By Nicholas Bakalar Maintaining a low level of LDL, or “bad” cholesterol, is important for cardiovascular health, but extremely low LDL may also have risks, researchers report. The scientists studied 96,043 people for an average of nine years, recording their LDL level biennially and tracking cases of hemorrhagic stroke, caused by the rupture of a blood vessel in the brain. About 13 percent of strokes are of the hemorrhagic type. They found that compared with people in the normal range for LDL — 70 to 99 milligrams per deciliter of blood — people who had an LDL of 50 to 69 had a 65 percent higher risk of hemorrhagic stroke. For people with an LDL below 50, the risk nearly tripled. LDL concentrations above 100, on the other hand, were not significantly associated with hemorrhagic stroke, even at levels higher than 160. The study, in Neurology, controlled for age, sex, education, income, diabetes, hypertension and other variables. The senior author, Dr. Xiang Gao, an associate professor of nutrition at Pennsylvania State University, said that this does not mean that having a high LDL is harmless. “High LDL is a risk for cardiovascular disease, and a level above 100 should be lowered,” he said. “But there is no single answer for everyone. The ideal level varies depending on an individual’s risk factors. We need a personalized recommendation rather than a general rule.” © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 26402 - Posted: 07.10.2019

Laura Sanders Over 100 hours of scanning has yielded a 3-D picture of the whole human brain that’s more detailed than ever before. The new view, enabled by a powerful MRI, has the resolution potentially to spot objects that are smaller than 0.1 millimeters wide. “We haven’t seen an entire brain like this,” says electrical engineer Priti Balchandani of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, who was not involved in the study. “It’s definitely unprecedented.” The scan shows brain structures such as the amygdala in vivid detail, a picture that might lead to a deeper understanding of how subtle changes in anatomy could relate to disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder. To get this new look, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and elsewhere studied a brain from a 58-year-old woman who died of viral pneumonia. Her donated brain, presumed to be healthy, was preserved and stored for nearly three years. Before the scan began, researchers built a custom spheroid case of urethane that held the brain still and allowed interfering air bubbles to escape. Sturdily encased, the brain then went into a powerful MRI machine called a 7 Tesla, or 7T, and stayed there for almost five days of scanning. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2019.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 26401 - Posted: 07.09.2019

Ian Sample Science editor When Snowball the sulphur-crested cockatoo revealed his first dance moves a decade ago he became an instant sensation. The foot-tapping, head-bobbing bird boogied his way on to TV talkshows and commercials and won an impressive internet audience. Block-rocking beaks: Snowball the cockatoo – reviewed by our dance critic Read more But that was merely the start. A new study of the prancing parrot points to a bird at the peak of his creative powers. In performances conducted from the back of an armchair, Snowball pulled 14 distinct moves – a repertoire that would put many humans to shame. Footage of Snowball in action shows him smashing Another One Bites the Dust by Queen and Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun with a dazzling routine of head-bobs, foot-lifts, body-rolls, poses and headbanging. In one move, named the Vogue, Snowball moves his head from one side of a lifted foot to another. “We were amazed,” said Aniruddh Patel, a psychology professor at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. “There are moves in there, like the Madonna Vogue move, that I just can’t believe.” Advertisement “It seems that dancing to music isn’t purely a product of human culture. The fact that we see this in another animal suggests that if you have a brain with certain cognitive and neural capacities, you are predisposed to dance,” he added. It all started, as some things must, with the Backstreet Boys. In 2008, Patel, who has long studied the origins of musicality, watched a video on the internet of Snowball dancing in time to the band’s track Everybody. He contacted Irena Schulz, who owned the bird shelter where Snowball lived, and with her soon launched a study of Snowball’s dancing prowess. © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Hearing; Evolution
Link ID: 26400 - Posted: 07.09.2019

