Study Creativity jazzes your brain
Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:06:44 GMT
By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer
WASHINGTON - Scientists inspired by the legendary improv of
Miles Davis and
John Coltrane are peering inside the brains of today's jazz musicians to learn where creativity comes from. Think dreaming.
This isn't just a curiosity for jazz fans but a bold experiment in the neuroscience of music, a field that's booming as researchers realize that music illuminates how the brain works. How we play and hear music provides a window into most everyday cognitive functions — from attention to emotion to memory — that in turn may help find treatments for brain disorders.
Creativity, though, has long been deemed too elusive to measure. Saxophonist-turned-hearing specialist Dr. Charles Limb thought jazz improvisation provided a perfect tool to do so — by comparing what happens in trained musicians' brains when they play by memory and when they riff.
"It's one thing to come up with a ditty. It's another thing entirely to come up with a masterpiece, an hourlong idea after idea," explains Limb, a
Johns Hopkins University otolaryngologist whose ultimate goal is to help the deaf not only hear but hear music.
How do you watch a brain on jazz? Inside an MRI scanner that measures changes in oxygen use by different brain regions as they perform different tasks.
You can't play trumpet or sax inside the giant magnet that is an MRI machine. So Limb and Dr. Allen Braun at the
National Institutes of Health hired a company to make a special plastic keyboard that would fit inside the cramped MRI with no metal to bother the magnet.
Then they put six
professional jazz pianists inside to measure brain activity while they played straight and when they improvised. They played, right-handed, both a simple C scale and a blues tune that Limb wrote, appropriately titled "Magnetism." Through earphones, they listened to a prerecorded jazz quartet accompaniment, to simulate a real gig.
Getting creative uses the same brain circuitry that Braun has measured during dreaming: First, inhibition switched off. The scientists watched a brain region responsible for that self-monitoring, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, shut down.
Then self-expression switched on. A smaller area called the
medial prefrontal cortex fired up, a key finding as Braun's earlier research on how language forms linked that region to autobiographical storytelling. And jazz improvisation produces such individual styles that it's often described as telling your own musical story.
More intriguing, the musicians also showed heightened sensory awareness. Regions involved with touch, hearing and sight revved up during improv even though no one touched or saw anything different, and the only new sounds were the ones they created.
That doesn't necessarily mean this is the center of creativity. The brains of highly trained musicians might work differently than an amateur pianist's, or a painter's, or a writer's, something Limb and Braun hope to test next.
"We're all creative every day. Are our brains doing the same things?" asks Braun, who studies the relationship of language and music at
NIH's National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
The study's biggest significance isn't what it found but that it could be performed at all, opening new avenues of brain research.
"Improvisation always has a sort of magical quality associated with it. People think when you're improvising you have some sort of inspiration that's not measurable," says Dr. Robert Zatorre of the
Montreal Neurological Institute, a pioneer in the neuroscience of music and himself a classical organist. "They went forward where everyone else feared to tread."
Neuroscientists call the brain plastic, meaning it has remarkable flexibility to rewire itself. Unraveling how those circuits get modified in turn helps researchers hunt treatments for brain disorders — and the same circuits that process music show strong relationships with other key brain regions. Studies show that patients learning to speak again after a stroke may improve faster if they sing rather than recite, for example. Zatorre's team is finding parallels between tone-deafness and the reading disability dyslexia.
"What we're doing is not necessarily trying to say, 'Well, if we use music it will help Parkinson's patients walk.' It might, yes, and there is some evidence it does so," says Zatorre, whose institute this summer hosts an international conference on music and the brain.
Instead, the quest is to "understand the rules by which the brain changes its organization. That's what we need to know," he adds.
Creativity comes in because its root is the spontaneity that defines everyday life. Consider conversation: Hopkins' Limb wants to image the brains of jazz musicians "trading fours," where one improvises four bars and the next answers back with four new bars — a musical conversation he believes comparable to the talking kind.
And no, Limb doesn't think he's diminishing the magic of music by finding its cerebral underpinnings.
"It's like knowing how an airplane flies. It's still pretty magical."
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EDITOR's NOTE — Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.
Chemicals linked to Gulf War illness
Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:07:17 GMT
WASHINGTON - Increasing evidence ties pesticides and other chemicals to some, not all, of the
Gulf War illnesses that afflict thousands of veterans of the 1991 war, says an analysis published Monday.
