By WILLIAM GRIMES Marian C. Diamond, a neuroscientist who overturned long-held beliefs by showing that environmental factors can change the structure of the brain and that the brain continues to develop throughout one’s life, died on July 25 at her home in Oakland, Calif. She was 90. Her son Richard Diamond confirmed the death. Dr. Diamond’s most celebrated study was of the preserved brain of Albert Einstein, in the 1980s, but it was her work two decades earlier, at the University of California, Berkeley, that had the most lasting impact. Dr. Diamond was an instructor at Cornell University in the late 1950s when she read a paper in Science magazine showing that rats who navigated mazes quickly had a different brain chemistry than slower rats. They showed much higher levels of acetylcholinesterase, an enzyme that accelerates the transmission of neural signals. “What a thrill I had when my mind jumped immediately to the question, ‘I wonder if the anatomy of these brains would also show a difference in learning ability?’ ” Dr. Diamond wrote in an autobiographical essay for the Society for Neuroscience. She was able to test her theory after joining a team at Berkeley led by Mark R. Rosenzweig, one of the authors of the Science paper. To gauge the effects of environment on performance, Dr. Rosenzweig and his colleagues had begun raising rats in so-called enriched cages, outfitted with ladders and wheels, in the company of other rats. The rats in a control group were raised alone in bare cages. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 23966 - Posted: 08.17.2017

David Cyranoski Neuroscientists who painstakingly map the twists and turns of neural circuitry through the brain are about to see their field expand to an industrial scale. A huge facility set to open in Suzhou, China, next month should transform high-resolution brain mapping, its developers say. Where typical laboratories might use one or two brain-imaging systems, the new facility boasts 50 automated machines that can rapidly slice up a mouse brain, snap high-definition pictures of each slice and reconstruct those into a 3D picture. This factory-like scale will “dramatically accelerate progress”, says Hongkui Zeng, a molecular biologist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, Washington, which is partnering with the centre. “Large-scale, standardized data generation in an industrial manner will change the way neuroscience is done,” she says. The institute, which will also image human brains, aims to be an international hub that will help researchers to map neural connectivity for everything from studies of Alzheimer’s disease to brain-inspired artificial-intelligence projects, says Qingming Luo, a researcher in biomedical imaging at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in Wuhan, China. Luo leads the new facility, called the HUST-Suzhou Institute for Brainsmatics, which has a 5-year budget of 450 million yuan (US$67 million) and will employ some 120 scientists and technicians. Luo, who calls himself a “brainsmatician”, also built the institute’s high-speed brain-imaging systems. “There will be large demand, for sure,” says Josh Huang, a neuroscientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, which is also partnering with the Chinese institute. Access to high-throughput, rapid brain mapping could transform neuro-scientists’ understanding of how neurons are connected in the brain, he says — just as high-throughput sequencing helped geneticists to untangle the human genome in the 2000s. “This will have a major impact on building cell-resolution brain atlases in multiple species,” he says. © 2017 Macmillan Publishers Limited

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 23965 - Posted: 08.16.2017

By Jenna Gallegos Pathogens are real jerks. As if infecting and killing plants and animals isn’t bad enough, they can also turn their hosts into zombies that spread the pathogens to their next victim. Now scientists report that bacteria make some victims summon other victims as their dying act. The bacteria hijack the chemical signaling pathway of insects, making them release a burst of hormones that serve as a beacon to attract friends and potential mates right before the bacteria kill off the host. Like malware marauding as an enticing link, the bacteria attract and then infect. Fruit flies are generally pretty good at avoiding hazards. They can detect when food is infected with a dangerous mold or when a parasitic wasp is nearby, said Markus Knaden, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, who was involved in the study. In both cases, the flies won’t lay their eggs near the infectious agent. That’s why Knaden and colleagues at Cornell University were so surprised when they found that flies were actually attracted to other insects with a certain bacterial infection. “If you’re sitting in a theater and someone next to you is coughing, you move to another chair,” said Bill Hansson, one of the Max Planck authors of the study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications. They expected flies to behave the same way, but instead, healthy flies found their sick friends to be extremely attractive. © 1996-2017 The Washington Post

