by Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Managing Editor Intense and lasting stress may deliver a blow to a kid's noggin, say researchers who found that a brain area linked to memory was smaller in children who had experienced chronic stress compared with their less-strained counterparts. The brain differences also bore out in cognitive ability, with those children with highly stressful lives performing poorer than other kids on spatial memory tests. The highly stressed children also had more trouble with tests of short-term memory, including tasks such as finding a token in a series of boxes, the researchers said. "All families experience some stress, so it is important to note that effects were found for high levels of stress," study researcher Jamie Hanson, a psychology graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told LiveScience, adding that some extreme examples would include family members falling victim to violent crimes or the chronic illness of a child or other family member. The research, detailed in the June 6 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, adds to other evidence of the impacts of stress, with one recent study showing that children exposed to multiple instances of violence age faster on a cellular level. Another past study suggested childhood stress could actually take years off an individual's life. The team was inspired by work in animals that has found a link between stress and brain changes, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in working memory, or the part of your memory that's available for quick recall. © 2012 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Stress; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16893 - Posted: 06.09.2012

by Linda Geddes They might share the same DNA and cramped living space, but as these images reveal, life is anything but identical for unborn twins. This unprecedented glimpse into their inner world is afforded through a recently developed form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which is being turned on twins for the first time. Whereas conventional MRI takes snapshots of thin slices of the body as it penetrates through it, so-called cinematic-MRI takes repeated images of the same slice, then stitches them together to create a videoMovie Camera. This means that a moving structure such as a fetus – or several fetuses – can be visualised in unprecedented detail. "A lot of the so-called videos in the womb are very processed, so they do a lot of reconstructing and computer work afterwards. These are the raw images that are acquired immediately," says Marisa Taylor-Clarke of the Robert Steiner MR Unit at Imperial College London, who recorded the images. She has been using the technique to study twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, a relatively common complication in which the blood supplies of twins sharing the same placenta become connected. As the twin receiving its sibling's blood grows larger, the growth of the donor twin becomes stunted. In the worst cases it can prove fatal to both twins. Fortunately, an operation that involves blocking the shared blood vessels usually saves them, but its impact on brain development is relatively unknown. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 16892 - Posted: 06.09.2012

By GINA KOLATA It seemed as if it would be a perfectly ordinary occasion, that hot August day in 1959. Three generations of a large Oklahoma family gathered at a studio in nearby Perryton, Tex., to have a photo taken of the elders, 14 siblings ranging in age from 29 to 52. Afterward, everyone went to a nearby park for a picnic. Among the group were two cousins, Doug Whitney, who was 10, and Gary Reiswig, who was 19. Doug’s mother and Gary’s father were brother and sister. Doug does not remember any details of that day, but Gary says he can never forget it. His father, and some of his aunts and uncles, just did not seem right. They stared blankly. They were confused, smiling and nodding, even though it seemed as if they weren’t really following the conversation. Seeing them like that reminded Gary of what his grandfather had been like years before. In 1936, at the age of 53, his grandfather was driving with his grandmother and inexplicably steered into the path of a train. He survived, but his wife did not. Over the next decade, he grew more and more confused. By the time he died at 63, he was unable to speak, unable to care for himself, unable to find his way around his house. Now here were the first signs of what looked like the same condition in several of his children. “We were looking at the grimness face to face,” Gary says. “After that, we gradually stopped getting together.” It was the start of a long decline for Gary’s father and his siblings. Their memories became worse, their judgment faltered, they were disoriented. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 16891 - Posted: 06.09.2012

The merest interaction with a member of the opposite sex can bring a glow to a woman's face, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of St Andrews found even non-sexual contact with men caused a noticeable rise in the temperature of a woman's face. The team used thermal imaging to detect changes in heterosexual women during their meetings with other people. They found that even without noticing, a woman's face would heat up in the company of the opposite sex. The team behind the discovery said the findings could be used in the development of thermal imaging to monitor levels of stress and emotion in future, for example in lie detection tests. Lead author of the study, Amanda Hahn, said researchers measured skin temperature on a woman's hand, arm, face and chest when they interacted with men. They found the most dramatic increase occurred in a woman's face, where temperatures rose by an entire degree in some cases. She said: "This thermal change was in response to simple social interaction, without any experimental change to emotion or arousal. Indeed our participants did not report feeling embarrassment or discomfort during the interaction." BBC © 2012