Nearly 30 percent of troops who took part in the brief war have reported symptoms that include fatigue, memory loss, pain and difficulty sleeping. Citing the variety of symptoms, the Institute of Medicine in 2006 declared there is no single
Gulf War syndrome, although troops who served in the Persian Gulf were sicker than those who didn't.
Multiple chemical exposures have long been chief suspects. So Dr. Beatrice Golomb of the
University of California, San Diego, reviewed 115 studies of neurological symptoms and veterans' exposure to three related chemicals: the anti-nerve gas pyridostigmine bromide, or PB, given to troops at the time; pesticides used aggressively to control sand flies; and the nerve gas sarin.
Those chemicals belong to a family known as acetylcholinesterase inhibitors that work the same way in the body, she wrote Monday in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Among the evidence Golomb cites: Veterans who are genetically less able to clear this type of chemical from their bodies had a higher chance of suffering symptoms, which mirror problems reported by pesticide-exposed agriculture workers.
probe finds drugs in drinking water
Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:08:44 GMT
By JEFF DONN, MARTHA MENDOZA and JUSTIN PRITCHARD, Associated Press Writers
A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.
To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.
But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.
In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas — from Southern
California to Northern New Jersey, from
Detroit to Louisville, Ky.
Water providers rarely disclose results of pharmaceutical screenings, unless pressed, the AP found. For example, the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public "doesn't know how to interpret the information" and might be unduly alarmed.
How do the drugs get into the water?
People take pills. Their bodies absorb some of the medication, but the rest of it passes through and is flushed down the toilet. The wastewater is treated before it is discharged into reservoirs, rivers or lakes. Then, some of the water is cleansed again at drinking water treatment plants and piped to consumers. But most treatments do not remove all drug residue.
And while researchers do not yet understand the exact risks from decades of persistent exposure to random combinations of low levels of pharmaceuticals, recent studies — which have gone virtually unnoticed by the general public — have found alarming effects on human cells and wildlife.
"We recognize it is a growing concern and we're taking it very seriously," said Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency.
Members of the AP National Investigative Team reviewed hundreds of scientific reports, analyzed federal drinking water databases, visited environmental study sites and treatment plants and interviewed more than 230 officials, academics and scientists. They also surveyed the nation's 50 largest cities and a dozen other major water providers, as well as smaller community water providers in all 50 states.
Here are some of the key test results obtained by the AP:
_Officials in
Philadelphia said testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city's watersheds.
_Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications were detected in a portion of the treated drinking water for 18.5 million people in Southern
California.
_Researchers at the
U.S. Geological Survey analyzed a
Passaic Valley Water Commission drinking water treatment plant, which serves 850,000 people in Northern New Jersey, and found a metabolized angina medicine and the mood-stabilizing carbamazepine in drinking water.
_A sex hormone was detected in
San Francisco's drinking water.
_The drinking water for
Washington, D.C., and surrounding areas tested positive for six pharmaceuticals.
_Three medications, including an antibiotic, were found in drinking water supplied to Tucson, Ariz.
The situation is undoubtedly worse than suggested by the positive test results in the major population centers documented by the AP.
The federal government doesn't require any testing and hasn't set safety limits for drugs in water. Of the 62 major water providers contacted, the drinking water for only 28 was tested. Among the 34 that haven't: Houston, Chicago,
Miami, Baltimore, Phoenix,
Boston and
New York City's Department of Environmental Protection, which delivers water to 9 million people.
Some providers screen only for one or two pharmaceuticals, leaving open the possibility that others are present.
The AP's investigation also indicates that watersheds, the natural sources of most of the nation's water supply, also are contaminated. Tests were conducted in the watersheds of 35 of the 62 major providers surveyed by the AP, and pharmaceuticals were detected in 28.
Yet officials in six of those 28 metropolitan areas said they did not go on to test their drinking water —
Fairfax, Va.; Montgomery County in
Maryland; Omaha, Neb.;
Oklahoma City; Santa Clara, Calif., and New York City.
The New York state health department and the USGS tested the source of the city's water, upstate. They found trace concentrations of heart medicine, infection fighters, estrogen, anti-convulsants, a mood stabilizer and a tranquilizer.
City water officials declined repeated requests for an interview. In a statement, they insisted that "New York City's drinking water continues to meet all federal and state regulations regarding drinking water quality in the watershed and the distribution system" — regulations that do not address trace pharmaceuticals.
