Hannah Devlin Science correspondent Scientists believe that a radical treatment involving the tranquilliser ketamine could help overcome alcohol addiction by “erasing” drink-related memories. Psychologists based at University College London are testing whether a one-off dose of the drug could help hazardous drinkers who are trying to reduce their alcohol intake. Alcohol addiction is notoriously difficult to treat, and there are few effective therapies available. Using a recreational drug to treat addiction may sound counterintuitive, but the researchers say there is a growing body of research suggesting that ketamine can be used to disrupt harmful patterns of behaviour. Ravi Das, one of the lead researchers, said: “There is evidence that it could be useful as a treatment for alcoholism.” Crucially, ketamine can disrupt the formation of memories, and scientists believe that this property could be harnessed to over-write the memories that drive addiction and harmful patterns of behaviour. “Memories that you form can be hijacked by drugs in some people,” said Das. “If you were an alcoholic you might have a strong memory of being in a certain place and wanting to drink. Those memories get continuously triggered by things in the environment that you can’t avoid.” For instance, seeing a glass of beer, hearing the clinking of glasses or even arriving home from work may trigger memories of the rewarding sensation of taking a drink – and might prompt a person to follow this urge. © 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 23146 - Posted: 01.25.2017

By Bob Grant More and more Americans are using cannabis both for medicinal and recreational purposes, but scientists still know little about the drug’s effects on human physiology, according to a National Academies report released this month (January 12). Part of this knowledge gap owes to the fact that cannabis is classified as a Schedule I drug under the US Controlled Substances Act. In the eyes of the federal government, marijuana is a dangerous substance—on par with heroin—that “has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” But researchers in Canada are not far ahead of their US counterparts, even though cannabis has since 2001 been functionally legal for medicinal use at the federal level there. See “National Academies Detail the State of Weed Science” “I wish I could say that [legalizing medical marijuana] had led to more research” in Canada, said Mark Ware, a McGill University pain management physician who has researched the safety and efficacy of cannabinoids for the past 18 years. “I think there’s certainly a willingness to be able to document real world use of cannabis under a legal framework.” Ware, who served as a reviewer on the National Academies report, added that while there are several public registries that track the legal use of cannabis among Canadians, experimental evidence on the effects of that use are lacking. “The clinical trials, I think for most people that’s an expensive undertaking,” he said. “There are still questions around who owns the intellectual property, who’s going to sponsor the trials. . . . Those remain barriers even in a legal framework as to the cost of that kind of research and the drug development piece of it.” © 1986-2017 The Scientist

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 23145 - Posted: 01.25.2017

By Nathaniel P. Morris In the 20th century, the deinstitutionalization of mental health care took patients out of long-term psychiatric facilities with the aim that they might return to the community and lead more fulfilling lives. But in our rush to shut down America’s asylums, we failed to set up adequate outpatient services for the mentally ill, who now often fend for themselves on the streets or behind bars. According to recent surveys, the number of state psychiatric beds has fallen from over 550,000 in 1955 to fewer than 38,000 in 2016. Meanwhile, research conducted by the Treatment Advocacy Center estimates over 355,000 inmates in America’s prisons and jails suffered from severe mental illness in 2012. Last year, a report by the Department of Housing and Urban Development found that over 100,000 Americans who experienced homelessness also suffered from severe mental illness. Mental health advocates point to a number of failures, such as limited funding for outpatient care and a lack of political foresight, that may have led to this situation. Yet emerging community-based approaches to mental health care are providing hope for the severely mentally ill—as well as some constraints. Court-ordered care for patients with severe mental illness, known as assisted outpatient treatment or AOT, is spreading nationwide. In December, President Obama signed into law the landmark 21st Century Cures Act, bipartisan legislation that bolsters funding for medical research and reshapes approval processes for drugs and medical devices. The law also supports a number of mental health reforms, including millions in federal incentives for states to develop AOT. © 2017 Scientific American

Keyword: Depression; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 23144 - Posted: 01.25.2017

By Helen Briggs BBC News The idea that dogs are more intelligent than cats has been called into question. Japanese scientists say cats are as good as dogs at certain memory tests, suggesting they may be just as smart. A study - involving 49 domestic cats - shows felines can recall memories of pleasant experiences, such as eating a favourite snack. Dogs show this type of recollection - a unique memory of a specific event known as episodic memory. Humans often consciously try to reconstruct past events that have taken place in their lives, such as what they ate for breakfast, their first day in a new job or a family wedding. These memories are linked with an individual take on events, so they are unique to that person. Saho Takagi, a psychologist at Kyoto University, said cats, as well as dogs, used memories of a single past experience, which may imply they have episodic memory similar to that of humans. "Episodic memory is viewed as being related to introspective function of the mind; our study may imply a type of consciousness in cats," she told BBC News. "An interesting speculation is that they may enjoy actively recalling memories of their experience like humans." The Japanese team tested 49 domestic cats on their ability to remember which bowl they had already eaten out of and which remained untouched, after a 15-minute interval. © 2017 BBC

