Menaka Wilhelm Karen Byrne's left hand sometimes operates on its own terms. It has unbuttoned shirts and stubbed out cigarettes, without her permission. Oh, and a few times, her own hand has slapped her across the face. This is a documented medical occurrence, not a premise for a Jim Carrey movie. The condition's name? Alien hand syndrome. Invisibilia featured Byrne and her alien hand last summer, and Giant Ant Studios recently created an otherworldly animation of Byrne's story. Byrne says she's gotten used to her left hand's new attitude, but alien hand syndrome is a pesky, strange condition. Imagine, as another patient has reported, sitting down to play the piano, only to have one hand levitate far above the piano keys as you try to practice. It's not that you've changed your mind; your goal is still to play a sonata. But that hand — still yours, and now also not yours — is obeying new directions, and you didn't come up with them consciously. For the pianist and Byrne, and many other cases, alien hand symptoms appears rooted in disruption of communication through the corpus callosum. That's the set of fibers that connects the right and left sides of the brain. The pianist's corpus callosum showed missing connections on an MRI, and Byrne's left hand developed its disobedience after a surgeon severed her corpus callosum in an operation to treat epileptic seizures. © 2018 npr

Keyword: Laterality; Consciousness
Link ID: 24643 - Posted: 02.10.2018

By Marc Lewis Over the past year and a half, Scientific American has published a number of fine articles arguing that addiction is not a disease, that drugs are not the cause of addiction, and that social and societal factors are fundamental contributors to opioid addiction in general and the overdose crisis in particular. The dominant view, that addiction is a disease resulting from drug use, is gradually being eroded by these and other incisive critiques. Yet the disease model and its corollaries still prevail in the domains of research, policy setting, knowledge dissemination and treatment delivery, more in the United States than in any other country in the developed world. You might wonder: what are we waiting for? The disease model remains dominant in the U.S. because of its stakeholders. First, the rehab industry, worth an estimated $35 billion per year, uses the disease nomenclature in a vast majority of its ads and slogans. Despite consistently low success rates, that's not likely to stop because it pulls in the cash. Second, as long as addiction is labeled a disease, medical insurance providers can be required to pay for it. Of course they do so as cheaply as possible, to the detriment of service quality, but they at least save governments the true costs of dealing with addiction through education, social support, employment initiatives and anti-poverty mechanisms. Third, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that funds roughly 90 percent of addiction research worldwide, is a medically oriented funder and policy setter, as are the American Society of Addiction Medicine and other similar bodies. © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 24642 - Posted: 02.10.2018

National Institutes of Health scientists developing a rapid, practical test for the early diagnosis of prion diseases have modified the assay to offer the possibility of improving early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies. The group, led by NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), tested 60 cerebral spinal fluid samples, including 12 from people with Parkinson’s disease, 17 from people with dementia with Lewy bodies, and 31 controls, including 16 of whom had Alzheimer’s disease. The test correctly excluded all the 31 controls and diagnosed both Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies with 93 percent accuracy. Importantly, test results were available within two days, compared to related assays that require up to 13 days. The group conducted the tests using Real-Time Quaking-Induced Conversion (RT-QuIC), an assay developed and refined over the past decade at NIAID’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories. Scientists from the University of California San Diego, University of Verona in Italy, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, and the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, collaborated on the project. The research findings were published in Acta Neuropathologica Communications. Multiple neurological disorders, including Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies, involve the abnormal clumping of a protein called alpha-synuclein into brain deposits called Lewy bodies. The pathological processes in these diseases resembles prion diseases in mammal brains. Like prion diseases, Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies result in progressive deterioration of brain functions and, ultimately, death. Parkinson’s disease is about 1,000 times more common than prion diseases, affecting up to 1 million people in the United States, with 60,000 new cases diagnosed each year. Lewy body dementia affects an estimated 1.4 million people in the United States, according to the Lewy Body Dementia Association.

