By Francine Russo Some children insist, from the moment they can speak, that they are not the gender indicated by their biological sex. So where does this knowledge reside? And is it possible to discern a genetic or anatomical basis for transgender identity? Exploration of these questions is relatively new, but there is a bit of evidence for a genetic basis. Identical twins are somewhat more likely than fraternal twins to both be trans. Male and female brains are, on average, slightly different in structure, although there is tremendous individual variability. Several studies have looked for signs that transgender people have brains more similar to their experienced gender. Spanish investigators—led by psychobiologist Antonio Guillamon of the National Distance Education University in Madrid and neuropsychologist Carme Junqué Plaja of the University of Barcelona—used MRI to examine the brains of 24 female-to-males and 18 male-to-females—both before and after treatment with cross-sex hormones. Their results, published in 2013, showed that even before treatment the brain structures of the trans people were more similar in some respects to the brains of their experienced gender than those of their natal gender. For example, the female-to-male subjects had relatively thin subcortical areas (these areas tend to be thinner in men than in women). Male-to-female subjects tended to have thinner cortical regions in the right hemisphere, which is characteristic of a female brain. (Such differences became more pronounced after treatment.) “Trans people have brains that are different from males and females, a unique kind of brain,” Guillamon says. “It is simplistic to say that a female-to-male transgender person is a female trapped in a male body. It's not because they have a male brain but a transsexual brain.” Of course, behavior and experience shape brain anatomy, so it is impossible to say if these subtle differences are inborn. © 2015 Scientific American

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Brain imaging
Link ID: 21720 - Posted: 12.24.2015

By Elahe Izadi Tiny cameras attached to wild New Caledonian crows capture, for the first time, video footage of these elusive birds fashioning hooked stick tools, according to researchers. These South Pacific birds build tools out of twigs and leaves that they use to root out food, and they're the only non-humans that make hooked tools in the wild, write the authors of a study published Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters. Humans have previously seen the crows making the tools in artificial situations, in which scientists baited feeding sites and provided the raw tools; but researchers say the New Caledonian crows have never been filmed doing this in a completely natural setting. "New Caledonian crows are renowned for their unusually sophisticated tool behavior," the study authors write. "Despite decades of fieldwork, however, very little is known about how they make and use their foraging tools in the wild, which is largely owing to the difficulties in observing these shy forest birds." Study author Jolyon Troscianko of the University of Exeter in England described the tropical birds as "notoriously difficult to observe" because of the terrain of their habitat and their sensitivity to disturbance, he said in a press release. "By documenting their fascinating behavior with this new camera technology, we obtained valuable insights into the importance of tools in their daily search for food," he added.

Keyword: Evolution; Intelligence
Link ID: 21719 - Posted: 12.24.2015

Tim Radford British scientists believe they have made a huge step forward in the understanding of the mechanisms of human intelligence. That genetic inheritance must play some part has never been disputed. Despite occasional claims later dismissed, no-one has yet produced a single gene that controls intelligence. But Michael Johnson of Imperial College London, a consultant neurologist and colleagues report in Nature Neuroscience that they may have discovered a very different answer: two networks of genes, perhaps controlled by some master regulatory system, lie behind the human gift for lateral thinking, mental arithmetic, pub quizzes, strategic planning, cryptic crosswords and the ability to laugh at limericks. As usual, such research raises potentially politically-loaded questions about the nature of intelligence. “Intelligence is a composite measure of different cognitive abilities and how they are distributed in a population. It doesn’t measure any one thing. But it is measurable,” Dr Johnson said. About 40% of the variation in intelligence is explained by inheritance. The other factors are not yet certain. But the scientists raise the distant possibility that armed with the new information they may be able to devise ways to modify human intelligence. “The idea of ultimately using drugs to affect cognitive performance is not in any way new. We all drink coffee to improve our cognitive performance,” Dr Johnson said. “It’s about understanding the pathways that are related to cognitive ability both in health and disease, especially disease so one day we could help people with learning disabilities fulfill their potential. That is very important.” © 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Intelligence; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 21718 - Posted: 12.22.2015

