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

Helen Thomson, biomedical news editor, San Diego Glowing visions of light that emanate from a person's body, often seen by those claiming to be psychic, really do exist, for some people at least. That's the tantalising conclusion of a study on a new form of emotion-colour synaesthesia which projects itself as coloured auras. Other forms of synaesthesia include numbers and letters that evoke colours, touch that evokes emotions and colours with their own fragrances. Now, Vilayanur Ramachandran and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, have identified a new type of synaesthesia in a man whose emotions give rise to colours, which can take the form of auras surrounding other people. The synaesthete in question, anonymously called RF, is a 23 year-old male who has a mild form of autism called Asperger's syndrome. At the age of 10, RF's mum told him to try to match a colour with each of his emotions in an effort to aid his previous inability to identify and communicate his emotions. Having followed her advice, RF soon reported actually seeing the colours in his mind when he felt different emotions. This evolved over a number of years until he described experiencing "auras of colour" around other people depending on the emotion he related to them. He says that everyone's aura is blue to begin with, and changes as soon as he associates a particular emotion with them. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 14678 - Posted: 11.16.2010

Helen Thomson, biomedical news editor, San Diego This weekend I was shown how a virtual reality piano has helped people who have had a stroke regain movement in their limbs. This game, and others like it, aid the functional reorganisation of the brain and could pave the way for faster improvements in stroke therapy. Soha Saleh, at the New Jersey Institute of Techonology, and colleagues used a robotic glove, together with various video games, to train four volunteers who had suffered stroke and lost near-total movement of their upper limbs. The four subjects were trained for 3 hours a day over 8 days. Each training session involved making finger and hand movements with the aid of a robotic glove which gave a small amount of support to volunteers' mobility, such as holding groups of fingers together so that the volunteer could concentrate on moving just one. The volunteers were instructed on what movements to perform by playing computer games involving stacking items on a shelf or playing tunes on a piano. Their movements were transmitted into the video game to provide immediate visual feedback. The subjects were tested for breadth of movement and questioned on their ability to perform everyday tasks before and after the training sessions. All four participants showed improvements in movement after the task, with an average improvement of 24 per cent in tasks such as reaching for ones nose. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Stroke; Regeneration
Link ID: 14677 - Posted: 11.16.2010

Helen Thomson, What happens in the female brain during an orgasm? It certainly doesn't lie back and think of England, as the saying goes. In fact there's rather a lot going on, according to a study on women who volunteered to stimulate themselves to orgasm while having their brains scanned. Knowing what goes on in the brain during orgasm won't just help women who are unable to reach sexual climax: it could also have implications for depression, pain, even obesity. So says Barry Komisaruk, from Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, who's here this week at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting to present a video which shows for the first time what goes on inside a woman's brain during an orgasm. And as many men have long suspected - it's complicated. More than 30 areas of the brain are active during the event, including those involved in touch, memory, reward - and even pain. "Knowing the sequence of events from stimulation to orgasm allows us to see what parts of the brain become activated and in what order. If we can compare this to the brain activity in anorgasmic women, we can see at what point their orgasm gets blocked and work out whether it's possible to get around that block," Komisaruk says. To get his results, Komisaruk somehow persuaded nine women to stimulate themselves to orgasm while having their brains scanned in a functional MRI machine. Taking snapshots of activity throughout the event allowed Komisaruk and his colleagues to create a 3D video of the spread of activity around the brain during an orgasm. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 14676 - Posted: 11.16.2010

By SINDYA N. BHANOO One of the keys to the keen ability of bats to process sound is that the neurons in a bat’s brain work as a team to convey the importance of certain signals — like an anger call or a distress call — while diminishing the effect of less-important sounds, researchers at the Georgetown University Medical Center reported this past weekend in San Diego at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. “It’s like a basketball team,” said Bridget Queenan, a neuroscientist involved in the study. “There are neurons in the brain with these roles — like five guys on the court.” In different instances, depending on the particular signal that urgently needs to be processed, the neurons act in different ways. For example, it could be that “one neuron processes the sound, another ‘shushes’ nearby neurons, and another helps boost the first neuron’s activity,” Ms. Queenan said. She and her colleagues studied the bats by inserting electrodes into their brains and recording their neural activity after a series of tones and calls. They used this to identify how individual neurons responded to calls in various instances, like when it was noisy or quiet. “So now we start to see a little a bit how these players are working together in a specific context,” she said. “It’s as if we get snapshots of a game at different points of action.” Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 14675 - Posted: 11.16.2010

