FAIRFAX, Va,— Researchers have designed a detection system that could soon help track a soldier’s stress level on the battlefield. The advance, which involves the use of the hormone hydrocortisone as a molecular marker, was described here today at the 35th Middle Atlantic Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society. The meeting is being held at George Mason University. "With real-time monitoring, the user can be continuously aware of his hydrocortisone levels, thus alerting him to dangerous levels of stress in the field," said David S. Lawrence, Ph.D., senior staff member and medicinal chemist at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. Stress evaluation is important to establishing and maintaining combat readiness among troops. Lawrence said military commanders "would like to monitor the soldiers on the front lines (or in other stressful situations) to determine whether John Smith has reached his maximum stress load where he may become a danger to himself or to his unit. The commanders can then make a more informed decision as to the mission itself and Smith's role in it."

Keyword: Stress; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 2166 - Posted: 06.24.2010

UCLA scientists have developed a fast new way to image how thousands of genes misfire proteins in a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease. The approach may provide a research blueprint for pinpointing the abnormal brain regions linked to autism and schizophrenia. The new findings are reported in the June edition of Genome Research. Last year, UCLA pharmacologist Desmond Smith developed a new method to rapidly track how genes express proteins in the human brain. Called “voxelation,” the approach involves cutting the brain into cubes, then using DNA chip technology and math to reconstruct gene expression patterns in three-dimensional images. This time, Smith used voxelation to compare gene expression in the brains of mice. Half of the mice received drugs to induce Parkinson’s disease. The UCLA team analyzed the brain cubes with DNA chips to track the expression of 9,000 genes simultaneously. They then combined the 9,000 resulting images to visualize how the genes construct the brain.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 2165 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Kevin J. McGraw, a biologist at Cornell University, knew what female birds and other animals in crowded, resource-scarce environments look for in their mates: males with potential to materially care for females and their offspring. But what about the human animal? What do women really want, McGraw wondered, as he read thousands of lonely-hearts personal ads in newspapers from 23 American cities. After two months of research, the graduate student in Cornell's Department of Neurobiology and Behavior concludes, "In densely populated and resource-demanding environments, birds and women may not be all that different." Where resources are at a premium -- expensive, big cities from San Francisco to Boston -- so are the men who can provide them, says McGraw. In such densely populated places, personal ads indicate that male-provided material comforts seem more important to women than do emotional or intellectual aspects of a relationship. But in medium- and smaller-sized cities, the biologist's reading of newspaper personal ads found the opposite: Women place more emphasis on emotional aspects or personal interests of potential mates, and less on materialism. McGraw comments: "This study emphasizes the flexibility of mating strategies, depending on the environments individuals find themselves in. The rich guys don't always win. And the nice guys don't always finish last -- although they might have to move to be found by the right mate."

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 2164 - Posted: 05.30.2002

The next time your boss catches you nodding off at your desk, simply wipe the drool from your mouth and say: Scientists have uncovered the first evidence that napping improves performance--at least on certain types of visual tasks. The finding may help explain what happens to the overworked brain and how sleep combats such problems. Students, medical residents, and long-haul truck drivers have long known the value of a good nap. Although lab studies have shown that a good night’s sleep improves performance on learning and memory, none had pinpointed the benefits of shorter snoozes. To see whether napping could improve visual discrimination, a team led by Robert Stickgold, a neuroscientist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had college students who were not sleep deprived stare at a video screen filled with horizontal bars. Periodically, three diagonal bars flashed in the lower left corner of the screen, and the students had to say whether these bars were stacked horizontally or vertically. The researchers graded students' performance by measuring how long the diagonal bars had to be shown in order for them to answer correctly 80% of the time. Students sat through 1250 frustrating trials during each session, so those who did not nap did worse and worse over the course of the day. But students who took a 1-hour nap returned to their original performance levels in the next test, the team reports in a paper published online 28 May in Nature Neuroscience. Copyright © 2002 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 2163 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Combination Works for Men Who Don't Respond to Standard Treatments By Martin Downs -- Once again, Viagra comes to the rescue. A new study shows that Viagra in combination with Paxil helps premature ejaculators who have not improved with standard treatment. If a man can work up the nerve to talk to his doctor about premature ejaculation, the doctor may refer him to a psychiatrist or a sex therapist, or may prescribe one of several possible medications including Paxil, an antidepressant, or a lidocaine numbing ointment that is rubbed on the head of the penis before sex. © 1996-2002 WebMD Inc. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 2161 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Living near a busy road may stop a child doing well at school, say scientists. The noise is bad for mental health, according to a study of schoolchildren in Austria. A child's academic performance, behaviour and attention span could all be affected by the hum of traffic or other sounds. Being constantly surrounded by everyday noise appears to be the main factor. It has "very subtle influences on children's motivation and cognitive development", says research leader Dr Peter Lercher of the University of Innsbruck. (C) BBC

