Researchers are working to develop technology that will allow smartphones to help addicts deal with drug cravings.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) are combining a variety of technologies, such as artificial intelligence, smartphone programming, biosensors and Wi-Fi, to develop the iHeal, which will be able to detect physiological stressors associated with drug cravings and respond with behavioral interventions.

Edward Boyer, MD, PhD, professor of emergency medicine and lead author of the study, worked with colleagues at UMMS and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to design the mobile device.

It uses “enabling technologies” that could help make behavioral interventions for substance abusers more effective outside the clinic or office environments. The iHeal combines sensors to measure physiological changes and detect trigger points for risky health behaviors, such as substance use, with smartphone software tailored to respond with patient-specific interventions.

Individuals with a history of substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder were asked to wear an iHeal sensor band around their wrists. The device measures the electrical activity of the skin, body motion, skin temperature and heart rate, which are all indicators of stress.

The band wirelessly transmits information to a smartphone, where software applications monitor and process the physiological data.

When the software detects an increased stress level, it asks the user to input information about their perceived level of stress, drug cravings, and current activities. This information is then used to identify drug cravings and deliver personalized drug prevention interventions precisely at the moment of greatest physiological need, according to the researchers.

An initial analysis of the iHeal, including feedback from users, suggests a number of technical issues related to data security, as well as the need for a more robust and less stigmatizing version before the device could be worn in public, researchers note.

Preliminary data about the multimedia device was recently published online in the Journal of Medical Toxicology.

Source: The University of Massachusetts Medical School

A new area of study incorporates a multi-disciplinary view of biosocial factors that can influence criminal and anti-social actions.

Criminiologist Dr. Brian Boutwell, an assistant professor at Sam Houston State University, is using the new research strategy to hone in on the root causes of criminal and antisocial behavior.

“Biosocial research is a multi-disciplinary way of studying antisocial behavior,” said Boutwell. “It involves aspects of behavioral genetics, neuroscience, evolutionary biology and developmental psychology. Additionally, it incorporates different analytical techniques and research methods to examine criminal and antisocial behaviors.”

Although environmental effects have been viewed as having a significant influence on behavior, biological factors are also important. But incorporating biology into the study of criminal behaviors remains in its infancy and on the fringes of criminology.

This new approach has been used by Boutwell and colleagues to examine corporal punishment, rape, stalking and IQ. In one study, recently published in the journal Aggressive Behavior, Boutwell examined the relationship between genetic risk factors for antisocial behavior and the use of corporal punishment in childhood.

While prior research has linked the use of corporal punishment with aggression, psychopathology, and criminal involvement, Boutwell explores why not all children who are spanked develop such tendencies.

In the study, Boutwell and his co-authors suggest that genetic risk factors conditioned the effects of spanking on antisocial behavior. That is, children who possessed a genetic predisposition for antisocial behavior appeared to be most susceptible to the negative influences of spanking.

Interestingly, this gene-environment interaction appeared to be especially important for male participants and not female children in the sample.

The researchers also examined the link between one group of offenders and rape. Investigators discovered a small segment of the population known to be chronically aggressive—termed life-course persistent offenders—are significantly more likely to rape, and do so repeatedly over their lifetime.

Based on these findings and prior research, the study suggests that the origins of rape, in part, may be genetic although investigators say more studies are needed to test this link.

Another ongoing study is examining the genetic and environmental correlates of stalking while other research interests include the link between genetics, antisocial behavior and intelligence. Findings to date suggest a link between the genetic risk factors that corresponded to increased antisocial behavior and decreased cognitive functioning.

Source: Sam Houston State University

Angry young man photo by shutterstock.

A new study suggests a strong correlation between brain dominance and the ear used to listen to a cell phone.

Researchers discovered if you’re a left brain thinker, chances are you use your right hand to hold your cell phone up to your right ear.

Investigators determined more than 70 percent of participants hold their cell phone up to the ear on the same side as their dominant hand.

Left brain-dominant people — those whose speech and language center is on the left side of the brain – are more likely to use their right hand for writing and other everyday tasks.

Likewise, the Henry Ford study shows most left brain-dominant people also use the phone in their right ear, despite there being no perceived difference in their hearing in the left or right ear. And, right brain dominant people are more likely to use their left hand to hold the phone in their left ear.

Researchers believe these simple discoveries will help expand scientific knowledge on brain functions.

“Our findings have several implications, especially for mapping the language center of the brain,” says Michael Seidman, M.D., FACS.

“By establishing a correlation between cerebral dominance and sidedness of cell phone use, it may be possible to develop a less-invasive, lower-cost option to establish the side of the brain where speech and language occurs rather than the Wada test, a procedure that injects an anesthetic into the carotid artery to put half of the brain to sleep in order to map activity.”

Seidman notes that the study also may offer additional evidence that cell phone use and brain, and head and neck tumors may not be linked. He believes that if the link to cancer were significant, then more tumors would be found on the right side of their brain, head and neck – the dominant side for cell phone use.

However, he does believe that it’s likely that there is a time and “dose-dependence” to the development of tumors.

Study results will be presented in San Diego at the 25th Mid-Winter Meeting of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology.

The research began with the observation that most people use their right hand to hold a cell phone to their right ear. This practice, Seidman said, is illogical since it is challenging to listen on the phone with the right ear and take notes with the right hand.

To determine the association between sidedness of cell phone use and auditory or language hemispheric dominance, the researchers developed a online survey using modifications of the Edinburgh Handedness protocol, a tool used for more than 40 years to assess handedness and predict cerebral dominance.

Researchers included questions about which hand was used for tasks such as writing; time spent talking on cell phone; whether the right or left ear is used to listen to phone conversations; and if respondents had been diagnosed with a brain or head and neck tumor.

