By ANDREW POLLACK LOS ANGELES — Elderly people losing their vision from age-related macular degeneration might one day have a treatment option that requires fewer injections into the eye than the standard drug now used. In testing, an experimental drug being developed by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, when injected every eight weeks, proved as effective as the standard treatment, Lucentis from Genentech, which was injected every four weeks. The findings are from two clinical trials that Regeneron is expected to announce on Monday. In a separate development, Advanced Cell Technology is expected to announce Monday that it has won regulatory approval to test a therapy derived from human embryonic stem cells in people with Stargardt’s macular dystrophy, another retina disease. It is only the second trial of a therapy derived from human embryonic stem cells to be cleared by the Food and Drug Administration. The first involves a treatment for spinal cord injury developed by Geron. Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in the elderly. Lucentis can restore a person’s ability to drive and read, in some cases. But the drug works best when given every four weeks, which can be inconvenient for patients and doctors. Doctors often give Lucentis less frequently, but even if that regimen produces good results, patients must still get checkups every month to make sure their vision is not deteriorating. Regeneron’s drug, which is called VEGF Trap-Eye, “gives us the opportunity to not have to see them monthly,” said Dr. Jeffrey Heier of Boston, an investigator in one of the trials and a consultant to Regeneron. That would be “very meaningful to patients and their families,” he said. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision; Stem Cells
Link ID: 14698 - Posted: 11.22.2010

by Andy Coghlan NERVE cells with huge potential for treating paralysis could be made from a person's own skin or hair follicles, making spinal repair a more realistic prospect. Studies in rats and dogs have already demonstrated that olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs), which insulate bundles of nerve cells, can help repair damage to the spinal cord and nerves leading to animals' paws. In rats and dogs, these cells can repair damage to the spinal cord and nerves leading to animals' paws The prospects for using them in treatments have been limited, however, because their only sources were thought to be the lining of the nose and the olfactory bulb in the brain where smell signals are processed. Biopsies from the human nose lining have only yielded tiny numbers of OECs, and obtaining them from the olfactory bulb would be invasive and potentially dangerous. Clare Baker of the University of Cambridge and colleagues injected chicken and mice embryos with neural crest cells genetically engineered to glow green under ultraviolet light. Neural crest cells are primordial cells that have the potential to develop into nervous system cells, among others. By visually tracking the cells in the growing embryos, they found some became OECs (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1012248107). Because neural crest cells can also be isolated from skin and hair follicles, OECs could potentially be grown from a patient's own cells. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Regeneration; Stem Cells
Link ID: 14697 - Posted: 11.22.2010

by Jocelyn Kaiser Tumors are notoriously hard to kill. Attack them with chemotherapy, and they develop drug resistance; surgically remove them, and they may have already metastasized to other parts of the body. Now scientists have found that tumors have yet another trick up their sleeve: They can create their own blood supply by morphing into blood vessels. The observations, reported by two separate teams online today in Nature, could explain why drugs designed to choke off blood to brain tumors often fail. The researchers drew the link between tumor cells and blood vessel cells with a series of experiments on glioblastomas—fast-growing brain tumors that contain tufts of thin, abnormal blood vessels. Neurosurgeon and stem cell scientist Viviane Tabar and colleagues at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City first took glioma samples from the operating room and looked for chromosomal abnormalities in the endothelial cells lining the tumor's blood vessels. They found patterns exactly like those in cells from the tumor itself, suggesting that at least some of the blood vessel cells came from the tumor. The researchers then sorted glioma cells into different types using antibodies that stick to specific proteins on a cell's surface. They showed that the cells that give rise to blood vessels are an immature cancer cell, known as a stemlike cancer cell. Finally, the researchers injected these cancer stem cells into the brains of mice with weakened immune systems and then examined the blood vessels within the resulting tumors. The vessels stained positive for antibodies to human endothelial cells, again showing that some of the cells had to come from the tumor. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Glia
Link ID: 14696 - Posted: 11.22.2010

