By C. CLAIBORNE RAY Q. What effect does the barometric pressure have on humans? Can it cause headaches and other discomforts? A. Differences in air pressure because of the weather or changes in altitude can have noticeable effects on the human body, though some people are more sensitive than others. Low barometric pressure can cause headaches by creating a pressure difference between the surrounding atmosphere and the sinuses, which are filled with air, said Dr. Matthew Fink, neurologist in chief at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. That leads to distended sinuses, especially if there is any congestion or blockage. “The same thing can happen with joints in people who have arthritis,” Dr. Fink said, with the low pressure associated with a coming storm aggravating joint pains in some. “High barometric pressure does not usually cause a problem, unless it is extreme,” he said. For example, water pressure can cause serious problems for a scuba diver because nitrogen dissolves in the blood when it is under pressure for some time. When the pressure is released as a diver ascends too quickly, the gas expands into bubbles; the resulting organic distress, often called the bends, can be fatal. One of the most noticeable effects of shifting air pressure occurs when a plane changes altitude rapidly. As expanding or contracting air in the inner ear equalizes its pressure with the surrounding atmosphere, ear popping and pain are common. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 18335 - Posted: 07.02.2013

by Elizabeth Norton Transforming fat cells into calorie-burning machines may sound like the ultimate form of weight control, but the idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Unexpectedly, some fat cells directly sense dropping temperatures and release their energy as heat, according to a new study; that ability might be harnessed to treat obesity and diabetes, researchers suggest. Fat is known to help protect animals from the cold—and not only by acting as insulation. In the early 1990s, scientists studying mice discovered that cold temperatures trigger certain fat cells, called brown adipose tissue, to release stored energy in the form of heat—to burn calories, in other words. Researchers have always assumed this mechanism was an indirect response to the physiological stress of cold temperatures, explains cell biologist Bruce Spiegelman of Harvard Medical School, Boston. The activation of brown fat seems to start with sensory neurons throughout the body informing the brain of a drop in temperature. In response the brain sends out norepinephrine, the chief chemical messenger of the sympathetic nervous system, which mobilizes the body to cope with many situations. In experimental animals, stimulating norepinephrine receptors triggered brown adipose tissue to release its energy and generate heat, while animals bred to be missing these receptors were unable to mount the same fat cell response. People also have brown adipose tissue that generates heat when the body is cold. And unlike white fat, which builds up around the abdomen and contributes to many disorders including heart disease and diabetes, this brown fat is found in higher proportions in leaner people and seems to actively protect against diabetes. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 18334 - Posted: 07.02.2013

By DOUGLAS QUENQUA For recovering alcoholics, memories associated with drinking — the smell of a bar, ice clinking in a glass — are among the greatest threats to sobriety. But what if retrieval of those memories could be blocked? Using a drug typically given to organ-transplant patients, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, reduced the incidence of relapse in rats by disrupting memories linked to past drinking. For several weeks the researchers allowed rats to binge on alcohol. Then, after 10 days of abstinence, the rats were exposed to just a drop of alcohol — enough to awaken their memories of drinking. The researchers then used brain scans to identify the neural mechanism responsible for triggering the reactivation of those memories, known as the mTORC1 signaling pathway. Rapamycin, a drug known to disrupt the pathway, was then given to some of the rats. Those that received it were significantly less likely to consume alcohol. “A single administration of this drug prevented relapse for a period of two weeks,” said Dorit Ron, a neuroscientist at the university and an author of the study, which was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Just how long the rats might have stayed dry is hard to say, she added, because “two weeks is when we ended the study.” Rapamycin, which is normally used to suppress transplant patients’ immune systems, is already approved by the Food and Drug Administration. But more study is required to determine whether it could help people abstain from alcohol, Dr. Ron said, adding that the drug also has significant side effects, including increased susceptibility to infection. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 18333 - Posted: 07.02.2013

