Janet Fang In pipefish, pregnant males give birth to more young from attractive mates, new research shows. Pipefish, sea horses, and sea dragons belong to a family in which the males get pregnant. In some of these species, the females court and compete for males. The pair then do a dance, which includes "twitching at each other and spiralling together, like a double helix", says lead author Kimberly Paczolt from Texas A&M University in College Station. As they spiral around each other, the female transfers the eggs into two rows along its mate's body. The male then fertilizes the eggs, and the brood pouch — which consists of two flaps — glues itself together in the middle. Weeks later, the seam breaks apart, tiny versions of the adults swim out, and the males are free to be impregnated again in as little as an hour. The male's pouch protects the embryos and gives them oxygen and nutrients. But, Paczolt says, the male doesn't care for the babies with utter abandon. Rather, he tempers how much he invests in the eggs according to how large the female is. In their study, published in Nature today, Paczolt and her colleague Adam Jones mated 22 male Gulf pipefish (Syngnathus scovelli) with two females each, in separate broods1. They found that the males preferred to mate with larger females, and that these more 'attractive' females transfer more eggs to the male and more of her young survive. © 2010 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 13886 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jennifer Viegas Human friends may come and go, but a horse could be one of your most loyal, long-term buddies if you treat it right, suggests a new study. Horses also understand words better than expected, according to the research, and possess "excellent memories," allowing horses to not only recall their human friends after periods of separation, but also to remember complex, problem-solving strategies for ten years or more. The bond with humans likely is an extension of horse behavior in the wild, since horses value their own horse relatives and friends, and are also open to new, non-threatening acquaintances. "Horses maintain long-term bonds with several members of their family group, but they also interact temporarily with members of other groups when forming herds," explained Carol Sankey, who led the research, and her team. "Equid social relationships are long-lasting and, in some cases, lifelong," added the scientists, whose paper has been accepted for publication in the journal Animal Behavior. Ethologist Sankey of the University of Rennes and her colleagues studied 20 Anglo-Arabian and three French Saddlebred horses stabled in Chamberet, France. The scientists tested how well the horses remembered a female trainer and her instructions after she and the horses had been separated up to eight months. © 2010 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 13885 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Jeff Hecht Attracting the opposite sex is not the only reason some birds have elaborate head ornamentation. Avoiding things that might bump your head in the dark is also important, at least for crested and whiskered auklets – seabirds famed for their decorative head feathers. Charles Darwin suggested that elaborate display feathers were involved in sexual selection, and subsequent experiments confirmed his idea. In fact, elaborate feathers may have first evolved for touch sensing, with sexual selection coming later, says Ian Jones of Memorial University in St John's, Newfoundland, Canada, who did the research with Sampath Seneviratne, now at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Crested and whiskered auklets nest in hollows on rocky islands in the remote northern Pacific Ocean. To see if their elaborate headdresses helped the birds make their way through the rocks to their nests at night, Jones and Seneviratne went to the Aleutian Islands, captured wild birds and put them in a darkened maze – but first they taped down some birds' decorative feathers. Infrared camera recordings (see video) showed that whiskered auklets (Aethia pygmaea) bumped their heads nearly three times more often if their long head feathers were taped down. Crested auklets (A. cristatella), suffered similarly with their crests taped down, but adding an artificial crest to the naturally unadorned least auklet (A. pusilla) – which also nests on the islands but in more open areas – didn't help these birds avoid bumps. Moreover, Sereviratne says, "birds with longer crests had greater difficulty in navigating inside the maze" when their crests were taped down. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Evolution
Link ID: 13884 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Babies love a beat, according to a new study that found dancing comes naturally to infants. The research showed babies respond to the rhythm and tempo of music, and find it more engaging than speech. The findings, based on a study of 120 infants between 5 months and 2 years old, suggest that humans may be born with a predisposition to move rhythmically in response to music. "Our research suggests that it is the beat rather than other features of the music, such as the melody, that produces the response in infants," said researcher Marcel Zentner, a psychologist at the University of York in England. "We also found that the better the children were able to synchronize their movements with the music, the more they smiled." To test babies' dancing disposition, the researchers played recordings of classical music, rhythmic beats and speech to infants, and videotaped the results. They also recruited professional ballet dancers to analyze how well the babies matched their movements to the music. During the experiments, the babies were sitting on a parent's lap, though the adults had headphones to make sure they couldn't hear the music and were instructed not to move. The researchers found the babies moved their arms, hands, legs, feet, torsos and heads in response to the music, much more than to speech. © 2010 LiveScience.com

