By Kent Babb MINNEAPOLIS — On the day he’d bury his daughter, Mark Catlin stepped out of a chapel and into the fresh air. “Nice day for a walk,” he said, looking up, and on this morning in late March, the weather was flawless: cloudless, crisp, a bright blue sky. He took a breath and set off, heading down the cemetery’s path and falling behind the procession of cars ahead, talking as gravel crunched beneath his shoes. He asked if the memorial service, laboriously planned near the lakefront cycling trails Kelly Catlin had explored before becoming a silver medalist in the 2016 Olympics, had been good enough. He apologized if it had been too sad. The afternoon reception, he assured friends and visitors, should be more lively. A few paces up the winding path, a longtime friend shook his head. Mark, the friend whispered, would do anything to distract himself — he always had — in this case to avoid facing “the darkness”: Kelly’s suicide two weeks earlier, her thoughts during those final days and weeks, the way she’d planned her death in the same meticulous, results-oriented way she’d lived her life. Back on the walkway, Mark wore a blank expression as he accepted condolences and told people about his plans for the coming weeks. Eventually he reached a gravesite surrounded by mourners, and he stopped at the rear of the group as if happening upon a stranger’s funeral. Gradually the faces turned, and after a moment Mark noticed his wife and two other children waiting near a charcoal-colored casket. “I guess we’ll go lay her to rest now,” he said, stepping forward.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 26462 - Posted: 07.30.2019

By Frank Bruni CHIOS, Greece — Over my 54 years, I’ve pinned my hopes on my parents, my teachers, my romantic partners, God. I’m pinning them now on a shrub. It’s called mastic, it grows in particular abundance on the Greek island of Chios and its resin — the goo exuded when its bark is gashed — has been reputed for millenniums to have powerful curative properties. Ancient Greeks chewed it for oral hygiene. Some biblical scholars think the phrase “balm of Gilead” refers to it. It has been used in creams to reduce inflammation and heal wounds, as a powder to treat irritable bowels and ulcers, as a smoke to manage asthma. I’m now part of a clinical trial in the United States to determine if a clear liquid extracted from mastic resin can, through regular injections, repair ravaged nerves. That would have profound implications for millions of Alzheimer’s patients, stroke survivors — and me. The vision in my right eye was ruined by a condition that devastated the optic nerve behind it, and I’m at risk of the same happening on the left side, in which case I wouldn’t be able to see a paragraph like this one. Will a gnarly evergreen related to the pistachio tree save me? That’s unclear. But in the meantime, I thought I should hop on a plane and meet my medicine. Chios has just 50,000 or so year-round residents. It lies much closer to Turkey than to the Greek mainland. And there’s no separating its history from that of mastic. ImageA 17th-century rendering of the island of Chios. A 17th-century rendering of the island of Chios.CreditBridgeman Images In the 1300s and 1400s, when Chios was governed by the Republic of Genoa, the punishment for stealing up to 10 pounds of mastic resin was the loss of an ear; for more than 200 pounds, you were hanged. The stone villages in the southern part of the island, near the mastic groves, were built in the manner of fortresses — with high exterior walls, only a few entrances and labyrinthine layouts — to foil any attempts by invaders to steal the resin stored there. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 26461 - Posted: 07.29.2019

By Dom Vukovic Robotic skeletons may sound like something out of a science fiction movie but they are now being used to help people with severe spinal cord injuries take their first steps. The device known as a Rex bionic exoskeleton is one of only a few in the country and researchers in a trial have named their protype HELLEN. In a joint initiative between the University of Newcastle and the Australian Institute of Neuro-Rehabilitation, the robot is being used as a therapy device to see if it can help improve health and mobility outcomes in people with conditions including stroke, multiple sclerosis and now quadriplegia. Chief investigator Jodie Marquez said the trial was one of the first in the world to capture data about physiological and neurological changes that might occur in patients who undergo therapy while wearing the robotic suit. "We're seeing whether exercising in the exoskeleton device can improve both real measures of strength and spasticity, but also bigger measures such as mood and quality of life and function," Dr Marquez said. "I have no doubt that robotics will become a part of rehabilitation and a part of our lives in the future, I think that's unquestionable." Lifesaver Jess Collins is the first person with severe spinal injuries to participate in the trial. She had a near fatal surfing accident while on holidays with friends in May last year leaving her paralysed from the chest down. "I've hit the board and then the sandbank and then instantly I didn't have any movement or feeling and I wasn't sure where I was placed in the water … I was face down, which was horrific and I was conscious the entire time," she said. © 2019 ABC

