By Emily Oster In 1980, 8.6 percent of first births were to women over 30; by 2015 this was 31 percent. This is more than an interesting demographic fact. It means that many of us are having children much later than our parents did. By the time a baby arrives, many of us have been through school, spent time in the working world, developed friendships, hobbies. And through all of these activities, we have probably grown used to the idea that if we work harder — at our jobs, at school, at banking that personal record in the half marathon — we can achieve more. Babies, however, often do not respond to a diligent work ethic. Take, as an example, crying. When my daughter, Penelope, was an infant, she was typically inconsolable between 5 and 8 p.m. I’d walk her up and down the hall, sometimes just crying (me crying, that is — obviously she was crying). I once did this in a hotel — up and down, up and down, Penelope screaming at the top of her lungs. I hope no one else was staying there. I tried everything — bouncing her more, bouncing her less, bouncing with swinging, bouncing with nursing (difficult). Nothing worked; she would eventually just exhaust herself. I wondered whether this was normal. I’m an economist, someone who works with data. I wrote a book on using data to make better choices during pregnancy; it was natural for me to turn to the data again once the baby arrived. And here, faced with crying, I found that the data was helpful. We often say babies are “colicky,” but researchers have an actual definition of colic (three hours of crying, more than three days a week, for more than three weeks) and some estimates of what share of babies fit this description (about 2 percent). But the same data can also tell us that many babies cry just a bit less than that, and almost 20 percent of parents report their baby “cries a lot.” So I was not alone. The data also told me the crying would get better, which it eventually did. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 26162 - Posted: 04.22.2019

By Christopher Ingraham Sleep scientist Matthew Walker has observed that “human beings are the only species that deliberately deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent gain.” We stay up late to watch our favorite TV shows. We wake up early to get to work or school on time. And twice a year we change our clocks, to the bewilderment of our circadian rhythms. We also set up conflicts between our natural and social clocks in other, less obvious ways, a fact underscored in research published this month in the Journal of Health Economics. It turns out, the study found, that living on the wrong side of a time zone’s boundary can have negative consequences on a person’s health and wallet. The culprit? More natural light in the evening hours. To understand the study, co-authored by Osea Giuntella of the University of Pittsburgh and Fabrizio Mazzonna of the Universita della Svizzera Italiana, it is important to understand how time zones affect local sunset times. Traveling east to west, sunrise and sunset times get later, as the map above shows. Panama City, Fla., for instance, is located on the far eastern end of the Central time zone, while Pecos, Tex., sits on the far western side. This week, the sun set in Panama City about 7:12 p.m. Central time. In Pecos, it set more than an hour later, at 8:25 p.m. Sunset is a powerful biological trigger: The fading of natural light causes the body to release melatonin, a hormone that induces drowsiness. As a result, people on the eastern side of a time zone, where the sun sets earlier, tend to go to bed earlier than those on the western side. The data below, derived from about 1 million users of the now-defunct sleep tracker Jawbone, illustrates this point, showing how bedtimes shift from east to west, with a sharp reset happening once you cross into a new time zone. © 1996-2019 The Washington Post

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Sleep
Link ID: 26161 - Posted: 04.22.2019

By Perri Klass, M.D. Every pediatrician knows that it’s important to diagnose autism when a child is as young as possible, because when younger children get help and intensive therapy, their developmental outcomes improve, as measured in everything from improved language, cognition and social skills to normalized brain activity. “The signs and symptoms for most children are there between 12 and 24 months,” said Dr. Paul S. Carbone, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah and a co-author of “Autism Spectrum Disorder: What Every Parent Needs to Know,” published by the American Academy of Pediatrics. “If we can get them in for evaluation by then, the therapies are available as young as those ages, you can easily start by 2,” he said. “We’d like to give kids the benefit of getting started early.” That means taking parents seriously when they bring up concerns about what they regard as strange behaviors and interactions on the part of babies and toddlers, and it also means that we try to screen all our patients, often with a checklist for parents to complete, like the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers, or M-CHAT. Children whose scores indicate a concern are then supposed to be referred on for a full developmental assessment. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website lists developmental milestones to look for; missing them may be an early sign of autism. So we all know this is important. We also know that we are not, collectively, doing a very good job of screening all children, that the questionnaires often over-identify children who don’t actually need full assessments, and that the referral process can be plagued with long waits (and when a young child has to wait months for the assessment, that works against the benefit of early diagnosis). Children in minority groups are diagnosed at an older average age than white children, and therefore get therapy later, contributing to increased disparities. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 26160 - Posted: 04.22.2019

