By Mitch Leslie Apes can wield tools, learn sign language, and get hooked on TV. New research credits them with yet another ability once thought to be exclusively human: duplicating the facial expressions of others. The work suggests that this capability, which might help individuals synchronize their emotions, precedes the origin of our species. Whether we're watching a movie or having coffee with an old friend, often we rapidly and unconsciously mirror the facial expressions of people we are looking at. Smiles, laughs, and grimaces of disgust are contagious. Why we're such copycats isn't clear. Youngsters might be learning the right moves for communication. Facial mimicry may also aid interpretation: To understand an expression, the brain recreates it. Some researchers think that emulating an expression might elicit the same feelings in the viewer, creating empathy. To determine whether the ability extends to apes, behavioral biologist Marina Davila Ross and colleagues at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover in Germany videotaped pairs of young orangutans at play. They analyzed instances in which one of the playmates produced a neutral expression or a so-called open-mouth face (see video), which might be equivalent to the human smile. As the team reports this week in Biology Letters, if an orangutan showed the open-mouth face, its partner was likely to follow suit in less than half a second. When the researchers broke down the interactions by age, they found that mimicry was more common among juveniles and adolescents and when the two playmates were more than 2 years apart in age. © 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 11090 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nikhil Swaminathan A successful treatment for Parkinson's disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that affects 1 percent of the world's population and (an estimated 500,000 people in the U.S.) aged 60 years and over, may be "in our sights now," says Ronald McKay, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). McKay's optimism stems from new research that shows that a gene, known as forkhead box A2 (FOXA2), is responsible for the differentiation and spontaneous destruction of neurons that secrete the neurotransmitter dopamine, a cell population that is progressively lost in Parkinson's disease, which is characterized by tremors, loss of muscle control and speech difficulties. "We have the cells; we know what controls their birth and death—we're on our way," says McKay, a senior molecular biology investigator. "It looks like we've got this disease in our sights now. We will understand Parkinson's disease relatively soon." McKay and colleagues (at the NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Md., and at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago) report in the journal PLoS Biology that they tested candidate cells in the brain of embryonic mice to determine which ones produce the enzyme tyrosine hydroxylase, a compound manufactured by dopamine neurons to help convert amino acids into precursors of the neurotransmitter. © 1996-2007 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 11089 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers say they have identified the chemical switch that controls the genetic mechanism regulating people's internal body clocks. Although the process involves complex genes, the whole mechanism is controlled by a single amino acid - a building block of protein - they say. It is hoped the discovery may lead to more effective drugs to treat sleep disorders and related ailments. The University of California study appears in the journal Nature. Lead researcher Professor Paolo Sassone-Corsi said: "Because the triggering action is so specific, it appears to be a perfect target for compounds that could regulate this activity. "It is always amazing to see how molecular control is so precise in biology." The body's internal clock, a highly sensitive mechanism able to anticipate changes in the environment, regulates a host of body functions, from sleep patterns to metabolism and behaviour. It is estimated that it regulates up to 15% of all human genes. Disruption of these rhythms can profoundly influence human health and has been linked to insomnia, depression, heart disease, cancer and neurodegenerative disorders. The gene CLOCK and its partner BMAL1 control the body's internal clock.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 11088 - Posted: 12.13.2007

CBC News Patients who have had strokes and are taking Lipitor (atorvastatin) to lower their cholesterol may be at increased risk of a brain hemorrhage, a new study finds. However, researchers caution that the medication's value — its prevention of ischemic strokes — needs to be weighed against the risk. A brain hemorrhage, or hemorrhagic stroke, involves the rupture of weakened blood vessels in the brain, leading to rapid bleeding. An ischemic stroke is caused by an obstruction within a blood vessel supplying blood to the brain. "The risk of hemorrhage in patients who have had a transient ischemic attack or stroke must be balanced against the benefits of cholesterol-lowering drugs in reducing the overall risk of a second stroke, as well as other cardiovascular events," said study author Larry Goldstein, with Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., in a release. The study was a secondary analysis of a double-blind, randomized clinical trial funded by Pfizer, the company that makes Lipitor. Participants were enrolled between September 1998 and March 2001and followed for an average of 4.5 years. © CBC 2007

