By R. Douglas Fields Clinton didn’t inhale, Obama did—and maybe Reagan should have. New research suggests that THC, the chemical that gives marijuana its mind-bending properties, kills developing neurons, yet oddly, the same chemical saves neurons in adults with Alzheimer’s disease. “Marijuana is not the ‘soft drug’ people like to think it is,” says neuro­pharmacologist Veronica Campbell of Trinity College in Dublin, whose latest study uncovered the harmful effects of THC on young neurons. When Campbell and her co-workers treated brain cells from newborn or adolescent rats with THC, the neurons died, but THC did not have such deadly effects on neurons taken from adult rats. In fact, work from other labs shows that THC benefits adult neurons. “We don’t know why,” Campbell says. Several possi­bilities are being investigated for this “Jekyll and Hyde” effect. Marijuana, like tobacco and opium, has powerful effects on the brain because certain compounds in the plant happen to have a chemical resemblance to naturally occurring substances in the body. Called endocannabinoids, these natural chemicals regulate important brain functions by controlling synapses in neural circuits that process thought and perception. According to several recent studies, these chemicals have many other functions in the brain and immune system, too—including regulating development and aiding survival of young neurons, as well as controlling the wiring of neurons into circuits for learning and memory. Smoking marijuana during the period of life when the brain is still developing obscures these critical chemical signals, Campbell suspects. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 13301 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Charles Q. Choi By carefully analyzing brain activity, scientists can tell what number a person has just seen, research now reveals. They can similarly tell how many dots a person was presented with. Past investigations had uncovered brain cells in monkeys that were linked with numbers. Although scientists had found brain regions linked with numerical tasks in humans — the frontal and parietal lobes, to be exact — until now patterns of brain activity linked with specific numbers had proven elusive. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here Scientists had 10 volunteers watch either numerals or dots on a screen while a part of their brain known as the intraparietal cortex was scanned — it's a region of the parietal lobe especially linked with numbers. They next rigorously analyzed brain activity to decipher which patterns might be linked with the numbers the volunteers had observed. When it came to small numbers of dots, the researchers found that brain activity patterns changed gradually in a way that reflected the ordered nature of the numbers. For example, one might be able to conclude that the pattern for six is between that for five and seven. In the case of the numerals, the researchers could not detect this same gradual change. This suggests their methods simply might not be sensitive enough to detect this progression yet, or that these symbols are, in fact, coded as more precise, discrete entities in the brain. © 2009 LiveScience.com.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 13300 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The brains of people who lost weight and kept it off responded differently to images of foods like ice cream compared to normal-weight individuals or those who regained the pounds, according to a new U.S. study. The brains of people who lost weight and kept it off responded differently to images of foods like ice cream compared to normal-weight individuals or those who regained the pounds, according to a new U.S. study. (HO, California Walnuts/Canadian Press) People who lose weight and keep it off may have different brain activity patterns than those who pack the pounds back on, according to a new U.S. study. The researchers, whose findings are in the October issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, monitored blood flow in the brains of people who successfully maintained their weight loss, as well as obese or normal-weight individuals. "Our findings shed some light on the biological factors that may contribute to weight loss maintenance," said the study's lead author, Jeanne McCaffery, of The Miriam Hospital's Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center in Miami. "They also provide an intriguing complement to previous behavioural studies that suggest people who have maintained a long-term weight loss monitor their food intake closely and exhibit restraint in their food choices," she added in a release. On average, people who participate in behavioural weight-loss programs lose eight to 10 per cent of their weight during the first six months and maintain two-thirds of that at the one-year followup, the researchers said. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 13299 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Dave Munger A member of my family died as a result of her alcohol abuse in her early 20s, leaving two children to be raised by their father. Clearly her addiction was horrible, and if it could have been prevented, many people would have been spared a lot of anguish. But consider the case of an independently wealthy man, living alone, with no dependents. He sits around his mansion all day, playing video games and freely sampling from his vast storehouse of illicit drugs. He’s just enjoying himself and he’s not directly hurting anyone. Is he a society-menacing addict? That’s the scenario presented by “DrugMonkey,” an NIH-funded biomedical research scientist who blogs anonymously at ScienceBlogs so that he can candidly assess the research of his peers. Two weeks ago he discussed an August study published in the journal Addiction that attempts to define clinical dependence on the rave-fave drug “Ecstasy,” or MDMA. We often think of true addicts as street junkies who prostitute themselves or steal from others to support their habits, but in reality there’s a wide variety of behaviors associated with abusing mind-altering substances. They can range from the casual drinker who sometimes has a few too many martinis, to the pothead who still lives in his mother’s basement, to a talk-show host zoned out on antidepressants. The American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-IV-TR is the reference most doctors use to diagnose mental disorders, and it offers two definitions of problems relating to recreational drug use. The first, “substance abuse,” simply suggests that abuse is any use of a substance that leads to physical, mental, social, or legal harm to oneself or to others. The second, “substance dependence,” is what we more commonly think of as addiction and includes a list of seven criteria, only three of which are needed to qualify. ©2005-2009 Seed Media Group LLC.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 13298 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Jessica Hamzelou A lack of sleep could help toxic plaques develop in the brain, accelerating the progression of Alzheimer's disease. David Holtzman looked at how sleep affected the levels of beta-amyloid protein in mice and humans. This protein causes plaques to build up in the brain, which some think cause Alzheimer's disease by killing cells. Holtzman's group found that beta-amyloid levels were higher in mouse brains when the mice were awake than when they were sleeping. Lack of sleep also had an effect on plaque levels: when the mice were sleep-deprived – forced to stay awake for 20 hours of the day – they developed more plaques in their brains. Holtzman also tried sending the mice to sleep with a drug that is being trialled for insomnia, called Almorexant. This reduced the amount of plaque-forming protein. He suggests that sleeping for longer could limit the formation of plaques, and perhaps block it altogether. The group also measured levels of beta-amyloid in the cerebrospinal fluid of 10 healthy men, both at night and during the day. Levels were lower at night, suggesting that sleep might also help keep levels of the plaque protein low in humans. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Sleep
Link ID: 13297 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Susan Gaidos Mention hypnosis, and the image that springs to mind is a caped magician swinging a pocket watch, seducing otherwise sensible people into barking like dogs. But hypnosis is more than a stage show act. For years, psychologists have used it to help patients calm preflight jitters, get a good night’s sleep or chuck a cigarette habit. Hypnosis even has uses in mainstream medicine for reducing the side effects of cancer treatments and helping patients cope with pain. Some physicians routinely employ hypnosis as an adjunct to mainstream anesthesia to help block pain during surgery or childbirth. Most recently, hypnosis has advanced from stage and clinic into the laboratory. It is now used as a research tool to temporarily create hallucinations, compulsions, delusions and certain types of seizures in the lab so that these phenomena can be investigated in detail. Such studies may lead to more effective treatments for a number of psychiatric and neurological disorders, assert psychologists Peter W. Halligan and David Oakley in the June issue of Trends in Cognitive Sciences. Other scientists, intrigued by the many practical uses of hypnosis, are striving to figure out how it works. Using the latest neuroimaging tools, these scientists are getting a look at what goes on in the hypnotized brain. The findings are mesmerizing. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Attention
Link ID: 13296 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Cassandra Willyard Each fall, hundreds of millions of newly hatched monarch butterflies flit from the fields and forests in eastern regions of Canada and the United States to the alpine fir forests of central Mexico, converging on the same spot to wait out the winter. Scientists don't know exactly how these insects find their way, but a new study shows that, to navigate, the butterflies rely on biological clocks. Oddly enough, the clocks are located in their antennae, not in their brains as previously thought. Migrating monarchs rely on the sun to maintain a constant heading. Because the sun drifts from east to west as the day wears on, the butterflies need a timekeeping device to help them compensate for its movement. Monarchs have a biological clock in their brains that relies on light cues to regulate their sleep-wake cycles and monitor day length. Scientists assumed they also used this clock to navigate. But the new study shows that the antennae possess a separate clock that controls time compensation. "That was a huge surprise," says Steven Reppert, a neurobiologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester and co-author of the new study. Reppert and his colleagues began studying antennae because they thought the appendages might assist migration in other ways--by allowing the butterflies to pick up certain scents, for example. They soon saw something surprising. When they clipped the antennae off about 30 migrating monarchs and put them in a flight simulator, which can track the direction they try to fly, the butterflies were disoriented. Whereas butterflies with antenna flew south to southeast, those with clipped antennae flew in random directions, although each individual hewed to its heading fairly consistently. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Animal Migration
