By GREGORY COWLES David Stuart MacLean’s first book, “The Answer to the Riddle Is Me,” opens with a scene out of Robert Ludlum: The protagonist wakes from a blackout to find himself on a crowded train platform in India, with no idea who he is or what he’s doing in a foreign country. The catch is that the protagonist is Mr. MacLean himself, and his book isn’t an international thriller but a “memoir of amnesia,” as his agreeably paradoxical subtitle puts it — the true story of how his memory was wiped clean and how that condition has subsequently affected his life. It is all the more thrilling for that. In 2002, Mr. MacLean was a 28-year-old Fulbright scholar visiting India to research a novel. It wasn’t his first trip; he had gone a few years earlier and stayed for months. But this time around, his anti-malaria medication touched off a break with reality as sudden as it was severe. He hallucinated angels and demons, and felt his thoughts “puddling in the carpet near the doorway and sloshing down the hall.” Delirious, he agreed with the police officer who surmised he must be a drug addict, and apologized profusely for misdeeds he had never committed. At the hospital, a nurse called him “the most entertaining psychotic that they’d ever had.” As harrowing as this territory is, Mr. MacLean makes an affable, sure-footed guide. In his descriptions, you can recognize the good fiction writer he must have been even before amnesia forced him to view the world anew; if the writer’s task is to “make it new,” then losing your memory turns out to be an unexpected boon. An avid drinker before his breakdown, he recoils the first time he tries Scotch again, thinking it smells “like Band-Aids.” He can’t remember his girlfriend of a year, but her voice is “faintly familiar, like the smell of the car heater the first time you turn it on in the fall.” He grasps at hope when his parents arrive to take him home: “I still didn’t have my memory, but I now had an outline of myself, like a tin form waiting for batter.” © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 19262 - Posted: 02.18.2014

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News A tool for predicting the risk of clinical depression in teenage boys has been developed by researchers. Looking for high levels of the stress hormone cortisol and reports of feeling miserable, lonely or unloved could find those at greatest risk. Researchers at the University of Cambridge want to develop a way of screening for depression in the same way as heart problems can be predicted. However, their method was far less useful in girls. Teenage years and early adulthood are a critical time for mental health - 75% of disorders develop before the age of 24. But there is no way to accurately say who will or will not develop depression. Risky combination Now researchers say they have taken the "first step" towards a screening tool. Tests on 1,858 teenagers, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, combined hormone levels and mood questionnaires to assess risk. They showed that having both high cortisol levels and depressive mood symptoms posed a higher risk of depression than either factor alone and presented a risk of clinical depression 14 times that of those with low cortisol and no depressive symptoms. Around one in six boys was in the high-risk category and half of them were diagnosed with clinical depression during the three years of study. One of the researchers, Prof Ian Goodyer, said: "Depression is a terrible illness that will affect as many as 10 million people in the UK at some point in their lives. "Through our research, we now have a very real way of identifying those teenage boys most likely to develop clinical depression. BBC © 2014

Keyword: Depression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 19261 - Posted: 02.18.2014

By MAGGIE KOERTH-BAKER If you are pulled over on suspicion of drunken driving, the police officer is likely to ask you to complete three tasks: Follow a pen with your eyes while the officer moves it back and forth; get out of the car and walk nine steps, heel to toe, turn on one foot and go back; and stand on one leg for 30 seconds. Score well on all three of these Olympic events, and there’s a very good chance that you are not drunk. This so-called standard field sobriety test has been shown to catch 88 percent of drivers under the influence of alcohol. But it is nowhere near as good at spotting a stoned driver. In a 2012 study published in the journal Psychopharmacology, only 30 percent of people under the influence of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, failed the field test. And its ability to identify a stoned driver seems to depend heavily on whether the driver is accustomed to being stoned. A 21-year-old on his first bender and a hardened alcoholic will both wobble on one foot. But the same is not necessarily true of a driver who just smoked his first joint and the stoner who is high five days a week. In another study, 50 percent of the less frequent smokers failed the field test. As more states legalize medical and recreational marijuana, distinctions like these will grow more and more important. But science’s answers to crucial questions about driving while stoned — how dangerous it is, how to test for impairment, and how the risks compare to driving drunk — have been slow to reach the general public. “Our goal is to put out the science and have it used for evidence-based drug policy,” said Marilyn A. Huestis, a senior investigator at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “But I think it’s a mishmash.” © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 19260 - Posted: 02.18.2014

