By Benedict Carey A generation ago, depression was viewed as an unwanted guest: a gloomy presence that might appear in the wake of a loss or a grave disappointment and was slow to find the door. The people it haunted could acknowledge the poor company — I’ve been a little depressed since my father died — without worrying that they had become chronically ill. Today, the condition has been recast in the medical literature as a darker, more permanent figure, a monster in the basement poised to overtake the psyche. For decades, researchers have debated the various types of depression, from mild to severe to “endogenous,” a rare, near-paralyzing despair. Hundreds of studies have been conducted, looking for markers that might predict the course of depression and identify the best paths to recovery. But treatment largely remains a process of trial and error. A drug that helps one person can make another worse. The same goes for talk therapies: some patients do very well, others don’t respond at all. “If you got a depression diagnosis, one of the most basic things you want to know is, what are the chances of my life returning to normal or becoming optimal afterward?” said Jonathan Rottenberg, a professor of psychology at the University of South Florida. “You’d assume we’d have an answer to that question. I think it’s embarrassing that we don’t.” In a paper in the current issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, Dr. Rottenberg and his colleagues argue that, in effect, the field has been looking for answers in the wrong place. In trying to understand how people with depression might escape their condition, scientists have focused almost entirely on the afflicted, overlooking a potentially informative group: people who once suffered from some form of depression but have more or less recovered. Indeed, while this cohort almost certainly exists — every psychiatrist and psychologist knows someone in it — it is so neglected that virtually nothing is known about its demographics, how well its members are faring and, fundamentally, how many individuals it contains. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 25603 - Posted: 10.23.2018

Richard Harris Powerful drugs that have been used for decades to treat delirium are ineffective for that purpose, according to a study published online Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Antipsychotic medications, such as haloperidol (brand name, Haldol), are widely used in intensive care units, emergency rooms, hospital wards and nursing homes. "In some surveys up to 70 percent of patients [in the ICU] get these antipsychotics," says Dr. E. Wesley "Wes" Ely, an intensive care specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. They're prescribed by "very good doctors at extremely good medical centers," he says. "Millions of people worldwide are getting these drugs to treat their delirium." But the drugs can have serious side effects. And Ely says there is no solid research showing that they are effective at treating delirium. Patients with delirium are often confused and incoherent and sometimes can suffer hallucinations. This condition can lead to long-term cognitive problems, including a form of dementia. Ely and colleagues at 16 U.S. medical centers decided to put antipsychotic drugs to a rigorous test. They divided nearly 600 patients who were suffering from delirium into three groups. One group got the powerful antipsychotic haloperidol. A second group got ziprasidone, which is a related medication from a class of drugs called "atypical antipsychotics." A third group got a placebo. © 2018 npr

Keyword: Alzheimers; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 25602 - Posted: 10.23.2018

Tina Hesman Saey SAN DIEGO — For some people, choosing a same-sex partner may be in their DNA. In a large study of more than 490,000 men and women in the United States, United Kingdom and Sweden, researchers discovered four genetic variants that occur more often in people who indicated on questionnaires that they had had same-sex sexual partners. Andrea Ganna, a geneticist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard reported the results October 19 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics. Two of the variants were specific to men’s sexual partner choice. The other two influence sex partner choice for both men and women. Collectively, the DNA differences explained only 8 to 12 percent of the heritability of having same-sex partners. “There is no gay gene,” Ganna said, “but rather non-heterosexuality is influenced by many tiny-effect genetic factors.” The new study is an advance over previous attempts to find “gay genes,” says J. Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., who was not involved in the new work. The study’s size is its main advantage, Bailey says. “It’s huge. Huge.” Researchers examined DNA data from more than 400,000 participants in the U.K. Biobank and more than 69,000 people who had their DNA tested by the consumer testing company 23andMe. People who have given their DNA data to those research projects also answered a battery of questions, including ones about whether they had ever had a partner of the same sex and how many sexual partners they have had. The findings were replicated with data from three other studies, including one from Sweden. Findings from such large studies are more likely to be replicated than the small studies in the past, Bailey says. Researchers have “really gotten these studies down now and if they find things, it’s pretty sure that they’re true.” |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2018

