By David Tuller After living in Oklahoma for 40 years, Nita and Doug Thatcher retired in 2009 to the Rust Belt city of Lorain, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb that hugs Lake Erie. When Nita needed to find a new primary care doctor, a friend recommended someone from the Cleveland Clinic. Nita knew the institution’s reputation for cutting-edge research and superior medical services. But as a longtime patient grappling with chronic fatigue syndrome, a debilitating disorder that scientists still don’t fully understand, she was wary when she learned that the clinic was promoting a common but potentially dangerous treatment for the illness: a steady increase in activity known as graded exercise therapy. The notion that people with chronic fatigue syndrome should be able to exercise their way back to health has enjoyed longstanding and widespread support, and “graded exercise” has become the de facto standard of clinical care. This approach has obvious intuitive appeal. Exercise helps all kinds of illnesses, and it’s a great tool for boosting energy. How could it possibly hurt? British psychiatrists and psychologists developed the graded exercise strategy for treating chronic fatigue syndrome during the 1990s. They offered a straightforward rationale: These patients were not medically sick but severely out of shape (“deconditioned”) from prolonged avoidance of activity. And they avoided activity because they wrongly believed they had a biological disease that would get worse if they overexerted themselves. During treatment, patients were encouraged to question this “dysfunctional cognition,” view any resurgent symptoms as transient, and push through the exhaustion and pain to rebuild their strength. Copyright 2016 Undark

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 22805 - Posted: 10.29.2016

By Ruth Williams .Newly made cells in the brains of mice adopt a more complex morphology and connectivity when the animals encounter an unusual environment than if their experiences are run-of-the-mill. Researchers have now figured out just how that happens. According to a study published today (October 27) in Science, a particular type of cell—called an interneuron—in the hippocampus processes the animals’ experiences and subsequently shapes the newly formed neurons. “We knew that experience shapes the maturation of these new neurons, but what this paper does is it lays out the entire circuit through which that happens,” said Heather Cameron, a neuroscientist at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda who was not involved with the work. “It’s a really nicely done piece of work because they go step-by-step and show all of the cells that are involved and how they’re connected.” Most of the cells in the adult mammalian brain are mature and don’t divide, but in a few regions, including an area of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus, neurogenesis occurs. The dentate gyrus is thought to be involved in the formation of new memories. In mice, for instance, exploring novel surroundings electrically activates the dentate gyrus and can affect the production, maturation, and survival of the newly born cells. Now, Alejandro Schinder and his team at the Leloir Institute in Buenos Aires, Argentina, have investigated the process in detail. © 1986-2016 The Scientist

Keyword: Neurogenesis; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 22804 - Posted: 10.29.2016

Ramin Skibba Some common swifts spend ten months in flight without taking a break, setting a flight record that would be the envy of Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh. Researchers report these long hauls, which occurred during migrations between Scandinavia and central Africa, on 27 October in Current Biology1. Ornithologists and birdwatchers have speculated about the long-distance prowess of common swifts (Apus apus) since the 1960s. People had seen the birds fill the sky in Liberia, for example, but couldn't find any nearby roost sites where the birds might land. Scientists attached tags that combined tiny data loggers and accelerometers to the 40-gram birds to record their route and flight activity during their annual journey. The team tracked 13 individual birds, some for multiple seasons, starting and ending at their breeding grounds in Sweden. The researchers found that some of the birds made a few brief night landings in winter but remained airborne for 99% of the time. Three birds didn't touch down once in the entire ten months. “These long-term flights confirm what everybody suspected for quite some time now,” says Felix Liechti of the Swiss Ornithological Institute in Sempach. Other birds can remain aloft for long periods. Alpine swifts (Tachymarptis melba) fly nonstop for half the year during their migrations2. And the much larger frigate birds (Fregata minor) off the coast of Ecuador can go for two months without landing while they forage for food in the ocean. They can even sleep on the wing3. But common swifts are in a class of their own. © 2016 Macmillan Publishers Limited,