By Bridget Alex Whether animal, vegetable, mineral or machine, everything experiences stress — broadly defined as challenges to equilibrium, a balanced state of being. The Human Stress Story In biology, stress is the body’s response to perceived threats to our physical or mental well-being. Moderate amounts are healthy and normal. But too much — or too little — causes problems. Chronic stress is linked to cardiovascular disease, anxiety and depression. Stress associated with extreme events such as combat can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Symptoms of PTSD, which affects over 7 million Americans, include flashbacks and hypervigilance long after a trauma. Meanwhile, recent studies show that people who underreact to stress are more likely to have impulsive behavior and substance addiction. The Adaptive Stress Response A 1936 Nature paper launched the field of stress research. In the study, physician Hans Seyle — later called the father of stress — subjected rats to cold, drugs, excessive exercise and other assaults. Whatever the stimuli, the rats exhibited similar physiological effects. Now understood as the stress response, this set of bodily changes is an adaptation that allows animals to focus their energy on survival and forgo other matters such as growth or reproduction. It’s initiated when the brain detects a potential threat and launches a cascade of hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol, that affects the endocrine, nervous and immune systems.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 26399 - Posted: 07.09.2019

Erin Wayman Crowds of people gather to watch an evening spectacle on beaches in Southern California: Twice a month, typically from March through August, the sand becomes carpeted with hundreds or thousands of California grunion. Writhing, flopping, silvery sardine look-alikes lunge as far onto shore as possible. As the female fish dig their tails into the sand and release eggs, males wrap around females and release sperm to fertilize those eggs. About 10 days later, the eggs hatch and the little grunion get washed out to sea. This mating ritual is set to the tides, with hatching timed to the arrival of the peak high tide every two weeks. But the ultimate force choreographing this dance is the moon. Many people know that the moon’s gravitational tug on the Earth drives the tides, and with them, the life cycles of coastal creatures. Yet the moon also influences life with its light. This story is part of a special report celebrating humans’ enduring fascination with the moon and exploring the many ways it affects life on Earth. More articles will be published in the coming weeks. See all the articles, plus our 1969 coverage of Apollo 11, here. For people living in cities ablaze with artificial lights, it can be hard to imagine how dramatically moonlight can change the nocturnal landscape. Out in the wild, far from any artificial light, the difference between a full moon and a new moon (when the moon appears invisible to us) can be the difference between being able to walk outside without a flashlight and not being able to see the hand in front of your face. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2019.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 26398 - Posted: 07.08.2019

By Jane E. Brody Kelly Baxter was 36 years old and had just moved to Illinois with her 41-year-old husband, Ted, when he suffered a disabling stroke that derailed his high-powered career in international finance. It derailed her life as well. “It was a terrible shock, especially in such a young, healthy, athletic man,” she told me. “Initially I was in denial. He’s this amazing guy, so determined. He’s going to get over this,” she thought. But when she took him home six weeks later, the grim reality quickly set in. “Seeing him not able to speak or remember or even understand what I said to him — it was a very scary, lonely, uncertain time. What happened to my life? I had to make big decisions without Ted’s input. We had been in the process of selling our house in New Jersey, and now I also had to put our Illinois house on the market and sell two cars.” But those logistical problems were minor in comparison to the steep learning curve she endured trying to figure out how to cope with an adult she loved whose brain had suddenly become completely scrambled. He could not talk, struggled to understand what was said to him, and for a long time had limited use of the right side of his body. “One of the biggest stumbling blocks for caregivers is knowledge,” said Dr. Richard C. Senelick, author of “Living With Stroke: A Guide for Families.” His advice is to learn everything you can about stroke, your loved one’s condition and prognosis. “The more you learn, the better you’ll be able to care for your loved one,” he said. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 26397 - Posted: 07.08.2019

By Susana Martinez-Conde Is your mind—every sensation, feeling, and memory you’ve ever had—completely tractable to your brain? If so, does it mean that you are a mere machine, and that all meaning and purpose is illusory? About a year ago, I joined author of Aping Mankind Raymond Tallis, and German philosopher and author of I am Not a Brain Markus Gabriel to discuss these issues at the How the Light Gets In Festival, hosted by the Institute of Art and Ideas. The video of the debate, which you can watch below, just came live last month. My co-panelists and I were tasked to start the debate with short pitches stating our positions on whether our minds and consciousness are no more than matter and mechanism. Specifically, we were charged with answering three questions at the outset, in 4 minutes or less: Are our minds just our brains? Has neuroscience led philosophy astray? Do we need to create new concepts, or abandon old ones, to understand why we feel a sense of meaning? The script that I prepared to address them follows below—but make sure to check out the full video for alternative views, and the discussion that ensued! A lot of the research we do in my lab focuses on understanding the neural bases of illusory perception. About 10 years ago, this led to my becoming interested in the neuroscience of stage magic, and beginning a research program about why magic works in the brain. Along the way, I decided to take magic lessons myself, to get a better understanding of magic: not only as a scientist looking in from the outside, but from the perspective of the magician. This was not only a good research investment, but also a whole lot of fun. But when I tell people about it, a question I get often is, do I still enjoy magic shows, or do they now feel mundane and unmagical? I always answer that I now enjoy magic a lot more than before I started studying it. © 2019 Scientific American

