Susan J. Jones-Brain Summaries

U.S. News and World Report, March 25, 2002 A Troubled Mind: What it’s really like to live with schizophrenia, by Nancy Shute This article looks at specific case studies of people afflicted with schizophrenia, plus information regarding services and drug therapy for cures.

Jacksonville Times- Union, March 14, 2002 Mayo Clinic study estimates 7.5 percent of children have ADHD The analysis of more than 8500 Minnesota children reveals that 7.5% of the children do have ADHD– providing a baseline number to begin answering the question of whether ADHD is over diagnosed in the general childhood population. There has long been suspicion that over diagnosis results in over medication of children. An accurate diagnosis occurs in two settings, and includes such characteristics as impulsive behavior, short attention span, and difficulty in focusing.

Jacksonville Times- Union, March 14, 2002 Monkey with implant moves cursor by thought A brain implant in a monkey has enabled the animal to move a cursor on the screen of a computer, only by thinking – opening up possibilities in the future to help paralyzed humans control devices through thought.

Brown University researcher, Miguel Nicolelis, believes that human applications could be made within five to ten yeaers. The work done through numerous trials allowed for control of two and three dimensional coordinates through the use of seven to 30 neurons (far fewer than any earlier, similar successes) to control the cursor.

Science News, Vol. 161, March 9, 2002 Kids’ ADHD tied to snoring, sleepiness in children who snore frequently and throughout the night have a higher occurrence of ADHD symptoms. University of Michigan neurologist Ronald D. Chervin reports that hyperactivity and attention problems are also more frequent in both boys and girls up to 14 years of age, who exhibit sleepiness during the day. PEDIATRICS, March 2002, reports that although snoring and sleep difficulties may not cause ADHD, hyperactivity may “…preclude a good night’s sleep and lead to increased daytime sleepiness.” It is possible, however, that frequent snoring makes ADHD symptoms more likely for some youngsters.

In a survey of nearly 900 children between the ages of two and fourteen, 30% of boys aged 8 or younger who snored while asleep did have hyperactivity and attention problems. Of those young males who did not snore at all or very much, only 9% exhibited the symptoms. The difference in the two groups was constant whether or not they were sleepy during their waking hours. In the entire sample, hyperactivity and inattention appeared in 22% or heavy snorers, but only 12% of those who were not.

Science News, Vol. 161, February 16, 2002 Alzheimer’s vaccine trial is suspended A vaccine comprised mostly of a protein fragment called beta-amyloid, held great promise for treatment of the brain disorder. Mice with symptoms similar to those of human Alzheimer’s that were injected with the vaccine, experienced limited and cleared deposits of the protein from their brains, providing great hope for use in treating human victims of the disease. In a French trial involving 97 patients, Elan Corporation of Dublin halted the tests on humans when four of the patients experienced inflammation in the central nervous system. Initial studies with humans showed no side effects, however when the trial was expanded the problems began. It is hoped that the inflammation may be only a temporary reaction, and an indication that the vaccine is taking effect. David Morgan of the University of South Florida is still hopeful that the vaccine can be tested and of benefit to human sufferers of Alzheimer’s.

Jacksonville Times- Union, February 17, 2002 Gloomy Gus might blame brain In research reported in the National Academy of Sciences Marcus Raichle, professor of radiology and neurology at Washington University in St. Louis reports that a portion of the cerebral cortex called the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex may be involved in the negative temperaments in some humans.

People with higher activity in this area are predictably likely to have a high level of negativity. They therefore have a higher risk of depression and anxiety. The work may begin to unravel a relationship between temperament and disease. The variations in brain systems may lead to differences in personality.

The study involved work done at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Minneapolis, the University of Minnesota, and Vanderbilt University.

U.S. News & World Report, February 11, 2002 Hearts and memories: Why bypass surgery may be hard on the brain by Josh Fischman
Memory and recall efficiency are somewhat reduced for all going through heart bypass surgery. There may, however, be a reason for that that can be avoided. There is often a fever that occurs immediately after the surgery, perhaps caused by heart-lung machines used that frequently damage blood cells. Higher fevers can scramble brain recall. Therefore, according the journal STROKE, the cardiac team at Duke University Medical Center encourages methods to control a spike in body temperature.

Science News, Vol. 160, December 8, 2001 Surprise! Fat proves a taste sensation - After years of believing that fat is tasteless, scientists at Purdue University are finding that adults that taste fat appear to absorbe fats more efficiently into the body. When a person tastes items containing fat, the body converts three times as much of the oil as those that do not taste fat when it is ingested in capsule form. There is mounting evidence, then, that a taste cue for fat exists. It may serve as a taste modulator, according to Timothy Gilbertson of Utah State University in Logan. This would enhance a food’s sweetness of saltiness, thus explaining the favor people show to chips and ice cream.