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 22803 - Posted: 10.28.2016

By Catherine Caruso Babies and children undergo massive brain restructuring as they mature, and for good reason—they have a whole world of information to absorb during their sprint toward adulthood. This mental renovation doesn’t stop there, however. Adult brains continue to produce new cells and restructure themselves throughout life, and a new study in mice reveals more about the details of this process and the important role environmental experience plays. Through a series of experiments, researchers at the Leloir Institute in Buenos Aires showed that when adult mice are exposed to stimulating environments, their brains are able to more quickly integrate new brain cells into existing neural networks through a process that involves new and old cells connecting to one another via special helper cells called interneurons. The adult mammalian brain, long believed to lack the capacity to make new cells, has two main areas that continuously produce new neurons throughout life. One of these areas, the hippocampus (which is involved in memory, navigation, mood regulation and stress response) produces new neurons in a specialized region called the dentate gyrus. Many previous studies have focused on how the dentate gyrus produces new neurons and what happens to these neurons as they mature, but Alejandro Schinder and his colleagues at Leloir wanted to go one step further and understand how new neurons produced by the dentate gyrus are incorporated into the existing neural networks of the brain, and whether environment affects this process. © 2016 Scientific American

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 22802 - Posted: 10.28.2016

By CATHERINE SAINT LOUIS Neither of the two drugs used most frequently to prevent migraines in children is more effective than a sugar pill, according to a study published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers stopped the large trial early, saying the evidence was clear even though the drugs — the antidepressant amitriptyline and the epilepsy drug topiramate — had been shown to prevent migraines in adults. “The medication didn’t perform as well as we thought it would, and the placebo performed better than you would think,” said Scott Powers, the lead author of the study and a director of the Headache Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. A migraine is a neurological illness characterized by pulsating headache pain, sometimes accompanied by nausea, vomiting and sensitivity to light and noise. It’s a common childhood condition. Up to 11 percent of 7- to 11-year-olds and 23 percent of 15-year-olds have migraines. At 31 sites nationwide, 328 migraine sufferers aged 8 to 17 were randomly assigned to take amitriptyline, topiramate or a placebo pill for 24 weeks. Patients with episodic migraines (fewer than 15 headache days a month) and chronic migraines (15 or more headache days a month) were included. The aim was to figure out which drug was more effective at reducing the number of headache days, and to gauge which one helped children to stop missing school or social activities. © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 22801 - Posted: 10.28.2016

Katherine Hobson Placebos can't cure diseases, but research suggests that they seem to bring some people relief from subjective symptoms, such as pain, nausea, anxiety and fatigue. But there's a reason your doctor isn't giving you a sugar pill and telling you it's a new wonder drug. The thinking has been that you need to actually believe that you're taking a real drug in order to see any benefits. And a doctor intentionally deceiving a patient is an ethical no-no. So placebos have pretty much been tossed in the "garbage pail" of clinical practice, says Ted Kaptchuk, director of the Program for Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. In an attempt to make them more useful, he has been studying whether people might see a benefit from a placebo even if they knew it was a placebo, with no active ingredients. An earlier study found that so-called "open-label" or "honest" placebos improved symptoms among people with irritable bowel syndrome. And Kaptchuk and his colleagues found the same effect among people with garden-variety lower back pain, the most common kind of pain reported by American adults. The study included 83 people in Portugal, all of whom had back pain that wasn't caused by cancer, fractures, infections or other serious conditions. All the participants were told that the placebo was an inactive substance containing no medication. They were told that the body can automatically respond to placebos, that a positive attitude can help but isn't necessary and that it was important to take the pills twice a day for the full three weeks. © 2016 npr

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 22800 - Posted: 10.28.2016

Nicola Davis A brown, pebble-sized object found in a rock pool on a beach near Bexhill, Sussex bears the first evidence of fossilised dinosaur brain tissue, scientists say. Found in 2004 by an amateur fossil collector, the object is the cast of a dinosaur’s brain cavity, and appears to show a thin veneer of mineralised tissues on its surface. Scientists say the find is most likely from a relative of the Iguanodon, which lived around 125 million years ago. Large, hefty herbivores, Iguanodons reached up around eight metres in length, could walk on either two legs or all fours and boasted sharp spikes on their thumbs - a feature initially thought to be a horn on the nose and immortalised as such in the Victorian dinosaur sculptures of Crystal Palace Park. While casts of the inside of dinosaur brain cases have been found before, it is the first time fossilised brain soft tissue has been discovered for any land-living vertebrate. “The most striking thing is that something as delicate as brain tissue, and which you wouldn’t expect to ever see, has been preserved,” said Alex Liu, co-author of the research from the University of Cambridge. “It just speaks volumes [about] the spectacular preservational quality that can be obtained in the fossil record even 130 million years after this dinosaur is alive.” Writing in a special publication from the Geological Society of London to commemorate the work of the late co-author Martin Brasier, an international team of researchers describe how the cast was discovered near other dinosaur remains, including ribs and leg bones. “We can’t say it is from the same organism, but it is from a fairly large dinosaur,” said Liu. © 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 22799 - Posted: 10.28.2016

