By Nicholas Bakalar Psychotherapy is effective in easing the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, researchers have found, even after therapy has ended. Irritable bowel syndrome can cause diarrhea, cramping, fever and sometimes rectal bleeding. The chronic ailment affects up to 11 percent of the population, and there is no cure or completely effective treatment. The study, in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, used data from 41 clinical trials that included 1,183 people assigned to psychotherapy and 1,107 controls. The approach was usually cognitive therapy, but some studies tested hypnotherapy, mindfulness, behavioral therapy or dynamic psychotherapy. The studies all used questionnaires at the start and end of the treatment, asking about severity and frequency of symptoms. Over all, the researchers found that 12 months after the end of treatment, 75 percent of the treatment group had greater symptom relief than the average member of the control group, although the benefits were modest. “I.B.S. is notoriously difficult to treat,” said the lead author, Kelsey T. Laird, a doctoral candidate at Vanderbilt University, “so the fact that these effects are just as strong six to 12 months later is very exciting — a significant effect, which did not decrease over time.” Whether a given individual will benefit from psychotherapy is still unknown, Ms. Laird said. But, she added, “We do know that this seems to be one of the best treatments out there. So I would recommend it.” © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 21740 - Posted: 01.02.2016

By KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD I arrived in Tirana, Albania, on a Sunday evening in late August, on a flight from Istanbul. The sun had set while the plane was midflight, and as we landed in the dark, images of fading light still filled my mind. The man next to me, a young, red-haired American wearing a straw hat, asked me if I knew how to get into town from the airport. I shook my head, put the book I had been reading into my backpack, got up, lifted my suitcase out of the overhead compartment and stood waiting in the aisle for the door up ahead to open. That book was the reason I had come. It was called “Do No Harm,” and it was written by the British neurosurgeon Henry Marsh. His job is to slice into the brain, the most complex structure we know of in the universe, where everything that makes us human is contained, and the contrast between the extremely sophisticated and the extremely primitive — all of that work with knives, drills and saws — fascinated me deeply. I had sent Marsh an email, asking if I might meet him in London to watch him operate. He wrote a cordial reply saying that he seldom worked there now, but he was sure something could be arranged. In passing, he mentioned that he would be operating in Albania in August and in Nepal in September, and I asked hesitantly whether I could join him in Albania. Now I was here. Tense and troubled, I stepped out of the door of the airplane, having no idea what lay ahead. I knew as little about Albania as I did about brain surgery. The air was warm and stagnant, the darkness dense. A bus was waiting with its engine running. Most of the passengers were silent, and the few who chatted with one another spoke a language I didn’t know. It struck me that 25 years ago, when this was among the last remaining Communist states in Europe, I would not have been allowed to enter; then, the country was closed to the outside world, almost like North Korea today. Now the immigration officer barely glanced at my passport before stamping it. She dully handed it back to me, and I entered Albania. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 21739 - Posted: 12.30.2015

Bruce Bower Craig Bryan treats military personnel who struggle with thoughts of ending their own lives, as well as those who’ve survived an actual suicide attempt. But these days he’s fighting an uphill battle. Suicide rates in the United States have been rising, especially among veterans and members of the armed forces. Traditional assumptions about why people kill themselves have not led to effective strategies for suicide prevention, Bryan says. So in recent years psychologists and others have been reconsidering basic beliefs about why people carry out the ultimate act of self-destruction. “There has been an explosion of new thinking about suicide in the past decade,” says Bryan, a clinical psychologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. This shift in focus was inspired by psychologist Thomas Joiner’s introduction in 2005 of the interpersonal theory of suicide. Unlike previous theorists, Joiner, of Florida State University in Tallahassee, treated thinking about suicide and attempting suicide as separate experiences, each with its own explanations and risk factors. Joiner’s approach has inspired much new suicide research by Bryan and others. One line of work suggests that three factors render individuals especially prone to moving from suicidal thoughts to actions: a partly inborn ability to withstand pain, self-hate triggered by extremely distressing experiences and, finally, access to guns or other lethal means. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2015.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 21738 - Posted: 12.30.2015

