Nerve cells mysteriously mislay chromosomes. HELEN PEARSON Many cells in the average brain may be missing huge chunks of genome, scientists revealed at a San Francisco meeting yesterday. The puzzling omissions might decide our risk of disease. Cells are generally assumed to need a full set of DNA to run without major flaws. In fact, a third of dividing cells in one region of the adult mouse brain have gained or lost at least one chromosome - the same goes for up to 15% of the adult neurons these cells produce, biologists have discovered. This hints that every person's brain may be a mosaic of cells with different genetic make-ups. "We were stunned," said Dhruv Kaushal of the University of California at San Diego at the American Society for Cell Biology conference. "We want to know what this means for the brain." © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2002

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 3185 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANNE MCILROY SCIENCE REPORTER A Canadian researcher may have found a biological explanation for why females are more sensitive to pain than males, a discovery that could lead to painkillers tailored for each sex. It is a common assumption that women can tolerate pain better than men because they cope with menstrual cramps and childbirth, but scientists established years ago that women are actually more sensitive to pain than men. They've also found that painkillers can affect men and women differently. Now, two teams of researchers have made intriguing findings about why this may be. Working with mice, they found that males appear to have a natural pain-control system that females don't have. The key to that system is a protein called GIRK2, which plays a role in communication between brain cells. © 2002 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 3184 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Trapped proteins may explain nerve degeneration. HELEN PEARSON Many degenerative brain disorders could arise because culprit proteins are unable to escape the cell's nucleus, gathering data suggest. Messed up cell transport is increasingly suspected as a cause of disease. Proteins encoded by an abnormal string of stutter-like DNA repeats are involved in a group of neurological conditions including Huntington's disease. Scientists have scratched their heads over how the anomaly causes the nerve-cell deterioration that strikes in middle age. The proteins have lost the ability to escape the nucleus and ferry molecules elsewhere in the nerve cells, suggest Ray Truant of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, and his colleagues. "The parallels between the diseases are starting to come together," he said at this week's American Society for Cell Biology meeting in San Francisco. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2002

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 3183 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Kathleen Fackelmann, USA TODAY WASHINGTON — For the first time, use of the club drug Ecstasy dropped among teens in the United States, and use of cigarettes and alcohol continued to decline, according to a just-released survey. This year's annual Monitoring the Future survey tracked substance use among 44,000 eighth-, 10th- and 12th-grade students. The survey has been tracking teens' drug use since 1975. The number of teens who said they had smoked during 2002 fell by 4 or 5 percentage points from the year before. That's the biggest drop in recent years. © Copyright 2002 USA TODAY

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 3182 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Gabriella Boston THE WASHINGTON TIMES Lu Corbett Daly, 77, a mother of eight, used to be vibrant and full of the finest humor. But she, along with 4 million other Americans, is afflicted with Alzheimer's disease, a condition so debilitating it robs a patient not only of memory, sight and mobility, but even personality. "It's a cruel disease in the sense that she can't enjoy the fruits of her labor," says her husband of more than 50 years, John Jay Daly, 74. "She raised eight children, picked them up when they fell on their bikes, comforted them when they broke up with their girlfriends and boyfriends. But she can't bask in their successes now." Mrs. Daly, who was diagnosed in 1995, is in the late stages of Alzheimer's disease, and nothing that researchers and doctors can come up with pharmaceutically and therapeutically will help her. © 2002 News World Communications, Inc.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 3181 - Posted: 06.24.2010

DALLAS – – Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas are using magnetic fields to treat diseases in the world’s second laboratory dedicated to magnetic seizure therapy (MST) research. The director of the new Neuro Stimulation Laboratory, Dr. Mustafa M. Husain, and co-investigator Dr. Larry Thornton, associate professors of psychiatry, hope this therapeutic tool at UT Southwestern will offer a better option for patients suffering from neuropsychiatric diseases, including major depression. MST stimulates the brain by directing a diffused electrical current to targeted areas but without the direct electrical stimulation used in electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), or “shock therapy” said Dr. Eric Nestler, chairman of psychiatry. MST also doesn’t seem to have the same side effects as ECT. © 2002 The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas

Keyword: Epilepsy
Link ID: 3180 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The ability of worms to convert potentially harmful fats into helpful ones might be harnessed to cut heart disease and strokes. Nematode worms, despite their tiny size, appear to be better at coping with Omega-6 fatty acids - a fat which contributes to blocked arteries in humans. The worms naturally convert Omega-6 to Omega-3 fatty acids, which decrease inflammation in blood vessels, and help prevent the formation of blockages. Scientists in the US have found that a particular chemical made by the worm appears to have a beneficial effect on human cells in a test tube. When human arteries harden and clog up - a process called atherosclerosis - it can stop enough blood, and oxygen, reaching the muscles of the heart. This can cause angina, or full-blown heart attacks. (C) BBC

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 3179 - Posted: 12.16.2002

Forget the robot child in the movie "AI." Vanderbilt researchers Nilanjan Sarkar and Craig Smith have a less romantic but more practical idea in mind. "We are not trying to give a robot emotions. We are trying to make robots that are sensitive to our emotions," says Smith, associate professor of psychology and human development. Their vision, which is to create a kind of robot Friday, a personal assistant who can accurately sense the moods of its human bosses and respond appropriately, is described in the article, "Online Stress Detection using Psychophysiological Signals for Implicit Human-Robot Cooperation." The article, which appears in the Dec. issue of the journal Robotica, also reports the initial steps that they have taken to make their vision a reality.

Keyword: Emotions; Robotics
Link ID: 3178 - Posted: 12.16.2002

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Infants born with the cell protein called Rhesus (Rh) factor that their mothers are missing, have twice the risk for developing schizophrenia. This new study, conducted by researchers at UCLA, suggest that the gene that codes for the Rh factor is the cause for the increased risk. Christina Palmer, M.D., a research scientist at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, says, "Previous studies reported a link between mothers and infants who are Rh-incompatible and a higher rate of schizophrenia in the children later in life. Our research is the first to take a genetic approach to examining this increased risk." Rh factor is a protein found on the exterior of red blood cells, and Rhesus D factor (RHD) is the gene that codes for the Rh protein. An individual is considered to be Rh-positive when the Rh factor exists or Rh-negative when Rh factor is not present on red blood cells. It is believed when a pregnant woman is Rh-negative and her unborn child is Rh-positive, the mother's immune system will attack the unborn child's red blood cells. This can cause oxygen deprivation to the unborn child's brain, which can cause jaundice or even severe brain damage and eventually lead to schizophrenia. Copyright © 2002 Ivanhoe Broadcast News, Inc.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 3177 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NewScientist.com news service Superior memories are made not born, according to a study that tested 10 memory champions against 10 matched controls. The team at University College London found that the master memorisers have neither higher IQs nor special brain structures to explain their talent. Instead, when debriefed after the memory tests, many admitted they always use an ancient Greek mnemonic technique known as "method of loci". This involves visualising yourself walking along a well-known route, depositing images of to-be-remembered items at specific points, then retracing your steps during recall. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 3176 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Study is the first test of the adaptive value of the dance language Based on work done in 2001 in the Agricultural Experiment Station at UC Riverside, P. Kirk Visscher, professor of entomology, and Gavin Sherman, former graduate student in the department of entomology, report their findings in a paper entitled "Honeybee colonies achieve fitness through dancing" in the journal Nature. The honey bee "dance language," first described in the 1940s, reflects the distance and direction to the food source visited by the forager. A bee returning from a rich source of food will "dance" on the vertical comb surface by running in a circle. On each revolution, the bee will bisect the circle at an angle. The angle with respect to 12 o'clock represents the angle to fly with respect to the sun. If the bee ran from 6 to 12 o'clock (i.e., straight up), this would communicate to the other bees to fly directly towards the sun. As the bee dances, it also waggles its abdomen whilst crossing the circle. The number of waggles tells the other bees how far away from the beehive the nectar is. The more the waggles, the greater the distance to the nectar. "The dance language is the most complex example of symbolic communication in any animal other than primates," said Visscher. "Our study is the first test of the adaptive value of the dance language. It provides insights that may be of use in manipulating foraging behavior of honeybees for pollination of crops." Copyright 2002, Regents UC.

