Information
comes from a study by NYU assistant professor of psychology Lila Davachi and
doctoral candidate Arielle Tambini. The study’s purpose was to examine the
relationship between two parts of the brain related to memory—the hippocampus
and neocortex—and the long-term storage of memory following rest.
Resting
after gaining new information allows the mind to process that information, and
store it into long-term episodic memory. While former studies have shown that
this process is highly effective in sleep, this experiment tested the effects
of “awake rest”--rest without sleeping.
The
hippocampus is responsible for regulating emotion and memory; the neocortex for
language, conscious thought and emotional response. Researchers used object-face
and scene-face encoding, the brain’s process of changing information from one
form to another, to determine how these two areas of the brain reacted to form
memories.
Participants
were shown images of people coupled with either objects or scenery (called
encoding tasks), and asked how likely these images were to go together. Testing
began 40–50 minutes after the first encoding task and 70–80 minutes after the
second.
According
to Davachi, brain regions remained active during rest, which suggests that
memories were being replayed and reinforced. Participants with stronger
relationships between the hippocampus and neocortex had better memory,
especially of the face-object pairing.
“It
will be essential for future studies to assess how connectivity during
post-task offline periods (rest) relates to more extended measures of long-term
memory consolidation,” authors wrote. “It will be interesting to explore the
relationship between longitudinal measurements of enhanced connectivity and
behavioral measures of memory consolidation.”
Take a short-term memory test or read
the full study in the January issue of Neuron.
An online survey
conducted by the American Psychiatric Association reported three out of
five workers expressed concern that mental health counseling would threaten
professional status. More than 2,000 adults participated in the study; 1,129
were employed full- or part-time.
Although 40
percent of respondents said their employers were supportive of employee health
treatment, others said their employers were less supportive of health services, more so for those concerning mental health.
Participants
affected by drug addiction, alcoholism and depression were most concerned.
People with diabetes and heart disease were shortly behind.
According to a
report in Research Works,
a publication of the Partnership for Workplace Mental Health (PWMH), there is a
high prevalence of these conditions in the workplace.
“The majority
(about two thirds) of people with symptoms of clinical criteria for having
mental and substance use disorders do not receive any treatment at all for these
conditions,” wrote report author Mark Attridge, PhD. In addition to job
security and professional status, confidentiality was another concern for
employees.
Researchers say
that employee access to quality mental health and addiction services is needed.
They suggest that the workplace promote promotion and intervention, and that
employers make sure employees know how to access their benefits. They also
encourage employers to be supportive and to reassure workers of
confidentiality.
Dr. Alan
Axelson, PWMH council chairman, stresses the importance of encouraging
employees to take care of their mental and physical health, and explains that
it can benefit employers as well.
“Research
supports the fact that when people receive needed care, they are healthier and
more productive,” he said in a press release, “Employers realize the return on
their healthcare investment.”
The two-part
study asked university students to rate themselves against peers on positive
and negative qualities that were meant to indicate desirability. Traits such as
maturity, modesty, discipline, wit, and being well-spoken were considered
positive, while traits such as rigidity, aggressiveness, messiness, and being
materialistic, narrow-minded or boastful were undesirable.
For the first test, 20 students evaluated themselves on these characteristics during two timed sessions that required participants to make decisions quickly. Fifty-six students participating in the second test were asked to take the same test, but they were given an unlimited amount of time for evaluation.
“The extent to which participants viewed themselves as ‘above average’ was negatively correlated with orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and, to a lesser extent, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) activation,” authors of the study wrote. “The majority of people judge their personality to be more desirable than their peers' personalities.”
The OFC and dACC are both involved in evaluation and planning. According to the authors, these regions of the brain are involved in deep thought and may be partly responsible for keeping the ego in check. They may also, in part, be responsible for recalling self-serving examples of specific traits. Judging broader traits, they say, would require less effort.
"In healthy people, the more you activate a portion of your frontal lobes, the more accurate your view of yourself is,” said lead author Jennifer Beer in a press release. Beer is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. “The more you view yourself as desirable or better than your peers, the less you use those lobes."
