Laura Beil When Elinor Sullivan was a postdoctoral fellow at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, she set out to explore the influence of food and exercise habits on obesity. In one experiment, she and her colleagues fed a troop of macaque monkeys regular chow. Other macaques dined American-style, with a hefty 32 percent of calories from fat and ready access to peanut butter treats. Over time, the second group of monkeys grew noticeably fatter. Then they all had babies. Sullivan, now at the University of Portland, noticed odd behavior in the plump moms’ offspring. At playtime, they often slinked off by themselves. When handled by keepers, the infants tended to vocalize anxiously, and the males became aggressive. They were prone to repetitive habits, like pacing. In their carefully controlled world, the only difference between those monkeys and others at the facility was their mothers’ extra pounds and indulgent diet. The behavior was so striking that Sullivan changed the course of her research. “It made me start thinking about human children,” she says, and the twin epidemics of obesity and behavioral problems such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Her research, published in 2010 in the Journal of Neuroscience, was one of the first studies to note that the progeny of female monkeys eating a high-fat diet were more likely to experience altered brain development and suffer anxiety. Not long after, researchers worldwide began compiling evidence linking the heaviness of human mothers to mental health in their children. One headline-grabbing study of more than 1,000 births, reported in 2012, found that autism spectrum disorders showed up more often in children of obese mothers than in normal-weight women (SN: 5/19/12, p. 16). © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2015.

Keyword: Obesity; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 21781 - Posted: 01.13.2016

By Gretchen Reynolds. To handle stress and adversity more effectively, we should probably pay closer attention to what is happening inside our bodies, according to a fascinating new brain study of resilience and why some people seem to have more of it than others. We live in difficult times, as readers of this newspaper know well. Worries about the state of our world, our safety, our finances, health and more can lead to a variety of physiological and psychological responses. “When faced with stress, whether it’s giving a talk in front of a hundred people or feeling pressured to get a second gold medal at the Olympics, we experience changes in our body,” said Lori Haase, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California in San Diego and lead author of the new study. Our heart rates rise, breathing grows shallow, and blood levels of adrenaline and other stress chemicals soar. While this stress response can have desirable results — “I need anxiety to motivate myself to write a grant,” Dr. Haase said — it can easily can get out of hand. Remaining in a state of heightened arousal undermines physical and mental performance, she explained. So while our bodies should respond to dangers and worries, our stress reactions also should dissipate as soon as possible afterward. This is where resilience comes in. In scientific terms, resilience is the ability to rapidly return to normal, both physically and emotionally, after a stressful event. Scientists and therapists long have known that some people are more resilient than others but had not known precisely why. © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 21780 - Posted: 01.13.2016

By Virginia Morell Dog owners often say they “know” that their dog understands what they’re feeling. Now, scientists have the evidence to back this up. Researchers tested 17 adult dogs of various breeds to see whether they could recognize emotional expressions in the faces and voices of humans and other dogs—an ability that’s considered a higher cognitive talent because two different senses are involved. Each dog took part in two test sessions with 10 trials. One by one, they stood facing two screens on which the researchers projected photos of unfamiliar but happy/playful human or dog faces versus the same faces with angry/aggressive expressions (as in the photo above). At the same time, the scientists played a single vocalization—either a dog bark, or an unfamiliar human speaking in Portuguese, a language none of the dogs had previously heard, or a neutral sound. The dogs looked much longer at a face (dog or human) when the expression matched the tone of the voice, a measure that’s also been used to assess various cognitive abilities of other mammals, the scientists report online today in Biology Letters. The dogs were best at this when looking at a fellow dog, which supports another study showing that dogs preferred looking at images of other dogs rather than those of humans. It’s the first time that a species, other than humans, has been shown to be capable of interpreting the vocal and facial expressions of an entirely different species of animal—a talent that surely helps Fido survive in its ecological niche: the jungle of the human home. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 21779 - Posted: 01.13.2016

