It seems like the ultimate insult, but getting people with brain injuries to do maths may lead to better diagnoses. A trial of the approach has found two people in an apparent vegetative state that may be conscious but “locked-in”. People who are in a vegetative state are awake but have lost all cognitive function. Occasionally, people diagnosed as being in this state are actually minimally conscious with fleeting periods of awareness, or even locked-in. This occurs when they are totally aware but unable to move any part of their body. It can be very difficult to distinguish between each state, which is why a team of researchers in China have devised a brain-computer interface that tests whether people with brain injuries can perform mental arithmetic – a clear sign of conscious awareness. The team, led by Yuanqing Li at South China University of Technology and Jiahui Pan at the South China Normal University in Guangzhou showed 11 people with various diagnoses a maths problem on a screen. This was followed by two possible answers flickering at frequencies designed to evoke different patterns of brain activity. Frames around each number also flashed several times. The participants were asked to focus on the correct answer and count the number of times its frame flashed. The brain patterns from the flickering answers together with the detection of another kind of brain signal that occurs when someone counts, enabled a computer to tell which answer, if any, the person was focusing on. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 21801 - Posted: 01.19.2016

By Emily Underwood Roughly half of Americans use marijuana at some point in their lives, and many start as teenagers. Although some studies suggest the drug could harm the maturing adolescent brain, the true risk is controversial. Now, in the first study of its kind, scientists have analyzed long-term marijuana use in teens, comparing IQ changes in twin siblings who either used or abstained from marijuana for 10 years. After taking environmental factors into account, the scientists found no measurable link between marijuana use and lower IQ. “This is a very well-conducted study … and a welcome addition to the literature,” says Valerie Curran, a psychopharmacologist at the University College London. She and her colleagues reached “broadly the same conclusions” in a separate, nontwin study of more than2000 British teenagers, published earlier this month in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, she says. But, warning that the study has important limitations, George Patton, a psychiatric epidemiologist at the University of Melbourne in Australia, adds that it in no way proves that marijuana—particularly heavy, or chronic use —is safe for teenagers. Most studies that linked marijuana to cognitive deficits, such as memory loss and low IQ, looked at a single “snapshot” in time, says statistician Nicholas Jackson of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, lead author of the new work. That makes it impossible to tell which came first: drug use or poor cognitive performance. “It's a classic chicken-egg scenario,” he says. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Intelligence
Link ID: 21800 - Posted: 01.19.2016

Finding out what’s going on in an injured brain can involve several rounds of surgery, exposed wounds and a mess of wires. Perhaps not for much longer. A device the size of a grain of rice can monitor the brain’s temperature and pressure before dissolving without a trace. “This fully degradable sensor is definitely an impressive feat of engineering,” says Frederik Claeyssens, a biomaterials scientist at the University of Sheffield, UK. The device is the latest creation from John Rogers’s lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They came up with the idea of a miniature dissolvable brain monitor after speaking to neurosurgeons about the difficulties of monitoring brain temperature and pressure in people with traumatic injuries. Unwieldy wires These vital signs are currently measured via an implanted sensor connected to an external monitor. “It works, but the wires coming out of the head limit physical movement and provide a nidus for infection. You can cause additional damage when you pull them out,” says Rogers. It would be better to use a wireless device that doesn’t need to be extracted, he says. So Rogers’s team developed an electronic monitor about a tenth of a millimetre wide and a millimetre long made of silicon and a polymer. These materials, used in tiny amounts, are eventually broken down by the body, and don’t trigger any harmful effects, says Rogers. “The materials individually are safe. The total amount is very small. It’s about 1000 times less than what you’d have in a vitamin tablet.” © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 21799 - Posted: 01.19.2016

By SINDYA N. BHANOO Male zebra finches learn their courtship songs from their fathers. Now, a new study details the precise changes in brain circuitry that occur during that process. As a young male listens to his father’s song, networks of brain cells are activated that the younger bird will use later to sing the song himself, researchers have found. As the learning process occurs, inhibitory cells suppress further activity in the area and help sculpt the song into a permanent memory. “These inhibitory cells are really smart — once you’ve gotten a part of the song down, the area gets locked,” said Michael Long, a neuroscientist at NYU Langone Medical Center and an author of the new study, which appears in the journal Science. Zebra finches learn their courtship song from their fathers and reach sexual maturity in about 100 days. At this point, they ignore their fathers’ tutoring altogether, Dr. Long said. In their study, he and his colleagues played recorded courtship songs to young and old birds and monitored neural activity in their brains. In sexually mature birds, the courtship song did not elicit any neural response. Understanding the role of the inhibitory cells in the brain could help researchers develop ways to manipulate this network, Dr. Long said. “Maybe we could teach old birds new tricks,” he said. “And extrapolating widely, maybe we could even do this in mammals, maybe even humans, and enrich learning.” © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 21798 - Posted: 01.19.2016

