By Scott O. Lilienfeld and Hal Arkowitz Let us start with a little quiz. How many of these conditions have you heard of? Taijin kyofusho, hikikomori, hwa-byung, or qi-gong psychotic reaction. If your score was 0 out of 4, do not feel bad: your culture may be to blame. The first two conditions are mental illnesses largely endemic to Japan; the second two are endemic to China. Psychological disorders, or at least our labels for them, differ across cultures. But are these and other non-Western conditions truly distinct from those in the U.S. and Europe? Or does every mental malady, no matter how foreign-sounding in name, vary only in minor ways from a problem that is more familiar to us, such as depression or schizophrenia? The evidence to date strongly suggests that culture can influence the expression of mental illnesses. Whether radically different cultures can give rise to entirely new psychiatric disorders, however, is a matter of fierce debate. This issue is of more than academic importance. Psychotherapists often consider cultural differences in their treatment, to be sure, but they typically assume that depression, for example, looks pretty much the same everywhere with minor exceptions. If so-called culture-bound syndromes—mental illnesses that are specific to a particular society—are merely variations of Western disorders, then mental health professionals in Western countries can safely continue to draw on existing knowledge about familiar disorders to treat them. In contrast, if some psychiatric ailments are entirely distinct from those in Western countries, psychologists and psychiatrists may need to start from scratch in figuring out how best to treat them. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Depression
Link ID: 13487 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Peter Aldhous Next time you catch a stranger's eye and feel a surge of attraction, here's something to ponder: is your ardour based partly on shared genetic ancestry? That's the intriguing question raised by a new study of Latino populations. A team led by Neil Risch and Esteban González Burchard of the University of California, San Francisco, took DNA samples from married couples in Mexican and Puerto Rican populations, examining around 100 genetic markers from across the genome. From these markers, the researchers were able to discern the proportions of Native American, European and African ancestry for each person. They found that within Mexican populations, people tended to pick partners with similar proportions of Native American and European ancestry, while in Puerto Rican populations couples had paired up based on their shared balance of European and African ancestry. The team also noted each person's socioeconomic profile to see if this explained their choice of partner as convincingly as ancestry did. But these factors couldn't explained the pairings. What's more, the same patterns emerged for Mexicans living in the San Francisco Bay Area as for Mexicans in Mexico, and for Puerto Ricans in both Puerto Rico and New York. So presumably people had cued into subtle variations in appearance, behaviour and even odour. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13486 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A drug that failed tests as an antidepressant is being hailed as "Viagra for women" after surprising but not unpleasant side effects. In three separate trials, the drug flibanserin did wonders for women's flagging sex drive despite doing nothing to lift mood. The accidental discovery is akin to Viagra's - it was originally designed as a heart medicine but failed. The US work was presented at a sexual medicine meeting in Lyon, France. Lead researcher Professor John Thorp, of the University of North Carolina, told the European Society for Sexual Medicine: "Flibanserin was a poor antidepressant. However, astute observers noted that it increased libido in laboratory animals and human subjects. So, we conducted multiple clinical trials." The women in the studies who took 100mg of the drug once a day for their low libido reported significant improvements in their sexual desire and satisfactory sexual experiences, he said. "It's essentially a Viagra-like drug for women in that diminished desire or libido is the most common feminine sexual problem, like erectile dysfunction is in men." The trials were funded by manufacturer Boehringer Ingelheim and involved 2,000 women in the US, Canada and Europe. BBC © MMIX

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 13485 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS Researchers at Princeton University recently made a remarkable discovery about the brains of rats that exercise. Some of their neurons respond differently to stress than the neurons of slothful rats. Scientists have known for some time that exercise stimulates the creation of new brain cells (neurons) but not how, precisely, these neurons might be functionally different from other brain cells. Phys Ed In the experiment, preliminary results of which were presented last month at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago, scientists allowed one group of rats to run. Another set of rodents was not allowed to exercise. Then all of the rats swam in cold water, which they don’t like to do. Afterward, the scientists examined the animals’ brains. They found that the stress of the swimming activated neurons in all of the ’ brains. (The researchers could tell which neurons were activated because the cells expressed