By JAMIE STENGLE -- Heart patients should be regularly screened for signs of depression, the American Heart Association recommended Monday. Depression is about three times more common in heart attack survivors and those hospitalized with heart problems than the general population, according to the recommendations published in the journal Circulation. The authors said only about half of heart doctors say they treat depression in their patients _ and not all those diagnosed with depression are treated. "I think we could reduce considerable suffering and improve outcomes," by screening, said Erika Froelicher, professor of nursing at the University of California, San Francisco. "I know we can do more." While there's no direct evidence that heart patients who are screened fare better, depression can result in poorer outcomes and a poorer quality of life, the panel said. Depressed patients may skip their medications, not change their diet or exercise or take part in rehabilitation programs, they said. Anyone from cardiologists to nurses to primary care doctors can and should be involved in determining whether a patient is depressed, said Froelicher, who was co-chair of the panel that wrote the recommendations. The panel suggests that heart patients be screened by first asking two standard questions: In the past two weeks, have you had little interest or pleasure in doing things? Have you felt down, depressed or hopeless? © Copyright 1996-2008 The Washington Post Company |

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 12092 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas -- Human friends and relatives keep tabs on their loved ones by phone when they're apart, and now new research shows elephants do nearly the same thing with rumble vocalizations that can transmit over one and a half miles. The finding helps to explain how elephants almost always find their way back to their herd, even after they wander far off. Elephants can see and smell their fellow herd members over long distances too, but visual obstructions, such as rocks, trees and even other big animals, can block their views, while wind changes and smells can compromise odor detection. universe WATCH VIDEO: Elephants can recognize themselves in the mirror. "The auditory system seems to provide a method to detect and communicate with individuals over both long and short distances, and we know that individuals can use auditory information to determine the location and identity of herd members," lead author Katherine Leighty explained to Discovery News. Leighty, a behavioral ecologist at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida, and her team conducted the first systematic study of spontaneously produced elephant rumble vocalizations. These are typically infrasonic calls, with frequencies between 13 and 35 Hz, which fall outside the range of human hearing. © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Hearing; Animal Communication
Link ID: 12091 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Zane B. Andrews and Tamas L. Horvath The obesity epidemic has led to increased scientific interest in how the brain controls human feeding behavior. Why do we get hungry? What biological mechanisms tell us what to eat and when to stop eating? It’s long been assumed that two neurobiological mechanisms largely govern food intake: one that controls the need to eat and one that controls the desire to eat. The hypothalamus in the brain regulates the homeostatic control of food intake by receiving, coordinating and responding to metabolic cues and signals from the digestive system. By integrating these metabolic signals, the hypothalamus tells us when we need to eat to maintain a body weight “set point,” much like a thermostat set on a specific temperature. It is clear, however, that higher brain centers that control the desire to eat also substantially influence our food consumption. The dopamine reward system is one such brain center. (When you covet a bowl of chocolate ice cream after dinner, a food that you don’t need to eat for hunger but want to eat, it is your dopamine reward system that gets excited.) In many situations, this desire to eat can override the need to eat, leading people to consume tasty foods even when they’re not hungry. Our inability to forego these rewarding aspects of food intake override long-term homeostatic control, contributing to obesity. Although the hypothalamus will direct intake based on the metabolic value of the food—when you’re very hungry, you seek out food with lots of calories—it remains to be determined whether the dopamine reward system can also sense a food’s energy content. In other words, does the dopamine system care about calories, or is it just concerned with taste and pleasure? © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc

Keyword: Obesity; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12090 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Andy Coghlan Out-of-control boys facing spells in detention or anti-social behaviour orders can now blame it all on their hormones. The "stress hormone" cortisol – or low levels of it – may be responsible for male aggressive antisocial behaviour, according to new research. The work suggests that the hormone may restrain aggression in stressful situations. Researchers found that levels of cortisol fell when delinquent boys played a stressful video game, the opposite of what was seen in control volunteers playing the same game. The results suggest that biology rather than peer pressure might play a larger role than previously thought in delinquent behaviour, and raise new possibilities for diagnosing and treating such disorders. Virtual rival The study pitted each volunteer against a pugnacious, virtually generated rival boy in a computer game that had them competing for a monetary reward. The game was deliberately rigged to subject volunteers to stress, frustration, provocation, and taunting from their adversary. Saliva samples from the 95 control volunteers showed that their cortisol levels rose by an average of 48%, as expected in stressful situations. But in the 70 participants with conduct disorder, levels of cortisol dropped by an average of 30%. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Aggression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12089 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Andrea Thompson Scientists may have found the glue that keeps fearful memories stuck in the brain, a discovery that could be useful in new treatments for Alzheimer's disease and post-traumatic stress disorder. That glue seems to be a protein that is key to maintaining the structure of cells and also is essential to embryonic development, a new study suggests. The protein, called beta-catenin, transmits early signals in species ranging from flies to frogs to mice that separate an embryo into front and back or top and bottom. It also acts like Velcro, fastening a cell's internal skeleton to proteins on its external membranes that in turn connect them to other cells. Story continues below ↓advertisement Previous studies have found other factors that govern our feelings of fear: * One study found a 'fear factor' gene that controls how neurons fire in the brain when mice are faced with impending danger. * Another found that the brain can learn to fear something, such as a bee's sting, when we view someone else's fear. * Another recent study detailed how primates and other mammals learned to fear and avoid snakes. © 2008 LiveScience.com.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Emotions
Link ID: 12088 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Ewen Callaway Money can't buy love, but it seems to earn you more babies. Rich men sire more children than paupers, according to a new study of thousands of middle-aged British men. Women are more likely to marry men who can provide for them and their children than penniless men, says Daniel Nettle, a behavioural scientist at Newcastle University, UK, who led the new study. "It's not that if you're richer you'll have more children – if you're richer you're less likely to be childless," he says. For much of civilization, females have tended to mate with better providers, but many sociologists argue that the industrial and sexual revolutions have immunised people in developed countries such evolutionary pressures. Census surveys have suggested that wealthier men have fewer kids, says Rosemary Hopcroft, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, who is not affiliated with the study. However, these surveys are problematic because they tend to look at household income and tally only a mother's children, she says. The children of divorced and remarried men tend to get left out. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 12087 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Genetic research could shed light on what is happening in people with the mysterious sleep disorder narcolepsy. The condition causes extreme daytime sleepiness, and sudden muscle weakness. Japanese researchers found a genetic variant linked to a much higher risk of narcolepsy, publishing their results in the journal Nature Genetics. It is linked to genes involved in regulating sleep, and the scientists say their finding could help unravel narcolepsy's causes. The condition is an uncommon and distressing one - people with it can suffer "sleep attacks" without any warning during any normal activity. In addition, some people can experience "cataplexy", where strong emotions such as anger, surprise, or laughter can trigger an instant loss of muscle strength, which, in some cases, can cause collapse. The causes are still not completely clear, although some scientists believe they revolve around a shortage of a chemical called hypocretin which sends signals to the brain about sleeping and waking up. There is strong evidence that the condition can run in families, so the University of Tokyo team are looking for the genetic differences which may be involved. They looked at the genetic code of hundreds of volunteers, some with narcolepsy, some without, to look for differences. The variant they found was linked to an 79% higher chance of narcolepsy in Japanese people, and a 40% increased chance in other ethnic groups. It is found close to two genes, CPT1B, and CHKB, which have already been singled out as candidates for involvement in the disorder - as they both have a role in regulating sleep. (C)BBC

Keyword: Narcolepsy; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12086 - Posted: 09.29.2008

by Jon Bardin If the key to our cognitive success is functional specificity, then synaptic complexity is the underlying cause. The history of pharmaceutical trials is littered with cases of drugs that show promise in mice but ultimately fail when tested in humans, often for reasons poorly understood by the scientists who study them. Such failures generally are explained in one of two ways: Either there is a problem with the underlying biological model itself, or there is a problem with the way the success of the model is being measured. Now a recent breakthrough by the Cambridge neuroscientist and geneticist Seth Grant may provide a third possibility. In a report published in the June 2008 issue of Nature Neuroscience, Grant and his colleagues analyzed synapses in organisms of increasing evolutionary complexity, from single-celled organisms to vertebrates. They found that more advanced organisms also had more complex synapses, allowing neurons to communicate in more complicated ways. This finding upends the classical model of intelligence, in which the number of neurons, not their complexity, predicts the capacity for greater intelligence and higher-order behaviors. Compounding this, many mouse models are based on incomplete behavioral measures because the true biology of the disease is unknown. Depression in mice, for example, is often measured by how fast a mouse swims. ©2005-2008 Seed Media Group, LLC.