By Brian Palmer, The death of Philip Seymour Hoffman this month has raised many questions about drug addiction, among them: What do drugs such as heroin do to the brain to make them so addictive? Can these chemical changes be undone? Over the past 20 years, research into drug addiction has identified several chemical and physical changes to the brain brought on by addictive substances. There is a wad of nerve cells in the central part of your brain, measuring about half an inch across, called the nucleus accumbens. When you eat a doughnut, have sex or do something else that your brain associates with survival and breeding, this region is inundated with dopamine, a neurotransmitter. This chemical transaction is partly responsible for the experience of pleasure you get from these activities. Drugs such as heroin also trigger this response, but the dopamine surge from drugs is faster and long-lasting. When a person repeatedly subjects his nucleus accumbens to this narcotic-induced flood, the nerve cells that dopamine acts upon become exhausted from stimulation. The brain reacts by dampening its dopamine response — not just to heroin or cocaine, but probably to all forms of pleasurable behavior. In addition, some of the receptors themselves appear to die off. As a result, hyper-stimulating drugs become the only way to trigger a palpable dopamine response. Drug addicts seek larger and larger hits to achieve an ever-diminishing pleasure experience, and they have trouble feeling satisfaction from the things that healthy people enjoy. Behavioral conditioning also plays a role. Once your brain becomes accustomed to the idea that eating a doughnut or having sex will provide pleasure, just seeing a doughnut or an attractive potential mate triggers the dopamine cascade into the nucleus accumbens. That’s part of the reason it is so difficult for recovering drug addicts to stay clean over the long term. Sights, sounds and smells associated with the drug high — needles, for example, or the friends with whom they used to get high — prime this dopamine response, and the motivation to seek the big reward of a drug hit builds. © 1996-2014 The Washington Post

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 19259 - Posted: 02.18.2014

By DOUGLAS QUENQUA The smell of a person’s earwax depends partly on his ethnic origin, a new study reports, suggesting that the substance could be an overlooked source of personal information. The earwax of Caucasian men contains more volatile organic compounds than that of East Asian men, researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia found. Twelve such compounds are common to both groups, they said, but 11 of those are more plentiful in Caucasians. Monell researchers have previously found that underarm odor contains clues to a person’s age, health and sex. They suspected that earwax might contain similar markers, since a 2006 study found that a gene related to underarm odor, which also varies by ethnicity, helps determine a person’s type of earwax. (East Asians are more likely to have dry earwax, for example.) "We’re at the beginning of exploring a new and interesting biofluid secretion that has not been looked at in this manner before," said George Preti, an organic chemist at Monell and the senior author of the new study, which was published in The Journal of Chromatography B. Because of the fatty nature of earwax, or cerumen, Dr. Preti says it is a probable repository for odorants produced by diseases and the environment, and hence a potentially valuable diagnostic tool. A 2013 study showed that a whale’s earwax contains evidence of the animal’s exposure to pollutants and stress hormones, and earwax odor in humans is a known indicator of branched-chain ketoaciduria, also known as maple syrup urine disease. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 19258 - Posted: 02.18.2014

Ian Sample, science correspondent, in Chicago A woman's diet in early life has more impact on her baby's birth weight than the food she eats as an adult, researchers say. The surprise finding suggests that you are what your mother ate, and that a woman's diet in her adult life has less influence on her baby's health than previously thought. Prof Christopher Kuzawa at Northwestern University in Illinois said that women's bodies seemed to "buffer" the supply of nutrients to their unborn babies, meaning that foetuses were partly protected from changes in women's diets. Kuzawa advised pregnant women to follow a healthy diet, but said they need not worry about every calorie because their health and diet as a toddler could be more important for their baby. "There is some good news here for expectant mothers. Although there certainly are some harmful things to avoid during pregnancy, and some supplements to take to make sure some important bases are covered, the mother's body seems to do a good job of buffering overall nutritional supply to her growing baby," he said. "Within the bounds of a healthy balanced diet, the overall quantity of food that a mother eats is unlikely to have large effects on her baby's birth weight," he added. The findings emerged from a 30-year study that followed more than 3,000 pregnant women in the Philippines whose children have now begun to have babies of their own. Kuzawa said that while there was good evidence that unborn children benefit from their mothers taking extra folate and that they are harmed by toxins such as lead, mercury, excessive alcohol and bisphenol A, which is used to make some plastics, the picture was less clear on the roles of calories, protein, fat and carbohydrates. © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Obesity
Link ID: 19257 - Posted: 02.17.2014

