By Karen Weintraub If the memory center of the human brain can grow new cells, it might help people recover from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), delay the onset of Alzheimer’s, deepen our understanding of epilepsy and offer new insights into memory and learning. If not, well then, it’s just one other way people are different from rodents and birds. For decades, scientists have debated whether the birth of new neurons—called neurogenesis—was possible in an area of the brain that is responsible for learning, memory and mood regulation. A growing body of research suggested they could, but then a Nature paper last year raised doubts. Now, a new study published today in another of the Nature family of journals—Nature Medicine—tips the balance back toward “yes.” In light of the new study, “I would say that there is an overwhelming case for the neurogenesis throughout life in humans,” Jonas Frisén, a professor at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, said in an e-mail. Frisén, who was not involved in the new research, wrote a News and Views about the study in the current issue of Nature Medicine. Not everyone was convinced. Arturo Alvarez-Buylla was the senior author on last year’s Nature paper, which questioned the existence of neurogenesis. Alvarez-Buylla, a professor of neurological surgery at the University of California, San Francisco, says he still doubts that new neurons develop in the brain’s hippocampus after toddlerhood. © 2019 Scientific American

Keyword: Neurogenesis
Link ID: 26082 - Posted: 03.26.2019

By Emily Underwood One of the thorniest debates in neuroscience is whether people can make new neurons after their brains stop developing in adolescence—a process known as neurogenesis. Now, a new study finds that even people long past middle age can make fresh brain cells, and that past studies that failed to spot these newcomers may have used flawed methods. The work “provides clear, definitive evidence that neurogenesis persists throughout life,” says Paul Frankland, a neuroscientist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada. “For me, this puts the issue to bed.” Researchers have long hoped that neurogenesis could help treat brain disorders like depression and Alzheimer’s disease. But last year, a study in Nature reported that the process peters out by adolescence, contradicting previous work that had found newborn neurons in older people using a variety of methods. The finding was deflating for neuroscientists like Frankland, who studies adult neurogenesis in the rodent hippocampus, a brain region involved in learning and memory. It “raised questions about the relevance of our work,” he says. But there may have been problems with some of this earlier research. Last year’s Nature study, for example, looked for new neurons in 59 samples of human brain tissue, some of which came from brain banks where samples are often immersed in the fixative paraformaldehyde for months or even years. Over time, paraformaldehyde forms bonds between the components that make up neurons, turning the cells into a gel, says neuroscientist María Llorens-Martín of the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Center in Madrid. This makes it difficult for fluorescent antibodies to bind to the doublecortin (DCX) protein, which many scientists consider the “gold standard” marker of immature neurons, she says. © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Neurogenesis
Link ID: 26081 - Posted: 03.26.2019

By Bernardo Kastrup In his 2014 book, Our Mathematical Universe, physicist Max Tegmark boldly claims that “protons, atoms, molecules, cells and stars” are all redundant “baggage.” Only the mathematical apparatus used to describe the behavior of matter is supposedly real, not matter itself. For Tegmark, the universe is a “set of abstract entities with relations between them,” which “can be described in a baggage-independent way”—i.e., without matter. He attributes existence solely to descriptions, while incongruously denying the very thing that is described in the first place. Matter is done away with and only information itself is taken to be ultimately real. This abstract notion, called information realism is philosophical in character, but it has been associated with physics from its very inception. Most famously, information realism is a popular philosophical underpinning for digital physics. The motivation for this association is not hard to fathom. Indeed, according to the Greek atomists, if we kept on dividing things into ever-smaller bits, at the end there would remain solid, indivisible particles called atoms, imagined to be so concrete as to have even particular shapes. Yet, as our understanding of physics progressed, we’ve realized that atoms themselves can be further divided into smaller bits, and those into yet smaller ones, and so on, until what is left lacks shape and solidity altogether. At the bottom of the chain of physical reduction there are only elusive, phantasmal entities we label as “energy” and “fields”—abstract conceptual tools for describing nature, which themselves seem to lack any real, concrete essence. © 2019 Scientific American

