by Virginia Morell A single cue—the taste of a madeleine, a small cake, dipped in lime tea—was all Marcel Proust needed to be transported down memory lane. He had what scientists term an autobiographical memory of the events, a type of memory that many researchers consider unique to humans. Now, a new study argues that at least two species of great apes, chimpanzees and orangutans, have a similar ability; in zoo experiments, the animals drew on 3-year-old memories to solve a problem. Their findings are the first report of such a long-lasting memory in nonhuman animals. The work supports the idea that autobiographical memory may have evolved as a problem-solving aid, but researchers caution that the type of memory system the apes used remains an open question. Elephants can remember, they say, but many scientists think that animals have a very different kind of memory than our own. Many can recall details about their environment and routes they've traveled. But having explicit autobiographical memories of things "I" did, or remembering events that occurred in the past, or imagining those in the future—so-called mental time travel—are considered by many psychologists to be uniquely human skills. Until recently, scientists argued that animals are stuck in time, meaning that they have no sense of the past or future and that they aren't able to recall specific events from their lives—that is, they don't have episodic memories, the what-where-when of an event that happened. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Evolution
Link ID: 18395 - Posted: 07.20.2013

By GINA KOLATA The mice were eating their usual chow and exercising normally, but they were getting fat anyway. The reason: researchers had deleted a gene that acts in the brain and controls how quickly calories are burned. Even though they were consuming exactly the same number of calories as lean mice, they were gaining weight. So far, only one person — a severely obese child — has been found to have a disabling mutation in the same gene. But the discovery of the same effect in mice and in the child — a finding published Wednesday in the journal Science — may help explain why some people put on weight easily while others eat all they want and seem never to gain an ounce. It may also offer clues to a puzzle in the field of obesity: Why do studies find that people gain different amounts of weight while overeating by the same amount? Scientists have long thought explanations for why some people get fat might lie in their genes. They knew body weight was strongly inherited. Years ago, for example, they found that twins reared apart tended to have similar weights and adoptees tended to have weights like their biological parents, not the ones who reared them. As researchers developed tools to look for the actual genes, they found evidence that many — maybe even hundreds — of genes may be involved, stoking appetites, making people voraciously hungry. This rare gene-disabling mutation, though, is intriguing because it seems to explain something different, a propensity to pile on pounds even while eating what should be a normal amount of food. Investigators are now searching for other mutations of the same gene in fat people that may have a similar, but less extreme effect. The hope is that in the long term, understanding how this gene affects weight gain might lead to treatments for obesity that alter the rate at which calories are burned. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18394 - Posted: 07.20.2013

Here’s yet another reason to get off the couch: new research findings suggest that regularly breaking a sweat may lower the risk of having a stroke. A stroke can occur when a blood vessel in the brain gets blocked. As a result, nearby brain cells will die after not getting enough oxygen and other nutrients. A number of risk factors for stroke have been identified, including smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes and being inactive. For this study, published in the journal Stroke, Michelle N. McDonnell, Ph.D., from the University of South Australia, Adelaide and her colleagues obtained data from the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study. REGARDS is a large, long-term study funded by the NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) to look at the reasons behind the higher rates of stroke mortality among African-Americans and other residents living in the Southeastern United States. “Epidemiological studies such as REGARDS provide an important opportunity to explore race, genetics, environmental, and lifestyle choices as stroke risk factors,” said Claudia Moy, Ph.D., program director at NINDS. Over 30,000 participants supplied their medical history over the phone. The researchers also visited them to obtain health measures such as body mass index and blood pressure. At the beginning of the study, the researchers asked participants how many times per week they exercised vigorously enough to work up a sweat. The researchers contacted participants every six months to see if they had experienced a stroke or a mini-stroke known as a transient ischemic attack (TIA). To confirm their responses, the researchers reviewed participants’ medical records.

