The strongest known recurrent genetic cause of schizophrenia (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/schizophrenia/index.shtml) impairs communications between the brain’s decision-making and memory hubs, resulting in working memory deficits, according to a study in mice. Researchers have suspected such a brain connectivity disturbance in schizophrenia for more than a century, and the NIH has launched a new initiative on the brain’s functional circuitry, or connectome (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2010/tracing-the-brains-connections.shtml). Although the disorder is thought to be 70 percent heritable, its genetics are dauntingly complex (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/science-news/2009/schizophrenia-and-bipolar-disorder-share-genetic-roots.shtml), except in certain rare cases, such as those traced to the mutation in question. Still, the mutation's link to the disturbed connectivity and working memory deficit eluded detection until now. To explore the mutation's effects on brain circuitry, Gogos, Karayiorgou and colleagues engineered a line of mice expressing the same missing segment of genetic material as the patients. Strikingly, like their human counterparts with schizophrenia, these animals turned out to have difficulty with working memory tasks — holding information in mind from moment to moment.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13926 - Posted: 06.24.2010

So a scientist walks into a shopping mall to watch people laugh. There's no punchline. Laughter is a serious scientific subject, one that researchers are still trying to figure out. Laughing is primal, our first way of communicating. Apes laugh. So do dogs and rats. Babies laugh long before they speak. No one teaches you how to laugh. You just do. And often you laugh involuntarily, in a specific rhythm and in certain spots in conversation. You may laugh at a prank on April Fools' Day. But surprisingly, only 10 to 15 percent of laughter is the result of someone making a joke, said Baltimore neuroscientist Robert Provine, who has studied laughter for decades. Laughter is mostly about social responses rather than reaction to a joke. "Laughter above all else is a social thing," Provine said. "The requirement for laughter is another person." Over the years, Provine, a professor with the University of Maryland Baltimore County, has boiled laughter down to its basics. "All language groups laugh 'ha-ha-ha' basically the same way," he said. "Whether you speak Mandarin, French or English, everyone will understand laughter. ... There's a pattern generator in our brain that produces this sound." Each "ha" is about one-15th of a second, repeated every fifth of a second, he said. Laugh faster or slower than that and it sounds more like panting or something else. © 2010 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 13925 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Emma Young MEMORIES are the basic stuff of thought. We access our stores of knowledge every time we perform a task, communicate through speech or formulate the simplest concepts. Yet the physical form of memory has long been mysterious. What changes occur in the brain when a new memory is encoded? One thing we do know is that memory formation involves the strengthening of synaptic connections between nerve cells. Using sea slugs, which have a relatively simple nervous system, a team led by Kelsey Martin at the University of California, Los Angeles, last year became the first to watch memories being made, in the form of new proteins appearing at the synapses (Science, vol 324, p 1536). Where, though, is knowledge stored in the complex brains of mammals? Short-term memories, such as a telephone number about to be used, seem to be stored in two small curled-up structures called the hippocampi, buried deep in the brain's two hemispheres. In 2008 Courtney Miller and David Sweatt at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa showed in mice that during the first hour after a memorable event there were chemical changes to the DNA of neurons in this area, altering the proteins produced. Over the subsequent week, there were similar changes to the genes of neurons in the cortex. These changes seemed to be permanent, indicating that long-term memories are stored there (Neuron, volume 53, p 857). The pair think they watched short-term memories form in the hippocampus, which then became long-term memories in the cortex. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 13924 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by James Mitchell Crow YOU were born with all the brain cells you'll ever have, so the saying goes. So much for sayings. In the 1990s, decades of dogma were overturned by the discovery that mammals, including people, make new neurons throughout their lives. In humans, such "neurogenesis" has been seen in two places: neurons formed in the olfactory bulb seem to be involved in learning new smells, while those born in the hippocampus are involved in learning and memory. The discovery that new neurons can integrate into the adult brain raises intriguing possibilities. Could the process be harnessed to treat diseases of the brain, such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's? The trick will be in replacing diseased cells with just the right kind of neuron, says Jeff Macklis, who studies neurogenesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. By some estimates, the nervous system is made up of 10,000 different kinds of neuron. This complexity means you can't just hijack any old cell produced by natural neurogenesis. However, there may be other ways of growing new neurons to order. Olle Lindvall at Lund University in Sweden has shown what might be possible. He transplanted dopamine-producing neurons taken from aborted fetuses into the brains of people with Parkinson's, and showed the new neurons can improve brain function, although the treatment didn't work for everyone. Lindvall is now looking for ways to make these specialised neurons from embryonic stem cells or stem cells made by reprogramming adult skin cells. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Regeneration; Neurogenesis
