by Michael Balter Children with a genetic condition that quells their fear of strangers don't stereotype based on race, according to a new study. The findings support the idea that prejudice stems from fear of people from different social groups, although some researchers question how well the new study supports that conclusion. Even individuals who profess not to be racist often harbor racist attitudes on an unconscious level, implying that racial prejudice is socially or biologically ingrained. In a 2005 paper in Science, New York University psychologist Elizabeth Phelps and her colleagues exposed black subjects and white subjects to pictures of both black and white faces, first in conjunction with a mild electric shock and then without the shock. Once the shock was gone, the volunteers' fear reactions, as measured by electrical reactions in the skin, soon disappeared when exposed to pictures of their own race, but remained to a limited extent when exposed to pictures of the opposite race. Phelps’s team concluded that racial bias was linked to a deep-seated fear of people perceived as members of a different social group, a connection that some researchers had suspected but for which solid data was lacking. The researchers also found that this fear was diminished in people who had more contact with members of other races, such as those who dated interracially. To further explore the role of social fear in racial prejudice, a team led by Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, a psychiatrist at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany, examined the attitudes of a group notably lacking it: children with a genetic disorder called Williams syndrome. Caused by the deletion of genes on chromosome 7, Williams syndrome often leads to mild to moderate mental and growth retardation as well as an intense sociability and lack of social fear, especially of strangers. “If I come into a Williams Syndrome Association meeting, 50 kids will crawl all over me and rejoice at seeing me even though they have never met me,” Meyer-Lindenberg says. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Emotions; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13966 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A new genetic fault which may account for some cases of inherited deafness has been revealed by Dutch researchers. It means that parents with the hereditary condition may be able to predict more accurately the chances of passing it on to their children. The new find, documented in the American Journal of Human Genetics, could even one day contribute to treatments, say the scientists. One child in 750 is born with severe hearing loss or profound deafness. The gene in question, labelled PTPRQ, appears to play a role in the development of the inner ear "hair cell" before the birth of the child. A genetic fault here means that these cells will not form properly or in sufficient numbers, leading to profound deafness or extremely poor hearing. This can lead to problems throughout childhood, including behavioural and developmental difficulties, and low academic achievement. The latest gene was tracked down by scientists at Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre who looked closely at the DNA of families prone to the condition, looking for shared genetic traits. There are now more than 60 known locations in our DNA which can contain faulty genes contributing to this form of deafness, although only half the genes in these locations which actually cause the problem are yet to be identified. Dr Hannie Kremer, who led the research, said: "Our approach is identifying more genes for congenital deafness. "This knowledge will help improve treatments for patients, genetic counselling, molecular diagnosis and the development of advanced therapeutic strategies." (C)BBC

Keyword: Hearing; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13965 - Posted: 04.12.2010

Jim Schnabel Of all the ways that proteins can go bad, becoming an amyloid is surely one of the worst. In this state, sticky elements within proteins emerge and seed the growth of sometimes deadly fibrils. Amyloids riddle the brain in Alzheimer's disease and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. But until recently it has seemed that this corrupt state could threaten only a tiny fraction of proteins. Research is now hinting at a more unsettling picture. In work reported in February, a team led by David Eisenberg at the University of California, Los Angeles, sifted through tens of thousands of proteins looking for segments with the peculiar stickiness needed to form amyloid1. They found, says Eisenberg, that "effectively all complex proteins have these short segments that, if exposed and flexible enough, are capable of triggering amyloid formation". Not all proteins form amyloids, however. The 'amylome', as Eisenberg calls it, is restricted because most proteins hide these sticky segments out of harm's way or otherwise keep their stickiness under control. His results and other work suggest that evolution treats amyloids as a fundamental threat. Amyloids have been found in some of the most common age-related diseases, and there is evidence that ageing itself makes some amyloid accumulation inevitable. It now seems as though the human body is perched precariously above an amyloidal abyss. "The amyloid state is more like the default state of a protein, and in the absence of specific protective mechanisms, many of our proteins could fall into it," says Chris Dobson, a structural biologist at the University of Cambridge, UK. © 2010 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Prions; Alzheimers
