by Laura Spinney JILL, 19, from Michigan, wants to go to university to read political science. There is just one problem: she keeps failing the mathematics requirement. "I am an exceptional student in all other subjects, so my consistent failure at math made me feel very stupid," she says. In fact, she stopped going to her college mathematics class after a while because, she says, "I couldn't take the daily reminder of what an idiot I was." Last November, Jill got herself screened for learning disabilities. She found that while her IQ is above average, her numerical ability is equivalent to that of an 11-year-old because she has something called dyscalculia. The diagnosis came partly as a relief, because it explained a lot of difficulties she had in her day-to-day life. She can't easily read a traditional, analogue clock, for example, and always arrives 20 minutes early for fear of being late. When it comes to paying in shops or restaurants, she hands her wallet to a friend and asks them to do the calculation, knowing that she is likely to get it wrong. Welcome to the stressful world of dyscalculia, where numbers rule because inhabitants are continually trying to avoid situations in which they have to perform even basic calculations. Despite affecting about 5 per cent of people - roughly the same proportion as are dyslexic - dyscalculia has long been neglected by science, and people with it incorrectly labelled as stupid. Now, though, researchers are starting to get to the root of the problem, bringing hope that dyscalculic children will start to get specialist help just as youngsters with dyslexia do. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Intelligence
Link ID: 12483 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tony Dokoupil America's all-time favorite pill isn't for birth control, according to historian Andrea Tone. It's a potent little tranquilizer called Miltown, after Milltown, the New Jersey hamlet where it was manufactured in 1955. Despite virtually zero advertising, the release of the original "mother's little helper" set off a consumer stampede. By 1957, Americans had filled 36 million prescriptions for Miltown, more than a billion pills had been manufactured and these so-called "peace pills" accounted for one third of all prescriptions. The drug's popularity has fallen off a cliff since the 1960s, when studies found that it caused psychological dependence. But it nonetheless launched the age of psychiatric cure-alls. Dozens of "lifestyle drugs" (like Xanax and Paxil, which also treat anxiety) have followed in its wake, raising a perennial question: do we actually need these medications, or does Big Pharma push them on us? Critics argue that the push is more like an aggressive shove. Drug companies spent more than $4 billion on syrupy and suggestive consumer ads last year, up from less than $1 billion in 1997. And more than three quarters of that cash went for television ads, which critics have blamed for trivializing the serious decision to take prescription drugs. Last year House Democrats tried (and failed) to pass a bill banning TV ads during a drug's first three years on the market. . But historian Tone differs with those who blame our pop-a-pill mentality on marketing hype and harried doctors too eager to write prescriptions. In "The Age of Anxiety" (Basic Books), her smart and crisp history of American tranquilizer use, the McGill University professor finds that demand for Miltown—the first lifestyle drug—was surprisingly patient driven. Tone spoke with NEWSWEEK's Tony Dokoupil. © 2009 Newsweek, Inc.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12482 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given the green light to human clinical trials of an embryonic stem-cell-based therapy for spinal cord injuries, a biotechnology firm said Friday. The regulator has given permission to Geron Corp. of Menlo Park, Calif., to inject embryonic stem cells into eight to 10 people recently paralyzed due to spinal cord injuries. The research aims to regrow nerve tissue. President Barack Obama, who took office on Tuesday, was expected to reverse former president George W. Bush's executive order that restricted federal funding on research involving human embryonic stem cells. Advocates of embryonic stem cell research say it could lead to potential treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and cancer by restoring organ and tissue function. Scientists say embryonic stem cells are the most useful type because they have the potential to become any type of cell within the body. But the research is controversial since embryos are destroyed to obtain the stem cells. Dr. Thomas Okarma, president and CEO of Geron, said the injections will be made in the spine. Several medical centres around the U.S. will participate in the research, which he said has not received U.S. government funding. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Regeneration; Stem Cells
Link ID: 12481 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Andy Coghlan Seven of the UK's most active animal rights extremists were jailed on Wednesday, receiving sentences of up to 11 years. "These sentences signal the end of the long dark era of animal rights extremism," said Simon Festing of the pro-research organisation, Understanding Animal Research. Globally, however, the situation is far from resolved. In the US, attacks are intensifying and researchers are expecting the new administration to clamp down on offenders. In the UK, the activists were tried for their parts in a six-year campaign to close Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), a company based near Cambridge that undertakes animal research for pharmaceutical companies. The activists' campaign of terror and blackmail, orchestrated by an organisation called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), went well beyond HLS itself, targeting any companies, contractors, shareholders, or individuals with connections to the company. According to Alastair Nisbet of the UK Crown Prosecution Service's Wessex Complex Casework Unit, the conspirators threatened to continue subjecting their victims to blackmail and intimidation unless they agreed to stop working with HLS. The harassment included noisy protests outside business premises; abusive telephone calls, emails and letters; threats of damage to property and physical assault; as well as false allegations of child abuse, hoax bombs, demonstrations and damage to the homes of targets through so-called "home visits". They also sent victims used tampons said to be soaked in HIV-infected blood. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 12480 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway Every parent thinks their baby is adorable but if you want to know the truth, ask a new mother. Young women are apparently much better at assessing cuteness than older women and men of all ages. By manipulating facial features such as the size of the eyes and foreheads and cheek plumpness, researchers created super-cute baby faces, looks that only a mother could love, as well as faces in between. Baby faces Reiner Sprengelmeyer of the University of St Andrews in the UK, and his colleagues then presented dozens of volunteers with sets of two baby faces, one made artificially cuter than the other. In 200 trials two dozen women aged 19 to 26 always performed well above chance in determining which face was cutest even when the "cuteness" difference between the faces was small. Older women and men and young men performed far worse on the trials, especially when faces differed little. Interestingly, women aged 45 to 51 nearly equalled younger women in accuracy. Since many of these women are on the cusp of menopause, Sprengelmeyer's team suggest that female reproductive hormones play a role. Of course, oestrogen and progesterone levels plummet after menopause. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12479 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Sunita Reed In 2000, Columbia University psychiatrist Eric Kandel won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his contributions to the understanding of the neurobiology of memory. But he feels that not enough progress has been made to help those with mental illness. “We’re desperately in need of drugs for the mentally ill,” Kandel says. “One way to do this is to find new drug targets.” Kandel and his colleague Daniela Pollak’s recent findings may have opened the door for such targets. They used mice as models to study depression and ways to treat it. Mice are reluctant but good swimmers. When they are placed in a pool of water they immediately paddle about. “So it swims and it swims and it swims and after a while it sees this is hopeless,” Kandel explains. “I’m not getting anywhere. I can’t get out of this thing, and it gives up and just floats.” This despondent behavior is a mouse model of depression. Then Pollak gave one group of mice the drug fluoxetine, the generic version of the commonly used antidepressant Prozac, and tested their behavior compared to the mice that did not get the drug. She found that the medicated mice continued to swim and showed reduced signs of depression. Previous studies had found that the same antidepressant also causes newborn cells to grow in certain areas of the brain. ©2009 ScienCentral

Keyword: Depression; Neurogenesis
Link ID: 12478 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Simon Baron Cohen Your front-page article on 12 January was given the headline "New research brings autism screening closer to reality" and the strapline "Call for ethics debate as tests in the womb could allow termination of pregnancies". It showed a photo of a foetus, which was given the caption, "The discovery of a high level of testosterone in prenatal tests is an indicator of autism." And inside the paper a double-page spread was devoted to the details of the study, and given the headline "Disorder linked to high levels of testosterone in the womb". All four of these statements are inaccurate. The new research was not about autism screening; the new research has not discovered that a high level of testosterone in prenatal tests is an indicator of autism; autism spectrum disorder has not been linked to high levels of testosterone in the womb; and tests (of autism) in the womb do not allow termination of pregnancies. To be fair to the reporter, Sarah Boseley, the content of her articles was mostly correct. But the headlines and photo captions have led to emails from hundreds of worried parents of children with autism erroneously believing that our research is being conducted with a view to wanting to terminate children with autism in the womb - a nasty and sinister example of eugenics that my co-authors and I oppose. The Guardian was reporting on our new study in the British Journal of Psychology that found a correlation between levels of foetal testosterone (FT) and the number of autistic traits a child shows at the age of eight. The study was not about prenatal screening for autism, and indeed did not even test children with autism. © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 12477 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Joel Garreau You used to need hubris, millions of dollars and the support of a great research university to imagine building a replacement for the human eye. Now it's become dream and quest material for artists and tinkerers. Tanya Vlach, 35, of San Francisco, wants a new computer eye to replace the natural one she lost in a car accident. So, being the product of her age, she put a request for help out on the Web. Sure enough, hundreds of young techies quickly responded. Might they fit a cellphone camera, some inquired, into Vlach's beautiful but merely decorative blue acrylic orb? Here we find the intersection of two great American myths. One involves filling a void by searching for the future inside ourselves -- out on some new frontier. The other connects to the inventor as hero -- from Edison and his light bulb to the young creators of the computer revolution in their California garages -- the lone rangers who changed the world. This union occurs now because enhancing the human body has evolved to the point where it can be an art project, an amazing hack and a search for identity -- a way to define your life. This is where it gets interesting. © 2009 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Vision; Robotics
