By LISA SANDERS, M.D. On Wednesday, we challenged Well readers to solve the case of a middle-aged woman who suddenly began to have episodes of confusion caused by low blood sugars. Her endocrinologist thought she might have an insulinoma, an insulin-producing tumor of the pancreas, but the testing he did seemed to rule out that diagnosis. Nearly 200 of you took on the challenge of trying to figure out what was causing her life-threatening drops in blood sugar level. The correct diagnosis is… Insulinoma The first respondent to make the diagnosis was Karen Unkel of Kinder, La. She is not a doctor but has a longstanding interest in hypoglycemia that allowed her to recognize the disease even in the face of an apparently negative work-up. Well done, Ms. Unkel. An insulinoma is a rare tumor of pancreatic tissue that makes and secretes insulin independently of blood glucose levels. This results in episodes of hypoglycemia that can be quite severe, even life-threatening. The diagnosis is suspected when a patient fulfills what is known as Whipple’s triad: 1) symptoms of hypoglycemia 2) associated with low measured blood sugar and 3) which improve when blood sugar is raised to the normal range. The diagnosis is made when doctors show that the patient is making too much insulin given his or her blood sugar level. Measuring insulin levels is not always accurate because insulin is processed rapidly in the body and because it is difficult to distinguish between insulin made naturally in the pancreas and any insulin that the patient might be injecting. What is measured instead is something known as C-peptide. Insulin is first made as a larger molecule known as proinsulin. When blood sugar rises, an extra bit is shaved off the molecule; that extra bit is C-peptide, and both the resulting insulin and C-peptide are released into the bloodstream. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 19791 - Posted: 07.04.2014

—By Chris Mooney The United States has a voting problem. In the 2012 presidential election, only about 57 percent of eligible American voters turned out, a far lower participation rate than in comparable democracies. That means about 93 million people who were eligible to vote didn't bother. Clearly, figuring out why people vote (and why they don't) is of premium importance to those who care about the health of democracy, as well as to campaigns that are becoming ever more sophisticated in targeting individual voters. To that end, much research has shown that demographic factors such as age and poverty affect one's likelihood of voting. But are there individual-level biological factors that also influence whether a person votes? The idea has long been heretical in political science, and yet the logic behind it is unavoidable. People vary in all sorts of ways—ranging from personalities to genetics—that affect their behavior. Political participation can be an emotional, and even a stressful activity, and in an era of GOP-led efforts to make voting more difficult, voting in certain locales can be a major hassle. To vote, you need both to be motivated and also not so intimidated you stay away from the polls. So are there biological factors that can shape these perceptions? "Our study is unique in that it is the first to examine whether differences in physiology may be causally related to differences in political activity," says lead study author Jeffrey French. ©2014 Mother Jones

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 19790 - Posted: 07.04.2014

Hassan DuRant The colorful little guy pictured above puts the eyes of every other animal to shame. Whereas humans receive color information via three color receptors in our eyes, mantis shrimp (Neogonodactylus oerstedii) have 12. Six of these differentiate five discrete wavelengths of ultraviolet light, researchers report online today in Current Biology. The mantis shrimp’s vision is possible by making use of specially tuned, UV-specific optical filters in its color-detecting cone cells. The optical filters are made of mycosporine-like amino acids (MAAs), a substance commonly found in the skin or exoskeleton of marine organisms. Often referred to as nature’s sunscreens, MAAs are usually employed to protect an organism from DNA-damaging UV rays; however, the mantis shrimp has incorporated them into powerful spectral tuning filters. Though the reason for the mantis shrimp’s complex visual perception is poorly understood, one possibility is that the UV detection could help visualize otherwise difficult-to-see prey on coral reefs. Many organisms absorb UV light—these organisms would be easy to spot as black objects in a bright world. © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 19789 - Posted: 07.04.2014

