By Neil Genzlinger Dorothy L. Cheney, whose careful research into how primates live and communicate revealed the surprising complexity of their thought processes and social structures, died on Friday at her home in Devon, Pa. She was 68. Her husband and research partner, Robert M. Seyfarth, said the cause was breast cancer. “Cheney was a spectacular scientist,” Robert M. Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and the author of books like “A Primate’s Memoir,” said by email. “Along with Robert Seyfarth, she did wonderfully clever, elegant field experiments that revealed how other primates think about the world — showing that they think in far more sophisticated and interesting ways than people anticipated.” Rather than doing their research in laboratories, Dr. Cheney and Dr. Seyfarth spent long stretches in the wilds of Africa and elsewhere, studying gorillas, baboons, vervet monkeys and other animals. One of their best-known experiments, conducted in Kenya in 1977, showed that vervets made distress sounds not just involuntarily, out of fear, but to convey a specific message about a given threat. They hid loudspeakers in bushes, played recorded sounds of vervets and watched the reaction. A particular bark sent the animals scurrying up trees because it was a warning about leopards; a low-pitched staccato noise had them looking skyward for predatory eagles. They summarized their research in their first book, “How Monkeys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species” (1990). Later research in Botswana included insights into the hierarchical nature of baboon societies and its possible evolutionary effects. “Because Western scientists learned about primates by examining corpses or observing single animals brought home as pets,” they wrote in their 2007 book, “Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind,” “few if any ever learned what can be discovered only through long, patient observation: that the most human features of monkeys and apes lie not in their physical appearance but in their social relationships.” © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 25683 - Posted: 11.15.2018

David Cyranoski Japanese neurosurgeons have implanted ‘reprogrammed’ stem cells into the brain of a patient with Parkinson’s disease for the first time. The condition is only the second for which a therapy has been trialled using induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which are developed by reprogramming the cells of body tissues such as skin so that they revert to an embryonic-like state, from which they can morph into other cell types. Scientists at Kyoto University use the technique to transform iPS cells into precursors to the neurons that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine. A shortage of neurons producing dopamine in people with Parkinson’s disease can lead to tremors and difficulty walking. In October, neurosurgeon Takayuki Kikuchi at Kyoto University Hospital implanted 2.4 million dopamine precursor cells into the brain of a patient in his 50s. In the three-hour procedure, Kikuchi’s team deposited the cells into 12 sites, known to be centres of dopamine activity. Dopamine precursor cells have been shown to improve symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in monkeys. Stem-cell scientist Jun Takahashi and colleagues at Kyoto University derived the dopamine precursor cells from a stock of IPS cells stored at the university. These were developed by reprogramming skin cells taken from an anonymous donor. “The patient is doing well and there have been no major adverse reactions so far,” says Takahashi. The team will observe him for six months and, if no complications arise, will implant another 2.4 million dopamine precursor cells into his brain. © 2018 Springer Nature Limited

Keyword: Parkinsons; Stem Cells
Link ID: 25682 - Posted: 11.14.2018

Adriana Galván Healthy sleep leads to healthy brains. Neuroscientists have gotten that message out. But parents, doctors and educators alike have struggled to identify what to do to improve sleep. Some have called for delaying school start times or limiting screentime before bed to achieve academic, health and even economic gains. Still, recent estimates suggest that roughly half of adolescents in the United States are sleep-deprived. These numbers are alarming because sleep is particularly important during adolescence, a time of significant brain changes that affect learning, self-control and emotional systems. And sleep deficits are even greater in economically disadvantaged youth compared to more affluent counterparts. Research from my developmental neuroscience lab shows one solution to the sleep deprivation problem that is deceptively simple: provide teens with a good pillow. Because getting comfortable bedding does not involve technology, expensive interventions or lots of time, it may be particularly beneficial for improving sleep among underresourced adolescents. Studies in my lab have shown that seemingly small differences in the quality and duration of sleep make a difference in how the brain processes information. Sleep acts like a glue that helps the brain encode recently learned information into long-term knowledge. It also improves focus in school because sleep helps dampen hyperactive behavior, strong emotional reactions and squirminess. This means that students who are normally dismissed from the classroom for disruptive behavior are more likely to stay in class if they’re not sleep-deprived. More time in the class leads to more learning. © 2010–2018, The Conversation US, Inc.

