Category: Medicine

Stanford scientists advance thought-control computer cursor movement

On By A.P.In brain algorithm, brain computer interface, Byron Yu, California, Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Foundation, cursor, Cynthia Chestek, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Director's Pioneer Award, Jame Gnadt, John Cunningham, Joline Fan, Jonathan Kao, Jose Carmena, Kebmodee, Krishna Shenoy, Mark Churchland, Matthew Kaufman, Medicine, mind control, monkey, National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Nature, Nature Neuroscience, neural prosthetics, paralysis, Paul Nuyujukian, ReFIT, REPAIR, Stanford, Stanford Graduate Fellowship, Stanford University, Stephen Ryu, traumatic brain injury, Vikash GiljaLeave a comment

 

 

Stanford researchers have designed the fastest, most accurate mathematical algorithm yet for brain-implantable prosthetic systems that can help disabled people maneuver computer cursors with their thoughts. The algorithm’s speed, accuracy and natural movement approach those of a real arm.

 

 

On each side of the screen, a monkey moves a cursor with its thoughts, using the cursor to make contact with the colored ball. On the left, the monkey’s thoughts are decoded with the use of a mathematical algorithm known as Velocity. On the right, the monkey’s thoughts are decoded with a new algorithm known as ReFITT, with better results. The ReFIT system helps the monkey to click on 21 targets in 21 seconds, as opposed to just 10 clicks with the older system.

 

 

When a paralyzed person imagines moving a limb, cells in the part of the brain that controls movement activate, as if trying to make the immobile limb work again.

Despite a neurological injury or disease that has severed the pathway between brain and muscle, the region where the signals originate remains intact and functional.

In recent years, neuroscientists and neuroengineers working in prosthetics have begun to develop brain-implantable sensors that can measure signals from individual neurons.

After those signals have been decoded through a mathematical algorithm, they can be used to control the movement of a cursor on a computer screen – in essence, the cursor is controlled by thoughts.

The work is part of a field known as neural prosthetics.

A team of Stanford researchers have now developed a new algorithm, known as ReFIT, that vastly improves the speed and accuracy of neural prosthetics that control computer cursors. The results were published Nov. 18 in the journal Nature Neuroscience in a paper by Krishna Shenoy, a professor of electrical engineering, bioengineering and neurobiology at Stanford, and a team led by research associate Dr. Vikash Gilja and bioengineering doctoral candidate Paul Nuyujukian.

In side-by-side demonstrations with rhesus monkeys, cursors controlled by the new algorithm doubled the performance of existing systems and approached performance of the monkey’s actual arm in controlling the cursor. Better yet, more than four years after implantation, the new system is still going strong, while previous systems have seen a steady decline in performance over time.

“These findings could lead to greatly improved prosthetic system performance and robustness in paralyzed people, which we are actively pursuing as part of the FDA Phase-I BrainGate2 clinical trial here at Stanford,” said Shenoy.

The system relies on a sensor implanted into the brain, which records “action potentials” in neural activity from an array of electrode sensors and sends data to a computer. The frequency with which action potentials are generated provides the computer important information about the direction and speed of the user’s intended movement.

The ReFIT algorithm that decodes these signals represents a departure from earlier models. In most neural prosthetics research, scientists have recorded brain activity while the subject moves or imagines moving an arm, analyzing the data after the fact. “Quite a bit of the work in neural prosthetics has focused on this sort of offline reconstruction,” said Gilja, the first author of the paper.

The Stanford team wanted to understand how the system worked “online,” under closed-loop control conditions in which the computer analyzes and implements visual feedback gathered in real time as the monkey neurally controls the cursor toward an onscreen target.

The system is able to make adjustments on the fly when guiding the cursor to a target, just as a hand and eye would work in tandem to move a mouse-cursor onto an icon on a computer desktop.

