By Bruce Bower Human language, in its many current forms, may owe an evolutionary debt to our distant ape ancestors who sounded off in groups of scattered individuals. Wild orangutans’ social worlds mold how they communicate vocally, much as local communities shape the way people speak, researchers report March 21 in Nature Ecology & Evolution. This finding suggests that social forces began engineering an expanding inventory of communication sounds among ancient ancestors of apes and humans, laying a foundation for the evolution of language, say evolutionary psychologist Adriano Lameira, of the University of Warwick in England, and his colleagues. Lameira’s group recorded predator-warning calls known as “kiss-squeaks” — which typically involve drawing in breath through pursed lips — of 76 orangutans from six populations living on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, where they face survival threats (SN: 2/15/18). The team tracked the animals and estimated their population densities from 2005 through 2010, with at least five consecutive months of observations and recordings in each population. Analyses of recordings then revealed how much individuals’ kiss-squeaks changed or remained the same over time. Orangutans in high-density populations, which up the odds of frequent social encounters, concoct many variations of kiss-squeaks, the researchers report. Novel reworkings of kiss-squeaks usually get modified further by other orangutans or drop out of use in crowded settings, they say. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2022.

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 28258 - Posted: 03.30.2022

Dave Davies Did Stone Age people conduct brain surgery? Medical historian Ira Rutkow points to evidence that suggests they did. "There have been many instances of skulls that have been found dating back to Neolithic times that have grooves in them where portions of the skull have been removed. And it's evident if you look at these skulls, that this was all done by hand," Rutkow says. There's no written record of Stone Age neurosurgery, but Rutkow theorizes it may have been conducted by a shaman on patients who were comatose or who had been otherwise injured. What's more, he says, physical evidence indicates that some patients likely survived: "With many of these older skulls, new bone growth had already formed, and bone in the skull can only form if the patient is alive," he says. Rutkow is a surgeon himself. His new book, Empire of the Scalpel, traces the history of surgery, from the days when barbers did most operations and patients died in great numbers, to today's high tech operations that use robots with artificial intelligence. He says that when looking back, it's important to keep in mind the body of knowledge that existed at a particular point in history — and to not judge surgeons of yore too harshly. "People write about medical history and they say, 'Oh, it was barbaric,' or 'The doctors were maltreating,'" he says. "We have to remember at all times that whatever I write about in the past was considered state of the art at the time. ... I would hate to think that 200 years from now, somebody is looking at what we are doing today and saying, 'Boy, that treatment that they were doing was just barbaric. How do they do that to people?'" © 2022 npr

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Evolution
Link ID: 28257 - Posted: 03.30.2022

Yue Leng Doctors often recommend “power naps” as a way to compensate for a poor night’s sleep and help keep alert until bedtime. But for older adults, extensive power naps could be an early sign of dementia. Research on how napping affects cognition in adults has had mixed results. Some studies on younger adults suggest that napping is beneficial to cognition, while others on older adults suggest it may be linked to cognitive impairment. However, many studies are based on just a single self-reported nap assessment. This methodology may not be accurate for people with cognitive impairment who may not be able to reliably report when or how long they napped. As an epidemiologist who studies sleep and neurodegeneration in older adults, I wanted to find out if changes in napping habits foreshadow other signs of cognitive decline. A study my colleagues and I recently published found that while napping does increase with age, excessive napping may foreshadow cognitive decline. Sleep may play a significant role in Alzheimer’s development. The link between daytime napping and dementia Sleep disturbance and daytime napping are known symptoms of mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia in older adults. They often become more extreme as the disease progresses: Patients are increasingly less likely to fall asleep and more likely to wake up during the night and feel sleepy during the day. © 2010–2022, The Conversation US, Inc.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Sleep
Link ID: 28256 - Posted: 03.30.2022

