By Roni Caryn Rabin Does long-term use of artificial sweeteners cause weight gain or contribute to metabolic syndrome? Scientists are still scratching their heads over this question. Artificial, or nonnutritive, sweeteners have no calories and are often used as diet aids. But while some well-designed trials have found that those randomly assigned to drink artificially sweetened beverages gained less weight than those given sugar-sweetened drinks, large population studies suggest that frequent consumption of artificial sweeteners may be linked with unanticipated consequences, including weight gain. A large study that followed a diverse group of 6,814 Americans ages 45 to 84 for at least five years found that those who drank diet soda at least once a day were at 67 percent greater risk of developing Type 2 diabetes than those who didn’t consume diet drinks, regardless of whether they gained weight or not, and at 36 percent greater risk of metabolic syndrome, which can be a precursor to heart disease, stroke and diabetes. Another large study that followed thousands of residents of San Antonio, Tex., for 10 years found those who drank more than 21 servings of diet drinks a week were at twice the risk of becoming overweight or obese, and the more diet soda people drank, the greater the risk. These large observational trials do not prove cause and effect, however, and may reflect the fact that people who are gaining weight may be most likely to drink a lot of diet soda. Dr. John Fernstrom, a University of Pittsburgh professor who is also a paid consultant to Ajinomoto, a maker of aspartame, reviewed the evidence on nonnutritive sweeteners and concluded that the evidence linking them to metabolic problems was “not compelling.” © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 21913 - Posted: 02.19.2016

By Susana Martinez-Conde, Stephen L. Macknik In the forests of Australia and New Guinea lives a pigeon-sized creature that is not only a master builder but a clever illusionist, too. The great bowerbird (Chlamydera nuchalis)—a cousin of crows and jays—has an elaborate mating ritual that relies on the male's ability to conjure forced perspective. Throughout the year he painstakingly builds and maintains his bower: a 60-centimeter-long corridor made of twigs, leading to a courtyard decorated with gray and white pebbles, shells and bones. Some species also add flowers, fruits, feathers, bottle caps, acorns, abandoned toys—whatever colorful knickknacks they can find. The male takes great care to arrange the objects according to size so that the smallest pieces are closest to the bower's entrance and the largest items are farthest away. The elaborate structure is not a nest. Its sole purpose is to attract a female for mating. Once construction is complete, the male performs in the courtyard for a visiting female, who—poised like a critical American Idol judge—evaluates the routine from the middle of the corridor. He sings, dances and prances, tossing around a few select trinkets to impress his potential mate. Her viewpoint is very narrow, and so she perceives objects paving the courtyard as being uniform in size. This forced perspective makes the choice offerings appear grander and therefore all the more enticing. The offerings, and the male himself, appear larger than life because of an effect that visual scientists call the Ebbinghaus illusion, which causes an object to look bigger if it is surrounded by smaller objects. © 2016 Scientific American

Keyword: Vision; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 21912 - Posted: 02.19.2016

By Ariana Eunjung Cha The scariest form of stroke involves the pooling of blood in the brain. When this begins, there has been very little that can be done to stop it. Even with open brain surgery, blood often clots so fast that it's impossible to remove, and an estimated 60 percent to 80 percent of patients who suffer from this condition don't survive. Of those who do pull through, 90 percent are left severely impaired. Researchers, however, believe they may have finally found a way to improve a patient's odds. Speaking at the 2016 International Stroke Conference in Los Angeles, they reported that using a clot-busting heart drug not only appeared to reduce the fatality percentage, it also appeared to increase patients' chances of a functional recovery, which in the past has been extremely rare. Issam Awad, a professor of surgery at the University of Chicago who is co-chair of the study, said the therapy could potentially "be the difference between going home instead of going to a nursing home." The study involved 500 patients with hemorrhagic or bleeding stroke from 73 sites around the world. Through a brain catheter, they were treated either with saline, which served as the control, or the drug Alteplase, which is known as a tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, and has been used in people with heart attacks or blood clots near the lungs. In the five years of follow-up from 2009 to 2015, those who received tPA were 10 percent less likely to die than those who received saline.

