In the 1980's, a spate of high profile child abuse convictions gave way to heightened concern about false memory reports given by children. Take, for example, the case of Kelly Michaels, a preschool teacher who was convicted on 115 counts of sexual abuse based on the testimony of 20 of her pupils. After serving seven years of her 47 year sentence, Michaels' conviction was overturned after the techniques used to interview the children were shown to be coercive and highly suggestive.

Since then, a sizeable literature on children's false memories has accumulated and until recently, the picture that had emerged was quite consistent: false memories of events were found to decrease with age throughout childhood and adolescence. In other words, as we grow into adulthood, our memory accuracy improves.

However, psychologists Charles Brainerd and Valerie Reyna of Cornell University believe that the relationship between age and memory accuracy may not be so simple. Drawing upon fuzzy-trace theory — the popular psychological theory that humans encode information on a continuum from verbatim to "fuzzy" traces that convey a general meaning — Brainerd and Reyna predicted that false memories may actually increase with age under certain circumstances. In other words, adults would have less accurate memories than children. [read more]

Sleep remains one of the big mysteries in biology. All animals sleep, and people who are deprived of sleep suffer physically, emotionally and intellectually. But nobody knows how sleep restores the brain.

Now, Giulio Tononi, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, has discovered how to stimulate brain waves that characterize the deepest stage of sleep. The discovery could open a new window into the role of sleep in keeping humans healthy, happy and able to learn.

The brain function in question, called slow wave activity, is critical to the restoration of mood and the ability to learn, think and remember, Tononi says. [read more]

Sleep not only protects memories from outside interferences, but also helps strengthen them, according to research that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 59th Annual Meeting in Boston, April 28 – May 5, 2007.

The study looked at memory recall with and without interference (competing information). Forty-eight people between the ages of 18 and 30 took part in the study. All had normal, healthy sleep routines and were not taking any medications. Participants were divided evenly into four groups—a wake group without interference, a wake group with interference, a sleep group without interference and a sleep group with interference. All groups were taught the same 20 pairs of words in the initial training session.

The wake groups were taught the word pairings at 9 a.m. and then tested on them at 9 p.m. after 12 hours awake. The sleep groups were taught the word pairs at 9 p.m. and tested on them at 9 a.m. after a night of sleep. Just prior to testing, the interference groups were given a second list of word pairs to remember. The first word in each pair was the same on both lists, but the second word was different, testing the brain’s ability to handle competing information, known as interference. The interference groups were then tested on both lists.

The study found that people who slept after learning the information performed best, successfully recalling more words. Those in the sleep group without interference were able to recall 12 percent more word pairings from the first list than the wake group without interference. With interference, the recall rate was 44 percent higher for the sleep group.

"This is the first study to show that sleep protects memories from interference," said study author Jeffrey Ellenbogen, MD, with Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, and Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. "These results provide important insights into how the sleeping brain interacts with memories: it appears to strengthen them. Perhaps, then, sleep disorders might worsen memory problems seen in dementia."

Memorizing a series of facts is one thing, understanding the big picture is quite another. Now a new study demonstrates that relational memory – the ability to make logical “big picture” inferences from disparate pieces of information – is dependent on taking a break from studies and learning, and even more important, getting a good night’s sleep.

Led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), the findings appear on-line in today’s Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“Relational memory is a bit like solving a jigsaw puzzle,” explains senior author Matthew Walker, PhD, Director of the Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory at BIDMC and Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School (HMS). “It’s not enough to have all the puzzle pieces – you also have to understand how they fit together.”

Adds lead author Jeffrey Ellenbogen, MD, a postdoctoral fellow at HMS and sleep neurologist at BWH, “People often assume that we know all of what we know because we learned it directly. In fact, that’s only partly true. We actually learn individual bits of information and then apply them in novel, flexible ways.” For instance, if a person learns that A is greater than B and B is greater than C, then he or she knows those two facts. But embedded within those is a third fact – A is greater than C – which can be deduced by a process called transitive inference, the type of relational memory that the researchers examined in this study.

Earlier research by Walker and colleagues had shown that sleep actively improves task-oriented “procedural memory” – for example, learning to talk, to coordinate limbs, musicianship, or to play sports. Because relational memory is fundamental to knowledge and learning, Walker and Ellenbogen decided to explore how and when this “inferential” knowledge emerges, hypothesizing that it develops during “off-line” periods and that, like procedural memory, would be enhanced following a period of sleep.

So, the researchers tested 56 healthy college students, each of whom was shown five pairs of unfamiliar abstract patterns – colorful oval shapes resembling Faberge eggs. The students were then told that some of the patterns were “correct” while others were “incorrect,” for example, Shape A wins over Shape B, Shape B wins over Shape C, and so on. All of the students learned the individual pairs but were not told that there was a hidden “hierarchy” linking all five of the pairs together.

After a 30-minute study period, the students were separated into three groups to test their understanding of the larger “big picture” relationship between the individual patterns: Group One was tested after a period of 20 minutes; Group Two was tested after a 12-hour period; and Group Three was tested after a 24-hour time span. In addition, approximately half of the students in Group Two slept during the 12-hour period, while the other half remained awake. All of the students in Group Three had a full night’s sleep.

The test results showed striking differences among the three groups, especially between the students who had a period of sleep and those who remained awake. “Group One, the students who were tested soon after their initial learning period, performed the worst,” says Walker. “While they were able to learn and recall the component pieces [for example, Shape A is greater than Shape B, Shape B is greater than Shape C] they could not discern the hierarchical relationships between the pieces [Shape A is greater than Shape C] – they couldn’t yet see ‘the big picture.’” Groups Two and Three, on the other hand, demonstrated a clear understanding of the interrelationship between the pairs of shapes.

“These individuals were able to make leaps of inferential judgment just by letting the brain have time to unconsciously mull things over,” he says. But, perhaps most notable, he adds, when the inferences were particularly difficult, the students who had had periods of sleep in between learning and testing significantly outperformed the other groups. “This strongly implies that sleep is actively engaged in the cognitive processing of our memories,” notes Ellenbogen. “Knowledge appears to expand both over time and with sleep.”

Concludes Walker, “These findings point to an important benefit [of sleep] that we had not previously considered. Sleep not only strengthens a person’s individual memories, it appears to actually knit them together and helps realize how they are associated with one another. And this may, in fact, turn out to be the primary goal of sleep: You go to bed with pieces of the memory puzzle, and awaken with the jigsaw completed.”


20 April 2007
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center News

A Brown University-led research team has, for the first time, recorded activity inside the cells of the hippocampus while simultaneously measuring activity in the neocortex. Recordings from these two brain regions – seats of memory creation and storage – revealed a surprisingly complex pattern of activity. These findings, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are part of a growing body of evidence that challenges traditional theories of the role of sleep in learning and memory. [read more]

Those persons who are labeled a “night owl” report more pathological symptoms related to insomnia, despite many having the opportunity to compensate for their nocturnal sleeplessness by extending their time in bed and being able to gain more total sleep time, according to a study published in the April 15th issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine (JCSM).

The study, authored by Jason C. Ong, PhD, and colleagues at Stanford University, consisted of 312 patients, who were categorized as morning, intermediate and evening chronotypes based upon scores on the Morningness-Eveningness Composite Scale. Group comparisons were made on self-report measures of nocturnal sleep, sleep period variability and waking correlates and consequences of insomnia.

Compared to the morning and intermediate types, people with insomnia who prefer evening activities (i.e., “night owls”) reported the most sleep/wake irregularities and waking distress, even after adjusting for severity of sleep disturbance. “Our findings indicate that further research should investigate the relationship between circadian rhythms and insomnia, especially with the severity of the ‘night owl’ group,” said Ong. “These factors may serve to perpetuate the insomnia disorder, and might be particularly important to consider when treating this subgroup of insomniacs.”

Insomnia, a classification of sleep disorders defined by difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, waking up too early, or poor quality sleep, is the most common sleep complaint at any age. About 30 percent of adults have symptoms of insomnia.

The amount of sleep a person gets affects his or her physical health, emotional well-being, mental abilities, productivity and performance. Recent studies associate lack of sleep with serious health problems such as an increased risk of depression, obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Experts recommend that adults get between seven and eight hours of sleep each night to maintain good health and optimum performance. Those who think they might have insomnia, or another sleep disorder, are urged to discuss their problem with their primary care physician, who will issue a referral to a sleep specialist.

