Ian Sample If you want successful offspring, have sex with a stranger - and the stranger the better, according to scientists at Cambridge University. They have shown that the more genetically distinct an animal's parents are, the more offspring they will have. The number of grandchildren is a common measure of reproductive success. "We've got sayings like 'opposites attract', and the ideal male partner is supposed to be a tall, dark stranger," says zoologist Bill Amos. "The stranger here really seems to make sense." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 665 - Posted: 10.20.2001

ERICA KLARREICH Spells and incantations step aside: scientists have found a genetic elixir of love. It makes males more faithful to females and more friendly to fellow males. It could also shed light on bonding disorders such as autism. Larry Young of Emory University in Georgia and colleagues used a virus to deliver a gene straight to the part of voles' brains responsible for rewards and addiction, the ventral pallidum. The gene made the animals' brains more receptive to the hormone vasopressin1. 1.Pitkow, L. et al. Facilitation of affiliation and pair-bond formation by vasopressin receptor gene transfer into the ventral forebrain of a monogamous vole. Journal of Neuroscience, 21(18), 7392 - 7396, (2001). © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2001

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 664 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Robin McKie Science Editor The Observer Tiny specks of dirt have been pinpointed as causes of Parkinson's disease. Scientists have found that soil contains strains of bacteria linked to the incurable neurological illness. Their research raises the prospect of creating vaccines to protect individuals from Parkinson's, which affects more than 120,000 Britons and whose sufferers include the Pope and the American film star Michael J. Fox. 'We are not saying every case of Parkinson's disease is caused by soil bacteria but our evidence suggests a fairly substantial number are triggered by them,' said microbiologist Professor Blaine Beaman of the University of California. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 663 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bruce Bower The proportion of teenagers and young adults who smoke cigarettes daily has declined in the United States over the past 20 years, thanks in no small part to a public health campaign to discourage tobacco use. At the same time, however, nicotine addiction has widened its grip among those young people who do smoke, a new study finds. Daily cigarette smokers aren't necessarily hooked on nicotine. But for people ages 24 and younger, the rate of addiction among regular cigarette smokers has increased even as the overall popularity of smoking has dropped, reports a team led by psychologist Naomi Breslau of Henry Ford Health System in Detroit. Breslau, N., et al. 2001. Nicotine dependence in the United States. Archives of General Psychiatry 58(September):810. From Science News, Vol. 160, No. 12, Sept. 22, 2001, p. 183. Copyright ©2001 Science Service. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 659 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Sustained weight maintenance after significant weight loss is usually difficult to achieve. One potential pharmacological approach to the treatment of obesity involves leptin, a circulating hormone that is released by the body's fat cells. Leptin provides a signal to the central nervous system to regulate appetite, food intake, and other aspects relevant to weight management. In a study of middle-aged obese men published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Westerterp-Plantenga et al. investigated the effects of leptin on appetite and energy expenditure during a moderate weight loss diet. The treatment group that received weekly injections of the leptin protein experienced subjective changes in appetite. However, reductions in calorie intake and body composition were similar to the untreated group.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 658 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Opinion is split about the benefits and risks of ECT Measuring the levels of a hormone could help doctors decide whether it is safe to give a patient electro-convulsive therapy (ECT). ECT is a controversial treatment used to relieve the symptoms of severe depression. There is evidence that it is effective at relieving these symptoms in many cases. But some of those who have undergone the treatment claim they have suffered long-lasting cognitive side effects including memory loss, mood swings and recurrent head-aches. Now, a team of scientists, led by Thomas Neylan, from the University of California in San Francisco, has found that levels of the stress hormone cortisol might indicate which patients will suffer most from these side-effects. (C) BBC

Keyword: Depression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 656 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Researchers suggest further interdisciplinary research between voice specialists, psychiatrists and psychologists is needed. Denver, CO -- Psychological factors including personality traits and psychiatric illness may be causally related to voice disorders or may be a consequence of vocal dysfunction. Failure to recognize coexistent psychopathology may result not only in errors in voice diagnosis, but may delay treatment and impair long-term cure rates. Previous research on this subject area has investigated personality variables that may predispose individuals to the development of voice pathology. Findings revealed that personality variables and their behavioral consequences could contribute to voice disorders. A model of predispositional personality types for functional dysphonia and vocal nodules has been established; evaluations of individuals with psychogenic dysphonia found that they share certain neurotic personality traits and social anxiety. © 1995-2001 Newswise

