Tracking the brain’s reaction to virtual-reality-simulated threats such as falling rocks and an under-researched fear reduction strategy may provide better ways of treating anxiety disorders and preventing relapses. Hippocrates described them as ‘masses of terrors,’ while French physicians in the 18th century labelled them as ‘vapours’ and ‘melancholia.’ Nowadays we know that panic attacks, a common symptom of anxiety, can be linked to intense phobias or even a general anxiety disorder with no specific source. ‘But if you’re not sure what a panic attack is, it’s very frightening,’ said Dr Iris Lange, a psychologist based at KU Leuven, in Belgium. ‘You probably think you will get a heart attack. We see a lot of people having to go to the medical emergency services.’ According to an EU and OECD report from 2018, anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorder across European Union countries and affect an estimated 25 million people. Decades of research have shown how anxiety amplifies sensitivity to threats. People with high anxiety will perceive even non-harmful things, such as insects, as potential threats. However, researchers have until recently used mice and rat experiments to understand the neuroscientific concepts of how anxiety patients behave when defending themselves from such perceived threats. ‘We are translating concepts that are probably not translatable (to humans), or we're just translating very core concepts,’ said Professor Dominik R Bach, a neuroscientist at University College London, in the UK.

Keyword: Stress; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 27305 - Posted: 06.17.2020

by Tessa van Leeuwen, Rob van Lier Have you ever considered what your favorite piece of music tastes like? Or the color of Tuesday? If the answer is yes, you might be a synesthete. For people with synesthesia, ordinary sensory events, such as listening to music or reading text, elicit experiences involving other senses, such as perceiving a taste or seeing a color. Synesthesia is not to be confused with common metaphors — such as saying someone ‘sees red’ to describe anger. Instead, synesthetic associations are perceptual, highly specific and idiosyncratic, and typically stable beginning in childhood. And many types exist: A taste can have a shape, a word can have a color, the months of the year may be experienced as an array around the body. In the general population, the phenomenon is relatively rare: Only 2 to 4 percent of people have it. But as much as 20 percent of people with autism experience synesthesia1,2. Why would two relatively rare conditions occur together so often? Over the past few years, researchers have found that people with synesthesia or autism share many characteristics. Synesthetes often have sensory sensitivities and attention differences, as well as other autism traits3,4. The two conditions also share brain connectivity patterns and possibly genes, suggesting they have common biological underpinnings. © 2020 Simons Foundation

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 27304 - Posted: 06.17.2020

By Julia Hollingsworth, CNN (CNN)Laura Molles is so attuned to birds that she can tell where birds of some species are from just by listening to their song. She's not a real-world Dr Doolittle. She's an ecologist in Christchurch, New Zealand, who specializes in a little-known area of science: bird dialects. While some birds are born knowing how to sing innately, many need to be taught how to sing by adults -- just like humans. Those birds can develop regional dialects, meaning their songs sound slightly different depending on where they live. Think Boston and Georgia accents, but for birds. Just as speaking the local language can make it easier for humans to fit in, speaking the local bird dialect can increase a bird's chances of finding a mate. And, more ominously, just as human dialects can sometimes disappear as the world globalizes, bird dialects can be shaped or lost as cities grow. The similarities between human language and bird song aren't lost on Molles -- or on her fellow bird dialect experts. "There are wonderful parallels," said American ornithologist Donald Kroodsma, the author of "Birdsong for the Curious Naturalist: Your Guide to Listening." "Culture, oral traditions -- it's all the same." For centuries, bird song has inspired poets and musicians, but it wasn't until the 1950s that scientists really started paying attention to bird dialects. One of the pioneers of the field was a British-born behaviorist named Peter Marler, who became interested in the subject when he noticed that chaffinches in the United Kingdom sounded different from valley to valley. At first, he transcribed bird songs by hand, according to a profile of him in a Rockefeller University publication. Later, he used a sonagram, which Kroodsma describes on his website as "a musical score for birdsong." ("You really need to see these songs to believe them, our eyes are so much better than our ears," Kroodsma said.) © 2020 Cable News Network.Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 27303 - Posted: 06.17.2020

