Nicola Davis Science correspondent Researchers have gained new insight into how and why some people experience depression after finding a particular brain network is far bigger in people living with the condition. The surface of the brain is a communication junction box at which different areas talk to each other to carry out particular processes. But there is a finite amount of space for these networks to share. Now researchers say that in people with depression, a larger part of the brain is involved in the network that controls attention to rewards and threats than in those without depression. “It’s taking up more real estate on the brain surface than we see is typical in healthy controls,” said Dr Charles Lynch, a co-author of the research, from Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. He added that expansion meant the size of other – often neighbouring – brain networks were smaller. Writing in the journal Nature, Lynch and colleagues report how they used precision functional mapping, a new approach to brain imaging that analyses a host of fMRI (functional MRI) scans from each individual. The team applied this method to 141 people with depression and 37 people without it, enabling them to measure accurately the size of each participant’s brain networks. They then took the average size for each group. They found that a part of the brain called the frontostriatal salience network was expanded by 73% on average in participants with depression compared with healthy controls. © 2024 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Depression; Brain imaging
Link ID: 29468 - Posted: 09.07.2024

By Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Katie Thomas Acadia Healthcare is one of America’s largest chains of psychiatric hospitals. Since the pandemic exacerbated a national mental health crisis, the company’s revenue has soared. Its stock price has more than doubled. But a New York Times investigation found that some of that success was built on a disturbing practice: Acadia has lured patients into its facilities and held them against their will, even when detaining them was not medically necessary. In at least 12 of the 19 states where Acadia operates psychiatric hospitals, dozens of patients, employees and police officers have alerted the authorities that the company was detaining people in ways that violated the law, according to records reviewed by The Times. In some cases, judges have intervened to force Acadia to release patients. Some patients arrived at emergency rooms seeking routine mental health care, only to find themselves sent to Acadia facilities and locked in. A social worker spent six days inside an Acadia hospital in Florida after she tried to get her bipolar medications adjusted. A woman who works at a children’s hospital was held for seven days after she showed up at an Acadia facility in Indiana looking for therapy. And after police officers raided an Acadia hospital in Georgia, 16 patients told investigators that they had been kept there “with no excuses or valid reason,” according to a police report. Acadia held all of them under laws meant for people who pose an imminent threat to themselves or others. But none of the patients appeared to have met that legal standard, according to records and interviews. Most doctors agree that people in the throes of a psychological crisis must sometimes be detained against their will to stabilize them and prevent harm. These can be tough calls, balancing patients’ safety with their civil rights. But at Acadia, patients were often held for financial reasons rather than medical ones, according to more than 50 current and former executives and staff members. © 2024 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Depression
Link ID: 29464 - Posted: 09.04.2024

By Elyse Weingarten In 2016, Canada enacted the Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAID, law, allowing individuals with a terminal illness to receive help from a medical professional to end their life. Following a superior court ruling, the legislation was expanded in 2021 to include nearly anyone with a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” causing “enduring physical or psychological suffering that is intolerable to them.” Whether mental illnesses such as depression, schizophrenia, and addiction should be considered “grievous and irremediable” quickly emerged as the subject of intense debate. Initially slated to go into effect in March 2023, a new mental health provision of the law was postponed a year due to public outcry both in Canada and abroad. Then, in February, Health Minister Mark Holland announced it had been delayed again — this time until 2027 — to allow more time for the country’s health care system to prepare. I was horrified by the news of the law’s latest expansion — a reaction that surprised me. Having grown up with a seriously mentally ill family member, I know first-hand how destructive mental illness can be, and I have no illusion that it is always treatable. Additionally, I support assisted suicide in cases of grave and terminal physical illness, so why do I find it so unacceptable to offer it to people who are intractably mentally ill? For nearly half a century, the Western understanding of mental illness has been shaped to adhere to the larger biomedical concepts of disease and wellness. Biological psychiatry, or the biomedical model, views mental illnesses as organically based disorders of the brain, physiologically indistinguishable from other diseases. The Canadian MAID law’s inclusion of mental illness is the culmination of this framework. Yet the widespread condemnation that the amendment received (that the bill’s previous iterations did not) demonstrates that mental and physical illness — though worthy of the same respect — are in no way equivalent, and that we can recognize this intuitively.

