Proto Language - DSM Controversy - Alzheimer's & Aluminum - Babies' Cries

[Marc Breedlove]

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/05/english-may-have-retained-words-.html?ref=hp

English May Have Retained Words From an Ice Age Language

by Elizabeth Norton

If you've ever cringed when your parents said
"groovy," you'll know that spoken language can
have a brief shelf life. But frequently used
words can persist for generations, even
millennia, and similar sounds and meanings often
turn up in very different languages. The
existence of these shared words, or cognates, has
led some linguists to suggest that seemingly
unrelated language families can be traced back to
a common ancestor. Now, a new statistical
approach suggests that peoples from Alaska to
Europe may share a linguistic forebear dating as
far back as the end of the Ice Age, about 15,000 years ago.

"Historical linguists study language evolution
using cognates the way biologists use genes,"
explains Mark Pagel, an evolutionary theorist at
the University of Reading in the United Kingdom.
For example, although about 50% of French and
English words derive from a common ancestor (like
"mere" and "mother," for example), with English
and German the rate is closer to 70%­indicating
that while all three languages are related,
English and German have a more recent common
ancestor. In the same vein, while humans,
chimpanzees, and gorillas have common genes, the
fact that humans share almost 99% of their DNA
with chimps suggests that these two primate lineages split apart more recently.

Because words don't have DNA, researchers use
cognates found in different languages today to
reconstruct the ancestral "protowords."
Historical linguists have observed that over
time, the sounds of words tend to change in
regular patterns. For example, the p sound
frequently changes to f, and the t sound to
th­suggesting that the Latin word pater is, well,
the father of the English word father. Linguists
use these known rules to work backward in time,
making a best guess at how the protoword sounded.
They also track the rate at which words change.
Using these phylogenetic principles, some
researchers have dated many common words as far
back as 9000 years ago. The ancestral language
known as Proto-Indo-European, for example, gave
rise to languages including Hindi, Russian, French, English, and Gaelic.

© 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/new-pill-helps-problem-drinkers-kick-the-bottle-8604803.html

New pill helps problem drinkers kick the bottle

Ella Pickover

A “helpful” new drug which could help problem
drinkers reduce the amount of alcohol they
consume will today become available to UK patients.

If dependent drinkers take the drug nalmefene and
undergo counselling they can cut their
consumption levels by 61 per cent, manufacturers said.

The pill, also known as selincro, has been
licensed for use by health officials and will be
available for doctors to prescribe to their patients from today.

The drug, which is to be taken once a day, has
been licensed for "the reduction of alcohol
consumption in adult patients with alcohol
dependence without physical withdrawal symptoms
and who do not require immediate detoxification".

While current drugs help patients to become
teetotal, nalmefene helps people with drinking
problems to cut back on the amount they drink.
The drug works by modulating the reward mechanism in the brain.

A clinical trial into the drug helped patients
cut the amount they consumed from 12.75 units a
day to five units a day - a 61 per cent
reduction. And patients who underwent counselling
as well as taking the drug reduced their "heavy
drinking days" from 23 days a month to nine days
a month after undergoing the treatment for six months, researchers said.

"The people who we saw in the study were not
stereotypical alcoholics, most of them had
families and jobs," said drug investigator Dr
David Collier, of Barts and The London School of Medicine.

© independent.co.uk
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/health/psychiatrys-new-guide-falls-short-experts-say.html?ref=science&_r=0

Psychiatry’s Guide Is Out of Touch With Science, Experts Say

By PAM BELLUCK and BENEDICT CAREY

Just weeks before the long-awaited publication of
a new edition of the so-called bible of mental
disorders, the federal government’s most
prominent psychiatric expert has said the book
suffers from a scientific “lack of validity.”

The expert, Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the
National Institute of Mental Health, said in an
interview Monday that his goal was to reshape the
direction of psychiatric research to focus on
biology, genetics and neuroscience so that
scientists can define disorders by their causes, rather than their symptoms.

While the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders, or D.S.M., is the best tool now
available for clinicians treating patients and
should not be tossed out, he said, it does not
reflect the complexity of many disorders, and its
way of categorizing mental illnesses should not guide research.

