Juan Rodriguez 'The book has sold half a million," Daniel Levitin says with equal measures of wonder and boastfulness, referring to This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. He was on his way to a McGill University faculty meeting after an hour and a half of talking about the many ways music -- or what the great avant-garde composer Edgard Varese termed "organized sound" --affects us. The theme is further extrapolated to songcraft in The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature. The book is a meditation on songcraft that he categorizes into six types, conveying friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion and love, copiously illustrated by lyrics he interprets in an affecting mix of scientific, literary and personal viewpoints. "I think this is a better book," he says, "because I found my voice." One wall of his small office at McGill -- where he holds the Bell chair in the psychology of electronic communication -- is stacked with rows of boxed research papers and documents. The opposite wall bears a photo of Levitin with Sting and framed platinum albums (such as Steely Dan's classic Aja), from his days and nights working on record production (for artists including Stevie Wonder and Blue Oyster Cult). His books come with testimonials from George Martin, Bobby McFerrin, Oliver Sacks, New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, David Byrne and Sting, among others. © 2008 The National Post Company

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 12343 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Neuroscience is increasingly relevant to a number of professions and academic disciplines beyond its traditional medical applications. Lawyers, educators, economists and businesspeople, as well as scholars of sociology, philosophy, applied ethics and policy, are incorporating the concepts and methods of neuroscience into their work. Indeed, for any field in which it is important to understand, predict or influence human behavior, neuroscience will play an increasing role. The Penn Neuroscience Boot Camp is designed to give participants a basic foundation in cognitive and affective neuroscience and to equip them to be informed consumers of neuroscience research. For more on the curriculum and goals, click here. Through a combination of lectures, break-out groups, panel discussions and laboratory visits, participants will gain an understanding of the methods of neuroscience and key findings on the cognitive and social-emotional functions of the brain, lifespan development and disorders of brain function. Each lecture will be followed by extensive Q&A. Break-out groups will allow participants to delve more deeply into topics of relevance to their fields. Laboratory visits will include trip to an MRI scanner, an EEG/ERP lab, an animal neurophysiology lab, and a transcranial magnetic stimulation lab. Participants will also have access to an extensive online library of copyrighted materials selected for relevance to the Boot Camp, including classic and review articles and textbook chapters in cognitive and affective neuroscience and the applications of neuroscience to diverse fields.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12342 - Posted: 12.16.2008

More people with eating disorders could benefit from "talking therapies" which aim to release them from obsessive feelings, say UK researchers. They said a specially-created form of cognitive behavioural therapy might work in four out of five cases. A 154-person American Journal of Psychiatry study, by the University of Oxford, found most achieved "complete and lasting" improvement. At present, the treatment is officially recommended only for bulimia patients. Some statistics suggest that more than a million people in the UK are affected by some kind of eating disorder, the best known types being anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Approximately 40% of those with eating disorders have bulimia, 20% have anorexia, and the remainder have "atypical disorders", which can combine both bulimic and anorexic-type symptoms. The National Institute of Clinical Excellence has backed cognitive behavioural therapy for bulimia, but Professor Christopher Fairburn, the Wellcome Trust funded researcher who led the project, believes his version could help many more people. His study focused on bulimia and "atypical" patients, but excluded those with anorexia. The technique works using a series of counselling sessions which help the person involved to realise the links between their emotions and behaviour, and work out ways to change what they are doing. Professor Fairburn developed two versions specifically for people with eating disorders, one which focused completely on the eating problems, and another, which took a wider view of not only the eating disorder, but also problems with self-esteem which might be contributing to it. Both treatments involved 50-minute outpatient sessions repeated once a week for 20 weeks. (C)BBC

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 12341 - Posted: 12.15.2008

Seven new gene variants discovered by scientists suggest strongly that obesity is largely a mind problem. The findings suggest the brain plays the dominant role in controlling appetite, and that obesity cannot easily be blamed on metabolic flaws. Two international studies, published in Nature Genetics, examined samples from thousands of people for the tiniest genetic changes. Many of the seven key variants seem to be active in the brain. This suggests that the brain's impact on appetite and eating behaviour may be more important that any genetic variation which alters the body's ability to lay down or burn up fat. All seven variants were picked up by a study led by Icelandic company deCODE Genetics, while six of the seven were also identified in a second, independent study by an international team dubbed the Giant consortium. In both cases the researchers scrutinised DNA samples from thousands of people to assess the impact of tiny changes. Each of the variants identified had a small impact on obesity, but a person carrying all of them was typically around 1.5kg - 2kg heavier than average. It is estimated that as much as 70% of the variation in body mass index - a measure of obesity based on height and weight - is down to genetics, rather than environmental factors. Researcher Dr Kari Stefansson, of deCODE Genetics said: "This suggests that as we work to develop better means of combating obesity, we need to focus on the regulation of appetite at least as much as on the metabolic factors of how the body uses and stores energy." Dr Alan Guttmacher, of the US National Human Genome Research Institute, said the research was a major step forward in understanding how the human body regulates weight. (C)BBC

