US scientists have claimed success using gene therapy to try to reverse a severe inherited sight disorder. They injected material containing a corrective gene into the eyes of three patients with Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA). The journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports all three showed signs of "significant" improvement in their vision. UK researchers carried out a similar procedure on three patients last year. They believe the method could be ready for use within two years to treat people suffering from some inherited diseases of the retina, which affect 20,000 people in Britain. Within three years, they believe it could be ready for testing on people who suffer age related macular degeneration, a condition that affects 500,000 Britons. Gene therapy works on a simple principle - to replace a malfunctioning gene, and restore function to a part of the body affected by a genetic disorder. In practice, however, it has proved very difficult to find ways to introduce the new gene copies in the correct tissues, and experiments in animals have had mixed results. In the eye, however, gene therapy has shown more promise. LCA affects approximately one in 80,000 people, causing progressively worsening vision, often starting in the first few years of life. It is responsible for one in 10 severe sight disorders in children. A fault in the RPE65 gene is to blame, and the gene therapy injects working copies of the gene into the back of the eye. Just 30 days after the treatment was delivered into one eye of each of the three young adults involved in the US study, the improvements could be measured. (C)BBC

Keyword: Vision; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12072 - Posted: 09.23.2008

by Kathleen McAuliffe Early on in the Iraq War, clinical psychologist Albert “Skip” Rizzo stumbled upon the video game Full Spectrum Warrior and determined to make a therapeutic tool out of it. Rizzo, a University of Southern California professor who had designed virtual reality tools to measure attention deficits in children, realized that thousands of soldiers would come back from the Middle East with post-traumatic stress disorder. Since 2005 the program he developed, Virtual Iraq, has had great success in treating the returning troops. What is the greatest challenge in your field today? To help people plagued by nightmares, flashbacks, and relentless stress related to a traumatic episode—being raped, narrowly escaping the collapse of the Twin Towers, witnessing a buddy die on the battlefield. Traditionally the best treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD] is to have the person relive the trauma using his or her imagination. Repeated exposure to the horror can desensitize individuals and help them stay calm enough to reprocess what happened and get beyond it. How does virtual reality address this problem? We immerse the individual in a virtual world to allow him or her to vividly reexperience the episode in a safe and controlled way. In Virtual Iraq, a soldier with PTSD recounts what happened, and a therapist seated before a computer then creates an environment that captures the essential elements of the episode. Say the soldier was driving in a Humvee convoy when the vehicle in front of him blew up. By donning special goggles, he can see a reenactment: To the left he sees a desert landscape; straight ahead, the Humvee. The simulation is done on a vibrating platform, so he feels the humming of the vehicle’s motor or the rumble of the exploding IED [improvised explosive device].

