Emily Carlson Children with Down syndrome can face many challenges - health problems, hearing impairments and learning disabilities, including those affecting language development. While modern advances in medicine have improved the health of children with this disability, a concern remains about the development of communications skills among these children. Countering the claim among researchers that language learning in children with Down syndrome ends during the teen-age years, a new UW-Madison study suggests that individuals with Down syndrome can benefit from language intervention programs during adolescence. Down syndrome is a developmental disability resulting from an extra copy of chromosome 21, and it affects about 5,000 newborns in the United States every year. A century ago, most children with this disability reached the age of only 9; today, they live well beyond their 50s. Copyright © 2002 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.

Keyword: Language; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 2820 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Stephen G. Matthews stephen.matthews@utoronto.ca Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism 2002, 13:373-380 The ability of the early environment to program the hypothalamo–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis has been documented in several species. There is considerable evidence that a similar process can also occur in humans. Studies of animals indicate that the phenotype of HPA function following early manipulation depends on the timing and intensity of the manipulation, in addition to the gender of the fetus or neonate. There is considerable interplay between the HPA and the hypothalamo–pituitary–gonadal axes, and emerging evidence indicates that this interaction is modified by early environmental manipulation. Studies are rapidly unraveling the mechanisms that underlie developmental programming of the HPA axis. Understanding these mechanisms could hold the key to the development of therapeutic interventions aimed at reversing the impact of an adverse intrauterine or neonatal environment. © Elsevier Science Limited 2002

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Stress
Link ID: 2819 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Andy Smith a.t.smith@rhul.ac.uk Wade A. R et al. (2002). Functional measurements of human ventral occipital cortex: retinotopy and colour. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B., 357:963-973. During the recent boom in functional MRI, vision research has led the way in terms of detailed, quantitative analysis. The main focus of cognitive MRI research has been to identify ‘blobs’ that show significant activity in given cognitive circumstances. This is an essential first step, but does not address the nature of the processing that occurs in the areas so identified. In contrast, vision researchers knew already where to look (at the very back of the brain), and have been mapping the surface of the visual cortex, almost millimetre by millimetre, addressing issues of functional organisation on a much finer scale. This methodological lead has been made possible by the pre-existence of copious physiological and anatomical information about the visual system of other primates. Because of this lead, at a recent Royal Society meeting in London on ‘the physiology of cognitive processes’ the presentations on vision were among the most eagerly received. One of these, presented by Wandell and now published along with the other contributions, illustrates just how far into the visual cortex the fine-scale approach can be taken. © Elsevier Science Limited 2002

Keyword: Vision; Brain imaging
Link ID: 2818 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Gordon Parker, M.D., Ph.D. Psychiatric Times October 2002 Vol. XIX Issue 10 My experience of 15 years in a tertiary referral mood disorders unit has validated many recent studies suggesting that resistance to antidepressant treatment is more common than previously judged or conceded. About four years ago, I commenced testing augmentation of antidepressant drugs with atypical antipsychotics in treatment-resistant subjects and observed dramatically rapid improvement in a percentage of my patients. I have since learned that other psychiatrists have come to a similar conclusion by a similar testing process. This should not be viewed as necessarily challenging the zeitgeist of evidence-based treatment guidelines and consensus statements as the gold standard, but should encourage discussion as to how formalized efficacy data and clinically observed effectiveness data may best complement each other. I observed two distinct improvement patterns in those patients who responded to the augmenting strategy. The first group of patients described a rapid improvement in mood, often in response to a low-dose atypical (e.g., olanzapine [Zyprexa] 2.5 mg to 5 mg) and generally in close association with restoration of sleep and a reduction in any anxiety symptoms. Improvement in these patients was usually evident in one to three days. Once improvement had occurred and patients were euthymic, the atypical could generally be ceased after another day or two, allowing the antidepressant and/or mood-stabilizing medication as the only necessary maintenance strategy -- at least, until any future episode. © 2002 Psychiatric Times. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Depression; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 2817 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Raymond W. Lam, M.D. Psychiatric Times October 2002 Vol. XIX Issue 10 Seasonal patterns of illness have been recognized since ancient times, but the concept of seasonality in psychiatric disorders has only gained prominence in the past two decades. This article will briefly review the diagnosis, treatment and pathophysiology of winter seasonal affective disorder (SAD). The DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria classify SAD as a subtype or "course specifier" for recurrent major depressive episodes within major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder (BD). However, only a minority of patients are diagnosed as having BD (Lam, 1998b). The stability of the SAD diagnosis is similar to other depressive subtypes. Longitudinal studies of one to 10 years of follow-up showed that about 30% of patients continued to have seasonal episodes, about 20% were in remission (some because of treatment) and the remaining 50% had complex patterns that were not strictly seasonal (Schwartz et al., 1996; Thompson et al., 1995). Like other forms of depression, SAD is associated with significant morbidity and health service utilization (Eagles et al., 2002). © 2002 Psychiatric Times. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Depression; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 2816 - Posted: 06.24.2010

