By Gretchen Reynolds Physically fit young adults have healthier white matter in their brains and better thinking skills than young people who are out of shape, according to a large-scale new study of the links between aerobic fitness and brain health. The findings suggest that even when people are youthful and presumably at the peak of their mental prowess, fitness — or the lack of it — may influence how well their brains and minds work. We already have plenty of tantalizing evidence that aerobic fitness can beneficently shape our brains and cognition. In animal experiments, mice and rats that run on wheels or treadmills produce far more new neurons in their brains than sedentary animals and perform better on tests of rodent intelligence and memory. Similarly, studies involving people show strong relationships between being physically active or fit and having greater brain volume and stronger thinking abilities than people with low fitness or who rarely exercise. But most of these past studies focused on middle-aged or older adults, whose brains often are starting to sputter and contract with age. For them, fitness and exercise are believed to help slow any decline, keeping brain tissue and function relatively youthful. Much less has been known about whether fitness likewise might be related to the structure and function of healthy, younger people’s brains. So, for the new study, which was published last month in Scientific Reports, scientists at the University of Münster in Germany decided to look inside the skulls of a large group of young adults. They began by turning to a hefty trove of data gathered as part of the Human Connectome Project, an international collaborative effort that aims to help map much of the human brain and tease out how it works. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 26662 - Posted: 10.02.2019

By Eva Frederick As the weather cools, one species of squirrel in the U.S. Midwest is gearing up for one of the most intense naps in the animal kingdom. For up to 8 months, the tiny mammals won’t eat or drink anything at all—and now scientists know how they do it. Most squirrels don’t hibernate—instead, they stash food for the cold season and spend the winter snug in their nests. Not the 13-lined ground squirrel (Ictidomys tridecemlineatus), whose heart rate, metabolism, and body temperature dramatically plummet during their long rest—similar to bears, woodchucks, and other hibernating animals. To find out how the squirrels suppress their thirst—a powerful force that could potentially wake them up—researchers measured the blood fluid, or serum, of dozens of squirrels, divided into three groups: those that were still active, those that were in a sleep-of-the-dead hibernation state called torpor, and those that were still hibernating, but in a drowsy in-between state. Generally, a high serum concentration makes animals, including humans, feel thirsty. The sleeping squirrels’ serum concentration was low, preventing them from waking up for a drink. Even when researchers roused the torpid squirrels, they wouldn’t drink a drop—until the team artificially increased the concentration of their blood serum. Next, the researchers wanted to know how the squirrels’ blood concentration dropped so low. Perhaps the squirrels drank a lot of water prehibernation to dilute their blood, the researchers thought. But when they filmed squirrels preparing for their winter snooze, they found the animals actually drank less water than they normally did. © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 26661 - Posted: 10.02.2019

Patti Neighmond Many American teenagers try to put in a full day of school, homework, after-school activities, sports and college prep on too little sleep. As evidence grows that chronic sleep deprivation puts teens at risk for physical and mental health problems, there is increasing pressure on school districts around the country to consider a later start time. In Seattle, school and city officials recently made the shift. Beginning with the 2016-2017 school year, the district moved the official start times for middle and high schools nearly an hour later, from 7:50 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. This was no easy feat; it meant rescheduling extracurricular activities and bus routes. But the bottom line goal was met: Teenagers used the extra time to sleep in. Researchers at the University of Washington studied the high school students both before and after the start-time change. Their findings appear in a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. They found students got 34 minutes more sleep on average with the later school start time. This boosted their total nightly sleep from 6 hours and 50 minutes to 7 hours and 24 minutes. "This study shows a significant improvement in the sleep duration of students, all by delaying school start times so they're more in line with the natural wake-up times of adolescents," says senior author Horacio de la Iglesia, a University of Washington researcher and professor of biology. The study also found an improvement in grades and a reduction in tardiness and absences.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 26660 - Posted: 10.01.2019

