By VERONIQUE GREENWOOD If you think about being thirsty at all, it seems like a fairly simple thought process: Find water. Drink it. Move on. But in fact there is something rather profound going on as you take that long, refreshing drink after a run or a hot day in the garden. As you become dehydrated, there is less water in your blood, and neurons in your brain send out the word that it’s time to look for water. Then, once you take a drink, you feel almost instantly satisfied. But if that is obvious, it is also mysterious. You aren’t pouring water directly into your bloodstream, after all. It will take at least 10 or 15 minutes, maybe longer, for the water in your stomach to make its way into the blood. And yet somehow, the brain knows. Sometimes that process isn’t as straightforward as it should be: People with a syndrome called polydipsia feel excessive thirst and drink enormous quantities of water. That can be dangerous, because if the blood is diluted too much, a person can die — a victim of water intoxication. As neuroscientists ponder how and why we thirst, a group of researchers at the California Institute of Technology has shed light on one small corner of the problem. Interested in how the brain keeps track of what the body is drinking, they have identified a set of neurons that receive messages as thirsty mice gulp down water. Passed around in the brain’s thirst centers, these messages seem to be behind the sensation of swift satisfaction that comes after a drink, and also suggest that it’s not just what is drunk, but how it is slurped down, that affects the brain. If the circuits work the same way in people, it may be key to understanding the neuroscience of what happens as we feel thirsty. In the last few years, biologists have been mapping the neurons within an area in the brain that regulates thirst, said Yuki Oka, a professor at Caltech and senior author of the new paper, which was published Wednesday in Nature. Cells in this region had been observed going quiet after an animal had water, but it was not clear exactly why. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 24715 - Posted: 03.01.2018

Terry Gross Antidepressants and medications for bipolar disorder can be life-changing and even lifesaving, but journalist Lauren Slater warns that the long-term side effects of these drugs are "cloaked in mystery." "As a nation, we're consuming them; we're gobbling them down," she says. "And we don't really know what we're taking into our bodies." Slater, who suffers from depression and bipolar disorder, has firsthand experience with psychotropic drugs; she has been taking medication for 35 years. Her new book, Blue Dreams, dedicates separate chapters to drugs such as Thorazine, lithium and psilocybin. Slater says she wanted to "unveil" the drugs by explaining their history, as well as how they work and the benefits and consequences for people who take them: "My goal was to almost try to make the drug into a character in and of itself. ... I wanted to bring these drugs alive." On how Thorazine changed the way mental illness was treated [Long] before Thorazine, people thought that mental illness was the result of what are called "humors" — blood, phlegm, bodily fluids that went out of whack. ... [Later, they] believed that it could be the result of hereditary genes gone wrong. But then Thorazine was invented, and that sort of was the kick-start to a whole bunch of other drugs being invented and to doctors and later the public at large thinking that mental illness was biochemical in nature. ... © 2018 npr

Keyword: Depression; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 24714 - Posted: 03.01.2018

Alice M. Gregory, Erin Leichman, Jodi Mindell Pairing the words “baby” and “sleep” can evoke strong emotions. Those who have had limited contact with little ones might interpret this word-combination as implying deep and prolonged slumber. For others, this union of words may elicit memories of prolonged periods of chaotic sleep (or what can feel like no sleep at all). Coping with the way babies sleep can be difficult. It’s not that babies don’t sleep. In fact, they sleep more than at any other stage of life. It’s more an issue of when they sleep. Newborns start by sleeping and waking around the clock. This is not always easy for parents. There is even research suggesting that in adults waking repeatedly at night can feel as bad as getting hardly any sleep in terms of attentional skills, fatigue levels and symptoms of depression. As to why infants wake at night, this is best explained by thinking about the two things that govern our sleep: the homeostatic and circadian processes. The crux of the homeostatic process is the straightforward idea that the longer we have been awake the greater our sleep drive (and the more sleepy we feel). It may take an adult an entire day to build up enough sleep drive to fall asleep at bedtime, but an infant may only need an hour or two of wakefulness before being able to drift off to sleep. The second process is circadian, which works like a clock. Adults typically feel more awake during the morning hours and sleepy at night, regardless of when we last slept. In very young babies this process is not yet developed. This means that sleep is more likely to occur at different points across the 24-hour day. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Sleep; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 24713 - Posted: 03.01.2018