Yao-Hua Law When it comes to migration science, birds rule. Although many mammals — antelopes, whales, bats — migrate, too, scientists know far less about how those animals do it. But a new device, invented by animal navigation researcher Oliver Lindecke, could open a new way to test how far-ranging bats find their way. Lindecke, of Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany, has been studying bat migration since 2011. He started with analyzing different forms of hydrogen atoms in wild bats to infer where they had flown from. But figuring out how the bats knew where to go was trickier. Lindecke needed a field setup that let him test what possible cues from nature helped bats navigate across vast distances. The first step was studying in which direction the bats first take flight. Such experiments on birds typically involve confining the animals in small, enclosed spaces. But that doesn’t work for bats, which tend to fall asleep in such spaces. So he invented what he calls the circular release box: a flat-bottom, funnel-shaped container topped by a wider lid. To escape, the bat crawls up the wall and takes off from the edge. Bat tracks in a layer of chalk (Lindecke says he was inspired by a snow-covered Berlin street) indicate where the bat took off. In August 2017, Lindecke captured 54 soprano pipistrelle bats (Pipistrellus pygmaeus) in a large, 50-meter-wide trap at the Pape Ornithological Research Station in Latvia as the animals were migrating along the coast of the Baltic Sea toward Central Europe. Experiments with the new device showed that the adult bats flew straight in the direction in which they took off, Lindecke and colleagues report online March 1 in the Journal of Zoology. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2019

Keyword: Animal Migration
Link ID: 26159 - Posted: 04.20.2019

By Kate Murphy Let’s say you’re walking down the street and coming toward you is someone pushing a baby in a stroller. The baby looks right at you and bursts into a big, gummy grin. What do you do? If you’re like most people, you reflexively smile back and your insides just melt. The baby might react by smiling even more broadly and maybe kicking its feet with delight, which will only deepen your smile and add to the warm feeling spreading in your chest. But what if you couldn’t smile naturally, with the usual crinkles around your eyes and creases in your cheeks? There’s convincing scientific evidence that the same kind of mutual engagement and interplay — with infants, or anyone else — would be difficult to achieve. Experts say mirroring another person’s facial expressions is essential for not only recognizing emotion, but also feeling it. That’s why anything that disrupts one’s ability to emote is cause for concern, particularly in an age when Botox and other cosmetic procedures that paralyze, stretch, plump or otherwise alter the face are commonplace. Permanently pouty lips and smooth brows might be good for selfies, but research suggests they flatten your affect, disconnecting you from your feelings and the feelings of others. “People these days are constantly rearranging their facial appearance in ways that prevent engaging in facial mimicry, having no idea how much we use our faces to coordinate and manage social interactions,” said Paula Niedenthal, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has published several studies on facial mimicry and its emotional and social importance. Following the example of celebrities like the Kardashians, the use of Botox injections is up more than 800 percent since 2000, and the use of soft tissue fillers is up 300 percent. Plus, there has been the advent of so-called “mini-facelifts” whereby people can take a more incremental approach to cosmetic surgery, getting their eyes, foreheads, chins or cheeks done à la carte. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 26158 - Posted: 04.20.2019

