The immune system may have a key role in the development of Parkinson's disease, say US researchers. In a 20-year study of 4,000 people, half with Parkinson's disease, the team found an association between genes controlling immunity and the condition. The results raise the possibility of new targets for drug development, Nature Genetics reports. Parkinson's UK said the study strengthened the idea that immunity is an important driver of the disease. The team were not just looking for a genetic cause of the disease, but also considered clinical and environmental factors. During their search, they discovered that groups of genes collectively known as HLA genes are associated with the condition. These genes are key for the immune system to differentiate between foreign invaders and the body's own tissues. In theory, that enables the immune system to attack infectious organisms without turning on itself - but it is not always an infallible system. The genes vary considerably between individuals. Some versions of the genes are associated with increased risk or protection against infectious disease, while others can induce autoimmune disorders in which the immune system attacks the body's own tissues. Inflammation Multiple sclerosis has already been shown to be associated with the same HLA genetic variant seen in the latest study in Parkinson's disease, the researchers said. (C)BBC

Keyword: Parkinsons; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 14362 - Posted: 08.16.2010

Kea parrots are renowned thieves in their native New Zealand, and with good reason - even a complicated sequence of locks can't foil them. Hiromitsu Miyata of Kyoto University in Japan first presented keas with boxes of food secured with up to three bolts. The parrots managed to open all of them, so he made the tasks harder. The most challenging set-up involved two bolts blocking each other such that one needed to be slid open before the second would release. Miyata found that the keas cracked this problem faster if they were allowed to study the set-up for a while before attempting to break it (Animal Cognition, DOI: 10.1007/s10071-010-0342-9). This suggests they are able to plan their moves, he says. Until now, the birds were thought to tackle problems in a haphazard fashion. Issue 2773 of New Scientist magazine © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 14361 - Posted: 08.16.2010

By MATT RICHTEL Before the hiking and rafting trip, Art Kramer was concerned about a big grant. “Time is slowing down,” he says on Day 3. For the first time in three days in the wilderness, Mr. Braver is not wearing his watch. “I forgot,” he says. It is a small thing, the kind of change many vacationers notice in themselves as they unwind and lose track of time. But for Mr. Braver and his companions, these moments lead to a question: What is happening to our brains? Mr. Braver, a psychology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, was one of five neuroscientists on an unusual journey. They spent a week in late May in this remote area of southern Utah, rafting the San Juan River, camping on the soft banks and hiking the tributary canyons. It was a primitive trip with a sophisticated goal: to understand how heavy use of digital devices and other technology changes how we think and behave, and how a retreat into nature might reverse those effects. Cellphones do not work here, e-mail is inaccessible and laptops have been left behind. It is a trip into the heart of silence — increasingly rare now that people can get online even in far-flung vacation spots. As they head down the tight curves the San Juan has carved from ancient sandstone, the travelers will, not surprisingly, unwind, sleep better and lose the nagging feeling to check for a phone in the pocket. But the significance of such changes is a matter of debate for them. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 14360 - Posted: 08.16.2010

By Caroline Parkinson A new form of brain disease, similar to Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease, could affect more people than previously thought, researchers in the US say. It had been thought that only people with one genetic profile were vulnerable to the prion disease VPSPr. But in an Annals of Neurology study, Case Western Reserve University experts found people with all three possible gene patterns are affected by VPSPr. They say the findings could help with the treatment of prion diseases. Although it is a prion disease like vCJD, VPSPr is not linked to eating infected meat. However, like CJD, the new condition happens sporadically. It was first identified because of the fast-advancing form of dementia seen in those affected. They were also unable to speak or move. But tests for CJD proved negative. Further molecular examination showed VPSPr was a prion disease, but one which looked very different to those already known. The human prion protein gene comes in three variants, depending on which amino acid the prion proteins contain - valine (V) or methionine (M). People can be VV, MM or MV. The first clutch of cases identified all had the VV variant. However, these latest cases included people with the other variants too. Despite extensive research, a relatively large group of neurodegenerative diseases associated with dementia remain undefined. (C)BBC

