By Nathan Seppa In science’s struggle to keep up with life on the streets, smoking cannabis for medical purposes stands as Exhibit A. Medical use of cannabis has taken on momentum of its own, surging ahead of scientists’ ability to measure the drug’s benefits. The pace has been a little too quick for some, who see medicinal joints as a punch line, a ruse to free up access to a recreational drug. But while the medical marijuana movement has been generating political news, some researchers have been quietly moving in new directions — testing cannabis and its derivatives against a host of diseases. The scientific literature now brims with potential uses for cannabis that extend beyond its well-known abilities to fend off nausea and block pain in people with cancer and AIDS. Cannabis derivatives may combat multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease and other inflammatory conditions, the new research finds. Cannabis may even kill cancerous tumors. Many in the scientific community are now keen to see if this potential will be fulfilled, but they haven’t always been. Pharmacologist Roger Pertwee of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland recalls attending scientific conferences 30 years ago, eager to present his latest findings on the therapeutic effects of cannabis. It was a hard sell. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 14147 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Katherine Harmon NEW YORK—When ancient denizens of central France painted leaping horses on the cave walls at Lascaux, they might not have had the late Renaissance understanding of how to illustrate perspective and three dimensions. But they did, with simple black lines, give the implication of depth, showing the far pair of limbs behind the closer pair. That seemingly simple detail reveals a world of information about the human brain, concluded various scientists and artists at a World Science Festival panel held June 3 at New York University. In the world itself, lines do not define objects. "You cannot find objects that have lines around them," rather most people make sense of their surroundings using shapes, color, shading and subtleties of depth, explained Patrick Cavanagh, of the Vision Sciences Lab at Harvard University. By that measure, line drawings are "not something we've evolved to be able to understand," he said, but rather, people in all cultures—and even babies and monkeys—can understand a simple line drawing. The effectiveness of simple line-based representations "wasn't invented; it was discovered by artists," he noted. Cavanagh called this discovery "a backdoor to the brain," through which scientists can learn more about how the brain makes sense of the visual world: for instance, why we all understand that a straight line that ends at a square's edge and then continues on the same plane on the other side is probably "behind" the square—and why our brain has so much trouble sorting out even simple optical illusions. © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 14146 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Gisela Telis The select club of brainy critters known for carrying traditions—among them humans, primates, whales, and dolphins—has an unlikely new member: the banded mongoose. Researchers have found that the furry African carnivore learns by imitation as well and carries what it learns well into adulthood. Experts say the discovery offers the first direct observation of animals passing down traditions in the wild. The mongoose is better known for its unique social system than for its brainpower. When mongoose pups emerge from the den, they try out and eventually choose one adult—usually an older sibling, cousin, or uncle, not a parent—who becomes their "escort" or chaperone during infancy. The escort protects, feeds, and plays with the pup as it grows, and the pair spends almost all its time together until the pup reaches adulthood. The relationship made Corsin Müller, an animal cognition expert at the University of Vienna, wonder if the escort teaches the pup any behaviors; that is, whether the escort is passing down "culture" or tradition to the pup. To find out, Müller and a colleague at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom took advantage of another mongoose quirk. When eating hard-shelled prey, such as eggs or rhinoceros beetles, some mongooses bite into the item, others hurl it against a hard surface to smash it open, and still others switch between the techniques. Each mongoose sticks to its preferred behavior, even if other members of the same group choose a different tactic. Watch and learn. A mongoose escort smashes (top) or bites (bottom) a food-filled plastic egg as his pup looks on. As an adult, the pup will adopt its escort's preferred foraging technique or "tradition" during its own encounters with the egg. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 14145 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Sarah Reed A new movie set for general release today follows the lives of sexually liberated females. No, its stars are not the glamorous gals from Sex and the City. The film instead throws the spotlight on crickets, offering unprecedented video footage of the insect's mating behavior in the wild and confirming lab studies that have suggested female crickets have just as many different mates as males. Most studies of insect behavior have been confined to the laboratory, due to the technical challenges faced in monitoring these small creatures in the wild. Although laboratory-based studies have revealed much about the behavior and physiology of insects, it wasn't known how much the controlled environment influenced these findings. To address this issue, a team of European scientists monitored a population of flightless field crickets (Gryllus campestris) at the bottom of a river valley in northern Spain from the spring of 2006 through to the autumn of 2007. The crickets were under surveillance 24 hours a day, with a network of 64 motion-sensitive, infrared-equipped video cameras capturing a total of 250,000 hours of footage. Tags featuring a highly visible code were glued onto the backs of the crickets as soon as they emerged from their burrows so that they could be individually identified in the footage. Parentage was then assigned by extracting DNA from the tip of a hind leg. Caught on tape. In this video, Tom Tregenza of the University of Exeter narrates several scenes from the crickets' lives. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 14144 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers have found a way to pharmacologically induce a memory of safety in the brain of rats, mimicking the effect of training. The finding suggests possibilities for new treatments for individuals suffering from anxiety disorders (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/anxiety-disorders/index.shtml). Rats normally freeze when they hear a tone they have been conditioned to associate with an electric shock. The reaction can be extinguished by repeatedly exposing the rats to the tone with no shock. In this work, administering a protein directly into the brain of rats achieved the same effect as extinction training. The protein, brain-derived neurotrophic factor or BDNF, is one of a class of proteins that support the growth and survival of neurons. Prior work has shown that extinction training does not erase a previously conditioned fear memory, but creates a new memory associating the tone with safety. "The surprising finding here is that the drug substituted for extinction training, suggesting that it induced such a memory," said Dr. Gregory Quirk at the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine, who led the investigation with support from the National Institute of Mental Health. The work is reported in the June 4 issue of Science. Memory formation involves changes in the connections, or synapses, between neurons, a process known as synaptic plasticity. One brain structure critical for extinction memory in rats is the infralimbic prefrontal cortex (ILC). Drugs that block synaptic plasticity impair the formation of extinction memory when injected into the ILC, causing rats to continue freezing at high levels after extinction training.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Emotions
Link ID: 14143 - Posted: 06.05.2010

In a major study, investigators have compared how individuals with Parkinson's disease respond to deep brain stimulation (DBS) at two different sites in the brain. Contrary to current belief, patients who received DBS at either site in the brain experienced comparable benefits for the motor symptoms of Parkinson's. The results appear in the June 3, 2010 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. This is the latest report from a study that has followed nearly 300 patients at 13 clinical sites for two years. The study was funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health. Additional support was provided by Minneapolis-based Medtronic, Inc., the makers of the DBS systems used in the study. "These results establish that DBS delivered to these two brain areas linked to key motor control pathways can have equivalent effects on tremor, stiffness and other motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease," said Walter Koroshetz, M.D., deputy director at NINDS. "The important question now becomes how stimulation at each site affects some of the other important, non-motor symptoms and how to best individualize DBS therapy." Motor control problems such as shaking, rigidity, slowed movement and poor balance are often the first and most troubling symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. In later stages, patients tend to develop a variety of cognitive and mood problems, including depression, apathy, slowed thinking, confusion, impaired memory and trouble sleeping.