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 11087 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jane E. Brody My husband, at 74, is the baby of his bridge group, which includes a woman of 85 and a man of 89. This challenging game demands an excellent memory (for bids, cards played, rules and so on) and an ability to think strategically and read subtle psychological cues. Never having had a head for cards, I continue to be amazed by the mental agility of these septua- and octogenarians. The brain, like every other part of the body, changes with age, and those changes can impede clear thinking and memory. Yet many older people seem to remain sharp as a tack well into their 80s and beyond. Although their pace may have slowed, they continue to work, travel, attend plays and concerts, play cards and board games, study foreign languages, design buildings, work with computers, write books, do puzzles, knit or perform other mentally challenging tasks that can befuddle people much younger. But when these sharp old folks die, autopsy studies often reveal extensive brain abnormalities like those in patients with Alzheimer's. Dr. Nikolaos Scarmeas and Yaakov Stern at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center recall that in 1988, a study of "cognitively normal elderly women" showed that they had "advanced Alzheimer's disease pathology in their brains at death." Later studies indicated that up to two-thirds of people with autopsy findings of Alzheimer's disease were cognitively intact when they died. © 2007 the International Herald Tribune

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 11086 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Steve Mitchell The recent breakthrough of skin cells reprogrammed to behave like embryonic stem cells has stolen the spotlight (ScienceNOW, 6 December), but adult stem cells are proving that they have advantages of their own. In the 13 December issue of Cell Stem Cell, researchers report using stem cells from patients afflicted with a form of muscular dystrophy to correct the disorder in mice. The results suggest that this strategy could one day treat muscular dystrophy in humans as well as other genetic disorders. Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which predominantly strikes boys, is caused by a mutation in the gene for a protein called dystrophin that is essential for proper muscle function. The condition leads to muscle degeneration, and patients usually die in their 30s. A particular type of stem cell found in muscle can give rise to new muscle tissue, so a team led by geneticist Luis Garcia of Généthon, a nonprofit biotechnology firm in Évry, France, investigated whether these cells could be used to reverse the dystrophin problems. The researchers first obtained the stem cells from patients via a muscle biopsy. Next, they used a virus to insert a gene into the cells that corrects the mutation in the dystrophin gene. The researchers then injected the modified stem cells into arteries of the legs of mice with muscular dystrophy. In just 3 weeks, muscles in the foot, shin, and thigh began expressing human dystrophin protein, indicating that the stem cells had given rise to muscle cells that had taken up residence in the muscles of the mice. © 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Muscles; Stem Cells
Link ID: 11085 - Posted: 06.24.2010

You're running late, stuck in traffic, or pushing a deadline. The day seems a bit more out of control than usual and, bam, you've driven past your freeway exit. Whether it's something like this, or drawing a blank during a big meeting, or getting into a fender-bender on the way to a parent-teacher conference, we all have had moments where life's little pressures ganged up on us and we, somehow, made the problem worse by forgetting something or overlooking a significant detail. Scientists have known that stress can impact your memory. What they're beginning to understand now is the changes your brain undergoes because of stress. Jeansok Kim an associate professor at the University of Washington's psychology department, studies memory by using mice. He's found a way to measure activity inside the brain's hippocampus. He says, "Think of it as putting a miniature microphone into the hippocampus and as the animal is navigating, you are listening to the cells." What he's hearing is the cells firing as a mouse moves from one location to another. When a mouse is a new location, various cells in the hippocampus fire, creating a memory of that spot. When the mouse returns to that location, the same cells fire. Scientists often test how well a mouse thinks by putting them in a pool of water. Mice are good but reluctant swimmers and soon locate a platform hidden out of sight, just beneath the water's surface. In later tests, they could easily remember where the platform was and quickly swim to it. © ScienCentral, 2000-2007.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Stress
Link ID: 11084 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A wearable digital camera may hold the key to helping people who have memory problems, experts believe. Sensecam, produced by Microsoft, takes photos of daily events every 30 seconds so they can be played back later at high-speed to jog memory. Trials showed it helped people recall the event and emotions related to it. Experts believe it could help people with general memory loss and more serious conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, but they say it is early days. Universities in the US and UK are currently testing the device. The camera, which can fit in the palm of a hand, can store up to 30,000 images - enough for a fortnight's use. It has been tested on a 63-year-old woman with memory loss caused by a brain infection. She spent about an hour every two days reviewing the images for a two-week period. Without any other memory aids, she typically forgot everything within five days. But during the test her memory steadily increased and after two weeks she could recall about 90% of the events she experienced. Researchers are now testing the device on healthy elderly people who would typically struggle to recall memories as a result of ageing as well as patients with Alzheimer's. (C)BBC

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Alzheimers
Link ID: 11083 - Posted: 12.12.2007

