By LISA SANDERS, M.D. “Have you been to see your doctor?” the woman asked her 72-year-old mother anxiously. Her mother had come from Miami to visit her in New York. They hadn’t seen each other for a couple of months, and her daughter hardly recognized her. Her mother had been slender; now, she looked emaciated. Her usually bright eyes peered dully above her newly prominent cheekbones. But it was more than that — the unrelentingly cheerful, energetic, outgoing woman she had known her entire life had disappeared. Now her mother spoke of nothing but how awful she felt and spent most of her day in bed. It started a couple of months earlier when the mother and her partner were traveling in Italy for a month. While there, she began to feel irritable. She had fallen in love with this man eight years earlier — two years after the sudden death of her husband. And their years together had been happy ones. But on this trip, everything about him, about their relationship, began to grate on her. Suddenly she didn’t want to travel with him; she didn’t even want to see him. Indeed, she didn’t want to see anyone. When she got home, she felt no better. She was a psychologist and recognized the symptoms of anxiety. She had never felt this before, but she had seen it in her patients. She went back to the psychiatrist she saw a few times after her husband died. Yes, the therapist agreed, she did seem anxious. She was also depressed. The woman accepted the psychiatric diagnoses, but told her therapist that it wasn’t just her mind; her body felt like it was too fatigued to do the work of living. But of course, the therapist told her, your mind is part of your body. People, especially older people, often feel symptoms of depression in their bodies — feeling sick and tired rather than sad. The woman started taking an antidepressant and saw the psychiatrist once a week. When that didn’t help, the psychiatrist tried another drug. When she was still no better, she saw another psychiatrist, who added an antipsychotic. By the time the mother went to visit her daughter, she was on four medications: one for anxiety, two for depression and one for her insomnia. Yet she remained anxious, depressed and unable to sleep. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 24549 - Posted: 01.22.2018

By Kate Baggaley The pain came without warning. It was February of last year, and the man was eating dinner. He’d just reached for a glass of wine. “It really burned my mouth when I started to drink,” says Greg (the healthcare worker in Toronto asked for his name to be changed). The odd and disquieting sensation had no apparent cause—no burns or cuts or other injuries. Yet the burning and tingling Greg felt on his tongue and the roof of his mouth persisted. “It was very intense during the middle of the day and then subsided at nighttime,” he says. Perhaps, he was told when finally visiting the family doctor months later, the pain was related to a yeast infection on the tongue. But the prescribed anti-fungal medication made no difference. Next Greg saw a dentist, who found no abnormalities in his mouth and recommended he get a blood test to rule out an autoimmune disorder. Eventually, though, one of Greg’s doctors referred him to Miriam Grushka, an oral medicine specialist in Toronto. Grushka has spent decades studying and treating Greg's condition, which is called burning mouth syndrome. “People say they feel like they burnt their tongue on a cup of coffee, but the burning never went away,” says Grushka. “In the vast majority of cases it’s benign, but it’s very uncomfortable.” Each week, she sees around 15 patients who have burning mouth syndrome or similar conditions. These hallucinations, or phantoms, are characterized by a taste or feeling in the mouth that will not go away. Oral phantoms are often treatable, and are rooted not in the mouth but the brain. But much else about these phantom feelings is still a mystery. Grushka and other researchers are still unraveling why they happen and how to banish them. © 2018 Popular Science.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 24548 - Posted: 01.22.2018

Amy Maxmen A puzzle posed by segments of 'dark matter' in genomes — long, winding strands of DNA with no obvious functions — has teased scientists for more than a decade. Now, a team has finally solved the riddle. The conundrum has centred on DNA sequences that do not encode proteins, and yet remain identical across a broad range of animals. By deleting some of these ‘ultraconserved elements’, researchers have found that these sequences guide brain development by fine-tuning the expression of protein-coding genes. The results1, published on 18 January in Cell, might help researchers to better understand neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s. They also validate the hypotheses of scientists who have speculated that all ultraconserved elements are vital to life — despite the fact that researchers knew very little about their functions. “People told us we should have waited to publish until we knew what they did. Now I’m like, dude, it took 14 years to figure this out,” says Gill Bejerano, a genomicist at Stanford University in California, who described ultraconserved elements in 20042. Bejerano and his colleagues originally noticed ultraconserved elements when they compared the human genome to those of mice, rats and chickens, and found 481 stretches of DNA that were incredibly similar across the species. That was surprising, because DNA mutates from generation to generation — and these animal lineages have been evolving independently for up to 200 million years. © 2018 Macmillan Publishers Limited

