Neuroscience

The scientist behind #BlackInNeuro is building the hastag into a community – STAT

Angeline Dukes, a graduate student in neuroscience, didnt intend to organize an entire movement.

But she did have a question. She had noticed other Twitter movements highlighting Black scientists in fields like birding, astronomy, and physics. She wondered: Wheres neuroscience?

So in early July, Dukes, who is Black, tweeted: Sooo when are we doing a #BlackInNeuro week?

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Within days, a group of nearly two dozen neuroscientists banded together to found Black In Neuro. Like many such groups, it started out as a kind of Twitter club. Its first act: a weeklong virtual showcase of the field and a series of events on neuroscience research, racism, and mental health.

They pulled in sponsors to pay their speakers, including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Stanford University. And theyre not stopping there: Now the group is making a list of Black neuroscientists, 300 and growing, for others to connect with as mentors or invite to present their research. Theyre hoping to eventually set up more formalized mentorships and travel awards.

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The goal: to develop a community for Black scientists who often feel alone or overlooked. Dukes has been there herself. She isnt always confident enough to lift up and showcase her own accomplishments. She still covers her computer and kitchen table with sticky notes of advice and encouragement shes heard along the way from mentors and colleagues, You can do this! and Make your voice heard!

Dukes said that her mentors and colleagues encouragement and support empowered her and now she wants to empower others.

Its important to know that we dont have to be pushed out of the field. We can keep going and we can find mentors and we can have this community, and we do belong here, Dukes told STAT.

Dukes, whos currently a student in the department of neurobiology and behavior at the University of California, Irvine, said it was wonderful to find a community of people who had not only succeeded, but overcome the same struggles shed experienced. She wanted to found the movement in part because of her own struggles as a Black scientist especially as she felt the mental health impact of the killings of unarmed Black people like Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd earlier this year.

In the summer of 2016, when the headlines focused on the police killings of Black men like Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Freddie Gray and 12-year-old Tamir Rice, no one in her lab at Vanderbilt University seemed affected by it, except her. Dukes was overwhelmed, empathizing with the family members of the victims seeking justice, and it affected her work in the lab.

I was so scared for myself and for my boyfriend and for my family and I didnt care about the science I wasnt paying attention, she said. Back then I felt like I was just an undergrad. Who am I to say anything or demand that you pay attention to this?

Earlier this year, Dukes demanded that her labmates pay attention. She spoke to her Ph.D. mentor, Christie Fowler, who is white, and they postponed an upcoming exam so she had time to focus on her mental health. Her mentors attitude helped her realize the power of support and how a broader community could offer more people the same attitude.

I did feel supported, and I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that Ive had professors and people in positions of power who were willing to try and fight for some kind of change to be made, she said.

In June, when her husband, who is also Black, was stopped without explanation by her own campus police officers, she was shaken. And though her mentor was supportive, and even rallied other faculty members to email university leadership, Dukes wanted to find a community of people who completely understood her experience. So she built it.

A part of me wanted Black In Neuro because I wanted something positive and I really needed a community that would understand without me having to explain why it was so upsetting, Dukes said.

I really needed a community that would understand without me having to explain why it was so upsetting.

Angeline Dukes, a graduate student in neuroscience who helped found #BlackInNeuro

Although Dukes describes herself as a small person who does like little things that maybe might make a change in a small sphere of influence, the people around her made it clear shes a natural fit to lead the group.

Dukes has experience organizing events shes the de facto party planner for the lab and even remembers everyones birthdays.

Shes also shown herself to be a powerful speaker about topics like racism in science. Dukes and two other neuroscientists at UC Irvine organized and led an anti-racism discussion this spring to teach others how to be a better mentor and ally to Black scientists, ultimately creating a better environment for Black colleagues. It was so successful that Nii Addy, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale University who acts as an accessory mentor to Dukes, said the Society of Neuroscience highlighted it as a resource for the neuroscience community as a whole in July.

Just to be able to have an idea and to be able to run with it and implement it. Thats pretty remarkable, Addy said. Her leadership skills have been impressive to me, and her vision as well.

Dukes ability to turn an idea like Black In Neuro Week into a reality by organizing a group of scientists, finding sponsors, and scheduling speakers and events in a matter of three weeks speaks to more than just her leadership skills it demonstrates her perseverance, a quality that Fowler, Dukes Ph.D. mentor at UC Irvine, who is also an associate professor of neurobiology and behavior, emphasized.

When shes faced with challenges, she just pushes through and does amazingly well, she said.

Case in point: When a last-minute emergency kept Fowler from presenting at a conference in New Orleans in March, she asked Dukes to fill in and present research that was not her own.

Dukes, who was the only Black person in the room, was shaking.

I was absolutely terrified, she said. I guess [it was] just the imposter syndrome and feeling like I wasnt sure if Im qualified to talk about this

But Fowler said her colleagues in the audience thought she knocked it out of the park. Dukes was even offered a job by another researcher at the conference.

Several faculty in her department at UC Irvine recognize her as a force of nature. And they encourage it.

Fowler and another faculty member gave Dukes a painting of a black bird to recognize the important work she was doing as an advocate for Black scientists. She keeps it above her desk as a reminder to keep speaking up a more artistic version of the sticky notes on her kitchen table at home.

It just felt really nice to feel like they recognize the work that Im doing, said Dukes. And so this was just another form of validation for me that I am being heard and that my thoughts are being valued.

Black In Neuro also helped Dukes see herself as others do at least a little bit.

It makes me feel more secure that I do have a place here and I can make a positive impact in science, she said.

Dukes and her 21 co-organizers are still deciding whats next for Black In Neuro.

