Bethany Brookshire When researchers release a new finding about the brain, it’s often mice or rats who have run the mazes and taken the tests for science. People might wonder: Are rodents good substitutes for humans? Maybe for men, but what about women? That’s less likely, because most neuroscience experiments don’t use female rodents — a fact one scientist says comes from outdated ideas that should go into the scientific dustbin. For years, many scientists have dismissed female rodents as too variable to use in the lab, with tricky hormone surges that can affect behavior and compromise study results. In 2009, male lab mammals in neuroscience studies outnumbered females 5.5 to 1, according to a 2011 study in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. “The idea that women are primarily driven by ovarian hormones [was] a narrative put in place intentionally in the Victorian era,” says Rebecca Shansky, a neuroscientist at Northeastern University in Boston. “That has also infiltrated the way we think about female animals” in science. Male animals can be just as “hormonal” as their female counterparts, Shansky argues in an essay published May 31 in Science, and it’s time that both sexes got equal attention in the lab. Here are five things to know about the issue of sex in the study of rodent brains. In humans, reproductive hormones such as estrogen and progesterone ebb and flow over a roughly 28-day cycle. In rodents, that cycle is compressed to four or five days. Estrogen or progesterone levels on one day could be up to four times as much as on the day before. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2019

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 26342 - Posted: 06.20.2019

By Tim Vernimmen The image above, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” was painted in 1884 by French artist Georges Seurat. The black lines crisscrossing it are not the work of a toddler wreaking havoc with a permanent marker, but that of neuroscientist Robert Wurtz of the National Eye Institute in the US. Ten years ago, he asked a colleague to look at the painting while wearing a contact lens–like contraption that recorded the colleague’s eye movements. These were then translated into the graffiti you see here. Art lovers may cringe, yet it is likely that Seurat would have been intrigued by this augmentation of his work. The movement Seurat kick-started with this painting — Neo-Impressionism — drew inspiration from the scientific study of how our vision works. Particularly influential was the pioneering research of Hermann von Helmholtz, a German physician, physicist and philosopher and author of a seminal 1867 book, Handbook of Physiological Optics, on the way we perceive depth, color and motion. One of the questions that occupied Helmholtz, and quite possibly Seurat, is why we don’t perceive the constant eye movements we make when we are scanning our surroundings (or a painted representation of them). Consider that the lines above were drawn in just three minutes. If we saw all those movements as we made them, our view of the world would be a blur of constant motion. As Wurtz and his Italian colleagues Paola Binda and Maria Concetta Morrone explain in two articles in the Annual Review of Vision Science, there’s a lot we know about why that doesn’t happen — and more yet to learn.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 26341 - Posted: 06.20.2019

A mother has laid bare the "brutal reality" of bringing up her adoptive son after he was left damaged by exposure to alcohol in the womb. Judith Knox says her 12-year-old son has a range of behavioural problems as a result of Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). It is estimated that as many as 172,000 people could be affected by the disorder in Scotland. But Ms Knox said it took six years for her son to be properly diagnosed. FASD is an umbrella term that describes the adverse physical and emotional conditions that affect people whose mother drank during pregnancy. A new support service for parents and carers, called FASD Hub Scotland, has now been launched. Ms Knox, who does not want to name her son or identify him through recent pictures, said the service was long overdue. She told BBC Scotland: "This has put a lot of strain on the family. "Your parenting is always being scrutinised and he just wants 100% of your attention, 100% of the time." The 51-year-old and her ex-husband adopted their son at the age of seven months and he quickly began to exhibit a raft of worrying behaviour. This included biting his fingers until they bled in a bid to stave off sleep, picking plaster from the walls to eat and ignoring the range of toys his family had bought him. Her son was eventually diagnosed with FASD at the age of six, after doctors initially wrongly thought he had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. But his behaviour continued to push his family to their limits.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26340 - Posted: 06.20.2019

