Laura Klivans San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to ban the sale and distribution of e-cigarettes in the city. The city is the corporate home of Juul Labs, the biggest producer of e-cigarettes in the United States. City Attorney Dennis Herrera co-authored the ordinance, and celebrated the final vote. "This is a decisive step to help prevent another generation of San Francisco children from becoming addicted to nicotine," he says. "This temporary moratorium wouldn't be necessary if the federal government had done its job," says Herrera. "E-cigarettes are a product that, by law, are not allowed on the market without FDA review. For some reason, the FDA has so far refused to follow the law. If the federal government is not going to act, San Francisco will." Juul responded to the final vote in a written statement to media, saying the ban will cause new challenges for the city. "This full prohibition will drive former adult smokers who successfully switched to vapor products back to deadly cigarettes, deny the opportunity to switch for current adult smokers, and create a thriving black market instead of addressing the actual causes of underage access and use," writes Juul spokesman Ted Kwong. Two San Francisco ordinances would prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes in brick-and-mortar stores and also online, if the products are being shipped to addresses in the city. © 2019 npr

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26362 - Posted: 06.27.2019

Preliminary research by the Canadian Paediatric Society found "a significant number of young children" required medical care after ingesting cannabis in the months surrounding legalization last October. The Canadian Paediatric Surveillance Program says it collected 16 reported cases of serious adverse events involving recreational cannabis between September and December 2018. They include six cases of kids younger than 18 who accidentally ate edibles and one case of accidental exposure. In each case, the cannabis belonged to a parent or caregiver. Four other cases of exposure were not accidental, although the society could not share more information. Details surrounding the five other reports were not immediately available, including how the kids were exposed to cannabis, their ages and whether exposure was accidental or not. The surveillance program defines "adverse events" as all cases in which kids are harmed by cannabis consumption, including injuries that may result from use by another individual, such as a friend or parent who is under the influence of cannabis. The two-year study will collect data until October 2020. The cannabis data was released Thursday, along with details from several other research projects underway. "The number of cases involving young children is striking," Christina Grant, a pediatrician in Hamilton and co-principal investigator, said Thursday in a release. ©2019 CBC/Radio-Canada

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 26361 - Posted: 06.27.2019

Nicola Davis Evidence that Parkinson’s disease may start off in the gut is mounting, according to new research showing proteins thought to play a key role in the disease can spread from the gastrointestinal tract to the brain. The human body naturally forms a protein called alpha-synuclein which is found, among other places, in the brain in the endings of nerve cells. However, misfolded forms of this protein that clump together are linked to damage to nerve cells, a deterioration of the dopamine system and the development of problems with movement and speech – hallmarks of Parkinson’s disease. The latest findings, which are based on studies in mice, back up a long-held theory that abnormally folded alpha-synuclein may start off in the gut and then spread to the brain via the vagus nerve – a bundle of fibres that starts in the brainstem and transports signals to and from many of the body’s organs, including the gut. “It supports and really provides the first experimental evidence that Parkinson’s disease can start in the gut and go up the vagus nerve,” said Ted Dawson, professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University school of medicine and co-author of the research. The researchers say the way the misfolded alpha-synuclein spreads in the brains of the mice, and the animals’ symptoms, closely mirrors the disease in humans. Parkinson's disease 'could be detected early on by brain changes' © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Parkinsons; Obesity
Link ID: 26360 - Posted: 06.26.2019

By Dana Najjar Four days after the birth of our daughter, my husband and I brought her home from the hospital. We were exhausted but giddy, ready to start our new lives. For nine months I had imagined what those first weeks at home would be like: sleepless nights, bleary-eyed arguments, a few late-night tears, all bundled up in the soft happy glow of new motherhood. In short, an adventure. But none of that materialized. What I came up against instead was a sheer wall of blinding panic. We had left the hospital with instructions to wake our newborn up every three hours to feed, but by the time we got home and settled in, five hours had elapsed, and nothing would rouse her long enough to nurse. She lay limp in my arms, drifting in and out of sleep, howling uncontrollably just long enough to tire herself out. We took our cues from the internet and tickled her feet with ice cubes, placed wet towels on her head and blew onto her face, but only managed to upset her more. And somewhere between trying to persuade her to latch for what felt like the hundredth time and willing my body to stay awake, it struck me that I had made a terrible mistake, one that I could never unmake. My stomach lurched, my hands and feet went numb and my heart began to pound. © 2019 Scientific American

