prevents the programmed cell

death that normally occurs when

neurons are stressed, as happens

in certain degenerative diseases

including Parkinson’s, and in

cell cultures.

Lipton suggests that some

promising new ecstasy-like drugs

might one day be used to boost

dopamine-producing cells in

people with Parkinson’s – without

damaging other neurons in the

brain. The work was presented

at a meeting of the Society for

Neuroscience in Atlanta, Georgia,

last week.

of damage in newborn pups.

Instead, they saw a threefold

rise in the number of dopamine

producing cells. These cells were

also more highly branched and

developed than normal,

suggesting they functioned better.

Similarly, when cultured

embryonic dopamine cells were

exposed to ecstasy, roughly three

times as many cells survived. The

effect didn’t vary much with

increasing concentration,

although particularly high doses

did kill the brain cells.

Lipton believes that ecstasy

FEMALE pronghorn antelope

recognise good genes in a potential

mate when they see them –

and their fawns reap the benefit.

Few studies of wild animals have

shown such clear consequences

of mate choice for genes alone.

Each September, female

pronghorn (Antilocapra Americana) roam widely across

the plains checking out several

males and mating with the one

best able to defend a harem, a task

requiring speed, endurance and

alertness. John Byers and Lisette

Waits of the University of Idaho in

Moscow used genetic tests to

determine the paternity of 164

newborn pronghorns on the

National Bison Range in western

Montana, then followed the fate

of the fawns as they matured.

Nearly 60 per cent were sired

by just 14 of 45 adult males. Fawns

sired by the most popular males

grew faster and were more likely

to survive to adulthood than

offspring whose mothers had

settled for duff males – even

although the unlucky does tried

to compensate by increasing the

amount of milk they gave their

fawns (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI:

10.1073/pnas.0608184103).

Beat you to the fittest mate

IT SEEMS that emotional self-control

really does come from within.

Previous studies have shown that

people can learn to control the activity

levels of specific brain regions to alter,

for example, pain levels, when shown

real-time “neurofeedback” from fMRI

brain images. Now a similar approach

may help psychopathic criminals

increase their emotional fluency.

Niels Birbaumer and Ranganatha

Sitaram from the University of

Tübingen in Germany found that by

showing healthy volunteers the

activity levels of the insula, a brain

region important in emotional

processing, represented in real time

as a thermometer bar on a screen,

the volunteers could control their

emotional responses.

After four training sessions they

had learned to raise and lower their

insula activity levels, in turn changing

how they rated the emotional quality

of disturbing or neutral images.

Three psychopathic prison inmates

who lacked a normal insula response

trained the same way. After four days,

one appeared to have learned to raise

his insula activity towards more

normal levels. It opens a potential

avenue for treating emotional

disorders such as psychopathy or

social phobia, the team told a meeting

of the Society for Neuroscience in

Atlanta, Georgia, last week.

THE world of breath-hold diving has

a new champion. Beaked whales

regularly plunge deeper beneath the

waves than any other mammal.

Beaked whales are among the

most elusive of cetaceans, rarely

spotted at the surface. To find out

more about their lives, Peter Tyack

and colleagues of Woods Hole

Oceanographic Institution in

Massachusetts attached tags to

whales in the Mediterranean in 2003

and 2004. The tags recorded the

depth and duration of dives, as well

as recording each animal’s sonar.

The team found that Cuvier’s

beaked whale dives to more than

1000 metres on average to hunt for

the deep-sea squid that makes up

most of its diet. The deepest dive

reached 1882 metres and lasted for

85 minutes (Journal of Experimental Biology, vol 209, p 4238). Although

elephant seals and sperm whales

have recorded deeper and longer

dives, other tagging studies show

that such trips are the exception

rather than the rule for those species.

In making their long journeys to

forage in the deep sea, the beaked

whales pass beyond the point where

their bodies exhaust their oxygen

stores and switch from aerobic to

anaerobic metabolism. “Deep-diving

whales may take as much biomass

out of the deep prey layer as all

human fisheries,” Tyack says. They

are the only marine mammals

known to routinely push past this

limit during dives.

IT COULD be a rave result for

people with Parkinson’s. It seems

that ecstasy boosts the number of

dopamine-producing cells in the

brain – the type that decline in

those with the disease. Or so rat

studies suggest.

Previous human studies have

suggested that ecstasy is bad for

the brain because it damages

serotonin signalling neurons,

which play a role in memory.

When Jack Lipton of the

University of Cincinnati and his

colleagues gave pregnant rats

the drug they found no signs

TUY D

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Ecstasy as a brain booster for Parkinson’s?

www.newscientist.com 28 October 2006 | NewScientist | 17

Beaked whales dive deepest

Tame your brain to keep your cool

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