By Bruce Bower Everyone oohs and ahs over babies. Ironically, new research suggests that young women taking oral contraceptives are especially good at picking out babies with the most adorable little mugs. Female sex hormones sensitize women to differences in babies’ cuteness, propose psychologist Reiner Sprengelmeyer of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and his colleagues. When given choices between computer-manipulated images of a baby’s face, premenopausal women discern gradations in the cuteness of the face better than either postmenopausal women or men of all ages, Sprengelmeyer’s group reports in the February Psychological Science. In the new study, young women taking hormone-boosting contraceptive pills outdid those not taking contraceptives, as well as premenopausal women in general, at detecting babies’ cuteness. Women of all ages identified subtle size differences between pairs of squares with comparable skill, indicating that hormone levels had no effects on basic visual faculties, the researchers assert. Instead, relatively high reproductive hormone levels in premenopausal women make them more emotionally responsive to cute babies, the team suggests. access © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 12532 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Anna Salleh -- The molecular answer to a 30-year puzzle over what triggers birds to breed in spring has been solved by U.K. researchers. Russell Foster of the University of Oxford unveiled his team's latest findings at a meeting of the Australian Neuroscience Society being held in Canberra. Scientists have long been puzzled how birds know when it's spring breeding time, said Foster, who is a circadian neuroscientist, studying how body clocks are regulated by light. The main way birds could know that it is spring is by detecting the changes in the number of daylight hours. But experiments in the 1930s showed that birds who had their eyes covered or removed still knew when to breed, said Foster. Later experiments implanted fiber optics in birds to simulate a spring-like day and tested the responses of various parts of the brain to this. "These studies found the birds' reproductive system was triggered to become active when the hypothalamus was illuminated," said Foster. Although the hypothalamus is deep in the base of the brain, it can still detect light because, as any child who has ever shone a torch through their hand knows, light penetrates tissue. © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Vision
Link ID: 12531 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway Though they wouldn't win much applause at a karaoke lounge, the infant forms of blue butterflies can belt out a convincing cover version of a tune favoured by red ants - which show their appreciation by protecting and feeding the butterfly larvae. Researchers have found that the larvae and pupae of Maculinea rebeli - a parasitic butterfly native to western Europe, though threatened with extinction - impersonate red ants so faithfully that worker ants worship them as if they were queens, caring for the developing caterpillar even at the expense of their own lives. "They appeared to be treating the caterpillars as if they were the holiest of holiest, the pinnacle of power, the queen ant," says Jeremy Thomas, an entomologist at the University of Oxford who led the new study. Listen to caterpillars imitating ants here, pupae making ant-noises here, the noise of the queen ant here and a worker ant here Playing queen As young caterpillars, M. rebeli spend their days gorging on leafy greens. When they're nearly ready to begin their transformation into a butterfly, the caterpillars descend to the forest floor and secrete ant-like chemicals. Duped worker ants ferry the caterpillar to its colony, where it is accepted as another ant, based on its smell alone. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Animal Communication; Hearing
Link ID: 12530 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Greg Miller If you're thinking of hiring a tax accountant, you might want to note the color of his office. According to a new study, the color red can improve performance on detail-oriented tasks--a desirable thing if your goal is an accurate return. However, if you're hoping to pare down your tax bill with any possible deductions, no matter how far-fetched, you might look for an accountant with a blue office--that color boosts creativity, the researchers report. Previous research on how color affects cognition has yielded inconsistent findings, says Rui (Juliet) Zhu, a consumer psychologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Some studies find that red enhances cognition, for example, while other studies suggest the opposite. Zhu suspected this might be because the work didn't pay enough attention to which types of cognition were being affected. Red might enhance performance on some tasks, she reasoned, while impairing performance on others. To investigate, Zhu and graduate student Ravi Mehta manipulated the background color on a computer screen while volunteers, mostly undergraduate students, performed a variety of tasks. For those that required attention to detail--such as proofreading a list of addresses--participants were slightly more accurate when the background was red, compared to blue or white. Blue, on the other hand, stimulated creativity. When subjects were asked to name as many uses for a brick as they could think of in a minute, they came up with more creative responses (such as "to use it as a scratch post for animals") and earned higher creativity scores from a jury of their student peers when the background was blue, Mehta and Zhu report online today in Science. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Emotions; Vision
