Prosopamnesia: A Woman's Struggle To Recognize New Faces

The woman's condition, known as prosopamnesia, is extremely rare and has only been found in a handful of people around the world, according to University of Queensland cognitive neuroscientist Professor Jason Mattingley.



"For many years, scientists have been interested in how people learn to recognise new faces, and people who have difficulty with faces often have trouble interacting in social settings," he said.



The woman -- whose identity remains protected -- presented herself to researchers after experiencing social embarrassment when she found she was unable to recognise colleagues, people to whom she had already been introduced.



The research, in collaboration with colleagues at Macquarie and La Trobe universities, is published in this month's edition of Current Biology. The work suggests the woman's "disability" might lie in her inability to encode or recognise new faces, rather than her ability to perceive them.



"She reports relying heavily on featural cues such as hair colour and style, eyeglasses, and eyebrows to recognise new acquaintances," Professor Mattingley said.



On a battery of standard face-recognition tests, the woman consistently registered scores that indicated her ability to recognise new faces was severely impaired.



The woman experiences a similar difficulty in recognising characters on television, but after months of repeated viewing could slowly learn to identify key individuals.



For example, when the woman was shown 42 images of pre-nominated movie celebrities, she correctly identified nine-out-of-10 of the faces.



The researchers also noted that it was only after six months of testing that the woman was able to recognise the faces.



The group's findings were backed up by brain-imaging investigations, which indicated that the woman's exposure to an unfamiliar face, even over 'multiple encoding episodes', was not enough to leave a lasting memory.



"It may be that enduring face representations are slow to form or are degraded in quality, or they may decay rapidly following normal encoding," Professor Mattingley said.



While face recognition is currently thought to be an innate capacity that human babies have at birth, aspects of this ability are probably shaped by experience.



Prosopamnesia is probably a condition linked to an irregularity during neural development, Professor Mattingley said.



To add to the researchers' intrigue, the young woman has reported that some of her family members experience similar problems with face memory.



"If this is true, this woman's condition might present us with tantalising evidence for a genetic link as well," Professor Mattingley said.



While more studies are planned, the woman has placed any additional investigations on hold until she establishes her career.






Scientific paper: Williams et al., Abnormal fMRI Adaptation to Unfamiliar Faces in a Case of Developmental Prosopamnesia, Current Biology (2007), doi:10.1016/j.cub.2007.06.042.



Source: Jason Mattingley


Research Australia

Tamoxifen Discontinuation Rates Surprisingly High In Clinical Practice

In the clinical practice setting almost a quarter of women treated for breast cancer stop tamoxifen within one year, a rate twice as high as indicated by previous studies. The new study, published in the March 1, 2007 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, says early termination of this highly effective breast cancer drug may negatively affect treatment efficacy. At 3.5 years, the study also reveals that over one third of women have ceased tamoxifen treatment.



Tamoxifen is a selective estrogen receptor modulator that inhibits the stimulatory effect that estrogen has on the development of specific types of breast cancer. Scientists estimate that over 40,000 recurrences are prevented each year worldwide because of this drug. However, the optimal duration of therapy is five years. Less than five years of continual treatment is associated with higher rates of recurrence and higher mortality rates. The most common reason for discontinuation is adverse effects, including mood swings and hot flashes; these are often successfully treated with a specific antidepressant.



Discontinuation or non-persistence rates estimated by clinical trials range from 16 to 32 percent. Studies of usage outside clinical trials report non-persistence rates of only 17 percent at two years and 31 percent at five years. However, these rates are compiled from self-reporting data collection methods and target elderly patients ??" an inherently biased data collection method in a population accustomed to chronic medications. Led by Thomas I. Barron, M.Sc. of the Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics at Trinity College Dublin & St James's Hospital, Dublin, researchers reviewed pharmaceutical data from a national database of 2816 women aged 35 years and older who started tamoxifen for breast cancer.



The researchers found that at 12 months 22 percent of women had ceased using the drug. At 24 months 28 percent had stopped tamoxifen, and at 3.5 years 35 percent had stopped the treatment without commencing an alternative therapy.



Analysis for risk factors for discontinuing tamoxifen identified age and history of antidepressant use. Women between the ages of 35 and 44 or over 75 as well as women who reportedly used an antidepressant within one year of starting tamoxifen were more likely to stop tamoxifen.



"This study demonstrates that persistence with tamoxifen cannot be assumed and raises concerns about persistence with other oral hormonal therapies for breast cancer and oral anti-neoplastics in general," the authors write. "This is of particular importance," they conclude, "as longer durations of adjuvant therapy may be recommended for breast cancer in the future and as cancer survivorship becomes a priority area in clinical practice and research."