If the cursor were straying too far to the left, for instance, the user likely adjusts the imagined movements to redirect the cursor to the right. The team designed the system to learn from the user’s corrective movements, allowing the cursor to move more precisely than it could in earlier prosthetics.

To test the new system, the team gave monkeys the task of mentally directing a cursor to a target – an onscreen dot – and holding the cursor there for half a second. ReFIT performed vastly better than previous technology in terms of both speed and accuracy.

The path of the cursor from the starting point to the target was straighter and it reached the target twice as quickly as earlier systems, achieving 75 to 85 percent of the speed of the monkey’s arm.

“This paper reports very exciting innovations in closed-loop decoding for brain-machine interfaces. These innovations should lead to a significant boost in the control of neuroprosthetic devices and increase the clinical viability of this technology,” said Jose Carmena, an associate professor of electrical engineering and neuroscience at the University of California-Berkeley.

Critical to ReFIT’s time-to-target improvement was its superior ability to stop the cursor. While the old model’s cursor reached the target almost as fast as ReFIT, it often overshot the destination, requiring additional time and multiple passes to hold the target.

The key to this efficiency was in the step-by-step calculation that transforms electrical signals from the brain into movements of the cursor onscreen. The team had a unique way of “training” the algorithm about movement. When the monkey used his arm to move the cursor, the computer used signals from the implant to match the arm movements with neural activity.

Next, the monkey simply thought about moving the cursor, and the computer translated that neural activity into onscreen movement of the cursor. The team then used the monkey’s brain activity to refine their algorithm, increasing its accuracy.

The team introduced a second innovation in the way ReFIT encodes information about the position and velocity of the cursor. Gilja said that previous algorithms could interpret neural signals about either the cursor’s position or its velocity, but not both at once. ReFIT can do both, resulting in faster, cleaner movements of the cursor.

Early research in neural prosthetics had the goal of understanding the brain and its systems more thoroughly, Gilja said, but he and his team wanted to build on this approach by taking a more pragmatic engineering perspective. “The core engineering goal is to achieve highest possible performance and robustness for a potential clinical device,” he said.

To create such a responsive system, the team decided to abandon one of the traditional methods in neural prosthetics.

Much of the existing research in this field has focused on differentiating among individual neurons in the brain. Importantly, such a detailed approach has allowed neuroscientists to create a detailed understanding of the individual neurons that control arm movement.

But the individual neuron approach has its drawbacks, Gilja said. “From an engineering perspective, the process of isolating single neurons is difficult, due to minute physical movements between the electrode and nearby neurons, making it error prone,” he said. ReFIT focuses on small groups of neurons instead of single neurons.

By abandoning the single-neuron approach, the team also reaped a surprising benefit: performance longevity. Neural implant systems that are fine-tuned to specific neurons degrade over time. It is a common belief in the field that after six months to a year they can no longer accurately interpret the brain’s intended movement. Gilja said the Stanford system is working very well more than four years later.

“Despite great progress in brain-computer interfaces to control the movement of devices such as prosthetic limbs, we’ve been left so far with halting, jerky, Etch-a-Sketch-like movements. Dr. Shenoy’s study is a big step toward clinically useful brain-machine technology that has faster, smoother, more natural movements,” said James Gnadt, a program director in Systems and Cognitive Neuroscience at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health.

For the time being, the team has been focused on improving cursor movement rather than the creation of robotic limbs, but that is not out of the question, Gilja said. Near term, precise, accurate control of a cursor is a simplified task with enormous value for people with paralysis.

“We think we have a good chance of giving them something very useful,” he said. The team is now translating these innovations to people with paralysis as part of a clinical trial.

This research was funded by the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Foundation, the National Science Foundation, National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowships, Stanford Graduate Fellowships, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (“Revolutionizing Prosthetics” and “REPAIR”) and the National Institutes of Health (NINDS-CRCNS and Director’s Pioneer Award).

