By Gillian R. Brassil and Jeré Longman A restrictive Idaho law — temporarily blocked by a federal judge Monday night — has amplified a charged debate about who should be allowed to compete in women’s sports, as transgender athletes have become increasingly accepted on the playing field while still facing strong resistance from some competitors and lawmakers. While scientific and societal views of sex and gender identity have changed significantly in recent decades, a vexing question persists regarding athletes who transition from male to female: how to balance inclusivity, competitive fairness and safety. There are no uniform guidelines — in fact the existing rules that govern sports often conflict — to determine the eligibility of transgender women and girls (policy battles have so far primarily centered on regulating women’s sports). And there is scant research on elite transgender athletes to guide sports officials as they attempt to provide equitable access to sports while reconciling any residual physiological advantages that may carry on from puberty. Dr. Eric Vilain, a geneticist specializing in sexual development who has advised the N.C.A.A. and the International Olympic Committee on policies for transgender athletes, said that sports leaders were confronted with “two almost irreconcilable positions” in setting eligibility standards — one relying on an athlete’s declared gender and the other on biological litmus tests. Politics, too, have entered the debate in a divided United States. While transgender people have broadly been more accepted across the country, the Trump administration and some states have sought to roll back protections for transgender people in health care, the military and other areas of civil rights, fueling a rise in hate crimes, according to the Human Rights Campaign. In March, Idaho became the first state to bar transgender girls and women from participating in women’s sports. © 2020 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 27426 - Posted: 08.20.2020

By Gretchen Reynolds People who are evening types go to bed later and wake up later than morning types. They also tend to move around far less throughout the day, according to an interesting new study of how our innate body clocks may be linked to our physical activity habits. The study, one of the first to objectively track daily movements of a large sample of early birds and night owls, suggests that knowing our chronotype might be important for our health. In recent years, a wealth of new science has begun explicating the complex roles of cellular clocks and chronotypes in our health and lifestyles. Thanks to this research, we know that each of us contains a master internal body clock, located in our brains, that tracks and absorbs outside clues, such as ambient light, to determine what time it is and how our bodies should react. This master clock directs the rhythmic release of hormones, such as melatonin, and other chemicals that affect sleep, wakefulness, hunger and many other physiological systems. Responding in part to these biochemical signals, as well as our genetic inclinations and other factors, we each develop a chronotype, which is our overall biological response to the daily passage of time. Chronotypes are often categorized into one of three groups: morning, day or night. Someone with a morning chronotype will naturally wake early; feel most alert and probably hungry in the morning; and be ready for bed before Colbert comes on. Day types tend to wake a bit later and experience peak alertness a few hours deeper into the day. And evening types rise as late as possible and remain vampirically wakeful well past dark. Our chronotypes are not immutable, though. Research shows that they have a yearslong rhythm of their own, with most people harboring a morning or day chronotype when young, an evening version during adolescence and young adulthood, and a return to a day or morning type by middle age. But some people remain night owls lifelong. Our shifting chronotypes are known to affect our health, especially if someone is an evening type. In past studies, people identified as evening types were more likely to develop heart disease, obesity, diabetes and other metabolic conditions than people with other chronotypes. They also tended to exercise less and sit far more, which some researchers suspect contributes to their risks for health problems. © 2020 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 27425 - Posted: 08.18.2020

Sharks have more complex social lives than previously known, as shown by a study finding that gray reef sharks in the Pacific Ocean cultivate surprising social networks with one another and develop bonds that can endure for years. The research focused on the social behavior of 41 reef sharks around the Palmyra Atoll, about 1,000 miles southwest of Hawaii, using acoustic transmitters to track them and camera tags to gain greater clarity into their interactions. Far from being solitary creatures, the sharks formed social communities that remained rather stable over time, with some of the same individuals remaining together during the four years of the study. The researchers documented a daily pattern, with sharks spending mornings together in groups of sometimes close to 20 individuals in the same part of the reef, dispersing throughout the day and into the night, and reconvening the next morning. “Sharks are incredible animals and still quite misunderstood,” said Florida International University marine biologist Yannis Papastamatiou, lead author of the research published last week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society. “I like to talk about their ‘secret social lives’ not because they want it to be a secret, but because only recently have we developed the tools to start seeing and understanding their social lives,” Papastamatiou said. “Not all sharks are social and some are likely solitary.” The reef shark is medium-sized, reaching about six feet long. Its sociality bore similarities in terms of stability over time to certain birds and mammals but differed in that it did not involve nesting, mating, making vocalizations or friendly interactions.

