Neuroscience

Scientists find a potential biomarker that predicts reductions in anxiety symptoms following treatment – PsyPost

The gray matter volume of a brain region involved in fear and avoidance responses appears to predict treatment outcomes in patients with anxiety disorders, according to new research published in Neuropsychopharmacology.

Anxiety disorders are among the most prevalent mental health conditions in the US and are associated with significant economic burden worldwide, explained study author Katie Burkhouse, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago and head of the Families, Affective Neuroscience, and Mood Disorders Lab.

Unfortunately, despite decades of research, many individuals do not respond to our first-line treatments for anxiety disorders, such as SSRIs (such as Prozac and Celexa) or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), especially patients presenting with more than one mental health disorder. Thus, the primary objective of this research was to identify a brain-based predictor of treatment response for patients with comorbid anxiety disorders in an attempt to use this information to guide patients toward treatments that have the highest likelihood of success.

In the study, 81 participants with a current anxiety disorder were randomly assigned to receive either 12 weeks of CBT or SSRI treatment. The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to measure the gray matter volume of the amygdala, nucleus accumbens, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex prior to treatment.

After controlling for age, sex, and total brain volume, the researchers found that participants with greater nucleus accumbens volume prior to treatment tended to see greater reductions in anxiety symptoms after the 12 weeks. The results were similar for both CBT and SSRI treatment.

In our study, we explored whether brain volume of regions supporting fear and avoidance responses, which are heavily impacted in anxiety disorders, may be used to predict which individuals respond to treatment. We found that for adults with anxiety, the individuals that responded best to psychosocial or SSRI treatment were those who had greater pre-treatment volume in the nucleus accumbens, a region that plays a key role in both passive and active avoidance behavior, Burkhouse told PsyPost.

The researchers replicated their results in another experiment with 55 youth who were between the ages of 7 and 19.

The novel piece of our study was the ability to reproduce this effect in a separate sample of children and adolescents with anxiety disorders. Thus, improving avoidance responses may be one way in which these first-line treatments work for reducing anxiety among youth and adults, and these effects may be most meaningful for individuals who exhibit greater pre-treatment deficits in neural systems underlying avoidance behaviors, Burkhouse said.

But the study like all research includes some limitations.

Although the focus on patients with anxiety disorders and comorbid conditions (e.g., multiple anxiety disorders or anxiety with depression) was intentional to increase the generalizability of the current findings to the community and to understand predictors of treatment response for this population, we were unable to examine whether the effects were specific to a certain anxiety diagnosis (such as social anxiety or generalized anxiety), Burkhouse explained.

Future studies should explore whether findings are specific to comorbid anxiety profiles or are observed for specific diagnoses. Additionally, although we were able to reproduce our treatment finding in a separate sample, the total proportion of variance in treatment outcome explained by our brain-based predictor was still relatively low (approximately 20%), which is not uncommon for treatment outcome studies.

Thus, continued work in this area is needed to improve prediction models. For example, combining structural data (e.g., brain volume) with other measures of threat processing and avoidance behaviors (e.g., functional neuroimaging) may result in improved accuracy and prediction in future anxiety treatment outcome studies, Burkhouse said.

The nucleus accumbens has long been associated with motivation and reward. The brain structure might be related to vulnerability to stress as well, and it also appears to be involved in emitting or withholding a response to avoid harm.

The present study benefited from the ability to reproduce the treatment prediction finding in a distinct sample of youth with anxiety disorders. Given that anxiety disorders are most likely to onset during childhood and adolescence, identifying predictors of response to treatment for this developmental population is essential, Burkhouse added.

To our knowledge, this is the first study to include a separate independent sample when testing neural predictors of treatment response. The ability to reproduce findings in separate samples is critical for advancing the field of precision medicine.

The study, Nucleus accumbens volume as a predictor of anxiety symptom improvement following CBT and SSRI treatment in two independent samples, was authored by Katie L. Burkhouse, Jagan Jimmy, Nicholas Defelice, Heide Klumpp, Olusola Ajilore, Bobby Hosseini, Kate D. Fitzgerald, Christopher S. Monk, and K. Luan Phan.

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Scientists find a potential biomarker that predicts reductions in anxiety symptoms following treatment - PsyPost

Neuroscience

What We Can Learn From How Emotional Pain Affects the Brain – Thrive Global

The human brain exhibits amnesiawhen called upon to reexperience the blows from sticks and stones. With humiliation and indignity, however, the brain is a steel trap of merciless memory.

It should come as no surprise that victims of hate crimes suffer greater emotional distress and cumulative psychological harm than victims of non-bias-motivated crimes. Indeed, five years after the traumatic encounters, they experience greater levels of depression and anxiety than other crime victims. The impact to both mind and body lingers much longer. The incidence of severe trauma from hate crimes requires a lengthier recovery periodif recovery is even possible at all.

Similarly, hate crime victims report that their reintegration into society is much more difficult to achieve. Deprived of self-respect after experiencing ordeals of indignity, victims of hate speech struggle with the everyday tasks of socialization. One obvious outcome is in trying to be less visible, which the hate crime victim achieves by moving to an entirely different environment.

In this way, hate speech serves to undermine free speech itself precisely because it silences the targeted group, compelling them to disappear socially.

Moreover, even watching someone else experiencing pain can create greater sensitivity in ones own pain perception. So finely calibrated is the processing of emotions in the human brain, it turns out that showing empathy to a fellow human being carries some emotional risk. In a 2009 study conducted simultaneously at the universities of Arizona and Maryland, researchers discovered that the anterior cingulate cortex, the region of the brain that regulates emotional reactions, responds to an emotional insult by unleashing a wide variety of physical responsesstress-induced sensations in the chest, muscle tightness, an increased heart rate, and stomach painsall triggered from the same sector of the brain. Another study undertaken by two professors from the University of Virginia in 2006 supported the finding that activation in the anterior cingulate cortex coincides with the onset of chest pains. The researchers concluded that emotional pain involves the same brain regions as physical pain, suggesting that the two are inextricably linked.

