By Andrea Anderson In spring a band of brainy rodents made headlines for zipping through mazes and mastering memory tricks. Scientists credited the impressive intellectual feats to human cells transplanted into their brains shortly after birth. But the increased mental muster did not come from neurons, the lanky nerve cells that swap electrical signals and stimulate muscles. The mice benefited from human stem cells called glial progenitors, immature cells poised to become astrocytes and other glia cells, the supposed support cells of the brain. Astrocytes are known for mopping up excess neuro-transmitters and maintaining balance in brain systems. During the past couple of decades, however, researchers started suspecting astrocytes of making more complex cognitive contributions. In the 1990s the cells got caught using calcium to accomplish a form of nonelectrical signaling. Studies since then have revealed how extensively astrocytes interact with neurons, even coordinating their activity in some cases. Perhaps even more intriguing, our astrocytes are enormous compared with the astrocytes of other animals—20 times larger than rodent astrocytes—and they make contact with millions of neurons apiece. Neurons, on the other hand, are nearly identical in all mammals, from rodents to great apes like us. Such clues suggest astrocytes could be evolutionary contributors to our outsized intellect. The new study, published in March in Cell Stem Cell, tested this hypothesis. A subset of the implanted human stem cells matured into rotund, humanlike astrocytes in the animals' brains, taking over operations from the native mouse astrocytes. When tested under a microscope, these human astrocytes accomplished calcium signaling at least three times faster than the mouse astrocytes did. The enhanced mice masterfully memorized new objects, swiftly learned to link certain sounds or situations to an unpleasant foot shock, and displayed unusually savvy maze navigation—signs of mental acuity that surpassed skills exhibited by either typical mice or mice transplanted with glial progenitor cells from their own species. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Glia; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 18455 - Posted: 08.05.2013

Josh Howgego When it comes to our sense of smell, we are all experiencing the world in very different ways. Scientists already know that humans' sensitivity to smelly molecules varies considerably from person to person (see: 'Soapy taste of coriander linked to genetic variants'). But evidence that genetic variations — as opposed to habit, culture or other factors — underlie these differences has been hard to come by. Geneticist Richard Newcomb of the New Zealand institute for Plant and Food Research in Auckland and his colleagues searched for olfactory genes by testing 187 people’s sensitivity to ten chemicals found in everyday food, including the molecules that give distinctive smells to blue cheese, apples and violets. They found that, as expected, the smelling abilities of their subjects varied. The team then sequenced the subjects’ genomes and looked for differences that could predict people’s ability to detect each chemical through smell. For four of the ten chemicals, the researchers identified clusters of genes that convincingly predicted smelling ability, as they report today in Current Biology1. The study could not conclude whether similar genetic associations exist for the other six compounds, or whether factors other than genes play a role in those cases. Previously, only five regions of the genome had been shown to affect olfactory ability when they undergo mutations, so Newcomb’s study has nearly doubled the number of genetic associations known to influence smell. And because there is nothing special about the chemicals they studied, Newcomb says that it is logical to think the findings would extend to lots of scents, meaning that people experience the plethora of chemicals surrounding them in endlessly different ways. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18454 - Posted: 08.03.2013

By CARL ZIMMER “Monogamy is a problem,” said Dieter Lukas of the University of Cambridge in a telephone news conference this week. As Dr. Lukas explained to reporters, he and other biologists consider monogamy an evolutionary puzzle. In 9 percent of all mammal species, males and females will share a common territory for more than one breeding season, and in some cases bond for life. This is a problem — a scientific one — because male mammals could theoretically have more offspring by giving up on monogamy and mating with lots of females. In a new study, Dr. Lukas and his colleague Tim Clutton-Brock suggest that monogamy evolves when females spread out, making it hard for a male to travel around and fend off competing males. On the same day, Kit Opie of University College London and his colleagues published a similar study on primates, which are especially monogamous — males and females bond in over a quarter of primate species. The London scientists came to a different conclusion: that the threat of infanticide leads males to stick with only one female, protecting her from other males. Even with the scientific problem far from resolved, research like this inevitably turns us into narcissists. It’s all well and good to understand why the gray-handed night monkey became monogamous. But we want to know: What does this say about men and women? As with all things concerning the human heart, it’s complicated. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 18453 - Posted: 08.03.2013