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 14359 - Posted: 08.14.2010

By THE NEW YORK TIMES What happens when your work schedule interferes with a good night’s sleep and you find yourself growing increasingly exhausted? One reader asks the Consults blog. Q. I am a 51-year-old woman health care worker, and I’ve worked nights for about four years now. My problem is that I have not been able to sleep well during the day; I do not get more than two hours’ worth of sleep. I do not want to take a sleep aid because I do not want to become dependent on drugs. Is there any help for me without a sleep aid? Is this a sleep disorder? I notice I have been putting on weight since I started working nights. Charmaine, The Bronx A. Dr. Shelby Freedman Harris and Dr. Michael Thorpy of Montefiore Medical Center respond: Your question touches on a topic in sleep medicine that is increasingly gaining both research and clinical interest: the issue of shift work and insomnia. Shift work refers to anything outside of the traditional daytime work schedule. It mainly affects people who work nights but can also affect those who start work early, before 6:30 a.m., or in the evening, after 4:30 p.m. Our bodies are biologically programmed through circadian rhythms to sleep at night and be alert during the day. When we start to play around with these rhythms — by working during hours when our body physiologically desires sleep, for example — we are at risk of developing what’s known as shift work sleep disorder. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 14358 - Posted: 08.14.2010

By GINA KOLATA In 2003, a group of scientists and executives from the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the drug and medical-imaging industries, universities and nonprofit groups joined in a project that experts say had no precedent: a collaborative effort to find the biological markers that show the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in the human brain. Now, the effort is bearing fruit with a wealth of recent scientific papers on the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s using methods like PET scans and tests of spinal fluid. More than 100 studies are under way to test drugs that might slow or stop the disease. And the collaboration is already serving as a model for similar efforts against Parkinson’s disease. A $40 million project to look for biomarkers for Parkinson’s, sponsored by the Michael J. Fox Foundation, plans to enroll 600 study subjects in the United States and Europe. The work on Alzheimer’s “is the precedent,” said Holly Barkhymer, a spokeswoman for the foundation. “We’re really excited.” The key to the Alzheimer’s project was an agreement as ambitious as its goal: not just to raise money, not just to do research on a vast scale, but also to share all the data, making every single finding public immediately, available to anyone with a computer anywhere in the world. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 14357 - Posted: 08.14.2010

by Sujata Gupta FINDING it difficult to revise for an exam? Help could be on its way in the form of the first non-invasive way of stimulating the brain that can boost visual memory. The technique uses transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), in which weak electrical currents are applied to the scalp using electrodes. The method can temporarily increase or decrease activity in a specific brain region and has already been shown to boost verbal and motor skills in volunteers. Richard Chi, a PhD student at the Centre for the Mind, University of Sydney, and colleagues wanted to follow up on previous research showing that lesions in the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL), an area near the temple, can lead to improvements in visual memory and perceptual skills similar to the abilities exhibited by some people with autism. Chi's team wondered if inhibiting that area using tDCS might likewise improve memory. To investigate, his team showed 36 volunteers a dozen "study" slides covered with shapes that varied in their number, arrangement, colour and size (see "Brain games"). The volunteers were then shown five "test" slides - two with patterns that appeared in the study slides, two with completely new patterns and one whose pattern looked similar to that on a study slide. Participants were asked to identify which of the test slides they had already seen, first performing the task without any brain stimulation. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 14356 - Posted: 08.14.2010