Link ID: 13923 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Helen Thomson "WHEN you're smilin', the whole world smiles with you," sang Louis Armstrong. He could have been referring to what some consider one of the greatest recent discoveries of neuroscience: mirror neurons. Discovered in macaques in the 1990s, these cells were spotted when researchers made recordings from microelectrodes placed in the animals' brains as they performed various tasks. While many neurons fired when the animal performed an action, a subset also fired when the animals saw the researcher perform the same action, with different groups of mirror neurons for different actions. Neuroscientists have speculated that in people, mirror neurons could represent the neural basis of empathy. They could also contribute to imitation and learning, and perhaps even language acquisition. It has been hard to find out if people have mirror neurons, but MRI scans have shown that certain areas of the brain - dubbed mirror systems - "light up" when we perform and watch the same action. Numerous studies have shown that people with more activity in their mirror systems seem to be better at understanding other people's emotions. Conversely, less activity in mirror systems has been linked to autism and also with psychopathy - different conditions that are both noted for low levels of empathy. Nina Bien's team at Maastricht University in the Netherlands recently identified inhibition mechanisms that hint at how we can mentally imitate an action without actually performing it (Cerebral Cortex, vol 19, p 2338). © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Vision; Autism
Link ID: 13922 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Amy Barth Two decades ago, neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried of UCLA was stimulating a woman’s brain with electrodes that had been implanted before surgery to treat her epilepsy. He realized his patient was trying to tell him something, and as he bent down to listen, she mumbled that she had a sudden urge to shift her hand. Apparently an electrode had activated the part of the brain’s motor cortex that controlled the woman’s will to move. Fried realized that medical procedures like this one presented a rare scientific opportunity: Patients being examined for neurosurgery allow researchers to investigate the human brain in action, exploring the functions of different regions in precise detail and in real time. These days, surgeons like Fried are increasingly partnering with brain researchers to take advantage of this access. About 30 such collaborations are currently under way. Although noninvasive imaging methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) can track activity in the brain, they provide limited resolution. As Caltech neuroscientist Ueli Rutishauser puts it: “fMRI is like viewing a city from space. You can see the brightness of the lights and the number of inhabitants, but not what they’re doing or who is talking to whom. For that, you have to walk the streets yourself.” The visceral exploration of living brain tissue is, in many cases, still the best way to unravel cognitive functions as diverse as language, memory, vision, and movement. Many of these studies piggyback on tests run on epilepsy patients. Sometimes brain scans fail to identify which regions need to be removed to stop epileptic seizures. If so, surgeons may implant electrodes to record neural activity, then keep the patient in the hospital for days or weeks until the next seizure strikes. With the consent of these wired-up patients, Fried and Harvard Medical School neuroscientist Gabriel Kreiman are conducting studies to investigate how the brain encodes visual information.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 13921 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee We could have found the apartment just by following the powerful musty odor that hit us as we stepped out of the elevator. When we got to the door, my guide knocked. No answer. She knocked again, then a third time. Finally, a small voice inside said, “Who’s there?” “It’s Susan, the social worker. We’re here with the cleaning crew. They’re here to clean out your apartment.” “Daniel’s not here,” the voice behind the door told us. “He went to get us breakfast.” “That’s OK. He doesn’t have to be here.” She opened the door a crack, and the door frame moved, almost imperceptibly. Yet it didn’t really move. The world seemed to shift, and I felt off balance for a moment. The door opened a bit wider, and then I saw them: cockroaches, thousands of them, scurrying along the top of the door to get out of the way. The door opened the rest of the way. The apartment was dark, and it took a moment to appreciate what was inside. No floor was visible, only a layer of dirty papers, food wrappers, and urine-stained rags. A rottweiler bolted out of the back to see what was going on. He jumped over a pile of dirty clothes—at least they looked like clothes. From the edge of the door, the massive pile of junk rose precipitously to the ceiling, like a giant sea wave. It could have been part of a landfill: papers, boxes, shopping carts, paper bags, dirty clothing, lamps—anything that could be easily collected from the street or fished out of a Dumpster. It was one solid wall of trash 20 feet deep, all the way to the back of the apartment. There must have been windows on the far wall, but they were darkened by the broken fans, boxes, and clothing covering them. Inside the condo the sweet, pungent odor of insects and rotting food enveloped us. Susan had instructed me to wear old clothes that I could throw out afterward. I was grateful for the advice but wished I’d also had a face mask—the heavy-duty kind.