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Some experts have suggested that there is an “obesity paradox,” the idea that obese people live longer than those of normal weight. But a new study found that obesity was associated with an increased risk for cardiovascular disease and a two- to three-year shorter life span. The study, in JAMA Cardiology, pooled data from 10 studies of 190,672 people followed from 1964 to 2015. Compared with those of normal weight, overweight men (body mass index of 25 to 29.9) had a 21 percent higher lifetime risk of cardiovascular disease and women a 32 percent higher risk. Among the obese (B.M.I. of 30 to 39.9), the risk was 67 percent higher for men and 85 percent higher for women, with even higher risk for those with a B.M.I. over 40. Longevity in men who were overweight but not obese was similar to that of men of normal weight. But they had an increased risk of cardiovascular disease at a younger age. “We were able to measure how much time is spent in healthy life years rather than just life span,” said the study’s senior author, Dr. Sadiya S. Khan, an assistant professor of medicine at Northwestern. “Maintaining a healthy B.M.I. is associated with a longer, healthier life, with less risk for cardiovascular disease.” © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 24712 - Posted: 03.01.2018

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Overweight mothers are more likely to have overweight babies, and the gut bacteria the babies inherit may in part be to blame. Researchers report that overweight mothers are more likely to have a cesarean section, and that babies born by cesarean to those mothers have species of gut bacteria different from those in babies born to normal weight women. And that difference in the gut microbiome — specifically an abundance of bacteria of the family Lachnospiraceae in infants of overweight mothers — may contribute to an increased risk for obesity. The study included 935 mother-infant pairs. Compared to children born to normal weight mothers, those born vaginally to overweight women were more than three times as likely to be overweight by age 3. But C-section babies born to overweight mothers were more than five times as likely to be overweight. For normal weight mothers, vaginal or C-section delivery made no difference in the risk for overweight babies. The study, in JAMA Pediatrics, controlled for breast-feeding, antibiotic exposure and other factors. The senior author, Anita L. Kozyrskyj, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Alberta, said that there is no probiotic that would lead to a positive change in gut bacteria. “If a cesarean is unavoidable, there is no easy answer,” she added, “but breast-feeding is effective in helping to prevent infants from becoming overweight.” © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 24711 - Posted: 03.01.2018

Helen Thomson In March 2015, Li-Huei Tsai set up a tiny disco for some of the mice in her laboratory. For an hour each day, she placed them in a box lit only by a flickering strobe. The mice — which had been engineered to produce plaques of the peptide amyloid-β in the brain, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease — crawled about curiously. When Tsai later dissected them, those that had been to the mini dance parties had significantly lower levels of plaque than mice that had spent the same time in the dark1. Tsai, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, says she checked the result; then checked it again. “For the longest time, I didn’t believe it,” she says. Her team had managed to clear amyloid from part of the brain with a flickering light. The strobe was tuned to 40 hertz and was designed to manipulate the rodents’ brainwaves, triggering a host of biological effects that eliminated the plaque-forming proteins. Although promising findings in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease have been notoriously difficult to replicate in humans, the experiment offered some tantalizing possibilities. “The result was so mind-boggling and so robust, it took a while for the idea to sink in, but we knew we needed to work out a way of trying out the same thing in humans,” Tsai says. “There’s been an explosion in brain wave research…pick your area and different people are trying to apply extra cranial stimulation.” The neuroscience that’s making waves for a wide range of conditions. © 2018 Macmillan Publishers Limited,