Article: "Early Discontinuation of Tamoxifen: A Lesson for Oncologists," Thomas I. Barron, R??is?­n M. Connolly, Kathleen Bennett, John Feely, M. John Kennedy, CANCER; Published Online: January 22, 2007 (DOI: 10.1002/cncr.22486); Print Issue Date: March 1, 2007.



Contact: Amy Molnar


John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Rapid Population Growth In Uganda Affecting Efforts To Fight HIV/AIDS

Rapid population growth in Uganda is undermining efforts to fight the spread of HIV/AIDS, Uganda AIDS Commission Director General Kihumuro Apuuli said Wednesday at a press briefing in the capital of Kampala, New Vision/Allafrica reports. Apuuli spoke with journalists ahead of the four-day HIV/AIDS global implementers meeting scheduled to start June 3 in Kampala.

There are an estimated 30 million people living in Uganda, New Vision/Allafrica reports. Apuuli said about 1.1 million of them are HIV-positive, but 90% are not aware that they are living with the disease. He also noted that more than 30,000 new HIV cases occur there annually. In addition, HIV-related deaths had increased 30% to 100,000 last year from 72,000 a few years ago, when a national survey was conducted.

According to Apuuli, mother-to-child HIV transmission accounts for 22% of new HIV cases in Uganda, and 25% of infants born to HIV-positive women contract the virus. Women in Uganda have an average of seven children, according to New Vision/Allafrica. Apuuli said that people often engage in risky behavior under the assumption that new medications to treat HIV/AIDS will soon be available. "If we do not prevent new infections, we will be chasing a mirage," he said.

The country's AIDS commission has created a five-year plan that focuses on HIV prevention, according to Apuuli. He added, "There are 120,000 people on antiretroviral drugs out of an estimated 240,000 who need it. We intend to make the drugs available to 300,000 people" (Mugisa, New Vision/Allafrica, 4/30).


Reprinted with kind permission from kaisernetwork. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at kaisernetwork/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

© 2008 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

Risk-Free Treatment For Low Female Sexual Desire

According to the Journal of Sexual Medicine, people who engage in regular sexual activity gain several health benefits, such as longer lives, healthier hearts, lower blood pressure, and lower risk of breast cancer. However, approximately 33 percent of women may not receive these benefits due to low sexual desire. Also, the marriages of women with low sexual desire may also be at risk, given a recent statistic that 25 percent of divorce is due to sexual dissatisfaction.



Some doctors are prescribing testosterone patches for women with low sexual desire. However, research shows that testosterone patches might increase the risk of breast cancer when used for just a year. Researchers are currently testing a new drug, flibanserin, which was developed as an antidepressant and affects neurotransmitters in the brain, to treat women with low sexual desire. However, experts are concerned about the side effects of this possible treatment. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has found evidence that a low-cost, risk-free psychological treatment is effective and may be a better alternative to drugs that have adverse side effects.



"Low sexual desire is the number one problem women bring to sex therapists," said Laurie Mintz, associate professor of educational, school and counseling psychology in the MU College of Education. "Drugs to treat low sexual desire may take the focus away from the most common culprits of diminished desire in women, including lack of information on how our own bodies work, body image issues, relationship issues and a stressful lifestyle. Indeed, research demonstrates that relationship issues are far more important in predicting women's sexual desire than are hormone levels. Before women seek medical treatments, they should consider psychological treatment."



Mintz has authored a book based on this premise. In her book, Mintz suggests a six-step psycho-educational and cognitive-behavioral treatment approach that she based on scientific literature and more than 20 years of clinical knowledge. The treatment plan includes chapters about one's thoughts about sex, how to talk with your partner, the importance of spending time together, ways to touch each other in both erotic and non-erotic ways, how to make time for sex and different ways to make sexual activity exciting and thus, increase women's sexual desire.



In a study demonstrating the effectiveness of her treatment, Mintz recruited married women between the ages of 28 to 65, who said they were uninterested in sexual activity. All the women were employed and a majority had children. All participants completed an online survey that measured sexual desire and sexual functioning. Then half of the participants were selected randomly to read her book and perform the exercises outlined in her book. After six weeks, they were emailed the same survey again. The control group did not read the book. Mintz found that the intervention group who read the book made significant gains in sexual desire and sexual functioning, compared to the control group who did not read the book. On average, women who read the book increased their level of sexual desire by almost 30 percent.



"This finding is especially exciting because low sexual desire among women has been not only the most common, but the least successfully treated of all the sexual problems brought to therapists" Mintz said. "Also, although other books have been written on the topic, this is the first to be tested for its effectiveness. In addition, unlike medical treatments such as testosterone, there are certainly no known negative medical side effects associated with the treatment strategies in my book."



Mintz will present her findings at the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT) annual conference.



Source:

Laurie Mintz

University of Missouri-Columbia