Laura Sanders A praying mantis depends on precision targeting when hunting insects. Now, scientists have identified nerve cells that help calculate the depth perception required for these predators’ surgical strikes. In addition to providing clues about insect vision, the principles of these cells’ behavior, described June 28 in Nature Communications, may also lead to advances in robot vision or other automated systems. So far, praying mantises are the only insects known to be able to see in 3-D. In the new study, neuroscientist Ronny Rosner of Newcastle University in England and colleagues used a tiny theater that played praying mantises’ favorite films — moving disks that mimic bugs. The disks appeared in three dimensions because the insects’ eyes were covered with different colored filters, creating minuscule 3-D glasses. As a praying mantis watched the films, electrodes monitored the behavior of individual nerve cells in the optic lobe, a brain structure responsible for many aspects of vision. There, researchers found four types of nerve cells that seem to help merge the two different views from each eye into a complete 3-D picture, a skill that human vision cells use to sense depth, too. One cell type called a TAOpro neuron possesses three elaborate, fan-shaped bundles that receive incoming visual information. Along with the three other cell types, TAOpro neurons are active when each eye’s view of an object is different, a mismatch that’s needed for depth perception. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2019.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 26422 - Posted: 07.16.2019

By Elizabeth Pennisi PROVIDENCE—Looking a squid in the eye is eerily like looking in a mirror. Squids, octopuses, and other cephalopods are on a very different part of the tree of life from vertebrates. But both have evolved sophisticated peepers that rely on a lens to focus light and provide excellent vision. This independent evolution of such complexity has puzzled biologists for centuries and has prompted searches for clues about how this might have come about. Evolutionary developmental biologists have now discovered that the genes that guide the initial formation of legs in us and other vertebrates also guide the formation of the squid’s lens (seen in cross section of eye above). The find is yet another example of how nature recruits genes used for one purpose to do another job for the body. The squid lens forms as extra-long membranes jutting out for specialized eye cells overlap to form a tight ball. Our lenses are actually degraded cells themselves packed with a clear protein. To learn how the squid lenses form, these researchers carefully tracked where, when, and which genes turn on and off as embryos of Doryteuthis pealeii, a squid commonly served as fried appetizers, develop. © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Vision; Evolution
Link ID: 26421 - Posted: 07.16.2019

By Ryan D'Agostino If you have a son, you have a one-in-seven chance that he has been diagnosed with ADHD. If you have a son who has been diagnosed, it's more than likely that he has been prescribed a stimulant—the most famous brand names are Ritalin and Adderall; newer ones include Vyvanse and Concerta—to deal with the symptoms of that psychiatric condition. The Drug Enforcement Administration classifies stimulants as Schedule II drugs, defined as having a "high potential for abuse" and "with use potentially leading to severe psychological or physical dependence." (According to a University of Michigan study, Adderall is the most abused brand-name drug among high school seniors.) In addition to stimulants like Ritalin, Adderall, Vyvanse, and Concerta, Schedule II drugs include cocaine, methamphetamine, Demerol, and OxyContin. According to manufacturers of ADHD stimulants, they are associated with sudden death in children who have heart problems, whether those heart problems have been previously detected or not. They can bring on a bipolar condition in a child who didn't exhibit any symptoms of such a disorder before taking stimulants. They are associated with "new or worse aggressive behavior or hostility." They can cause "new psychotic symptoms (such as hearing voices and believing things that are not true) or new manic symptoms." They commonly cause noticeable weight loss and trouble sleeping. In some children, some stimulants can cause the paranoid feeling that bugs are crawling on them. Facial tics. They can cause children's eyes to glaze over, their spirits to dampen. One study reported fears of being harmed by other children and thoughts of suicide. ©2019 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc.

Keyword: ADHD; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26420 - Posted: 07.15.2019

Researchers at the University of Waterloo say they have developed a new, "kid-friendly" way of diagnosing autism in young children. It uses infrared technology to read the way a child's eyes move as they process the features of a person's face. "A neuro-typical child will spend a whole lot more time looking at the person's — or the face's — eye," Anita Layton, a professor of applied mathematics, pharmacy and biology, told CBC Kitchener-Waterloo. "A [child with autism] will look at the mouth a lot more." Layton and her team developed the technique by showing a group of 40 children 44 photographs on a screen connected to their eye-tracking device. The children were all around 5 years old. Seventeen had been previously diagnosed as on the spectrum, the other 23 were considered neuro-typical. The difference in eye tracking has been well documented, Layton said. Her team found a way to turn that difference into a diagnostic tool that works well for young children and even non-verbal kids on the more complicated end of the spectrum. Right now, the two most popular ways of diagnosing Autism Spectrum Disorder are by having the child or parent fill out a comprehensive questionnaire, or have the child evaluated by a psychologist. "It's not easy for a child. Imagine a four or five-year-old child, neuro-typical or [autistic] to sit there for a long time, to answer your questions. That simply is no fun for a kid," Layton said. The eye-tracking test, on the other hand, can be done in just a few minutes. ©2019 CBC/Radio-Canada

