In a study of how human emotional states influence higher mental abilities, cognitive neuroscientists at Washington University in St. Louis have shown that watching even just 10 minutes of classic horror films or prime-time television comedies can have a significant short-term influence on areas of the brain critical for reasoning, intelligence, and other types of higher cognition. Participants in the study had more activity in the prefrontal cortex when doing either a word-based task in an anxious mood, or when doing a face-based task in a pleasant mood. In these conditions, which the participants found more difficult, the two brain areas shown in yellow appeared to be working harder, as shown by greater activity. The same regions were less active -- and possibly more efficient -- during either the word task in a pleasant mood or the face task in an anxious mood. "To have the best mental performance and the most efficient pattern of brain activity, you need a match between the type of mood you are in and thetype of task you are doing," said Jeremy Gray, Ph.D., a Research Scientist in the Psychology Department in Arts & Sciences and lead author of the study. "This is one of the first studies to really show that performance and brain activity are a product of an equal partnership or marriage between our emotional states and higher cognition." Scheduled for publication March 19 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study is co-authored by Gray and Washington University colleagues Todd Braver, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences and director of the laboratory where the study was conducted, and Marcus Raichle, M.D., professor of radiology, neurology, anatomy and neurobiology in the School of Medicine. Copyright ©2002 Washington University in St. Louis. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Emotions; Brain imaging
Link ID: 1715 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Study explores rainbow world of patient with synesthesia ASSOCIATED PRESS — For one middle-aged man, “two” looks blue, but “2” is orange. And while “3” appears pink, ”5” is green. The man has synesthesia — a phenomenon in which printed words and numbers burst with color, flavors take on shapes and the spoken language turns into a mental rainbow. W.O. sees all printed words in colors, sometimes letter-by-letter and sometimes syllable-by-syllable. Short words have a single color while long words may have many. FOR SOME PEOPLE with synesthesia, say researchers, a newspaper is never black and white — it’s red, orange, blue, beige, pink and green all over. “This is an alternate perception,” said Thomas J. Palmeri, a Vanderbilt University psychologist and the first author of a study reporting on the tests given to one man. “He is normal — a highly successful, intelligent man and he suffers no problems from this unique wiring of the brain.” The report, appearing Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, explores multi-chromatic world of a man identified only as W.O. The man, a university professor of medicine, did not respond to requests for a direct interview. • MSNBC Terms, Conditions and Privacy © 2002

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 1714 - Posted: 06.24.2010

We laugh more frequently than we eat, sing or have sex. So why do we know so little about it? David Derbyshire investigates It's a peculiar response. But then laughter is a funny business. It's part of human behaviour all over the world, irrespective of culture. It takes place whenever two or three people meet informally, when somebody else strokes our feet, when a four-month-old baby sees a familiar smiling face. © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2002.

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 1713 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The Internet May Attract Those Who Try To Hide Gambling Behaviors WASHINGTON - People who use the internet to gamble may have more serious gambling problems than those who use slot machines or play the lottery, according to a new study that is among the first to evaluate the prevalence of internet gambling. The study warns that the explosive growth of the internet will likely lead to more on-line gambling opportunities and the health and emotional difficulties that come with gambling disorders, including substance abuse, circulatory disease, depression and risky sexual behaviors. The findings are reported on in the March issue of Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, a journal of the American Psychological Association (APA). Psychologists George T. Ladd, Ph.D., and Nancy M. Petry, Ph.D., of the University of Connecticut Health Center surveyed the gambling behaviors of 389 people seeking free or reduced-cost dental or health care at the university's health clinics. Results show that nearly 11 percent were found to be problem gamblers and over 15 percent met the criteria for pathological gamblers. The most common forms of gambling reported by the participants were lottery (89%), slot machines (82%) and scratch tickets (79%). Next came card-playing forms of gambling (71%), sports betting (57%), bingo (56%) and animal betting (53%). Internet gambling was reported by just over eight percent or 31 of the participants and 14 of those people reported gambling on the internet at least weekly. © PsycNET 2002 American Psychological Association

Keyword: OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Link ID: 1712 - Posted: 06.24.2010