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 25601 - Posted: 10.22.2018

By Michael Price SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA—How genes influence sexual orientation has sparked debate for at least a quarter century. But geneticists have had only a handful of underpowered studies to address a complex, fraught, and often stigmatized area of human behavior. Now, the largest-ever study of the genetics of sexual orientation has revealed four genetic variants strongly associated with what the researchers call nonheterosexual behavior. Some geneticists are hailing the findings as a cautious but significant step in understanding the role of genes in sexuality. Others question the wisdom of asking the question in the first place. Andrea Ganna, a research fellow with the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues examined data from hundreds of thousands of people who provided both DNA and behavioral information to two large genetic surveys, the UK Biobank study and the private genetics firm 23andMe. They analyzed DNA markers from people who answered either “yes” or “no” to the question, “Have you ever had sex with someone of the same sex?” In total, they identified 450,939 people who said their sexual relationships had been exclusively heterosexual and 26,890 people who reported at least one homosexual experience. In Ganna’s talk yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics here, he emphasized that the researchers were cautious about exploring sexual behavior that is still illegal in many countries, and that they tried to frame their questions carefully “to avoid a fishing expedition.” The team, which includes behavioral scientists, preregistered their research design and also met regularly with members of the LGBTQ community to discuss and share results. Ganna acknowledged that what they call “nonheterosexual behavior” includes “a large spectrum of sexual experiences, that go from people who engage exclusively in same-sex behavior to those who might have experimented once or twice.” © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 25600 - Posted: 10.22.2018

Allison Aubrey By age 40, about one in 10 adults will experience some hearing loss. It happens so slowly and gradually, says audiologist Dina Rollins, "you don't realize what you're missing." And even as it worsens, many people are in denial. By the time someone is convinced they have a hearing problem, age-related memory loss may have already set in. But, here's the good news: Restoring hearing with hearing aids can help slow down cognitive decline. Consider these findings: Researchers tracked about 2,000 older adults in the U.S. both before and after they started using hearing aids. The adults were participants in a big, national study, the Health and Retirement Study. "We found the rate of cognitive decline was slowed by 75 percent following the adoption of hearing aids," says Asri Maharani, a researcher at the University of Manchester in the division of neuroscience and experimental psychology and an author of the paper. "It is a surprising result," Maharani says. The study was published this spring in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. To assess cognition over time, researchers performed a battery of tests face-to-face with participants. This was done every two years from 1996 to 2014. One test to assess memory required participants to recall a list of 10 words, both immediately after the words were read aloud, and then again after the participants had been distracted by other tasks. © 2018 npr

Keyword: Alzheimers; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 25599 - Posted: 10.22.2018

By Sandra G. Boodman Ever since he was a toddler, Michael had been beset by an array of medical problems that doctors couldn’t explain. Severe leg pain came first. That was followed a few years later by recurrent, sometimes severe, stomachaches. Later, the little boy developed a wracking cough, followed by trouble breathing. In fifth grade, after he fell and smacked his tailbone, he was in so much pain he wound up in a wheelchair. His worried parents took him to four emergency rooms and an array of Washington-area specialists, among them orthopedists, neurologists, pediatricians and a gastroenterologist. Yet virtually every test failed to uncover a problem. It would take a seasoned pediatrician to pull together the disparate elements of the 10-year-old’s medical history and make an unexpected diagnosis that would prove to be a turning point for the boy and his family. Three years later, Michael, now 14 and a freshman in high school, seems to have moved beyond the disorder that dominated his first decade. His father said he believes his son’s illness resulted from “a perfect storm” of factors. He would have preferred that the doctors who saw Michael had spoken “a little more freely about their guesses” and had provided more guidance. To protect Michael’s privacy, his parents requested that he and they be identified by their middle names. When he was nearly 2, Michael, who had been previously healthy, began limping and then stopped walking. His pediatrician found no obvious explanation and sent him to a pediatric neurologist, who ordered an extensive work-up, including scans and blood tests. © 1996-2018 The Washington Post