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Parkinsons
Link ID: 24641 - Posted: 02.10.2018

By Karl Gruber A. Fujiwara et al., “First report on the emergency dance of Apis cerana japonica, which induces odorous plant material collection in response to Vespa mandarinia japonica scouting,” Entomol Sci, doi:10.1111/ens.12285, 2017. The Waggle Dance Honeybees are famous for their waggle dances—figure-eight boogies that foragers use to inform nestmates about the locations of food or water. But entomologists were unclear about whether the dances could also be used to help ensure colony safety. Unwelcome Guests Ayumi Fujiwara, a graduate student at the University of Tokyo, and colleagues simulated wasp attacks on hives of the Japanese honeybee (Apis cerana japonica) to test the bees’ response to danger. “Giant wasps attack the nests of honeybees to feed their brood in autumn. As a result, wasps may sometimes annihilate a whole honeybee colony,” she says. Dance Off The researchers found that the bees did use a waggle dance as a warning signal, but only in response to sightings of one wasp species, Vespa mandarinia japonica. “The hive entrance dance informs bees’ nestmates of a specific emergency and of the urgent necessity to collect odorous plant materials as a counterattack strategy,” Fujiwara says. The bees collect stinky plant materials, such as leaves from Nepalese smartweed (Persicaria nepalensis), and smear them at the hive entrance to deter the wasps. Decoding the Moves The information coded in this new waggle dance is not yet completely clear, notes Margaret Couvillon, a biologist and honeybee specialist at Virginia Tech. “What would be interesting to see is if there are any differences in the conveying of directional information in this defensive context versus the regular foraging context,” she says. “Nature tends to be parsimonious in finding solutions, so we might expect that the bees use a similar mechanism in these different situations.” © 1986-2018 The Scientist

Keyword: Animal Communication; Aggression
Link ID: 24640 - Posted: 02.10.2018

By Kimberly Hickok Your webcam may know your face, but your keyboard knows your gender. Computer models can predict with 95.6% accuracy whether a man or woman is typing, according to a new study. To conduct the research, computer engineers installed keystroke-logging software onto the personal computers of 75 volunteers—36 men, 39 women—which monitored their daily computer use for 10 months. The researchers then used a program they created, called “ISqueezeU” to calculate the relative helpfulness of different typing features for determining gender—things like the time between two specific keystrokes, or the amount of time a key is pressed down during a single keystroke. A few features stood out as being more useful than others. For example, the average time between pressing the “N” key to pressing the “O” key was the most helpful, followed by the average time between pressing the “M” and “O” keys. The program isn’t capable of specifying whether a man or woman types those keys faster or more often—only that there is a difference. The researchers then tested the program’s findings using five machine learning models, which are computer programs that build models based on what they “learn” from existing data. All five models were able to predict gender accurately more than 78% of the time, with the most successful model being more than 95% accurate, the engineers report this week in Digital Investigation. The team proposes the use of keystroke dynamics as a cost-efficient and nonintrusive way to identify the gender of unknown computer users in criminal investigations, such as in cases of cyberstalking or identity theft. The researchers plan to expand their data collection with more volunteers, and see whether incorporating other variables such as handedness or education level can increase accuracy. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 24639 - Posted: 02.10.2018

By Roni Dengler Mental illness affects one in six U.S. adults, but scientists' sense of the underlying biology of most psychiatric disorders remains nebulous. That's frustrating for physicians treating the diseases, who must also make diagnoses based on symptoms that may only appear sporadically. No laboratory blood test or brain scan can yet distinguish whether someone has depression or bipolar disorder, for example. Now, however, a large-scale analysis of postmortem brains is revealing distinctive molecular traces in people with mental illness. This week, an international team of researchers reports that five major psychiatric disorders have patterns of gene activity that often overlap but also vary in disease-specific—and sometimes counterintuitive—ways. The findings, they say, might someday lead to diagnostic tests and novel therapies, and one has already inspired a clinical trial of a new way to treat overactive brain cells in autism. Outsiders say the data mark a milestone in psychiatry. "This [work] is changing fundamental views about the nature of psychiatric illness," says Kenneth Kendler, a psychiatric geneticist at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Researchers have long known that genes influence mental illness. Five years ago, for example, the global Psychiatric Genomics Consortium found that people with autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder frequently share certain DNA variations. But that 2013 study did not say how those genetic alterations might lead to symptoms. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 24638 - Posted: 02.09.2018

