 - Posted: 04.10.2003

Men's higher tolerance for pain is not just macho posturing but has a physiological underpinning, suggests a study in which subjects were given a monetary incentive to keep their hand submerged in ice water. Sex differences in pain perception have been noted in multiple studies, with women typically displaying lower pain tolerance than men, but it is unknown whether the mechanisms underlying these differences are hormonal, genetic or psychosocial in origin. For example, some researchers have suggested that men are more motivated to express a tolerance for pain because masculine stereotyping encourages it, while feminine stereotyping encourages pain expression and lower pain tolerance. "These findings suggest that motivation does not account for the sex difference in pain tolerance," says study author Roger B. Fillingim, Ph.D., of the Department of Operative Dentistry at the University of Florida and the Gainesville VA Medical Center in Gainesville, Fla.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 3672 - Posted: 04.10.2003

RICK CALLAHAN, Associated Press Writer Cocaine-addicted rats experience bursts of brain chemical activity just before seeking out their next fix, scientists report in a finding that could open a new avenue for treating human addicts. When the rats merely heard or saw cues associated with cocaine, their brains pumped out extra doses of the same reward-related chemical that helps produce the euphoria that human users feel. The rats' brain activity may explain the intense cravings human addicts experience when something reminds them of the drug. ©2003 Associated Press

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 3671 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Sleep does more than banish dark under-eye circles. It also helps you learn, according to an increasing amount of research in animals and humans. Advances in neuroscience led scientists in recent years to produce a large body of converging evidence that shows that sleep helps secure memories and aids at least some types of learning. The findings indicate that sleep is much more important than commonly believed. It’s 3 a.m. and you’re still glued to The Osbournes marathon running on MTV. What’s a little less sleep when you can see Ozzy war with the neighbors? You’re not alone. Many Americans skimp on shut-eye. Almost one-third of respondents said they get less than seven hours of sleep per night during the week, according to a recent survey of approximately 1,000 people by the National Sleep Foundation. Copyright © 2003 Society for Neuroscience

Keyword: Sleep; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 3670 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Connie Costa, 68, used to work in accounting. But about four years ago she started having problems remembering things. She couldn’t remember what month or year it was and had problems writing even her name. Soon Connie was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, a disease that affects about 4 million Americans, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, and about 10 percent of the population above 65 years of age. “Alzheimer’s is a terrible and terribly prevalent disease”, says Barry Reisburg, clinical director of the Silberstein Aging and Dementia Treatment and Research Center at New York University School of Medicine. Experts estimate that in the coming years, as we live longer and as baby boomers get older, there is going to be a steep rise in the number of Alzheimer’s patients. So far, there is no cure no known prevention for Alzheimer’s. Although there is some medication, Reisburg points out, “All currently approved medication has been shown to be effective only for mild and moderate Alzheimer’s.” But now Reisburg and his colleagues report in the New England Journal of Medicine that a German drug called Memantine could help patients in the more advanced stages of the disease. © ScienCentral, 2000-2003.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 3669 - Posted: 06.24.2010