In fact, medical evidence abounds showing how emotion and physical harm share the same circuitry in the human brain. The New England Journal of Medicine published a research study in 2013 on how subjects experienced both physical and emotional pain by looking at a photo of a cherished person who died. Brain scans indicated the same neural activity when a subject was exposed to heat on his or her forearm as when shown a photo of a lost loved one. Experiencing physical pain did not yield a separate neural response that was distinguishable from emotional pain. A burned forearm and an aggrieved heart elicited identical neural reactions. One of the researchers on the study, Tor Wagner, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Colorado in Boulder, explained the reasons for this unexpected outcome, stating [t]hat may be why social pain is so painful: every time you remember it, you feel it all over again and that is not true for physical pain. Of all the things Ive observed in the brain, nothing is more similar to physical pain than social pain.

And the consequences of social pain are even more severe. The pain from social exclusion and indignity, which begins with emotional distress, ends up rendering a person physically sick. The two regions of the brain once thought to be the epicenter for the processing of physical pain show similar patterns of neural activity when the mind focuses on a photograph reminiscent of rejection or loss. A research team from the University of Kentucky set out to demonstrate this neural overlap between social and physical pain systems. Apparently, the same behavioral and neural mechanisms are at work in processing what many would believe to be disparate manifestations of pain. Psychology professor C. Nathan DeWall explained the significance of his teams findings in 2009: Social pain, such as chronic loneliness, damages health as much as smoking and obesity. We hope our findings can pave the way for interventions designed to reduce the pain of social rejection. He also speculated about the reasons why the human brain evolved in this manner. Instead of creating an entirely new system to respond to social hurt, he said, evolution piggybacked the system for emotional pain onto that for physical pain. The evolution of the human brain allowed emotional injury to take a free ride on the circuitry associated with physical pain.

And not surprisingly, when it comes to hate crimes and their origins in racial bigotry, the overall bodily damage arising from such injurious speech tends to be even worse. Law professor Richard Delgado noted that, [i]n addition to these long-term psychological harms of racial labeling, the stresses of racial abuse may have physical consequences. There is evidence that high blood pressure is associated with inhibited, constrained or restricted anger . . . American blacks have higher blood pressure levels, and higher morbidity and mortality rates from hypertension, hyper-intensive disease, and stroke than do white counterparts. Further, there exists a strong correlation between degree of darkness of skin for blacks and level of stress felt, a correlation that may be caused by the greater discrimination experienced by dark-skinned people.

Psychology professor Geoff MacDonald, from the University of Toronto, has charted the trajectory of bodily and psychological harm caused by social insult. He noted that, not unlike damage done to the body, the initial sensation of emotional hurt produces a surge of stress hormones. In the context of a physical injury, the purpose of this hormone is to brace the body for yet another attack. It provides confidence to both body and mind that the individual can actually take and survive a punch. The release of these stress hormones accounts for why a person can actually walk away on a broken leg or manage to speak despite having a shattered skull. After the surge of this energy dissipates, the pain ensues. The same release of stress hormones occurs when a person faces severe emotional, social pain. Proving the Talmudic injunction not to humiliate a fellow human being because it is tantamount to draining him of his blood, neuroscience can now account for how the ancients knew something about what happens, physiologically, to human beings who have experienced severe indignity. The brain discharges a sufficient amount of stress hormones to handle the first blow. When the damage is done and the insult has subsided, the body will begin the process of dissipating the pain, and the blood flows away from the afflicted area.

The difference, however, is that, unlike physical pain, where bones will ultimately heal, and the pain of the experience will become wholly forgotten, social pain can beand often isrelived over and over again. The sensation of the pain is instantly recalled and reexperienced. This is the consequence of how our memories cope with traumatic stress, resulting in a cruel admixture of the mind. Physical pain, by contrast, can be remembered as once being painful, but the pain itself cannot be reclaimed. The human brain exhibits amnesia when called upon to reexperience the blows from sticks and stones. With humiliation and indignity, however, the brain is a steel trap of merciless memory.

With sets of patients who had experienced physical injury and another group that suffered from emotional harm, researchers at Purdue University did a five-year study and checked back in with the participants each year after the incidents that caused them such pain. The focus of the study was to determine how they felt about what they had experienced five years earlier. The results, published in 2008, were not surprising to neuroscientists but surely would be perplexing to emotionally adverse judges. Those participants who had experienced emotional injury reported higher levels of pain than participants who experienced physical harm. They were still feeling the emotional effects of the harm. Psychology professor Kip Williams of Purdue stated that, While both types of pain can hurt very much at the time they occur, social pain has the unique ability to come back over and over again, whereas physical pain lingers only as an awareness that it was indeed at one time painful. A few law professors had been making similar points over the years, with much skepticism from their colleagues and the courts. It must have just seemed intuitively obvious. Arkes, for instance, once presciently wrote during the Stone Age of such speculations (in 1974), There is in fact such a thing as a psychological injury, which may be quite grave . . . as an assault on ones body or a broken leg.

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What We Can Learn From How Emotional Pain Affects the Brain - Thrive Global

Neuroscience

How to protect your mental health during the coronavirus pandemic Northern Life – Northern Life magazine

The coronavirus pandemic is creating stress in the global population. Empty store shelves, fear about the disease and quarantine or self-isolation can negatively impact depression and anxiety. The mental health implications of the pandemic will impact everyone differently, and clinical psychologists at Flow Neuroscience have offered a guide to support andmanage ones mental health and those of others during these times.

Globalconcern about coronavirus means its very important to keep the normal routineas much as possible when it comes to sleep, nutrition and exercise,particularly in people with existing mental health problems, says DanielMansson, clinical psychologist and co-founder of Flow Neuroscience. In thecurrent situation, finding ways to maintain your normal routine is essential toreducing stress and potential depressive thoughts that may appear.

Theconstant news about the pandemic can feel relentless and may exacerbate existingmental health problems. Be careful about the balance of watching important newsand the news that could cause you to feel depressed. Seek trusted information,such as the NHS website, at specific times to take practical steps to protectyourself and loved ones. Have breaks from social media and mute triggeringkeywords and accounts.

Somepeople might feel that talking about their depression and anxiety requires noadditional attention during these unprecedented times. People should beencouraged to talk about their feelings. Various support helplines areavailable, including Samaritans, as well as mental health crisis services, details ofwhich can be found via the mental health charity Mind.

