By Claire Thomas In 1989, The Lancet carried a curious report on a dog that kept licking a mole on her owner's leg. The mole turned out to be a malignant melanoma. Since then, scientists have observed similar "disease sniffing" abilities in mice and rats, which tend to avoid sickly members of their own species. Now researchers think they have figured out how these animals do it. Scientists have previously identified a number of mouse smell receptors, cell-surface proteins in the animals' noses that pick up everything from the fragrance of food to the scent of fear (ScienceNOW, 21 August 2008). Neurogeneticist Ivan Rodriguez of the University of Geneva in Switzerland and colleagues wondered whether there might be additional such receptors that respond to a disease "scent," perhaps by detecting chemicals associated with bacteria and inflammation. The researchers scoured the already deciphered mouse genome, looking for genes that might encode additional receptor proteins in its olfactory system, the sensory cells that connect the nose to the brain. They found genes for five new receptors, all of which belong to a known family of proteins called formyl peptide receptors (FPRs). The known FPRs include two immune system receptors that detect chemicals given off by pathogens in the blood, helping immune cells track down and attack foreign bodies. Could the newly identified ones on olfactory cells do the same, detecting pathogens but those outside the body on another animal? Rodriguez's team exposed olfactory mouse neurons in the lab to disease-causing bacteria and the urine of sick mice. Sure enough, some of the chemicals sparked a "smell response" in the neurons, as reflected by electrical changes in the cells, the researchers report online today in Nature. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 12788 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey Rubbernecking neurons don’t do an injured brain any good. Newborn neurons rush to the scene of the damage but don’t pitch in to help heal the wound, a new study shows. Scientists have had great hopes that new neurons produced in the brain after a stroke or other insult could migrate to the wounded area and replace damaged cells. Previous research has shown that the newborns are attracted to injury sites, but a new study that appears in the April 22 Journal of Neuroscience shows that those neurons don’t form replacements for the majority of cells. The results indicate that simply boosting neuron production may not help heal the brain. Zhengang Yang of Fudan University in Shanghai and colleagues induced strokes in a part of rats’ brains called the striatum, which controls movement, and marked new neurons so the cells could be traced as they migrated through the brain. The researchers examined the cells for certain proteins that are hallmarks of different neuron types, to see which kind of neuron the cells differentiated into. Previous research has shown that new neurons are born in the adult brain in two places — the hippocampus and the subventricular zone, or SVZ. Neurons born in the SVZ usually migrate to the olfactory bulb. But after a stroke, some of the new SVZ neurons flock to the wound site. Yang and his colleagues show in the new study that the new SVZ neurons don’t form medium-sized spiny neurons, the type of cell most common in the striatum. Only neurons producing calretinin and Sp8, two markers of olfactory bulb neurons, migrate into the wounded striatum. There, the neurons form the same type that they would in the olfactory bulb, if they survive at all. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Neurogenesis; Regeneration
Link ID: 12787 - Posted: 06.24.2010

This week’s New Yorker has a fascinating article about the growing use of “neuro-enhancing” drugs by college students and others to improve focus, reduce sleep needs and lengthen study time and work hours. Drugs like Adderall and Ritalin, typically prescribed to improve focus of people with attention deficit problems, now are being taken by people with healthy brains to help them boost achievement. One doctor has even coined a term for the practice: cosmetic neurology. Author Margaret Talbot writes: A young man I’ll call Alex recently graduated from Harvard. As a history major, Alex wrote about a dozen papers a semester. He also ran a student organization, for which he often worked more than forty hours a week; when he wasn’t on the job, he had classes. Weeknights were devoted to all the schoolwork that he couldn’t finish during the day, and weekend nights were spent drinking with friends and going to dance parties. …Since, in essence, this life was impossible, Alex began taking Adderall to make it possible. Adderall, a stimulant composed of mixed amphetamine salts, is commonly prescribed for children and adults who have been given a diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. But in recent years Adderall and Ritalin, another stimulant, have been adopted as cognitive enhancers: drugs that high-functioning, overcommitted people take to become higher-functioning and more overcommitted…. College campuses have become laboratories for experimentation with neuroenhancement. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; ADHD
