By Nicholas Bakalar A mother’s depression may have long-term effects on her child’s immune system and psychological health. Israeli researchers followed 125 babies from birth through 10 years. About 43 percent of the mothers had a diagnosis of major depression, and the rest constituted a control group. The study is in Depression & Anxiety. The investigators tested the children’s and mothers’ saliva for cortisol, the stress hormone, as well as for an antibody called secretory immunoglobulin A, or SIgA, high levels of which indicate activation of the immune system. They also visited the families to assess the mother’s emotional health and to observe behavioral problems in children. Compared to controls, depressed mothers had higher cortisol and SIgA levels and tended to exhibit more intrusive and insensitive behaviors toward their children. Children of the depressed mothers had higher levels of SIgA, tended to be more withdrawn and had higher rates of psychiatric symptoms. The senior author, Ruth Feldman, a professor of developmental neuroscience at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, said that maternal depression may affect the child in various ways. “Children exposed to maternal major depression respond like those under chronic stress,” she said. Depression also increases maternal stress, which impacts a child’s stress levels. And insensitive behaviors by a mother may increase a child’s social withdrawal, which increases the risk for psychiatric disorders. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 25369 - Posted: 08.24.2018

By Frankie Schembri For many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), recognizing and responding to eye contact, body language, and tone of voice is a major challenge. Improving those social skills can take lots of work—putting a strain on caregivers with limited time, resources, and money for therapy. Now, a study shows that just 30 days with an in-home robot that provides social feedback can dramatically improve a child’s interactions with others. Researchers have long known that robots—and games with automated feedback—can change the behavior of children with autism, at least in the short term. Such interactions have been shown to help children pick up on social cues, such as making sustained eye contact, that they might have missed from their caregivers. But translating these new skills into better person-to-person interactions may require longer and more intensive training, and few studies have been large enough—or long enough—to show significant, long-lasting improvements. So Brian Scassellati, a robotics expert and cognitive scientist at Yale University, put together an experiment that gave children a long-term relationship with their bots, one they could share with their families. His team provided 12 families with a tablet computer loaded with social games and a modified version of a commercially sold robot called Jibo, which was programmed to follow along with the games and provide feedback. “As a roboticist, that was one of the most frightening things in the world. Leaving the robots there and hoping they would do the things we’d programmed them to do,” Scassellati says. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Autism; Robotics
Link ID: 25368 - Posted: 08.23.2018

By Carl Zimmer In a limestone cave nestled high above the Anuy River in Siberia, scientists have discovered the fossil of an extraordinary human hybrid. The 90,000-year-old bone fragment came from a female whose mother was Neanderthal, according to an analysis of DNA discovered inside it. But her father was not: He belonged to another branch of ancient humanity known as the Denisovans. Scientists have been recovering genomes from ancient human fossils for just over a decade. Now, with the discovery of a Neanderthal-Denisovan hybrid, the world as it was tens of thousands of years ago is coming into remarkable new focus: home to a marvelous range of human diversity. In 2010, researchers working in the Siberian cave, called Denisova, announced they had found DNA from a scrap of bone representing an unknown group of humans. Subsequent discoveries in the cave confirmed that the Denisovans were a lineage distinct from modern humans. Scientists can’t yet say what Denisovans looked like or how they behaved, but it’s clear they were separated from Neanderthals and modern humans by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. Until now, scientists had indirect clues that Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans interbred, at least a few times. But the new study, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, offers clear evidence. “They managed to catch it in the act — it’s an amazing discovery,” said Sharon Browning, a statistical geneticist at the University of Washington who was not involved in the new study. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 25367 - Posted: 08.23.2018