Anxietyis likely to increase during the current crisis, but a well-nourished body isbetter at handling stress. Traditional Mediterranean food, sometimes referredto as the anti-depression diet, for its anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatoryproperties, includes whole grains, vegetables (particularly green leaves),fruit, berries, nuts (including almonds), seeds and olive oil. The Flow app,free to download on iOSand Android, can help people to improve their nutrition and reduce the risk ofdepression at home.

90%of depressed people struggle with sleep, which is likely to increase with fearsover coronavirus. Good quality sleep is a form of overnight therapy, andincreases the chance of handling strong emotions. Try to wake up and go to bedat the same time every day. Achieving 8 hours of sleep, taking a hot bath,setting the bedroom temperature to 18 degrees and having no screen time 2 hoursbefore bedtime will also help.

Withmonths of the coronavirus pandemic ahead, it is important to keep exercising.Clinical studies show that regular exercise produces chemicals, such asdopamine and serotonin, which are as effective as antidepressant medication orpsychotherapy for treating milder depression. Most people will not have accessto a gym during the crisis, so it is important to create a daily exerciseroutine at home. Experts recommend between 30-40 minutes of exercise, 3-4 timesa week to work up a sweat. People with depression often struggle with exercise,so start small with a 10 minute walk, then add a few minutes daily.

Ifyou are suffering from clinical depression, it is important to contact your doctoror psychologist should your symptoms worsen.

Asthe coronavirus epidemic approaches though, many NHS services will be strainedto cope with the demand to save lives. A modern drug-free treatment fordepression, which does not require NHS services, is available in the UK sinceJune of 2019.

Createdby Flow Neuroscience, the brain stimulation headset is the only one in the EUto be medically approved as a home treatment for depression. The headset usestDCS, a type of brain stimulation which is now listed as a treatment fordepression on the NHS website. Clinical studies published in the New England Journalof Medicine and the British Journal of Psychiatry showed that the type of tDCSbrain stimulation used in the Flow headset had a similar impact toantidepressants 1,2,3 More information about the Flow headset can befound here.

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How to protect your mental health during the coronavirus pandemic Northern Life - Northern Life magazine

Neuroscience

How to spot bogus science stories and read the news like a scientist – The Conversation UK

When fake news, misreporting and alternative facts are everywhere, reading the news can be a challenge. Not only is there plenty of misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, climate change and other scientific topics floating around social media, you also need to read science stories, even well-known publications, with caution.

We have already seen headlines suggesting that coronavirus vaccines are imminent, while scientists desperately try to manage expectations that its more likely to take more than a year for vaccines to be suitable for use. So how do we approach science news like a scientist, to see past the sensational and find the facts?

In a recent study, we and our colleagues analysed 520 academic papers and the media articles that reported their findings. We wanted to trace how the presentation of scientific knowledge as it makes its way from researchers to the general public via the media.

Read more: We're climate researchers and our work was turned into fake news

We found that scientific knowledge is sometimes reproduced but is most often reinterpreted and its meaning is frequently lost in translation. Based on this study, we think there are some key things that readers of the news can do to spot when science is being reported in a misleading or inaccurate way, and get to what the evidence really shows.

In our research we saw that content transformation can happen in a number of ways. The main focus of a study is often changed in a way that makes assumptions about how the results might effect people, even in cases when this was not an aim of the research. For example, research in rats is often taken to have implications in humans.

Highly technical language can be changed not just to more common phrases but also more evocative or sensational descriptions. Charts and graphs are replaced with images that make articles appear more related to human experimentation or applications, even where this isnt the case.

One example we looked at in detail was a report on the Mail Online website from 2016 that said brain implants could soon help us develop superhero night vision. The report stated that scientists have used brain implants to give rats a sixth-sense that enables them to detect and react to the normally invisible light source. It added that would make it possible for the adult brain to adapt to new forms of input and opens up the possibility of enabling humans to gain an array of superhuman senses.

An exciting revelation indeed. But if this was such a groundbreaking and impactful development, why did so few other news publishers cover it?

The research the story was based on had originally been published in the Journal of Neuroscience by a team of scientists at Duke University Medical Centre in the United States. Their work explored how easily you could change the sensory processing of adult rats by implanting them with a brain device to teach them to identify the location of infrared light sources. Surprisingly, the implanted rats learned to do so in less than four days.

The scientists who conducted the research suggested their findings could have important implications for basic neuroscience and rehabilitative medicine. But the Mail Online article took this to another level and interpreted this as the possibility of giving people a number of superhuman senses.

The experiment had previously been reported in New Scientist, which appeared to be the main source of information for the report published in the Mail Online. The New Scientist article did focus on the rats but said the research paved the way for human brain augmentation. The article used images representing human mind control. It was then less of a leap for the Mail Online to report the research as a move towards giving people superhuman powers.

All this leaves ordinary readers to try to work out what is accurate and what isnt. This requires them to read like a scientist but without the same training.

So how do we read this way? Based on our research, we have put together six steps to help you read in a critical way when engaging with scientific information.

The first thing to do is simply be aware of how important information in the original source may be reinterpreted, modified and even ignored altogether depending on what a journalist understands or chooses to present. This is a bit like the game telephone or Chinese whispers.

In particular, you should watch out for big or surprising claims that may be exaggerated (such as giving people a sixth sense). Such extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Check how precise and unambiguous the details presented in the article about the research are. Saying that an experiment has proven a particular fact is a lot stronger than saying it suggests that something might happen in the future.

Look for a reference or a link to the original source in the report youre reading, like the ones provided in this text. If there is one its more likely that the journalist has read the original research and understands what it does and doesnt say.

Try to check whether the arguments in the article come from the scientists who carried out the research or the journalist. This could mean looking for quotes or comparing with the original research paper, if you can do that.

Look to see if other places are reporting the same stories. If only one news outlet is covering an amazing breakthrough, it might be time to apply a little more scepticism.

Developing these skills could help you discern what sources you should and shouldnt trust, and how to spot when even usually authoritative outlets sometimes exaggerate or misinterpret things.

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How to spot bogus science stories and read the news like a scientist - The Conversation UK

Neuroscience

The Neural Basis of Tremors – Technology Networks

New insight on what happens in brain cells to cause tremors in mice has been published in the open-access journal eLife.Uncontrollable movements called tremors are common and debilitating, but scientists have previously struggled to pinpoint their exact cause. The new study reveals the neural activity behind tremors, and suggests that targeting deep brain stimulation (DBS) to the cerebellum can help treat the condition. DBS is a technique used to treat movement disorders in patients who do not respond well enough to medications.