The study is the first to examine the brain’s role in self-bias in social judgment. Authors say it implies a relationship between poor insight and frontal lobe dysfunction. This information could be used to further study other relationships the frontal lobe might have with poor insight.
“For example, mood disorders and substance abuse may compromise function and/or volume in frontal lobe regions,” authors write. “Understanding these functional and structural changes in relation to self-judgment bias may be helpful for designing therapeutic interventions for various disorders.”
The study appears online in NeuroImage.
Roughly 120 overweight or
obese patients from the Department of Veterans Affairs clinics in Durham, N.C.,
volunteered for a study comparing the effects of two different dieting
plans—the low-carb, ketogenic
diet (LCKD) and a low-fat diet in combination with orlistat
(LFD+O), a weight-loss medication.
Sixty-five of the volunteers completed the low-fat
diet, eating a diet with less than 30 percent of energy intake from fat and
taking 120 mg of orlistat three times daily. Orlistat (Alli, Xenical) is an
over-the-counter weight loss aid that can block a significant amount of fat
from being absorbed by the digestive system. At the end of the 48-week trial,
the group cut 8.5 percent of body fat. Low-carb
dieters, on an Atkins-style
diet, had similar results, trimming 9.5 percent of body fat.
“Both groups lost
considerable weight (on average 21-25 pounds) and experienced numerous health
benefits and were able to reduce medications for chronic diseases associated
with weight,” explains Dr. William Yancy, Jr., M.D., research associate
at Durham’s Department of Veterans Affairs and lead author of the study.
Although both plans tied for
weight loss and had similar HDL (good cholesterol) improvements, the group of
57 low-carb dieters also had decreased systolic and diastolic blood pressure by
5.9 and 4.5 mm, respectively.
Pre-trial, average body
mass index (BMI) was 39.3, and one in three participants had type 2 diabetes.
A healthy BMI score for an adult ranges between 18.5 and 24.9. As the scores
rises, the risk for complications such as stroke, type 2
diabetes, poor cholesterol and heart disease
increases.
Following the study, low-fat
dieters enjoyed better LDL (bad cholesterol) levels, while participants on the
low-carb diet had improved insulin metabolism, hemoglobin A1C, and
blood glucose levels.
“People with these
diseases—hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, arthritis—or at risk for
these diseases stand to benefit the most (from these diets),” Yancy explains.
There haven't been significant health risks for short-term dieters, but little is known of the effects after six months. Long-term dieters may be at risk for bone loss or kidney stones. In any case, Dr. Yancy urges anyone considering a low-carb, ketogenic diet to consult a physician.
The study's abstract can be found in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Most couples have to wait until the second trimester of
pregnancy (4-6 months), but the simple test could cut that time in half—as
early as seven weeks. The test is highly accurate, too. Of the 201 women who
were tested between 2003 and 2009, researchers were able to obtain sufficient
samples from 189 and produce 100 percent accurate results.
When a woman is pregnant, her body will circulate her blood
with blood from the fetus. For this test, a sample of the mother’s blood is
screened for genes unique to the Y-chromosome of males. If these genes were
present, researchers predicted a boy.
Early testing can also help doctors detect conditions such
as Down’s syndrome and Rhesus-D disease (RhD). This method of testing has
several advantages over invasive methods, such as fetal blood sampling (FBS),
that can cause amniotic fluid leaking or miscarriage.
RhD sometimes results from a blood incompatibility between,
for example, an Rh-positive mother and an Rh-negative child. If the mother’s
body detects this difference, it may send antibodies against the baby. If it
goes untreated, it can lead to jaundice, anemia, brain damage or stillbirth.
“Noninvasive
prenatal diagnosis of fetal Rhesus D genotype is sensitive and accurate and has
been widely validated in Europe,” authors noted. “The United States should
begin to undertake clinical trials to bring this technology to patient care as
soon as possible.”
This test is currently not available to the general public, but
continued success could mean it’s on the horizon. Its adoption into general
health practices could help cut the risk of fetal complications of RhD.
The study was published in Obstetrics&Gynecology.
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