by Sara Reardon Their dads may be up with the sun, but it takes more than that to wake up a chick still in its egg. Unhatched chicks aren't roused from slumber by random noise, but they do wake up if they hear a chicken danger call. Evan Balaban of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, says we still don't know when fetuses begin to experience sleep cycles the way adults do. It makes sense for the developing brain to stay in a state of suspended animation, similar to that of someone in a coma, to conserve oxygen. If the fetus brain is too active, it runs the risk of running out of oxygen and damaging itself. To find out more, Balaban and colleagues looked at developing chicks still in their eggs. Unlike mice, the chicks in their eggs are separated from any influence by the mother's hormones, making them easier to study. The researchers labelled sugar molecules with radioactive tracers and injected the sugar into the chick embryos. When the brain is active, it uses the sugar and lights up with the radioactive tracer. Using this method, the researchers found that the chicks' brains were fairly inactive until 80 per cent of the way through their development inside the egg. At that point, the brains began to take up the sugar in a regular cycle, suggesting they were passing through phases of sleep and wakefulness. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sleep; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16751 - Posted: 05.05.2012

Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV Seeing an object move doesn't actually mean that it's moving. In this video, the psychedelic patterns might look like they're rotating, but pause the video and you'll see that they are actually static images. This striking illusion, created by visual perception researcher Akiyoshi Kitaoka from Ritsumeikan University in Japan, is commonly known as the 'rotating snakes' and exploits a peripheral vision effect where motion is perceived in one direction due to gradual changes in brightness of segments in the pattern. Rounded edges also seem to enhance the illusion. The brain trick was thought to occur when our eyes slowly move across the image. But now a new study by Susana Martinez-Conde from Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, and colleagues is uncovering that superfast eye movements are responsible for the phantom motion. Since the effect isn't perceived continuously, the team tracked eye movements of volunteers just before they started to see rotation. They found that people usually blinked, or moved their eyes so quickly they didn't realise it, right before their brain was tricked. Conversely, their eyes were stable when they didn't perceive motion. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 16750 - Posted: 05.05.2012

By LISA SANDERS, M.D. On Thursday I challenged Well readers to figure out a medical mystery involving a middle-aged woman who learned she had an unusual disease after visiting an ophthalmologist. The case was surprising because the woman didn’t feel sick, yet the doctor made the diagnosis just by looking at her and asking her a few simple questions that confirmed his diagnostic suspicions. The first reader to figure it out completely was Dr. Eric Gierke, a neurologist at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle. He said he recognized the condition because he had a patient who had acromegaly and only a few very subtle physical changes. In submitting his answer, Dr. Gierke also guessed one of the questions that the diagnosing physician asked the patient — “Has your shoe size changed recently?” — making him the clear winner. A few other readers also guessed both the questions and the diagnosis, but Dr. Gierke was first and the most specific. In all, 16 readers figured out the correct diagnosis. Well done! Acromegaly is a disease caused by a tumor, usually found in the pituitary gland, that secretes an excess of growth hormone, the blood chemical that tells our bodies to grow. Children with acromegaly can grow to extraordinary stature. André the Giant, the French professional wrestler and actor whose height was billed at 7 feet 4 inches, and Richard Kiel, the 7-foot-2 actor who played the villain Jaws in two James Bond movies, both had acromegaly from childhood. Their distinctive faces reveal some of the characteristic acromegalic changes: Their brows are prominent, and they have wide, square chins and large noses. Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 16749 - Posted: 05.05.2012

By Matt McGrath Science reporter, BBC World Service Up to 90% of school leavers in major Asian cities are suffering from myopia - short-sightedness - a study suggests. Researchers say the "extraordinary rise" in the problem is being caused by students working very hard in school and missing out on outdoor light. The scientists told the Lancet that up to one in five of these students could experience severe visual impairment and even blindness. In the UK, the average level of myopia is between 20% and 30%. According to Professor Ian Morgan, who led this study and is from the Australian National University, 20-30% was once the average among people in South East Asia as well. "What we've done is written a review of all the evidence which suggests that something extraordinary has happened in east Asia in the last two generations," he told BBC News. "They've gone from something like 20% myopia in the population to well over 80%, heading for 90% in young adults, and as they get adult it will just spread through the population. It certainly poses a major health problem." BBC © 2012

Keyword: Vision; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16748 - Posted: 05.05.2012