While abnormalities in different brain cells in the cerebellum, particularly Purkinje cells, have previously been associated with tremors, it wasnt certain if and how Purkinje cells cause this condition, says lead author Amanda Brown, a graduate student in the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, US.

To investigate this further, Brown and her colleagues studied mice with Purkinje cells that were unable to signal correctly. They then treated the mice with a drug that usually causes tremors and found that the animals did not develop the condition.

Next, they administered the drug to healthy mice and measured what happened in their Purkinje cells. They found that the animals tremors coincided with abnormal bursts of activity in these cells. Using a technique called optogenetics, the team recreated these abnormal bursts in the Purkinje cells in untreated, healthy mice and found that this also led to tremors.

Finally, they showed that targeting DBS to the cerebellum where Purkinje cells are located could stop tremors in mice treated with the tremor-inducing drug. DBS that targets part of the brain called the thalamus, which receives messages from the cerebellum, is already used to treat movement disorders in people, Brown explains. But these findings highlight the cerebellum as a more direct potential target.

Our study hints at a potential treatment option to reduce or curb tremors and other movement disorders involving the cerebellum, adds senior author Roy Sillitoe, Associate Professor of Pathology at Baylor College of Medicine. Our next step is to explore whether cerebellar deep brain stimulation works as well in humans with tremors as in mice.ReferenceBrown et al. (2020) Purkinje cell misfiring generates high-amplitude action tremors that are corrected by cerebellar deep brain stimulation. eLife. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.51928

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

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The Neural Basis of Tremors - Technology Networks

Neuroscience

We can combat the virus by equipping governments with an arsenal of neurotech – The National

On Saturday evening, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe introduced a new set of measures to help contain the Covid-19 pandemic in France. He and the President observed that the first measures taken to limit assemblies were "imperfectly applied". This sounds to me like blaming the people. However, individual responsibility matters. Governments, not just the French one, hold a significant responsibility as well for not using the most advanced scientific methodology to improve their communication and strategies of behaviour change.

All around the world, administrations have worked with physicians to create a set of medically sound guidelines aimed at slowing down the Covid-19 spread. As is often the case in public health communication and prevention, the belief is that informing people is sufficient to change their behaviour. False. If this were the case, no physician would be smoking.

In public health communication and prevention, the belief is that informing people is sufficient to change their behaviour. False. If this were the case, no physician would be smoking

Now, imagine a handful of government advisers that are not biologists or epidemiologists gathered in the meeting room of a ministry of health. After an intense day of theoretical work, they claim they have found a vaccine to cure Covid-19.

Do you think a vaccine developed by non-experts who conducted zero experiment would work? And would you be willing to try it? Something tells me I am not the only one who would answer a firm No to both questions. Such a methodology being insanely dangerous.

This is not how the effort on finding a Covid-19 vaccine is being conducted. But more or less the modus operandi to design public health prevention and communication strategies in times of crisis. People who really understand our behaviours are not physicians, nor are they economists or policy makers in government task forces.

Those who master the science of persuasion, engagement and behaviour change are behavioural and brain scientists working for the consumer, entertainment and big tech industries. They use biometrics and neurotechnologies to conduct experiments. The brain data they collect, combined with a wealth of other information, are at the core of the design of apps we are glued to, the TV shows we binge watch, the delivery services that ease our lives and the products we cannot put down.

Why the need for neuroscience? Because relying on what one self-reports, looks at, smiles or frowns at is the human equivalent of observing the smoke of your car, listening to its noise and sensing its temperature. It adds up to sometimes useful peripheral data but that which does not tell the whole story. Nothing beats monitoring the engine, our brain, together with the various environments altering its functioning that matters as much as the brain itself.

Governments very rightly leverage biology in the current crisis but they should not ignore the benefits of neuroscience. Especially the French government. In 2009, I became the head of the Neuroscience and Public Policy program. A world premiere at the Prime Ministers Center for Strategic Analyses. With my team, we published the first ever government report introducing how to use neuroscientific methods and technologies to improve communication and prevention in public health. Advisers to former US President Barack Obama, and the British Government, including future Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler contributed. This report was released a decade ago on March 16, 2010.

One could argue that French authorities ignored it because it was not good enough. Well, a dozen of governments and global organizations reached out to learn about our solutions informed by neuroscience, including the World Economic Forum (WEF) which later named me its global head of strategy in health and healthcare. There might have been a couple of things in this report that made sense after all.

The WEF understood early on that health and healthcare are not a just a medical matter but a systemic one. And neuroscience is of significant help to change health-related behaviours for the better.

Neuro-technologies can be used to accurately measure the effect of certain words on the reward circuit of the brain, a network that play a key role in our decisions. Being able to monitor the synchrony between the brain activity of multiple people interacting provides unprecedented insight on how trust evolves. Quite relevant to the current crisis, functional brain data was found to be a better predictor of the impact of a health-related behaviour change campaign than what people answered in a survey.

Last week, I flew from Atlanta to participate in meetings at the French Ministry of Health in Paris. The afternoon before French President Emmanuel Macron gave his address, I introduced physicians and inter-ministerial advisers to the latest benefits of using neurotech in health prevention. Most had never heard of it before and tried to shake my hand to thank me. Clearly the messaging on shaking hands had not yet sunk in.

Thanks to portable neurotechnologies brain data can now be recorded everywhere, participants no longer being stuck in medical and scientific facilities. Data processing no longer takes weeks. We can now collect and analyse brain data in real-time on thousands of workers stuck in their homes.

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, I have spoken to many neurotech entrepreneurs and neuroscience leaders. Many like us are already working pro bono to test for the most effective Covid-19 health messaging strategy.

Brains matter. They are our best weapon to win the war against Covid-19. Governments can no longer avoid adding neurotech to their arsenal.

Professor Olivier Oullier is the president of Emotiv, a neuroscientist and a DJ

Updated: March 17, 2020 12:13 PM

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We can combat the virus by equipping governments with an arsenal of neurotech - The National

Neuroscience

New research on brain structure highlights cells linked to Alzheimer’s and autism – Cambridge Network

Published yesterday (16 March) in Nature Neuroscience, the most in-depth study of its kind is set to change the way we think about the brain and the role of cells such as astrocytes. This knowledge will have with implications for the study of neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis and autism.