If a sparrow tried to mate with a fighter jet, that would fairly describe the kamikaze sex life of a bizarre seafaring octopus. Among the rarely encountered blanket octopus (Tremoctopus violaceus), females outweigh males by up to 40,000 times. During a night dive in deep water off the northern Great Barrier Reef, zoologist Mark Norman of Museum Victoria in Melbourne and his colleagues had what they say is scientists' first-ever encounter with a live male blanket octopus. The adult male is about the size of a jellybean, weighing about a quarter-gram--making it about the size of the pupil in a female's eye. Although the males are small, they are not harmless--they carry stinger-laden tentacles, apparently stolen from Portuguese man-of-war jellyfish, and bare them whenever approached, the team observed. Stealing a self-defense system instead of making one from scratch, may have enabled the males to stay small and devote more resources to sex. Blanket octopuses are pelagic, never touching the sea floor, Norman explains, which makes it hard for males to find females in the open ocean. He suggests one reason the males miniaturized was to cut down on development time and beat competitors to the punch. (Females, on the other hand, grow large to produce as many eggs as possible so at least a few will survive in the vast sea.) Copyright © 2002 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 2815 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition Robert McGivern and his team of neuroscientists at San Diego State University, US, found that as children enter puberty, their ability to quickly recognise other people's emotions plummets. What is more, this ability does not return to normal until they are around 18 years old. McGivern reckons this goes some way towards explaining why teenagers tend to find life so unfair, because they cannot read social situations as efficiently as others. Previous studies have shown that puberty is marked by sudden increases in the connectivity of nerves in parts of the brain. In particular, there is a lot of nerve activity in the prefrontal cortex. "This plays an important role in the assessment of social relationships, as well as planning and control of our social behaviour," says McGivern. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 2814 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Penn scientists find that coaster G’s, twists, and speeds are not enough to injure the brain (Philadelphia, PA) – To meet the growing expectations of thrill-seekers, amusement park rides have been built bigger, faster, and more exciting. But do bigger thrills come with added risks of injury? Published medical case studies have proposed a link between roller coaster forces and brain injury. Already the State of New Jersey has enacted legislation limiting G forces, and similar legislation has been proposed by members of the U.S. House of Representatives. According to a pair of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, however, medical science does not support the notion that roller coasters produce forces large enough to harm the brains of riders. Their findings are presented in the October issue of the Journal of Neurotrauma. "We should step back and separate the facts from the hype," said Douglas H. Smith, MD, from the Department of Neurosurgery and the Head Injury Center at the Penn School of Medicine and co-author of the study. "To our knowledge, no peer-reviewed studies have definitively linked brain injury in healthy individuals to riding the latest, and most powerful roller coasters. In fact, G forces really aren't the issue here."

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 2813 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ZOMBIE brains could soon become a powerful tool for drug developers. A biotech company has developed a way to keep slices of living brain tissue alive for weeks, allowing researchers to study the effect of chemicals on entire neural networks, not just individual cells. "We are building stripped-down mini-brains, if you will, directly on a chip," says Miro Pastrnak, business development director of Tensor Biosciences of Irvine, California. He says the "brain-on-a-chip" could help drugs developers find better treatments for a host of neurological and psychiatric disorders, from Alzheimer's disease to schizophrenia. Tensor may already have found a more effective treatment for anxiety this way. "Behaviour is the result of the electrical activity of billions of brain cells connected in complex circuits, not the activity of a cell or a receptor acting in isolation," says Pastrnak. And psychoactive drugs alter behaviour at this level, often affecting many different types of neural receptors, cell types and synapses. Yet at the moment, candidate drugs are only tested on individual nerve cells, because it's proved difficult to keep larger pieces of brain tissue alive for more than a few hours.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 2812 - Posted: 10.17.2002

