by Elizabeth Norton A loud shirt. A gravelly voice. Purple prose. The merging of the senses, called synesthesia, is a literary device that makes for vivid imagery. But in a neurological condition with the same name, a single perception can involve a second, linked sense that most people would not experience. "Synesthetes" may taste chocolate when hearing a song or see numbers as colors. The reason, new research suggests, may be that the brain cells in the area responsible for the secondary, or extra, sense—for instance, the chocolate taste—are overly active. In addition to shedding light on an unusual mode of perception, the findings could lead to treatments for brain disorders—showing ways to reduce hallucinations, for example, or correcting various types of impaired perception that can follow a stroke. Synesthesia can occur early in life due to the explosive growth of a young child's brain, explains neuroscientist Devin Terhune of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Normally, as the child grows older and brain circuits are refined, the linkages break up. But in synesthetes, for some reason, the secondary sense persists throughout life. The simplest explanation, Terhune and his colleagues believe, is that neurons in the area responsible for the extra sense are more responsive, or "excitable," than usual, strengthening a sensory association that the person wouldn't normally be aware of. The investigators tested their hypothesis with a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation, which, as the name suggests, stimulates a specific part of the brain with a weak magnetic field applied to the scalp. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 16056 - Posted: 11.19.2011

By Scicurious Brain Now we come to the Ig Nobel Physiology Prize. Yawns are notoriously contagious in humans and in other social animals, especially primates. In humans, yawning has been thought to do various things, including cooling the brain, increasing arousal when you’re sleepy and, possibly, helping to synchronize group behavior. Could yawning be a form of unconscious empathy? This would mean that in order to have a contagious yawn, the animals involved would have to be capable of empathy, of fellow feeling. We know that dogs and primates, and humans, probably are, but that means we can’t really test for whether it’s empathy or not. We need a species that is social but probably can’t feel for its compatriots. That’s where tortoises come in. To test whether yawning requires empathy and thus get at the real purpose that yawning might serve, Anna Wilkinson of the University of Lincoln in England and her colleagues took a group of red-footed tortoises that lived together and trained one of them to yawn when exposed to a red square. Then they had tortoises watch the trained tortoise in action and checked them for yawns. The researchers also checked for yawns when no other tortoise was present and when the trained tortoise had no red square and so wasn’t yawning. What they got was a big, fat negative. The test tortoises showed no notice of the other animals’ huge yawns. This may mean that contagious yawning is not just the result of a fixed-action pattern triggered when you see someone else yawn. If that were the case, the tortoises would have yawned right along with their compatriots. Contagious social yawning may require something more, a social sense or a sense of empathy resulting from complex social interactions. Of course, it could also mean that tortoises are just a really bad choice for contagious yawning. But the social explanation seems a little more supported. —From the Scicurious Brain at http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain © 2011 Scientific American

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 16055 - Posted: 11.19.2011

Sandrine Ceurstemont, New Scientist TV The mysterious origin of the female orgasm hasn't yet been solved, but now the world's first movie of the brain during sexual climax maps activity before, during and after the event. Created by animators from theVisualMD, it's based on brain scans captured by Barry Komisaruk of Rutgers University, New Jersey, and his team as a woman stimulated herself inside an fMRI machine. The animation uses a colour scale that varies from red to white, where yellow and white are linked to highest levels of activity. The first sequence uses snapshots of 20 moments during the 7-minute scan. Initially, genital touching fires up a region of the sensory cortex but signals quickly spread to the limbic system, an area linked to emotion, behaviour and long-term memory. Then the cerebellum and frontal cortex light up as muscles become tense before climax. During orgasm, almost the whole brain becomes highly active, as demonstrated by the bright yellow colours. This stage is highlighted in the second part of the animation. Activity then returns to lower levels. Komisaruk hopes that this map of the brain will help explain conditions where women have difficulty achieving orgasm, by showing where the process breaks down. He's also developing a technique where people can watch their brain activity while inside an fMRI scanner, allowing them to learn how to change brain patterns. This could help treat a range of conditions such as pain, anxiety and depression. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Brain imaging
Link ID: 16054 - Posted: 11.19.2011

