By HARRIET BROWN In patients with depression, anxiety and other psychiatric problems, doctors often find abnormal blood levels of thyroid hormone. Treating the problem, they have found, can lead to improvements in mood, memory and cognition. Now researchers are exploring a somewhat controversial link between minor, or subclinical, thyroid problems and some patients’ psychiatric difficulties. After reviewing the literature on subclinical hypothyroidism and mood, Dr. Russell Joffe, a psychiatrist at the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, and colleagues recently concluded that treating the condition, which affects about 2 percent of Americans, could alleviate some patients’ psychiatric symptoms and might even prevent future cognitive decline. Patients with psychiatric symptoms, Dr. Joffe said, “tell us that given thyroid hormones, they get better.” The thyroid, a bow-tie-shaped gland that wraps around the trachea, produces two hormones: thyroxine, or T4, and triiodothyronine, known as T3. These hormones play a role in a surprising range of physical processes, from regulation of body temperature and heartbeat to cognitive functioning. Any number of things can cause the thyroid to malfunction, including exposure to radiation, too much or too little iodine in the diet, medications like lithium, and autoimmune disease. And the incidence of thyroid disease rises with age. Too much thyroid hormone (hyperthyroidism) speeds the metabolism, causing symptoms like sweating, palpitations, weight loss and anxiety. Too little (hypothyroidism) can cause physical fatigue, weight gain and sluggishness, as well as depression, inability to concentrate and memory problems. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Depression
Link ID: 16068 - Posted: 11.22.2011

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR The risk factors that predict stroke also predict mental impairment, a new study has found, even in people who have never had a stroke. Researchers studied a nationally representative sample of 23,752 mentally normal, stroke-free men and women whose average age was 64, using health questionnaires and an in-home physical and mental examination. They recorded seven risk factors for stroke: three types of heart abnormality, high blood pressure, the use of blood pressure medication, diabetes and smoking. Several of the authors have received payments from pharmaceutical companies. The report appears in Neurology. The volunteers were followed for an average of more than four years. After eliminating from consideration any who had had a stroke, the researchers found 1,907 who were cognitively impaired. After controlling for age, sex, race and education, researchers found that high blood pressure and left ventricular hypertrophy independently predicted cognitive impairment, and the more risk factors a person had, the greater the risk for mental problems. The lead author, Frederick W. Unverzagt, a professor of clinical psychology at the Indiana University School of Medicine, had this advice: “The early detection and treatment of high blood pressure is what we’re advocating for folks to preserve their cognitive health.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stroke; Alzheimers
Link ID: 16067 - Posted: 11.22.2011

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Older people who go to an emergency room in pain are less likely to get medication for it than younger people with similar levels of distress, a new analysis has found. A seven-year nationwide study of emergency room patient data has found that 49 percent of patients over age 75 were given pain medication, compared with slightly more than 65 percent of those under age 75. The study, which included data on more than 88,000 emergency room visits, appeared online last month in Annals of Emergency Medicine. Elderly people who were cognitively impaired or otherwise unable to report pain were not included in the analysis, so that does not explain the finding. Although the reasons for the difference are unclear, the authors suggest that emergency room personnel may be concerned about adverse effects of pain medications on the elderly, or they may pay more attention to diagnosis in older patients and less to pain relief. “There are side effects of pain medications,” said Dr. Timothy Platts-Mills, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “But in almost all cases, you can provide some pain relief for older adults by selecting appropriate medications or reducing doses.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 16066 - Posted: 11.22.2011

