By Laura Sanders Brain differences might help explain psychopaths’ cold, calculated and often antisocial behavior, and perhaps even point out better ways to treat or prevent the disorder, a study of Wisconsin prison inmates suggests. Compared with a group of 13 non-psychopathic criminals, a group of 14 psychopaths had weaker connections between an area near the front of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, or vmPFC, and the amygdala, a pair of almond-shaped structures deep in the brain. Earlier studies have hinted that this particular link is important for emotional regulation and aggression. Neuroscientist Michael Koenigs of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and colleagues discovered the weaker connection by taking a mobile brain scanner to a medium-security prison. Psychopaths are overrepresented in prison populations thanks to their lack of empathy and tendency toward antisocial behavior. After interviewing inmates and scrutinizing their disciplinary records to determine whether they were psychopaths, the scientists conducted two kinds of brain scans. The first measured the strength of brain connections called white matter tracts, which are bundles of nerves that serve as information superhighways that shuttle information between different brain regions. It was those scans that revealed the weaker link between the vmPFC and the amygdala in psychopaths, the team reports November 30 in the Journal of Neuroscience. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Aggression; Emotions
Link ID: 16096 - Posted: 12.01.2011

by Terrence W. Deacon IN A 1992 issue of The Times Literary Supplement, the philosopher Jerry Fodor famously complained that: "Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious." In 2011, despite two decades of explosive advances in brain research and cognitive science, Fodor's assessment still rings true. Why is that? Is it just that cognitive neuroscience still has a long way to go? Or have we been looking in the wrong places for clues? For hints to this mystery, brain researchers and philosophers of mind have focused on brain processes, neural computations and their correspondences with the physical world. But what if we should be focusing on what is not there instead? This proposal is at the heart of my new book Incomplete Nature. I believe that in order to overcome this stalemate we need to pay more attention to what is intrinsically not present in everything - from life's functions and meanings to mind's experiences and values. This suggestion is not intended as an invitation to mysticism, rather it is a way of pointing to the importance of what the field of statistical mechanics calls "constraint": the degrees of freedom not realised in a dynamical process. To illustrate, consider how a quickly flowing stream forms stable eddies as it curls around a boulder, or how a snow crystal spontaneously grows its precise, hexagonally symmetric, yet idiosyncratic branches. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 16095 - Posted: 12.01.2011

by Marion Long and Valerie Ross For centuries experts held that every language is unique. Then one day in 1956, a young linguistics professor gave a legendary presentation at the Symposium on Information Theory at MIT. He argued that every intelligible sentence conforms not only to the rules of its particular language but to a universal grammar that encompasses all languages. And rather than absorbing language from the environment and learning to communicate by imitation, children are born with the innate capacity to master language, a power imbued in our species by evolution itself. Almost overnight, linguists’ thinking began to shift. Avram Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia on December 7, 1928, to William Chomsky, a Hebrew scholar, and Elsie Simonofsky Chomsky, also a scholar and an author of children’s books. While still a youngster, Noam read his father’s manuscript on medieval Hebrew grammar, setting the stage for his work to come. By 1955 he was teaching linguistics at MIT, where he formulated his groundbreaking theories. Today Chomsky continues to challenge the way we perceive ourselves. Language is “the core of our being,” he says. “We are always immersed in it. It takes a strong act of will to try not to talk to yourself when you’re walking down the street, because it’s just always going on.” Chomsky also bucked against scientific tradition by becoming active in politics. He was an outspoken critic of American involvement in Vietnam and helped organize the famous 1967 protest march on the Pentagon. When the leaders of the march were arrested, he found himself sharing a cell with Norman Mailer, who described him in his book Armies of the Night as “a slim, sharp-featured man with an ascetic expression, and an air of gentle but absolute moral integrity.” © 2011, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 16094 - Posted: 12.01.2011

By Michelle Roberts Health reporter, BBC News Frequently heading a football can lead to brain injury, warn doctors who say they have found proof on brain scans. Imaging of 32 keen amateur players revealed patterns of damage similar to that seen in patients with concussion. There appears to be a safe cut off level of 1,000 or fewer headers a year below which no harm will be done, but the US investigators say more work is needed to confirm this. Heading is believed to have killed the English footballer Jeff Astle. Astle, 59, who died in 2002, developed cognitive problems after years of playing for England and West Bromwich Albion. The coroner ruled that his death resulted from a degenerative brain disease caused by heading heavy leather footballs. Although the balls used to play soccer today are much lighter than those used in the 1960s when Astle was playing, they can still pack a punch, says lead researcher Dr Michael Lipton of Montefiore Medical Center, the university hospital for the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 16093 - Posted: 11.29.2011

