David Shariatmadari Maybe we should ask the duck-billed platypus. Back in the 1950s, scientists working on humans identified a state marked by increased brain activation, accelerated breathing and heart rate, and muscular paralysis. But perhaps the most remarkable feature was a flickering of the eyes beneath closed eyelids – because all these physiological changes took place while the subjects were fast asleep. What the researchers had discovered became known as the “rapid eye movement” (REM) phase. Under normal circumstances, it recurs every 90 minutes or so, and takes up around 25% of our total time spent sleeping. It quickly became clear that people woken during REM had much better recall of their dreams; in fact, they would often say they’d just that moment been dreaming. As a result, the scientific community began to think of REM as the outward manifestation of the dream state. For the first time in human history, the most extraordinary and fantastical part of our lives had been subject to experimental observation. Not only that, but animals were found to experience REM as well – some of them more often and for longer than humans. We now know that the REM-iest mammal of them all is, bizarrely enough, Ornithorhynchus anatinus, known to you and me as the duck-billed platypus. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, since, as Nature notes, “an account from as long ago as 1860, before REM sleep was discovered, reported that young platypus showed ‘swimming’ movements of their forepaws while asleep”. © 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Sleep; Evolution
Link ID: 21014 - Posted: 06.03.2015

By Fiona Kumfor, Sicong Tu and The Conversation The brain is truly a marvel. A seemingly endless library, whose shelves house our most precious memories as well as our lifetime’s knowledge. But is there a point where it reaches capacity? In other words, can the brain be “full”? The answer is a resounding no, because, well, brains are more sophisticated than that. A study published in Nature Neuroscience earlier this year shows that instead of just crowding in, old information is sometimes pushed out of the brain for new memories to form. Previous behavioural studies have shown that learning new information can lead to forgetting. But in this study, researchers used new neuroimaging techniques to demonstrate for the first time how this effect occurs in the brain. The experiment The paper’s authors set out to investigate what happens in the brain when we try to remember information that’s very similar to what we already know. This is important because similar information is more likely to interfere with existing knowledge, and it’s the stuff that crowds without being useful. To do this, they examined how brain activity changes when we try to remember a “target” memory, that is, when we try to recall something very specific, at the same time as trying to remember something similar (a “competing” memory). Participants were taught to associate a single word (say, the word sand) with two different images—such as one of Marilyn Monroe and the other of a hat. © 2015 Scientific American

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 21013 - Posted: 06.03.2015

By Emily DeMarco For owners of picky cats, that disdainful sniff—signaling the refusal of yet another Friskies flavor—can be soul-crushing. Some cats are notoriously finicky eaters, but the reasons behind such fussy behavior remain fuzzy. Previous research has shown that cats can’t taste sweet flavors, but little is known about how they perceive bitter tastes. Now, researchers in the pet food industry have identified two bitter taste receptors in domestic cats, which could help explain why some felines are so choosy when it comes to their chow. In the study, published today in BMC Neuroscience, the scientists used cell-based experiments to see how the two cat taste receptors, known as Tas2r38 and Tas2r43, responded to bitter compounds such as phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) and 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP)—which have molecular structures similar to ones in Brussels sprouts and broccoli—as well as aloin (from the aloe plant) and denatonium (used to prevent inadvertent ingestion of some chemicals). When compared with the human versions of these receptors, the researchers found that the cat bitter receptor Tas2r38 was less sensitive to PTC and did not respond to PROP, whereas Tas2r43 was less sensitive to aloin but more sensitive to denatonium, leading the researchers to conclude that cats taste different, and perhaps more narrow, ranges of bitter flavors than humans. The research could help pharmaceutical and pet food manufacturers create compounds that block or inhibit these bitter taste receptors, the team says, potentially leading to more appetizing medicines (if such a thing exists) and foods for our feline companions. © 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Evolution
Link ID: 21012 - Posted: 06.03.2015

