Students invited to take cocaine for London university’s research

King’s College London has sent an email to hundreds of undergraduates inviting them to “take part in a clinical study involving nasal administration of cocaine”.

Students who use drugs recreationally will not be allowed to participate, nor those studying medicine or dentistry. Those who are accepted will be given “reasonable financial compensation” for the time and expenses incurred. The email explains the study will mean that: “After cocaine administration, repeated biological samples (blood, urine, hair, sweat, oral fluid) will be taken to compare and investigate how cocaine and its metabolites are spread through the human body.”

Participants will not be able to cut or dye their hair for 120 days during the study follow-up period as scientists investigate a wide range of physical effects on the body.

The project, which has been approved by London Westminster Research Ethics Committee, will be supervised by the clinical toxicology department at St Thomas’ Hospital.

A spokesman for King’s said: “This is an important scientific study to investigate how cocaine and its metabolites are spread through the human body.

“All the relevant ethical approvals were received for this study. The study will be conducted under the highest level of medical supervision in a dedicated clinical research suite. Further information about the NHS ethical approval process, which was followed, is available on our website.”

The email has already attracted online comments and jokes from students. The university has a reputation for research into the use and effects of illegal drugs, including studies into the genetic causes of addiction and papers on whether certain substances should be legalised.

An estimated 700,000 people in Britain took cocaine last year, making it the second most popular drug after cannabis.

A how-to manual for fruit fly research has been created

The first ever basic training package to teach students and scientists how to best use the fruit fly, Drosophila, for research has been published. It’s hoped it will encourage more researchers working on a range of conditions from cancer to Alzheimer’s disease to use the humble fly.

The unique scheme has been put together by Dr Andreas Prokop from the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Manchester and John Roote from the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge.

John Roote said, “In 1910 Thomas Hunt Morgan isolated the first Drosophila sex-linked mutation, white.  Since then many thousands of research workers have realised the potential of the humble fruit fly.

“The powerful research tools that we have today combined with a century of background knowledge, the vast collections of stocks that are available to everyone and the fortuitous ‘pre-adaptation’ of the fly for life in a laboratory ensure that Drosophila melanogaster maintains its position as the pre-eminent model organism for research in genetics.  However, until now a comprehensive teaching programme to guide students through the often daunting first few steps has been surprisingly absent.”

Dr Prokop said: “People don’t realise just how useful the tiny fruit fly can be when it comes to research. Fellow scientists are often not aware of their genetic value for research. For example, about 75% of known human disease genes have a recognisable match in the genome of fruit flies which means they can be used to study the fundamental biology behind complex conditions such as epilepsy or neurodegeneration.”

Fruit flies have been used for scientific research for more than a hundred years. They have allowed scientific breakthroughs in genetics, body structure and function. The first jet lag gene and the first learning gene were identified in flies as well as breakthroughs in neuroscience, such as the discovery of the first channel proteins.

Training package: How to design a genetic mating scheme: a basic training package for Drosophila genetics

Study Seeks Biomarkers for Invisible War Scars

Over the past decade, about half a million veterans have received diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury. Thousands have received both. Yet underlying the growing numbers lies a disconcerting question: How many of those diagnoses are definitive? And how many more have been missed?

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Electrical Engineer Turns Brain Implant Research into Products

University of Utah electrical engineering professor Florian Solzbacher is helping turn science fiction into reality through his research and related startup companies. Solzbacher is pushing the boundaries of electrical devices that can be implanted into the brain and used as an interface between neurons and computers. If you’re thinking about the “Six Million Dollar Man,” you’re not entirely off base.

Solzbacher’s research builds on Utah Electrode Array (“Utah Array”) technologies, which were invented by another University of Utah professor, Richard Normann, and are recognized as the leading approach for selective communication with hundreds of neurons in the central and peripheral nervous systems. The Utah Array is a computer chip that is implanted in, and takes signals from the brain. It transmits them in a way a computer can understand – in short, a neural interface. Solzbacher has improved how the chip works and pioneered its applications.

“We are making things work,” says Solzbacher. “People have had the idea to invent better technologies like ours for years, but we are the first to make them work and get them into patients. There are over 10,000 labs worldwide that can make things with our technologies, and they, in turn, pull us in and involve us in theirs.”

Solzbacher is commercializing his research through startup company Blackrock Microsystems and sister company Blackrock NeuroMed. Both firms employ a combined 50 people and are selling their neural interface technologies and related tools to researchers and companies around the globe. Their customers are using the technologies to find new approaches for treating nervous system disorders such as blindness, deafness, Parkinson’s and epilepsy, while another set of clients is using them to control prosthetic limbs.

Making a Game Out of Improving the ‘Sticky’ Brain

UCSF neuroscientists have found that by training on attention tests, people young and old can improve brain performance and multitasking skills.

Anyone who tries to perform two tasks at once is likely to do worse on both. Why that is so at the neurological level has largely been terra incognita. But research now is starting to reveal the impact of multitasking on short-term memory and attention.

Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD, associate professor of neurology, physiology and psychiatry, and researchers at the UCSF Neuroscience Imaging Center use EEG, MRI and other non-invasive tools to study cognitive processes while people try their best on drills that test short-term memory.

Why stem-cell science thrives in Japan

It’s easy to take for granted the epic scale of what some scientists are attempting these days. When the news broke a couple of weeks ago that Japanese scientists had turned normal cells from a mouse into eggs, and then fertilized them and seen them develop into baby mice, I thought it was pretty cool.