Science News, Vol. 160, December 8, 2001 A spice takes on Alzheimer’s disease Inda, with its diet rich in curcumin (the spice in yellow curry) has one of the lowest rates of Alzheimer’s disease in the world. It is theorized that the spice may hold the potential for a new therapy for the brain disorder.

Research has shown that regular use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen can significantly reduce a person’s chance of developing Alzheimer’. Yet the drug can cause liver and kidney damage when taken for extended periods of time, so regular use of such medication is not encouraged. Researchers at UCLA have found that curcumin has an anti-inflammatory property and is safe when ingested in large amounts. It thwarts the damage caused by free radicals, Such damage may contribute to the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

When testing curcumin on mice which are genetically engineered to develop the brain lesions called amyloid plaques which characterize Alzheimer’s the plaque burden in mice was 43% less than those not ingesting the spice. Inflammation and free radical damage in the mouse brains also was reduced.

Science News, Vol. 160, December 8, 2001 Drugs tested for Lou Gehrig’s Disease Tamoxifen, often used by women with breast cancer, may help sufferers of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Muscle strength is maintained over a long period of time through its use. The disease, which results from nerve cells over stimulation from the chemical glutamate, causes the subsequent death of those cells that control muscle. Tamoxifen treatment delayed the onset of symptoms by eight days and prolonged the survival of mice injected with virus that causes ALS like symptoms.

Another drug that holds hope for ALS is celecoxib, an arthritis drug marketed under the name of Celebrex. This targets and enzyme call COX-2 that controls inflammation in the body. Such inflammation may play a role in the nerve cell death in ALS. In work done through Johns Hopkins University, mice genetically engineered to develop a form of the disease survived up to four weeks longer than expected when treated with celecoxib. Testing on ALS patients has begun.

Nature, Vol 415, 28 February 2002, In two minds: Brain potential and functional MRI evidence for how to handle two languages with one brain Speaking two languages fluently, or truly bilingual people, are able to filter out words irrelevant to the language currently spoken and manipulated via a sublexical decision stage in language processing. This occurs before the language moves to the decision stage of language processing, allowing the communicator to understand and speak one language “…without apparent interference from the other.” Using MRIs, bilingual and monolingual subjects were asked to respond to words of one language, while ignoring words or a second language and pseudo-words. The bilingual subjects were insensitive to the non-target language which indicates that the “…meaning of non-target words was not being processed. This word suggests that bilinguals use an indirect phonological access route to the lexicon of the target language to avoid interference.”

Nature, Vol 415, 28 February 2002, Adult neurogenesis: Functional neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus Because early research that has found that neurons are generated in the dentate gyrus of a mammalian hippocampus was done in fixed tissue, it was unknown whether new neurons actually became functional. On work done recently with the adult mammalian hippocampus, newly generated cells were found to mature into functional neurons in the adult mammalian brain. This work was carried on at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California.

Science News, Vol. 161, March 2, 2002 High homocysteine tied to Alzheimer’s research done with the Framingham Heart Study in Massachusetts has found a link between elevated blood concentrations of homocysteine (an amino acid) and Alzheimer’s plus other forms of dementia. Earlier connected to heart disease and stroke, the higher concentrations were found to cause nearly twice as many cases of dementia. The work, reported in the February 14,2002 NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE, shows a correlation rather than a causation. However, since blood homocysteine is affected by diet, it is known that taking vitamins B6, B12, or folic acid slashes homocysteine concentrations in the blood. As a result, the risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia may indeed be lessened by taking those vitamins.

Science News, Vol. 161, March 2, 2002 More good news about chocolate Drinking five cups of cocoa every day may keep blood pressure down and have better kidney function than those who do not. The cocoa produced commercially, however, are lacking the flavanols necessary to correlate with those positive affects. The flavanols help produce nitric oxide, which opens arteries and performs other benefits for cardiovascular health. This work comes out of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Norman Hollenberg heads up the work.

Discover, April 2002 The Sixth Sense, by Eric Haseltine
A sort of sixth sense, centered in the vestibules in the inner ears responsible for monitoring direction and velocity of head movements, may enable humans to perceive beyond their five senses. This sense is beyond sensations and does not enter consciousness. It allows one to protect themselves from dangerous falls by commanding automatic reflexes to push arms out to absorb shocks.