By Diana Kwon When optogenetics debuted over a decade ago, it quickly became the method of choice for many neuroscientists. By using light to selectively control ion channels on neurons in living animal brains, researchers could see how manipulating specific neural circuits altered behavior in real time. Since then, scientists have used the technique to study brain circuity and function across a variety of species, from fruit flies to monkeys—the method is even being tested in a clinical trial to restore vision in patients with a rare genetic disorder. Today (February 8) in Science, researchers report successfully conducting optogenetics experiments using injected nanoparticles in mice, inching the field closer to a noninvasive method of stimulating the brain with light that could one day have therapeutic uses. “Optogenetics revolutionized how we all do experimental neuroscience in terms of exploring circuits,” says Thomas McHugh, a neuroscientist at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan. However, this technique currently requires a permanently implanted fiber—so over the last few years, researchers have started to develop ways to stimulate the brain in less invasive ways. A number of groups devised such techniques using magnetic fields, electric currents, and sound. McHugh and his colleagues decided to try another approach: They chose near-infrared light, which can more easily penetrate tissue than the blue-green light typically used for optogenetics. “What we saw as an advantage was a kind of chemistry-based approach in which we can harness the power of near-infrared light to penetrate tissue, but still use this existing toolbox that's been developed over the last decade of optogenetic channels that respond to visible light,” McHugh says. © 1986-2018 The Scientist

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 24637 - Posted: 02.09.2018

by Ben Guarino Praying mantises do not perceive the world as you and I do. For starters, they're not very brainy — they're insects. A human brain has 85 billion neurons; insects such as mantises have fewer than a million. But mantises, despite their neuronal drought, have devised a way to see in three dimensions. They have a unique sort of vision unlike the 3-D sight used by primates or any other known creature, scientists at the University of Newcastle in Britain discovered recently. The scientists say they hope to apply this visionary technique to robots, allowing relatively unintelligent machines to see in 3-D. “Praying mantises are really specialized visual predators,” said Vivek Nityananda, an animal behavior expert at the university's Institute of Neuroscience. They are ambush hunters, waiting in stillness to strike at movement. Yet unlike other insects, they have two large, forward-facing eyes — the very feature that enables vertebrates to sense depth. Previous research had suggested that praying mantises use 3-D vision, also called stereopsis. Stereo vision, Nityananda said, is “basically comparing the slightly different views of each eye to be able to work out how far things are from you.” Uncovering the particulars of mantis stereo vision required a lot of patience and a little beeswax. Luckily, Nityananda and his teammates had both. Using the beeswax like glue — in a way that did not harm the insects — they affixed lenses to their faces. The lenses, similar to old-fashioned 3-D movie glasses, had one blue filter paired with one green filter. The mantises then were placed in front of a screen — an insect cinema, the researchers called it. © 1996-2018 The Washington Post

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 24636 - Posted: 02.09.2018

Laura Sanders Brain scientists have filmed a first-of-a-kind birth video. It reveals specialized cells in the brains of mice dividing to create newborn nerve cells. The images, published in the Feb. 9 Science, show intricacies of how certain parts of the adult mouse brain can churn out new nerve cells. These details may help lead to a deeper understanding of the role of this nerve cell renewal in such processes as memory. Deep in the brains of mice, a memory-related structure called the hippocampus is known to be flush with new nerve cells. But because this buried neural real estate is hard to study, the circumstances of these births weren’t clear. Using living mice, Sebastian Jessberger, a neuroscientist at the University of Zurich, and colleagues removed the outer layers of brain tissue that obscure the hippocampus. The scientists marked 63 cells called radial stem cells, which can divide to create new nerve cells. Researchers then watched these stem cells for up to two months, taking pictures every 12 or 24 hours. During that time, 42 of these stem cells underwent a spurt of division, churning out two kinds of cells: intermediate cells that would go on to produce nerve cells as well as mature nerve cells themselves. Once this burst of activity ended, the radial stem cells disappeared by dividing themselves into mature nerve cells that could no longer split. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2017.

Keyword: Neurogenesis; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 24635 - Posted: 02.09.2018

By Andrew Joseph, Thousands of people with post-traumatic stress disorder have taken the drug prazosin to ease the nightmares and disturbances that stalk their sleep. Numerous studies have shown the drug to be effective at controlling those episodes. But a team of researchers from the Department of Veterans Affairs, seeking to collect more evidence, set out to study the sustained effectiveness of the treatment. They organized a large, lengthy, multisite trial—the most rigorous type of trial. The drug was no better than a placebo. The trial “seemed like a good idea, but you know, live and learn,” said Dr. Murray Raskind, a lead researcher on the trial, which was described Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Some researchers not involved with the study were quick to say that clinicians should still prescribe prazosin for some patients; Raskind, director of the VA Northwest Network Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center, agreed. There are few other treatment options and there is evidence supporting the use of the drug, a generic that was originally approved to treat high blood pressure but is prescribed off label to control nightmares and improve sleep quality in patients with PTSD. “I don’t think it should change clinical practice—there are six positive studies and one negative study,” said Raskind, who described the research team as “humbled” by the results. He estimated that 15 percent to 20 percent of veterans in the VA system with PTSD are currently prescribed prazosin, and said he did not expect that to change. © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 24634 - Posted: 02.09.2018