April Dembosky Most of the time, the voices in Keris Myrick's head don't bother her. They stay in the background or say nice things. But sometimes they get loud and mean – like when a deadly pandemic descended on the world and shut down society as we know it. "It's when things go really, really fast and they seem overwhelmingly disastrous. That's when it happens," says Myrick, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia 25 years ago. "The attacking voices were calling me stupid ... I literally had a meltdown right here in my house. Just lost it." She was able to calm herself down and quiet the voices, and as the pandemic wore on, she kept them at bay by keeping busy: She works for a foundation, hosts a podcast and wrote a children's book. She was able to manage, but she worried about others like her. "People with schizophrenia were not actually deemed as 'the priority vulnerable population' to be served or to be addressed in the same way as people who had other chronic health conditions and who were over a certain age," Myrick says. "So we kind of got left out." This omission occurred even as new data published in JAMA Psychiatry showed that people with schizophrenia are nearly three times more likely to die from COVID-19 than the general population. Their risk of death from the virus is greater than for people with diabetes, heart disease or any other condition aside from age. "People's initial reaction to this was one of disbelief," says Katlyn Nemani, a New York University School of Medicine neuropsychiatrist and the study's lead author. © 2022 npr

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 28255 - Posted: 03.26.2022

Minuscule involuntary eye movements, known as microsaccades, can occur even while one is carefully staring at a fixed point in space. When paying attention to something in the peripheral vision (called covert attention), these microsaccades sometimes align towards the object of interest. New research by National Eye Institute (NEI) investigators shows that while these microsaccades seem to boost or diminish the strength of the brain signals underlying attention, the eye movements are not drivers of those brain signals. The findings will help researchers interpret studies about covert attention and may open new areas for research into attention disorders and behavior. NEI is part of the National Institutes of Health. Scientists working on the neuroscience of attention have recently become concerned that because both attention and eye movements, like microsaccades, involve the same groups of neurons in the brain, that microsaccades might be required for shifting attention. “If microsaccades were driving attention, that would bring into question a lot of previous research in the field.” said Richard Krauzlis, Ph.D., chief of the NEI Section on Eye Movements and Visual Selection, and senior author of a study report on the research. “This work shows that while microsaccades and attention do share some mechanisms, covert attention is not driven by eye movements.” Krauzlis’ previous research has shown that covert attention causes a modulation of certain neuronal signals in an evolutionarily ancient area of the brain called the superior colliculus, which is involved in the detection of events. When attention is being paid to a particular area – for example, the right-hand side of one’s peripheral vision – signals in the superior colliculus relating to events that occur in that area will receive an extra boost, while signals relating to events occurring somewhere else, like on the left-hand side, will be depressed.

Keyword: Attention; Vision
Link ID: 28254 - Posted: 03.26.2022

By Roni Caryn Rabin Almost a million people in the United States have died of Covid-19 in the past two years, but the full impact of the pandemic’s collateral damage is still being tallied. Now a new study reports that the number of Americans who died of alcohol-related causes increased precipitously during the first year of the pandemic, as routines were disrupted, support networks frayed and treatment was delayed. The startling report comes amid a growing realization that Covid’s toll extends beyond the number of lives claimed directly by the disease to the excess deaths caused by illnesses left untreated and a surge in drug overdoses, as well as to social costs like educational setbacks and the loss of parents and caregivers. Numerous reports have suggested that Americans drank more to cope with the stress of the pandemic. Binge drinking increased, as did emergency room visits for alcohol withdrawal. But the new report found that the number of alcohol-related deaths, including from liver disease and accidents, soared, rising to 99,017 in 2020, up from 78,927 the previous year — an increase of 25 percent in the number of deaths in one year. That compares with an average annual increase of 3.6 percent in alcohol-related deaths between 1999 and 2019. Deaths started inching up in recent years, but increased only 5 percent between 2018 and 2019. The study, done by researchers with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a division of the National Institutes of Health, was published in The Journal of the American Medical Association on Friday. Using information from death certificates, the researchers included all deaths in which alcohol was listed as an underlying or contributing cause. (Only a very small number also involved Covid-19.) “The assumption is that there were lots of people who were in recovery and had reduced access to support that spring and relapsed,” said Aaron White, the report’s first author and a senior scientific adviser at the alcohol abuse institute. © 2022 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Stress
Link ID: 28253 - Posted: 03.26.2022

