As we get older, we become more easily distracted, but it isn't always a disadvantage, according to researchers. Tarek Amer, a psychology postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University, says that although our ability to focus our attention on specific things worsens as we get older, our ability to take in broad swaths of information remains strong. So in general, older adults are able to retain information that a more focused person could not. For the last few years, Amer's research has focused mainly on cognitive control, a loose term that describes one's ability to focus their attention. His work at the University of Toronto, where he received his PhD in 2018, looked specifically at older adults aged 60 to 80. Amer joined Spark host Nora Young to discuss his research and how it could be implemented in practical ways. What happens to our ability to concentrate as we get older? There's a lot of research that shows as we get older, this ability tends to decline or is reduced with age. So essentially, what we see is that relative to younger adults, older adults have a harder time focusing on one thing while ignoring distractions. This distraction can be from the external world. This can also be internally based distractions, such as our own thoughts, which are usually not related to the task at hand. With respect to mind wandering specifically, the literature is ... mixed. [The] typical finding is that older adults tend to, at least in lab-based tasks, mind wander less. So I know that you've been looking, in your own research, at concentration and memory formation. So what exactly are you studying? One of the things I was interested in is whether this [decline in the ability to concentrate] could be associated with any benefits in old age. For example, one thing that we showed is that when older and younger adults perform a task that includes both task-relevant as well as task-irrelevant information, older adults are actually processing both types of information. So if we give them a memory task at the end that actually is testing memory for the irrelevant information … we see that older adults actually outperform younger adults. ©2020 CBC/Radio-Canada.

Keyword: Attention; Alzheimers
Link ID: 27116 - Posted: 03.14.2020

Deborah Becker Alcoholics Anonymous may be just as good or better than scientifically proven treatments to help people quit drinking, according to a new review. But AA still doesn't work for everyone. AILSA CHANG, HOST: Alcoholics Anonymous, or AA, has been around for almost 85 years. But up until this week, medical researchers weren't quite sure just how well AA worked. Well, now a new review published by the Cochrane Collaboration has found that AA may lead to longer breaks from alcohol compared to other evidence-based treatments. Deborah Becker has been following all of this. She's a senior correspondent and host at WBUR and joins us now. Hey, Deborah. DEBORAH BECKER, BYLINE: Hi. CHANG: So for quite some time now, people weren't sure how effective AA was, and now they are. So what's changed? BECKER: Well, what they say has changed is that they have more and better studies about AA and professional programs that are based on AA principles. So the researchers here looked at 27 studies of AA programs involving more than 10,000 people. And the most striking finding of looking at all of this research was that the folks who were in AA or AA-based programs tended to stay away from alcohol longer. CHANG: OK. So can you just very briefly explain the mechanism by which AA is supposed to work? BECKER: Well, AA is primarily a social support network for people, so they can discuss how they are trying to achieve recovery and what they're doing to stay in recovery. And AA is based on what are known as the 12 steps. And these are 12 steps that folks take to guide them to recovery. CHANG: And this leaning into social networks, is that something that's unique to AA? BECKER: Well, I don't know if it's unique to AA, but certainly the support network theory of alcoholism and even addiction treatment is something that's widely used. And one of the lead authors of this Cochrane review is Dr. John Kelly at Massachusetts General Hospital. And he says what this review shows is that AA helps people shift their social networks away from heavy drinkers and toward people in recovery. And he says that's what professional therapy tries to do, but this - AA - does it in a more accessible and obviously less expensive way. © 2020 npr

