Category Archives: Neuroscience

Neuroscience

Growing Evidence That Mentally Ill Youths Become Less Healthy Adults – Duke Today

DURHAM, N.C. -- A new pair of studies from a Duke research teams long-term work in New Zealand make the case that mental health struggles in early life can lead to poorer physical health and advanced aging in adulthood.

But because mental health problems peak early in life and can be identified, the researchers say that more investment in prompt mental health care could be used to prevent later diseases and lower societal healthcare costs.

The same people who experience psychiatric conditions when they are young go on to experience excess age-related physical diseases and neurodegenerative diseases when they are older adults, explained Terrie Moffitt, the Nannerl O. Keohane professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke, who is the senior author on both studies.

The findings in a paper appearing Feb. 17 in JAMA Psychiatry come from the long-term Dunedin Study, which has tested and monitored the health and wellbeing of a thousand New Zealanders born in 1972 and 73 from their birth to past age 45.

In middle age, the study participants who had a history of youthful psychopathology were aging at a faster pace, had declines in sensory, motor and cognitive functions, and were rated as looking older than their peers. This pattern held even after the data were controlled for health factors such as overweight, smoking, medications and prior physical disease. Their young mental health issues included mainly anxiety, depression, and substance abuse, but also schizophrenia.

You can identify the people at risk for physical illnesses much earlier in life, said Jasmin Wertz, a postdoctoral researcher at Duke who led the study. If you can improve their mental health in childhood and adolescence, its possible that you might intervene to improve their later physical health and aging.

A related study by the same team that appeared in JAMA Network Open in January used a different approach and looked at 30 years of hospital records for 2.3 million New Zealanders aged 10 to 60 from 1988 to 2018. It also found a strong connection between early-life mental health diagnoses and later-life medical and neurological illnesses.

That analysis, led by former Duke postdoctoral researcher Leah Richmond-Rakerd, showed that young individuals with mental disorders were more likely to develop subsequent physical diseases and to die earlier than people without mental disorders. People with mental illnesses experienced more hospitalizations for physical conditions, spent more time in hospitals and accumulated more healthcare costs over the subsequent 30 years.

"Our healthcare system often divides treatment between the brain and the body, but integrating the two could benefit population health, said Richmond-Rakerd, who is now an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.

Investing more resources in treating young peoples mental-health problems is a window of opportunity to prevent future physical diseases in older adults, Moffitt said. Young people with mental health problems go on to become very costly medical patients in later life.

In a 2019 commentary for JAMA Psychiatry, Moffitt and her research partner Avshalom Caspi, the Edward M. Arnett professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke, made the argument that mental health providers have an opportunity to forestall later health problems and other social costs by intervening in the lives of younger people. Their body of work is showing that mental disorders can be reliably predicted from childhood risk factors such as poverty, maltreatment, low IQ, poor self-control and family mental health issues. And because populations in the developed world are becoming more dominated by older people, the time to make those investments in prevention is now, they said.

These studies were supported by the U.S. National Institute on Aging, the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Development, and the UK Medical Research Council. Additional support came from the Jacobs Foundation, the Lundbeck Foundation and the New Zealand Health Research Council (R01-AG032282, R01-AG049789, MR/P005918, P30 AG028716, P30 AG034424, 15-265, R288-2018-380, P2C HD065563). The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study is supported by the New Zealand Health Research Council and New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment.

CITATIONS: Association of History of Psychopathology With Accelerated Aging at Midlife, Jasmin Wertz, Avshalom Caspi, Antony Ambler, Jonathan Broadbent, Robert J. Hancox, HonaLee Harrington, Renate M. Houts, Joan H. Leung, Richie Poulton, Suzanne C. Purdy, Sandhya Ramrakha, Line Jee Hartmann Rasmussen, Leah S. Richmond-Rakerd, Peter R. Thorne, Graham A. Wilson, Terrie E. Moffitt. JAMA-Psychiatry, Feb. 17, 2021. DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2020.4626

"Longitudinal Associations of Mental Disorders With Physical Diseases and Mortality Among 2.3 Million New Zealand Citizens," Leah S. Richmond-Rakerd, Stephanie DSouza, Barry J. Milne, Avshalom Caspi, Terrie E. Moffitt. JAMA Network Open, Jan. 13, 2021. DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.33448

Psychiatrys Opportunity to Prevent the Rising Burden of Age-related Disease, Terrie Moffitt, Avshalom Caspi. JAMA-Psychiatry, March 27, 2019. DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2019.0037

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Growing Evidence That Mentally Ill Youths Become Less Healthy Adults - Duke Today

Neuroscience

Demystifying the teenage brain – The Bay’s News First – SunLive

At 31-years-old, I am still a teenager. That is, at least, according to the popular neuroscience educator Nathan Wallis.

He informs me that as a male middle child, still under the age of 32, I could still be in the midst of my own adolescence.

It might explain the mood swings and predilection to video games.

You are actually an adolescent yourself then, Nathan insists. You wont have an adult brain until you are about 32.

Nathan suggests his teen brain lasted well into conventional adulthood.

I was sort of 33 when I thought: I sort of get this whole grown up thing now and how to be an adult and what I want to do with my life.

Before that I very much felt like I was 15 and pretending to be an adult.

Nathan is leading a seminar called The Teen Brain at Tauranga Girls College this month with the aim of demystifying some of the myths surrounding teenage brain development.

He has grown-up children himself and is now enjoying life as a grandfather, so he knows all too well about the trials of raising a teenager.

As he explains, for much of a childs teenage years the frontal cortex part of the brain is shut for renovations.

The whole brain isnt shut or theyd be dead! Nathan jokes, but their ability to control emotions, their ability to organise themselves, is supposed to go backwards. Adolescence is, essentially, brain number four, the frontal cortex, and it is shut for renovations for about three years.