Keyword: Sleep; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 25681 - Posted: 11.14.2018

David DiSalvo Research findings suggesting that sleep loss and anxiety are closely linked were among those presented at Neuroscience 2018, the annual conference of the Society for Neuroscience held in San Diego, California. The news isn’t all dire, however – this year’s event offered some science-based encouragement along with causes for concern. Neuroscience continues focusing on the mysteries of sleep (and yes, it’s still plenty mysterious despite its media ubiquity)—not only the perils of failing to get enough, but the list of vital roles it plays in our brains. Research discussed at this year’s event touched on a range of findings, from sleep's roles in memory consolidation to garbage removal in brain tissue. We’re learning via more studies each year that sleep, including well-placed naps, facilitates the brain’s consolidation of information—moving memory freight from short-term to long-term storage, and sharpening its accessibility for when we need it. Without sleep, memory simply doesn’t happen. We’ve also learned that sleep provides the brain with an invaluable period of transporting toxins out of neural tissue through a complex garbage-removal system. Operating separately from the body's lymphatic system, the brain’s trash-disposal apparatus seems dependent on sleep to function properly. Links between neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and the accumulation of toxins in brain tissue are exceptionally strong, and sleep loss is a likely culprit. A panel session at this year’s event called “Threats of Sleep Deprivation” highlighted new findings on the connection between sleep loss and anxiety. “Sleep deprivation isn’t what we usually think it is,” said session moderator Clifford Saper, MD, PhD of Harvard Medical School. It’s usually not “staying up 40 hours all at once,” but rather gradually losing sleep over time. ©2018 Forbes Media LLC.

Keyword: Sleep; Emotions
Link ID: 25680 - Posted: 11.14.2018

Jennifer Leman Some moths aren’t so easy for bats to detect. The cabbage tree emperor moth has wings with tiny scales that absorb sound waves sent out by bats searching for food. That absorption reduces the echoes that bounce back to bats, allowing Bunaea alcinoe to avoid being so noticeable to the nocturnal predators, researchers report online November 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “They have this stealth coating on their body surfaces which absorbs the sound,” says study coauthor Marc Holderied, a bioacoustician at the University of Bristol in England. “We now understand the mechanism behind it.” Bats sense their surroundings using echolocation, sending out sound waves that bounce off objects and return as echoes picked up by the bats’ supersensitive ears (SN: 9/30/17, p. 22). These moths, without ears that might alert them to an approaching predator, have instead developed scales of a size, shape and thickness suited to absorbing ultrasonic sound frequencies used by bats, the researchers found. The team shot ultrasonic sound waves at a single, microscopic scale and observed it transferring sound wave energy into movement. The scientists then simulated the process with a 3-D computer model that showed the scale absorbing up to 50 percent of the energy from sound waves. What’s more, it isn’t just wings that help such earless moths evade bats. Other moths in the same family as B. alcinoe also have sound-absorbing fur, the same researchers report online October 18 in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2018

Keyword: Hearing; Evolution
Link ID: 25679 - Posted: 11.14.2018

by Bianca Nogrady It’s a rainy Wednesday morning and Dr Andrew Affleck is driving more carefully than usual on his way to the Neuroscience Research Australia building in Randwick. It’s not just the slick, crowded roads putting the edge on his caution; in the boot of his car, cocooned in several layers of protective container and nestled in ice, is the brain of a human being who was alive only a few hours earlier. It’s no ordinary brain – if any brain could be said to be ordinary – but one that has a deadly secret buried inside. The individual who was until recently embodied within this mass of pink, grey and white tissue died of one of the neurodegenerative diseases that are increasingly a cause of death for our ageing population. Perhaps it was Alzheimer’s disease that gradually robbed them of their connection to reality, or frontotemporal dementia that transformed their personality, or Parkinson’s disease that shook their body and mind. “I really hope that this is the brain that will get us across the line,” says Affleck. At the Sydney Brain Bank, housed within NeuRA, the hope is that scientists will be able to glean some new and vital insight from their tissue. And maybe, one day, that insight will lead to a better understanding, a better treatment, or even a cure. “Every donation, bringing the tissue back into the laboratory, I say to myself, I really hope that this is the tipping point,” says Affleck, a research associate at the Sydney Brain Bank. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 25678 - Posted: 11.14.2018

