Mike Mariani With its bright colors, anthropomorphic animal motif, and nautical-themed puzzle play mat, Dr. Kimberly Noble’s laboratory at Columbia University looks like your typical day care center—save for the team of cognitive neuroscientists observing kids from behind a large two-way mirror. The Neurocognition, Early Experience, and Development Lab is home to cutting-edge research on how poverty affects young brains, and I’ve come here to learn how Noble and her colleagues could soon definitively prove that growing up poor can keep a child’s brain from developing. Noble, a 40-year-old from outside of Philadelphia who discusses her work with a mix of enthusiasm and clinical restraint, is among the handful of neuroscientists and pediatricians who’ve seen increasing evidence that poverty itself—and not factors like nutrition, language exposure, family stability, or prenatal issues, as previously thought—may diminish the growth of a child’s brain. Now she’s in the middle of planning a five-year, nationwide study that could establish a causal link between poverty and brain development—and, in the process, suggest a path forward for helping our poorest children. It’s the culmination of years of work for Noble, who helped jump-start this fledgling field in the early 2000s when, as a University of Pennsylvania graduate student, she and renowned cognitive neuroscientist Martha Farah began exploring the observation that poor kids tended to perform worse academically than their better-off peers. They wanted to investigate the neurocognitive underpinnings of this relationship—to trace the long-standing correlation between socioeconomic status and academic performance back to specific parts of the brain. “There have been decades of work from social scientists, looking at socioeconomic disparities in broad cognitive outcomes—things like IQ or high school graduation rate,” she says. “But there’s no high school graduation part of the brain.” ©2017 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Stress
Link ID: 23805 - Posted: 07.04.2017

Blood samples from infants who died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) had high levels of serotonin, a chemical that carries signals along and between nerves, according to a study funded in part by the National Institutes of Health. The finding raises the possibility that a test could be developed to distinguish SIDS cases from other causes of sleep-related, unexpected infant death. The study, led by Robin L. Haynes, Ph.D., of Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) provided funding for the work. SIDS is the sudden death of an infant under one year of age that remains unexplained after a complete autopsy and death scene investigation. In the current study, researchers reported that 31 percent of SIDS infants (19 of 61) had elevated blood levels of serotonin. In previous studies, the researchers reported multiple serotonin-related brain abnormalities in SIDS cases, including a decrease in serotonin in regions involved in breathing, heart rate patterns, blood pressure, temperature regulation, and arousal during sleep. Taken together, the researchers wrote, the findings suggest that an abnormality in serotonin metabolism could indicate an underlying vulnerability that increases SIDS risk and that testing blood samples for serotonin could distinguish certain SIDS cases from other infant deaths. However, they caution that more research is needed. NICHD’s Safe to Sleep campaign provides information on ways to reduce the risk of SIDS and other sleep-related causes of infant death.

Keyword: Sleep; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 23804 - Posted: 07.04.2017

Elana Gordon By the time Elvis Rosado was 25, he was addicted to opioids and serving time in jail for selling drugs to support his habit. "I was like, 'I have to kick this, I have to break this,' " he says. For Rosado, who lives in Philadelphia, drugs had become a way to disassociate from "the reality that was life." He'd wake up physically needing the drugs to function. His decision to finally stop using propelled him into another challenging chapter of his addiction and one of the most intense physical and mental experiences he could have imagined: detoxing. "The symptoms are horrific," Rosado says. There are recovery and treatment centers that can help people quit using drugs — in fact, it's a multi-billion-dollar industry. But this help can be expensive, and waiting lists for state and city-funded programs are often extremely long. So can detoxing on your own be the solution? In most cases, the answer is no. In fact, a growing movement within the field of addiction medicine is challenging the entire notion of detox and the assumption that when people cleanse themselves of chemicals, they're on the road to recovery. Article continues after sponsorship "That's a really pernicious myth, and it has erroneous implications," says Dr. Frederic Baurer, president of the Pennsylvania Society of Addiction Medicine. But at the time, Rosado says, he needed to end his "longtime love affair" with codeine. Like Oxycontin and morphine, it's an opioid. In jail, these drugs were easily available, Rosado recalls, through friends and cell mates. © 2017 npr