Link ID: 13964 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANNE EISENBERG ERIC JONES sat in a middle seat on a recent flight from the New York area to Florida, but he wasn’t complaining. Instead, he was quietly enjoying actions that many other people might take for granted, like taking a cup of coffee from the flight attendant or changing the channel on his video monitor. These simple movements were lost to Mr. Jones when the fingers and thumb on his right hand were amputated three years ago. But now he has a prosthetic replacement: a set of motorized digits that can clasp cans, flimsy plastic water bottles or even thin slips of paper. “Pouring a can of soda into a cup — that is a mundane daily action for most people, but to me it is a very big deal,” said Mr. Jones, who lives with his family in Mamaroneck, N.Y. “I slip my bionic fingers on like a glove, and then I have five moveable fingers to grasp things. It’s wonderful to have regained these functions.” Mr. Jones’s prosthesis, called ProDigits, is made by Touch Bionics in Livingston, Scotland. The device can replace any or all fingers on a hand; each replacement digit has a tiny motor and gear box mounted at the base. Movement is controlled by a computer chip in the prosthesis. ProDigits was released commercially last December, said Stuart Mead, the chief executive of Touch Bionics. About 60 patients have been fitted worldwide, he said, and some have been wearing it for three or four years. The cost is $60,000 to $75,000, including fitting and occupational therapy. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Robotics
Link ID: 13963 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JOHN TIERNEY As a retired clinical psychologist, Clark Martin was well acquainted with traditional treatments for depression, but his own case seemed untreatable as he struggled through chemotherapy and other grueling regimens for kidney cancer. Counseling seemed futile to him. So did the antidepressant pills he tried. Nothing had any lasting effect until, at the age of 65, he had his first psychedelic experience. He left his home in Vancouver, Wash., to take part in an experiment at Johns Hopkins medical school involving psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient found in certain mushrooms. Scientists are taking a new look at hallucinogens, which became taboo among regulators after enthusiasts like Timothy Leary promoted them in the 1960s with the slogan “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” Now, using rigorous protocols and safeguards, scientists have won permission to study once again the drugs’ potential for treating mental problems and illuminating the nature of consciousness. After taking the hallucinogen, Dr. Martin put on an eye mask and headphones, and lay on a couch listening to classical music as he contemplated the universe. “All of a sudden, everything familiar started evaporating,” he recalled. “Imagine you fall off a boat out in the open ocean, and you turn around, and the boat is gone. And then the water’s gone. And then you’re gone.” Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 13962 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By LISA SANDERS, M.D. Dr. Kurtland Ma found the young man lying on the stretcher in the quiet of the predawn night. He was surprised by how healthy the patient looked: he had learned over the first year of his residency training that those who came to the Jacobi Medical Center emergency room in the Bronx at that hour were often the very sickest patients. The thin chart reported that the patient came to the E.R. because he was having trouble walking. He had a headache; he felt weak and dizzy, and yet his vitals and initial blood work were completely normal. He was a puzzle, the senior resident told him as she handed Dr. Ma the chart. “I have no idea what’s going on with this guy,” she told Dr. Ma. “But he is probably going to need a head CT.” The patient was 28 and said he was healthy until three days ago, when he and his girlfriend went to the Bahamas to celebrate his birthday. After a long day of swimming and snorkeling, they decided to try a restaurant they had heard good things about. They both ordered seafood — she had the red snapper, he the barracuda — and then went out dancing. Out on the dance floor the patient doubled over, caught off guard by an intense pain that knifed through his gut and took away his breath. He stumbled to the bathroom. The abdominal cramps and diarrhea came in waves. He kept thinking it would pass, but it didn’t. Finally he decided to go back to the hotel. As they walked through the streets crowded with other vacationers, his girlfriend teased him for letting a little bug ruin his birthday. But by then all he wanted was to lie down and go to sleep. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 13961 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Obstructive sleep apnea is associated with an increased risk of stroke in middle-aged and older adults, especially men, according to new results from a landmark study supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health. Overall, sleep apnea more than doubles the risk of stroke in men. Obstructive sleep apnea is a common disorder in which the upper airway is intermittently narrowed or blocked, disrupting sleep and breathing during sleep. Researchers from the Sleep Heart Health Study (SHHS) report that the risk of stroke appears in men with mild sleep apnea and rises with the severity of sleep apnea. Men with moderate to severe sleep apnea were nearly three times more likely to have a stroke than men without sleep apnea or with mild sleep apnea. The risk from sleep apnea is independent of other risk factors such as weight, high blood pressure, race, smoking, and diabetes. They also report for the first time a link between sleep apnea and increased risk of stroke in women. Obstructive Sleep Apnea Hypopnea and Incident Stroke: The Sleep Heart Health Study, was published online March 25 ahead of print in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Stroke is the second leading cause of death worldwide. "Although scientists have uncovered several risk factors for stroke — such as age, high blood pressure and atrial fibrillation, and diabetes — there are still many cases in which the cause or contributing factors are unknown, " noted NHLBI Acting Director Susan B. Shurin, M.D. "This is the largest study to date to link sleep apnea with an increased risk of stroke. The time is right for researchers to study whether treating sleep apnea could prevent or delay stroke in some individuals. "