Laura Sanders Kratom, an herbal supplement available at vape shops and online stores, has been linked to 91 deaths over 18 months from July 2016 to December 2017, according to a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those deaths made up less than 1 percent of the 27,338 overdose fatalities analyzed for the report, released online on April 12. Although small, the numbers point to increasing numbers of people using the plant to combat pain, depression and even opioid addiction. Interest in, and exposure to, kratom is apparently rising. “We’d see about 10 cases a year, and now we’re seeing hundreds,” says toxicologist Henry Spiller of the Central Ohio Poison Center in Columbus. Here, scientists weigh in on what’s known and unknown about the herbal supplement. What is kratom, and why are people using it? The supplement is mashed leaves from the tropical tree Mitragyna speciosa, a coffee cousin that grows in the warm, wet forests of Southeast Asia. Pulverized leaves create a green powder that can be dissolved in tea, packed into pill capsules or extracted into alcohol. Traditionally, workers chew the leaves in search of a mild stimulant effect during the day, and then drink tea to relieve pain, says pharmacologist and toxicologist Oliver Grundmann of the University of Florida in Gainesville. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2019

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26157 - Posted: 04.20.2019

By Gina Kolata The study subjects had been thin all their lives, and not because they had unusual metabolisms. They just did not care much about food. They never ate enormous amounts, never obsessed on the next meal. Now, a group of researchers in Britain may have found the reason. The people carry a genetic alteration that mutes appetite. It also greatly reduces their chances of getting diabetes or heart disease. The scientists’ study, published on Thursday in the journal Cell, relied on data from the U.K. Biobank, which includes a half million people aged 40 to 69. Participants have provided DNA samples and medical records, and have allowed researchers to track their health over years. A second study in the same journal also used data from this population to develop a genetic risk score for obesity. It can help predict, as early as childhood, who is at high risk for a lifetime of obesity and who is not. Together, the studies confirm a truth that researchers wish more people understood. There are biological reasons that some struggle mightily with their weight and others do not, and the biological impacts often are seen on appetite, not metabolism. People who gain too much weight or fight to stay thin feel hungrier than naturally thin people. The study of the appetite-dulling mutation was led by Dr. Sadaf Farooqi, professor of metabolism and medicine at the University of Cambridge, and Nick Wareham, an epidemiologist at the university. The study drew on Dr. Farooqi’s research into a gene, MC4R. She has probed it for 20 years, but for the opposite reason: to understand why some people are overweight, not why some are thin. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 26156 - Posted: 04.19.2019

Tina Hesman Saey There’s a new way to predict whether a baby will grow into an obese adult. Combining the effect of more than 2.1 million genetic variants, researchers have created a genetic predisposition score that they say predicts severe obesity. People with scores in the highest 10 percent weighed, on average, 13 kilograms (about 29 pounds) more than those with the lowest 10 percent of scores, the team reports April 18 in Cell. The finding may better quantify genes’ roles in obesity than previous prediction scores, but still fails to account for lifestyle, which may be more important in determining body weight, other researchers say. Still, the study shows that “your genetics really start to take hold very early in life,” says coauthor Amit Khera, a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Weight differences showed up as early as age 3, and by age 18, those with the highest scores weighed 12.3 kilograms more on average than those with the lowest scores, Khera and his colleagues found. Some people with high genetic scores had normal body weights, but those people may have to work harder to maintain a healthy weight than others, he says. People with the highest scores were 25 times more likely to have severe obesity — a body mass index (BMI) greater than 40 — than those with the lowest scores. BMI is a measurement of body fat based on height and weight. A BMI of 18.5 (calculated as kilograms per meters squared of height) to 24.9 is considered healthy. BMIs 30 and above are considered obese. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2019

Keyword: Obesity; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 26155 - Posted: 04.19.2019

By Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Serge F. Kovaleski The steep rise in the number of people suffering opioid addiction has helped spawn the widespread use of another substance: kratom, a green powdered herbal supplement that is widely available and virtually unregulated. Derived from the leaves of a tree native to Southeast Asia and sold in the United States online and in bodegas and head shops, kratom has long been used as a mood booster, energy supplement and pain reliever. It is also increasingly being used by those who swear by it as a curb for opioid addiction. Some veterans also say it helps control symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Several million Americans are now believed to use kratom. One is Andrew Turner, whose PTSD, herniated discs and movement problems affecting his face and neck were so severe after multiple deployments with the Navy that he took as many as 20 prescription medications, including opioids, daily. “I was on the path to suicide, and losing hope,” Mr. Turner said. After he began drinking kratom tea, the pain and dread diminished, he said. “It was a night-and-day difference.” But the authorities warn that kratom can be dangerous. Reported side effects include seizures, hallucinations and symptoms of psychosis, and there have been calls from inside the Trump administration to curb its use. A new government review links kratom to nearly 100 overdose deaths. “There is no evidence to indicate that kratom is safe or effective for any medical use,” Scott Gottlieb, until recently the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said last year. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26154 - Posted: 04.19.2019

By Gina Kolata In a study that raises profound questions about the line between life and death, researchers have restored some cellular activity to brains removed from slaughtered pigs. The brains did not regain anything resembling consciousness: There were no signs indicating coordinated electrical signaling, necessary for higher functions like awareness and intelligence. But in an experimental treatment, blood vessels in the pigs’ brains began functioning, flowing with a blood substitute, and certain brain cells regained metabolic activity, even responding to drugs. When the researchers tested slices of treated brain tissue, they discovered electrical activity in some neurons. The work is very preliminary and has no immediate implications for treatment of brain injuries in humans. But the idea that parts of the brain may be recoverable after death, as conventionally defined, contradicts everything medical science believes about the organ and poses metaphysical riddles. “We had clear lines between ‘this is alive’ and ‘this is dead,’” said Nita A. Farahany, a bioethicist and law professor at Duke University. “How do we now think about this middle category of ‘partly alive’? We didn’t think it could exist.” For decades, doctors and grieving family members have wondered if it might ever be possible to restore function to a person who suffered extensive brain injury because of a severe stroke or heart attack. Were these brains really beyond salvage? The new research confirms how little we know about the injured brain and so-called brain death. Bioethicists like Dr. Farahany were stunned and intrigued by the findings, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. “This is wild,” said Jonathan Moreno, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania. “If ever there was an issue that merited big public deliberation on the ethics of science and medicine, this is one.” © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 26153 - Posted: 04.18.2019

Laura Sanders Scientists have restored cellular activity to pig brains hours after the animals’ death — an unprecedented feat. This revival, achieved with a sophisticated system of artificial fluid, took place four hours after the pigs’ demise at a slaughterhouse. “This is a huge breakthrough,” says ethicist and legal scholar Nita Farahany of Duke University, who wasn’t involved in the research. “It fundamentally challenges existing beliefs in neuroscience. The idea of the irreversibility of loss of brain function clearly isn’t true.” The results, reported April 17 in Nature, may lead to better treatments for brain damage caused by stroke or other injuries that starve brain tissue of oxygen. The achievement also raises significant ethical puzzles about research on brains that are not alive, but not completely dead either. In the study, the brains showed no signs of the widespread neural activity thought to be required for consciousness. But individual nerve cells were still firing. “There’s this gray zone between dead animals and living animals,” says Farahany, who coauthored a perspective piece in Nature. The experiments were conducted on pigs that had been killed in a food processing plant. These animals were destined to become pork. “No animals died for this study,” the authors of the new work write in their paper. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2019