NEW YORK - The effects of a methamphetamine overdose are very similar to those seen after a traumatic brain injury, according to researchers who examined the effects of "club drugs" in rats. "We showed that a single overdose of meth can be as damaging as a head-on motor vehicle collision in the brain," co-author Matthew Warren, of the University of Florida in Gainesville, told Reuters Health. Methamphetamine is a highly addictive stimulant that is chemically related to amphetamine, but is more potent and more harmful to the central nervous system. Warren and his associates analyzed changes in the proteins in rodents' brains after traumatic injury and decided to investigate whether methamphetamine and MDMA, also known as Ecstasy, might cause similar changes. MDMA is a psychoactive drug that is chemically similar to methamphetamine and the hallucinogen mescaline. The results of animal studies have also shown it has toxic effects on the nervous system. (c) Reuters 2007

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 11082 - Posted: 12.12.2007

By John Tierney What if you could take a drug that would quickly alter your sexual orientation from straight to gay, or vice versa? To their surprise, neurobiologists have discovered that homosexuality can be turned on or off in fruit flies. They’d known that sexual orientation can be genetically programmed, but they didn’t realize it could also be altered by giving a drug that changes the way the flies’ sensory circuits react to pheromones. Within hours of the treatment, previously heterosexual male fruit flies would be courting other males, and treatment could also cause flies who had been engaging in homosexual behavior to become exclusively heterosexual, the neurobiologists report in Nature Neuroscience. You can read a summary of it here from the University of Illinois at Chicago, the home of one of the researchers, David Featherstone. “It was amazing,” Dr. Featherstone said. “I never thought we’d be able to do that sort of thing, because sexual orientation is supposed to be hard-wired. This fundamentally changes how we think about this behavior.” I asked Dr. Featherstone if it might be possible one day to quickly alter humans’ sexual orientation. Here’s his answer: Although I am not sure my research is a big step in this direction, I think that ultimately the answer will be: Yes. After all, the goal of neuroscience is a complete understanding of brain function. Understanding in science is typically demonstrated by the ability to control a process. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 11081 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Daniel Engber Last month, the New York Times foolishly gave space on its op-ed page to a team of self-promoting brain researchers and political consultants who claimed they could use functional magnetic resonance imaging to read the minds of American swing voters. The flaws in their study were numerous and egregious (as I explained here), and three days later, the newspaper published a stern rebuke signed by 17 prominent cognitive neurobiologists: "We are distressed," they wrote, "by the publication of research in the press that has not undergone peer review, and that uses flawed reasoning to draw unfounded conclusions about topics as important as the presidential election." Consider that lesson unlearned: On Wednesday, a second piece of spurious, brain-based punditry made its way into the opinion pages of a major newspaper. This time it's an essay in the Los Angeles Times from psychiatrist and self-help guru Daniel G. Amen, a medical maverick who runs a chain of private brain-scanning facilities across the country. Amen doesn't want to read the minds of swing voters; he wants to study the candidates themselves. Why? Because the leading candidates appear to be messed up in the head. "Underlying brain dysfunction" might explain Rudy Giuliani's marital failings, he says, or John McCain's temper, or Hillary Clinton's inability to seem authentic. After all, three of the last four presidents "have shown clear brain pathology": Reagan's forgetfulness was a symptom of his Alzheimer's, Clinton's escapades were a product of prefrontal damage, and George W. Bush's linguistic gaffes reflect some form of temporal lobe impairment. 2007 Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 11080 - Posted: 12.12.2007

