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Physiology

Gastrointestinal Physiology and Function – PubMed

The gastrointestinal (GI) system is responsible for the digestion and absorption of ingested food and liquids. Due to the complexity of the GI tract and the substantial volume of material that could be covered under the scope of GI physiology, this chapter briefly reviews the overall function of the GI tract, and discusses the major factors affecting GI physiology and function, including the intestinal microbiota, chronic stress, inflammation, and aging with a focus on the neural regulation of the GI tract and an emphasis on basic brain-gut interactions that serve to modulate the GI tract. GI diseases refer to diseases of the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, colon, and rectum. The major symptoms of common GI disorders include recurrent abdominal pain and bloating, heartburn, indigestion/dyspepsia, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, and constipation. GI disorders rank among the most prevalent disorders, with the most common including esophageal and swallowing disorders, gastric and peptic ulcer disease, gastroparesis or delayed gastric emptying, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Many GI disorders are difficult to diagnose and their symptoms are not effectively managed. Thus, basic research is required to drive the development of novel therapeutics which are urgently needed. One approach is to enhance our understanding of gut physiology and pathophysiology especially as it relates to gut-brain communications since they have clinical relevance to a number of GI complaints and represent a therapeutic target for the treatment of conditions including inflammatory diseases of the GI tract such as IBD and functional gut disorders such as IBS.

Keywords: Absorption; Barrier function; Central nervous system (CNS); Colon; Constipation; Diarrhea; Digestion; Enteric nervous system (ENS); Epithelial barrier; Gut microbiome; Inflammation; Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD); Intestinal permeability; Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS); Mucosa; Secretion; Small intestine; Smooth muscle; Stress; Visceral pain.

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Gastrointestinal Physiology and Function - PubMed

Physiology

Scientists find the best way to soothe a crying baby – Earth.com

The sound of a crying infant can be very distressing to parents. They seek to soothe the baby and may resort to numerous ploys in order to restore the baby to a state of peace. None of these methods has been scientifically proven, however, relying rather on trial and error or on the advice of experienced caregivers. In a new study by Japanese researchers, four different soothing methods were tested and the efficacy of each was assessed based on changes in the babys heart rate and whether the baby stopped crying.

Many parents suffer from babies nighttime crying, says corresponding author Kumi Kuroda of the RIKEN Center for Brain Science in Japan. Thats such a big issue, especially for inexperienced parents, that it can lead to parental stress and even to infant maltreatment in a small number of cases, she says.

The study details how crying babies are physiologically affected by being held, carried, and laid down. The researchers made use of ECG data on heart rate, and hand-held video cameras, to track the physiological and behavioral state of the baby as it was soothed. Mothers were given four methods for calming the baby: hold the crying infant, hold and walk with the infant, place the infant in a cot or crib, and place the infant in a mobile crib or stroller that can be moved back and forth. At each heartbeat, behavior was assessed as asleep, alert, or crying, and scored accordingly. This way the researchers could track changes in both behavior and physiology with sub-second precision.

In previous research, Kuroda and her colleagues found that mother mice pick up their babies (pups) by mouth and carry them when they are distressed. The mouse pups show a specific response, termed the Transport Response, when picked up by their mothers. This involves a complex series of parallel biological processes that results in reduced crying and lower heart rates, which helps the parents to transport the infants. Kruoda and the team wondered whether human infants would show similar physiological responses to being carried around, and whether this would have a calming impact when the infant was distressed.

The Transport Response is found in many mammals that have altricial young (born underdeveloped and helpless) that are not able to walk around on their own. Such mammals include dogs, cats and monkeys. We are more familiar with this response when picking up young puppies or kittens by the scruff of the neck. They tend to hang motionless and become more docile, but their bodies do not go entirely limp; they maintain a certain compactness of posture, with legs pulled in slightly, perhaps making it easier for their parents to carry them to a new location.

The researchers compared the responses of 21 human infants to soothing using the four different methods. They found that when the mother walked while carrying the baby, the crying infants calmed down and their heart rates slowed within 30 seconds. In fact, when mothers walked in this way for a period of five minutes, the infants became so calm that around 50 percent of them fell asleep. A similar calming effect occurred when the infants were placed in a rocking cot, but not when the mother held the baby while sitting, or placed the baby in a motionless cot.

As Kuroda explains, walking for five minutes promoted sleep, but only for crying infants. Surprisingly, this effect was absent when babies were already calm beforehand. Among the babies studied, all had stopped crying by the end of the five-minute walk and had reduced heart rates. However, sitting and holding a crying baby was not calming; the heart rate tended to increase and crying persisted. Heart rates also increased when walking mothers turned, or when they stopped walking, showing that babies are very sensitive to their mothers movements.

Unfortunately, the study found that when the mothers tried to put down their sleeping babies after calming them, more than one-third of the infants became alert again within 20 seconds. Analysis of the data showed that all the babies produced physiological responses, including changes in heart rate, the moment they became detached from the mothers body. However, if the infants were asleep for a longer period before being laid down, they were less likely to awaken during the process, the team found.