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Evolution
Link ID: 23143 - Posted: 01.25.2017

What are you like? A look at your brain may tell you. A study has found a link between some elements of brain structure and certain personality traits. The study involved scanning the brains of 500 volunteers, and assessing their personalities in terms of five traits – neuroticism, openness, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. The researchers focused on the structure of the cortex, the outer layer of the brain. They found that in people who are more neurotic and prone to mood changes, the cortex tends to be thicker and less wrinkly. People who appear more open – for example, curious and creative – show the opposite pattern. More mature The link between structure and personality may help explain how we mature as we get older. Folds and wrinkles are thought to increase the surface area of the brain, but make the cortex thinner. The cortex continues to stretch and fold throughout childhood and adolescence, and into adulthood. As we grow up, people generally become less neurotic, and more conscientious and agreeable. “Our work supports the notion that personality is, to some degree, associated with brain maturation,” says Roberta Riccelli, at Magna Graecia University in Catanzaro, Italy. Journal reference: Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Emotions; Brain imaging
Link ID: 23142 - Posted: 01.25.2017

By NATALIE ANGIER Whether personally or professionally, Daniel Kronauer of Rockefeller University is the sort of biologist who leaves no stone unturned. Passionate about ants and other insects since kindergarten, Dr. Kronauer says he still loves flipping over rocks “just to see what’s crawling around underneath.” In an amply windowed fourth-floor laboratory on the east side of Manhattan, he and his colleagues are assaying the biology, brain, genetics and behavior of a single species of ant in ambitious, uncompromising detail. The researchers have painstakingly hand-decorated thousands of clonal raider ants, Cerapachys biroi, with bright dots of pink, blue, red and lime-green paint, a color-coded system that allows computers to track the ants’ movements 24 hours a day — and makes them look like walking jelly beans. The scientists have manipulated the DNA of these ants, creating what Dr. Kronauer says are the world’s first transgenic ants. Among the surprising results is a line of Greta Garbo types that defy the standard ant preference for hypersociality and instead just want to be left alone. The researchers also have identified the molecular and neural cues that spur ants to act like nurses and feed the young, or to act like queens and breed more young, or to serve as brutal police officers, capturing upstart nestmates, spread-eagling them on the ground and reducing them to so many chitinous splinters. Dr. Kronauer, who was born and raised in Germany and just turned 40, is tall, sandy-haired, blue-eyed and married to a dentist. He is amiable and direct, and his lab’s ambitions are both lofty and pragmatic. “Our ultimate goal is to have a fundamental understanding of how a complex biological system works,” Dr. Kronauer said. “I use ants as a model to do this.” As he sees it, ants in a colony are like cells in a multicellular organism, or like neurons in the brain: their fates joined, their labor synchronized, the whole an emergent force to be reckoned with. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 23141 - Posted: 01.24.2017

By Rachael Lallensack Jet lag can put anyone off their game, even Major League Baseball (MLB) players. Long-distance travel can affect specific—and at times, crucial—baseball skills such as pitching and base running, a new study finds. In fact, jetlag's effects can even cancel out the home field advantage for some teams returning from away games. Jet lag is known for its fatigue-inducing effects, most of which stem from a mismatch between a person’s internal clock and the time zone he or she is in, something called “circadian misalignment.” This misalignment is especially strong when a person’s day is shorter than it should be—which happens whenever people travel east—previous research has shown. Just how that affects sports teams has long been debated. A 2009 study of MLB, for example, found that jet lag did decrease a team’s likelihood of winning, if only slightly. But no prior study has ever been able to pinpoint exact areas of game play where the effects of jet lag hit hardest—data that could help coaches and trainers better prepare players for games following travel. To figure out how that might happen, “adopted” Chicago Cubs fan and study author Ravi Allada, a neurobiologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, looked at 20 years’ worth of MLB data from 1992 to 2011. He and his team narrowed their data set from 46,535 games to the 4919 games in which players traveled at least two time zones. Then, they broke down offensive and defensive stats from each of those games, including home runs allowed, stolen bases, and sacrifice flies. Finally, they compared how the numbers changed for teams that had traveled east versus those that had traveled west. © 2017 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 23140 - Posted: 01.24.2017

