When a woman is at peak ovulation, she can better identify whether a man is heterosexual or not by looking at his face, says a new study by psychologists at the University of Toronto and Tufts University.

Furthermore, harboring romantic notions or a mating goal increases a woman’s sensitivity in discriminating between straight and gay men.

“This effect is not apparent when a woman is judging another female’s orientation,” said Professor Nicholas Rule of psychology, lead author of a new study published in Psychological Science. “This suggests that fertility influences a heterosexual woman’s attention to potential mates rather than merely increasing sensitivity to sexual orientation or nonverbal cues more generally.”

In the first of three experiments, 40 undergraduate females were asked to view 80 photos of men’s faces and judge each man’s sexual orientation; forty of these were self-reported gay males, while the other 40 were straight men. The men did not differ in attractiveness or emotional expression and the women were encouraged to use their intuition in making decisions.

The women also reported how much time had passed since their last menstrual cycle and its average duration; none of the women were taking any systemic contraceptive medications.

The researchers compared the women’s accuracy in judging sexual orientation with the point at which the women were in their fertility cycle, and found that the closer a woman was to peak ovulation, the more accurate she was at judging a man’s sexual orientation.

In the second experiment, 34 women viewed a similar series of female faces, 100 of whom were self-identified lesbians while another 100 were straight. Interestingly, there was no relationship between the fertility cycle and accurate judgments of the women’s sexual orientation.

“Together, these findings suggest that women’s accuracy may vary across the fertility cycle because men’s sexual orientation is relevant to conception and thus of greater importance as women are nearer to ovulation.”

This hypothesis was tested further during a third experiment in which the women were primed with a mating goal in order to manipulate reproductive relevance. Half of the volunteers were asked to read a story that described a romantic encounter while the other half did not, before judging sexual orientation through photos.  Researchers found that the women primed with a mating goal were far more accurate in their judgments than those who were not, suggesting that inducing mating-related thoughts improved accuracy in judging men’s sexual orientations.

The findings can be found online in a paper titled Mating Interest Improves Women’s Accuracy in Judging Male Sexual Orientation, published in Psychological Science.

Source:  University of Toronto

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A new laboratory study from the University of South Florida suggests an unknown component of coffee interacts with caffeine to protect against Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

Using a mouse model, researchers found that this interaction boosts blood levels of a critical growth factor that seems to fight off the Alzheimer’s disease process.

The research presents the first evidence that caffeinated coffee offers protection against the memory-robbing disease not found in other caffeine-containing drinks or decaffeinated coffee.

Moreover, the findings support real-life observational research that has found daily coffee/caffeine intake during mid-life and in older age decreases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

The USF researchers’ earlier studies in Alzheimer’s mice indicated that caffeine was likely the ingredient in coffee that provides this protection because it decreases brain production of the abnormal protein beta-amyloid, which is thought to cause the disease.

The new study shows that caffeinated coffee induces an increase in blood levels of a growth factor called GCSF (granulocyte colony stimulating factor). GCSF is a substance greatly decreased in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and demonstrated to improve memory in Alzheimer’s mice.

“Caffeinated coffee provides a natural increase in blood GCSF levels,” said USF neuroscientist Dr. Chuanhai Cao, lead author of the study.

“The exact way that this occurs is not understood. There is a synergistic interaction between caffeine and some mystery component of coffee that provides this beneficial increase in blood GCSF levels.”

Identifying this yet unknown component could lead to enroiching coffee and other beverages with it to provide long-term protection against Alzheimer’s.

In their study, the researchers compared the effects of caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee to those of caffeine alone. In both Alzheimer’s mice and normal mice, treatment with caffeinated coffee greatly increased blood levels of GCSF; neither caffeine alone or decaffeinated coffee provided this effect.

The boost in GCSF levels is important, because the researchers also reported that long-term treatment with coffee (but not decaffeinated coffee) enhances memory in Alzheimer’s mice. Higher blood GCSF levels due to coffee intake were associated with better memory.

Although the present study was performed in Alzheimer’s mice, the researchers indicated that they’ve gathered clinical evidence of caffeine/coffee’s ability to protect humans against Alzheimer’s and will soon publish those findings.

Coffee is safe for most Americans to consume in the moderate amounts (4 to 5 cups a day) that appear necessary to protect against Alzheimer’s disease.

“No synthetic drugs have yet been developed to treat the underlying Alzheimer’s disease process” said Dr. Gary Arendash, the study’s other lead author.

