By Bruce Bower People who have nap-time dreams about a task that they’ve just practiced get a big memory boost on the task upon awakening, Harvard researchers report. Those who dream about anything else have no such enhanced recall, the team reports in a paper published online April 22 in Current Biology. Neither do those who stay awake, even if they think about the task. “I was startled by this finding,” says study coauthor Robert Stickgold, a cognitive neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School. “Task-related dreams may get triggered by the sleeping brain’s attempt to consolidate challenging new information and to figure out how to use it.” His new findings elaborate on research suggesting that sleep generally enhances memory and learning (SN: 4/28/07, p. 260). Dreaming about a demanding undertaking doesn’t cause enhanced memories for that experience, Stickgold emphasizes. Rather, memory-fortifying brain processes during sleep cause the dreams, he proposes. During slumber, Stickgold posits, a structure called the hippocampus integrates recently learned information, such as how to navigate a virtual maze, while other brain regions apply this information to related but broader situations, such as how to navigate a maze of job application forms. That’s a “tempting speculation,” remarks physiological psychologist Jan Born of the University of Lübeck in Germany. Stickgold’s idea has much potential for fostering advances in dream research, Born says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Sleep; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 14006 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Emily Sohn After 24 hours in a coma, a Croatian girl woke up speaking only German, according to reports that spread across the Internet last week. The 13-year-old had been studying German in school and watching German television shows on her own, according to various versions of the story, but she was not fluent until after the incident. Meanwhile, she lost the ability to speak her native language. Discovery News did not confirm the report with the girl's doctors or parents, but experts say the story is plausible -- to some extent. In a condition called bilingual aphasia, people often lose one of their two languages because different parts of the brain are involved in remembering each one, explained Michael Paradis, a neurolinguist at McGill University in Montreal. Even if a brain injury affected the Croatian teenager's memory of her native language, the brain areas that were learning German could have remained untouched. "This has been observed thousands of times," Paradis said. "It's not surprising at all. I'd like to know all the facts, but it's quite possible that after a coma, you'd have problems which might be located in such a way in the brain that they affect one language but not another." What can't be true, though, is the claim that the coma gave the girl fluency that she didn't have before. © 2010 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 14005 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Graham Lawton On 28 December 1963, Randy Gardner, a 17-year-old schoolboy in San Diego, California, got up at 6 am feeling wide awake and raring to go. He didn't go back to sleep again until the morning of 8 January 1964. That's 11 days without sleep. Gardner's 264 hours remains the longest scientifically verified period without sleep, breaking the previous record of 260 hours. It was described in a 1965 paper by sleep researcher William Dement of the Stanford University School of Medicine in California, who stayed awake with Gardner for the final three days. Gardner experienced mood swings, memory and attention lapses, loss of coordination, slurred speech and hallucinations, but was otherwise fine. His first sleep after those 11 days lasted just 14 hours. According to Dement, Gardner did not consume any stimulants during his "wakeathon". He did, however, have people around him keeping him awake. Without such help you would be fighting hard to stay awake after 36 hours, and would find the urge to sleep near-irrepressible by 48. But you'd probably be snatching subtle bursts of sleep even before you finally went to bed: sleep-deprived people slip in and out of "microsleeps" - seconds of sleep that occur without you noticing them, often with your eyes open. Microsleeps aside, how long could Gardner have gone on for? Nobody knows for sure, but we do know that sleep deprivation is eventually fatal. Rats that are kept awake die after two weeks, less time than it takes them to starve to death. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 14004 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway Decaf coffee and nicotine-free tobacco aren't just for the health-conscious. Giving them to flies with a form of Parkinson's disease has revealed that although coffee and cigarettes protect the brain, caffeine and nicotine aren't responsible for the benefit. If the compounds that put up this brain defence can be identified, they may offer a preventive Parkinson's treatment where none currently exists, says Leo Pallanck, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, whose team led the new study. "We think that there's something else in coffee and tobacco that's really important," he says. Evidence for the protective effect of coffee and tobacco comes mostly from epidemiological studies which suggest that coffee-drinkers and smokers are less likely to develop Parkinson's than abstainers. "A lot of the field has gravitated to the idea that it's caffeine and nicotine [that protects their brains]," says Pallanck. But because these drugs are harmful in large amounts, it would be tough to find a way of using them as therapies. To see if ingredients other than caffeine and nicotine might be providing the benefit, Pallanck's team turned to fruit flies with a condition similar to Parkinson's disease. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 14003 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By John Horgan Do some soldiers enjoy killing? If so, why? This question is thrust upon us by the recently released video of U.S. Apache helicopter pilots shooting a Reuters cameraman and his driver in Baghdad in 2007. Mistaking the camera of the Reuters reporter for a weapon, the pilots machine-gunned the reporter and driver and other nearby people. The most chilling aspect of the video, which was made public by Wikileaks, is the chatter between two pilots, whose names have not been released. As Elizabeth Bumiller of The New York Times put it, the soldiers "revel in their kill." "Look at those dead bastards," one pilot says. "Nice," the other replies. The exchange reminds me of a Times story from March 2003, during the U.S. invasion of Baghdad. The reporter quotes Sgt. Eric Schrumpf, a Marine sharpshooter, saying, "We had a great day. We killed a lot of people." Noting that his troop killed an Iraqi woman standing near a militant, Schrumpf adds, "I'm sorry, but the chick was in the way." Does the apparent satisfaction—call it the Schrumpf effect—that some soldiers take in killing stem primarily from nature or nurture? Nature, claims Richard Wrangham, an anthropologist at Harvard University and an authority on chimpanzees. Wrangham asserts that natural selection embedded in both male humans and chimpanzees—our closest genetic relatives—an innate propensity for "intergroup coalitionary killing" [pdf], in which members of one group attack members of a rival group. Male humans "enjoy the opportunity" to kill others, Wrangham says, especially if they run little risk of being killed themselves. © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Aggression; Stress
Link ID: 14002 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Charles Q. Choi The blast waves from explosions could jolt the skull into generating electricity, potentially damaging the brain, scientists now suggest. Although the burns and shrapnel wounds that explosions can inflict are their most obvious hazards, perhaps the greatest danger comes from a blast's shock wave. These rapidly generate ripples in a person's innards, potentially causing traumatic brain injuries with deleterious effects ranging from a simple concussion to long-term impaired mental function. Now scientists have uncovered a surprising possible way by which a blast might affect the brain — electric fields created when bone is hit by a shock wave. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here "It's always exciting to look at a phenomenon that may have been missed in the past," said researcher Steven Johnson, a theoretical physicist at MIT. "Moreover, this is potentially an issue that can directly affect the lives of our soldiers , which gives it a special interest for all of us who are involved." A variety of materials generate electricity when mechanically stressed. This effect, known as piezoelectricity, is commonly seen in guitar pickups and loudspeakers. Johnson and his colleagues developed a new computer model of the electric fields generated in the skull by an improvised explosive device (IED) — the kind often rigged up nowadays in combat zones. The model results suggest the generated electric fields could exceed electrical safety guidelines by a factor of 10. In fact, they might be comparable in magnitude to medical procedures employing electromagnetic fields that can disrupt brain function. © 2010 LiveScience.com.

