By Talia Ogliore New research from Washington University in St. Louis reveals that neurons in the visual cortex — the part of the brain that processes visual stimuli — change their responses to the same stimulus over time. Although other studies have documented “representational drift” in neurons in the parts of the brain associated with odor and spatial memory, this result is surprising because neural activity in the primary visual cortex is thought to be relatively stable. Xia The study published Aug. 27 in Nature Communications was led by Ji Xia, a recent PhD graduate of the laboratory of Ralf Wessel, professor of physics in Arts & Sciences. Xia is now a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. “We know that the brain is a flexible structure because we expect the neural activity in the brain to change over days when we learn, or when we gain experience — even as adults,” Xia said. “What is somewhat unexpected is that even when there is no learning, or no experience changes, neural activity still changes across days in different brain areas.” Researchers in Wessel’s group explore sensory information processing in the brain. Working with collaborators, they use novel data analysis to address questions of dynamics and computation in neural circuits of the visual cortex of the brain. Study co-senior author Michael J. Goard, from the Neuroscience Research Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara, showed mice a single, short movie clip on a loop. (They used a section of the opening from a classic Orson Welles black-and-white film, de rigueur for today’s mouse vision studies.) While a mouse watched the movie, researchers simultaneously recorded activity in several hundred neurons in the primary visual cortex, using two-photon calcium imaging. ©2021 Washington University in St. Louis

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 27972 - Posted: 09.01.2021

Natalie Grover Losing weight through exercise appears to be more difficult for obese people, research suggests. Initially, researchers thought that the total energy we spend in a day is the sum of energy expended due to activity (ranging from light gardening to running a marathon) and energy used for basic functioning (what keeps us ticking even when we are doing nothing, such as immune function and wound healing). But preliminary lab research indicates that that simple addition could be misleading – estimates of total daily expenditure tend to be less than the sum of baseline and activity expenditure in individuals. To explore this further, a group of international scientists analysed measurements of energy expenditure from 1,754 adults from a dataset collected over decades and supplied by the International Atomic Energy Agency. They found that increasing levels of activity by exercising more, for instance, led to each person’s body compensating by limiting the energy expended on basic metabolic functions over a longer period, according to the study published in the journal Current Biology. For instance, if you go for a run and your activity tracker says you burned 300 calories (and you didn’t eat any differently) – you may assume that your total daily energy expenditure went up by 300 calories. That may be the case in the short term, but over the long term the body starts to compensate for this extra energy exertion by reducing the energy spent on other processes, said lead author Prof Lewis Halsey from the University of Roehampton. “It’s like the government trying to balance the budget – if it’s spending more on education for instance, then it might need to spend less on roads,” he said. © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 27971 - Posted: 09.01.2021

By Nora D. Volkow The provisional drug overdose death statistics for 2020 confirmed the addiction field’s worst fears. More people died of overdoses in the United States last year than in any other one-year period in our history. More than 93,000 people died. The increase from the previous year was also more than we’ve ever seen—up 30 percent. These data are telling us that something is wrong. In fact, they are shouting for change. It is no longer a question of “doing more” to combat our nation’s drug problems. What we as a society are doing—putting people with drug addiction behind bars, underinvesting in prevention and compassionate medical care—is not working. Even as we work to create better scientific solutions to this crisis, it is beyond frustrating—it is tragic—to see the effective prevention and treatment tools we already have just not being used. The benefits of providing effective substance use disorder treatments—especially medication for opioid use disorder—are well-known. Yet decades of prejudice against treating substance use disorders with medication has greatly limited their reach, partly accounting for why only 18 percent of people with opioid use disorder receive medications. Historical reluctance to provide these treatments and of insurers to cover them reflects the stigma that has long made people with addiction a low priority. We must eliminate the attitudes and infrastructure barring treating people with substance use disorders. This means making it easier for clinicians to provide life-saving medications, expanding models of care like digital health technologies and mobile clinics that can reach people where they are, and ensuring that payers cover treatments that work. © 2021 Scientific American