specific genes in response to the stress.) But the youngest brain cells in the running rats, the cells that the scientists assumed were created by running, were less likely to express the genes. They generally remained quiet. The “cells born from running,” the researchers concluded, appeared to have been “specifically buffered from exposure to a stressful experience.” The rats had created, through running, a brain that seemed biochemically, molecularly, calm. For years, both in popular imagination and in scientific circles, it has been a given that exercise enhances mood. But how exercise, a physiological activity, might directly affect mood and anxiety — psychological states — was unclear. Now, thanks in no small part to improved research techniques and a growing understanding of the biochemistry and the genetics of thought itself, scientists are beginning to tease out how exercise remodels the brain, making it more resistant to stress. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions; Stress
Link ID: 13484 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Greg Miller Boosting the level of a brain chemical reverses learning impairments in a mouse model of Down syndrome, researchers report. The work adds to emerging evidence that cognition-enhancing drugs may one day help humans with Down syndrome lead more independent lives. Down syndrome is the most common cause of mental retardation, affecting approximately one in 800 babies at birth. People with the disorder have an extra copy of chromosome 21, giving them additional copies of hundreds of genes. This somehow alters brain development and causes mild to severe learning disabilities. To investigate what goes wrong in the brain of someone who has Down syndrome, researchers led by neurobiologist Ahmad Salehi of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, turned to a genetically modified strain of mice that has three copies of more than 100 of the genes found on human chromosome 21. These so-called Ts65Dn mice exhibit learning and memory deficiencies and other symptoms of Down syndrome. When Salehi and colleagues examined the brains of Ts65Dn mice under a microscope, they discovered degeneration in a region near the base of the brain called the locus coeruleus. This region contains neurons that extend armlike axons all the way to the hippocampus, a key memory center tucked deep inside the temporal lobes. These neurons release the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, which promotes learning and memory in the hippocampus. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13483 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Carina Storrs The Obama administration announced last month that people who buy or sell medical marijuana in the growing number of states that have decriminalized its therapeutic usage should not be targeted for arrest or prosecution by federal authorities. Now, the American Medical Association (AMA) has called for the federal government to go one step further in easing restrictions, the Los Angeles Times reported last week. Although the new AMA policy is far from outright support of medically sanctioned pot smoking, delegates of the organization recommended at an interim meeting in Houston last week that marijuana be removed from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Schedule I category of drugs, which includes heroin and LSD. Drugs in this category are deemed unsafe with no currently acceptable medical use. With its recommendation, the AMA hopes to facilitate research on the clinical effects of smoking marijuana, as well as other delivery methods for the drug. Part of the impetus behind the AMA's change of heart, according to the Times, was work done by Sunil Aggarwal, a medical student at the University of Washington. Aggarwal initially drummed up support in the AMA's medical student section, of which he is a member, for marijuana's removal from its Schedule I category. Then, at the AMA's 2008 meeting, Aggarwal convinced the organization to begin a one-year review of the effectiveness of medical marijuana. In his own research, Aggarwal has studied 139 patients with chronic pain and found that medical marijuana relieved a range of their symptoms, including nerve damage and back pain.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 13482 - Posted: 11.19.2009

by Ewen Callaway Even at the tender age of 3, children who will go on to be convicted of a crime are less likely to learn to link fear with a certain noise than those who don't. This may mean that an insensitivity to fear could be a driving force behind criminal behaviour. Adult criminals tend to be fearless, but whether this characteristic emerges before or after they commit a crime wasn't clear, says Adrian Raine, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. To find out, Raine and colleague Yu Gao turned to data from a 1970s study, collected as part of a decades-long project to understand the biological and environmental factors underlying mental illness. Back then, researchers led by Raine's former research supervisor had measured the sweat response of about 1800 3-year-olds in Mauritius when they were exposed to two different sounds. One sound was always followed by a noisy blare, the other by nothing. The children learned to anticipate which sound preceded the blare, and sweated in response to it – an indicator of fear. Decades later, Raine's own team looked to see if any of the subjects had criminal records and found 137 that did. The team discovered that, as toddlers, these people had sweated significantly less in anticipation of the blare compared with subjects of similar race, gender and background for whom no criminal record was found. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Emotions; Aggression
