By Michelle Roberts Antidepressants get to work immediately to lift mood, contrary to current belief, UK researchers say. Although patients may not notice the effects until months into the therapy, the team say they work subconsciously. The action is rapid, beginning within hours of taking the drugs, and changes negative thoughts, according to the Oxford University researchers. These subtle, positive cues may add up over time to lift the depression, the American Journal of Psychiatry reports. It may also explain why talking therapies designed to break negative thought cycles can also help. Psychiatrist Dr Catherine Harmer and her team at Oxford University closely studied the reactions of 33 depressed patients and 31 healthy controls given either an antidepressant or a dummy drug. The depressed patients who took the active drug showed positive improvements in three specific measures within three hours of taking them. These patients were more likely to think about themselves in a positive light, rather than dwelling on their bad points, the researchers said. They were also more likely to see the positive in others. For example, if they saw a grumpy person they no longer internalised this to think that they must have done something wrong to upset the person. This was despite feeling no improvement in mood or anxiety. Dr Harmer said: "We found the antidepressants target the negative thoughts before the patient is aware of any change in feeling subjectively. Over time, this will affect our mood and how we feel because we are receiving more positive information." (C)BBC

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 13401 - Posted: 10.26.2009

By Tara Ballenger With cars, it’s a no-brainer: Drivers who split their attention between the road and talking or texting on cellphones, e-mailing colleagues, or even putting on a fresh coat of nail polish are taking chances of making potentially fatal mistakes. Just this month, President Obama and Congress convened a two-day conference to address “distracted drivers,’’ who were involved in more than 5,800 fatal collisions last year, according to the Department of Transportation. There's no way to avoid doing multiple tasks at the same time, but there are ways to save on the brain drain of switching from one to another. Here are some tips from Laura Vanderberg, assistant director of the Time Management Consulting Program at Tufts University, and David Meyer, a specialist in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Michigan. Choose easy tasks. Combining activities such as sitting in the waiting room at the doctor's office with answering e-mails on your hand-held is fine because one of the tasks is so easy. The fewer ''switches,'' the better. Time and attention are lost each time you toggle between activities. If you're working on an important project, checking e-mail every half-hour instead of every 10 minutes will cut down on inefficiency. Know yourself. Everyone multitasks differently. Experiment with watching TV, listening to music, or texting while completing other tasks, and pay attention to which ones affect your work. © 2009 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 13400 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Lizzie Buchen Sudden movements and sounds can trigger a battle between neurons in the brain, and the winners get to decide where an animal will look, according to new research. Working with barn owls, neuroscientists at Stanford University in California found that neurons in the midbrain, which acts as a relay for sensory information, engage in a 'winner takes all' battle with one another. To the victors go the owl's gaze and attention. The findings, presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago, Illinois, could explain how the brain decides where to look in an emergency. The senses detect everything around them, but the brain can only focus on one part of the world at a time. In everyday life, the conscious mind decides what this should be. But when confronted with a loud noise or fast-moving object, the urge to look becomes automatic. That response makes sense, says principal investigator Eric Knudsen. "When there are features in the environment signalling something that could be life-or-death, we'd want to know about it," he says. What is less clear is how this head-turning decision happens on a cellular level. To find out, Knudsen's team used barn owls, which have neatly arranged midbrains that are easy to study. Research focused on a circuit in the midbrain known as the isthmotectal network, which receives sensory information and tells the eyes where to look. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 13399 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jocelyn Kaiser A single injection of DNA into the eyes of four children born with a blindness-causing disease has given them enough vision to walk without help. The study, published today, confirms that if patients with this disease are given gene therapy early in life, the results can be dramatic. Several clinical trials in the United States and Europe have been using gene therapy to treat a disease called Leber's congenital amaurosis (LCA), which affects about 3000 people in the United States. Those born with LCA start losing their sight at birth and are completely blind by age 40. Children born with one form, LCA2, have defects in a gene called RPE65 that helps the retina's light-sensing cells make rhodopsin, a pigment needed to absorb light. Without rhodopsin, the photoreceptor cells gradually die. In 2001, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) showed that they could partially restore sight to blind dogs with this defect by injecting a good copy of RPE65 into their eyes. Two years ago, the Penn team began a small safety study of the therapy in humans with collaborators at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. They injected each patient's worse eye with a modified virus carrying the RPE65 gene. Early results from this trial and a similar study in the United Kingdom published in April 2008 showed that four of six young adults with LCA2 who received the treatment could later sense more light and perform better in an obstacle course. But the Penn researchers knew from their studies in animals that children should improve even more because they have more intact retinal tissue than adults do. Today in an online paper in The Lancet, their team and collaborators in Europe report full study results for three of the adults they treated earlier and nine more patients, including four children ages 8 to 11. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Vision; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13398 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANNE EISENBERG WHEN disease destroys vital parts of the eye, causing degrees of blindness, scientists can sometimes replace damaged tissue with electronic implants that help patients see lines and basic shapes. A model of an eye with a newly designed implant from a Boston group of researchers. The tips of the implant's electrodes, which help replace the work of diseased rods and cones, slide into a snug berth just below the retina. But as with any electrical connection, these implants must fit snugly and not jiggle or shake loose after a few months, like a drooping plug in a wall socket. Now groups of scientists have demonstrated retinal implants that they say will resist the jarring of daily use. The implant contains a tiny array of electrodes whose tips slide into a snug berth just beneath the retina, the nerve tissue lining the back of the eye, and are held in place by natural suction. The electrodes prompt the remains of retinal circuits to transmit signals to the brain, said John L. Wyatt, a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-founder of the Boston Retinal Implant Project, one of the groups that has developed a prototype of the new design. The research team includes scientists from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, the VA Boston Health Care System and Cornell University. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision; Robotics
Link ID: 13397 - Posted: 10.26.2009

Researchers in southwestern Ontario are trying to determine if chewing gum will ease swallowing problems among people with Parkinson's disease. Parkinson's is a degenerative nerve disease that affects more than 100,000 Canadians, and can cause swallowing difficulty as the disease progresses, according to the Parkinson Society Canada. That's because Parkinson's symptoms such as tremor, stiffness and slow movements can affect the mechanisms used in speaking and swallowing, said neurologist and researcher Dr. Mandar Jog of the London Health Sciences Centre. Early research points to improved swallowing among Parkinson's patients who chew gum several hours a day. Chewing is a form of exercise for the mouth. The researchers think that having gum in the mouth and chewing it may help to train Parkinson's patients to also move their tongues while eating and swallowing. "Gum acts like sensory cue to train the system," said Jog, who is also director of the Movement Disorders Centre. Other types of training have helped people with Parkinson's. For example, when lights are placed in front of patients, the visual cue seems to help them improve their gait, Jog said. Now the team is investigating how long the benefits of gum chewing last. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 13396 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ERIK ECKHOLM PHILADELPHIA — As a teenager, Keith Garrett was desperate to be accepted by the guys on the corner. His first arrest for shoplifting was a point of pride with the gang, he recalled, and using heroin, cocaine and alcohol was natural. Like many others in his group, he ended up addicted and scrounging to survive in abandoned houses. William Baker, left, a recovering drug addict who has become a certified peer specialist, advises Keith Garrett, 54, right, who has been struggling with his addictions and depression at a COMHAR Center in Philadelphia. Mr. Garrett, now 54, was first sent to drug treatment in 1975, for six months. When he got out, he joined a 12-step program, but soon enough, he lighted a joint with an old friend and was drawn back to the streets. The halfhearted efforts at rehabilitation followed by relapse were repeated over the years. “I didn’t get much support in building a new life,” he said of earlier treatments. Finally, a year ago, Mr. Garrett said, he realized that “nobody cared if I lived or died.” He entered into a new world of addiction recovery services developing in Philadelphia, where public and private agencies have teamed up to give struggling addicts far more social and practical support than before. The city relies on a network of treatment centers, recovery houses and a community center that provide counseling and practical aid. They are mainly staffed by peers in recovery who are trained to help others navigate a shaky new world of sobriety. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 13395 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Charles Q. Choi On election night last year, testosterone levels dropped rapidly among male voters of losing parties. After the outcome of the U.S. presidential election was declared, neuroscientists at Duke University found that although male voters for Barack Obama, the winner, had stable levels of testosterone, the hormone's levels rapidly dropped in males who cast ballots for John McCain or Robert Barr, the losers. In a questionnaire, the McCain and Barr voters reported feeling significantly more controlled, submissive, unhappy and unpleasant after the loss than the Obama backers. The researchers monitored testosterone levels from the saliva of 163 college-age volunteers in North Carolina and Michigan by asking them to chew sugar-free gum and then spit before and after the results were announced. The male participants would normally have shown a slight nighttime drop in testosterone levels anyway, because the body doesn't need it during sleep, but on election night, they departed dramatically from this routine: Obama voters' levels did not fall as they should have, whereas those of McCain and Barr backers dropped more than would have been expected. No significant effects were seen in the 106 female volunteers. Women have testosterone, but in much lesser amounts, making them less likely to experience rapid testosterone changes following victory or defeat. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 13394 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey HONOLULU — Humans may owe the gift of gab to a newly discovered gene that helps keeps vocal pipes limber. Researchers discovered the gene, dubbed tospeak, in an Australian family with a speaking disorder. Many of the women in the family have weak, husky voices, while several of their male relatives cannot speak above a whisper, reported Raymond Clarke of the University of New South Wales’ St. George Hospital in Kogarah, Australia, October 21 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics. Clarke and his colleagues traced the source of the family’s disorder to a region of chromosome 8. Part of the chromosome had been rearranged, causing a break in the tospeak gene. Tospeak probably doesn’t code for a protein, Clarke says. The gene is sprinkled with stop signals and its RNA product doesn’t resemble other RNAs that have specific functions in the cell. But production of the tospeak RNA seems to be important for proper development of the larynx. Members of the family who have the speaking problem have short, thick vocal cords that don’t vibrate properly. Some of the family members also have fused bones in the wrists and feet, known as the carpals and tarsals, and fused vertebrae in their spines. All of the defects may be linked to a breakdown in relations between tospeak and a neighboring gene, known as GDF6, the researchers report. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Language; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13393 - Posted: 06.24.2010

An international team led by a National Institutes of Health researcher has found that carriers of a rare, genetic condition called Gaucher disease face a risk of developing Parkinson’s disease more than five times greater than the general public. The findings were published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. In previous studies, several genes have been linked to Parkinson's disease. However, researchers say their work conclusively shows that mutations in the gene responsible for Gaucher disease are among the most significant risk factors found to date for Parkinson's disease. The discovery was made by investigators from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and the National Institute on Aging (NIA), both parts of the National Institutes of Health, in collaboration with scientists from 16 research centers across four continents. Parkinson's disease, a neurological condition that typically causes tremors and stiffness in movement, affects about 1 to 2 percent of people over the age of 60. The chance of developing Parkinson's disease increases with age and involves a combination of environmental risk factors and genetic susceptibility. Gaucher disease occurs when an individual inherits two defective copies of the GBA gene, which codes for an enzyme called glucocerebrosidase. This enzyme breaks down a fatty substance called glucocerebroside, which, when not properly disposed of, can harm the spleen, liver, lungs, bone marrow and, in some cases, the brain. The enzyme functions in a part of the cell called the lysosome, where cellular components are broken down, or metabolized, for recycling.