Even as a mother of four, I was very surprised to see the result. I thought whether a baby awoke during a laydown was related to how theyre put on the bed, such as their posture, or the gentleness of the movement, Kuroda says. But our experiment did not support these general assumptions. Although we did not predict it, the key parameter for successful laydown of sleeping infants was the latency from sleep onset. Babies often woke up if they were put down before they got about 8 minutes of sleep.

Based on their findings, the researchers propose a method for soothing and promoting sleep in crying infants. They recommend that parents hold crying infants and walk with them for five minutes, followed by sitting and holding infants for another five to eight minutes before putting them to bed. The protocol, unlike other popular sleep training approaches such as letting infants cry until they fall asleep themselves, aims to provide an immediate solution for infant crying. Whether it can improve infant sleep in the long-term requires further research, Kuroda says.

Although the research involved only mothers and their infants, Kuroda expects the effects are likely to be similar for fathers and any other caregivers. She emphasizes that this study only included a small samples of infants and will need to be repeated with bigger sample sizes in order to verify the results. Additionally, this procedure does not address why some babies cry excessively and cannot sleep, but it does offer an immediate solution that can help parents of newborns.

The researchers recognize the usefulness of heartrate data in this approach to soothing a baby and hope to make it accessible to parents. We are developing a baby-tech wearable device with which parents can see the physiological states of their babies on their smartphones in real-time, says Kuroda. Like science-based fitness training, we can do science-based parenting with these advances, and hopefully help babies to sleep and reduce parental stress caused by excessive infant crying.

The research is published in the journal Current Biology.

By Alison Bosman, Earth.com Staff Writer

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Scientists find the best way to soothe a crying baby - Earth.com

Physiology

EHS Patients: SOFA Score Usefulness on Admission to Predict the 90-day Mortality – Physician’s Weekly

Exertional heat stroke (EHS) is becoming more understood, yet there is a lack of clinical data to support risk-stratifying EHS patients. Finding a suitable scoring system for EHS prognostic evaluation was researchers main goal for a study.

All EHS patients hospitalized in the intensive care unit (ICU) of the General Hospital of Southern Theatre Command of the PLA between October 2008 and May 2019 were included in the retrospective cohort analysis. Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II), Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA), Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) scores, inflammatory indices, and organ function measurements were all gathered at the time of admission. With the use of a multivariate Cox proportional hazard risk regression model, risk variables for 90-day mortality were found.

Finally, 189 patients (all male) were included; 21 years (IQR 19.027.0), their median APACHE II score was 11.0 (IQR 8.016.0), their median SOFA score was 3.0 (IQR 2.06.0), and their median GCS score was 12.0 (IQR 7.014.0). There were 23 non-survivors (12.2%) compared to 166 survivors (87.8%). Rhabdomyolysis (46.1% vs. 63.6%), disseminated intravascular coagulation (25.6% vs. 90.0%), acute liver injury (69.4% vs. 95.7%), and acute kidney injury (36.6% vs. 95.7%) were among the serious organ injuries that were more common in non-survivors than in the survivor group. A multivariate Cox risk regression model with an ideal cutoff score of 7.5 revealed that the SOFA score was an independent risk factor for 90-day death.

A clinically relevant predictor of mortality in EHS may be the SOFA score. The best cutoff level and the usefulness of the SOFA score must be confirmed by prospective research.

Reference: sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0735675722005447

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EHS Patients: SOFA Score Usefulness on Admission to Predict the 90-day Mortality - Physician's Weekly

Physiology

Revealing the Hidden Genome: Unknown DNA Sequences Identified That May Be Critical to Human Health – SciTechDaily

Scientists have developed a new technique to reveal the hidden human genome.

Numerous short RNA sequences that code for microproteins and peptides have been identified, providing new opportunities for the study of diseases and the development of drugs.

Researchers from Duke-NUS Medical School and their collaborators have discovered thousands of previously unknown DNA sequences in the human genome that code for microproteins and peptides that could be critical for human health and disease.

Much of what we understand about the known two per cent of the genome that codes for proteins comes from looking for long strands of protein-coding nucleotide sequences, or long open reading frames, explained computational biologist Dr Sonia Chothani, a research fellow with Duke-NUS Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disorders (CVMD) Programme and first author of the study. Recently, however, scientists have discovered small open reading frames (smORFs) that can also be translated from RNA into small peptides, which have roles in DNA repair, muscle formation and genetic regulation.

Scientists have been seeking to identify smORFs and the tiny peptides they code for since smORF disruption can cause disease. However, the currently available techniques are quite limited.

Much of the current datasets do not provide information that is detailed enough to identify smORFs in RNA, added Dr Chothani. The majority also comes from analyses of immortalised human cells that are propagatedsometimes for decadesto study cell physiology, function and disease. However, these cell lines arent always accurate representations of human physiology.

Chothani and her colleagues from Singapore, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Australia present an approach they created to address these challenges in a recentstudy published in Molecular Cell. They scoured existing ribosome profiling datasets for short strands of RNA with periodic three-base sections that covered more than 60% of the RNAs length. They then performed their own RNA sequencing and Ribosome profiling to establish a combined data set of six kinds of cells and five types of tissue derived from hundreds of patients.

