By Amanda Schaffer Last week, researchers at the University of Colorado published a psych experiment that seems almost too good to be true. They showed that two 15-minute writing exercises, administered to an intro physics class early in the semester, could substantially boost the scores of female students. Even more curious: the exercises had nothing to do with physics. Instead, students were asked to write about things that mattered to them, like creativity or relationships with family and friends. How could a few paragraphs on personal values translate into enduring better mastery of pulleys and frictionless planes? When it comes to math and science classes, women can be subtly hampered by negative stereotypes about their gender. This is the idea of stereotype threat, advanced by psychologists Joshua Aronson and Claude Steele, and now solidly established, as I've written in Slate before. Stereotype threat can roar into action when members of any stereotyped group are primed to think about belonging to it—in other words, when women focus on being female or African-Americans on being black. It causes performance problems, but stereotype threat can also be countered, often in simple ways. As the Colorado writing exercises show, getting women to focus on things they care about can buck them up. The lesson is that small doses of affirmation can do a lot of good. Here's what we know about how stereotype threat works: In the 1990s, researchers found that women taking a math exam who were told that the test had "shown gender differences in the past" scored lower than other women with equivalent math backgrounds. Similarly, women asked to watch commercials in which ditzy ladies gushed about brownie mix afterward expressed less interest in quantitative pursuits. Stereotype threat is a universal offender: It can sabotage white men on the basketball court or men more broadly on a test of social sensitivity. © Copyright 2010 Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 14718 - Posted: 11.30.2010

by Jennifer Carpenter In F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," an old man gets younger with each passing day, a fantastic concept recently brought to life on film by Brad Pitt. In a lab in Boston, a research team has used genetic engineering to accomplish something similarly curious, turning frail-looking mice into younger versions of themselves by stimulating the regeneration of certain tissues. The study helps explain why certain organs and tissues break down with age and, researchers say, offers hope that one day such age-related deterioration can be thwarted and even reversed. As we age, many of our cells stop dividing. Our organs, no longer able to rejuvenate themselves, slowly fail. Scientists don't fully understand what triggers this, but many researchers suspect the gradual shrinking of telomeres, the protective DNA caps on the end of chromosomes. A little bit of telomere is lost each time a cell divides, and telomerase, the enzyme that maintains caps, isn't typically active in adult tissues. Another piece of evidence: People with longer telomeres tend to live longer, healthier lives, whereas those with shorter telomeres suffer more from age-related diseases, such as diabetes, Alzheimer's, and heart disease. Several years ago, Ronald DePinho, molecular biologist and director of the Belfer Institute of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and colleagues at Harvard Medical School in Boston genetically engineered mice to lack a working copy of the telomerase gene. The animals died at about 6 months—that's young for mice, which usually live until they are about 3 years old—and seemed to age prematurely. At an early age, their livers and spleens withered, their brains shrank, and they became infertile. By early adulthood, these mice exhibited many of the maladies seen in 80-year-old humans. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 14717 - Posted: 11.30.2010

By Susan Milius Not to reopen any emotional scars from Thanksgiving dinner, but an unusual study of an animal social network suggests that ending up as the butt of unfriendly interactions could be in part inherited. The study, in yellow-bellied marmots, gives the first look beyond people at what facets of social relationships might have genetic components, says coauthor Daniel Blumstein of UCLA. It’s receiving incoming social attention, particularly in grouchy interactions, that showed a small but intriguing genetic influence, Blumstein says. Aspects of initiating interactions in a network, whether to dish out snubs or snuggles, showed no evidence of heritability, according to the paper posted online November 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “I am completely blown away by this paper,” says James Fowler, professor of medical genetics and political science at the University of California, San Diego. In human networks, he and his colleagues have found the marmotlike pattern of heritability in aspects of received social ties but not in initiated ones. Fowler had suspected that the asymmetry in people came from a quirk of limiting the number of friends in the study. Marmots didn’t have that limitation though, he says, “so the idea that there may be something systematic here between species is extremely interesting.” Marmots don’t have Facebook yet, but animals living among clusters of burrows in Colorado do interact enough for observers to plot networks with each marmot as a node. An exchange might be friendly, such as a marmot grooming a neighbor or settling down tranquilly nearby. Or a social interaction might go sour, with one marmot nipping or chasing another. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Aggression; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 14716 - Posted: 11.30.2010