An experimental treatment for alcohol dependence works better in individuals who possess specific combinations of genes that regulate the function and binding of serotonin, a brain chemical affected by the treatment, according to a study supported by the National Institutes of Health. A report of the finding appears online in the American Journal of Psychiatry. “This study is another important step toward personalized treatments for alcohol dependence,” says Kenneth R. Warren, Ph.D., acting director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), which funded the study. “A personalized approach based on a person’s genetic makeup is increasingly being investigated for delivering optimum treatment to the ‘right’ patient.” Ondansetron is a medication currently used to treat nausea and vomiting, often following chemotherapy. It works by blocking serotonin-3 receptors, and has shown potential as a treatment for defined subpopulations with alcohol dependence. In previous studies, Professor Bankole Johnson, D.Sc., M.D., and his team at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, have shown that variations in genes that encode the serotonin transporter, a protein that regulates the concentration of serotonin between nerve cells, can significantly influence drinking intensity. They have also shown that the effectiveness of ondansetron therapy among people with alcohol dependence is influenced by variations of the serotonin transporter gene.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18452 - Posted: 08.03.2013

by Michael Slezak Could the US government be losing support in the global war on drugs? A year after some Latin American countries officially discussed alternatives to prohibition, Uruguay has moved to allow the production, sale and distribution of cannabis. The new legislation, which has made it through one house of parliament in Uruguay, has been described by President José Mujica as a "cutting-edge experiment". If passed by the upper house, the laws will allow registered users to buy up to 40 grams a month from a pharmacist, grow up to six plants at home, or grow up to 99 plants as part of a "cannabis club" made up of between 15 and 45 members. Uruguay has seen increases in crime associated with illegal drugs, particularly cocaine. According to the US Department of State, the drug problem continues there despite "concerted and consistent government efforts to combat these trends", including increased arrests and drug seizures. Mujica says the legislation aims to bring an existing market into the "light of day" and stop it from "corrupting everything". "They are doing it for the same reason the US stopped alcohol prohibition [in the 1930s]," says David Nutt at Imperial College London. "To reduce organised crime and achieve tax revenue for the country." The move comes hot on the heels of two US states legalising the production and distribution of cannabis and New Zealand creating a legal market for new designer drugs. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 18451 - Posted: 08.03.2013

By Michele Solis Attention training might trump language practice in treating dyslexia, and video games might provide just that, according to a recent study in Current Biology. Researchers at the University of Padua in Italy found that 10 kids with dyslexia who played an action-filled video game for nine 80-minute sessions increased their reading speed, without introducing mistakes. These reading gains lasted at least two months and outpaced gains measured in 10 children with dyslexia who played a nonaction version of the same game, as well as trumping the expected improvement that naturally occurs in a year for a child with dyslexia. Though small, the study bolsters evidence that dyslexia stems in part from problems in focusing attention onto letters and words in an orderly way. Last year the same team reported that preschoolers who struggled to quickly and accurately shift their attention—which can be thought of as a spotlight—were likely to have reading difficulties three years later. Because action video games require players to constantly redirect their attention to different targets, neuroscientist Simone Gori and his colleagues thought the video games might fine-tune that spotlight so as to avoid jumbling letters on a page. The training honed visual attention skills and reading hand in hand, and the reading improvements even exceeded those obtained in children after traditional therapies for dyslexia, which focus on building language skills. Gori does not advocate abandoning the older methods but says that training visual attention could be a vital, overlooked component. He also notes that kids are prone to quit traditional dyslexia therapies, which he says can be demanding and even boring; not a problem in his video-game experiment. “Our difficulty was in getting the kids to stop playing,” Gori says. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Dyslexia
Link ID: 18450 - Posted: 08.03.2013

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Well-established guidelines for the treatment of back pain require very conservative management — in most cases, no more than aspirin or acetaminophen (Tylenol) and physical therapy. Advanced imaging procedures, narcotics and referrals to other physicians are recommended only for the most refractory cases or those with serious other symptoms. But a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine suggests that doctors are not following the guidelines. Researchers studied 23,918 outpatient visits for back pain, a representative sample of an estimated 440 million visits made over 12 years in the United States. After controlling for age, sex, the nature of the pain and other factors, they found that during this time, Nsaid and Tylenol use fell more than 50 percent. But prescriptions for opiates increased by 51 percent, and CT or M.R.I. scans by 57 percent. Referrals to other physicians increased by 106 percent, which the authors said is a likely contributor to recent increases in expensive and often ineffective spine surgeries. The senior author, Dr. Bruce E. Landon, a professor of health care policy at Harvard, said that in most cases back pain improves by itself. But he added: “It’s a long conversation for physicians to educate patients. Often it’s easier just to order a test or give a narcotic rather than having a conversation. It’s not always easy to do the right thing.” Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 18449 - Posted: 08.03.2013

