Girls who go through puberty early could be more likely to experience depression and behaviour problems that last into their 20s compared to peers who start menstruation later, a U.S. study suggests. Researchers studied data on nearly 7,800 women who had their first menstrual cycle at an average age of 12. The women were interviewed four times, starting around age 16 and continuing until about age 28. Girls who went through puberty earlier than most were more likely to become depressed, and their symptoms were also more severe in adolescence, the study found. The younger the age at the first period, the stronger the association between early puberty and mental health problems; It was stronger for girls who started menstruation at age 8 than at age 10, for example. With earlier puberty, girls were also more likely to have behaviour issues that led to things like stealing, lying, breaking into buildings and selling drugs. The link lasted into young adulthood. Interestingly, the magnitude of the association between puberty and these psychological difficulties remains stable, meaning that puberty is as strongly associated with depressive symptoms and antisocial behaviour during adulthood as it is during adolescence, said lead study author Jane Mendle, a researcher at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. ©2017 CBC/Radio-Canada.

Keyword: Depression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 24463 - Posted: 12.28.2017

By Helen Shen Brain-controlled prosthetic devices have the potential to dramatically improve the lives of people with limited mobility resulting from injury or disease. To drive such brain-computer interfaces, neuroscientists have developed a variety of algorithms to decode movement-related thoughts with increasing accuracy and precision. Now researchers are expanding their tool chest by borrowing from the world of cryptography to decode neural signals into movements. During World War II, codebreakers cracked the German Enigma cipher by exploiting known language patterns in the encrypted messages. These included the typical frequencies and distributions of certain letters and words. Knowing something about what they expected to read helped British computer scientist Alan Turing and his colleagues find the key to translate gibberish into plain language. Many human movements, such as walking or reaching, follow predictable patterns, too. Limb position, speed and several other movement features tend to play out in an orderly way. With this regularity in mind, Eva Dyer, a neuroscientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, decided to try a cryptography-inspired strategy for neural decoding. She and her colleagues published their results in a recent study in Nature Biomedical Engineering. “I’ve heard of this approach before, but this is one of the first studies that’s come out and been published,” says Nicholas Hatsopoulos, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago, who was not involved in the work. “It’s pretty novel.” © 2017 Scientific American,

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Robotics
Link ID: 24462 - Posted: 12.28.2017

Acclaimed Stanford neuroscientist Ben Barres, MD, PhD, died on Dec. 27, 20 months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was 63. Barres’ path-breaking discoveries of the crucial roles played by glial cells — the unsung majority of brain cells, which aren’t nerve cells — revolutionized the field of neuroscience. Barres was incontestably visionary yet, ironically, face-blind — he suffered from prosopagnosia, an inability to distinguish faces, and relied on voices or visual cues such as hats and hairstyles to identify even people he knew well. And there were many of them. A professor of neurobiology, of developmental biology and of neurology, Barres was widely praised as a stellar and passionate scientist whose methodologic rigor was matched only by his energy and enthusiasm. He was devoted to his scholarly pursuits and to his trainees, advocating unrelentingly on their behalf. He especially championed the cause of women in academia, with whom he empathized; he was transgender. “Ben was a remarkable person. He will be remembered as a brilliant scientist who transformed our understanding of glial cells and as a tireless advocate who promoted equity and diversity at every turn,” said Marc Tessier-Lavigne, PhD, president of Stanford University. “He was also a beloved mentor to students and trainees, a dear friend to many in our community and a champion for the fundamental dignity of us all.”