Link ID: 13481 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Carl Zimmer Numbers make modern life possible. “In a world without numbers,” University of Rochester neuroscientist Jessica Cantlon and her colleagues recently observed in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, “we would be unable to build a skyscraper, hold a national election, plan a wedding, or pay for a chicken at the market.” The central role of numbers in our world testifies to the brain’s uncanny ability to recognize and understand them—and Cantlon is among the researchers trying to find out exactly how that skill works. Traditionally, scientists have thought that we learn to use numbers the same way we learn how to drive a car or to text with two thumbs. In this view, numbers are a kind of technology, a man-made invention to which our all-purpose brains can adapt. History provides some support. The oldest evidence of people using numbers dates back about 30,000 years: bones and antlers scored with notches that are considered by archaeologists to be tallying marks. More sophisticated uses of numbers arose only much later, coincident with the rise of other simple technologies. The Mesopotamians developed basic arithmetic about 5,000 years ago. Zero made its debut in A.D. 876. Arab scholars laid the foundations of algebra in the ninth century; calculus did not emerge in full flower until the late 1600s. Despite the late appearance of higher mathematics, there is growing evidence that numbers are not really a recent invention—not even remotely. Cantlon and others are showing that our species seems to have an innate skill for math, a skill that may have been shared by our ancestors going back least 30 million years.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 13480 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Frequent use of ketamine - a drug popular with clubbers - is being linked with memory problems, researchers say. The University College London team carried out a range of memory and psychological tests on 120 people. They found frequent users performed poorly on skills such as recalling names, conversations and patterns. Previous studies said the drug might cause kidney and bladder damage. The London team and charity Drugscope said users should be aware of the risks. Ketamine - or Special K as it has been dubbed - acts as a stimulant and induces hallucinations. It has been increasing in popularity, particularly as an alternative to ecstasy among clubbers, as the price has fallen over recent years. A gram now costs about £20 - half the price of cocaine. In response, the drug was made illegal three years ago - it is currently graded class C - although it still remains legal for use as an anaesthetic and a horse tranquiliser. The study split the participants into five groups - those using the drug each day, recreational users who took the drug once or twice a month, former users, those who used other drugs and people who did not take any drugs. All of the people took part in a series of memory tests as well as completing questionnaires and were then followed up a year later, the Addiction journal reported. Researchers found the frequent users group performed significantly worse on the memory tests - in some they made twice as many errors. The study also showed performance worsened over the course of the year. There was no significant difference between the other groups. However, all groups of ketamine users showed evidence of unusual beliefs or mild delusions, such as conspiracy theories, the psychological questionnaires showed. (C)BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 13479 - Posted: 11.17.2009

By Christof Koch Surely there must have been times in high school or college when you laid in bed, late at night, and wondered where your “free will” came from? What part of the brain—if it is the brain—is responsible for deciding to act one way or another? One traditional answer is that this is not the job of the brain at all but rather of the soul. Hovering above the brain like Casper the Friendly Ghost, the soul freely perturbs the networks of the brain, thereby triggering the neural activity that will ultimately lead to behavior. Although such dualistic accounts are emotionally reassuring and intuitively satisfying, they break down as soon as one digs a bit deeper. How can this ghost, made out of some kind of metaphysical ectoplasm, influence brain matter without being detected? What sort of laws does Casper follow? Science has abandoned strong dualistic explanations in favor of natural accounts that assign causes and responsibility to specific actors and mechanisms that can be further studied. And so it is with the notion of the will. Over the past decade psychologists such as Daniel M. Wegner of Harvard University amassed experimental evidence for a number of conscious sensations that accompany any willful action. The two most important are intention and agency. Prior to voluntary behavior lies a conscious intention. When you decide to lift your hand, this intention is followed by planning of the detailed movement and its execution. Subjectively, you experience a sensation of agency. You feel that you, not the person next to you, initiated this action and saw it through. If a friend were to take your hand and pull it above your head, you would feel your arm being dragged up, but you would not feel any sense of being responsible for it. The important insight here is that the consciously experienced feelings of intention and agency are no different, in principle, from any other consciously experienced sensations, such as the briny taste of chicken soup or the red color of a Ferrari. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 13478 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Michael Torrice Some people can read your face and know you've had a bad day. Others seem oblivious. Now, researchers have pinpointed a genetic explanation for why some people are better empathizers than others. Empathy is crucial for our everyday social interactions. Neuroscientists have focused on a possible role for oxytocin, a hormone that seems to help us get along. Human volunteers trust others more to dole out money fairly when under the influence of the hormone, for example. And recently, scientists have linked a variation, or polymorphism, in the gene that codes for the oxytocin receptor to autism, a disorder defined by impaired social interactions. Neuropsychologist Sarina Rodrigues of Oregon State University in Corvallis and colleagues decided to look for a connection between this polymorphism, called rs53576, and empathy differences in the general population. To measure empathy in 192 college students, the researchers used a standard evaluation called the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test. Each subject looks at images of a movie still cropped to show only the actor's eyes. For each image, the researchers display four words, such as "playful" or "comforting," and ask the students to pick the word that best matches what the person is thinking or feeling. Autistic patients score poorly on this test, and past studies have shown that people who receive a snort of oxytocin perform better than those who receive a placebo. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Emotions; Autism
Link ID: 13477 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By DENISE GRADY Dr. Howard Riina threaded a slender tube through a maze of arteries in Dennis Sugrue’s brain, watching X-ray images on a monitor to track his progress. At the site where a previous operation had removed a malignant tumor, he infused a drug called mannitol and unleashed a flood of the cancer drug Avastin. Doctors and nurses watched intently, worried that the Avastin could cause brain swelling, a hemorrhage or a seizure. But Mr. Sugrue emerged unscathed. A half hour after the procedure, he woke up from anesthesia mumbling, “More is better,” and wishing aloud that he could have had a bigger dose. It was an experiment. Mr. Sugrue, 50, who works for a hedge fund and has two teenage children, was in a study for people with glioblastoma — the same type of brain tumor that killed Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts in August — and was only the second person ever to have Avastin sprayed directly into his brain. Getting drugs into the brain has always been a major challenge in treating tumors and other neurological diseases, because the blood-brain barrier, a natural defense system, keeps many drugs out. The study that Mr. Sugrue is in, at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell, combines old technologies in a new way to open the barrier and deliver extraordinarily high doses of Avastin straight to these deadly tumors — without soaking the rest of the brain in the drug and exposing it to side effects. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 13476 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Emily Sohn Insects may have tiny brains, but they can perform some seriously impressive feats of mental gymnastics. According to a growing number of studies, some insects can count, categorize objects, even recognize human faces -- all with brains the size of pinheads. Despite many attempts to link the volume of an animal's brain with the depth of its intelligence, scientists now propose that it's the complexity of connections between brain cells that matters most. Studying those connections -- a more manageable task in a little brain than in a big one -- could help researchers understand how bigger brains, including those of humans, work. Figuring out how a relatively small number of cells work together to process complex concepts could also lead to "smarter" computers that do some of the same tasks. "The question is: If these insects can do these things with such little brains, what does anything need a big brain for?" said Lars Chittka, who presented his arguments along with colleague Jeremy Niven in the journal Current Biology. "Bigger isn't necessarily better, and in some cases it could be quite the opposite." Because we are intelligent animals with big brains, people have long assumed that big brains are smarter brains. Yet, scientists have found scant evidence to support that view, Chittka said. Studies that have made those connections are fraught with problems. "If you try many measurements," he said, "Eventually you will find one that shows a correlation." © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 13475 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rita Rubin, USA TODAY Steve Ballou, an ex-smoker for more than a decade, started slipping back into his old ways with cigars. He'd have one when he was out with the guys, then when he was driving home from work, then one after