By TIM REQUARTH and MEEHAN CRIST Babies learn to speak months after they begin to understand language. As they are learning to talk, they babble, repeating the same syllable (“da-da-da”) or combining syllables into a string (“da-do-da-do”). But when babies babble, what are they actually doing? And why does it take them so long to begin speaking? Insights into these mysteries of human language acquisition are now coming from a surprising source: songbirds. Researchers who focus on infant language and those who specialize in birdsong have teamed up in a new study suggesting that learning the transitions between syllables — from “da” to “do” and “do” to “da” — is the crucial bottleneck between babbling and speaking. “We’ve discovered a previously unidentified component of vocal development,” said the lead author, Dina Lipkind, a psychology researcher at Hunter College in Manhattan. “What we’re showing is that babbling is not only to learn sounds, but also to learn transitions between sounds.” The results provide insight into language acquisition and may eventually help shed light on human speech disorders. “Every time you find out something fundamental about the way development works, you gain purchase on what happens when children are at risk for disorder,” said D. Kimbrough Oller, a language researcher at the University of Memphis, who was not involved in the study. At first, however, the scientists behind these findings weren’t studying human infants at all. They were studying birds. “When I got into this, I never believed we were going to learn about human speech,” said Ofer Tchernichovski, a birdsong researcher at Hunter and the senior author of the study, published online on May 29 in the journal Nature. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 18332 - Posted: 07.01.2013

Posted by Alison Abbott Two months after animal-rights activists broke into an animal facility at the University of Milan and removed hundreds of animals, photographs of many of the mice have appeared on the Facebook page of one of the protestors’ supporters who uses the pen name Jooleea Carleenee. The raid took place on 20 April. Researchers at the university said that they lost years of their work along with the animals, most of which were genetically modified mice serving as models for disease. They said that they did not expect mutants that were particularly delicate, or immunosuppressed ‘nude’ mice, to survive outside controlled laboratory conditions. Carleenee says that she posted the pictures to show that the animals were still alive. But the images of the overcrowded and uncontrolled conditions in which the mice appear to have been kept in her home have fuelled a new row, with scientists posting angry comments, complaining of cruelty. Daria Giovannoni, president of the pro-science lobby group Pro-Test Italia, says: “If these photos show the actual conditions of the stolen mice, we’re seriously concerned about their well-being and health: we don’t think that these animals are faring better now than when they were in the laboratory.” The raid on 20 April spurred the nascent Pro-Test Italia — modelled on UK and US Pro-Test organizations — to action. It arranged a series of demonstrations by scientists in defence of their work on animals. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 18331 - Posted: 07.01.2013

By JANE E. BRODY Most people know that obesity can result in serious health problems, yet many of us continue to focus on its cosmetic consequences rather than its risks to health. This distorted view may change now that the American Medical Association has finally labeled obesity a disease, not just a risk factor for other disorders. Last month, the organization recognized that obesity is a verifiable illness that warrants far more attention than physicians, patients and insurers currently give it. The designation may change how aggressively doctors treat obesity, foster the development of new therapies, and lead to better coverage byinsurers. After all, the price of not treating obesity is now in the stratosphere. Obesity-related health conditions cost the nation more than $150 billion and result in an estimated 300,000 premature deaths each year. If the population’s weight gain is not soon capped (or better yet, reversed), experts predict that half of adults in America will be obese by 2040. The A.M.A. has said in effect that it is medicine’s responsibility to provide the knowledge and tools needed to curb this runaway epidemic. On June 19, James Gandolfini, the hefty award-winning actor who portrayed Tony Soprano in “The Sopranos,” died at 51, apparently of a heart attack, while on vacation in Italy. Even if genetics played a role, Mr. Gandolfini’s weight contributed significantly to his risk of sudden cardiac death. Not a week earlier, a 46-year-old member of my family who weighed over 300 pounds died suddenly of what might have been a heart attack while dozing in front of the television. He had long suffered from sleep apnea (a risk factor for sudden death), high blood pressure and severe gout, all results of his extreme weight. Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 18330 - Posted: 07.01.2013

