By Michael Shermer Anthony Bourdain (age 61). Kate Spade (55). Robin Williams (63). Aaron Swartz (26). Junior Seau (43). Alexander McQueen (40). Hunter S. Thompson (67). Kurt Cobain (27). Sylvia Plath (30). Ernest Hemingway (61). Alan Turing (41). Virginia Woolf (59). Vincent van Gogh (37). By the time you finish reading this list of notable people who died by suicide, somewhere in the world another person will have done the same, about one every 40 seconds (around 800,000 a year), making suicide the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. Why? According to the prominent psychologist Jesse Bering of the University of Otago in New Zealand, in his authoritative book Suicidal: Why We Kill Ourselves (University of Chicago Press, 2018), “the specific issues leading any given person to become suicidal are as different, of course, as their DNA—involving chains of events that one expert calls ‘dizzying in their variety.’” Indeed, my short list above includes people with a diversity of ages, professions, personality and gender. Depression is commonly fingered in many suicide cases, yet most people suffering from depression do not kill themselves (only about 5 percent Bering says), and not all suicide victims were depressed. “Around 43 percent of the variability in suicidal behavior among the general population can be explained by genetics,” Bering reports, “while the remaining 57 percent is attributable to environmental factors.” Having a genetic predisposition for suicidality, coupled with a particular sequence of environmental assaults on one's will to live, leads some people to try to make the pain stop. In Bering's case, it first came as a closeted gay teenager “in an intolerant small Midwestern town” and later with unemployment at a status apex in his academic career (success can lead to unreasonably high standards for happiness, later crushed by the vicissitudes of life). Yet most oppressed gays and fallen academics don't want to kill themselves. “In the vast majority of cases, people kill themselves because of other people,” Bering adduces. “Social problems—especially a hypervigilant concern with what others think or will think of us if only they knew what we perceive to be some unpalatable truth—stoke a deadly fire.” © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 25529 - Posted: 10.04.2018

Susan Milius It’s a lovely notion, but tricky to prove. Still, lemurs sniffing around wild fruits in Madagascar are bolstering the idea that animal noses contributed to the evolution of aromas of fruity ripeness. The idea sounds simple, says evolutionary ecologist Omer Nevo of the University of Ulm in Germany. Plants can use mouth-watering scents to lure animals to eat fruits, and thus spread around the seeds. But are those odors really advertising, or are they just the way fruits happen to smell as they ripen? For some wild figs and a range of other fruits in eastern Madagascar, a strong scent of ripeness does seem to have evolved in aid of allure, Nevo and his colleagues argue October 3 in Science Advances. A lot of fruit collecting and odor chemistry suggest that fruits dispersed by lemurs, with their sensitive noses, change more in scent than fruits that rely more on birds with acute color vision. Earlier studies had sniffed around several species, such as figs. But for a broader look, Nevo and his colleagues analyzed scents from 25 other kinds of fruits as well as five kinds of figs. All grew wild in a “really magnificent” mountainous rainforest preserved as a park in eastern Madagascar, Nevo says. The researchers classified 19 of the plants as depending largely on red-bellied and other local lemurs to spread seeds. Most of these lemurs are red-green color-blind, not great for spotting the ripe fruits among foliage. But the researchers following some lemurs foraging in daylight noticed that sniffing at fruits was a big deal for the primates. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2018

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Evolution
Link ID: 25528 - Posted: 10.04.2018