But I wasn’t that surprised.

I knew that Katsuhiko Hayashi — one of the scientists involved — was doing fascinating research on stem cells at Kyoto University, and so this seemed a natural progression for his work to take.

Then I spoke to him and his boss. What they said reminded me that they are attempting to do something that, until recently, would have blown the mind of almost any scientist, philosopher or other kind of intellectual there’s ever been throughout the whole of human history.

Mitinori Saitou, who is head of Hayashi’s lab at the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology in the Graduate School of Medicine, was highly ambitious from an early age, and became particularly focused when he was doing his PhD as a young man.

"I got interested in germ-cell biology and the regulation of the cell fates," he told me, "hoping that one day it may be possible to develop a methodology to control cellular fate at will."

To control fate: It’s like something out of a Greek myth.

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Replicating Risk Genes in Bipolar Disorder

One of the biggest challenges in psychiatric genetics has been to replicate findings across large studies.

Scientists at King’s College London, Institute of Psychiatry have now performed one of the largest ever genetic replication studies of bipolar affective disorder, with 28,000 subjects recruited from 36 different research centers. Their findings provide compelling evidence that the chromosome 3p21.1 locus contains a common genetic risk for bipolar disorder, the PBRM1 gene.

The locus at 3p21.1 has also been previously associated with depression and schizophrenia. Using a separate dataset of over 34,000 subjects, they did not confirm association of this same variant with schizophrenia.

Thus, they replicated the association of the marker with bipolar disorder, but not with schizophrenia. This is an interesting finding, in that it distinguishes the heritable risk for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. It contrasts with the majority of studies that have found that schizophrenia risk genes also contribute to the risk for bipolar disorder.

"This study adds to the recent rapid progress in identifying genes for mental illness. The last few years have seen the identification of about two dozen genetic loci for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia," commented first author Evangelos Vassos. "About half of these are shared between these two disorders, indicating they share some, but not all, genetic causes."

Due to the conflicting results, it is clear that more work is needed to determine the role this locus plays in psychosis, but the evidence seems solid that it is associated with bipolar disorder.

Intranasal Oxytocin Blocks Alcohol Withdrawal in Human Subjects

Background: The neuropeptide, oxytocin (OT), has been reported to block tolerance formation to alcohol and decrease withdrawal symptoms in alcohol-dependent rodents. Numerous recent studies in human subjects indicate that OT administered by the intranasal route penetrates into and exerts effects within the brain.

Methods: In a randomized, double-blind clinical trial, intranasal OT (24 IU/dose, N = 7) or placebo (N = 4) was given twice daily for 3 days in alcohol-dependent subjects admitted to a research unit for medical detoxification using Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment for Alcohol (CIWA) score-driven PRN administration of lorazepam. Subjects rated themselves on the Alcohol Withdrawal Symptom Checklist (AWSC) each time CIWA scores were obtained. Subjects also completed the Penn Alcohol Craving Scale, an Alcohol Craving Visual Analog Scale (ACVAS) and the Profile of Mood States (POMS) on inpatient days 2 and 3.

Results: All subjects had drunk heavily each day for at least 2 weeks prior to study and had previously experienced withdrawal upon stopping/decreasing alcohol consumption. OT was superior to placebo in reducing alcohol withdrawal as evidenced by: less total lorazepam required to complete detoxification (3.4 mg [4.7, SD] vs. 16.5 [4.4], p = 0.0015), lower mean CIWA scores on admission day 1 (4.3 [2.3] vs. 11.8 [0.4], p < 0.0001) and day 2 (3.4 [2.2] vs. 11.1 [3.6], p < 0.002), lower AWSC scores on days 1 and 2 (p < 0.02; p = 0.07), and lower ACVAS ratings (p = 0.01) and lower POMS Tension/Anxiety subscale scores on day 2 (p < 0.01).

Conclusions: This is the first demonstration that OT treatment may block alcohol withdrawal in human subjects. Our results are consistent with previous findings in rodents that OT inhibits neuroadaptation to and withdrawal from alcohol. OT could have advantages over benzodiazepines in managing alcohol withdrawal because it may reverse rather than maintain sedative-hypnotic tolerance. It will be important to test whether OT treatment is effective in reducing drinking in alcohol-dependent outpatients.

Neuroscientists Launch 5 Year Study of Music Education and Child Brain Development

Researchers at USC Brain and Creativity Institute will explore the effects of intense music training on cognitive development in LA Phil’s YOLA at HOLA program.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, the USC Brain and Creativity Institute and Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA) are delighted to announce a longitudinal research collaboration to investigate the emotional, social and cognitive effects of musical training on childhood brain development.

The five-year research project, Effects of Early Childhood Musical Training on Brain and Cognitive Development, will offer USC researchers an important opportunity to provide new insights and add rigorous data to an emerging discussion about the role of early music engagement in learning and brain function.

Through a collaboration with the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles at Heart of Los Angeles (YOLA at HOLA) program, a partnership between the LA Phil and HOLA which provides free instruments and musical training to children from the Rampart District of Los Angeles, researchers with the USC Brain and Creativity Institute — led by acclaimed neuroscientists Hanna Damasio and Antonio Damasio – will track how children respond to music from the very onset of their exposure to systematic, high intensity music education.