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Emotions
Link ID: 25598 - Posted: 10.22.2018

Sasa Woodruff Ryan "China" McCarney has played sports his entire life, but sometimes he has to force himself to show up on the field to play pick-up soccer with his friends. "I'm dreading and I'm anticipating the worst. But I do it anyway. And then, it's a euphoric sensation when you're done with it because you end up having a great time," says McCarney. McCarney was just 22 when he had his first panic attack. As a college and professional baseball player, he says getting help was stigmatized. It took him six years to get professional support. He still struggles with depression and social anxiety, but says exercising helps him — especially when it's with his teammates. Research shows exercise can ease things like panic attacks or mood and sleep disorders, and a recent study in the journal, Lancet Psychiatry, found that popular team sports may have a slight edge over the other forms of physical activity. The researchers analyzed CDC survey data from 1.2 million adults and found — across age, gender, education status and income — people who exercised reported fewer days of bad mental health than those who didn't. And those who played team sports reported the fewest. One of the study's authors, Adam Chekroud, an assistant adjunct professor at Yale's School of Medicine, thinks team activity could add another layer of relief for sufferers of mental illness. He says there are biological, cognitive and social aspects to mental illness. "Some sports might just be hitting on more of those elements than other sports," he says. "If you just run on a treadmill for example, it's clear that you're getting that biological stimulation. But perhaps there are other elements of depression that you're not going to be tapping into." © 2018 npr

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 25597 - Posted: 10.22.2018

Amanda B. Keener If Leonardo da Vinci had a good eye doctor, he might not have become such a great artist. At least that’s what an analysis of paintings and sculptures believed to be modeled after da Vinci suggests. Visual neuroscientist Christopher Tyler of the City University of London examined six pieces of art, including Salvator Mundi and Vitruvian Man. Five of the pieces depict an eye misalignment consistent with a disorder called exotropia that can interfere with three-dimensional vision, Tyler reports online October 18 in JAMA Ophthalmology. Exotropia, in which one eye turns slightly outward, is one of several eye disorders collectively called strabismus. Today, strabismus, which affects 4 percent of people in the United States, is treated with special glasses, eye patches or surgery. Tyler calculated the differences in eye alignment using the same sorts of measurements that an optometrist does when tailoring a pair of glasses. Most of the portraits showed the eyes misaligned, but Vitruvian Man by da Vinci himself did not. As a result, da Vinci may have had intermittent exotropia, present only some of the time and perhaps controllable, Tyler suspects. “The person [with intermittent exotropia] can align their eyes and see in 3-D, but if they’re inattentive or tired, the eye may droop,” he says. If da Vinci could control his exotropia, Tyler speculates that it would have been an artistic advantage. “The artist’s job is to paint on a 2-D surface,” he says. “This can be difficult when you view the world three-dimensionally.” Both eyes need to focus on the same subject for 3-D vision. Many artists shut one eye when viewing their subjects to more easily translate details into two dimensions. But with intermittent exotropia, da Vinci could have switched from 3-D to 2-D and back again with ease. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 201