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 14001 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Carolyn Y. Johnson Physically, Tripp was fine, crawling, standing, and walking on schedule. But language eluded him. Lee Black vividly recalled when Tripp, nearly 2, sat in his highchair and tried to sing a children’s song. He started to say “head,’’ then faltered, as if the word had crumbled out of his grasp. “I watched him freeze,’’ his father said. “That was the ultimate moment.’’ Tripp was later diagnosed with autism, a disorder that can impair children’s ability to speak. Despite years of therapy, he did not talk. Then last fall, at age 8, he began an experimental program that coaxes speech using singing, movement, and imitation. After 10 weeks, he could say “mama,’’ “dada,’’ “bubbles,’’ and “bye.’’ One evening, his brother, Luke, was having trouble getting the family dog onto his bed. “Journey, up!’’ he called. “Up, up, up!’’ Tripp chimed in. For his mother, that simple exchange was huge — Tripp had spontaneously used his voice, joining in a bedtime ritual. “That’s what a family is supposed to feel like; when you’re putting your kids to bed, everybody’s supposed to be participating,’’ she said later. “A little thing like that can carry me for a month.’’ © 2010 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Autism; Language
Link ID: 14000 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists have developed a brain implant that essentially melts into place, snugly fitting to the brain’s surface. The technology could pave the way for better devices to monitor and control seizures, and to transmit signals from the brain past damaged parts of the spinal cord. “These implants have the potential to maximize the contact between electrodes and brain tissue, while minimizing damage to the brain. They could provide a platform for a range of devices with applications in epilepsy, spinal cord injuries and other neurological disorders,” said Walter Koroshetz, M.D., deputy director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health. The study, published in Nature Materials*, shows that the ultrathin flexible implants, made partly from silk, can record brain activity more faithfully than thicker implants embedded with similar electronics. The simplest devices for recording from the brain are needle-like electrodes that can penetrate deep into brain tissue. More state-of-the-art devices, called micro-electrode arrays, consist of dozens of semi-flexible wire electrodes, usually fixed to rigid silicon grids that do not conform to the brain’s shape. In people with epilepsy, the arrays could be used to detect when seizures first begin, and deliver pulses to shut the seizures down. In people with spinal cord injuries, the technology has promise for reading complex signals in the brain that direct movement, and routing those signals to healthy muscles or prosthetic devices.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 13999 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway Brain-training software may be a waste of time. People who played "mind-boosting" games made the same modest cognitive gains as those who spent a similar amount of time surfing the web. "It didn't really make any difference what people did," says Adrian Owen of the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, UK, who tested brain-training software on volunteers recruited through a BBC television programme. Over the past five years, there has been an explosion in the market for brain-training software, which supposedly keeps the brain youthful. The BBC approached Owen with the idea of testing such software after he wrote a review of the scientific literature on it. Only a handful of studies existed on the topic, many lacking good controls or enough volunteers, he says. "The scientific evidence for it was extremely weak." Owen and his colleagues asked 11,000 volunteers to take tests to gauge their reasoning ability and verbal and spatial memory. Participants then spent six weeks playing on one of two computer programs, or just surfing the web for trivia. In one program, which mimics commercial brain-training software, the volunteers solved simple mathematics problems and puzzles that tested their memories. The other was designed specifically to boost cognitive abilities such as reasoning and planning. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Intelligence
Link ID: 13998 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Gisela Telis Called “feathered apes” for their simianlike smarts, crows use tools, understand physics, and recognize themselves and humans. But new research suggests that the brainy birds may be even smarter than was previously thought. Given a complex problem and an assortment of tools, New Caledonian crows came up with a creative solution that hints at higher-order thinking. A native of New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands in the Pacific Ocean, the New Caledonian crow makes tools from sticks or leaves and uses these to draw tasty grubs from hollows in trees. That in itself wouldn’t be so impressive—even some insects use tools this way—but the crows also combine tools when they needed to. In a 2007 experiment conducted by graduate student Alex Taylor and colleagues at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, the crows used a shorter stick to grab another that was long enough to get food outside their reach. This kind of action seems to indicate insight or reasoning. But not everyone was convinced, says Taylor. “Some scientists suggested the tools became valuable in themselves because they were associated with food,” he says. That would mean the birds sought each