Peter Aldhous Whether you think of them as mad or bad, they are certainly dangerous to know. All societies contain a few extremely violent individuals, who are either psychopaths or have a related severe personality disorder. With no concern about the harm they inflict, little can be done to change their behaviour, psychiatrists say. Now the UK government is challenging this dogma in the hope of protecting the public from these highly risky people. It has already altered criminal law to allow certain violent offenders to be given indefinite jail sentences. Over the coming weeks, parliament will debate legislation that could broaden the definition of mental disorders and create powers to detain such people for treatment (see "Doctors or jailers...", below). Meanwhile, the government is rolling out an unprecedented treatment and research programme aiming to show it is possible to reduce the risks posed by the most dangerous violent offenders. Just like the changes to the law, the "Dangerous People with Severe Personality Disorder" (DSPD) programme is highly controversial. However, even critics concede that it holds the best chance yet of showing whether violent psychopaths can be reformed - and so psychiatrists worldwide will be watching. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 10171 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — From Southern drawls to Russian dialects, human language varies widely across regions and cultures. Now scientists have documented similar geographical variations in calls emitted by male bearded seals in the Arctic. The vocalizations of this seal are so different that an individual from Alaska may have trouble understanding a male of the same species from Canada. The discovery adds bearded seals to a growing list of animals, including bottlenose dolphins, bats, prairie dogs, crickets, and many other species, that show regional variations in their calls and acoustic signals. "Some of them, such as killer whales, even have real vocal dialects," lead author Denise Risch told Discovery News. Risch is a researcher at Humboldt University in Berlin and at the Norwegian College of Fisheries Science, University of Tromso. She and her colleagues obtained recordings over several years of male bearded seals from four Arctic sites: Alaska, Svalbard, the western Canadian Arctic and the Canadian High Arctic. © 2007 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Language; Animal Communication
Link ID: 10170 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Kenyon Wallace, OTTAWA (CP) - Women use more of their brains than men when it comes to driving a car, using a computer mouse or performing other visually guided actions, says a new study that suggests stroke victims should have different rehabilitation programs depending on their gender. The way your brain "fires" in the split second before doing tasks that require eye-hand co-ordination depends on whether you're a man or a woman, says Lauren Sergio, a York University professor and co-author of the study. The study found that for females, areas in both the left and right sides of the brain were active during eye-hand co-ordination experiments. That occurred for men only when they were planning their most complex task: moving a cursor on a screen in the opposite direction to the one expected, using a joystick. "We found that in females, there were three major brain areas involved in visually guided movement and they showed activity on both sides of the brain in most of the exercises in the study," Sergio said in an interview. "In contrast, male brains lit up on both sides only for the most complex exercise." The findings, published in February in the European Journal of Neuroscience, could have implications for the way stroke victims are rehabilitated, said Sergio, a kinesiologist who studies the mechanics of body movements. © 2007 CanWest Interactive

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 10169 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Childhood memories might best be kept in a photo album, not in your mind. Turns out, storing old memories can make you forget an important appointment or what you needed to buy at the store today. Too many long-term memories make it hard to properly filter new information and process short-term memories, according to a study last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "In our world, we are constantly bombarded by new information so we are constantly filtering, and if we did not do this, we would be overwhelmed," said study team member Gaël Malleret of Columbia University Medical Center. The new research indicates that those with better working memory may have fewer new neurons being developed in their hippocampus — a region of the brain involved in formation of memories. This "helps them forget old and useless information sooner and enables them to take in new information faster,” Malleret said. Researchers previously believed that growth of new neurons in the hippocampus, known as neurogenesis, was beneficial to memory. © 2007 LiveScience.com.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Neurogenesis
Link ID: 10168 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Deborah Tannen I once showed my mother a photograph taken of me by a professional photographer. Instead of commenting on the glamorous pose and makeup-artist adornment, she said, "One of your eyes is smaller than the other." Then she turned to me and gripped my chin as she examined my face. "It is," she pronounced. "Your left eye is smaller." For a while after, whenever she saw me, she inspected my eye and reiterated her concern. During that time, I too became preoccupied with my left eye. My mother's perspective had become my own. When else does a slight imperfection -- a pimple, a small asymmetry -- become the most prominent feature on your face? When you're looking in a mirror. A mother who zeroes in on her daughter's appearance -- often on the Big Three: hair, clothes and weight -- is regarding her daughter in the same way that she looks at herself in a mirror. The more I thought about it, the more this seemed to account for some of the best and worst aspects of the mother-daughter relationship: Each tends to see the other as a reflection of herself. It's wonderful when this means caring deeply, being interested in details and truly understanding the other. But it can cause frustration when it means scrutinizing the other for flaws in the same way that you scrutinize yourself. The mirror image is particularly apt during the teenage years. At this age, a girl may spend hours in front of a full-length mirror, scouring her reflection for tiny imperfections that fill her with dread. And it is typically also at this age that she is most critical of her mother. (One woman recalls how her teenage daughter summed it up: "Everything about you is wrong.") The teenage girl is critiquing her mother -- and finding her wanting -- just as she scans her own mirror image for imperfections. © 2007 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 10167 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Dieting is unlikely to lead to long-term weight loss and may put a person's health at risk, a study says. US researchers found people typically lose between 5% and 10% of their weight during the first six months of a diet. But the review of 31 previous studies, by the University of California, said up to two-thirds put more weight on than they had lost within five years. Repeatedly losing and gaining weight is linked to heart disease and stroke, the American Psychologist journal reported. Lead researcher Traci Mann said: "We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more. Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people. We concluded most of them would have been better off not going on the diet at all. "Their weight would have been pretty much the same, and their bodies would not suffer the wear and tear of losing weight and gaining it all back." And she added some diet studies relied on participants to report their weight rather than having it measured by an impartial source while others had low follow-up rates which made their results unrepresentative. She said this might make diets seem more effective than they really were as those who gained weight might be less likely to take part in the follow-ups. In one study, 50% of dieters weighed more than 4.99kg (11lbs) over their starting weight five years after the diet. The study did not name any diets in particular, but looked at a broad spectrum of approaches. (C)BBC