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 26080 - Posted: 03.26.2019

By Roni Caryn Rabin Pot brownies and other cannabis “edibles” like gummy bears that are sold online and where marijuana is legal may seem like harmless fun, but new research indicates that edibles may be more potent and potentially more dangerous than pot that is smoked or vaped. The new study analyzed thousands of cannabis-triggered emergency room visits in the greater Denver area, and found that edibles induced a disproportionate number of pot-related medical crises. Edibles were also more likely than inhaled pot to cause severe intoxication, acute psychiatric symptoms in people with no history of psychiatric illness and cardiovascular problems. Pot smokers, on the other hand, were more likely to have gastrointestinal complaints, including a vomiting condition called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, and they were more likely to be hospitalized if they needed emergency care. Emergency room doctors in Colorado started noticing several years ago that “there were a lot of visits associated with edibles, even though they were not the predominant product used, and they seemed to be sicker compared to those who inhaled,” said Dr. Andrew Monte, an associate professor of medicine and the lead author of the new study, published in Annals of Internal Medicine on Monday. He also noted that the only deaths in Colorado that have been definitively attributed to cannabis involved edibles, and those deaths were surprisingly violent. In all three incidents, including a murder and a suicide in 2014 and another suicide in 2015, the pot users exhibited extremely erratic behavior after consuming edibles, according to news reports and trial testimony. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26079 - Posted: 03.26.2019

Amy Fleming ‘This is what my brain looks like,” says David Nutt, showing me an intense abstract painting by a friend of his that is sitting on the windowsill in his office. Nutt’s base at Hammersmith hospital has a cosy, lived-in feel – a stark contrast to the gleaming white laboratory he oversees as director of the neuropsychopharmacology unit at Imperial College London. Lab coats hang on a hook by the door, an ancient kettle sits in the corner and next to the painting is an unruly collection of objects that offer clues to his research interests: brain-shaped awards, an atomic model of Nutt’s invention for detecting inflammation in the brain of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients, a poster for the 1967 film LSD Flesh of Devil and two carved wooden mushrooms – the final items hinting at his role at Imperial’s psychedelic research group. All that is missing is something to do with the demon drink, to reflect Nutt’s ambitious plan to bring a safe synthetic alcohol substitute called Alcarelle to the masses. Nutt has long been developing a holy grail of molecules – also referred to as “alcosynth” – that will provide the relaxing and socially lubricating qualities of alcohol, but without the hangovers, health issues and the risk of getting paralytic. It sounds too good to be true, and when I discuss the notion with two alcohol industry experts, they independently draw parallels with plans to colonise Mars. Yet Alcarelle finding its way into bars and shops is starting to look like a possibility. Seed funding was raised in November 2018, allowing Nutt and his business partner, David Orren, to attempt to raise £20m from investors to bring Alcarelle to market. “The industry knows alcohol is a toxic substance,” says Nutt. “If it were discovered today, it would be illegal as a foodstuff. The safe limit of alcohol, if you apply food standards criteria, would be one glass of wine a year.” © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26078 - Posted: 03.26.2019