Nicola Davis A possible explanation for one of biology’s greatest mysteries, the female orgasm, has been bolstered by research showing that rabbits given antidepressants release fewer eggs during sex. The human female orgasm has long proved curious, having no obvious purpose besides being pleasurable. The scientists behind the study have previously proposed it might have its evolutionary roots in a reflex linked to the release of eggs during sex – a mechanism that exists today in several animal species, including rabbits. Since humans have spontaneous ovulation, the theory goes that female orgasm may be an evolutionary hangover. They say the new experiment supports the idea. “We know there is a reflex [in rabbits], but the question [is] could this be the same one that has lost the function in humans?” said Dr Mihaela Pavličev a researcher at the University of Cincinnati who co-authored the study. To explore the question the team gave 12 female rabbits a two-week course of fluoxetine (trade name Prozac) – an antidepressant known to reduce the capacity for women to orgasm – and looked at the number of eggs released after the animals had sex with a male rabbit called Frank. The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that rabbits given the antidepressants released 30% fewer eggs than nine rabbits that were not given Prozac but still mated with Frank. © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 26659 - Posted: 10.01.2019

By Dean McLaughlin BBC News NI A Londonderry man who was diagnosed with Parkinson's at the age of 30 says more young people need to be aware of the disease. Ronan Coyle first noticed the symptoms at 24 but only found out what the problem was six years later. "People think I'm drunk when I walk down the street," he told BBC Radio Foyle. Now 37, Ronan plays golf and squash and likes to swim to take his mind off the disease. A spokesperson for Parkinson's UK said playing sport "helps ease the mind". Parkinson's is thought to be linked to a chemical called dopamine, which is lacking in the brains of people with the condition. There are more than 40 symptoms and these can include vomiting as the body struggles to process food in the gut. Parkinson's can also affect people's mood. Often a person will feel they have got to grips with their condition and then a new symptom will emerge. It was while studying for his Irish history and politics degree that Ronan first noticed the symptoms. "I was writing notes for an essay and I couldn't write properly," he said. "Come exam time, I was under a lot of stress. It got really bad. "Then I noticed my walking was funny. I went to a couple of neurologists and they more or less said you have a tremor and that it was nothing to worry about." When Ronan turned 30 he was referred to a neurologist in Belfast. After a number of scans it was confirmed that he had the disease. © 2019 BBC

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 26658 - Posted: 10.01.2019

Alex Smith When children are diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, stimulant medications like Ritalin or Adderall are usually the first line of treatment. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued new guidelines on Monday that uphold the central role of medication, accompanied by behavioral therapy, in ADHD treatment. However, some parents, doctors and researchers who study kids with ADHD say they are disappointed that the new guidelines don't recommend behavioral treatment first for more children, as some recent research has suggested might lead to better outcomes. When 6-year-old Brody Knapp of Kansas City, Mo., was diagnosed with ADHD last year, his father, Brett, was skeptical. Brett didn't want his son taking pills. "You hear of losing your child's personality, and they become a shell of themselves, and they're not that sparkling little kid that you love," Brett says. "I didn't want to lose that with Brody, because he's an amazing kid." Brody's mother, Ashley, had other ideas. She's a school principal and has ADHD herself. "I was all for stimulants at the very, very beginning," Ashley says, "just because I know what they can do to help a neurological issue such as ADHD." More and more families have been facing the same dilemma. The prevalence of diagnosed ADHD has shot up in the U.S. in the past two decades; 1 in 10 children now has that diagnosis. The updated guidelines from the AAP recommend that children with ADHD should also be screened for other conditions, and monitored closely. But the treatment recommendations regarding medication are essentially unchanged from the previous guidelines, which were published in 2011. © 2019 npr

Keyword: ADHD; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26657 - Posted: 10.01.2019

Jon Hamilton Too much physical exertion appears to make the brain tired. That's the conclusion of a study of triathletes published Thursday in the journal Current Biology. Researchers found that after several weeks of overtraining, athletes became more likely to choose immediate gratification over long-term rewards. At the same time, brain scans showed the athletes had decreased activity in an area of the brain involved in decision-making. The finding could explain why some elite athletes see their performance decline when they work out too much — a phenomenon known as overtraining syndrome. The distance runner Alberto Salazar, for example, experienced a mysterious decline after winning the New York Marathon three times and the Boston Marathon once in the early 1980s. Salazar's times fell off even though he was still in his mid-20s and training more than ever. "Probably [it was] something linked to his brain and his cognitive capacities," says Bastien Blain, an author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at University College London. (Salazar didn't respond to an interview request for this story.) Blain was part of a team that studied 37 male triathletes who volunteered to take part in a special training program. "They were strongly motivated to be part of this program, at least at the beginning," Blain says. Half of the triathletes were instructed to continue their usual workouts. The rest were told to increase their weekly training by 40%. The result was a training program so intense that these athletes began to perform worse on tests of maximal output. After three weeks, all the participants were put in a brain scanner and asked a series of questions designed to reveal whether a person is more inclined to choose immediate gratification or a long-term reward. "For example, we ask, 'Do you prefer $10 now or $60 in six months,' " Blain says. © 2019 npr

