|By Janali Gustafson Cravings—we all have them. These intense desires can be triggered by a place, a smell, even a picture. For recovering drug addicts, such memory associations can increase vulnerability to relapse. Now researchers at the Florida campus of the Scripps Research Institute have found a chemical that prevents rats from recalling their drug-associated memories. The study, published online in Biological Psychiatry last fall, is also the first of its kind to disrupt memories without requiring active recollection. Over the course of six days the rats in this study alternated between one of two chambers. On days one, three and five, the animals were injected with methamphetamine hydrochloride—the street drug known as meth—and placed in one room. On the even-numbered days they received a saline placebo and entered a different chamber. After two more days, half the rodents were given a choice between the rooms. As expected, they showed a clear preference for the place they visited after receiving meth. The other half of the animals were injected with a solution containing Latrunculin A (LatA). This chemical interferes with actin, a protein known to be involved in memory formation. These animals showed no preference between rooms, even up to a day later: their choices seemed not to be driven by a memory of meth. Previous research has suggested that drugs of abuse alter the way actin functions, causing it to constantly refresh memories associated with these drugs rather than tucking them away into typical memory storage, which is more inert. As a result of their active status, drug memories might remain susceptible to disruption long after their initial formation. © 2014 Scientific American

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 19492 - Posted: 04.16.2014

Associated Press NEW YORK -- A small study of casual marijuana smokers has turned up evidence of changes in the brain, a possible sign of trouble ahead, researchers say. The young adults who volunteered for the study were not dependent on pot, nor did they show any marijuana-related problems. "What we think we are seeing here is a very early indication of what becomes a problem later on with prolonged use," things like lack of focus and impaired judgment, said Dr. Hans Breiter, a study author. Longer-term studies will be needed to see if such brain changes cause any symptoms over time, said Breiter, of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Massachusetts General Hospital. Previous studies have shown mixed results in looking for brain changes from marijuana use, perhaps because of differences in the techniques used, he and others noted in Wednesday's issue of the Journal of Neurosciences. The study is among the first to focus on possible brain effects in recreational pot smokers, said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The federal agency helped pay for the work. She called the work important but preliminary. The 20 pot users in the study, ages 18 to 25, said they smoked marijuana an average of about four days a week, for an average total of about 11 joints. Half of them smoked fewer than six joints a week. Researchers scanned their brains and compared the results with those of 20 nonusers who were matched for age, sex and other traits. The results showed differences in two brain areas associated with emotion and motivation - the amygdala and the nucleus accumbens. Users showed higher density than nonusers, as well as differences in shape of those areas. Both differences were more pronounced in those who reported smoking more marijuana. © 2014 Hearst Communications, Inc.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Brain imaging
Link ID: 19491 - Posted: 04.16.2014

Scientists haven’t pinpointed a definitive cause for Alzheimer’s disease—a fatal brain disorder that robs people of their memory and cognitive abilities. But now researchers have uncovered an intriguing clue about why more women than men develop the condition. A particular gene variant, found in a quarter of the population and long known to raise people’s risk for the disease, seems less menacing in men, new research shows. The findings could have implications for potential gender-specific treatments, some Alzheimer’s investigators suggest. Though a small percentage of Alzheimer’s cases arise from genetic mutations that cause obvious disease before the age of 65, the vast majority of people who develop the condition do so later in life from undefined triggers, some thought to be genetic. In 1993, scientists found that people who inherit a gene variant called apolipoprotein E4 (APOE4) are more prone to the common form of Alzheimer’s that strikes in late life. There’s also a “risk-neutral” variant (APOE3) and a much rarer version of the gene (APOE2) that decreases a person’s risk for Alzheimer’s. Shortly thereafter, other research groups replicated the finding and some data hinted that APOE4 raises Alzheimer’s risk more in women than in men. Indeed, when scientists combed through a massive data set containing 5930 Alzheimer’s patients and 8607 dementia-free elderly from 40 independent studies, they reported in 1997 that females with the APOE4 variant were four times more likely to have Alzheimer’s compared with people with the more common, neutral form of the gene. However, in men, APOE4 seemed virtually harmless. “It was a pretty big effect,” says Michael Greicius, a neurologist at Stanford University Medical Center in California, of the analysis. Yet the findings didn’t create much of a stir at the time. © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Alzheimers; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 19490 - Posted: 04.15.2014

Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge and director of the Autism Research Center, replies: Your mother is correct that the scientific evidence points to the brain of people with autism and Asperger's syndrome as being different but not necessarily “disordered.” Studies have shown that the brain in autism develops differently, in terms of both structure and function, compared with more typical patterns of development, and that certain parts of the brain are larger or smaller in people who have autism compared with those who have a more typical brain. One structural difference resides in the brain's corpus callosum, which connects the right and left hemispheres. Most studies show that the corpus callosum is smaller in certain sections in people with autism, which can limit connectivity among brain regions and help explain why people with autism have difficulty integrating complex ideas. An example of a functional difference is in the activity of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is typically active in tasks involving theory of mind—the ability to imagine other people's thoughts and feelings—but is underactive when people with autism perform such tasks. The brain of those with autism also shows advantages. When some people with this condition are asked to complete detail-oriented tasks, such as finding a target shape in a design, they are quicker and more accurate. Additionally, those with autism generally exhibit less activity in the posterior parietal cortex, involved in visual and spatial perception, which suggests that their brain is performing the task more efficiently. © 2014 Scientific American

Keyword: Autism; Attention
Link ID: 19489 - Posted: 04.15.2014

Feeling peeved at your partner? You may want to check your blood sugar. A new study suggests that low levels of glucose in the blood may increase anger and aggression between spouses. The researchers say their findings suggest a connection between glucose and self-control, but other experts disagree about the study’s implications. Glucose is a source of fuel for the body, and its levels in the blood rise and fall throughout the day, as the body metabolizes meals that include carbohydrates. Researchers have suspected since the 1960s that low glucose or swings in glucose may play a role in human aggression. In two 2010 studies, psychologist Brad Bushman of Ohio State University, Columbus, attempted to figure out just what that role is, first by measuring vengefulness among people with symptoms of type 2 diabetes (a disease in which the body can’t regulate glucose levels properly), and then by providing sweetened drinks to strangers competing on a computerized task. Both studies suggested that higher glucose levels can make strangers less likely to treat each other aggressively. Bushman wondered about the relationship between glucose levels and aggression among romantic couples. So he and colleagues at the University of Kentucky and the University of North Carolina recruited 107 married couples and equipped them with blood glucose meters, voodoo dolls, and 51 pins to record their glucose and anger levels over time. For 21 days, the couples used the meters to measure their glucose levels each morning before breakfast and each evening before bed. They also assessed how angry they were at their spouse at the end of each day, by recording how many of the 51 pins they stuck into their voodoo dolls just before bed when their partner wasn’t looking. After 21 days, the couples were invited into the lab. There, they played a computer game that allowed them to blast their spouse with an unpleasant noise—a mixture of fingernails scratching a chalkboard, ambulance sirens, and dentist drills—as loudly and for as long as he or she wanted, as a proxy for their willingness to act aggressively and make their partner suffer. © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Emotions; Obesity
Link ID: 19488 - Posted: 04.15.2014