By DAN HURLEY Among the growing numbers of researchers and public health officials advocating a daring new strategy to put an injectable antidote for heroin overdoses directly into the hands of addicts, few have the credibility of Mark Kinzly. After 11 years as an addict, Mr. Kinzly cleaned up, began working with needle exchange programs and became a research associate at the Yale School of Public Health. Then came the relapse and the overdose that nearly killed him. “We were watching TV — I think it was the Red Sox beating the Yankees,” Mr. Kinzly, 47, recalled of the evening in 2005 when he passed out in a colleague’s apartment. “Because of our work he knew what to do. He dialed 911 and then injected the naloxone.” Taken in high enough doses, heroin and other opioids suppress the brain’s regulation of breathing and other life-sustaining functions. Naloxone is a chemical that blocks the brain-cell receptors otherwise activated by heroin, acting in minutes to restore normal breathing. Since its approval by the Food and Drug Administration in 1971, naloxone has become a standard treatment for overdoses, used almost exclusively by emergency medical workers. But it has lately become a tool for state and cities struggling to reduce stubbornly high death rates among opiate users. By distributing the drug and syringes to addicts and training them and their partners in preventing, recognizing and treating overdoses, the programs take credit for reversing more than 1,000 overdoses. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 11079 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By HARRIET BROWN We stood in front of the freezer case at the grocery store, my 16-year-old daughter, Kitty, and I. It was late, and I was tired, but we had come out for a few items that couldn’t wait until morning. One of them was ice cream. “How about this vanilla?” I asked, rubbing away condensation on the freezer door to peer at a label. Then I shook my head and said: “Never mind. It’s 140 calories a half-cup.” I opened the door, rummaged and pulled out a different pint of vanilla. That one was also 140 calories. Not good enough. Meanwhile, my daughter was a few cases away, holding up a pint of coffee ice cream. Together we read the back of the carton and rejected it. A pint of caramel cappuccino swirl was an improvement, but I thought we could do better. And I was right. We took home three pints of Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream, with 270 calories in every half-cup. Like many Americans, I can be obsessive about reading food labels. Only I’m looking for more calories, not fewer, because my daughter Kitty is in recovery from anorexia. Her weight has been restored for more than a year, and in many ways she is as normal as a teenager gets. But when it comes to eating, she still has to pay attention in a different way. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 11078 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists have created an "autistic mouse" after replacing a normal gene in its body with a mutated one. They hope the mouse will yield clues about autism, a neuropsychiatric disorder in which those affected experience social, communication and sometimes cognitive deficits. Many perform repetitive motions, and some variants of the disorder are accompanied by a heightened spatial ability and high intellect. "With this research, we can study changes in the brain that lead to autistic behaviours and symptoms, which may help us understand more about progression and treatment of the disorder," study author Craig Powell, assistant professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said in a release. Researchers replaced a normal gene called neurologin-3 with a mutated neurologin-3 gene, which is associated with autism. The modified mouse showed autistic symptoms similar to those in people with the condition, according to the authors. It displayed decreased social interaction with other mice, anxiety, poorer co-ordination and pain sensitivity. It also showed advanced spatial learning abilities. The scientists plan to test drug therapies on mouse models to improve social interaction deficits. © CBC 2007

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 11077 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Adding antibiotics to standard drug therapy may slow down the progress of multiple sclerosis, research suggests. Patients showed fewer symptoms, and fewer signs of tissue damage when they took the antibiotic doxycycline alongside the MS drug beta interferon. Louisiana State University researchers believe the antibiotic may block the action of enzyme that destroy certain cells in the nervous system. Archives of Neurology reports the study involving 15 patients on its website. However, UK experts warned the study was small, and no comparison was made with patients who did not take doxycycline. The 15 patients who took part in the study all had relapsing-remitting MS - the most common form of the disease. Typically, this causes attacks of symptoms such as muscle weakness and spasms, followed by periods of remission. The attacks result from damage inflicted on the body by its own immune system, which turns in on itself, attacking the nervous tissue. It is thought that these attacks may be triggered by an inappropriate response to viral or bacterial infections, or another potentially disease-causing agent. They are certainly very unpredictable, and symptoms come and go, often seemingly randomly. Many patients with relapsing-remitting MS take the drug interferon, which helps to suppress the immune system, and keep it working more normally. However, they are still prone to attacks which cause damage to the tissue of the brain. The study focused on patients who had been taking interferon for at least six months, and who were still experiencing symptoms, and developing new tissue damage in the brain. For four months the patients took 100mg a day of doxycycline alongside their regular dose of interferon. At the end of this period brain scans revealed that brain tissue damage was reduced by at least 25% in nine of the patients. (C)BBC