Keyword: Hearing; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 13883 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO - People with a family history of Alzheimer's disease often have clumps of a toxic protein in their brains even though they are perfectly healthy, researchers said on Monday. They said the findings could lead to new ways to identify people most likely to develop Alzheimer's disease, when there is still time to do something about it. "The hope is to one day be able to diagnose very clearly the Alzheimer's disease process before any symptoms occur, when the brain is still healthy. Then the treatments would have the best chance of success," said Lisa Moscone of New York University Langone Medical Center, whose study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The team wants to continue to follow the people in the study to see whether they develop dementia, and they want to replicate the findings in a much larger study. Several teams have been working on better ways to detect early-stage Alzheimer's disease in hopes of developing drugs that can fight it before it causes too much damage. Current treatments cannot reverse the course of Alzheimer's, a mind-robbing form of dementia that affects more than 26 million people globally. Copyright 2010 Reuters.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Brain imaging
Link ID: 13882 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Kay Lazar Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office joined a federal lawsuit yesterday that contends that Johnson & Johnson paid tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks to get its drugs, especially the powerful antipsychotic Risperdal, prescribed in nursing homes. The action was taken as Coakley’s office disclosed that it is also scrutinizing companies that market antipsychotics to Massachusetts nursing homes. These drugs are widely used in some homes for residents suffering from dementia, a condition that puts them at greater risk of death when given antipsychotics. Antipsychotics were approved to treat people with severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, but it is legal for physicians to prescribe them “off label’’ to treat people with dementia. Pharmaceutical companies are prohibited from marketing or promoting off-label uses of their products. “The inappropriate off-label marketing of antipsychotic drugs to nursing homes is a significant health and safety issue for our seniors,’’ Coakley said in a statement released by her office. “We have taken strong action on this issue in the past and are continuing to monitor it very closely moving forward.’’ Coakley’s office declined further comment, citing the pending litigation. The Globe reported Monday that 28 percent of Massachusetts nursing home residents were given antipsychotics last year. © 2010 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Alzheimers
Link ID: 13881 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Liam Creedon, Press Association A soldier blinded by a grenade in Iraq today described how his life has been transformed by ground-breaking technology that enables him to "see" with his tongue. Lance Corporal Craig Lundberg, 24, from Walton, Liverpool, can read words, identify shapes and walk unaided thanks to the BrainPort device, despite being totally blind. The Liverpool fan, who plays blind football for England, lost his sight after being struck by a rocket propelled grenade while serving in Basra in 2007. He was faced with the prospect of relying on a guide dog or cane for the rest of his life. But he was chosen by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to be the first person to trial a pioneering device - the BrainPort, which could revolutionise treatment for the blind. The BrainPort converts visual images into a series of electrical pulses which are sent to the tongue. The different strength of the tingles can be read or interpreted so the user can mentally visualise their surroundings and navigate around objects. The device is a tiny video camera attached to a pair of sunglasses which are linked to a plastic "lolly pop" which the user places on their tongue to read the electrical pulses. L/Cpl Lundberg explained: "It feels like licking a nine volt battery or like popping candy. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Vision; Robotics