By SABRINA TAVERNISE WASHINGTON — Researchers at the University of North Carolina published a paper last week that introduced another wrinkle into the debate about childhood obesity. They disputed recent findings that obesity among young children had fallen since 2004, arguing that a longer view — using data all the way back to 1999 — showed that these youngsters were not really getting any thinner. So which view is correct? The answer seems to be both. Obesity has become a major health problem in the United States, affecting about 17 percent of Americans ages 2 to 19, up from about 5 percent in the early 1970s. The rate rose for years but then leveled off, and the current debate centers on whether obesity has begun to decline in the youngest of these children. The question has drawn considerable attention not just because scientists disagree on the answer, but also because it has a political dimension: The issue has been vigorously championed by Michelle Obama, the first lady. The North Carolina researchers and the federal team that produced the earlier findings both relied on the same data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. It is considered the gold standard in health research because height and weight are measured by a health professional, not the respondents themselves. But instead of looking only at the past decade of data on children ages 2 to 5, the North Carolina researchers looked at 14 years’ worth. An unusual spike in obesity among these children in 2003 created the false appearance of a later decline, they concluded, so comparing 2012 to 1999 gave a truer view of the trends. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 19487 - Posted: 04.15.2014

by Alix Spiegel It was late, almost 9 at night, when Justin Holden pulled the icy pizza box from the refrigerator at the Brookville Supermarket in Washington, D.C. He stood in front of the open door, scanning the nutrition facts label. A close relative had recently had a heart attack, and in the back of his mind there was this idea stalking him: If he put too much salt in his body, it would eventually kill him. For this reason the information in the label wasn't exactly soothing: 1,110 milligrams of sodium seemed like a lot. But there was even worse-sounding stuff at the bottom of the label. Words like "diglyceride," with a string of letters that clearly had no business sitting next to each other. It suggested that something deeply unnatural was sitting inside the box. "Obviously it's not good for me," the 20ish Holden said. "But, hopefully, I can let it slide in." He tucked the pizza under his arm, and headed one aisle over for a sports drink. Who among us has not had a moment like this? That intimate tete-a-tete with the nutrition label, searching out salt, sugar, fat, trying to discern: How will you affect me? Are you good? Or are you bad? Here's the thing you probably haven't stopped to consider: how the label itself is affecting you. "Labels are not just labels; they evoke a set of beliefs," says , a clinical psychologist who does research at the Columbia Business School in New York. A couple of years ago, Crum found herself considering what seems like a pretty strange question. She wanted to know whether the information conveyed by a nutritional label could physically change what happens to you — "whether these labels get under the skin literally," she says, "and actually affect the body's physiological processing of the nutrients that are consumed." ©2014 NPR

Keyword: Obesity; Attention
Link ID: 19486 - Posted: 04.15.2014

By KATHERINE BOUTON Like almost all newborns in this country, Alex Justh was given a hearing test at birth. He failed, but his parents were told not to worry: He was a month premature and there was mucus in his ears. A month later, an otoacoustic emission test, which measures the response of hair cells in the inner ear, came back normal. Alex was the third son of Lydia Denworth and Mark Justh (pronounced Just), and at first they “reveled at what a sweet and peaceful baby he was,” Ms. Denworth writes in her new book, “I Can Hear You Whisper: An Intimate Journey Through the Science of Sound and Language,” being published this week by Dutton. But Alex began missing developmental milestones. He was slow to sit up, slow to stand, slow to walk. His mother felt a “vague uneasiness” at every delay. He seemed not to respond to questions, the kind one asks a baby: “Can you show me the cow?” she’d ask, reading “Goodnight, Moon.” Nothing. No response. At 18 months Alex unequivocally failed a hearing test, but there was still fluid in his ears, so the doctor recommended a second test. It wasn’t until 2005, when Alex was 2 ½, that they finally realized he had moderate to profound hearing loss in both ears. This is very late to detect deafness in a child; the ideal time is before the first birthday. Alex’s parents took him to Dr. Simon Parisier, an otolaryngologist at New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, who recommended a cochlear implant as soon as possible. “Age 3 marked a critical juncture in the development of language,” Ms. Denworth writes. “I began to truly understand that we were not just talking about Alex’s ears. We were talking about his brain.” © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hearing; Language
Link ID: 19485 - Posted: 04.15.2014