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 27115 - Posted: 03.14.2020

By R. Douglas Fields Our concepts of how the two and a half pounds of flabby flesh between our ears accomplish learning date to Ivan Pavlov’s classic experiments, where he found that dogs could learn to salivate at the sound of a bell. In 1949 psychologist Donald Hebb adapted Pavlov’s “associative learning rule” to explain how brain cells might acquire knowledge. Hebb proposed that when two neurons fire together, sending off impulses simultaneously, the connections between them—the synapses—grow stronger. When this happens, learning has taken place. In the dogs’ case, it would mean the brain now knows that the sound of a bell is followed immediately by the presence of food. This idea gave rise to an oft-quoted axiom: “Synapses that fire together wire together.” The theory proved sound, and the molecular details of how synapses change during learning have been described in detail. But not everything we remember results from reward or punishment, and in fact, most experiences are forgotten. Even when synapses do fire together, they sometimes do not wire together. What we retain depends on our emotional response to an experience, how novel it is, where and when the event occurred, our level of attention and motivation during the event, and we process these thoughts and feelings while asleep. A narrow focus on the synapse has given us a mere stick-figure conception of how learning and the memories it engenders work. It turns out that strengthening a synapse cannot produce a memory on its own, except for the most elementary reflexes in simple circuits. Vast changes throughout the expanse of the brain are necessary to create a coherent memory. Whether you are recalling last night’s conversation with dinner guests or using an acquired skill such as riding a bike, the activity of millions of neurons in many different regions of your brain must become linked to produce a coherent memory that interweaves emotions, sights, sounds, smells, event sequences and other stored experiences. Because learning encompasses so many elements of our experiences, it must incorporate different cellular mechanisms beyond the changes that occur in synapses. This recognition has led to a search for new ways to understand how information is transmitted, processed and stored in the brain to bring about learning. In the past 10 years neuroscientists have come to realize that the iconic “gray matter” that makes up the brain’s outer surface—familiar from graphic illustrations found everywhere, from textbooks to children’s cartoons—is not the only part of the organ involved in the inscription of a permanent record of facts and events for later recall and replay. It turns out that areas below the deeply folded, gray-colored surface also play a pivotal role in learning. © 2020 Scientific American

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Glia
Link ID: 27114 - Posted: 03.12.2020

Laura Reiley A study published in the journal Cell Metabolism by a group of Yale researchers found that the consumption of the common artificial sweetener sucralose (which is found in Splenda, Zerocal, Sukrana, SucraPlus and other brands) in combination with carbohydrates can swiftly turn a healthy person into one with high blood sugar. From whole grain English muffins to reduced-sugar ketchup, sucralose is found in thousands of baked goods, condiments, syrups and other consumer packaged goods — almost all of them containing carbs. The finding, which researchers noted has yet to be replicated in other studies, raises new questions about the use of artificial sweeteners and their effects on weight gain and overall health. In the Yale study, researchers took 60 healthy-weight individuals and separated them into three groups: A group that consumed a regular-size beverage containing the equivalent of two packets of sucralose sweetener, a second group that consumed a beverage sweetened with table sugar at the equivalent sweetness, and a third control group that had a beverage with the artificial sweetener as well as a carbohydrate called maltodextrin. The molecules of maltodextrin don’t bind to taste receptors in the mouth and are impossible to detect. While the sensation of the third group’s beverage was identical to the Splenda-only group, only this group exhibited significant adverse health effects. The artificial sweetener by itself seemed to be fine, the researchers discovered, but that changed when combined with a carbohydrate. Seven beverages over two weeks and the previously healthy people in this group became glucose intolerant, a metabolic condition that results in elevated blood glucose levels and puts people at an increased risk for diabetes.

Keyword: Obesity; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 27113 - Posted: 03.12.2020

By Alex Gatenby Victoria Derbyshire programme The mental health charity Mind says it is signposting people to street drug charities to help them withdraw from antidepressants because of the lack of alternatives available. Those affected can experience debilitating symptoms. "Within a couple of days of coming off, it was overwhelming - agitation, anxiety, akathisia [restlessness], just restlessness, can't sleep, suicidal ideations, all that stuff going on very quickly," Stuart Bryan tells the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme. The 48-year-old has been taking anti-depressants on and off for more than two decades. "The withdrawals are far worse than the original depression, for me and so many other people." Stuart has tried to stop more than 10 times, but has struggled with what he calls his withdrawal "hell" - and has now had to stop working. He says doctors have advised him to take anything between "a few weeks" to three months to slowly stop using the drugs. But he believes people coming off anti-depressants are being "abandoned by the system". Image caption Mind's Stephen Buckley says it is not fully understood how difficult a process coming off anti-depressants can be While antidepressants are not addictive, just over half of those who stop or reduce their dosage experience withdrawal symptoms, according to one review of 24 studies last year. The mental health charity Mind's head of information Stephen Buckley says it is having to signpost patients to street-drug charities, even though they have been prescribed the drugs on the NHS. Street-drug charities usually help those misusing alcohol and illegally-obtained drugs. © 2020 BBC

