Articles by Melinda Wenner

Out of Mind When I was a medical student in the mid-1990s, many of the newer generation antipsychotics used to treat schizophrenia, such as risperidone and olanzapine, were just coming on the market. My psychiatry rotation was at the famed Bellevue Hospital in New York, and half of the unit to which I was assigned was filled with patients in clinical trials of many of those drugs. In many cases, these were double-blinded, placebo controlled trials, but that was a bit of a f

1,2 "They have positive symptoms, they have negative symptoms, they have cognitive deficits that look very much like what you see in schizophrenia," says NYU's Javitt. For example, NMDA receptors are involved in the formation of memories but not in the retention of old memories; similarly, patients with schizophrenia have trouble forming, but not retaining, memories, Javitt says. NMDA receptors are also involved in pitch matching in the auditory cortex and in certain visual tasks, and schiz

1While no one really knows what causes the GAD67 abnormalities - they might be due to variants in the gene for GAD67, problems with gene expression, or both - the ultimate cause may not really matter, says Lewis, since drugs might be able to regulate neuronal activity by targeting these downstream problems directly.His lab has discovered that GAD67 abnormalities affect only a subset of neurons: those that produce parvalbumin and somatostatin.2 Of note, these cells are also involved in certain ty

var FO = { movie:"http://images.the-scientist.com/supplements/20071201/swf/infographic.swf", width:"520", height:"580", majorversion:"8", build:"0", xi:"true"}; UFO.create(FO, "ufoDemo"); 1 There are also consistent reductions in the size of the medial temporal lobe and the left neocortical superior temporal gyrus in patients with schizophrenia; those areas are responsible for declarative memory and auditory processing, respectively. Some studies have also found that the

Neurotrailblazer By Melinda Wenner Martha Shenton is pushing imaging boundaries in order to understand the schizophrenic brain © 2007 Jared Leeds ARTICLE EXTRAS The Etiology Molecular Mysteries Gazing Downstream Seeing Schizophrenia Pregnancy, Chromosomes, and Receptors Martha Shenton is what you might call a maverick. As the director of Brigham and Women's Hospital's Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory in Boston, s

A new play depicts a scientist's struggle to understand her autistic teenager

This time, it's scientists who are under the lens - one attached to a camera, that is

A new play captures the power struggles that can occur among troops of monkeys and the scientists studying them

When the University of Nottingham, UK opened its new Center for Healthcare Associated Infections, a facility dedicated to studying and controlling "superbugs," The Guardian newspaper interviewed its director, Richard James, about why such a research center was necessary. He said: "This is a sophisticated army with astonishing weapons. And each time we develop something new, [bacteria] develop a defense for it." The use of such war metaphors in science and medicine is not new. As ear

Why vaccines are a good investment An economist says lower health care costs are just the tip of the icebergBy Melinda Wenner David Bloom ARTICLE EXTRASThe Vaccine Conundrum David Bloom first became interested in international health in the late 1980s. At that time he was an established labor economist, and the economic aspects of the AIDS epid

New York University researchers weave neuroscience and biology into classic rock

An artist creates a drug called Havidol. Say the drug's name out loud, and you get her point

A biologist and journalist review a Brooklyn artist's attempt to bring the zoo to SoHo

The age-old practice may harm both science and scientists