While the government spends billions of dollars on educational and prevention programs to persuade teens not to do things like smoke, drink or do drugs, a Temple University psychologist suggests that competing systems within the brain make adolescents more susceptible to engaging in risky or dangerous behavior, and that educational interventions alone are unlikely to be effective.


Laurence Steinberg, Distinguished University Professor and the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology at Temple, outlines his argument in, “Risk Taking in Adolescence: New Perspectives from Brain and Behavioral Science,” in the April issue of the journal, Current Directions in Psychological Science. [read more]

Groundbreaking international legal principles on sexual orientation, gender identity, and international law have been released by 29 international human rights experts, led by University of Nottingham academic, Professor Michael O'Flaherty.

The "Yogyakarta Principles" call for worldwide action against violence, discrimination and abuse, by governments, the UN human rights system, national human rights institutions, non-governmental organisations, and others. The 29 principles contained in the Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity establish the first ever set of principles on sexual orientation and gender identity, and are based upon a comprehensive analysis of current international human rights laws.

The principles identify the legal obligations of all States to ensure the universal reach of human rights protections. They were launched to coincide with the UN Human Rights Council's session in Geneva, where, in 2006, 54 States called for the Council to act against egregious violations of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. "States have the primary obligation to respect, protect, and promote human rights," said Professor O'Flaherty, who is also a member of the UN Human Rights Committee, "Ending violence and abuse against people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity must become a global priority for governments."

The Yogyakarta Principles address a broad range of human rights standards. They were developed in response to well-documented patterns of abuse targeted toward persons because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity.

Worldwide, human rights defenders point to violations including extrajudicial executions, violence and torture, repression of free speech and assembly, and discrimination in work, health, education, access to justice, and immigration.

The Principles were adopted by a group of distinguished experts in international law following a meeting in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Among the group of experts are a former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN independent experts, current and former members of human rights treaty bodies, judges, academics and human rights defenders.

The full text of the Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity is available at: http://yogyakartaprinciples.org

The presence of guns in homes is strongly associated with higher suicide rates, a new U.S. study found.

Spending on prescription drugs to treat depression, anxiety, pain, schizophrenia and other conditions climbed from $7.9 billion in 1997 to $20 billion in 2004 - over a 150 percent increase, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

• The sharpest increase was for antipsychotic agents, medications used to manage schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other psychoses. They saw an increase from $1.3 billion to $4.1 billion from 1997 to 2004.
  
  
• Spending for central nervous system stimulants to treat pain and control seizures, nearly tripled over the same time period, increasing from $0.6 billion to $1.7 billion.
  
  
• Spending on antidepressants more than doubled from 1997 to 2004, increasing from $5.1 billion to $12.1 billion, as did expenditures for anxiolytics, sedatives, and hypnotics for anxiety and sleep disorders. Spending for these drugs rose from $.9 billion to $2.1 billion.
  
  
• During the same time period, overall prescriptions for psychotherapeutic drugs increased from 141.9 million to 244.3 million; the number of people prescribed at least one such drug rose from 21 million to 32.6 million; and the average price per purchase increased from $55.80 to $82.00.

AHRQ, a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, works to improve the quality, safety, efficiency and effectiveness of health care in the United States. The data in this AHRQ News and Numbers comes from the Agency's Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, a highly detailed source of information on the health services that Americans use, how frequently they use them, the cost of these services, and how they are paid.

For more information on this AHRQ News and Numbers see Trends in the Use and Expenditures for the Therapeutic Class Prescribed Psychotherapeutic Agents and All Subclasses, 1997 and 2004 (PDF).

http://www.ahrq.gov

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Medical News Today
30 March 2007

AMES, Iowa – New research by Iowa State University psychologists provides more concrete evidence of the adverse effects of violent video game exposure on the behavior of children and adolescents.

ISU Distinguished Professor of Psychology Craig Anderson, Assistant Professor of Psychology Douglas Gentile, and doctoral student Katherine Buckley share the results of three new studies in their book, "Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents" (Oxford University Press, 2007). It is the first book to unite empirical research and public policy related to violent video games.

Anderson and Gentile presented their findings last week at the Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting in Boston.

The book's first study found that even exposure to cartoonish children's violent video games had the same short-term effects on increasing aggressive behavior as the more graphic teen (T-rated) violent games. The study tested 161 9- to 12-year-olds, and 354 college students. Each participant was randomly assigned to play either a violent or non-violent video game. "Violent" games were defined as those in which intentional harm is done to a character motivated to avoid that harm. The definition was not an indication of the graphic or gory nature of any violence depicted in a game.

The researchers selected one children's non-violent game ("Oh No! More Lemmings!"), two children's violent video games with happy music and cartoonish game characters ("Captain Bumper" and "Otto Matic"), and two violent T-rated video games ("Future Cop" and "Street Fighter"). For ethical reasons, the T-rated games were played only by the college-aged participants.

The participants subsequently played another computer game designed to measure aggressive behavior in which they set punishment levels in the form of noise blasts to be delivered to another person participating in the study. Additional information was also gathered on each participant's history of violent behavior and previous violent media viewing habits.

The researchers found that participants who played the violent video games -- even if they were children's games -- punished their opponents with significantly more high-noise blasts than those who played the non-violent games. They also found that habitual exposure to violent media was associated with higher levels of recent violent behavior -- with the newer interactive form of media violence found in video games more strongly related to violent behavior than exposure to non-interactive media violence found in television and movies.

"Even the children's violent video games -- which are more cartoonish and often show no blood -- had the same size effect on children and college students as the much more graphic games have on college students," said Gentile. "What seems to matter is whether the players are practicing intentional harm to another character in the game. That's what increases immediate aggression -- more than how graphic or gory the game is."

Another study detailed in the book surveyed 189 high school students. The authors found that respondents who had more exposure to violent video games held more pro-violent attitudes, had more hostile personalities, were less forgiving, believed violence to be more typical, and behaved more aggressively in their everyday lives. The survey measured students' violent TV, movie and video game exposure; attitudes toward violence; personality trait hostility; personality trait forgiveness; beliefs about the normality of violence; and the frequency of various verbally and physically aggressive behaviors.

The researchers were surprised that the relation to violent video games was so strong.

"We were surprised to find that exposure to violent video games was a better predictor of the students' own violent behavior than their gender or their beliefs about violence," said Anderson. "Although gender aggressive personality and beliefs about violence all predict aggressive and violent behavior, violent video game play still made an additional difference.

"We were also somewhat surprised that there was no apparent difference in the video game violence effect between boys and girls or adolescents with already aggressive attitudes," he said.

The study found that one variable -- trait forgiveness -- appeared to make that person less affected by exposure to violent video games in terms of subsequent violent behavior, but this protective effect did not occur for less extreme forms of physical aggression.

A third new study in the book assessed 430 third-, fourth- and fifth-graders, their peers, and their teachers twice during a five-month period in the school year. It found that children who played more violent video games early in the school year changed to see the world in a more aggressive way, and became more verbally and physically aggressive later in the school year -- even after controlling for how aggressive they were at the beginning of the study. Higher aggression and lower pro-social behavior were in turn related to those children being more rejected by their peers.

"I was startled to find those changes in such a short amount of time," said Gentile. "Children's aggression in school did increase with greater exposure to violent video games, and this effect was big enough to be noticed by their teachers and peers within five months."

The study additionally found an apparent lack of "immunity" to the effects of media violence exposure. TV and video game screen time was also found to be a significant negative predictor of grades.

The book's final chapter offers "Helpful Advice for Parents and Other Caregivers on Choosing and Using Video Games." The authors say that providing clear, science-based information to parents and caregivers about the harmful effects of exposure to violent video games is the first step in helping educate the people who are best able to use the information. The advice includes links to Web sites about entertainment media and parenting issues, including Anderson's and Gentile's Web pages at http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/ and http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/dgentile/.

Although intelligence is generally thought to play a key role in children's early academic achievement, aspects of children's self-regulation abilities—including the ability to alternately shift and focus attention and to inhibit impulsive responding--are uniquely related to early academic success and account for greater variation in early academic progress than do measures of intelligence. Therefore, in order to help children from low-income families succeed in school, early school-age programs may need to include curricula designed specifically to promote children's self-regulation skills as a means of enhancing their early academic progress.

Those are the findings of a new study conducted by researchers at the Pennsylvania State University and published in the March-April 2007 issue of the journal Child Development.

