By ANDREW SOLOMON Drew Petersen didn’t speak until he was 3½, but his mother, Sue, never believed he was slow. When he was 18 months old, in 1994, she was reading to him and skipped a word, whereupon Drew reached over and pointed to the missing word on the page. Drew didn’t produce much sound at that stage, but he already cared about it deeply. “Church bells would elicit a big response,” Sue told me. “Birdsong would stop him in his tracks.” Sue, who learned piano as a child, taught Drew the basics on an old upright, and he became fascinated by sheet music. “He needed to decode it,” Sue said. “So I had to recall what little I remembered, which was the treble clef.” As Drew told me, “It was like learning 13 letters of the alphabet and then trying to read books.” He figured out the bass clef on his own, and when he began formal lessons at 5, his teacher said he could skip the first six months’ worth of material. Within the year, Drew was performing Beethoven sonatas at the recital hall at Carnegie Hall. “I thought it was delightful,” Sue said, “but I also thought we shouldn’t take it too seriously. He was just a little boy.” On his way to kindergarten one day, Drew asked his mother, “Can I just stay home so I can learn something?” Sue was at a loss. “He was reading textbooks this big, and they’re in class holding up a blowup M,” she said. Drew, who is now 18, said: “At first, it felt lonely. Then you accept that, yes, you’re different from everyone else, but people will be your friends anyway.” Drew’s parents moved him to a private school. They bought him a new piano, because he announced at 7 that their upright lacked dynamic contrast. “It cost more money than we’d ever paid for anything except a down payment on a house,” Sue said. When Drew was 14, he discovered a home-school program created by Harvard; when I met him two years ago, he was 16, studying at the Manhattan School of Music and halfway to a Harvard bachelor’s degree. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Intelligence
Link ID: 17454 - Posted: 11.05.2012

By Evan Charney and William English Dozens of studies in the past few years have linked single genes to whether a person is liberal or conservative, has a strong party affiliation or is likely to vote reguarly. The discipline of “genopolitics” has grabbed headlines as a result, but is the claim that a few genes influence political views and actions legitimate? We don't think so. The kinds of studies that have produced many of the findings we question involve searching for connections between behavior and gene variants that occur frequently in the population. Most of the 20,000 to 25,000 human genes come in hundreds or thousands of common variations, which often consist of slight differences in a gene's sequence of DNA code letters or in repeats of a particular segment. For the most part, scientists do not know what effect, if any, these common variants, known as polymorphisms, have on the functioning of the proteins they encode. Genes predict certain well-defined physiological diseases—such as hereditary breast cancer and the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease—but when it comes to complex human behaviors such as voting, the link is tenuous at best. One of the most prominent papers showing a link between a few polymorphisms and political behavior was published by James Fowler and Christopher Dawes in 2008 in the Journal of Politics. They concluded that people who possess certain variants of a gene called MAOA are more likely to vote than those who do not and that people with a particular variant of a gene known as 5-HTT who regularly attend religious services are also more likely to vote. We do not believe that these conclusions are right. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Emotions; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 17453 - Posted: 11.05.2012

By OLIVER SACKS HALLUCINATIONS are very startling and frightening: you suddenly see, or hear or smell something — something that is not there. Your immediate, bewildered feeling is, what is going on? Where is this coming from? The hallucination is convincingly real, produced by the same neural pathways as actual perception, and yet no one else seems to see it. And then you are forced to the conclusion that something — something unprecedented — is happening in your own brain or mind. Are you going insane, getting dementia, having a stroke? In other cultures, hallucinations have been regarded as gifts from the gods or the Muses, but in modern times they seem to carry an ominous significance in the public (and also the medical) mind, as portents of severe mental or neurological disorders. Having hallucinations is a fearful secret for many people — millions of people — never to be mentioned, hardly to be acknowledged to oneself, and yet far from uncommon. The vast majority are benign — and, indeed, in many circumstances, perfectly normal. Most of us have experienced them from time to time, during a fever or with the sensory monotony of a desert or empty road, or sometimes, seemingly, out of the blue. Many of us, as we lie in bed with closed eyes, awaiting sleep, have so-called hypnagogic hallucinations — geometric patterns, or faces, sometimes landscapes. Such patterns or scenes may be almost too faint to notice, or they may be very elaborate, brilliantly colored and rapidly changing — people used to compare them to slide shows. At the other end of sleep are hypnopompic hallucinations, seen with open eyes, upon first waking. These may be ordinary (an intensification of color perhaps, or someone calling your name) or terrifying (especially if combined with sleep paralysis) — a vast spider, a pterodactyl above the bed, poised to strike. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 17452 - Posted: 11.05.2012