By Emily Underwood The boisterous songs a male zebra finch sings to his mate might not sound all that melodious to humans—some have compared them to squeaky dog toys—but the courtship tunes are stunningly complex, with thousands of variations. Now, a new study helps explain how the birds master such an impressive repertoire. As they learn from a tutor, usually their father, their brains tune out phrases they’ve already studied, allowing them to focus on unfamiliar sections bit by bit. The mechanism could help explain how other animals, including humans, learn complex skills, scientists say. The study is a “technical tour de force,” and “an important advance in our understanding of mechanisms of vocal learning and of motor learning generally,” says Erich Jarvis, a neuroscientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Many species—including humans, chimpanzees, crows, dolphins, and even octopuses—learn complex behaviors by imitating their peers and parents, but little is known about how that process works on a neuronal level. In the case of zebra finches, young males spend the whole of their teenage lives trying to copy their fathers, says Michael Long, a neuroscientist at New York University in New York City. It comes out “all wrong” at first, but after practicing hundreds of times, the birds “sound a lot like dad.” In the new study, Long’s graduate student Daniela Vallentin used a tiny electrode implant to record the activity of neurons in a region of the finch brain called the HVC, which is essential for birdsong learning and production. Weighing less than a penny, the implant can be affixed to a bird’s head and record activity in the brains of freely moving and singing birds, Long says. The researchers also used a powerful light microscope to visualize the activity of individual neurons as the birds listened to a fake “tutor” bird that taught young finches only one “syllable” of a song at a time. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 21797 - Posted: 01.18.2016

Fergus Walsh Medical correspondent UK doctors in Sheffield say patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) are showing "remarkable" improvements after receiving a treatment usually used for cancer. About 20 patients have received bone marrow transplants using their own stem cells. Some patients who were paralysed have been able to walk again. Prof Basil Sharrack, of Sheffield's Royal Hallamshire Hospital, said: "To have a treatment which can potentially reverse disability is really a major achievement." Around 100,000 people in the UK have MS, an incurable neurological condition. Most patients are diagnosed in their 20s and 30s. The disease causes the immune system to attack the lining of nerves in the brain and spinal cord. The treatment - known as an autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) - aims to destroy the faulty immune system using chemotherapy. It is then rebuilt with stem cells harvested from the patient's own blood. These cells are at such an early stage they've not developed the flaws that trigger MS. Prof John Snowden, consultant haematologist at Royal Hallamshire Hospital, said: "The immune system is being reset or rebooted back to a time point before it caused MS." About 20 MS patients have been treated in Sheffield in the past three years. Prof Snowden added: "It's clear we have made a big impact on patients' lives, which is gratifying." In MS the protective layer surrounding nerve fibres in the brain and spinal cord - known as myelin - becomes damaged. The immune system mistakenly attacks the myelin, causing scarring or sclerosis. © 2016 BBC.

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 21796 - Posted: 01.18.2016

Patricia Neighmond When Cathy Fields was in her late 50s, she noticed she was having trouble following conversations with friends. "I could sense something was wrong with me," she says. "I couldn't focus. I could not follow." Fields was worried she had suffered a stroke or was showing signs of early dementia. Instead she found out she had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD. Fields is now 66 years old and lives in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. She's a former secretary and mother of two grown children. Fields was diagnosed with ADHD about eight years ago. Her doctor ruled out any physical problems and suggested she see a psychiatrist. She went to Dr. David Goodman at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who by chance specializes in ADHD. Goodman asked Fields a number of questions about focus, attention and completing tasks. He asked her about her childhood and how she did in school. Since ADHD begins in childhood, it's important for mental health professionals to understand these childhood experiences in order to make an accurate diagnosis of ADHD in adulthood. Online screening tests are available, too, so you can try it yourself. Goodman decided that Fields most definitely had ADHD. She's not alone. Goodman says he's seeing more and more adults over the age of 50 newly diagnosed with ADHD. © 2016 npr