Analyses of these data identified nearly 8,000 smORFs. Interestingly, they were highly specific to the tissues that they were found in, meaning that these smORFs may perform a function specific to their environment. The team also identified 603 microproteins coded by some of these smORFs.

The genome is littered with smORFs, said Assistant Professor Owen Rackham, senior author of the study from the CVMD Programme. Our comprehensive and spatially resolved map of human smORFs highlights overlooked functional components of the genome, pinpoints new players in health and disease and provides a resource for the scientific community as a platform to accelerate discoveries.

Professor Patrick Casey, Senior Vice-Dean of Research at Duke-NUS, said, With the healthcare system evolving to not only treat diseases but also prevent them, identifying potential new targets for disease research and drug development could open avenues to new solutions. This research by Dr Chothani and her team, published as a resource for the scientific community, brings important insights to the field.

Reference: A high-resolution map of human RNA translation by Sonia P. Chothani, Eleonora Adami, Anissa A. Widjaja, Sarah R. Langley, Sivakumar Viswanathan, Chee Jian Pua, Nevin Tham Zhihao, Nathan Harmston, Giuseppe DAgostino, Nicola Whiffin, Wang Mao, John F. Ouyang, Wei Wen Lim, Shiqi Lim, Cheryl Q.E. Lee, Alexandra Grubman, Joseph Chen, J.P. Kovalik, Karl Tryggvason, Jose M. Polo, Lena Ho, Stuart A. Cook, Owen J.L. Rackham and Sebastian Schafer, 15 July 2022, Molecular Cell.DOI: 10.1016/j.molcel.2022.06.023

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Revealing the Hidden Genome: Unknown DNA Sequences Identified That May Be Critical to Human Health - SciTechDaily

Physiology

Expert in Engineered Cell-Based Cancer Therapies Appointed USC Viterbi BME Chair – USC Viterbi School of Engineering

New Chair of the USC Viterbi Department of Biomedical Engineering.Peter Yingxiao Wang. Image/David Baillot, UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

Research leader in the field of precision medicine, Professor Peter Yingxiao Wang, will join the USC Viterbi School of Engineering on January 1, 2023, as the new chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Wang who has pioneered work on controllable engineered cells to directly target tumors will also be jointly appointed at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. He will lead two research laboratories to be housed in the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience on the UPC campus and the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center on the USC Health Sciences Campus.

Wang comes to USC Viterbi after ten years as a faculty member at the University of California San Diego, where as professor of bioengineering he pursued leading research into cancer immunotherapy and cell imaging. Most recently, Wang and his collaborators developed a breakthrough therapy harnessing focused ultrasound (FUS) to remotely-control specially engineered immune cells, known as FUS-CAR T-cells, to target and destroy solid tumors with high precision in space and time, while avoiding side effects and toxicity on healthy tissue.

Wangs role will further fortify USC Viterbis research capacity in precision medicine, while forging stronger collaborations with Keck School of Medicine.

I am thrilled that Peter has decided to join us as the new chair of Biomedical Engineering at USC, said USC Viterbi Dean Yannis C. Yortsos. He will lead a remarkable department the first biomedical engineering department on the West Coast with a history of landmark accomplishments in this critical field, at the intersection of engineering, medicine and the health sciences. We look forward to his leadership and vision.

Wang said he was excited to join the department, noting that USC was positioned at a unique advantage, thanks to the depth of research and teaching excellence in both its engineering and medical schools.

We already have a very strong Department of Biomedical Engineering with multiple rising stars who were recently promoted, combined with the existing strengths from senior faculty, and of course our fabulous students, Wang said. We are really strong in both engineering and medicine, and one thing I would like to push is for more intimate and systematic collaboration between USC Viterbi and Keck School, as well as the Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.

Its a really exciting trend for our departments future, giving us the opportunity to bring our cutting-edge technology directly to patients, where we can really help people.

Wang said that through increased collaboration, he was eager to break down silos and shorten the pipeline from research and discovery toward patient applications of therapies and technologies. He said he was also interested in ensuring the BME department further expanded its considerable strengths in precision medicine.

We have talented faculty working in this area already, like Associate Professor Stacey Finley who works on analysis of immune cell signaling, Associate Professor Megan McCain who is working on stem cell and tissue engineering, Associate Professor Eun Ji Chung, who is looking at how we can deliver the genetic and therapeutic materials more efficiently to different locations in the body, and Associate Professor Keyue Shen who is working on immune-engineering approaches, Wang said. This is in addition to our superior senior faculty, like Professors David DArgenio, Michael Khoo, Vasilis Marmarelis, Francisco Valero-Cuevas, and Ellis Meng on biomedical modeling, machine learning, neuromuscular control and medical devices, and Professors Qifa Zhou and Jesse Yen, who are leaders in ultrasound technology.