By Maureen McCarthy October 30th marked the five-year anniversary of the death of my friend Washoe. Washoe was a wonderful friend. She was confident and self-assured. She was a matriarch, a mother figure not only to her adopted son but to others as well. She was kind and caring, but she didn’t suffer fools. Washoe also happened to be known around the world as the first nonhuman to acquire aspects of a human language, American Sign Language. You see, my friend Washoe was a chimpanzee. Washoe was born somewhere in West Africa around September 1965. Much like the chimpanzees I study here in Uganda, Washoe’s mother cared for her during infancy, nursing her, carrying her, and sharing her sleeping nests with her. That changed when her mother was killed so baby Washoe could be taken from her forest home, then bought by the US Air Force for use in biomedical testing. Washoe was not used in this sort of testing, however. Instead, Drs. Allen and Beatrix Gardner of the University of Nevada chose her among the young chimpanzees at Holloman Aeromedical Laboratory to be cross-fostered. Cross-fostering occurs when a youngster of one species is reared by adults of a different species. In this case, humans raised Washoe exactly as if she were a deaf human child. She learned to brush her teeth, drink from cups, and dress herself, in the same way a human child learns these behaviors. She was also exposed to humans using sign language around her. In fact, humans used only American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate in Washoe’s presence, avoiding spoken English so as to replicate as accurately as possible the learning environment of a young human exposed to sign language. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 17451 - Posted: 11.05.2012

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News A new drug is the "most effective" treatment for relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, say UK researchers. During MS the body's immune system turns on its own nerves causing debilitating muscle problems. Researchers at the University of Cambridge say a cancer drug, which wipes out and resets the immune system, has better results than other options. However, there is concern that a drugs company is about to increase the cost of the drug as a result. Around 100,000 people in the UK have multiple sclerosis. When the condition is diagnosed most will have a form of the disease know as relapsing-remitting MS, in which the symptoms can almost disappear for a time, before suddenly returning. Built from scratch The researchers tested a leukaemia drug, alemtuzumab, which had shown benefits for MS in small studies. In leukaemia, a blood cancer, it controls the excess production of white blood cells. In MS patients, the dose eliminates the immune cells entirely, forcing a new immune system to be built from scratch which should not attack the nerves. Two trials, published in the Lancet medical journal, compared the effectiveness of alemtuzumab with a first-choice drug, interferon beta-1a. BBC © 2012

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 17450 - Posted: 11.03.2012

By DENISE GRADY Just when they might have thought they were in the clear, people recovering from meningitis in an outbreak caused by a contaminated steroid drug have been struck by a second illness. The new problem, called an epidural abscess, is an infection near the spine at the site where the drug — contaminated by a fungus — was injected to treat back or neck pain. The abscesses are a localized infection, different from meningitis, which affects the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord. But in some cases, an untreated abscess can cause meningitis. The abscesses have formed even while patients were taking powerful antifungal medicines, putting them back in the hospital for more treatment, often with surgery. The problem has just begun to emerge, so far mostly in Michigan, which has had more people sickened by the drug — 112 out of 404 nationwide — than any other state. “We’re hearing about it in Michigan and other locations as well,” said Dr. Tom M. Chiller, the deputy chief of the mycotic diseases branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We don’t have a good handle on how many people are coming back.” He added, “We are just learning about this and trying to assess how best to manage these patients. They’re very complicated.” In the last few days, about a third of the 53 patients treated for meningitis at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich., have returned with abscesses, said Dr. Lakshmi K. Halasyamani, the chief medical officer. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 17449 - Posted: 11.03.2012

