by Virginia Morell As every dog owner knows, teaching Fido to lie down and be calm can be a giant hurdle in obedience class. Now, it turns out that at least among German Shepherds, genetics play a big role in whether your pet earns a gold star. Researchers gave 104 of the dogs the lie-down-and-be-calm test, and three other behavioral exams, all designed to assess the dogs' ability to control their impulses. Later, the scientists compared the canines' DNA, looking specifically at a gene that is connected to the production of dopamine and norepinephrine. These neurotransmitters are involved in our emotional responses and ability to focus, and have been implicated in humans with attention deficit disorder. The 37 German Shepherds with a shortened version of the gene had the most trouble controlling their impulsive behaviors, regardless of their sex, age, or training. But the dogs with long versions of the gene, such as the one in the photo, passed the impulse-tests with the calm of Zen master. The study, reported in the current issue of PLoS ONE, may not only help breeders identify hyperactive dogs, but could prove useful in studies of ADHD in humans. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; ADHD
Link ID: 16269 - Posted: 01.19.2012

By JULIA MOSKIN FOR 10 years, wielding slabs of cream cheese and mounds of mayonnaise, Paula Deen has become television’s self-crowned queen of Southern cuisine and one of the country’s most popular chefs, with an empire built on layers of gooey butter cake, fried chicken and sheer force of personality. On Tuesday, she suddenly unveiled a new career for herself: herald of a healthy life. In an interview on the “Today” show on NBC, she revealed — as has long been rumored — that she has Type 2 diabetes, a diagnosis that she said she received three years ago. In an interview with The New York Times, she said the delay in announcing it had been part of a necessary personal journey. “I wanted to wait until I had something to bring to the table,” she said. Now, Ms. Deen, 64, has brought to her own table a multiplatform endorsement deal with Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company that makes Victoza, a noninsulin injectable diabetes medication that she began promoting on Tuesday morning. She and her sons, Jamie and Bobby (who do not have diabetes), are all being paid to spearhead the company’s upbeat new public-relations campaign, “Diabetes in a New Light,” which advocates using the drug along with eating lighter foods and increasing physical activity. All the same, Ms. Deen said she would not change her own lifestyle or cooking style drastically, other than to reduce portion sizes of unhealthful foods. “I’ve always preached moderation,” she said. “I don’t blame myself.” © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 16268 - Posted: 01.19.2012

By TARA PARKER-POPE After two decades of steady increases, obesity rates in adults and children in the United States have remained largely unchanged during the past 12 years, a finding that suggests national efforts at promoting healthful eating and exercise are having little effect on the overweight. Over all, 35.7 percent of the adult population and 16.9 percent of children qualify as obese, according to data gathered by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and published online Tuesday by The Journal of the American Medical Association. While it is good news that the ranks of the obese in America are not growing, the data also point to the intractable nature of weight gain and signal that the country will be dealing with the health consequences of obesity for years to come. “We’re by no means through the epidemic,’’ said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the childhood obesity program at Children’s Hospital in Boston. “Children will be entering adulthood heavier than they’ve ever been at any time in human history. Even without further increases in prevalence, the impact of the epidemic will continue to mount for many years to come.’’ The data come from thousands of men, women and children who have taken part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys — compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics at the C.D.C. since the 1960s — and represent some of the most reliable statistics available on the health of the American public. The most recent findings are based on data collected from 2009-10 that have been compared with previous surveys collected in two-year cycles beginning in 1999-2000. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 16267 - Posted: 01.19.2012

By Kara Rogers In a study published in late 2011 in Nature, Stanford University geneticist Anne Brunet and colleagues described a series of experiments that caused nematodes raised under the same environmental conditions to experience dramatically different lifespans. Some individuals were exceptionally long-lived, and their descendants, through three generations, also enjoyed long lives. Clearly, the longevity advantage was inherited. And yet, the worms, both short- and long-lived, were genetically identical. This type of finding—an inherited difference that cannot be explained by variations in genes themselves—has become increasingly common, in part because scientists now know that genes are not the only authors of inheritance. There are ghostwriters, too. At first glance, these scribes seem quite ordinary—methyl, acetyl, and phosphoryl groups, clinging to proteins associated with DNA, or sometimes even to DNA itself, looking like freeloaders at best. Their form is far from the elegant tendrils of DNA that make up genes, and they are fleeting, in a sense, erasable, very unlike genes, which have been passed down through generations for millions of years. But they do lurk, and silently, they exert their power, modifying DNA and controlling genes, influencing the chaos of nucleic and amino acids. And it is for this reason that many scientists consider the discovery of these entities in the late 20th century as a turning point in our understanding of heredity, as possibly one of the greatest revolutions in modern biology—the rise of epigenetics. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 16266 - Posted: 01.19.2012