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 26396 - Posted: 07.08.2019

By Bassey Ikpi This bipolar II. This many-sided creature. This life of mine. This brain constantly in conference with the racing heart, reminding me to slow down, stay calm. Remember the first time you were ever on a Ferris wheel? Remember when you got to the very top and just sat there, the entire world at your feet? You felt like you could reach up and grab the sky. Your entire body tingled with the intersection of joy and indestructibility and fearlessness and that good anxious recklessness. So damn excited to be alive at that moment. You could do anything. Now imagine feeling that every day for a week, or a month, or a few months. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, without a break. So that everything you do feels like THE BIGGEST MOST AMAZING THING YOU HAVE EVER DONE IN YOUR LIFE! The first week or so, it’s great. Until it’s not. Because then the insomnia sets in. And you’re stacking days on top of one another, adding a new one before the last one ends. And you have to write the entire book tonight before you can sleep or eat or leave the house or do anything. But first you have to call your friends and your sister and the guy you just met and tell them all how much you love them. Tell each one that you’ve never felt this way about any other human being in the entire world and you’re so lucky and so glad and so grateful to have such an amazing, magical person in your life. And you believe it because it’s true. Until it isn’t. Until everything about them — the way their voices trail, the way their mouths move when they chew, the fact that he crosses his legs at the knee, the way she speaks about movies she’s never seen, the way they refer to celebrities by their first names — starts to make you feel like your blood is filled with snakes and you want to scream awful things at them about how the sounds of their voices feel like teeth on your skin and how much you hate their mother or their apartment or yourself. You want to bury your hatred in them, but you’re never quite sure who you hate the most. You, it’s always you. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 26395 - Posted: 07.08.2019

By Lacy Schley We all know smoking is bad for your health. But it seems smoking might be bad for your personality, too. A recent paper published in the Journal of Research In Personality reports that, compared to people who didn’t smoke, cigarette smokers were more likely to report not-so-great changes in certain aspects of their personalities. What’s more, giving up smoking didn’t help reverse those changes. Smoking: Through the Years The paper outlines a series of five different long-term studies — four in the U.S. and one in Japan — that collectively surveyed about 15,500 people. Experts at a handful of different universities started the projects to track a whole host of things over time, like physical and mental health, relationships, behavior, etc. But for the purposes of this paper, the authors were only interested in the link between personality and smoking. In each of the different studies, participants, who ranged in age from 20 to 92 years old, filled out a questionnaire that asked them about their smoking habits. The surveys included questions meant to assess where the participants fell on a spectrum of five personality traits, often called the Big Five: openness, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism. Then, anywhere from four to 18 years later (depending on the studies), the same participants filled out the same survey again. Researchers flagged those who had quit smoking since their first survey and put them into their own “smoking cessation” group.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26394 - Posted: 07.08.2019

By James Gallagher Health and science correspondent, BBC News Nerves inside paralysed people's bodies have been "rewired" to give movement to their arms and hands, say Australian surgeons. Patients can now feed themselves, put on make-up, turn a key, handle money and type at a computer. Paul Robinson, 36 from Brisbane, said the innovative surgery had given him independence he had never imagined. Completely normal function has not been restored, but doctors say the improvement is life-changing. How does the procedure work? Injuries to the spinal cord stop messages getting from the brain to control the rest of the body. The impact is paralysis. Patients in the trial had quadriplegia affecting movement in all their limbs. But crucially they were still able to move some muscles in their upper arms. The functioning nerves leading from the spinal cord to these muscles were then rewired. The nerves were cut and then attached to nerves that control other muscles - such as for extending the arm or opening or closing the hand. For example, nerves that once turned the palm up to face the ceiling could be used to extend all the fingers in the hand. So now when a patient thinks of rotating their hand, their fingers extend. "We believe that nerve transfer surgery offers an exciting new option, offering individuals with paralysis the possibility of regaining arm and hand functions to perform everyday tasks, and giving them greater independence and the ability to participate more easily in family and work life," said Dr Natasha van Zyl from Austin Health in Melbourne. © 2019 BBC