Although there is currently a focus on teaching specific content and factual information in pre-kindergarten and early elementary education, these findings indicate that without a simultaneous focus on promoting self-regulation skills, many children are likely to struggle to keep pace with the academic demands of the early elementary classroom.

The study examined the role of self-regulation in emerging academic ability in 141 3- to 5-year-old children from low-income homes who attended Head Start, the federal preschool program for children living in poverty. The researchers sought to determine the extent to which distinct but overlapping aspects of children's developing self-regulation (cognitive, social-emotional, and temperament-based) are associated with emerging math and literacy ability in kindergarten.

The researchers found that all aspects of children's self-regulation are uniquely related to their academic abilities, over and above their intelligence. They also found that one particular aspect of self-regulation—termed the inhibitory control aspect of brain function used in planning, problem solving, and goal-directed activity—is predictive of all academic outcomes but was particularly associated with early ability in math.

"Children's ability to regulate their thinking and behavior develops rapidly in the preschool years," according to Clancy Blair, associate professor of human development and family studies at the Pennsylvania State University and lead author of the study. "By the time children start school, they are expected to be able to sufficiently regulate attention, impulsivity, and emotion so as to communicate effectively and to jointly engage in learning experiences with teachers and classmates.

"For some children, however, particularly children from low-income homes or facing early adversity, self-regulation abilities may be slow in developing, leading to problems in the transition to school and increased risk for early school failure. In the attempt to improve educational achievement and decrease inequities in educational progress associated with socioeconomic status, it is important to understand the nature of multiple influences on early progress in school."

Alcohol and tobacco more harmful than cannabis and ecstacy.

A new study published in the Lancet proposes that drugs should be classified by the amount of harm that they do, rather than the sharp A, B, and C divisions in the UK Misuse of Drugs Act. The new ranking places alcohol and tobacco in the upper half of the league table. These socially accepted drugs were judged more harmful than cannabis, and substantially more dangerous than the Class A drugs LSD, 4-methylthioamphetamine and ecstasy.

Harmful drugs are currently regulated according to classification systems that purport to relate to the harms and risks of each drug. However, these are generally neither specified nor transparent, which reduces confidence in their accuracy and undermines health education messages.

Professor David Nutt from the University of Bristol, Professor Colin Blakemore, Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council, and colleagues, identified three main factors that together determine the harm associated with any drug of potential abuse:

   1. the physical harm to the individual user caused by the drug
   2. the tendency of the drug to induce dependence
   3. the effect of drug use on families, communities, and society

Within each of these categories, they recognized three components, leading to a comprehensive 9-category matrix of harm. Expert panels gave scores, from zero to three, for each category of harm for 20 different drugs. All the scores for each drug were combined to produce an overall estimate of its harm. In order to provide familiar benchmarks, for comparison with illicit drugs, five legal drugs of potential misuse (alcohol, khat, solvents, alkyl nitrites, and tobacco) and one that has since been classified (ketamine) were included in the assessment. The process proved simple, and yielded roughly similar scores for drug harm when used by two separate groups of experts.

Professor David Nutt, lead author on the paper, said: “Drug misuse and abuse are major health problems. Our methodology offers a systematic framework and process that could be used by national and international regulatory bodies to assess the harm of current and future drugs of abuse.”

Professor Colin Blakemore added: “Drug policy is primarily aimed at reducing the harm to individual users, their families and society. But at present there is no rational, evidence-based method for assessing the harm of drugs. We have tried to develop such a method. We hope that policy makers will take note of the fact that the resulting ranking of drugs differs substantially from their classification in the Misuse of Drugs Act and that alcohol and tobacco are judged more harmful than many illegal substances.”

Press release: 23 March 2007
University of Bristol

What is the very best way to learn a complex task? Is it practice, practice, practice, or is watching and thinking enough to let you imitate a physical activity, such as skiing or ballet? A new study from Brandeis University published this week in the Journal of Vision unravels some of the mysteries surrounding how we learn to do things like tie our shoes, feed ourselves, or perform dazzling dance steps.

"What makes one person clumsy and the next person a prima ballerina is a combination of talent and practice," explains study co-author Robert Sekuler a neuroscientist at Brandeis" Volen Center for Complex Systems. "We are trying to determine what strategies will optimize imitation learning, which is crucial for acquiring many of the skills used in daily life. A lot of what we do we learn by watching and imitating others."

The study provides a first detailed look into explicit learning of sequential, non-verbal material. While many studies have evaluated serial recall of words, researchers have paid little attention to imitation learning, even though such learning is crucial to just about everything we do, from sports to regaining mobility after a stroke or accident.

"This study demonstrates that we can learn much better just by watching than previously thought, but it also suggests that there is more than meets the eye," says Yigal Agam, a neuroscience graduate student and study co-author. "Next we need to really understand how to optimize non-verbal imitative learning—to make that learning as fast, easy and painless as possible."

The study evaluated participants" ability to view, remember and then reproduce a complex sequence of motions generated by the random, unpredictable movements of a disc. Even a single repetition of a motion sequence substantially reduced errors in reproduction. To test how important it was to actually reproduce the motion, Sekuler and his colleagues compared the participants" performance when they reproduced the motion after each viewing to when they did so only once, after the final viewing, and otherwise just carefully observed and thought about the motion. Interestingly, performance was the same. Seeing the motion, without actually imitating it, was enough to learn it.

But leveraging a learner"s attention to the task at hand is also critically important. "It"s not simply a question of information falling on the retina—this kind of learning is a skill of acquiring information, transforming it into output, which is the imitation," says Agam.

Several strategies may help leverage a learner"s attention and motivate imitative learning. Organizing the motor skill practice is key. For example, Sekuler, an expert on the neural and cognitive terrain of visual memory, says that breaking down a behavioral sequence into chunks can aid imitation learning, just as chunking can help us memorize a string of seemingly unrelated digits or other material. Agam and Sekuler have their sights set on identifying strategies that teachers and coaches could use to make complex actions more "chunkable," and therefore easier to imitate.

For example, to promote chunking (and learning), a complex behavior can be paused at just the right time, which will help the novice viewer more easily appreciate and imitate the separate components of that behavior. The researchers" long-term goal is to devise simple methods that will allow teachers and coaches to take any arbitrary complex action that they want to teach—like that series of dance steps or that perfect golf swing, and then re-package that action into components that make for optimal learning.

Humans acquire fears using similar neural processes whether they’ve personally experienced an aversive event or only witnessed it, according to a study by researchers at New York University’s Departments of Psychology. This is the first study examining the brain basis of fears acquired indirectly, through the observation of others. The study shows that the amygdala, which is known to be critical to the acquisition and expression of fears from personal experience, is also involved during the acquisition and expression of fears obtained indirectly through social observation. The findings appear in the most recent issue of the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN).

The research team, from the laboratory of NYU Professor Elizabeth Phelps, also includes Andreas Olsson, now a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University’s Department of Psychology, and Katherine Nearing from NYU’s School of Medicine.

Previous research has shown how people develop fears after first-hand experience of an aversive event—getting stung by a bee or being burned by a hot pan. In acquiring these fears, a process known as fear conditioning, the brain’s amygdala plays a critical role. However, it’s unclear if fear conditioning can occur indirectly—that is, through social observation with no personal experience. It is also uncertain what neural processes take place in the acquisition of fears stemming from events or circumstances not experienced first-hand.

In this study, subjects witnessed a short video of another individual participating in a fear-conditioning experiment. In the video, subjects saw another person responding with distress when receiving mild electric shocks paired with a colored square. The subjects watching the video were then told they would take part in an experiment similar to the one they just viewed. Unlike the experiment in the video, these subjects never received shocks.

The results showed that the participants had a robust fear response when they were presented with the colored square that predicted electric shocks in the video, indicating that such a response resulted from merely observing—rather than directly experiencing—an aversive event. In addition, using brain imaging techniques, the researchers found that the amydgala response was equivalent with both when watching others receive a shock and when presented with the colored square that was previously paired with shock in the video. This finding demonstrates that similar neural systems are engaged when fears are learned through first-hand experience or by merely observing others.

"In our daily lives, we are frequently exposed to vivid images of others in emotional situations through personal social interactions as well as the media," explained Phelps. "The knowledge of somebody else’s emotional state may evoke empathic responses. However, as our results reveal, when others’ emotions are accompanied with vivid expressions and perceived as potentially relevant to our own future well being, we may engage additional learning mechanisms."