By Laura Sanders The virus responsible for COVID-19 can steal a person’s sense of smell, leaving them noseblind to fresh-cut grass, a pungent meal or even their own stale clothes. But so far, details remain elusive about how SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, can infiltrate and shut down the body’s smelling machinery. One recent hint comes from a young radiographer who lost her sense of smell. She had signs of viral infection in her brain. Other studies, though, have not turned up signs of the virus in the brain. Contradictory evidence means that no one knows whether SARS-CoV-2 can infect nerve cells in the brain directly, and if so, whether the virus’s route to the brain can sometimes start in the nose. Understanding how people’s sense of smell is harmed (SN: 5/11/20), a symptom estimated to afflict anywhere between 20 and 80 percent of people with COVID-19, could reveal more about how the virus operates. One thing is certain so far, though: The virus can steal the sense of smell in a way that’s not normal. “There’s something unusual about the relationship between COVID-19 and smell,” says neuroscientist Sandeep Robert Datta of Harvard Medical School in Boston. Colds can prevent smelling by stuffing the nose up with mucus. But SARS-CoV-2 generally leaves the nose clear. “Lots of people are complaining about losing their sense of smell when they don’t feel stuffed up at all,” Datta says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2020.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 27302 - Posted: 06.13.2020

Natalie Dombois for Quanta Magazine It’s not surprising that the fruit fly larva in the laboratory of Jimena Berni crawls across its large plate of agar in search of food. “A Drosophila larva is either eating or not eating, and if it’s not eating, it wants to eat,” she said. The surprise is that this larva can search for food at all. Owing to a suite of genetic tricks performed by Berni, it has no functional brain. In fact, the systems that normally relay sensations of touch and feedback from its muscles have also been shut down. Berni, an Argentinian neuroscientist whose investigations of fruit fly nervous systems recently earned her a group leader position at the University of Sussex, is learning what the tiny cluster of neurons that directly controls the larva’s muscles does when it’s allowed to run free, entirely without input from the brain or senses. How does the animal forage when it’s cut off from information about the outside world? The answer is that it moves according to a very particular pattern of random movements, a finding that thrilled Berni and her collaborator David Sims, a professor of marine ecology at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, U.K. For in its prowl for food, this insensate maggot behaves exactly like an animal Sims has studied for more than 25 years — a shark. In neuroscience, the usual schema for considering behavior has it that the brain receives inputs, combines them with stored information, then decides what to do next. This corresponds to our own intuitions and experiences, because we humans are almost always responding to what we sense and remember. But for many creatures, useful information isn’t always available, and for them something else may also be going on. When searching their environment, sharks and a diverse array of other species, now including fruit fly larvae, sometimes default to the same pattern of movement, a specific type of random motion called a Lévy walk. All Rights Reserved © 2020

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Aggression
Link ID: 27301 - Posted: 06.13.2020

Ruth Williams Research teams in the US and Japan have each discovered independently and by unrelated routes a population of hypothalamic neurons in mice that induce the low body temperature, reduced metabolism, and inactivity characteristic of hibernation and torpor. The two papers are published today (June 11) in Nature. “Trying to pin down which neurons are involved with initiating torpor and hibernation . . . is certainly something that biologists have been interested in for several years now,” says biologist Steven Swoap of Williams College who was not involved in the research. “Both of [the teams] come at it from a different angle and almost end up in the same place, so they complement each other in that way, which is pretty nice,” he adds. Hibernation and daily torpor are both forms of mammalian suspended animation and share a number of features. Both involve significant, but regulated, drops in body temperature, metabolism, heart rate, breathing rate, and activity, and both are thought to be ways of preserving energy when food is scarce. While hibernation lasts for weeks or months, however, daily torpor lasts several hours each day. Why some mammals such as bears and certain primates and rodents have the ability to enter periods of dormancy while others don’t is unknown. But the diversity of hibernator species suggests that the biological mechanisms controlling such states may also be preserved, albeit unused, in non-hibernating species. This tantalizing possibility sparks ideas of sending dormant astronauts on extended space journeys as well as more down-to-earth notions of temporarily lowering body temperature and metabolism to preserve tissues in patients with, for example, traumatic injuries. © 1986–2020 The Scientist.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 27300 - Posted: 06.13.2020