By Erin Blakemore From the streetlights outside our bedrooms to the lamps and devices inside, sleeping with some amount of light has become a way of life for many. That may not be such a bright idea. Research suggests that sleeping in a moderately lit room could affect metabolic and cardiovascular health compared with snoozing in a room with dimmer light. We don’t need more sleep. We just need more darkness. In a study published in PNAS, researchers at Northwestern University had two groups of 10 young adults sleep in differently lit rooms. One group slept in rooms with dim light for two nights; the other slept one night in a room with dim night and the next in a room with moderate overhead light — about the equivalent of an overcast day. Participants wore heart monitors at night. In the morning, they did a variety of glucose tests. Both groups got the same amount of sleep but their bodies experienced very different nights. Both groups responded well to insulin the first night, when they both slept in dim lighting. On the second night, however, the group sleeping in brighter lighting didn’t respond as well to insulin. The dim light sleepers’ insulin resistance scores fell about 4 percent on the second night, while the bright sleepers’ rose about 15 percent. Their heart rates were faster on the bright night, too. The heightened heart rate and other measures led the researchers to conclude that light activates the sympathetic nervous system, which usually dominates bodily functions during the day.

Keyword: Sleep; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 28252 - Posted: 03.26.2022

Allison Whitten Every time you reach for your coffee mug, a neuroscientific mystery takes shape. Moments before you voluntarily extend your arm, thousands of neurons in the motor regions of your brain erupt in a pattern of electrical activity that travels to the spinal cord and then to the muscles that power the reach. But just prior to this massively synchronized activity, the motor regions in your brain are relatively quiet. For self-driven movements like reaching for your coffee, the “go” signal that tells the neurons precisely when to act — instead of the moment just before or after — has yet to be found. In a recent paper in eLife, a group of neuroscientists led by John Assad at Harvard Medical School finally reveals a key piece of the signal. It comes in the form of the brain chemical known as dopamine, whose slow ramping up in a region lodged deep below the cortex closely predicted the moment that mice would begin a movement — seconds into the future. Dopamine is commonly known as one of the brain’s neurotransmitters, the fast-acting chemical messengers that are shuttled between neurons. But in the new work, dopamine is acting as a neuromodulator. It’s a term for chemical messengers that slightly alter neurons to cause longer-lasting effects, including making a neuron more or less likely to electrically communicate with other neurons. This neuromodulatory tuning mechanism is perfect for helping to coordinate the activity of large populations of neurons, as dopamine is likely doing to help the motor system decide precisely when to make a movement. The new paper is one of the latest results to expand our knowledge of the crucial and varied roles that neuromodulators play in the brain. With recent advances in technology, neuroscientists can now view neuromodulators at work in networks that traverse the entire brain. The new findings are overturning some long-held views about these modulators adrift in the brain, and they’re revealing exactly how these molecules allow the brain to flexibly change its internal state amid ever-changing environments. All Rights Reserved © 2022

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 28251 - Posted: 03.23.2022

Linda Geddes A completely locked-in patient is able to type out words and short sentences to his family, including what he would like to eat, after being implanted with a device that enables him to control a keyboard with his mind. The findings, published in Nature Communications, overturn previous assumptions about the communicative abilities of people who have lost all voluntary muscle control, including movement of the eyes or mouth, as well as giving a unique insight into what it’s like to be in a “locked in” state. Locked-in syndrome – also known as pseudocoma - is a rare condition, where people are conscious and can see, hear, and smell, but are unable to move or speak due to complete paralysis of their voluntary muscles, eg as a result of the progressive neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Advertisement Some can communicate by blinking or moving their eyes, but those with completely locked-in syndrome (CLIS) cannot even control their eye muscles. In 2017, doctors at the University of Tübingen in Germany enabled three patients with CLIS to answer “yes” or “no” to questions by detecting telltale patterns in their brain activity, using a technology called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). The advance generated widespread media coverage, and prompted the parents of the current patient, who was diagnosed with ALS in 2015, to write to the medical team, saying he was losing the ability to communicate with his eye movements, and could they help. The problem with using fNIRS to help CLIS patients to communicate is that it is relatively slow, and only gives the correct answer 70% of the time, meaning questions have to be repeated to get a reliable answer. “It was always our goal to enable a patient in a completely locked down state to spell out words, but with a classification accuracy of 70%, it is almost impossible to enable free spelling,” said Dr Ujwal Chaudhary, a biomedical engineer and managing director of ALS Voice gGmbH in Mössingen, Germany, who co-led the research. © 2022 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease ; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 28250 - Posted: 03.23.2022