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 16890 - Posted: 06.09.2012

Ewen Callaway Trespassers on the mating grounds of male bumphead parrotfish soon learn a hard lesson. The reef-munching fish fend off competing males using aggressive headbutting — a form of behaviour that has never previously been seen in the species. A team of US researchers reveals the surprising finding in the journal PLoS ONE this week1. Growing to a weight of more than 75 kilograms and up to 1.5 metres in length, the giant bumphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) is one of the heftiest reef fish in the world — but also one of the most shy around humans. “These really are underwater buffalos, gentle giants that play a critical role in coral reef ecology. But when reproduction is involved, it is time to fight,” says David Bellwood, a marine ecologist at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, who was not involved in the study. The fish are named for their prominent forehead ridge, which in the males is reinforced by a thick bony plate. Scientists thought that bumpheads used this armour to ram coral reefs and break them up for feeding — but no one had ever seen them do it. With one bumphead eating as much as 5 tonnes of reef in a year, Bellwood and other bumphead experts had their doubts; the bony bit isn’t very large and the fish have powerful jaws for biting the coral anyway. © 2012 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 16889 - Posted: 06.09.2012

A brain training technique which helps people control activity in a specific part of the brain could help treat depression, a study suggests. Cardiff University researchers used MRI scanners to show eight people how their brains reacted to positive imagery. After four sessions of the therapy the participants had seen significant improvements in their depression. Another eight who were asked to think positively but did not see brain images as they did so showed no change. The researchers said they believed the MRI scans allowed participants to work out, through trial and error, which sort of positive emotional imagery was most effective. The technique - known as neurofeedback - has already had some success in helping people with Parkinson's disease. But the team acknowledge that further research, involving a larger number of people, is needed to ascertain how effective the therapy is, particularly in the long term. Prof David Linden, who led the study which was published in the PLoS One journal, said it had the potential to become part of the "treatment package" for depression. About a fifth of people will develop depression at some point in their lives and a third of those will not respond to standard treatments. BBC © 2012

Keyword: Depression; Brain imaging
Link ID: 16888 - Posted: 06.09.2012

Removing alcohol abuse from psychiatry's diagnostic bible is drawing fire. Proposed changes for the DSM-5 include merging alcohol dependence and abuse categories into a single diagnosis: substance abuse disorder. Doctors, insurers, scientists, and those in the legal system turn to the manual when drawing the line between what psychiatrists consider normal and not normal. June's issue of the Journal of Studies of Alcohol and Drugs includes a critique of the changes and a defence. "Our goal was to try to make the criteria easier for the usual clinician to use, and so we're no longer asking them to remember one criteria set for abuse and a separate set for dependence," said Dr. Marc Schuckit, the journal's editor. While Schuckit served on the DSM-5's substance use committee, he said the views in the editorial reflect his own opinions and experience with the group's consensus approach. Abolishing the abuse category was done because there wasn't enough data to support an inbetween state, Dr. Griffith Edwards of the National Addiction Centre in London, UK said in a critical letter appearing in the same issue. "This decision goes against clinical experience, which suggests that people can develop destructive and disruptive drinking behaviour without clinical symptoms of dependence," Edwards wrote. © CBC 2012

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16887 - Posted: 06.09.2012

By Nathan Seppa By delving into the components of protective nerve coatings that get damaged in multiple sclerosis, scientists have identified a handful of lipid molecules that appear to be attacked by an immune system run amok. Bolstering the supply of these lipids might help preserve these nerve coatings and, in the process, knock back the inflammation that contributes to their destruction, researchers report in the June 6 Science Translational Medicine. In MS patients, rogue antibodies assault myelin, the fatty sheath that insulates nerves and facilitates signaling. Inflammation exacerbates the attack on myelin and the cells that make it. But other details of MS, including the roles of myelin lipids, have been less clearly understood. “I think this is a very good study,” says Francisco Quintana, an immunologist at Harvard Medical School. “Overall, there are not many papers on lipids in MS. Technically, they are challenging and require a lot of expertise.” To explore the role of lipids, the researchers studied spinal fluid from people with MS, healthy people and patients with other neurological disorders. Tests on the fluid showed that antibodies targeted four lipids more often in MS patients than in the other groups. Examination of autopsied brains from MS patients and people without MS revealed that, in the MS patients, these four lipids were depleted at the sites where the nerve coatings were damaged. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 16886 - Posted: 06.07.2012