Analysis by Tim Wall Female cichlid fish seem to want heroes not zeros, according to researchers at Stanford University. The female fish prefer pugnacious piscine pugilists. The African cichlid females' brains showed signs of anxiety after witnessing a preferred mate lose a fight with another fish. At the same time, seeing their chosen male beat down his opponent resulted in increased activity in parts of the female's brain associated with reproduction and pleasure. Humans might show some of those same responses, because the brain areas involved in the cichlid's response are similar and perform comparable functions in humans, fish, and in fact all other vertebrates, said Russ Fernald, a professor of biology at Stanford in a press release. "It is the same as if a woman were dating a boxer and saw her potential mate get the crap beat out of him really badly," Julie Desjardins, a postdoctoral biology researcher and lead author of the paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "She may not consciously say to herself, 'Oh, I'm not attracted to this guy anymore because he's a loser.' But her feelings might change anyhow." In humans the subconscious change could result from failure in any competitive situation, such as losing a game or failing to get a promotion, not just physical violence, said Desjardins. Also, human males might feel a similar loss of interest if a female failed in a competition. © 2010 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 14715 - Posted: 11.30.2010

Ed Yong There’s a chemical that can subtly shift your childhood memories of your own mother. In some people, it paints mum in a more saintly light, making them remember her as closer and more caring. In others, the chemical has a darker influence, casting mum as a less caring and more distant parent. All of this becomes heavily ironic when you consider that the chemical in question – a hormone called oxytocin – is often billed as the “hormone of love”, and even marketed as “Liquid Trust”. As a new study shows, the reality is much more complicated. Describing oxytocin as the “hormone of love” is like describing a computer as a “writing tool” – it does other things too, some of which aren’t pleasant. Oxytocin is a versatile actor, whose resume includes all sorts of jobs in sex, reproduction, social behaviour and emotions. It can increase trust among people and make them more cooperative (this works in meerkats, too). It can increase the social skills of autistic people. It’s released during orgasm. It affects lactating breasts, contracting wombs and the behaviour of sheep mothers towards their newly born lambs. The list goes on: drug addiction, generosity, depression, empathy, learning, memory. Despite these many roles, oxytocin is often reduced to a misleading label. While “hormone of love” may be great for catchy headlines and compelling marketing slogans, they are ultimately misleading. Jennifer Bartz from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine has found that oxytocin can have completely opposite effects on the way people behave, depending on how they view their relationships to other people. © 2010, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 14714 - Posted: 11.30.2010

By Karen Weintraub A German researcher recently identified a gene that appears to promote generosity. American scientists are finding that being big-hearted may trigger the brain’s pleasure centers. And Jeff Bell and Jared Douglas Kant are convinced that helping others cope with obsessive-compulsive behaviors made the difference in their own treatment for the disorder. Giving, it seems, is not just a seasonal thing. Altruism appears to be innate, and researchers, doctors, and patients say the act of giving or helping offers deep psychological benefits. “I think it’s a very human phenomenon,’’ said Dr. Helen Riess, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Evolution has wired the human brain to promote helpfulness, she said, something like “survival of the nicest.’’ “If we didn’t help others through altruism, we wouldn’t have as many people around,’’ said Riess, also the director of empathy research and training in the department of psychology at Massachusetts General Hospital. “If our village were attacked by invaders, individuals would just get into a hole and save themselves. But instead, they work together. Mutual aid sustains species.’’ The brain responds to such cooperative behavior by releasing the feel-good chemical dopamine, Riess said, and helping someone else improve — or even just watching an improvement — makes us, as empathetic beings, feel better. © 2010 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Emotions; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 14713 - Posted: 11.29.2010