by Agata Blaszczak-Boxe, LiveScience.com Unlike many humans, some monkeys are genuinely faithful to their mates. A species known as Azara's owl monkeys tends to be monogamous, according to a new study of these primates. The research also found that the monkeys' inclination to be faithful was related to the male monkeys' tendency to care for their offspring. "They [Azara's owl monkeys] live in pairs, so, in a group, we have only one adult male and one adult female, and both of them are faithful," study author Maren Huck, a professor at the University of Derby in England, told Live Science. "We found a link between... parental care and having few instances of cheating," Huck said. Researchers had known before this study that members of the Azara's species were socially monogamous, which means that males and females live in pairs. But in animals, including humans, social monogamy is not always equivalent to what researchers call genetic monogamy, where females and males only reproduce with their mates. One way researchers can check for genetic monogamy is to analyze the DNA of mating pairs, and check the paternity of the offspring. In the study, the researchers analyzed field observations of the monkeys' behavior, along with genetic samples from a total of 128 monkeys, including some that lived in groups, and others that were solitary "floaters." The material used by the research team included samples from 35 offspring that were born to 17 reproducing pairs. © 2014 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 19484 - Posted: 04.15.2014

By CATHERINE SAINT LOUIS Doctors are prescribing opioid painkillers to pregnant women in astonishing numbers, new research shows, despite the fact that risks to the developing fetus are largely unknown. Of 1.1 million pregnant women enrolled in Medicaid nationally, nearly 23 percent filled an opioid prescription in 2007, up from 18.5 percent in 2000, according to a study published last week in Obstetrics and Gynecology, the largest to date of opioid prescriptions among pregnant women. Medicaid covers the medical expenses for 45 percent of births in the United States. The lead author, Rishi J. Desai, a research fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said he had expected to “see some increase in trend, but not this magnitude.” “One in five women using opioids during pregnancy is definitely surprising,” he said. In February, a study of 500,000 privately insured women found that 14 percent were dispensed opioid painkillers at least once during pregnancy. From 2005 to 2011, the percentage of pregnant women prescribed opioids decreased slightly, but the figure exceeded 12 percent in any given year, according to Dr. Brian T. Bateman, an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and his colleagues. Their research was published in Anesthesiology. Dr. Joshua A. Copel, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn., said he was taken aback by the findings, which come even as conscientious mothers-to-be increasingly view pregnancy as a time to skip caffeine, sushi and even cold cuts. “To hear that there’s such a high use of narcotics in pregnancy when I see so many women who worry about a cup of coffee seems incongruous,” he said. In both studies, the opioids most prescribed during pregnancy were codeine and hydrocodone. Oxycodone was among the top four. Women usually took the drugs for a week or less; however, just over 2 percent of women in both studies took them for longer periods. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 19483 - Posted: 04.14.2014

By Ariel Van Brummelen The presence of light may do more for us than merely allow for sight. A study by Gilles Vandewalle and his colleagues at the University of Montreal suggests that light affects important brain functions—even in the absence of vision. Previous studies have found that certain photoreceptor cells located in the retina can detect light even in people who do not have the ability to see. Yet most studies suggested that at least 30 minutes of light exposure is needed to significantly affect cognition via these nonvisual pathways. Vandewalle's study, which involved three completely blind participants, found that just a few seconds of light altered brain activity, as long as the brain was engaged in active processing rather than at rest. First the experimenters asked their blind subjects whether a blue light was on or off, and the subjects answered correctly at a rate significantly higher than random chance—even though they confirmed they had no conscious perception of the light. Using functional MRI, the researchers then determined that less than a minute of blue light exposure triggered changes in activity in regions of their brain associated with alertness and executive function. Finally, the scientists found that if the subjects received simultaneous auditory stimulation, a mere two seconds of blue light was enough to modify brain activity. The researchers think the noise engaged active sensory processing, which allowed the brain to respond to the light much more quickly than in previous studies when subjects rested while being exposed to light. The results confirm that the brain can detect light in the absence of working vision. They also suggest that light can quickly alter brain activity through pathways unrelated to sight. The researchers posit that this nonvisual light sensing may aid in regulating many aspects of human brain function, including sleep/wake cycles and threat detection. © 2014 Scientific American