For now, they are focused on nurturing the community they created. They are gearing up to hold monthly socials, actively developing a list of Black neuroscientists, and profiling individual researchers. Other Black neuroscientists in the field think the increased exposure of Black students to successful neuroscientists like them will go a long way.

So those same folks can now say, OK, well, this theres this person here, this person here, this person here, that I can connect with, that looks like me, that I can relate to. Thats gonna go a long way, so that people arent dealing with imposter syndrome in isolation, Addy, Dukes Yale mentor, said.

Dukes was taken aback by the strength of the community she made. She teared up as she recalled a video meeting for Black women, late in the movements weeklong event in July, when she realized how similar her experiences were to everyone there.

Its so easy to feel like youre the only one and no one understands. And to just know there are people out there who get it, like 100%, they get it, and to not have to explain that, and just see how important that is for so many people. It really means a lot, she said.

It clearly did for the participants, too. Yasmin Hurd, the director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai and one of Dukes science idols, also attended. She, too, was moved by everyones experiences she even turned on her video camera despite her new haircut. But even more so, she was impressed with Dukes. Hurd said she had a way of making everyone feel special for who they are and the research they did.

Its this warm environment [where] people felt safe. And there were just a lot of emotions. And it brought out the raw emotions in me that a lot of these ladies are going through the same things that I went through, and that we havent really moved the dial enough, said Hurd.

Dukes wants to keep moving that dial, both with Black in Neuro and on her own. She participates in a biannual Saturday science event at her local church, where she teaches children, many of them Black, about things like what neurons do she said the students are always a bit freaked out that she works with mice.

At the end of it, I had at least one of them that was like, I think I can be a scientist! and I was like, Yes! Yes you can! Thats exactly what you can do, she said.

She wants to keep showing others that there is a place for them in research, if they want it. She intends to seek a professorship at a historically black college and university so that she can help other Black women see that a career in science, and specifically research, is an option.

I feel very certain that this is the career path for me, that this is what Im supposed to be doing, especially with all of the Black in Neuro stuff, I feel like this is really how I can make a difference, she said.

Elizabeth Cooney contributed to this report.

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The scientist behind #BlackInNeuro is building the hastag into a community - STAT

Neuroscience

Peak and Valley’s Adaptogenic Wellness Blends Are Built on Neuroscience and Inclusivity – Fashionista

Three years ago, wellness entrepreneur Nadine Joseph wasn't spending her days doing what you might expect of someone who founded their own line of herbal supplements. She was neither sorting bulk bags of mushrooms on her kitchen counter, nor hopping on the phone with customers to discuss their intimate health concerns. Instead, Joseph was working in a laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., studying the effects of stress on the brain.

In her work as a neuroscientist, Joseph examined the ways in which everyday stressors impact not just our cognitive abilities, but our bodies overall. It was also a subject she was intimately familiar with outside the lab.

"For a period of three years, I was living an unsustainably stressful lifestyle," says Joseph, who founded Seattle-based, science-backed wellness brand Peak and Valley in 2018. Joseph was exhausted in every sense, becoming agitated over the smallest of triggers. At one point, she even worked overnight as a helper to someone with cerebral palsy, and when her shift ended, went straight back to the lab. It was an anatomical call for help.

"If you were to look at what was going on in my body with a biological microscope, you'd see that my adrenal glands couldn't keep up with the constant stress I was experiencing," she says. "They were functioning below the necessary level. When my body was saying, 'Hey, emit some more cortisol!' My glands were like, 'Oh, we actually don't have that much cortisol left.'"

Joseph ended up at the doctor's office where she was prescribed a cocktail of medication that included a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI). These commonly-prescribed antidepressants, like Lexapro, Prozac or Zoloft, work by increasing levels of serotonin within the brain. Joseph is affirming of medication: "It's definitely a personal choice, whether or not you want to go on them," she stresses.

But when it came to her own treatment options, she grew wary of the side effects that are theorized to be associated with SSRIs. (Frequent examples include mild headaches, nausea and decreased libido). So she began wafting through biomedical-research database PubMed in search of an alternative with which she was more comfortable. [Editor's note: Always consult your physician before adjusting prescribed medical treatments.] Months later, she stumbled upon adaptogens. "I still remember the article I read," she adds. "It was just one of those things where I became immediately fascinated because of how unique the category is."

This select group of herbs, roots and even some mushrooms supports the body's natural ability to process stress. And because each person responds to stressors in categorically different ways, adaptogens quite literally "adapt" their function based on the specific needs of the body, be they physical, chemical or biological. They're also side effect-free, which was of particular interest to Joseph at the time.

Nadine Joseph, founder of Peak and Valley.

Photo: Courtesy of Peak and Valley

Armed with her scientific background, Joseph began researching adaptogenic elements, like ashwagandha and reishi mushrooms, eventually ordering ingredients to create her own blends. But the more she learned about adaptogens on a biological level, the more concerned she became about the quality, or lack thereof, of what was then on the market.

"I wasn't excited about the options I had," she remembers. "So instead of going with traditional commercial companies, I ended up ordering from farms. I didn't have a high salary I'm a broke researcher and I was ordering these big bags of mushrooms and herbs and roots, seeing what I can blend together to make it easier for myself to consume."

When Joseph talks about quality, she's referring to something called beta-glucans, or complex sugars that make adaptogens' actual healing qualities possible. The higher the quality of the adaptogen, the higher the percentage of beta-glucan concentration and the more impactful the adaptogen is as a whole.

There are a number of factors that go into creating high beta-glucan content, one of which is where the adaptogen itself is physically grown. Take mushrooms, like the aforementioned reishi, or fungi like chaga, cordyceps and lion's mane. "They can be grown either on grain or on wood," explains Joseph. "In nature, they're grown on wood. But what you see with a lot of American companies is that, just because of limitations we have with land, they're not grown on wood. This leads to really low beta-glucan content."