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 23964 - Posted: 08.16.2017

Alice H. Eagly It’s no secret that Silicon Valley employs many more men than women in tech jobs. What’s much harder to agree on is why. The recent anti-diversity memo by a now former Google engineer has pushed this topic into the spotlight. The writer argued there are ways to explain the gender gap in tech that don’t rely on bias and discrimination – specifically, biological sex differences. Setting aside how this assertion would affect questions about how to move toward greater equity in tech fields, how well does his wrap-up represent what researchers know about the science of sex and gender? As a social scientist who’s been conducting psychological research about sex and gender for almost 50 years, I agree that biological differences between the sexes likely are part of the reason we see fewer women than men in the ranks of Silicon Valley’s tech workers. But the road between biology and employment is long and bumpy, and any causal connection does not rule out the relevance of nonbiological causes. Here’s what the research actually says. There is no direct causal evidence that biology causes the lack of women in tech jobs. But many, if not most, psychologists do give credence to the general idea that prenatal and early postnatal exposure to hormones such as testosterone and other androgens affect human psychology. In humans, testosterone is ordinarily elevated in males from about weeks eight to 24 of gestation and also during early postnatal development. © 2010–2017, The Conversation US, Inc.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 23963 - Posted: 08.16.2017

Paul Martin Sir Patrick Bateson, who has died aged 79, was a scientist whose work advanced the understanding of the biological origins of behaviour. He will also be remembered as a man of immense warmth and kindness, whose success as a leader, teacher and administrator of science owed much to his collaborative spirit, generosity and good humour. He was a key figure in ethology – the biological study of animal behaviour. As well as being a conceptual thinker who revelled in painting the big theoretical picture, he was an accomplished experimental scientist. He published extensively, with more than 300 journal papers and several books to his name. His early research was on imprinting – a specialised form of early learning in which young animals rapidly learn about key features of their environment, such as the distinguishing characteristics of their parent or a desirable mate. He later worked with Gabriel Horn on unravelling the neurobiological mechanisms that underpin this learning. A related interest was the biology of mate choice, where he revealed how young animals could strike an optimal balance between outbreeding and inbreeding. His research achievements led to his election as fellow of the Royal Society in 1983. Another scientific focus was the role of play behaviour in the development of the individual. Studies with monkeys, cats and other species showed how experiences that are actively acquired through playing in early life help to build the physical, cognitive and social skills that are vital in later life. © 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 23962 - Posted: 08.16.2017

Allison Aubrey What we eat can influence more than our waistlines. It turns out, our diets also help determine what we smell like. A recent study found that women preferred the body odor of men who ate a lot of fruits and vegetables, whereas men who ate a lot of refined carbohydrates (think bread, pasta) gave off a smell that was less appealing. Skeptical? At first, I was, too. I thought this line of inquiry must have been dreamed up by the produce industry. (Makes a good marketing campaign, right?) But it's legit. "We've known for a while that odor is an important component of attractiveness, especially for women," says Ian Stephen of Macquarie University in Australia. He studies evolution, genetics and psychology and is an author of the study. From an evolutionary perspective, scientists say our sweat can help signal our health status and could possibly play a role in helping to attract a mate. How did scientists evaluate the link between diet and the attractiveness of body odor? They began by recruiting a bunch of healthy, young men. They assessed the men's skin using an instrument called a spectrophotometer. When people eat a lot of colorful veggies, their skin takes on the hue of carotenoids, the plant pigments that are responsible for bright red, yellow and orange foods. "The carotenoids get deposited in our skin," explains Stephen. © 2017 npr

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 23961 - Posted: 08.15.2017

By Kerry Grens The rare, severe effects of Zika infection in adults may go beyond Guillain-Barre syndrome. Doctors in Brazil report today in JAMA Neurology that among a group of hospitalized patients, those with the virus sometimes presented with other neurological problems—namely, an inflamed nervous system. The physicians tracked 40 patients who came to a hospital in Rio de Janeiro between December 2015 and May 2016 for acute neuroinflammation. Among them, 35 turned out to have been infected with Zika, and within this group, 27 had Guillain-Barre syndrome, which causes debilitating paralysis. Five patients had encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain, two had inflamed spinal cords, and one had nerve inflammation. Such symptoms are thought to indicate “post-infectious syndromes, where you have a viral infection, you clear the infection by mounting an antibody response, and the antibodies actually attack parts of the central and peripheral nervous system, causing these neurological symptoms,” Richard Temes, director of the Center for Neurocritical Care at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York, tells HealthDay. He was not involved in this study. Zika infection in adults is typically not dangerous, and many people won’t develop symptoms at all. Doctors have noticed an uptick in Guillain-Barre syndrome among those who have caught the virus. The authors note in their study that admissions to their hospital for both Guillain-Barre syndrome and encephalitis rose after May 2014, when the Zika outbreak hit Brazil.