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 26656 - Posted: 09.28.2019

By Natasha Singer CVS Health wants to help millions of American workers improve their sleep. So for the first time, the big pharmacy benefits manager is offering a purely digital therapy as a possible employee benefit. The company is encouraging employers to cover the costs for their workers to use Sleepio, an insomnia app featuring a cartoon therapist that delivers behavior modification lessons. CVS Health’s push could help mainstream the nascent business of digital therapeutics, which markets apps to help treat conditions like schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis. The company recently introduced, along with Sleepio, a way for employers to cover downloads as easily as they do prescription drugs. The company said it had already evaluated about a dozen apps. Some industry executives and researchers say the digital services should make therapy more accessible and affordable than in-person sessions with mental health professionals. Big Health, the start-up behind Sleepio, is one of more than a dozen companies that are digitizing well-established health treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy, or devising new therapies — like video-game-based treatments for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder — that can be delivered online. Since last year, a few pharmaceutical companies, including Novartis, announced partnerships with start-ups to develop digital treatments for mental health and other conditions. So far, the use of treatment apps has been limited. But with the backing of CVS Health, which administers prescription drug plans for nearly one-third of Americans, those therapies could quickly reach tens of millions of people. A few employers have started offering Sleepio, and more are expected to sign on this fall, CVS Health said. Like in-person therapy, the insomnia app does not require a prescription. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 26655 - Posted: 09.28.2019

By Shraddha Chakradhar, Rockefeller University neuroscientist Vanessa Ruta was just named a member of the latest class of MacArthur “Genius” grant winners. The fellowship offers a five-year grant of $625,000 to individuals “who show exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future,” according to the MacArthur Foundation. Fortuitously, or perhaps by design, creativity has been a guiding principle for Ruta, 45, and her work. Both her parents were visual artists, and Ruta herself grew up as a ballet dancer—and at one point considered it a career path. After making the switch to science, however, she says that creativity—and the freedom that comes with it—still plays a big part in how she goes about her work. Her research now involves better understanding how the nervous system takes in external cues such as smell and processes these stimuli to inspire various behaviors. Advertisement STAT spoke with Ruta to learn more about her life and work. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed. Both your parents were artists. Did they influence how you work? I was strongly influenced by their creative process, which is parallel to how scientists work. There’s a kind of honing in your craft. It’s obvious in the artistic endeavors, whether it’s practicing dancing or something else. But it’s also there in the sciences—you have to be disciplined about pushing through with your experiments. © 2019 Scientific American

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 26654 - Posted: 09.28.2019

By Laura Sanders Survey any office, and you’ll see pens tapping, heels bouncing and hair being twiddled. But jittery humans aren’t alone. Mice also fidget while they work. What’s more, this seemingly useless motion has a profound and widespread effect on mice’s brain activity, neuroscientist Anne Churchland of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and colleagues report September 24 in Nature Neuroscience. Scientists don’t yet know what this brain activity means, but one possibility is that body motion may actually shape thinking. Researchers trained some mice to lick a spout corresponding to an area where a click or a flash of light originated. To start their task, mice grabbed a handle and waited for the signal. As the mice focused on their jobs, researchers used several different methods to eavesdrop on nerve cell behavior in the animals’ brains. All the while, video cameras and a sensor embedded on a platform under the mice picked up every move the rodents made — and there were a lot. Mice wiggled their noses, flicked their whiskers and fiddled their hind paws while concentrating on finding the sound or light, the team found. Those fidgets showed up in nerve cell activity. When a whisker moved, for instance, nerve cells involved in moving and sensing sprang into action. Fidgets predicted a big chunk of neural behavior, mathematical models suggested. Mice’s fidgets even had stronger effects on brain activity than did the task at hand, the researchers report. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2019