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 10166 - Posted: 04.10.2007

By NATALIE ANGIER Even in the most sexually liberated and self-satisfied of nations, many people still yearn to burn more, to feel ready for bedding no matter what the clock says and to desire their partner of 23 years as much as they did when their love was brand new. The market is saturated with books on how to revive a flagging libido or spice up monotonous sex, and sex therapists say “lack of desire” is one of the most common complaints they hear from patients, particularly women. And though there may be legitimate sociological or personal underpinnings to that diminished desire — chronic overwork and stress, a hostile workplace, a slovenly or unsupportive spouse — still the age-old search continues for a simple chemical fix, Cupid encapsulated, a thrill in a pill. Since the spectacular success of Viagra and similar drugs, the pharmaceutical industry has been searching for the female equivalent of Viagra — a treatment that would do for women’s most common sexual complaint, lack of desire, what sildenafil did for men’s, erectile dysfunction. Initial trials of Viagra in women proved highly disappointing. True, the drug enhanced engorgement of vaginal tissue, just as it had of the penis, but that extra bit of pelvic swelling did nothing to amplify women’s desire for or enjoyment of sex. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 10165 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NICHOLAS WADE When it comes to the matter of desire, evolution leaves little to chance. Human sexual behavior is not a free-form performance, biologists are finding, but is guided at every turn by genetic programs. Desire between the sexes is not a matter of choice. Straight men, it seems, have neural circuits that prompt them to seek out women; gay men have those prompting them to seek other men. Women’s brains may be organized to select men who seem likely to provide for them and their children. The deal is sealed with other neural programs that induce a burst of romantic love, followed by long-term attachment. So much fuss, so intricate a dance, all to achieve success on the simple scale that is all evolution cares about, that of raisingthe greatest number of children to adulthood. Desire may seem the core of human sexual behavior, but it is just the central act in a long drama whose script is written quite substantially in the genes. In the womb, the body of a developing fetus is female by default and becomes male if the male-determining gene known as SRY is present. This dominant gene, the Y chromosome’s proudest and almost only possession, sidetracks the reproductive tissue from its ovarian fate and switches it into becoming testes. Hormones from the testes, chiefly testosterone, mold the body into male form. In puberty, the reproductive systems are primed for action by the brain. Amazing electrical machine that it may be, the brain can also behave like a humble gland. In the hypothalamus, at the central base of the brain, lie a cluster of about 2,000 neurons that ignite puberty when they start to secrete pulses of gonadotropin-releasing hormone, which sets off a cascade of other hormones. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 10164 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NATALIE ANGIER Sexual desire. The phrase alone holds such loaded, voluptuous power that the mere expression of it sounds like a come-on — a little pungent, a little smutty, a little comical and possibly indictable. Everybody with a pair of currently or formerly active gonads knows about sexual desire. It is a near-universal experience, the invisible clause on one’s birth certificate stipulating that one will, upon reaching maturity, feel the urge to engage in activities often associated with the issuance of more birth certificates. Yet universal does not mean uniform, and the definitions of sexual desire can be as quirky and personalized as the very chromosomal combinations that sexual reproduction will yield. Ask an assortment of men and women, “What is sexual desire, and how do you know you’re feeling it?” and after some initial embarrassed mutterings and demands for anonymity, they answer as follows: “There’s a little bit of adrenaline, a puffing of the chest, a bit of anticipatory tongue motion,” said a divorced lawyer in his late 40s. “I feel relaxed, warm and comfortable,” said a designer in her 30s. “A yearning to kiss or grab someone who might respond,” said a male filmmaker, 50. “Or if I’m alone, to call up exes.” Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 10163 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Roxanne Khamsi People with Parkinson's disease are less likely to be smokers and coffee drinkers than their healthy siblings, according to a study of family members. The finding adds to a growing body of evidence that some substance in tobacco might protect the brain against this devastating neurological disorder and sheds new light on coffee's effects on the disease. Researchers say the study provides new evidence that the causes of Parkinson's vary. They also stress that the negative health effects of smoking far outweigh any protective effect the substance might have against this neurodegenerative disease. Parkinson's disease, which generally strikes people over the age of 50, leads to a loss of coordination, dementia and may result in early death. For decades, scientists have found evidence suggesting that smokers are less likely to develop this illness than non-smokers. But experts believe that genes can influence one's risk of developing Parkinson's, and the vast majority of these studies involved participants who were unrelated and therefore genetically dissimilar. To control for this genetic variability, William Scott of the University of Miami in Florida, US, and his colleagues studied the smoking and coffee-drinking habits of Parkinson's patients and their family members. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 10162 - Posted: 06.24.2010

