Thanks to better brain imaging and biological insights, we're closing in on the neurons of consciousness and the subtleties of our mental machinery Cognitive control Towards the seat of consciousness The question "what is consciousness?" represents one of the great frontiers of contemporary science. Thanks to studies of humans and animals, we now know that it is a subtly nuanced state whose nature and intensity varies according to the brain's intrinsic level of activity, its chemical microclimate and the information it receives from outside. By exploiting the normal vicissitudes of waking, sleeping and dreaming states, we are now beginning to explore how consciousness is expressed and controlled. For example, I have been involved in studies comparing brain activation in REM sleep with that in lucid-dreaming states, in which we retain much executive brain function. They seem to confirm the central importance of one specific area of the frontal brain - the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - in regulating many key aspects of consciousness, including attention, decision-making and voluntary action. A combination of imaging techniques, judicious measures of subjective experience and detailed cellular and molecular-level studies will continue to deepen our understanding of our cognitive command centres in the coming years. With them we hope to crack the puzzle of consciousness, and perhaps correct the dysfunctional states of the brain we now call mental illness. Allan Hobson © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 14556 - Posted: 10.16.2010

Lauran Neergaard, Associated Press - When her stroke hit, Edna Wooten somehow stopped her car. Then her daughter ignored her slurred protests and raced her to the hospital - in time for a drug to dissolve the blood clot causing her stroke. Wooten was lucky: Too few stroke sufferers get that clot-busting treatment, especially black and Latino patients who are at highest risk of having a stroke and also may be hesitant to seek fast care. New research is targeting those underserved populations to better spread the word that "time is brain" - the faster you move, the more brain you save. "We basically scare people so much about stroke, it motivates them to denial," says Dr. Lewis Morgenstern of the University of Michigan, an expert on stroke disparities. "What we haven't done a good job of is telling people there is an effective treatment, that people are in control of their own destiny." That was the message that stroke educator Shauna St. Clair of Georgetown University took to a senior center in a predominantly black neighborhood in Washington last week, part of a project funded by the National Institutes of Health. "Damaged brain cells we can fix. That's why we want you to get treatment as soon as possible," St. Clair told the rapt group. "If they stay damaged, they die." © 2010 Hearst Communications Inc.

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 14555 - Posted: 10.14.2010

By Steve Connor, Science Editor "Love is a smoke made by the fume of sighs," wrote William Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet. Love is also an effective pain killer as good as many of the strongest drugs, scientists have found. For all the many musings in literature on the nature of love, nobody has quite realised its potential as an analgesic medicine until now, with a study showing that a romantic affair makes physical pain more bearable. Scientists believe that the findings make sense because pain control and the intense feelings of being newly in love appear to be centred on similar regions of the brain. The study, carried out on love-struck American students, found that the euphoria of the intense emotional attachment that comes with a new romance can override discomfort generated by a physically painful stimulus, such as touching something hot. "It turns out that the areas of the brain activated by intense love are the same areas that drugs use to reduce pain," said Arthur Aron, professor of psychology at State University of New York at Stony Brook, who carried out the study with colleagues from Stanford University in California. "When thinking about your beloved, there is intense activation in the reward area of the brain – the same area that lights up when you take cocaine, the same area that lights up when you win a lot of money," said Professor Aron, who has been studying the scientific nature of love for 30 years. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 14554 - Posted: 10.14.2010

