Syria gives positive response to Arab request

In this image from amateur video made available by the Ugarit News group on Friday, Dec. 2, 2011, a soldier takes aim in Homs, Syria. The United Nations' human rights chief called on the international community to protect Syrian civilians Friday as violence surged across the country, with hours of intense shooting that sent stray bullets whizzing across the border.(AP Photo/Ugarit News Group via APTN) THE ASSOCIATED PRESS CANNOT INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY THE CONTENT, DATE, LOCATION OR AUTHENTICITY OF THIS MATERIAL. TV OUT

In this image from amateur video made available by the Ugarit News group on Friday, Dec. 2, 2011, a soldier takes aim in Homs, Syria. The United Nations' human rights chief called on the international community to protect Syrian civilians Friday as violence surged across the country, with hours of intense shooting that sent stray bullets whizzing across the border.(AP Photo/Ugarit News Group via APTN) THE ASSOCIATED PRESS CANNOT INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY THE CONTENT, DATE, LOCATION OR AUTHENTICITY OF THIS MATERIAL. TV OUT

In this image from amateur video made available by the Ugarit News group on Friday, Dec. 2, 2011, an inured person is put into a car in Homs, Syria. The United Nations' human rights chief called on the international community to protect Syrian civilians Friday as violence surged across the country, with hours of intense shooting that sent stray bullets whizzing across the border.(AP Photo/Ugarit News Group via APTN) THE ASSOCIATED PRESS CANNOT INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY THE CONTENT, DATE, LOCATION OR AUTHENTICITY OF THIS MATERIAL. TV OUT

A pro-Syrian regime protester waves a Syrian flag as he stands in front of portrait of Syrian President Bashar Assad, during a protest against sanctions, Damascus, Syria, Friday Dec. 2, 2011. International intervention, such as the NATO action in Libya that helped topple Moammar Gadhafi, is all but out of the question in Syria. But the European Union, the Arab League, Turkey and others have piled on sanctions aimed at crippling the regime once and for all. (AP Photo/Muzaffar Salman)

Pro-Syrian regime protesters gather during a protest against sanctions, in Damascus, Syria, on Friday Dec. 2, 2011. The Syrian violence has led to several rounds of sanctions, a key tool used by the international community to exert pressure on the regime. The measures include travel bans and asset freezes. The EU's latest sanctions, which were announced Thursday, target 12 people and 11 companies. They add to a long list of regime figures previously sanctioned by the EU, including Assad, his top associates, and high-ranking security officials. (AP Photo/Bassem Tellawi)

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) ? Syria has "responded positively" to an Arab League request to send observers to the country as part of a peace plan to end the nation's eight-month crisis, the Foreign Ministry said Monday.

But there appeared to be serious stumbling blocks. Syria demanded that the Arab League scrapping recent decisions taken against Damascus, including economic sanctions and suspending the country from the Arab League when the protocal is signed.

"We are waiting for the Arab League's response and that all decisions taken by the League in Syria's absence be annulled," Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi told reporters in Damascus.

Syria's top diplomat, Walid al-Moallem, "responded positively" to the League and sent a letter to the organization's chief Nabil Elaraby on Sunday night, Makdissi said.

He said al-Moallem's message combined some "minor amendments that won't affect the essence of the plan."

There was no immediate reaction from the Arab League, although Elaraby was discussing the letter with aides.

Syrian President Bashar Assad is under mounting international pressure to end his regime's crackdown on an eight-month uprising that the U.N. says has killed more than 4,000 people.

Syria's failure to meet a Nov. 25 deadline to allow in observers drew Arab League sanctions, including a ban on dealings with the country's central bank and a freeze on government assets.

The bloc also imposed a travel ban on 19 Syrian officials, including Assad's younger brother Maher, who is believed to be in command of much of the crackdown, as well as Cabinet ministers, intelligence chiefs and security officers. The list does not include the president himself.

Together with sanctions from the United States, the European Union and Turkey, the Arab League's penalties are expected to inflict significant damage on Syria's economy and may undercut the regime's authority.

Damascus remains defiant, however, and has shown few signs of easing its campaign against dissent. Activists said security forces killed at least seven people Monday, most of them in the restive central province of Homs.