In several cases, officials at municipal or regional water providers told the AP that pharmaceuticals had not been detected, but the AP obtained the results of tests conducted by independent researchers that showed otherwise. For example, water department officials in
New Orleans said their water had not been tested for pharmaceuticals, but a Tulane University researcher and his students have published a study that found the pain reliever naproxen, the sex hormone estrone and the anti-cholesterol drug byproduct clofibric acid in treated drinking water.
Of the 28 major metropolitan areas where tests were performed on drinking water supplies, only
Albuquerque;
Austin, Texas; and
Virginia Beach, Va.; said tests were negative. The drinking water in
Dallas has been tested, but officials are awaiting results. Arlington, Texas, acknowledged that traces of a pharmaceutical were detected in its drinking water but cited post-9/11 security concerns in refusing to identify the drug.
The AP also contacted 52 small water providers — one in each state, and two each in
Missouri and
Texas — that serve communities with populations around 25,000. All but one said their drinking water had not been screened for pharmaceuticals; officials in
Emporia, Kan., refused to answer AP's questions, also citing post-9/11 issues.
Rural consumers who draw water from their own wells aren't in the clear either, experts say.
The Stroud Water Research Center, in Avondale, Pa., has measured water samples from
New York City's upstate watershed for caffeine, a common contaminant that scientists often look for as a possible signal for the presence of other pharmaceuticals. Though more caffeine was detected at suburban sites, researcher Anthony Aufdenkampe was struck by the relatively high levels even in less populated areas.
He suspects it escapes from failed septic tanks, maybe with other drugs. "Septic systems are essentially small treatment plants that are essentially unmanaged and therefore tend to fail," Aufdenkampe said.
Even users of bottled water and home filtration systems don't necessarily avoid exposure. Bottlers, some of which simply repackage tap water, do not typically treat or test for pharmaceuticals, according to the industry's main trade group. The same goes for the makers of home filtration systems.
Contamination is not confined to the United States. More than 100 different pharmaceuticals have been detected in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and streams throughout the world. Studies have detected pharmaceuticals in waters throughout Asia,
Australia,
Canada and
Europe — even in Swiss lakes and the North Sea.
For example, in Canada, a study of 20 Ontario drinking water treatment plants by a national research institute found nine different drugs in water samples. Japanese health officials in December called for human health impact studies after detecting prescription drugs in drinking water at seven different sites.
In the United States, the problem isn't confined to surface waters. Pharmaceuticals also permeate aquifers deep underground, source of 40 percent of the nation's water supply. Federal scientists who drew water in 24 states from aquifers near contaminant sources such as landfills and animal feed lots found minuscule levels of hormones, antibiotics and other drugs.
Perhaps it's because Americans have been taking drugs — and flushing them unmetabolized or unused — in growing amounts. Over the past five years, the number of U.S. prescriptions rose 12 percent to a record 3.7 billion, while nonprescription drug purchases held steady around 3.3 billion, according to
IMS Health and The Nielsen Co.
"People think that if they take a medication, their body absorbs it and it disappears, but of course that's not the case," said EPA scientist Christian Daughton, one of the first to draw attention to the issue of pharmaceuticals in water in the United States.
Some drugs, including widely used cholesterol fighters, tranquilizers and anti-epileptic medications, resist modern drinking water and wastewater treatment processes. Plus, the EPA says there are no sewage treatment systems specifically engineered to remove pharmaceuticals.
One technology, reverse osmosis, removes virtually all pharmaceutical contaminants but is very expensive for large-scale use and leaves several gallons of polluted water for every one that is made drinkable.
Another issue: There's evidence that adding chlorine, a common process in conventional drinking water treatment plants, makes some pharmaceuticals more toxic.
Human waste isn't the only source of contamination. Cattle, for example, are given ear implants that provide a slow release of trenbolone, an anabolic steroid used by some bodybuilders, which causes cattle to bulk up. But not all the trenbolone circulating in a steer is metabolized. A German study showed 10 percent of the steroid passed right through the animals.
Water sampled downstream of a
Nebraska feedlot had steroid levels four times as high as the water taken upstream. Male fathead minnows living in that downstream area had low testosterone levels and small heads.
Other veterinary drugs also play a role. Pets are now treated for arthritis, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, allergies, dementia, and even obesity — sometimes with the same drugs as humans. The inflation-adjusted value of veterinary drugs rose by 8 percent, to $5.2 billion, over the past five years, according to an analysis of data from the Animal Health Institute.