A gene therapy technique which aims to ease memory problems linked to Alzheimer's Disease has been successfully tested in mice. US scientists used it to increase levels of a chemical which helps brain cells signal to each other. This signalling is hindered in Alzheimer's Disease, the journal Nature reported. The Alzheimer's Research Trust said the study suggested a way to keep nerve cells in the brain communicating, Ageing populations in many countries around the world mean that Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia are set to increase. Researchers at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease in San Francisco believe that boosting the brain chemical, a neurotransmitter called EphB2, could help reduce or even prevent some of the worst effects of the condition. Their research suggests that the chemical plays an important role in memory, and is depleted in Alzheimer's patients. One of the most noticeable features about the brains of Alzheimer's patients is the build-up of "plaques" of a toxic protein called amyloid. Over time this leads to the death of brain cells. BBC © MMX

Keyword: Alzheimers; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 14712 - Posted: 11.29.2010

By Maggie Koerth-Baker A crooked tooth. That funky mole. A pimple on your chin. When you stare into the mirror and pick apart the little imperfections, you're doing more than being too hard on yourself. In fact, that behavior—understanding that your reflection is you, and seeing how you differ from other people—is often taken as a demonstration of some complex cognitive gymnastics that not all species can pull off. Since the 1970s psychologists have used mirrors to search for signs of self-awareness in both humans and animals. Along the way, they came to believe that humans were almost universally able to pass a mirror-based self-recognition test by 24 months of age. But a 2004 study published in Child Development called that idea into question. Researchers found the widely accepted finding only applied to kids from Western nations, where most of the previous studies had been done. Now, a study published September 9 in The Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology is reinforcing that idea and taking it further. Not only do non-Western kids fail to pass the mirror self-recognition test by 24 months—in some countries, they still are not succeeding at six years old. What does it mean? Are kids in places like Fiji and Kenya really unable to figure out a mirror? Do these children lack the ability to psychologically separate themselves from other humans? Not likely. Instead researchers say these results point to long-standing debates about what counts as mirror self-recognition, and how results of the test ought to be interpreted. © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Attention; Evolution
Link ID: 14711 - Posted: 11.29.2010

Anne Trafton, MIT News Office Neuroscientists at MIT and Harvard have made the surprising discovery that the brain sees some faces as male when they appear in one area of a person’s field of view, but female when they appear in a different location. The findings challenge a longstanding tenet of neuroscience — that how the brain sees an object should not depend on where the object is located relative to the observer, says Arash Afraz, a postdoctoral associate at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research and lead author of a new paper on the work. “It’s the kind of thing you would not predict — that you would look at two identical faces and think they look different,” says Afraz. He and two colleagues from Harvard, Patrick Cavanagh and Maryam Vaziri Pashkam, described their findings in the Nov. 24 online edition of the journal Current Biology. In the real world, the brain’s inconsistency in assigning gender to faces isn’t noticeable, because there are so many other clues: hair and clothing, for example. But when people view computer-generated faces, stripped of all other gender-identifying features, a pattern of biases, based on location of the face, emerges. The researchers showed subjects a random series of faces, ranging along a spectrum of very male to very female, and asked them to classify the faces by gender. For the more androgynous faces, subjects rated the same faces as male or female, depending on where they appeared.

Keyword: Vision; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 14710 - Posted: 11.29.2010

By Helen Briggs Health reporter, BBC News Sex hormones taken by women after the menopause may make their brains "younger", researchers claim. A small study of post-menopausal women found those on HRT performed better in tests measuring how the left and right hand sides of the brain work together. Psychologists at Durham University say it mirrors the brain activity of younger women who naturally produce the sex hormones in their bodies. The research is published in the journal Hormones and Behavior. The study involved 62 post-menopausal women aged between 46 and 71. Of these, 36 were on hormone therapy, while the rest were in the control group. All were right-handed. They were asked to carry out fine motor coordination tasks, such as tapping buttons with different fingers using both their left and right hands. The researchers say both hands performing together equally was a sign that the two brain halves were interacting more. This was found to be more pronounced in the women on HRT. BBC © MMX