With words such as frontal cortex and neuroscience flying around, the seminar sounds complex, but Nathan believes he has developed a way of cutting through the jargon and making the talk accessible to anyone with a brain.

A big part of what the seminar is about is demystifying it. Taking out the big words and saying this is this.

It is surprisingly and incredibly simple for what the topic is, which is complicated neuroscience.

Nathan believes the talk will be beneficial to anyone - parents, teens, those who work with teens, or perhaps those who have suffered trauma in their youth may find the seminar helpful. He will also touch on the topic of alcohol and marijuanas impact on the teenage brain.

The promise of a top tip for parents might be worth the admission fee alone.

I can teach parents in 10 minutes how to be in the top percentage of communicators, he says. If they do that they will vastly improve the quality of their relationship with their teenagers.

The Teen Brain seminar takes place at 7.30pm on February 28 at Tauranga Girls College. For more information, visit: http://www.nathanwallis.com

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Demystifying the teenage brain - The Bay's News First - SunLive

Neuroscience

Neuroscience Antibodies and Assays Market Outlook 2026: Market Trends, Segmentation, Market Growth and Competitive Landscape with key players position…

The Neuroscience Antibodies and Assays Market grew in 2019, as compared to 2018, according to our report, Neuroscience Antibodies and Assays Market is likely to have subdued growth in 2020 due to weak demand on account of reduced industry spending post Covid-19 outbreak. Further, Neuroscience Antibodies and Assays Market will begin picking up momentum gradually from 2021 onwards and grow at a healthy CAGR between 2021-2025.

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Neuroscience

USC produces more Fulbright students in 2020-21 than other Calif. schools – USC News

USC has been named one of the countrys top producers of U.S. Fulbright students for the ninth straight year.

Twenty-five USC students received the prestigious grant during the 2020-21 award cycle. Thats the most Fulbright student award recipients produced by USC since the 2008-2009 cycle. USC joined only 17 other colleges and universities named as top producing institutions this year.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program awards recipients one-year grants to study, conduct research or teach English around the world. The program was created to improve understanding between people of different countries. It is primarily funded by the U.S. Department of State, and awards are given to about 2,200 students each year.

USC produced more Fulbright students this year than any school in California, including Stanford University, UCLA and University of California, Berkeley. Additionally, 31% of USC applicants were awarded Fulbrights, exceeding success rates at Harvard and Yale universities.

Experts at USC Academic Honors and Fellowships help USC students seeking competitive fellowships and other prestigious programs by conducting mock interviews, essay reviews and other advice.

Below is a list of 24 of USCs 25 grant recipients for the 2020-21 cycle, as released to The Chronicle of Higher Education on Monday; one recipient wished to remain anonymous. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some students in this group deferred their awards, others declined and other recipients applied for the next cycle to be considered again.

Lena Aloumari graduated in May 2017 with a Master of Arts in Teaching from the USC Rossier School of Education. Aloumari was awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship grant to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, where she will focus on teaching English to Jordanian university and secondary school students. She will also research access to quality education for disenfranchised communities.

Natalie Balladarsch graduated in December 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts in public relations and a minor in Spanish from the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Balladarsch was awarded a Fulbright grant to Spain, where she will teach at a university in Madrid. She will examine the impact of immigrant communities on Spanish culture and develop an international dance project in Madrid. Balladarsch plans to pursue a global career with an emphasis on diversity of thought and experience.

Yasmin Barkett graduated from USC Dornsife in May 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts in international relations and a minor in psychology and law. Barkett was awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant grant to Colombia, where she will serve as a teaching assistant at a university. She also hopes to teach free English classes in the local community and bridge the opportunity gaps between those attending a university and those who cannot. The Stockton native plans to pursue a career in international education development.

Dillon Brown graduated from USC Dornsife in May 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in political economy and a Bachelor of Science in public policy and law. Brown was awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant grant to Greece, where he will teach students at local schools in Athens. He plans to pursue a career in public policy, focusing on education and other economic social issues.

Alex Bruno graduated in May 2020 with a Bachelor of Science in neuroscience and a minor in the dynamics of early childhood from USC Dornsife. Bruno was awarded a Fulbright research grant to Poland to study fetal cardiology, analyzing how time of diagnosis affects long term outcomes for children with congenital heart defects. He plans to apply to medical school and pursue a career in cardiothoracic surgery.

Ashley Chainani graduated in December 2019 with a Bachelor of Science in business administration from the USC Marshall School of Business. Chainani was awarded a Fulbright grant to Spain, where she will teach English and explore how Spains educational system allows for intergenerational socioeconomic mobility. She plans to pursue a career in public policy or nonprofit work.

Lisa de Rfols graduated in May 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in economics and international relations with a minor in French. A Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Award will enable de Rfols to travel to Colombia, and she will use a Boren Scholarship to learn Portuguese in Brazil. She plans to pursue a career in international economic development, focusing on sustainability and forced migration.

Nathan Duong graduated from USC Dornsife in May 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in cognitive science and a minor in the dynamics of early childhood. He was awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship grant to the Canary Islands in Spain in an early childhood classroom. He plans to start a surf program as a means of allowing his students to practice their English in a natural setting.

Marisa Fuse graduated in May 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts from USC Dornsife in international relations and law, history and culture. She was awarded a Fulbright teaching grant to South Korea, where she will teach English and explore the cross-cultural connections between the U.S. and Korea. After her fellowship, she plans to go into public policy and focus on criminal justice reform.

Eva Isakovic graduated in December 2020 with a USC Dornsife degree in economics as a Trustee Scholar. She was awarded a Boren Scholarship to study Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian in Belgrade, Serbia, and Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. After graduation, she will return to Sarajevo with a Fulbright research grant to examine the persisting effects of civil war on Bosnian political engagement and economic health. Eva plans to pursue a doctorate in comparative politics and hopes to work on future ethnic reconciliation and democratization policy in areas affected by conflict.