Tom Lawrence The first UK clinical trials of an electronic eye implant designed to restore the sight of blind people have proved successful and "exceeded expectations", scientists said today. Eye experts developing the pioneering new technology said the first group of British patients to receive the electronic microchips were regaining "useful vision" just weeks after undergoing surgery. The news will offer fresh hope for people suffering from retinitis pigmentosa (RP) - a genetic eye condition that leads to incurable blindness. Retina Implant AG, a leading developer of subretinal implants, fitted two RP sufferers with the wireless device in mid-April as part of its UK trial. The patients were able to detect light immediately after the microchip was activated, while further testing revealed there were also able to locate white objects on a dark background, Retina Implant said. Ten more British sufferers will be fitted with the devices as part of the British trial, which is being led by Tim Jackson, a consultant retinal surgeon at King's College Hospital and Robert MacLaren, a professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Oxford and a consultant retinal surgeon at the Oxford Eye Hospital. © independent.co.uk

Keyword: Vision; Robotics
Link ID: 16747 - Posted: 05.03.2012

By Scicurious Only a few weeks ago I looked at a study on fast food consumption and depression, and only a few days ago I talked about a brand new study looking at high fat diets and protection from heart attack damage. And today, we’ve got another study on high fat diet, this time in mice, and depressive-like behavior. What is the effect of a high fat diet? Well, it appears to be getting more complicated with each new study. But it this study, at least, it looks like diet-induced obesity might produce depressive-like effects in mice. But how the diet is doing that is not so well defined. Several studies in humans have found a correlation between obesity and the development of depression. But it’s important to keep in mind that correlation is not causation. Many people who become obese also have other things going on (socioeconomic status, family history, comorbid disorders) which can influence the development of depression. In order to determine if obesity itself is causing depression, you first have to deliberately cause obesity in a controlled population. And this is where mice come in. Using a specialty high fat and high sugar diet, Sharma and Fulton fed up a set of mice for 12 weeks, until they were significantly fatter than control mice. They then looked at behavioral tests for anxiety and depression. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Depression; Obesity
Link ID: 16746 - Posted: 05.03.2012

By Laura Sanders Scientists have caught tiny amounts of a strangely shaped protein — a relative of a well-known suspect in Alzheimer’s disease —spreading destruction throughout the brains of mice. If a similar process happens in the human brain, it could help explain how Alzheimer’s starts, and even suggest new ways to stop the dangerous molecule’s spread. Many Alzheimer’s researchers believe the abundance of a molecule called A-beta in the brain is one of the key steps in developing the disease. A-beta commonly takes the form of a chain of 42 protein building blocks called amino acids. The new study chronicles the dangers of a modified A-beta that lacks the first two amino acids in the chain. Capping this stub is a rare, circular amino acid called pyroglutamate. Until recently, this form “has been largely ignored as some minor mysterious form of amyloid-beta,” says study coauthor George Bloom of the University of Virginia. Yet even trace amounts of this version, called pyroglutamylated A-beta, or pE A-beta, are devastating to mouse nerve cells, he and colleagues report online May 2 in Nature. “This opens up a whole new view of the disease,” says neurogeneticist Rudy Tanzi of Harvard Medical School. Instead of focusing just on the amount of A-beta in the brain, scientists need to pay attention to modifications of the molecule, too, he says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 16745 - Posted: 05.03.2012

By Gary Stix NFL legend Junior Seau died today after reportedly shooting himself in the chest, according to various news reports. What prompted the apparent suicide is still unknown. But Seau’s taking of his own life will inevitably raise questions about a possible role of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a disorder that results from repeated concussions and that can produce dementia and other forms of cognitive dysfunction. The NFL has had to contend with a growing incidence of this disorder. Dave Duerson, an NFL safety, committed suicide in 2011 by shooting himself in the chest and directed that his brain be used for research on CTE. Any player in the NFL, and in other contact sports like hockey, probably leaves a long career with some traces of brain injury. But tests will be needed to determine whether Seau merited a clinical diagnosis. No reports have emerged so far that Seau suffered from dementia-like symptoms. An SUV that Seau was driving in 2010 near his home in Oceanside, Calif., went over a cliff that fronted on a beach, according to The Los Angeles Times. The incident occurred following his arrest that year related to suspicion of domestic violence. Seau, a 12-time NFL Pro linebacker following a career as an All-American at University of Southern California, registered 13 seasons with the San Diego Chargers, three seasons with the Miami Dolphins and ended his career with the New England Patriots. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Depression
Link ID: 16744 - Posted: 05.03.2012

