/ By Joshua C. Kendall Dr. Joshua A. Gordon, the new director of the National Institute of Mental Health, took office in the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency. But he has this much in common with Obama’s successor: He has little patience for incremental reforms. As Gordon defines it, the job involves both advocating for the mental health needs of Americans and developing science to guide policymakers and clinicians. A 49-year-old psychiatrist who made his reputation as a brilliant researcher of mice with mutations that mimic human mental disorders, Gordon is convinced that radical changes are needed in the treatment of illnesses like schizophrenia. In an interview in his office at the NIMH campus in Bethesda, Maryland, he lamented that while modest improvements have been made in patient care over the last few decades, we don’t know enough about the brain to “even begin to imagine what the transformative treatments of tomorrow will be like.” Few psychiatrists would disagree that change is overdue. Take depression: Current approaches, which employ drugs like Prozac or cognitive-behavioral therapy, or a combination of the two, can relieve major symptoms in only some patients. The hope is that “precision medicine” — treatments targeted to the specific biological makeup of the patient — can do for psychiatry what scientists like Gordon’s Nobel Prize-winning mentors J. Michael Bishop and Harold E. Varmus did for cancer treatment a generation ago. Unfortunately, as Gordon is well aware, mental illness is particularly challenging in this regard. In contrast to many types of cancer, where one genetic mutation can cause unregulated cell growth, psychiatric diseases rarely stem from any single faulty gene; instead, they are typically rooted in a complex interplay of genetic, environmental, and cultural factors. Copyright 2017 Undark

Keyword: Depression; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 23751 - Posted: 06.17.2017

By ABBY GOODNOUGH WASHINGTON — Weeks before the presidential election, at a packed rally in New Hampshire, Donald J. Trump recounted the story of a young woman and her boyfriend who had fatally overdosed within a year of each other. He promised not just a border wall to keep drugs out, but also more access to treatment. “We’re going to take care of it,” he said of the opioid addiction epidemic, which has disproportionately hit states that were crucial to his election victory. “What’s taking so long?” Five months into his term, though, President Trump has enthusiastically supported a health care bill that would deeply cut the Medicaid program that has provided treatment to thousands of addicted Americans. He has yet to fill the nation’s top public health and drug policy jobs. And while he has appointed a bipartisan commission on the opioid crisis, which held its first official meeting on Friday, it remains to be seen how much attention the panel can command from Mr. Trump’s turbulent administration. Some addiction specialists say that waiting for a commission’s recommendations when hundreds of people are dying each week — and when countless groups around the country have studied the issue already — is wasting time. What is really needed, the specialists say, is the type of concerted, emergency action that public health officials have used to fight outbreaks of infectious diseases. “There really isn’t anything this commission is going to figure out that we don’t know already,” said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, who directs opioid policy research at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management. “What we need is an enormous federal investment in expanding access to addiction treatment, and for the different federal agencies that have a piece of this problem to be working in a coordinated fashion.” © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 23750 - Posted: 06.17.2017

Kerin Higa After surgery to treat her epilepsy severed the connection between the two halves of her brain, Karen's left hand took on a mind of its own, acting against her will to undress or even to slap her. Amazing, to be sure. But what may be even more amazing is that most people who have split-brain surgery don't notice anything different at all. But there's more to the story than that. In the 1960s, a young neuroscientist named Michael Gazzaniga began a series of experiments with split-brain patients that would change our understanding of the human brain forever. Working in the lab of Roger Sperry, who later won a Nobel Prize for his work, Gazzaniga discovered that the two halves of the brain experience the world quite differently. When Gazzaniga and his colleagues flashed a picture in front of a patient's right eye, the information was processed in the left side of the brain and the split-brain patient could easily describe the scene verbally. But when a picture was flashed in front of the left eye, which connects to the right side of the brain, the patient would report seeing nothing. If allowed to respond nonverbally, however, the right brain could adeptly point at or draw what was seen by the left eye. So the right brain knew what it was seeing; it just couldn't talk about it. These experiments showed for the first time that each brain hemisphere has specialized tasks. In this third episode of Invisibilia, hosts Alix Spiegel and Hanna Rosin talk to several people who are trying to change their other self, including a man who confronts his own biases and a woman who has a rare condition that causes one of her hands to take on a personality of its own. © 2017 npr