Keyword: Vision; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 19482 - Posted: 04.14.2014

By BENEDICT CAREY The relationship had become intolerably abusive, and after a stinging phone call one night, it seemed there was only one way to end the pain. Enough wine and pills should do the job — and would have, except that paramedics barged through the door, alerted by her lover. “I very rarely tell the story in detail publicly, it’s so triggering and sensational,” said Dese’Rae L. Stage, 30, a photographer and writer living in Brooklyn who tried to kill herself in 2006. “I talk about what led up to it, how helpless I felt — and what came after.” The nation’s oldest suicide prevention organization, the American Association of Suicidology, decided in a vote by its board last week to recognize a vast but historically invisible portion of its membership: people, like Ms. Stage, who tried to kill themselves but survived. About a million American adults a year make a failed attempt at suicide, surveys suggest, far outnumbering the 38,000 who succeed, and in the past few years, scores of them have come together on social media and in other forums to demand a bigger voice in prevention efforts. Plans for speakers bureaus of survivors willing to tell their stories are well underway, as is research to measure the effect of such testimony on audiences. For decades, mental health organizations have featured speakers with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression. But until now, suicide has been virtually taboo, because of not only shame and stigma, but also fears that talking about the act could give others ideas about how to do it. “This is a real shift you’re seeing,” said Heidi Bryan, 56, of Neenah, Wis., who has been speaking for years about suicide attempts she made in the 1990s. “For people working in suicide prevention, they always told us not to talk about our own experience, like they were afraid to tip us over the edge or something. Honestly, we’re the ones who know what works and what doesn’t.” © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 19481 - Posted: 04.14.2014

|By Simon Makin Scientists have observed that reading ability scales with socioeconomic status. Yet music might help close the gap, according to Nina Kraus and her colleagues at Northwestern University. Kraus's team tested the auditory abilities of teenagers aged 14 or 15, grouped by socioeconomic status (as indexed by their mother's level of education, a commonly used surrogate measure). The researchers recorded the kids' brain waves with EEG as they listened to a repeated syllable against soft background sound and when they heard nothing. They found that children of mothers with a lower education had noisier, weaker and more variable neural activity in response to sound and greater activity in the absence of sound. The children also scored lower on tests of reading and working memory. Kraus thinks music training is worth investigating as a possible intervention for such auditory deficits. The brains of trained musicians differ from nonmusicians, and they also enjoy a range of auditory advantages, including better speech perception in noise, according to research from Kraus's laboratory. The researchers admit that this finding could be the result of preexisting differences that predispose some people to choose music as a career or hobby, but they point out that some experimental studies show that musical training, whether via one-on-one lessons or in group sessions, enhances people's response to speech. Most recently Kraus's group has shown that these effects may last. Kraus surveyed 44 adults aged 55 to 76 and found that four or more years of musical training in childhood was linked to faster neural responses to speech, even for the older adults who had not picked up an instrument for more than 40 years. © 2014 Scientific American

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Hearing
Link ID: 19480 - Posted: 04.14.2014

