Bruce Bower Plenty of evidence indicates that the recognition of familiar faces depends largely on structures on the right side of the brain's outer layer, or cortex. However, the brain appears to take a sharp left turn in fostering the ability to identify one's own face. That, at least, is the implication of experiments conducted with a so-called split-brain patient. To curb the spread of severe epileptic seizures at age 25, the now-48-year-old man had submitted to a surgical severing of nerve fibers connecting one side of his cortex to the other. If confirmed in studies of people with intact brains, the new investigation indicates that left-brain networks assume primary responsibility for memories and knowledge about oneself, including the key visual distinction between "me" and "others," says a team of neuroscientists led by David J. Turk of Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. Personal recognition allows for other types of complex thought, such as empathy and introspection, the scientists note. From Science News, Vol. 162, No. 8, Aug. 24, 2002, p. 118. Copyright ©2002 Science Service. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Laterality
Link ID: 2519 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Mark T. Sampson BOSTON — Researchers are developing a marijuana-derived synthetic compound to relieve pain and inflammation without the mood-altering side effects associated with other marijuana based drugs. They say the compound could improve treatment of a variety of conditions, including chronic pain, arthritis and multiple sclerosis. Their findings were presented at the 224th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. The compound, called ajulemic acid, has produced encouraging results in animal studies of pain and inflammation. It is undergoing tests in a group of people with chronic pain and could be available by prescription within two to three years, the researchers say.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 2518 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BLOOMBERG NEWS LOS ANGELES, (Bloomberg News) — Glaxo- SmithKline, the second-largest drug maker, will not have to pull advertisements for the antidepressant Paxil that call the drug "nonhabit-forming" for at least three weeks after a federal judge lifted a ban on them today. Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer of the United States District Court in Los Angeles stayed her order after the Justice Department on Tuesday argued that only the Food and Drug Administration, which approved the television commercials, has authority to regulate prescription-drug advertising and labeling. Paxil is one of GlaxoSmith- Kline's most-prescribed drugs, with sales of $2.67 billion last year. Users said in a lawsuit that the advertisements for the antidepressant are false and deceptive and that some users experience withdrawals when they stop using the medicine. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 2517 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Ellen Barry, Globe Staff, CHICAGO - There, on a stereoscopic screen strapped to your skull, is the thing that haunts you. If you're a Vietnam veteran, it could be rice paddies, helicopter rotors, B-52s, radio chatter, and men yelling, ''Move out! Move out!'' If you have anger management problems, it could be a red-faced boss ordering you to clear out your desk. If you're a drinker, it could be a bar. The device is a virtual reality simulator, and researchers speaking yesterday at a meeting of the American Psychological Association promised it will one day become a fixture in therapy. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.

Keyword: Stress; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 2516 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Abnormal accumulation of two common lipids in motor nerve cells could play a critical role in the development of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), according to investigators at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) in Baltimore. The finding could help scientists develop drugs and other treatments that might one day slow or arrest the disease's progression. "ALS is a terrible disease in which a fully functioning mind is trapped inside a body that is becoming progressively paralyzed. At the present time, nothing can be done for ALS, but we hope this newly established link between lipid regulation and the disease will hasten the development of new treatments," said Mark Mattson, Ph.D., lead author of the study* and chief of the NIA Laboratory of Neurosciences. Lipids are the building blocks of fats. The study is available online at the Annals of Neurology website, http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/98016376/FILE?TPL=ftx_start and will be published in the journal's September 2002 issue. Also called Lou Gehrig's disease, ALS is a progressive, fatal neurological disease affecting as many as 20,000 Americans, with 5,000 new cases occurring in the United States each year. Patients usually die within five years of diagnosis. ALS occurs when specific nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary movement gradually degenerate. The loss of these motor neurons causes the muscles under their control to weaken and waste away, leading to paralysis. In some instances, the disease is inherited, but in most cases the cause is unknown.