We also have a promising and strong group of junior faculty, like Assistant Professors Cristina Zavaleta on molecular imaging, Jennifer Treweek on quantitative histopathology, and Maral Mousavi on biomedical sensors and diagnosis. Together with other leading professors in the department, like Ted Berger, Gerald Leob, Bartlett Mel and Stan Yamashiro, it will offer more opportunity to collaborate, to sharpen our expertise and to make our ultrasound-controllable CAR-T cell system even more powerful and precise, Wang said.

Wang obtained his bachelors and masters degrees from Peking University, Beijing in 1992 and 1996, in mechanics and in fluid mechanics, respectively. He moved to California where he received his Ph.D. degree in Bioengineering from the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering in 2002, before continuing his postdoctoral work there under Bioengineering Professor Shu Chien and Professor Roger Y. Tsien in the Department of Pharmacology.

Before joining the UCSD as faculty in 2012, he was an associate professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Department of Bioengineering, and a full-time faculty member in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois. He was also affiliated at UIUC with the Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology, Neuroscience Program, the Center for Biophysics and Computational Biology, and Institute of Genomic Biology.

Wang is a recipient of the competitive Wallace H. Coulter Early Career Award and was also awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and the National Institutes of Health Independent Scientist Award.

He is a fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE), and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES).

Wang will take over the chairs role from Interim Department Chairs David Z. DArgenio, Michael Khoo and Vasilis Marmaralis, who will continue to serve in that capacity until January 2023.

Published on September 16th, 2022

Last updated on September 16th, 2022

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Expert in Engineered Cell-Based Cancer Therapies Appointed USC Viterbi BME Chair - USC Viterbi School of Engineering

Physiology

Rewarding Geophysical Research | The UCSB Current – The UCSB Current

In recognition of their meritorious work and service toward the advancement and promotion of discovery and solution science, three faculty from UC Santa Barbara have been selected for section awards from the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

Debra Perrone, Samantha Stevenson and Anna Trugman are being recognized for their early career achievements by AGU, a nonprofit organization that supports 130,000 experts and enthusiasts worldwide in Earth and space sciences. The union annually recognizes a number of individuals as part of its Honors and Recognition program.

Debra Perrone was chosen for a Hydrologic Sciences Early Career Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to hydrology through research, education, or societal impacts.

I am grateful for the support of my colleagues who nominated me for this award, as well as the hydrologic sciences community, more broadly, for their support of research that integrates multiple disciplines and has a focus on societal impacts, said Perrone, an assistant professor in the Environmental Studies Program.

Perrone focuses on identifying and solving societys water-scarcity challenges, particularly issues concerning groundwater. She takes a broad approach to the task, combining research methods from engineering, physical science and law to inform water sustainability and policy.

AGU conferred an Ocean Sciences Early Career Award to Samantha Stevenson, an assistant professor in the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. The award lauds significant contributions to the ocean sciences from honorees within 10 years of receiving their Ph.D.

As a physical oceanographer, Stevenson studies the physical mechanisms that affect movement of water in the ocean. Shes particularly interested in understanding how interactions between the ocean and atmosphere alter the behavior of El Nio and La Nia events.

Stevenson uses numerical ocean and climate models to investigate how those processes respond to climate change. Some of her work focuses on projections of future 21st century climate change. Shes also considering how to use reconstructions of climatic conditions over the past several hundred years to improve both our knowledge of the past and our estimates of what we may expect in the future.

It has been my dream for a long time to contribute to humanity's knowledge of the oceans in order to help us prepare for the ongoing threat of climate change, Stevenson said. I am tremendously excited that my work has been recognized by the AGU Ocean Sciences section.

I plan to continue doing my best to solve important ocean and climate problems, she added, and also hope this award will help me be a good role model for the younger generation of women in physical oceanography.

Anna Trugman received a Global Environmental Change Early Career Award. The honor cites researchers whove made outstanding contributions in research, educational, or societal impacts in the area of global environmental change [] within 10 years of receiving their Ph.D. or highest terminal degree.

I'm extremely excited to be among Debra and Sam as early career female environmental scientists winning these awards, said Trugman, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography.

Trugman is a plant ecologist interested in the terrestrial carbon cycle. Her lab focuses on how climate change impacts forest resilience as well as carbon, water and energy fluxes from the land surface to the broader Earth system.

Some of her current projects include the ecological, carbon-cycle and economic consequences of wildfire in California. She also aims to understand how the physiology of plants under stress shapes ecosystem resilience and biogeographic patterns in water-limited systems.

AGU will formally recognize this years recipients during the AGU22 Fall Meeting, which convenes Dec. 1216 in Chicago, and online. This celebration is a chance for the unions community to recognize the outstanding work of their colleagues and be inspired by their accomplishments and stories.

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Neuroscience

AI-Based Research Reveals That Extreme Temperatures Fuel Online Hate Speech – Neuroscience News

Summary: Extreme heat and extreme cold temperatures are associated with a marked rise in aggressive online behaviors, including hate speech, a new AI-based study discovered.

Source: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

Temperatures above or below a feel-good window of 1221 degrees Celsius (5470 F) are linked to a marked rise in aggressive online behavior across the U.S., a new study finds.