By Simon Makin Neuroscientists know a lot about how individual neurons operate but remarkably little about how large numbers of them work together to produce thoughts, feelings and behavior. They need a wiring diagram for the brain—known as a connectome—to identify the circuits that underlie the organ’s functions. Now researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and their colleagues have developed an innovative brain-mapping technique and used it to trace the connections emanating from nearly 600 neurons in a mouse brain’s main visual area in just three weeks. This technology could someday be used to help understand disorders thought to involve atypical brain wiring, such as autism or schizophrenia. The technique works by tagging cells with genetic “bar codes.” Researchers inject viruses into mice brains, where the viruses direct cells to produce random 30-letter RNA sequences (consisting of the nucleotide “letters” G, A, U and C). The cells also create a protein that binds to these RNA bar codes and drags them the length of each neuron’s output wire, or axon. The researchers later dissect the mice brains into target regions and sequence the cells in each area, enabling them to determine which tagged neurons are connected to which regions. The team found that neurons in a mouse’s primary visual cortex typically send outputs to multiple other visual areas. It also discovered that most cells fall into six distinct groups based on which regions—and how many of them—they connect to. This finding suggests there are subtypes of neurons in a mouse’s primary visual cortex that perform different functions. “Because we have so many neurons, we can do statistics and start understanding the patterns we see,” says Cold Spring Harbor’s Justus Kebschull, co-lead author of the study, which was published in April in Nature. © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Brain imaging; Autism
Link ID: 25527 - Posted: 10.04.2018

By Gretchen Reynolds Are we born to be physically lazy? A sophisticated if disconcerting new neurological study suggests that we probably are. It finds that even when people know that exercise is desirable and plan to work out, certain electrical signals within their brains may be nudging them toward being sedentary. The study’s authors hope, though, that learning how our minds may undermine our exercise intentions could give us renewed motivation to move. Exercise physiologists, psychologists and practitioners have long been flummoxed by the difference between people’s plans and desires to be physically active and their actual behavior, which usually involves doing the opposite. Few of us exercise regularly, even though we know that it is important for health and well being. Typically, we blame lack of time, facilities or ability. But recently an international group of researchers began to wonder whether part of the cause might lie deeper, in how we think. For an earlier review, these scientists had examined past research about exercise attitudes and behavior and found that much of it showed that people sincerely wished to be active. In computer-based studies, for example, they would direct their attention to images of physical activity and away from images related to sitting and similar languor. But, as the scientists knew, few people followed through on their aims to be active. So maybe, the scientists thought, something was going on inside their skulls that dampened their enthusiasm for exercise. To find out, they recruited 29 healthy young men and women. All of the volunteers told the scientists that they wanted to be physically active, although only a few of them regularly were. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 25526 - Posted: 10.04.2018

By Michael Mosley Horizon Could taking a placebo, a pill which contains nothing but ground rice, really help cure back pain? The placebo effect is well studied but at the same time something of a mystery. The word placebo comes from the Latin "I shall please" and is associated with images of quack doctors selling dodgy cures. Yet it is also an important part of modern clinical trials, where patients are given either a placebo (sometimes called a dummy pill) or an active drug (without knowing which is which) and researchers then look to see if the drug outperforms the placebo, or vice versa. But what if you decided to do a placebo-controlled trial on back pain, with a twist? The twist being that everyone, unknowingly, was getting placebo? Would people taking the pills get better anyway? That's what we set out to test for BBC2's Horizon programme, Can my brain cure my body? With the help of Dr Jeremy Howick. an expert on the placebo effect from University of Oxford, we set out to see if we could cure real back pain with fake pills. It would be the largest experiment of its kind ever carried out in the UK, with 100 people from Blackpool taking part. Some were asked to act as a "control" group. The rest were told that they were taking part in a study - where they might receive the placebo or a powerful new painkiller. What they weren't told was that they would all get placebos, capsules containing nothing but ground rice. The pills were authentic looking and based on years of research. They were blue-and-white-striped, because that has been shown to have a greatest painkilling effect. They came in bottles, carefully labelled, warning of potential side effects and sternly reminding patients to keep out of the hands of children. All very convincing. © 2018 BBC