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 26653 - Posted: 09.28.2019

By Liz Eavey My brother Roland’s Facebook post set off a flurry of concern throughout his social network. He’d been assaulted, he wrote, by “old-world mentality Agent Smiths who are threatening our ability to bring natural plant-based Medicine and intelligent health care to the world.” In caps, he told his followers to ALERT THE PRESS AND BRING SIGNS OF PROTEST. The yogis sent positive vibes; the rebels cried fight the man; the good Samaritans offered to jump in their cars and rescue him. Except that Roland hadn’t exactly been assaulted. He’d been placed under an involuntary psychiatric hold and forcibly subdued in an emergency room at the same institution where he was training to become a psychiatrist. And, with that, four years ago, Facebook snitched our big family secret: Roland, the literary prodigy, the tenderhearted musician, the Ivy League grad, was bipolar. Roland — who read and approved this essay — is the effortlessly brilliant middle child who takes up a disproportionate amount of space in a room, with a booming voice and the charisma of a megachurch pastor. After college, he moved to Hollywood and landed, with zero experience or connections, a coveted job with an A-list director. Then, he decided to become a doctor, enrolling in a top-tier M.D./M.B.A. program. Everything about my brother is superlative, including his demons: crippling insomnia, legendary alcoholism and a chemical imbalance that has repeatedly imploded his life. I, the firstborn, am diplomatic and obedient, less concerned with standing out than blending in. Just 17 months apart, Roland and I constantly butted heads trying to assert our individuality growing up. In seventh grade, I wrote “An Older Sister’s Guide to Having Younger Brothers,” which began: “A smart idea, which would prevent use of this guide, would be to just not have younger brothers.” Yet, when we weren’t vying for sibling dominance, we were always looking out for each other. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 26652 - Posted: 09.27.2019

By Tina Hesman Saey Mice (and maybe people) may metabolize food according to daily, circadian rhythms set by gut bacteria. Microbes in the small intestine of mice rhythmically dictate when fat is taken up by cells that line the organ, researchers report. The study, described in the Sept. 27 Science, details how gut microbes influence a host’s metabolism. If the findings carry over to people, the research may give clues to why jet lag and night-shift work, which can throw off circadian rhythms, often lead to obesity, diabetes and other health problems. Researchers knew that human cells have molecular clocks that time 24-hour circadian cycles of metabolism (SN: 11/8/18), and that gut microbes in the colon follow their hosts’ biological beat (SN: 10/16/14). But the new study finds that, at least in the small intestine, microbes can set rhythms for host cells to follow. That work was done in mice, but the process may work similarly in people. The new research “is helping us appreciate just how intertwined are the metabolisms of the microbiota and their mammalian hosts,” says microbiologist and immunologist Andrew Gewirtz of Georgia State University in Atlanta who was not involved in the work. “It’s a very intimate interaction, regulating things as basic as circadian rhythms, which was quite a surprise.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2019.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 26651 - Posted: 09.27.2019

By Jill Halper, M.D. Depression is not cancer. It’s a completely different disease. Yet when I look back on my husband’s depression and death by suicide three years ago, it sure looks a lot like cancer to me. As an adolescent medicine physician in Los Angeles, I have cared for many patients with depression and mental illness, and as a pediatric resident in training, I also cared for many children with cancer. But the difference in how people view these illnesses is astounding. Before we met, my husband’s first marriage had ended, and his ex-wife told him that he did not deserve love. Primed by genetics and an abusive childhood, he was convinced he would always be alone. He attempted suicide with an overdose of pills. When he unexpectedly woke up in the morning, he drove to U.C.L.A. and was checked into the psychiatric unit. He was treated, started on medication and improved. Six months later we met, and soon felt that we were soul mates. He realized he did deserve love. We never took the suicide attempt lightly and always had professional support and treatment. We were married for nearly 20 years. We had two children, purchased a home and negotiated our marriage as best we could. We communicated well, and had the support of a couples’ therapist. It seemed his horrible disease was cured — until it wasn’t. He wasn’t cured; as with some cancers, his disease was simply in remission. And while his first suicide attempt was about the fear of never finding love, his second fear, equally unwarranted, was that he was a complete failure as a provider. My husband’s father was not trained in any skill or profession. He was laid off in his 50s, and never worked again. When he died in his 60s, he left behind a financial mess. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 26650 - Posted: 09.27.2019