Scientists are getting closer to the dream of creating computer systems that can replicate the brain. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have designed a computer chip that mimics how the brain's neurons adapt in response to new information. Such chips could eventually enable communication between artificially created body parts and the brain. It could also pave the way for artificial intelligence devices. There are about 100 billion neurons in the brain, each of which forms synapses - the connections between neurons that allow information to flow - with many other neurons. This process is known as plasticity and is believed to underpin many brain functions, such as learning and memory. Neural functions The MIT team, led by research scientist Chi-Sang Poon, has been able to design a computer chip that can simulate the activity of a single brain synapse. Activity in the synapses relies on so-called ion channels which control the flow of charged atoms such as sodium, potassium and calcium. The 'brain chip' has about 400 transistors and is wired up to replicate the circuitry of the brain. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 16053 - Posted: 11.19.2011

Caitlin Stier, video intern In this video, a straw appears to pass through a safety pin. Wonder what the trick is? Developed by illusion enthusiast Greg Ross of Greeenpro Productions in Pennsylvania, it's a variation of a well-known sleight of hand that exploits the limitations of sight. Ross devised the set-up while tinkering with a straw, toothpick, and safety pin. He first pierced the straw and toothpick and fastened the two with the pin. By applying pressure on the pin with the straw and toothpick combo, the straw spins around 180 degrees. But it moves so fast that neither our eyes nor the camera can detect the half-rotation. "I wanted to somehow create a solid through solid effect, which took that a step further into the realm of optical illusions rather than magic," Ross explains. Super-fast motion is necessary for the trick to work. According to psychologist Stephen Macknik, author of the book Sleights of Mind, assuming the narrow straw is about the same size as a nail, we don't see it until it stops if it completes more than about one rotation in three seconds. Macknik estimates that the straw in this clip takes a mere 100 milliseconds to complete nearly half a rotation. That's fifteen times faster than the human motion system can detect for an object of that size. If you would like to recreate the illusion yourself, you can follow a tutorial prepared by Ross that demonstrates how to make your own straw and pin trick. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 16052 - Posted: 11.19.2011

By Tina Hesman Saey WASHINGTON — Separation anxiety in some children may be due to extra doses of a particular gene. The gene, GTF2I, is located on human chromosome 7. People missing part of the chromosome that contains GTF2I have a condition called Williams syndrome and are generally extra social. On the other hand, people who have extra copies of that part of chromosome 7 may have social and other types of anxiety: About 26 percent of children with an extra copy the region containing GTF2I have been diagnosed by a doctor as having separation anxiety, human geneticist Lucy Osborne of the University of Toronto said November 15 at a press conference at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting. Osborne and colleagues genetically engineered mice to have a duplicate copy or two of GTF2I, or to be missing one copy of the gene, then tested the effect of the gene dosage on separation anxiety with a squeak test. Week-old baby mice separated from their mothers send out ultrasonic distress calls. “It’s a ‘come get me’ signal,” Osborne said. Baby mice with a normal two copies of GTF2I squeaked an average of 192 times over four minutes when removed briefly from their nests. Mice with three or four copies squeaked nearly twice as much, indicating greater anxiety at being separated from their mothers. Mice missing one copy of the gene were a little bit less vocal. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 16051 - Posted: 11.19.2011

By Susan Milius Small rodents called voles have their own battles of the sexes over macho traits. And it turns out that dominant voles don’t always come out on top, which may explain one way a species maintains genetic diversity. Among European rodents called bank voles (Myodes glareolus), dominant males readily trounce meeker ones in disputes over rights to court females, explains Mikael Mokkonen of the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. But the genetic mix underlying these supercharged males doesn’t work well when females inherit it. Sisters of the truculent top voles tend to have small litters of pups, he and his colleagues confirm in the Nov. 18 Science. “You can think of sexual conflict as a tug-of-war over a trait value because what’s optimal for males is not optimal for females,” Mokkonen says. Researchers have proposed that the evolutionary push and pull of such conflicts — favoring a dominant genetic mix at times in males but disfavoring it in females — keeps variety in a population. That possibility has become a hot topic in recent years as one possible solution for a central puzzle in biology: “If selection strongly favors some gene or some trait, why do we see so much variation in natural populations?” says evolutionary biologist Robert Cox of the University of Virginia, who studies male-female issues in lizards. For bank voles, sexual conflict by itself isn’t enough to preserve variations indefinitely, Mokkonen and his colleagues conclude. Warring sides probably aren’t perfectly balanced, and the researchers’ computer simulations found that genetic variation dwindles over the course of generations. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 16050 - Posted: 11.19.2011