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 26460 - Posted: 07.29.2019

By Kelli María Korducki The antidepressant Prozac came on the market in 1986; coincidentally, it was the year I was born. By the time I saw my first psychiatrist, as an early-2000s teenager, another half-dozen antidepressants belonging to the same class of drugs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or S.S.R.I.s, had joined it on the market — and in the public consciousness. The despondent cartoon blob from a memorable series of TV ads for the S.S.R.I. drug Zoloft became a near-instant piece of pop culture iconography after its May 2001 debut. It was commonplace through much of my childhood to find ads for other S.S.R.I.s tucked into the pages of the women’s magazines I’d leaf through at the salon where my mother had her hair cut, outlining criteria for determining whether Paxil “may be right for you.” In my depressed, anxious, eating disordered adolescence, I knew by name the pills that promised to help me. The mainstreaming of S.S.R.I.s and other psychopharmaceuticals didn’t eradicate stigmas against mental illness, but it certainly normalized a sense of their prevalence. (A 2003 study concluded that child and adolescent psychotropic prescription rates alone had nearly tripled since the late 1980s.) It also shaped the tone of conversation. No longer were mental illnesses necessarily discussed as a shameful aberration, but rather as chemically preordained sicknesses: functions of what became known as a “chemical imbalance.” As a teenager entering the psychiatric care system, I found this logic tremendously reassuring. I came from an extended family of medical providers and had been raised to trust in the hard, scientific grounding of modern medicine. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 26459 - Posted: 07.29.2019

By Derrick Bryson Taylor Many owners struggle to teach their dogs to sit, fetch or even bark on command, but John W. Pilley, a professor emeritus of psychology at Wofford College, taught his Border collie to understand more than 1,000 nouns, a feat that earned them both worldwide recognition. For some time, Dr. Pilley had been conducting his own experiment teaching dogs the names of objects and was inspired by Border collie farmers to rethink his methods. Dr. Pilley was given a black-and-white Border collie as a gift by his wife Sally. For three years, Dr. Pilley trained the dog, named Chaser, four to five hours a day: He showed her an object, said its name up to 40 times, then hid it and asked her to find it. He used 800 cloth animal toys, 116 balls, 26 Frisbees and an assortment of plastic items to ultimately teach Chaser 1,022 nouns. In 2013, Dr. Pilley published his findings that explained that Chaser was taught to understand sentences containing a prepositional object, verb and direct object. Chaser died on Tuesday at 15. She had been living with Dr. Pilley’s wife and their daughter Robin in Spartanburg. Dr. Pilley died last year at 89. Another daughter, Pilley Bianchi, said on Saturday that Chaser had been in declining health in recent weeks. “The vet really determined that she died of natural causes,” Ms. Bianchi said. “She went down very quickly.” Ms. Bianchi, who helped her father train Chaser, said the dog had been undergoing acupuncture for arthritis but had no other known illnesses. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 26458 - Posted: 07.29.2019