Paul Marks, senior technology correspondent Two research papers published this week throw further light on the health risks of the Taser stun gun. This striking image shows the central issue examined in one of the papers: what happens when one of the two barbed darts fired by a police Taser struck a 27-year-old man on the side of the head. Although Isabel Le Blanc-Louvry and colleagues at the department of forensic medicine at Rouen University Hospital in France do not reveal when or where this occured, they say the victim had been drunk and resisted police requests for his ID. The police fired the pneumatically powered Taser to incapacitate and subdue him - but somehow nobody noticed a dart remained stuck in his head, until he later went to hospital complaining of a persistent headache. In the ER, the dart was found to "have penetrated the frontal part of the skull and damaged the underlying frontal lobe", the team report in Forensic Science International. "We observed that the length of the Taser dart is sufficient to allow brain penetration," they write. The man made a full recovery. The controversial weapon's woes continued in the journal Circulation this week, where cardiologist Douglas Zipes at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis reports that Taser strikes near the heart can kill. In a study of eight cases where cardiac arrest was induced after tasings by US police departments, seven victims died. "Electronic control device stimulation can cause cardiac arrest" due to ventricular tachycardia and fibrillation, he concludes. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 16743 - Posted: 05.03.2012

Daniel Cressey With the official opening of a £5.4-million (US$8.7-million) facility at its UK base on 30 April, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly says it is reaffirming its commitment to neuroscience research at a time when other drug firms are mostly avoiding the field. The site, at Erl Wood in Windlesham, Surrey, will house around 130 scientists working on the early phases of clinical drug development, making it Lilly's second-largest research site worldwide, after the company’s headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana. Researchers will work on conditions ranging from cancer and diabetes to Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia, says Sarah Chatham, managing director of the centre. The investment contrasts with lay-offs at other pharma companies. Many have turned their attention to acquiring smaller firms to get new drugs, instead of using large in-house research teams. Lilly’s focus on neuroscience is also unusual, with Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca all bailing out of much brain work in recent years (see 'Novartis to shut brain research facility'). The centre was welcomed by UK science minister David Willetts, not least because policy-makers have grown anxious that Britain is no longer perceived as a good place to do medical research. Academics are concerned that their research environment is overburdened with red tape, especially because of what they see as the bureaucratic way the United Kingdom implemented the European Union Clinical Trials Directive in 2004 (see 'UK health research to be rehabilitated'). © 2012 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Alzheimers
Link ID: 16742 - Posted: 05.03.2012

By Neil Bowdler Health reporter, BBC News A trial has begun of a portable brain-cooling device which could enhance the survival prospects of cardiac patients. Ground-based cars in the service of the charity London's Air Ambulance are the first in the UK to carry the Rhinochill machine. Larger brain-cooling devices are already used in UK hospitals on cardiac and stroke patients to aid recovery. But cooling the body earlier in the field, during resuscitation, could save more lives, early research suggests. "We know quite well that if you're cooled after your heart attack, it can not only mean that your chances of surviving are greatly increased, but your chances of surviving without brain damage are too," Dr Richard Lyon, a registrar with London's Air Ambulance, told BBC News. "For the last 10 years or so, the big thrust has been to cool you as quickly as possible, but usually after you get delivered to hospital, after your heart has been restarted. "What we're doing is bringing everything much further forward - starting this brain-cooling process while CPR is still being carried out in the field." BBC © 2012

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 16741 - Posted: 05.03.2012

by Helen Thompson Reports of ‘mad cow’ disease in the United States erupted in the news this week after the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) confirmed that the remains of a California dairy cow had tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). This marks the fourth case of BSE identified in the US, and the first case in six years. In spongiform encephalopathy diseases, abnormally folded prion proteins accumulate in the brain, causing other proteins to deform as well. BSE has proved to be unusually adept at jumping between species; humans exposed to BSE can develop its human counterpart: Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). In a statement released on 24 April, Karen Ross, Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture said, “The detection of BSE shows that the surveillance program in place in California and around the country is working.” Food safety advocates such as Yonkers, New York, -based Consumers Union say it’s a warning sign that surveillance is inadequate and needs to be stepped up. Ross’s statement also makes a point of noting a key feature of this particular case: The infected cow carried what is known as ‘L-type’ BSE, a version of the disease that has not been detected before in the US and has so far not been associated with transmission through animal feed. As the policy debate over testing rumbles on, here is a short guide to what is known and not known about this rare strain and its unexpected appearance. © 2012 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 16740 - Posted: 05.02.2012

