It is widely reported that a picture of an angry face seems to figuratively pop out of an array of happy faces, although all of these reports are based on a single experiment by Hansen and Hansen. Pop out, when it occurs, indicates that an observer has located the target by means of a preattentive, parallel search. Hansen and Hansen concluded that it was the affect displayed by the face which caused it to pop out from its surrounding distracters. However, Hansen and Hansen's angry faces contained extraneous dark areas which were introduced when they transformed Ekman and Friesen's photographs of angry and happy faces into black-on-white sketches. When the original artifact-free gray-scaled versions of angry and happy faces were used no evidence for pop out was found. All target faces were found during a serial, self-terminating search regardless of their expression. The angry face in Hansen and Hansen's experiments may have popped out from a crowd of happy faces because of a contrast artifact inadvertently introduced when they created their stimuli.

Trastuzumab is an effective treatment for patients with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) that overexpresses HER-2. A high incidence of brain metastases (BM) has been noted in patients receiving trastuzumab. A retrospective chart review was conducted of 100 patients commencing trastuzumab for metastatic breast cancer from July 1999 to December 2002, at the Christie Hospital. Seven patients were excluded; five patients developed central nervous system metastases prior to starting trastuzumab, and inadequate data were available for two. Out of the remaining 93 patients, 23 (25%) have developed BM to date. In all, 46 patients have died, and of these 18 (39%) have been diagnosed with BM prior to death. Of the 23 patients developing BM, 18 (78%) were hormone receptor negative and 18 (78%) had visceral disease. Univariate analysis showed a significant association between the development of cerebral disease and both hormone receptor status and the presence of visceral disease. In conclusion, a high proportion of patients with MBC treated with trastuzumab develop symptomatic cerebral metastases. HER-2-positive breast cancer may have a predilection for the brain, or trastuzumab therapy may change the disease pattern by prolonging survival. New strategies to address this problem require investigation in this group of patients.

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Goserelin offers an effective, well-tolerated alternative to CMF in premenopausal patients with ER-positive and node-positive early breast cancer.