By Courtney Humphries Two years ago, George Winslow’s world was literally thrown off balance. He was working on cars at the auto repair shop he owns in Foxborough when he began to sweat, and every step felt like a struggle. The world began to spin violently. Unable to get his balance, Winslow slammed to the floor. He lost hearing in one ear. He left the shop in an ambulance, and the world didn’t stop moving for more than four grueling hours. Winslow was diagnosed with Meniere’s disease, a progressive disorder of the inner ear that brings severe, unexpected attacks of vertigo, often accompanied by hearing loss, ringing in the ears, and nausea. From then on, Winslow suffered from frequent attacks of intense dizziness, sometimes three or four a week. An active person who had always preferred to work under the hood rather than behind a desk, he was often exhausted and relying more on the help of his staff. “This is the toughest thing I’ve ever gone through,’’ says Winslow, 54. Because a balance disorder is a complex problem to diagnose, people who suffer them often go from doctor to doctor until, like Winslow, they find specialists who can properly treat the problem. After his local doctor offered little help, Winslow eventually found his way to Dr. Steven Rauch, an otologist at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary who specializes in treating balance disorders like Meniere’s. Winslow has undergone a series of treatments that have lessened the frequency and duration of the attacks, and he had minor surgery last week that he hopes will further improve the situation. But although his condition has improved, he’s had to adjust to a life out of balance. © 2010 NY Times Co

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 14695 - Posted: 11.22.2010

By Steve Connor, Science Editor The elaborate songs of a bird species famed for its wide repertoire of tunes have been decoded for the first time. Scientists have been able to predict the correct sequence of notes and "syllables" in the Bengalese finch's melodious, but erratic songs. The team from Pennsylvania State University now believe they can reproduce the bird's song after studying more than 25,000 melodies recorded from a finch which was kept in a sound-proofed studio on campus for several days. The study, carried out by Dr Dezhe Jin is part of a wider investigation into how individual brain cells can control birdsong, which could help to shed light on the complex neural networks involved in human speech. Earlier work by Dr Jin and his colleagues focused on the simpler songs of the zebra finch – a close relative of the Bengalese version – which has helped to explain how the brain of the bird controlled the complex vocalisation involved when young birds learn to sing the song of their parents. "Unlike dogs and cats, whose vocalisations are innate and unlearned, songbirds learn a song in much the same way as humans learn a language – through cultural transmission," said Dr Jin. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Animal Communication
Link ID: 14694 - Posted: 11.20.2010

By Steve Jones Now and again I have a vision. Not of a golden future in which servile oiks queue to put pound coins in a tin before each lecture, nor of a dystopia in which higher education is brought to its knees by a reckless ideological experiment, but of an imaginary cosmos inside my head which projects itself unpredictably upon the real world. The 12th-century mystic and composer Hildegard of Bingen had the same problem: "I saw a great star most splendid and beautiful, and with it an exceeding multitude of falling stars… and suddenly they were all annihilated, being turned to black coals… and cast into the abyss." Almost certainly, she and I had the same condition. My own migraines are restricted to a brief scotoma, a bright but painless pulsing and spinning, circular zigzag that blacks out part of the visual field, while hers – and those of most of the one in 10 of us who experience them – were much more striking. Often the imagined pulse is accompanied by a headache, by vomiting, or by hallucinations of touch, sound, taste or smell. Some people perceive that they are falling, or that their limbs are ballooning or getting smaller. Lewis Carroll is thought to have had the condition, which might have given him the idea for Alice's shrinking when she fell down the rabbit hole and for her massive growth later on. © Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2010