Susan Gaidos Muscles tighten, the heart pounds and nausea takes hold: In the face of sudden stress, men and women respond alike. But when threats, scares or frustrations continue for days or months, differences between the sexes emerge. Scientists have long known that women are more likely than men to suffer depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and other anxiety disorders, all of which have been linked to chronic stress, says Temple University psychologist Debra Bangasser. But until recently, studies of people’s responses to such stress have focused primarily on men. Now, a growing number of scientists are studying what happens at the cellular and genetic levels in the brains of stressed-out rodents — male and female — to gain insight into the human brain. The studies are beginning to reveal differences between the sexes that may help explain the variability in their reactions and perhaps even provide much-needed insight into why stress-related disorders are more common in women than men. Recent findings reported at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, held in Chicago in October, show that a common stress hormone triggers different responses in specific brain cells of male and female animals. The differences make females less able than males to adapt to chronic stress. Other studies are exploring how exposure to the same hormone influences gene expression in a part of the brain that controls mood and behavior. Still other research suggests that a different hormone, associated with trust, could render females more susceptible than males to depression, anxiety and PTSD. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2015.

Keyword: Stress; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 21778 - Posted: 01.12.2016

By Ralph G. Neas In mid-February of 1979, I started experiencing tingling sensations in my feet and fingers. I told myself I was only feeling some residual effects from a bout with the flu several weeks before, and I caught the afternoon plane to Minneapolis to join my new boss, U.S. Sen. David Durenberger (R-Minn.), for several days of political meetings. That was on Sunday. On Tuesday, midway through a presentation, I began slurring my words and I found it hard to swallow. A local doctor, on hearing I’d had the flu, told me to go to my hotel room, take a couple of aspirin and call him in the morning. I spent the night moving from the bed to the couch to the chair to the floor, seeking relief from pain that was affecting more and more of my body. Just before dawn, I noticed that the right side of my face was paralyzed. On my way to the ER, the left side became paralyzed. I wasn’t having a recurrence of the flu. A spinal tap confirmed doctors’ suspicions that I’d come down with Guillain-Barré syndrome, or GBS, a rare neurological disorder that can cause total paralysis. Within 10 days I was so weakened by the spreading paralysis in my legs and arms that I could not get out of my bed at St. Mary’s, the Minneapolis hospital where I was being treated. Within three weeks, doctors performed a tracheostomy — connecting a mechanical respirator to my windpipe — because my ability to breathe was getting so poor.

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 21777 - Posted: 01.12.2016

Laura Sanders Pain can sear memories into the brain, a new study finds. A full year after viewing a picture of a random, neutral object, people could remember it better if they had been feeling painful heat when they first saw it. “The results are fun, they are interesting and they are provocative,” says neuroscientist A. Vania Apkarian of Northwestern University in Chicago. The findings “speak to the idea that pain really engages memory.” Neuroscientists G. Elliott Wimmer and Christian Büchel of University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany reported the results in a paper online at BioRxiv.org first posted December 24 and revised January 6. The findings are under review at a journal, and Wimmer declined to comment on the study until it is accepted for publication. Wimmer and Büchel recruited 31 brave souls who agreed to feel pain delivered by a heat-delivering thermode on their left forearms. Each person’s pain sensitivity was used to calibrate the amount of heat they received in the experiment, which was either not painful (a 2 on an 8-point scale) or the highest a person could endure multiple times (a full 8). While undergoing a functional MRI scan, participants looked at a series of pictures of unremarkable household objects, such as a camera, sometimes feeling pain and sometimes not. Right after seeing the images, the people took a pop quiz in which they answered whether an object was familiar. Pain didn’t influence memory right away. Right after their ordeal, participants remembered about three-quarters of the previously seen objects, regardless of whether pain was present, the researchers found. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2015.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 21776 - Posted: 01.12.2016

Answered by Anne Masten, You raise one of the most intriguing questions in modern resilience science: Can adversity be good for development? The answer appears to be yes, depending on the timing and nature of the stresses. But it is important to note that it is a person's adaptive responses to life's challenges that are beneficial, not the exposure to adversity itself. Beneficial responses have been called steeling effects, stress inoculation and post-traumatic growth. Extreme deprivation or stress can clearly cause lasting life consequences. Yet many individuals endure, recover and thrive in the aftermath of devastating events. A few, such as Malala Yousafzai, Stephen Hawking or Oprah Winfrey, even become famous. What distinguishes them? An individual's resilience can be viewed as the capacity to adapt to adversity at a given point. Resilience is not innate, nor is it fixed. It can fluctuate throughout a person's lifetime and is influenced by a complex set of adaptive processes. Many of these protective systems improve with experience or require challenges to reach their full potential. On a biological and environmental level, our capabilities to fight off infections and respond to stress are both shaped by experience. For instance, we vaccinate our children to promote immunity to dangerous pathogens. Similarly, exposure to manageable levels of psychological stress can improve future adaptation abilities. It is important to remember, however, that too much adversity can deplete the resources any child or adult needs to muster resilience. There is psychological and neurobiological evidence that prolonged or overwhelming stress can wear down our body and mind. © 2016 Scientific American