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 2515 - Posted: 08.24.2002

Why do some people recover from some noise exposure in a matter of hours or days? Why, in fact, are humans able to make use of the mechanically-sensitive hair cell stereocilia to hear throughout the auditory punishments of a lifetime? Most mechanical systems, when assaulted, break down or cease to function. According to Dr. Bechara Kachar and his colleagues at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), Section of Structural Biology, "the answer to this rapid recovery appears to be centered in a "treadmill" of renewal, running from the tip of the sensory stereocilia to its base." The study is published in the 22 August issue of Nature. Earlier, scientists had hypothesized that the stereocilia remained rigid because they were supported by a sturdy backbone made of a crystalline array of cross-linked parallel filaments composed of the protein actin. Actin is a robust protein.

Keyword: Hearing; Regeneration
Link ID: 2514 - Posted: 08.24.2002

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition Asymmetry could account for a fifth of the variation in romantic jealousy from person to person, says a Canadian researcher. Just about everyone is lopsided to some extent. Hormone imbalances in the womb, for instance, can lead to one foot being bigger than the other. But in recent years, a series of animal and human studies have suggested that the implications of asymmetry go far beyond struggling to find shoes that fit both feet. It seems that people who are more symmetrical are not only healthier, more fertile and perhaps even smarter - they are also more attractive. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 2513 - Posted: 06.24.2010

AFP — People can identify the odor of close family members, but they don't like it, according a researcher who suggests that this helps to prevent incest. A team led by Tiffany Czilli at Detroit's Wayne State University carried out an unusual experiment involving 25 families that had at least two children between six and 15, New Scientist reports. The volunteers slept in the same T-shirt for three consecutive nights so that it was impregnated with their individual smell signature, and they washed using only scent-free soap. Copyright © 2002 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 2512 - Posted: 06.24.2010

DHA, or docosahexaenoic acid, belongs to a class of nutrients known as n-3 fatty acids and is essential for normal visual and central nervous system (CNS) development in infants, as well as being associated with a number of health benefits in adults. Cheruku et al. recently published a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in which they investigated CNS integrity of newborn infants and related it to the plasma DHA status of their mothers. There were signs of more advanced neurological development as indicated by more mature sleep patterning in infants whose mothers had higher concentrations of plasma DHA. Because n-3 fatty acids (including DHA) accrue in the fetal tissues primarily during the last trimester of pregnancy, adequate maternal intake of these nutrients during this stage is critical for both pre- and postnatal brain development. In this study, 17 healthy pregnant women were enrolled on admission to a hospital maternity ward, and maternal venous blood samples were collected at delivery. The women were divided into a high-DHA and a low-DHA group according to their plasma DHA concentrations.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Sleep
Link ID: 2511 - Posted: 06.24.2010

CHICAGO - Adolescents and young adults who feel socially isolated or find it difficult to feel a sense of belonging in other ways may turn to drug use to cope with their loneliness, and new research indicates ecstasy may be the drug of choice to fulfill their needs. Furthermore, those attracted to ecstasy have more difficulty with being alone and making social connections compared to non-drug users and those that abuse other drugs, according to a study being presented at the 110th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association (APA) in Chicago. "Given the subjective effects of ecstasy in promoting 'togetherness,' it is likely taken by people who feel socially isolated and perhaps unable to feel a sense of belonging in other ways," said study lead author Ami Rokach, Ph.D., of York University in Toronto, Ontario. "The locations in which the drug is most popularly consumed, namely at raves and parties where individuals are suddenly surrounded by hundreds of 'friends,' are also conducive to a feeling of oneness." © PsycNET 2002 American Psychological Association

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Emotions
Link ID: 2510 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Dark manes make lions king. HELEN PEARSON Lionesses like their mates butch, dark and hairy. Using life-sized dummies with detachable wigs, researchers in Africa have found that female lions favour mates with a dark head of hair1. Lions' manes sprout at adolescence, in a surprising range of styles - shoulder-length or cropped, black or fair. "One question that's never been answered is why," says Peyton West of the University of Minnesota in St Paul. After five years watching lions circle and sniff mannequins in Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, West thinks she has the answer. Females prefer a brunette male to a blonde one, she and colleague Craig Packer have found. * West, P.M. & Packer, C. Sexual selection, temperature and the lion's mane. Science, 297, 1339 - 1343, (2002). © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2002