Link ID: 12786 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Margaret Talbot A young man I’ll call Alex recently graduated from Harvard. As a history major, Alex wrote about a dozen papers a semester. He also ran a student organization, for which he often worked more than forty hours a week; when he wasn’t on the job, he had classes. Weeknights were devoted to all the schoolwork that he couldn’t finish during the day, and weekend nights were spent drinking with friends and going to dance parties. “Trite as it sounds,” he told me, it seemed important to “maybe appreciate my own youth.” Since, in essence, this life was impossible, Alex began taking Adderall to make it possible. Adderall, a stimulant composed of mixed amphetamine salts, is commonly prescribed for children and adults who have been given a diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. But in recent years Adderall and Ritalin, another stimulant, have been adopted as cognitive enhancers: drugs that high-functioning, overcommitted people take to become higher-functioning and more overcommitted. (Such use is “off label,” meaning that it does not have the approval of either the drug’s manufacturer or the Food and Drug Administration.) College campuses have become laboratories for experimentation with neuroenhancement, and Alex was an ingenious experimenter. His brother had received a diagnosis of A.D.H.D., and in his freshman year Alex obtained an Adderall prescription for himself by describing to a doctor symptoms that he knew were typical of the disorder. During his college years, Alex took fifteen milligrams of Adderall most evenings, usually after dinner, guaranteeing that he would maintain intense focus while losing “any ability to sleep for approximately eight to ten hours.” In his sophomore year, he persuaded the doctor to add a thirty-milligram “extended release” capsule to his daily regimen.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; ADHD
Link ID: 12785 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Children resuscitated at birth are more likely to have a low IQ by the age of eight, even if they appear healthy as babies, research has suggested. The study compared babies who were resuscitated at birth - some needing further care, but others not - with those who had a problem-free delivery. It suggests even mild problems around delivery may be enough to cause subtle damage to the brain. The study, by Bristol's Southmead Hospital, appears in the Lancet. It is based on children who were part in a long-term research project known as the Children of the 90s study. The researchers defined a low IQ as being less than 80. They found that children who were resuscitated, but required no further treatment, had a 65% increased risk of a low IQ compared with those who were not. The risk of a low IQ for children who were resuscitated and also required further treatment for signs of brain damage, known as encephalopathy, was six times higher than babies delivered without any problem. Damage caused during labour is due to the brain being starved of oxygen, a phenomenon known as hypoxia. Overall the risk of a low IQ for any of the children was still relatively low. But writing in The Lancet, the researchers said: "Infants who needed resuscitation, even if they did not develop encephalopathy in the neonatal period, had a substantially increased risk of a low full-scale IQ score. "The data suggest that mild perinatal physiological compromise might be sufficient to cause subtle neuronal or synaptic (nerve cell junction) damage, and thereby affect cognition in childhood and potentially in adulthood." (C)BBC

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Intelligence
Link ID: 12784 - Posted: 04.23.2009

By RONI CARYN RABIN It may be hard to fathom, but in the haystack of government health statistics that track cancer, car accidents, twin births to women over 40, fat teenagers and people who quit smoking, there has been no reliable estimate of the number of Americans affected by paralysis. Until now. A study to be released on Tuesday by the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation reports that far more Americans than previously estimated are paralyzed to some degree: 5.6 million people, representing 1.9 percent of the population, or roughly 1 in 50 Americans. Previous estimates — or “guesstimates,” as some have called them — hovered around 4 million at most, and some were as low as 1.4 million. “Nobody had any idea what the numbers were, because no one ever tried to find out,” said Joseph Canose, vice president for quality of life at the Reeve Foundation’s Paralysis Resource Center, who led the study. “There were many different ways of counting it, and there was no common definition, and the numbers were all over the place.” But the figures, which could have enormous implications for public policy, research financing and health care, are already causing controversy, because the estimates for paralysis caused by certain diseases and conditions differ drastically from long-accepted numbers. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Movement Disorders