By Carey Goldberg It was on the cover of The New York Times Book Review. And the cover of Time Magazine. Suddenly, the obscure science of “fetal origins” is getting popular, in the pages of a new book called “Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives.” Written by science journalist Annie Murphy Paul, "Origins" explores the still-murky but growing research into how the environment in the womb can affect a baby’s life ever after -- including the life of the mind. A few questions for the author: Q; In "Origins," you describe myriad ways that the prenatal environment appears to influence the fetus. What do we know about the effects of the womb on the brain? A: Fetal origins is very much an emerging science, so we know less than we would like about the effects of the prenatal environment on the brain. We do know, of course, that the brain is formed during the nine months of gestation, and that a number of influences during this period--chemical exposures, stress, depression, drug and alcohol use, nutrition--can have effects on the brain, showing up in things like measures of neural conduction speed, tests of cognitive ability, and IQ scores. Q: Many pregnant women worry that their own emotional state, particularly stress, will affect the fetus. How would you sum up the findings on that? A: The findings on the effects of prenatal stress are twofold. It's fairly well established that traumatic stress--severe, life-threatening stress, like that experienced in a natural disaster or war--is associated with a higher risk of premature delivery, low birth weight, and in some studies, birth defects. © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 14553 - Posted: 10.14.2010

By Rachel Ehrenberg Of all the body’s organs, the brain is the most like Area 51: Entry to the region is severely restricted, thanks to a barricade of cells and molecules known collectively as the blood-brain barrier. Increased surveillance by scientists has now pinpointed the barrier’s senior operatives, cells that are tasked with monitoring the razor wire–like barricade that keeps all but a select few from entering the brain. In two papers published online October 13 in Nature, scientists report that specialized cells called perictyes are crucial in the blood-brain barrier’s development and its maintenance in adulthood. A better understanding of how these pericytes function could help elucidate why some people fare especially poorly after traumatic brain injury or get particular neurological diseases such as cerebral palsy, scientists say. And new research could also lead to tricks for selectively opening or closing the blood-brain barrier, letting in medications that might combat diseases such as Alzheimer’s. One of the new studies demonstrates that pericytes are necessary for cementing the barrier’s cells into a nearly impenetrable wall surrounding blood vessels in the central nervous system. The work also establishes a timeline: In mice, the blood-brain barrier develops well before birth, researchers from Stanford and the University of California, San Francisco report. Pericytes also appear to keep the barrier’s cells on lockdown, dialing down the activity of genes that, if left to their own devices, would spur the transport of molecules across the barrier and into the brain. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 14552 - Posted: 10.14.2010

By Nathan Seppa People addicted to heroin or prescription opiates might have a hands-free device for getting through the rigors of drug withdrawal. The medication buprenorphine implanted under the skin and released over 24 weeks can ease drug cravings and helps some patients stay clean, researchers report in the Oct. 13 Journal of the American Medical Association. Buprenorphine is a semisynthetic opioid compound prescribed for pain relief and for addiction withdrawal. Buprenorphine works something like methadone, a synthetic opioid developed in the 1930s. Both drugs are prescribed for withdrawal from addiction to heroin or prescription pain relievers such oxycodone, Dilaudid, codeine and Vicodin. But buprenorphine in tablet form can be misused by patients who crush the pills, liquefy them and inject them for a stronger effect. To get around such abuse and to ensure that a person is getting a standardized dose of the drug, researchers devised the implants — polymer compounds composed of ethylene vinyl acetate and buprenorphine — that slowly release the drug into the body over 24 weeks. They recruited 163 adults diagnosed with opioid dependence and randomly assigned 108 to get the implants and 55 to receive placebo implants. The study’s subjects included users of heroin or prescription opioids. All participants received drug counseling during the trial and submitted regular urine samples. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 14551 - Posted: 10.14.2010

By JoNel Aleccia Newborn babies who develop jaundice, a common liver problem that turns their skin and eyes yellow, are at greater risk for autism, according to Danish researchers who studied all children born in that country during a 10-year period. Full-term babies born between 1994 and 2004 who were diagnosed with jaundice were 67 percent more likely to develop autism than those without jaundice, according to the study published in the latest issue of the journal Pediatrics. Babies most at risk were those born to mothers who had had children previously, and those born in the darkest months of the year, October to March, said researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark. “Yes, I was a bit surprised,” said Rikke Maimburg, the Danish epidemiologist who led the study that analyzed records from nearly 734,000 births. “We have previously found the connection in a smaller study … Now we find it again with sufficient statistical power.” U.S. autism researchers and advocates found the population-based results surprising, too, but they said the findings should be interpreted with caution by the public, by parents of children with autism — and by parents of the millions of newborns who develop jaundice in the first few days of life. “This study does not say that increased bilirubin caused autism,” said Dr. Susan Levy, a developmental pediatrician and autism expert at the Center for Autism Research at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “That may be a little piece of it, but it’s not the whole thing.” © 2010 msnbc.com