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 21775 - Posted: 01.12.2016

By Tania Rabesandratana Here’s one trick to make yourself feel happier: Listen to your own voice—digitally manipulated to make it sound cheery. That’s one potential application of a new study, in which researchers modified the speech of volunteers as they read a short story by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. The team then altered the voice’s pitch, among other features, to make it sound happy, sad, or fearful. (Compare this normal voice with the same voice modified to sound afraid.) Listening to their own modified voices in real time through a headset, only 16 of 109 participants detected some kind of manipulation. The rest took the voice’s emotion as their own, feeling sad or happy themselves. (The result was less clear for fear.) The researchers suggest that emotions expressed through our voices are part of an ancient, unconscious primate communication system, whereas we have more conscious control over the words we utter. The voice manipulation software is available online, so anyone can experiment with it. The scientists speculate that emotion manipulation could help treat psychiatric disorders like depression. It could also change the mood of online meetings or gaming, they say, or even lend more emotional impact to singing performances. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Emotions; Language
Link ID: 21774 - Posted: 01.12.2016

When Jack O'Connor was 19, he was so desperate to beat his addictions to alcohol and opioids that he took a really rash step. He joined the Marines. "This will fix me," O'Connor thought as he went to boot camp. "It better fix me or I'm screwed." After 13 weeks of sobriety and exercise and discipline, O'Connor completed basic training, but he started using again immediately. "Same thing," he says. "Percocet, like, off the street. Pills." Percocet is the brand name for acetaminophen and oxycodone. Oxycodone is a powerful opioid. It's one of the most commonly prescribed painkillers, and is a key factor in one of the country's most pressing public health problems — an opioid addiction epidemic. It is a crisis that started, in part, from the over-prescription of painkillers, like Percocet, and then shifted to heroin, as people addicted to prescription drugs looked for a cheaper high. O'Connor is one of an estimated 2.5 million Americans addicted to opioids and heroin, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Over three years, he detoxed from prescription painkillers — and heroin — more than 20 times. Each time, he started using again. So why is it so hard for opioid addicts to quit? You can boil it down to two crucial bits of science: the powerful nature of opioids and the neuroscience behind how addiction hijacks the brain. "The first recording of opioid use was 5,000 years ago," says Dr. Seddon Savage, an addiction and pain specialist at Dartmouth College. It was "a picture of the opium poppy and the words 'the joy plant.' "

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 21773 - Posted: 01.11.2016

Don’t blame impulsive people for their poor decisions. It’s not necessarily their fault. Impulsivity could result from not having enough time to veto our own actions. At least that is the implication of a twist on a classic experiment on free will. In 1983, neuroscientist Benjamin Libet performed an experiment to test whether we have free will. Participants were asked to voluntarily flex a finger while watching a clock-face with a rotating dot. They had to note the position of the dot as soon as they became aware of their intention to act. As they were doing so, Libet recorded their brain activity via EEG electrodes attached to the scalp. He found that a spike in brain activity called the readiness potential, which precedes a voluntary action, occurred about 350-milliseconds before the volunteers became consciously aware of their intention to act. The readiness potential is thought to signal the brain preparing for movement. Libet interpreted his results to mean that free will is an illusion. But we’re not complete slaves to our neurons, he reasoned, as there was a 200-millisecond gap between conscious awareness of our intention and the initiation of movement. Libet argued that this was enough time to consciously veto the action, or exert our “free won’t”. While Libet’s interpretations have remained controversial, this hasn’t stopped scientists carrying out variations of his experiment. Among other things, this has revealed that people with Tourette’s syndrome, who have uncontrollable tics, experience a shorter veto window than people without the condition, as do those with schizophrenia. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Consciousness; ADHD
Link ID: 21772 - Posted: 01.11.2016