By CATHERINE SAINT LOUIS Does chocolate really hurt dogs? It can, depending on their weight and how much they eat, so be vigilant this Valentine’s Day. Stimulants in chocolate can lead to vomiting, diarrhea, agitation and life-threatening elevated heart rates or seizures. “Dogs have no off button,” said Dr. Tina Wismer, the medical director of the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center. “If you or I ate 10 percent of our body weight in chocolate, we’d have the same problems. A 10-pound dog can easily eat a pound of chocolate.” The darker the chocolate, the more toxic it is. For a 20-pound dog, 9 ounces of milk chocolate can cause seizures, but it takes only 1.5 ounces of baker’s chocolate, she said. Signs of chocolate poisoning usually appear six to 12 hours after ingestion, according to The Merck Veterinary Manual. “Seizures due to toxicity don’t stop unless you treat them,” Dr. Wismer said. So head to the emergency clinic or veterinarian if you come home to find your dog vomiting repeatedly and extremely agitated, and certainly if the pet is unconscious and its limbs are shaking. By contrast, dogs who vomit once and fall sleep can be watched at home, she said. Unlike cats, dogs like sweets. So it’s best to keep chocolate stored away and off countertops, which are no match for a motivated climber. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Epilepsy; Obesity
Link ID: 19256 - Posted: 02.17.2014

by Ashley Yeager Humans aren’t the only ones to suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder. Dogs can suffer from the disorder as well, with particular breeds compulsively chewing their feet, chasing their tails or sucking blankets. Now scientists say they have identified several of the genes that trigger the behavior in Doberman pinschers, bullterriers, sheepdogs and German shepherds. Four genes, CDH2, CTNNA2, ATXN1 and PGCP, involved in the communication between brain cells appear to play a role in dog OCD, researchers report February 16 in Genome Biology. The results could be used to better understand the disorder in people. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013.

Keyword: OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 19255 - Posted: 02.17.2014

by Bethany Brookshire CHIGAGO – From a cockatoo bopping to the Backstreet Boys to a sea lion doing the boogie, nothing goes viral like an animal swaying to the music. Now, research shows that not only can bonobos feel the beat, they can play along. Music “engages the brain in a way that no other stimulus can,” says cognitive psychologist Edward Large of the University of Connecticut in Storrs. He and Patricia Gray, a biomusic researcher at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, wanted to see if bonobos, which share 98.7 percent of their DNA with humans, might respond similarly to musical rhythms. The researchers gave a group of bonobos access to a specially tailored drum, then showed them people drumming rhythmically. Eventually three animals picked up the beat and were able to match tempos with the scientists. Bonobos were also found to prefer a faster pace than most people. Large and Gray presented their findings February 15 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting. Rhythm involves the coordination of many brain areas, such as auditory and motor regions. Further research could help scientists understand whether only a few species can keep the beat, or if moving to the groove is widespread in the animal kingdom. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013.

Keyword: Hearing; Evolution
Link ID: 19254 - Posted: 02.17.2014

Kids with ADHD may be able to learn better focus through a computer game that trains the brain to pay attention, a new study suggests. The game was part of a neurofeedback system that used bicycle helmets wired to measure brain waves and gave immediate feedback when kids were paying attention, researchers reported Monday in Pediatrics. Giving kids feedback on what their brains are doing is "like turning on a light switch," said Dr. Naomi Steiner, the study's lead author and a developmental and behavioral pediatrician at the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center. "Kids said 'Oh, this is what people mean when they tell me to pay attention.'" To test the system, Steiner and her colleagues randomly assigned 104 Boston area elementary school children to one of three groups: no treatment, 40 half-hour sessions of neurofeedback or 40 sessions of cognitive therapy. The kids getting neurofeedback wore standard bicycle helmets fitted with brain wave sensors while they performed a variety of exercises on the computer. In one exercise, kids were told to focus on a cartoon dolphin. When people pay attention, theta wave activity goes down while beta waves increase, Steiner explained. If the kids' brains showed they were paying attention, the dolphin would dive to the bottom of the sea. Parents' reports on ADHD symptoms six months later showed a lasting improvement in kids who had done neurofeedback.