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 27424 - Posted: 08.18.2020

By Jillian Kramer We spend a substantial part of our days visually scanning an area for something we want—our keys or ketchup, for example. For scientists the way we do so “provides a window into how our minds sift through the information that arrives at our eyes,” says Jason Fischer, a cognitive neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University. Past research has focused on readily apparent visual characteristics such as color, shape and size. But an object's intrinsic physical properties—things we know from experience but cannot see, such as hardness—also come into play. “You may not be able to immediately see that a brick is heavier than a soda can and harder than a piece of cake, but you know it. And that knowledge guides how you act on a brick as compared with those other objects,” says Fischer, senior author on a new study led by graduate student Li Guo. “We asked whether that knowledge about objects' hidden physical properties is, in itself, something you can use to locate objects faster.” The study was published online in May in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Researchers asked study participants to pick out the image of an item in a grid of other objects as quickly as possible. Each grid was controlled for the color, size and shape of the objects presented, so participants could not use easy visual cues. For example, when they were asked to find a cutting board, the grid also included softer but similarly colored items such as a croissant and a bandage and similarly shaped items, among them a sponge, pillow and paper bag. © 2020 Scientific American

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 27423 - Posted: 08.18.2020

By Hannah Thomasy Some 2 percent of men in the U.S. identify as bisexual. But, for decades, some sexuality researchers have questioned whether true bisexual orientation exists in men. In 2005, J. Michael Bailey, a sexuality researcher at Northwestern University, and two colleagues showed men who identify as bisexual brief pornographic clips featuring men or women, while measuring their subjects’ self-reported arousal and change in penis circumference. The results, when compared to men who identified as straight or gay, led them to conclude that the men identifying as bisexual did not actually have “strong genital arousal to both male and female sexual stimuli.” This was in contrast to work on sexual arousal in women, which showed that they — whether identifying as straight or gay — were physically aroused by both male and female stimuli. A New York Times headline covering Bailey’s 2005 study on men declared: “Straight, Gay, or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited.” But the paper also spurred more research into the subject — some of which has now led Bailey to revise his conclusions. In a paper published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Bailey and 12 colleagues reanalyzed data from eight previously published studies of bisexual-identified men, including the 2005 paper. The new review finds that men who reported attraction to both men and women do in fact show genital arousal towards both male and female stimuli. The data, the authors conclude, offers “robust evidence for bisexual orientation among men.” The PNAS study has drawn positive coverage and received praise from some activists, who see it as valuable confirmation for an often-marginalized sexual identity. But it has also received backlash from other scientists and many bisexual people, some of whom argue that in attempting to prove, based on genital arousal, that bisexuality exists, researchers are discounting bisexual people’s lived experiences. It has also reignited a broader debate over the ethics of human sexuality research — and about what role, if any, scientists should play in validating the experiences of queer people.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 27422 - Posted: 08.18.2020