Link ID: 13295 - Posted: 06.24.2010

IT HAS long been a puzzle that girls who grow up without their fathers at home reach sexual maturity earlier than girls whose fathers live with them. For years, absent fathers have taken the blame for this, because growing up quickly has negative consequences for girls. For example, early-bloomers are more likely to suffer depression, hate their bodies, engage in risky sex and get pregnant in their teen years. It could be a simple matter of not having as many eyes, particularly suspicious fatherly ones, watching over daughters. Or it could be a complicated physiological response to stress, in which girls adapt their reproductive strategy to their circumstances. If life is harsh, the theory goes, maybe they need to get their babies into the world as quickly as possible. The animal world suggests that the effect is not restricted to humans. Young mice, pigs, goats and even a few primates get signals from their kin which inhibit sexual development; a strange male in their midst, by contrast, really speeds things up. Research in humans has shown that girls growing up with stepfathers mature even more quickly than fatherless girls and that stepbrothers have a measurable effect too. However, Jane Mendle of the University of Oregon and her colleagues have suggested another putative cause: genes. Specifically, the same genes that might make a dad more likely to leave his family could be behind early sexual development as well. The researchers came to their conclusion after analysing data collected through the American National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Dr Mendle looked at 1,382 boys and girls, each of whom was related to at least one other subject through their mother. Most of the mothers were pairs of sisters, but some were identical twins or first cousins raised as sisters. © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2009.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13294 - Posted: 06.24.2010

In 2006, concern over the welfare of his family caused Dario Ringach to stop using animals in his research. A neuroscientist at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), Ringach had been receiving threats from animal-rights extremists over his experiments involving primates. Then, an undetonated firebomb was left next door to the house of a colleague, apparently because the activists had the wrong address. After three years of keeping a low profile, Ringach is now trying to raise public support for the use of animals in research. This month, he published a commentary on the subject in the Journal of Neuroscience1 and a letter to the editor in the Journal of Neurophysiology2 in which he calls on scientists to publicly support such research. His coauthor on both was David Jentsch, a neuropsychopharmacologist at UCLA whose work involves primates and whose car was firebombed earlier this year. Nature spoke with Ringach about his concerns. You say that animal-rights extremists are winning. Why? You can see this in a recent Pew research survey on public opinion on science. Only 52% of the broad public supports biomedical research involving animals. And over the years, this has consistently declined. What is behind this trend? A lot of organizations at different levels have had a tremendous impact — from work that the Humane Society of the United States [based in Washington DC] has been doing in exposing failures in the food industry, to work that PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, based in London] is doing in trying to reach out to children very early. © 2009 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 13293 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Katherine Ellison For decades, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder has sparked debate. Is it a biological illness, the dangerous legacy of genes or environmental toxins, or a mere alibi for bratty kids, incompetent parents and a fraying social fabric? With 4.5 million U.S. children having received a diagnosis of the disorder -- and more than half of them taking prescription drugs to control it -- the question has divided doctors and patients, parents and teachers, and mothers and fathers. Scientists maintain that they've been narrowing in on the origins and mechanics of disabling distraction, while gathering increasing evidence that ADHD is as real as such less controversial disorders as Down syndrome and schizophrenia. Their most recent progress is described in a Sept. 9 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, based on a new study that indicates a striking difference in the brain's motivational machinery in people with ADHD symptoms. "This is another big piece in the puzzle saying that there is something there, that this is not simply a matter of anxious parents," said James Swanson, a co-author of the report and a developmental psychologist based at the University of California at Irvine. The JAMA study said that, compared with a group of healthy subjects, brain scans of 53 adults with ADHD revealed a flaw in the way they process dopamine, which among other things, alerts people to new information and helps them anticipate pleasure and rewards. Swanson speculated that people with ADHD may even have a net deficit of dopamine. © 2009 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: ADHD; Brain imaging
