By Alexis Madrigal Email Author A defendant’s fMRI brain scan has been used in court for what is believed to be the first time. Brain scan evidence that the defense claimed shows the defendant’s brain was psychopathic was allowed into the sentencing portion of a murder trial in Chicago, Science reported Monday. Brian Dugan, who had been convicted of the rape and murder of a 10-year old, was sentenced to death, despite the fMRI scans. “I don’t know of any other cases where fMRI was used in that context,” Stanford professor Hank Greely told Science. While the possibility of using fMRI data in a variety of contexts, particularly lie detection, has bounced around the margins of the legal system for years, there are almost no documented cases of its actual use. In the 2005 case Roper v. Simmons, the Supreme Court allowed brain scans to be entered as evidence to show that adolescent brains work differently than adult brains. That’s a far cry, though, from using fMRI to establish the truth of testimony or that specific structures within an individual defendant’s brain are legally relevant. It’s difficult to tell whether the Dugan case will be a watershed moment in the use of brain scan evidence in court, or if the evidence impacted the decision in this case. © 2009 Condé Nast Digital.

Keyword: Brain imaging; Aggression
Link ID: 13501 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nick Higham For an actor, the performance conditions weren't exactly ideal: flat on her back in a large machine, under strict instructions to lie as still as possible, speaking in short bursts interspersed with the shrill sound of a magnetic resonance imaging scanner. But last week Fiona Shaw, one of Britain's leading actresses - who has in her time played everything from the tragic heroine Medea to Shakespeare's Richard II - volunteered in the cause of science to spend an hour having her brain scanned while "acting". Professor Sophie Scott of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London wanted to know what happens physically in an actor's head when they pretend to be someone else. She hoped that scanning Fiona's brain in action would be able to tell us. The scanner works by measuring blood flow to different parts of the brain. The harder a part is working, the more blood flows into it. The parts of the brain that control speech are well known: what Prof Scott wanted to know was whether other parts of the brain would also "light up" when actors speak in character rather than as themselves. The results of the experiment will be on display as part of the Wellcome Collection's new exhibition on identity. Prof Scott, who is also a Wellcome senior fellow, says our speech and the way we use language are important components of our identity - and one of the ways actors seek to convince their audience that they are another person is of course by changing their voice. For the experiment, Fiona Shaw performed snatches of T S Eliot's poem The Waste Land. (Appropriately enough, given the circumstances, Eliot's original title for the poem was He Do the Police in Different Voices.) (C)BBC

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 13500 - Posted: 11.24.2009

Giving birth seems to slow the progression of multiple sclerosis (MS), Belgian and Dutch researchers say. The researchers tracked 330 women with MS for 18 years and found that among those who had children, severe disability took longer to develop. Writing in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, they say previous studies have suggested a worsening of MS just after birth. But the MS Society said the study was flawed and further research was needed. MS is a long-term inflammatory condition of the central nervous system. It affects the transfer of messages from the nervous system to the rest of the body. Women are twice as likely to develop MS as men and many of the new cases will be among women of childbearing age. The researchers from Belgium and the Netherlands said all the women had been referred to one specialist centre and had had their first symptoms from the ages of 22 to almost 38. Nearly a quarter of the women (24%) were childless; 170 had given birth before their symptoms developed (52%); 61 had their children after their symptoms developed (18%); and 19 had had children both before and afterwards (6%). The researchers used the Kurtzke Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) which runs from one to 10, where 10 is death from MS and six is when an individual needs a cane, a crutch or a brace to walk 100m. After an average of 18 years living with MS, over half the women (55%) were categorised as EDSS six. They found that both the likelihood and speed of progression were affected by childbirth. Women who had given birth to one or more children at any point before or after the start of MS symptoms were 34% less likely to progress to EDSS six than childless women. (C)BBC