Keyword: Animal Communication
Link ID: 3175 - Posted: 12.16.2002

By Becky Ham, Staff Writer Health Behavior News Service A year's worth of counseling and medication relieved some symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder among a group children, but only children receiving additional biofeedback therapy managed to hold on to these healthy gains after going off the medication, according to a new study. Half of the 100 children in the study received EEG biofeedback therapy, a treatment in which individuals are taught to retrain electrical activity in their brains. The biofeedback group also experienced significant changes in these "brain wave" patterns associated with attention-deficit disorder, according to Vincent J. Monastra, Ph.D., of the FPI Attention Disorders Clinic and colleagues. "While ADHD is diagnosed on the basis of behavioral symptoms, our findings suggest that the disorder also involves neurophysiological factors," says Monastra and colleagues. The study results are published in the December issue of Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback.

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 3174 - Posted: 12.16.2002

By NICHOLAS WADE The long search for a gene that helps cause schizophrenia may at last be bearing fruit after many false starts and disappointments, scientists are reporting. An errant gene first implicated among schizophrenic patients in Iceland has now turned up in a survey of Scottish patients, too, giving a clear confirmation of the earlier result. The gene may be involved in remodeling the connections that brain cells make with one another, called synapses. Many of the Icelandic and Scottish patients have the same variant pattern in the gene, supporting the idea that when the gene does not work as designed, wrongly formed nerve-to-nerve wiring accumulates in the brain, giving rise to schizophrenia. Copyright The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 3173 - Posted: 12.13.2002

Research may lead to relief of sleep disorders and jet lag A group of scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) has demonstrated that the gene Opn4, which codes for the protein Melanopsin, is the elusive pigment gene that captures light and keeps your body tuned to a daily cycle--called a circadian rhythm. "This is the key protein in the eye that sends signals to the clock," says TSRI Cell Biology Professor Steve Kay, Ph.D., who led the study. In an article appearing in the journal Science, Kay and his colleagues describe experiments in which they observe laboratory models that lack the Opn4 gene. They were able to show that without this gene, the models were not able to keep their circadian rhythms entrained to a 24-hour day. If a circadian rhythm were a grandfather clock, Opn4 (Melanopsin) would be the key that winds it every day. Previously, it was not known which genes were responsible.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 3172 - Posted: 12.13.2002

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL--Animals can be a pretty uncooperative lot. While species like lions and prairie dogs cooperate in some cases, scientists seldom know the costs and benefits of cooperative acts in the wild. In particular, scientists have long been interested in situations in which cooperating animals give up something now in order to develop a relationship that pays off in the long run. Experimental studies show, however, that animals don't usually cooperate in these cases; apparently, they are unwilling to pass up an immediate benefit in order to gain more in the long run. Now, experiments with blue jays at the University of Minnesota suggest that animals may be induced to cooperate when their opponent reciprocates by tit-for-tat behavior and rewards accumulate over a sequence of plays. The work, which will be published in the Dec. 13 issue of Science, suggests that these are among the factors guiding evolution of some animals--including humans--toward cooperative behavior. "Our results suggest that the timing of the benefits of cooperation is really important," said lead investigator David Stephens, an associate professor of ecology, evolution and behavior in the College of Biological Sciences. "For example, suppose you want two toddlers to work together, and you reward good behavior at every turn. They're likely to soon fall back into bad behavior. But if they have to play nicely with each other for 10 trials before receiving a reward, then they are likely to do it."