Clive Gamble Wondering what went on in the heads of Neanderthals has rarely produced positive thoughts. H. G. Wells set the bar low in his short story The Grisly Folk in 1921, writing: “We cannot conceive in our different minds the strange ideas that chased one another through those queerly shaped brains.” Wells's hatchet job was effective. Other authors have offered sympathetic alternatives, such as Isaac Asimov's 1958 short story The Ugly Little Boy. But the idea of a 'thinking Neanderthal' has become an evolutionary oxymoron on a par with 'military intelligence' and 'airline food'. Yet cognition certainly took place in the Neanderthal brain — the largest in human evolution, housed in a long, distinctively shaped skull. In How to Think Like a Neandertal, archaeologist Thomas Wynn and psychologist Frederick Coolidge provide one of the most rounded portraits yet of a fossil human. The book covers familiar areas — diet, symbolism and language — but also includes innovative assessments of Neanderthals' capacity to tell jokes, and even speculations on what they might have dreamed about. The authors use the Neanderthals as a means of discussing the evolutionary reasons for such cognitive abilities as humour and deception. We have learned much about Neanderthals in the past 150 years. They were powerfully built and top carnivores. Their stone tools are found across Eurasia. We know from their genome sequence that the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and ourselves lived some half a million years ago. They became extinct in southern Spain as recently as 30,000 years ago. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 16065 - Posted: 11.22.2011

Charlotte Schubert Human neurons, derived from embryonic stem cells, can modulate the behavior of a network of host neurons, according to a study examining the cells in culture and transplanting them into a mouse brain. The findings, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, lay the foundations for potential future treatments of Parkinson's disease, stroke and other conditions. Previous studies have shown that transplanted human neurons derived from stem cells look and act like functional nerve cells. For instance, such cells form connections with host neurons in the mouse brain, and receive signals from them. But it has been a challenge to show that the transplanted cells can successfully signal to and regulate the behaviour of host neurons. To address this question, Jason Weick and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin in Madison harnessed a technique known as optogenetic targeting. This involves genetically engineering neurons to produce an ion channel (a protein-lined pore that spans the cell membrane) that opens in response to light, allowing positive ions such as sodium and calcium to flow through it and activate the neuron. In this way the researchers can selectively activate human neurons in a mixture of human and mouse cells. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Stem Cells; Neurogenesis
Link ID: 16064 - Posted: 11.22.2011

By Katherine Lymn As head of Experimental Surgical Services at the University of Minnesota, he’s been the focus of animal rights activists’ rage. Bianco estimated that up to 300 sheep are “sacrificed” each year as part of his experiments in heart valve research. Pathology staff members kill the sheep with an overdose injection of a drug similar to what a veterinarian would use to euthanize a pet. Bianco speaks out in support of animal experimentation and accepts his status as a public figure of the biomedical research industry. But he sees it differently when animal rights groups try to influence students. “My solution is to bring the students to us,” he said. He invites high school students to his lab for field trips to “counteract” PETA’s message that using animals for research is wrong. Bianco tests heart valves in animals before the valves go on to human trials. He proactively promotes research like this, which has drawn threats in the past. Activist Camille Marino, out of Florida, posted a threat against Bianco on her website negotioationisover.net in 2009. “We should not be surprised when the unconscionable violence inflicted upon animals is justifiably visited upon their tormentors,” she wrote. Animal rights organizations have demonstrated at the University in the past. In 1999, the Animal Liberation Front claimed responsibility for vandalizing research facilities and stealing more than 100 animals. © 1900 - 2011 The Minnesota Daily

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 16063 - Posted: 11.22.2011

By TARA PARKER-POPE Like most creatures on earth, humans come equipped with a circadian clock, a roughly 24-hour internal timer that keeps our sleep patterns in sync with our planet. At least until genetics, age and our personal habits get in the way. Even though the average adult needs eight hours of sleep per night, there are “shortsleepers,” who need far less, and morning people, who, research shows, often come from families of other morning people. Then there’s the rest of us, who rely on alarm clocks. For those who fantasize about greeting the dawn, there is hope. Sleep experts say that with a little discipline (well, actually, a lot of discipline), most people can reset their circadian clocks. But it’s not as simple as forcing yourself to go to bed earlier (you can’t make a wide-awake brain sleep). It requires inducing a sort of jet lag without leaving your time zone. And sticking it out until your body clock resets itself. And then not resetting it again. To start, move up your wake-up time by 20 minutes a day. If you regularly rise at 8 a.m., but really want to get moving at 6 a.m., set the alarm for 7:40 on Monday. The next day, set it for 7:20 and so on. Then, after you wake up, don’t linger in bed. Hit yourself with light. In theory, you’ll gradually get sleepy about 20 minutes earlier each night, and you can facilitate the transition by avoiding extra light exposure from computers or televisions as you near bedtime. (The light from a computer screen or an iPad has roughly the same effect as the sun.) “Light has a very privileged relationship with our brain,” says Dr. Jeffrey M. Ellenbogen, chief of sleep medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. While most sensory information is “processed” by the thalamus before being sent on its way, Ellenbogen says, light goes directly to the circadian system. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 16062 - Posted: 11.21.2011