Abigail Jackson graduated in May 2020 with a Bachelor of Science in computational neuroscience and a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy. The USC Dornsife alumna was awarded a Fulbright research grant to Germany, where she will work with bioprocess engineerYvonne Genzels team at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems. She plans to pursue a doctorate after her Fulbright grant period.

Ichigo Mina Kaneko is a doctoral candidate in comparative studies in literature and culture at USC. Kaneko was awarded a Fulbright grant to Japan for doctoral dissertation research on the role and symbolism of the mushroom in Japanese literature and media after WWII. She is a recipient of the Provosts Fellowship and a candidate for the Translation Studies and Visual Studies Research Institute.

Nayanika Kapoor graduated from USC in May 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and political science, with a minor in East Asian languages and cultures. Nayanika was awarded a Fulbright grant to Taiwan, where she will be teaching English. She plans to pursue a career in political communication and policy focusing on race and gender.

Catherine Knox graduated from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering in May 2020 with a Bachelor of Science in environmental engineering with a minor in international relations. Knox was awarded a Fulbright graduate study grant to attend Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands to pursue a masters degree in environment and resource management, specializing in water and society. She plans to pursue a career in transboundary water management, focused on the integration of technology with water policy.

Aarohi Mahableshwarkar graduated in May 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in international relations and a minor in natural science from USC Dornsife. Mahableshwarkar was awarded a Fulbright research grant to India, where she will examine the efficacy of government policies in supporting the proliferation of opioid addiction treatment. She plans to earn a medical degree and pursue a career in global health, working at the nexus of health care, science and policy.

Kristen Mascarenhas graduated in May 2020 with a Bachelor of Science in neuroscience and a minor in health policy. Mascarenhas was awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant grant to India. She plans to attend medical school and pursue a career as a pediatrician, focusing on issues of health equity and education.

Jenna Mazza graduated in May 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in international relations and Spanish. She was awarded a Fulbright research grant to Spain to investigate the individual impact of Barcelonas asylum policies on refugees in the city. The USC Dornsife alumna plans to pursue a career in international development with a focus on gender and forced migration policy.

Chinyere Nwodim graduated in May 2020 with a Master of Fine Arts in writing for the screen and television in the USC School of Cinematic Arts. She received a Fulbright research award to Brazil, where she will explore how the synthesis of Brazils many cultural identities is represented in science fiction and fantasy and what these stories reveal about deeper fears, myths and hopes. She plans to pursue a career as a writer and filmmaker.

Gregory Randolph is a doctoral candidate in urban planning and development at the USC Price School of Public Policy. He was awarded a Fulbright research fellowship for his dissertation work on rural-to-urban transitions in India.

Jorge Sandoval graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts in May 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in interactive entertainment game design and a minor in computer programming. Sandoval was awarded a Fulbright English teacher grant to Mexico, where he will teach English through the use of computer programming and video games. He plans to pursue a career in Foreign Service.

Michael Smith graduated in May 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in communication from the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Smith was awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Fellowship in Bulgaria, where he will teach high school students English. After his fellowship he plans on pursuing a law degree with an emphasis in international law.

Kurtis Weatherford graduated in May 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in international relations and political economy with a minor in human security and geospatial intelligence. He was awarded a Fulbright teaching grant to Greece, where he will teach English while exploring opportunities to work in refugee and climate resilience education. The USC Dornsife alumnus plans to pursue graduate education and a career in public policy with a focus on climate and migration policy.

Melissa Xu aims to graduate with a masters in global medicine from the Keck School of Medicine of USC after receiving a bachelors in neuroscience and a minor in Spanish from USC Dornsife. She received a Fulbright grant to teach English in Ecuador, where she also hopes to serve as a health volunteer, especially after the effects of COVID-19. She plans to pursue a future in medicine focusing on limited resource health care.

Sarah Yeomans plans to graduate from USC this year with a doctorate in art history. She is an archaeologist who specializes in medical practices, technologies and the impact of pandemic events in ancient Rome. Yeomans was awarded a Fulbright research fellowship to Turkey, where she conducts archaeological research at Rhodiapolis, a Graeco-Roman city with a large medical complex that dates to the second century C.E.

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USC produces more Fulbright students in 2020-21 than other Calif. schools - USC News

Neuroscience

Mental illness in early life linked with poorer health and advanced aging in adulthood – News-Medical.Net

A new pair of studies from a Duke research team's long-term work in New Zealand make the case that mental health struggles in early life can lead to poorer physical health and advanced aging in adulthood.

But because mental health problems peak early in life and can be identified, the researchers say that more investment in prompt mental health care could be used to prevent later diseases and lower societal healthcare costs.

The same people who experience psychiatric conditions when they are young go on to experience excess age-related physical diseases and neurodegenerative diseases when they are older adults."

Terrie Moffitt, Senior Author, Nannerl O. Keohane Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University

The findings in a paper appearing Feb. 17 in JAMA Psychiatry come from the long-term Dunedin Study, which has tested and monitored the health and wellbeing of a thousand New Zealanders born in 1972 and '73 from their birth to past age 45.

In middle age, the study participants who had a history of youthful psychopathology were aging at a faster pace, had declines in sensory, motor and cognitive functions, and were rated as looking older than their peers. This pattern held even after the data were controlled for health factors such as overweight, smoking, medications and prior physical disease. Their young mental health issues included mainly anxiety, depression, and substance abuse, but also schizophrenia.

"You can identify the people at risk for physical illnesses much earlier in life," said Jasmin Wertz, a postdoctoral researcher at Duke who led the study. "If you can improve their mental health in childhood and adolescence, it's possible that you might intervene to improve their later physical health and aging."