Keyword: Regeneration
Link ID: 26393 - Posted: 07.05.2019

By Madeleine Connors At the age of 16, my mother spent hours waiting in bread lines in communist Poland, biting at her nails. The year was 1972. The line was mostly women. Their bellies rattled with hunger, anticipation of food burning in their throats. My mother has said that waiting in a bread line was not much different from a time later in her life when she had moved to America and stood in line for hours for an Eric Clapton concert. “It’s all about wanting something. You want something, you wait for it,” she recited with a tone so deadpan that it reminded me that my mom was once a teenage girl. My experience of teenage girlhood was vastly different, growing up in Sonoma, Calif. I was many things; hungry was not one of them. I picked mushrooms out of tacos with reckless abandon. I would surrender pieces of toast under the breakfast table to my dachshund. But in 1972, food rationing in Poland had become widespread. My mother would wake up at the crack of dawn with ambitions of bringing back flour to her family. She would clench and study her bread coupon, only to look up and see an outbound train full of canned goods and hams hurtling toward Russia. Even then she knew: food was for other people. People who were better, more deserving; worth nourishing. When I was young, I ate to overcompensate for her hunger. Costco became the patron saint of my mother’s immigrant anxieties and bulk was her prayer. She bought American dream-size buckets full of almonds. She bought offensive amounts of pastas. She bought enough snacks to feed a bus full of kids on a travel soccer team. Shopping with my mother became an arms race. Shuffling through aisles along with other newly American mothers, my mom lived to give me a different life than the one she experienced. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 26392 - Posted: 07.05.2019

By Courtenay Harris Bond Before I started ketamine infusions this spring, I was milling around my house, unhinged, ducking into my bedroom to weep behind the closed door whenever my three young children were occupied. I felt like an actor playing a wife and mother. I had been having trouble concentrating on anything for several months, including my work as a journalist. Unable to read a book or watch a crime thriller — diversions I usually love and use to unwind — and in a torturous limbo with no plan, I felt hopeless, full of self-loathing, even suicidal. The only thing keeping me from hurting myself was the thought of what that would do to my family. Globally, nearly 800,000 people die by suicide each year, according to the World Health Organization, which also reports that more than 300 million people worldwide suffer from depression. Approximately 10 to 30 percent of those with major depressive disorder have treatment-resistant depression, typically defined as a failure to respond to at least two different treatments. I have treatment-resistant depression, as well as generalized anxiety disorder. Throughout my life, I have been on a quest to conquer these formidable demons. I am 48 and have been in therapy off and on — mostly on — since the fourth grade. I have tried approximately 14 different antidepressants, but they either haven’t worked, or they’ve caused insufferable side effects. I have done a full course of transcranial magnetic stimulation, during which magnetic fields were applied to my scalp at specific points that affect depression and anxiety. And I recently tried Nardil, a first-generation antidepressant that requires a special diet. I was dizzy at times with blurred vision and felt overwhelming fatigue to the point where I feared I might fall asleep while driving. Copyright 2019 Undark

Keyword: Depression; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26391 - Posted: 07.05.2019

Jon Hamilton The squiggly blue lines visible in the neurons are an Alzheimer's biomarker called tau. The brownish clumps are amyloid plaques. Courtesy of the National Institute on Aging/National Institutes of Health Alzheimer's disease begins altering the brain long before it affects memory and thinking. So scientists are developing a range of tests to detect these changes in the brain, which include an increase in toxic proteins, inflammation and damage to the connections between brain cells. The tests rely on biomarkers, shorthand for biological markers, that signal steps along the progression of disease. These new tests are already making Alzheimer's diagnosis more accurate, and helping pharmaceutical companies test new drugs. "For the future, we hope that we might be able to use these biomarkers in order to stop or delay the memory changes from ever happening," says Maria Carrillo, chief science officer of the Alzheimer's Association. (The association is a recent NPR sponsor.) The first Alzheimer's biomarker test was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in in 2012. It's a dye called Amyvid that reveals clumps of a protein called amyloid. These amyloid plaques are a hallmark of Alzheimer's. © 2019 npr