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Epigenetics
Link ID: 24547 - Posted: 01.20.2018

Laura Sanders Nerve cells in the brain make elaborate connections and exchange lightning-quick messages that captivate scientists. But these cells also sport simpler, hairlike protrusions called cilia. Long overlooked, the little stubs may actually have big jobs in the brain. Researchers are turning up roles for nerve cell cilia in a variety of brain functions. In a region of the brain linked to appetite, for example, cilia appear to play a role in preventing obesity, researchers report January 8 in three studies in Nature Genetics. Cilia perched on nerve cells may also contribute to brain development, nerve cell communication and possibly even learning and memory, other research suggests. “Perhaps every neuron in the brain possesses cilia, and most neuroscientists don’t know they’re there,” says Kirk Mykytyn, a cell biologist at Ohio State University College of Medicine in Columbus. “There’s a big disconnect there.” Most cells in the body — including those in the brain — possess what’s called a primary cilium, made up of lipid molecules and proteins. The functions these appendages perform in parts of the body are starting to come into focus (SN: 11/3/12, p. 16). Cilia in the nose, for example, detect smell molecules, and cilia on rod and cone cells in the eye help with vision. But cilia in the brain are more mysterious. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2017.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 24546 - Posted: 01.20.2018

Paula Span When Ann Vandervelde visited her primary care doctor in August, he had something new to show her. Dr. Barak Gaster, an internist at the University of Washington School of Medicine, had spent three years working with specialists in geriatrics, neurology, palliative care and psychiatry to come up with a five-page document that he calls a dementia-specific advance directive. In simple language, it maps out the effects of mild, moderate and severe dementia, and asks patients to specify which medical interventions they would want — and not want — at each phase of the illness. “Patients stumble into the advanced stage of dementia before anyone identifies it and talks to them about what’s happening,” Dr. Gaster told me. “At what point, if ever, would they not want medical interventions to keep them alive longer? A lot of people have strong opinions about this, but it’s hard to figure out how to let them express them as the disease progresses.” One of those with strong opinions, it happens, was Ms. Vandervelde, 71, an abstract painter in Seattle. Her father had died of dementia years before, in a nursing home after her mother could no longer care for him at home. Ms. Vandervelde had also spent time with dementia patients as a hospice volunteer. Further, caring for her mother in her final year, Ms. Vandervelde had seen how family conflicts could flare over medical decisions. “I was not going to leave that choice to my children if I could spare them that,” she said. So when Dr. Gaster explained his directive, “it just made so much sense,” Ms. Vandervelde said. “While I could make these decisions, why not make them? I filled it out right there.” © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 24545 - Posted: 01.20.2018

Lions, elephants, and baboons are matriarchies that are female-centric in different ways, for different reasons. Lion mothers form ‘daycare centres’ to nurse their young and sisters band together to hunt for their families. It’s not the male who’s the bread-winner — it’s the female. Elephants are led by the eldest female who knows all the watering holes and strategies for survival. Her age and memory of how to survive the long dry season is key in a climate plagued by drought. Baboons have a female royal family where, surprisingly, it’s the youngest female who ascends to the throne. Mommy Wildest is an intimate story – the ”days of our lives” of these families, with individual characters whose challenges we follow: the Ol Dikidiki pride of lionesses raising their 11 cubs; Donatella, the elephant grandmother who leads her family to safety from gunshots shielding them from danger, and bay Rijeka, the baboon princess surrounded by her sisters. Mommy Wildest also follows the leading scientists in their field who’ve been asking: Why did these three societies evolve into matriarchies? What can humans learn from them? Dr. Craig Packer IS the lion king. He’s the foremost lion expert in the world and has been studying lions for more than 40 years. In this film, he travels to Maasai Mara to visit one of the richest concentrations of lions left in the world, and to meet the Ol Dikidiki pride. It was Dr. Packer who determined why lionesses bond together in sisterhoods –it’s to defend against roving males who would kill their cubs and take over the pride. By working together, the sisters can defend against the much stronger male. ©2018 CBC/Radio-Canada.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 24544 - Posted: 01.20.2018