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 655 - Posted: 10.20.2001

For some people, music makes as much sense as a foreign language Do people cover their ears when you step up to the karaoke mike? Can't tap your foot in time to a melody? Can't even recognise a simple tune like Happy Birthday? If the answer is yes, you're not just tone-deaf, you're "tune-deaf". "For these patients, listening to music is like listening to a foreign language," says Isabelle Peretz of Montreal University in Canada, who identified congenital amusia four years ago. Tune-deaf people are perfectly normal in other ways, she explains. They are intelligent, have no history of mental illness and were exposed to music as children. They just cannot comprehend the basic components of melody such as meter, rhythm and pitch and consequently do not feel any emotion when listening. The disorder seems to affect men and women equally. Peretz's research-including one study on 11 people-has shown that tune-deaf people cannot distinguish intervals of about two semitones or less. A semitone is the smallest interval in Western scales and most people can detect an interval of half that. Tune-deaf people also have difficulty recognising "wrong" notes in popular tunes and spotting musical dissonance. © AlphaGalileo March 2000

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 654 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Deaf children who have had electrodes implanted in their ears will learn how to use the devices properly at a medical centre in Nottingham. The Cochlear Implant Centre at Queens Medical Centre is unique in offering support to children who have had cochlear implants. The implants have been carried out at Queens Medical Centre (QMC) since 1989 and involve placing an electrode into the inner ear so the brain can understand sounds. (C) BBC

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 650 - Posted: 10.20.2001

- Using a technique to eliminate the function of one enzyme in a restricted memory-related region in the brains of mice, researchers have shown that the enzyme is important in consolidating long-term memories. According to the researchers, their experiments - which showed that defects in a key biochemical signaling pathway were responsible for the animals' inability to improve their long-term memory in a series of maze tests - constitute a powerful approach to understanding molecules involved in learning and memory. ©2001 Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 649 - Posted: 10.20.2001

A gene implicated in the human nerve disorder neurofibromatosis type 1 has been shown to play an important role in a biochemical pathway that communicates crucial information about the circadian clock to various parts of the body. Circadian rhythms, the patterns of activity that occur on a 24-hour cycle, are important biological regulators in virtually every living creature. In humans and other animals, the brain's internal circadian clock regulates sleep and wake cycles, as well as body temperature, blood pressure, and the release of various endocrine hormones. ©2001 Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 647 - Posted: 11.06.2001

Seeds of Psychosis New research shows that the biological clock ticks for men too By Josie Glausiusz Eileen Malaspina dreamed of becoming a physician. But in 1971, during her senior year in high school, her grades began to deteriorate. She became increasingly withdrawn and complained that the neighbors were talking about her. After graduation she entered not the college to which she had won a scholarship but a hospital. Diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder, a devastating mix of mania, depression, and psychosis, she never made it to medical school. But her only sister, Dolores, did. Now a psychiatrist at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, Dolores Malaspina applied to study medicine with one aim: to understand the illness that afflicts her younger sister. © Copyright 2001 The Walt Disney Company.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 645 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Oh great- now we'll have rat psychologists Illustrations and Case Histories by Bruce McCall Several months ago, Matthew Wilson, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, announced that he had figured out what the rats in his lab dream about. Wilson and his graduate assistant Kenway Louie had implanted tiny electrodes directly into the rats' hippocampi, the region responsible for memory and learning. Then they trained the rats to scurry around a circular track and stop periodically for food rewards. As the rats ran, the electrodes monitored the firing of a dozen or so neurons in each rat's brain. Wilson found that the neurons fired in a distinctive pattern that varied from rat to rat but remained the same for each individual animal. Later, when the rats experienced rapid eye movement sleep, those neurons began to fire again. "The patterns are not exactly the same," Wilson says, "but we can definitely say that they are derived from those generated during the rats' awake experience on the track." © Copyright 2001 The Walt Disney Company.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 644 - Posted: 11.06.2001

by Maia Szalavitz Transcranial magnetic stimulation has come of age and is being used to study everything from free will to mental illness. Will it move out of the lab and into the clinic? Over the centuries, countless claims have been made for the healing power of magnets. Even now, an Internet search will yield thousands of sites touting their benefits, despite little scientific evidence. There is one medical use of magnets, however, that is currently generating great interest amongst neuroscientists - a technology called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), first introduced in 1985, that is being used to study everything from free will to movement disorders and mental illness. © Elsevier Science Limited 2000