Keyword: Depression; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 29449 - Posted: 08.22.2024

By Sara Reardon Last week’s decision by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reject MDMA, also known as ecstasy, as a psychiatric treatment surprised many researchers. Lykos Therapeutics, the company that has been testing MDMA, plans to ask the FDA to reconsider the decision, but scientists are now wondering what the agency’s ruling will mean for other potential psychedelic therapies. In a press release posted on 9 August, Lykos, which is based in San Jose, California, said that the FDA had sent a letter requesting that the company undertake another large-scale trial of the drug in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and resubmit its application. “The FDA request for another study is deeply disappointing,” Lykos chief executive Amy Emerson said in the press release, adding that the company plans to work with the agency to “resolve scientific disagreements”. Conducting another study “would take several years”, she said, adding that Lykos has already addressed many of the FDA’s concerns. In an e-mail to Nature, Lykos declined to provide the complete letter detailing the agency’s specific concerns and directed the news team instead to its press release. Experts say that without access to the letter, it’s hard to determine why the FDA reached the decision it did. “We really are going off incomplete information,” says Mason Marks, who studies drug policy at Florida State University in Tallahassee, adding that he was “a little surprised” by the agency’s decision. Trial concerns But Marks points out that the FDA typically follows the advice of its independent advisory committees — and the one that evaluated MDMA in June overwhelmingly voted against approving the drug, citing problems with clinical trial design that the advisers felt made it difficult to determine the drug’s safety and efficacy. One concern was about the difficulty of conducting a true placebo-controlled study with a hallucinogen: around 90% of the participants in Lykos’s trials guessed correctly whether they had received the drug or a placebo, and the expectation that MDMA should have an effect might have coloured their perception of whether it treated their symptoms. © 2024 Springer Nature Limited

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Depression
Link ID: 29433 - Posted: 08.15.2024

By Sara Reardon Stress can make people feel sick, and bacteria in the gut might be to blame, according to a study1 in mice. The research suggests that a stressed brain directly shuts down specific glands in the gut, affecting gut bacteria and the body’s broader immune system. The study “is a technical tour de force”, says neuroscientist John Cryan at University College Cork in Ireland, who reviewed the study. Most work on the gut–brain connection has focused on how bacteria affect the brain, so Cryan welcomes research into how psychological states can exert ‘top-down’ control of bacteria. “It’s a really cool part of the puzzle”, he says. The research was published on 8 August in Cell. Researchers have long known that the gut and brain ‘talk’ to each other. Under stress, the brain spurs the release of hormones that can trigger gut conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease. And certain bacteria in the gut can release chemical signals that affect the brain and behaviour. Your brain could be controlling how sick you get — and how you recover But the neural communication pathways are less well understood. To find out more, neuroscientist Ivan de Araujo at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, and his colleagues focused on small organs called Brunner’s glands that are found in the walls of the small intestine. Little is known about these glands, other than that they produce mucus and contain numerous neurons. De Araujo’s team found that removing the Brunner’s glands of mice made the animals more susceptible to infection. It also raised markers of inflammation, a flood of immune chemicals and cells that can damage tissues. The team saw a similar effect in humans: people who’d had tumours removed from the part of the gut containing Brunner’s glands had higher levels of white blood cells — a marker of inflammation — than people who’d had tumours removed from other areas. © 2024 Springer Nature Limited

Keyword: Stress; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 29432 - Posted: 08.13.2024

By Andrew Jacobs The journal Psychopharmacology has retracted three papers about MDMA-assisted therapy based on what the publication said was unethical conduct at one of the study sites where the research took place. Several of the papers’ authors are affiliated with Lykos Therapeutics, the drug company whose application for MDMA-assisted therapy to treat post-traumatic stress disorder was rejected last week by the Food and Drug Administration. The company said the research in the retracted papers was not part of its application to the F.D.A. In declining to approve Lykos’s application, the agency cited concerns about missing data and problems with the way the company’s study was designed, according to a statement released by Lykos on Friday. The F.D.A. has asked Lykos to conduct an additional clinical trial of its MDMA-assisted therapy, which would have been the first psychedelic medicine to win approval by federal regulators. Lykos has said it would appeal the decision. The journal retraction was first reported by Stat, the health and medical news website. On Sunday, Lykos said that it disagreed with Psychopharmacology’s decision and that it would file an official complaint with the Committee on Publication Ethics, a nonprofit that sets guidelines for academic publications. “The articles remain scientifically sound and present important contributions to the study of potential treatments for PTSD,” the company said in the statement. The incident cited by Psychopharmacology has been well documented. © 2024 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 29431 - Posted: 08.13.2024