Keyword: Evolution; Animal Rights
Link ID: 12085 - Posted: 06.24.2010

From The Economist print edition THE function of sleep, according to one school of thought, is to consolidate memory. Yet two Italians have no problems with their memory even though they never sleep. The woman and man, both in their 50s, are in the early stages of a neurodegenerative disease called multiple system atrophy. Their cases raise questions about the purpose of sleep. Healthy people rotate between three states of vigilance: wakefulness, rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep and non-REM sleep. But all three are mixed together in the Italian patients. The pair were initially diagnosed by Roberto Vetrugno of the University of Bologna and his colleagues as suffering from REM behavioural disorder, in which the paralysis, or cataplexy, that normally prevents sleeping people from acting out their dreams is lost. This can cause people in REM sleep to twitch and groan, sometimes flailing about and injuring their bedmates. These patients, however, soon progressed from this state to an even odder one, according to a report in Sleep Medicine. One of the principal ways to measure sleep is to monitor brainwave activity, which can be done by placing electrodes on the scalp in a technique known as electroencephalography (EEG). Non-REM sleep itself is divided into four stages defined purely by EEG patterns; the first two are collectively described as light sleep and the last two as deep or slow-wave sleep. When the Italian patients appeared to be asleep, their EEGs suggested that their brains were either simultaneously awake, in REM sleep and non-REM sleep, or switching rapidly between the three. Yet when subjected to a battery of neuropsychological tests, they showed no intellectual decline. © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2008.

Keyword: Sleep; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 12084 - Posted: 06.24.2010

People who have a stroke seem to recover faster when they use a mirror to create the illusion that their paralyzed limb is moving alongside a healthy one, a Japanese researcher said Friday. "The mental aspect of rehabilitation has far greater importance than previously understood and should be paid far more attention," Kazu Amimoto of Tokyo Metropolitan University said in a statement. Amimota presented his findings on the therapy at the World Stroke Conference in Vienna. A stroke is a brain injury caused by a lack of blood that deprives the brain of oxygen and glucose. People who have had a stroke often develop hemiplegia — paralysis of one side of the body. Traditionally, stroke patients take therapy to stimulate and exercise the paralyzed half of their body. In the mirror approach, a mirror is placed on the middle of the patient's body so that movements from the healthy limb appear to be mimicked by the paralyzed arms and legs. The optical illusion seems to stimulate the brain and improve motor function in paralyzed areas, Amimoto said. © CBC 2008

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 12083 - Posted: 06.24.2010

John Krakauer Many things stimulate our brains' reward centers, among them, coordinated movements. Consider the thrill some get from watching choreographed fight or car chase scenes in action movies. What about the enjoyment spectators get when watching sports or actually riding on a roller coaster or in a fast car? Scientists aren't sure why we like movement so much, but there's certainly a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest we get a pretty big kick out of it. Maybe synchronizing music, which many studies have shown is pleasing to both the ear and brain, and movement—in essence, dance—may constitute a pleasure double play. Music is known to stimulate pleasure and reward areas like the orbitofrontal cortex, located directly behind one's eyes, as well as a midbrain region called the ventral striatum. In particular, the amount of activation in these areas matches up with how much we enjoy the tunes. In addition, music activates the cerebellum, at the base of the brain, which is involved in the coordination and timing of movement. So, why is dance pleasurable? First, people speculate that music was created through rhythmic movement—think: tapping your foot. Second, some reward-related areas in the brain are connected with motor areas. Third, mounting evidence suggests that we are sensitive and attuned to the movements of others' bodies, because similar brain regions are activated when certain movements are both made and observed. For example, the motor regions of professional dancers' brains show more activation when they watch other dancers compared with people who don't dance.

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 12082 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey Researchers led by Carl Cotman and Nicole Berchtold at the University of California, Irvine, find that the activity of genes in men’s brains begins to change earlier than it does in women’s brains. The types of genes that change with age also differ between the sexes. The study, which appears online September 22 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also found that in both genders, each part of the brain examined had its own pattern of aging. “This is a very interesting study in what is, curiously, an under-studied area, normal aging,” says Etienne Sibille, a neuroscientist at the University of Pittsburgh, who was not involved in the study. “You have a combination of expected and surprises in each finding.” For instance, the fact that men and women’s brains age differently could be predicted based on women’s increased longevity, but the type and scope of the differences were unexpected, he says. Cotman and Berchtold and their colleagues collected brains from people who had died of various causes between ages 20 and 99. The researchers isolated messenger RNA, or mRNA, from the people’s brains. Messenger RNA is a courier molecule that carries instructions encoded in genes to the cellular machinery that will build proteins using those instructions. Genes that produce higher levels of mRNA are more active. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2008