Link ID: 12529 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Nick Lane IF YOU stopped eating today, you wouldn't survive more than two months. A crocodile, on the other hand, might live for a year or more. Why the difference? You waste most of the food you eat generating heat. The evolution of warm-bloodedness, or endothermy, is one of life's great mysteries. Sure, there are some advantages - staying active in the cold, keeping young cosy and warm, and avoiding having to go out into the open to soak up heat from the sun. The thing is, you could get much the same advantages by turning up the heat only when and where in the body it is needed, as many animals do. So why do most birds and mammals keep the furnaces burning 24/7? Staying warm - which for birds means 40 °C on average - comes at a price. Some warm-blooded animals have to eat as much in one day as similarly sized reptiles do in a month, a dangerous and time-consuming strategy. Biologists have long struggled to understand why we mammals and our feathery cousins are warm-blooded. The standard explanation is that it evolved in small carnivores to enable an active, predatory lifestyle. Last year, however, a radical new idea was put forward: warm blood evolved not in carnivores but in herbivores, as a way of balancing their nutrient requirements. Though it is early days, this idea could explain not only why we have such an apparently wasteful lifestyle, but also a long-standing question about the dinosaurs (see "Why did dinosaurs grow so big?"). © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 12528 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Simon Crompton A magic pill that makes you slim with no side-effects would be the 21st century's goose that lays the golden egg. With 13 million people forecast to become obese by 2010, the market for a miracle cure is huge. Dieters spent £47million last year on pills and diet aids, just one segment of an industry with a turnover of £1 billion a year. It's no wonder that so many companies want to jump on this lucrative bandwagon. “I achieved the impossible,” ran the headline after a woman in America claimed that Alli, an anti-obesity drug to be made available in British pharmacies this spring, had enabled her to lose 4st (25.4kg) in 18 months. Last week came the news that we're using eight times the number of slimming tablets than we were seven years ago. But their ingredients do not include miracles. The singer Kelly Osbourne checked into rehab last week, rumoured to be addicted to weight-loss pills. And the news that Alli will be available over the counter in the UK has also sparked tales of bouts of diarrhoea from those who have tried it, and warnings from doctors that weight loss with the drug is likely to be small and will occur only if people also make big changes to their lifestyles. This follows concerns from consumer groups that other types of slimming pills, sold at healthfood shops as herbal remedies and supplements, are for the most part useless. Loopholes in British regulation allow the makers of such pills to make claims about weight loss that are scientifically unsubstantiated. Then there are pills that are available online, subject to no controls and sometimes dangerous. Copyright 2009 Times Newspapers Ltd.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 12527 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By KAREN BARROW Dr. Margaret Gatz, a professor of psychology, gerontology and preventative medicine at the University of Southern California, conducts research on interventions that may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. In a recent study, published in the January 2009 issue of the journal Diabetes, Dr. Gatz and her team tracked rates of dementia and diabetes in Swedish twins and discovered that developing diabetes before the age of 65 was associated with a 125 percent increased risk of subsequently developing Alzheimer’s disease. 1. How did you become interested in the relationship between diabetes and dementia? Our research began with the question why some people develop dementia, especially Alzheimer’s disease, in old age, whereas others do not. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia, followed by vascular dementia, which is generally caused by the same things that are risk factors for stroke. Recently, a number of researchers have begun to show that vascular risk factors are important not only for increasing risk of vascular dementia but also for increasing risk of Alzheimer’s disease. This observation is particularly interesting because vascular risk factors are potentially modifiable. In other words, people might be able to reduce their risk of Alzheimer’s disease by attending to the kinds of health behaviors that reduce vascular risk, such as controlling blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes. What led our research group to be interested in diabetes was the search for potential ways to lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease. We were fortunate to be able to launch the Study of Dementia in Swedish Twins, building on the Swedish Twin Registry, to identify a population of twins where one or both members of the pair have developed dementia. Because the participants are twins, they are genetically similar, and that permits us to ask specifically what is different in the lives of those twins when one has dementia and the other does not. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 12526 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Children who are born in late summer or early autumn are often taller and stronger than peers born in spring and winter, a large study suggests. The results from the Children of the 90s project - which involved 7,000 youngsters - says the reason may lie in their mothers' exposure to the sun. The body makes Vitamin D, crucial for bone-building, from sunlight. The Bristol University study suggests that this process may even occur in babies while still in the womb. By the age of 10, those children born in the summer and autumn months were on average half a centimetre taller and had nearly 13 cm sq of extra bone area than those born in the winter months. "Wider bones are thought to be stronger and less prone to breaking as a result of osteoporosis in later life, so anything that affects early bone development is significant," said Professor Jon Tobias, one of the researchers. Mothers entering the late stages of pregnancy in the summer can attain the necessary vitamin D levels by walking around outside or even sunbathing, the researchers suggested. People should not panic about skin cancer as a result of controlled exposure, as some sun was much better than none, they added. And if there was not much sun to be seen, "women might consider talking to their doctor about taking Vitamin D supplements, particularly if their babies are due between November and May," said Professor Tobias. In winter months at latitudes of 52 degrees north (above Birmingham), there is no ultraviolet light of the appropriate wavelength for the body to make vitamin D in the skin, research shows. The Arthritis Research Campaign is currently running a trial to establish whether giving vitamin D to pregnant women increases the bone density of their babies at birth and in childhood and reduces the risk of developing osteoporosis in later life. "Although most people in the UK can can get the essential nutrients they need from their diet, and don't need to take extra supplements, the exception is vitamin D," a spokeswoman for the charity said. (C)BBC

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 12525 - Posted: 02.05.2009

by Michael Brooks WHILE many institutions collapsed during the Great Depression that began in 1929, one kind did rather well. During this leanest of times, the strictest, most authoritarian churches saw a surge in attendance. This anomaly was documented in the early 1970s, but only now is science beginning to tell us why. It turns out that human beings have a natural inclination for religious belief, especially during hard times. Our brains effortlessly conjure up an imaginary world of spirits, gods and monsters, and the more insecure we feel, the harder it is to resist the pull of this supernatural world. It seems that our minds are finely tuned to believe in gods. Religious ideas are common to all cultures: like language and music, they seem to be part of what it is to be human. Until recently, science has largely shied away from asking why. "It's not that religion is not important," says Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University, "it's that the taboo nature of the topic has meant there has been little progress." The origin of religious belief is something of a mystery, but in recent years scientists have started to make suggestions. One leading idea is that religion is an evolutionary adaptation that makes people more likely to survive and pass their genes onto the next generation. In this view, shared religious belief helped our ancestors form tightly knit groups that cooperated in hunting, foraging and childcare, enabling these groups to outcompete others. In this way, the theory goes, religion was selected for by evolution, and eventually permeated every human society (New Scientist, 28 January 2006, p 30) © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12524 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Siri Carpenter Lousy day? Don’t try to think happy thoughts—just think fast. A new study shows that accelerated thinking can improve your mood. In six experiments, researchers at Princeton and Harvard universities made research participants think quickly by having them generate as many problem-solving ideas (even bad ones) as possible in 10 minutes, read a series of ideas on a computer screen at a brisk pace or watch an I Love Lucy video clip on fast-forward. Other participants performed similar tasks at a relaxed speed. Results suggested that thinking fast made participants feel more elated, creative and, to a lesser degree, energetic and powerful. Activities that promote fast thinking, then, such as whip­ping through an easy crossword puzzle or brain-storming quickly about an idea, can boost energy and mood, says psychologist Emily Pronin, the study’s lead author. Pronin notes that rapid-fire thinking can sometimes have negative consequences. For people with bipolar disorder, thoughts can race so quickly that the manic feeling becomes aversive. And based on their own and others’ research, Pronin and a colleague propose in another recent article that although fast and varied thinking causes elation, fast but repetitive thoughts can instead trigger anxiety. (They further suggest that slow, varied thinking leads to the kind of calm, peaceful happiness associated with mindfulness meditation, whereas slow, repetitive thinking tends to sap energy and spur depressive thoughts.) © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Emotions; Attention