Keyword: Autism; Vision
Link ID: 26419 - Posted: 07.15.2019

By Thomas Stackpole The run happened — or didn’t — maybe five days into the raw-diet experiment. I had formed a sort of fitness pact with a friend to forgo cooked food, and after days of nothing but salads, almonds, sashimi and black coffee, my body felt taut and ready for action. And for about half a mile, it was, my strides floating above the pavement as a few fistfuls of raw kale percolated in my belly. Then suddenly I sputtered, feeling an unambiguous alarm go off: Tank is empty, sorry, this is the end of the line. After a pause, I tried running again but made it maybe a block before my legs revolted again and I slowed to a walk. My new healthy diet, it seemed, didn’t accommodate any actual exercise. When I told all this to my co-workers the next morning, it was fodder for a good laugh. My obsessions were — and often still are — a kind of running joke. I’ve been conducting a series of shifting and poorly planned “wellness” experiments on myself for about a decade. I’ve eaten keto, low-carb and sometimes not at all. One time, I ate almost nothing but lean ground turkey and broccoli over greens for maybe two months as part of a YouTube bodybuilder’s plan. More than once, I’ve lost 10 pounds in a week. I’ve also obsessed over bulking up, gaining 25 pounds over about six months of lifting, before pivoting and deciding to train for a marathon to run it off. Then there were the gut biome vitamins, the metabolism-boosting mushrooms, the experiments with LSD microdosing and calorie trackers. Despite years of cycling through boutique insanities, it didn’t occur to me that I might have a problem until earlier this year, when the Twitter founder turned Silicon Valley wellness influencer Jack Dorsey detailed his fasting regimen. The news that he eats one meal a day during the week and nothing on the weekend provoked scornful cries that he was advocating little more than anorexia with a bro-y tech-world veneer. I, on the other hand, saw a kindred spirit. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 26418 - Posted: 07.15.2019

By Susan Berger Julie Staple was a child when her dad, Mark Womack, began exhibiting odd behavior. An award-winning violin, viola and cello maker, Womack was not following through for clients nor returning phone calls promptly. He was watching more TV and taking more breaks from work. He began drinking and was quick to become angry. The behavior lasted years and took its toll. Staple and her mom, Ginny Womack, a professional violinist, thought Mark Womack was depressed. Her parents got divorced. Mark Womack was fired from two jobs making instruments in Nebraska and Texas. There were other disturbing events. A body shop wouldn’t fix his car because he couldn’t recall insurance information. A drive to his parents’ home that normally took two hours took five. And then came a phone call from his boss to the family — Mark Womack was crying and couldn’t remember how to make a violin. The boss took him to a clinic. At age 53, Mark Womack was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s in September 2015. Further evaluation a few months back revealed instead a diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia or FTD. Ginny Womack became his caregiver. “Had my mom known, she would never have divorced him and been his caretaker from the beginning,” Staple, of Deerfield, Ill., said. FTD often is misdiagnosed as a psychiatric disorder or Alzheimer’s. It affects the area of the brain generally associated with personality, behavior and language and is often diagnosed in people between the ages of 40 and 45. About 5.8 million people in the United States are living with Alzheimer’s and dementia, said Heather Snyder, senior director for medical and scientific operations for the Alzheimer’s Association. The number is expected to rise to 14 million by 2050. Approximately 16 million people are caregivers. © 1996-2019 The Washington Post