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 23803 - Posted: 07.04.2017

By Sandrine Ceurstemont Bird or beast? A cuckoo seems to have learned how to mimic the sounds made by the pig-like peccaries it lives alongside, perhaps to ward off predators. The Neomorphus ground cuckoos live in forests in Central and South America, where they often follow herds of wild peccaries so they can feed on the invertebrates that the peccaries disturb as they plough through the leaf litter. Ecologists have noticed that when the cuckoos clap their beaks together they sound a lot like the tooth clacks the peccaries make to deter large predatory cats. To find out whether this is just coincidence or evidence of mimicry, Cibele Biondo at the Federal University of ABC in Brazil and her team analysed the cuckoo and peccary sounds, and compared them with the beak clapping sounds made by roadrunners – close relatives of the ground cuckoos. Logically, the cuckoos should sound most similar to roadrunners, given that the two are closely related. But the analysis suggested otherwise. “The acoustic characteristics are more similar to the teeth clacking of peccaries,” says Biondo. She suspects that cuckoos have something to gain by imitating the peccaries, particularly in the dark, dense forests where predators rely on hearing as much as vision. “Cuckoos may deceive predators by making it appear that peccaries are present when they are not,” says Biondo. © Copyright New Scientist Ltd.

Keyword: Evolution; Animal Communication
Link ID: 23802 - Posted: 07.04.2017

Fergus Walsh Medical correspondent The world's most detailed scan of the brain's internal wiring has been produced by scientists at Cardiff University. The MRI machine reveals the fibres which carry all the brain's thought processes. It's been done in Cardiff, Nottingham, Cambridge and Stockport, as well as London England and London Ontario. Doctors hope it will help increase understanding of a range of neurological disorders and could be used instead of invasive biopsies. I volunteered for the project - not the first time my brain has been scanned. Computer games In 2006, it was a particular honour to be scanned by the late Sir Peter Mansfield, who shared a Nobel prize for his work on developing Magnetic Resonance Imaging, one of the most important breakthroughs in medicine. He scanned me using Nottingham University's powerful new 7 Tesla scanner. When we looked at the crisp, high resolution images, he told me: "I'm a physicist, so don't ask me to tell you to whether there's anything amiss with your brain - you'd need a neurologist for that." I was the first UK Biobank volunteer to have their brain and other organs imaged as part of the world's biggest scanning project. More recently, I had my brain scanned while playing computer games, as part of research into the effects of sleep deprivation on cognition. So my visit to the Cardiff University's Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC) held no particular concerns. The scan took around 45 minutes and seemed unremarkable. A neurologist was on hand to reassure me my brain looked normal. My family quipped that they were happy that a brain had been found inside my thick skull. But nothing could have prepared me for the spectacular images produced by the team at Cardiff, along with engineers from Siemens in Germany and the United States. © 2017 BBC.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 23801 - Posted: 07.04.2017

By RONI CARYN RABIN It may be the most palatable advice you will ever get from a doctor: Have a glass of wine, a beer or a cocktail every day, and you just might prevent a heart attack and live longer. But the mantra that moderate drinking is good for the heart has never been put to a rigorous scientific test, and new research has linked even modest alcohol consumption to increases in breast cancer and changes in the brain. That has not stopped the alcoholic beverage industry from promoting the alcohol-is-good-for-you message by supporting scientific meetings and nurturing budding researchers in the field. Now the National Institutes of Health is starting a $100 million clinical trial to test for the first time whether a drink a day really does prevent heart attacks. And guess who is picking up most of the tab? Five companies that are among the world’s largest alcoholic beverage manufacturers — Anheuser-Busch InBev, Heineken, Diageo, Pernod Ricard and Carlsberg — have so far pledged $67.7 million to a foundation that raises money for the National Institutes of Health, said Margaret Murray, the director of the Global Alcohol Research Program at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which will oversee the study. The decision to let the alcohol industry pay the bulk of the cost has raised concern among researchers who track influence-peddling in science. “Research shows that industry-sponsored research almost invariably favors the interests of the industry sponsor, even when investigators believe they are immune from such influence,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University who is the author of several books on the topic, including “Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health.” © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 23800 - Posted: 07.04.2017