Link ID: 12783 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Dr. Michael Stein treats ordinary ailments such as heart failure and headaches, and cares for people in the throes of addiction. Stein is also a novelist and Brown University professor of medicine and community health. His latest work combines those pursuits in the true story of one woman's fight to live the life she lost to addiction. Lucy Fields is the name he gives to a 29-year-old patient addicted to the painkiller Vicodin. The drug is the most-prescribed medication in the United States, 20 times more common than Prozac or penicillin. "The Addict: One Patient, One Doctor, One Year" is a portrait of her battle to kick the drug. Here is an edited version of a recent conversation with Stein. Q. Why do you treat addicts? A. People who are addicted in general are young and physically healthy, so if you can help them, the satisfaction is a rarity for an internist. I typically deal with chronic illnesses that are slow to get better or never get better, whereas people who are addicts can really dramatically change. Q. Does that make you an optimist? A. All doctors are optimists. We want our patients to get better. With addicts, you are literally trying to change someone's mind. Their brains need to be helped to rid themselves of this problem. That is a difficult, long-lasting process that requires patience and optimism. © 2009 NY Times Co

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12782 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By SALLY SATEL, M.D. Last fall, British television broadcast a reality program called “How Mad Are You?” The plot was simple: 10 volunteers lived together for a week in a castle in the Kent countryside and took part in a series of challenges. The twist was the lack of a prize. Five of the volunteers had a history of a serious mental illness, like obsessive compulsive disorder and bipolar disorder, and five did not. The challenges, meant to elicit latent symptoms, included mucking out a cowshed, performing stand-up comedy and taking psychological tests. But the real test came at the end of the week. Could a panel of experts — a psychiatrist, psychologist and a psychiatric nurse — tell them apart? They could not. After watching hours of videotape, the experts correctly identified only two of the five people with a history of mental illness. And they misidentified two of the healthy people as having a mental illness. The point was made: even trained professionals cannot reliably determine mental illness by appearances alone. “Having a mental illness doesn’t have to become your defining characteristic,” wrote the producer, Rob Liddell, in describing the program. “It shouldn’t set you apart in society.” The leading mental health advocacy group in England and Wales, MIND, praised the program for encouraging viewers “to re-examine their preconceptions.” Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Link ID: 12781 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Claire Thomas An intense scouring of the X chromosome has turned up nine new genes tied to X-linked mental retardation, a group of conditions marked by severe cognitive impairment. The study also surprisingly indicates that more than 1% of the estimated 800 genes on the X chromosome have no function in the body. "[The work] sets the stage for the next frontier in human and medical genetics," says Han Brunner, an expert in congenital conditions at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands who was not involved in the research. Mental retardation afflicts 2% to 3% of the general population, and researchers have linked a small proportion of these cases to a faulty X chromosome. In addition to cognitive problems, patients with X-linked mental retardation (XLMR)--which includes fragile x syndrome (ScienceNOW, 24 May 2007)--may also suffer from epilepsy, macrocephaly (an enlarged head), and reproductive defects. XLMR is far more common in boys, as they only inherit one X chromosome and thus don't have the backup copy that girls do. Traditional genetic methods, such as looking at family trees and sequencing individual genes, have linked defects in 80 genes on the X chromosome to XLMR, but the discovery rate has slowed, suggesting that those techniques have reached their limit. So, in the current study, 18 research teams from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, and Germany turned to a new computer program called AutoCSA, which ramps up the amount of DNA that can be sequenced at one time. The researchers sequenced 720 out of about 800 genes on the X chromosome, comparing 208 individuals with XLMR with unaffected family members. In all, the effort took 6 years and would have been "unthinkable" using traditional methods, says Patrick Tarpey, a molecular geneticist at the Sanger Institute in Cambridge, U.K., who was part of the collaboration. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12780 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Joyce Gramza It’s been 20 years since the discovery of the gene that causes the most common type of Muscular Dystrophy — Duchenne MD — and patients are still waiting for a cure. "The mutation causes muscle fibers to pull away from each other and with progressive use of your muscles in these patients it eventually leads to muscle damage, severe muscle damage," explains Dean Burkin, assistant professor of pharmacology at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine. Gene therapy to replace the faulty dystrophin gene might be a solution, but Burkin and his colleagues are excited about a simpler and potentially safer approach based on work they are publishing in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "This could be an IV drug for the patients if the work in the mouse models that we’ve been using translates to human studies," Burkin says. "That would allow a fair ease of treatment for the patients…. We’ve obviously got to do some safety tests and there’s still a few studies that we need to do. But in the field there are a number of drugs including ours that are being developed. "These patients, especially, have been waiting a long time for new therapies to come about and I think we’re at the cusp now." ©2009 ScienCentral