Canadian Press PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Researchers who looked at the impact of G-force on the head and neck say in a new study that roller-coasters aren't as dangerous as previous studies suggest. Other researchers disputed the findings in Wednesday's Journal of Neurotrauma and said more work needs to be done. The University of Pennsylvania researchers who conducted the latest study looked at data from rides at three parks and developed a mathematical model calculating the effect of gravitational force. They found that roller-coasters don't produce enough "head rotational acceleration" to cause either bleeding or swelling of the brain. © Copyright 2002 The Canadian Press

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 2811 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Pete Feigal shares the personal side of mental illness at mental health conference WORTHINGTON - Pete Feigal was just 15 when his parents put him in a mental institution for depression. Inside the Mayo Clinic-affiliated institution, he saw people treated with electric shock therapy, straight jackets and other "instruments of torture, " he said. "This place took the fun out of dysfunctional," Feigal said with a smile. Instead of listening and trying to relate to patients with compassion, the institution's doctors essentially punished patients for "not giving into the therapeutic community." ©Worthington Daily Globe 2002

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 2810 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Like the beams in a house infested with termites, certain neurons in people with Parkinson's disease slowly disintegrate, causing muscle tremors and stiffness. Now, researchers have repaired such degenerating neurons in mice using stem cells. The results could eventually lead to better treatments for humans. People with Parkinson's disease slowly lose a group of neurons that help coordinate body movement. These neurons reside in a brain region called the substantia nigra and use dopamine to communicate with each other. Neuroscientists had previously used neural stem cells to replace dead neurons in brains with other kinds of damage, so neurobiologist Evan Snyder of Harvard Medical School in Boston and colleagues reasoned that neural stem cells could replace the dopamine neurons in mice with a Parkinson's-like condition. Copyright © 2002 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Regeneration; Stem Cells
Link ID: 2809 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Coenzyme Q10 may delay brain degeneration. HELEN PEARSON An over-the-counter dietary pill may slow the brain deterioration seen in Parkinson's disease, researchers have announced1. But patients are being warned not to head for the drugstore just yet. A dose of the supplement, coenzyme Q10, stalls the onset of some of the movement problems that accompany the disorder, the American Neurological Association meeting will hear today. "It didn't stop progression but it did reduce it," says Clifford Shults of the University of California, San Diego, who led the three-year pilot study. Existing treatments for the disease relieve the symptoms but do not treat the cause: the breakdown of the nerves in the brain that make the neurotransmitter dopamine. Finding a drug that prevents this decay "is at the centre of everyone's radar screen", says Bill Langston of the Parkinson's Institute in Sunnyvale, California. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2002

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 2808 - Posted: 06.24.2010

* Prior research indicates that the brain's response to alcohol is related to a genetic risk for alcoholism. * New research examines high-velocity eye movements, called saccades, in individuals with and without a family history of alcoholism. * Those with a family history of alcoholism have slightly but consistently slower saccadic eye movement than those without a history, yet appear to "adapt" more quickly to continued alcohol exposure. Genetic factors play a key role in the development of alcoholism. A family history of alcoholism does not, however, guarantee that individual offspring will develop the disease. In an effort to discover identifying "markers" of those at risk for alcoholism, researchers in the October issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research evaluate the influence of a family history of alcoholism on the response of saccadic eye movements to alcohol. Saccades are high-velocity eye movements made from one point to another, as in reading. Their main function is to bring the image of a target from the visual periphery onto the fovea centralis (center of the retina), where vision is most acute. The saccadic control system is sensitive to alcohol, and saccadic parameters provide reliable measures of alcohol's effects in a dose-dependent manner.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 2807 - Posted: 10.16.2002