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 21795 - Posted: 01.18.2016

By Melinda Beck Here’s a sobering thought for the holidays: Chronic heavy drinking can cause insidious damage to the brain, even in people who never seem intoxicated or obviously addicted. Experts say alcohol-related brain damage is underdiagnosed and often confused with Alzheimer’s disease, other forms of dementia or just getting older. Now, brain imaging is revealing how long-term alcohol abuse can change the structure of the brain, shrinking gray-matter cells in areas that govern learning, memory, decision-making and social behavior, as well as damaging white-matter fibers that connect one part of the brain with others. “As we get older, we all lose a little gray-matter volume and white-matter integrity, but in alcoholics, those areas break down more quickly. It looks like accelerated aging,” says Edith Sullivan, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Stanford University, who has studied alcohol’s effects for years. Long-term alcohol abuse also changes how the brain regulates emotion and anxiety and disrupts sleep systems, creating wide-ranging effects on the body. Increasingly, clinicians are diagnosing “alcohol-induced neurocognitive disorder” and “alcohol-related dementia.” How much is too much and over what period of time? ©2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 21794 - Posted: 01.18.2016

Laura Sanders Signals in the brain can hint at whether a person undergoing anesthesia will slip under easily or fight the drug, a new study suggests. The results, published January 14 in PLOS Computational Biology, bring scientists closer to being able to tailor doses of the powerful drugs for specific patients. Drug doses are often given with a one-size-fits-all attitude, says bioengineer and neuroscientist Patrick Purdon of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. But the new study finds clear differences in people’s brain responses to similar doses of an anesthetic drug, Purdon says. “To me, that’s the key and interesting point.” Cognitive neuroscientist Tristan Bekinschtein of the University of Cambridge and colleagues recruited 20 people to receive low doses of the general anesthetic propofol. The low dose wasn’t designed to knock people out, but to instead dial down their consciousness until they teetered on the edge of awareness — a point between being awake and alert and being drowsy and nonresponsive. While the drug was being delivered, participants repeatedly heard either a buzzing sound or a noise and were asked each time which they heard, an annoying question designed to gauge awareness. Of the 20 people, seven were sidelined by the propofol and they began to respond less. Thirteen other participants, however, kept right on responding, “fighting the drug,” Bekinschtein says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2016.

Keyword: Consciousness; Sleep
Link ID: 21793 - Posted: 01.16.2016

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. Federal health officials on Friday advised pregnant women to postpone traveling to 13 Latin American or Caribbean countries and Puerto Rico where mosquitoes are spreading the Zika virus, which has been linked to brain damage in babies. Women considering becoming pregnant were advised to consult doctors before traveling to countries with Zika cases, and all travelers were urged to avoid mosquito bites, as were residents of Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands. “We believe this is a fairly serious problem,” said Dr. Lyle R. Petersen, chief of vector-borne diseases for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “This virus is spreading throughout the Americas. We didn’t feel we could wait.” The C.D.C. advisory applies to 14 Western Hemisphere countries and territories: Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, Venezuela, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. It applies to the entire countries “unless there is specific evidence the virus is not occurring somewhere,” Dr. Petersen said. This appears to be the first time the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised pregnant women to avoid a specific region. The warning is expected to affect the travel industry and could affect the Summer Olympics, set for Brazil in August. Officials at Brazil’s Health Ministry were not available for comment Friday night. Hours earlier, Philip Wilkinson, a spokesman for the Rio 2016 organizing committee, said that Olympic venues “will be inspected on daily basis during the Rio 2016 Games to ensure there are no puddles of stagnant water and therefore minimize the risk of coming into contact with mosquitos.” Dr. Petersen said he did not want to speculate about how his agency’s warning might affect the Olympics. “This is a dynamic situation,” he said. “We’re going to wait and see how this all plays out. Viruses can spread in a population for some periods of time.” © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 21792 - Posted: 01.16.2016