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 27970 - Posted: 09.01.2021

By Carolyn Wilke Some female hummingbirds don flashy feathers to avoid being bothered by other hummingbirds, a new study suggests. Male white-necked jacobin hummingbirds (Florisuga mellivora) have bright blue heads and throats. Females tend to have more drab hues, but some sport the blue coloring too. Appearing fit and fine to impress potential mates can often explain animals’ vibrant colors. But mate choice doesn’t seem to drive these females’ pretty plumage since males don’t appear to prefer the blue females. Instead, bright colors may help lady birds blend in with the guys, and as a result, feed for longer without harassment from other hummingbirds, researchers report August 26 in Current Biology. Beyond vying for mates, animals often also compete for territory, parental attention, social ranks and food (SN: 4/7/16). Mating choices don’t capture all those other interactions and can’t always explain animals’ looks, says Jay Falk, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. To begin investigating why some female jacobins have colorful blue plumage, Falk and colleagues captured and released over 400 of the birds in Gamboa, Panama, using genetics to determine their sex. Most females had drab colors — olive green heads and backs and mottled throats. But nearly 30 percent of females had the shimmery blue noggins that all juveniles have and that are characteristic of adult males. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2021.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 27969 - Posted: 08.28.2021

by Peter Hess Some mutations in SCN2A, a gene reliably linked to autism, change social behaviors in mice by dampening the electrical activity of their neurons, according to a new study. SCN2A encodes a sodium channel that helps neurons send electrical signals. So-called ‘gain-of-function’ mutations make the channel hyperactive and can lead to epilepsy, whereas ‘loss-of-function’ mutations diminish its activity and are typically associated with autism. The mice in the new study carry the latter type and, as a result, have fewer functioning sodium channels than usual. The animals also react to unfamiliar mice in an atypical way, mirroring social behaviors seen in autistic people with similar SCN2A mutations. “We’re in the position of really connecting a single mutation, or at least a defect in the channel, to the behavior,” says lead investigator Geoffrey Pitt, professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. “The message that our paper shows is that loss-of-function mutations and decreased sodium current can lead to behaviors.” This study confirms previous work showing that autism-linked mutations in SCN2A dampen channel activity in neurons, and further connects the loss-of-function mutations to clear changes in behavior, says Kevin Bender, associate professor of neurology at the University of California San Francisco, who was not involved in the work. “The behavioral results were actually some of the most robust that I’ve seen in this field to date.” © 2021 Simons Foundation

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 27968 - Posted: 08.28.2021

By Daniel R. George, Peter J. Whitehouse Aducanumab, marketed as “Aduhelm,” is an antiamyloid monoclonal antibody and the latest in a procession of such drugs to be tested against Alzheimer’s disease. Over the last several decades, billions have been spent targeting the amyloid that clumps together to form the neuritic plaques first documented by German psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer in 1906. This class of drugs has reduced amyloid aggregation; however, since 2000, there has been a virtual 100 percent fail rate in clinical trials, with some therapies actually worsening patient outcomes. In 2019, Aducanumab failed in a futility analysis of two pooled phase III randomized controlled trials, but was later claimed to have yielded a small benefit for a subset of patients in a high-dosage group. The biologic was granted accelerated approval by the FDA based not on its clinical benefit but rather on its ability to lower amyloid on PET scans. Biogen immediately priced the treatment at $56,000 annually, making it potentially one of the most expensive drugs in the country’s history. This predicament is all the more surreal because—in the absence of more decisive evidence—there is no adequate proof that the drug actually clinically benefits people who take it. Aducanumab, which is delivered intravenously, was observed to cause brain swelling or bleeding in 40 percent of high-dose participants as well as higher rates of headache, falls and diarrhea. The FDA’s decision flew in the face of a near-consensus recommendation from its advisory committee not to approve. Three members of that committee have since resigned; several federal investigations have been launched to examine the close relationship between Biogen and the FDA; and the Department of Veterans Affairs and numerous private insurers and high-profile hospital systems have already signaled they want nothing to do with the drug. Meanwhile, Biogen has launched a Web site and comprehensive marketing campaign called “It’s Time,” quizzing potential consumers on their memory loss and ultimately guiding them to experts, imaging and/or infusion sites. © 2021 Scientific American,

