Catherine de Lange, reporter Jessica Hamzelou, reporter Kate Northstone at the University of Bristol reckons a toddler left to snack on sweets and crisps could be left with a lower IQ later in life. Northstone's team collected data on the eating habits and IQ of almost 4000 children over six years. After accounting for other known influences on IQ, the team found that three-year-old children on a diet high in fat and sugar had lower IQ scores five years later than those fed healthier diets. Eight-year-olds with fruit- and vegetable-laden diets also scored more highly on IQ tests than those on less healthy diets. The results were published today in the Journal of Epidemiological Community Health. The research isn't the first to suggest ways to boost a child's IQ. Children with older dads have also been found to score lower on IQ tests, along with those who are smacked or exposed to cigarette smoke or lead. Last week, a separate study published in The Lancet said that diet could also make a key contribution to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The authors recommend that children with the condition should eliminate certain foods from their diet before beginning drug treatment. Previous research suggests that some cases of ADHD result from allergic reactions to food. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: ADHD; Intelligence
Link ID: 14975 - Posted: 02.10.2011

By Laura Sanders A cluster of nerve cells have founded their own tiny fight club. These cells, nestled deep in a primitive part of the brain, compel mice to aggressively maul not just intruder males, but also females and blown-up rubber gloves, a study finds. What’s more, the fight cells have an intertwined and thorny relationship with nearby “mate” cells, a discovery that may shed light on human sexual violence. “This is absolutely awesome,” says neuroscientist Newton Canteras of the University of São Paulo, who was not involved in the study. “They [researchers] were able to pinpoint one tiny region in the hypothalamus that is responsible for the aggressive response.” The research, led by Dayu Lin of New York University’s Langone Medical Center, was published in the Feb. 10 Nature. Earlier studies had pointed to the hypothalamus, an almond-sized structure important for hunger, thirst and body temperature, as an aggression center in the brain. Electrical stimulation there made cats and rats attack targets. But researchers didn’t have a clear idea of where in the hypothalamus the fight neurons reside. Now, for the first time, scientists have pinpointed the exact location, says study coauthor David Anderson, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Caltech. Researchers found the cells by monitoring the brains of male mice during attacks on male mouse intruders. If the hypothalamus is a country, “these cells are located in one neighborhood in a city in a state in that country,” he says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 14974 - Posted: 02.10.2011

Evidence that prescription drugs shrink patients' brains would, one might think, suggest only one course of action: stop prescribing them. But the matter turns out to be much more complicated, according to research published today in Archives of General Psychiatry on the effects of antipsychotic drugs in people with schizophrenia1. In the past 15 years, research has indicated that people with schizophrenia have smaller cerebral volumes than the general population, and that this reduction is particularly large in 'grey-matter' structures, which contain the cell bodies of neurons. For instance, one meta-analysis points to 5–7% reductions in the size of the amygdala, hippocampus and parahippocampus2, which are all involved in memory storage and retrieval. But scientists have debated whether the decrease is caused by the disease alone, or whether powerful antipsychotic drugs also have a role. According to the latest findings, the more antipsychotics patients receive, the more likely they are to have a decreased amount of grey matter. The research was led by Beng Choon Ho, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. His team used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of 211 patients, administering on average 3 scans per patient over a 7.2-year period1. They found that treatment length and the type and dose of antipsychotic drugs taken were both relatively good predictors of total brain volume change. Use of antipsychotics explained 6.6% of the change in total brain volume and 1.7% of the change in total grey-matter volume. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Brain imaging
Link ID: 14973 - Posted: 02.08.2011