Keyword: Consciousness; Laterality
Link ID: 23749 - Posted: 06.17.2017

By Ashley Yeager Researchers led by Bert O’Malley of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, identified a set of metabolism and stress genes in mouse liver cells that followed a pattern of expression on a 12-hour cycle—starting in the morning and again in the evening. O’Malley’s team also found that a 12-hour clock, distinct from the 24-hour circadian clock, drives this morning-evening rhythm in gene expression. The clock’s origin, the scientists suggest, may be rooted in organisms’ initial evolution in the ocean millions of years ago. “It’s a provocative argument,” Cambridge University biologist Michael Hastings tells The Scientist in a phone interview. He’s cautious about the claim of an evolutionary connection between the 12-hour clock in sea creatures and the 12-hour cycles seen in mammals. Still, he commends the team on taking a “cross-biology” approach toward exploring 12-hour gene-expression rhythms in a range of animals. In past studies, researchers have shown that coastal sea animals, such as the crustacean Eurydice pulchra have a dominant body clock driven by the 12-hour ebb and flow of the tides. Rhythms of gene expression every 12-hours have also been found in mammals, such as mice. Whether mammals’ 12-hour rhythms are driven by the body’s circadian clock or something else, however, has remained a mystery. Interested in that question and also observations that the time of day can affect humans’ ability to think clearly, handle stress, and respond to medicine, O’Malley and colleagues began to look more closely at mammals’ 12-hour gene-expression rhythms. In the new study, they analyzed gene-expression data of 18,108 mouse liver genes. Using a mathematical technique developed by researchers at Rice University, the team identified 3,652 genes that had 12-hour rhythms that didn’t appear to be associated with the mouse’s circadian clock. © 1986-2017 The Scientist

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 23748 - Posted: 06.17.2017

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS Better grades might be found on the playground. A new study of elementary-age children shows that those who were not part of an after-school exercise program tended to pack on a particular type of body fat that can have deleterious impacts on brain health and thinking. But prevention and treatment could be as simple as playing more games of tag. Most children do not meet the federal health guidelines for exercise, which call for at least an hour of it a day for anyone under the age of 18. Physical inactivity can result in weight gain, especially around the midsection — including visceral fat, a type of tissue deep inside the abdomen that is known to increase inflammation throughout the body. It is also linked to heightened risks for diabetes and cardiovascular complications, even in children, and may contribute to declining brain function: Obese adults often perform worse than people of normal weight on tests of thinking skills. But little has been known about visceral fat and brain health in children. For a soon-to-be-published study, researchers from Northeastern University in Boston and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign tracked hundreds of 8-to-10-year-old children in a nine-month after-school exercise program in Urbana. Every day, one group of children played tag and other active games for about 70 minutes. The subjects in a control group continued with their normal lives, with the promise that they could join the program the following year. All the children completed tests of fitness, body composition and cognitive skills at the start and end of the program. The researchers did not ask the children to change their diets. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 23747 - Posted: 06.17.2017

Heidi Ledford By 13 weeks of gestation, human fetuses have developed a much more unusual immune system than previously thought. A human fetus in its second trimester is extraordinarily busy. It is developing skin and bones, the ability to hear and swallow, and working on its first bowel movement. Now, a study published on 14 June in Nature finds that fetuses are also acquiring a functioning immune system — one that can recognize foreign proteins, but is less inclined than a mature immune system to go on the attack (N. McGovern et al. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature22795; 2017). The results add to a growing body of literature showing that the fetal immune system is more active than previously appreciated. “In general textbooks, you see this concept of a non-responsive fetus is still prevailing,” says immunologist Jakob Michaelsson at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. But the fetal immune system is unique, he says. “It’s not just immature, it’s special.” A developing fetus is constantly exposed to foreign proteins and cells, which are transferred from the mother through the placenta. In humans, this exposure is more extensive than in many other mammals, says immunologist Mike McCune at the University of California, San Francisco. As a result, laboratory mice have proved a poor model for studying the developing human fetal immune system. But fully understanding that development could reveal the reasons for some miscarriages, as well as explain conditions such as pre-eclampsia, which is associated with abnormal immune responses to pregnancy and causes up to 40% of premature births. © 2017 Macmillan Publishers Limited,