By Ken Belson For more than two decades, Paul McCrory has been the world’s foremost doctor shaping the concussion protocols that are used by sports leagues and organizations globally. As the leader of the Concussion in Sport Group, McCrory helped choose the members of the international group and write its quadrennial consensus statement on the latest research on concussions — a veritable bible for leagues, trainers, doctors and academics that an N.F.L. spokesman once called “the foundation of all sports-related research.” But McCrory’s status as a leading gatekeeper for concussion treatment and research is under attack as he faces multiple accusations that he plagiarized other scientists, including in articles for a medical journal that he edited. He has denied intentionally lifting copy without credit, and has called one since-retracted piece an “isolated and unfortunate incident.” The scandal facing the pre-eminent doctor, who has long cast doubt on the legitimacy of C.T.E., or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, has raised questions about his relationship to sports leagues and the influence they may have in shaping how the research on brain trauma is interpreted. “It’s concerning because he’s taken the lead on writing a consensus statement that is so influential, and we should have access to his insights,” said Kathleen Bachynski, who teaches public health at Muhlenberg College and has written about head trauma in sports. “McCrory’s research agenda and published statements and work as an expert witness come from a point of view of minimizing C.T.E.” McCrory’s prominence grew as sports leagues looked for consensus on concussions. McCrory’s rise to power in concussion circles is notable partly because he is based in Australia, far from the research centers studying head trauma in Europe and America. A neurologist at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, McCrory worked for 15 years as a team doctor for the Collingwood Football Club, an Australian rules football team in Melbourne, beginning around 1990. He came to advise the Australian Football League, as well as Formula 1 racing, boxing, soccer, rugby and a who’s who of sports organizations, including the International Olympic Committee, FIFA and the International Ice Hockey Federation, at the turn of the century. © 2022 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 28249 - Posted: 03.23.2022

Terry Gross One morning in 2017, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni woke up to find that everything looked blurry and smeared. "There was a fog, a dappled fog over the right side of my field of vision," Bruni says. "And I thought for hours that there must be some gunk in my eye, or maybe I'd had too much to drink the night before. Then I thought, Oh, no, it's my eyeglasses. I just have to clean them. And on and on, until deep into the day, I realized there was something wrong beyond all of that." Bruni, then 52, soon learned that he'd experienced a rare kind of stroke that had irreparably damaged his optic nerve. The prognosis: His vision in that eye would never return. What's more, there was a 20 to 40% chance that another stroke would impact his good eye. The news was devastating. "I had some emotional, psychological and really spiritual work to do to accept this and figure out how to go on in the most productive and constructive fashion," he says. But after going through a period of shock and terror, Bruni saw himself at a decision point: He could fixate on what had been lost, or he could focus on what remained. He chose to do the latter. "I feel like once you've recognized what's happened, ... it is so important and so constructive and so right to focus instead on all the things you can still do, all the blessings that remain," he says. "I ended up determined — determined to show myself that I could adapt to whatever was going to happen." In the memoir, The Beauty of Dusk, Bruni chronicles the changes to his vision and the adaptations he's had to make in his work, personal life and attitude. The book also profiles a number of other people who've survived and thrived in ways that Bruni says are profoundly instructive. © 2022 npr

Keyword: Vision; Stroke
Link ID: 28248 - Posted: 03.23.2022

By Ellen Barry After more than a decade of argument, psychiatry’s most powerful body in the United States added a new disorder this week to its diagnostic manual: prolonged grief. The decision marks an end to a long debate within the field of mental health, steering researchers and clinicians to view intense grief as a target for medical treatment, at a moment when many Americans are overwhelmed by loss. The new diagnosis, prolonged grief disorder, was designed to apply to a narrow slice of the population who are incapacitated, pining and ruminating a year after a loss, and unable to return to previous activities. Its inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders means that clinicians can now bill insurance companies for treating people for the condition. It will most likely open a stream of funding for research into treatments — naltrexone, a drug used to help treat addiction, is currently in clinical trials as a form of grief therapy — and set off a competition for approval of medicines by the Food and Drug Administration. Since the 1990s, a number of researchers have argued that intense forms of grief should be classified as a mental illness, saying that society tends to accept the suffering of bereaved people as natural and that it fails to steer them toward treatment that could help. A diagnosis, they hope, will allow clinicians to aid a part of the population that has, throughout history, withdrawn into isolation after terrible losses. “They were the widows who wore black for the rest of their lives, who withdrew from social contacts and lived the rest of their lives in memory of the husband or wife who they had lost,” said Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum, who is chair of the steering committee overseeing revisions to the fifth edition of the D.S.M. © 2022 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Emotions
Link ID: 28247 - Posted: 03.19.2022