Researchers have identified connections between neurons in brain systems associated with reward, stress, and emotion. Conducted in mice, the new study may help untangle multiple psychiatric conditions, including alcohol use disorder, anxiety disorders, insomnia, and depression in humans. “Understanding these intricate brain systems will be critical for developing diagnostic and therapeutic tools for a broad array of conditions,” said George F. Koob, Ph.D., director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), which contributed funding for the study. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) also provided major support for the research. NIAAA and NIMH are parts of the National Institutes of Health. A report of the study, by first author Dr. William Giardino and colleagues at Stanford University, appears in the August 2018 issue of Nature Neuroscience. Responding appropriately to aversive or rewarding stimuli is essential for survival. This requires fine-tuned regulation of brain systems that enable rapid responses to changes in the environment, such as those involved in sleep, wakefulness, stress, and reward-seeking. These same brain systems are often dysregulated in addiction and other psychiatric conditions. In the new study, researchers looked at the extended amygdala, a brain region involved in fear, arousal, and emotional processing and which plays a significant role in drug and alcohol addiction. They focused on a part of this structure known as the bed nucleus of stria terminalis (BNST), which connects the extended amygdala to the hypothalamus, a brain region that regulates sleep, appetite, and body temperature.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 25366 - Posted: 08.23.2018

Hannah Devlin Science correspondent Lack of sleep has long been linked to obesity, but a new study suggests late night snacking may not be the primary culprit. The latest findings provide the most compelling evidence to date that disrupted sleep alters the metabolism and boosts the body’s ability to store fat. The findings add to mounting scientific evidence on how disrupted sleep influences the usual rhythms of the body clock, raising the risk of a wide range of health problems from heart disease to diabetes. Jonathan Cedernaes, a circadian researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden and the paper’s first author, said the findings pointed to “the irreplaceable function that sleep has”. “Sleep is not just to conserve energy, it has so many functions,” he said. Time and again research has linked shift work and lack of sleep to the risk of obesity and diabetes, but the reasons behind this association are complex and have been difficult to elucidate. Insufficient sleep appears to disrupt hormones that control appetite and feelings of fullness. Those who sleep less have more time to eat, may be too tired to exercise and have less self-control when it comes to resisting the temptation of unhealthy snacks. A previous study by Cedernaes and colleagues showed that even a short period of sleep deprivation led people to eat more and opt for higher calorie food. To complicate matters further, obesity increases the risk of sleep apnoea, a breathing problem that itself disturbs sleep quality. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Sleep; Obesity
Link ID: 25365 - Posted: 08.23.2018

By Nicholas Bakalar Children whose families move homes frequently may be at increased risk for serious psychiatric illness. Researchers followed 1,440,383 children from birth to age 29, including data on residential moves. They found 4,537 cases of psychosis, symptoms of which can include hallucinations and delusions. The more often children under 19 moved, the greater their risk for psychosis. The largest effect was among 16- to 19-year-olds. For them, two or three moves more than tripled the risk for psychosis, and four or more nearly quadrupled the risk. After age 20, there was no association between moving and illness. The study, in JAMA Psychiatry, controlled for sex, foreign background, parental death, parental history of severe mental illness, income and mother’s age at birth, but had no data for bullying or physical or sexual abuse. “Moving once or twice over the course of a childhood won’t have much effect,” said the lead author, James B. Kirkbride, an associate professor at University College London. “But moving once a year for four or five years — it would seem that those kids would face a risk. So we’d want to build a social network for those children who are moving frequently, particularly in late adolescence, when forming friendships can be vital for lifelong resistance to psychotic illness.” © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 25364 - Posted: 08.23.2018