“We see no reason why an inherently natural product such as coffee cannot be more beneficial and safer than medications, especially to protect against a disease that takes decades to become apparent after it starts in the brain.”

Researchers suggests moderate daily coffee intake starting at least by middle age (30s – 50s) is optimal for providing protection against Alzheimer’s disease, although starting even in older age appears protective from their studies.

“We are not saying that daily moderate coffee consumption will completely protect people from getting Alzheimer’s disease,” Cao said. “However, we do believe that moderate coffee consumption can appreciably reduce your risk of this dreaded disease or delay its onset.”

Coffee also contains many ingredients other than caffeine that potentially offer cognitive benefits against Alzheimer’s disease. “The average American gets most of their daily antioxidants intake through coffee,” Cao said. “Coffee is high in anti-inflammatory compounds that also may provide protective benefits against Alzheimer’s disease.”

“Now is the time to aggressively pursue the protective benefits of coffee against Alzheimer’s disease,” Arendash said. “Hopefully, the coffee industry will soon become an active partner with Alzheimer’s researchers to find the protective ingredient in coffee and concentrate it in dietary sources.”

“Because Alzheimer’s starts in the brain several decades before it is diagnosed, any protective therapy would obviously need to be taken for decades,” Cao said. “We believe moderate daily consumption of caffeinated coffee is the best current option for long-term protection against Alzheimer’s memory loss. Coffee is inexpensive, readily available, easily gets into the brain, appears to directly attack the disease process, and has few side effects for most of us.”

While the researchers believe coffee consumption is important for Alzheimer’s protection, two other lifestyle choices — physical and cognitive activity – also appear to reduce the risk of dementia.

“Combining regular physical and mental exercise with moderate coffee consumption would seem to be an excellent multi-faceted approach to reducing risk or delaying Alzheimer’s,” Arendash said.

“With pharmaceutical companies spending millions of dollars trying to develop drugs against Alzheimer’s disease, there may very well be an effective preventive right under our noses every morning – caffeinated coffee.”

The findings appear in the early online version of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Source: University of South Florida

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Two popular antipsychotic medications made by Johnson Johnson — Risperdal and risperidone — have been recalled due to possible contamination with a chemical used to treat the wood pallets the drug is often transported on.

The drug is from the Johnson Johnson-owned subsidiary Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals.

The recall was prompted by reports from two consumers of an odd odor emanating from their medication. Johnson Johnson tracked the odor down to trace amounts of TBA (2,4,6 tribromoanisole).

According to Johnson Johnson, TBA is a byproduct of a chemical preservative sometimes applied to wood often used in the construction of pallets on which materials are transported and stored.

While not considered to be toxic, TBA can generate an offensive odor and a very small number of patients have reported temporary gastrointestinal symptoms when taking other products with this odor.

As it relates to Risperdal and risperidone, there have been no reported serious adverse events caused by the presence of TBA.

The antipsychotic drug is commonly used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar mania in teens and adults, and the treatment of irritability associated with autistic disorder in children and teens.

Two lots are affected by the recall. The Risperdal lot was shipped to pharmacies between 8/27/2010 and 2/15/2011 and the risperidone lot was shipped to pharmacies between 11/10/2010 and 1/01/2011. The recalls are for Risperdal tablets 3mg, Bottles of 60 Tablets (Lot #0GG904, expiration 5/2012) and risperidone tablets 2mg, Bottles of 60 Tablets (Lot #OlG175, expiration 8/2012).

Johnson Johnson warns that patients should not stop taking their medication.

Instead, anyone experiencing an uncharacteristic odor associated with Risperdal 3mg Tablets or risperidone 2mg Tablets should return the tablets to their pharmacist, and contact their healthcare professional if they have questions.

Patients or healthcare professionals can contact the Medical Information Recall Line at 1-800-634-8977 (Monday – Friday, 9 am – 5 pm ET). Information can also be found on www.risperdal.com and www.patriotpharmaceuticals.com.

Investigation Into the Contamination

According to information supplied by Johnson Johnson, they conducted an investigation involving suppliers to evaluate the potential source of this TBA issue.

This investigation revealed that some of the wooden pallets used by one of their suppliers in its warehouse were contaminated with TBA. In addition, some of the packaging components manufactured by the Johnson Johnson supplier were exposed to these pallets.

“We have initiated a deeper investigation to determine the potential impact of these findings to other products,” said a spokesperson for Johnson Johnson.

