cigarette

Scientists have identified an area of the brain where damage seems to quickly halt a person's desire to smoke। The region could form a target for novel therapies to help people quit smoking, the researchers say। http://louisgjgsheehan.blogspot.com

Led by neuroscientist Antoine Bechara of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, the team homed in on this brain area after learning about an unusual stroke patient whom they identify only as N. From age 14, N. had been a heavy smoker. But after his stroke at age 28, he never lit up again.

Smokers typically undergo well-characterized emotional and physical withdrawal symptoms that make quitting extremely difficult. However, N. effortlessly quit smoking immediately after his stroke and never relapsed. He told doctors, "My body forgot the urge to smoke."

Bechara says, "What is striking is that it was as if a switch had been turned off—he quit just like that, without any effort at all।" http://louisgjgsheehan.blogspot.com

To see whether brain damage caused by N.'s stroke played a role in his smoking cessation, Bechara and his colleagues scanned N.'s brain to identify the stroke-affected area. They spotted damage in the insula, a region deep inside the cerebral cortex. The insula had previously been associated with monitoring the body's internal conditions and controlling conscious urges, such as the desire to eat.

The researchers next identified 69 smokers or former smokers with a variety of damaged brain areas caused by strokes, surgery, or other factors. Nineteen of these patients had damaged insulas, and all had quit smoking.

After surveying all the patients, the team found that 18 of the patients with insula damage had quit smoking as uneventfully as N. had. However, most of the 13 other people who had quit smoking had experienced typically tough withdrawal symptoms.

"When we did all our analysis and statistics, it turned out that the likelihood of quitting smoking with ease after insula damage was 136 times higher than for damage anywhere else in the brain," says Bechara.

He and his team report these results in the Jan. 26 Science.

Neuroscientist Steven Grant of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda, Md., calls the researchers' report "an outstanding paper."

"To have any kind of variable produce this rate of quitting cigarette smoking is remarkable, to have it associated with a particular brain region is fantastic, and to have it associated with a brain region that we haven't normally looked at a lot in addiction makes it really high profile," says Grant.

Researchers would never purposely damage people's insulas to curb smoking addictions, Grant explains. However, he notes that further information about the insula's role in addiction could lead to new antismoking therapies.

"This opens up the possibility of novel medications that could be developed to quiet the insula that perhaps might be more effective than the [smoking-cessation drugs] we have now," he adds.

happy

Happy children learn especially well, unless they have to focus on details rather than the big picture. That’s the implication of a new study in which school-age youngsters induced to feel happy lagged behind their sad- or neutral-feeling peers in finding shapes embedded within larger images.

This two-part investigation shows for the first time that an experimentally induced good mood undermines children’s ability to perform detail-oriented tasks, report psychologist Simone Schnall of the University of Plymouth in England and her colleagues online and in an upcoming Developmental Science.

http://www.myspace.com/louis_j_sheehan_एस्कुइरे Earlier studies had indicated that a surge of happiness draws adults’ attention away from the details of a problem but increases both adults’ and children’s creativity and mental flexibility.

Schnall hypothesized that positive and negative feelings evolved, in part, to trigger contrasting thinking styles. Happiness signals a sense of personal safety that encourages a relaxed, broad focus on one’s immediate situation. Sadness reflects awareness of a difficult problem or situation, prompting caution and a detailed surveillance of one’s surroundings.

Psychologist Joseph Forgas of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, supports Schnall’s scenario. “There is now clear experimental evidence showing that mild sadness produces cognitive advantages in performing tasks that require attention to detail and focusing on new information,” Forgas says.

Psychologist Alice Isen of Cornell University disagrees. She regards the emotion-inducing methods and cognitive tests employed by Schnall and other researchers as inadequate to confirm a cognitive downside to happiness.

Earlier studies, such as one in which Isen and her colleagues studied physicians making diagnostic decisions, indicate that people induced to feel happy alternate skillfully between monitoring detailed information and thinking more expansively, depending on situational demands.