Link ID: 13292 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Katherine Harmon dementia alzheimer's money financial managementPaying bills or counting change may seem like basic life skills to most, but for those who are about to slip into older-age dementia, the tasks can become increasingly difficult. And as fiscal functionality begins to fail, Alzheimer's disease might be less than a year away, a new study suggests. "Impairments in financial skills and judgments are often the first functional changes demonstrated by patients with incipient dementia," wrote the authors of the paper, which was published online today in Neurology. Although the relationship between money management skills and dementia has been established for some time, the researchers' focus on declining skills as an early indicator showed that once these abilities start to slip, the diagnosable disease is likely not far behind. Researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham gave 163 older adults—76 of whom were deemed healthy and 87 of whom were diagnosed as being mildly cognitively impaired (MCI)—a financial exam, which included exercises such as paying for groceries and making investment decisions. They found that those subjects who were already slightly impaired performed more poorly on aspects of the test, such as checkbook use, than the control group. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 13291 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Andy Coghlan Crazy as it sounds, alcohol may one day be given to people with brain injuries to help them recover. The idea has arisen from a study of 38,000 people with head injuries, which found that those with alcohol in their blood were more likely to survive. For every 100 people who died when stone-cold sober, only 88 died with ethanol – the kind of alcohol in drinks – in their veins. "The finding raises the intriguing possibility that administering ethanol to patients with brain injuries may improve outcome," conclude the investigators. Lead researcher Ali Salim of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles said he hoped a trial could be mounted, but more information is needed first. "We need a better understanding of the exact mechanism, the appropriate dose and specific timing of treatment before we can embark on clinical trials," he told New Scientist. Salim said that several previous studies have found similar beneficial effects – although others do not. Animal experiments, meanwhile, suggest that relatively low doses of alcohol protect the brain from injury, but high doses increase the risk of death. More research is also needed to establish how alcohol protects the brain, but Salim says it may work by blunting the amount of adrenalin reaching the brain, which reduces inflammation. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 13290 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Greg Miller Boozing it up in adolescence contributes to risky behavior in adulthood, according to a new study with rats. Some researchers suspect that the same is true for people, but they've had a hard time establishing whether adolescent drinking makes people prone to risk-taking or whether risk-prone people are simply more likely to start drinking as teenagers. Although the new work doesn't settle the issue, it bolsters the case that early alcohol use can cause lasting changes in behavior. Some of the best data available show that people who start drinking as adolescents and drink more heavily then are more likely to have problems with alcohol and drug abuse later in life, says Ilene Bernstein, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington, Seattle, and the senior author of the new study. But those studies have fallen short of determining cause and effect, Bernstein says. To get around this pitfall, she and her colleagues turned to rats, assigning individuals from a genetically identical strain to either drinking or teetotaling groups. Although rats don't voluntarily like to drink alcohol, the researchers found they could entice the rodents with spiked gelatin--the murine equivalent of the Jell-O shots beloved by college students everywhere. Adolescent rats assigned to the drinking group had access to the stuff for 20 days. They consumed the equivalent of "multiple, multiple drinks" a day but spread their drinking over many hours and never appeared visibly drunk, Bernstein says. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 13289 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Jessica Hamzelou It's a dieter's dream: imagine that your appetite simply reduced, making it easy for you to eat less, but your body continued to burn the amount of calories it burned when you were eating normally, allowing you to keep the weight off. That is what has happened to a group of mice genetically engineered to limit the action of a gene called Cpe. Their metabolism remained high despite being less hungry and not eating as much as normal mice. If the corresponding gene in humans could one day be targeted by drugs, it might allow dieters to keep burning calories at the same rate as they do when eating normally. Crash dieting causes the hypothalamus in the brain to slow the body's metabolism and store energy more efficiently. Not only does this make it tricky to shift the weight, but it also primes the body to start laying down fat. This process means that the pounds are piled back on as soon as normal eating resumes . Leona Plum of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University's Medical Center and her team identified a protein in this brain region in mice called Fox01, which controls a gene, Cpe, which is known to make mice susceptible to obesity. The team genetically engineered mice lacking this protein. "Interrupting the link between the protein and Cpe caused a different breakdown of neuropeptides – brain chemicals - in the hypothalamus, which made the mice less hungry," says Plum. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Obesity; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13288 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NATASHA SINGER HOW can you get a faster high from sustained-release pain pills like OxyContin? Let me count some of the ways. People have crushed them using bookends, hammers, mortars and pestles, and then snorted the powder, according to doctors who study addiction. They’ve chewed and swallowed fistfuls of pills. They’ve minced the pills in blenders, pulverized them in coffee grinders, dissolved them in water and then injected the liquid. Even for those of us who don’t inhale, the misuse and abuse of prescription painkillers called opioids should matter because, putting moral and ethics aside for the moment, it’s costing us billions of dollars. In a 2008 federal survey, an estimated 4.7 million Americans were found to have used prescription pain relievers for nonmedical reasons in the previous month. The abuse of opioids now costs at least $11 billion annually in excess medical care including overdoses by adults and accidental ingestion by children, said Howard G. Birnbaum, a health economist with the Analysis Group in Boston. Corporate America loves a void, and now some pharmaceutical companies are developing innovative opioids intended to deter tampering and meet the market’s need. Some pills under development are rubberlike and harder to crush. Others contain ingredients that cause unpleasant reactions in the body, like flushing or itching, if the pill is adulterated. Taking a cue from exploding ink packets that can render stolen money unusable, some pills have an outer opioid layer and an inner core that, if tampered with, releases a drug that counters the high of the pain reliever. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 13287 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Carolyn Y. Johnson It started as a simple term project for an MIT class on ethics and law on the electronic frontier. Two students partnered up to take on the latest Internet fad: the online social networks that were exploding into the mainstream. With people signing up in droves to reconnect with classmates and old crushes from high school, and even becoming online “friends” with their family members, the two wondered what the online masses were unknowingly telling the world about themselves. The pair weren’t interested in the embarrassing photos or overripe profiles that attract so much consternation from parents and potential employers. Instead, they wondered whether the basic currency of interactions on a social network - the simple act of “friending” someone online - might reveal something a person might rather keep hidden. Using data from the social network Facebook, they made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person’s online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay. They did this with a software program that looked at the gender and sexuality of a person’s friends and, using statistical analysis, made a prediction. The two students had no way of checking all of their predictions, but based on their own knowledge outside the Facebook world, their computer program appeared quite accurate for men, they said. People may be effectively “outing” themselves just by the virtual company they keep. “When they first did it, it was absolutely striking - we said, ‘Oh my God - you can actually put some computation behind that,’ ” said Hal Abelson, a computer science professor at MIT who co-taught the course. © Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 13286 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Patients with severe brain damage who do not appear to have signs of consciousness still seem able to learn, a Cambridge University study suggests. Researchers tested for Pavlovian-like responses in 22 people in a persistent vegetative state by playing a noise prior to a puff of air to the eye. Some subjects learnt to anticipate the puff of air causing the eye muscles to twitch, Nature Neuroscience reported. The team hopes it may lead to tests to determine which patients could recover. Study leader Dr Tristan Bekinschtein from the University of Cambridge said the consensus had been that learning to link one stimulus with another - in this case a noise and a puff of air - was dependent on explicit awareness of the association. But the study, where up to 70 puffs of air were delivered over a 25 minute period, showed that this sort of conditioning is possible even in patients who, by all other measures, are not conscious. Electrodes positioned by the eyes picked up whether the muscles began to respond or not. And a control experiment doing the same tests on people under general anaesthesia did not produce the same responses, suggesting that the learning does not happen when truly unconscious, and that some patients may have some level of consciousness not apparent on traditional tests. Dr Bekinschtein, who began the work as a PhD student in Argentina, said they also found that patients who started to anticipate the puff of air were more likely to show signs of recovery later on, in terms of increased ability to communicate. Although the results are reported in 22 patients, some of whom were in what is termed a "minimally conscious state", the team has since used the test in many more and is planning a large clinical trial with colleagues in the US and Belgium. (C)BBC