People with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may be less sensitive to pain than others who don't have the condition, say Dutch scientists. PTSD patients report panic attacks, flashbacks, anxiety and depression following a traumatic event. The Archives of General Psychiatry study suggests PTSD patients' brains may be wired up differently. A UK expert said it was unknown why some people developed the condition after trauma, while others did not. Researchers used brain scans to compare what happened when volunteers were given hot objects to hold. The PTSD patients generally said the objects felt less hot. Scans confirmed their brains were less active than those of their unaffected counterparts. The researchers do not know why the processing of pain signals should be different in patients with the condition. Many of those diagnosed with PTSD had taken part in conflicts as part of the armed forces, and the project was carried out jointly between the Central Military Hospital in Utrecht and the city's Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience. A total of 24 military veterans, half with PTSD and half without, were chosen to take part. The research used a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner, which can show, in real-time, which areas of the brain are most active. The veterans were placed in the scanner, then given objects heated to an uncomfortable temperature to hold. They were asked how painful it was to hold the object. The level of pain reported by the PTSD-diagnosed veterans was significantly less than that reported by the other volunteers. (C)BBC

Keyword: Stress; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 10161 - Posted: 04.09.2007

Waltham, MA —A Brandeis University study published in Cell this week shows for the first time experimentally that the circadian cells in fruit flies function as a network that enables the insects to adapt their behavior according to seasonal changes. This discovery leads the way to understanding how mammals, and presumably humans, adjust physiology and behavior to environmental changes such as short winter days and long summer ones. For years, behavioral geneticists have known that specific brain cells in Drosophila fruit flies regulate the daily rhythmic behavior according to 24-hour endogenous clock machinery. But until now, scientists had offered only mathematical models to explain how fruit flies and other animals, including humans, adapt to seasonal changes such as fluctuating day length and temperature. "In this study we show how the 24-hour intrinsic molecular clock can produce a variable output, so that it fits any seasonal condition," said lead author Dan Stoleru. "This is especially exciting because it gives us an understanding of how animals extract vital information from the environment to drive innate behavior such as reproduction, migration or hibernation." Stoleru, a researcher in the pioneering National Center for Behavioral Genomics lab led by Michael Rosbash, explained that this property is provided by an adaptable brain circuit of oscillating neurons, capable of responding specifically to different environmental cues.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 10160 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Nathan Seppa Attempts to hide illicit drug use by taking niacin have landed four people in Philadelphia hospitals over the past 2 years, two with life-threatening reactions to high doses of the nutrient, doctors report. Niacin, also known as vitamin B3, plays roles in digestion, hormone production, skin upkeep, and nervous system maintenance. Because the vitamin promotes fat metabolism, doctors sometimes give niacin in large doses to people with high concentrations of cholesterol and triglycerides. That property has led some people to believe that niacin can also cleanse the body of illicit drugs, particularly marijuana. Two of the four Philadelphia patients experienced nausea, rapid heartbeat, dizziness, dehydration, low blood sugar, blood-clotting abnormalities, liver toxicity, and a dangerous drop in blood pH. One patient, a 14-year-old boy, also experienced abdominal pain, a run-up in his white blood cell count, and an irregular heartbeat. The other severely affected patient, a 17-year-old girl, was in a coma when an emergency team found her, says study coauthor Manoj K. Mittal, an emergency physician at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He and his colleagues report their findings in an upcoming Annals of Emergency Medicine. ©2007 Science Service.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 10159 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Depression during pregnancy may increase the risk of giving birth early, a UK study suggests. Mothers who were severely depressed gave birth earlier than those without depression, a small study shows. The depressed mothers had significantly higher levels of a stress hormone which is known to initiate birth, an Institute of Psychiatry meeting heard. Experts said depression during pregnancy is common and the findings should be looked at in a bigger study. Dr Veronica O'Keane, perinatal psychiatrist at King's College London, measured amounts of corticotrophin-releasing hormone (CRH), in 25 women who had a diagnosis of major depression (but were not on medication) and 35 women without depression. Levels of CRH - a