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 14142 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Zahra Hirji Dieting is a royal pain. No matter how many carrots or grapes you eat, you still feel hungry. But what if you could go days, weeks even, without eating and not feel hungry? For yellow-bellied marmots, cat-size rodents, this miraculous ability is part of a normal routine. In a new study, scientists identified a molecule that makes marmots hungry during their hibernation phase. This molecule, nicknamed AICAR (5-aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide 1 B-D-ribofuranoside if you really want to know), is found in creatures from yeast to humans. Knowing how to manipulate it could open the door for people struggling with obesity and eating disorders. Marmots (Marmota flaviventris) spend up to seven months out of the year, October to March, hibernating. Unlike other hibernating animals such as ground squirrels and some bats, these furry critters do not store excess food within a paw’s reach for a mid-hibernation snack, Greg Florant of Colorado State University and head author of the study explained to Discovery News. Rather, they eat to the point of obesity during the summer. Impressively, they are not plagued by health problems like diabetes, Florant noted. “Even if they aren’t hibernating, marmots can go for days on end without food,” Florant said. © 2010 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 14141 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Daniel Cressey Long derided by much of the mainstream medical community, acupuncture seems to have just got a little bit less alternative. Despite anecdotal evidence claiming benefits in treating ailments from allergies to pain, acupuncture faces two big challenges to acceptance in mainstream medicine. Many reviews of clinical trials have concluded that there is no evidence of efficacy for most conditions beyond the placebo effect1, and there is no scientifically accepted mechanism for how the treatment works. Research in mice has now provided a biochemical explanation that some experts are finding more persuasive2, although it might account for only some of the treatment's supposed benefits. "Our study shows there is a clear biological mechanism behind acupuncture," says Maiken Nedergaard, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester in New York, who led the research. Nedergaard's team wanted to find out whether the neuromodulator adenosine, which is produced when tissue is injured and has pain-dulling effects, was involved in the purported pain-relieving effects of acupuncture. After inducing pain in the right hind paws of their mice, the researchers inserted and rotated an acupuncture needle just below the 'knee', at a place known in humans as the 'Zusanli point'. For about an hour after the treatment the mice took longer to respond to touch or heat on the paw, indicating that their pain had been dulled. The team found that adenosine levels had increased at the acupuncture site, and that mice lacking a key cell receptor for adenosine did not show the same response. © 2010 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 14140 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By PAM BELLUCK YARUMAL, Colombia — Tucked away on a steep street in this rough-hewn mountain town, an old woman found herself diapering her middle-age children. At frighteningly young ages, in their 40s, four of Laura Cuartas’s children began forgetting and falling apart, assaulted by what people here have long called La Bobera, the foolishness. It is a condition attributed, in hushed rumors, to everything from touching a mysterious tree to the revenge of a wronged priest. It is Alzheimer’s disease, and at 82, Mrs. Cuartas, her gray raisin of a face grave, takes care of three of her afflicted children. One son, Darío, 55, babbles incoherently, shreds his socks and diapers, and squirms so vigorously he is sometimes tied to a chair with baggy blue shorts. A daughter, María Elsy, 61, a nurse who at 48 started forgetting patients’ medications, and whose rages made her attack a sister who bathed her, is a human shell, mute, fed by nose tube. Another son, Oderis, 50, denies that his memory is dying, that he remembers to buy only one thing at a time: milk, not milk and plantains. If he gets Alzheimer’s, he says, he will poison himself. “To see your children like this ... ,” Mrs. Cuartas said. “It’s horrible, horrible. I wouldn’t wish this on a rabid dog. It is the most terrifying illness on the face of the earth.” Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 14139 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Jennifer Couzin-Frankel In the first decision of its kind, a federal magistrate judge has ruled that functional magnetic resonance imaging shouldn't be permitted in the courtroom as a new type of lie detector. U.S. Magistrate Judge Tu Pham yesterday released a 39-page opinion asserting that the technology is unreliable and has not been accepted by the scientific community. Scientists who felt fMRIs weren't ready to be used in court as lie detectors are relieved by the ruling which, while not binding on other jurisdictions, is likely to have an impact. Lorne Semrau was seeking to include the results of scans as part of his defense in a Medicare and Medicaid fraud case being heard in a federal court in Tennessee. But while Judge Pham agreed that the technique had been subject to testing and peer review, it flunked on the other two points suggested by the Supreme Court to weigh cases like this one: the test of proven accuracy and general acceptance by scientists. Pham noted, for example, that "there are no known error rates for fMRI-based lie detection outside the laboratory setting." The distinction between lying in a controlled experiment and the real world is an important one, says Owen Jones, a law professor at Vanderbilt University Law School in Nashville. "You have much greater stakes in the lie" when you're really trying to deceive, he says. Those brain scans might not look like the scans of people told to lie, for instance, about whether they'd taken a watch off a lab table. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Stress; Brain imaging
