Saturday, January 20, 2007

Brain Areas Active in Daydreaming

Daydreaming seems to be the default setting of the human mind, and certain brain regions are devoted to it. When people are given a specific task to do, they focus on that task, but other brain regions get busy during down time, researchers reported yesterday in the journal Science.

"There is this network of regions that always seems to be active when you don't give people something to do," psychologist Malia Mason of Harvard Medical School said.

Mason's team set up an experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI to see what was going on when people were not specifically thinking about or doing something. FMRI makes real-time images of the brain, showing which areas are active and when.

The team recruited 19 volunteers and scanned them as they did a variety of tasks. They were also imaged when they were just sitting there, waiting between tasks.

"In the absence of a task that requires deliberative processing, the mind generally tends to wander, flitting from one thought to the next with fluidity and ease," the researchers wrote.

Parts of the North Atlantic are setting winter heat records, allowing species ranging from swordfish to jellyfish to thrive beyond their normal ranges.

Temperatures in Arctic waters off northern Europe at the tail end of the Gulf Stream are at 44.06 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest for early January since records began in the 1930s, Norway's Institute of Marine Research reported.

The world's oceans are in a warming trend that could alter fish stocks and damage coral reefs that are vital nurseries for tropical species while boosting northern stocks of cod or herring.

"The global oceans have been warming since the middle 1970s and several studies have shown that the warming can be attributed to a human-produced signal," said James Hurrell of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research.

A type of Black Sea jellyfish seems to have become established off Scandinavia, perhaps flushed out of the ballast tanks of visiting ships and now able to survive because of less chilly waters in winter.

Cancer doctors must disclose all financial ties to investment firms, said a leading physician group seeking to stop the leak of insider information on clinical drug trials.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology described the new policy, the most strict among medical groups, in a Jan. 20 article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The organization has more than 23,000 members worldwide.

Cancer physicians must disclose all consulting or advisory arrangements they have with either investment or commercial interests, the policy says. Investment firms cultivate doctors with lucrative consulting arrangements, and traders can use their inside knowledge to buy and sell stocks of companies developing new therapies before the information becomes public.

-- From News Services