by Laura Sanders Most nights I read a book in bed to wind down. But when I run out of my library supply, I read articles on my phone instead. I suspect that this digital substitution messes with my sleep. That’s not good for me — but it’s probably worse for the many children who have screens in their rooms at night. A team of researchers recently combed through the literature looking for associations between mobile devices in the bedroom and poor sleep. Biostatistician Ben Carter of King’s College London and colleagues found that kids between ages 6 and 19 who used screen-based media around bedtime slept worse and were more tired in the day. That’s not surprising: Phones, tablets and laptops make noise and emit blue light that can interfere with the sleep-inducing melatonin. But things got interesting when the researchers compared kids who didn’t have screens in their bedrooms with kids who did have phones or tablets in their rooms but didn’t use them. You might think there wouldn’t be a sleep difference between those groups. None of these kids were up all night texting, gaming or swiping, so neither sounds nor blue light were messing with any of the kids’ sleep. Yet Carter and colleagues found a difference: Kids who had screen-based media in their bedroom, but didn’t use it, didn’t sleep as much as kids without the technology. What’s more, the sleep they did get was worse and they were more tired during the day, the researchers reported in the December JAMA Pediatrics. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2017

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Sleep
Link ID: 23139 - Posted: 01.24.2017

By Ingfei Chen Learning Morse code, with its tappity-tap rhythms of dots and dashes, could take far less effort—and attention—than one might think. The trick is a wearable computer that engages the sensory powers of touch, according to a recent pilot study. The results suggest that mobile devices may be able to teach us manual skills, almost subconsciously, as we go about our everyday routines. Ph.D. student Caitlyn Seim and computer science professor Thad Starner of the Georgia Institute of Technology tinker with haptics, the integration of vibrations or other tactile cues with computing gadgets. Last September at the 20th International Symposium on Wearable Computers in Heidelberg, Germany, they announced that they had programmed Google Glass to passively teach its wearers Morse code—with preliminary signs of success. For the study, 12 participants wore the smart glasses while engrossed in an online game on a PC. During multiple hour-long sessions, half the players heard Google Glass's built-in speaker repeatedly spelling out words and felt taps behind the right ear (from a bone-conduction transducer built into the frames) for the dots and dashes corresponding to each letter. The other six participants heard only the audio, without the corresponding vibrations. After each run of game playing, all the players were asked to tap out letters in Morse code using a finger on the touch pad of the smart glasses; for example, if they tapped “dot-dot,” an “i” would pop up on the visual display. The brief testing essentially prompted them to try to learn the code. After four one-hour sessions, the group that had received tactile cues could tap a pangram (a sentence using the entire alphabet) with 94 percent accuracy. The audio-only group eventually achieved 47 percent accuracy, learning solely from their trial-and-error inputs. © 2017 Scientific American

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 23138 - Posted: 01.24.2017

written by Claire Lehmann I learned about Debra through reading her LA Times op-ed on the futility of gender neutral parenting. I got in touch with Debra because I wanted to learn more about her field of sex neuroscience, her own research and her thoughts on studying sex differences in the brain. Because the study of sex and sex differences is often fraught with political roadblocks, I also wanted to get a picture of how a neuroscientist-sex researcher approaches some of these contentious issues. Hi Debra, thanks for chatting to Quillette. Can you briefly tell us who you are — where you studied, who was your supervisor and what made you interested in neuroscience, in particular sex neuroscience? I am a sex researcher at York University in Toronto and I write about the science of sex for several media outlets, including Playboy. For my PhD, which I just defended, I worked with Dr. Keith Schneider, who has pioneered new methods in high-resolution fMRI and is the Director of the University of Delaware’s Center for Biomedical and Brain Imaging, and Dr. James Cantor at the University of Toronto, who is a world expert in the brain imaging of pedophilia. I remember opening up a textbook during my first neuroscience course as an undergraduate student, seeing images from an fMRI study, and thinking it was incredible. I decided to pursue neuroscience in grad school and had the opportunity to do a placement in sexology as part of my Master’s degree. That’s how I got hooked! And I haven’t looked back. © 2017 Quillette

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Brain imaging
Link ID: 23137 - Posted: 01.24.2017