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 21911 - Posted: 02.19.2016

By Nicholas Bakalar The popular heartburn drugs known as proton pump inhibitors have been linked to a range of ills: bone fractures, kidney problems, infections and more. Now a large new study has found that they are associated with an increased risk for dementia as well. Proton pump inhibitors, or P.P.I.s, are widely available both by prescription and over the counter under various brand names, including Prevacid, Prilosec and Nexium. German researchers, using a database of drug prescriptions, studied P.P.I. use in 73,679 men and women older than 75 who were free of dementia at the start of the study. Over an average follow-up period of more than five years, about 29,000 developed Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias. The study is in JAMA Neurology. After controlling for age, sex, depression, diabetes, stroke, heart disease and the use of other medicines, they found that regular use of P.P.I.s increased the risk for dementia in men by 52 percent and in women by 42 percent, compared with nonusers. “Our study does not prove that P.P.I.s cause dementia,” said the senior author, Britta Haenisch of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases. “It can only provide a statistical association. This is just a small part of the puzzle. “Clinicians, pharmacists and patients have to weigh the benefits against the potential side effects,” she continued, “and future studies will help to better inform these decisions.” © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 21910 - Posted: 02.19.2016

By BENEDICT CAREY Children with attention-deficit problems improve faster when the first treatment they receive is behavioral — like instruction in basic social skills — than when they start immediately on medication, a new study has found. Beginning with behavioral therapy is also a less expensive option over time, according to a related analysis. Experts said the efficacy of this behavior-first approach, if replicated in larger studies, could change standard medical practice, which favors stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin as first-line treatments, for the more than four million children and adolescents in the United States with a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or A.D.H.D. The new research, published in two papers by the Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, found that stimulants were most effective as a supplemental, second-line treatment for those who needed it — and often at doses that were lower than normally prescribed. The study is thought to be the first of its kind in the field to evaluate the effect of altering the types of treatment midcourse — adding a drug to behavior therapy, for example, or vice versa. “We showed that the sequence in which you give treatments makes a big difference in outcomes,” said William E. Pelham of Florida International University, a leader of the study with Susan Murphy of the University of Michigan. “The children who started with behavioral modification were doing significantly better than those who began with medication by the end, no matter what treatment combination they ended up with.” Other experts cautioned that the study tracked behavior but not other abilities that medication can quickly improve, like attention and academic performance, and said that drugs remained the first-line treatment for those core issues. © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 21909 - Posted: 02.18.2016

By GINA KOLATA More than a million men have smeared testosterone gels on their bodies in recent years, hoping it would rejuvenate them, energize them, and increase their libido. But until now, there has never been a rigorous study asking if there were any real benefits to testosterone therapy for healthy men with so-called low T. The first results of such research were published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. Although it found at best modest benefits, mostly in sexual functioning, it is a landmark study, said Dr. Eric S. Orwoll, a professor of medicine at Oregon Health and Science University, because it provides the first credible data on testosterone’s effects on some of the problems it is thought to resolve. Some doctors said they hoped the modest results might bring some sanity to the testosterone frenzy of recent years. “Frankly,” said Dr. Sundeep Khosla, a dean at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, “there is a lot of abuse.” Men lured by advertisements seek the drug, and Dr. Khosla said he had heard of doctors who prescribed it without first measuring the man’s testosterone levels to see if they were low. “What I hope is that this will bring a more conservative approach,” Dr. Orwoll said. “There is a lot of prescribing out there, and it doesn’t look like, for the average man, it will have a big effect.” The study, led by the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and funded by the National Institutes of Health and AbbVie, the maker of the testosterone gel AndroGel, involved 790 men 65 and older with low testosterone levels for their age. Testosterone levels normally fall as men age, but these men had levels on the low end — below 275 nanograms per deciliter of blood. Some of the men said they had lost their sexual drive, others said they were walking much slower than they used to, and others said they just felt blah, as if they had lost their zest for life. The men were randomly assigned to use AndroGel or a placebo for a year. © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 21908 - Posted: 02.18.2016

