Andrew Orlowski Special Report If the fMRI brain-scanning fad is well and truly over, then many fashionable intellectual ideas look like collateral damage, too. What might generously be called the “British intelligentsia” – our chattering classes – fell particularly hard for the promise that “new discoveries in brain science” had revealed a new understanding of human behaviour, which shed new light on emotions, personality and decision making. But all they were looking at was statistical quirks. There was no science to speak of, the results of the experiments were effectively meaningless, and couldn’t support the (often contradictory) conclusions being touted. The fMRI machine was a very expensive way of legitimising an anecdote. This is an academic scandal that’s been waiting to explode for years, for plenty of warning signs were there. In 2005, Ed Vul, now a psychology professor at UCSD, and Hal Pashler – then and now at UCSD – were puzzled by a claim being made in a talk by a neuroscience researcher. He was explaining study that purported to report a high correlation between a test subject’s brain activity and the speed with which they left the room after the study. “It seemed unbelievable to us that activity in this specific brain area could account for so much of the variance in walking speed,” explained Vul. “Especially so, because the fMRI activity was measured some two hours before the walking happened. So either activity in this area directly controlled motor action with a delay of two hours — something we found hard to believe — or there was something fishy going on.” IT © 1998–2016

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 22410 - Posted: 07.08.2016

By Louise Whiteley It’s an appealing idea: the notion that understanding the learning brain will tell us how to maximise children’s potential, bypassing the knotty complexities of education research. But promises to replace sociological complexity with biological certainty should always be treated with caution. Hilary and Steven Rose are deeply sceptical of claims that neuroscience can inform education and early intervention policy, and deeply concerned about the use of such claims to support neoliberal agendas. They argue that focusing on the brain encourages a focus on the individual divorced from their social context, and that this is easily aligned with a view of poor achievement as a personal moral failing, rather than a practical consequence of poverty and inequality. Whether or not you end up cheerleading for the book’s political agenda, its deconstruction of faulty claims about how neuroscience translates into the classroom is relevant to anyone interested in education. The authors tear apart the scientific logic of policy documents, interrogate brain-based interventions and dismantle prevalent neuro-myths. One of the book’s meatiest chapters deals with government reports advocating early intervention to increase “mental capital”, and thus reduce the future economic burden of deprived, underachieving brains. As we discover, the neuroscientific foundations of these reports are shaky. For instance, they tend to assume that the more synaptic connections between brain cells the better, and that poor environment in a critical early period permanently reduces the number of synapses. This makes early intervention focusing on the individual child and “poor parenting” seem like the obvious solution. But pruning of synapses is just as important to brain development, and learning involves the continual forming and reforming of synaptic connections. More is not necessarily better. And while an initial explosion in synapses can be irreversibly disrupted by extreme neglect, the evidence just isn’t there yet for extrapolating this to the more common kinds of childhood deprivation that such reports address.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 22409 - Posted: 07.08.2016

Tough love, interventions and 12-step programs are some of the most common methods of treating drug addiction, but journalist Maia Szalavitz says they're often counterproductive. "We have this idea that if we are just cruel enough and mean enough and tough enough to people with addiction, that they will suddenly wake up and stop, and that is not the case," she tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. Szalavitz is the author of Unbroken Brain, a book that challenges traditional notions of addiction and treatment. Her work is based on research and experience; she was addicted to cocaine and heroin from the age of 17 until she was 23. Szalavitz is a proponent of "harm reduction" programs that take a nonpunitive approach to helping addicts and "treat people with addiction like human beings." In her own case, she says that getting "some kind of hope that I could change" enabled her to get the help she needed. On her criticism of 12-step programs I think that 12-step programs are fabulous self help. I think they can be absolutely wonderful as support groups. My issue with 12-step programs is that 80 percent of addiction treatment in this country consists primarily of indoctrinating people into 12-step programs, and no other medical care in the United States is like that. The data shows that cognitive behavioral therapy and motivational enhancement therapy are equally effective, and they have none of the issues around surrendering to a higher power, or prayer or confession. © 2016 npr

