By Marla Cone and Environmental Health News California scientists have discovered clusters of autism, largely in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas, where children are twice as likely to have autism as children in surrounding areas. The 10 clusters were found mostly among children with highly educated parents, leading researchers to report that they probably can be explained by better access to medical experts who diagnose the disorder. Because of the strong link to education, the researchers from University of California at Davis said the new findings do not point to a localized source of pollution, such as an industry, near the clusters. “I suspect access to services plays the major role,” said Irva Hertz-Picciotto, senior author of the study published Tuesday in the journal Autism Research. She added, however, that there could be other reasons why higher-educated parents lead to more autism. Environmental exposures, such as chemicals from consumer products, could be more common in those households, she said. “Certainly there may be some consumer products to which more educated persons are more likely to be exposed. There is undoubtedly a possibility of higher exposures in the more educated,” said Hertz-Picciotto, a professor of public health sciences and an autism expert at the UC Davis MIND Institute. For the study, the researchers analyzed the birth records of about 2.5 million babies born in California between 1996 and 2000. Nearly 10,000 were later diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 13641 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Carina Storrs Wolfing down a meal in record time can lead to more than digestive discomfort and possible acclaim in food-eating contests. Studies have warned that speed eaters can easily become overeaters, possibly because they lose track of how sated they are amidst hurried bites. Moreover, the pattern of consuming large portions of food quickly is associated with obesity in children, adolescents and adults. Researchers in Bristol, England, sought to break this pattern in children and adolescents using a machine dubbed the Mandometer, which is designed to manage the pace of meals. The device features a computerized scale that calculates the rate of food intake and, like a hovering mother, constantly reminds the user if he or she should eat slower or faster. The device, first developed to help treat anorexia and bulimia nervosa, actually issues verbal feedback. In a study published January 5 in the British Medical Journal, participants who received Mandometer assistance for one year lost significantly more body mass index (BMI), which is a measure of weight based on height, than those who did not. In fact, the Mandometer group, but not the control group, achieved the reduction in BMI that the authors had previously determined was necessary to lead to a difference in body composition and metabolism. The finding suggests that "modifying eating behavior might provide additional benefits to standard lifestyle modification in treating obese adolescents," the authors wrote, noting that adolescents have been more difficult to treat for obesity through counseling than younger children. The study was led by Julian P.H. Shield, a professor of diabetes and metabolic endocrinology at the University of Bristol. © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Obesity; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 13640 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The female cane toad can pump herself up to mega-size to throw off smaller males striving to mate with her, Australian biologists reported on Wednesday. The unusual tactic suggests that female anurans, as frogs and toads are called, may have far more power to select their sex partner than thought, according to their study, appearing in the British journal Biology Letters. Female cane toads (Bufo marinus) are typically choosier than males when it comes to reproduction. They discriminate among potential mates by approaching the toad with the best call. But, as they head to a rendezvous with the hunk with the mightiest ribbit, they also have to run the gauntlet of excited rival males. An unwanted suitor will seek to climb on the female's back, grasping her tightly in the armpit or groin, waiting until she starts laying her eggs in order to fertilize them. This is where the pneumatic trick comes in, say the scientists, led by Benjamin Phillips of the University of Sydney. By inflating sacs in her body, the female is able to loosen the grip and the luckless male slides off her body, defeated. © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 13639 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Aggressive childhood brain tumours could be treatable with a novel combination of two existing cancer drugs, a study suggests. Researchers led by the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) examined 90 tumours from children and found two new genetic abnormalities in nine of them. They were then able to kill these abnormal tumours, in laboratory tests, by combining the two existing drugs. But one expert says the findings remain "far off being applicable to patients". In the UK, about 400 children are diagnosed with brain tumours every year. The research, published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, brought together scientists from the UK, France, Portugal, Brazil and America. The abnormal tumours - known as glioblastomas, aggressive and often fatal cancers of the brain's glial cells - contained too many copies of the EGFR gene and mutations of the gene the scientists say have never before been found in children. They tried to block the EGFR gene with a drug, erlotinib (Tarceva), used in clinical trials to treat adult glioblastomas, but identified a molecule specific to the children's cells - platelet-derived growth factor receptor (PGFR) - that was making it ineffective. But when they combined erlotinib with a drug, imatinib (Glivec), they hoped would block the PGFR molecules, they killed a significant number of the cancer cells. Dr Chris Jones, who led the research, said it proved "that cancers may look the same, but it is only when you get down to the genetic level that you can truly understand them and devise treatments". (C)BBC