By Meghan Rosen The career choices of one type of social spider depend on its personality. Character wins out over factors such as age or body size in shaping the spider’s job prospects, researchers report July 31 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Lena Grinsted of Aarhus University in Denmark and colleagues marked more than 600 Stegodyphus sarasinorum spiders with brightly colored paint to identify individuals. Then the team gave the spiders a personality quiz. Researchers measured spiders’ boldness by blasting them with a puff of air and aggression by prodding them with a stick. Bold spiders froze when they first felt the air but quickly recovered. Aggressive spiders struck a threatening pose after feeling the stick. Then the team let the spiders build nests for hiding and webs for capturing prey. When the researchers wiggled a leaf in the webs to mimic a struggling insect, the boldest spiders hustled out to investigate. The findings bolster the idea that spider colonies are not homogenous societies where everyone contributes in the same way, the authors suggest. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 18448 - Posted: 08.03.2013

by Tanya Lewis, LiveScience In waters from Florida to the Caribbean, dolphins are showing up stranded or entangled in fishing gear with an unusual problem: They can't hear. More than half of stranded bottlenose dolphins are deaf, one study suggests. The causes of hearing loss in dolphins aren't always clear, but aging, shipping noise and side effects from antibiotics could play roles. "We're at a stage right now where we're determining the extent of hearing loss [in dolphins], and figuring out all the potential causes," said Judy St. Leger, director of pathology and research at SeaWorld in San Diego. "The better we understand that, the better we have a sense of what we should be doing [about it]." Whether the hearing loss is causing the dolphin strandings -- for instance, by steering the marine mammals in the wrong direction or preventing them from finding food -- is also still an open question. Dolphins are a highly social species. They use echolocation to orient themselves by bouncing high-pitched sound waves off of objects in their environment. They also "speak" to one another in a language of clicks and buzzing sounds. Because hearing is so fundamental to dolphins' survival, losing it can be detrimental. A 2010 study found that more than half of stranded bottlenose dolphins and more than a third of stranded rough-toothed dolphins had severe hearing loss. The animals' hearing impairment may have been a critical factor in their strandings, and all rescued cetaceans should be tested, the researchers said in the study, detailed in the journal PLOS ONE. © 2013 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Hearing; Animal Migration
Link ID: 18447 - Posted: 08.03.2013

Researchers have reverse-engineered the outlines of a disrupted prenatal gene network in schizophrenia, by tracing spontaneous mutations to where and when they likely cause damage in the brain. Some people with the brain disorder may suffer from impaired birth of new neurons, or neurogenesis, in the front of their brain during prenatal development, suggests the study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health. “Processes critical for the brain’s development can be revealed by the mutations that disrupt them,” explained Mary-Claire King, Ph.D. External Web Site Policy, University of Washington (UW), Seattle, a grantee of NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). “Mutations can lead to loss of integrity of a whole pathway, not just of a single gene. Our results implicate networked genes underlying a pathway responsible for orchestrating neurogenesis in the prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia.” King, and collaborators at UW and seven other research centers participating in the NIMH genetics repository, report on their discovery Aug. 1, 2013 in the journal Cell. “By linking genomic findings to functional measures, this approach gives us additional insight into how early development differs in the brain of someone who will eventually manifest the symptoms of psychosis,” said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D. Earlier studies had linked spontaneous mutations to non-familial schizophrenia and traced them broadly to genes involved in brain development, but little was known about convergent effects on pathways.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18446 - Posted: 08.03.2013