By Joan Raymond For years, the conventional wisdom was that babies learned how to talk by listening to their parents. But a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that our little angels are using more than their ears to acquire language. They’re using their eyes, too, and are actually pretty good lip readers. The finding could lead to earlier diagnosis and intervention for autism spectrum disorders, estimated, on average, to affect 1 in 110 children in the United States alone. In the study, researchers from Florida Atlantic University tested groups of infants, ranging from four to 12 months of age and a group of adults for comparison. advertisement The babies watched videos of women speaking either in English, the native language used in the home, or in Spanish, a language foreign to them. Using an eye tracker device to study eye movements, the researchers looked at developmental changes in attention to the eyes and mouth. Results showed that at four months of age, babies focused almost solely on the women’s eyes. But by six to eight months of age, when the infants entered the so-called “babbling” stage of language acquisition and reached a milestone of cognitive development in which they can direct their attention to things they find interesting, their focus shifted to the women’s mouths. They continue to “lip read” until about 10 months of age, a point when they finally begin mastering the basic features of their native language. At this point, infants also begin to shift their attention back to the eyes. © 2012 msnbc.com

Keyword: Language; Autism
Link ID: 16265 - Posted: 01.17.2012

By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D. In certain quarters of academia, it’s all the rage these days to view human behavior through the lens of evolutionary biology. What survival advantages, researchers ask, may lie hidden in our actions, even in our pathologies? Depression has come in for particular scrutiny. Some evolutionary psychologists think this painful and often disabling disease conceals something positive. Most of us who treat patients vehemently disagree. Consider a patient I saw not long ago, a 30-year-old woman whose husband had had an affair and left her. Within several weeks, she became despondent and socially isolated. She developed insomnia and started to ruminate constantly about what she might have done wrong. An evolutionary psychologist might posit that my patient’s response has a certain logic. After all, she broke off her normal routine, isolated herself and tried to understand her abandonment and plan for the future. You might see a survival advantage in the ability of depressed people like her to rigidly and obsessively fix their attention on one problem, tuning out just about everything and everyone else around them. Certain studies might seem to support this perspective. Paul W. Andrews, a psychologist at Virginia Commonwealth University, reported that normal subjects get sadder while trying to solve a demanding spatial pattern recognition test, suggesting that something about sadness might improve analytical reasoning. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Evolution
Link ID: 16264 - Posted: 01.17.2012

By JANE E. BRODY Hearing loss, a disability currently untreated in about 85 percent of those affected, may be the nation’s most damaging and costly sensory handicap. It is a hidden disability, often not obvious to others or even to those who have it. Its onset is usually insidious, gradually worsening over years and thus easily ignored. Most of those affected can still hear sounds and think the real problem is that people aren’t speaking clearly. They often ask others to speak up, repeat what was said or speak more slowly. Or they pretend they can hear, but their conversations may be filled with non sequiturs. As hearing worsens, they are likely to become increasingly frustrated and socially isolated. Unable to hear well in social settings, they gradually stop going to the theater, movies, places of worship, senior centers or parties or out to restaurants with friends or family. Social isolation, in turn, has been linked to depression and an increased risk of death from conditions like heart disease. And now there is another major risk associated with hearing problems: dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. This finding alone should prompt more people to get their hearing tested and, if found impaired, get properly fitted with aids that can help to keep them cognitively engaged. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hearing; Alzheimers
Link ID: 16263 - Posted: 01.17.2012

By Chelsea Conaboy A. Spinal stenosis is a narrowing of the spinal canal that can - but does not always - cause pain in the legs and other problems. It is typically the result of degenerative effects of aging. Disks or joints in the back may bulge or vertebral bones grow spurs that push into the space where the spinal cord and nerves sit, compressing them. The condition is not uncommon, said Dr. Carol Hartigan, a physiatrist in the Spine Center at New England Baptist Hospital. Researchers using imaging tests have found that as many as 30 percent of people over age 60 may have a narrowed canal, but not all experience symptoms, she said. Especially when the narrowing happens slowly over time, the spinal cord and the nerves can adjust to the change, “like a tree that grows around a fence,’’ she said. But some people will experience pain or weakness in the front or back of their legs, often more severe when they are standing or walking. Some, depending on the location of the stenosis, can have bowel and bladder problems. Hartigan said people should see a doctor if the symptoms persist or if they are interfering with daily activities. Staying physically fit is important to controlling symptoms of stenosis, Hartigan said. Often changing the position of the spine slightly can relieve pain enough to keep moving. Some who have trouble walking, might have an easier time riding a bike or even using a treadmill. Steroid injections can provide temporary relief for some, Hartigan said. © 2012 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 16262 - Posted: 01.17.2012