Keyword: OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Link ID: 13920 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Matt Walker The giggling sounds of a hyena contain important information about the animal's status, say scientists. In the first study to decipher the hyena's so-called "laugh", they have shown that the pitch of the giggle reveals a hyena's age. What is more, variations in the frequency of notes used when a hyena makes a noise convey information about the animal's social rank. Details of the US-based research are published in the journal BMC Ecology. Professor Frederic Theunissen from the University of California at Berkeley, US, and Professor Nicolas Mathevon from the Universite Jean Monnet in St Etienne, France, worked with a team of researchers to study 26 captive spotted hyenas held at a field station at Berkeley. There they recorded the animals' calls in various social interactions, such as when the hyenas bickered over food, and established which elements of each call corresponded to other factors. Last year, the researchers published some provisional results from the study. Now they have confirmed that the pitch of the giggle reveals a hyena's age, while variations in the frequency of notes can encode information about dominant and subordinate status. BBC © MMX

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 13919 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Charles Q. Choi Female crayfish send mixed messages during courtship — using urine. The urine that female American signal crayfishes (Pacifastacus leniusculus) spray out triggers courtship behavior in males. The males attempt to mate only after they catch a whiff, experiments revealed, with it driving them into a sexual frenzy. However, as they unleash this seductive aphrodisiac, the females are typically fighting males, researchers found. The males actually use urine as a signal for violence, releasing it when they fight other males. The females essentially issue it as an invitation and challenge. So why send conflicting signals? By stimulating aggression in males, females can best gauge male size and strength, thereby ensuring only the fittest partners will father their offspring, scientists reason. So why use urine? "Most probably because urine provides uncheatable information," said researcher Thomas Breithaupt, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Hull in England. Animals often bluff about their prowess — male Australian slender crayfish (Cherax dispar) often bluff opponents with large claws that aren't actually stronger than normal, for instance. However, urine contains byproducts of physical processes that can serve as vital clues about their fighting power. © 2010 LiveScience.com.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 13918 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Eric Bland Magnets can alter a person's sense of morality, according to a new report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Using a powerful magnetic field, scientists from MIT, Harvard University and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center are able to scramble the moral center of the brain, making it more difficult for people to separate innocent intentions from harmful outcomes. The research could have big implications for not only neuroscientists, but also for judges and juries. "It's one thing to 'know' that we'll find morality in the brain," said Liane Young, a scientist at MIT and co-author of the article. "It's another to 'knock out' that brain area and change people's moral judgments." Before the scientists could alter the brain's moral center, they first had to find it. Young and her colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging to locate an area of the brain known as the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ) which other studies had previously related to moral judgments. While muscle movement, language and even memory are found in the same place in each individual, the RTPJ, located behind and above the ear, resides in a slightly different location in each person. For their experiment, the scientists had 20 subjects read several dozen different stories about people with good or bad intentions that resulted in a variety of outcomes. © 2010 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 13917 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Linda Geddes AS FAR as the internet or phone networks go, bad connections are bad news. Not so in the brain, where slower connections may make people more creative. Rex Jung at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and his colleagues had found that creativity correlates with low levels of the chemical N-acetylaspartate, which is found in neurons and seems to promote neural health and metabolism. But neurons make up the brain's grey matter - the tissue traditionally associated with thinking power, rather than creativity. So Jung is now focusing his creativity studies on white matter, which is largely made of the fatty myelin sheaths that wrap around neurons. Less myelin means the white matter has a lower "integrity" and transmits information more slowly. Several recent studies have suggested that white matter of high integrity in the cortex, which is associated with higher mental function, means increased intelligence. But when Jung looked at the link between white matter and creativity, he found something quite different. He used diffusion tensor imaging to study the white matter of 72 volunteers. Unlike MRI, which measures tissue volume, DTI measures the direction in which water diffuses through white matter, an indication of its integrity. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Intelligence; Brain imaging