Keyword: Depression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 26359 - Posted: 06.26.2019

/ By Sara Talpos Earlier this year, a half-dozen students from City Hill Middle School, in Naugatuck, Connecticut, traveled with their science teacher Katrina Spina to the state capital to testify in support of a bill that would ban sales of energy drinks to children under the age of 16. Having devoted three months to a chemistry unit studying the ingredients in and potential health impacts of common energy drinks — with brand names like Red Bull, Monster Energy, and Rockstar – the students came to a sobering conclusion: “Energy drinks can be fatal to everyone, but especially to adolescents,” 7th-grader Luke Deitelbaum told state legislators. “Even though this is true, most energy drink companies continue to market these drinks specifically toward teens.” “Countries such as the United Kingdom and Norway have considered banning sales to young people, while Lithuania and Latvia have active bans in place.” A 2018 report found that more than 40 percent of American teens in a survey had consumed an energy drink within the past three months. Another survey found that 28 percent of adolescents in the European Union had consumed these sorts of beverages in the past three days. This popularity is in marked contrast to the recommendations of groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Sports Medicine, who say youth should forgo these products entirely. These recommendations are based on concerns about health problems that, although rare, can occur after consumption, including seizures, delirium, rapid heart rate, stroke, and even sudden death. A U.S. government report found that from 2007 to 2011, the number of emergency department visits involving energy drinks more than doubled, to nearly 21,000. Copyright 2019 Undark

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26358 - Posted: 06.26.2019

David Barrie Until the arrival of GPS, the magnetic compass was the single most useful navigational tool available to humans. But it’s a recent invention. Although Chinese explorers understood the principles of the compass earlier, it entered service in Europe in the 12th century. Other animals have been magnetic navigators for much, much longer. Many different species—ranging from newts and insects to sea turtles, fish, and birds—are able to orient themselves relative to the Earth’s magnetic field. Among mammals, naked mole rats, deer, and even dogs also seem to have this gift. Researchers have recently shown that the brainwaves of human beings respond to changes in magnetic fields, though it’s far from clear whether or not we can make any navigational use of this effect. But how all these different species actually detect the Earth’s magnetic field remains largely mysterious. We know that certain bacteria that respond to magnetic fields carry within them crystalline chains of the mineral magnetite, which enables their alignment with the magnetic field in a passive way—just like the needle of a compass. This simple mechanism helps these microbes swim toward the oxygen-deprived depths where many species flourish. Magnetite also seems to be a promising candidate for a “magnetoreceptor” in multicellular organisms. An array of a few million cells containing magnetite could be used to detect small changes in the intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field. Magnetite is found in many organisms, and it is clearly involved in the magnetic sense possessed by some fish. © 1986–2019 The Scientist

Keyword: Animal Migration
Link ID: 26357 - Posted: 06.26.2019

Bruce Bower South American capuchin monkeys have not only hammered and dug with carefully chosen stones for the last 3,000 years, but also have selected pounding tools of varying sizes and weights along the way. Capuchin stone implements recovered at a site in northeastern Brazil display signs of shifts during the last three millennia between a focus on dealing with either relatively small, soft foods or larger, hard-shelled edibles, researchers report. These discoveries, described online June 24 in Nature Ecology & Evolution, are the first evidence of changing patterns of stone-tool use in a nonhuman primate. “It’s likely that local vegetation changes after 3,000 years ago led to changes in capuchin stone tools,” says archaeologist Tomos Proffitt of University College London. The new findings raise the possibility that chimpanzees and macaque monkeys, which also use stones to pound and dig, have shifted their tool-use styles over the long haul, perhaps in response to climate and habitat changes, Proffitt says. Archaeological sites linked to apes and monkeys are rare, though. Previous excavations in West Africa unearthed nut-cracking stones wielded by chimps around 4,300 years ago (SN: 11/21/09, p. 24). Present-day chimps inhabiting the same part of Africa crack nuts with similar-looking rocks. Evidence of long-term changes in tools used by wild capuchins (Sapajus libidinosus) comes from a site in Brazil’s Serra da Capivara National Park. Excavations there have also yielded ancient human stone tools (SN: 10/18/14, p. 14). But the newly unearthed artifacts more closely resemble stone tools used by modern capuchins at the same site (SN: 11/26/16, p. 16), rather than Stone Age human implements, the researchers say. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2019