Olsson added: "In a way, learning by observing others’ emotional responses is like exploiting their expertise without being directly exposed to the potential risks associated with the direct learning. This seems a very adaptive thing to do for most social animals, which could explain why it is commonly seen across species. However, it remains to be explored in what way uniquely human social abilities contribute to learning fears through social observation."

A common drug [propranolol] administered in the first hours following trauma to patients deemed to be at risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) reduced the occurrence of PTSD, according to a study led by researchers at the University of Lille, France [in 2003].

While the study involved a small number of subjects, its results are encouraging, says its senior author, Charles Marmar, MD, associate chief of staff for mental health at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and professor and vice chair of psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco.

"The study is based on the new theory that PTSD is most likely to occur in patients who experience a particularly severe and prolonged response to trauma. If this model proves accurate after five or ten replications of studies like this one, it could have very profound ramifications. From a public health perspective, if you could identify the subgroup of people who are susceptible to PTSD, giving them this course of medication -- which is brief, very well tolerated and inexpensive -- could be very effective prevention [following major trauma] and may have great social relevance." The study appears in the November 1 issue of Biological Psychiatry. [read rest of article]

Also: The Memory Pill (60 Minutes video -- 26 Nov 2006)
Bad Memory? Wipe It Clean With New Pill (16 Jan 2006)

Having a basic knowledge of scientific principles is no longer a luxury but, in today’s complex world, a necessity. And, according to a Michigan State University researcher, while Americans are holding their own, they are not even close to where they should be.

Participating at 3:45 p.m. PST today in an American Association for the Advancement of Science symposium, titled "Science Literacy and Pseudoscience," MSU’s Jon Miller said that Americans, while slightly ahead of their European counterparts when it comes to scientific knowledge, still have a long way to go.

"A slightly higher proportion of American adults qualify as scientifically literate than European or Japanese adults, but the truth is that no major industrial nation in the world today has a sufficient number of scientifically literate adults," he said. "We should take no pride in a finding that 70 percent of Americans cannot read and understand the science section of the New York Times." Approximately 28 percent of American adults currently qualify as scientifically literate, an increase from around 10 percent in the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to Miller’s research.

A professor in political science, Miller said one reason for the Americans’ slim lead is that the United States is the only major nation in the world that requires its college students to take general science courses. "Although university science faculties have often viewed general education requirements with disdain," he said, "analyses indicate that the courses promote civic scientific literacy among U.S. adults despite the disappointing performance of American high school students in international testing." Adding to the United States’ relatively good showing is Americans’ use of informal science education resources, such as science magazines, news magazines, science museums and the Internet.

Why is it important to have a population wise in the ways of science? Miller listed several reasons, including the need for a more sophisticated work force; a need for more scientifically literate consumers, especially when it comes to purchasing electronics; and, equally as important, a scientifically literate electorate who can help shape public policy.

"Over recent decades, the number of public policy controversies that require some scientific or technical knowledge for effective participation has been increasing," he said. "Any number of issues, including the siting of nuclear power plants, nuclear waste disposal facilities, and the use of embryonic stem cells in biomedical research point to the need for an informed citizenry in the formulation of public policy."

To be classified as "scientifically literate," Miller said one must be able to understand approximately 20 of 31 scientific concepts and terms similar to those that would be found in articles that appear in the New York Times weekly science section and in an episode of the PBS program "NOVA."

FDA approves study to evaluate an artificial retina intended to help subjects blinded by retinitis pigmentosa. Patients who have gone blind are a step closer to perhaps one day regaining some of their sight.

Researchers at the USC Doheny Eye Institute announced today the next step in their efforts to advance technology that hopefully will help patients with retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration regain some vision using an implanted artificial retina. The announcement by Mark Humayun, professor of ophthalmology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and associate director of research at the Doheny Retina Institute, came at a press conference at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.

The Food and Drug Administration recently approved an Investigational Device Exemption to conduct a clinical study of the new device – dubbed the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System. The implantable technology is a collaborative effort between USC and Second Sight Medical Products, which manufactures the implant.

The Argus II is the second generation of an electronic retinal implant designed for the treatment of blindness due to retinitis pigmentosa, a group of inherited eye diseases that affect the retina. RP causes the degeneration of photoreceptor cells in the retina, which capture and process light, helping individuals to see. As these cells degenerate, patients experience progressive vision loss. The Argus device is essentially designed to take the place of the photoreceptors.

“The first phase of our implant work began in 2002,” Humayun said. “We have successfully implanted six patients in the trial, and we have found that the devices are indeed electrically conducting and can be used by patients to detect light or even to distinguish between objects such as a cup or plate.”

While the first generation of implants contained 16 electrodes laid out on an array, the Argus II is designed with 60 electrodes, which is intended to allow for higher-resolution images. The new device is also approximately one quarter the size of the original, reducing surgery and recovery times. The array is attached to the retina and used in conjunction with an external camera and video processing system to provide a rudimentary form of sight to implanted subjects.

The clinical trial of the first generation of implants continues at the Doheny Eye Institute at USC. All six previously blind patients in the first trial have been able to detect light, identify objects in their environment and even perceive motion after implantation with the first generation device.

The device ultimately may be used for the millions of people suffering from age-related macular degeneration, or AMD. In fact, Humayun said, there are 25 million people around the world, including 6 million in the United States, who have been blinded or are severely visually impaired due to diseases like RP and AMD. By 2020, that figure is expected to double, creating a virtual vision-loss epidemic. Both AMD and RP destroy vision by annihilating the retinal cells that allow light to be translated into recognizable images.

“Perhaps what we’re most excited about in this next study,” Humayun said, “is, similar to the first generation Second Sight device, we will be able to test the new device with patients at their homes, churches, schools and similar locations. The importance of this work is going to be reflected in how well this helps them regain some of their lost vision.”

The current study will include patients over 50 years of age who have RP or AMD and who have had previous functional vision.

This study is supported by the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, National Eye Institute/NIH, Research to Prevent Blindness, the W. M. Keck Foundation and the Albaugh Family Trust.

As a night of bad sleep can have an adverse effect on an adult’s performance at work the next day, an insufficient amount of rest can also have a negative impact on how well middle or high school students perform in the classroom. A study published in the February 15th issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine (JCSM) finds that adolescents who experience sleep disturbances are more likely to receive bad grades in school.

James F. Pagel, MD, of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, examined the results of 238 school district-approved questionnaires, filled out by students attending middle school or high school, which included a high frequency of sleep complaints. According to the surveys, students with lower grade point averages (GPAs) were more likely to have restless, aching legs when trying to fall asleep, difficulty concentrating during the day, snoring every night, a hard time waking up in the morning, sleepiness during the day, and falling asleep in class.

"While a series of previously-conducted studies all found that adolescents reporting inadequate sleep, irregular sleep patterns, and/or poor sleep quality do not perform as well in school as students without sleep complaints, this study provides additional evidence indicating that sleep disturbances occur at high frequencies in adolescents and significantly affect daytime performance, as measured by GPA," said Pagel.

Both restless legs and difficulty concentrating during the day are symptoms associated with the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a diagnosis that can be associated with poor school performance. It is important for parents to discuss their teen’s sleep-related problem with a primary care physician, and to have their teen screened for ADHD if necessary, added Pagel.

Teens are advised to follow these recommendations to getting a good night’s sleep, which will help lead to better school performance:

• Get a full night’s sleep on a regular basis. Do not stay up all hours of the night to "cram" for an exam, do homework, etc. If extracurricular activities at school are proving to be too time-consuming, consider cutting back.
  
• If you are not asleep after 20 minutes, then get out of the bed and do something relaxing, such as reading a book or listening to music, until you are tired enough to go back to bed.
  
• Get up at the same time every morning.
  
• Avoid taking naps after school if you can. If you need to lie down, do not do so for more than an hour.
  
• Keep a regular schedule.
  
• Don’t read, write, eat, watch TV, talk on the phone or play cards in bed.
  
• Do not have any caffeine after lunch.
  
• Do not go to bed hungry, but don’t eat a big meal before bedtime either.
  
• Avoid any rigorous exercise within six hours of your bedtime.
  
• Try to get rid of or deal with things that make you worry.
  
• Make your bedroom quiet, dark and a little bit cool.