In the past 20 years, research has shown glial cells to be key players in brain development and function, as well as promising targets for better understanding neurological disorders. Alzheimer's causes around two thirds of dementia cases in the UK, which affects around 850,000 individuals at present*. MS is a neurological disorder that affects the central nervous system and impacts around 100,000 people in the UK**. Autism affects around one in every hundred people in the UK***.

'Glial' comes from the Greek word for 'glue' or 'putty'. At one time, glial cells were thought of as 'brain putty' - functionally similar, passive cells whose only function was to fill the space around the 'all important' neurons. However, new studies are showing their critical importance in regulating neuron functions^. Astrocytes are a type of glial cell, so called because of their 'star-shaped' structure^^.

Despite the wealth of knowledge on neuronal function and the organisation of neurons into layers, prior to this study there had been little investigation into whether glial cells across different layers showed different cellular properties. To answer this question, the researchers developed a new methodological approach to provide a more detailed view of the organisation of astrocytes than ever before.

Nucleic acid imaging was carried out on mouse and human brain samples at the University of Cambridge to map how new genes are expressed within tissue. These maps were combined with single cell genomic data at the Wellcome Sanger Institute to extend the molecular description of astrocytes. These data sets were then combined to create a three-dimensional, high-resolution picture of astrocytes in the cerebral cortex.

The team discovered that astrocytes are not uniform as previously thought, but take distinct molecular forms depending on their location in the cerebral cortex. They found that astrocytes are also organised into multiple layers, but that the boundaries of astrocyte layers are not identical to the neuronal layers. Instead, astrocyte layers have less sharply defined edges and overlap the neuronal layers.

Dr Omer Bayraktar, Group Leader at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: "The discovery that astrocytes are organised into layers that are similar, but not identical to, neuronal layers redefines our view of the structure of the mammalian brain. The structure of the cerebral cortex can no longer simply be seen as the structure of neurons. If you want to properly understand how our brains work, you have to consider how astrocytes are organised and what role they play."

As well as increasing our understanding of brain biology, the findings will have implications for the study and treatment of human neurological disorders. Over the past decade glial cells, rather than neurons, have been heavily implicated in diseases such as Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis.

Professor David Rowitch, senior author of the study and Head of Paediatrics at the University of Cambridge, said: "This study shows that the cortical architecture is more complex than previously thought. It provides a basis to begin to understand the precise roles played by astrocytes, and how they are involved in human neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases."

Image credit: Bayraktar lab, Wellcome Sanger Institute and Rowitch lab, University of Cambridge

In the cerebral cortex of the mammalian brain, neurons are the cells responsible for transmitting information throughout the body. It has long been recognised that the 10-14 billion neurons of the human cerebral cortex are organised into six layers, with distinct populations of neurons in each layer that correspond to their function https://www.dartmouth.edu/~rswenson/NeuroSci/chapter_11.html

* More information on Alzheimers disease can be found here: https://www.alzheimersresearchuk.org/about-dementia/types-of-dementia/alzheimers-disease/about/

**More information about MS can be found here: https://www.mssociety.org.uk/about-ms/what-is-ms

*** More Information on autism is available from the National Autistic Society: https://www.autism.org.uk/about/what-is/asd.aspx

^ An overview of the changing status of glial cells is available at: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/know-your-neurons-meet-the-glia/

^^ Only half of the cells in the human cerebral cortex are neurons, the other half are glial cells, of which astrocytes are a type. The molecular signals that astrocytes provide are essential for forming synapses between neurons. They regulate synapse formation in the developing brain, as well as refining synapses in the maturing brain 'pruning' extra synapses to sculpt neuronal networks.

Omer Ali Bayraktar, Theresa Bartels and Staffan Holmqvist et al. (2020). Astrocyte layers in the mammalian cerebral cortex revealed by a single-cell in situ transcriptomic map. Nature Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-020-0602-1

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New research on brain structure highlights cells linked to Alzheimer's and autism - Cambridge Network

Human Behavior

Human Behavior And Group Dynamics Can Be Reshaped By AI Use, Including Via AI Self-Driving Cars – Forbes

AI will substantively impact human behavior including social group interactions.

Suppose you interact with an AI system, such as a robot, and in so doing your behavior changes based on that interaction.

This makes sense in that we already today interact with the likes of Alexa and Siri, AI systems employing a limited capability of Natural Language Processing (NLP), and find ourselves perhaps changing what we do next as a result of the AI interaction (Ill go ahead and put on my raincoat and take my umbrella, after discussing the forecasted weather with Alexa).

Lets rev this up a notch.

Suppose you and your buddies opt to interact with an AI system, doing so collectively, as a group, and have some form of substantive interaction that takes place.

Would the group dynamics and social interaction be potentially altered as a result of having the AI system engaged in the interaction with you all?

Yes, indeed, and furthermore the manner in which the AI interacted and what it had to say could impact too the viewpoints and perceptions of those humans in the group that were undertaking the interaction, along with causing the human-to-human group or social dialogue to also be impacted (such as cohesion of the group, tenor and tone of the group, focus, and engagement within the group, etc.).

A recent Yale study conducted an experiment in which humans in small groups of three people interacted with an AI system, deployed as a likable looking robot, doing so to play a game, and the robot was pre-programmed to provide varying kinds of experimental treatments: (1) Robot expresses a self-deprecating commentary which ostensibly reveals a sense of robot personal vulnerability to the group, (2) Robot is neutral in its commentary, and (3) Robot is silent.

The researchers reported that the vulnerable utterances by the robot not only influenced groups to talk more, but also positively shaped the directionality of the utterances to be more evenly balanced between the other two human members of the group (see this link for the research paper, the authors of the study are Margaret L. Traeger,Sarah Strohkorb Sebo,Malte Jung,Brian Scassellati, andNicholas A. Christakis).

Having conducted similar AI research that explores the impact of AI on human behavior and likewise having deployed AI systems in industry, Ive found it useful to characterize these efforts as follows.

Well use the letter R to represent robots, and the letter H to represent humans.

The nomenclature of 1R <-> 1H means that we have one robot that is interacting with one human.

This is a commutative expression in that well say that 1R <-> 1H is equal to and no different than if we were to indicate 1H <-> 1R.