Link ID: 13880 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Diane Daniel When Claudette Broyles tries to describe to friends how she feels, she likens herself to a balloon on a string, tied to a post. "I'm constantly rocking and swaying, but the level changes," said Broyles, 60, of Woodstock, Va. "If I'm having an average day, then it's like I'm a balloon in a mild breeze. If I'm having a bad day, it's like it's really windy." I hadn't heard the balloon analogy before, but I could relate. Broyles and I suffer from mal de debarquement syndrome (MdDS), an uncommon balance disorder that one researcher describes as "motion hallucination." For weeks, months or even years at a time, we feel that we are rocking, bobbing, swaying, even though diagnostic tests for balance, hearing and vision show up normal. The name for the illness is French for "disembarkation sickness," so called because it most frequently occurs after being on a boat. Of course, many people have experienced the swaying sensations that occur just after a boat trip. But for those with MdDS, that feeling doesn't let up; it persists with varying degrees of severity, causing everything from clumsiness to the inability to walk without some kind of support. Just how many sufferers there are is unknown, says neurologist Yoon-Hee Cha, who this year launched a study funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, the first time federal money has been used for research into the syndrome. © 2010 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 13879 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By HARRIET BROWN As a woman whose height and weight put me in the obese category on the body-mass-index chart, I cringed when Michelle Obama recently spoke of putting her daughters on a diet. While I’m sure the first lady’s intentions are good, I’m also sure that her comments about childhood obesity will add yet another layer to the stigma of being overweight in America. Last August, Dr. Delos M. Cosgrove, a cardiac surgeon and chief executive of the prestigious Cleveland Clinic, told a columnist for The New York Times that if he could get away with it legally, he would refuse to hire anyone who is obese. He probably could get away with it, actually, because no federal legislation protects the civil rights of fat workers, and only one state, Michigan, bans discrimination on the basis of weight. Dr. Cosgrove may be unusually blunt, but he is far from alone. Public attitudes about fat have never been more judgmental; stigmatizing fat people has become not just acceptable but, in some circles, de rigueur. I’ve sat in meetings with colleagues who wouldn’t dream of disparaging anyone’s color, sex, economic status or general attractiveness, yet feel free to comment witheringly on a person’s weight. Over the last few years, fat people have become scapegoats for all manner of cultural ills. “There’s an atmosphere now where it’s O.K. to blame everything on weight,” said Dr. Linda Bacon, a nutrition researcher and the author of “Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight” (Benbella, 2008). “If we’re worried about climate change, someone comes out with an article about how heavier people weigh more, so they require more fuel, and they blame the climate change crisis on fatter people. We have this strong belief system that it’s their fault, that it’s all about gluttony or lack of exercise.” Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 13878 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Helen Thomson HORROR films are simply a disconcerting watch for the majority of us, but for Jane Barrett they are literally torturous. She writhes in agony whenever the actors on the screen feel pain. "When I see violence in films I have an extreme reaction," she says. "I simply have to close my eyes. I start to feel nauseous and have to breathe deeply." She is just one of many people who suffer from a range of disorders that give rise to "extreme empathy". Some of these people, like Barrett, empathise so strongly with others that they experience the same physical feelings - whether it's the tickle of a feather or the cut of a knife. Others, who suffer from a disorder known as echopraxia, just can't help immediately imitating the actions of others, even in inappropriate situations. Far from being mere curiosities, understanding these conditions could have many pay-offs for neuroscience, such as illuminating conditions like phantom pain. They may even help answer the age-old question of whether empathy really is linked to compassion. There is a general consensus that empathy-linked conditions arise from abnormalities in the common mechanisms for empathy found in all humans: although few of us experience sensations as powerful as Barrett's, we all wince at a brutal foul on the football field and feel compassion for someone experiencing grief. Many studies have suggested that our capacity for empathy arises from a specific group of neurons, labelled mirror neurons. First discovered in macaque monkeys, they are situated in and around the premotor cortex and parietal lobe - regions that span the top of the brain near the middle of the head. These neurons fire both when you perform an action and when you see someone else perform that action. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 13877 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Lisa Grossman The molecule that lets snakes sense heat is the same one that makes wasabi feel fiery. Scientists have known for decades that some snakes use specialized holes called pit organs to “see” the heat radiating from prey. Now, molecular biologists have pinpointed the protein that gives pit-bearing snakes — vipers, boas and pythons — this sixth sense. The culprit is called TRPA1, a protein whose human counterpart is known as the “wasabi receptor” for its role in sensing the potent condiment. The results are reported online March 14 in Nature. “This is one of the first really interesting new findings in that species” in 20 years, comments snake-sense specialist Ken Catania of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, who was not associated with the study. “It’s the kind of paper that makes me have to go and revise my class lectures.” Scientists had thought that snakes’ sensitivity to heat comes from the exceptionally thin tissue in pit organs. Just as it takes less heat to boil a cup of water than a pot, it takes less heat to stimulate pit organ tissue than a mammal’s skin. But what was happening on a molecular level had never been explored. “We’ve been trying to address this question for a long time, several years,” says study coauthor David Julius of the University of California, San Francisco. “The technology wasn’t really right for us to do that until recently.” Recent advances in high-throughput genetic screening that can sift through hundreds of genes quickly made the study possible. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Vision
Link ID: 13876 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rossella Lorenzi An international team of researchers has identified intact neurons and cerebral cells in a mummified medieval brain, according to a study published in the journal Neuroimage. Found inside the skull of a 13th century A.D. 18-month-old child from northwestern France, the brain had been fixed in formalin solution since its discovery in 1998. "Although reduced by about 80 percent of its original weight, it has retained its anatomical characteristics and most of all, to a certain degree its cell structures," anatomist and palaeopathologist Frank Ruhli, head of the Swiss Mummy Project at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, told Discovery News. The brain was the only tissue preserved in the infant's skeletonized body. "It is a unique case of naturally-occurring preservation of human brain tissue in the absence of other soft tissues," Ruhli said. The brain appeared almost intact. The grooves and furrows -- gyri and sulci -- that make up the surface of the brain's cerebral cortex were still clearly visible, as well the frontal, temporal and occipital lobe. Amazingly, the cellular structure had also been preserved to a certain degree. Microscopic examination of the tissue revealed gray and white matter, blood vessels and large neurons near the the hippocampus area, the memory-making region of the brain. The cells had mostly retained their original shape as well as the dendrites, the short, branched fibers that extend from the cell body of a neuron. © 2010 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 13875 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Diane Rogers-Ramachandran Although our perception of the world seems effortless and instantaneous, it actually involves considerable image processing, as we have noted in many of our previous columns. Curiously enough, much of the current scientific understanding of that process is based on the study of visual illusions. Analysis and resolution of an image into distinct features begin at the earliest stages of visual processing. This was discovered in cats and monkeys by a number of techniques, the most straightforward of which was to use tiny needles—microelectrodes—to pick up electrical signals from cells in the retina and the areas of the brain associated with vision (of which there are nearly 30). By presenting various visual targets to monitored animals, investigators learned that cells in early-processing brain areas are each sensitive mainly to changes in just one visual parameter, not to others. For instance, in the primary visual cortex (V1, also called area 17), the main feature extracted is the orientation of edges. In the area known as V4 in the temporal lobes, cells react to color (or, strictly speaking, to wavelengths of light, with different cells responding to different wavelengths). Cells in the area called MT are mainly interested in direction of movement. One characteristic of these cells that may seem surprising is that their activity when stimulated is not constant. A neuron that responds to red, for instance, will initially fire vigorously but taper off over time as it adapts, or “fatigues,” from steady exposure. Although part of this adaptation may result from depletion of neurotransmitters, it also likely reflects the evolutionary logic that the goal of the cell is to signal change rather than a steady state (that is, if nothing changes, there is literally nothing for the cell to get excited about). © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 13874 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Abigail Baird In 2009, Miley Cyrus reportedly made an astonishing 25 million dollars. Most of that money came from album sales, which were reported to be slightly over 4 million during that year. Four million…Four million?! Have you heard Miley Cyrus sing? Are there really four million kids out there willing to spend their hard-earned babysitting money on a Miley Cyrus album because they deeply love listening to her sing? Well, according to the findings of a study recently published in Neuroimage, selling four million albums does not translate to having four million people like your music. The study reports that there is good reason to believe that a lot of those purchases were made out of fear -- a fear well known to adolescents all over America: terror of social rejection. The fear of social rejection is so strong in adolescents because their relationships are essential