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 18393 - Posted: 07.20.2013

Jaak Panksepp, the inventor of the term "affective neuroscience", is regarded as a radical in his field, with ground-breaking insights into emotional issues ranging from depression to playfulness. What makes him radical? First, his study of animal emotions, and his data-supported assertion that animals experience feelings as humans do. Using electrical stimulation of the brain, Panksepp has shown that all mammals have the same basic emotional system: i.e. underlying neural networks that are linked to feelings of raw emotion, and respond positively or negatively when aroused. For example, Panksepp has tickled rats to hear them 'laugh' ; in other species, he has conducted extensive experiments on what he calls "separation distress." Today's neuroscientists generally do not bother to consider the emotional life of animals, or put it on par with that of humans. But as Panksepp eloquently argues: "Animals do have emotional systems that generate feelings, even though hardly a neuroscientist yet acknowledges this fact." Second: Panksepp looks at what causes our feelings: the primary, instinctual networks in the brain that make them happen. Most neuroscientists, he confided in our phone conversation between Paris (where I teach) and Washington (where he teaches), look only at symptoms. "They are behaviorists. They follow the tradition of early psychologist William James, who looked at emotion as a mental after-effect, a cognitive read-out of autonomic bodily arousals, rather than as the brain system which drives us." He has been at odds with these behaviorists for most of his career, this despite the fact that Panksepp's major contributions to the field of emotion are now widely accepted, especially by psychotherapists treating patients for emotional concerns such as depression. © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

Keyword: Emotions; Depression
Link ID: 18392 - Posted: 07.20.2013

by Brian Mustanski, Ph.D. There is a lot of interest in the question of if too much sex, sexual desire, masturbation, or viewing of pornography is an addiction like to alcohol or cocaine. In fact, an early version of the new DSM-V manual of mental disorders included a “hypersexuality” diagnosis, but this diagnosis was not included in the finalized version. One tool to study addiction is to look at how the brain responds to those substances or cues of those substances. Until recently, this neuroscience approach had not been used to study hypersexuality. A new study published in the journal Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology has tested the brain’s response to sexual stimuli among a group of individuals who identified as having problems controlling their use of online pornography. This new study was published by my colleague (and fellow Indiana University Psychology alumni) Dr. Nicole Prause, who is an Assistant Research Scientist in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California- Los Angeles and a Research Scientist at the Mind Research Network. Below are her answers to my questions about this new study. What was the purpose of the study? Some clinicians describe patients who report problems decreasing their sexual behaviors, such as viewing many hours of sexual films online every day, as sexually “addicted” or “hypersexual”. Our study tested whether people who report such problems look like other addicts from their brain responses to sexual images. Studies of drug addictions, such as cocaine, have shown a consistent pattern of brain response to images of the drug of abuse, so we predicted that we should see the same pattern in people who report problems with sex if it was, in fact, an addiction. © Copyright 1991-2013 Sussex Publishers, LLC

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 18391 - Posted: 07.20.2013

Beth Mole The insertion of one gene can muzzle the extra copy of chromosome 21 that causes Down’s syndrome, according to a study published today in Nature1. The method could help researchers to identify the cellular pathways behind the disorder's symptoms, and to design targeted treatments. “It’s a strategy that can be applied in multiple ways, and I think can be useful right now,” says Jeanne Lawrence, a cell biologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, and the lead author of the study. Lawrence and her team devised an approach to mimic the natural process that silences one of the two X chromosomes carried by all female mammals. Both chromosomes contain a gene called XIST (the X-inactivation gene), which, when activated, produces an RNA molecule that coats the surface of a chromosome like a blanket, blocking other genes from being expressed. In female mammals, one copy of the XIST gene is activated — silencing the X chromosome on which it resides. Lawrence’s team spliced the XIST gene into one of the three copies of chromosome 21 in cells from a person with Down’s syndrome. The team also inserted a genetic 'switch' that allowed them to turn on XIST by dosing the cells with the antibiotic doxycycline. Doing so dampened expression of individual genes along chromosome 21 that are thought to contribute to the pervasive developmental problems that comprise Down's syndrome. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18390 - Posted: 07.18.2013

By Rachael Rettner, People with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) often show differences in certain brain areas compared with healthy people, but it has been difficult to determine whether these differences are a cause or a consequence of the condition. Now, a number of new studies may help disentangle the condition’s causes from its effects and, in doing so, bring a better understanding of how the disorder might be prevented or treated. In a review article, researchers draw upon these studies to piece together a new model for how the condition arises. The model suggests that three factors are necessary for PTSD to develop: A person needs to have certain risk factors for the condition; he or she must be exposed to a traumatic event; and, after that event, further changes to the brain need to occur. With this view of the condition, researchers may ultimately be able to predict who is at risk for PTSD before experiencing a traumatic event and to treat people at the right time after trauma to prevent subsequent brain changes from occurring, thus keeping the disorder from progressing to its final form. “If the disease causes specific changes [in the brain], then treatment can cause the same change in the other direction,” said Roee Admon, a researcher at Harvard Medical School. He, along with colleagues, proposed the new PTSD model in the July issue of the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences. According to the model, changes in two brain areas — the amygdala and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) — may predispose people to PTSD. © 1996-2013 The Washington Post