Keyword: ADHD; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 19253 - Posted: 02.17.2014

Carl Zimmer In 2011, a 66-year-old retired math teacher walked into a London neurological clinic hoping to get some answers. A few years earlier, she explained to the doctors, she had heard someone playing a piano outside her house. But then she realized there was no piano. The phantom piano played longer and longer melodies, like passages from Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto number 2 in C minor, her doctors recount in a recent study in the journal Cortex. By the time the woman — to whom the doctors refer only by her first name, Sylvia — came to the clinic, the music had become her nearly constant companion. Sylvia hoped the doctors could explain to her what was going on. Sylvia was experiencing a mysterious condition known as musical hallucinations. These are not pop songs that get stuck in your head. A musical hallucination can convince people there is a marching band in the next room, or a full church choir. Nor are musical hallucinations the symptoms of psychosis. People with musical hallucinations usually are psychologically normal — except for the songs they are sure someone is playing. The doctors invited Sylvia to volunteer for a study to better understand the condition. She agreed, and the research turned out to be an important step forward in understanding musical hallucinations. The scientists were able to compare her brain activity when she was experiencing hallucinations that were both quiet and loud — something that had never been done before. By comparing the two states, they found important clues to how the brain generates these illusions. If a broader study supports the initial findings, it could do more than help scientists understand how the brain falls prey to these phantom tunes. It may also shed light on how our minds make sense of the world. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hearing; Attention
Link ID: 19252 - Posted: 02.15.2014

by Clare Wilson AS MANY as 1 in 10 cases of schizophrenia may be triggered by an autoimmune reaction against brain cells, according to early trial results shared with New Scientist. The finding offers the possibility of gentler treatments for this devastating mental illness. Last month, doctors at a conference at the Royal Society of Medicine in London were told to consider an autoimmune cause when people first show symptoms of schizophrenia. People with schizophrenia experience symptoms of psychosis, such as hallucinations, delusions and paranoia. It affects 1 per cent of people in the West and is thought to be caused by overactive dopamine signalling pathways in the brain. Anti-psychotic drugs don't always work wellMovie Camera and have serious side effects. Previous studies had found that antibodies that target the NMDA receptor on neurons trigger brain inflammation, leading to seizures, comas – and sometimes psychosis (Annals of Neurology, doi.org/fdgnpc). In the past few years, these antibodies have also been found in the blood of people whose only symptom is psychosis. In 2010, Belinda Lennox at the University of Oxford tested 46 people with recent onset of psychosis for antibodies known to target neurons. Three people – about 6 per cent – tested positive (Neurology, doi.org/chs532). "The question is whether a larger percentage of cases might have other antibodies which we cannot yet detect," says Robin Murray at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, who wasn't involved in the research. Now Lennox is conducting a larger trial. Early results suggest other antibodies could well be involved. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 19251 - Posted: 02.15.2014

Ian Sample, science correspondent, in Chicago Researchers have found evidence – if evidence were needed – that men have less sex after becoming a father for the first time. A study of more than 400 young men in the Philippines found that their sex lives declined significantly when they had their first child. The fall in sexual activity was associated with the men's testosterone levels, which are known to fall when men start families, but the latest research shows that the greater the fall in testosterone, the less sex men reported. Lee Gettler, an anthropologist at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, gathered medical and lifestyle information on the men from the ages of 21 to 26 years old and found there were physiological and behavioural changes as some of them married and had children. When men got married their testosterone levels fell, and declined even further when they had their first child. That led to the question of whether falling testosterone might impact on their sex lives. "I didn't think that testosterone would be linked to men's sexual behaviour, but when we tested it we found that as men transitioned to fatherhood, the more their testosterone declined the less frequently they reported having sex with their partner," Gettler said. "Does this mean that men who care for children have low testosterone and no sex? No, it has nothing to do with childcare." The impact on men's sex lives was not linked to the amount of time and energy they invested in childcare, he said. Gettler described his research at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago. © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 19250 - Posted: 02.15.2014