By Malia Wollan “If you’re talking to a puppy, increase the pitch of your voice and slow the tempo,” says Mario Gallego-Abenza, a cognitive biologist and an author of a recent study analyzing canine response to human speech. People tend to use that high-register, baby-talk tone with all dogs, but it’s really only puppies under a year old that seem to like it. “With older dogs, just use your normal voice,” he says. Dogs can learn words. One well-studied border collie named Rico knew 200 objects by name and, like a toddler, could infer the names of novel objects by excluding things with labels he already knew. Use facial expressions, gestures and possibly food treats while you talk. “Maintain eye contact,” Gallego-Abenza says. Research shows that even wolves are attuned to the attention of human faces and that dogs are particularly receptive to your gaze and pointing gestures. Scientists disagree about whether dogs are capable of full-blown empathy, but studies suggest canines feel at least a form of primitive empathy known as “emotional contagion.” In one study, dogs that heard recordings of infants crying experienced the same spike in cortisol levels and alertness as their human counterparts. You might find yourself wondering: Is this dog even listening to me? Does it care? Look for the sorts of social cues you would seek in an attentive human listener. “Is the dog looking at you?” Gallego-Abenza says. “Is it getting closer?” You are a social animal; connection with other social animals can make you feel better about the world. Gallego-Abenza, no longer studying dogs, is now working on a doctorate at the University of Vienna focused on vocalizations between ravens. Last year, a couple contacted him, sure that they were able to converse with the birds in their garden. “Humans have this rich language, and we really want to communicate,” he says. “We think that every other animal is the same, but they’re not.” Go ahead and talk to dogs, but consider letting wild creatures alone to their own intraspecies squeaks, howls and whispers. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Animal Communication
Link ID: 26077 - Posted: 03.26.2019

By Gina Kolata Lucas was 5 before his parents, Bill and Marci Barton of Grand Haven, Mich., finally got an explanation for his difficulties standing up or climbing stairs. The diagnosis: muscular dystrophy. Mr. Barton turned to Google. “The first thing I read was, ‘no cure, in a wheelchair in their teens, pass in their 20s,” Mr. Barton said. “I stopped. I couldn’t read any more. I couldn’t handle it.” Then he found a reason to hope. For the first time ever, there are clinical trials — nearly two dozen — testing treatments that might actually stop the disease. The problem, as Mr. Barton soon discovered, is that the enrollment criteria are so restrictive that very few children qualify. As a result, families like the Bartons often are turned away. “There is so much hope, but it’s not for them,” said Kristin Stephenson, vice president of policy and advocacy at the Muscular Dystrophy Association in Chicago. Even for the parents whose lucky child qualifies, good news may be followed by agonizing, life-or-death choices. What treatments seem most promising? Should he be enrolled in a trial with a placebo arm? Should he be placed in a less risky study that aims to slow the progress of the disease but will not stop it? Should the parents take their chances with a trial now — or wait a year or two, as their child’s condition worsens, until something better comes along? Often there is no easy way to decide. “We talk to families every day,” said Debra Miller who founded the advocacy group, Cure Duchenne, after her son was diagnosed with the disease. “So many times they are looking at us and saying, ‘What do I do?’” © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Muscles
Link ID: 26076 - Posted: 03.25.2019

By Sandra G. Boodman “She never cried loudly enough to bother us,” recalled Natalia Weil of her daughter, who was born in 2011. Although Vivienne babbled energetically in her early months, her vocalizing diminished around the time of her first birthday. So did the quality of her voice, which dwindled from normal to raspy to little more than a whisper. Vivienne also was a late talker: She didn’t begin speaking until she was 2. Her suburban Maryland pediatrician initially suspected that a respiratory infection was to blame for the toddler’s hoarseness, and counseled patience. But after the problem persisted, the doctor diagnosed acid reflux and prescribed a drug to treat the voice problems reflux can cause. But Vivienne’s problem turned out to be far more serious — and unusual — than excess stomach acid. The day she learned what was wrong ranks among the worst of Weil’s life. “I had never heard of it,” said Weil, now 33, of her daughter’s diagnosis. “Most people haven’t.” The chronic illness seriously damaged Vivienne Weil’s voice. The 8-year-old has blossomed recently after a new treatment restored it. Her mother says she is eagerly making new friends and has become “a happy, babbly little girl.” (Natalia Weil) At first, Natalia, a statistician, and her husband, Jason, a photographer, were reassured by the pediatrician, who blamed a respiratory infection for their daughter’s voice problem. Her explanation sounded logical: Toddlers get an average of seven or eight colds annually. © 1996-2019 The Washington Post

