Monthly Archives: January 2020

Neuroscience

Science in the 2010s: Neuroscience – Labmate Online

Over the past decade the pace of neuroscience innovation has continued to accelerate, with scientists harnessing advanced technologies and collaborative Open Science frameworksto pioneer new breakthroughs. Want to look back on the past 10 years? Here are some of the most significant neuroscience discoveries of the 2010s.

2010 saw Argentinian neuroscientist and professor Fernando Nottebohm honoured with the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Sciences for proving that neurogenesis does occur in the adult vertebrate brain. The discovery was a serious breakthrough for neuroscience, with member sof the Benjamin Franklin Medal committee praising Nottebohm for "generating a completely new approach to the quest for cures for brain injury and degenerative disease."

In 2012 American scientist Van Wedeen pioneered an award-winning study that revealed the intricate wiring patterns of the human brain. It was one of the first studies to portray the organ as a complex yet systematic grid, as opposed to a disorderly tangle.

In 2014 the FIFA World Cup made more than just sports headlines when Brazilian physician Miguel Nicolelis developed a robotic suit that allowed a quadriplegic teen to kick-off the opening game of the tournament. Nicolelis was later inaugurated as a member of the prestigious Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Researchers from the University of Manchester kicked off 2016 with a major finding that linked the development of Alzheimers disease to a specific type of virus, as well as two strains of bacteria. The study helped support evidence that the neurodegenerative disease is partly caused by a dormant microbial component, possible triggered by iron dysregulation.

2018 marked a major milestone for neurotechnology, with an open-access studypublished inPLOS One introducing a brain implant system that allows patients paralysed by neurodegenerative disorders to send emails, communicate with others and shop online using brain waves connected to an off-the-shelf Android tablet.

Just weeks before the end of 2019, scientists at the University of North Carolina Health Care discovered a key neural circuit that actively regulates alcohol consumption in animals. The findings were published in the Journal of Neuroscience and offered new insight into the role brain cells play in influencing reward-induced behaviours such as alcohol consumption.

Want to know more about the latest neuroscience breakthroughs? Backed by five years of research, Dementias Platform UK is working to transform the dementia research landscape and accelerate the development of diagnosis and treatments, with some of the most significant advances explored in 'Changing Dementia Horizons: DPUK Progress Outlined.

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Science in the 2010s: Neuroscience - Labmate Online

Neuroscience

Bruce McEwen, Pioneer in Study of Stress’s Impact on the Brain, Dies at 81 – Scientific American

A leading figure in the field of neuroscience, BruceMcEwen, died on January 2 after a brief illness.

Beginning in the1960s,McEwenexploredhow stress hormonescould alter the way genes are expressed in the brain, having a consequent impact on memory,mood and decision-making. This work contradicted the accepted academic dogma of the time that the brain does not change during adulthood.

One noted example of the Rockefeller University professors work was the finding that chronic stress could lead to loss of neurons in the brain'shippocampalarea, a locus for memory formation.

McEwen, 81, head of RockefellersHarold and MargaretMillikenHatch Laboratory ofNeuroendocrinology, worked with hiswife KarenBulloch, also a Rockefellerprofessor, to examine brain immune cellsin inflammation andneurodegenerativedisease.

In 1976, he wrote an article forScientific Americanentitled "Interactions between Hormones and Nerve Tissue" in which he observed in the formal language of the day:

During his career, he coined the term allostaticload to convey how lingering stress affectsbody and brainand much of his recent research was devotedto the impact on the brain of nutrition, physical activity, early-life trauma and other factors.

One of McEwens well-known former graduate students, RobertSapolsky, remarked in aprepared statement from Rockefeller:Hiswork became increasingly more expansive and integrativein later years he called himself a molecular sociologist. He made the most seminal findings regarding how steroid hormones affect the brain. Sapolsky is aprofessor of biological sciences at Stanford University.

McEwen'sresearchhas been cited more than 130,000 times in the scientific literature, and he was co-author ofThe End of Stress as We Know It (Joseph Henry Press, 2002).

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Bruce McEwen, Pioneer in Study of Stress's Impact on the Brain, Dies at 81 - Scientific American

Neuroscience

Academic paper in comic form explores ethics of treating torturer with PTSD – Ars Technica

Enlarge / Martinique-born psychiatrist Franz Fanon explored the bioethics of studying and treating trauma in his 1961 book, The Wretched of the Earth. An academic paper written in comic form examines one case study in particular from a modern perspective.

tupungato/Getty Images

Is it possible to ethically treat someone with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) developed as a result of inflicting torture on others? That's the question posed in a paper published last summer in AJOB Neuroscience, but there's a twist. The paper is written and illustrated as a comic book by Lehigh University artist and neuroscientist Ann E. Fink.

Fink is part of a growing movement called "graphic medicine," a term coined back in 2007 by physician and comics artist Ian Williams to describe the use of comics to enhance both professional and general public discourse on healthcare issues. Comics may be a form of visual rhetoric ideal for medical education and patient care, and proponents include M.K. Czerwiec, aka "Comic Nurse," who worked in an HIV hospice at the height of the AIDS epidemic. When the clinic closed in 2000, she struggled to find an outlet to express the bittersweet emotions she was feeling, but she found the comic format was perfect.