Ross Ellenhorn and Dimitri Mugiani Earlier this month, an advisory panel rejected MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD, possibly dooming US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of the drug commonly called ecstasy. In a public meeting alongside FDA staff, panel members said that the research neither adequately accounted for abuse risks nor proved the drug’s efficacy in combination with psychotherapy. This decision dealt a major blow to Lykos Therapeutics, the for-profit public benefit corporation of the non-profit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (Maps), which sponsored the trials. More broadly, the rejection has been described as a drastic setback for the psychedelic movement as a whole. For several years now, it seemed that greater acceptance and new legal spaces for psychedelics were a certainty. Then, scientists appeared at the FDA hearing and everything went dark. As practitioners and leaders in the realm of human transformation, and in creating and running organizations that serve individuals experiencing complex psychiatric symptoms, we believe in psychedelics as a force for good. Yet, to us, this FDA decision is the natural and expected outcome of a basic and fatal conceptual error that our brothers and sisters in the movement have adopted. By joining larger trends within the behavioral health milieu that focus on the elimination of distinct symptoms by drugs and by expert-driven techniques, today’s psychedelic movement is teetering on the edge of becoming unpsychedelic. What do we mean by this? Psychedelics free our minds to novelty, liberating us from habitual patterns. The common term for this property is “brain plasticity”, and it may be the core reason these substances can also affect areas of psychological suffering related to habits of the mind – those that experienced psychiatrists label as depression, anxiety, addiction and, yes, PTSD. Psychedelics are pro-imagination, pro-creativity, pro-innovation – qualities that research shows are at the very root of personal growth. © 2024 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Stress; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 29424 - Posted: 08.11.2024

By Ellen Barry In recent decades, mental health providers began screening for “adverse childhood experiences” — generally defined as abuse, neglect, violence, family dissolution and poverty — as risk factors for later disorders. But what if other things are just as damaging? Researchers who conducted a large study of adults in Denmark, published on Wednesday in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, found something they had not expected: Adults who moved frequently in childhood have significantly more risk of suffering from depression than their counterparts who stayed put in a community. In fact, the risk of moving frequently in childhood was significantly greater than the risk of living in a poor neighborhood, said Clive Sabel, a professor at the University of Plymouth and the paper’s lead author. “Even if you came from the most income-deprived communities, not moving — being a ‘stayer’ — was protective for your health,” said Dr. Sabel, a geographer who studies the effect of environment on disease. “I’ll flip it around by saying, even if you come from a rich neighborhood, but you moved more than once, that your chances of depression were higher than if you hadn’t moved and come from the poorest quantile neighborhoods,” he added. The study, a collaboration by Aarhus University, the University of Manchester and the University of Plymouth, included all Danes born between 1982 and 2003, more than a million people. Of those, 35,098, or around 2.3 percent, received diagnoses of depression from a psychiatric hospital. Are you concerned for your teen? If you worry that your teen might be experiencing depression or suicidal thoughts, there are a few things you can do to help. Dr. Christine Moutier, the chief medical officer of the American Foundation for Suicide © 2024 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Stress
Link ID: 29395 - Posted: 07.18.2024

By Dave Philipps David Metcalf’s last act in life was an attempt to send a message — that years as a Navy SEAL had left his brain so damaged that he could barely recognize himself. He died by suicide in his garage in North Carolina in 2019, after nearly 20 years in the Navy. But just before he died, he arranged a stack of books about brain injury by his side, and taped a note to the door that read, in part, “Gaps in memory, failing recognition, mood swings, headaches, impulsiveness, fatigue, anxiety, and paranoia were not who I was, but have become who I am. Each is worsening.” Then he shot himself in the heart, preserving his brain to be analyzed by a state-of-the-art Defense Department laboratory in Maryland. The lab found an unusual pattern of damage seen only in people exposed repeatedly to blast waves. The vast majority of blast exposure for Navy SEALs comes from firing their own weapons, not from enemy action. The damage pattern suggested that years of training intended to make SEALs exceptional was leaving some barely able to function. But the message Lieutenant Metcalf sent never got through to the Navy. No one at the lab told the SEAL leadership what the analysis had found, and the leadership never asked. It was not the first time, or the last. At least a dozen Navy SEALs have died by suicide in the last 10 years, either while in the military or shortly after leaving. A grass-roots effort by grieving families delivered eight of their brains to the lab, an investigation by The New York Times has found. And after careful analysis, researchers discovered blast damage in every single one. It is a stunning pattern with important implications for how SEALs train and fight. But privacy guidelines at the lab and poor communication in the military bureaucracy kept the test results hidden. Five years after Lieutenant Metcalf’s death, Navy leaders still did not know. Until The Times told the Navy of the lab’s findings about the SEALs who died by suicide, the Navy had not been informed, the service confirmed in a statement. © 2024 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Depression
Link ID: 29378 - Posted: 07.03.2024

