Raphael G. Satter -- British archaeologists have unearthed an ancient skull carrying a startling surprise -- an unusually well-preserved brain. Scientists said Friday that the mass of gray matter was more than 2,000 years old -- the oldest ever discovered in Britain. One expert unconnected with the find called it "a real freak of preservation." The skull was severed from its owner sometime before the Roman invasion of Britain and found in a muddy pit during a dig at the University of York in northern England this fall, according to Richard Hall, a director of York Archaeological Trust. Finds officer Rachel Cubbitt realized the skull might contain a brain when she felt something move inside the cranium as she was cleaning it, Hall said. She looked through the skull's base and spotted an unusual yellow substance inside. Scans at York Hospital confirmed the presence of brain tissue. Hall said it was unclear just how much of the brain had survived, saying the tissue had apparently contracted over the years. Parts of the brain have been tentatively identified, but more research was needed, he said. He said it was a mystery why the skull was buried separately from its body, suggesting human sacrifice and ritual burial as possible explanations. © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 12332 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway For men whose chat-up lines aren't working, it could simply be a case of bad timing. Psychologists have determined that women are most likely to give their phone number to a male stranger when they are likeliest to get pregnant. Researchers recruited handsome young men to experimentally hit on women on a street corner to determine whether fertility affects receptivity to male advances. Large amounts of research have shown that women are more responsive to masculine voices, faces, and odours when they're fertile, but no studies have probed the obvious outcome of such inclinations, says Nicolas Guéguen, a psychologist at the University of South Brittany, France. "These studies did not focus on women's behaviour. It's the first study to test the role of the menstrual cycle on courtship request, in a real social context and not in laboratory," he told New Scientist. To bridge that gap, he asked five handsome 20-year-old men - winnowed down from a larger group rated for attractiveness by 28 women - to ask unsuspecting females for a date. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12331 - Posted: 06.24.2010

John Bonner Four families from Turkey with a genetic disorder that prevents children developing normally into adults have helped geneticists to track down genes which trigger puberty. The researchers, from Cukurova University, Turkey and the University of Cambridge, UK, have shown that the families have mutations in the genes responsible for either a peptide found in the brain, neurokinin B, or its receptor. Eight children from the four families have a condition called normosmic idiopathic hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (nIHH), in which they fail to develop normal secondary sexual characteristics in adolescence. Males have a small penis and undescended testes but are otherwise physically and mentally normal. The study, published in Nature Genetics1, suggests that neurokinin B is key in stimulating the production of gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) by the hypothalamus. This causes another part of the brain, the pituitary gland, to release two hormones — luteinising and follicle stimulating hormones — that trigger the synthesis of various sex hormones in the testes or ovaries. Timing is everything Kemal Topaloglu and colleagues analysed the genomes of both affected and unaffected children within the four families and located two mutations in the TAC3 and TACR3 genes, known to encode neurokinin B or its receptor molecule. They also introduced the receptor gene into cultured cells and found that it allowed calcium ions to flow into cells — a process that might help to trigger hormone production by the hypothalamus. Cells with the mutant gene didn't see a similar influx of calcium. © 2008 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12330 - Posted: 06.24.2010

CHICAGO - Brain scans using magnetic resonance imaging may be able to detect signs of multiple sclerosis long before symptoms of the disease appear, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. They said nearly a third of people who showed signs of the disease on brain MRIs developed the disease within five years. Multiple sclerosis occurs when the immune system attacks the myelin sheath protecting nerve cells. It affects 2.5 million people globally and can cause symptoms ranging from vague tingling to blindness and paralysis. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here Dr. Darin Okuda of the University of California, San Francisco studied brain scans done on 44 people for various health reasons, such as migraine or head injuries. All had abnormalities similar to those seen in people with MS, but none had been diagnosed with the disease. Okuda continued to follow these people to see if they developed the disease and found that within 5.4 years, 30 percent had developed MS symptoms. "More research is needed to fully understand the risk of MS for people with these brain abnormalities, but it appears that this condition may be a precursor to MS," Okuda, whose study appears in the journal Neurology, said in a statement. Copyright 2008 Reuters.