Science News, Vol 161, February 2, 2002 Drink and Thrive: Moderate alcohol use reduces dementia risk From new research coming out of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, observations of nearly 5400 healthy participants age 55 and over has shown some benefits for moderate drinkers in avoiding dementia in later life. For non drinkers, light drinkers and heavy drinkers the rate of developing dementia over time was about 4%: yet it was only 2.6% among moderate drinkers. Moderate drinkers were those who consumed one to three alcoholic beverages per day.

Once data was adjusted to account for differences in sex, age, weight, blood pressure and tobacco use, moderate drinkers showed only 58% of the risk of dementia as that calculated for nondrinkers. The researchers hypothesize that vascular disorders are linked to dementia in elderly people, but alcohol has benefits to blood vessels and thus might account for sustained brain function.

In work done at University of Bordeaux in France, it has been found that French wine drinkers over the age of 65 have a reduced risk of dementia. The new research supports that finding for beer and hard liquor, as well.

Although heavy, long term drinking reduces cognitive ability, moderate consumption may provide a benefit.
Nature Reviews/ Neuroscience Volume 3, January 2002 A depressing habit Among the many behavioral manifestations of addition, such as drug craving, motor signs, mood changes, is behavioral sensitization. It is an “…enhanced locomotor response that follows repeated exposures to a drug of abuse.” It appears that a correlation exists between behavioral sensitization and long term depression of glutamate mediated synaptic transmission (an excitatory neurotransmitter, or “on” switch for a brain nerve cell).

Activity increased after a single dose of cocaine after a two-week rest period, following five days with repeated doses of cocaine. The effect on behavior patterns was thus quite long, and the area where synaptic change seemed to occur was in the nucleus accumbens. The latter is a part of the mesolimbic dopamine system implicated in sensitization. It was found that those mice that had been repeatedly exposed to cocaine did not respond to depression of sensitivity patterns. Thus, the development of behavioral sensitization might correlate with the onset of long term depression, which may preclude the suppression of transmission.

Science News, Vol. 161, January 26, 2002 Biology of Rank: Social status sets up monkey’s cocaine use The first demonstration that social stressors, like dominance hierarchy, can influence levels of dopamine D2 receptors in primates has occurred in the Brookhaven National Lab in Upton, NY. It may provide an explanation why people in lower social classes are at a higher risk for drug abuse. Using PET scans to study the D2 receptors in male macaque monkeys that had been in individual cages for one and a half years, the animals were rescanned after being moved into larger cages housing four animals per cage. At that time, social hierarchies were established.

The PET scans revealed comparably low numbers of dopamine D2 receptor in all individually housed monkeys as well as in low-ranking grouped monkeys. The number of receptors, however, sharply increased in the dominant monkeys and the concentrations of dopamine in their synapses was also relatively low. Excessive amounts of dopamine in the synapses leads to over sensitivity of the brain’s reward pathways, creating susceptibility to drug abuse. The low status monkeys preferred cocaine solutions, unlike the dominant monkeys.

It is believed that people with low dopamine receptor numbers report more pleasure in response to stimulant drugs than those animals with high D2 numbers. There is no proof that the findings in monkeys will hold true for humans, but further research will be done.

Science News, Vol. 161, February 23, 2002 Infants emerge as picky imitators Infants love to imitate behaviors, although with some measure of descrimination. At times, they demonstrate a capacity for “…evaluating the sensibility of others’ behavior” according to the February 14 issue of NATURE. When watching an adult turn on a light with her forehead, once with hands bound and once with hands free, 10 of 14 infants re enacted her actions only when the adult had hands free. Those that did not mimic the woman, instead lit the box by touching it with their hands – simpler than either demonstration shown them.

PET scans published in NEUROREPORT indicate that “separate brain networks orchestrate the imitation of specific actions for achieving a goal versus the accomplishment of a goal by means of one’s own choosing.” It appears that when a human replicates an action, increased activity occurs in the frontal brain area. When the same goal is reached in a unique and different way, the brain activity increases primarily in the mid brain which is involved in coordination of movement.

This leads researchers to distinguish between goals and techniques for trying to reach the goals. Means are separate from goals.

Nature Reviews/ Neuroscience Volume 3, no. 2 February 2002 What Does fMRI Tell Us About Neuronal Activity? FMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) has been used in cognitive neuroscience for more than ten years. It works on the premise that there is a relationship between neuronal activity and the local control of blood flow and oxygenation in the brain. The observation of this through fMRI allows measurement of brain activity without invasive procedures, enabling researchers to explore the function and dysfunction of the brain. Although the signal received from the scan of the fMRI is triggered by the metabolic demands of neuronal activity as it increases, the relationship between the results of the fMRI and the responses of neurons is unclear. There is no allowance for differences in species, firing rates or neurons, nor thresholds. There is no allowance for excitatory or inhibitory activity or modulatory inputs that may not bring measurable results to the fMRI signal. This article is a good one for pointing out unanswered concerns about the information gathered through use of the fMRI.