By Sheila Kaplan WASHINGTON — Last summer, with public concern about teenage vaping growing, Juul Labs paid a charter school organization in Baltimore $134,000 to set up a five-week summer camp to teach children healthy lifestyles. The curriculum was created by Juul — maker of the very vaping devices that were causing the most alarm among parents, health experts and public officials. In April 2017, a Juul representative visited the Dwight School in New York City to meet with students — with no teachers present — and told them the company’s e-cigarettes were “totally safe.” Other schools across the country were offered $10,000 from the e-cigarette company for the right to talk to students in classrooms or after school. In Richmond, Calif. last year, Juul gave the Police Activities League $90,000 to offer the company’s vaping education program “Moving Beyond” to middle school and high school students who faced suspension for using cigarettes. Those efforts were among many detailed by a House subcommittee on Thursday afternoon in the second day of hearings on the problem of youth vaping and Juul’s role in it — a topic that the Food and Drug Administration and two state attorneys general have been investigating for more than a year. Juul “deployed a sophisticated program to enter schools and convey its messaging directly to teenage children,” recruited thousands of online influencers to market its vaping devices to youths and targeted children as young as 8 in summer camp, a memo prepared by subcommittee staff members claimed. Juul, which has an estimated $38 billion valuation, stopped shipping the flavored pods to retailers at a time when the Food and Drug Administration was threatening to remove its devices from the market if it did not make them inaccessible to youths. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26457 - Posted: 07.27.2019

Susie Neilson Living with anxiety can be tough — your thoughts might race, you might dread tasks others find simple (like driving to work) and your worries might feel inescapable. But loving someone with anxiety can be hard too. You might feel powerless to help or overwhelmed by how your partner's feelings affect your daily life. If so, you're not alone: Multiple studies have shown that anxiety disorders may contribute to marital dissatisfaction. "We often find that our patients' ... partners are somehow intertwined in their anxiety," says Sandy Capaldi, associate director at the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety at the University of Pennsylvania. Anxiety is experienced at many different levels and in different forms — from moderate to debilitating, from generalized anxiety to phobias — and its impacts can vary. But psychiatrists and therapists say there are ways to help your partner navigate challenges while you also take care of yourself. Start by addressing symptoms. Because an anxiety disorder can be consuming, it can be best to start by talking with your partner about the ways anxiety affects daily life, like sleeplessness, says Jeffrey Borenstein, president and CEO of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation in New York. Something as simple as using the word "stress" instead of clinical labels can help too. "Often people may feel a little more comfortable talking about stress as opposed to ... anxiety [disorders]," Borenstein says. Don't minimize feelings. "Even if the perspective of the other person absolutely makes no sense to you logically, you should validate it," says Carolyn Daitch, a licensed psychologist and director of the Center for the Treatment of Anxiety Disorders in Farmington Hills, Mich. Try to understand your partner's fears and worries, or at least acknowledge that those fears and worries are real to your partner, before addressing why such things might be irrational. © 2019 npr

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 26456 - Posted: 07.27.2019

By Sarah White | Some five ounces of clear fluid fills the spaces between your brain and your skull. This brain juice, or cerebrospinal fluid, cushions against injury, supplies nutrients and clears away waste. Your body can make as much as a pint of fresh stuff every day to replace the old. But for 150 years, scientists have puzzled over how the used cerebrospinal fluid leaves the brain to make room for more. New research, published Wednesday in Nature, has finally deciphered this brain drain process. As a result, it’s also inching us closer to understanding Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. South Korean scientists, led by Gou Young Koh, completed the puzzle by studying our immune system’s superhighway, dubbed the lymphatic system. They were able to trace the cerebrospinal fluid’s one-directional path in mice, from its origin in the brain into lymph nodes in the neck. The key conduit? Lymphatic vessels at the bottom of the skull, in the brain’s outer layers. Before now, neuroscientists thought cerebrospinal fluid drained through lymphatic vessels on top of the brain or ones exiting through the nasal cavity. No one had managed to carefully examine the lymphatic vessels on the bottom of the brain because they’re so close to bones and delicate blood vessels. But by having a neurosurgeon on their team, the researchers could get close enough to identify what was so special about these bottom lymphatic vessels and see what makes them ideal for draining cerebrospinal fluid.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 26455 - Posted: 07.27.2019

