Brain & Behavior

Both sides of brain process the language of feelings

Both sides of the brain play a role in processing emotional communication, with the right side stepping in when we focus not on the “what” of an emotional message but rather on how it feels. By studying blood flow velocity to each side of the brain, Belgian psychologists have opened a window onto the richness and complexity of human emotional communication. Their research appears in the January 2003 issue of Neuropsychology, published by the American Psychological Association.

Person’s medical costs rise with increasing obesity

Overweight and obese individuals incur up to $1,500 more in annual medical costs than healthy-weight individuals, according to a two-year study of nearly 200,000 employees of General Motors. Average annual medical costs for normal weight individuals in the study were $2,225, while costs for overweight and obese individuals rose steadily, from $2,388 for overweight individuals to $3,753 for the most severely obese persons. The study, by Dee W. Edington, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan and colleagues, is the first to examine the relationship between medical costs and the six weight groups defined by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s weight guidelines. The guidelines separate individuals into categories of underweight, healthy-weight, overweight and three different obesity designations, based on average body mass index.

Interleukin-6 May Lead to Drugs That Prevent Brain Injury From Diseases, Aging

A Mayo Clinic investigation of Interleukin-6, a hormone inside cells often considered a “bad actor” of the immune system because of its association with inflammation injuries and malignant diseases, shows that it also plays a therapeutic role in mice: it protects brain cells. Interleukin-6 — called IL-6 for short by researchers — may, in fact, be a “white knight” for mouse brain cells, or neurons, as brain cells also are called. These results, while early, may be promising for humans as well. The Mayo Clinic investigation is described in the Jan. 15 Journal of Neuroscience.

Cells Dine on Their Own Brains to Stay Fit

Eating your own brain may not sound like a sensible approach to prolonging your life, but researchers at the University of Rochester have discovered that some single-celled organisms essentially do just that to keep themselves healthy. Scientists studied the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and found that contrary to what biologists have believed, the cell would “eat” its own nucleus to rid itself of aged or damaged sections. Though it’s long been known that cells frequently break down and recycle various cell parts in a process called autophagy (after the Greek for “self-eating”), biologists thought that eating the nucleus was strictly off-limits.

Study Links Chronic Pain to Signals in the Brain

For centuries, doctors have tried to find effective ways to treat chronic pain, a devastating neurological disorder that affects almost 90 million Americans. A new study shows that two proteins in the brain trigger the neuronal changes that amplify and sustain this type of pain. The finding may lead to new ways of treating chronic pain. “This is the first [chronic pain] study to show clear molecular targets in the brain,” says Min Zhuo, Ph.D., of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, senior author of the report. “Drugs that inhibit these two proteins may help to reduce chronic pain.”

Lowering plaque protein in blood may offer treatment for Alzheimer’s

Agents that alter blood levels of beta-amyloid protein in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease represent a potential approach to treating the illness in humans that may be safer than the vaccine method of therapy, researchers report in a new study. Beta-amyloid protein is a component of the amyloid plaques that accumulate in the brains of people with Alzheimer?’s disease. Beta-amyloid is viewed by many researchers and clinicians as the underlying cause of the degeneration and dementia that characterize the illness. Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive, degenerative brain disease and the most common form of dementia. There is no cure.

Early lead exposure may be major cause of juvenile delinquency

Children exposed to lead have significantly greater odds of developing delinquent behavior, according to Pittsburgh researcher. Results of the study, directed by Herbert Needleman, M.D., professor of child psychiatry and pediatrics, were published in today’s issue of Neurotoxicology and Terotology. Needleman — whose prior work was instrumental in establishing nationwide government bans on lead from paint, gasoline and food and beverage cans — examined 194 youths convicted in the Juvenile Court of Allegheny County, Pa., and 146 non-delinquent controls from high schools in Pittsburgh. Bone lead levels, measured by K X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy of the tibia, showed that the delinquent youths had significantly higher mean concentrations of lead in their bones ? 11.0 parts per million (ppm) ? compared to 1.5 ppm in the control group.

Drug treatment for ADHD sharply cuts risk for future substance abuse

An analysis of all available studies that examine the possible impact of stimulant treatment for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) on future substance abuse supports the safety of stimulant treatment. Using a statistical technique called meta-analysis, the researchers found that medication treatment for children with ADHD resulted in an almost two-fold reduction in the risk of future substance abuse. “We know that untreated individuals with ADHD are at a significantly increased risk for substance abuse. And we understand why parents often ask whether stimulant medications might lead to future substance abuse among their children,” says Timothy Wilens, MD, MGH director of Substance Abuse Services in Pediatric Psychopharmacology, the paper’s lead author. “Now we can reassure parents and other practitioners that treating ADHD actually protects children against alcohol and drug abuse as well as other future problems.”

Potential new treatment for people with manic depression

Drug company AstraZeneca said it has submitted an application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for approval of quetiapine (Seroquel) as a treatment for acute mania associated with bipolar disorder, or manic-depressive illness. The application follows the completion of a clinical trial programme in bipolar disorder undertaken by the company which reportedly found quetiapine effective as a treatment of acute mania on two levels: as monotherapy (i.e to be prescribed on its own) and as adjunctive therapy with standard mood stabilising medication. These clinical trials have delivered strong and positive results in both the monotherapy and adjunctive therapy studies, which confirm quetiapine to be an ideal first line therapy for the treatment of acute mania associated with bipolar disorder, the company said.

New evidence for orangutan culture

An international collaboration of primatologists has gleaned evidence from decades of observations of orangutans that the apes show behaviors that are culturally based.
The scientists’ findings push back the origins of culturally transmitted behavior to 14 million years ago, when orangutans first evolved from their more primitive primate ancestors. Previous evidence for cultural transmission in chimpanzees suggested an origin of cultural traits 7 million years ago. The researchers also warn that illegal logging and other habitat destruction in the forests of Sumatra and Borneo could not only threaten further research into the earliest origins of culture, but continue the dangerous decline in orangutan populations.

Cocaine harms brain’s ‘pleasure center’

New research results strongly suggest that cocaine bites the hand that feeds it, in essence, by harming or even killing the very brain cells that trigger the “high” that cocaine users feel. This most comprehensive description yet of cocaine-induced damage to key cells in the human brain’s dopamine “pleasure center” may help explain many aspects of cocaine addiction, and perhaps aid the development of anti-addiction drugs. It also could help scientists understand other disorders involving the same brain cells, including depression.

Hitchhiking rocks provide details of glacial melting in West Antarctic

Rocks deposited by glaciers on mountain ranges in West Antarctica have given scientists the most direct evidence yet that parts of the ice sheet are on a long-term, natural trajectory of melting. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been melting and contributing water continuously to the ocean for the last 10,000 years and is likely to keep doing so, says John Stone, University of Washington associate professor of Earth and space sciences. Measuring and understanding changes in the Earth?s ice sheets over the past few decades, and predicting their future behavior are major challenges of modern glaciology. But it is important to view these changes in the context of what?s been happening naturally over centuries and millennia. This work establishes a background pattern of steady decline in the West Antarctic ice sheet.