By KEN BELSON When St. Louis Rams quarterback Case Keenum sustained a concussion in a game in Baltimore last month, commentators focused on how he wobbled as he got up and questioned why he was not taken out of the game. Few mentioned that he had slammed his head on the turf. In the rush to reduce head trauma in sports, doctors, researchers, leagues and equipment makers have looked at everything from improving helmets to teaching safer tackling techniques. But one little-explored cause of concussions is the field beneath the feet of the millions of athletes who play football, lacrosse, soccer and other sports. A new report compiled by the Concussion Legacy Foundation called attention to the link between head injuries and poorly maintained fields, especially the growing number of those made of synthetic turf. The foundation urged groundskeepers, athletic directors and sports associations to treat their fields as seriously as other protective sports equipment. “We have no national conversation on the technology underneath an athlete’s feet,” the authors wrote in their report, the Role of Synthetic Turf in Concussion. “Helmet technology is an area of great attention and investment, and surfaces deserve the same attention.” The report, which is based on more than a dozen academic studies, cites research that shows that 15.5 percent of concussions in high school sports occur when players hit their head on a playing surface. Another study found that 10 percent of concussions sustained by high school and college football players came after players hit their head on a field. In the N.F.L., about one in seven concussions occurs when a player’s head strikes a synthetic or grass field. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 21737 - Posted: 12.30.2015

By Darryl Fears For male smallmouth bass, sex change is increasingly not an option. In the chemical-laced Chesapeake Bay watershed and in rivers up through New England, it comes with the territory. Based on the latest U.S. Geological Survey on intersex fish, 85 percent of male smallmouth bass in waters in and around national wildlife refuges in the Northeast have developed "characteristics of the opposite sex." That's in addition to 90 percent of the species in some West Virginia waters and 50 percent to 100 percent in the southern stretch of the Potomac River. All of the affected fish had eggs where their testes should be, according to previous studies. Why this is happening remains a mystery, says the lead author of a new study, despite the problem being detected more than a decade ago. “It is not clear what the specific cause of intersex is in these fish,” said Luke Iwanowicz, a USGS research biologist. “This study was designed to identify locations that may warrant further investigation." The strongest suspicion focuses on what is poured down the drains of homes, businesses and farms every day. Scientists are worried that prescription drugs such as birth control and mood-control pharmaceuticals, flushed down toilets, and chemical pesticides such as atrazine, washed off farms by rain, have turned creeks, streams and rivers into chemical soups that disrupt the endocrines of marine life.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 21736 - Posted: 12.30.2015

By Diana Kwon Pupils are a rich source of social information. Although changes in pupil size are automatic and uncontrollable, they can convey interest, arousal, helpful or harmful intentions, and a variety of emotions. According to a new study published in Psychological Science, we even synchronize our pupil size with others—and doing so influences social decisions. Mariska Kret, a psychologist now at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and her colleagues recruited 69 Dutch university students to take part in an investment game. Each participant decided whether to transfer zero or five euros to a virtual partner after viewing a video of their eyes for four seconds. The invested money is tripled, and the receiver chooses how much to give back to the donor—so subjects had to make quick decisions about how trustworthy each virtual partner seemed. Using an eye tracker, the investigators found that the participants' pupils tended to mimic the changes in the partners' pupils, whether they dilated, constricted or remained static. As expected, subjects were more likely to give more money to partners with dilating pupils, a well-established signal of nonthreatening intentions. The more a subject mirrored the dilating pupils of a partner, the more likely he or she was to invest—but only if they were of the same race. The Caucasian participants trusted Caucasian eyes more than Asian eyes—which suggests that group membership is important when interpreting these subtle signals. © 2015 Scientific American

Keyword: Attention; Emotions
Link ID: 21735 - Posted: 12.30.2015

By Roni Caryn Rabin Melatonin has been shown to be effective in randomized clinical trials — the kind considered the gold standard in medicine — but it may work better for some sleep problems than others. “There is pretty strong evidence it’s effective for jet lag,” said D. Craig Hopp, a program director at the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, part of the National Institutes of Health. But “the evidence is more equivocal for chronic things like insomnia.” A 2002 Cochrane review that analyzed 10 randomized trials, most of them comparing oral melatonin to placebo, concluded that melatonin is “remarkably effective in preventing or reducing jet lag.” It not only helped people fall asleep faster and sleep more soundly, but also led to less daytime fatigue and improved general well-being. Eight of the 10 trials found that taking melatonin for several days after arriving at a destination reduced jet lag from flights crossing at least five time zones. In many of the trials, people also took melatonin on the day of the flight or for several days before the trip, usually in the late afternoon or early evening. Once at the destination, melatonin should be taken close to bedtime, aiming for the local hours between 10 p.m. and midnight. Doses of 0.5 milligrams and 5 milligrams were both effective, though people fell asleep faster and slept better with the larger dose. For others with insomnia, melatonin has more modest benefits. A 2013 analysis that looked at 19 randomized controlled trials involving 1,683 subjects determined that on average, melatonin reduced the amount of time it took to fall asleep by seven minutes when compared with placebo and increased total sleep time by eight minutes. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 21734 - Posted: 12.30.2015