Keyword: Vision; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 14693 - Posted: 11.20.2010

by Greg Miller Elephants are famous for having a good memory, but they also have complex communication skills and rich social lives. Unfortunately, scientists know virtually nothing about the 5-kilogram brain responsible for these talents. This week, in a presentation at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and in a paper in Brain Structure and Function, scientists present the first microscopic study of neurons in the cerebral cortex of the African elephant. The cortex is the thin layer of cells on the surface of the brain that governs many functions, and in elephants it contains a greater variety of cell types (such as the extensively branched neuron pictured above) than is found in more frequently studied animals such as rodents and primates. How this complexity contributes to an elephant's smarts isn't known, but the authors say their findings suggest that evolution has found multiple ways to build a complex brain—and an intelligent beast. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 14692 - Posted: 11.20.2010

By Janet Raloff Baby fat can be a harbinger of serious disease later on. Being overweight as a young child is a strong predictor of diabetes and heart disease risk in early adulthood, a new Dutch study finds. Previous research has linked being overweight in childhood with a higher risk of these chronic diseases in adulthood, but the new study is the first to identify the ages between 2 and 6 years as the most important in predicting later risk of metabolic syndrome, says the study’s lead author, physician Marlou de Kroon of Vrije University in Amsterdam. The condition is associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. The new work “is very interesting,” says cardiologist Gerald Berenson, because it reveals the earliest and most critical age for predicting adult weight problems and risk of serious chronic disease. Berenson, who was not involved in the new study, is director of Tulane University’s Center for Cardiovascular Health in New Orleans. In the face of a growing epidemic of childhood obesity, these data are very disturbing, Berenson says. People often disregard children’s weight problems, rationalizing “that kids will grow out of it during puberty,” he says. But the new study shows that the kids may not — and if they don’t, big problems could ensue. To explore the relationship between early weight gain and later disease risk, researchers repeatedly measured the height and weight of 642 Dutch children born between 1977 and 1986 in Terneuzen, the Netherlands. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Obesity; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 14691 - Posted: 11.20.2010

Eliza Strickland; How do you track a thought, diagram an emotion, sketch the path of a memory? For as long as humans have tried to understand the mind, we've grappled with such questions. Now in a remarkable new book from Abrams, author Carl Schoonover showcases our species' tenacious attempts to make images of the brain in order to understand ourselves. The image-rich book, titled Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain From Antiquity to the 21st Century, shows the beautiful results of that quest. "Prod the delicate matter in the head in the appropriate manner, and it just might reveal a small but important flash of insight, a clue among countless other clues," Schoonover writes in the preface. "Prod by prod, glimpse by glimpse, we can begin to form theories about brain structure and function; thus, the history of neuroscience is the history of the techniques we employ to delve into the brain." The book ranges from the earliest cell-staining techniques to the high-tech methods that yield today's "brainbows" and intricate maps of neural architecture. Here we present a sampling of our favorite portraits. © 2010, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 14690 - Posted: 11.20.2010

by Carl Zimmer Pop quiz: What is 357 times 289? No pencils allowed. No calculators. Just use your brain. Got an answer yet? Got it now? How about now? Chances are you still don’t. As you solved the problem one step at a time, you lost track of the numbers. Maybe you tried to start over, lost track again, and eventually gave up in frustration before you could discover that the answer was 103,173. I used a calculator to get that, I confess. Our mutual failure is absurd. The brain is, in the words of neuroscientist Floyd Bloom, “the most complex structure that exists in the universe.” Its trillions of connections let it carry out all sorts of sophisticated computations in very little time. You can scan a crowded lobby and pick out a familiar face in a fraction of a second, a task that pushes even today’s best computers to their limit. Yet multiplying 357 by 289, a task that demands a puny amount of processing, leaves most of us struggling. For psychologists, this kind of mental shortcoming is like a crack in a wall. They can insert a scientific crowbar and start to pry open the hidden life of the mind. The fact that we struggle with certain simple tasks speaks volumes about how we are wired. It turns out the evolution of our complex brain has come at a price: Sometimes we end up with a mental traffic jam in there. © 2010, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 14689 - Posted: 11.20.2010