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 27967 - Posted: 08.28.2021

Emma Yasinski Some genetic risk factors for alcohol use disorder overlap with those for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, scientists reported in Nature Communications on August 20. The study, which relied on a combination of genetic, transcriptomic, and epigenetic data, also offers insight into the molecular commonalities among these disorders, and their connections to immune disfunction. “By meshing findings from genome wide association studies . . . with gene expression in brain and other tissues, this new study has prioritized genes likely to harbor regulatory variants influencing risk of Alcohol Use Disorder,” writes David Goldman, a neurogenetics researcher at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), in an email to The Scientist. “Several of these genes are also associated with neurodegenerative disorders—an intriguing connection because of alcohol’s ability to prematurely age the brain.” Over the past several years, researchers have published a handful of massive genome-wide association studies (GWAS) studies identifying loci—regions of the genome that can contain 10 or more individual genes—that likely influence a person’s risk of developing an alcohol use disorder (AUD). In a study published two years ago, Manav Kapoor, a neuroscientist and geneticist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and first author on the new paper, and his team found evidence that the immune system might be overactive in people with AUD, but the finding left him with more questions. The first was whether excessive drinking directly causes immune dysfunction, or if instead some people’s genetic makeup puts them at risk for both simultaneously. © 1986–2021 The Scientist.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 27966 - Posted: 08.28.2021

Rachel Hall Napping has long been a symbol of laziness, but actually it is an essential bodily function that improves our memory, creativity, empathy and problem-solving abilities. Sleep scientists say the gold standard for good physical and mental health is making sure you get between seven and nine hours’ sleep every day, but not necessarily all in one go. “Capitalists in the old days told us that we should do 12 to 16 hours of work for them, and then have eight hours to do what we like, so they wanted us to sleep efficiently in a certain window – that’s where the idea of consolidated sleep comes from,” said Till Roenneberg, a professor of chronobiology at the University of Munich. He has been studying civilisations without electricity, and has observed that people often woke up during the night, took a break and went back to sleep. However, Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Why We Sleep, said people who have trouble falling asleep at night should approach naps with caution, and that everyone should avoid napping after 3pm. “If you nap too late in the day it’s a bit like snacking before main meal, it just takes the edge off your sleep hunger at night,” he said. The ideal length, according to the scientists, is 20 to 25 minutes. Any longer and you’ll fall into a deeper sleep cycle, which lasts for about 90 minutes. This means when you wake up you will experience “sleep inertia”, or grogginess. © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Sleep; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 27965 - Posted: 08.28.2021

Terry Gross Human beings are programmed to approach pleasure and avoid pain. It's an instinct that dates back millions of years, to a time when people needed to actively seek food, clothing and shelter every day, or risk death. But psychiatrist Anna Lembke says that in today's world, such basic needs are often readily available — which changes the equation. "Living in this modern age is very challenging. ... We're now having to cope with: How do I live in a world in which everything is provided?" Lembke says. "And if I consume too much of it — which my reflexes compel me to do — I'm going to be even more unhappy." Lembke is the medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford University and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. Her new book, Dopamine Nation, explores the interconnection of pleasure and pain in the brain and helps explain addictive behaviors — not just to drugs and alcohol, but also to food, sex and smart phones. Lembke says that her patients who are struggling with substance abuse often believe their addictions are fueled by depression, anxiety and insomnia. But she maintains that the reverse is often true: Addictions can become the cause of pain — not the relief from it. That's because the behavior triggers, among other things, an initial response of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which floods the brain with pleasure. But once the dopamine wears off, a person is often left feeling worse than before. "They start out using the drug in order to feel good or in order to experience less pain," Lembke says. "Over time, with repeated exposure, that drug works less and less well. But they find themselves unable to stop, because when they're not using, then they're in a state of a dopamine deficit." © 2021 npr