By Ferris Jabr Dig through enough recent psychology research and you might walk away thinking that some scientists seem to have a gambling addiction. You would be half right: researchers turn to gambling again and again, but they are not in it to rack up money. Psychologists are interested in gambling as a powerful tool for investigating risk-taking, decision-making, and how the brain responds to personal gains and losses. Two recent gambling studies offer insights not only into general human behavior, but into the psychology of gambling itself—that is, how our minds work when we hit the casino or pull out our favorite deck of cards for an evening's entertainment with friends. The studies suggest that the best "poker face" is not a neutral expression, but a trustworthy one, and that even when we are merely spectators, our brains respond as though we have something tangible to win or lose. In a study published online July 21 in PLoS ONE, Wellesley College psychologist Erik Schlicht and his colleagues examined how our opponents' faces influence the way we bet in poker. Schlicht recruited 14 adult participants for the study, most of whom were novices that played fewer than 10 hours of poker a year. The experimenters asked the participants to sit down at computers and individually run though hundreds of scenarios in a simulated and highly simplified version of Texas hold 'em. On the computer screen, participants saw their two-card starting hand, any one of 100 digitally animated faces to represent a computer opponent, and two poker chips representing each player's bets. In the study's tweaked version of poker, the participants always bet 100 chips and the computer always bet 5,000 chips. © 2010 Scientific American

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 14355 - Posted: 08.14.2010

By Kay Lazar CHELSEA — Steve Saling talks about being lucky and as happy as he has ever been, which might seem odd, given that Saling cannot speak, walk, or move his hands. His “voice’’ is the monotone of a computer, activated by an infrared beam he moves with almost imperceptible twitches of his head. The 41-year-old former landscape architect has Lou Gehrig’s disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressive nerve disorder that slowly paralyzes patients while leaving their mind intact. They eventually lose the ability to even breathe, often within five years. Saling was diagnosed four years ago, a month after the birth of his son. Instead of despairing, he went into overdrive, determined to use technology to stay one step ahead of the relentless and usually lethal disease. Now he is blazing a path for many others. Through a chance encounter shortly after his diagnosis, he teamed up with Barry Berman, chief executive of the Chelsea Jewish Foundation, and helped to design the nation’s first residence for ALS patients needing nursing care. Using customized infrared technology, patients have far more independence than in a typical nursing home. Saling, who once specialized in making public parks accessible for disabled people, is its first resident. © 2010 NY Times Co.

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 14354 - Posted: 08.14.2010

Q. My husband gets disabling headaches from fluorescent lighting, even the new compact ones that look more like incandescent light. Also from looking directly at LCD monitors. Although he works at home and can avoid this lighting for the most part, it’s very disabling, prevents him from going many places that he’d like to, taking our daughter places, etc. Once he’s affected, the only thing that really helps is sleeping. He’s being treated by a neurologist (who has diagnosed them as migraine), but the one med that seemed to help (I think Topamax) left him with exhaustion as a side effect, so he had to stop taking it. Wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses helps him tolerate the lighting a little better, but not much. The effects are much, much worse earlier in the day; he can tolerate greater exposure if it’s later in the day. Is there anything in the research literature about light-induced migraine and treatment strategies? Ellen, New England Dr. David Dodick responds: Light-induced migraine is common, and light often amplifies the pain after the headache has begun. (Doctors refer to this occurrence as photophobia.) There is exciting new research on the anatomical pathways that account for how and why migraine is worsened by light, and ongoing research to explain how and why light may trigger a migraine attack. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Vision
Link ID: 14353 - Posted: 08.12.2010

Regions of the brain are known to differ in people with autism. Red and orange show areas that are thicker or larger, while the blue shows a reduction in size compared with a non-autistic brain. Regions of the brain are known to differ in people with autism. Red and orange show areas that are thicker or larger, while the blue shows a reduction in size compared with a non-autistic brain. (MRC) Autism in adults can be diagnosed using MRI brain scans, British scientists have found. The 15-minute scans were used to identify autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with an accuracy of 90 per cent in 20 people who were previously diagnosed. "Our study offers a 'proof of concept' for describing the complex multidimensional grey matter differences in ASD," Dr. Christine Ecker, a lecturer in forensic and neurodevelopmental sciences at London's Institute of Psychiatry and her co-authors concluded in Wednesday's issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. In the experiment, magnetic resonance imaging scans were reconstructed into 3-D images and analyzed using computer software programmed to spot structural changes in the brain's grey matter by measuring areas that relate to behaviour, language and vision. Changes in shape and thickness point to the disorder. A capability to diagnose ASD based on objective biological tests rather than the current method of relying on personality traits could help identify patients more quickly who need treatment, Ecker said. © CBC 2010