Nicola Davis Being overweight can cause depression, researchers say, with the effects thought to be largely psychological. While previous studies have found that people who are obese are more likely to have depression, it has been unclear whether that is down to depression driving weight changes or the reverse. Now, in the largest study of its kind, experts say having genetic variants linked to a high body mass index (BMI) can lead to depression, with a stronger effect in women than men. What’s more, they say the research suggests the effect could be down to factors such as body image. “People who are more overweight in a population are more depressed, and that is likely to be at least partly [a] causal effect of BMI [on] depression,” said Prof Tim Frayling, a co-author of the study, from the University of Exeter medical school. Get Society Weekly: our newsletter for public service professionals Read more Writing in the International Journal of Epidemiology, the researchers from the UK and Australia describe how they used data from the UK Biobank, a research endeavour involving 500,000 participants aged between 37 and 73 who were recruited in 2006-10. The researchers looked at 73 genetic variants linked to a high BMI that are also associated with a higher risk of diseases such diabetes and heart disease. They also looked at 14 genetic variants linked to a high percentage of body fat but which were associated with a lower risk of such health problems. While the former group could be linked to depression through biological or psychological mechanisms, the latter would only be expected to have a psychological effect. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Obesity; Depression
Link ID: 25677 - Posted: 11.13.2018

Sara Reardon A new technique that makes dead mice transparent and hard like plastic is giving researchers an unprecedented view of how different types of cell interact in the body. The approach lets scientists pinpoint specific tissues within an animal while scanning its entire body. The approach, called vDISCO, has already revealed surprising structural connections between organs, including hints about the extent to which brain injuries affect the immune system and nerves in other parts of the body. That could lead to better treatments for traumatic brain injury or stroke. Methods that turn entire organs clear have become popular in the past few years, because they allow scientists to study delicate internal structures without disturbing them. But removing organs from an animal’s body for analysis can make it harder to see the full effect of an injury or disease. And if scientists use older methods to make an entire mouse transparent, it can be difficult to ensure that the fluorescent markers used to label cells reach the deepest parts of an organ. The vDISCO technique overcomes many of these problems. By making the dead mice rigid and see-through, it can preserve their bodies for years, down to the structure of individual cells, says Ali Ertürk, a neuroscientist at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany, who led the team that developed vDISCO. He presented the work this week at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego, California. © 2018 Springer Nature Limited.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 25676 - Posted: 11.13.2018

/ By Elizabeth Svoboda In 1997, a Stanford University neuroscientist wrote a letter to his colleagues. He signed the letter with his birth name, Barbara Barres, but made it clear that from now on he wished to be known as Ben. “Whenever I think about changing my gender role, I am flooded with feelings of relief,” he wrote. “Whenever I think about changing my gender role, I am flooded with feelings of relief.” “I hope that despite my trans sexuality you will allow me to continue with the work that, as you all know, I love,” he concluded his letter. To Barres’ great joy, his fellow scientists responded with unwavering support. What they didn’t know was that he’d been unable to sleep for a week as he mulled whether to transition to male or commit suicide. His new autobiography — published, sadly, after his death last year from pancreatic cancer — testifies to his personal courage on two fronts: first, as a dogged investigator of glia, the brain’s most numerous cells, which many had written off as purposeless; and second, as an advocate for female and gender-nonconforming scientists. An intense and sagacious child, Ben Barres — born Barbara — decided he wanted to be a scientist before reaching his fifth birthday. He favored microscopes and chemistry sets over dresses and jewelry. By college, it was clear his genius was equal to his dedication. He earned prestigious scholarships that helped fund a biology degree at MIT, then went on to tackle a medical degree at Dartmouth. The early challenges Barres faced often stemmed from appearing female in a male-dominated field. When he was the only person in an MIT class to solve an artificial intelligence problem, the professor scoffed and insisted his boyfriend must have done the work. Copyright 2018 Undark