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS Jane Goodall went to the Gombe Stream Reserve near Lake Tanganyika in East Africa when she was 26. By living among the animals and quietly recording their interactions, she was able to show that the chimp world included love, hate, fear, jealousy, tool use, brutality, even warfare. I spoke with Dr. Goodall last month at Western Connecticut State College, where she was giving a lecture, and then later by telephone. A condensed version of the conversations follows: Q. In July you celebrated the 50th anniversary of your first trip to Gombe Stream Reserve. When you arrived there in 1960, could you have imagined the life that lay ahead? A. Of course not. I was a young girl, straight from England, more or less, no degree of any sort, and Louis Leakey was giving me this amazing opportunity to live with the animal most like us. There’d been no long-term studies of great apes. The longest had been George Schaller, with mountain gorillas, and he’d stayed a year. I think Louis Leakey thought the study might last 10 years. But at 26, I thought perhaps three. And then the more I learned about chimpanzees, the more I realized there was more to learn — until I couldn’t stop. Q. So you got to Gombe, and very soon, you observed something astounding: Chimpanzees used tools to fish for ants. A. I went in July. And tool-making was toward the end of October. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 14674 - Posted: 11.16.2010

By RONI CARYN RABIN Marijuana smoking often starts during adolescence — and the timing could not be worse, a new study suggests. Young adults who started using the drug regularly in their early teens performed significantly worse on cognitive tests assessing brain function than did subjects who were at least 16 when they started smoking, scientists reported on Monday. The findings, presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego, led researchers at McLean Hospital to surmise that the developing teenage brain may be particularly vulnerable to the ill effects of marijuana. “We have to understand that the developing brain is not the same as the adult brain,” said Dr. Staci A. Gruber, the paper’s senior author and director of the cognitive and clinical neuroimaging section of the neuroimaging center at McLean, a Harvard-affiliated hospital in Belmont, Mass. The study, done in conjunction with brain scans, was small, consisting of 35 chronic marijuana smokers who were 22 years old on average. Twenty had started smoking marijuana regularly before age 16, while 15 started smoking regularly at age 16 or later. All had similar levels of education and income. The subjects were asked to complete an assessment of executive function — the brain processes responsible for planning and abstract thinking, as well as understanding rules and inhibiting inappropriate actions. The test — in which participants were asked to sort cards with different shapes, numbers and colors — is a measure of cognitive flexibility, the ability to stay focused, stick to rules and control impulsive responses. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 14673 - Posted: 11.16.2010

By Kay Lazar WESTMINSTER — Bruce Vincent works his way up and down the aisles of the grocery store he has owned for two decades, methodically unpacking crates of food, stocking shelves, and breaking down the empty cartons. Midway down aisle 2, Vincent hesitates, unsure where the fudge-coated peanut butter cookies go. The redesigned package throws him, so he tucks them amid crackers on the top shelf and continues down the row. On closer inspection, Vincent has left behind a trail of similar mismatches, which his 26-year-old son, Brian, now the boss, wearily but discreetly fixes. Used to be, the elder Vincent would gently correct the mistakes of his son, who started sweeping floors and stocking shelves at Vincent’s Country Store when he was 10 years old. That was before Alzheimer’s disease. At 48, with a face still wrinkle-free, Bruce Vincent is starting to forget things he has long known — how to stock shelves, how to make change at the cash register, how to read a digital clock. A casual acquaintance probably wouldn’t notice anything amiss, because he often obscures his forgetfulness with quick one-liners. But his family sees it. Just last year, Vincent was named businessman of the year in this Central Massachusetts town of about 7,000. Now his wife and three grown children are confronting uncomfortable, agonizing decisions no family should face so soon: Is it safe for Bruce to drive? Will he have to stop working at his own store? © 2010 NY Times Co

