By Teller, Smithsonian magazine, In the last half decade, magic—normally deemed entertainment fit only for children and tourists in Las Vegas—has become shockingly respectable in the scientific world. Even I—not exactly renowned as a public speaker—have been invited to address conferences on neuroscience and perception. I asked a scientist friend (whose identity I must protect) why the sudden interest. He replied that those who fund science research find magicians “sexier than lab rats.” I’m all for helping science. But after I share what I know, my neuroscientist friends thank me by showing me eye-tracking and MRI equipment, and promising that someday such machinery will help make me a better magician. I have my doubts. Neuroscientists are novices at deception. Magicians have done controlled testing in human perception for thousands of years. I remember an experiment I did at the age of 11. My test subjects were Cub Scouts. My hypothesis (that nobody would see me sneak a fishbowl under a shawl) proved false and the Scouts pelted me with hard candy. If I could have avoided those welts by visiting an MRI lab, I surely would have. But magic’s not easy to pick apart with machines, because it’s not really about the mechanics of your senses. Magic’s about understanding—and then manipulating—how viewers digest the sensory information.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 16442 - Posted: 02.28.2012

By PAM BELLUCK SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — Secel Montgomery Sr. stabbed a woman in the stomach, chest and throat so fiercely that he lost count of the wounds he inflicted. In the nearly 25 years he has been serving a life sentence, he has gotten into fights, threatened a prison official and been caught with marijuana. Despite that, he has recently been entrusted with an extraordinary responsibility. He and other convicted killers at the California Men’s Colony help care for prisoners with Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia, assisting ailing inmates with the most intimate tasks: showering, shaving, applying deodorant, even changing adult diapers. Their growing roster of patients includes Joaquin Cruz, a convicted killer who is now so addled that he thinks he sees his brother in the water of a toilet, and Walter Gregory, whose short-term memory is ebbing even as he vividly recalls his crime: stabbing and mutilating his girlfriend with a switchblade. “I cut her eyes out, too,” Mr. Gregory declared recently. Dementia in prison is an underreported but fast-growing phenomenon, one that many prisons are desperately unprepared to handle. It is an unforeseen consequence of get-tough-on-crime policies — long sentences that have created a large population of aging prisoners. About 10 percent of the 1.6 million inmates in America’s prisons are serving life sentences; another 11 percent are serving over 20 years. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 16441 - Posted: 02.27.2012

Giovanni Frazzetto From rage and grief to exquisite tendresse, emotion is laid bare in theatre. Few art forms electrify or illuminate as powerfully as stage acting. But how have theatrical greats such as John Gielgud or Vanessa Redgrave cast their spell? Acting may be one of the most ancient arts, but science is only just beginning to get to grips with it. Science started to seep into theatre in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the Russian actor and theatre director Constantin Stanislavski. Founder of the influential Moscow Art Theatre, Stanislavski turned to physiologist Ivan Pavlov's research on conditioned reflexes to improve his acting method. The aim was to create performance that united psychological experience and physical action. Our brains recreate the emotions of actors such as Geraldine James when we watch them perform. Stanislavski sought a way to consciously trigger an actor's emotional expression. Science had begun to discover that neural pathways underlie complex behaviour and emotions, which can be conditioned in response to a changing environment. By practising key physical actions pertinent to the character and the play, Stanislavski realized, the actor could learn, by reflex, how to express the psychological experience of the emotion — with help from the imagination. A particular posture or movement would trigger a particular emotion. So by working hard on small actions such as clenching the fists and tensing the neck muscles, the actor could trigger anger, or they could awaken feelings of despair by shuffling, drooping and bowing the shoulders. © 2012 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 16440 - Posted: 02.27.2012

by Sheila Eldred Football players as young as 7 years old sustained an average of 107 hits per player during a single season, the first study to analyze head impact exposure in youth football shows. The hardest of the hits came during practice, not games. The study, published in the Annals of Biomedical Engineering, analyzed just seven kids, but the findings helped secure funding for a much larger study announced this week. Head impact exposure in high school and college athletes has been well documented. While this study suggests that youth football players sustain less frequent hits, the level of acceleration can reach the same level measured in adults -- which is high enough to cause concussions. "This new study for 2012 allows for a dramatically increased sample size [approximately 50,000 head impacts will likely be recorded] and head exposure mapping for all age groups,” said Stefan Duma, department head of the Virginia Tech – Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, which directs the project. To study the biomechanics of impacts, researchers will use medical imaging protocols combined with brain computer modeling. The initial study also led to the development of the National Impact Database, containing the first safety rating system for adult football helmets. © 2012 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16439 - Posted: 02.27.2012