“As long as the research community takes the
D.S.M. to be a bible, we’ll never make progress,”
Dr. Insel said, adding, “People think that
everything has to match D.S.M. criteria, but you
know what? Biology never read that book.”

The revision, known as the D.S.M.-5 and the first
since 1994, has stirred unprecedented questioning
from the public, patient groups and, most
fundamentally, senior figures in psychiatry who
have challenged not only decisions about specific
diagnoses but the scientific basis of the entire
enterprise. Basic research into the biology of
mental disorders and treatment has stalled, they
say, confounded by the labyrinth of the brain.

© 2013 The New York Times Company
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http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2013/05/nimh-wont-follow-psychiatry-bibl.html?ref=hp

NIMH Won't Follow Psychiatry 'Bible' Anymore

by Emily Underwood

The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM-5)­slated for release this month­has lost a
major customer before even going to print. Thomas
Insel, director of the National Institute of
Mental Health (NIMH), declared last week on his
blog that the institution will no longer use the
manual to guide its research. Instead, NIMH is
working on a long-term plan to develop new
diagnostic criteria and treatments based on
genetic, physiologic, and cognitive data rather than symptoms alone.

Insel's pronouncement is the most recent hit in a
long barrage of criticism that has rained down
upon the latest DSM revision process since it
began over a decade ago. "While DSM has been
described as a 'Bible' for the field," he wrote,
"it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of
labels and defining each." Although the manual's
strength has been to standardize these labels, he
wrote, "[t]he weakness is its lack of validity,"
and "[p]atients with mental disorders deserve better."

Although Insel's blog was reported as a
"bombshell," and "potentially seismic," NIMH's
decision to scrap the DSM criteria has been
public for several years, says Bruce Cuthbert,
director of NIMH's Division of Adult
Translational Research and Treatment Development.
In 2010, the agency began to steer researchers
away from the traditional categories of DSM by
posting new guidance for grant proposals in five
broad areas. Rather than grouping disorders such
as schizophrenia and depression by symptom, the
new categories focus on basic neural circuits and
cognitive functions, such as those for reward, arousal, and attachment.

© 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/05/neuroscientists-brainstorm-goals-for-us-brain-mapping-initiative.html

Neuroscientists brainstorm goals for US brain-mapping initiative

Posted by Helen Shen

More than 150 neuroscientists descended on
Arlington, Virginia this week to begin planning
the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative
Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative­an ambitious
but still hazy proposal to understand how the
brain works by recording activity from an
unprecedented numbers of neurons at once.

President Barack Obama announced the initiative
on 2 April, which will be carried out by three
federal agencies­the National Institutes of
Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation
(NSF), and the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA)­alongside a handful of private
foundations. Most neuroscientists have relished
the attention on their field, but have also been
left wondering what it means in scientific terms
to “understand” the brain, what it will take to
get there, and how much will be feasible in the
programme’s projected 10-year lifespan. They
gathered at an inaugural NSF planning meeting
taking place from 5-6 May to discuss their ideas and concerns.

“The belief is we’re ready for a leap forward,”
says Van Wedeen, a neurobiologist at Harvard
Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and one
of the NSF meeting organizers. “Which leap and in
which direction is still being debated.”

The NSF group invited researchers representing
neuroscience, computer science, and engineering ­
as many as would fit in the hotel conference
room. Another estimated 200 or so followed the
meeting by live webcast on Monday. Roughly 75
participants accepted NSF’s open invitation to
submit one-page documents outlining the major

© 2013 Nature Publishing Group,
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/does-aluminum-in-pans-and-antiperspirants-lead-to-alzheimers-disease/2013/05/03/e2726998-ae75-11e2-98ef-d1072ed3cc27_story.html

Does aluminum in pans and antiperspirants lead to Alzheimer’s disease?

By Gisela Telis,

I’ve seen friends fret over the purported link
between aluminum and Alzheimer’s disease and have
often wondered if their fears are founded on
fact. Should they give up aluminum pans or
aluminum-containing antiperspirants? I’ve always
heard that aluminum’s health dangers are just hype. So what’s the real deal?