Rae Ellen Bichell Ever notice the catnaps that older relatives take in the middle of the day? Or how grandparents tend to be early risers? You're not alone. Colleen McClung did, too. A neuroscientist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, McClung wanted to know what was going on in the brain that changes people's daily rhythms as they age. We all have a set of so-called clock genes that keep us on a 24-hour cycle. In the morning they wind us up, and at night they help us wind down. A study out Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that those genes might beat to a different rhythm in older folks. "When you think about the early bird dinner specials, it sort of fits in with their natural shift in circadian rhythms," says McClung. "There is a core set of genes that has been described in every animal — every plant all the way down from fungus to humans — and they're pretty much the same set of genes." The genes are the master controllers of a bunch of other genes that control processes ranging from metabolism to sleep. When you woke up this morning, the timekeeping genes told a gland in your brain to give a jolt of the stress hormone cortisol to wake up. Tonight, they'll tell a gland to spit out melatonin, a hormone that makes you sleepy. "You can think of them as sort of the conductor of an orchestra," says McClung. They make sure all the other genes keep time. © 2015 npr

Keyword: Sleep; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 21717 - Posted: 12.22.2015

A study of mice shows how proteasomes, a cell’s waste disposal system, may break down during Alzheimer’s disease, creating a cycle in which increased levels of damaged proteins become toxic, clog proteasomes, and kill neurons. The study, published in Nature Medicine and supported by the National Institutes of Health, suggests that enhancing proteasome activity with drugs during the early stages of Alzheimer’s may prevent dementia and reduce damage to the brain. “This exciting research advances our understanding of the role of the proteasomes in neurodegeneration and provides a potential way to alleviate symptoms of neurodegenerative disorders,” said Roderick Corriveau, Ph.D., program director at the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), which provided funding for the study. The proteasome is a hollow, cylindrical structure which chews up defective proteins into smaller, pieces that can be recycled into new proteins needed by a cell. To understand how neurodegenerative disorders affect proteasomes, Natura Myeku, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow working with Karen E. Duff, Ph.D., professor of pathology and cell biology at Columbia University, New York City, focused on tau, a structural protein that accumulates into clumps called tangles in the brain cells of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and several other neurodegenerative disorders known as tauopathies. Using a genetically engineered mouse model of tauopathy, as well as looking at cells in a dish, the scientists discovered that as levels of abnormal tau increased, the proteasome activity slowed down.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 21716 - Posted: 12.22.2015

By John Bohannon In July 1984, a man broke into the apartment of Jennifer Thompson, a 22-year-old in North Carolina, and threatened her with a knife. She negotiated, convincing him to not kill her. Instead, he raped her and fled. Just hours later, a sketch artist worked with Thompson to create an image of the assailant's face. Then the police showed her a series of mug shots of similar-looking men. Thompson picked out 22-year-old Ronald Cotton, whose photograph was on file because of a robbery committed in his youth. When word reached Cotton that the police were looking for him, he walked into a precinct voluntarily. He was eventually sentenced to life in prison based on Thompson's testimony. Eleven years later, after DNA sequencing technology caught up, samples taken from Thomson's body matched a different man who finally confessed. Cotton was set free. When Thompson first identified Cotton by photo, she was not convinced of her choice. "I think this is the guy," she told the police after several minutes of hesitation. As time went on, she grew surer. By the time Thompson faced Cotton in court a year later, her doubts were gone. She confidently pointed to him as the man who raped her. Because of examples like these, the U.S. justice system has been changing how eyewitnesses are used in criminal cases. Juries are told to discount the value of eyewitness testimony and ignore how confident the witnesses may be about whom they think they saw. Now, a new study of robbery investigations suggests that these changes may be doing more harm than good. © 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 21715 - Posted: 12.22.2015

By JOSEPH LEDOUX IN this age of terror, we struggle to figure out how to protect ourselves — especially, of late, from active shooters. One suggestion, promoted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security, and now widely disseminated, is “run, hide, fight.” The idea is: Run if you can; hide if you can’t run; and fight if all else fails. This three-step program appeals to common sense, but whether it makes scientific sense is another question. Underlying the idea of “run, hide, fight” is the presumption that volitional choices are readily available in situations of danger. But the fact is, when you are in danger, whether it is a bicyclist speeding at you or a shooter locked and loaded, you may well find yourself frozen, unable to act and think clearly. Freezing is not a choice. It is a built-in impulse controlled by ancient circuits in the brain involving the amygdala and its neural partners, and is automatically set into motion by external threats. By contrast, the kinds of intentional actions implied by “run, hide, fight” require newer circuits in the neocortex. Contemporary science has refined the old “fight or flight” concept — the idea that those are the two hard-wired options when in mortal danger — to the updated “freeze, flee, fight.” While “freeze, flee, fight” is superficially similar to “run, hide, fight,” the two expressions make fundamentally different assumptions about how and why we do what we do, when in danger. Why do we freeze? It’s part of a predatory defense system that is wired to keep the organism alive. Not only do we do it, but so do other mammals and other vertebrates. Even invertebrates — like flies — freeze. If you are freezing, you are less likely to be detected if the predator is far away, and if the predator is close by, you can postpone the attack (movement by the prey is a trigger for attack). © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions; Attention
Link ID: 21714 - Posted: 12.19.2015