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 12071 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Lisa Rein This was supposed to be my exciting new life in Washington. I had been hired by one of the nation's great newspapers. I was setting up a cute apartment in Dupont Circle. And yet my body was sending me a signal that all was not well: I was waking every morning with a throbbing pain in my jaw. A dentist took one look into my sore mouth and pronounced me a victim of an affliction common among Type A people who move to Washington for stressful jobs. Bruxism. I was grinding my teeth at night. It was so bad that a diagnostic test, which involved sliding my teeth from side to side on a thin sheet resembling carbon paper, turned up several molars that were practically flattened and one that was starting to crack. At 35, I was losing my teeth. It turns out that we are a nation of bruxers . About 10 percent of adults grind regularly, although dentists say that half of the population, including children, gnash at some point in their lives. But as many as half of the serious grinders don't seek treatment, either because they don't see a dentist or because the habit doesn't cause them pain. Eventually they'll wear right through their teeth, though, and that will be really painful -- as well as costly. © Copyright 1996-2008 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Sleep; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 12070 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY Images that purport to show — in living color — the parts of the brain that generate such virtues as compassion, fairness and wisdom are invading turf that was once reserved for philosophers, theologians and psychologists. From morality to math, a revolution in "functional" magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which observes brain blood flow, is being used by researchers to pinpoint the pieces of the brain that people rely on to think and feel. So, what's the problem? "A lot of these claims are just crazy," says neurophysiologist Nikos Logothetis of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. "There is a fundamental mismatch between what these images are showing and what cognitive scientists are claiming for these studies." Here's a sampling of fMRI tests from recent news releases: •University of Florida researchers asked 12 volunteers to have an fMRI while watching ads for Coca-Cola, Evian and Gatorade "to find out how people really feel about something." •University of Wisconsin researchers reported that when 16 Tibetan monks meditated inside an fMRI machine, the images showed "brain circuits used to detect emotions and feelings were dramatically changed in subjects who had extensive experience practicing compassion meditation." Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 12069 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Aria Pearson Wasps can remember each other after a busy week apart, according to new research. It's a level of social memory never seen before in insects, which were long thought to be too small-brained for such a feat. Queens of the paper wasp, Polistes fuscatus, form cooperative nests after fighting to establish a dominance hierarchy. When big-brained vertebrates like primates fight to establish dominance, they benefit from their ability to remember previous adversaries. But insects, even those with complex social colonies, were thought to lack that kind of individual social intelligence. Michael Sheehan and Elizabeth Tibbetts at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, tested that idea. Tibbetts knew that wasps can recognise individuals based on colour patterns on their faces. The next step was to see if they could remember individuals over a period of time in which they were distracted by other social interactions. Buzz off, stranger The researchers exposed female wasps to a new individual and then placed them in separate cages along with 10 other wasps. After one week, the females acted much more aggressively when placed with another new individual than when placed with the wasp they had met before. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Evolution
Link ID: 12068 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Charles Barber A team of American researchers attracted national attention last year when they announced results of a study that, they said, reveal key factors that will influence how swing voters cast their ballots in the upcoming presidential election. The researchers didn’t gain these miraculous insights by polling their subjects. They scanned their brains. Theirs was just the latest in a lengthening skein of studies that use new brain-scan technology to plumb the mysteries of the American political mind. But politics is just the beginning. It’s hard to pick up a newspaper without reading some newly minted neuroscientific explanation for complex human phenomena, from schizophrenia to substance abuse to ­homosexuality. The new neuroscience has emerged from the last two decades of formidable progress in brain science, psychopharmacology, and brain imaging, bringing together research related to the human nervous system in fields as diverse as genetics and computer science. It has flowered into one of the hottest fields in academia, where almost anything “neuro” now generates excitement, along with neologisms—neuroeconomics, neurophilosophy, neuromarketing. The torrent of money flowing into the field can only be described in superlatives—hundreds of millions of dollars for efforts such as Princeton’s Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior and MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Psychiatrists have been in the forefront of the transformation, eagerly shrugging off the vestiges of “talk therapy” for the bold new paradigms of neuroscience. By the late 1980s, academic psychiatrists were beginning literally to reinvent parts of the discipline, hanging out new signs saying Department of Neuropsychiatry in some medical schools. A similar transformation has occurred in academic psychology. Copyright 2008, The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Keyword: Depression; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 12067 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jessica Griggs Can smells sweeten your dreams? Certain aromas, such as lavender, are known to have soporific effects, but once you’re asleep, can smells influence what you dream about? To find out, Boris Stuck of University Hospital Mannheim, Germany, exposed 15 sleeping volunteers to chemicals that mimicked the smell of either rotten eggs or roses. "Most everyday smells have two components: the actual smell and a component that irritates your nose," says Stuck. "By exposing the patients to chemicals chosen to only incorporate the smelly component, we were able to stimulate them with really high doses of the smell without them waking up." Stuck's team waited until their subjects had entered the REM phase of sleep, the stage at which most dreams occur, and then exposed them to a high dose of smelly air for 10 seconds before waking them up one minute later. The volunteers were then quizzed about the content of their dreams and asked how it made them feel. Rose-tinted dreams All subjects reported a positive dream experience when stimulated by the rose smell, and most experienced the opposite when exposed to the rotten eggs. Stuck says the smells influence the "emotional colouration" of the dream. The team are now looking to recruit people who suffer from nightmares to see if exposure to smells can help make their dreams more pleasant. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sleep
Link ID: 12066 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Heidi Ledford Microbes that call the intestines home help ward off type 1 diabetes in mice, researchers have found. The findings, published online today by Nature1, are the latest in a series of revelations about the impact that resident bacteria may have on health. Humans, mice and other animals are home to a complex community of trillions of microbes, mostly living harmlessly in their guts, their skin and elsewhere. In humans the effects of this 'microbiome' on metabolism and the immune system have been linked to obesity2 and inflammatory bowel disease3. Now type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease that affects the pancreas, can be added to the list. A link to the microbiome could provide an explanation for the rising rates of this disease, particularly in developed countries. For years, researchers have put forward possible explanations in terms of infection, lifestyle and environment: a particular virus infection, perhaps, or chemicals found in certain processed foods. "The problem is, we've never found out what that trigger is," says Denis Daneman, chairman of paediatrics at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, who is currently investigating ways that diet may increase the risks. Over a decade ago, some researchers noted that a diabetes-prone strain of mouse is even more likely to develop the disease when it is grown in a sterile, microbe-free environment. The observation suggested that exposure to bacteria could somehow help stave off the disease. © 2008 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 12065 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Michelle Roberts A study has linked a small number of cases of cerebral palsy to antibiotics given to women in premature labour. The UK study found 35 cases of cerebral palsy in 769 children of women without early broken waters given antibiotics. This compared with 12 cases among 735 children of women not given the drugs. Advice is being sent to the study's 4,148 mothers and a helpline set up. Medical experts stressed pregnant women should not feel concerned about taking antibiotics to treat infections. The Oracle study was the largest trial in the world into premature labour and was set up to investigate whether giving antibiotics - which might tackle an underlying symptomless infection - to women with signs of premature labour would improve outcomes for babies. One in eight babies in the UK is born prematurely and prematurity is the leading cause of disability and of infant death in the first month after birth. In 2001, ORACLE found the antibiotic erythromycin had immediate benefits for women in premature labour (before 37 weeks gestation) whose waters had broken. It delayed onset of labour and reduced the risk of infections and breathing problems in babies. Erythromycin and the other antibiotic studied - co-amoxiclav - showed no benefit or harm for the women whose waters were still intact, however, and doctors were advised not to routinely prescribe them in such circumstances.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12064 - Posted: 09.20.2008