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Glia
Link ID: 25675 - Posted: 11.13.2018

Chand and several other athletes throughout sports history have failed to qualify to compete in a women's event as a result of their biology. Starting in the 1960s, sex verification tests were done to ensure that only athletes determined to be biologically female could compete as women. That's because in most sports, the top male athletes outcompete the top female athletes by about 10%. More recently the motivation behind testing has shifted to determining whether an athlete has an "unfair" advantage. Since men typically have more testosterone than women and testosterone is linked to athletic performance, current tests measure female athletes' testosterone levels to ensure they are within a certain range. Can a test determine an individual's biological sex? And can testosterone produced by an athlete's own body provide an unfair advantage? pictogram of sprinters Click on "Human Development" to learn about the development of sex organs and characteristics, including hormone levels. Click on "Case Studies" to explore the sex verification tests that have been used throughout sports history by applying them to two fictitious athletes.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 25674 - Posted: 11.13.2018

by Robin McKie Robert Shafran’s first inkling that his life would soon be turned on its head occurred on his first day at college in upstate New York in 1980. His fellow students greeted him like a long-lost friend. “Guys slapped me on the back, girls hugged and kissed me,” he recalls. Yet Robert had never set foot inside Sullivan County Community College until that day. Another student, Eddy Galland, who had studied at the college the previous year, was the cause of the confusion, it transpired. Eddy was his spitting image, said classmates. Robert was intrigued and went to Eddy’s home to confront him. Sign up for Lab Notes - the Guardian's weekly science update Read more “As I reached out to knock on the door, it opened – and there I am,” says Robert, recalling his first meeting with Eddy in the forthcoming documentary Three Identical Strangers. The two young men had the same facial features, the same heavy build, the same dark complexions, the same mops of black curly hair – and the same birthday: 12 July 1961. They were identical twins, a fact swiftly confirmed from hospital records. Each knew he had been adopted but neither was aware he had a twin. Their story made headlines across the US. One reader – David Kellman, a student at a different college – was particularly interested. Robert and Eddy also looked astonishingly like him. So he contacted Eddy’s adoptive mother, who was stunned to come across, in only a few weeks, two young men who were identical in appearance to her son. “My God, they are coming out of the woodwork,” she complained. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 25673 - Posted: 11.12.2018

By Alice Robb One muggy Saturday last summer, I went on a date with a man who seemed entirely fine. We drank two beers and went for a walk, and he explained why he liked certain buildings that we passed. We kissed, and his breath tasted like cigarettes. We parted ways, and I couldn’t muster the energy to answer his emoji-laden follow-up texts about my weekend activities. The date was mediocre at best — but in the days that followed, I second-guessed my decision not to see him again. Maybe I had written him off too soon; maybe I should have given things a chance to develop. After all, he had some good qualities. He was handsome, tall, employed — and not, refreshingly, as a writer. It was only after a painfully on-the-nose dream a few weeks later that I stopped doubting my intuition. In the dream, I had agreed to a second date, and I had brought along two friends to observe our interactions and help me assess him. At the end of the group outing, my friends pulled me away and offered a unanimous decision: He wasn’t for me. I had made the right call. By the time we reach adulthood, most of us have accepted the conventional wisdom: We shouldn’t dwell on our dreams. Even though research suggests that REM sleep — when most dreaming takes place — is crucial for mental and physical health, we think of dreams as silly little stories, the dandruff of the brain. We’re taught that talking about our dreams is juvenile, self-indulgent, and that we should shake off their traces and get on with our day. It doesn’t have to be that way. For the past two years, a group of my friends has been gathering every month to talk about dreams; we do it for fun. Even if we resist, dreams have a way of sneaking into conscious territory and influencing our daytime mood. In three years of reporting on the science behind dreams, I’ve heard strangers describe flying, tooth loss, reunions with the dead — all the classics. I’ve seen that a dream can be a fascinating window into another person’s private life, and I’ve learned that paying attention to dreams can help us understand ourselves. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep; Attention
Link ID: 25672 - Posted: 11.12.2018