Brendan Maher Hugh Rienhoff says that his nine-year-old daughter, Bea, is “a fire cracker”, “a tomboy” and “a very sassy, impudent girl”. But in a forthcoming research paper, he uses rather different terms, describing her hypertelorism (wide spacing between the eyes) and bifid uvula (a cleft in the tissue that hangs from the back of the palate). Both are probably features of a genetic syndrome that Rienhoff has obsessed over since soon after Bea’s birth in 2003. Unable to put on much muscle mass, Bea wears braces on her skinny legs to steady her on her curled feet. She is otherwise healthy, but Rienhoff has long worried that his daughter’s condition might come with serious heart problems. Rienhoff, a biotech entrepreneur in San Carlos, California, who had trained as a clinical geneticist in the 1980s, went from doctor to doctor looking for a diagnosis. He bought lab equipment so that he could study his daughter’s DNA himself — and in the process, he became a symbol for the do-it-yourself biology movement, and a trailblazer in using DNA technologies to diagnose a rare disease (see Nature 449, 773–776; 2007). “Talk about personal genomics,” says Gary Schroth, a research and development director at the genome-sequencing company Illumina in San Diego, California, who has helped Rienhoff in his search for clues. “It doesn’t get any more personal than trying to figure out what’s wrong with your own kid.” Now nearly a decade into his quest, Rienhoff has arrived at an answer. Through the partial-genome sequencing of his entire family, he and a group of collaborators have found a mutation in the gene that encodes transforming growth factor-β3 (TGF-β3). Genes in the TGF-β pathway control embryogenesis, cell differentiation and cell death, and mutations in several related genes have been associated with Marfan syndrome and Loeys–Dietz syndrome, both of which have symptomatic overlap with Bea’s condition. The mutation, which has not been connected to any disease before, seems to be responsible for Bea’s clinical features, according to a paper to be published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18329 - Posted: 07.01.2013

Niko J. Kallianiotis for The New York Times Autism, or the fear of it, chased one Korean mother from her Queens church. “I very carefully told the mom: ‘I think your child is a little different. Why don’t you take the test for autism?’ ” said the Rev. Joy Lee of the Korean Presbyterian Church in Flushing. “She told me, ‘Oh no, my child will be O.K.’ So then she quit. After that, she did not pick up the phone.” Ms. Ko said her own mother refused to discuss Jaewoo with relatives and friends after he was given his diagnosis. It crushed another Korean mother — twice. First, she said, when her son received the diagnosis, and again when friends saw it as a sign that she herself was sick. To cure him, they said, she needed psychotherapy. Sun Young Ko, of Forest Hills, whose 8-year-old son, Jaewoo Kwak, was given a diagnosis of autism 18 months ago, said her own mother refused to discuss her grandson with relatives or friends. “She’s kind of hiding,” Ms. Ko said. Raising an autistic child is hard enough, let alone raising one in a culture in which the stigma surrounding autism still runs high. Now, inspired by a 2011 study of a South Korean city that found relatively high rates of autism, a leading advocacy group is teaming with churches, doctors, schools and news organizations in Flushing, trying gingerly to bring Korean parents around to the idea that if there is something unusual about their child, concealing it and avoiding help are absolutely the wrong things to do. “More so than other populations, Korean-Americans really measure their own self-worth, and the worth of the family, in terms of what the child is able to achieve and what the child means to the family,” said Roy Richard Grinker, a professor of anthropology at George Washington University and the senior author of the South Korea study. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 18328 - Posted: 07.01.2013

by Katia Moskvitch In the days before GPS, we needed both a compass and a map to navigate. Migrating birds are no different. Studies have suggested that the animals rely on an internal map and compass to traverse large distances, though just where these senses reside is unclear. Now, scientists say they have the strongest evidence yet that map sense is associated with the beak. Researchers have long suspected that migrating birds navigate by sensing Earth's magnetic field. The idea was that their beaks, which contain a lot of iron, worked like real magnets, with the metal aligning itself relative to the field. Supposedly, the so-called trigeminal nerve transmitted this information to the brain. But in 2009, a team led by Henrik Mouritsen of the University of Oldenburg in Germany cut the trigeminal nerve in several European robins and found that the animals still oriented perfectly. In lab-based experiments, the birds were able to locate the natural and artificial magnetic north. It seemed that the beak played no role in the compass sense. The finding gave support to another hypothesis, one that suggested that the inner compass was instead a magnetism-sensing chemical reaction in the birds' eyes. But Mouritsen's team was still convinced that the beak had to be involved in the magnetosense in some way, and it decided to do another test. In 2010 and 2011, the scientists captured 57 Eurasian reed warblers near Kaliningrad, Russia. Every spring, these birds migrate northeast to their breeding grounds in southern Scandinavia, up to 1000 kilometers away. Once again, the scientists snapped the trigeminal nerve, in half of the birds. But then they also moved all 57 birds 1000 kilometers to the east, where the magnetic field differs from their home site, and released them. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Animal Migration
Link ID: 18327 - Posted: 06.29.2013