Bret Stetka In June of 2001 musician Peter Gabriel flew to Atlanta to make music with two apes. The jam went surprisingly well. At each session Gabriel, a known dabbler in experimental music and a founding member of the band Genesis, would riff with a small group of musicians. The bonobos – one named Panbanisha, the other Kanzi — were trained to play in response on keyboards and showed a surprising, if rudimentary, awareness of melody and rhythm. Since then Gabriel has been working with scientists to help better understand animal cognition, including musical perception. Plenty of related research has explored whether or not animals other than humans can recognize what we consider to be music – whether they can they find coherence in a series of sounds that could otherwise transmit as noise. Many do, to a degree. And it's not just apes that respond to song. Parrots reportedly demonstrate some degree of "entrainment," or the syncing up of brainwave patterns with an external rhythm; dolphins may — and I stress may — respond to Radiohead; and certain styles of music reportedly influence dog behavior (Wagner supposedly honed his operas based on the response of his Cavalier King Charles Spaniel). But most researchers agree that fully appreciating what we create and recognize as music is a primarily human phenomenon. Recent research hints at how the human brain is uniquely able to recognize and enjoy music — how we render simple ripples of vibrating air into visceral, emotional experiences. It turns out, the answer has a lot to do with timing. The work also reveals why your musician friends are sometimes more tolerant of really boring music. © 2015 npr

Keyword: Hearing; Emotions
Link ID: 21713 - Posted: 12.19.2015

Carl Zimmer Over the past few million years, the ancestors of modern humans became dramatically different from other primates. Our forebears began walking upright, and they lost much of their body hair; they gained precision-grip fingers and developed gigantic brains. But early humans also may have evolved a less obvious but equally important advantage: a peculiar sleep pattern. “It’s really weird, compared to other primates,” said Dr. David R. Samson, a senior research scientist at Duke University. In the journal Evolutionary Anthropology, Dr. Samson and Dr. Charles L. Nunn, an evolutionary biologist at Duke, reported that human sleep is exceptionally short and deep, a pattern that may have helped give rise to our powerful minds. Until recently, scientists knew very little about how primates sleep. To document orangutan slumber, for example, Dr. Samson once rigged up infrared cameras at the Indianapolis Zoo and stayed up each night to watch the apes nod off. By observing their movements, he tracked when the orangutans fell in and out of REM sleep, in which humans experience dreams. “I became nocturnal for about seven months,” Dr. Samson said. “It takes someone who wants to get their Ph.D. to be motivated enough to do that.” In the new study. Dr. Samson and Dr. Nunn combined that information with studies of 19 other primate species. The researchers found wide variations in how long the animals slept. Mouse lemurs doze for seventeen hours a day, for example, while humans sleep just seven hours or so a day — “the least of any primate on the planet,” said Dr. Samson. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep; Evolution
Link ID: 21712 - Posted: 12.19.2015

Scientists showed that they could alter brain activity of rats and either wake them up or put them in an unconscious state by changing the firing rates of neurons in the central thalamus, a region known to regulate arousal. The study, published in eLIFE, was partially funded by the National Institutes of Health. “Our results suggest the central thalamus works like a radio dial that tunes the brain to different states of activity and arousal,” said Jin Hyung Lee, Ph.D., assistant professor of neurology, neurosurgery and bioengineering at Stanford University, and a senior author of the study. Located deep inside the brain the thalamus acts as a relay station sending neural signals from the body to the cortex. Damage to neurons in the central part of the thalamus may lead to problems with sleep, attention, and memory. Previous studies suggested that stimulation of thalamic neurons may awaken patients who have suffered a traumatic brain injury from minimally conscious states. Dr. Lee’s team flashed laser pulses onto light sensitive central thalamic neurons of sleeping rats, which caused the cells to fire. High frequency stimulation of 40 or 100 pulses per second woke the rats. In contrast, low frequency stimulation of 10 pulses per second sent the rats into a state reminiscent of absence seizures that caused them to stiffen and stare before returning to sleep. “This study takes a big step towards understanding the brain circuitry that controls sleep and arousal,” Yejun (Janet) He, Ph.D., program director at NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 21711 - Posted: 12.19.2015

