Vole Romance - Surgery Sap - Young Blood - Addicted Babies
0 views
Skip to first unread message
Breedlove, Stephen
Jun 1, 2017, 7:27:27 AM6/1/17
to
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/may/31/vole-love-helps-scientists-pinpoint-romantic-brain-activity
Vole love helps scientists pinpoint romantic brain activity
Hannah Devlin Science correspondent
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind. And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind,” Shakespeare wrote. Now scientists have pinpointed the specific patterns of brain activity that accompany romance, offering a new explanation for why love sends our judgement haywire.
As a relationship takes root, the study found, the brain’s reward circuit goes into overdrive, rapidly increasing the value placed on spending time with one’s love interest. This, at least, was the case in the prairie vole, scientists’ animal model of choice for studying the neuroscience of love.
Elizabeth Amadei, who co-led the work at Emory University in Atlanta, said: “As humans, we know the feelings we get when we view images of our romantic partners, but, until now, we haven’t known how the brain’s reward system works to lead to those feelings.”
In order to get more direct access to what is happening in the brain, Amadei and colleagues turned to the North American voles, which as a species have almost perfected monogamy. They mate for life, share nest-building duties and have an equal role in raising their young – although, like humans, voles have the occasional “extramarital” fling.
Using electrical probes, the scientists recorded directly from the brains of female voles as they encountered a potential partner, mated for the first time and began to show signs of having formed a lifelong bond, indicated by “huddling” behaviour.
--------------------
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/will-surgery-sap-your-brain-power
Will surgery sap your brain power?
By Mitch Leslie
Colin Wahl, a market research consultant in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, was recovering nicely from triple bypass surgery last year when he noticed a white spot on the incision. It proved to be an obstinate infection that required three further surgeries to eradicate. Wahl, now 61, says his mind hasn't been as sharp since. "It's little things mostly related to memory." An avid recreational hockey player, he would forget to bring his skates or sticks to the rink. Certain words became elusive. Just hours after talking to a colleague about Tasmania, he couldn't recall the word. Instead, he says, the phrase "Outback Australia" was stuck in his mind. "I'm trying to remember something and something else slips into that memory slot."
Many of us can recount a similar story about a friend, colleague, or loved one—usually elderly—whose mental condition deteriorated after a visit to an operating room. "The comment that ‘So-and-so has never been the same after the operation’ is pervasive," says anesthesiologist Roderic Eckenhoff of the University of Pennsylvania.
Often, surgical patients are beset by postoperative delirium—delusions, confusion, and hallucinations—but that usually fades quickly. Other people develop what has been dubbed postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD), suffering problems with memory, attention, and concentration that can last months or even a lifetime. POCD not only disrupts patients' lives, but may also augur worse to come. According to a 2008 study, people who have POCD 3 months after they leave the hospital are nearly twice as likely to die within a year as are surgical patients who report no mental setbacks. With the ballooning senior population needing more surgeries, "this is going to become an epidemic," says anesthesiologist Mervyn Maze of the University of California, San Francisco.
© 2017 American Association for the Advancement of Science.
--------------------
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2133311-human-tests-suggest-young-blood-cuts-cancer-and-alzheimers-risk/
Human tests suggest young blood cuts cancer and Alzheimer’s risk
By Sally Adee
Older people who received transfusions of young blood plasma have shown improvements in biomarkers related to cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease, New Scientist has learned.
“I don’t want to say the word panacea, but here’s something about teenagers,” Jesse Karmazin, founder of startup Ambrosia, told New Scientist. “Whatever is in young blood is causing changes that appear to make the ageing process reverse.”
Since August 2016, Karmazin’s company has been transfusing people aged 35 and older with plasma – the liquid component of blood – taken from people aged between 16 and 25. So far, 70 people have been treated, all of whom paid Ambrosia to be included in the study.
Karmazin spoke to New Scientist ahead of presenting some of the results from the study at the Recode conference in Los Angeles today. These results come from blood tests conducted before and a month after plasma treatment, and imply young blood transfusions may reduce the risk of several major diseases associated with ageing.
Blood biomarkers
None of the people in the study had cancer at the time of treatment, however Karmazin’s team looked at the levels of certain proteins called carcinoembryonic antigens. These chemicals are found in the blood of healthy people at low concentrations, but in larger amounts these antigens can be a sign of having cancer.
© Copyright New Scientist Ltd.