Keyword: Sleep; Stroke
Link ID: 13960 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Wendy Zukerman GRUMPY old people may be bad-tempered because their brains react differently to chronic stress. At least that's what happens to elderly rats. Elderly humans are more vulnerable to stress than their youthful counterparts. "There is more low-level anxiety and depression," says Nancy Pachana of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. To investigate why, Hirotaka Shoji of the National Centre for Geriatrics and Gerontology in Obu, Japan, put 3-month-old and 24-month-old rats under stress by placing them inside a wire-mesh container for 1 hour every day for two weeks. Before this treatment began, the two sets of rats had similar levels of the stress hormone, corticosterone. All the rats had higher levels of the hormone after two weeks, but the old rats had significantly more. The old rats also showed increased activity in areas of the brain associated with anxiety and decreased activity in regions linked with controlling emotions (Behavioural Brain Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2010.03.025). Shoji suggests that ageing may reduce the brain's ability to damp down the release of corticosterone in response to repeated stress. When another group of rats were put in the cage just once, for an hour, stress hormone levels were similar in old and young rats, suggesting that ageing increases vulnerability to repeated stress rather than one-off episodes. © Copyright Reed Business Information Lt

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 13959 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower Data, like children, can be raised wrong. Then they become an embarrassment. Consider the retraction on February 2 of a study suggesting that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine had caused a small number of children to develop autism. The now-debunked study, published in 1998 in a major medical journal, fueled parents’ fears about vaccinating children. So it stands to reason that reluctant parents, upon reading about the retraction, will drag their kids to the doctor for a shot and a lollipop. Don’t bet on it. A growing body of research indicates that people making decisions interpret the chances of encountering rare events, such as a child developing tragic complications from a vaccine, in dramatically different ways. “There’s an explosion of interest in studying how people acquire the information on which they base risky decisions,” says psychologist Craig Fox of the University of California, Los Angeles, who helped generate an influential model that predicts how people will make gambling decisions depending on descriptions of the odds. People who learn about the like­lihood of encountering a low-probability, high-impact event via descriptions that include precise probabilities tend to overestimate, by a lot, the chances of that event actually occurring. Vaccine-o-phobic parents have typically never seen a child sink into autism after an MMR injection and never will (SN Online: 2/3/10). But they have heard scary secondhand accounts, read celebrity-penned tales of vaccine horrors and scanned government statistics on the minuscule but still real chances of side effects unrelated to autism. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Autism; Attention
Link ID: 13958 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Mark Cohen Hey, Mom! Mom! Watch me! Look, Mom!” I could hear the excited cries through the closed door of the examining room, even though I was still 20 feet down the hall. The happy shouts were followed by a loud thump and then a cascade of muted crashes. As I headed toward the commotion, my medical assistant smiled and handed me the chart for this patient. “You’d better get in to see this little guy quickly, Dr. Cohen, before he totally wrecks your room!” The brief information on the consultation request said, “Tyler Winters, 3-year-old boy, hyperactive.” As I often tell medical students, nearly all 3-year-olds are hyperactive at least some of the time. Often the parents of a child whose development and behavior are perfectly normal insist on a referral to a developmental pediatrician like myself because they are sure there is something wrong—or someone has told them as much. I generally look forward to those consultations; it’s enjoyable to reassure an anxious parent that her child is developing normally. Before leaving my office I had briefly looked through Tyler’s medical record on the computer. Other than his having been adopted at birth, there was nothing that stood out as unusual. When I knocked and opened the door, Tyler was clambering onto the exam table while his mother, Sandi, was attempting to move a pile of books from the floor back onto the book rack. They had apparently been knocked off (the crashes) when he jumped from the table to the floor (the loud thump). Sandi glanced at me with a nervous smile, then quickly turned to scoop her child off the table.

