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Some teens show signs of future depression Bruce Bower Certain characteristics typify teens who suffer recurrences of depression as young adults, raising researchers' hopes for devising improved depression treatments, a new study finds. But, the current outlook for depressed teens isn't bright. The results indicate that by their early 20's, about half of these young people have again experienced depression's trademark blend of melancholy, despair, and apathy.
Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 51 - Posted: 10.20.2001
Scientists Say Aging May Result From Brain's Hormonal Signals By NICHOLAS WADE Could it be that aging, like puberty and menopause, is a programmed life-cycle event set off by hormonal signals from the brain? A new study suggests that in the laboratory roundworm, and maybe people too, youthfulness is maintained by hormonal signals from the brain. When the neurons that transmit the signal suffer damage from the wear and tear of normal metabolism, the youthfulness signal fails, and the body's tissues all lapse into senescence at about the same time.
Keyword: Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 50 - Posted: 10.20.2001
Close encounters Bellowing 'get off my land' at a trespassing ant will do no good at all. You'd do better to get right up close and whisper, Philip Ball finds. 13 October 2000 PHILIP BALL Ants sense each other's whispers with their antennae, researchers propose in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America1. This insight into ant 'hearing' could help scientists use sound to protect crops against ant infestations.
Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 48 - Posted: 10.20.2001
Scientists Learn to Program Human Dreams Research Adds to Links Between Dreams and Learning, Creativity Boston--October 12, 2000--A team of Harvard Medical School scientists has achieved what researchers since Freud's day have sought: a way to control -- at least in part -- the content of a person's dreams. They are using their dream-provoking method to explore age-old questions, such as: Where do dreams come from? What do they mean? What is their role in memory, learning, and creativity? What is their link to the unconscious? For years, scientists have been stymied in their quest to understand these associations because dreams are unique events that cannot be replicated. Until now. Robert Stickgold, HMS assistant professor of psychiatry, and his colleagues report in the Oct.13 Sciencethat they were able to get 17 different people to see the same dream images as they drifted off to sleep.
Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 47 - Posted: 11.06.2001
Robert L. Sack, M.D., Richard W. Brandes, B.S., Adam R. Kendall, B.S., and Alfred J. Lewy, M.D., Ph.D. ABSTRACT Background Most totally blind people have circadian rhythms that are "free-running" (i.e., that are not synchronized to environmental time cues and that oscillate on a cycle slightly longer than 24 hours). This condition causes recurrent insomnia and daytime sleepiness when the rhythms drift out of phase with the normal 24-hour cycle. We investigated whether a daily dose of melatonin could entrain their circadian rhythms to a normal 24-hour cycle.
Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 46 - Posted: 11.06.2001
Beetle sex mania 11 October 2000 DAVID ADAM Pity the agony aunts of the weevil world, where sexual confusion reigns. Female beetles impersonate males, both sexes look alike and neither seems fussy about the real or intended gender of their partners. Researchers in Florida have now separated out these sexual spaghetti strands to explain what turns a weevil on.
Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 45 - Posted: 10.20.2001
Peace and quiet for the fish in your life Henry Gee eavesdrops in on the echo-free fish tank which will allow researchers to hear what fish are thinking. 11 October 2000 HENRY GEE What do you buy for the Person Who Has Everything? You could always get electric curtains that rustle ominously when played the theme tune to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And there isn't a stylish swinger who'd ever turn down another fondue set or lava lamp. Still stumped? Think laterally, then. Why not something for the Pet of the Person Who Has Everything? Allen F. Mensinger of the University of Minnesota, Duluth, Minnesota and Max Deffenbaugh of the Exxon Production Research Company in Houston, Texas, have the very thing: an echo-free fish tank1. Give the fish in their life some peace and quiet!
Keyword: Animal Communication
Link ID: 44 - Posted: 10.20.2001
Tom Abate
Monday, October 9, 2000
The new economy has quietly given birth to what is
likely to become the next industrial giant -- a hybrid
blend of high tech and biotech.
This symbiosis was the unsung hero of the race to
unravel the human genome. Now it promises to
accelerate the pace of medicine. New instruments
will help turn genetic discoveries into diagnostic
tests and cures for everything from pneumonia to
inherited diseases.
Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 43 - Posted: 10.20.2001
Mapping Our Emotions Brain-imaging technology helps researchers find the root of human feelings Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer Monday, October 9, 2000 Scientists using sophisticated brain imaging technology are learning what goes on inside the brain when we experience emotion -- a subject once dismissed as too abstract for serious research. In the latest foray, neurologist Antonio Damasio at the University of Iowa College of Medicine showed how feelings of anger, sadness, happiness and fear are linked to distinct patterns in specific regions of the brain.
Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 42 - Posted: 10.20.2001
Valium and related drugs are among the world's most popular treatments for anxiety, despite numerous side effects. Now researchers have identified a receptor in the brain that's responsible for just the drug's antianxiety powers--opening up the possibility that a drug targeted to that receptor could ease anxiety without causing drowsiness, clumsiness, and memory loss. The chemical compounds known as benzodiazepines, such as Valium, calm the brain by discouraging neurons from firing. The drugs boost the efficiency of a chemical messenger called GABA, which flips the brain's main "off switch."
Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 41 - Posted: 10.20.2001
A Clue for Designing Safer Anxiety Drugs By REUTERS ASHINGTON, Oct. 5 (Reuters) - Researchers said today that they had found a possible way to design drugs that work as well as popular anxiety medications, but without side effects. Anxiety drugs like Valium work well, but they produce side effects that include drowsiness, forgetfulness and clumsiness and, when taken over time, they can lead to dependence.
Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 40 - Posted: 10.20.2001
Make Heat, Not Fat Jealous of those skinny people who eat constantly but seem to just burn it off? Now scientists have discovered a way to mimic their metabolism. By introducing a protein that turns fat to heat, they kept well-fed mice slim. Mice keep warm by converting fat from deposits called brown adipose tissue into heat. A protein called Ucp stokes this biochemical furnace--inspiring researchers to wonder whether Ucp could help obese people burn off extra calories instead of storing them as fat.
Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 39 - Posted: 10.20.2001
Teaching old brains new tricks A faulty circuit, not missing brain cells, could be to blame for those lost keys, Jessa Netting finds. 3 October 2000 JESSA NETTING Increasing forgetfulness with age is often chalked up to decreasing numbers of brain cells. But it may have more to do with a faulty brain circuit than missing grey matter, a report in the Journal of Neuroscience1 now suggests. Repairing such circuits may prove a much easier route to cognitive enhancement than replacing missing cells.
Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 38 - Posted: 10.20.2001
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
A new breed of animal,
dubbed the "sand mouse,"
has been added to the annals of
biological science, and it has
become the subject of a scientific
challenge.
Last week Dr. John J. Hopfield, a
Princeton professor known for
seminal discoveries in computer
science, biology and physics,
posed an unusual test to his fellow
scientists.
Keyword: Animal Communication
Link ID: 37 - Posted: 10.20.2001
The times of our lives Why do we grow old and die rather than stay young and gorgeous forever, asks Henry Gee? 2 October 2000 HENRY GEE Why do we grow old and die? Why can't we stay young and gorgeous forever? These are questions that interest everybody, as attested by the plump profits of beauty-products companies. Evolution has several explanations for our mortality. At root is a division between our 'germ line' -- sperm and egg cells kept healthy and pristine; and the 'soma' -- the body that houses the germ cells.
Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 35 - Posted: 10.20.2001
Memory echoes in brain's sensory terrain Bruce Bower Psychologists have long noted that any of the sights, sounds, and other inputs that make up an experience can, if encountered again, ignite a memory of the event. In two independent studies, neuroscientists have taken steps to untangle the brain processes that link sensations to memories. When people recall information composed of sights and sounds, neural activity surges in some visual and acoustic areas of their brains just as it does when they first formed the memory, the two teams report in the Sept. 26 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. From Science News, Vol. 158, No. 14, Sept. 30, 2000, p. 213. Copyright © 2000 Science Service. All rights reserved.
Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 34 - Posted: 10.20.2001
LA JOLLA, CALIF. - Salk scientists have obtained the first snapshot of how gene behavior varies among mammalian brains. The study employed "gene chip" technology to simultaneously compare the activities of approximately 13,000 genes in two inbred strains of mice. Because the strains differ in their susceptibilities to seizures - and their genetic responses to seizures were found to differ as well - the approach may have implications for treating human epilepsy.
Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 33 - Posted: 10.20.2001
Neuronal Stem Cells Are Transplanted Into Diseased Eye, Extend Into Optic Nerve Research paves way for retinal transplants to restore vision BOSTON - Neural progenitor cells transplanted to the diseased retina of rats have integrated into the eye, taken on some of the characteristics of retinal cells and extended into the optic nerve, a necessary prerequisite to re-establishing connections to the brain, researchers reported today (Sept. 27, 2000).
Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 32 - Posted: 10.20.2001
How the Retina Does the Math Researchers studying how neurons compute--such as tallying the myriad of incoming signals and concluding whether or not to fire--have long focused on the retina. By studying cells known to fire only in response to objects moving in one direction only, they hoped to learn more general lessons about how brain neurons compute. But the studies were handicapped by the fact that no one knew which retinal neurons exactly do the math. Now, an Australian team reports evidence that the computations take place in retinal neurons called ganglion cells (Science, 29 September, p. 2347).
Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 31 - Posted: 10.20.2001
Researchers Explore How Brain Updates Memories Over Time Experiment with rats indicates human recall can be manipulated Sandra Blakeslee, New York Times Wednesday, September 27, 2000 New York -- Scientists may have found a biological reason to explain why two people who witness the same event will, years later, often have different memories of what happened. It seems that every time an old memory is pulled into consciousness, the brain takes it apart, updates it and then makes new proteins in the process of putting the memory back into long-term storage. The fact that new proteins are made means the memory has been transformed permanently to reflect each person's life experiences -- not the memory itself.
Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 30 - Posted: 10.20.2001