By Anna Azvolinsky David Julius entered the biochemistry graduate program at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1977. “It was all one foot in front of the other. I wasn’t trying to figure out what I would be doing in 10 years,” says the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) professor of physiology. “When I arrived, I thought, ‘Classes are pretty much over. This is like a real job, and I can just go in the lab and do my thing.’” Julius joined the UC Berkeley lab of Jeremy Thorner, who was studying hormonal signaling and trying to understand how budding yeast cells switch mating type. Randy Schekman, a Berkeley researcher who worked on protein secretion and vesicular transport, served as Julius’s coadvisor. “What was great about Jeremy and Randy was that they were both trained as biochemists and then had decided to take advantage of the yeast genetic system to understand the biochemistry of cellular signaling.” Haploid yeast cells can be either “type a” or “type α,” and mate with cells of the opposite type. Julius worked on the synthesis of alpha factor, one of two mating hormones produced and secreted by yeast. His graduate studies produced three Cell papers. The first, published in 1983, reported that a class of enzymes, the dipeptidyl aminopeptidases, is necessary to cleave a longer precursor of alpha factor into the final 13-amino-acid peptide. To identify the specific dipeptidyl aminopeptidase and elucidate its role, Julius took advantage of yeast mutants, including one called ste13 (for sterile 13), which cannot produce normal alpha factor. It was the first time anyone had characterized the biochemical functioning of one of the yeast sterile mutants. © 1986-2018 The Scientist

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 24543 - Posted: 01.20.2018

By Kimberly Hickok A rooster’s crow is so loud, it can deafen you if you stand too close. So how do the birds keep their hearing? To find out, researchers attached recorders to the heads of three roosters, just below the base of their skulls. Crows lasted 1 to 2 seconds and averaged more than 130 decibels. That’s about the same intensity as standing 15 meters away from a jet taking off. One rooster’s crows reached more than 143 decibels, which is more like standing in the middle of an active aircraft carrier. The researchers then used a micro–computerized tomography scan to create a 3D x-ray image of the birds’ skulls. When a rooster’s beak is fully open, as it is when crowing, a quarter of the ear canal completely closes and soft tissue covers 50% of the eardrum, the team reports in a paper in press at Zoology. This means roosters aren’t capable of hearing their own crows at full strength. The intensity of a rooster’s crow diminishes greatly with distance, so it probably doesn’t cause significant hearing loss in nearby hens. But if it did, she’d likely be OK. Unlike mammals, birds can quickly regenerate hair cells in the inner ear if they become damaged. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 24542 - Posted: 01.20.2018

Bruce Bower Smell has a reputation as a second-rate human sense. But that assumption stinks once hunter-gatherers enter the picture. Semaq Beri hunter-gatherers, who live in tropical forests on the eastern side of the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia, name various odors as easily as they name colors, say psycholinguist Asifa Majid and linguist Nicole Kruspe. Yet Semelai rice farmers, who live in forest outposts near the Semaq Beri and speak a closely related language, find odors much more difficult to name than colors, the researchers report online January 18 in Current Biology. By including members of a farming community that inhabit a common forest environment and speak a similar language, the new study indicates for the first time that the cultural practices of hunter-gatherers help enhance their odor-naming ability — and possibly their smell-detection skills — relative to settled peoples. Neuroscientist and odor researcher John McGann of Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J., calls these results “unexpected and deeply interesting.” Genetics apparently interact with personal experiences of different smells and one’s cultural background to produce odor-naming abilities, McGann says. Previous research has found that like Semelai farmers, Westerners describe colors far more easily than smells. People in Western societies often talk about odors by resorting to analogies, such as “It smells like banana.” Semaq Beri hunter-gatherers usually used specific terms for a range of odors as well as colors, say Majid of Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and Kruspe of Lund University in Sweden. These forest dwellers are attuned to odors by virtue of their lifestyle and culture, the investigators propose. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2017.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 24541 - Posted: 01.19.2018

By Yasemin Saplakoglu In Harry Potter, the young wizard is given a piece of parchment called the Marauder’s map on which is a detailed layout of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The magical map reveals the movements of people (and ghosts) through the school with evanescing ink footsteps. In the hippocampus—a small horseshoe-shaped area of mammalian brains—there is a kind of Marauder’s map, which keeps track of other individuals’ movements. Two new studies published last week in Science show the hippocampus is not only responsible for figuring out an animal’s own position in space—something previously known—but also that of others. This finding explains why soccer games do not always end up with a pile of humans in the middle of the field—players are really good at not bumping into one another. In 1971 John O’Keefe, a neuroscientist at University College London (U.C.L.), and his student Jonathan Dostrovsky discovered “place cells”—neurons in the hippocampus that fire when an animal goes to a specific spot in space. This finding earned O’Keefe a Nobel Prize in 2014. But until recently research had only looked at how the brain maps an animal’s own position. Being able to map where others are in space, “is important for any kind of social interactions [such as] courtship, coordinated hunting [and] monitoring the position of predators or prey,” says Nachum Ulanovsky, a neurobiologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and senior author of one of the studies. “Here, in one bang, we had two studies in two different species of mammals showing [how the brain does this] for the first time.” © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 24540 - Posted: 01.19.2018