Keyword: Movement Disorders
Link ID: 23960 - Posted: 08.15.2017

By Andy Coghlan Can exercise during childhood protect you against memory loss many decades later? Exercise early in life seems to have lifelong benefits for the brain, in rats at least. “This is an animal study, but it indicates that physical activity at a young age is very important – not just for development, but for the whole lifelong trajectory of cognitive development during ageing,” says Martin Wojtowicz of the University of Toronto, Canada. “In humans, it may compensate for and delay the appearance of Alzheimer’s symptoms, possibly to the point of preventing them.” Wojtowicz’s team spilt 80 young male rats into two equal groups, and placed running wheels in the cages of one group for a period of six weeks. Around four months later – when the rats had reached middle age – the team taught all the rats to associate an electric shock with being in a specific box. When placed in the box, they froze with fear. Two weeks later, the team tested the rats in three scenarios: exactly the same box in the same room, the same box with the room arranged and lit differently, and a completely different box in a different room. The rats without access to a running wheel when they were young now froze the same proportion of times in each of these situations, suggesting they couldn’t remember which one was hazardous. But those that had been able to run in their youth froze 40 to 50 per cent less in both altered box settings. © Copyright New Scientist Ltd

Keyword: Alzheimers; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 23959 - Posted: 08.15.2017

By Kate Kyle, CBC News Widespread, prolonged hunger that existed in residential schools is a contributing factor in the disproportionate health issues facing many Indigenous people, such as diabetes and obesity, according to an article published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. "Hunger is really central to the experiences of residential school survivors," says Ian Mosby who co-authored the article with Tracy Galloway, both with the University of Toronto. They say childhood malnutrition experienced in many government-funded schools is contributing to the higher risk for obesity, diabetes and heart disease among Indigenous people in adulthood. "While this wasn't every single residential school," says Mosby, "it's common enough through survivor testimony that we need to start looking at hunger in residential schools as a real predictor of long-term health problems." Residential school kitchen 1920s Residential schools across Canada faced significant underfunding, along with inadequate cooking facilities and untrained staff. Historians and former students have described children getting "one or two pieces of stale bread for lunch. Rarely getting meat, rarely getting milk and butter, and few fruits and vegetables," says Mosby. ©2017 CBC/Radio-Canada.

Keyword: Obesity; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 23958 - Posted: 08.15.2017

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Children who sleep less may be at increased risk for Type 2 diabetes, researchers report. Earlier studies found a link between shorter sleep and diabetes in adults, but the connection has been little studied in children. British researchers studied 4,525 9- and 10-year olds from varying ethnic backgrounds. On average, their parents reported they slept 10 hours a night, with 95 percent sleeping between eight and 12 hours. The study, in Pediatrics, found that the less sleep, the more likely the children were to have higher body mass indexes, higher insulin resistance and higher glucose readings. All three are risk factors for Type 2 diabetes. Over all, increasing weekday sleep duration by an hour was associated with a 0.2 lower B.M.I. and a 3 percent reduction in insulin resistance. The reasons for the link remain unclear, but the researchers suggest that poor sleep may affect appetite regulation, leading to overeating and obesity. This observational study could not establish cause and effect. Still, the senior author, Christopher G. Owen, a professor of epidemiology at St. George’s University of London, said that for children, the more sleep the better — there is no threshold. “Increasing sleep is a very simple, low-cost intervention,” he said. “We should be doing our utmost to make sure that children sleep for an adequate amount of time.” © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep; Obesity
Link ID: 23957 - Posted: 08.15.2017

By M. GREGG BLOCHE Was the Central Intelligence Agency’s post-9/11 “enhanced interrogation” program an instance of human experimentation? Recently declassified documents raise this explosive question. The documents were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in connection with a federal lawsuit scheduled for trial next month. The case was brought on behalf of three former detainees against two psychologists who developed the C.I.A.’s program. I reviewed some of the documents in a recent article in The Texas Law Review. Internal C.I.A. records indicate that the psychologists, James Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen, anticipated objections that critics would later level against the program, such as that coercion might generate unreliable information, and contracted with the agency to design research tools that addressed some of these concerns. Redactions in the released documents (and the C.I.A.’s withholding of others) make it impossible to know the full extent, if any, of the agency’s data collection efforts or the findings they yielded. At their depositions for the A.C.L.U. lawsuit, each of the psychologists denied having evaluated the program’s effectiveness. But the C.I.A. paid the psychologists to develop a research methodology and instructed physicians and other medical staff members at clandestine detention sites to monitor and chart the health conditions of detainees. In response, the advocacy group Physicians for Human Rights has charged that the program was an unlawful experiment on human beings. It calls the program “one of the gravest breaches of medical ethics by United States health professionals since the Nuremberg Code,” the ethical principles written to protect people from human experimentation after World War II. In its lawsuit, the A.C.L.U. is pressing a similar claim. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 23956 - Posted: 08.14.2017