"I realized that the combination of image and text in sequential fashion really helped me organize my thoughts," Czerwiec told the University of Chicago News last year. "It just worked." Now an artist in residence at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, she published a graphic nonfiction memoir/oral history, Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371, in 2017. Czerwiec and Williams, along with Penn State University's Michael Green, were among the first attendees in 2010 of what is now an annual international graphic medicine conference. They published The Graphic Medicine Manifesto, a collection of scholarly essays with visual narratives, in 2015.

Like many in the graphic medicine community, Fink has a longstanding interest in comics, although her early training was in psychology and neuroscience, with an emphasis on the larger social and ethical questions surrounding learning, memory, and mental health. During a fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she met comic art legend Lynda Barry and a group called the Applied Comics Kitchen. That's when Fink started using comics to teach topics in biology and health. "A lot of this is really about centering the personal narrative, the experience of the patient, the experience of the provider," she told Ars. But the AJOB Neuroscience paper is her first academic essay in comic form.

In the paper, Fink revisits in comic form a bioethical dilemma described by psychiatrist and political philosopher Franz Fanon in his seminal 1961 book, The Wretched of the Earth. Born on the Caribbean island of Martinique (then a French colony) and educated in France, Fanon described the dehumanizing effects of colonialism on the colonized people in his book, offering numerous case studies he'd encountered in the final chapter.

The most well-known is the tale of a white male police inspector in Algeria whose job involved torturing prisoners of the colonial government for many hours each day. He would likely have been diagnosed with PTSD today, since the stress of his day job led to the man regularly beating his wife and children at homeincluding a 20-month-old infant. He sought treatment, Fanon wrote, to deal with the stress and guilt he felt over torturing human beings so that he could continue torturing people at work with "total peace of mind"and thereby curb the impulse to inflict physical abuse on his own family.

The police inspector's bioethics dilemma and decision tree

Ann E. Fink

Should he help this man suffering from PTSD be a better torturer?

Ann E. Fink

Outlining the basics of PTSD

Ann E. Fink

Useful lessons for the torturers of today?

Ann E. Fink

On a lighter note: a dissertation on Icelandic sagas in comic form

Yoav Tirosh

This posed an ethical dilemma for Fanon. The police inspector is both victim and perpetrator: he inflicts abuse on Algerian prisoners and his family, but he himself is also a pawn and a victim of the larger sociopolitical pressures and mental trauma incurred on the job. So should Fanon treat the man and make him a better torturer, thereby sparing his wife and children while Algerian citizens continue to suffer? Or, should he refuse to treat him and let the family continue to suffer? And was it even possible to treat the man in any meaningful sense, if he continued to work in the context of an inherently violent colonial regime?

Fink's interest in learning and memoryparticularly her early experiments on the plasticity of individual neurons in the amygdala region of the brainled to an interest in PTSD. "I always wanted to put it in a broader context," she said. When she read Fanon's police inspector case study in The Wretched of the Earth, the psychiatrist's ethical dilemma struck a chord. "How do you think about PTSD as a reducible biological phenomenon in the context of a society that's sick, violent, and inhumane?" she said.

"How do you think about PTSD as a reducible biological phenomenon in the context of a society that's sick, violent, andinhumane?"

For Fink, the case is a useful starting point to explore the larger ethical issues surrounding the social dimensions of traumatic stress. She developed a "decision tree" to help clarify the complex ethical issues involved. "You can think of PTSD as a biological entity, or something socially contextualized," said Fink. "And you can think of it as a personal narrative issue."

But there are no easy solutions to the dilemma. "I don't have an answer, and that is kind of the point," Fink told Ars. "It wouldn't be a good ethical dilemma if it had a pat answer. The narrative shows us what the problems are." Fanon's own solution wasn't a solution at all. He quit his job at the hospital and joined the Algerian resistance. "This situation wasn't tenable for him in the long run," she said. "HIs ultimate conclusion is that you can't treat PTSD. There's no healing you can do in this inhuman context."

The comic trend might be spreading beyond the health and medicine arena. Last fall, a PhD candidate at the University of Iceland produced a comic version of the abstractfor his doctoral dissertation on a famous 13th century Icelandic saga. TheLjsvetninga saga has multiple versions, and scholarship has typically focused on dating the various versions to determine which might be the earliest. But Yoav Tirosh chose to explore how the saga's construction has constantly changed. His comic abstract is in the form of a dialogue, in which a fictional version of Tirosh meets the ghost of one of the saga's central figures (Gumundr inn rki, a goi, aka a priest or chieftain) in the restroom of a hotel inReykjavk.

I liked the challenge of trying to interpret visually something that is very text-based like a PhD thesis, and initially even intended it to be incorporated into the thesis itself, he told Medievalists.net. This, however, would have delayed my submission in at least a month and time was pressing, so I decided to do it during my post-submission 'vacation.'" It also served as preparation for a bigger goal: Tirosh hopes to produce an introduction to Old Norse literature in comic form one day.

DOI: AJOB Neuroscience, 2019. 10.1080/21507740.2019.1632970 (About DOIs).