|By Ferris Jabr You know the exit is somewhere along this stretch of highway, but you have never taken it before and do not want to miss it. As you carefully scan the side of the road for the exit sign, numerous distractions intrude on your visual field: billboards, a snazzy convertible, a cell phone buzzing on the dashboard. How does your brain focus on the task at hand? To answer this question, neuroscientists generally study the way the brain strengthens its response to what you are looking for—jolting itself with an especially large electrical pulse when you see it. Another mental trick may be just as important, according to a study published in April in the Journal of Neuroscience: the brain deliberately weakens its reaction to everything else so that the target seems more important in comparison. Cognitive neuroscientists John Gaspar and John McDonald, both at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, arrived at the conclusion after asking 48 college students to take attention tests on a computer. The volunteers had to quickly spot a lone yellow circle among an array of green circles without being distracted by an even more eye-catching red circle. All the while the researchers monitored electrical activity in the students' brains using a net of electrodes attached to their scalps. The recorded patterns revealed that their brains consistently suppressed reactions to all circles except the one they were looking for—the first direct evidence of this particular neural process in action. © 2014 Scientific American

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 19788 - Posted: 07.03.2014

by Helen Thomson ONE moment you're conscious, the next you're not. For the first time, researchers have switched off consciousness by electrically stimulating a single brain area. Scientists have been probing individual regions of the brain for over a century, exploring their function by zapping them with electricity and temporarily putting them out of action. Despite this, they have never been able to turn off consciousness – until now. Although only tested in one person, the discovery suggests that a single area – the claustrum – might be integral to combining disparate brain activity into a seamless package of thoughts, sensations and emotions. It takes us a step closer to answering a problem that has confounded scientists and philosophers for millennia – namely how our conscious awareness arises. Many theories abound but most agree that consciousness has to involve the integration of activity from several brain networks, allowing us to perceive our surroundings as one single unifying experience rather than isolated sensory perceptions. One proponent of this idea was Francis Crick, a pioneering neuroscientist who earlier in his career had identified the structure of DNA. Just days before he died in July 2004, Crick was working on a paper that suggested our consciousness needs something akin to an orchestra conductor to bind all of our different external and internal perceptions together. With his colleague Christof Koch, at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, he hypothesised that this conductor would need to rapidly integrate information across distinct regions of the brain and bind together information arriving at different times. For example, information about the smell and colour of a rose, its name, and a memory of its relevance, can be bound into one conscious experience of being handed a rose on Valentine's day. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 19787 - Posted: 07.03.2014

Maggie Fox NBC News Walking is an almost magic elixir, doctors like to say. It can reverse diabetes, lower blood pressure, and help people keep the fat off. Now a study shows it can also help people with Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s patients who walked just three times a week felt less tired, less depressed and they found their Parkinson’s symptoms improved, also. “The results of our study suggest that walking may provide a safe and easily accessible way of improving the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and improve quality of life,” Dr. Ergun Uc of the University of Iowa and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center of Iowa City, who led the study. The findings would only apply to Parkinson’s patients who can still walk easily. Parkinson’s is caused by the loss of brain cells that produce a message carrying-chemical, or neurotransmitter, that is important for movement. Symptoms can start with a barely noticeable trembling but worsen to difficulty walking and talking, depression and other disability. There’s no cure and the drugs used to treat the condition usually stop helping over time. Some people have trouble walking. But for those who don’t, the study found, walking can help their symptoms. And other research suggests that regular exercise can help slow down the progression of Parkinson’s. Various programs show that dancing,cycling, Pilates and even boxing can help. But walking has a big advantage – people can do it anywhere, without special equipment, and on their own schedules.