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 641 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Researchers funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) have found that an inexpensive program that trains primary care providers to work with patients and mental health specialists to diagnose and properly treat depression can reduce the time that participating patients spend clinically depressed. Over a two-year period, the program reduced the duration of participating patients' depression by well over a month. The training program cost less than $500 per depressed patient and increased the time that the depressed patients spent employed during that two-year period by about four workweeks. NIMH Director Steven E. Hyman, M.D. said, "This study shows that reducing the suffering that depression brings to nearly 19 million Americans a year, in a cost-effective way, is an achievable goal."

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 638 - Posted: 10.20.2001

By ERIC NAGOURNEY Healthy people over 60 on a course to develop memory problems show distinctive changes in their brains that can be seen with PET scans, even if the people experience no symptoms, a new study reports. The researchers administered mental acuity tests to 48 healthy people from 60 to 80 years old, and scanned their brains. Three years later, they re-evaluated the study group, and found that 11 of the people who had slowed glucose metabolism in part of the brain had cognitive impairment. The 12th had Alzheimer's. Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers; Brain imaging
Link ID: 636 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Some of Grandma's health advice (wet feet cause colds, for instance) has not panned out. Some has stood the test of time (such as the idea that roughage-that is, fiber-is good for you). Fish as brain food may also get the nod from scientists. It has already gotten the nod for its cardiovascular benefits. There's now evidence that eating fish can play a positive role in mental health. It may sound like a joke, but the brain is largely composed of fat. Fats, along with water, are the chief components of brain cell membranes and the specialized tissues enclosing the nerves. The anti-fat message promoted as part of heart-healthy diets these days makes it easy to forget that not all fats are "bad," and that some types are essential to human life. © 2001 Health Letter Associates

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 634 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Emma Young The first clinical trial of a drug to treat vCJD will begin in the UK within weeks, says the Department of Health. However, experts are concerned that the prospects for a fully controlled investigation into the drug's effectiveness are slim. The trial has been spurred by the announcement in August of the "remarkable recovery" of a 20-year-old British woman, suspected of suffering from vCJD. She received quinacrine, conventionally used to treat malaria, along with chloropromazine, an anti-psychotic drug. However, the scientists at the University of California, San Francisco found the approach produced no improvement in a second American patient with classical CJD, which is not caused by eating BSE-infected material. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 632 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Moth larvae defend their homes with bad vibrations. JOHN WHITFIELD When caterpillar confronts caterpillar, it's a leaf-shaking event. Moth larvae settle turf wars with percussion battles, say researchers - residents deter intruders by drumming out a warning on their home leaf. Acoustic communication between caterpillars may be widespread, agrees entomologist Jim Costa of Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina. 1.Yack, J. E., Smith, M. L. & Weatherhead, P. J. Caterpillar talk: acoustically mediated territoriality in larval Lepidoptera. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 98, 11371 - 11375, (2001). © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2001

Keyword: Animal Communication; Hearing
Link ID: 629 - Posted: 10.20.2001

A culturing technique produces a large source of potent cells for use in brain-disease treatment. By Jamie Talan NEWSDAY Researchers have isolated two specific populations of brain cells from human fetal tissue and expanded them in culture, yielding an incredibly large and still potent source of cells for eventual transplantation to treat a number of brain diseases. Steve Goldman and his colleagues at Cornell University Medical College said this technique "should allow us to produce 60 cells from every one cell we start with." They can obtain 10 million cells from tissue procured from one fetal brain, which means multiplying each by 60. The new cells retained their ability to act as neural stem cells. © 2001 KnightRidder.com

Keyword: Stem Cells; Parkinsons
Link ID: 627 - Posted: 10.20.2001