By Meghan Rosen A short camping trip could help people rise and shine. After a week living in tents in Colorado’s Rockies, volunteers’ internal clocks shifted about two hours earlier, transforming night owls into early birds, researchers report August 1 in Current Biology. “It’s a clever study, and it makes a dramatic point,” says Katherine Sharkey, a sleep researcher and physician at Brown University. People get much more light outside than they do indoors, and that can reset their internal clocks, she says. A master clock in the brain controls the release of melatonin, a hormone that prepares the body for sleep. Melatonin levels rise in the early evening and then taper off in the morning before a person wakes up. But because so many people spend their days indoors and their nights bathed in the glow of electric lights, the body’s clock can get out of sync. Melatonin levels ramp up later in the evening and ebb later in the morning — often after a person has woken up. The lingering sleep hormone can make people groggy. Kenneth Wright Jr., a sleep researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder, and colleagues whisked eight volunteers away from artificial lights for a summer camping trip. After nightfall, the campers used only campfires for illumination — no flashlights (or cellphones) allowed. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 18445 - Posted: 08.03.2013

By Lucas Laursen My cousin Guillermo Cassinello Toscano was on the train that derailed in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, last week when it went around a bend at twice the speed limit. Cassinello heard a loud vibration and then a powerful bump and then found himself surrounded by bloody bodies in wagon number nine. Shaking, he escaped the wreckage through either a door or a hole in the train—he cannot recall—then sat amid the smoke and debris next to the track and began to cry. Seventy-nine passengers died. Cassinello doesn’t remember everything that happened to him. The same mechanisms that kept his brain sharp enough to escape immediate danger may also make it harder for him both to recall the accident, and to put the trauma behind him. "The normal thing is that the person doesn't remember the moment of the accident or right after," says clinical psychologist Javier Rodriguez Escobar of trauma therapy team Grupo Isis in Seville, who helped treat and study victims of the 2004 Madrid train bombings. That's because the mind and the body enter a more alert but also more stressed state, with trade-offs that can save your life, but harm your mind’s memory-making abilities. As the train fell over, several changes would have swept through Cassinello’s body. His adrenal glands, near his kidneys, would have released adrenaline (also known as epinephrine) into his bloodstream. The adrenaline would have directed blood to the powerful muscles of his arms and legs, where it would help him escape the wreckage faster. The hormone would have raised his heart and breathing rates. It also would have stimulated his vagus nerve, which runs from his spine to his brain. Although adrenaline cannot cross the blood–brain barrier, the vagus can promote noradrenaline production in the brain. That hormone activates the amygdala, which helps form memories. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 18444 - Posted: 08.01.2013

By Jessica Shugart Lunch at a restaurant with a friend could lessen the brain’s aptitude for detailed tasks back at work, a new study suggests. If an error-free afternoon is the goal, perhaps workers should consider hastily consuming calories alone at their desks. But bosses shouldn’t rush to glue workers to their chairs just yet. The research is only a first stab at teasing out how a sociable lunch affects work performance, says study leader Werner Sommer of Humboldt University in Berlin. Researchers have long thought that dining with others fosters mental well-being, cooperation and creativity. To test the effects of a midday social hour on the brain’s capacity to get through the workday, Sommer and his colleagues gave 32 university students lunch in one of two settings and then tested their mental focus. Half of the students enjoyed meals over a leisurely hour with a friend at a casual Italian restaurant. The other group picked up their meals from the same restaurant, but had only 20 minutes to eat alone in a drab office. People who went out to lunch got to choose from a limited vegetarian menu; participants in the office group had meals that matched the choice of a member of the other group. After lunch, the group that dined in bland solitude performed better on a task that assesses rapid decision making and focus, the researchers report July 31 in PLOS ONE. Measurements of brain activity also suggested that the brain’s error-monitoring system could be running at sub-par levels in those who ate out. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 18443 - Posted: 08.01.2013

Andrew M. Seaman, Reuters Children with an autism spectrum disorder spend about twice as much time playing video games as kids who don't have a developmental disability, according to a new study. Researchers also found that children with an autism spectrum disorder or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at an increased risk of gaming addictions, compared to children without the disabilities. "What we found is that it looks like (addictive gaming) was largely driven by inattention," Christopher Engelhardt, one of the study's authors from the University of Missouri in Columbia, told Reuters Health. Previous studies have found that children with an autism spectrum disorder or ADHD spend more time playing video games and are at increased risk for gaming addictions than other children, write the researchers in the journal Pediatrics. No single study, however, has looked at the three groups to see whether shared features of autism and ADHD - such as inattention or hyperactivity - seem to drive video game use. For the new study, Engelhardt and his colleague surveyed the parents of 141 boys between the ages of 8 and 18 years old. Of those, 56 had an autism spectrum disorder, 44 had ADHD and 41 were developing normally. Overall, they found that kids with an autism spectrum disorder played - on average - 2.1 hours of video games per day. Children with ADHD spent about 1.7 hours per day playing video games and normally developing kids played about 1.2 hours per day.