Link ID: 13916 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Kristina Rehm John has a few snorts of cocaine, finds he can take it or leave it, and never bothers to take another hit. Jim has a few snorts of cocaine and before he knows it, his whole life revolves around getting more of the white powder, until his job, his marriage, his health are gone. Why? The answer may lie in one of the most exciting neuroscience discoveries of the last fifty years: the finding that new neurons are born in the adult brain. During the past decade we’ve learned a lot about the function of these newborn neurons, revealing their possible role in psychiatric and neurological diseases such as mood disorders, schizophrenia and epilepsy. The promise of this research is extraordinary. We may be on the verge of understanding, treating or even preventing life-crushing brain-based diseases — including one that affects an estimated 23 million Americans: drug and alcohol addiction. In a recent study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Michele Noonan, a University of Texas neuroscience graduate student in the lab of Amelia Eisch, shows that a lack of neurogenesis, or birth of new neurons, in the adult rat can actually cause drug addiction. Their team blocked neurogenesis in the hippocampus — a seat of memory — with targeted irradiation, and then tested the rats for their ability to become addicted to cocaine. They found that when fewer neurons were born in the irradiated hippocampus, rats were more vulnerable to develop cocaine addiction and were more likely to relapse. This is the strongest evidence yet that there are real biological reasons why some people might be more vulnerable to addiction than others, and gives us a better understanding of the role these little newborn neurons might play in the brain. © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Neurogenesis
Link ID: 13915 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Tim Wogan If a stranger steps on your foot, you'd probably shrug your shoulders and assure him that no harm has been done, even if your toes are throbbing like crazy. But if that stranger instead takes a swing with his fist-successfully or not—most people are unlikely to be so forgiving. Researchers now believe they've demonstrated which part of the brain allows us to make moral judgments of another person's motives, a find that could lead to a greater understanding of Asperger syndrome and other autism spectrum disorders. Scientists already have some clues about how we judge the actions of another person. Previous research using functional magnetic resonance imaging, a method of imaging activity in the brain, has shown that an area just above the right ear called the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ) receives more blood than usual when we read about people’s beliefs and intentions, particularly if we use the information to judge people negatively. But it's not possible to say from a simple observational study whether the brain activity is actually necessary to make such a judgment or whether making the negative judgment causes this region to become more active. So social neuroscientist Liane Young of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and colleagues decided to turn off the right temporoparietal junction and see whether people would make different judgments of others' actions. They achieved this using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a technology that uses a tightly focused magnetic field to temporarily disable individual regions of the brain. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Attention; Autism
Link ID: 13914 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Karen Weintraub When the device first came off, her skin was red and raw. It looked like there was a frozen stick of butter stuffed under her flesh. The 57-year-old had just completed an hourlong fat reduction treatment on her abdomen in a Chestnut Hill dermatologist’s office. (Photos, facing page.) For a few minutes, it distended her belly, with the fat beneath frozen and weirdly hard. As her flesh rapidly defrosted, the lumpiness and redness faded. It would be weeks before she knew whether the procedure had made a difference. Such “body contouring’’ is one of the latest trends in dermatology, aimed at getting rid of small pockets of fat without the pain, price, or recovery time of liposuction or other weight-loss surgery. But also without their dramatic results. The suburban Boston patient said an earlier round of treatment had helped her clothes fit better. “Some days you’re good, some days you’re not,’’ she said. The first treatment left her “feeling like the good days,’’ she said. (While insisting she wasn’t embarrassed about getting the procedure, the woman did not want to be identified by name. “A lot of friends do know’’ about it, she said, looking up from a copy of Women’s Health magazine about 45 minutes into the treatment. “My husband knows. I just don’t want 200 friends to know.’’) © 2010 NY Times Co

