Aggression - NIMH Director - Tinnitus - Hockey Concussions

[Marc Breedlove]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/science/to-study-aggression-a-fight-club-for-flies.html?ref=science

To Study Aggression, a Fight Club for Flies

By JAMES GORMAN

Males’ aggression toward each other is an old
story throughout the animal kingdom. It’s not
that females aren’t aggressive, but in many
species, male-on-male battles are more common.

Take fruit flies. “The males are more aggressive
than females,” said David J. Anderson, a
California Institute of Technology neuroscientist
who knows their tussles well. Dr. Anderson runs a
kind of fight club for fruit flies in his lab at
Caltech, with the goal of understanding the deep
evolutionary roots of very fundamental behaviors.

Dr. Anderson, Kenta Asahina and a group of their
colleagues recently identified one gene and a
tiny group of neurons, sometimes as few as three,
present only in the brains of male fruit flies, that can control aggression.

The gene is also found in mammals, and has also
been associated with aggression in some mammalian
species, perhaps even in humans, although that is not clear.

The discovery, reported in the journal Cell last
month, does not tell the whole story of fly
aggression. Some fighting is inextricably linked
to food and mating, while the mechanism the
scientists found is not. But it is a striking
indication of how brain structure and chemistry
work together, as well as a reminder that as
different as humans and flies are, they are not always very far apart.

The painstaking process of discovery, recounted
step by step in the paper, gives a glimpse of
modern brain research and the lengths to which
scientists must go if they want to get down to
the level of how neurons control behavior.

“They did a huge amount of experiments,” said
Ulrike Heberlein at the Janelia Farm research
campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Dr. Heberlein also studies fly behavior and
recently demonstrated another human-fly
connection, showing that jilted male flies will turn to drink.

© 2014 The New York Times Company
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/science/blazing-trails-in-brain-science.html?ref=science&_r=0

Blazing Trails in Brain Science

By BENEDICT CAREY

BETHESDA, Md. ­ The police arrived at the house
just after breakfast, dressed in full riot gear,
and set up a perimeter at the front and back. Not
long after, animal rights marchers began filling
the street: scores of people, young and old,
yelling accusations of murder and abuse, invoking
Hitler, as neighbors stepped out onto their porches and stared.

It was 1997, in Decatur, Ga. The demonstrators
had clashed with the police that week, at the
Yerkes National Primate Research Center at nearby
Emory University, but this time, they were paying
a personal call ­ on the house of the center’s
director, inside with his wife and two teenage children.

“I think it affected the three of them more than
it did me, honestly,” said Dr. Thomas R. Insel,
shaking his head at the memory. “But the
university insisted on moving all of us to a safe
place for a few days, to an ‘undisclosed location.’

“I’ll say this. I learned that if you’re going to
take a stand, you’re going to make some people
really angry ­ so you’d better believe in what
you’re doing, and believe it completely.”

For the past 11 years, Dr. Insel, a 62-year-old
brain scientist, has run an equally contentious
but far more influential outfit: the National
Institute of Mental Health, the world’s leading
backer of behavioral health research.

The job comes with risk as well as power. Patient
groups and scientists continually question the
agency’s priorities, and politicians occasionally
snipe at its decisions. Two previous directors
resigned in the wake of inflammatory statements
(one on marijuana laws, one comparing urban
neighborhoods to jungles), and another stepped
down after repeatedly objecting to White House decisions.

© 2014 The New York Times Company
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25980275

'Tinnitus risk' of noisy nights out

About two-thirds of people are left with ringing
in their ears after a night out at a club, gig or pub, a poll suggests.

Campaign group Action on Hearing Loss said the
poll of 1,000 adults also showed a third would
ignore the "safe level" on their music players.

The group warns that people doing either increase the risk of tinnitus.

DJ Paul Oakenfold urged people to wear ear
defenders to gigs and to "turn down the volume".

Half of those surveyed said they listened to
music for between one and six hours a day - up to
a third of their waking day - perhaps in the
background at work or on their MP3 player on
their way to and from work or studies.

But one in five would not do anything differently
to take any care of their hearing.

Action on Hearing Loss warned that one in 10
people across the UK is affected by tinnitus
every day, ranging from a "light buzzing" to a
"constant roar" in the ears and head.

It can affect everything from the ability to
concentrate at work to getting to sleep at night.

The poll also found that one in 10 people does
not know what tinnitus is, with 3% thinking it
was "big ears" and 4% a "repetitive strain injury".

It has created an audio version of what tinnitus
sounds like in order to raise awareness.

Paul Breckell, chief executive of Action on
Hearing Loss, said: "Listening to loud music for
a long time can trigger tinnitus and is an indication of damaged hearing.

BBC © 2014
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/sports/hockey/study-finds-changes-in-brains-of-hockey-players-who-had-concussions.html?ref=health

Study Finds Changes in Brains of Hockey Players Who Had Concussions

By JEFF Z. KLEIN

Hockey players who sustained concussions during a
recent season experienced acute microstructural
changes in their brains, according to a series of
studies published in the Journal of Neurosurgery on Tuesday.

“We’ve seen evidence of chronic injuries later in
life from head trauma, and now we’ve seen this in
current players,” said Dr. Paul Echlin, an
Ontario sports concussion specialist who
conducted the study in collaboration with Dr.
Martha Shenton of Brigham and Women’s Hospital
and researchers from Harvard Medical School,
Massachusetts General Hospital and Western University of Canada.