By Gretchen Reynolds The benefits of mindfulness meditation, increasingly popular in recent years, are supposed to be many: reduced stress and risk for various diseases, improved well-being, a rewired brain. But the experimental bases to support these claims have been few. Supporters of the practice have relied on very small samples of unrepresentative subjects, like isolated Buddhist monks who spend hours meditating every day, or on studies that generally were not randomized and did not include placebo­ control groups. This month, however, a study published in Biological Psychiatry brings scientific thoroughness to mindfulness meditation and for the first time shows that, unlike a placebo, it can change the brains of ordinary people and potentially improve their health. To meditate mindfully demands ‘‘an open and receptive, nonjudgmental awareness of your present-moment experience,’’ says J. David Creswell, who led the study and is an associate professor of psychology and the director of the Health and Human Performance Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University. One difficulty of investigating meditation has been the placebo problem. In rigorous studies, some participants receive treatment while others get a placebo: They believe they are getting the same treatment when they are not. But people can usually tell if they are meditating. Dr. Creswell, working with scientists from a number of other universities, managed to fake mindfulness. First they recruited 35 unemployed men and women who were seeking work and experiencing considerable stress. Blood was drawn and brain scans were given. Half the subjects were then taught formal mindfulness meditation at a residential retreat center; the rest completed a kind of sham mindfulness meditation that was focused on relaxation and distracting oneself from worries and stress. © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 21907 - Posted: 02.18.2016

Sidharth Gupta always dazzled people with his intelligence. “Everybody used to praise my brother’s brain,” says Isha Gupta , two years his junior. “Everybody. Like, ‘Oh Sidharth, he’s very smart. He’s got a very sharp brain.’ That’s something that I’ve heard all my life. And his brain is what gave up on him.” Two years ago, “Sid” was the picture of exuberance and ambition. Having established his own marketing and event planning business in his native India, he moved to Toronto in 2011 to work as an account executive at Canada’s largest advertising agency, MacLaren McCann. According to Isha, Sid had big dreams. The event management company in India was just the beginning; he was planning to grow it into a worldwide marketing business. Thirty years old at the time, Sid was smart, savvy, on the ball — and always up for fun. He had “insane energy,” says colleague Zain Ali . “He could work all day and then party late and then get back to work the next day.” “Sid was very happy-go-lucky,” says another work friend, Rishi Gupta (no relation). “He had that same smile on his face all the time. He wanted to be part of the party, to have a good time.” That was Sid’s frame of mind on Feb. 20, 2014, as he geared up for a marketing launch at the Canadian International Auto Show in Toronto. After he and Zain put in 12 hours setting up an interactive display for the new Camaro Z28, Sid joined a few friends to celebrate Rishi’s birthday. ©2016 CBC/Radio-Canada.

Keyword: Stroke; Emotions
Link ID: 21906 - Posted: 02.17.2016

Allison Aubrey It's no secret that stimulant medications such as Adderall that are prescribed to treat symptoms of ADHD are sometimes used as "study drugs" aimed at boosting cognitive performance. And emergency room visits linked to misuse of the drug are on the rise, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. "Young adults in the 18- to 25-year age range are most likely to misuse these drugs," says Dr. Ramin Mojtabai, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and senior author of the study. A common scenario is this: A person who has been prescribed ADHD drugs gives or diverts pills to a friend or family member who may be looking for a mental boost, perhaps to cram for a final or prepare a report. And guess what? This is illegal. Overall, the study found that nonmedical use of Adderall and generic versions of the drug increased by 67 percent among adults between 2006 and 2011. The findings are based on data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The number of emergency room visits involving Adderall misuse increased from 862 visits in 2006 to 1,489 in 2011 according to data from the Drug Abuse Warning Network . © 2016 npr

Keyword: ADHD; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 21905 - Posted: 02.17.2016

Fergus Walsh Medical correspondent When I picked up the human brain in my hands, several things ran through my mind. My immediate concern was I might drop it or that it would fall apart in my hands - fortunately neither happened. Second, I was struck by how light the human brain is. I should say this was half a brain - the right hemisphere - the left had already been sent for dissection. The intact human brain weighs only around 3lbs (1.5kg) - just 2% of body-weight, and yet it consumes 20% of its energy. The brain I was holding had been steeped in formalin, a preserving fluid, for about three weeks and is one of several hundred brains donated every year for medical research. It was only after I'd got used to the feel of the brain in my hands that I could then start to wonder about how such a simple-looking structure could be capable of so much. This brain had experienced, processed, interpreted an entire human life - the thoughts, emotions, language, memory, emotion, cognition, awareness, and consciousness - all the things that make us human and each of us unique. You may think yuck, but I'm with the scientists and surgeon who declare: "Brains are beautiful". The pathology team at the Bristol Brain Bank had kindly allowed us to film as part of the BBC "In the Mind" season, looking at many aspects of mental health. My brief was to examine some of the latest advances in neuroscience. There is a genuine sense of excitement among researchers about the direction and progress being made in our knowledge of the brain. © 2016 BBC.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 21904 - Posted: 02.17.2016