stick because they wanted it, not because they understood the stick’s potential function. The distinction, although subtle, marks the difference between high- and low-level learning, and it speaks to a central question of cognition research: How do you determine whether an animal is thinking through its actions, or simply learning through association a series of behaviors and combining them? © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 13997 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By OLIVIA JUDSON Being fat is bad for your brain. That, at least, is the gloomy conclusion of several recent studies. For example, one long-term study of more than 6,500 people in northern California found that those who were fat around the middle at age 40 were more likely to succumb to dementia in their 70s. A long-term study in Sweden found that, compared to thinner people, those who were overweight in their 40s experienced a more rapid, and more pronounced, decline in brain function over the next several decades. Consistent with this, the brains of obese people often show signs of damage. One study of 60 healthy young adults (in their 20s and 30s) found that the fatter members of the group had significantly lower gray-matter densities in several brain regions, including those involved in the perception of taste and the regulation of eating behavior. A study of 114 middle-aged people (aged between 40 and 66) found that the obese tended to have smaller, more atrophied brains than thinner people; other studies have found similar results. Brains usually atrophy with age, but being obese appears to accelerate the process. This is bad news: pronounced brain atrophy is a feature of dementia. Why fatness should affect the brain in this way is not clear, although a host of culprits have been suggested. A paper published this week in the early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has identified a gene that seems to be involved. FTO, as the gene is known, appears to play a role in both body weight and brain function. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 13996 - Posted: 04.22.2010

by Dan Ferber The smell of a Big Mac makes your mouth water, but your arteries are safe if you buy the salad, right? Maybe not. A new study has identified a specific food odor that makes dieting fruit flies die young. The results suggest that certain odors—or drugs that block us from sensing them—might one day help prevent disease and extend lives. For more than a decade, scientists have known that a low-calorie diet lengthens the lives of many organisms, including yeast, fruit flies, monkeys, and perhaps humans. But the connection may have as much to do with smelling as it does with eating. In 2004, for example, molecular geneticist Cynthia Kenyon of the University of California, San Francisco, discovered that removing certain olfactory neurons not only blocks roundworms’ sense of smell but also prolongs their lives. And a few years later, geneticist Scott Pletcher of the University of Michigan Medical School, biologist Gregg Roman of Baylor College of Medicine, and their colleagues shortened the life span of fruit flies by wafting the smell of live yeast—a tasty treat—toward them while they were on a diet. Pletcher and colleagues suspected that a specific odor was at work, but they didn't know which one. In the meantime, other scientists had identified a receptor in a group of neurons that enable fruit flies to smell carbon dioxide, which signals the presence of a good meal of tasty yeast. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Obesity
Link ID: 13995 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Ingrid Wickelgren MONTREAL—Rational calculations do not dictate financial decisions, as psychologists have revealed in recent years. Emotions often sway our spendthrift or miserly ways. In particular, positive feelings promote risk taking—gambling in Vegas, say, or going on a shopping spree—whereas bad moods prompt protective selling or saving. In some cases, our feelings may have an obvious origin: studies show that sunshine breeds stock surges, whereas clouds curtail purchasing. But much of what influences our spending is far more subtle—subliminal, in fact. Now psychology graduate student Julie L. Hall of the University of Michigan reports at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society 2010 annual meeting that subconscious emotional cues have a far greater impact on financial risk taking than conscious ones do. What is more, one particular brain region mediates the connection between what influences our feelings and the financial decisions we make. Hall and her colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of 24 men and women while the subjects glanced at happy, angry and neutral faces of the sort that, according to previous research, can affect an onlooker's mood. Some of these faces were clearly visible, whereas others flashed so briefly—appearing for a mere 30 milliseconds—that the subjects could not consciously see their expressions. After viewing each face, the men and women were supposed to perform a simulated investment task: choosing between two risky, high-payoff stocks and a safe, low-payoff bond. As expected, the investigators found that viewing the happy faces caused the subjects to pick the riskier financial alternative—that is, the stocks—far more often than seeing the neutral faces did. © 2010 Scientific American