The researchers said these were the first studies
in which an independent medical team used
magnetic resonance imaging analysis before,
during and after a season to measure the effects
of concussions on athletes. Forty-five male and
female Canadian university hockey players were
observed by independent physicians during the 2011-12 season.

All 45 players were given M.R.I. scans before and
after the season. The 11 who received a
concussion diagnosis during the season were given
additional scans within 72 hours, two weeks and two months of the incident.

The scans found microscopic white matter and
inflammatory changes in the brains of individuals
who had sustained a clinically diagnosed
concussion during the period of the study.

Additional analysis found that players who
sustained a concussion during the study period or
reported a history of concussions showed
significant differences in their brains’ white
matter microstructure compared with players who
did not sustain a concussion, or who reported no history of concussions.

© 2014 The New York Times Company
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http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/weighing-testosterone-benefits-and-risks/?ref=health

Weighing Testosterone’s Benefits and Risks

By RONI CARYN RABIN

Nearly a decade ago, researchers in Boston
decided to see whether older men who were not in
very good shape could benefit from daily doses of testosterone.

The scientists recruited several hundred
volunteers and gave them the hormone or a
placebo. Those taking testosterone got stronger,
compared with those taking the placebo, and they
could carry a load up stairs faster.

But they also had nearly five times the number of
cardiovascular problems, including heart attacks
and strokes, and safety monitors ended the trial early.

Since those findings were published in 2010,
studies of testosterone treatment have produced
mixed results. A 2012 study of veterans aged 40
and over with low testosterone found that those
treated with the hormone were less likely to die,
but more recent reports, including one published
last week, have documented an increase in
cardiovascular risk in men over age 65 taking
testosterone, as well as in younger men with a history of heart disease.

Officials at the Food and Drug Administration
said on Friday that they were reassessing the
safety of testosterone products in light of the
recent studies, and will investigate rates of
stroke, heart attack and death in men using the drugs.

In recent years, testosterone has been heavily
promoted as a cure-all for low energy, low
libido, depression and other ills among
middle-aged men. “Low T” is a ubiquitous
diagnosis, heard in television commercials and locker rooms.

Between 2001 and 2011, hormone use by men 40 and
over nearly quadrupled. By the end of that
period, nearly one in 25 men in their 60s was taking testosterone.

Though the drug is indicated for men with
abnormally low testosterone levels, a condition
called hypogonadism, doctors have been
prescribing it to many men with normal levels.

© 2014 The New York Times Company
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http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/feb/01/humans-clever-apes-laugh-alice-roberts-evolution

Humans are more than clever apes? Don't make me laugh

Alice Roberts

Just how special do you think you are? How
different do you think you are from other
animals? Do you think of yourself as an animal or
do you see yourself, and your fellow humans, as
somehow set apart from the rest of the animal kingdom?

Most of us – and I would unashamedly label us as
the sensible majority of the population – accept
that evolution is the best explanation for the
pattern of life that we observe on the planet,
both living and fossilised. However much
creationists bang on about evolution being "just
a theory", it beautifully explains all the
evidence we have to hand (and there's masses of
that: anatomical, genetic, palaeontological,
embryological), without a single piece of
evidence having turned up that threatens to bring
the whole edifice tumbling down around our ears.

So, I'm hoping you're a sensible sort of person
and that you consider evolution to be as true as
the spherical nature of the Earth, or the fact
that the Earth orbits the sun and not vice versa.
But just how comfortable are you with the idea of
being a product of evolution? I think it's still,
even among the most enlightened of us, really
hard to come to terms with the idea that we are
just another animal. A naked ape. The third
chimpanzee, even. You have to admit, science has
done a very good job at bringing us down a peg or
two, at knocking us off the pedestal of our own
construction. We can no longer view ourselves as
a special creation, something created in the
image of a deity and close to angels (whatever
they are or look like). We can no longer see
ourselves as the ultimate destination, as the
pinnacle of evolution, either. Our species is
just a tiny twig on the massive, dense tree of
life. But that's so difficult to stomach!

© 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/health/in-medicines-michelangelo-dr-frank-netters-life-in-pictures.html?ref=science

A Doctor Bridging Arts and Sciences

By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D.

In history’s long parade of pushy mothers and
miserably obedient children, no episode beats Dr.
Frank H. Netter’s for a happy ending. Both parties got the last laugh.

Netter was born to immigrant parents in New York
in 1906. He was an artist from the time he could
grab a pencil, doodling through high school,
winning a scholarship to art school, and
enunciating intentions of making his living as an
illustrator. Then his mother stepped in, and with
an iron hand, deflected him to medicine. Frank’s
siblings and cousins all had respectable careers,
she informed him, and he would, too.

To his credit, he lasted quite a while: through
medical school, hospital training and almost an
entire year as a qualified doctor. But he
continued drawing the whole time, making sketches
in his lecture notes to clarify abstruse medical
concepts for himself, then doing the same for classmates and even professors.

Then, fatefully, his work attracted the notice of
advertising departments at pharmaceutical
companies. In the midst of the Depression, he
demanded and received $7,500 for a series of five
drawings, many times what he might expect to earn
from a full year of medical practice. He put down his scalpel for good.

Thanks to a five-decade exclusive contract with
Ciba (now Novartis), he ultimately became
possibly the best-known medical illustrator in
the world, creating thousands of watercolor
plates depicting every aspect of 20th-century
medicine. His illustrations were virtually never
used to market specific products, but distributed
free of charge to doctors as a public service,
and collected into popular textbooks.

© 2014 The New York Times Company
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