Next, well introduce intentionality and the changing of behavior.

If we have 1R -> 1H, it means that one robot is interacting with one human and that the end result is some form of behavioral change exhibited by the human (which can arise via intentional actions of the R, or unintentionally so).

Of course, in the real world, we could have more than one human involved, having the humans participating as a group, so the group aspect is: 1R -> nH.

This means that we have one robot that is changing the behavior of a group of humans, wherein n is some number of 2 or greater.

To make it clear that group dynamics are involved, this is included too: 1R -> nH : nH <-> nH.

The latter portion of nH <-> nH helps to remind us that the group of humans are interacting with each other (since otherwise, it could be that the humans are told to not interact with each other or for some reason decide to purposely not interact, which, admittedly, could also be shaped via the R, but thats an additional variant for another day).

One other important point is that even though the R is used to represent a robot, the other way to more fully envision this aspect is to think of the R as any AI system that is reasonably intelligent-like and decidedly does not need to be the kind of space-age robot that we often have in mind, i.e., there doesnt necessarily need to be a slew of mechanical arms, legs, and other such human-like mechanization's.

Why care about all of this?

Because we are going to soon enough have widespread advanced AI systems that interact with humans, doing so beyond just occurring on a one-on-one basis (the 1R <-> 1H), though even for one-on-one nonetheless still being able to impact human behavior (the 1R -> 1H), and will certainly be ratcheting up to impacting human behavior that affects social interaction as a group (the 1R -> nH : nH <-> nH).

Developers and those fielding AI systems ought to be thinking carefully about how their AI is going to potentially impact humans and the inner group of dynamics among humans, during the interaction that those AI systems undertake with us.

In addition, humans need to be mindful that the AI system can potentially change our behavior, for the good or possibly for the bad, along with changing how we behave in a group setting with our fellow humans.

If we dont make sure that we are on our toes, the AI can cleverly lead us down a primrose path, getting groups of humans to become incensed, perhaps take to violent action, or express untoward outcomes (getting humans to among ourselves furtively work ourselves into a tizzy).

Of course, you can also take the glass-is-half-full viewpoint, and suggest that perhaps the AI system might stoke humans in a group setting to be more productive, more open to each other, and otherwise spur humans to be more, well, humane with each other.

This is why the recent spate of AI Ethics guidelines are so important and why I keep pounding away at having the AI community be mindful of how they are designing, developing, and fielding the myriad of AI systems that are appearing in a dizzying fashion and going to become integral to our daily lives.

For my analysis of the Rome Call For AI Ethics see this link, for my analysis of the Department of Defense principles of AI Ethics, see this link.

The AI genie is being let out of the bottle, so quickly and without sufficient scrutiny and caution, we might either be shooting our own foot as humanity, or we might be boosting ourselves to new heights, yet all-in-all it right now is taking place with little thought as to which way this is going to go.

Id prefer that things end-up on the side of enhancing mankind, the so-called AI For Good, and avoid or mitigate what we know will certainly equally emerge too, which is the AI For Bad.

On the topic of research studies, there are ways to further explore this question about AI and human behavior encompassing group dynamics.

For example, first consider this: 1H -> 1R

This use case looks at how the human can potentially change the behavior of the robot or AI system, perhaps convincing the robot to take actions that without the human interaction might not otherwise have taken place.

Amplifying that further, consider this: 1H -> nR : nR <-> nR.

In this use case, there is a group of robots or AI systems that are interacting jointly as a group (thats the nR <-> nR), and the human is impacting the robots, in both an individual robot instance, and along with how and what robots are doing as a federated or group interaction.

Many are caught off-guard on that formulation, not realizing that yes, we are gradually going to have multiple robots that are interacting with each other, doing so in a manner of human-like group dynamic interactions (for my discussion of federated AI, see this link here).

For those that like twisters and puzzles, heres something you might enjoy: 1R -> nR : nR <-> nR

Thats the case of a robot that is interacting with a multitude of other robots, and for which the group dynamics of the other robots are being changed as a result of the robot that is initiating or potentially leading the interaction.

Finally, we can also reflect on humans in the same manner, namely this: 1H -> nH : nH <-> nH.

No robots are in that equation, its a human-only instance.

We experience this every day.

Your boss comes into a conference room and announces to you and your fellow employees that the company is going to provide a bonus to those that exceed their quota (thats a behavior spark of the 1H -> nH). The group of employees engage in a discussion among themselves about what each will do (the nH <-> nH), in order to earn that potential bonus.

Thats a happy face version.

Revise the example somewhat for a sad face version.

Your boss comes into the conference room and announces to you and your fellow employees that the company is going to start laying off people, those as rated as subpar by their employee colleagues. Imagine what would happen next in the group dynamics among the employees, a potential nightmare of alliances, backstabbing, and the like.

Those of you that want to pursue the whole enchilada, consider this:

nR -> nH : nH <-> nH

nH -> nR: nR <-> nR

(nR -> nH) + (nH -> nR): nR <-> nR; nH <-> nH

Plus other variations.

Ill leave that as an exercise for those of you at home or are in your research labs.

As mentioned earlier, the R is not merely or solely a traditional kind of robot that comes to mind and can be any intelligent-like AI system, which includes, for example, AI-based self-driving cars.

Heres the question then for today: Can AI-based self-driving cars potentially impact human behavior on both an individual basis and on a social dynamic or group interaction among humans too?

Id like to keep you in suspense, and gradually reveal the answer, though I realize you are undoubtedly anxiously perched on the edge of your seat, so, yes, AI-based self-driving cars can indeed have such impacts.

Lets unpack the matter and see.

The Levels Of Self-Driving Cars

It is important to clarify what I mean when referring to AI-based true self-driving cars.

True self-driving cars are ones that the AI drives the car entirely on its own and there isnt any human assistance during the driving task.

These driverless vehicles are considered a Level 4 and Level 5, while a car that requires a human driver to co-share the driving effort is usually considered at a Level 2 or Level 3. The cars that co-share the driving task are described as being semi-autonomous, and typically contain a variety of automated add-ons that are referred to as ADAS (Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems).

There is not yet a true self-driving car at Level 5, which we dont yet even know if this will be possible to achieve, and nor how long it will take to get there.

