By PAM BELLUCK To learn more about the biochemistry of addiction, scientists in Australia dropped liquefied freebase cocaine on bees’ backs, so it entered the circulatory system and brain. The scientists found that bees react much like humans do: cocaine alters their judgment, stimulates their behavior and makes them exaggeratedly enthusiastic about things that might not otherwise excite them. What’s more, bees exhibit withdrawal symptoms. When a coked-up bee has to stop cold turkey, its score on a standard test of bee performance (learning to associate an odor with sugary syrup) plummets. “What we have in the bee is a wonderfully simple system to see how brains react to a drug of abuse,” said Andrew B. Barron, a senior lecturer at Macquarie University in Australia and a co-leader in the bees-on-cocaine studies. “It may be that when we know that, we’ll be able to stop a brain reacting to a drug of abuse, and then we may be able to discover new ways to prevent abuse in humans.” The research, published in The Journal of Experimental Biology, advances the knowledge of reward systems in insects, and aims to “use the honeybee as a model to study the molecular basis of addiction,” said Gene E. Robinson, director of the neuroscience program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a co-author with Dr. Barron, and Ryszard Maleszka and Paul G. Helliwell at Australian National University. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12412 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jonah Lehrer THE CITY HAS always been an engine of intellectual life, from the 18th-century coffeehouses of London, where citizens gathered to discuss chemistry and radical politics, to the Left Bank bars of modern Paris, where Pablo Picasso held forth on modern art. Without the metropolis, we might not have had the great art of Shakespeare or James Joyce; even Einstein was inspired by commuter trains. (Yuko Shimizu for the Boston Globe) And yet, city life isn't easy. The same London cafes that stimulated Ben Franklin also helped spread cholera; Picasso eventually bought an estate in quiet Provence. While the modern city might be a haven for playwrights, poets, and physicists, it's also a deeply unnatural and overwhelming place. Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it's long been recognized that city life is exhausting -- that's why Picasso left Paris -- this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so. "The mind is a limited machine,"says Marc Berman, a psychologist at the University of Michigan and lead author of a new study that measured the cognitive deficits caused by a short urban walk. "And we're beginning to understand the different ways that a city can exceed those limitations." © 2009 NY Times Co

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 12411 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Peter Aldhous When you're in love, everything seems different - and that includes your sense of smell. Women who are deeply in love struggle to recognise the body odour of male friends, but their ability to distinguish their partner's smell is unaffected. Body odours are known to play a role in human sexual attraction. But how does falling in love affect our perception and processing of these smells? To find out, Johan Lundström and Marilyn Jones-Gotman of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, asked a group of 20 young women with boyfriends to fill in a Passionate Love Scale questionnaire (pdf format) to determine just how much in love they were. Meanwhile, the women's partners and male and female friends slept for a seven nights in a cotton T-shirt with pads sewn into the underarms to soak up their sweat. In a series of trials, each woman was asked to pick out their lover's or a friend's T-shirt from three garments, two of which had been worn by strangers. The women's scores on the Passionate Love Scale made no difference to their ability to recognise a lover's shirt, or that worn by a female friend. But those who were more deeply in love were less good at distinguishing a male friend's odour from those of strangers. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 12410 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Erin Davis Each year, approximately one child in every 150 is diagnosed with autism. Eleven-year-old Andrew Skillings is one of those children. He has Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism. For Andrew's older sister Marissa, her brother's diagnosis has affected every aspect of her life from the time he was born. She was almost 5 and shared a room with Andrew. Marissa says she remembers those first few weeks he was home. "I decided he needed to go back where he came from, because as a baby he never, ever stopped screaming," she says. Then the Skillings found out Andrew had a mental disability. Recently, Marissa described what it's like to live with a little brother who has frequent meltdowns — and who she tries to protect. "I'd kill for him. But I could kill him, too. He talks. Nonstop. Talking and talking," Marissa says. "He'll tell anybody information about an animal, whether they want to hear it or not. People can tell Andrew has a disability because of his hand gestures and the way he moves when he gets nervous. "He moves his hands back and forth; and he'll walk with his hands down by his sides just shaking his hands; and he likes to crack his knuckles when he's nervous, and he'll keep doing the movement even if they don't crack." Copyright 2009 NPR