by Sara Reardon Low levels of antidepressants and other psychoactive drugs in water supplies can trigger the expression of genes associated with autism – in fish at least. The use of antidepressants has increased dramatically over the past 25 years, says Michael Thomas of Idaho State University in Pocatello. Around 80 per cent of each drug passes straight through the human body without being broken down, and so they are present in waste water. In most communities, water purification systems cannot filter out these pharmaceuticals. "They just fly right through," says Thomas, which means they ultimately find their way into the water supply. The concentration of these drugs in drinking water is very low – at most, they are present at levels 100 times lower than the prescription doses. But since the drugs are specifically designed to act on the nervous system, Thomas hypothesised that even a small dose could affect a developing fetus. Thomas's group created a cocktail of the anti-epileptic drug carbamazepine and two selective serotonin uptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants, fluoxetine and venlafaxine, at this low concentration. They exposed fathead minnows (Pimephales promelas) to the drugs for 18 days, then analysed the genes that were being expressed in the fishes' brains. Although the researchers had expected the drugs might activate genes involved in all kinds of neurological disorders, only 324 genes associated with autism in humans appeared to be significantly altered. Most of these genes are involved in early brain development and wiring. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Autism; Depression
Link ID: 16885 - Posted: 06.07.2012

By Laura Sanders New details about how some drugs for schizophrenia accumulate in the brain may help explain why patients often must wait for weeks for the medications to work. Because many commonly used antipsychotics such as haloperidol and clozapine quickly latch onto their targets, it would seem that the drugs should bring fast relief. “But there’s always a side story,” says neuroscientist Michael Cousin of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. “There’s another layer of complexity.” Researchers led by Teja Groemer of Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany illuminate this process in the June 7 Neuron by describing how the buildup of certain drugs in the brain may have underappreciated consequences for their effectiveness. The idea that drugs accumulate in the brain isn’t totally new; other scientists have suggested that antipsychotic drugs can pile up in certain places, Groemer says. But most people have assumed such accumulation is inconsequential. Not so, Groemer and his team found. Stockpiled drugs may actually squelch nerve cells’ behavior in a highly selective way by being released only when needed most. Using a proxy compound that could be seen with a microscope (because making the drugs themselves visible would have changed their behavior), the researchers watched the chemical build up in small pockets, called synaptic vesicles, inside nerve cells that were growing in a dish. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 16884 - Posted: 06.07.2012

By Jane Dreaper Health correspondent, BBC News Multiple CT scans in childhood can triple the risk of developing brain cancer or leukaemia, a study suggests. The Newcastle University-led team examined the NHS medical records of almost 180,000 young patients. But writing in The Lancet the authors emphasised that the benefits of the scans usually outweighed the risks. They said the study underlined the fact the scans should only be used when necessary and that ways of cutting their radiation should be pursued. During a CT (computerised tomography) scan, an X-ray tube rotates around the patient's body to produce detailed images of internal organs and other parts of the body. In the first long-term study of its kind, the researchers looked at the records of patients aged under 21 who had CT scans at a range of British hospitals between 1985 and 2002. Because radiation-related cancer takes time to develop, they examined data on cancer cases and mortality up until 2009. The study estimated that the increased risk translated into one extra case of leukaemia and one extra brain tumour among 10,000 CT head scans of children aged under ten. BBC © 2012

Keyword: Brain imaging; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16883 - Posted: 06.07.2012

By Brian Alexander When news broke that singer Sheryl Crow has a benign brain tumor called a meningioma, her representative swatted away concern by saying that “half of us are walking around with [a meningioma] but you don’t really know unless you happen to have an MRI.” Well, no. Despite that unnamed representative’s effort to make a brain tumor sound like a pimple, meningiomas are not anywhere near so universal, and, despite the “benign” designation, can be dangerous, leading to severe disabilities, and, in rare cases, death. “About 2 to 3 percent are malignant,” Dr. Elizabeth Claus, director of medical research at the Yale School of Public Health, a neurosurgeon at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the principal investigator for the multi-institution Meningioma Consortium, explained in an interview. “Then that is a very serious situation because there’s not much in the way of great treatments. They can metastasize, say to the lungs, and no chemotherapy will work for it.” As the name indicates, a meningioma is a cancer of the meninges, the protective lining that surrounds the brain and spinal cord, often also called the dura. It’s true that meningiomas are one of the most common types of brain tumors, comprising about one-third of all benign brain tumors, but meningiomas are not nearly as common as Crow’s rep would have you believe. As of 2005, approximately 138,000 Americans were known to have been diagnosed of meningioma. © 2012 msnbc.com