Keyword: Glia
Link ID: 24461 - Posted: 12.28.2017

By Katherine Sellgren BBC News Kids seem to spend endless hours on smartphones, games consoles, computers and tablets these days. Playing on electronic devices certainly doesn't help their waistlines, but do you ever wonder what regular device use is doing to their eyesight? While there isn't much research out there yet about the impact of screens on eyesight - after all the iPhone was first unveiled by Apple in only 2007 - experts are concerned about growing levels of short-sightedness in children. And they suggest the best thing parents can do to prevent it is to encourage youngsters to spend more time outdoors in the sunlight. How short-sightedness is on the rise There has been a massive rise around the globe in short-sightedness - or myopia as it's officially known - over recent decades. "We know that myopia or short-sightedness is becoming more common," says Chris Hammond, professor of ophthalmology at King's College London and consultant ophthalmic surgeon at St Thomas' Hospital. "It has reached epidemic levels in East Asia, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, where approaching 90% of 18-year-olds are now short-sighted. "In Europe, it's potentially getting up to 40% to 50% of young adults in their mid-20s who are short-sighted now in Western Europe. It's been gradually rising over the decades of the 20th Century from around 20-30%." Why has it become so much more common? Annegret Dahlmann-Noor, consultant ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London says lack of natural light seems to be the key issue. "The main factor seems to be a lack of exposure to direct sunlight, because children who study a lot and who use computers or smartphones or tablet computers a lot have less opportunity to run around outside and are less exposed to sunshine and because of that seem to be at more risk of developing short-sightedness." Prof Hammond says: "It may be that there's no coincidence that in East Asian countries, the most myopic ones all correlate with the maths league tables. "These kids are being pushed with very intensive education from a very young age and spend a lot of time indoors studying everything close up and very little time outdoors. © 2017 BBC.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 24460 - Posted: 12.28.2017

By Emily Anthes Men with autism respond differently to human odors — and the social signals that they contain — than do their neurotypical peers, according to a new study. The results suggest that men with autism misread social signals present in human odors — causing them to misinterpret others’ emotions. Human sweat contains chemicals believed to convey social and emotional information. For instance, when women smell sweat collected from men watching scary movies, they are more likely to describe faces with ambiguous expressions as fearful. Advertisement In the new study, researchers exposed men to sweat collected from people who were skydiving. Unlike controls, men with autism do not show increased skin conductance, a measure of physiological arousal, to this ‘fear sweat.’ They are also more likely than controls to trust a mannequin that emits this scent. “I think this could be a meaningful aspect of impaired social interaction,” says lead investigator Noam Sobel, professor of neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. “Humans constantly engage in social chemo-signaling; we do this all the time, and it shapes our interactions,” he says. “And somehow these mechanisms work differently in autism.” Several studies have examined olfaction in people with autism. Researchers have found, for example, that children with autism inhale odors differently than their typical peers do, and some children with the condition may be particularly sensitive to smells. © 2017 Scientific American

Keyword: Autism; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 24459 - Posted: 12.26.2017

Haroon Siddique Researchers are developing an internet-based tool they hope will predict the effectiveness of antidepressants for individual patients, ending the current prescription lottery. Patients with depression often try many different drugs before settling on one that works, but a study aims to help clinicians make an informed choice as to which is likely to work best for a particular person. Dr Claire Gillan, at Trinity College Dublin, likened deciding which antidepressant to prescribe to a “flip of a coin” at present. But she hopes to create an algorithm that will take away the need for trial and error, potentially transforming treatment for millions of people. Guardian Today: the headlines, the analysis, the debate - sent direct to you Read more “There’s an awful lot of time and money wasted in people going through a 12-week treatment that doesn’t work, then another 12-week treatment that doesn’t work ad nauseam,” she said. “There will never be a point where algorithms are making these decisions in isolation; side effects have to be taken into account, for example. But this is a process of identifying treatment the clinician can use when debating a bunch of drugs – when they have no idea which will work through no fault of their own – for a particular patient.” © 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 24458 - Posted: 12.26.2017

By Sally Abrahams BBC News For years, Mary Rose struggled to get off to sleep or to stay asleep, because she felt like she was being attacked by insects. "Imagine having a swarm of bees buzzing inside the skin of your legs, biting you," she says, describing the sensation that overwhelmed her. "It's really very, very painful." Now in her 80s, the art historian has a condition called restless legs syndrome (RLS), which tortures her at night. "It makes you want to scratch your legs and get up and walk about - it was just impossible to lie down and sleep because one's legs were twitching in this uncontrollable way," she explained. The symptoms were so severe, she didn't want to go to bed at night. 'No sleep at all' Mary Rose can't remember when the problem began, but the condition went undiagnosed for years. "People would say 'oh you've got cramp; you must take quinine or sleep with corks in your bed'. And I did all these things." Of course, they had no effect. She also tried rubbing ointment into her legs to ease the stinging sensation, but that never lasted long enough to let her sleep through the night. Visits to her GP also failed to bring relief. Eventually, she was referred to the sleep clinic at Guy's and St Thomas's hospitals in London, where she's now being treated by neurologist Dr Guy Leschziner. "Restless legs syndrome is a common neurological disorder that causes an irresistible urge to move, particularly at night, and is often linked with unpleasant sensations in the legs," Dr Leschziner explains. "It affects up to one in 20 adults," he continues, "and can cause severe sleep deprivation." At its worst, Mary Rose was surviving on only a few hours' sleep at night, sometimes even less. "I have had complete nights without any sleep at all," she says. © 2017 BBC