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 13913 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By AMY HARMON When President Obama nominated Ari Ne’eman to the National Council on Disability, many families touched by autism took it as a positive sign. Mr. Ne’eman would be the first person with the disorder to serve on the council. Kent Adams Ari Ne'eman would be the first person with autism on the National Council on Disability. But he has since become the focus of criticism from other advocates who disagree with his view that society ought to concentrate on accepting autistic people, not curing them. A hold has been placed on Mr. Ne’eman’s nomination, which requires Senate confirmation. Whether the hold is related to the criticism of Mr. Ne’eman (pronounced NAY-men) and what it might take to lift it is unclear. But Mr. Ne’eman, the 22-year-old founder of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, seems to be a lightning rod for a struggle over how autism will be perceived at a time when an estimated 1 in 100 American children and teenagers are given such a diagnosis. Mr. Ne’eman is at the forefront of a growing movement that describes autism as a form of “neurodiversity” that should be embraced and accommodated, just as physical disabilities have led to the construction of ramps and stalls in public restrooms for people with disabilities. Autism, he and others say, is a part of their identity. But that viewpoint, critics say, represents only those on the autism spectrum who at least have basic communication skills and are able to care of themselves. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 13912 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Katherine Harmon Like many people, rats are happy to gorge themselves on tasty, high-fat treats. Bacon, sausage, chocolate and even cheesecake quickly became favorites of laboratory rats that recently were given access to these human indulgences—so much so that the animals came to depend on high quantities to feel good, like drug users who need to up their intake to get high. A new study, published online March 28 in Nature Neuroscience, describes these rats' indulgent tribulations, adding to research literature on the how excess food intake can trigger changes in the brain, alterations that seem to create a neurochemical dependency in the eater—or user. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) Preliminary findings from the work were presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in October 2009. Like many pleasurable behaviors—including sex and drug use—eating can trigger the release of dopamine, a feel-good neurotransmitter in the brain. This internal chemical reward, in turn, increases the likelihood that the associated action will eventually become habitual through positive reinforcement conditioning. If activated by overeating, these neurochemical patterns can make the behavior tough to shake—a result seen in many human cases, notes Paul Kenny, an associate professor in the Department of Molecular Therapeutics at The Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Fla., and co-author of the new study. "Most people who are overweight would say, 'I would like to control my weight and my eating,' but they find it very hard to control their feeding behavior," he says. © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Obesity; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 13911 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Larry O'Hanlon There's a reason why bees can see you while you're still searching for the source of that buzzing noise: Their color vision is five times faster than human vision and among the fastest color vision yet clocked in the animal world. The lightning-fast color vision enables bees to zip through bushes and trees, escape predators, spot each other and otherwise deal with their world in fast forward. The trick to their fast vision is how many "snap shots" per second the color-detecting cells in bumblebees' eyes take and send to their brains. "The limiting factor is how fast the photo receptors can register a change," explained bee vision researcher Peter Skorupski of Queen Mary, University of London. "So we measured the speed directly from the receptor." In a human eye the receptors are the cells in the retina at the back of the eye. "When we see something it seems instantaneous," said Skorupski. "But there's a lot of processing going on under the bonnet. In our case there can be a delay of tenth of a second before you register what you are seeing." The fastest vision known belongs to flies, but that is not color vision, Skorupski explained. "A lot of this has been worked out in flies. Our work was inspired by classic work on flies. That work focused also on finding the connection between the speed of fly vision to the cost of having such amped-up sight, Skorupski explained. © 2010 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Vision; Evolution