By ANDREW JACOBS SANTIAGO, Chile — They killed Tony the Tiger. They did away with Cheetos’ Chester Cheetah. They banned Kinder Surprise, the chocolate eggs with a hidden toy. The Chilean government, facing skyrocketing rates of obesity, is waging war on unhealthy foods with a phalanx of marketing restrictions, mandatory packaging redesigns and labeling rules aimed at transforming the eating habits of 18 million people. Nutrition experts say the measures are the world’s most ambitious attempt to remake a country’s food culture, and could be a model for how to turn the tide on a global obesity epidemic that researchers say contributes to four million premature deaths a year. “It’s hard to overstate how significant Chile’s actions are — or how hard it has been to get there in the face of the usual pressures,” said Stephen Simpson, director of the Charles Perkins Centre, an organization of scholars focused on nutrition and obesity science and policy. The multibillion dollar food and soda industries have exerted those pressures to successfully stave off regulation in many other countries. Since the food law was enacted two years ago, it has forced multinational behemoths like Kellogg to remove iconic cartoon characters from sugary cereal boxes and banned the sale of candy like Kinder Surprise that use trinkets to lure young consumers. The law prohibits the sale of junk food like ice cream, chocolate and potato chips in Chilean schools and proscribes such products from being advertised during television programs or on websites aimed at young audiences. Beginning next year, such ads will be scrubbed entirely from TV, radio and movie theaters between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. In an effort to encourage breast-feeding, a ban on marketing infant formula kicks in this spring. The linchpin of the initiative is a new labeling system that requires packaged food companies to prominently display black warning logos in the shape of a stop sign on items high in sugar, salt, calories or saturated fat. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 24633 - Posted: 02.08.2018

By Catherine Offord River-dwelling populations of the Central American fish species Astyanax mexicanus sleep for more than 10 hours each day. But eyeless, cave-dwelling members of the same species barely sleep at all, and show no obvious health or developmental problems as a result. Now, researchers in the U.S. and in France have identified the signaling pathway behind this difference, offering a glimpse into the processes regulating sleep duration in vertebrates. The findings were published yesterday (February 6) in two papers in eLife. In one study, researchers at Florida Atlantic University compared the brains of cave-dwelling A. mexicanus with their surface-living cousins. They found that the number of neurons producing hypocretin—a neuropeptide linked to sleep-disorders such as narcolepsy when dysregulated—was significantly higher in the cave dwellers. What’s more, inhibiting hypocretin signaling genetically or pharmacologically increased cavefish’s sleep duration by several hours, while having minimal effect on surface-living fish. “These findings suggest that differences in hypocretin production may explain variation in sleep between animal species, or even between individual people,” study coauthor Alex Keene of Florida Atlantic University’s Brain Institute says in a statement. “It may also provide important insight into how we might build a brain that does not need to sleep.” © 1986-2018 The Scientist

Keyword: Sleep; Vision
Link ID: 24632 - Posted: 02.08.2018

Research into curious bright spots in the eyes on stroke patients’ brain images could one day alter the way these individuals are assessed and treated. A team of scientists at the National Institutes of Health found that a chemical routinely given to stroke patients undergoing brain scans can leak into their eyes, highlighting those areas and potentially providing insight into their strokes. The study was published in Neurology. “We were kind of astounded by this – it’s a very unrecognized phenomenon,” said Richard Leigh, M.D., an assistant clinical investigator at the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the paper’s senior author. “It raises the question of whether there is something we can observe in the eye that would help clinicians evaluate the severity of a stroke and guide us on how best to help patients.” The eyes glowed so brightly on those images due to gadolinium, a harmless, transparent chemical often given to patients during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to highlight abnormalities in the brain. In healthy individuals, gadolinium remains in the blood stream and is filtered out by the kidneys. However, when someone has experienced damage to the blood-brain barrier, which controls whether substances in the blood can enter the brain, gadolinium leaks into the brain, creating bright spots that mark the location of brain damage. Previous research had shown that certain eye diseases could cause a similar disruption to the blood-ocular barrier, which does for the eye what the blood-brain barrier does for the brain. Dr. Leigh’s team discovered that a stroke can also compromise the blood-ocular barrier and that the gadolinium that leaked into a patient’s eyes could provide information about his or her stroke.