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 19786 - Posted: 07.03.2014

By Smitha Mundasad Health reporter, BBC News Researchers have identified a gene that may put people at greater risk of strokes and heart attacks. Writing in PLOS ONE they say the gene fault may encourage the formation of blood clots - the ultimate cause of most heart attacks and strokes. Scientists hope gene tests may help doctors one day to pinpoint individuals more likely to suffer these conditions. But experts say lifestyle factors such as smoking and exercise have the greatest influence on risk. Around one in 10 people in the Caucasian population carries this variation of the gene, named PIA2. And researchers from King's College London reviewed more than 80 studies involving about 50,000 people - the largest analysis of this genetic fault to date. Threat to under-45s They found individuals with PIA2 were more likely to have a stroke - caused by a blood clot blocking blood supply to the brain - than those without the gene. Scientists calculate the gene increases a person's risk of having a stroke by 10-15%. But how significant this increase is depends on an individual's baseline risk - influenced by factors such as smoking, diet, weight and exercise, the scientists say. Heart attacks are caused by a blockage to the blood vessels that carry oxygen to the heart. More than 100,000 heart attacks are recorded in the UK each year And for people with two copies of the gene the risk rises by up to 70% from this baseline. In a second study published in the same journal, the scientists show PIA2 is also linked to an increased risk of heart attacks in people under 45. More research is needed to see whether this holds true for the whole population, they say. About 150,000 people have a stroke in the UK each year and more than 100,000 heart attacks are recorded annually. BBC © 2014

Keyword: Stroke; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 19785 - Posted: 07.03.2014

From David Beckham’s infamous kick at France '98 to Luis Suárez chomping Giorgio Chiellini's shoulder in Brazil last week, the history of the World Cup is littered with moments of impulsive aggression that appear to defy all rational explanation. The story of human impulsivity stretches back deep into our evolutionary past. By nature, we are all prone to making quick, rash decisions that may lead to regret, and in some cases a four-month ban from international football. Impulsivity is actually a survival mechanism and was essential in the African savanna where our species evolved around a million and a half years ago. For our ancestors, the ability to make split-second decisions could make the difference between life and death. All of us have deep primal instincts but over the several hundred million years of evolution separating our reptilian ancestors from the first mammals, and eventually primates, the cognitive ability to exercise self-restraint has increased. While most living things make this decision purely as a trade-off between risk and reward, only humans can decide to exercise self-restraint on the basis of how they think they will be perceived by others – an ability that emerged some time in the past 100,000 years or so. “We evolved to be very social animals, living in large groups, and so we have developed inhibitory mechanisms in the more recently evolved parts of the prefrontal cortex,” explains Michael Price of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Brunel. “This is the social centre of the brain. Our big reason not to be impulsive is because of your reputation and how other people are going to judge you and perhaps ostracise you as we saw with Beckham in the aftermath of France ’98.” © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Aggression; ADHD
Link ID: 19784 - Posted: 07.03.2014

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS Exercise may help to keep the brain robust in people who have an increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, according to an inspiring new study. The findings suggests that even moderate amounts of physical activity may help to slow the progression of one of the most dreaded diseases of aging. For the new study, which was published in May in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio recruited almost 100 older men and women, aged 65 to 89, many of whom had a family history of Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease, characterized by a gradual and then quickening loss of memory and cognitive functioning, can strike anyone. But scientists have discovered in recent years that people who harbor a specific variant of a gene, known as the APOE epsilon4 allele or the e4 gene for short, have a substantially increased risk of developing the disease. Genetic testing among the volunteers in the new study determined that about half of the group carried the e4 gene, although, at the start of the study, none showed signs of memory loss beyond what would be normal for their age. Then the scientists set out to more closely examine their volunteers’ brains. For some time, researchers have suspected that Alzheimer’s disease begins altering the structure and function of the brain years or even decades before the first symptoms appear. In particular, it’s been thought that the disease silently accelerates the atrophy of the hippocampus, a portion of the brain critical for memory processing. Brain scans of people who have Alzheimer’s show that their hippocampi are considerably more shrunken than those of people of the same age without the disease. There’s been less study, though, of possible shrinkage in the brains of cognitively normal people at risk for Alzheimer’s. One reason is that, until recently, few interventions, including drugs, had shown much promise in slowing or preventing the disease’s progression, so researchers – and patients – have been reluctant to identify markers of its potential onset. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 19783 - Posted: 07.02.2014