By Janna Levin During traumatic periods and their aftermath, our brains can fall into habitual ways of thinking that may be helpful in the short run but become maladaptive years later. For the brain to readjust to new situations later in life, it needs to be restored to the malleable state it was in when the habits first formed. That is exactly what Gül Dölen, a neuroscientist and psychiatric researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, is working toward in her lab. What is her surprising tool? Psychedelics. JANNA LEVIN: Welcome to “The Joy of Why.” This is Janna Levin. On June 4th, an advisory panel for the Federal Drug Administration recommended against approving the use of the psychedelic drug MDMA as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. Various concerns, some about safety, overshadowed the demonstrable value of the drug in the opinion of the panel. The path to approval for drug therapies is notoriously fraught with profound complexities, a high bar on proof in clinical trials, the medical injunction to “do no harm,” as well as social and political nuances. But, what’s the fundamental neuroscience behind the news story? Why are so many psychiatric researchers enthusiastic about the promise of psychedelics? We happened to take on this subject a few weeks ago with neuroscientist Gül Dölen. Here is that episode. New drug leads can come from practically anywhere. Penicillin’s discovery was spurred from mold spores that accidentally landed in a petri dish. Cancer treatments can be dredged from the bottom of the sea. And synthetic antibodies can now be engineered from scratch. But there’s a class of drugs that mainstream medicine has generally overlooked that could prove life-changing for many people facing addiction, depression, post-traumatic stress — if scientists embrace the potential power of psychedelics. © 2024 the Simons Foundation.

Keyword: Stress; Depression
Link ID: 29351 - Posted: 06.08.2024

By Ellen Barry Post-traumatic stress disorder diagnoses among college students more than doubled between 2017 and 2022, climbing most sharply as the coronavirus pandemic shut down campuses and upended young adults’ lives, according to new research published on Thursday. The prevalence of PTSD rose to 7.5 percent from 3.4 percent during that period, according to the findings. Researchers analyzed responses from more than 390,000 participants in the Healthy Minds Study, an annual web-based survey. “The magnitude of this rise is indeed shocking,” said Yusen Zhai, the paper’s lead author, who heads the community counseling clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His clinic had seen more young people struggling in the aftermath of traumatic events. So he expected an increase, but not such a large one. Dr. Zhai, an assistant professor in the Department of Human Studies, attributed the rise to “broader societal stressors” on college students, such as campus shootings, social unrest and the sudden loss of loved ones from the coronavirus. PTSD is a mental health disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts, flashbacks and heightened sensitivity to reminders of an event, continuing more than a month after it occurs. It is a relatively common disorder, with an estimated 5 percent of adults in the United States experiencing it in any given year, according to the most recent epidemiological survey conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services. Lifetime prevalence is 8 percent in women and 4 percent in men, the survey found. The new research also found a sharp rise in the prevalence of a similar condition, acute stress disorder, which is diagnosed less than a month after a trauma. Diagnoses rose to 0.7 percent among college students in 2022, up from 0.2 percent five years earlier. Use of mental health care increased nationally during the pandemic, as teletherapy made it far easier to see clinicians. Treatment for anxiety disorders increased most steeply, followed by PTSD, bipolar disorder and depression, according to economists who analyzed more than 1.5 million insurance claims for clinician visits between 2020 and 2022. © 2024 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 29350 - Posted: 06.08.2024