The survey was distributed to 5,000 individuals who were either with an otology online group or a patient undergoing Wada and MRI for non-invasive localization purposes. More than 700 responded to the online survey.

Investigators discovered that on average, respondents’ cell phone usage was 540 minutes per month.

The majority of respondents (90 percent) were right-handed, 9 percent were left handed and 1 percent were ambidextrous. Among those who are right-handed, 68 percent reported that they hold the phone to their right ear, while 25 percent used the left ear and 7 percent used both right and left ears.

For those who are left-handed, 72 percent said they used their left ear for cell phone conversations, while 23 percent used their right ear and 5 percent had no preference.

As would be expected, researchers discovered that having a hearing difference can impact ear preference for cell phone use.

Source: Henry Ford Hospital

Man talking on a cell phone photo by shutterstock.

A new study suggests the symptoms of autism in toddlers from a minority background are more significant than those noted in age-equivalent Caucasian children.

The investigation was the first prospective study of ethnic differences in the symptoms of autism among toddlers.

Researchers determined minority toddlers have more delayed language, communication and gross motor skills than Caucasian children with the disorder. Researchers at the Kennedy Krieger Institute believe subtle developmental delays may be going unaddressed in minority toddlers until more severe symptoms develop.

Autistic spectrum disorders are found in equal prevalence among all racial and ethnic groups. However, some studies have shown that children of African American, Hispanic and Asian descent are less likely to receive an early diagnosis of autism than Caucasian children.

In this new study, Rebecca Landa, Ph.D., director of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders at the institute, investigated whether the symptoms of autism in toddlers play a role in this disparity in diagnosis.

“We found the toddlers in the minority group were significantly further behind than the non-minority group in development of language and motor skills and showed more severe autism symptoms in their communication abilities,” says Landa, whose study included children and parents of African American, Asian and Hispanic descent.

“It’s really troubling when we look at these data alongside diagnosis statistics because they suggest that children in need of early detection and intervention are not getting it.”

The study is published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Researchers examined development in 84 toddlers with ASD at an average 26-28 months of age using three standardized instruments that evaluate child development.

Children were evaluated by their caregivers using the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales Developmental Caregiver Questionnaire (CSBS-DP CQ) and by research clinicians using the Mullen Scales of Early Learning and the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-Generic (ADOS).

Researchers then controlled for participants’ socioeconomic status. All three tools indicated a significant difference between minority and non-minority children.

Previous studies show that detection of ASD is possible at as early as 14 months of age. While early diagnosis is crucial for accessing intervention services, studies examining children from minority groups suggest considerable delays in the diagnosis of ASD in these children relative to their Caucasian peers.

The results may stem from cultural differences in what communities perceive as typical and atypical development in young children, the relationships between families and respected community physicians, and the stigma that some cultures place on disability as areas where education and awareness could have meaningful impact.

“Addressing cultural influences gives us a clear target to improve service delivery to minority children, but these findings may also suggest biological and other culturally related differences between Caucasian and minority children with autism,” Landa said.

“There are other complex diseases that present differently in different ethnic groups and more research is needed to investigate this possibility.”

Landa has since initiated a new study that will document the age at which minority parents first noticed signs of developmental disruption in their children, the specific nature of the behavior that concerned them, and the children’s intervention history.

Additional research is also needed to study group-specific differences in the presentation of autism symptoms between a variety of minority groups.

“Although questions remain on why these differences exist, by taking steps to develop more culturally sensitive screening and assessment practices, with a special focus on educating parents, clinicians and health educators, I believe we can empower parents to identify early warning signs and ensure minority children have the same access to services as their Caucasian peers,” said Landa.

Source: Kennedy Krieger Institute

Upset Toddler photo by shutterstock.

Over the past few decades, researchers have quantified many of the effects of stress on the human body, from frequent headaches, muscle pain or spasm to chest palpitations, while emotional and cognitive signs involve memory impairments, anxiety, moodiness and depression.

In a new study, researchers focus on the unseen effects of stress — damage to the cellular fabric of the human body that may speed the aging process.

Researchers looked at the way in which stress can shorten telomere length. Telomeres are protective caps on the ends of chromosomes and are indicators of aging, as they naturally shorten over time.

However, telomeres are also highly susceptible to stress and depression, both of which have repeatedly been linked with premature telomere shortening.

The human stress response is regulated by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, or HPA axis. This region controls the body’s levels of cortisol, the primary stress hormone. Unfortunately, the HPA axis does not work normally in individuals with depression — and stress-related illnesses.

In the study, scientists reviewed the relationships between telomere length, stress, and depression, measuring telomere length in patients with major depressive disorder and in healthy individuals. They also measured stress, both biologically, by measuring cortisol levels, and subjectively, through a questionnaire.

They found that telomere length was shorter in the depressed patients, which confirmed prior findings. Importantly, they also discovered that shorter telomere length was associated with a low cortisol state in both the depressed and healthy groups.

These findings suggest a link between stress, depression and aging.

First author Mikael Wikgren, Ph.D., explained, “Our findings suggest that stress plays an important role in depression, as telomere length was especially shortened in patients exhibiting an overly sensitive HPA axis. This HPA axis response is something which has been linked to chronic stress and with poor ability to cope with stress.”

According to Dr. John Krystal, editor of Biological Psychiatry,“The link between stress and telomere shortening is growing stronger. The current findings suggest that cortisol levels may be a contributor to this process, but it is not yet clear whether telomere length has significance beyond that of a biomarker.”

Researchers say additional studies are necessary to determine if interventions to stabilize or normalize telomere length would improve outcomes.