In the mood? Feeling sexy and romantic has been linked to a hormone named kisspeptin. Researchers hope the chemical may help treat people with some sexual problems. Kisspeptin occurs naturally in the body, where it stimulates the release of other signalling chemicals that have been linked to reproduction. Now a study of 29 heterosexual young men has found that injections of the hormone enhance the brain’s response to sexual and romantic pictures of couples. After injection, MRI scans showed increased activity in the regions of the brain that are usually stimulated by sexual arousal and romance. But this activity was only prompted by arousing pictures – non-sexy images did not have the same effect. “Our findings indicate that kisspeptin could play a role in stimulating some of the emotions and responses that lead to sex and reproduction,” says Waljit Dhillo, at Imperial College London. “Ultimately, we are keen to look into whether kisspeptin could be an effective treatment for psychosexual disorders.” The team now plans to study the effects of the hormone in a larger group of people, including women as well as men. Journal reference: Journal of Clinical Investigation © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 23136 - Posted: 01.24.2017

By NANCY L. SEGAL and SATOSHI KANAZAWA In 1973, the biologist Robert Trivers and the computer scientist Dan Willard made a striking prediction about parents and their offspring. According to the principles of evolutionary theory, they argued, the male-to-female ratio of offspring should not be 50-50 (as chance would dictate), but rather should vary as a function of how good (or bad) the conditions are in which the parents find themselves. Are the parents’ resources plentiful — or scarce? The Trivers-Willard hypothesis holds that when their conditions are good, parents will have more male offspring: Males with more resources are likely to gain access to more females, thereby increasing the frequency with which their genes (and thus their parents’ genes) are preserved in future generations. Conversely, male offspring that lack resources are likely to lose out to males that have more resources, so in bad conditions it pays for parents to “invest” more in daughters, which will have more opportunities to mate. It follows, as a kind of corollary, that when parents have plentiful resources they will devote those resources more to their sons, whereas when resources are scarce, parents will devote them more to their daughters. In short: If things are good, you have more boys, and give them more stuff. If things are bad, you have more girls, and give more of your stuff to them. Is this hypothesis correct? In new research of ours, to be published in the April issue of The Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, we suggest that in the case of breast-feeding, at least, it appears to be. In recent years, evidence has emerged suggesting that in various mammalian species, breast milk — which is, of course, a resource that can be given to children — is tailored for the sex of each offspring. For example, macaque monkey mothers produce richer milk (with higher gross energy and fat content) for sons than for daughters, but also provide greater quantities of milk and higher concentrations of calcium for daughters than for sons. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 23135 - Posted: 01.23.2017

By Carl Bialik A woman has never come closer to the presidency than Hillary Clinton did in winning the popular vote in November. Yet as women march in Washington on Saturday, many of them to protest the presidency of Donald Trump, an important obstacle to the first woman president remains: the hidden, internalized bias many people hold against career advancement by women. And perhaps surprisingly, there is evidence that women hold more of this bias, on average, than men do. There has been lots of discussion of the role that overt sexism played in both Trump’s campaign and at the ballot box. A YouGov survey conducted two weeks before the election, for example, found that Trump voters had much higher levels of sexism, on average, than Clinton voters, as measured by their level of agreement with statements such as “women seek to gain power by getting control over men.” An analysis of the survey found that sexism played a big role in explaining people’s votes, after controlling for other factors, including gender and political ideology. Other research has reached similar conclusions. Two recent studies of voters, however, suggest that another, subtler form of bias may also have been a factor in the election. These studies looked at what’s known as “implicit bias,” the unconscious tendency to associate certain qualities with certain groups — in this case, the tendency to associate men with careers and women with family. Researchers have found that this kind of bias is stronger on average in women than in men, and, among women, it is particularly strong among political conservatives. And at least according to one study, this unconscious bias was especially strong among one group in 2016: women who supported Trump.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 23134 - Posted: 01.23.2017

Robert McCrum Stroke, or “brain attack”, is the third biggest killer in the western world, after cancer and heart failure. The life-changing effects associated with this simple, Anglo-Saxon word are readily explained: a stroke occurs when the blood supply to the brain is disrupted by a blood vessel either bursting or blocking, so that the part of the brain supplied by this blood vessel dies. The brain is a much more complex organ than the heart. While strokes are a common feature of everyday life, precisely how and why they occur is far from straightforward. Each year in the UK, there will be about 50,000 brain attacks. One-third of those affected will die; one-third will be left severely disabled; and about one-third will make some kind of recovery. In the time it takes to read this article, approximately nine people in Britain, from across all age groups, will have suffered a stroke. Or did they? For the brain is not only super-sensitive territory – as the human animal’s command HQ – it is also top secret. Despite extraordinary progress in MRI scans, the brain remains essentially mysterious and the symptoms of its dysfunction can be hard to diagnose with certainty. An elderly man presenting himself at A&E with unsteady gait and a slurring of his words could be suffering a stroke – or he might just be intoxicated. Treat him for the former, and you’ll save his life; treat him as a drunk, and he might die. © 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 23133 - Posted: 01.23.2017