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 24710 - Posted: 02.28.2018

By Virginia Morell Want to say “Hello,” but don’t know the local language? Try waving your hand. Such gestures, common among humans, are also surprisingly similar among chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest great ape relatives. Now, a new study has identified numerous gestures that mean the same thing to both species. That suggests these signals have biological underpinnings and could be inherited from our last common ancestor. Gestures, signals often used to get someone’s attention or ask for or stop something, are not technically languages. They don’t have specific linguistic and grammatical rules or accepted vocabularies. But gestures still have meaning: Among chimpanzees, for example, scientists have documented that many of their movements—from mouth stroking to request food or arm raising to request grooming—are used to elicit specific responses from other chimpanzees. Researchers have now found something similar in bonobos, great apes closely related to chimpanzees but with longer legs, pink lips, and long hair that’s parted in the middle on their heads. Scientists started by shooting and analyzing videos of wild bonobos in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When a bonobo made a common gesture that brought a consistent, satisfying response from others, it was added to the list. For example, when one bonobo looked at another while loudly scratching one arm, the second often responded by grooming the first. Because the first bonobo was almost always satisfied by this response, the researchers concluded that a “big, loud scratch” is a request for grooming. The scientists next compared the bonobo gestures to those of chimpanzees, and found that their repertoires overlapped by about 90%, significantly more than “would be expected by chance,” says lead author Kirsty Graham, a comparative psychologist at the University of York in the United Kingdom. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Animal Communication; Evolution
Link ID: 24709 - Posted: 02.28.2018

by Amy Ellis Nutt In the first broad demographic study of trends in gender-affirming surgeries in the United States, researchers found that the number of operations increased fourfold from 2000 to 2014. Some of the dramatic rise, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal JAMA Surgery, may be related to an increase in insurance coverage for the procedures. “Early on we recognized there’s been a lot of work on health disparities having to do with age, race and so on that get collected in health-care settings,” said Brandyn Lau, an assistant professor of surgery and health sciences informatics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “One of the things we need to know is whether [lesbian, gay and transgender] patients are getting the same care.” Lau and other researchers from Johns Hopkins Medicine and Harvard University analyzed 15 years of data from the National Inpatient Sample, a collection of hospital inpatient information from across the country, and found a total of 4,118 gender-affirming surgeries. The surgeries took place as LGBTQ people are finding increasing acceptance, especially among younger generations. The majority of the surgeries that occurred between 2000 and 2011 involved patients not covered by health insurance. About half of the transgender patients in the study paid out of pocket between 2000 and 2005. That number rose to 65 percent between 2006 and 2011. However, the trend reversed between 2012 and 2014, with the number plummeting to 39 percent. Much of that decrease, say the study's authors, is due to Medicare and Medicaid. In May 2014, Medicare ended its 33-year ban on transgender surgeries. Loren Schechter, who specializes in transgender surgeries, says he does about 300 procedures a year, whereas it was only about 50 in 2000. The plastic surgeon also accepts Medicare, which others do not. © 1996-2018 The Washington Post

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 24708 - Posted: 02.28.2018

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett In my first year of university, just after I had been prescribed fluoxetine for depression, I had an argument about it with a close friend. He told me that taking antidepressants would make my feelings false, my emotions manufactured. I wouldn’t be able to tell if what I was feeling was real – and that was wrong. At the time I did not know how to articulate that all of our feelings are linked to chemicals: that even eating a chocolate bar can give me a blood-sugar spike and alter my behaviour, that feeling the sunshine on my skin can give me hope and energy. Furthermore, that the contraceptive pills his girlfriends took were liable to make them angry, not to mention less horny. I did not know how to say that the antidepressant I took in order to cope with my life was not that different to the ketamine and cocaine he used to cope with his. In any case, it was a pretentious argument of the kind one has at university, and both of us lacked the scientific knowledge to really underpin our views. It was all posturing. Once I accepted that I needed help and began treatment, I felt calmer within a week I think of it now because antidepressants are in the news again: whether they work or don’t work, whether other treatments – therapy, mindfulness, exercise, volunteering, being a 96-year-old Italian with a diet of fish and olive oil – are more effective than that “magic” pill. The chemical imbalance theory is posited, then debunked, in a never-ending cycle, as we, the mentally ill and medicated, watch on with hope but also exasperation. Because for all the scientific advances, therapeutic studies and happiness indexes, the only thing an individual can say with any certainty is whether or not antidepressants worked for them.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 24707 - Posted: 02.28.2018