BY NANCY SHUTE When Debra Lunceford-Mikolajczyk saw A Beautiful Mind , she delighted in how the hallucina- tions of the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash seemed so real. "Everyone feels the psychosis with him. It was so cool." And she knows psychosis. On April Fools' Day 1977, the 22-year-old blond with the perfect pageboy was driving to Kresge's to buy bobby pins when her car radio started sending her secret messages. "Tell us, what would you do if you trapped someone?" "I thought someone was playing a joke on me," she recalls. Terrified, she played along. Soon she was up at 5 a.m., deciphering messages in songs like "Fly Like an Eagle." When she tried to cut off the voices by changing stations, the voices would change, too. Looking back, she says: "I knew something was wrong with how I processed information. I knew I was not a well girl." Indeed. She ended up hospitalized for five weeks. When she got out, she was "an unwed mother with a 2-year-old, basically insane." Lunceford-Mikolajczyk is one of the more than 2 million Americans with schizophrenia. It is the most dreadful of all mental illnesses, striking its victims in their teens and 20s and devastating their minds. The disease has put Mark Hidalgo's life on hold. "My plan is to get a car, get a part-time job, get a girlfriend, go out to dinner, go to the movies, and get married," he says. Instead, the 42-year-old son of a Costa Rican diplomat lives with his mother and spends his days at Liberties Inc., a support center for people with mental illnesses in a strip mall in suburban Detroit. Monthly shots of Haldol, an antipsychotic drug, subdue the paranoia and sleeplessness that tormented him. But anxiety attacks make it impossible for him to drive or work. "It's terrible," Hidalgo says. "You feel like everyone's staring at you, and you can't keep your mind on one thing." © 2002 U.S.News & World Report Inc. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 1711 - Posted: 06.24.2010

This question is central to a study of bioethics that explores the moral foundation of a strictly vegetarian, so-called vegan diet. The research, by Steven Davis, a professor of animal science at Oregon State University, adds a new perspective to a millennia-old debate: Is it right for people to kill animals in order to feed themselves? Davis turns that question on its head. How many animals must die, he asks, in order for people to feed themselves? Davis's research focuses on the work of Tom Regan, a philosophy professor from North Carolina State University and founder of the contemporary animal rights movement. Regan argues that the least harm would be done to animals if people were to adopt a vegan diet - that is, a diet based only on plants, with no meat, eggs, or milk products. What goes unaccounted for in Regan's vegan conclusion, according to Davis, is the number of animals who are inadvertently killed during crop production and harvest. "Vegan diets are not bloodless diets," Davis said. "Millions of animals die every year to provide products used in vegan diets."

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 1710 - Posted: 03.18.2002

When David Beckham scored his momentous equaliser against Greece at Old Trafford in Manchester, chances are his testosterone level was high. Research presented on Saturday suggests levels of the male sex hormone at their highest in footballers when they play a game a home. The study - revealed the British Psychological Society's annual conference - reopens the discussion about testosterone and how much it affects things like performance. That the hormone is linked to aggressive behaviour is still a matter of debate and there was evidence presented at the same conference to dispute this assertion. At the England-Greece match, Beckham was not only playing in his home country, the Manchester United striker was also at his club side's home ground. (C) BBC