Hundreds of Canadian MS patients have gone out of country for a controversial neck vein treatment in recent years. Hundreds of Canadian MS patients have gone out of country for a controversial neck vein treatment in recent years. (CBC) Saskatchewan multiple sclerosis patients hoping to take part in a clinical trial of a controversial treatment may soon get a call from the ministry of health. But only around 10 per cent of those who applied will actually get that call. Deb Jordan, a ministry spokeswoman, said 670 people had signed up as of Thursday, just ahead of the Friday midnight deadline for applications to be part of a two-year, double-blind trial of what has been dubbed liberation therapy. Jordan said patient names will be randomly drawn to determine who will fill 86 spots in the test, which will take place in Albany, N.Y. A successful candidate must be a Saskatchewan resident, under the age of 60 and not had liberation treatment. "Once we verify that information, then the applicant will be forwarded to the folks who are involved in the clinical trial," said Jordan. "I want to also emphasize that the fact that a patient may be drawn does not necessarily mean that they will move on to the clinical trial. © CBC 2012

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 16438 - Posted: 02.27.2012

Scottish research has shown it could be possible to reverse the muscle damage seen in children with a form of motor neurone disease. Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) - 'floppy baby syndrome' - is the leading genetic cause of death in children. It affects one in 6,000 births, but 50% of those with the most severe form die before the age of two. The University of Edinburgh mouse study suggests a drug could boost levels of a protein and so reverse muscle damage. Children with SMA experience progressive muscle wastage, loss of mobility and motor function. Now 13, he was diagnosed at the age of three. "My wife first knew there was something wrong when he was two. He was just walking funnily. "But he wasn't diagnosed until the third time she took him to the doctors. "Initially there was a question as to whether it was SMA or muscular dystrophy. "We'd heard of muscular dystrophy - but not SMA. BBC © 2012

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Muscles
Link ID: 16437 - Posted: 02.27.2012

By Dwayne Godwin and Jorge Cham © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Attention; Emotions
Link ID: 16436 - Posted: 02.27.2012

By Hannah Tepper At the end of his second year of Harvard graduate school, neuroscientist and bestselling author Richard Davidson did something his colleagues suspected would mark the end of his academic career: He skipped town and went to India and Sri Lanka for three months to “study meditation.” In the ’70s, just as today, people tended to lump meditation into the new-age category, along with things like astrology, crystals, tantra and herbal “remedies.” But contrary to what his skeptics presumed, not only did Davidson return to resume his studies at Harvard, his trip also marked the beginning of Davidson’s most spectacular body of work: neuroscientific research indicating that meditation (and other strictly mental activity) changes the neuroplasticity of the brain. Thirty years later, Davidson is still researching and writing about the intersection of neuroscience and emotion — he currently teaches psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In his new book, written with Sharon Begley, “The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live, and How You Can Change Them,” Davidson lays out a fascinating theory that parses out emotional style into six dimensions, giving readers a better understanding of where they stand on this emotional plane and how emotional styles affect the qualities of their everyday lives. Last week Salon spoke over the phone with Davidson about how Botox injections disrupt our ability to emote, the connection between happiness and health, and why emotion has been unfairly and historically underappreciated. © 2012 Salon Media Group,

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 16435 - Posted: 02.27.2012

By JoNel Aleccia For Kelly Wooldridge of St. Louis, the change in her son’s behavior was so abrupt, it was like someone flipped a switch. Overnight, Brendan, now 10, went from being an easy-going, “huggy-kissy” kid to a rageful child plagued with tics, compulsions and obsessions, she said. “He would walk up and choke kids at school, or pick up a chair and throw it at them,” recalled Wooldridge, 37. Brendan developed facial tics, constant throat clearing, some humming. "He was just miserable in his own skin," his mother said. The shift first occurred when Brendan was 3, just after several recurring bouts of strep throat. The disturbing behaviors lingered, seeming to wax and wane for the next few years with no clear cause or explanation. It wasn’t until last year that Wooldridge -- like a growing number of parents, pediatricians and researchers -- finally connected the dots between the common childhood infection and the sudden onset of some forms of mental illness. “Last spring, we learned about PANDAS,” said Wooldridge. “I thought it sounded a little crazy, but it totally fit.” PANDAS -- or Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections -- is the unusual diagnosis given to a group of children who abruptly develop Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or tic disorders such as Tourette’s Syndrome – but only after contracting infections such as scarlet fever or strep throat caused by Group A streptococcus bacteria. © 2012 msnbc.com