By Jan Hoffman The collateral damage from the pandemic continues: Young adults, as well as Black and Latino people of all ages, describe rising levels of anxiety, depression and even suicidal thoughts, and increased substance abuse, according to findings reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a research survey, U.S. residents reported signs of eroding mental health in reaction to the toll of coronavirus illnesses and deaths, and to the life-altering restrictions imposed by lockdowns. The researchers argue that the results point to an urgent need for expanded and culturally sensitive services for mental health and substance abuse, including telehealth counseling. In the online survey completed by some 5,400 people in late June, the prevalence of anxiety symptoms was three times as high as those reported in the second quarter of 2019, and depression was four times as high. The effects of the coronavirus outbreaks were felt most keenly by young adults ages 18 to 24. According to Mark Czeisler, a psychology researcher at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, nearly 63 percent had symptoms of anxiety or depression that they attributed to the pandemic and nearly a quarter had started or increased their abuse of substances, including alcohol, marijuana and prescription drugs, to cope with their emotions. “It’s ironic that young adults who are at lower risk than older adults of severe illness caused by Covid-19 are experiencing worse mental health symptoms,” said Mr. Czeisler. A survey of about 5,000 people done in April, during the earlier days of the pandemic, Mr. Czeisler said, suggested that tremors in the mental health firmament were beginning to surface. Already in April, high percentages of respondents reported they were spending more time on screens and less time outside than before the pandemic, which translated into more virtual interactions and far fewer in person. They noted upheavals to family, school, exercise and work routines, and to their sleeping patterns. All of these are factors that can contribute to the robustness of mental health. © 2020 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 27421 - Posted: 08.15.2020

By Lucy Hicks “Social distancing” has become one of the buzz phrases of the year. But it turns out humans aren’t the only animals that put some space between themselves and others to reduce the transmission of disease. Wildlife—from finches to mandrills—use similar tactics, according to a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Science chatted with two of the study’s authors—Andrea Townsend, a behavioral ecologist at Hamilton College, and Dana Hawley, a biologist at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University—about how self-isolating works throughout the animal kingdom. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Get more great content like this delivered right to you! Q: How do animals know when they need to socially distance? Andrea Townsend: COVID-19 has so many symptoms that it’s hard to know when someone is sick. But some animals like house finches use very general behavioral cues, such as lethargy, to assess potential infections and avoid certain individuals. Dana Hawley: In other cases, animals have evolved fairly complex cues to induce social distancing. The Caribbean spiny lobster [a social lobster that normally lives in groups] has evolved to detect a chemical cue in the urine of sick lobsters and avoid areas that these sick lobsters occupy. Another example is in mandrills. Researchers took the feces of animals that did or did not have parasites and basically put a tiny amount on the side of a tree. They found that the primates were much more strongly drawn to the feces of unparasitized animals than those that were parasitized. © 2020 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 27420 - Posted: 08.15.2020

By Carolyn Wilke Taste buds can turn food from mere fuel into a memorable meal. Now researchers have discovered a set of supersensing cells in the taste buds of mice that can detect four of the five flavors that the buds recognize. Bitter, sweet, sour and umami — these cells can catch them all. That’s a surprise because it’s commonly thought that taste cells are very specific, detecting just one or two flavors. Some known taste cells respond to only one compound, for instance, detecting sweet sucralose or bitter caffeine. But the new results suggest that a far more complicated process is at work. When neurophysiologist Debarghya Dutta Banik and colleagues turned off the sensing abilities of more specific taste cells in mice, the researchers were startled to find other cells responding to flavors. Pulling those cells out of the rodents’ taste buds and giving them a taste of several compounds revealed a group of cells that can sense multiple chemicals across different taste classes, the team reports August 13 in PLOS Genetics. “We never expected that any population of [taste] cells would respond to so many different compounds,” says Dutta Banik, of the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. But taste cells don’t respond to flavors in insolation; the brain and the tongue work together as tastemakers (SN: 11/24/15). So the scientists monitored the brain to see if it received bitter, sweet or umami signals when mice lacked a key protein needed for these broadly tasting cells to relay information. Those observations revealed that without the protein, the brain didn’t get the flavor messages, which was also shown when mice slurped bitter solutions as though they were water even though the rodents hate bitter tastes, says Dutta Banik, who did the work at the University at Buffalo in New York. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2020.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 27419 - Posted: 08.15.2020