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 1707 - Posted: 03.16.2002

NewScientist.com news service Rejection can dramatically reduce a person's IQ and their ability to reason analytically, while increasing their aggression, according to new research. "It's been known for a long time that rejected kids tend to be more violent and aggressive," says Roy Baumeister of the Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, who led the work. "But we've found that randomly assigning students to rejection experiences can lower their IQ scores and make them aggressive." Baumeister's team used two separate procedures to investigate the effects of rejection. In the first, a group of strangers met, got to know each other, and then separated. Each individual was asked to list which two other people they would like to work with on a task. They were then told they had been chosen by none or all of the others. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Intelligence
Link ID: 1706 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bruce Bower Progressively larger brains evolved in primates of all stripes, not just humans. We can thank a common capacity for solving a broad range of problems, from coordinating social alliances to inventing tools, according to a new study. This conclusion challenges a popular theory that big, smart brains arose primarily because they afforded advantages when it came to negotiating complex social situations during human evolution. "The ability to learn from others, invent new behaviors, and use tools may have [also] played pivotal roles in primate-brain evolution," say Simon M. Reader of McGill University in Montreal and Kevin N. Laland of the University of Cambridge in England. In an upcoming report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the two zoologists chronicle links between an array of intelligent behaviors and enhanced brain size in primates. Reader, S.M., and K.N. Laland. In press. Social intelligence, innovation, and enhanced brain size in primates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Abstract available at http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/062041299v1. From Science News, Vol. 161, No. 11, March 16, 2002, p. 166. Copyright ©2002 Science Service. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 1705 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Peering at the molecular machinery of the human body, researchers have determined that fragments of cocaine alter critical proteins, even when the drug is no longer detectable in the bloodstream. This newly revealed chemical activity may explain some of cocaine's long-lasting and insidious effects. Although cocaine stays in the blood for less than an hour, its ill effects can linger. Some people who've ceased using cocaine may suffer persistent inflamed blood vessels and other autoimmune conditions. Yet researchers don't understand how cocaine causes these long-term ailments. Previously, organic chemist Donald Landry of Columbia University in New York City and his colleagues had studied how cocaine breaks down in water. The work led him to suspect that in the body, the drug might break down by attaching a piece of itself to proteins. Copyright © 2002 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 1704 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Results Offer Hope for Some Paralyzed People to Control Robots and Computers By Shankar Vedantam Washington Post Staff Writer Electrodes implanted in a monkey's brain have enabled the animal to move a cursor on a computer screen just by thinking about it, researchers announced yesterday. It is the latest development in a new field of research called neuroprosthetics that could one day help some paralyzed people use their thoughts to control robots and computers. Other researchers have previously implanted electrodes in monkeys and people and shown that brain signals can move a cursor. The new work increases the speed and accuracy with which the brain can direct the cursor. Researchers believe they are perhaps a decade away from perfecting the technique for paralyzed patients. © 2002 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 1703 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jennifer Fisher Wilson The discoverer of prions, the pathogens implicated in the fatal, brain-wasting mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), announced recently that a therapy against them would likely be available within the next five to 10 years, but he added that scientists are still mystified by exactly what circumstances cause the pathogens to produce infections in animals and humans. "We thought that the number of cases of the disease would increase two to three times, but the number of cases in 2001 was similar to the number in 2000," Stanley B. Prusiner, 1997 Nobel Prize winner, told a crowded room of scientists at the University of Pennsylvania on Feb. 13. Prion diseases are difficult to predict, he said, because they involve so many variables. For example, it is still unknown why the new variant form of CJD disease, caused by BSE, is confined to young people while inherited CJD, also known as sporadic CJD, afflicts only the aged, he said. . C. Korth et al., "Acridine and phenothiazine derivatives as pharmacotherapeutics for prion disease," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98:9836-41, 2001. The Scientist 16[6]:28, Mar. 18, 2002 © Copyright 2002, The Scientist, Inc. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 1702 - Posted: 06.24.2010

* Alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking often go hand in hand. * A rodent study has found that low doses of alcohol and nicotine can have an additive effect on the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. * A related study has found that a nicotine blocker called mecamylamine can reduce the rewarding effects of alcohol in humans. * The two studies collectively suggest that nicotinic mechanisms are involved in alcohol consumption. It’s no secret that smokers often drink, and drinkers often smoke. Addiction scientists believe that alcohol consumption may contribute to increased cigarette smoking; certainly alcohol is considered a major risk factor for relapse during smoking cessation. Similarly, smoking is believed to increase the pleasurable effects of alcohol, and may be a risk factor for alcoholism relapse. Two studies in the March issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research examine the mechanisms underlying the two addictive behaviors. One study uses rodents to investigate the impact that alcohol and nicotine have on dopamine (DA) release in the brain; the other study looks at the impact a drug used to block nicotinic effects called mecamylamine has on alcohol’s effects for humans. The results collectively suggest that nicotinic mechanisms are involved in alcohol consumption.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 1700 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Findings published in current edition of Journal of Neurophysiology -- Bethesda, MD -- The four million Americans who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) experience symptoms which include progressive mental deterioration, confusion, a loss of memory and an inability to calculate the simplest of numbers. This may be due to the fact that people with Alzheimer's have fewer brain cells and less of some important neurotransmitters than people without the disease. The Importance of Galanin Previous research has established that a substance called “galanin” is associated with learning and memory and is involved in brain function, and disorders such as epilepsy. When a nerve is cut or injured, the neuron produces extra galanin, possibly to repair or modulate the damage. The production of galanin may be one way that the body tries to repair nerve damage. Unfortunately, accepted literature states when the onset of AD occurs, galanin hyperinnervation (excessive supply) of nerve cells that employ acetylcholine as their neurotransmitter in the basal forebrain of AD patients occurs and depresses acetylcholine release and its inhibitory actions at other central nervous system sites. Copyright © 2002, The American Physiological Society

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 1699 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Binge-eating, a disorder that can lead to obesity in young women, can be predicted by looking at a girl's negative emotions, including dissatisfaction with her body image, new data confirms. Only certain negative emotions, however, were linked to an increased risk of binge eating. "Heightened depressive symptoms and emotional eating, as well as low self-esteem, but not anxiety symptoms and anger, predicted binge eating onset," says Eric Stice, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, writing in the current issue of Health Psychology. Similarly, not all types of social support were linked to binge eating. Low peer support increased a girl's risk, but low parental support did not have any effect. Teenagers' risk of binge eating was not related to their age, ethnicity or level of parental education.