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 3171 - Posted: 12.13.2002

Neurosurgeons at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center have become the first in the Chicago area to use a radically new, magnetically controlled system to enter the brain and its vascular system to treat a variety of diseases without surgically opening up the skull and brain. "Magnet-guided neurosurgery allows us to use a guidewire and catheter to manipulate surgical tools within the brain in ways that previously were impossible," said Dr. Leonard Cerullo, chairman of the department of Neurosurgery at Rush and founder, president and medical director of the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch (CINN) medical group. "Because we can enter the brain through a blood vessel that is accessed through a small incision in the upper thigh, we have the potential to substantially reduce the need to surgically open the skull and disrupt brain tissue in order to repair aneurysms and deliver stroke therapies. We hope this will result in more effective treatment, reduced costs and swifter recovery times," he noted.

Keyword: Miscellaneous; Brain imaging
Link ID: 3170 - Posted: 12.13.2002

Researchers map brain areas that process tunes HANOVER, N.H. – Researchers at Dartmouth are getting closer to understanding how some melodies have a tendency to stick in your head or why hearing a particular song can bring back a high school dance. They have found and mapped the area in your brain that processes and tracks music. It's a place that's also active during reasoning and memory retrieval. The study by Petr Janata, Research Assistant Professor at Dartmouth's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, and his colleagues is reported in the Dec. 13, 2002, issue of Science. Their results indicate that knowledge about the harmonic relationships of music is maintained in the rostromedial prefrontal cortex, which is centrally located, right behind your forehead. This region is connected to, but different from, the temporal lobe, which is involved in more basic sound processing. "This region in the front of the brain where we mapped musical activity," says Janata, "is important for a number of functions, like assimilating information that is important to one's self, or mediating interactions between emotional and non-emotional information. Our results provide a stronger foundation for explaining the link between music, emotion and the brain."

Keyword: Hearing; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 3169 - Posted: 06.24.2010

— Researchers have discovered the first genetic component of a biochemical pathway in the brain that governs the indelible imprinting of fear-related experiences in memory. The gene identified by researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Columbia University encodes a protein that inhibits the action of the fear-learning circuitry in the brain. Understanding how this protein quells fear may lead to the design of new drugs to treat depression, panic and generalized anxiety disorders. The findings were reported in the December 13, 2002 issue of the journal Cell, by a research team that included Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigators Eric Kandel at Columbia University and Catherine Dulac at Harvard University. Lead author of the paper was Gleb Shumyatsky, a postdoctoral fellow in Kandel’s laboratory at Columbia University. Other members of the research team are at the National Institutes of Health and Harvard Medical School. ©2002 Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Keyword: Emotions; Stress
Link ID: 3168 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A tiny sea creature could hold the key for better cameras. Researchers in the US are studying a relative of the starfish, known as a brittlestar, whose arms are covered with perfect lenses. The lenses provide the brittlestar with all-round vision. Scientists say they are better than any optical devices developed in the lab. "Instead of trying to come up with new ideas and technology, we can learn from this marine creature," said Joanna Aizenberg of Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs. The remarkable vision of the brittlestar is due to thousands of chalk-like calcite crystals in its skeleton. These serve as armour as well as acting together as an all-seeing eye which allows the brittlestar to spot and escape predators. (C) BBC

Keyword: Vision; Evolution
Link ID: 3167 - Posted: 12.12.2002

— Butterflies are able to fly with such great agility because they can draw on a variety of different wing strokes, according to a study that may help the quest for nimble, hand-sized drones, the next thing in robot warfare. Flying insects have long fascinated aircraft designers with their ability to hover apparently tirelessly, switch direction instantly or immediately throw themselves into reverse flight. But it is frustratingly hard to see how the creatures do these tricks, for they are so small and their wings beat very rapidly. Most attempts at finding out entail super-gluing a bug to a pivoting stick and filming it as it whizzes around. This may be fun for fly sadists, but it is hardly a replica of the natural conditions for flight. Copyright 2002 AFP. Copyright © 2002 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Animal Migration; Robotics
Link ID: 3166 - Posted: 06.24.2010