By Sam Roberts Oleh Hornykiewicz, a Polish-born pharmacologist whose breakthrough research on Parkinson’s disease has spared millions of patients the tremors and other physical impairments it can cause, died on May 27 in Vienna. He was 93. His death was confirmed by his longtime colleague, Professor Stephen J. Kish of the University of Toronto, where Professor Hornykiewicz (pronounced whor-nee-KEE-eh-vitch) taught from 1967 until his retirement in 1992. Professor Hornykiewicz was among several scientists who were considered instrumental in first identifying a deficiency of the neurotransmitter dopamine as a cause of Parkinson’s disease, and then in perfecting its treatment with L-dopa, an amino acid found in fava beans. The Nobel laureate Dr. Arvid Carlsson and his colleagues had earlier shown that dopamine played a role in motor function. Drawing on that research, Professor Hornykiewicz and his assistant, Herbert Ehringer, discovered in 1960 that the brains of patients who had died of Parkinson’s had very low levels of dopamine. He persuaded another one of his collaborators, the neurologist Walther Birkmayer, to inject Parkinson’s patients with L-dopa, the precursor of dopamine, which could cross the barrier between blood vessels and the brain and be converted into dopamine by enzymes in the body, thus replenishing those depleted levels. The treatment alleviated symptoms of the disease, and patients who had been bedridden started walking. The initial results of this research were published in 1961 and presented at a meeting of the Medical Society of Vienna. The “L-dopa Miracle,” as it was called, inspired Dr. Oliver Sacks’s memoir “Awakenings” (1973) and the fictionalized movie of the same name in 1990. © 2020 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 27299 - Posted: 06.13.2020

Ruth Williams In the hippocampus of the adult mouse brain, newly formed cells that become activated by a learning experience are later reactivated in the REM phase of sleep, according to a study in Neuron today (June 4). The authors show this reactivation is necessary for fortifying the encoding of the memory. “It is a very cool paper,” writes neuroscientist Sheena Josselyn of the University of Toronto in an email to The Scientist. “This is the first study to causally link new neurons to sleep-dependent memory consolidation. I am sure it will have a broad impact on scientists studying memory, sleep as well as those interested in adult neurogenesis,” she says. Josselyn was not involved in the study. In the adult mammalian brain, most cells do not replicate. But, deep in the center of the organ, in a particular region of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus, new neurons continue to be born at a slow rate throughout the lifetime of the animal. This neurogenesis is thought to be important for memory formation among other cognitive tasks. Indeed, if the activities of mouse adult-born neurons (ABNs) are perturbed during a learning experience, the animal will not memorize the event as effectively as it does when these cells are left alone. Learning is just one part of forming a memory, however. For memories to last, sleep, and in particular REM sleep, is essential. “Sleep deprivation generally decreases neurogenesis,” writes neuroscientist Masanori Sakaguchi of the International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine at the University of Tsukuba in an email to The Scientist. The question was, says Sakaguchi, “is there any function of adult-born neurons during sleep?” To find out, Sakaguchi’s team first examined the activity of mouse ABNs after a learning experience—a contextual fear conditioning in which the animals’ feet were shocked as they explored a particular cage—and during subsequent sleep. Using miniaturized microscopes attached to the skulls of freely moving mice and fluorescent markers to track ABN activities, the team showed that the ABNs that had been activated after the context-shock learning event were more likely to then be reactivated during the animals’ next REM phases of sleep. © 1986–2020 The Scientist