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 25525 - Posted: 10.04.2018

Sarah Boseley Health editor Half of all those taking antidepressants experience withdrawal problems when they try to give them up and for millions of people in England, these are severe, according to a new review of the evidence commissioned by MPs. Guidance from the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (Nice), which says withdrawal symptoms “are usually mild and self-limiting over about one week” urgently needs to be changed, say the review authors. Dr James Davies from the University of Roehampton and Prof John Read from the University of East London say the high rate of withdrawal symptoms may be part of the reason people are staying on the pills for longer. They cannot cope, so carry on taking the drugs, or their doctors assume they have relapsed and write another prescription. The review was commissioned by the all-party parliamentary group for prescribed drug dependence and follows a long debate about the Nice guidance, which critics say is out of date. Modern antidepressants of the SSRI class, such as Prozac (fluoxetine) and Seroxat (paroxetine), were marketed in part on their safety. People were unable to harm themselves by overdosing as they could on benzodiazepines like valium and stopping the drugs was said to be easier. There have been plenty of anecdotal accounts of withdrawal symptoms, which include dizziness, vertigo, nausea, insomnia, headaches, tiredness and difficulties concentrating. But the Nice guidance said in 2004 that the withdrawal symptoms were slight and short-lived and was re-adopted without further evidence in 2009. It is similar to the US guidance, which says symptoms usually resolve within one to two weeks. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 25524 - Posted: 10.03.2018

By Diana Kwon How do we decide what we like to eat? Although tasty foods typically top the list, a number of studies suggest preferences about consumption go beyond palatability. Scientists have found both humans and animals can form choices about what to consume based on the caloric content of food, independent of taste. Research spanning many decades has shown nutrients in the gastrointestinal tract can shape animals’ flavor preferences. One of the earliest findings of this effect dates back to the 1960s, when Garvin Holman of the University of Washington reported hungry rats preferred consuming a liquid paired with food injected into the stomach rather than a solution coupled with a gastric infusion of water. More recently Ivan de Araujo, a neuroscientist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and his colleagues have shown calories can trump palatability: Their work has demonstrated mice prefer consuming bitter solutions paired with a sugar infusion injected in the gut rather than a calorie-free sweet solution. Advertisement For years De Araujo and his group have been working to tease apart how the contents of the gut produce pleasure in the brain. In mice they have found sugar in the digestive tract can activate the brain’s reward centers. In animals bred without the ability to taste sweetness, sugary snacks still triggered activity in the ventral striatum, a brain region involved in reward processing. But according to De Araujo, the specific pathway that relayed signals between the gut and the brain remained a mystery. © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Obesity; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 25523 - Posted: 10.03.2018

Sukanya Charuchandra More and more children around the world are being born to obese mothers than ever before. In the United States, 23.4 percent of women are obese before they become pregnant—a number that represents a growing phenomenon. From 1994 to 2014, the rate of women who were obese prior to pregnancy in the country shot up 86 percent, according to a nationwide nutrition program registry. The increasingly common condition has been associated with children being born obese as well as showing a greater risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, cognitive and behavioral difficulties, and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Incidentally, a growing numbers of children are being diagnosed with mental disorders, with up to one in five children in the US experiencing conditions that challenge their mental health in any single year. This summer alone, multiple studies have found that different facets of moms’ metabolic health and weight are linked with a greater risk for children being diagnosed with autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and mild neurodevelopmental problems. In June, Thomas Buchanan of the University of Southern Carolina and his colleagues reported how expectant mothers’ diabetes—experienced by one in 16 pregnant women in the US—is tied to a baby’s chances developing autism. The researchers found a clear divide: Mothers with a diabetes diagnosis by their 26th week of pregnancy gave birth to children with a higher likelihood of being on the autism spectrum compared to mothers with no diabetes or who received a diagnosis after their 26th week. “There appeared to be not a technical dose-response relationship, but a relationship in severity, according to the severity and timing of the diabetes: the more severe and earlier, the more the risk of autism,” Buchanan tells The Scientist. © 1986 - 2018 The Scientist