By Michele C. Hollow My son often asks, “What do you have against jokes?” “Nothing,” I reply. “Well, stop killing them,” he says. He’s 18, autistic, and does standup. He has learned the importance of delivery and timing, skills mastered by the best comics. Despite this, many people believe people with autism are humorless. Tell that to Jerry Seinfeld, Michael Palin and Dan Aykroyd. All identify themselves as having autism spectrum disorder, or A.S.D. One of Mr. Aykroyd’s symptoms included an obsession with ghosts and law enforcement. His deep interest in the ghost hunter Hans Holzer inspired him to co-write “Ghostbusters.” “It’s a huge myth that people with A.S.D. don’t understand or are not interested in humor,” said Thomas Frazier, chief science officer at Autism Speaks, an advocacy organization that sponsors research and conducts awareness and outreach activities. “And the types of humor they like, understand, and even don’t get comes down to the individual. It’s the same with neurotypicals. It’s all about teaching the mechanics of it, and once you are comfortable with it, you come to appreciate it.” Of course, the autism spectrum is broad, and some people on it may appreciate certain jokes more than others. “Humor is personal, individualized, and people process jokes differently,” Dr. Frazier said. A 2018 study published in the journal Psychological Reports found people on the spectrum struggle with jokes that defy logic and familiarity. The setup is followed by a punch line with a twist. “Having a joke take you on a totally different path from the setup is disconcerting,” Dr. Frazier said. “A lot of people with autism don’t like incongruous humor.” © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism; Emotions
Link ID: 26339 - Posted: 06.19.2019

Paul GabrielsenPaul Gabrielsen For everyone who's looked into an infant's sparkling eyes and wondered what goes on in its little fuzzy head, there's now an answer. New research shows that babies display glimmers of consciousness and memory as early as 5 months old. For decades, neuroscientists have been searching for an unmistakable signal of consciousness in electrical brain activity. Such a sign could determine whether minimally conscious or anesthetized adults are aware—and when consciousness begins in babies. Studies on adults show a particular pattern of brain activity: When your senses detect something, such as a moving object, the vision center of your brain activates, even if the object goes by too fast for you to notice. But if the object remains in your visual field for long enough, the signal travels from the back of the brain to the prefrontal cortex, which holds the image in your mind long enough for you to notice. Scientists see a spike in brain activity when the senses pick something up, and another signal, the "late slow wave," when the prefrontal cortex gets the message. The whole process takes less than one-third of a second. Researchers in France wondered if such a two-step pattern might be present in infants. The team monitored infants' brain activity through caps fitted with electrodes. More than 240 babies participated, but two-thirds were too squirmy for the movement-sensitive caps. The remaining 80 (ages 5 months, 12 months, or 15 months) were shown a picture of a face on a screen for a fraction of a second. © 2018 Condé Nast

Keyword: Consciousness; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 26338 - Posted: 06.19.2019

By Madison Dapcevich An optical illusion designed by researchers to test how contrast deceives the brain appears to show a diamond moving across the screen, twitching up and down and left to right, without ever physically changing location. Dubbed the “Perceptual Diamond”, the illusion “produces motion continuously and unambiguously” to trick the viewer into thinking it is moving around the screen, yet it remains steady and slightly illuminated. Rather, its motion is mimicked by changing the contrast between the edges of strips around the diamond’s edges and the background. Shifts in contrasts around the edges, like in this illusion, can create the perception of motion. The Perpetual Diamond illusion provides no clues as to its orientation or direction until it is animated, generating movement through contrast signals alone, wrote the authors in i-Perception. "We often take the perception of motion for granted because we assume that motion corresponds to objects shifting location in the real world," explained study author Arthur Shapiro, from the American University in Washington DC, in an email to IFLScience. "However, the brain has many processes that can lead to the perception of motion, and there are many types of images that can stimulate these processes." Depending on the combination of illuminated edges, the diamond will appear to move in different directions. For example, if the two top edges blink between black and white and the two bottom edges do the opposite, the diamond appears to continuously move upward.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 26337 - Posted: 06.19.2019