by Bethany Brookshire The high fiber refrain never seems to stop. We all know that we’re supposed to eat more fiber and focus on whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables. But when forced to choose between chewy, crumbly, flavorless oat bran and delicious white buttered toast for breakfast, it’s easy to tune out. But that fiber isn’t for you. It fuels and sustains your gut microbes — and those in your kids, and grandkids and great-grandkids, too, a study in mice finds. The results suggest that when we pass our genes on to our children, we also pass on a gut ecosystem that reflects our previous dietary choices. (No pressure.) The Food and Drug Administration recommends that Americans eat about 25 grams of dietary fiber per day. But most people don’t hit that mark. “The average American gets 10 to 15 grams of dietary fiber,” says Erica Sonnenburg, a microbiologist at Stanford University. If that doesn’t make you feel ashamed, compare your diet to the Hadza, hunter-gatherers who live in Tanzania. “The tubers they’re eating are so fibrous [that people] chew for a while and spit it out,” Sonnenburg says. It’s hard to calculate exactly how much fiber the Hadza get from the tubers, but Sonnenburg says that some some speculate it’s between 100 and 150 grams per day at certain times of year. That high level of fiber is reflected in their guts. “What all the studies have found is that these populations who are living a more traditional lifestyle are the best approximation for our ancient microbiota. They all harbor microbiota that’s much more diverse.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2016. A

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 21791 - Posted: 01.16.2016

Angus Chen A new method of delivering medication for opioid addicts gained approval from a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel this week. It's a matchstick-like insert designed to slip under the skin and release a drug over a period of months. Some physicians say the implant will be a useful addition to the currently short lineup of medication-assisted treatment options. The rod is called Probuphine, developed by the companies Braeburn Pharmaceuticals and Titan Pharmaceuticals. It contains a medication called buprenorphine which the FDA approved for opioid addiction in 2002 and is currently widely in use. The FDA typically follows the advice of its advisory panels on approvals. This molecule binds to opioid receptors in the body, but doesn't hit them as hard as something like heroin or morphine would. So it can reduce cravings without giving a full high. It's often taken in combination with a medication called naloxone, which negates the effect of any additional opiates and acts as an antidote for overdoses. Right now, patients must hold a tablet or a film under their tongue or in their cheek until it dissolves every day. This gives a long-lasting implant a few advantages over oral daily doses. Probuphine lasts up to six months. So unless patients want to dig underneath their skin to tear the thing out, there's no deviating from the treatment. "With the Suboxone [a daily combination of buprenorphine and naloxone], you can go on these drug holidays," says Patrick Kennedy, a former congressman and former opiate addict who urged the panel to approve Probuphine. "If I knew I had access to another drug, OxyContin, I would just stop taking the Suboxone and — you know." © 2016 npr

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 21790 - Posted: 01.16.2016

By Dina Fine Maron We may be able to keep our gut in check after all. That’s the tantalizing finding from a new study published today that reveals a way that mice—and potentially humans—can control the makeup and behavior of their gut microbiome. Such a prospect upends the popular notion that the complex ecosystem of germs residing in our guts essentially acts as our puppet master, altering brain biochemistry even as it tends to our immune system, wards off infection and helps us break down our supersized burger and fries. In a series of elaborate experiments researchers from Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital discovered that mouse poop is chock full of tiny, noncoding RNAs called microRNAs from their gastrointestinal (GI) tracts and that these biomolecules appear to shape and regulate the microbiome. “We’ve known about how microbes can influence your health for a few years now and in a way we’ve always suspected it’s a two-way process, but never really pinned it down that well,” says Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, not involved with the new study. “This [new work] explains quite nicely the two-way interaction between microbes and us, and it shows the relationship going the other way—which is fascinating,” says Spector, author of The Diet Myth: Why the Secret to Health and Weight Loss Is Already in Your Gut. What’s more, human feces share 17 types of microRNAs with the mice, which may portend similar mechanisms in humans, the researchers found. It could also potentially open new treatment approaches involving microRNA transplantations. “Obviously that raises the immediate question: ‘Where do the microRNAs come from and why are they there?,’” says senior author Howard Weiner, a neurologist at both Harvard and Brigham. The work was published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe. © 2016 Scientific American