Alison Abbott Depressed patients who are resistant to other therapies can be helped long term by deep-brain stimulation. The effects can still be seen six years after implanting stimulating electrodes deep inside the brain, according to a follow-up of patients published online in the American Journal of Psychiatry. The study was carried out by a team led by psychiatrist Sidney Kennedy and neurosurgeon Andres Lozano at the University Health Network in Toronto, Canada. They show that, within a year of implantation, depression lifted in 12 of 20 patients — and that the benefits were sustained for up to six years. But two of the patients died by presumed suicide. The good news is that those who showed an early response to deep-brain stimulation maintained that response, says Kennedy. "However the suspected suicides indicate that we have not been able to prevent the course of illness," he adds. According to Thomas Schläpfer, a psychiatrist at the University of Bonn, Germany, the study shows that deep-brain stimulation does actually seem to modify the disease, something that no other treatment has done. "Medication studies in depression always show patients relapsing, even if they respond at first — but responders in this study did not relapse." In the paper, response is defined as a decrease by 50% or more in scores on the Hamilton rating scale for depression. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 14972 - Posted: 02.08.2011

By Jennifer Welsh Gibbons have regional accents, a new study suggests. While not a sexy Southern drawl, these accents can help scientists identify the species of gibbon singing and where they are from. "Each gibbon has its own variable song but, much like people, there is a regional similarity between gibbons within the same location," lead researcher Van Ngoc Thinh, from the Primate Genetics Laboratory at the German Primate Center, said in a statement. The crested gibbons in the genus Nomascus, which live in the Asian rain forests of China, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, use their songs to communicate with other gibbons. They also use singing to bond with mates and define territory. The songs are specifically adapted to travel over long distances through the dense vegetation of the rain forest by concentrating all of the energy into a single frequency, similar to the calls used by rain forest birds. After analyzing the singing of more than 400 gibbons from 92 groups in 24 locations (six different species all together), the researchers compared the song information with the species and location of the gibbons. They also compared it to the genetic variation between these groups. The researchers found that each group of gibbons had its own slightly different way of singing, which varied by location. The songs could be used to pinpoint a gibbon to a species and a location. © 2011 LiveScience.com

Keyword: Language; Animal Communication
Link ID: 14971 - Posted: 02.08.2011

NEW YORK — Smoking marijuana has been linked with an increased risk of mental illness, and now researchers say that when pot smokers do become mentally ill, the disease starts earlier than it would if they didn't smoke pot. This means that serious psychiatric diseases that might not have shown up until kids were in their teens or twenties — or might never had developed at all — are starting in children as young as 12 who smoke marijuana. The link between using pot and developing serious mental illness is strongest in the youngest smokers — 12- to 15-year-olds, or kids even younger, said Dr. Matthew Large in an interview with Reuters Health. "We have to (tell) people who have marijuana in their pockets not to give it to younger people," said Large, who headed up the research at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Large and his colleagues looked at thousands of patients with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia. People with psychotic disorders lose touch with reality — usually starting in adolescence or young adulthood. The authors of the new study found that in the subjects who had been pot smokers, the psychotic symptoms began nearly 3 years earlier than in those who had not been marijuana users. Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 14970 - Posted: 02.08.2011

By Michelle Roberts Health reporter, BBC News Scientists believe they have discovered the genetic code that makes some people sleepwalk. By studying four generations of a family of sleepwalkers they traced the fault to a section of chromosome 20. Carrying even one copy of the defective DNA is enough to cause sleepwalking, the experts told the journal Neurology. They hope to target the genes involved and find new treatments for the condition that affects up to 10% of children and one in 50 adults. Most often, sleepwalking is a fairly benign problem and something that will be outgrown. Many children will have episodes where they will arise from their sleep in a trance-like state and wander. But more extreme cases of sleepwalking can be deeply disruptive and downright dangerous, particularly when the condition persists into adulthood. Sleepwalkers may perform complex feats such as locating the car keys, unlocking the doors and then driving. There have even been high-profile cases where sleepwalkers have killed during an episode. BBC © MMXI

Keyword: Sleep; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 14969 - Posted: 02.08.2011

