By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD STONY BROOK, N.Y. — Six years after their discovery, the extinct little people nicknamed hobbits who once occupied the Indonesian island of Flores remain mystifying anomalies in human evolution, out of place in time and geography, their ancestry unknown. Recent research has only widened their challenge to conventional thinking about the origins, transformations and migrations of the early human family. Indeed, the more scientists study the specimens and their implications, the more they are drawn to heretical speculation. Were these primitive survivors of even earlier hominid migrations out of Africa, before Homo erectus migrated about 1.8 million years ago? Could some of the earliest African toolmakers, around 2.5 million years ago, have made their way across Asia? Did some of these migrants evolve into new species in Asia, which moved back to Africa? Two-way traffic is not unheard of in other mammals. Or could the hobbits be an example of reverse evolution? That would seem even more bizarre; there are no known cases in primate evolution of a wholesale reversion to some ancestor in its lineage. The possibilities get curiouser and curiouser, said William L. Jungers of Stony Brook University, making hobbits “the black swan of paleontology — totally unpredicted and inexplicable.” Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 12803 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Rowan Hooper PERHAPS because of its non-serious nature, play has been a neglected, even embarrassing subject for serious scientists. Little work has been done on what it's for - that is, its evolutionary function. The Playful Brain has a stab at rectifying this, with some success. Play is so complicated, say the authors, that to understand it we need to build up a towering "layer cake" of information about neurology, physiology and juvenile development. Primates are difficult to experiment on - for this reason, and because of the authors' area of expertise, we are plunged straight into a detailed analysis of play fighting in rats. We have to wade through a lot of technical reading to get to the good stuff - and here I'm going to be shamelessly pro-ape - the parts about primates in general, and humans in particular. I enjoyed an anecdote about two juvenile gorillas play fighting, bashing into each other's shoulders. One abruptly changes his attack, and grabs the other's genitals, making him leap into the air in surprise. So what is play actually for? Pellis and Pellis show that play improves social competence by honing the emotional and intellectual skills necessary to thrive in society. This explains why males play more than females: females are more socially competent to start with, while males by their nature are more aggressive and competitive. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12802 - Posted: 06.24.2010

David Kessler researched part of "The End of Overeating" by diving into dumpsters behind restaurants to look for the nutritional labels of menu items high in fat, salt and sugar. He went in the middle of the night, long after the last employee had locked up the Chili's Grill and Bar. He'd steer his car around the back, check to make sure no one was around and then quietly approach the dumpster. If anyone noticed the man foraging through the trash, they would have assumed he was a vagrant. Except he was wearing black dress slacks and padded gardening gloves. "I'm surprised he didn't wear a tie," his wife said dryly. The high-octane career path of David A. Kessler, the Harvard-trained doctor, lawyer, medical school dean and former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration had come to this: nocturnal dumpster diving. Sometimes, he would just reach in. Other times, he would climb in. It took many of these forays until Kessler emerged with his prize: ingredient labels affixed to empty cardboard boxes that spelled out the fats, salt and sugar used to make the Southwestern Eggrolls, Boneless Shanghai Wings and other dishes served by the nation's second-largest restaurant chain. Kessler was on a mission to understand a problem that has vexed him since childhood: why he can't resist certain foods. © 2009 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Obesity; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12801 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANNE EISENBERG EARBUDS can pipe audio directly from a portable player to the ear. But did you ever imagine that eyeglasses or contact lenses could deliver digital images directly from a smartphone to the retina? An eyeglass from SBG Labs has a tiny projector in its frame. Holographics optics create an overlay image — for example, a map to the wearer’s destination. A contact lens created by Babak A. Parviz and a team at the University of Washington in Seattle offers built-in electronics to create displays. Several companies are developing prototypes for digital devices that look like stylish eyewear but may one day offer such capabilities to consumers. The glasses are called heads-up displays because the wearer can always look through them and see the real world — like the sidewalk just ahead — but can also see, on an overlay image, virtual information like an electronic map or an arrow showing the correct way to a destination. The glasses may also help the wearer remember the name of a long-lost friend she sees on the street. SBG Labs, an optical technology company in Sunnyvale, Calif., is among the businesses that are developing the devices. The glasses are only slightly larger than many chic pairs of wraparounds, but instead of bearing rhinestones or designer initials, they hold a tiny projector and optics — tucked away in the side of the frame. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision; Robotics