David Cyranoski Doctors in Japan are poised to implant neural cells made from ‘reprogrammed’ stem cells into the brains of people with Parkinson’s disease. It is only the third clinical application of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which are developed by reprogramming the cells of body tissues such as skin to revert to an embryonic-like state, from which they can morph into other cell types. Researchers have used the technique to generate precursors to the neurons that make the neurotransmitter dopamine, which degenerate and die in people with Parkinson’s disease. Physicians at Kyoto University Hospital will inject 5 million of these precursor cells into the brains of seven people with the condition. Because dopamine-producing neurons are involved in motor skills, people with the condition typically experience tremors and stiff muscles. Participants will be observed for two years after the transplantation. One of the trial’s leaders, stem-cell scientist Jun Takahashi at the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application in Kyoto, demonstrated in 2017 that the precursor cells differentiated into dopamine-producing neurons in monkeys that had a version of the disease. They also had improved symptoms1. In 2014, ophthalmologist Masayo Takahashi — Takahashi’s wife — at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe developed an iPS-cell-based therapy to treat retinal disease. And in May, a team at Osaka University received approval to use cells created from iPS cells to treat heart disease. © 2018 Springer Nature Limited

Keyword: Parkinsons; Stem Cells
Link ID: 25363 - Posted: 08.22.2018

By Meredith Wadman VANCOUVER, CANADA—The dark shadow of Huntington disease fell squarely over Michelle Dardengo’s life on the day in 1986 that her 52-year-old father was found floating in the river in Tahsis, the remote Vancouver Island mill town where she grew up. Richard Varney had left his wedding ring, watch, and wallet on the bathroom counter; ridden his bike to a bridge that spans the rocky river; and jumped. The 4.5-meter drop broke his pelvis. The town doctor happened to be fishing below and pulled Varney out as he floated downstream, saving his life. But his tailspin continued. The once funny man who read the Encyclopedia Britannica for pleasure; the good dancer who loved ABBA, the Three Tenors, and AC/DC; the affable volunteer firefighter—that man was disappearing. He was being replaced by an erratic, raging misanthrope wedded to 40-ounce bottles of Bacardi whose legs would not stay still when he reclined in his La-Z-Boy. In 1988, Varney was diagnosed with Huntington disease. That explained his transformation but offered little comfort. Huntington is a brutal brain malady caused by a mutant protein that inexorably robs victims of control of their movements and their minds. Patients are plagued by jerky, purposeless movements called chorea. They may become depressed, irritable, and impulsive. They inevitably suffer from progressive dementia. The slow decline typically begins in midlife and lasts 15 to 20 years, as the toxic protein damages and finally kills neurons. For both families and the afflicted, the descent is agonizing, not least because each child of an affected person has a 50% chance of inheriting the fatal disease. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 25362 - Posted: 08.22.2018

By Christopher F. Schuetze DOETINCHEM, Netherlands — “We’re lost,” said Truus Ooms, 81, to her friend Annie Arendsen, 83, as they rode a city bus together. “As the driver, you should really know where we are,” Ms. Arendsen told Rudi ten Brink, 63, who sat at the wheel of the bus. But she was joking. The three are dementia patients at a care facility in the eastern Netherlands. Their bus ride — a route on the flat, tree-lined country roads of the Dutch countryside — was a simulation that plays out several times a day on three video screens. It is part of an unorthodox approach to dementia treatment that doctors and caregivers across the Netherlands have been pioneering: harnessing the power of relaxation, childhood memories, sensory aids, soothing music, family structure and other tools to heal, calm and nurture the residents, rather than relying on the old prescription of bed rest, medication and, in some cases, physical restraints. “The more stress is reduced, the better,” said Dr. Erik Scherder, a neuropsychologist at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and one of the country’s best-known dementia care specialists. “If you can lower stress and discomfort, it has a direct physiological effect.” Simulated trips in buses or on beaches — like one in a care facility in Haarlem, not far from a real beach — create a gathering point for patients. The shared experience lets them talk about past trips and take a mini holiday from their daily lives. Dementia, a group of related syndromes, manifests itself in a steep decline in brain functions. The condition steals memories and personalities. It robs families of their loved ones and saps resources, patience and finances. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 25361 - Posted: 08.22.2018