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 23746 - Posted: 06.15.2017

Laurel Hamers When things get hot, embryonic bearded dragon lizards turn female — and now scientists might know why. New analyses, reported online June 14 in Science Advances, reveal that temperature-induced changes in RNA’s protein-making instructions might set off this sex switch. The findings might also apply to other reptile species whose sex is influenced by temperature. Unlike most mammals, many species of reptiles and fish don’t have sex chromosomes. Instead, they develop into males at certain temperatures and females at others. Bearded dragon lizards are an unusual case because chromosome combinations and temperature are known to influence sex determination, says ecologist Clare Holleley of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Canberra, Australia (SN: 7/25/15, p.7). When eggs are incubated below 32° Celsius, embryonic bearded dragons with two Z chromosomes develop as male, while dragons with a Z and a W chromosome develop as female. But as temperatures creep above 32°, chromosomally male ZZ dragons will reverse course and develop as females instead. “They have two sex chromosomes, but they also have this temperature override,” Holleley says. By comparing bearded dragons that are female because of their chromosomes and those that are female because of environmental influences, Holleley and her colleagues hoped to sort out genetic differences that might point to how the lizards make the switch. The team collected RNA from the brain, reproductive organs and other tissues of normal female, normal male and sex-reversed female Australian central bearded dragons (Pogona vitticeps). Then, the researchers compared that RNA, looking for differences in the ways the lizards were turning on genes. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2017.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 23745 - Posted: 06.15.2017

Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis Whether tapping a foot to samba or weeping at a ballad, the human response to music seems almost instinctual. Yet few can articulate how music works. How do strings of sounds trigger emotion, inspire ideas, even define identities? Cognitive scientists, anthropologists, biologists and musicologists have all taken a crack at that question (see go.nature.com/2sdpcb5), and it is into this line that Adam Ockelford steps. Comparing Notes draws on his experience as a composer, pianist, music researcher and, most notably, a music educator working for decades with children who have visual impairments or are on the autistic spectrum, many with extraordinary musical abilities. Through this “prism of the overtly remarkable”, Ockelford seeks to shed light on music perception and cognition in all of us. Existing models based on neurotypical children could overlook larger truths about the human capacity to learn and make sense of music he contends. Some of the children described in Comparing Notes might (for a range of reasons) have trouble tying their shoelaces or carrying on a basic conversation. Yet before they hit double digits in age, they can hear a complex composition for the first time and immediately play it on the piano, their fingers flying to the correct notes. This skill, Ockelford reminds us, eludes many adults with whom he studied at London's Royal Academy of Music. Weaving together the strands that let these children perform such stunning feats, Ockelford constructs an argument for rethinking conventional wisdom on music education. He positions absolute pitch (AP) as central to these abilities to improvise, listen and play. © 2017 Macmillan Publishers Limited,