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 14709 - Posted: 11.27.2010

Brendan Borrell In her 25 years of research, Gail Prins, a reproductive physiologist at the University of Illinois in Chicago, had got used to doing science her way. But when her experiments started to question the safety of bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical found in thousands of consumer products from food-can linings to baby bottles, she found her work under a new level of scrutiny. The experience was unnerving, she says. "I feel I do solid science." Even federal evaluators in the United States agreed that her work was suitable for informing decisions about BPA's safety — at least at first. A study published in early 2006, for example, helped explain how early exposure to BPA could increase rats' susceptibility to prostate cancer1. The work complemented a growing body of research suggesting that the chemical posed several developmental and cancer risks (see 'Hazard warning'). That December, when a panel on reproductive health drafted a report on BPA for the US National Toxicology Program (NTP) it determined that Prins's study "makes important contributions and is suitable for the evaluation process". But the following year, the NTP's final report discounted Prins's study. The chemical industry had stepped in to make its views heard. BPA grosses some US$6 billion a year for the five companies that produce it in the United States. Steven Hentges, who works on BPA for the American Chemistry Council, the industry trade group, wrote a 93-page letter to the NTP panel on 2 February 2007, detailing what he perceived as flaws in a slew of studies coming out of academic laboratories. © 2010 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 14708 - Posted: 11.27.2010

by Jon Evans A SKIN patch could soon provide efficient pain relief whenever you flex sore muscles. The system would work by synchronising the release of drugs with movement of the underlying inflamed tissue. Unyong Jeong's team at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, covered a flexible rubber film with a sheet of corrugated microporous polystyrene, with gutters around 3 micrometres wide and 1 micrometre deep. The gutters were then filled with a liquid and sealed with another rubber film. Finally, the first rubber film was peeled away to expose the underside of the liquid-filled polystyrene gutters. Flexing the patch distorts the polystyrene tunnels enough to reduce their volume, squeezing the solution out through the pores in the plastic. Once the strain is removed, the tunnels spring back into shape, ready for the next use (Angewandte Chemie, DOI: 10.1002/anie.201004838). Jeong and his team demonstrated the mechanism with a dye solution, but they are now moving on to therapeutic applications. He envisages the first practical use will be skin patches for treating muscle pain and rheumatism. "Current [skin patches] are designed to just continuously release the active agents," he says. "If we can control the release rate responding to the motion of our muscles, it will make the patches more effective and prolong the time of use." He is also hoping to develop biodegradable strain-release patches to heal organs and damaged muscles inside the body. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 14707 - Posted: 11.27.2010

By Laura Sanders The part of the mouse brain devoted to sensory input is moonlighting as a whisker-flicker, scientists have found. The result may prompt researchers to rethink strict descriptions of certain brain regions. The new study, published November 26 in Science, shows that it’s not the brain’s motor cortex, which is in charge of voluntary motion, but rather the sensory cortex that tells a mouse to pull its whisker away from danger. “This study furthers the whole line of thinking about the brain — that really, all these systems are deeply interconnected,” says neuroscientist Michael Graziano of Princeton University. “There’s a growing realization that it’s difficult to chop the brain up into little pieces and study them separately.” In the new work, scientists led by Ferenc Matyas of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest saw that when a mouse deflected its whisker away from an object, neurons in the sensory cortex were the first to fire. This region of the mouse brain is thought to be responsible for sensing a soft, warm nest or a painful prick from a twig, but not initiating motor activity. When Matyas and his team blocked the activity of the sensory cortex with a toxin, the mice could no longer move their whiskers away from a signal. What’s more, inactivating the motor cortex with the toxin had no effect on the whisker flick. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 14706 - Posted: 11.27.2010

THE QUESTION Even after treatment, depression sometimes comes back. Among teenagers, what might contribute to this recurrence? THIS STUDY analyzed data on 196 teens who had been treated for depression at an average age of 14. By random assignment, they took the antidepressant fluoxetine, received cognitive behavioral therapy (a type of talk therapy aimed at learning to counter negative thinking), took the drug and had therapy in combination or took a placebo. After three months, teens taking the placebo who had not recovered could switch to another treatment group. Within a five-year span, 96 percent of the teens were deemed symptom-free. However, in that time, about 47 percent had a recurrence of depression, girls more often than boys (57 vs. 33 percent). Teens who had an anxiety disorder along with depression were also more likely to have depression return (62 vs. 42 percent). Though the combination of antidepressant and talk therapy had been the most effective short-term treatment, it had no effect on whether teenagers had a recurrence. WHO MAY BE AFFECTED? Teens with depression. Each year, an estimated 2 million American youths 12 to 17 years old have at least one major depressive episode. About two-fifths of them receive treatment. CAVEATS Whether the results apply to teens treated with other medications or types of therapy is unclear. FIND THIS STUDY Dec. 1 online issue of Archives of General Psychiatry. www.archgenpsychiatry.com. © 2010 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 14705 - Posted: 11.23.2010