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 27964 - Posted: 08.28.2021

Jordana Cepelewicz Neuroscientists are the cartographers of the brain’s diverse domains and territories — the features and activities that define them, the roads and highways that connect them, and the boundaries that delineate them. Toward the front of the brain, just behind the forehead, is the prefrontal cortex, celebrated as the seat of judgment. Behind it lies the motor cortex, responsible for planning and coordinating movement. To the sides: the temporal lobes, crucial for memory and the processing of emotion. Above them, the somatosensory cortex; behind them, the visual cortex. Not only do researchers often depict the brain and its functions much as mapmakers might draw nations on continents, but they do so “the way old-fashioned mapmakers” did, according to Lisa Feldman Barrett, a psychologist at Northeastern University. “They parse the brain in terms of what they’re interested in psychologically or mentally or behaviorally,” and then they assign the functions to different networks of neurons “as if they’re Lego blocks, as if there are firm boundaries there.” But a brain map with neat borders is not just oversimplified — it’s misleading. “Scientists for over 100 years have searched fruitlessly for brain boundaries between thinking, feeling, deciding, remembering, moving and other everyday experiences,” Barrett said. A host of recent neurological studies further confirm that these mental categories “are poor guides for understanding how brains are structured or how they work.” Neuroscientists generally agree about how the physical tissue of the brain is organized: into particular regions, networks, cell types. But when it comes to relating those to the task the brain might be performing — perception, memory, attention, emotion or action — “things get a lot more dodgy,” said David Poeppel, a neuroscientist at New York University. All Rights Reserved © 2021

Keyword: Brain imaging; Attention
Link ID: 27963 - Posted: 08.25.2021

Tim Adams For centuries, philosophers have theorised about the mind-body question, debating the relationship between the physical matter of the brain and the conscious mental activity it somehow creates. Even with advances in neuroscience and brain imaging techniques, large parts of that fundamental relationship remain stubbornly mysterious. It was with good reason that, in 1995, the cognitive scientist David Chalmers coined the term “the hard problem” to describe the question of exactly how our brains conjure subjective conscious experience. Some philosophers continue to insist that mind is inherently distinct from matter. Advances in understanding how the brain functions undermine those ideas of dualism, however. Anil Seth, professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex, is at the leading edge of that latter research. His Ted talk on consciousness has been viewed more than 11m times. His new book, Being You, proposes an idea of the human mind as a “highly evolved prediction machine”, rooted in the functions of the body and “constantly hallucinating the world and the self” to create reality. One of the things that I liked about your approach in the book was the way that many of the phenomena you investigate arise out of your experience. For example, the feeling of returning to consciousness after anaesthesia or how your mother, experiencing delirium, was no longer recognisably herself. Do you think it’s always important to keep that real-world framework in mind? The reason I’m interested in consciousness is intrinsically personal. I want to understand myself and, by extension, others. But I’m also super-interested for example in developing statistical models and mathematical methods for characterising things such as emergence [behaviour of the mind as a whole that exceeds the capability of its individual parts] and there is no personal component in that. © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Consciousness; Attention
Link ID: 27962 - Posted: 08.25.2021