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS—Chances are, your baby won’t respond to questions like, “How was your day, honey?” Or, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” But just because infants can’t form sentences until toddlerhood doesn’t mean that they don’t benefit from early conversations with their parents. It’s long been observed that the better children perform in school and the more successful their careers, the higher the socioeconomic status (SES) of their family—and, according to Stanford University’s Anne Fernald, this has a lot to do with how parents of different SES speak to their babies. Those babies that are spoken to frequently in an engaging and nurturing way—generally from a higher SES—tend to develop faster word-processing skills, or the ability to follow a sentence from one object or setting to another. This word processing speed, in turn, directly relates to the development not just of vocabulary and language skills, but also memory and nonverbal cognitive abilities. In a new study, Fernald and colleagues measured parent-baby banter from round-the-clock recordings in babies’ homes, then tested those babies’ word-processing speed using retinal-following experiments that tracked how long it took them to follow a prompt to an image like a dog or juice. The researchers found that the differences in word-processing speed between high and low SES were stark: By 2 years of age, high SES children were 6 months ahead of their low SES counterparts; and by age 3, the differences in processing abilities were highly predictive of later performance in and out of school, the team reported here today at the annual meeting of AAAS, which publishes Science. Fernald hopes that this research will lead to interventions that help to shrink the language gap between kids on either side of the income gap. © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Language
Link ID: 19249 - Posted: 02.15.2014

by Laura Sanders Some of the human brain’s wrinkles are forged by the behavior of a single gene, scientists report in the Feb. 14 Science. By scanning more than 1,000 people’s brains, researchers identified five with malformed wrinkles in a specific region. The abnormalities — numerous shallow dips surrounding an unusually wide brain furrow called the Sylvian fissure — were linked with intellectual and language disabilities and seizures in these people. All five people had mutations that dampened the behavior of a gene named GPR56. Curbing this gene’s behavior results in diminished production of cells that eventually become neurons in the affected brain region, mouse experiments revealed. Boosting the gene’s behavior had the opposite effect. The results might clarify how wrinkles allow human brains to cram lots of neurons into a small space, Christopher Walsh of Boston Children’s Hospital and colleagues suggest. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 19248 - Posted: 02.15.2014

Katherine Sharpe Ben Harkless could not sit still. At home, the athletic ten-year-old preferred doing three activities at once: playing with his iPad, say, while watching television and rolling on an exercise ball. Sometimes he kicked the walls; other times, he literally bounced off them. School was another story, however. Ben sat in class most days with his head down on his desk, “a defeated heap”, remembers his mother, Suzanne Harkless, a social worker in Berkeley, California. His grades were poor, and his teacher was at a loss for what to do. Harkless took Ben to a therapist who diagnosed him with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). He was prescribed methylphenidate, a stimulant used to improve focus in people with the condition. Harkless was reluctant to medicate her child, so she gave him a dose on a morning when she could visit the school to observe. “He didn't whip through his work, but he finished his work,” she says. “And then he went on and helped his classmate next to him. My jaw dropped.” ADHD diagnoses are rising rapidly around the world and especially in the United States, where 11% of children aged between 4 and 17 years old have been diagnosed with the disorder. Between half and two-thirds of those are put on medication, a decision often influenced by a child's difficulties at school. And there are numerous reports of adolescents and young adults without ADHD using the drugs as study aids. © 2014 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: ADHD; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 19247 - Posted: 02.13.2014

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News Brain scans show a complex string of numbers and letters in mathematical formulae can evoke the same sense of beauty as artistic masterpieces and music from the greatest composers. Mathematicians were shown "ugly" and "beautiful" equations while in a brain scanner at University College London. The same emotional brain centres used to appreciate art were being activated by "beautiful" maths. The researchers suggest there may be a neurobiological basis to beauty. The likes of Euler's identity or the Pythagorean identity are rarely mentioned in the same breath as the best of Mozart, Shakespeare and Van Gogh. The study in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience gave 15 mathematicians 60 formula to rate. One of the researchers, Prof Semir Zeki, told the BBC: "A large number of areas of the brain are involved when viewing equations, but when one looks at a formula rated as beautiful it activates the emotional brain - the medial orbito-frontal cortex - like looking at a great painting or listening to a piece of music." The more beautiful they rated the formula, the greater the surge in activity detected during the fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scans. "Neuroscience can't tell you what beauty is, but if you find it beautiful the medial orbito-frontal cortex is likely to be involved, you can find beauty in anything," he said. To the the untrained eye there may not be much beauty in Euler's identify, but in the study it was the formula of choice for mathematicians. BBC © 2014