Source: Elsevier

Children who watch a lot of movies featuring alcohol are twice as likely to start drinking compared to other kids who watch relatively few of such films, according to new research.

The study, published in the online journal BMJ Open, also reveals that these children are significantly more likely to progress to binge drinking.

For the study, more than 6,500 U.S. children between the ages of 10 and 14 were regularly quizzed over two years about their consumption of alcohol and potentially influential factors, such as movie viewing and marketing, home environment, peer behavior, and personal rebelliousness.

The kids were asked which randomly selected 50 movies they had seen from among the top 100 box office hits in each of the preceding five years, plus 32 films grossing more than $15 million in the first quarter of 2003, the year of the first survey.

The number of seconds of on-screen alcohol use, including product placement, in each of these 532 films was measured by trained coders. Given the movies they reported seeing, adolescents had typically seen an estimated 4.5 hours of alcohol use, while many had seen in excess of eight hours.

Around one in 10 of the kids (11 percent) said they owned branded merchandise, such as a Tshirt or hat, with the name of a beer, wine, or spirit on it. Nearly one in four (23 percent) said their parents drank alcohol at least once a week at home; 29 percent said they were able to get alcohol at home.

Over the course of the two years, the proportion of kids who started drinking alcohol more than doubled from 11 percent to 25 percent, while the number who began binge drinking — defined as five or more drinks in a row — tripled from 4 percent to 13 percent.

Parents who drank at home, and availability of alcohol in the home, was associated with taking up drinking, but not progressing to binge drinking. Exposure to alcohol in movies, owning branded merchandise, having friends who drank, and rebelliousness were associated with both.

After adjusting for factors likely to influence the results, kids who watched the most movies featuring alcohol were twice as likely to start drinking as those who watched the least — and they were 63 percent more likely to progress to binge drinking.

Alcohol in movies accounted for 28 percent of kids who started drinking between surveys and for 20 percent of those who moved on to binge drinking.

The association was seen not only with movie characters who drink, but also with alcohol product placement, suggested the researchers.

“Product placement in movies is forbidden for cigarettes in the USA, but is legal and commonplace for the alcohol industry, with half of Hollywood films containing at least one alcohol brand appearance, regardless of film rating,” they write.

They point out that the depiction of smoking in movies has fallen since it became a public health issue and the subject of industry monitoring, and suggest that alcohol in movies “may deserve similar emphasis.”

Source: BMJ-British Medical Journal 

Are you a rebel or a conformist? A new research study attempts to discover an answer as to why some prefer to rebel against social influences while others tend to accept and conform to societal pressures.

Although differences in individuals’ tendencies to conform to social pressures are commonly observed, no anatomical measure has previously been linked to the likelihood of someone conforming under the influence of their peers.

In the study, researchers used neuroimaging technology to ascertain if individuals’ decisions are hard wired — that is, associated with anatomical differences in key brain structures. Investigators discovered a link between the amount of grey matter in one specific brain region and an individual’s likelihood of conforming to social pressures.

The findings are reported in the journal Current Biology.

Investigators first measured the brain volumes in 28 participants. Then, to measure how participants responded to social influence, they were tested to see how their preferences for certain pieces of music changed after being told what authoritative “music critics” thought about them.

A week prior to testing, each participant listed 20 songs they liked but didn’t personally own. On the day of the test, the participants rated their choices out of 10.

Next, the researchers stated that music critics with expert opinions had listened to the participants’ choices and had also rated these songs out of 10.

The participants then performed a task comparing their choices with unknown music. Following the task, the participants rerated their 20 choices, and the degree to which their opinions differed in light of hearing the critics’ ratings served as a measure of conformity under social influence.

Investigators discovered only grey matter volume in one precise brain region — the lateral orbitofrontal cortex — was associated with this measure of social influence.

The linear relationship between grey matter volume and the tendency of individuals to conform was observed in this particular region in both hemispheres of the brain.

In a previous study, the researchers had looked at the level of activity in the participants’ brains when faced with disagreement with the experts. This activity predicted how much influence the experts would have.

By comparing the measures in this new study with the previous findings, they were able to show that grey matter volume in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex also predicted how individuals responded when the critics disagreed with their opinions.

These findings suggest that the brain region is particularly tuned to recognizing cues of social conflict, such as when someone disapproves of a choice, which may prompt the subject to update their opinions accordingly.

Said study leader Dr. Chris Frith, “The ability to adapt to others and align ourselves with them is an important social skill. However, at what level is this skill implemented in the brain? At a software (information processing) or hardware (structural) level? Our results show that social conformation is, at least in part, hard-wired in the structure of the brain.”

Dr Daniel Campbell-Meiklejohn, first author of the study, explains the implications of their findings: “This opens a new chapter on the social consequences of brain atrophy and brain development. People with damage to this region often display changes of personality and social interaction.

“This finding suggests that perhaps we should look at how these individuals learn what is important from the expressed preferences of others.”

Source: Wellcome Trust

Some six thousand Americans are killed at work each year, and a University of Georgia study suggests the culture of the workplace can be a critical factor in reducing or increasing risk of injury.

Researchers determined a worker’s perception of safety and the work-life balance established by businesses has a significant effect on work-related injuries.

“We’ve known for some time that certain occupations are more dangerous than others due to a variety of physical and other hazards,” said study author Dave DeJoy, Ph.D. “But in the last 20 years, there has been growing evidence that management and organizational factors also play a critical role. That is, actions taken or not taken at the organizational level can either set the stage for injuries or help prevent them.”

DeJoy and his colleagues examined U.S. safety climate perceptions among a diverse sample of occupations and worker groups — from offices to factories — and to highlight the factors linked to injury.