Hanneke Meijer Even though I am better with dead birds than with living ones, I do enjoy watching them. Their behaviour is fascinating, and as Jennifer Ackerman points out in her book, birds are a lot more intelligent than we often give them credit for. But what do we know about the evolution of bird intelligence? How did the bird brain evolve, and when did it take on its “birdiness”? The fossil record isn’t particularly well-suited for the preservation of soft tissue such as brains – and behaviour doesn’t fossilise at all. However, some inferences regarding behaviour can be made based on anatomy, something the fossil record is rife with. When we look at the anatomical evidence of bird behaviour in the fossil record (Naish, 2014), it becomes clear that certain types of behaviour we see in modern birds – such as colonial nesting, parental care and plumage display – evolved a long time ago, and are likely dinosaurian in origin. The avian brain itself is a modified version of the basic archosaur brain (archosaurs are the group of reptiles that gave rise to crocodiles and dinosaurs). The archosaur brain, as seen in living crocodiles, is a relatively simple, tube-like structure consisting of the hindbrain, mid-brain and forebrain along a central axis. The bird brain has undergone significant enlargement of the forebrain and has folded along its main axis, resulting in a distinctive shape. Unfortunately, no fossilised bird brain has yet been found, but the shape and size of the inner brain cavity in fossilised skulls provides some information about brain shape and maximal brain dimensions. It should be noted here that the brain cavity is never an exact representation of the brain itself, as a significant portion of the endocranial space can be taken up by blood vessels, other soft tissues and fluid. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 24539 - Posted: 01.19.2018

By JAN HOFFMAN The California case in which 13 siblings were found imprisoned at home earlier this week is shocking, but not without precedent. Lurid cases have come to light over the years of children locked in closets and basements, held captive by parents who have crumbled under the weight of drugs, extreme religious conviction, personality disorders or their own abusive backgrounds. The good news, trauma experts say, is that recovery is indeed possible. Victims can reclaim their lives. “The clinical data is encouraging,” said John A. Fairbank, co-director of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress. “There are good treatments available for children seriously abused and traumatized.” In particular, said Dr. Fairbank, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke, good results have been shown with a relatively short-term cognitive behavioral therapy tailored for trauma patients, an approach developed in the early 1990s but widely disseminated in the last 15 years. A significant hurdle to recovery for the California siblings and children in analogous situations, said psychologists, is that their captors were not stranger-kidnappers but their parents. “In doing the healing work, you look at what the patient’s support systems are, “ said Priscilla Dass-Brailsford, a trauma psychologist and an adjunct professor in the department of psychiatry at Georgetown University. “The biggest supports are parents and family. These kids don’t have that. The parents were the aggressors.” Experts interviewed for this article, who underscored that they had no direct knowledge of the California case, said that because the siblings’ primal assurance of unconditional love and safety had been ripped away, they would almost certainly struggle to trust and attach to future supportive figures. “The notion that this was done by parents increases a child’s helplessness and hopelessness,” said Nora J. Baladerian, a Los Angeles psychologist who often treats traumatized individuals. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 24538 - Posted: 01.19.2018

Tom Goldman We live in an age of heightened awareness about concussions. From battlefields around the world to football fields in the U.S., we've heard about the dangers caused when the brain rattles around inside the skull and the possible link between concussions and the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy. A number of high-profile NFL stars have developed CTE, and parents are increasingly worried about how concussions may affect their children who play sports. The injury even has become part of popular culture, thanks to the 2015 film Concussion. But now a high-powered team of researchers says all that focus on concussions may be missing the mark. It's really about hits A study published online Thursday in Brain, a journal of neurology, presents the strongest case yet that repetitive hits to the head that don't lead to concussions —meaning no loss of consciousness or other symptoms that can include headaches, dizziness, vision problems or confusion — cause CTE. "We've had an inkling that subconcussive hits — the ones that don't [show] neurological signs and symptoms — may be associated with CTE," says Dr. Lee Goldstein, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine and the lead investigator on the study. "We now have solid scientific evidence to say that is so." And this evidence, he says, leaves researchers "terrifically concerned." © 2018 npr