Keyword: Emotions; Attention
Link ID: 19246 - Posted: 02.13.2014

|By Dina Fine Maron Concussions are a major problem in football. But brain injury is a growing concern in soccer, too, usually resulting from heading the ball or collisions. A meta-analysis of existing studies finds that concussions accounted for between 6 and 9 percent of all injuries sustained on soccer fields. Most of those concussions come from when two players make for the ball, often when a player’s elbow, arm or hand inadvertently makes contact with another player’s head. But we’re not just talking about injuries to professionals. One work shows some 63 percent of all varsity soccer players have sustained concussions—yet only 19 percent realized it. And another says girls’ soccer can be particularly brutal, accounting for 8 percent of all sports-related concussions among high school girls. The findings are in the journal Brain Injury. [Monica E. Maher et al., Concussions and heading in soccer: A review of the evidence of incidence, mechanisms, biomarkers and neurocognitive outcomes] Professional players who reported a great deal of extensive heading the ball during their careers did the poorest in tests of verbal and visual memory compared with other players. Goalies and defenders were most likely to get concussions. So if you want to bend it like Beckham, maybe focus on playing midfield or offense. Padding the goal posts would also be a heads-up policy. © 2014 Scientific American

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 19245 - Posted: 02.13.2014

By Ben Cimons, Recently I received an e-mail from my mother with a link to the harrowing tale of a 16-year-old Northern Virginia girl who overdosed on heroin and died, and whose companions had dumped her body. My mom wrote that she found the story “terrifying, because that easily could have been you. I thank God every day that it wasn’t, and that you are safe and healthy.’’ She was right. It could have been me, and it very nearly was. The only difference was that after I passed out from an accidental heroin overdose, the person I was with called 911 before abandoning me. Today I am 23 years old, living in a recovery house in Wilmington, N.C., and slowly regaining my life. But it has not been easy. Heroin is seductive. The minute it hits you, all your worries disappear. You are content with everything. You feel warm. You can’t help but smile. You feel free. The first time I tried it, I found an escape from the feelings of sadness and isolation I had been experiencing for as long as I could remember. But once heroin gets a hold on you, it never lets go. Heroin has been in the news a lot lately, most recently because of the death, apparently by overdose, of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. Heroin is everywhere. It’s easy to find, including in the suburbs where I lived until recently, and cheaper than prescription pills. © 1996-2014 The Washington Post

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 19244 - Posted: 02.13.2014

by Bethany Brookshire There are times when science is a painful experience. My most excruciating moment in science involved a heated electrode placed on my bare leg. This wasn’t some sort of graduate school hazing ritual. I was a volunteer in a study to determine how we process feelings of pain. As part of the experiment I was exposed to different levels of heat and asked how painful I thought they were. When the electrode was removed, I eagerly asked how my pain tolerance compared with that of others. I secretly hoped that I was some sort of superwoman, capable of feeling pain that would send other people into screaming fits and brushing it off with a stoic grimace. It turns out, however, that I was a bit of a wuss. Ouch. I figured I could just blame my genes. About half of our susceptibility to pain can be explained by genetic differences. The other half, however, remains up for grabs. And a new study published February 4 in Nature Communications suggests that part of our susceptibility to pain might lie in chemical markers on our genes. These “notes” on your DNA, known as epigenetic changes, can be affected by environment, behavior and even diet. So the findings reveal that our genetic susceptibility to pain might not be our destiny. Tim Spector and Jordana Bell, genetic epidemiologists at King’s College London, were interested in the role of the epigenome in pain sensitivity. Epigenetic changes such as the addition (or subtraction) of a methyl group on a gene make that gene more or less likely to be used in a cell by altering how much protein can be made from it. These differences in proteins can affect everything from obesity to memory to whether you end up like your mother. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Epigenetics
Link ID: 19243 - Posted: 02.12.2014