Keyword: Neurogenesis; Sleep
Link ID: 27298 - Posted: 06.10.2020

By Bethany Brookshire Biomedical science has historically been a male-dominated world — not just for the scientists, but also for their research subjects. Even most lab mice were male (SN: 6/18/19). But now, a new study shows that researchers are starting to include more females — from mice to humans — in their work. In 2019, 49 percent of articles surveyed in biomedical science used both male and female subjects, almost twice as many as a decade before, according to findings published June 9 in eLife. A study of articles published in 2009 across 10 biomedical disciplines showed a dismal picture. Only 28 percent of 841 research studies included both males and female subjects. The results were published in 2011 in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. The scientific world took note. In 2016, the U.S. National Institutes of Health instituted the Sex as a Biological Variable policy in an effort to correct the imbalance. Scientists had to use both males and females in NIH-funded research unless they could present a “strong justification” otherwise. Annaliese Beery, a neuroscientist at Smith College in Northhampton, Mass., conducted the original study showing the extent of sex bias in research. In 2019, she and Nicole Woitowich, a chemist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., wanted to see if sex bias was still as strong as it was in 2009. Have things improved? After scanning another 720 articles across nine of the 10 original disciplines, the researchers have shown that yes, they have, with nearly half of all journal articles including both males and females. Behavioral research was the most inclusive, with both sexes in 81 percent of studies. Overall, six out of nine fields surveyed showed a significant increase in studies that included both sexes. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2020

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 27297 - Posted: 06.10.2020

An epidemic of fatal drug overdoses across Canada is on the rise amid COVID-19 pandemic restrictions that harm-reduction workers and doctors say exacerbates the toxic supply. Overdose prevention sites continue to run but physical distancing guidelines mean fewer people are able to use the services. For example, a site in Toronto that previously averaged more than 100 visits a day now sees fewer than half that. From March 2019 to May 2020, Ontario's coroner reported a 25 per cent increase in fatal overdoses, based on preliminary estimates for all substances. Nick Boyce, director of the Ontario Harm Reduction Network, said the increase is significant. "It matches anecdotally what I've been hearing from the front-line workers we work with around the province," Boyce said. "They're all saying deaths are going up. But to hear that number and to see that number, I was not expecting it to be that high." Last year, fentanyl directly contributed to about 75 per cent of opioid-related deaths in Ontario. More than 14,000 Canadians have been killed by opioids in the last four years, according to federal data. "Laws actually incentivize drug dealers and suppliers to come up with new and different drugs," Boyce said. "We learned this lesson in the 1920s with alcohol prohibition when people switched from drinking beer to toxic moonshine. We're seeing that with the opioid drug supply now." ©2020 CBC/Radio-Canada.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Stress
Link ID: 27296 - Posted: 06.10.2020

By Amanda Heidt Human beings typically don’t leave the nest until well into our teenage years—a relatively rare strategy among animals. But corvids—a group of birds that includes jays, ravens, and crows—also spend a lot of time under their parents’ wings. Now, in a parallel to humans, researchers have found that ongoing tutelage by patient parents may explain how corvids have managed to achieve their smarts. Corvids are large, big-brained birds that often live in intimate social groups of related and unrelated individuals. They are known to be intelligent—capable of using tools, recognizing human faces, and even understanding physics—and some researchers believe crows may rival apes for smarts. Meanwhile, humans continue to grow their big brains and build up their cognitive abilities during childhood, as their parents feed and protect them. “Humans are characterized by this extended childhood that affects our intelligence, but we can’t be the only ones,” says Natalie Uomini, a cognitive scientist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. But few researchers have studied the impact of parenting throughout the juvenile years on intelligence in nonhumans. To study the link between parental care and intelligence in birds, Uomini and her team created a database detailing the life history of thousands of species, including more than 120 corvids. Compared with other birds, they found corvids spend more time in the nest before fledging, more days feeding their offspring as adults, and more of their life living among family. The results, reported last week in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, also confirm corvids have unusually large brains compared with many other birds. Birds need to be light for flight, but a raven’s brain accounts for almost 2% of its body mass, a value similar to humans. © 2020 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Evolution; Intelligence
Link ID: 27295 - Posted: 06.09.2020