By Laura Sanders Like all writers, I spend large chunks of my time looking for words. When it comes to the ultracomplicated and mysterious brain, I need words that capture nuance and uncertainties. The right words confront and address hard questions about exactly what new scientific findings mean, and just as importantly, why they matter. The search for the right words is on my mind because of recent research on COVID-19 and the brain. As part of a large brain-scanning study, researchers found that infections of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, were linked with less gray matter, tissue that’s packed with the bodies of brain cells. The results, published March 7 in Nature, prompted headlines about COVID-19 causing brain damage and shrinkage. That coverage, in turn, prompted alarmed posts on social media, including mentions of early-onset dementia and brain rotting. As someone who has reported on brain research for more than a decade, I can say those alarming words are not the ones that I would choose here. The study is one of the first to look at structural changes in the brain before and after a SARS-CoV-2 infection. And the study is meticulous. It was done by an expert group of brain imaging researchers who have been doing this sort of research for a very long time. As part of the UK Biobank project, 785 participants underwent two MRI scans. Between those scans, 401 people had COVID-19 and 384 people did not. By comparing the before and after scans, researchers could spot changes in the people who had COVID-19 and compare those changes with people who didn’t get the infection. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2022.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Attention
Link ID: 28246 - Posted: 03.19.2022

By Matt Richtel For two decades, researchers have used brain-imaging technology to try to identify how the structure and function of a person’s brain connects to a range of mental-health ailments, from anxiety and depression to suicidal tendencies. But a new paper, published Wednesday in Nature, calls into question whether much of this research is actually yielding valid findings. Many such studies, the paper’s authors found, tend to include fewer than two dozen participants, far shy of the number needed to generate reliable results. “You need thousands of individuals,” said Scott Marek, a psychiatric researcher at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and an author of the paper. He described the finding as a “gut punch” for the typical studies that use imaging to try to better understand mental health. Studies that use magnetic-resonance imaging technology commonly temper their conclusions with a cautionary statement noting the small sample size. But enlisting participants can be time-consuming and expensive, ranging from $600 to $2,000 an hour, said Dr. Nico Dosenbach, a neurologist at Washington University School of Medicine and another author on the paper. The median number of subjects in mental-health-related studies that use brain imaging is around 23, he added. But the Nature paper demonstrates that the data drawn from just two dozen subjects is generally insufficient to be reliable and can in fact yield “massively inflated” findings,” Dr. Dosenbach said. For their analysis, the researchers examined three of the largest studies using brain-imaging technology to reach conclusions about brain structure and mental health. All three studies are ongoing: the Human Connectome Project, which has 1,200 participants; the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development, or A.B.C.D., study, with 12,000 participants; and the U.K. Biobank study, with 35,700 participants. The authors of the Nature paper looked at subsets of data within those three studies to determine whether smaller slices were misleading or “reproducible,” meaning that the findings could be considered scientifically valid. © 2022 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 28245 - Posted: 03.19.2022

Hannah Devlin Science corespondent Taking long naps could be a precursor of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study that tracked the daytime sleeping habits of elderly people. The findings could help resolve the conflicting results of the effects of napping on cognition in older adults, with some previous studies highlighting the benefits of a siesta on mood, alertness and performance on mental tasks. The latest study suggests that an increase over time in naps was linked to a higher chance of developing mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s. The scientists think it is more likely that excessive napping could be an early warning sign, rather than it causing mental decline. “It might be a signal of accelerated ageing,” said Dr Yue Leng, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco. “The main takeaway is if you didn’t used to take naps and you notice you’re starting to get more sleepy in the day, it might be a signal of declining cognitive health.” The scientists tracked more than 1,000 people, with an average age of 81, over several years. Each year, the participants wore a watch-like device to track mobility for up to 14 days. Each prolonged period of non-activity from 9am to 7pm was interpreted as a nap. The participants also underwent tests to evaluate cognition each year. At the start of the study 76% of participants had no cognitive impairment, 20% had mild cognitive impairment and 4% had Alzheimer’s disease. For participants who did not develop cognitive impairment, daily daytime napping increased by an average 11 minutes a year. The rate of increase doubled after a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment to a total of 24 minutes and nearly tripled to a total of 68 minutes after a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, according to the research published in the journal Alzheimer’s and dementia. © 2022 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Alzheimers; Sleep
Link ID: 28244 - Posted: 03.19.2022