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Brain imaging
Link ID: 12329 - Posted: 12.11.2008

Sugar can be addictive, wielding power over the brains of lab animals much like a craving for drugs, according to Princeton University scientists who say their findings may eventually have implications for the treatment of humans with eating disorders. Psychologist Bart Hoebel and colleagues at the university's neuroscience institute have studied what they call sugar addiction in rats for years. They say their rats have met two of the three elements of addiction — they show a pattern of increased intake and then signs of withdrawal. But Hoebel's most recent experiments also demonstrate a third element — craving and relapse. "If binging on sugar is really a form of addiction, there should be long-lasting effects in the brains of sugar addicts," Hoebel said in a news release. "Craving and relapse are critical components of addiction, and we have been able to demonstrate these behaviours in sugar-binging rats in a number of ways." Hoebel presents his findings Wednesday to the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology in Scottsdale, Ariz., just in time to give humans pause during their holiday feasting. © CBC 2008

Keyword: Obesity; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12328 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By STEPHANIE NANO NEW YORK -- Scientists may have figured out one reason some people reach for the french fries instead of an apple. It could be a gene that's been linked to an increased risk of obesity. A study of children found those with a common variation of the gene tend to overeat high-calorie foods. They ate 100 extra calories per meal, which over the long term can put on weight, said Colin Palmer, who led the study at the University of Dundee in Scotland. The findings don't mean that everyone with that version of the gene will eat too much and become obese, he said. They just might have a tendency to eat more fattening foods. "It's still your choice," he said. "This gene will not make you overweight if you do not overeat." Palmer said the results support the theory that childhood obesity today could be connected to the widespread availability and low cost of high-calorie foods. The research is published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. Last year, scientists discovered the gene, named FTO, was linked to obesity but they didn't know why. Most of the other genes thought to affect body weight influence appetite. © 2008 The Associated Press

Keyword: Obesity; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12327 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rachel Mahan Brains today are expensive—metabolically speaking, that is. Pound for pound, the human brain demands a huge amount of energy to support its recently evolved language and social skills. Now a study offers some of the first strong evidence that the rapid development of our metabolically costly brain may have led to an unfortunate by-product: when energy prob­lems arise, the result may be schizophrenia. No one knows exactly what causes schizo­phrenia, a debilitating disorder characterized by psychosis and severe cognitive impairments. One theory, which suggests it is a consequence of our brain’s high metabolism, has been around for years—but until now scientists had not devel­oped a way to test it. In the new study—a rare combination of evolutionary genetics and med­icine—research­ers in China, Germany and the U.K. compared gene expres­sion (when and where in the body certain genes are active) and concen­trations of meta­bolites (small molecules crucial for metabolic processes) in the post­mortem brains of people without schizophrenia with those in the brains of chimpan­zees, rhesus macaques and human schizo­phrenics. They determined that the genes and metabolites that are altered in schizo­phrenia appear to have changed rapidly in recent human evolution. More important, they are related to energy metabolism. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Evolution
Link ID: 12326 - Posted: 06.24.2010