Keyword: Sleep; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 24457 - Posted: 12.26.2017

Michael May Carl Luepker suffers from a nerve disorder which causes involuntary muscle spasms. He lived with the symptoms for 30 years until he discovered he'd passed the genetic disorder on to his son. NOEL KING, HOST: Parents make all kinds of sacrifices for their children, but what do you do when you want to save your child from experiencing the same kind of suffering you have experienced? NPR's Michael May brings us the story of one father who's searching for a way to ease his son's discomfort that's caused by a shared genetic disorder. MICHAEL MAY, BYLINE: Carl Luepker suffers from dystonia, a disorder that causes involuntary muscle spasms. When I met him 30 years ago, Carl's spasms were in his right hand. Then they spread to the muscles of his face until they garbled his speech. Last December, Carl sat down in the office of his neurologist, Dr. Jerrold Vitek, to discuss a surgery called deep brain stimulation. CARL LUEPKER: My fears are - obviously, first is death. MAY: It's not an easy decision to let a doctor drill a hole in your skull and put electrodes deep in your brain. LUEPKER: Those are sort of my three biggest fears, are death, loss of cognition and any behavioral changes I might incur from the procedure. JERROLD VITEK: Well, Carl, what I would say is that the potential risk is about a 1 to 2 percent chance that there'd be a significant bleed. That's the greatest risk. The chance of benefit is marked. The vast majority of people will benefit. MAY: Deep brain stimulation has been called a pacemaker for the brain. It regulates the neurons that are misfiring. It's used for everything from Parkinson's disease to major depression. Scientists still don't understand exactly why DBS works. But for some patients, it dramatically reduces symptoms. At first, scientists literally destroyed the part of the brain that was malfunctioning. Vitek says there's a reason doctors would be willing to try something so brutal. VITEK: One word will answer that - desperation. © 2017 npr

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 24456 - Posted: 12.26.2017

By Judith Graham, Ask Edith Smith, a proud 103-year-old, about her friends, and she’ll give you an earful. There’s Johnetta, 101, whom she’s known for 70 years and who has Alzheimer’s disease. “I call her every day and just say ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ She never knows, but she says hi back, and I tease her,” Smith said. There’s Katie, 93, whom Smith met during a long teaching career with the Chicago Public Schools. “Every day we have a good conversation. She’s still driving and lives in her own house, and she tells me what’s going on.” Then there’s Rhea, 90, whom Smith visits regularly at a retirement facility. And Mary, 95, who doesn’t leave her house anymore, “so I fix her a basket about once a month of jelly and little things I make and send it over by cab.” And fellow residents at Smith’s Chicago senior community, whom she recognizes with a card and a treat on their birthdays. “I’m a very friendly person,” Smith said, when asked to describe herself. That may be one reason why this lively centenarian has an extraordinary memory for someone her age, suggests a recent study by researchers at Northwestern University highlighting a notable link between brain health and positive relationships. For nine years, these experts have been examining “SuperAgers”—men and women over age 80 whose memories are as good—or better—than people 20 to 30 years younger. Every couple of years, the group fills out surveys about their lives and gets a battery of neuropsychological tests, brain scans and a neurological examination, among other evaluations. © 2017 Scientific American,

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 24455 - Posted: 12.26.2017

By Katarina Zimmer | CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing can extend survival in a mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a fatal neurodegenerative disease, according to a study published yesterday (December 20) in Science Advances. “The treatment did not make the ALS mice normal and it is not yet a cure,” study coauthor David Schaffer, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, says in a press release. “But based upon what I think is a really strong proof of concept, CRISPR-Cas9 could be a therapeutic molecule for ALS.” ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, affects some 20,000 Americans and is characterized by the premature death of motor neurons in the brain stem and spinal cord. The disease causes progressive muscle deterioration and eventually results in paralysis and death. There are no available treatments to delay the muscle wasting and currently approved drugs can extend survival by a few months at most. Schaffer and his colleagues suspected that ALS could be treated through genome editing because some forms of the disease (around 20 percent of inherited forms and 2 percent of all cases) are caused by dominant mutations in a gene that encodes superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1), an enzyme that helps protect cells against toxic free radicals. © 1986-2017 The Scientist

