Roger Highfield. A team at Oxford has found hitherto unrecognised cells in the eye that respond to blue light which shift our body clocks to new time zones and allow recovery from jet-lag. Today, in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Prof Russell Foster's group have now shown that these light sensors do more than regulate our body clocks and also play an important role in directly regulating levels of sleepiness and alertness. Prof Foster said the cells are a brand new target for the development of highly selective drugs to regulate sleep and wakefulness and that he has started work on their development. "The results may also have enormous practical value as currently the drugs available for the regulation of sleep and alertness are fairly crude," he said. The work will pave the way to a new class of sleeping pill and stimulants that would have the same effect as bright light, or darkness, depending on the design of the drug. He already has some candidate chemicals but he believes it will take another decade for tests on patients to see if these drugs will be of value for either treating insomnia or excessive sleepiness. © Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2008

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Sleep
Link ID: 11952 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Michael Mosley Twenty-eight year old Kathryn Proctor, a florist, had been having epileptic fits for about four years. "It started off with eye spasms - they were actually seizures and they developed into full fits. "The fits can be controlled with medication but they found a lump on my brain and there's a 50% chance that it's causing the epilepsy. "It's on the right-hand side, about halfway up on the frontal lobe." The lump they found was a cavernoma, an abnormality in one of the veins in her brain. It had to come out, not only because it was triggering fits but because it could haemorrhage. Kathryn agreed to let us film her operation as part of a series I was making, Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery. In fact she not only agreed, she was enthusiastic. "I would be happy for you to film because I want to sit down and watch it with my girlfriends afterwards" Kathryn was well aware that the operation she was about to undergo was complex and risky. Potential complications included heavy bleeding and, when removing the cavernoma, accidental injury to parts of her brain. Because of this she had to be operated on while fully awake. (C)BBC

Keyword: Epilepsy
Link ID: 11951 - Posted: 08.19.2008

By Susan Milius Tiny ants enslaved inside acorns across the northeastern United States could be resisting their captors with a covert army of killer nannies. About the size of newspaper commas, ants in the genus Temnothorax fall prey to a marginally larger ant species that doesn't do its own housework. Instead the do-little ants, Protomognathus americanus, raid smaller species' nests and steal babies in the larval and pupal stages. The youngsters grow up inside the acorn home of the slave-makers’ queen, doing her housework and nursemaiding her young. Biologists have seen that the species vulnerable to enslavement evolve ways to try to fight off raids. But ways for the kidnapped youngsters to resist captivity haven’t shown up. Theorists have even argued that post-enslavement resistance couldn’t evolve. But observers are giving up on the slaves too fast, says Susanne Foitzik of Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. Kidnapped workers of two Temnothorax species kill off a good portion of their charges in the nurseries of slave-maker colonies, Foitzik said at the 12th International Behavioral Ecology Congress held August 9 through 15 at Cornell University. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2008

