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Archive for January, 2011

 Psychosis Progression

Image: Psychosis Progression by Louis Wain

(Most of his life Louis lived in seclusion with 5 spinster sisters and 17 cats.)

By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on October 1, 2010 

Researchers are hopeful that emerging research linking psychosis to an abnormal relationship between two signaling chemicals in the brain may lead to a new approach to preventing psychotic symptoms.

The finding could lead to better drugs for schizophrenia, one of the most common severe mental health conditions.

Sufferers experience symptoms of psychosis — an inability to distinguish between reality and imagination — such as hallucinations and delusions. The condition tends to begin in the late teens or 20s, and usually persists for the rest of the sufferer’s life.

Brain chemicals called neurotransmitters carry signals from one nerve cell to another. Research has linked schizophrenia with abnormally high levels of a neurotransmitter called dopamine in a region of the brain called the striatum.

Drugs currently used to treat schizophrenia block the effects of dopamine in the brain. These drugs are not effective for all patients, and can have serious side effects.

Read in Full:  http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/10/01/lab-discovery-could-lead-to-new-meds-for-psychosis/19028.html

 



 View Image

Ohio State University have created a fantastic interactive web application where you play the part of a neurosurgeon operating on a patient who needs a deep brain stimulation device installed to treat their Parkinson’s disease.

When I first loaded it up and saw the cartoon-like style I thought it would just be a bit of eye-candy but it turns out to be quite a detailed guide to exactly how this sort of surgery is undertaken.

It’s great if you’re just curious, as there’s plenty to learn about the procedure, but even if you’re a neuroscience fanatic there are questions throughout the demo that allow you to flex your problem-solving skills.

Read in Full:  http://mindhacks.com/2010/09/28/neurosurgery-simulated/



by ALLEN SCHAUFFLER / KING 5 News

Posted on September 30, 2010 at 4:26 PM

Updated yesterday at 10:58 PM

RENTON, Wash. — Every once in a while there is a news story that is truly a treat, a rare treat to work on and bring to the air. This was the case with Wil Kerner and his art.

His art, first of all, is fascinating. It’s childlike and complex at the same time – collage works full of bright colors and big shapes, one-eyed cartoon characters from a world other than ours. It’s bright, vivid, demanding; hard to walk past.

Watching him create his art is absolutely mind-blowing. Wil is just 15 years old and severely autistic. He lives outside of Renton. And he cuts paper. Constantly. His grandmother who helps with his art spends thousands of dollars a year on reams of brightly colored paper. Wil cuts relentlessly, drifting in and out of Grandmother Susan’s living room, which has been set up as a sort of walk-through studio for him.

Shapes emerge from his scissors, sheets of paper hit the floor as he snips and trims and cuts, occasionally talking or grunting to himself or others. And then it happens – you look down and there is an image, a coherent whole, a colorful collage resembling a cartoon character from another planet or a Picasso-animal or just a beautiful collection of shapes and color, Alexander Calder laid flat.

To view Wil’s collage art, go to http://www.wilspapercutouts.com/.

Read in Full:  http://www.nwcn.com/news/Renton-teen-with-autism–104117179.html



 

October 1, 2010

Siblings of children with autism have more frequent language delays and other subtle characteristics of the disorder than previously understood. Girls also may be mildly affected more often than recognized in the past.

A new study, led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, found mild traits, not strong enough to provoke a diagnosis of autism, seem to be present in the siblings of affected children at significantly higher rates than seen in the general population. The findings appear online and will be published in the November issue of The .

“Mild symptoms, called quantitative traits, may be confounding studies that compare children with autism to their siblings,” says first author John N. Constantino, MD. “Researchers presume one child is affected, and the other is not, but our findings suggest that although one child may have autism while the other does not, it’s very possible both children are affected to some degree by genes that contribute to autism.”

exert their influence in different ways. Some families have only a single child with autism and no other affected children. But in other families, more than one child may be affected, or other siblings may have a number of autism characteristics.

The study found that approximately one in five siblings thought to be unaffected experienced language delays or speech problems early in life. The researchers also noticed many female siblings had subtle traits, but few had full-blown . Boys are thought to be affected four times more often than girls. But when the researchers used standardized methods to account for the presence of quantitative traits, the rate looked more like three affected boys for every two affected girls.

“The gender difference may not be as pronounced as we once thought it was,” Constantino says. “If we rely only on a professional diagnosis of autism to determine who is affected, then boys vastly outnumber girls. But it may be that many girls are being missed.”

Read in Full:  http://www.physorg.com/news205144257.html



http://www.ucp.org/uploads/thearc.jpg

September 30th, 2010 12:56 pm ET

Brooke Dunbar

U.S Department of Health and Human Services announced today the contribution of $1.87 million to The Arc of the United States, the largest non-profit advocacy organization in the U.S. committed to helping those with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families.  The money is intended to go towards a national resource and information center to provide information about Autism and other developmental disabilities. 

