By CLAUDIA WALLIS It is one of the most intriguing labels in psychiatry. Children with Asperger’s syndrome, a mild form of autism, are socially awkward and often physically clumsy, but many are verbal prodigies, speaking in complex sentences at early ages, reading newspapers fluently by age 5 or 6 and acquiring expertise in some preferred topic — stegosaurs, clipper ships, Interstate highways — that will astonish adults and bore their playmates to tears. In recent years, this once obscure diagnosis, given to more than four times as many boys as girls, has become increasingly common. Much of the growing prevalence of autism, which now affects about 1 percent of American children, according to federal data, can be attributed to Asperger’s and other mild forms of the disorder. And Asperger’s has exploded into popular culture through books and films depicting it as the realm of brilliant nerds and savantlike geniuses. But no sooner has Asperger consciousness awakened than the disorder seems headed for psychiatric obsolescence. Though it became an official part of the medical lexicon only in 1994, the experts who are revising psychiatry’s diagnostic manual have proposed to eliminate it from the new edition, due out in 2012. If these experts have their way, Asperger’s syndrome and another mild form of autism, pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (P.D.D.-N.O.S. for short), will be folded into a single broad diagnosis, autism spectrum disorder — a category that encompasses autism’s entire range, or spectrum, from high-functioning to profoundly disabling. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 13427 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Olivia Judson Say “eeee.” Say it again. Go on: “eeee.” Maybe I’m easy to please, but doing this a few times makes me giggle. “Eeee.” Actually, I suspect it’s not just me. Saying “eeee” pulls up the corners of the mouth and makes you start to smile. That’s why we say “cheese” to the camera, not “choose” or “chose.” And, I think, it’s why I don’t get the giggles from “aaaa” or “oooo.” The mere act of smiling is often enough to lift your mood; conversely, the act of frowning can lower it; scowling can make you feel fed up. In other words, the gestures you make with your face can — at least to some extent — influence your emotional state. Exactly how frowns and smiles influence mood is a matter of debate. One possibility is classical conditioning. Just as Ivan Pavlov conditioned a dog to associate the sound of a bell with the expectation of food, the argument goes, so humans quickly come to associate smiling with feeling happy. Once the association has been established, smiling is, by itself, enough to generate happy feelings. Another possibility is that different facial gestures have intrinsic properties that make them more or less pleasant, perhaps by altering the way that blood flows to the brain. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 13426 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Diane Welland The push to prevent skin cancer may have come with unintended consequences—impaired brain function because of a deficiency of vitamin D. The “sunshine vitamin” is synthesized in our skin when we are exposed to direct sunlight, but sunblock impedes this process. And although vitamin D is well known for promoting bone health and regulating vital calcium levels—hence its addition to milk—it does more than that. Scientists have now linked this fat-soluble nutrient’s hormonelike activity to a number of functions throughout the body, including the workings of the brain. “We know there are receptors for vitamin D throughout the central nervous system and in the hippocampus,” said Robert J. Przybelski, a doctor and research scientist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “We also know vitamin D activates and deactivates enzymes in the brain and the cerebrospinal fluid that are involved in neurotransmitter synthesis and nerve growth.” In addition, animal and laboratory studies suggest vitamin D protects neurons and reduces inflammation. Two new European studies looking at vitamin D and cognitive function have taken us one step further. The first study, led by neuroscientist David Llewellyn of the University of Cambridge, assessed vitamin D levels in more than 1,700 men and women from England, aged 65 or older. Subjects were divided into four groups based on vitamin D blood levels: severely deficient, deficient, insufficient (borderline) and optimum, then tested for cognitive function. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 13425 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Lone Frank Say the word: neuromarketing. Doesn’t exactly sound good, does it? It’s an outlandish word that scrapes across the tongue, leaving an aftertaste of thought control, science fiction, and downright creepiness. The press surrounding neuromarketing reflects this as well. The headlines are ominous: soon, the bright boys of the advertising world will get their sticky hands on our inner "buy button." Soon, marketing experts, with the help of cutting-edge brain research, will get direct access to the inner depths of our brains where, with the right stimulation, they can unleash our buying impulses and get their cash registers ringing. Neuromarketing is a young and growing field–some won’t even admit that it is a field yet–that is striving to reveal the inner mechanisms of our consumer behavior. You might say that this interest and the issues it raises are a natural extension or offshoot of neuroeconomics and the more general studies of how we make choices and decisions. Every so often, there is also a conspicuous overlap between neuroeconomists and researchers in neuromarketing. The studies in neuromarketing are just more specific and much more directed. And the Holy Grail lies in predicting what the brain wants. In the advertising industry, you can see neuromarketing as an attempt to make the "art" of advertising into a science Any marketing expert proposing a multi-million dollar project to a client would like to be able to back it up with something that looks like real data, not just hunches. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 13424 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Piercarlo Valdesolo The power to resist temptation has been extolled by philosophers, psychologists, teachers, coaches, and mothers. Anyone with advice on how you should live your life has surely spoken to you of its benefits. It is the path to the good life, professional and personal satisfaction, social adjustment and success, performance under pressure, and the best way for any child to avoid a penetrating stare and a cold dinner. Of course, this assumes that our natural urges are a thing to be resisted – that there is a devil inside, luring you to cheat, offend, err, and annoy. New research has begun to question this assumption. A new brain imaging study by Josh Greene and Joe Paxton at Harvard University published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that what separates the well-behaved from the poorly-behaved might not be the ability to control your temptations but rather what kind of temptations you have. For example, foregoing the opportunity for short-term gain and satisfaction, whether it is a delicious slice of tiramisu or that wallet stuffed with cash you stumbled across in the empty parking lot, will depend more on the nature of your automatic urges than your ability to control them. Greene and Paxton were interested in why people behave honestly when confronted with the opportunity to anonymously cheat for personal gain. They considered two possible explanations. First, there is the “Will” hypothesis: in order to behave honestly people must actively resist the temptation to cheat. In other words, returning the wallet depends on your ability to stifle your desire to take the cash and buy yourself something nice. Alternatively, there is the “Grace” hypothesis: honest behavior results from the absence of temptation. Returning the wallet requires no particular ability to control your treacherous urges – the urge simply isn’t there. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 13423 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Greg Miller "I think, therefore I am," pronounced the famed French philosopher René Descartes. What imbues us with this uniquely human sense of self-awareness? Some neuroscientists have pegged an area of the brain known as the insula, which helps us detect what's going on within our bodies. But an unusual case of a man with extensive damage to this region suggests that the insula cannot be the sole source of self-awareness. Tucked deep inside the brain, the insula responds to pain, a full stomach, changes in body temperature, and other internal sensations. Researchers have proposed that the insula somehow translates these visceral sensations into conscious, subjective experience. But it's a hard hypothesis to test. Enter "Roger." In 1980, a viral disease known as herpes simplex encephalitis destroyed 25% to 35% of his brain, including nearly all of his insula. Yet Roger functions remarkably well: Although he suffers from amnesia and has lost his sense of smell and taste, he has a normal IQ and very good language skills. Roger doesn't act like he lacks self-awareness, but researchers led by Sahib Khalsa and David Rudrauf of the University of Iowa in Iowa City were curious about his ability to detect visceral sensations. To investigate, they gave Roger a drug that increases heart rate. Then they asked him to turn a dial to indicate any changes he noticed. Roger detected the increase, as did 11 healthy volunteers. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 13422 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Eating a diet high in processed food increases the risk of depression, research suggests. What is more, people who ate plenty of vegetables, fruit and fish actually had a lower risk of depression, the University College London team found. Data on diet among 3,500 middle-aged civil servants was compared with depression five years later, the British Journal of Psychiatry reported. The team said the study was the first to look at the UK diet and depression. They split the participants into two types of diet - those who ate a diet largely based on whole foods, which includes lots of fruit, vegetables and fish, and those who ate a mainly processed food diet, such as sweetened desserts, fried food, processed meat, refined grains and high-fat dairy products. After accounting for factors such as gender, age, education, physical activity, smoking habits and chronic diseases, they found a significant difference in future depression risk with the different diets. Those who ate the most whole foods had a 26% lower risk of future depression than those who at the least whole foods. By contrast people with a diet high in processed food had a 58% higher risk of depression than those who ate very few processed foods. Although the researchers cannot totally rule out the possibility that people with depression may eat a less healthy diet they believe it is unlikely to be the reason for the findings because there was no association with diet and previous diagnosis of depression. Study author Dr Archana Singh-Manoux pointed out there is a chance the finding could be explained by a lifestyle factor they had not accounted for. BBC © MMIX

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 13421 - Posted: 06.24.2010