By Annette Choi “I was facing my clothes rack where I have a bunch of stuff hanging off of it,” Brandon Tan says. “And since it was dark, my bags and jackets were kind of morphed into black figures.” Tan, a New York City-based writer, says that that night—with eyes wide-open and lips sealed—he struggled to move his own body. Quickly, nightmarish hallucinations began taking over his auditory and sensory perceptions, blurring the line between dream and reality. “I just kept hearing really mischievous giggling and really creepy screaming,” he says. “And it felt like there were really strong gusts of wind in my room, but the window was completely shut.” Jackie Monoson can sympathize. But unlike Tan, who is new to the experience of sleep paralysis, Monoson, a video editor living in New York City, says she has experienced it on and off for several years now, especially during times of high stress. She recalls one episode in particular, which occurred during finals week of her senior year at New York University: “I felt like as I was falling asleep, I was also waking up,” she says. “I was in my dorm, and I knew that my roommate was in the room, but I couldn’t yell out.” Not long after her first few encounters, Monoson turned to the internet for help. Per the advice of an online sleep paralysis forum, during episodes, Monoson learned to focus on moving smaller muscles—like wiggling her toes—to break from the feeling of paralysis. Sleep paralysis affects millions every year, and studies estimate that more than half of the global population will experience at least one episode in their lifetimes. Despite the prevalence, however, the disorder is poorly understood. © 1996–2018 WGBH Educational Foundation

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 25671 - Posted: 11.12.2018

By Alex Therrien Health reporter, BBC News A five-minute scan could be used to spot people at risk of dementia before symptoms appear, researchers claim. Scientists used ultrasound scanners to look at blood vessels in the necks of more than 3,000 people and monitored them over the next 15 years. They found those with the most intense pulses went on to experience greater cognitive decline over the next decade than the other study participants. Researchers hope it may offer a new way to predict cognitive decline. An international team of experts, led by University College London (UCL), measured the intensity of the pulse travelling towards the brain in 3,191 people in 2002. A more intense pulse can cause damage to the small vessels of the brain, structural changes in the brain's blood vessel network and minor bleeds known as mini-strokes. Over the next 15 years, researchers monitored participants' memory and problem-solving ability. Those with the highest intensity pulse (the top quarter of participants) at the beginning of the study were about 50% more likely to show accelerated cognitive decline over the next decade compared with the rest of the participants, the study found. Researchers said this was the equivalent of about an extra one to one-and-half years of decline. Cognitive decline is often one of the first signs of dementia, but not everyone who experiences it will go on to develop the condition. Researchers said the test could provide a new way to identify people who are at risk of developing dementia, leading to earlier treatments and lifestyle interventions. Controlling blood pressure and cholesterol, having a healthy diet, doing regular exercise and not smoking can all help to stave off dementia, evidence suggests. © 2018 BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 25670 - Posted: 11.12.2018