Over the weekend, the military conducted exercises meant to test "the capabilities and the readiness of missile systems to respond to any possible aggression," state-run TV said.

The drill showed Syrian missiles and troops were "ready to defend the nation and deter anyone who dares to endanger its security" and that the missiles hit their test targets with precision, State TV said.

In October, Assad warned the Middle East "will burn" if the West intervenes in Syria and threatened to turn the region into "tens of Afghanistans."

Syria is known to have surface-to-surface missiles such as Scuds, capable of hitting deep inside its archenemy Israel.

Makdissi, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said "the maneuvers were routine and planned earlier."

But the combination of missile tests as well as air and ground troops indicate the maneuvers were of a higher-level than the military's usual annual war games.

Syrian TV showed a missile being fired, as senior officers followed the event using their binoculars, then a missile hitting the ground creating a thick brown cloud.

State media did not say where the maneuvers where conducted. But Israel's daily Jerusalem Post quoted Israeli army officials as saying the test was conducted Saturday in Syria's northeast and included the firing of a Scud B missile, with a range of 185 miles (300 kilometers), toward the Iraqi border.

Although the U.S. and the European Union have imposed waves of sanctions against Syria in recent months, Washington and its allies have shown little appetite for intervening in another Arab nation in turmoil as they did in Libya.

On top of that, Assad has a number of powerful allies that give him the means to push back against outside pressure, and the international community is aware that intervening in Syria risks touching off a wider Mideast confrontation with Israel and Iran in the mix.

Syria wouldn't have to look far for prime targets to strike, sharing a border with U.S.-backed Israel and NATO-member Turkey. Assad's regime is the closest Arab ally of Iran and also has ties to Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah movement and other radical groups, including the militant Palestinian Hamas.

State-run news agency SANA quoted Defense Minister Dawoud Rajha as telling the forces that participated in the maneuvers "to be in full readiness to carry out any orders give to them."

___

Mroue reported from Beirut.

___

Mroue can be reached on http://twitter.com/bmroue

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-12-05-ML-Syria/id-45c11c01c05f4c098c3abad5c0762566

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RIM writes off value of tablet inventory (AP)

NEW YORK ? Research In Motion Ltd., the struggling maker of the BlackBerry phones, is writing off much of its inventory of PlayBook tablets, since it has to sell them at a deep discount.

The Canadian company on Friday said it's taking a pre-tax charge of $485 million in the just-ended quarter to account for the declining value of the tablets. The model originally priced at $500 now costs $200.

A year ago, co-CEO Jim Balsillie said pent-up interest in the PlayBook was "really overwhelming." Companies are looking for an equivalent of the iPad of corporate use, he said.

In March, Balsillie said "The launch of the PlayBook may well be the most significant development for RIM since the launch of the of the first BlackBerry device back in 1999."

But when the tablet went on sale in April, reviewers puzzled over the lack of email software, saying the device seemed half-baked. RIM now promises updated software in February.

RIM said it shipped 150,000 PlayBooks to stores and distributors in the fiscal third quarter, which ended Nov. 26. "Sell-through," or the number actually bought by users, was slightly higher, reflecting sales of tablets shipped earlier. It shipped 500,000 in the first quarter and 200,000 in the second.

RIM also said it sold 14.1 million BlackBerrys in the third quarter, slightly better than analysts expected. It then expects sales to fall slightly in the current quarter, roughly in line with analysts' expectations.

The company provided preliminary revenue and profit figures for the third quarter that were lower than it previously projected, but not a surprise to analysts.

RIM said it expects earnings at the "low to mid point" of the $1.20 to $1.40 per share it previously forecast. Analysts polled by FactSet have on average been expecting $1.18 per share.

The company expects revenue slightly the below the $5.3 billion to $5.6 billion in its previous forecast. Analysts had been expecting $5.27 billion, on average.

RIM shares fell $1.76, or 9.5 percent, to $16.82 in morning trading Friday. The stock hit a seven-year low of $15.98 last month.

The PlayBook charge comes as analysts have started to conclude that RIM's management has no chance of really righting the ship. They've started to value the company not on its future prospects, but on how much it would be worth if acquired, broken up, or simply run down while keeping BlackBerry service going.

The company is also taking a charge of $50 million for an embarrassing October outage of email and Web services that lasted days for millions of overseas BlackBerry users. It briefly spread to the U.S. and Canada before the company was able to contain the damage.