Keyword: OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 16434 - Posted: 02.25.2012

Erin Allday For a few months after she was born, Ashley Chase cried inconsolably every day, for hours at a time. Her mother didn't call it colic at the time, but now she wonders. There was never any obvious cause for Ashley's distress, and she was an otherwise happy and healthy baby. The fussiness eventually went away without cause, as is often the case with colicky babies. And perhaps most intriguing - Ashley, now 14, suffers migraines. Just like her mom. Colic, it turns out, may be closely connected to migraines, say researchers at UCSF. A study released this week found that moms who suffer migraines are 2 1/2 times more likely to have colicky infants than those who don't. "It kind of makes sense," said Ashley, a patient at the UCSF Headache Center who lives in Pleasanton with her parents. "Everything's 'more' when you have a migraine. Everything's too loud, everything's too much. I imagine it would feel the same for a baby." The UCSF research, which will be formally presented at an American Academy of Neurology meeting in New Orleans next month, could shed light on two poorly understood and difficult-to-treat conditions: migraines and colic. Earlier research has hinted at a connection between the two conditions, but the UCSF study is the most convincing so far, neurologists and headache experts said. The study looked at 154 mothers of infants and found that more than 28 percent of women who suffered migraines had colicky babies, compared with 11 percent of women without migraines. © 2012 Hearst Communications Inc.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16433 - Posted: 02.25.2012

By Emily Willingham Attention Deficit–Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) had a star turn in the recent, high-profile murder trial of University of Virginia lacrosse star George Huguely. Lawyers for the defense aren’t using the condition to explain away their client’s presumed violent behavior; rather, they’re saying that the woman he’s accused of killing may have died from her own, personal battle with ADHD. Amidst their exculpatory evidence was the victim’s prescription for Adderall, and they offered that she could have died from a mix of the drug (which is prescribed to treat ADHD) and alcohol. The medical examiner has discounted that notion, calling the very low levels of Adderall in the victim’s blood “within therapeutic range.” The cause of her death rather seems to have been a blunt force trauma to the head. The idea that ADHD drugs might be killing us—and in ways that resemble being bashed in the head—represents just one of several ominous storylines associated with the disorder. In recent years, we’ve also heard speculation about whether ADHD is real, and if it is real, whether it’s being grossly overdiagnosed. And then there are the drugs. A recent opinion piece in the New York Times by psychology professor L. Alan Sroufe argues at great length that attention-deficit drugs do more harm than good over the long term, a conclusion other professionals in his field dispute. The backlash against ADHD—which often targets the drugs used to treat it, the people who have it, and the therapists and parents who make treatment decisions—has again reached a fever pitch. These backlashes against childhood developmental diagnoses seems to rise and fall every few years, but lately it’s burgeoning. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: ADHD; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16432 - Posted: 02.25.2012

Dementia is estimated to affect about 500,000 Canadians and up to five million people in the U.S.Dementia is estimated to affect about 500,000 Canadians and up to five million people in the U.S. (Associated Press) An analysis of tens of thousands of people in nursing homes in the U.S. suggests that residents who take certain antipsychotic drugs for dementia are at about double the risk of dying compared to residents not taking those specific medications. All the residents in the study, published Friday in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), were over age 65. The Harvard Medical School study, the largest ever undertaken among U.S. nursing home residents, focused on 75,445 nursing-home residents from 45 states from 2001 to 2005. Their risks of death were looked at during a six-month period. Facts about dementia in Canada What is it? An umbrella term for a variety of brain disorders. Symptoms include loss of memory, judgment and reasoning, and changes in mood and behaviour. Prevalence: In 2010, more than 500,000 Canadians were living with dementia. Of these, about 71,000 were under age 65. One in 11 Canadians over 65 have the condition. Who is most at risk? Women account for 72 per cent of all Alzheimer's cases, and 62 per cent of all dementia cases. © CBC 2012

Keyword: Alzheimers; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 16431 - Posted: 02.25.2012