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 26356 - Posted: 06.25.2019

Some commonly-prescribed drugs for depression, epilepsy and a few other conditions may increase a person's risk of dementia, according to researchers. The medicines, which belong to a family of drugs called anticholinergics, have already been linked to short-term problems with thinking. Now a large study of UK patients raises concerns about possible long-term brain side effects. Experts stress the findings, in JAMA Internal Medicine, external, do not prove there is a direct risk or mean that patients should come off the drugs. What are anticholinergics? Anticholinergic drugs block the action of a chemical messenger used by the brain to control signals around the body. Doctors prescribe them for a wide range of conditions and millions of people in the UK are on them. They can be used to treat overactive bladder, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, depression, epilepsy, psychosis, Parkinson's disease and some allergies. These medications include some antidepressants, antipsychotics and muscle relaxants. What are the concerns? The study, led by Prof Carol Coupland at the University of Nottingham, included more than 58,000 people with dementia and 225,000 without the condition. The researchers looked at medication use going back over 20 years, before any dementia was diagnosed. This revealed the link between strong anticholinergic medications and increased risk of dementia in the people aged 55 and older. Only certain drugs in this class of medicine - antidepressants, anti-Parkinson drugs, antipsychotics, bladder drugs and epilepsy drugs - were implicated. © 2019 BBC.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 26355 - Posted: 06.25.2019

New statistics suggest almost one-quarter of mothers experience either postpartum depression or an anxiety disorder in the months following birth, and that younger mothers are most at risk. The Statistics Canada survey analyzed the experiences of 7,085 respondents who gave birth in 2018 between January and the end of June. The women were surveyed online and by phone five to 13 months after delivery. The data found 23 per cent reported feelings consistent with either postpartum depression or an anxiety disorder — feelings that are more intense and longer-lasting than the so-called "baby blues" and may not resolve on their own. The rate ranged from 16 per cent in Saskatchewan to 31 per cent in Nova Scotia and was especially high among younger respondents. Among those under the age of 25 — numbering between 500 and 550 respondents — 30 per cent reported mental-health issues. That's compared to 23 per cent of mothers aged 25 and older. The survey also asked mothers about drug use and found 3 per cent used cannabis during pregnancy and 3 per cent used cannabis while breastfeeding. In addition, 1 per cent reported opioid use during pregnancy, including medical use and non-medical use. The survey was conducted in conjunction with the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada and involved data collected from Nov. 29, 2018 to Feb. 5, 2019.

Keyword: Depression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 26354 - Posted: 06.25.2019

Even if you know that looking at a phone, tablet or computer screen at night is bad for your sleep, it’s hard to stop. That’s one reason there has been a growing interest in glasses or apps that can block the blue parts of the light spectrum that experts say are especially bad for sleep. This light doesn’t necessarily appear blue; it’s part of any bright white light, says Charles Czeisler, chief of the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “Our light exposure between when the sun sets and the sun rises is probably the primary driver of sleep deficiency in our society,” Czeisler says. While that includes artificial light of all kinds, light from electronic devices that emit blue light — such as the LED displays in smartphones, tablets, and modern computer and TV screens — is particularly troublesome for sleep, he says. A number of studies indicate that using blue-blocking glasses and apps like f.lux or Apple’s Night Shift mode may improve sleep in certain cases, but they won’t cure insomnia on their own. Experts say much more research is needed on how well they work, who can benefit the most and how to best use them. Still, they may help, though thinking about light exposure throughout the day may be even more useful. “It just depends on how many problems a person is having with their sleep,” says Lisa Ostrin, an assistant professor at the University of Houston College of Optometry who has conducted research into ways that blocking blue light affects sleep. To understand how glasses or apps affect sleep, it helps to understand light’s role in the first place. © 1996-2019 The Washington Post