The connection between aluminum and Alzheimer’s
disease is less a myth than a longstanding
scientific controversy. It began in 1965, when
researchers discovered that injecting rabbits’
brains with aluminum caused them to develop
neurofibrillary tangles, the twisted proteins
found in brain cells of patients with Alzheimer’s
disease, a degenerative brain disorder that destroys memory and cognition.

The finding spurred a rush of research. Just
eight years later, a Canadian group studying
brain tissue from deceased Alzheimer’s patients
found that certain parts of their brains had two
to three times more aluminum than a normal brain.
By 1980, Daniel Perl and Arnold Brody had managed
to actually peer inside human tangle-bearing
brain cells ­ and found aluminum there, too.

“That really changed the whole complexion of the
thing,” recalls Perl, now a professor of
pathology in the Uniformed Services University of
the Health Sciences in Bethesda. “I was getting
called all the time, because there was so much public interest.”

Despite the rise in interest, no one could figure
out what this meant for human health. Part of the
problem was that scientific techniques were ­ and
still are ­ too imperfect to provide an answer.
Whether they were studying brain cells or
conducting population-wide epidemiological
studies that tracked aluminum exposure and
Alzheimer’s risk, researchers lacked the tools to
get very precise or conclusive results.

© 1996-2013 The Washington Post
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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=flame-retardants-linked-lower-iq-hyperactivitiy-children

Flame Retardants Linked to Lower IQs, Hyperactivity in Children

By Dina Fine Maron

Almost a decade after manufacturers stopped using
certain chemical flame retardants in furniture
foam and carpet padding, many of the compounds
still lurk in homes. New work to be presented
today reaffirms that the chemicals may also still
be hurting young children who were exposed before they were born.

Researchers investigating the health impacts of
prenatal exposure to flame retardants collected
blood samples from 309 pregnant women early in
their second trimester. Spikes in the levels of
one class of flame retardant, polybrominated
diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) correlated with behavior
and cognition difficulties during early childhood.

The researchers tracked children through the
first five years of their lives, looking at a
battery of tests for IQ and behavior. They found
that children of mothers who had high PBDE levels
during their second trimester showed cognition
deficits when the children were five years old as
well as higher rates of hyperactivity at ages two
to five. If the mother’s blood had a 10-fold
increase in PBDEs, the average five-year-old had
about a four-point IQ deficit. “A four-point IQ
difference in an individual child may not be
perceivable in…ordinary life. However, in a
population, if many children are affected, the
social and economic impact can be huge due to the
shift of IQ distribution and productivity,” says
lead author Aimin Chen, an assistant professor of
environmental health at the University of
Cincinnati College of Medicine. The findings,
based on women and children from Cincinnati, will
be presented May 6 at the annual meeting of the
Pediatric Academic Societies in Washington, D.C.
The unpublished results have been submitted to a
peer-reviewed journal, but the paper has not yet been accepted.

© 2013 Scientific American
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http://www.nih.gov/news/health/may2013/nichd-06.htm

Women’s, men’s brains respond differently to hungry infant’s cries

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health
have uncovered firm evidence for what many
mothers have long suspected: women’s brains
appear to be hard-wired to respond to the cries of a hungry infant.

Researchers asked men and women to let their
minds wander, then played a recording of white
noise interspersed with the sounds of an infant
crying. Brain scans showed that, in the women,
patterns of brain activity abruptly switched to
an attentive mode when they heard the infant
cries, whereas the men’s brains remained in the resting state.

“Previous studies have shown that, on an
emotional level, men and women respond
differently to the sound of an infant crying,”
said study co-author Marc H. Bornstein, Ph.D.,
head of the Child and Family Research Section of
the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of
Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the
institute that conducted the study. “Our findings
indicate that men and women show marked
differences in terms of attention as well.”

The earlier studies showed that women are more
likely than men to feel sympathy when they hear
an infant cry, and are more likely to want to care for the infant.

Their findings appear in NeuroReport.

Previous studies have shown differences in
patterns of brain activity between when an
individual’s attention is focused and when the
mind wanders. The pattern of unfocused activity
is referred to as default mode, Dr. Bornstein
explained. When individuals focus on something in
particular, their brains disengage from the
default mode and activate other brain networks.
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