By Rahma Ibrahim University researchers have discovered a new subset of cells — “metronome cells” — that may act as timekeepers in the brain, a finding that contributes new information to one of the biggest debates in neuroscience. While scientists have long known about the existence of cells in the brain that tend to be more reactive to stimuli — called fast spiking cells — they have long debated the function of a specific frequency of rhythm produced by those cells, called gamma oscillations. Some neuroscientists believe that gamma oscillations are at the root of how the brain functions. Other equally qualified scientists believe that these rhythms are merely a byproduct of brain activity. “Scientists’ faces will either light up or grow very overcast when someone mentions gamma oscillation,” explained Christopher Moore, professor of neuroscience and supervisor of the study. These gamma oscillations produce structured ripples in the brain at an interval of 40 Hertz, or 40 cycles per second. This regular pattern has led scientists to believe that perhaps the gamma oscillations act as an organizing clock, helping to align and connect information coming from different areas of the brain. Moore compared this theory to an orchestra; just as a conductor of an orchestra connects the various parts, the gamma oscillations have been thought to have similar function. If the conductor stops, then the whole orchestra cannot make good music. But for years, scientists have acknowledged limitations with this theory. Fast spiking cells and gamma rhythms have been found to respond to stimulus from outside the body of the cell. This raises concern if researchers assume that these oscillations act as a timekeeper; if the conductor is distracted every time they hear a trumpet, then the orchestra cannot be conducted.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 26649 - Posted: 09.27.2019

By Veronique Greenwood When the land-dwelling ancestors of today’s whales and dolphins slipped into the seas long ago, they gained many things, including flippers, the ability to hold their breath for long periods of time and thick, tough skin. Along the way they also discarded many traits that were no longer relevant or useful. In fact, as scientists reported in a study published Wednesday in Science Advances, the loss of some genes in the common ancestor of whales and dolphins allowed them to shed features that would have been liabilities beneath the waves, which may have contributed to the survival of future generations. As more species’ genomes are sequenced, researchers can begin to pick out which genes are shared among groups of organisms. Presumably, these genes were also found in the group’s last common ancestor. A team led by Michael Hiller, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics and an author of the new paper, used this technique with modern cetaceans, the group that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises. Then they compared that set of genes to those of the cetaceans’ nearest relatives, the hippo family, and pinpointed 85 genes that were switched off or inactivated in the cetaceans’ ancestor during its move to the aquatic life. These genes were involved in a wide variety of processes, such as blood clotting, sleep and hair growth. Although some of the genes had been flagged before, others had not been identified. (Dr. Hiller and colleagues had previously found that genes necessary for the development of hair had been lost in cetaceans, which perhaps reduced drag as the animals swam through the water.) “Many of the things we found were at least for me quite unexpected,” said Dr. Hiller. For instance, one of the lost genes produces an enzyme involved in DNA repair. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep; Evolution
Link ID: 26648 - Posted: 09.27.2019

By Rachel Nuwer In the perennial battle over dogs and cats, there’s a clear public relations winner. Dogs are man’s best friend. They’re sociable, faithful and obedient. Our relationship with cats, on the other hand, is often described as more transactional. Aloof, mysterious and independent, cats are with us only because we feed them. Or maybe not. On Monday, researchers reported that cats are just as strongly bonded to us as dogs or infants, vindicating cat lovers across the land. “I get that a lot — ‘Well, I knew that, I know that cats like to interact with me,’” said Kristyn Vitale, an animal behavior scientist at Oregon State University and lead author of the new study, published in Current Biology. “But in science, you don’t know that until you test it.” Research into cat behavior has lagged that into dogs. Cats are not social animals, many scientists assumed — and not as easy to work with. But recent studies have begun to plumb the depth of cats’ social lives. “This idea that cats don’t really care about people or respond to them isn’t holding up,” Ms. Vitale said. In a study in 2017, Ms. Vitale and her colleagues found that the majority of cats prefer interacting with a person over eating or playing with a toy. In a 2019 study, the researchers found that cats adjust their behavior according to how much attention a person gives them. Other researchers have found that cats are sensitive to human emotion and mood, and that cats know their names. Scientists had arrived at conflicting findings about whether cats form attachments to their owners, however, so Ms. Vitale and her colleagues designed a study to more explicitly test the hypothesis. They recruited owners of 79 kittens and 38 adult cats to participate in a “secure base test,” an experiment commonly used to measure bonds that dogs and primates form with caretakers. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution; Aggression
Link ID: 26647 - Posted: 09.25.2019