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who attend regular education classes may be more likely to improve their social skills if their typically developing peers are taught how to interact with them than if only the children with ASD are taught such skills. According to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health, a shift away from more commonly used interventions that focus on training children with ASD directly may provide greater social benefits for children with ASD. The study was published online ahead of print on November 30, 2011, in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. The most common type of social skills intervention for children with ASD is direct training of a group of children with social challenges, who may have different disorders and may be from different classes or schools. The intervention is usually delivered at a clinic, but may also be school-based and offered in a one-on-one format. Other types of intervention focus on training peers how to interact with classmates who have difficulty with social skills. Both types of intervention have shown positive results in studies, but neither has been shown to be as effective in community settings. Connie Kasari, Ph.D., of the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues compared different interventions among 60 children, ages 6-11, with ASD. All of the children were mainstreamed in regular education classrooms for at least 80 percent of the school day.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 16092 - Posted: 11.29.2011

By Ferris Jabr When a researcher asks a volunteer to slide head-first into the open eye of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine, the expectation is that the device's magnetic field will penetrate the skull to produce a faithful picture of the brain without changing its behavior. A new study suggests, however, that MRI machines do, in fact, manipulate brain activity—and they change the brain in a way that helps treat depression. In other words, MRIs may be unintentional antidepressants. Hadi Rokni-Yazdi of Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Iran and his colleagues organized 51 volunteers with major depressive disorder into three 17-person groups. Volunteers in the first two groups received one of two kinds of MRI scan. Those in the third group received phony MRI scans: The magnet was never switched on, but a recording of the sound generated by a genuine session was played to convince the volunteers they had been scanned. All the subjects were taking common antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and all had their level of depression assessed by standard scales before and after the procedure. Two weeks after the scans, volunteers in the first two groups scored between 35 and 40 percent lower on the depression scales than they scored before the scan. The placebo effect may have played a role; when people believe they are receiving a helpful treatment for anything, they often feel better afterward. But volunteers in the pretend MRI group improved less, only by 15 to 19 percent. So, the researchers reasoned, some other factor must explain why volunteers who received phony MRIs showed less improvement. The results are discussed in the November issue of Brain Imaging and Behavior. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Depression; Brain imaging
Link ID: 16091 - Posted: 11.29.2011

By JANE E. BRODY Ilsa Katz was 85 when her daughter, Vivian Atkins, first noticed that her mother was becoming increasingly confused. “She couldn’t remember names, where she’d been or what she’d done that day,” Ms. Atkins recalled in an interview. “Initially, I was not too worried. I thought it was part of normal aging. But over time, the confusion and memory problems became more severe and more frequent.” Her mother couldn’t remember the names of close relatives or what day it was. She thought she was going to work or needed to go downtown, which she never did. And she was often agitated. A workup at a memory clinic resulted in a diagnosis of early Alzheimer’s disease, and Ms. Katz was prescribed Aricept, which Ms. Atkins said seemed to make matters worse. But the clinic also tested Ms. Katz’s blood level of vitamin B12. It was well below normal, and her doctor thought that could be contributing to her symptoms. Weekly B12 injections were begun. “Soon afterward, she became less agitated, less confused and her memory was much better,” said Ms. Atkins. “I felt I had my mother back, and she feels a lot better, too.” Now 87, Ms. Katz still lives alone in Manhattan and feels well enough to refuse outside assistance. Still, her daughter wondered, “Why aren’t B12 levels checked routinely, particularly in older people?” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 16090 - Posted: 11.29.2011

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS Just in time for Thanksgiving, a major new study offers some hopeful news about fat and fate, as well as about the consequences of the choices we make. For the research, investigators tallied the results of dozens of studies about the effects of exercise on the so-called fat gene, which is believed to increase the risk that carriers will be overweight or obese by 12 percent or more. Scientists first identified this gene, called the “fat mass and obesity-associated” gene, or FTO gene, several years ago, and as it turns out, it’s distressingly common. By most estimates, about 65 percent of people of European or African descent and perhaps 44 percent of Asians carry some version of the FTO gene. These findings would seem to suggest that most of us are doomed to be tubby, an enervating idea — and one that may even be self-fulfilling. In a study published in February in The New England Journal of Medicine, volunteers who learned that they carried the FTO gene or similar fat-promoting genes frequently turned afterward to heedless binging, consuming more fatty foods in the next 90 days than they had in the preceding months, presumably because they believed that their fate, at least in terms of weight, was sealed. But the new report, published this month in the journal PLoS Medicine, emphatically suggests otherwise. It found that physical activity, even in small doses, may subvert genetic destiny. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 16089 - Posted: 11.29.2011