Analyzing billions of tweets posted on the social media platform Twitter in the U.S., researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research found hate speech increasing across climate zones, income groups and belief systems for temperatures too hot or too cold.

This indicates limits to adaptation to extreme temperatures, and sheds light on a yet underestimated societal impact of climate change: conflict in the digital sphere with implications for both societal cohesion and mental health.

Detecting hate tweets in more than four billion tweets from U.S. users with our AI-algorithm and combining them with weather data, we found that both the absolute number and the share of hate tweets rise outside a climate comfort zone: People tend to show a more aggressive online behavior when its either too cold or too hot outside, states PIK scientist Annika Stechemesser, first author of the study to be published inThe Lancet Planetary Health.

Being the target of onlinehate speechis a serious threat to peoples mental health. The psychological literature tells us that online hate can aggravate mental health conditions especially for young people and marginalized groups, she adds.

We see that outside the feel-good window of 1221C (5470F) online hate increases up to 12% for colder temperatures and up to 22% for hotter temperatures across the U.S.

The well-tempered tweet: Fewest hate tweets at 1518 C (5965F) across the U.S.

To arrive at these findings, the authors used a machine-learning approach to identify approximately 75 million English-phrased hate tweets in a data set consisting of more than 4 billion tweets posted on Twitter in the U.S. between 2014 and 2020. Subsequently, the authors analyzed how the number of hate tweets changed when local temperatures increased or decreased.

In defining hate speech, the researchers were guided by the official UN definition: Cases of discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, color, descent, gender or other identity factor.

Across the U.S., the authors found low levels of hate tweets in a feel-good window of 1221C (5470 F); the minimum of hate tweets is reached for temperatures between 15 and 18C (5965F).

Temperatures hotter and colder are linked to increases in hatetweets. The precise feel-good temperature window varies a little across climate zones, depending on which temperatures are common.

Temperatures above 30C (86 degrees Fahrenheit) are, however, consistently linked to strong increases in online hate across allclimate zonesand socioeconomic differences such as income, religious beliefs or political preferences.

This points to limits of temperature adaptation capability: Even in high-income areas where people can afford air condition[ing] and other heat mitigation options, we observe an increase in hate speech on extremely hot days.

In other words: There is a limit to what people can take. Thus, there are likely limits of adaptation toextreme temperaturesand these are lower than those set by our mere physiological limits, says Anders Levermann, head of Complexity Science at the Potsdam Institute, researcher at the Columbia University in the U.S., and co-author of the study.

The hidden climate impact: Mental health

The consequences of more aggressive online behavior can be severe, as hate speech has been found to have negative impacts on the mental health of online hates victims. It can also be predictive of hate crimes in the offline world.

For centuries, researchers have grappled with the question of how climate conditions affect human behavior and societal stability, Leonie Wenz, working group leader at the Potsdam Institute who led the study, explains.

Now, with ongoing climate change, it is more important than ever. Our results highlight online hate speech as a new impact channel through which climate change can affect overall societal cohesion and peoples mental health.

So that means that curbing emissions very rapidly and drastically will not only benefit the outer world. Protecting our climate from excessive global warming is also critical to ourmental health.

Author: Press OfficeSource: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact ResearchContact: Press Office Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact ResearchImage: The image is in the public domain

Original Research: Open access.Temperature impacts on hate speech online: evidence from 4 billion geolocated tweets from the USA by Annika Stechemesser et al. Lancet Planetary Health

Abstract

Temperature impacts on hate speech online: evidence from 4 billion geolocated tweets from the USA

A link between weather and aggression in the offline world has been established across a variety of societal settings. Simultaneously, the rapid digitalisation of nearly every aspect of everyday life has led to a high frequency of interpersonal conflicts online. Hate speech online has become a prevalent problem that has been shown to aggravate mental health conditions, especially among young people and marginalised groups. We examine the effect of temperature on the occurrence of hate speech on the social media platform Twitter and interpret the results in the context of the interlinkage between climate change, human behaviour, and mental health.

In this quantitative empirical study, we used a supervised machine learning approach to identify hate speech in a dataset containing around 4 billion geolocated tweets from 773 cities across the USA between May 1, 2014 and May 1, 2020. We statistically evaluated the changes in daily hate tweets against changes in local temperature, isolating the temperature influence from confounding factors using binned panel-regression models.

The prevalence of hate tweets was lowest at moderate temperatures (12 to 21C) and marked increases in the number of hate tweets were observed at hotter and colder temperatures, reaching up to 125% (95% CI 80165) for cold temperature extremes (6 to 3C) and up to 220% (95% CI 205235) for hot temperature extremes (42 to 45C). Outside of the moderate temperature range, the hate tweets also increased as a proportion of total tweeting activity. The quasi-quadratic shape of the temperaturehate tweet curve was robust across varying climate zones, income quartiles, religious and political beliefs, and both city-level and state-level aggregations. However, temperature ranges with the lowest prevalence of hate tweets were centred around the local temperature mean and the magnitude of the increases in hate tweets for hot and cold temperatures varied across the climate zones.