By Katherine J. Wu Dr. Arianne Pontes Oriá stands firm: She does not make animals cry for a living. Technically, only humans can cry, or weep in response to an emotional state, said Dr. Oriá, a veterinarian at the Federal University of Bahia in Brazil. For humans, crying is a way to physically manifest feelings, which are difficult to study and confirm in other creatures. But Dr. Oriá does collect animal tears — the liquid that keeps eyes clean and nourished. In vertebrates, or animals with backbones, tears are vital for vision, Dr. Oriá said. And yet, these captivating fluids have been paid little to no attention, except in a select few mammals. “A lot of vision, we’re not aware of until it’s a problem,” said Sebastian Echeverri, a biologist who studies animal vision but doesn’t work with Dr. Oriá’s team. “We notice when tears are missing.” That’s a bit of a shame, Dr. Oriá said. Because whether it hails from dogs, parrots or tortoises, the stuff that seeps out of animals’ eyes is simply “fascinating,” she said. As she and her colleagues have reported in a series of recent papers, including one published on Thursday in the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science, tears can be great equalizers: Across several branches of the tree of life, vertebrates seem to swaddle their eyes with fluid in much the same way. But to help them cope with the challenges of various environments, evolution has tinkered with the tears of the world’s creatures in ways that scientists are only beginning to explore. Research like Dr. Oriá’s could offer a glimpse into the myriad paths that eyes have taken to maximize their health and the well-being of the organisms that use them. © 2020 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 27418 - Posted: 08.15.2020

Alison Abbott Two years ago, Jennifer Li and Drew Robson were trawling through terabytes of data from a zebrafish-brain experiment when they came across a handful of cells that seemed to be psychic. The two neuroscientists had planned to map brain activity while zebrafish larvae were hunting for food, and to see how the neural chatter changed. It was their first major test of a technological platform they had built at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The platform allowed them to view every cell in the larvae’s brains while the creatures — barely the size of an eyelash — swam freely in a 35-millimetre-diameter dish of water, snacking on their microscopic prey. Out of the scientists’ mountain of data emerged a handful of neurons that predicted when a larva was next going to catch and swallow a morsel. Some of these neurons even became activated many seconds before the larva fixed its eyes on the prey1. Something else was strange. Looking in more detail at the data, the researchers realized that the ‘psychic’ cells were active for an unusually long time — not seconds, as is typical for most neurons, but many minutes. In fact, more or less the duration of the larvae’s hunting bouts. “It was spooky,” says Li. “None of it made sense.” Li and Robson turned to the literature and slowly realized that the cells must be setting an overall ‘brain state’ — a pattern of prolonged brain activity that primed the larvae to engage with the food in front of them. The pair learnt that, in the past few years, other scientists using various approaches and different species had also found internal brain states that alter how an animal behaves, even when nothing has changed in its external environment. © 2020 Springer Nature Limited

Keyword: Attention; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 27417 - Posted: 08.12.2020

Jon Hamilton The Food and Drug Administration has approved a variant of the anesthetic and party drug ketamine for suicidal patients with major depression. The drug is a nasal spray called Spravato and it contains esketamine, a chemical cousin of ketamine. In 2019, the FDA approved Spravato for patients with major depressive disorder who hadn't responded to other treatments. Now, the agency is adding patients who are having suicidal thoughts or have recently attempted to harm themselves or take their own lives. "Spravato is the first approved antidepressant medication that's been able to demonstrate a reduction in symptoms of major depressive disorder within 24 hours after the first dose," says Dr. Michelle Kramer, a psychiatrist and vice president of U.S. neuroscience, medical affairs at Janssen Pharmaceuticals, which makes the drug. Janssen is part of Johnson & Johnson. The drug's quick action is potentially important for suicidal patients because "existing drugs typically can take weeks or longer before you really get noticeable clinical benefit," says Dr. Gerard Sanacora, a professor of psychiatry at Yale University and director of Yale's depression research program. He was involved in the studies leading to the FDA approval and has consulted for Janssen. So a dose of esketamine "could potentially get a person out of a difficult, horrible situation when they're feeling so overwhelmed," says Dr. Charles Conway, a professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who wasn't involved in the study. "This could be a significant improvement in how we can help people who have intense suicidal thinking." © 2020 npr

Keyword: Depression; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 27416 - Posted: 08.12.2020