PAY attention please, using as much of your brain as possible. When your mind wanders during a boring task, it may be because parts of your brain simply disconnect. Knowing that activity in different brain regions changes when attention lapses, Daniel Weissman of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, wondered if there were also changes in the crosstalk between regions. Weissman asked volunteers to spend a tedious hour in a functional-MRI brain scanner, identifying letters that flashed on a screen. At times, their reactions slowed, showing that attention was wavering. During these lapses, communication between regions related to self-control, vision and language processing died down. "Attention failed to grease the connections in the brain," says Weissman. This is equivalent to these regions disconnecting, he says. Weissman presented the results at a recent neuroscience meeting. Attention is like a communication amplifier that only focuses on the connections between certain regions at certain times, says Weissman. When the amplifier switches to a new set of connections, existing ones weaken. Communication between those regions slows and attention lapses. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 12325 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Emily Yoffe For researchers of emotions, creating them in the lab can be a problem. Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California-Berkeley, studies the emotions of uplift, and he has tried everything from showing subjects vistas of the Grand Canyon to reading them poetry—with little success. But just this week one of his postdocs came in with a great idea: Hook up the subjects, play Barack Obama's victory speech, and record as their autonomic nervous systems go into a swoon. In his forthcoming book, Born To Be Good (which is not a biography of Obama), Keltner writes that he believes when we experience transcendence, it stimulates our vagus nerve, causing "a feeling of spreading, liquid warmth in the chest and a lump in the throat." For the 66 million Americans who voted for Obama, that experience was shared on Election Day, producing a collective case of an emotion that has only recently gotten research attention. It's called "elevation." Elevation has always existed but has just moved out of the realm of philosophy and religion and been recognized as a distinct emotional state and a subject for psychological study. Psychology has long focused on what goes wrong, but in the past decade there has been an explosion of interest in "positive psychology"—what makes us feel good and why. University of Virginia moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who coined the term elevation, writes, "Powerful moments of elevation sometimes seem to push a mental 'reset button,' wiping out feelings of cynicism and replacing them with feelings of hope, love, and optimism, and a sense of moral inspiration." 2008 Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12324 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Catherine Brahic Sexual stereotypes are not the preserve of humans. Male dolphins, it seems, are not interested in learning how to use a sponge, but their sisters are. Dolphins were first seen carrying sponges cupped over their beaks in Shark Bay, Australia, in the 1980s. Janet Mann of Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and colleagues have now reviewed data collected during 20 years spent monitoring this group of dolphins and found that, while mothers show both their male and female calves how to use sponges, female calves are almost exclusively the only ones to apply this knowledge. "The daughters seem really keen to do it," says Mann. "They try and try, whereas the sons don't seem to think it's a big deal and hang out at the surface waiting for their mothers to come back up." Solitary spongers Sponger dolphins shuffle their beak around in the sand, apparently using the sponge as protection. When they ferreted out a hidden fish, the dolphins drop the sponge and catch the prey. The researchers even dived down with sponge-capped hands and tried the technique themselves - successfully ferreting out spotted grubfish. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Evolution; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 12323 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Morten L. Kringelbach and Tipu Z. Aziz The video is brief, just a couple of minutes, but it’s reality TV as riveting as anything you’ll ever see. A man in his mid-50s, affable, articulate, faces the camera and talks a bit about a medical procedure he’s had. He holds in his hand what looks like a remote control. “I’ll turn myself off now,” he says mildly. The man presses a button on the controller, a beep sounds, and his right arm starts to shake, then to flap violently. It’s as if a biological hurricane has engulfed him, or perhaps it’s that his arm is made of straw and some evil sprite is waving it about. With effort, the man grasps the malfunctioning right arm with his left hand and slowly, firmly, subdues the commotion, as if he were calming a child in the throes of a temper tantrum. He’s breathing hard, and it’s clear he can’t keep it up much longer. With an almost desperate gesture, he reaches out for the controller and manages to press the button again. There’s a soft beep, and suddenly it’s over. He’s fine. Composed, violently afflicted, then composed again. All with the flick of a switch. As before-and-after moments go, this one is potent, verging on the miraculous. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect to witness under a revival tent, not in the neurology ward of a British hospital. Once you’ve seen it, you’ll have an indelible image of Parkinson’s disease. The word “tremor” doesn’t convey what can happen to people—the way they are thrashed and harassed by their own bodies. But this scene, involving a patient of ours, informs viewers about more than a disease; it’s a vivid window onto a powerful medical technology known as deep-brain stimulation (you can watch the video at www.kringelbach.dk/nrn). © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Depression
Link ID: 12322 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Elizabeth Landau (CNN) -- For one person, the idea of spending a cold winter's night alone seems great -- a perfect time to catch up on novels, watch cheesy movies, and drink hot chocolate with marshmallows. For another, the prospect is less comforting -- feelings of depression, anger, isolation set in as the hours go by. About 60 million people in the U.S. feel so isolated that it's a major source of unhappiness. About 60 million people in the U.S. feel so isolated that it's a major source of unhappiness. Research suggests that the degree of loneliness that any two people feel in a particular situation may vary widely, partly because of genetics. In fact, loneliness is half inherited, half environmental, says John Cacioppo, director of the University of Chicago's Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience. In his recent book "Loneliness," with co-author William Patrick, Cacioppo defines loneliness in terms of the need for social connection and notes that a person can feel lonely even in a large crowd. At any given time, about 60 million people in the U.S. feel so isolated that it's a major source of unhappiness, the book says. "Loneliness we see to be much more like hunger, thirst and pain than a personality factor per se," Cacioppo told CNN. "It's something everybody has, everybody has the capacity to feel that way, and it serves to call attention to a real biological need." © 2008 Cable News Network