by Becky McCall Cosmos Online LIVERPOOL, UK: Our memories of major past events can be surprisingly unreliable, says a new study of the July 2005 London bombings, which found that people can easily convince themselves they've seen things that never happened. "Some people think that our memories are like video recorders and that if you press play the memories come flooding back. It doesn't work like that at all and should not form the basis of legal decision making" said James Ost, a psychologist from the University of Portsmouth, England. Ost said that when DNA testing became available in the U.S. in the early 90s, 80 per cent of death row cases that were exonerated, were found to have been wrongly convicted on the strength of mistaken identity. His research demonstrates how this can happen. To investigate how reliable our memories are, he asked people in the U.K. and Sweden if they'd seen CCTV footage of the bus bombing in the city's Tavistock Square. Eighty-four per cent of U.K. respondents said that they had, compared to 50 per cent of Swedish participants, when in fact, no such footage exists. His research was presented last week at the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA) Festival of Science, held in Liverpool, England.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 12063 - Posted: 09.20.2008

By Rachel Zelkowitz It could be an ad in a fashion magazine: Miracle fat prevents weight-gain! Researchers aren't promising that, but they do say they've isolated a fat molecule in mice that prevents the animals from storing even more fat. The discovery could open a new front in the battle against the bulge if the molecule has the same effect in humans. The word "fat" typically evokes the image of clogged arteries or cellulite jiggling on a thigh. But fat has a good side, too. Fat cells make up adipose tissue, which helps regulate insulin levels and breaks down dietary fat for energy. This breakdown is accomplished via proteins in fat cells called fatty acid–binding proteins. Mice genetically engineered to lack these proteins gain less weight and are less susceptible to metabolic diseases such as diabetes than are regular mice. Biochemist Gökhan Hotamisligil of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and his colleagues wanted to understand how this process works. They set up an experiment to compare normal mice that produce the binding proteins with mice engineered to lack them. Half the mice in each group ate a high-fat diet for 16 weeks while their counterparts crunched on low-cal food. At the end of the treatment, the researchers tested how much and what types of fat built up in adipose tissue, blood, liver, and muscle. They also tested metabolic function in mice. They saw that mice on the high-fat diet without fatty acid–binding proteins did gain weight but less weight than the control mice on the high-fat diet. Most surprisingly, the mice without binding proteins had better metabolic function and more of the fat that's considered healthy than the controls, the team reports today in Cell. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 12062 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower Brain researchers have begun to explore what might be called faith-based analgesia. Stimulating a religious state of mind in devout Catholics triggers brain processes associated with substantial relief from physical pain, report neuroscientist Katja Wiech of the University of Oxford, England, and her colleagues in an upcoming issue of Pain. “Our data suggest that religious belief alters the brain in a way that changes how a person responds to pain,” says Oxford neuroscientist and study coauthor Irene Tracey. Practicing Catholics perceived electrical pulses delivered to one hand while viewing an image of the Virgin Mary as less painful than pulses delivered while looking at a non-religious picture. Functional MRI showed a change in these volunteers’ brain activity only while viewing the religious icon. In contrast, professed atheists and agnostics derived no pain relief from viewing the same religious image while getting uncomfortably zapped on the hand. “What’s exciting is that this new study shows a neural mechanism by which religious belief affects pain perception,” remarks psychiatrist Harold Koenig, codirector of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at Duke University in Durham, N.C. ecause the images spark religious thoughts and feelings, comments neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman of the University of California, Los Angeles. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2008