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 18389 - Posted: 07.18.2013

By GINA KOLATA A new study has found that dementia rates among people 65 and older in England and Wales have plummeted by 25 percent over the past two decades, to 6.2 percent from 8.3 percent, a trend that researchers say is probably occurring across developed countries and that could have major social and economic implications for families and societies. Another recent study, conducted in Denmark, found that people in their 90s who were given a standard test of mental ability in 2010 scored substantially better than people who had reached their 90s a decade earlier. Nearly one-quarter of those assessed in 2010 scored at the highest level, a rate twice that of those tested in 1998. The percentage of subjects severely impaired fell to 17 percent from 22 percent. The British study, published on Tuesday in The Lancet, and the Danish one, which was released last week, also in The Lancet, soften alarms sounded by advocacy groups and some public health officials who have forecast a rapid rise in the number of people with dementia, as well as in the costs of caring for them. The projections assumed the odds of getting dementia would be unchanged. Yet experts on aging said the studies also confirmed something they had suspected but had had difficulty proving: that dementia rates would fall and mental acuity improve as the population grew healthier and better educated. The incidence of dementia is lower among those better educated, as well as among those who control their blood pressure and cholesterol, possibly because some dementia is caused by ministrokes and other vascular damage. So as populations controlled cardiovascular risk factors better and had more years of schooling, it made sense that the risk of dementia might decrease. A half-dozen previous studies had hinted that the rate was falling, but they had flaws that led some to doubt the conclusions. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 18388 - Posted: 07.18.2013

By PAM BELLUCK The man complained of memory problems but seemed perfectly normal. No specialist he visited detected any decline. “He insisted that things were changing, but he aced all of our tests,” said Rebecca Amariglio, a neuropsychologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. But about seven years later, he began showing symptoms of dementia. Dr. Amariglio now believes he had recognized a cognitive change so subtle “he was the only one who could identify it.” Patients like this have long been called “the worried well,” said Creighton Phelps, acting chief of the dementias of aging branch of the National Institute on Aging. “People would complain, and we didn’t really think it was very valid to take that into account.” But now, scientists are finding that some people with such complaints may in fact be detecting early harbingers of Alzheimer’s. Studies presented Wednesday at an Alzheimer’s Association conference in Boston showed that people with some types of cognitive concerns were more likely to have Alzheimer’s pathology in their brains, and to develop dementia later. Research presented by Dr. Amariglio, for example, found that people with more concerns about memory and organizing ability were more likely to have amyloid, a key Alzheimer’s-related protein, in their brains. And, in a significant shift highlighted at the conference, leading Alzheimer’s researchers are identifying a new category called “subjective cognitive decline,” which is people’s own sense that their memory and thinking skills are slipping even before others have noticed. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 18387 - Posted: 07.18.2013

by Jennifer Viegas The memory of dogs is more human-like than previously thought, allowing our furry pals to copy our actions, even after delays. The discovery, outlined in the latest issue of Animal Cognition, means that dogs possess what’s known as “declarative memory,” which refers to memories which can be consciously recalled, such as facts or knowledge. Humans, of course, have this ability, as anyone playing a trivia game demonstrates. But it had never fully been scientifically proven in dogs before, although dog owners and canine aficionados have likely witnessed the skill first-hand for years. Claudia Fugazza and Adám Miklósi of Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary conducted the study. A LOT of dog studies happen in Hungary, where people really love their pooches and some of the world’s leading canine researchers live. The team investigated if dogs could defer imitation, which in this case meant copying what their owners were doing. Eight adult pet dogs were trained using the “Do As I Do” method. (Fugazza is a leading expert on this training method for dogs.) The tasks included copying their owners walking around a bucket and ringing a bell. Can dogs then successfully replicate what they learned after a 10 or so minute distracting break? The owner, Valentina, got her dog Adila to pay attention to her. She then demonstrated an activity, like ringing a bell with her hand. © 2013 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Evolution
Link ID: 18386 - Posted: 07.18.2013