by Peter Hess Early behavioral signs predict seizures in autistic children, according to a new study1. Previous work has shown that 5 to 46 percent of people with autism experience seizures. And autistic adults with epilepsy have, on average, less cognitive ability and weaker daily living skills than their autistic peers who do not have seizures2. The new study shows that people with autism who begin having seizures during childhood show small but significant behavioral differences before they ever experience a seizure, compared with those who do not develop epilepsy. They score lower than their peers on measures of quality of life and adaptive behaviors, which include communication, daily living skills, socialization and motor skills. They score higher on a measure of hyperactivity. The results suggest that seizures and certain behavioral issues in autism could have common origins, says co-lead investigator Jamie Capal, associate professor of pediatrics and neurology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “I think it really does show us that in individuals with autism who eventually have epilepsy, there is some shared mechanism early on that we just haven’t been able to identify,” Capal says. Early signs: To investigate the relationship between childhood behaviors in autism and the development of seizures, the researchers analyzed data on 472 autistic children aged 2 to 15 from the Autism Treatment Network, a medical registry that includes 12 clinics in the United States and Canada. None of the children had experienced seizures before enrolling in the network, but 22 developed seizures two to six years after enrollment. © 2020 Simons Foundation

Keyword: Autism; Epilepsy
Link ID: 27294 - Posted: 06.09.2020

Béatrice Pudelko Fear, anxiety, worry, lack of motivation and difficulty concentrating — students cite all sorts of reasons for opposing distance learning. But are these excuses or real concerns? What does science say? At the beginning of the pandemic, when universities and CEGEPs, Québec’s junior colleges, were putting in place scenarios to continue teaching at a distance, students expressed their opposition by noting that the context was “not conducive to learning.” Teachers also felt that the students were “simply not willing to continue learning in such conditions.” A variety of negative emotions were reported in opinion columns, letters and surveys. A petition was even circulated calling for a suspension of the winter session, which Education Minister Jean-François Roberge refused. Students are not the only ones who have difficulty concentrating on intellectual tasks. In a column published in La Presse, Chantal Guy says that like many of her colleagues, she can’t devote herself to in-depth reading. “After a few pages, my mind wanders and just wants to go check out Dr. Arruda’s damn curve,” Guy wrote, referring to Horacio Arruda, the province’s public health director. In short: “It’s not the time that’s lacking in reading, it’s the concentration,” she said. “People don’t have the head for that.” Why do students feel they don’t have the ability for studies? Recent advances in cognitive science provide insights into the links between negative emotions and cognition in tasks that require sustained intellectual investment. © 2010–2020, The Conversation US, Inc.

Keyword: Attention; Stress
Link ID: 27293 - Posted: 06.09.2020

By Yasmin Anwar, Media Relations Stephen Glickman, a pioneer in behavioral endocrinology and founder of the world’s first colony of captive spotted hyenas — he raised generations of them in a UC Berkeley research facility — died at his home in Berkeley on May 22 from pancreatic cancer. He was 87. A professor emeritus of psychology and of integrative biology, whose lifelong bond with animals began during his boyhood near the Bronx Zoo in New York, Glickman joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1968. Over the next five decades, he conducted studies of creatures great and small, authoring more than 100 research papers. His sharp intellect, warm wit and overall lovability engaged peers and protégés in scientific and social justice pursuits, colleagues said. “Steve was a giant in the field of animal behavior,” said UC Berkeley psychology chair Ann Kring. “He studied a wide variety of species in the wild, at the zoo and, perhaps most famously, at the field station where he conducted work with hyenas for more than 30 years.” Glickman’s standout legacy is his ardent stewardship of a colony of spotted hyenas at UC Berkeley’s Field Station for the Study of Behavior, Ecology and Reproduction. The hyena compound in the Berkeley hills, above the campus, closed in 2014 when funding dried up, but not before yielding seminal discoveries about endocrinology, fertility and other medical conditions that affect humans. Hormone-driven matriarchy By studying female hyenas, who use a long, phallic clitoris, instead of a vagina, for mating and giving birth, Glickman and fellow researchers found that high levels of androgens produced in their ovaries masculinized their sex organs and boosted their aggression and dominance in the pack. Copyright © 2020 UC Regents; all rights reserved