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 25596 - Posted: 10.22.2018

By Jocelyn KaiserO For years, a Colorado couple searched for an explanation for why their bright, active little girl was having increasing trouble walking, speaking, and seeing. In December 2016, Julia Vitarello and Alek Makovec learned that 6-year-old Mila Makovec almost certainly had Batten disease, an inherited and fatal neurodegenerative disorder. Now, in a stunning illustration of personalized genomic medicine, Mila is receiving a drug tailored to her particular disease-causing DNA mutation—and it appears to have halted the condition’s progression. Today at the annual meeting of The American Society of Human Genetics in San Diego, California, researchers told the story of how in less than a year, they went from sequencing Mila’s genome to giving her a synthetic RNA molecule that helps her cells ignore her genetic flaw and make a needed protein. The same steps could help some other patients with diseases caused by unique mutations in a single gene, they said. “It’s very exciting,” says gene therapy researcher Steven Gray of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Houston, who wasn’t involved in the research. “There couldn’t be a stronger example of how personalized medicine might work in practice.” Batten disease afflicts an estimated two to four in 100,000 births in the United States. Patients have problems with lysosomes, enzyme-filled sacs within cells that clear waste molecules. Without properly working lysosomes, waste builds up and kills neural cells, causing brain damage and death by adolescence. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 25595 - Posted: 10.20.2018

By Diana Kwon Spanish neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal revolutionized the study of the brain when he observed neurons for the first time. His investigations, now more than 100 years old, revealed intricate details of nerve cells in many different animals, including humans—rootlike dendrites attached to bulbous cell bodies, from which extend long, slender axons. Cajal’s examinations also revealed dendrites (via which nerve cells receive signals from other neurons) were much longer in humans than in rodents and other animals, even other non-human primates. A new study, published this week in Cell, shows that in people these antennalike projections also have distinct electrical properties that may help explain how the brain processes arriving information. Scientists have been meticulously studying dendrites in the decades since Cajal’s initial observations. Still, “the only thing we really knew about human dendrites was their anatomy,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscientist Mark Harnett says. “There was a lot of potential for human dendrites to be doing something different because of their length, but there was no published work, as far as I know, on their actual electrical properties.” So Harnett and his colleagues set out to investigate whether the length of dendrites affected electrical signals transmitted through them. With the help of a neurologist, Sydney Cash of Massachusetts General Hospital, they were able to obtain brain tissue that had been removed from epilepsy patients undergoing routine surgery to help allay seizures—a procedure in which physicians routinely remove part of the temporal cortex to get to the hippocampus, a structure deep inside the brain where seizures typically originate. © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Brain imaging; Evolution
Link ID: 25594 - Posted: 10.20.2018

Ashley P. Taylor The activity in a cortical area involved in self-regulation was the best correlate of weight loss in a study published today (October 18) in Cell Metabolism. Previously, scientists thought that challenges to losing weight stemmed from imbalances between the hormones leptin, which produces a feeling of satiety, and ghrelin, which stimulates hunger. When people go on a diet, ghrelin levels go up and leptin levels go down. To see how brain activity fits into dieting physiology, Alain Dagher, a neurologist at McGill University, worked with 24 overweight and obese people who were starting a 1,200-calories-per-day diet at a weight-loss clinic. Before starting the regimen, participants had fMRIs—imaging scans that show brain activity—while looking at pictures of either appetizing, sometimes high-calorie food, or of scenery. The researchers repeated the scans one month and three months into the diet. Typically, food pictures activate the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, linked to desire, motivation, and value, Dagher says in a press release. Further, this region stimulates hunger when the body is burning more calories than it’s taking in, Dagher tells HealthDay. Over the course of the study, the ventral medial prefrontal cortex responded less and less to the pictures of food, but the decline in activity was greatest in people who lost the most weight, Dagher says in the release. On the other hand, activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex, involved in self-regulation, increased over the course of the diet, and the more it was active, the more weight people lost. © 1986 - 2018 The Scientist

Keyword: Obesity; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 25593 - Posted: 10.20.2018