By Wallis Snowdon, Ariel Fournier The seizure of a controversial drug in Edmonton is evidence that more research is required on kratom as a possible antidote in Alberta's deadly opioid epidemic, says a leading researcher in the field. "Everything has to be taken with caution, but does that mean you take it off the streets?" said Susruta Majumdar, a chemist who has worked on numerous studies into the drug. "Probably not," said Majumdar, who works in the department of neurology at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. "It's a little premature to ban it right away and take it out of the public scenario because very little research has been done. It's a weak alkaloid but we need to be cautious about it." In a news release Tuesday, Health Canada said it had seized unauthorized kratom products from two Edmonton head shops. The packets were confiscated from a store called Jupiter on Whyte Avenue and from another called Bogart's Pipes and Papers on 132nd Avenue. Kratom is a coffee-like plant native to southeast Asia. The drug is traditionally consumed by chewing on the leaves, but can also be ingested as a capsule or powder or as a tea. Health Canada said the herbal product has been linked to both "narcotic and stimulant-like effects," and may pose serious health risks including nausea, vomiting, seizures, and liver toxicity. ©2017 CBC/Radio-Canada.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 23799 - Posted: 07.01.2017

ByMaia Szalavitz George Sarlo is throwing cash at research into how drugs like magic mushrooms can help people overcome trauma like his own. Deep in the Mexican jungle, in a village so remote it's only accessible by boat, 74-year-old venture capitalist George Sarlo waited to meet his father. It was the fall of 2012, and Sarlo knew his quest seemed absurd. After all, his father had been dead for decades, and he had no connection to this region of rainforests and beaches and its indigenous peoples. As the financier watched a shaman prepare a ceremonial cup of bitter brown ayahuasca, he couldn't believe that he'd agreed to swallow this nauseating psychedelic brew for a second time. But he had traveled for 12 hours—via plane, boat, and finally on foot—to this primeval place, a newly-built gazebo-like wood platform without walls. He had expressed his intentions in a group therapy session in preparation; he had eaten a special, bland diet and even halted other medications. He also trusted his friend, Dr. Gabor Maté, a fellow Hungarian Holocaust survivor, who led the therapy and had arranged the trip. Maté is perhaps best known for his book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, which explores his work with extremely traumatized injection drug users in Vancouver. He's been offering psychedelic therapy to trauma survivors since learning about the potential of ayahuasca in 2008.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Stress
Link ID: 23798 - Posted: 07.01.2017

Hannah Devlin Doctors in Bristol are set to begin the world’s first clinical study into the use of MDMA to treat alcohol addiction. Researchers are testing whether a few doses of the drug, in conjunction with psychotherapy, could help patients overcome addiction more effectively than conventional treatments. The small trial was granted ethical approval a few weeks ago and the team expects to give the first dose of MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy pills, within the next two months. Ben Sessa, a clinical psychiatrist on the trial and senior research fellow at Imperial College London said: “We know that MDMA works really well in helping people who have suffered trauma and it helps to build empathy. Many of my patients who are alcoholics have suffered some sort of trauma in their past and this plays a role in their addiction.” Twenty patients, recruited through the recreational drug and alcohol services in Bristol, will be given the drug in capsule form during two supervised treatment sessions. The participants will be heavy drinkers – typically consuming the equivalent of five bottles of wine a day – who have relapsed into alcoholism repeatedly after trying other forms of treatment. “After 100 years of modern psychiatry our treatments are really poor,” said Sessa, speaking at the Breaking Convention conference in London. “The chances of relapse for these patients are really high – 90% at three years. No one has ever given MDMA to treat alcoholism before.” © 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 23797 - Posted: 07.01.2017

By ABBY GOODNOUGH WASHINGTON — The Senate leadership’s efforts to salvage the Republican health care bill have focused in part on adding $45 billion for states to spend on opioid addiction treatment. That is a big pot of money. But addiction specialists said it was drastically short of what would be needed to make up for the legislation’s deep cuts to Medicaid, which has provided treatment for hundreds of thousands of people caught up in a national epidemic of opioid abuse. The new money would most likely flow to states in the form of grants over 10 years, averaging out to $4.5 billion per year. With hundreds of people dying every week from overdoses of heroin, fentanyl and opioid painkillers, some specialists say a fixed amount of grant money is simply inadequate compared with the open-ended funding stream that Medicaid provides to treat all who qualify for the coverage. “When it comes to other illnesses like breast cancer or heart disease, we’d never rely solely on grants for treatment — because we know that grants are not substitutes for health coverage,” said Linda Rosenberg, president and chief executive of the National Council for Behavioral Health, which represents treatment providers. “Addiction is no different.” The Affordable Care Act vastly expanded access to addiction treatment by designating those services as “essential benefits.” That means they had to be covered through both an expansion of Medicaid to far more low-income adults and the marketplaces set up under the law for people to buy private plans. Both the House and Senate health bills would effectively end the expansion and cap federal Medicaid spending, resulting in the loss of coverage for millions of people, according to the Congressional Budget Office. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 23796 - Posted: 07.01.2017