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Glia
Link ID: 13638 - Posted: 01.05.2010

A Canadian-led study has found that men's minds and bodies are more in sync than women's when it comes to sexual arousal. The analysis of previous research on human sexuality found that men's feelings of arousal tend to match their physiological responses, while women's mind and body responses were more often inconsistent. Psychology professor Meredith Chivers of Queen's University led the study, which included researchers from the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group, the University of Lethbridge, the University of Amsterdam and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. "We wanted to discover how closely people's subjective experience of sexual arousal mirrors their physiological genital response — and whether this differs between men and women," Chivers said in a statement. The researchers analyzed the results from 134 previous studies, conducted between 1967 and 2007, collectively involving more than 2,500 women and 1,900 men. Participants in the studies were asked how aroused they felt while watching or listening to sexually explicit content, and sometimes after the exposure to the sexual stimulus. The researchers then compared these descriptions of the participants' feelings with their physiological responses: changes in erection for men and in genital blood flow in women. © CBC 2010

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 13637 - Posted: 06.24.2010

About half of Americans with major depression do not receive treatment for the condition, and in many cases the therapies are not consistent with the standard of care, according to a new study. The study also showed that ethnicity and race were important factors in determining who received treatment, with Mexican Americans and African Americans the least likely to have depression care. While many people can feel sad from time to time, a depressive disorder occurs when these feelings start to interfere with everyday life, preventing someone from functioning normally, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The condition can be debilitating, hindering a person's ability to work, sleep and eat. A combination of factors likely contributes to the disorder, including imbalances in brain chemicals, genetics, and stressful situations, the NIH says. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here Previous research has indicated that many Americans with depression go untreated, but the current study was the first to break down large ethnic and racial groups into subgroups to look at disparities in treatment. The researchers used information from the National Institute of Mental Health's Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys — a combination of three surveys conducted between 2001 and 2003 with a total of 15,762 participants. © 2010 LiveScience.com.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 13636 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY That most alarming New Year’s morning question — “Uh-oh, what did I do last night?” — can seem benign compared with those that may come later, like “Uh, what exactly did I do with the last year?” Or, “Hold on — did a decade just go by?” It did. Somewhere between trigonometry and colonoscopy, someone must have hit the fast-forward button. Time may march, or ebb, or sift, or creep, but in early January it feels as if it has bolted like an angry dinner guest, leaving conversations unfinished, relationships still stuck, bad habits unbroken, goals unachieved. “I think for many people, we think about our goals, and if nothing much has happened with those then suddenly it seems like it was just yesterday that we set them,” said Gal Zauberman, an associate professor of marketing at the Wharton School of Business. Yet the sensation of passing time can be very different, Dr. Zauberman said, “depending on what you think about, and how.” In fact, scientists are not sure how the brain tracks time. One theory holds that it has a cluster of cells specialized to count off intervals of time; another that a wide array of neural processes act as an internal clock. Either way, studies find, this biological pacemaker has a poor grasp of longer intervals. Time does seem to slow to a trickle during an empty afternoon and race when the brain is engrossed in challenging work. Stimulants, including caffeine, tend to make people feel as if time is passing faster; complex jobs, like doing taxes, can seem to drag on longer than they actually do. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Attention; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 13635 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rachel Saslow Scientists may have created a vaccine against cocaine addiction: a series of shots that changes the body's chemistry so that the drug can't enter the brain and provide a high. The vaccine, called TA-CD, shows promise but could also be dangerous; some of the addicts participating in a study of the vaccine started doing massive amounts of cocaine in hopes of overcoming its effects, according to Thomas R. Kosten, the lead researcher on the study, which was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry in October. "After the vaccine, doing cocaine was a very disappointing experience for them," said Kosten, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Nobody overdosed, but some of them had 10 times more cocaine coursing through their systems than researchers had encountered before, according to Kosten. He said some of the addicts reported to researchers that they had gone broke buying cocaine from multiple drug dealers, hoping to find a variety that would get them high. Of the 115 addicts in the study, 58 were given the vaccine, administered in a series of five shots over 12 weeks, while 57 received placebo injections. Six people dropped out before the end of the study. The researchers recruited the participants from a methadone-treatment program in West Haven, Conn., which made it possible to track them for the full 24 weeks of the study. The patients were addicted to cocaine and heroin; TA-CD is designed to work only on cocaine, including the crack form of the drug. © 2010 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 13634 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By HENRY FOUNTAIN Subjective tinnitus, the ringing