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 22408 - Posted: 07.08.2016

By Jessica Hamzelou TEENAGE pregnancies have hit record lows in the Western world, largely thanks to increased use of contraceptives of all kinds. But strangely, we don’t really know what hormonal contraceptives – pills, patches and injections that contain synthetic sex hormones – are doing to the developing bodies and brains of teenage girls. You’d be forgiven for assuming that we do. After all, the pill has been around for more than 50 years. It has been through many large trials assessing its effectiveness and safety, as have the more recent patches and rings, and the longer-lasting implants and injections. But those studies were done in adult women – very few have been in teenage girls. And biologically, there is a big difference. At puberty, our bodies undergo an upheaval as our hormones go haywire. It isn’t until our 20s that things settle down and our brains and bones reach maturity. “If a drug is going to be given to 11 and 12-year-olds, it needs to be tested in 11 and 12-year-olds,” says Joe Brierley of the clinical ethics committee at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. Legislation introduced in the US in 2003 and in Europe in 2007 was intended to make this happen but a New Scientist investigation can reveal that there is still scant data on what contraceptives actually do to developing girls. The few studies that have been done suggest that tipping the balance of oestrogen and progesterone during this time may have far-reaching effects, although there is not yet enough data to say whether we should be alarmed. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 22407 - Posted: 07.08.2016

Shefali Luthra Prescription drug prices continue to climb, putting the pinch on consumers. Some older Americans appear to be seeking an alternative to mainstream medicines that has become easier to get legally in many parts of the country. Just ask Cheech and Chong. Research published Wednesday found that states that legalized medical marijuana — which is sometimes recommended for symptoms like chronic pain, anxiety or depression — saw declines in the number of Medicare prescriptions for drugs used to treat those conditions and a dip in spending by Medicare Part D, which covers the cost on prescription medications. Because the prescriptions for drugs like opioid painkillers and antidepressants — and associated Medicare spending on those drugs — fell in states where marijuana could feasibly be used as a replacement, the researchers said it appears likely legalization led to a drop in prescriptions. That point, they said, is strengthened because prescriptions didn't drop for medicines such as blood-thinners, for which marijuana isn't an alternative. The study, which appears in Health Affairs, examined data from Medicare Part D from 2010 to 2013. It is the first study to examine whether legalization of marijuana changes doctors' clinical practice and whether it could curb public health costs. The findings add context to the debate as more lawmakers express interest in medical marijuana. This year, Ohio and Pennsylvania passed laws allowing the drug for therapeutic purposes, making it legal in 25 states, plus Washington, D.C. The approach could also come to a vote in Florida and Missouri this November. A federal agency is considering reclassifying medical marijuana under national drug policy to make it more readily available. © 2016 npr

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 22406 - Posted: 07.07.2016

By ERICA GOODE Irving Gottesman, a pioneer in the field of behavioral genetics whose work on the role of heredity in schizophrenia helped transform the way people thought about the origins of serious mental illness, died on June 29 at his home in Edina, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis. He was 85. His wife, Carol, said he died while taking an afternoon nap. Although Dr. Gottesman had some health problems, she said, his death was unexpected, and several of his colleagues said they received emails from him earlier that day. Dr. Gottesman was perhaps best known for a study of schizophrenia in British twins he conducted with another researcher, James Shields, at the Maudsley Hospital in London in the 1960s. The study, which found that identical twins were more likely than fraternal twins to share a diagnosis of schizophrenia, provided strong evidence for a genetic component to the illness and challenged the notion that it was caused by bad mothering, the prevailing view at the time. But the findings also underscored the contribution of a patient’s environment: If genes alone were responsible for schizophrenia, the disorder should afflict both members of every identical pair; instead, it appeared in both twins in only about half of the identical pairs in the study. This interaction between nature and nurture, Dr. Gottesman believed, was critical to understanding human behavior, and he warned against tilting too far in one direction or the other in explaining mental illness or in accounting for differences in personality or I.Q. © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 22405 - Posted: 07.07.2016