A related study by the same team that appeared in JAMA Network Open in January used a different approach and looked at 30 years of hospital records for 2.3 million New Zealanders aged 10 to 60 from 1988 to 2018. It also found a strong connection between early-life mental health diagnoses and later-life medical and neurological illnesses.

That analysis, led by former Duke postdoctoral researcher Leah Richmond-Rakerd, showed that young individuals with mental disorders were more likely to develop subsequent physical diseases and to die earlier than people without mental disorders. People with mental illnesses experienced more hospitalizations for physical conditions, spent more time in hospitals and accumulated more healthcare costs over the subsequent 30 years.

"Our healthcare system often divides treatment between the brain and the body, but integrating the two could benefit population health," said Richmond-Rakerd, who is now an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.

"Investing more resources in treating young people's mental-health problems is a window of opportunity to prevent future physical diseases in older adults," Moffitt said. "Young people with mental health problems go on to become very costly medical patients in later life."

In a 2019 commentary for JAMA Psychiatry, Moffitt and her research partner Avshalom Caspi, the Edward M. Arnett professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke, made the argument that mental health providers have an opportunity to forestall later health problems and other social costs by intervening in the lives of younger people.

Their body of work is showing that mental disorders can be reliably predicted from childhood risk factors such as poverty, maltreatment, low IQ, poor self-control and family mental health issues. And because populations in the developed world are becoming more dominated by older people, the time to make those investments in prevention is now, they said.

Source:

Journal reference:

Wertz, J., et al. (2021) Association of History of Psychopathology With Accelerated Aging at Midlife. JAMA Psychiatry. doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2020.4626.

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Mental illness in early life linked with poorer health and advanced aging in adulthood - News-Medical.Net

Neuroscience

A New Theory for Why We Dream – Tufts Now

Whats the point of dreams? We all have them, for hours each day of our lives, even if we dont remember. Plenty of mammals and birds dream, too. When you see Fido sound asleep with his eyes rapidly moving, his paws twitching, you know for sure that hes in dreamland.

Lots of theories have been offered: dreams are used to regulate emotion, like dealing with fears; to consolidate memory, replaying things from your day to help remember them; to solve, or on the other hand to forget, real-world problems. Another theory suggests they help the brain predict its own future states.

None of those theories seem quite right to Erik Hoel, a research assistant professor at Tufts Allen Discovery Center who studies consciousness, modeling the relationships between experiences and brain states.

In his research, Hoel works with artificial neural networksmachine learning. Think of Deep Mind, the Google artificial intelligence program that beat the best human players at the almost infinitely complex Japanese strategy game Go.

It turns out that when such machine learning programs do the same task again and again, they can become overfitable to do that one thing really well, but not to learn lessons and create general knowledge that can be applied to different tasks. To prevent that, programmers often introduce random variables, or noise in the data.

In essence, thats what Hoel thinks our brains are doing when we dream: breaking the cycle of repetitive daily tasksfilling out spreadsheets, delivering mail, tightening pipe fittingswith an infusion of discord, keeping our brains fit.

Have you ever had a problem that just seemed to defy solution? You think and think, but you remain stuck. Then you go to bed, wake up the next morning, and presto, the solution appears. It might well be, Hoel would say, that your thinking was overfitted for the taskjust like a machine learning program in need of disruption.

This fits with anecdotal reports of plateauing in terms of performance on a task, like a video game, only to sleep and have increased performance the next day, Hoel says. There is also the long-standing traditional association between dreams and creativity.

He recently published a paper on what he calls the overfitted brain hypothesis, and its been garnering attention in the pressit was the cover story for a recent issue of New Scientist magazine.

How Hoel came to the theory surprisingly begins not with neuroscience, but fiction.

When he was young, he loved reading. His mother ran the bookstore Jabberwocky in Newburyport, Mass., and he spent a lot of time there, like the proverbial kid in a candy store, immersed in fictional worlds. He always wanted to be a writer, but ended up studying cognitive science at Hampshire College, and went on to get a Ph.D. in neuroscience. (He did become a fiction writer, too: his novel The Revelations will be published by the Overlook Press in early April.)

His focus as a student was consciousness, but his love of reading also made him wonder why people are so drawn to reading novels, which always struck me from a scientific perspective as kind of a very strange activity, he says. Fictions are essentially liestheres no such thing as Hogwarts. Harry Potter never went there. Its the opposite of facts.

Fiction has all sorts of purposesaesthetic, emotional, even politicalbut probably also has an evolutionary role, Hoel says. I think that one could argue that there is a sort of deep biological need for fictions in humans, he says. Just look at all the TV shows, novels, movies, and video games we consume for an ungodly amount of our waking hours. Those diversions actually serve deep down some sort of fundamental purpose, he says.

He soon started seeing links between fiction and dreaming. Take the short stories by Jorge Borges, Hoel says. They are rife with narrative and yet quite otherworldly at the same timejust like dreams. It made him think there must be some evolved purpose of dreaming, a function seen across many species of animals.

He soon started to research sleep and dreaming. But looking closely at the scientific literature about dreaming, he came away with more questions than answers. One prominent recent theory says dreams are created for memory consolidation; but why, Hoel asks, do the dreams so rarely actually mimic those memories? Another says that dreams are for emotion processing, but theres little empirical evidence for it.

One fact that many dream theories also overlook is that while reptiles and many other animals dont dream, mammals and birds apparently do. Dreaming is so ubiquitous across mammals and even birds that there must be a good reason for it, he says.

Its widely noted in neuroscience that many traits are highly conserved, meaning that brains seem to operate in much the same way across the animal kingdom, Hoel says. The human brain, while basically getting more bang for your buck in terms of space and having some more frontal and prefrontal regions, is not significantly different in its neuroanatomy from a canines, he points out.