or other noise that often accompanies noise-related hearing loss, is a tough problem to treat. But researchers in Germany have come up with a novel approach, a kind of music therapy in which the music is custom-tailored to the person with tinnitus. The technique, by Hidehiko Okamoto, Henning Stracke and Christo Pantev of Westfalian Wilhelms-University and Wolfgang Stoll of Muenster University Hospital, makes use of recent findings about a possible cause of tinnitus: reorganization of the auditory cortex, the part of the brain responsible for perceiving sound, in response to noise exposure. Other research has shown that behavioral training may reverse faulty cortical reorganization. The researchers allowed patients to choose their favorite music, which was then “notched” — a one-octave frequency band, centered on the frequency of the ringing experienced by the subject, was filtered out. The subjects listened to the music on average about 12 hours a week. After a year, the researchers report in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, those who listened to this custom-notched music reported a significant improvement in their tinnitus — the ringing was not as loud — compared with others who listened to music that was notched at frequencies not corresponding to their ringing frequency. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 13633 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower She’s the ultimate evolutionary party crasher. Dubbed Ardi, her partial skeleton was unearthed in Ethiopia near the scattered remains of at least 36 of her comrades. Physical anthropologists had known about the discovery of this long-gone gal for around 15 years, but few expected to see the 4.4-million-year-old hell-raiser that was unveiled in 11 scientific papers in October. Like a biker chick strutting into a debutante ball, Ardi brazenly flaunts her nonconformity among more-demure members of the human evolutionary family, known as hominids. She boasts a weird pastiche of anatomical adornments, even without tattoos or nose studs. In her prime, she moved slowly, a cool customer whether upright or on all fours. Today, she’s the standard bearer for her ancient species, Ardipithecus ramidus. And in true biker-chick fashion, Ardi chews up and spits out conventional thinking about hominid origins, according to a team — led by anthropologist Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley — that unearthed and analyzed her fragile bones (SN: 10/24/09, p. 9). First, White and his colleagues assert, Ardi’s unusual mix of apelike and monkeylike traits demolishes the long-standing assumption that today’s chimpanzees provide a reasonable model of either early hominids or the last common ancestor of people and chimps — an ancestor which some scientists suspect could even have been Ardi, if genetics-based estimates of when the split occurred are borne out. Second, the team concludes, Ardi trashes the idea that knuckle-walking or tree-hanging human ancestors evolved an upright gait to help them motor across wide ancient savannas. Her kind lived in wooded areas and split time between lumbering around on two legs hominid-style and cruising carefully along tree branches on grasping feet and the palms of the hands. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 13632 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Carla K. Johnson , Associated Press An expert panel says there's no rigorous evidence that digestive problems are more common in children with autism compared to other children, or that special diets work, contrary to claims by celebrities and vaccine naysayers. Painful digestive problems can trigger problem behavior in children with autism and should be treated medically, according to the panel's report published in the January issue of Pediatrics and released Monday. "There are a lot of barriers to medical care to children with autism," said the report's lead author, Dr. Timothy Buie of Harvard Medical School. "They can be destructive and unruly in the office, or they can't sit still. The nature of their condition often prevents them from getting standard medical care." Some pediatricians' offices "can't handle those kids," Buie said, especially if children are in pain or discomfort because of bloating or stomach cramps. Pain can set off problem behavior, further complicating diagnosis, especially if the child has trouble communicating -- as is the case for children with autism. Autism is a spectrum of disorders affecting a person's ability to communicate and interact with others. Children with autism may make poor eye contact or exhibit repetitive movements such as rocking or hand-flapping. About 1 in 110 U.S. children have autism, according to a recent government estimate. © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 13631 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists have developed biological cells that can give insight into the chemistry of the brain. The cells, which change colour when exposed to specific chemicals, have been used to show how a class of schizophrenia drug works. The researchers hope they will also help shed light on how many other drugs work on the brain. The study, by the University of California - San Diego, is published in Nature Neuroscience. Schizophrenia is most commonly associated with symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations. But people with the illness also struggle to sustain attention or recall information. A class of drugs called atypical neuroleptics has become commonly prescribed, in part because they seem to improve these problems. However, the way they altered brain chemistry was uncertain. It was known that the drugs trigger the release of a large amount of a chemical called acetylcholine, which enables brain cells to communicate with each other. However, the drugs have also been shown to hobble a receptor on the surface of the receiving cell, which would effectively block the message. The San Diego team designed biological cells - called CNiFERs - which changed colour when acetylcholine latched onto this particular class of receptors - an event scientists have not previously been able to detect in a living brain. They implanted the cells into rat brains, then stimulated a deeper part of the brain in a way known to release acetylcholine nearby. In response, CNiFERs changed colour - proving that they were working. (C)BBC