RIM reports fiscal third-quarter earnings on Dec. 15.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personaltech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111202/ap_on_hi_te/us_research_in_motion_tablet

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Sprint gives Clearwire $1.6 billion golden parachute, lovers of WiMAX rejoice

LTE may be Sprint's future network of choice, but WiMAX will be with us for a while longer. Clearwire provides the Now Nework's waves of WiMAX, but it's had recent financial troubles that it claimed could prevent it from making a required $237 million interest payment due today. However, Sprint has come to Clearwire's rescue by agreeing to to pay $926 million to keep the WiMAX network running through 2015. It also pledged to kick in $350 million to help fund the firm's shift to LTE, plus another $347 million in equity funding if Clearwire can raise more than $400 million on its own. Why buy the cow, when you can get the milk for free $1.6 billion, right Mr. Hesse?

Sprint gives Clearwire $1.6 billion golden parachute, lovers of WiMAX rejoice originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/01/sprint-gives-clearwire-1-6-billion-golden-parachute-lovers-of/

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Unemployment rate may give Obama boost

Unemployment rate: Obama may benefit from the unemployment rate?drop?as the country heads into a presidential election year.

Finally, a flicker of economic hope for President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats, even if it's a faint one.

Skip to next paragraph

November's sharp drop in the?unemployment?rate shows that jobs are finally moving in the right direction and suggests the economy is on firmer footing as the country heads into a presidential election year.

The Labor Department reported the jobless rate fell to 8.6 percent in November from 9 percent the month before, a 2? year low.

That's still high?unemployment?by historical standards. And lots of problems still lurk ? from Europe's debt crisis to congressional gridlock to the tens of millions of Americans still out of work or otherwise feeling economic distress. Furthermore, part of the improvement came because 300,000 people stopped their job searches and were no longer counted as unemployed.

But Friday's report, combined with other recent economic data showing advances in manufacturing and consumer spending, could give Obama momentum for the re-election campaign.

The White House and congressional Democrats were quiet in showing any enthusiasm they might have felt, instead using the new figures to step up criticism of anti-tax Republicans for blocking measures they said could help create even more jobs. Those include an extension of an expiring Social Security payroll tax cut that largely benefits the middle class.

"The?unemployment?rate went down," Obama said. "And despite some strong headwinds this year, the American economy has now created in the private sector jobs for the past 21 months in a row. That's nearly 3 million new jobs in all, and more than half a million over the last four months."

Said House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson of Connecticut: "Today's?unemployment?numbers, while encouraging, simply underscore the urgency for Congress to address the top issue facing American families? jobs."

Republicans were publicly unimpressed with the jobs report, insisting Obama hadn't done enough and emphasizing that the jobless rate was still higher than when he took office in January 2009, when it stood at 7.7 percent.

"Any job creation is welcome news, but the jobless rate in this country is still unacceptable. Today marks the 34th consecutive month of?unemployment?above 8 percent," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

That view was echoed on the campaign trail.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, in a Fox News interview, acknowledged that the report was good news but said it wouldn't help Obama politically. "This is the slowest recovery we've seen since (President Herbert) Hoover," Romney said. "He's going to have a hard time putting perfume on this pig." Hoover held office from 1929 to early 1933, at the outset of the Great Depression.

Despite stimulus measures by the Obama administration, Congress and the Federal Reserve,?unemploymenthas remained high, peaking at 10.1 percent in October 2009 and staying around 9 percent for most of 2011.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, another Republican seeking Obama's job, noted that a major part of the sharp drop in the?unemployment?rate was "not because entrepreneurs were creating new jobs" but because some 300,000 Americans "have simply given up looking for work."

"The Obama model of class warfare, government takeovers in the economy and creating fear and uncertainty for job-creators have failed," Gingrich asserted.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/YujYzwWb1dU/Unemployment-rate-may-give-Obama-boost

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Ivory Coast's Gbagbo taken into custody at ICC (AP)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands ? The International Criminal Court charged former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo with murder, rape, persecution and inhuman acts Wednesday, crimes allegedly committed as his backers fought brutal battles to keep him in power after last year's elections.