dinner. This went on for several years, but he thought of himself as a cigar aficionado, not a relapsed smoker, since cigarettes were never on the menu. Until he vacationed in the City of Lights. Ballou will forever associate Paris' nickname with the act of lighting a cigarette. Over lunch one day, he realized he'd forgotten to buy a cigar to savor after the meal. So he bummed a cigarette from his wife, an occasional smoker. "I smoked half her pack that afternoon, and from that point on, I was a smoker," says Ballou, 54, a Sherborn, Mass., resident who works in financial services. He had a smoker's typical love/hate relationship with cigarettes. "I really did want to quit, but I was a nicotine addict. I needed something to help me get over this." That something was a nicotine vaccine. Researchers are investigating whether the same approach used to prevent infectious diseases could treat addictions to such drugs as nicotine and cocaine. None is yet on the market, but in late September, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) released a $10 million stimulus grant to Nabi Pharmaceuticals to help pay for the first Phase III trial – a large study designed to confirm effectiveness and monitor side effects – of a smoking-cessation vaccine. Company spokesman Greg Fries says Nabi, based in Rockville, Md., expects to begin enrolling patients in the NicVax study by year's end. Copyright 2009 USA TODAY,

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 13474 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Hypnosis has a "very real" effect that can be picked up on brain scans, say Hull University researchers. An imaging study of hypnotised participants showed decreased activity in the parts of the brain linked with daydreaming or letting the mind wander. The same brain patterns were absent in people who had the tests but who were not susceptible to being hypnotised. One psychologist said the study backed the theory that hypnosis "primes" the brain to be open to suggestion. Hypnosis is increasingly being used to help people stop smoking or lose weight and advisers recently recommended its use on the NHS to treat irritable bowel syndrome. It is not the first time researchers have tried to use imaging studies to monitor brain activity in people under hypnosis. But the Hull team said these had been done while people had been asked to carry out tasks, so it was not clear whether the changes in the brain were due to the act of doing the task or an effect of hypnosis. In the latest study, the team first tested how people responded to hypnosis and selected 10 individuals who were "highly suggestible" and seven people who did not really respond to the technique other than becoming more relaxed. The participants were asked to do a task under hypnosis, such as listening to non-existent music, but unknown to them the brain activity was being monitored in the rest periods in between tasks, the team reported in the journal Consciousness and Cognition. In the "highly suggestible" group there was decreased activity in the part of the brain involved in daydreaming or letting the mind wander - also known as the "default mode" network. BBC © MMIX

Keyword: Attention; Brain imaging
Link ID: 13473 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Chemicals in plastics alter the brains of baby boys making them "more feminine", say US researchers. Males exposed to high doses in the womb went on to be less likely to play with boys' toys like cars or to join in rough and tumble games, they found. The University of Rochester team's latest work adds to concerns about the safety of phthalates, found in vinyl flooring and PVC shower curtains. The findings are reported in the International Journal of Andrology. Phthalates have the ability to disrupt hormones, and have been banned in toys in the EU for some years. However, they are still widely used in many different household items, including plastic furniture and packaging. There are many different types and some mimic the female hormone oestrogen. The same researchers have already shown that this can mean boys are born with genital abnormalities. Now they say certain phthalates also impact on the developing brain, by knocking out the action of the male hormone testosterone. Dr Shanna Swan and her team tested urine samples from mothers over midway through pregnancy for traces of phthalates. The women, who gave birth to 74 boys and 71 girls, were followed up when their children were aged four to seven and asked about the toys the youngsters played with and the games they enjoyed. They found that two phthalates DEHP and DBP can affect play behaviour. BBC © MMIX

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 13472 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Lizzie Buchen A once-mysterious neural pathway may have a crucial role in making injured areas overly sensitive to touch, a study in mice suggests. When a person has any kind of injury — a broken shin, for example, or a sunburn — the pain system becomes hypersensitized, firing up in response to normally painless sensations induced by, for instance, walking or a gentle massage. Normally, this tenderness protects the vulnerable tissue as it heals. But occasionally the pain can overstay its usefulness, becoming chronic in conditions such as arthritis. Now, neuroscientists Robert Edwards and Allan Basbaum from the University of California, San Francisco, and their colleagues have found that a small subset of nerve fibres, the function of which remained a