by Douglas Heaven Toss a stone into a pool and it leaves ripples long after it sinks. Ideas and experiences have a similar affect on our brains: short bouts of intense neural activity leave ripples in the brain's background activity that can still be detected 24 hours later. The finding effectively opens a window into a person's recent past. Previous studies have shown that it is possible to use brain activity to detect simple thoughts or words, and even what image someone is looking at. But this is the first time activity from the past has been observed. Even when you are doing nothing, the brain is busy. Cut off from external stimuli and left to "idle", the brain enters a resting state. "You would expect it to quieten down," says Rafael Malach at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. But instead, the brain just switches gear, producing patterns of activity that are slower but no less noisy. "The activity is very organised, very rich and very consistent," says Malach. But what it means is largely a mystery. Malach and his colleagues wondered whether the activity might in fact be a kind of echo. Could it tell us something about what the brain had been up to previously? "It might be a window into the previous day's activity," says Malach. To test the idea, the team compared fMRI scans of 20 people taken before, during and after a period of intense cognitive activity. They focused on a region of the brain called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, which is linked to decision-making and volition. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 18326 - Posted: 06.29.2013

Till Roenneberg Sleep is essential for health, performance and wellbeing. Yet in many countries, people are getting one to two hours less of it each night than their ancestors did 50–100 years ago. Even when people have the opportunity to sleep, many cannot. Sleep pathologies are approaching epidemic levels, affecting an estimated 70 million people in the United States alone (see go.nature.com/6dgqhg). And in some countries, direct and indirect costs of sleep-related problems are thought to approach 1% of gross domestic product1. Despite these alarming numbers, sleep research ranks only 91st in the 235 categories on this year's funding list of the US National Institutes of Health — below, for instance, studies of tobacco (see go.nature.com/ces1rf). Researchers have made great advances in understanding which neurotransmitters and brain regions are involved in sleep2, and how the timings of sleep and wakefulness are controlled by an internal (circadian) clock3, among other things. Yet we still do not have answers to the most basic questions. It is not really understood, for instance, what sleep is for, how much is optimal, how sleep quality can be measured and predicted, or the role of genetic and environmental factors in determining ideal sleeping patterns. One reason for this lack of understanding is that most of what is known about sleep comes from laboratory studies. Subjects in these studies tend to be mice or hamsters that are kept in artificial light–dark cycles, or people who have been instructed to sleep at certain times in beds that are not their own, with electrodes fastened to their heads. Assessments of sleep are also often based on subjective responses to questions about how 'well' people feel after they have slept, or whether they think they experienced a good night's sleep. To learn about sleep in the real world, and to establish how to manage sleep to improve productivity, health and quality of life, we need a multidisciplinary 'human sleep project'. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Sleep; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18325 - Posted: 06.29.2013

By Cristy Gelling Lemur species that live in large groups can tell when to steal food from a competitor in a lab experiment, researchers report June 26 in PLOS ONE. The finding supports the idea that brainpower in primates evolved to fit their complex social lives. Because the sneakier lemurs don't have bigger brains than less sneaky ones living in smaller groups, researchers suggest that social smarts don’t always depend on brain size. Much of the evidence for sociality’s role in the evolution of intelligence comes from indirect measures such as brain size, says study coauthor Evan MacLean of Duke University. But brain size does not always correspond to brainpower, so MacLean uses behavioral tests. He and his colleagues tested the social intelligence of six species of lemur, primates from Madagascar distantly related to monkeys and apes. Each of the species lives in social groups ranging from families of just three, mongoose lemurs’ preferred posse, to gangs of about 16, a typical size for a group of ring-tailed lemurs. The researchers trained lemurs to view humans as competitors for food, then presented the animals with a choice between pilfering treats from one of two people: one facing the animals or another with his or her back turned. Species that live in small groups reached for the food under a competitor’s nose as often as they did behind people’s backs. But the ring-tailed lemurs were much more likely to choose the unguarded food. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Evolution; Emotions
Link ID: 18324 - Posted: 06.29.2013