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 13957 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By TERRY SEJNOWSKI Is there anything good about insomnia? Could there possibly be any upside to a long, torturous sleepless night? To answer the question, let’s look at another condition entirely. Postpartum depression affects between 5 percent and 25 percent of new mothers. Symptoms — including sadness, fatigue, appetite changes, crying, anxiety and irritability — usually occur in the first few months after child birth. There is a simple way to alleviate postpartum depression in just a few hours: sleep deprivation. If a depressed mother stays up all night, or even the last half of the night, it is likely that by morning the depression will lift. Although this sounds too good to be true, it has been well documented in over 1,700 patients in more than 75 published papers during the last 40 years.[1] Sleep deprivation used as a treatment for depression is efficacious and robust: it works quickly, is relatively easy to administer, inexpensive, relatively safe and it also alleviates other types of clinical depression. Sleep deprivation can elevate your mood even if you are not depressed, and can induce euphoria. This throws a new light on insomnia. This remarkable result is not well known outside a small circle of sleep researchers for three good reasons. First, sleep deprivation is not as convenient as taking a pill. Second, prolonged sleep deprivation is not exactly a desirable state; it leads to cognitive defects, such as reduced working memory and impaired decision making. Finally, depression recurs after the mother, inevitably, succumbs to sleep, even for a short nap. Nonetheless this is an incredibly important observation; it shows that depression can be rapidly reversed and suggests that something is happening in the sleeping brain to bring on episodes of depression. All this offers hope that studying sleep deprivation may lead to new, unique and rapid treatments for depression. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Sleep
Link ID: 13956 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The use of anti-psychotic drugs in the elderly doubles the risk of potentially fatal pneumonia, say Dutch researchers. A study of almost 2,000 patients found the increased risk starts soon after treatment begins and concluded that patients should be closely monitored. An expert review published in 2009 found the drugs are overused in many cases and are responsible for up to 1,800 deaths in the UK every year. Ministers have said they want to see a significant cut in their use. The latest research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine compared the health records of 258 over-65s with pneumonia with 1,686 patients without the infection. Of those with pneumonia, a quarter died within a month. When they looked at prescribed drugs, they found current use of anti-psychotics was associated with a roughly two-fold increase in the risk of pneumonia. Those on the newer types of anti-psychotic drugs were slightly less likely to have the infection than those on the older class of drugs but were still at significant increased risk. The risk was found to start soon after treatment and increased the higher the dose of drugs the patient was prescribed. The researchers from Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam said: "Clinicians who start treatment with anti-psychotic drugs should closely monitor patients, particularly at the start of therapy and if high doses are given." (C)BBC

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 13955 - Posted: 04.08.2010

WASHINGTON - Smoking may increase the risk of multiple sclerosis in people who have other risk factors for the neurological disorder, researchers said Wednesday. The findings suggest that smokers who have high levels of a protein that protects against the Epstein-Barr virus, a common herpes virus, were twice as likely as nonsmokers to get multiple sclerosis (MS), the researchers wrote in the online edition of the journal Neurology. Previous studies have suggested that smoking and the virus-fighting protein were independent risk factors and this research looked at how they may be associated with each other, Claire Simon of Harvard University said in a telephone interview. "We found that that association was stronger in people who reported smoking compared with people who did not report smoking," Simon said. The study found no association between smoking and a gene related to the immune system gene called HLA-DR15, which is thought to be another risk factor for MS, she said. Studying the potential risk factors simultaneously might provide clues about why some people get MS and others do not, Simon said. MS is an incurable condition that affects more than 1 million people worldwide. The disease can cause mild symptoms in some people and permanent disability in others. Symptoms may include numbness or weakness in one or more limbs, partial or complete loss of vision, tingling or pain, electric-shock sensation with certain head movements, tremors and an unsteady gait. Copyright 2010 Reuters

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 13954 - Posted: 04.08.2010