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 12061 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers have discovered a communications “hot line” that lets a worm's nervous system dial the immune system to help coordinate the response to infectious pathogens. The new research is the first to identify direct evidence that specific cells in the nervous system coordinate initial defenses against toxic bacteria. Those first responders are part of the innate immune system, a kind of “sixth sense” that is hard-wired and fends off invading microbes until the adaptive immune response is mobilized. “It has been recognized for at least 20 years that there must be bidirectional communication between the nervous and the immune systems,” says Alejandro Aballay at Duke University Medical Center. “But because of the complexity of the communication network it has been very difficult to prove this connection conclusively. The complexity of the nervous and immune systems of mammals, including humans, makes sorting out neural-immune communications a daunting task.” To cut through this complexity, Aballay and his colleagues turned to the simple roundworm, C. elegans. It proved to be an ideal model for dissecting those elusive connections—and for bringing together a diverse research team whose only connection was a signaling protein known primarily for its effect on the social life of worms. The research team included Aballay, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator Cornelia Bargmann at the Rockefeller University, as well as Sarah Steele, an undergraduate research student funded by an HHMI science education grant to Duke. The research is reported in the September 18, 2008 edition of Science Express, which provides electronic publication of selected Science papers. © 2008 Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Keyword: Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 12060 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Multiple sclerosis is more common among people living in northern latitudes, but they aren't the only ones affected, according to a new report. The World Health Organization and the London-based Multiple Sclerosis International Federation published the MS Atlas on Wednesday. It summarizes information on the disease in 112 countries, none of which were free of the disease. MS is a neurodegenerative disease that attacks the brain and spinal cord, and can lead to paralysis and sometimes blindness. Some people with MS experience little disability during their lifetime. But up to 60 per cent are no longer fully able to walk 20 years after onset, which has major implications for their quality of life and costs to society, the report said. Symptoms appear around 30 years of age on average. “The Atlas of MS reveals how these implications impact women more than men, by at least two to one, at an age when they are starting a family and developing a career,” said Dr. Benedetto Saraceno, director of the WHO's department of mental health and substance dependence. The study confirms that MS is a global disease, not solely of the more developed “northern” and “western” countries, the report said. © CBC 2008