Carl Zimmer Throughout the day, a clock ticks inside our bodies. It rouses us in the morning and makes us sleepy at night. It raises and lowers our body temperature and at the right times, and regulates the production of insulin and other hormones. From Our Advertisers The body’s circadian clock even influences our thoughts and feelings. Psychologists have measured some of its effects on the brain by having people take cognitive tests at different times of day. As it turns out, late morning turns out to be the best time to try doing tasks such as mental arithmetic that demand that we hold several pieces of information in mind at once. Later in the afternoon is the time to attempt simpler tasks, like searching for a particular letter in a page of gibberish. Another clue about the clock in our brains comes from people with conditions such as depression and bipolar disorder. People with these disorders often have trouble sleeping at night, or feel groggy during the day. Some people with dementia experience “sundowning,” becoming confused or aggressive at the end of the day. “Sleep and activity cycles are a very big part of psychiatric illnesses,” said Huda Akil, a neuroscientist at the University of Michigan. Yet neuroscientists have struggled to understand exactly how the circadian clock affects our minds. After all, researchers can’t simply pop open a subject’s skull and monitor his brain cells over the course of each day. A few years ago, Dr. Akil and her colleagues came up with an idea for the next best thing. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Depression
Link ID: 21733 - Posted: 12.29.2015

Love a sugar hit? Your sweet tooth may hail from an unlikely source: your liver. A hormone made by the organ appears to control how much carbohydrate and sugar we want to eat, and helps slow us down when we are overindulging. The hormone, called FGF21, has already been found to help obese mice lose weight and regain their sensitivity to insulin. A modified form is currently in clinical trials to test whether it has the same effect in people with diabetes. Our bodies break down carbohydrates into sugars such as sucrose, glucose and fructose. Recent genetic studies have suggested that people with altered levels of FGF21 consume more carbohydrates. To find out more, a team co-led by Matthew Potthoff at the University of Iowa observed the eating habits of mice with either abnormally high or low levels of the hormone. They found that mice genetically modified to lack the hormone chose to drink much higher levels of sugar-sweetened drinks than normal mice. Those given an extra dose of the hormone, on the other hand, reduced their sugar intake. The team also showed that the hormone is produced in response to high carbohydrate levels; it then enters the bloodstream, where it sends a signal to the brain to suppress our sugar intake. In people, blood levels of FGF21 triple 24 hours after a spike in blood sugar levels. When monkeys were given the synthetic version of the hormone being tested in clinical trials, they also opted for a diet low in sugar, according to a separate study by Steven Kliewer at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and colleagues. The team also found that these monkeys consumed less alcohol than those that weren’t given the compound. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Obesity; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 21732 - Posted: 12.29.2015

By BENEDICT CAREY SAN FRANCISCO — The idea was to go out in an emotional swan dive, a lunge for the afterlife that would stretch his 17-year-old imagination. He settled on a plan and shared the details with a Facebook friend: He would drop DMT, a powerful psychedelic, and then cut his throat. “Everyone was telling me what I could and couldn’t do — doctors, my parents,” said Frank, now a 19-year-old college student. “I was going to hurt myself, to show people, ‘Look, I am still in control of my life.’” And so, in time, he was. Frank, who eight months earlier had received a diagnosis of psychosis, the signature symptom of schizophrenia, and had been in and out of the hospital, gradually learned to take charge of his own recovery, in a new approach to treatment for people experiencing a first psychotic “break” with reality. At a time when lawmakers in Washington are debating large-scale reforms to the mental health care system, analysts are carefully watching a handful of new first-break programs like the one that treated Frank in New York as a way to potentially ease the cycle of hospitalization and lifetime disability that afflict so many mentally ill people. More than two million people in the United States have received a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Most are consigned to whatever treatment is available amid a hodgepodge of programs that often focus on antipsychotic drugs to blunt delusions and paranoia — medicines that can come with side effects so debilitating that many patients go off them and end up in a loop of hospitalization and despair. But over the past several years, a number of states have set up programs with a different approach, emphasizing supportive services, like sustained one-on-one therapy, school and work assistance, and family education, as well as medication. The therapists work to engage each patient as an equal partner in decisions — including about medication dosage, to make it as tolerable as possible. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 21731 - Posted: 12.29.2015