Its also true, Erik Hoel says, that evolution is a great multitasker, so Id be surprised if theres just one absolute reason for dreaming and no other reason.

So what does differentiate mammals from reptiles? Mothers, says Hoel. When an iguana is born, natures basically just booting up the iguana programalmost everything is just innate for them. Reptiles therefore dont actively learn. On the other hand, young mammals learn from their moms (and dads, too) as they develop and are cared for.

Its unsurprising, Hoel says, that the creatures that have to learn to survive have the most pronounced dreaming and signs of dreaming. Its likely a sign of dreamings evolutionary importance for learningand survival.

While metaphors of brains as computers is a bit overdone, Hoel says, in this case, reversing the metaphor to say that brains are like neural networks is close to the mark. After all, he says, those neural networks were designed by engineers to mimic human circuitry.

The overlap between how humans dream, and how machine learning experts avoid pure memorization and help programs transfer knowledge from one problem to others lends credence to the idea that the evolved function of dreaming is for precisely these purposes, he says. It seems that the most effective way to trigger dreams about something is to have subjects perform repetitively on a novel task like Tetris, likely because the visual system has become overfitted to the task.

Sleep is widely known to have a restorative effectjust try going without it for a day or two and see how well you function. Precisely how that works is not completely known. Current thinking is that sleep evolved as some sort of metabolic housekeeping activityat one stage of sleep, the cerebral spinal fluid essentially flushes waste products through the lymphatic system.

But dreaming seems to happen during other parts of sleep, and apparently occurs more than we realize; we tend to remember our dreams only if we wake in their midst. Hoels theory is that dreaming is an exaptation, a trait that evolved for one purpose but later takes on others.

In this case, he says, sleep evolved for molecular housekeeping purposes, and only when brains had to significantly learn during the organisms lifetime did the goal of avoiding overfitting and increasing generalization become adaptive.

Another key feature of Hoels theory is that it takes the phenomenology of dreams seriously. Our nightly hallucinogenic narratives, containing fabulist and unusual events, are exactly what dreams would be if they were fulfilling the role Hoel proposesadding noise to the thinking system.

The point of dreams is the dreams themselves, since they provide departures away from the statistically-biased input of an animals daily life, which can therefore increase performance, he says. It may seem paradoxical, but a dream of flying may actually help you keep your balance running.

Have you ever had a problem that just seemed to defy solution? You think and think, but you remain stuck. Then you go to bed, wake up the next morning, and presto, the solution appears. It might well be, Hoel would say, that your thinking was overfitted for the task.

And what about dreams that seem to be speaking to ushelping us understand our lives, remember loved ones, or even scare us?

Meaning in dreams, he says, is basically a side effect. I dont think dogs are imbuing their dreams with meaning, but they still dream, he says. Humans can imbue their dreams with meaning, but dreams should still have a purpose for all mammals who regularly do it, Hoel says.

Its also true, he says, that evolution is a great multitasker, so Id be surprised if theres just one absolute reason for dreaming and no other reason.

Hoel comes back to where he started: fiction. It is worth considering whether fictions, like novels or films, act as artificial dreams, accomplishing at least some of the same function, he says.

His theory, he says, suggests fictions, and perhaps the arts in general, may actually have an underlying cognitive utility in the form of improving generalization and preventing overfitting.

The tradition of fiction goes back much further than the first novel, he saysmaybe to the first storytelling shamans. Maybe thats part of the human secretwe export some of our learning finessing outside of the body, so that you dont have to just do it through dreams, he says. You can do it through these artificial dreams that maybe even are more impactful because theyre so well structured.

Taylor McNeil can be reached at taylor.mcneil@tufts.edu.

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A New Theory for Why We Dream - Tufts Now

Neuroscience

Study provides new insight into the effects of antidepressant drugs – News-Medical.net

The effects of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and other conventional antidepressants are believed to be based on their increasing the levels of serotonin and noradrenalin in synapses, while ketamine, a new rapid-acting antidepressant, is thought to function by inhibiting receptors for the neurotransmitter glutamate.

Neurotrophic factors regulate the development and plasticity of the nervous system. While all antidepressants increase the quantity and signaling of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in the brain, the drugs have so far been thought to act on BDNF indirectly, through serotonin or glutamate receptors.

A new study published this week in Cell demonstrates, however, that antidepressants bind directly to a BDNF receptor known as TrkB. This finding challenges the primary role of serotonin or glutamate receptors in the effects of antidepressants.

The international study, which was collaboratively led by the Neuroscience Center and the Department of Physics at the University of Helsinki, investigated the binding of antidepressants from different drug classes to the TrkB receptor. All the antidepressants examined, including fluoxetine (an SSRI), imipramine (a tricyclic antidepressant) and the rapid-acting ketamine interacted with TrkB.

We found that all antidepressants boost BDNF signaling by binding to its TrkB receptor. This signaling is necessary for the cellular and behavioral effects of antidepressants in our experimental models. The effects of antidepressant on plasticity do not therefore require increases in the serotonin levels or the inhibition of glutamate receptors, as previously thought."

Professor Eero Castrn, Study's Principal Investigator

The binding site of antidepressants in the transmembrane region of TrkB was identified through molecular modeling, performed in Professor Ilpo Vattulainen's research group at the Department of Physics, University of Helsinki. Biochemical binding studies and mutations introduced in the TrkB receptor verified the site.

Molecular modeling also demonstrated that the structure of TrkB is sensitive to the cholesterol concentration of the cell membrane. TrkB is displaced in cholesterol-rich membrane compartments, such as synaptic membranes.