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 21789 - Posted: 01.14.2016

By Anahad O'Connor For much of his life, Dr. Vincent Pedre, an internist in New York City, suffered from digestive problems that left him feeling weak and sick to his stomach. As an adult he learned he had irritable bowel syndrome, or I.B.S., a chronic gut disorder that affects up to 10 percent of Americans. Through the process of elimination, Dr. Pedre discovered that his diet was the source of many of his problems. Cutting out dairy and gluten reversed many of his symptoms. Replacing processed foods with organic meats, fresh vegetables and fermented foods gave him more energy and settled his sensitive stomach. Dr. Pedre, a clinical instructor in medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, began to encourage many of his patients who were struggling with digestive disorders to do the same, helping them to identify food allergens and food sensitivities that could act as triggers. He also urged his patients to try yoga and meditation to alleviate chronic stress, which can worsen digestive problems. Dr. Pedre now has a medical practice specializing in gastrointestinal disorders and is the author of a new book called “Happy Gut.” In the book, Dr. Pedre argues that chronic health problems can in some cases be traced to a dysfunctional digestive system, which can be quelled through a variety of lifestyle behaviors that nurture the microbiota, the internal garden of microbes that resides in the gut. Recently, we caught up with Dr. Pedre to talk about what makes a “happy gut,” how you can avoid some common triggers of digestive problems, and why fermented foods like kombucha and kimchi should be part of your diet. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation. © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 21788 - Posted: 01.14.2016

By Katherine Harmon Here’s another reason to eat your vegetables. Trillions of microbes in the human large intestine—known as the microbiome—depend on dietary fiber to thrive and give us energy. As fiber intake declines, so, too, does the range of bacteria that can survive in the gut. Now, a new study of multiple generations of mice fed a low-fiber diet indicates that this diversity plummets further with each generation, a hint of what might be happening in the human gut as we continue eating a contemporary diet of refined foods. The work might also help explain rises in many Western diseases, such as inflammatory bowel disease and obesity. "This is a seminal study," says microbial ecologist Jens Walter, of the University of Alberta in Canada. "The magnitude by which the low-[fiber] diet depletes the microbiome in the mouse experiments is startling." For much of human history in hunter-gatherer and early agrarian times, daily fiber intake was likely at least three or four times the officially recommended amounts today (something like 100 grams versus 25 grams)—and several times greater than average U.S. consumption now (about 15 grams). The trend has led many researchers, including microbiologist Erica Sonnenburg of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, to suspect that the well-documented low diversity of gut microbes among people in developed countries—some 30% less diverse than in modern hunter-gatherers—is, in part, a product of drastically reduced fiber intake. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science. A

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 21787 - Posted: 01.14.2016

David Cox In the spring of 1930, Danish artist Einar Wegener arrived in Berlin for a consultation that he hoped would both save and change his life. Wegener had spent the previous twenty years dressing as a woman, Lili Elbe. In public, his wife, painter Gerda Gottlieb, introduced Elbe as Wegener’s sister . But by 1930 he could not bear his double life any longer. He resolved to commit suicide, even naming a date – May 1. Instead, Wegener made a different choice, electing to undergo a series of pioneering gender reassignment operations, transitioning into Lili Ilse Elvenes, better known as Lili Elbe. Elbe’s extraordinary story remains controversial; indeed, the film The Danish Girl, starring Eddie Redmayne and based on Elbe’s life was this week banned from Qatari cinemas after protests about its “depravity”. Elbe’s revolutionary transition would not have been possible without the contribution of the sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, a man who had become both renowned and notorious across Europe for his groundbreaking research into human gender and sexuality. While Elbe’s posthumous 1933 biography, “Man into Woman: The First Sex Change”, made her story internationally famous, Hirschfeld is a less well-known figure today. As both a Jew and gay activist, much of his legacy was burnt to ashes when his Institute for Sexual Research was targeted by a Nazi attack in 1933. But through colleagues and pupils, his work has gone on to transform the way we view sexual minorities and has helped make gender reassignment surgery the widely accepted procedure it is today. © 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited o

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 21786 - Posted: 01.14.2016

Eva Emerson Chronic stress takes its toll on everyone. But it may hit women harder (or at least differently) than men, much research finds. New studies in rodents show that females remain sensitive to ongoing stress longer than males do, as Susan Gaidos reports. It remains to be seen whether such results can explain the differences in rates of depression and anxiety disorders in men and women. (Perhaps women are more likely to discuss their symptoms and be diagnosed. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, disorders which may also be related to stress.) Still, the new work offers an intriguing idea: If stress induces distinct biochemical signaling in men and women, perhaps therapies should also be tailored to each sex. Another fascinating line of research mentioned in Gaidos’ story involves altering female mice’s response to chronic stress (making it more like a male’s) by targeting DNA modifications known as epigenetic tags. Consisting of chemicals such as methyl groups, these tags are attached to DNA and influence gene activity. They seem like a perfect target for drugs. Epigenetic tags don’t change the underlying genes, just the instructions for turning those genes on or off, up or down. In the mice, scientists used enzymes to alter the chemical tags on genes involved in the response to chronic stress. It’s an exciting approach, one I’m sure many scientists will try in efforts to modulate the body’s response, not just to stress, but also to other threats to health. Maybe even to fat. A woman’s extra fat can trigger metabolic changes in a developing fetus, Laura Beil reports. Beil describes the latest research about the risks faced by children of obese moms or moms who have gained too much weight while pregnant. Neurological effects are the new twist, and a scary one, given the prevalence of obesity among women of childbearing age. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2015

