A legal battle in New York City highlights the healing power of dogs for children with autism and Asperger’s syndrome. Manhattan federal prosecutors have accused the owners of an Upper East Side residence of discriminating against 11-year-old Aaron Schein by preventing him from having a dog, The New York Daily News reports. Aaron has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, often considered a high-functioning form of autism, and his doctors believe a service dog will relieve anxiety and help him cope with the disorder. People with Asperger’s usually have average or above-average intelligence, but they lack the intuitive ability to read social cues and find it difficult to make friends and form relationships. According to the newspaper, a lawsuit claims the building owners violated the Fair Housing Act by imposing unreasonable demands on Aaron’s parents before allowing a dog. “It is not right or legal for landlords to dictate the unreasonable terms and conditions by which persons with disabilities should live their lives,” said Kim Kendrick, an assistant secretary for the federal Housing and Urban Development Department, to the newspaper. After Aaron’s parents asked the co-op board to make an exception to the building’s strict no-pets rule, the building placed stringent conditions on the family. Among the restrictions reportedly imposed by the building: the dog couldn’t be left alone for more than two hours, it would have to be taken in and out of the building on a service elevator, monitoring of dog walkers who might take it for a stroll, and $1 million in liability insurance for any injury or property damage caused by the dog. A company-hired doctor reportedly agreed the dog was medically necessary. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 12232 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By HENRY FOUNTAIN Unloved as they are, cockroaches do a lot of scurrying around in response to threats, human or otherwise. While these movements aren’t random, they aren’t entirely predictable either, researchers say in a study in Current Biology. Cockroaches choose from one of several preferred trajectories when running from a predator, and that variability is enough to confound their attackers most of the time. Paolo Domenici of the Methodological Chemistry Institute of the National Research Council of Italy and colleagues measured how the American cockroach (Periplaneta americana) responded to a threat stimulus. They found that all of their test insects acted similarly, running away at an angle from the direction of the threat. Although there was some variability, the researchers discovered that over repeated tests this angle of escape ranged from about 90 degrees (at a right angle to the direction of the threat) to 180 degrees (the opposite direction), with peaks, or preferred trajectories, of about 90, 120, 150 and 180 degrees. The researchers say they have no idea what goes on in the roach nervous system to produce these preferred routes. But they note that escape-route variability is not uncommon elsewhere in the animal world, so through further experimentation it might be possible to develop a general theory of how animals maintain a certain level of unpredictability. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 12231 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey PHILADELPHIA — Women and men sometimes do things differently, right down to divvying up their genetic legacies. This divvying up is known as meiosis, a process that cuts the number of chromosomes in half during the production of eggs and sperm. Men do meiosis by the textbook, but women play it looser with the process, scientists from Washington State University and the University of Washington reported Nov. 12 in Philadelphia at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics. The finding could help explain why women sometimes pass along the wrong number of chromosomes to their children, the researchers suggest. “The male doesn’t contribute to chromosome abnormality in any way,” says Terry Hassold, a geneticist at Washington State University in Pullman who presented the findings. Some genetic disorders, such as Down syndrome, are caused by having an extra copy of a chromosome. Humans normally have two copies of each chromosome, one inherited from mom and one from dad. About one in every 700 babies born has an extra copy of chromosome 21, a surplus that causes Down syndrome. About one in every 1,000 babies born may have an extra X or Y chromosome, and one in every 1,000 girls may have only one X chromosome. Abnormalities in the number of other chromosomes often lead to miscarriage or to death soon after birth. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2008

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12230 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Stephani Nano -- The same kind of deep brain stimulation used to treat some patients for Parkinson's disease also helped a few people suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder, French scientists reported. Their study involved only 16 patients, but in four of them, symptoms nearly disappeared. However, many patients had serious side effects, including one case of bleeding in the brain. The treatment involved an experimental brain pacemaker, and it reduced repetitive thoughts and behaviors in some of the patients -- just as it blocks tremors for some Parkinson's sufferers. The researchers came up with the approach after noticing that two Parkinson's patients who got the treatment also saw an improvement to their obsessive-compulsive disorders. Other small studies have targeted a different part of the brain for that disorder and depression. In the French study, symptoms were reduced more than 25 percent, the researchers said. The results are "very encouraging," said the study's lead author, Dr. Luc Mallet of Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris. In an e-mail, he said the procedure should be used only in medical studies at the moment because of the possible side effects. The findings are reported in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Link ID: 12229 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Fergus Walsh Oxford University says the first animals have been moved into a new biomedical sciences centre in the city. The building will bring together animal research currently conducted at around half a dozen facilities in the city. Construction began five years ago but building work halted for more than a year when the contractors pulled out, citing intimidation from animal rights groups. The four storey Oxford animal lab is still surrounded by anonymous wooden hoardings topped with barbed wire. It is ringed with cameras and is a highly secure building. Inside, biosecurity is a key feature. Before getting to see the first animals I had to put on protective overalls, plastic shoe covers and a hairnet. This is mostly to protect the animals from any germs I might bring in. The first animals moved in were mice, which is perhaps appropriate given that rodents will make up 98% of the inhabitants. Eventually there will also be zebrafish, tadpoles, frogs and small numbers of guinea pigs, gerbils and hamsters. There will be no cats or dogs and no farm animals. BBC © MMVIII