Leyland Cecco in Toronto A leading federal scientist in Canada has alleged he was barred from investigating a mystery brain illness in the province of New Brunswick and said he fears more than 200 people affected by the condition are experiencing unexplained neurological decline. The allegations, made in leaked emails to a colleague seen by the Guardian, have emerged two years after the eastern province closed its investigation into a possible “cluster” of cases. “All I will say is that my scientific opinion is that there is something real going on in [New Brunswick] that absolutely cannot be explained by the bias or personal agenda of an individual neurologist,” wrote Michael Coulthart, a prominent microbiologist. “A few cases might be best explained by the latter, but there are just too many (now over 200).” New Brunswick health officials warned in 2021 that more than 40 residents were suffering from a possible unknown neurological syndrome, with symptoms similar to those of the degenerative brain disorder Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Those symptoms were varied and dramatic: some patients started drooling and others felt as though bugs were crawling on their skin. A year later, however, an independent oversight committee created by the province determined that the group of patients had most likely been misdiagnosed and were suffering from known illnesses such as cancer and dementia. The committee and the New Brunswick government also cast doubt on the work of neurologist Alier Marrero, who was initially referred dozens of cases by baffled doctors in the region, and subsequently identified more cases. The doctor has since become a fierce advocate for patients he feels have been neglected by the province. © 2024 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Alzheimers; Depression
Link ID: 29342 - Posted: 06.04.2024

By Andrew Jacobs and Christina Jewett The Food and Drug Administration on Friday raised concerns about the health effects of MDMA as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, citing flaws in a company’s studies that could pose major obstacles to approval of a treatment anticipated to help people struggling with the condition. The agency said that bias had seeped into the studies because participants and therapists were readily able to figure out who got MDMA versus a placebo. It also flagged “significant increases” in blood pressure and pulse rates that could “trigger cardiovascular events.” The staff analysis was conducted for an independent advisory panel that will meet Tuesday to consider an application by Lykos Therapeutics for the use of MDMA-assisted therapy. The agency’s concerns highlight the unique and complex issues facing regulators as they weigh the therapeutic value of an illegal drug commonly known as Ecstasy that has long been associated with all-night raves and cuddle puddles. Approval would mark a seismic change in the nation’s tortuous relationship with psychedelic compounds, most of which the Drug Enforcement Administration classifies as illegal substances that have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” Research like the current studies on MDMA therapy have corralled the support of various groups and lawmakers from both parties for treatment of PTSD, a condition affecting millions of Americans, especially military veterans who face an outsize risk of suicide. No new therapy has been approved for PTSD in more than 20 years. “What’s happening is truly a paradigm shift for psychiatry,” said David Olson, director of the U.C. Davis Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics. “MDMA is an important step for the field because we really lack effective treatments, period, and people need help now.” © 2024 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Depression
Link ID: 29332 - Posted: 06.02.2024

Rodrigo Duarte Around 8% of human DNA is made up of genetic sequences acquired from ancient viruses. These sequences, known as human endogenous retroviruses (or Hervs), date back hundreds of thousands to millions of years – with some even predating the emergence of Homo sapiens. Our latest research suggests that some ancient viral DNA sequences in the human genome play a role in susceptibility to psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. Hervs represent the remnants of these infections with ancient retroviruses. Retroviruses are viruses that insert a copy of their genetic material into the DNA of the cells they infect. Retroviruses probably infected us on multiple occasions during our evolutionary past. When these infections occurred in sperm or egg cells that generated offspring, the genetic material from these retroviruses was passed on to subsequent generations, becoming a permanent part of our lineage. Initially, scientists considered Hervs to be “junk DNA” – parts of our genome with no discernible function. But as our understanding of the human genome has advanced, it’s become evident that this so-called junk DNA is responsible for more functions than originally hypothesised. First, researchers found that Hervs can regulate the expression of other human genes. A genetic feature is said to be “expressed” if its DNA segment is used to produce RNA (ribonucleic acid) molecules. These RNA molecules can then serve as intermediaries leading to the production of specific proteins, or help to regulate other parts of the genome. Initial research suggested that Hervs regulate the expression of neighbouring genes with important biological functions. One example of this is a Herv that regulates the expression of a gene involved in modifying connections between brain cells. © 2010–2024, The Conversation US, Inc.