By Jacey Fortin A man in North Carolina died on Monday after he went swimming in a lake and was infected by Naegleria fowleri, a single-celled organism known as the “brain-eating amoeba.” The man, Eddie Gray, 59, fell ill after he visited the Fantasy Lake Water Park in Cumberland County July 12, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement on Thursday. Naegleria fowleri infections are rare, but deadly. There were 145 known infected people in the United States from 1962 through 2018, and all but four cases were fatal. The amoeba is typically found in warm freshwater, and the majority of cases in the United States have occurred in Florida and Texas. “Mr. Gray’s death was tragic and untimely,” Justin Plummer, a lawyer representing his estate, said in a statement. “The family is currently asking for privacy and respect during this difficult time.” According to his obituary, Mr. Gray was an active member of the Sedge Garden United Methodist Church who enjoyed kayaking, camping, hunting, fishing and NASCAR. “Our sympathies are with the family and loved ones,” Zack Moore, North Carolina’s state epidemiologist, said in a statement. “People should be aware that this organism is present in warm freshwater lakes, rivers and hot springs across North Carolina, so be mindful as you swim or enjoy water sports.” According to the North Carolina health department, Naegleria fowleri “does not cause illness if swallowed but can be fatal if forced up the nose, as can occur during diving, water-skiing or other water activities.” © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 26454 - Posted: 07.26.2019

Tina Hesman Saey Subtle defects in the immune system may lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes, a study of mice suggests. Mice gained weight and developed health problems when they carried a genetic defect that dampens some immune functions, researchers report in the July 26 Science. The immune problems were linked to shifts in the gut microbiome — the collection of friendly bacteria and other microbes living in the intestines. Altering the gut microbe mix, particularly in the small intestine, may lead to increased absorption of fat from the diet, the researchers found. These findings, if they hold up in human studies, could lead to strategies for boosting immune system function in order to help prevent obesity and associated health problems. People with obesity and those with type 2 diabetes also have gut microbe compositions and subtle immune system deficiencies similar to those seen in the mice, says June Round, a microbiome researcher at the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City. “It’s possible that things that are happening in our mice are also happening in individual [humans],” she says. Round and colleagues noticed that mice with a defect in the Myd88 gene started gaining weight at about 5 months old. By about a year old, those mice, which lack Myd88 protein in immune cells called T cells, weighed up to 60 grams — about twice as much as a normal mouse. The mutant mice also had developed metabolic problems associated with obesity, such as insulin resistance, a hallmark of type 2 diabetes in people. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2019

Keyword: Obesity; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 26453 - Posted: 07.26.2019

Abby Olena For years, scientists thought the brain lacked a lymphatic system, raising questions about how fluid, macromolecules, and immune cells escape the organ. In 2015, two studies in mice provided evidence that the brain does in fact have a traditional lymphatic system in the outermost layer of the meninges—the coverings that protect the brain and help keep its shape—but scientists hadn’t yet figured out the exact exit route cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and molecules take. In a study published today (July 24) in Nature, researchers show that there is a hot spot of meningeal lymphatic vessels at the base of the rodent skull that is specialized to drain CSF and allow proteins and other large molecules to leave the brain. “What they showed very nicely is that the system of meningeal lymphatics is the drainage system of the CSF of the central nervous system,” says Jonathan Kipnis, a neuroscientist at the University of Virginia who did not participate in the new study, but coauthored the first 2015 study. “We’re just scratching really the surface of understanding what these vessels are doing.” “I’m actually quite relieved because when we published in 2015 . . . we got a lot of contrasting comments and some people were not convinced that the lymphatics really can be involved in cerebrospinal fluid drainage because there was a lot of literature telling otherwise,” Kari Alitalo of the University of Helsinki tells The Scientist. Alitalo coauthored the second 2015 paper describing the brain’s lymphatic system, but was not involved in the current study. © 1986–2019 The Scientist

