Are Bar Flies Just Sex Starved Males?

     They very well could be, if these bar flies are also fruit flies.   An article in the March 18 issue of the Des Moines Register, (I'd provide a link but you'd just hit a pay wall)   entitled  Sex Starved Fruit Flies Turn to Alcohol,  describes an interesting study.  Male fruit flies were put into cages with females who had already mated, and would therefore have no interest in sex.   The males attempted to approach the females but were driven away,  even kicked or bitten.  They were very definitely rejected.  The males kept trying, but eventually gave up. Then these males were placed in separate cages, and offered a choice of two kinds of food, one of which contained alcohol.  They preferred the alcoholic stuff, and ate a lot of it. They got very drunk.   Other males, the ones who had actually mated, were offered the same choice.  They tasted the alcohol, but didn't care for it.
       The authors said that there is a brain chemical in fruit flies which is affected by sex, but if sex is lacking, the same effect can be achieved with alcohol.   But guess what?   This same brain chemical is present in humans.  The author suggests that there may be lessons for humans here.

Is a Cat Microbe Changing Your Behavior?

      In the March issue of the online edition of Atlantic Magazine is an article by Kathleen Mcauliffe entitled How Your Cat is Making You Crazy. It's about the work of Czech researcher Jaroslav Flegr, and his work with Toxoplasma gondii, the parasite associated with handling cat liter.

        Since the 1920s, doctors have warned pregnant women to avoid cat litter, since this protozoon, if transmitted to the fetus, can cause severe brain damage or death.  This microbe can also have severe effects on those with compromised immune systems.  But for healthy children and adults, the result of infection is a brief flu-like disease, and then the microbe becomes dormant inside our brain cells, and has no further effect. 

            But Flegr has begun to doubt whether it is completely dormant.   He believes that it continues to tweak our neural connections in ways that cause subtle behavioral changes. Stanford’s Robert Sapolsky believes he may be right.  Sapolsky points out that when this parasite infects a rat, it turns the rat’s natural fear of cats into an attraction to cats, which lures the rat into the jaws of its main predator, which puts the parasite inside the body of a cat, which is where it needs to be to complete its life cycle.

            And the rabies virus kills its victims, but just before it does so, it changes the victim’s brain circuits in such a way as to throw the victim into a rage, where it attacks and bites anything that moves.   By then, the virus has migrated into the saliva, so that whatever is bitten becomes the next host.   In the case of both microbes, the behavior patterns produced are quite complex—so complex that it is amazing that a microbe could evolve to accomplish this. 

            We humans are not part of the cat/rat/T. gondii cycle--we are accidental victims.  So if T. gondii causes any behavioral changes in humans at all, they would not be changes that would enhance the reproductive odds for the protozoa.  But though accidental, they may still be there.   About 20% of Americans carry the T. gondii protozoa, and according to Flegr, for their entire lives, these carriers (he happens to be one) will have their brains subtly changed. They will be changed by the accidental activity of protozoa doing what they evolved to do to make a rat’s brain force the rat to seek out cats.

            In humans, the changes which Flegr believes are wrought by this microbe are subtle, but still consistent for all carriers.  Except that in humans, the behavioral changes in human females are exactly opposite as the changes in human males.  Men who are infected tend to be more introverted, suspicious, anti-social, and oblivious to other people’s opinions of them. They are happy wearing rumpled old clothes, would prefer to work by themselves, and generally have fewer friends. Infected women tend to be outgoing, trusting, and image-conscious.  They are rule-abiding, meticulously dressed, and have a vast network of social connections.  At first, researchers could find no explanation why the behaviors of infected men and infected women seemed to be the exact opposite.   But they have concluded that there is a common denominator---emotional strain.  Women respond to insecurity by increased social bonding, and increased nurturing.   Men simply withdraw, and become more anti-social.   So we are simply seeing two sides of the same coin.

            Flegr’s data have shown (and this has been replicated) that infected individuals are much more likely to have traffic accidents.  When one considers the vast number of infected individuals worldwide (in France it’s nearly 55%) and also the number of traffic deaths, it’s possible that T.gondii is killing more people than malaria.  Flegr also has data showing that T.gondii may trigger schizophrenia in certain genetically susceptible individuals.