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 26075 - Posted: 03.25.2019

By Laura Parker In the coming adventure video game Sea of Solitude, the main character — a young woman named Kay — navigates a partly submerged city as she faces a multitude of red-eyed scaly creatures. None are as terrifying as her own personal demons. As the game progresses, Kay realizes the creatures she is encountering are humans who turned into monsters when they became too lonely. To save herself, she fights to overcome her own loneliness. Kay was modeled after the game’s creative director, Cornelia Geppert of Jo-Mei Games, an independent game studio, who struggled after a 2013 breakup. “I felt like I was trapped in a cage,” Ms. Geppert, 37, said of her experience. Sea of Solitude, which Electronic Arts will publish this year, is among a growing number of video games that are tackling mental health issues. Last year, a game called Celeste explored depression and anxiety through a protagonist who had to avoid physical and emotional obstacles. In 2017’s fantasy action-adventure video game Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, a young Celtic warrior deals with psychosis. Other games in recent years, including Night in the Woods and Pry, have delved into self-identity, anger issues and post-traumatic stress disorder. All followed the 2013 interactive fiction game Depression Quest, which asked players to step into the shoes of a character living with depression. These games are a far cry from the industry’s better-known story lines of battlefield heroics or the zombie apocalypse. But as a cultural conversation around mental health grows louder, makers of content are responding. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one in five American adults lives with a mental illness. “Mental health is becoming a more central narrative in our culture, with greater efforts to normalize mental health challenges,” said Eve Crevoshay, executive director of Take This, a nonprofit that educates video game developers on best practices around portraying mental health. “With that trend comes response from creative industries, including games.” (Take This was founded in 2013 after the suicide of a video game journalist prompted a debate about the issue.) © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 26074 - Posted: 03.25.2019

By Marlene Cimons It can be difficult to sleep while pregnant. Any number of issues can interrupt sleep, including the frequent need to urinate, back pain, abdominal discomfort and shortness of breath, among others. Moreover, disruptive sleep during pregnancy can be risky for the fetus, contributing to curbing growth. But a recent study suggests that excessive, undisturbed sleep may be a problem, too. Sleeping continuously for nine or more hours may be related to the danger of late stillbirth, that is, the loss or death of a baby before or during delivery. “There’s been a lot of public attention paid to sleep deprivation and its impact on health, but not as much to lengthy — perhaps too much — sleep, especially when it comes to pregnancy,” said Louise O’Brien, research associate professor in the neurology sleep disorders center and in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan. “Women often worry when they wake up several times during the night when they are pregnant, but it may be protective in this case.” O’Brien and her colleagues analyzed online surveys from 153 women who had experienced a late stillbirth (on or after 28 weeks of pregnancy) during the month previous to answering the questionnaire and 480 women with an ongoing third-trimester pregnancy or who had recently delivered a live born baby during the same period. The findings, recently published in the journal Birth, suggest a connection between long periods of undisturbed maternal sleep and stillbirth, independent of other risk factors. Stillbirth affects about 1 percent of all pregnancies, or about 24,000 annually in the United States, many of them unexplained, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. © 1996-2019 The Washington Post

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 26073 - Posted: 03.25.2019

Allison Aubrey There are lots of reasons why many of us don't get the recommended seven hours or more of sleep each night. Travel schedules, work deadlines, TV bingeing and — a big one — having young children all take a toll. Research published recently in the journal Sleep finds that up to six years after the birth of a child, many mothers and fathers still don't sleep as much as they did before their child was born. For parents, there's just less time in the day to devote to yourself. So, can you catch up on sleep? That partly depends on how much sleep you've missed. A study in the current issue of Current Biology points to just how quickly the adverse effects of sleep deprivation can kick in. Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder recruited a bunch of young, healthy adults who agreed to a stay in a sleep lab. Some were allowed to sleep no more than five hours per night for five consecutive days. "After five days, people [gained] as much as 5 pounds," says study author Christopher Depner, who studies the links between sleep loss and metabolic diseases. Lack of sleep can throw off the hormones that regulate appetite, he explains, so people tend to eat more. Depner and his colleagues also documented a decrease in insulin sensitivity among the sleep-deprived participants. "In some people, it decreased to a level where they'd be considered pre-diabetic," he says. Presumably, that rise in blood sugar would be only temporary in these young, healthy people. But it's a striking indicator of how much a lack of sleep can influence metabolism. © 2019 npr

