SAN DIEGO -- Scientists at the University at Buffalo have shown that the drug methylphenidate, the generic form of Ritalin, which physicians have considered to have only short-term effects, appears to initiate changes in brain function that remain after the therapeutic effects have dissipated. The changes appear to be similar to those that occur with other stimulant drugs such as amphetamine and cocaine, said Joan Baizer, Ph.D., UB professor of physiology and biophysics and senior author of the study.

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 978 - Posted: 11.12.2001

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have found that telling a lie and telling the truth require different activities in the human brain. The findings will be presented Tuesday, Nov. 13, at the national meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego, CA. By identifying the brain activity associated with deception and denial, the work paves the way for improvements in lie-detection techniques. It may also contribute to the field of psychotherapy by advancing understanding of what happens to the brain during the those psychological processes, said Daniel Langleben, MD, leader of the study and assistant professor in Penn's Department of Psychiatry.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 977 - Posted: 11.12.2001

HELEN PEARSON Greasy sausage roll or juicy apple? Our choice of snacks cannot be explained by a taste for fat, nutrition researchers now suggest. By hunting down the genetic secrets of the skinny, they hope to help those prone to piling on the pounds. Some lucky people munch chips and chocolate and never gain an ounce. Their choice of diet is not down to fondness for fatty flavours, say appetite researchers John Blundell and John Cooling of the University of Leeds.1 1.Cooling, J. & Blundell, J. E. High-fat and low-fat phenotypes: habitual eating of high- and low-fat foods not related to taste preference for fat. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 55, 1016 - 1021, (2001). © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2001

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 976 - Posted: 11.12.2001

Ritalin is a controversial drug A study which suggests the controversial drug Ritalin could cause long-term brain changes has been attacked. The drug is prescribed to children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). While many parents say it has been extraordinarily successful, others have compared the drug to a "chemical cosh". Scientists found that rats given large doses of Ritalin suffered subtle neuronal changes. They said these were comparable to the effects of other stimulant drugs such as amphetamines and cocaine. However a UK expert who strongly advocates Ritalin use said the study was deeply flawed. (c) BBC

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 975 - Posted: 11.12.2001

Changes appear similar to those caused by amphetamine The stimulant Ritalin, a drug used to help children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, may cause long-term changes in the brain, researchers reported on Sunday. THE CHANGES LOOK similar to those seen with other stimulants such as amphetamine and cocaine, at least in rats, the team at the University of Buffalo found. "Clinicians consider Ritalin to be short-acting," Joan Baizer, a professor of physiology and biophysics who led the study said in a statement. • MSNBC Terms and Conditions © 2001

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 974 - Posted: 11.12.2001

By Lisa Liddane The Orange County Register It's a volcano waiting to erupt in the brain. When an aneurysm ruptures, it can result in brain damage, coma or death. It landed actress Sharon Stone in a hospital last month. A 20-year-old woman died of a ruptured brain aneurysm after riding Montezooma's Revenge roller coaster two months ago at Knott's Berry Farm in California. In March 2000, Eric Samaniego, a critical-care nurse from Yorba Linda, Calif., had a tremendous headache - something he had never experienced. "My vision started getting blurry, and I started to lose my balance." As a nurse, he knew something was terribly wrong. His wife called 911. Samaniego remembers little about the month after he arrived in the emergency room. He was told the aneurysm was corrected through a series of operations. But the rehabilitation and recovery were tough. Copyright © 2001 The Seattle Times Company

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 973 - Posted: 11.12.2001

Bruce Bower Although people effortlessly remember all sorts of everyday events, scientists are struggling to explain how the brain makes this possible. In two critical brain areas, such memory may hinge more on the timing than on the strength of neural activity, according to a team of neuroscientists. As volunteers study word lists, clusters of neurons in the rhinal cortex and the hippocampus-adjacent brain areas already implicated in memory-fire synchronized electrical bursts that pave the way for remembering those words later, argue Jürgen Fell of the University of Bonn in Germany and his colleagues. From Science News, Vol. 160, No. 19, Nov. 10, 2001, p. 294. Copyright ©2001 Science Service. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 970 - Posted: 11.12.2001