Link ID: 12476 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Ian Sample, science correspondent Acupuncture can help people who suffer from headaches and migraines, even when the needles are put in the "wrong" place, according to a major review of medical studies. Volunteers who were treated with the traditional Chinese technique, in which thin needles are pushed into the skin at specific points, had fewer headaches and migraines, and experienced less pain if a headache came on, researchers found. Scientists working for the Cochrane Collaboration, which publishes gold standard reviews on the effectiveness of medical treatments, confirmed the beneficial effect of acupuncture after analysing 33 separate studies involving nearly 7,000 patients in total. Researchers led by Klaus Linde at the centre for complementary medicine research at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, reviewed published evidence for acupuncture as a treatment for tension headaches, which usually affect both sides of the head, and migraines, which tend to affect only one side. Eleven trials involving 2,317 patients found many experienced fewer headaches after having acupuncture, though a similar improvement was seen in those who had "fake" acupuncture, where the needles were either inserted at incorrect points or did not puncture the skin. © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 12475 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nathan Seppa People who don’t typically get distressed by routine events that might unnerve others seem to have a reduced likelihood of developing dementia in old age, concludes a study of elderly Swedish people published in the Jan. 20 Neurology. Physician Laura Fratiglioni of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and her colleagues studied 506 people in their 80s who didn’t have dementia upon enrolling in a long-term medical study. All participants agreed to take personality tests, filling out a questionnaire that assessed what scientists call neuroticism, a state of being easily distressed. The questions also revealed how extroverted a person is. Interviews of the participants determined whether a person was likely to be socially active or to live a more isolated life. Over the six-year study, 144 of the participants developed dementia. An analysis of the personality and lifestyle data suggested that people with low levels of neuroticism and high scores on extrovert traits were the least likely to develop dementia. When addressed in the context of an individual’s lifestyle — ranging from social butterfly to shut-in — the findings suggested that having a socially integrated lifestyle may provide a buffer against the pro-dementia risk of being easily distressed. But in people leading more isolated lives, having low neuroticism scores still seemed to offer some protection against dementia. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Alzheimers; Stress
Link ID: 12474 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Greg Miller When studying the neurological basis for everything from how we deal with the loss of a loved one to why we crave certain foods, scientists have increasingly turned to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). As it's most often used, the technique measures blood oxygenation in the brain--and the assumption has always been that areas with more oxygenated blood are areas where neurons are busily firing away. But a new study suggests that's not always true, adding an unexpected wrinkle to this burgeoning field of research. The surprising findings come from experiments with two monkeys. Neuroscientists Yevgeniy Sirotin and Aniruddha Das at Columbia University trained each monkey to monitor a tiny light in an otherwise dark room. When the light turned red, as it did at regular, predictable intervals, a monkey could earn a juice reward by fixing its gaze on the light for a few seconds. Microelectrodes placed in the primary visual cortex, the first way station for visual information in the cerebral cortex, picked up only a steady, quiet chatter of neural activity while the monkeys performed the task. (The small light provided very little visual stimulation, Das says, akin to a single star in an otherwise black sky.) But optical measurements of blood volume and oxygenation told a different story, the researchers report in tomorrow's issue of Nature. These two hemodynamic measures rose and fell in the visual cortex throughout the experiment, repeatedly peaking a few seconds before the monkey had to fix its gaze on the light. The findings indicate that the flow of oxygenated blood to a particular brain region doesn't just increase in response to neural activity but can actually anticipate an expected task, even when nearby neurons are relatively quiet, Das says. That suggests that the association between neural firing and hemodynamics isn't as close as many researchers had assumed. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Brain imaging; Glia
Link ID: 12473 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jordan Lite Men have more willpower than women when it comes to resisting food, a small new study suggests. "We didn’t expect such striking differences between males and females," study co-author Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, tells ScientificAmerican.com. "Men were able to inhibit their desire for food . . . and women weren’t able to do so." Scientists had 13 women and 10 men who had fasted overnight look at, smell and taste – but not dig into — goodies like pizza, burgers and cake. They then told the subjects to practice "cognitive inhibition" (read: to try to convince themselves they weren't really hungry) and measured their brain activity using positron emission tomography (PET) scanning. (PET scans measure increases in blood flow linked to brain activity.) Both sexes reported they felt less hungry when they were trying not to be, according to results published in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But the scans suggested that only the guys were able to control their desire to eat. On average, the men showed less activity in the limbic system (the brain’s emotional center that controls the drive to eat) when told to inhibit their craving for food than they did when they weren't told to control their hunger. There was no difference, however, in the women's brain activity. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Obesity; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 12472 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Richard Black A synthetic "chemical sex smell" could help rid North America's Great Lakes of a devastating pest, scientists say. US researchers deployed a laboratory version of a male sea lamprey pheromone to trick ovulating females into swimming upstream into traps. The sea lamprey, sometimes dubbed the "vampire fish", has parasitised native species of the Great Lakes since its accidental introduction in the 1800s. The work is reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Great Lakes on the US-Canada border support recreational fishing worth billions of dollars a year, which the lampreys would wreck but for a control programme costing about £20m annually. This is thought to be the first time that pheromones have been shown to be the basis of a possible way of controlling animal pests other than insects. "There's been extensive study of pheromones in animals and even in humans," said lead researcher Weiming Li from Michigan State University in East Lansing, US. "But most researchers have presumed that as animals get more complex, their behaviour is regulated in a more complex way, not by just one pheromone," he told BBC News. Professor Li's team released the synthetic version of a lamprey hormone from a trap placed in a stream where lampreys come to breed. Females scenting it would swim vigorously upstream until they found the source, some becoming trapped in the process. The sea lamprey's natural life cycle takes it from birth in a stream to adulthood in the ocean, where it gains its vampirical appellation. Circular jaws lock on to another, larger fish, and a sharp tongue carves through its scales. From then on the lamprey feeds on the blood and body fluids of its temporary host, often killing it in the process. (C)BBC

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 12471 - Posted: 01.20.2009

People who socialize and are more laid back may be less likely to develop dementia, a new study suggests. In Tuesday's issue of the medical journal Neurology, Swedish researchers said people who were not socially active but calm and relaxed had a 50 per cent lower risk of developing dementia compared with people who were isolated and prone to distress. "In the past, studies have shown that chronic distress can affect parts of the brain, such as the hippocampus, possibly leading to dementia," said Hui-Xin Wang, of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who led the study. "But our findings suggest that having a calm and outgoing personality in combination with a socially active lifestyle may decrease the risk of developing dementia even further." The study involved 506 older people who did not have dementia when the study began. Participants were given questionnaires to identify personal traits and lifestyles, such as the richness of their social networks. After an average of six years, 144 subjects developed dementia. The dementia risk was also found to be 50 per cent lower among people who were outgoing and calm compared with those prone to distress or a high degree of neuroticism, the researchers said. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Alzheimers; Stress
Link ID: 12470 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JANE E. BRODY Rochelle and Ian Yankwitt were thrilled when their son, Casey, was born seven years ago, 19 months after the birth of their daughter. But their delight was short-lived. At 7 months, this otherwise happy infant failed to respond to his name or any attempt to engage him with words, his mother recalled in an interview. “I thought he was deaf,” Ms. Yankwitt said, but tests showed nothing wrong with his hearing. Instead, at 14 months, Casey received a diagnosis of autism. His parents, both lawyers, wasted no time in setting up early intervention treatments — speech and occupational therapy and special education — as provided by New York State for developmentally disabled children. Ms. Yankwitt, who described Casey as “pretty seriously affected,” left her job to coordinate his endless rounds of treatment. If not for speech therapy five or more days a week for six years, Ms. Yankwitt is convinced Casey would not have the limited language skills he now has, which enable him to speak in short sentences, make his needs known and share things that excite him. But, she added, “there is no mistaking Casey for a normal child. He is in constant motion, flaps his arms, is easily frustrated and makes strange noises.” Ms. Yankwitt read many books and articles by parents claiming that this, that or the other treatment had cured their child’s autism, all anecdotal and based on theories and therapies unproved by scientific study. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 12469 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Carey Goldberg You're sitting at a dull meeting and your attention drifts. You're waiting in a check-out line, thinking of nothing in particular. You're lying in bed, having just turned off the television. At such times, your conscious mind is on "idle," but your brain is not. In such situations, the brain's "default system" takes over, a pattern of spontaneous activity that is fast becoming one of the hottest areas in neuroscience research, one that may cast light on mental illness. Yesterday, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, and elsewhere reported that the brain's default functions look strikingly hyperactive in people with schizophrenia and their relatives. And the more overactive the default system is, they found, the worse the symptoms tend to be. The findings are so strong that they raise hopes that brain scans of the default network could be used to diagnose schizophrenia before its symptoms appear, or predict how patients will respond to various treatments, researchers John Gabrieli and Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli said. "The really exciting thing is that, probably in a year or two, for many, many diseases we'll have a huge amount of evidence about what the situation is in that disease for the default system," said Gabrieli, a professor at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research. © 2009 NY Times Co