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 26417 - Posted: 07.15.2019

By Knvul Sheikh A tropical parasite transmitted through rats and snails has caught the attention of health officials in Hawaii. But few scientists have studied the infection once it makes its way into humans, and researchers can’t say for certain whether the disease is becoming more widespread. The parasite, Angiostrongylus cantonensis, typically resides in a rat’s pulmonary arteries and is commonly known as “rat lungworm.” When its eggs hatch, tiny larvae are shed in the animals’ feces and eaten by snails or slugs. Those slugs, in turn, are often mistakenly eaten by people, on unwashed produce or in drinks that have been left uncovered. Although the larvae can’t grow into adult worms in a human host, they still can cause various complications, including flulike symptoms, headaches, stiff necks and bursts of nerve pain that seem to shift from one part of the body to another. M.R.I. scans suggest that the worms can also wriggle into the brain, leading to eosinophilic meningitis, which in rare cases can cause paralysis. Doctors in the state have noted cases of rat lungworm disease since at least 1959. But it is difficult to diagnose. To better track it, and to identify areas that prevention efforts should target, the Hawaii Department of Health began monitoring rat lungworm infections about a decade ago. From 2007 to 2017, officials tallied 82 cases, two of which resulted in death. Another 10 cases were reported in 2018, and six more have been reported among visitors and residents already this year. From the team at NYT Parenting: Get the latest news and guidance for parents. We'll celebrate the little parenting moments that mean a lot — and share stories that matter to families. The east side of the Big Island, in particular, has become a hot spot for infections, according to a review of cases published Monday in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Researchers are not sure why. Rats may be more numerous there, or more heavily infected, or more likely to cross paths with humans and infect them. Increased awareness about the disease may also have led to more infections being recognized than in the past. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 26416 - Posted: 07.13.2019

By Emily Anthes In 2002, Marin Sardy and her younger brother Tom traveled to a small Costa Rican town for what they hoped would be a low-key beach vacation. The siblings, both in their 20s, planned to spend a few weeks relaxing, learning to surf, and just generally enjoying each other’s company. Sardy reveals what it means to love someone who is mentally ill and how hard it is to truly understand another person’s mind. And then, one day, Tom began to complain about his face. His bones, he said, had detached from each other, and his jaw had separated from his head. He couldn’t get his face back into alignment, he told Sardy. He began to talk — excitedly and cryptically — about “building matrices” and his plans to swim from Alaska to Japan. His facial expressions turned blank. Sardy observed these developments with growing alarm. She and Tom had grown up with a mother whose life had been derailed by schizophrenia, and she was well acquainted with its signs and symptoms. “Memories unfurl inside as I watch Tom,” Sardy writes in her intimate, multigenerational memoir, “The Edge of Every Day: Sketches of Schizophrenia.” “It is as if I already know that doctors and medications and hospitals and our efforts will all fail him.” “The Edge of Every Day” is Sardy’s attempt to come to terms with a fundamentally mysterious disease and how its effects ripple throughout her family. It’s a deeply compassionate book about what it means to love someone who is mentally ill — about how hard it is to truly understand another person’s mind and the importance of continuing to try. Copyright 2019 Undark

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 26415 - Posted: 07.13.2019

Katarina Zimmer About two years ago, 29 people visited a neuroscience lab in the Netherlands to sing karaoke. Wearing muffled headphones so they could hear the music but not their own voices, it was almost inevitable that they would sing “Silent Night” or the Dutch national anthem out of tune. Dutch researchers recorded each individual sing, then played the recording back to him or her. Listening to themselves sing solo evoked feelings of shame and embarrassment and sparked higher-than-normal activity in the subjects’ amygdalae. Fortunately for some study participants, a good night’s sleep was enough to lessen the amygdala’s response when they listened to the recording again the next day. But others who had experienced restless sleep—specifically poor-quality REM, or rapid eye movement, sleep—experienced the opposite: their amygdalae were just as sensitive, if not more, to the recording the next day. The findings suggest that poor-quality REM sleep can interfere with the amygdala’s ability to process emotional memories overnight, the scientists who conducted the study say. They posit that this has implications for people with psychological disorders linked to disturbed REM sleep patterns, such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The research appears today (July 11) in Current Biology. © 1986–2019 The Scientist.

Keyword: Sleep; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 26414 - Posted: 07.13.2019

Jon Hamilton In a waiting room at the Banner Alzheimer's Institute in Phoenix, a 74-year-old woman named Rubie is about to find out whether she has a gene that puts her at risk for Alzheimer's. "I'm a little bit apprehensive about it, and I hope I don't have it," she says. "But if I do, I want to be able to plan for my future." The gene is called APOE E4, and it's the most powerful known genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's after age 65. APOE E4 doesn't cause the disease, and many of those who carry it never develop Alzheimer's. Still, about 1 in 4 people who carries a single copy will develop Alzheimer's by 85. Among people who get two copies (one from each parent) up to 55% will develop Alzheimer's by age 85. Rubie is one of several participants in a research study at Banner who agreed to speak both before and after learning their APOE E4 status. The participants are identified only by first name to protect their privacy. Like many people in their 60s and 70s, Rubie has seen dementia up close. "My mother had Alzheimer's in the last stage of her life, and I've got friends and family that have Alzheimer's," she says. "It's a terrible sickness." Rubie wanted to do something to help researchers find a treatment for Alzheimer's. So she volunteered for the Generation Program, which is testing an experimental drug meant to prevent or delay the disease. © 2019 npr

