By Greg Miller More than a year after taking a hallucinogenic drug in a carefully controlled experiment, most people rate the experience among the most personally meaningful and spiritually significant of their lives, researchers report online today in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. Such findings are helping to renew interest in research with hallucinogens, a field whose reputation long suffered from the psychedelic excesses of the 1960s. The new study follows up with 36 volunteers who participated in earlier experiments led by psychopharmacologist Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The researchers monitored the mostly middle-aged subjects while they took a strong dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms. All of the volunteers had indicated at least some participation in religious or spiritual activities--such as meditating or going to church--and the researchers instructed them to direct their attention inward while under the drug's sway. None had previous experience with hallucinogens. On questionnaires completed after the drug had worn off, and again 2 months later, they rated the experience as highly significant, the researchers reported in a 2006 paper in Psychopharmacology. Volunteers frequently described a sense of greater truth or a sense of the unity of all things while on the drug, for example. The experience remained highly significant to most of the volunteers 14 months later, the researchers now report: 58% rated it among the five most personally meaningful experiences of their lives and 67% rated it among the five most spiritually significant. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 11769 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Alison Abbott The director of a top laboratory in Germany has charged that two of his former research students took data from his laboratory without his permission and published scientifically incorrect interpretations of them against his advice. One of the two editors-in-chief of Human Brain Mapping, Peter Fox of the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, told Nature that the paper was correctly refereed, but declined to add details. Logothetis is furious about the publication of data, which he believes will mislead the field, and about the fact that the authors of the paper allege that he tried to stop them publishing the data for personal reasons. The affair began in the spring, when Amir Shmuel, who worked in Logothetis's laboratories from 2002 to 2007 and is now at the Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University in Canada, asked Logothetis for permission to use data generated there. Although he agreed at first, Logothetis withdrew his permission when he realized that the data — from functional magnetic resonance imaging studies on monkey brains — were being used to support a theory about spontaneous brain activity. The data had been collected when monkeys were looking at a grey but flickering LED screen. “The protocol was just inappropriate for analysis of spontaneous brain activity,” says Logothetis. © 2008 Nature Publishing Group –

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 11768 - Posted: 06.24.2010

-- Thanks to salt and hot chili peppers, researchers have found a calculus-computing center that tells a roundworm to go forward toward dinner or turn to broaden the search. It's a computational mechanism, they say, that is similar to what drives hungry college students to pizza. These behavior-driving calculations, according to a paper published in the July 3 issue of the journal Nature, are done "in a tiny, specialized computer inside a primitive roundworm," says principal investigator Shawn Lockery, a University of Oregon biologist and member of the UO Institute of Neuroscience. In their paper, the researchers documented how two related, closely located chemosensory neurons, acting in tandem, regulate behavior. The left neuron controls an on switch, while the opposing right one an off switch. These sister neurons are situated much like the two nostrils or two eyes of mammals. Together these neurons are known as ASE for antagonistic sensory cues. It's possible, Lockery said, that the discovery someday could help research aimed at treating at least some of the 200,000 people in the United States who annually seek medical treatment, according to records of the National Institutes of Health, for problems involving taste and smell. © University of Oregon

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 11767 - Posted: 06.24.2010

If we learned language in the same way that we learn to add, subtract or play cards, children like Barry would not get much beyond hello and goodbye. Nor, for that matter, would normal toddlers. As anyone who has struggled through college French can attest, picking up a new language as an adult is as simple as picking up a truck. Yet virtually every kid in the world succeeds at it-and without conscious effort. Children attach meanings to sounds long before they shed their diapers. They launch into grammatical analysis before they can tie their shoes. And by the age of 8, most produce sentences as readily as laughter or tears. Scholars have bickered for centuries over how kids accomplish this feat, but most now agree that their brains are wired for the task. Like finches or sparrows, which learn to sing as hatchlings or not at all, we're designed to acquire certain kinds of knowledge at particular stages of development. Children surrounded by words almost always become fluent by 8, whatever their general intelligence. And people deprived of language as children rarely master it as adults, no matter how smart they are or how intensively they're trained. As MIT linguist Steven Pinker observes in his acclaimed 1994 book "The Language Instinct," "Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works. It is a distinct piece of [our] biological makeup." Whether they emerge speaking Spanish, Czech or Hindi, kids all acquire language on the same general schedule. And as a growing body of research makes clear, they all travel the same remarkable path. © 2008 Newsweek, Inc