David H.Wells Take a theory of consciousness that calculates how aware any information-processing network is – be it a computer or a brain. Trouble is, it takes a supercomputer billions of years to verify its predictions. Add a maverick cosmologist, and what do you get? A way to make the theory useful within our lifetime. Integrated information theory (IIT) is one of our best descriptions of consciousness. Developed by neuroscientist Giulio Tononi of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, it’s based on the observation that each moment of awareness is unified. When you contemplate a bunch of flowers, say, it’s impossible to be conscious of the flower’s colour independently of its fragrance because the brain has integrated the sensory data. Tononi argues that for a system to be conscious, it must integrate information in such a way that the whole contains more information than the sum of its parts. The measure of how a system integrates information is called phi. One way of calculating phi involves dividing a system into two and calculating how dependent each part is on the other. One cut would be the “cruellest”, creating two parts that are the least dependent on each other. If the parts of the cruellest cut are completely independent, then phi is zero, and the system is not conscious. The greater their dependency, the greater the value of phi and the greater the degree of consciousness of the system. Finding the cruellest cut, however, is almost impossible for any large network. For the human brain, with its 100 billion neurons, calculating phi like this would take “longer than the age of our universe”, says Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 21903 - Posted: 02.17.2016

By Gretchen Reynolds Some forms of exercise may be much more effective than others at bulking up the brain, according to a remarkable new study in rats. For the first time, scientists compared head-to-head the neurological impacts of different types of exercise: running, weight training and high-intensity interval training. The surprising results suggest that going hard may not be the best option for long-term brain health. As I have often written, exercise changes the structure and function of the brain. Studies in animals and people have shown that physical activity generally increases brain volume and can reduce the number and size of age-related holes in the brain’s white and gray matter. Exercise also, and perhaps most resonantly, augments adult neurogenesis, which is the creation of new brain cells in an already mature brain. In studies with animals, exercise, in the form of running wheels or treadmills, has been found to double or even triple the number of new neurons that appear afterward in the animals’ hippocampus, a key area of the brain for learning and memory, compared to the brains of animals that remain sedentary. Scientists believe that exercise has similar impacts on the human hippocampus. These past studies of exercise and neurogenesis understandably have focused on distance running. Lab rodents know how to run. But whether other forms of exercise likewise prompt increases in neurogenesis has been unknown and is an issue of increasing interest, given the growing popularity of workouts such as weight training and high-intensity intervals. So for the new study, which was published this month in the Journal of Physiology, researchers at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland and other institutions gathered a large group of adult male rats. The researchers injected the rats with a substance that marks new brain cells and then set groups of them to an array of different workouts, with one group remaining sedentary to serve as controls. © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Neurogenesis
Link ID: 21902 - Posted: 02.17.2016

Meghan Rosen The people of Flint, Mich., are drinking bottled water now, if they can get it. Volunteers deliver it door-to-door and to local fire stations. The goal is to keep the city’s residents from ingesting so much lead. Success – or lack thereof – could have consequences not just now, but for generations to come. Late last year, scientists raised alarms over a link between the city’s lead-tainted water and the growing number of children with high lead levels in their blood. It’s a serious problem. Lead is toxic to the brain, something scientists have long known. “Lead is probably the most well-known neurotoxin to man,” says Mona Hanna-Attisha, the pediatrician who first connected lead in Flint’s water to lead exposure in kids. And as scientists are beginning to find out, the damage that lead inflicts on children may be long-lasting. In addition to harming kids during youth, lead could contribute to disorders that develop later in life, such as Alzheimer’s disease or schizophrenia. Lead’s reach could extend even further, too — beyond those who drank the contaminated water to their children and grandchildren. Flint’s kids “will have to be followed throughout their whole life, and maybe into the next generation or two,” says Douglas Ruden, a neural toxicologist at Wayne State University in Detroit. A few months of drinking clean water will help bring the kids’ lead levels back down, he says. “But the damage is done.” And it’s permanent. In the United States, lead is everywhere. Decades of burning leaded gasoline spewed lead into the air, and the element settled in the upper layer of soil, clinging to particles of dirt. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2016.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 21901 - Posted: 02.16.2016