By Brian Owens Chimpanzees and their relatives bonobos are closer than we thought. Bonobos seem to have donated genes to chimps at least twice in the roughly two million years since they last shared an ancestor. The two closely related apes have occasionally interbred in captivity, and bonobos are renowned for their free and easy sex life. But the finding that they interbred in the wild was unexpected. The two species split sometime between 1.5 and 2.1 million years ago, around the same time that the Congo River system formed. Wild bonobo populations are entirely contained in that river system, separated from two nearby subspecies of chimps, the eastern and central subspecies. Scientists assumed the river was an impenetrable barrier, says Christina Hvilsom from Copenhagen Zoo in Denmark, one of the researchers who worked on the genetic project. But it turns out that it must have been breached more than once – although it’s not clear how that happened. Hvilsom and her colleagues weren’t actually looking for genetic evidence of ancient interspecies erotica. They were mapping genetic markers that could be used to determine where illegally traded chimps came from so they could be returned to their homes in the wild. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 22798 - Posted: 10.28.2016

By Melissa Dahl A rule that spans time and space and morning routines: It is entirely too easy to underestimate the time it takes to get to work. Maybe once — one time — it took just 20 minutes to get to work, but it typically takes 25 to 30, and you know that, but still you leave late and, thus, arrive late. It’s dumb. It is also, maybe, human nature. As Christian Jarrett at BPS Research Digest reports, a team of neuroscientists has just uncovered a very handy if rather complicated excuse for tardiness — it seems people tend to underestimate how long it will take to travel familiar routes. The laws of time and space do not actually bend in order to transport you to work or school more quickly, but at least part of you believes that they will. And yet the oddest part of this new study, published in the journal Hippocampus, is that the participants tended to overestimate the physical length of those routes, even as they underestimated how long it would take to travel them. It does make a certain amount of sense that people would exaggerate the breadth of familiar distances, because the level of detail you’ve stored about them matters to your memory. If you remember every Starbucks and street corner you pass on the way you usually walk to school, for instance, the walking route will likely feel longer when you recall it than one you don’t know as well. As Jarrett explains, the researchers “thought a more detailed neural representation would make that space seem larger.” And when they asked a group of students — all of whom had been living in the same building in London for 9 months — to draw a little map of their neighborhood, this is indeed what they found. The students exaggerated the physical distance of the routes they walked the most, drawing their maps a little bigger they should have. © 2016, New York Media LLC.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 22797 - Posted: 10.28.2016

By Michael-Paul Schallmo, Scott Murray, Most people do not associate autism with visual problems. It’s not obvious how atypical vision might be related to core features of autism such as social and language difficulties and repetitive behaviors. Yet examining how autism affects vision holds tremendous promise for understanding this condition at a neural level. Over the past 50 years, we have learned more about the visual parts of the brain than any other areas, and we have a solid understanding of how neural activity leads to visual perception in a typical brain. Differences in neuronal processing in autism are likely to be widespread, and may be similar across brain regions. So pinpointing these differences in visual areas might reveal important details about processing in brain regions related to social functioning and language, which are not as well understood. Studying vision in autism may also help connect studies of people to those of animal models. Working with animals allows neuroscientists to study neural processing at many different levels—from specific genes and single neurons to small neural networks and brain regions that control functions such as movement or hearing. But animals do not display the complexity and diversity in language and social functioning that people do. By contrast, visual brain processes are similar between people and animals. We can use our rich knowledge of how neurons in animals process visual information to bridge the gap between animals and people. We can also use it to test hypotheses about how autism alters neural functioning in the brain. © 2016 Scientific American