By Hannah Krakauer, Last week, the Food and Drug Administration released incident reports describing several deaths that have occurred following the consumption of Monster Energy drinks. Much of the concern over energy-drink consumption centers on the high caffeine content of such beverages. How did these deaths come to light? Anais Fournier, 14, of Hagerstown, Md., died suddenly last December from a heart arrhythmia that led to cardiac arrest. She had apparently drunk two Monster Energy drinks over two days. In mid-October, Fournier’s mother, Wendy Crossland, filed a lawsuit against Monster Beverage, based in Corona, Calif., claiming that the company did not make clear the risks that come with drinking the beverage. As part of a Freedom of Information request by Crossland, the FDA released details of the other four cases, plus one nonfatal heart attack, all of which are alleged to be associated with drinking Monster Energy. The company maintains that its drinks are safe. How much caffeine is in energy drinks such as Monster Energy? Actually, not a huge amount. A 24-ounce can of Monster Energy contains 240 milligrams of caffeine. A typical eight-ounce cup of brewed coffee contains 90 to 200 milligrams of caffeine. © 1996-2012 The Washington Post

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 17448 - Posted: 11.03.2012

Kerry Grens Fewer than five percent of patients prescribed narcotics to treat chronic pain become addicted to the drugs, according to a new analysis of past research. The finding suggests that concerns about the risk of becoming addicted to prescription painkillers might be "overblown," said addiction specialist Dr. Michael Fleming at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. "If you're a person that doesn't have a history of addiction and doesn't have any major psychiatric problems, narcotics are relatively safe as long as your doctor doesn't give you too much and uses the right medication," Fleming, who was not involved in the new study, told Reuters Health. Some recent research has concluded the same thing, but another expert remained skeptical about the new report because many of the studies it included were not considered the best quality research, and they varied widely in their results. Advertise | AdChoices "I think the jury's still out" on how worrisome prescription opioid addiction is, said Joseph Boscarino of the Geisinger Clinic in Danville, Pennsylvania, who studies pain and addiction. Opioid painkillers, which include oxycodone, fentanyl and morphine, have only recently become available for patients with chronic pain, said Boscarino, who was not part of the new study. © 2012 NBCNews.com

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 17447 - Posted: 11.03.2012

SAM KIM, Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — An elephant in a South Korean zoo is using his trunk to pick up not only food, but also human vocabulary. An international team of scientists confirmed Friday what the Everland Zoo has been saying for years: Their 5.5-ton tusker Koshik has an unusual and possibly unprecedented talent. The 22-year-old Asian elephant can reproduce five Korean words by tucking his trunk inside his mouth to modulate sound, the scientists said in a joint paper published online in Current Biology. They said he may have started imitating human speech because he was lonely. Koshik can reproduce "annyeong" (hello), "anja" (sit down), "aniya" (no), "nuwo" (lie down) and "joa" (good), the paper says. One of the researchers said there is no conclusive evidence that Koshik understands the sounds he makes, although the elephant does respond to words like "anja." Everland Zoo officials in the city of Yongin said Koshik also can imitate "ajik" (not yet), but the researchers haven't confirmed the accomplishment. Koshik is particularly good with vowels, with a rate of similarity of 67 percent, the researchers said. For consonants he scores only 21 percent. Researchers said the clearest scientific evidence that Koshik is deliberately imitating human speech is that the sound frequency of his words matches that of his trainers. © 2012 Hearst Communications Inc.

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 17446 - Posted: 11.03.2012

By MARGALIT FOX Arthur R. Jensen, an educational psychologist who ignited an international firestorm with a 1969 article suggesting that the gap in intelligence-test scores between black and white students might be rooted in genetic differences between the races, died on Oct. 22 at his home in Kelseyville, Calif. He was 89. His death was confirmed by the University of California, Berkeley, where he was an emeritus professor in the Graduate School of Education. Professor Jensen was deeply interested in differential psychology, a field whose central question — What makes people behave and think differently from one another? — strikes at the heart of the age-old nature-nurture debate. Because of his empirical work in the field on the quantification of general intelligence (a subject that had long invited a more diffuse, impressionistic approach), he was regarded by many colleagues as one of the most important psychologists of his day. But a wider public remembered him almost exclusively for his 1969 article “How Much Can We Boost I.Q. and Achievement?” Published in The Harvard Educational Review, a scholarly journal, the article quickly became — and remains even now — one of the most controversial in psychology. In the article, Professor Jensen posited two types of learning ability. Level I, associative ability, entailed the rote retention of facts. Level II, conceptual ability, involved abstract thinking and problem-solving. This type, he argued, was roughly equivalent to general intelligence, denoted in psychology by the letter “g.” © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Intelligence; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 17445 - Posted: 11.03.2012