By Gretchen Reynolds An intriguing new study shows how exercise may bolster brain health. The study was in mice, but it found that a hormone produced by muscles during exercise can cross into the brain and enhance the health and function of neurons, improving thinking and memory in both healthy animals and those with a rodent version of Alzheimer’s disease. Earlier research shows that people produce the same hormone during exercise, and together the findings suggest that moving could alter the trajectory of memory loss in aging and dementia. We have plenty of evidence already that exercise is good for the brain. Studies in both people and animals show that exercise prompts the creation of new neurons in the brain’s memory center and then helps those new cells survive, mature and integrate into the brain’s neural network, where they can aid in thinking and remembering. Large-scale epidemiological studies also indicate that active people tend to be far less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia than people who rarely exercise. But how does working out affect the inner workings of our brains at a molecular level? Scientists have speculated that exercise might directly change the biochemical environment inside the brain, without involving muscles. Alternatively, the muscles and other tissues might release substances during physical activity that travel to the brain and jump-start processes there, leading to the subsequent improvements in brain health. But in that case, the substances would have to be able to pass through the protective and mostly impermeable blood-brain barrier that separates our brains from the rest of our bodies. Those tangled issues were of particular interest a decade ago to a large group of scientists at Harvard Medical School and other institutions. In 2012, some of these researchers, led by Bruce M. Spiegelman, the Stanley J. Korsmeyer Professor of Cell Biology and Medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, identified a previously unknown hormone produced in the muscles of lab rodents and people during exercise and then released into the bloodstream. They named the new hormone irisin, after the messenger god Iris in Greek mythology. © 2021 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Muscles
Link ID: 27961 - Posted: 08.25.2021

By Katherine Ellison Jessica McCabe crashed and burned at 30, when she got divorced, dropped out of community college and moved in with her mother. Eric Tivers had 21 jobs before age 21. Both have been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and both today are entrepreneurs who wear their diagnoses — and rare resilience — on their sleeves. With YouTube videos, podcasts and tweets, they’ve built online communities aimed at ending the shame that so often makes having ADHD so much harder. Now they’re going even further, asking: Why not demand more than mere compassion? Why not seek deeper changes to create a more ADHD-friendly world? “I’ve spent the last five or six years trying to understand how my brain works so that I could conform, but now I’m starting to evolve,” says McCabe, 38, whose chipper, NASCAR-speed delivery has garnered 742,000 subscribers — and counting — to her YouTube channel, “How to ADHD.” “I think we no longer have to accept that we live in a world that is not built for our brains.” With Tivers, she is planning a virtual summit on the topic for next May. As a first step, with the help of Canadian cognitive scientist Deirdre Kelly, she says she’ll soon release new guidelines to assess products and services for their ADHD friendliness. Computer programs that help restless users meditate and a chair that accommodates a variety of seated positions are high on the list to promote, while error-prone apps or devices will be flagged. Kelly also envisions redesigning refrigerator vegetable drawers, so that the most nutritious food will no longer be out of sight and mind. In the past two decades, the world has become much kinder to the estimated 6.1 million children and approximately 10 million adults with ADHD, whose hallmark symptoms are distraction, forgetfulness and impulsivity. Social media has made all the difference.

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 27960 - Posted: 08.25.2021

By Paula Span Learning your odds of eventually developing dementia — a pressing concern for many, especially those with a family history of it — requires medical testing and counseling. But what if everyday behavior, like overlooking a couple of credit card payments or habitually braking while driving, could foretell your risk? A spate of experiments is underway to explore that possibility, reflecting the growing awareness that the pathologies underlying dementia can begin years or even decades before symptoms emerge. “Early detection is key for intervention, at the stage when that would be most effective,” said Sayeh Bayat, the lead author of a driving study funded by the National Institutes of Health and conducted at Washington University in St. Louis. Such efforts could help identify potential volunteers for clinical trials, researchers say, and help protect older people against financial abuse and other dangers. In recent years, many once-promising dementia drugs, particularly for Alzheimer’s disease, have failed in trials. One possible reason, researchers say, is that the drugs are administered too late to be helpful. Identifying risks earlier, when the brain has sustained less damage, could create a pool of potential participants with “preclinical” Alzheimer’s disease, who could then test preventive measures or treatments. It could also bring improvements in daily life. “We could support people’s ability to drive longer, and have safer streets for everyone,” Ms. Bayat offered as an example. © 2021 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 27959 - Posted: 08.25.2021