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 27292 - Posted: 06.09.2020

Burcin Ikiz About five years ago, researchers from the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle received a special donation: a piece of a live, rare brain tissue. It came from a very deep part of the brain neuroscientists usually can’t access. The donated tissue contained a rare and mysterious type of brain cells called von Economo neurons (VENs) that are thought to be linked to social intelligence and several neurological diseases. The tissue was a byproduct of a surgery to remove a brain tumor from a patient in her 60s. The location of the tissue turned out to be in one of the deepest layers of the frontoinsular cortex, which is one of the few places where these rare neurons are found in the human brain. “This was one of the extremely rare chances that we received this tissue from a donor that had a tumor being removed from quite a deep [brain] structure,” said Rebecca Hodge, who is the co-first author of the study, published in Nature Communications on March 3rd. Hodge and her colleagues became the first scientists to record electrical spikes from these neurons. Further studies they did on these cells gave them clues about the VENs’ identity and function in the human brain. VENs are large, spindle-shaped neurons. They were first identified by the Ukrainian scientist Vladimir Betz more than a century ago. They were later named after the anatomist Constantin von Economo, who described their shape and distribution through the human cortex. Only humans and especially social animals with large brains, such as great apes, whales, dolphins, and elephants have VENs. It is hypothesized that the cells evolved independently in these animals. Since common lab animals with smaller brains, like mice and rats, don’t have VENs, it is difficult to study them in a lab environment. © 2017 – 2019 Massive Science Inc.

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 27291 - Posted: 06.08.2020

By Lisa Sanders, M.D. “I know what Danny has,” said the boy’s aunt to the boy’s mother, her sister-in-law. Her voice on the phone cracked with excitement. “I saw someone just like him on TV!” This was last fall, and Danny was 18. He had been a medical mystery since he was 7 months old. His mother recalled that she had just finished changing his diaper and picked him up when she heard him make a strange clicking noise, his mouth opening and closing oddly. And then his head flopped back as she held him. She hurried to the living room of their Queens home to show her husband, but by the time she got there, Danny was fine. Those sudden episodes of clicking and collapse happened again and again, eventually occurring more than 100 times a day. His first doctors thought these episodes could be tiny seizures. But none of the antiseizure medications they prescribed helped. Then, when Danny was 8, and almost too big for his mother to catch when he slow-motion slumped to the floor, his parents found a doctor who was willing to explore a different diagnosis and treatment. Could this be a rare disease known as cataplexy? In this disorder, patients have episodes of sudden weakness in the skeletal muscles of the body. In some, cataplexy may affect only the face or neck, causing the eyelids to droop or the head to fall forward. But in others, it can also affect the entire body. These episodes are often triggered by strong emotion, which was the case for Danny. Cataplexy is usually part of another rare disorder, narcolepsy, in which the normal control of sleep and wakefulness is somehow lost. Those with narcolepsy have sudden episodes of sleep that invade their waking hours and transient periods of wakefulness that disrupt their sleep. © 2020 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep; Epilepsy
Link ID: 27290 - Posted: 06.08.2020

Allison Aubrey Sleep makes everything easier, even in these difficult days. Why then is it so hard to get? For most of us, right now, it takes work to settle our minds so we can rest. From medication to melatonin to putting on fuzzy socks, we all have routines we hope will help us drift off into sleep. And for good reason. "You've just got to gradually bring the brain and the body down, sort of from that altitude of wakefulness onto the hard, safe landing pad of sleep at night," says Matthew Walker, a sleep researcher at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of Why We Sleep. Don't count sheep Not only will counting sheep not help you fall asleep faster, but a study by Allison Harvey at UC Berkeley found that it actually "made it harder to fall asleep, and it took you longer to fall asleep." Do use calming mental imagery Harvey found that other types of mental imagery, however, are conducive to sleep. Walker suggests imagining a pleasant walk you've taken before, "like a hike in the woods or if it's a walk down on a beach that you do on vacation." Mentally navigating that walk, he says, "tended to hasten the speed of the onset of sleep." Try relaxation and meditation apps as training wheels "I'm a big fan of those things," says Chris Winter, a neurologist and sleep researcher in Charlottesville, Virginia. These apps can train you to meditate — to clear away regrets about the past and worries about the future so you can learn to be in the moment. "The ability to settle your mind and initiate sleep is a skill," Winter says. "The more you practice it, the better you'll get at it and the more confident you become." Melatonin has mixed results © 2020 npr