Keyword: Emotions; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12321 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists believe a transplant of brain cells may one day be able to reverse a common form of hearing loss. Damage to hair cells in the inner ear due to ageing and overstimulation causes hearing problems in 10% of people worldwide. The cell loss is irreversible, but US scientists believe it may be possible to replace them with stem cells from a region of the brain. The study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The key ependymal cells come from the lining of the lateral ventricle of the brain. They share characteristics with inner ear hair cells - but crucially, unlike them, they have the ability to reproduce. The researchers, led by Dr Dongguang Wei, from the University of California at Davis, believe the brain cells could potentially be transplanted from a person's brain into their ear, where they would take on the role of hair cells, and restore hearing. Loss of inner ear hair cells often also leads to breakdown of the nerve cells along which the signals they generate are transmitted to the brain. The researchers believe these spiral ganglion cells can also be replaced - this time by stem cells from another area of the brain's lateral ventricle. Their conclusions are based on a detailed analysis of the structure, chemistry and role of the brain cells. Tests of the theory are already underway in the laboratory. And they believe the cells also hold out hope for use in the treatment of diseases of the nervous system. Professor Andy Forge, of the University College London Ear Institute, said previous work had suggested that the inner ear might have a small number of stem cells of its own which might be able to replace damaged hair cells. (C)BBC