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 13499 - Posted: 11.24.2009

The Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada will finance some research into an experimental Italian treatment but urges patients not to stop treatment until more is known about the procedure.The Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada will finance some research into an experimental Italian treatment but urges patients not to stop treatment until more is known about the procedure. (M. Spencer Green/Associated Press) The Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada will be asking Canadian scientists to propose their own research into a procedure that has ignited the hopes of patients in Europe and North America. The procedure is known as chronic cerebro spinal venous insufficiency, or CCSVI, and involves removing a blockage in the veins that carry blood to and from the brain. An Italian vascular surgeon, Dr. Paolo Zamboni, a professor of medicine at the University of Ferrara in Italy, has reported success in reducing the symptoms of people who suffer from multiple sclerosis. The Canadian MS organization has reacted to Zamboni's research with caution. On Monday, however, the society said that after receiving so many inquiries about the procedure, it has decided to offer a grant to researchers in Canada. Details of the program will be announced Tuesday. In the meantime, the society urged people with MS to be patient and continue with their regular treatment until there is more evidence about the experimental procedure. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 13498 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By By Carolyn Y. Johnson More than two centuries ago, the Italian scientist Luigi Galvani found that electricity could make a dead frog’s leg kick, as if it were alive. Today, using the same basic principle but new tools, scientists are employing light to trigger brain cells - looking not for a kick, but for the origins of emotions, behaviors, and diseases in the brain. Advanced imaging technologies have given neuroscientists new ways to peer into the working mind, but a precise understanding of how 100 billion brain cells create everything from memories to mental illness has remained elusive. Now, by using gene therapy to insert light-sensitive proteins from algae and other organisms into brain cells, scientists are able to control specific brain circuits with light, and then watch what happens. It’s a big shift, said Dr. Karl Deisseroth, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at Stanford University, who compares the difference between imaging the brain and triggering individual cells to learning the rules of football by watching the game on a high-end TV or by controlling players. “It wouldn’t matter how good your video camera was or your TV was; it would still be very mysterious, and that’s imaging,’’ Deisseroth said. The new technology, on the other hand, “allows you to play the role of coach and understand things.’’ © 2009 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Brain imaging
Link ID: 13497 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NATALIE ANGIER As the festival of mandatory gratitude looms into view, allow me to offer a few suggestions on what, exactly, you should be thankful for. Be thankful that, on at least one occasion, your mother did not fend off your father with a pair of nunchucks, but instead allowed enough contact to facilitate your happy conception. Be thankful that when you go to buy a pale, poultrylike entity, the grocery clerk will accept your credit card in good faith and even return it with a heroic garble of your last name. Be grateful for the empathetic employee working the United Airlines ticket counter the day after Thanksgiving, who understands why you must leave town today, this very minute, lest someone pull out the family nunchucks. Above all, be thankful for your brain’s supply of oxytocin, the small, celebrated peptide hormone that, by the looks of it, helps lubricate our every prosocial exchange, the thousands of acts of kindness, kind-of kindness and not-as-nakedly-venal-as-I-could-have-been kindness that make human society possible. Scientists have long known that the hormone plays essential physiological roles during birth and lactation, and animal studies have shown that oxytocin can influence behavior too, prompting voles to cuddle up with their mates, for example, or to clean and comfort their pups. Now a raft of new research in humans suggests that oxytocin underlies the twin emotional pillars of civilized life, our capacity to feel empathy and trust. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 13496 - Posted: 06.24.2010