Keyword: Alzheimers; Brain imaging
Link ID: 26390 - Posted: 07.05.2019

By Knvul Sheikh The tiny, transparent roundworm known as Caenorhabditis elegans is roughly the size of a comma. Its entire body is made up of just about 1,000 cells. A third are brain cells, or neurons, that govern how the worm wriggles and when it searches for food — or abandons a meal to mate. It is one of the simplest organisms with a nervous system. The circuitry of C. elegans has made it a common test subject among scientists wanting to understand how the nervous system works in other animals. Now, a team of researchers has completed a map of all the neurons, as well as all 7,000 or so connections between those neurons, in both sexes of the worm. “It’s a major step toward understanding how neurons interact with each other to give rise to different behaviors,” said Scott Emmons, a developmental biologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York who led the research. Structure dictates function in several areas of biology, Dr. Emmons said. The shape of wings provided insight into flight, the helical form of DNA revealed how genes are coded, and the structure of proteins suggested how enzymes bind to targets in the body. It was this concept that led biologist Sydney Brenner to start cataloging the neural wiring of worms in the 1970s. He and his colleagues preserved C. elegans in agar and osmium fixative, sliced up their bodies like salami and photographed their cells with a powerful electron microscope. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain imaging; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 26389 - Posted: 07.04.2019

By Sabine Galvis Scientists looking for a link between repeated brain trauma and lasting neurological damage typically study the brains of soldiers or football players. But it’s unclear whether this damage—known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)—is prevalent in the general population. Now, a new study reports those rates for the first time. To conduct the research, neuropathologist Kevin Bieniek, then at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and colleagues sorted through nearly 3000 brains donated to the clinic's tissue registry between 2005 and 2016. Then, by scanning obituaries and old yearbooks, the researchers narrowed the group to 300 athletes who played contact sports and 450 nonathletes. The scientists removed all infants under age 1, brain samples with insufficient tissue, and brain donors without biographical data attached to their samples. Finally, they collected medical records and looked under a microscope at tissue from up to three sections of each brain for signs of CTE. Those signs include lesions and buildup of tau, a protein associated with neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. Six percent of the brains showed some or all signs of CTE, Bieniek and his colleagues report in Brain Pathology. Not all the people experienced symptoms associated with CTE, at least according to their medical records. Those symptoms include anxiety, depression, and drug use. However, people with CTE were about 31% more likely to develop dementia and 27% more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than those without CTE. © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 26388 - Posted: 07.04.2019

Maria Temming A new analysis of brain scans may explain why hyperrealistic androids and animated characters can be creepy. By measuring people’s neural activity as they viewed pictures of humans and robots, researchers identified a region of the brain that seems to underlie the “uncanny valley” effect — the unsettling sensation sometimes caused by robots or animations that look almost, but not quite, human (SN Online: 11/22/13). Better understanding the neural circuitry that causes this feeling may help designers create less unnerving androids. In research described online July 1 in the Journal of Neuroscience, neuroscientist Fabian Grabenhorst and colleagues took functional MRI scans of 21 volunteers during two activities. In each activity, participants viewed pictures of humans, humanoid robots of varying realism and — to simulate the appearance of hyperrealistic robots — “artificial humans,” pictures of people whose features were slightly distorted through plastic surgery and photo editing. In the first activity, participants rated each picture on likability and how humanlike the figures appeared. Next, participants chose between pairs of these pictures, based on which subject they would rather receive a gift from. In line with the uncanny valley effect, participants generally rated more humanlike candidates as more likable, but this trend broke down for artificial humans — the most humanlike of the nonhuman options. A similar uncanny valley trend emerged in participants’ judgments about which figures were more trustworthy gift-givers. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2019.