Keyword: Depression; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 29330 - Posted: 05.29.2024

By Steven Strogatz For decades, the best drug therapies for treating depression, like SSRIs, have been based on the idea that depressed brains don’t have enough of the neurotransmitter serotonin. Yet for almost as long, it’s been clear that simplistic theory is wrong. Recent research into the true causes of depression is finding clues in other neurotransmitters and the realization that the brain is much more adaptable than scientists once imagined. Treatments for depression are being reinvented by drugs like ketamine that can help regrow synapses, which can in turn restore the right brain chemistry and improve whole body health. In this episode, John Krystal, a neuropharmacologist at the Yale School of Medicine, shares the new findings in mental health research that are revolutionizing psychiatric medication. STEVEN STROGATZ: According to the World Health Organization, 280 million people worldwide suffer from depression. For decades, people with chronic depression have been told their problem lies with a chemical imbalance in the brain, specifically a deficit in a neurotransmitter called serotonin. And based on this theory, many have been prescribed antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, to correct this chemical imbalance. This theory has become the common narrative, yet almost from the beginning, researchers have questioned the role of serotonin in depression, even though SSRIs do seem to bring a lot of relief to many people. So, if bad brain chemistry isn’t at the root of chronic depression, what is? If the thinking behind SSRIs is wrong, why do they seem to help? And is it possible that as we get closer to the true cause of depression, we may find better treatments for other conditions as well? © 2024 the Simons Foundation.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 29325 - Posted: 05.25.2024

By Ellen Barry The annual gathering of the American Psychiatric Association is a dignified and collegial affair, full of scholarly exchanges, polite laughter and polite applause. So it was a shock, for those who took their seats in Room 1E08 of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, to watch a powerfully built 32-year-old man choke back tears as he described being slammed to the floor and cuffed to a stretcher in a psychiatric unit. Because the man, Matthew Tuleja, had been a Division I football player, he had a certain way of describing the circle of bodies that closed around him, the grabbing and grappling and the sensation of being dominated, pinned and helpless. He was on the ground in a small room filled with pepper spray. Then his wrists and ankles were cuffed to the sides of a stretcher, and his pants were yanked down. They gave him injections of Haldol, an antipsychotic medication he had repeatedly tried to refuse, as he howled in protest. Forcible restraints are routine events in American hospitals. One recent study, using 2017 data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, estimated the number of restraints per year at more than 44,000. But it is rare to hear a first-person account of the experience, because it tends to happen to people who do not have a platform. Researchers who surveyed patients about restraint and seclusion have found that a large portion, 25 to 47 percent , met criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder. Listening, rapt, to Mr. Tuleja was a roomful of psychiatrists. It was a younger crowd — people who had entered the field at the time of the Black Lives Matter protests. Many of them lined up to speak to him afterward. “I still can’t forget the first time I saw someone restrained,” one doctor told him. “You don’t forget that.” © 2024 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Aggression
Link ID: 29317 - Posted: 05.21.2024

By Laura Sanders Everyone knows that the brain influences the heart. Stressful thoughts can set the heart pounding, sometimes with such deep force that we worry people can hear it. Anxiety can trigger the irregular skittering of atrial fibrillation. In more extreme and rarer cases, emotional turmoil from a shock — the death of a loved one, a cancer diagnosis, an intense argument — can trigger a syndrome that mimics a heart attack. But not everyone knows that the heart talks back. Subscribe to Science News Powerful signals travel from the heart to the brain, affecting our perceptions, decisions and mental health. And the heart is not alone in talking back. Other organs also send mysterious signals to the brain in ways that scientists are just beginning to tease apart. A bodywide perspective that seeks to understand our biology and behavior is relatively new, leaving lots of big, basic questions. The complexities of brain-body interactions are “only matched by our ignorance of their organization,” says Peter Strick, a neuroscientist at the University of Pittsburgh. Exploring the relationships between the heart, other organs and the brain isn’t just fascinating anatomy. A deeper understanding of how we sense and use signals from inside our bodies — a growing field called interoception — may point to new treatments for disorders such as anxiety. “We have forgotten that interactions with the internal world are probably as important as interactions with the external world,” says cognitive neuroscientist Catherine Tallon-Baudry of École Normale Supérieure in Paris. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2024.