BRUSSELS - For 23 torturous years, Rom Houben says he lay trapped in his paralyzed body, aware of what was going on around him but unable to tell anyone or even cry out. The car-crash victim had been diagnosed as being in a vegetative state but appears to have been conscious the whole time. An expert using a specialized type of brain scan that was not available in the 1980s finally realized it, and unlocked Houben’s mind again. The 46-year-old Houben is now communicating with one finger and a special touchscreen on his wheelchair. “Powerlessness. Utter powerlessness. At first I was angry, then I learned to live with it,” he said, punching the message into the screen during an interview with the Belgian RTBF network, aired Monday. He has called his rescue his “renaissance.” Over the years, Houben’s family refused to accept the word of his doctors, firmly believing their son knew what was happening around him, and gave no thought to letting him die, said his mother, Fina. She was vindicated when the breakthrough came. “At that moment, you think, ‘Oh, my God. See, now you know.’ I was always convinced,” she said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. The discovery took place three years ago but only recently came to light, after publication of a study on the misdiagnosis of people with consciousness disorders. Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 13495 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Owen Flanagan, contributor In his autobiographical Confessions, Augustine of Hippo recounts a strange sight: his teacher, Ambrose, reading to himself. At the time, reading was a public activity; the literate elite, being a rare commodity, would read the Bible aloud to the illiterate masses as a public service. Socrates, many intellectuals' role model, was in all likelihood illiterate. Today we are readers. Evidence suggests that reading - which depends on an alphabet, writing materials, papyrus and such - is only about 5000 years old. The brain in its modern form is about 200,000 years old, yet brain imaging shows reading taking place in the same way and in the same place in all brains. To within a few millimetres, human brains share a reading hotspot - what Stanislas Dehaene calls the "letterbox" - on the bottom of the left hemisphere. Dehaene builds his clear and interesting book around this "reading paradox," which is really more puzzle than paradox. It is standard procedure in cognitive neuroscience to assume that a brain area dedicated to a particular function - especially when it is universal - is an adaptation that evolved to serve a function related to reproductive success. The letterbox, however, cannot be an adaptation because reading is an utterly recent invention, unlike neurological abilities for language and socialising that were around long enough to have evolved. What's more, the letterbox does not ride on top of areas used for speech. Instead, it must be an "exaptation": a brain area that evolved to do one thing but has been co-opted to do another. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 13494 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ALAN SCHWARZ In a shift in the National Football League’s approach to handling concussions, the league will soon require teams to receive advice from independent neurologists while treating players with brain injuries, several people with knowledge of the plan confirmed Sunday. For generations, decisions on when players who sustain concussions should return to play have been made by doctors and trainers employed by the team, raising questions of possible conflicts of interest when coaches and owners want players to return more quickly than proper care would suggest. As scientific studies and anecdotal evidence have found a heightened risk for brain damage, dementia and cognitive decline in retired players, the league has faced barbed criticism from outside experts and, more recently, from Congress over its policies on handling players with concussions. The league and Commissioner Roger Goodell have insisted that the N.F.L.’s policies are safe and that no third-party involvement is necessary, pointing to research by its committee on concussions as proof. But after an embarrassing hearing on the issue before the House Judiciary Committee last month in which the league was compared to the tobacco industry, the N.F.L. seems to have begun to embrace the value of outside opinion. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 13493 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists have pinpointed a mutated gene as key to the development of some types of glioma brain tumour. The mutation leads to hugely increased levels of a chemical in the brain, which seems to feed the cancer. The Nature study suggests that detecting higher levels of the chemical could provide doctors with a useful diagnostic tool. It also raises hopes that blocking production of the chemical might prevent the cancer getting worse. People with particular brain tumours, such as lower-grade gliomas, often carry a mutated version of a gene that controls production of an enzyme called IDH1. The latest study, by US firm Agios Pharmaceuticals, shows that these mutations change the way the enzyme works and result in the build-up of high levels of a chemical called 2-hydroxyglutarate (2HG) in the brain. Researchers found malignant glioma samples with IDH1 mutations had 100 times more 2HG than similar samples from patients without the mutation. They said measuring 2HG levels could be used to help identify patients with IDH1 mutant brain tumours. Writing in the journal, the researchers said: "This will be important for prognosis as patients with IDH1 mutations live longer than patients with gliomas characterised by other mutations. "In addition, patients with lower-grade gliomas may benefit by the therapeutic inhibition of 2HG production. Inhibition of 2HG production by mutant IDH1 might slow or halt conversion of lower-grade glioma into lethal secondary glioblastoma, changing the course of the disease." (C)BBC

Keyword: Glia
Link ID: 13492 - Posted: 11.24.2009

Research to be published in Glasgow suggests rates of suicide among addicts aged over 35 may be higher than previously thought. The Scottish Drugs Forum (SDF) said older drug users need more support. Of 55,000 chaotic drug users in Scotland, 15,000 or more than 25%, are believed to be 35 or over but they have said services often ignore their needs. SDF chief executive David Liddell said they have been taking drugs for so long, they have simply given up. The older addicts, who are known as the Trainspotting generation from the film starring Ewan McGregor, began drug taking in the late 1980s or 1990s. They account for almost half of all of last year's 574 drugs-related deaths. Of those deaths, 174, (30%) were among 35 to 44-year-olds and 97 (17%) involved people over 45. The findings - taken from surveys of more than 70 drug users and professionals involved in their care - show that the more life-experienced group of problem drug users can frequently be overwhelmed by a combination of past experiences and future barriers which impede their ability to overcome their drug dependency. More than half the older users interviewed by SDF admitted they had had suicidal thoughts. According to SDF director David Liddell this raises new questions about the true nature of drug-related deaths statistics in Scotland which in 2008 reached two record high levels - a total of 574 for all drug-related deaths, including the new high of 370 drug-related deaths among people known to have had a drug problem. He said: "We estimate there are about 15,000 older drug users in Scotland, making up about 27% of the 55,000 people with a drug problem in Scotland. BBC © MMIX