By ALAN SCHWARZ With more than six million American children having received a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, concern has been rising that the condition is being significantly misdiagnosed and overtreated with prescription medications. Yet now some powerful figures in mental health are claiming to have identified a new disorder that could vastly expand the ranks of young people treated for attention problems. Called sluggish cognitive tempo, the condition is said to be characterized by lethargy, daydreaming and slow mental processing. By some researchers’ estimates, it is present in perhaps two million children. Experts pushing for more research into sluggish cognitive tempo say it is gaining momentum toward recognition as a legitimate disorder — and, as such, a candidate for pharmacological treatment. Some of the condition’s researchers have helped Eli Lilly investigate how its flagship A.D.H.D. drug might treat it. The Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology devoted 136 pages of its January issue to papers describing the illness, with the lead paper claiming that the question of its existence “seems to be laid to rest as of this issue.” The psychologist Russell Barkley of the Medical University of South Carolina, for 30 years one of A.D.H.D.’s most influential and visible proponents, has claimed in research papers and lectures that sluggish cognitive tempo “has become the new attention disorder.” In an interview, Keith McBurnett, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and co-author of several papers on sluggish cognitive tempo, said: “When you start talking about things like daydreaming, mind-wandering, those types of behaviors, someone who has a son or daughter who does this excessively says, ‘I know about this from my own experience.’ They know what you’re talking about.” © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 19479 - Posted: 04.12.2014

Anne Trafton | MIT News Office Picking out a face in the crowd is a complicated task: Your brain has to retrieve the memory of the face you’re seeking, then hold it in place while scanning the crowd, paying special attention to finding a match. A new study by MIT neuroscientists reveals how the brain achieves this type of focused attention on faces or other objects: A part of the prefrontal cortex known as the inferior frontal junction (IFJ) controls visual processing areas that are tuned to recognize a specific category of objects, the researchers report in the April 10 online edition of Science. Scientists know much less about this type of attention, known as object-based attention, than spatial attention, which involves focusing on what’s happening in a particular location. However, the new findings suggest that these two types of attention have similar mechanisms involving related brain regions, says Robert Desimone, the Doris and Don Berkey Professor of Neuroscience, director of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and senior author of the paper. “The interactions are surprisingly similar to those seen in spatial attention,” Desimone says. “It seems like it’s a parallel process involving different areas.” In both cases, the prefrontal cortex — the control center for most cognitive functions — appears to take charge of the brain’s attention and control relevant parts of the visual cortex, which receives sensory input. For spatial attention, that involves regions of the visual cortex that map to a particular area within the visual field.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 19478 - Posted: 04.12.2014

Scientists may have discovered how the most common genetic cause of Parkinson’s disease destroys brain cells and devastates many patients worldwide. The study was partially funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS); the results may help scientists develop new therapies. The investigators found that mutations in a gene called leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2; pronounced “lark two” or “lurk two”) may increase the rate at which LRRK2 tags ribosomal proteins, which are key components of protein-making machinery inside cells. This could cause the machinery to manufacture too many proteins, leading to cell death. “For nearly a decade, scientists have been trying to figure out how mutations in LRRK2 cause Parkinson’s disease,” said Margaret Sutherland, Ph.D., a program director at NINDS. “This study represents a clear link between LRRK2 and a pathogenic mechanism linked to Parkinson’s disease.” Affecting more than half a million people in the United States, Parkinson’s disease is a degenerative disorder that attacks nerve cells in many parts of the nervous system, most notably in a brain region called the substantia nigra, which releases dopamine, a chemical messenger important for movement. Initially, Parkinson’s disease causes uncontrolled movements; including trembling of the hands, arms, or legs. As the disease gradually worsens, patients lose ability to walk, talk or complete simple tasks.

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 19477 - Posted: 04.12.2014

James Gorman Crows and their relatives, like jays and rooks, are definitely in the gifted class when it comes to the kinds of cognitive puzzles that scientists cook up. They recognize human faces. They make tools to suit a given problem. Sometimes they seem, as humans like to say, almost human. But the last common ancestor of humans and crows lived perhaps 300 million years ago, and was almost certainly no intellectual giant. So the higher levels of crow and primate intelligence evolved on separate tracks, but somehow reached some of the same destinations. And scientists are now asking what crows can’t do, as one way to understand how they learn and how their intelligence works. One very useful tool for this research comes from an ancient Greek (or perhaps Ethiopian), the fabulist known as Aesop. One of his stories is about a thirsty crow that drops pebbles into a pitcher to raise the level of water high enough that it can get a drink. Researchers have modified this task by adding a floating morsel of food to a tube with water and seeing which creatures solve the problem of using stones to raise the water enough to get the food. It can be used for a variety of species because it’s new to all of them. “No animal has a natural predisposition to drop stones to change water levels,” said Sarah Jelbert, a Ph.D. student at Auckland University in New Zealand, who works with crows. But in the latest experiment to test the crows, Ms. Jelbert, working with Alex Taylor and Russell Gray of Auckland and Lucy Cheke and Nicola Clayton of the University of Cambridge in England, found some clear limitations to what the crows can learn. And those limitations provide some hints to how they think. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 19476 - Posted: 04.12.2014