Caitlin Stier, video intern If you know where to fix your gaze, you can make a dull diamond sparkle using the power of your mind. In this animation, a striped diamond seems to twinkle when you track a circle moving back and forth within the shape. Created by psychology researcher Sebastiaan Mathôt of VU University in Amsterdam, the trick seems to be caused by poor estimation of what's happening in our peripheral vision. While focusing on the moving object, our brain only perceives a small part of the diamond shape. According to Mathôt, we expect to see the diamond's outline move perpendicular to the line due to a bias of our visual system. But when we move our gaze to the right, it confuses our brain, perhaps causing a compromise between the conflicting directions of motion that results in a sparkling effect along the line. The animation is a variation of the boogie-woogie illusion devised by psychologists Patrick Cavanagh and Stuart Anstis from Harvard University. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 16430 - Posted: 02.25.2012

by Vivien Marx Call it the fish version of instant messaging. When a fish is injured, it secretes a compound that makes other fish dart away (as seen in the latter half of the sped up video above, when the red light flashes). The substance, named Schreckstoff (German for "scary stuff"), protects the entire community of fish, but no one knew how it worked. Now they do, thanks to an analysis of fish mucus reported today in Current Biology. The key ingredient in Schreckstoff is a sugar called chondroitin sulfate, which is found in abundance in fish skin. When the skin is torn, enzymes break the compound down into sugar fragments that activate an unusual class of sensory neurons known as crypt cells in other fish. And the fish take off. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Emotions
Link ID: 16429 - Posted: 02.25.2012

By Ferris Jabr There's a scene in Pixar's Finding Nemo when Dory, a yellow-finned regal tang, injures herself in a tug-of-war over a snorkel mask. A tiny plume of blood curls away from Dory's face into the water around her, where it is sucked into the nostrils of Bruce, a "vegetarian" shark who immediately recants his no-sushi policy. (Fortunately, Dory escapes.) Scientists have known for some time that many ocean predators relish the scent of an injured fish, whereas fish that are more likely to end up as a meal flee from the same scent. Now, researchers think they have pinpointed the key chemical in fish skin that warns nearby fish of danger—a chemical related to a supplement some people take for joint pain. In the 1930s Austrian animal behavior scientist Karl von Frisch accidentally injured a minnow in a tank. He noticed that the other fish in the tank began alternately darting back and forth and freezing in place—classic predator-evading behavior. Subsequent experiments established that the frightened fish were responding to chemicals released from the skin of their injured peer—a cocktail dubbed schreckstoff, which is German for "scary stuff." For decades, the chemistry of schreckstoff remained unknown. In the 1970s and '80s some scientists discovered that exposing fish to a chemical known as hypoxanthine-3-N-oxide (H3NO) frightened them in the same way as schreckstoff, albeit to a lesser degree. H3NO, they concluded, was probably the active compound in schreckstoff. But there was a problem with that idea: scientists had never reliably detected H3NO in fish skin. Instead, some researchers proposed, H3NO may mimic the genuine active compound. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Emotions
Link ID: 16428 - Posted: 02.25.2012

By Melinda Wenner Moyer The mystery of Whitney Houston's death will not be solved for several weeks, as the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office awaits a full toxicology report. But many experts speculate that the singer's tragic demise involved a deadly cocktail of alcohol and prescription drugs, including Xanax. Houston wouldn't be the first star to suffer such a fate: Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson and Anna Nicole Smith are all thought to have died in part from prescription drug overdoses, which can involve painkillers, sedatives and stimulants, often in combination with alcohol. But the problem extends far beyond Hollywood. In 2007 some 27,000 Americans died from unintentional prescription drug overdoses—making prescription drugs a more common cause of accidental death in many states than car crashes are. Although sedatives are thought to have played a role in Houston’s death, most prescription drug overuse involves opioid painkillers. Approximately 3 to 5 percent of people who take pain medication eventually end up addicted, according to Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, an arm of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. And "individuals who have a past history of a substance-use disorder—from smoking, drinking or other drugs—are at greater risk," she says. Addiction to other classes of prescription drugs such as sedatives, stimulants and sleep medications is thought to be less common—but it occurs, and even users who do not become compulsively addicted can, over time, become physically dependent and experience intense withdrawal symptoms when their prescriptions run out. They might also develop drug tolerance, the need to take higher doses over time to feel the same effects. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16427 - Posted: 02.25.2012