Keyword: Stroke; Vision
Link ID: 24631 - Posted: 02.08.2018

By David Grimm ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN—If they weren't in the windowless basement of a cavernous biomedical research building, the "Aquatic Suites" might sound like a cushy vacation destination. But the zebrafish here at the University of Michigan (UM) still have it pretty good. In a large room full of aquaria, the striped, pinkie-size swimmers flit past fake green plants, white plastic tunnels, and multicolored marbles that may remind them of the bottoms of lakes and streams. These simple accoutrements are a luxury for creatures typically housed with little more than food and the water they swim in. And the enrichments may make the animals better at what they do: serving as important models for human disease. For decades, lab animals such as rodents and fish have lived in barren enclosures: a small plastic box, few—if any—companions, and little else. The smaller the number of variables, the thinking went, the greater the accuracy of the experiment. But a growing number of studies suggests that this approach may have backfired. Only one in nine drugs that works in animals ever succeeds in human clinical trials, and labs often struggle to reproduce one another's results. Could the environment these creatures live in be part of the problem? That's what a new group of advocates argues. "We're trying to control these animals so much, they're no longer useful," says Joseph Garner, a behavioral scientist who runs a program to improve the value and welfare of lab animals at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. "If we want animals to tell us about stuff that's going to happen in people, we need to treat them more like people." © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 24630 - Posted: 02.08.2018

By BENEDICT CAREY Scientists have developed a brain implant that noticeably boosted memory in its first serious test run, perhaps offering a promising new strategy to treat dementia, traumatic brain injuries and other conditions that damage memory. The device works like a pacemaker, sending electrical pulses to aid the brain when it is struggling to store new information, but remaining quiet when it senses that the brain is functioning well. In the test, reported Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, the device improved word recall by 15 percent — roughly the amount that Alzheimer’s disease steals over two and half years. The implant is still experimental; the researchers are currently in discussions to commercialize the technology. And its broad applicability is unknown, having been tested so far only in people with epilepsy. Experts cautioned that the potential for misuse of any “memory booster” is enormous — A.D.H.D. drugs are widely used as study aids. They also said that a 15 percent improvement is fairly modest. Still, the research marks the arrival of new kind of device: an autonomous aid that enhances normal, but less than optimal, cognitive function. Doctors have used similar implants for years to block abnormal bursts of activity in the brain, most commonly in people with Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy. “The exciting thing about this is that, if it can be replicated and extended, then we can use the same method to figure out what features of brain activity predict good performance,” said Bradley Voytek, an assistant professor of cognitive and data science at the University of California, San Diego. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Robotics
Link ID: 24629 - Posted: 02.07.2018

Kratom, a coffee-like plant native to southeast Asia which has similar properties to heroin and morphine is readily available in Canada. (Earth Kratom) U.S. health authorities say an herbal supplement promoted as an alternative pain remedy contains the same chemicals found in opioids, the addictive family of drugs at the centre of a national addiction crisis. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration analysis, published Tuesday, makes it more likely that the supplement, kratom, could be banned by the federal government. The FDA also said it has identified 44 reports of death involving kratom since 2011, up from 36 reported in November. Sold in various capsules and powders, kratom has gained popularity in the U.S. as a treatment for pain, anxiety and drug dependence. Proponents argue that the substance is safer than opioid painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin, which have contributed to an epidemic of drug abuse. More than 63,000 Americans died in 2016 from drug overdoses, mostly from opioids. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb reiterated that there are no FDA-approved medical uses for kratom, which is derived from a plant native to Southeast Asia. "Claiming that kratom is benign because it's 'just a plant' is shortsighted and dangerous," Gottlieb said in a statement. "It's an opioid. And it's an opioid that's associated with novel risks because of the variability in how it's being formulated, sold and used recreationally." ©2018 CBC/Radio-Canada.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 24628 - Posted: 02.07.2018