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13392 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Susan Milius, Science News -- Like a songbird calling another out, one male humpback whale may make another change his tune. Studying humpbacks with methods adapted from bird research has uncovered the first known instances of what look like whales responding musically to each other's songs, says Danielle Cholewiak, a researcher for the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary based in Scituate, Mass. Cholewiak and colleagues detected melodic adjustments when a solo singer encountered another singer nearby and when researchers played their song remixes for whales. Male whales may be using music to tell another male, "Hey, I'm talking to you," Cholewiak reported Oct. 14 at the Society of Marine Mammology's biennial conference. Cholewiak "showed short-term acoustic interactions between males -- that was the new thing," said Adam S. Frankel of Marine Acoustics Inc., an independent consulting firm in Arlington, Va. Among humpback whales, only males boom out long strings of repeating phrases of hums and whups and chirps. The sounds can make a boat vibrate, said Salvatore Cerchio of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York City, who worked with Cholewiak on the new study. Scientists use the word song to describe this patterned male vocalization, just as they do for elaborate bird serenades. © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Language; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 13391 - Posted: 06.24.2010

(HealthDay News) -- Exposure to too much light at night may cause depression, suggests a new study. Ohio State University researchers found that mice kept in a lighted room 24 hours a day had more depressive symptoms than mice that had a normal day-night cycle. The study also found that mice that lived in a constantly lit room, but could take refuge in a dark tube when they desired, had fewer depressive symptoms than mice that couldn't get away from the 24-hour light. "The ability to escape light seemed to quell the depressive effects," lead author Laura Fonken, a graduate student in psychology, said in a news release from Ohio State University. The findings indicate the need to learn more about how artificial light affects humans, said study co-author Randy Nelson, a professor of neuroscience and psychology. "Constant light with no chance of escape increased depressive symptoms," Nelson said in the news release. "The increasing rate of depressive disorders in humans corresponds with the increasing use of light at night in modern society. Many people are now exposed to unnatural light cycles, and that may have real consequences for our health," he added. The study, presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience held Oct. 17 to 21 in Chicago, is scheduled to be published in the Dec. 28 issue of the journal Behavioural Brain Research. © 2009 ScoutNews, LLC.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Depression
Link ID: 13390 - Posted: 06.24.2010

(HealthDay News) -- While adult male monkeys exposed to cocaine in the womb have poor impulse control, the same is not true for female monkeys, new research has found. The male monkeys continued to have poor impulse control 15 years after birth. Impulsivity is a risk factor for drug abuse, said the researchers, who added that their findings could help improve understanding of human drug abuse. "This is the first time that so many different measures of impulsivity, which is considered a risk factor for drug abuse, have been looked at in the same group of animals," lead investigator Lindsey Hamilton, of Wake Forest University School of Medicine, said in a university news release. "We're looking for ways to predict which individuals are going to take drugs during their lives. It was very surprising to see that, even more than a decade after the prenatal cocaine exposure, the monkeys ended up being more impulsive and possibly more susceptible to drug use. It was particularly interesting, however, that this effect was only seen in the males. Something is either protecting the females from the effects of the cocaine exposure in the womb or making the males more susceptible to the lasting effects," Hamilton explained. Hamilton and colleagues conducted four impulse control tests with male and female monkeys exposed to cocaine in the womb and monkeys with no cocaine exposure. © 2009 U.S.News & World Report LP

Keyword: Drug Abuse; ADHD
Link ID: 13389 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Frederik Joelving When you've spent the weekend splurging on greasy fast foods, your bathroom scale isn't alone in reeling from the impact. Your brain does, too. New research shows just how saturated fat tricks us into eating more and elucidates the evolutionary basis for the propensity for poundage in developed nations. Our brain physiology, it seems, is glaringly out-of-date in the modern world. Researchers have long known that the hormones leptin and insulin play key roles in appetite and food intake. In healthy people leptin, which is secreted by fat tissue, acts as a molecular measuring tape for our waistlines, quashing feelings of hunger. Insulin spikes when the pancreas gets a whiff of the blood sugar increase after a meal; once the brain detects the spike, it knows to tamp down the desire for food. Certain foods and metabolic disorders, however, can disrupt our ability to respond appropriately