Children wearing multifocal contact lenses had slower progression of their myopia, according to results from a clinical trial funded by the National Eye Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health. The findings support an option for controlling the condition, also called nearsightedness, which increases the risk of cataracts, glaucoma and retinal detachment later in life. Investigators of the Bifocal Lenses In Nearsighted Kids (BLINK) Study published the results August 11 in JAMA(link is external). “It is especially good news to know that children as young as 7 achieved optimal visual acuity and got used to wearing multifocal lenses much the way they would a single vision contact lens. It’s not a problem to fit younger kids in contact lenses. It’s a safe practice,” said BLINK study chair, Jeffrey J. Walline, O.D., Ph.D., associate dean for research at the Ohio State University College of Optometry Myopia occurs when a child’s developing eyes grow too long from front to back. Instead of focusing images on the retina—the light-sensitive tissue in the back of the eye—images of distant objects are focused at a point in front of the retina. As a result, people with myopia have good near vision but poor distance vision. Single vision prescription glasses and contact lenses are used to correct myopic vision but fail to treat the underlying problem. Multifocal contact lenses – typically used to improve near vision of people over the age of 40 years – correct myopic vision in children while simultaneously slowing myopia progression by slowing eye growth.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 27415 - Posted: 08.12.2020

Elizabeth Landau Carmen Sandi recalls the skepticism she faced at first. A behavioral neuroscientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, she had followed a hunch that something going on inside critical neural circuits could explain anxious behavior, something beyond brain cells and the synaptic connections between them. The experiments she began in 2013 showed that neurons involved in anxiety-related behaviors showed abnormalities: Their mitochondria, the organelles often described as cellular power plants, didn’t work well — they produced curiously low levels of energy. Those results suggested that mitochondria might be involved in stress-related symptoms in the animals. But that idea ran contrary to the “synapto-centric” vision of the brain held by many neuroscientists at the time. Her colleagues found it hard to believe Sandi’s evidence that in anxious individuals — at least in rats — mitochondria inside key neurons might be important. “Whenever I presented the data, they told me, ‘It’s very interesting, but you got it wrong,’” Sandi said. Yet a growing number of scientists have joined her during the past decade or so in wondering whether mitochondria might be fundamental not just to our general physical well-being but specifically to our mental health. In particular, they have explored whether mitochondria affect how we respond to stress and conditions like anxiety and depression. Carmen Sandi, a behavioral neuroscientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, suspected that a deficit in cellular energy might explain the lack of motivation that anxiety-prone people experience. © 2020 Simons Foundation

Keyword: Stress; Depression
Link ID: 27414 - Posted: 08.11.2020

By Laura Sanders When your brain stops working — completely and irreversibly — you’re dead. But drawing the line between life and brain death isn’t always easy. A new report attempts to clarify that distinction, perhaps helping to ease the anguish of family members with a loved one whose brain has died but whose heart still beats. Brain death has been a recognized concept in medicine for decades. But there’s a lot of variation in how people define it, says Gene Sung, a neurocritical care physician at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “Showing that there is some worldwide consensus, understanding and agreement at this time will hopefully help minimize misunderstanding of what brain death is,” Sung says. As part of the World Brain Death Project, Sung and his colleagues convened doctors from professional societies around the world to forge a consensus on how to identify brain death. This group, including experts in critical care, neurology and neurosurgery, reviewed the existing research on brain death (which was slim) and used their clinical expertise to write the recommendations, published August 3 in JAMA. In addition to the main guidelines, the final product included 17 supplements that address legal and religious aspects, provide checklists and flowcharts, and even trace the history of relevant medical advances. “Basically, we wrote a book,” Sung says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2020.