By Kristine Phillips The Food and Drug Administration is investigating the sudden deaths of five people who had undergone an obesity treatment that places an inflated silicone balloon in their stomach. All deaths happened within a month of the procedure, the FDA said in a letter earlier this week to health-care providers. Three people died just one to three days later. The agency, however, cautioned that it has yet to determine whether the devices or the way in which they were placed in the stomachs directly caused those deaths. “At this time, we do not know the root cause or incidence per rate of patient death,” the FDA said, adding that it is working with the companies that manufacture the devices. The devices are manufactured by two California companies. Four of the cases involved the Orbera Intragastric Balloon System by Apollo Endosurgery. One involved the ReShape Integrated Dual Balloon System by ReShape Medical. The deaths happened from 2016 to present, according to the FDA. The agency said two more death reports it received happened within the same time frame and are potentially related to complications from the balloon treatment. The procedure lasts for up to 30 minutes. One or two balloons are placed inside the stomach through the mouth using an endoscope while a patient is mildly sedated. Once inside, it's inflated with liquid, usually with saline solution. The idea is for the balloon, which is about the size of a grapefruit once inflated, to leave less room for food. It stays in the stomach for up to six months, while the patient also follows a diet and exercises regularly. © 1996-2017 The Washington Post

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 23955 - Posted: 08.14.2017

By Megan Scudellari Neuropharmacology postdoc Nick DiPatrizio was stumped. His advisor, University of California, Irvine, researcher Daniele Piomelli, had discovered eight years earlier that hungry rats have high levels of endocannabinoids, endogenous molecules that bind to the same receptors as the active ingredient in marijuana. Now, in 2009, DiPatrizio was trying to identify exactly where and how those molecules were controlling food intake in rats. But under specific feeding conditions, he couldn’t locate any changes in endocannabinoid levels in the brain, which is flush with endocannabinoid receptors and the obvious place to look for behavioral signals. Piomelli gently chastised his mentee. “He said, ‘You’re being neurocentric. Remember, there’s a body attached to the head. Look in the other organs of the body,’ ” recalls DiPatrizio. So the young scientist persisted, and eventually discovered that hunger—and the taste of fat—leads to increased endocannabinoid levels in the jejunum, a part of the small intestine. Endocannabinoid signaling in the gut, not the brain, was controlling food intake in the rodents in response to tasting fats.1 The evolution of endocannabinoid research has mirrored DiPatrizio’s early thinking: ever since the first endocannabinoid receptor was identified in the late 1980s, the field has been overwhelmingly focused on the central nervous system. The main endocannabinoid receptor, CB1, was first discovered in a rat brain and is now known to be among the most abundant G protein–coupled receptors in neurons there. Plus, cannabis is well-known for its psychotropic effects. “That has led the research field to be very CNS-oriented,” says Saoirse O’Sullivan, who studies endocannabinoids at the University of Nottingham in the U.K. © 1986-2017 The Scientist

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 23954 - Posted: 08.14.2017

Eric Deggans Like a lot of kids in high school, Sam worries that he doesn't fit in. "I'm a weirdo. That's what everyone says," declares the 18-year-old character at the center of Netflix's new dramatic comedy series Atypical. One reason Sam struggles to fit in: He has autism. As his character explains at the start of the first episode, sometimes he doesn't understand what people mean when they say things. And that makes him feel alone, even when he's not. Sam's family in Atypical is thrown in all sorts of new directions by his quest to date and find a girlfriend. Creator Robia Rashid says she wanted to tell a different kind of coming-of-age story, inspired by recent increases in autism diagnoses. "There are all these young people now who are on the spectrum, who know ... they're on the spectrum," she says. "And [they] are interested in things that every young person is interested in ... independence and finding connections and finding love." On-screen depictions of autism have come a long way since Dustin Hoffman's portrayal of Raymond Babbitt in the 1988 Oscar-winning film Rain Man. Hoffman's Babbitt focused obsessively on watching The People's Court and getting served maple syrup before his pancakes. He could also memorize half the names in a phone book in one reading and count the number of toothpicks on the floor, moments after they spilled out of the box. For Atypical, Rashid says she researched accounts of adults with autism, has several parents of autistic children working in her crew and hired an actor with autism to play a minor role. © 2017 npr