By KAREN BARROW A soldier returns from war unable to get the images of battle out of his head. An earthquake survivor rides out long, anxiety-filled nights. A young woman in a pretty floral dress walks her dog along the streets of Manhattan. All three may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The woman walking her dog is Robin Hutchins, 25. She looks confident and self-assured, and few would guess that a year ago she discovered that she had the stress disorder. “When I tell people I have P.T.S.D., it’s like I have to convince them it’s a real issue,” she said. The disorder — in which a traumatic experience leaves the patient suffering from severe anxiety for months or years after the event — is often associated with battlefield combat and natural disasters. But as Dr. Frank Ochberg, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University, noted in an interview, the typical trigger is more mundane — most commonly, a traffic accident. In Ms. Hutchins’s case, it was sexual violence. During her first year in college, on a weekend home to tend to a broken leg, she was raped by a young man she knew. She returned to college without telling her parents about it. “I just really wanted to be a freshman in college,” she said. Ms. Hutchins spoke to a counselor there and resumed her routine — attending class, hanging out with friends and trying to put the trauma behind her. “Nobody ever said, ‘You need to stop your life and deal with this — you can’t just walk through it,’ ” she said. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress; Depression
Link ID: 14704 - Posted: 11.23.2010

By SINDYA N. BHANOO The human tendency to form close bonds with people other than kin may have primal roots. Researchers from Germany report in the journal Current Biology that male macaques exhibit a social bonding behavior similar to human friendship. A macaque in Thailand. Scientists say males of the species develop bonds like human friendship. Macaque monkeys live in groups of 50 to 60, but “every male in the group has a few other males he interacts with more than others,” said Oliver Schülke, the study’s lead author and an evolutionary biologist at the University of Göttingen. Dr. Schülke and his colleagues studied male Assamese macaques in Thailand over a period of five years and monitored their behavior. Macaques that spent a lot of time within 1.5 meters of each other were considered friends, since it is easy to attack another macaque at this distance. Males that groomed each other’s bodies frequently and for excessive periods of time were also considered friends. Often, they groomed areas that an individual could groom himself. “The grooming seems to work to foster these bonds,” Dr. Schülke said. “The hygiene aspect was only one part of it.” The bonds can lead to the forming of coalitions, where a group of males might fight another male to improve rank and social status, the researchers found. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Aggression; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 14703 - Posted: 11.23.2010

by Nathan Collins Add this to your list of worries, high schoolers: daylight savings time might mess with your college admissions. For decades, scientists have debated whether spring and fall time changes affect everything from seasonal affective disorder to traffic accidents. The idea is that resetting clocks by "springing forward" and "falling back" can upset sleep patterns and with them the ability to concentrate. Now, it appears that these time changes might just muck up performance on the SAT, the U.S. college admissions exam, which is administered five times a year, including two dates that fall after daylight savings transitions. Using data from Indiana, where until recently individual counties could opt in or out of daylight savings, researchers found that scores in counties that changed their clocks were consistently 16.34 points—or 2%—lower than in counties that did not, they report online this month in the Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics. That may not sound like a lot, but it may be enough to keep you out of Harvard. So choose your test dates carefully, kids. Springing forward could land you in your fall-back school. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Attention
Link ID: 14702 - Posted: 11.23.2010