Keyword: Consciousness; Brain imaging
Link ID: 27413 - Posted: 08.11.2020

By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie My daughter and I were playing tag, or a kind of tag. Before that, we traced the letter P and we danced to James Brown’s “I feel good,” a song she selected from the iPod. We laughed as we danced, she with a natural rhythm striking for a 4-year-old, and I with my irretrievable gracelessness. Next on our plan was “Sesame Street.” It was about 2 p.m. on May 28. A day complacent with the promise of no surprises, like all the other days of the lockdown, shrunken days with shriveled routines. “When coronavirus is over,” my daughter often said, words filled with yearning for her preschool, her friends, her swimming lessons. And I, amid snatches of joy and discovery, often felt bored, and then guilty for feeling boredom, in this expanded boundless role of parent-playmate. My daughter picked up a green balloon pump, squirted the air at me, and ran off, around the kitchen counter. When I caught her, squealing, it was her turn to chase me. I was wearing white slippers, from some hotel somewhere, back when international travel was normal. They felt soft and thin-soled. I recall all these clearly, because of all the things I will be unable to recall later. I turned away from the kitchen to make the chase longer and something happened. I slipped or I tripped or my destiny thinned and I fell and hit my head on the hardwood floor. At the beginning of the stay-at-home order, plagued by amorphous anxieties, I taught my daughter how to call my doctor husband at work. Just in case. My daughter says that after I fell I told her, “Call Papa.” My husband says I spoke coherently. I told him that I fell and that the pain in my head was “excruciating,” and when I said “excruciating,” I seemed to wince. He says he asked my daughter to get me the ice pack in the freezer and that I said, “Thank you, baby,” when she gave it to me. I do not remember any of this.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 27412 - Posted: 08.11.2020

By Simon Makin New research could let scientists co-opt biology's basic building block—the cell—to construct materials and structures within organisms. A study, published in March in Science and led by Stanford University psychiatrist and bioengineer Karl Deisseroth, shows how to make specific cells produce electricity-carrying (or blocking) polymers on their surfaces. The work could someday allow researchers to build large-scale structures within the body or improve brain interfaces for prosthetic limbs. In the medium term, the technique may be useful in bioelectric medicine, which involves delivering therapeutic electrical pulses. Researchers in this area have long been interested in incorporating polymers that conduct or inhibit electricity without damaging surrounding tissues. Stimulating specific cells—to intervene in a seizure, for instance—is much more precise than flooding the whole organism with drugs, which can cause broad side effects. But current bioelectric methods, such as those using electrodes, still affect large numbers of cells indiscriminately. The new technique uses a virus to deliver genes to desired cell types, instructing them to produce an enzyme (Apex2) on their surface. The enzyme sparks a chemical reaction between precursor molecules and hydrogen peroxide, infused in the space between cells; this reaction causes the precursors to fuse into a polymer on the targeted cells. “What's new here is the intertwining of various emerging fields in one application,” says University of Florida biomedical engineer Kevin Otto, who was not involved in the research but co-authored an accompanying commentary in Science. “The use of conductive polymers assembled [inside living tissue] through synthetic biology, to enable cell-specific interfacing, is very novel.” © 2020 Scientific American

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Epigenetics
Link ID: 27411 - Posted: 08.11.2020

by Laura Dattaro Extra repeating bits of DNA may account for nearly 3 percent of the genetic architecture of autism, according to a new study1. The work is the first to examine such genetic variants in autism on a large scale. About half of the identified repeating sections occur in genes that have not been previously linked to autism, suggesting new lines of inquiry for geneticists. “These genes are involved in autism, absolutely,” says study investigator Steve Scherer, professor of medicine at the University of Toronto in Canada. “Those [genes] will become diagnostic tests for the autism screening panel.” The researchers looked at areas of the genome with tandem repeats — stretches of 2 to 20 nucleotides, which are the ‘building blocks’ of DNA, that are repeated two or more times in one spot. These repeats can expand when they are passed down from parents to children: If a nucleotide, or combination of them, is repeated 10 times in a parents’ DNA, it may be repeated hundreds of times in their child, for example. The more a repeat expands, the more likely it is that it will disrupt the gene’s function. Some specific repeats are already associated with autism: About 5 percent of autistic people have fragile X syndrome, which is nearly always caused by the expansion of a particular repeat in the FMR1 gene. But less than a quarter of people with autism have a known genetic cause, even though twin studies suggest that autism is highly heritable2. © 2020 Simons Foundation