By BENEDICT CAREY Over the past few decades, cognitive scientists have found that small alterations in how people study can accelerate and deepen learning, improving retention and comprehension in a range of subjects, including math, science and foreign languages. The findings come almost entirely from controlled laboratory experiments of individual students, but they are reliable enough that software developers, government-backed researchers and various other innovators are racing to bring them to classrooms, boardrooms, academies — every real-world constituency, it seems, except one that could benefit most: people with learning disabilities. Now, two new studies explore the effectiveness of one common cognitive science technique — the so-called testing effect — for people with attention-deficit problems, one of the most commonly diagnosed learning disabilities. The results were mixed. They hint at the promise of outfoxing learning deficits with cognitive science, experts said, but they also point to the difficulties involved. The learning techniques developed by cognitive psychologists seem, in some respects, an easy fit for people with attention deficits: breaking up study time into chunks, mixing related material in a session, varying study environments. Each can produce improvements in retention or comprehension, and taken together capture the more scattered spirit of those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, especially children. The testing effect has proved especially reliable for other students, and it is a natural first choice to measure the potential application to A.D.H.D. The principle is straightforward: Once a student is familiar with a topic, testing himself on it deepens the recall of the material more efficiently than restudying. © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 21900 - Posted: 02.16.2016

By Nancy Szokan It’s well known that physical activity is a mood elevator. But writing in “The Athlete’s Way” blog on Psychology Today’s website, endurance athlete Christopher Bergland discusses a study indicating that combining movement with the attention-focusing benefits of meditation can be an extra-effective tool in fighting depression. The small study, conducted at Rutgers University in New Jersey, was based on a set of assumptions: Healthy brains are constantly producing neurons. Brains of people under stress or suffering depression produce fewer neurons. Physical activity increases neuron production, as do antidepressant medications. (Meanwhile, a certain number of newborn neurons die off.) Mental exercise — “effortful learning,” which requires focus — reduces those deaths. People with depression often have problems with focus. The researchers tested a novel intervention — it’s called MAP because it involves mental and physical training — aimed at both increasing neuron production and keeping those neurons alive. Fifty-two people completed the study — 22 with major depressive disorder, or MDD, and 30 who were not depressed. Twice a week, they performed 30 minutes of meditation during which they were directed to constantly focus on their breathing; they began each session seated, but for the last 10 minutes they meditated while walking slowly. Then they performed 30 minutes of moderate physical activity on a treadmill or stationary cycle. After eight weeks, the researchers found that the MDD patients’ depressive symptoms had been reduced by 40 percent. (The non-depressed participants also said they felt happier.)

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 21899 - Posted: 02.16.2016

By SINDYA N. BHANOO The human brain is attracted to things that were once pleasing even if they no longer are, researchers report. Study participants were asked to find red and green objects on a computer screen filled with different colored objects. They received small rewards for finding the objects: $1.50 for the red ones and 25 cents for the green ones. The next day, while brain scans were conducted, participants were asked to find certain shapes on the screen. There was no reward, and color was irrelevant. Still, when a red object appeared, participants focused on it, and scans showed dopamine was released in their brains. “They are not getting a reward for that, yet part of the brain is saying, ‘Oh, there’s a reward — pay attention to it,’” said Susan M. Courtney, a cognitive neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University and a co-author of the study in Current Biology. The findings may help researchers develop pharmaceutical treatments for problems like food or drug addiction. © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 21898 - Posted: 02.16.2016