An Italian court has cut the sentence given to a convicted murderer by a year because he has genes linked to violent behaviour — the first time that behavioural genetics has affected a sentence passed by a European court. But researchers contacted by Nature have questioned whether the decision was based on sound science. Abdelmalek Bayout, an Algerian citizen who has lived in Italy since 1993, admitted in 2007 to stabbing and killing Walter Felipe Novoa Perez on 10 March. Perez, a Colombian living in Italy, had, according to Bayout's testimony, insulted him over the kohl eye make-up the Algerian was wearing. Bayout, a Muslim, claims he wore the make-up for religious reasons. During the trial, Bayout's lawyer, Tania Cattarossi, asked the court to take into account that her client may have been mentally ill at the time of the murder. After considering three psychiatric reports, the judge, Paolo Alessio Vernì, partially agreed that Bayout's psychiatric illness was a mitigating factor and sentenced him to 9 years and 2 months in prison — around three years less than Bayout would have received had he been deemed to be of sound mind. But at an appeal hearing in May this year, Pier Valerio Reinotti, a judge of the Court of Appeal in Trieste, asked forensic scientists for a new independent psychiatric report to decide whether he should commute the sentence further. For the new report, Pietro Pietrini, a molecular neuroscientist at Italy's University of Pisa, and Giuseppe Sartori, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Padova, conducted a series of tests and found abnormalities in brain-imaging scans and in five genes that have been linked to violent behaviour — including the gene encoding the neurotransmitter-metabolizing enzyme monoamine oxidase A (MAOA). A 2002 study led by Terrie Moffitt, a geneticist at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London, had found low levels of MAOA expression to be associated with aggressiveness and criminal conduct of young boys raised in abusive environments. © 2009 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Aggression; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13420 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent One of the charms of the world's most famous painting is that she appears radiant one moment and then serious and sardonic the next. Now scientists claim to have come up with an answer to her changing moods - our eyes are sending mixed signals to the brain. They believe Mona Lisa's smile depends on what cells in the retina pick up the image and what channel the image is transmitted through in the brain. Sometimes one channel wins over the other, and you see the smile, sometimes others take over and you do not see the smile. Different cells in the eye are designed to pick up different colours, contrasts, backgrounds and foregrounds. Some deal with central vision while others with peripheral. Depending on what cells picks up the image first depends on what channel they are sent to the brian for interpreting. These channels encode data about an object's size, clarity, brightness and location in the visual field. "Sometimes one channel wins over the other, and you see the smile, sometimes others take over and you don't see the smile," said Dr Luis Martinez Otero, a neuroscientist at Institute of Neuroscience in Alicante, Spain, who conducted the study, told New Scientist. To get a fuller picture of the reasons behind Mona Lisa's vanishing smile, Dr Martinez Otero varied different aspects of the Mona Lisa that are processed by different visual channels, and then asked volunteers whether they saw a smile or not. © Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2009

Keyword: Vision; Emotions
Link ID: 13419 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Carolyn Y. Johnson As a child, Kathy Sherman used to sneak into the basement late at night to watch movies that scared her so much she couldn’t sleep. Now she’s a florist during the day, but on her own time Sherman organizes meetings of horror fans and visits haunted houses. She has tried bungee jumping and skydiving. “Oh my God - being scared, you can feel your heart pounding out of your chest, your skin feels like it’s getting goose bumps, your hair feels like it’s standing up, you jump out of your seat. You get all hyped up and you come back down. It’s just fun,’’ said Sherman, a resident of Randolph. To neuroscientists, Sherman is describing classic fear, the same emotion that primes the body to flee or fight predators, and that, when it goes terribly awry, causes disabling anxiety disorders or phobias. So as children and grownups alike celebrate all things frightful this Halloween, the question arises: Why do Kathy Sherman and so many of us indulge in fear for fun? The National Institutes of Health doesn’t give out million-dollar grants to better understand why people enjoy haunted houses or vampire movies, but scientists who study the biology of fear say their work suggests that the rush of hormones and the heart-racing thrill produce a sensation of pleasure while another part of the brain kicks in to let people know they won’t get hurt. “In the case of people who are thrill seekers . . . when they encounter something scary or bad, they’re going to have this endorphin rush. But there’s also a part of the brain that knows it’s not really a bad thing,’’ said neuroscientist Ki Ann Goosens of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. © 2009 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 13418 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Cassandra Willyard Think back to high school biology. Remember the long, stringy neurons that make up your nervous system? You probably learned that these cells communicate by sending a chemical message across the small gap between them, called a synapse. That's still true, but new research