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 23953 - Posted: 08.12.2017

An experimental drug appears to slow the progression of Niemann-Pick disease type C1 (NPC1), a fatal neurological disease, according to results of a clinical study led by researchers at the National Institutes of Health. The study appears in The Lancet. NPC1 is a rare genetic disorder that primarily affects children and adolescents, causing a progressive decline in neurological and cognitive functions. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved any treatments for the condition. The drug, 2-hydroxypropyl-beta-cyclodextrin (VTS-270), is being tested under a cooperative research and development agreement, or CRADA, between NIH and Sucampo Pharmaceuticals, Inc. In April 2017, Sucampo acquired Vtesse Inc., which previously had been developing VTS-270. “The results are very encouraging and support continued development of VTS-270 for treating NPC1,” said Forbes D. Porter, M.D., Ph.D., clinical director at NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the study’s senior author. “Compared to untreated patients we followed in an earlier study, participants who received VTS-270 scored better on a scale used to evaluate disease severity and progression, including elements such as speech, cognition and mobility.” The study was a phase 1/2a clinical trial designed to test the drug’s safety and effectiveness. A group of 14 participants, ranging from ages 4 to 23 years, received the experimental drug once a month at NIH for 12 to 18 months. Another group of three participants received the drug every two weeks for 18 months at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 23952 - Posted: 08.12.2017

By MALIA WOLLAN ‘‘Don’t startle the person,’’ says Charlene Gamaldo, the medical director at the Johns Hopkins Center for Sleep. Sleepwalkers exist in a semiwakeful state and can become testy and disoriented when forced to come to full consciousness. Instead, speak to them in a quiet voice and lead them gently back to their bed. In most cases, they’ll settle easily and in the morning remember nothing of their nighttime ambulations. To determine whether you’re dealing with a sleepwalker, as opposed to, say, a night owl (or someone with another, more worrisome form of parasomnia), watch for open eyes, a blank expression, physical clumsiness and a lack of reactivity. ‘‘They look zoned out,’’ Gamaldo says. Sleepwalkers tend to perform tasks from memory, including texting, shopping online, cooking and even driving and having sex, all with a noticeably odd flair. ‘‘They may get up and eat a raw TV dinner,’’ Gamaldo says. Researchers attribute a surge in sleepwalking in the 21st century to a rise in the use of hypnosedative sleeping medications. A popular hotel chain in the United Kingdom even issued sleepwalker-care guidelines to staff members after noting a sevenfold increase in sleepwalking patrons over one year, 95 percent of whom were men wandering out of their rooms naked. Other triggers include stress, genetics, fatigue, heat and what Gamaldo calls ‘‘poor sleep hygiene,’’ or loud, overly bright bedrooms filled with TVs and digital devices. To protect a sleepwalker in your home, make it as safe and soporific as possible. Keep him or her away from stairs and sharp objects. ‘‘The bedroom should be uncluttered,’’ Gamaldo says. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 23951 - Posted: 08.12.2017

By Knvul Sheikh At his psychiatric clinic in the Connecticut Mental Health Center, Albert Powers sees people every day who experience hallucinations. The condition is often a hallmark of psychosis, occurring in an estimated 60 to 70 percent of people with schizophrenia, and in a subset of those diagnosed with bipolar disorder, dementia and major depression. Auditory hallucinations are the most common type experienced. Some patients report hearing voices; others hear phantom melodies. But increasing evidence over the past two decades suggests hearing imaginary sounds is not always a sign of mental illness. Healthy people also experience hallucinations. Drugs, sleep deprivation and migraines can often trigger the illusion of sounds or sights that are not there. Even in the absence of these predisposing factors, approximately one in 20 people hear voices or see visual hallucinations at least once in their lifetimes, according to mental health surveys conducted by the World Health Organization. Whereas most researchers have focused on the brain abnormalities that occur in people suffering at an extreme end of this spectrum, Powers and his colleagues have turned their attention to milder cases in a new study. “We wanted to understand what’s common and what’s protecting people who hallucinate but who don’t require psychological intervention,” he says. Normally when the brain receives sensory information, such as sound, it actively works to fill in information to make sense of what it hears—its location, volume and other details. “The brain is a predictive machine,” explains Anissa Abi-Dargham, a psychiatrist at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the new work. “It is constantly scanning the environment and relying on previous knowledge to fill in the gaps [in] what we perceive.” Because our expectations are usually accurate, the system generally works well. For example, we are able to hear the sound of running water or the murmur of a friend talking across the room and then react in an instant, Abi-Dargham says. © 2017 Scientific American,