By LAURA BEIL Witness testimony has been the gold standard of the criminal justice system, revered in courtrooms and crime dramas as the evidence that clinches a case. Yet scientists have long cautioned that the brain is not a filing cabinet, storing memories in a way that they can be pulled out, consulted and returned intact. Memory is not so much a record of the past as a rough sketch that can be modified even by the simple act of telling the story. For scientists, memory has been on trial for decades, and courts and public opinion are only now catching up with the verdict. It has come as little surprise to researchers that about 75 percent of DNA-based exonerations have come in cases where witnesses got it wrong. This month, the Supreme Court heard its first oral arguments in more than three decades that question the validity of using witness testimony, in a case involving a New Hampshire man convicted of theft, accused by a woman who saw him from a distance in the dead of night. And in August the New Jersey Supreme Court set new rules to cope with failings in witness accounts, during an appeal by a man picked from a photo lineup, and convicted of manslaughter and weapons possession in a 2003 fatal shooting. Rather than the centerpiece of prosecution, witness testimony should be viewed more like trace evidence, scientists say, with the same fragility and vulnerability to contamination. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 16088 - Posted: 11.29.2011

By CARL ZIMMER CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Steven Pinker was a 15-year-old anarchist. He didn’t think people needed a police force to keep the peace. Governments caused the very problems they were supposed to solve. Besides, it was 1969, said Dr. Pinker, who is now a 57-year-old psychologist at Harvard. “If you weren’t an anarchist,” he said, “you couldn’t get a date.” At the dinner table, he argued with his parents about human nature. “They said, ‘What would happen if there were no police?’ ” he recalled. “I said: ‘What would we do? Would we rob banks? Of course not. Police make no difference.’ ” This was in Montreal, “a city that prided itself on civility and low rates of crime,” he said. Then, on Oct. 17, 1969, police officers and firefighters went on strike, and he had a chance to test his first hypothesis about human nature. “All hell broke loose,” Dr. Pinker recalled. “Within a few hours there was looting. There were riots. There was arson. There were two murders. And this was in the morning that they called the strike.” The ’60s changed the lives of many people and, in Dr. Pinker’s case, left him deeply curious about how humans work. That curiosity turned into a career as a leading expert on language, and then as a leading advocate of evolutionary psychology. In a series of best-selling books, he has argued that our mental faculties — from emotions to decision-making to visual cognition — were forged by natural selection. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 16087 - Posted: 11.29.2011

A new report shows that female Grade 8 students are outperforming their male counterparts in Canada on reading and science, with no discernable difference between the two genders in math skills. The report, released Monday, outlines the results of the 2010 Pan-Canadian Assessment Program (PCAP) from the Council of Ministers of Education in Canada. It's based on test results from 32,000 Grade 8 students from more than 1,600 schools across the country, providing a national report card. Girls scored better than boys in both science and reading, lending credence to the view that boys need a push in several subjects. Break-down by province Students in Quebec and Ontario scored above the national average on math. They scored near the national average in Alberta, and below the average in all other provinces and territories tested. When it comes to science, students in Alberta and Ontario scored above the national average. They scored near the national average in British Columbia and Prince Edward Island, and below the average in all other provinces and territories tested. On the reading portion, students in Ontario and Alberta scored above the national average. They scored near the national average in British Columbia, and below the average in all other provinces and territories tested. © CBC 2011

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 16086 - Posted: 11.29.2011

Cells taken from people with a rare syndrome linked to autism could help explain the origins of the condition, scientists suggest. The Stanford University team turned skin cells from people with "Timothy syndrome" into fully-fledged brain cells. The abnormal activity found in these cells could be partially corrected using an experimental drug, Nature Medicine reports. UK researchers warned the findings might not apply to everyone with autism. Compared with the hundreds of thousands of people worldwide thought to show characteristics of autism, "Timothy syndrome" is vanishingly rare, affecting an estimated 20 people across the planet. People who have the syndrome frequently display autistic behaviour, such as problems with social development and communication. Because it is caused by a single gene defect rather than a combination of small genetic flaws, each making a tiny contribution, it presents a useful target for scientists looking to examine what goes wrong in the developing brain of a child with autism. The US researchers used a technique developed recently to generate brain cells called neurons from only a sample of the patient's skin. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 16085 - Posted: 11.29.2011