By Gary Stix A lingering question asked by neuroscientists has to do with what, if anything, makes the male and female brain distinctive, whether in mice or (wo)men. There is still no concise answer. The best evidence from the most recent research suggests that both males and females share the same neural circuitry, but use it differently. Catherine Dulac, a professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard, and investigator at the Howard Hughes medical Institute, is a pioneer in exploring these questions. I talked to her briefly about her research, which also extends far beyond just the neurobiology of gender. Can you tell me in broad overview about what you study? I'm interested in understanding how the brain engages in instinctive social behaviors. There are a lot of instinctive behaviors such as eating and sleeping that are essential in animals and humans, but social behavior is a very distinctive and particularly interesting set of instinctive behaviors that we would like to understand at the neuronal level. What we would like to understand in mechanistic terms is how does an individual recognize other animals of its own species, for example how does an animal identifies a male, a female, or an infant, how does the brain processes these signals in order to trigger appropriate social behaviors such as mating, aggression or parenting. Can you tell me a little bit about your work of the last few years that relates to gender identification? © 2015 Scientific American

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 21730 - Posted: 12.29.2015

By Katrina Schwartz It has become a cultural cliché that raising adolescents is the most difficult part of parenting. It’s common to joke that when kids are in their teens they are sullen, uncommunicative, more interested in their phones than in their parents and generally hard to take. But this negative trope about adolescents misses the incredible opportunity to positively shape a kid’s brain and future life course during this period of development. “[Adolescence is] a stage of life when we can really thrive, but we need to take advantage of the opportunity,” said Temple University neuroscientist Laurence Steinberg at a Learning and the Brain conference in Boston. Steinberg has spent his career studying how the adolescent brain develops and believes there is a fundamental disconnect between the popular characterizations of adolescents and what’s really going on in their brains. Because the brain is still developing during adolescence, it has incredible plasticity. It’s akin to the first five years of life, when a child’s brain is growing and developing new pathways all the time in response to experiences. Adult brains are somewhat plastic as well — otherwise they wouldn’t be able to learn new things — but “brain plasticity in adulthood involves minor changes to existing circuits, not the wholesale development of new ones or elimination of others,” Steinberg said. Adolescence is the last time in a person’s life that the brain can be so dramatically overhauled. © 2015 KQED Inc.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 21729 - Posted: 12.29.2015

By Karen Weintraub Mild cognitive impairment, or M.C.I., is not a disease in itself. Rather, it is a clinical description based on performance on a test of memory and thinking skills. Depending on its cause, mild cognitive impairment is potentially reversible. Poor performance on a cognitive test could be caused by certain medications, sleep apnea, depression or other problems, said Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. In those cases, when the underlying disease is treated, cognitive abilities can bounce back. But in about half of people with M.C.I. – doctors are not sure of the exact number — memory problems are the first sign of impending Alzheimer’s disease. If M.C.I. progresses to Alzheimer’s, there is no recovery. Alzheimer’s is marked by an inexorable decline that is always fatal, although the path from the first signs of cognitive impairment to death may take three to 15 years, said Dr. David Knopman, a professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. As many as 20 percent to 30 percent of those with M.C.I. who score below but near the cutoff for normal can cross back above in a subsequent cognitive test – perhaps because they are having a better day, he said. But someone whose score is borderline is at higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s than someone who scores higher, said Dr. Knopman, also vice chair of the medical and scientific advisory council of the Alzheimer’s Association. Doctors may be hesitant to label someone with early Alzheimer’s, which can be difficult to diagnose in the early stages, so they often call it mild cognitive impairment instead, said Dr. John C. Morris, a professor of neurology and the director of the Knight Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 21728 - Posted: 12.29.2015