Link ID: 12523 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Coco Ballantyne A new study in mice suggests that a mother's childhood experiences may affect the brain function of her offspring. Researchers found that mouse moms who were physically active, stimulated and changed their living arrangements frequently as youngsters gave birth to babies with better memory than those born to mothers raised in dull environments. "How well mice remember when they are young is influenced by exposures to stimuli of their mothers when they were young," says Larry Feig, a biochemist at Tufts University Medical School in Boston and senior author of the study that will published tomorrow in The Journal of Neuroscience. This study adds to an accumulating body of evidence that not all the physiological characteristics passed from parents to offspring are genetic, Feig notes. Is it possible the same is true in humans? "The best we could say is if this occurs in humans," he says, "it would suggest that experiences [your mother] had during adolescence could influence your memory." Feig's team previously showed that stimulating environments trigger a biochemical cascade in mice that enhances their recall by fostering communication between nerve cells in the hippocampus, a region of the brain that controls memories. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 12522 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Katey Rich One Of History's Most Famous Brains Goes To The Movies Henry Molaison never knew throughout his long life that he was making an irreplaceable contribution to neuroscience. And now after his death there will be a movie to commemorate it. Columbia Pictures and Scott Rudin have picked up the rights to a forthcoming memoir about Molaison, who was known for the 45 years that Dr. Suzanne Corkin studied him only as H.M. Molaison, after suffering seizures since a boyhood bicycle accident, had a lobotomy at age 27 that ended the seizures, but also made him completely unable to form new memories. As described in his New York Times obituary, Molaison would not remember the scientists who worked with him from day to day, but with time could improve at tasks they taught him, proof that there was some innate memory that remained in him after all. Variety says Columbia has also picked up the rights to another book about Molaison, and plans to tell the story through Corkin's point-of-view. Given how well-read the Times obituary was, it seems maybe this is a neuroscience milestone that will have an appeal outside beyond the medical community.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 12521 - Posted: 02.05.2009

By Paul Raeburn When my wife, Elizabeth, was pregnant, she had a routine ultrasound exam, and I was astonished by the images. The baby’s ears, his tiny lips, the lenses of his eyes and even the feathery, fluttering valves in his heart were as crisp and clear as the muscles and tendons in a Leonardo da Vinci drawing. Months before he was born, we were already squabbling about whom he looked like. Mostly, though, we were relieved; everything seemed to be fine. Elizabeth was 40, and we knew about all the things that can go wrong in the children of older mothers. We worried about Down syndrome, which is more common in the offspring of older women. Elizabeth had the tests to rule out Down syndrome and a few other genetic abnormalities. That was no guarantee the baby would be okay, but the results were reassuring to us. The day after Henry was born, while we were still bleary-eyed from a late-night cesarean delivery, we caught part of a report on the hospital television about an increased risk of autism in the children of older fathers. Until then, all we’d thought about was Elizabeth’s age—not mine. We’d had no idea that my age could be an important factor in our baby’s health. When we got home, I looked up the study. Researchers had analyzed medical records in Israel, where all young men and most women must report to the draft board for mandatory medical, intelligence and psychiatric screening. They found that children born to fathers 40 or older had nearly a sixfold increase in the risk of autism as compared with kids whose fathers were younger than 30. Children of fathers older than 50—that includes me—had a ninefold risk of autism. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Autism; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 12520 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Some children with a common mental disorder may have newly identified genetic mutations that affect learning and memory. In Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Jacques Michaud, a geneticist at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center in Montreal, and an international team of colleagues said they've identified mutations for non-syndromic mental deficiency or NSMD. Children with the mutations look normal physically but may have delays in language and mental development and, in some cases, a mild form of epilepsy. The researchers discovered that three per cent of the 94 subjects with NSMD they studied had harmful mutations in the SYNGAP1 gene. "Several observations indicate that new mutations are a frequent cause of neurodevelopmental disorders, but their identification has been difficult because it requires the study of a large fraction of genes, which represents a challenging task," said Dr. Fadi Hamdan, an author of the study. To identify the mutations, the researchers used a new technology to study hundreds of genes in people with NSMD, and 142 subjects with autism spectrum disorders, 143 subjects with schizophrenia, and 190 control subjects. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12519 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Susan Milius Maybe female seed beetles have their own what-the-bleep exclamation. Even for insects, it’s difficult to imagine any other reaction to a male Callosobruchus maculatus beetle’s sex organ, which has spikes. “It jumps to mind as something quite dumb,” says Göran Arnqvist, an evolutionary biologist at Uppsala University in Sweden, who for much of the past eight years has studied seed beetle sex. Male beetles of several Callosobruchus species have sharp edges on their sperm-delivery organs. The females’ ducts grow a bit of extra toughening but not enough to make sex safe from the risk of injury. After many tests, Arnqvist has concluded that the genital excesses aren’t good for the species as a whole. These seed beetles would have less-damaging sex — and would produce more babies — if males lost their edges. Discussions of evolution often glorify the beautifully apt forms: orchids with nectar recesses just the right length for the tonguelike structure of a certain moth, or harmless butterflies with the same wing colors as a poisonous neighbor. Yet the most dramatic examples of the power of evolutionary theory may come from the strange and ugly stuff — biology that seems too dumb to have been designed. Trying to understand counterintuitive sexual parts and habits follows in the best of scientific traditions. As Charles Darwin worked on evolution, he pondered male phenomena that looked useless, or even harmful, for surviving. Outsized horns on male beetles puzzled him, as did male birds with gorgeous plumage. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 12518 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sandra G. Boodman Valerie Novak fervently wished doctors would stop telling her the intense headache she'd endured for several weeks was a migraine. For one thing, neither the Georgetown University senior nor her close relatives had headaches, and migraines are frequently familial. None of the increasingly potent drugs doctors prescribed was doing much good. And the 22-year-old had lost 15 pounds in three weeks from bouts of severe vomiting. "I was so frustrated and upset," recalled Novak of her ordeal last summer, which involved consultations with half a dozen doctors, several trips to area emergency rooms and two hospitalizations. Novak, who had always been healthy, said she feared the unrelenting pain in her left temple and associated symptoms were something "I'd have to live with for the rest of my life." Her mother, Kathy Novak, a nurse practitioner in Bowie, was similarly skeptical of the diagnosis but grateful that doctors had ruled out more ominous possibilities, such as a brain tumor. When her middle daughter began complaining about double vision, Kathy took her to an ophthalmologist. His judgment led to an accurate diagnosis that had nothing to do with migraines but was instead a rare complication of a common item listed on Novak's medical records. Left untreated, it might have killed her. An Arabic studies major who had been scheduled to graduate in December 2008, Novak said her headache began last summer while she was in Colorado visiting her boyfriend. When over-the-counter pain relievers failed to work, she consulted a Denver physician, who told her she probably had a migraine that would go away on its own. © 2009 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12517 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New ways of treating Parkinson's disease by stimulating the brain are to be investigated by scientists. Deep brain stimulation eases symptoms, such as tremors, by allowing sufferers to deliver electrical pulses to electrodes implanted in their brains. Researchers at St Andrews University will study what happens in the head when the electrodes are switched on. They will also look at whether other symptoms can be eased by targeting different parts of the brain. Symptoms of Parkinson's disease include tremors, difficulty moving and poor balance. Professor Philip Winn, from St Andrews University, will work with researchers in Germany, Italy, France and Scotland on the three-year, £1.17m project. He said he wanted to find answers to a range of questions. "One is to do with exactly what effect the electrical stimulation is having on the brain. Is it the case that we're stimulating activity or is it in fact the case that the stimulation we do, what the electrical pulses do, is actually to shut down activity locally where the electrode is implanted?" Prof Winn said. He said more effective treatment for Parkinson's could be developed if they could understand the effect of the stimulation. The other part of the research will consider where in the brain the electrodes should be placed. Prof Winn said: "If you put the electrode at the most commonly used site you can inhibit tremors that Parkinsonian patients have, which are very disturbing and distressing to them. "But it's thought possible that if we put electrodes at other sites we can have an affect on the posture and gait problems that patients have. (C)BBC