--------------------
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/babies-exposed-opioids-womb-parents-may-be-best-medicine
For babies exposed to opioids in the womb, parents may be the best medicine
Meghan Rosen
The first thing you’ll notice is the noise. Monitors beep steadily, relentlessly, ready to sound a car-alarm blare if a baby is in trouble.
The air has an astringent odor — not clean exactly, but reminiscent of an operating room (there’s one next door). Ceiling lights shine fluorescent white. Half are off, but glare from the monitors throws out extra light. It’s midday on a Friday, but it’ll be just as bright at midnight.
Here on the fourth floor of Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital, 10 tiny beds hold 10 tiny infants, each with Band-Aid–like patches stuck to their bodies to continuously monitor health. Between beds, nurses squeeze through narrow aisles crammed with folding chairs and plastic incubators. This space, one of five in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, has the people and equipment needed to keep sick babies alive — heart rate monitors, oxygen tanks, IV poles to deliver medications.
Until recently, Yale’s NICU and hundreds like it across the country were considered the place to be for newborns withdrawing from opioid drugs. But now, as the number of drug-dependent babies surges, doctors here and elsewhere are searching for better options.
“We’re really focused on trying to get these kids out of the NICU,” says Yale pediatrician Matthew Grossman. “We’re looking at moms and the dads as the first line of treatment.”
The nationwide rate of babies withdrawing from opioids has soared — up nearly 400 percent from 2000 to 2012. The booming numbers are the bleak by-product of the United States’ ongoing battle with the drugs: Sales of prescription opioid pain relievers alone quadrupled from 1999 to 2010, and overdose deaths tripled from 2000 to 2014.
© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2017
--------------------
http://blogs.plos.org/neuro/2017/05/31/behind-sociability-the-medial-prefrontal-cortex/
Behind sociability? The medial prefrontal cortex
Giuseppe Gangarossa
Could it be possible to run a normal existence without social life? Indeed, sociability is an important aspect for individuals and social interaction builds our lives. In fact, social interaction enhances quality of life and improves the stability of communities. Impaired sociability is a classical symptom observed in many neuropsychiatric disorders including autism, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety and generalized fear. Interestingly, many studies have pointed to the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a brain area located in the ventromedial part of the frontal lobe, as key region involved in the neural bases of sociability (Valk et al, 2015; Treadway et al., 2015; Frith et al., 2007).
The prelimbic cortex (PL) and the infralimbic cortex (IL), two subregions of the mPFC, have been strongly suggested to play an important role in the neural mechanisms underlying sociability as isolation rearing in rats results in impaired social behavior and structural modifications in the PL and IL. Isolation rearing is a neurodevelopmental manipulation that produces neurochemical, structural, and behavioral alterations in rodents that in many ways are consistent with psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, anxiety and depression. In particular, it has been shown that isolation rearing can alter the volume of mPFC, the dendritic length and the spine density of pyramidal neurons. However, the detailed mechanisms involved in sociability disorders remain elusive and poorly understood.
A recent article published in Plos ONE by Minami and colleagues aimed at measuring neural activity in the PL and IL of control and isolated rats during social interaction in order to determine whether there is neural activity related to social behavior in these areas.
--------------------
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/05/31/more-than-a-third-of-teenage-girls-experience-depression-new-study-says/?utm_term=.75ca76102169
More than a third of teenage girls experience depression
By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Depression is usually considered an issue parents have to watch out for starting in the turbulent teenage years. The CW channel, full of characters with existential angst about school, friends and young love, tells us so, as do the countless parenting books about the adolescent years in every guidance counselor's office.
But what if by that time it's already too late?
A large new study out this week contains some alarming data about the state of children's mental health in the United States, finding that depression in many children appears to start as early as age 11. By the time they hit age 17, the analysis found, 13.6 percent of boys and a staggering 36.1 percent of girls have been or are depressed.
These numbers are significantly higher than previous estimates. Understanding the risk of depression is critically important because of the close link between depressive episodes and serious issues with school, relationships and suicide.
While researchers have long known about the gender gap in depression, with more adult women than men suffering from the condition, the new numbers show that whatever divergent paths boys and girls take happens even earlier than expected.
Published in the journal Translational Psychiatry, the study was based on data compiled from in-person interviews with more than 100,000 children who participated in the National Survey of Drug Use and Health from 2009 to 2014. The NSDUH is an annual survey on a representative sample of the U.S. population.
Among the standard questions asked are ones about insomnia, irritability, and feelings of guilt or worthlessness that researchers used to “diagnose” survey participants with depression using diagnostic criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Through the survey, they were able to capture a broader group of children than those who have a formal diagnosis and who may be in treatment.