Mo Costandi According to the old saying, the eyes are windows into the soul, revealing deep emotions that we might otherwise want to hide. Although modern science precludes the existence of the soul, it does suggest that there is a kernel of truth in this saying: it turns out the eyes not only reflect what is happening in the brain but may also influence how we remember things and make decisions. Our eyes are constantly moving, and while some of those movements are under conscious control, many of them occur subconsciously. When we read, for instance, we make a series of very quick eye movements called saccades that fixate rapidly on one word after another. When we enter a room, we make larger sweeping saccades as we gaze around. Then there are the small, involuntary eye movements we make as we walk, to compensate for the movement of our head and stabilise our view of the world. And, of course, our eyes dart around during the ‘rapid eye movement’ (REM) phase of sleep. What is now becoming clear is that some of our eye movements may actually reveal our thought process. Research published last year shows that pupil dilation is linked to the degree of uncertainty during decision-making: if somebody is less sure about their decision, they feel heightened arousal, which causes the pupils to dilate. This change in the eye may also reveal what a decision-maker is about to say: one group of researchers, for example, found that watching for dilation made it possible to predict when a cautious person used to saying ‘no’ was about to make the tricky decision to say ‘yes’. © 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Attention; Vision
Link ID: 21011 - Posted: 06.02.2015

By Sandra G. Boodman When B. Paul Turpin was admitted to a Tennessee hospital in January, the biggest concern was whether the 69-year-old endocrinologist would survive. But as he battled a life-threatening infection, Turpin developed terrifying hallucinations, including one in which he was performing on a stage soaked with blood. Doctors tried to quell his delusions with increasingly large doses of sedatives, which only made him more disoriented. Nearly five months later, Turpin’s infection has been routed, but his life is upended. Delirious and too weak to go home after his hospital discharge, he spent months in a rehab center, where he fell twice, once hitting his head. Until recently he did not remember where he lived and believed he had been in a car wreck. “I tell him it’s more like a train wreck,” said his wife, Marylou Turpin. “They kept telling me in the hospital, ‘Everybody does this,’ and that his confusion would disappear,” she said. Instead, her once astute husband has had great difficulty “getting past the scramble.” Turpin’s experience illustrates the consequences of delirium, a sudden disruption of consciousness and cognition marked by vivid hallucinations, delusions and an inability to focus that affects 7 million hospitalized Americans annually. The disorder can occur at any age — it has been seen in preschoolers — but disproportionately affects people older than 65 and is often misdiagnosed as dementia. While delirium and dementia can coexist, they are distinctly different illnesses. Dementia develops gradually and worsens progressively, while delirium occurs suddenly and typically fluctuates during the course of a day. Some patients with delirium are agitated and combative, while others are lethargic and inattentive.

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 21010 - Posted: 06.02.2015

Allie Wilkinson For many species, reproduction is a duet between male and female. Now, for the first time, scientists report evidence of 'virgin birth' in a wild vertebrate, the smalltooth sawfish. The fish (Pristis pectinata) normally reproduces sexually, requiring contributions from both sexes. But the latest analysis estimates that nearly 4% of sawfish in a Florida estuary were born without any genetic contribution from a male, in a phenomenon known as parthenogenesis. This asexual reproduction is rare in vertebrates, and had previously been observed only in a handful of species in captivity, including snakes collected from the wild1 and Komodo dragons2. The latest findings appear in the 1 June issue of Current Biology3. Smalltooth sawfish are one of five large ray species that have chainsaw-like appendages protruding from their faces, and are in the same subclass as sharks. The smalltooth sawfish was once abundant along the US eastern and southern coastlines from North Carolina to Texas, but overfishing and coastal development have drastically reduced its numbers. The critically endangered fish are now found only off the coast of southwest Florida. Researchers discovered evidence of 'virgin births' among the sawfish while conducting a routine genetic analysis to determine whether they were inbreeding. Some of the 190 sawfish sampled in a Florida estuary showed unusually high levels of relatedness to other fish in the same population. © 2015 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 21009 - Posted: 06.02.2015

By Arlene Karidis Health-care professionals, educators and patient advocates debate endlessly over attention deficit disorder. Some argue about the cause of the condition, which is associated with inattentiveness and, often, hyperactivity. Many disagree on treatment and parenting techniques. A dwindling group disputes whether it actually exists. Even its name — to be formal, it’s attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder — has been a source of debate. The label ADHD trivializes the disorder, asserts Russell Barkley, a neuropsychiatrist and professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Medical University of South Carolina who has published more than 300 peer-reviewed articles on the condition. “ADHD is not simply about not being able to pay attention. Describing it as such is like calling autism a ‘not looking at people’ problem,” he said, and there is much more to ADHD. Some practitioners and researchers say drugs are by far the most effective treatment. Others argue that long-term drug use addresses symptoms only and does not provide important tools to help people manage their inattentiveness. They say it’s more helpful to focus on behavioral interventions, nutrition, exercise and special accommodations at school. The American Psychiatric Association says there is no doubt that ADHD exists — and it estimates that 5 percent of U.S. children have the condition.