Ask the pharmaceutical industry whether the contamination of water supplies is a problem, and officials will tell you no. "Based on what we now know, I would say we find there's little or no risk from pharmaceuticals in the environment to human health," said microbiologist Thomas White, a consultant for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
But at a conference last summer, Mary Buzby — director of environmental technology for drug maker
Merck & Co. Inc. — said: "There's no doubt about it, pharmaceuticals are being detected in the environment and there is genuine concern that these compounds, in the small concentrations that they're at, could be causing impacts to human health or to aquatic organisms."
Recent laboratory research has found that small amounts of medication have affected human embryonic kidney cells, human blood cells and
human breast cancer cells. The
cancer cells proliferated too quickly; the kidney cells grew too slowly; and the blood cells showed biological activity associated with inflammation.
Also, pharmaceuticals in waterways are damaging wildlife across the nation and around the globe, research shows. Notably, male fish are being feminized, creating egg yolk proteins, a process usually restricted to females. Pharmaceuticals also are affecting sentinel species at the foundation of the pyramid of life — such as earth worms in the wild and zooplankton in the laboratory, studies show.
Some scientists stress that the research is extremely limited, and there are too many unknowns. They say, though, that the documented health problems in wildlife are disconcerting.
"It brings a question to people's minds that if the fish were affected ... might there be a potential problem for humans?" EPA research biologist Vickie Wilson told the AP. "It could be that the fish are just exquisitely sensitive because of their physiology or something. We haven't gotten far enough along."
With limited research funds, said Shane Snyder, research and development project manager at the
Southern Nevada Water Authority, a greater emphasis should be put on studying the effects of drugs in water.
"I think it's a shame that so much money is going into monitoring to figure out if these things are out there, and so little is being spent on human health," said Snyder. "They need to just accept that these things are everywhere — every chemical and pharmaceutical could be there. It's time for the EPA to step up to the plate and make a statement about the need to study effects, both human and environmental."
To the degree that the EPA is focused on the issue, it appears to be looking at detection. Grumbles acknowledged that just late last year the agency developed three new methods to "detect and quantify pharmaceuticals" in wastewater. "We realize that we have a limited amount of data on the concentrations," he said. "We're going to be able to learn a lot more."
While Grumbles said the EPA had analyzed 287 pharmaceuticals for possible inclusion on a draft list of candidates for regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act, he said only one, nitroglycerin, was on the list. Nitroglycerin can be used as a drug for heart problems, but the key reason it's being considered is its widespread use in making explosives.
So much is unknown. Many independent scientists are skeptical that trace concentrations will ultimately prove to be harmful to humans. Confidence about human safety is based largely on studies that poison lab animals with much higher amounts.
There's growing concern in the scientific community, meanwhile, that certain drugs — or combinations of drugs — may harm humans over decades because water, unlike most specific foods, is consumed in sizable amounts every day.
Our bodies may shrug off a relatively big one-time dose, yet suffer from a smaller amount delivered continuously over a half century, perhaps subtly stirring allergies or nerve damage. Pregnant women, the elderly and the very ill might be more sensitive.
Many concerns about chronic low-level exposure focus on certain drug classes: chemotherapy that can act as a powerful poison; hormones that can hamper reproduction or development; medicines for depression and epilepsy that can damage the brain or change behavior; antibiotics that can allow human germs to mutate into more dangerous forms; pain relievers and blood-pressure diuretics.
For several decades, federal environmental officials and nonprofit watchdog environmental groups have focused on regulated contaminants — pesticides, lead, PCBs — which are present in higher concentrations and clearly pose a health risk.
However, some experts say medications may pose a unique danger because, unlike most pollutants, they were crafted to act on the human body.
"These are chemicals that are designed to have very specific effects at very low concentrations. That's what pharmaceuticals do. So when they get out to the environment, it should not be a shock to people that they have effects," says zoologist John Sumpter at
Brunel University in London, who has studied trace hormones, heart medicine and other drugs.
And while drugs are tested to be safe for humans, the timeframe is usually over a matter of months, not a lifetime. Pharmaceuticals also can produce side effects and interact with other drugs at normal medical doses. That's why — aside from therapeutic doses of fluoride injected into potable water supplies — pharmaceuticals are prescribed to people who need them, not delivered to everyone in their drinking water.