See also: Sleep well before learning something new, an article discussing how sleep deprivation can severely hamper the brain’s ability to learn.

The color of a drink can fool the taste buds into thinking it is sweeter

Does orange juice taste sweeter if it's a brighter orange? A new study in the March issue of the Journal of Consumer Research finds that the color of a drink can influence how we think it tastes. In fact, the researchers found that color was more of an influence on how taste was perceived than quality or price information.

"Perceptual discrimination is fundamental to rational choice in many product categories yet rarely examined in consumer research," write JoAndrea Hoegg (University of British Columbia) and Joseph W. Alba (University of Florida). "The present research investigates discrimination as it pertains to consumers' ability to identify difference—or the lack thereof—among gustatory stimuli."

Hoegg and Alba are the first to look at how individual attributes -- such as color, price, or brand -- can affect which products we prefer. The researchers manipulated orange juice by changing color (with food coloring), sweetness (with sugar), or by labeling the cups with brand and quality information. They found that though brand name influenced people's preferences for one cup of juice over another, labeling one cup a premium brand and the other an inexpensive store brand had no effect on perceptions of taste.

In contrast, the tint of the orange juice had a huge effect on the taster's perceptions of taste. As the authors put it: "Color dominated taste."

Given two cups of the same Tropicana orange juice, with one cup darkened with food coloring, the members of the researcher's sample group perceived differences in taste that did not exist. However, when given two cups of orange juice that were the same color, with one cup sweetened with sugar, the same people failed to perceive taste differences.

"It seems unlikely that our consumers deliberately eschewed taste for color as a basis for discrimination," write the authors. "Moreover, our consumers succumbed to the influence of color but were less influenced by the powerful lure of brand and price information."

---

Hoegg, J. and J.W. Alba. "Taste Perception: More Than Meets the Tongue," Journal of Consumer Research: March 2007.

PHILADELPHIA (UPI) — A University of Pennsylvania psychologist says a number of studies have found negative psychological effects associated with adolescent acne.

David Sarwer, an associate professor at the Center for Human Appearance at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, said up to 50 percent of teenage acne sufferers also experience increased body image dissatisfaction, social anxiety, low self-esteem and symptoms of depression, USA Today reported Monday.

"Some become so upset they may think about or actually attempt suicide," Sarwer said.

Researchers say drugs and treatments developed in recent years offer new hope to sufferers of acne, which is caused when sebaceous glands in the skin create too much sebum oil, which can clog pores and mix with bacteria, causing inflammation.

Mild acne can be treated with over-the-counter medications containing benzoyl peroxide, salicylic acid and sulfur, but unresponsive outbreaks and acne characterized by larger cysts may require the prescription drug isotretinoin. The drug derived from vitamin A is an effective treatment, but scares away some consumers due to its extensive list of side effects, including liver changes and birth defects in pregnant women.

Copyright © 2007 by United Press International

A drug company was last week accused of concealing evidence about the safety of the antidepressant Seroxat. According to leading psychiatrist Professor David Healy, this is just the latest in a string of cases where patients and medical professionals have been misled about a drug's adverse effects. [read more]

Eastwood, J.D., Cavalierea, C., Fahlmana, S.A. and Eastwood, A.E. (2007). A desire for desires: Boredom and its relation to alexithymia. Personality and Individual Differences, 42(6), 1035-1045.

Abstract: Participants completed self-report scales of boredom, emotional awareness and external orientation. Structural equation modeling indicated that boredom, emotional awareness and external orientation are distinctly measurable but correlated – the bored individual is unaware of emotions and externally-oriented. Furthermore, although the bored person typically complains that the external world fails to engage them, the present findings suggest the underlying problem may be in the person’s inability to consciously access and understand their emotions. The present findings and accompanying literature review challenge the simplistic notion that boredom is never more than a trivial annoyance resulting from an under-stimulating environment.

A silver dollar-sized region deep in the brain called the insula is intimately involved in smoking addiction, and damage to this structure can completely erase the body's urge to smoke, researchers have discovered. The findings appear in the 26 January 2007 issue of the journal Science, published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

Obviously brain damage is not a treatment option for nicotine addiction, but the new results may offer leads for therapies to help smokers kick the habit or for monitoring smokers' progress while using existing therapies.

The study was largely inspired by a patient who had smoked around 40 cigarettes a day before his insula was damaged by a stroke and then quit immediately after. He told the researchers that his body "forgot the urge to smoke." [read more]

Many people think they can safely drive while talking on their cell phones. Vanderbilt neuroscientists Paul E. Dux and René Marois have found that when it comes to handling two things at once, your brain, while fast, isn't that fast.

"Why is it that with our incredibly complex and sophisticated brain, with 100 billion neurons processing information at rates of up to a thousand times a second, we still have such a crippling inability to do two tasks at once?" Marois, associate professor of Psychology, asked. "For example, what is it about our brain that gives us such a hard time at being able to drive and talk on a cell phone simultaneously?"

Researchers have long thought that a central "bottleneck" exists in the brain that prevents us from doing two things at once. Dux and Marois are the first to identify the regions of the brain responsible for this bottleneck, by examining patterns of neural activity over time. Their results were published in the Dec. 21 issue of Neuron.

"In our everyday lives, we seem to complete so many cognitive tasks effortlessly. However, we experience severe limitations when we try to do even two simple tasks at once, such as pressing a button when a visual stimulus appears and saying a word when a sound is presented. This is known as dual-task interference," Dux, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Psychology, said. "We were interested in trying to understand these limitations and in finding where in the brain this bottleneck might be taking place."

The research is particularly timely, as additional states consider banning the use of cell phones while driving. "While we are driving, we are bombarded with visual information. We might also be talking to passengers or talking on the phone," Marois said. "Our new research offers neurological evidence that the brain cannot effectively do two things at once. People think if they are using a headset with their cell phone while driving they are safe, but they're not because they are still doing two cognitively demanding tasks at once."

Identifying the information bottleneck responsible for this dual-task limitation required the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, an imaging technology that reveals the brain areas active in a given mental task by registering changes in oxygenated blood concentration in these regions. While fMRI is an excellent tool for identifying a particular area in the brain involved in a given task, it generally provides limited information about how that area responds over time.

To overcome this limitation, Dux and Marois rapidly sampled brain activity using fMRI while subjects were performing two demanding tasks. Evaluation of the data produced by this rapid sampling method allowed them to characterize the temporal pattern of activity in specific brain areas.

The two tasks consisted of pressing the appropriate computer key in response to hearing one of eight possible sounds and uttering an appropriate syllable in response to seeing one of eight possible images. Different senses and motor responses were enlisted in order to ensure that any interference between the two tasks was not specific to a particular sensory or motor modality, but instead originated at a central information-processing bottleneck.

The results revealed that the central bottleneck was caused by the inability of the lateral frontal and prefrontal cortex, and also the superior frontal cortex, to process the two tasks at once. Both areas have been shown in previous experiments to play a critical role in cognitive control.

"We determined these brain regions responded to tasks irrespective of the senses involved, they were engaged in selecting the appropriate response, and, most importantly, they showed 'queing' of neural activity--the neural response to the second task was postponed until the response to the first was completed," Dux said.

"Neural activity seemed to be delayed for the second task when the two tasks were presented nearly simultaneously – within 300 milliseconds of each other," Marois said. "If individuals have a second or more between tasks, we did not see this delay.

"This temporal delay is the essence of dual-task interference for tasks that require actions. By using time-resolved fMRI, we can see its signature in the brain," he continued. "These findings allow us to really now focus on this set of brain areas and to understand why these areas cannot process two tasks at once."

The researchers are interested in further exploring what is happening in the bottleneck to slow performance and believe the work may have future implications for people performing complex tasks. "It may be possible to look to the sort of tasks people are going to have to do in a very complex environment, such as flying a plane, and find out under what circumstances these tasks may be less vulnerable to dual-task interference," Dux added.

For the record, neither Marois nor Dux use their cell phones while driving. "I'm Australian, and it's illegal there, so I'm trained not to," Dux said. "Even so, I would never do it. Dual-task costs can be up to a second, and that's a long time when you're traveling at 60 miles per hour."

Up to one in three mental health patients are being over-prescribed drugs, says the Healthcare Commission [in Great Britain]. Read the article.

Ditto for the U.S.