By DAN HURLEY IN the back room of a suburban storefront previously occupied by a yoga studio, Nick Vecchiarello, a 16-year-old from Glen Ridge, N.J., sits at a desk across from Kathryn Duch, a recent college graduate who wears a black shirt emblazoned with the words “Brain Trainer.” Spread out on the desk are a dozen playing cards showing symbols of varying colors, shapes and sizes. Nick stares down, searching for three cards whose symbols match. “Do you see it?” Ms. Duch asks encouragingly. “Oh, man,” mutters Nick, his eyes shifting among the cards, looking for patterns. Across the room, Nathan Veloric, 23, studies a list of numbers, looking for any two in a row that add up to nine. With tight-lipped determination, he scrawls a circle around one pair as his trainer holds a stopwatch to time him. Halfway through the 50 seconds allotted to complete the exercise, a ruckus comes from the center of the room. “Nathan’s here!” shouts Vanessa Maia, another trainer. Approaching him with a teasing grin, she claps her hands like an annoying little sister. “Distraction!” she shouts. “Distraction!” There is purpose behind the silliness. Ms. Maia is challenging the trainees to stay focused on their tasks in the face of whatever distractions may be out there, whether Twitter feeds, the latest Tumblr posting or old-fashioned classroom commotion. On this Wednesday evening at the Upper Montclair, N.J., outlet of LearningRx, a chain of 83 “brain training” franchises across the United States, the goal is to improve cognitive skills. LearningRx is one of a growing number of such commercial services — some online, others offered by psychologists. Unlike traditional tutoring services that seek to help students master a subject, brain training purports to enhance comprehension and the ability to analyze and mentally manipulate concepts, images, sounds and instructions. In a word, it seeks to make students smarter. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Intelligence; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 17444 - Posted: 11.03.2012

By Gary Stix Nicotine enhances the ability to focus and remember. The alkaloid acts in a similar manner to the brain’s own signaling molecule, acetylcholine. It interacts with eponymous receptors on the surface of nerve cells to regulate signaling in the brain. The role of the nicotinic-acetylcholine receptors throughout the central nervous system is so wide-ranging that new discoveries about the molecule continue apace. A recent study published in Nature Neuroscience found that one type of nicotinic receptor acts as a key element in a cell that appears to perform a critical function in regulating memory. A team of researchers—led by one group from Uppsala University in Sweden and another from Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil—found that a type of nicotinic receptor on a cell called oriens lacunosum-moleculare (OLM-alpha 2) seems to be involved in turning on a critical circuit in the hippocampus, a brain structure involved with memory formation. “This cell has a significant influence on the incoming information to the hippocampus,” says Klas Kullander from Uppsala University. When this circuit is switched on, visual, auditory or other inputs to the hippocampus are targeted for additional processing of the incoming information, perhaps a means of flagging its importance so that it can be directed to the cerebral cortex for long-term storage of memory. The on-state of this circuit “prioritizes more intense local processing of the information,” Kullander says. “It lets the hippocampus dwell on the information longer.” © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 17443 - Posted: 11.03.2012

By Laura Sanders Devoid of any external time cues, monkeys can still tell time. Animals learned to move their eyeballs once every second, a completely internal timing feat made possible by the rhythmic behavior of small groups of nerve cells, researchers propose online October 30 in PLOS Biology. Time is often measured with clues from the environment, says study coauthor Geoffrey Ghose of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. A quick glance at a clock indicates that your meeting will start soon, and a look outside at a low sun tells you that it’s time to leave work. But some time-telling abilities rely on purely internal processes — just a feeling that minutes, hours or days have ticked by, Ghose says. Ghose and Blaine Schneider, also of the University of Minnesota, studied this internal sensation of time by creating a situation in which two monkeys had to generate their own pattern without any outside help. The animals were trained to switch their gaze rhythmically between a red dot and a blue dot on a computer screen once every second, a job that looks like “they’re watching an extremely boring tennis match,” Ghose says. After a while, the monkeys got good, on average just tens of milliseconds off their tempo. Meanwhile, the researchers used electrodes to eavesdrop on the behavior of neurons in a part of the brain called the lateral intraparietal area. Earlier monkey studies found that neurons there build up activity with time, firing messages more and more frequently as the milliseconds tick by. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Hearing
Link ID: 17442 - Posted: 11.03.2012