hormone which is associated with stress but also naturally excreted by the placenta during pregnancy - were found to be higher in those with depression. On average mothers with depression gave birth two days earlier - but three of the mothers in the depressed group had a premature birth (under 37 weeks) compared with none in the control group. In a small subset of the babies at eight weeks, Dr O'Keane also found that those born to mothers who had depression had higher salivary levels of another stress hormone - cortisol - during routine vaccinations. Previous research has shown that children born to mothers who had high levels of anxiety during pregnancy have higher levels of cortisol at 10 years old, indicating the stress gets passed on. Dr O'Keane explained that CRH is needed for normal organ development in the foetus but the higher levels associated with depression could prompt premature delivery. (C)BBC

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 10158 - Posted: 04.08.2007

By Melinda Wenner People who believe they have lived past lives as, say, Indian princesses or battlefield commanders are more likely to make certain types of memory errors, according to a new study. The propensity to make these mistakes could, in part, explain why people cling to implausible reincarnation claims in the first place. Researchers recruited people who, after undergoing hypnotic therapy, had come to believe that they had past lives. Subjects were asked to read aloud a list of 40 non-famous names, and then, after a two-hour wait, told that they were going to see a list consisting of three types of names: non-famous names they had already seen (from the earlier list), famous names, and names of non-famous people that they had not previously seen. Their task was to identify which names were famous. The researchers found that, compared to control subjects who dismissed the idea of reincarnation, past-life believers were almost twice as likely to misidentify names. In particular, their tendency was to wrongly identify as famous the non-famous names they had seen in the first task. This kind of error, called a source-monitoring error, indicates that a person has difficulty recognizing where a memory came from. © 2007 MSNBC.com © 2007 Microsoft

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 10157 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By CARL ZIMMER Humans are born time travelers. We may not be able to send our bodies into the past or the future, at least not yet, but we can send our minds. We can relive events that happened long ago or envision ourselves in the future. New studies suggest that the two directions of temporal travel are intimately entwined in the human brain. A number of psychologists argue that re-experiencing the past evolved in our ancestors as a way to plan for the future and that the rise of mental time travel was crucial to our species’ success. But some experts on animal behavior do not think we are unique in this respect. They point to several recent experiments suggesting that animals can visit the past and future as well. The first clues about the twists and turns of mental time travel came from people with certain brain injuries that caused them to forget autobiographical details without forgetting the information they had picked up along the way. A man known in the scientific literature as K.C., for instance, could play chess with no memory of having ever played it. K.C. could remember sentences psychologists taught him without any memory of the lessons. K.C. had lost what psychologists now call episodic memory. Endel Tulving, a Canadian psychologist, defined episodic memory as the ability to recall the details of personal experiences: what happened, where it happened, when it happened and so on. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 10156 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By John I. Nurnberger, Jr., and Laura Jean Bierut The tendency to become dependent on alcohol has long been known to run in families, which for some only added to the social stigma attached to this complicated condition. But to scientists, that apparent heritability suggested that some genetic component underlying vulnerability to alcohol problems was being transmitted from generation to generation. With rapid advances over the past 10 years in technologies for discovering and analyzing the functions of genes, researchers are now increasingly able to get at the biological roots of complex disorders such as substance abuse and addiction. The power to examine patterns of inheritance in large populations, and to survey hundreds of thousands of tiny variations in the genomes of each of those individuals, enables investigators to pinpoint specific genes that exert strong or subtle influences on a person's physiology and his or her resulting risk for disease. As is true of many other human disorders, alcoholism does not have a single cause, nor is its origin entirely genetic. Genes can play an important role, however, by affecting processes in the body and brain that interact with one another and with an individual's life experiences to produce protection or susceptibility. Teasing these effects apart is challenging, and to date fewer than a dozen genes that influence one's risk for alcoholism have been identified, although more surely exist. © 1996-2007 Scientific American, Inc