By Christof Koch In the 1954 foundational text of the Age of Aquarius, The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley describes his encounters with mescaline, a psychoactive substance derived from the peyote cactus and traditionally used by Native Americans for religious purposes. Huxley’s experiences include profound changes in the visual world, colors that induce sound, the telescoping of time and space, the loss of the notion of self, and feelings of oneness, peacefulness and bliss more commonly associated with religious visions or an exultant state: “A moment later a clump of Red Hot Pokers, in full bloom, had exploded into my field of vision. So passionately alive that they seemed to be standing on the very brink of utterance, the flowers strained upwards into the blue.... I looked down at the leaves and discovered a cavernous intricacy of the most delicate green lights and shadows, pulsing with undecipherable mystery.” Yet remarkably these enhanced percepts are not grounded in larger but in reduced brain activity, as a recent experiment reports. More on that in a moment. Mescaline, together with psilocybin, another natural psychoactive compound produced by “magic” mushrooms, and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD or, simply, acid), a potent synthetic psychedelic drug, became widely popular in the 1960s counterculture. The striking similarities between the reports of LSD users and symptoms of acute psychosis led researchers to postulate that serotonin, a chemical-signaling compound or neurotransmitter released by certain groups of neurons in the brain stem, helped to mediate both types of experiences. Indeed, it is now quite certain that the characteristic subjective and behavioral effects of psychedelics are initiated via stimulation of serotonin 2A receptors (known as 5-HT2A) on cortical neurons. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16739 - Posted: 05.02.2012

The number of babies born in the United States with signs of drug withdrawal has tripled in a decade because more pregnant women are using narcotics, according to a new study. The rate of infants born with withdrawal symptoms reached about one every hour in 2009, researchers report in this week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Aileen Dannelley and her baby, Savannah, of Oak Lawn, Ill., both fought addiction to prescription painkillers, an increasing issue in the U.S. Aileen Dannelley and her baby, Savannah, of Oak Lawn, Ill., both fought addiction to prescription painkillers, an increasing issue in the U.S. (Dannelley Family/Associated Press) "What we found was that from 2000 to 2009, the number of babies having drug withdrawal increased by three times," said the study’s lead author, Dr. Stephen Patrick of the University of Michigan's division of neonatal-perinatal medicine in Ann Arbor. For the study, Patrick and his co-authors reviewed hospital billing data from across the U.S. They looked at how many women were using opiates at the time of delivery as well as whether the newborns showed drug withdrawal symptoms. © CBC 2012

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16738 - Posted: 05.02.2012

By David Biello Banned for indoor use since 2001, the effects of the common insecticide known as chlorpyrifos can still be found in the brains of young children now approaching puberty. A new study used magnetic imaging to reveal that those children exposed to chlorpyrifos in the womb had persistent changes in their brains throughout childhood. The brains of 20 children exposed to higher levels of chlorpyrifos in their mother’s blood (as measured by serum from the umbilical cord) “looked different” compared to those exposed to lower levels of the chemical, says epidemiologist Virginia Rauh of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, who led the research published online by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on April 30. “During brain development some type of disturbance took place.” The 6 young boys and 14 little girls, whose mothers were exposed to chlorpyrifos when it was used indoors to control pests prior to the ban, ranged in age from seven to nearly 10. All came from Dominican or African American families in the New York City region. Compared to 20 children from the same kinds of New York families who had relatively low levels of chlorpyrifos in umbilical cord blood, the 20 higher dose kids had protuberances in some regions of the cerebral cortex and thinning in other regions. “There were measurable volumetric changes in the cerebral cortex,” Rauh notes. Though the study did not map specific disorders associated with any of these brain changes, the regions affected are associated with functions like attention, decision-making, language, impulse control and working memory. The “structural anomalies in the brain could be a mechanism, or explain why we found cognitive deficits in children” in previous studies, Rauh notes. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 16737 - Posted: 05.02.2012

John von Radowitz Slackers may have brains that are wired for under-achievement, a study suggests. Scientists have identified neural pathways that appear to influence an individual's willingness to work hard to earn money. Scans showed differences between "go-getters" and "slackers" in three specific areas of the brain. People prepared to work hard for rewards had more of the nerve-signalling chemical dopamine in two brain regions called the striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Both are known to play an important role in behaviour-changing reward sensations and motivation. But "slackers", who were less willing to work hard for reward, had higher dopamine levels in the anterior insula. This is a brain region involved in emotion and risk perception. Dopamine is a "neurotransmitter" that helps nerves "talk" to each other by sending chemical signals across connection points called synapses. Psychologist Michael Treadway, from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, US, who co-led the research, said: "Past studies in rats have shown that dopamine is crucial for reward motivation. But this study provides new information about how dopamine determines individual differences in the behaviour of human reward-seekers." The findings are reported in the latest issue of the Journal of Neurosciences. © independent.co.uk