Keyword: Attention; Emotions
Link ID: 26387 - Posted: 07.04.2019

Two nationally renowned neurosurgeons at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis will present “BrainWorks,” a live theatrical performance that explores the wonders of the human brain by dramatizing real-life neurological cases. The performance, comprised of four one-act plays, will debut July 19-21 at the Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts at Webster University. Albert Kim, PhD, MD, associate professor of neurological surgery, and Eric C. Leuthardt, MD, professor of neurological surgery, will guide the audience through each scene as they explain the mysteries of the human brain and the neuroscience of diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, brain tumors and stroke. Kim and Leuthardt teamed up with playwrights from the New Dramatists to write each one-act play; the scenarios are based on patients the doctors have treated. “We have involved conversations about what’s going to happen – the course of treatment, the risks and benefits,” Kim said. “We also ensure the families become involved in those conversations. Together, the patient and family members become a part of the process that transforms and heals them. It’s this kind of conversation we want to bring to others through ‘BrainWorks.’” ©2019 Washington University in St. Louis

Keyword: Alzheimers; Epilepsy
Link ID: 26386 - Posted: 07.04.2019

Laura Sanders Immune cells can storm into the brains of older mice, where these normally helpful cells seem to be up to no good. The result, described July 3 in Nature, raises the possibility that immune cells may have a role in aging. Anne Brunet of Stanford University School of Medicine and colleagues studied gene activity to identify all sorts of cells in a particular spot in mice brains — the subventricular zone, where new nerve cells are born. Compared with young mice, old mice had many more killer T cells in that area. These immune system fighters take out damaged or infected cells in the rest of the body, but aren’t usually expected to show up in the brain. Experiments on postmortem human brain tissue suggest that a similar thing happens in old people. T cells were more abundant in tissue from people ages 79 to 93 than in tissue from people ages 20 to 44, the researchers found. In the brains of mice, killer T cells churn out a compound called interferon-gamma. This molecule might be responsible for the falling birthrate of new nerve cells that comes with old age, experiments on mice’s stem cells in dishes suggest. The results come amid a debate over whether human brains continue to make new nerve cells as adults (SN Online: 3/8/2018). If so, then therapies that shut T cells out of the brain might help keep nerve cell production rates high, even into old age — a renewal that might stave off some of the mental decline that comes with aging. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2019

Keyword: Alzheimers; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 26385 - Posted: 07.04.2019

By Nicholas Bakalar Hormone therapy for prostate cancer is associated with an increased risk for dementia, a new study has found. Androgen deprivation therapy, or A.D.T., is used to treat prostate cancer of varying degrees of severity. It can significantly reduce the risk for cancer progression and death. The study, in JAMA Network Open, included 154,089 men whose average age was 74 and who had diagnoses of prostate cancer. Of these, 62,330 received A.D.T. and the rest did not. In an average follow-up of eight years, the scientists found that compared with men who had no hormone therapy, one to four doses of A.D.T. was associated with a 19 percent increased risk for both Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, and the risk increased with the number of doses. At five to eight doses the increased risk was 28 percent for Alzheimer’s and 24 percent for other dementias. The lead author, Ravishankar Jayadevappa, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, said that for advanced cancer, A.D.T. can be a lifesaving treatment and should not be avoided because of any increased risk for dementia. But, he said, “Patients with localized cancer should be looking at the risks of dementia, and possibly avoiding A.D.T.” © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 26384 - Posted: 07.04.2019

By Ryan Dalton In the dystopian world of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the government of Oceania aims to achieve thought control through the restriction of language. As explained by the character ‘Syme’, a lexicologist who is working to replace the English language with the greatly-simplified ‘Newspeak’: “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” While Syme’s own reflections were short-lived, the merits of his argument were not: the words and structure of a language can influence the thoughts and decisions of its speakers. This holds for English and Greek, Inuktitut and Newspeak. It also may hold for the ‘neural code’, the basic electrical vocabulary of the neurons in the brain. Neural codes, like spoken languages, are tasked with conveying all manner of information. Some of this information is immediately required for survival; other information has a less acute use. To accommodate these different needs, a balance is struck between the richness of information being transferred and the speed or reliability with which it is transferred. Where the balance is set depends on context. In the example of language, the mention of the movie Jaws at a dinner party might result in a ranging and patient—if disconcerting—discussion around the emotional impact of the film. In contrast, the observation of a dorsal fin breaking through the surf at the beach would probably elicit a single word, screamed by many beachgoers at once: “shark!” In one context, the language used has been optimized for richness; in the other, for speed and reliability. © 2019 Scientific American

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 26383 - Posted: 07.03.2019