Keyword: Language; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 11766 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Mice given the equivalent of six to eight cups of coffee a day were less likely to develop a disease similar to multiple sclerosis, a study found. Researchers hope this could lead to new ways to prevent MS in humans. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal reported that the caffeine appeared to prevent nervous system damage. However, experts recommend no more than five cups a day, amid evidence higher doses can worsen diabetes. While the chain reaction which leads to multiple sclerosis is still not fully understood, a key moment surrounds the entry of immune cells into the central nervous system. Once there, they trigger "autoimmune" attacks, gradually and progressively destroying the fatty myelin sheaths that protect nerves. Current treatments for MS are limited only to slowing the progress of the disease once it is established. At Cornell University in the US, and Turku University in Finland, the researchers are using a mouse disease called "experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis", or EAE, to mimic the development of MS in humans. One of the effects of caffeine in both mice and humans affects a molecule called adenosine, which plays a role in sleep and energy production. When mice were dosed with caffeine, adenosine could not link to a particular receptor on the surface of cells. This in turn appeared to have an indirect effect on the ability of immune cells to enter the nervous system at a part of the brain called the choroid plexus, and the mice did not develop EAE. While the precise reason this happened was not clear, the researchers suggested the adenosine blocking effect led to a lower number of "adhesion molecules" - needed by the immune cells to gain entry - on the surface of the choroid plexus. (C)BBC

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 11765 - Posted: 07.01.2008

By Shankar Vedantam In Bethesda, a 15-year-old girl talks to her television set. Often, she seems more connected to the tube's ghostly embrace than to her own father, mother, brothers and sister. She flushes household items down the toilet. She has no friends outside her family. Rachel does not understand why other people might not want to talk about her beloved Japanese animation shows. She gets angry when anyone shows a lack of interest in the things that interest her. Rachel has autism, and there are tens of thousands of children like her. Having a child like Rachel -- especially at a time of widespread fears that something in children's vaccines is responsible for surging rates of diagnosis in the United States -- is debilitating, dispiriting, demoralizing. Many families are worried by allegations that the medical establishment is covering up the risks of childhood shots, possibly because doctors have financial conflicts of interests with vaccine manufacturers or because health officials are worried about the consequences of lowered vaccination rates. "It is an ever- increasing snowball of horror -- one disappointment after another," Rachel's father, Peter Hotez, says about the challenge of dealing with an autistic child. "You recognize the gravity now as she has become a difficult and impossible teenager." © 2008 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 11764 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nikhil Swaminathan Researchers have discovered that a drug marketed to slow the progression of memory loss in Alzheimer's disease may also prevent brain damage in as many as 35 percent of premature infants. Scientists at Children's Hospital Boston in a study published in The Journal of Neuroscience say they used memantine (brand name Namenda) to stop strokes‚Äîthat would result in learning difficulties, behavioral problems and faulty motor function‚Äîin rats. The researchers hope to receive permission sometime in the next five years to test their new treatment in premature babies who suffer strokes. Thanks to medical and technological strides, children as young as 23 weeks old (average pregnancy is about 40 weeks) are now able to survive, according to study co-author and neurologist Frances Jensen. But infants this young have less oxygen in their blood‚Äîbecause their lungs are not fully functional and their breathing is labored‚Äîleaving them prone to strokes (caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain). Preemies "are a very very fragile group of patients," Jensen says, adding that the strokes are the main cause of cerebral palsy‚Äîan incurable neurological disorder that affects the motor function of 500,000 people in the U.S., with 8,000 infants diagnosed yearly. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 11763 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY The outer layer of the brain, the reasoning, planning and self-aware region known as the cerebral cortex, has a central clearinghouse of activity below the crown of the head that is widely connected to more-specialized regions in a large network similar to a subway map, scientists reported Monday. The new report, published in the free-access online journal PLoS Biology, provides the most complete rough draft to date of the cortex’s electrical architecture, the cluster of interconnected nodes and hubs that help guide thinking and behavior. The paper also provides a striking demonstration of how new imaging techniques focused on the brain’s white matter — the connections between cells, rather than the neurons themselves — are filling in a dimension of human brain function that has been all but dark. In previous studies, scientists have used magnetic resonance imaging to identify peaks and valleys of neural activity when people are doing various things, like making decisions, reacting to frightening images or reliving painful memories. But these studies, while provocative, revealed virtually nothing about the underlying neural networks involved — about which brain regions speak to one another and when. Previous estimates of network structure, based on such imaging, have been sketchy. The new findings, while not conclusive, give scientists what is essentially a wiring diagram that they can test and refine. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 11762 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By GINA KOLATA On Dec. 18, 2005, Ariel Sharon, then Israel’s prime minister, was taken to a Jerusalem hospital with symptoms of a stroke, unable to speak or understand what others were saying. Over the next 36 hours, his doctors found themselves in a quandary. Mr. Sharon had two conditions that might lead to a new and devastating stroke. And treating one condition could make the other one worse. First, he was susceptible to blood clots that could be swept from his heart to his brain, causing a major stroke. Anticlotting drugs might protect him. But his brain scans showed microbleeds, pinpoint drops of blood that leaked from blood vessels in the brain. The fear was that an anticlotting drug might turn a new microbleed into a life-threatening, incapacitating hemorrhagic stroke. Until recently, microbleeds were all but unknown. Now, with improved scans, they are turning up constantly; one recent study found them in the brains of 1 out of 5 people age 60 and older. And they are leading to a classic conundrum of modern medicine: Just because something turns up on an M.R.I. scan, is it significant? And if it may or may not be significant, what to do about it? Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 11761 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Lucas Laursen Researchers have devised a treatment that mechanically repairs burst cell membranes in the brain, somewhat like puncture sealants used in bicycle tyres, and could therefore help to avert brain damage after serious head injuries. Brain-injured rats that are injected with a polymer called polyethylene glycol (PEG) soon after their injuries recover certain behavioural abilities better than untreated rats, report researchers in this week’s Journal of Biological Engineering 1. PEG, a commonly available substance already used medically for stomach pumping, has reached clinical testing with naturally injured dogs, a step towards human testing. It is one of several polymers and sugars that show potential for reducing the impact of blunt traumas to the brain, according to author Richard Borgens of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. The therapy "does not require sophisticated technology", says Borgens, "it requires sophisticated thinking". He says it acts by absorbing water, promoting the healing of cell membranes and preventing "the exchange of things that cause decay and degeneration of the cell". Once it reaches human trials, PEG could be carried by trauma units and administered as soon as emergency crews reach victims of blunt-force trauma. © 2008 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 11760 - Posted: 06.24.2010