Our results highlight hate speech online as a potential channel through which temperature alters interpersonal conflict and societal aggression. We provide empirical evidence that hot and cold temperatures can aggravate aggressive tendencies online. The prevalence of the results across climatic and socioeconomic subgroups points to limitations in the ability of humans to adapt to temperature extremes.

Volkswagen Foundation.

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Neuroscience

Apollo Neuroscience Initiates IRB-Approved Clinical Trial Series to Understand Effectiveness of the Apollo Wearable for Treatment of PTSD – Business…

PITTSBURGH--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apollo NeuroscienceTM, makers of the first scientifically-validated wearable that improves the bodys resilience to stress, is running an IRB-approved clinical trial with the support of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a nonprofit sponsoring the most advanced clinical trials of a psychedelic-assisted therapy. The purpose of this study is to understand how the Apollo Neuro proprietary wearable touch therapy device impacts long-term outcomes following MDMA-assisted therapy in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Apollo is a wellness wearable device that helps improve sleep, relaxation, focus, and recovery by toning the nervous system, giving you more control over how you feel and your overall health. Interestingly, Apollo Neuro is the first technology with an issued patent to mitigate uncomfortable and undesirable experiences associated with medicine-assisted therapy (including psychedelic medicines and traditional medicines).

Worn on either the wrist, ankle, or clipped to clothing on any other part of the body, the Apollo wearable works by engaging with your sense of touch, like a wearable hug, delivering silent, soothing vibrations that help you feel safe and in control. Apollo Neuros scientifically validated technology trains your nervous system to bounce back from stress more quickly, making it easier to go from fight or flight to rest and digest.

Through years of clinical practice and research, Dr. Dave Rabin, MD, PhD, Board-Certified Psychiatrist, Neuroscientist, and Co-Founder/CIO of Apollo Neuroscience, found that patients with treatment-resistant mental health conditions, including PTSD, experienced substantial improvements when they were in calm, safe environments. Dr. Rabin and his colleagues also observed promising responses to therapeutic touch, empathic listening, and music in both the lab and clinical settings, along with reduced feelings of stress and anxiety. An evaluation of the published scientific literature confirmed these observations in over 100 scientific publications over the last few decades. After years of research in the Department of Psychology & Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, these insights and learnings were developed into the Apollo wearable; a device that improves the body's resilience to stress by sending gentle vibrations to the body that signal safety to the brain.

The Apollo wearable draws our attention to an undeniable link between stress, trauma and the human need to feel safe. Preliminary data from ongoing clinical trials of the Apollo technology have been very promising, including in research subjects with PTSD. The Apollo wearable has been found to improve sleep while reducing feelings of anxiety, low mood, and irritability, and helps build an emotionally-nurturing sense of safety and connection that the user can take with them.

Two more large clinical trials evaluating the Apollo wearable in PTSD patients are currently underway and recruiting participants. The first at the Rocky Mountain VA in Denver, CO, and the second, a nationwide trial, evaluating the Apollo wearable to sustain remission from PTSD following MDMA-assisted therapy. This second trial is open to anyone who has participated in a MAPS trial of MDMA-assisted therapy. To check your eligibility to participate, click here.

Weve seen tremendous results with the Apollo wearable in thousands of traumatized individuals and those who have participated in psychedelic-assisted therapy thus far,'' said Dr. Rabin. Some of the most promising responses were in people receiving ketamine-assisted therapy, particularly those new to psychedelic medicines or who have a lot of anxiety in anticipation of new experiences. We care about the outcomes, and anything we can do to help people stay in remission or feel better for longer periods of time is a big win for our field. We are very much looking forward to seeing how the Apollo wearable will contribute to the integration period following MDMA-assisted therapy.

Maximizing patient outcomes means exploring options for people to continue the healing and integration process after the course of MDMA-assisted therapy is complete,'' said Rick Doblin, Founder and Executive Director of MAPS. Thats where the Apollo wearable comes in. One of the advantages the Apollo wearable may provide is to help regulate a persons emotional response when theyre no longer in the clinic, but in the real world, facing real-life stressors. It gives people frequent non-verbal reminders of the things they learn in the treatment. The Apollo wearable is the first technology to be tested in a clinical trial by these MAPS study subjects. Were pleased to support the option for MDMA-assisted therapy study participants to try the Apollo wearable once the long-term follow up has been completed.

About Apollo Neuro

Apollo Neuroscience is pioneering a new category of wearable technology that actively improves health, using touch therapy to promote stress resilience, sleep, focus, recovery, and more. Worn on the wrist, ankle, or attached to your clothing as a clip, Apollo Neuros scientifically validated technology delivers gentle vibrations to the body that restore balance to the nervous system. By harnessing our natural response to soothing touch, the Apollo wearable is a simple, unobtrusive tool that delivers the benefits of mindfulness, without effort on the part of the user. The result? Less stress, more sleep. Less fatigue, more focus. The Apollo wearable is safe and non-invasive for adults and children alike. Developed by physicians and neuroscientists, the Apollo wearable has been tested in multiple studies and clinical trials and is proven to improve heart rate variability (HRV), a key biometric of stress resilience. For more information, visit apolloneuro.com.