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 12409 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The odds of suffering a ruptured brain aneurysm go up sharply among people who smoke and have a family history of aneurysms, compared with all other people, whether or not they do or have smoked and have family aneurysm histories, a U.S. statistical study suggests. "While all people should be advised to quit smoking, our findings suggest that there is an interaction so that if you smoke and you have a family history of aneurysms, you are at an extremely high risk of suffering a stroke from a ruptured brain aneurysm," study author Dr. Daniel Woo said in a news release. The study set out to examine the connection between two independent variables — a heredity factor, namely family history of aneurysms, and an environmental factor, namely smoking — and to see how the risk of stroke from brain aneurysm changed with both factors present. The study found that smokers with a family history of stroke were more than six times more likely to suffer a stroke than those who did not smoke and did not have a family history of stroke or brain aneurysm. In the study, published online Dec. 31 by the journal Neurology, scientists with the University of Cincinnati looked at 339 people who had suffered a stroke from a brain aneurysm and 1,016 people who had not. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Stroke
Link ID: 12408 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By CAMILLE SWEENEY These are among the first things to become harder to read as people slide further into middle age and their eyes lose their ability to focus. What can begin as a gentle blur might end with not being able to make out the peas on your plate. This condition, known as presbyopia, is the slow deterioration of close vision and is most commonly attributed to aging. It is caused by a loss of elasticity of the crystalline lens, the structure behind the iris that enables the eye to focus on objects at various distances. The arrival of presbyopia can be “one of those ‘Whoa, I’m aging’ moments,” said Randy Savin, 50, president of an insurance agency in Solon, Ohio. For Mr. Savin, that moment came two years ago when he realized he had to hold the newspaper at a distance to read it. At the time, he could count on both hands the number of prescription glasses he used for distance: he had eight pairs that floated between his two cars, home and office. “I just couldn’t handle the thought of adding readers to my life,” Mr. Savin said. Until recently, there wasn’t much more one could do than to succumb to a pair of reading glasses, or try to correct the problem with either monovision contact lenses (one eye is corrected for distance, one for up close) or laser surgery. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 12407 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Anna J. Abramson. High-stakes democratic elections often boil down to a matter of trust. In this year's presidential race, for example, junior senator Barack Obama has routinely peppered his speeches with "you can trust me on that," or, "so you can trust me when I say...." Meanwhile, veteran senator John McCain has tried to convince Americans that he has "earned" their trust. "Trust is uniquely and especially prominent this year because it's an issue that rings so loudly when you talk about experience versus inexperience," says Democratic strategist Jake Maguire, who has worked on campaigns for John Kerry, John Edwards, and Obama. On the campaign trail, Maguire says, candidates often swap the suits and ties they wear at speeches and debates for rolled up sleeves and jeans. "Out there on the stump, the best way to look trustworthy is to seem like you're 'one of us,'" says Maguire. "The idea is: You can trust them. They're just like your neighbors, the people you know." Indeed, political operatives have worked since the dawn of democracy to make candidates look trustworthy—an effective strategy, according to cutting edge studies that may change the way we view campaigns and elections. In recent years, researchers have found that snap judgments of candidates, based on nothing more than their faces, can reliably and powerfully predict the outcomes of political elections. According to these studies, it only takes a tenth of a second for subjects to decide if a face is trustworthy or not.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12406 - Posted: 06.24.2010

BRAIN activity that is "scrambled" in deaf cats develops normally if they are fitted with a cochlear implant shortly after birth. The finding may explain how deaf children given implants as babies can learn to speak almost as well as hearing children. In hearing animals, sound vibrates hair cells in the inner ear, triggering neurons to send impulses to the brain. In deaf animals, these hair cells are often defective; cochlear implants compensate by stimulating neurons directly. To see how this artificial stimulation affects the brain, Rob Shephard at the Bionic Ear Institute in Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues recorded electrical activity in the cortex of 17 8-month-old cats that were deaf from birth. As they monitored the cats' brains, they activated each cat's cochlear implant. Ten of the cats had received the implant relatively recently and their electrical activity was "completely scrambled", indicating that they did not perceive sound coherently: normal cortex activity is key to perceiving sound and, in humans, to developing speech. In the seven cats that received implants at 8 weeks old, however, activity was similar to that in hearing cats (The Journal of Comparative Neurology, DOI: 10.1002/cne.21886). © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Hearing; Robotics