Keyword: Autism; Obesity
Link ID: 25522 - Posted: 10.03.2018

By Jan Hoffman The Food and Drug Administration conducted a surprise inspection of the headquarters of the e-cigarette maker Juul Labs last Friday, carting away more than a thousand documents it said were related to the company’s sales and marketing practices. The move, announced on Tuesday, was seen as an attempt to ratchet up pressure on the company, which controls 72 percent of the e-cigarette market in the United States and whose products have become popular in high schools. The F.D.A. said it was particularly interested in whether Juul deliberately targeted minors as consumers. “The new and highly disturbing data we have on youth use demonstrates plainly that e-cigarettes are creating an epidemic of regular nicotine use among teens,” the F.D.A. said in a statement. “It is vital that we take action to understand and address the particular appeal of, and ease of access to, these products among kids.” F.D.A. officials described the surprise inspection as a follow-up to a request the agency made for Juul’s research and marketing data in April. Kevin Burns, Juul’s chief executive officer, said the company had already handed over more than 50,000 pages of internal documents to the F.D.A. in response to that request. “We want to be part of the solution in preventing underage use, and we believe it will take industry and regulators working together to restrict youth access,” he said. In recent months, the F.D.A. has increasingly expressed alarm over the prevalence of vaping among youths in high school and even middle school, which its commissioner, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, said had reached “epidemic proportions.” © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 25521 - Posted: 10.03.2018

By Michael Price Alien limb syndrome isn’t as extraterrestrial as it sounds—but it’s still pretty freaky. Patients complain that one of their hands has gone “rogue,” reaching for things without their knowledge. “They sit on their hand trying to get it not to move,” says Ryan Darby, a neurologist and neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “They’re not crazy. They know there’s not something controlling their arm, that it’s not possessed. But they really feel like they don’t have control.” Now, a study analyzing the locations of brain lesions in these patients—and those who have akinetic mutism, in which people can scratch an itch and chew food placed into their mouths without being aware they’ve initiated these movements—are shedding light on how our brains know what’s going on with our bodies. The work shows how neuroscience is beginning to approach elements of the biological nature of free will. “I think it's really nice work, carefully done and thoughtfully presented,” says Kevin Mitchell, a neurogeneticist at Trinity College in Dublin who studies perception and who wasn’t involved in the study. Philosophers have wrestled with questions of free will—that is, whether we are active drivers or passive observers of our decisions—for millennia. Neuroscientists tap-dance around it, asking instead why most of us feel like we have free will. They do this by looking at rare cases in which people seem to have lost it. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 25520 - Posted: 10.02.2018

By Sarah Mervosh A simple rule change in Ivy League football games has led to a significant drop in concussions, a study released this week found. After the Ivy League changed its kickoff rules in 2016, adjusting the kickoff and touchback lines by just five yards, the rate of concussions per 1,000 kickoff plays fell to two from 11, according to the study, which was published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Kickoffs, during which players sprint down the field and can knock into each other at full speed, had previously represented an outsize number of concussions. The study comes amid a broader push to adjust kickoff rules at all levels of football and offers a strong indication that touchbacks can help reduce the risk of head injury in a sport grappling with the competing priorities of entertaining its audience and keeping its players safe. “We see really compelling evidence that, indeed, introducing the experimental kickoff rule seems to be associated with a large reduction in concussions,” said Douglas Wiebe, the lead author of the study and the director of the Penn Injury Science Center at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2015, kickoffs during Ivy League games accounted for 6 percent of all plays, but 21 percent of concussions, the study said. So Ivy League football coaches decided to change the rules to encourage kicks into the end zone. Under the new system, teams kicked off from the 40-yard line, instead of the 35, and touchbacks started from the 20-yard line, rather than the 25. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 25519 - Posted: 10.02.2018