By Dominic Howell BBC News A new therapy which involves a patient embodying themselves in a virtual reality avatar of a crying child could help with depression, research has suggested. Patients wear a headset that projects a life-sized image, firstly of an adult and then of a child. The new research tested the technology for the first time on patients with a mental health problem. The project is part of a continuing study at University College London. The university, which is working in collaboration with ICREA-University of Barcelona, has suspected for several years that virtual therapy could help with mental health conditions. This latest research - which has been published in the British Journal of Psychiatry Open and was funded by the Medical Research Council - lays the basis for a large-scale clinical trial to be carried out in the future. The study took 15 people who were all being treated by the NHS for depression and put them through the avatar experience. Firstly, the patients - 10 of whom were female and the rest male - put on a headset which projected an adult version of themselves into a virtual reality mirror. The patient was asked to mentally identify with the adult avatar, which exactly replicated the patient's body movements, in a process known as "embodiment". They then noticed a separate avatar of a small crying child, who was also in the mirror. They were told to say compassionate phrases to the child to try and comfort and console it. Patients asked the child to think of a time when it was happy, and to think of someone who loved them. At this stage of the experiment the roles were then reversed. © 2016 BBC

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 21897 - Posted: 02.15.2016

By Lindsey Tanner CHICAGO — Two blood-building drugs injected soon after birth may give premature babies a lasting long-term edge, boosting brain development and IQ by age 4, a first-of-its-kind study found. The study was small but the implications are big if larger, longer studies prove the drugs help level the playing field for these at-risk newborns, the researchers and other experts say. Preemies who received the medicines scored much better by age 4 on measures of intelligence, language and memory than those who did not. The medicine-receiving group’s scores on an important behavior measure were just as high as a control group of 4-year-olds born on time at a normal weight. The results are “super exciting,” said Robin Ohls, the lead author and a pediatrics professor at the University of New Mexico. She said it is the first evidence of long-term benefits of the drugs when compared with no blood-boosting treatment. Although the treated babies didn’t do as well as the normal-weight group on most measures, their scores were impressive and suggest greater brain development than the other preemies, Ohls said. They scored about 12 points higher on average on IQ tests than the untreated infants but about 10 points lower than the normal-weight group. On tests measuring memory and impulsive behavior, the treated babies fared as well as those born at normal weight.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 21896 - Posted: 02.15.2016

Laura Sanders WASHINGTON — Tiny orbs of brain cells swirling in lab dishes may offer scientists a better way to study the complexities of the human brain. Toxicologist Thomas Hartung described these minibrains, grown from stem cells derived from people’s skin cells, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Insights from experiments on animals are often difficult to apply to humans, Hartung, of Johns Hopkins University, said in a news briefing February 12. “We need something else,” he said. “We are not 150-pound rats.” These minibrains aren’t flashy. Other minibrain systems created by scientists in the past have complex neural structures and elaborate development (SN: 9/21/13, p. 5), representing the Ferraris and Maseratis of minibrains, Hartung said. In contrast, he said, his minibrains are Mini Coopers. But these bare-bones models, made of busy nerve cells and support cells in a sphere about the size of a fly eye, offer a standardized system that can reliably test the effects of a wide range of drugs. Hartung and colleagues are developing a company to make minibrains quickly available to researchers who could use them to study such disorders as autism, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, he said. The minibrains would cost about as much as a lab rat. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2016

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 21895 - Posted: 02.15.2016

By Ann Gibbons Depressed? Your inner Neandertal may be to blame. Modern humans met and mated with these archaic people in Europe or Asia about 50,000 years ago, and researchers have long suspected that genes picked up in these trysts might be shaping health and well-being today. Now, a study in the current issue of Science details their impact. It uses a powerful new method for scanning the electronic health records of 28,000 Americans to show that some Neandertal gene variants today can raise the risk of depression, skin lesions, blood clots, and other disorders. Neandertal genes aren’t all bad. “These variants sometimes protect against a disease, sometimes make people more susceptible to disease,” says paleogeneticist Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Two other new studies identified three archaic genes that boost immune response. And most archaic genes that persist in humans were likely beneficial in prehistoric times. But some now cause disease because modern lifestyles and environments are so different. Living people carry only trace amounts of Neandertal DNA, which makes its impact on health more striking. “The Neandertal genetic contribution to present-day people seems to have larger physiological effects than I would have naïvely thought,” says Pääbo, who helped launch this avenue of research by sequencing the first ancient genomes but was not involved in these studies. On average, Europeans and Asians have inherited about 1.5% of their genomes from Neandertals. Island Melanesians carry an additional 2% to 3% of DNA inherited from another extinct group, the Denisovans. Most Africans lack this archaic DNA because the interbreeding happened after modern humans left Africa. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Depression; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 21894 - Posted: 02.13.2016