Nora Schultz A food supplement used by athletes and body builders to boost muscle power might help to prevent brain damage and death of newborn babies from oxygen starvation, researchers say. Problems with the placenta and umbilical cord before or during birth can reduce the fetal oxygen supply. One in 300 babies in developed countries suffers birth injuries as a result, and one in 20 babies in the UK are born by emergency caesarean section because doctors worry they may not be getting enough oxygen. Now Zoe Ireland and David Walker at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, think they may have found a simple way to reduce the risks. They fed pregnant spiny mice a diet containing 5% of the organic acid creatine, which can protect cells by providing energy when oxygen levels are low. When the researchers starved the mice of oxygen just before birth, 95% of pups whose mothers had been fed creatine survived, compared to only 63% of pups whose mothers did not receive the supplement. "The pups of supplemented mice also grew better, and this may be because their suckling reflex was less affected by brain damage," says Ireland. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 11404 - Posted: 06.24.2010

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- In a world where Nature is "red in tooth and claw" as Tennyson wrote, a handful of predatory garter snakes have won an evolutionary arms race against a tribe of rough-skinned newts so poisonous that the toxin in just one newt could kill thousands of mice or a dozen humans. It's a saga of what biologists call co-evolution. For many millennia the two species have competed against each other, evolving through natural selection in order to survive in the territory they share. Generation after generation, the newts have developed more and more powerful poison in their skins to protect themselves against the hungry snakes, and the snakes have evolved stronger and stronger resistance to the poison, so they can eat the newts in safety. Now biologists tracking more than 20,000 garter snakes and 500 newts in 28 habitats along the Pacific coast have discovered four sites in California where the snakes have clearly won the arms race: Evolution has given them a kind of super-resistance that overcomes the strongest poison the newts can possibly stir up. In other words, the snakes are free to gobble up their prey with impunity from now on. © 2008 Hearst Communications Inc

Keyword: Neurotoxins; Evolution
Link ID: 11403 - Posted: 06.24.2010

(HealthDay News) -- Researchers say they've discovered a biomarker for depression that could lead to a quick lab test to determine whether a particular antidepressant is making headway against the disease. "This may be a very simple biochemical indicator for depression," said study co-author Mark Rasenick, director of the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The test "wouldn't tell you which [medication] to start, but it would tell you if the one you're taking is working." It may even be possible to use the test to determine whether rounds of psychotherapy are reaping any benefit, he said. For now, however, such a test is a hypothetical, pending further exploration of the finding reported in the March edition of The Journal of Neuroscience. At issue is whether the brain itself shows physical or chemical signs of depression. The researchers looked at the interaction of neurotransmitters and a protein called Gs alpha. In brain cells, the protein acts like a kind of butler, passing messages from neurotransmitters on the outside and amplifying their messages, Rasenick explained. © 2008 Forbes.com LLC™

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 11402 - Posted: 06.24.2010

An hour sniffing exhaust fumes may not just give you a headache - it could even alter the way the brain functions, Dutch researchers have suggested. Scientists have known nanoparticles reach the brain when inhaled, but this is the first time they have been shown to affect how we process information. Researchers sought to replicate the environment experienced by those who work in a garage or by the roadside. Their findings were published in the journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology. A team at Zuyd University in the Netherlands persuaded 10 volunteers to spend an hour in a room filled either with clean air or exhaust from a diesel engine. They were wired up to an electroencephalograph (EEG), a device that records the electrical signals of the brain. They were monitored during the period of exposure and for an hour after they left the room. After about 30 minutes, the brains of those in the exhaust rooms displayed a stress response on the EEG, which is indicative of a change in the way information is being processed in the brain cortex. This effect continued after they were no longer in the room. "We can only speculate what these effects may mean for the chronic exposure to air pollution encountered in busy cities where the levels of such soot particles can be very high," said lead researcher Paul Borm. "It is conceivable that the long-term effects of exposure to traffic nanoparticles may interfere with normal brain function and information processing. Further studies are necessary to explore this effect." The fact that the brain responds when confronted with a new smell is not entirely surprising, says Ken Donaldson, professor of respiratory toxicology at the University of Edinburgh. "And it may not necessarily be negative, but such physiological changes do warrant investigation because there could indeed be a long-term effect. It's a very interesting, and potentially important, study." (C)BBC

