By Nathan Seppa The long-standing connection between depression and heart problems might be traceable to the fact that depressed people are less physically active than others, a new study of heart patients shows. A greater tendency in depressed people to smoke and to fail to take medications regularly may also play a role, researchers report in the Nov. 26 Journal of the American Medical Association. Previous studies have suggested that depression seems to increase the risk of heart problems in people with no history of them, and that depression often coincides with worsening health in people who have an existing heart condition. Yet the medical reason for this association is unknown, and it’s not even clear whether depression leads to heart problems or vice versa. Scientists have investigated possible side effects from antidepressant drugs, chemical imbalances in the brain, stress, diet, chronic inflammation, smoking and a lack of exercise as reasons for the link between depression and heart problems. To sort out these possibilities, researchers began a study in 2000, identifying people visiting clinics in the San Francisco Bay area who had chronic but stable coronary heart disease. Of the 1,017 patients enrolled, tests showed that one-fifth, average age 63, had symptoms of depression at the start of the study. The other four-fifths were age 68 on average and weren’t depressed. Researchers monitored the health of all the volunteers using lab tests, checkups, interviews, death records. Follow-up averaged five years, and researchers logged the final data entries in early 2008. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2008

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 12272 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway People often compare sexual attraction to a jolt of electricity, but in some animals a charged atmosphere is very literal. Male elephant nose fish are known to lure females with the help of an electric field. Now lab experiments suggest that females fancy the electric aura of males of their own kind over the spark of closely related species. Such electric attraction could maintain genetic differences between the nearly identical fish species, says Philine Feulner, a behavioural ecologist at the University of Sheffield, UK, who led the study. Classified as weakly electric fish because they can't muster more than 1 volt - electric eels deliver 500-volt zaps - elephant nose fish generate an electric current with an organ in their tail made from specialised muscle cells. Irresistible charge The field produced helps the long-nosed nocturnal fish to find food and navigate the murky waters of the lower Congo River, Feulner says. Among several closely related species all living in the same vicinity, the jolts differ enough in their length, size, and frequency, that Feulner and her colleagues could measure the difference with an electrode inside the fish's aquarium. They could even mimic electric pulses of different species using a simple set-up. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Animal Communication
Link ID: 12271 - Posted: 06.24.2010

THE surprising discovery that the deadly neurological disease Huntington's improves ability at some cognitive tests is helping us to understand the illness. Christian Beste from the Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors in Dortmund, Germany, and his colleagues asked 13 people with Huntington's and 25 apparently healthy controls, half of whom had a gene for Huntington's but no symptoms, to judge whether tones played in a series were long or short. Huntington's worsens ability at most cognitive tests, but in this one the people with Huntington's performed better: they had an average reaction time of 0.5 seconds, compared with 0.64 seconds for the controls. They also made fewer errors (The Journal of Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.2659-08.2008). Beste has an idea why this is so. How Huntington's damages the brain is a mystery, but one explanation is that neurons become abnormally sensitive to the neurotransmitter glutamate, and eventually die off as a result. As glutamate is vital for sensory discrimination, Beste says this extra sensitivity could explain the improvements his team found. He says the finding strengthens the glutamate theory and suggests the cognitive task be used as a test for drugs that block the glutamate response. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 12270 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By TARA PARKER-POPE When pediatricians diagnose attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, they often ask their patients whether they know anybody else with the problem. These days, children are likely to reply with a household name: Michael Phelps, the Olympic superstar, who is emerging as an inspirational role model among parents and children whose lives are affected by attention problems. “There is a tremendous, tremendous amount of pride — I got the impression sometimes that some of the kids felt like they owned Michael,” said Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz, director of the Child Study Center at New York University Langone Medical Center. “There is a special feeling when someone belongs to your club and the whole world is adoring him.” But the emergence of a major celebrity with attention deficit has revealed a schism in the community of patients, parents, doctors and educators who deal with the disorder. For years, these people have debated whether it means a lifetime of limitations or whether it can sometimes be a good thing. Children with the disorder typically have trouble sitting still and paying attention. But they may also have boundless energy and a laserlike focus on favorite things — qualities that could be very helpful in, say, an Olympic athlete. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 12269 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey WASHINGTON — Sleep not only refreshes the body, it may also push the reset button on the brain, helping the brain stay flexible and ready to learn, new research shows. Whether it is slow-wave sleep or rapid eye movement (REM), sleep changes the biochemistry of the brain, and the change is necessary to continue learning new things, suggests research presented November 18 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. Hundreds of genes behave differently when an animal is asleep rather than awake, says Chiara Cirelli of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Cirelli and her colleagues are trying to settle a long-standing debate about why sleep is necessary. One theory is that sleep helps solidify memories by replaying information learned during the day. Another idea holds that sleep is for energy restoration. Cirelli and other researchers presented evidence at the neuroscience meeting suggesting that sleep may perform both functions. In a study in rats, Cirelli and her colleagues discovered that a molecule that works with the brain chemical glutamate becomes more and more abundant the longer rats are awake. The molecule, the glutamate receptor GluR1, helps forge connections, called synapses, between neurons. When rats are awake, the amount of GluR1 in the brain may climb up to 40 percent higher than levels found when the animal has been asleep for a few hours. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2008

Keyword: Sleep; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 12268 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Michael Shermer Why do people see faces in nature, interpret window stains as human figures, hear voices in random sounds generated by electronic devices or find conspiracies in the daily news? A proximate cause is the priming effect, in which our brain and senses are prepared to interpret stimuli according to an expected model. UFOlogists see a face on Mars. Religionists see the Virgin Mary on the side of a building. Paranormalists hear dead people speaking to them through a radio receiver. Conspiracy theorists think 9/11 was an inside job by the Bush administration. Is there a deeper ultimate cause for why people believe such weird things? There is. I call it “patternicity,” or the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise. Traditionally, scientists have treated patternicity as an error in cognition. A type I error, or a false positive, is believing something is real when it is not (finding a nonexistent pattern). A type II error, or a false negative, is not believing something is real when it is (not recognizing a real pattern—call it “apat­ternicity”). In my 2000 book How We Believe (Times Books), I argue that our brains are belief engines: evolved pattern-recognition machines that connect the dots and create meaning out of the patterns that we think we see in nature. Sometimes A really is connected to B; sometimes it is not. When it is, we have learned something valuable about the environment from which we can make predictions that aid in survival and reproduction. We are the ancestors of those most successful at finding patterns. This process is called association learning, and it is fundamental to all animal behavior, from the humble worm C. elegans to H. sapiens. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 12267 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Lauren Cahoon Are you nuts for all things newfangled? Or do you stick with the tried and true? New research hints at how such personality traits may be wired into our brains. Scientists have known for some time that the white matter in our brains--the strands of nerve fibers that connect nerve cell bodies, or gray matter--serve as the wires through which neural information flows. However, figuring out exactly which parts of the brain connect to each other, and how strong these connections are, has only been possible recently in living humans thanks to a technique called diffusion tensor imaging. A type of magnetic resonance imaging, the method traces the web of white matter by following the diffusion of fluid through the nerve fibers. Neurologists have used this technology in clinical studies to evaluate brain damage. Neurologist Bernd Weber of the University of Bonn in Germany, former Bonn psychologist Michael Cohen, and colleagues decided to take the tool in a new direction: "No one had really investigated [white matter's] connection to personality," says Weber. To do this, the team asked a group of 20 volunteers to complete a survey to assess whether they were novelty seekers or comfort seekers. The volunteers answered true-or-false questions such as, "I like to try new things just for fun," or "I'd rather stay home than go out." The team then analyzed the volunteers' brains using diffusion tensor imaging, which revealed striking differences between the two groups: Novelty seekers sported a robust bundle of white matter linking the hippocampus, which forms memories and distinguishes between new and old experiences, to a region of the brain known as the ventral striatum, a major planning and reward center. In comfort seekers, on the other hand, the ventral striatum was more strongly connected to the frontal lobe, which plays a role in following social norms (among many other functions), the team reports online this week in Nature Neuroscience. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12266 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A faulty immune reaction may be responsible for the development of epilepsy, research suggests. Studies in mice by US and Italian researchers linked seizures to brain changes which made immune cells stick inside its blood vessels. This, in turn, the journal Nature Medicine reported, helped break down a vital filter which protects the brain from harmful chemicals. "Unsticking" these cells helped prevent the development of epilepsy in mice. Recent research has focused on problems with the "blood brain barrier" as a possible key to epilepsy, which, if poorly controlled, can mean regular and potentially damaging seizures. Many molecules circulating in the bloodstream could cause damage if they reach the brain, and the role of the barrier is to keep them away. The loss of the barrier is known to be connected to the "excitability" of neurons which may be the trigger for epileptic seizures, but the root cause of why the barrier could be breached remains mysterious. The latest research may have found how an initial, non-epileptic, seizure could lead to a lifetime of epilepsy. It looked at the behaviour of white blood cells - leukocytes - whose job it is to defend the body from threats such as bacteria and viruses. The scientists found that, in mice at least, the initial seizure caused the release of a body chemical within the blood vessels which increased the "adhesion" of leukocytes, keeping them in the vessels for longer. Normally, the mice would then go on to develop full epilepsy, but when this "stickiness" chemical was blocked using antibodies or by genetically changing the mice, the frequency of subsequent seizures was markedly reduced. (C)BBC