By Emily Rosenzweig Life deals most of us a consistent stream of ego blows, be they failures at work, social slights, or unrequited love. Social psychology has provided decades of insight into just how adept we are at defending ourselves against these psychic threats. We discount negative feedback, compare ourselves favorably to those who are worse off than us, attribute our failures to others, place undue value on our own strengths, and devalue opportunities denied to us–all in service of protecting and restoring our sense of self-worth. As a group, this array of motivated mental processes that support mood repair and ego defense has been called the “psychological immune system.” Particularly striking to social psychologists is our ability to remain blind to our use of these motivated strategies, even when it is apparent to others just how biased we are. However there are times when we either cannot remain blind to our own psychological immune processes, or where we may find ourselves consciously wanting to use them expressly for the purpose of restoring our ego or our mood. What then? Can we believe a conclusion we reach even when we know that we arrived at it in a biased way? For example, imagine you’ve recently gone through a breakup and want to get over your ex. You decide to make a mental list of all of their character flaws in an effort to feel better about the relationship ending. A number of prominent social psychologists have suggested you’re out of luck—knowing that you’re focusing only on your ex’s worst qualities prevents you from believing the conclusion you’ve come to that you’re better off without him or her. In essence, they argue that we must remain blind to our own biased mental processes in order to reap their ego-restoring benefits. And in many ways this closely echoes the position that philosophers like Mele have taken about the possibility of agentic self-deception. © 2016 Scientific American

Keyword: Attention; Consciousness
Link ID: 22404 - Posted: 07.07.2016

DAVID GREENE, HOST: Nearly one-quarter of all Americans reach for a bottle of acetaminophen every single week. Many of you might know this drug as Tylenol. It's a pain killer that can take the edge off a headache or treat you when you have a fever. It also might have another effect. And let's talk about this with NPR social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam. And, Shankar, straight out, is this going to make me not want to take Tylenol, what you're about to tell me? VEDANTAM: It might make you not want to take Tylenol when you're talking with me, David. GREENE: Oh, even more interesting. VEDANTAM: (Laughter) I was speaking with Dominik Mischkowski. He's currently a researcher at the National Institutes of Health. He recently conducted a couple of double blind experiments. These are experiments where the volunteers are given either sugar pills or Tylenol, but neither the volunteers nor the researchers know which volunteers are getting which pill. Mischkowski and his advisers at Ohio State University, Jennifer Crocker and Baldwin Way, they played loud noises for the volunteers. Not surprisingly, volunteers given Tylenol experienced less physical discomfort than volunteers given the placebo. © 2016 npr

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 22403 - Posted: 07.07.2016

By Patrick Monahan Animals like cuttlefish and octopuses can rapidly change color to blend into the background and dazzle prospective mates. But there’s only one problem: As far as we know, they can’t see in color. Unlike our eyes, the eyes of cephalopods—cuttlefish, octopuses, and their relatives—contain just one kind of color-sensitive protein, apparently restricting them to a black and white view of the world. But a new study shows how they might make do. By rapidly focusing their eyes at different depths, cephalopods could be taking advantage of a lensing property called “chromatic blur.” Each color of light has a different wavelength—and because lenses bend some wavelengths more than others, one color of light shining through a lens can be in focus while another is still blurry. So with the right kind of eye, a quick sweep of focus would let the viewer figure out the actual color of an object based on when it blurs. The off-center pupils of many cephalopods—including the w-shaped pupils of cuttlefish (above)—make this blurring effect more extreme, according to a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In that study, scientists built a computer model of an octopus eye and showed that—for an object at least one body length away—it could determine the object’s color just by changing focus. Because this is all still theoretical, the next step is testing whether live cephalopods actually see color this way—and whether any other “colorblind” animals might, too. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Vision; Evolution
Link ID: 22402 - Posted: 07.07.2016

It's no secret that passwords aren't impenetrable. Even outside of major incidents like the celebrity nude photo hack, or when millions of passwords get released online, like what happened to Twitter recently, many of us may still be at risk of having our data compromised due to password-related security flaws. According to a June 2015 survey from mobile identity company TeleSign, two in five people were notified in the preceding year that their personal information was compromised or that they had been hacked or had their password stolen. But a new technology developed by the BioSense lab at the University of California, Berkeley could make all of that a thing of the past. Over the course of three years, the lab's co-director, John Chuang, and his graduate students have been working on a technology called passthoughts, which would use a person's brainwaves to identify them, according to CNET. The team has found that a passthought — something like a song that someone could sing in their mind — isn't easily forgotten and can achieve a 99-per-cent authentication accuracy rate. The device used to capture passthoughts resembles a telephone headset. It relies on EEG technology, detecting electrical activity in your brain via electrodes strapped to your head. And although Chuang's team say the technology has improved greatly in recent years, the awkwardness of the device might hinder it from being widely adopted. ©2016 CBC/Radio-Canada.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 22401 - Posted: 07.06.2016