Link ID: 12405 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Elizabeth Quill Eye candy might more appropriately be called brain candy. Seeing a pretty face is like eating a piece of oh-so-sweet chocolate — for the brain, if not for the stomach. In fact, attractive faces activate the same reward circuitry in the brain as food, drugs and money. For humans, there is something captivating and unforgettable about the arrangement of two balls, a point and a horizontal slit on the front of the head. The power of faces isn’t lost on psychologists. “Faces are interesting because they impart so much information — expression, attention — and these interact with facial beauty,” says Anthony Little of the University of Stirling in Scotland. So it’s no surprise that making faces attractive is big business. Each year, Americans spend more than $13 billion on cosmetic surgery and tens of billions on cosmetics and beauty aids. But while facial improvements leave those who subscribe to them with a healthy glow and the illusion of youth — subtracting a few years can bump you up a few notches on the hot-or-not barometer — studies of attractiveness have tended to leave the scientists who undertake them with puzzled looks, gray hairs and wrinkles. Recently, though, researchers seeking to unmask the essence of facial attractiveness have been using computer technology to isolate the characteristics long rumored to underlie beauty. New methods reveal that averageness, or a lack of distinctness, makes someone more appealing, while facial symmetry doesn’t automatically make a knockout, as most people believe. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 12404 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Coco Ballantyne Desperately seeking a good night's sleep, insomniacs spend more money on alcohol than medical help and sleep aids combined, according to a study published today in the journal Sleep. But experts say turning to the bottle is the last thing you should do if you can't fall asleep at night. The study, led by Meagan Daley, a professor of psychology and business at Laval University in Quebec, found that insomniacs in that Canadian province spend an annual $275 million ($340 million Canadian) on alcohol to lull them to sleep at night compared with $14.7 million on over-the-counter and prescription sleep meds and $69.4 million on insomnia-related health care consultations. Simply put, the sleepless in Quebec spend over three times more on alcoholic "sleeping aids" than on medical interventions specifically designed to promote z's—even though alcohol is more expensive. "Generic versions of sleep medications are a few cents a pill," Daley says. "Even the regular main brand sleep medications are cheaper than taking a drink or two." What's more, alcohol doesn't help you snooze. Quite the contrary. It actually exacerbates symptoms of insomnia, says Maher Karam-Hage, an addiction psychiatrist at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. For most people, drinking a glass of wine with dinner will not compromise a good night's sleep, but three to four drinks before bed can cause you to wake up in the middle of the night, he says. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Sleep; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12403 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Jack Penland The idea of giving your brain a workout isn’t a new one, but the stumbling block has been to find a way to train your brain that actually shows improvement in other, unrelated mental tasks. Susanne Jaeggi and Martin Buschkuehl, post-doctoral fellows at the University of Michigan, have been putting volunteers through an intense computer-based mental workout that is showing promise. Jaeggi says they gave the volunteers basic intelligence tests both before and after the training and found that, “After training … people actually got smarter in these (intelligence) tests.” She says, “In other training programs that are on the market, people get (better at a) particular task, so they form very task-specific strategies." However, she adds, “Their ability does not transfer to domains other than the training task, itself.” For example, she says, people have been able to train themselves to remember long sequences of numbers, but if the sequence changes to letters or shapes, people have to start over and re-train with the new material. ©2009 ScienCentral

Keyword: Intelligence; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 12402 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Laura Sanders It seems preposterous that thrill seeker James Bond would have too few of anything, but new research suggests he may have a deficit of dopamine receptors. Earlier work has suggested that a propensity for risky behaviors, like driving fast cars, gambling and drinking, is influenced by dopamine, one of the brain’s chemical messengers. Now a team of researchers led by neuroscientist David Zald has confirmed in humans a link between “novelty-seeking personality traits” and dopamine receptors. The team’s results appear in the Dec. 31 Journal of Neuroscience. “Risk seeking is a basic characteristic that varies widely among people,” says Zald, of Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Of risk seekers, Zald says: “They get bored quickly with the same old, same old and turn to things like drug use, whiskey and sex. These exciting things have a lot of pull for them.” Nerve cells excrete and detect dopamine to communicate with the rest of the brain. The chemical controls diverse brain functions — motor control, sleep and pleasure have all been linked to dopamine signaling. A nerve cell detects dopamine released from other nerve cells or from itself through proteins on the outside of the cell called dopamine receptors, which come in many varieties. Many of the first experiments linking dopamine and thrill seeking were in rodents. The brains of novelty-seeking rodents — so named because the rats and mice spend more time exploring a new environment than do their complacent littermates — are less able to regulate the amount of dopamine in the brain. But equating a rodent sniffing around a new home to a person engaging in high-risk behavior like cocaine use is a stretch, the researchers point out. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Emotions