By Melinda Wenner Moyer Intuitively, it makes sense Splatterhouse and Postal 2 would serve as virtual training sessions for teens, encouraging them to act out in ways that mimic game-related violence. But many studies have failed to find a clear connection between violent game play and belligerent behavior, and the controversy over whether the shoot-‘em-up world transfers to real life has persisted for years. A new study published on October 1 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences tries to resolve the controversy by weighing the findings of two dozen studies on the topic. The meta-analysis does tie violent video games to a small increase in physical aggression among adolescents and preteens. Yet debate is by no means over. Whereas the analysis was undertaken to help settle the science on the issue, researchers still disagree on the real-world significance of the findings. This new analysis attempted to navigate through the minefield of conflicting research. Many studies find gaming associated with increases in aggression, but others identify no such link. A small but vocal cadre of researchers have argued much of the work implicating video games has serious flaws in that, among other things, it measures the frequency of aggressive thoughts or language rather than physically aggressive behaviors like hitting or pushing, which have more real-world relevance. © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 25518 - Posted: 10.02.2018

Sarah Boseley and agencies One in two women will develop dementia or Parkinson’s disease, or have a stroke, in their lifetime, new research suggests. About a third of men aged 45 and half of women of the same age are likely to go on to be diagnosed with one of the conditions, according to a study of more than 12,000 people. The researchers, from the University Medical Center Rotterdam in the Netherlands, said preventive measures could “substantially” reduce the burden of the illnesses. The findings have been published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry. The health of 12,102 people was monitored between 1990 and 2016, with all participants initially under the age of 45. During this period 1,489 were diagnosed with dementia and 263 with parkinsonism – the generic term for a range of symptoms that can be seen in someone with Parkinson’s disease – while 1,285 had a stroke. The overall risk of a 45-year-old later developing one of the three conditions was 48% for women and 36% for men, the researchers said. Dementia was of greatest concern for women, who at 45 years old had a 25.9% risk of going on to develop the condition, compared with 13.7% for men. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Alzheimers; Parkinsons
Link ID: 25517 - Posted: 10.02.2018

Linda Holmes On Sunday's CBS Sunday Morning, Ted Koppel reminisced about the many profiles of media giant Ted Turner that have aired on the network, beginning all the way back in the 1970s, when he hadn't started CNN but had bought Atlanta's baseball and basketball teams. Now, about to turn 80, Turner told Koppel about his diagnosis of Lewy body dementia. He acknowledged that in addition to memory difficulties, it causes exhaustion. In fact, as he noted with a tinge of humor, he wasn't able to bring the name of the disease to mind even as he was talking about how it affected him. Turner is still active, however: He was seen not only practicing yoga but continuing to wander his immense Montana ranch on horseback. According to the National Institutes of Health, Lewy body dementia is caused by protein deposits in the brain — named "Lewy bodies" after the neurologist who discovered them. The deposits cause changes in brain chemistry that disrupt thinking and behavior as well as movement. The disease also reportedly affected actor Robin Williams prior to his death in 2014. © 2018 npr

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 25516 - Posted: 10.02.2018

By Christine Hauser A New Jersey man died after being infected with Naegleria fowleri, also known as the “brain-eating amoeba,” a rare infection that is contracted through the nose in fresh water. The man, Fabrizio Stabile, 29, of Ventnor, N.J., was mowing his lawn on Sept. 16 when he felt ill from a headache, according to his obituary and GoFundMe page. His symptoms worsened and he was taken to the hospital after he became unable to speak coherently. A spinal tap revealed he was infected with the amoeba, and he died on Sept. 21. It is the first confirmed case of the infection in the United States since 2016, an epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Jennifer Cope, said on Monday. Mr. Stabile fell ill after visiting the BSR Cable Park and Surf Resort, a surf and water park in Waco, Tex., said Kelly Craine, a spokeswoman for the Waco-McLennan County Public Health District. She said in a telephone interview on Monday that the C.D.C. sent epidemiologists to take samples from the park to test for the presence of the amoeba, and those results could come this week. There are no reports of other illnesses at the Waco park, the C.D.C. said. The amoeba is a single-celled organism that can cause a rare infection of the brain called primary amoebic meningoencephalitis, also known as PAM, which is usually fatal. It thrives in warm temperatures and is commonly found in warm bodies of fresh water, such as lakes, rivers and hot springs, the C.D.C. said, though it can also be present in soil. It enters the body through the nose, and it moves on to the brain. Infection typically occurs when people go swimming in lakes and rivers, according to the C.D.C. The amoeba got its nickname because it starts to destroy brain tissue once it reaches the brain, after it is forced up there in a rush of water. Before it enters the body, it happily feasts on the bacteria found in the water. “It turns to using the brain as a food source,” Dr. Cope said. “It is a scary name. It is not completely inaccurate.” © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 25515 - Posted: 10.02.2018