Jon Hamilton About 1 in 7 people age 60 or older have a brain condition that may be an early sign of Alzheimer's disease. The condition, called mild cognitive impairment, occupies a gray zone between normal aging of the brain and dementia. And most people know almost nothing about it. A national survey found that 82% of Americans are unfamiliar with the condition or know very little about it. More than half thought the symptoms sounded like "normal aging," according to the survey, which was part of a special report released this week by the Alzheimer's Association. "Mild cognitive impairment is often confused with normal aging because it is very subtle," says Maria Carrillo, chief science officer of the Alzheimer's Association. Symptoms include "forgetting people's names, forgetting perhaps that you've said something already, forgetting a story, forgetting words," she says. The condition, which affects about 10 million people in the U.S., is defined as changes in memory and thinking that are noticeable to the affected person and those around them but not serious enough to interfere with the individual's everyday activities. That makes it tricky to diagnose, says Dr. Pierre Tariot, director of the Banner Alzheimer's Institute in Phoenix. So after talking to a patient, Tariot often asks if he can speak with the person's spouse or a close family member. A patient's wife, for example, might notice that her husband is still managing to keep his appointments, Tariot says, but then she adds: "But a year ago, he had it all locked and loaded in his brain. And now, unless he writes it down 12 times and then asks me to double-check, he's not going to get there." © 2022 npr

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 28243 - Posted: 03.19.2022

By Lisa Sanders, M.D. “You can’t see the ceiling, can you?” the man asked his 31-year-old wife. She grimaced, then shook her head. She was lying in bed looking toward the familiar shadows and shapes cast by the wintry morning sun. But she couldn’t see them. It was as if a dense white fog lay between her and those daily shifting patterns. Squinting didn’t help. Opening her eyes as wide as she could didn’t, either. All her life she had perfect vision. It was a secret source of pride. She’d never even seen an eye doctor. But that morning changed everything. She first noticed the trouble in her eyes six months earlier. She is a professional violinist and a teacher and that summer took her students to Italy to experience the sacred music and art. As she gazed up at the frescos decorating the ceiling of a favorite cathedral, a shimmering shape with jagged, irregular edges appeared out of nowhere. The points seemed to twinkle as the starlike image slowly enlarged. Inside the glittering outline, the colors were jumbled, like the crystals in a kaleidoscope. It was beautiful and terrifying. She dropped her head, closed her eyes and rubbed her aching neck. When she opened her eyes, the star burst, with its glimmering edges, was still there, distorting all that lay beyond it. It grew so large that it was almost all she could see. Then slowly it began to fade; after nearly a half-hour, the world started to resume its familiar look and shape. There had been similar, if less severe, experiences: Every now and then, when she would get up quickly after sitting or lying down, she would feel an intense pressure inside her head, and when it released, everything briefly looked faded and pale before returning to normal hues. These spells only lasted a few seconds and happened only a handful of times over the past few years. She wrote it off to fatigue or stress. After that day in Italy, those glistening star bursts appeared weekly, then daily. Stranger still, straight lines developed weird lumps and bumps when she looked at them out of the corner of her eye. Doorways, curbs and table edges seemed to waver, growing bulges and divots. When she looked at the object full on, it would obediently straighten out but resumed its aberration once it was on the sidelines again. © 2022 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 28242 - Posted: 03.19.2022