Keyword: Neurotoxins
Link ID: 11401 - Posted: 03.11.2008

By DAVID KOHN SIOLIM, India — At the faded one-story medical clinic in this fishing and farming village, people with depression and anxiety typically got little or no attention. Busy doctors and nurses focused on physical ailments — children with diarrhea, laborers with injuries, old people with heart trouble. Patients, fearful of the stigma connected to mental illness, were reluctant to bring up emotional problems. Last year, two new workers arrived. Their sole task was to identify and treat patients suffering depression and anxiety. The workers found themselves busy. Almost every day, several new patients appeared. Depressed and anxious people now make up “a sizable crowd” at the clinic, said the doctor in charge, Anil Umraskar. The patients talk about all sorts of troubles. “Financial difficulties are there,” said one of the new counselors, Medha Upadhye, 29. “Interpersonal conflicts are there. Unemployment. Alcoholism is a major problem.” The clinic is at the forefront of a program that has the potential to transform mental health treatment in the developing world. Instead of doctors, the program trains laypeople to identify and treat depression and anxiety and sends them to six community health clinics in Goa, in western India. Depression and anxiety have long been seen as Western afflictions, diseases of the affluent. But new studies find that they are just as common in poor countries, with rates up to 20 percent in a given year. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 11400 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JANE E. BRODY What you are about to read is not an endorsement of any particular diet as a therapy for multiple sclerosis. Nor is it a suggestion to forgo established medical treatments. But so long as it is part of a medically approved treatment program, the diet described here is unlikely to hurt, except perhaps to make meal planning a challenge. And on the testimony of those who have followed it, the plan may be worth trying, despite the lack of scientific evidence to support it. The diet has not been subjected to a placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial, the gold standard for determining the value of any therapy. But Ann D. Sawyer and Judith E. Bachrach, co-authors of “The MS Recovery Diet,” say this should not dissuade people struggling with the debilitating symptoms of the degenerative disease. The diet they outline extends one developed decades ago by Dr. Roy L. Swank, an emeritus professor of neurology at Oregon Health Science University. It severely restricts saturated fat and increases essential fatty acids like fish and vegetable oils, measures endorsed by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society as part of a healthy diet. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 11399 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas -- "Hack hack hack pyow hack hack" might not mean much to human ears, but to a putty-nosed monkey it means, "I'm adult male X; I have just seen an eagle; I will now move away," according to a new study showing that primates can combine individual calls to express different meanings. While such syntax-like behavior has been described in other species, such as whales and dolphins, the new findings are the first to clearly demonstrate the skill in a non-human primate. "What our research shows is that individual calls do not carry any specific meanings, but different call sequences do," co-author Klaus Zuberbuhler told Discovery News. "So, for example, a series of hacks almost certainly indicates the presence of a crowned eagle, whereas a series of hacks preceded by 1 to 2 pyows reliably indicates that the caller is about to start traveling away," added Zuberbuhler, who is a researcher in the School of Psychology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. For the study, published in this week's Current Biology, Zuberbuhler and colleague Kate Arnold focused on alarm calls emitted by free-ranging male putty-noses at Gashaka Gumti National Park, Nigeria. These monkeys live in groups with one male, six to nine females and their offspring. © 2008 Discovery Communications

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 11398 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists from three western Canadian universities are using a microchip as they try to encourage nerves cells to reconnect the brain, spinal cord, and the body. If they succeed, the research could mean "a new life for people with brain or spinal cord injuries," said Naweed Syed, research director at the University of Calgary's Hotchkiss Brain Institute, in a release Thursday. Using a microchip to encourage nerve cells to reconnect could help people with brain or spinal cord injuries, said Naweed Syed, research director of the University of Calgary's Hotchkiss Brain Institute. (University of Calgary/Ken Bendiktsen) The chip could also help people with degenerative diseases, said University of Saskatchewan neuroscientist Valerie Verge. The team is close to knowing how to use computer chips to facilitate the regeneration process, she said. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research gave the team, the Western Canada Regeneration Initiative, a $2.25-million grant Thursday to boost their research. Brain surgeons, electrical engineers, neurologists, and neuroscience researchers from the universities of Calgary, Alberta and Saskatchewan are working on the project. © CBC 2008