Check out this article: (Click on the highlighted words [Atlantic  Magazine]  above.)

Whole Genome Sequence for $1,000?

    According to an article in the Jan 10 issue of Wall Street Journal,  Life Technologies Corp is introducing a machine in the coming year which it claims can provide a whole genome sequence for any individual who wants one--for about $1,000.   And it can do it in a day.   A genome read out that quick and cheap could allow genetic sequencing to be used as a routine medical screening.  And as the price drops even further, such tests would be available to the entire population in most developed countries.
     The advantages would be: first, individuals could discover early in life whether they are particularly at risk for certain diseases, and take preventative action. Second, this information could guide therapists in tailoring treatments to the individual. And third, it could allow drug companies to develop specific drugs for different genetic types.  And forth, it would make it more practical for drug companies to develop drugs to mitigate the effects of certain genetic diseases, particularly those caused by a single mutation, by identifying the pool of individuals who might benefit from them.
     Of course, there could be a downside.   Once such information exists, it's only a matter of time before some of it falls into the hands of those who might use it to our disadvantage.  And eventually, such use might even be legal and institutionalized.  Have you seen the movie GATTACA?

Face Blindness

In The New Yorker, Aug 30 issue is a piece by Dr. Oliver Sacks about prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces.   I was interested, since I have a mild case of this problem.  My problem is just severe enough to be annoying, but not debilitating.  Dr. Sacks has the same problem, but much worse.  He wrote of an incident where he had spent an hour with his psychiatrist, and then took the elevator down to the lobby.  The psychiatrist had taken another elevator and arrived there first, and had taken off his white coat.  Dr. Sacks walked right past him without recognizing him.   Dr. Sacks has been classified as autistic, but does not believe that he is.  He thinks that his inability to recognize faces merely makes him appear autistic.

            But prosopagnosia affects not only faces, but also our ability to classify visual images of any kind.  I had planned to take up fishing as a hobby when I retired.  But I realized that this would not work unless I took someone else along to examine each fish I caught and tell me what species it was and whether I could legally keep it.  When I tried to explain this to my friends, they said, “Oh no.  When you buy a license, they give you a little folder which shows pictures of each species.”  I said, “Unless it was a catfish or a sturgeon, I don’t think that would help."  When I visit the DNR aquarium in Guttenberg, they have every game species in the tank, and on the wall they have beautiful drawings and descriptions of each.  But I have never been able to completely match one with the other.  Whenever my wife and I drive somewhere, I’m content to let her navigate.  Unless I have driven the same route several times, I have no memory of it. I always assumed that these problems were related to my face blindness.  Turns out I was right.

            Dr. Sacks says that once he walked around his neighborhood in the rain for two hours, looking for his house.  He walked past his own house 3 times before a kindly neighbor told him where he was.  While Dr. Sacks has a more serious case than mine, some of his patients are still worse.  He writes of patients who cannot recognize their own children.  And of course, his most famous patient was “the man who mistook his wife for a hat.”

            The particular area of the brain involved is a long narrow area in the underside of the right occipital lobe, extending from the visual cortex to the pre-frontal.  And there may be a gradient of functions from one end to the other.   The functions may range from identifying shapes, to classifying faces versus objects, to remembering whose face it is, or to reading the emotional content of faces.  Dr. Sacks says that there is a bell curve distribution of these abilities.  And for every person born with poorer than average face recognition abilities, there is probably one with greater than average.  He mentioned people who can recognize the face of every person they have ever met. 

            I know of such a case, and the person involved used this facility to his advantage.  When I worked at the John Deere tractor works in the late 1950s, the manager, Harley Walden, had a legendary ability to remember faces.  Once a year, he would walk slowly through the plant, walk down every aisle, and stop and introduce himself to every worker, and speak with them a few minutes.   It took him a few days to do this, because there were 8,000 workers there.  The next year, he would do it again, and he remembered them—all 8,000 of them.   He’d walk up and say something like, “Well, how’s it going Jim?  Is your boy still wrestling for East High this year?"  People were astounded.  But most workers interpreted this to mean that Harley Walden had taken an interest in them personally.  This bought him a lot of respect and loyalty.  But the strange thing about prosopagnosia is that if this part of the brain is ever damaged, no adjacent area ever takes over this function.  When you have face blindness, you have it.