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 26152 - Posted: 04.18.2019

Nita A. Farahany, Henry T. Greely and Charles M. Giattino. Scientists have restored and preserved some cellular activities and structures in the brains of pigs that had been decapitated for food production four hours before. The researchers saw circulation in major arteries and small blood vessels, metabolism and responsiveness to drugs at the cellular level and even spontaneous synaptic activity in neurons, among other things. The team formulated a unique solution and circulated it through the isolated brains using a network of pumps and filters called BrainEx. The solution was cell-free, did not coagulate and contained a haemoglobin-based oxygen carrier and a wide range of pharmacological agents. The remarkable study, published in this week’s Nature1, offers the promise of an animal or even human whole-brain model in which many cellular functions are intact. At present, cells from animal and human brains can be sustained in culture for weeks, but only so much can be gleaned from isolated cells. Tissue slices can provide snapshots of local structural organization, yet they are woefully inadequate for questions about function and global connectivity, because much of the 3D structure is lost during tissue preparation2. The work also raises a host of ethical issues. There was no evidence of any global electrical activity — the kind of higher-order brain functioning associated with consciousness. Nor was there any sign of the capacity to perceive the environment and experience sensations. Even so, because of the possibilities it opens up, the BrainEx study highlights potential limitations in the current regulations for animals used in research. Most fundamentally, in our view, it throws into question long-standing assumptions about what makes an animal — or a human — alive. © 2019 Springer Nature Publishing AG

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 26151 - Posted: 04.18.2019

By Susan Gubar After the births of my babies in the ’70s, the umbilical cord connecting them to me was cut and trashed. But these days the blood inside can be preserved in a bank. It contains stem cells with the potential to save the lives of patients with leukemia, lymphoma or sickle cell disease. Stem cell treatments have been in the news lately because some companies are accused of selling unproven treatments that may actually harm patients. Earlier this month, the New York attorney general filed suit against one such company, claiming it knowingly performed rogue procedures on patients with a wide range of medical conditions. But there are legitimate lifesaving uses of cord blood that should not be tainted by these sham companies. Liars and thieves must not be allowed to detract from meticulous scientific research that has made umbilical cord blood mystic in its regenerative powers. A reader who is pregnant and whose first child had undergone successful leukemia treatments asked me about cord blood banking recently. Her obstetrician had suggested she bank her new baby’s cord blood as an insurance policy in case her first child suffered a recurrence. Cord blood transplants can be used to reconstitute a patient’s immune system. Blood from a sibling stands a good chance of being a suitable match for a transplant. Two impediments may influence parents against the risk-free practice of banking cord blood. First, some obstetricians believe that a brief wait before the clamping of an umbilical cord can enhance a child’s well-being, but delayed clamping compromises the volume and quality of collected cord blood cells. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stem Cells
Link ID: 26150 - Posted: 04.18.2019

By Kelly Servick The machines that scan our brains are usually monstrous contraptions, locked away in high-end research centers. But smaller, cheaper technologies may soon enter the field, like an MRI scanner built for the battlefield and a lightweight, wearable magnetoencephalography system that records magnetic fields generated by the brains of people in motion. If such devices become widespread, they’ll raise new ethical questions, says Francis Shen, a law professor and neuroethicist at the University of Minnesota (UMN) in Minneapolis and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. How should researchers share results with the far-flung populations they may soon be able to study? Could direct-to-consumer neuroimaging become an industry alongside personal genetic testing? With a grant from the federal Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, Shen has teamed up with three UMN colleagues, including MRI physicist Michael Garwood, to start a conversation about the ethical implications of portable neuroimaging. Garwood is part of a multicenter team building an MRI machine powerful enough to be used in medical diagnostic tests that weighs just 400 kilograms—less than a tenth of traditional scanners. He expects the new scanner to take its first images in 3 years. And if market demand can bring down the cost of a key component, he thinks it could eventually cost $200,000 or less, versus millions of dollars for current scanners. Shen and Garwood discussed the ethical issues at play with Science, after presenting their work at a meeting of BRAIN Initiative investigators last week in Washington, D.C. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 26149 - Posted: 04.17.2019