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 21008 - Posted: 06.02.2015

By Sarah C. P. Williams Bonobos, endangered great apes considered—along with chimpanzees—the closest living relative to humans, spend most of each day climbing through trees, collecting fruit and leaves. Compare that with the lives of early humans who traversed hot, barren landscapes and it begins to make sense why we’re the fattier, less muscular primate. Over the past 3 decades, two researchers analyzed the hard-to-come-by bodies of 13 bonobos that had died in captivity and compared them with already collected data on 49 human bodies donated by means of autopsy to help understand how evolution drove this change. Although some captive bonobos have become obese, the researchers found that, on average, the apes’ body mass—which is thought to resemble that of the closest common ancestor we share with them—is composed of 10% to 13% skin, whereas humans have only 6% skin. This thinner skin, the team hypothesizes, probably arose around the same time that Homo sapiens gained the ability to sweat, allowing more time spent in hot, open areas. The scientists also found that we pack on more fat than our ape relatives: Female and male humans average 36% and 20% body fat, whereas female and male bonobos average 4% and close to 0% body fat, respectively. Increased fat, the researchers hypothesize, allowed our species to survive—and reproduce—during times of low food availability. As for muscle, the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, bonobos come out on top, especially when it comes to upper body muscles needed for tree climbing and swinging, which became unnecessary when humans went strictly bipedal. The new findings, the researchers say, help illustrate the forces of natural selection that may have affected H. sapiens’s soft tissues even before our brains started expanding in size and tool use shaped the species. © 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Evolution; Obesity
Link ID: 21007 - Posted: 06.02.2015

By ANDREW SOLOMON At the beginning of spring in 2013, Mary Guest, a lively, accomplished 37-year-old woman, fell in love, became pregnant and married after a short courtship. At the time, Mary taught children with behavioral problems in Portland, Ore., where she grew up. Her supervisor said that he had rarely seen a teacher with Mary’s gift for intuiting students’ needs. “Mary was a powerful person,” he wrote to her mother, Kristin. “Around Mary, one felt compassion, drive, calmness and support.” Mary had struggled with depression for much of her life. Starting in her 20s, she would sometimes say to Kristin that she just wanted to die. “She would always follow up by saying, ‘But you don’t need to worry, Mama,’ ” Kristin told me. “ ‘I don’t have a plan, and I don’t intend to do anything.’ ” In recent years, Mary and her mother went for a walk once a week, and Mary would describe the difficulties she was having. She was helped somewhat by therapy and by antidepressant and antianxiety medications, which blunted her symptoms. Mary’s friends appreciated her wacky sense of humor and her engaging wit. Colleagues said that her moods never impinged on her work; in fact, few of them knew what she was dealing with. Yet for years Mary worried that she would never be in a stable relationship and experience love or a family of her own. She said plaintively to Kristin, “I think I would be a really good mother.” So when she discovered that she was pregnant, she was delighted, and she expected the experience to be blissful. She decided to discontinue her antidepressants, having read about their potential danger for a growing fetus. Given her history of severe depression, she was monitored closely by a psychiatric nurse practitioner, who told her that she could call anytime for an immediate prescription. But Mary elected to stay off medication.

Keyword: Depression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 21006 - Posted: 06.01.2015

Lauren Silverman Jiya Bavishi was born deaf. For five years, she couldn't hear and she couldn't speak at all. But when I first meet her, all she wants to do is say hello. The 6-year-old is bouncing around the room at her speech therapy session in Dallas. She's wearing a bright pink top; her tiny gold earrings flash as she waves her arms. "Hi," she says, and then uses sign language to ask who I am and talk about the ice cream her father bought for her. Jiya is taking part in a clinical trial testing a new hearing technology. At 12 months, she was given a cochlear implant. These surgically implanted devices send signals directly to the nerves used to hear. But cochlear implants don't work for everyone, and they didn't work for Jiya. A schoolboy with a cochlear implant listens to his teacher during lessons at a school for the hearing impaired in Germany. The implants have dramatically changed the way deaf children learn and transition out of schools for the deaf and into classrooms with non-disabled students. "The physician was able to get all of the electrodes into her cochlea," says Linda Daniel, a certified auditory-verbal therapist and rehabilitative audiologist with HEAR, a rehabilitation clinic in Dallas. Daniel has been working with Jiya since she was a baby. "However, you have to have a sufficient or healthy auditory nerve to connect the cochlea and the electrodes up to the brainstem." But Jiya's connection between the cochlea and the brainstem was too thin. There was no way for sounds to make that final leg of the journey and reach her brain. © 2015 NPR