Keyword: Autism; Vision
Link ID: 22796 - Posted: 10.27.2016

By Helen Thomson IN THE 2009 Bruce Willis movie Surrogates, people live their lives by embodying themselves as robots. They meet people, go to work, even fall in love, all without leaving the comfort of their own home. Now, for the first time, three people with severe spinal injuries have taken the first steps towards that vision by controlling a robot thousands of kilometres away, using thought alone. The idea is that people with spinal injuries will be able to use robot bodies to interact with the world. It is part of the European Union-backed VERE project, which aims to dissolve the boundary between the human body and a surrogate, giving people the illusion that their surrogate is in fact their own body. In 2012, an international team went some way to achieving this by taking fMRI scans of the brains of volunteers while they thought about moving their hands or legs. The scanner measured changes in blood flow to the brain area responsible for such thoughts. An algorithm then passed these on as instructions to a robot. “The feeling of embodying the robot was good, although the sensation varied over time“ The volunteers could see what the robot was looking at via a head-mounted display. When they thought about moving their left or right hand, the robot moved 30 degrees to the left or right. Imagining moving their legs made the robot walk forward. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 22795 - Posted: 10.27.2016

Alison Abbott Psychiatrist Joshua Gordon wants to use mathematics to improve understanding of the brain. The US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has a new director. On 12 September, psychiatrist Joshua Gordon took the reins at the institute, which has a budget of US$1.5 billion. He previously researched how genes predispose people to psychiatric illnesses by acting on neural circuits, at Columbia University in New York. His predecessor, Thomas Insel, left the NIMH to join Verily Life Sciences, a start-up owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, in 2015. Gordon says that his priorities at the NIMH will include “low-hanging clinical fruit, neural circuits and mathematics — lots of mathematics", and explains to Nature exactly what that means. What do you plan to achieve in your first year in office? I won’t be doing anything radical. I am just going to listen to and learn from all the stakeholders — the scientific community, the public, consumer advocacy groups and other government offices. But I can say two general things. In the past twenty years, my two predecessors, Steve Hyman [now director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts] and Tom Insel, embedded into the NIMH the idea that psychiatric disorders are disorders of the brain, and to make progress in treating them we really have to understand the brain. I will absolutely continue this legacy. This does not mean we are ignoring the important roles of the environment and social interactions in mental health — we know they have a fundamental impact. But that impact is on the brain. Second, I will be thinking about how NIMH research can be structured to give pay-outs in the short-, medium- and long-terms. © 2016 Macmillan Publishers Limited,

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 22794 - Posted: 10.27.2016

By Kerry Grens Scientists have observed changes in the human brain as study participants tell lies—specifically, as white lies became outright deception, the amygdalas of the fibbing volunteers became less active. The researchers’ findings, published in Nature Neuroscience yesterday (October 24), offer a possible neural mechanism for a common human failing, that lying can lead to more extensive dishonesty. “The reduction in activity in the amygdala can predict how much people increase dishonesty subsequently,” study coauthor Neil Garrett, a psychologist at University College London, told The Verge. Garrett and colleagues asked 25 volunteers who saw a big image of a jar of pennies to give others (who only saw a small picture of the jar) estimates about the number of pennies. The volunteers were given incentives to lie, and after they had fibbed previously, fMRI data showed reduced activity in the amygdala when people were dishonest again. This brain region is involved in processing emotions. “It’s an intriguing possibility that adaptation of amygdala response might underlie escalation in self-serving dishonesty,” Tom Johnstone, a neuroscientist at the University of Reading who was not involved in the study, told Scientific American, “though the results need to be replicated in a larger sample of participants, in order to examine the involvement of the many other brain regions previously shown to play a role in generating and regulating emotional responses.” © 1986-2016 The Scientist

Keyword: Stress; Emotions
Link ID: 22793 - Posted: 10.27.2016

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Extremely high or low resting heart rates in young men may predict psychiatric illness later in life, a large new study has found. Researchers used heart rate and blood pressure data gathered at Swedish military inductions from 1969 to 2010, and linked them with information from the country’s detailed health records through the end of 2013. The study, in JAMA Psychiatry, included 1,794,361 men whose average age was 18 at induction. The highest heart rates — above 82 beats a minute — were associated with increased risks of obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorder and schizophrenia. The lowest, below 62 beats, were associated with an increased risk of substance abuse and violent criminality. Extremes in blood pressure followed similar patterns, but the associations were not as strong. The lead author, Antti Latvala, a researcher at the University of Helsinki, said that the reasons for the association remain unknown. But, he added, “These measures are indicators of slightly different reactivity to stimuli. These people might have elevated heart rates because of an elevated stress level that is then predictive of these disorders.” Still, Dr. Latvala said, a high or low heart rate does not mean future psychiatric disease. “These are very complex illnesses,” he said. “People with high or low heart rate have nothing to worry about because of these findings. This is just a tiny piece of the puzzle.” © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 22792 - Posted: 10.27.2016