Inside the Wonderfully Weird and Growing Retail World of MushroomsFashion and Beauty Brands Are Using Mental Health to Connect With 'The Anxious Generation'Why the Beauty- and Wellness-Obsessed Are Turning to the Age-Old Practice of Herbalism

Joseph's $38 blends, which can be stirred into cozy beverages, baked into desserts or added to a morning smoothie, were different. Her first,Balance My Stress, features reishi extract, eleuthero root, ashwagandha and cocoa, and not only helps protect against stress, but also works to decrease fatigue, protect the immune system and improve blood flow. "It balanced out the way I experienced stress. I had better sleep at night. Things became a lot manageable," she says.

Her second blend, too, was a personal passion project. After years of painful eczema, she createdNurture My Skin, which includes inflammation-fighting turmeric, hydrating rosehip and circulatory Dong Quai root. She says it reduced her eczema by roughly 90%. And for blend number three, Nourish My Brain, Joseph incorporated medicinal mushroom extracts with herbs and roots to boost memory ability and focus. It quickly became an MVP during her long days in the lab. She began wondering: If her blends had improved her own life so dramatically, would she really want to keep them a secret?

"When I was satisfied with the standards I had put in place, I started sharing them with my friends and family," says Joseph. "They experienced a lot of positive effects, especially my mom. One day I looked at all of this stuff in my kitchen and was like, 'I should probably create a company with this. I think I could do a lot of good sharing this with people.'"

Peak and Valley processes its adaptogenic ingredients down to a powder blend, which can then be mixed into coffees, food or even cocktails.

Photo: Courtesy of Peak and Valley

In September 2018, Joseph left her demanding research job to work on Peak and Valley full-time, launching the brand with her three blends that same December. Today, Peak and Valley has remained small, and intentionally so, but has grown to include new retail partners and wholesale stockists: 43 of them (at press time) and counting. In August, that group expanded to include Nordstrom, which now carries Peak and Valley at seven of its in-store pop-up shops across the U.S., as well as at Nordstrom.com.

In 2020, it's not unusual for a luxury department-store chain to be selling wellness powders made from medicinal plants. This is not simply because the U.S. is in the thick of a mental health crisis that the coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated on a grand scale. Anxiety disorders, for example, already affect an estimated 18% of American adults. Certain adaptogens work to combat anxiety symptoms not as a silver bullet, but supplementally over time. For that, Joseph is her own perfect case study.

She'll also be the first person to tell you that the market in which Peak and Valley sits has an undeniable diversity, inclusivity and accessibility problem: Luxury shoppers with financial means and geographic accessibility are not the only consumers who could benefit from adaptogens. "One big, big problem with the wellness industry is that it really just caters to caucasian women with a disposable income. "That's seen in every single marketing message," says Joseph, who designed Peak and Valley's jars herself and included a woman of color on every single one of them. "I'm a woman of color in the wellness space, and it's pretty frustrating to see that minorities in general just aren't being represented in an industry that's supposed to be about self-care and mindfulness."

This is especially problematic and appropriative when considering the communities and traditions that have been using adaptogenic ingredients for thousands of years. "Another step toward diversification in this space is just respecting these Eastern self-care practices and herbal medicines that we're incorporating into Western wellness," she says.

In celebrating adaptogens like the ones Peak and Valley is using, it's necessary to credit both Ayurveda, the 5,000-year-old system of natural healing with its origins in the Vedic culture of India, as well as Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which aims to restore the body's natural harmony between the opposing forces of yin and yang. "A lot of these practices come from people of color," adds Joseph. "They're going through this process where people of color are slowly phased out of it."

To truly diversify the wellness industry, Joseph suggests her colleagues look to their supply chains: Are those who have been using your ingredients for a much longer time than you have actually visible within this space? Do your farmers and suppliers have space to tell their side of how they use their medicine? And at the absolute very, very least, are those individuals being compensated fairly not just for their services, but also their millennia of knowledge?

Still, Joseph is energized by the diversification she sees in the space. There's power in numbers, and with category leaders like Joseph, there's also an example that's already been set. "We're going to see these medicinal herbs incorporated into every aspect of our way of life," she says. "I was talking with someone just a few months ago who's planning on incorporating adaptogens into an ice cream! I'm just excited to see what the future holds because I never could have anticipated it being so widespread."

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Peak and Valley's Adaptogenic Wellness Blends Are Built on Neuroscience and Inclusivity - Fashionista

Neuroscience

Neuroscience antibodies and assays Market is Booming Worldwide to Show Significant Growth by 2020-2026 – The News Brok

Neuroscience antibodies and assays Market is growing at a High CAGR during the forecast period 2020-2026. The increasing interest of the individuals in this industry is that the major reason for the expansion of this market.

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Neuroscience antibodies and assays Market is Booming Worldwide to Show Significant Growth by 2020-2026 - The News Brok

Neuroscience

Research on Neuroscience Antibodies and Assays Market (impact of COVID-19) 2020-2026: Thermo Fisher, Abcam, Bio-Rad, Merck – Galus Australis

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Neuroscience

Blood transfusions protect the brain from stroke damage – News-Medical.Net

Muscle weakness permeates through one side of your body and your speech slurs. It's a stroke. And you need to be rushed to the emergency room.

Doctors replace your blood with the blood of a healthy person who's never suffered a stroke.

This blood swap lessens damage to your brain, and any neurological deficits from the stroke are nil.

This is not mere wishful thinking. It is a potential breakthrough in stroke therapy based on mice research by West Virginia University neuroscientists.