Inga Vesper The executive director of the European Union’s ambitious — but contentious — Human Brain Project (HBP) has left his post after a disagreement with the institution that coordinates the initiative. The 10-year, €1-billion (US$1.1-billion) project aims to simulate the human brain using computers, and is a flagship science initiative of the EU. In a joint statement on 16 August, Chris Ebell and the HBP’s coordinating institution, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, said that they had decided to “separate by common agreement” following “differences of opinion on governance and on strategic orientations”. Ebell became director of the project in 2015, after the HBP disbanded its small executive committee in favour of a 22-member governing board. The HBP, which involves more than 100 partner institutions, had after its inception in 2013 been criticized by some neuroscientists for its scientific direction, its complicated structure and the lack of transparency surrounding its funding decisions. doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-06020-0 © 2018 Springer Nature Limited

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 25360 - Posted: 08.22.2018

By Jane E. Brody The day my identical twin boys were delivered by an emergency cesarean, I noticed a behavioral difference. Twin A, who had been pushed against an unyielding pelvis for several hours, spent most of his first day alert and looking around, while Twin B, who had been spared this pre-birth stress, slept calmly like a typical newborn. My husband and I did our best to treat them equally, but Twin A was more of a challenge to hold — we called him “our lobster baby” — while Twin B was easily cuddled. As the boys developed, we saw other differences. Twin B rehearsed all the ambulatory milestones — crawling, walking, cycling, skating, etc. — while his twin watched, then copied the skill when it was mastered. Although they shared all their genes and grew up with the same adoring parents, clearly there were differences in these boys that had been influenced by other factors in their environment, both prenatal and postnatal. The relative importance of nature and nurture to how a child develops has been debated by philosophers and psychologists for centuries, and has had strong — and sometimes misguided — influences on public policy. The well-intentioned Head Start program, for example, was designed to give children from deprived environments an academic leg up. But it might have been more effective to teach their caregivers parenting and nurturing skills, as well as how to enrich the children’s environment and resist bad influences. Children learn from what they see around them, and if what they mainly experience is violence, abuse, truancy and no expectations for success, their chances for a wholesome future are compromised from the start. As my son Erik Engquist, a fellow journalist who was Twin A, put it: “Genes define your potential, but your environment largely determines how you turn out. The few who escape negative influences are outliers.” © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 25359 - Posted: 08.21.2018

Scientists funded by the National Eye Institute (NEI) report a novel gene therapy that halts vision loss in a canine model of a blinding condition called autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa (adRP). The strategy could one day be used to slow or prevent vision loss in people with the disease. NEI is part of the National Institutes of Health. “We’ve developed and shown proof-of-concept for a gene therapy for one of the most common forms of retinitis pigmentosa,” said William Beltran, D.V.M., Ph.D., of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, Philadelphia, a lead author of the study, which appears online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Retinitis pigmentosa refers to a group of rare genetic disorders that damage light-sensing cells in the retina known as photoreceptors. Rod photoreceptor cells enable vision in low light and require a protein called rhodopsin for their light-sensing ability. People with adRP caused by mutations in the rhodopsin gene usually have one good copy of the gene and a second, mutated copy that codes for an abnormal rhodopsin protein. The abnormal rhodopsin is often toxic, slowly killing the rod cells. As the photoreceptors die, vision deteriorates over years or decades. Scientists have identified more than 150 rhodopsin mutations that cause adRP, challenging efforts to develop effective therapies. Beltran generated a gene therapy construct that knocks down the rod cells’ ability to produce rhodopsin using a technology known as shRNA (short-hairpin RNA) interference. Gene therapy introduces genetic material, like shRNA, into cells to compensate for abnormal genes or to make a beneficial protein. Often adapted from viruses, vectors are engineered to effectively deliver this genetic material into cells without causing disease.