Keyword: Hearing; Intelligence
Link ID: 2160 - Posted: 05.29.2002

Tennis and golf players, at least the good ones, experience it with every shot: Their brains compute the velocity and direction of a flying ball with high precision in real-time. But under dim light, when the contrast is low, even the pros misjudge. Now theoretical neuroscientists show that such errors are not due to sloppy neuronal computation, but the result of educated--but erroneous--guesses as the brain struggles under difficult conditions. Dim light can lead to some strange errors. In one classic example, a rhombus moving horizontally with the four corners covered appears to move vertically at low contrast (see link below with interactive animation). Similarly, car drivers underestimate their speed in foggy weather and tend to drive faster than on a sunny day. Cognitive neuroscientists have tried to exploit such observations to figure out how the brain perceives motion. Copyright © 2002 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 2159 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Penn researchers design disc to deliver medication for up to 12 months (Philadelphia, PA) -- One of the greatest difficulties in treating schizophrenia has always been helping patients to stay on their medication. Now, that problem is closer to being solved. Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine have designed an implantable device capable of delivering anti-psychotic medication for a period of five months, and continuing work at Penn indicates that such devices may work for up to a full year. The device has been proven effective in initial laboratory studies, and more research is underway (in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine) to lead to potential clinical trials. Findings from the small-mammal study appear in the current issue of the scientific journal Neuropsychopharmacology. If the device can be demonstrated to work effectively in human subjects in future trials, it will offer a medical alternative that may relieve many patients of the threat of psychosis and chronic social instability.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 2158 - Posted: 05.29.2002

NIDA-supported researchers from Brookhaven National Laboratory and the State University of New York at Stony Brook have found evidence in humans that dopamine plays a role in the conditioned cue response to food. Cues—seeing, smelling, and tasting something enjoyable—increase the desire for the reward without necessarily enhancing the pleasure of the reward itself. Positron emission tomography (PET) was used to measure changes in dopamine in the brains of 10 healthy adults (eight men and two women) during food and neutral stimulations. Food stimulation consisted of the participants viewing, smelling, and tasting their favorite foods but not actually eating the foods. For neutral stimulation, participants described their family genealogy in detail. Prior to and during food stimulation, participants were instructed to rate their feelings of "hunger," "desire for food," "alertness," "stimulation," and "talkativeness" on a scale of 1 to 10. Participants had fasted 16-20 hours before PET scans were conducted.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 2157 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Neuronal differences in brain regions involved in decision-making and other functions observed for the first time in chronic users of cocaine Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have detected differences in areas of the brain in chronic cocaine users. These differences were detected in regions involved in decision making, behavioral inhibition, and emotional reaction to the environment. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and other brain mapping techniques, the researchers, led by Dr. Teresa R. Franklin, examined 13 men who had used cocaine for an average of 13 years each. They found that, compared to controls who had never used cocaine, select regions of the brains of the cocaine users had less gray matter. This decrease in critical working brain tissue ranged from 5 to 11 percent. This is the first time in either animal or human studies that differences in gray matter concentrations have been found in chronic cocaine users.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 2156 - Posted: 05.29.2002

MAASTRICHT, Netherlands, (UPI) -- People with depression are more than three times as likely to develop Parkinson's disease than people who are not depressed, a new study reveals. "This raises the question of whether depression is the first symptom of Parkinson's disease ... that appears before patients have other symptoms and a diagnosis," said Agnes Schuurman, one of the study's authors, a researcher at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Parkinson's disease is characterized by reduced mobility, tremors and muscular rigidity. Although Parkinson's sufferers are often affected by depression, Schuurman said this is the first study to track people with depression to see how many develop Parkinson's. Copyright © 2002 United Press International