"We know we are being exposed to other people's drugs through our drinking water, and that can't be good," says Dr. David Carpenter, who directs the Institute for Health and the Environment of the
State University of New York at
Albany.
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The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at investigate ap.org
NYC Traces of sedatives in NYC water
Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:36:45 GMT
By JEFF DONN, AP National Writer
NEW YORK - Locals say this city makes the world's best bagels from the best water, piped in from rustic reservoirs up to 150 miles north. Yet few know of a secret ingredient in their source water: a dash of pharmaceuticals.
Research studies have turned up minute amounts of more than 15 drugs or their byproducts in several pristine-looking rivers, a reservoir, and aqueducts feeding the country's biggest water system.
Though barely measurable, these pharmaceuticals are present in a variety worthy of a medicine cabinet: drugs for aches, infections, seizures and high blood pressure; hormones for menopause; the active ingredient in a popular sedative; and caffeine — all bound for the city that never sleeps.
How did they reach waterways? The vast watershed, while mainly rural, stretches almost from
Pennsylvania to
Connecticut and encompasses lots of human activity. Human and veterinary medicines are excreted or discarded, and eventually enter source waters mostly through residential sewage or farm runoff.
And while these waters are processed at
wastewater treatment plants upstate, much of the pharmaceutical residue passes right through, studies show.
It's unknown how much lingers each day by the time 1.1 billion gallons reach the faucets of more than 9 million people in the city and northern suburbs via a century-old network of aqueducts and tunnels.
The New York City Department of Environmental Protection, which runs the city's water system, responded to an Associated Press survey of water utilities, saying it has not tested its drinking water for pharmaceuticals, despite the findings in its watershed.
The tests that detected pharmaceuticals in the upstate source waters were conducted by the
U.S. Geological Survey and New York State Department of Health.
City water officials declined repeated requests for an interview and issued only a brief general statement: "
New York City's drinking water continues to meet all federal and state regulations regarding drinking water quality in the watershed and the distribution system" — regulations that do not address pharmaceuticals in trace amounts.
As in other cities, human health risks from trace pharmaceuticals are uncertain, since concentrations in
New York source waters are way below medical doses and undergo dilution as they mix with fresh water en route to the city.
Already, though, troubling studies indicate that traces of pharmaceuticals may be harming fish in New York City's Jamaica Bay, within sight of Manhattan's skyscrapers. Researcher Anne McElroy at Stony Brook University has found feminized male flounder there, and she links them to high levels of the female hormone estrone or other estrogenic chemicals discovered in the waterway.
Estrogen also has been found in the city's watershed in recent years. Upstate, the geological survey and state health agency also detected the heart medicine atenolol; anti-seizure drugs carbamazepine and primidone; relaxers diazepam and carisoprodol; infection fighters trimethoprim, clindamycin, and sulfamethoxazole; pain relievers ibuprofen, acetaminophen and codeine; and remains of caffeine and nicotine.
Despite all that, the federal government considers the New York City system to be so clean that it need not filter most of its water, as most big cities are required to do. When the filtering waiver was extended last year, Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg exulted: "I've always thought that New York City has some of the best water around, and now we've got confirmation from Washington."
However, filtration is meant mainly to remove germs, and the federal government hasn't required any testing of pharmaceuticals in source or drinking water. Though it lacks conventional treatment plants with filtering processes, New York City does disinfect and add chemicals to its drinking water. Plus, it is building a filtration plant for water from its
Croton watershed — its smallest and closest source.
Patrick Phillips, a geological survey hydrologist who has studied drugs in the city's watershed, says recent sewage treatment upgrades probably catch some, though the systems aren't designed to. The city also is building a plant to disinfect with ultraviolet radiation the water taken from the major, upstate sectors of the watershed. Research shows that ultraviolet can degrade some pharmaceuticals.
"I think both the state and the city are aware that these things could be an issue and you could be proactive about it," Phillips says.
Few New Yorkers seem aware of their possible presence. The AP contacted more than two dozen water-testing companies across the metropolitan area, and none had ever been asked to check for pharmaceuticals.
Douglas LeVangie, a sales executive at Simpltek, says even the company's home water tests for disease-causing germs sell modestly in New York City, with its global reputation for wholesome water.
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National Writer Martha Mendoza and writer Justin Pritchard also contributed to this report.