Yasemin Saplakoglu Imagine that while you are enjoying your morning bowl of Cheerios, a spider drops from the ceiling and plops into the milk. Years later, you still can’t get near a bowl of cereal without feeling overcome with disgust. Researchers have now directly observed what happens inside a brain learning that kind of emotionally charged response. In a new study published in January in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team at the University of Southern California was able to visualize memories forming in the brains of laboratory fish, imaging them under the microscope as they bloomed in beautiful fluorescent greens. From earlier work, they had expected the brain to encode the memory by slightly tweaking its neural architecture. Instead, the researchers were surprised to find a major overhaul in the connections. What they saw reinforces the view that memory is a complex phenomenon involving a hodgepodge of encoding pathways. But it further suggests that the type of memory may be critical to how the brain chooses to encode it — a conclusion that may hint at why some kinds of deeply conditioned traumatic responses are so persistent, and so hard to unlearn. “It may be that what we’re looking at is the equivalent of a solid-state drive” in the brain, said co-author Scott Fraser, a quantitative biologist at USC. While the brain records some types of memories in a volatile, easily erasable form, fear-ridden memories may be stored more robustly, which could help to explain why years later, some people can recall a memory as if reliving it, he said. Memory has frequently been studied in the cortex, which covers the top of the mammalian brain, and in the hippocampus at the base. But it’s been examined less often in deeper structures such as the amygdala, the brain’s fear regulation center. The amygdala is particularly responsible for associative memories, an important class of emotionally charged memories that link disparate things — like that spider in your cereal. While this type of memory is very common, how it forms is not well understood, partly because it occurs in a relatively inaccessible area of the brain. All Rights Reserved © 2022

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Brain imaging
Link ID: 28241 - Posted: 03.16.2022

Rina Torchinsky Over the weekend, the model Hailey Bieber told her Instagram followers that she experienced stroke-like symptoms while at breakfast with her husband Thursday morning. Doctors found a small clot in her brain, she said, which caused "a small lack of oxygen." Bieber said on Instagram that her body passed the clot on its own, and she recovered within a few hours. Though Bieber recovered in her case, blood clots in the brain can lead to ischemic strokes, which make up a majority of all strokes. And among young people, stroke rates are on the rise. Here's what you need to know. Ischemic strokes happen when blood flow is blocked through an artery that delivers blood to the brain. These strokes account for the vast majority of all strokes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Transient ischemic attacks, which are sometimes called "mini-strokes," are different than ischemic strokes because these strokes block blood flow from the brain for a short period of time only — often, as short as five minutes. Like ischemic strokes, these strokes are also often caused by blood clots. Although these are short-lived, transient ischemic attacks warn of future strokes and are medical emergencies. More than a third of people who experience these do not receive treatment and have a major stroke within a year, according to the CDC. A hemorrhagic stroke is another type of stroke, which occurs when an artery in the brain leaks blood or ruptures. The leaked blood puts pressure on brain cells and damages them. High blood pressure and aneurysms can cause these strokes, the CDC says. Over the past 30 years, stroke incidence among adults 49 and younger has continued to increase in Southern states and the Midwest, the American Heart Association said in February. Rates have declined for those older than 75. © 2022 npr

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 28240 - Posted: 03.16.2022

By Linda Searing The more fit you are, the less likely you may be to develop Alzheimer’s disease — with those who are the most fit having a 33 percent lower risk for this dementia than the least fit, according to a report to be presented to the American Academy of Neurology at its annual meeting next month. FAQ: What to know about the omicron variant of the coronavirus D.C.-based researchers, from the Washington VA Medical Center and George Washington University, tested and tracked 649,605 veterans (average age 61) for nearly a decade. Based on their cardiorespiratory fitness, participants were divided into five categories, from lowest to highest fitness level. 10-minute exercising may slow progression to dementia for those with mild cognitive impairment The researchers found that, as fitness improved, people’s chances of developing the ailment decreased. Compared with the least-fit group, those slightly more fit had a 13 percent lower risk for Alzheimer’s; the middle group was 20 percent less likely to develop the disease; the next higher group was 26 percent less likely; with the odds reaching a 33 percent lower risk for those in the most-fit group. Alzheimer’s is the most common type of dementia. It is a progressive brain disorder that, over time, destroys memory and thinking skills and interferes with the ability to carry out daily tasks. About 6 million Americans 65 and older have Alzheimer’s. There are no proven ways to cure the disease. © 1996-2022 The Washington Post

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 28239 - Posted: 03.16.2022