By Sam Rose You’ve probably heard about microdosing, the “productivity hack” popular among Silicon Valley engineers and business leaders. Microdosers take regular small doses of LSD or magic mushrooms. At these doses, they don’t experience mind-bending, hallucinatory trips, but they say they get a jolt in creativity and focus that can elevate work performance, help relationships, and generally improve a stressful and demanding daily life. If its proponents are to be believed, microdosing offers the cure for an era dominated by digital distractions and existential anxiety—a cup of coffee with a little Tony Robbins stirred in. So far, though, it’s been impossible to separate truth from hype. That’s because, until recently, microdoses haven’t been tested in placebo-controlled trials. Late last year, the first placebo-controlled microdose trial was published. The study concluded that microdoses of LSD appreciably altered subjects’ sense of time, allowing them to more accurately reproduce lapsed spans of time. While it doesn’t prove that microdoses act as a novel cognitive enhancer, the study starts to piece together a compelling story on how LSD alters the brain’s perceptive and cognitive systems in a way that could lead to more creativity and focus. The idea behind microdosing traces its roots back decades. In the 1950s, a handful of psychedelic therapists at a mental health facility in Saskatchewan wanted to help alcoholics get clean. They guided the patients through a high dose, ego-dissolving, LSD experience. When they came out the other side, over half of the patients reported complete recovery from alcoholism. The Canadian government was intrigued and ordered more rigorous trials, this time with placebo controls, and without the experienced “trip guides” offering suggestions on what patients should feel. These trials were a bust. In the fall-out, many viewed psychedelic therapy as more shamanism than science. The mindset of the user and suggestion from the therapist (termed “set and setting” to LSD proponents) are just as important as the drug itself. In other words, LSD’s effects had as much to do with goings on outside the brain as inside it. To LSD proponents, though, this was part of how it worked. “Set and setting” guard against a bad trip (with large doses), and give the user an idea of what they should experience. © 2019 Scientific American

Keyword: Depression; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26148 - Posted: 04.17.2019

Nicola Davis Philandering men have unfaithfulness written all over their faces, according to research that suggests men and women are able to spot cheating chaps just by looking at them. Experts found men with more “masculine” faces were more likely to be thought to be unfaithful, and such men also self-reported more cheating or “poaching” of other men’s partners. However, they stressed the results were modest, and said people should be wary of deciding whether someone is a love rat based on impressions of facial features alone. The team said being suspicious of men with masculine features – such as a strong browridge, strong jaw and thinner lips – might have offered an evolutionary advantage, allowing heterosexual women to spot a flaky partner and men to recognise a potential rival who might seduce their partner or leave them raising someone else’s child. Previous research has suggested women are able to spot unfaithful men from their mugshot, with the masculinity of the man’s face a key factor in the judgment, while weaker effects have been found for men weighing up images of women. However, it was unclear whether people could also spot a philanderer of the same sex. Writing in the journal Royal Society Open Science, researchers described how they asked heterosexual white participants to judge the facial features of 189 white adults who had been photographed and taken part in previous research. Overall, 293 men and 472 women rated pictures of women, while 299 men and 452 women judged images of men, rating on a scale of one to 10 how likely they thought each person was to be unfaithful. © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 26147 - Posted: 04.17.2019

By James Gallagher Health and science correspondent, BBC News Widely held myths about sleep are damaging our health and our mood, as well as shortening our lives, say researchers. A team at New York University trawled the internet to find the most common claims about a good night's kip. Then, in a study published in the journal Sleep Health, they matched the claims to the best scientific evidence. They hope that dispelling sleep myths will improve people's physical and mental health and well-being. So, how many are you guilty of? Myth 1 - You can cope on less than five hours sleep This is the myth that just won't go away. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously had a brief four hours a night. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made similar claims, and swapping hours in bed for extra time in the office is not uncommon in tales of business or entrepreneurial success. Yet the researchers said the belief that less than five hours shut-eye was healthy, was one of the most damaging myths to health. "We have extensive evidence to show sleeping five hours or less consistently, increases your risk greatly for adverse health consequences," said researcher Dr Rebecca Robbins. These included cardiovascular diseases, such as heart attacks and strokes, and shorter life expectancy. Instead, she recommends everyone should aim for a consistent seven to eight hours of sleep a night. Thatcher: Can people get by on four hours' sleep? Myth 2 - Alcohol before bed boosts your sleep The relaxing nightcap is a myth, says the team, whether it's a glass of wine, a dram of whisky or a bottle of beer. © 2019 BBC