By BENEDICT CAREY Foster children are being prescribed cocktails of powerful antipsychosis drugs just as frequently as some of the most mentally disabled youngsters on Medicaid, a new study suggests. The report, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, is the first to investigate how often youngsters in foster care are given two antipsychotic drugs at once, the authors said. The drugs include Risperdal, Seroquel and Zyprexa — among other so-called major tranquilizers — which were developed for schizophrenia but are now used as all-purpose drugs for almost any psychiatric symptoms. “The kids in foster care may come from bad homes, but they do not have the sort of complex medical issues that those in the disabled population do,” said Susan dosReis, an associate professor in the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and the lead author. The implication, Dr. dosReis and other experts said: Doctors are treating foster children’s behavioral problems with the same powerful drugs given to people with schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder. “We simply don’t have evidence to support this kind of use, especially in young children,” Dr. dosReis said. In recent years, doctors and policy makers have grown concerned about high rates of overall psychiatric drug use in the foster care system, the government-financed program that provides temporary living arrangements for 400,000 to 500,000 children and adolescents. Previous studies have found that children in foster care receive psychiatric medications at about twice the rate among children outside the system. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16061 - Posted: 11.21.2011

By ANDREW POLLACK It has three Nobel Prize winners on its board. Its chairman, P. Roy Vagelos, is a pharmaceutical industry star who ran Merck during its heyday. Its chief scientist has written frequently cited biomedical papers. Yet for all that, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals has known mostly failure in nearly 24 years of existence, piling up cumulative losses of $1.2 billion. But that is now changing. Late Friday, the company won approval from the Food and Drug Administration for what is expected to be its first big drug — to treat the wet form of age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of severe vision loss in the elderly. The drug, called Eylea, can be injected into the eye less frequently than the current standard, Genentech’s Lucentis, according to the labels of the two drugs. Eylea is also slightly less expensive, at $1,850 an injection versus $1,950 for Lucentis. Regeneron argues that Eylea would save the health care system thousands of dollars a year per patient, factoring in the fewer injections and also fewer doctor visits and examinations. Eylea, however, is still more expensive that Avastin, a Genentech cancer drug that costs only $50 a dose when used off-label to treat macular degeneration. Avastin accounts for more than half the macular degeneration market, despite some recent contamination incidents that have raised safety concerns. The approval is a vindication for Dr. Leonard S. Schleifer, 59, who has been chief executive since founding Regeneron in early 1988, making him almost certainly the longest-reigning chief executive in the biotechnology industry. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 16060 - Posted: 11.21.2011

By Alan Boyle Slides containing thin slices of Albert Einstein's brain will go on display at Philadelphia's Mutter Museum, thanks to a donation from a neuropathologist who has been holding onto the samples for decades. Lucy Rorke-Adams of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia received the box of 46 slides in the mid-1970s from the widow of a physician who helped arrange the preparation of the brain samples, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Thomas Stoltz Harvey, a doctor at Princeton Hospital, conducted the autopsy on the famed physicist just hours after his death in 1955. Apparently without the family's permission, Harvey preserved Einstein's brain and sectioned it into hundreds of specimens on microscope slides for study. The controversy, as well as the strange journey of Einstein's brain, are detailed in Michael Paterniti's book "Driving Mr. Albert." Harvey and other researchers found nothing unusual about the brain's size, but there was evidence that Einstein's brain contained more than the expected proportion of glial cells, which play a role in supporting connections between neurons. Rorke-Adams, whose research focuses on comparisons of brain cells at different ages, said Einstein's brain looks remarkably youthful under a microscope: "“It does not show any of the changes that we associate with age," CBS Philly quoted her as saying. © 2011 msnbc.com