Meanwhile, the Level 4 efforts are gradually trying to get some traction by undergoing very narrow and selective public roadway trials, though there is controversy over whether this testing should be allowed per se (we are all life-or-death guinea pigs in an experiment taking place on our highways and byways, some point out).

Since semi-autonomous cars require a human driver, the adoption of those types of cars wont be markedly different than driving conventional vehicles, so theres not much new per se to cover about them on this topic (though, as youll see in a moment, the points next made are generally applicable).

For semi-autonomous cars, it is important that the public be forewarned about a disturbing aspect thats been arising lately, namely that in spite of those human drivers that keep posting videos of themselves falling asleep at the wheel of a Level 2 or Level 3 car, we all need to avoid being misled into believing that the driver can take away their attention from the driving task while driving a semi-autonomous car.

You are the responsible party for the driving actions of the vehicle, regardless of how much automation might be tossed into a Level 2 or Level 3.

Self-Driving Cars And Human Behavior

For Level 4 and Level 5 true self-driving vehicles, there wont be a human driver involved in the driving task.

All occupants will be passengers.

The AI is doing the driving.

Some people perceive the AI driving system as nothing more than a simple machine. It is easy for us as human drivers to say that driving is a mundane task and readily undertaken.

Indeed, it is somewhat staggering to realize that in the United State alone there are about 220 million licensed drivers (see driver stats link here). Obviously, the driving of a car must be relatively simplistic if you can get that many people to presumably be able to do it (as some suggest, it isnt rocket science).

Yet, also consider how much life-or-death risks and consequences there are in the act of driving a car.

There are about 40,000 deaths per year due to car crashes in the U.S., and around 2.5 million bodily injuries to people involved in car crashes.

Turns out that getting an AI system to drive a car could be said to be easy, but the trick is getting it to drive a car safely, and do so in the midst of the raucous and dangerous wilds of human drivers and everyday driving circumstances (in essence, getting AI to drive a car on a closed track that is utterly controlled is readily viable, but once you put that same AI self-driving car into the real-world with the rest of us, all bets are off, for now, and its a doozy of a problem).

Once you put an AI self-driving car onto the public roadways, youve essentially added a new social actor into our midst.

Social actor, you might ask?

Yes, the AI system is now contending with all the same roadway social interactions that we humans do.

Think about your actions as a human driver.

Is that pedestrian going to suddenly dart into the street, and if so, should I slam on my brakes or instead keep going to scare them back onto the sidewalk in a game of chicken?

Thats social interaction.

Now, with the advent of self-driving cars, rather than having a human driver in the drivers seat, the social actor becomes the AI system thats driving the self-driving car.

But, there isnt anyone or anything sitting in the drivers seat anymore (though, as Ive posted here, some are working on robot drivers that look and act like a traditional robot, which would sit inside the car and drive the vehicle, but this is not likely in the near-term and certainly not prior to the advent of todays version of self-driving cars).

Ive exhorted that we are going to find ourselves confronted with a head nod problem (see my analysis here), whereby as pedestrians we can no longer look at the head of the driver to get subtle but telling clues about what the driver is intending to do.

Thus, this vital social interaction is going to be broken, meaning that the pedestrian wont know what the AI driving system is thinking (theres not as yet a theory-of-mind that we can have about AI driving systems), and likewise, the AI if not properly developed wont be gauging what the pedestrian might do.

There are various technological solutions being explored to deal with this social interaction, including for example putting LED displays on the exterior of the car to provide info to pedestrians, and there is the hope that V2P (vehicle-to-pedestrian) electronic messaging will help, though all of this has yet to be figured out.

Lets tie this together with the earlier equations presented.

A self-driving car is coming down the street and meanwhile, a pedestrian is getting ready to jaywalk.

We are on the verge of a social interaction, namely a 1R <-> 1H situation.

The AI of the self-driving car wants to stand its ground and intends to proceed unabated, so it somehow communicates this to the pedestrian, attempting a 1R -> 1H.

In what way will the communication occur, and will the human pedestrian acquiesce or resist and opt to jaywalk?

Thats yet to be well-formulated.

Lets bump things up.

A group of strangers are standing on a street corner, waiting to cross the street (this is nH).

As a self-driving car reaches the corner, it wants to try and make sure that those pedestrians stand away from the corner, since the AI system is going to make that right turn without pausing.

We have this: 1R -> nH

It could be that the pedestrians do nothing and standstill.

Or, they might look at each other and try to figure out which has the greater will, namely they as a pack of humans might decide to flow off the curb into the street, doing so to basically tell the self-driving car to back off and let them cross, though it could also be that they briefly confer and decide that it is better to let the AI do its things and make the turn.

In essence, this happened: 1R -> nH: nH <-> nH.

Suppose the AI system had proffered a gentle, friendly indication, asking the group to remain out of the way, how might that have played out among the group in a social interaction about what to do?

Or, suppose the AI system had been stern, essentially threatening the group to stay put, what might have been the group dynamics in that case?

For more on the use of social reciprocity by AI in human-AI interactions, see my discussion at the link here.

Read the rest here:
Human Behavior And Group Dynamics Can Be Reshaped By AI Use, Including Via AI Self-Driving Cars - Forbes

Human Behavior

Religion justifies many conflicting human behaviors. How would God reconcile that? | Opinion – Tennessean

DeWayne Stallworth, Guest Columnist Published 5:00 a.m. CT March 17, 2020

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Religion accounts for much of the best and worst of human behavior throughout history. What would God make of this?

Narratives stretching back millennia help explain how a divine being, or multiple deities, created what we mere mortals know as humanity and planetary substance.

Early humans, while adapting and defining the social world around them, discovered their limitations and began associating the creation of things beyond their physical grasp the moon, stars, sky and so on to that of a more informed, super natural and transcendental phenomenon.

This mode of contemplation often resulted in the attribution of divine essence toward nature as well as toward humans who were recognized and worshiped as demigods.

By correlating aspects of the natural world with that of divine essence, humans garnered the ability to envision a sacred space beyond the here-and-now moment, which also inspired the use of rituals and symbols to communicate cultural significance to peoples of the world. As the God concept developed in practice and theory among various cultural groups, the world became fragmented and accustomed to the use of divine influence as a means to further human ambitions.

