By Michael Shermer On a Los Angeles street corner in 2000, I was the "inside man" in a classic con game called the pigeon drop. A magician named Dan Harlan orchestrated it for a television series I co-hosted called Exploring the Unknown (type "Shermer, con games" into Google). Our pigeon was a man from whom I asked directions to the local hospital while Dan (the "outside man") moved in and appeared to find a wallet full of cash on the ground. After it was established that the wallet belonged to neither of us and appeared to have about $3,000 in it, Dan announced that we should split the money three ways. I objected on moral grounds, insisting that we ask around first, which Dan agreed to do only after I put the cash in an envelope and secretly switched it for an envelope with magazine pages stuffed in it. Before he left on his moral crusade, however, Dan insisted that we each give him some collateral ("How do I know you two won't just take off with the money while I'm gone?"). I enthusiastically offered $50 and suggested that the pigeon do the same. He hesitated, so I handed him the sealed envelope full of what he believed was the cash (but was actually magazine pages), which he then tucked safely into his pocket as he willingly handed over to Dan his entire wallet, credit cards and ID. A few minutes after Dan left, I acted agitated and took off in search of him, leaving the pigeon standing on the street corner with a phony envelope and no wallet! After admitting my anxiety about performing the con (I didn't believe I could pull it off) and confessing a little thrill at having scored the goods, I asked Dan to explain why such scams work. "We are that way as the human animal," he reflected. "We have a conscience, but we also want to go for the kill." Indeed, even after we told our pigeon that he had been set up, he still believed he had the three grand in his pocket! © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12688 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Helen Phillips Mr P, an 80-year-old Polish émigré and former engineer, knew he had memory problems, but it was his wife who described it as a permanent sense of déjà vu. He refused to watch TV or read a newspaper, as he claimed to have seen everything before. When he went out walking he said the same birds sang in the same trees and the same cars drove past at the same time every day. His doctor said he should see a memory specialist, but Mr P refused. He was convinced that he had already been. Déjà vu can happen to anyone, and anyone who has had it will recognise the description immediately. It is more than just a sense that you have seen or done something before; it is a startling, inappropriate and often disturbing sense that history is repeating, and impossibly so. You can't place where the earlier encounter happened, and it can feel like a premonition or a dream. Subjective, strange and fleeting, not to mention tainted by paranormal explanations, the phenomenon has been a difficult and unpopular one to study. Now that is changing, spurred in part by Mr P and a handful of people who, like him, have dementia and experience continuous déjà vu, and also by the discovery that there is a group of people with epilepsy who have déjà vu-like auras before a seizure. They are making it possible for researchers to catch the process in action, bringing hope that the secrets of this strange and disturbing phenomenon could finally be unlocked. Surprisingly, not only is déjà vu proving an interesting window on the peculiar ways that our memory works, it is also providing a few clues about how we tell the difference between what is real, imagined, dreamed and remembered - one of the true mysteries of consciousness. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 12687 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Steve Ayan Norman Cousins, the storied journalist, author and editor, found no pain reliever better than clips of the Marx Brothers. For years, Cousins suffered from inflammatory arthritis, and he swore that 10 minutes of uproarious laughing at the hilarious team bought him two hours of pain-free sleep. In his book Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient (W. W. Norton, 1979), Cousins described his self-prescribed laughing cure, which seemed to ameliorate his inflammation as well as his pain. He eventually was able to return to work, landing a job as an adjunct professor at the School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he investigated the effects of emotions on biological states and health. The community of patients inspired by such miracle treatments believes not only that humor is psychologically beneficial but that it actually cures disease. In reality, only a smattering of scientific evidence exists to support the latter idea—but laughter and humor do seem to have significant effects on the psyche, even influencing our perception of pain. What is more, psychological well-being has an impact on overall wellness, including our risk of disease. Laughter relaxes us and improves our mood, and hearing jokes may ease anxiety. Amusement’s ability to counteract physical agony is well documented, and as Cousins’s experience suggests, humor’s analgesic effect lasts after the smile has faded. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12686 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway It's a bizarre and rare disorder, but its consequences can be horrific. One man with body integrity identity disorder (BIID) dumped his lower leg in dry ice for several hours until doctors were forced to amputate. Others have resorted to wood chippers and gunshots to do away with healthy limbs they never wanted. Now a study of four men with BIID suggest their condition is linked to reduced activity in a brain area involved in forming a mental body map. "They can feel the body being touched, but it does not integrate into their sense of body image," says Paul McGeoch, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, who presented the study at a recent conference on the condition in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany. "They know the limb is part of their body, but it's 'more' than it should be. It should be gone," he adds. The disorder, also known as apotemnophilia, was first described in 1977 by the American sexologist John Money. He classified it as an intense sexual desire to have an amputation, hence its original name, which is Greek for love of amputation. Most patients, however, don't describe their desire to be amputees as sexual, says Michael First, a psychiatrist at Columbia University in New York who has conducted extensive interviews with dozens of patients. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 12685 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nathan Seppa Children under age 4 who get multiple courses of general anesthesia for surgery seem to be at greater risk of developing a learning disability later in childhood, compared with kids not exposed to the drugs, researchers report in the April Anesthesiology. Despite this apparent danger, the researchers acknowledge that they don’t know whether the knock-out drugs are responsible for the risk or if children needing surgeries are just prone to developing learning disabilities. “We feel strongly that this data is preliminary,” says study coauthor Randall Flick, a pediatrician and anesthesiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Flick and his colleagues consulted a medical registry of people born in Olmstead County, Minn., between 1976 and 1982 and identified 593 children who received anesthesia before reaching age 4 and 4,764 others who didn’t. The researchers also checked to see if school records designated any of the children as learning disabled, defined as scoring significantly below what their IQs would predict on reading, writing and math tests. The researchers excluded from the analysis any children who were severely mentally disabled or who had moved away before reaching age 5. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Intelligence
Link ID: 12684 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Lauran Neergaard -- Severe depression may silently break a seemingly healthy woman's heart. Doctors have long known that depression is common after a heart attack or stroke, and worsens those people's outcomes. Monday, Columbia University researchers reported new evidence that depression can lead to heart disease in the first place. The scientists tracked 63,000 women from the long-running Nurses' Health Study between 1992 and 2004. None had signs of heart disease when the study began, but nearly 8 percent had evidence of serious depression. The depressed women were more than twice as likely to experience sudden cardiac death -- death typically caused by an irregular heartbeat, concluded the 12-year study, published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. They also had a smaller increased risk of death from other forms of heart disease. The big surprise: Sudden cardiac death seemed more closely linked with antidepressant use than with the depression symptoms the women reported. That might simply mean that women who used antidepressants were, appropriately, the most seriously depressed, cautioned lead researcher Dr. William Whang. But he said the finding merited more research. Studies of the newer antidepressants most often used today so far haven't signaled a risk of irregular heartbeat, and some even have suggested protection, noted Dr. Redford Williams of Duke University, a specialist in how psychosocial factors affect health. © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Depression; Stress
Link ID: 12683 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Gary Stix SAN FRANCISCO – The popularity of brain training games has great appeal to aging baby boomers who may be having second thoughts about some of those mind-altering experiences of their now distant youth. The real value of these over-engineered video games, however, may not be for lapsed hippies: Research has shown that the games may improve the mental functioning of the learning disabled and the memory impaired – and now comes word that they may reduce the seemingly intractable symptoms of schizophrenia. Schizophrenics suffer from a long list of cognitive deficits that may affect attention, memory and the ability to set priorities and manage everyday affairs. One answer may lie in computerized brain-training software, according to researchers at the University of California at San Francisco, who have successfully used such software from Posit Science (a company established by neuroscience pioneer Michael Merzenich) to improve cognition in schizophrenics. The scientists conducted a study in which they split a group of 32 people diagnosed with schizophrenia in half: one group played ordinary video games and members of the other were put through 20 hours of training in exercises that switched tasks rapidly or picked out novel objects to improve a subject’s ability to categorize, predict or link information. Their findings, presented yesterday at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting here: the brain-trained group experienced statistically significant improvement in measures of inhibition (impulse control) and non-verbal working memory (the brain's RAM, where info is temporarily stored). There were no statistically significant improvements, however, in the speed of mental processing , verbal learning or verbal working memory. This work builds on previous studies that show the same software improved cognition in auditory processing. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 12682 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Gordy Slack For a decade or so, brain studies have seemed on the brink of answering questions about the nature of consciousness, the self, thought and experience. But they never do, argues University of California at Berkeley philosopher Alva Noë, because these things are not found solely in the brain itself. In his new book, "Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons From the Biology of Consciousness," Noë attacks the brave new world of neuroscience and its claims that brain mechanics can explain consciousness. Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist Francis Crick wrote, "You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." While Noë credits Crick for drawing popular and scientific attention to the question of consciousness, he thinks Crick's conclusions are dead wrong and dangerous. Noe's conversational style is gentle, attentive and easygoing. But, in true philosopher fashion, he also picks his words deliberately, as if stepping off the path of right thinking would result in some tragic plummet into the abyss of illogic. In San Francisco there's a brain gym where members exercise their brains with "neurobic" software. A sign outside the place reads: "You Are Your Brain!" It has become almost a mainstream notion now. But the subtitle of your book begins "Why you are not your brain." What's wrong with the "You are your brain" view? It's one thing to say you wouldn't be you if not for your brain, that your brain is critical to what you are. But I could say that about your upbringing and your culture, too. It's another thing entirely to say that you are your brain. ©2009 Salon Media Group, Inc

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12681 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Try this at home: If fruit flies are buzzing around your kitchen, switch on your hairdryer and aim it at the flies. A gentle stream of air will stop them in their tracks, putting them in prime position for swatting. The reaction of fruit flies to wind was something that had intrigued biologist David J. Anderson for some time. When the flies sensed the wind, they went into a defensive, hunkering-down position until the feel of the wind ceased, then resumed flying around. With an interest in animals' defensive behavior and its evolutionary ties to emotion, Anderson became interested in the neural connections underlying the flies' response to wind. In a study described in the March 12 issue of the journal Nature, Anderson and his team zeroed in on how the flies process the feel of the wind and respond by freezing in place. They found that that the flies' wind-sensitive neurons exist in the same sensory organ in the flies' antennae as the neurons that process the sound of the song of a potential mate. The next challenge was determining how the same organ processed two distinct stimuli, leading to two distinct behavioral responses. Anderson and his team, including graduate student Suzuko Yorozu, were able to dissect the neural circuits that underlie this defensive behavior and see a different set of neurons "light up" in response to wind versus the sound of courtship song. The team mounted a fly upside down under a very powerful two-photon microscope. Cutting a hole in the cuticle--the shell that covers the fly's brain--the team had a detailed view into the fly's brain. Having used sophisticated techniques to selectively visualize the activity of particular genes in the fly, the researchers could see when any neurons in the fly's brain were activated by a particular stimulus.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12680 - Posted: 03.26.2009

By Steve Connor, Science Editor Money works like a drug on the human brain – and even just the thought of earning a higher salary gives us a physical buzz, a study has found. Scientists have discovered that thinking about cash stimulates the reward centres involved in pleasure and the higher the salary – even if it is just imagined – the greater the pleasure generated in the brain. This may be no great surprise, but the most intriguing aspect of the research is that the findings hold true even if what we want to buy costs more, for example in times of high inflation, and our actual spending power drops. The results of the study suggest that the human brain is innately susceptible to the illusion of wealth that money can bring. This is known in economics as "money illusion" – when people get fixated on the nominal value of money, rather than on its actual purchasing power. Some economists have proposed that people behave irrationally when it comes to wages by being happier with higher salary increases in times of high inflation than they are with lower salary rises in times of low inflation. It has now emerged that more money really does seem to generate the feelings of reward in the brain that are also involved in irrational or addictive behaviour, even if the purchasing power of higher salaries is reduced by high inflation. A study by Professor Armin Falk, of the University of Bonn, has found scientific support for the theory of money illusion being embedded in the human mind by examining the brain activity of 18 volunteers who took part in a series of tests involving different salary payments and prices. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12679 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NICHOLAS WADE Nature is reputed to be red in tooth and claw, but many arms races across the animal kingdom are characterized by restraint rather than carnage. Competition among males is often expressed in the form of elaborate weapons made of bone, horn or chitin. The weapons often start off small and then, under the pressure of competition, may evolve to attain gigantic proportions. The Irish elk, now extinct, had antlers with a span of 12 feet. The drawback of this magnificent adornment, though, was that the poor beast had to carry more than 80 pounds of bone on its head. In a new review of sexual selection, a special form of natural selection that leads to outlandish armament and decoration, Douglas J. Emlen, a biologist at the University of Montana, has assembled ideas on the evolutionary forces that have made animal weapons so diverse. Sexual selection was Darwin’s solution to a problem posed by the cumbersome weapons sported by many species, and the baroque ornaments developed by others. They seemed positive handicaps in the struggle for survival, and therefore contrary to his theory of natural selection. To account for these extravagances, Darwin proposed that both armaments and ornaments must have been shaped by competition for mates. In his view, the evolution of the armaments was driven by the struggle between males for females, whereas the ornaments arose from the choice, largely by females, of characteristics they prized in males. Modern biologists have devoted considerable attention to female choice and how it has led to such a riotous profusion of animal high fashion, from the plumage of birds to the colors of butterflies. Less attention has been paid to the equally rich diversity of animal weaponry. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 12678 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey SAN FRANCISCO — Sleep-deprived people make mistakes. New research suggests that a tired brain may turn on the equivalent of an internal screen saver instead of concentrating on mental tasks, which may explain those blunders. Ninad Gujar of the University of California, Berkeley and colleagues presented evidence March 22 at the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society that sleep deprivation affects the brain’s default network. Scientists describe the default network as the parts of the brain that deactivate when a person is doing a specific mental task, such as having a conversation, reading or memorizing a list of words, or solving a math problem. The network is active, though, when people are ruminating, daydreaming, recalling the past or when the mind wanders. Researchers still don’t fully understand how the network works and how it affects cognition. Gujar wanted to find out if sleep deprivation affects the default network. His team tested 28 young adults; half got a normal amount of sleep and half were kept awake for 35 hours before testing. The volunteers did memory tests while in an fMRI scanner. Every time the volunteers saw a particular picture, they were supposed to punch a button. But Gujar was more interested in what happened in the volunteers’ brains while they waited for the picture to pop up. He left enough time between the correct picture and other images to allow participants’ brains to slip into default mode, and then he looked at brain activity. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Sleep; Attention
Link ID: 12677 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Gary Stix SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.-- We may all have a little bit of Narcissus in us. If the mythological figure were a modern-day pretty boy—say a Brad Pitt or a Matt Damon--a neuroscientist might interpret the infatuation with self not as a tragic flaw, but rather as a normal manifestation of the functioning of the superior temporal sulcus, the inferior frontal gyrus or some other brain structure lifted straight out of TV's Grey’s Anatomy. Like Narcissus, neuroscientists have found that our own faces capture our rapt attention. We recognize emotions from sadness to disgust more readily on our own faces than in the same expressions made by others. And when we don’t, something may be very wrong. This insight, presented yesterday at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting here, seems fairly obvious at first glance. But Bhismadev Chakrabarti, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge, wondered about it when he started his study. After all, most of us don’t spend the majority of our time looking in the mirror. In fact, we pass most of our days looking at other people and trying to determine, for instance, if they're frowning at us or simply getting ready to sneeze. To find the answer, Chakrabarti and colleagues took photos of 34 women who feigned facial expressions of happiness, sadness, anger, disgust and fear. The women did not see the photos until several weeks later when they were shown a mix of pix including those as well as photos of strangers. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12676 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Pat Shellenbarger GRAND RAPIDS -- Even before examining Brian Key's eyes, Dr. Christopher Glisson was sure the problem was not in his eyes, but in his brain. A tumor on the pituitary gland likely was pressing on the optic nerves, he believed, narrowing the high school senior's peripheral vision. Other doctors suspected a tumor, but it was Glisson's specialized training as a neuro-ophthalmologist that helped him find it. Yet he and his kind are an endangered species in the medical field, members of a sub-specialty that is losing practitioners because of the relatively low pay. They are victims of a health insurance system that rewards doctors who perform a lot of procedures and penalizes those who spend much time with their patients. "You can certainly make a lot more money," Glisson said. "To me, that's not where I thought my talents lie." As President Barack Obama is calling for health care reform, many critics say one thing that must change is the skewed payment system that encourages doctors to go into more lucrative specialties. Because of the relatively lower pay, there is a shortage of primary-care doctors and other specialists who can help patients avoid serious -- and costly -- medical problems. Glisson sees fewer patients in an average day than most doctors, but he spends an hour or more with each. © 2008 Michigan Online LLC.