-- Older people who already suffer brain impairment may be further stressed by a lack of sleep if findings about mice prove true for humans, U.S. scientists say. The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, found a response on the cellular level to the stress caused by sleep deprivation -- known as the unfolded protein response -- was impaired in the brains of older mice. The researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia find the unfolded protein response activated in 10-week- old mice deprived of sleep helped prevent misfolded proteins from accumulating. However in 2-year-old mice, the unfolded protein response often failed and misfolded proteins clogged the endoplasmic reticulum -- the cellular compartment where some proteins are made. Old mice also had less of the proteins that refold abnormal proteins and more of the proteins that cause cell death than the young mice. "We could speculate that sleep disturbance in older humans places an additional burden on an already-stressed protein folding and degradation system," study first author Nirinjini Naidoo says in a statement. © 2008 United Press International,

Keyword: Sleep; Stress
Link ID: 11759 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Michael Balter Why are some people gay? Most researchers who study sexual orientation think that both genetic and environmental factors play a role, but the relative contributions of each remain unclear. A new study of Swedish twins reinforces earlier findings that environmental influences--including the environment in the womb--may play a greater role than genes. Scientists studying complex human behaviors often turn to twin studies. Researchers look at both identical and fraternal twins to see how often they share a trait--a parameter called concordance. The greater the concordance among genetically identical twins compared with fraternal twins--who share only half of their genes--the more likely that genetic factors are involved. Earlier twin studies of sexual orientation have suggested varying degrees of genetic and environmental influences. But they have suffered from the limitations typical of all twin studies. These include small sample sizes and assumptions that identical and fraternal twins both have the same family environments; if identical twins are treated more similarly by their parents than fraternal twins, for example, this could be mistaken for a genetic influence. Recruitment biases are also an issue: Some studies have enlisted participants who openly identify themselves as gay, who may not be typical of the entire homosexual population. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 11758 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By PEGGY ORENSTEIN For weeks before a store down the street from where I live in Berkeley opened, it was unclear what it would sell — materially, anyway. Rather than having a sign describing the merchandise, the windows were papered over with foot-high aphorisms in punchy red and white type. “Friends are more important than money.” “Jealousy works the opposite way you want it to.” True enough, I suppose. But the one that caught my attention was this: “Stress is related to 99 percent of all illness.” I tried to imagine how that claim made it past the copywriters and project managers who must have approved it. It was hardly as benign as the suggestions that people should floss daily or drink lots of water. Or was it? Somewhere along the line, maybe when yoga studios began to outnumber Starbucks outlets, the notion, at once modern and primitive, of the mind’s irrefutable power over the flesh became the conventional wisdom. It’s not that I think the mind-body connection is a total sham. But even where it would seem most established, say in the relationship between stress and heart disease, the mechanism is unclear. Is stress an independent risk factor or does it merely influence others, raising blood pressure or encouraging over-eating? Either way, popular mythology both simplifies and generalizes the potential harm, applying it to everything that ails us. After all, it feels true: I’m more at peace with my frenetic life after a few rounds of sun salutations. Yet, what does that prove? Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 11757 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Audrey McAvoy -- The Navy has adopted a new plan for training in Hawaii waters that it says will allow it to accelerate some exercises and hold them more frequently while continuing to limit the effects of its sonar on marine mammals. The Navy created the training plan after completing environmental studies to ensure the plan complies with federal law. It is conducting similar studies for training ranges off California, the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. Environmentalists say active sonar can hurt or kill whales and other marine mammals. The Navy says it takes steps to protect marine mammals from its sonar. The plan adopted Thursday leaves in place key elements of Navy training. The Navy will continue to hold a series of undersea warfare exercises that train sailors to use sonar, or bounced sound waves, to find submarines. Rim of the Pacific international maritime drills, which the Navy hosts off Hawaii every two years, will also be allowed to continue. B.J. Penn, Navy assistant secretary for installations and environment, said the plan allows the Navy to provide sailors with the skills they need to be effective in combat. "The Navy must train its deploying forces in the most realistic manner possible," he said in a statement. © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 11756 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Ewen Callaway Want to quit smoking? Next time the urge to light up strikes, think of snow-capped peaks instead of the fleeting pleasure of a white cigarette. That's the conclusion of a new brain study which shows that thinking happy thoughts could help dampen cravings. Mauricio Delgado, a cognitive neuroscientist at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, and his colleague Elizabeth Phelps of New York University measured the brain activity of 15 volunteers as they played a simple game. The researchers told their subjects to associate blue cards with a real $4 payoff, and yellow cards with nothing. To control for potential biases, they swapped the colour assignments for half the volunteers. Before either a yellow or blue card flashed onto a computer screen, the volunteers received an instruction to either concentrate on their prize or instead on some calming, natural object – a blue ocean, for instance. Delgado's team measured how excited volunteers were by attaching an electrode to each volunteer's finger, as increased excitement changes the electrical behaviour of the skin, possibly because of changes in sweat levels. When there was not $4 up for grabs, volunteers stayed perfectly calm no matter what they were thinking. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Emotions
Link ID: 11755 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Andrea Lu With all the heartache it causes, why do some people have so much trouble letting go of their grief? In an ironic twist, new research shows that the brain's pleasure center may be to blame. Most people, when confronted with the death of a loved one, mourn intensely for a few weeks or months and then gradually manage to move on. A small percentage, however, become debilitated by the loss and can't resume their normal lives; they experience what psychologists call complicated grief. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures blood flow to various parts of the brain, has shown that grief activates regions of the brain associated with processing pain. However, no study had yet observed what happens in the brain during complicated grief. In the new work, which will be published in the 15 August issue of NeuroImage, researchers led by clinical psychologist Mary-Frances O'Connor of the University of California, Los Angeles, looked at 23 women who had lost a mother or sister to breast cancer within the past 5 years. Based on a clinical assessment, the researchers divided the women into complicated and noncomplicated grievers. They then showed the women a series of 60 pictures that paired a photo of a stranger or the deceased loved one with either a grief-related word (e.g., cancer) or a similar-looking but emotionally neutral word (e.g., ginger). The purpose of the words was to make the images of relatives seem fresh, even if the women had already viewed them several times on their own. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Emotions; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 11754 - Posted: 06.24.2010