Keyword: Vision; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 25358 - Posted: 08.21.2018

By Bilal Choudhry Inadequate sleep causes more than $400 billion in economic losses annually in the United States and results in 1.23 million lost days of work each year, researchers have found. The impact of chronic sleeplessness in the United States far exceeds the costs in other industrialized countries. The runner-up, Japan, loses as much as $138 billion annually to sleeplessness among workers, but that represents a greater share of its economy, researchers at the RAND Corporation found. The number of individuals who sleep less than the recommended hours is increasing in the developed world. From 20 to 30 percent of these workers complain of a lack of sleep on a daily basis. “Inadequate sleep is too easily accepted into the community as part of life,” said Dr. David Hillman, a clinical professor at the University of Western Australia who studies sleep deficiency. In many work settings, “sleep is an indulgence.” On a less quantifiable level, inadequate sleep reduces the safety and productivity of workers. Researchers have linked such shattering events as the Challenger space shuttle accident to human error caused by a lack of sleep. “It’s a huge problem that translates into enormous costs,” said Dr. Hillman. “And it’s a call to not only mitigate the suffering, but also to mitigate the costs.” As the work force becomes more competitive, he said, employers must acknowledge inadequate sleep as a threat to company productivity. Well-rested employees are more efficient, tend to be healthier and feel more content. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 25357 - Posted: 08.21.2018

James R. Howe VI In May 2007, Wim Hof went on a short hike in well-worn summer clothes, a pair of shorts and open-toed sandals. But it may have been a poor choice: his foot started to hurt and he had to turn back after four and a half miles. There are two crucial details to this story: Hof began his hike at Base Camp on Mount Everest, and the pain in his foot was caused by severe frostbite. He had reason to think he could withstand the extreme conditions; Wim Hof is also known as “The Iceman,” holder of 26 world records and one of the most successful extreme athletes of all time. He attributes his success to a breathing method that he thinks exploits his “reptilian brain,” helping him acquire a superhuman tolerance to punishing cold. According to some, tricks like these fool the lizard part of your brain – the more primitive, unconscious mind – and can be used to make us vulnerable to marketing, lose us money, or maybe even elect Donald Trump. Paul MacLean first proposed the idea of the “lizard brain” in 1957 as part of his triune brain concept, theorizing that the human brain supposedly consists of three sections, nested based on their evolutionary age. He believed the neocortex, which he thought arose in primates, is the largest, outermost, and newest part of the human brain: It houses our conscious mind and handles learning, language, and abstract thought. MacLean thought the older, deeper limbic system – which mediates emotion and motivation – began in mammals. Finally, he traced the brainstem and basal ganglia back to primordial reptiles, theorizing that they controlled our reflexes, as well as our four major instincts: to fight, flee, feed, and fornicate.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 25356 - Posted: 08.21.2018

Ashley Yeager On Wednesday and Thursday (August 15 and August 16), more than 85 people in New Haven, Connecticut, overdosed on synthetic cannabinoids. In Washington, DC, last month, more than 300 people overdosed on the drugs, commonly called K2 or Spice, with similar cases reported in Baltimore, Brooklyn, and Los Angeles. In 2016, California Governor Jerry Brown banned possession of the synthetic drugs in his state, and in 2015, Mayor Bill de Blasio made it illegal to sell them in the boroughs of New York City. Still, such legislation hasn’t mitigated the overdoses in New York and other areas. Michael Baumann, a pharmacologist at the National Institute on Drug Abuse who has been studying the effects of synthetic cannabinoids in animal models, tells The Scientist that part of the problem is that K2, Spice, and similar drugs are often referred to as fake marijuana, which can entice people to try it. After all, it seems safer than smoking the real thing, right? But what people don’t realize is that these synthetic products contain chemicals that are much more potent than THC—tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive constituent of marijuana—or any other naturally occurring compound in pot, Baumann says. “K2 and Spice are dangerous because there’s no quality control in their packaging, and you don’t know what’s in it,” he says. “These mini-epidemics of intoxication illustrate that beautifully.” Here, The Scientist talks with Baumann about synthetic cannabinoids’ activity in the body and the brain, how the drugs originated as basic neuroscience tools to study the endocannabinoid system, and what makes users prone to overdose. © 1986 - 2018 The Scientist.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 25355 - Posted: 08.21.2018