Keyword: ADHD; Autism
Link ID: 18442 - Posted: 08.01.2013

By Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen L. Macknik According to a legend that one of us (Martinez-Conde) heard growing up in Spain, anybody can see the Devil's face. All you need to do is to stare at your own face in the mirror at the stroke of midnight, call the Devil's name and the Prince of Darkness will look back at you. Needless to say, I was both fascinated and terrified by the possibility. And I knew this was an experiment I must try. I waited a day or two to gather my courage, then stayed awake until midnight, got up from my bed, and into the bathroom I went. I closed the door behind me so that my family would not hear me calling out loud for Satan, faced my wide-eyed reflection, made my invocation, and ... nothing happened. I was disenchanted (literally) but also quite relieved. Now, three decades later, a paper entitled “Strange-Face-in-the-Mirror Illusion,” by vision scientist Giovanni B. Caputo of the University of Urbino in Italy, may explain my lack of results. Caputo asked 50 subjects to gaze at their reflected faces in a mirror for a 10-minute session. After less than a minute, most observers began to perceive the “strange-face illusion.” The participants' descriptions included huge deformations of their own faces; seeing the faces of alive or deceased parents; archetypal faces such as an old woman, child or the portrait of an ancestor; animal faces such as a cat, pig or lion; and even fantastical and monstrous beings. All 50 participants reported feelings of “otherness” when confronted with a face that seemed suddenly unfamiliar. Some felt powerful emotions. After reading Caputo's article, I had to give “Satan” another try. I suspected that my failure to see anything other than my petrified self in the mirror 30 years ago had to do with suboptimal lighting conditions for the strange-face illusion to take place. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 18441 - Posted: 08.01.2013

Elizabeth Pollitzer Transplanting muscle-derived stem cells into diseased muscle regenerates it — a phenomenon that holds major potential for human therapies. But for years, researchers were puzzled by the unpredictability of these cells — sometimes they would promote fast regeneration, at other times none at all. Then, in 2007, a group led by Johnny Huard, a stem-cell researcher at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, hit on the rather surprising explanation — sex1. Muscle stem cells taken from female mice regenerate new muscle much faster than those from male mice when transplanted into diseased muscle of mice of either sex. Researchers have also found that cells taken from male and female mice respond differently to stress2, and that human cells exhibit wildly different concentrations of many metabolites across the sexes3. Evidence is mounting that cells differ according to sex, irrespective of their history of exposure to sex hormones. These differences could have major implications for the susceptibility to and course of many diseases, their diagnosis and treatment. However, most cell biologists do not note whether the cells they are using come from males or females4. Between 1997 and 2001, ten prescription drugs were withdrawn from the market by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), eight of which were more dangerous to women than to men (see go.nature.com/ksindo). The ingredients used in non-prescription drugs can also pose greater health risks to women. In 2000, for instance, the FDA took steps to remove phenylpropanolamine, a component of many over-the-counter medications, from all drug products because of a reported increased risk of bleeding into the brain or into tissue around the brain in women but not in men. Such drug therapies are developed through basic research — but what if sex-related differences in studied cells contribute in a significant way to the observed effects? © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Muscles
Link ID: 18440 - Posted: 08.01.2013

By Melissa Hogenboom Science reporter, BBC News Several ancient dinosaurs evolved the brainpower needed for flight long before they could take to the skies, scientists say. Non-avian dinosaurs were found to have "bird brains", larger than that of Archaeopteryx, a 150 million-year-old bird-like dinosaur. Once regarded as a unique transition between dinosaurs and birds, scientists say Archaeopteryx has now lost its pivotal place. The study is published in Nature. A recent discovery in China which unveiled the earliest creature yet discovered on the evolutionary line to birds, also placed Archaeopteryx in less of a transitional evolutionary place. Bird brains tend to be more enlarged compared to their body size than reptiles, vital for providing the vision and coordination needed for flight. Scientists using high-resolution CT scans have now found that these "hyper-inflated" brains were present in many ancient dinosaurs, and had the neurological hardwiring needed to take to the skies. This included several bird-like oviraptorosaurs and the troodontids Zanabazar junior, which had larger brains relative to body size than that of Archaeopteryx. This latest work adds to previous studies which found the presence of feathers and wishbones on ancient dinosaurs. BBC © 2013