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 12228 - Posted: 06.24.2010

What goes on inside the brain of a bully? Researchers from the University of Chicago used brain scan technology to find out. They wanted to learn whether the brain of an aggressive youth responds differently to violence than the brain of someone who is not a bully. In a chilling finding, the researchers found aggressive youths appear to enjoy inflicting pain on others. In the study, the researchers compared eight 16- to 18-year-old boys who were unusually aggressive to a control group of adolescent boys with no unusual signs of aggression. The aggressive boys had been given a diagnosis of aggressive conduct disorder and had been in trouble for starting fights, using a weapon and stealing from their victims. The youths were tested with functional magnetic resonance imaging to see how their brains reacted while watching video clips. The clips showed people in pain as a result of accidents — such as when a heavy bowl dropped on their hands. They also showed intentional acts, like stepping on another person’s foot. When the aggressive youths watched people intentionally inflicting pain on another, the scan showed a response in the part of the brain associated with reward and pleasure. The youths who were not aggressive didn’t show the same brain response. The study, published in the current issue of the journal Biological Psychology, suggests that the brain’s natural impulse for empathy may be disrupted in the brain of a bully, leading to increased aggression. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 12227 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Alan S. Brown Eight years ago, when Erik Ramsey was 16, a car accident triggered a brain stem stroke that left him paralyzed. Though fully conscious, Ramsey was completely paralyzed, essentially “locked in,” unable to move or talk. He could communicate only by moving his eyes up or down, thereby answering questions with a yes or a no. Ramsey’s doctors recommended sending him to a nursing facility. Instead his parents brought him home. In 2004 they met neurologist Philip R. Kennedy, chief scientist at Neural Signals in Duluth, Ga. He offered Ramsey the chance to take part in an unusual experiment. Surgeons would implant a high-tech device called a neural prosthesis into Ramsey’s brain, enabling him to communicate his thoughts to a computer that would translate them into spoken words. Today Ramsey sports a small metal electrode in his brain. Its thin wires penetrate a fraction of an inch into his motor cortex, the part of the brain that controls movement, including the motion of his vocal muscles. When Ramsey thinks of saying a sound, the implant captures the electrical firing of nearby neurons and transmits their impulses to a computer, which decodes them and produces the sounds. So far Ramsey can only say a few simple vowels, but Kennedy believes that he will recover his full range of speech by 2010. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Robotics; Stroke
Link ID: 12226 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Hal Arkowitz and Scott O. Lilienfeld “I was driving home after work,” David reported. “Things had been very stressful there lately. I was tense but looking forward to getting home and relaxing. And then, all of a sudden—boom! My heart started racing, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was sweating and shaking. My thoughts were racing, and I was afraid that I was going crazy or having a heart attack. I pulled over and called my wife to take me to the emergency room.” David’s fears turned out to be unjustified. An emergency room doctor told David, a composite of several therapy patients seen by one of us (Arkowitz), that he was suffering from a panic attack. The current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) defines a panic attack as an abrupt and discrete experience of intense fear or acute discomfort, accompanied by symptoms such as heart palpitations, shortness of breath, sweating, trembling, and worries about going crazy, losing control or dying. Most attacks occur without obvious provocation, making them even more terrifying. Some 8 to 10 percent of the population experiences an occasional attack, but only 5 percent develops panic disorder. Contrary to common misconception, these episodes aren’t merely rushes of anxiety that most of us experience from time to time. Instead patients who have had a panic attack typically describe it as the most frightening event they have ever undergone. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12225 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas -- Birds may be bilingual, trilingual or better, suggest new findings that birds in the wild can learn the vocalizations of other species. The discovery not only proves that birds eavesdrop on what other birds are saying, but it also provides some of the strongest evidence to date that birds can learn "foreign" calls, as opposed to just confusing similar sounds with their own. While humans may learn a foreign language for work or pleasure, the skill can mean life or death for little songbirds that, according to the study, pay attention to the alarm calls sounded by other birds when a predator, such as a hawk, approaches. "It's tricky to know what goes on inside another species' head," lead author Robert Magrath told Discovery News. "At one extreme, perhaps they are labeling, such as 'flying