By Veronique Greenwood Last year a new sleep drug called Belsomra came on the market, featuring a mechanism unlike any other pill: it mimics narcolepsy. That might sound odd, but the potential users are many. More than 8.5 million Americans take prescription sleep aids, and many others use snooze-inducing over-the-counter medications. All these pills, including Belsomra, do one of two things: they enhance the effects of the neurotransmitter GABA, known for quieting brain activity, or they arrest the actions of neurotransmitters that keep the brain aroused. Yet it's not quite as simple as flipping a switch; the drugs have a range of side effects, including daytime drowsiness, hallucinations and sleep-eating. Here's an overview of the sleeping pills currently available in the U.S.—plus a look at cognitive-behavior therapy for insomnia, which may be more successful than drugs alone. It requires a lot more work than popping a pill, but cognitive-behavior therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) has been shown to successfully alleviate sleep problems. Aimed at developing healthy habits, CBT-I comes with a lot of homework—between weekly or so visits with a specialist, a patient keeps track of hours spent in bed and hours sleeping and uses the bed only for sleep and sex. The patient must stay up until an established bedtime and get up on awakening, generating a sleep deficit that makes it easier to fall asleep at the right time. Avoiding caffeine and alcohol after 4 P.M. and timing exercise so that it doesn't interfere with drowsiness are also part of the system. © 2016 Scientific American

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 21770 - Posted: 01.11.2016

by Laura Sanders Young babies get a bad rap. They’re helpless, fickle and noisy. And even though they allegedly sleep for 16 hours a day, those hours come in 20-minute increments. Yet hidden in the chaos of a young infant’s life are some truly magnificent skills — perceptual feats that put adults to shame. So next time your baby loses it because she can’t get her thumb into her mouth, keep in mind that her strengths lie elsewhere. Six-month-old babies can spot subtle differences between two monkey faces easy as pie. But 9-month-olds — and adults — are blind to the differences. In a 2002 study of facial recognition, scientists pitted 30 6-month-old babies against 30 9-month-olds and 11 adults. First, the groups got familiar with a series of monkey and human faces that flashed on a screen. Then new faces showed up, interspersed with already familiar faces. The idea is that the babies would spend more time looking at new faces than ones they had already seen. When viewing human faces, all of the observers, babies and adults alike, did indeed spend more time looking at the new people, showing that they could easily pick out familiar human faces. But when it came to recognizing monkey faces, the youngsters blew the competition out of the water. Six-month-old babies recognized familiar monkey faces and stared at the newcomers longer. But both adults and 9-month-old babies were flummoxed, and looked at the new and familiar monkey faces for about the same amount of time. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2015

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Vision
Link ID: 21769 - Posted: 01.09.2016

By Christof Koch While “size does not matter” is a universally preached dictum among the politically correct, everyday experience tells us that this can't be the whole story—under many conditions, it clearly does. Consider the size of Woody Allen's second favorite organ, the brain. Adjectives such as “highbrow” and “lowbrow” have their origin in the belief, much expounded by 19th-century phrenologists, of a close correspondence between a high forehead—that is, a big brain—and intelligence. Is this true? Does a bigger brain make you necessarily smarter or wiser? And is there any simple connection between the size of a nervous system, however measured, and the mental powers of the owner of this nervous system? While the answer to the former question is a conditional “yes, somewhat,” the lack of any accepted answer to the second one reveals our ignorance of how intelligent behavior comes about. The human brain continues to grow until it reaches its peak size in the third to fourth decade of life. An MRI study of 46 adults of mainly European descent found that the average male had a brain volume of 1,274 cubic centimeters (cm3) and that the average female brain measured 1,131 cm3. Given that a quart of milk equals 946 cm3, you could pour a bit more than that into a skull without any of it spilling out. Of course, there is considerable variability in brain volume, ranging from 1,053 to 1,499 cm3 in men and between 975 and 1,398 cm3 in women. As the density of brain matter is just a little bit above that of water plus some salts, the average male brain weighs about 1,325 grams, close to the proverbial three pounds often cited in U.S. texts. © 2016 Scientific American