Keyword: Hearing; Robotics
Link ID: 21005 - Posted: 06.01.2015

By Tori Rodriguez Heart disease and depression often go hand in hand. Long-term studies have found that people with depression have a significantly higher risk of subsequent heart disease, and vice versa. Recent research has revealed that the link begins at an early age and is probably caused by chronic inflammation. A new study in the November 2014 issue of Psychosomatic Medicine by researchers in the U.S., Australia and China examined data from an ongoing study of health among Australians. The researchers looked at the scores of 865 young adults on a questionnaire that assesses depression symptoms and other measures of mental health. They also examined measurements of the internal diameter of the blood vessels of the retina, a possible marker of early cardiovascular disease. After controlling for sex, age, smoking status and body mass index, the investigators found that participants with more symptoms of depression and anxiety had wider retinal arterioles than others, which could reflect the quality of blood vessels in their heart and brain. “We don't know if the association is causal,” explains study co-author Madeline Meier, a psychology professor at Arizona State University. “But our findings suggest that symptoms of depression and anxiety may identify youth at risk for cardiovascular disease.” Other research shows that people with depression have more inflammation throughout their body and nervous system. “One theory is that stress and inflammation could play a causal role in depression,” Meier says. Such chronic inflammation is also a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The relationship is complex: in some people, inflammation seems to precede depression and heart disease; in others, the disorders seem to cause or exacerbate the inflammation. © 2015 Scientific American

Keyword: Depression; Stress
Link ID: 21004 - Posted: 06.01.2015

Rebecca Hersher Greg O'Brien sees things that he knows aren't there, and these visual disturbances are becoming more frequent. That's not uncommon; up to 50 percent of people who have Alzheimer's disease experience hallucinations, delusions or psychotic symptoms, recent research suggests. At first, he just saw spider-like forms floating in his peripheral vision, O'Brien says. "They move in platoons." But in the last year or so, the hallucinations have been more varied, and often more disturbing. A lion. A bird. Sprays of blood among the spiders. Over the past five months, O'Brien has turned on an audio recorder when the hallucinations start, in hopes of giving NPR listeners insight into what Alzheimer's feels like. For now, he says, "I'm able to function. But I fear the day, which I know will come, when I can't." Interview Highlights [It's] St. Patrick's Day, about 9 o'clock in the morning in my office, and they're coming again. Those hallucinations. Those things that just come into the mind when the mind plays games. And then I see the bird flying in tighter and tighter and tighter circles. And all of a sudden, the bird — beak first — it darted almost in a suicide mission, exploding into my heart. Today I'm just seeing this thing in front of me. It looks like a lion, almost looks like something you'd see in The Lion King, and there are birds above it. It's floating, and it disintegrates ... it disintegrates ... it disintegrates.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Vision
Link ID: 21003 - Posted: 06.01.2015

By ANDREW POLLACK Is sexual desire a human right? And are women entitled to a little pink pill to help them feel it? Those questions are being raised in a campaign that is pressing the Food and Drug Administration to approve a pill aimed at restoring lost libido in women. The campaign, backed by the drug’s developer and some women’s groups, accuses the F.D.A. of gender bias for approving Viagra and 25 other drugs to help men have sex, but none for women. “Women have waited long enough,” the effort, known as Even the Score, says in an online petition that has gathered more than 40,000 signatures. “In 2015, gender equality should be the standard when it comes to access to treatments for sexual dysfunction.” The drug, flibanserin, has been rejected twice by the F.D.A. on the grounds that its very modest effectiveness was outweighed by side effects like sleepiness, dizziness and nausea. The first rejection, in 2010, followed a decision by a committee of outside advisers to the agency who unanimously opposed approval. On Thursday, F.D.A. advisers will once again consider whether flibanserin should be approved. Sprout Pharmaceuticals, which now owns the drug, has submitted new data, including a study to demonstrate that the pill does not impair driving. Still, approval might hinge on whether the F.D.A. agrees to interpret the old data in a new way and whether the politics of such drugs has changed. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 21002 - Posted: 06.01.2015