By Kimberly Hickok If you ever wanted to know what a moth was thinking, this might be as close as you’re going to get. In a new study published today in Cell Reports, researchers placed female hawkmoths (Manduca sexta) in a wind tunnel containing two pieces of filter paper—one covered in a test odor, and one with no odor. Perhaps not surprisingly, the insects were most attracted to odors containing aromatic chemicals, which are present in plants that are common nectar sources. Some odors consistently caused the moths to touch their feet to the paper while curving their abdomen, which is how they lay eggs, indicating that moths associate those odors with egg laying. With six different odors, the moths alternated touching their feet and their mouths to the same odor, suggesting that plants containing one or all of those chemicals, such as jimson weed, are important for both feeding and egg laying. By combining these data with imaging of nerve cells at the base of the moths’ antennae, the researchers identified four clusters of nerves specifically associated with feeding behavior and six specifically associated with egg laying, but none associated with both behaviors. This means moths use specific odors to direct their behavior. The scientists say more research is needed to see whether nerve clusters respond to odor the same way in other species of moths and pollinating insects, which can help identify important odors and the plants that make them. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 24706 - Posted: 02.28.2018

By Ashley Yeager | Human neural stem cells transplanted into the injured spines of monkeys matured into nerve cells, spurring neuronal connections and giving the animals an improved ability to grasp an orange, researchers report today (February 26) in Nature Medicine. “This type of cellular therapy, though still in its infancy, may eventually be a reasonable approach to treating central nervous system injury and possibly even neurodegenerative disease in humans,” Jonathan Glass, a neurologist at Emory University School of Medicine, tells The Scientist by email. Glass, who was not involved in the study, notes that the differentiation of stem cells over time is “impressive,” as is their ability to make connections in the monkeys’ central nervous systems, but more work needs to be done to show if the cells can grow extremely long axons to connect motor and sensory neurons after spinal injury in humans. Up to this point, most of the work on transplanting neural stem cells had been done in rats. This is the first study to show the treatment can be successfully scaled up to primates. “We definitely have more confidence to do this type of treatment in humans,” study coauthor Mark Tuszynski, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, tells The Scientist. In the study, Tuszynski and his colleagues cut into a section of the spinal cord of rhesus monkeys and then two weeks later inserted a graft of human neural progenitor cells into the injury site. In the first four monkeys, the grafts did not stay in position, a finding that forced the researchers to add to the transplants more fibrinogen–thrombin, a protein-enzyme mixture the makes the graft adhere more quickly to site. The team also had to tilt the operating table to drain cerebral spinal fluid, which would wash the graft away. © 1986-2018 The Scientist

Keyword: Regeneration; Stem Cells
Link ID: 24705 - Posted: 02.27.2018

Laura Sanders With fevers, chills and aches, the flu can pound the body. Some influenza viruses may hammer the brain, too. Months after being infected with influenza, mice had signs of brain damage and memory trouble, researchers report online February 26 in the Journal of Neuroscience. It’s unclear if people’s memories are affected in the same way as those of mice. But the new research adds to evidence suggesting that some body-wracking infections could also harm the human brain, says epidemiologist and neurologist Mitchell Elkind of Columbia University, who was not involved in the study. Obvious to anyone who has been waylaid by the flu, brainpower can suffer at the infection’s peak. But not much is known about any potential lingering effects on thinking or memory. “It hasn’t occurred to people that it might be something to test,” says neurobiologist Martin Korte of Technische Universität Braunschweig in Germany. The new study examined the effects of three types of influenza A — H1N1, the strain behind 2009’s swine flu outbreak; H7N7, a dangerous strain that only rarely infects people; and H3N2, the strain behind much of the 2017–2018 flu season misery (SN: 1/19/18, p. 12). Korte and colleagues shot these viruses into mice’s noses, and then looked for memory problems 30, 60 and 120 days later. A month after infection, the mice all appeared to have recovered and gained back weight. But those that had received H3N2 and H7N7 had trouble remembering the location of a hidden platform in a pool of water, the researchers found. Mice that received no influenza or the milder H1N1 virus performed normally at the task. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2018