By Benedict Carey Last winter, several dozen people who were struggling with suicidal urges and bouts of intense emotion opened their lives to a company called Mindstrong, in what has become a closely watched experiment in Silicon Valley. Mindstrong, a venture co-founded by a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, promised something that no drug or talk therapy can provide: an early-warning system that would flag the user when an emotional crisis seemed imminent — a personal, digital “fire alarm.” For the past year, California state and county mental health officials, along with patient representatives, have met regularly with Mindstrong and another company, 7 Cups, to test smartphone apps for people receiving care through the state’s public mental health system. Officials from 13 counties and two cities are involved, and the apps are already available to the public. The new users, most of whom have a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, receive treatment through the Los Angeles County mental health network, and were among the first test subjects in this collaboration. They allowed Mindstrong to digitally install an alternate keyboard on their smartphones, embedded in the app, and to monitor their moment-to-moment screen activity. “People with borderline personality disorder have a very difficult time identifying when distress is very high,” said Lynn McFarr, director of the cognitive and dialectical behavior therapy clinic at Harbor U.C.L.A. Medical Center, which provides care for people in the Los Angeles County system. “If we can show them, in this biofeedback fashion, that the signals went off the rails yesterday, say, after they got into a fight with a co-worker, then they’d be able to anticipate that emotion and target it with the skills they’ve learned.” The potential for digital technology to transform mental health care is enormous, and some 10,000 apps now crowd the market, each promising to soothe one psychological symptom or another. Smartphones allow near continuous monitoring of people with diagnoses such as depression, anxiety and schizophrenia, disorders for which few new treatments are available. But there has been little research to demonstrate whether such digital supports are effective. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Depression
Link ID: 26336 - Posted: 06.18.2019

Ian Sample Science editor In a project that has all the makings of a Roald Dahl classic, scientists have hit on an answer to the mystery of how man’s best friend got its puppy dog eyes. The sad, imploring expression held such power over humans during 33,000 years of canine domestication that the preference for dogs that could pull off the look steered the evolution of their facial muscles, researchers have said. The result is that dogs gradually acquired a new forehead muscle named the levator anguli oculi medialis, or LAOM, and have used it to deploy the doleful look to devastating effect ever since. “They are very powerful animals in how they capture our hearts,” said Prof Bridget Waller, the director of the Centre for Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Portsmouth. “We pay a lot of attention to faces, they are meaningful to us, and this expression makes dogs look juvenile and sad. It induces a nurturing response. It’s a cute factor.” Puppy dog eyes are achieved by the LAOM raising the inner eyebrows, in some cases quite dramatically. The movement makes the eyes look larger and the face more babyish. Humans use different muscles to produce a similar expression when they are sad, which may explain why it brings out the caregiver in people. To investigate how the look developed in dogs, the UK-US research team acquired wolf and dog cadavers from taxidermists and US state organisations and dissected their heads to compare the facial muscles. No animals were killed for the research. © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 26335 - Posted: 06.18.2019

By Jane E. Brody Shakespeare wisely recognized that sleep “knits up the ravell’d sleave of care” and relieves life’s physical and emotional pains. Alas, this “chief nourisher in life’s feast,” as he called it, often eludes millions of people who suffer from insomnia. Desperate to fall asleep or fall back to sleep, many resort to Ambien or another of the so-called “Z drugs” to get elusive shut-eye. But except for people with short-term sleep-disrupting issues, like post-surgical pain or bereavement, these sedative-hypnotics have a time-limited benefit and can sometimes cause more serious problems than they might prevent. They should not be used for more than four or five weeks. In April, the Food and Drug Administration added a boxed warning to the prescription insomnia drugs zolpidem (Ambien, Edluar, Intermezzo and Zolpimist), zaleplon (Sonata) and eszopiclone (Lunesta) following reports of injury and death from sleepwalking, sleep-driving and engaging in other hazardous activities while not fully awake. Last July, a Georgia woman was arrested when she drove the wrong way on a highway the day after using Ambien, as prescribed, to help her sleep. Although she had consumed no alcohol, she flunked a standard sobriety test and told police she was unaware of how she ended up going the wrong way. Although extreme reactions to these sleep drugs are thought to be uncommon, they are unpredictable and can be disastrous when they occur. Some have resulted in vehicular fatalities. As many as 20 percent to 30 percent of people in the general population sleep poorly. They may have difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, some awaken much too early, while others do not feel rested despite spending a full night seemingly asleep in bed. For one person in 10, insomnia is a chronic problem that repeats itself night after night. Little wonder that so many resort to sleeping pills to cope with it. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 26334 - Posted: 06.18.2019