The supplement nicotinamide riboside (NR) – a form of vitamin B3 – prevented neurological damage and improved cognitive and physical function in a new mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. The results of the study, conducted by researchers at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) part of the National Institutes of Health, suggest a potential new target for treating Alzheimer’s disease. The findings appear in the Feb. 5, 2018, issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. NR acts on the brain by normalizing levels of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), a metabolite vital to cellular energy, stem cell self-renewal, resistance to neuronal stress and DNA repair. In Alzheimer’s disease, the brain’s usual DNA repair activity is impaired, leading to mitochondrial dysfunction, lower neuron production, and increased neuronal dysfunction and inflammation. “The pursuit of interventions to prevent or delay Alzheimer’s and related dementias is an important national priority,” said Richard J. Hodes, M.D., director of the NIA. “We are encouraging the testing of a variety of new approaches, and this study’s positive results suggest one avenue to pursue further.” Based on their studies in human postmortem brain, they developed a new strain of mice mimicking major features of human Alzheimer’s such as tau pathology, failing synapses, neuronal death and cognitive impairment. Using this animal model, the researchers tested the effects of an NR supplement by adding it to the drinking water of the mice. Over a three-month period, researchers found that mice who received NR showed reduced tau in their brains, but no change in amyloid-beta.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 24627 - Posted: 02.07.2018

By PAM BELLUCK More American children than previously thought may be suffering from neurological damage because their mothers drank alcohol during pregnancy, according to a new study. The study, published Tuesday in the journal JAMA, estimates that fetal alcohol syndrome and other alcohol-related disorders among American children are at least as common as autism. The disorders can cause cognitive, behavioral and physical problems that hurt children’s development and learning ability. The researchers evaluated about 3,000 children in schools in four communities across the United States and interviewed many of their mothers. Based on their findings, they estimated conservatively that fetal alcohol spectrum disorders affect 1.1 to 5 percent of children in the country, up to five times previous estimates. About 1.5 percent of children are currently diagnosed with autism. “This is an equally common, or more common, disorder and one that’s completely preventable and one that we are missing,” said Christina Chambers, one of the study authors and a professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego. “If it truly is affecting a substantial proportion of the population, then we can do something about it. We can provide better services for those kids, and we can do a better job of preventing the disorders to begin with.” The range of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (also called FASDs) can cause cognitive, behavioral and physical difficulties. The most severe is fetal alcohol syndrome, in which children have smaller-than-typical heads and bodies, as well as eyes unusually short in width, thin upper lips, and smoother-than-usual skin between the nose and mouth, Dr. Chambers said. A moderate form is partial fetal alcohol syndrome. Less severe is alcohol-related neurodevelopmental disorder, in which children have neurological but not physical characteristics and it is known that their mothers drank during pregnancy. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 24626 - Posted: 02.07.2018

By Daniel Barron When my son was born a few months ago, he quickly established himself as the tyrant of our household, one that ruled with a singular phonetic ultimatum (“Oooo—whaaah”), tiny iron fists clutched in fury, and a face that roiled like the churning sea. His placid silence instantly devolved to wrath, wrath (once appeased) acquiesced to staring, staring occasionally melted into surprise, an overabundance of which puddled into an outstretched, fearful startle. In his tough, all-work-no-play gig, he presided for weeks without smiling, cooing, giggling or any apparent sign of happiness. During these overtures, I often wondered why he never cracked a smile. His well fashioned grimace—complete with frown, furrow and squint—proved that his facial muscles were strong enough and coordinated enough to make any number of expressions. In the absence of expressions of happiness, was he unhappy? I thought on the idea for a while and, in the end, consulted a couple of my neuroscientist colleagues at Yale: Al Kaye, a fourth-year psychiatry resident and Dustin Scheinost, an assistant professor with appointments in the Department of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging and in Yale’s Child Study Center. The three of us have young sons and (I hope) enjoyed the back and forth about whether, during their first weeks, our little men were in fact not happy. © 2018 Scientific America

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Emotions
Link ID: 24625 - Posted: 02.07.2018

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR People with acne are at substantially higher risk for depression in the first years after the condition appears, a new study reports. Researchers used a British database of 134,427 men and women with acne and 1,731,608 without and followed them for 15 years. Most were under 19 at the start of the study, though they ranged in age from 7 to 50. The study is in the British Journal of Dermatology. Over the 15-year study period, the probability of developing major depression was 18.5 percent among patients with acne and 12 percent in those without. People with acne were more likely to be female, younger, nonsmokers and of higher socioeconomic status. They were also less likely to use alcohol or be obese. After adjusting for these factors, the scientists found that the increased risk for depression persisted only for the first five years after diagnosis. The risk was highest in the first year, when there was a 63 percent increased risk of depression in a person with acne compared to someone without. The reason for the association is unclear. The lead author, Isabelle A. Vallerand, an epidemiologist at the University of Calgary, said she was surprised to see such a markedly increased risk. “It appears that acne is a lot more than just skin deep,” she said. “It can have a substantial impact on overall mental health.” © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 24624 - Posted: 02.07.2018