Heidi Ledford Teaching parents of children with autism how to interact more effectively with their offspring brings the children benefits that linger for years, according to the largest and longest-running study of autism interventions. The training targeted parents with 2–4-year-old children with autism. Six years after the adults completed the year-long course, their children showed better social communication and reduced repetitive behaviours, and fewer were considered to have “severe” autism as compared to a control group, according to results published on 25 October in The Lancet1. “This is not a cure,” says child psychiatrist Jonathan Green of the University of Manchester, and an investigator on the study. “But it does have a sustained and substantial reduction in severity and that’s important in families.” John Constantino, a child psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, says that the results are “monumentally important”, because there has been little evidence showing that interventions for autism at an early stage are effective — even though researchers already broadly endorse the idea. "It is a rare long-term randomized controlled trial in a field in which there exists almost no data of this kind," he says. But he adds that the magnitude of the improvement was a disappointment, and that there were signs that the effects of treatment were diminishing over time. And although the therapy benefited communication skills and decreased repetitive behaviours, it did not lessen childrens' anxiety — another key symptom of autism. “Perhaps most of all, this underscores how desperately important it is that we develop higher-impact interventions,” he says. © 2016 Macmillan Publishers Limited,

Keyword: Autism; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 22791 - Posted: 10.26.2016

By Tori Rodriguez Uric acid is almost always mentioned in the context of gout, an inflammatory type of arthritis that results from excessive uric acid in the blood. It may be surprising, then, that it has also been linked with a vastly different type of disease: bipolar disorder. Elevated uric acid has been observed in patients with acute mania, and reducing uric acid improves symptoms. New evidence supports its potential as a treatment target. Uric acid is a by-product of the breakdown of compounds called purines, found in many foods and manufactured by the body. High levels of uric acid can indicate that these compounds, such as the neurotransmitter adenosine, are being broken down too readily in the body. “Adenosine might play a key role in neurotransmission and neuromodulation, having sedative, anticonvulsant and antiaggressive effects,” says physician Francesco Bartoli, a researcher at the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy. Bartoli's new study, published in May in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research, examined uric acid levels in 176 patients with bipolar disorder or another severe mental illness and 89 healthy controls. The results show that bipolar disorder was the only diagnosis significantly linked with levels of uric acid. Excess uric acid was found to be linked to male gender, metabolic syndrome, waist size and triglyceride levels. Beyond the too rapid breakdown of adenosine, other potential explanations for increased uric acid include the metabolic abnormalities often present in people with bipolar disorder and frequent consumption of purine-rich foods and drinks, such as liver, legumes, anchovies and alcohol. Fructose consumption can also be a problem because the sugar inhibits uric acid excretion. Dietary interventions may reduce levels, but medication is typically required if dietary changes are insufficient. © 2016 Scientific American

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 22790 - Posted: 10.26.2016

Andrew Solomon A new virtual-reality attraction planned for Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, Calif., was announced last month in advance of the peak haunted-house season. The name, “Fear VR 5150,” was significant. The number 5150 is the California psychiatric involuntary commitment code, used for a mentally ill person who is deemed a danger to himself or others. Upon arrival in an ersatz “psychiatric hospital exam room,” VR 5150 visitors would be strapped into a wheelchair and fitted with headphones. “The VR headset puts you in the middle of the action inside the hospital,” an article in The Orange County Register explained. “One patient seems agitated and attempts to get up from a bed. Security officers try to subdue him. A nurse gives you a shot (which you will feel), knocking you out. When you wake up in the next scene, all hell has broken loose. Look left, right and down, bloody bodies lie on the floor. You hear people whimpering in pain.” Knott’s Berry Farm is operated by Ohio-based Cedar Fair Entertainment Company, and Fear VR 5150 was to be featured at two other Cedar Fair parks as well. Almost simultaneously, two similar attractions were started at Six Flags. A news release for one explained: “Our new haunted house brings you face-to-face with the world’s worst psychiatric patients. Traverse the haunted hallways of Dark Oaks Asylum and try not to bump into any of the grunting inmates around every turn. Maniacal inmates yell out from their bloodstained rooms and deranged guards wander the corridors in search of those who have escaped.” The Orange County branch of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) sprang into action, and Doris Schwartz, a Westchester, N.Y.-based mental-health professional, immediately emailed a roster of 130 grass-roots activists, including me, many of whom flooded Cedar Fair and Six Flags with phone calls, petitions and emails. After some heated back-and-forth, Fear VR 5150 was shelved, and Six Flags changed the mental patients in its maze into zombies. © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 22789 - Posted: 10.26.2016