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 13994 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Steve Connor In 2000 President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair announced in a joint satellite broadcast from the White House and Downing Street that scientists had completed the first draft of the human genome. Ten years on and medical researchers are now enjoying a 'genome bonanza' that has begun to elucidate the complex role of genes in human health. Three such studies are published today. One describes how a gene linked to obesity is also associated with mental deterioration, a second shows how another gene affects memory and thinking in old age and the third study identifies the part of the human genome affected by a healthy Mediterranean diet – or more specifically virgin olive oil. When the draft genome was published, President Clinton ruffled a few atheistic feathers when he suggested that the milestone represents the translation of a mysterious code designed by a higher being. "Today, we are learning the language in which God created life," he said. Whether God-given or not, it took another three years for scientists to finally complete the entire 'book of life', as the human genome came to be called. And it was soon clear that as a powerful research tool it would unleash untold insights into the workings of the human body, as well as our relationships to the wider living world. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Obesity; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13993 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sandra G. Boodman For Susan Benda, the ritual was becoming routine: She would awaken in the middle of the night and pad to the bathroom, then stick her head under a steaming hot shower. That was the only way to briefly quell the infuriating scalp itch that had plagued her for more than a year. A lawyer for the federal government who lives in the District, Benda had amassed an impressive array of shampoos, ranging from cheap drugstore brands to expensive prescription remedies, some foul-smelling, others floral-scented. She had consulted three dermatologists, one of whom said her unremitting itching, which grew worse at night, had a psychiatric cause; the other two said it was allergic. Her internist had raised the ominous prospect of cancer. She had undergone a biopsy on her neck to check for a rare digestive problem after a mysterious itchy rash appeared there. In February, when an allergist took one look at Benda's neck and told her what was really wrong, she was dumbfounded. "Do I laugh or do I cry?" she remembers thinking. "What kept the doctors from seeing what I have? And why didn't I think of it?" In August 2008 Benda made an appointment with a well-known Washington dermatologist; her head had been itching for several weeks. As the doctor inspected her scalp, Benda described the problem and said it felt as though "red ants were crawling all over my head." That description, and the lack of any apparent cause, led the doctor to tell Benda her itch was neurotic in origin. © 2010 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 13992 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Celeste Biever A gene variant that helps us gain weight may shrink our brains into the bargain. Elderly obese people are more likely to develop dementia and their brains tend to be smaller than those of people of normal weight. This has been put down to clogged arteries slowing the blood flow to the brain, killing neurons. But now Paul Thompson's team at the University of California, Los Angeles, has found that a gene variant linked to obesity may harm the brain directly. Half of Europeans and West Africans have a variant of a gene called FTO that increases the risk of obesity by two-thirds. The variant is thought to affect metabolism and fat storage. When Thompson's team looked at brain scans of 206 healthy people aged 70 to 80, they found that those with at least one copy of the FTO variant had 8 per cent less volume in their frontal lobes and 12 per cent less in the occipital lobes, compared with their counterparts lacking the variant. The brains of those with the variant "looked 16 years older", Thompson reckons. The study's participants did not have cognitive problems. However, these brain areas are critical to problem-solving and perception, and brain atrophy there increases the risk of dementia and memory problems, Thompson says. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Obesity; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13991 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By HENRY FOUNTAIN Songbirds are not born with songs in their heads, but learn them from others. And as in a game of telephone, it would seem natural that, over generations, the songs might change. That is what happens with many species, some more dramatically than others. The songs of indigo buntings change so much, for example, that songs that are five years apart are almost completely different. But with other species, the songs are more stable. Now, thanks to some old audio recordings, researchers have determined just how stable some songbirds’ songs can be. The songbird in question is not just any old bird, but a member of a famous group of finches that Charles Darwin studied in the Galápagos Islands. Using recordings of Geospiza fortis, the medium ground finch, made 38 years apart, Jeffrey Podos of the University of Massachusetts and Eben Goodale, who is now at the University of California, San Diego, found that some songs have persisted over four decades. The researchers conducted a statistical analysis of songs, using elements like number of notes, note duration and trill rate. As they report in Biology Letters, in each year’s recordings there is a lot of variability in the songs. But from one period to another, there are some songs that match quite closely. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Evolution