Keyword: Obesity; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12340 - Posted: 12.15.2008

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - The new drug overtaking the Gaza Strip doesn't stimulate hallucinations or give endurance at the dance club. It merely chills you out, which is exactly what many Gazans say they need. Ruled by Islamic hard-liners from Hamas and locked in by Israel, Gazans can't travel outside the strip, have few places to go for fun, and are faced with a failing economy. Thus the boom in the popularity of tramadol, a painkiller known here by a common brand name, "Tramal." Growing numbers of Gazans have begun using the drug over the past year and a half to take the edge off life in the impoverished seaside strip, pharmacists and residents say. This worries medical personnel, who say the drug can cause dependence. It is a prescription drug in many countries, and the Hamas-run Health Ministry has made efforts to control it, but without much success in a society where medicines available only by prescription elsewhere are often sold over the counter. Tramadol is especially popular among young men. Some down the pills with coffee or dissolve them in tea. Others pop them freely when hanging out with friends. Grooms have been seen passing them out at weddings. "You feel calmness through your whole body, absolute quiet," said one regular user, 27-year-old Bassem, in describing the drug's effect. He, like others interviewed by The Associated Press for this story, refused to give his last name for fear of being arrested as a drug user. © 2008 The Associated Press

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12339 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. D. Carleton Gajdusek, a virologist who won the 1976 Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on the mysterious epidemics now known as prion diseases, died last week in Tromso, Norway. The cause of death is unknown, but Dr. Gajdusek (pronounced GUY-dah-shek) was 85 and had long had congestive heart failure, said Dr. Robert Klitzman, his biographer, who said he had spoken to him about a week ago. He was found in his Tromso hotel room on Friday morning about 24 hours after a manager saw him at breakfast. In later life, Dr. Gajdusek became notorious when he was charged with molesting the many young boys he had adopted in New Guinea and Micronesia and brought to live with him in Maryland. He pleaded guilty to one charge, served a year in prison and left the United States in 1998, dividing his time between Paris, Amsterdam and Tromso. Dr. Gajdusek won the Nobel for his work on kuru, which was slowly wiping out the Fore tribe of New Guinea. Victims descended into trembling and madness before death and, after an autopsy, were found to have brains shot through with spongy holes. In 1957, Dr. Gajdusek — who had searched the Hindu Kush, the Amazon jungle and finally the mountain valleys of New Guinea hoping to find remote tribes with unique diseases to study — realized that the victims had all participated in “mortuary feasts” in the decades before the custom was suppressed in the 1940s by missionaries and the Australian police. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 12338 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Celeste Biever Pictures you are observing can now be recreated with software that uses nothing but scans of your brain. It is the first "mind reading" technology to create such images from scratch, rather than picking them out from a pool of possible images. Earlier this year Jack Gallant and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, showed that they could tell which of a set of images someone was looking at from a brain scan. To do this, they created software that compared the subject's brain activity while looking at an image with that captured while they were looking at "training" photographs. The program then picked the most likely match from a set of previously unseen pictures. Now Yukiyasu Kamitani at ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan has gone a step further: his team has used an image of brain activity taken in a functional MRI scanner to recreate a black-and-white image from scratch. "By analysing the brain signals when someone is seeing an image, we can reconstruct that image," says Kamitani. This means that the mind reading isn't limited to a selection of existing images, but could potentially be used to "read off" anything that someone was thinking of, without prior knowledge of what that might be. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision; Sleep
Link ID: 12337 - Posted: 06.24.2010

HELEN BRANSWELL Traumatic brain injuries have become the signature wound of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and troops who sustain them face a daunting array of potential medical consequences later on, a report on the issue commissioned by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The report from the Institute of Medicine – a body that advises the U.S. government on science, medicine and health – said military personnel who sustain severe or even moderate brain injuries may go on to develop Alzheimer's-like dementia or symptoms similar to Parkinson's, a neurodegenerative disease. They face a higher risk of developing seizure disorders and psychoses, problems with social interactions and difficulty holding down a job. Troops who sustain even mild brain injuries are more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And all are at a higher risk of experiencing aggressive behaviour, depression and memory problems. The report urged the U.S. government to ramp up research in the area, saying there is not enough evidence in the medical literature – especially as relates to mild brain injuries – to determine what today's troops face and how best to help them recover from or cope with the health problems they may develop. © Copyright 2008 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc.