Nature Reviews/ Neuroscience Volume 3, no. 2 February 2002 Parallels Between Cerebellum and Amygdala-Dependent Conditioning Discoveries in studies relating to eyelid and fear conditioning indicate that during the formation of memory, the two simple forms of learning (conditioning and fear conditioning) may involve easy, “soft”plasticity initially when encoding occurs, But where there is long-term storage of memory, “hard” plasticity exists. By this, we see a transfer (to what extent is unknown) from the soft easy-triggered cells to the hard storage cells for long lasting memory.

Science News, Vol. 161, February 16, 2002 Low birth weight matters later, too Babies born less than 1.5 kilograms in weight (preemies about 3 lbs, 5 oz.), grow up to “… have lower achievement scores on standard tests and are less likely to go to college…”than are full term babies who weigh over twice as much. But the premature infants also appear to be less prone to misbehavior than their full term counterparts.

In 242 babies similar in socioeconomic status tracked after births in urban Cleveland, Ohio, although the likelihood for successful enrollment in four year colleges was lower, the premature birth children were less likely to break laws and use illicit drugs. The latter could be, according to Maureen Hack of Case Western Reserve University, a result of closer parenting due to the concerns over the premature births. Even accounting for medical problems, the premature babies developed more neurological problems, cerebral palsy, and other chronic illness than full term humans did. The work is reported in the Jan. 17 NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE.

Discover, March 2002 Of Spice, Spray and Senility Harvard University and Brigham and Women’s Hospital of Boston have developed a vaccine to stop damaging beta-amyloid protein, a major cause/symptom of Alzheimer’s disease. The vaccine, when sprayed directly into the nose, causes the immune system to produce antibodies that attach to the proteins and neutralize them. Tested on mice, the rate of plaque formation plunged by 75%, raising hopes that this treatment may benefit patients before symptoms of the disease appear, or to stop the disease in its earliest stages.

In other work in Los Angeles, it was found that diets high in curcumin, the compound in the curry spice turmeric, reduced the accumulation of beta-amyloid protein in rat brains. The rats did better in memory-dependent maze tests than rats on normal diets, which may explain why in India where turmeric is common as a spice, only just over 1% of the population over age 65 develop Alzheimer’s. It is the lowest incidence of the disease anywhere in the world.

Discover, March 2002 More than a pretty face According to research at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital, beautiful faces may be nearly addictive to heterosexual men. Showing a mix of male and female faces briefly on a computer screen, participants could press a button to keep a face visible longer. When an attractive female face was pictured, the males did press the bar about 6000 times within 40 minutes. The brain scans showed that the female faces triggered the brain regions activated by food and cocaine. Handsome male faces provoked an aversive response, much like the part of the brain activated with a burn. Brain circuitry may have responded in such a fashion because attractive males were seen as competition. The part of the brain activated is the brain stem, its most primitive portion.

Science News, Vol. 160, December 8, 2001 Thinking the way to stronger muscles According to Guang H. Yue of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation brain power can equate to muscle power. When volunteers in an experiment he conducted were asked to think about a simple action but not to perform it, volunteers saw muscle powering pondered actions such as finger contraction or elbow bending strengthen by 35% and 13.5% respectively. The subjects did fifty mental contractions, five days per week. The muscles did not grow in size, but the brain signals to the muscle did strengthen. This mental flexing will be tested on stroke patients and the elderly, groups unlikely to exercise.

Science News, Vol. 160, December 8, 2001 Antibiotic now tackles Parkinson’s The antibiotic minocycline delayed death in mice that develop a neurological condition resembling Huntington’s disease. Now it appears that it may also protect the class of brain cells that die in Parkinson’s disease, another neurodegenerative disorder.

According to Steven M. Paul of Lily Research Labs in Indianapolis, mice injected with a toxic substance to destroy nerve cells that produce the brain chemical dopamine experience the death of fewer cells if the mice ingest minocycline. The results are similar, even if the injection occurs up to four hours after the last toxic injection. The work appears in the December 4th PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.

Paul is working to develop a mimic for the minocycline to reach the brain with better efficiency than the genuine antibiotic. The mimic will also be void of the drug’s germ killing properties, unnecessary for the treatment of the brain disorder. Because the antibiotic does not easily cross the bloodstream into the brain, the mimic will operate more efficiently because it does cross into the brain with ease.