Other contributing researchers include Cynthia Chestek, John Cunningham, Byron Yu, Joline Fan, Mark Churchland, Matthew Kaufman, Jonathan Kao and Stephen Ryu.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/november/thought-control-cursor-111812.html

Thanks to Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community

Michael Newman – drunk Australian man tries to ride saltwater crocodile

On By A.P.In alcohol, Australia, Crocodile, drunk, Ethanol, Human Behavior, Malcom Douglas, Mark Phillips, Michael Newman, Nature, StupidityLeave a comment

 

A drunk man who climbed into a crocodile enclosure in Australia and attempted to ride a 5m (16ft) long crocodile has survived his encounter.

The crocodile, called Fatso, bit the 36-year-old man’s leg, tearing chunks of flesh from him as he straddled the reptile.

He received surgery to serious wounds to his leg and is recovering in hospital, police say.

He had been chucked out of a pub in the town of Broome for being too drunk.

The man, Michael Newman, climbed over a fence and tried to sit on the 800kg (1,800lb) saltwater crocodile.

“Fatso has taken offence to this and has spun around and bit this man on the right leg,” Sgt Roger Haynes of Broome police told journalists.

“The crocodile has let him go and he’s been able to scale the fence again and leave the wildlife park.”

Malcolm Douglas, the park’s owner, said that the crocodile was capable of crushing a man to death with a single bite.

“The man who climbed the fence was fortunate because Fatso was a bit more sluggish than normal, due to the cooler nights we have been experiencing in Broome,” said Mr Douglas.

“If it had been warmer and Fatso was more alert, we would have been dealing with a fatality.”

“No person in their right mind would try to sit on a 5m crocodile, Saltwater crocodiles, once they get hold of you, are not renowned for letting you go.”

The man staggered back to the pub bleeding heavily.

Pub manager Mark Phillips said staff told him that the man reappeared at about 11pm with bits of bark hanging off him and flesh gouged out of his limbs.

“They said he had chunks out of his legs and things like that,” Mr Phillips told The West Australian news website.

An average of two people are killed each year in Australia by aggressive saltwater crocodiles, which can grow up to 7m (23 ft) long and weigh more than a tonne.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10611973

 

 

Artificial muscle is 200 times stronger than real muscle

On By A.P.In artificial muscle, carbon nanatube, Inventions, Medicine, Ray Baughman, Richard Vaia, Science, Texas, University of Texas at DallasLeave a comment

 

 

They’re small but mighty. The tiny artificial muscles created by an international team of researchers are 200 times stronger than human muscle fibers of comparable size.

In the future, improved versions of the muscles could go into the next generation of motors for robots arms, flaps on airplane wings, medical devices — any inanimate thing that moves.

“There’s a lot of excitement,” said Richard Vaia, who studies high-tech materials at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Vaia was not involved in the making of the new muscle.

Researchers around the world have been trying to create artificial muscles that work more the way natural muscles do, to allow for more-delicate movements than current mechanisms can achieve.

Ray Baughman, a nanotechnology researcher at the University of Texas at Dallas, led the team that made the new muscle, which he sometimes calls a yarn because of the way it’s woven.  The muscles would work well in small medical devices, he said. His lab in Texas has thought of another creative use for them, too: “We’ve been playing with yarns to open and close blinds depending on the temperature of the room,” he told TechNewsDaily.

In the farther future, artificial muscles could give robots more natural-looking facial expressions, Baughman said.

The lab wants to try to manufacture longer ropes of the muscle, so it can weave a protective fabric for firefighters’ uniforms. The fabric would automatically seal its pores when faced with a sudden flash, Baughman said.

Baughman’s new muscles are made of ropes of carbon nanotubes, a super-tiny, high-tech material that researchers are adding to everything from water filters to experimental airplane parts. Baughman said he and his team twisted the nanotubes — “quite similarly to the way people insert twists into common wool or cotton fibers” — into thicker yarns. They then filled the hollow space in the nanotubes with different materials, including paraffin, the wax that goes in candles.