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 26413 - Posted: 07.13.2019

By Stephen L. Macknik When Susana Martinez-Conde and I talk to audiences about NeuroMagic—our research initiative to study the brain with magic (and vice-versa), people often ask us how we bring both fields together. They want to know in what ways magic tricks can inform neuroscience, and what a day in the life of a neuromagic scientist looks like. How do we run a neuromagic experiment, from collecting the data to using the results to gain knowledge about the mind's inner secrets? Our new study, led by Anthony Barnhart (aka Magic Tony) and just published in the Journal of Eye Movement Research, illustrates some of the ways in which we investigate magic in the lab. You can download the paper for free, but as it is written for academics, I'll give you the gist here. The experiment addresses how various neural circuits interact in your brain while you watch a magic performance. There's the visual system—critical for perception—there's the oculomotor system—critical for targeting and moving the eyes—and there's the attentional system—critical for filtering out irrelevant information and allowing you to literally and figuratively focus both the visual and oculomotor systems at the right place and at the right time. Without all three of these systems working together, you would be unable to conduct most visual tasks. Advertisement Magic is one of the inroads available to dissect the function of many perceptual and cognitive systems, and especially so in situations that are fairly similar to those we encounter in real life. This concept—ecological validity—is important to testing whether neuroscience theories will hold up outside of the lab, and one of the reasons why magic tricks are attractive for studying everyday perception and cognition. © 2019 Scientific American

Keyword: Vision; Attention
Link ID: 26412 - Posted: 07.13.2019

Partial sight has been restored to six blind people via an implant that transmits video images directly to the brain. Some vision was made possible – with the participants’ eyes bypassed – by a video camera attached to glasses which sent footage to electrodes implanted in the visual cortex of the brain. University College London lecturer and Optegra Eye Hospital surgeon Alex Shortt said it was a significant development by specialists from Baylor Medical College in Texas and the University of California Los Angeles. “Previously all attempts to create a bionic eye focused on implanting into the eye itself. It required you to have a working eye, a working optic nerve,” Shortt told the Daily Mail. “By bypassing the eye completely you open the potential up to many, many more people. “This is a complete paradigm shift for treating people with complete blindness. It is a real message of hope.” How eye-gaze technology brought creativity back into an artist's life The technology has not been proven on those born blind. The US team behind the study asked participants, each of whom has been completely blind for years, to look at a blacked-out computer screen and identify a white square appearing randomly at different locations on the monitor. The majority of the time, they can find the square. © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Vision; Robotics
Link ID: 26411 - Posted: 07.13.2019

Tina Hesman Saey No one should have to sleep with the fishes, but new research on zebrafish suggests that we sleep like them. Sleeping zebrafish have brain activity similar to both deep slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep that’s found in mammals, researchers report July 10 in Nature. And the team may have tracked down the cells that kick off REM sleep. The findings suggest that the basics of sleep evolved at least 450 million years ago in zebrafish ancestors, before the evolution of animals that give birth to live young instead of laying eggs. That’s 150 million years earlier than scientists thought when they discovered that lizards sleep like mammals and birds (SN: 5/28/16, p. 9). What’s more, sleep may have evolved underwater, says Louis C. Leung, a neuroscientist at Stanford University School of Medicine. “These signatures [of sleep] really have important functions — even though we may not know what they are — that have survived hundreds of millions of years of evolution.” In mammals, birds and lizards, sleep has several stages characterized by specific electrical signals. During slow-wave sleep, the brain is mostly quiet except for synchronized waves of electrical activity. The heart rate decreases and muscles relax. During REM or paradoxical sleep, the brain lights up with activity almost like it’s awake. But the muscles are paralyzed (except for rapid twitching of the eyes) and the heart beats erratically. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2019