Link ID: 14138 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Andy Coghlan Post-mortems of binge-drinking adolescent monkeys have produced the best evidence yet that heavy drinking at an early age can do lasting damage to the brain. The worst damage was to stem cells destined to become neurons in the hippocampus, the brain area responsible for memory and spatial awareness. Monkey and human brains develop in the same way, so the finding suggests that similar effects may occur in human teenagers. It thus reinforces the rationale for anti-alcohol policies in the US and elsewhere which aim to raise the age at with people start to drink. Chitra Mandyam of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and colleagues gave four rhesus macaque monkeys citrus-flavoured alcoholic drinks for an hour a day over a period of 11 months. Two months later the animals were killed, and their brains were compared with those of monkeys that had not consumed alcohol. The bingeing monkeys had 50 to 90 per cent fewer stem cells in their hippocampus compared with the controls. "We saw a profound decrease in vital cells," Mandyam says. "What is important for the public to know is that this type of drinking can kill off stem cells." This loss could result in damage to memory and spatial skills, she adds. Lasting effects Mandyam thinks that this degeneration could have long-term effects and provide a mechanism for why bingeing teens are more likely to develop alcohol dependence as adults. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 14137 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Linda Geddes The first indication that something might be up came when I caught myself asking my friend how she was feeling twice in the space of 30 seconds. Then I got into my car and couldn't find my keys, until a helpful passer-by pointed out that they were sitting in the lock outside. Since then, I've caught myself losing track of what I'm saying mid-sentence, and walking upstairs only to realise that I have no recollection of what I've gone up there for. It seems that "mumnesia", the forgetfulness that is said to beset pregnant women, may finally be taking hold. There have been plenty of studies supporting the idea that mumnesia exists – although some others have contradicted them. But a new study casts fresh light on exactly how pregnancy might interfere with memory in women, as well as exploring how long the effects last. It is also one of the largest studies looking into pregnancy and memory to have been conducted so far. Laura Glynn at the University of California, Irvine, asked 254 pregnant women to perform a series of memory tests at different stages of their pregnancy, as well as 12 to 14 weeks after the birth. She also measured levels of the hormones oestrogen and cortisol in their blood, and repeated these tests on 48 non-pregnant women. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 14136 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS Three years ago, when Oxford University Press published “Music, Language, and the Brain,” Oliver Sacks described it as “a major synthesis that will be indispensable to neuroscientists.” The author of that volume, Aniruddh D. Patel, a 44-year-old senior fellow at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, was in New York City in May. We spoke over coffee for more than an hour and later by telephone. An edited and condensed version of the conversations follows. Q. YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF AS A NEUROSCIENTIST OF MUSIC. THIS HAS TO BE A NEW PROFESSION. HOW DID YOU COME TO IT? A. I’ve been passionate about two things since childhood — science and music. At graduate school, Harvard, I hoped to combine the two. But studying with E.O. Wilson, I quite naturally got caught up with ants. In 1990, I found myself in Australia doing fieldwork on ants for a Ph.D. thesis. And there, I had this epiphany: the only thing I really wanted to do was study the biology of how humans make and process music. I wondered if the drive to make it was innate, a product of our evolution, as Darwin had speculated. Did we have a special neurobiological capacity for music, as we do for language and grammar? So from Australia, I wrote Wilson that there was no way I could continue with ants. Amazingly, he wrote: “You must follow your passion. Come back to Harvard, and we’ll give it a shot.” Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 14135 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By SINDYA N. BHANOO The iguanas on the Galápagos Islands enjoy a pleasant life with few predators and ample marine algae to feast on. But every few years El Niño, a tropical Pacific weather pattern, disrupts this, warming the ocean waters and causing the algae to die. Iguanas sometimes go without food for up to several months. While some iguanas starve, others seem to make it until new algae grow. This survivability may be connected to the iguana’s ability to control stress levels, according to a study in the May 26 issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. In a stress-inducing situation like that caused by El Niño, iguanas release a hormone called corticosterone. In the short term, this helps the iguanas tap into their own protein reserves. And, for example, when an iguana faces an attack by a predatory hawk, the hormone provokes a response to move faster. But in the long term, iguanas that cannot turn off the stress hormone expend too much energy too quickly, which is fatal, the researchers found in their survey of 98 iguanas. “Their ability to turn off their response was what seemed to predict who lived and who died,” said L. Michael Romero, a professor of biology at Tufts University and the paper’s lead author. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 14134 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY Decades ago modern medicine all but stamped out the nervous breakdown, hitting it with a combination of new diagnoses, new psychiatric drugs and a strong dose of professional scorn. The phrase was overused and near meaningless, a self-serving term from an era unwilling to talk about mental distress openly. But like a stubborn virus, the phrase has mutated. In recent years, psychiatrists in Europe have been diagnosing what they call “burnout syndrome,” the signs of which include “vital exhaustion.” A paper published last year defined three types: “frenetic,” “underchallenged,” and “worn out” (“exasperated” and “bitter” did not make the cut). This is the latest umbrella term for the kind of emotional collapses that have plagued humanity for ages, stemming at times from severe mental difficulties and more often from mild ones. There have been plenty of others. In the early decades of the 20th century, many people simply referred to a crackup, including “The Crack-Up,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1936 collection of essays describing his own. And before that there was neurasthenia, a widely diagnosed and undefined nerve affliction causing just about any symptom people cared to add. Yet medical historians say that, for versatility and descriptive power, it may be hard to improve upon the “nervous breakdown.” Coined around 1900, the phrase peaked in usage during the middle of the 20th century and echoes still. One recent study found that 26 percent of respondents to a national survey in 1996 reported that they had experienced an “impending nervous breakdown,” compared with 19 percent from the same survey in 1957. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 14133 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By KATHERINE ELLISON WALNUT CREEK, Calif. — I’m sitting in front of a gray plastic console that resembles an airplane cockpit. Each time I move, a small reflector on a makeshift tiara resting on my forehead alerts an infrared tracking device pointing down at me from above a computer monitor. Watching the screen, I’m supposed to click a mouse each time I see a star with five or eight points, but not for stars with only four points. It’s a truly simple task, and I’m a college-educated professional. So why do I keep getting it wrong? Halfway into the 20-minute session, I find myself clicking at a lot of four-point stars, while sighing and cursing with each new mistake and stamping my feet, sending further unflattering information to the contraption via tracking straps taped to my legs. Dr. Martin H. Teicher, the Harvard psychiatrist who invented the test, has an explanation for my predicament. “You have some objective evidence for an impairment in attention,” he said — in other words, a “very subtle” case of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. (Indeed, I had already received a diagnosis three years earlier.) Not only did I click too many times when I shouldn’t have, and occasionally vice versa, but subtle shifts in my head movements, tracked by the device’s motion detector, suggested that I tended to shift attention states, from on-task to impulsive to distracted and back. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD; Attention
Link ID: 14132 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Karen Schrock BOSTON—Why do we often attribute events in our lives to a higher power or supernatural force? Some psychologists believe this kind of thinking, called teleological thinking, is a byproduct of social cognition. As our ancestors evolved, we developed the ability to understand one anothers’ ideas and intentions. As a result of this “theory of mind,” some experts figure, we also tend to see intention or purpose—a conscious mind—behind random or naturally occurring events. A new study presented here in a poster at the 22nd annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science supports this idea, showing that people who may have an impaired theory of mind are less likely to think in a teleological way. Bethany T. Heywood, a graduate student at Queens University Belfast, asked 27 people with Asperger’s Syndrome, a mild type of autism that involves impaired social cognition, about significant events in their lives. Working with experimental psychologist Jesse M. Bering (author of the Bering in Mind blog and a frequent contributor to Scientific American Mind), she asked them to speculate about why these important events happened—for instance, why they had gone through an illness or