To get the muscles to contract, researchers heated them briefly. When heated, the paraffin wax expanded, pushing against the nanotube walls and making them fatter and shorter. As the wax cooled again, it shrank, and the nanotubes became narrower and longer. The muscles were able to shorten and then lengthen again every 25 milliseconds, or 25 thousandths of a second, Baughman said. Such fast contractions mean the muscles are able to perform a lot of work, he said.

The combination of carbon nanotubes and wax impresses Vaia. “The novel thing was how they utilized the properties of the two, came up with the correct processing to put them together,” he said.

Right now, Baughman’s lab knows how to make a muscle fiber that’s one kilometer (0.62 miles) long, but Baughman hopes one day to weave fabrics that require miles of fiber.

He also is looking to make the muscles react to chemicals instead of heat. Heat-driven motors are energy-inefficient, so chemical-driven muscles might be more practical.

Baughman and his colleagues wrote about their work Nov. 15 in the journal Science.

http://www.livescience.com/24811-strong-artificial-muscle.html

Chimp and human gut bacteria are nearly identical

On By A.P.In Andrew Moeller, chimp, chimpanzee, enterotypes, Gomber Stream National Park, gut bacteria, Howard Ochman, human, immune system, inflammatory bowel disease, Medicine, Obesity, Tanzania, Yale UniversityLeave a comment

 

Humans share about 99 percent of our genomes with chimpanzees. Now, research finds we share something else: gut bacteria.

The bacterial colonies that populate the chimpanzee intestinal tract are mirror images of those found in the human gut, researchers report today (Nov. 13) in the journal Nature Communications. The findings suggest gut bacteria patterns evolved before chimps and humans split and went their evolutionarily separate ways.

Human gut bacteria are crucial to health, with infants relying on healthy microbe populations to influence the developing immune system. Problems with microbe populations may also contribute to obesity and inflammatory bowel diseases. 

Three intestinal ecosystems

In 2011, researchers learned that everyone’s gut bacteria fall into one of three different types, almost analogous to blood types. In each type, certain bacteria dominate. These types weren’t linked to any personal characteristics such as geographic area, age or gender. Researchers dubbed these distinct bacterial ecosystems “enterotypes.” (“Entero” means gut or intestine.)

“No one really knows why these three enterotypes exist,” said study researcher Andrew Moeller, a doctoral student at Yale University.

Along with his adviser Howard Ochman and their colleagues, Moeller want to understand how these enterotypes arose. They could be distinctly human, he told LiveScience, which would suggest they arose relatively recently, perhaps in response to the development of agriculture. Or they could be ancient, shared among our closest primate relatives.

The researchers analyzed gut bacteria samples from 35 chimpanzees from Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. The chimpanzees were all in the subspecies Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii, the eastern chimpanzee, which arose approximately the same time as Homo sapiens.

Shared bacteria

The researchers found that, just like humans, chimps’ guts harbor one of three distinct types of bacterial colonies. Even more intriguingly, these enterotypes matched humans’ precisely. In type 1, for example, both humans and chimps show a predominance of Bacteroides, Faecalibacterium and Parabacteroides.

There were some differences. For example, in humans and chimps, enterotype 2 is marked by an overabundance of bacteria called Lachnospiraceae. In humans, the bacteria Prevotellae is also prevalent in type 2. In chimps, Prevotellae appears in significant numbers in all three enterotypes, perhaps because it is associated with a high-carbohydrate diet.

Other differences could help explain certain human health issues. By comparing human and chimpanzee gut bacteria, the researchers found many of the bacteria present only in humans are linked to diseases such as inflammatory bowel diseases, conditions that cause pain, diarrhea and vomiting.

Seven of the chimps in the study were tested repeatedly over eight years, and their gut microbes were found to change from type to type over that time period. No one has ever tested humans for changes over a period longer than two weeks, Moeller said, but the results suggest our enterotypes may shift over time, too.