Sid Perkins Sporting feats such as baseball's 100-mile-per-hour fastball are made possible by a suite of anatomical features that appeared in our hominin ancestors about 2 million years ago, a video study of college athletes suggests. And this ability to throw projectiles may have been crucial for human hunting, which in turn may have had a vital role in our evolution. “Throwing projectiles probably enabled our ancestors to effectively and safely kill big game,” says Neil Roach, a biological anthropologist at George Washington University in Washington DC, who led the work. Eating more calorie-rich meat and fat would have helped early hominins' brains and bodies to grow, enabling our ancestors to expand into new regions of the world, he suggests. The study is published today in Nature1. Although some primates occasionally throw objects, and with a fair degree of accuracy, only humans can routinely hurl projectiles with both speed and accuracy, says Roach. Adult male chimpanzees can throw objects at speeds of around 30 kilometres per hour, but even a 12-year-old human can pitch a baseball three times faster than that, he notes. In fact, the quickest motion that the human body produces — rotation of the humerus, the long bone in the upper arm, at a rate that is briefly equivalent to 25 full rotations in a single second — occurs while a person is throwing a projectile. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Evolution; Muscles
Link ID: 18323 - Posted: 06.29.2013

By Dwayne Godwin and Jorge Cham A new initiative aims to invent new technologies for understanding the brain

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 18322 - Posted: 06.29.2013

By Susan Milius After 17 years underground, throngs of ruby-eyed cicadas clawed up through the soil this year to partake in a once-in-a-lifetime, synchronized mating frenzy. Except it wasn’t one big insect orgy: It was three. The insects that unearthed themselves to breed in 2013 belong to three distinct species. You need only flip them over to see some differences, written in the varieties of their orange markings. You can hear the differences too, says Chris Simon of the University of Connecticut in Storrs. The tymbals on either side of a male’s abdomen vibrate to make the racket for which cicadas are famous. A chorus of courting Magicicada cassini males sounds like an electric carving knife revving up. M. septendecula coughs out a series of rasps. And M. septendecim serenades with the whistling drone of a B-movie spaceship. The various thrums and buzzings may mingle in the same neighborhood, but the last time ancestors of these species mated with each other was almost 4 million years ago, Simon says. That’s the conclusion of the most detailed genetic studies yet of periodical cicada evolutionary history, which Simon and colleagues published in April in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. With DNA plus episodic field observations, the scientists are getting an idea about the odd family tree of periodical cicadas, how the insects synchronize their life cycles and why they breed side-by-side with others unsuitable for mating. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Evolution
Link ID: 18321 - Posted: 06.29.2013

by Andrew Porterfield Honey bees may have only a fraction of our neurons—just under a million versus our tens of billions—but our brains aren't so different. Take sidedness. The human brain is divided into right and left sides—our right brain controls the left side of our body and vice versa. New research reveals that something similar happens in bees. When scientists removed the right or left antenna of honey bees, those insects with intact right antennae more quickly recognized bees from the same hive, stuck out their tongues (showing willingness to feed), and fended off invaders. Bees with just their left antennae took longer to recognize bees, didn't want to feed, and mistook familiar bees for foreign ones. This suggests, the team concludes today in Scientific Reports, that bee brains have a sidedness just like ours do. The researchers also think that right antennae might control other bee behavior, like their sophisticated, mysterious "waggle dance" to indicate food. But there's no buzz for the left-antennaed. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Laterality; Evolution
Link ID: 18320 - Posted: 06.29.2013

David Derbyshire Every year Robert Hodgson selects the finest wines from his small California winery and puts them into competitions around the state. And in most years, the results are surprisingly inconsistent: some whites rated as gold medallists in one contest do badly in another. Reds adored by some panels are dismissed by others. Over the decades Hodgson, a softly spoken retired oceanographer, became curious. Judging wines is by its nature subjective, but the awards appeared to be handed out at random. So drawing on his background in statistics, Hodgson approached the organisers of the California State Fair wine competition, the oldest contest of its kind in North America, and proposed an experiment for their annual June tasting sessions. Each panel of four judges would be presented with their usual "flight" of samples to sniff, sip and slurp. But some wines would be presented to the panel three times, poured from the same bottle each time. The results would be compiled and analysed to see whether wine testing really is scientific. The first experiment took place in 2005. The last was in Sacramento earlier this month. Hodgson's findings have stunned the wine industry. Over the years he has shown again and again that even trained, professional palates are terrible at judging wine. "The results are disturbing," says Hodgson from the Fieldbrook Winery in Humboldt County, described by its owner as a rural paradise. "Only about 10% of judges are consistent and those judges who were consistent one year were ordinary the next year. © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Attention
Link ID: 18319 - Posted: 06.29.2013