by Sarah Zielinski When you get a phone call or a text from a friend or acquaintance, how fast you respond — or whether you even bother to pick up your phone — often depends on the quality of the relationship you have with that person. If it’s your best friend or mom, you probably pick up right away. If it’s that annoying coworker contacting you on Sunday morning, you might ignore it. Ring-tailed lemurs, it seems, are even pickier in who they choose to respond to. They only respond to calls from close buddies, a new study finds. These aren’t phone calls but contact calls. Ring-tailed lemurs live in female-dominated groups of 11 to 16, and up to 25, animals, and when the group is on the move, it’s common for one member to yell out a “meow!” and for other members to “meow!” back. A lemur may also make the call if it gets lost. The calls serve to keep the group together. The main way ring-tailed lemurs (and many other primates) build friendships, though, is through grooming. Grooming helps maintain health and hygiene and, more importantly, bonds between members. It’s a time-consuming endeavor, and animals have to be picky about who they bother to groom. Ipek Kulahci and colleagues at Princeton University wanted to see if there was a link between relationships built through grooming and vocal exchanges among ring-tailed lemurs. Contact calls don’t require nearly as much time or effort as grooming sessions, so it is possible that animals could be less discriminating when they respond to calls. But, the researchers reasoned, if the vocalizations were a way of maintaining the relationships built through painstaking grooming sessions, then the lemurs would be as picky in their responses as in their grooming partners. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2015.

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 21727 - Posted: 12.29.2015

James Bond's villain in the latest 007 film, Spectre, could use a lesson in neuroanatomy, a Toronto neurosurgeon says. In a scene recorded in a Morroccan desert, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, played by Christoph Waltz, tortures Bond using restraints and a head clamp fused with a robotic drill. The goal is to inflict pain and erase 007's memory bank of faces. But Blofeld didn't have his brain anatomy down and could have likely killed Daniel Craig's character instead, Dr. Michael Cusimano of St. Michael's Hospital, says in a letter published in this week's issue of the journal Nature. Aiming to erase Bond's memory of faces, the villain correctly intends to drill into the lateral fusiform gyrus, an area of the brain responsible for recognizing faces, Cusimano said. But in practice, the drill was placed in the wrong area, aiming for the neck instead of the brain. "Whereas the drill should have been aimed just in front of 007's ear, it was directed below the mastoid process under and behind his left ear," Cusimano wrote. It likely would have triggered a stroke or massive hemorrhage, he said. In a draft of the letter, Cusimano said he was "spellbound" watching the film in a packed theatre, but his enjoyment was somewhat marred by the blunder. "I laughed," he recalled in an interview. "I think people around me kind of looked at me and were wondering why I was laughing because it's a pretty tense part of the movie." ©2015 CBC/Radio-Canada.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 21726 - Posted: 12.27.2015

By BENEDICT CAREY Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, who gave psychiatry its first set of rigorous standards to describe mental disorders, providing a framework for diagnosis, research and legal judgments, as well as a lingua franca for the endless social debate over where to draw the line between normal and abnormal behavior, died on Friday. He was 83. From Our Advertisers Dr. Spitzer died from complications of heart disease at the assisted living facility where he lived in Seattle, his wife, Janet Williams, said. The couple had moved to Seattle from Princeton, N.J., this year. Dr. Spitzer’s remaking of psychiatry began with an early interest in one of the least glamorous and, historically, most ignored corners of the field: measurement. In the early 1960s, the field was fighting to sustain its credibility, in large part because diagnoses varied widely from doctor to doctor. For instance, a patient told he was depressed by one doctor might be called anxious or neurotic by another. The field’s diagnostic manual, at the time a pamphlet-like document rooted in Freudian ideas, left wide latitude for the therapist’s judgment. Dr. Spitzer, a rising star at Columbia University, was himself looking for direction, increasingly frustrated with Freudian analysis. A chance meeting with a colleague working on a new edition of the manual — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or the D.S.M. for short — led to a job taking notes for the committee debating revisions. There, he became fascinated with reliable means for measuring symptoms and behavior — i.e., assessment. “At the time, there was zero interest in assessment,” said Dr. Michael First, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia. “He saw how important it was, and his whole career led to assessment being taken seriously.” © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 21725 - Posted: 12.27.2015

By Diana Kwon Symptoms come and go in most cases of multiple sclerosis (MS), a chronic disease in which the immune system attacks myelin, the nonconductive sheath that surrounds neurons' axons. Yet 10 to 15 percent of cases are progressive rather than relapsing. This more severe version appears later in life and is marked by steadily worsening symptoms. No treatments are currently available, but that might be about to change. In September pharmaceutical company Hoffmann–La Roche announced positive results from three large clinical trials of ocrelizumab, an injectable antibody medication that targets B cells, for both relapsing and progressive MS. They found that the drug was more effective at treating relapsing MS than interferon beta-1a (Rebif), a top-performing drug now used to treat the disease. Even more exciting, it slowed the advance of symptoms in patients with progressive MS for the entire 12-week duration of the study. “The drug has dramatic effects on relapsing MS, and we finally have our foot in the door with the progressive form,” says Stephen Hauser, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who was involved in the trials. The fact that ocrelizumab works on both types of MS is a tantalizing clue for scientists trying to understand the root causes of the disease and figure out why the inflammation of the relapsing form eventually turns into progressive degeneration in some patients. “These results give evidence that the inflammatory and the degenerative components of MS are related,” Hauser says. “The big question now is, If we begin treatment really early, can we protect relapsing patients from developing the progressive problems later on?” © 2015 Scientific American