for passing on the lessons that will enable them to join adult society. In order to do this properly and efficiently, teenagers come equipped with the ability to learn fast and furiously from their peers, especially those who wield more social power -- who are older or more popular. Although this system developed because it helps the teen transition to adulthood, it has proven an excellent principle upon which to base economic decisions. The popular kids dictate teen culture, and if they endorse it (Twilight, anyone?) it will sell. Gregory S. Berns, the chair of Neuroeconomics at Emory University, and his colleagues set out to understand more about the neural and behavioral mechanics of social influence on decisions about purchasing music. The researchers’ basic question was: When people change their behavior based on social influence, is it their actual preferences that change, or simply their behavior? © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Emotions
Link ID: 13873 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By SAM DOLNICK WHEN most people think of hunger in America, the images that leap to mind are of ragged toddlers in Appalachia or rail-thin children in dingy apartments reaching for empty bottles of milk. Once, maybe. But a recent survey found that the most severe hunger-related problems in the nation are in the South Bronx, long one of the country’s capitals of obesity. Experts say these are not parallel problems persisting in side-by-side neighborhoods, but plagues often seen in the same households, even the same person: the hungriest people in America today, statistically speaking, may well be not sickly skinny, but excessively fat. Call it the Bronx Paradox. “Hunger and obesity are often flip sides to the same malnutrition coin,” said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. “Hunger is certainly almost an exclusive symptom of poverty. And extra obesity is one of the symptoms of poverty.” The Bronx has the city’s highest rate of obesity, with residents facing an estimated 85 percent higher risk of being obese than people in Manhattan, according to Andrew G. Rundle, an epidemiologist at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. But the Bronx also faces stubborn hunger problems. According to a survey released in January by the Food Research and Action Center, an antihunger group, nearly 37 percent of residents in the 16th Congressional District, which encompasses the South Bronx, said they lacked money to buy food at some point in the past 12 months. That is more than any other Congressional district in the country and twice the national average, 18.5 percent, in the fourth quarter of 2009. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 13872 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Elizabeth Barrett Struggling to hear someone properly mid-conversation during a noisy party or gathering may be something most of us have experienced at one time or another. But a person's brain rather than their ear could be to blame for the inability to "zoom in" on an individual you want to hear - the so-called "cocktail party" problem, new research suggested today. The study being carried out by Deafness Research UK scientists at the University College London Ear Institute intimated the brain appears to play a greater role than was previously thought in the auditory process. It is hoped the research, looking at the brain's ability to focus its listening attention on a single speaker amid a mixture of background chatter, but at the same time immediately respond if someone calls our name, will benefit the deaf and hard of hearing. Particularly those with cochlear implants or "bionic ears" and hearing aids, which traditionally struggle in noisy environments. Vivienne Michael, chief executive of Deafness Research UK, said: "Scientists are particularly interested in how the central auditory system is able to cope with noisy environments; a major challenge for hearing research over the next decade will be to improve the performance of cochlear implant devices. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Hearing; Attention
Link ID: 13871 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Robert Epstein On Wednesday, March 10, I had the pleasure of making love with Scientific American ’s editor-in-chief, Mariette DiChristina—in front of a large audience, no less. Hey, calm down. We didn’t make love with each other. We did something even better. We showed about a hundred smart, skeptical New Yorkers that we could, fairly easily and on demand, increase the love that feel people toward each other—people who are already in love, people who are just friends, and even total strangers. The venue was the classy 92Y Tribeca, the fairly new home of art and intellect in lower Manhattan, and the excuse was Scientific American Mind ’s January/February cover story about how science can help you fall in love. Our presentation began, consistent with the occasion, with a prolonged hug that prompted laughter and applause. When, eventually, the embrace ended, I asked four volunteers to come up on stage, and I paired them off into couples that had never met before. I then asked them, on a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 was low and 10 was high), a) how much they liked each other, b) how much they loved each other, c) how close they felt to each other, and d) how attracted they were to each other. Next, I asked the individuals in each couple simply to