By Matthew Hutson LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA—Spies may soon have another tool to carry out their shadowy missions: a new device that uses sound to “see” around corners. David Lindell Previously, researchers developed gadgets that bounced light waves around corners to catch reflections and see things out of the line of sight. To see whether they could do something similar with sound, another group of scientists built a hardware prototype—a vertical pole adorned with off-the-shelf microphones and small car speakers. The speakers emitted a series of chirps, which bounced off a nearby wall at an angle before hitting a hidden object on another wall—a poster board cutout of the letter H. Scientists then moved their rig bit by bit, each time making more chirps, which bounced back the way they came, into the microphones. Using algorithms from seismic imaging, the system reconstructed a rough image of the letter H (above). The researchers also imaged a setup with the letters L and T and compared their acoustic results with an optical method. The optical method, which requires expensive equipment, failed to reproduce the more-distant L, and it took more than an hour, compared with just 4.5 minutes for the acoustic method. The researchers will present the work here Wednesday at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference. © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 26333 - Posted: 06.18.2019

By Austin Frakt The idea that legal cannabis can help address the opioid crisis has generated much hope and enthusiasm. Opioid misuse has declined in recent years at the same time that cannabis use has been increasing, with many states liberalizing marijuana laws. Based on recent research, some advocates have been promoting this connection, arguing that easier access to marijuana reduces opioid use and, in turn, overdose deaths. A new study urges caution. Sometimes appearances — or statistics — can be deceiving. Why people were so hopeful It’s plausible that marijuana can help reduce pain. Systematic reviews show that certain compounds found in marijuana or synthetically produced cannabinoids do so, at least for some conditions. So some people who might otherwise seek out opioid painkillers could use medical marijuana instead. Regulations in some states, including New York, that streamline access to medical marijuana are based on the idea that it can substitute for opioids in pain treatment. In 2014, a study published in JAMA gave further hope that liberalizing marijuana laws might alleviate the opioid crisis. The study examined the years 1999 through 2010, during which 10 states established medical marijuana programs. It compared changes in the rates of opioid painkiller deaths in states that passed medical marijuana laws with those that had not. The results? Researchers found that the laws were associated with a nearly 25 percent decline in the death rate from opioid painkillers. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26332 - Posted: 06.18.2019

National Institutes of Health scientists have used human skin cells to create what they believe is the first cerebral organoid system, or “mini-brain,” for studying sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). CJD is a fatal neurodegenerative brain disease of humans believed to be caused by infectious prion protein. It affects about 1 in 1 million people. The researchers, from NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), hope the human organoid model will enable them to evaluate potential therapeutics for CJD and provide greater detail about human prion disease subtypes than the rodent and nonhuman primate models currently in use. Human cerebral organoids are small balls of human brain cells ranging in size from a poppy seed to a small pea. Their organization, structure, and electrical signaling are similar to brain tissue. Because these cerebral organoids can survive in a controlled environment for months, nervous system diseases can be studied over time. Cerebral organoids have been used as models to study Zika virus infection, Alzheimer’s disease, and Down syndrome. In a new study published in Acta Neuropathologica Communications, scientists at NIAID’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories discovered how to infect five-month-old cerebral organoids with prions using samples from two patients who died of two different CJD subtypes, MV1 and MV2. Infection took about one month to confirm, and the scientists monitored the organoids for changes in health indicators, such as metabolism, for more than six months. By the end of the study, the scientists observed that seeding activity, an indication of infectious prion propagation, was present in all organoids exposed to the CJD samples. However, seeding was greater in organoids infected with the MV2 sample than the MV1 sample. They also reported that the MV1-infected organoids showed more damage than the MV2-infected organoids.