Eating chips, chocolate and cake may be damaging to a child's intelligence, according to researchers at Bristol University. Their study suggests a link between a diet high in processed foods and a slightly lower IQ. Writing in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, they suggest poor nutrition may affect brain development. The British Dietetic Association said more young parents needed to be educated about healthy eating. The eating habits of 3,966 children taking part in the The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children were recorded at the ages of three, four, seven and eight and a half. The researchers said three types of diet emerged: Processed diets which were high in fat, sugar and convenience foods, traditional diets of meat, potato and vegetables, and health conscious diets of salads, fruit and fish. The children all took IQ tests when they were eight and half. The researchers found a link between IQ and diet, even after taking into account other factors such as the mother's level of education, social class and duration of breast feeding. BBC © MMXI

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Intelligence
Link ID: 14968 - Posted: 02.08.2011

Human brains have shrunk over the past 30,000 years, puzzling scientists who argue it is not a sign we are growing dumber but that evolution is making the key motor leaner and more efficient. The average size of modern humans -- Homo sapiens -- has decreased about 10 percent during that period -- from 1,500 to 1,359 cubic centimeters (91 to 83 cubic inches), the size of a tennis ball. Women's brains, which are smaller on average than those of men, have experienced an equivalent drop in size. These measurements were taken using skulls found in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. "I'd called that a major downsizing in an evolutionary eye blink," John Hawks of the University of Michigan told Discover magazine. But other anthropologists note that brain shrinkage is not very surprising since the stronger and larger we are, the more gray matter we need to control this larger mass. The Neanderthal, a cousin of the modern human who disappeared about 30 millennia ago for still unknown reasons, was far more massive and had a larger brain. The Cro-Magnons who left cave paintings of large animals in the monumental Lascaux cave over 17,000 years ago were the Homo sapiens with the biggest brain. They were also stronger than their modern descendants. Psychology professor David Geary of the University of Missouri said these traits were necessary to survive in a hostile environment. He has studied the evolution of skull sizes 1.9 million to 10,000 years old as our ancestors and cousins lived in an increasingly complex social environment. © 2011 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Evolution; Intelligence
Link ID: 14967 - Posted: 02.08.2011

by Douglas Fox A STRANGE contraption, a cross between a deli meat slicer and a reel-to-reel film projector, sits in a windowless room in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It whirs along unsupervised for days at a time, only visited occasionally by Narayanan Kasthuri, a mop-haired postdoc at Harvard University, who examines the strip of film spewing out. It may seem unlikely, but what's going on here may revolutionise neuroscience. Spaced every centimetre along the film are tiny dots, each of which is a slice of mouse brain, one-thousandth the thickness of a sheet of aluminium foil. This particular roll of film contains 6000 slices, representing a speck of brain the size of a grain of salt. The slices of brain will be turned into digital images by an automated electron microscope. A computer will read those images, trace the outlines of nerve cells, and stack the pictures into a 3D reconstruction. In the jargon, they are building the mouse "connectome", named in line with the term "genome" for the sequence of all of an organism's genes, "proteome" for all its proteins, and so on. It's an epic undertaking. The full mouse connectome would produce hundreds of times more data than can be found on all of Google's computers, says Jeffrey Lichtman, the neuroanatomist leading the Harvard team. And yet it's just the beginning. Their efforts could be seen as a dry run for a project that is at least four orders of magnitude greater: mapping the human connectome. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 14966 - Posted: 02.08.2011

Researchers believed neurons in the brain communicated through physical connections known as synapses. However, EU-funded neuroscientists have uncovered strong evidence that neurons also communicate with each other through weak electric fields, a finding that could help us understand how biophysics gives rise to cognition. The study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, was funded in part by the EUSYNAPSE ('From molecules to networks: understanding synaptic physiology and pathology in the brain through mouse models') project, which received EUR 8 million under the 'Life sciences, genomics and biotechnology for health' Thematic area of the EU's Sixth Framework Programme (FP6). Lead author Dr Costas Anastassiou, a postdoctoral scholar at the Californian Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the US, and his colleagues explain how the brain is an intricate network of individual nerve cells, or neurons, that use electrical and chemical signals to communicate with one another. Every time an electrical impulse races down the branch of a neuron, a tiny electric field surrounds that cell. A few neurons are like individuals talking to each other and having small conversations. But when they all fire together, it's like the roar of a crowd at a sports game. That 'roar' is the summation of all the tiny electric fields created by organised neural activity in the brain. While it has long been recognised that the brain generates weak electrical fields in addition to the electrical activity of firing nerve cells, these fields were considered epiphenomenon - superfluous side effects.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 14965 - Posted: 02.08.2011