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 13630 - Posted: 01.04.2010

By Carolyn Y. Johnson Dogs have been an integral part of human life for centuries. It is precisely because of that intertwined history that dogs are a potentially powerful tool for researchers seeking the genetic roots of everything from psychiatric disorders to cancer - just two of the ailments that are similar in both humans and dogs. Last month, scientists studying Doberman pinschers with a compulsive behavior disorder similar to human obsessive-compulsive disorder found a gene associated with the condition. The genetic hit is now being followed by other researchers, who are studying the same gene in human patients with OCD, in hopes the clue from man’s best friend may help explain the disease in people. “This is exactly where we were hoping to get to,’’ said Elinor Karlsson, a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute, a genetics research center in Cambridge, and coauthor of a paper on the subject. “This is taking a disease that people have had a lot of trouble working with in humans, that seems to be a multigenic and complex psychiatric disease, and using a dog breed to look at something completely new about that disease - something we wouldn’t be able to find in any other species.’’ In dogs, compulsive behavior includes tail chasing, licking their legs until they develop infections, and pacing and circling - versions of normal behaviors such as predatory behavior, grooming, or locomotion taken to extremes. Those kinds of behaviors parallel the way that normal human behaviors, such as hand washing or checking objects, can become repetitive in the estimated 2.2 million American adults affected by OCD. © 2010 NY Times Co

Keyword: OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13629 - Posted: 06.24.2010

What if you wanted to get to know your brain by building one from the bottom up? All you need is this guide, a lot of patience, and some really tiny tweezers.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 13628 - Posted: 01.04.2010