Keyword: Vision; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12675 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers say taking a special vitamin supplement during pregnancy could prevent hydrocephalus - one of the most common birth brain defects. Tests on rats showed a combination of folates dramatically reduced the rates of hydrocephalus - in which fluids build up in the brain's chambers. They even seemed to work after the condition had started to develop. But the work, published in the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology, is still at an early stage. The team from the universities of Manchester and Lancaster hope to get permission to start clinical trials in pregnant women with babies diagnosed with hydrocephalus. The supplement itself is not currently available, so they are also seeking the support of a pharmaceutical company willing to produce it as a pill. At present hydrocephalus affects one in 1,000 live births. There is no satisfactory treatment for it other than surgical diversion of the fluid through a tube, known as a shunt, from the brain to the abdomen or heart. However, shunts are permanent and prone to infection and blockage, which means patients may require several operations during their lifetime. Most of those with by the condition have impaired mental and physical ability, although the effects can vary widely. The team also say they have shown it is the chemical composition of cerebrospinal fluid - rather than the fluid itself putting pressure on the brain - which causes the problems. Lead researcher Jaleel Miyan said: "Cerebrospinal fluid is not a liquid which simply cushions the brain and carries chemicals around it. It is actively produced and transported and plays an essential biological role in developing the brain". The combination of supplements appeared to stimulate this process. (C)BBC

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12674 - Posted: 03.23.2009

By Liz Kowalczyk Lawyers for Dr. Joseph Biederman, a leading Harvard child psychiatrist, are asking a judge to seal his testimony and accompanying documents in a huge multistate lawsuit, saying they "could be immensely damaging to him, both personally and professionally." Biederman has emerged as a key witness in a lawsuit brought on behalf of more than 2,000 patients, including children, who contend that they have been injured by psychiatric drugs known as atypical antipsychotics. Biederman, who works at Massachusetts General Hospital, is not a defendant in the case, but the plaintiffs' lawyers have submitted more than two dozen documents aiming to present him as an example of how drug companies and researchers cooperated to boost "off label" prescribing of drugs for purposes that go beyond federally approved uses, for example, prescribing adult medications to children. Such prescribing is permitted, but marketing for "off label" uses is not. The psychiatrist testified in the case in February, and a New Jersey judge plans to hear a request from Biederman's attorneys next week to make that testimony and attached exhibits confidential, lawyers on both sides said. Biederman's attorney, Peter Spivack, said he could not comment on the motion to seal because he did not have permission from his client to speak to the news media. The attached documents include PowerPoint presentations apparently given by Biederman to various groups about research being done at the MGH-Johnson & Johnson Center for the Study of Pediatric Psychopathology, which he ran from 2002 to 2006. Court documents say the company gave at least $700,000 to the center. © 2009 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12673 - Posted: 06.24.2010

It all started with Cheerios. Jonah Lehrer was once again standing in a supermarket aisle, crippled by the thought of which variety of whole-oat goodness to buy: honey nut or apple cinnamon. “It was an embarrassing waste of time,” he says, “and yet it happened to me all the time.” Lehrer decided that he had to figure out what was going on inside his brain when he contemplated such issues. And his curiosity transcended breakfast. How did the brain process picking a house? Choosing stocks? Split-second, life-or-death decisions? These questions led the author on a path from the epistemological roots of rational versus emotionally driven thinking to leveraging the tools of modern-day neuroscience to look inside the brain and see how it actually thinks. The result is his second book, How We Decide, a real-world exploration of the brain’s capacity for decision making. With it, Lehrer shows how different decisions require different mental tools; that rational thought isn’t always the answer; and that understanding how our brain processes information can improve the thousands of choices, big and small, we make every day. Lehrer, who is editor at large for Seed magazine, sat down with senior editor Greg Boustead to discuss the decision-making skills of pilots and world leaders, the problem with certainty, and the best way to handle a Stephen Colbert interview (“don’t try to be funny”). Seed: In How We Decide you talk about pilots extensively. During your research, you worked in flight simulators to get a feel for making critical decisions under duress. Jonah Lehrer: Yes, they’re unbelievably realistic. And I spent time with pilots to try to understand how they think. ©2005-2009 Seed Media Group LLC.