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 26452 - Posted: 07.26.2019

Carolyn Wilke Most frogs lay oodles of eggs and quickly hop away. But some poison dart frogs baby their offspring, cleaning and hydrating eggs laid on land and piggybacking hatched tadpoles to water. A peek inside the brains of these nurturing amphibians reveals that in males and females, two regions linked with caring for young are the same — a finding that may provide clues to the neural underpinnings of parental behavior, researchers report online July 17 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. From humans to crocodiles, many creatures tend to their young. “But we actually understand very little about how the brain makes parental behaviors,” says Eva Fischer, a neuroethologist at Stanford University. To study how such care is wired into the amphibian brain, Fischer and her colleagues looked at neural activity in three poison dart frog species with different parenting strategies: Dendrobates tinctorius, among whom the males take care of the young; Oophaga sylvatica, whose females do the parenting; and Ranitomeya imitator, whose offspring are cared for by a monogamous male and female pair. The researchers collected and quickly killed 25 frogs while the amphibians were toting their tadpoles to water, in order to study the brain while it was still influenced by the parental task. Another 59 brains from non-caregiving frog species or caregivers’ partners were also included in the study. The researchers froze the frog brains and sliced them like loaves of bread. They stained the layers of tissue to pinpoint which nerve cells, or neurons, were turned on. In all three species, a brain region called the preoptic area was lit up with activity in caregiving frogs, but not in those of non-caregiving animals. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2019.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 26451 - Posted: 07.26.2019

By Jocelyn Kaiser U.S. scientists who challenged a new rule that would require them to register their basic studies of the human brain and behavior in a federal database of clinical trials have won another reprieve. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, says it now understands why some of that kind of research won’t easily fit the format of ClinicalTrials.gov, and the agency has delayed for the reporting requirements for another 2 years. The controversy dates back to 2017, when behavioral and cognitive researchers realized that new requirements for registering and reporting results from NIH-funded clinical studies would also cover even basic studies of human subjects, experiments that did not test drugs or other potential treatments. The scientists protested that including such studies would confuse the public and create burdensome, unnecessary paperwork. A year ago, NIH announced it would delay the requirement until September and seek further input. The responses prompted NIH staff to examine published papers from scientists conducting basic research. They agreed it would be hard to include some of these studies into the rigid informational format used by ClinicalTrials.gov—for example, because the authors didn’t specify the outcome they expected before the study began, or they reported results for individuals and not the whole group. In other cases, the authors did several preliminary studies to help them design their experiment. © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Attention; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 26450 - Posted: 07.25.2019

Anna Ploszajski A man who lost his hand 17 years ago has been given the sense of touch through a brain-controlled robotic prosthetic. Keven Walgamott, whose arm was amputated below the elbow after an accident, can now feel 119 different touch sensations through the prosthetic as if it were his own limb. He is able to distinguish between large, small, soft and hard objects when blindfolded, and handle delicate objects such as grapes and eggs. Everyday tasks such as putting on his wedding ring, peeling a banana or holding a mobile phone are now possible. “The most amazing thing for me is what the team was able to do,” said Walgamott. “[They] take a bunch of mechanical pieces and provide, through a computer, not only the ability to move all fingers and grasp things but be able to feel again.” The prosthetic hand and wrist has been in development for 15 years. Electrodes were implanted in the remaining part of his arm, allowing communication between the prosthetic hand and his brain. The hand can move in six directions and is equipped with 19 sensors that detect touch and positioning. The arrays interpret the signals Walgamott’s brain sends to his arm nerves, and a computer outside the body translates these into digital information, which then instructs the prosthetic to move as the wearer intends. They also provide Walgamott’s nerves with computer-generated touch signals from the prosthesis, which are then interpreted by his brain. © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Robotics
Link ID: 26449 - Posted: 07.25.2019