Claire McCarthy I have many patients with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and it seems like I have the same conversation over and over again with their parents: to medicate or not to medicate. I completely understand the hesitation I hear from so many parents. I have to admit, I'm not entirely happy myself about prescribing a medication that has side effects and can be abused or misused, and one for which there is a black market. I also worry that too often when a child is on medication and so learning and behaving better, parents and teachers lose the incentive to help the child learn the organizational and other skills that could make all the difference later in life. Since ADHD often persists into adulthood, we have to have the long view with these kids. But....the long view works the other way, too. Not treating ADHD with medication can lead to problems. Like drug abuse. ADHD is really common. It affects 8 percent of children and youth--that's about 2 in every classroom of 20. Kids with ADHD can have real problems with both learning and behavior, problems that can haunt them for a lifetime (if you end up dropping out of high school because of poor grades or behavior, or end up getting arrested, it has a way of interfering with your future income and quality of life). But another thing we know is that kids with ADHD have a higher risk of drug abuse. We don't know exactly why this is the case. Some of it is likely the impulsivity that is so common in people with ADHD; they don't always make the best decisions. It may also be that people with ADHD are more prone to addiction. Whatever it is, the risk is very real. Not only are kids with ADHD 2.5 times more likely to abuse drugs, they are more likely to start earlier, use more types of drugs, and continue into adulthood. ©2014 Boston Globe Media Partners, LLC

Keyword: ADHD; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 19782 - Posted: 07.02.2014

Learning a second language benefits the brain in ways that can pay off later in life, suggests a deepening field of research that specializes in the relationship between bilingualism and cognition. In one large Scottish test, researchers discovered archival data on 835 native speakers of English who were born in Edinburgh in 1936. The participants had been given an intelligence test at age 11 as part of standard British educational policy and many were retested in their early 70s. Those who spoke two or more languages had significantly better cognitive abilities on certain tasks compared with what would be expected from their IQ test scores at age 11, Dr. Thomas Bak of the Centre for Cognitive Aging and Cognitive Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh reported in the journal Annals of Neurology. "Our results suggest a protective effect of bilingualism against age-related cognitive decline," independently of IQ, Bak and his co-authors concluded. It was a watershed study in 1962 by Elizabeth Peal and Wallace Lambert at McGill University in Montreal that turned conventional thinking on bilingualism on its head and set the rationale for French immersion in Canada. Psychologists at York University in Toronto have also been studying the effect of bilingualism on the brain across the lifespan, including dementia. They’ve learned how people who speak a second language outperform those with just one on tasks that tap executive function such as attention, selection and inhibition. Those are the high-level cognitive processes we use to multitask as we drive on the highway and juggle remembering the exit and monitoring our speed without getting distracted by billboards. © CBC 2014

Keyword: Language; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 19781 - Posted: 07.02.2014

by Laura Sanders At the playground yesterday, Baby V commando-crawled through a tunnel with holes on the side. Every so often, I stuck my face in there with a loud “peekaboo.” She reached up longingly toward the bouncy duck. I picked her up and steadied her as she lurched back and forth. She scrambled up some low stairs and launched down a slide. I lurked near the bottom, ready to assist and yell “yay” when she didn’t face-plant. The one thing I didn’t do was sit back and leave her to her own devices, free from my helicopter-mom tendencies. But since I have the most ridiculous crush on that girl, it’s hard for me to leave her be. As a parent who works outside of the home, I treasure our time together. But as she becomes more capable and independent, I realize that I need to be more thoughtful about letting her carve out some space for herself. A recent research paper emphasized this point. The study, published June 17 in Frontiers in Psychology, finds that children who spend more time in unstructured activities may better master some important life skills. Researchers sorted kids’ activities into structured activities, which included child-initiated activities such as playing alone or with friends, singing, riding bikes and camping, and structured activities, including soccer practice, piano lessons, chores and homework. Six- and seven-year-olds who had more unstructured time scored higher on a measure of executive function, complex cognitive abilities such as seamlessly switching between tasks, resisting impulses and paying attention — all things that help people get along in this world. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 19780 - Posted: 07.02.2014