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Muscles
Link ID: 12779 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By LEE DYE So after looking for years you finally found your perfect mate. Was it good judgment on your part, helped along by a lot of romance, or was it just a case of cold genetics? It may well be that your genes, not your superior taste when it comes to the opposite sex, made the choice for you. But even your genes can get it wrong. At least if you are a fruit fly. A team of scientists at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, have been trying for a number of years to figure out the role genes play in mate selection. Of course, they would prefer to study the same thing in humans, but there seems to be an ethical problem with having people mate with strangers to produce children for scientific research. So for now, fruit flies will have to do. These amazing creatures share many genes with higher life forms, including humans, and they go through so many generations in such a short period of time that they are very useful for research. And they're cheap, fortunately, because their lifespan is only a couple of weeks. In their latest experiment, the researchers used two different strains of fruit flies that have lived in separate and controlled environments in their lab for 15 years. © 2009 ABCNews Internet Ventures

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12778 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jonah Lehrer One of the first tricks in Penn and Teller's Las Vegas show begins when Teller—the short, quiet one—strolls onstage with a lit cigarette, inhales, drops it to the floor, and stamps it out. Then he takes another cigarette from his suit pocket and lights it. No magic there, right? But then Teller pivots so the audience can see him from the other side. He goes through the same set of motions, except this time everything is different: Much of what just transpired, the audience now perceives, was a charade, a carefully orchestrated stack of lies. He doesn't stamp out the first cigarette—he palms it, then puts it in his ear. There is no second cigarette; it's a pencil stub. The smoke from the first butt is real, but the lighter used on the pencil is actually a flashlight. Yet the illusion is executed so perfectly that every step looks real, even when you're shown that it is not. Penn and Teller demonstrate the seven basic principles of magic. The trick is called Looks Simple, and the point is that even a puff on a cigarette, closely examined, can disintegrate into smoke and mirrors. "People take reality for granted," Teller says shortly before stepping onstage. "Reality seems so simple. We just open our eyes and there it is. But that doesn't mean it is simple." For Teller (that's his full legal name), magic is more than entertainment. He wants his tricks to reveal the everyday fraud of perception so that people become aware of the tension between what is and what seems to be. Our brains don't see everything—the world is too big, too full of stimuli. So the brain takes shortcuts, constructing a picture of reality with relatively simple algorithms for what things are supposed to look like. Magicians capitalize on those rules. Wired.com © 2009 Condé Nast Digital

Keyword: Attention; Vision
Link ID: 12777 - Posted: 06.24.2010

JoAnne Zoller Wagner's diagnosis as prediabetic wasn't enough to compel her to change her habits and lose 30 pounds. Not even with the knowledge her sister had died because of diabetes. "I didn't have that sense of urgency," said the Pasadena, Md., woman. But nine months later, doctors told Wagner her condition had worsened. She, too, now had Type 2 diabetes. That scared her into action. Now, two years later, the 55-year-old woman has slimmed down. She exercises regularly and her blood sugar levels are back in the healthy, normal range. Thanks to her success, she was able to avoid diabetes medication. Diabetics like Wagner who manage to turn things around, getting their blood sugar under control — either escaping the need for drugs or improving enough to quit taking them — are drawing keen interest from the medical community. This summer an American Diabetes Association task force will focus on this group of patients and whether they can be considered "cured." Among the points of interest: © 2009 Microsoft

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 12776 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By AMANDA M. FAIRBANKS The eight children, ages 5 to 11, who attend the Brooklyn Autism Center Academy need intensive individual instruction to cope with a neurological disorder that can make achieving academic progress slow and grueling. During the course of the day, one teacher is paired with each child. After successfully completing a task, students are rewarded with a spoonful of vanilla pudding, time on a piano or a few minutes in a bouncy castle. The system repeats itself, interspersing work with small breaks. “Every child with autism can learn,” said Jaime Nicklas, 32, the school’s educational director. “If they are not learning, it is our responsibility to change our teaching procedure, so they can make the progress they are capable of.” But this type of focused instruction comes with a high price: The academy’s annual tuition is $85,000. The parents of one of the students, Ruby Kassimir, 5, the only girl in the school, took out a home equity line of credit on their home in Queens to help pay the tuition. “There just aren’t that many options available,” explained Ruby’s mother, Sue Laizik, a project coordinator at Columbia University. As the number of autism diagnoses has risen, the extraordinary cost of educating the children has become a growing point of contention. In 2001, the city’s Department of Education listed 3,278 students with autism; by 2008, that figure had more than doubled to 6,877. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 12775 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By John Cloud Tuesday, Being a teenager means experimenting with foolish things like dyeing your hair purple or candy flipping or going door-to-door for a political party. Parents tend to overlook seemingly mild, earnest teen pursuits like joining the Sierra Club, but a new study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association suggests that another common teen fad, vegetarianism, isn't always healthy. Instead, it seems that a significant number of kids experiment with a vegetarian diet as a way to mask an eating disorder, since it's a socially acceptable way to avoid eating many foods and one that parents tend not to oppose. The study, led by nutritionist Ramona Robinson-O'Brien, an assistant professor at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University in Minnesota, found that while adolescent and young adult vegetarians were less likely than meat eaters to be overweight and more likely to eat a relatively healthful diet, they were also more likely to binge eat. Although most teens in Robinson-O'Brien's study claimed to embark on vegetarianism to be healthier or to save the environment and the world's animals, the research suggests they may be more interested in losing weight than protecting cattle or swine. (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.) For one thing, many young "vegetarians" continue to eat the white meat of defenseless chickens (25% in the current study) as well as the flesh of those adorable animals known as fish (46%), even when they are butchered and served up raw as sushi. And in a 2001 study in the Journal of Adolescent Health, researchers found that the most common reason teens gave for vegetarianism was to lose weight or keep from gaining it. Adolescent vegetarians are far more likely than other teens to diet or to use extreme and unhealthy measures to control their weight, studies suggest. The reverse is also true: teens with eating disorders are more likely to practice vegetarianism than any other age group. © 2009 Time Inc.

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia; Animal Rights
Link ID: 12774 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JESSE McKINLEY SAN FRANCISCO — On Monday, somewhere in New York City, 420 people will gather for High Times magazine’s annual beauty pageant, a secretly located and sold-out event that its sponsor says will “turn the Big Apple into the Baked Apple and help us usher in a new era of marijuana freedom in America.” David Perleberg sold pro-marijuana T-shirts at the forum, including one that shows the university’s buffalo mascot inhaling. They will not be the only ones partaking: April 20 has long been an unofficial day of celebration for marijuana fans, an occasion for campus smoke-outs, concerts and cannabis festivals. But some advocates of legal marijuana say this year’s “high holiday” carries extra significance as they sense increasing momentum toward acceptance of the drug, either as medicine or entertainment. “It is the biggest moment yet,” said Ethan Nadelmann, the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance in Washington, who cited several national polls showing growing support for legalization. “There’s a sense that the notion of legalizing marijuana is starting to cross the fringes into mainstream debate.” For Mr. Nadelmann and others like him, the signs of change are everywhere, from the nation’s statehouses — where more than a dozen legislatures have taken up measures to allow some medical use of marijuana or some easing of penalties for recreational use — to its swimming pools, where an admission of marijuana use by the Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps was largely forgiven with a shrug. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12773 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey Mice and cats don’t usually agree, but both animals have the same bright idea about night vision. Cats, rats, mice and other nocturnal mammals arrange DNA in some eye cells to form miniature lenses that help focus light, a new study shows. Scientists at the Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich in Germany and colleagues discovered the unusual DNA arrangement while investigating the function of several genes in the rod cells of mouse eyes, says Boris Joffe, one of the authors of the new study, which appears in the April 17 Cell. Rod cells are light-gathering cells in the retina of the eye. They operate under low-light conditions, while cone cells perform the light-gathering duty when it is bright. Usually active genes are located in the part of the DNA that is at the center of a cell’s nucleus. There, the genes have easy access to the cellular machinery that rewrites instructions encoded in the DNA into RNA. Inactive DNA is pushed to the periphery of the nucleus, where it is out of the way. But rod cells in the mouse retina shove active genes to the outside of the nucleus, the researchers found. The center of the nucleus is instead occupied by densely-packed inactive DNA called heterochromatin. Mice put this type of DNA front and center in their rod cells. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Vision; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12772 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By TARA PARKER-POPE The transition from high school to college is tough for most students. But for those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, university life poses a host of academic, medical and personal challenges. Students with A.D.H.D. struggle to stay focused on their studies and to meet the organizational demands of schoolwork. Although some children appear to outgrow the disorder as they age, doctors say that as many as two-thirds have symptoms that persist into adulthood. Medications help, but students need a support system of family, teachers and friends. Last year, The Journal of Pediatric Nursing published a report in which college students with A.D.H.D. recounted the role family members played in their academic success in high school. Mothers made flash cards, gave them books on tape, proofread papers and helped them prioritize. Even school friends would tap them in class if they “zoned out.” When teenagers leave for college, that personal support system disappears. They move away from parents, trusted teachers and the pediatrician who prescribes their medication. For a teenager struggling to stay organized, the unusual class schedules, hourlong lectures, late-night study sessions and disrupted sleep routines of college can be a nightmare. Studies suggest that college students with A.D.H.D. are at greater risk for academic and psychological difficulties, and have lower grade-point averages, than peers without the problem. “We have found that there are a lot of significant barriers these students face,” says Dr. Mark H. Thomas, a physician at the University of Alabama student health center, who is part of a campuswide effort to provide additional resources to students with the disorder, including a series of podcasts on how to cope. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 12771 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Sandrine Ceurstemont If you're surrounded by smiling faces, you're more likely to feel happy than if everyone around you is looking glum. But we know relatively little about how emotions spread from one person to another. The Chameleon Project, a collaboration between artist Tina Gonsalves - currently in residence at the MIT Media Lab - and neuroscientists could help. The installation involves using face recognition software that analyses a person's expression as they walk into a room and shows them a video portrait of another person displaying a related emotion. The project employs an algorithm developed by neuroscientist Chris Frith from University College London that tries to read and respond to the emotions of a person in the same way another person would. That algorithm builds on research that suggests that when we interact with someone, we try to reach a neutral emotional state where communication can occur more easily. People tend to mirror the expression of someone who is happy or scared, but try to calm down someone who is angry. As well as producing a unique art installation, the Chameleon Project should provide neuroscientists with new insight into how people respond to less-studied emotions such as anger. The underlying technology could be used with little modification for research into empathy – for example, investigating how people with mental illnesses like autism and schizophrenia respond to the emotions of people around them. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Emotions; Robotics
Link ID: 12770 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Helen Thomson If somebody is in your personal space, you can thank a bunch of "mirror neurons" in your frontal lobes for helping you to decide how you should respond. That's the conclusion of a study by German researchers that suggests mirror neurons, which fire both when you perform an action and when you watch someone else perform it, have greater responsibilities than were previously realised. Antonino Casile from the Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research at the University of Tübingen in Germany and colleagues probed the personal space of two rhesus monkeys, while monitoring their mirror neurons that respond to seeing a human grasping an object some distance away. Monkey do The team compared how the neurons fired when a person grabbed a metallic object within a monkey's reach and again from a greater distance. They found that rather than simply responding to the action, the mirror neurons also responded to whether or not the action was close enough for the monkey to intervene. Specific subsets of neurons responded to grasping actions inside and outside of a monkey's reach. Of the mirror neurons that fired when a monkey grabbed an object for itself around a quarter fired only in response to seeing a person grasp an object within the monkey's reaching distance while a different quarter responded to actions outside that space. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 12769 - Posted: 06.24.2010