Keyword: Prions; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 26331 - Posted: 06.15.2019

By Simon Makin Better Memory through Electrical Brain Ripples Hippocampus Neuron, computer illustration Credit: Kateryna Kon Getty Images Specific patterns of brain activity are thought to underlie specific processes or computations important for various mental faculties, such as memory. One such “brain signal” that has received a lot of attention recently is known as a “sharp wave ripple”—a short, wave-shaped burst of high-frequency oscillations. Researchers originally identified ripples in the hippocampus, a region crucially involved in memory and navigation, as central to diverting recollections to long-term memory during sleep. Then a 2012 study by neuroscientists at the University of California, San Francisco, led by Loren Frank and Shantanu Jadhav, the latter now at Brandeis University, showed that the ripples also play a role in memory while awake. The researchers used electrical pulses to disrupt ripples in rodents’ brains, and showed that, by doing so, performance in a memory task was reduced. However, nobody had manipulated ripples to enhance memory—until now, that is. Researchers at NYU School of Medicine led by neuroscientist György Buzsáki have now done exactly that. In a June 14 study in Science, the team showed that prolonging sharp wave ripples in the hippocampus of rats significantly improved their performance in a maze task that taxes working memory—the brain’s “scratch pad” for combining and manipulating information on the fly. “This is a very novel and impactful study,” says Jadhav, who was not involved in the research. “It’s very hard to do ‘gain-of-function’ studies with physiological processes in such a precise way.” As well as revealing new details about how ripples contribute to specific memory processes, the work could ultimately have implications for efforts to develop interventions for disorders of memory and learning. © 2019 Scientific American

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 26330 - Posted: 06.15.2019

By Carl Zimmer Last week, ladybugs briefly took over the news cycle. Meteorologists at the National Weather Service were looking over radar images in California on the night of June 4 when they spotted what looked like a wide swath of rain. But there were no clouds. The meteorologists contacted an amateur weather-spotter directly under the mysterious disturbance. He wasn’t getting soaked by rain. Instead, he saw ladybugs. Everywhere. Radar apparently had picked up a cloud of migrating ladybugs spread across 80 miles, with a dense core ten miles wide floating 5,000 feet to 9,000 feet in the air. As giant as the swarm was, the meteorologists lost track of it. The ladybugs disappeared into the night. Compared to other animal migrations, the migrations of insects are a scientific mystery. It’s easy to spot a herd of wildebeest making its way across the savanna. Insects, even in huge numbers, move from place to place without much notice. One day you look around, and ladybugs are everywhere. “The migrations themselves are totally invisible,” said Jason Chapman, an ecologist at the University of Exeter in Britain. Dr. Chapman and his colleagues are using radar to bring insect migrations to light. The scientists help run a unique network of small radar stations in southern England designed to scan the sky 24 hours a day, spotting insects flying overhead. “These radars are fantastic,” said Dr. Chapman. “We have a lot of information about every individual insect that flies over overhead, including a measure of the shape and a measure of their size.” © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Animal Migration
Link ID: 26329 - Posted: 06.14.2019