By EMILY BAZELON At 4 months, Noah Whitmer was an easy baby. Super tranquilo, remembers Trudy Eliana Muñoz Rueda, who took care of Noah at her home day care center in Fairfax County, Va. Rueda and Noah’s mother, Erin Whitmer, both noticed when he stopped taking his bottle well and napping as usual in the middle of his fifth month, in April 2009. Whitmer thought this was because Noah had just started eating solid food. She and Rueda talked about it early on April 20, both of them hunched over Noah in his car seat when Whitmer dropped him off. That afternoon, after a morning in which Noah didn’t nap and drank only a couple of ounces of formula, Rueda says she prepared a bottle for him while he lay on a mat. In her native Peru, Rueda, who is 46, ran a travel agency and taught college courses for prospective tour guides. Her husband was trained as a lawyer. After they moved to the United States in 2001, the couple had a second child, and three years later Rueda converted her basement into a home day care center so she could work while spending time with her two kids. When Rueda sat down to feed Noah, her 13-year-old daughter was at school, her 5-year-old was upstairs watching TV and the four other children in her care were taking naps. Rueda’s sister-in-law, who spent the morning with the children while Rueda was at a doctor’s appointment, had just left the house. “Everything was calm and quiet,” Rueda, who has soft features and dark hair, told me in Spanish while her lawyer translated. There are two irreconcilable versions of how that calm shattered. Rueda says that Noah was crying, and she picked him up, sat on the couch and gave him the bottle to help put him to sleep. While she was feeding him, she felt Noah’s arm go limp, and when she moved to take the bottle out of his mouth, he made a sound that she didn’t recognize. “I could tell something was happening,” she says. She stood up and put Noah on her shoulder, patting him on the back. “As I did this, his body tensed up in a ball. It was as if he was looking for air, and he couldn’t breathe.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 14964 - Posted: 02.07.2011

A tiny, translucent water flea that can reproduce without sex and lives in ponds and lakes has more genes than any other creature, said scientists who have sequenced the crustacean's genome. Daphnia pulex, named after the nymph in Greek mythology who transforms into a tree in order to escape the lovestruck Apollo, has 31,000 genes compared to humans who have about 23,000, said the research in the journal Science. Often studied by scientists who want to learn about the effects of pollution and environmental changes on water creatures, the almost-microscopic freshwater Daphnia is the first crustacean to have its genome sequenced. But just because this creature -- viewed as the canary in the gold mine of the world's waters -- has more genes doesn't necessarily mean they are all unique, explained project leader John Colbourne. "Daphnia's high gene number is largely because its genes are multiplying, by creating copies at a higher rate than other species," said Colbourne, genomics director at the Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics. Daphnia has a large number of never-before seen genes, as well as a big chunk of the same genes found in humans, the most of any insects or crustacean so far known to scientists. "More than one-third of Daphnia's genes are undocumented in any other organism -- in other words, they are completely new to science," said Don Gilbert, coauthor and Department of Biology scientist at IU Bloomington. © 2011 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 14963 - Posted: 02.07.2011