By Elizabeth Pennisi One of biology’s enduring mysteries is how some animals—from humans to honey bees—became so social. Now, a study suggests that, in the inconspicuous sweat bee, changes to the expression of a single gene could determine which bees are solitary and which are social. The gene, which has previously been linked to autism in humans, has also been connected to social behavior in animals like mice and locusts. The new discovery puts scientists one step closer toward demonstrating a common evolutionary basis for social behavior. “People have been taking about the genetics of sociality for years,” says Bernard Crespi, an evolutionary biologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, who was not involved with the work. “Finding this gene is a real watershed for the field.” Sweat bees don’t have the same massive colonies as honey bees, whose hundreds of workers care for and protect a single egg-laying queen. But the tiny, gentle bees have some interesting social arrangements: In some groups and species, workers help a reproducing queen, as honey bees do; in other groups, sweat bee females tend their own broods. This difference has led scientists to think sweat bees may hold the key to understanding how more complex insect societies began to evolve. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 25592 - Posted: 10.18.2018

Women whose left index and ring fingers are different lengths are more likely to be lesbians, a study suggests. Scientists measured the fingers of 18 pairs of female identical twins, where one was straight and the other gay. On average, the lesbians, but not the straight twins, had different sized index and ring fingers, typically a male trait, but only on the left hand. This may be the result of exposure to more testosterone in the womb, the University of Essex researchers said. The scientists also measured the fingers of 14 pairs of male identical twins, where one was straight and the other gay, but found no link. Both men and women were exposed to the "male" hormone, testosterone, in the womb - but some may be exposed more than others, the scientists said. Study author Dr Tuesday Watts, from the psychology department at Essex University, said: "Because identical twins, who share 100% of their genes, can differ in their sexual orientations, factors other than genetics must account for the differences. "Research suggests that our sexuality is determined in the womb and is dependent on the amount of male hormone we are exposed to or the way our individual bodies react to that hormone, with those exposed to higher levels of testosterone being more likely to be bisexual or homosexual. © 2018 BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 25591 - Posted: 10.18.2018

By Concepción de León I hear some people have trouble with therapy, that it can take years for them to open up to their doctors, let alone cry or break down. Not me. Day one, I told my therapist, Amy Bernstein, “I’ll just tell you everything, and we’ll go from there.” I was assigned to her after revealing, during an initial interview to determine the appropriate therapist for my needs, that I’d been touched as a child. I hadn’t planned to bring it up at all, but I was asked directly, so I said, yes, you could say that. (At the time, I avoided the word “molested.”) And yes, it still crossed my mind. To be honest, what happened had always felt like such a small thing. Many others have had it much worse; I counted myself lucky for only having been touched in subtle ways — a male relative digging his hands in my tiny skirt pockets to “feel around for change”; another bringing his hand to my crotch when he thought I was asleep. These were two of a handful of men who violated me. Amy recommended books to help me understand what had happened, but I put them down after just a few pages, thinking, “This isn’t for me! My thing is too small.” But then, as tends to be the case with therapy, things got harder before they got better. I returned to one of the books Amy had recommended, “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma,” by Bessel van der Kolk, to try to understand my visceral response to remembering. Dr. van der Kolk is a Boston-based psychiatrist who specializes in post-traumatic stress disorder and has worked with a broad range of clients, from veterans to sexual assault survivors. “The Body Keeps the Score” hinges on his idea that trauma is stored in the body and that, for therapy to be effective, it needs to take the physiological changes that occur into account. Trauma produces “a re-calibration of the brain’s alarm system, an increase in stress hormone activity” and, also, “compromises the brain area that communicates the physical, embodied feeling of being alive,” Mr. van der Kolk writes. For survivors of sexual assault and other traumas, the amygdala, which initiates the body’s fight or flight response system whenever it perceives danger, can remain activated long after the threat has subsided. In the present, survivors relive their traumas in the form of fragmented images, sounds and emotion that the brain can’t register as belonging to the past. Many people also experience dissociation, which can manifest as literal desensitization in parts of the body or the inability to describe physical sensations. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 25590 - Posted: 10.18.2018

