By Coco Ballantyne About a year ago, a 42-year-old male gorilla named Fubo living in the Bronx Zoo's Congo Gorilla Forest suffered a seizure for no apparent reason. Concerned about his condition, zoo veterinarians put him on several seizure-controlling medications, which seemed to work, because he didn't have any more occurrences on the meds. But they were worried about the cause: Did Fubo have a brain tumor, a stroke or perhaps some kind of injury? To find out, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which runs the Bronx Zoo in New York City, contacted the Brain Tumor Foundation (BTF), a nonprofit that provides free brain scans to people living in New York's five boroughs—especially those who cannot afford medical care and want to be screened for possible brain tumors. Furry and weighing 275 pounds (125 kilograms), Fubo was no typical patient, but the BTF was willing to give it a go. On February 25, workers arrived at the zoo in BTF's Bobby Murcer Mobile MRI Unit, a trailer housing a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner, which uses magnetic fields and radio waves to generate images of structures inside the body. (The MRI-on-wheels is named after the late Bobby Murcer, the New York Yankees All-Star outfielder who went on to become a radio commentator, and who died last year from brain tumor complications.) The whole process of sedating the gorilla, running the scan, and returning him to the Gorilla Forest took about three and a half hours, says veterinarian Paul Calle, director of the WCS's Zoological Health Program. "He was very stable and did well," Calle says, noting that Fubo is now back with his family and doing just fine. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 12703 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sandra G. Boodman Weeks after his hip replacement surgery, Solomon Berkman started going downhill fast. The 70-year-old retired aerospace engineer, who had prided himself on his mental acuity, became vague and forgetful, unable to work the crossword puzzle that had been his daily routine. Usually gregarious, Berkman became nearly mute in social situations. He developed urinary incontinence and began falling, necessitating emergency calls to the police because his wife, Pat, was unable to hoist him. At times his behavior was inexplicably bizarre. Berkman once fell asleep in the shower, where his wife discovered him after an hour. Although doctors agreed he was deteriorating mentally and physically, they differed on the possible causes. One suspected Parkinson's disease. Another thought he might be showing signs of dementia or early Alzheimer's. A third thought his hip surgery and a second procedure to clean out his blocked carotid artery might be partly responsible. Yet none of the doctors seriously considered the real, and ultimately treatable, reason for Berkman's decline. "It felt like we were losing him," his oldest son, Robert Berkman, recalled. "The whole thing put tremendous strain on my mother." Today, nine years later, Berkman, who lives in Lebanon Township, N.J., suffers from none of the problems that had so disabled him. © 2009 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12702 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Steve Connor, Science Editor Computer and video games that involve guns and shooting may not do much for a child's education but they can improve eyesight, according to a study showing that a person's night-time vision gets better after playing electronic action games. Scientists found that games involving aiming and shooting at virtual objects on a computer screen can significantly increase people's ability to see objects in twilight conditions, when colours fade into different shades of grey. Until now the only recognised way of improving a person's ability to detect small changes in shades of grey – visual "contrast" – was to improve the optics of the eye with contact lenses, spectacles or surgery. But researchers have found that training on a video game can be just as effective, if not more so. "Unfortunately, contrast sensitivity is one of the aspects of vision that is most easily compromised," said Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester in New York, who led the study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. "This problem affects thousands of people worldwide, including those with professional activities requiring excellent eyesight, and ageing populations, along with individuals who are clinically evaluated for vision problems such as amblyopia," Professor Bavelier said. "Normally, improving contrast sensitivity means getting glasses or eye surgery, somehow changing the optics of the eye. But we have found that action video games train the brain to process the existing visual information much more efficiently. The improvements last for months after game play has stopped." ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 12701 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By LINDSEY TANNER CHICAGO -- An influential government-appointed medical panel is urging doctors to routinely screen all American teens for depression _ a bold step that acknowledges that nearly 2 million teens are affected by this debilitating condition. Most are undiagnosed and untreated, said the panel, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which sets guidelines for doctors on a host of health issues. The task force recommendations appear in April's issue of the journal Pediatrics. And they go farther than the American Academy of Pediatrics' own guidance for teen depression screening. An estimated 6 percent of U.S. teenagers are clinically depressed. Evidence shows that detailed but simple questionnaires can accurately diagnose depression in primary-care settings such as a pediatrician's office. ad_icon The task force said that when followed by treatment, including psychotherapy, screening can help improve symptoms and help kids cope. Because depression can lead to persistent sadness, social isolation, school problems and even suicide, screening to treat it early is crucial, the panel said. The task force is an independent panel of experts convened by the federal government to establish guidelines for treatment in primary-care. Its new guidance goes beyond the pediatrics academy, which advises pediatricians to ask teen patients questions about depression. Other doctor groups advise screening only high-risk youngsters. © 2009 The Associated Press