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 24537 - Posted: 01.19.2018

By Esther Landhuis As the sun went down on a recent Friday, the hospital clinic buzzed with activity. “Loads of patients turned up without appointments,” says Sarah Tabrizi, a neurologist at University College London. It wasn’t just the typical post-holiday rush. Many rushed in, Tabrizi suspects, after hearing news last month about a potential new therapy for Huntington’s disease, a brain disorder that cripples the body and blurs speech and thinking, sometimes not too long after a person’s 30th birthday. Like other neurodegenerative disorders such as Lou Gehrig’s, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s has no cure. Over decades biotech companies have poured billions of dollars into developing and testing pharmaceuticals for these devastating conditions, only to unleash storms of disappointment. Yet in December a ray of something approximating hope poked through when a California company released preliminary findings from its small Huntington’s study. Results from this early-stage clinical trial have not yet been published or reported at medical meetings. But some researchers have growing confidence that the drug should work for Huntington’s and perhaps other diseases with clear genetic roots. The initial data showed enough promise to convince Roche to license the drug from California-based Ionis Pharmaceuticals, which sponsored the recent Huntington’s trial. The pharma giant paid Ionis $45 million for the right to conduct further studies and work with regulatory agencies to bring the experimental therapy to market. © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 24536 - Posted: 01.17.2018

Two independent teams of scientists from the University of Utah and the University of Massachusetts Medical School have discovered that a gene crucial for learning, called Arc, can send its genetic material from one neuron to another by employing a strategy commonly used by viruses. The studies, both published in Cell, unveil a new way that nervous system cells interact. “This work is a great example of the importance of basic neuroscience research,” said Edmund Talley, Ph.D., a program director at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health. “What began as an effort to examine the behavior of a gene involved in memory and implicated in neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease has unexpectedly led to the discovery of an entirely new process, which neurons may use to send genetic information to one another.” While Arc is known to play a vital role in the brain’s ability to store new information, little is known about precisely how it works. In addition, previous studies had detailed similarities between the Arc protein and proteins found in certain viruses like HIV, but it was unclear how those commonalities influenced the behavior of the Arc protein. The University of Utah researchers began their examination of the Arc gene by introducing it into bacterial cells. To their surprise, when the cells made the Arc protein, it clumped together into a form that resembled a viral capsid, the shell that contains a virus’ genetic information. The Arc “capsids” appeared to mirror viral capsids in their physical structure as well as their behavior and other properties.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 24535 - Posted: 01.17.2018

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS Our skeletons may help to keep our weight stable, according to a fascinating new study with animals. The study suggests that bones could be much more intimately involved in tracking weight and controlling appetite than scientists realized. It also raises interesting questions about whether a sedentary lifestyle could cause us to pack on pounds in part by discombobulating our sensitive bones. There is no question that our bodies like to maintain whatever weight they have sustained for any period of time. This is in large part because of our biological predilection for homeostasis, or physiological stability, which prompts our bodies to regain any weight that we lose and, in theory, lose any weight that we gain. To achieve this stability, however, our bodies have to be able to sense how much we weigh, note when that weight changes, and respond accordingly, as if we contained an internal bathroom scale. It has not been clear how our bodies manage this trick. Some years ago, scientists did discover one of the likely mechanisms, which involves leptin, a hormone released by fat cells. In broad terms, when people add fat, they produce more leptin, which then jump-starts processes in the brain that reduce appetite and should cause their bodies to drop that new weight. But obviously this system is not perfect or no one would hold on to added pounds. So for the new study, which was published this month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international group of researchers began to wonder whether there might be other processes at work. To find out, they first gathered groups of mice and rats. They chose both species, hoping that, if any results were common to each, this might indicate that they also could occur in other mammals, including, potentially, us. Then the scientists implanted tiny capsules into each rodent’s abdomen. Some contained weights equaling about 15 percent of each animal’s body mass. Others were empty. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 24534 - Posted: 01.17.2018