|By Scott O. Lilienfeld and Hal Arkowitz A rabble-rousing patient on a psychiatric ward is brought into a room and strapped to a gurney. He is being punished for his defiance of the head nurse's sadistic authority. As he lies fully awake, the psychiatrist and other staff members place electrodes on both sides of his head and pass a quick jolt of electricity between them. Several orderlies hold the patient down while he grimaces in pain, thrashes uncontrollably and lapses into a stupor. This scene from the 1975 Academy Award–winning film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, starring Jack Nicholson as the rebellious patient, has probably shaped the general public's perceptions of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) far more than any scientific description. As a result, many laypeople regard ECT as a hazardous, even barbaric, procedure. Yet most data suggest that when properly administered, ECT is a relatively safe and often beneficial last-resort treatment for severe depression, among other forms of mental illness. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is far from the only negative portrayal of ECT in popular culture. In a 2001 survey of 24 films featuring the technique, psychiatrists Andrew McDonald of the University of Sydney and Garry Walter of Northern Sydney Central Coast Health of New South Wales reported that the depictions of ECT are usually pejorative and inaccurate. In most cases, ECT is delivered without patients' consent and often as retribution for disobedience. The treatment is typically applied to fully conscious and terrified patients. Following the shocks, patients generally lapse into incoherence or a zombielike state. In six films, patients become markedly worse or die. Probably as a result of such portrayals, the general public holds negative attitudes toward ECT. © 2014 Scientific American

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 19475 - Posted: 04.12.2014

By Dominic Basulto The latest numbers from the Center for Disease Control showing a steep rise in the number of children with autism are so off the charts that it’s hard not to come to one of two conclusions: There’s something wrong in the way that we measure the data or there’s something extraordinary going on. 1 in 68 American children now has autism, up from 1 in 88 children just two years ago, an increase of 30 percent. A decade ago, one in 166 children were diagnosed as having autism. In 1975, it was 1 in 5000. Plot this as a graph using CDC data and you get a hockey stick curve showing exponential growth in autism over just the past decade. If you accept the first conclusion – that we’re simply not measuring autism correctly – there’s actually a fair amount of evidence to suggest that as much as 53 percent of the variation in data can be explained away by factors such as better diagnosis, better detection and better awareness. And it’s true that the very definition of “autism” continues to change to include a much wider description of symptoms along a spectrum, so it’s only natural to expect an increase in the number of cases if we’re making it easier to define people as having autism. There’s even a growing consensus in the scientific community that the current numbers are “no cause for alarm” and may actually underestimate the incidence of autism in the population, due to problems in collecting information in more rural areas and among some demographic groups. That still leaves approximately 50 percent of the rise in autism cases to explain through science. It won’t be easy. There may be as many as 60 different disorders that are associated with autism, and a multitude of factors at work, with most of them thought to be linked to changes in our environment or genetic factors resulting from increasing parental age. As a result, even the Chief Science Officer at Autism Speaks concedes that what causes autism remains a mystery. © 1996-2014 The Washington Post

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 19474 - Posted: 04.12.2014

By Dwayne Godwin and Jorge Cham ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S) Dwayne Godwin is a neuroscientist at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Jorge Cham draws the comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper at www.phdcomics.com. © 2014 Scientific American

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 19473 - Posted: 04.12.2014