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12700 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower When 2-year-olds with autism look at someone’s face, they may crave synchronized detection rather than social connection. Toddlers with this developmental condition track sounds and sights that occur together, such as a mother’s lips moving in time with sounds coming out of her mouth, rather than social cues, such as the gleam in that same mother’s eyes, a new study suggests. Locked in a world of co-occurring sound and motion, youngsters with autism neglect social signals that critically contribute to mental and brain development, propose psychologist Ami Klin of Yale University’s Child Study Center and his colleagues. “Our findings lead us to the rather sad hypothesis that a toddler with autism might watch a face but not necessarily experience a person, since so much of that experience involves mutual eye gaze,” Klin says. The new study, published online March 29 in Nature, indicates that by age 2, kids with autism don’t notice the array of cues indicating that a body is moving. Non-autistic children do so within days of birth. Young animals in many species, from humans to birds, monitor signs of movement by others as cues to initiate social contact. While earlier studies have suggested that children with autism often don’t look at other people’s eyes, it’s been unclear why this behavior occurs. Few studies have included toddlers or infants with autism, who are difficult to diagnose. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 12699 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The raising of the school leaving age to 15 over 50 years ago could go some way to reducing dementia rates in the elderly, a study has suggested. A Cambridge University team compared the mental abilities of elderly people, and found those born after the change fared better. They say that further changes to the school leaving age could improve mental abilities and curb dementia rates more. Experts said more information on how education affected dementia was needed. Around 700,000 people in the UK currently have dementia. Experts have estimated that by 2051, the number could stand at 1.7m. In this study, researchers compared a group of over 9,000 people aged over 65 tested in 1991 with over 5,000 over-65s tested in 2002. They were all given a standard test used to detect early signs of dementia, which involves naming as many animals as possible within a minute. The researchers identified a small but potentially significant increase in the number of words a minute people used in the later group. Poor cognitive function is known to be linked to developing dementia, and it is already known that dementia is less likely in people who been educated for longer. Previous research has shown that education is beneficial because it increases the number of neural connections in the brain. The school leaving age was set at 15 in 1947, rising to 16 in 1972. The government announced two years ago that, by 2015, teenagers would have to stay in education or training until they were 18. (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 12698 - Posted: 03.28.2009