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 14672 - Posted: 11.16.2010

By Joseph C. Franklin What do you do when you’re stressed out? Talk to friends? Listen to music? Have a drink, or eat some ice cream? Or maybe practice yoga? These things are all pleasant options, and they’re obvious, effective ways to deal with stress. Chances are that you would not even think about doing something like, say, cutting your arm with a knife until you draw blood. Yet inflicting pain is exactly what millions of Americans – particularly adolescents and young adults – do to themselves when they’re stressed. This is called nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI), and it most commonly takes the form of cutting or burning the skin. Traditionally, many doctors, therapists, and family members have believed that people engage in NSSI primarily to manipulate others. However, recent research has found that such social factors only motivate a minority of cases and usually represent cries for help rather than coldhearted attempts to exploit caretakers. Although there are many reasons why people engage in this kind of self-injury, the most commonly reported reason is simple, if seemingly odd: to feel better. Several studies support the claim that self-inflicted pain can lead to feeling better. For example, Schmahl and colleagues scanned the brains of people with a history of NSSI during a painful experimental task designed to mimic NSSI. They found that the pain led to decreased activity in the areas of the brain associated with negative emotion. The reality of this effect provokes a perplexing question: How could self-inflicted pain possibly lead to feeling better? One possible answer to this question is that some people are simply hard-wired to like pain. Although NSSI is associated with an increased pain threshold and tolerance, people who engage in NSSI still report feeling pain and, furthermore, report that this pain is unpleasant. Moreover, if these people are hard-wired to like pain, it is unclear why they primarily engage in NSSI when stressed or why they stick to moderate self-injury (e.g., cutting the skin) rather than severe self-injury (e.g., limb amputation). © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Emotions
Link ID: 14671 - Posted: 11.16.2010

People who are overweight have a greater sense of smell for food, a study has found. Researchers from the University of Portsmouth say their early findings may go towards explaining why some people struggle to stay slim. Experts already know that part of the brain that processes information about odour is also connected to the feeding centres of the brain. The latest research is published in the journal Chemical Senses. In the UK, a quarter of adults are obese and doctors fear that the incidence will only rise in the future as more and more people continue to pile on excess weight. While too much food and too little exercise may be largely to blame, scientists have been searching for the underlying causes driving the obesity epidemic. To this end, Dr Lorenzo Stafford and his team set out to study if a skewed sense of smell could be partly to blame. His team asked 64 volunteers to take part in a series of experiments that tested their smelling ability. Their study found that people appear to be slightly better at smelling food odours after they have eaten rather than when they are hungry. BBC © MMX

Keyword: Obesity; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 14670 - Posted: 11.15.2010

By Joan Raymond Jean Snyder says she isn't afraid of spiders, snakes or even dentists. But she is scared of one little thing: a GPS breakdown. "When it comes to finding my way, I've become a GPS zombie," says Snyder, a 47-year-old office manager in Highland Heights, Ohio."I'm sure I'm not doing my brain any favors." Snyder might be on to something. Three studies by McGill University researchers presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience on Sunday show that the way we navigate the world today may indeed affect just how well our brains function as we age — particularly the hippocampus, which is linked to memory. Generally, to find our way, we rely on one of two strategies: The first is a so-called spatial navigation strategy, in which we build cognitive maps using things like landmarks as visual cues that not only help us determine where we are at a given point in space, but also help us plan where we need to go. Or, we navigate by using a stimulus-response strategy, a kind of auto-pilot mode in which we turn left and right because, after some repetition, that's the most efficient way to get from A to B. If you have GPS, that uber-strategy of stimulus-response may seem quite familiar. © 2010 msnbc.com.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Alzheimers
Link ID: 14669 - Posted: 11.15.2010

By Steve Connor, Science Editor The mystery of why some people stay thin without effort while others have continually to fight off the fat has come significantly closer to being solved with a study showing that a single gene can affect appetite. Scientists have found convincing evidence to support the idea that the "fat gene" affects how hungry someone feels, which has a direct effect on how much food is eaten and how much fat is accumulated in the body. The study was carried out on genetically modified mice with several copies of the fat gene added to their DNA. The scientists said the findings support the idea that the gene in humans plays a direct role in determining whether someone is likely to become obese. In Britain, about one in five people are classed as clinically obese. Women are affected more than men, with a third of women and half of men classified as overweight, which carries an increased risk of heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Three years ago, scientists found that variants of the FTO gene are linked with a 70 per cent increased risk of developing obesity, with people carrying two copies of one gene variant being on average 3kg (6.6lb) heavier than people carrying alternative variants of the gene. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Obesity; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 14668 - Posted: 11.15.2010