by Greg Miller Immature neurons transplanted into the brains of obesity-prone mice can prevent the animals from becoming so fat, according to a new study. The researchers caution that their experiment was never intended as a step toward treating obesity in humans, but they say it provides an important proof of principle that transplanted fetal cells can integrate themselves into an abnormal neural circuit and help restore its function. Other researchers say the work highlights both the promise and the challenges of developing cell therapies for complex brain disorders. The road to fetal or stem cell therapies for the nervous system has been rocky. Despite early promise, recent trials of fetal cell transplants for Parkinson's disease have yielded disappointing results, for example, and last week the California biotechnology company Geron pulled the plug on a closely watched trial of a stem cell therapy for spinal injury. It also announced that, for financial reasons, it would abandon further stem cell work. Yet basic neuroscience research has been more encouraging. In the past decade, scientists overturned century-old dogma by showing that some parts of the human brain produce new neurons throughout life. There is evidence that these new neurons get wired into existing neural circuits and may help maintain or enhance brain function, suggesting that transplanted cells may be able to do the same. In the new study, reported online today in Science, Harvard University neuroscientist Jeffrey Macklis and colleagues investigated whether fetal neurons transplanted into a part of the mouse brain that does not normally produce new neurons of its own could repair an abnormal neural circuit. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 16084 - Posted: 11.26.2011

By Nathan Seppa By screening people who have died with full-body computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging, doctors can often determine the cause of death without an autopsy, British researchers report November 22 in the Lancet. Further combining a CT scan with a quick heart test might result in a solid determination of cause of death in up to half of cases referred for autopsy, says study coauthor Ian Roberts, a pathologist at the University of Oxford. Autopsies are invasive and sometimes inconclusive, and some people object to the procedure on cultural or religions grounds. The new data suggest that imaging may provide an alternative in some cases, adding to post-mortem accuracy and easing the burden of grieving survivors, says Roberts. Whether imaging would save money is unknown, he says. At their essence, autopsies have changed little in the past century but remain the gold standard post-mortem exam. In recent years, some coroners and medical examiners have considered the use of medical imaging with MRI or CT scans, but few labs or hospitals have adopted the technologies because little research data existed to document their utility in this setting. For the new study, Roberts and his colleagues examined 182 deceased people whose cause of death wasn’t known. All underwent a CT scan and MRI. Radiologists analyzed those results separately and combined, arriving at a cause of death from each set of images. The radiologists also ranked how much confidence they had in each cause-of-death conclusion — definite, probable, possible or uncertain. Pathologists then performed autopsies on all of the bodies. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 16083 - Posted: 11.26.2011

By Tina Hesman Saey Scientists have deciphered the complete genetic instruction book of monarch butterflies. It is the first butterfly genome completed and the first of a long-distance migrating insect. Within the butterfly’s genetic archive, neurobiologist Steven Reppert of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester and his colleagues found genes that may help the insects sense the position of the sun and navigate to fir trees in Mexico, where they spend the winter. Reporting in the Nov. 23 Cell, the team also notes that monarchs make more of certain small genetic molecules, called microRNAs, that are involved in building muscle, regulating temperature sensitivity and storing fat when in migration mode. The 273 million DNA units that make up the monarch genome also include a complete set of genes for producing juvenile hormone, which summer butterflies use to kick-start reproduction. Migrating male monarchs use different strategies than females do to turn off the hormone, the team discovered. Monarchs have genes similar to ones that silk moths use to sense mating chemicals called pheromones. Those genes may aid social interactions between monarchs in their wintering grounds, Reppert says. The scientists also unearthed from the genome a gear previously thought to be missing from the butterfly’s daily, or circadian, clock, which helps the monarchs maintain a straight path. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Animal Migration; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 16082 - Posted: 11.26.2011

By BENEDICT CAREY ATHENS, Ohio — She was gone for good, and no amount of meditation could resolve the grief, even out here in the deep quiet of the woods. “When I began to see the delusions in the context of things that were happening in my real life, they finally made some sense," Milt Greek said. "And understanding the story of my psychosis helped me see what I needed to stay well.” Milt Greek pushed to his feet. It was Mother’s Day 2006, not long after his mother’s funeral, and he headed back home knowing that he needed help. A change in the medication for his schizophrenia, for sure. A change in focus, too; time with his family, to forget himself. And, oh yes, he had to act on an urge expressed in his psychotic delusions: to save the world. So after cleaning the yard around his house — a big job, a gift to his wife — in the coming days he sat down and wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, supporting a noise-pollution ordinance. Small things, maybe, but Mr. Greek has learned to live with his diagnosis in part by understanding and acting on its underlying messages, and along the way has built something exceptional: a full life, complete with a family and a career. He is one of a small number of successful people with a severe psychiatric diagnosis who have chosen to tell their story publicly. In doing so, they are contributing to a deeper understanding of mental illness — and setting an example that can help others recover. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 16081 - Posted: 11.26.2011