why they met a significant other. As compared with 34 neurotypical people, those with Asperger’s syndrome were significantly less likely to invoke a teleological response—for example, saying the event was meant to unfold in a particular way or explaining that God had a hand in it. They were more likely to invoke a natural cause (such as blaming an illness on a virus they thought they were exposed to) or to give a descriptive response, explaining the event again in a different way. © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 14131 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Alice Park While schizophrenia is a complex psychiatric disorder that has its roots in genetic changes, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have uncovered a potentially new culprit for some of the condition's most common symptoms. Reporting in the journal Schizophrenia Research, the psychiatrists describe a connection between the herpes simplex virus, responsible for cold sores, and the drop in concentration, memory and coordination that are often the earliest signs of schizophrenia. Previous studies have linked the presence of antibodies to the virus with both smaller brain volumes and cognitive problems in patients with the mental disorder. So the Hopkins researchers, led by David Schretten, studied blood samples from 40 schizophrenic patients and asked these volunteers to perform a series of cognitive tests. Their findings confirmed that indeed, those who had herpes simplex antibodies, indicating that they had fought off an infection with the virus, scored lower on the tests of coordination, memory and motor skills than patients not possessing the same antibodies. In addition, brain scans confirmed that the patients who performed poorly on the cognitive tests also had smaller brain volumes than those who hadn't been exposed to the virus. In particular the cerebellum, which controls motor function, was considerably smaller in these subjects. These results lead the authors to believe that the herpes virus may be directly attacking brain tissue and triggering the cognitive deficits, and that somehow, the schizophrenic brain is more vulnerable to the viral assault. © 2010 Time Inc

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 14130 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Harry Collins TAKE a long look at the Mona Lisa. How do you see her? As blobs of paint or as a woman with an enigmatic smile? Now explain how you came to see those blobs of paint as a smile. For your second mission, think back to learning to form sentences. Your parents never told you "verb in the middle" (if you're English) or "verb at the end" (if you're German) but still you picked it up. And, more remarkable, once you did, have you any idea how come this sentence breaks the rules but read it you still can? These abilities demonstrate what's known as "tacit knowledge" - something as big and taken for granted as "air", "thought", or "language". Take away tacit knowledge and the human world disappears. Without it, what we think of as knowledge, the "stuff" contained in our books and intellectual artefacts, would make no sense and be no more than noise. The big question is whether, or how far, this tacit knowledge can be made explicit. The term was coined in the 1950s by the British-Hungarian physical chemist and philosopher, Michael Polanyi. In that era of enormous optimism about what physics and mathematics could achieve, it seemed only a matter of time before science formalised everything. This was to pave the way for computers to acquire all human abilities and run everything. Polanyi wanted to show there was more to scientific creativity than this and argued there was always something unspoken, even at the heart of the exact sciences. His most famous example was riding a bicycle: we can do it but without quite knowing how. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 14129 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Celeste Biever CAN people with autism take a pill to improve their social skills? For the first time, drugs are being tested that could address the social difficulties associated with autism and other learning disorders by tackling some of the brain chemistry thought to underlie them. The only drugs currently prescribed to people with autism seek to dampen aggression and anxiety. The new drugs, now in the very early stages of clinical testing, address some of the classic symptoms of autism. "People may learn more, learn to speak better, learn social skills and to be more communicative," says Randall Carpenter of Seaside Therapeutics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is testing one of the drugs. Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer at the charity Autism Speaks and a psychiatrist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is equally enthusiastic about the prospect of a new class of drugs. "For the first time we are seeing drugs that could tackle core autism symptoms," she says. For the first time we are seeing drugs that could tackle the core symptoms of autism The Seaside trial is aimed at a learning disorder called fragile X, which is associated with autism. People with fragile X carry a mutation in a gene involved in strengthening brain connections associated with salient experiences. Stronger brain connections allow people to distinguish these events from background noise, making this a key process in learning. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 14128 - Posted: 06.24.2010