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 27410 - Posted: 08.11.2020

By Priyanka Runwal Everyone needs to cool off on a scorching summer day, even chimpanzees. Where do the primates go on sizzling days when woodlands and forests don’t provide respite from the heat? But not just any chimps. New research shows that on Senegal’s savannas, home to a population of chimpanzees that has long fascinated scientists for their distinct behaviors, you’re more likely to find mama chimps than adult males or non-lactating females hiding out in cool caves. Their visits coincided with the hottest times of day and became more frequent during the hottest months of the year, according to the study published last month in the International Journal of Primatology. They also made these visits despite the risks of encounters with predators, showing how important the locations are for helping them survive and bring up babies in a challenging landscape that is threatened by human activities. In southeastern Senegal, temperatures spike to 110 degrees Fahrenheit and fires burn large parts of the landscape over a seven-month dry season. Several natural cave formations pock the terrain, and they can be up to 55 degrees cooler than the surrounding grasslands. The region is also home to the northernmost population of western chimpanzees, a critically endangered subspecies that mostly lives in large swathes of open grasslands and woodlands in this area. In 2001, Jill Pruetz, a primatologist then at Iowa State University, gathered evidence of western chimpanzees using caves in the area, suspecting that they used them to escape the heat and possibly avoid heat stroke and other ill health effects of the dry season. But she reached few conclusions about whether all of the chimps used the caves as often as others. Kelly Boyer Ontl, a primatologist at Ball State University in Indiana and lead author of the new study, said, “I was really interested in finding out what chimpanzees are doing in caves, when are they using it and who’s going in there.” © 2020 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 27409 - Posted: 08.08.2020

By Hannah Sparks For communities with a low rate of depression and suicide, there may be something in the water, according to a new study. A comprehensive analysis of findings from previous studies has revealed that regions where the public drinking water contains a high level of naturally occurring lithium — a mineral used most often for the treatment of depression and bipolar disorder — also boast a lower rate of suicide than other areas. The review included all prior research on the effects of lithium, as well as regional water samples and suicide data from 1,286 locales in Austria, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, the UK, Japan and the United States. “Naturally occurring lithium in drinking water may have the potential to reduce the risk of suicide and may possibly help in mood stabilization, particularly in populations with relatively high suicide rates and geographical areas with a greater range of lithium concentration in the drinking water,” the authors concluded in their report. Denoted as “Li” on the periodic table, the element is found in varying concentrations in crops, rocks, soil and ground water — thus how it seeps into our water supply. In a statement on the King’s College London website, lead study author and chairman of epidemiology and public health at Brighton and Sussex Medical School Anjum Memon said, “It is promising that higher levels of trace lithium in drinking water may exert an anti-suicidal effect and have the potential to improve community mental health.” The results, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, “are also consistent with the finding in clinical trials that lithium reduces suicide and related behaviors in people with a mood disorder,” said Allan Young, a professor at King’s College’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience.

Keyword: Depression; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 27408 - Posted: 08.08.2020

Viviana Gradinaru Despite the wealth and quality of basic neuroscience research, there is still little we can do to treat or prevent most brain disorders. Industry efforts, meanwhile, have shied away from this field, particularly after a series of major drug candidates for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease failed to meet expectations (1). My previous research, which entailed developing and using optogenetics (2, 3) to understand how deep brain stimulation works in Parkinson's disease (PD) (4, 5), resulted in two key insights: We need to look and intervene earlier in brain disease progression, and we need to be able to access relevant cell populations with noninvasive yet precise tools to investigate, prevent, contain, or even reverse the course of disease. Accumulating evidence has highlighted a third insight: We may need to look beyond the brain to fully understand brain disorders (6, 7). My goal has been to develop an effective toolkit for neuromodulation so we can start to bridge the gap between what we know and what we can do to treat the brain. To achieve minimally invasive optogenetic-mediated modulation, we need to be able to penetrate the blood–brain barrier (BBB) so that vectors can be delivered systemically rather than through intracranial injections and address the poor reach of visible light through tissue so that large tissue volumes can be recruited without implantation of optical fibers. For early intervention, we need to get past the neuronal and brain-centric view of neurological disease. © 2020 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Depression
Link ID: 27407 - Posted: 08.08.2020