Link ID: 12401 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway Some put forward France's decadent sauces or Spain's creative tapas as evidence of Europeans' delicate taste for food, while Asian gourmands would sing the praises of sushi. But they might all be wrong. New research suggests that Africans have more sensitive palettes than Europeans and Asians – at least for bitter tastes. A survey of numerous African populations in Kenya and Cameroon found a striking amount of diversity in a gene responsible for sensing bitter tastes. "If they have more genetic diversity, there's more variation in their ability to taste," says Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who presented the findings at a recent conference. Europeans and Asians typically have only one of two forms of a gene called TAS2R38, which detects a bitter-tasting compound called PTC and similar chemicals in vegetables such as broccoli and Brussels sprouts. The gene makes the difference between people tasting a weak dilution of the compound or not, with little nuance in between. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12400 - Posted: 06.24.2010

DESPITE many people’s best intentions they simply won’t be able to keep their New Year’s resolutions – especially giving up activities that involved risky behaviour such as bingeing on alcohol, drugs, sex or food. According to researchers, some brains are wired to seek a dopamine rush, a brain chemical that is usually released when we are engaged in risky behaviour. Nashville’s Vanderbilt University neuropsychologist David Zald said: “That's not an excuse for failure (in keeping resolutions), but does make the burden harder for some people.” Professor Zald reported in the Journal of Neuroscience yesterday that the brains of impulsive thrill-seekers had few so-called dopamine auto-receptors controlling the amount of the neurotransmitter. “When dopamine is released at high levels, people experience euphoria,” Professor Zald said. “In high novelty-seekers, who have less regulation of their dopamine (level), this may make the experiences of novelty or excitement all the more rewarding.” Professor Zald and his colleagues conducted brain scans of 34 volunteers, who ranged from high to low on the “novelty-seeking” scale. The results showed clearly that high risk-takers had fewer auto-receptors. Copyright 2008 News Limited.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Emotions
Link ID: 12399 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By MALCOLM RITTER NEW YORK – It's almost New Year's Eve, a time for plunging into boisterous crowds bathed in loud music. And for some of us, that means turning to an old friend and hearing things like this: "Did you know (BOOM-da-da-BOOM) went over (Bob! You look wonder-) so she said (clink-clink) and then I (Here, have another one) what would you do?" Huh? Too noisy to hear! But wait — how come these younger people understood what she said? What's wrong with your ears? Actually, part of the problem may be your brain. In fact, it may lie in your brain's dimmer switch for controlling the input from your ears. That bit of brain circuitry appears to falter with age, and scientists are getting some clues about why. If you have trouble understanding conversation in a noisy room, you're experiencing what's sometimes called the cocktail party problem. That can be one of the first signs of an age-related hearing loss — a more general problem that can creep in during middle age, and affects one-third of adults ages 65 to 75. Scientists are still trying to piece together why our hearing goes downhill with age, with the goal of trying to slow it or even reverse it. When it comes to the cocktail party problem, the dimmer switch is a piece of that story, though it's not clear just how big a factor. © 2008 The Associated Press

Keyword: Hearing; Attention
Link ID: 12398 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Felicia Mello While women with curvy figures might enjoy more attention from men in Western culture, and find it easier to become pregnant, new research suggests they may also face some evolutionary disadvantages compared to women with thicker waists. That's because the same hormones that increase fat around the waist can also make women stronger, more assertive, and more resistant to stress, according to a new study published in the December issue of Current Anthropology. Given those findings, it makes sense that the slim-waisted body has not evolved to become the universal norm, said the study's author, Elizabeth Cashdan, an anthropologist at the University of Utah. Her study takes aim at a theory popular in evolutionary psychology and medicine: that men universally prefer women with narrow waists and larger hips because their higher levels of estrogen make them more likely to conceive a child, and less vulnerable to chronic diseases. These preferences, the theory goes, have defined women's ideal body shape over time. The idea took root in the 1990s when psychologists showed men drawings of women's silhouettes and asked them which were most sexy. Researchers found that men gravitated toward images with a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7 - in other words, with a waist about a third narrower than the hips. Those same hourglass proportions are reportedly shared by stars such as Marilyn Monroe and Jessica Alba, and linked in medical studies with a lower risk of heart disease. © 2008 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 12397 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By STEPHANIE NANO NEW YORK -- Obesity surgery can reverse diabetes in teens, just as it does in adults, according to a small study. All but one of