In contrast, studies conducted by Forgas indicate that mildly sad adults do better than mildly happy ones on detail-oriented tests of social judgments, eyewitness memory and the ability to present persuasive arguments on controversial topics.

In one experiment, Schnall and her coworkers tested 30 children, ages 10 and 11, while either lively or gloomy pieces of classical music played in the background. Each child completed 20 problems requiring that he or she locate either a triangle or a houselike shape in a larger, more complex figure.

Children listening to lively music then communicated how they felt by pointing to a drawing of a happy face, whereas those listening to gloomy music selected a drawing of a sad face. Youngsters chose from five faces, ranging from happy to neutral to sad.

Compared with sad kids, happy ones consistently took at least one second longer to find embedded shapes, and correctly identified an average of three or four fewer shapes.

In a second experiment, the researchers addressed whether happiness impaired children’s ability to find embedded shapes, or whether sadness enhanced it. They tested 61 children, ages 6 and 7, on the same embedded shape problems. Each child first watched either a happy scene, a neutral scene, or a sad scene from one of three animated feature films. Participants reported how they felt by pointing to face drawings consistent with the emotional tone of just-viewed film clips.

Children who felt sad or neutral did equally well at identifying embedded figures, correctly solving an average of two to three more problems than happy kids did.

In other words, sadness did not elevate performance over that achieved with a neutral mood, but happiness worsened performance। http://www.myspace.com/louis_j_sheehan_esquire

Cornell’s Isen sees serious flaws in the new study. Lively music can arouse or distract individuals more than gloomy music does, possibly harming the ability to find embedded figures, she says. And embedded figures provide a poor measure of attention to fine details, in her view.

This scientific debate raises the question of why sadness exists at all, Forgas says. “If sadness has no benefit, why is it so ubiquitous?” he asks.

uttered

Clear and warm, but the atmosphere is charged with the smoke and dust of contending armies। The sun shines but dimly. http://louis2j2sheehan.blogspot.com

Custis was with us last night, and returned to camp at 5 A.M. to-day. He gets from government only a small loaf of corn bread and a herring a day. We send him something, however, every other morning. http://louis2j2sheehan.blogspot.comHis appetite is voracious, and he has not taken cold. He loathes the camp life, and some of the associates he meets in his mess, but is sustained by the vicissitudes and excitements of the hour, and the conviction that the crisis must be over soon.

Last night there was furious shelling down the river, supposed to be a night attack by Butler, which, no doubt, Beauregard anticipated. Result not heard.

The enemy’s cavalry were at Milford yesterday, but did no mischief, as our stores had been moved back to Chesterfield depot, and a raid on Hanover C. H. was repulsed. Lee was also attacked yesterday evening, and repulsed the enemy. It is said Ewell is now engaged in a flank movement, and the GREAT FINAL battle may be looked for immediately.

Breckinridge is at Hanover Junction, with other troops. So the war rolls on toward this capital, and yet Lee’s headquarters remain in Spottsylvania. A few days more must tell the story. If he cuts Grant’s communications, I should not be surprised if that desperate general attempted a bold dash on toward Richmond. I don’t think he could take the city—and he would be between two fires

I saw some of the enemy’s wounded this morning, brought down in the cars, dreadfully mutilated. Some had lost a leg and arm—besides sustaining other injuries. But they were cheerful, and uttered not a groan in the removal to the hospital.

Flour is selling as high as $400 per barrel, and meal at $125 per bushel. The roads have been cut in so many places, and so frequently, that no provisions have come in, except for the army. But the hoarding speculators have abundance hidden.

The Piedmont Road, from Danville, Va., to Greensborough, is completed, and now that we have two lines of communication with the South, it may be hoped that this famine will be of only short duration. They are cutting wheat in Georgia and Alabama, and new flour will be ground from the growing grain in Virginia in little more than a month। God help us, if relief come not speedily! A great victory would be the speediest way. http://louis2j2sheehan.blogspot.com

My garden looks well, but affords nothing yet except salad.