Our shared history

The similarities between chimp and human colonies suggest enterotypes predate our species, which in turn suggests that none of the three ecosystems are better than the others, Moeller said. [Gallery: Tiny, Nasty Bugs That Make Us Sick]

“Before we found this in chimpanzees, there was a possibility that enterotypes were a product of modernization, which could mean they have some negative effects on health,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any reason to think one enterotype is going to have an effect on health that’s going to be better” than the others.

Moeller and his colleagues are now examining gorilla fecal samples to find out where they stand as slightly more distant primate relatives to humans.

“The next step is to try to find out the processes and mechanisms responsible for producing these three community states,” Moeller said, “which is kind of a lofty goal, but I think more sampling will actually reveal why these communities exist.”

http://www.livescience.com/24738-chimp-human-gut-bacteria-identical.html

Pica is highly prevalent among men in Madagascar

On By A.P.In Christopher Golden, Laura Beatriz Lopez, Madagascar, Neuropsychiatric Disease, Pica, Sera Young, Susan AlbersLeave a comment

Turns out pregnant women aren’t the only ones who eat dirt. A new study reveals a surprising incidence of pica—craving and consuming nonfood substances—among men.

Conducted in Madagascar, where pica is common, the research is the first to identify a population where the practice is highly prevalent among men, the scientists say. In fact, the men in the study ate nonfood items at least as much as pregnant women and adolescents, whom previous case studies had shown to be the main pica practitioners.

So why this sudden appearance of pica-practicing men?

“My guess, which is not substantiated, is that prior research study designs may have ignored men in their study samples as an artifact of studying pregnant women,” said study author Christopher Golden, an eco-epidemiologist and National Geographic Society Conservation Trust grantee.

Pica researcher Laura Beatriz López, nutrition director at the University of Buenos Aires, agreed.

“Traditionally studies of geophagy [eating earth] and pica have focused on describing the prevalence in children and pregnant women,” López wrote in an email, which has been translated from Spanish.

“Personally, I think the work is pioneering,” she said, because it reveals “such a high prevalence of pica in men and also found no significant differences with women.”

Golden and colleagues—advised by Cornell nutritional anthropologist Sera Young—surveyed pica behaviors in a random sample of 760 people in 16 villages of Madagascar’s Makira Protected Area in 2009. (See Madagascar pictures from National Geographic magazine.)

The study subjects—male and female—identified eating 13 nonfood substances, including sand, soil, chicken feces, uncooked rice, raw cassava root, charcoal, salt, and ash, according to the new report, which appeared Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.

More than 53 percent of the survey respondents reported engaging in pica. For adult men alone, that number was 63 percent.

Bucking the stereotype, less than one percent of nonpregnant women said they ate any nonfoods only during pregnancy.

Many people reported eating nonfoods for their healing powers, especially for stomach troubles, Golden said. And many believed that pica would bring good luck for better overall health.

Previously, scientists had suggested people practice pica for two reasons: to fulfill a deficiency of trace minerals in their diet and to cleanse and deworm the intestinal tract.

The nutrition theory would make sense for pregnant women and children, whose dietary needs are greater those of the rest of the population.

Even so, there’s no evidence that the human body can actually absorb trace minerals from soil, said Golden, adding that pica “may not serve any health purpose.”

The University of Buenos Aires’s López added that the cultural norms of Madagascar contribute to the high rate of eating inedible substances. For instance, many Malagasy don’t consider eating raw starches, such as uncooked rice, to be a form of pica.

Pica, study co-author Golden emphasized, “is not exclusive to rural populations in developing countries.”

For example, many Americans do it, Golden said, and he speaks from experience. “A close college friend of mine,” he said, “is a frequent consumer of chalk.

“It is very prevalent, yet stigmatized, and thus underreported.”