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Alzheimers
Link ID: 12081 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Eighteen-month-old Valentina babbles earnestly to her dad Willie Matista at the Infancy Studies Laboratory at Rutgers in Newark. Valentina is progressing normally for her age and Matista says he “gets the picture” even if he doesn’t always know exactly what she is saying. But not all kids show this kind of progress. The Matistas have been volunteering to participate in neuroscientist April Benasich’s at the Rutgers Center for the Neurosciences since Valentina was 3-months-old. Benasich is trying to tease out why some children’s language abilities are impaired and others are on track. She likes to say she’s “eavesdropping” on what is going on in the brains of children while they are in this stage of rapid development. Her most recent study found a direct relationship between one type of brain wave and a toddler’s language ability. “We saw these really, really strong correlations to language and to cognitive outcomes and we were surprised because we thought if we saw anything it would be a subtle effect,” says Benasich. She and her team put soft sensor caps on toddlers aged 16 to 36 months that record their brain waves as they rest quietly in their parents’ laps. They analyzed these brain wave tests or electroencephalograms (EEGs), and looked specifically at a type of brain wave called a “gamma wave.” In adults, it’s thought to allow different areas of the brain to talk to each other more easily, but not much is known about gamma waves in toddlers. ©2008 ScienCentral

Keyword: Language; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12080 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nathan Seppa Use of clot-busting drugs as long as 4 ½ hours after an event pays dividends later Emergency room physicians can deliver clot-busting treatments to a wider range of stroke patients than previously thought, European researchers report in the Sept. 25 New England Journal of Medicine. The finding could change the way stroke is treated and increase ER doctors’ ability to prevent some cases of disability caused by strokes, scientists say. Most strokes result when a blood clot lodges in the brain, blocking blood flow to other parts of the organ. A powerful drug called tPA, or tissue plasminogen activator, can dissolve these clots. But medical dogma holds that it must be given within three hours of a stroke’s onset. Beyond that, the thinking goes, the bulk of the brain damage is done and adding the risk of internal bleeding that accompanies clot-busters seems unwise. The new study extends that window of effective tPA treatment by 90 minutes, to 4 ½ hours. This precious extra time to dissolve a clot and restore blood flow to a starving portion of brain could benefit tens of thousands of stroke patients in the United States each year, says study coauthor Werner Hacke, a neurologist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2008

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 12079 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Parents of children with ADHD should be trained to help their children cope, and Ritalin should only be prescribed as a last resort, a health watchdog in Britain said Wednesday. The drug shouldn't be used in children under five, and should be prescribed for older children only when they have severe attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said in its guidelines for parents and doctors. Treatment with Ritalin — a brand name for the pharmaceutical methylphenidate — or other drugs "should be reserved for those with severe symptoms and impairment," the guidelines say. Symptoms of ADHD can include a short attention span, a low level of organization, excessive talking, aggressive gestures and irritability. It affects an estimated five to 12 per cent of Canadian children. When drugs for the disorder are prescribed, it should be along with psychological therapy and support for the child to develop problem solving, listening, coping and peer relationship skills, the group said. The guidelines also say parent training and education programs should be offered as a first-line treatment for ADHD in both preschool and school-aged children. © CBC 2008