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 23744 - Posted: 06.15.2017

By Sam Wong Microdosing, the practice of regularly taking small amounts of psychedelic drugs to improve mood and performance, has been taking off over the past few years. But the fact that these drugs are illegal makes it difficult to research their effects and possible health consequences. There are no rigorous clinical trials to see whether microdosing works (see “Microdosers say tiny hits of LSD make your work and life better”). Instead, all we have are anecdotes from people like Janet Lai Chang, a digital marketer based in San Francisco. She will present her experience of microdosing at the Quantified Self conference in Amsterdam from 17 to 18 June. When did you start microdosing? I started in February 2016. I wanted to understand how my brain works and how it might work differently with the influence of psilocybin [the active ingredient in magic mushrooms]. What else did you hope to achieve? I had been struggling with a lot of social anxiety. It was really preventing me from advancing professionally. I was invited to give a talk at Harvard University and a TedX talk in California. I didn’t feel ready. I felt all this anxiety. I procrastinated until the last minute and then didn’t do it. It was one of my biggest regrets. What doses did you take? At first I was taking 0.2 grams of mushrooms every day, with a day or two off at the weekend. In August, I had a month off. From October to April, it was a few times a week. How did it affect you? I was less anxious, less depressed, more open, more extroverted. I was more present in the moment. It’s harder to get into the flow of the focused solo work that I’m normally really good at. But it’s good for the social aspect. © Copyright New Scientist Ltd.

Keyword: Depression; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 23743 - Posted: 06.15.2017

by Helen Thompson Paper wasps have a knack for recognizing faces, and a new study adds to our understanding of what that means in a wasp’s brain. Most wasps of a given species look the same, but some species of paper wasp (Polistes sp.) display varied colors and markings. Recognizing these patterns is at the core of the wasps’ social interactions. One species, Polistes fuscatus, is especially good at detecting differences in faces — even better than they are at detecting other patterns. To zero on the roots of this ability, biologist Ali Berens of Georgia Tech and her colleagues set up recognition exercises of faces and basic patterns for P. fuscatus wasps and P. metricus wasps — a species that doesn’t naturally recognize faces but can be trained to do so in the lab. After the training, scientists extracted DNA from the wasps’ brains and looked at which bits of DNA or genes were active. The researchers found 237 genes that were at play only in P. fuscatus during facial recognition tests. A few of the genes have been linked to honeybee visual learning, and some correspond to brain signaling with the neurotransmitters serotonin and tachykinin. In the brain, picking up on faces goes beyond basic pattern learning, the researchers conclude June 14 in the Journal of Experimental Biology. It’s possible that some of the same genes also play a broader role in how organisms such as humans and sheep tell one face from another. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2017

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 23742 - Posted: 06.15.2017

Kathryn Hess can’t tell the difference between a coffee mug and a bagel. That’s the old joke anyway. Hess, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, is one of the world’s leading thinkers in the field of algebraic topology—in super simplified terms, the mathematics of rubbery shapes. It uses algebra to attack the following question: If given two geometric objects, can you deform one to another without making any cuts? The answer, when it comes to bagels and coffee mugs, is yes, yes you can. (They only have one hole apiece, lol.) If that all sounds annoyingly abstract, well, it kind of is. Algebraic topologists have lived almost exclusively in multidimensional universes of their own calculation for decades. It’s only recently that pure mathematicians like Hess have begun applying their way of seeing the world to more applied, real-world problems. If you can call understanding the dynamics of a virtual rat brain a real-world problem. In a multimillion-dollar supercomputer in a building on the same campus where Hess has spent 25 years stretching and shrinking geometric objects in her mind, lives one of the most detailed digital reconstructions of brain tissue ever built. Representing 55 distinct types of neurons and 36 million synapses all firing in a space the size of pinhead, the simulation is the brainchild of Henry Markram. Markram and Hess met through a mutual researcher friend 12 years ago, right around the time Markram was launching Blue Brain—the Swiss institute’s ambitious bid to build a complete, simulated brain, starting with the rat. Over the next decade, as Markram began feeding terabytes of data into an IBM supercomputer and reconstructing a collection of neurons in the sensory cortex, he and Hess continued to meet and discuss how they might use her specialized knowledge to understand what he was creating. “It became clearer and clearer algebraic topology could help you see things you just can’t see with flat mathematics,” says Markram. But Hess didn’t officially join the project until 2015, when it met (and some would say failed) its first big public test.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 23741 - Posted: 06.14.2017