Scientists hunting for a drug that speeds stroke recovery might find one in the bedside cabinets of millions of Americans. Mice treated with small doses of the sleeping pill Ambien recovered more quickly from strokes than those given a placebo. Ambien is the best-known incarnation of the drug zolpidem, which was prescribed 40 million times in the US in 2011. The researchers say that the finding should be replicated by other labs before proceeding with clinical trials, but it’s an intriguing result for a problem in desperate need of solutions. Strokes cut off the blood supply to part of the brain, leading to the death of oxygen-starved tissue. Some tissue repair can take place in the months afterwards, but most people never fully recover. Although physical therapy can help, there are no drugs that increase the amount of brain tissue repaired. “There are various natural mechanisms that promote a degree of normal recovery in animals and people, but it’s limited”, says Gary Steinberg of Stanford University School of Medicine, who was lead author of the study. One such mechanism may be an increase in signalling by the GABA neurotransmitter in parts of the brain that are able to rewire themselves. Because Ambien acts on GABA receptors, Steinberg and his team wondered whether they could use it to hack this mechanism to improve recovery. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Stroke; Sleep
Link ID: 21710 - Posted: 12.19.2015

Tina Hesman Saey SAN DIEGO — New research may help explain why chronic stress, sleep deprivation and other disruptions in the body’s daily rhythms are linked to obesity. Chronic exposure to stress hormones stimulates growth of fat cells, Mary Teruel of Stanford University reported December 16 at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology. Normally, stress hormones, such as cortisol, are released during waking hours in regular bursts that follow daily, or circadian, rhythms. Those regular pulses don’t cause fat growth, Teruel and colleagues discovered. But extended periods of exposure to the hormones, caused by such things as too little sleep, break up that rhythm and lead to more fat cells. Even though only about 10 percent of fat cells are replaced each year, the body maintains a pool of prefat cells that are poised to turn into fat. “If they all differentiated at once, you’d be drowning in fat,” Teruel said. Previous studies have shown that a protein called PPAR-gamma controls the development of fat cells and that stress hormones turn on production of PPAR-gamma. Teruel’s team discovered that prefat cells with levels of PPAR-gamma below a certain threshold don’t transform into fat in laboratory tests. Steady hormone exposure eventually allowed the precursor cells to build up enough PPAR-gamma to cross the threshold into fat making. But in cells given the same total amount of stress hormone in short pulses, PPAR-gamma levels rose and fell. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2015

Keyword: Obesity; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 21709 - Posted: 12.19.2015

Megan Scudellari In 1997, physicians in southwest Korea began to offer ultrasound screening for early detection of thyroid cancer. News of the programme spread, and soon physicians around the region began to offer the service. Eventually it went nationwide, piggybacking on a government initiative to screen for other cancers. Hundreds of thousands took the test for just US$30–50. LISTEN James Harkin, a researcher for the British TV trivia show QI, talks to Adam Levy about how he finds facts and myths for the show — and then runs a mini-quiz to see whether the Podcast team can discern science fact from science fiction 00:00 Across the country, detection of thyroid cancer soared, from 5 cases per 100,000 people in 1999 to 70 per 100,000 in 2011. Two-thirds of those diagnosed had their thyroid glands removed and were placed on lifelong drug regimens, both of which carry risks. Such a costly and extensive public-health programme might be expected to save lives. But this one did not. Thyroid cancer is now the most common type of cancer diagnosed in South Korea, but the number of people who die from it has remained exactly the same — about 1 per 100,000. Even when some physicians in Korea realized this, and suggested that thyroid screening be stopped in 2014, the Korean Thyroid Association, a professional society of endocrinologists and thyroid surgeons, argued that screening and treatment were basic human rights. © 2015 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Evolution
Link ID: 21708 - Posted: 12.16.2015