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 11950 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rachel Zelkowitz Ask a woman if she thinks actor Brad Pitt's body is attractive, and the answer will most likely be a resounding yes. But she might be hard-pressed to explain why that heartthrob excels over the merely buff. Researchers can now provide some help. Pretty people such as Pitt tend to have more symmetrical bodies, scientists have found. But questions remain about whether symmetry reflects any kind of evolutionary advantage. With two hands, two legs, and two sides of the brain, humans are clearly bilateral beings. But bilateral doesn't mean perfectly symmetrical: One earlobe might hang slightly lower than the other, someone's left wrist might be just a bit wider than their right. Studies of faces have shown that people perceive more symmetrical faces of either gender as more attractive, perhaps because these subtle differences, called fluctuating asymmetry, somehow reflect susceptibility to environmental stresses such as disease. Vulnerability to stress might make someone less healthy and therefore less suitable as a mate, according to the theory. Isolating asymmetry in the rest of the body has proven difficult because researchers lacked instruments designed to measure these differences. William Brown, an evolutionary psychologist at Brunel University in the U.K., decided to take the problem to people who know bodies best: doctors and fashion designers. Physicians sometimes use three-dimensional body scanners to make images of a burn victim's skin, and designers use them to make more accurate models for fitting clothing. Brown's team used the device to scan the bodies of 40 male and 37 female college students. A computer gave precise measurements for 24 traits: ankle girth, shoulder width, and others. The computer also created a full-scale, rotating image of each subject's body. The model displayed no information about skin color, clothing, or hairstyle. The researchers then asked 37 men and 50 women to rate attractiveness of the opposite-sex models. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 11949 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Alison Motluk Self-recognition, once thought to be an ability enjoyed only by select primates, has now been demonstrated in a bird. The finding has raised questions about part of the brain called the neocortex, something the self-aware magpie does not even possess. In humans, the ability to recognise oneself in a mirror develops around the age of 18 months and coincides with the first signs of social behaviour. So-called "mirror mark tests", where a mark is placed on the animal in such a way that it can only be observed when it looks at its reflection, have been used to sort the self-aware beasts from the rest. Of hundreds tested, in addition to humans, only four apes, bottlenose dolphins and Asian elephants have passed muster. Helmut Prior at Goethe University in Frankfurt and his colleagues applied a red, yellow or black spot to a place on the necks of five magpies. The stickers could only be seen using a mirror. Then he gave the birds mirrors. Catch a glimpse The feel of the mark on their necks did not seem to alarm them. But when the birds with coloured neck spots caught a glimpse of themselves, they scratched at their necks - a clear indication that they recognised the image in the mirror as their own. Those who received a black sticker, invisible against the black neck feathers, did not react. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 11948 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Randolph Schmid -- Answer this without counting: Are there more X's here XXXXXX, or here XXXXX? That's a problem facing people whose languages don't include words for more than one or two. Yet researchers say children who speak those languages are still able to compare quantities. "We argue that humans possess an innate system for enumeration that doesn't rely on words," says Brian Butterworth of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. In an attempt to prove it, Butterworth compared the numerical skills of children from two indigenous Australian groups whose languages don't contain many number words with similar children who speak English. All the groups performed equally well, his research team reports in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Basic number and arithmetic skills are built on a specialized innate system," Butterworth said in an interview via e-mail. Using words for exact numbers is "useful but not necessary," the researchers concluded. Co-author Robert Reeve of the University of Melbourne, Australia, agreed: "Our findings are consistent with the idea that we have an innate system for representing quantity ideas and that the lack of number words in a language should not prevent us from completing simple number and computation tasks." © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 11947 - Posted: 06.24.2010

PITY the poor male salmon. In the race to become a father, it's the female who calls the shots. Fluid she releases into the water with her eggs can tip the balance in favour of a particular male by speeding up the rate at which his sperm swim - a strategy thought to help select the best possible mate. "We were really struck by this result," says Neil Gemmell at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, who looked at the sperm of blue-green chinook salmon. Females of animal species such at crickets, which fertilise their eggs inside their bodies, are already known to exert some control over which sperm get lucky, but until now it was not obvious how fish which release their eggs and sperm into the water around them could do the same. Gemmell's team found that while sperm from one particular male crawled along at 20 micrometres per second in one female's fluid, they raced four times as fast in another's (Behavioural Ecology, DOI: 10.1093/beheco/arn089). The difference is crucial, as speed rather than quantity determines which male's sperm fertilises an egg, Gemmell points out. Females might be favouring males with a compatible immune system, or a dissimilar genetic make-up to ensure healthier offspring, Gemmell suggests. Variation in the concentration of ions in the fluid such as calcium may be what is affecting sperm motility. From issue 2669 of New Scientist magazine, 16 August 2008, page 15 © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 11946 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON - Two genes that influence the activity of nerve cells in the brain may play a key role in a person's risk for bipolar disorder, marked by dramatic swings from depression to manic behavior, researchers said on Sunday. The findings are not expected to lead to a genetic test for the risk of the condition but could help unravel the mystery of how it arises and lead to better treatments, they reported in the journal Nature Genetics. An international team of scientists examined the genomes of 10,596 people mainly from Britain and the United States, including 4,387 with bipolar disorder, also sometimes known as manic-depression. Story continues below ↓advertisement The researchers found those with bipolar disorder more likely to have certain variants of the ANK3 and CACNA1C genes. Proteins made by the two genes help govern the flow of sodium and calcium ions into and out of neurons in the brain, influencing the activity of these nerve cells. "The key importance of this is that it gives us a clear idea of the sorts of chemicals and mechanisms in the brain that are involved in bipolar disorder," Nick Craddock of Britain's Cardiff University, who helped lead the study, said in a telephone interview. Copyright 2008 Reuters.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 11945 - Posted: 08.18.2008