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 27112 - Posted: 03.12.2020

By Jonathan Lambert To a sea turtle, plastic debris might smell like dinner. As the plastic detritus of modern human life washes into oceans, marine creatures of all kinds interact with and sometimes eat it (SN: 11/13/19). Recent research suggests that this is no accident. Plastic that’s been stewing in the ocean emits a chemical that, to some seabirds and fish, smells a lot like food (SN: 11/9/16). That chemical gas, dimethyl sulfide, is also produced by phytoplankton, a key food source for many marine animals. Now, scientists have determined that loggerhead sea turtles may also confuse the smell of plastic with food, according to a study published March 9 in Current Biology. Over two weeks in January 2019, 15 captive loggerheads in tanks were exposed at the water surface to a slew of scents, including the largely neutral scent of water as a control, of food such as shrimp and of new and ocean-soaked plastic. The turtles (Caretta caretta) largely ignored smells of water and clean plastic. But when the scientists puffed air containing scents of either food or ocean-stewed plastic, the reptiles increased their sniffing above water — a typical foraging behavior. In fact, those responses to food and ocean-soaked plastic were indistinguishable to the researchers, suggesting that the plastic can induce foraging behavior in sea turtles, the team says. That might explain why sea turtles get entangled in or eat plastic, which can be harmful. Along with previous research, this study expands the breadth of marine life that may confuse plastic with food. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2020

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 27111 - Posted: 03.12.2020

By Denise Grady Year after year for two decades, Nancy Wexler led medical teams into remote villages in Venezuela, where huge extended families lived in stilt houses on Lake Maracaibo and for generations, had suffered from a terrible hereditary disease that causes brain degeneration, disability and death. Neighbors shunned the sick, fearing they were contagious. “Doctors wouldn’t treat them,” Dr. Wexler said. “Priests wouldn’t touch them.” She began to think of the villagers as her family, and started a clinic to care for them. “They are so gracious, so kind, so loving,” she said. Over time, Dr. Wexler coaxed elite scientists to collaborate rather than compete to find the cause of the disorder, Huntington’s disease, and she raised millions of dollars for research. Her work led to the discovery in 1993 of the gene that causes Huntington’s, to the identification of other genes that may have moderating effects and, at long last, to experimental treatments that have begun to show promise. Now, at 74, Dr. Wexler is facing a painful and daunting task that she had long postponed. She has decided it’s time to acknowledge publicly that she has the disease she’s spent her life studying and that killed her mother, uncles and grandfather. “There is such stigma, and such ostracization,” Dr. Wexler, a professor of neuropsychology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, said in a lengthy interview. “I think it’s important to destigmatize Huntington’s and make it not as scary. Of course it is scary. Having a fatal disease is scary and I don’t want to trivialize that. But if I can say, I’m not stopping my life, I’m going to work, we’re still trying to find a cure, that would help. If I can do anything to take the onus off having this thing, I want to do it.” Among her greatest concerns are the thousands of Venezuelans from the families full of the disease, whose willingness to donate blood and skin samples, and the brains of deceased relatives, made it possible to find the gene. But they live in an impoverished region, and, Dr. Wexler said, they are still outcasts. The clinic that she and her colleagues opened has been shut down by Venezuela’s government. © 2020 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Huntingtons; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 27110 - Posted: 03.10.2020

Christina Marvin This story originally appeared on Massive Science, an editorial partner site that publishes science stories by scientists. Subscribe to their newsletter to get even more science sent straight to you. As a spectator, it's easy to forget the long term consequences of 300 pound humans crashing into each other at over 20 miles per hour. But this is the reality of American football. During play, the brain is one of the most susceptible parts of the body and the long-term danger may remain hidden until years after retirement. New safety rules and improved helmets prevent injuries such as skull fractures. But no amount of training or equipment is yet known to prevent concussions, internal brain injuries caused when the brain shakes back and forth, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the neurodegenerative disease that results from accumulated hits to the head. The best thing we can do is stop playing these types of sports. The second best option is to mitigate the risks. The NFL is plagued with controversy over the league's relationship with head injuries. Traditional helmets are designed to prevent skull fractures. However, concussions are not just blunt force trauma, but results of rotational forces exerted when the head snaps back and forth. If the NFL wants to get serious about concussion prevention, as many believe they morally have a responsibility to do, independent neuroscience has to have a leading role in how helmets are designed. While the NFL denies bias in how they use science, it is impossible to deny that they have a large financial interest in the results, and this has led to questionable measures on head protection. From 1994 to 2009, the NFL actually employed their own research committee. But the committee was overhauled in 2009 after criticism from Congress for their continued denial of the link between football and brain disease. © 2019 Salon.com, LLC.