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 2509 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Brain cells stimulated to repair stroke damage. HELEN PEARSON Researchers have prompted mouse brains to replace nerve cells that were killed by stroke. The discovery raises hopes that drugs could trigger brain regeneration after damage or disease. Using a mix of two standard serums, Masato Nakafuku of Japan Science and Technology Corporation and his group stimulated new nerve cells to grow in the animals' injured hippocampus, a region involved in storing memories1. The mice did not develop some of the learning difficulties usually associated with such an injury. Researchers had assumed that the brain was unable to repair these cells, called pyramidal neurons. Patients who suffer stroke in this area have severe and irreversible memory problems. * Nakatomi, H. et al. Regeneration of hippocampal pyramidal neurons after ischaemic brain injury by recruitment of endogenous neural progenitors. Cell, 110, 429 - 441, (2002). © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2002

Keyword: Stroke; Regeneration
Link ID: 2508 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Copyright © 2002 AP Online By KRISTEN WYATT, Associated Press ATLANTA - Katie Clapp knew something was wrong with her newborn boy, but it took two years and dozens of doctor visits before he was diagnosed with the most common inherited cause of mental retardation. By that time, Clapp had given birth to another child with Fragile X Syndrome. If she had known about the genetic flaw, she said, she wouldn't have had more children. A survey released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the first to look at the often long diagnosis for the incurable disorder that affects about 50,000 people nationwide. Copyright © 2001 Nando Media

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 2507 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Piltdown taught science a lesson, sort of BY SAMANTHA LEVINE In 1912, in an English town called Piltdown, a centuries-old woman and an orangutan became unlikely partners in crime. A cunning trickster had stained and filed her skull and the ape's jaw to make them appear ancient, then planted them in a shallow pit where laborers were doing road work. The workmen took their find to a local amateur paleontologist, Charles Dawson, who showed them to Arthur Smith Woodward, the foremost paleontologist at London's British Museum. He confirmed the bones' prehistoric provenance and the new creature's key position in the evolutionary tree: The big-brained hominid bridged the evolutionary gap between ape and man, all but proving Darwin's theory of common descent. The "missing link" had been found. And it was British. Dubbed"Dawson's Dawn Man,"Eoanthropus dawsoni didn't have a lot of competition at the time. There was "almost no fossil record known for humans," says Karen Rosenberg, chair of the University of Delaware's anthropology department and coeditor of the journal PaleoAnthropology –only the jawbone of a hominid found in Heidelberg, Germany, and several fossils from Java. Without better evidence, Piltdown fit some people's preconceptions of man's evolution–specifically, that our big brains, and thus, intelligence, developed before other aspects of modern man. Even so, some scientists of that era argued that certain characteristics of the bones, like the absence of the critical joints that connect a cranium with a jaw, proved they were never really joined as one. The critics were generally ignored. But the puzzle of Piltdown grew with the discovery of other hominid fossils. The finding of tiny-brained Australopithecus in Tanzania in 1924, for example, made Dawn Man's large brain case increasingly inexplicable. Stacks of articles and essays–some say 500 or more–were devoted to the maddening topic. One professor who swallowed the Piltdown scam said the contradictions merely proved that "there were at least two very distinct and independent species of primitive man." Piltdown was slowly cast off as a freakish anomaly until 1949, when chemical tests found that the skull and jaw were younger than many believed. Radiocarbon dating in the 1950s confirmed the true age of the bones and that they came from two different periods. Copyright © 2002 U.S. News & World Report, L.P.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 2506 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Captive dolphins base their whistles on human sounds. KENDALL POWELL Young captive dolphins mimic their trainer's whistle in their calls to other dolphins, researchers say1. The finding is some of the first evidence that animals use imitated sounds to communicate with each other. "In developing their whistle, young dolphins are incorporating sounds they hear in their environment into their vocalization," says Peter Tyack, who studies animal behavior at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts. When separated from their social group, dolphins whistle in short, unique bursts to signal their location and identity. They whistle through their blowholes at frequencies almost too high for humans to hear. Their human trainers use a dog whistle to communicate with the dolphins. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2002