By Abby Goodnough The addiction treatment program at Highland Hospital’s emergency room is only one way that cities and health care providers are connecting with people in unusual settings. Another is in San Francisco, where city health workers are taking to the streets to find homeless people with opioid use disorder and offering them buprenorphine prescriptions on the spot. The city is spending $6 million on the program in the next two years, partly in response to a striking increase in the number of people injecting drugs on sidewalks and in other public areas. Most of the money will go toward hiring 10 new clinicians for the city’s Street Medicine Team, which already provides medical care for the homeless. Members of the team will travel around the city offering buprenorphine prescriptions to addicted homeless people, which they can fill the same day at a city-run pharmacy. At the end of a recent yearlong pilot, about 20 of the 95 participants were still taking buprenorphine under the care of the street medicine team. Dr. Barry Zevin, the city’s medical director for Street Medicine and Shelter Health, hopes to provide buprenorphine to 250 more people through the program. That’s only a tiny fraction of the estimated 22,500 people in San Francisco who actively inject drugs, he said, but it’s a start. What follows is a condensed, edited interview with Dr. Zevin, who has been providing medical care to the homeless in San Francisco since 1991. Why offer buprenorphine on the streets instead of in a medical clinic? Most health care for the homeless happens under the model of waiting for people to come in to a health center. But a lot of people never come in. There are a lot of mental health, substance abuse and cognitive problems in this population, a lot of chronic illness. Appointments are the enemy of homeless people. On the street there are no appointments, and no penalties or judgments for missing appointments. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 25354 - Posted: 08.20.2018

By Daniela J. Lamas NORTH ANDOVER, Mass. — It was a Sunday afternoon, and in the cozy house at the end of the street, Andrew Foote sat in his usual chair while a movie played on the television. The young man’s hands rested on two pillows, wrists bent and fingers contracted into fists. From time to time, he rocked forward as if to stand but then collapsed backward, into the chair. His few words were slow and slurred. The simple fact that Andrew was living at home is somewhat miraculous. Heroin and fentanyl caused him to stop breathing, but he learned to breathe on his own again. His kidneys failed and then recovered. But Andrew’s brain, starved of oxygen too long, was left severely damaged. More than four years have passed since the overdose. For Andrew’s parents, the fear that their son will die has now been replaced by a new set of realities and unanswerable questions: Is this a good life? Is he happy? What will happen to him when they grow old? In the opioid epidemic, outcomes like Andrew’s are a largely unseen casualty. “People think that if you overdose on drugs, you either die or you’re O.K.,” his mother, Linda Foote, told me. “But that’s not true.” Andrew was a golden child. He was the oldest of four, a high school football star who remained humble despite the trophies that decorated his room — now alongside a urinary catheter, pill boxes and equipment for his feeding tube. “How many touchdowns did you make in high school?” his mother prompted. His long-term memory had remained relatively preserved, though it was hard for him to call up the words. As we waited, my gaze traveled to a framed collage of family photos. There was Andrew in his letterman’s jacket, blond hair cut short, lips curled upward in a shy smile. He was still a handsome guy. Mrs. Foote took pride in this, but his expression had dimmed. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 25353 - Posted: 08.20.2018