hawk approaching at 10m!' or 'hawk flying by in the distance,' or 'predator on the ground,' etc." Magrath, an associate professor of botany and zoology at the Australian National University, added that the vocalizations could be prompted by anxiety too. "The best evidence is that both labeling and fear have a role," he said. Magrath and colleagues Benjamin Pitcher and Janet Gardner studied three Australian birds: superb fairy-wrens, white-browed scrubwrens, and New Holland honeyeaters. He prompted each to sound an alarm call using a gliding model sparrowhawk. This predatory bird has a taste for fairy-wrens and scrubwrens. © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 12224 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Kelli Whitlock Burton When tangling over territories, some male fiddler crabs win by pretending to be stronger than they are, a new study reveals. The research adds to earlier findings that suggest animals use dishonesty more often than previously thought. Male fiddler crabs sport an enormous claw, which can regrow if lost during a fight over a home burrow. Although the replacement looks the same as the original, it is much weaker. The crabs notice the difference in their new claw, because it is lighter and does not pinch or pull as well. However, when faced with a challenger, they act as if nothing's wrong, displaying their feeble--but large--claws threateningly. The bluff usually works, according to a team of Australian ecologists who report their findings this week in Functional Ecology. The researchers collected Uca mjoebergi fiddler crabs in Darwin, Australia, and identified those with original claws and those with replacements. They measured closing force and pulling force--in territorial fights, invading crabs try to yank residents from their homes. The researchers then released the crabs near their original burrows and watched as other males challenged them. Homeless crabs with regenerated claws that were searching for a new burrow usually picked on crabs with smaller claws. Most of the time, the resident crabs gave up their burrow without a fight, falling for the bluff. "Male performance traits, such as claw strength and pull-resisting force, are really the key to success in male combat, so much so that the males will pretend to be good performers even if they are not," says lead author Simon Lailvaux, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Aggression; Animal Communication
Link ID: 12223 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Kerri Smith Researchers have found the internal 'metronome' that controls how fast birds sing by cooling small areas of the zebra finch brain. The finding clarifies how birds keep time and could even shed light on how humans regulate their speech, or make music. Michael Long and Michale Fee at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge came up with a device that allowed them to cool down a part of the zebra finch brain called the high vocal centre (HVC). This centre consists of two small regions, one in each hemisphere, and is located towards the back of the bird's forebrain, close to the surface of the brain. The centre is involved in song production but its exact function was not known. The researchers implanted two thin cooling elements made of gold into the brains of adult zebra finches so that they lay over the two regions forming the HVC, which are each just 1 millimetre by 2 millimetres across. They then cooled the regions very precisely using a thermoelectric property called the Peltier effect, in which an electric current is used to transfer heat from one end of the element to the other. Cooling the HVC by 6.5 ºC slowed down the birds' song by up to 45% and had little effect on its other features, such as pitch or the order of the notes1 (see 'Cool songs'). The team then cooled another region involved in singing, called the robust nucleus of the arcopallium, or RA, but didn't see the same effect. This confirms that the HVC is indeed serving as the birds' metronome, the researchers say. The results are published in Nature. © 2008 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Language; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 12222 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway Everyone loves a pretty face - except those women who might see it as a threat. With eyes on the competition, women of childbearing age rate other attractive women consistently lower than women who have entered menopause, according to a new study. "It's almost as if they're putting down other attractive women," says Benedict Jones, a psychologist at Aberdeen University, UK, who led the study of 97 middle-aged women. Numerous studies have looked at how fertility affects women's preferences for men's faces, bodies, voices, and even sweaty shirts. Yet few researchers have flipped the coin to examine how fertility changes competition for mates within sexes, says Jones. He and his colleagues showed pre- and post-menopausal women pictures of men and women, digitally manipulated to make them more masculine or more feminine looking. Their software systematically enhances male features such as a wide jaw and heavy brow or female attributes such as wider eyes and more arched eyebrows. "It's not going into Photoshop and mucking about to make the jaw a few pixels wider and the eyes a few pixels bigger," he says. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 12221 - Posted: 06.24.2010