Nicola Davis Obese patients undergoing stomach-shrinking surgery have half the risk of death in the years that follow compared with those tackling their weight through diet and behaviour alone, new research suggests. Experts say obesity surgery is cost-effective, leads to substantial weight loss and can help tackle type 2 diabetes. But surgeons say not enough of the stomach-shrinking surgeries are carried out in the UK, with figures currently lagging behind other European countries, including France and Belgium – despite the latter having a smaller population. “We don’t think this [new study] alone is sufficient to conclude that obese patients should push for bariatric surgery, but this additional information certainly seems to provide additional support,” said Philip Greenland, co-author of the latest study from Northwestern University. In the new study, one of several on obesity surgery published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers sought to explore whether stomach-shrinking operations, known as bariatric surgery, had a long-term impact on the risk of death among obese individuals, compared with non-surgical approaches to weight loss. In total, more than 33,500 participants were involved in the study – 8,385 of whom had one of three types of bariatric surgery between 2005 and 2014. The majority of participants had a BMI greater than 35; obesity is defined as a BMI of 30 or higher. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 24533 - Posted: 01.17.2018

By Catherine Offord When Floris Klumpers zapped people with electricity while working toward his PhD in the late 2000s, he expected his volunteers’ amygdalae—key emotion centers in the brain—to light up in anticipation of a shock. “There was this idea that the amygdala is the most important structure in emotion processing—especially in fear processing,” says Klumpers, then at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. “We were quite surprised, using fMRI studies, to not find amygdala activity when people were anticipating an adverse event.” Klumpers assumed he’d made a mistake, but after replicating the finding in further experimental work, he began thinking about the different stages of animals’ fear responses. First, there’s anticipation, during which an individual becomes alert and plans reactions to possible danger. Then there’s confrontation, when it has to act to avoid imminent danger. Perhaps, Klumpers reasoned, the brain’s fear-processing regions treat these two phases differently. To investigate, Klumpers, now a neuroscientist at Radboud University Medical Center, and colleagues recently collected data from more than 150 volunteers, who received mild electrical shocks to their fingers as they viewed a computer. “We have a simple cue on the screen that can predict the occurrence of an electrical stimulation,” Klumpers says. In one set of experiments, for example, a yellow square meant a shock was likely, while a blue square signaled no shock for the time being. Meanwhile, the researchers monitored participants’ heart rates and imaged their brains using fMRI. © 1986-2018 The Scientist

Keyword: Emotions; Stress
Link ID: 24532 - Posted: 01.16.2018

Ian Sample Science editor Donatella Versace finds it in the conflict of ideas, Jack White under pressure of deadlines. For William S Burroughs, an old Dadaist trick helped: cutting pages into pieces and rearranging the words. Every artist has their own way of generating original ideas, but what is happening inside the brain might not be so individual. In new research, scientists report signature patterns of neural activity that mark out those who are most creative. “We have identified a pattern of brain connectivity that varies across people, but is associated with the ability to come up with creative ideas,” said Roger Beaty, a psychologist at Harvard University. “It’s not like we can predict with perfect accuracy who’s going to be the next Einstein, but we can get a pretty good sense of how flexible a given person’s thinking is.” Creative thinking is one of the primary drivers of cultural and technological change, but the brain activity that underpins original thought has been hard to pin down. In an effort to shed light on the creative process, Beaty teamed up with colleagues in Austria and China to scan people’s brains as they came up with original ideas. The scientists asked the volunteers to perform a creative thinking task as they lay inside a brain scanner. While the machine recorded their white matter at work, the participants had 12 seconds to come up with the most imaginative use for an object that flashed up on a screen. Three independent scorers then rated their answers. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Attention; Brain imaging
Link ID: 24531 - Posted: 01.16.2018

By LAURA BEIL Millions of American children have been exposed to a parasite that could interfere with their breathing, liver function, eyesight and even intelligence. Yet few scientists have studied the infection in the United States, and most doctors are unaware of it. The parasites, roundworms of the genus Toxocara, live in the intestines of cats and dogs, especially strays. Microscopic eggs from Toxocara are shed in the animals’ feces, contaminating yards, playgrounds and sandboxes. These infectious particles cling to the hands of children playing outside. Once swallowed, the eggs soon hatch, releasing larvae that wriggle through the body and, evidence suggests, may even reach the brain, compromising learning and cognition. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention periodically tracks positive tests for Toxocara through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The latest report, published in September in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, estimated that about 5 percent of the United States population — or about 16 million people — carry Toxocara antibodies in their blood, a sign they have ingested the eggs. But the risk is not evenly shared: Poor and minority populations are more often exposed. The rate among African Americans was almost 7 percent, according to the C.D.C. Among people living below the poverty line, the infection rate was 10 percent. The odds of a positive test rise with age, but it’s unknown whether this reflects recent infections or simply an accumulation of antibodies from past encounters. Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, calls Toxocara both one of the most common parasites in the country and arguably the most neglected. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 24530 - Posted: 01.16.2018