By Carolyn Wilke Frog and toad pupils come in quite the array, from slits to circles. But overall, there are seven main shapes of these animals’ peepholes, researchers report in the Aug. 25 Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Eyes are “among the most charismatic features of frogs and toads,” says herpetologist Julián Faivovich of the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales “Bernardino Rivadavia” in Buenos Aires. People have long marveled at the animals’ many iris colors and pupil shapes. Yet “there’s almost nothing known about the anatomical basis of that diversity.” Faivovich and colleagues catalogued pupil shapes from photos of 3,261 species, representing 44 percent of known frogs and toads. The team identified seven main shapes: vertical slits, horizontal slits, diamonds, circles, triangles, fans and inverted fans. The most common shape, horizontal slits, appeared in 78 percent of studied species. Mapping pupil shapes onto a tree of evolutionary relationships allowed the scientists to infer how these seven shapes emerged. Though uncommon in other vertebrates, horizontal pupils seem to have given rise to most of the other shapes in frogs and toads. All together, these seven shapes have evolved at least 116 times, the researchers say. Pupil shape affects the amount of light that reaches the retina and its light-receiving cells, says Nadia Cervino, a herpetologist also at the Argentine museum. But how the shape influences what animals actually see isn’t well-known. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2021.

Keyword: Vision; Evolution
Link ID: 27958 - Posted: 08.25.2021

By Jonathan Lambert At least 65 million years of evolution separate humans and greater sac-winged bats, but these two mammals share a key feature of learning how to speak: babbling. Just as human infants babble their way from “da-da-da-da” to “Dad,” wild bat pups (Saccopteryx bilineata) learn the mating and territorial songs of adults by first babbling out the fundamental syllables of the vocalizations, researchers report in the Aug. 20 Science. These bats now join humans as the only clear examples of mammals who learn to make complex vocalizations through babbling. “This is a hugely important step forward in the study of vocal learning,” says Tecumseh Fitch, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Vienna not involved in the new study. “These findings suggest that there are deep parallels between how humans and young bats learn to control their vocal apparatus,” he says. The work could enable future studies that might allow researchers to peer deeper into the brain activity that underpins vocal learning. Before complex vocalizations, whether words or mating songs, can be spoken or sung, vocalizers must learn to articulate the syllables that make up a species’s vocabulary, says Ahana Fernandez, an animal behavior biologist at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin. “Babbling is a way of practicing,” and honing those vocalizations, she says. The rhythmic, repetitive “ba-ba-ba’s” and “ga-ga-ga’s” of human infants may sound like gibberish, but they are necessary exploratory steps toward learning how to talk. Seeing whether babbling is required for any animal that learns complex vocalizations necessitates looking in other species. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2021.

Keyword: Language; Hearing
Link ID: 27957 - Posted: 08.21.2021

By Priyanka Runwal Brain tissue is innately squishy. Unlike bones, shells or teeth, it is rich in fat and rots quickly, seldom making an appearance in the fossil record. So when Russell Bicknell, an invertebrate paleontologist at the University of New England in Australia, noticed a pop of white near the front of a fossilized horseshoe crab body where the animal’s brain would have been, he was surprised. A closer look revealed an exceptional imprint of the brain along with other bits of the creature’s nervous system. Unearthed from the Mazon Creek deposit in northeastern Illinois, and dating back 310 million years, it’s the first fossilized horseshoe crab brain ever found. Dr. Bicknell and his colleagues reported the find last month in the journal Geology. “These kinds of fossils are so rare that if you happen to stumble upon one, you’d generally be in shock,” he said. “We’re talking a needle-in-a-haystack level of wow.” The find helps fill a gap in the evolution of arthropod brains and also shows how little they have changed over hundreds of millions of years. Soft-tissue preservation requires special conditions. Scientists have found brains encased in fossilized tree resin, better known as amber, that were less than 66 million years old. They have also found brains preserved as flattened carbon films, sometimes replaced or overlaid by minerals in shale deposits that are more than 500 million years old. Such deposits include corpses of ocean-dwelling arthropods that sank to the seafloor, were rapidly buried in mud and remained shielded from immediate decay in the low-oxygen environment. However, the fossilized brain of Euproops danae, which is kept in a collection at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, required a different set of conditions to be preserved. © 2021 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 27956 - Posted: 08.21.2021