Martha Mills So, it turns out I’m getting better at depression. That isn’t to say I’ve stopped suffering it, or that it is any less debilitating when it sneaks up after a two-year hiatus and pile-drives me into a blistering agony of mental carpet burns topped with a patronising tousle of the bed-hair, like a nostalgic school bully. No, what’s “better” about me is spotting it and moving quicker through the self-blame method of diagnosis. We all have down days, and that’s what you hope these are. Only they stopped being a day or two of feeling blue that can be whiled away with the distraction of a conspiratorial sofa and questionable DVD collection, and have merged into weeks since you were last able to feel anything but disappointment on waking up, and the choice between showering or just smelling like a tramp’s undercarriage has gone beyond struggle into pure resignation. Being especially practised at denial, I decided that I, a mere mortal with a solid history of depressive episodes since childhood, could fake my way out of this oncoming tsunami of debilitating black fog using the advice that people who have never experienced depression trot out – an experiment that could surely only succeed [sidelong glance to camera]. I would improve my diet and exercise, force myself to take up hobbies, I would “soldier on until it passed” and thrust myself (reluctantly) into social situations. I even tried “looking on the bright side” but it turned out to just be glare on my TV. © 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 23795 - Posted: 07.01.2017

By Nicholette Zeliadt Researchers have known that genes contribute to autism since the 1970s, when a team found that identical twins often share the condition. Since then, scientists have been racking up potential genetic culprits in autism, a process that DNA-decoding technologies have accelerated in the past decade. As this work has progressed, scientists have unearthed a variety of types of genetic changes that can underlie autism. The more scientists dig into DNA, the more intricate its contribution to autism seems to be. How do researchers know genes contribute to autism? Since the first autism twin study in 1977, several teams have compared autism rates in twins and shown that autism is highly heritable. When one identical twin has autism, there is about an 80 percent chance that the other twin has it, too. The corresponding rate for fraternal twins is around 40 percent. However, genetics clearly does not account for all autism risk. Environmental factors also contribute to the condition, although researchers disagree on the relative contributions of genes and environment. Some environmental risk factors for autism, such as exposure to a maternal immune response in the womb or complications during birth, may work with genetic factors to produce autism or intensify its features. Is there such a thing as an autism gene? Not really. There are several conditions associated with autism that stem from mutations in a single gene, including fragile X and Rett syndromes. But less than 1 percent of non-syndromic cases of autism stem from mutations in any single gene. © 1996-2017 The Washington Post

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 23794 - Posted: 07.01.2017

By Mo Costandi You can’t teach an old dog new tricks—or can you? Textbooks tell us that early infancy offers a narrow window of opportunity during which sensory experience shapes the way neuronal circuits wire up to process sound and other inputs. A lack of proper stimulation during this “critical period” has a permanent and detrimental effect on brain development. But new research shows the auditory system in the adult mouse brain can be induced to revert to an immature state similar to that in early infancy, improving the animals’ ability to learn new sounds. The findings, published Thursday in Science, suggest potential new ways of restoring brain function in human patients with neurological diseases—and of improving adults’ ability to learn languages and musical instruments. In mice, a critical period occurs during which neurons in a portion of the brain’s wrinkled outer surface, the cortex, are highly sensitized to processing sound. This state of plasticity allows them to strengthen certain connections within brain circuits, fine-tuning their auditory responses and enhancing their ability to discriminate between different tones. In humans, a comparable critical period may mark the beginning of language acquisition. But heightened plasticity declines rapidly, and this continues throughout life, making it increasingly difficult to learn. In 2011 Jay Blundon, a developmental neurobiologist at Saint Jude Children's Research Hospital, and his colleagues reported that the critical periods for circuits connecting the auditory cortex and the thalamus occur at about the same time. © 2017 Scientific American,

Keyword: Hearing; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 23793 - Posted: 06.30.2017