Keyword: Autism; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 14550 - Posted: 10.12.2010

By Rob Stein Doctors have injected millions of human embryonic stem cells into a patient partially paralyzed by a spinal cord injury, marking the beginning of the first carefully designed attempt to test the promising but controversial therapy, officials announced Monday. The patient was treated Friday at the Shepherd Center, a 132-bed hospital in Atlanta that specializes in spinal cord and brain injuries, according to announcement by the hospital and Geron Corp. of Menlo Park, Calif., which is sponsoring the research. The hospital is one of seven sites participating in the study, which is primarily aimed at testing whether the therapy is safe. Doctors will also conduct tests to see whether the treatment restores sensation or enables the patient to regain movement. No additional information about the first patient was released. The milestone was welcomed by scientists eager to finally move the research from the laboratory to the clinic, as well as by advocates for patients and by patients hoping for cures. Although the cells have been tested in animals, and some clinics around the world claim to offer therapies using human embryonic stem cells, the trial is the first to have been vetted by a government entity and aimed at carefully evaluating the strategy. After repeated delays, the Food and Drug Administration gave the go-ahead in July. But the move was criticized by those with moral objections to any research using cells from human embryos, and it is raising concern even among many proponents. Some argue that the experiments are premature, others question whether they are ethical, and many fear that the trials risk disaster for the field if anything goes awry. © 2010 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Stem Cells; Regeneration
Link ID: 14549 - Posted: 10.12.2010

By PERRI KLASS, M.D. As a pediatrician, I always ask about babble. “Is the baby making sounds?” I ask the parent of a 4-month-old, a 6-month-old, a 9-month-old. The answer is rarely no. But if it is, it’s important to try to find out what’s going on. If a baby isn’t babbling normally, something may be interrupting what should be a critical chain: not enough words being said to the baby, a problem preventing the baby from hearing what’s said, or from processing those words. Something wrong in the home, in the hearing or perhaps in the brain. Babble is increasingly being understood as an essential precursor to speech, and as a key predictor of both cognitive and social emotional development. And research is teasing apart the phonetic components of babble, along with the interplay of neurologic, cognitive and social factors. The first thing to know about babble is also the first thing scientists noticed: babies all over the world babble in similar ways. During the second year of life, toddlers shape their sounds into the words of their native tongues. The word “babble” is both significant and representative — repetitive syllables, playing around with the same all-important consonants. (Indeed, the word seems to be derived not from the biblical Tower of Babel, as folk wisdom has it, but from the “ba ba” sound babies make.) Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Language; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 14548 - Posted: 10.12.2010

Ian Sample Scientists have confirmed what many pet owners have long suspected: some dogs have a more gloomy outlook on life than others. The unusual insight into canine psychology emerged from a study by Bristol University researchers into how dogs behave when separated from their owners. Dogs that were generally calm when left alone were also found to have a "dog bowl half full" attitude to life, while those that barked, relieved themselves and destroyed furniture appeared to be more pessimistic, the study concluded. Michael Mendl, head of animal welfare and behaviour at the university, said the more anxiously a dog behaved on being parted from its owner, the more gloomy its outlook appeared to be. The findings suggest that the trouble caused by some dogs when they are left alone may reflect deeper emotional problems that could be treated with behavioural therapy. "Owners vary in how they perceive this kind of anxious behaviour in dogs. Some are very concerned, some relinquish the dog to a refuge, but others think the dog is happy or even being intentionally spiteful," Mendl told the Guardian. "At least some of these dogs may have emotional issues and we would encourage owners to talk to their vets about potential treatments," he added. Of the 10m pet dogs in the UK, around half may show separation anxiety at some stage, the researchers said. © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 14547 - Posted: 10.12.2010