Simon Makin Running helps mice to recover from a type of blindness caused by sensory deprivation early in life, researchers report. The study, published on 26 June in eLife1, also illuminates processes underlying the brain’s ability to rewire itself in response to experience — a phenomenon known as plasticity, which neuroscientists believe is the basis of learning. More than 50 years ago, neurophysiologists David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel cracked the 'code' used to send information from the eyes to the brain. They also showed that the visual cortex develops properly only if it receives input from both eyes early in life. If one eye is deprived of sight during this ‘critical period’, the result is amblyopia, or ‘lazy eye’, a state of near blindness. This can happen to someone born with a droopy eyelid, cataract or other defect not corrected in time. If the eye is opened in adulthood, recovery can be slow and incomplete. In 2010, neuroscientists Christopher Niell and Michael Stryker, both at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), showed that running more than doubled the response of mice's visual cortex neurons to visual stimulation2 (see 'Neuroscience: Through the eyes of a mouse'). Stryker says that it is probably more important, and taxing, to keep track of the environment when navigating it at speed, and that lower responsiveness at rest may have evolved to conserve energy in less-demanding situations. “It makes sense to put the visual system in a high-gain state when you’re moving through the environment, because vision tells you about far away things, whereas touch only tells you about things that are close,” he says. © 2014 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Vision; Regeneration
Link ID: 19779 - Posted: 07.01.2014

James Gorman All moving animals do their best to avoid running into things. And most living things follow a tried and true strategy — Watch where you’re going! Flying and swimming animals both have to cope with some complications that walkers, jumpers and gallopers don’t confront. Not only do they have to navigate in three dimensions, but they also cope with varying air and water flow. Beyond that, they often do so without the same references points and landmarks we have on the ground. Christine Scholtyssek of Lund University in Sweden, and colleagues decided to compare how two species in different mediums, air and water, which pose similar problems, reacted to apparent obstacles as they were moving. What they found, and reported in Biology Letters in May, was that the two species they examined — bumblebees and zebra fish — have very different strategies. It was known that the bees’ navigation depended on optic flow, which is something like the sensation of watching telephone poles speed past from a seat on a moving train. They tend to fly away from apparent obstacles as they approach them. The question was whether fish would do something similar. So, in order to give both animals the same test, Dr. Scholtyssek and her colleagues devised an apparatus that could contain air or water. When one wall had vertical stripes and the other horizontal, the bees, not surprisingly, flew away from the vertical stripes, which would have appeared as one emerging obstacle after another as the bees flew past. Horizontal stripes don’t change as a creature moves past, so they provide no reference for speed or progress. The fish, however, swam closer to the vertical stripes, which wasn’t expected. “It is surprising that although fish and bees have the same challenge, moving with or against streams, they do not use the same mechanisms,” Dr. Scholtyssek said. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Animal Migration
Link ID: 19778 - Posted: 07.01.2014

By Lori Aratani The placebo effect — the idea that a treatment works because a patient believes it does — has long been a footnote to the work of finding ways to counteract disease. Some physicians have dismissed placebos as mere hokum, a trick of the mind. But researchers have found that in some people, placebos elicit similar responses in the brain to actual drug treatments. In one experiment, researchers using a PET scanner found that the brain activity in test subjects who received placebos and reported less pain mirrored that of those who received actual treatment for their pain. As Erik Vance writes in “Why Nothing Works,” published in the July/August 2014 issue of Discover magazine, the work suggests we possess an “inner pharmacy” of some sort that, if harnessed correctly, could be used as a complement to traditional treatments. But as Vance’s overview of recent research on the topic shows, it’s complicated. A placebo’s impact is not universal. Certain individuals — and certain conditions (pain and depression, for example) — seem to respond better than others to placebos. Researchers think that something in a person’s physiological makeup makes him more sensitive to placebos, while others feel little or no impact. There are ethical considerations, too, since it’s considered wrong to mislead volunteers participating in a study. But there are ways to navigate this thicket. In one small study, researchers gave placebos to a group of people with irritable bowel syndrome — after telling them that the pills were just placebos; a second group received no treatment. Surprisingly, many more of those who received the placebos reported improvements in their symptoms than did people in the no-treatment group.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Depression
Link ID: 19777 - Posted: 07.01.2014