In Huntington's disease, a mutated protein in the body becomes toxic to brain cells. Recent studies have demonstrated that a small region adjacent to the mutated segment plays a major role in the toxicity. Two new studies supported by the National Institutes of Health show that very slight changes to this region can eliminate signs of Huntington's disease in mice. Researchers do not fully understand why the protein (called mutant huntingtin) is toxic, but one clue is that it accumulates in ordered clumps of fibrils, perhaps clogging up the cells' internal machinery. "These studies shed light on the structure and biochemistry of the mutant huntingtin protein and on potentially modifiable factors that affect its toxicity," said Margaret Sutherland, Ph.D., a program director at NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). "They reveal sites within the huntingtin protein and within broader disease pathways that could serve as targets for drug therapy." Both studies were published online this week. One study, published in the Journal of Cell Biology, was led by Leslie Thompson, Ph.D., and Joan Steffan, Ph.D., of the University of California, Irvine. The other study, in Neuron, was led by X. William Yang, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of California, Los Angeles in collaboration with Ron Wetzel, Ph.D., of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The normal huntingtin protein consists of about 3,150 amino acids (which are the building blocks for all proteins). In individuals with Huntington’s disease, the mutated protein contains an abnormally long string of a single amino acid repeat; lengthier chains are associated with worse symptoms and earlier onset of the disease.