The idea that dogs only see the world in black, white and shades of gray is a common misconception. What’s true, though, is that like most mammals, dogs only have two types of color receptors (commonly called “cones”) in their eyes, unlike humans, who have three. Each of these cones is sensitive to a different wavelength (i.e. color) of light. By detecting different quantities of each wavelength and combining them, our three cones can transmit various signals for all the hues of the color wheel, the same way the three primary colors can be mixed in different amounts to do the same. But because they only have two cones, dogs’ ability to see color is indeed quite limited compared to ours (a rough comparison would be the vision of humans with red-green colorblindness, since they, too, only have two cones). Whereas a human with full color vision sees red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet along the spectrum of visible light, a dog sees grayish brown, dark yellow, light yellow, grayish yellow, light blue and dark blue, respectively—essentially, different combinations of the same two colors, yellow and blue: Consequently, researchers have long believed that dogs seldom rely on colors to discriminate between objects, instead looking solely at items’ darkness or brightness to do so. But a new experiment indicates that this idea, too, is a misconception. As described in a paper published yesterday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a team of Russian researchers recently found that, at least among a small group of eight dogs, the animals were much more likely to recognize a piece of paper by its color than its brightness level—suggesting that your dog might be aware of some of the colors of everyday objects after all.

Keyword: Vision; Evolution
Link ID: 18385 - Posted: 07.18.2013

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS Two newly published studies investigate the enticing possibility that we might one day be able to gain the benefits of exercise by downing a pill, rather than by actually sweating. But while some of the research holds out promise for an effective workout pill, there remains the question of whether such a move is wise. The more encouraging of the new studies, which appears this week in Nature Medicine, expands on a major study published last year in Nature. In that study, researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Fla., reported that a compound they had created and injected into obese mice increased activation of a protein called REV-ERB, which is known to partially control animals’ circadian rhythms and internal biological clocks. The injected animals lost weight, even on a high-fat diet, and improved their cholesterol profiles. Unexpectedly, the treated mice also began using more oxygen throughout the day and expending about 5 percent more energy than untreated mice, even though they were not moving about more than the other animals. In fact, in most cases, they were more physically lazy and inactive than they had been before the injections. The drug, it seemed, was providing them with a workout, minus the effort. Intrigued, the Scripps scientists, in conjunction with researchers from the Pasteur Institute in France and other institutions, set out to see what their compound might be doing inside muscles to provide this ersatz exercise. They knew that their drug increased the potency of the REV-ERB protein, but no one yet knew what REV-ERB actually does in muscles. So they began by developing a strain of mice that could not express very much of the protein in their muscle cells. Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 18384 - Posted: 07.18.2013

By Sue Shellenbarger It’s easy to be offended when a colleague yawns while you’re talking. But that yawn may not mean what you think. A growing number of researchers believe the purpose of this little-understood behavior is to cool the brain, says a research review published earlier this year in Frontiers in Neuroscience. Changes in climate affect how often people yawn. Researchers in an earlier study asked two groups of pedestrians in Tucson, Ariz., one in early summer and one in the winter. People were asked to look at pictures of people yawning and talk about their own yawning behavior. The participants were nearly twice as likely to yawn when they were surveyed during the winter, when they could inhale cool air to reduce the temperature of the brain, says the study, published in 2011 in Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience. Participants yawned less when surveyed in the early summer, when temperatures outdoors were about the same as the human body. Other studies show yawning increases after people experience heat stress or have a heat pack placed on their foreheads. Yawning also may build empathy within groups. Yawns are seen as contagious, but “catching” a yawn depends on a person’s ability to feel empathy and closeness with the yawner, says a 2013 research review in the International Journal of Applied Basic Medical Research. ©2013 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 18383 - Posted: 07.18.2013