Philip Ball Lead guitarists usually get to play the flashy solos while the bass player gets only to plod to the beat. But this seeming injustice could have been determined by the physiology of hearing. Research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1 suggests that people’s perception of timing in music is more acute for lower-pitched notes. Psychologist Laurel Trainor of McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, and her colleagues say that their findings explain why in the music of many cultures the rhythm is carried by low-pitched instruments while the melody tends to be taken by the highest pitched. This is as true for the low-pitched percussive rhythms of Indian classical music and Indonesian gamelan as it is for the walking double bass of a jazz ensemble or the left-hand part of a Mozart piano sonata. Earlier studies2 have shown that people have better pitch discrimination for higher notes — a reason, perhaps, that saxophonists and lead guitarists often have solos at a squealing register. It now seems that rhythm works best at the other end of the scale. Trainor and colleagues used the technique of electroencephalography (EEG) — electrical sensors placed on the scalp — to monitor the brain signals of people listening to streams of two simultaneous piano notes, one high-pitched and the other low-pitched, at equally spaced time intervals. Occasionally, one of the two notes was played slightly earlier, by just 50 milliseconds. The researchers studied the EEG recordings for signs that the listeners had noticed. © 2014 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 19776 - Posted: 07.01.2014

By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN ADOLESCENCE is practically synonymous in our culture with risk taking, emotional drama and all forms of outlandish behavior. Until very recently, the widely accepted explanation for adolescent angst has been psychological. Developmentally, teenagers face a number of social and emotional challenges, like starting to separate from their parents, getting accepted into a peer group and figuring out who they really are. It doesn’t take a psychoanalyst to realize that these are anxiety-provoking transitions. But there is a darker side to adolescence that, until now, was poorly understood: a surge during teenage years in anxiety and fearfulness. Largely because of a quirk of brain development, adolescents, on average, experience more anxiety and fear and have a harder time learning how not to be afraid than either children or adults. Different regions and circuits of the brain mature at very different rates. It turns out that the brain circuit for processing fear — the amygdala — is precocious and develops way ahead of the prefrontal cortex, the seat of reasoning and executive control. This means that adolescents have a brain that is wired with an enhanced capacity for fear and anxiety, but is relatively underdeveloped when it comes to calm reasoning. You may wonder why, if adolescents have such enhanced capacity for anxiety, they are such novelty seekers and risk takers. It would seem that the two traits are at odds. The answer, in part, is that the brain’s reward center, just like its fear circuit, matures earlier than the prefrontal cortex. That reward center drives much of teenagers’ risky behavior. This behavioral paradox also helps explain why adolescents are particularly prone to injury and trauma. The top three killers of teenagers are accidents, homicide and suicide. The brain-development lag has huge implications for how we think about anxiety and how we treat it. It suggests that anxious adolescents may not be very responsive to psychotherapy that attempts to teach them to be unafraid, like cognitive behavior therapy, which is zealously prescribed for teenagers. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 19775 - Posted: 07.01.2014