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 26072 - Posted: 03.25.2019

David Cox Claudia Kieffer remembers the first time she encountered the drug she describes as having “saved my life”. Eight years ago, Kieffer, who had suffered from treatment-resistant depression for decades, was given ketamine as a routine anaesthetic, as part of a post-mastectomy breast reconstruction procedure. But as well as alleviating the pain, Kieffer noticed an instantaneous change in her state of mind. “My head suddenly felt different to any previous time in my entire life,” she says. “I wasn’t high. It wasn’t like I had smoked a joint or had morphine. It was like a spring breeze had blown through my head and just cleaned out all the detritus that had built up over years and years. And when you’ve suffered from depression for as long as I had, it feels like you’re drowning. So when something comes along that makes you feel so very different and healthy, you want to know what that drug is.” Get Society Weekly: our newsletter for public service professionals Read more At the time, Kieffer had tried almost every depression-related treatment available, without success. “I’d had three nervous breakdowns and been hospitalised three times,” she remembers. “I’d had 13 rounds of electric-shock therapy and it didn’t help. When I was in my 20s and 30s, I would self-medicate, just because that’s what you do when you don’t know what else to do. I was thinking about taking my life every single day. I just wanted to fall asleep and not wake up.”

Keyword: Depression; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26071 - Posted: 03.25.2019

By Benedict Carey Whatever its other properties, memory is a reliable troublemaker, especially when navigating its stockpile of embarrassments and moral stumbles. Ten minutes into an important job interview and here come screenshots from a past disaster: the spilled latte, the painful attempt at humor. Two dates into a warming relationship and up come flashbacks of an earlier, abusive partner. The bad timing is one thing. But why can’t those events be somehow submerged amid the brain’s many other dimming bad memories? Emotions play a role. Scenes, sounds and sensations leave a deeper neural trace if they stir a strong emotional response; this helps you avoid those same experiences in the future. Memory is protective, holding on to red flags so they can be waved at you later, to guide your future behavior. But forgetting is protective too. Most people find a way to bury, or at least reshape, the vast majority of their worst moments. Could that process be harnessed or somehow optimized? Perhaps. In the past decade or so, brain scientists have begun to piece together how memory degrades and forgetting happens. A new study, published this month in the Journal of Neuroscience, suggests that some things can be intentionally relegated to oblivion, although the method for doing so is slightly counterintuitive. For the longest time, forgetting was seen as a passive process of decay and the enemy of learning. But as it turns out, forgetting is a dynamic ability, crucial to memory retrieval, mental stability and maintaining one’s sense of identity. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 26070 - Posted: 03.23.2019

By Jennifer Couzin-Franke Earlier this week, the Lieber Institute for Brain Development, a nonprofit housed at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, announced a new neuroscience research initiative that aims to tackle a gaping hole in medicine: the interplay between brain diseases and their genomic drivers among African-Americans. The goal is to better understand how brain diseases play out in this population, which has been profoundly underrepresented in neuroscience research. To build trust among African-Americans in Baltimore and eventually beyond, the venture includes a partnership with the African-American Clergy Medical Research Initiative, a group of clergy leaders in the city. African-American scientists at Lieber are already involved, but project leaders hope to engage those at other institutions as the work expands. The effort builds on Lieber’s rapidly growing brain bank, which now stands at about 3000 brains, with more than 400 new brains collected each year, all donated by next of kin. Many are from young and middle-aged people who die suddenly of suicide, drug overdose, or other causes. Although most of the brains are from people of European ancestry, more than 700 are from African-Americans. Despite growing recognition that African-Americans are underrepresented in medical research—and face discrimination and other hardships that can heighten health risks—study of brain diseases in this population have lagged behind, says Daniel Weinberger, the institute’s director. ScienceInsider spoke with Weinberger, a psychiatrist and schizophrenia researcher who came to the Lieber Institute in 2011 from the National Institute of Mental Health. The conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity. © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Alzheimers; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 26069 - Posted: 03.23.2019

