Feature Channels: Mental Health

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Parkinson’s disease (PD) and other “synucleinopathies” are known to be linked to the misfolding of alpha-synuclein protein in neurons. Less clear is how this misfolding relates to the growing number of genes implicated in PD through analysis of human genetics. Researchers affiliated with Whitehead Institute and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) explain how they used a suite of novel biological and computational methods to shed light on the question.

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Sian Beilock, the Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology, has been awarded the 2017 Troland Research Award for her pioneering work on anxiety and performance in high-stress situations. The National Academy of Sciences gives the award annually to two investigators no older than 40 to recognize their unusual achievements and to further research in the field of experimental psychology. The honor is accompanied by a $75,000 prize.

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For many families, normal activities, such as going to a large family gathering or an amusement park, can be difficult to navigate with a child with autism, as the child may be act out due to being overwhelmed by extra noises and stimulation. To help families deal with such situations, specialists at the University of Missouri Thompson Center for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders have been successfully integrating applied behavior analysis (ABA), the science of understanding why people behave in various ways and how understanding those motivations can shape behavior.

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Alcohol use can be found in suicide deaths and unintentional deaths due to injuries such as those from motor vehicle collisions (MVCs). The authors of this study argue that it is important to distinguish between the roles that alcohol may play in the two different types of deaths. Consequently, they compared postmortem toxicology results for alcohol and other drugs, alone and in combination, in suicide and MVC deaths.

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The UNC School of Medicine has awarded the 17th Perl-UNC Neuroscience Prize to David Anderson, PhD, the Seymour Benzer Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology for “his discovery of neural circuit mechanisms controlling emotional behaviors.”

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UAB and VICIS have each made major strides in developing next generation football helmets in response to the growing concussion crisis, and they have partnered to combine expertise and intellectual property to bring more effective helmets to the market.

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A functional MRI brain scan may help predict which patients will respond positively to antidepressant therapy, according to a new study published in the journal Brain.

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A volume decrease in specific parts of the brain’s hippocampus – long identified as a hub of mood and memory processing – was linked to bipolar disorder in a study led by researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). The research was published today in Molecular Psychiatry, part of the Nature Publishing Group.

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Offering your spouse what you believe to be positive support could have negative physiological effects on them, according to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York.

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Scientists have found a way to inhibit the growth of glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer with low survival rates, by targeting a protein that drives growth of brain tumors, according to research from the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute and Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center.

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Mindfulness meditation is an increasingly popular treatment for anxiety, but testing its effectiveness in a convincing way has been difficult. Now a rigorously designed, NIH-sponsored clinical trial has found objective physiological evidence that mindfulness meditation combats anxiety.

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A clinical trial to examine the effect of nilotinib on clinical outcomes and biomarkers in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease has opened at Georgetown University Medical Center.

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A University of Cincinnati study reported that patients who sustained a concussion, followed by symptoms of visual dysfunction, experienced delayed central and peripheral vision reaction times.

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Xinglong Wang’s team published a study in the January 2017 issue of Molecular Therapy that is seen as confirming the relevance of this neurotoxic pathway, according to an accompanying editorial by Eloise Hudry, PhD, of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Unit at Harvard Medical School. This paper also confirms TDP-43 inhibition as a viable therapeutic option for the treatment of neurologic disorders, including Alzheimer disease.

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Promising, early studies of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease have paved a path for future clinical trials, but there are unique ethical challenges with this vulnerable population regarding decision making and post-study treatment access that need to be addressed as they ramp up, Penn Medicine researchers argue in a new review in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

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Neurobiologist Lynn Dobrunz, Ph.D., has discovered a novel mechanism for how stress-induced anxiety — the type of experience that can produce post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD — affects circuit function in the hippocampus, the area of the brain where aversive memories are formed.

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The pediatric neuropsychology program at NYU Lutheran, led by Gianna Locascio, PsyD, brings a new level of care to Brooklyn families.

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Researchers show that the phenomenon, previously seen in Western populations, also occurs in Chinese teenagers, and can cross cultural divides

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Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC) recently received the school’s highest ranking in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding since the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research began its annual ranking of medical schools in 2006. The rankings represent total NIH funding granted from October 1, 2015 through September 30, 2016. The USC Department of Ophthalmology and Department of Preventive Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC both ranked No. 2 nationally among the nation’s ophthalmology and preventive medicine departments receiving NIH funds. The Keck School of Medicine of USC also ranked No. 1 in NIH funds received per principal investigator.

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Biomedical engineers at Johns Hopkins report they have worked out a noninvasive way to release and deliver concentrated amounts of a drug to the brain of rats in a temporary, localized manner using ultrasound.

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Greg Caporaso showed promising research that could lead to a new treatment option for autism spectrum disorder.

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Occult practices feed both depression and psychopathy.

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• A new study found that patients on chronic hemodialysis with depression are frequently not interested in modifying or initiating anti-depressant treatment. Kidney specialists caring for these patients are often unwilling to modify or initiate anti-depressant therapy even when patients are willing to accept recommendations from nurses to do so

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Patients who reported the most positive relationships with their counselors on a session-to-session basis had fewer days of drinking and fewer days of heavy drinking between treatment sessions than patients whose relationship was not as positive. The results indicate that efforts to ensure a good match between patient and counselor can have considerable benefits to the patient’s recovery.