Why Does Cognitive Therapy Work?
By James Krehbiel

WASHINGTON, D.C. and LONDON, ENGLAND - January 17, 2006 -- The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) is moving the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock today from seven to five minutes to midnight. Reflecting global failures to solve the problems posed by nuclear weapons and the climate crisis, the decision by the BAS Board of Directors was made in consultation with the Bulletin's Board of Sponsors, which includes 18 Nobel Laureates.

BAS announced the Clock change today at an unprecedented joint news conference held at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC, and the Royal Society in London. In a statement supporting the decision to move the hand of the Doomsday Clock, the BAS Board focused on two major sources of catastrophe: the perils of 27,000 nuclear weapons, 2000 of them ready to launch within minutes; and the destruction of human habitats from climate change. In articles by 14 leading scientists and security experts writing in the January-February issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (http://www.thebulletin.org), the potential for catastrophic damage from human-made technologies is explored further.

Created in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Doomsday Clock has been adjusted only 17 times prior to today, most recently in February 2002 after the events of 9/11.

By moving the hand of the Clock closer to midnight--the figurative end of civilization--the BAS Board of Directors is drawing attention to the increasing dangers from the spread of nuclear weapons in a world of violent conflict, and to the catastrophic harm from climate change that is unfolding.

The BAS statement explains: "We stand at the brink of a Second Nuclear Age. Not since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has the world faced such perilous choices. North Korea's recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran's nuclear ambitions, a renewed emphasis on the military utility of nuclear weapons, the failure to adequately secure nuclear materials, and the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia are symptomatic of a failure to solve the problems posed by the most destructive technology on Earth."

The BAS statement continues: "The dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons. The effects may be less dramatic in the short term than the destruction that could be wrought by nuclear explosions, but over the next three to four decades climate change could cause irremediable harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival."

Stephen Hawking, a BAS sponsor, professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of The Royal Society, said: "As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth. As citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change."

Kennette Benedict, executive director, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: "As we stand at the brink of a Second Nuclear Age and at the onset of unprecedented climate change, our way of thinking about the uses and control of technologies must change to prevent unspeakable destruction and future human suffering."

Sir Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, professor of cosmology and astrophysics, master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, and a BAS sponsor, said: "Nuclear weapons still pose the most catastrophic and immediate threat to humanity, but climate change and emerging technologies in the life sciences also have the potential to end civilization as we know it."

Lawrence M. Krauss, professor of physics and astronomy at Case Western Reserve University, and a BAS sponsor, said: "In these dangerous times, scientists have a responsibility to speak truth to power especially if it might provoke actions to reduce threats from the preventable technological dangers currently facing humanity. To do anything else would be negligent."

Ambassador Thomas Pickering, a BAS director and co-chair of the International Crisis Group, said: "Although our current situation is dire, we have the means today to successfully address these global problems. For example, through vigorous diplomacy and international agencies like the International Atomic Energy Agency, we can negotiate and implement agreements that could protect us all from the most destructive technology on Earth--nuclear weapons."

Additional information is available on the Web at http://www.thebulletin.org.

Research into procrastination shows surprising findings

A University of Calgary professor in the Haskayne School of Business has recently published his magnum opus on the subject of procrastination – and it's only taken him 10 years.

Joking aside, Dr. Piers Steel is probably the world's foremost expert on the subject of putting off until tomorrow what should be done today. His comprehensive analysis of procrastination research, published in the recent edition of the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin, presents some surprising conclusions on the subject, such as:

    * Most people's New Year's resolutions are doomed to failure

    * Most self-help books have it completely wrong when they say perfectionism is at the root of procrastination, and

    * Procrastination can be explained by a single mathematical equation

"Essentially, procrastinators have less confidence in themselves, less expectancy that they can actually complete a task," Steel says. "Perfectionism is not the culprit. In fact, perfectionists actually procrastinate less, but they worry about it more."

Other predictors of procrastination include: task aversiveness, impulsiveness, distractibility, and how much a person is motivated to achieve. Not all delays can be considered procrastination; the key is that a person must believe it would be better to start working on given tasks immediately, but still not start.

It's estimated that about 15-20 per cent of the general population are procrastinators. And the costs of procrastinating can add up well beyond poor work performance, especially for those who delay filing their taxes or planning their retirement.

Steel says motivational failures such as difficulty in sticking to diets and exercise regimes – frequently the focus of New Year's resolutions – are related to procrastination because impulsiveness is often at the root of the failure. "Temptations that are close at hand are difficult to resist. Addicts often relapse after returning from treatment facilities because drugs and alcohol become easily available and daily habits reassert themselves. Or we load up on bread in the restaurant before the meal is served. Or we check our email 10 times an hour instead of completing a project."

The good news is that willpower has an unusual capacity. "The old saying is true: 'Whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're probably right'," Steel says. "And as you get better at self control, your expectancy about whether you can resist goes up and thus improves your ability to resist."

Steel has also come up with the E=MC2 of procrastination, a formula he's dubbed Temporal Motivational Theory, which takes into account factors such as the expectancy a person has of succeeding with a given task (E), the value of completing the task (V), the desirability of the task (Utility), its immediacy or availability (Ã) and the person's sensitivity to delay (D).

It looks like this and uses the Greek letter Ã: Utility = E x V/ÃD

It's still unclear why some people may be more prone to developing procrastination behaviour, but some evidence suggests it may be genetic. Steel concludes: "Continued research into procrastination should not be delayed, especially because its prevalence seems to be growing."

People who were abused and neglected during childhood have a higher risk of major depression when they become young adults, according to a report in the January issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Child abuse has been linked to depression in clinical populations and community surveys, according to background information in the article. But few prospective longitudinal studies have examined the relationship between abuse or neglect in childhood and depression in adulthood.

Cathy Spatz Widom, Ph.D., then of the New Jersey Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Newark, and now of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, and colleagues conducted a prospective study to determine whether abused and neglected children were at elevated risk of major depressive disorder (MDD) and psychiatric illness, compared with matched control subjects, when followed up into young adulthood. The study included 676 children with substantiated cases of physical and sexual abuse and neglect before the age of 11. They were matched based on age, race, sex, and approximate family social class with 520 non-abused and non-neglected children. All were followed up into young adulthood (average age: 28.7).

"The current results show that childhood physical abuse was associated with increased risk for lifetime MDD," the authors write. "We also provide new evidence that neglected children are at increased risk for depression as well."

Child abuse and neglect were associated with a 51 percent increased risk for current MDD in young adulthood. Children who were physically abused had a 59 percent increased risk of lifetime MDD. Those who experienced multiple types of abuse had a 75 percent increased risk of lifetime MDD. The risk of current MDD was 59 percent higher for those who were neglected.

Childhood sexual abuse was not associated with an elevated risk of MDD. "However, childhood victims of sexual abuse reported significantly more depression symptoms than controls," the authors point out.

"In addition, these findings reveal that onset of depression began in childhood for many of the children," they write. "Our age-at-onset findings reinforce the need to intervene early in the lives of these abused and neglected children, before depression symptoms cascade into other spheres of functioning."

In the first known report of its kind, a study published in the January 1st issue of the journal SLEEP finds that sleep disturbances are common among suicide attempters, and that nightmares are associated with suicidality.

The study, conducted by Nisse Sjöström, RN, and colleagues of Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Göteborg, Sweden, focused on 165 patients between the ages of 18-68, who were admitted to medical units or psychiatric wards at Sahlgrenska after a suicide attempt. It was discovered that 89 percent of subjects reported some kind of sleep disturbance. The most common complaint was difficulties initiating sleep (73 percent), followed by difficulties maintaining sleep (69 percent), nightmares (66 percent) and early morning awakening (58 percent). Nightmares were associated with a five-fold increase in risk for high suicidality.

"Our finding of an association between nightmares and suicidality does not imply causality," said Sjöström. "However, our findings should inspire clinicians to include questions concerning sleep disturbance and especially nightmares in the clinical assessment of suicidal patients."

Nightmares are disturbing, visual dream sequences that occur in your mind and wake you up from your sleep. Nightmares are very common and can begin at any age. Between 50-85 percent of adults report having a nightmare at least on occasion. They tend to become less frequent and intense as you age. Teen and adult women report nightmares more often than teen and adult men. Parents can also be disturbed of their sleep if their children have severe nightmares.

Nightmare disorder develops when you have nightmares on a frequent basis. Nightmare disorder is not as common. About two to eight percent of people have a current problem with nightmares. The use of some medications may be a cause of nightmare disorder. You may be more likely to have nightmare disorder if a relative also has it.

