An alarming report has been issued by the national Research Council and Institute of Medicine that shown about 14 to 20 percent youngsters suffering from psychological disorders in USA. Kenneth E. Warner, the chairman of the committee of the written report has stated “Although there are a number of effective programs for preventing the youngsters form mental disorders, these should be extended and experimented on a broader scale to meet the problem”.

It is noticed that most of the problems have their roots in childhood or early adolescence and the onset of symptoms was started earlier before these turned towards chronic disorders. The committee has refused the concept of taking such disorders never be prevented.

If the problem is detected in its early stages it will not become serious. There are enough resources to help the suffering youngsters of the nation and provide them with the skills and assistance to lead a happy contented life with their caring relations. The need of the time is to develop effective communication programs and their implementation on a larger scale to prevent the children and young generation from emotional and behavioral problems.

“Older adults are able to show a less reaction to negative emotions,” said Roberto Cabeza, psychologist of Duke University.

Researchers have thought that the older people deal with emotions differently or less reactively than the young, Cabeza said. “Reports have provided us with the fact that there’s a shift in the bias, perhaps a reduction of negative emotions and stress on processing positive emotions,” he said.

For the execution of the theory about brain, Cabeza and his colleagues isolate 15 young of average age 25 and 15 older healthy women with average age 70.

The women were shown pictures chosen to draw positive, neutral and negative responses. In next step, the women were tested to reveal which photos they remembered. The fMRI technology was also implemented to measure neural activity.

Though both groups of women remembered negative images, the older ones memorized lesser than the young women, Cabeza said. Less activity between different neural areas has been examined in the brains of old women.

Why it only happened to the old ladies? “They have suffered negativities in life such as illnesses, death of friends, relatives and spouses,” Cabeza said. “It’s possible with this change and shift, by paying less attention and processing fewer negative events, we’re protecting ourselves from these negative events.”

Paul Sanberg, director of the South Florida University said “Younger people don’t have the bitter experiences in the world. They haven’t seen as many negative things in their lives as the older. That is why they don’t have the experience to cope with those things as much.”

This British study has been published in the journal Neurology 2nd Dec. issue and it adds something to those previous studies which show that many anti-epilepsy drugs including valproate can cause birth defects in babies.

Dr. Michel Berg, the lead author of the study, says in this connection: “Previous data indicates that epilepsy drug like valproate can become the cause of neural tube defects in babies and these drugs also seem to affect brain development.”

Doctors already avoid prescribing valpraote and other epilepsy drugs to pregnant women as well as to those who are planning for it.

“It wouldn’t change practice in a dramatic way, but if there is another option, it provides enough reason to avoid prescribing this drug,” says Dr. Jeffery P. Brosco, who is an associate professor at the University of Miami Miller School.

Some other problems have also been encountered by the drugs used for this condition and some other studies say that pregnant women who use another epilepsy drug known as Topamax alone or with other drugs, they may bear babies with different birth defects.

1. Not be able to recognize familiar places and people
2. To have difficulty in finding the right words to name objects or express thoughts
3. To perform simple calculations with great difficulty
4. Having difficulty in planning and carrying out tasks like following a recipe, writing a letter and balancing a check book.
5. Not be able to control moods or behavior. Depression, aggression or agitation may occur.
6. Not taking interest in personal care like bathing or grooming.

Some key symptoms for types of dementia cause:

1. Highly detailed visual hallucinations is often found in patients who have dementia with Lewy bodies.
2. Personality changes or unusual behavior may be the first symptoms of frontotemporal dementia. Usually people with this condition do not express nay caring for others or they may also make sexually explicit comments, expose themselves or say rude things.

“The take-home message is that, if you drink a lot, you’re going to hurt your brain. This is something we knew, but this is a huge study that quantifies that.” said Rajesh Miranda, an associate professor of Health Science Center College of Medicine.

Brain degenerates naturally with aging, at a rate of about 1.9 percent per decade. Simultaneously, the brain gains white matter lesions. Both of these changes are accompanist of dementia and cognitive decline.

For the study, researchers conducted MRI and health examination on 1,839 adults, aged up to 60. None of the participants had evidence of clinical dementia or had suffered a stroke.

The men and women were asked, how much alcohol they drank in a weak, then were categorized in low (1 to 7 drinks per week), moderate (8 to 14 drinks per week) or heavy drinkers (14 or more drinks a week).

Most participants fell into the “low-consumption” class. Men were more likely than women to report being moderate or heavy drinkers.

Alcohol had no protective affect on the normal, age-related shrinkage in brain volume, the researchers found.

Instead, the more a person drank, the more their brain volume reduced. This factor was more prominent in women than men, though women tended to be lighter drinkers.

“The gender difference could be explained by biological factors, namely that alcohol is absorbed faster in women and they tend to feel the effects of alcohol more than men.” researchers said.

A recent research study published in the February issue of the journal “Neurology” established this finding with sufficient evidences based on clinical trials.

Researchers conducted study with the help of almost 7,374 volunteers who were men and women both and were belonging to an age group of ‘over 40 years’. Selection of these men and women was on the basis of having the Parkinson’s disease or not. Meaning thereby, half of them were suffering from this disease and the rest one did not.