Keyword: Autism; Brain imaging
Link ID: 14352 - Posted: 08.12.2010

By Bruce Bower For Lucy and her ancient hominid comrades, raw meat sliced off animal carcasses was what’s for dinner. That’s the implication of a new study, published in the Aug. 12 Nature, describing butchery marks made by stone implements on two animal bones from about 3.4 million years ago. If the new analysis holds up, it provides the oldest known evidence of stone-tool use and meat eating by members of the human evolutionary family. It’s also the first sign of such behavior in hominids preceding the Homo lineage, say anthropologist Shannon McPherron of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and her colleagues. McPherron’s group made the discovery in Ethiopia’s Dikika research area. Study coauthor Zeresenay Alemseged of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco previously unearthed a 3.3-million-year-old skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis child at Dikika (SN: 9/23/06, p. 195). There’s no way to know whether the Dikika bones display marks made by intentionally produced stone tools or by sharp rocks found on the landscape. Until now, the oldest animal bones bearing stone-tool butchery marks came from another Ethiopian site, Bouri, and dated to 2.5 million years ago (SN: 4/24/99, p. 262). Researchers found the oldest known stone tools, estimated to be 2.6 million to 2.5 million years old, at nearby Gona, Ethiopia. Those implements were carefully fashioned from select types of rock, suggesting that stone toolmaking had begun much earlier (SN: 4/17/04, p. 254). © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 14351 - Posted: 08.12.2010

by Greg Miller In children, an anxious temperament can be a warning sign. Kids who are painfully shy and nervous are more prone to anxiety disorders and depression later in life, and they're more likely to self-medicate with alcohol and other drugs. But what causes a child to have an anxious temperament in the first place? A new study with monkeys finds that an anxious temperament is partly heritable and that it's tied to a particular brain region involved in emotion. Children with an anxious temperament often freeze up when they meet a stranger or encounter a social situation they perceive as threatening, says Ned Kalin, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Kalin and his colleagues have found that some young monkeys do much the same thing. When a human "intruder" enters the room and approaches their cage without making eye contact, these anxious youngsters freeze in place and grow quiet. Their stress hormone levels spike, too. In the new study, published in the 12 August issue of Nature, Kalin and colleagues studied 238 young rhesus monkeys from a family of more than 1500 lab-raised monkeys with well-documented pedigrees. By analyzing the family connections among the young monkeys, which ranged from siblings to distant cousins, the researchers found that an anxious temperament was partly heritable, accounting for about 36% of the variability in individual monkeys' responses on the human intruder test (as measured by the reduction in movement and vocalization and increase in stress hormone levels). © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Emotions; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 14350 - Posted: 08.12.2010

by Catherine de Lange They might not win any Oscars, but orang-utans can act. They have been caught on camera performing "pantomimes", in which they express their intentions and desires by acting them out. The finding challenges the view that these behaviours are exclusive to humans. Non-human great apes such as orang-utans and chimpanzees were already known to display meaningful gestures. They might throw an object when angry, for example. But that is a far cry from displaying actions that are intentionally symbolic and referential – the behaviour known as pantomiming. "Pantomime is considered uniquely human," says Anne Russon from York University in Toronto, Canada. "It is based on imitation, recreating behaviours you have seen somewhere else, which can be considered complex and beyond the grasp of most non-human species." Yet over years she has worked with great apes, Russon has seen several cases that she thought could be considered pantomiming. So to gather more concrete evidence, she and colleague Kristin Andrews searched through 20 years of data on the behaviour of free-ranging, rehabilitated orang-utans. They found 18 cases of orang-utans clearly acting out a message. Sometimes it was a simple mime, such as body-scratching using a stick, probably to encourage another orang-utan to groom the actor. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Evolution; Emotions
Link ID: 14349 - Posted: 08.12.2010