Added Cleveland Clinic psychologist Susan Albers by email: “Pica is an eating disorder that gets far less attention and research than other eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, yet it is important, as it can lead to significant health consequences, due to the possibility of consuming toxic substances.

“We’ve seen more attention on men and eating disorders over the last few years,” Albers said. “This study notes the importance of further research on men and pica and making sure they are adequately represented in the sample.”

Study co-author Golden said he isn’t quite ready to label pica an eating disorder, since it’s not yet clear whether the practice is harmful. But he agreed that more pica research is needed, especially among men.

The new Madagascar study may be a big step in that direction. To Golden, the discovery “opens up this whole field of research, to have fellow researchers acknowledge both men and women in their studies.”

More: “Why People Eat Dirt”—interview with Christopher Golden >>

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/121019-pica-food-health-science-madagascar-men-women-pregnant-eat-dirt/

Humans can learn a new sense: ‘Whisking’

On By A.P.In brain, human whiskers, Journal of Neuroscience, Medicine, Nature, Neuroscience, Rat, Weizmann Institute, whiskingLeave a comment

 

Rats use a sense that humans don’t: whisking. They move their facial whiskers back and forth about eight times a second to locate objects in their environment. Could humans acquire this sense? And if they can, what could understanding the process of adapting to new sensory input tell us about how humans normally sense? At the Weizmann Institute, researchers explored these questions by attaching plastic “whiskers” to the fingers of blindfolded volunteers and asking them to carry out a location task. The findings, which recently appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience, have yielded new insight into the process of sensing, and they may point to new avenues in developing aids for the blind.
The scientific team, including Drs. Avraham Saig and Goren Gordon, and Eldad Assa in the group of Prof. Ehud Ahissar and Dr. Amos Arieli, all of the Neurobiology Department attached a “whisker” – a 30 cm-long elastic “hair” with position and force sensors on its base – to the index finger of each hand of a blindfolded subject. Then two poles were placed at arm’s distance on either side and slightly to the front of the seated subject, with one a bit farther back than the other. Using just their whiskers, the subjects were challenged to figure out which pole – left or right – was the back one. As the experiment continued, the displacement between front and back poles was reduced, up to the point when the subject could no longer distinguish front from back.
On the first day of the experiment, subjects picked up the new sense so well that they could correctly identify a pole that was set back by only eight cm. An analysis of the data revealed that the subjects did this by figuring the spatial information from the sensory timing. That is, moving their bewhiskered hands together, they could determine which pole was the back one because the whisker on that hand made contact earlier.
When they repeated the testing the next day, the researchers discovered that the subjects had improved their whisking skills significantly: The average sensory threshold went down to just three cm, with some being able to sense a displacement of just one cm. Interestingly, the ability of the subjects to sense time differences had not changed over the two days. Rather, they had improved in the motor aspects of their whisking strategies: Slowing down their hand motions – in effect lengthening the delay time – enabled them to sense a smaller spatial difference.
Saig: “We know that our senses are linked to muscles, for example ocular and hand muscles. In order to sense the texture of cloth, for example, we move our fingers across it, and to seeing stationary object, our eyes must be in constant motion. In this research, we see that changing our physical movements alone – without any corresponding change in the sensitivity of our senses – can be sufficient to sharpen our perception.”
Based on the experiments, the scientists created a statistical model to describe how the subjects updated their “world view” as they acquired new sensory information – up to the point at which they were confident enough to rely on that sense. The model, based on principles of information processing, could explain the number of whisking movements needed to arrive at the correct answer, as well as the pattern of scanning the subjects employed – a gradual change from long to short movements. With this strategy, the flow of information remains constant. “The experiment was conducted in a controlled manner, which allowed us direct access to all the relevant variables: hand motion, hand-pole contact and the reports of the subjects themselves,” says Gordon. “Not only was there a good fit between the theory and the experimental data, we obtained some useful quantitative information on the process of active sensing.”
“Both sight and touch are based on arrays of receptors that scan the outside world in an active manner,” says Ahissar, “Our findings reveal some new principles of active sensing, and show us that activating a new artificial sense in a ‘natural’ way can be very efficient.”  Arieli adds: “Our vision for the future is to help blind people ‘see’ with their fingers. Small devices that translate video to mechanical stimulation, based on principles of active sensing that are common to vision and touch, could provide an intuitive, easily used sensory aid.”
 