By Melinda Wenner Moyer Thirty years ago, America declared war against fat. The inaugural edition of Dietary Guidelines for Americans, published in 1980 and subsequently updated every five years, advised people to steer clear of "too much fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol," because of purported ties between fat intake and heart disease. The message has remained essentially the same ever since, with current guidelines recommending that Americans consume less than 10 percent of their daily calories from saturated fat. But heart disease continues to devastate the country, and, as you may have noticed, we certainly haven't gotten any thinner. Ultimately, that's because fat should never have been our enemy. The big question is whether the 2010 Dietary Guidelines, due out at the end of the year, will finally announce retreat. The foundation for the "fat is bad" mantra comes from the following logic: Since saturated fat is known to increase blood levels of "bad" LDL cholesterol, and people with high LDL cholesterol are more likely to develop heart disease, saturated fat must increase heart disease risk. If A equals B and B equals C, then A must equal C. Well, no. With this extrapolation, scientists and policymakers made a grave miscalculation: They assumed that all LDL cholesterol is the same and that all of it is bad. A spate of recent research is now overturning this fallacy and raising major questions about the wisdom of avoiding fat, especially considering that the food Americans have been replacing fat with—processed carbohydrates—could be far worse for heart health. © Copyright 2010 Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 13953 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Mind reading may no longer be the domain of psychics and fortune tellers - now some computers can do it, too. Software that uses brain scans to determine what items people are thinking about was among the technological innovations showcased Wednesday by Intel, which drew back the curtain on a number of projects that are still under development. The software analyzes functional MRI scans to determine what parts of a person's brain is being activated as he or she thinks. In tests, it guessed with 90 per cent accuracy which of two words a person was thinking about, said Intel Labs researcher Dean Pomerleau. Eventually, the technology could help the severely physically disabled to communicate. And Pomerleau sees it as an early step toward one day being able to control technology with our minds. "The vision is being able to interface to information, to your devices and to other people without having an intermediary device," he said. For now, the project's accomplishments are far more modest - it can only be used with prohibitively expensive and bulky fMRI equipment and hasn't yet been adapted to analyze abstract thoughts. The system works best when a person is first scanned while thinking of dozens of different concrete nouns - words like "bear" or "hammer." When test subjects are then asked to pick one of two new terms and think about it, the software uses the earlier results as a baseline to determine what the person is thinking. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 13952 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway DEEP brain stimulation has long been psychiatry's black magic: stick electrodes into a region linked to mental illness, deliver rapid pulses of weak current, and voila! Crippling symptoms of depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and even substance abuse are eased. Now brain imaging of people undergoing deep brain stimulation (DBS) to treat depression is revealing the mechanism behind these effects - and who it will and won't work on. The crucial discovery is that DBS seems to tune an array of brain regions, not just the area around the electrode. This once fringe treatment is now creating a new view of mental illness as a condition affecting an interconnected network rather than arising from chemical imbalances in specific regions. "The brain works on a circuit board," says Helen Mayberg of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, whose team is lifting the veil on DBS. DBS involves continually delivering high-frequency pulses of weak current to a particular region via stimulators that are surgically inserted into the brain. Although invasive, it works so well for Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders that it is now mainstream, with tens of thousands of patients implanted. In the last decade, researchers have tested DBS on a variety of other conditions. It has proved effective at reducing some symptoms of bipolar disorder and Tourette's syndrome (see table). It was recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat obsessive compulsive disorder. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 13951 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Linda Geddes Waist circumference: 77.5 centimetres (30.5 inches) Five months to go until I give birth to our first child, and the trials of life and work are starting to get to me. If that weren't enough, the onslaught of news stories about stress during pregnancy is enough to raise my blood pressure still further. Last week it was stress during pregnancy gives your child asthma. Then there were the studies hinting that stress inhibits growth in the emotional areas of babies' brains, raises the risk of stillbirth and makes your child more likely to develop schizophrenia. What's a pregnant woman to make of all this? One of the problems with these studies is that repeatedly stressing animals in a lab environment is hardly the same as juggling work deadlines, gym classes and social arrangements. Neither is London, my home, a war zone – as was the location in the schizophrenia study. What we need are studies that measure stress more directly, and fortunately I've found two that do just that. Unlike many previous studies, they rely on direct measurements of the fetus or its immediate environment, the amniotic fluid. And they are throwing up some surprising results, including that moderate levels of stress might be good for fetal development. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Stress; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 13950 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Janelle Weaver Pigeons wearing miniature backpacks containing tracking devices have revealed that the birds rapidly shift direction during flight in response to cues from the leading members of their group. "It is the first study demonstrating hierarchical decision-making in a group of free-flying birds," says Tamás Vicsek, a biophysicist at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest who led the study, which is published today in Nature1. The discovery became possible only recently with the introduction of Global Positioning System (GPS) devices that can collect data at a high rate: five times per second. Vicsek's team strapped lightweight GPS devices to individual pigeons and tracked flocks of up to 10 birds during free flights lasting around 12 minutes and 15-kilometre homing flights. In total, the GPS logged 32 hours of data and captured 15 group flights. The researchers couldn't pinpoint individuals' exact positions within a flock, but were able to accurately compare birds' directions of motion. Within flocks, the authors looked first at the behaviour of pairs of birds. For each possible pairing, the team identified a leader — the bird that changed direction first — and a follower, which copied the leader's motion. Followers reacted very quickly, within a fraction of a second. Next, the scientists constructed a network of relationships among birds in the group during each flight. They uncovered a robust pecking order: birds higher up the ranks had more influence over the group's movements, and each individual's level of influence was consistent across specific free and homing flights. © 2010 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Aggression; Animal Migration
Link ID: 13949 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Katherine Harmon The spy shot the cop with the revolver. This sentence, a favorite of linguists, appears to be simple enough. It's grammatically correct, has a subject and a predicate and can even be easily understood by young children. Or can it? Who had the revolver: the spy or the cop? Like optical illusions, language can play tricks on the brain, explained New York University psychologist Gary Marcus at an April 6 lecture at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. These simple syntactic ambiguities, he argued, throw a wrench into prevalent theories that the human brain is well evolved—or even optimally evolved—for language. As evidence for our species' general optimality, many people point to the complex human visual system, which has yet to be matched by technological developments. So if our brain's handling of vision is so well tuned, shouldn't our language centers be as well? No way, according to Marcus. Visual abilities have been developing in animal predecessors for hundreds of millions of years. Language, on the other hand, has had only a few hundred thousand years to eke out a place in our primate brain, he noted. What our species has come up with is a "kluge," Marcus said, a term he borrows from engineering that means a solution that is "clumsy and inelegant, but it gets the job done." (His 2008 book, Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, explores the language subject and other human mental inefficiencies.) © 2010 Scientific American

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 13948 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By RANDI HUTTER EPSTEIN Shirley Koecheler, 54, has been a sleepwalker for as long as she can remember. But it wasn’t until she got married that she started eating in her sleep, too. She’d wander into the kitchen — eyes open but asleep — and binge on junk food. Like so many of those with sleep-related eating disorder, Ms. Koecheler, a businesswoman and farmer from Maple Plains, Minn., does not remember anything about her nighttime journeys. When she wakes up the next morning to a crumb-filled bed, uncomfortably full, she knows that she must have spent the night feasting. “I’ve gained seven pounds in the past two months,” Ms. Koecheler said. “I bought the Easter candy for the kids and had my husband hide it, but I must have found it during the night. I found the wrappers in the wastebasket from the solid chocolate bunnies.” Sleep eaters “make a beeline for the kitchen” and tend to binge on sugary, high-calorie snacks, sometimes five times a night, said Dr. John W. Winkelman, medical director of the Sleep Health Center of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Brighton, Mass. Some go for bizarre food combinations like peanut butter and pasta, and even the occasional nail polish or paper. Consequences of nighttime eating can include injuries like black eyes from walking into a wall or hand cuts from a prep knife, or dental problems from gnawing on frozen food. On a deeper level, many sleep eaters feel depressed, frustrated and ashamed. Upwards of 10 percent of adults suffer from some sort of parasomnia, or sleep disorder, like sleepwalking or night terrors. Some have driven cars or performed inappropriate sexual acts — all while in a sleep-induced fog. About 1 percent, mostly women, raid the refrigerator. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 13947 - Posted: 06.24.2010