Gbagbo, 66, is the first former head of state taken into custody by the court since it was established in 2002, although prosecutors also have charged Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with genocide and Libya's former leader, the late Moammar Gadhafi, with crimes against humanity.

"Mr. Gbagbo is brought to account for his individual responsibility in the attacks against civilians committed by forces acting on his behalf," Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said in a statement.

Moreno-Ocampo stressed that both sides of the political divide in Ivory Coast committed crimes in the post-election chaos and that his investigation was continuing.

That statement appeared aimed at countering fears that Gbagbo's arrest could further stoke tension in Ivory Coast, also known by its French name Cote d'Ivoire, because it gives the appearance of victor's justice. Grave abuses were also committed by forces loyal to the country's democratically elected leader, Alassane Ouattara, who enlisted the help of a former rebel group to force Gbagbo from office.

Reed Brody, of Human Rights Watch, said Gbagbo's indictment was only half the story as victims of crimes by forces loyal to Ouattara have so far gone unpunished.

"This created the perception of victor's justice," he said in Brussels. "And if the cycle of violence in Cote d'Ivoire is to stop there has to be justice that is even handed and justice for the victims on both sides."

A convoy of cars whisked Gbagbo to the court's detention unit close to the North Sea, following an overnight flight that touched down in the Netherlands shortly before 4 a.m. (0300 GMT) Wednesday.

He is the sixth suspect taken into custody by the court, which has launched seven investigations, all of them in Africa. A further 11 suspects remain at large and the court has no police force to arrest them.

According to court papers, Gbagbo is charged as an "indirect perpetrator" in a carefully orchestrated campaign of violence against civilians perceived as supporters of Ouattara.

Prosecutors say about 3,000 people died in violence by both sides after last year's election.

Rights groups welcomed Gbagbo's extradition.

"This is a great day for Laurent Gbagbo's victims, for the people of Cote d'Ivoire, for international justice," said Human Rights Watch's Brody. "I mean, just a few months ago president Gbagbo's forces were holding the country hostage, killing, raping, and today he is facing justice. This is a very important message to all the leaders in the world that if they use the atrocities and crime to stay in power that they too could face justice."

The United Nations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented how forces loyal to Ouattara torched villages that voted for Gbagbo, and executed those that could not run away, including the elderly and the disabled, by rolling them inside mattresses and then setting them on fire.

Gbagbo "is not the only one responsible (for the human rights abuses committed during the post election period)," said 30-year-old Kossonou Agingra in Ivory Coast. "There were partisans of Alassane (Ouattara) who killed ? and partisans of Gbagbo who killed."

Gbagbo is expected to spend Wednesday settling in to his new cell in the court's seaside detention unit and will likely appear before judges later this week.

He will share a cell block with former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who is waiting for a verdict in his trial at an ad hoc tribunal on charges of orchestrating atrocities in Sierra Leone.

Taylor and the late Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who was put on trial at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, are the only two heads of state to have faced justice at an international court.

Gbagbo, a history professor, came to power in a flawed election in 2000. He failed to hold elections when his first five-year term expired in 2005, and rescheduled the vote a half-dozen times before it finally went ahead in November 2010.

As soon as it became clear that Ouattara was leading in the polls, Gbagbo's presidential guard surrounded the election commission, preventing the results from being announced.

Killings began as soon as the United Nations declared Ouattara the winner, and for the next four months morgues overflowed as the military under Gbagbo's control executed opponents, gunned down protesters and shelled neighborhoods.

The turning point came in March 2011 when thousands of unarmed women led a demonstration demanding Gbagbo's departure. Tanks opened fire with 50-caliber bullets and the horrific scene that followed was caught on camera phones, and led to condemnation by governments around the world.

The United Nations helped by French forces began air strikes soon after, clearing the path for Ouattara's soldiers to enter the capital, where they seized Gbagbo inside his bunker on April 11. He was held under house arrest in the country's north until he was flown out of the country Tuesday night ? likely the first of several suspects.

"Ivorian victims will see justice for massive crimes," Moreno-Ocampo said. "Mr. Gbagbo is the first to be brought to account, there is more to come."

___

Associated Press writers Laura Burke in Abidjan, Rukmini Callimachi in Kinshasa, Congo, and Jamey Keaten in Paris contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111130/ap_on_re_eu/eu_international_criminal_court_gbagbo

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Can Male Circumcision Stem the AIDS Epidemic in Africa?