Keyword: Attention; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16736 - Posted: 05.02.2012

At two years, Avastin (bevacizumab) and Lucentis (ranibizumab injection), two widely used drugs to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD), improve vision when administered monthly or on an as needed basis, although greater improvements in vision were seen with monthly administration for this common, debilitating eye disease, according to researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health. Of the two drugs, Avastin is most frequently used to treat AMD.However, prior to the Comparison of AMD Treatments Trials (CATT), a two-year clinical trial, the two drugs had never been compared head-to-head. Second year results were published today in the journal Ophthalmology. First year results were published in the May 19, 2011 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. AMD is the leading cause of vision loss and blindness in older Americans. In its advanced stages, the wet form of AMD spurs the growth of abnormal blood vessels, which leak fluid and blood into the macula and obscure vision. The macula is the central portion of the retina that allows us to look straight ahead and to perceive fine visual detail. Accumulation of fluid and blood damages the macula, causing loss of central vision, which can severely impede mobility and independence. Without treatment, most patients become unable to drive, read, recognize faces or perform tasks that require hand-eye coordination. Avastin and Lucentis block growth of abnormal blood vessels and leakage of fluid from the vessels.

Keyword: Vision; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16735 - Posted: 05.01.2012

By NATALIE ANGIER CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Seated in a cheerfully cramped monitoring room at the Harvard University Laboratory for Developmental Studies, Elizabeth S. Spelke, a professor of psychology and a pre-eminent researcher of the basic ingredient list from which all human knowledge is constructed, looked on expectantly as her students prepared a boisterous 8-month-old girl with dark curly hair for the onerous task of watching cartoons. The video clips featured simple Keith Haring-type characters jumping, sliding and dancing from one group to another. The researchers’ objective, as with half a dozen similar projects under way in the lab, was to explore what infants understand about social groups and social expectations. Yet even before the recording began, the 15-pound research subject made plain the scope of her social brain. She tracked conversations, stared at newcomers and burned off adult corneas with the brilliance of her smile. Dr. Spelke, who first came to prominence by delineating how infants learn about objects, numbers, the lay of the land, shook her head in self-mocking astonishment. “Why did it take me 30 years to start studying this?” she said. “All this time I’ve been giving infants objects to hold, or spinning them around in a room to see how they navigate, when what they really wanted to do was engage with other people!” © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16734 - Posted: 05.01.2012

TIM JOHNSON, Free Press When it comes to unfathomed mysteries, few are more persistent than this one: Just what is it that goes on in the brain of an impulsive, risk-taking teenager? Thirty-two international researchers — including two from the University of Vermont — have managed to shed some light on this question. In a journal article published Sunday, they identify patterns of brain activity that are characteristic of teens who are prone to use drugs or alcohol. What’s new about this study, by a European group called IMAGEN Consortium, is that it reveals distinct neural networks in the adolescent brain in which measurable activity can be linked to various forms of impulsivity — the likelihood of doing something risky. The researchers identified seven networks that were activated when the teenagers successfully controlled impulses; and six networks activated when impulses failed to be controlled. If you’re a worried parent looking for risk-averting strategies, don’t get your hopes up. This study isn’t about to spawn new ways to discourage teen drug and alcohol use — it’s just the the first of an anticipated series of research projects that might hold some promise for that. © 2012 www.burlingtonfreepress.com.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16733 - Posted: 05.01.2012

By Rebecca Cheung Unique wings allow one type of male tree cricket to hum a different sort of tune — one that encompasses a wide range of pitches. The discovery could mean that these males are saying a lot more than previously thought, and that potential mates might be listening for these notes. “The frequencies might be carrying some information about the condition of the male. An insect that is able to sing faster, and hence at a higher frequency, might actually be quite well fed, or he’s in a nice warm place you might want to be in,” says Natasha Mhatre of the University of Bristol in England. “You now have to ask: ‘What kind of information is that frequency carrying?’” Crickets produce sound by rubbing their wings together. For most crickets — including field and bush crickets — males can produce only one musical note. Generally, the pitch of the male’s song is directly related to his size. Researchers believe that when females scout for a potential mate, they tend to be drawn to songs of deeper frequency or pitch, which are produced by larger crickets. But certain tree crickets were known to vary their tune. Scientists had observed, for instance, that a species from southern India called Oecanthus henryi produces high-pitch sounds at warmer temperatures. Until now, it wasn’t fully understood how these critters could do this. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hearing
Link ID: 16732 - Posted: 05.01.2012