You should see a sleep specialist if your nightmares cause you great anxiety or often disrupt your sleep. A sleep specialist will help make an accurate diagnosis of your problem. He or she will also rule out possible underlying causes of the problem. While sleep specialists do not typically treat nightmares, most often they refer you to an experienced counselor or psychologist.

Berkeley -- University of California, Berkeley, graduate student Allen Liu last Friday donned coveralls, a blindfold, earplugs and gloves, then got down on all fours and sniffed out a 33-foot chocolate trail through the grass. This was no fraternity initiation, but part of an experiment to find out whether mammals compare information coming from their two nostrils in order to aid scent-tracking performance, much like they compare information from their ears in order to locate a sound.

In a paper appearing this week in the advance online edition of Nature Neuroscience, UC Berkeley researchers report conclusive evidence from these experiments that humans do indeed gain a performance advantage from cross-nostril comparisons. They also found that humans can scent-track, and that, with training, they can improve their accuracy significantly while nearly doubling their speed along the scent trail.

In one experiment, the authors found that while volunteers with one nostril blocked could still track a scent - in this experiment, essence of chocolate - volunteers with two open nostrils tracked a scent quicker and with fewer deviations from the trail. "We were asking the question, 'Are two nostrils better than one"'" said lead author Jess Porter, a graduate student in biophysics at UC Berkeley. "The answer is yes."

Apparently, according to Porter and her colleagues, the mammalian brain compares smells between nostrils to tell where an odor is coming from in the same way that the brain compares the sounds entering a person's two ears to locate a source. Until now, many researchers thought this was unlikely because a mammal's nostrils, in a mouse, for example, are too close together to receive distinctly different smells.

"The human brain compares information from two 'noses' to turn smell information into spatial information," said Noam Sobel, associate professor of neuroscience and psychology and member of the program in biophysics at UC Berkeley. Sobel hopes to use information from these experiments to design scent-tracking robots equipped with his eNose, an electronic nose that one day could detect odors such as that from an explosive mine.

To test Sobel and Porter's smell hypothesis, the UC Berkeley researchers soaked a 33-foot (10-meter) string in chocolate essence and laid it in the grass outside Barker Hall, located at the northwest corner of the UC Berkeley campus. They then garbed volunteers to block their senses of sight, hearing and touch, eliminating all clues other than smell to guide them along the trail. Sniffing like bloodhounds, two-thirds of 32 subjects were able to follow the chocolate scent to the end of the trail within three attempts. All volunteers zigzagged along the trail in the same way that tracking dogs follow a scent.

The researchers then trained four of these volunteers to see if they could improve. All were able to double their speed along the track within just a few days and deviated much less from the scent trail than on their first attempts. The researchers measured subjects' sniffs and noticed that the faster the subjects moved along the trail, the more rapid their sniffing - just as with dogs, though not as fast as the six sniffs per second rate exhibited by dogs. The big question, however, was whether two nostrils allow scent localization in the same way that a human's two ears and eyes help locate sounds and sights.

To further test this, the researchers devised an ingenious nasal "prism" that mixed scents from the outside world and then presented this to both nostrils, so that there was no difference between what the nostrils smelled. The four subjects were half as accurate at tracking smells under these conditions.

Independent measurements showed that a human's two nostrils sample odors from distinct areas separated by approximately 1.5 inches (3.5 centimeters), more than enough distance to distinguish the edge of a scent plume. All of these experiments put the lie to a common assumption that humans are lousy smellers compared to all other mammals. While it's true that humans are predominantly visual creatures, Sobel said, their olfactory sense can be compared to that of dogs and other mammals.

"Our sense of smell is less keen partly because we put less demand on it," Porter said. "But if people practice sniffing smells, they can get really good at it."

Smoking reduction may lead to unexpected quitting
In a review article in the December Nicotine and Tobacco Research, researchers at the University of Vermont have found an unexpected, effective alternative to motivate smokers to quit smoking – cutting back. According to the qualitative review of 19 studies on smoking reduction in individuals who did not want to quit, this method, typically coupled with the use of nicotine replacement products, led to an increase in quitting in 16 of the studies.

"Cutting back is approved as a method of quitting in several European countries, but not in the United States," said lead author John Hughes, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. "Our review contradicts the commonly held belief that quitting requires stopping abruptly and provides evidence that smokers can quit successfully by reducing the amount of cigarettes smoked. Furthermore, our review indicates cutting back is often a great way to start changing smoking that can lead to eventual quitting."

Hughes's report is the largest review of smoking reduction studies published to date. Among the 19 studies reviewed (many of which were randomized, placebo-controlled trials), the two considered the most important involved randomized, controlled trials that assigned smokers to either reduce or not reduce. Both of these studies found that smoking reduction leads to more cessation. Also, in three studies, the effect of reduction was found to be similar to the effect of providing smoking cessation advice. Based on this finding, Hughes suggests that clinicians try recommending reduction for smokers who have not responded to repeated cessation advice.

Hughes and colleague Matthew Carpenter warn that smokers do need to understand that there is no good evidence that cutting back alone decreases smoking-related health risks and thus clinicians should promote reduction only as a step towards eventual cessation to their patients.

A new study has found that adolescents who play violent video games may exhibit lingering effects on brain function, including increased activity in the region of the brain that governs emotional arousal and decreased activity in the brain’s executive function, which is associated with control, focus and concentration. The findings were presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

"Our study suggests that playing a certain type of violent video game may have different short-term effects on brain function than playing a nonviolent—but exciting—game," said Vincent P. Mathews, M.D., professor of radiology at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis.

Video games are big business with nearly $10 billion in sales in the United States last year. But along with growing sales come growing concerns about what effects these games may be having on the young people who play them.

Dr. Mathews and colleagues randomly assigned 44 adolescents to play either a violent video game or a nonviolent video game for 30 minutes. The researchers then used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study brain function during a series of tasks measuring inhibition and concentration. One test used emotional stimuli and one did not.

fMRI measures the tiny metabolic changes that occur when a part of the brain is active. These changes will appear as a brightly colored area on the MR image, indicating the part of the brain that is being used to process the task. The two groups did not differ in accuracy or reaction time for the tasks, but analysis of the fMRI data showed differences in brain activation.

Compared with the group that played the nonviolent game, the group that played the violent video game demonstrated less activation in the prefrontal portions of the brain, which are involved in inhibition, concentration and self-control, and more activation in the amygdala, which is involved in emotional arousal.

"During tasks requiring concentration and processing of emotional stimuli, the adolescents who had played the violent video game showed distinct differences in brain activation than the adolescents who played an equally exciting and fun—but nonviolent—game," Dr. Mathews said. "Because of random assignment, the most likely factor accounting for these differences would be the group to which the volunteers were assigned."

The researchers hope to conduct additional research on long-term effects of violent video game exposure and the impact of these brain functioning differences.

"Additional investigation of the reasons for and effects of this difference in brain functioning will be important targets for future study, but the current study showed that a difference between the groups does exist," Dr. Mathews said.

Do you hate Brussels sprouts because your mother did" Does the size of your plate determine how hungry you feel" Why do you actually overeat at healthy restaurants"

"You can ask your smartest friend why he or she just ate what they ate, and you won’t get an answer any deeper than, 'It sounded good,'" says Brian Wansink, Ph.D.), author of "Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think," and Professor and Director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab.

Dubbed the "Freakonomics of food" by the Canadian Broadcasting Commission, Mindless Eating, uses hidden cameras, two-way mirrors, and hundreds of studies to show why we eat what and how much we eat. "The unique thing about his work is that it cleverly answers everyday questions about food and shows translates them into Good News – how we can improve it," said Seth Roberts, Ph.D., a psychology professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

Take how much we eat. Wansink claims we typically don’t overeat because we are hungry or because the food tastes good. Instead we overeat because of the cues around us – family and friends, packages and plates, shapes and smells, distractions and distances, cupboards and containers.

Consider your holiday ice cream bowl. If you spoon 3 ounces of ice cream onto a small bowl, it will look like a lot more than if you had spooned it into a large bowl. Even if you intended to carefully follow your diet, the larger bowl would likely influence you to serve more. This tricks even the pros.