In the study, led by Xuefang "Sophie" Ren, research assistant professor in the Department of Neuroscience, the team found that blood substitution therapy rescues the brains of mice from ischemic damage. Their article is published in Nature Communications.

"What we were able to demonstrate is that if you remove part of the blood from a subject undergoing stroke, and replace that blood from a subject that's never had a stroke, the outcomes of that stroke are profoundly improved," said Ren, who's also director of the WVU Experimental Stroke Core.

The study is believed to be the first to show that blood replacement therapy leads to improved stroke outcomes in mice, a potential next step for stroke therapy in humans.

Most strokes (ischemic) occur when the blood supply to the brain is interrupted, usually by a blockage of the arteries leading to the brain.

While there is no known single medication for stroke, the only FDA-approved treatment for ischemic strokes is tPA, or tissue plasminogen activator, which dissolves the clot and improves blood flow. However, tPA typically must be administered within three hours of the stroke.

Ren's research indicates that blood transfusions can take place beyond that limited window - up to seven hours - and still have a positive impact.

Replacing 20 percent of the blood in a mouse was enough to show a profound reduction in damage to the brain. The average adult holds around one-and-a-half gallons of blood in the body.

The study's co-authors include Heng Hu, postdoctoral fellow and Experimental Stroke Core surgeon, and James Simpkins, director of the Center for Basic & Translational Stroke Research and professor of the Department of Neuroscience.

"The idea is to change the immune response that happens after stroke," Simpkins said.

Researchers explained that following a stroke, the makeup of a patient's blood changes, causing disruptions in the brain and how the body responds.

Neutrophils, a type of white blood cell that helps lead the immune system's response, play a role in increasing the levels of an enzyme called MMP-9, which can lead to blood-brain barrier leakage and degeneration in brain tissue.

Blood replacement therapy removes inflammatory cells and decreases neutrophils and MMP-9 levels following a stroke, the study concluded.

"The immune system doesn't recognize much of what's happening when there's a stroke," Simpkins said. "So the neutrophils go to the brain and try to clean up the damage that happens. But there's too much in the brain and those same neutrophils release MMP-9, which then exacerbates the damage.

What we learn is that stroke is simply not a cerebral vascular event. It's a whole-body event. Both the brain and the body get signals that something's going on in the brain and as the immune system responds to try to help, it actually worsens the outcome. Therefore, by removing the blood and replacing it with the blood of those that have not experienced stroke, we get good outcomes."

James Simpkins, Director and Professor, Department of Neuroscience, Center for Basic & Translational Stroke Research

Currently, blood-based therapies are emerging as treatments to combat aging and fight neurodegenerative diseases, the researchers noted.

Now, blood replacement therapy is a proven strategy that targets the pathological systemic responses to stroke, Ren said, and could reduce the mortality of stroke patients.

"Blood indeed saves our brains and lives from stroke damage," she said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 795,000 Americans experience a stroke each year and 140,000 die from it.

"In an ideal circumstance, a person having a stroke would show up to Ruby (Memorial) or any hospital," Simpkins said.

"They'd go through the proper protocol. We would remove their stroke blood and magically restore it with the right kind of blood that would tamp down this immune response they're experiencing. If it works out, that's good for all of us."

For patients or loved ones seeking information on current stroke trials, contact Simpkins at 304-293-7430.

Source:

Journal reference:

Ren, X., et al. (2020) Blood substitution therapy rescues the brain of mice from ischemic damage. Nature Communications. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17930-x.

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Neuroscience

This Is How Your Brain Responds to Social Influence – Singularity Hub

Im a doormat when it comes to peer pressure. Jump off a 32-foot (10 meter) diving board without any experience? Sure! Propel off a cliff my first time outdoor climbing? Ill try!

Those were obviously terrible decisions for someone afraid of heights, and each ended with I really shouldve known better. But it illustrates a point: its obvious that our decisions dont solely come from our own experiences. From what career you choose to what sandwich you want for lunch, we care about what our friends, families, and complete strangers thinkotherwise, Yelp wouldnt exist.

In academic speak, observing and learning from other people is called social influence, a term thats obviously crossed into pop culture lexicon. Yet neuroscientists have struggled to understand why this happens. How do our brains process others decisions? And how does it weigh those decisions against our (potentially saner) judgment?

This month, Drs. Lei Zhang and Jan Glscher from Germany and Austria teased out the neural networks that allow us to evaluate social influence. They then figured out how those networks link to our internal, or direct learning networksthat is, should I listen to my fear of heights or to social pressure?

By scanning the brains of 39 people playing a multiplayer betting game, the team synthesized a social prediction error from brain activity in the reward circuit, which measures the difference between how we expect people to behave versus how they actually do. They then used neurocomputational tools to model these brain activity data, and found a link between the brains reward circuit and social ones.

Its not all academic curiosity. One of the most prominent AI models today, deep reinforcement learning, stemmed from research on how humans learn from their mistakesformally known as reward prediction error. (Sound familiar?) As momentum gains for a more cognitive and social approach for training AI, neuroscience studies that help us understand how we learn from one another may also benefit learning algorithms that teach AI to learn by observing us.

Our work shows that we need to constantly balance our own expectations with those we observe in others, and whether the two match up, the authors concluded. Thanks to our brains social error signal, we can flexibly adapt our choices to social influence, maybe for the better.

Lets talk direct learning firstthe type of learning we gain from our own experiences. At its heart is the reward prediction error, and even if you havent heard of it, youve experienced it.

Take this scenario: youre meeting your spouses coworkers for the first time. You have an expectation based on what youve heard, and you adjust your mannerisms appropriatelyor so you think. When you meet them, you realized theyre nothing like what you expected.

This is where the reward prediction error comes in. We often hear about the brains reward circuits, but thats not quite accurate. They dont shell out pleasant reward rushes all the time. What these brain circuits actually do is calculate an estimated reward, based on your knowledge, expectations, and decisions, versus what actually happens.

If they match up, the reward error is very low, meaning your brain says that you dont need to adjust your behavior. You also get a nice dose of happy-feeling neurochemicals to reinforce those behaviors; hence, reinforcement learning. If expectation and reality dont match up, then the error is highand thats when you figure out you probably need to change your strategy.

In other words, you learn. At its root, reinforcement learning is learning from your mistakes in judgment.

Neuroanatomy studies have traced these learning circuits to two main regions: part of the prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), at the very forefront of your brain, which encodes your own valuation or judgment, and parts of the reward learning circuit, which encodes the error signal.

Social influence gets messier. Previous studies suggest that vmPFC is also involved in decision-making that incorporates social influence, but so far few people have traced how one mind can change anothers decision.

The team began answering these questions with 185 people, randomly assigned into groups of 5, in a social influence test. It starts with direct learning: people choose between two abstract fractal imagesa yellow swirl and a blue snowflakeon a computer screen, with one choice getting a higher score than the other. They also laid down bets on how confident they were in their choice. The person was then able to see others choices in their groups sequentially, and was then provided with a second chance to choose.

The study required participants to learn and continuously relearn, the authors explained, so that they begin to naturally incorporate other peoples choices into their own decisionseven when they know that there is no bonus for participation or competition. Perhaps unsurprisingly, people were more eager to change their choice when it didnt fit with the groups, while sticking to their guns when it matched with the general flow. Whats more, if the persons choice matched the groups, they were also willing to bet higher on its chance of success in the next round.

Social information altered peoples choice and their confidence in the choice, which helped them readjust their choice next time aroundan obvious sign of learning, the authors said.

During the betting game, one of five participants laid inside an MRI machine and had their brains scanned. Altogether, the team watched the brain activity of 39 people as they grappled with sticking with their choice or succumbing to peer pressure.

Using their model to analyze MRI data, the team honed in on a brain region called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which was previously found to track a sense of good will that we allocate to other humans. The ACC was particularly responsible for learning from others. Digging deeper, the team found the link between the two nodes: vmPFC, for direct learning, and ACC, for social learning.

The bridge is the putamen (Latin for nutshell), a round nugget of brain tissue that forms the broader reward circuit, which extends to a surface region of the brain (rTPJ, or right temporoparietal junction) that seem to be involved in immediate social influence. As for should I stay or should I go? in picking a choice, the ACC hooks up with another part of the prefrontal cortex, the dlPFC, to finally decide.

If your eyes are glazing over these acronyms, yeah, me too. Here it is in a nutshell (lol): the brain region that governs how we learn from our own experience is connected with ones that help us learn from the experiences of others. When the two circuits strongly sync up, were likely to change our behavior due to social influencers. But the final decision is still up to us.

Similar to learning from our own experiences, this social learning circuit generates a social prediction errorone that heavily guides how we learn from others, but surprisingly, also how we learn from ourselves. Both errors silently drive our next decision: what sandwich to get (listen to my own tastes or depend on Yelp?), what advice to take, and yeahwhether to jump off a diving board while freaking out from peer pressure.

Direct learning is efficient in stable situations, explains Glscher, and when situations are changing and uncertain, social learning may play an important role together with direct learning to adapt to novel situations.

Now that we better understand brain networks for social learning, the next step is disrupt them using non-invasive brain stimulation techniques, said Glscher, and see how our decisions change in response. And in light of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, there is no way individuals and governments learn from mistakes all by themselves, and instead, a global and collective human society is needed to address all these challenges.

Image Credit: Free-Photos from Pixabay

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This Is How Your Brain Responds to Social Influence - Singularity Hub

Neuroscience

The PAINWeek 2020 Live Virtual Conference (September 11-13) Welcomes ASPN, the American Society of Pain and Neuroscience – PR Web

Having an ASPN track at PAINWeek is a natural evolution as both groups are heavily interested in alleviating chronic pain complaints through use of methods that are nonpharmacological

MONTCLAIR, N.J. (PRWEB) August 25, 2020

PAINWeek welcomes, for the first time, the American Society of Pain and Neuroscience (ASPN), which will present courses on Sunday, September 13. ASPN member Peter Pryzbylkowski, MD, commented, Having an ASPN track at PAINWeek is a natural evolution as both groups are heavily interested in alleviating chronic pain complaints through use of methods that are nonpharmacological in nature. Dr. Pryzbylkowski will present Fundamentals of Neuromodulation.

Presenter Sean Li, MD, stated, ASPN is a unique and new professional society developed to harness the talents of a diverse group of interventional pain physicians through the pursuit of clinical excellence, education, research, and innovation. The collaboration of PAINWeek and ASPN will further advance pain medicine by embracing interventional treatment options to alleviate chronic pain and suffering. Dr. Lis course is Peripheral Nerve Stimulations: Indications and Evidence. The ASPN track includes: Patient Identification Strategies for Neuromodulators and The Role of Combining Spinal Cord Stimulation & Intrathecal Therapy.

"We're very pleased to welcome ASPN, commented Mike Shaffer, Director of Business Development at PAINWeek. We understand that the PAINWeek audience continues to have a heightened interest in interventional treatments for chronic pain, particularly neuromodulation. Therefore, ASPN's unparalleled faculty and burgeoning reputation in our landscape make for a great fit. We're looking forward to their track, and building on our partnership in the future."

PAINWeek will also welcome the American Headache Society, International Pelvic Pain Society, American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians, and Osteoarthritis Research Society International.