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 24704 - Posted: 02.27.2018

By Dina Fine Maron Millions of Americans who suffer from bipolar disorder depend on lithium. The medication has been prescribed for half a century to help stabilize patients’ moods and prevent manic or depressive episodes. Yet what it does in the brain—and why it does not work for some people—has remained largely mysterious. But last year San Diego–based researchers uncovered new details about how lithium may alter moods, thanks to an approach recently championed by a small number of scientists studying mental illness: The San Diego team used established lab techniques to reprogram patients’ skin cells into stem cells capable of becoming any other kind—and then chemically coaxed them into becoming brain cells. This process is now providing the first real stand-ins for brain cells from mentally ill humans, allowing for unprecedented direct experiments. Proponents hope studying these lab-grown neurons and related cells will eventually lead to more precise and effective treatment options for a variety of conditions. The San Diego team has already used this technique to show some bipolar cases may have more to do with protein regulation than genetic errors. And another lab discovered the activity of glial cells (a type of brain cell that supports neuron function) likely helps fuel schizophrenia—upending the theory that the disorder results mainly from faulty neurons. This new wave of research builds on Shinya Yamanaka’s Nobel-winning experiments on cellular reprogramming from a decade ago. His landmark findings about creating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have only recently been applied to studying mental illness as the field has matured. “What’s really sparked that move now has been the ability to make patient-specific stem cells—and once you can do that, then all sorts of diseases become amenable to investigation,” says Steven Goldman, who specializes in cellular and gene therapy at the University of Rochester Medical Center. © 2018 Scientific American,

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Stem Cells
Link ID: 24703 - Posted: 02.27.2018

Lauren Smith As a shark biologist, I enjoy nothing more than going scuba diving with sharks in the wild. However, I realise it’s an immense privilege to do this as part of my work – and that for the vast majority of people experiencing the underwater world in such a way is simply not possible. Nevertheless, even without the aid of an air tank humans interact with fish on many levels and in greater numbers than they do with mammals and birds. A review published by the journal Animal Cognition in 2014 by Culum Brown, an associate professor at Macquarie University, Sydney, explains that fish are one of the vertebrate taxa most highly utilised by humans. But despite the fact that they are harvested from wild stocks as part of global fishing industries, grown under intensive aquaculture conditions, are the most common pet and are widely used for scientific research, fish are seldom afforded the same level of compassion or welfare as warm-blooded vertebrates. As Brown highlights in his review, part of the problem is the large gap between people’s perception of fish intelligence and the scientific reality. This is an important issue because public perception guides government policy. The perception of an animal’s intelligence often drives our decision on whether or not to include them in our moral circle. From a welfare perspective, most researchers would suggest that if an animal is sentient, then it can most likely suffer and should therefore be offered some form of formal protection.