Richard Harris Researchers have launched an innovative medical experiment that's designed to provide quick answers while meeting the needs of patients, rather than drug companies. Traditional studies can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and can take many years. But patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease don't have the time to wait. This progressive muscle-wasting disease is usually fatal within a few years. Scientists in an active online patient community identified a potential treatment and have started to gather data from the participants virtually rather than requiring many in-person doctor's visits. How is that possible? In this case, doctors and patients alike got interested in an extraordinary ALS patient whose symptoms actually got better, which rarely occurs. He'd been taking a dietary supplement called lunasin, "and lo and behold six months later, [his] speech [was] back to normal, swallowing back to normal, doesn't use his feeding tube, [and he was] significantly stronger as measured by his therapists," said Richard Bedlack, a neurologist who runs the ALS clinic at Duke University. Of course, it could just be a coincidence that the man who got better happened to be taking these supplements. To find out, Bedlack teamed up to run a study with Paul Wicks, a neuropsychologist and vice president for innovation at a web-based patient organization called PatientsLikeMe. © 2016 npr

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 22788 - Posted: 10.26.2016

By Steven C. Pan A good night’s sleep can be transformative. Among its benefits are improved energy and mood, better immune system functioning and blood sugar regulation, and greater alertness and ability to concentrate. Given all of these benefits, the fact that a third of the human lifespan is spent sleeping makes evolutionary sense. However, sleep appears to have another important function: helping us learn. Across a plethora of memory tasks—involving word lists, maze locations, auditory tones, and more—going to sleep after training yields better performance than remaining awake. This has prompted many sleep researchers to reach a provocative conclusion: beyond merely supporting learning, sleep is vital, and perhaps even directly responsible, for learning itself. Recent discoveries from neuroscience provide insights into that possibility. Sleep appears to be important for long-term potentiation, a strengthening of signals between neurons that is widely regarded as a mechanism of learning and memory. Certain memories acquired during the day appear to be reactivated and “replayed” in the brain during sleep, which may help make them longer lasting. In some instances the amount of improvement that occurs on memory tasks positively correlates with the length of time spent in certain stages of sleep. These and other findings are generating great excitement among sleep researchers, as well as prompting heated debates about the degree to which sleep may or may not be involved in learning. To date, most sleep and learning research has focused on recall, which is the capacity to remember information. However, new research by Stéphanie Mazza and colleagues at the University of Lyon, recently published in the journal Psychological Science,suggests another potential benefit of sleep: improved relearning. © 2016 Scientific American

Keyword: Sleep; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 22787 - Posted: 10.26.2016

Merrit Kennedy Parents can reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome by keeping their child's crib in the same room, close to their bed, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. That's one of the key recommendations in new guidance released today aimed at preventing SIDS, which claims the lives of approximately 3,500 infants every year in the United States. That number "initially decreased in the 1990s after a national safe sleep campaign, but has plateaued in recent years," the AAP adds. The pediatricians say that children should sleep in the same room but on a separate surface from their parents for at least the first six months of their lives, and ideally the first year. They say that this can halve the risk of SIDS. It also "removes the possibility of suffocation, strangulation, and entrapment that may occur when the infant is sleeping in an adult bed," according to the recommendations. The AAP discourages sharing a bed with an infant. You can read the AAP's full guidance here. These are a few more of the pediatricians' recommendations: Infants under a year old should always sleep lying on their backs. Side sleeping "is not safe and is not advised," the AAP says. Infants should always sleep on a firm surface covered by only a flat sheet. That's because soft mattresses "could create a pocket ... and increase the chance of rebreathing or suffocation if the infant is placed in or rolls over to the prone position." Smoking — both during pregnancy and around the infant after birth — can increase the risk of SIDS. Alcohol and illicit drugs during pregnancy can also contribute to SIDS, and "parental alcohol and/or illicit drug use in combination with bed-sharing places the infant at particularly high risk of SIDS," the pediatricians say. © 2016 npr

Keyword: Sleep; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 22786 - Posted: 10.25.2016