Catherine de Lange, The McGurk effect is an auditory illusion. It occurs when a video of a person speaking is given different audio, so the picture and the sounds don't match. Most people will hear a third sound - neither the original audio nor the audio they've just heard (see video above). The illusion demonstrates that we rely on both auditory and visual cues to process speech correctly. Michael Beauchamp and colleagues from the University of Texas in Houston wanted to find out exactly where, and at what point during the perception process, these two senses combine in the brain. Previous studies have pointed to a brain area called the superior temporal sulcus (STS), although some researchers disagree. Now this debate can be laid to rest. Part of the problem is that the STS region for auditory-visual integration is located at a different spot in each person, says Beauchamp. He therefore began by conducting MRI scans to determine its exact location in the brain of each subject. Next, a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied to find out whether the STS really is responsible for the McGurk effect. TMS fires a series of short electromagnetic pulses at a target area of the brain to deactivate it, so if the STS was the key, subjects undergoing TMS to that area wouldn't perceive the illusion. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Hearing; Language
Link ID: 14688 - Posted: 11.17.2010

By JR Minkel Could some cases of schizophrenia boil down to something as simple as vitamin D deficiency? The idea was first put forth more than a decade ago by schizophrenia researcher John McGrath of the University of Queensland in Australia. The circumstantial evidence fit: people born in winter or spring or at high latitudes are at slightly increased risk of developing schizophrenia, and vitamin D deficiency is also more common in winter months and at high latitudes because of lack of sunlight. It may be that a deficit of vitamin D leaves expecting mothers more vulnerable to illnesses such as influenza, which could in turn sensitize the maturing brain to stress-related damage later in life. [For more on how prenatal infections can lead to mental illness, see “Infected with Insanity,” by Melinda Wenner; Scientific American Mind, April/May 2008.] Now McGrath and his colleagues have put the hypothesis to the test. They analyzed blood samples taken from 424 Danish newborns who went on to develop schizophrenia as well as an equal number of babies who never acquired the disease. In each sample, they measured the amount of the chemical 25OHD, which the body converts into vitamin D. The researchers found that infants who had low levels of 25OHD in their blood—and therefore mothers who were deficient in vitamin D while they were pregnant—were at a higher risk of developing schizophrenia when they grew up. The result, published in the September issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, could be especially interesting for communities of black immigrants living in northern countries. Researchers have found a striking increase in schizo­phrenia risk for the children of dark-skinned migrants living at high latitudes—a finding neatly explained if vitamin D plays a role, because dark skin blocks ultraviolet B radiation, the component of sunlight necessary for the body to synthesize vitamin D. © 2010 Scientific American

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 14687 - Posted: 11.17.2010

By Laura Sanders SAN DIEGO — In the two-hour window after a stroke, flicking a single whisker completely prevents many damaging effects in a rat, a new study finds. The cheap, simple intervention, described November 15 at a news conference at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting, may represent a new way to minimize disability after a stroke. “I think it’s one of the most profound findings that have come along in recent years,” said neuroscientist Carol Barnes of the University of Arizona in Tucson. “There is no brain damage. It’s almost a miracle. It’s almost too good to be true. Any protection would be good, but this is more than dramatic.” Researchers led by Ron Frostig of the University of California, Irvine mimicked a stroke by severing a major blood vessel in rats’ brains. Then at times during the two hours immediately afterward, a mechanical rod stimulated a single whisker on the anesthetized rat for a total of less than five minutes. With whisker stimulation, the team saw that blood began to flow backward through the severed vessel and got rerouted through other vessels, ultimately reaching the brain area that would have been deprived of blood. No such rerouting was present in rats that didn’t have a whisker stimulated, or in rats that had whisker stimulation more than two hours after the stroke. The team’s preliminary data suggest that the method works for conscious rats, too. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 14686 - Posted: 11.17.2010