By JANE E. BRODY Susan Sills, a Brooklyn artist who until recently made life-size cutouts on plywood using a power saw, long suspected she might be at risk for developing Parkinson’s disease. Both her mother and grandfather had this neurological movement disorder, and she knew that it sometimes runs in families. So she was not surprised when at age 72 she first noticed hand tremors and a neurologist confirmed that she had the disease. But to watch her in action three years later, it would be hard for a layperson to tell. She stands straight, walks briskly, speaks in clarion tones and maintains a schedule that could tire someone half her age. Having wisely put the power saw aside, Ms. Sills now makes intricately designed art jewelry. She is also a docent at the Brooklyn Museum, participates in a cooperative art gallery and assists her husband’s business by entertaining customers. Ms. Sills attributes her energy and well-being partly to the medication she takes but primarily to the hours she spends working out with a physical therapist and personal trainer, who have helped her develop an exercise regimen that, while not a cure, can alleviate Parkinson’s symptoms and slow progression of the disease. “The exercises opened me up,” said Ms. Sills, allowing such symptoms as small steps, slow movements and tiny, cramped handwriting to subside. “The earlier people begin exercising after a Parkinson’s diagnosis, and the higher the intensity of exercise they achieve, the better they are,” Marilyn Moffat, a physical therapist on the faculty of New York University, said. “Many different activities have been shown to be beneficial, including cycling, boxing, dancing and walking forward and backward on a treadmill. If someone doesn’t like one activity, there are others that can have equally good results.” © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 23132 - Posted: 01.23.2017

By NICHOLAS ST. FLEUR The tale of the Tasmanian tiger was tragic. Once numerous across Tasmania, the doglike marsupial was branded a sheep killer by colonists in the 1830s and hunted to extinction. The last of its kind, Benjamin, died in a zoo in 1936, and with it many secrets into the animals’ lives were lost. The striped creature, which is also known as the thylacine, was hardly studied when it was alive, depriving scientists of understanding the behavior of an important predator from Australia’s recent biological past. Now, for the first time, researchers have performed neural scans on the extinct carnivore’s brain, revealing insights that had been lost since the species went extinct. “Part of the myth about them is what exactly did they eat, how did they hunt and were they social?” said Dr. Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist at Emory University and lead author on the study, which was published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One. “These are questions nobody really knows the answers to.” Dr. Berns’s main research pertains to dogs and the inner workings of the canine brain, but after learning more about Tasmanian tigers, he became fascinated by the beasts. With their slender bodies, long snouts and sharp teeth, Tasmanian tigers looked as if they could be related to dogs, wolves or coyotes. But actually they are separated by more than 150 million years of evolution. It is a classic example of convergent evolution, in which two organisms that are not closely related develop similar features because of the environment they adapted to and the ecological role they played. To better understand thylacines, Dr. Berns spent two years tracking down two preserved Tasmanian tiger brains, one at the Smithsonian Institution and the other at the Australian Museum. Their brains, like those of all marsupials, are very different from the brains of placental mammals. The biggest difference is that they lack a corpus callosum, which is the part of the brain that connects the left and right hemispheres. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution; Brain imaging
Link ID: 23131 - Posted: 01.21.2017

By Jordan Axt Imagine playing a game where you’re seated in front of four decks of cards. On the back of two decks are pictures of puppies; on the other two are pictures of spiders. Each deck has some cards that win points and others that lose points. In general, the puppy decks are “good” in that they win you more points than they lose while the spider decks are “bad” in that they lose you more points they win. You repeatedly select cards in hopes of winning as many points as possible. This game seems pretty easy— and it is. Most players favor the puppy decks from the start and quickly learn to continue favoring them because they produce more points. However, if the pictures on the decks are reversed, the game becomes a little harder. People may have a tougher time initially favoring spider decks because it’s difficult to learn that something people fear like spiders brings positive outcomes and something people enjoy like puppies brings negative outcomes. Performance on this learning task is best when one’s attitudes and motivations are aligned. For instance, when puppies earn you more points than spiders, people’s preference for puppies can lead people to select more puppies initially, and a motivation to earn as many points as possible leads people to select more and more puppies over time. But when spiders earn you more points than spiders, people have to overcome their initial aversion to spiders in order to perform well. © 2017 Scientific American