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 12516 - Posted: 02.03.2009

Tracking changes in the levels of a certain hormone during pregnancy may help to predict which women may suffer postpartum depression, a small study suggests. Risk factors include a history of depression, a stressful or anxious pregnancy, a lack of social support, and low self-esteem, but these explain only a portion of why some women develop postpartum depression. In Monday's online issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers who studied 100 women said they found 12 out of 16 participants who had postpartum depression also had high levels of corticotropin-releasing hormone or CRH. In the study, high levels of CRH at 25 weeks gestational age helped to predict future postpartum depression or PPD in about three-fourths of women and misclassified 24 per cent, the researchers said. CRH is normally produced in tiny amounts by the brain's hypothalamus in response to stress. During pregnancy, the placenta produces much more of the hormone, which is thought to prepare a woman's body for childbirth. Levels of CRH and other hormones drop after giving birth. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Depression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12515 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Peter Aldhous, San Francisco bureau chief Among my editors in London, I'm sometimes known as the Prince of Darkness - not for any particular satanic tendencies, but because I frequently send emails when most people in my time zone in California are fast asleep. Like millions of others, I'm a chronic insomniac, so when the table of contents for the latest issue of Behavior Therapy dropped into my email inbox at 1:45 am on Sunday, I was drawn to a paper entitled Sleep Hygiene Practices of Good and Poor Sleepers in the United States: an Internet-Based Study. For the uninitiated, "sleep hygiene" has nothing to do with the cleanliness of your bedroom, but instead refers to behaviours that influence the quality of your sleep. The problem is that previous research has yielded conflicting results as to which behaviours, exactly, are the most disruptive. To further investigate the issue, Les Gellis of the Philadelphia Veterans Medical Center and Kenneth Lichstein of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa conducted an online survey of 128 "good" and 92 "poor" sleepers - the latter scoring 7 or more on a 21-point scale called the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. You can rate yourself on the index here (pdf format) - my score was 12. Surprisingly, there was little difference between the good and bad sleepers for many of the factors highlighted on websites offering advice on insomnia - including drinking alcohol or caffeine near to bedtime, or watching television in bed. (I do all of those.) © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 12514 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Sunita Reed New research published today says that insulin, the hormone used to treat diabetes, might some day be useful for treating or preventing Alzheimer’s disease. Neuroscientist Bill Klein and colleagues at Northwestern University had previously discovered evidence that Alzheimer’s disease might actually be a form of diabetes of the brain. Prior studies by other researchers found that patients with Alzheimer’s disease had lower levels of insulin, and that their brains were insulin-resistant. Klein discovered that, in addition to the plaques and tangles in brains of those with Alzheimer’s, there were toxic proteins called ADDLs (pronounced "ADD-els"). In normal brains, insulin binds to sites on cells called receptors, triggering a series of events that allow memories to form. By studying rat brain cell cultures in the lab, Klein’s team discovered how ADDLs can interfere with the memory-formation process. When they added the ADDLs, they attached to their own receptors on the cell surface and caused the insulin receptors to disappear. “Insulin in the brain is just not working,” explains Klein. Even though it’s there, it doesn’t have a place to park. Its receptors seem to be less responsive to the insulin. That’s the same thing that occurs in type 2 diabetes outside of the brain." In the current study, Klein and his colleagues at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, tried a strategy to protect the insulin receptors from damage. Before adding ADDLs, they flooded the brain cells with a high concentration of insulin. The insulin treatment blocked the ADDLs from attaching to the ADDL receptors and completely protected the insulin receptors. ©2009 ScienCentral

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 12513 - Posted: 06.24.2010