Keyword: Emotions; Depression
Link ID: 29313 - Posted: 05.18.2024

By Christina Caron Antidepressants are among the most prescribed medications in the United States. This is, in part, because the number of people diagnosed with depression and anxiety has been on the rise, and prescriptions jumped sharply among some age groups during the pandemic. Despite the prevalence of these medications, some patients have “significant misconceptions” about how the drugs work, said Dr. Andrew J. Gerber, a psychiatrist and the president and medical director of Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Conn. About 80 percent of antidepressants are prescribed by primary care doctors who have not had extensive training in managing mental illness. Dr. Paul Nestadt, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said patients tell him, “‘You know, Doc, I’ve tried everything.’” But often, he said, “they never got to a good dose, or they were only on it for a week or two.” Here are some answers to frequently asked questions about antidepressants. How do antidepressants work? There are many types of antidepressants, and they all work a bit differently. In general, they initiate a change in the way brain cells — and different regions of the brain — communicate with one another, said Dr. Gerard Sanacora, a professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. Clinical trials have shown that antidepressants are generally more effective with moderate, severe and chronic depression than with mild depression. Even then, it’s a modest effect when compared with placebo. © 2024 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 29275 - Posted: 04.30.2024

By Nicole Rust We readily (and reasonably) accept that the causes of memory dysfunction, including Alzheimer’s disease, reside in the brain. The same is true for many problems with seeing, hearing and motor control. We acknowledge that understanding how the brain supports these functions is important for developing treatments for their corresponding dysfunctions, including blindness, deafness and Parkinson’s disease. Applying the analogous assertion to mood—that understanding how the brain supports mood is crucial for developing more effective treatments for mood disorders, such as depression—is more controversial. For brain researchers unfamiliar with the controversy, it can be befuddling. You might hear, “Mental disorders are psychological, not biological,” and wonder, what does that mean, exactly? Experts have diverse opinions on the matter, with paper titles ranging from “Brain disorders? Not really,” to “Brain disorders? Precisely.” Even though a remarkable 21 percent of adults in the United States will experience a mood disorder at some point in their lives, we do not fully understand what causes them, and existing treatments do not work for everyone. How can we best move toward an impactful understanding of mood and mood disorders, with the longer-term goal of helping these people? What, if anything, makes mood fundamentally different from, say, memory? The answer turns out to be complex and nuanced—here, I hope to unpack it. I also ask brain and mind researchers with diverse perspectives to chime in. Among contemporary brain and mind researchers, I have yet to find any whose position is driven by the notion that some force in the universe beyond the brain, like a nonmaterial soul, gives rise to mood. Rather, the researchers generally agree that our brains mediate all mental function. If everyone agrees that both memory and mood disorders follow from things that happen in the brain, why would the former but not the latter qualify as “brain disorders”? © 2024 Simons Foundation

Keyword: Depression; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 29251 - Posted: 04.11.2024

By Esther Landhuis When Angela Tang’s teenage son came down with a baffling illness, few households could have been better equipped to deal with it. The family lives in a wealthy Los Angeles suburb. Both parents are doctors — Tang in internal medicine, her husband in infectious disease — and their son, a straight-A student well-liked at school, had been cared for by the family’s pediatrician since birth. Still, the parents worried as their son’s symptoms appeared, seemingly out of the blue, in September 2018: He’d meticulously line up pencils in groups of five, recite prayers unrelentingly, make homework illegible as he had to erase or cross out every C, D, and F. Eating, too, became a chore. If he had a contaminating thought while taking a bite, he’d have to spit out the food, wash his mouth, and try again, but the new bite couldn’t have touched the old one. It got to the point where he could only eat mushy or semi-liquid foods carefully placed “in little aliquots on his plate, so that if one bite got contaminated,” it wouldn’t touch the others, Tang said. Before long, she and her husband were working around the clock just to get him through the day. In a panic, Tang consulted their pediatrician, and recalls the doctor asking an intriguing question: “Has he had any unusual infections recently — because you know about PANDAS, right?” At the time, Tang knew nothing about PANDAS. She had completed her own medical residency two years before the illness — short for pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections — was first outlined in a 1998 paper. That publication detailed how a child’s behavior could change alarmingly after a strep infection, and may include symptoms of obsessive-compulsive behavior and tics. It has also stirred controversy: Many doctors hesitate to diagnose or treat the condition even today.

Keyword: OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 29241 - Posted: 04.04.2024