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 26146 - Posted: 04.16.2019

Alison Abbott In January 1973, Science published an article called ‘On being sane in insane places’. The author, psychologist David Rosenhan, described how he and seven other healthy people had reported themselves to a dozen psychiatric hospitals, claiming to hear voices uttering odd words such as ‘thud’ or ‘hollow’ — a symptom never reported in the clinical literature. Each person was diagnosed with either schizophrenia or manic-depressive psychosis, and admitted; once inside, they stopped the performance. They were released after an average of 19 days with diagnoses of ‘schizophrenia in remission’ (D. L. Rosenhan Science 179, 250–258; 1973). One research and teaching hospital, hearing about the study, declared that its own staff could never be so deceived. It challenged Rosenhan to send it pseudopatients. He agreed, but never did. Nonetheless, the hospital claimed to have identified 41 of them. Psychiatric hospitals, it seemed, could recognize neither healthy people nor those with mental illnesses. Rosenhan’s study exemplifies much of what went wrong in twentieth-century psychiatry, as biologists, psychoanalysts and sociologists struggled for supremacy. Science historian Anne Harrington takes us through the painful history of that struggle in the enthralling Mind Fixers, which focuses particularly on the United States. © 2019 Springer Nature Publishing AG

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Depression
Link ID: 26145 - Posted: 04.16.2019

By C. Claiborne Ray Q. Our dog escaped from the car. How did he find his way home the next day from nearly three miles away? A. What took so long? Dogs are well known for their ability to backtrack to a beloved home — or person. Most animal behavior experts attribute their navigating ability largely to a hypersensitive sense of smell. Three miles is not a great distance, compared with some of the epic homeward journeys that dogs have occasionally made, and a three-mile radius would be rich in odor guideposts. The theory is that a dog creates a map of scents from odiferous sites like a food store or fertilized garden — or even just a hint of an owner’s scent in the ground or air. Dogs are especially sensitive to the odor of the humans in their lives. One study used MRI imaging to study activity in the caudate nucleus, a brain area associated with the expectation of a reward. Dogs of varying breeds were exposed to their own scent or that of a familiar dog, a strange dog, a strange human or a familiar human. By far the strongest activation followed exposure to the scent of a familiar person. Another navigational clue may come from dogs’ suspected sensitivity to differences in magnetic orientation. A study of dozens of dogs found that they usually preferred to defecate with their bodies aligned in a north-south orientation, a preference that disappeared when the magnetic field was disturbed. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 26144 - Posted: 04.16.2019

Maanvi Singh People coping with psychological trauma have a heightened risk of developing cardiovascular disease, a large-scale study finds. Researchers used national health registers to identify 136,637 Swedish patients with no history of cardiovascular disease who were diagnosed with a stress-related disorder — a cluster of mental health conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder, triggered by acute trauma — from 1987 to 2013. The team compared each of these patients with siblings and with unrelated people of the same age and sex, both of whom had a clear bill of mental and heart health. In the patients’ first year after being diagnosed, those with a stress-related disorder had a 64 percent higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease than their siblings without a mental health diagnosis, and a 70 percent higher risk than unrelated patients, the scientists report. The cardiovascular disease accounted for included heart failure, arrhythmia, stroke, hypertension and heart attack. The study found that those with a stress-related disorder were most vulnerable in the year following their mental health diagnosis: They had four times the relative risk of heart failure compared with their siblings. After one year, the patients with a stress diagnosis had a 29 percent higher risk for all cardiovascular disease than their siblings. Over the course of 27 years, 10.5 percent of patients with stress-related disorders developed cardiovascular disease — compared with 8.4 percent of the sibling group and 6.9 percent of the general population group. The study, published April 10 in the British Medical Journal, builds on a growing body of research linking mental health with heart disease. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2019.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 26143 - Posted: 04.16.2019