WASHINGTON - It’s a delicate and daring experiment: Could doctors switch a leg nerve to make it operate the bladder instead? Families of a few U.S. children whose spina bifida robs them of the bladder control that most people take for granted dared to try the procedure — and early results suggest the surgery indeed may help, in at least some patients. With the technique, pioneered in China, the kids are supposed to scratch or pinch their thigh to signal the bladder to empty every few hours. But surprisingly, some youngsters instead are starting to feel those need-to-go sensations that their birth defect had always prevented. “It feels like this little chill kind of thing in me,” marvels 9-year-old Billy Kraser of Scranton, Pa. “When he goes in there and he’s dry and he’s clean, it’s such a triumph,” adds his mother, Janice Kraser. “I’ll hear him going, ‘Yesss!”’ The U.S. pilot study consists of just nine spina bifida patients and still is tracking how they fare — no one is finished healing yet. But already desperate families are lining up for a chance at this nerve rerouting, even as William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich., is trying to raise money to expand the study and provide better evidence. © 2008 Microsoft

Keyword: Regeneration
Link ID: 12220 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Shankar Vedantam Steve Newman had suffered from major depression from the time he was 13. He tried innumerable treatments: psychotherapy and medications. Approaching 60, single by necessity and friendless by choice, he decided his train had only two stops left before suicide. One option was shock therapy, formally known as electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT. The controversial technique has been shown to be effective in treating depression, but it involves inducing seizures in patients. Memory loss is a common side effect. Newman was not looking forward to it. Newman was working in Florida as an insurance agent when he heard about the other option. It sounded like science fiction, or just kooky: Scientists in this country and overseas were experimenting with the use of high-power magnets to cure depression, using a technique known as transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS. "I would have jumped into a volcano to get better; my life was just unbearable," Newman said. "I was at the point in my life where I did not have a lot of choice. I decided I would try TMS and then ECT, and if neither of them worked, I was going to consider suicide." Newman gave up his job in Florida and in 2005 moved to Philadelphia, where he signed up for the magnetic therapy trial at the University of Pennsylvania. Weeks after the treatments began, Newman said, he woke up one morning and found that his depression had vanished. © 2008 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 12219 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY Two scientists, drawing on their own powers of observation and a creative reading of recent genetic findings, have published a sweeping theory of brain development that would change the way mental disorders like autism and schizophrenia are understood. The theory emerged in part from thinking about events other than mutations that can change gene behavior. And it suggests entirely new avenues of research, which, even if they prove the theory to be flawed, are likely to provide new insights into the biology of mental disease. At a time when the search for the genetic glitches behind brain disorders has become mired in uncertain and complex findings, the new idea provides psychiatry with perhaps its grandest working theory since Freud, and one that is grounded in work at the forefront of science. The two researchers — Bernard Crespi, a biologist at Simon Fraser University in Canada, and Christopher Badcock, a sociologist at the London School of Economics, who are both outsiders to the field of behavior genetics — have spelled out their theory in a series of recent journal articles. “The reality, and I think both of the authors would agree, is that many of the details of their theory are going to be wrong; and it is, at this point, just a theory,” said Dr. Matthew Belmonte, a neuroscientist at Cornell University. “But the idea is plausible. And it gives researchers a great opportunity for hypothesis generation, which I think can shake up the field in good ways.” Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12218 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR High school textbooks call it the tongue map — that colorful illustration that neatly divides the human tongue into sections according to taste receptors. There is the tip of the tongue for sweet, the sides for sour and salty, and the back of the tongue for bitter. But recent studies show that while scientists still have much to learn about receptors, the map, at least, is wrong What is known is that there are at least five basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and the most recently discovered, umami. This last flavor, which means “savory” in Japanese, can be detected in miso, soy sauce and other Asian foods, particularly those that contain monosodium glutamate. And scientists suspect that there are receptors for other flavors as well. In a study published in the journal Nature in 2006, a team of scientists reported that receptors for the basic tastes are found in distinct cells, and that these cells are not localized but spread throughout the tongue. That said, other studies suggest that some parts may be more sensitive to certain flavors, and that there may be differences in the way men and women detect sour, salty and bitter flavors. THE BOTTOM LINE Receptors for different tastes are not confined to certain parts of the tongue. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 12217 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Billy Baker Bevil Conway, an artist turned neuroscientist, was sitting in front of a laptop computer recently at Harvard Medical School showing off one of his latest discoveries. Small squares of color flashed rapidly on the screen - red, yellow, green - until suddenly, as the screen showed a square of deep purple, the computer's speakers crackled with electrical static. If you ask why an artist would delve into the labyrinthine, and largely unknown, workings of the brain, the look of satisfaction on Conway's face as he leaned back in his chair said it all. The static on the speakers is the electrical signal recorded from a single neuron in a monkey's brain, a neuron that only turned on when the monkey was shown deep purple on a monitor. "When you discover something new about the brain, it's intoxicating," said Conway. "That's the first deep purple recording in history. Philosophers have been arguing for hundreds of years whether color is encoded in the brain or is external. What's amazing is that this is in a monkey. They don't have language. When I learn something like this, I get the same feeling as when I make a painting that does something that would never have been done if I weren't around." Conway, 34, a native of Zimbabwe who is an assistant professor at Wellesley College and a visiting scientist at Harvard Medical School, started out as a visual artist. In exploring the techniques of art - why certain color combinations work; why line drawings are effective even though they have no external basis in nature; how movement can be conveyed in a two-dimensional media - he found a desire to understand the way vision and perception work in the brain itself.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 12216 - Posted: 11.11.2008