News | Health

As a preventive measure, voluntary male circumcision is gaining favor as a large-scale attack against HIV's spread. But scaling it up will cost billions of dollars

By Katherine Harmon ?| November 29, 2011

CUTTING RISK: Is investing in an imperfect prevention method a wise attack on HIV/AIDS in Africa? Image: iStockphoto/muzon

For the Xhosa in South Africa, a boy's coming of age is often marked by an elaborate and lengthy set of rituals. One of the ordeals is circumcision, which is traditionally performed by a healer and occasionally leads to an ineffective cut, infection or even death. The young men who emerge from the ceremony healthy, however, achieve not only new social status but are also much less likely to become infected with HIV.

Adult male circumcision, in which the foreskin of the penis is surgically removed, has emerged as one of the more powerful reducers of infection risk. Some studies are finding that it decreases the odds that a heterosexual man will contract HIV by 57 percent or more. With HIV vaccine research still limping along, condoms being underused and the large-scale vaginal gel trial Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic (VOICE) just called off early last week after disappointing results, the operation has been gaining ground.

For the past three years 13 countries in southern and eastern Africa at the heart of the HIV/AIDS epidemic have been on a mission to circumcise 80 percent of their men by 2015 in an effort to cut in half the rate of sexual transmission of the disease from 2011 levels. And a new series of nine papers, published online Tuesday in PLoS Medicine, assesses whether the ambitious goals could work?and whether they are worth it.

The analyses "give a pretty optimistic assessment," says Atheendar Venkataramani, a resident physician and researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, who was not involved in the new papers. But from his own research in the field, he says, he is inclined to share the optimism.

Cutting costs
Because HIV and AIDS are still incurable, infection means a lifetime of antiretroviral therapy. So with more people getting infected every day, the cost of treatment for the ever growing global HIV population is increasing. A surgical procedure, such as a circumcision, is not cheap either, but when compared with indefinite treatment, the one-time cut is poised to be a cost saver.

The estimated price tag for all of the 13 countries (Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe) to reach the 80 percent male circumcision rate by 2015 would be somewhere on the order of $1.5 billion, the authors of one of the papers suggest. To keep that saturation constant for another 10 years would cost a further $500 million. These 20.3 million circumcisions, however, could prevent some 3.4 million new HIV infections in both men and women, according to the new findings. From 2016 to 2025, after accounting for the initial expenditures, the programs would save some $16.5 billion.

Previous research had concluded that male circumcision programs would be cost-effective, but this is some of the first large-scale work to incorporate information specific to country?and in some cases, region?to assess costs and savings. The recent data can go straight to the countries' respective ministers of health and, perhaps even more important, to the countries' ministers of finance, points out Emmanuel Njeuhmeli of the U.S. Agency for International Development, who is a co-author of several of the papers. "Understanding the science is not enough?they need to have the resources," he says of the countries' health ministries. And that can be a lot to ask of a sub-Saharan African country such as Lesotho, which has a GDP of $2.1 billion and where much of the population lacks even basic medical care.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=9182285fe0b91463326bbc1f0dd911f6

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Functional brain pathways disrupted in children with ADHD

Public release date: 28-Nov-2011
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Linda Brooks
lbrooks@rsna.org
630-590-7762
Radiological Society of North America

CHICAGO Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers have identified abnormalities in the brains of children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) that may serve as a biomarker for the disorder, according to a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

ADHD is one of the most common childhood disorders, affecting an estimated five to eight percent of school-aged children. Symptoms, which may continue into adulthood, include inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity behaviors that are out of the normal range for a child's age and development.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, there is no single test capable of diagnosing a child with the disorder. As a result, difficult children are often incorrectly labeled with ADHD while other children with the disorder remain undiagnosed.

"Diagnosing ADHD is very difficult because of its wide variety of behavioral symptoms," said lead researcher Xiaobo Li, Ph.D., assistant professor of radiology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. "Establishing a reliable imaging biomarker of ADHD would be a major contribution to the field."