By Andrew Newberg Researchers have pinpointed differences between the brains of believers and nonbelievers, but the neural picture is not yet complete. Several studies have revealed that people who practice meditation or have prayed for many years exhibit increased activity and have more brain tissue in their frontal lobes, regions associated with attention and reward, as compared with people who do not meditate or pray. A more recent study revealed that people who have had “born again” experiences have a smaller hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in emotions and memory, than atheists do. These findings, however, are difficult to interpret because they do not clarify whether having larger frontal lobes or a smaller hippocampus causes a person to become more religious or whether being pious triggers changes in these brain regions. Various experiments have also tried to elucidate whether believing in God causes similar brain changes as believing in something else. The results, so far, show that thinking about God may activate the same parts of the brain as thinking about an airplane, a friend or a lamppost. For instance, one study showed that when religious people prayed to God, they used some of the same areas of the brain as when they talked to an average Joe. In other words, in the religious person’s brain, God is just as real as any object or person. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Emotions; Brain imaging
Link ID: 16261 - Posted: 01.17.2012

By Dwayne Godwin and Jorge Cham © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 16260 - Posted: 01.16.2012

By Maria Konnikova What if every visit to the museum was the equivalent of spending time at the philharmonic? For painter Wassily Kandinsky, that was the experience of painting: colors triggered sounds. Now a study from the University of California, San Diego, suggests that we are all born synesthetes like Kandinsky, with senses so joined that stimulating one reliably stimulates another. The work, published in the August issue of Psychological Science, has become the first experimental confir­mation of the infant-synesthesia hy­pothesis—which has existed, unproved, for almost 20 years. Researchers presented infantsand adults with images of repeating shapes (either circles or triangles) on a split-color background: one side was red or blue, and the other side was yellow or green. If the infants had shape-color asso­ciations, the scientists hypoth­esized, the shapes would affect their color preferences. For in­stance, some infants might look significantly longer at a green back­ground with circles than at the same green background with triangles. Absent synesthesia, no such dif­ference would be visible. The study confirmed this hunch. Infants who were two and three months old showed significant shape-color associations. By eight months the preference was no longer pronounced, and in adults it was gone altogether. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16259 - Posted: 01.16.2012

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Drinking alcohol causes a pleasant feeling because it releases endorphins, the brain’s natural opioids. But a new study has found that problem drinkers differ from social drinkers in the way alcohol affects one part of the brain. The report appeared Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine. Researchers performed PET imaging on 13 heavy drinkers and 12 social drinkers after each had had a standardized amount of alcohol. The scientists traced the release of endorphins in two regions of the brain — the nucleus accumbens and the orbitofrontal cortex — and recorded the volunteers’ subjective feelings of intoxication. All subjects reported feelings of intoxication as the researchers observed changes in opioid release in the nucleus accumbens. There was no difference between heavy drinkers and the control group when it came to changes in blood alcohol levels over time. But with the heavy drinkers, unlike with the healthy controls, there was a positive correlation between the release of endorphins in the orbitofrontal cortex and the subjects’ subjective feeling of drunkenness. This phenomenon, the authors write, may contribute to an increased perception of pleasure and to excessive alcohol consumption in these drinkers. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16258 - Posted: 01.16.2012

By Janet Raloff A new study may explain how rising carbon dioxide concentrations — and the ocean acidification they induce — can cause topsy-turvy changes in the behavior of fish. Like a flipped switch, the normal response of nerve cells can reverse as acidifying seawater perturbs how a fish regulates acids and bases in its body, including the brain. “This could be a big deal,” says neurobiologist Andrew Dittman of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. Dittman, who was not affiliated with the study, says the new findings could go a long way toward explaining curious sensory changes observed in fish exposed to acidifying waters. The scary scent of predators, for example, can suddenly become alluring. For the new study, published online January 15 in Nature Climate Change, Göran Nilsson of the University of Oslo and his colleagues homed in on brain chemistry. The idea emerged after Philip Munday of James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, told Nilsson of behavioral quirks his laboratory fish were exhibiting in a high–carbon dioxide environment — conditions exemplifying ocean waters a half-century or more from now. Nilsson, a neurophysiologist, speculated that a connection between nerves and chemistry might be involved. “It was very much an ‘Aha’ moment,” Munday says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16257 - Posted: 01.16.2012