A toxic caffeine level was found in the system of a high school student who died unexpectedly, says a U.S. coroner who warns young people need to be educated about the dangers of taking the potent powder that is sold online. Logan Stiner, 18, was found dead at his family’s home in May. Steiner was an excellent student and a healthy young man who didn’t do drugs, Dr. Stephen Evans, a coroner in Lorain County, Ohio, said Monday. "We sent his blood out for levels, and [when] it came back it was a toxic level. Caffeine toxicity will do exactly what happened to him. It'll lead to things like cardiac arrhytmias and seizures," Evans said in an interview. Use of caffeine from coffee, tea and other beverages is so widespread that it is considered innocuous, but that’s not the case when it’s taken in an overdose amount. Powdered caffeine is sold in bulk over the internet. Problems can arise because adding a teaspoon of the caffeine powder to water is the equivalent of 30 cups of coffee. About one-sixteenth of a teaspoon of the powder is equal to about two cups of coffee. Evans said he recognizes that weightlifters will say Stiner should’ve taken the correct amount. "One-sixteenth of a teaspoon. You expect a kid to figure that out?" He suggested that regulators re-consider internet sales of a pound of powdered caffeine to young people. When Evans and his staff reviewed the pathology literature, they found 18 other cases of deaths in the U.S. from caffeine overdoses. Some were suicides and others were accidental, but he suspects the deaths are underreported since few pathologists investigating deaths from seizure and cardiac arrhytmia check caffeine levels. © CBC 2014

Keyword: Neurotoxins; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 19774 - Posted: 07.01.2014

Emotional and behavioral problems show up even with low exposure to lead, and as blood lead levels increase in children, so do the problems, according to research funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health. The results were published online June 30 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. “This research focused on lower blood lead levels than most other studies and adds more evidence that there is no safe lead level,” explained NIEHS Health Scientist Administrator Kimberly Gray, Ph.D. “It is important to continue to study lead exposure in children around the world, and to fully understand short-term and long-term behavioral changes across developmental milestones. It is well-documented that lead exposure lowers the IQ of children.” Blood lead concentrations measured in more than 1,300 preschool children in China were associated with increased risk of behavioral and emotional problems, such as being anxious, depressed, or aggressive. The average blood lead level in the children was 6.4 micrograms per deciliter. While many studies to date have examined health effects at or above 10 micrograms per deciliter, this study focused on lower levels. The CDC now uses a reference level of 5 micrograms per deciliter, to identify children with blood lead levels that are much higher than normal, and recommends educating parents on reducing sources of lead in their environment and continued monitoring of blood lead levels.

Keyword: Neurotoxins; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 19773 - Posted: 07.01.2014

by Bethany Brookshire One day when I came in to the office, my air conditioning unit was making a weird rattling sound. At first, I was slightly annoyed, but then I chose to ignore it and get to work. In another 30 minutes, I was completely oblivious to the noise. It wasn’t until my cubicle neighbor Meghan Rosen came in and asked about the racket that I realized the rattle was still there. My brain had habituated to the sound. Habituation, the ability to stop noticing or responding to an irrelevant signal, is one of the simplest forms of learning. But it turns out that at the level of a brain cell, it’s a far more complex process than scientists previously thought. In the June 18 Neuron, Mani Ramaswami of Trinity College Dublin proposes a new framework to describe how habituation might occur in our brains. The paper not only offers a new mechanism to help us understand one of our most basic behaviors, it also demonstrates how taking the time to integrate new findings into a novel framework can help push a field forward. Our ability to ignore the irrelevant and familiar has been a long-known feature of human learning. It’s so simple, even a sea slug can do it. Because the ability to habituate is so simple, scientists hypothesized that the mechanism behind it must also be simple. The previous framework for habituation has been synaptic depression, a decrease in chemical release. When one brain cell sends a signal to another, it releases chemical messengers into a synapse, the small gap between neurons. Receptors on the other side pick up this excitatory signal and send the message onward. But in habituation, neurons would release fewer chemicals, making the signal less likely to hit the other side. Fewer chemicals, fewer signals, and you’ve habituated. Simple. But, as David Glanzman, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles points out, there are problems with this idea. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 19772 - Posted: 06.25.2014