By Damian Garde, A boy in Pakistan became a local legend as a street performer in recent years by traversing hot coals and lancing his arms with knives without so much as a wince. A thousand miles away, in China, lived a family wracked by excruciating bouts of inexplicable pain, passed down generation after generation. Scientists eventually determined what the boy and the family had in common: mutations in a gene that functions like an on-off switch for agony. Now, a bevy of biotech companies, including Genentech and Biogen, are staking big money on the idea that they can develop drugs that toggle that switch to relieve pain without the risk of addiction. The gene in question is SCN9A, which is responsible for producing a pain-related protein called Nav1.7. In patients who feel nothing, SCN9A is pretty much broken. In those who feel searing random pain, the gene is cranking out far too much Nav1.7. That discovery raises an obvious question: Can blocking Nav1.7 provide relief for many types of pain—and someday, perhaps, replace dangerous opioid therapies? “That’s the dream,” said David Hackos, a senior scientist at Genentech, which has two Nav1.7 treatments in the first stage of clinical development. It’s too early make any sweeping predictions—and, indeed, a Pfizer pill targeting Nav1.7 has already stumbled—but the pharma industry clearly sees the potential for a blockbuster. © 2016 Scientific American

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 22400 - Posted: 07.06.2016

Anthony Devlin/ Antidepressant use is at an all-time in high in England, where prescriptions filled for these drugs has doubled over the last decade. Figures from the Health and Social Care Information Centre show that in 2015, 61 million prescriptions were filled for antidepressant drugs, including citalopram and fluoxetine. This is up from 57.1 million in 2014, and 29.4 million back in 2005. “The reasons for this increase in antidepressant prescriptions could include a greater awareness of mental illness and more willingness to seek help,” says Gillian Connor of the charity Rethink Mental Illness. “However, with our overstretched and underfunded mental health services, too often antidepressants are the only treatment available.” UK guidelines suggest that people should be offered antidepressants as a first treatment option for moderate depression, but some critics argue that it would be better to steer people to talking therapies. In May, Andrew Green, a GP in East Riding and chairman of the British Medical Association’s Clinical and Prescribing Subcommittee, told a meeting of the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence that one of the reasons doctors resort to prescribing antidepressants is because the waiting lists for talking therapies are so long. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 22399 - Posted: 07.06.2016

By David Shultz Making eye contact for an appropriate length of time is a delicate social balancing act: too short, and we look shifty and untrustworthy; too long, and we seem awkward and overly intimate. To make this Goldilocks-like dilemma even trickier, it turns out that different people prefer to lock eyes for different amounts of time. So what’s too long or too short for one person might be just right for another. In a new study, published today in Royal Society Open Science, researchers asked a group of 498 volunteers to watch a video of an actor staring out from a screen and press a button if their gazes met for an uncomfortably long or short amount of time (above). During the test, the movement of their eyes and the size of their pupils were recorded with eye-tracking technology. On average, participants had a “preferred gaze duration” of 3.3 seconds, give or take 0.7 seconds. That’s a pretty narrow band for someone on their first date! Making things even harder, individual preferences can also be measured: Researchers found that how quickly people’s pupils dilated—an automatic reflex whenever someone looks into the eyes of another—was a good indicator of how long they wanted to gaze. The longer their preferred gaze, the faster their pupils expanded. The differences are so subtle, though, that they can only be seen with the eye-tracking software—making any attempts to game the system is likely to end up awkward rather than informative. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Autism; Emotions
Link ID: 22398 - Posted: 07.06.2016