By Laura Sanders As a scientist, Giulio Tononi’s goal is as lofty as it gets: He wants to understand how the brain generates consciousness. In his hunt, he and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin–Madison routinely use state-of-the-art brain scanners to produce torrents of information that stream into sophisticated computer programs describing various aspects of brain function. But Tononi’s most profound insight didn’t spring from this huge cache of scientific data. It came instead from a moment of quiet reflection. When he stepped away from his scanners and data and the hustle of the lab and thought — deeply — about what it was like to be conscious, he realized something: Each split second of awareness is a unified, holistic experience, completely different from any experience before or after it. From that observation alone, Tononi intuited a powerful new theory of consciousness, a theory based on the flow of information. He and others believe that mathematics — in particular, a set of equations describing how bits of data move through the brain — is the key to explaining how the mind knits together an experience. Because of its clarity, this informational intuition has resonated with other researchers, inspiring a new way to see the consciousness problem. “This insight was very important to me,” says Anil Seth of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. “I thought, there’s something right about all this.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Consciousness; Attention
Link ID: 16426 - Posted: 02.25.2012

Europe's top human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, has urged Germany to end the practice of surgically castrating sex offenders. The council's anti-torture committee said such voluntary treatment, albeit rare in Germany, was "degrading". In Germany no more than five sex offenders a year have been opting for castration, hoping it will lower their sex drives and reduce their jail term. The committee's recommendations are not binding but have great influence. The committee's official title is the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT). "Surgical castration is a mutilating, irreversible intervention and cannot be considered as a medical necessity in the context of the treatment of sexual offenders", the CPT report said. It was based on an investigation in Germany carried out in November-December 2010. The BBC's Stephen Evans in Berlin says the German authorities argue that castration is not a punishment but a treatment which enables, as a government statement put it, "suffering tied to an abnormal sex drive… to be cured, or at least alleviated". Research for the report revealed that of the 104 people operated on between 1970 and 1980, only 3% reoffended, compared with nearly half of those who refused castration or were denied it by the authorities. BBC © 2012

Keyword: Aggression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 16425 - Posted: 02.25.2012

New findings might help explain why risk of drug abuse and addiction increase so dramatically when cocaine use begins during teenage years. When first exposed to cocaine, the adolescent brain launches a strong defensive reaction designed to minimize the drug’s effects, according to scientists. Now two new studies by a Yale University team identify key genes that regulate this response and show that interfering with this reaction dramatically increases a mouse’s sensitivity to cocaine. The results were published in the February 14 and February 21, 2012 issues of the Journal of Neuroscience. Research has shown that vulnerability to cocaine is much higher in adolescence, when the brain is shifting from an explosive and plastic growth phase to more settled and refined neural connections characteristic of adults. Photo credit: Lil Larkie Researchers have shown that vulnerability to cocaine is much higher in adolescence, when the brain is shifting from an explosive and plastic growth phase to more settled and refined neural connections characteristic of adults. Past studies at Yale University have shown that the neurons and their synaptic connections in adolescence change shape when first exposed to cocaine through molecular pathway regulated by the gene integrin beta1, which is crucial to the development of the nervous system of vertebrates. Anthony Koleske, professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry and of neurobiology At Yale University, is senior author of both papers. He said: This suggests that these structural changes observed are probably protective of the neurocircuitry, an effort of the neuron to protect itself when first exposed to cocaine. © 2011 Earthsky Communications Inc.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16424 - Posted: 02.25.2012

By Yardena Schwartz Brick, N.J.: Lindsey Avon and her 28-year-old husband Victor have been together for 10 years. But when Victor decided to lose some weight in college, Lindsey had no idea what he was really going through. It wasn’t until Victor checked himself into an inpatient eating disorder treatment center that Lindsey, 29, realized her then-boyfriend was fatally anorexic. Santa Cruz, Calif.: Nearly all of Avi Sinai’s school friends were girls, who constantly talked about how “fat” they were and how they longed to be thinner. Avi’s mom and his girlfriends’ mothers were shocked that Avi, just 10 at the time, was the one who succumbed to the obsession with being skinny. Okemos, Mich.: Susan Barry, 60, spends every day wishing she had known more about male anorexia when her son, TJ Warschefsky, was still alive. He died in 2007 at the age of 22 after an eight-year battle with the disease. His heart gave out in the middle of his nightly routine of 1,000 sit-ups. He weighed 78 pounds. “He didn’t want to be skinny,” Barry said of TJ, who was a star athlete and straight-A student. “He wanted a six pack, he wanted rock hard abs. That’s how it all started.” Their stories may sound rare, but experts say cases like Avi Sinai, Victor Avon and TJ Warschefsky are growing more and more common. Far from the world of beauty magazines, pin-thin celebrities and runway models, anorexia is striking what many consider to be an unlikely group: boys and young men. © 2012 msnbc.com

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 16423 - Posted: 02.23.2012