Keyword: Sleep; Vision
Link ID: 26353 - Posted: 06.25.2019

By C. Claiborne Ray Q. When the chicks have just hatched, how do chicken farmers tell future hens from future roosters? A. Sexing hatchlings is important for the egg industry. Roosters do not lay eggs, obviously, and they are not needed in order for hens to lay eggs. But it is surprisingly difficult to tell hatchling males from females; there are no external genitalia, and the internal equipment is only subtly different. Though some breeds may show early differences in feather color, often it can take weeks for obvious signs of gender — like combs, wattles and behavioral traits — to emerge. An alternative to waiting was developed in the 1930s by two Japanese researchers, Kiyoshi Masui and Juro Hashimoto. It is called venting or vent sexing. Sign up for Science Times We’ll bring you stories that capture the wonders of the human body, nature and the cosmos. Ideally, about 12 hours after hatching, the chicken-sexer gently squeezes open the multipurpose vent under the tail called the cloaca and exposes a key area of the interior. Several folds of mucus membrane can be seen, and the male sex organ, if present, can be found visually or by touch in an indentation on the second fold. It is a tiny bump, about the size of a pinpoint. It takes a lot of skill and practice to use this method without harming the chicks, so it is mostly done by trained chicken-sexers — who are often well paid for their expertise. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 26352 - Posted: 06.25.2019

By Benedict Carey and Jennifer Steinhauer Confronted by a rising rate of suicides in some groups of veterans., the Department of Veterans Affairs on Friday decided to approve the use of a new and costly depression drug, despite concerns among doctors and other experts about the drug’s effectiveness. The decision to endorse the drug — called Spravato, and manufactured by Janssen, a unit of Johnson & Johnson — came days after President Trump offered to negotiate a deal between the drug maker and the agency. Johnson & Johnson reportedly was working with associates at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, and the company has been supporting V.A. suicide-prevention efforts. A spokesman for the V.A. said that the decision to approve the drug, which would cover its use by doctors in its nearly 1,000 clinics nationwide, was a medical one. In a statement, the agency said, “V.A. will closely monitor the use of esketamine” — the generic name for Spravato — “in veterans to more fully understand its relative safety and effectiveness as compared to other available treatments. Based on this information, V.A. may revise its clinical guidance” and the availability of the drug. The V.A. stopped short of putting Spavato on its formulary, the list of drugs it requires to be carried in its 260 or so pharmacies. The approval enables V.A. doctors to offer the drug to patients they believe could benefit. Some Congressional Democrats expressed concern at the fast approval process. “I am incredibly alarmed by reporting today that suggests Spravato, a controversial new drug, is being rushed through critical reviews and may be prescribed to veterans before fully vetting the potential risks and benefits,” said Mark Takano, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Committee on Veteran’s Affairs, in a prepared statement released Wednesday. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26351 - Posted: 06.24.2019

For more than half a century, the world has known that tobacco kills — yet it is still killing more than 8 million people a year. Tobacco use remains the world’s worst entirely preventable public-health emergency, and there is a desperate need for fresh ways to tackle it. So it is little wonder that e-cigarettes have attracted attention as a potential solution. More than half of US adult smokers try to quit each year: in theory, e-cigarettes might boost their chances of success. It is generally agreed that vaping is safer than smoking conventional cigarettes. But even as e-cigarette sales have boomed — the global market was worth US$11.3 billion in 2018 — concerns have mushroomed, and research has failed to keep up. Urgent questions about vaping remain: whether it really does help people to quit smoking, whether it serves as a gateway to cigarettes, and whether the liquid formulations have short- and long-term health effects. Until such questions are answered, it seems premature to advocate strongly for e-cigarette use, and imperative that regulators develop guidelines to limit vaping by adolescents. A UK study published this year highlights the evidence gap. In a large randomized, controlled trial, researchers found that smokers who used e-cigarettes to help them quit were less likely to start smoking again for at least a year, compared with those who used other aids such as nicotine gum or patches1. The study was one of the most rigorous so far — yet the benefit was slight, and 75% of study participants had already tried and failed to quit using the other cessation aids, so it was less surprising that they failed again. Overall, studies have not found strong evidence for a benefit of e-cigarettes over other quitting strategies — including nicotine-replacement therapy combined with antidepressants. © 2019 Springer Nature Publishing AG