© 1996-2017 The Washington Post
--------------------
Vole love helps scientists pinpoint romantic brain activity
Hannah Devlin Science correspondent
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind. And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind,” Shakespeare wrote. Now scientists have pinpointed the specific patterns of brain activity that accompany romance, offering a new explanation for why love sends our judgement haywire.
As a relationship takes root, the study found, the brain’s reward circuit goes into overdrive, rapidly increasing the value placed on spending time with one’s love interest. This, at least, was the case in the prairie vole, scientists’ animal model of choice for studying the neuroscience of love.
Elizabeth Amadei, who co-led the work at Emory University in Atlanta, said: “As humans, we know the feelings we get when we view images of our romantic partners, but, until now, we haven’t known how the brain’s reward system works to lead to those feelings.”
In order to get more direct access to what is happening in the brain, Amadei and colleagues turned to the North American voles, which as a species have almost perfected monogamy. They mate for life, share nest-building duties and have an equal role in raising their young – although, like humans, voles have the occasional “extramarital” fling.
Using electrical probes, the scientists recorded directly from the brains of female voles as they encountered a potential partner, mated for the first time and began to show signs of having formed a lifelong bond, indicated by “huddling” behaviour.
--------------------
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/will-surgery-sap-your-brain-power
Will surgery sap your brain power?
By Mitch Leslie
Colin Wahl, a market research consultant in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, was recovering nicely from triple bypass surgery last year when he noticed a white spot on the incision. It proved to be an obstinate infection that required three further surgeries to eradicate. Wahl, now 61, says his mind hasn't been as sharp since. "It's little things mostly related to memory." An avid recreational hockey player, he would forget to bring his skates or sticks to the rink. Certain words became elusive. Just hours after talking to a colleague about Tasmania, he couldn't recall the word. Instead, he says, the phrase "Outback Australia" was stuck in his mind. "I'm trying to remember something and something else slips into that memory slot."
Many of us can recount a similar story about a friend, colleague, or loved one—usually elderly—whose mental condition deteriorated after a visit to an operating room. "The comment that ‘So-and-so has never been the same after the operation’ is pervasive," says anesthesiologist Roderic Eckenhoff of the University of Pennsylvania.
Often, surgical patients are beset by postoperative delirium—delusions, confusion, and hallucinations—but that usually fades quickly. Other people develop what has been dubbed postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD), suffering problems with memory, attention, and concentration that can last months or even a lifetime. POCD not only disrupts patients' lives, but may also augur worse to come. According to a 2008 study, people who have POCD 3 months after they leave the hospital are nearly twice as likely to die within a year as are surgical patients who report no mental setbacks. With the ballooning senior population needing more surgeries, "this is going to become an epidemic," says anesthesiologist Mervyn Maze of the University of California, San Francisco.
© 2017 American Association for the Advancement of Science.
--------------------
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2133311-human-tests-suggest-young-blood-cuts-cancer-and-alzheimers-risk/
Human tests suggest young blood cuts cancer and Alzheimer’s risk
By Sally Adee
Older people who received transfusions of young blood plasma have shown improvements in biomarkers related to cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease, New Scientist has learned.
“I don’t want to say the word panacea, but here’s something about teenagers,” Jesse Karmazin, founder of startup Ambrosia, told New Scientist. “Whatever is in young blood is causing changes that appear to make the ageing process reverse.”
Since August 2016, Karmazin’s company has been transfusing people aged 35 and older with plasma – the liquid component of blood – taken from people aged between 16 and 25. So far, 70 people have been treated, all of whom paid Ambrosia to be included in the study.
Karmazin spoke to New Scientist ahead of presenting some of the results from the study at the Recode conference in Los Angeles today. These results come from blood tests conducted before and a month after plasma treatment, and imply young blood transfusions may reduce the risk of several major diseases associated with ageing.
Blood biomarkers
None of the people in the study had cancer at the time of treatment, however Karmazin’s team looked at the levels of certain proteins called carcinoembryonic antigens. These chemicals are found in the blood of healthy people at low concentrations, but in larger amounts these antigens can be a sign of having cancer.
© Copyright New Scientist Ltd.
--------------------
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/babies-exposed-opioids-womb-parents-may-be-best-medicine
For babies exposed to opioids in the womb, parents may be the best medicine
Meghan Rosen
The first thing you’ll notice is the noise. Monitors beep steadily, relentlessly, ready to sound a car-alarm blare if a baby is in trouble.