The results were published online in January and will be in the March issue of the Journal of Safety Research.

Investigators discovered that well-managed companies can decrease injuries by 38 percent as worker opinions improve.

A worker’s perception of a positive safety climate can decrease injuries by 32 percent. In the survey, questions pertaining to the safety climate assessed worker perceptions on the importance of their safety in their work organization.

“We can design the best safety controls, but they must be maintained, and that falls on management,” Smith said.

Researcher found that the work culture including policies and procedures that applied to day-to-day operations were factors that define a safe environment.

“Enacted policies and procedures-not formalized ones but those acted upon-define a climate of safety.”

DeJoy agrees. “Injury is a failure of management. Organizations who blame individuals for injuries do not create a positive safety climate.”

In addition to factors identified by the study to decrease injuries, work-family interference was established as a significant risk for occupational injury.

“We used to think work was one thing and family was another, but now there is a realization that work-life balance affects performance and productivity,” DeJoy said.

The study looked at the mutual interference between job and family demands. In situations where work interferes with family life or family demands affect job performance, they found that the risk for injury increased 37 percent.

Consistent with previous studies performed by the Department of Labor Statistics, they found whites had higher injury rates than blacks, but both had lower rates than the “other” category, which is predominately made up of Hispanics.

“These results provide guidance for targeting interventions and protective measures to curtail occupational injury in the U.S.,” said co-author Todd Smith, a recent graduate of the Health Promotion and Behavior doctoral program at UGA..

DeJoy was part of a team of researchers that worked with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to put together a quality of work life survey module that featured a number of scales and measures assessing different job and organizational factors.

This module was included as part of the General Social Survey and administered to a national representative sample of American adults.

In the current study, DeJoy and his team assessed occupational injury risk in terms of socio-demographic factors, employment characteristics and organizational factors for 1,525 respondents using data from the quality of work life module.

The study identified race, occupational category and work-family interferences as risk factors for occupational injury and safety climate and organizational effectiveness as protective factors.

“The data suggests effects are pronounced and generalized across all occupations,” said Smith, who spent 12 years as a workplace safety consultant before starting his graduate program at UGA.

“Most prior research on organizational factors has focused on single occupations or single organizations,” DeJoy said. “There has been a clear need to examine these factors across a diverse array of occupations and employment circumstances to see how generalizable or pervasive these factors are.”

The nine factors they examined were participation, work-family interference, management-employee relations, organizational effectiveness, safety climate, job content, advancement potential, resource adequacy and supervisor support.

Source: University of Georgia – Athens

A new study finds that discrimination against gender nonconformity can begin at a very young age, raising the risk of psychological trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by young adulthood.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health found that children in the U.S. whose activity choices, interests, and pretend play before age 11 were different from expected gender roles faced increased risk of being physically, psychologically and sexually abused.

At the same time, the study found that most children who display gender nonconforming behaviors are heterosexual in adulthood.

The study has been published online and will appear in the March 2012 print issue of Pediatrics.

“The abuse we examined was mostly perpetrated by parents or other adults in the home. Parents need to be aware that discrimination against gender nonconformity affects one in 10 kids, affects kids at a very young age, and has lasting impacts on health,” said lead author Andrea Roberts, Ph.D.

PTSD has been linked to risky behavior such as engaging in unprotected sex, and also to physical symptoms such as cardiovascular problems and chronic pain.

The researchers, led by Roberts and senior author S. Bryn Austin, Sc.D., examined questionnaire data gathered from nearly 9,000 young adults (average age 23) who enrolled in the longitudinal Growing Up Today study in 1996.

Respondents were asked in 2007 to recall their childhood experiences, including favorite toys and games, roles they took while playing, media characters they imitated or admired, and feelings of femininity and masculinity. They also were asked about physical, sexual, or emotional abuse they experienced and were screened for PTSD.

The findings were sobering as men ranked in the top 10th percentile of childhood gender nonconformity reported a higher prevalence of sexual and physical abuse before age 11.

They also reported more psychological abuse between ages 11 and 17 compared with those below the median of nonconformity.

Women were also at risk as those who scored in the top 10th percentile of gender nonconformity reported a higher prevalence of all forms of abuse.

Rates of PTSD were almost twice as high among young adults who were gender nonconforming in childhood than among those who were not.

The researchers also found that most children who were gender-nonconforming were heterosexual in adulthood (85 percent), a finding reported for the first time in this study.

“Our findings suggest that most of the intolerance toward gender nonconformity in children is targeted toward heterosexuals,” said Roberts.

Researchers say that additional studies are needed to understand why gender nonconforming kids experience greater risk of abuse. Furthermore, studies are indicated to aid in the development of interventions to prevent abuse.

The experts also recommend that pediatricians and school health providers consider abuse screening for this vulnerable population.

Source: Harvard School of Public Health

Sad child photo by shutterstock.

A new linguistic study suggests university students who extensively text are less accepting of new words.

In the investigation, graduate student Joan Lee designed an experiment to understand the effect of text messaging on language. She found texting has a negative impact on people’s linguistic ability to interpret and accept words.

Lee’s study revealed that those who texted more were less responsive to new words as compared to students who read more traditional print media such as books, magazines, and newspapers.

Lee queried university students about their reading habits, including text messaging, then presented them with a range of words both real and fictitious.

The findings came as something of a surprise as language originality and creativity seem to be a characteristic of text messaging.

“Our assumption about text messaging is that it encourages unconstrained language. But the study found this to be a myth,” said Lee.

“The people who accepted more words did so because they were better able to interpret the meaning of the word, or tolerate the word, even if they didn’t recognize the word. Students who reported texting more rejected more words instead of acknowledging them as possible words.”