By Kathryn Casteel It’s no secret that heroin has become an epidemic in the United States. Heroin overdose deaths have risen more than sixfold in less than a decade and a half.1 Yet according to one of the most widely cited sources of data on drug use, the number of Americans using heroin has risen far more slowly, roughly doubling during the same time period.2 Most major researchers believe that source, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, vastly understates the increase in heroin use. But many rely on the survey anyway for a simple reason: It’s the best data they have. Several other sources that researchers once relied on are no longer being updated or have become more difficult to access. The lack of data means researchers, policymakers and public health workers are facing the worst U.S. drug epidemic in a generation without essential information about the nature of the problem or its scale. “We’re simply flying blind when it comes to data collection, and it’s costing lives,” said John Carnevale, a drug policy expert who served at the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy under both Republican and Democratic administrations. There is anecdotal evidence of how patterns of drug use are changing, Carnevale said, and special studies conducted in various localities are identifying populations of drug users. “But the national data sets we have in place now really don’t give us the answers that we need,” he said.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 23792 - Posted: 06.30.2017

By Diana Kwon By blocking specific enzymes, researchers were able to selectively remove memories stored in the neurons of Aplysia, a sea slug. These findings, published last week (June 22) in Current Biology, demonstrate that distinct memories stored in connections to a single nerve cell can be manipulated separately. “We were able to reverse long-term changes in synaptic strength at synapses known to contribute to different forms of memories,” study coauthor Samuel Schacher, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, told Motherboard. By stimulating multiple Aplysia sensory neurons that make connections with to the same motor neuron, Schacher and colleagues induced associative memory, which involves learning the relationship between two previously unrelated items (a new acquaintance’s name, for example), and non-associative memory, where recollections are unrelated to a specific event. The team measured the strength of the synaptic connections between the sensory and motor neurons and discovered that distinct forms of an enzyme, protein kinase M (PKM), played a role in developing the changes linked to the two types of memory. Selectively blocking these molecules, the researchers found, allowed them to remove the memories of their choice. Molecules associated with memory have been discovered in the past. For example, in a 2006 Science study, another team of researchers was able to erase memories in mice by blocking a related molecule, PKM-zeta. Subsequent papers, however, found that mice lacking this enzyme had no problem forming memories. © 1986-2017 The Scientist

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 23791 - Posted: 06.30.2017

By STEPH YIN Whales and songbirds produce sounds resembling human music, and chimpanzees and crows use tools. But only one nonhuman animal is known to marry these two skills. Palm cockatoos from northern Australia modify sticks and pods and use them to drum regular rhythms, according to new research published in Science Advances on Wednesday. In most cases, males drop beats in the presence of females, suggesting they perform the skill to show off to mates. The birds even have their own signature cadences, not unlike human musicians. This example is “the closest we have so far to musical instrument use and rhythm in humans,” said Robert Heinsohn, a professor of evolutionary and conservation biology at the Australian National University and an author of the paper. A palm cockatoo drumming performance starts with instrument fashioning — an opportunity to show off beak strength and cleverness (the birds are incredibly intelligent). Often, as a female is watching, a male will ostentatiously break a hefty stick off a tree and trim it to about the length of a pencil. Holding the stick, or occasionally a hard seedpod, with his left foot (parrots are typically left-footed), the male taps a beat on his tree perch. Occasionally he mixes in a whistle or other sounds from an impressive repertoire of around 20 syllables. As he grows more aroused, the crest feathers on his head become erect. Spreading his wings, he pirouettes and bobs his head deeply, like an expressive pianist. He uncovers his red cheek patches — the only swaths of color on his otherwise black body — and they fill with blood, brightening like a blush. Over seven years, Dr. Heinsohn and his collaborators collected audio and video recordings of 18 male palm cockatoos exhibiting such behaviors in Australia’s Cape York Peninsula, where the birds are considered vulnerable because of aluminum ore mining. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Animal Communication; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 23790 - Posted: 06.29.2017

Nicola Davis If you want your smile to appear pleasant, you might want to avoid a dazzling beam, research suggests. A study by scientists in the US has found that wide smiles with a high angle and showing a lot of teeth are not the best at creating a positive impression. “A lot of people don’t understand how important their smiles are and how important this aspect of communication we do with each other every day is,” said Stephen Guy, a co-author of the research from the University of Minnesota. The authors say the findings could prove valuable for clinicians working to restore facial movement and expression to those who have experienced facial paralysis. “When you have different surgical options, how do you choose which one is better?” Guy said, pointing out that some options might offer more extent of smile – referring to breadth – but others might improve the angle. “In order to do that, you need to say, ‘Oh, this smile is better or worse than that smile.’” To find the perfect smile, the team showed a 3D, computer-animated virtual face smiling in a range of different ways to 802 members of the public, ranging in age from 18 to 82. All had consumed fewer than six alcoholic drinks – the study was carried out at the Minnesota state fair. Each animation ran for 250 milliseconds and the faces showed differences in the angle of the smile, how broad it was, and the amount that teeth on show. In addition, the team took one smile – featuring a high angle, low extent and medium amount of dental show – and tinkered with the symmetry of the smile, changing the length of time it took the left side of the face to smile compared with the right. © 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 23789 - Posted: 06.29.2017