Genevieve Fox Paola Peretti is losing her eyesight and she wouldn’t have it any other way. When she was 14, she became very short-sighted, virtually overnight. Three years later came the diagnosis of Stargardt macular dystrophy, a degenerative disease that destroys central vision, damages colour perception and results in blindness. Two years ago, finding herself in a place of both “desperation and hope,” the 32-year-old Italian language teacher and debut novelist decided to step out from the shadow of her hereditary condition, which she only ever aired with her family, and confront her fear of the dark. The Distance Between Me and the Cherry Tree is the result: a captivating, wise and highly visual children’s novel about living in the face of fear. Its heroine, nine-year-old Mafalda, also has Stargardt disease. A bewitching, brave little girl, she will lose her sight completely within six months, as Peretti was expecting to do at some unspecified point in her own life when she began the novel. The eponymous cherry tree is next to Mafalda’s school. Each day, she has to get closer to it before it comes into focus. As her short-sightedness increases, so does her fear of the future. “She is losing her life as she knows it,” says Peretti, who explains that she herself can see “half of what other people see”. Mafalda has blank patches in both eyes, and they get bigger. Peretti has a blank patch in her right eye. I am seated a couple of feet from her as we talk in her publisher’s office. She says I am partially blurred. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Vision; Emotions
Link ID: 25352 - Posted: 08.20.2018

By Abby Goodnough OAKLAND, Calif. — Every year, thousands of people addicted to opioids show up at hospital emergency rooms in withdrawal so agonizing it leaves them moaning and writhing on the floor. Usually, they’re given medicines that help with vomiting or diarrhea and sent on their way, maybe with a few numbers to call about treatment. When Rhonda Hauswirth arrived at the Highland Hospital E.R. here, retching and shaking violently after a day and a half without heroin, something very different happened. She was offered a dose of buprenorphine on the spot. One of three medications approved in the United States to treat opioid addiction, it works by easing withdrawal symptoms and cravings. The tablet dissolved under her tongue while she slumped in a plastic chair, her long red hair obscuring her ashen face. Soon, the shakes stopped. “I could focus a little more. I could see straight,” said Ms. Hauswirth, 40. “I’d never heard of anyone going to an emergency room to do that.” Highland, a clattering big-city hospital where security wands constantly beep as new patients get scanned for weapons, is among a small group of institutions that have started initiating opioid addiction treatment in the E.R. Their aim is to plug a gaping hole in a medical system that consistently fails to provide treatment on demand, or any evidence-based treatment at all, even as more than two million Americans suffer from opioid addiction. According to the latest estimates, overdoses involving opioids killed nearly 50,000 people last year. By providing buprenorphine around the clock to people in crisis — people who may never otherwise seek medical care — these E.R.s are doing their best to ensure a rare opportunity isn’t lost. “With a single E.R. visit we can provide 24 to 48 hours of withdrawal suppression, as well as suppression of cravings,” said Dr. Andrew Herring, an emergency medicine specialist at Highland who runs the buprenorphine program. “It can be this revelatory moment for people — even in the depth of crisis, in the middle of the night. It shows them there’s a pathway back to feeling normal.” © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 25351 - Posted: 08.18.2018

By Kerri Smith, Cole Skinner was hanging from a wall above an abandoned quarry when he heard a car pull up. He and his friends bolted, racing along a narrow path on the quarry’s edge and hopping over a barbed-wire fence to exit the grounds. The chase is part of the fun for Skinner and his friend Alex McCallum-Toppin, both 15 and pupils at a school in Faringdon, UK. The two say that they seek out places such as construction sites and disused buildings—not to get into trouble, but to explore. There are also bragging rights to be earned. “It’s just something you can say: ‘Yeah, I’ve been in an abandoned quarry’,” says McCallum-Toppin. “You can talk about it with your friends.” Science has often looked at risk-taking among adolescents as a monolithic problem for parents and the public to manage or endure. When Eva Telzer, a neuroscientist at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, asks family, friends, undergraduates or researchers in related fields about their perception of teenagers, “there’s almost never anything positive,” she says. “It’s a pervasive stereotype.” But how Alex and Cole dabble with risk—considering its social value alongside other pros and cons—is in keeping with a more complex picture emerging from neuroscience. Adolescent behaviour goes beyond impetuous rebellion or uncontrollable hormones, says Adriana Galván, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “How we define risk-taking is going through a shift.” © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 25350 - Posted: 08.18.2018