Expecting a spike in cases after Sept. 11, researchers puzzle out the biology of the disorder By Douglas Steinberg Thousands of cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will likely emerge from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Many cases will last a few months, but severely traumatized witnesses could suffer for the rest of their lives. How can a single horrific experience with nasty aftershocks sear the psyche for decades? Answers to this question appear increasingly urgent in an atmosphere of war, anthrax scares, and continual television replays of the World Trade Center collapse. Researchers have linked PTSD to changes in the brain and body. But association is not causation, and biologists hotly contest the significance of these changes. Inconsistent findings fuel the debate, and the ethical limitations of psychiatric research, combined with a lack of animal models, might make some issues impossible to resolve. The stakes in these scientific disputes are high: greater consensus could channel resources into better prevention and treatment strategies. The Scientist 15[22]:1, Nov. 12, 2001 © Copyright 2001, The Scientist, Inc. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 969 - Posted: 11.12.2001

Cholesterol is secreted by cells in the brain Cholesterol plays a crucial role in making sure that the brain works properly. The compound is notorious for clogging up the arteries, leading to heart disease and stroke. But scientists have found that it stimulates the nerve cells of the brain to make the connections that are essential to learning and memory. The brain does not obtain cholesterol from the blood. The molecules are too big to pass across the blood-brain barrier which provides a frontline defence against toxic substances. (c) BBC

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 967 - Posted: 11.09.2001

Nerve cells need cholesterol to establish contacts / New perspectives for the treatment of brain lesions A previously unknown role of cholesterol in the formation of contacts between nerve cells has been discovered by researchers at the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, Germany, and at the Centre de Neurochimie in Strasbourg in France (Science, November 09th, 2001). Their results suggest a link between brain cholesterol metabolism and nerve cell development, learning and memory and hint at new strategies to cure injury- or disease-induced brain lesions. Brain function depends on the exchange of electrical signals between nerve cells that is mediated by highly specialized contact sites, the socalled synapses. Their formation is a decisive phase during brain development and plays an important role in learning and memory. So far, however, the mechanisms of this process are largely obscure and thus, their elucidation is therefore an important topic of neuroscience research. Moreover, the identification of "synaptogenic" factors is a fundamental prerequisite to repair synaptic connections that have been destroyed by injury, stroke or neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 966 - Posted: 11.09.2001

Copyright © 2001 Christian Science Monitor Service By LORI VALIGRA, Christian Science Monitor. - It's an underwater nightclub scene that could drown out the overtures of even the most virtuosic terrestrial Romeo. To the human ear, the relentless rat-a-tat-tat of the male cusk eel and the hours-long humming of the midshipman fish may sound like downtown street noise. But to potential mates, these underwater troubadours are the piscine versions of Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra, crooning love songs in the moonlight. Although whale song has long been documented in ships' logs, it wasn't until World War II that scientists and the military first noticed the sounds of fish and the snapping of crustaceans. So far, more than 700 species of saltwater and freshwater fish throughout the world are known to vocalize, but scientists say the total number is likely much higher. Most of the time, the sounds come from male fish during mating. Copyright © 2001 Nando Media

Keyword: Animal Communication; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 964 - Posted: 11.09.2001

Viewing attractive female faces activates the brain's reward circuits in males From ancient mythology to modern advertising, the face of a beautiful woman has been regarded as a powerful motivator of men's behavior. Now a group of researchers based at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has shown that, while heterosexual men recognize attractiveness in both female and male faces, they will expend effort to increase their viewing of attractive female faces only. The research also shows that areas of the brain previously identified as responding to such rewards as food, drugs and money also respond to facial beauty. The study appears in the November 8 issue of Neuron. "Our group has been studying the physiological mechanisms that underlie a variety of motivated behaviors," says Hans Breiter, MD, of the Motivation and Emotion Neuroscience Center in the MGH Department of Radiology, the paper's author and leader of the research team. "While many neuroscientists have been studying the visual processing of faces, we wanted to find out if watching beautiful faces can itself be rewarding and can activate the brain's motivation centers." To answer these questions, the researchers conducted three experiments with groups of young, heterosexual men. (Men were chosen as study subjects because other recent research has shown that women's response to facial stimuli can change during their menstrual cycles.) Each experiment utilized a series of 80 photographs of faces that fell into four standard categories: beautiful females, average females, beautiful males, and average males.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Brain imaging
Link ID: 963 - Posted: 11.09.2001

In the November 1, 2001 issue, the Journal of Neuroscience inaugurated a new series of critical minireviews called "New Directions in Neuroscience," meant to help readers stay in touch with new methods and new fields of research (Shepherd, 2001). The first set of minireviews is entitled "Genomics and Proteomics," and three of the five reviews treat topics relevant to biological psychology.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Newsletter
Link ID: 962 - Posted: 11.09.2001

For almost thirty years there have been two competing hypotheses about how synaptic vesicles discharge transmitter molecules into the synapse and then are recycled for further activity. Recent experiments and reviews indicate that both hypotheses are correct, each applying to a different pool of vesicles within the presynaptic terminal (Richards, Guatimosin, and Betz, 2000; Wilkinson and Cole, 2001).