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease ; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 24454 - Posted: 12.22.2017

Michaeleen Doucleff It's not every day that surgeons develop a new brain surgery that could save tens of thousands of babies, even a hundred thousand, each year. And it's definitely not every day that the surgery is developed in one of the world's poorest countries. But that's exactly what neurosurgeons from Boston and Mbale, Uganda, report Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The treatment is for a scary condition in which a baby's head swells up, almost like balloon. It's called hydrocephalus, or "water on the brain." But a more accurate description is "spinal fluid inside the brain." Inside our brains, there are four chambers that continually fill up and release spinal fluid. So their volume stays constant. In babies with hydrocephalus, the chambers don't drain properly. They swell up, putting pressure on the brain. If left untreated about half the children will die, and the others will be badly disabled. Traditionally doctors treat hydrocelphalus in the U.S. with what's called a shunt: They place a long tube in the baby's brain, which allows the liquid to drain into the child's stomach. © 2017 npr

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 24453 - Posted: 12.22.2017

By Rebecca Keogh Imagine you are at Ikea to pick up a sofa for your new flat. You see one you like, a wine-coloured two-seater with big soft cushions. You imagine what it would look like with your current furniture, and decide that’s the sofa you want. As you continue meandering through the store you find a nice industrial-style lamp and coffee table, so you try to imagine what they might look like with the sofa. But imagining all three items together is more difficult than just imagining the sofa alone. How many pieces of furniture do you think you could rearrange in your mind? Is there a limit to how much we can imagine at once, or is our imagination truly unlimited? viewpoints Limitations to our imagery can constrain what we are able to achieve, both in daily life and in therapeutic interventions. This is the question that my supervisor and I tried to answer in our lab at the University of New South Wales recently. Instead of furniture, we used simple shapes known as Gabor patches, which are essentially circles with lines through them. We also used a visual illusion known as binocular rivalry. Binocular rivalry occurs when two different images are shown, one to each eye, and instead of seeing a mix of the two images you see only one of them, either the image that was presented to the left eye or the image presented to the right eye. Previous work by Joel Pearson (my supervisor) has shown that simply imagining a Gabor patch, or seeing a very weak Gabor patch, will make you more likely to see that image in a subsequent binocular rivalry display. Copyright 2017 Undark

Keyword: Vision; Attention
Link ID: 24452 - Posted: 12.22.2017

A promising approach to post-operative incision-site pain control uses a naturally occurring plant molecule called resiniferatoxin (RTX). RTX is found in Euphorbia resinifera, a cactus-like plant native to Morocco, which is 500 times more potent than the chemical that produces heat in hot peppers, and may help limit the use of opioid medication while in the hospital and during home recovery. In a paper published online in Anesthesiology, the peer-reviewed medical journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, researchers found that RTX could be used to block postoperative incisional pain in an animal model. Many medical providers turn to opioids, such as morphine or fentanyl, for moderate to severe post-operative pain relief, but these often come with side effects that can interfere with recovery, including respiratory depression, inhibition of gut motility and constipation, nausea and vomiting. Prolonged use of opioids can produce tolerance and introduces the risk of misuse. RTX is not an opioid and does not act in the brain but rather on the nerve endings in the skin. Scientists found that it can be used to block pain from the surgical incision selectively for approximately 10 days. In the study, researchers pre-treated the skin incision site with RTX to render the nerve endings in the skin and subcutaneous tissue along the incision path selectively insensitive to pain. Unlike local anesthetics, which block all nerve activity including motor axons, RTX allows many sensations, like touch and vibration, as well as muscle function, to be preserved. Long after the surgery, and towards the end of healing of an incision wound, the nerve endings eventually grow back. Thus, pain from the skin incision is reduced during the recovery period.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 24451 - Posted: 12.22.2017