WHAT makes people psychopaths is not an idle question. Prisons are packed with them. So, according to some, are boardrooms. The combination of a propensity for impulsive risk-taking with a lack of guilt and shame (the two main characteristics of psychopathy) may lead, according to circumstances, to a criminal career or a business one. That has provoked a debate about whether the phenomenon is an aberration, or whether natural selection favours it, at least when it is rare in a population. The boardroom, after all, is a desirable place to be—and before the invention of prisons, even crime might often have paid. To shed some light on this question Elsa Ermer and Kent Kiehl of the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, decided to probe psychopaths’ moral sensibilities and their attitude to risk a little further. Their results do not prove that psychopathy is adaptive, but they do suggest that it depends on specific mechanisms (or, rather, a specific lack of them). Such specificity is often the result of evolution. Past work has established that psychopaths have normal levels of intelligence (they are only rarely Hannibal Lecter-like geniuses). Nor does their lack of guilt and shame seem to spring from a deficient grasp of right and wrong. Ask a psychopath what he is supposed to do in a particular situation, and he can usually give you what non-psychopaths would regard as the correct answer. It is just that he does not seem bound to act on that knowledge. © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2010.

Keyword: Aggression; Emotions
Link ID: 14685 - Posted: 11.16.2010

By Michelle Roberts Health reporter, BBC News People who are exposed to the second-hand smoke from others' cigarettes are at increased risk of hearing loss, experts believe. Doctors already know that people who smoke can damage their hearing. The latest study in the journal Tobacco Control, involving more than 3,000 US adults, suggests the same is true of passive smoking. Experts believe tobacco smoke may disrupt blood flow in the small vessels of the ear. This could starve the organ of oxygen and lead to a build up of toxic waste, causing damage. The harm is different to that caused by noise exposure or simple ageing. In the study, the researchers from the University of Miami and Florida International University looked at the hearing test results of 3,307 non-smoking volunteers - some who were ex-smokers and some who had never smoked in their lifetime. The tests measured range of hearing over low, mid and high noise frequencies. To assess passive smoke exposure, the volunteers had their blood checked for a byproduct of nicotine, called cotinine, which is made when the body comes into contact with tobacco smoke. BBC © MMX

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Hearing
Link ID: 14684 - Posted: 11.16.2010

By Leslie Tamura The weather is getting gray and cold, and that summer sense of excitement has melted away. It's dim dark in the morning when you get up and dark in the evening when you come home. And it's all making you feel downright blah, maybe even teetering on depressed. Sounds like the wintertime blues. "It doesn't necessarily mean you're sad or down, you're just lacking in the push that all people need to get through the day," said Norman Rosenthal, a Maryland psychiatrist who studies seasonal conditions such as the winter blues. In the mid-1980s, Rosenthal and his colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health coined the term "seasonal affective disorder," or SAD, for an extreme form of the wintertime blues. About 20 percent of Americans start to feel down as the days get noticeably shorter, Rosenthal said. Some people start feeling their mood change as early as July, when daylight begins to grow shorter after the summer solstice on June 21. Most, however, first notice the change after they move their clocks back into standard time, which this year occurred on Nov. 7 . It's a little lighter in the early morning for a few weeks until the days shorten even more, but it's nearly nighttime for the post-work commute home. Psychiatrists and chronobiologists - scientists who study organisms' internal rhythms - say exposure to light, morning light in particular, is what makes the difference to mood. © 1996-2010 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Depression; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 14683 - Posted: 11.16.2010

By Sandra G. Boodman It seemed to Lisa and Brian Billiter that their youngest daughter had been born with an unusually sensitive stomach. As an infant, Breanna, known as Bree, would spit up her entire meal if she ate just one extra spoonful of baby food, Lisa said. At 18 months, she would awaken once a week between 2 and 5 a.m., vomit once and go back to sleep, usually showing no sign of illness or distress. Her pediatrician seemed unconcerned, attributing Bree's vomiting to something she had eaten, a virus that one of her three siblings had brought home or an ear infection. When the early-morning episodes increased in severity after Bree turned 2, the doctor ordered a CT scan to check for a brain tumor. Finding nothing, she tried to reassure the Billiters, who live in West Barnstable, Mass. " 'Don't worry about it, she's growing normally,' " Lisa recalled the doctor telling her. But as Bree got older, the episodes became more intense - and more frightening. The little girl would vomit convulsively, sometimes for only a few minutes, at other times for hours, risking dehydration and sometimes prompting a trip to the hospital. Her parents learned to recognize the onset of episodes: Bree would complain of severe nausea, yawn repeatedly, then start throwing up. During an attack, she seemed unaware of her surroundings and unable to speak, her mother said. But a few hours after the incidents ended, Bree was back to normal, tucking into a full meal as if nothing had happened. © 1996-2010 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 14682 - Posted: 11.16.2010