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 27109 - Posted: 03.10.2020

By Perri Klass, M.D. When you talk about sibling issues, everyone takes it personally. Whether it’s birth order and the supposed advantages of being the oldest (or youngest, or middle), or the question of having (or being) the favorite child, people tend to respond immediately with their own sometimes very individual and emotional stories. What I want to talk about today are sibling sex ratios — having a sibling of the other sex versus growing up in all-boy or all-girl sibling configurations. The most evocative phrase I’ve seen for this is “family constellations,” which I like because it suggests that there are lots of interesting — and even beautiful — arrangements, but that differences are real. But let’s take one step further back: Are there actually parents, or parent pairs, who are more likely to conceive boys or girls? Does the five-daughter family (from “Pride and Prejudice” or “Fiddler on the Roof”) or the seven-son setup (“Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”) just reflect five (or seven) random rolls of the dice, or is there actually something going on from an evolutionary point of view? The evolutionary theory, which has been advanced to explain sex ratio, goes back to Darwin, but was fully formulated in 1930 by a British scientist named Ronald Fisher, who made the argument that if individuals vary in the sex ratio among their offspring (that is, some are more likely to produce more males or more females), the reproductive advantage in a population will always lie with the rarer sex, and thus the sex ratio will equilibrate toward 1:1. After all, Fisher argued, half of the genetic material of the next generation must come by way of those who tend to produce males, and half from those who tend to produce females. But are there such tendencies? I’ve heard people say that having boys “runs in the family,” or that their cousins are almost all girls, that’s the “family pattern.” But a very large study of 4.7 million births in Sweden published in February in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society argues that there is no evidence of a genetic tendency toward one sex or the other, or a family tendency. © 2020 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 27108 - Posted: 03.10.2020

By Karen Weintraub At age 16, German Aldana was riding in the back seat of a car driven by a friend when another car headed straight for them. To avoid a collision, his friend swerved and hit a concrete pole. The others weren’t seriously injured, but Aldana, unbuckled, was tossed around enough to snap his spine just below his neck. For the next five years, he could move only his neck, and his arms a little. Right after he turned 21 and met the criteria, Aldana signed up for a research project at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine near his home. Researchers with the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis carefully opened Aldana's skull and, at the surface of the brain, implanted electrodes. Then, in the lab, they trained a computer to interpret the pattern of signals from those electrodes as he imagines opening and closing his hand. The computer then transfers the signal to a prosthetic on Aldana's forearm, which then stimulates the appropriate muscles to cause his hand to close. The entire process takes 400 milliseconds from thought to grasp. A year after his surgery, Aldana can grab simple objects, like a block. He can bring a spoon to his mouth, feeding himself for the first time in six years. He can grasp a pen and scratch out some legible letters. He has begun experimenting with a treadmill that moves his limbs, allowing him to take steps forward or stop as he thinks about clenching or unclenching the fingers of his right hand. But only in the lab. Researchers had permission to test it only in their facility, but they’re now applying for federal permission to extend their study. The hope is that by the end of this year, Aldana will be able to bring his device home — improving his ability to feed himself, open doors and restoring some measure of independence.

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 27107 - Posted: 03.09.2020

By Susana Martinez-Conde Parents tend to be just a bit biased about their children’s looks (not me though—my kids are objectively beautiful), but as it turns out, this type of self-deception is not as benign as one might think. According to recent research, many parents appear to suffer from a sort of denial concerning their kids’ weights, which poses a considerable obstacle to remediating childhood obesity by way of promoting healthy eating habits at home. The latest of such studies was published last month in the American Journal of Human Biology, and conducted by a team of scientists at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. Daniela Rodrigues and her collaborators, Aristides Machado-Rodrigues and Cristina Padez, recruited hundreds of parents and children for their research. All the participating children were between 6 and 10 years old and attended elementary school in Portugal. A total of 834 parents completed questionnaires that included a variety of questions, such as whether they thought that their children’s weight was a bit too little, a bit too much, way too much, or just fine. In turn, the team collected the weights and heights of the 793 participating children, at their respective schools. The results were in line with the researchers’ predictions, but nonetheless remarkable. Of the 33% parents who misperceived their children’s weight, 93% underestimated it. Moreover, parents who underestimated their kids’ weights were 10 to 20 times more likely to have an obese child. Several factors were associated with the parental weight underestimation, including a higher BMI (body mass index) for the mothers, younger ages for the children, lower household income (for girls) and urban living (for boys). However, such associations did not explain why parents underestimated their children’s weights to begin with. © 2020 Scientific American