By Emily Main Redheads may be stereotyped as having fiery tempers, but those tempers may turn to fear and loathing when they walk through the door of a dentist’s office, according to research published in the Journal of the American Dental Association. The study shows that people with a specific gene that often occurs in redheads tend to experience heightened anxiety when they pop in for a regular teeth cleaning. The details: The study’s authors recruited 144 people for the study, 67 of whom were natural redheads, and 77 who were dark-haired. The participants answered survey questions about any fears or anxieties related to dental visits, and the researchers took blood samples that they later tested for specific gene variants common in people with red hair. People with one specific gene, MC1R, were more than twice as likely to report that they avoided dental appointments because of fear and anxiety than people without that gene. Of the 85 people in the study with MC1R, 65 were redheads. What it means: It’s possible, say the researchers, that redheads with the gene in question tend to be resistant to certain pain medications. This could mean redheads are more prone than most to experience a difficult dental visit, affecting their expectations about future appointments. Redheaded or not, most of us have probably had reservations about going to the dentist at some point in our lives. But don’t let fear prevent you from getting your twice-yearly checkups. Recent studies have linked periodontal disease to a wide variety of chronic diseases, including heart disease, strokes, and type 2 diabetes. If it’s been a while since you’ve visited the dentist, you might be pleasantly surprised at the experience. “Things don’t hurt anymore,” says Kimberly A. Harms, DDS, consumer advisor for the American Dental Association. Anesthesia has become much more effective, she says, and patients don’t have to experience the pain that used to be common in dental procedures. © 2011 msnbc.com

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 16080 - Posted: 11.26.2011

Ewen Callaway Put two young mice in a cage and they will politely sniff one another. Two rat pups, by contrast, quickly become a blur of fur as they begin some “really rough-and-tumble play”, says Richard Paylor, a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. Such behaviour makes rats an ideal animal model for studying autism spectrum disorder, given that children who have the disorder are often less interested in play than children without it. Paylor is one of the first scientists to use transgenic rats to study neurodevelopmental diseases such as autism, and presented his team’s work at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington DC last week. Transgenic rats, Paylor and others say, are a better proxy than mice for the behavioural and cognitive problems experienced by people with autism. And because rats are a preferred model for the pharmaceutical industry, their use in basic research may speed new treatments. “I think they’re the future,” says Joseph Buxbaum, a neuroscientist at the Seaver Autism Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. “I could name 20 high-complexity behavioural tests that you can do in a rat that nobody’s ever done in a mouse.” At the meeting, he debuted his lab’s own transgenic rat strain, which is missing a working copy of a gene called Shank3. People with this same mutation usually develop a neurodevelopmental condition, often autism. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 16079 - Posted: 11.26.2011

Sandrine Ceurstemont, New Scientist TV Feeling sleepy after your Thanksgiving dinner? You may have heard that turkey consumption is to blame since it contains a natural sedative called tryptophan. But now an animation produced by the American Chemical Society debunks this common myth and identifies what food in your feast is most likely responsible for your drowsiness. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 16078 - Posted: 11.26.2011

by Jessica Hamzelou BRAIN shrinkage in people with Alzheimer's disease can be reversed in some cases - by jolting the degenerating tissue with electrical impulses. Moreover, doing so reduces the cognitive decline associated with the disease. "In Alzheimer's disease it is known that the brain shrinks, particularly the hippocampus," says Andres Lozano at Toronto Western Hospital in Ontario, Canada. What's more, brain scans show that the temporal lobe, which contains the hippocampus, and another region called the posterior cingulate use less glucose than normal, suggesting they have shut down. Both regions play an important role in memory. To try to reverse these degenerative effects, Lozano and his team turned to deep brain stimulation - sending electrical impulses to the brain via implanted electrodes. The group inserted electrodes into the brains of six people who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's at least a year earlier. They placed the electrodes next to the fornix - a bundle of neurons that carries signals to and from the hippocampus - and left them there, delivering tiny pulses of electricity 130 times per second. Follow-up tests a year later showed that the reduced use of glucose by the temporal lobe and posterior cingulate had been reversed in all six people (Annals of Neurology, DOI: 10.1002/ana.22089). © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 16077 - Posted: 11.26.2011