look deeply into each other’s eyes for two minutes in an exercise I call “Soul Gazing.” After the giggling stopped, they got down to business and started looking quite serious. Then I asked for those numbers again: liking, loving, closeness and attraction. To the delight and astonishment of the audience, the numbers went up for all four people—14 percent overall. © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Emotions; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 13870 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Andy Coghlan What does a rattlesnake's night vision have in common with the taste of wasabi sauce? It turns out that when some snakes "thermally image" their prey, they employ receptors similar to those we use to sense pungency from wasabi. Unlike the human receptors, which respond to odour molecules, the snakes' thermal receptors respond directly to heat, triggering nerve impulses that their brain interprets as an image. "It's hard to know exactly what the snake 'sees', but one assumes that the thermal image in some way depicts the relative thermal intensity of an object or animal," says David Julius of the University of California, San Francisco, whose team has found the link. "It's probably not unlike a thermal camera." Julius's team compared gene activity in different types of nerve cell from diamondback rattlesnakes, which all have shallow pits on their faces that detect heat. They found that in nerves that feed the pits, a gene called TRPA1 was 400 times more active than elsewhere. The gene makes a protein that activates the cells when it detects heat from objects at more than 27 °C. Boas and pythons have similar molecules on their snouts. Journal reference: Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature08943 © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Evolution
Link ID: 13869 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Michael Torrice Whether it involves gambling away one's life savings or committing one murder after another, a psychopath inevitably leaves the rest of us wondering: What was going on in his head? Now researchers report that part of the answer may be hypersensitivity to rewards, which may create a pathological drive for money, sex, and status. All psychopaths share two characteristic traits: an inability to empathize with others' emotions, such as the fear in a person's face, and impulsive, anti-social behavior, such as reckless risk taking or excessive aggression. Neuroscientists have pinpointed neural mechanisms that may cause psychopaths' lack of empathy. But very little research has looked at what leads to impulsivity-which in some ways might be more important, because it can help predict a psychopath's tendency towards violent crime. Neuroscientist Joshua Buckholtz of Vanderbilt University in Nashville and his colleagues decided to focus on a system of interconnected brain regions called the mesolimbic system, which motivate us to hunt for rewards by releasing the neurotransmitter dopamine. Drugs like heroine-to which psychopaths are also more susceptible—can push circuits in this system into overdrive, leaving addicts compulsively seeking another hit. The researchers hypothesized that psychopaths might also overreact to other rewards. To test their hypothesis, the scientists studied how normal personality is affected by variations in the nucleus accumbens, a part of the mesolimbic system involved in motivation. They gave 30 volunteers a small dose of amphetamine, a stimulant, and used a PET scanner to measure how much dopamine their nucleus accumbens released. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Aggression; Emotions
Link ID: 13868 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A gene that causes a fatal childhood brain disorder can also cause adults to develop peripheral neuropathy, a condition resulting in weakness and decreased sensation in the hands and limbs, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and other institutions. The study is the first to show that different mutations in the same gene cause the two seemingly unrelated disorders. Inherited peripheral neuropathies are a diverse group of disorders that cause loss of muscle tissue in the hands, feet, and lower legs of affected patients, usually starting in adulthood. Various genetic causes have been identified for Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT) (http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v17/n6/pdf/ejhg200931a.pdf.), the broad category of inherited peripheral neuropathy that affects approximately 125,000 people in the United States. The peripheral nervous system consists of nerves that reside or extend outside of the brain and spinal cord. In the current study, the researchers determined that persons with a CMT-like neuropathy have a mutation in the same gene that causes Menkes disease, a severe brain disorder that begins in infancy and is fatal if not treated. This gene, called ATP7A, codes for a protein needed to move the trace metal copper between different compartments within the body's cells, or out of cells altogether. "The findings provide insight into how peripheral nerves function and may ultimately lead to new treatments for some peripheral neuropathies," said Alan E. Guttmacher, M.D., acting director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the NIH Institute that collaborated in the study.

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13867 - Posted: 03.15.2010