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Academic paper in comic form explores ethics of treating torturer with PTSD - Ars Technica

Neuroscience

Integrating Academic Inquiry and Reformist Activism in Psychiatry – Psychiatric Times

CONVERSATIONS IN CRITICAL PSYCHIATRY

Conversations in Critical Psychiatry is an interview series aimed to engage prominent critics within and outside the profession who have made meaningful criticisms of psychiatry and have offered constructive alternative perspectives to the current status quo.

Sandra Steingard, MD, is Chief Medical Officer, Howard Center, Burlington, Vermont and Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine. She is chair of the board of the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care, a member of the board of the American Association of Community Psychiatrists, and on the advisory board of Mad in America Continuing Education. She is editor of the book, Critical Psychiatry: Controversies and Clinical Implications, published by Springer in 2019. Beginning January 2020, she has also assumed the role of Editor-in-Chief of the Community Mental Health Journal.

G. Scott Waterman, MD, is Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine, where he served at various times as Director of Psychopharmacology, Director of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry, and Associate Dean for Student Affairs. Upon his retirement, Dr Waterman enrolled in the graduate program of the Department of History at the University of Vermont, where he studied extremist social and political movements of modern Europe and America and received his MA a few years ago. He is a member of the executive council of the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry and teaches courses in philosophy of psychiatry at the University of Vermont.

Dr Steingard and Dr Waterman have been married for 33 years.

I got to know Dr Waterman through the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatryan organization I would recommend to all readersand I have been impressed with his intellectual rigor in the course of our interactions. He began his career with research interests in the neurobiological foundations of childhood-onset mental illness but eventually shifted his academic focus to philosophy of psychiatry. I became more acquainted with Dr Steingard's ideas after I read Critical Psychiatry: Controversies and Clinical Implications, published earlier last year. The volume presents an overview of the critical psychiatry movement with impressive clarity and is highly accessible to clinicians and trainees. The happy coincidence that these two intelligent and accomplished psychiatrists are married allowed me to engage them in this joint interview where their complementary views, side by side, make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Aftab: Dr Steingard, can you tell us briefly about how you got involved with the critical psychiatry movement and how this involvement has changed how you practice as a psychiatrist? Also, since a disappointingly large number of people think of the critical psychiatry movement as being synonymous with the antipsychiatry movement, can you shed some light on why that is not the case?

Steingard: There is not an absolute delineation between critical psychiatry and antipsychiatry. Bonnie Burstow of the University of Toronto characterizes antipsychiatry as an abolitionist movement whose proponents consider psychiatry so fundamentally flawed as to be beyond reform. Critical psychiatry, on the other hand, includes both critical academic inquiry and reformist activism. It encompasses critiques that range from questioning the validity of our diagnostic system and investigating the effects of conflicts of interest on clinical practice to examining the impact of structural societal forcespoverty, sexism, racism, for exampleon mental well-being and the manifestations of psychiatric disorders. Critical psychiatry also acknowledges the important contributions of those with lived experience of receiving psychiatric treatment or being labeled with psychiatric conditions not only to evaluating clinical care but also designing and conducting research. Those are some of the areas that have had great salience for me.

The evolution of my critical stance toward psychiatry began early. I entered the field because I was fascinated by psychoanalysis. When I was introduced, as a psychiatry resident, to various critiques of psychoanalytic theory such as Adolf Grnbaums work, I was disappointed at my teachers inability to address them. That contributed to my decision to leave psychoanalytic training and shift my focus to studying and caring for people who experience psychosis. Many new drugs came on the market in the 1990s. I was initially hopeful that they would improve care but was demoralized to witness the blatant hype that was carried out, not only by the pharmaceutical industry but also by academic leaders. Initially, I was comfortable thinking about psychosis as reflective of brain diseaseor at least a disruption of brain functionsbut in more recent years, as I have been introduced to the perspectives of the critical social sciences, as well as to people who have been treated for a variety of psychiatric disorders, I have broadened my perspective on the conceptualization of psychosis (and all psychiatric phenomena).

It is difficult to summarize how this has changed my practice, but I have been influenced by Joanna Moncrieffs drug-centered approach to pharmacotherapy and need-adapted treatments. These ideas have helped me to embody principles that are not inherently controversial but, nevertheless, hard to implement. They include adopting a patient-centered focus, practicing with humility and transparency, and acknowledging that our medical perspective may not be the only (or best) way to conceptualize the nature of our patients distress.

Aftab: Dr Waterman, do you also identify with the critical psychiatry movement? How would you describe your identity as a psychiatrist?

Waterman: I would like to think that, throughout my career, I was a critical psychiatrist in the generic sense of challenging prevailing conceptualizations and practices. And while I have in recent years been largely an observer from the periphery of what has come to be called the critical psychiatry movement, I share a number of its formulations and priorities. Thus, my former preoccupations with matters like mind-body dualistic fallacies in medical discourse and training, the conceptual problems of the biopsychosocial model, and the multiple shortcomings of the DSM diagnostic system have moved aside to make room for concerns about personal autonomy, coercion, epistemic justice, and the commercial corruption of the empiric database of medicine. Although I continue to be deeply involved in philosophy of psychiatry, my identity as a psychiatrist is as a retired oneif, indeed, I remain one at all.

Aftab: Dr Steingard, you and Dr Moncrief write: We live in the era of evidenced-based practice. If an approach is not funded, then it will never acquire the kind of data that would allow it to be considered evidence-based. This creates a closed loop: only research that is hypothesized to be of value is funded; understudied approaches that might be of value are ignored because they are not considered evidenced-based.1

That's a very important point. A lot of people dont appreciate the institutional and political forces which determine what gets funded and what gets studied. It certainly suggests that looking only at evidenced-based literature can be a recipe for confirmation bias. How should we approach this situation?

Steingard: There is no good answer, but it begins with a recognition of the problem. In addition, it is important for psychiatrists to understand what questions randomized controlled studies do and do not answer. For instance, they can detect differences that are not necessarily clinically meaningful. Often, the emphasis is put on the statistical rather than clinical significance of findings and then an echo chamber of public relations promotes a narrative in the absence of more critical examination of the data. On the other hand, I appreciate that it is extremely time consuming to parse out all of the available data on each topic that might be of interest to a busy clinician. One has to decide at some point to trust expert sources. I wish we could have more confidence in the academic establishment.

Aftab: Dr Waterman, one of the reasons you were drawn to psychiatry was the promise that a neuroscientific understanding of psychiatric conditions is on the horizon and it will transform the way we practice psychiatry. What do you think explains the failure of neuroscience so far to have the revolutionary impact on clinical psychiatry that was expected? Do you have conceptual reasons to think that such a revolution may never happen?

Waterman: When we were residents, Sandy and I attended a lecture by the renowned philosopher of mind and of neuroscience, Patricia Churchland (whose argumentsalong with those of her husband, Paul Churchlandfor a particular brand of materialism exerted great influence on me). She recounted an anecdote involving their son, who I believe was about six years old at the time. He reportedly asked of his philosopher-parents at breakfast one morning, What if the brain is more complicated than it is smart? While doubtless not the first person to pose that question, it seems unlikely to be one that has occurred to many first-graders!

The profound complexities of the brain are only half of the equation. The expectation that advances in neuroscience would revolutionize clinical psychiatry seems to me to be predicated on anticipation of sufficient understandings of two (at least currently) disparate arenas: the brain being one and the other being the psychiatric phenomena whose neuroscientific foundations are being sought but which manifest at the level of the whole person. Those phenomena entail both subjective/first-person (emotions, cognitions) and objective/third-person (behaviors) components that are themselves both complex and heterogenous from person to person. The complexities they present include things like the looping effects of which Ian Hacking writes,2 whose material instantiation in the brain might be intractable. So what comprehension of psychiatric phenomenahow best to capture, define, describe, and classify themwill allow us to match up such understandings with our growing grasp of neuroscience? Moreover, what levels of neuroscientific understandinggenes?, gene products?, neurons?, neural circuits?, regional or whole-brain physiology?, combinations of them?should we expect to match up with our still-elusive grasp of psychiatric phenomena? I remain enough of a materialist to believe that advances in neuroscience might well translate into significant advances in clinical psychiatry, but enough of an empiricist to recognize that a revolution is not in the offing and that explanatory pluralism (and its clinical extensions) are our best bet for the foreseeable future.

Aftab: Dr Steingard, can you elaborate for the readers your approach to psychopharmacology that you have espoused in Critical Psychiatry?

Steingard: This approach has been characterized by Joanna Moncrieff as a drug-centered approach to psychopharmacotherapy. It considers the drugs we use as psychoactive substances that alter brain function in ways that may be experienced as beneficial. This is distinct from a disease-centered approach which posits that the drugs work by fixing something that is not working correctly. There has been much discussion in our field (including in articles in Psychiatric Times) about whether or not psychiatry as a field promoted the so-called chemical imbalance theory. I would argue that most people have come to believe that the drugs we prescribe work by correcting problems thought to underlie psychiatric conditions. Thus, for example, SSRIs are said to fix a problem in the serotonin system and antipsychotic drugs fix a problem in the dopamine system. However, what we have learned is that while the drugs clinical effects might be related to the way they alter these systems, evidence is lacking that depression results from low levels of serotonin and psychosis reflects high levels of dopamine. Nevertheless, these beliefs persist and influence the way physicians talk to patients about these drugs.

Aftab: You write The challenge is that psychiatrists are currently charged with being the gatekeepers to psychoactive drug use . . . Rather than putting psychiatrists in the role of determining who can and cannot have legitimate access to such drugs, psychiatrists can be the experts on drug action.3 How does the drug-centered approach change the gatekeeper role of psychiatrists, since whether you adopt a drug-centered approach or disease-centered approach, psychiatrists still have the prescribing power and therefore they still have the responsibility to determine legitimate access?

Steingard: As long as psychiatrists (and others) hold prescribing privileges, there is no way for us to avoid acting as gatekeepers to drug access. However, what I prefer about the drug-centered approach is that it avoids what I think is a false distinction between good and bad drugs or between good and bad uses of drugs. The disease-centered approach fosters the notions that good drugs are those that are used to treat diseases or disorders while bad drugs are those that people use recreationally. Such thinking leads to the tortured distinction we see in discussions of cannabis between so-called medical and recreational marijuana. From a drug-centered perspective, our role would be to educate not only our patients but our communities about what these drugs do, what problems they can cause, and the challenges of discontinuation, among other things. We would help people make judicious decisions about their health. People have sought out psychoactive substances for a very long time and this is not likely to abate. If we push aside the moral judgements and the sometimes-arbitrary distinctions between medical and other uses, we would have a more honest and transparent discussion about what these drugs do and do not do.

Continued >

References:

1. Moncrieff J, Steingard S. What is Critical Psychiatry? In: Critical Psychiatry: Controversies and Clinical Implications. Steingard S (Ed). Cham, Switzerland: Springer; 2019.

2. Hacking I. The Looping Effect of Human Kinds. In: Sperber D, Premack D, and Premack AJ, eds. Causal Cognition: A Multidisciplinary Debate. Oxford: Clarendon Press; 1995.

3. Steingard S. A Path to the Future for Psychiatry? In: Critical Psychiatry: Controversies and Clinical Implications. Steingard S, Ed. Cham, Switzerland: Springer; 2019.

4. Waterman GS, Batra J. Biopsychosocial psychiatry. Am J Psychiatry. 2003;160:185.

5. Waterman GS. Why I am not a psychiatrist and Responses to commentaries. Bulletin of the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry. 2019;26:2-3,9-12. https://philosophyandpsychiatry.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/aapp-bulletin-vol-26-1-2019-.pdf. Accessed January 3, 2019.

6. Waterman GS. Does the biopsychosocial model help or hinder our efforts to understand and teach psychiatry? Psychiatric Times. 2006;23(14):12-13.

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Integrating Academic Inquiry and Reformist Activism in Psychiatry - Psychiatric Times

Neuroscience

Engrams Emerging as the Basic Unit of Memory – Technology Networks

Though scientist Richard Semon introduced the concept of the engram 115 years ago to posit a neural basis for memory, direct evidence for engrams has only begun to accumulate recently as sophisticated technologies and methods have become available.

In a new review in Science, Professors Susumu Tonegawa of The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT and Sheena Josselyn of the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and the University of Toronto describe the rapid progress they and colleagues have been making over the last dozen years in identifying, characterizing and even manipulating engrams, as well as the major outstanding questions of the field.

Experiments in rodents have revealed that engrams exist as multiscale networks of neurons. An experience becomes stored as a potentially retrievable memory in the brain when excited neurons in a brain region such as the hippocampus or amygdala become recruited into a local ensemble. These ensembles combine with others in other regions, such as the cortex, into an engram complex. Crucial to this process of linking engram cells is the ability of neurons to forge new circuit connections, via processes known as synaptic plasticity and dendritic spine formation. Importantly, experiments show that the memory initially stored across an engram complex can be retrieved by its reactivation but may also persist silently even when memories cannot be naturally recalled, for instance in mouse models used to study memory disorders such as early stage Alzheimers disease.

More than 100 years ago Semon put forth a law of engraphy, wrote Josselyn, Senior Scientist at SickKids, Professor of Psychology and Physiology at the University of Toronto and Senior Fellow in the Brain, Mind & Consciousness Program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), and Tonegawa, Picower Professor of Biology and Neuroscience at the RIKEN-MIT Laboratory for Neural Circuit Genetics and investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at MIT. Combining these theoretical ideas with the new tools that allow researchers to image and manipulate engrams at the level of cell ensembles facilitated many important insights into memory function.

For instance, evidence indicates that both increased intrinsic excitability and synaptic plasticity work hand in hand to form engrams and that these processes may also be important in memory linking, memory retrieval, and memory consolidation.

For as much as the field has learned, Josselyn and Tonegawa wrote, there are still important unanswered questions and untapped potential applications: How do engrams change over time? How can engrams and memories be studied more directly in humans? And can applying knowledge about biological engrams inspire advances in artificial intelligence, which in turn could feedback new insights into the workings of engrams?

The paper appears in Sciences Jan. 3 edition.

This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

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Engrams Emerging as the Basic Unit of Memory - Technology Networks

Neuroscience

A Molecular Map of the Brains Decision-Making Area – Technology Networks

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have come one step closer toward understanding how the part of our brain that is central for decision-making and the development of addiction is organized on a molecular level. In mouse models and with methods used for mapping cell types and brain tissue, the researchers were able to visualize the organization of different opioid-islands in striatum. Their spatiomolecular map, published in the journal Cell Reports, may further our understanding of the brain's reward-system.

Striatum is the inner part of the brain that among other things regulates rewards, motivation, impulses and motor function. It is considered central to decision-making and the development of various addictions.

In this study, the researchers created a molecular 3D-map of the nerve cells targeted by opioids, such as morphine and heroin, and showed how they are organized in striatum. It is an important step toward understanding how the brain's network governing motivation and drug addiction is organized. In the study, the researchers described a spatiomolecular code that can be used to divide striatum into different subregions.

"Our map forms the basis for a new understanding of the brain's probably most important network for decision-making," says Konstantinos Meletis, associate professor at the Department of Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet and the study's main author. "It may contribute to an increased understanding of both normal reward processes and the effects of various addictive substances on this network."

To find this molecular code, the researchers used single-nucleus RNA sequencing, a method to study small differences in individual cells, and mapping of the striatal gene expression. The results provide the first demonstration of molecular codes that divide the striatum into three main levels of classification: a spatial, a patch-matrix and a cell-type specific organization.

"With this new knowledge we may now begin to analyze the function of different types of nerve cells in different molecularly defined areas," says Meletis. "This is the first step in directly defining the networks' role in controlling decision-making and addiction with the help of optogenetics."

This new knowledge may also form the basis for the development of new treatments based on a mechanistic understanding of the brain's network, according to the researchers.

Reference:Antje Mrtin, Daniela Calvigioni, Ourania Tzortzi, Janos Fuzik, Emil Wrnberg, Konstantinos Meletis. A Spatiomolecular Map of the Striatum. Cell Reports, 2019; 29 (13): 4320 DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2019.11.096

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A Molecular Map of the Brains Decision-Making Area - Technology Networks

Neuroscience

Loyola physician one among the contributing authors of new guidelines for treatment of ischemic stroke – News-Medical.net

The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association recently appointed a writing group to provide updated guidelines for the early management of acute ischemic stroke. The group was comprised of specialists in various areas of expertise, including neurology, neurosurgery, neurointerventional radiology, translational neuroscience, critical care, emergency medicine and nursing. This group of multidisciplinary experts reviewed randomized trials relevant to the treatment of ischemic stroke and developed new and updated guidelines.

Jos Biller, MD, chairperson of neurology at Loyola University Medical Center, was a contributing author of these updated guidelines for the treatment of adults with acute arterial ischemic stroke. He said,

The expectation is that the modern practice of medicine should be based on best evidence. The guidelines followed a meticulous methodology and are largely based on rigorous randomized trials."

Clinically, Dr. Biller cares for patients with aneurysms, brain hemorrhages and transient ischemic attacks in addition to caring for stroke patients. Loyola University Medical Center is recognized by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association as a certified comprehensive stroke center. In addition to providing evidence-based stroke care to its own patients, Loyola provides telestroke services for hospitals across Illinois and neighboring states. "We emphasize 'time equals brain,' which is why the evaluation and treatment of acute stroke is time-sensitive. Through the use of technology, we can provide expertise on the diagnosis and management of strokes to our colleagues at other hospitals in real time," he said.

The updated guidelines apply to adult patients with ischemic stroke from the time symptoms appear to two weeks post-stroke. The guidelines have been made available to emergency medical services responders, physicians, allied health professionals and hospital administrators. Patients will benefit from major changes to treatment protocols, including updates to the use of aspirin and thrombolytic agents, the urgency of intervention with guidelines for prehospital triage and transport, as well as initiation of in-hospital measures to prevent recurrent stroke.

Stroke is a principal cause of mortality and disability. In the United States, stroke is the fifth leading cause of death, with more than 133,000 people dying because of stroke each year. At Loyola, said Dr. Biller, "we strive to practice evidence-based medicine and collaborate in the search for new knowledge. It is expected that within five to six years, the guidelines will be updated again because we will have new evidence."

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Loyola physician one among the contributing authors of new guidelines for treatment of ischemic stroke - News-Medical.net

Human Behavior

Can AI Be More Efficient Than People in the Judicial System? – Interesting Engineering

AI is set to replace many human jobsin the future, but should lawyers and judges be among them? Here we explore where AI is already being used in judicial systems around the worldand discuss if it should play a more senior role.

Could, or should, AI ever be developed that could pass judgment on a living, breathing human being?

RELATED: CHINA HAS UNVEILED AN AI JUDGE THAT WILL 'HELP' WITH COURT PROCEEDINGS

Believe it or not, AI and some forms of advanced-algorithms are already widely used in many judicial systems around the world. In the various states within the United States, for example, predictive algorithms are already being used to help reduce the load on the judicial system.

"Under immense pressure to reduce prison numbers without risking a rise in crime, courtrooms across the U.S. have turned to automated tools in attempts to shuffle defendants through the legal system as efficiently and safely as possible." - Technology Review.

In order to achieve this, U.S. Police Departments are using predictive algorithms to strategize where to deploy their forces most effectively. By being fed historical crime statistics and other technology, like face-recognition, it is hoped this level of automation will help improve the effectiveness of their human resources.

The U.S. judicial service is also using other forms of algorithms, called risk assessment algorithms, to help handle post-arrest cases, too.

"Risk assessment tools are designed to do one thing: take in the details of a defendants profile and spit out a recidivism scorea single number estimating the likelihood that he or she will re-offend.

A judge then factors that score into a myriad of decisions that can determine what type of rehabilitation services particular defendants should receive, whether they should be held in jail before trial, and how severe their sentences should be. A low score paves the way for a kinder fate. A high score does precisely the opposite." - Technology Review.

In China, AI-powered judges are also becoming a reality. Proclaimed as the "first of its kind in the world," the City of Beijing has introduced an internet-based litigation service center that features an AI-judge for certain parts of the service.

The judge, called Xinhua, is a completely artificial female with a body, facial expressions, voice, and actions that are based on an existing living and breathing human female judge in the Beijing Judicial Service.

This virtual judge is primarily being used for basic repetitive casework, the Bejing Internet Court has said in a statement. "She," therefore, mostly deals with litigation reception and online guidance rather than final judgment.

The logic is that this AI-powered feature of the online court should make it more effective and more widely reaching for Beijing's citizens.

"Accordingto court president Zhang Wen, integrating AI and cloud computing with the litigation service system will allow the public to better reap the benefits of technological innovation in China." - Radii China.

AI is also being used in China to sift through social media messages, comments, and other activity online to help build body evidence against a potential defendant. Traffic police in China are also beginning to use facial recognition technology to identify and convict offenders.

Other police forces around the world are also using similar tech.

The answer to this question is not a simple one to answer. While AI can make decisions of a kind, this doesn't mean it is necessarilyfoolproof.

Many AI systems and predictive algorithms that use machine learning tend tobe trained byusing existing data sets or other existing historical information.

While this sounds like a relatively logical approach, it relies heavily on the supplied data particularly on the quality of it.

"Junk in, junk out." as the saying goes.

One major use of machine learning and big data, as in this case, is that it is used to identify correlations or apparent correlations within data sets. This could lead to false positives in the case of crime data and not actuallybe very useful for identifying the underlying causes of crime.

As another famous adage warns, "correlation is not causation."

Humans are just as guilty of this logical fallacy as an artificial replica could potentially be. One famous one is low income and a person's proclivity towards crime.

This is not always the case, merely a mitigating circumstance.

If such a potential error is not handled correctly, an AI-law enforcement decision or judgment could quickly generate a vicious cycle of false identification or too severe or lenient a punishment.

But, as with everything in life, things are a little more nuanced. Humans are not perfect decision-making machines either.

If other studies from 2018 are also correct, it seems thatAI can be faster and more accurate at spotting potential legal issues than human beings. This meansit could be argued that AI should definitely be used in legal support roles or at least reviewing legal precedent.

As we have already seen, AI and advanced algorithms are already in use around the world for certain clerical and data gathering tasks. They are, in effect, doing some of the "legwork" for human judges and lawyers.

But could they ever be used to completely replace their,vis-a-vis, humansuperiors in a judicial system? What exactly would be the advantages and disadvantages of doing so?

Many would claim that an AI should be able to remove any bias in the final judgment making process. Their final decisions should, in theory, be based purely on the facts at hand and existing legal precedent.

This, of course, is supposed to already be the case with human judges. But any human is susceptible to prejudice and unconscious bias, despite the best of their intentions.

But, probably more significantly, just because something is law it doesn't necessarilymean it's just. "Good" and "bad" behavior is not black or white, it is a highly nuanced and completelyhuman construction.

The answer to such things remains safely within the realm of philosophy, not computer science. Of course, others would likely disagree, and that's a "good" thing.

Judges also need to make decisions on the offender's punishment post-conviction. These decisions can range from very minor (petty fines) or granting bail to life-changing events like long-term imprisonment, or even death in some places around the world.

Such decisions are based on, in theory at least, the severity of a crime to the convict's likelihood of re-offending. As we have seen in places in the U.S., this is where AI and predictive algorithms are already being used to help with the judge's decision-making process.

They can, of course, completely ignore the recommendation from the AI. But this might not be possibleif humans were completely removed from the process.

Perhaps a case could be made here for generative adversarial network (GAN) panels of AI-judges?After all, the almost combative naturesetting and resetting of precedentis the basis of most common law legal systems.

But that's beyond the scope ofthis article.

One apparent benefit of using AIs or clever algorithms to make decisions is that they can't really have a bias. This should make them almost perfect for legal decisions as theprocess should be evidence-based rather than subjective as can be the case for human judges.

Sounds perfect, doesn't it? But "the grass isn't always greener on the other side."

Algorithms and AI are not perfect in-and-of-themselvesin this regard. This is primarily because any algorithm or AI needs to be coded by a human.

This can introduce unintended bias from the offset.

AIs may even learn and mimic bias from their human counterparts and from data they have been trained with. Could this ever be mitigated against?

Another issue is who will oversee AI-judges? Could their decisions be challenged at a later date? Would human judges take precedence over an AIs decision or vice versa?

The World Government Summit held in 2018, made an interesting and poignant conclusion on this subject that bears repeating verbatim: -

"It is as yet uncertain which of these technologies may become widespread and how different governments and judiciaries will choose tomonitor their use.

The day when technology will become the judge of good and bad human behavior and assign appropriatepunishments still lies some wayin the future.

However, legal systems often provide ideal examples of services that could be improved, while trials are likely to benefit from better data analysis.The law often requires a trial to set a precedentso watch out for the test case of AI as a judge."

So, in conclusion, could AI ever replace human legal professionals or be more efficient at legal decision-making? The answer, it seems, is both yes and no.

Yes, with regards to performing support or advisory roles like gathering evidence or estimating the likelihood of re-offense. No, with regards to making final judgments and sentencing.

It is probably prudent to keep human beings as the "top dog" when it comes to sentencing other mortal and sentient human beings rather than bits of code. Law and the legal system can, after all,be legitimately labeled "a human construction."

Existing legal systems are both beautifully jerry-rigged and maddening illogical at timesthat have been patched and upgraded as sense and sensibilities evolved over time and that suits human beings just fine. They are not set in stone for all time; they evolve as society does.

No machine could ever hope to understand, empathize or pass judgment "in the spirit of the law."

Perhaps humans, with all our imperfections and logical inconsistencies, are the only possiblearbiters of justice on one another. For this reason, it could be arguedthat "justice" should never be delegated to machines and cold logic as it is at odds with the "human condition?"

But we'll let you make up your own mind.

Link:
Can AI Be More Efficient Than People in the Judicial System? - Interesting Engineering

Human Behavior

CAL THOMAS: As we move into new decade, at look at life 100 years ago – Rockdale Newton Citizen

It can be useful and instructive to observe the turning of a decade by looking back on what life was like in America a mere 100 years ago.

On Jan. 2, 1920, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 108.76. Today it is over 28,000 points.

In 1920, the U.S. had become an economic power, which is remarkable considering the bloody war to end all wars that ended just two years earlier. Republican presidents shifted their attention from foreign entanglements to economic growth (sound familiar?).

The beginning of the Roaring 20s featured new rights for women, including the right to vote, daring flapper outfits and cigarette smoking. It also included Prohibition, which led to the rise of Al Capone and the Mafia. People should have been convinced that attempts to regulate human behavior by government fiat only work if the public is willing to obey the law, which in the case of liquor it clearly was not.

The one thing that hasnt changed in the last 100 years and for that matter since the first humans walked the Earth is human nature. One can change styles of clothing and hair, change modes of transportation, even change politicians, but human nature never changes. Greed, lust and the quest for power are embedded in each of us in every generation.

The impact of the Industrial Revolution found more people living in big cities than on farms for the first time beginning in 1920. That year also launched what we today call the consumer society. Americas total wealth more than doubled between 1920 and 1929.

As the website history.com notes: People from coast to coast bought the same goods (thanks to nationwide advertising and the spread of chain stores), listened to the same music, did the same dances and even used the same slang. Many Americans were uncomfortable with this urban, sometimes racy mass culture, and for many people in the U.S., the 1920s brought more conflict than celebration.

Isnt it the same today? Have we learned nothing? The tension between people with opposing political and social views and religious beliefs has increased these last 100 years because of contemporary social media and the 24/7 news cycle in which revolution sells better than resolution.

Cars, washing machines, new forms of birth control and other creations gave especially women new freedoms. Radio united the nation and phonograph records, which sold 100 million in 1927 alone, created a common culture, even if some older people didnt like the modern music.

As with Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley in the 1940s and 50s, some older folks in the 1920s rejected the dance hall lifestyle and what they saw as the vulgarity and depravity of jazz music and the moral erosion they claimed it caused. But for the younger generation, it was a new world in which the future looked bright.

What will America be like in 2120? In 1920 no one could have foreseen a Great Depression, or a second World War, much less the prosperity and cultural changes that would come, or the threat of nuclear annihilation.

The saying that the more things change, the more they remain the same has never seemed more accurate and providential.

Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas new book Americas Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Superpowers and the Future of the United States (HarperCollins/Zondervan). Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com.

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CAL THOMAS: As we move into new decade, at look at life 100 years ago - Rockdale Newton Citizen

Human Behavior

ND ends 2019 with fewer than 100 reported traffic fatalities – Wahpeton Daily News

BISMARCK Preliminary reports indicate that North Dakota had 98 motor vehicle fatalities in 2019 a total that, if it goes unchanged, would be the first time in 17 years the state has recorded fewer than 100 traffic fatalities. Gov. Doug Burgum thanked the agencies involved in the Vision Zero traffic safety initiative for making a difference and expanding their efforts during the past year.

Since the comprehensive Vision Zero initiative was launched in 2018 by the North Dakota Department of Transportation (NDDOT), Highway Patrol and Department of Health, traffic fatalities in the state have decreased from 116 in 2017 to 105 in 2018 to a preliminary total of 98 in 2019, which would be the lowest total since 97 traffic fatalities were recorded in 2002. It will take up to 30 days to finalize the 2019 total as crash reports and investigations are completed.

This past year, Vision Zero was expanded with additional safety measures including more highway safety engineering systems, law enforcement equipment and programs; the establishment of highway safety corridors; crash data improvements and dashboards; and Vision Zero Schools, a new peer-to-peer program in high schools.

Of the 98 motor vehicle fatalities in 2019, 42 percent were alcohol-related and 25 percent were speed-related. Victims ranged in age from 3 years old to 93 years old, and 83 percent were North Dakota residents. By mode of transportation, 74 of the fatalities were in a passenger vehicle, 11 were motorcyclists, five were pedestrians, four were on all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) and two were bicyclists. One fatality involved a train and 14 involved commercial motor vehicles.

Vision Zeros ongoing success requires strong partnerships and buy-in from the public, said Col. Brandon Solberg, superintendent of the Highway Patrol.

If every driver and passenger chooses to buckle up, and every driver obeys speed limits and traffic laws and drives sober, the vast majority of traffic fatalities would be eliminated. Preventable human behavior contributes to 94 percent of motor vehicle crashes. Personal responsibility is the foundation of Vision Zero.

Vision Zero continues to educate through various mediums about the importance of passenger safety and dangers of speeding, distracted driving and impaired driving, including a new Not Funny campaign that stresses the importance of always driving sober or finding a sober ride.

Parents play a vital role in keeping their children safe on the road, no matter the age, State Health Officer Mylynn Tufte said. Parents should talk often with their young drivers about alcohol, lack of seat belt use, distracted driving, speeding, and driving with passengers. Young children should always be buckled in a car seat that is installed correctly and appropriate for their age and size.

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ND ends 2019 with fewer than 100 reported traffic fatalities - Wahpeton Daily News