By Bruce Bower Infants generally thrive physically and mentally if their mothers’ emotional condition, whether healthy or depressed, remains stable before and after birth, say psychologist Curt Sandman of the University of California, Irvine, and his colleagues. Kids whose mothers stayed depressed from the fourth month of pregnancy on displayed first-year mental and physical development comparable to that of youngsters whose mothers stayed emotionally healthy for the same stretch, Sandman’s team will report in Psychological Science. In contrast, babies’ first-year physical and mental development lagged if their mothers’ emotional state during pregnancy changed after giving birth. That pattern held whether depression during pregnancy resolved after giving birth or depression first appeared after delivering a child. “A human fetus that prepares for inadequate care after birth based on biological messages from a depressed mother will have a survival advantage,” Sandman says. A fetus that gets thrown a caretaking curve upon leaving the womb — whether biologically primed to expect sufficient or deficient treatment — tends to struggle developmentally, at least for the first year, he suggests. Related investigations have found that people whose mothers nearly starved during pregnancy eventually developed higher rates of diabetes and other metabolic disorders if they received enough food after birth, but not if they too got inadequate nutrition. Until now, no one has reported a health advantage for babies exposed to maternal depression before and after birth. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Depression
Link ID: 16049 - Posted: 11.19.2011

By Nick Bascom Standing fully erect and balancing on only two feet gives humans a strange strut that sets them apart from all other mobile critters. Yet the basic motor commands that direct a human stride may also get other animals moving, a new study suggests. Although legged vertebrates come in many different shapes and sizes and exhibit a wide variety of walking styles, they may all employ a similar nerve system, located in the spine, to coordinate the muscle activity needed for locomotion, neurophysiologist Francesco Lacquaniti of the University of Rome Tor Vergata and colleagues report in the Nov. 18 Science. Networks of spinal nerve cells, called central pattern generators, contain all the necessary information to time the muscles for the step cycle, says neuroscientist Sten Grillner of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, who was not involved in the study. The networks still need to be turned on by the brain, but once triggered, the spinal nerves handle locomotion all on their own. A message to start moving gets generated in the spinal cord and travels down the nerve pathway to specialized nerve cells that deliver the message directly to muscle fibers. The central pattern generators are so autonomous that, in some cases, cats can still walk after having their spinal cords severely damaged. It doesn’t work the same in humans, who typically suffer permanent paralysis after significant spinal shock. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16048 - Posted: 11.19.2011

By R. Douglas Fields Children breast-fed longer than six months scored a 3.8-point IQ margin over those who were bottle-fed, according to a seven-year study by researchers at Jagiellonian University Medical College in Poland. Medical epidemiologist Wieslaw Jedrychowski and colleagues followed 468 babies born to nonsmoking mothers. The children were tested five times at regular intervals from infancy through preschool age. The data showed that cognitive abilities of preschoolers who were breast-fed scored significantly higher than bottle-fed infants, and IQ score was directly proportional to how long the infants had been breast-fed: IQs were 2.1 points higher in children who were breast-fed for three months; 2.6 points higher when babies were breast-fed for four to six months; 3.8 points higher in children breast-fed longer than six months. The results were published in the May 2011 issue of the European Journal of Pediatrics. This research confirms observations reported 70 years ago by Carolyn Hoefer and Mattie Hardy in JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association, as well as many subsequent studies. This body of research provides the scientific basis for the World Health Organization's recommendation that all infants should be exclusively breast-fed for the first six months of life. But what is the missing ingredient that undermines the cognitive development of bottle-fed babies? Chemists searching for a specific compound in mother's milk have been overlooking the obvious difference between breast-feeding and bottle-feeding—something that could easily account for the difference in cognitive development, wrote Tonse Raju, a pediatrician and neonatalogist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in the current issue of Breastfeeding Medicine, October 2011. (Raju was not involved in the Jedrychowski study.) © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Intelligence
Link ID: 16047 - Posted: 11.17.2011