The new information center will provide families with information and resources in their own communities. There is also the plan to create national networking – including internet-based networking, sponsoring regional events, and assisting community based organizations with training and technical assistance.

The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network and Self Advocates Becoming Empowered will partner with The Arc in this initiative.  The official name will be: Autism NOW: The National Autism Resource and Information Center.

Read in Full:  http://www.examiner.com/parenting-politics-in-national/hhs-gives-1-87-million-towards-establishing-national-autism-resource-center



 

ScienceDaily (Sep. 29, 2010) — Playing white noise in class can help inattentive children learn. Researchers writing in BioMed Central’s open access journal Behavioral and Brain Functions tested the effect of the meaningless random noise on a group of 51 schoolchildren, finding that although it hindered the ability of those who normally pay attention, it improved the memory of those that had difficulties in paying attention.

Göran Söderlund from Stockholm University, Sweden, worked with a team of researchers to carry out the experiments at a secondary school in Norway. He said, “There was significant improvement in performance for the children rated as inattentive by their teachers, and a significant decline in performance for those rated as attentive as noise levels were increased. This finding could have practical applications offering non-invasive and non-pharmacological help to improve school results in children with attentional problems.”

Read in Full:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100928193445.htm



 

A curious case of a two year old infant who had a sponge-eating obsession. The report is taken from a small case series of compulsive sponge-eating in children, published in medical journal Acta Pædiatrica.

Remarkably, the child was successfully and quickly treated just by correcting low iron levels in the blood.

A general practitioner referred a 32-month-old girl with an obsession of eating sponge since the age of 7 months. The obsession for the sponge aggravated to the extent that she could rip the cushions, car seats and mattresses to get the sponge out. The child was noticed to have a strong, irresistible urge and was seen finishing a fifth of sponge from a cushion in less than half an hour. Occasionally she had been seen eating carpet fibres and tissue papers. She was otherwise a fit and medically healthy girl with a normal intelligence and behaviour. The examination including general physical and systemic resulted to be unremarkable except pallor…

Read in Full:  http://mindhacks.com/2010/09/29/taking-the-sponge/



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By John M Grohol PsyD

In Australia, David Jones’ publicist Kristy Fraser-Kirk is suing the company she works for and its former CEO Mark McInnes for sexual harassment. David Jones is sort of like Macy’s, except it’s based in Australia.

According to news reports, Ms. Fraser-Kirk, 27, is suing David Jones, Mark McInnes and nine directors of the company. She is seeking compensation for a number of different claims, including breach of contract, as well as punitive damages of $37 million. Not exactly chump change. But then again, maybe that’s what it takes to send a clear message about how sexual harassment will not be tolerated in the modern workplace.

But due to the publicity surrounding the case in Australia, she’s now making a new novel claim — that the publicity has led to an “adjustment disorder.” So what is an adjustment disorder? How might it impact Fraser-Kirk’s case??

An adjustment disorder is simply the clinical label given to a mental health concern that is so new in an individual that it doesn’t quite rise to the level of a full-blown mental disorder like depression or generalized anxiety.

Read in Full:  http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/09/29/fraser-kirk-and-adjustment-disorders/



 

By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on September 29, 2010

We all know that the phrase heartbroken is reflective of a social rejection. New research suggests the phrase may also have some physiological truth as researchers determine social rejection does affect the heart.

Dutch researchers have determined social rejection isn’t just emotionally upsetting; it also makes your heart rate drop for a moment.

The report is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Research has shown that the brain processes physical and social pain in some of the same regions. A team of Dutch researchers wanted to find out how social pain affects you physically.

For the study, volunteers were asked to send the researchers a photograph of themselves. They were told that for a study on first impressions, students at another university would look at the photo to decide whether they liked the volunteer.

This was just a cover story for the real experiment.

Read in Full:  http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/09/29/social-rejection-literally-affects-the-heart/18895.html



 

By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on September 29, 2010 

A new study finds that stressed men have diminished activity in brain regions responsible for understanding others’ feelings.

In the investigation, researchers had men look at angry faces. The results suggest the silent and stoic response to stress might be a “guy thing” after all.

“These are the first findings to indicate that sex differences in the effects of stress on social behavior extend to one of the most basic social transactions — processing someone else’s facial expression,” said Mara Mather, director of the Emotion and Cognition Lab at USC.

In an article appearing in the journal NeuroReport, Mather and her coauthors present a series of tests indicating that, under acute stress, men had less brain response to facial expressions, in particular, fear and anger.

In both men and women, looking at pictures of faces caused activity in the part of the brain used in basic visual processing (the “fusiform face area”) and in parts of the brain used for interpreting and understanding facial expressions.

However, men under acute stress showed decreased activity not only in the fusiform face area but also decreased coordination among parts of the brain that help us interpret what emotions these faces are conveying.

In a marked sex difference, women under stress showed the opposite — women under stress had increased activity in the fusiform face area and increased coordination among the regions of the brain used in interpreting facial emotions compared to the control group.

Read in Full:  http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/09/29/men-respond-to-stress-by-shutting-down/18890.html