Keyword: Regeneration; Robotics
Link ID: 11397 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jeff Donn, Martha Mendoza and Justin Pritchard A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows. To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe. But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health. In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas — from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville, Ky. Water providers rarely disclose results of pharmaceutical screenings, unless pressed, the AP found. For example, the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public “doesn’t know how to interpret the information” and might be unduly alarmed. © 2008 MicrosoftMSN

Keyword: Depression; Epilepsy
Link ID: 11396 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY SO far no one is demanding that asterisks be attached to Nobels, Pulitzers or Lasker awards. Government agents have not been raiding anthropology departments, riffling book bags, testing professors’ urine. And if there are illicit trainers on campuses, shady tutors with wraparound sunglasses and ties to basement labs in Italy, no one has exposed them. Yet an era of doping may be looming in academia, and it has ignited a debate about policy and ethics that in some ways echoes the national controversy over performance enhancement accusations against elite athletes like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. In a recent commentary in the journal Nature, two Cambridge University researchers reported that about a dozen of their colleagues had admitted to regular use of prescription drugs like Adderall, a stimulant, and Provigil, which promotes wakefulness, to improve their academic performance. The former is approved to treat attention deficit disorder, the latter narcolepsy, and both are considered more effective, and more widely available, than the drugs circulating in dorms a generation ago. Letters flooded the journal, and an online debate immediately bubbled up. The journal has been conducting its own, more rigorous survey, and so far at least 20 respondents have said that they used the drugs for nonmedical purposes, according to Philip Campbell, the journal’s editor in chief. The debate has also caught fire on the Web site of The Chronicle of Higher Education, where academics and students are sniping at one another. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Intelligence
Link ID: 11395 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Larry Greenemeier As Kevin Warwick gently squeezed his hand into a fist one day in 2002, a robotic hand came to life 3,400 miles away and mimicked the gesture. The University of Reading cybernetics professor had successfully wired the nerves of his forearm to a computer in New York City's Columbia University and networked them to a robotic system back in his Reading, England, lab. "My body was effectively extended over the Internet," Warwick says. It's a far cry from his vision of transforming humanity into a race of half-machine cyborgs able to commune with the digital world—there is no spoon, Neo—but such an evolution is necessary, says 54-year-old Warwick. Those who don't avail themselves of subcutaneous microchips and other implanted technology, he predicts, will be at a serious disadvantage in tomorrow's world, because they won't be able to communicate with the "superintelligent machines" sure to be occupying the highest rungs of society, as he explains in a 2003 documentary, Building Gods, which is circulating online. Something of a self-promoter, Warwick, or "Captain Cyborg" as a U.K. newspaper once dubbed him, has appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and other shows on the TV talk circuit to tout his work. In his 2004 book, I, Cyborg, he describes his research as "the extraordinary story of my adventure as the first human entering into a cyber world." © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 11394 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By David Ropeik It’s that time of year, when crocuses bloom, the lawn starts to need mowing, and most Americans lose an hour’s sleep setting their clocks ahead. (Remember? Spring forward, fall back.) So here are answers to your questions about the time switch — and about sleep. Most Americans move their clocks ahead for daylight-saving time in the wee hours of the second Sunday in March. The day of the big switch used to be the first Sunday of April, but Congress put a new rule into effect last year as an energy-saving measure. What's the rationale behind the switchover? As the year progresses toward the June solstice, the Northern Hemisphere gets longer periods of sunlight. Timekeepers came up with daylight-saving time — or summer time, as it’s known in other parts of the world — to shift some of that extra sun time from the early morning (when timekeepers need their shut-eye) to the evening (when they play softball). The idea is that having the extra evening sunlight will cut down on the demand for lighting, and hence cut down on electricity consumption — and that few people will miss having it a little darker at, say, 6 o'clock in the morning. At least that's how the theory goes. © 2008 Microsoft