By Heidi Ledford of Nature magazine It would not be the first psychiatric drug to run aground in a large study after sailing through early trials. But even though TC-5214 has failed to significantly relieve major depression in a phase III trial and investors are fleeing, some analysts and scientists argue that the setback need not spell the end for the drug, nor for other compounds that act on nicotinic receptors in nerve cells. On November 8, Targacept, a drug company based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, announced that TC-5214 had performed no better than placebo in one of four phase III trials. The results are a disappointment to clinicians eager for an innovative antidepressant. Because the drug exploits a previously untried mechanism, it might have helped the roughly one-third of people with depression who do not respond to current therapies. "We really need new options," says Noah Philip, a psychiatrist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. "People were very eager to see what this drug would do." Results from the other trials are expected by early 2012, but some analysts are pessimistic; Targacept's stock fell by 60% after the announcement. "I was stunned by the negative outcome," says Alan Carr, an analyst for the Needham & Co investment bank in New York. "I don't have high expectations for the remaining three trials." TC-5214 is a form of mecamylamine, a blood-pressure drug introduced in the 1950s. It targets nicotinic �4�2 receptors (see `Mixed signals'), which normally receive chemical signals from the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Because excess acetylcholine has been linked to major depression, blocking these signals might relieve the condition. © 2011 Scientific American

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 16046 - Posted: 11.17.2011

By Emily Sohn Among the devastating consequences of her brain injury from a gunshot wound 10 months ago, Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords lost the ability to talk. But with help from music-based therapy, according to an ABC News segment that aired this week, Giffords has rediscovered her voice and, it seems, her spirit. The footage, which shows Giffords crying in frustration when she tries unsuccessfully to talk but looking joyful as she sings fluently, paints a dramatic picture of the power of music to help people overcome brain injuries. Giffords' story also highlights both the potential and the limitations of a fairly new field of medicine. Music brings so much pleasure to our everyday lives, and it would make sense if music also worked as a healing tool. But scientists are still awaiting solid data to prove what seems to work in case study after case study. "It used to be thought that music was a superfluous thing, and no one understood why it developed from an evolutionary standpoint," said Michael De Georgia, director of the Center for Music and Medicine at Case Western Reserve University's University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland. © 2011 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Stroke
Link ID: 16045 - Posted: 11.17.2011

By Science News Staff Cats look to the edge Cats may not seem like planners, but they do look ahead when walking. Three adult cats with magnetic devices strapped to their heads walked across slats, giving scientists the first data on where cats look when they walk. The cats looked a few rungs ahead at the edges of the slats, found Trevor Rivers, now at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. "They don't say 'I want to step right there.' They are looking at where not to be," Rivers said November 14. — Tina Hesman Saey Moms protected from stress New mothers might not believe it, but being a mom may help protect against some negative consequences of stress. Tracey Shors of Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J., and colleagues tested the effect of stress on female rats' ability to learn to blink when they hear a particular sound. Stress renders virgin female rats incapable of learning the task. But mothers, including virgin female foster mothers, are protected against learning deficits. And the protection lasts a lifetime, Shors said November 13. The researchers don't yet know what about motherhood is responsible for the protection. — Tina Hesman Saey Vitamin D is good for aging brain Vitamin D may keep mental gears greased during middle age. Middle-aged rats fed high, low or standard amounts of vitamin D performed similarly on memory tests in which the animals had to find a submerged platform in a water tank, Nada Porter of the University of Kentucky and colleagues found. But when the rats had to learn a new location, "the high vitamin D guys just made a beeline" for the new spot while rats in the other two groups swam aimlessly, Porter said during a presentation November 12. — Tina Hesman Saey © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 16044 - Posted: 11.17.2011