by John Seabrook The Western New Mexico Correctional Facility sits in high-desert country about seventy miles west of Albuquerque. Grants, a former uranium boomtown that depends heavily on prison work, is a few miles down the road. There’s a glassed-in room at the top of the prison tower, with louvred windows and, on the ceiling, a big crank that operates a searchlight. In a box on the floor are some tear-gas shells that can be fired down into the yard should there be a riot. Below is the prison complex—a series of low six-sided buildings, divided by high hurricane fences topped with razor wire that glitters fiercely in the desert sun. To the east is the snow-covered peak of Mt. Taylor, the highest in the region; to the west, the Zuni Mountains are visible in the blue distance. One bright morning last April, Dr. Kent Kiehl strode across the parking lot to the entrance, saying, “I guarantee that by the time we reach the gate the entire inmate population will know I’m here.” Kiehl—the Doc, as the inmates call him—was dressed in a blue blazer and a yellow tie. He is tall, broad-shouldered, and barrel-chested, with neat brown hair and small ears; he looks more like a college football player, which was his first ambition, than like a cognitive neuroscientist. But when he speaks, in an unexpectedly high-pitched voice, he becomes that know-it-all kid in school who intimidated you with his combination of superior knowledge and bluster. At thirty-eight, Kiehl is one of the world’s leading younger investigators in psychopathy, the condition of moral emptiness that affects between fifteen to twenty-five per cent of the North American prison population, and is believed by some psychologists to exist in one per cent of the general adult male population. (Female psychopaths are thought to be much rarer.) © 2008 CondéNet

Keyword: Aggression; Emotions
Link ID: 12215 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Injuries in very young children are associated with later diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, UK research suggests. A study of 62,000 children shows both head and burn injuries before the age of two are linked with almost double the risk of ADHD diagnosis by age 10. It suggests injuries in general are an early sign of ADHD behaviour. The British Medical Journal study may help GPs spot children who need specialist referral, experts said. Previous research has suggested mild brain injury is associated with behavioural changes in children. The researchers said that although a link between head injury and ADHD had been shown it was not clear which comes first. In the latest study, a team of UK and US researchers, predicted that they would find higher rates of ADHD diagnosis in children who had been treated for a head injury when they were younger than in those who had burn injuries. Using data from more than 300 general practices from between 1988 to 2003 they found that both types of injuries were associated with greater rates of ADHD diagnosis than children who had no injuries. The study also found that children who had a head injury after the age of two had a greater likelihood of being diagnosed with ADHD before their 10th birthday among all three groups. Children who go on to develop ADHD may exhibit more risk-taking behaviours as young children and are therefore more likely to experience early injuries, the researchers suggest. There is considerable debate over the cause of ADHD. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines state that risk factors for ADHD are likely to interact and that although genetics is important, environmental factors such as injury or maternal smoking may also contribute. (C)BBC

Keyword: ADHD; Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 12214 - Posted: 11.08.2008

By Mark Leyner and Dr. Billy Goldberg Imagine an accidental bop on the head changed your accent from the grating stridence of Fran Drescher to the dulcet, euphonious tones of, say, Kate Winslet. Or if you’re a man, what if a whack to the forehead transformed your speech from something out of Homer Simpson's pie-hole to the adorably urbane voice of Stewie Griffin from “Family Guy?” That kind of bizarre voice change happened for real to a woman from Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Recent newspaper reports and a cable TV show featured CindyLou Romberg, who split her head from front to back after falling out of a moving car in 1981. Despite the serious brain injury, after her awful headaches and lingering back pain abated, she resumed a normal life as a caregiver and motorcycle enthusiast. Until her back started bothering her again about a year ago. After visiting a local chiropractor, Romberg soon began speaking gibberish.When she began speaking normally again, she had a German accent, tinged with what some friends thought was vaguely French or Russian. This strange accent was coming from an American woman who had never studied a foreign language, nor been to any foreign country, except Canada. © 2008 Microsoft

Keyword: Language; Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 12213 - Posted: 06.24.2010