Keyword: Epilepsy; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 12265 - Posted: 11.24.2008

By RONI CARYN RABIN Happy people spend a lot of time socializing, going to church and reading newspapers — but they don’t spend a lot of time watching television, a new study finds. That’s what unhappy people do. Although people who describe themselves as happy enjoy watching television, it turns out to be the single activity they engage in less often than unhappy people, said John Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland and the author of the study, which appeared in the journal Social Indicators Research. While most large studies on happiness have focused on the demographic characteristics of happy people — factors like age and marital status — Dr. Robinson and his colleagues tried to identify what activities happy people engage in. The study relied primarily on the responses of 45,000 Americans collected over 35 years by the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey, and on published “time diary” studies recording the daily activities of participants. “We looked at 8 to 10 activities that happy people engage in, and for each one, the people who did the activities more — visiting others, going to church, all those things — were more happy,” Dr. Robinson said. “TV was the one activity that showed a negative relationship. Unhappy people did it more, and happy people did it less.” Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12264 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A new study from Georgia Tech shows that when patients with macular degeneration focus on using another part of their retina to compensate for their loss of central vision, their brain seems to compensate by reorganising its neural connections. Age - related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in the elderly. The study appears in the December edition of the journal Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience. 'Our results show that the patient's behaviour may be critical to get the brain to reorganise in response to disease,' said Eric Schumacher, assistant professor in Georgia Tech's School of Psychology. 'It's not enough to lose input to a brain region for that region to reorganise; the change in the patient's behaviour also matters.' In this case, that change of behaviour comes when patients with macular degeneration, a disease in which damage to the retina causes patients to lose their vision in the centre of their visual field, make up for this loss by focusing with other parts of their visual field. Previous research in this area showed conflicting results. Some studies suggested that the primary visual cortex, the first part of the cortex to receive visual information from the eyes, reorganises itself, but other studies suggested that this didn't occur. Schumacher and his graduate student, Keith Main, worked with researchers from the Georgia Tech/Emory Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Emory Eye Centre. They tested whether the patients' use of other areas outside their central visual field, known as preferred retinal locations, to compensate for their damaged retinas drives, or is related to, this reorganisation in the visual cortex. © 2007—2008 Agency Science.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 12263 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway If you can't tell Angelina Jolie from Jennifer Aniston, total ignorance of pop culture might not be the only culprit. People with a rare condition called "face blindness" lack connections in a brain area responsible for recognising faces, new research shows. Officially termed prosopagnosia, face blindness takes two forms: acquired and inherited. People who develop the condition later in life have usually suffered a stroke or an injury in a brain region important for facial recognition called the fusiform gyrus, says Cibu Thomas, a neuroscientist who led the study while at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The inherited form – which may affect up to one out of 50 people – is far more mysterious. Tests of facial recognition can diagnose inherited prosopagnosiacs, but functional brain scans have revealed few differences between their brains and those of people who can pick out celebrities and loved ones. "Here's a brain that looks normal in an MRI, and in some cases they have difficulty in recognising their own spouse," says Thomas, who is now at the Harvard Medical School. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12262 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Irene Pepperberg is associate research professor at Brandeis University and the author of a new book, Alex and Me. She and Jonah Lehrer, the editor of Mind Matters, discuss what Alex and other African Grey Parrots can teach us about the evolution of intelligence and the concept of zero. LEHRER: What first got you interesting in study avian intelligence? After all, to say someone has a "bird brain" is insulting. PEPPERBERG: I had parakeets as pets as a child, and I knew they were quite smart. For instance, they could learn to say words and phrases in context. But I didn't connect that to science at the time. I trained in chemistry at MIT and chemical physics at Harvard, not even knowing that a new field, animal cognition, was developing in psychology. It wasn't until I saw the first NOVA programs, in 1974, on ape signing, dolphin intelligence and the one on "Why Do Birds Sing?" that I realized that one could look at animal-human communication and animal intelligence in a scientific way. That’s when I realized that no one was looking at parrots, which could actually talk. I decided to use their ability to produce human speech sounds to examine their cognitive processes. LEHRER: Were you surprised by Alex's talents? PEPPERBERG: In general, no. But occasionally he would do something that was really impressive, jumping beyond the task at hand, transferring his knowledge unexpectedly from one domain to another. That’s when I’d get surprised. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 12261 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rachel Zelkowitz Biology has an easy explanation for Don Juan's motives--having many lovers lets him produce the greatest number of offspring. But scientists have long wondered why the females of many species seek out multiple mates, because each coupling can cost them precious time and energy without necessarily increasing the number of offspring they can bear. New research shows how, at least in flies, such female promiscuity can reduce the chances that the offspring will inherit bad genes. Females take multiple partners, a behavior called polyandry, in many species, including mice. Some researchers have suggested that polyandry evolved to help females boost the likelihood that their offspring will carry certain positive traits such as virility. They can collect sperm through multiple matings, and only the most competitive of this "sperm cocktail" will fertilize their eggs, says Nina Wedell, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. An alternative explanation is that cheating evolved to spare the offspring from potentially negative traits. Wedell and her colleagues examined one cause of such problematic traits: "selfish" genes. These genes break the 50-50 inheritance rule by being passed onto offspring more often than not. Selfish genes "fight" other genes to get passed on to the next generation, often harming the carrier by causing problems such as reduced fertility. For example, male fruit flies can carry a selfish gene that destroys all of their sperm with a Y chromosome, so they produce fewer sperm and can father only daughters. Yet, male fruit flies with the selfish gene are physically identical to those without it. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 12260 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Kerri Smith An electrode implanted into the brain of a man who is unable to move or communicate has enabled him to use a speech synthesizer to produce vowel sounds as he thinks them. The work could one day help similar patients to produce whole sentences using signals from their brains, say the researchers. Brain scanA paralysed man has been able to use a voice synthesizer thanks to an electrode implanted in his brain.GETTY Frank Guenther of Boston University in Massachusetts and his colleagues worked with a patient who has locked-in syndrome, a condition in which patients are almost completely paralysed — often able to move only their eyelids — but still fully conscious. Guenther and his team first had to determine whether the man's brain could produce the same speech signals as a healthy person's. So they scanned his brain using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while he attempted to say certain vowels. Once the researchers were happy that the signals were the same, they implanted an electrode — designed by neuroscientist Philip Kennedy of the firm Neural Signals in Duluth, Georgia — into the speech-production areas of the man's brain. The electrode will remain there for the forseeable future. © 2008 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Hearing; Language
Link ID: 12259 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower WASHINGTON — It takes years for children to master the ins and outs of arithmetic. New research indicates that this learning process triggers a large-scale reorganization of brain processes involved in understanding written symbols for various quantities. The findings support the idea that humans' ability to match specific quantities with number symbols, a skill required for doing arithmetic, builds on a brain system that is used for estimating approximate quantities. That brain system is seen in many nonhuman animals. When performing operations with Arabic numerals, young adults, but not school-age children, show pronounced activity in a piece of brain tissue called the left superior temporal gyrus, says Daniel Ansari of the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada. Earlier studies have linked this region to the ability to associate speech sounds with written letters, and musical sounds with written notes. The left superior temporal gyrus is located near the brain’s midpoint, not far from areas linked to speech production and understanding. In contrast, children solving a numerical task display heightened activity in a frontal-brain area that, in adults, primarily serves other functions. Ansari presented his findings November 19 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2008

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12258 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tom Siegfried At the end of The Matrix trilogy, Neo and Agent Smith are engaged in one final, interminable scene of surreal combat, a surrogate competition for an eternal battle between humans and machines. “It’s pointless to keep fighting,” Agent Smith declares to Neo. “Why do you persist?” “Because I choose to,” Neo replies, just before the computer-generated Smith meets his demise in a cinematic celebration of human free will’s superiority to the programming that enslaves machines. Machines are mindless. The brain is a decider. All very inspiring, except that the brain itself is a machine, a network of cells that computes its choices based on the sum of sensory inputs and their interactions with neural anatomy. “Free will” is not the defining feature of humanness, modern neuroscience implies, but is rather an illusion that endures only because biochemical complexity conceals the mechanisms of decision making. Yet belief in free will persists as stubbornly as Neo’s resistance to electronic tyranny. Whether supposedly free choice is actually a Matrix-like mirage remains one of the great questions of human philosophical history. For centuries that question was assessed mostly with thought —uninformed by actual neurobiological knowledge. Nowadays, though, the inner workings of the brain are revealing themselves to modern methods of neuroinquiry, and free will seems merely to emerge from electrochemical networks of neuronal interactions. But like tourists exploring a strange city without a GPS map, scientists don’t know how all the neural neighborhoods are connected and occasionally encounter surprising enclaves—such as a place in the brain called the lateral habenula. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2008