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 16882 - Posted: 06.07.2012

Experts are warning that the public dangerously underestimates the health risks linked to smoking cannabis. The British Lung Foundation carried out a survey of 1,000 adults and found a third wrongly believed cannabis did not harm health. And 88% incorrectly thought tobacco cigarettes were more harmful than cannabis ones - when the risk of lung cancer is actually 20 times higher. The BLF said the lack of awareness was "alarming". Latest figures show that 30% of 16-59 year-olds in England and Wales have used cannabis in their lifetimes. A new report from the BLF says there are established scientific links between smoking cannabis and tuberculosis, acute bronchitis and lung cancer. Cannabis has also been shown to increase chances of developing mental health problems such as schizophrenia. Part of the reason for this, say the experts, is that people smoking cannabis take deeper puffs and hold them for longer than when smoking tobacco cigarettes. This means that someone smoking a cannabis cigarette inhales four times as much tar as from a tobacco cigarette, and five times as much carbon monoxide, the BLF says. Its survey found that young people are particularly unaware of the risks. BBC © 2012

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 16881 - Posted: 06.06.2012

  By Suzanne Koven When I first went into practice, over 20 years ago, all my patients were eating pretzels. Also Entenmann’s fat-free cake. And jelly beans. It was the era of the low-fat craze, not to be confused with the low-carb crazes that preceded and followed it. That my patients were not losing weight on these diets didn’t surprise me, not because of my vast knowledge of nutrition (about which physicians receive notoriously scant training), but because I wasn’t faring too well on them myself. You see, dear reader, when it comes to dieting — to paraphrase the men’s hair commercial — I’m not only a professional, I’m also a member of the club. I remember the precise moment I first decided to lose weight. I was 12½ and had lied to my parents about where I would be spending the evening: I said Susie’s. It was actually Teddy’s. As I dressed for my clandestine outing, I gazed at a reflection of myself in a pair of purple striped hip-huggers and resolved to be thinner. I devised a diet that seemed sensible: 400 calories a day. It didn’t take me too long to figure out that this was not enough to sustain a growing adolescent (or the average cocker spaniel, for that matter). What took me decades to figure out, though, was that my impulse to diet had more to do with shame, specifically shame about desire (See above: Teddy) than with what I actually weighed — which wasn’t much. © 2012 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 16880 - Posted: 06.06.2012

By Melissa Dahl If you can't stomach the thought of guzzling down eight glasses of water every single day, here's some good news: You're off the hook, more health experts are saying. A new editorial in an Australian public health journal is the latest to bust the widely-repeated health myth we need to guzzle 64 ounces, or eight 8-ounce glasses, of water each day just to stave off dehydration. Actually, we get enough fluids to keep our bodies adequately hydrated from the foods we eat and the beverages we drink -- even from caffeinated drinks like coffee and tea. Turns out, the whole "eight glasses a day" thing "really is no longer the recommendation; the recommendation is drinking to thirst," explains Madelyn Fernstrom, a registered dietitian and TODAY's diet and nutrition editor. Drink when you're thirsty! What a novel idea. It's not a bad idea to consume 64 ounces of fluid a day, but it's not a scientifically proven idea, either. It likely comes from a 1940s recommendation from the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council, which said that adults should ingest about 2.5 liters of water a day. "But the often ignored second half of that statement pointed out that most of the water you need is in the foods you eat," explains Dr. Aaron Carroll, associate professor of Pediatrics and the associate director of Children's Health Services Research at Indiana University School. © 2012 msnbc.com

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 16879 - Posted: 06.06.2012

By Gareth Cook How aware are plants? This is the central question behind a fascinating new book, “What a Plant Knows,” by Daniel Chamovitz, director of the Manna Center for Plant Biosciences at Tel Aviv University. A plant, he argues, can see, smell and feel. It can mount a defense when under siege, and warn its neighbors of trouble on the way. A plant can even be said to have a memory. But does this mean that plants think — or that one can speak of a “neuroscience” of the flower? Chamovitz answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook. 1. How did you first get interested in this topic? My interest in the parallels between plant and human senses got their start when I was a young postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Xing-Wang Deng at Yale University in the mid 1990s. I was interested in studying a biological process that would be specific to plants, and would not be connected to human biology (probably as a response to the six other “doctors” in my family, all of whom are physicians). So I was drawn to the question of how plants sense light to regulate their development. It had been known for decades that plants use light not only for photosynthesis, but also as a signal that changes the way plants grow. In my research I discovered a unique group of genes necessary for a plant to determine if it’s in the light or in the dark. When we reported our findings, it appeared these genes were unique to the plant kingdom, which fit well with my desire to avoid any thing touching on human biology. But much to my surprise and against all of my plans, I later discovered that this same group of genes is also part of the human DNA. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 16878 - Posted: 06.06.2012