Alison Abbott When neurobiologist Bill Newsome got a phone call from Francis Collins in March, his first reaction was one of dismay. The director of the US National Institutes of Health had contacted him out of the blue to ask if he would co-chair a rapid planning effort for a ten-year assault on how the brain works. To Newsome, that sounded like the sort of thankless, amorphous and onerous task that would ruin a good summer. But after turning it over in his mind for 24 hours, his dismay gave way to enthusiasm. “The timing is right,” says Newsome, who is based at Stanford University School of Medicine in California. He accepted the task. “The brain is the intellectual excitement for the twenty-first century.” It helped that the request for the brain onslaught was actually coming from Collins's ultimate boss — US President Barack Obama. Just two weeks after that call, on 2 April, Obama announced a US$100-million initial investment to launch the BRAIN Initiative, a research effort expected to eventually cost perhaps ten times that amount. The European Commission has equal ambitions. On 28 January, it announced that it would launch the flagship Human Brain Project with a 2013 budget of €54 million (US$69 million), and contribute to its projected billion-euro funding over the next ten years (see Nature 482, 456–458; 2012). Although the aims of the two projects differ, both are, in effect, bold bids for the neuroscientist's ultimate challenge: to work out exactly how the billions of neurons and trillions of connections, or synapses, in the human brain organize themselves into working neural circuits that allow us to fall in love, go to war, solve mathematical theorems or write poetry. What's more, researchers want to understand the ways in which brain circuitry changes — through the constant growth and retreat of synapses — as life rolls by. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 18382 - Posted: 07.18.2013

by Sarah C. P. Williams Researchers think they've hit on why a common obesity gene causes weight gain: Those who carry a version of it don't feel full after eating and take in extra calories. That's because the variant of the FTO gene in question, which one in six individuals carry, leads to higher levels of ghrelin, a hormone involved in mediating appetite and the body's response to food, researchers have discovered. While most studies on FTO have relied on mice, the new work analyzed blood samples and brain scans from humans. "This is a very exciting piece of research," says geneticist Andrew Hattersley of the Peninsula Medical School in Exeter, U.K., who was not involved in the new study. "There is a lot of work that's been done on the mechanism of FTO in animals, but you have to be careful about applying those lessons to people. So it's nice to finally see work done in humans." Hattersley was part of a team that in 2007 reported that people who had one version of the FTO gene, called AA, weighed an average of 3 kilograms more than those with the TT version of the gene. Since then, studies in mice have shown that in everyone, there are high levels of the FTO protein in brain areas that control energy balance. Researchers have also found that animals with the AA version tend to eat more and prefer high-fat food compared with those with the TT version. But why FTO had this effect wasn't known. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Obesity; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18381 - Posted: 07.16.2013

By SABRINA TAVERNISE WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration announced on Monday that it had approved the first brain wave test to help diagnose attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children. The test uses an electroencephalogram, or EEG, with sensors attached to a child’s head and hooked by wires to a computer to measure brain waves. It traces different types of electrical impulses given off by nerve cells in the brain and records how many times those impulses are given off each second. The test takes 15 to 20 minutes, and measures two kinds of brain waves — theta and beta. Certain combinations of those waves tend to be more prevalent in children with A.D.H.D., the Food and Drug Administration said in a news release. The disorder is one of the most common behavioral disorders in children. About 9 percent of adolescents have A.D.H.D. and the average age of diagnosis is 7, the drug agency said, citing the American Psychiatric Association. Children who have it tend to be hyperactive, impulsive and exhibit behavioral problems. The maker of the testing device, NEBA Health of Augusta, Ga., gave the F.D.A. data from a study of 275 children and adolescents, ages 6 to 17, with attention or hyperactivity problems. Clinicians used the device, called a Neuropsychiatric EEG-Based Assessment Aid, in combination with traditional testing methods, like listing the criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, behavioral questionnaires and I.Q. testing. An outside group of researchers then reviewed the data and decided whether the child had the disorder. The results showed that the device helped doctors make a more accurate diagnosis than using traditional methods alone, the F.D.A. said. An agency spokeswoman said it did not release the study’s data. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 18380 - Posted: 07.16.2013