MAGIC, it mystifies and captivates us. We shake our heads in disbelief as coins are conjured out of thin air, as cards are mysteriously summoned from a pack, and as the magician's assistant vanishes before our eyes. Of course, there is no such thing as "magic", so how does magic work? It's a question that neuroscientists like Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde are trying to answer. In the process they have conjured up a new branch of cognitive research called neuromagic. From misdirection and the magical practice of "forcing", to mirror neurons and synaptic plasticity, Sleights of Mind is a spellbinding mix of magic and science. The authors invite us to sip this heady potion as they show us how understanding the myriad ways in which the brain is deceived by magic may solve some of the mysteries surrounding how it works. "Magic tricks fool us because humans have hard-wired processes of attention and awareness that are hackable," say the authors. Magicians use your mind's intrinsic properties against you. In a magical feat of their own, the authors persuaded magicians such as James Randi and Teller from the Las Vegas headline act Penn and Teller to deconstruct tricks so that Macknik and Martinez-Conde could later attempt to reconstruct what is going on inside your head "as you are suckered". Magic, say the neuroscientists, could reveal how the brain functions in everyday situations such as shopping. However, it is a stretch to believe, as the authors do, that if you've bought an expensive item you never intended to buy, then you were probably a victim of the "illusion of choice", a technique magicians use to rob their dupes of genuine choice. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 14701 - Posted: 11.23.2010

By FRED VOGELSTEIN Once every three or four months my son, Sam, grabs a cookie or a piece of candy and, wide-eyed, holds it inches from his mouth, ready to devour it. He knows he’s not allowed to eat these things, but like any 9-year-old, he hopes that somehow, this once, my wife, Evelyn, or I will make an exception. We never make exceptions when it comes to Sam and food, though, which means that when temptation takes hold of Sam and he is denied, things can get pretty hairy. Confronted with a gingerbread house at a friend’s party last December, he went scorched earth, grabbing parts of the structure and smashing it to bits. Reason rarely works. Usually one of us has to pry the food out of his hands. Sometimes he ends up in tears. It’s not just cookies and candy that we forbid Sam to eat. Cake, ice cream, pizza, tortilla chips and soda aren’t allowed, either. Macaroni and cheese used to be his favorite food, but he told Evelyn the other day that he couldn’t remember what it tastes like anymore. At Halloween we let him collect candy, but he trades it in for a present. At birthday parties and play dates, he brings a lunchbox to eat from. There is no crusade against unhealthful food in our house. Some might argue that unhealthful food is all we let Sam eat. His breakfast eggs are mixed with heavy cream and served with bacon. A typical lunch is full-fat Greek yogurt mixed with coconut oil. Dinner is hot dogs, bacon, macadamia nuts and cheese. We figure that in an average week, Sam consumes a quart and a third of heavy cream, nearly a stick and a half of butter, 13 teaspoons of coconut oil, 20 slices of bacon and 9 eggs. Sam’s diet is just shy of 90 percent fat. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Epilepsy; Obesity
Link ID: 14700 - Posted: 11.23.2010

By Steve Connor, Science Editor Blind patients suffering from a type of eye disease that strikes in childhood will become the second group of people in the world to receive stem cells derived from spare IVF embryos left over from fertility treatment. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given the go-ahead for the controversial transplant of embryonic stem cells into the eyes of patients with Stargardt's macular degeneration, where the light-sensitive retina cells at the back of eye are destroyed. The announcement follows the first injection of embryonic stem cells into a patient in the US who is partially paralysed as a result of a spinal cord injury. Last October, a US biotechnology company, Geron, announced the start of the first clinical trial of embryonic stem cells with the hope of repairing damaged nerves. Another US biotechnology firm, Advanced Cell Technology, has now been given approval for a second clinical trial involving the injection of thousands of embryonic stem cells into the eyes of a dozen adult patients with a juvenile form of macular degeneration. Robert Lanza, the company's chief scientific officer, said that the first patient could receive the stem cell transplants early in the new year and although the trial is designed primarily to assess safety, the first signs of visual improvement may be apparent within weeks. "Talking to the clinicians, we could see something in six weeks, that's when we think we may see some improvements. It really depends on individual patients but that's a reasonable time frame when something may start to happen," Dr Lanza said. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Stem Cells; Vision
Link ID: 14699 - Posted: 11.22.2010