Keyword: Consciousness; Evolution
Link ID: 24702 - Posted: 02.27.2018

By Aaron E. Carroll I remember the first time my daughter discovered her hand. The look of amazement on her face was priceless. It wasn’t long before she was putting that discovery to use, trying to put everything she could find into her mouth. Babies want to feed themselves. It sometimes feels as if parents spend more time trying to stop them than encouraging them. Over the last few years, however, some people have begun to ask if we are doing the right thing. Baby-led weaning is an approach to feeding that encourages infants to take control of their eating. It’s based on the premise that infants might be better self-regulators of their food consumption. It has even been thought that baby-led weaning might lead to reductions in obesity. While babies have been spoon-fed for a long time, the explosion of commercial foods for them might be making it too easy to overfeed them, an idea that the results from a cohort study in 2015 seemed to hint at. Those weaned in a baby-led approach seemed to be more responsive to being sated and were less likely to be overweight. A case-control study from 2012 also argued that baby-led weaning was associated with a lower body mass index (B.M.I). Such trials cannot establish causality, however, and may be confounded in unmeasured ways. A recent randomized controlled trial accomplished what previous work could not. Pregnant women in New Zealand were recruited before they gave birth and randomly assigned to one of two groups. Both got standard midwifery and child care. But one group received eight more contacts, from pregnancy to the newborn’s ninth month. Five of these were with a lactation consultant, who encouraged the mothers to prolong breast-feeding and delay the introduction of solid foods until 6 months of age. The three other contacts were with research staffers who encouraged parents to read hunger and fullness cues from their infants and provide their babies (starting at 6 months) with foods that were high in energy and iron — easy to grab but hard to choke on. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 24701 - Posted: 02.27.2018

Mike Shooter Sian was just 14, brought by her misery to the edge of self-harm, when I met her in a cafe at the top end of one of the old mining valleys. Neutral ground. She told me about her rugby-playing older brother and her bright little sister who had lots of pets and wanted to be a vet. She felt that her parents doted on them and that there could be no room in anyone’s heart for her. She told me about her only friend, who had been killed in a road accident just as they went up to big school. About the recent death of her grandmother, who had been the only person she could confide in. And about the GP who had said she was depressed and given her a course of pills. I thought about Sian again this week. The newspaper headlines across the world were welcoming a major study that confirmed the value of antidepressant medication in the treatment of depression in adults. And so did I. Depression was validated at long last as an illness every bit as serious as physical conditions, that could cause untold human suffering and economic devastation, but could be helped with a course of antidepressant pills. First things first, I heartily agree with what that survey was saying about adult treatment. After all, I have a recurrent depression myself that has needed frequent treatment over the years. I talked about it openly when I was president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and have continued to do so from the public platform, in the media, and to anyone who will listen. I do this in the hope that it will help to dispel the stigma that surrounds mental illness and prevents people from seeking therapy until it is too late. The diagnosis made sense of what I was going through. It wasn’t my fault. And I was grateful for the medication.

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 24700 - Posted: 02.27.2018

By MAYA SALAM and LIAM STACK President Trump said Thursday that violent video games and movies may play a role in school shootings, a claim that has been made — and rejected — many times since the increase in such attacks in the past two decades. Movies are “so violent,” Mr. Trump said at a meeting on school safety one day after he gathered with survivors of school shootings, including some from last week’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where, the authorities say, a former student, Nikolas Cruz, killed 17 people with a semiautomatic rifle. “We have to look at the internet because a lot of bad things are happening to young kids and young minds and their minds are being formed,” Mr. Trump said, “and we have to do something about maybe what they’re seeing and how they’re seeing it. And also video games. I’m hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts.” “And then you go the further step and that’s the movies,” he added. “You see these movies, they’re so violent, and yet a kid is able to see the movie if sex isn’t involved, but killing is involved.” A neighbor of Mr. Cruz’s told The Miami Herald that he played video games, often violent ones, for up to 15 hours a day. Media scholars say the claim — a common one in the wake of mass shootings — does not hold up to scrutiny. Mr. Trump is far from the first leader to argue that violence in video games or movies can lead to violence in the real world. A similar claim was made in the 1940s, when Mayor Fiorello La Guardia of New York argued that pinball — which was illegal in the city for over 30 years — was “dominated by interests heavily tainted with criminality.” © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 24699 - Posted: 02.26.2018