Christopher Nolan’s Inception is a film about a time when we have the power to enter into each other’s dreams, and actively steer the dream’s course to implant an idea in the dreamer. The film raises the issue of how much we understand about the neuroscience of dreams. Due to its need for invasive experiments, neuroscience typically works with non-human animals, which raises a significant difficulty: how do you know that a rat is dreaming? You can’t wake it up from REM sleep and ask. (Well, you can, but don’t expect a cogent response.) There’s no accepted objective indicator that a person or animal is having a dream, as opposed to sleeping. But, we can still learn something useful by looking at the neuroscience of sleep. The neuroscience of sleep has told us a few important things over the years. For example, we know that our pattern of sleep and wakefulness (the “circadian rhythm”) has much of its basis in the activity of the suprachiasmatic nucleus, a rice-grained-sized group of cells just above where the optic nerves from our eyes crossover. We know that our free running rhythm—what we go to if we are completely in the dark, with no indicator of solar activity—is slightly over 24 hours, and that the length of the rhythm can be affected by things like cannabinoids found in pot. We know that the brain activity of a person dreaming is very similar to that of an awake person—were it not for the fact that our body is paralyzed during dreaming, we’d probably do a lot of things we’d regret. While we’ve made a lot of progress in understanding sleep, we’ve a long way to go to understand dreaming. What makes it a challenge, perhaps as big a challenge as understanding consciousness itself, is the subjective aspect of dreaming. For example, we know that vivid dreaming occurs during REM sleep in humans. We also know that other animals have REM sleep. Do they also dream?

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 14348 - Posted: 08.12.2010

By Jenifer Goodwin (HealthDay News) -- Menstrual cramps are often dismissed as a mere nuisance, but new research suggests the monthly misery may be altering women's brains. Researchers in Taiwan used a type of brain scan known as optimized voxel-based morphometry to analyze the anatomy of the brains of 32 young women who reported experiencing moderate to severe menstrual cramps on a regular basis for several years, and 32 young women who did not experience much menstrual pain. Even when they weren't experiencing pain, women who had reported having bad cramps had abnormalities in their gray matter (a type of brain tissue), said study author Dr. Jen-Chuen Hsieh, a professor of neuroscience at the Institute of Brain Science at National Yang-Ming University in Taipei, Taiwan. Those differences included abnormal decreases in volume in regions of the brain believed to be involved in pain processing, higher-level sensory processing and emotional regulation, as well as increases in regions involved in pain modulation and regulation of endocrine function. Exactly how the changes in the brain could affect women's experience of pain is unknown, researchers said. But the brain abnormalities suggest that menstrual pain may have similarities with other chronic pain conditions in that over time, repeated bouts of excruciating aches make the brain unusually sensitive to pain -- in effect, making the experience of pain worse. ©2010 Bloomberg L.P.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 14347 - Posted: 08.12.2010

By Jason Palmer The brain appears to be a vastly interconnected network much like the Internet, according to new research. That runs counter to the 19th-Century "top-down" view of brain structure. A novel technique to track signals across tiny brain regions has revealed connections between regions associated with stress, depression and appetite. The research, which has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, may lead to a full map of the nervous system. Larry Swanson and Richard Thompson from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, US, isolated a small section of a rat's brain in the nucleus accumbens - a brain region long associated with pleasure and reward. Their technique hinges on the injection of "tracers" at precise points in the brain tissue. These are molecules that do not interfere with the movement of signals across the tissue, but can be illuminated and identified using a microscope. What is new is that the researchers injected two tracers at the same point at the same time: one that showed where signals were going, and one that showed where they were coming from. The approach can show up to four levels of connection. If the brain has a hierarchichal structure like a large company, as neurology has long held, the "to" and "from" diagram would show straight lines from independent regions up towards a central processing unit: the company's boss. (C)BBC