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Apollo Neuroscience Initiates IRB-Approved Clinical Trial Series to Understand Effectiveness of the Apollo Wearable for Treatment of PTSD - Business...

Neuroscience

Modeling the social mind | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology – MIT News

Typically, it would take two graduate students to do the research that Setayesh Radkani is doing.

Driven by an insatiable curiosity about the human mind, she is working on two PhD thesis projects in two different cognitive neuroscience labs at MIT. For one, she is studying punishment as a social tool to influence others. For the other, she is uncovering the neural processes underlying social learning that is, learning from others. By piecing together these two research programs, Radkani is hoping to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms underpinning social influence in the mind and brain.

Radkani lived in Iran for most of her life, growing up alongside her younger brother in Tehran. The two spent a lot of time together and have long been each others best friends. Her father is a civil engineer, and her mother is a midwife. Her parents always encouraged her to explore new things and follow her own path, even if it wasnt quite what they imagined for her. And her uncle helped cultivate her sense of curiosity, teaching her to always ask why as a way to understand how the world works.

Growing up, Radkani most loved learning about human psychology and using math to model the world around her. But she thought it was impossible to combine her two interests. Prioritizing math, she pursued a bachelors degree in electrical engineering at the Sharif University of Technology in Iran.

Then, late in her undergraduate studies, Radkani took a psychology course and discovered the field of cognitive neuroscience, in which scientists mathematically model the human mind and brain. She also spent a summer working in a computational neuroscience lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. Seeing a way to combine her interests, she decided to pivot and pursue the subject in graduate school.

An experience leading a project in her engineering ethics course during her final year of undergrad further helped her discover some of the questions that would eventually form the basis of her PhD. The project investigated why some students cheat and how to change this.

Through this project I learned how complicated it is to understand the reasons that people engage in immoral behavior, and even more complicated than that is how to devise policies and react in these situations in order to change peoples attitudes, Radkani says. It was this experience that made me realize that Im interested in studying the human social and moral mind.

She began looking into social cognitive neuroscience research and stumbled upon a relevant TED talk by Rebecca Saxe, the John W. Jarve Professor in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, who would eventually become one of Radkanis research advisors. Radkani knew immediately that she wanted to work with Saxe. But she needed to first get into the BCS PhD program at MIT, a challenging obstacle given her minimal background in the field.

After two application cycles and a years worth of graduate courses in cognitive neuroscience, Radkani was accepted into the program. But to come to MIT, she had to leave her family behind. Coming from Iran, Radkani has a single-entry visa, making it difficult for her to travel outside the U.S. She hasnt been able to visit her family since starting her PhD and wont be able to until at least after she graduates. Her visa also limits her research contributions, restricting her from attending conferences outside the U.S. That is definitely a huge burden on my education and on my mental health, she says.

Still, Radkani is grateful to be at MIT, indulging her curiosity in the human social mind. And shes thankful for her supportive family, who she calls over FaceTime every day.

Modeling how people think about punishment

In Saxes lab, Radkani is researching how people approach and react to punishment, through behavioral studies and neuroimaging. By synthesizing these findings, shes developing a computational model of the mind that characterizes how people make decisions in situations involving punishment, such as when a parent disciplines a child, when someone punishes their romantic partner, or when the criminal justice system sentences a defendant. With this model, Radkani says she hopes to better understand when and why punishment works in changing behavior and influencing beliefs about right and wrong, and why sometimes it fails.

Punishment isnt a new research topic in cognitive neuroscience, Radkani says, but in previous studies, scientists have often only focused on peoples behavior in punitive situations and havent considered the thought processes that underlie those behaviors. Characterizing these thought processes, though, is key to understanding whether punishment in a situation can be effective in changing peoples attitudes.

People bring their prior beliefs into a punitive situation. Apart from moral beliefs about the appropriateness of different behaviors, you have beliefs about the characteristics of the people involved, and you have theories about their intentions and motivations, Radkani says. All those come together to determine what you do or how you are influenced by punishment, given the circumstances. Punishers decide a suitable punishment based on their interpretation of the situation, in light of their beliefs. Targets of punishment then decide whether theyll change their attitude as a result of the punishment, depending on their own beliefs. Even outside observers make decisions, choosing whether to keep or change their moral beliefs based on what they see.

To capture these decision-making processes, Radkani is developing a computational model of the mind for punitive situations. The model mathematically represents peoples beliefs and how they interact with certain features of the situation to shape their decisions. The model then predicts a punishers decisions, and how punishment will influence the target and observers. Through this model, Radkani will provide a foundational understanding of how people think in various punitive situations.

Researching the neural mechanisms of social learning

In parallel, working in the lab of Professor Mehrdad Jazayeri, Radkani is studying social learning, uncovering its underlying neural processes. Through social learning, people learn from other peoples experiences and decisions, and incorporate this socially acquired knowledge into their own decisions or beliefs.