Mouse studies indicate successful pain relief, University of Pittsburgh researchers say PITTSBURGH, – By "programming" a herpes simplex virus to deliver a gene-mediated pain-blocking protein at the cellular level, University of Pittsburgh researchers have been able to significantly reduce cancer-related pain in mice with tumors, the researchers report in the November issue of the journal Annals of Neurology. The paper, "Herpes vector-mediated expression of proenkephalin reduces bone cancer pain," is now available online at the journal's Web site, http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/0364-5134/. "Chronic pain is notoriously difficult to treat effectively," said co-author Joseph Glorioso, Ph.D., chairman of the department of molecular genetics and biochemistry and director of the Molecular Medicine Institute at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and president of the American Society of Gene Therapy. "We've been able to show that using this virus can significantly reduce bone cancer pain – at least in mice." The investigators are pursuing necessary approvals to begin a clinical trial in patients with severe pain resulting from metastatic cancer, and hope to start enrolling patients sometime next year.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 2806 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By WILLIAM HATHAWAY, Courant Staff Writer Neural stem cells may actually play doctor to damaged brain cells, not just replace dead and dying ones, new research has found. And a second study appearing in the current issue of Nature Biotechnology shows transplanted stem cells also can replace lost brain tissue in mice - if they are placed within a biodegradable "scaffold" before being transplanted. In the first study, transplanted cells actually rescued mice brain cells damaged with chemicals to mimic the degeneration caused by Parkinson's Disease. Copyright © 2002 by The Hartford Courant

Keyword: Stem Cells; Regeneration
Link ID: 2805 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NewScientist.com news service Stem cells modified to produce a cancer-killing immune chemical can track and destroy difficult-to-treat brain tumours, US researchers have found. They hope the work in mice could lead to new treatments for people with gliomas. Standard glioma treatment involves surgery, followed by radiotherapy or chemotherapy. But tiny groups of glioma cells often spread deep into healthy brain tissue, so even if the main tumour is wiped out, the risk of recurrence of the cancer is high. Life expectancy after diagnosis is normally about one year. A team led by John Yu at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles took neural stem cells from mice fetuses and genetically engineered them to produce interleukin 12. This is an immune stimulating chemical known to kill gliomas. The team then injected the modified stem cells into implanted gliomas in the brains of mice. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Stem Cells
Link ID: 2804 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Copyright © 2002 AP Online By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer WASHINGTON - The genetic quirk that makes red hair red may also make carrot-tops harder to knock out - in the operating room, that is. A new study suggests people with naturally red hair need about 20 percent more anesthesia than patients with other hair colors. It's a small study that will need confirmation. But it marks the first time scientists have linked a visible genetic trait to anesthesia doses, said Dr. Daniel Sessler of the University of Louisville, whose study will be presented Tuesday at a meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists. Copyright © 2001 Nando Media

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 2803 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JOHN O'NEIL Some stroke or accident victims lose the ability to produce speech; others, their ability to understand it. But in an extremely small group, the brain injuries produce a shift in pronunciation known as foreign accent syndrome. Researchers at Oxford believe they have zeroed in on the brain region involved in the syndrome, which causes patients' accents to shift suddenly. The first known case was reported in 1941, involving a Norwegian woman who was ostracized when she developed what her neighbors thought was a German accent after she recovered from shrapnel injuries. Copyright The New York Times Company

Keyword: Language; Stroke
Link ID: 2802 - Posted: 10.15.2002

In the first study of its type, researchers at Emory University and nine other centers nationwide have determined that a naturally occurring compound called coenzyme Q10 can slow progressive deterioration associated with the early stages of Parkinson's disease up to 44 percent. This is the first time a study has shown that any nutrient or vitamin might play a role in slowing the progression of PD. The greatest benefits were seen in motor skills and activities of daily living, such as walking, dressing, feeding and bathing. The results of this study will be published in the Oct. 15 issue of the American Medical Association's Archives of Neurology and will be discussed at the annual meeting of the American Neurological Association in New York City, also on Oct. 15. "The study was designed to test the hypothesis that high doses of coenzyme Q10 would slow the progression of Parkinson's, as measured by movement difficulty or disability," says Ray Watts, M.D., professor of neurology, Emory University School of Medicine, and lead investigator of the Emory study. "We are very encouraged with the results of this small trial, which consisted of 80 Parkinson's patients nationwide. However, a larger, multi-centered, controlled trial is still needed before this treatment can be recommended to patients with a high degree of certainty."

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 2801 - Posted: 06.24.2010