Keyword: Hearing; Regeneration
Link ID: 12320 - Posted: 12.09.2008

By GINA KOLATA Cheryl Weinstein’s left knee bothered her for years, but when it started clicking and hurting when she straightened it, she told her internist that something was definitely wrong. It was the start of her medical odyssey, a journey that led her to specialists, physical therapy, Internet searches and, finally, an M.R.I. scan that showed a torn cartilage and convinced her that her only hope for relief was to have surgery to repair it. But in fact, fixing the torn cartilage that was picked up on the scan was not going to solve her problem, which, eventually, she found was caused by arthritis. Scans — more sensitive and easily available than ever — are increasingly finding abnormalities that may not be the cause of the problem for which they are blamed. It’s an issue particularly for the millions of people who go to doctors’ offices in pain. The scans are expensive — Medicare and its beneficiaries pay about $750 to $950 for an M.R.I. scan of a knee or back, for example. Many doctors own their own scanners, which can provide an incentive to offer scans to their patients. And so, in what is often an irresistible feedback loop, patients who are in pain often demand scans hoping to find out what is wrong, doctors are tempted to offer scans to those patients, and then, once a scan is done, it is common for doctors and patients to assume that any abnormalities found are the reason for the pain. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Brain imaging
Link ID: 12319 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JANE E. BRODY Michael became hooked on headphones in his early teens. He walked the streets of Brooklyn day after day with his favorite music blasting directly into his ears. By his early 20s, the sensory hair cells in his inner ears had been permanently damaged and Michael had lost much of his upper-range hearing. The Children’s Hearing Institute reports that hearing loss among children and young adults is rising in the United States, and that one-third of the damage is caused by noise. According to the American Academy of Audiology, about one child in eight has noise-induced hearing loss. That means some five million children have an entirely preventable disability that will stay with them for life. The academy has begun a “turn it to the left” (the volume dial, that is) awareness campaign in hopes of protecting current and future generations of youngsters from unwittingly damaging their hearing. Often, the problem is not detected until children develop persistent ringing in the ears or begin to have learning or behavior problems in school because of trouble understanding speech. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 12318 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NATALIE ANGIER Imagine you’re in a dark room, running your fingers over a smooth surface in search of a single dot the size of this period. How high do you think the dot must be for your finger pads to feel it? A hundredth of an inch above background? A thousandth? Well, take a tip from the economy and keep downsizing. Scientists have determined that the human finger is so sensitive it can detect a surface bump just one micron high. All our punctuation point need do, then, is poke above its glassy backdrop by 1/400,000th of an inch — the diameter of a bacterial cell — and our fastidious fingers can find it. The human eye, by contrast, can’t resolve anything much smaller than 100 microns. No wonder we rely on touch rather than vision when confronted by a new roll of toilet paper and its Abominable Invisible Seam. Biologically, chronologically, allegorically and delusionally, touch is the mother of all sensory systems. It is an ancient sense in evolution: even the simplest single-celled organisms can feel when something brushes up against them and will respond by nudging closer or pulling away. It is the first sense aroused during a baby’s gestation and the last sense to fade at life’s culmination. Patients in a deep vegetative coma who seem otherwise lost to the world will show skin responsiveness when touched by a nurse. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 12317 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Michael Price Rod cells in our eyes help us see in dim light. They also ensure that the cones, the other light-sensitive cells we depend on for vision, get enough food, a new study reveals. The findings may shed light on a common cause of blindness. Approximately 100,000 people in the United States have retinitis pigmentosa, an incurable inherited retinal disease that leads to blindness. More than 40 genes can contribute to the disease, often by damaging important proteins in retinal cells. The disease's initial symptom, night-vision loss, appears when rods start dying off. This attrition usually begins in childhood, and though it's inconvenient, most people get by with their cones--the photoreceptive cells that work in bright light. But by the time affected people reach adulthood, the cones begin dying, too, ultimately resulting in total blindness. This has confounded scientists, because the faulty genes aren't active in the cones, only in the rods. To crack this mystery, biologist Constance Cepko of Harvard University and her colleague Claudio Punzo, a postdoctoral researcher, first evaluated previous theories. Some researchers thought that when the rods died, they produced a toxin that killed the cones. Others hypothesized that because rods use lots of oxygen in the retina, their death might leave behind a large amount of oxygen that overloads and damages the remaining cones. But neither of these seemed to fit the pattern, Cepko says, so he and Punzo decided to look for a new explanation. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 12316 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Nora Schultz A dog might be a man's best friend, but only if it is being treated fairly. When a dog thinks it's getting a raw deal in comparison to other dogs, it doesn't shy away from expressing its envy. Until now, such overt dislike of unfairness had only been demonstrated in primates, but some scientists have suspected that other species that live cooperatively could also be sensitive to fair play - or a lack of one. To test this theory, Friederike Range and her colleagues at the University of Vienna, Austria, asked 43 trained dogs to extend their paw to a human in various situations. The animals performed the trick almost at every request, regardless of whether they were given a reward or not; as well as when working alone or alongside another dog. The dogs' enthusiasm quickly waned, though, when they saw the other dog being rewarded but received nothing themselves. The dogs that were ignored extended their paws significantly less often than in all other circumstances, doing so in only 13 out of 30 trials. They also showed significantly more symptoms of stress, such as licking or scratching themselves. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 12315 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY A long-awaited government report is calling on the military to test all new recruits for cognitive skills and then do large-scale studies of returning combat veterans to better evaluate and respond to traumatic brain injury, the signature wound of the Iraq war. For years, veterans’ advocates and researchers have called for more careful investigation of head injuries — not just severe wounds but also “closed head” injuries, which do not produce visible damage and do not show up on CT scans. Some doctors and veterans say the high blast impact of I.E.D.’s, the roadside explosives that have accounted for most head injuries to troops in Iraq, may be creating symptoms that differ from the sort of concussions suffered in sports or car accidents. Many veterans have complained of persistent, sometimes disabling symptoms like sleeplessness, dizziness and confusion that can resemble disorders like post-traumatic stress and can complicate disability assessments. The report, released Thursday by the Institute of Medicine, a government advisory group that studies health and medical issues, recommends that the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs conduct careful studies “to confirm reports of long-term or latent effects of exposure to blasts.” Some 5,500 military personnel have suffered brain injuries from mild to severe. The wounds account for an estimated 22 percent of all casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq — about twice the rate in Vietnam. Experts attribute this increase in part to better on-site medical care and body armor that allows ground troops to survive blasts that would otherwise be deadly. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 12314 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Catching a cold sore puts you at risk of Alzheimer's disease, mounting evidence suggests. The herpes virus behind cold sores is a major cause of the protein plaques that accumulate in the brains of people with Alzheimer's, scientists have shown. On the plus side, the latest discovery by the University of Manchester team may mean antiviral drugs used to treat cold sores could also prevent dementia. The findings are published in the Journal of Pathology. Professor Ruth Itzhaki and colleagues found DNA evidence of the herpes simplex virus (HSV) type 1 in 90% of plaques in Alzheimer's disease patients' brains. They had previously shown that HSV1 infection of nerve-type cells in mice leads to deposition of the main component of the plaques - beta amyloid. And that the virus is present in the brains of many elderly people and that in those people with a specific genetic factor, there is a high risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. Taken together, the researchers say the findings strongly implicate the cold sore-causing virus as a root cause of Alzheimer's dementia. Professor Itzhaki said: "We suggest that HSV1 enters the brain in the elderly as their immune systems decline and then establishes a dormant infection from which it is repeatedly activated by events such as stress, immunosuppression, and various infections." In turn, this causes damages the brain cells, which die and then disintegrate, releasing the proteins which develop into amyloid plaques, she said. The researchers now plan to test whether antiviral drugs used to treat cold sores, which block the action of HSV1, might stop the cell damage that leads to Alzheimer's. (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 12313 - Posted: 12.08.2008