By Shankar Vedantam New data from a large federal study have reignited a debate over the effectiveness of long-term drug treatment of children with hyperactivity or attention-deficit disorder, and have drawn accusations that some members of the research team have sought to play down evidence that medications do little good beyond 24 months. The study also indicated that long-term use of the drugs can stunt children's growth. The latest data paint a very different picture than the study's positive initial results, reported in 1999. One principal scientist in the study, psychologist William Pelham, said that the most obvious interpretation of the data is that the medications are useful in the short term but ineffective over longer periods but added that his colleagues had repeatedly sought to explain away evidence that challenged the long-term usefulness of medication. When their explanations failed to hold up, they reached for new ones, Pelham said. "The stance the group took in the first paper was so strong that the people are embarrassed to say they were wrong and we led the whole field astray," said Pelham, of the State University of New York at Buffalo. Pelham said the drugs, including Adderall and Concerta, are among the medications most frequently prescribed for American children, adding: "If 5 percent of families in the country are giving a medication to their children, and they don't realize it does not have long-term benefits but might have long-term risks, why should they not be told?" © 2009 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: ADHD; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12697 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas -- Ripping the legs off live crabs and crowding lobsters into seafood market tanks are just two of the many practices that may warrant reassessment, given two new studies that indicate crustaceans feel pain and stress. The findings add to a growing body of evidence that virtually all animals, including fish, shellfish and insects, can suffer. Robert Elwood, the lead author of both papers, explained to Discovery News that pain allows an individual to be "aware of the potential tissue damage" while experiencing "a huge negative emotion or motivation that it learns to avoid that situation in the future." Both pain and stress are therefore key survival mechanisms. Elwood, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at The Queen's University in Belfast, and colleague Mirjam Appel studied hermit crabs collected from rock pools in County Down, Northern Ireland. All of the crabs survived the experiments and were later released back into their native habitat. Elwood and Appel gave small electric shocks to some of the crabs within their shells. When the researchers provided vacant shells, some crabs -- but only the ones that had been shocked -- left their old shells and entered the new ones, showing stress-related behaviors like grooming of the abdomen or rapping of the abdomen against the empty shell. © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Evolution
Link ID: 12696 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ROCHESTER, N.Y., (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say they've discovered brain cells called astrocytes are what distinguish the human brain from that of other animals. "Studies in rodents show that non-neuronal cells are part of information processing," said Dr. Maiken Nedergaard of the University of Rochester Medical Center, who led the research team. "And our study suggests that astrocytes are part of the higher cognitive functioning that defines who we are as humans." The scientists noted there are 10 times as many astrocytes in the brain than the neurons that send electrical signals. Medical student Nancy Ann Oberheim, first author of the study, said human astrocytes signals are faster, bigger and more complex than those found in mice and rats. The researchers discovered new types of astrocytes, and also determined astrocytes use calcium, rather than electrical signals, to communicate with neurons. The research team reported astrocytes send much slower signals that do neurons, but are just as important in the basic working of the brain. The study that included scientists from New York Medical College and the University of Washington appears in the Journal of Neuroscience. © 2009 United Press International, Inc.

Keyword: Glia; Evolution
Link ID: 12695 - Posted: 06.24.2010

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Getting between a female hyena and her cubs at chow time is no laughing matter – especially for males. Females rule among spotted hyenas, making them rare among mammals and unique among carnivores, Michigan State University researcher Kay Holekamp said. After more than 20 years of closely studying generations of the ferocious, yet social creatures, Holekamp and colleagues now believe they know why. "We've been unhappy with previous explanations of sex role reversal in hyenas for some time," said zoology professor Holekamp, who is recognized as a top authority on the spotted hyena. Holekamp and associates theorize that the length of time it takes for the massive skulls and jaws of hyenas to mature in youngsters – combined with the intense feeding competition typical of hyena clans – prompt female family members to develop dominant behaviors. "Mothers have to compensate with aggression for the handicaps their kids are experiencing during feeding," she said. Hyena cubs are at particular risk after they are weaned, she said, because their skulls don't fully develop until after sexual maturity. More closely related to cats than dogs, hyenas are most closely related to the animal family that includes mongooses. They can weigh up to 185 pounds and stand up to 3 feet tall, with jaws capable of cracking open giraffe leg bones up to 3 inches in diameter. Known mostly as scavengers and able to eat things that would sicken or kill many other species, they also are good hunters, capable of bringing down prey several times their own size. © 2009 Michigan State University Board of Trustees