George Johnson A paper in The British Medical Journal in December reported that cognitive behavioral therapy — a means of coaxing people into changing the way they think — is as effective as Prozac or Zoloft in treating major depression. In ways no one understands, talk therapy reaches down into the biological plumbing and affects the flow of neurotransmitters in the brain. Other studies have found similar results for “mindfulness” — Buddhist-inspired meditation in which one’s thoughts are allowed to drift gently through the head like clouds reflected in still mountain water. Findings like these have become so commonplace that it’s easy to forget their strange implications. Depression can be treated in two radically different ways: by altering the brain with chemicals, or by altering the mind by talking to a therapist. But we still can’t explain how mind arises from matter or how, in turn, mind acts on the brain. This longstanding conundrum — the mind-body problem — was succinctly described by the philosopher David Chalmers at a recent symposium at The New York Academy of Sciences. “The scientific and philosophical consensus is that there is no nonphysical soul or ego, or at least no evidence for that,” he said. Descartes’s notion of dualism — mind and body as separate things — has long receded from science. The challenge now is to explain how the inner world of consciousness arises from the flesh of the brain. © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 22397 - Posted: 07.05.2016

By Bret Stetka Beloved crank and Seinfeld co-creator Larry David once told an interviewer that he tolerates people like he tolerates lactose — which is to say, I'm assuming, not well. David's particular degree of grumpiness might be extreme, and perhaps embellished in the interest his shtick, but his social misgivings echo those of many in their dotage who’d rather spend time with old friends than deal with the sweat and small talk required to go out and make new ones. Humans may not be alone here. According to new research, our primate cousins also become more socially selective with age, preferring the companionship of their “friends” to monkeys that are less familiar (or maybe just a drag at parties). The findings also hint at a possible evolutionary explanation for why our social preferences change over the years. The work, conducted primarily by researchers from the German Primate Center in Göttingen, Germany, was recently published in the journal Current Biology and entailed observing the behaviors of over 100 Barbary macaque monkeys, an out-going, some might say "screechy," species hailing from North Africa. To get a sense of how interest in non-social vs social stimulation changes over the course of their lifetimes, monkeys of varying ages were observed in the presence of both inanimate objects and other monkeys. They were first presented with three novel objects: animal toys, a see-through cube filled with glitter in a viscous liquid, and a tube baited with food. Those that had reached early adulthood were not interested in the objects without a reward. The younger ones were intrigued by all three. © 2016 Scientific American

Keyword: Evolution; Emotions
Link ID: 22396 - Posted: 07.05.2016

Laura Sanders Feeling good may help the body fight germs, experiments on mice suggest. When activated, nerve cells that help signal reward also boost the mice’s immune systems, scientists report July 4 in Nature Medicine. The study links positive feelings to a supercharged immune system, results that may partially explain the placebo effect. Scientists artificially dialed up the activity of nerve cells in the ventral tegmental area — a part of the brain thought to help dole out rewarding feelings. This activation had a big effect on the mice’s immune systems, Tamar Ben-Shaanan of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and colleagues found. A day after the nerve cells in the ventral tegmental area were activated, mice were infected with E. coli bacteria. Later tests revealed that mice with artificially activated nerve cells had less E. coli in their bodies than mice without the nerve cell activation. Certain immune cells seemed to be ramped up, too. Monocytes and macrophages were more powerful E. coli killers after the nerve cell activation. If a similar effect is found in people, the results may offer a biological explanation for how positive thinking can influence health. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2016

Keyword: Neuroimmunology; Emotions
Link ID: 22395 - Posted: 07.05.2016

Mo Costandi There’s much more to visual perception than meets the eye. What we see is not merely a matter of patterns of light falling on the retina, but rather is heavily influenced by so-called ‘top-down’ brain mechanisms, which can alter the visual information, and other types of sensory information, that enters the brain before it even reaches our conscious awareness. A striking example of this is a phenomenon called inattentional blindness, whereby narrowly focusing one’s attention on one visual stimulus makes us oblivious to other stimuli, even though they otherwise may be glaringly obvious, as demonstrated by the infamous ‘Invisible Gorilla’ study. Now researchers say they have discovered another extreme form of blindness, in which people fail to notice an unexpected image, even when shown by itself and staring them in the face. Marjan Persuh and Robert Melara of the City University of New York designed two experiments to investigate whether people’s prior expectations could block their awareness of meaningful and important visual stimuli. In the first, they recruited 20 student volunteers and asked them to perform a visual discrimination task. They were shown a series of images, consisting of successive pairs of faces, each of which were presented for half a second on a computer screen, and asked to indicate whether each pair showed faces of people of the same or different sex. Towards the end of each session, the participants were presented with a simple shape, which flashed onto the screen for one tenth of a second. They were then asked if they had seen anything new and, after replying, were told that a shape had indeed appeared, and asked to select the correct one from a display of four. This shape recognition task was then repeated in one final control trial. © 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 22394 - Posted: 07.04.2016