Michael Posner Has the Western world succumbed to the disease of scientism – a misguided belief in the infallibility of science? So says philosopher Peter Hacker, emeritus research fellow at Oxford's St. John's College. In a recent interview with TPM Online, the website of The Philosophers' Magazine, Mr. Hacker – a leading authority on Ludwig Wittgenstein – says scientism “pervades our mentality and our culture. We are prone to think that, if there's a serious problem, science will find the answer. If science cannot find the answer, then it cannot be a serious problem at all.” This prevailing scientism, he continues “is manifest in the infatuation of the mass media with cognitive neuroscience … people nattering on what their brains make them do and tell them to do. I think this is pretty pernicious – anything but trivial.” Mr. Hacker's remarks form part of a larger critique of how neuroscience is grappling with human consciousness, the great divide for philosophers and scientists. Consciousness, of course, is one of the great, unsolved conundrums of modern science. Where, if anywhere, does awareness reside? How, if at all, can it be explained? Is the mind separate from its body? Or does everything, ultimately, reduce to biochemistry and quantum physics, including our private, inner-most experiences of the world? © Copyright 2010 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 14667 - Posted: 11.15.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey Many of the mutations that cause brain disorders are not inherited, new research on the genetics of mental retardation suggests, but are rare DNA variants that pop up for the first time in affected people. A study published online November 14 in Nature Genetics highlights the importance of rare genetic variants in causing disease, and shows that disrupting even one copy of certain genes can have profound consequences for brain development and mental abilities, says James Lupski, a clinical geneticist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. In the new study, researchers led by Joris Veltman, a human geneticist at Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center in the Netherlands, searched the genomes of 10 people with mental retardation looking for the cause of the disorder. Scientists have recently shown that during sperm production, big chunks of DNA can get lost or duplicated, leading to diseases or disorders in a man’s offspring. The problem gets worse as men age. About 15 percent of mental retardation cases are associated with these missing or repeated chunks of DNA, Veltman says. But the people in the study didn’t have any of these problems. The researchers wondered if the patients might have new mutations that change single DNA letters instead of disrupting big chunks of genetic material. To find out, the team searched the protein-producing parts of the genomes of the 10 patients and their parents. On average, the researchers found 21,755 different genetic variants in each person, with about 100 new mutations per generation, Veltman says. Then a variety of techniques helped to whittle the catalog down to just those mutations that were present in patients but not their parents, and that were likely to have functional significance. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 14666 - Posted: 11.15.2010

By Laura Sanders SAN DIEGO — Presented with a choice between cocaine and food, female rats choose the drug while male rats go for the grub, a new study finds. The result may help clarify differences in addiction between men and women, scientists reported November 14 at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting. Kerry Kerstetter of the University of California, Santa Barbara and colleagues trained rats to press one lever to receive food or a separate lever to receive cocaine. Later, the rats were presented with the food lever and the cocaine lever at the same time. At the time of the choice, all of the rats were hungry, so they should have been motivated to choose the food. Male rats clearly preferred the food. But female rats chose the cocaine over the food about half of the time. “Females and males seem to be very different when it comes to the incentive value of cocaine,” Kerstetter said. When the researchers more than doubled the dose of cocaine delivered with each lever push, male rats grew more likely to choose the cocaine. But females still edged them out for cocaine craving, choosing cocaine about 75 to 80 percent of the time compared with less than 50 percent of the time for the males. “I think these comparisons with the sex differences are particularly interesting,” says neuroscientist Ralph DiLeone of the Yale University School of Medicine. “People have noticed these differences with drug addiction, and it starts to make sense to incorporate the food intake, because these drug systems evolved for feeding.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Obesity
Link ID: 14665 - Posted: 11.15.2010