Keyword: Depression; Parkinsons
Link ID: 2155 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Folic acid may help forestall the disease By Jennifer Thomas HealthScoutNews Reporter -- Heard of homocysteine? If not, you will soon, health experts say. New research is finding homocysteine (ho-mo-SIS-teen), an amino acid, may play a role in the onset of dementia. The good news is that vitamins B6, B12 and folic acid may reduce the levels of homocysteine in the blood, says Dr. James Toole, a professor of neurology and public health science at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Copyright © 2002 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 2154 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer, Is evolution like a well-tuned car that purrs down the road at a steady pace? Or is it more like an aging, rattling jalopy that often lurches forward? The aging jalopy is a handy metaphor for the evolutionary theory popularized by Stephen Jay Gould, who died of cancer last week at age 60. Thanks to Gould's numerous popular writings, his theory known as "punctuated equilibrium" has been at the center of a major scientific debate since the early 1970s. Gould and his colleague Niles Eldredge argued that the evolution of life isn't a slow, steady, gradual process, as conventional scientific wisdom held. Rather, they said, evolution is a multi-million-year saga usually characterized by brief, sudden shifts separated by long periods of little or no change. ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 2153 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JOHN O'NEIL A change is as good as a rest for a brain worn down by working too long on one task, according to a study released yesterday in the journal Nature Neuroscience. A group of researchers tried to find out why too much practice could make performance slump. Led by Dr. Sara C. Mednick, a Harvard psychologist, the researchers put 30 well-rested people through the same set of tasks — distinguishing between shapes that were displayed very briefly — four times in the course of day, starting at 9 a.m. and ending at 7 p.m. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Attention; Sleep
Link ID: 2152 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JANE E. BRODY I slowed down as I approached a fork in the highway, unsure of which arm to take. The driver behind me was on my tail, so impatient that he tried to pass me on the right just as I headed for the right fork, forcing him to slam on his brakes. He became so infuriated that he pulled right in front of my car and each time I moved he repeatedly slammed on his brakes, forcing me to brake suddenly again and again, endangering not only me but himself and the driver behind me. While his road rage was short of a shooting, it was rage nonetheless and extremely unnerving. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Aggression; Emotions
Link ID: 2151 - Posted: 05.28.2002

Statistical analysis applied to fraternal birth order effect by Jessica Whiteside -- Roughly one in seven gay men may owe his sexual orientation to the fact he has older brothers, say U of T researchers. Earlier studies have shown that each additional older brother increases the odds of homosexuality in a younger brother. "This phenomenon, known as the fraternal birth order effect, was first shown by Professor Ray Blanchard [of U of T's Department of Psychiatry and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health] and has since been confirmed by other scientists," says CAMH post-doctoral fellow James Cantor. Cantor is co-author of a new study to determine the proportion of gay men whose sexual orientation is due to this effect. "This latest study demonstrates just how important that link is," says Cantor.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 2150 - Posted: 05.28.2002

CHAPEL HILL – About 10 years ago, Dr. Robert Golden and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill colleagues discovered an important new clue to the cause of depression, one that other researchers eventually confirmed. They found that depressed people showed a blunted hormonal response to a test he developed that boosts serotonin, an important neurotransmitter chemical in the brain. "This neuroendocrine challenge test, which involved giving depressed volunteer patients a medicine called clomipramine, indicated that depressed patients’ serotonin systems were sluggish in response and not working efficiently," Golden said. "An analogy I use is that their serotonin ‘engine’ needs a tune-up because they aren’t getting much mileage out of the gas being burned."

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 2149 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By AAP Are women responsible for the intelligence of the human race because they consistently pick brain over brawn when choosing mates? A study by German geneticists supports the controversial theory that women approach brains as a sexual ornament - much like a lion's mane or a peacock's tail - according to a report in New Scientist magazine. Developments in genetics allowed the German team to build on previous studies by finding more evidence that the X chromosome carries intelligence.

Keyword: Intelligence; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 2148 - Posted: 05.28.2002

NewScientist.com news service People who have trouble controlling their anger might be suffering from a mild form of brain dysfunction, say US researchers. Their tests suggest that being prone to aggressive, even violent, outbursts is linked to impairments in a region of the brain called the orbital/medial prefrontal cortex circuit. Psychiatric diagnoses of the condition, known formally as Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) are rare. But Mary Best at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia says: "Even individuals who do not meet full criteria for the disorder can still have frequent uncontrollable episodes of impulsive aggression, and they can impact society through their violent behaviour. An example would be a spousal abuser." The disorder usually starts in adolescence, and most cases probably go undiagnosed, says Best. Some psychologists have blamed IED episodes for recent cases of school pupils massacring fellow students. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Aggression; Emotions
Link ID: 2147 - Posted: 06.24.2010

MRI measures size of key memory center in brain By Adam Marcus HealthScoutNews Reporter MONDAY, (HealthScoutNews) -- Head scans that measure the size of a key memory center in the brain may help doctors predict Alzheimer's disease decades before a patient's mental ability falters, new research has found. The findings involve an area deep in the brain called the hippocampus, one of the earliest sites to be affected by Alzheimer's. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the researchers showed that at death women with dementia linked to the degenerative disorder had markedly smaller hippocampus volume compared with women who died with normal brain function intact. More modest changes were also evident in women with the cellular scars of early Alzheimer's but no memory loss when they died. "We wanted to see if we looked at people who were not demented and had no memory impairment, could we identify which had Alzheimer's by looking at the volume of the hippocampus," said James Mortimer, director of the Institute on Aging at the University of South Florida in Tampa and a co-author of the study. "We can do it with great accuracy." Copyright © 2002 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Brain imaging
Link ID: 2146 - Posted: 06.24.2010