"The drug binding stabilizes dimers, structures composed of two TrkB receptors, inhibiting the displacement of the TrkB receptors and increasing their quantity in synaptic cell membranes, which boosts the effects of BDNF. That is to say that the drugs do not directly activate TrkB. Instead, they sensitize the receptor to the effects of BDNF," Castrn explains.

In addition to findings pertaining to the effects of antidepressants, the study produced a substantial amount of new information on the structure and function of the growth factor receptor.

Ketamine, which has been used as an anesthetic, is becoming increasingly utilized as an antidepressant. The researchers were surprised to find that both slow-acting SSRIs and rapid-acting ketamine act by binding to the same site in TrkB.

SSRI drugs bind to the serotonin transporter protein much more avidly than to TrkB, but the binding of ketamine to the glutamate receptor and TrkB occurs at similar drug concentrations.

"Previous studies have shown that in SSRI therapy, drugs gradually reach the high brain concentration needed for binding to the TrkB receptor, whereas intravenously administered ketamine and esketamine as a nasal spray reach the level needed for binding quickly, in a matter of minutes. The difference in the onset of action for SSRIs and ketamine may be caused by their different capacity to reach in the brain the concentration needed for binding with TrkB receptors," Castrn says.

Source:

Journal reference:

Casarotto, P.C., et al. (2021) Antidepressant drugs act by directly binding to TRKB neurotrophin receptors. Cell. doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2021.01.034.

Link:
Study provides new insight into the effects of antidepressant drugs - News-Medical.net

Neuroscience

At Yale, new neuroscience institute to unravel the mysteries of cognition – Yale News

The human brain is the source and conduit of all ideas, beliefs, and dreams.

It drives us to produce art, literature, and science, to feel and describe love, to invent for survival and diversion alike.

Through it, we perceive, we wonder, we question: Why? How? What if?

Researchers at Yale University have been studying the brain for generations. Now, a new and historic philanthropic gift is launching an ambitious research enterprise devoted to the study of human cognition that will supercharge Yales neuroscience initiative and position the university to reveal the brain in its full, dynamic complexity.

The gift, made by Yale alumnus Joseph C. Tsai 86, 90 J.D., and his wife, Clara Wu Tsai, will establish the Wu Tsai Institute, a new kind of research organization that bridges the psychological, biological, and computational sciences. The Institute will pursue a mission to understand human cognition and explore human potential by sparking interdisciplinary inquiry. It will harness and amplify Yales strengths in neuroscience broadly defined, joining hundreds of researchers in a university-wide effort to understand the brain and mind at all levels from molecules and cells to circuits, systems, and behavior.

Research into the building blocks and emergent properties of the brain will address fundamental questions about human nature and potential: How do countless neurons and synapses transform sensations into perceptions, thoughts, and beliefs? What enables us to learn so much as young children, and can this be reawakened later in life? Why do we struggle to remember the past and pay attention to the present? Which cognitive capabilities are difficult for computers to mimic and why?

The answers to such questions offer the possibility of enlivening human experience, advancing mutual understanding, and improving society making education and organizations more effective, physical and mental health more durable, and technology more natural and supportive at work and home.

Understanding cognition is one of the greatest challenges in the history of science.

President Peter Salovey

Understanding cognition is one of the greatest challenges in the history of science, said Yale President Peter Salovey, a social psychologist and pioneer of the study of emotional intelligence. Thanks to the vision and generosity of Joe Tsai and Clara Wu Tsai, Yale will pursue a thrilling new approach to the intensive, long-term study of the brain and the wonders of the mind. This is a vast undertaking that advances Yale as a leader in scientific research, while promising insights that will improve life for people around the world.

Joe Tsai is co-founder and executive vice chairman of the global internet technology company Alibaba Group. Clara Wu Tsai, a former executive at American Express and Taobao Hong Kong, leads the family foundations work in supporting scientific research, economic mobility, social justice, and creativity in the arts. The Tsais are also owners of several professional sports franchises, including the Brooklyn Nets, New York Liberty, and San Diego Seals. Major global philanthropists and devoted Yale benefactors, the Tsais have made previous gifts establishing theTsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY), as well assupporting the Yale mens and womens lacrosse programs, the Department of Computer Science, and Yale Law School.

The worlds great universities are built to pursue consequential questions, and nothing is more foundational than understanding the mystery of the human brain, Joe Tsai said. Today, the science and technology community is obsessed with artificial intelligence, but how do we know if computers can outsmart humans if we do not fully appreciate our own cognitive capacities? Clara and I believe that Yale has the right combination of people, resources, and collaborative culture to lead to a better understanding of this big question.

Interdisciplinary collaboration is fundamental to success in the life sciences field, said Clara Wu Tsai. Our foundation is built on that very premise, and, in all of our efforts, Joe and I work to bring great scientists together across fields and areas of expertise.From the maturation of the mind and brain to the development of new cognitive computational models and the study of human behavior,scientists at the Wu Tsai Institute will be working on the very cutting edge of the cognitive sciences.

Yale starts from a position of strength and draws on a distinguished legacy of faculty in neuroscience, includingNobel Prize winners and National Academy of Sciences members who made discoveries that helped lay the biological and psychologicalfoundations of the field.

Today, about 140 Yale research groups are engaged in research related to neuroscience in departments throughout the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (e.g., linguistics; mathematics; molecular biophysics and biochemistry; molecular, cellular and developmental biology; philosophy; psychology; statistics and data science), School of Medicine (e.g., cell biology; cellular and molecular physiology; Child Study Center; genetics; neurology; neuroscience; neurosurgery; psychiatry), and School of Engineering & Applied Science (e.g., computer science; biomedical engineering; electrical engineering; mechanical engineering and materials science). The Wu Tsai Institute will unite these scholars in some cases physically and in all cases through shared resources and facilities while expanding their ranks. The Institute will recruit new faculty, staff, and students, and will drive collaboration through innovative programs and events in which rising and established experts from different disciplines influence and inspire each other, accelerating the pace of discovery.

Neuroscience is a special opportunity for Yale because we have many allied strengths already, said Provost Scott Strobel, a biochemist. By organizing ourselves in a way that links them to a common purpose, we can make huge leaps forward. The Wu Tsai Institute will enable discoveries that transcend disciplines, embodying our conviction that the greatest advances in science depend not only on penetrating subject-matter expertise, ingenuity, and perseverance, but also on the co-mingling and creative cooperation of experts to produce entirely new ways of thinking.

The Wu Tsai Institute will occupy space at 100 College St., a light-filled structure in a reborn area of downtown New Haven between Yales medical and central campuses that is being renovated to house offices, labs, and classrooms. The Institute will move into the building by fall 2022, along with the Department of Psychology from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), the Department of Neuroscience from the School of Medicine, and colleagues from more than half a dozen other departments, facilitating interaction among researchers across the university and beyond.

Led by Yale psychologist and inaugural directorNicholas Turk-Browne, the Wu Tsai Institutes vision is uniquely interdisciplinary and cooperative.

The Institute will provide resources and incentives human, technological, social, and structural to make daring intellectual partnerships appealing and fruitful, he said. Whether sparked by a spontaneous remark in a common room, a question from left field after a talk, or a more intentional collaboration in which research groups co-design experiments from scratch, the success of the Institute in making headway on understanding human cognition requires more than business-as-usual: It requires bold, unorthodox scientific expeditions.

The Institute is organized with this guiding spirit in mind. Embedded within the Institutes global structure will be three cutting-edge academic centers. Approaching the common problem of cognition from different and complementary perspectives, the centers will provide local structure through whichnew laboratories, facilities, and services facilitate vanguard neuroscience research:

A defining feature of the Wu Tsai Institute is the interdependence of these centers, said Turk-Browne, who studies the interaction and development of fundamental cognitive processes in the human brain. The centers are not departments, he said, nor will they become silos within the Institute. Rather, the success of each will depend upon input from and collaboration with the others.

Scientific interest in the brain originated in the magic of the mind, he said. Neuroscience as a field then branched off into subfields studying the brain at different scales, using different tools and concepts, and affiliating with different neighboring disciplines. This has led to rapid progress in recent decades. Now is the time to reunite these subfields and together address the founding aspiration of neuroscience to reveal the inner workings of the mind through an integrated understanding of the brain. Achieving this integration across scales, tools, and disciplines with data science will enable powerful new theories and insights about what makes us human.

The Wu Tsai Institute will catalyze this integration and will provide a global framework, offering resources, programs, and activities that span the breadth of neuroscience and connected fields. It will allow Yale to recruit several world-class neuroscientists into endowed professorships, create an internal grant mechanism to encourage high-risk/high-reward ideas, begin a new independent postdoctoral fellowship program, expand dramatically the number of neuroscience-related graduate positions, and launch a paid internship program for undergraduates to inspire the next generation of scientists and scientifically minded citizens. These initiatives strive to connect the subfields of neuroscience through an executive committee of faculty leaders; a steering committee of stakeholders across the university; joint appointments spanning departments and schools; co-mentorship of students and postdocs; support for interdisciplinary research collaborations; and community-building workshops, retreats, and seminars. All activities will be guided and evaluated byGiovanna Guerrero-Medina,a member of the Institute staff dedicated to fostering diversity and excellence.

The creation of new initiatives provides an opportunity to confront historical and ongoing systemic inequities in neuroscience and to do better, she said. We will design programs and processes from the ground up to promoteequity and inclusionfor underrepresented groups across race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and ability.

The scientific ambitions of the Institute resonate with two of Yales fivemajor scientific priorities for the coming decade:neuroscience and integrative data science.

Data science brings a mathematical and computational toolkit that can be applied across scales and subfields of neuroscience, said John Lafferty, Yale data scientist and member of the executive committee. This provides a common language for talking about molecules and behavior in the same breath, for linking cellular activity to blood oxygenation. At the same time, few machine learning algorithms were designed for neuroscience data or with knowledge of key problems in the field, creating the opportunity for a new wave of approaches. The goal is not to recreate the brainin silicobut rather to learn principles behind how the brain works and to create algorithms that follow these strategies. This will create a computational proving ground in which to deepen understanding of cognition, with new models that, for example, accurately represent the beliefs of others or have the richness and capacity of human memory.

Major advances will require a virtuous cycle between data and models, experimentalists and theorists. Spatial arrangements in 100 College will encourage such feedback loops. The computational sciences will be situated on a middle floor between the psychological sciences above and the biological sciences below a physical reminder of their central role in bridging the Institutes mission. To foster intellectual collisions, the middle floor will also offer flexible shared spaces conducive to interaction, among them a large common room with sweeping views, whiteboards, and refreshments, hoteling offices for researchers visiting from across campus and across the world, and attractive forums for workshops, symposia, and events.

These communal spaces will be complemented by purpose-built facilities equipped with the latest neuroscientific tools. In a welcoming and inspiring atmosphere on the ground floor, for example, the Institute will house state-of-the-art technologiesfor studying the human brain in action. Designed for exploration and discovery, the new facility will enable big research ideas, hands-on educational opportunities, and alumni and community engagement.

In these and other ways, the Wu Tsai Institute represents an opportunity to transform how Yale and the academy pursue inquiries of great breadth and complexity.

The power of the idea behind the Institute is in enabling Yales researchers to find new intellectual connections and then providing resources to pursue questions at these intersections, said Daniel Coln-Ramos, Yale neuroscientist and cell biologist and executive committee member. Like a synaptic cleft between neurons, an axon between cortical areas, or the open air between brains in a social world, subfields of neuroscience vary in the distance that will need to be traveled. But as with messages delivered by chemicals, electrical pulses, or verbal speech, conversation, collaboration, and discovery narrow these distances and produce larger networks with greater knowledge and capabilities. Filling the space between these disciplines will allow us to answer the biggest whys and the grandest hows.

Expanding the number of students and postdocs encourages the multidisciplinary work that will be an Institute hallmark and also allows Yale to reinforce its commitment to diversity and excellence across the sciences. Students and postdocs are one of the best ways to bridge research areas, said Coln-Ramos. Because theyre conducting and shaping their labs research day to day, and because theyre in the midst of building new skills, they are often the ones to seek out collaborators.

The Institutes mission and organization stand to deepen connections throughout Yale.

The formation of the Wu Tsai Institute will lead to a new era of partnership between the School of Medicine and Faculty of Arts and Sciences, said Nancy J. Brown, M.D., dean of the School of Medicine. We cannot solve the pressing questions in neuroscience without interdisciplinary approaches. The Institute can serve as a model for collaborations in other areas.

Indeed, the Institute will yield collaborative opportunities and benefit from scholarship far beyond fields traditionally involved in neuroscience research.

The relation between mind and brain is among the deepest and most profound questions that we face, said Tamar Gendler, philosopher and dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. To understand it, we must draw on methods and insights from across disciplines and approaches: aesthetic, ethical, social, biological, physical, and technical. I am excited to help realize the bold and imaginative promise of the Wu Tsai Institute, with key engagement from fellow FAS leaders, including deans Alan Gerber in the social sciences and Jeffrey Brock in the natural sciences and engineering, and department chairs from across the academic divisions.

Alongside the research mission and integral to it the Institute will serve Yales teaching mission. In addition to providing for new postdoctoral fellows, it will expand graduate education in neuroscience through support of the well-established and highly successful Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program, as well as other top Ph.D. programs across the university. At the undergraduate level, it will fund summer fellowships and year-round research opportunities for students in Yales fast-growing neuroscience major and related majors. Established in 2017 by psychologist and now Yale College Dean Marvin Chun, the neuroscience major has more than 80 students. The Institute will help prepare them for graduate and professional school, and for empirical, evidence-based decision-making regardless of career path.

The Wu Tsai Institute is a marvelous expression of our ambitions in neuroscience, in data science, and in engineering, and it will be a major instrument of their fulfillment, said Brock, dean of science and dean of the School of Engineering & Applied Science. It represents the bold, creative organizational thinking that will serve our faculty and students well as they strive to advance knowledge and make the breakthroughs that benefit all humankind. We are grateful to Joe Tsai and Clara Wu Tsai for their vision and their confidence as we at Yale aim to push scientific boundaries.

For more information about the Wu Tsai Institute and to sign up to receive updates, please visit the Institute website at wti.yale.edu.

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At Yale, new neuroscience institute to unravel the mysteries of cognition - Yale News

Neuroscience

Neuroscientist David Sulzer To Release Debut Book MUSIC, MATH, AND MIND: THE PHYSICS AND NEUROSCIENCE OF MUSIC – Broadway World

David Sulzer's debut book, Music, Math, and Mind, offers a lively exploration of the mathematics, physics, and neuroscience that underlie music in a way that readers without scientific background can follow.

Dr. Sulzer, also known in the musical world as Dave Soldier, explains why the perception of music encompasses the physics of sound, the functions of the ear and deep-brain auditory pathways, and the physiology of emotion. He delves into topics such as the math by which musical scales, rhythms, tuning, and harmonies are derived, from the days of Pythagoras to technological manipulation of sound waves. Sulzer makes accessible a vast range of material-styles from around the world to canonical composers to hip-hop, the history of experimental music, and animal music by songbirds, cetaceans, bats, and insects.

From David Sulzer:

"Musicians and music lovers have innate curiosity about what they do and love, but essential questions that underlie every style of music aren't taught in classes, textbooks, or in pop science books. For example, why are there musical scales, what does it mean when something is out-of-tune, do other animals hear differently than we do, why are sounds different from each other, and how do we know it? These topics have been examined for thousands of years, but the math, physics and biology is intimidating to non-specialists. With this book and a bit of patience, anyone with grade school level multiplication and division can understand these questions and develop a basis for more profound understanding of what it means to engage in art."

David Sulzer is a professor in the Departments of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Pharmacology at Columbia University Medical Center. His laboratory has made important contributions to the study of brain mechanisms involved in autism, Parkinson's disease, drug addiction, and learning and memory. In his alter ego, Dave Soldier, he is a composer, performer, and producer who has worked with many major figures in the classical, jazz, and pop worlds, appearing on over one hundred records. Some of his projects bridge music and neuroscience, including the Thai Elephant Orchestra (an orchestra of fourteen elephants in Northern Thailand), and the Brainwave Music Project, which uses EEGs of brain activity to create compositions.

Some of the questions answered in Music, Math, and Mind:

How are emotions carried by music?How does the brain understand what it is listening to?How can we measure music? How fast, long and tall is it?What does it mean for sounds to be in or out of tune?How might a musician use math to come up with new ideas?Is there a mathematical definition of noise and consonance?How do we associate music with time, place, and dreams?Do other animals perceive sound and music like we do?

Music, Math, and Mind: The Physics and Neuroscience of MusicBy David SulzerColumbia University PressPub Date: April 27, 2021304 pagesHardcover $120.00 / 93.00 (978-0-231-19378-8)Paperback $28.00 / 22.00 (978-0-231-19379-5)E-book $27.99 / 22.00 (978-0-231-55050-5)

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Neuroscientist David Sulzer To Release Debut Book MUSIC, MATH, AND MIND: THE PHYSICS AND NEUROSCIENCE OF MUSIC - Broadway World