Keyword: Attention; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 13285 - Posted: 09.21.2009

Ian Sample, science correspondent People who are left wheelchair-bound by spinal cord injuries could regain some of their mobility through a rehabilitation programme being developed by scientists. Guardian neuroscience stories have found that a combination of drugs, muscle stimulation and treadmill exercises helps paralysed rats to recover the ability to walk normally. The animal tests pave the way for clinical trials in humans, which scientists hope to begin in the US and Switzerland within five years. The treatment, developed by neurologists at the University of Zurich and the University of California in Los Angeles, taps into neural circuits in the spinal cord that control the muscles used for walking. In able-bodied people, these "walking circuits" spring into action when they receive a signal from the brain, but if the spinal cord is damaged, the message from the brain never arrives. When contact with the brain is lost, the circuits shut down. "We've known for more than a century that there are networks of neurons in the spinal cord that generate the rhythmic activity needed for walking," said Grégoire Courtine at the Experimental Neurorehabilitation laboratory in Zurich. "Our study suggests that the brain mostly sends a go or no-go signal." A team led by Courtine used drugs known as serotonin agonists to awaken the walking circuits in paralysed rats whose spines had been severed. The researchers then used tiny electrodes to stimulate the animals' spinal circuitry, according to a report in the journal Nature Neuroscience. © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

Keyword: Regeneration
Link ID: 13284 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BILL FINLEY Martha Maxine might seem like an ill-fitting name for a 5-year-old male horse, but there is an explanation. He used to be a she. Martha Maxine will be a favorite in Saturday’s Tony Maurello Stakes. He won the filly division last year. Martha Maxine will be among the favorites Saturday in the $125,000 Tony Maurello Stakes at Balmoral Park outside Chicago, the same harness racing track where he won the filly division of the same race a year ago. He will make his fourth start since tests determined the horse was intersex, with male sex chromosomes. Complicated questions about possible intersex athletes have come up in human sports, including one recently in track and field, but those athletes typically have an opportunity to challenge any findings. In the case of Martha Maxine, the harness racing authorities took conclusive action. In June, the horse was reclassified as a male by the United States Trotting Association and barred from female-only races. The trainer and co-owner Erv Miller never suspected there was anything different about Martha Maxine; the horse had an uneventful but productive 2008 campaign. Still officially a female, Martha Maxine won 13 races last year, earning $193,891. “The only thing I ever noticed was that she was a very muscular mare,” Miller said. “She carried a lot of muscle tone, like a male does. Other than that, there was nothing different about her. When you think you’ve seen everything in this business, something else comes along. That’s what happened here.” Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 13283 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Alexis Madrigal Email Author Neuroscientist Craig Bennett purchased a whole Atlantic salmon, took it to a lab at Dartmouth, and put it into an fMRI machine used to study the brain. The beautiful fish was to be the lab’s test object as they worked out some new methods. So, as the fish sat in the scanner, they showed it “a series of photographs depicting human individuals in social situations.” To maintain the rigor of the protocol (and perhaps because it was hilarious), the salmon, just like a human test subject, “was asked to determine what emotion the individual in the photo must have been experiencing.” The salmon, as Bennett’s poster on the test dryly notes, “was not alive at the time of scanning.” methodsIf that were all that had occurred, the salmon scanning would simply live on in Dartmouth lore as a “crowning achievement in terms of ridiculous objects to scan.” But the fish had a surprise in store. When they got around to analyzing the voxel (think: 3-D or “volumetric” pixel) data, the voxels representing the area where the salmon’s tiny brain sat showed evidence of activity. In the fMRI scan, it looked like the dead salmon was actually thinking about the pictures it had been shown. “By complete, random chance, we found some voxels that were significant that just happened to be in the fish’s brain,” Bennett said. “And if I were a ridiculous researcher, I’d say, ‘A dead salmon perceiving humans can tell their emotional state.’” © 2009 Condé Nast Digital.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 13282 - Posted: 06.24.2010