MICHAEL POSNER Among the great enigmas of human existence, few have proven so intractable as the human brain. Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran says our current understanding of the body’s most complex organ approximates what we knew about chemistry in the 19th century: in short, not much. On a scale of 100, estimates Toronto psychiatrist Colin Shapiro, our comprehension of how the brain actually functions ranks at a lowly 2. Now, two Toronto doctors, a general practitioner and a medical biophysicist, are laying claim to a research innovation that could expand our knowledge exponentially. Using one of the earliest imaging technologies, the electroencephalograph (EEG), Mark Doidge and Joseph Mocanu have written software that creates dynamic, real-time, three-dimensional colour movies of the brain. If their research is validated, it could revolutionize neuroscience – and, not incidentally, make them a fortune. But while the software is proven, its application to medical treatment has yet to be clinically tested in traditional, double-blind studies. “We usually think of cameras as looking out at the world,” Dr. Doidge said. “This is a new kind of camera. It gives you a window on your mind.” It’s not a camera in the conventional sense. Instead, adapting an algorithm known as eLORETA, the software amplifies EEG signals from 32 electrodes attached to the cerebral cortex, and converts them into colour-coded movies of neuronal activity. In a brain divided in more than 6,200 voxels (3D pixels), the algorithm infers and maps where electrical events are occurring. The movie can then be watched in real time, recorded and played back on computer screens. © Copyright 2011 The Globe and Mail Inc.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 14962 - Posted: 02.07.2011

By James Gallagher Health reporter, BBC News An international team of researchers have found a clue to one of the leading causes of blindness, which they hope could eventually lead to a cure. Age-related macular degeneration affects 500,000 people in the UK and is incurable. The study in the journal Nature found an enzyme known as DICER1 that stops functioning, resulting in the illness. UK experts said it had the potential to be an important breakthrough. The macula is a part of the eye which sits in the centre of the retina and is responsible for the fine detail at the centre of the field of vision. As the disease progresses that central vision declines, making reading, driving and recognising people difficult. It affects one in 50 people over 50 and one in five people over 85. The exact cause is unknown, but risk factors include smoking, high blood pressure and having relatives with the condition. BBC © MMXI

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 14961 - Posted: 02.07.2011

Joseph Milton Fly brains have never looked so good. Spectacular images of the insects' complex neural circuitry have now been produced using a pair of techniques that allow individual nerve-cell lineages to be visualized using a range of colours. Both methods are adaptations of the 'Brainbow' techniques devised at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to visualize mouse neurons, and reported in Nature in 20071. "We were inspired by the elegance of the Brainbow approach," says Iris Salecker, a neuroscientist at the National Institute for Medical Research in London, who worked on one of the fruitfly methods. The new techniques, reported in two papers published online today in Nature Methods23, involve inserting strings of genes into the neurons of Drosophila melanogaster embryos. Each gene produces a different fluorescent colour, lighting up individual neurons, or even all of the cells descended from an embryonic neuron - because they will carry the same gene and therefore be the same colour. Both techniques result in colourful visualizations that allow all the nerve cells in any one lineage to be distinguished and their development traced, illuminating how neural circuits develop and interact. The string includes a selection of colour-producing genes, but only one gene is active in each modified nerve cell — the one closest to a region of DNA called a promoter. As the strings are identical, all the modified neurons would be the same colour, and would be impossible to separate visually. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Brain imaging; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 14960 - Posted: 02.07.2011

A Devon man suffering from Tourette's Syndrome is to undergo a pioneering form of brain surgery. Mike Sullivan, 32, from Exeter, will have deep brain stimulation to help reduce his involuntary tics. It sends electrical impulses to control brain activity and has proved effective in treating Parkinson's disease, cluster headaches and depression. Tourette's is a neurological disorder thought to occur if there is a problem with nerves communicating in the brain. People suffering from Tourette's usually have both motor and vocal tics. Mr Sullivan, who was diagnosed with the condition at the age of 12, became the victim of bullying and teasing at school. He opted for deep brain stimulation after his condition worsened and symptoms became more frequent. Mr Sullivan said he has to work hard to suppress the almost continual tics while working with the public at Exeter Register Office. He describes this experience as exhausting and mentally draining. "I can, up to a point, control it... but I'm always looking for a way out if people are staring," he told BBC News. BBC © MMXI