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26350 - Posted: 06.24.2019

Kelly Crowe · CBC News · Last fall, a dangerous animal sickness — chronic wasting disease (CWD) — was detected in a Quebec deer farm. It was a disturbing development — the first sign of this highly contagious infection outside of Alberta and Saskatchewan. There were almost 3,000 deer in the herd. Eleven tested positive for CWD. The rest — more than 2,700 animals — tested negative and were released into the food chain. It was a controversial decision, in part, because so little is known about the human health risk from CWD. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency's website cautions that: "A negative test result does not guarantee that an individual animal is not infected with CWD." "There is not currently a food safety test available for any prion disease," CFIA's spokesperson told CBC News in an email. "The tests that are used are the best available. In accordance with Health Canada's precautionary approach, no animals known to be infected were released into the human food chain." CWD is similar to another frightening animal illness — mad cow disease, officially called "bovine spongiform encephalopathy" or BSE. It is a fatal infection in cattle that can be spread to humans through beef consumption. Both CWD and BSE are caused by a strange protein — a prion — which can jump the species barrier, triggering a deadly cascade of neurological damage. Worldwide, BSE has caused about 225 cases of human prion disease called "variant Creutzfeldt Jacob Disease (vCJD)." There is no treatment and no cure. After an epidemic of mad cow disease in the U.K. more than two decades ago, governments developed strict controls to prevent BSE-infected cattle from being processed for human food. But so far there are few official controls in place to keep CWD out of the food chain.

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 26349 - Posted: 06.24.2019

By Kevin Arceneaux, Bert N. Bakker, Claire Gothreau, and Gijs Schumacher Science is supposed to be self-correcting. Ugly facts kill beautiful theories, to paraphrase the 19th-century biologist Thomas Huxley. But, as we learned recently, policies at the top scientific journals don’t make this easy. Our story starts in 2008, when a group of researchers published an article (here it is without a paywall) that found political conservatives have stronger physiological reactions to threatening images than liberals do. The article was published in Science, which is one of the most prestigious general science journals around. It’s the kind of journal that can make a career in academia. It was a path-breaking and provocative study. For decades, political scientists and psychologists have tried to understand the psychological roots of ideological differences. The piece published in Science offered some clues as to why liberals and conservatives differ in their worldviews. Perhaps it has to do with how the brain is wired, the researchers suggested—specifically, perhaps it’s because conservatives’ brains are more attuned to threats than liberals’. It was an exciting finding, it helped usher in a new wave of psychophysiological work in the study of politics, and it generated extensive coverage in popular media. In 2018, 10 years after the publication of the study, the findings were featured on an episode of NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast. Fast forward to 2014. All four of us were studying the physiological basis of political attitudes, two of us in Amsterdam, the Netherlands (Bakker and Schumacher at the University of Amsterdam), and two of us in Philadelphia (Arceneaux and Gothreau at Temple University). We had raised funds to create labs with expensive equipment for measuring physiological reactions, because we were excited by the possibilities that the 2008 research opened for us. © 2019 The Slate Group LLC.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 26348 - Posted: 06.24.2019

By Katie Thomas The Food and Drug Administration has approved a new drug to treat low sexual drive in women, the only one besides Addyi, which entered the market in 2015. The drug, to be called Vyleesi, will be sold by AMAG Pharmaceuticals and is intended to be used 45 minutes before sex, via an auto-injector pen that is administered in the thigh or abdomen. “We’re obviously thrilled about being able to bring another option to patients,” said Dr. Julie Krop, the chief medical officer of AMAG, which is based in Waltham, Mass. “These women have suffered significantly, pretty much in silence, for a stigmatized condition, and many of them have not known that it’s a treatable medical condition.” For years, the F.D.A. has been under pressure to encourage more treatments for women with low sexual drive — a condition known as hypoactive sexual desire disorder. Medications for men experiencing erectile dysfunction arrived on the market two decades ago. But these treatments for women have provoked controversy. The first product, Addyi, was approved amid an industry-backed publicity campaign painting detractors as sexist. But some opponents argued its risks outweighed its benefits. Addyi must be taken every day and cannot be taken with alcohol, which can cause fainting. Soon after it went on sale, Addyi was acquired by Valeant Pharmaceuticals for $1 billion, which then failed to promote it. Valeant sold it back to its original owners in 2017 and the drug’s sales have been tepid. Company officials declined to say how much Vyleesi would cost and said they would provide more details when the product goes on sale later this year. They said they expected insurance to cover Vyleesi on a scale similar to Addyi and to male erectile dysfunction drugs — coverage of those drugs by commercial health care plans is mixed. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 26347 - Posted: 06.22.2019