By DIANE ACKERMAN WHAT’S the quickest way to a man’s heart? No, not through the chest wall with a knife. According to Mom wisdom, it’s a cozy meal, in a penumbra of pleasure that mingles the fragrant food with the cook. If men are anything like common fruit flies — and who’s to say they’re not at times; heaven knows women are — Mom was right. Anyway, that’s the romantic ploy of female fruit flies, for whom a dinner date is the ultimate rush. And rush it literally is, since they live only about 25 days and can’t afford to be shy. Still, the males need to be in the right mood, and the females are surprisingly picky and manipulative, given their short careers. Did I mention that some fruit flies have come-hither eyes? I don’t mean the dozens of mosaic facets, so evocative of hippie sunglasses, but the zingy psychedelic eye colors lab folk like to breed into them, the better to study mutant genes. As a Cornell grad student, I often stopped by the fetid biology lab to admire the eggplant-blackness of the abdomens, the spiky hairs, the gaudy prisms of the eyes — some apricot, some teal, some purple, some the brick-red of Ming vases. A favorite of biologists, fruit flies have it all — they’re prowling for mates within 12 hours of birth, they’re easy to raise and they can lay 100 eggs a day. Plus, they share most of our genes, including about 70 percent of those we’ve linked to such diseases as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 16256 - Posted: 01.16.2012

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR A new study has found that among immigrants, younger age at the time of migration predicts a higher incidence of psychotic disorders. The study, published in December in The American Journal of Psychiatry, was conducted from 1997 to 2005 in The Hague, where there are detailed records on almost everyone ages 15 to 54 who has made contact with the health care system for a possible psychotic disorder. The researchers found 273 immigrants, 119 second-generation citizens and 226 Dutch citizens who fit the criteria. In four ethnic groups — people from Suriname, the Netherlands Antilles, Turkey and Morocco — the risk of psychosis was most elevated among those who immigrated before age 4. There was no association of psychosis with age among immigrants from Western countries. The researchers, led by Dr. Wim Veling of the Parnassia Psychiatric Institute in The Hague, investigated various possible explanations — that social factors may be involved, that people may migrate because they are prone to psychosis, that a decision to migrate is influenced by the early appearance of psychosis, among many others. But the correlation between younger age of migration and the development of psychosis persisted. “We don’t know the reason,” said Dr. Ezra Susser, the senior author and a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, “but it might be related to early social context, which we know has an important influence on later health and mental health.” © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16255 - Posted: 01.14.2012

Using MR spectroscopy, a team of researchers has developed a way to measure whether brain tumors have a mutation in a gene called IDH. The tissue being analyzed is inside the red boxes. The tumor on the left has the mutation, while the tumor on the right does not. A team of researchers from MIT, Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Agios Pharmaceuticals are using MR spectroscopy to measure whether brain tumors have a mutation in the IDH gene. Scientists are now targeting isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) in a hope to slow tumor growth and find new ways to treat gliomas. Gliomas, the most common types of brain tumor, are also among the deadliest cancers: Their mortality rate is nearly 100 percent, in part because there are very few treatments available. A team of researchers from MIT, Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Agios Pharmaceuticals has now developed a way to identify a particular subset of brain tumors, which may help doctors choose treatments and create new drugs that target the disease’s underlying genetic mutation. Scientists have known for several years that many brain tumors involve a mutation in the gene for an enzyme called isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH). This enzyme is involved in cell metabolism — the process of breaking down sugar molecules to extract energy from them. IDH mutations are found in up to 86 percent of low-grade gliomas, which have a better prognosis than high-grade gliomas, also called glioblastomas. Patients with low-grade gliomas can survive for years, though the tumors almost always prove fatal. SciTechDaily Copyright © 1998 - 2012

Keyword: Brain imaging; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 16254 - Posted: 01.14.2012

By msnbc.com staff and news services A 9-year-old Detroit-area girl whose battle with Huntington's disease drew attention after she was taunted online in 2010 by her grandmother's former neighbor has died. Michigan Memorial Funeral Home in Flat Rock, which is handling arrangements, says Kathleen Edward died Wednesday. One Facebook posting was of her doctored photo placed above a set of crossbones and another included a photo of her mother in the arms of the grim reaper. The conflict with the neighbor reportedly stemmed from a misunderstanding with the girl's family. After the Facebook taunts appeared, people worldwide voiced their support of the young girl on Facebook and raised money to send her on a shopping spree in 2010, according to the Detroit Free Press. Huntington's disease is a genetic, incurable brain disorder which, in children, can cause tremors, slow, rigid movements and seizures. Kathleen's mother also died from the degenerative disease in 2009, the newspaper reported. If one parent has Huntington's disease, a child has a 50 percent chance of getting it. Most people with Huntington's disease develop symptoms in their 40s or later, but when younger people get it, the disease tends to progress more quickly, according to the Mayo Clinic. "She suffered with this disease for a while, and she never complained," her grandmother, Rebecca Rose, told the Detroit Free Press. "She was always happy, always smiling." © 2012 msnbc.com