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 12059 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Carl Zimmer If you had to sum up the past 40 years of research on the mind, you could do worse than to call it the Rise of the Zombies. We like to see ourselves as being completely conscious of our thought processes, of how we feel, of the decisions we make and our reasons for making them. When we act, it is our conscious selves doing the acting. But starting in the late 1960s, psychologists and neurologists began to find evidence that our self-aware part is not always in charge. Researchers discovered that we are deeply influenced by perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and desires about which we have no awareness. Their research raised the disturbing possibility that much of what we think and do is thought and done by an unconscious part of the brain—an inner zombie. Some of the earliest evidence for this zombie came from studies of people who had suffered brain injuries. In 1970 British psychologists Elizabeth Warrington and Lawrence Weiskrantz showed a series of words to a group of people with amnesia, who promptly forgot the list. A few minutes later Warrington and Weiskrantz showed them the first three letters of each of the words they had just seen and forgotten and asked the amnesiacs to add some additional letters to make a word. Any word would do. The amnesiacs consistently chose the words they had seen and forgotten; the inner zombie, somewhere beyond awareness, retained memories of the words.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12058 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Different areas of the brain mature at different rates, which helps explain many of the intellectual and emotional changes seen in children, teens and young adults. While no two children develop in exactly the same way, scientists have been able to link certain developmental milestones to changes in brain tissue, observed by MRI scans taken repeatedly over years. Move the slider below to see how the brain matures. Red, yellow and orange patterns indicate undeveloped brain tissue, while green, blue and purple indicate a maturing of the brain. Brain images courtesy of Dr. Paul Thompson, University of California, Los Angeles. Source information provided by Dr. Jay Giedd, National Institutes of Mental Health. Produced by Tara Parker-Pope, Jon Huang, and Mike Mason/The New York Times Home Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12057 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jeremy Hsu When Brad Pitt tells Eric Bana in the 2004 film Troy that “there are no pacts between lions and men,” he is not reciting a clever line from the pen of a Hollywood screenwriter. He is speaking Achilles’ words in English as Homer wrote them in Greek more than 2,000 years ago in the Iliad. The tale of the Trojan War has captivated generations of audiences while evolving from its origins as an oral epic to written versions and, finally, to several film adaptations. The power of this story to transcend time, language and culture is clear even today, evidenced by Troy’s robust success around the world. Popular tales do far more than entertain, however. Psychologists and neuroscientists have recently become fascinated by the human predilection for storytelling. Why does our brain seem to be wired to enjoy stories? And how do the emotional and cognitive effects of a narrative influence our beliefs and real-world decisions? The answers to these questions seem to be rooted in our history as a social animal. We tell stories about other people and for other people. Stories help us to keep tabs on what is happening in our communities. The safe, imaginary world of a story may be a kind of training ground, where we can practice interacting with others and learn the customs and rules of society. And stories have a unique power to persuade and motivate, because they appeal to our emotions and capacity for empathy. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12056 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Heather Mayer It seems that as people settle into old age, they slow down, mellow out, and generally get less of a kick out of life. Now researchers at the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) have a clue as to why this may be: The pleasure circuits of our brains change dramatically with aging. New research indicates that as we get older, our brains may stop responding to the neural signals that used to bring us pleasure. “I think something that many people as they age fear the most is having something wrong with their brains — either a dementia of some type or being depressed or not being able to enjoy life,” says Karen Berman, a neuroscientist at NIMH. Berman and her team of researchers conducted a first-of-its-kind study, looking at the brain chemical dopamine in healthy young and old people. Dopamine is a chemical that is responsible for the pleasure responses that people feel, and Berman’s team found that dopamine receptors decrease with age, causing a decrease in the brain’s pleasure and reward response. “Dopamine in the brain is very important for motivating us, for keeping us happy, for letting us experience rewards and for helping us to go about our daily lives and carry out our plans,” Berman explains. ©2008 ScienCentral

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12055 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Emma Young Crows seem to be able to use causal reasoning to solve a problem, a feat previously undocumented in any other non-human animal, including chimps. Alex Taylor at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and his team presented six New Caledonian crows with a series of "trap-tube" tests. A choice morsel of food was placed in a horizontal Perspex tube, which also featured two round holes in the underside, with Perspex traps below. For most of the tests, one of the holes was sealed, so the food could be dragged across it with a stick and out of the tube to be eaten. The other hole was left open, trapping the food if the crows moved it the wrong way. Three of the crows solved the task consistently, even after the team modified the appearance of the equipment. This suggested that these crows weren't using arbitrary features – such as the colour of the rim of a hole – to guide their behaviour. Instead they seemed to understand that if they dragged food across a hole, they would lose it. To investigate further, the team presented the crows with a wooden table, divided into two compartments. A treat was at the end of each compartment, but in one, it was positioned behind a rectangular trap hole. To get the snack, the crow had to consistently choose to retrieve food from the compartment without the hole. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 12054 - Posted: 06.24.2010

High testosterone in women makes them more attracted to masculine actors such as Daniel Craig, with men favouring the femininity typified by Natalie Portman. The claim has been made by the University of Aberdeen's Face Research Laboratory. Their research says that changes in testosterone levels affect the extent to which men and women are attracted to different types of faces. This is rather than people being attracted to particular types. James Bond actor Daniel Craig and fellow star of the big screen Russell Crowe were highlighted as masculine. Star Wars actress Natalie Portman and Lost star Evangeline Lilly were said to typify feminine faces. The researchers asked male and female volunteers to complete short face preference tests in which they were shown pairs of masculine and feminine faces. Participants were asked to choose which face from each pair was more attractive. They completed four different test sessions that were each a week apart. In each session, volunteers also provided a saliva sample which was used to measure testosterone levels. Dr Ben Jones, a psychology lecturer, said: "People preferred different types of face in the session where their testosterone level was highest than in the session where it was lowest." (C)BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12053 - Posted: 09.16.2008