Jackie Goldstein Mental illness has been part of human society throughout recorded history, but how we care for people with mental disorders has changed radically, and not always for the better. In Colonial days, settlers lived in sparsely populated rural communities where sanctuary and community support enabled the tradition of family care brought from England. "Distracted persons" were acknowledged, but erratic behavior wasn't associated with disease. Records indicate unusual tolerance of bizarre behavior. When 18th century Pastor Joseph Moody of York, Maine, unable to face crowds, delivered sermons with a handkerchief covering his face, his behavior was tolerated for three years before he was relieved of his duties. As urban areas grew in size and number, a transient poor population with no access to family support led to almshouses, the first form of institutionalization, inspired by 18th century reforms in Europe. A Philadelphia Quaker who had visited an English retreat brought the idea to this country and in 1817 founded the Friends Asylum, a self-sufficient farm that offered a stress-free environment known as "moral treatment." Other private asylums followed, but they soon became overcrowded. By the late 19th century, this was addressed with larger state hospitals, which soon became overcrowded as well. People with mental disorders are more likely to be stigmatized owing to fear and misunderstanding when they aren't part of the community. And stigmatization can discourage those with a mental disorder from seeking or complying with treatment. © 2016 npr

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 22393 - Posted: 07.04.2016

By Anthea Rowan The neurologist does not cushion his words. He tells us how it is: “She won’t read again.” I am standing behind my mother. I feel her stiffen. We do not talk of this revelation for days — and when we do, we do it in the garden of the rehab facility where she is recovering from a stroke. The stroke has scattered her memory, but she has not forgotten she will apparently not read again. I was shocked by what the doctor said, she confides. Me, too. Do you believe him? she asks. No — I am emphatic, for her and for me — I don’t. Mum smiles: “Me neither.” The damage wreaked by Mum’s stroke leaked across her brain, set up roadblocks so that the cerebral circuit board fizzes and pops uselessly, with messages no longer neatly passing from “A” to “B.” I tell the neuro: “I thought they’d learn to go via ‘D’ or ‘W.’ Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen — messages reroute?” “Unlikely,” he responds. “In your mother’s case.” Alexia — the loss of the ability to read — is common after strokes, especially, as in my mother’s case, when damage is wrought in the brain’s occipital lobe, which processes visual information. Pure alexia, which is Mum’s diagnosis, is much more rare: She can still write and touch-type, but bizarrely, she cannot read.

Keyword: Language; Stroke
Link ID: 22392 - Posted: 07.04.2016

Carl Zimmer Our genes are not just naked stretches of DNA. They’re coiled into intricate three-dimensional tangles, their lengths decorated with tiny molecular “caps.” These so-called epigenetic marks are crucial to the workings of the genome: They can silence some genes and activate others. Epigenetic marks are crucial for our development. Among other functions, they direct a single egg to produce the many cell types, including blood and brain cells, in our bodies. But some high-profile studies have recently suggested something more: that the environment can change your epigenetic marks later in life, and that those changes can have long-lasting effects on health. In May, Duke University researchers claimed that epigenetics could explain why people who grow up poor are at greater risk of depression as adults. Even more provocative studies suggest that when epigenetic marks change, people can pass them to their children, reprogramming their genes. But criticism of these studies has been growing. Some researchers argue that the experiments have been weakly designed: Very often, they say, it’s impossible for scientists to confirm that epigenetics is responsible for the effects they see. Three prominent researchers recently outlined their skepticism in detail in the journal PLoS Genetics. The field, they say, needs an overhaul. “We need to get drunk, go home, have a bit of a cry, and then do something about it tomorrow,” said John M. Greally, one of the authors and an epigenetics expert at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Epigenetics; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 22391 - Posted: 07.02.2016