By Megan Schmidt | Soaring with the birds. Teeth falling out. A crazy psychopath is chasing you. For many of us, our dreams transport us to a surreal world where logic and reason have no reign. Some of us may even look forward to sleep – and the adventures we’ll go on in our dreams. But does everyone take a nightly trip to dreamland? While most of us remember somewhere around one or two dreams a week, some people report a subconscious experience that’s more like a blank tape. Among us are people who say they never, ever dream. A small subset of the population – around one in every 250 people – report never remembering a single dream in their lives, as a 2015 study found. What is it about people who don’t remember their dreams that sets them apart from the people that do? Is it possible for the brain to stop producing dreams? And could something be wrong in the brains of people who report never dreaming? Raphael Vallat, a neuroscientist specializing in sleep and dream research at the University of California, Berkeley Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab, offered insights to a number of these questions. Vallat says dreaming “is one of the last frontiers in our understanding of the human mind.” And learning about dream recall – the why and how of remembering one’s dreams – may help scientists solve some of the mysteries of the dreaming mind. Work by Vallat and others in the field has uncovered a number of interesting tidbits that seem to separate the dreamers from the so-called nondreamers, or the people seldom or never remember their dreams.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 26448 - Posted: 07.25.2019

By Gretchen Reynolds Weight training may have benefits for brain health, at least in rats. When rats lift weights, they gain strength and also change the cellular environment inside their brains, improving their ability to think, according to a notable new study of resistance training, rodents and the workings of their minds. The study finds that weight training, accomplished in rodents with ladders and tiny, taped-on weights, can reduce or even reverse aspects of age-related memory loss. The finding may have important brain-health implications for those of us who are not literal gym rats. Most of us discover in middle age, to our chagrin, that brains change with age and thinking skills dip. Familiar names, words and the current location of our house keys begin to elude us. But a wealth of helpful past research indicates that regular aerobic exercise, such as walking or jogging, can prop up memory and cognition. In these studies, which have involved people and animals, aerobic exercise generally increases the number of new neurons created in the brain’s memory center and also reduces inflammation. Unchecked, inflammation in the brain may contribute to the development of dementia and other neurodegenerative conditions. Far less has been known, though, about whether and how resistance training affects the brain. A few studies with older people have linked weight training to improved cognition, but the studies have been small and the linkages tenuous. While researchers know that lifting weights builds muscle, it is not yet clear how, at a molecular level, it would affect the cells and functions of the brain. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Neurogenesis
Link ID: 26447 - Posted: 07.24.2019

Ian Sample Science editor Brain scans of US embassy staff who became ill in mysterious circumstances while serving in Cuba have found potential abnormalities that may be related to their symptoms. The scans taken from 40 US government workers who suffered strange concussion-like symptoms during their deployment to Havana revealed that particular brain features looked different to those in healthy volunteers. Images of the diplomats’ brains found that on average they had lower volumes of white matter, the tissue made from nerve bundles that send messages around the brain. They also showed micro-structural differences and other changes that could affect auditory and visuospatial processing, doctors said. But the medical team that performed the scans said the findings were not conclusive. They do not match what is normally seen in brain injuries and the severity of symptoms did not vary with the extent of the brain differences spotted. “It’s a unique presentation that we have not seen before,” said Ragini Verma, a professor of biomedical imaging on the team at the University of Pennsylvania. “What caused it? I’m completely unequipped to answer that.” Independent experts agreed the findings were inconclusive and said it was still unclear whether the diplomats were victims of any attack or had suffered related brain injuries. The apparent abnormalities might have pre-dated the attacks, they said, and could have more mundane explanations such as anxiety or depression. One said the study did not meet the usual standards for publication. © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Brain imaging; Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 26446 - Posted: 07.24.2019