By Catherine Offord Jerrold Olefsky has spent much of the last decade trying to decipher the connection between obesity and the risk for type 2 diabetes. It’s now known that “in obesity, the adipose tissue becomes highly inflamed and fills up with macrophages and other immune cells,” Olefsky, an endocrinologist at the University of California, San Diego, explains. “This inflammation is very important for causing insulin resistance,” in which cells fail to respond to hormonal signals to take up glucose. But a crucial piece of the puzzle has been missing. “Insulin resistance is a systemic thing,” Olefsky says. For inflamed fat tissue to trigger it, “somehow, all the tissues must talk to each other. We just didn’t know how.” Research has not supported a major role for early suspects such as cytokines. But reading a paper a few years ago on the role of tiny vesicles called exosomes in intercellular communication in cancer, Olefsky was struck by the fact that, “Well, gee, all these cells make exosomes.” Known to carry microRNAs (miRNAs)—small nucleic acids that influence gene expression—exosomes seemed like plausible candidates for an inter-tissue communication system in obesity. Olefsky’s group isolated macrophages from adipose tissue in obese and lean mice and harvested exosomes produced by the cells in vitro. Then, the researchers added these vesicles to cultured muscle, liver, and fat cells—major insulin targets in the body. While lean-type exosomes made recipient cells “super insulin-sensitive,” Olefsky says, obese-type exosomes induced insulin resistance. In vivo work showed a similar effect: lean mice injected with obese-type exosomes became insulin resistant without gaining weight, while obese mice treated with lean-type exosomes stayed obese, but developed normalized insulin sensitivity. © 1986-2017 The Scientist

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 24450 - Posted: 12.22.2017

Hannah Devlin Science correspondent Deafness has been prevented in mice using gene editing for the first time, in an advance that could transform future treatment of genetic hearing loss. The study found that a single injection of a gene editing cocktail prevented progressive deafness in baby animals that were destined to lose their hearing. “We hope that the work will one day inform the development of a cure for certain forms of genetic deafness in people,” said Prof David Liu, who led the work at Harvard University and MIT. Nearly half of all cases of deafness have a genetic root, but current treatment options are limited. However, the advent of new high-precision gene editing tools such as Crispr has raised the prospect of a new class of therapies that target the underlying problem. The study, published in the journal Nature, focused on a mutation in a gene called Tmc1, a single wrong letter in the genetic code, that causes the loss of the inner ear’s hair cells over time. The delicate hairs, which sit in a spiral-shaped organ called the cochlea, vibrate in response to sound waves. Nerve cells pick up the physical motion and transmit it to the brain, where it is perceived as sound. If a child inherits one copy of the mutated Tmc1 gene they will suffer progressive hearing loss, normally starting in the first decade of life and resulting in profound deafness within 10 to 15 years. However, since most people affected by the mutation will also have a healthy version of the gene, inherited from their other parent, the scientists wanted to explore whether deleting the faulty version worked as a treatment. © 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Hearing; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 24449 - Posted: 12.21.2017

Laura Sanders Globs of an inflammation protein beckon an Alzheimer’s protein and cause it to accumulate in the brain, a study in mice finds. The results, described in the Dec. 21/28 Nature, add new details to the relationship between brain inflammation and Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers suspect that this inflammatory cycle is an early step in the disease, which raises the prospect of being able to prevent the buildup of amyloid-beta, the sticky protein found in brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease. “It is a provocative paper,” says immunologist Marco Colonna of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Finding an inflammatory protein that can prompt A-beta to clump around it is “a big deal,” he says. Researchers led by Michael Heneka of the University of Bonn in Germany started by studying specks made of a protein called ASC that’s produced as part of the inflammatory response. (A-beta itself is known to kick-start this inflammatory process.) Despite being called specks, these are large globs of protein that are created by and then ejected from brain immune cells called microglia when inflammation sets in. A-beta then accumulates around these ejected ASC specks in the space between cells, Haneke and colleagues now propose. Specks of a type of inflammation protein called ASC (red) form the core of amyloid-beta plaques (green) in the brain of a 4-month-old mouse (top) and in the brain of a person who had Alzheimer’s disease (bottom). |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2017.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 24448 - Posted: 12.21.2017