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 23130 - Posted: 01.21.2017

Joseph Palamar On Nov. 30 the FDA approved a Phase III clinical trial to confirm the effectiveness of treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with MDMA, also known as Ecstasy. This news appeared in headlines throughout the world, as it represents an important – yet somewhat unorthodox – advance in PTSD treatment. However, the media have largely been referring to Ecstasy – the street name for this drug – as the treatment in this trial, rather than MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine). This can lead to misunderstanding, as recreational Ecstasy use is a highly stigmatized behavior. Using this terminology may further misconceptions about the study drug and its uses. While Ecstasy is in fact a common street name for MDMA, what we call Ecstasy has changed dramatically since it became a prevalent recreational drug. Ecstasy now has a very different meaning – socially and pharmacologically. It is understandable why the media have referred to this drug as Ecstasy rather than MDMA. Not only has much of the public at least heard of Ecstasy (and would not recognize MDMA), but this also increases shock value and readership. But referring to a therapeutic drug by its street name (such as Ecstasy) is misleading – especially since MDMA is known to be among the most popular illicit drugs used at nightclubs and dance festivals. This leads some to assume that street drugs are being promoted and provided to patients, perhaps in a reckless manner. © 2010–2017, The Conversation US, Inc.

Keyword: Stress; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 23129 - Posted: 01.21.2017

Claudia Dreifus Geneticists tell us that somewhere between 1 and 5 percent of the genome of modern Europeans and Asians consists of DNA inherited from Neanderthals, our prehistoric cousins. At Vanderbilt University, John Anthony Capra, an evolutionary genomics professor, has been combining high-powered computation and a medical records databank to learn what a Neanderthal heritage — even a fractional one — might mean for people today. We spoke for two hours when Dr. Capra, 35, recently passed through New York City. An edited and condensed version of the conversation follows. Q. Let’s begin with an indiscreet question. How did contemporary people come to have Neanderthal DNA on their genomes? A. We hypothesize that roughly 50,000 years ago, when the ancestors of modern humans migrated out of Africa and into Eurasia, they encountered Neanderthals. Matings must have occurred then. And later. One reason we deduce this is because the descendants of those who remained in Africa — present day Africans — don’t have Neanderthal DNA. What does that mean for people who have it? At my lab, we’ve been doing genetic testing on the blood samples of 28,000 patients at Vanderbilt and eight other medical centers across the country. Computers help us pinpoint where on the human genome this Neanderthal DNA is, and we run that against information from the patients’ anonymized medical records. We’re looking for associations. What we’ve been finding is that Neanderthal DNA has a subtle influence on risk for disease. It affects our immune system and how we respond to different immune challenges. It affects our skin. You’re slightly more prone to a condition where you can get scaly lesions after extreme sun exposure. There’s an increased risk for blood clots and tobacco addiction. To our surprise, it appears that some Neanderthal DNA can increase the risk for depression; however, there are other Neanderthal bits that decrease the risk. Roughly 1 to 2 percent of one’s risk for depression is determined by Neanderthal DNA. It all depends on where on the genome it’s located. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution; Depression
Link ID: 23128 - Posted: 01.21.2017

Children who have their tonsils removed to treat chronic throat infections or breathing problems during sleep may get more short-term symptom relief than similar children who don’t get tonsillectomies, two recent studies suggest. Over time, however, the benefits of surgery for chronic streptococcal throat infections appear to go away. Three years after tonsillectomies, children who had these procedures had about the same number of throat infections as those who didn’t get their tonsils taken out, one of the studies in the journal Pediatrics found. “Tonsillectomy, while very common and generally safe, is not completely without risk,” said Sivakumar Chinnadurai, senior author of the strep throat study and a researcher at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. “The recognition of risks, and the knowledge that some patients’ infection rate improves over time has led to [strep] infection being a much less common indication for tonsillectomy than it was in the past,” Chinnadurai added by email. “While tonsillectomy remains one of the most common surgeries performed in the United States, the main indication for children has switched to obstructed breathing.” To assess the potential for tonsillectomies to help young people with chronic strep infections, Chinnadurai and colleagues examined data from seven studies of children who had experienced at least three strep infections in the previous one to three years. © 1996-2017 The Washington Post

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 23127 - Posted: 01.21.2017