Lee believes reading traditional print media exposes people to variety and creativity in language that is not found in the colloquial peer-to-peer text messaging used among young people.

She said reading encourages flexibility in language use and tolerance of different words. It helps readers to develop skills that allow them to generate interpretable readings of new or unusual words.

“In contrast, texting is associated with rigid linguistic constraints which caused students to reject many of the words in the study,” said Lee. “This was surprising because there are many unusual spellings or ‘textisms’ such as ‘LOL’ in text messaging language.”

Lee believes word frequency influences the acceptability of words for texters. “Textisms represent real words which are commonly known among people who text,” she said. “Many of the words presented in the study are not commonly known and were not acceptable to the participants in the study who texted more or read less traditional print media.”

Source: University of Calgary

Woman texting photo by shutterstock.

Are kids born with an innate sense of fairness? A new study answers affirmatively, finding that children develop a sense of fairness before they are two years of age.

University of Illinois researchers said that they found that 19- and 21-month-old infants have a general expectation of fairness, and they can apply it appropriately to different situations.

Investigators performed two experiments analyzing infant responses as they watched live scenarios unfold.

In the first, 19-month-olds saw two giraffe puppets dance around at the back of a stage. An experimenter arrived with two toys on a tray and said, “I have toys!” “Yay!” said the giraffes.

Then the experimenter gave one toy to each giraffe or both to one of them. The infants were timed gazing at the scene until they lost interest.

Researchers believe longer looking times indicate that that a baby finds something odd or unexpected. In this experiment, three-quarters of the infants looked longer when one giraffe got both toys.

In the second experiment, two women faced each other with a pile of small toys between them and an empty plastic box in front of each of them.

An experimenter said, “Wow! Look at all these toys. It’s time to clean them up.”

In one scenario, one woman dutifully put the toys away, while the other kept playing — but the experimenter gave a reward to both the worker and the slacker. In another scenario, both women put the toys away and both got a reward. The observing 21-month-old infants looked reliably longer when the worker and the slacker were rewarded equally.

“We think children are born with a skeleton of general expectations about fairness,” said researcher and doctoral student Stephanie Sloane, “and these principles and concepts get shaped in different ways depending on the culture and the environment they’re brought up in.”

Some cultures value sharing more than others, but the ideas that resources should be equally distributed and rewards allocated according to effort tend to be innate and universal.

Researchers believe other survival instincts can intervene. Self-interest is one, as is loyalty to the in-group — your family, your tribe, your team. Investigators believe it is much harder to abide by that abstract sense of fairness when you want all the cookies — or your team is hungry.

That’s why children need reminders to share and practice in the discipline of doing the right thing in spite of their desires.

Still, said Sloane, “helping children behave more morally may not be as hard as it would be if they didn’t have that skeleton of expectations.”

This innate moral sense might also explain the power of early trauma, she said.

Aside from fairness, research has shown that small children expect people not to harm others and to help others in distress.

“If they witness events that violate those expectations in extreme ways, it could explain why these events have such negative and enduring consequences,” said Sloane.

Their findings are published in the journal Psychological Science.

Source: Association for Psychological Science

When a person hugs or affectionately touches another, the brain chemical oxytocin is released, helping to strengthen social bonds, among other actions. 

This “hormone of love” might provide hope for those suffering with depression, according to researchers who are currently conducting a clinical trial.

“In humans, oxytocin is released when they hug or experience other pleasant physical touch, and it plays a part in the human sexual response cycle,” said Dr. Kai MacDonald, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

Oxytocin seems to change the brain signals responsible for social recognition through facial expressions, says MacDonald, perhaps by changing the firing of the amygdala, the area of the brain that plays a major role in the processing of important emotional stimuli. Therefore, oxytocin in the brain may be a very strong mediator of human social behavior.

“That’s why oxytocin is sometimes called ‘the love hormone,’” said MacDonald. “It’s said that the eyes are the window to the soul… they certainly are the window to the emotional brain. We know that the eye-to-eye communication, which is affected by oxytocin, is critical to intimate emotional communication for all kind of emotions — love, fear, trust, anxiety.”

Previously, UC San Diego researchers discovered that oxytocin could help those with schizophrenia, and MacDonald and colleague David Feifel, M.D., Ph.D., professor of psychiatry, are now enrolling participants to study its role in clinical depression.

“Studies of blood levels and genetic factors in depressed patients point to the possibility that this natural hormone might play a part in helping clinical depression,” said MacDonald.

“Previously, studies of healthy individuals have shown that intranasal doses of oxytocin reduce activation of brain circuits involved in fear, increase levels of eye contact, and increase both trust and generosity,” MacDonald said. “Interestingly, people given oxytocin don’t report feeling any different, but they act differently.”

Early clinical data also indicates oxytocin may help women with anxiety disorders.

“A hug or a touch that causes a release of this hormone might somehow change brain signals,” MacDonald said.  “We want to see if we can harness this response to help patients who suffer from depression.”

Source:  University of California

As baby boomers become seniors, researchers are aggressively searching for medications that can reduce the detrimental effects of Alzheimer’s disease.

But a new study using mice suggests Alzheimer’s disease drugs now being tested in clinical trials may have potentially adverse side effects.

Northwestern University researchers discovered the drugs could act like a bad electrician, causing neurons to be miswired and interfering with their ability to send messages to the brain.

“Let’s proceed with caution,” said Robert Vassar, Ph.D., professor of cell and molecular biology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

“We have to keep our eyes open for potential side effects of these drugs.” Ironically, he said, the drugs could impair memory.

The drugs in question are designed to inhibit BACE1, the enzyme Vassar originally discovered that promotes the development of the clumps of plaque that are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s.