Sara Reardon A medical imaging device that can create 3D renderings of the entire human body in as little as 20 seconds could soon be used for a wide variety of research and clinical applications. The modified positron emission tomography (PET) scanner is faster than conventional PET scans — which can take an average of 20 minutes — and requires less radiation exposure for the person being imaged. Researchers presented video taken by the device last week at the US National Institutes of Health’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research Symposium in Bethesda, Maryland. The machine could be especially helpful for imaging children, who tend to wiggle around inside a scanner and ruin the measurements, as well as for studies of how drugs move through the body, says Sanjay Jain, a paediatrician and infectious-disease physician at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Standard PET scanners detect γ-rays from radioactive tracers that doctors inject into the person being imaged. The person’s cells take up the molecule and break it down, releasing two γ-rays. A ring-shaped detector positioned around the person measures the angle and speed of the rays and reconstructs their origin, creating a 3D map of the cells that are metabolizing the molecule. The ring is just 25 centimetres thick, however, so physicians can image only a small portion of the body at a time. Capturing larger areas requires them to dose the person with more of the radioactive molecule ― it decays quickly, which means the signal fades fast ― and move them back and forth through the ring. © 2019 Springer Nature Publishing AG

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 26328 - Posted: 06.14.2019

By Karen Zraick and Sarah Mervosh Are you sabotaging your sleep in your quest to improve it? Many new tools are becoming available to monitor your sleep or help you achieve better sleep: wearable watches and bands; “nearable” devices that you can place on your bed or nightstand; and apps that work by monitoring biometric data, noise and movement. They can remind you to start winding down, or generate a report on your night’s slumber. But some sleep specialists caution that these apps and devices may provide inaccurate data and can even exacerbate symptoms of insomnia. Fiddling with your phone in bed, after all, is bad sleep hygiene. And for some, worrying about sleep goals can make bedtime anxiety even worse. There’s a name for an unhealthy obsession with achieving perfect sleep: orthosomnia. It was coined by researchers from Rush University Medical School and Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in a 2017 case study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. Dr. Kelly Baron, one of the paper’s authors and the director of the University of Utah’s behavioral sleep medicine program, said that sleep trackers can be helpful in identifying patterns. She herself tracks her bedtime with a Fitbit. But she said she had noticed a trend of patients complaining based on unverified scores, even for things like the amount of deep sleep, which varies by individual. “People were putting a lot of stock in what it was telling them,” she said. “Like, ‘I’m afraid I’m not getting enough deep sleep. There’s something wrong with me.’” As gadgets proliferate, so do concerns The flood of data and buzzwords can easily become confusing: sleep debt percentages, heart rate dips, sleep rhythms, graphs of sleep disruption and comparisons to other users. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 26327 - Posted: 06.14.2019

By Jan Hoffman An association between weed and the dead turns out to have been established long before the 1960s and far beyond a certain ur-band’s stomping grounds in San Francisco. Researchers have identified strains of cannabis burned in mortuary rituals as early as 500 B.C., deep in the Pamir mountains in western China, according to a new study published Wednesday. The residue had chemical signatures indicating high levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the plant’s most psychoactive, or mood-altering, compound. You think the Grateful Dead were the first to wonder “what in the world ever became of sweet Jane?” That CBD gummies to assuage the anxious are anything new? That puffs of elevated consciousness started with Rocky Mountain highs? Nah. “Modern perspectives on cannabis vary tremendously cross-culturally, but it is clear that the plant has a long history of human use, medicinally, ritually and recreationally over countless millennia,” said Robert Spengler, an archaeobotanist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, who worked on the study. Cannabis stems and seeds had previously been found at a handful of burial sites around Eurasia, but the evidence at the Pamir cemetery, verified by advanced scientific technology, shows an even more direct connection between the plant and early ritual. The new findings expand the geographical range of cannabis use within the broader Central Asian region, said Mark Merlin, a professor of botany at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who did not work on the research. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26326 - Posted: 06.14.2019