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 12694 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower In the brain, the gift of gab — or at least the gift of knowing what someone’s gabbing about — depends on sight, not just sound. If a listener sees a talker’s lips moving or hands gesturing, certain brain networks pitch in to decode the meaning of what’s being said, a new study suggests. In daily life, the number of brain networks recruited for understanding spoken language varies depending on the types of communication-related visual cues available, proposes a team led by neuroscientist Jeremy Skipper, now at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City. This idea contrasts with a longstanding notion that language comprehension is handled solely by a relatively narrow set of brain regions. “The networks in the brain that process language change from moment to moment during an actual conversation, using whatever information is available to predict what another person is saying,” Skipper says. Neuroscientist Gregory Hickok of the University California, Irvine interprets the new findings more cautiously. Skipper’s results suggest that a stable language network can incorporate information from gestures and other visual signals that feed into it, Hickok remarks. Skipper and his colleagues studied 12 adults who reclined in an fMRI scanner. Each volunteer listened to a woman read roughly 50-second-long adaptations of Aesop’s Fables. In one condition, participants only heard the woman’s voice. In three additional conditions, a mirror inside the scanner allowed them also to see the woman on a video screen placed at the edge of the scanner. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 12693 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Therapists are still offering treatments for homosexuality despite there being no evidence that such methods work, research suggests. A significant minority of mental health professionals had agreed to help at least one patient "reduce" their gay or lesbian feelings when asked to do so. The survey, published in the journal BMC Psychiatry and conducted by London researchers, involved 1,400 therapists. Many were acting with the "best of intentions", said the lead author. Only 4% said they would attempt to change a client's sexual orientation, but when asked if they would help curb homosexual feelings some 17% - or one in six - said they had done so. The incidence appeared to be as prevalent in recent years as decades earlier. "Of course it's incumbent on a professional to assist a client who wants help, but this should be done using evidence-based therapies - exploring their distress and helping them to adjust to their situation," said Professor Michael King of University College London. "We know now that efforts to change people's sexual orientation result in very little change and can cause immense harm. We found it very worrying that there was a significant minority who appeared to ignore this - even if they had all the right intentions." The Royal College of Psychiatrists says all homosexuals have "a right to protection from therapies that are potentially damaging, particularly those that purport to change sexual orientation". In the US, where there has been heated debate on the issue of "curing" homosexuality, The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has urged all "ethical practitioners to refrain from attempts to change individuals' sexual orientation". (C)BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 12692 - Posted: 03.26.2009

WASHINGTON - An estimated 5.3 million Americans have Alzheimer's, and each patient on average costs Medicare three times more than patients without the disease, the Alzheimer's Association reported yesterday. In its annual report, the group projected that by 2010, nearly a half-million new cases of Alzheimer's will develop each year as the population ages, and by 2050 a million new cases will be diagnosed annually. "Direct and indirect costs of Alzheimer's and other dementias amount to more than $148 billion annually," the group said in a statement. "A strategy to immediately confront Alzheimer's has the potential to save millions of lives and billions of dollars by reducing the burden on Medicare and Medicaid," said Harry Johns, Alzheimer's Association chief executive officer. The number of deaths from Alzheimer's, the sixth-leading cause of mortality in the United States, rose by more than 47 percent between 2000 and 2006, the group said. And these patients cost far more to treat than most other patients. There is no cure and the few drugs available only mildly affect symptoms. © 2009 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 12691 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By RONI CARYN RABIN Scientists who have been following families with a history of depression have found structural differences in family members’ brains — specifically, a significant thinning of the right cortex, the brain’s outermost surface. The thinning may be a trait or a marker of vulnerability to depression, the researchers suggested. The scientists’ brain imaging study found the thinning in descendants of depressed parents and grandparents, whether or not the individuals themselves had ever suffered a depressive episode or an anxiety disorder, researchers said. “That’s what is so extraordinary. You’re seeing it two generations later, and you’re seeing it in both children and adults,” said Dr. Bradley S. Peterson, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and the paper’s first author. “And it’s present even if those offspring themselves have not yet become ill.” While people may assume that a familial trait is genetic, that is not necessarily the case, Dr. Peterson added. “We don’t know if this has a genetic origin or if it’s a consequence of growing up with parents or grandparents who are ill. Studies have shown that when parents are depressed, it changes the environment in which children are growing up.” The paper, to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is an outgrowth of research started 27 years ago by Dr. Myrna Weissman to investigate the familial roots of depression. Dr. Weissman is the paper’s senior author. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 12690 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway With hindsight, the causes of the current global financial meltdown seem obvious, even predictable. Now, brain imaging offers one explanation for why so few investors challenged foolhardy fiscal advice. Our brains raise few objections when presented with seemingly expert guidance, new research suggests. "Most average people have this tendency to turn off their own capacity for making judgments when an expert comes into the picture," says Gregory Berns, a neuroeconomist at Emory University in Atlanta. Berns' team presented 24 young volunteers with a simple choice: accept a sure payment or bet on a riskier, yet higher-paying lottery. When weighing this decision, volunteers activated brain circuits known to calculate risk and reward. In line with previous research, the team noticed more brain activation in these dopamine-delivering areas when the expected reward was higher. "When advice is not there, when people are making these judgments on their own, you can make clear correlations with expected value in the lottery and areas associated with the dopamine system," he says. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12689 - Posted: 06.24.2010

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