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 16059 - Posted: 11.21.2011

Ewen Callaway A mutation that appeared more than half a million years ago may have helped humans learn the complex muscle movements that are critical to speech and language. The claim stems from the finding that mice genetically engineered to produce the human form of the gene, called FOXP2, learn more quickly than their normal counterparts. The work was presented by Christiane Schreiweis, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, at the Society for Neuroscience meeting this week in Washington DC this week. Scientists discovered FOXP2 in the 1990s by studying a British family known as 'KE' in which three generations suffered from severe speech and language problems1. Those with language problems were found to share an inherited mutation that inactivates one copy of FOXP2. Most vertebrates have nearly identical versions of the gene, which is involved in the development of brain circuits important for the learning of movement. The human version of FOXP2, the protein encoded by the gene, differs from that of chimpanzees at two amino acids, hinting that changes to the human form may have had a hand in the evolution of language2. A team led by Schreiweis’ colleague Svante Pääbo discovered that the gene is identical in modern humans (Homo sapiens) and Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), suggesting that the mutation appeared before these two human lineages diverged around 500,000 years ago3. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Language; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 16058 - Posted: 11.19.2011

By Scicurious We hear a lot about PTSD these days, and with good reason. As more people confront trauma and come away with severely debilitating disorders, it becomes that much more important to understand the mechanism, in order to find ways to treat or prevent it. And one of the ways people are seeking to understand PTSD is by trying to find genetic risk factors for the disorder, in the hope that familial traits will be able to predict who might develop PTSD and who might not, allowing for preventative treatments before exposure, and better treatments after trauma. And if you’re going to study familial components in humans, one of the best ways to do that is to study twins. For this study, the authors are looking at two different groups of twins (the study is still ongoing) recruited from the Vietnam Era Twin Registry. In the first group of twins, one twin fought in the Vietnam war and got PTSD, the other twin didn’t fight. In the second group of twins, one twin fought in Vietnam and did NOT get PTSD, and the other twin did not fight. They took these groups of twins and put them in fMRI, where they exposed them to sets of fearful or non-fearful faces. Fearful faces can provoke a response from the amygdala, an area of the brain associated with processing emotions such as fear. People with PTSD are known to have differences in amygdala responses, and this study wanted to confirm this, as well as examining their twins, to see if there was any indication in twins who had not been exposed to combat. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Stress; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 16057 - Posted: 11.19.2011

by Elizabeth Norton A loud shirt. A gravelly voice. Purple prose. The merging of the senses, called synesthesia, is a literary device that makes for vivid imagery. But in a neurological condition with the same name, a single perception can involve a second, linked sense that most people would not experience. "Synesthetes" may taste chocolate when hearing a song or see numbers as colors. The reason, new research suggests, may be that the brain cells in the area responsible for the secondary, or extra, sense—for instance, the chocolate taste—are overly active. In addition to shedding light on an unusual mode of perception, the findings could lead to treatments for brain disorders—showing ways to reduce hallucinations, for example, or correcting various types of impaired perception that can follow a stroke. Synesthesia can occur early in life due to the explosive growth of a young child's brain, explains neuroscientist Devin Terhune of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Normally, as the child grows older and brain circuits are refined, the linkages break up. But in synesthetes, for some reason, the secondary sense persists throughout life. The simplest explanation, Terhune and his colleagues believe, is that neurons in the area responsible for the extra sense are more responsive, or "excitable," than usual, strengthening a sensory association that the person wouldn't normally be aware of. The investigators tested their hypothesis with a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation, which, as the name suggests, stimulates a specific part of the brain with a weak magnetic field applied to the scalp. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 16056 - Posted: 11.19.2011