Sara Reardon Cuttlefish are masters at altering their appearance to blend into their surroundings. But the cephalopods can no longer hide their inner thoughts, thanks to a technique that infers a cuttlefish’s brain activity by tracking the ever-changing patterns on its skin. The findings, published in Nature on 17 October1, could help researchers to better understand how the brain controls behaviour. The cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) camouflages itself by contracting the muscles around tiny, coloured skin cells called chromatophores. The cells come in several colours and act as pixels across the cuttlefish’s body, changing their size to alter the pattern on the animal’s skin. The cuttlefish doesn’t always conjure up an exact match for its background. It can also blanket itself in stripes, rings, mottles or other complex patterns to make itself less noticeable to predators. “On any background, especially a coral reef, it can’t look like a thousand things,” says Roger Hanlon, a cephalopod biologist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Chicago, Illinois. “Camouflage is about deceiving the visual system.” To better understand how cuttlefish create these patterns across their bodies, neuroscientist Gilles Laurent at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany, and his collaborators built a system of 20 video cameras to film cuttlefish at 60 frames per second as they swam around their enclosures. The cameras captured the cuttlefish changing colour as they passed by backgrounds such as gravel or printed images that the researchers placed in the tanks. © 2018 Springer Nature Limited.

Keyword: Vision; Brain imaging
Link ID: 25589 - Posted: 10.18.2018

Kerry Grens Nicotine can wield its effects on offspring in more ways than from exposures in utero or secondhand smoke: the sperm of mice that ingested nicotine carry epigenetic signatures of that exposure, a study published in PLOS Biology today (October 16) reports. The result might explain why the experiments also found the male mice’s offspring—and grandoffspring—exhibited abnormal behavior and learning impairments. “Until now, much attention had been focused on the effects of maternal nicotine exposure on their children,” Florida State University’s Pradeep Bhide, who led the study, tells The Boston Globe in an email. “Not much had been known about the effects of paternal smoking on their children and grandchildren. Our study shows that paternal nicotine exposure can be deleterious for the offspring in multiple generations.” To investigate paternal exposure, Bhide’s team spiked male mice’s drinking water with nicotine for 12 weeks. The researchers then bred those animals with unexposed females, and mated the offspring to produce the third generation. The second- and third-generation mice underwent a battery of cognitive and behavioral tests to see if their father’s or grandfather’s nicotine exposure had any effect. On some examinations, the mice performed typically, but they didn’t do as well on certain learning tasks as mice whose parent or grandparent had not been given nicotine. The second generation also exhibited hyperactivity and had lower levels of certain neurotransmitters in the brain than the offspring of unexposed animals had. © 1986 - 2018 The Scientist

Keyword: Epigenetics; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 25588 - Posted: 10.18.2018

By Nicholas Bakalar Having pre-eclampsia — dangerously high blood pressure during pregnancy — is linked to an increased risk for dementia later in life, according to a new study. Up to 5 percent of pregnant women develop pre-eclampsia, usually after the 20th week. In addition to hypertension, the condition can include signs of diminished kidney or liver function. Researchers followed the 1,178,005 Danish women who had given birth between 1978 and 2015. More than 58,000 of them had pre-eclampsia during pregnancy. The study is in BMJ. Having pre-eclampsia doubled the risk for vascular dementia, and quadrupled the risk for women over 65. There was a modest association of pre-eclampsia with Alzheimer’s disease, and none with any other type of dementia. “My advice to a woman who has had pre-eclampsia is the same for dementia as it would be for cardiovascular risk,” said the senior author, Heather A. Boyd, a researcher at the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen. “Get the hypertension down, get the weight within normal range, work on lowering the risk for Type 2 diabetes. We still need to confirm this finding in other populations, and then we need to figure out what to do about it. We don’t know at this point what the intervention should be.” © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 25587 - Posted: 10.18.2018