By Neuroskeptic A high-profile paper in Cell reports on a new brain stimulation method that’s got many neuroscientists excited. The new technique, called temporal interference (TI) stimulation, is said to be able to reach structures deep inside the brain, using nothing more than scalp electrodes. Currently, the only way to stimulate deep brain structures is by implanting electrodes (wires) into the brain – which is an expensive and potentially dangerous surgical procedure. TI promises to make deep brain stimulation an everyday, non-invasive tool. But will it really work? The paper comes from Nir Grossman et al. from the lab of Edward S. Boyden at MIT. Their technique is based around applying two electrical fields to the subject’s head. Each field is applied using two scalp electrodes. It is the interaction between the two fields that creates brain stimulation. Both fields oscillate at slightly different frequencies, for instance 2 kHz and 2.01 kHz. Where these fields overlap, a pattern of interference is created which oscillates with an ‘envelope’ at a much lower frequency, say 10 Hz. The frequency of the two fields is too high to have any effect on neural activity, but the interference pattern does have an effect. Crucially, while the electric fields are strongest close to the electrodes, the interference pattern is most intense at a remote point – which could be deep in the brain.

Keyword: Brain imaging; Parkinsons
Link ID: 23740 - Posted: 06.14.2017

By Hannah Osborne Scientists studying the brain have discovered that the organ operates on up to 11 different dimensions, creating multiverse-like structures that are “a world we had never imagined.” By using an advanced mathematical system, researchers were able to uncover architectural structures that appears when the brain has to process information, before they disintegrate into nothing. Their findings, published in the journal Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, reveals the hugely complicated processes involved in the creation of neural structures, potentially helping explain why the brain is so difficult to understand and tying together its structure with its function. The team, led by scientists at the EPFL, Switzerland, were carrying out research as part of the Blue Brain Project—an initiative to create a biologically detailed reconstruction of the human brain. Working initially on rodent brains, the team used supercomputer simulations to study the complex interactions within different regions. In the latest study, researchers honed in on the neural network structures within the brain using algebraic topology—a system used to describe networks with constantly changing spaces and structures. This is the first time this branch of math has been applied to neuroscience. "Algebraic topology is like a telescope and microscope at the same time. It can zoom into networks to find hidden structures—the trees in the forest—and see the empty spaces—the clearings—all at the same time," study author Kathryn Hess said in a statement.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 23739 - Posted: 06.14.2017

Jon Hamilton Researchers are working to revive a radical treatment for Parkinson's disease. The treatment involves transplanting healthy brain cells to replace cells killed off by the disease. It's an approach that was tried decades ago and then set aside after disappointing results. Now, groups in Europe, the U.S. and Asia are preparing to try again, using cells they believe are safer and more effective. "There have been massive advances," says Claire Henchcliffe, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. "I'm optimistic." "We are very optimistic about ability of [the new] cells to improve patients' symptoms," says Viviane Tabar, a neurosurgeon and stem cell biologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Henchcliffe and Tabar joined several other prominent scientists to describe plans to revive brain cell transplants during a session Tuesday at the International Society for Stem Cell Research meeting in Boston. Their upbeat message marks a dramatic turnaround for the approach. During the 1980s and 1990s, researchers used cells taken directly from the brains of aborted fetuses to treat hundreds of Parkinson's patients. The goal was to halt the disease. © 2017 npr

Keyword: Parkinsons; Stem Cells
Link ID: 23738 - Posted: 06.14.2017

By Lenny Bernstein A mother’s fever during pregnancy, especially in the second trimester, is associated with a higher risk that her child will be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, researchers reported Tuesday. Three or more fevers after 12 weeks of gestation may be linked to an even greater risk of the condition. The study by researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health adds support for the theory that infectious agents that trigger a pregnant woman’s immune response may disrupt a fetus’s brain development and lead to disorders such as autism. “Fever seems to be the driving force here,” not the infection itself, said Mady Hornig, director of translational research at the school’s Center for Infection and Immunity. Fever can be part of the body’s immune response to an infection, and molecules produced by a mother’s immune system may be crossing into the baby’s neurological system at a critical time, she said. The research, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, comes at a time when the scientifically discredited theory that some childhood vaccines cause autism has gained new attention. President Trump has promoted this myth, energizing some anti-vaccine groups. Some families say that their children developed autism after vaccinations. The timing is a coincidence, however; symptoms of autism typically become clear at around two years of age, which happens to be the age when children get certain vaccines. © 1996-2017 The Washington Post