by Jessica Hamzelou Memories that seem to be lost forever may be lurking in the brain after all, ready to be reawakened. The finding, based on experiments in mice, could eventually give us a way to revive memories in people with Alzheimer's or amnesia. When we learn something, sets of neurons in the brain strengthen their mutual connections to lay down lasting memories. Or at least that's the theory. Susumu Tonegawa and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology decided to put it to the test. The team first developed a clever technique to selectively label the neurons representing what is known as a memory engram – in other words, the brain cells involved in forming a specific memory. They did this by genetically engineering mice so they had extra genes in all their neurons. As a result, when neurons fire as a memory is formed, they produce red proteins visible under a microscope, allowing the researchers to tell which cells were part of the engram. They also inserted a gene that made the neurons fire when illuminated by blue light. To mimic memory loss, some of the mice were given a drug that blocks the strengthening of connections between neurons. This made the animals forget their fear of the cage. But the telltale red proteins allowed Tonegawa's team to work out which neurons had been involved in storing the fear memory. They then attempted to reactivate just these neurons using blue light. Sure enough, after the engram had been reactivated, the mice again acted as if they were afraid of the cage. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 21001 - Posted: 05.30.2015

Boer Deng The ability of the bizarre prion protein to cause an array of degenerative brain conditions may help solve a puzzle in Alzheimer's research — why the disease sometimes kills within a few years, but usually causes a slow decline that can take decades. By adopting tools used to study the prion protein, PrP, researchers have found variations in the shape of a protein involved in Alzheimer’s that may influence how much damage it causes in the brain. At the Prion 2015 meeting, held on 26–29 May in Fort Collins, Colorado, neuroscientist Lary Walker described how he has borrowed a technique from prion research to study different ‘strains’ of the amyloid-β protein, which accumulates in clumps in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s. It may be that differences between the strains account for variations in the disease’s symptoms and rate of progression. “The Alzheimer’s field has not been paying enough attention to what’s happening in the prion field,” says Walker, who is based at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Similarities between rare prion diseases and common neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s have been noted for decades: both are thought to involve proteins in the nervous system that change shape and clump together. In prion diseases, a misfolded, often foreign, protein induces cascading malformation of the native prion protein in a patient’s brain. In Alzheimer’s, proteins called tau and amyloid-β accumulate within and around nerve cells, though what triggers that process — and the role of the deposits in the disease — is unclear. © 2015 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Alzheimers; Prions
Link ID: 21000 - Posted: 05.30.2015

Jon Hamilton Antidepressant drugs that work in hours instead of weeks could be on the market within three years, researchers say. "We're getting closer and closer to having really, truly next-generation treatments that are better and quicker than existing ones," says Dr. Carlos Zarate, a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health. The new drugs are based on the anesthetic ketamine, which is also a popular club drug known as Special K. Unlike current antidepressants, which can take weeks to work, ketamine-like drugs have an immediate effect. They also have helped people with depression who didn't respond to other medications. The drug that is furthest along is esketamine, a chemical variant of ketamine that has been designated a potential breakthrough by the Food and Drug Administration. Esketamine is poised to begin Phase 3 trials, and the drug's maker, Johnson & Johnson, plans to seek FDA approval in 2018. Ketamine, used as a tranquilizer for animals and as an anesthetic in humans, is also being tested as a treatment for depression. Another ketamine-like drug on the horizon is rapastinel. It has completed Phase 2 studies, which showed "rapid, substantial, and sustained reductions in depressive symptoms," according to the drug's maker, Naurex. "I think it's highly probable that we'll see some version of one of these treatments being approved in the relatively near future," says Dr. Gerard Sanacora, director of the Yale Depression Research Program. "In my mind it is the most exciting development in mood disorder treatment in the last 50 years." © 2015 NPR

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 20999 - Posted: 05.30.2015

A patient tormented by suicidal thoughts gives his psychiatrist a few strands of his hair. She derives stem cells from them to grow budding brain tissue harboring the secrets of his unique illness in a petri dish. She uses the information to genetically engineer a personalized treatment to correct his brain circuit functioning. Just Sci-fi? Yes, but... An evolving “disease-in-a-dish” technology, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is bringing closer the day when such a seemingly futuristic personalized medicine scenario might not seem so far-fetched. Scientists have perfected mini cultured 3-D structures that grow and function much like the outer mantle – the key working tissue, or cortex — of the brain of the person from whom they were derived. Strikingly, these “organoids” buzz with neuronal network activity. Cells talk with each other in circuits, much as they do in our brains. Sergiu Pasca, M.D. External Web Site Policy, of Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, and colleagues, debut what they call “human cortical spheroids,” May 25, 2015 online in the journal Nature Methods. Prior to the new study, scientists had developed a way to study neurons differentiated from stem cells derived from patients’ skin cells — using a technology called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). They had even produced primitive organoids by coaxing neurons and support cells to organize themselves, mimicking the brain’s own architecture. But these lacked the complex circuitry required to even begin to mimic the workings of our brains.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 20998 - Posted: 05.30.2015