To learn more about PAINWeek or to register, click here or visit https://www.painweek.org/conferences/painweek/live-virtual-conference.

About Global Education Group:Global Education Group focuses on producing partnership-based CME for healthcare practitioners. The Global team works with a select group of medical education companies, associations, academic institutions and healthcare facilities to develop and accredit live healthcare conferences and workshops as well as online activities. With each partnership or joint providership, Global brings accreditation expertise, project management excellence and grant funding intelligence. Based in Littleton, Colo., Global has accreditation with commendation from the ACCME. Global also holds accreditations to offer continuing education for nurses, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, dietitians, dentists and psychologists. Global is a division of Ultimate Medical Academy.

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The PAINWeek 2020 Live Virtual Conference (September 11-13) Welcomes ASPN, the American Society of Pain and Neuroscience - PR Web

Neuroscience

Hoag and BehaVR Partner to Launch First-of-its-Kind Virtual Reality Program for Expectant Moms – Web Hosting | Cloud Computing | Datacenter | Domain…

Based in neuroscience research, NurtureVR combines prenatal education, pain management, postpartum education and mindfulness in a unique program designed to support women through their third and fourth trimesters

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., & NASHVILLE, Tenn.(BUSINESS WIRE)Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian and BehaVR today announced the launch of NurtureVR, a first-of-its-kind program for expectant mothers that uses virtual reality (VR) to augment prenatal education, pain management related to pregnancy, mindfulness, and support women through postpartum care.

By combining accessible, immersive technology with compassionate, mindful care, NurtureVR brings innovation to support women as they journey through pregnancy and into motherhood. NurtureVR will be launched in a pilot program at Hoag next month and made broadly available to healthcare providers and health plans across the nation in November 2020.

We are delighted to partner with BehaVR to create and bring NurtureVR to new and expectant mothers across the nation, said Allyson Brooks, M.D., the Ginny Ueberroth Executive Medical Director Endowed Chair of Hoag Womens Health Institute. This program was developed by women for women. It incorporates the insights of women who are pregnant or were recently pregnant to ensure that it meets needs that are as diverse as the experiences of pregnancy and early motherhood.

NurtureVR is built upon decades of research into VRs ability to mitigate pain related to pregnancy, create experiential learning environments, reduce stress, and improve wellbeing. It is designed to be offered to women beginning in their third trimesters. Using VR headsets in their homes, women access 14 weeks worth of educational material, meditation capabilities and other immersive experiences, helping them with diverse topics including stress and pain management. 3D ultrasound images can be uploaded into the system to ensure personalized experiences. The program continues for an additional eight weeks after the baby is born with tools that cover issues such as maternal-baby bonding, partner intimacy, stress management, and hormonal and emotional changes.

Hoag knows firsthand how beneficial VR technology can be in helping patients with pain management, patient education and mindfulness, said Robert Louis, M.D., Chief of Neurosurgery and the Empower360 Endowed Chair for Skull Base and Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery, Pickup Family Neurosciences Institute at Hoag. We have incorporated VR technology to assist surgeons with operations since 2015.

NurtureVR combines our decades of caring for women and years of VR experience with the perspective and technology of BehaVR, which has allowed us to create a program that is unlike anything else were seeing in therapeutic VR or in womens health, he added. The idea of NurtureVR is that virtual reality can serve as a lifelong tool, something women can carry with them through the fourth trimester, that eight-week period after a baby is born, and beyond. We believe that women will be able to draw on the meditation, mindfulness, stress management and education they experienced through VR throughout their motherhood experience.

VR works by engaging all four systems of learning in the brain:

VR has already been proven as a highly effective tool for patient education, pain management and mental health and wellness, but we believe we have just scratched the surface of the value it can have in healthcare and on patients lives and experiences, said Pete Buecker, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of BehaVR. BehaVR is excited to partner with Hoag to bring NurtureVR to women as they journey through pregnancy and into early motherhood, and we look forward to exploring how this technology can continue to be expanded and refined to support new moms and their babies.

The NurtureVR experience can be customized and individualized for each woman, allowing expectant mothers to experience different environments, sounds and visuals, based on their preferences and input. The individual journey is continuously refined and personalized with BehaVRs Dynamic Experience Engine. This includes everything from a mothers and babys skin tones, to the landscapes a woman sees, to the way a woman chooses to hold her baby while breastfeeding.

We believe that VR is going to become standard for maternal education, pain management related to pregnancy, emotional health and support for the coming generation of parents, and we are pleased to be on the leading edge of this trend, said Dr. Brooks. We recognize that healthy moms lead to healthy babies, and VR is an exciting new tool to help get us there. I envision mothers developing a relationship with the VR experience that allows them to feel better about themselves, to reduce feelings of angst and confusion and to remind them to take care of themselves.

About Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian

Hoag is a nonprofit, regional health care delivery network in Orange County, California, that treats more than 30,000 inpatients and 480,000 outpatients annually. Hoag consists of two acute-care hospitals Hoag Hospital Newport Beach, which opened in 1952, and Hoag Hospital Irvine, which opened in 2010 in addition to nine health centers and 13 urgent care centers. Hoag has invested $261 million in programs and services to support the underserved community within the past five years, including areas like mental health, homelessness, transportation for seniors, education, and support for single mothers. Hoag is a designated Magnet hospital by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). Hoag offers a comprehensive blend of health care services that includes five institutes providing specialized services in the following areas: cancer, heart and vascular, neurosciences, womens health, and orthopedics through Hoags affiliate, Hoag Orthopedic Institute, which consists of an orthopedic hospital and four ambulatory surgical centers. Hoag has been named one of the Best Regional Hospitals in the 2019 2020 U.S. News & World Report. For an unprecedented 23 years, residents of Orange County have chosen Hoag as one of the countys best hospitals in a local newspaper survey. Visit http://www.hoag.org for more information.