by Sarah C. P. Williams All for one, or in it for yourself? That depends on how you were brought up, according to a new study involving the prisoner's dilemma, perhaps the most famous scenario in game theory. In the game, you can either cooperate or betray your partner. And adult males who were exposed as children to violence, crime, conflict, and neglect turn on their partners earlier and more often in the game than males who grew up in more stable environments, the study finds. Imagine that you're a thief, and you and your partner have been nabbed by the police. If you both stay silent, you both get a month in jail. But if you rat out your partner, or "defect," while he stays silent, he gets 2 years and you go free. Alas, if you both snitch, you both get a year. Dreamed up decades ago, the prisoner's dilemma has now become a staple of social psychology experiments. "It's really an assay for how your mind is built to tradeoff between different ways of living in the world," says psychologist Michael McCullough of the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. "Are you going to be tempted by short-term payoffs or are you going to invest again and again to try to get long-term benefits?" McCullough and colleagues wanted to explore how these choices might vary based on a person's background. The researchers recruited 244 male and female undergraduate students to participate in multiple iterations of the prisoner's dilemma game in which points—later converted into real money—were won in each round depending on the choices made. Each student was told they were playing at least 20 rounds of the game via a computer. They were told their opponents were human—but instead the computer was programmed to take a "tit for tat" strategy: The computer repeats the moves made by the player in the previous round. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Emotions; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 17441 - Posted: 10.31.2012

By ANDREW POLLACK Allergan said Tuesday that it was looking to divest itself of its Lap-Band, the once-popular weight-loss device that has experienced several years of falling sales, loss of market share and controversies about its safety and effectiveness. The falling sales “do not fit the profile of a high-growth company like Allergan,” David E. I. Pyott, the company’s chief executive, told analysts Tuesday morning on a call announcing the company’s third-quarter financial results. In an interview, Mr. Pyott said Allergan had already hired an investment banking firm, which he would not name, and was sending letters to other medical device companies and private equity firms seeking a buyer for its obesity business, which also includes a balloonlike device that is not approved in the United States but is used in some other countries. The Lap-Band, a silicone ring that is wrapped around the stomach and can be inserted in an outpatient procedure, once appeared to have a bright future as a less drastic, if less effective, alternative to gastric bypass, which involves rerouting the digestive tract. But Allergan’s obesity business sales have fallen from a peak of $296 million in 2008 to an expected $160 million this year. In the third quarter, the sales fell by 25 percent to $37.4 million from a year earlier. The obesity business, while still profitable, represents less than 3 percent of total product sales for Allergan, which is known most for its Botox treatment for wrinkles, migraine headaches and other conditions. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 17440 - Posted: 10.31.2012

by Rachel Nuwer The dungeon is pitch black—until the dungeon master blazes a torch, confirming your worst fears. A Beholder monster lurches at you, its eyeballs wriggling on tentacular stems. As you prepare to wield your Vorpal sword, where do you focus your gaze: at the monster's head or at its tentacle eyes? Such a quandary from the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons may seem like a meaningless trifle, but it holds within it the answer to a scientific question. In fact, a father-son team has used images of such monsters to show that most people will look to another creature's eyes, no matter where they are located on the body. "Dungeons & Dragons monsters have eyes all over the place," says Julian Levy, a ninth grader at Lord Byng Secondary School in Vancouver, Canada. Two years ago, Levy's knowledge of the role-playing game led him to a unique solution for solving a basic scientific question: Do people focus their gaze on another person's eyes or on the center of the head, where the eyes just happen to be located? "We were eating dinner and my dad was talking about how, after publishing a paper about gaze tracking, a reviewer said that you could never prove whether people are looking at the eyes or the center of the face," Levy recalls. So he piped up with an idea, offering Dungeons & Dragons characters as an experimental solution. Because many characters have eyes located on their hands, torso, or other areas of the body, a researcher could track viewers' gazes to see what part of the characters they focus on first. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 17439 - Posted: 10.31.2012