Link ID: 12800 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Gabrielle Glaser As evidence of widespread vitamin D deficiency grows, some scientists are wondering whether the sunshine vitamin—once only considered important in bone health—may actually play a role in one of neurology's most vexing conditions: autism. The idea, although not yet tested or widely held, comes out of preliminary studies in Sweden and Minnesota. Last summer, Swedish researchers published a study in Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology that found the prevalence of autism and related disorders was three to four times higher among Somali immigrants than non-Somalis in Stockholm. The study reviewed the records of 2,437 children, born between 1988 and 1998 in Stockholm, in response to parents and teachers who had raised concerns about whether children with a Somali background were overrepresented in the total group of children with autism. In Sweden, the 15,000-strong Somali community calls autism "the Swedish disease," says Elisabeth Fernell, a researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and a co-author of the study. In Minnesota, where there are an estimated 60,000 Somali immigrants, the situation was quite similar: There, health officials noted reports of autism among Somali refugees, who began arriving in 1993, comparable to those found in Sweden. Within several years of arrival, dozens of the Somali families whose children were born in the U.S. found themselves grappling with autism, says Huda Farah, a Somali-born molecular biologist who works on refugee resettlement issues with Minnesota health officials. The number of Somali children in the city's autism programs jumped from zero in 1999 to 43 in 2007, says Ann Fox, director of special education programs for Minneapolis schools. The number of Somali-speaking children in the Minneapolis school district increased from 1,773 to 2,029 during the same period. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 12799 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey Early to bed, early to rise makes a man sleepy and inattentive at twilight. A new brain imaging study suggests morning people’s circadian clocks can’t resist the biological pressure to sleep, while night owls don’t buckle as easily. The research, appearing in the April 24 Science, could change the way scientists view the relationship between sleep and the circadian clock. Two systems control sleeping and waking — the circadian clock and the sleep homeostat. The circadian clock helps synch the body’s rhythms, such as the rise and fall of blood pressure and body temperature, with light and dark cycles. The homeostat is a biological accountant that keeps track of how long a person has been awake or asleep and how much sleep the person has had recently — inducing sleep when it’s been too long. As the day goes on, the waking signal from the clock gets stronger, says Derk-Jan Dijk, a professor of sleep and physiology at the University of Surrey in Guildford, England. “It’s not just an alarm clock that gives one signal in the morning,” he says. “It’s really a process.” If the circadian clock operated alone, people would be most awake in the evening, but the homeostat counterbalances the clock’s wake signal. Until now, scientists have either viewed the two systems as separate, or assumed that the clock was the most important factor in determining bedtimes. But the study introduces a new, more intimate link between the two systems. The homeostat plays a more important role than people thought in determining sleeping and waking times, says Allan Pack of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 12798 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Andy Coghlan A small patch of cells that protects the eye from age-related blindness could begin trials in patients within two years in the UK. The pioneering treatment could be one of the first successful applications originating from embryonic stem cells (ESC), the cells in embryos that can grow into all tissues of the body. Because embryos are destroyed when ESCs are obtained, anti-abortion groups have opposed development of treatments based on them. More recently, they've claimed that ESC research is unnecessary because it's now possible to make ordinary tissue into embryonic-like cells called "induced pluripotent" stem cells (iPS). Success of the eye patch would demonstrate that ESCs can indeed lead to valuable treatments, in this case to prevent blindness. In a major boost for the treatment today, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced that it would be funding clinical development of the treatment and helping to win permission from regulatory authorities to proceed with trials. "This offers such an opportunity for patients, and it's time to start mapping that regulatory pathway towards trials," says Ruth McKernan, chief scientific officer of Pfizer Regenerative Medicine. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Vision; Stem Cells
Link ID: 12797 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The organizers of today's Pro-Test rally at the University of California, Los Angeles, say it succeeded beyond their hopes. Hundreds of people—many of them students and postdocs—came out to show their support for biomedical research. U.S. scientists who use animals in their research have been under attack from animal rights extremists in recent years, and UCLA has been the epicenter. Many scientists have been reluctant to speak up in defense of their work for fear of provoking further harassment. But today that changed. "I'm amazed," UCLA neuroscientist David Jentsch said of the turnout (campus police put the crowd at about 700). Jentsch organized the rally after waking up one night last month to find his car in flames. Animal rights activists later claimed responsibility. Jentsch modeled today's rally on protests at the University of Oxford that helped turn the tide of public opinion against animal rights extremists who opposed construction of a research lab there. Despite the time and effort it took away from his research and the hate e-mail he endured, Jentsch says the rally was worth it. "I think putting our faces on what we do humanizes the effort and makes it harder to write obscene things in the middle of the night and to brutalize people." Pro-testers gathered on the edge of the UCLA campus as a counter protest staged by animal rights groups was winding down across the street. The anti-vivisection rally, part of the annual World Week for Animals in Laboratories, attracted fewer people—several dozen—and at times there seemed to be almost as many journalists as protesters. The media, including CNN and several local television stations, had turned out perhaps hoping to see a confrontation. There wasn't one. The visible police presence may have helped, but everyone on both sides appeared to be on their best behavior. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 12796 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A study has found that painkillers such as ibuprofen cannot prevent Alzheimer's disease - but does not rule out that they may delay its onset. Work had raised hope that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) might have a preventative effect. But the latest 12-year study found the risk of dementia was 66% higher in people with heavy NSAID use, compared with those with little or no use. The University of Washington study features in the journal Neurology. A US study published last year and based on data from almost 250,000 veterans showed those who used ibuprofen for more than five years were more than 40% less likely to develop Alzheimer's. The latest research focused on 2,736 people with an average age of 75 at the start of the study. Lead researcher Dr Eric Larson said: "Although we hoped to find a protective effect, there was none. "Thus, for this age group, there's no basis for taking NSAIDs to prevent Alzheimer's disease." His colleague Dr John Breitner said a key difference between the latest study and previous work was that the participants were older. He said: "It has been argued for some time that NSAID use delays the onset of Alzheimer's disease. It would follow that studies looking at younger people who use NSAIDs would show fewer cases of Alzheimer's, while in groups of older people there might be more cases, including those that would have occurred earlier if they had not been delayed. We must not ignore the fundamental finding, which is an increase in the risk of dementia in the NSAID users. We need further research to understand that result more clearly." Rebecca Wood, of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, said there were no clear evidence pinning down the effect of NSAIDs - if any - on dementia. (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 12795 - Posted: 04.23.2009

By LAURAN NEERGAARD WASHINGTON -- Food hijacked Dr. David Kessler's brain. Not apples or carrots. The scientist who once led the government's attack on addictive cigarettes can't wander through part of San Francisco without craving a local shop's chocolate-covered pretzels. Stop at one cookie? Rarely. It's not an addiction but it's similar, and he's far from alone. Kessler's research suggests millions share what he calls "conditioned hypereating" _ a willpower-sapping drive to eat high-fat, high-sugar foods even when they're not hungry. In a book being published next week, the former Food and Drug Administration chief brings to consumers the disturbing conclusion of numerous brain studies: Some people really do have a harder time resisting bad foods. It's a new way of looking at the obesity epidemic that could help spur fledgling movements to reveal calories on restaurant menus or rein in portion sizes. "The food industry has figured out what works. They know what drives people to keep on eating," Kessler tells The Associated Press. "It's the next great public health campaign, of changing how we view food, and the food industry has to be part of it." He calls the culprits foods "layered and loaded" with combinations of fat, sugar and salt _ and often so processed that you don't even have to chew much. Overeaters must take responsibility, too, and basically retrain their brains to resist the lure, he cautions. © 2009 The Associated Press

Keyword: Obesity; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12794 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Alice Park The promise of energy drinks is pretty irresistible — push your body, work hard, sweat buckets, and if you need an extra boost, down a bottle or two of liquid fuel to drive you through the rest of your workout. Makes sense, since the drinks provide your body with carbohydrates in the form of sugars — the fuel that cells and tissues like muscle need to keep working. But exercise experts say that despite what you may think, energy drinks have no effect at all on your tired muscles. Instead, when your energy is petering out, a swig of an energy drink works on the brain to keep you inspired and motivated to push on. Researchers at the University of Birmingham and Manchester Metropolitan University report in the Journal of Physiology that sugary energy drinks activate reward and pleasure regions in the brain, a boost that can translate to better performance — and one that does not occur with other artificially sweetened beverages. In the study, volunteers who got sugary energy drinks were able to complete a physical-training session 2% faster than those who got artificially sweetened drinks, and improved their mean power output as well. "What we are suggesting is a central-governor model," says Ed Chambers, one of the study's co-authors and a researcher at the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at the University of Birmingham. "Ultimately, the brain controls exercise performance by controlling the neural outflow to the exercising muscles." © 2009 Time Inc.