by Penny Sarchet The common pet budgerigar (or parakeet) is loved for its ability to mimic its owners. But it has another special trick – it can catch yawns from other budgies, suggesting it has some kind of empathy. "Practically all vertebrates yawn," says Ramiro Joly-Mascheroni of City University, London. In 2008, he showed that dogs can catch yawns from humans. The only other species shown to yawn contagiously are humans, chimpanzees and a type of rodent called the high-yawning Sprague-Dawley rat. But Andrew Gallup of the State University of New York and his colleagues have now shown for the first time that the same happens for a species of non-mammals. To see whether budgies, a sociable parrot species, can make each other yawn, his team designed two experiments. In the first, budgies were placed in adjacent cages, either with a barrier between them, or with nothing obstructing their view of each other. They found that, when budgies could see each other, they were around three times as likely to yawn within five minutes of a yawn from their neighbour. In their second experiment, budgies were shown a video – either one that showed clips of budgies yawning, or one that had no yawning at all. Every bird that watched the yawning video also yawned, while fewer than half of the birds shown the other video yawned. "Thus far, yawning has been demonstrated to be contagious in a few highly social species," said Gallup. "To date, this is the first experimental evidence of contagious yawning in a non-mammalian species." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 20997 - Posted: 05.30.2015

By Roberto A. Ferdman In 2007, the Food and Drug administration approved the first ever over-the-counter diet drug. Alli, as the pill was (and still is) called, could be taken by anyone, without a prescription. And it worked, so long as those who took it also maintained a healthy lifestyle. That last bit—persuading people who take diet drugs to also eat well and exercise—is the oft overlooked key with weight-loss remedies. And GlaxoSmithKline, which manufactures the drug, knew it. Marketing around the pill made it clear that Alli was not some miracle drug. But getting people to treat diet drugs for what they are—helpers, not fix alls—is actually a lot harder than it sounds. Some diet drugs have been shown to work. But a growing pool of research suggests people are prone to use them improperly. "There's a funny, kind of counterintuitive thing that happens when many people take weight-loss drugs: they gain weight," said Amit Battacharjee, an assistant professor at The Tuck School of Business, whose research focuses on consumer beliefs and well-being. "But it isn't necessarily because the drugs themselves don't work." Battacharjee has a new study titled 'The Perils of Marketing Weight-Management Remedies,' which looks closely at how the way in which weight-loss drugs are pitched to people can significantly affect the way in which people understand them.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 20996 - Posted: 05.30.2015

John Bohannon “Slim by Chocolate!” the headlines blared. A team of German researchers had found that people on a low-carb diet lost weight 10 percent faster if they ate a chocolate bar every day. It made the front page of Bild, Europe’s largest daily newspaper, just beneath their update about the Germanwings crash. From there, it ricocheted around the internet and beyond, making news in more than 20 countries and half a dozen languages. It was discussed on television news shows. It appeared in glossy print, most recently in the June issue of Shape magazine (“Why You Must Eat Chocolate Daily”, page 128). Not only does chocolate accelerate weight loss, the study found, but it leads to healthier cholesterol levels and overall increased well-being. The Bild story quotes the study’s lead author, Johannes Bohannon, Ph.D., research director of the Institute of Diet and Health: “The best part is you can buy chocolate everywhere.” I am Johannes Bohannon, Ph.D. Well, actually my name is John, and I’m a journalist. I do have a Ph.D., but it’s in the molecular biology of bacteria, not humans. The Institute of Diet and Health? That’s nothing more than a website. Other than those fibs, the study was 100 percent authentic. My colleagues and I recruited actual human subjects in Germany. We ran an actual clinical trial, with subjects randomly assigned to different diet regimes. And the statistically significant benefits of chocolate that we reported are based on the actual data. It was, in fact, a fairly typical study for the field of diet research. Which is to say: It was terrible science. The results are meaningless, and the health claims that the media blasted out to millions of people around the world are utterly unfounded.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 20995 - Posted: 05.28.2015