By Steve Connor, Science Editor A patient who was partially paralysed as a result of an injury to the spinal cord has become the first person to be injected with millions of stem cells derived from early human embryos created by IVF. Geron Corporation, based in Menlo Park, California, said that it has enrolled the first of several patients in a pioneering study of embryonic stem cells. The phase one clinical trial will attempt to assess whether the novel treatment is safe, rather than effective. Embryonic stem cells have the proven ability to develop into any of the 200 or more specialised tissues of the body, from insulin-making pancreatic cells to the nerve cells of the brain. Scientists believe they could be used to treat many incurable conditions, from spinal injury to Parkinson's disease. However, there are concerns that the reality may not live up to the hype. As yet, there has been little clinical demonstration that human embryonic stem cells are safe, let alone effective, with concerns that they may lead to cancerous tumours. Early in 2009, Geron was given a licence by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to carry out the first clinical trial on spinal cord patients. But later in the year the company had to carry out further tests when the FDA became concerned about the growth of cysts in some laboratory animals injected with embryonic stem cells. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Stem Cells; Regeneration
Link ID: 14546 - Posted: 10.12.2010

By Susan Gaidos It’s a high-stakes version of the board game Clue. Scientist-detectives probing the origins of autism must contend with an enormous cast of characters. Within the past year, researchers have found dozens, possibly hundreds, of rare genetic mutations that may contribute to the disorder, and a handful of common mutations may also be involved. Faced with this staggering lineup of genetic suspects, scientists have turned to new DNA sequencing technologies and other methods to track clues within the brain and pin down the who, where and how underlying autism. Nobody expects to find Colonel Mustard in the kitchen with a knife. The latest clues have made it clear that with autism, there will turn out to be multiple culprits. “There’s not going to be a simple explanation for autism,” says neurogeneticist Daniel Geschwind of the University of California, Los Angeles. “The genetics are very complex, and there are likely to be many different genetic and biological mechanisms involved.” Researchers have long known that genes play a role in autism, a disorder marked by impaired social interaction and communication. Studies of twins suggest that as many as 90 percent of autism cases may have a genetic link. The problem, in many cases, is that scientists don’t know what to make of those findings. “What you hope for is that you find a mutation and then every time you see the mutation, a person’s got some evidence of autism,” says Yale University neurogeneticist Matthew State. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 14545 - Posted: 10.12.2010

By Janet Raloff When it comes to weight management, the timing of dining is pivotal, a new study indicates. At least in rodents, food proved especially fattening when consumed at the wrong time of day. As nocturnal animals, mice normally play and forage at night, often in complete darkness. With even dim chronic illumination of their nighttime environment, however, the animals’ hormonal dinner bells rang at the wrong time. Affected young adults began eating most of their chow during what should have been their rest period. The result: They fattened up and developed diminished blood-sugar control, researchers report October 11 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The animals didn’t eat more or exercise less. Throughout the eight-week study, their caloric intake — and output through exercise — matched that of lean kin afforded a truly dark night. “I suspect that what we’re doing is demonstrating that a calorie is not always just a calorie” — at least in terms of weight gain, concludes neuroscientist and team member Randy Nelson of Ohio State University in Columbus. Although human and rodent exposure to light at night has been associated with increased cancer risks, light at night apparently was not a direct cause of the effects seen in the food intake study, notes epidemiologist Richard Stevens of the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington. Not an author of this study, he is a longtime investigator of light-at-night impacts. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Obesity; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 14544 - Posted: 10.12.2010