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 12336 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rachel Zelkowitz Brainiacs, rejoice! The most sophisticated study on the subject so far suggests that, when it comes to choosing a mate, females value intelligence and creativity independent of a guy's looks. Just what makes men and women attractive to the opposite sex? We don't need science to tell us that a nice body and good personality help. But when it comes to traits such as intelligence and creativity, an experiment or two is useful. Until now, however, most data have come from surveys, often asking abstract questions such as, "How important to you is a man's intelligence?" To gauge how smarts can affect women's mate choices in real-life situations, evolutionary psychologist Mark Prokosch of Elon University in North Carolina and researchers at the University of California, Davis, brought romance back to the laboratory. The team recruited 15 men with a median age of 19 to take the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, a standard intelligence test. The volunteers were then filmed in three separate scenarios designed to reveal intelligence and creativity. They included reading headlines from news agencies such as the BBC, answering an open-ended question such as how the discovery of life on Mars might change their perspective of life on Earth, and responding to queries about why they would make a good date. These tasks might seem random, but previous studies have shown that whether someone stumbles over unfamiliar text or whether he can provide a pithy response to an unexpected question gives clues to his overall intelligence and creativity. The researchers also filmed the men playing Frisbee, so viewers could get a sense of their physical attractiveness. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Intelligence
Link ID: 12335 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey Making decisions about crime and punishment is, it turns out, as complicated as a legal brief. For the first time, scientists have peered into the brains of people who are deciding whether a crime deserves punishment and how severe the penalty should be. Those decisions involve parts of the brain associated with rational thought, but emotion-processing regions weigh in too, a team of law and neuroscience researchers from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., show in a new study in the Dec. 11 Neuron. The findings suggest that brain areas active in deciding a harsh punishment for a crime deliberately committed are different than those active when giving the accused some benefit of the doubt. “We’ve identified regions that are jointly involved, but separately deployed to make a legal decision,” says Owen Jones, a professor of law and biology at Vanderbilt who led the study with neuroscientist René Marois. “Our judicial system based on third-party punishment is usually seen as cold and detached as opposed to … punishment by the victim of a crime,” Marois says. The new study shows that emotions play a part in impartial judgment too. Scientists have used functional MRI, or fMRI, before to scan the brains of people who are trying to decide whether to retaliate against someone who has cheated them in an economic game. But the new study is the first to examine which parts of the brain are active when an impartial third party makes decisions about guilt and punishment. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2008

Keyword: Emotions; Brain imaging
Link ID: 12334 - Posted: 06.24.2010

There are signs that the ongoing decline in teen marijuana use in recent years has stalled; however the downward trend in cigarette and alcohol use continues, according to the 2008 Monitoring the Future (MTF) Survey. Results were announced today at a news conference. The MTF survey indicates that marijuana use among eighth, tenth, and twelfth graders, which has shown a consistent decline since the mid-1990s, appears to have leveled off with 10.9 percent of eighth graders, 23.9 percent of tenth graders, and 32.4 percent of twelfth graders reporting past year use. Heightening the concern over this stabilization in use is the finding that, compared to last year, the proportion of eighth graders who perceived smoking marijuana as harmful and the proportion disapproving of its use have decreased. The Monitoring the Future survey — now in its 33rd year — is a series of classroom surveys of eighth, tenth, and twelfth graders conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan under a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). "The 2008 survey results reinforce the fact that we cannot become complacent in our efforts to persuade teens not to smoke, drink or abuse illicit substances," said HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt. "As long as young people are being exposed to images that make taking drugs seem glamorous, we need to counter them with truthful messages about the risks and consequences of drug abuse."

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12333 - Posted: 06.24.2010

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

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 12332 - Posted: 06.24.2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 12325 - Posted: 06.24.2010

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

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12324 - Posted: 06.24.2010