the 11 extremely obese teens studied saw their diabetes disappear within a year after weight-loss surgery, the researchers reported. The 11th patient still had diabetes, but needed much less insulin and stopped taking diabetes pills. Previous studies have shown the diabetes benefits of obesity surgery for adults. Dr. Thomas Inge, a pediatric surgeon at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, and his colleagues wanted to find out if the same was true for adolescents. Although more research is needed, Inge said the study "opens the door" to weight-loss surgery as a treatment option for severely obese teens with Type 2 diabetes. The results are in the January issue of Pediatrics and are being released Monday. About a third of U.S. youngsters are either overweight or obese. Increasing numbers of obese children are being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease and the one linked to obesity. It was seldom seen before in kids. "It's marching south through the generations, which is very scary," said Dr. Larry Deeb, a former president of the American Diabetes Association and a spokesman for the group. © 2008 The Associated Press

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 12396 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Stephen Smith Nearly three years after federal regulators sounded an alarm about dangerous diet pills imported from Brazil, doctors in Massachusetts continue to treat patients stricken with heart problems, headaches, and insomnia linked to the powerful drugs. Just yesterday, a Cambridge Health Alliance internist saw two patients who told him they are taking the medications, typically a brew of speed, tranquilizers, and other chemicals mixed into a capsule. One of the patients, who gets the pills from a doctor in Brazil, has heart palpitations and high blood pressure, well-recognized side effects of the weight-loss regimen. Another, hooked on the pills for four years, plunges into bouts of depression when she tries to stop using them, said Dr. Pieter Cohen. And a police bust in May suggests there remains a robust market for the drugs: Detectives in Marlborough confiscated nearly 46,000 illegal diet pills, which, they said, were peddled in plastic bags from a convenience store catering to Brazilian emigres in neighboring Hudson. The term "Brazilian diet pill" refers to multiple formulations that cannot be sold in the United States but are legal in Brazil, where they are touted as an all-natural method for shedding unwanted pounds rapidly. © 2008 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 12395 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By DIANA MICHÈLE YAP In my dreams, I can walk. Awake, I lie in bed because I have to — on my back, or on my side. I shift positions. I’ve learned I’m lucky I can do that. Sometimes I’m so tired that simply lying in bed is not restful enough. Can I be any more horizontal? Can my atrophied limbs sink any lower into the sheets, the mattress that molds to my form? I imagine falling through the mattress, but realize it would probably hurt when I hit the floor. I never get bored, lying there. Just sad. Last year I lost my ability to walk. By the time I finally learned I had osteosclerotic myeloma, part of POEMS syndrome (a rare blood disorder whose initials stand for five of its features, including polyneuropathy, or nerve damage), I was weaker than I’d ever been. I was nearly unable even to use my hands. None of it registered as suffering, until this past spring, as I began to write these words. Perhaps I’ve been in shock. I recognize that I don’t live in a war zone, that there are more aggressive cancers. I’m told about others locked in their disabled bodies who produce great work, and even play sports. But I am not extraordinary; I’m no hero. The horror of my situation is the opposite of the happy ending I wished for in high school, half a lifetime ago. At 35, I’m mostly confined to the bed and the wheelchair. Twice a week I go to physical therapy. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 12394 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Four animal rights activists have been convicted of orchestrating a blackmail campaign against firms that supplied an animal testing research centre. They used paedophile smears, criminal damage and bomb hoaxes to intimidate companies associated with Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) in Cambridgeshire. The four, members of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) from Hampshire and London, had denied the charges. A fifth defendant was cleared by the Winchester Crown Court jury. During a six-year campaign the group falsely claimed managers of the companies were paedophiles. They also sent hoax bombs parcels and made threatening telephone calls to firms telling them to cut links with HLS. One of the features of intimidation included sending used sanitary items in the post to the firms and daubing roads outside managers' homes with slogans such as "puppy killer". The court heard the defendants were part of SHAC, which was based near Hook, Hampshire, and targeted companies in the UK and Europe between 2001 and 2007. It was told Nicholson, from Eversley in Hampshire, was a founder member of SHAC, who managed the "menacing" campaigns against the firms. Selby, Wadham and Medd-Hall were released on conditional bail, while Nicholson was remanded in custody. A man who worked for a company which transported animals for HLS said he still fears reprisals after being sent obscene packages. We received a lot of phone calls and letters [which] contained things like used condoms, used sanitary towels, razor blades and syringe needles claiming to be from people who are infected with AIDS," he added. (C)BBC

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 12393 - Posted: 12.29.2008