The BACE1 enzyme works by cutting up and releasing proteins that form the plaques. Thus, drug developers believed blocking the enzyme might slow the disease.

However, in Vassar’s new study, he found BACE1 also has a critical role as the brain’s electrician. The enzyme maps out the location of axons, the wires that connect neurons to the brain and the rest of the nervous system, a process called axonal guidance.

Laboratory research involved studying genetically altered mice in which the BACE1 enzyme was removed. In doing this, Vassar discovered the animals’ olfactory system – used for the sense of smell — was incorrectly wired.

The axons of the olfactory neurons were not wired properly to the olfactory bulb of the brain. The findings show the key role of BACE1 in axonal guidance.

“It’s like a badly wired house,” Vassar said. “If the electrician doesn’t get the wiring pattern correct, your lights won’t turn on and the outlets won’t work.”

Studying the mechanism of the olfactory system is a good model for reviewing nerve or axonal wiring. If the axons aren’t being properly connected in the olfactory system, Vassar said, the problem likely exists elsewhere in the brain and nervous system.

The hippocampus could be particularly vulnerable to BACE1 blockers, he noted, because its population of neurons is continually being reborn, which may play a role in forming new memories. The neurons need to grow new axons that in turn must connect them with new targets. Axonal guidance is a continuous need.

Despite the new findings, “it’s not all bad news,” Vassar noted. “These BACE1 blockers might be useful at a specific dose that will reduce the amyloid plaques but not high enough to interfere with the wiring. Understanding the normal function of BACE1 may help us avoid potential drug side effects.”

The findings, from the scientist whose original research led to the drug development, are published in the journal Molecular Neurodegeneration.

Source: Northwestern University

A new study suggests environmental influences including maternal depression or a bilingual upbringing can affect language development in early childhood.

The work by University of British Columbia researchers is among the first to explore the impacts of maternal mental health and antidepressant exposure on the mechanics of early language acquisition.

Experts say the preliminary findings provide important new insights into early childhood development and mother’s mental health and will inform new approaches to infant language acquisition.

Prior research revealed that during the first months of life, babies rapidly attune to the language sounds they hear and the sights they see (movements in the face that accompany talking) of their native languages.

After this foundational period of language recognition, babies begin focusing on acquiring their native tongues and effectively ignore other languages.

However, in findings from two studies, researcher Janet Werker reports that this key developmental period — which typically ends between the ages of eight and nine months — can change.

In one study, Werker finds the period lasts longer for babies in bilingual households than in monolingual babies, particularly for the face recognition aspects of speech.

In another study, Werker and collaborators discovered that maternal depression and its treatment with common antidepressant medication — selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) — can also affect the timing of speech perception development in babies.

The team’s preliminary findings suggest that SRI treatment in mothers may accelerate babies’ ability to attune to the sounds and sights of the native language, while maternal depression untreated by SRIs may prolong the period of tuning.

“At this point, we do not know if accelerating or delaying the achievement of these milestones of early infancy has any consequences on later language acquisition,” said Werker.

“However, these preliminary findings highlight the importance of environmental factors on infant development and put us in a better position to support not only optimal language development in children but also maternal well-being.”

This study followed three groups of mothers – one being treated for depression with SRIs, one with depression not taking antidepressants and one with no symptoms of depression. By measuring changes in heart rate and eye movement to sounds and video images of native and non-native languages, the researchers calculated the language development of babies at three intervals, including six and 10 months of age.

Researchers also studied how the heart rates of unborn babies responded to languages at the age of 36 weeks in the uterus.

Source: University of British Columbia

While most understand that dehydration can have medical complications, a new study shows that even mild dehydration can influence mood, energy levels and the ability to think clearly.

Regrettably, we often use thirst as an indicator for when we need to drink — a response that experts say is too late to avoid many of the detrimental effects of dehydration.

In two recent studies, researchers at the University of Connecticut’s Human Performance Laboratory discovered the mental, mood and cognitive downside of even mild dehydration.

Investigators determined that it didn’t matter if a person had just walked for 40 minutes on a treadmill or was sitting at rest – the adverse effects from mild dehydration were the same.

Mild dehydration is defined as an approximately 1.5 percent loss in normal water volume in the body.

The take home message is that individuals need to stay hydrated at all times, not just during exercise, extreme heat or exertion.

“Our thirst sensation doesn’t really appear until we are 1 [percent] or 2 percent dehydrated. By then dehydration is already setting in and starting to impact how our mind and body perform,” says Lawrence E. Armstrong, one of the studies’ lead scientists and an international expert on hydration.

The importance for everyone to stay hydrated is a message that needs to be promoted.

“Dehydration affects all people, and staying properly hydrated is just as important for those who work all day at a computer as it is for marathon runners, who can lose up to 8 percent of their body weight as water when they compete.”

In the study, separate groups of young women and men were tested. Twenty-five women with an average age of 23 took part in one study. The men’s group consisted of 26 men with an average age of 20.

All of the participants were healthy, active individuals, who were neither high-performance athletes nor sedentary — typically exercising for 30 to 60 minutes per day.

Each participant took part in three evaluations that were separated by 28 days. All of the participants walked on a treadmill to induce dehydration, and all of the subjects were hydrated the evening before the evaluations commenced.

As part of the evaluation, the subjects were put through a battery of cognitive tests that measured vigilance, concentration, reaction time, learning, memory, and reasoning. The results were compared against a separate series of tests when the individuals were not dehydrated.

The young women experienced mild dehydration which caused headaches, fatigue, and difficulty concentrating. They also perceived tasks as more difficult when slightly dehydrated, although there was no substantive reduction in their cognitive abilities.

The research findings are published in The Journal of Nutrition.