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 21724 - Posted: 12.27.2015

By KEN BELSON Researchers at several universities and research institutes were awarded almost $16 million Tuesday to find a way to diagnose, while victims are alive, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head hits in contact sports. The National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke issued the seven-year grant as part of a long-term study of brain disease in former N.F.L. and college football players, many of whom sustained multiple concussions on the field. Despite the implications that the research may have on football players and the N.F.L., no league money will be used to help pay for the grant. For years, researchers have been able to diagnose C.T.E. only by examining the brains of players who died and whose families agreed to donate the organ, a limitation that has slowed efforts to determine who is susceptible to having the disease. The new study, considered among the most ambitious in the field of sports-related brain injury, aims to develop ways to spot the disease in the living and figure out why certain players get it and others do not. A more comprehensive understanding of the disease, the researchers said, may lead to ways to prevent it. “There are so many critical unanswered questions about C.T.E.,” Dr. Robert Stern, the lead principal investigator and a professor at Boston University School of Medicine, said in a statement. “We are optimistic that this project will lead to many of these answers, by developing accurate methods of detecting and diagnosing C.T.E. during life, and by examining genetic and other risk factors for this disease.” © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 21723 - Posted: 12.24.2015

By Ferris Jabr Matthew Brien has struggled with overeating for the past 20 years. At age 24, he stood at 5′10′′ and weighed a trim 135 pounds. Today the licensed massage therapist tips the scales at 230 pounds and finds it particularly difficult to resist bread, pasta, soda, cookies and ice cream—especially those dense pints stuffed with almonds and chocolate chunks. He has tried various weight-loss programs that limit food portions, but he can never keep it up for long. “It's almost subconscious,” he says. “Dinner is done? Okay, I am going to have dessert. Maybe someone else can have just two scoops of ice cream, but I am going to have the whole damn [container]. I can't shut those feelings down.” Eating for the sake of pleasure, rather than survival, is nothing new. But only in the past several years have researchers come to understand deeply how certain foods—particularly fats and sweets—actually change brain chemistry in a way that drives some people to overconsume. Scientists have a relatively new name for such cravings: hedonic hunger, a powerful desire for food in the absence of any need for it; the yearning we experience when our stomach is full but our brain is still ravenous. And a growing number of experts now argue that hedonic hunger is one of the primary contributors to surging obesity rates in developed countries worldwide, particularly in the U.S., where scrumptious desserts and mouthwatering junk foods are cheap and plentiful. “Shifting the focus to pleasure” is a new approach to understanding hunger and weight gain, says Michael Lowe, a clinical psychologist at Drexel University who coined the term “hedonic hunger” in 2007. © 2015 Scientific American

Keyword: Obesity; Attention
Link ID: 21722 - Posted: 12.24.2015

Need to remember something important? Take a break. A proper one – no TV or flicking through your phone messages. It seems that resting in a quiet room for 10 minutes without stimulation can boost our ability to remember new information. The effect is particularly strong in people with amnesia, suggesting that they may not have lost the ability to form new memories after all. “A lot of people think the brain is a muscle that needs to be continually stimulated, but perhaps that’s not the best way,” says Michaela Dewar at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK. New memories are fragile. They need to be consolidated before being committed to long-term storage, a process thought to happen while we sleep. But at least some consolidation may occur while we’re awake, says Dewar – all you need is a timeout. In 2012, Dewar’s team showed that having a rest helps a person to remember what they were told a few minutes earlier. And the effect seems to last. People who had a 10-minute rest after hearing a story remembered 10 per cent more of it a week later than those who played a spot-the-difference game immediately afterwards. “We dim the lights and ask them to sit in an empty, quiet room, with no mobile phones,” says Dewar. When asked what they had been thinking about afterwards, most volunteers said they had let their minds wander. Now Dewar, along with Michael Craig at the University of Edinburgh and their colleagues, have found that spatial memories can also be consolidated when we rest. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sleep; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 21721 - Posted: 12.24.2015