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Making New Year’s resolutions is easy. Keeping them — beyond a couple of weeks, at least — is tough. One big factor that affects whether the commitment sticks: sleep. A sleep expert and neurologist explains how better sleep can help you keep those resolutions, including eating healthier, exercising more and getting a promotion.

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A new high-tech medical device to make brain surgery safer has been developed by researchers at the University of Adelaide.

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Mental sharpness in women begins to decline as early as their 50s. Cognitive processing speed, which includes speed of perception and reaction, showed an average decline of around 1 percent every two years and verbal memory declined on average around 1 percent every five years.

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Northwestern Medicine scientists showed for the first time that non-invasive brain stimulation can be used like a scalpel, rather than like a hammer, to cause a specific improvement in precise memory.Precise memory, rather than general memory, is critical for knowing details such as the specific color, shape and location of a building you are looking for, rather than simply knowing the part of town it’s in.

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Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have linked excess tau protein in the brain to the spatial disorientation that leads to wandering in many Alzheimer's disease patients. The findings, in mice, could lead to early diagnostic tests for Alzheimer's and point to treatments for this common and troubling symptom.

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It’s well known that humans and other animals are fatigued and sleepy when sick, but it’s a microscopic roundworm that’s providing an explanation of how that occurs, according to a study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. A study published this week in eLife reveals the mechanism for this sleepiness.

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A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology reveals that the U.S. prevalence of masked hypertension is 12.3 percent. Based on the U.S. population, this translates to approximately 17.1 million people, or 1 in 8 adults

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Scanning a premature infant’s brain shortly after birth to map the location and volume of lesions, small areas of injury in the brain’s white matter, may help doctors better predict whether the baby will have disabilities later, according to a new study published in the January 18, 2017, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Psychologist Arthur C. Evans Jr., PhD, has been named chief executive officer of the American Psychological Association, the APA Board of Directors announced today. Evans assumes the post effective March 20.

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Research in mice points to better understanding of how the structure of nerve cells in the adult hippocampus may deteriorate, which can lead to Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological disorders.

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Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Karolinska Institutet have found that gestational diabetes raises the risk of postpartum depression in first-time mothers.

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Researchers have made a ground-breaking discovery revealing new molecular information on how the brain regulates depression and anxiety. In so doing, they identified a new molecule that alleviates anxiety and depressive behaviour in rodents.

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A new Université de Montréal study in the British Medical Journal reveals that antidepressants prescribed to pregnant women could increase the chance of having a baby with birth defects.

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Researchers from Florida Atlantic University and Harvard Medical School address the possible but unproven link between statins and diabetes, as well as the implications of prescription of statins for clinicians and their patients. They emphasize that the risk of diabetes, even if real, pales in comparison to the benefits of statins in both the treatment and primary prevention of heart attacks and strokes. The editor-in-chief published the commentary and his editorial online ahead of print.

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Studying brain disorders in people and developing drugs to treat them has been slowed by the inability to investigate single living cells from adult patients. In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers were able to grow adult human neurons donated from patients who had undergone surgery. From these cell cultures, they identified more than five brain cell types and the potential proteins each cell could make.

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Significantly more people with mental illness and substance use disorders had insurance coverage in 2014 due to the expansion of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but many barriers to treatment remain, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research suggests.

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Researchers at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School has found a more accurate test for jaundice, finding that measuring solely for the level of unbound bilirubin rather than total serum bilirubin would more accurately determine the risk of neurotoxicity.

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A synthesized steroid mirroring one naturally made by the dogfish shark prevents the buildup of a lethal protein implicated in some neurodegenerative diseases, reports an international research team studying an animal model of Parkinson’s disease. The clustering of this protein, alpha-synuclein (α-synuclein), is the hallmark of Parkinson’s and dementia with Lewy bodies, suggesting a new potential compound for therapeutic research.

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Dr. Lalitha Sivaswamy has been appointed as Chief of the Children’s Hospital of Michigan’s nationally recognized Division of Pediatric Neurology effective immediately.

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Studies show that people who are chronically lonely have significantly more heart disease, are more prone to advanced cancers and strokes, and are more likely to develop neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

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Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian showed that several genes implicated in rare forms of pediatric epilepsy also contribute to common forms of the disorder.

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African-American women in abusive relationships use a variety of strategies pulled from three general categories to survive intimate partner violence (IPV), according to a new University at Buffalo study recently published in the journal Social Work.

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Depression is very common during pregnancy, with as many as one in seven women suffering from the illness and more than a half million women impacted by postpartum depression in the U.S. alone. The disorder not only affects the mother’s mood, but has also been linked to influencing the newborn’s development, according to recent research. In a study published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, research from The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center found that BDNF levels change during pregnancy, and can cause depression in the mother and low birth weight in the baby.

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Older adults suffering from multiple chronic health conditions and depression are nearly five times as likely to be problem drinkers as older adults with the same conditions and no depression.