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 12257 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Rachel Nowak INFRARED light can stimulate neurons in the inner ear as precisely as sound waves, a discovery that could lead to better cochlear implants for deaf people. A healthy inner ear uses hair cells that respond to sound to stimulate neurons that send signals to the brain. But hair cells can be destroyed by disease or injury, or can contain defects at birth, leading to deafness. In such cases, cochlear implants can directly stimulate neurons. The hearing provided by today's implants is good enough to enable deaf children to develop speech skills that are remarkably similar to hearing children's. Implant users still find it tough to appreciate music, communicate in a noisy environment and understand tonal languages like Mandarin, however. That's because the implants use only 20 or so electrodes, a small number compared to the 3000-odd hair cells in a healthy ear. More sources of stimulation should make hearing clearer but more electrodes cannot be packed in because tissue conducts electricity, so signals from different electrodes would interfere. In contrast, laser light targets nerves more precisely and doesn't spread, which could allow an implant to transmit more information to the neurons. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 12256 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Alan Mozes (HealthDay News) -- A compound that boosts growth hormone levels in Alzheimer's patients may not slow the disease, new research suggests. The study, funded by drug giant Merck, was spurred by promising animal research that had suggested that the compound, called MK-677, might help curb Alzheimer's effect on the brain. However, "the study suggests that targeting this hormone system may not be an effective approach at slowing the rate of Alzheimer's disease progression," said study author Dr. J.J. Sevigny, associate director of clinical neuroscience at Merck Research Laboratories in North Wales, Pa. His team reported its finding in the Nov. 18 issue of Neurology. ad_icon "In a similar vein, the study challenges a commonly held theory that hormones may attack beta-amyloid plaque in the brain," Sevigny added. "That was the premise of this research: that by giving this medication we'd be able to influence the beta-amyloid in the brain. And we didn't receive this result in this study." Based on the findings, Merck has now stopped investigating MK-677 for use against Alzheimer's. SOURCES: J.J. (Jeffrey) Sevigny, M.D, associate director, clinical neuro-science, Merck Research Laboratories, North Wales, Pa.; Maria Carrillo, Ph.D., director, medical & scientific relations, Alzheimer's Association, National Office, Chicago; Nov. 18, 2008, Neurology © 2008 Scout News LLC.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12255 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By GARDINER HARRIS WASHINGTON — Powerful antipsychotic medicines are being used far too cavalierly in children, and federal drug regulators must do more to warn doctors of their substantial risks, a panel of federal drug experts said Tuesday. More than 389,000 children and teenagers were treated last year with Risperdal, one of five popular medicines known as atypical antipsychotics. Of those patients, 240,000 were 12 or younger, according to data presented to the committee. In many cases, the drug was prescribed to treat attention deficit disorders. But Risperdal is not approved for attention deficit problems, and its risks — which include substantial weight gain, metabolic disorders and muscular tics that can be permanent — are too profound to justify its use in treating such disorders, panel members said. “This committee is frustrated,” said Dr. Leon Dure, a pediatric neurologist from the University of Alabama School of Medicine who was on the panel. “And we need to find a way to accommodate this concern of ours.” The meeting on Tuesday was scheduled to be a routine review of the pediatric safety of Risperdal and Zyprexa, popular antipsychotic medicines made, respectively, by Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly & Company. Food and Drug Administration officials proposed that the committee endorse the agency’s routine monitoring of the safety of the medicines in children and support its previous efforts to highlight the drugs’ risks. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12254 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Hustling up the escalator, I didn't have time to appreciate the irony of my situation: I was running late to a session on stress. It was with more than strictly professional interest then, that I settled in to hear 5 researchers discuss their latest findings on stress and the brain. In some ways, stress is all in our heads, said Bruce McEwen, a neuroendocrinologist at Rockefeller University in New York City, since our brains are responsible for recognizing and responding to stressors. Three sections in particular: the amygdale, the hippocampus, and the prefrontal cortex work with the hypothalamus to flip on (and hopefully shut down) production of stress hormones and other automatic responses to stress, like increased heart rate. But researchers are now learning how stressors can physically alter our brains, which in turn, may impact how we learn, form memories, and even make decisions. The effects are sometimes reversible but sometimes not, the scientists reported. Stress the monkey. Simona Spinelli of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland and colleagues placed 13 young monkeys in the care of their peers for 6 months, while another 15 monkeys spent the same time with their mothers. Both sets of monkeys then rejoined typical social groups, and the researchers scanned their brains after several months of exposure to the normal environment. The monkeys raised under Lord of the Flies-like conditions showed enlarged brain regions in areas related to stress, compared to the control group, even after spending time in the normal environment. This suggests that early stress can have long-lasting impacts on the brain, Spinelli says, though follow-up studies in humans are necessary. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 12253 - Posted: 06.24.2010