puzzle since their discovery decades ago1, could be routing innocuous touch sensations to the pain pathway when there's an injury. "Surprise would be an understatement," says Basbaum, referring to the findings. "No one knew anything about what these fibres were doing." The team's findings are published by Nature2. The researchers found that the fibres, called unmyelinated low-threshold mechanoreceptors (C-LTMRs), are easily stimulated, unlike classic pain fibres, which respond only when the sensation is intense. But C-LTMRs aren't usually used to detect light touch — this falls to another another major group of sensory neurons — so their role was unclear. The small population of cells have remained enigmatic because they have been difficult to target specifically. © 2009 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 13471 - Posted: 06.24.2010

HONG KONG - People of Japanese and European descent who have mutant versions of five genes may be at higher risk of developing Parkinson's disease, two large teams of researchers have found. The two independent studies, published in the latest issue of Nature Genetics, involved more than 25,000 participants in total and are the largest studies to date to try to uncover genetic associations behind Parkinson's disease. A study in Japan looked only at ethnic Japanese while a second study, in the United States, focused only on people of European heritage. In the first study, Tatsushi Toda of Japan's Kobe University and colleagues sequenced the genes of 2,011 participants with the disease and 18,381 others without the disease. They found that those with the disease had variants of the genes PARK16, BST1, SNCA and LRRK2. In the second study, researchers led by Andrew Singleton at the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) laboratory of neurogenetics in the United States analyzed the genes of more than 5,000 patients of European ancestry who suffer from the disease and detected strong links between Parkinson's and variants of the genes SNCA and MAPT. The two teams later compared their data and found that variants of PARK16, SNCA and LRRK2 carry risk of Parkinson's in both Japanese and European populations, while variants of BST1 and MAPT were population-specific. Copyright 2009 Reuters.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13470 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower Unlike most Western guys and gals looking for love, Africa’s Hadza foragers pair up without regard to each other’s size and strength, a new study finds. And that stature-may-care approach underscores the often unappreciated variety of human mating strategies, the researchers say. Hadza marriages don’t tend to consist of individuals with similar heights, weights, body mass indexes, body-fat percentages or grip strengths, say behavioral ecologist Rebecca Sear of the London School of Economics and anthropologist Frank Marlowe of Florida State University in Tallahassee. Neither do Hadza couples feature a disproportionate percentage of husbands taller than their wives, as has been documented in some Western nations, the researchers report in the Oct. 23 Biology Letters. Almost no Hadza individuals mention height or size when asked to explain what makes for an attractive mate, Sear and Marlowe add. People everywhere seek healthy, fertile marriage partners, Sear proposes. “But I suspect there may not be a preference for one particular signal of health in mates across every population,” she says. Among the roughly 1,000 Hadza scraping out a living in rural Tanzania, knowledge of a potential mate’s health history may render that person’s height and weight irrelevant, the researchers suggest. Also, any health benefits of being big may get nullified by the difficulty of maintaining a large body during periodic food shortages endured by the Hadza. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 13469 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Kay Lazar The word teasers flashing on his computer screen seemed tuned to his personal abilities. And the accompanying voice track prodded or consoled - “it actually congratulates you,’’ he said - based on his answers. Now, the 92-year-old former management executive, an engineer by training and crossword puzzler by hobby, is scheduling computer time for fellow residents at the Fox Hill Village retirement community in Westwood. The facility just purchased a couple of these newfangled brain games and residents are lining up for 20-minute sessions. The products are spreading like kudzu through retirement communities and senior centers, as older Americans search for ways to stay mentally sharp. Researchers, however, have yet to determine whether these brain games, targeted to seniors and now an $80 million-a-year market, deliver what they promise. “The jury is still very much out,’’ said Peter Snyder, a brain researcher at Brown University’s Alpert Medical School, who analyzed 10 studies on the issue and came away unimpressed by the quality and quantity of research. In an article published earlier this year in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia, Snyder concluded there was no evidence the products, typically computer software costing several hundred to a couple of thousand dollars, stave off dementia in healthy elders. Snyder did not delve into the effect of brain exercises on adults who already have cognitive impairments. © 2009 NY Times Co

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Alzheimers
Link ID: 13468 - Posted: 06.24.2010