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Depression
Link ID: 13491 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Diane Mapes In an episode of “Mad Men” earlier this season, a character with some major health issues — stroke and dementia — mysteriously smelled oranges while eating chocolate ice cream. Shortly after, the man dies while standing in line at the A&P. Was the phantom orange scent a warning sign of his impending doom? It’s possible, says Dr. Alan Hirsch of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago. “By all means, a phantom smell could mean something serious,” says the psychiatrist and nationally recognized smell and taste expert. “It absolutely needs to be evaluated. It could be a tumor – that’s on the top of your list of things to rule out – but it could also be a cyst or some infectious agent housed in the area of the brain where the smell is processed.” Brief episodes of phantom smells or phantosmia – smelling something that’s not there – can be triggered by temporal lobe seizures, epilepsy, or head trauma. Phantosmia is also associated with Alzheimer’s and occasionally with the onset of a migraine. But it’s not typically something sweet that’s conjured up by the brain. “It’s usually more unpleasant stuff or odors that are hard to describe,” says Hirsch. “People will say it’s chemical-like or talk about a burning smell.” © 2009 Microsoft

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Epilepsy
Link ID: 13490 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By PAM BELLUCK Science has never given much credence to claims that you can learn French or Chinese by having the instruction CDs play while you sleep. If any learning happens that way, most scientists say, the language lesson is probably waking the sleeper up, not causing nouns and verbs to seep into a sound-asleep mind. But a new study about a different kind of audio approach during sleep gives insight into how the sleeping brain works, and might eventually come in handy to people studying a language, cramming for a test or memorizing lines in a play. Scientists at Northwestern University report that playing specific sounds while people slept helped them remember more of what they had learned before they fell sleep, to the point where memories of individual facts were enhanced. In a study published online Thursday by the journal Science, researchers taught people to move 50 pictures to their correct locations on a computer screen. Each picture was accompanied by a related sound — meow for a cat, whirring for a helicopter, for example. Then, 12 subjects took a nap, during which 25 of the sounds were played along with white noise as they slept. When they awoke, none realized that the sounds had been played or could guess which ones had been used. Yet, almost all remembered more precisely the computer locations of the pictures associated with the 25 sounds that had been played while they slept, doing less well placing the other 25 pictures. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 13489 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Frans de Waal What intrigues me most about laughter is how it spreads. It’s almost impossible not to laugh when everybody else is. There have been laughing epidemics, in which no one could stop and some even died in a prolonged fit. There are laughing churches and laugh therapies based on the healing power of laughter. The must-have toy of 1996—Tickle Me Elmo—laughed hysterically after being squeezed three times in a row. All of this because we love to laugh and can’t resist joining laughing around us. This is why comedy shows on television have laugh tracks and why theater audiences are sometimes sprinkled with “laugh plants”: people paid to produce raucous laughing at any joke that comes along. The infectiousness of laughter even works across species. Below my office window at the Yerkes Primate Center, I often hear my chimps laugh during rough-and-tumble games, and I cannot suppress a chuckle myself. It’s such a happy sound. Tickling and wrestling are the typical laugh triggers for apes, and probably the original ones for humans. The fact that tickling oneself is notoriously ineffective attests to its social significance. And when young apes put on their play face, their friends join in with the same expression as rapidly and easily as humans do with laughter. Shared laughter is just one example of our primate sensitivity to others. Instead of being Robinson Crusoes sitting on separate islands, we’re all interconnected, both bodily and emotionally. This may be an odd thing to say in the West, with its tradition of individual freedom and liberty, but Homo sapiens is remarkably easily swayed in one emotional direction or another by its fellows.

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 13488 - Posted: 06.24.2010

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