Keyword: Obesity; Attention
Link ID: 27106 - Posted: 03.09.2020

By Allison Hirschlag Everyone likes a good nap now and then, right? Whether you nod off during a boring movie, or rest your head on your desk at work for 20 minutes or so to fight the afternoon slump, naps can revitalize you in a major way. One study even showed they can boost performance and memory regulation better than caffeine. This all sounds great in theory, but many people — myself included — find naps do the opposite. I wake up from naps feeling like I’m in the throes of a New Year’s Day-strength hangover. It takes me at least 20 minutes to recover from them, and I never end up seeing any of the benefits. Even when I timed my nap to be no more than 30 minutes — the nap length sleep experts claim is the most beneficial — I came out of it certain I was experiencing the early stages of the flu (I wasn’t). Naturally, I’ve always been a little jealous of the people who take naps and wake up feeling like a million bucks. I’m a healthy, youngish, childless woman who regularly sleeps seven to eight hours a night — why don’t naps work for me? The short answer is that some adults are genetically predisposed to need more hours of continuous sleep than others (I’m leaving children out of this because, as growing bodies, they naturally need more sleep). According to a study by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, at least 80 genes appear to be involved in sleep regulation, which “suggests that sleep duration in natural populations can be influenced by a wide variety of biological processes.” Simply put, sleep duration needs vary considerably because they’re based on a broad spectrum of genetic differences.

Keyword: Sleep; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 27105 - Posted: 03.09.2020

By Heather Jones I knew early on that my normal didn’t feel like everyone else’s. Even as early as kindergarten, I could tell that my brain worked differently than others, and that I seemed more listless than other children my age. Other kids felt sadness when they experienced a loss or something upsetting. I always felt sad. I didn’t question the cloudy lens through which I viewed the world, because I had never seen clearly. When I was 16, my family doctor asked me the questions that would change my worldview. Having treated me since childhood, she had noticed patterns. She asked me whether I was experiencing the list of symptoms associated with persistent depressive disorder. I had all of them — feeling down, feeling hopeless, sleep problems, avoidance of social activities, low self-esteem and the rest of the laundry list of warning signs. My doctor explained to me that persistent depressive disorder, also called dysthymia, was a type of “functional depression” that lasts for years and often for a lifetime. I had probably had it since early childhood. I burst into tears, finally knowing there was a reason I felt this way. Knowing what I had didn’t take away my depression — more than 20 years later, I am still living with this condition — but getting a proper diagnosis started me on a path to better management of my symptoms. I am not alone. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 1.3 percent of American adults will experience persistent depressive disorder at some time in their lives.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 27104 - Posted: 03.09.2020

Amelia Hill A low carbohydrate diet may prevent and even reverse age-related damage to the brain, research has found. By examining brain scans, researchers found that brain pathways begin to deteriorate in our late 40s – earlier than was believed. “Neurobiological changes associated with ageing can be seen at a much younger age than would be expected, in the late 40s,” said Lilianne R Mujica-Parodi, a professor in the department of biomedical engineering at Stony Brook University in New York. “However, the study also suggests that this process may be prevented or reversed based on dietary changes that involve minimising the consumption of simple carbohydrates,” added Mujica-Parodi. To better understand how diet influences brain ageing, researchers concentrated on young people whose brains showed no signs of ageing. This is the period during which prevention may be most effective. Using brain scans of nearly 1,000 individuals between the ages of 18 to 88, researchers found that the damage to neural pathways accelerated depending on where the brain was getting its energy from. Glucose, they found, decreased the stability of the brain’s networks while ketones – produced by the liver during periods of carbohydrate restrictive diets – made the networks more stable. “What we found with these experiments involves both bad and good news,” said Mujica-Parodi, “The bad news is that we see the first signs of brain ageing much earlier than was previously thought. “However, the good news is that we may be able to prevent or reverse these effects with diet … by exchanging glucose for ketones as fuel for neurons,” she added in the study, which is published in PNAS. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Alzheimers; Obesity
Link ID: 27103 - Posted: 03.07.2020