By Dina Fine Maron Not all of Mitchell Elkind’s stroke patients are on social security. In recent years he has treated devastating attacks in people as young as 18. And he is not alone. A growing body of research indicates strokes among U.S. millennials—ages 18 to 34—have soared in recent years. But an analysis by Scientific American has revealed significant differences in where these strokes are occurring, depending both on region and whether people live in rural or urban settings. The investigation, which used data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), was reviewed by five stroke experts and found that the West and Midwest have seen especially worrisome increases among younger adults. Moreover, large cities appear to have seen bigger increases than rural areas. The analysis employed hospital discharge data from 2003 to 2012 from the AHRQ’s Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) database. The findings align with earlier studies that pointed to nationwide increases in strokes in this age group: In a study published earlier this year in JAMA Neurology, researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that in a nine-year span from 2003 to 2012 there was a 32 percent spike in strokes among 18- to 34-year-old women and a 15 percent increase for men in the same range. Scientific American’s analysis sought to dig deeper into the data by exploring whether the stroke trend differed by location. © 2017 Scientific American

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 23788 - Posted: 06.29.2017

By Kerry Grens Until a little more than a decade ago, doctors had few options to treat newborns whose brains were deprived of oxygen or blood at birth, a condition known as perinatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, or HIE. If babies could be stabilized and kept breathing, physicians and nurses could offer only supportive care and had to watch and wait to see how much brain damage their patients would suffer. “This was a disease where we had no treatment that worked, and [around] 60 percent of these babies were either dying or had a disability,” says Rosemary Higgins, a program scientist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. In 2005, research findings reshaped the field. Higgins and other neonatologists reported the results of a couple of large clinical trials testing the effects of so-called cooling therapy on brain damage. Hundreds of babies suffering from HIE—the effects on the brain of oxygen deprivation during delivery, due to umbilical cord problems, the placenta coming away from the uterus too soon, or other complications—had their temperatures chilled from roughly 37 °C to about 33 °C for 72 hours, then slowly rewarmed (in one study it was whole-body cooling, in the other it was just the head). Although many babies still died of the brain damage or ended up with a severe disability, more fared better in the treatment groups than in the control groups (New Engl J Med, 353:1574-84; The Lancet, 365:663-70). “Cooling was a landmark discovery for this disease,” Higgins says. Finally, doctors (and their patients) weren’t completely helpless. The intervention used in these studies reduced the number of newborns dying or enduring a severe disability to below 50 percent. © 1986-2017 The Scientist

Keyword: Sleep; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 23787 - Posted: 06.29.2017

People with higher IQs are less likely to die before the age of 79. That’s according to a study of over 65,000 people born in Scotland in 1936. Each of the people in the study took an intelligence test at the age of 11, and their health was then followed for 68 years, until the end of 2015. When Ian Deary, of the University of Edinburgh, UK, and his team analysed data from the study, they found that a higher test score in childhood was linked to a 28 per cent lower risk of death from respiratory disease, a 25 per cent reduced risk of coronary heart disease, and a 24 per cent lower risk of death from stroke. These people were also less likely to die from injuries, digestive diseases, and dementia – even when factors like socio-economic status were taken into account. Deary’s team say there are several theories for why more intelligent people live longer, such as people with higher IQs being more likely to look after their health and less likely to smoke. They also tend to do more exercise and seek medical attention when ill. “I’m hoping it means that if we can find out what smart people do and copy them, then we have a chance of a slightly longer and healthier life,” says Dreary. But there’s evidence genetics is involved too. A recent study suggests that very rare genetic variants can play an important role in lowering intelligence, and that these may also be likely to impair a person’s health. Journal reference: British Medical Journal, DOI: 10.1136/bmj.j2708 © Copyright New Scientist Ltd.

Keyword: Intelligence
Link ID: 23786 - Posted: 06.29.2017