Link ID: 13910 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey Scientists are discovering how tiny clocks inside each cell can march to the beat of a master drummer in the brain. Chuwy/iStockphoto, illustration by T. Dube Timing is everything. Just ask a comedian, trapeze artist, Romeo and Juliet — or nearly any cell in your body. Ticking away inside almost all cells are tiny clocks composed of protein gears. Scientists have known that these molecular clocks govern the daily rhythms of life, from mealtimes and bedtimes to the rise and fall of hormone levels, body temperature and blood pressure. New research shows that circadian clocks, as the daily timekeepers are known, do more than just control day-to-day schedules. Such clocks, some scientists say, have the potential to play a role in nearly every biological function. Studies of bacteria, rodents and fruit flies suggest that circadian clocks may time processes as diverse as cellular division and aging. “When you start asking, ‘what does the clock control?’ you have to say, ‘everything,’” says Erik Herzog, a biologist at Washington University in St. Louis. Some of the new insights come from studying the brain’s master clock, a pair of structures known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN, that set the body’s daily rhythms. Other work, meanwhile, suggests that the SCN is not a single monolithic clock but more a set of interrelated nodes that help coordinate clocks throughout the body. And still other researchers have found that the SCN may not even be the ultimate arbiter of the body’s time, and that other organs control biological rhythms on their own without much, if any, help from the SCN. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 13909 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Holly Anderson, contributor IT IS common to feel uncomfortable when reading about new neuroscience techniques that seem to encroach on the sacrosanct realm of our hidden inner lives. And it is understandable to feel even more uncomfortable about the notion that our actions are dictated by processes in our brains, calling into question a place for moral responsibility. This discomfort pervades Eliezer Sternberg's new book. In My Brain Made Me Do It, Sternberg dips into philosophy, psychology and neuroscience research as he considers the various evidence that suggests we lack free will and thus a foundation for moral responsibility. Strange cases from psychology and neuroscience pose problems for a naive view of human agency. What if your hand started grabbing things of its own accord? Or if you were compelled to use every tool you found in front of you? Keep some grains of salt handy as you are reading. The tone Sternberg takes to the possibility of widespread acceptance of neurobiological determinism is of the sky-is-falling variety. With over 40,000 practising neuroscientists, it isn't hard to find juicy quotes dismissing the existence of free will, but it is inaccurate to characterise this as the general attitude of the field. Sternberg addresses two related problems throughout the book. The first concerns the wide range of influences on our actions that we are unaware of at any given moment. If an action I take is triggered by unconscious sensory input, am I employing free will? © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 13908 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Andrea Thompson Many pregnant women report being more forgetful as their pregnancy progresses, and new research suggests it could be caused by elevated hormone levels affecting the brain. Previous studies haven't turned up a solid link that could explain maternal memory problems, widely reported on an anecdotal basis. "I think women are interested and sometimes worried about their memory, and whether they're going to get it back if they feel that they've lost some of their cognitive function during pregnancy," said researcher Diane Farrar of the University of Bradford and Bradford Institute for Health Research in England. Farrar and her colleagues set out to test the spatial memory of pregnant women — that's the memory that tells us where we parked the car or set down the keys. The researchers also measured the levels of a set of sex hormones in the pregnant women and had them fill out a questionnaire to judge their mood and level of anxiety. The results for the 23 pregnant women in the study were compared with 24 non-pregnant women. During their second and third trimesters, the pregnant women performed significantly worse than the non-pregnant women on spatial memory tests, the study found. The memory effect still held at three months after birth. © 2010 LiveScience.com.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 13907 - Posted: 06.24.2010