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Hearing
Link ID: 23950 - Posted: 08.11.2017

By Aylin Woodward Two newly identified brain areas in rhesus monkeys seem to help the animals recognise familiar faces. Primates, Homo sapiens included, must be able to differentiate between faces and recognise friend from foe because social hierarchies play a large role in daily life. But exactly how primate brains deal with faces is not completely clear. One idea is that the same parts of the brain are involved in recognising both familiar and unfamiliar faces, just with varying efficiency. But Sofia Landi and Winrich Freiwald at Rockefeller University in New York have now cast doubt on that thinking. Their work shows that distinct brain areas are responsible for recognising the primates you know. Many researchers have already shown that certain areas of the temporal and prefrontal cortex are involved in unfamiliar face perception in rhesus monkey brains. Using whole-brain fMRI scans of four monkeys, Landi and Freiwald have now identified two additional brain areas that play a role not only in unfamiliar face perception but also in recognising familiar faces. The two new areas are in the anterior temporal lobe – the part of our brains above and in front of our ears. One is in the perirhinal cortex and one is in the temporal pole. These regions lit up far more when the monkeys recognised a familiar face in a photograph, as opposed to when they were presented with images of a stranger. © Copyright New Scientist Ltd.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 23949 - Posted: 08.11.2017

By NIRAJ CHOKSHI The photos you share online speak volumes. They can serve as a form of self-expression or a record of travel. They can reflect your style and your quirks. But they might convey even more than you realize: The photos you share may hold clues to your mental health, new research suggests. From the colors and faces in their photos to the enhancements they make before posting them, Instagram users with a history of depression seem to present the world differently from their peers, according to the study, published this week in the journal EPJ Data Science. “People in our sample who were depressed tended to post photos that, on a pixel-by-pixel basis, were bluer, darker and grayer on average than healthy people,” said Andrew Reece, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University and co-author of the study with Christopher Danforth, a professor at the University of Vermont. The pair identified participants as “depressed” or “healthy” based on whether they reported having received a clinical diagnosis of depression in the past. They then used machine-learning tools to find patterns in the photos and to create a model predicting depression by the posts. They found that depressed participants used fewer Instagram filters, those which allow users to digitally alter a photo’s brightness and coloring before it is posted. When these users did add a filter, they tended to choose “Inkwell,” which drains a photo of its color, making it black-and-white. The healthier users tended to prefer “Valencia,” which lightens a photo’s tint. Depressed participants were more likely to post photos containing a face. But when healthier participants did post photos with faces, theirs tended to feature more of them, on average. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 23948 - Posted: 08.11.2017

Thomas Cronin We humans are uncommonly visual creatures. And those of us endowed with normal sight are used to thinking of our eyes as vital to how we experience the world. Vision is an advanced form of photoreception – that is, light sensing. But we also experience other more rudimentary forms of photoreception in our daily lives. We all know, for instance, the delight of perceiving the warm sun on our skin, in this case using heat as a substitute for light. No eyes or even special photoreceptor cells are necessary. But scientists have discovered in recent decades that many animals – including human beings – do have specialized light-detecting molecules in unexpected places, outside of the eyes. These “extraocular photoreceptors” are usually found in the central nervous system or in the skin, but also frequently in internal organs. What are light-sensing molecules doing in places beyond the eyes? Vision depends on detecting light All the visual cells identified in animals detect light using a single family of proteins, called the opsins. These proteins grab a light-sensitive molecule – derived from vitamin A – that changes its structure when exposed to light. The opsin in turn changes its own shape and turns on signaling pathways in photoreceptor cells that ultimately send a message to the brain that light has been detected. © 2010–2017, The Conversation US, Inc.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Vision
Link ID: 23947 - Posted: 08.11.2017