By GINA KOLATA The two economists call their paper “Mental Retirement,” and their argument has intrigued behavioral researchers. Data from the United States, England and 11 other European countries suggest that the earlier people retire, the more quickly their memories decline. The implication, the economists and others say, is that there really seems to be something to the “use it or lose it” notion — if people want to preserve their memories and reasoning abilities, they may have to keep active. “It’s incredibly interesting and exciting,” said Laura L. Carstensen, director of the Center on Longevity at Stanford University. “It suggests that work actually provides an important component of the environment that keeps people functioning optimally.” While not everyone is convinced by the new analysis, published recently in The Journal of Economic Perspectives, a number of leading researchers say the study is, at least, a tantalizing bit of evidence for a hypothesis that is widely believed but surprisingly difficult to demonstrate. Researchers repeatedly find that retired people as a group tend to do less well on cognitive tests than people who are still working. But, they note, that could be because people whose memories and thinking skills are declining may be more likely to retire than people whose cognitive skills remain sharp. And research has failed to support the premise that mastering things like memory exercises, crossword puzzles and games like Sudoku carry over into real life, improving overall functioning. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Alzheimers
Link ID: 14543 - Posted: 10.12.2010

By MARILYN BERGER During the horrendous heat wave in July, when all of us in New York were not quite ourselves, I started feeling funny. I was sleeping too much; my right foot was dragging; my typing was skewed; I lost interest in reading the paper, about which I am usually obsessive. I figured I’d been done in by the weather. But when it improved and I didn’t, I finally gave in and called my longtime doctor, a brilliant diagnostician who had given me my annual checkup just a month earlier. I hate to be the kind of patient who calls about every hangnail, and worse, I couldn’t report anything specific — just the foot and a sort of general lethargy. It didn’t occur to me to connect my symptoms with a minor accident I’d had in May, when I fell off my bike onto the grass, crunching my helmet. (At my checkup, the doctor and I had discussed this and another fall I’d taken, noting the curiosity that when you’re young you “fall,” but when you’re older you “have a fall.”) But when there’s something wrong with your head, I’ve discovered, you have no way of knowing there is something wrong with your head. And that Catch-22 almost proved fatal. I described my symptoms to my doctor on the phone, and she replied crisply: “Doesn’t sound like you. Go see a neurologist.” Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 14542 - Posted: 10.12.2010

By Laura Sanders Some deaf people have extraordinarily keen vision, and a new study of cats may explain why. The results, published online October 12 in Nature Neuroscience, show how parts of the brain normally dedicated to a sense that has been lost can pitch in to augment another type of input. For years, researchers have known that deaf people often have superior peripheral vision and motion detection, but just how the brain creates these advantages was unclear. “Over the years, we’ve speculated about how these changes might be taking place,” says neuroscientist Helen Neville of the University of Oregon in Eugene, but a clear cause has been elusive. In the new study, researchers led by Stephen Lomber found that in deaf cats, brain regions important for hearing get co-opted to enhance vision. Instead of processing sound, these regions lend a hand to the visual system. For the first time, the study establishes a causal link between particular auditory regions and vision enhancements. “There have been all these theories out there for what region of the brain might be responsible for this, but no one has actually gone in there and demonstrated it,” Lomber says. Since cat brains are organized much like human brains, the results may mirror what happens in the brain of a deaf person. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Hearing; Vision
Link ID: 14541 - Posted: 10.11.2010

by Andy Coghlan Just 2 minutes ago, a sperm whale swam by about 4 kilometres south of Cassis on the French Mediterranean coast. From my desk in London, I heard its clicks. Thanks to a new website, so can you. The LIDO (Listening to the Deep Ocean Environment) site offers a live feed to 10 hydrophones sprinkled around European waters, and one in Canada. Several more are scheduled to come soon in Canada and in Asia. The network's primary aim is to record and archive long-term subsea noise so that researchers can study the effects of human activity on whales and dolphins. It is the brainchild of Michel André, a bioacoustician at the Technical University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain. He and his colleagues have spent the past 10 years placing hydrophones on the seabed, on existing research platforms that monitor earthquakes and tsunamis, for instance, or detect neutrino particles from space. "These observatories were already cabled to shore for geophysics and astrophysics data monitoring, so we took advantage of the existing network to install real-time acoustic data hubs on them," says André, who will demonstrate the system next month at a meeting on underwater acoustics technology in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. "The system is powered from the shore, and streams audio data to a server where the signals are analysed and published directly on the internet," he says. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Hearing; Animal Communication
Link ID: 14540 - Posted: 10.11.2010