By Emilia Clarke Just when all my childhood dreams seemed to have come true, I nearly lost my mind and then my life. I’ve never told this story publicly, but now it’s time. It was the beginning of 2011. I had just finished filming the first season of “Game of Thrones,” a new HBO series based on George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels. With almost no professional experience behind me, I’d been given the role of Daenerys Targaryen, also known as Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Lady of Dragonstone, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons. As a young princess, Daenerys is sold in marriage to a musclebound Dothraki warlord named Khal Drogo. It’s a long story—eight seasons long—but suffice to say that she grows in stature and in strength. She becomes a figure of power and self-possession. Before long, young girls would dress in platinum wigs and flowing robes to be Daenerys Targaryen for Halloween. The show’s creators, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, have said that my character is a blend of Napoleon, Joan of Arc, and Lawrence of Arabia. And yet, in the weeks after we finished shooting the first season, despite all the looming excitement of a publicity campaign and the series première, I hardly felt like a conquering spirit. I was terrified. Terrified of the attention, terrified of a business I barely understood, terrified of trying to make good on the faith that the creators of “Thrones” had put in me. I felt, in every way, exposed. In the very first episode, I appeared naked, and, from that first press junket onward, I always got the same question: some variation of “You play such a strong woman, and yet you take off your clothes. Why?” In my head, I’d respond, “How many men do I need to kill to prove myself?” © 2019 Condé Nast

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 26068 - Posted: 03.23.2019

By Veronique Greenwood The sun bears were making faces at each other. And that was a bit of a surprise. Comparative psychologists have been studying the facial expressions of primates like orangutans and gorillas for years. They have evolved in complex societies and thus need to be able to convey their joy, anger, and other emotions to their companions. But nobody had thought to look at creatures like sun bears, who live mostly solitary lives. Marina Davila-Ross, a primatologist at the University of Portsmouth in England, and her colleagues learned that a handful of the Southeast Asian bears, which primarily live alone in the wild, were in a rehabilitation center near the orangutan center in Malaysia where Dr. Davila-Ross was doing research. Curious about whether facial communication was more common in the animal kingdom that people thought, they deployed cameras to capture hours of footage of the bears interacting with each other. In a study published Thursday in Scientific Reports, they say that sun bears do use facial expressions to communicate, suggesting that the capacity to do so may be widespread, and that social creatures do not have a monopoly on expressing themselves this way. Sun bears are exceedingly solitary. A female’s one or two cubs will live with her for about two years, and then set off for lives on their own. Adults seem to rarely meet, except for mating. At the center, bears that cannot be released back into the wild live in enclosures in groups of five or six. For the bears, it was an unnatural setup — but it was perfect for the scientists. In their footage of 22 bears going about their daily lives, the scientists zeroed in on moments when the animals were playing, batting at each other and grappling good-humoredly. They watched for moments where the playing bears were looking into each other’s faces, and then they looked for certain facial expressions, like opening one’s mouth wide and showing teeth. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 26067 - Posted: 03.23.2019