For the study, Dr. Li and colleagues performed fMRI on 18 typically developing children and 18 children diagnosed with ADHD (age range 9 to 15 years). While undergoing fMRI, the children engaged in a test of sustained attention in which they were shown a set of three numbers and then asked whether subsequent groups of numbers matched the original set. For each participant, fMRI produced a brain activation map that revealed which regions of the brain became activated while the child performed the task. The researchers then compared the brain activation maps of the two groups.

Compared to the normal control group, the children with ADHD showed abnormal functional activity in several regions of the brain involved in the processing of visual attention information. The researchers also found that communication among the brain regions within this visual attention-processing pathway was disrupted in the children with ADHD.

"What this tells us is that children with ADHD are using partially different functional brain pathways to process this information, which may be caused by impaired white matter pathways involved in visual attention information processing," Dr. Li said.

Dr. Li said much of the research conducted on ADHD has focused on the impulsivity component of the disorder.

"Inattention is an equally important component of this disorder," she said, "and our findings contribute to understanding the pathology of inattentiveness in ADHD."

###

Coauthors are Shugao Xia, Ariane Kimball and Craig Branch, Ph.D.

Note: Copies of RSNA 2011 news releases and electronic images will be available online at RSNA.org/press11 beginning Monday, Nov. 28.

RSNA is an association of more than 48,000 radiologists, radiation oncologists, medical physicists and related scientists committed to excellence in patient care through education and research. The Society is based in Oak Brook, Ill. (RSNA.org)

Editor's note: The data in these releases may differ from those in the published abstract and those actually presented at the meeting, as researchers continue to update their data right up until the meeting. To ensure you are using the most up-to-date information, please call the RSNA Newsroom at 1-312-949-3233.

For patient-friendly information on fMRI of the brain, visit RadiologyInfo.org.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 28-Nov-2011
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Linda Brooks
lbrooks@rsna.org
630-590-7762
Radiological Society of North America

CHICAGO Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers have identified abnormalities in the brains of children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) that may serve as a biomarker for the disorder, according to a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

ADHD is one of the most common childhood disorders, affecting an estimated five to eight percent of school-aged children. Symptoms, which may continue into adulthood, include inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity behaviors that are out of the normal range for a child's age and development.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, there is no single test capable of diagnosing a child with the disorder. As a result, difficult children are often incorrectly labeled with ADHD while other children with the disorder remain undiagnosed.

"Diagnosing ADHD is very difficult because of its wide variety of behavioral symptoms," said lead researcher Xiaobo Li, Ph.D., assistant professor of radiology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. "Establishing a reliable imaging biomarker of ADHD would be a major contribution to the field."

For the study, Dr. Li and colleagues performed fMRI on 18 typically developing children and 18 children diagnosed with ADHD (age range 9 to 15 years). While undergoing fMRI, the children engaged in a test of sustained attention in which they were shown a set of three numbers and then asked whether subsequent groups of numbers matched the original set. For each participant, fMRI produced a brain activation map that revealed which regions of the brain became activated while the child performed the task. The researchers then compared the brain activation maps of the two groups.

Compared to the normal control group, the children with ADHD showed abnormal functional activity in several regions of the brain involved in the processing of visual attention information. The researchers also found that communication among the brain regions within this visual attention-processing pathway was disrupted in the children with ADHD.

"What this tells us is that children with ADHD are using partially different functional brain pathways to process this information, which may be caused by impaired white matter pathways involved in visual attention information processing," Dr. Li said.

Dr. Li said much of the research conducted on ADHD has focused on the impulsivity component of the disorder.

"Inattention is an equally important component of this disorder," she said, "and our findings contribute to understanding the pathology of inattentiveness in ADHD."

###

Coauthors are Shugao Xia, Ariane Kimball and Craig Branch, Ph.D.

Note: Copies of RSNA 2011 news releases and electronic images will be available online at RSNA.org/press11 beginning Monday, Nov. 28.

RSNA is an association of more than 48,000 radiologists, radiation oncologists, medical physicists and related scientists committed to excellence in patient care through education and research. The Society is based in Oak Brook, Ill. (RSNA.org)

Editor's note: The data in these releases may differ from those in the published abstract and those actually presented at the meeting, as researchers continue to update their data right up until the meeting. To ensure you are using the most up-to-date information, please call the RSNA Newsroom at 1-312-949-3233.

For patient-friendly information on fMRI of the brain, visit RadiologyInfo.org.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/rson-fbp112111.php

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