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 12078 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Yoshiaki Kikuchi and Madoka Noriuchi It’s probably not surprising that mothers excel at recognizing and interpreting the moods and emotions of their infants. Although infants can’t speak, mothers seem to know what their babies are thinking: they smile when their baby smiles and they frown when their baby is upset. Research suggests that the mother’s ability to understand the needs of her infant is very important for establishing a secure mother-infant relationship. However, the neural mechanisms that underlie these behaviors are poorly understood. Such knowledge is crucial for understanding normal as well as abusive and neglectful mothering. In recent years, several studies have been carried out using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to better understand how a mother’s brain responds to her own child’s cues. The most recent, led by neuroscientist Lane Strathearn and colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine, investigated what happens inside the brain of a mother when she looks at the facial expressions of her own infant. In the study, 28 first-time mothers were shown pictures of their seven-month old child that they had never seen before. (The pictures were taken when the mother was not present.) The pictures spanned a wide range of human emotion and included images of the child making happy, sad or neutral faces. These pictures were then matched with images of an unknown infant. The central finding was that seeing the happy face of the mother’s own infant activated all of the key areas in the brain associated with reward processing. These regions include the ventral tegmental area, substantia nigra and the striatum. This finding suggests that for mothers the sight of their smiling baby is a potent reward and represents a uniquely pleasurable experience. Furthermore, this neural response was graded, so that happy faces led to more activation than neutral faces. Sad faces generated the least activation. In other words, the response of mothers in their reward areas seemed to directly mirror the emotions the infant displayed. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 12077 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ALAN SCHWARZ N.F.L. players are lionized every Sunday for giving their bodies to the sport. Now, some retired players are planning to literally give their brains to a new center at Boston University’s School of Medicine devoted to studying the long-term effects of concussions. A dozen athletes, including six N.F.L. players and a former United States women’s soccer player, have agreed to donate their brains after their deaths to the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy. On Thursday, the center will announce that a fifth deceased N.F.L. player, the former Houston Oilers linebacker John Grimsley, was found to have brain damage commonly associated with boxers. The former New England Patriots linebacker Ted Johnson, one of the players who has agreed to donate his brain, said he hoped the center would help clarify the issue of concussions’ long-term effects, which have been tied to cognitive impairment and depression in several published studies. The N.F.L. says that, in regard to its players, the long-term effects of concussions are uncertain. “I shouldn’t have to prove to anybody that there’s something wrong with me,” said Johnson, 35, whose neurologist has said multiple concussions from 2002 through his 2005 retirement resulted in permanent and degenerative problems with memory and depression. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 12076 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Gero Miesenböck In 1937 the great neuroscientist Sir Charles Scott Sherrington of the University of Oxford laid out what would become a classic description of the brain at work. He imagined points of light signaling the activity of nerve cells and their connections. During deep sleep, he proposed, only a few remote parts of the brain would twinkle, giving the organ the appearance of a starry night sky. But at awakening, “it is as if the Milky Way entered upon some cosmic dance,” Sherrington reflected. “Swiftly the head-mass becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one; a shifting harmony of subpatterns.” Although Sherrington probably did not realize it at the time, his poetic metaphor contained an important scientific idea: that of the brain revealing its inner workings optically. Understanding how neurons work together to generate thoughts and behavior remains one of the most difficult open problems in all of biology, largely because scientists generally cannot see whole neural circuits in action. The standard approach of probing one or two neurons with electrodes reveals only tiny fragments of a much bigger puzzle, with too many pieces missing to guess the full picture. But if one could watch neurons communicate, one might be able to deduce how brain circuits are laid out and how they function. This alluring notion has inspired neuroscientists to attempt to realize Sherrington’s vision. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 12075 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Peter Aldhous ANTIDEPRESSANTS taken by millions of men could be impairing their fertility by causing damage to the DNA in their sperm. In 2006, Peter Schlegel and Cigdem Tanrikut of the Cornell Medical Center in New York City reported that two men had developed low counts of healthy sperm after taking two different selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the most commonly prescribed class of antidepressant. Now Schlegel's team has given 35 healthy men doses of a third SSRI called paroxetine, sold as Seroxat or Paxil, over five weeks, and examined their sperm before treatment and four weeks in. Superficially, the men's sperm seemed healthy - amounts of sperm and semen, and the shape and motility of sperm, were all normal. But when the team looked at DNA fragmentation in the sperm, using the TUNEL method, a worrying picture emerged. On average, the proportion of sperm cells with fragmented DNA rose from 13.8 per cent before taking paroxetine to 30.3 per cent after just four weeks. Similar levels of sperm DNA damage have been linked to problems with embryo viability. For example, in couples undergoing IVF, studies have found that where the man has more sperm with damaged DNA, fewer embryos form and those that do are less likely to implant successfully into the woman's uterus. As a result, fertility specialists regard a fraction of 30 per cent of sperm with DNA damage as being "clinically significant", says Douglas Carrell, a specialist in male infertility at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 12074 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers in Gothenburg studying the connection between alcoholism and the hormone ghrelin have found that a single genetic cause may lie behind several forms of dependency. “It feels exciting and totally new,” said Elisabeth Jerlhag, one of the researchers from the Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology at the University of Gothenburg’s Sahlgrenska Academy, to the Göteborgs-Posten (GP) newspaper. The hormone ghrelin, found primarily in the stomach as well as the brain, is well-known for its role in controlling people’s appetites. Previous research on ghrelin has focused on its role in dietary-related diseases such diabetes and obesity. But the Gothenburg team’s research points to a broader role for the hormone when it comes to the reward systems in people’s brains associated with various types of addiction. After reviewing previous studies which indicated that alcoholics were found to have higher levels of ghrelin in their blood, Jerlhag and the rest of the team led by Professor Jörgen Engel then examined the genes of 417 people, 138 of whom had sought medical treatment for high alcohol consumption. “We found variations in the gene for ghrelin which had a strong connection both with high alcohol intake and with obesity,” said Sara Landgren, another researcher in the group, to GP.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Obesity
Link ID: 12073 - Posted: 06.24.2010