By Carrie Arnold We all experience the occasional life-changing event—a new baby, a cross-country move, a serious injury. In rare cases, such events can precipitate a mental disorder. The problem is compounded because people often assume their suffering is par for the course after such upheaval. In reality, relief is probably a short treatment away, via therapy or medication. For a new mother, dealing with a newborn is fraught with anxieties. Did I fasten the car seat properly? Is the baby still breathing? In more than one in 10 new mothers, these normal worries can escalate into more serious obsessions that can interfere with her ability to care for herself and her baby. Most of the research on postpartum psychiatric problems has focused on depression and psychosis. Obstetricians such as Emily Miller of Northwestern University, however, were also noticing a range of anxiety-related disorders, including intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviors. “It's good to check that your baby is strapped into the car seat,” Miller notes. “But these women aren't just doing it once. They're doing it over and over, and it's interfering with their lives.” With her colleagues, Miller followed 461 women after they gave birth. Eleven percent said they had obsessions and compulsions two weeks after delivery that the researchers found to be the equivalent of mild to moderate obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)—a sharp increase over the 2 to 3 percent rate of OCD in the general population. Half of these women's symptoms continued six months' postpartum, and an additional 5.4 percent developed new OCD symptoms in that time. The afflicted women indicated that their symptoms were distressing, taking up a significant amount of time and otherwise interfering with their daily life. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 18318 - Posted: 06.26.2013

Male twin Vietnam veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were more than twice as likely as those without PTSD to develop heart disease during a 13-year period, according to a study supported by the National Institutes of Health. This is the first long-term study to measure the association between PTSD and heart disease using objective clinical diagnoses combined with cardiac imaging techniques. “This study provides further evidence that PTSD may affect physical health,” said Gary H. Gibbons, M.D., director of the NIH's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), which partially funded the study. “Future research to clarify the mechanisms underlying the link between PTSD and heart disease in Vietnam veterans and other groups will help to guide the development of effective prevention and treatment strategies for people with these serious conditions.” The findings appear online today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and in the September 10 print issue. Researchers from the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta, along with colleagues from other institutions, assessed the presence of heart disease in 562 middle-aged twins (340 identical and 222 fraternal) from the Vietnam Era Twin Registry. The incidence of heart disease was 22.6 percent in twins with PTSD (177 individuals) and 8.9 percent in those without PTSD (425 individuals). Heart disease was defined as having a heart attack, having an overnight hospitalization for heart-related symptoms, or having undergone a heart procedure. Nuclear scans, used to photograph blood flow to the heart, showed that individuals with PTSD had almost twice as many areas of reduced blood flow to the heart as individuals without PTSD.

Keyword: Stress; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18317 - Posted: 06.26.2013

By Meghan Rosen Paralyzed rats can now decide for themselves when it’s time to take a leak. Animals in a new study regained bladder control thanks to a new treatment that coaxes severed nerves to grow. Instead of dribbling out urine, the rodents squeezed out shots of pee almost as well as healthy rats do, researchers report June 25 in the Journal of Neuroscience. The study is the first to regenerate nerves that restore bladder function in animals with severely injured spinal cords. “This is a very big deal,” says neurologist John McDonald of the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, Md. If the treatment works in people with spinal cord injuries, he says, “it would change their lives.” Unlike paralyzed rats, severely paralyzed humans can’t leak urine to relieve a full bladder. Unless injured people are fitted with a catheter, urine backs up into the kidneys. “These people get kidney failure all the time,” says study leader Jerry Silver, a neuroscientist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. “It’s a terrible problem. If they didn’t have the catheter, they would die.” Some of the worst spinal cord injuries sever the bundle of nerve cells that reach from a mammal’s brain down through the vertebrae. The neurons can’t just grow back. Instead, the cells’ stumps get stuck in a gummy thicket of scar tissue that forms around the wound. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Regeneration; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 18316 - Posted: 06.26.2013