In the tests involving the young men, mild dehydration caused some difficulty with mental tasks, particularly in the areas of vigilance and working memory, according to the results of the second UConn study.

While the young men also experienced fatigue, tension, and anxiety when mildly dehydrated, adverse changes in mood and symptoms were “substantially greater in females than in males, both at rest and during exercise,” according to the study. The men’s study was published in the British Journal of Nutrition.

“Even mild dehydration that can occur during the course of our ordinary daily activities can degrade how we are feeling – especially for women, who appear to be more susceptible to the adverse effects of low levels of dehydration than men,” says Harris Lieberman, one of the studies’ co-authors.

“In both sexes these adverse mood changes may limit the motivation required to engage in even moderate aerobic exercise. Mild dehydration may also interfere with other daily activities, even when there is no physical demand component present.”

Investigators are uncertain why women and men are so adversely affected by mild dehydration. One possibility is that neurons in the brain detect dehydration. These neurons may then signal parts of the brain regulating mood.

This process could be part of an ancient warning system protecting humans from more dire consequences, and alerting them to the need for water to survive.

In order to stay properly hydrated, experts like Armstrong recommend that individuals drink eight, 8-ounce glasses of water a day, which is approximately equivalent to about 2 liters of water.

People can check their hydration status by monitoring the color of their urine. Urine should be a very pale yellow in individuals who are properly hydrated.

Urine that is dark yellow or tan in color indicates greater dehydration. Proper hydration is particularly important for high-risk groups, such as the elderly, people with diabetes, and children.

Source: University of Connecticut

Water bottles photo by shutterstock.

The first evidence of a causal link between traumatic brain injury and an increased risk for post-traumatic stress disorder has been provided by scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The study also suggests that individuals who experience even a mild traumatic brain injury face a higher risk for developing an anxiety disorder and should try to avoid stressful situations for at least awhile.

The motivation for the study (conducted in rats) was the observed association between traumatic brain injury (TBI) and PTSD, especially in military veterans, said Michael Fanselow, a UCLA professor of psychology and the senior author of the study.

The reasons for this link are unclear. Perhaps the events that cause brain injury are also very frightening and the correlation between TBI and PTSD is merely incidental. However, Fanselow and his colleagues hypothesized that the two “could be linked in a more mechanistic way.”

For the study, scientists separated the physical and emotional traumas by training the rats with “fear conditioning” two days after they experienced a concussive brain trauma — ensuring that the brain injury and fear occurred on separate days.

“We found that the rats with the earlier TBI acquired more fear than control rats (without TBI),” said Fanselow, a member of UCLA’s Brain Research Institute. “Something about the brain injury rendered them more susceptible to acquiring an inappropriately strong fear. It was as if the injury primed the brain for learning to be afraid.”

To investigate this further, the researchers analyzed the rats’ amygdala, which is the brain’s important center for fear learning.

“We found that there are significantly more receptors for excitatory neurotransmitters that promote learning,” said Maxine Reger, a UCLA graduate student of psychology in Fanselow’s laboratory and the lead author of the study.

Fanselow added, “This finding suggests that brain injury leaves the amygdala in a more excitable state that readies it for acquiring potent fear. One of UCLA’s great strengths is the spirit of collaboration that allows scientists from very different departments to combine their very different expertises to answer important but difficult questions.”

The study is published in the journal Biological Psychology.

Source: UCLA

Beginning at 6 months of age, high-risk infants — who would later develop autism — display major brain differences compared to high-risk infants who would not develop autism, according to a new study led by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“It’s a promising finding,” said Jason J. Wolff, PhD, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow.

“At this point, it’s a preliminary albeit great first step towards thinking about developing a biomarker for risk in advance of our current ability to diagnose autism.”

The study also suggests, said Wolff, that autism does not appear suddenly in young children, but rather develops gradually during infancy. This raises the possibility “that we may be able to interrupt that process with targeted intervention,” he said.

The study included 92 infants who all have older siblings with autism and are therefore considered at high risk for autism as well. All underwent diffusion tensor imaging — a type of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) — at 6 months and behavioral assessments at 24 months. Most also had additional brain imaging scans at either or both 12 and 24 months.

At 24 months, 28 infants (30 percent) met criteria for autism spectrum disorders while 64 infants (70 percent) did not.

Fractional anisotropy (FA) revealed that the two groups differed in white matter fiber tract development — pathways that connect brain regions. FA measures white matter organization and development by tracking water molecule movement through brain tissue.

Between infants who did develop autism versus infants who did not, significant differences were found in FA trajectories in 12 of the 15 tracts that were studied.

Specifically, babies who later developed autism had elevated FA at six months but then had slower change over time. By 24 months of age, infants with autism had lower FA values than infants without autism.

“This evidence, which implicates multiple fiber pathways, suggests that autism is a whole-brain phenomenon not isolated to any particular brain region,” Wolff said.

The study was published online at AJP in Advance, a section of the website of the American Journal of Psychiatry.  Its results are the latest from the ongoing Infant Brain Imaging Study (IBIS) Network.

Source:  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine

Weight training for two years significantly improves the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease compared to other forms of exercise, such as stretching and balance exercises, according to new research.

“While we have known that many different types of exercise can benefit Parkinson’s patients over short time periods, we did not know whether exercise improves the motor symptoms of Parkinson’s over the long term,” said study author Daniel Corcos, Ph.D., with the University of Illinois at Chicago.

For the study, 48 people with Parkinson’s disease were put in one of two groups. The first was assigned to progressive resistance exercise, known as weight training. The other was assigned to the exercise known as fitness counts, which includes flexibility, balance and strengthening exercises.

The groups exercised for one hour, twice a week, for two years.