By Ferris Jabr For people with katsaridaphobia, or the fear of cockroaches, the common pests are more than nuisances—they are the stuff of nightmares. When some phobics spot one of the skittering beasts they start sobbing uncontrollably, whereas others who have seen them in their homes seriously consider moving. Psychologists can treat such disruptive fears with exposure therapy, in which a therapist gradually presents the feared stimulus to the patient in increasingly intimate scenarios. Recently, some psychologists have successfully combined exposure therapy and virtual reality to treat fears of flying, heights and spiders, asking patients to interact with simulated environments that guarantee their safety. Now, a team of psychologists has completed the first clinical trial testing the treatment of cockroach phobia with augmented reality—a younger cousin of virtual reality that layers digital animations over video or photos of a real-world environment. The new study, published in the September issue of Behavior Therapy, is the most recent and most significant step toward bringing augmented reality therapy out of the lab and into common clinical practice. "I am thrilled with the research," says Stéphane Bouchard, a psychologist at the University of Québec in Outaouais who has studied virtual reality therapy, but was not involved in the new study. "This study shows reliably the feasibility of augmented reality to treat specific phobias." In the study psychologist Cristina Botella of the University of Jaume I in Spain and her colleagues treated six women diagnosed with cockroach phobia. © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Emotions; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 14539 - Posted: 10.11.2010

By Rob Stein The withdrawal of the diet drug Meridia on Friday marks the latest setback in the long, frustrating quest for a pharmaceutical solution to the nation's obesity epidemic. Despite millions of dollars in research by scientists and drug companies, only a handful of government-approved weight-loss drugs remain on the market. Only one can be used long term, and none is considered very effective. "It's been very frustrating," said Jennifer Lovejoy, incoming president of the Obesity Society, a research and advocacy group. "We desperately need safe new drugs so we can begin to have something effective against this public health epidemic." The search for a weight loss cure, once dismissed as a cosmetic luxury, has intensified as more than two-thirds of Americans have become overweight, including one-third who are obese, boosting their risk for a host of health problems. Experts stress that the best way to be healthy is to eat well and exercise regularly and to avoid gaining weight in the first place - and the failure to produce a pharmaceutical magic bullet makes the importance of that ever clearer. Doctors recommend that people always try to improve their eating habits and increase their physical activity to lose weight. But diets and exercise regimens often fail, and many people are unable to shed significant numbers of pounds or keep them off, so they resort to drugs or even surgery. © 2010 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 14538 - Posted: 10.09.2010

By Nancy Shute Parents who research treatments for autism are confronted with a bewildering array of options, almost all of which have never been tested for safety and effectiveness. Organizations like The Cochrane Collaboration, which reviews the quality of evidence for medical treatments, are putting more effort into evaluating popular alternative treatments. So far, the most comprehensive review of alternative autism treatments comes from two pediatricians: Susan Hyman of the University of Rochester School of Medicine Golisano Children's Hospital at Strong and Susan Levy, a clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Their 2008 analysis gave each treatment a letter grade for the quality of the research conducted up to that point; the mark, however, is not a ranking of the treatment's safety or effectiveness. The two pediatricians based the grades on the amount of testing done on the treatments, which in most cases was skimpy at best. Research that got an "A" grade included randomized control trials, the gold standard for medical research, and meta-analyses, which compare research from different labs. A "B" went to treatments that had been studied in "well-designed controlled and uncontrolled trials," according to Hyman. The "C" grades, the lowest category (there were no "D"s or "F"s), were based on case reports, theories and anecdotes, which are not considered acceptable for mainstream medical research. © 2010 Scientific American

Keyword: Autism; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 14537 - Posted: 10.09.2010