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12672 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower Dogs are lousy conversationalists and can’t write worth a lick. But don’t sell the family pooch short when it comes to grasping subtle references in human communication, a new study suggests. Border collies quickly realize that their owners want them to fetch a toy from another room when shown a full-size or miniature replica of the desired item and given a command to “bring it here,” say biological psychologist Juliane Kaminski of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and her colleagues. Even a photograph of a toy works with some dogs as a signal to fetch that toy from an unseen location, the researchers report in an upcoming issue of Developmental Science. Three dogs already trained to fetch objects succeeded on both replica tasks right away. Two untrained dogs got the hang of replica requests after a bit of practice. “The most reasonable interpretation of dogs’ success in the replica tasks is that they understood that by showing a replica, a human was trying to communicate something to them,” Kaminski says. Dogs evolved a feel for how people communicate as a result of living in human settlements for thousands of years, she proposes. Earlier studies have found that chimps, dolphins and other nonhuman animals have great difficulty retrieving objects after being shown replicas of those objects, even after many trials. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Evolution; Intelligence
Link ID: 12671 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Two studies have pinpointed a single gene as key to the development and treatment of schizophrenia. A US team from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute found that a mutated version of the DISC1 gene disrupts the growth and development of brain cells. And a team from the University of Edinburgh showed that the gene affects how patients respond to treatment. Both studies, published in the journals PLoS One and Cell, raise hopes of more effective treatment for schizophrenia. Each family member diagnosed with mental illness also carried a mutated copy of DISC1 The condition is a common form of mental illness, affecting up to 1% of adults worldwide. Symptoms tend to appear in late adolescence or early adulthood, and can include delusions, hallucinations, paranoia, and depression. The US team showed that DISC1 plays a key role in normal brain development and the growth of individual neurons. However, carrying the wrong version of the gene can make this process go awry. Working on mice, they showed that DISC1 was active, both in cells taken from embryos and in brain stem cells taken from adult mice. When DISC1 levels were reduced in adult mice their brain cells failed to divide, and the animals developed symptoms mimicking schizophrenia in humans. Further tests showed that DISC1 acts like lithium, a drug commonly prescribed as mood stabiliser to patients with mental illness, inhibiting the action of a key chemical in the brain. When mice with depressed levels of DISC1 were treated with this chemical, their symptoms began to improve. Lead researcher Dr Li-Heui Tsai said: "We need to get a handle on the genetics of schizophrenia, but now we know how DISC1 probably contributes to the disorder, which is a big step." (C) BBC

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12670 - Posted: 03.21.2009

By David Brown Natasha Richardson, the British actress who fell during a ski lesson on Monday and later in the day lapsed into a coma, died of a large blood clot compressing her brain, New York City's medical examiner said yesterday. The bleeding that led to the clot was caused by "blunt impact to the head," according to the official report, which also labeled the death an accident. The formal name for the condition is "epidural hematoma." It is usually the result of bleeding from arteries torn when the skull is struck hard, often on the temple where the bone is thinnest. Arterial hemorrhage inside the skull is a potential catastrophe. Each heartbeat pumps blood under high pressure into a confined space, compressing the brain tissue. "It is the most feared, treatable problem in neurosurgery," said Gail Rosseau, chief of surgery at the Neurologic and Orthopedic Hospital of Chicago. "These are the patients who 'talk and die.' " If the condition is recognized in time, a surgeon can drill a hole through the skull or cut away a piece of it, remove the clot and relieve the pressure. This often results in complete recovery. Although many details of Richardson's accident have not been made public, she apparently demonstrated a "lucid interval" typical of many traumatic epidural hematomas -- a period soon after the impact when the victim is alert and feels well that is followed by a rapid decline into unconsciousness. © 2009 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 12669 - Posted: 06.24.2010