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 23737 - Posted: 06.13.2017

Paula Span A few years hence, when you’ve finally tired of turning up the TV volume and making dinner reservations at 5:30 p.m. because any later and the place gets too loud, you may go shopping. Perhaps you’ll head to a local boutique called The Hear Better Store, or maybe Didja Ear That? (Reader nominees for kitschy names invited.) Maybe you’ll opt for a big-box retailer or a kiosk at your local pharmacy. If legislation now making its way through Congress succeeds, these places will all offer hearing aids. You’ll try out various models — they’ll all meet newly established federal requirements — to see what seems to work and feel best. Your choices might include products from big consumer electronics specialists like Apple, Samsung and Bose. If you want assistance, you might pay an audiologist to provide customized services, like adjusting frequencies or amplification levels. But you won’t need to go through an audiologist-gatekeeper, as you do now, to buy hearing aids. The best part of this over-the-counter scenario: Instead of spending an average of $1,500 to $2,000 per device (and nearly everyone needs two), you’ll find that the price has plummeted. You might pay $300 per ear, maybe even less. So many people will be using these new over-the-counter hearing aids — along with the hordes wearing earbuds for other reasons — that you won’t feel self-conscious. You’ll blend right in. That, at least, represents the future envisioned by supporters of the Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Act of 2017, which would give the Food and Drug Administration three years to create a regulatory category for such devices and to establish standards for safety, effectiveness and labeling.

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 23736 - Posted: 06.13.2017

By Kerry Grens Memory theories The theory goes that as memories form, they set up temporary shop in the hippocampus, a subcortical region buried deep in the brain, but over time find permanent storage in the cortex. The details of this process are sketchy, so Takashi Kitamura, a researcher in Susumu Tonegawa’s MIT lab, and colleagues wanted to pinpoint the time memories spend in each of these regions. Total recall As mice were subjected to a fearful experience, the team labeled so-called memory engram cells—neurons that are stimulated during the initial exposure and whose later activity drives recollection of the original stimulus (in this case, indicated by a freezing response). Using optogenetics, Kitamura turned off these cells in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) when the memory first formed as mice were exposed to a foot shock. Short-term memory was unaffected, but a couple of weeks later, the animals could not recall the event, indicating that PFC engrams formed contemporaneously with those in the hippocampus, not later, as some had suspected, and that this early memory trace in the cortex was critical for long-term retrieval. Going dark Over time, as untreated mice recalled the fearful event, engrams in the hippocampus became silent as PFC engrams became more active. “It’s a see-saw situation,” says Kitamura, “this maturation of prefrontal engrams and dematuration of hippocampal engrams.” Circuit dynamics Stephen Maren, who researches memory at Texas A&M University and was not part of the study, says the results reveal that the network circuitry involved in memory consolidation (of which Kitamura’s team dissected just one component) is much more dynamic than previously appreciated. “It’s the most sophisticated circuit-level analysis we have to date of these processes.” © 1986-2017 The Scientist

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 23735 - Posted: 06.13.2017

By MATT RICHTEL More than 10 percent of the world’s population is now obese, a marked rise over the last 30 years that is leading to widespread health problems and millions of premature deaths, according to a new study, the most comprehensive research done on the subject. Published Monday in The New England Journal of Medicine, the study showed that the problem had swept the globe, including regions that have historically had food shortages, like Africa. The study, compiled by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington and funded by the Gates Foundation, looked at 195 countries, essentially the world’s population, finding that rates of obesity at least doubled in 73 countries — including Turkey, Venezuela and Bhutan — from 1980 to 2015, and “continuously increased in most other countries.” Analyzing some 1,800 data sets from around the world, researchers found that excess weight played a role in four million deaths in 2015, from heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease and other factors. The per capita death rate was up 28 percent since 1990 and, notably, 40 percent of the deaths were among people who were overweight but not heavy enough to be classified as obese. The study defined obese as a body mass index of 30 or higher and overweight as a B.M.I. from 25 to 29. By those measures, nearly 604 million adults worldwide are obese and 108 million children, the authors reported. Obesity rates among children are rising faster in many countries than among adults. In the United States, 12.5 percent of children were obese, up from 5 percent in 1980. Combining children and adults, the United States had the dubious distinction of having the largest increase in percentile points of any country, a jump of 16 percentage points to 26.5 percent of the overall population. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 23734 - Posted: 06.13.2017