to these hormonal signals. In a study published in the September issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation, scientists report unraveling a central biochemical mechanism behind fat's effect on the mammalian brain . They found that after only three days on a diet high in saturated fat—a common ingredient in beef and cheese—the brains of rats and mice became resistant to leptin and insulin. In contrast, unsaturated fats, such as those found in olive oil, did not trigger resistance. As a result of the hormone resistance, a meal high in saturated fat can crank up our appetite well after dessert. "Taking time off from a healthy diet to eat most fast foods may have consequences that last for some days, even after one resumes the healthy diet," says University of Cincinnati behavioral neuroscientist Stephen Benoit, who led the study. He believes the findings are likely to apply to humans, too. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 13388 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Diane Rogers-Ramachandran Humans enjoy stereoscopic vision. As we mentioned in our essay last issue, because our eyes are separated horizontally images we see in the two eyes are slightly different and the difference is proportional to the relative depth. The visual areas in the brain measure these differences, and we experience the result as stereo—what we all have enjoyed as children playing with View-Master toys. Visual-image processing from the eye to the brain happens in stages. Rudimentary features such as the orientation of edges, direction of motion, color, and so on are extracted early on in areas called V1 and V2 before reaching the next stages in the visual-processing hierarchy for a progressively more refined analysis. This stage-by-stage description is a caricature; many pathways go “back” from stage to stage—allowing the brain to play a kind of 20-questions game to arrive at a solution after successive iterations. Returning to the concept of stereo, we can ask: At what stage is the comparison of the two eyes’ images made? If you are looking at a scene with hundreds of features, how do you know which feature in one eye matches with which feature in the other eye? How do you avoid false matches? Until the correct matching is achieved, you cannot measure differences. In stereopsis, this conundrum is called the correspondence problem. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 13387 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News -- Females of the Australian redback spider, one of the world's most poisonous spiders and a close relative to the black widow, demand 100 minutes of courting or else they usually cannibalize their male suitors, research finds. Proving that bigger isn't always better in the mating game, the tiniest of males sometimes approach female redbacks after offering the critical 100 minutes of wooing and successfully mate without being eaten, according to the paper in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The study shows that puny males of this species can win at love without exerting much effort and begins to explain the extreme size differences between males and females among some spider species. "Based upon our data of the timing of premature lethal cannibalism, it appears as though females are not tuned to select male size, but rather the duration of courtship," co-author Jeffrey Stoltz told Discovery News. Females don't even discriminate once the 100 minutes are up, Stoltza added, so other males can even scramble in at that point and win her favor. Stoltz, a University of Toronto researcher, and colleague Maydianne Andrade analyzed Australian redback spiders bred from a population collected in Sydney. They focused on the spider's unique mating ritual. © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 13386 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway Creating chimeras with the higher brain of a songbird and the hindbrain of a non-singer may one day shed light on the evolution of birdsong, and even human speech. "The goal is to get a non-singing animal that can actually learn how to imitate sounds," says Erich Jarvis, a neuroscientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. The chimera would have the hindbrain of a quail and the forebrain of the zebra finch. "I knew when I started this project that it was one of those crazy ones." Both people and songbirds learn how to communicate in infancy by listening to adults and imitating their sounds. In the embryo, neurons from learning centres in the higher brain, or forebrain, connect up with neurons in the hindbrain that control vocal muscles in the throat. These connections are absent in non-singing birds such as quails, which simply squawk. A quail's call is innate and is not learned from a parent. Jarvis's team is investigating how forebrain neurons are normally guided to the hindbrain in a songbird by doing brain transplants on bird embryos that are 2 days old – the size of a pen tip. Jarvis announced his first results at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting in Chicago last week. The team has removed the tissue from a quail embryo that gives rise to the forebrain and replaced it with the same tissue from a finch embryo. They found that some of the finch neurons make a beeline for the quail's hindbrain. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Language; Animal Communication