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 21768 - Posted: 01.09.2016

Pete Etchells Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, or ASMR, is a curious phenomenon. Those who experience it often characterise it as a tingling sensation in the back of the head or neck, or another part of the body, in response to some sort of sensory stimulus. That stimulus could be anything, but over the past few years, a subculture has developed around YouTube videos, and their growing popularity was the focus of a video posted on the Guardian this last week. It’s well worth a watch, but I couldn’t help but feel it would have been a bit more interesting if there had been some scientific background in it. The trouble is, there isn’t actually much research on ASMR out there. To date, only one research paper has been published on the phenomenon. In March last year, Emma Barratt, a graduate student at Swansea University, and Dr Nick Davis, then a lecturer at the same institution, published the results of a survey of some 500 ASMR enthusiasts. “ASMR is interesting to me as a psychologist because it’s a bit ‘weird’” says Davis, now at Manchester Metropolitan University. “The sensations people describe are quite hard to describe, and that’s odd because people are usually quite good at describing bodily sensation. So we wanted to know if everybody’s ASMR experience is the same, and of people tend to be triggered by the same sorts of things.” The study asked a range of questions about where, when and why people watch ASMR videos, whether there was any consistency in ASMR-triggering content, as well as whether individuals felt it had any effect on their mood. There was a remarkable consistency across participants in terms of triggering content – whispering worked for the majority of people, followed by videos involving some sort of personal attention, crisp sounds, and slow movements. For the most part, participants reported that they watched ASMR videos for relaxation purposes, or to help them sleep or deal with stress. © 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 21767 - Posted: 01.09.2016

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: It's unusual for an NFL player - a current player - to criticize the league, especially its handling of controversial issues like concussions or domestic violence, but author Johnny Anonymous has done just that. He's an offensive lineman who's written a book under that pseudonym. It's called "NFL Confidential." In it, he details his 2014 season, including training camp and his big break after a starting player gets injured. He's worried about being fired, so we've masked his voice. First, Johnny Anonymous says getting hurt is always on the mind of the player. ANONYMOUS: It's absolutely constant. The NFL's the only league, the only job you'll find in the world where we have a 100 percent injury rate. CORNISH: So walk us through the questions that come to mind for a player when they first hear that, you know, sickening sound and they're lying there on the field. What are you thinking? ANONYMOUS: For some guys, it's fear, which is why you'll see them kicking and screaming and crying, and some guys it's shock. I know for most of us - and probably all of us - the first thing you think is, I'm done; that's it. You think the injury's going to take the game away from you. CORNISH: So in a way, you know, this is how it happens, right, this discussion of, like, why do people take all the painkillers, you know, like, why do people defy doctors? ANONYMOUS: You have to. It's the only way you make it through. I can tell you right now, honestly, that if I am playing a game, I cannot complete that game without painkillers. I will not be an effective player. © 2016 npr

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 21766 - Posted: 01.09.2016

By Josh Izaac Helmets can reduce the risk of traumatic brain injury by almost 20%. But what if we take so many risks when wearing them that we lose the protective edge they provide? This could be the case, according to a study published this week. Researchers observed 80 cyclists under the guise of an “eye-tracking experiment,” pretending to track their eye-motion via a head-mounted camera as the participants inflated a virtual balloon. For some of the participants, the “eye-tracking devices” were mounted on helmets, while others just wore baseball caps, as can be seen in the picture of the equipment above. The further they inflated the balloon without it popping, the higher their reward and their risk-taking score. Participants wearing helmets inflated their balloons on average 30% more than those who wore caps, the team reports in Psychological Science. The finding could affect how we approach safety design and training, the authors say, as increased risk-taking behavior when using safety equipment might counteract the perceived benefit of the equipment. But what causes this effect in the first place? The underlying mechanism might be related to the concept of “social priming,” where people’s actions towards others are altered subconsciously due to exposure to particular words, cues, objects, or symbols. Importantly, this is the first time social priming has been shown to change people’s behaviour even when they are not interacting with others, providing potential new insights into human behavior. So, next time you’re out riding with a helmet, think twice before attempting that wheelie. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 21765 - Posted: 01.09.2016

By Emily Underwood As long as she can remember, 53-year-old Rosa Sundquist has tallied the number of days per month when her head explodes with pain. The migraines started in childhood and have gotten worse as she’s grown older. Since 2008, they have incapacitated her at least 15 days per month, year-round. Head-splitting pain isn’t the worst of Sundquist’s symptoms. Nausea, vomiting, and an intense sensitivity to light, sound, and smell make it impossible for her to work—she used to be an office manager—or often even to leave her light-proofed home in Dumfries, Virginia. On the rare occasions when she does go out to dinner or a movie with her husband and two college-aged children, she wears sunglasses and noise-canceling headphones. A short trip to the grocery store can turn into a full-blown attack “on a dime,” she says. Every 10 weeks, Sundquist gets 32 bee sting–like injections of the nerve-numbing botulism toxin into her face and neck. She also visits a neurologist in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who gives her a continuous intravenous infusion of the anesthetic lidocaine over 7 days. The lidocaine makes Sundquist hallucinate, but it can reduce her attacks, she says—she recently counted 20 migraine days per month instead of 30. Sundquist can also sometimes ward off an attack with triptans, the only drugs specifically designed to interrupt migraines after they start. Millions of others similarly dread the onset of a migraine, although many are not afflicted as severely as Sundquist. Worldwide, migraines strike roughly 12% of people at least once per year, with women roughly three times as likely as men to have an attack. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 21764 - Posted: 01.08.2016