Among all the men and women, divided in to two groups, 50 percent volunteers were also suffering from high blood pressure and were undergoing its treatments that included the ‘calcium Channel blockers’, ACE inhibitors, AT-II antagonists, and beta blockers.

Researchers observed that the participants who were treating themselves with the calcium channel blockers for a long time for controlling their high blood pressure were found to be with lowered down risks of having Parkinson’s disease. The rate of such lowering down was calculated to be almost 23% compared to those participants who were not on these medications.

Such effects of lowering down the risks of Parkinson’s disease was however, not observed with same effects with the use of any other drugs like ACE inhibitors, AT II antagonists and beta blockers. Dr Christoph R. Meier , the lead researcher at the University Hospital Basel in Switzerland says,” no such association was seen for other high blood pressure medicines”.

Dr Christoph R. Meier believe that further extended research in to this area is really required as it would further help in exploring the explanations of why these ‘calcium channel Blockers’ act as a potential firewall against the risks of Parkinson’s disease and reduce the risks up to great extent at the same time. The future research would also be helpful in finding out the reasons for all other high blood pressure drugs not being effective in the same manner.

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Researchers from the ‘California pacific Medical Center research Institute’ conducted a study that established these findings with the help of sufficient evidences. These research findings have also been published in the journal “Cancer Research”.

A protein, “IE1” present in the human body, performs many functions altogether. It modifies the brain cancer cells in such a way that these cancerous cells start growing at fast pace. Researchers could establish a conformed performance of these cells for CMV in the “malignant process of this cancer”.

Tumor cells receive a ‘two-punch’ blow by the “IE1” protein. Researchers were able to trace out this ‘CMVIE1’ protein in almost every malignant brain tumor. This spotting led the researchers to say that “it can make tumor cells more aggressive by affecting two major pathways”.

The process has two stages. The first stage is for inhibiting two key tumor suppressing proteins within the brain tumor cells. During the second stage, there is a promotion of growth with pathway signals in the tumor itself. When both these cellular pathways are modulated the tumor cells get more agitated by the viral protein.

Dr. Charles Cobbs, the lead researcher, discovered an association of the CMV with the malignant brain tumors in the year 2002 .After almost seven years’ time identifying the mechanism for  helping the CMV tumor fuels, researchers have drawn up a projection which hopes to give an impetus to the development of new treatments in near future.

Dr.Liliana Soroceanu, the co-researcher in this study, is optimistic about the new opportunities opened up by this research. She foresees the strong possibilities of finding new ways to treat the malignant brain tumors with the development of new antiviral drugs in near future.”It would be “a simple oral medication that could dramatically help patients fight off a previously fatal cancer”, she says.

Most commonly, the brain cancer is represented by the high grade ‘glioma tumors’. It is difficult to treat such type of brain cancer as the surgical treatments do not stand as good options. Radiation therapies and chemotherapies have been proved to be of limited success only .This vulnerability increases the risk many times because the tumors grow with a tremendous speed and within a period of one year it becomes fatal.

CMV, a very common virus, is one of the main causes for persisting infection in almost 50% to 60% of the Americans. This disease displays very few symptoms and people at large are not much aware of these symptoms of infection.CMV could be a great risk factor even for the healthy individuals who have compromised immune system. Such a situation may be common with the people suffering through HIV/AIDs along with the organ transplant aspirants, and the pregnant women with their fetus.

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Susumu Tonegawa, Professor of Biology and Neurosciences devised this revolutionary mechanism to observe the effects of bypassing one of the major memory-forming circuits in the brain and its impacts on the learning and memory capacities in mice. Details of this research have been published in this week’s online edition of the journal “Science”.

According to the findings, the ‘hippocampal neural pathway’ also known as the ‘tri-synaptic pathway (TSP)’has an important role in the ‘quick- memory’ formation on witnessing new events in everyday life. “Decline of these abilities that accompany neurodegenerative diseases and normal aging in humans, is likely to be due to the malfunctioning of this circuit”, said Susumu Tonegawa.

On the basis of several genetic engineering techniques, Tonegawa’s laboratory invented a method called “Doxycycline-Inhibited Circuit Exocytosis-Knockdown (DICE-K)”. It is an acronym reflecting “Boston Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka”. With the application of ‘DICE-K’, the scientists were able to “induce and reverse a blockade of synaptic transmission in specific neural circuits in the hippocampus”.

Complexities of the brain and its cognitive capabilities along with the behaviors depend upon millions of molecules composing billions of neurons that are interconnected. Working of this extremely complex cellular network can be understood with the help of cognitive applications like memory. It is required to “intervene in the specific neural circuit suspected to be involved”, he said.

‘Hippocampus’ is a seahorse-shaped brain region that facilitates memory capacities and spatial navigation. It suffers severe damages at first In Alzheimer’s disease. It also causes memory problems and disorientation.