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 11076 - Posted: 12.11.2007

By MELISSA LAFSKY The most horrifying moment in the new movie “Awake” occurs 34 minutes into the film, when the protagonist (Hayden Christensen) feels the scalpel cutting into his chest. As his surgeon (Terrence Howard) deepens the incision, the audience can hear the patient’s screams of agony, while the characters onscreen see only a man lying on an operating table, seemingly unconscious. Movies and television shows that portray doctors as ego-driven and error-prone are standard fare these days. But “Awake” takes dramatic license a step further, bringing to life a rare phenomenon that physicians are still struggling to understand. Called anesthesia awareness, it occurs when patients wake up during surgery because they are underanesthetized. In real life, these periods are generally brief. But the patient can indeed feel pain, ranging from minor to unendurable. “Those are the two ends of the scale, and there’s everything in between,” said Dr. Peter S. Sebel, a professor of anesthesiology at Emory University and a leading researcher on awareness. “We don’t have a good feel for how many episodes are distressing and how many are not.” Such nuances may be lost on viewers of “Awake,” which opened Nov. 30 — a date for which anesthesiologists spent months bracing themselves. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 11075 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Humans are evolving faster than ever before, which means people on different continents are becoming increasingly different, a new study says. Anthropology researchers at the University of Utah have found the pace of evolution has accelerated in the past 40,000 years, especially since the end of the Ice Age 10,000 years ago. Human races are evolving away from each other and are very different from what they were 1,000 or 2,000 years ago, according to research leader Henry Harpending, a professor of anthropology at the university. That explains, in part, the difference between Viking invaders and their peaceful Swedish descendants. "The dogma has been these are cultural fluctuations, but almost any temperament trait you look at is under strong genetic influence," Harpending said in a release. The findings were published in Monday's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers looked for genetic evidence of natural selection, or the evolution of favourable gene mutations, over the past 80,000 years by analyzing DNA from 270 individuals in the International HapMap Project, which is an initiative to identify variations in genes that cause disease. They studied 3.9 million chromosome mutations from 270 people in four populations: Han Chinese, Japanese, Africa’s Yoruba tribe and northern Europeans, represented largely by data from Utah Mormons. Harpending and his team examined the speed at which chromosome mutations broke up and recombined and found that about seven per cent are undergoing rapid, recent evolution. © CBC 2007

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 11074 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Ewen Callaway Feel the rhythm: music is tightly tied to biology.PunchstockA study of 39 African cultures has shown that their genetics are closely linked to the songs they sing. Music, it seems, could reveal deeper biological connections between people than characteristics, such as language, that change rapidly when one culture meets another, says Floyd Reed, a population geneticist at the University of Maryland in College Park, who led the study. "Other aspects of these populations’ cultures have undergone tremendous change, but the music seems to persist," he says. "In a way music is very resilient to cultural change." The work, presented late November at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting in Washington DC, compares modern genetic data to a catalogue of traditional songs gathered in the 1950s and 1960s by ethnographer Alan Lomax. Lomax, best known for his recordings of American folk music and his popularization of singers such as Woodie Guthrie and Lead Belly, collected some 5,500 songs from 857 cultures. To reveal connections between musical styles, Lomax, who died in 2002, and ethnomusicologist Victor Grauer created a system called cantometrics. This classifies vocal songs based on a sliding scale for 37 traits, such as yodelling and tempo. © 2007 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Hearing; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 11073 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By John Bohannon The female fruit fly is a faithful lover, at least for a little while. As soon as she mates, she rejects all suitors for several days and spends her time laying eggs. Biologists have now found the switch that controls this coy female behavior, to the pleasure of male flies and disease researchers alike. The basis for the female fly's temporary monogamy is a mood-killing protein called sex peptide (SP). Male flies inject SP along with their semen to guard against potential competitors and to induce egg-laying, but the peptide's target has evaded researchers for decades. To track down SP's molecular dance partner, a team led by Barry Dickson, a biologist at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, Austria, introduced 13,000 virgin female flies to 13,000 eager males. In each female fly, a different gene had been turned off using a technique known as RNA interference. After every mating, the researchers counted the number of eggs that the females produced in 48 hours. Then they matched each female with another randy male. "If we managed to turn off the receptor for SP in a female," says IMP graduate student Nilay Yapici, "then she should lay few or no eggs and be as receptive as a virgin when she meets another male." © 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 11072 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Philip Davis pleasures his brain with shifting Shakespearean syntax, measures the results on an electroencephalogram, and finds evidence that powerful writing can literally change the ways in which we think ... I have always been very interested in how literature affects us. But I don't really like it when people say, "This book changed my life!" Struggling with ourselves and our seemingly inextricable mixture of strengths and weaknesses, surely we know that change is much more difficult and much less instant than that. It does scant justice to the deep nature of a life to suppose that a book can simply "change" it. Literature is not a one-off remedy. And actually it is the reading of books itself, amongst other things, that has helped me appreciate that deep complex nature. Nonetheless, I do remain convinced that life without reading and the personal thinking it provokes would be a greatly diminished thing. So, with these varying considerations, I know I need to think harder about what literature does. And here's another thing. In the last few years I have become interested not only in the contents of the thoughts I read—their meaning for me, their mental and emotional effect—but also in the very shapes these thoughts take; a shape inseparable, I feel, from that content. Moreover, I had a specific intuition—about Shakespeare: that the very shapes of Shakespeare's lines and sentences somehow had a dramatic effect at deep levels in my mind.

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 11071 - Posted: 06.24.2010