Dori Grijseels In 2016, three neuroscientists wrote a commentary article arguing that, to truly understand the brain, neuroscience needed to change. From that paper, the International Brain Laboratory (IBL) was born. The IBL, now a collaboration between 22 labs across the world, is unique in biology. The IBL is modeled on physics collaborations, like the ATLAS experiment at CERN, where thousands of scientists work together on a common problem, sharing data and resources during the process. This was in response to the main criticism that the paper’s authors, Zachary Mainen, Michael Häusser and Alexandre Pouget, had about existing neuroscience collaborations: labs came together to discuss generalities, but all the experiments were done separately. They wanted to create a collaboration in which scientists worked together throughout the process, even though their labs may be distributed all over the globe. The IBL decided to focus on one brain function only: decision-making. Decision-making engages the whole brain, since it requires using both input from the senses and information about previous experiences. If someone is thinking about bringing a sweater when they go out, they will use their senses to determine whether it looks and feels cold outside, but they might also remember that, yesterday, they were cold without a sweater. For its first published (in pre-print form) experiment, seven labs of the 22 collaborating in the IBL tested 101 mice on their decision-making ability. The mice saw a black and white grating either to their right or to their left. They then had to twist a little Lego wheel to move the grating to the middle. By rewarding them with sugary water whenever they did the task correctly, the mice gradually learned. It is easy for them to decide which way to twist the wheel if the grating has a high contrast, because it stands out compared to the background of their visual field. However, the mice were also presented with a more ambiguously-patterned grating not easily distinguishable from the background, so the decision of which way to turn the wheel was more difficult. In some cases, the grating was even indistinguishable from the background. Between all seven labs –which were spread across three countries – the mice completed this task three million times. © 2017 – 2019 Massive Science Inc.

Keyword: Attention; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 27102 - Posted: 03.07.2020

By Liz Langley It might be time to reconsider what it means to call someone a “rat.” Previous research has shown the much-maligned rodents assist comrades in need, as well as remember individual rats that have helped them—and return the favor. Now, a new study builds on this evidence of empathy, revealing that domestic rats will avoid harming other rats. In the study, published March 5 in the journal Current Biology, rats were trained to pull levers to get a tasty sugar pellet. If the lever delivered a mild shock to a neighbor, several of the rats stopped pulling that lever and switched to another. Harm aversion, as it's known, is a well-known human trait regulated by a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Further experiments showed the ACC controls this behavior in rats, too. This is the first time scientists have found the ACC is necessary for harm aversion in a non-human species. This likeness between human and rat brains is “super-exciting for two reasons,” says study co-author Christian Keysers, of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience. For one, it suggests that preventing harm to others is rooted deep in mammals' evolutionary history. (See what a rat looks like when it’s happy.) What’s more, the finding could have a real impact on people suffering from psychiatric disorders such as psychopathy and sociopathy, whose anterior cingulate cortexes are impaired. “We currently have no effective drugs to reduce violence in antisocial populations,” Keysers says, and figuring out how to increase such patients’ aversion to hurting others could be a powerful tool.

Keyword: Attention; Emotions
Link ID: 27101 - Posted: 03.07.2020

Heidi Ledford A person with a genetic condition that causes blindness has become the first to receive a CRISPR–Cas9 gene therapy administered directly into their body. The treatment is part of a landmark clinical trial to test the ability of CRISPR–Cas9 gene-editing techniques to remove mutations that cause a rare condition called Leber’s congenital amaurosis 10 (LCA10). No treatment is currently available for the disease, which is a leading cause of blindness in childhood. For the latest trial, the components of the gene-editing system – encoded in the genome of a virus — are injected directly into the eye, near photoreceptor cells. By contrast, previous CRISPR–Cas9 clinical trials have used the technique to edit the genomes of cells that have been removed from the body. The material is then infused back into the patient. “It’s an exciting time,” says Mark Pennesi, a specialist in inherited retinal diseases at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. Pennesi is collaborating with the pharmaceutical companies Editas Medicine of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Allergan of Dublin to conduct the trial, which has been named BRILLIANCE. This is not the first time gene editing has been tried in the body: an older gene-editing system, called zinc-finger nucleases, has already been administered directly into people participating in clinical trials. Sangamo Therapeutics of Brisbane, California, has tested a zinc-finger-based treatment for a metabolic condition called Hunter’s syndrome. The technique inserts a healthy copy of the affected gene into a specific location in the genome of liver cells. Although it seems to be safe, early results suggest it might do little to ease the symptoms of Hunter’s syndrome. © 2020 Springer Nature Limited