By Christiane Gelitz, Maddie Bender | To a chef, the sounds of lip smacking, slurping and swallowing are the highest form of flattery. But to someone with a certain type of misophonia, these same sounds can be torturous. Brain scans are now helping scientists start to understand why. People with misophonia experience strong discomfort, annoyance or disgust when they hear particular triggers. These can include chewing, swallowing, slurping, throat clearing, coughing and even audible breathing. Researchers previously thought this reaction might be caused by the brain overactively processing certain sounds. Now, however, a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience has linked some forms of misophonia to heightened “mirroring” behavior in the brain: those affected feel distress while their brains act as if they are mimicking the triggering mouth movements. “This is the first breakthrough in misophonia research in 25 years,” says psychologist Jennifer J. Brout, who directs the International Misophonia Research Network and was not involved in the new study. The research team, led by Newcastle University neuroscientist Sukhbinder Kumar, analyzed brain activity in people with and without misophonia when they were at rest and while they listened to sounds. These included misophonia triggers (such as chewing), generally unpleasant sounds (like a crying baby), and neutral sounds. The brain's auditory cortex, which processes sound, reacted similarly in subjects with and without misophonia. But in both the resting state and listening trials, people with misophonia showed stronger connections between the auditory cortex and brain regions that control movements of the face, mouth and throat. Kumar found this connection became most active in participants with misophonia when they heard triggers specific to the condition. © 2021 Scientific American,

Keyword: Hearing; Attention
Link ID: 27955 - Posted: 08.21.2021

by Peter Hess Children born to mothers who take antipsychotic medications during pregnancy do not have elevated odds of autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), nor are they more likely to be born preterm or underweight, according to a study released this past Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine. Some women with schizophrenia, Tourette syndrome or bipolar disorder take antipsychotic drugs, such as aripiprazole, haloperidol or risperidone. Clinicians have long debated whether women should discontinue these medications during pregnancy out of concern for the drugs’ effects on the developing fetus. But children born to mothers who take antipsychotics during pregnancy and to those who do not take them have similar outcomes, the new work shows. “Our findings do not support a recommendation for women to discontinue their regular antipsychotic treatment during pregnancy,” says senior investigator Kenneth Man, research fellow at the University College London School of Pharmacy in the United Kingdom. Prescribing antipsychotics during pregnancy can help prevent potentially dangerous psychotic episodes and ensure that an expectant mother can take care of herself, says Mady Hornig, associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, who was not involved in the study. “We certainly don’t want to be cavalier about the use of any medication during pregnancy, but one also wants to balance out the implications of not treating.” © 2021 Simons Foundation

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 27954 - Posted: 08.21.2021

By Jillian Kramer Mice are at their best at night. But a new analysis suggests researchers often test the nocturnal creatures during the day—which could alter results and create variability across studies—if they record time-of-day information at all. Of the 200 papers examined in the new study, more than half either failed to report the timing of behavioral testing or did so ambiguously. Only 20 percent reported nighttime testing. The analysis was published in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. West Virginia University neuroscientist Randy Nelson, the study's lead author, says this is likely a matter of human convenience. “It is easier to get students and techs to work during the day than [at] night,” Nelson says. But that convenience comes at a cost. “Time of day not only impacts the intensity of many variables, including locomotor activity, aggressive behavior, and plasma hormone levels,” but changes in those variables can only be observed during certain parts of the diurnal cycle, says University of Wyoming behavioral neuroscientist William D. Todd. This means that “failing to report time of day of data collection and tests makes interpretation of results extremely difficult,” adds Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center staff scientist Natalia Machado. Neither Todd nor Machado was involved in the new study. The study researchers say it is critical that scientists report the timing of their work and consider the fact that animals' behavioral and physiological responses can vary with the hour. As a first step, Nelson says, “taking care of time-of-day considerations seems like low-hanging fruit in terms of increasing behavioral neuroscience research reliability, reproducibility and rigor.” © 2021 Scientific American

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 27953 - Posted: 08.21.2021