Link ID: 13385 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Laura Sanders CHICAGO — The Halle Berry fan club is expanding one brain cell at a time. By eavesdropping on the activity of single neurons in the human brain, scientists have figured out which brain cells go wild for superstars such as the popular actress. And the newest research shows that people can activate those cells selectively. “This study is the first demonstration of humans’ ability to control the activity of single neurons,” the researchers wrote in a summary of their study. The results, presented October 19 at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting by Moran Cerf of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, may help researchers understand how each cell in the brain sees and responds to the world. “This type of work gives us some clues about what’s going on in the brain,” comments Christoph Weidemann of the University of Pennsylvania, who studies how the brain processes information. “It’s quite an amazing feat for the brain to make sense of its input and reliably recognize people and objects.” The new study was conducted on people with epilepsy. Doctors had implanted electrodes in these patients’ brains to track where seizures originate. The researchers used these same electrodes to eavesdrop on the activity of single brain cells in a part of the brain called the medial temporal lobe, which is important for “memory, attention, perception — the things that we care about the most,” Cerf said in his presentation. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Vision; Attention
Link ID: 13384 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Michael Torrice Red-eye flights, all-night study sessions, and extra-inning playoff games all deprive us of sleep and can leave us forgetful the next day. Now scientists have discovered that lost sleep disrupts a specific molecule in the brain's memory circuitry, possibly leading to treatments for tired brains. Neuroscientists studying rodents and humans have found that sleep deprivation interrupts the storage of episodic memories: information about who, what, when, and where. To lay down these memories, neurons in our brains form new connections with other neurons or strengthen old ones. This rewiring process, which occurs over a period of hours, requires a rat's nest of intertwined molecular pathways within neurons that turn genes on and off and fine-tune how proteins behave. Neuroscientist Ted Abel of the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues wanted to untangle these molecular circuits and pinpoint which one sleep deprivation disrupts. The researchers started by studying electrical signals in slices of the hippocampus--the brain's memory center--from sleep-deprived mice. They tested for long-term potentiation (LTP), a strengthening of connections between neurons that neuroscientists think underlies memory. When the scientists tried to trigger LTP in these brain slices with electrical stimulation or chemicals, they found that methods that fired up cellular pathways involving the molecule cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) didn't work. Brain cells from sleep-deprived mice also held about 50% less cAMP than did cells from well-rested mice. In the brain, cAMP acts as a molecular messenger, passing signals between proteins that regulate activity of genes responsible for memory formation. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sleep; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 13383 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Clare Wilson A US jury's decision that an antidepressant caused heart defects in an unborn baby is highlighting the painful dilemma facing pregnant women with depression. The most common antidepressants have been linked to birth defects and miscarriage, yet some doctors fear that letting depressive symptoms go untreated may have long-term consequences for the mother and her unborn baby. On 15 October, a jury in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, ordered manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline to pay $2.5 million to the family of 3-year-old Lyam Kilker, who was born with serious heart defects. While pregnant, Kilker's mother took the antidepressant paroxetine (Seroxat or Paxil), which belongs to the most commonly prescribed class of antidepressants, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Doctors try to avoid giving drugs to pregnant women, but Kilker's mother is not unusual. Antidepressants are increasingly being prescribed during pregnancy, particularly in the US, where 13 per cent of pregnant women took them in 2003. The trend reflects an increase in their use in the general population: often a woman is already taking antidepressants when she becomes pregnant. Awareness is also growing of the potential risks of not treating depression during pregnancy, on the child as well as the mother. Last year, a large study showed that children whose mothers had been depressed while pregnant took longer to start smiling, talking and developing motor skills (BJOG, vol 115, p 1043). © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 13382 - Posted: 06.24.2010