Keyword: Miscellaneous; Newsletter
Link ID: 961 - Posted: 11.09.2001

Schizophrenia typically has its onset in late adolescence or early adulthood, but cases that occur in childhood or early adolescence appear to be clinically and neurobiologically similar to later-onset illness. Early-onset schizophrenia may offer special opportunities to study how the disease develops and may help to discover its causes. For this reason, a team of neuroscientists (Thompson et al., 2001) used MRI to map, over a five-year period, the brains of 12 patients, 6 male and 6 female, with childhood-onset schizophrenia (COS), and a parallel group of 12 healthy adolescents. A third group of subjects were controls for medication; these were 10 non-schizophrenic adolescents who exhibited chronic mood disturbance and lack of behavioral control for which they were being treated with the same medications as the COS patients. MRI scans were first taken when the subjects were about 13.5 years old, then again about 2.5 years later, and finally about 5 years after the first scans.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Newsletter
Link ID: 960 - Posted: 11.09.2001

In Figure 8.11 (b and c), we saw that when a finger is denervated or lost, adjacent intact parts of the hand take over its representation in somatosensory cortex. When a hand is lost, the cortical regions that represent the upper arm and face expand, taking over the cortical area that previously represented the missing hand (Figure 8.12). Similar changes occur in the motor cortex after loss of a hand.

Keyword: Regeneration; Newsletter
Link ID: 959 - Posted: 11.09.2001

SAN FRANCISCO--The Pavarottis of the canary world can drive a female wild by singing certain special notes. Now scientists have learned what makes these "sexy syllables" so alluring: Virtuoso canary singers have mastered a tricky vocal technique, which may indicate their overall robustness. Birds sing to attract mates. But why females prefer a particular song has been a puzzle. Although there's evidence that complex and frequent songs are more attractive, a recent idea suggests that certain notes are the key to seduction. "Sexy syllables" in canary song were first identified in 1995 by ethologists Eric Vallet and Michel Kreutzer of the Université de Paris X in Nanterre, France. When males sang certain trills, or when the trills were played on tape, caged females assumed postures inviting copulation. Copyright © 2001 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 955 - Posted: 11.08.2001

Three antioxidant compounds that can traverse the blood-brain barrier appear to prevent the damage wrought by so-called free radicals, highly reactive compounds suspected to be involved in aging. The molecules prevent brain damage and prolong life in mice whose natural system to mop up free radicals was knocked out, according to a new study--and researchers are hopeful they could lead to drugs to increase human life-span. Free radicals--oxygen-containing molecules that zap cellular machinery--are churned out whenever an organism transforms food into fuel. If they linger, they cause disease and perhaps aging as well. Creatures neutralize free radicals with an arsenal of enzymes, including mitochondrial superoxide dismutase (SOD2). SOD2 is crucial: Mice lacking it die within days of birth. A synthetic antioxidant called MnTBAP can delay their demise. But MnTBAP can't cross the blood-brain barrier, so mutant mice still develop neurological symptoms; researchers usually have to kill them within 3 weeks. Copyright © 2001 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 954 - Posted: 11.08.2001

(SAN DIEGO, CALIF.)– As a part of the inaugural International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR) conference, four prominent autism scientists will identify the current level of understanding in the areas of genetics, neuroscience, the incidences (or epidemiological trends) and diagnosis of autism and present a look at where the fields are headed. IMFAR will hold its first conference on Nov. 9 and 10 to promote communication and facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration among scientists researching the disorder. "We have brought together some of the pre-eminent researchers who understand the challenge that autism presents," said David G. Amaral, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry at UC Davis School of Medicine and research director at the UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute, one of the sponsors of the IMFAR conference. "These speakers will challenge their peers to go beyond that foundation and to further expand our current level of understanding of this disorder."

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 953 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Research on components of the brain's electrical signaling system has answered a basic question about our human evolution, confirming scientific belief that we two-legged, computer-using creatures are descended from prokaryotes -- cellular organisms so primitive and simple that they exist without nuclei or cell walls. The study, led by Zhe Lu, MD, PhD, an Associate Professor in the Department of Physiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have been recently published in the journal Nature. The research by Lu and his colleagues focused on the structure and function of molecules called potassium channels, which are essential to how the brain works. When potassium channels open and close, they control the flow of potassium ions across cell membranes. The current contributes to the electrical signals in nerve, muscle and endocrine cells.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 952 - Posted: 11.08.2001