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 10155 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Marina Krakovsky The day I meet Sonja Lyubomirsky, she keeps getting calls from her Toyota Prius dealer. When she finally picks up, she is excited by the news: she can buy the car she wants in two days. Lyubomirsky wonders if her enthusiasm might come across as materialism, but I understand that she is buying an experience as much as a possession. The hybrid will be gentler on the environment, and a California state law letting some hybrids use the carpool lane promises a faster commute between her coastal Santa Monica home and her job at the University of California, Riverside, some 70 miles inland. Two weeks later, in late January, the 40-year-old Lyubomirsky, who smiles often and seems to approach life with zest and good humor, reports that she is "totally loving the Prius." But will the feeling wear off soon after the new-car smell, or will it last, making a naturally happy person even more so? An experimental psychologist investigating the possibility of lasting happiness, Lyubomirsky understands far better than most of us the folly of pinning our hopes on a new car--or on any good fortune that comes our way. We tend to adapt, quickly returning to our usual level of happiness. The classic example of such "hedonic adaptation" comes from a 1970s study of lottery winners, who a year after their windfall ended up no happier than nonwinners. Hedonic adaptation helps to explain why even changes in major life circumstances--such as income, marriage, physical health and where we live--do so little to boost our overall happiness. Not only that, but studies of twins and adoptees have shown that about 50 percent of each person's happiness is determined from birth. This "genetic set point" alone makes the happiness glass look half empty, because any upward swing in happiness seems doomed to fall back to near your baseline. © 1996-2007 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 10154 - Posted: 06.24.2010

There's new evidence that the brain plays a role in obesity. A study in mice shows how too much body fat makes the brain resistant to a hormone that normally shuts off appetite when we're full. As this ScienCentral News video reports, the researchers also studied ways to restore sensitivity to the fullness hormone. The fullness hormone "leptin," produced by body fat, normally signals the brain to stop eating. But giving it to obese people doesn't work -- it turned out they do produce plenty of leptin. Now researchers at Oregon Health and Science University say the problem is in the brain. "It was thought that adding leptin back to organisms would help them lose weight," says neuroscientist Michael Cowley at the university's Oregon National Primate Center. "Instead what we found was that obese organisms have very high levels of leptin in their blood and putting more in didn't help them lose weight. And this was termed leptin resistance." Cowley's group studied mice to look for the mechanism behind leptin resistance in the brain. They put groups of mice on either fatty diet or regular chow for 20 weeks -- a quarter of the mouse lifespan. Mice that got obese on the fatty diet produced ten times as much leptin as lean mice, but their brains stopped responding to it. The researchers tested populations of nerve cells known to have receptors for leptin, in the part of the brain that regulates appetite, the hypothalamus. © ScienCentral, 2000-2007.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 10153 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Marilynn Marchione — The most infamous feud in American folklore, the long-running battle between the Hatfields and McCoys, may be partly explained by a rare, inherited disease that can lead to hair-trigger rage and violent outbursts. Dozens of McCoy descendants apparently have the disease, which causes high blood pressure, racing hearts, severe headaches and too much adrenaline and other "fight or flight" stress hormones. No one blames the whole feud on this, but doctors say it could help explain some of the clan's notorious behavior. "This condition can certainly make anybody short-tempered, and if they are prone because of their personality, it can add fuel to the fire," said Dr. Revi Mathew, a Vanderbilt University endocrinologist treating one of the family members. The Hatfields and McCoys have a storied and deadly history dating to Civil War times. Their generations of fighting over land, timber rights and even a pig are the subject of dozens of books, songs and countless jokes. Unfortunately for Appalachia, the feud is one of its greatest sources of fame. Several genetic experts have known about the disease plaguing some of the McCoys for decades, but kept it secret. Several family members revealed their history to Vanderbilt doctors, who are trying to find more McCoy relatives to warn them of the risk. © 2007 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Aggression; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 10152 - Posted: 06.24.2010