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Attention
Link ID: 12468 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By LAURAN NEERGAARD WASHINGTON -- Space shuttle science may soon come to an eye doctor near you: Researchers are using a NASA gadget to finally tell if a cataract is brewing before someone's vision clouds over. It's a story of shot-in-the-dark science that paid off with a noninvasive test that tells when eyes are losing the natural compound that keeps cataracts at bay. That brings the potential to fight the world's leading cause of vision loss. Knowing their eyes are vulnerable could spur people to take common-sense steps to reduce that risk, like avoiding cigarette smoke, wearing sunglasses and improving diet. More intriguing, the device allows easier testing of whether certain medications might prevent or slow cataract formation. Studies involving astronauts _ whose space flights put them at extra risk _ and civilians could begin later this year. Don't call the eye clinic yet: The government has only a few prototypes of the device and no commercial manufacturer lined up. But already, doctors at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University have begun experimental use to see how the exam might fit into the care of a variety of eye patients. "It's like an early alarm system," says Dr. Manuel Datiles III of the National Eye Institute, who led a study of 235 people that found the laser light technique can work. © 2009 The Associated Press

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 12467 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Andy Coghlan A UK company has received the go-ahead to start the world's first trial using stem cells to repair brain damage in stroke victims. ReNeuron, based in Guildford, hopes to start the trials within the next six months on 12 patients. Although six children with a rare, inherited brain condition called Batten's disease were treated with stem cells in 2006, the newly approved trial will be the first to treat a common killer. "We're absolutely delighted," says John Sinden, the company's chief scientific officer. "It's a milestone internationally, and sets the road map for what you have to do to get a stem-cell therapy into the clinic." Stroke victims will receive injections of neural stem cells through holes drilled into the skull to allow access to the worst-affected regions of their brains with a fine syringe. "Ultimately, we hope these cells will be able to differentiate into brain tissue, neurons and supporting tissue, and will re-institute connections lost through the stroke," says Keith Muir, a neurologist at the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow, where he is principle investigator for the trial. "It may be that the cells themselves, or something they produce, will help to trigger repairs." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Stroke; Stem Cells
Link ID: 12466 - Posted: 06.24.2010

WASHINGTON - Faced with their favorite foods, women are less able than men to suppress their hunger, a discovery that may help explain the higher obesity rate for females, a new study suggests. Researchers trying to understand the brain's mechanisms for controlling food intake were surprised at the difference between the sexes in brain response. Gene-Jack Wang of Brookhaven National Laboratory and his colleagues were trying to figure out why some people overeat and gain weight and others don't. They performed brain scans on 13 women and 10 men, who had fasted overnight, to determine how their brains responded to the sight of their favorite foods. They report their findings in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "There is something going on in the female," Wang said in a telephone interview, "the signal is so much different." In the study, participants were quizzed about their favorite foods. Then they were asked to fast overnight. The next day they underwent brain scans while being presented with their favorite foods. In addition, they used a technique called cognitive inhibition to suppress thoughts of hunger. © Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Keyword: Obesity; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 12465 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D. As everyone knows, sex feels good. Or does it? In recent years, I’ve come across several patients for whom sex is not just unpleasurable; it actually seems to cause harm. One patient, a young man in his mid-20s, described it this way: “After sex, I feel literally achy and depressed for about a day.” Otherwise, he had a clean bill of health, both medical and psychiatric: well adjusted, hard-working, lots of friends and a close-knit family. Believe me, I could have cooked up an explanation very easily. He had hidden conflicts about sex, or he had ambivalent feelings about his partner. Who doesn’t? But search as I could for a good explanation, I could find none. Though his symptoms and distress were quite real, I told him he did not have a major psychiatric problem that required treatment. He was clearly disappointed leaving my office. I didn’t think much about his case until some time later, when I met another patient with a similar complaint. She was a 32-year-old woman who experienced a four- to six-hour period of intense depression and irritability after an orgasm, either alone or with a partner. It was so unpleasant that she was starting to avoid sex. Recently, a psychoanalyst colleague — a man known for his skill in uncovering psychopathology — called me about yet another case. He was puzzled about a 24-year-old man whom he viewed as psychiatrically healthy except for intense depression that lasted for several hours after sex. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Depression
Link ID: 12464 - Posted: 06.24.2010