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 13627 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ALISON GOPNIK At this very moment, you are actually moving your eyes over a white page dotted with black marks. Yet you feel that you are simply lost in the universe of The New York Times Book Review, alert to the seductive perfume of a promising new novel and the acrid bite of a vicious critical attack. That transformation from arbitrary marks to vivid experience is one of the great mysteries of the human mind. It’s especially mysterious because reading is a relatively recent invention, dating to some 5,000 to 10,000 years ago. Our brains didn’t evolve to read. Stanislas Dehaene, a distinguished French cognitive scientist, has helped unravel that mystery. His gifts, on display in “Reading in the Brain,” include an aptitude for complex experiments and an appetite for detail. This makes for excellent science but not, paradoxically, easy reading. Still, his book will repay careful study, even if it doesn’t inspire blissful absorption. Dehaene begins by describing the remarkably complicated neural circuitry devoted to getting from marks to thoughts. He then explains how reading developed historically (from Sumerian inscriptions and Egyptian hieroglyphics to the Greek and Roman alphabets and Chinese characters), how we learn to read as children and why dyslexia makes reading so hard. Every time you complete a word recognition security test on a Web site, you are paying unconscious homage to the sophistication and subtlety of the reading brain. The most advanced spambots can’t even recognize letters as well as we can, let alone recover the meaning that lurks behind them. Cognitive science has shown that the simplest experiences — talking, seeing, remembering — are the result of fiendishly complex computations. Dehaene’s work, along with that of others, adds reading to the list. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 13626 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BARBARA STRAUCH I LOVE reading history, and the shelves in my living room are lined with fat, fact-filled books. There’s “The Hemingses of Monticello,” about the family of Thomas Jefferson’s slave mistress; there’s “House of Cards,” about the fall of Bear Stearns; there’s “Titan,” about John D. Rockefeller Sr. The problem is, as much as I’ve enjoyed these books, I don’t really remember reading any of them. Certainly I know the main points. But didn’t I, after underlining all those interesting parts, retain anything else? It’s maddening and, sorry to say, not all that unusual for a brain at middle age: I don’t just forget whole books, but movies I just saw, breakfasts I just ate, and the names, oh, the names are awful. Who are you? Brains in middle age, which, with increased life spans, now stretches from the 40s to late 60s, also get more easily distracted. Start boiling water for pasta, go answer the doorbell and — whoosh — all thoughts of boiling water disappear. Indeed, aging brains, even in the middle years, fall into what’s called the default mode, during which the mind wanders off and begin daydreaming. Given all this, the question arises, can an old brain learn, and then remember what it learns? Put another way, is this a brain that should be in school? As it happens, yes. While it’s tempting to focus on the flaws in older brains, that inducement overlooks how capable they’ve become. Over the past several years, scientists have looked deeper into how brains age and confirmed that they continue to develop through and beyond middle age. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Alzheimers
Link ID: 13625 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Geoffrey Miller PEOPLE have radically diverse responses to the very idea of conspicuous consumption. Some folks consider it blindingly obvious that most economic behaviour is driven by status seeking, social signalling and sexual solicitation. These include most Marxists, marketers, working-class fundamentalists and divorced women. Other folks consider this an outrageously cynical view, and argue that most consumption is for individual pleasure ("utility") and family prosperity ("security"). Those folks include most capitalists, economists, upper-class fundamentalists, and soon-to-be-divorced men. Such differences of opinion can rarely be resolved by trading examples or anecdotes, or arguing from first principles. It more often helps to apply some psychology. With this in mind, some colleagues and I devised a series of experiments inspired by "costly signalling theory" - the idea that animals, including humans, use costly, intricate and hard-to-fake signals to flaunt their biological fitness to potential mates and social partners. Our goal was to see how thinking about mating influences people's decisions about spending and giving (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol 93, p 85). In the first experiment the team, led by Vladas Griskevicius from Arizona State University in Tempe and Josh Tybur from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, invited college students to the lab in small groups. Each was randomly assigned to one of two conditions: "mating" or "non-mating". The mating subjects looked at three photographs of people of the opposite-sex on a computer screen, picked which one they thought most desirable, and spent a few minutes writing about an ideal first date with that person. The non-mating subjects looked at a street scene photograph and spent the same amount of time writing about the ideal weather for walking around and looking at the buildings it featured. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 13624 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Mosquitoes can impress potential mates by harmonizing the high-pitched whine of their tiny wings. Now, scientists have discovered how this musical matchmaking helps the insects to pick their perfect partner. Research on one of the main malaria carriers in Africa, Anopheles gambiae, shows that the insects use subtle differences in tone to distinguish between forms of mosquito that appear to be physically identical. The preference for harmony is so strong that it seems to be causing two forms of mosquito living in the same region to become separate species. This strict mating policy may be a key factor in maintaining the genetic diversity that makes the insect so adaptable to different environments, and could point to other ways to disrupt mosquito reproduction in malaria-ridden countries. A. gambiae is actually a complex of seven species that are physically indistinguishable but with slightly different behavioural traits. In Burkina Faso, one of these species includes two forms — Mopti (M) and Savannah (S) — and additional forms exist in other parts of Africa. The sheer diversity of the mosquito has puzzled scientists. "People studying this mosquito have wondered how it manages to speciate so quickly," says sensory physiologist Gabriella Gibson at the University of Greenwich, UK. Also unclear is how two forms that swarm together can avoid mating with one another, thereby preventing their genetic diversity from being diluted. © 2010 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hearing
Link ID: 13623 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Earlier bedtimes may help protect teens from depression and suicidal thoughts, says a U.S. study published Friday. Researchers analyzed data from 15,659 U.S. students in Grades 7 to 12 and their parents. Participants were surveyed from 1994 to 1996 for the study by James Gangwisch, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, and his colleagues . On average, the teenagers said they got seven hours and 53 minutes of shut-eye a night, compared with the nine or more hours recommended for adolescents by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the team reported in the journal Sleep. Adolescents who reported that they usually slept five or fewer hours a night were 1.71 times more likely to suffer from depression and 1.48 times more likely to think about committing suicide than those who said they got eight hours of sleep a night. These calculations took into account demographic factors such as race and whether the family received public assistance, the study said. "Our findings suggest that later parental-set bedtimes contribute to shorter sleep durations and perceptions of not getting enough sleep, which in turn are associated with depression and [thoughts of suicide]," the study's authors concluded. By setting earlier bedtimes, parents could protect against depression and suicidal thoughts in their children, the authors said. Participants who reported that they "usually get enough sleep" were 0.35 times less likely to suffer from depression and 0.71 times less likely to think of committing suicide, the researchers found. © CBC 2010

Keyword: Depression; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 13622 - Posted: 06.24.2010