Keyword: Vision; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 27100 - Posted: 03.06.2020

By Michael Price Every Fourth of July, the thunderous crack of my neighbors’ fireworks is quickly followed by the wailing chorus of frightened dogs, including my own two mixed-breed pups. New research suggests Pico’s and Winnie’s sensitivity to noise, especially fireworks, is the most common form of anxiety in pet dogs. The study—the largest ever on canine temperaments—also finds that some breeds are prone to certain anxious behaviors, including aggression, separation anxiety, and fear. The results could help uncover new ways to tackle these traits. Anecdotes on dog behavior abound, but reliable scientific data are lacking, says Hannes Lohi, a canine geneticist at the University of Helsinki. That’s particularly an issue when looking at problem behaviors that can put dogs at higher risk of being euthanized or winding up in shelters. So Lohi and colleagues contacted Finnish dog breed clubs and reached out to dog owners around the world through social media, asking owners to rate their dogs’ behavior on seven different anxiety-related traits: noise sensitivity, general fear, fear of heights and surfaces (like reflective tiles), inattention, compulsive behaviors (like relentless chewing or tail chasing), aggression, and separation anxiety. They received more than 13,700 responses representing 264 breeds. To make reliable comparisons, the researchers limited themselves to the 14 breeds with 200 or more surveyed dogs. © 2020 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Emotions; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 27099 - Posted: 03.06.2020

In a study of epilepsy patients, researchers at the National Institutes of Health monitored the electrical activity of thousands of individual brain cells, called neurons, as patients took memory tests. They found that the firing patterns of the cells that occurred when patients learned a word pair were replayed fractions of a second before they successfully remembered the pair. The study was part of an NIH Clinical Center trial for patients with drug-resistant epilepsy whose seizures cannot be controlled with drugs. “Memory plays a crucial role in our lives. Just as musical notes are recorded as grooves on a record, it appears that our brains store memories in neural firing patterns that can be replayed over and over again,” said Kareem Zaghloul, M.D., Ph.D., a neurosurgeon-researcher at the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and senior author of the study published in Science. Dr. Zaghloul’s team has been recording electrical currents of drug-resistant epilepsy patients temporarily living with surgically implanted electrodes designed to monitor brain activity in the hopes of identifying the source of a patient’s seizures. This period also provides an opportunity to study neural activity during memory. In this study, his team examined the activity used to store memories of our past experiences, which scientists call episodic memories. In 1957, the case of an epilepsy patient H.M. provided a breakthrough in memory research. H.M could not remember new experiences after part of his brain was surgically removed to stop his seizures. Since then, research has pointed to the idea that episodic memories are stored, or encoded, as neural activity patterns that our brains replay when triggered by such things as the whiff of a familiar scent or the riff of a catchy tune. But exactly how this happens was unknown.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 27098 - Posted: 03.06.2020

Katarina Zimmer Long believed to be simple, pathogen-eating immune cells, macrophages have a far more extensive list of job duties. They appear to have specialized functions across body tissues, help repair damaged tissue, play a key role in regulating inflammation and pain, and participate in other roles scientists are just beginning to reveal. Now, a group of researchers in the Netherlands has identified a mechanism by which macrophages may help resolve inflammatory pain in mice. In a study recently posted as a preprint to bioRxiv, they report that the immune cells shuttle mitochondria to sensory neurons that innervate inflamed tissue, and that this helps resolve pain. The researchers speculate that the mechanism could replenish functional mitochondria in neurons during chronic inflammatory conditions, which is associated with dysfunctional mitochondria. “I think the transfer of mitochondria is quite convincing,” Jan Van den Bossche, an immunologist at Amsterdam University Medical Center who wasn’t involved in the research, writes to The Scientist in an email. If the findings can be replicated, “this could have [implications for] many diseases with chronic inflammation and pain,” he adds. The research is the result of a five-year project that began when Niels Eijkelkamp, a neuroimmunologist at the University Medical Center Utrecht, and his colleagues started investigating how inflammatory pain resolves, “so we could understand what causes chronic pain,” he says. © 1986–2020 The Scientist

Keyword: Glia; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 27097 - Posted: 03.06.2020