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia; Emotions
Link ID: 1698 - Posted: 03.15.2002

John McKenzie [ABCNEWS.com] — For many Americans, losing the ability to think and remember is the single biggest fear about growing older. A new study published in the Archives of Neurology finds that women 65 and older who had high levels of cholesterol were more likely to have problems thinking clearly than those with healthy cholesterol levels. Researchers now suggest that some women may have difficulty thinking clearly because what they eat causes high cholesterol. Copyright © 2002 ABCNEWS Internet Ventures.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 1697 - Posted: 06.24.2010

There has been a recent upsurge of interest in placebo effects (e.g., Blakeslee, 1998 a, b; Brown, 1998; Harrington, 1997; Holden, 2002; Moerman, 2001; Petrovic, Kalso, Petersson, and Ingvar, 2002). The word placebo (from the Latin, I shall please) has two related meanings: (1) a substance containing no medication but prescribed or given to reinforce a patient's expectation to get well; (2) an inactive substance or treatment used as a control in an experiment to test the effectiveness of a drug or medical treatment.

Keyword: Newsletter; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 1695 - Posted: 03.15.2002

The clue to understanding anxiety may be written in your genes By Jocelyn Selim When Charles Darwin returned to England in 1836 after his five-year voyage on the Beagle, he was 27 years old and on the cusp of one of the most brilliant careers in the history of science. He was also a bit of a wreck. He began complaining of "constant attacks"—heart palpitations, trembling, shortness of breath, and "swimming in the head." When offered a secretaryship at the Geological Society of London, he declined, explaining that "anything that flurries me completely knocks me up afterward." Two years later the once-intrepid traveler moved to his country home in Kent and became a legendary recluse, leaving only when absolutely necessary and then traveling in a carriage with darkened windows. On one rare trip in 1861, a brief speech in front of the Linnean Society prompted a 24-hour vomiting episode. Darwin never learned the true nature of his malady. Physicians of the time diagnosed it as anything from "dyspepsia with aggravated character" to "suppressed gout"; their successors might have attributed it to a weak nervous system or a conflicted superego. But according to a team of researchers led by Xavier Estivill, a molecular geneticist at Barcelona's Medical and Molecular Genetics Center, Darwin's agoraphobia may have had a more specific origin. In a study published in the journal Cell last summer, Estivill contended that nearly every social phobia and panic disorder is rooted in a single stretch of about 60 genes. Anxiety disorders first caught Estivill's attention 14 years ago through the work of physician Antoni Bulbena. While working at the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona, Bulbena made an odd observation: Patients who were double-jointed complained of nervous disorders far more often than others—fully 16 times as often, a follow-up study showed. Intrigued by the coincidence, Estivill traveled to a small Catalonian village near Barcelona, collected DNA samples from families known to have both conditions, and began combing through the samples for common characteristics. © Copyright 2002 The Walt Disney Company.

Keyword: Stress; Emotions
Link ID: 1692 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A quarter of obese children are already showing signs of changes that could lead to full-blown diabetes. The finding supports doctors' fears that many of today's "couch potato generation" could be falling prey to the disabling disease before they hit their 30s. It has been known for some time that being obese, or even overweight, can greatly increase the chances of diabetes, but evidence is growing that younger and younger patients are at risk. The study, by researchers at Yale University in the US, looked at more than 150 obese children, aged between four and 18. They found that in the 55 aged four to 10, 25% were showing signs of "insulin resistance". (C) BBC

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 1691 - Posted: 03.14.2002

Researchers have watched monkeys weigh different decisions while tracking the behavior of individual neurons in their brain. The work, reported in the 14 March issue of Neuron, shows how neurons keep track of recent events while making a comparison. In past experiments, neuroscientists had monitored the steps involved in making a decision: neurons encoding sensory information, comparing stimuli, and preparing commands to move muscles, among others. In this new study, Ranulfo Romo and colleagues at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City observed the complete unfolding of a decision, including a crucial step--neurons' ability to keep a trace of recent events in memory while making a comparison. They focused on the activities of neurons in a brain region called the medial premotor cortex (MPC); this region is primarily involved in commanding body movements, but Romo and others suspect it participates in sensory processing and can retain memories. To test whether this means that the MPC helps make decisions, the researchers applied a vibration to monkeys' fingertips for half a second. After 1 to 3 seconds, they then applied a second vibration at a different frequency. The animals learned to press a button to indicate which frequency was higher. As the animals mulled over which button to push, the researchers used electrodes to track the firing of individual neurons in the MPC. --MARINA CHICUREL Copyright © 2002 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Robotics; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 1690 - Posted: 06.24.2010