Dave Davies We tend to think of being asleep or awake as an either-or prospect: If you're not asleep, then you must be awake. But sleep disorder specialist and neurologist Guy Leschziner says it's not that simple. "If one looks at the brain during sleep, we now know that actually sleep is not a static state," Leschziner says. "There are a number of different brain states that occur while we sleep." As head of the sleep disorders center at Guy's Hospital in London, Leschziner has treated patients with a host of nocturnal problems, including insomnia, night terrors, narcolepsy, sleep walking, sleep eating and sexsomnia, a condition in which a person pursues sexual acts while asleep. He writes about his experiences in his book The Nocturnal Brain. Leschziner notes that the different parts of the brain aren't always in the same stage of sleep at the same time. When this happens, an individual might order a pizza or go out for a drive — while technically still being fast asleep. "Sometimes these conditions sound very funny," Leschziner says. "But on other occasions they can be really life changing, resulting in major injury or, as one of the cases that I described in the book, in a criminal conviction." On what we know about recall after a sleepwalking episode We used to think that people don't really remember anything that occurs in this stage. That seems to relate to the fact that the brain in parts is in very deep sleep whilst in other parts is awake. What we have learned over the last few years is that actually quite a lot of people have some sort of limited recall. They don't necessarily remember the details of all the events or indeed the entirety of the event, but sometimes they do experience little snippets. © 2019 npr

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 26445 - Posted: 07.24.2019

Briar Stewart · A Canadian-born researcher is helping to launch the first substantial study of transgender athletes in a bid to better understand how transitioning and hormone therapy affects athletic performance. The issue of how to include transgender women in competition is centred around rules, rights and biological differences. And the debate about what constitutes an unfair advantage is heated, which is why medical physicist Joanna Harper hopes science can steer the conversation. "Until we have several of these larger-scale studies done worldwide, it's hard to be truly definitive on anything," she said. Harper, who is also an adviser to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), will be moving to the U.K. this fall to help lead the research into transgender athletes. The work will be carried out at Loughborough University, through its School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences. Personal motivation It was Harper's own experience that motivated her to try and track transgender athletes both before and after a gender transition. Harper, who is originally from Parry Sound, Ont, but is now based in Portland, Ore., has been a competitive runner for decades. When she was younger and racing as a male, her marathon time was a very quick two hours and 23 minutes. But once she started her transition in 2004 and began taking testosterone blockers and estrogen, her pace slowed. "Within nine months of hormone therapy, I was running 12 per cent slower," she said. "That's the difference between serious male distance runners and serious female distance runners." Harper, now in her 60s, still competes, racing alongside women. She wins some events and loses others, which is why she asserts that if trans women can become hormonally like other women, competition can be "equitable and meaningful." ©2019 CBC/Radio-Canada.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 26444 - Posted: 07.24.2019

By Heather King On Sept. 29, 2016, I was at a private book signing in Williamson County, Tenn., for Alberto Gonzales, the former United States attorney general. As the chairwoman for the Montgomery County Young Republicans, I spent a lot of time sharing drinks with Tennessee’s political class. At the end of the evening, I decided to drive home, even though I knew I had drunk too much. I had taken these back roads so many times, I told myself; I could make it home. Twenty minutes into my hourlong trek, I passed out. When I regained consciousness, I was upside down in a ditch. A stranger stopped to pull me out of my car. The police arrived and arrested me immediately. The next morning, reality set in. I had done so much damage in my life that my son, Taj, who was 16 at the time, refused to talk to me. That was the last night I drank. As much as I would love to say that I stopped drinking for Taj, I didn’t. For the first time in many years, I wanted to live more than I wanted to drink. I found myself in this weird dilemma: I could no longer see myself drinking, but I had no idea how to live my life without alcohol. My son was the first person that I told I was going to stop. He didn’t believe me, and rightly so. He had seen plenty of unsuccessful attempts to quit. But he held me, as a parent would hold a child after her first heartbreak, and he told me we would get through it together. At 16 years old, my child was more of an adult than I was at 34. I became a mother at 18 years old. I had never wanted children. Partying my way through high school and getting drunk with my older brother was my only priority. It stayed that way even after I had my son. I never thought I was capable of loving and nurturing a small human; after all, I was raised by a working single mom who rarely showed affection. Not because she didn’t love me; she just wasn’t around. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26443 - Posted: 07.24.2019