By Branwen Jeffreys Health correspondent, BBC News Combining exercise with conventional treatments for depression does not improve recovery, research suggests. In the NHS-funded study - published in the British Medical Journal - some patients were given help to boost their activity levels in addition to receiving therapy or anti-depressants. After a year all 361 patients had fewer signs of depression, but there was no difference between the two groups. Current guidelines suggest sufferers do up to three exercise sessions a week. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) drew up that advice in 2004. At the time it said that on the basis of the research available, increased physical activity could help those with mild depression. The latest study, carried out by teams from the Universities of Bristol and Exeter, looked at how that might actually work in a real clinical setting. All 361 people taking part were given conventional treatments appropriate to their level of depression. But for eight months some in a randomly allocated group were also given up advice on up to 13 separate occasions on how to increase their level of activity. BBC © 2012

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 16877 - Posted: 06.06.2012

Talking to a psychologist on the phone as therapy for depression may work as well as meeting face-to-face, according to a new study. Depression is common in the general population and psychotherapy is considered an effective treatment that some patients prefer to antidepressant medications. The convenience of phones could make psychotherapy more readily available.The convenience of phones could make psychotherapy more readily available. (Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press) But about 75 per cent of patients with depression in previous studies said barriers like time constraints, lack of available and accessible services, transportation problems and cost stop them from going for treatment. In Wednesday's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers compared treatments by randomly assigning 325 patients at community clinics in Chicago to face-to-face therapy or telephone therapy for 18 weeks. "Our study found psychotherapy conveniently provided by telephone to patients wherever they are is effective and reduces dropout," the study's lead author, David Mohr, a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, said in a release. The results showed 20.9 per cent of the people who had therapy over the phone dropped out compared with 32.7 per cent for face-to-face therapy. But those in the telephone group scored three points higher on a depression scale than those who met in person. © CBC 2012

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 16876 - Posted: 06.06.2012

By Julie Wan, For many years, scientists agreed that human tongues perceived four basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty and bitter. Then in 2002, receptors were confirmed for a taste called umami — first proposed by a Japanese chemist in 1908 and commonly described as meatiness or savoriness — and it became widely accepted as the fifth basic taste. Since then, molecular biologists have theorized that humans may have as many as 20 distinct receptors for such tastes as calcium, carbonation, starch and even water. The data supporting each vary widely, but one contender for a sixth taste has begun to stand out from the rest: fat. The growing evidence is intriguing to scientists and food developers, who hope that a better understanding of our perception of fat will have applications in health and obesity management. But that’s far down the road. Currently, the debate is still over whether fat is a taste, and studies are increasingly likely to say that it is. In 2010, for example, researchers at Deakin University in Australia found that people were able to detect the taste of fatty acids. This year, researchers at the Center for Human Nutrition at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis said they had discovered that some people may be more sensitive to the presence of fat in foods than others. For the latter study, published in March in the Journal of Lipid Research, 21 people with a body mass index of 30 or more — considered clinically obese — tasted three solutions with a similarly viscous texture and were asked to identify the one that was different. © 1996-2012 The Washington Post

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Obesity
Link ID: 16875 - Posted: 06.05.2012

Content provided by Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience People prone to depression may struggle to organize information about guilt and blame in the brain, new neuroimaging research suggests. Crushing guilt is a common symptom of depression, an observation that dates back to Sigmund Freud. Now, a new study finds a communication breakdown between two guilt-associated brain regions in people who have had depression. This so-called "decoupling" of the regions may be why depressed people take small faux pas as evidence that they are complete failures. "If brain areas don't communicate well, that would explain why you have the tendency to blame yourself for everything and not be able to tie that into specifics," study researcher Roland Zahn, a neruoscientist at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, told LiveScience. Zahn and his colleagues focused their research on the subgenual cingulated cortex and its adjacent septal region, a region deep in the brain that has been linked to feelings of guilt. Previous studies have found abnormalities in this region, dubbed the SCSR, in people with depression. The SCSR is known to communicate with another brain region, the anterior temporal lobe, which is situated under the side of the skull. The anterior temporal lobe is active during thoughts about morals, including guilt and indignation. © 2012 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 16874 - Posted: 06.05.2012