Parrots can dance and talk, and now apparently they can use and share grinding tools. They were filmed using pebbles for grinding, thought to be a uniquely human activity – one that allowed our civilisations to extract more nutrition from cereal-based foods. Megan Lambert from the University of York, UK, and her colleagues were studying greater vasa parrots (Coracopsis vasa) in an aviary when they noticed some of the birds scraping shells in their enclosure with pebbles and date pips. “We were surprised,” says Lambert. “Using tools [to grind] seashells is something never seen before in animals.” Afterwards, the birds would lick the powder from the tool. Some of the parrots even passed tools to each other, which is rarely seen in animals. This behaviour was exclusively male to female. Lambert and her team, who watched the parrots for six months, noticed that the shell-scraping was more frequent before their breeding season. Since seashells contain calcium, which is critical for females before egg-laying, they suspect that the parrots could be manufacturing their own calcium supplements, as the mineral is probably better absorbed in powder form. Greater vasa parrots are native to Madagascar and have breeding and social systems unique among parrots. For example, two or more males have an exclusive sexual relationship with two or more females, and they are unusually tolerant of their group members. The reproductive ritual of sharing tools and grinding could be yet another one of their quirks. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 21707 - Posted: 12.16.2015

By Geoffrey S. Holtzman In November 1834, a 9-year-old boy named Major Mitchell was tried in Maine on one charge of maiming and one charge of felonious assault with intent to maim. He had lured an 8-year-old classmate into a field, beaten him with sticks, attempted to drown him in a stream, and castrated him with a piece of tin. Yet what makes this case so remarkable is neither the age of the defendant nor the violence of his crime, but the nature of his trial. Mitchell’s case marks the first time in U.S. history that a defendant’s attorney sought leniency from a jury on account of there being something wrong with the defendant’s brain. More recently, there has been an explosion in the number of criminals who have sought leniency on similar grounds. While the evidence presented by Mitchell’s defense was long ago debunked as pseudoscience (and was rightly dismissed by the judge), the case for exculpating Major Mitchell may actually be stronger today than it was 181 years ago. In a curious historical coincidence, recent advances in neuroscience suggest that there really might have been something wrong with Major Mitchell’s brain and that neurological deficits really could have contributed to his violent behavior. The case provides a unique window through which to view the relationship between 19th-century phrenology—the pseudoscientific study of the skull as an index of mental faculties—and 21st-century neuroscience. As you might expect, there is a world of difference between the two, but maintaining that difference depends crucially on the responsible use of neuroscience. Major Mitchell’s story cautions against overlooking neuroscience’s limitations, as well as its ability to be exploited for suspect purposes. © 2015 The Slate Group LLC.

Keyword: Emotions; Attention
Link ID: 21706 - Posted: 12.16.2015

Human memory is about to get supercharged. A memory prosthesis being trialled next year could not only restore long-term recall but may eventually be used to upload new skills directly to the brain – just like in the film The Matrix. The first trials will involve people with epilepsy. Seizures can sometimes damage the hippocampus, causing the brain to lose its ability to form long-term memories. To repair this ability, Theodore Berger at the University of Southern California and his colleagues used electrodes already implanted in people’s brains as part of epilepsy treatment to record electrical activity associated with memory. The team then developed an algorithm that could predict the neural activity thought to occur when a short-term memory becomes a long-term memory, as it passes through the hippocampus. Early next year, Berger’s team will use this algorithm to instruct the electrodes to predict and then mimic the activity that should occur when long-term memories are formed. “Hopefully, it will repair their long-term memory,” says Berger. Previous studies using animals suggest that the prosthesis might even give people a better memory than they could expect naturally. A similar approach could eventually be used to implant new memories into the brain. Berger’s team recorded brain activity in a rat that had been trained to perform a specific task. The memory prosthesis then replicated that activity in a rat that hadn’t been trained. The second rat was able to learn the task much faster than the first rat – as if it already had some memory of the task. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Robotics
Link ID: 21705 - Posted: 12.16.2015