Humans are extraordinary in their social learning abilities, however our primary form of learning, shared by all other animals, is learning from self-experience. To investigate how learning from others is similar to or different from learning from our own experiences, Radkani has designed a two-player video game that involves both types of learning. During the game, she and her collaborators in Jazayeris lab record neural activity in the brain. By analyzing these neural measurements, they plan to uncover the computations carried out by neural circuits during social learning, and compare those to learning from self-experience.

Radkani first became curious about this comparison as a way to understand why people sometimes draw contrasting conclusions from very similar situations. For example, if I get Covid from going to a restaurant, Ill blame the restaurant and say it was not clean, Radkani says. But if I hear the same thing happen to my friend, Ill say its because they were not careful. Radkani wanted to know the root causes of this mismatch in how other peoples experiences affect our beliefs and judgements differently from our own similar experiences, particularly because it can lead to errors that color the way that we judge other people, she says.

By combining her two research projects, Radkani hopes to better understand how social influence works, particularly in moral situations. From there, she has a slew of research questions that shes eager to investigate, including: How do people choose who to trust? And which types of people tend to be the most influential? As Radkanis research grows, so does her curiosity.

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Modeling the social mind | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT News

Neuroscience

How Does Nature Nurture the Brain? – Neuroscience News

Summary: An hour-long stroll in nature helps decrease activity in an area of the brain associated with stress processing, a new study reports.

Source: Max Planck Institute

After a 60-minute walk in nature, activity in brain regions involved in stress processing decreases.

This is the finding of a recent study by the Lise Meitner Group for Environmental Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, published inMolecular Psychiatry.

Living in a city is a well-known risk factor for developing amental disorder, while living close to nature is largely beneficial for mental health and the brain.

A central brain region involved in stress processing, the amygdala, has been shown to be less activated during stress in people who live inrural areas, compared to those who live in cities, hinting at the potential benefits of nature.

But so far the hen-and-egg problem could not be disentangled, namely whether nature actually caused the effects in the brain or whether the particular individuals chose to live in rural or urban regions, says Sonja Sudimac, predoctoral fellow in the Lise Meitner Group for Environmental Neuroscience and lead author of the study.

To achieve causal evidence, the researchers from the Lise Meitner Group for Environmental Neuroscience examinedbrain activityin regions involved in stress processing in 63 healthy volunteers before and after a one-hour walk in Grunewald forest or a shopping street with traffic in Berlin using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

The results of the study revealed that activity in the amygdala decreased after the walk in nature, suggesting that nature elicits beneficial effects onbrain regionsrelated to stress.

The results support the previously assumed positive relationship between nature and brain health, but this is the first study to prove the causal link. Interestingly, the brain activity after the urban walk in these regions remained stable and did not show increases, which argues against a commonly held view that urban exposure causes additional stress, explains Simone Khn, head of the Lise Meitner Group for Environmental Neuroscience.

The authors show that nature has a positive impact on brain regions involved in stress processing and that it can already be observed after a one-hour walk. This contributes to the understanding of how our physical living environment affects brain and mental health.

Even a short exposure to nature decreases amygdala activity, suggesting that a walk in nature could serve as a preventive measure against developing mental health problems and buffering the potentially disadvantageous impact of the city on the brain.

The results go in line with a previous study (2017,Scientific Reports) which showed thatcity dwellerswho lived close to the forest had a physiologically healthier amygdala structure and were therefore presumably better able to cope with stress.

This new study again confirms the importance for urban design policies to create more accessible green areas in cities in order to enhance citizensmental healthand well-being.

In order to investigate beneficial effects of nature in different populations and age groups, the researchers are currently working on a study examining how a one-hour walk in natural versus urban environments impactsstressin mothers and their babies.

Author: Press OfficeSource: Max Planck InstituteContact: Press Office Max Planck InstituteImage: The image is in the public domain

Original Research: Open access.How nature nurtures: Amygdala activity decreases as the result of a one-hour walk in nature by Sonja Sudimac et al. Molecular Psychiatry

Abstract

How nature nurtures: Amygdala activity decreases as the result of a one-hour walk in nature

Since living in cities is associated with an increased risk for mental disorders such as anxiety disorders, depression, and schizophrenia, it is essential to understand how exposure to urban and natural environments affects mental health and the brain.

It has been shown that the amygdala is more activated during a stress task in urban compared to rural dwellers. However, no study so far has examined the causal effects of natural and urban environments on stress-related brain mechanisms.

To address this question, we conducted an intervention study to investigate changes in stress-related brain regions as an effect of a one-hour walk in an urban (busy street) vs. natural environment (forest). Brain activation was measured in 63 healthy participants, before and after the walk, using a fearful faces task and a social stress task.

Our findings reveal that amygdala activation decreases after the walk in nature, whereas it remains stable after the walk in an urban environment.

These results suggest that going for a walkin nature can have salutogenic effects on stress-related brain regions, and consequently, it may act as a preventive measure against mental strain and potentially disease.

Given rapidly increasing urbanization, the present results mayinfluence urban planning to create more accessible green areas and to adapt urban environments in a way that will be beneficial for citizens mental health.

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How Does Nature Nurture the Brain? - Neuroscience News