“We also are working with peer companies to better understand how and where TBA is entering and impacting our supply chains and what we can do to further mitigate this exposure. The voluntary recall, being implemented with the knowledge of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), was initiated after enhanced surveillance and complaint monitoring programs escalated two odor-related reports.”

Source: Johnson Johnson

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Although students bemoan having to take tests, researchers have confirmed that memory practice helps an individual remember things in a variety of ways.

“We’ve known for over 100 years that testing is good for memory,” says Kent State University psychology graduate student Kalif Vaughn.

Classically, psychologists have proven that “retrieval practice” — correctly producing a studied item — increases the likelihood that you’ll get it right the next time.

“But we didn’t know why,” Vaughn said.

Researchers have believed testing is good for remembering the exact thing you are trying to remember: so-called “target memory.” However, researchers did not know if the memory practice would help an individual remember other items.

In other words, if you’re asked to recall the Lithuanian equivalent of an English word, memory practice will help you remember the Lithuanian word, but you won’t necessarily remember the English.

In the new research study, Vaughn and Kent State psychologist Dr. Katherine A. Rawson investigated if memory practice (as occurs when you study for a test) might boost other types of memory.

Turns out it does.

They discovered that retrieval practice helps all forms of memory. The study will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

That “everything” includes target memory; “cue memory,” for the stimulus (the Lithuanian) that reveals the target; and “associative memory,” of the relationship between things—in this case, the word pair.

To pinpoint which of these components was improving, the researchers conducted two slightly different experiments, one involving 131 undergraduates and the other, 69.

In both preparation sessions, English-Lithuanian word pairs were displayed on a computer screen one by one, each for 10 seconds of study. After studying the list, the participants underwent retrieval trials: A Lithuanian word appeared and they had to type the English equivalent within eight seconds.

If the answer was correct, the word went to the end of the list to be asked again. If wrong, the participant got to restudy it. Each item was pre-assigned a “criterion level” from one to five—the number of times it needed to be correctly recalled during practice. Once that level was reached, the word was dropped from practice.

Participants then returned—two days later in experiment 1, seven in experiment 2—and completed tests recruiting different types of memory. First, they performed one of four recall tests, plus trials including recognizing words they had or had not studied and picking out correct word pairings among incorrect ones.

To eliminate the potentially enhancing effect of a prior recall test—and get a “pure” assessment of recognition of cues, targets, and associations—the second experiment eliminated the preceding recall tests.

The experiments yielded the same results: Items with higher “criterion levels”—which had been correctly retrieved more times during practice—exhibited better performance on tests of all three kinds of memory: cue, target, and associative.

The researchers discovered that merely taking multiple tests was not benefical, however successful testing—getting the answer right—made the difference in memory performance later on.

Vaughn admits the study leaves much to be discovered. “We know that repeated retrieval is good for memory. Testing is a modifier of memory. But we still don’t know how that works. We don’t understand the mechanism.”

Source: Association for Psychological Science

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New research suggests the inability of a wife to fall asleep is more of a marital problem than if a husband is troubled by insomnia.

Investigators discovered that, among wives, taking longer to fall asleep at night predicted their reports of more negative and less positive marital interactions the next day, and it also predicted their husband’s reports of less positive marital interaction ratings the following day.

In contrast, husbands’ sleep did not affect their own or their wife’s report of next day’s marital interactions.

“We found that wives’ sleep problems affect her own and her spouse’s marital functioning the next day, and these effects were independent of depressive symptoms,” said principal investigator Wendy M. Troxel, PhD.

“Specifically, wives who took longer to fall asleep the night before reported poorer marital functioning the next day, and so did their husbands.”

The importance of sleep is demonstrated in the fact that the relationship between nightly sleep and next day’s marital interactions was more important than daily marital interactions and subsequent sleep.

Curiously, however, husbands’ reports of higher levels of positive marital interactions predicted their own shorter sleep duration the next night.

The study involved 32 healthy, married couples with an average age of 32 years. Participants were free of clinically relevant sleep, psychiatric or medical disorders.

The amount of time it takes to go to sleep after the lights are turned off, waking after falling to sleep, and total sleep time were measured for 10 nights.

The quality of marital interactions was assessed daily over the 10-day assessment using electronic diaries to evaluate positive marital interactions such as feeling supported or valued by spouse, as well as negative marital interactions such as feeling criticized or ignored by spouse.

According to the authors, the findings show that sleep disorders such as insomnia can have a negative impact on marital relationships.

“These results highlight the importance of considering the interpersonal consequences of sleep and sleep loss,” said Troxel.

Source: American Academy of Sleep Medicine

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