By Edd Gent There’s been a lot of hype coming out of Silicon Valley about technology that can meld the human brain with machines. But how will this help society, and which companies are leading the charge? Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, made waves in March when he announced his latest venture, Neuralink, which would design what are called brain-computer interfaces. Initially, BCIs would be used for medical research, but the ultimate goal would be to prevent humans from becoming obsolete by enabling people to merge with artificial intelligence. Musk is not the only one who’s trying to bring humans closer to machines. Here are five organizations working hard on hacking the brain. According to Musk, the main barrier to human-machine co­operation is communication bandwidth. Because using a touch screen or a keyboard is a slow way to communicate with a computer, Musk’s new venture aims to create a “high-bandwidth” link between the brain and machines. What that system would look like is not entirely clear. Words such as “neural lace” and “neural dust” have been bandied about, but all that has really been revealed is a business model. Neuralink has been registered as a medical research company, and Musk said the firm will produce a product to help people with severe brain injuries within four years. This will lay the groundwork for developing BCIs for healthy people, enabling them to communicate by “consensual telepathy,” possibly within five years, Musk said. Some scientists, particularly those in neuroscience, are skeptical of Musk’s ambitious plans. © 1996-2017 The Washington Post

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 23733 - Posted: 06.12.2017

By ALEX WILLIAMS This past winter, Sarah Fader, a 37-year-old social media consultant in Brooklyn who has generalized anxiety disorder, texted a friend in Oregon about an impending visit, and when a quick response failed to materialize, she posted on Twitter to her 16,000-plus followers. “I don’t hear from my friend for a day — my thought, they don’t want to be my friend anymore,” she wrote, appending the hashtag #ThisIsWhatAnxietyFeelsLike. Thousands of people were soon offering up their own examples under the hashtag; some were retweeted more than 1,000 times. You might say Ms. Fader struck a nerve. “If you’re a human being living in 2017 and you’re not anxious,” she said on the telephone, “there’s something wrong with you.” It was 70 years ago that the poet W.H. Auden published “The Age of Anxiety,” a six-part verse framing modern humankind’s condition over the course of more than 100 pages, and now it seems we are too rattled to even sit down and read something that long (or as the internet would say, tl;dr). Anxiety has become our everyday argot, our thrumming lifeblood: not just on Twitter (the ur-anxious medium, with its constant updates), but also in blogger diaries, celebrity confessionals (Et tu, Beyoncé?), a hit Broadway show (“Dear Evan Hansen”), a magazine start-up (Anxy, a mental-health publication based in Berkeley, Calif.), buzzed-about television series (like “Maniac,” a coming Netflix series by Cary Fukunaga, the lauded “True Detective” director) and, defying our abbreviated attention spans, on bookshelves. With two new volumes analyzing the condition (“On Edge: A Journey Through Anxiety,” by Andrea Petersen, and “Hi, Anxiety,” by Kat Kinsman) following recent best-sellers by Scott Stossel (“My Age of Anxiety”) and Daniel Smith (“Monkey Mind”), the anxiety memoir has become a literary subgenre to rival the depression memoir, firmly established since William Styron’s “Darkness Visible” and Elizabeth Wurtzel’s “Prozac Nation” in the 1990s and continuing today with Daphne Merkin’s “This Close to Happy.” © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Stress
Link ID: 23732 - Posted: 06.12.2017