By ERIK ECKHOLM and OLGA PIERCE Suffering from excruciating spinal deterioration, Robby Garvin, 24, of South Carolina, tried many painkillers before his doctor prescribed methadone in June 2006, just before Mr. Garvin and his friend Joey Sutton set off for a weekend at an amusement park. On Saturday night Mr. Garvin called his mother to say, “Mama, this is the first time I have been pain free, this medicine just might really help me.” The next day, though, he felt bad. As directed, he took two more tablets and then he lay down for a nap. It was after 2 p.m. that Joey said he heard a strange sound that must have been Robby’s last breath. Methadone, once used mainly in addiction treatment centers to replace heroin, is today being given out by family doctors, osteopaths and nurse practitioners for throbbing backs, joint injuries and a host of other severe pains. A synthetic form of opium, it is cheap and long lasting, a powerful pain reliever that has helped millions. But because it is also abused by thrill seekers and badly prescribed by doctors unfamiliar with its risks, methadone is now the fastest growing cause of narcotic deaths. It is implicated in more than twice as many deaths as heroin, and is rivaling or surpassing the tolls of painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 11944 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A history of severe ear infections or tonsil trouble may increase the chances of being obese later in life, according to scientists. About a third of children get recurrent otitis media and research presented at a US conference suggests a link. Infections may affect food choices by damaging nerves involved in taste, the researchers said. However, a number of UK experts raised doubts about the findings, with one saying a link was "extremely unlikely". In the first, more than 6,000 adults were quizzed about their history of ear infections and the results suggested that those with a moderate to severe history were 62% more likely to be obese. Dr Linda Bartoshuk, who led the study at the University of Florida College of Dentistry, said that the finding was of "considerable" public health interest. Another research project found that women who had impaired taste functioning were more likely to prefer sweet and high fat foods and more likely to be overweight. The study authors suggested that nerve damage caused by severe infections could be to blame for this. Dr Kathleen Daly, from the University of Minnesota Twin-Cities, presented research which suggested that babies treated with grommets for recurrent ear infections were likely to increase in terms of "body mass index" (BMI). She said: "Obesity has doubled over the past 20 years among pre-school children. The more data we collect on what contributes to this major public health problem, the greater likelihood that we can help prevent it." Having tonsils removed can be a sign of recurrent infection problems in the ear, nose and throat, and a survey of almost 14,000 people found that those who had had tonsils removed were 40% more likely to be overweight as adults. (C)BBC

Keyword: Obesity; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 11943 - Posted: 08.16.2008

WASHINGTON - Federal regulators on Friday cleared the first treatment approved in the United States for Huntington’s, a rare inherited disease that causes uncontrolled movements, deterioration of mental abilities and, ultimately, death. The medication, called Xenazine, will not cure the condition—and it has some potentially serious side effects, such as raising the risk of suicidal behavior. However, it does provide relief for a major disabling symptom of Huntington’s: the jerky, involuntary movements known by the medical term chorea and force many patients to live as shut-ins. “A lot of patients won’t go out because they are embarrassed by those movements,” said Dr. Frederick J. Marshall, a University of Rochester Medical Center neurologist who led the clinical study that provided evidence of the drug’s effectiveness. “Suppressing those movements means a lot to people with Huntington’s disease.” The disease affects only about 30,000 patients in the United States. Developing and testing medications for such a small population is a difficult process, with uncertain financial rewards. So the Food and Drug Administration granted Xenazine a special “orphan drug” designation that provides additional years of patent protection and allows the manufacturer, Prestwick Pharmaceuticals, to write off some development costs. The medication had already been approved in Canada, Europe and Australia. © 2008 The Associated Press.