The severity of symptoms, including tremors, was measured using the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) after six, 12, 18 and 24 months of exercise, Corcos said. Scores were taken when the participants were not taking their medication.

While both forms of exercise reduced symptoms at six months, participants who did weight training saw a 7.3 point improvement in their UPRDS score after two years while the fitness counts group returned to the same scores they had at the start of the study.

“Our results suggest that long-term weight training could be considered by patients and doctors as an important component in managing Parkinson’s disease,” said Corcos.

The study was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Source: The American Academy of Neurology

Sociologists have developed a theory of the “moral self” that may help explain ethical lapses in the banking, investment and mortgage-lending industries that nearly ruined the U.S. economy.

Sociologists have long theorized that individual behavior results from cultural expectations about how to act in specific situations. In a new study, researchers Jan Stets, Ph.D., of University of California, Riverside and Michael Carter, Ph.D., of California State University-Northridge found that how individuals see themselves in moral terms is also an important motivator of behavior.

The bankers, stockbrokers, and mortgage lenders who contributed to the recession were able to act without shame or guilt because their moral identity standard was set at a low level, and the behavior that followed from their personal standard went unchallenged by their colleagues, Stets explained.

“One’s identity standard guides a person’s behavior,” she said. “Then the person sees the reactions of others to his or her behavior. If others have a low moral identity and do not challenge the illicit behavior that follows from it, then the person will continue to do what he or she is doing. This is how immoral practices can emerge.”

And the consequences can be severe, as witnessed by the economic meltdown brought about by the irresponsible practices of some bankers and others on Wall Street, which led to many Americans losing their homes, retirement savings, and jobs.

“The fact that a few greedy actors have the potential to damage the lives of many — as evidenced in the Bernie Madoff case — brings issues of right and wrong, good and bad, and just and unjust to public awareness,” the researchers said. “To understand the illicit behavior of some, we need to study the moral dimension of the self and what makes some individuals more dishonest than others.”

For the study, the sociologists surveyed more than 350 university students in a two-phase study that measured moral identity, assessment of specific situations as having a moral component, and emotions, such as guilt and shame.

The students were first asked how they responded in specific situations where they had a choice to do the right or wrong thing; for example, copy another student’s answers, drive home drunk, give to charity, allow another student to copy their answers, or let a friend drive home drunk.

Three months later, the students were asked to rate each scenario in moral terms, and how they thought individuals ought to feel after doing the right or wrong thing in each situation. The students placed themselves along a continuum between two contradictory characteristics — honest/dishonest, caring/uncaring, unkind/kind, helpful/not helpful, stingy/generous, compassionate/hardhearted, untruthful/truthful, selfish/selfless, and principled/unprincipled.

The more that individuals saw themselves as honest, caring, kind, fair, helpful, generous, compassionate, truthful, hardworking, friendly, selfless, and principled, the higher their moral identity, the researchers said.

“We found that individuals with a high moral identity score were more likely to behave morally, while those with a low moral identity score were less likely to behave morally,” Stets said. “Respondents who received feedback from others that did not verify their moral identity standard were more likely to report guilt and shame than those whose identities were verified.”

The goal is to live up to one’s self-view, the researchers said. “When the meanings of one’s behavior based on feedback from others are inconsistent with the meanings in one’s identity standard, the person will feel bad,” they said.

More research is needed to identify the source of moral identity meanings, the researchers add.

“Exposure to particular social contexts and individuals may encourage a higher moral identity. For example, when parents are involved in their children’s lives, their children are more likely to recognize moral values. Schools can also sensitize individuals to moral meanings by providing an atmosphere that fosters justice, virtue and volunteering. Religious traditions that promote reflection on moral issues and foster charitable work also help individuals recognize moral meanings.”

The study is published in the February issue of the journal American Sociological Review.

Source: University of California, Riverside

A new trend in scientific research is to use videogame technology to simulate human tissue.

Wake Forest University researchers are using graphics processing units (GPUs), the technology that makes videogame images so realistic, to simulate the inner workings of human cells.

Dr. Samuel Cho, a biophysicist and computer scientist, said the popularity of video games has also been a godsend in helping to drop the price of the GPUs so that they can now be used for research.

Furthermore, the technology now allows Cho to see exactly how the cells live, divide and die. And that, he said, opens up possibilities for new targets for tumor-killing drugs.

Cho’s most recent computer simulation, of a critical RNA molecule that is a component of the human telomerase enzyme, illuminates previously unknown hidden states in the folding and unfolding of this molecule.

The results of his research appear in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The human telomerase enzyme is found only in cancerous cells. It adds tiny molecules called telomeres to the ends of DNA strands when cells divide — essentially preventing cells from dying.

“The cell keeps reproducing over and over, and that’s the very definition of cancer,” Cho said. “By knowing how telomerase folds and functions, we provide a new area for researching cancer treatments.”

The visual representation gives scientists a far more accurate view of how the molecule functions. This, in turn, can allow the development of new medications that can block the action of the enzyme and potentially stop the growth of cancerous cells.

Specifically, a new drug would stop the human telomerase enzyme from adding onto the DNA, so the tumor cell dies.

Cho is currently exploring the use of videogaming technology to investigate bacterial ribosome — a molecular system 200 times larger than the human telomerase enzyme RNA molecule.

His research group has begun to use graphics cards called GPUs to perform these cell simulations, which is much faster than using standard computing.

“We have hijacked this technology to perform simulations very, very quickly on much larger biomolecular systems,” Cho said.

Without the GPUs, Cho estimated it would have taken him more than 40 years to program that simulation. Amazingly, use of the technology will allow the research to be performed in only a few months.

Source: Wake Forest University