By Isabella Rolz Anais Garcia, 21, anxiously stares at the menu of a Bob Evans restaurant in Baltimore. Her dark brown eyes gravitate toward the Fit and Healthy section, which lists calories per meal. She takes a long time figuring out what to order and decides to go with her “safe meal,” a small stack of pancakes, with no butter, reduced-calorie syrup, a small bowl of fruit on the side and a cup of black coffee. “Restaurants are like battle zones for me, literal war zones,” she says. A ballerina who contended with anorexia nervosa for years, Garcia, who is 5-foot-1½ tall, has reached 105 pounds, a safer weight than the 79 pounds of a year ago. In her gray turtleneck sweater and casual black leggings, her extreme thinness remains apparent. “For the past five years, I’ve done nothing but hate and try to disown my body,” she says. Ballet celebrates the body — and thinness. Despite demands for change from dancers who have experienced problems and from psychologists specializing in eating disorders, the stereotype that a dancer must be elegant and lean persists. Ballerinas become vulnerable to self-consciousness about their bodies, and they face increased risk of anorexia, bulimia nervosa and other eating disorders. Generally, someone who develops an eating disorder has a predisposition, with several factors at play. For ballerinas, “it is of course the ballet culture,” which is competitive and demanding, says Linda Hamilton, a New York psychologist who has worked with ballerinas with eating disorders. But “you might also have a personality predisposition,” she says. “A perfectionist personality can make the dancer intolerant of any physical changes.” Sometimes, “the disorders start early, as young as 12,” she says, because the curves that come with puberty don’t fit the ballet look. © 1996-2018 The Washington Post

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 25669 - Posted: 11.12.2018

By Lina Zeldovich, It was 1924 when the 12-year-old boy was brought to the Moscow clinic for an evaluation. By all accounts, he was different from his peers. Other people did not interest him much, and he preferred the company of adults to that of children his own age. He never played with toys: He had taught himself to read by age 5 and spent his days reading everything he could instead. Thin and slouching, the boy moved slowly and awkwardly. He also suffered from anxiety and frequent stomachaches. At the clinic, a gifted young doctor, Grunya Efimovna Sukhareva, saw the boy. Caring and attentive, she observed him with a keen eye, noting that he was “highly intelligent” and liked to engage in philosophical discussions. By way of a diagnosis, she described him as “an introverted type, with an autistic proclivity into himself.” ‘Autistic’ was a relatively new adjective in psychiatry at the time. About a decade earlier, Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler had coined the term to describe the social withdrawal and detachment from reality often seen in children with schizophrenia. Sukhareva’s characterization came nearly two decades before Austrian doctors Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger published what have long been considered to be the first clinical accounts of autism. At first, Sukhareva used ‘autistic’ in the same way Bleuler did—but as she started to see other children with this trait, she decided to try to characterize it more fully. Over the course of the following year, she identified five more boys with what she described as “autistic tendencies.” All five also showed a preference for their own inner world, yet each had his own peculiarities or talents. One was an extraordinarily gifted violinist but struggled socially; another had an exceptional memory for numbers but could not recognize faces; yet another had imaginary friends who lived in the fireplace. None were popular with other children, she noted, and some saw peer interaction as useless: “They are too loud,” one boy said. “They hinder my thinking.” © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 25668 - Posted: 11.12.2018

David Sington Aubrey Manning’s hugely popular 1998 BBC series Earth Story, about the evolution and shaping of the planet Earth, inspired a generation and led to a noticeable increase in students applying to read earth sciences. Yet, Aubrey, who has died aged 88, was not a geologist, but an ethologist, whose work made an important contribution to the understanding of how animal behaviour plays a role in the evolution of new species. In a series of experiments at Oxford and Edinburgh universities – he was professor of natural history (1973-97) at the latter – Aubrey showed how mutations in genes that affect the behaviour of fruit flies could lead to reproductive isolation, a key mechanism in the creation of new species. This work laid the foundation for the modern study of the evolutionary genetics of behaviour. His 1967 publication An Introduction to Animal Behaviour, now in its sixth edition, is still the standard textbook in its field, and his lectures were so popular – packed with students from many other courses – that the university took to scheduling them for 9am on Mondays as the most effective way to get undergraduates out of bed. It was this reputation as a superb communicator of science that led the BBC to his door. When as its producer I approached him in 1997 to present Earth Story, Aubrey, with typical modesty, protested that I had the wrong man and insisted on introducing me to his geological colleagues. However, it was the very fact that the subject was new to him that was the secret of the ventures success. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 25667 - Posted: 11.12.2018

By Dana G. Smith SAN DIEGO—Robert King spent 29 years living alone in a six by nine-foot prison cell. He was part of the “Angola Three”—a trio of men kept in solitary confinement for decades and named for the Louisiana state penitentiary where they were held. King was released in 2001 after a judge overturned his 1973 conviction for killing a fellow inmate. Since his exoneration he has dedicated his life to raising awareness about the psychological harms of solitary confinement. “People want to know whether or not I have psychological problems, whether or not I’m crazy—‘How did you not go insane?’” King told a packed session at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting here this week. “I look at them and I tell them, ‘I did not tell you I was not insane.’ I don’t mean I was psychotic or anything like that, but being placed in a six by nine by 12–foot cell for 23 hours a day, no matter how you appear on the outside, you are not sane.” There are an estimated 80,000 people, mostly men, in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. They are confined to windowless cells roughly the size of a king bed for 23 hours a day, with virtually no human contact except for brief interactions with prison guards. According to scientists speaking at the conference session, this type of social isolation and sensory deprivation can have traumatic effects on the brain, many of which may be irreversible. Neuroscientists, lawyers and activists such as King have teamed up with the goal of abolishing solitary confinement as cruel and unusual punishment. © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 25666 - Posted: 11.10.2018

Tam Hunt Why is my awareness here, while yours is over there? Why is the universe split in two for each of us, into a subject and an infinity of objects? How is each of us our own center of experience, receiving information about the rest of the world out there? Why are some things conscious and others apparently not? Is a rat conscious? A gnat? A bacterium? These questions are all aspects of the ancient “mind-body problem,” which asks, essentially: What is the relationship between mind and matter? It’s resisted a generally satisfying conclusion for thousands of years. The mind-body problem enjoyed a major rebranding over the last two decades. Now it’s generally known as the “hard problem” of consciousness, after philosopher David Chalmers coined this term in a now classic paper and further explored it in his 1996 book, “The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory.” Chalmers thought the mind-body problem should be called “hard” in comparison to what, with tongue in cheek, he called the “easy” problems of neuroscience: How do neurons and the brain work at the physical level? Of course they’re not actually easy at all. But his point was that they’re relatively easy compared to the truly difficult problem of explaining how consciousness relates to matter. Over the last decade, my colleague, University of California, Santa Barbara psychology professor Jonathan Schooler and I have developed what we call a “resonance theory of consciousness.” We suggest that resonance – another word for synchronized vibrations – is at the heart of not only human consciousness but also animal consciousness and of physical reality more generally. It sounds like something the hippies might have dreamed up – it’s all vibrations, man! – but stick with me. How do things in nature – like flashing fireflies – spontaneously synchronize? © 2010–2018, The Conversation US, Inc.

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 25665 - Posted: 11.10.2018

By Kelly Servick SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA—We know the menagerie of microbes in the gut has powerful effects on our health. Could some of these same bacteria be making a home in our brains? A poster presented here this week at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience drew attention with high-resolution microscope images of bacteria apparently penetrating and inhabiting the cells of healthy human brains. The work is preliminary, and its authors are careful to note that their tissue samples, collected from cadavers, could have been contaminated. But to many passersby in the exhibit hall, the possibility that bacteria could directly influence processes in the brain—including, perhaps, the course of neurological disease—was exhilarating. “This is the hit of the week,” said neuroscientist Ronald McGregor of the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the work. “It’s like a whole new molecular factory [in the brain] with its own needs. … This is mind-blowing.” The brain is a protected environment, partially walled off from the contents of the bloodstream by a network of cells that surround its blood vessels. Bacteria and viruses that manage to penetrate this blood-brain barrier can cause life-threatening inflammation. Some research has suggested distant microbes—those living in our gut—might affect mood and behavior and even the risk of neurological disease, but by indirect means. For example, a disruption in the balance of gut microbiomes could increase the production of a rogue protein that may cause Parkinson’s disease if it travels up the nerve connecting the gut to the brain. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Obesity; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 25664 - Posted: 11.10.2018