About BehaVR

BehaVR is advancing health care access and delivery and improving patient outcomes and experiences through the pioneering use of virtual reality (VR), cloud computing, and machine learning. Founded by leading clinicians, healthcare veterans and technology innovators, BehaVR has a proprietary technology platform that enables a personalized and progressive treatment approach grounded in decades of neuroscience research and designed to educate, motivate, and activate individuals to make long-term, sustained improvements to their health. For more information, visit http://www.behavr.com.

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Kerri Guyton

615 610 0322

kerri.guyton@finnpartners.com

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Neuroscience

Plans upended by pandemic, a professor and three students find each other – Yale News

In March, Yale political scientist Elizabeth Nugent was about to start a post-election survey in Tunisia to better understand the effects of repression on political partisanship following a revolution. COVID-19 upended those plans.

Nugent, whose work explores the psychology of political behavior in the Middle East, had to shift gears. She postponed the survey and turned her attention to a book project shed been planning about the activists who mobilized uprisings in Egypt and Syria during the Arab Spring of 2011.

In February, shortly before the gravity of the pandemic became clear in the United States, Nugent had travelled to Berlin to do preliminary fieldwork for the book, which will examine the activists lives in exile following the failed revolutions. There she engaged with members of the citys burgeoning community of Syrian and Egyptian expatriates. With further fieldwork suddenly impossible, she revised her approach and hired three summer research assistants to help pursue it. The virus had disrupted their plans also.

They have been an absolute joy to work with and an unexpected high point of the past few months, Nugent said of Nick Wade 21, Sarah Kammourh 22, and Marwan Safar Jalani 20 B.A. They've not only helped me move forward with the new project on activism in exile, but also challenged me to think about the project differently.

The match between Nugent and her assistants represents an example of the creative and productive ways Yale scholars and students are adapting to the constraints of pandemic life.

Wade, a resident of Pauli Murray College majoring in political science with a concentration on the Middle East, had planned on doing a 10-week internship as an investment-banking analyst at Goldman Sachs in Manhattan. Due to the pandemic, the internship was reduced to five weeks and made fully remote. He had taken Nugents seminar Politics of the Contemporary Middle East in the fall of his sophomore year, which piqued his interest in studying Middle East politics. He contacted Nugent to see if she had any research opportunities to fill the gap created by the truncated internship.

The change in plans turned out to be a blessing in disguise because Ive really enjoyed working with Professor Nugent, said Wade, who is pursuing a certificate in advanced language study in Arabic and is studying on campus this semester.

Wades portion of the project has involved scouring government and other databases for information on the migration of Syrians and Egyptians to Germany, the United States, Turkey, and other countries from the late 1950s to the present. He tracked asylum and refugee claims as well as work and student visas. He wrestled with discrepancies in the data, learning that information compiled by the United Nations and other multilateral organizations was often more reliable than government records, he said.

Kammourh and Safar Jalani tackled a different aspect of the project. Nugent assigned Kammourh, who is Egyptian American, to analyze novels and memoirs in English and Arabic that address Egypts 2011 revolution and its aftermath. Safar Jalani, who was born in Damascus, Syria and left the country in 2012 during the civil war, was assigned to study memoirs and novels about the Syrian conflict. Both students are identifying how the books address revolution, the subsequent transition period from protest to war in Syria and the collapse of the Mubarak regime in Egypt and the aftermath of the defeat.

They are highlighting the personal experience how authors describe the feelings of euphoria, disappointment, betrayal, and astonishment, Nugent said. Trying to put people into the shoes of revolutionaries as events unfolded is a worthwhile exercise.

Kammourh, a neuroscience major, had planned on staying in New Haven to work as an undergraduate research assistant in a neuropsychiatry lab at Yale School of Medicine, but the temporary closure of many university research labs due to the pandemic thwarted that plan. Determined to find a meaningful summer job, Kammourh browsed the student employment listings and discovered Nugents research opportunity, which combined her interests in mental health and Egyptian politics.

I have always been interested in the mental health and psychiatric services available to people in Egypt, especially after the 2011 revolution, said Kammourh, who also is pursuing a certificate in advanced language study in Arabic and studying remotely this fall. I saw this project as an opportunity to explore the mental health of Egyptian activists who experienced the aftermath of a revolution by reading their memoirs, novels, and interviews.

Safar Jalani the first Yale student from Syria to earn a Rhodes Scholarship had planned to be a counselor in the Yale Young Global Scholars (YYGS) program during the first half of the summer, followed by travel in Europe during which hed make presentations to Syrian refugee populations about how to apply to his high school, the United World College in Mostar, Bosnia & Herzegovina.

When those plans fell through, he connected with Nugent through Andrea Aldrich, a lecturer in the political science department who had advised him on his senior thesis, which compared post-conflict inter-ethnic initiatives in two cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Mostar and Brko. Nugents project dovetailed nicely with own research interests, said Safar Jalani, who served as president of the Yale Refugee Project and worked as an undergraduate for Human Rights Watch in New York.

Professor Nugents emphasis on memoirs and non-fiction narratives allows me to hear what Syrians have to say about their revolution, about the new world that they live in, inside or outside Syria, about the new reality that the world and the government have placed all of us in, he said.

Safar Jalanis lived experience and background in human rights scholarship, and Kammourhs interest in neuroscience brought valuable perspectives to the project, Nugent said.