Link ID: 13990 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Ingrid Wickelgren MONTREAL—When we're under immediate stress—say, we are about to give a speech or about to be mugged—we either fight or flee, or so scientists have long preached. But some psychologists are now suggesting that this scenario may apply mainly to males. Men get antisocial under pressure, but women tend to react in the opposite way: they "tend and befriend," engaging in nurturing and social networking, perhaps as a way to protect their offspring, according to a theory proffered by neuroscientist Shelley Taylor of the University of California, Los Angeles. Here at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society 2010 annual meeting, psychologist Mara Mather of the University of Southern California presented powerful new support for Taylor's hypothesis in the divergent ways that stressed men and women respond to faces. Mather and her colleagues asked male and female subjects to place their hand in ice water for three minutes, an activity that makes levels of the stress hormone cortisol shoot up over the next hour or so. Then these subjects—and a comparison group whose hands had been comfortably immersed in warm water—looked at angry or neutral faces while lying inside a brain scanner. These conditions revealed a striking sex difference in the brain in the extent to which men and women process faces, and perform emotional assessments of others, under stress. The men under the influence of high cortisol levels showed less activity in a key face-processing region of the brain (the fusiform face area or FFA) than the unstressed men did, suggesting that stressful situations diminish the ability of men to evaluate facial expressions. By contrast, the brains of the women under strain worked harder on the faces: in these females, the FFA was more active than it was in women who did not experience the cortisol boost. © 2010 Scientific American

Keyword: Stress; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 13989 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The brains of children with attention-deficit disorders respond to on-the-spot rewards in the same way as they do to medication, say scientists. A Nottingham University team measured brain activity as children played a computer game, offering extra points for less impulsive behaviour. Their findings, published in Biological Psychiatry, could mean lower doses of drugs such as Ritalin in severe cases. But they warn teachers and parents may often struggle to give instant rewards. Estimates vary, but it is believed that up to 5% of children in the UK have some form of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This can lead to behavioural problems including impulsive actions, fidgeting and poor attention span, and can affect a child's academic and social progress. In severe cases, stimulant drugs such as Ritalin, which act on parts of the brain associated with attention and behaviour, can be given. In addition, parents are often asked to try to influence the child's actions directly by rewarding positive behaviour and making sure that there are negative consequences if a child behaves badly. Research has suggested that, unlike in non-ADHD children, these incentives and disincentives only work well if delivered on the spot, as opposed to later in the day or week. The Nottingham team wanted to look at the effects of this "behaviour therapy" in the brain of the child. They devised a computer game in which children had to "catch" aliens of a certain colour, while avoiding aliens of a different colour. The game was designed to test the children's ability to resist the impulse to grab the wrong sort of alien. To test whether incentives made a difference, in one variant of the game the reward for catching the right alien was increased fivefold, as was the penalty for catching the wrong one. (C)BBC

Keyword: ADHD; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 13988 - Posted: 04.19.2010

By Brian Alexander, contributor The student naval aviator was flying in formation — a high pressure maneuver anytime, but especially when you’re still trying to make the grade — when he suddenly started laughing. Hysterically laughing. Laughing so hard he endangered the flight. This wasn’t the first time the man had broken out in uncontrollable laughter at a seemingly strange moment. In fact, the young pilot had been waking up other members of his household in the middle of night as he, sound asleep, broke out in peals of laughter. As it turned out, the pilot, who showed no other symptoms when he was documented with the problem in 1997, was experiencing a rare form of epileptic episode called gelastic seizure. The main symptom of a gelastic seizure is uncontrolled laughter. Laughing or crying at inappropriate moments, or out of context to one’s circumstances — crying in the middle of a lecture, for example, or laughing at a funeral — is something most of us experience at least once. However, as the case of the pilot illustrates, there can be a variety of underlying causes for these ill-timed outbursts. Multiple sclerosis, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease or any number of conditions can cause brain lesions or damage the communications between different parts of the brain. The result is pathological laughing or crying, also sometimes called involuntary emotional expression disorder. Now, Cleveland Clinic researchers are testing an experimental treatment, a combination of two medications, dextromethorphan and low-dose quinidine, to help control the involuntary outbursts. © 2010 Microsoft

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 13987 - Posted: 06.24.2010