By Kasra Zarei Depression and antidepressant use are at all-time highs in the year 2017, but for about a third of those affected, depression still doesn’t get better with medication—and for these patients, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which uses powerful magnets to stimulate brain cells noninvasively, can be a viable option. To be clear, TMS isn’t new; it was first approved by the FDA in 2008. What’s new is that the evidence for its safety and effectiveness has only gotten stronger. TMS is now generally covered by insurance companies for treatment-resistant depression, and new studies have shown that combining it with traditional treatments like psychotherapy can lead to significantly higher response rates. Some scientists also now believe TMS can be a dominant therapy compared to antidepressants, based on its lower cost, higher net monetary benefit and better quality of life outcomes produced. Although there are still many questions about TMS left unanswered, it is a treatment with a strong presence in fighting depression and much promise as personalized TMS grows closer to becoming a reality. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 350 million people worldwide suffer from depression, making it the leading cause of disability worldwide. As many as 30 percent of people with depression are resistant to medication, and show suicide thoughts and attempts, and an overall poor quality of life. With traditional treatment options ineffective, these patients need a solution. © 2017 Scientific American

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 24447 - Posted: 12.21.2017

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Eating leafy greens may help slow mental decline. Researchers studied 960 men and women ages 58 to 99 who completed food frequency questionnaires and had two or more cognitive assessments over an average of almost five years of follow-up. Among many other foods, the researchers recorded the number of servings of lettuce, spinach, kale and collard greens. At least twice over the course of the study they administered cognitive tests covering memory, spatial ability and perceptual speed. Those who ate the most leafy vegetables — one to two servings a day — scored the equivalent of 11 years younger on tests of mental ability than those who ate little or none. Greens contain lutein, folate, beta carotene and other nutrients known to affect aging. Could the same effect be obtained with supplements containing these nutrients? Probably not. “The evidence for supplements is not positive, either from observational studies or clinical trials,” said the lead author, Martha Clare Morris, a professor of epidemiology at Rush University in Chicago. “The nutrients in food have many different forms and interactions. A specific formulation put in a pill with the same effect? That’s wishful thinking.” The study, in Neurology, controlled for smoking, physical activity and other factors, but it is observational, and does not prove cause and effect. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 24446 - Posted: 12.21.2017

Laurel Hamers The hardy souls who manage to push shorts season into December might feel some kinship with the thirteen-lined ground squirrel. The critter hibernates all winter, but even when awake, it’s less sensitive to cold than its nonhibernating relatives, a new study finds. That cold tolerance is linked to changes in a specific cold-sensing protein in the sensory nerve cells of the ground squirrels and another hibernator, the Syrian hamster, researchers report in the Dec. 19 Cell Reports. The altered protein may be an adaptation that helps the animals drift into hibernation. In experiments, mice, which don’t hibernate, strongly preferred to hang out on a hot plate that was 30° Celsius versus one that was cooler. Syrian hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus) and the ground squirrels (Ictidomys tridecemlineatus), however, didn’t seem to notice the chill until plate temperatures dipped below 10° Celsius, notes study coauthor Elena Gracheva, a neurophysiologist at Yale University. Further work revealed that a cold-sensing protein called TRPM8 wasn’t as easily activated by cold in the squirrels and hamsters as in rats. Found in the sensory nerve cells of vertebrates, TRPM8 typically sends a sensation of cold to the brain when activated by low temperatures. It’s what makes your fingertips feel chilly when you’re holding a glass of ice water. It’s also responsible for the cooling sensation in your mouth after you chew gum made with menthol. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2017

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 24445 - Posted: 12.20.2017

By Melissa McCradden Do girls take longer than boys to recover after a concussion? A recent study of middle- and high school athletes they found that the female athletes took twice as long to be symptom-free as the male athletes. Shockingly, the female athletes took nearly a full month to report being symptom-free, while the male athletes took less than two weeks. It was reported widely across the media as evidence the young women may have a special problem with concussions. This conclusion, unfortunately, is not well supported. Meta-analyses (which look at the full body of literature on a topic) have found conflicting evidence regarding male-female differences in concussion recovery. Consensus statements on sport-related concussion have not deemed there to be sufficient reason to distinguish between the genders for return-to-play protocols or guidelines on handling the injury. And the study itself has important flaws. There are hundreds of thousands of female athletes who have scholarships, professional careers, and Olympic hopes at stake, and let’s not forget the basic principle that our girls deserve equal opportunity as the boys to participate in sports. These conclusions have real consequences, and we need to get our information right. One of the strongest predictive factors for prolonged post-concussion symptoms is expectation of recovery—those who believe they will recover quickly are more likely to do so. So if we label women in this way, it can have a direct, negative effect on their recovery from concussion. © 2017 Scientific American

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 24444 - Posted: 12.20.2017