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 26410 - Posted: 07.11.2019

By Kelly Mayes Your fancy sleep tracker is no match for a dedicated sleep lab. But who wants to spend 8 hours in a strange hospital room wired with electrodes while someone video records you all night? Now, several companies say they may have a compromise: high-tech sleep-monitoring headbands that combine brain wave–reading electrodes with sophisticated artificial intelligence. And best of all, they can be worn in your own bed. The technology could make it easier to get accurate readings of someone’s sleep patterns at home, says Tristan Bekinschtein, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom who was not involved with designing any of the devices. A prime benefit, he says, is that they get rid of the wires that inhibit movement during sleep and they can be used over multiple nights. Still, he says, the technology needs more testing before it becomes widely used in clinical research. One of the leading devices in sleep monitoring is the Dreem headband, developed by a company of the same name based in Paris. The headband is made of a slim, breathable piece of fabric designed to wrap around the head, with a separate arch extending over the top. Seven electrodes line the inner portion, making contact with the scalp. The device monitors the electrical activity of the brain with the traditional electroencephalogram readings taken in a sleep lab. And, as in sleep lab studies, the headband also tracks head movement, heart rate, and respiration, relying on sound recordings and a miniature accelerometer like those found in smartphones. Built-in artificial intelligence analyzes the data on the fly, identifying whether a person is, for example, in rapid eye movement sleep or other known stages like non–rapid eye movement sleep, which are not as deep. © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 26409 - Posted: 07.11.2019

By Denise Grady The actor Cameron Boyce, 20, who died on Saturday, had epilepsy, and his death was caused by a seizure that occurred during his sleep, his family said in a statement. Mr. Boyce starred in shows on the Disney Channel, including “Descendants” and “Jessie,” and appeared in a number of movies. “Cameron’s tragic passing was due to a seizure as a result of an ongoing medical condition, and that condition was epilepsy,” a Boyce family spokesperson told ABC News in a statement on Tuesday night. The Los Angeles County coroner’s office conducted an autopsy, but said it was awaiting the results of additional tests before determining an official cause of death. The most likely cause of his death was Sudep, or sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, said Dr. Orrin Devinsky, director of NYU Langone’s Comprehensive Epilepsy Center in Manhattan. He was not involved in Mr. Boyce’s care. Each year, about one in 1,000 people with epilepsy die from this disorder. In the United States, there are about 2,600 such deaths a year, though neurologists suspect that figure is an undercount. “It can happen to anyone with epilepsy,” Dr. Devinsky said. “Even the first seizure could be the last one. The more uncontrolled the seizures, the more severe, and the more they occur in sleep, the higher the risk.” About 70 percent of cases occur during sleep, and the people are often found facedown in bed. Usually, they have been sleeping alone. The probable cause of death is that the person stops breathing. A severe seizure can temporarily shut down the brain, including the centers that control respiration, Dr. Devinsky said. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Epilepsy
Link ID: 26408 - Posted: 07.11.2019

Lying inside a scanner, the patient watched as pictures appeared one by one: A bicycle. A cupcake. Heroin. Outside, researchers tracked her brain's reactions to the surprise sight of the drug she'd fought to kick. U.S. government scientists are starting to peek into the brains of people caught in the opioid epidemic, to see if medicines proven to treat addiction, like methadone, do more than ease the cravings and withdrawal. Do they also heal a brain damaged by addiction? And which one works best for which patient? They're fundamental questions considering that far too few of the 2 million opioid users who need anti-addiction medicine actually receive it. One reason: "People say you're just changing one drug for another," said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse, who is leading that first-of-its-kind study. "The brain responds differently to these medications than to heroin. It's not the same." Science has made clear that three medicines — methadone, buprenorphine and extended-release naltrexone — can effectively treat what specialists prefer to call opioid use disorder. Patients who stick with methadone or buprenorphine in particular cut their chances of death in half, according to a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that explored how to overcome barriers to that care. Opioid addiction changes the brain in ways that even when people quit can leave them vulnerable to relapse, changes that researchers believe lessen with long-term abstinence. ©2019 CBC/Radio-Canada.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26407 - Posted: 07.11.2019

By Elaine Glusac When Nicole Thibault had her first child, she imagined traveling everywhere with him. But by age 2, he would become upset by simply passing a restaurant that smelled of garlic. Waiting in line elicited tantrums and crowded places overwhelmed him. Autism was diagnosed within the year. “I thought maybe our family dream of travel wouldn’t happen,” said Ms. Thibault, 46, of Fairport, N.Y., who now has three children. But she spent the next three years learning to prepare her son for travel by watching videos of future destinations and attractions so that he would know what to expect. The preparation helped enable him, now 14 and well-traveled, to enjoy adventures as challenging as exploring caves in Mexico. It also encouraged Ms. Thibault to launch a business, Magical Storybook Travels, planning travel for families with special needs. Now the travel industry is catching up to the family. A growing number of theme parks, special attractions and hotels are introducing autism training and sensory guides that highlight triggers, providing resources in times of need and assuring families they won’t be judged. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in 59 children falls on the autism spectrum disorder, up from one in 150 in 2002. Autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, is a developmental disability that can cause challenges in social interaction, communication and behavior. Some may have sensory sensitivities and many have trouble adapting to changes in routine, which is the essence of travel. The growing frequency of autism diagnoses and the gap in travel services for those dealing with autism created an overlooked market. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 26406 - Posted: 07.11.2019