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Sleep
Link ID: 11393 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sandra G. Boodman Whenever doctors told Ruben Galiano that his wife, Olga, had multiple sclerosis, he tried not to look as though he didn't believe them. To the former hotel cook, her symptoms resembled those he had seen in stroke patients. And the MS medication she had been taking hadn't done a thing. But the real reason Galiano clung to his skepticism was emotional. "If she had MS it would mean she wouldn't be cured," he said. That was a possibility Galiano could not entertain about his wife of nearly 40 years. Olga Galiano's problem surfaced about five years ago, shortly after the couple moved back to their homeland, Guatemala. They had spent their entire adult lives in the Washington area, where their children were born and raised, but Olga Galiano's mother was seriously ill and needed their help. Soon after they settled in Guatemala City, Olga Galiano got very sick. She collapsed on the floor and in the space of a week developed double vision and an uncontrollable tremor in her head and hands. She also lost her sense of balance, and her speech became badly slurred. The first doctor who examined her ruled out a stroke, then diagnosed Parkinson's disease, which he soon changed to MS, an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system. A second doctor concurred with the MS diagnosis. A third physician told them he had no idea what was wrong and recommended a witch doctor. © 2008 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 11392 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bruce Bower It would come as no surprise to the late saxophonist and improvisational master John Coltrane, but when accomplished jazz musicians play free-form, their brain activity suggests a release of self-expression from conscious monitoring and self-censorship. Such neural activity may lie at the heart of musical improvisation and perhaps other improvisational feats, propose auditory scientist Charles J. Limb of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and neurologist Allen R. Braun of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders in Bethesda, Md. "What we think is happening is that when you're telling your own musical story, you're shutting down neural impulses that might impede the flow of novel ideas," says Limb, himself a trained jazz saxophonist. Moreover, jazz musicians immersed in improvisation display heightened brain activity in all sensory areas and in adjacent motor regions, the researchers say. Improvisers' brains "ramped up" to translate incoming sensations into novel musical performances, Limb suggests. ©2008 Society for Science & the Public.

Keyword: Hearing; Brain imaging
Link ID: 11391 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Eric Bland -- Imagine controlling a video game by thought alone. Two weeks ago at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Emotiv Systems showcased a new device, the Epoc, designed to help you do just that. While Emotiv's futuristic, dueling-octopus looking headset will initially be developed for video games, it could eventually be used in medicine, virtual reality, robotics, education and many other areas. The technology is based on electroencephalography, more commonly known as EEG. EEG has been around for over 100 years and is currently used to study sleep patterns and epilepsy by analyzing electrical activity in the brain. Until recently, though, EEG readings were regarded as too broad for most applications. The breakthrough, notes Emotiv Systems' President Tan Le, is in the software algorithm that decodes a person's thoughts by analyzing the electrical impulses in the brain. Many brain signals originate deep inside the brain and radiate outward. By time the signal reaches the outside of the brain, or cerebral cortex, the brain can appear to be firing randomly. According to Le, Emotiv's software algorithm "unfolds the cortex and takes us closer to the source of the signal." © 2008 Discovery Communications