By Carolyn Butler When I raised the idea of writing about sex in this column, my editors encouraged me, but my very private husband balked at the prospect of confronting Carrie Bradshawesque dissections of our bedroom habits in his morning paper. Since I can't really blame him for that, I agreed that our sex life was off limits for publication. Happily, other people's sexual relations are still entirely fair game. And all of a sudden, there's a whole lot more to discuss: Last month, researchers from Indiana University's Center for Sexual Health Promotion published what they said was the most comprehensive national study on sex in nearly 20 years. Their findings appear in a special issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Sexual Medicine and include commentary from several prominent sexual-health experts. "This data provides a contemporary snapshot . . . of the sexual landscape," says research scientist and lecturer Debby Herbenick, lead author of the study, which surveyed 5,865 teens and adults from ages 14 to 94. It is certainly interesting reading. "Because nobody really talks about sex, people are very curious about what their neighbors are doing," says Herbenick. "Learning more about other people's sex lives provides some type of context about our own lives: whether people are having the same type of sex, with the same frequency and, of course, whether they're enjoying it or not. We want to provide some answers, and help start a conversation between parents and teenagers, friends, partners and a range of people." So let's talk, then: According to the study, vaginal intercourse remains the most common sex act, although respondents reported more than 40 unique combinations of behaviors during their most recent sexual experience. © 1996-2010 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 14681 - Posted: 11.16.2010

Children with ADHD are known to go off medications like Ritalin because of side-effects, but researchers suggest that doctors stress the importance of treatment to reduce the risk of traffic crashes.Children with ADHD are known to go off medications like Ritalin because of side-effects, but researchers suggest that doctors stress the importance of treatment to reduce the risk of traffic crashes. Teenage boys with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are twice as likely to be involved in a serious car collision compared with the general population, an Ontario study suggests. The study in Tuesday's issue of the online journal PLoS Medicine looked at 3,421 males between the ages of 16 and 19 who were involved in serious road trauma between 2002 and 2009, compared with a control group of teens admitted for appendicitis. The researchers suggested listing ADHD the same way as other medical disorders like epilepsy, which require drivers to show they are road worthy to keep their driver's license. Study author Dr. Donald Redelmeier, a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, estimated if the crash risk for teenagers with ADHD could be reduced to that of teens without the disorder then it would prevent about 700 crashes a year in Ontario. Teenaged girls with ADHD also showed an increased risk of crashes, but the study focused on teenaged male drivers because they have the highest incidence of road crashes, at twice the population average. © CBC 2010

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 14680 - Posted: 11.16.2010

By Pallab Ghosh Doctors in Glasgow have injected stem cells into the brain of a stroke patient in an effort to find a new treatment for the condition. The elderly man is the first person in the world to receive this treatment - the start of a regulated trial at Southern General Hospital. He was given very low doses over the weekend and has since been discharged - and his doctors say he is doing well. Critics object as brain cells from foetuses were used to create the cells. The patient received a very low dose of stem cells in an initial trial to assess the safety of the procedure. Over the next year, up to 12 more patients will be given progressively higher doses - again primarily to assess safety - but doctors will be looking closely to see if the stem cells have begun to repair their brains and if their condition has improved. The company making the stem cells says the trial has ethical approval from the medicine's regulator. BBC © MMX

Keyword: Stem Cells; Stroke
Link ID: 14679 - Posted: 11.16.2010