By Erin Blakemore Despite all that neurotic clucking and scratching, domestic chickens are pretty unflappable. After all, we’ve bred them to be that way, preferring chill chicks to freaked-out fowl. But the behaviors of more anxious chickens could do more than ruffle a bunch of feathers: New research suggests that studying the genome of flustered birds could shed light on human mental disorders. In a new study published in the journal Genetics, evolutionary biologist Dominic Wright and his team looked at whether there’s a genetic connection between anxious behavior in chickens, mice and humans. Despite the compact size of the chicken genome — it’s just a third of the size of a human’s — the birds’ genes share surprising similarity to those of people. There's another reason why chickens are so great for genetic research. Because there are both wild and domesticated chickens, researchers can observe their contrasting behaviors and easily pin them to genetic differences. Wright bred wild red junglefowl chickens with their calmer cousins, white leghorn chickens, for the experiment. After eight generations, his team was able to run open field tests — experiments during which the birds were put in a brightly-lit arena and assessed for how much time they spent cowering on the periphery instead of strutting through the room. These behavioral tests helped the team identify brave and anxious birds, then narrow down areas of the genome related to variations in anxiety. They identified 10 candidate genes in the hypothalamus, an area of the brain which helps regulate anxiety.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Emotions
Link ID: 21763 - Posted: 01.08.2016

Blocking the production of new immune cells in the brain could reduce memory problems seen in Alzheimer's disease, a study suggests. University of Southampton researchers said their findings added weight to evidence that inflammation in the brain is what drives the disease. A drug used to block the production of these microglia cells in the brains of mice had a positive effect. Experts said the results were exciting and could lead to new treatments. Up until now, most drugs used to treat dementia have targeted amyloid plaques in the brain which are a characteristic of people with the Alzheimer's disease. But this latest study, published in the journal Brain, suggests that in fact targeting inflammation in the brain, caused by a build-up of immune cells called microglia, could halt progression of the disease. Researchers found increased numbers of microglia in the post-mortem brains of people with Alzheimer's disease. Previous studies have also suggested that these cells could play an important role. Dr Diego Gomez-Nicola, lead study author from the university, said: "These findings are as close to evidence as we can get to show that this particular pathway is active in the development of Alzheimer's disease. "The next step is to work closely with our partners in industry to find a safe and suitable drug that can be tested to see if it works in humans." © 2016 BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers; Glia
Link ID: 21762 - Posted: 01.08.2016

Bruce Bower Youngsters befuddled by printed squiggles on the pages of a storybook nonetheless understand that a written word, unlike a drawing, stands for a specific spoken word, say psychologist Rebecca Treiman of Washington University in St. Louis and her colleagues. Children as young as 3 can be tested for a budding understanding of writing’s symbolic meaning, the researchers conclude January 6 in Child Development. “Our results show that young children have surprisingly advanced knowledge about the fundamental properties of writing,” Treiman says. “This knowledge isn’t explicitly taught to children but probably gained through early exposure to print from sources such as books and computers.” Researchers and theorists have previously proposed that children who cannot yet read don’t realize that a written word corresponds to a particular spoken word. Studies have found, for instance, that nonliterate 3- to 5-year-olds often assign different meanings to the same word, such as girl, depending on whether that word appears under a picture of a girl or a cup. Treiman’s investigation “is the first to show that kids as young as 3 have the insight that print stands for something beyond what’s scripted on the page,” says psychologist Kathy Hirsh-Pasek of Temple University in Philadelphia. Preschoolers who are regularly read to have an advantage in learning that written words have specific meanings, suspects psychologist Roberta Golinkoff of the University of Delaware in Newark. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2015.

Keyword: Language; Dyslexia
Link ID: 21761 - Posted: 01.08.2016