By Sarah Hepola One of the trickiest things about blackouts is that you don’t necessarily know you’re having one. I wrote a memoir, so centered around the slips of memory caused by heavy drinking that it is actually called “Blackout,” and in the years since its 2015 release, I’ve heard from thousands of people who experienced them. No small number of those notes contain some version of this: “For years, I was having blackouts without knowing what they were.” Blackouts are like a philosophical riddle inside a legal conundrum: If you can’t remember a thing, how do you know it happened? In the days leading up to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, a theory arose that he might have drunk so much as a teenager that he did not remember his alleged misdeeds. The blackout theory was a way to reconcile two competing narratives. It meant that Christine Blasey Ford was telling the truth but so was Brett Kavanaugh. He simply did not remember what happened that night and therefore believed himself falsely accused. Several questions at the hearing were designed to get at this theory, but it gained little ground. I want to be clear, up front, that I cannot know whether Judge Kavanaugh experienced a blackout. But what I do know is that blackouts are both common and tragically misunderstood. Before the prosecutor Rachel Mitchell was mysteriously dispatched, she was aiming toward the above line of inquiry. “Have you ever passed out from drinking?” she asked. Kavanaugh’s answer was dismissive but slightly confusing: “I’ve gone to sleep, but I’ve never blacked out. That’s the allegation? That’s wrong.” A few clarifications. First, I dare you to find the heavy drinker who hasn’t passed out from too much booze. To say you were just sleeping is like my dad saying he’s resting his eyes when he’s napping. It’s a semantic dodge. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 25514 - Posted: 10.01.2018

By John Horgan I just finished Tao Lin’s new book Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change, and I have some things to say about it. I’m a Lin fan. He first came to my attention in 2013 when he mailed me his novel Taipei, which mentions a trippy scene in The End of Science. Taipei is a lightly fictionalized memoir that details a young writer’s consumption of drugs, including uppers, downers, heroin, cannabis and a smattering of psychedelics, sometimes all in combination. Lin writes with a deadpan hyper-realism so acute that he makes other fiction and non-fiction seem phony. Even when he’s funny, Lin is bleak, but there’s something exhilarating about the precision with which he describes the world, other people, the swirl of his thoughts and emotions. He’s like a stoned American version of Norwegian memoirist/novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of My Struggle. Lin also reminds me of Jack Kerouac, who in On the Road and Dharma Bums desperately chases epiphanies in an effort to escape his tormented self. Advertisement By the time I finished Taipei, I was worried about the author, who seems to be in a state of terminal despair. Lin was apparently worried too. Trip recounts how he pulls himself out of his “zombie-like and depressed” funk by immersing himself in the writings and online talks of psychedelic visionary Terence McKenna. © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 25513 - Posted: 10.01.2018