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 18439 - Posted: 08.01.2013

Andrew Curry In the 1970s, archaeologist Peter Bogucki was excavating a Stone Age site in the fertile plains of central Poland when he came across an assortment of odd artefacts. The people who had lived there around 7,000 years ago were among central Europe's first farmers, and they had left behind fragments of pottery dotted with tiny holes. It looked as though the coarse red clay had been baked while pierced with pieces of straw. Looking back through the archaeological literature, Bogucki found other examples of ancient perforated pottery. “They were so unusual — people would almost always include them in publications,” says Bogucki, now at Princeton University in New Jersey. He had seen something similar at a friend's house that was used for straining cheese, so he speculated that the pottery might be connected with cheese-making. But he had no way to test his idea. The mystery potsherds sat in storage until 2011, when Mélanie Roffet-Salque pulled them out and analysed fatty residues preserved in the clay. Roffet-Salque, a geochemist at the University of Bristol, UK, found signatures of abundant milk fats — evidence that the early farmers had used the pottery as sieves to separate fatty milk solids from liquid whey. That makes the Polish relics the oldest known evidence of cheese-making in the world1. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Evolution; Aggression
Link ID: 18438 - Posted: 08.01.2013

By Darold Treffert So much of what happens to us in life is not by plan, but rather by coincidence or serendipity. Thus it was with me and my career. After completing my residency in psychiatry I was assigned the responsibility of developing a Children’s Unit at Winnebago Mental Health Institute here in Wisconsin. There were over 800 patients at the hospital, some under age 18. We gathered about 30 such children and adolescents and put them on this new unit. Three patients particularly caught my eye. One boy had memorized the bus system of the entire city of Milwaukee with exhaustive detail and precision. Another little guy, even though mute and severely disabled with autism, could put a 200 piece jig saw puzzle together—picture side down—just from the geometric shapes of the puzzle pieces. And a third lad was an expert on what happened on this day in history and even though I would study up the night before, knowing he would quiz me the next day, I could never surpass his recall of events on that day in history. Kim Peek, his father Fran Peek and Dr. Treffert meeting in Milwaukee I was stunned, and intrigued, by this jarring juxtaposition of ability and disability in the same individual and began to study all that I could about savant syndrome—“islands of genius” amidst a sea of impairment. Then in 1980 Leslie Lemke came to Fond du Lac to give a concert. Leslie–blind, cognitively impaired and with such spasticity in his hands that he could not hold a fork or spoon to eat—had become a accomplished pianist, never having had a piano lesson in his life. Somehow the hand spasticity magically disappears when he sits at the keyboard. The 1983 60 Minutes program, which many still remember, recounted in detail the astonishment of Leslie’s mother, May Lemke, one evening, when Leslie, age 14, played back Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 flawlessly, having heard it earlier for the first time that evening as the soundtrack to the movie Sincerely Yours. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 18437 - Posted: 08.01.2013

By PAM BELLUCK For some people with severe mental illness, life is a cycle of hospitalization, skipped medication, decline and then rehospitalization. They may deny they have psychiatric disorders, refuse treatment and cascade into out-of-control behavior that can be threatening to themselves or others. Now, a study has found that a controversial program that orders these patients to receive treatment when they are not hospitalized has had positive results. Patients were much less likely to end up back in psychiatric hospitals and were arrested less often. Use of outpatient treatment significantly increased, as did refills of medication. Costs to the mental health system and Medicaid of caring for these patients dropped by half or more. The study evaluated the program run by New York State, known as Kendra’s Law because it was enacted after Kendra Webdale was pushed to her death on the New York City subway tracks by a man with untreated schizophrenia in 1999. Forty-four other states have some form of Kendra’s Law, but New York’s is by far the most developed because the state has invested significant resources into paying for it, experts say. From the start, Kendra’s Law has had staunch defenders and detractors. But the new analysis, led by researchers at Duke University and published in The American Journal of Psychiatry, joins a series of studies that suggest the program can be helpful for patients who, while they constitute only a small number of the people with mental illness, are some of the most difficult and expensive to care for. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Aggression
Link ID: 18436 - Posted: 07.31.2013