Alison Flood Caroline Criado Perez’s exposé of the gender data gap that has created a world biased against women has won her the Royal Society science book prize. Criado Perez’s Invisible Women, which explores how everything from speech-recognition software to bulletproof vests, from medical tests to office temperature controls are designed for men as a default, was called a brilliant exposé by chair of judges and Oxford professor Nigel Shadbolt. He said the book had made him, as an AI researcher and data scientist, look at his field afresh. “[Criado Perez] writes with energy and style, every page full of facts and data that support her fundamental contention that in a world built for and by men gender data gaps, biases and blind spots are everywhere,” he said. The author and feminist campaigner who successfully pushed for Jane Austen to be featured on the UK’s £10 note, called her £25,000 win on Monday night a huge relief. “Obviously it’s a huge honour, but mainly because it has the official endorsement of scientists and so it can’t be dismissed now, and that’s so important,” she said. “Writing this book was hellish. It really tested my mental strength to its limits, partly because it was a really emotional book to write because of the impact this is having on women’s lives and how angry and upsetting it was to keep coming across this gap in the data. But also it was very challenging because it was a book about the whole world and everything in it, and I had to work out how to synthesise that into something manageable.” © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 26646 - Posted: 09.25.2019

By Nicholas Bakalar Sleep apnea may increase the risk for mood disorders, researchers have found. Obstructive sleep apnea, or O.S.A., is a sleep-related breathing disorder that has been linked to many other conditions, including cardiovascular disease, asthma exacerbation, glaucoma, erectile dysfunction and neurocognitive problems. For the new study, in JAMA Otolaryngology—Head & Neck Surgery, researchers enrolled 197 Korean men and women diagnosed with O.S.A. and 788 people without the syndrome matched for age, sex, and health and socioeconomic characteristics. None of the 985 participants had been diagnosed with depression, bipolar illness or an anxiety disorder before the start of the study. The researchers followed them for an average of nine years. Over the course of the study, people with O.S.A. were nearly three times as likely to be diagnosed with depression, and almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with anxiety as those in the control group. Women with O.S.A. were more likely than men to develop a mood disorder. The reason for the association is unknown. The researchers had no information about the use of positive airway pressure devices or oral appliances used to treat sleep apnea, so they could not determine whether treatment would reduce the risk. Still, they write, “studies that investigate O.S.A. management and the risk of developing affective disorders may yield strategies for effective prevention and intervention practices.” © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep; Depression
Link ID: 26645 - Posted: 09.25.2019

By Eva Frederick There may be honor among thieves, but there certainly isn’t among parasitic wasps. A new study suggests the crypt keeper wasp, whose larvae burrow into the bodies of other wasps and live off their corpses, has more than half a dozen hosts—or, if you prefer, victims. Those victims are typically Bassettia pallida wasps, which lay their eggs in the stems and branches of oak trees, forming swollen bumps called galls or crypts. The crypt keeper wasp (Euderus set) then lays her eggs in the gall, where her larvae either camp out next to the host hatchlings or burrow into their bodies. When a hatchling is ready to chew its way out of the gall, the crypt keeper—through a feat of undiscovered mind control or through simply weakening the host—makes it chew a hole that is too small. That causes the host’s head to get stuck like a cork in a wine bottle. After snacking on the body of the host, the crypt keeper wasp escapes the gall by burrowing out through its host’s head, which is much softer than the tough stem of the plant. © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 26644 - Posted: 09.25.2019

Researchers have discovered that gene expression regulators work together to raise an individual’s risk of developing schizophrenia. Schizophrenia-like gene expression changes modeled in human neurons matched changes found in patients’ brains. The researchers, led by Kristen Brennand, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City, report on their findings in Nature Genetics. The work was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health. Genome-wide association studies have revealed at least 143 chromosomal sites associated with risk for schizophrenia. However, individually, each of these sites can explain only a small fraction of the risk. Even when the effects of disease-linked rare genetic variants are factored in, most of schizophrenia’s known high inheritance remains unexplained. One possible clue: more than 40% of the suspect chromosomal sites contain regulators, called expression quantitative trait loci, or eQTLs, that govern the expression of multiple genes. “Individually, these gene regulators have a modest effect on the brain. Working in concert, they exert different and more significant effects on the brain — effects that boost schizophrenia risk,” explained David Panchision, chief of the Developmental Neurobiology Program at NIMH. “Learning more about the downstream cellular and molecular effects of such synergy holds hope for advances in precision psychiatry and more personalized medicine.” To explore the role of these regulators, Brennand and colleagues studied them in induced neurons using a molecular modeling technology. This induced pluripotent stem cell method makes it possible to grow a person’s unique neurons in a petri dish using stem cells derived from their skin cells.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 26643 - Posted: 09.24.2019