An implantable device that blocks a stomach nerve has shown promise in treating obesity in a less invasive way than traditional surgery, a study has found. The device is implanted under the skin in the abdomen and is regulated by patients through a switch. It emits a low-level electrical charge that blocks the vagal nerve, which signals a person when to eat. This blocking causes obese patients to feel full after a normal-sized meal rather than to continue eating. The study, a collaborative effort by the Mayo Clinic and researchers in Norway, Mexico and Australia, is published in the June issue of the journal Surgery. EnteroMedics, the manufacturer of the device, funded the research. The device is being touted as a less invasive alternative to bariatric surgery, in which the stomach is surgically decreased in size or removed. It is reversible, unlike the surgery, and can be shut off by patients during the night. According to researchers, there is no damage to the vagal nerves or stomach. © CBC 2008

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 11753 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By GARDINER HARRIS Federal health officials on Sunday will call together some of the world’s leading experts on an obscure disease to discuss the controversial case of a 9-year-old girl from Athens, Ga., who became autistic after receiving numerous vaccinations. But the government has so far kept quiet a second case that some say is more disturbing and more relevant to the meeting. On Jan. 11, a 6-year-old girl from Colorado received FluMist, a flu vaccine, and about a week later “became weak with multiple episodes of falling to ground” and “difficulty walking,” according to a case report filed with federal health officials and obtained by The New York Times. The girl grew increasingly weak and feverish and “became more limp, appears sleepy, acts as if drunk,” the report said. She was hospitalized and underwent surgery and was finally withdrawn from life support. She died on April 5, according to the report. Both the 9- and 6-year-olds had mitochondrial disorders, a spectrum of genetic diseases that have received almost no attention from federal health officials. The 9-year-old, Hannah Poling, was 19 months old and developing normally in 2000 when she received five shots against nine infectious diseases. Two days later, she developed a fever, cried inconsolably and refused to walk. In the next seven months, she spiraled downward, and in 2001 doctors diagnosed autism. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 11752 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Sabin Russell An international team of researchers has spotted a previously unknown genetic mutation that can raise the risk of Alzheimer's disease by 44 percent and is carried by about a quarter of the U.S. and European populations studied. It is only the second gene ever linked to so-called late-onset Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of the devastating brain-wasting condition that afflicts 5.2 million Americans and creates untold heartache for victims and their families. The first gene linked to the late-onset condition, which affects people over age 65 - was discovered 15 years ago. That finding has yet to lead to meaningful therapies. Researchers said the newly implicated genetic flaw, a mutation in a gene called CALHM1, plays a role in biological processes within the brain that may be more amenable to treatment. While the prospects for new drugs remain theoretical, the study to be published in Friday's edition of the journal Cell is a rare flicker of hope in the long struggle against Alzheimer's disease. "I don't know anybody who thinks there will be one silver bullet," said William Fisher, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Association of Northern California. "What we're finding out is that there is a whole range of complexity. Maybe this is one of the answers." © 2008 Hearst Communications Inc

Keyword: Alzheimers; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 11751 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman A new study may reveal a genetic reason for why people with Fragile X syndrome and autism have trouble sleeping.If you’ve got rhythm, thank a pair of RNA-binding proteins. A new study in mice shows that the way these proteins function is crucial for synchronizing the biological clocks throughout a person’s body. The study aimed to understand the source of a symptom in people with Fragile X syndrome, the most common inherited form of mental retardation and the most common known cause of autism. The syndrome is caused by a defect in a gene called fragile X mental retardation 1 or FMR1. People with the syndrome often have unusual sleeping patterns. Parents often report that it takes two to four years for children with Fragile X syndrome to begin sleeping through the night. Typically developing children usually adopt normal sleep patterns by the time they are six to eight months old. Many neurological disorders are accompanied by sleep difficulties, says Yung-Hui Fu of the University of California, San Francisco, but the reason for those sleeping problems is often unknown. An international team of scientists led by David Nelson, a human geneticist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, set out to investigate why. The study appears in the July American Journal of Human Genetics and is the first to suggest a mechanism for the sleep disruptions that accompany Fragile X syndrome. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2008

Keyword: Sleep; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 11750 - Posted: 06.24.2010