The air has an astringent odor — not clean exactly, but reminiscent of an operating room (there’s one next door). Ceiling lights shine fluorescent white. Half are off, but glare from the monitors throws out extra light. It’s midday on a Friday, but it’ll be just as bright at midnight.
Here on the fourth floor of Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital, 10 tiny beds hold 10 tiny infants, each with Band-Aid–like patches stuck to their bodies to continuously monitor health. Between beds, nurses squeeze through narrow aisles crammed with folding chairs and plastic incubators. This space, one of five in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, has the people and equipment needed to keep sick babies alive — heart rate monitors, oxygen tanks, IV poles to deliver medications.
Until recently, Yale’s NICU and hundreds like it across the country were considered the place to be for newborns withdrawing from opioid drugs. But now, as the number of drug-dependent babies surges, doctors here and elsewhere are searching for better options.
“We’re really focused on trying to get these kids out of the NICU,” says Yale pediatrician Matthew Grossman. “We’re looking at moms and the dads as the first line of treatment.”
The nationwide rate of babies withdrawing from opioids has soared — up nearly 400 percent from 2000 to 2012. The booming numbers are the bleak by-product of the United States’ ongoing battle with the drugs: Sales of prescription opioid pain relievers alone quadrupled from 1999 to 2010, and overdose deaths tripled from 2000 to 2014.
© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2017
--------------------
http://blogs.plos.org/neuro/2017/05/31/behind-sociability-the-medial-prefrontal-cortex/
Behind sociability? The medial prefrontal cortex
Giuseppe Gangarossa
Could it be possible to run a normal existence without social life? Indeed, sociability is an important aspect for individuals and social interaction builds our lives. In fact, social interaction enhances quality of life and improves the stability of communities. Impaired sociability is a classical symptom observed in many neuropsychiatric disorders including autism, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety and generalized fear. Interestingly, many studies have pointed to the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a brain area located in the ventromedial part of the frontal lobe, as key region involved in the neural bases of sociability (Valk et al, 2015; Treadway et al., 2015; Frith et al., 2007).
The prelimbic cortex (PL) and the infralimbic cortex (IL), two subregions of the mPFC, have been strongly suggested to play an important role in the neural mechanisms underlying sociability as isolation rearing in rats results in impaired social behavior and structural modifications in the PL and IL. Isolation rearing is a neurodevelopmental manipulation that produces neurochemical, structural, and behavioral alterations in rodents that in many ways are consistent with psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, anxiety and depression. In particular, it has been shown that isolation rearing can alter the volume of mPFC, the dendritic length and the spine density of pyramidal neurons. However, the detailed mechanisms involved in sociability disorders remain elusive and poorly understood.
A recent article published in Plos ONE by Minami and colleagues aimed at measuring neural activity in the PL and IL of control and isolated rats during social interaction in order to determine whether there is neural activity related to social behavior in these areas.
--------------------
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/05/31/more-than-a-third-of-teenage-girls-experience-depression-new-study-says/?utm_term=.75ca76102169
More than a third of teenage girls experience depression
By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Depression is usually considered an issue parents have to watch out for starting in the turbulent teenage years. The CW channel, full of characters with existential angst about school, friends and young love, tells us so, as do the countless parenting books about the adolescent years in every guidance counselor's office.
But what if by that time it's already too late?
A large new study out this week contains some alarming data about the state of children's mental health in the United States, finding that depression in many children appears to start as early as age 11. By the time they hit age 17, the analysis found, 13.6 percent of boys and a staggering 36.1 percent of girls have been or are depressed.
These numbers are significantly higher than previous estimates. Understanding the risk of depression is critically important because of the close link between depressive episodes and serious issues with school, relationships and suicide.
While researchers have long known about the gender gap in depression, with more adult women than men suffering from the condition, the new numbers show that whatever divergent paths boys and girls take happens even earlier than expected.
Published in the journal Translational Psychiatry, the study was based on data compiled from in-person interviews with more than 100,000 children who participated in the National Survey of Drug Use and Health from 2009 to 2014. The NSDUH is an annual survey on a representative sample of the U.S. population.
Among the standard questions asked are ones about insomnia, irritability, and feelings of guilt or worthlessness that researchers used to “diagnose” survey participants with depression using diagnostic criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Through the survey, they were able to capture a broader group of children than those who have a formal diagnosis and who may be in treatment.
© 1996-2017 The Washington Post
--------------------
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages