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Immunology

Allergies vs. COVID: KU doctors give tips on knowing the difference – hays Post

LEFT to RIGHT: Dr. Dana Hawkinson, University of Kansas Health Center medical director of infection prevention and control; Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer; andDr. Selina Gierer, specialist in allergy, immunology and rheumatology medicine.

By CRISTINA JANNEYHays Post

Is that runny nose and cough COVID or just your run-of-the-mill seasonal allergies?

Doctors at the University of Kansas Health System tried to give viewers tips on how to distinguish between the two during their daily news briefing Wednesday.

Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer, and Dr.Dana Hawkinson, medical director of infection prevention and control, were joined byDr. Selina Gierer, specialist inallergy, immunology and rheumatology medicine, andear, nose and throat surgeon Dr. Keith Sale.

Gierer said Kansas has reached its peak allergy season. Children are also returning to school and can be exposed to viral infections.

"It is always a challenge when we go back to school when kids get any viral infection on top of season allergies trying to pick a part what's an illness and what is an allergy symptom," she said.

Itchy and water eyes as well as sneezing are common symptoms of allergies, but not of COVID-19.

Then there is an overlap zone for both allergies and COVID,Gierer said.

These include cough, fatigue, headache, sore throat, shortness of breath and runny nose.

"Ultimately, if you are having fever, if your symptoms are not typical for your allergy symptoms,"Gierer said, "perhaps this is not a typical allergy season for you.

"If you are having cough, if you are having congestion and you are having change in your sense of smell, it's time for you to be thinking about contacting your doctor to get tested for coronavirus."

She suggested keeping control of your allergy symptoms and avoiding people who are sick.

Monitor your triggers, such as dust, mold, pollen or animals. Monitor the local pollen count. Stay on your allergy medications.

"If you know you are going to be doing yard work, and the next day you feel itchy and drippy and sneezy, you can probably attribute that to your allergies and not an acute onset of coronavirus,"Gierer said.

Asthma is an underlying medical condition that increases the likelihood of complications from coronavirus. However, it is on the lower end of the range of complicating factors.

Asthma is much less common to cause complications than obesity and hypertension,Gierer said.

However, one of the biggest triggers of asthma is a viral infection. She said it is also important to keep your asthma under control by staying on medications, avoiding triggers and keeping a 30-day supply of medication on hand.

Dr. Sale saw a patient in his clinic who was having typical symptoms for allergies, such as a runny nose, but was not getting better on her normal medications.

She thought she had a sinus infection or something else. A friend from out of town had visited the week before. She was tested for COVID and was surprised with a positive COVID test, Sale said.

Sale said his office is taking COVID precautions, including using PPE, hand sanitizing between patients and patients wearing masks unless their nose or mouth is being examined.

Gierer said allergy medication or a rescue inhaler will probably not help with COVID-19 symptoms.

Sale said fatigue may be common to both allergies and COVID, but the persistence of the symptom may be a sign of the later.

Gierer said, "If the allergy medications are not working, that might trigger you to think there is something else going on."

Hawkinson said scientists are working to combine testing for flu and COVID-19. He said if a patient has a nasal swab for COVID-19, a lab could use that same sample to test for flu and RSV.

RSV, is a common respiratory virus that usually causes mild, cold-like symptoms. Most people recover in a week or two, but RSV can be serious, especially for infants and older adults, according the Centers for Disease Control.

The flu season is in full swing in South Africa and Australia and has been lighter this year there than in years past,Hawkinson said. He said that could be in part to mask use and increased hand washing.

KU Med is working on mass flu vaccination at this time.

Gierer urged members of the public to get flu vaccines. That is usually recommended starting in October.

The doctors also gave tips on staying in good general health.

You can naturally boost your immune system by getting adequate sleep, eating a healthy diet, as well as hand washing and staying away from people who are sick.

Those tips can help with COVID-19, flu or RSV.

Sale also said caring for your mental health can have an effect on maintaining physical health, which includes socializing in a safe way.

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Allergies vs. COVID: KU doctors give tips on knowing the difference - hays Post

Immunology

‘I Am a Scientist Working With Severe Cases of COVID-19’ – Newsweek

Before the pandemic, I was studying immunology in the field of virus infections. I am a professor of immunobiology and molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Yale School of Medicine, and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. With my team at Yale's Iwasaki lab, we had been studying how the immune system detects viruses and how innate and adaptive immune systems are connected. Based on these insights, we are designing better vaccines.

We had been studying viruses including herpes, influenza and Zika for years, so when SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) hit we were prepared to tackle the questions it provoked. At the end of February, we started pivoting our work to focus on COVID-19. Our first effort was mostly focused on testing, because in the early stages of the virus there was no real testing capacity in the U.S.

With a number of collaborators, we helped set up a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based testing strategy, and carried out numerous PCR testing in the lab to help identify COVID-19 infected patients and healthcare workers.

In parallel, my lab quickly moved into studying immunology, which is our specialty.

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Now, in September in Connecticut, there are very few COVID-19 cases. But back in March and April we were seeing cases spiking in the state. So, we had this unique opportunity to start enrolling patients at Yale New Haven Hospital, which was seeing many cases of COVID-19, as part of our Yale IMPACT (Implementing Medical and Public Health Action Against Coronavirus CT) study. We were able to do white blood cell analysis on 113 patients to study and follow them over time to understand the changes in their immune responses in real time, and that work has resulted in a study that was published in Nature.

Our aim was to study the immune response in different people; those who were having a moderate case of COVID-19 and are recovering from the infection, and those who were having a severe response to the COVID-19 virus, some of whom unfortunately did pass away from this disease.

Every four days or so, we would take their nasopharyngeal swabs (samples of secretions from the nose and throat) and blood and analyse what was happening, and that led to very interesting insights. Firstly, with the virus load that we measure from the patients' nose, we observed the severe and moderate patients started off with similar levels. But then, though the moderate patients were able to clear the virus eventually, the severe patients never really could.

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So the first thing we noticed was that one of the elements that distinguished between moderate and severe cases of the disease was the inability to control the virus in the severe case. The second thing we learned when we collected patients' plasma and observed their cytokines.

Cytokines are small proteins important in cell signalling because they transmit information from one cell to another.

The COVID-19 viral load in severe patients was associated with increased levels of these proteins. They can have a positive or a negative effect on the body's immune response to a disease, depending on the information they are transmitting between cells.

It turns out that there are a number of distinct features that are associated with the COVID-19 patients we observed and that interestingly correlate with their recovery from this disease. I was really floored when I saw these features, because there were some unusual things that we had not anticipated seeing.

Essentially, we saw that patients who eventually recovered had proteins (growth factors) in their blood that were encouraging their cells to repair. Growth factors can repair the damaged tissue in blood vessels and lung cells that happens during viral infection. In contrast, the patients who went on to have really severe cases of COVID-19 had proteins in their blood that were misfiring in all sorts of strange ways, and in some cases, reacting as if there was a parasite in the body!

It's pretty unusual during a viral infection to have anti-parasite responses going offbut many of the very severe patients we monitored exhibited these.

Compared to other viruses we have been studying over the years, we had never seen this kind of anti-parasite response coming up. So, it's likely that this virus is doing something to the host that is disorienting them in some way that allows this type of misfiring to occur. We don't know what that is yet, it may be intrinsic to the virus or it may be somehow the host is being triggered by some features of this virus that is elevating all kinds of these cytokine proteins. It may even be a body's way of trying to recover from infection.

When the patients were clustered based on their cytokine levels, they separated out into three clusters. We observed that patients who recovered didn't have much in the way of these misfiring proteins, but the second cluster of severe cases and the third cluster of very severe cases both did, and the third cluster had very rapid decline with the disease. That third cluster included patients who had the greatest numbers of misfiring proteins.

When I first saw these unusual signatures, I thought there was some technical glitch. So I asked the scientists to make sure they repeated this analysis multiple times, and these signatures kept coming up. But then during the course of study we started seeing other pre-prints, scientific papers that have not yet been peer-reviewed, that were reporting these anti-parasite responses also. So we knew we weren't alone in seeing this, and now we have seen several studies that confirm this.

One of the things that we reported is that even during the first 12 days of COVID-19 symptom onset there are certain proteins mentioned above that correlate with worse COVID-19 disease outcome. So, by measuring these early, we can inform clinicians that a patient, if they exhibit such cytokine proteins, is someone to pay attention to versus others who may look just as sick but aren't exhibiting in the same way.

In addition, we found bio-markers that we can use to look at patients to help predict what might happen. It's very useful to have this information because you can prepare Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds in anticipation, as well as to potentially give these patients more suitable treatment.

Way before our COVID-19 study came out I had been tweeting about targeting inflammasomes because we have seen evidence of that activation in multiple papers. Inflammasomes are one type of inflammation that happens during a severe infection.

As the name suggests, inflammasomes are a very toxic form of inflammation. It is a large protein complex that forms inside the cell in response to bacterial and viral infection. Inflammasomes can transform cytokine proteins such as IL-1b and IL-18 into active forms. It can also cause "fiery death" of cells, which is known as pyroptosis. We found clear signatures of inflammasome activation that correlated with worse disease and death from COVID-19.

My lab had the knowledge and tools to react before COVID-19 hit, and it is an amazing privilege to be able to work on a pandemic to try and help people. We feel very energized because we are helping people and there are tangibles that come out of this type of research. Things are happening in real time; people are reaching out to me with different ideas for clinical trials based on what we have found. It's really exciting that a study result can trigger clinical trials in a very rapid manner, and be able to predict what might happen using a mouse model we developed to mimic COVID-19.

I feel honored to be working in this area. The pandemic has given me an opportunity to communicate science because more people are now interested. This real interest in immunology and vaccines is also an opportunity for me to educate the public about the immune system. Immunology is becoming extremely important now that public health measures have failed in many countries. Now, we really need the immune system to be able to kick in with the right vaccines to protect us.

I hope that our insights will help people cope with this infection better and eventually, recover. We continue to investigate this virus and have recently released research into whether immune responses to COVID-19 differ between the sexes.

To help just even one person survive this virus would be the most gratifying thing a scientist could hope for.

Professor Akiko Iwasaki focuses on the mechanisms of immune defense against viruses at mucosal surfaces, which are a major site of entry for infectious agents. She is a professor of immunobiology and molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Yale School of Medicine, and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Professor Iwasaki has received numerous awards and honors for her work and is also well known for her Twitter advocacy on women and underrepresented minorities in the science and medicine fields. You can follow her on Twitter @VirusesImmunity

All views expressed in this piece are the writer's own.

As told to Jenny Haward.

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'I Am a Scientist Working With Severe Cases of COVID-19' - Newsweek

Embryology

Assenting: The well-formed mind knows all cultures – The Troubadour Online

Leo Brian Schafer

Catholic Values Columnist

The premise we are discussing today seems to have an obvious solution.

Education, after all, is intended to be the communication of truth, and other religions Islam, Judaism and Protestant denominations are untrue. Why, then, should impressionable children be taught about other religions? All that would seem to do is cause them to question the truth of Christ and stray from the Gospel.

And does the Gospel not tell us that whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea?

What possible benefit could be borne from the support of this proposal?

Consider the statement at hand. Children should be taught about other religion in schools is not a statement of proselytization or evangelization, but one of education. Being taught about strictly means that children will be told that other religions exist.

This brings us to the foundation of the matter. The core of what we are considering, perhaps, is not a question of religion, but one of culture and how culture is taught.

As Christians, we are called to evangelize, to go out to all nations and baptize. How can we be prepared to do this when the only religion, the only culture we are exposed to during our most formative years is our own?

Yes, learning Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and the other great thinkers of our tradition is wholly beneficial to our greater formation. But how much greater would it be to aid in our call to evangelization to read Al-Ghazzali, Dawkins, Gdel and Kierkegaard?

To read our opposition through a Catholic lens, to learn about foreign traditions and cultures in order to more adequately carry out our calling to evangelization is not a bad thing, and is, in fact something that should be required of us.

That is not to say, however, that there are drawbacks and downsides.

Yes, teachers who believe in a more universalist philosophy may take all the good that we intend and flip it on its head, instilling their poisonous beliefs into Catholic children. That is to be avoided at any cost, so the conditions for this should be struck, and the dangerous notion of teaching about other religions in schools should be abandoned.

Or should it? Teachers who believe that abortion is a human right may instill their poisonous beliefs on children, so biology and embryology should not be taught. More aptly, teachers who believe (insert heresy here) may instill their poison into children so theology should not be taught.

So it goes for any subject. Some teachers believe false teaching x, so subject y should not be taught.

The very suggestion is preposterous. This debilitating fear of lies is valid one who loves the truth by definition hates lies but we cannot let this fear prevent us from greater things.

Yes, a bad world cultures teacher can corrupt. But so can a bad theology teacher, chemistry teacher or even a business teacher.

It is wholly beneficial to the Christian life to be exposed to other religions and schools of thought in order to be better prepared to serve the universal calling bestowed on us all, to evangelize all nations.

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Assenting: The well-formed mind knows all cultures - The Troubadour Online

Physiology

Cell-autonomous immunity and the pathogen-mediated evolution of humans – Science Codex

Although immune responses are generated by a complex, hierarchical arrangement of immune system organs, tissues, and components, the unit of the cell has a particularly large effect on disease progression and host survival. These cell-level defense mechanisms, known as cell-autonomous immunity, are among the most important determinants of human survival, and are millions to billions of years old, inherited from our prokaryotic and single-celled ancestors.

The authors of a new paper published in the September 2020 issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology argue that understanding how cell-autonomous immunity has evolved in primates is crucial to understanding the human evolution, not only because infectious agents thought to have affected human genomic evolution are excellent manipulators of cell-autonomous immunity, but because these defenses are found in every cell in every body system.

In "Cell-Autonomous Immunity and the Pathogen-Mediated Evolution of Humans: Or How Our Prokaryotic and Single-Celled Origins Affect the Human Evolutionary Story," Jessica F. Brinkworth and Alexander S. Alvarado discuss how the ubiquity of cell-autonomous immunity highlights a biological reality not commonly addressed in human evolutionary studies - pathogens can mediate the evolution of all body cells, and therefore, all human body systems.

The article examines these ancient tactics in light of evolutionarily important human pathogens and illustrates inter-primate differences in their function. The authors posit that, often considered an independent physiological system in human evolutionary biology, the immune system is ubiquitous, integrated into every other aspect of human physiology. "We argue, therefore, that immunity and pathogen-mediated natural selection is a consideration in the examination of the evolution and function of any human physiological system or trait."

The authors show how human pathogens considered important in the evolution of the human genome manipulate cell-autonomous immunity and have shaped primate evolution, including phagosomes like Yersinia pestis (the causative bacteria of plague) and antimicrobial peptides like Toxoplasma gondii, the 1-2 million-year-old obligate intracellular feline-borne parasite.

"The ancient nature of these defenses is an important consideration in human evolutionary studies because their antiquity is both why cell-autonomous immunity exists in every cell, and the pathogens commonly considered the most pernicious and to have exerted the most stringent selective pressure on the human lineage tend to be organisms that bear microbiological innovations that manipulate these tactics," the authors write.

The paper also illustrates that these defenses are diverging in primate immune cells, and present evidence that they are also changing in "nonimmune" tissues. "For decades, it has been understood that microorganisms and cell-autonomous immune responses to them alter human behavior and vice versa. Incorporation of the same biological relationships between pathogens, cell-autonomous defenses, and body system X extended to other physiological systems or traits at the center of the classic questions of human evolutionary biology (e.g., why does skin color vary in humans, why do primate placentae vary in shape and size, how did human bipedal locomotion evolve, how does primate bone and dental microstructure vary) can enrich and improve our understanding of why such features evolved."

For this kind of information to contribute to a better understanding of the gross features of human evolution, however, the authors say researchers in this area must increase integration of molecular and morphological methods or findings in human evolutionary studies. "Any examination of human evolutionary biology, regardless of physiological system and when possible, should consider autonomous immunity of the cells in that system and how microorganisms have shaped them."

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Cell-autonomous immunity and the pathogen-mediated evolution of humans - Science Codex

Physiology

U.S. Soccer hires USWNT Head of Performance and Sports Scientist – Soccerwire.com

CHICAGO Ellie Maybury has been named the Head of Performance for the U.S. Womens National Team while Julian Haigh has been named the USWNT Sports Scientist.

Maybury and Haigh, who have been overseeing the USWNTs fitness since the latter part of 2019, will now be full-time members of U.S. head coach Vlatko Andonovskis staff.

Maybury will be responsible for creating and executing the overall day-to-day sport science and performance plan for the USWNT, which includes the athletic development of players, optimal preparation of players for competition, monitoring of players training/match loads, maintaining optimal recoveries for post-training/competition, injury prevention strategies, nutritional strategies and prescription of strength and conditioning training programs.

Haigh will assist Maybury in all aspects of the sports science and performance for the USWNT.

Ellie and Julian are highly-motivated professionals with a passion for sports science and both have several years of experience working their way up through our Youth National Teams and the NWSL, respectively, said U.S. WNT general manager Kate Markgraf. The physical training and monitoring of our players is tremendously important to how we play and paramount to maintaining our players health and well-being; especially coming out of the pandemic when most of the players will have played significantly less games at the club and international level. With their individual and collective experience, they are vital in navigating the physical needs of our players to compete for world titles. We are privileged to add Ellie and Julian as full-time members of the senior National Team staff.

Maybury joined U.S. Soccer full time in January of 2016 as the lead sport scientist for all of the Youth Womens National Teams, overseeing the sports science and physiological aspects of the USAs eight youth teams with specific emphasis on the U-17 and U-20 WNTs during their World Cup cycles.

In 2016, she was with the U.S. teams for both the FIFA Under-17 Womens World Cup in Jordan and the FIFA U-20 Womens World Cup in Papua New Guinea, and in 2018 she was on the staff for the FIFA U-17 Womens World Cup in Uruguay.

Maybury has a BSc (Hons) in Sport Science and Materials Technology from the University of Birmingham and an MSc in Exercise Physiology from Loughborough University. She is currently working on developing her research portfolio in order to enhance her applied skills of working with female youth and senior players at the elite level. Maybury is also a certified paramedic in England and worked as a paramedic for two years in the West Midlands.

Additionally, Maybury is an AAAS IF/THEN Ambassador, one of 125 women selected nationwide from a variety of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers and brought together to serve as high-profile role models for young girls. U.S. Soccer is a partner of IF/THEN, an initiative of Lyda Hill Philanthropies, promoting and supporting women in STEM roles who directly impact U.S. Soccers ability to develop world-class players within the U.S. National Team program.

Haigh has served three years working for U.S. Soccer as a sports scientist, overseeing all the NWSL clubs as well as the U.S. Under-23 Womens National Team while helping gather and analyze fitness and performance data of every player in the pro league. He will continue in his role working with the NWSL and sports scientists for the clubs while also working with Maybury and the USWNT.

Prior to coming to U.S. Soccer, Haigh worked a season and half in the NWSL as the sports scientist for the Boston Breakers. Before that, he worked five seasons in sports science and strength and conditioning with the Widnes Vikings in Englands professional rugby Super League.

Haigh graduated from Liverpool John Moores University with a degree in sports and exercise science before going on to complete his Masters at LJMU, also in sport and exercise science. He also did an internship at Everton Football Club in the English Premier League and worked briefly with the Liverpool Ladies Football Club.

Haigh was born in Boston, Mass., before moving to England as a young child.

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U.S. Soccer hires USWNT Head of Performance and Sports Scientist - Soccerwire.com

Physiology

University subject profile: sports science – The Guardian

What youll learnWhether you dream of managing your favourite football club or want to get more local people involved in sport, a sports science degree could help you achieve those dreams.

Sports science degrees take a behind-the-scenes look at sport, exercise and health, coaching, management, and how the body works. These courses arent just for athletes you dont need to be good at sport.

Both bachelor of science and arts qualifications are available, as courses can cover anything from exercise physiology to the relationship between sport and the media.

Youll develop an understanding of human responses to sport and exercise. You should know how performance can be enhanced, monitored and analysed, and about the health benefits of physical activity, as well as the impact on the body. You will understand coaching processes and sports management.

How youll learnThe ratio of theory to practice depends on the course. Sports technology, exercise physiology and sports psychology courses have a heavy emphasis on science. Those which mention management, sports development or coaching in their titles will have a more vocational leaning. All courses will, however, have a science bit expect to study biomechanics, physiology and psychology. Some courses will involve professional placements and provide you with invaluable practical experience.

Entry requirementsMany courses will expect you to have biology, chemistry, maths or physics at A-level (or equivalent). A physical education or psychology A-level could help your application.

What job can you get?You will be qualified for a career in sports coaching, management and administration, maybe as a fitness instructor, personal trainer or leisure centre manager.

An increasing number of graduates are being recruited to provide sport science support for professional athletes, are employed by national governing bodies for sport, or are working in the commercial leisure sector, in particular within marketing and the promotion of sports goods and events. There is the option of further study and research, or you could teach sports in schools.

You may learn business skills that will benefit freelance work as, for example, a nutritionist or events manager.

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University subject profile: sports science - The Guardian

Physiology

ZoneMaster Inc. is Launching FitTrakker App the Most Advanced Fitness Tracker App in the World – PRUnderground

Experts agree, having access to a fitness tracker can be a remarkable resource when it comes to following a fitness program and getting optimal results. Unfortunately, not all devices or apps on the market today are first-class choices. The good news is the whole fitness tracker space is changing for the better. Enter ZoneMaster Inc. and the companys new release the eye-opening FitTrakker app, which will be launched this weekend on the App Store for Apple cell phones and smartwatches. FitTrakker is integrated with Apples Health Kit and is already being called The Best Fitness Tracking App in the World, delivering a long list of features and benefits unmatched by its competitors. With a 30-day free trial, users can check it out and see the big difference first-hand.

Only you are your body master! Thats why we created the FitTrakker!, one of the FitTrakker teams motoes, reflects their principle of individualized fitness profile. Their initial idea was to invent a reliable tool to determine individual physiology zones and provide accurate information to users. Architects of the app are internationally recognized professionals in their respective fields. Miro Zeravica, CEO, Milica Okicic, MD, VP of Research & Development, and Srecko Mavrek, VP of Marketing & Business Development. We look forward to the response to the app. We predict that users and fitness enthusiasts will love it, they said.

Currently there is no other app that customizes training and monitors workload per individual based on specific individuals data such as their physiology zones. This is combined with the details of their own personal profile and several training parameters including training start time, medium, conditions and medium temperature. A powerful Energymeter gives details on calories spent through exercise, something that can be a huge benefit when it comes to weight loss or dieting. Charts covering energy and training details are easily accessed, along with powerful GPS/HR features and wonderful graphics.

All-in-all FitTrakker is the most advanced fitness app on the market today.

For more information and to download the new app be sure to visit http://www.fittrakker.com.

#FitTrakker #bestfitnesstrackingapp #fitnessds

About FitTrakker

We formed an international research team to invent a reliable tool to determine an individual physiology zone. Currently there is no device or tool that customizes training and monitors workload per individual based on specific individuals data such as their physiology zones. However, there are devices with limited functionalities. Our idea is new, unique, and hasnt been developed in the past. It targets a variety of athletes at the professional, recreational, collegiate and school levels. Welcome to FitTrakker.

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ZoneMaster Inc. is Launching FitTrakker App the Most Advanced Fitness Tracker App in the World - PRUnderground

Neuroscience

Rad Scientist Podcast: The Fever Effect – KPBS

Wednesday, September 2, 2020

Margot Wohl

Photo by Agustn Rodrguez Lpez

Above: Melonie Vaughn dons a white lab coat at UC San Diego in this photo taken in August, 2019.

Melonie Vaughns desire to study neurodevelopmental disorders stemmed from watching her autistic brother struggle with navigating school and social relationships. Now she is a rising second year neuroscience Ph.D. student at UC San Diego. Melonie, an Afro-Panamanian, is the only black woman in her program.

Twitter handle: @melonievaughn_

Episode Music:Rad Scientist Theme Motif - Grant FisherAt Our Best ... Read more

Aired: September 2, 2020 | Transcript

Melonie Vaughns desire to study neurodevelopmental disorders stemmed from watching her autistic brother struggle with navigating school and social relationships. During her undergraduate at Harvard, she studied a mysterious phenomenon called the fever effect where some autistic individuals experience a reduction in symptoms when their temperature is elevated.

Now she is a rising second-year neuroscience Ph.D. student at UC San Diego. Vaughn, an Afro-Panamanian, is the only black woman in her program. After a professor made racist comments during a lecture, shes been pushing for institutional changes to her program to support students of color.

Rooting out racism includes so much more than reforming police practices. Those subtle and not so subtle barriers exist everywhere, from the streets, to the schools to the ivory towers of academia.

A new season of personal stories launches today from the KPBS podcast, Rad Scientist, stories from Black scientists who have made some cool scientific discoveries and ... Read more

Aired: September 2, 2020 | Transcript

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Rad Scientist Podcast: The Fever Effect - KPBS

Neuroscience

Why do you feel lonely? Neuroscience is starting to find answers. – MIT Technology Review

Long before the world had ever heard of covid-19, Kay Tye set out to answer a question that has taken on new resonance in the age of social distancing: When people feel lonely, do they crave social interactions in the same way a hungry person craves food? And could she and her colleagues detect and measure this hunger in the neural circuits of the brain?

Loneliness is a universal thing. If I were to ask people on the street, Do you know what it means to be lonely? probably 99 or 100% of people would say yes, explains Tye, a neuroscientist at the Salk Institute of Biological Sciences.It seems reasonable to argue that it should be a concept in neuroscience. Its just that nobody ever found a way to test it and localize it to specific cells. Thats what we are trying to do.

In recent years, a vast scientific literature has emerged linking loneliness to depression, anxiety, alcoholism, and drug abuse. There is even a growing body of epidemiological work showing that loneliness makes you more likely to fall ill: it seems to prompt the chronic release of hormones that suppress healthy immune function. Biochemical changes from loneliness can accelerate the spread of cancer, hasten heart disease and Alzheimers, or simply drain the most vital among us of the will to go on. The ability to measure and detect it could help identify those at risk and pave the way for new kinds of interventions.

In the months ahead, many are warning, were likely to see the mental-health impacts of covid-19 play out on a global scale. Psychiatrists are already worried about rising rates of suicide and drug overdoses in the US, and social isolation, along with anxiety and chronic stress, is one likely cause. The recognition of the impact of social isolation on the rest of mental health is going to hit everyone really soon, Tye says. I think the impact on mental health will be pretty intense and pretty immediate.

Yet quantifying, or even defining, loneliness is a difficult challenge. So difficult, in fact, that neuroscientists have long avoided the topic.

Loneliness, Tye says, is inherently subjective. Its possible to spend the day completely isolated, in quiet contemplation, and feel invigorated.Or to stew in alienated misery surrounded by a crowd, in the heart of a big city, or accompanied by close friends and family. Or, to take a more contemporary example, to participate in a Zoom call with loved ones in another city and feel deeply connectedor even more lonely than when the call began.

This fuzziness might explain the curious results that came back when Tye, before publishing her first scientific paper on the neuroscience of loneliness in 2016, ran a search for other papers on the topic. Though she found studies on loneliness in the psychological literature, the number of papers that also contained the words cells, neurons, or brain was precisely zero.

Neuroscientists have long assumed that questions about how loneliness might work in the human brain would elude their data-driven labs.

Though the nature of loneliness has preoccupied some of the greatest minds in philosophy, literature, and art for millennia, neuroscientists have long assumed that questions about how it might work in the human brain would elude their data-driven labs. How do you quantify the experience? And where would you even begin to look in the brain for the changes brought about by such a subjective feeling?

Tye hopes to change that by building an entirely new field: one aimed at analyzing and understanding how our sensory perceptions, previous experiences, genetic predispositions, and life situations combine with our environment to produce a concrete, measurable biological state called loneliness. And she wants to identify what that seemingly ineffable experience looks like when it is activated in the brain.

If Tye succeeds, it could lead to new tools for identifying and monitoring those at risk from illnesses worsened by loneliness. It could also yield better ways to handle what could be a looming public health crisis triggered by covid-19.

Tye has homed in on specific populations of neurons in rodent brains that seem to be associated with a measurable need for social interactiona hunger that can be manipulated by directly stimulating the neurons themselves. To pinpoint these neurons, Tye relied on a technique she developed while working as a postdoc in the Stanford University lab of Karl Deisseroth.

Deisseroth had pioneered optogenetics, a technique in which genetically engineered, light-sensitive proteins are implanted into brain cells; researchers can then turn individual neurons on or off simply by shining lights on them though fiber-optic cables. Though the technique is far too invasive to use in peopleas well as an injection into the brain to deliver the proteins, it requires threading the fiber-optic cable through the skull and directly into the brainit allows researchers to tweak neurons in live, freely moving rodents and then observe their behavior.

Tye began using optogenetics in rodents to trace the neural circuits involved in emotion, motivation, and social behaviors. She found that by activating a neuron and then identifying the other parts of the brain that responded to the signal the neuron gave out, she could trace the discrete circuits of cells that work together to perform specific functions. Tye meticulously traced the connections out of the amygdala, an almond-shaped set of neurons thought to be the seat of fear and anxiety both in rodents and in humans.

JENNY SIEGWART

Scientists had long known that stimulating the amygdala as a whole could cause an animal to cower in fear. But by following the maze of connections in and out of different parts of the amygdala, Tye was able to demonstrate that the brains fear circuit was capable of imbuing sensory stimuli with far more nuance than previously understood. It seemed, in fact, to modulate courage too.

By the time Tye set up her lab at MITs Picower Institute for Learning and Memory in 2012, she was following the neural connections of the amygdala to places like the prefrontal cortex, known as the brains executive, and the hippocampus, the seat of episodic memory. The goal was to construct maps of the circuits across the brain that we rely on to understand the world, make meaning of our moment-to-moment experience, and respond to different situations.

She began studying loneliness largely by serendipity. While scouting for new postdocs, Tye came across the work of Gillian Matthews. As a graduate student at Imperial College London, Matthews had made an unexpected discovery when she separated the mice in her experiments from one another. Social isolationthe very fact of being aloneseemed to have changed brain cells called DRN neurons in ways that implied they might play a role in loneliness.

Tye immediately saw the possibilities. Oh, my goshthis is incredible! she recalls thinking. That the signs of social isolation could be traced to a specific part of the brain made total sense to her. But where is it and how would you find it? If this could be the region, I thought, that would be super interesting. In all her studies of neurons, says Tye, Id never seen anything about social isolation before. Ever.

Tye realized that if she and Matthews could construct a map of a loneliness circuit, they could answer in the lab precisely the kinds of questions she hoped to explore: How does the brain imbue social isolation with meaning? How and when does the objective experience of not being around people, in other words, become the subjective experience of loneliness?The first step was to better understand the roletheDRN neurons played in this mental state.

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Why do you feel lonely? Neuroscience is starting to find answers. - MIT Technology Review

Neuroscience

Neuroscience Market by Technology, Application & Geography Analysis & Forecast to 2026 – The Scarlet

The Neuroscience market research report Added by Market Study Report, LLC, offers a comprehensive study on the current industry trends. The report also offers a detailed abstract of the statistics, market valuation, and revenue forecast, which in addition underlines the status of the competitive spectrum and expansion strategies adopted by major industry players.

The research report on Neuroscience market assesses ongoing market trends, as well as the factors that are poised to enhance the market growth during the analysis timeframe. It also encompasses major market restraints which may hamper the market growth. Going on, the report also comprises of the key manufacturers which formulate the competitive terrain of the Neuroscience market and also highlights the major market segmentations.

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Summary of the geographical landscape of the Neuroscience market:

Table of Contents:

Executive Summary: It includes key trends of the Neuroscience market related to products, applications, and other crucial factors. It also provides analysis of the competitive landscape and CAGR and market size of the Neuroscience market based on production and revenue.

Production and Consumption by Region: It covers all regional markets to which the research study relates. Prices and key players in addition to production and consumption in each regional market are discussed.

Key Players: Here, the report throws light on financial ratios, pricing structure, production cost, gross profit, sales volume, revenue, and gross margin of leading and prominent companies competing in the Neuroscience market.

Market Segments: This part of the report discusses about product type and application segments of the Neuroscience market based on market share, CAGR, market size, and various other factors.

Research Methodology: This section discusses about the research methodology and approach used to prepare the report. It covers data triangulation, market breakdown, market size estimation, and research design and/or programs.

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Development Trend of Analysis of Neuroscience Market

Marketing Channel

Market Dynamics

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