Keyword: Tourettes
Link ID: 14959 - Posted: 02.07.2011

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - More than a quarter of Americans taking antidepressants have never been diagnosed with any of the conditions the drugs are typically used to treat, according to new research. That means millions could be exposed to side effects from the medicines without proven health benefits, researchers say. "We cannot be sure that the risks and side effects of antidepressants are worth the benefit of taking them for people who do not meet criteria for major depression," said Jina Pagura, a psychologist and currently a medical student at the University of Manitoba in Canada, who worked on the study. "These individuals are likely approaching their physicians with concerns that may be related to depression, and could include symptoms like trouble sleeping, poor mood, difficulties in relationships, etc.," she added in an e-mail to Reuters Health. "Although an antidepressant might help with these issues, the problems may also go away on their own with time, or might be more amenable to counseling or psychotherapy." The researchers tapped into data from the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiologic Surveys, which include a nationally representative sample of more than 20,000 U.S. adults interviewed between 2001 and 2003. Roughly one in ten people told interviewers they had been taking antidepressants during the past year. Yet a quarter of those people had never been diagnosed with any of the conditions that doctors usually treat with the medication, such as major depression and anxiety disorder. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/eXPVSL Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, online January 25, 2011. Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 14958 - Posted: 02.05.2011

By BINA VENKATARAMAN BOSTON — Tracking the inexorable advance of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the deadly neuromuscular ailment better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease or A.L.S., has long been an inexact science — a matter of monitoring weakness and fatigue, making crude measurements of the strength of various muscles. This imprecision has hindered the search for drugs that could slow or block the disease’s progress. But now a neurologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center here has won a $1 million prize — reportedly the largest ever for meeting a specific challenge in medical research — for developing a reliable way to quantify the small muscular changes that signal progressive deterioration. The winner, Dr. Seward Rutkove, showed that his method could cut in half the cost of clinical trials to screen potential drugs for the disease, said Melanie Leitner, chief scientific officer of Prize4Life, the nonprofit group that created the competition. The method does not provide a target in the body at which to aim drugs, nor will it help doctors better diagnose the disease. But Dr. Merit Cudkowicz, a professor of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital and a chairwoman of the Northeast A.L.S. Consortium, compared Dr. Rutkove’s discovery to the way magnetic resonance imaging expedited the development of drugs for multiple sclerosis. “You can use this as a tool to screen drugs to see if they will affect survival,” she said, but added, “The ultimate prize is finding a drug that works for A.L.S.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 14957 - Posted: 02.05.2011

by Valerie Ross Jesse Rissman cannot read your mind—but he’s working on it. A postdoctoral memory researcher at Stanford University, Rissman is studying how much fMRI scans (which measure activity in the brain) can reveal about what a person is thinking. Along the way, he is raising a big red flag to those who want to use brain scans to peer into the heads of suspected criminals. What got you interested in brain scans in the courtroom? In India, a woman was convicted of murder using a technology that recorded electrical activity from the scalp while she was viewing or listening to materials related to the crime. When I learned more about the tests and how widely they were being used in the Indian legal system, I realized these techniques need to be evaluated in a more rigorous way. How do you look for memories? We had people study photographs of faces. Then, while they were in an fMRI scanner, we showed them those faces again, interspersed with new ones, and they had to judge whether they recognized each face. Then we used a computer algorithm to identify neural signatures associated with recognition and those associated with the experience of something new. Can you identify a person’s memories from such scans? We could tell quite reliably whether people thought each face was familiar or new, but we couldn’t tell the true status of the memory. When we tried to distinguish faces the person had seen from those he hadn’t, we were correct less than 60 percent of the time. There are many reasons memories may not properly form. The person may not be paying attention, may be under the influence of a substance, may be drowsy—and memories are forgotten over time. The idea that our brain contains a veridical record of our experiences is, I think, fanciful. Copyright © 2011, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 14956 - Posted: 02.05.2011