The ‘hippocampus’ is made up of multiple regions like CA1, CA3 and the dentate gyrus.
MIT study aimed at determining complex interactions between neural pathways and the hippocampal regions and its impact on learning and memory tasks. The hippocampus has two major, parallel information communication routes. One is the ‘tri-synaptic pathway (TSP)’ and the shorter ‘monosynaptic pathway (MSP)’. The TSP performs data processing from all three hippocampal regions and the MSP skips through most of them.

Scientists were more surprised to observe that mice with their major TSP pathway shut down were able to learn even and to navigate a maze. The shorter MSP pathway proved enough for them to perform this task.

Maze is such a task that is learned slowly with numerous repeated trials only
The same mice were also subjected to different task in changed environment requiring quick learning and memory formation. Scientists observed that the mice with TSP shut down were not able to perform satisfactorily. It made them to believe that the TSP pathway is essential for animals to acquire memories in a new environment quickly. “This kind of learning results in the most sophisticated form of memory that makes animals more intelligent and is known to decline with age,” Tonegawa said.

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This new research supports the basic principle that establishes a key role of sleep in the brain’s ability of changing the responses according to the environment. Scientists call this ability as the “plasticity” of the brain. This plasticity of the brain is at the heart of human learning.
Scientists observed that the plasticity of brain depends upon the synapses, the nerve cell connections. These connections remain strong when we are awake and become week when we sleep.”People sleep so that their synapses can downsize and prepare for a new day and the next round of learning and synaptic strengthening”, say experts.

A normal human brain spends 80% energy on synaptic activity. It keeps on adding and strengthening synapses while responding to all stimulations. Human brain contains millions of neurons and each one neuron has thousands of synapses. The energy thus becomes “huge and can’t be sustained”, says Chiara Cirelli, the lead researcher.

An off-line period is must to bring synapses down when we are not exposed to the environment. If we do not sleep the brain will attain a saturation point where the energy level will be down and the brain’s ability to learn will also go down. “That is why we sleep”, explains Chiara Cirelli.

Molecular and electro-physical studies conducted on rats helped scientists to evaluate the “synaptic potentiation”. Study of sleeping and waking time represents the strengthening and weakening. Scientists also observed the brain slices and their movements for measuring the number of specific receptors.

Analysis of the results obtained indicated that with an increase in the synaptic activity, more glutamatergic receptors enter the synapse making it big and strong. Scientists were surprised to note that there was a 50% increase in the receptors after wakeful interval in comparison to the ones who were asleep.

Molecular examination of receptors undergoing ‘phosphorylation’ revealed that these levels were much higher while awakened. Experiments with other enzymes also yielded same results with synaptic potentiation.

Evaluation of electrical signals reflecting synaptic changes and measuring the “evoked response” resulted in to an almost ECG like output. For the same levels of stimulation, Responses were stronger following a long period of waking and weaker after sleep for equal stimulations. This indicates the more strengthening of synapses.
The study concludes that our brain system becomes positively stronger during wakefulness and a good sleep rejuvenates them to a sustainable baseline.

Chiara Cirelli says, “We believe that learning occurs only when we are awake, and sleep’s main function is to keep our brains and all its synapses lean and efficient”.

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It is now an established fact that one of the major causes of persistent functional disability in schizophrenia is emotional functioning disturbance. But it is not clear which specific aspects of emotional functioning are impaired in patients with the condition.

Dr.Ellen Herbner and colleague researchers at the ‘University of Illinois at Chicago, USA’, conducted detailed study and experiments to derive these results recently. Findings of this study have been published in the recent issue of the journal “Schizophrenia Research”.

During the investigative research, the researchers asked 34 schizophrenia patients and 35 demographically matched mentally healthy individuals to give ratings for 131 pictures selected from the ‘International Affective Picture System (IAPS)’ library that covered a wide range of emotional arousal and valence levels.

In addition to that the patients were assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale and the Heinrichs-Carpenter Quality of Life Scale, and they completed physical and social anhedonia self-report scales.

Researchers observed that across the full spectrum of valence and arousal levels, the self-reported responses to emotional stimuli were drastically similar in schizophrenia patients and healthy individuals, and highly correlated, at r values of 0.98 for valance ratings and 0.95 for arousal ratings.

The research team also examined the degree of synchronization and relationship between emotional experience and measures of other aspects of emotional functioning. It took an account of estimated premorbid intellectual functioning, performance on emotional response correlated with anhedonia self-report, emotional perception, negative symptoms, and quality of life measures.

However, the correlations could only be partially established. The only significant relationship with the picture results was found between higher physical anhedonia scores and more negative ratings of positively valenced IAPS stimuli.
“In addition to confirming the normal emotional experience of individuals with schizophrenia at the moment of exposure to stimuli, the present finding shows that clinical evidence of emotional dysfunction is apparently unrelated to any disturbance in immediate emotional experience of events”, said in the research paper in the journal.

Dr.Ellen Herbner added in the concluding statement, “An important practical implication of our findings is that IAPS visual emotional stimuli seem suitable to elicit emotional reactions in psycho physiological or functional imaging studies of the neural substrate for emotional experience in schizophrenia, since the initial psychological responses to the stimuli appear unimpaired”.

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