Keyword: Animal Communication; Hearing
Link ID: 2505 - Posted: 06.24.2010

TORONTO - Dr. Anna Taddio, a researcher at The Hospital for Sick Children (HSC), has found that newborns who experience repeated painful procedures in the first days of life experience more intense pain and learn to anticipate it. This research is reported in the August 21 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association. "This was the first study to look at anticipatory pain responses in newborns. This research confirmed anecdotal reports that infants become hypersensitive to pain and learn to anticipate pain as a result of cumulative exposures to pain," said Dr. Taddio, the study's principal investigator, an HSC pharmacist and associate scientist, and an assistant professor of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto. "Many newborn infants undergo painful, invasive procedures after delivery for medical reasons and it is important for us to understand how they react to pain, and look at ways to decrease their pain, " added Dr. Taddio.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 2504 - Posted: 08.21.2002

Years of research come together in a book explaining how stress affects the brain ATLANTA -- Emory University psychiatrist J. Douglas Bremner, M.D., has compiled more than ten years of research, reflection, and observations as a clinical psychiatrist in a book that explains how stress-induced changes in the brain may account for some psychiatric disorders, including Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), dissociative disorders, borderline personality disorder, adjustment disorder, depression, and anxiety. The book "Does Stress Damage the Brain? Understanding Trauma-Related Disorders from a Neurological Perspective," outlines the theory that there is a biological basis for trauma-related disorders which can be essential in diagnosing and treating such disorders. This view of trauma spectrum disorders, as Bremner calls them, is a departure from the widely held view in psychiatry that psychiatric disorders are completely different from one another, and have different causes. The idea of trauma spectrum disorders came out of research conducted by Bremner and colleagues when he was a young psychiatry resident at West Haven, VA Hospital and Yale University Hospital, During an experience in the wee hours of the morning with a Vietnam War combat veteran who was trapped in the middle of a post-traumatic "flashback," Dr. Bremner was struck by the seemingly reflexive and uncontrollable nature of the symptoms, which were similar to those of patients having seizures. Dr. Bremner wondered if the flashbacks represented a neurological rather than a psychological condition, as they were considered to be at that time.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 2503 - Posted: 08.21.2002

NewScientist.com news service Gingko biloba has no beneficial effect on memory in healthy older people, according to a US study. The popular herbal supplement is extracted from leaves of the gingko biloba tree. It is widely believed to enhance memory and concentration, and sales in the US alone exceed £200 million each year. "Many of our older patients were taking gingko and wanted to know if it was of any benefit. But although there had been dozens of trials showing beneficial effects, they all had serious shortcomings. We decided to carry out the first scientifically rigorous study," said Paul Solomon who led the study at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 2502 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Peggy Peck UPI Science News SAN DIEGO, Aug. 20 (UPI) -- People who have quick tempers are likely to be more pain sensitive, while their easygoing neighbors find physical aches less painful, new research presented Tuesday at the 10th World Congress on Pain suggests. People who suppress their anger also are more likely to feel pain, said the study's author, Stephen P. Bruehl, assistant professor of anesthesiology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. Individuals with short fuses tend to produce very low levels of brain chemicals called endogenous opioids, also known as the body's natural pain-killers, "so they are feeling more pain and more constant pain," Bruehl said in an interview with United Press International. People who suppress anger, however, "actually have adequate levels of endogenous opioids, but they are still are more pain-sensitive," said Bruehl. Copyright © 2002 United Press International

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Emotions
Link ID: 2501 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Shows signs of trepanation — drilling to relieve pressure on the brain LONDON (AP) — A Bronze Age man whose skull was fished out of the River Thames survived one of Britain's earliest forms of brain surgery, archeologists said today. The 4,000-year-old skull, found in October, has a 4.5-centimetre by three-centimetre hole in the top, suggesting the man had undergone trepanation, a procedure in which a portion of the skull is removed from a living patient. The bone had re-grown around the hole, indicating the patient — an adult male who lived around 1750 BC — survived the operation, performed without anesthetic. Copyright 1996-2002. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited.

Keyword: Evolution; Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 2500 - Posted: 06.24.2010