By Lena H. Sun Federal health officials took the unusual step on Tuesday of warning the public about an increase in a mysterious and rare condition that mostly affects children and can cause paralysis. So far this year, 127 confirmed or suspected cases of acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM, have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a significant increase over 2017 and a worrying perpetuation of a disease for which there is little understanding. Of the cases announced Tuesday, 62 have been confirmed in 22 states, according to Nancy Messonnier, a top official at the CDC. More than 90 percent of the confirmed cases have been in children 18 and younger, with the average age being 4 years old. The surge has baffled health officials, who on Tuesday announced a change in the way the agency is counting cases. They also wanted to raise awareness about the condition so parents can seek medical care if their child develops symptoms, and so physicians can quickly relay reports of the potential illness to the CDC. “We understand that people, particularly parents, are concerned about AFM,” said Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Despite extensive laboratory and other testing, CDC has not been able to find the cause for the majority of the cases. “There is a lot we don’t know about AFM, and I am frustrated that despite all of our efforts, we haven’t been able to identify the cause of this mystery illness." © 1996-2018 The Washington Post

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 25586 - Posted: 10.17.2018

By Todd E. Feinberg, Jon Mallatt Consciousness seems mysterious. By this we mean that while life in general can be explained by physics, chemistry and biology, it seems that whenever one tries to explain the relationship between the brain and the subjective events that are experienced as feelings—what philosophers often refer to as “qualia”—something appears to be “left out” of the explanation. This apparent divide between the brain and subjective experience is what philosopher Joseph Levine famously called this the “explanatory gap,” and how to bridge that gap is what philosopher David Chalmers called the term “hard problem of consciousness.” We study primary consciousness, the most basic type of sensory experience. This is the ability to have any experience or feeling at all, what philosopher Thomas Nagel called “something it is like to be” in his famous 1974 paper “What is it like to be a bat?” Over the last few years, we have tried to “demystify” primary consciousness by combining neural and philosophical aspects of the problem into a unified view of how feelings are created in a naturally biological way. Our analysis leads us to the view that the puzzle of consciousness and the explanatory gap actually has two related aspects: an ontological aspect and an epistemic aspect and that both have a natural and scientific explanation. First, we consider the ontological aspect of the problem. This part of the puzzle entails what philosopher John Searle called the “ontological subjectivity” of consciousness. This is the idea that consciousness has a unique and fundamentally “first-person” ontology—or mode of being—in that feelings only exist when experienced by an animal subject. The implications of this view would be that no manner of objective scientific explanation, no matter how complete, would “explain away” the neurobiologically unique subjective feelings that are associated with certain brain states—in other words how things feel. The challenge here is to explain this unique aspect of feelings in a way that is consistent with an entirely scientific world view and do so without invoking any new or fundamentally “mysterious” physical principles. © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 25585 - Posted: 10.17.2018

Laura Sanders WASHINGTON — As the number of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder increases, so too has research on the complex and poorly understood disorder. With powerful genetic tools, advanced brain-imaging methods and large groups of children to study, the field is poised to make big contributions in understanding — and potentially treating — autism. Neuroscientist Kevin Pelphrey, who is formerly of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., but has recently moved to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, studies autism’s beginnings. He described some of his findings about the link between brain development and the disorder on October 15 at a meeting of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing. Here are some of the key points Pelphrey made on how autism may get its start in the developing brain, how the disorder is different between boys and girls, and how large, long-term studies of children with autism might yield clues about the condition. What causes autism spectrum disorder? For most cases, no one knows. There’s likely no single cause — environmental and genetic risk factors work in combination. In some children, rare mutations in key genes have been linked to the disorder. More commonly, many genetic changes, each with a small influence on overall risk, may increase a child’s likelihood of developing the disorder. With the number of autism diagnoses growing, partly due to better detection, researchers are looking at potential factors beyond genetics, such as parents’ age, premature birth and maternal obesity. When does the disorder begin? |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 20

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 25584 - Posted: 10.17.2018