By Scicurious Brain Now we come to the Ig Nobel Physiology Prize. Yawns are notoriously contagious in humans and in other social animals, especially primates. In humans, yawning has been thought to do various things, including cooling the brain, increasing arousal when you’re sleepy and, possibly, helping to synchronize group behavior. Could yawning be a form of unconscious empathy? This would mean that in order to have a contagious yawn, the animals involved would have to be capable of empathy, of fellow feeling. We know that dogs and primates, and humans, probably are, but that means we can’t really test for whether it’s empathy or not. We need a species that is social but probably can’t feel for its compatriots. That’s where tortoises come in. To test whether yawning requires empathy and thus get at the real purpose that yawning might serve, Anna Wilkinson of the University of Lincoln in England and her colleagues took a group of red-footed tortoises that lived together and trained one of them to yawn when exposed to a red square. Then they had tortoises watch the trained tortoise in action and checked them for yawns. The researchers also checked for yawns when no other tortoise was present and when the trained tortoise had no red square and so wasn’t yawning. What they got was a big, fat negative. The test tortoises showed no notice of the other animals’ huge yawns. This may mean that contagious yawning is not just the result of a fixed-action pattern triggered when you see someone else yawn. If that were the case, the tortoises would have yawned right along with their compatriots. Contagious social yawning may require something more, a social sense or a sense of empathy resulting from complex social interactions. Of course, it could also mean that tortoises are just a really bad choice for contagious yawning. But the social explanation seems a little more supported. —From the Scicurious Brain at http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain © 2011 Scientific American

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 16055 - Posted: 11.19.2011

Sandrine Ceurstemont, New Scientist TV The mysterious origin of the female orgasm hasn't yet been solved, but now the world's first movie of the brain during sexual climax maps activity before, during and after the event. Created by animators from theVisualMD, it's based on brain scans captured by Barry Komisaruk of Rutgers University, New Jersey, and his team as a woman stimulated herself inside an fMRI machine. The animation uses a colour scale that varies from red to white, where yellow and white are linked to highest levels of activity. The first sequence uses snapshots of 20 moments during the 7-minute scan. Initially, genital touching fires up a region of the sensory cortex but signals quickly spread to the limbic system, an area linked to emotion, behaviour and long-term memory. Then the cerebellum and frontal cortex light up as muscles become tense before climax. During orgasm, almost the whole brain becomes highly active, as demonstrated by the bright yellow colours. This stage is highlighted in the second part of the animation. Activity then returns to lower levels. Komisaruk hopes that this map of the brain will help explain conditions where women have difficulty achieving orgasm, by showing where the process breaks down. He's also developing a technique where people can watch their brain activity while inside an fMRI scanner, allowing them to learn how to change brain patterns. This could help treat a range of conditions such as pain, anxiety and depression. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Brain imaging
Link ID: 16054 - Posted: 11.19.2011

Scientists are getting closer to the dream of creating computer systems that can replicate the brain. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have designed a computer chip that mimics how the brain's neurons adapt in response to new information. Such chips could eventually enable communication between artificially created body parts and the brain. It could also pave the way for artificial intelligence devices. There are about 100 billion neurons in the brain, each of which forms synapses - the connections between neurons that allow information to flow - with many other neurons. This process is known as plasticity and is believed to underpin many brain functions, such as learning and memory. Neural functions The MIT team, led by research scientist Chi-Sang Poon, has been able to design a computer chip that can simulate the activity of a single brain synapse. Activity in the synapses relies on so-called ion channels which control the flow of charged atoms such as sodium, potassium and calcium. The 'brain chip' has about 400 transistors and is wired up to replicate the circuitry of the brain. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 16053 - Posted: 11.19.2011

Caitlin Stier, video intern In this video, a straw appears to pass through a safety pin. Wonder what the trick is? Developed by illusion enthusiast Greg Ross of Greeenpro Productions in Pennsylvania, it's a variation of a well-known sleight of hand that exploits the limitations of sight. Ross devised the set-up while tinkering with a straw, toothpick, and safety pin. He first pierced the straw and toothpick and fastened the two with the pin. By applying pressure on the pin with the straw and toothpick combo, the straw spins around 180 degrees. But it moves so fast that neither our eyes nor the camera can detect the half-rotation. "I wanted to somehow create a solid through solid effect, which took that a step further into the realm of optical illusions rather than magic," Ross explains. Super-fast motion is necessary for the trick to work. According to psychologist Stephen Macknik, author of the book Sleights of Mind, assuming the narrow straw is about the same size as a nail, we don't see it until it stops if it completes more than about one rotation in three seconds. Macknik estimates that the straw in this clip takes a mere 100 milliseconds to complete nearly half a rotation. That's fifteen times faster than the human motion system can detect for an object of that size. If you would like to recreate the illusion yourself, you can follow a tutorial prepared by Ross that demonstrates how to make your own straw and pin trick. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 16052 - Posted: 11.19.2011