During one holiday party, Wansink and his Lab put this to the test by inviting 63 distinguished nutritional science professors at a leading university to an holiday ice cream social. When they arrived, they were given either medium-size 17-ounce bowls or large-size 34-ounce bowls. "Even though these people think, sleep, lecture and study nutrition," Wansink said, "They still served themselves and ate 31 percent more ice cream (106 more calories) if they had been given a big bowl."

If experts can’t control mindless eating, what help is there for the rest of us" Here’s the good news reassures Wansink, "As Mindless Eating shows, what we eat and how much we eat – is so automatic, the easiest changes are those that are smallest."

At a holiday buffet" Use a smaller plate, or put only two items on your plate during any given trip to the table. Return as many times as you like, but only take two items each time.

Meticulous studies outline why we are consistently influenced, but they also provide the silver lining. If we know that we tend to pour 28% more into short wide glasses than in tall thin ones, the secret is simply getting rid of the short glasses.

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More on the topic can be found at www.MindlessEating.org, which also shows photos of studies and top tips for the holidays – and beyond.

Laws of physics, math debunk Hollywood portrayals of ghosts, vampires

As the weather cools and Halloween approaches, chilling creaks in the stairs, bloodcurdling screams from the attic and other paranormal activity become more believable -- but not to UCF physics professor Costas Efthimiou.

The laws of physics and math debunk popular myths about ghosts and vampires, according to a paper published by Efthimiou and Sohang Gandhi, a UCF graduate now studying at Cornell University.

Using Isaac Newton's Laws of Motion, Efthimiou demonstrates that ghosts would not be able to walk and pass through walls. Basic math disproves the legend of humans turning into vampires after they are bitten, Efthimiou explains, because the entire human population in 1600 would have been wiped out in less than three years.

"These popular myths make for a lot of Halloween fun and great movies with special effects, but they just don't hold up to the strict tests of science," Efthimiou said.

In movies such as "Ghost," starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, ghosts often walk like humans, pass through walls and pick up objects. But that portrayal cannot be accurate, Efthimiou says. For ghosts to have the ability to walk like humans, they would need to put a force upon the floor, which would exert an equal and opposite force in return. But ghosts' ability to pass through walls and have humans walk right through them demonstrates that they cannot apply any force.

Movies such as "Blade," featuring Wesley Snipes, suggest that vampires feed on human blood and that once a human has been bitten, he or she turns into a vampire and begins feeding on other humans. To disprove the existence of vampires, Efthimiou relied on a basic math principle known as geometric progression.

Efthimiou supposed that the first vampire arrived Jan. 1, 1600, when the human population was 536,870,911. Assuming that the vampire fed once a month and the victim turned into a vampire, there would be two vampires and 536,870,910 humans on Feb. 1. There would be four vampires on March 1 and eight on April 1. If this trend continued, all of the original humans would become vampires within two and a half years and the vampires' food source would disappear.

Efthimiou did not take into consideration mortality rates, which would have increased the speed at which the human population would have been vanquished. And even factoring in a birth rate would not change the outcome.

"In the long run, humans cannot survive under these conditions, even if our population were doubling each month," Efthimiou said. "And doubling is clearly way beyond the human capacity of reproduction."

Efthimiou also provides a practical explanation for "voodoo zombiefication," which suggests that zombies "come about by a voodoo hex being placed by a sorcerer on one of his enemies." He reviewed the case of a Haitian adolescent who was pronounced dead by a local doctor after a week of dramatic convulsions.

After the boy was buried, he returned in an incoherent state, and Haitians pronounced that a sorcerer had raised him from the dead in the state of a zombie.

Science, however, has a less-supernatural explanation. A highly-toxic substance called tetrodotoxin is found in a breed of puffer fish native to Haitian waters. Contact with this substance generally results in a rapid death. However, in some cases, the right dose of the toxin will result in a state that mimics death and slows vital signs to a level that is unable to be measured. Eventually, the victim snaps out of the death-like coma and returns to his or her regular condition.

Scientific analysis has shown that oxygen deprivation is consistent with the boy's brain damage and his incoherent state.

"It would seem that zombiefication is nothing more than a skillful act of poisoning," Efthimiou said.

23 October 2006
University of Central Florida

The news media seriously underreport the role alcohol plays in violent crimes, injuries and traffic accidents, according to a new national study. While alcohol is believed to play a role in about one-third of homicides and fatal motor vehicle accidents, media reports linked alcohol to specific accidents or crimes significantly less frequently.

Some of the largest discrepancies occurred in reporting alcohol use in violent crimes, particularly for television news. Only 1.4 percent of television news stories in the sample mentioned the role of alcohol in their reporting of homicides, according to Michael Slater, co-author of the study and professor of communication at Ohio State University.

The result is that the public may underestimate the dangers of alcohol use, Slater said. “People's perceptions of risk are strongly shaped by what they see in the media, so many people may have distorted views about the risks of alcohol use,” he said. “If the media doesn't report on the link between alcohol and violent crime and accidents, most people won't be fully aware of the risks. This may also decrease public support for alcohol control measures that can significantly reduce alcohol-related problems”

Slater conducted the study with Marilee Long and Valerie Ford of Colorado State University. Their results appear in the November 2006 issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol.

The link between violent crime and alcohol use was also rarely acknowledged. Estimates suggest alcohol plays a role in 31 percent of homicides, but it is mentioned in only 2.6 percent of television reports, 7.3 percent of newspaper accounts, and 5.6 percent of magazine reports of violent crime, with even lower percentages in the reporting of homicides.

For this study, the researchers used estimates that alcohol plays a role in about one third (31.1 percent) of homicides and a third (31 percent)of fatal non-traffic injuries. The estimates come from a study of data from 331 medical examiner studies conducted between 1975 and 1995.

They used statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration which estimated that 34 percent of accidents involved people who were legally intoxicated.

The researchers then examined coverage of crimes and accidents appearing in a national sample of daily newspaper, magazine and local television news, as well as national television news during a two-year period (2002-03). They determined the percentage of stories that linked alcohol use to specific violent crimes, injuries and motor vehicle accidents.

In all, they analyzed the content of about 1,000 daily newspaper editions, 550 television news programs, and 72 magazine issues. Newspapers and television stations were selected so they represented all regions of the country, in cities of various sizes. Three news magazines – Newsweek, Time and U.S. News & World Report -- were also sampled, as were the three major television networks, CNN and USA Today. This sample more closely approximates a truly representative national sample of media outlets than any previous study of which the researchers are aware, Slater said.

As expected, the media was most likely to report on alcohol use in motor vehicle accidents, but even then, they fell far short of estimated numbers, Slater said. While alcohol is linked to 34 percent of motor vehicle accidents, only 12.8 percent of television stories, 19.2 percent of newspaper articles, and 22.2 percent of magazine articles about such accidents mentioned the use of alcohol, the study revealed.

For stories about fatal accidents not involving motor vehicles, alcohol was mentioned in 1.4 percent of television reports, 4.8 percent of newspaper stories and 13.6 percent of magazine articles. However, statistics suggest 31 percent of these accidents involve the use of alcohol. The link between violent crime and alcohol use was also rarely acknowledged.

Estimates suggest alcohol plays a role in 31 percent of homicides, but it is mentioned in only 2.6 percent of television reports, 7.3 percent of newspaper accounts, and 5.6 percent of magazine reports of violent crime, with even lower percentages in the reporting of homicides. As these figures show, television does the poorest job in reporting when accidents or crimes have a connection to alcohol use.

“The percentage of TV news stories about violent crime that mention the role of alcohol was less than one-tenth the estimated percentage that had such a link,” Slater said. “By just watching TV news, most people would have little idea about the dangers of alcohol abuse when it comes to crime and accidents,” he said. “Even the print media doesn't give the complete story.”

The study also looked at media coverage of drug use and found that between 1.8 and 18.1 percent of reports about crimes or accidents mentioned the use of drugs. However, there were no estimates available about how often drug use was actually involved in these incidents.

The underreporting of the alcohol connection to crimes and accidents can be blamed on both police and news reporters, Slater said. Police departments may not mandate that officers mention in their reports if alcohol is suspected of playing a role in a violent crime or some types of accidental deaths. And reporters and their editors don't make it a habit to ask.

Whatever the reasons, Slater said it does make a difference. “The underreporting of the contribution of alcohol to crime and accidents may make it more difficult for wide acceptance of strategies to control alcohol use,” he said.

23 October 2006
Ohio State University Research News