By Moises Velasquez-Manoff The man was 23 when the delusions came on. He became convinced that his thoughts were leaking out of his head and that other people could hear them. When he watched television, he thought the actors were signaling him, trying to communicate. He became irritable and anxious and couldn’t sleep. Dr. Tsuyoshi Miyaoka, a psychiatrist treating him at the Shimane University School of Medicine in Japan, eventually diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia. He then prescribed a series of antipsychotic drugs. None helped. The man’s symptoms were, in medical parlance, “treatment resistant.” A year later, the man’s condition worsened. He developed fatigue, fever and shortness of breath, and it turned out he had a cancer of the blood called acute myeloid leukemia. He’d need a bone-marrow transplant to survive. After the procedure came the miracle. The man’s delusions and paranoia almost completely disappeared. His schizophrenia seemingly vanished. Years later, “he is completely off all medication and shows no psychiatric symptoms,” Dr. Miyaoka told me in an email. Somehow the transplant cured the man’s schizophrenia. A bone-marrow transplant essentially reboots the immune system. Chemotherapy kills off your old white blood cells, and new ones sprout from the donor’s transplanted blood stem cells. It’s unwise to extrapolate too much from a single case study, and it’s possible it was the drugs the man took as part of the transplant procedure that helped him. But his recovery suggests that his immune system was somehow driving his psychiatric symptoms. At first glance, the idea seems bizarre — what does the immune system have to do with the brain? — but it jibes with a growing body of literature suggesting that the immune system is involved in psychiatric disorders from depression to bipolar disorder. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 25512 - Posted: 10.01.2018

By Ersilia M. DeFilippis I felt a shake and opened my eyes. The clock read 1:30 a.m. “We need to go to the hospital,” my mother whispered in my ear, clutching her stomach. She knew; it was the same pain she had experienced many times before. We were in California, many miles from home, many miles from my father (a doctor), who always knew what to do. At the time, I was early in my medical school training, although I knew all the intricate details of my mother’s medical history and realized she needed to get medical attention. When we arrived at the local emergency room in an affluent neighborhood, my mother was placed in a wheelchair and taken to the waiting room. She curled up on the cold barren hospital floor, the only position she could find comfortable. Although my mother usually puts on lipstick and high heels to go to the grocery store, this time, her hair was unkempt and her pajamas worn out. Her knees were tucked into her chest and her belly was distended. It should have been clear to onlookers that she was in agonizing pain, but people were hesitant, skeptical even. “Ma’am,” someone yelled. “Ma’am, we can’t have you lying on the floor. Get up.” My mother lay still. “Get up, ma’am,” she was told again, again more forcibly. They helped her back into the wheelchair. “Help me,” she said. “The pain is unbearable.” Reluctantly, they put her in a stretcher and prepared to place an IV in her arm. To convince them the pain was real, we asked them to call my father, who could fill in all of the medical details: her multiple prior hospitalizations, surgeries and diagnoses. © 1996-2018 The Washington Post

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 25511 - Posted: 10.01.2018

By Sandra E. Garcia For years, parents of a Texas boy believed he was mostly nonverbal because of a brain aneurysm he had when he was 10 days old. The boy, Mason Motz, 6, of Katy, Tex., started going to speech therapy when he was 1. In addition to his difficulties speaking, he was given a diagnosis of Sotos syndrome, a disorder that can cause learning disabilities or delayed development, according to the National Institutes of Health. His parents, Dalan and Meredith Motz, became used to how their son communicated. “He could pronounce the beginning of the word but would utter the end of the word,” Ms. Motz said in an interview. “My husband and I were the only ones that could understand him.” That all changed in April 2017, when Dr. Amy Luedemann-Lazar, a pediatric dentist, was performing unrelated procedures on Mason’s teeth. She noticed that his lingual frenulum, the band of tissue under his tongue, was shorter than is typical and was attached close to the tip of his tongue, keeping him from moving it freely. Dr. Luedemann-Lazar ran out to the waiting room to ask the Motzes if she could untie Mason’s tongue using a laser. After a quick Google search, the parents gave her permission to do so. Dr. Luedemann-Lazar completed the procedure in 10 seconds, she said. After his surgery, Mason went home. He had not eaten all day. Ms. Motz heard him say: “I’m hungry. I’m thirsty. Can we watch a movie?” “We’re sitting here thinking, ‘Did he just say that?’” Ms. Motz said. “It sounded like words.” © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 25510 - Posted: 10.01.2018