Brian Mann On a warm early summer day, Bella Doolittle sits on the doorstep of her house feeding biscuits to her dog Pepper. Bella was in her mid-50s when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. That was two years ago and the symptoms are advancing, with more memory loss and a new painful anxiety. "Have you ever watched a really terrible horror movie where you know any moment now someone's going to get torn to pieces in a very evil, painful way?" she says, describing the tension she often feels. These are the struggles and setbacks that Bella and Will Doolittle, her husband, talk about in their podcast, the Alzheimer's Chronicles. They say they decided to share their experiences because they know many couples and families are struggling with the same challenges. In all, more than 16 million Americans provide unpaid care for someone living with Alzheimer's or another form of dementia. On a recent episode, Bella and Will described how their life is getting harder, bit by bit. "It definitely has been a very tough period," she recounted. "I became almost suicidal. It was horrible." "Yeah, you were in bad shape," Will said. Anxiety medication is helping, but at times their podcasts are raw, vulnerable and intimate, recorded over their kitchen table. During each episode, they pull back the curtain on aspects of Bella's illness, but they've also been increasingly open about the inner workings of their two-decade long marriage. © 2019 npr

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 26346 - Posted: 06.22.2019

Laura Sanders When animals are together, their brain activity aligns. These simpatico signals, described in bats and mice, bring scientists closer to understanding brains as they normally exist — enmeshed in complex social situations. Researchers know that neural synchrony emerges in people who are talking, taking a class together and even watching the same movie. But scientists tend to study human brains in highly constrained scenarios, in part because it’s technologically difficult to capture brain activity as people experience rich social interactions (SN: 5/11/19, p. 4). Now two studies published June 20 in Cell offer more details about how synced brains might influence social behavior. In one study, researchers monitored a pair of Egyptian fruit bats in a dark chamber for more than an hour. Neural implants recorded brain activity as the bats groomed themselves, fought, rested and performed other behaviors. The brain activity of the two bats was highly coordinated. When one bat’s neural activity oscillated in a fast rhythm, for example, the other bat’s brain was likely to do the same thing. This coordination continued even when the bats weren’t directly interacting with each other, the team found. But when the bats were separated into two chambers in the same room, this correlated activity fell away, suggesting that the bats had to be sharing the same social context for their brains to link up. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2019.

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 26345 - Posted: 06.22.2019

Nicola Davis Changes in the brain that can be spotted years before physical symptoms of Parkinson’s disease occur might act as an early warning sign for the condition, researchers say. It is thought that about 145,000 people in the UK are living with Parkinson’s disease, a neurological condition that can lead to mobility problems, including slowness and tremors, as well as other symptoms such as memory difficulties. There are treatments to help manage symptoms but as yet the disease cannot be slowed or cured. The researchers, based at King’s College London, say the latest findings could eventually lead to new ways to identify people who might go on to develop Parkinson’s; the discoveries could also confirm diagnoses, monitor the disease progression, and aid the development and testing of drugs. Those developments could be some way off though, some scientists have said. Most of the time Parkinson’s appears to have no known cause, so people affected by the disease are not studied before their symptoms appear. But the King’s College studies concerned with genetic mutations making the development of Parkinson’s disease more likely, could point to the warning signs. Marios Politis, a professor and lead author of the research, said: “If you carry the gene [SNCA] it means it is almost certain you are going to develop Parkinson’s in the course of your life.” © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Parkinsons; Brain imaging
Link ID: 26344 - Posted: 06.20.2019

By Megan Schmidt Have you ever spaced out during a meeting, but been jolted back to reality by the sound of your boss calling your name a few times? If you’ve ever been in this awkward situation, you might have experienced “microsleep.” This weird state of consciousness is characterized by brief bursts of sleep that happen while a person is awake — often while their eyes are open and they’re either sitting upright, or even performing a task. During microsleep, parts of the brain go offline for a few seconds while the rest of the brain stays awake. It’s sort of like being a zombie for a few brief moments — sans the whole “eating human flesh” part. And usually, people don’t realize it’s happening to them. Researchers don’t fully understand why certain parts of our brain switch off throughout the day. But they have found the states of sleep and wakefulness aren’t as cut and dry as we might assume. And although fatigue does seem to prime the brain for microsleep, even well-rested people do it — a lot. In an experiment published in 2012, participants who got a good night’s sleep played what may be the world’s most boring computer game — tracking a moving target on a monitor with a joystick. During the 50-minute test, researchers monitored people’s brain and eye activity. They found that people’s brains really liked sneaking in microsleep during the humdrum computer game. On average, game players experienced a whopping 79 episodes of microsleep in just under an hour, lasting up to six seconds each time.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 26343 - Posted: 06.20.2019