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 11942 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sharon Begley If there is one thing experts on child development agree on, it is that kids learn best when they are allowed to make mistakes and feel the consequences. So Mom and Dad hold back as their toddler tries again and again to cram a round peg into a square hole. They feel her pain as playmates shun her for being pushy, hoping she'll learn to back off. They let their teen stay up too late before a test, hoping a dismal grade will teach her to get a good night's sleep but believing that ordering her to get to bed right now will not: kids who experience setbacks rather than having them short-circuited by a controlling parent learn not to repeat the dumb behavior. But not, it seems, all kids. In about 30 percent, the coils of their DNA carry a glitch, one that leaves their brains with few dopamine receptors, molecules that act as docking ports for one of the neurochemicals that carry our thoughts and emotions. A paucity of dopamine receptors is linked to an inability to avoid self-destructive behavior such as illicit drug use. But the effects spill beyond such extremes. Children with the genetic variant are unable to learn from mistakes. No matter how many tests they blow by partying the night before, the lesson just doesn't sink in. The discovery, reported last December, is part of what is fast becoming the newest frontier in studies of why children turn out as they do. Since the first advice book for American parents appeared in 1811, the child-rearing industry, as well as researchers who have made child development a science, have assumed that, although every child is an individual, there are certain universals. If parents are too take-charge about homework, the child becomes disengaged and eventually gives up; if they are warm and affectionate, kids don't act out. But while most children do respond the way research shows, there have always been "outliers," kids who don't turn out the way experts promise. © 2008 Newsweek, Inc.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 11941 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Melinda Wenner You probably think you're doing everything you can to stay healthy: you get lots of sleep, exercise regularly and try to avoid fried foods. But you may be forgetting one important thing. Relax! Stress has a bigger impact on your health than you might realize, according to research presented yesterday at the annual conference of the American Psychological Association in Boston. Ohio State University psychologist Janice Kiecolt-Glaser and her partner, Ronald Glaser, an OSU virologist and immunologist, have spent 20-odd years researching how stress affects the immune system, and they have made some startling discoveries. An easy example comes from their work with caregivers, people who look after chronically ailing spouses or parents (no one would argue that this role is quite stressful). In one experiment, Kiecolt-Glaser and her colleagues administered flu vaccines to caregivers and control subjects and compared the numbers of antibodies—proteins involved in immune reactions—that the two groups produced in response. Only 38 percent of the caregivers produced what is considered an adequate antibody response compared to 66 percent of their relaxed counterparts, suggesting that the caregivers' immune systems weren't doing their jobs very well—and that the stress of caregiving ultimately put them at an increased risk of infection. If stress affects immune responses, then it should also affect how well the body heals itself. In one particularly cringe-worthy study, Kiecolt-Glaser and her colleagues afflicted a group of caregivers with small arm wounds using a tool dermatologists use to perform skin biopsies. The caregivers' wounds took 24 percent longer to heal than wounds that they had afflicted to non-caregivers. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 11940 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower Imagine, for a moment, that you are smaller than a speck of dust and in the mood for some teeny-tiny sightseeing. It’s a perfect opportunity to take a scenic trip to the inner ear. First, stroll up the ear canal. This is a fantasy, so no waxy buildup blocks the way. At the end of the fleshy tunnel, squeeze around the huge, circular membrane better known as the eardrum. Gingerly sidestep the precariously balanced, oddly shaped middle ear bones and proceed into the inner ear. Up ahead, rising like skyscrapers from a flat landscape, looms a cluster of stereocilia. These slender, interconnected projections sit atop the basic sensory elements of hearing — the inner ear hair cells. Bundles of gently waving stereocilia serve as receptacles for sound waves delivered from hair cells, transforming those waves into electrical signals that travel to the brain to be interpreted. But the inner ear is more than just the mediator of hearing. As a core player in the human system for receiving and creating spoken language, it’s a hotbed of recent evolutionary change as well. In a new study, anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin–Madison finds that eight hearing-related genes show signs of having evolved systematically in human populations over the past 40,000 years. Some alterations on these genes took root as recently as 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2008

Keyword: Hearing; Language
Link ID: 11939 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Tamsin Osborne Bisexual men might have their "hyper-heterosexual" female relatives to thank for their orientation. Previous work has suggested that genes influencing sexual orientation in men also make women more likely to reproduce. Andrea Camperio Ciani and colleagues at the University of Padua, Italy, showed that the female relatives of homosexual men tend to have more children, suggesting that genes on the X chromosome are responsible. Now the team have shown that the same is true for bisexuality. "It helps to answer a perplexing question - how can there be 'gay genes' given that gay sex doesn't lead to procreation?" says Dean Hamer of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, who was not involved in the work. "The answer is remarkably simple: the same gene that causes men to like men also causes women to like men, and as a result to have more children." The researchers asked 239 men to fill out questionnaires about their families and their past sexual experiences. On the basis of their answers, the men were classified as heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual. The results showed that the maternal aunts, grandmothers and mothers of both bisexual men and homosexuals had more children than those of heterosexual men. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 11938 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Amber Dance When shopping for a mate, female zebra finches might choose males with the sweetest song because singing ability advertises intellectual prowess. Neeltje Boogert of McGill University in Montreal, found that the males who sang the most complex melodies were also quicker at solving a problem to find food. Boogert presented her research on 11 August at the International Behavioral Ecology Congress at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The same finches then faced a puzzle. Boogert hid millet seeds in small wells in a wooden board. The finches had to peer into the wells to find the seeds, and in later trials had to pry lids off the wells to get the snack. Some figured it out in four tries, others still hadn’t mastered the lid after 17 attempts. Birds with more elements in their songs solved the puzzle in fewer trials. Boogert notes that the ability to spot and prise out food in dense vegetation or mud is just the sort of thing a female might be looking for — skills that will help feed her chicks, and genes that will make those chicks good foragers when they grow up. © 2008 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Intelligence
Link ID: 11937 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Brandon Keim Drugs that make soldiers want to fight. Robots linked directly to their controllers' brains. Lie-detecting scans administered to terrorist suspects as they cross U.S. borders. These are just a few of the military uses imagined for cognitive science -- and if it's not yet certain whether the technologies will work, the military is certainly taking them very seriously. "It's way too early to know which -- if any -- of these technologies is going to be practical," said Jonathan Moreno, a Center for American Progress bioethicist and author of Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense. "But it's important for us to get ahead of the curve. Soldiers are always on the cutting edge of new technologies." Moreno is part of a National Research Council committee convened by the Department of Defense to evaluate the military potential of brain science. Their report, "Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies," was released today. It charts a range of cognitive technologies that are potentially powerful -- and, perhaps, powerfully troubling. © 2008 CondéNet, Inc.