Ian Sample Science editor A broken skull chiselled from a lump of rock in a cave in Greece is the oldest modern human fossil ever found outside Africa, researchers claim. The partial skull was discovered in the Apidima cave on the Mani peninsula of the southern Peloponnese and has been dated to be at least 210,000 years old. If the claim is verified – and many scientists want more proof – the finding will rewrite a key chapter of the human story, with the skull becoming the oldest known Homo sapiens fossil in Europe by more than 160,000 years. Katerina Harvati, the director of paleoanthropology at the University of Tübingen in Germany, said the skull revealed that at least some modern humans had left Africa far earlier than previously thought and reached further geographically to settle as far away as Europe. Other fossils of early modern humans found in Israel already point to brief excursions out of Africa, where the species evolved, long before the mass exodus during which Homo sapiens spread from the continent about 70,000 years ago and colonised the world. Paleontologists view the excursions as failed dispersals, with the pioneers ultimately dying out and leaving no genetic legacy in people alive today. “Our results indicate that an early dispersal of Homo sapiens out of Africa occurred earlier than previously believed, before 200,000 years ago,” Karvati said. “We’re seeing evidence for human dispersals that are not just limited to one major exodus out of Africa.” © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 26405 - Posted: 07.11.2019

By Pam Belluck Last year, health officials confronted a record number of cases of a rare, mysterious neurological condition that caused limb weakness and paralysis in more than 200 children across the country. Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday that they were still trying to understand the condition, called acute flaccid myelitis, or A.F.M. And though there have been very few cases so far this year, they urged doctors to be on the lookout because the illness has tended to emerge in late summer and early fall. A.F.M. often involves sudden muscle weakness in the legs or arms and can also include stiffness in the neck, drooping eyelids or face muscles, problems swallowing and slurred speech. The paralysis can appear similar to polio. There have been 570 recorded cases since 2014, when the C.D.C. began tracking the condition, and it appears to peak every two years from August through October. In 2018, there were 233 cases in 41 states, the largest reported outbreak so far, the agency reported Tuesday. In alternate years, there have been small numbers of cases and 2019, with 11 confirmed cases so far, is looking like other off years, C.D.C. officials said. Still, Dr. Anne Schuchat, the agency’s principal deputy director, cautioned parents and clinicians to be aware of possible symptoms and report suspected cases quickly. “We don’t right now have an explanation for the every-other-year pattern,” she said, “and we really need to be ready to rapidly detect, report and investigate each case this year and be ready for possibly a bad year this year.” © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Movement Disorders
Link ID: 26404 - Posted: 07.10.2019

By Meghana Keshavan, Christian Angermayer is an unlikely proselyte of psychedelia: The German financier didn’t drink so much as a sip of beer for the first three decades of his life. But five years ago, after careful consideration (and the encouragement of a personal physician), Angermayer boarded a yacht with a handful of his closest friends. They sailed into the crystalline, tropical waters of a jurisdiction in which such substances are legal (he is very emphatic on this point), and had his very first psychedelic trip. His entire worldview was changed. “It was the single most meaningful thing I’ve ever done or experienced in my life,” said Angermayer, 40. “Nothing has ever come close to it.” The first thing Angermayer did after the experience was call his parents and tell them, with a newfound conviction, that he loved them. Then, being a consummate entrepreneur, he quickly identified a business opportunity: He would commercialize psychedelics. Today, with a net worth of roughly $400 million accrued through various enterprises, Angermayer is one of the driving forces behind the movement to turn long-shunned psychoactive substances, like the psilocybin derived from so-called magic mushrooms, into approved medications for depression and other mental illnesses. Though he still resolutely won’t touch even a drop of alcohol, he has banded together a team of like-minded entrepreneurs—including Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel—to invest in a handful of startups focused on developing psychedelics. © 2019 Scientific American,

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Depression
Link ID: 26403 - Posted: 07.10.2019