Keyword: Stress; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 21785 - Posted: 01.14.2016

Maggie Koerth-Baker In 1990, when James Danckert was 18, his older brother Paul crashed his car into a tree. He was pulled from the wreckage with multiple injuries, including head trauma. The recovery proved difficult. Paul had been a drummer, but even after a broken wrist had healed, drumming no longer made him happy. Over and over, Danckert remembers, Paul complained bitterly that he was just — bored. “There was no hint of apathy about it at all,” says Danckert. “It was deeply frustrating and unsatisfying for him to be deeply bored by things he used to love.” A few years later, when Danckert was training to become a clinical neuropsychologist, he found himself working with about 20 young men who had also suffered traumatic brain injury. Thinking of his brother, he asked them whether they, too, got bored more easily than they had before. “And every single one of them,” he says, “said yes.” Those experiences helped to launch Danckert on his current research path. Now a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo in Canada, he is one of a small but growing number of investigators engaged in a serious scientific study of boredom. There is no universally accepted definition of boredom. But whatever it is, researchers argue, it is not simply another name for depression or apathy. It seems to be a specific mental state that people find unpleasant — a lack of stimulation that leaves them craving relief, with a host of behavioural, medical and social consequences. © 2016 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Attention; Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 21784 - Posted: 01.13.2016

By SABRINA TAVERNISE SILVER SPRING, Md. — A panel of medical experts recommended Tuesday that the Food and Drug Administration approve a new way of treating opioid addicts, using a slender rod implanted into the arm that delivers medicine for months at a time. Some doctors say it could help ease the national epidemic of drug overdoses. The rod is about the size of a small matchstick and delivers daily doses of buprenorphine — one of the most common medical treatments for opioid addicts — for six-month periods. In controlled doses, buprenorphine can help the body withdraw from opioid addiction, but can also itself be addictive. That risk is increased by the fact that the medicine can be taken only by mouth, requiring patients, often ill from addiction, to manage their daily dosages. The advisory panel voted 12 to 5 to recommend approval. The panel concluded that flaws in the evidence the company presented, including missing data in a clinical study, were not fatal, and that the product was roughly as effective as the oral form of the drug. They agreed it would be a useful tool for doctors in the face of a major public health epidemic and could help stem the flow of illicit use of buprenorphine. “I think this will save some folks’ lives,” said Dr. David Pickar, adjunct professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School, who voted to recommend approval. “From a safety point of view I think we’re in good shape.” Dr. Thomas Grieger, a staff psychiatrist at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said: “There is not evidence of significant risk using this agent, but there is evidence of significant benefit.” © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 21783 - Posted: 01.13.2016

By Virginia Morell When you hear a bird warbling, you probably think the crooner is a male. And chances are if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, you would be right. But females also evolved to sing, and many still do—although generally less than the males. One reason may be that it’s more dangerous for them to sing especially when nesting, scientists report today. At least, that’s the case for female fairywrens, the most vocal of which are the most likely to have their eggs and chicks eaten. The study “provides some of the first field evidence indicating why females of so many songbird species might have lost song,” says Karan Odom, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and the lead author of a 2014 study on the evolution of birdsong. Female superb fairywrens (Malarus cyaneus)—a small Australian species—aren’t the only female songbirds that sing. In fact, females sing in 71% of songbird species, often for territorial defense. In species like the superb fairywren, some females even sing when they’re on their nests, a place where, at least theoretically, they should pipe down so as not to attract predators. Rodents, birds, cats, and foxes have all been seen preying on the fairywrens’ nests. “People had observed [this singing in the nest behavior], but they hadn’t investigated it,” says Sonia Kleindorfer, a behavioral ecologist at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. “It struck me as odd, and very risky.” © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Animal Communication
Link ID: 21782 - Posted: 01.13.2016