By Anahad O’Connor Many nutrition experts blame processed foods for the obesity epidemic, suggesting that a return to home cooking would turn it around. But now some researchers are pushing back against that idea, arguing that it oversimplifies the obstacles that poor and middle-class families face. The case against processed foods has been growing. A flurry of studies last month provided new evidence that these foods, which are typically loaded with salt, sugar, fat and chemical additives, heighten the risk of obesity and chronic disease. Scientists at the National Institutes of Health found that people ate more calories and quickly gained weight on a diet of mostly ultra-processed foods like frozen entrees, diet beverages, fruit juices, pastries, baked potato chips, canned foods and processed meats. Then a pair of large studies in the journal BMJ showed that people who ate significant amounts of these foods had increased mortality rates and cardiovascular disease compared to people who avoided them. These findings and others prompted health experts — including Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the N.I.H. — to urge Americans to limit their intake of ultra-processed foods. But that might be easier said than done. Highly processed foods have become the dominant food source for many Americans, accounting for almost 60 percent of the calories we eat. Americans across the socioeconomic spectrum consume them in increasing amounts. But studies show that their intake is highest among low-income families. Many households depend on them because they are cheap, convenient and, in some cases, their only option. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 26325 - Posted: 06.12.2019

By Caterina Gawrilow, Sara Goudarzi Those affected by attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are clinically thought of as inattentive, hyperactive and impulsive. However, people with ADHD are also perceived as being very spontaneous, curious, inquisitive, enthusiastic, lively and witty, a perception that creates an impression they are more creative than those without ADHD. But is there truth to this idea? Creativity is generally the ability to generate something original and unprecedented. The ideas must not only be new and surprising, but also useful and relevant. Among other things, creativity comes through intensive knowledge and great motivation in a particular field, be it painting, music or mathematics. For years, both laypersons and scientists have been fascinated by the proverbial proximity of genius and madness. According to psychologist Dean Keith Simonton from the University of California, Davis, unusual and unexpected experiences, such as psychological difficulties and psychiatric stays, are an important characteristic of people who create masterpieces. Advertisement Two core symptoms, inattention and impulsiveness, suggest a connection between creativity and ADHD. Inattention, which occurs more frequently in those affected with the disorder, likely leads to mind wandering, or the drifting of thoughts from an activity or environment. Such drifting can lead to new, useful and creative ideas. © 2019 Scientific American

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 26324 - Posted: 06.12.2019

Strobe lighting at music festivals can increase the risk of epileptic seizures, researchers have warned. The Dutch team said even people who have not been diagnosed with epilepsy might be affected. Their study was prompted by the case of a 20-year-old, with no history of epilepsy, who suddenly collapsed and had a fit at a festival. The Epilepsy Society said festivals should limit lighting to the recommended levels. Epilepsy is a condition that affects the brain. There are many types, and it can start at any age. Around 3% of people with epilepsy are photosensitive, which means their seizures are triggered by flashing or flickering lights, or patterns. The Health and Safety Executive recommends strobe lighting should be kept to a maximum of four hertz (four flashes per second) in clubs and at public events. 'Life-affirming' The researchers studied electronic dance music festivals because they often use strobe lighting. They looked at data on people who needed medical care among the 400,000 visitors to 28 day and night-time dance music festivals across the Netherlands in 2015. The figures included 241,000 people who were exposed to strobe lights at night-time festivals. Thirty people at night-time events with strobe lighting had a seizure, compared with nine attending daytime events. The team, led by Newel Salet of the VU Medical Centre in Amsterdam, writing in BMJ Open, said other factors could increase the risk of seizures. But they added: "Regardless of whether stroboscopic lights are solely responsible or whether sleep deprivation and/or substance abuse also play a role, the appropriate interpretation is that large [electronic dance music] festivals, especially during the night-time, probably cause at least a number of people per event to suffer epileptic seizures." They advise anyone with photosensitive epilepsy to either avoid such events or to take precautionary measures, such as getting enough sleep and not taking drugs, not standing close to the stage, and leaving quickly if they experience any "aura" effects. © 2019 BBC

Keyword: Epilepsy; Vision
Link ID: 26323 - Posted: 06.12.2019