By Scicurious It seems like the worst sort of cycle. The less sleep you get, the less effective you are. Then you have more to do, get more stressed, and stay up trying to get it all done (or lie awake stressing about it). The next day, less sleep, and even more anxiety. The ironic part is that you might not be quite so anxious…if you could just get some SLEEP. The authors of this study wanted to look at anxiety responses in people, and how they were affected by lack of sleep. To do this, you need 19 healthy participants, an fMRI machine, a test of anxiety…and way to keep people up all night. How do you assess anxiety responses? Start with cues, and then give outcomes. You can see the layout of the studies above. The participants were placed in an fMRI scanner. During the recording, they were shown signs, followed by stimuli. If they got a negative sign, they would always get a negative stimuli (a man with a gun, which is plenty good enough to provoke an anxiety response). If they got a zero sign, they got a normal stimuli (a doorknob. Nothing scary there). If they got a question mark, they have a 50% chance of getting the negative stimulus. This question mark gives you an ambiguous stimulus, you don’t know what to expect. They had the participants go through the series of stimuli in two conditions: rested and sleep deprived. And when they sleep deprived them, BOY did they. Many sleep deprivation studies will restrict sleep to, say, 4 hours the night before the study, or 5. Not these guys. No, they had the participants pull an all-nighter! © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Sleep; Emotions
Link ID: 18379 - Posted: 07.16.2013

An Ontario researcher has discovered that common male crickets talk trash, dance and brag after winning a fight. The discovery has caught the attention of fellow researchers and National Geographic magazine. Lauren Fitzsimmons, a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Windsor, discovered the brash behaviour. Fitzsimmons placed pairs of male crickets in a small, clear arena, which always led to fights. The arena included a viewing area for other crickets. She set up three audience situations: a male watching and listening to a fight, a female watching and listening to a fight, or no audience. The combatants bit, pushed and flipped each other around the ring. "After a series of these bouts, one male will kind of sulk away and not interact anymore, while the other will perform a song and dance," Fitzsimmons said. She said the winning cricket would "shake his body back and forth" and chirp in victory. "When we had a male audience watching, the male would produce more of these victory displays," Fitzsimmons said. "The speculation is they can tell there is another individual there, and they’re showing off. "We know females prefer dominant males and males who win fights." © CBC 2013

Keyword: Aggression; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 18378 - Posted: 07.16.2013

By Marilynn Marchione The Associated Press New research boosts the "use it or lose it" theory about brainpower and staying mentally sharp. People who delay retirement have less risk of developing Alzheimer's disease or other types of dementia, a study of nearly half a million people in France found. It's by far the largest study to look at this, and researchers say the conclusion makes sense. Working tends to keep people physically active, socially connected and mentally challenged — all things known to help prevent mental decline. "For each additional year of work, the risk of getting dementia is reduced by 3.2 percent," said Carole Dufouil, a scientist at INSERM, the French government's health research agency. She led the study and gave results Monday at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Boston. About 35 million people worldwide have dementia, and Alzheimer's is the most common type. In the U.S., about 5 million have Alzheimer's — 1 in 9 people aged 65 and over. What causes the mind-robbing disease isn't known and there is no cure or any treatments that slow its progression. France has had some of the best Alzheimer's research in the world, partly because its former president, Nicolas Sarkozy, made it a priority. The country also has detailed health records on self-employed people who pay into a Medicare-like health system.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 18377 - Posted: 07.16.2013

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR There are many dying languages in the world. But at least one has recently been born, created by children living in a remote village in northern Australia. Carmel O’Shannessy, a linguist at the University of Michigan, has been studying the young people’s speech for more than a decade and has concluded that they speak neither a dialect nor the mixture of languages called a creole, but a new language with unique grammatical rules. The language, called Warlpiri rampaku, or Light Warlpiri, is spoken only by people under 35 in Lajamanu, an isolated village of about 700 people in Australia’s Northern Territory. In all, about 350 people speak the language as their native tongue. Dr. O’Shannessy has published several studies of Light Warlpiri, the most recent in the June issue of Language. “Many of the first speakers of this language are still alive,” said Mary Laughren, a research fellow in linguistics at the University of Queensland in Australia, who was not involved in the studies. One reason Dr. O’Shannessy’s research is so significant, she said, “is that she has been able to record and document a ‘new’ language in the very early period of its existence.” Everyone in Lajamanu also speaks “strong” Warlpiri, an aboriginal language unrelated to English and shared with about 4,000 people in several Australian villages. Many also speak Kriol, an English-based creole developed in the late 19th century and widely spoken in northern Australia among aboriginal people of many different native languages. Lajamanu parents are happy to have their children learn English in school for use in the wider world, but eager to preserve Warlpiri as the language of their culture. There is an elementary school in Lajamanu, but most children go to boarding school in Darwin for secondary education. The language there is English. But they continue to speak Light Warlpiri among themselves. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 18376 - Posted: 07.15.2013