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 14346 - Posted: 08.12.2010

By LARA SALAHI Researchers claimed to have identified markers for early Alzheimer's disease in some patients by analyzing results of a spinal tap, according to an article published Monday in the Archives of Neurology. Their results, they claim, are nearly 100 percent accurate in predicting Alzheimer's in some patients. But many experts are quick to question how reliable these results may be. "The test is an advance and has tremendous research potential. This is sure," said Karl Herrup, chair of Cell Biology and Neuroscience at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J. But, he added, "a dangerous, though unintended, consequence of the '100 percent accuracy' descriptor is that people who may not be on the fast track to Alzheimer's will end up frightened unnecessarily from a positive test result." "[T]he fear of [Alzheimer's disease] is so strong in our population that feeding it any way seems not in our best overall interest." And ABC News Senior Health and Medical Editor Dr. Richard Besser said the test is not yet ready for prime time. "This test isn't ready to be used on healthy, normal people," Besser said on "Good Morning America. It will be useful for research, doing drug trials in a group of people who may be at high likelihood to go on for Alzheimer's disease." © 2010 ABC News

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 14345 - Posted: 08.12.2010

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR A new study suggests that a 50-year-old drug commonly used as an anesthetic for humans and animals — and abused, as the drug called Special K — may deliver almost instant relief in some of the most troublesome cases of bipolar depression. It has been known for several years that small doses of the drug, ketamine, can relieve major depression. But this study, done by researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health, is the first to demonstrate efficacy in patients with treatment-resistant bipolar depression. Indeed, the researchers said, the effect on this group appeared to be even stronger. Although the study was small, with just 18 patients, it was conducted under the highest standards for a drug study: it was randomized, placebo-controlled and double-blinded. In bipolar disorder, sometimes called manic-depressive illness, patients cycle between periods of elation and severe depression, and the depressive phase carries a high risk of suicide. It is commonly treated with mood stabilizers, including lithium, anticonvulsants and some antipsychotics, often in complex combinations. Both mania and depression usually improve on these drugs. But when the depression remains, it is notoriously difficult to treat, so a fast-acting medicine with lasting effects would have obvious advantages. Ketamine probably acts by limiting the action of one type of brain receptor that moves nerve signals between neurons. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 14344 - Posted: 08.10.2010

By GINA KOLATA Researchers report that a spinal fluid test can be 100 percent accurate in identifying patients with significant memory loss who are on their way to developing Alzheimer’s disease. Although there has been increasing evidence of the value of this and other tests in finding signs of Alzheimer’s, the study, which will appear Tuesday in the Archives of Neurology, shows how accurate they can be. The new result is one of a number of remarkable recent findings about Alzheimer’s. After decades when nothing much seemed to be happening, when this progressive brain disease seemed untreatable and when its diagnosis could be confirmed only at autopsy, the field has suddenly woken up. Alzheimer’s, medical experts now agree, starts a decade or more before people have symptoms. And by the time there are symptoms, it may be too late to save the brain. So the hope is to find good ways to identify people who are getting the disease, and use those people as subjects in studies to see how long it takes for symptoms to occur and in studies of drugs that may slow or stop the disease. Researchers are finding simple and accurate ways to detect Alzheimer’s long before there are definite symptoms. In addition to spinal fluid tests they also have new PET scans of the brain that show the telltale amyloid plaques that are a unique feature of the disease. And they are testing hundreds of new drugs that, they hope, might change the course of the relentless brain cell death that robs people of their memories and abilities to think and reason. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 14343 - Posted: 08.10.2010