by Carl Zimmer Neuroscientists these days regularly make spectacular discoveries about how the brain gets sick. They know much more today about brain cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and a host of other neurological disorders than they did just a few years ago. And from such discoveries come all sorts of encouraging possibilities for treating or even curing these diseases. If 
only we could break down some rogue protein or bind a drug to 
a troublesome receptor, it seems as if all would be well. There’s just one little hitch: Even if scientists invented the perfect cure, they 
probably couldn’t get it into the brain to do its work. Drugs can cross easily out of the bloodstream into most organs of the body. The brain is a glaring exception because it is protected by an intricate shield known as the blood-brain barrier. The blood-brain barrier serves a vital function: It keeps our brains free for the most part from infections or toxins that find their way into other parts of the body. Unfortunately, the brain’s barrier also gets in the way of most medicines that could help heal it. Neurologists sometimes open up the skull and inject drugs directly. That brute-force approach can work in an emergency, but it is hardly a practical solution for people who need to take drugs every day at home. There is reason for hope that the blood-brain barrier will not block medicine’s path forever, though. Some scientists are working on ways to penetrate it—either by sneaking drugs through the barrier or by temporarily opening channels through which the drugs can pass. © 2011, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 16043 - Posted: 11.17.2011

When the Society for Neuroscience gets together for their annual meeting each year, a city of scientists suddenly forms for a week. This year’s meeting has drawn 31,000 people to the Washington DC Convention Center. The subjects of their presentations ranged from brain scans of memories to the molecular details of disorders such as Parkinson’s and autism. This morning, a scientist named Svante Paabo delivered a talk. Its subject might make you think that he had stumbled into the wrong conference altogether. He delivered a lecture about Neanderthals. Yet Paabo did not speak to an empty room. He stood before thousands of researchers in the main hall of the convention center. His face was projected onto a dozen giant screens, as if he were opening for the Rolling Stones. When Paabo was done, the audience released a surging crest of applause. One neuroscientist I know, who was sitting somewhere in that huge room, sent me a one-word email as Paabo finished: “Amazing.” You may well know about Paabo’s work. In August, Elizabeth Kolbert published a long profile in the New Yorker. But he’s been in the news for fifteen years. I’ve also followed his work since the mid-1990s, having written about pieces of Paabo’s work in newspapers, magazines, and books. But it was bracing to hear him bring together the scope of his research in an hour–including new experiments that Paabo’s colleagues are presenting at the meeting. He has changed the way scientists study human evolution. Along with fossils, they can now study genomes that belonged to people who died 40,000 years ago. They can do experiments to see how some of those individual genes helped to make us human. During his talk, Paabo used this new research to sketch out a sweeping vision of how our ancestors evolved uniquely human brains as they swept out across the world. © 2011, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 16042 - Posted: 11.17.2011

The thought of being trapped in a lifeless body, unable to communicate, is a terrifying prospect. It happened to Roy Hayim, a surveyor, who became dangerously ill after eating an airline meal. Mr Hayim contracted botulism, a rare bacterial infection. He was left paralysed and blind for several days, although he could hear everything that was happening - even a news report on the radio which said he was fighting for his life. After about 10 days Mr Hayim was able to move his thumb and for the next eight months he used this method to communicate with his wife Caroline and hospital staff. He spent nearly a year in hospital but made a full recovery. This all happened 20 years ago, but Roy remembers it vividly. Awareness "I felt trapped, afraid and terribly concerned. I didn't know whether I would survive or not," he said. I went to meet Mr Hayim to get his insight on what it is like to be unable to communicate. My visit was prompted by research in the Lancet which shows that electroencephalography - EEG - can be used to communicate with some patients who were diagnosed as vegetative. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Attention; Robotics
Link ID: 16041 - Posted: 11.15.2011

