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Category: neuroscience – Page 1,037

Are Intellectuals Suffering a Crisis of Meaning?

Ignorance is bliss, until it isn’t…,and it becomes experience.

“We fail our most cognitively talented students when we set them up for adult expectations that they must be high achieving, or we don’t help them find their own unique path to self-actualization and contribution to society. In today’s polarized world, with a general lack of nuance and open and honest critical discussions, I also think a very large number of intellectually gifted children are growing up knowing they are bright, but wondering: what for?”

What is the relationship between intellectual giftedness and meaning in life?

Chronic rhinosinusitis linked to depression, anxiety

(HealthDay)—Chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) is associated with incidence of depression and anxiety, according to a study published online Feb. 7 in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery.

Jong-Yeup Kim, M.D., Ph.D., from Konyang University Hospital in Daejeon, South Korea, and colleagues conducted a retrospective nationwide cohort study using population-based insurance data for 16,224 patients with CRS and 32,448 individuals without CRS, with propensity score matching between the groups. The incidence, survival rate, and hazard ratios of depression and anxiety were calculated for each group.

The researchers found that during the 11-year follow-up, the overall incidence of depression was higher in the CRS versus the non-CRS group (24.2 versus 16.0 per 1,000 person-years; adjusted hazard ratio, 1.54). Higher incidence of anxiety was also seen in the CRS versus the non-CRS group (42.2 versus 27.8 per 1,000 person-years; adjusted hazard ratio, 1.57). Compared with patients with CRS with nasal polyps, patients with CRS without had higher adjusted hazard ratios for developing depression (1.61 versus 1.41) and anxiety (1.63 versus 1.45).

First identification of brain’s preparation for action

Reviewing the brain impulses, we could see that when participants were producing the sequences correctly and accurately, with no errors, each activity was spaced and ordered in advance of being executed. However, when mistakes occurred, the ‘queuing’ of actions was visibly less well-defined as separate and distinct actions. It appears that the more closely bunched and less-defined ‘queuing’ was, the more participants committed errors in sequence production and timing.

Neuroscientists at Bangor University and University College London have for the first time, identified the processes which occur in our brains milliseconds before we undertake a series of movements, crucial for speech, handwriting, sports or playing a musical instrument. They have done so by measuring tiny magnetic fields outside the participants’ head and identifying unique patterns making up each sequence before it is executed. They identified differences between neural patterns which lead to a more skilled as opposed to a more error-prone execution.

The research, funded by the Wellcome Trust, is published in Neuron Issue date 7 FEBRUARY 2019 (DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2019.01.018). Following further research, this new information could lead to the development of interventions which would assist with rehabilitation post-stroke or improve life for people living with stutter, dyspraxia or other similar conditions.

Lead author Dr. Katja Kornysheva, of Bangor University’s School of Psychology explained the significance of the findings:

Aging and chronic diseases share genetic factors, study reveals

The global population aged 60 or over is growing faster than all younger age groups and faces the tide of chronic diseases threatening their quality of life and posing challenges to healthcare and economy systems. To better understand the underlying biology behind healthspan — the healthy period of life before the first chronic disease manifestation — the scientists from Gero and MIPT collaborated with the researchers from PolyOmica, the University of Edinburgh and other institutes to analyze genetic data and medical histories of over 300,000 people aged 37 to 73 made available by UK Biobank.

The study published today in Communications Biology was lead by Dr. Peter Fedichev and Prof. Yurii Aulchenko. It shows that the most prevalent chronic conditions such as cancer, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, stroke, dementia, and some others apparently share the common underlying mechanism that is aging itself.

«According to Gompertz mortality law, the risk of death from all causes increases exponentially after the age of 40 and doubles approximately every 8 years», explains Peter Fedichev, founder and CSO of Gero. «By analyzing the dynamics of disease incidence in the clinical data available from UKB, we observed that the risks of age-related diseases grow exponentially with age and double at a rate compatible with the Gompertz mortality law. This close relation between the most prevalent chronic diseases and mortality suggests that their risks could be driven by the same process, that is aging. This is why healthspan can be used as a natural proxy for investigation of the genetic factors controlling the rate of aging, the “holy grail” target for anti-aging interventions».

Drug microdosing effects may not measure up to big expectations

Taking very small amounts of psychedelic substances on a regular basis – called ‘microdosing’ – may improve psychological and cognitive functioning, but the effects do not exactly match users’ expectations, a new study from Macquarie University suggests.

Microdosing of substances like LSD and psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms) has had a recent surge in popularity, with proponents claiming wide-ranging benefits, including enhanced productivity, concentration, creativity, mood and wellbeing, all without the typical ‘high’ of psychedelics.

This is the first published to test these claims, in which researchers recruited 98 ‘microdosers’ from online forums and tracked their over a six-week period.

Real life Experience of Medical Cannabis Treatment in Autism: Analysis of Safety and Efficacy

There has been a dramatic increase in the number of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) worldwide. Recently anecdotal evidence of possible therapeutic effects of cannabis products has emerged. The aim of this study is to characterize the epidemiology of ASD patients receiving medical cannabis treatment and to describe its safety and efficacy. We analysed the data prospectively collected as part of the treatment program of 188 ASD patients treated with medical cannabis between 2015 and 2017. The treatment in majority of the patients was based on cannabis oil containing 30% CBD and 1.5% THC. Symptoms inventory, patient global assessment and side effects at 6 months were primary outcomes of interest and were assessed by structured questionnaires. After six months of treatment 82.4% of patients (155) were in active treatment and 60.0% (93) have been assessed; 28 patients (30.1%) reported a significant improvement, 50 (53.7%) moderate, 6 (6.4%) slight and 8 (8.6%) had no change in their condition. Twenty-three patients (25.2%) experienced at least one side effect; the most common was restlessness (6.6%). Cannabis in ASD patients appears to be well tolerated, safe and effective option to relieve symptoms associated with ASD.

Bees have brains for basic math, study finds

Researchers have found bees can do basic mathematics, in a discovery that expands our understanding of the relationship between brain size and brain power.

Building on their finding that honeybees can understand the concept of zero, Australian and French researchers set out to test whether bees could perform arithmetic operations like addition and subtraction.

Solving requires a sophisticated level of cognition, involving the complex mental management of numbers, long-term rules and short term working memory.

Mega docking library poised to speed drug discovery

Researchers have launched an ultra-large virtual docking library expected to grow to more than 1 billion molecules by next year. It will expand by 1000-fold the number of such “make-on-demand” compounds readily available to scientists for chemical biology and drug discovery. The larger the library, the better its odds of weeding out inactive “decoy” molecules that could otherwise lead researchers down blind alleys. The project is funded by the National Institutes of Health.

“To improve medications for mental illnesses, we need to screen huge numbers of potentially therapeutic molecules,” explained Joshua A. Gordon, M.D., Ph.D., director of NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which co-funded the research. “Unbiased computational modeling allows us to do this in a computer, vastly expediting the process of discovering new treatments. It enables researchers to virtually “see” a molecule with its receptor protein—like a ship in its harbor berth or a key in its lock—and predict its pharmacological properties, based on how the are predicted to interact. Only those relatively few candidate molecules that best match the target profile on the computer need to be physically made and tested in a wet lab.”

Bryan Roth, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill, Brian Shoichet, Ph.D., and John Irwin, Ph.D., of the University of California San Francisco, and colleagues, report on their findings Feb. 6, 2019 in the journal Nature. The study was supported, in part, by grants from NIMH, National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), the NIH Common Fund, and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).

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