Dewayne Stallworth(Photo: Submitted)

The Crusades are an example in which human beings used religion as a means to vie for more space, power and geographical positioning. Muslims and Christians killed one another because both sides were convinced that they possessed solely Gods blessed directive to pursue cultural advancement.

Similarly, American chattel slavery is yet another example of how humans use religion to substantiate oppressive and dehumanizing behavior. In fact, in 1562, British sailor John Hawkins became the first European to sail the triangular trade successfully. The slave ship that transported these newly-enslaved Africans to the new world was ironically named Jesus.

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In the 21st century, humans continue to co-sign God to acts that border on sinister and nefarious intentions. Diverse religious groups gather together weekly in order to worship the God of their understanding. Jews, Muslims and Christians believe that their respective notions about God, this world, and the hereafter are validated historically, and they have the words to prove it: Hebrew Bible, Quran and Christian Bible.

Which religious group is right? A Christian understanding of God, for instance, entails a belief of hellish torture if one does not possess faith solely in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.

In other words, according to Christian dogma, one can fight against social injustice, advocate for LGBTQ rights, assist the homeless and treat all human personality with a sense of relevance, but still reserve a spot in hell if one does not believe the Christian narrative of the historical Jesus. I find this mode of thinking to be difficult, absurd and dangerous.

Neo-Nazi groups also subscribe to hard-wired notions about God. They are convinced that God has given them authority to kill, harass and terrorize non-whites as a means of preserving God ordained whiteness. As far as these racists are concerned, God deems their hateful consideration of another race as being both appropriate and meaningful.

Therefore, I believe that God, albeit a plausible cosmic reality, is also a mental construction that provides a context for what is good and proper for the individual. Thus, God is real according to how the individual understands and interprets this reality via lived experience. I often wonder how God feels about people who use religious dogma as a means of manipulation, control and social expansion.

Does God even care? I think God does care; and if God is real, the agents of religious manipulation will have to provide an accounting for their abuses; or maybe not.

You decide.

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DeWayne R. Stallworth is an African American religious studies scholar and the author of two books.

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Religion justifies many conflicting human behaviors. How would God reconcile that? | Opinion - Tennessean

Human Behavior

How To Stay Resilient And Mentally Healthy During The Coronavirus Outbreak – WBUR

Editor's Note:This hour discusses anxiety and other mental health issues.If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact theNational Suicide Prevention Lifelineat 1-800-273-8255 (En Espaol: 1-888-628-9454; Deaf and Hard of Hearing: 1-800-799-4889) or theCrisis Text Lineby texting 741741.Coronavirus anxiety resources:Coronavirus Anxiety Helpful Expert Tips and Resources (ADAA),Manage Anxiety & Stress (CDC), Pandemics General Resources (APA)Other Resources:Anxiety and Depression Association of America,Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies,The Jed Foundation,National Alliance on Mental Illness

Coronavirus and collective stress around the world. Why is this moment so anxiety-producing and how can we stay resilient in the face of it?

Jonathan Kanter, director of the Center for the Science of Social Connection at the University of Washington. (@UWPsychology)

Elissa Epel, stress scientist and psychiatry professor at the University of California, San Francisco. (@Dr_Epel)

The San Francisco Chronicle: "How to turn the coronavirus anxiety into something positive" "Most of us alive today are novices to experiencing global pandemics, so we could benefit from some insight through a science lens of human behavior under threat.

"Theres a lot of controversy about just how much we should be anxious and panicking. Science has an answer. Anxiety is helpful, panic is damning: Anxiety drives us to mobilize together, stay clearheaded, and do what is needed for the common good.

"Panic is highly contagious, throws us into irrational and catastrophic thinking, and drives us to toward lousy human behaviors that can exacerbate our crisis greed, excessive hoarding, stampeding. Panic is highly contagious and infects those around us. The difference between anxiety and panic is critical to understand, so we can strike the right balance."

The Conversation: "Social distancing comes with social side effects heres how to stay connected" "To fight the spread of coronavirus, government officials have asked Americans to swallow a hard pill: Stay away from each other.

"In times of societal stress, such a demand runs counter to what evolution has hard-wired people to do: Seek out and support each other as families, friends and communities. We yearn to huddle together. The warmth of our breath and bodies, of holding hands and hugging, of talking and listening, is a primary source of soothing. These connections are pivotal for responding to and maximizing our survival in times of stress.

"Priority number one is to follow the recommended social distancing guidelines to control the virus. The cure is definitely not worse than the disease experts projections of disease spread and mortality without strong intervention make this clear."

Wired: "Dont Go Down a Coronavirus Anxiety Spiral" "The past few days have made clear how serious the escalating coronavirus pandemic is for many people in the United States. Schools and workplaces across the country closed, major events were canceled, and testing delays made it impossible to confirm how many people were infected.

"The stock market had its biggest decline in decades, Sarah Palin rapped to Baby Got Back dressed in a bear suitit feels like the world is unraveling. There is so much going on, and so much uncertainty, it is all too easy to get trapped watching cable news or scrolling through Twitter all day.

"If all this news is making you feel stressed, youre far from alone. Many people are sharing their worries online; theres a whole subreddit devoted to coping with these feelings. Experts say overloading on information about events like the coronavirus outbreak can make you particularly anxious, especially if youre stuck inside with little to do but keep scrolling on Twitter and Facebook."

Seattle Times: "A cough, and our hearts stop: Coping with coronavirus anxiety and fear" "We are you. We are mothers, daughters, students and teachers. Yet we are also clinical psychologists who spend our days researching and treating pathological anxiety and fear. With the near constant news of the spreading coronavirus and fatalities, our personal and professional identities have dramatically collided, forcing us to consciously live consistent with the scientific principles we know well.

"This became very real for one of us on March 1, as two young children developed sudden, unexplained fevers. As they lay uncharacteristically quiet on the couch complaining of sore throats and headaches, fear set in. What followed was 24 hours of worry, internet searching, repeated calls to the pediatrician, and constant self-reassurance kids are unlikely to develop severe symptoms, coughing and breathing difficulties are primary symptoms but anxiety persisted.

"In the end, the two kids were diagnosed with strep infections, and anxiety subsided. In Seattles elevated threat environment, anxiety processes are playing out in our daily lives."

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How To Stay Resilient And Mentally Healthy During The Coronavirus Outbreak - WBUR