by Douglas Heaven Timing is everything. But exactly how the brain keeps time, which it does very well, has been something of a mystery. One widely held theory suggests that a single brain region acts as a centralised timekeeper – possibly in the basal ganglia or cerebellum. However, a study now suggests that timekeeping is decentralised, with different circuits having their own timing mechanisms for each specific activity. The finding could help explain why certain brain conditions affect our sense of timing, and even raise the possibility of artificially manipulating time perception. Geoffrey Ghose and Blaine Schneider, at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, investigated timing in the brain by training two rhesus macaques to perform tasks in which they moved their eyes between two dots on a screen at regular 1-second intervals. There were no external cues available to help them keep track of time. After three months, the monkeys had learned to move their eyes between the two dots with average intervals of 1.003 and 0.973 seconds, respectively. The researchers then used electrodes to record brain activity across 100 neurons in the lateral intraparietal cortex – associated with eye movement – while the monkeys performed the task. The activity of these neurons decreased during the interval between each eye movement, and the rate of decrease correlated with the monkeys' timing. Using this information, Ghose and Schneider were able to predict the interval between eye movements by measuring the preceding decay rate. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 17438 - Posted: 10.31.2012

By Scicurious Treating alcoholism is incredibly difficult on many levels. One of the most difficult areas to deal with is social interaction, how people with alcoholism can interact with others. Alcoholics can have many problems with social exclusion. This is partially due to the severe stigma that accompanies alcoholism, but it’s also due to the difficulties that being an alcoholic can produce on social interaction. Regardless, being an alcoholic can result in ostracism and a breaking down of social support networks, and that can make recovery, especially in times of stress, that much more difficult. But of course, it’s not just the act of being socially ostracized or excluded, it also matters how the person being excluded responds. And there are some indications that alcoholics have a larger response to social exclusion than controls. But do they? And if so, why? So the authors of this study wanted to look at how people with alcoholism respond to things like social rejection compared to controls. They took 22 recovering alcoholics (abstinent, all male, all inpatient treatment and in the 3rd week of detox), and 22 controls, and put them in an fMRI scanner to look at changes in blood oxygenation in the brian. By determining where more or less oxygenated blood is going, fMRI gives an idea of where more or less activity may be taking place. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Emotions
Link ID: 17437 - Posted: 10.30.2012

By WILLIAM C. RHODEN We’ve seen it hundreds of times. An athlete is injured and within seconds is surrounded by an armada of medical personnel: trainers, assistant trainers, team doctors. The athlete is helped off the field, given a diagnosis, treated and sent to physical therapy, often to return miraculously in a week or two. But when that same athlete has a mental disorder, there is no armada of trainers, no team doctors. That athlete is often abandoned. For all of the current focus on traumatic brain injury as a result of concussions, mental illness, often overlooked, exists at every level of sports. Sports too often is a masking agent that hides deeply rooted mental health issues. The better the athlete, the more desperate to reach the next level, the less likely he or she will reach out for help. The gladiator mentality remains a primary barrier. “Mental health has a stigma that is tied into weakness and is absolutely the antithesis of what athletes want to portray,” said Dr. Thelma Dye Holmes, the executive director of the Northside Center for Child Development, one of New York’s oldest mental health agencies, serving more than 1,500 children and their families. “Mental health is not something that you can easily know,” Holmes said. “You feel a pain in your side, you have discomfort. Mental illness is vague and makes us uneasy. Especially when it comes to athletes, there tends to be a stigma around coming forward.” © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 17436 - Posted: 10.30.2012

By Laura Sanders A genetic tweak makes it easier to see neurons at work in living, breathing animals. The method, described in the Oct. 18 Neuron, capitalizes on a property of a busy neuron: When the cell fires, calcium ions flood in. Using an altered version of the protein GFP that lights up when calcium is present in a mouse’s brain, neuroscientist Guoping Feng of MIT and colleagues could see smell-sensing neurons respond to an odor, and movement neurons light up during walking. Q. Chen et al. Imaging Neural Activity Using Thy1-GCaMP Transgenic Mice. Neuron. Vol. 76, October 18,2012, p. 297. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.07.011. [Go to] © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 17435 - Posted: 10.30.2012