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 11390 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Constance Holden Adolescent males and females appear to use somewhat different brain areas when processing language tasks, according to a study appearing this week in Neuropsychologia. The finding could lend support to different educational approaches for boys and girls. It's well established that girls score higher than boys in most tests involving language, such as verbal fluency and word memory. So cognitive scientists Douglas Burman and James Booth at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, sought to see if there are differences in brain activity that underlie these sex differences. The researchers administered several word tests to about 50 children aged 9 to 15, half of them girls. Paired words were either flashed on a screen or spoken, and subjects had to judge whether they rhymed, for example. Subjects' brain activity in response to each task was monitored by functional magnetic resonance imaging, which measures blood flow to various parts of the brain. The researchers found that girls showed significantly greater activation of the language areas of the brain than did boys. The boys showed greater activation of the specific sensory brain areas--visual or auditory--required by the task. The researchers conclude that girls rely more on universal language-processing machinery that operates regardless of how they receive the information, whereas boys process information depending on the sensory mode. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Language; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 11389 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Michael Marshall Talk about getting under someone's skin. Impressionists seem to use visual images to "become" the people they are imitating, according to a brain-scanning study that started as a public demonstration and is now being expanded. Sophie Scott, of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, asked impressionist Duncan Wisbey to lie in an fMRI brain scanner and repeat phrases in a variety of different voices – including the actor Cary Grant and the British TV chef Anthony Worrall Thompson. Other accents Wisbey impersonated included "baleful Cockney" and "tired Australian". As a control, he repeated the same phrases in his own voice. When Wisbey was imitating others, there was higher activity in his parietal lobe, sensory motor strip and supplementary motor areas of the brain. These areas are respectively involved in visual imagery, body representation and vocalisation. "For basic speech production, his results are normal," says Scott. "The extra activities [when doing impressions] are in very plausible areas. These areas are known to be active in mental imagery tasks." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Language; Brain imaging
Link ID: 11388 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas -- Scurrying mice would seem to have little to do with human language, but new research has found that a slightly different version of a gene associated with human speech also governs movement in rodents. The finding gives new meaning to the phrase "loose lips," since the researchers who conducted the study believe that the human ability to speak evolved, in part, from the capacity to move the lips around efficiently. Scientists first began to zero in on the gene, called Foxp2, when they noticed that people with defects in it had trouble speaking. "Foxp2 is the only gene thus far to be linked to human speech and language," co-author Simon Fisher explained to Discovery News. "In humans who carry a [defect] in the gene, it leads to them having problems with learning to make rapid sequences of mouth movements." Fisher is a Royal Society research fellow and head of the Molecular Neuroscience group at the Wellcome Trust Center for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford. Since Foxp2 in healthy humans is just a mutated form of a gene present in all vertebrates, including rodents, Fisher and his team introduced a defective form of the gene into mouse brains to see what would happen. © 2008 Discovery Communications

Keyword: Language; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 11387 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ALEX BERENSON ANCHORAGE — Eli Lilly, the drug maker, systematically hid the risks and side effects of Zyprexa, its best-selling schizophrenia medicine, a lawyer for the State of Alaska said Wednesday in opening arguments in a lawsuit that contends the drug caused many schizophrenic patients to develop diabetes. The lawyer, Scott Allen, said that memorandums from Lilly executives showed that the company knew of Zyprexa’s dangers soon after the drug was introduced in 1996. But Lilly deliberately played down the side effects, Mr. Allen said, so that sales of Zyprexa would not be hurt. Lilly’s conduct was “reprehensible,” Mr. Allen said. In the suit, which is being heard in Alaska state court before Judge Mark Rindner, the state is asking Lilly to pay for the medical expenses of Medicaid patients who have contracted diabetes or other diseases after taking Zyprexa. The Alaska case is the first Zyprexa-related lawsuit to reach a jury trial and is being closely watched by other states and by federal prosecutors who are investigating Lilly for the way it marketed Zyprexa. A jury of seven women and five men is hearing the case in Anchorage. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 11386 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By KENNETH CHANG A team of scientists including Linda B. Buck, who shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, has retracted a scientific paper after the scientists could not reproduce their original findings. The Harvard Medical School, where the researchers worked when the findings were published in the journal Nature in 2001, has begun a review of the research to determine if there is any evidence of misconduct. In the paper, the researchers described how they produced genetically engineered mice that produced a plant protein in certain smell-related neurons. The researchers had claimed that as the plant protein traveled between neurons, they could map out which neurons in the cortex of the brain received information from which smell receptors in the nose. In the retraction, published by Nature on Thursday, the researchers said, “Moreover, we have found inconsistencies between some of the figures and data published in the paper and the original data. We have therefore lost confidence in the reported conclusions.” “It’s disappointing,” Dr. Buck, who is now at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, told the journal Nature in a news article about the retraction. “The important thing is to correct the literature.” Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 11385 - Posted: 06.24.2010