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12793 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nicole Branan Forming a grammatically correct sentence may seem to require advanced cognitive skills, but it turns out that our creative language capacity might rely on a less sophisticated system than is commonly thought. A recent study suggests that our ability to construct sentences may arise from procedural memory—the same simple memory system that lets our dogs learn to sit on command. Scientists distinguish between procedural memory, which is relevant for learning skills such as how to swim, and declarative memory, which stores knowledge, including facts and memories of events, such as one’s birthday, says Victor S. Ferreira of the University of California, San Diego. To find out which system is at work when we form sentences, Ferreira and his team exploited a phenomenon called syntactic persistence—speakers tend to use the same grammatical pattern they have used or heard in previous sentences. The researchers tested four healthy individuals and four amnesic patients. The amnesiacs’ procedural memory was intact, meaning that they could learn skills with repetitive practice, but their declarative memory abilities were damaged, leaving them unable to memorize new facts. First, all participants heard and repeated a sentence. Then they saw an unrelated picture and had to describe it. Finally, participants heard another sentence that was either identical to the original sentence or subtly changed in its meaning or grammatical structure, or both. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 12792 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Linda Geddes A GROWING appreciation of the links between anorexia and autism spectrum disorders has uncovered new opportunities for treating the eating disorder. Mental health professionals are now attempting to train the brains of people with anorexia to be more flexible and to see the big picture as well as fine details. In doing so, they hope patients will be less inclined to obsess about body weight and calories and be better equipped to overcome their eating disorder in the long term, as well as gaining weight more immediately. Last month, the international Academy for Eating Disorders published a paper calling for eating disorders (EDs) such as anorexia and bulimia to receive the same degree of healthcare as other biologically based mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) (International Journal of Eating Disorders, DOI: 10.1002/eat.20589). Other groups are even calling for anorexia to be placed in the same diagnostic category as autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The main reason for this change is a growing understanding of the biological basis of EDs. Twin studies suggest that between 50 and 83 per cent of EDs have a genetic basis. Now, evidence suggests that people with anorexia have cognitive traits associated with ASD. "Eating disorders and autism spectrum disorders are obviously not the same thing, but they do have some things in common," says Janet Treasure of the Institute of Psychiatry in London. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Autism; Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 12791 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Dan Jones DAYBREAK, and a group of apes are dancing around a rectangular monolith so dark it seems to suck light in. Inspired by this mysterious object, one of them grabs a bone and begins to wield it as a tool - then as a weapon. The armed ape goes hunting, makes a kill and eats flesh for the first time. Next day, he drives a rival group of apes from a watering hole and murders their leader. This, according to Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi masterpiece 2001: A space odyssey, is the dawn of humankind. If only it were that simple. Anyone trying to understand our origins soon realises that no one thing pushed our ape ancestors across the threshold of humanity. It is difficult to pin down what makes us human anyway. We walk upright on two legs, with disproportionately large brains held high, communicating in spoken languages, navigating the complexity of human social life, producing sophisticated tools and artefacts, and creating culture. The story of how we became human is woven from many strands. Attempts to unravel that tale have until recently relied on the hard evidence of fossilised bones. This has allowed us to make inferences about certain aspects of our ancestors: how big they were, how they moved and their cranial capacity. But there is a limit to what you can learn from bones. In particular, they tell us little about our ancestors' less tangible traits, such as how fast they grew, their age at weaning and sexual maturity, and how many offspring they had. They also tell us almost nothing about thought and behaviour. This is a problem, says Robin Dunbar of the University of Oxford, because such factors are important in human evolution. "They're all part of the big story." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 12790 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower Predicting whether patients with mental disorders will become violent is a dicey business, and one the legal system has thrust upon mental-health workers. A new study encouragingly suggests that swift swings in the intensity of symptoms can often peg which psychiatric patients are on the verge of threatening or hurting others. Employing a statistical technique called dynamic systems modeling, the new work shows that among psychiatric patients with documented histories of committing violent acts, those whose symptoms of emotional distress rapidly and repeatedly fluctuated from mild to severe during a 26-week period were particularly apt to assault others or to threaten them with a weapon, say psychologist Candice Odgers of the University of California, Irvine and her colleagues. In cases of rapid symptom fluctuation, patients went from peaks to valleys of emotional health about every two to four weeks, the team reports in a paper published online April 15 and slated to appear in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Violence occurred less frequently among patients whose symptoms fluctuated from high to low points over longer stretches, which often lasted about 10 weeks. Overall, patients whose symptoms rapidly ebbed and flowed were almost three times as likely to become violent than those whose symptoms oscillated slowly. Patients who displayed rapidly fluctuating psychiatric symptoms that also worsened during the study were especially likely to commit two or more violent acts during the study period. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Emotions; Aggression
Link ID: 12789 - Posted: 06.24.2010

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