Keyword: Robotics; Stress
Link ID: 11936 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Gary Stix Last year Sean A. Spence, a professor at the school of medicine at the University of Sheffield in England, performed brain scans that showed that a woman convicted of poisoning a child in her care appeared to be telling the truth when she denied committing the crime. This deception study, along with two others performed by the Sheffield group, was funded by Quickfire Media, a television production company working for the U.K.’s Channel 4, which broadcast videos of the researchers at work as part of a three-part series called “Lie Lab.” The brain study of the woman later appeared in the journal European Psychiatry. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) purports to detect mendacity by seeing inside the brain instead of tracking peripheral measures of anxiety—such as changes in pulse, blood pressure or respiration­­—measured by a polygraph. Besides drawing hundreds of thousands of viewers, fMRI has pulled in entrepreneurs. Two companies—Cephos in Pepperell, Mass., and No Lie MRI in Tarzana, Calif.—claim to predict with 90 percent or greater certitude whether you are telling the truth. No Lie MRI, whose name evokes the casual familiarity of a walk-in dental clinic in a strip mall, suggests that the technique may even be used for “risk reduction in dating.” Many neuroscientists and legal scholars doubt such claims—and some even question whether brain scans for lie detection will ever be ready for anything but more research on the nature of deception and the brain. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 11935 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Markus Ullsperger September 22, 2006: On a trial run, experimental maglev train Transrapid 08 plows into a maintenance vehicle at 125 mph near Lathen, Germany, spewing wreckage over hundreds of yards, killing 23 passengers and severely injuring 10 others. Human error was behind both accidents. Of course, people make mistakes, both large and small, every day, and monitoring and fixing slipups is a regular part of life. Although people understandably would like to avoid serious errors, most goofs have a good side: they give the brain information about how to improve or fine-tune behavior. In fact, learning from mistakes is likely essential to the survival of our species. In recent years researchers have identified a region of the brain called the medial frontal cortex that plays a central role in detecting mistakes and responding to them. These frontal neurons become active whenever people or monkeys change their behavior after the kind of negative feedback or diminished reward that results from errors. Much of our ability to learn from flubs, the latest studies show, stems from the actions of the neurotransmitter dopamine. In fact, genetic variations that affect dopamine signaling may help explain differences between people in the extent to which they learn from past goofs. Meanwhile certain patterns of cerebral activity often foreshadow miscues, opening up the possibility of preventing blunders with portable devices that can detect error-prone brain states. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 11934 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Peter Aldhous THE next time you hear someone blaming "beer goggles" for their behaviour, you may have to believe them. People really do appear more attractive when our perceptions are changed by drinking alcohol. There have been few previous attempts to investigate the idea that people seem to find others more attractive when drunk. In 2003, psychologists at the University of Glasgow, UK, published a study in which they asked heterosexual students in campus bars and cafés whether they had been drinking, and then got them to rate photos of people for attractiveness. While the results supported the beer goggles theory, another explanation is that regular drinkers tend to have personality traits that mean they find people more attractive, whether or not they are under the influence of alcohol at the time. To resolve the issue, a team of researchers led by Marcus Munafň at the University of Bristol in the UK conducted a controlled experiment. They randomly assigned 84 heterosexal students to consume either a non-alcoholic lime-flavoured drink or an alcoholic beverage with a similar flavour. The exact amount of alcohol varied according to the individual but was designed to have an effect equivalent to someone weighing 70 kilograms drinking 250 millitres of wine - enough to make some students tipsy. After 15 minutes, the students were shown pictures of people their own age, from both sexes. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 11933 - Posted: 06.24.2010