Katarina Zimmer It’s well established that exercise is good for the mammalian brain. As early as 1999, researchers discovered considerably more newborn neurons in the hippocampi of mice that had access to a running wheel than in animals that didn’t. But 20 years later, scientists are still trying to understand why. A team of Australian and German researchers has uncovered one mechanism that explains how exercise boosts neurogenesis in mice: the activity causes platelets circulating in the blood to release factors that boost the growth of neural precursor cells in the hippocampus, the researchers report today (March 21) in Stem Cell Reports. “We all know about the positive effect of exercise on the brain and other organ systems, but what the actual mechanism is to promote new neuron production is still a bit of a mystery,” remarks Vince Tropepe, who studies neurogenesis at the University of Toronto and who was not involved in the study. “This paper is quite interesting in that they’ve identified a player—these platelets and platelet-derived factors that are circulating in the blood after exercise—that might be a mediator of this effect.” The researchers came to this conclusion through a series of experiments comparing mice that had access to a running wheel for four days with control mice that didn’t. Lab mice voluntarily run up to 10 kilometers per night, “equivalent to us running more than a marathon a day,” explains coauthor Tara Walker, a senior research associate at the Queensland Brain Institute. © 1986 - 2019 The Scientist

Keyword: Neurogenesis; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 26066 - Posted: 03.23.2019

Laura Sanders With great fanfare, a new antidepressant entered the U.S. market in March, the first fundamentally new medicine for depression in decades. Based on the anesthetic ketamine, the drug — called Spravato — is intended to help people with severe depression quickly, taking effect within hours or days instead of the weeks that typical antidepressants take. But for all the hubbub, big questions have gone unanswered about the drug, developed by Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Some psychiatrists are concerned that the drug was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration based on skimpy data, under standards that were less rigorous than those required for previous antidepressants. It remains unclear, for example, what happens as someone stops taking the drug, as well as whether it has long-term effects. The data on Spravato raise more questions than they answer, says psychiatrist Alan Schatzberg of Stanford University. “And I think that’s unfortunate.” Despite those unknowns, some psychiatrists are relieved to have another drug to try, particularly for people with depression so severe that other drugs have failed to help. Spravato “does something that very few things in psychiatry can do — it works for people who didn’t respond to other treatments, and it works fast,” says psychiatrist Dan Iosifescu of New York University’s School of Medicine. “I really welcome having another powerful tool in my toolbox.” |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2019

Keyword: Depression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 26065 - Posted: 03.23.2019

By Paul Raeburn When the brain remembers, proteins in two locations deep within the organ—the amygdala and hippocampus—encode the memory until it is stored, or “consolidated” in the vernacular. Neuroscientists once thought that a memory, when put in its place, became permanent and stable. That’s a problem for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), plagued by crippling, debilitating memories that they cannot shake. “We wish that we could somehow target unpleasant or pathological memories and reduce their emotional strength,” says Bryan A. Strange, founder of the Laboratory of Clinical Science at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. During the past two decades or so, it has become clear that these memories are not fixed and unshakable. They can be manipulated in ways that might ultimately ease the suffering of patients, not just ones with a PTSD diagnosis but also those afflicted by phobias, depression and other stress-related conditions. Strange is among the researchers looking for leads to tamp down toxic memories. He and his colleagues reported in a Science Advances paper on March 20 that the anesthetic propofol can be used to alter such recollections, if administered in the right circumstances. © 2019 Scientific American

Keyword: Stress; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 26064 - Posted: 03.22.2019

By Bahar Gholipour Philosophers have spent millennia debating whether we have free will, without reaching a conclusive answer. Neuroscientists optimistically entered the field in the 1980s, armed with tools they were confident could reveal the origin of actions in the brain. Three decades later, they have reached the same conclusion as the philosophers: Free will is complicated. Now, a new research program spanning 17 universities and backed by more than $7 million from two private foundations hopes to break out the impasse by bringing neuroscientists and philosophers together. The collaboration, the researchers say, can help them tackle two important questions: What does it take to have free will? And whatever that is, do we have it? Neuroscience’s first and most famous encounter with free will occurred in 1983, when physiologist Benjamin Libet made a peculiar discovery. A brain signal called the readiness potential was known to precede self-initiated actions, such as raising a hand or spontaneously tapping a finger. Libet found the readiness potential starts to rise before people report they are aware of their decision to move. Many took that as a challenge to the existence of free will. But subsequent studies argued that was a flawed interpretation, and that the results said little about free will. © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 26063 - Posted: 03.22.2019