By Alexandra Rosati The shift to a cooked-food diet was a decisive point in human history. The main topic of debate is when, exactly, this change occurred. All known human societies eat cooked foods, and biologists generally agree cooking could have had major effects on how the human body evolved. For example, cooked foods tend to be softer than raw ones, so humans can eat them with smaller teeth and weaker jaws. Cooking also increases the energy they can get from the food they eat. Starchy potatoes and other tubers, eaten by people across the world, are barely digestible when raw. Moreover, when humans try to eat more like chimpanzees and other primates, we cannot extract enough calories to live healthily. Up to 50 percent of women who exclusively eat raw foods develop amenorrhea, or lack of menstruation, a sign the body does not have enough energy to support a pregnancy—a big problem from an evolutionary perspective. Such evidence suggests modern humans are biologically dependent on cooking. But at what point in our evolutionary history was this strange new practice adopted? Some researchers think cooking is a relatively recent innovation—at most 500,000 years old. Cooking requires control of fire, and there is not much archaeological evidence for hearths and purposefully built fires before this time. The archaeological record becomes increasingly fragile farther back in time, however, so others think fire may have been controlled much earlier. Anthropologist Richard Wrangham has proposed cooking arose before 1.8 million years ago, an invention of our evolutionary ancestors. If the custom emerged this early, it could explain a defining feature of our species: the increase in brain size that occurred around this time. © 2018 Scientific American,

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 24698 - Posted: 02.26.2018

Amelia Hill For a serious examination of the devastating and incurable disability that is narcolepsy, Henry Nicholls’s book, Sleepy Head, is a surprisingly funny account. There is the obvious, if somewhat cruel, humour to be found in stories of people falling asleep in surprising places: in a small boat sailing around the Farne Islands, with the freezing North Sea cascading over the gunwale; while scuba diving; on a rollercoaster; at the dentist’s; on the back of a horse; on a surfboard. But there are other extremely funny insights that Nicholls gives into the crepuscular world that narcoleptics inhabit: his laconic fretting over the etiquette of attending a CBT group for insomniacs, which he discovers he also suffers from while researching the book. “A narcoleptic attending an insomnia clinic could be seen as the height of insensitivity,” he deadpans. Then there’s the attempt to solve sleep apnoea by learning the didgeridoo. (Didgetherapy, since you ask. It involves acrylic didgeridoos and is, apparently, quite effective.) Misjudging his tone entirely, I arrive at our interview expecting a garrulous chat. I’m particularly excited that I opened Nicholls’s book thinking I was pretty special to be able to share with him the fact that my father also had narcolepsy – and close his book having realised that five of my closest family members (including myself) have had diagnosable sleep disorders ranging from sleep apnoea to night terrors to – my own thrilling self-realisation – an episode of hypnagogic hallucination and sleep paralysis. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Narcolepsy; Sleep
Link ID: 24697 - Posted: 02.26.2018

By Natalie Crockett BBC News Older people in Wales are being urged to think about donating their brains after they die to help scientists researching dementia. Researchers at Cardiff University are not actively recruiting at the moment but are still keen to hear from people aged over 85 without a diagnosis. While they also recruit donors with dementia as healthy brains are needed for comparisons. Donor Ken Baxter, 75, said: "When I'm finished, it isn't any use to me." Since 2009, 460 people in Wales have signed up, with 79 successful donations made to the Brains for Dementia Research project so far. They are recruited through its team at the university, which is working to identify which genes contribute to a person's susceptibility to developing Alzheimer's disease. It is hoped they will then be able to predict which people are more likely to get it. But to do this they need to study human brain tissue, as looking at the distribution of protein deposits on the brain is the only way to get a definitive diagnosis of the disease. While donors who have dementia often find out about brain donation from medical professionals, it can be harder to attract those with healthy brains. Mr Baxter is one such donor and decided to donate his brain after seeing how dementia affected a friend. He saw it as a way to help others but admitted he does not always get a positive reaction to his plans. He said: "'[People say] are you sure? It's not something I want to do'. And some people are horrified when you tell them - I can't see a reason why but a lot of people take it the wrong way. "They think 'I've never thought of that' - but you're helping someone. If we can overcome these diseases, so much the better." © 2018 BBC.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 24696 - Posted: 02.26.2018