Tina Hesman Saey SAN DIEGO — Friendly ghosts help muscles heal after injury. Connective tissue sheaths that bundle muscle cells together leave behind hollow fibers when muscles are injured, Micah Webster of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Baltimore and colleagues discovered. Muscle-repairing stem cells build new tissue from inside those empty tunnels, known as ghost fibers, Webster reported December 13 at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology. Researchers previously knew that stem cells can heal muscle, but how stem cells integrate new cells into muscle fibers has been a mystery. Webster and colleagues used a special microscopy technique to watch stem cells in live mice as the cells fixed muscles damaged by snake venom. Stem cells from undamaged parts of the muscle fiber crawled back and forth through the ghostly part of the fibers and spaced themselves out evenly. Stem cells replicated themselves to reconstruct each muscle fiber inside its ghostly shell the researchers found. Stem cells didn’t move from one ghost fiber to another. The finding suggests that researchers will need to create artificial ghost fibers to repair injuries in which chunks of muscles are lost, such as in soldiers hit by explosives, Webster said. The researchers also reported the results online December 10 in Cell Stem Cell. M.T. Webster et al. Intravital imaging reveals ghost fibers as architectural units guiding muscle progenitors. Annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology, San Diego, December 13, 2015. M.T. Webster et al. Intravital imaging reveals ghost fibers as architectural units guiding myogenic progenitors during regeneration. Cell Stem Cell. Published online December 10, 2015. doi: 10.1016/j.stem.2015.11.005 © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2015

Keyword: Muscles
Link ID: 21704 - Posted: 12.16.2015

By David Shultz As the Rolling Stones, Revlon, and Angelina Jolie can attest, not many body parts are more sexualized than the lips. A new study published online today in Royal Society Open Science, suggests that we’re not the only primates that feel this way. Black-and-white snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus bieti, pictured) have a strict social hierarchy in which a few, older males mate with multiple females, while the younger males form bachelor groups and bide their time. The males’ lips naturally redden with age, but the story seems a little more complicated than that: A series of photographs taken over multiple months shows that mating males’ lips redden during the mating season, whereas the bachelor males’ become paler. Scientists still aren’t sure why the animals’ lips seem to correspond with their social rank, but one idea is that females prefer the redder shades when choosing a mate, similar to how a female peacock chooses the male with the most elaborate tail. Another explanation could be that the males are using lip color as a preemptive indicator of their status in order to minimize conflict: Paler lips could make bachelors appear less threatening, allowing the mating males to focus their aggression on other red-lipped competitors. Both mechanisms could also be acting simultaneously, the authors say. © 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 21703 - Posted: 12.16.2015

Jon Hamilton Taking antidepressants during the second or third trimester of pregnancy may increase the risk of having a child with autism spectrum disorder, according to a study of Canadian mothers and children published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics. But scientists not involved in the research say the results are hard to interpret and don't settle the long-running debate about whether expectant mothers with depression should take antidepressants. "This study doesn't answer the question," says Bryan King, program director of the autism center at Seattle Children's Hospital and a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington. "My biggest concern is that it will be over-interpreted," says King, who wrote an editorial that accompanied the study. "It kind of leaves you more confused," says Alan Brown, a professor of psychiatry and epidemiology at Columbia University who studies risk factors for autism. "Mothers shouldn't get super worried about it," he says. One reason it's confusing is that there's strong evidence that mothers with depression are more likely than other women to have a child with autism, whether or not they take antidepressants during pregnancy. King and Brown say that makes it very hard to disentangle the effects of depression itself from those of the drugs used to treat it. © 2015 npr

Keyword: Depression; Autism
Link ID: 21702 - Posted: 12.15.2015

When anticonvulsant drugs fail to control epilepsy, surgery can be used as a last resort: removing the part of the brain thought to be the source of someone’s seizures. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always work. A computer model of brain activity could change things for the better by allowing surgeons to more precisely tailor the procedure to the individual. Seizures are caused by sudden surges in electrical activity in the brain. EEG scans made during a seizure can capture what is going on, providing a clue to the part of the brain that needs to be cut out. Even so, the surgery still fails to prevent seizures in 30 per cent of cases. There are other ways to track down the source of someone’s seizures, however. For example, the connectivity of the brain’s neurons and the surface area of affected regions is different in people with epilepsy compared with those who do not have the condition. Frances Hutchings at Newcastle University, UK and her colleagues have shown that these differences can be picked up using a combination of fMRI scans and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). They used this data to model the brains of 22 people with epilepsy. By simulating the brain’s electrical activity, they were able to see where it went awry and identify the region where seizures were most likely to originate in each individual. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Epilepsy; Brain imaging
Link ID: 21701 - Posted: 12.15.2015