The ideas they pick up on have challenged me to think about which direction to take the project, she said. How much should I incorporate psychology? How far should I go in placing this into a human rights context? Meanwhile, Nick has been very helpful in understanding what constitutes a valid source. Is every statistic equally worthy? Which sources are the most reliable?

The ideas they pick up on have challenged me to think about which direction to take the project.

Elizabeth Nugent

The reading has helped Kammourh to better understand the struggles Egyptians have faced in the revolutions aftermath, such as addiction, unemployment, and mental-health problems, she said.

The topic hits very close to home, as members of my family in Egypt encounter these tribulations, she said. However, the hope of this project is to finally document these narratives and hopefully integrate them into the theories of political science surrounding revolutions.

Overall, though, I learned that there is a lot more hope in the future of Egyptian politics than we feel there is, she added. Though some people have completely abandoned activism, others are now mobilizing on issues affecting Egyptians, womens groups, and queer communities. Even when their continued efforts garner very little media attention and are met by severe violence, their hope for a better Egypt keeps them fighting and organizing.

Safar Jalani, who will pursue a Masters of Philosophy degree in comparative government at Oxford, said the reading taught him how peoples experiences in the Syrian war differed depending on where in the country they lived.

I lived in Damascus, and only witnessed the conflict when it was a war between the government and the Free Syrian Army, he said. But the authors of the books I am reading come from Raqqa, Hama, Daraa, and Idlib. Their opinions are shaped by their social and political circumstances. The perspective of the author from Raqqa, naturally, was affected by the terrifying experiences he went through under ISIS, while narrators from other cities did not live under ISIS, and therefore did not write as much about it.

One specific text that stood out to him, the Rhodes Scholar said, is The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy by Syrian scholar and writer Yassin Al-Haj Saleh.

He weaves together his own experiences with philosophical and political explanations of what happened on the ground in Syria during the conflict, Safar Jalani said. Through political philosophy, he explains Islamism, sectarianism, war, dictatorship, and nihilism in a way that relates to the everyday experiences of Syrians living the conflict.

While Safar Jalani plans to begin the next chapter of his academic career at Oxford this fall, Wade and Kammourh both plan to keep working with Nugent this semester. Wade will continue to build the immigration while Nugent and Kammourh will be analyzing existing public opinion datasets measuring drug use and addiction, mental health, and political behavior.

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Plans upended by pandemic, a professor and three students find each other - Yale News

Cell Biology

New type of taste cell discovered in mice – University at Buffalo Reporter

Some taste cells are multitaskers that can detect bitter, sweet, umami and sour stimuli, a new study finds.

The research challenges conventional notions of how taste works. In the past, it was thought that taste cells were highly selective, capable of discerning only one or two types of the five basic stimuli only sweet, for instance, or only salty and sour. Though many cells are indeed specialists, the discovery of a subset of cells that can respond to up to four different tastes suggests that taste science is more complex than previously thought.

The study was published on Aug. 13 in the journal PLOS Genetics. The research was done on mice, which have a very similar taste system to humans, says Kathryn Medler, associate professor of biological sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, who led the study with first author Debarghya Dutta Banik.

This changes the way weve been thinking about how taste cells function and how taste information is collected in a taste bud and sent back to the brain, Medler says. Our data fills in a lot of holes. Other research has suggested that taste cells can be broadly responsive, but we were able to isolate individual taste cells and describe how they work. I cannot definitively state that humans have these broadly responsively taste cells, but based on the high degree of similarity between the mouse and human taste systems, I predict that these cells are very likely present in humans.

It is currently believed that taste cells are very specific about what stimuli they detect. The surprising thing with this new cell population is that individual cells can detect bitter, sweet, umami as well as sour stimuli, says Dutta Banik, a postdoctoral fellow in anatomy, cell biology and physiology in the Indiana University School of Medicine. Dutta Banik did the research while pursuing his doctorate at UB. It was surprising to know that individual taste cells can respond to so many taste qualities.

Taste cells are critical to survival: They help us decide whether a food is a good source of nutrients or a potential poison.

Beyond identifying the multitasking taste cells, the new study describes some of their traits. Scientists showed that the cells detect sour stimuli using one signaling pathway, and sweet, bitter and umami stimuli using a different pathway.

Experiments also showed that when broadly responsive taste cells are silenced, mice have trouble tasting sweet, bitter and umami stimuli. This was the case even when the more selective taste cells those that specialize in detecting individual stimuli remained active, says study co-author Ann-Marie Torregrossa, assistant professor of psychology, College of Arts and Sciences, and associate director of UBs Center for Ingestive Behavior Research.

We did a series of taste tests, says Torregrossa, who led the behavioral aspects of the study. When the animals were missing the function of either the broadly responsive cells or of the traditional taste cells, they responded to sweet, bitter and umami solutions as if they were water. This is very exciting because it suggests they needed both cells to taste the solution normally. When we did the same taste tests with animals that had both cells, they as you would expect licked the sweet solution avidly and avoided the bitter.

This shows that both of these cell populations are important for sending the taste information to the brain, Dutta Banik says.

The groundbreaking findings highlight how much scientists still have to learn about taste, including how taste buds work and send information to the brain.

Compared to other sensory systems, we know surprisingly little about how taste is coded and processed, Torregrossa says. This study identifies a new population of cells that are contributing to normal taste function, which could be a large piece in the puzzle.

The studys co-authors also included Eric D. Benfey, Amy R. Nelson, Zachary C. Ahart, Barrett T. Kemp and Bailey R. Kemp in the Department of Biological Sciences, and Laura E. Martin, Kristen E. Kay and Gregory C. Loney in the Department of Psychology. The research received support from the UB North Campus Imaging Facility, which is funded by the National Science Foundation.

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New type of taste cell discovered in mice - University at Buffalo Reporter