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 16253 - Posted: 01.14.2012

Caitlin Stier, video intern Don't believe your eyes as you watch this video: although the rectangles moving in sync suddenly seem to shuffle, their motion hasn't actually changed. Keep watching when a backdrop of morphing stripes appears and a caterpillar-like motion can be seen. Created by graduate student Sebastiaan Mathôt from VU University of Amsterdam, the brain trick occurs when the background is striped rather than solid, an illusion originally developed by researcher Stuart Anstis from University of California, San Diego. The effect is caused by the influence of contrast on motion. When there is a big difference in contrast between a moving object and its background, it appears to move faster than when brightness levels are similar. In this case, the top rectangle is brighter than the maroon one below it. So when their front edges are superimposed on a dark stripe, the top block seems to move faster than the bottom one. Similarly, the speed effect is reversed when they cover the lighter stripe. In the second version of the illusion with morphing stripes, the front and back edges of the blocks sit on different colours. Since the motion of each edge is perceived independently, the front and back of the blocks appear to move at different speeds, creating a caterpillar-like sashay. According to Anstis, the contrast effect is also experienced by drivers. On a foggy day, the difference in brightness between an object and its surroundings is generally less than on a sunny day. This can cause drivers to underestimate how fast they're travelling and speed up, sometimes with disastrous consequences. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 16252 - Posted: 01.14.2012

By Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen L. Macknik Our brains are exquisitely tuned to perceive, recognize and remember faces. We can easily find a friend’s face among dozens or hundreds of unfamiliar faces in a busy street. We look at each other’s facial expressions for signs of appreciation and disapproval, love and contempt. And even after we have corresponded or spoken on the phone with somebody for a long time, we are often relieved when we meet him or her in person and are able to put “a face to the name.” The neurons responsible for our refined “face sense” lie in a brain region called the fusiform gyrus. Trauma or lesions to this brain area result in a rare neurological condition called prosopagnosia, or face blindness. Prosopagnostics fail to identify celebrities, close relatives and even themselves in the mirror. But even those of us with normal face-recognition skills are subject to many illusions and biases in face perception. This illusion, created by psychologist Richard Russell, won third prize in the 2009 Best Illusion of the Year Contest. The side-by-side faces are perceived as female and male. Yet both are versions of the same androgynous face (see http://illusioncontest.neuralcorrelate.com/2009/the-illusion-of-sex). The two images are identical, except that the contrast between the eyes and mouth and the rest of the face is higher for the face on the left than for the face on the right. This illusion shows that contrast is an important cue for determining the sex of a face, with low-contrast faces appearing male and high-contrast faces appearing female. It may also explain why females in many cultures darken their eyes and mouths with cosmetics: a made-up face looks more feminine than a fresh face. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 16251 - Posted: 01.14.2012

By Laura Beil When Lewis Carroll sent Alice down the rabbit hole, she encountered a strange and twisted land with distortions of size and time. Some headache experts see something else — the possible ghosts of the author’s migraines, which can leave victims temporarily blinded, nauseated, hallucinatory, numb, unable to concentrate or seeking shelter from painful stings of light and sound. People with migraines travel between two worlds: one in which they are having a migraine and one in which they are not. “I’m very brave generally,” Tweedledum tells Alice, “only today I happen to have a headache.” But even after the headache is gone, migraine sufferers live with the dread of its return. For more than a century, researchers have been trying to step through the looking glass to find clues to the mystery of migraines, with little success. Treatments that can prevent or end migraine attacks exist only because drugs for something else were found, often by accident, to quiet the migraine’s neurological storm. “All of the major things we use were not designed for migraine at all,” says Peter Goadsby, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco. “It’s not good enough that one of the commonest of medical problems has treatment developed by serendipity.” A major barrier to relief, it turns out, has been that migraines, which affect 36 million people in the United States, have no known cause. But researchers now think that they are, at least, looking for the culprits in the right places. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 16250 - Posted: 01.14.2012