shows that certain brain cells bypass the synapse altogether. Instead, they communicate by spraying a cloud of neurotransmitters into the spaces between cells, blanketing nearby neurons. A team of Hungarian researchers at the University of Szeged made the discovery by examining a type of neuron called a neurogliaform cell. These cells are common in the brain's cortex, a region that plays a key role in many functions, including memory, attention, awareness, and language. Studies have shown that neurogliaform cells can inhibit the firing of other brain cells by releasing a neurotransmitter called GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), which typically transmits messages across synapses. But some studies have suggested that GABA can diffuse into the extracellular space as well, where it carries messages between neurons not connected via synapses. To create enough ambient GABA for this to happen, however, scientists speculated that many neurons would have to fire at once. The researchers set out to test this idea. The output end, or axon, of a normal neuron is typically long and stringy. But when the Hungarian team used electron and light microscopes to examine brain tissue from rats and humans, they found that neurogliaform cells have bushy axons with many branches. These bushy axons are densely populated with sites where GABA can be released into the extracellular space, the team found. Elsewhere in the brain this occurs mainly at synapses, but only 11 of the 50 release sites examined in neurogliaform cells corresponded to a synapse, the researchers report today in Nature. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Glia
Link ID: 13417 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jesse Bering Gay people are often asked by the curious: When did you first realize you were gay?” In my case, I remember undressing my Superman doll--and being terribly disappointed at the result--as well as being motivated to befriend the more attractive boys in third grade. But hormonally speaking, it wasn’t until I was about fourteen that I first looked in the mirror and thought to myself, ah, that’s what I am all right, it all makes perfect sense now. It wasn’t much of a mystery. After all, lust isn’t exactly a subtle thing. Back then I derived as much pleasure from making out with my “girlfriend” as I might have from scraping the plaque from my dog’s teeth. In contrast, barely touching legs with a boy I had a crush on sparked an electric, ineffable ecstasy. In the locker room after high school gym class, I forced myself to picture naked girls in my head (particularly my girlfriend) as a sort of cognitive cold shower, a pre-emptive strike against an otherwise embarrassing physical response. I could go on but you get the idea: whether or not we like, hide or accept what we are, our true identities--gay, straight, bisexual--consciously dawn on each of us at some point in adolescence. We all have a natural “orientation” towards sexual contact with others, and for the most part we’re just hopeless pawns, impotent onlookers, to our body’s desires. At least, that’s what most people tend to think. But actually, some scientists believe that there may be a fourth sexual orientation in our species, one characterized by the absence of desire and no sexual interest in males or females, only a complete and lifelong lacuna of sexual attraction toward any human being (or non-human being). Such people are regarded as asexuals. Unlike bisexuals, who are attracted to both males and females, asexuals are equally indifferent to and uninterested in having sex with either gender. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 13416 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Cassandra Brooks Oral sex is surprisingly rare in the animal kingdom. Humans do it, of course. As do bonobos, our close relatives. But now researchers have observed the practice for the first time in a non-primate. During intercourse, female short-nosed fruit bats lick the genitals of their partner, a possible ploy to increase copulation time. The discovery suggests there may be a biological advantage to fellatio. Senior author Libiao Zhang, a biologist at Guangdong Entomological Institute in Guangzhou, China, and colleagues had been studying the mating behavior of the short-nosed fruit bat (Cynopterus sphinx), which is native to southeast Asia. The researchers paired males and females in cages designed to mimic their natural environment, while infrared cameras beamed video of the creatures' nighttime liaisons back to the lab. Most of what Zhang and colleagues saw didn't surprise them. The males built tents out of Chinese fan-palm leaves to attract the females. And both sexes groomed each other during courtship. But then came the shocker: After the male mounted the female from behind, she bent over and began licking his penis. Of the 20 observed mating bat pairs, 70% of the females performed fellatio on the males, the team reports online this week in PLoS ONE. The males never withdrew while being licked, and the authors found that the longer a female licked, the longer copulation lasted (for each second of licking, the female bats gained 6 seconds of copulation). The team speculates that licking helps maintain the male's erection, and that the saliva increases lubrication, both of which may prolong intercourse. In all, fellating females mated for an average of 4 minutes, twice as long as the other females. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 13415 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Richard Knox When EMTs brought the 68-year-old man to the Boston hospital, he was in a deep coma. Suspecting a brain hemorrhage, doctors ordered a CT scan and were startled by what they saw. The New England Journal of Medicine reproduces the picture in its current issue, and, we feature it here with their permission. A CT scan shows a ghostly brain hemorrhage. After the scan showed a massive hemorrhage, surgeons decided there was nothing they could do to save the man's life, and his family decided to withdraw respirator care. He died shortly after. We talked about the spectral image with neurologist Joshua Klein of Brigham and Women's Hospital, who was involved in the case. Here's an edited version of our conversation. What did the image look like to you? To me it looked like a ghost. That's exactly what I thought it was. At first I was thinking, "Is this the angel of death?" I was showing it to my colleagues. They were calling it an "apparition hemorrhage." Apparition hemorrhage? Is that a medical term? That was a new-coined term. It's not a real thing. We see many hemorrhages all the time. It's just a very unusual thing to see one take the shape of something...something so human. It was an image that kept coming into my mind. Copyright 2009 NPR

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 13414 - Posted: 10.31.2009

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor A research team of UC scientists has decoded the words in the secret chemical language of Argentine ants - a discovery that could lead to an environmentally benign pesticide against the insects that march into Bay Area homes every time the weather turns cold or wet. The researchers found special signaling chemicals on the bodies of one aggressive group of the ants, and then synthesized the chemicals to induce peaceable members of the same species to turn them into highly aggressive beasts, perhaps leading them to turn on each other. The experiments with the hydrocarbons that trigger the ants' silent battle calls cost tens of thousands of dollars, and the difficult experiments led by UC Berkeley evolutionary biologist Neil D. Tsutsui, often risked failure before they succeeded. But Brian L. Fisher at the California Academy of Sciences, a leading authority on ants of every tribe, called the discovery "a really novel breakthrough" and said it marks the first successful step in efforts by humans to "understand the entire language that ants use to communicate with each other." The report by Tsutsui's UC team was published Monday in the British scientific journal BMC Biology. Almost all Argentine ants in California belong to a genetically distinct group of the species whose members are cooperative and social and form one huge "super colony" that extends from Oregon to San Diego, Tsutsui and Fisher said in interviews. Although the ants are viciously aggressive against other species of ants, they are peaceable even when brought together in the lab from different parts of the state, the scientists said. © 2009 Hearst Communications Inc.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Animal Communication
Link ID: 13413 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Andrew Koob Andrew Koob received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from Purdue University in 2005, and has held research positions at Dartmouth College, the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Munich, Germany. He's also the author of The Root of Thought, which explores the purpose and function of glial cells, the most abundant cell type in the brain. Mind Matters editor Jonah Lehrer chats with Koob about why glia have been overlooked for centuries, and how new experiments with glial cells shed light on some of the most mysterious aspects of the mind. LEHRER: Your new book, The Root of Thought, is all about the power of glial cells, which actually make up nearly 90 percent of cells in the brain. What do glial cells do? And why do we have so many inside our head? KOOB: Originally, scientists didn't think they did anything. Until the last 20 years, brain scientists believed neurons communicated to each other, represented our thoughts, and that glia were kind of like stucco and mortar holding the house together. They were considered simple insulators for neuron communication. There are a few types of glial cells, but recently scientists have begun to focus on a particular type of glial cell called the 'astrocyte,' as they are abundant in the cortex. Interestingly, as you go up the evolutionary ladder, astrocytes in the cortex increase in size and number, with humans having the most astrocytes and also the biggest. Scientists have also discovered that astrocytes communicate to themselves in the cortex and are also capable of sending information to neurons. Finally, astrocytes are also the adult stem cell in the brain and control blood flow to regions of brain activity. Because of all these important properties, and since the cortex is believed responsible for higher thought, scientists have started to realize that astrocytes must contribute to thought. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Glia; Brain imaging
Link ID: 13412 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Shanta Barley Using women's stockings to test a whale's sex drive: that's a joke, surely? In fact, the hosiery is key to a new method for measuring a whale's sex hormones without harming it – the first such method to be discovered. For the first time, testosterone and progesterone – two key hormones that signal whether whales are pregnant, lactating or in the mood to mate – have been extracted from whales' lung mucus, captured in nylon stockings dangled from a pole over their blowholes as they surface to breathe. This could allow non-invasive pregnancy tests on whales in the wild. Claims sometimes made for Japanese "scientific whaling" programmes that killing whales helps assess pregnancy rates would then become even more questionable. To investigate whether it was possible to collect sex hormones from whales non-invasively, Carolyn Hogg of the Evolution and Ecology Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and her colleagues collected "blow" samples from 35 humpback whales off Queensland, Australia, and 18 North Atlantic right whales in the Bay of Fundy on the border of Canada and the US. They noted the whales' gender by sight, where possible. Back at the lab, liquid chromatography mass spectrometry was used to measure the blow's testosterone and progesterone content. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 13411 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway, Chicago WHAT are you thinking about? Which memory are you reliving right now? You may think that only you can answer, but by combining brain scans with pattern-detection software, neuroscientists are prying open a window into the human mind. In the last few years, patterns in brain activity have been used to successfully predict what pictures people are looking at, their location in a virtual environment or a decision they are poised to make. The most recent results show that researchers can now recreate moving images that volunteers are viewing - and even make educated guesses at which event they are remembering. Last week at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago, Jack Gallant, a leading "neural decoder" at the University of California, Berkeley, presented one of the field's most impressive results yet. He and colleague Shinji Nishimoto showed that they could create a crude reproduction of a movie clip that someone was watching just by viewing their brain activity. Others at the same meeting claimed that such neural decoding could be used to read memories and future plans - and even to diagnose eating disorders. Understandably, such developments are raising concerns about "mind reading" technologies, which might be exploited by advertisers or oppressive governments (see "The risks of open-mindedness"). Yet despite - or perhaps because of - the recent progress in the field, most researchers are wary of calling their work mind-reading. Emphasising its limitations, they call it neural decoding. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 13410 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Michael Balter Most women have their last child before age 40. Why would Darwinian evolution favor such a cutoff, especially when most other mammals reproduce until they die? A new study finds support for the "grandmother hypothesis," the idea that older women spread their genes most effectively by helping their daughters take care of their children. In 1998, behavioral ecologist Kristen Hawkes of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and her colleagues proposed that grandmothers lend their skill and experience to the rearing of their grandchildren. Hawkes and others cited the Hadza, a modern foraging society in Tanzania, in which grandmothers search for tubers while their daughters are breastfeeding their babies. Given that tubers are thought to have become an important staple during the early days of human evolution, a selective advantage for "grandmothering" rather than "mothering" by older women might have arisen in our species. Over the past decade, a number of researchers have tried to test the hypothesis by looking at the relationship between grandmothers and their grandchildren. Some studies found that when grandmothers live near their grandchildren and/or live longer, their grandchildren have higher survival rates. But other studies did not see this correlation. To try to resolve these inconsistencies, a team led by biological anthropologist Leslie Knapp of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom proposed what it calls the "X-linked grandmother hypothesis." There are varying degrees of relatedness between grandmothers and their grandchildren, particularly via the X chromosome. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 13409 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By DUFF WILSON Young children and adolescents who take the newest generation of antipsychotic medications risk rapid weight gain and metabolic changes that could lead to diabetes, hypertension and other illnesses, according to the biggest study yet of first-time users of the drugs. The study, to be published Wednesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association, found that 257 young children and adolescents in New York City and on Long Island added 8 to 15 percent to their weight after taking the pills for less than 12 weeks. The patients, ages 4 to 19, added an average of one to one-and-a-half pounds a week. “The degree of weight gain is alarming,” said Dr. Wayne K. Goodman, head of a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel on the drugs last summer and chairman of psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan. “The magnitude is stunning,” he said. Although the drugs’ influence on weight and metabolism had been previously detected, Dr. Goodman, who was not involved in the study, said the speed and magnitude of the effects found in the study were greater than previously reported — findings he said were made possible by looking exclusively at new patients. The four drugs in the study, the most popular antipsychotic medications, are industry blockbusters, with combined sales of $12.7 billion last year. And while all four caused weight gain, there were differences in the extent of the side effects. Among them, Zyprexa, made by Eli Lilly & Company, showed the most severe effects on weight and metabolism. The study’s authors, and an accompanying JAMA editorial, called for closer monitoring of patients taking the drugs, as well as additional long-term studies. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Obesity
Link ID: 13408 - Posted: 06.24.2010