Keyword: Sleep; Stress
Link ID: 27289 - Posted: 06.08.2020

Published by Steven Novella under Neuroscience This is an important and sobering study, that I fear will not get a lot of press attention – especially in the context of current events. It is a bit wonky, but this is exactly the level of knowledge one needs in order to be able to have any chance of consuming and putting into context scientific research. I have discussed fMRI previously – it stands for functional magnetic resonance imaging. It uses MRI technology to image blood flow to different parts of the brain, and from that infer brain activity. It is used more in research than clinically, but it does have some clinical application – if, for example, we want to see how active a lesion in the brain is. In research it is used to help map the brain, to image how different parts of the brain network and function together. It is also used to see which part of the brain lights up when subjects engage in specific tasks. It is this last application of fMRI that was studied. Professor Ahmad Hariri from Duke University just published a reanalysis of the last 15 years of his own research, calling into question its validity. Any time someone points out that an entire field of research might have some fatal problems, it is reason for concern. But I do have to point out the obvious silver lining here – this is the power of science, self-correction. This is a dramatic example, with a researcher questioning his own research, and not afraid to publish a study which might wipe out the last 15 years of his own research. Copyright © 2020 All Rights Reserved .

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 27288 - Posted: 06.08.2020

­­Researchers at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a part of the National Institutes of Health, have identified a specific, front-line defense that limits the infection to the olfactory bulb and protects the neurons of the olfactory bulb from damage due to the infection. Neurons in the nose respond to inhaled odors and send this information to a region of the brain referred to as the olfactory bulb. Although the location of nasal neurons and their exposure to the outside environment make them an easy target for infection by airborne viruses, viral respiratory infections rarely make their way from the olfactory bulb to the rest of the brain, where they could cause potentially fatal encephalitis. The study was published in Science Immunology. Taking advantage of special viruses that can be tracked with fluorescent microscopy, the researchers led by Dorian McGavern, Ph.D., senior investigator at NINDS, found that a viral infection that started in the nose was halted right before it could spread from the olfactory bulb to the rest of the central nervous system. “Airborne viruses challenge our immune system all the time, but rarely do we see viral infections leading to neurological conditions,” said Dr. McGavern. “This means that the immune system within this area has to be remarkably good at protecting the brain.” Additional experiments showed that microglia, immune cells within the central nervous system, took on an underappreciated role of helping the immune system recognize the virus and did so in a way that limited the damage to neurons themselves. This sparing of neurons is critical, because unlike cells in most other tissues, most neuronal populations do not come back.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Glia
Link ID: 27287 - Posted: 06.06.2020

By David Templeton For much of the 20th century, most people thought that stress caused stomach ulcers. But that belief was largely dismissed 38 years ago when a study, which led to a Nobel Prize in 2016, described the bacterium that generates inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract and causes peptic ulcers and gastritis. “The history of the idea that stress causes ulcers took a side step with the discovery of Helicobacter pylori,” said Dr. David Levinthal, director of the University of Pittsburgh Neurogastroenterology & Motility Center. “For the longest time — most of the 20th century — the dominant idea was that stress was the cause of ulcers until the early 1980s with discovery of Helicobacter pylori that was tightly linked to the risk of ulcers. That discovery was critical but maybe over-generalized as the only cause of ulcers.” Now in an important world first, a study co-authored by Levinthal and Peter Strick, both from the Pitt School of Medicine, has explained what parts of the brain’s cerebral cortex influence stomach function and how it can affect health. “Our study shows that the activity of neurons in the cerebral cortex, the site of conscious mental function, can impact the ability of bacteria to colonize the stomach and make the person more sensitive to it or more likely to harbor the bacteria,” Levinthal said. The study goes far beyond ulcers by also providing evidence against the longstanding belief that the brain’s influence on the stomach was more reflexive and with limited, if any, involvement of the thinking brain. And for the first time, the study also provides a general blueprint of neural wiring that controls the gastrointestinal tract. © 2020 StarTribune.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 27286 - Posted: 06.06.2020