By Laura Sanders WASHINGTON — Magic tricks prey on people’s subpar powers of perception, but new work finds that the brain has tricks of its own up its sleeve: People notice more than they think. In the research, presented November 12 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, Luis Martinez of CSIC- Miguel Hernandez University in Spain and colleagues amazingly “read minds” with the Princess Card Trick, invented by magician Henry Hardin in 1905. Volunteers mentally chose a playing card from a panel of six cards, which then disappeared. When a second group of cards appeared, the researchers had miraculously figured out which card a person had in mind and removed it. Few people caught the trick: All the cards in the second set were different, not just the card people had chosen. A few seconds after viewing the two panels of cards, participants were asked which of two new cards was present in the first panel. None of the volunteers could consciously recall which card was present. Despite these avowals of ignorance, when forced to choose, people got the right answer about 80 percent of the time. “People say they don’t know, but they do,” Martinez said. “The information is still there, and we can use it unconsciously if we are forced to.” To see whether this unconscious knowledge works for objects other than cards, Martinez and his colleagues performed a similar experiment with pictures of men’s faces. A similar kind of visual short-term memory helped people choose which face they had seen before, even when volunteers didn’t perceive that they knew the correct answer. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 16040 - Posted: 11.15.2011

by Catherine de Lange How kind you are could be affected by a change in a single gene. What's more, others can tell if you have the gene even if you don't speak a single word. There are several variations of the gene that codes for the receptor for the hormone oxytocin. Aleksandr Kogan at the University of Toronto, Canada, and colleagues wanted to check whether these variations influence behaviour, since high levels of oxytocin are believed to make people more sociable. Kogan's team asked 116 volunteers to watch 23 silent videos that were 20 seconds long. Each showed a person's response to their partner telling them a story of personal suffering. The volunteers were asked to rate how kind and trustworthy the person in the video appeared to be. People with the so-called GG version of the oxytocin receptor gene were judged to be kinder than those with GA or AA versions. The difference? Those with GG variations used significantly more non-verbal empathetic gestures in their storytelling such as smiling and nodding. Kogan expects that this is what influenced the observers' judgements. Further research will be needed to identify the effect of the different genetic variations on oxytocin levels. Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.111265810 © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 16039 - Posted: 11.15.2011

By JAMES GORMAN NEW IBERIA, La. — In a dome-shaped outdoor cage, a dozen chimpanzees are hooting. The hair on their shoulders sticks straight up. “That’s piloerection,” a sign of emotional arousal, says Dr. Dana Hasselschwert, head of veterinary sciences at the New Iberia Research Center. She tells a visitor to keep his distance. The chimps tend to throw pebbles — or worse — when they get excited. Chimps’ similarity to humans makes them valuable for research, and at the same time inspires intense sympathy. To research scientists, they may look like the best chance to cure terrible diseases. But to many other people, they look like relatives behind bars. Biomedical research on chimps helped produce a vaccine for hepatitis B, and is aimed at one for hepatitis C, which infects 170 million people worldwide, but there has long been an outcry against the research as cruel and unnecessary. Now, because of a major push by advocacy organizations, a decision to stop such research in the United States could come within a year. As it is, the United States is one of only two countries that conduct invasive research on chimpanzees. The other is the central African nation of Gabon. “This is a very different moment than ever before,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States. “Now is the time to get these chimps out of invasive research and out of the labs.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 16038 - Posted: 11.15.2011

By RONI CARYN RABIN Jan Brehm lives in rainy Portland, Ore., and she has always dreaded this time of year, when the days get shorter, her mood plummets and all she wants to do is crawl into bed and eat cookie dough. She and her husband were considering moving to Arizona or Colorado — anywhere with more sunlight — until last year, when she purchased her first artificial light box. She keeps it on her desk, and every morning, before she starts her workday, she turns it on and basks in the bright artificial light for about 30 to 45 minutes while catching up on her reading. The boxes come in different sizes; Ms. Brehm’s is about 15 inches high and 12 inches wide, and she keeps it a foot or more from her face. “I still say to myself, ‘It’s a dark crummy day,’ when the clouds roll in,” Ms. Brehm, a 57-year-old actress and entrepreneur, said. “The difference is, I don’t feel like going back to bed.” For the millions of Americans who suffer from mild to severe winter blues — a condition called seasonal affective disorder, or S.A.D. — bright-light therapy is the treatment of choice, with response rates comparable with those of antidepressants. “Your natural clock is usually longer than 24 hours, and you need light in the morning to set it and keep it on track,” said Dr. Alfred Lewy, a professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health and Science University and an expert on seasonal depression and light therapy. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 16037 - Posted: 11.15.2011