By Tina Hesman Saey WASHINGTON — Separation anxiety in some children may be due to extra doses of a particular gene. The gene, GTF2I, is located on human chromosome 7. People missing part of the chromosome that contains GTF2I have a condition called Williams syndrome and are generally extra social. On the other hand, people who have extra copies of that part of chromosome 7 may have social and other types of anxiety: About 26 percent of children with an extra copy the region containing GTF2I have been diagnosed by a doctor as having separation anxiety, human geneticist Lucy Osborne of the University of Toronto said November 15 at a press conference at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting. Osborne and colleagues genetically engineered mice to have a duplicate copy or two of GTF2I, or to be missing one copy of the gene, then tested the effect of the gene dosage on separation anxiety with a squeak test. Week-old baby mice separated from their mothers send out ultrasonic distress calls. “It’s a ‘come get me’ signal,” Osborne said. Baby mice with a normal two copies of GTF2I squeaked an average of 192 times over four minutes when removed briefly from their nests. Mice with three or four copies squeaked nearly twice as much, indicating greater anxiety at being separated from their mothers. Mice missing one copy of the gene were a little bit less vocal. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 16051 - Posted: 11.19.2011

By Susan Milius Small rodents called voles have their own battles of the sexes over macho traits. And it turns out that dominant voles don’t always come out on top, which may explain one way a species maintains genetic diversity. Among European rodents called bank voles (Myodes glareolus), dominant males readily trounce meeker ones in disputes over rights to court females, explains Mikael Mokkonen of the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. But the genetic mix underlying these supercharged males doesn’t work well when females inherit it. Sisters of the truculent top voles tend to have small litters of pups, he and his colleagues confirm in the Nov. 18 Science. “You can think of sexual conflict as a tug-of-war over a trait value because what’s optimal for males is not optimal for females,” Mokkonen says. Researchers have proposed that the evolutionary push and pull of such conflicts — favoring a dominant genetic mix at times in males but disfavoring it in females — keeps variety in a population. That possibility has become a hot topic in recent years as one possible solution for a central puzzle in biology: “If selection strongly favors some gene or some trait, why do we see so much variation in natural populations?” says evolutionary biologist Robert Cox of the University of Virginia, who studies male-female issues in lizards. For bank voles, sexual conflict by itself isn’t enough to preserve variations indefinitely, Mokkonen and his colleagues conclude. Warring sides probably aren’t perfectly balanced, and the researchers’ computer simulations found that genetic variation dwindles over the course of generations. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 16050 - Posted: 11.19.2011

By Bruce Bower Infants generally thrive physically and mentally if their mothers’ emotional condition, whether healthy or depressed, remains stable before and after birth, say psychologist Curt Sandman of the University of California, Irvine, and his colleagues. Kids whose mothers stayed depressed from the fourth month of pregnancy on displayed first-year mental and physical development comparable to that of youngsters whose mothers stayed emotionally healthy for the same stretch, Sandman’s team will report in Psychological Science. In contrast, babies’ first-year physical and mental development lagged if their mothers’ emotional state during pregnancy changed after giving birth. That pattern held whether depression during pregnancy resolved after giving birth or depression first appeared after delivering a child. “A human fetus that prepares for inadequate care after birth based on biological messages from a depressed mother will have a survival advantage,” Sandman says. A fetus that gets thrown a caretaking curve upon leaving the womb — whether biologically primed to expect sufficient or deficient treatment — tends to struggle developmentally, at least for the first year, he suggests. Related investigations have found that people whose mothers nearly starved during pregnancy eventually developed higher rates of diabetes and other metabolic disorders if they received enough food after birth, but not if they too got inadequate nutrition. Until now, no one has reported a health advantage for babies exposed to maternal depression before and after birth. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Depression
Link ID: 16049 - Posted: 11.19.2011