Early therapy can change brains of kids with autism

On By A.P.In autism, California, Medicine, MIND Institute, Neuropsychiatric Disease, Sally Rodgers, UC DavisLeave a comment

 

 

 

 

 

As the number of children with autism has risen dramatically over the past couple of decades, experts have learned that the earlier a child gets diagnosed, the earlier specialized therapy can be initiated, which can significantly improve outcomes.

Now researchers have been able to show that a particular type of behavioral therapy called the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) not only improves autism symptoms, but actually normalizes brain activity and improves social behavior.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that starts to become very apparent around age 3. The main signs and symptoms of autism involve communication, social interactions and repetitive behaviors. According to the latest statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in 88 children currently is diagnosed with autism, including one in 54 boys.

“Early intervention alters the trajectory of the brain and social development in children with autism,” says Geraldine Dawson, the lead study author who developed the ESDM therapy along with study co-author Sally Rogers.

Dawson was a researcher at the University of Washington when she helped devise ESDM; she’s now the chief science officer for the advocacy and research group Autism Speaks and a professor at the University of North Carolina. Rogers is a professor and researcher at the University of California Davis MIND Institute.

ESDM therapy uses teaching methods from ABA ,or applied behavioral analysis, the traditional one-on-one interaction between a child and the therapist.

But rather than sitting at a desk next to the child — where a teacher or therapist breaks down complex tasks into small components and gives tangible reinforcements — children receiving ESDM are sitting on the floor, playing with their therapist or parents.

It can be done just about anywhere, and Dawson says the play-based method of engaging a child helps him or her develop a social relationship.

The study began with 48 children in Seattle and Sacramento, California, who were between who were between 1 1/2 and 2 1/2 years old. Half of the children received a total of 20 hours of ESDM therapy over five days a week.

But since parents can be taught the methods in just a few hours, they could engage their children using the ESDM method as well. The other half of the toddlers received community-based interventions, which included in some individual therapist sessions and some day care-based sessions. The number of hours spent with therapists was the same in both groups.

Three years ago, Rogers and Dawson published their first findings from this study and found that children receiving ESDM therapy increased their IQ and language skills three times more than children in the community-intervention group.

That in itself was “very significant,” says Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, because it proved that early detection and intervention leads to improved outcomes.

In their latest study, published Friday in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Rogers and Dawson show what parts of a child’s brain are active after two years of therapy, compared to typically developing children, using an EEG (electroencephalogram). In an EEG, electrical activity in different parts of the brain is measured using electrodes that attached to the child’s head.

“If the child wiggles too much, the data is not interpretable,” says Dawson.

In the end, researchers could only get 60% of the children to sit still enough to get usable EEG results, she says, but that was true in both the group of children with autism and those without.

Fifteen children in the EDSM group, 14 in the community intervention group and 17 typically developing children underwent EEGs while looking at pictures of faces (social stimuli) vs. pictures of toys (nonsocial stimuli).

Technicians measuring the brain activity had no idea which children had autism and which did not.

“Children who received ESDM now showed a normal (brain) response, identical to typical 4-year-olds,” Dawson tells CNN. That wasn’t the case with most children who didn’t have ESDM therapy.

Babies are naturally drawn to people and faces, and their brains show greater responses when they look at a face, compared to an object or a toy, Dawson says.

But in young and even older children with autism, the opposite happens. The part of the brain that should be responding to a face or social activity doesn’t light up, but the part of the brain that responds to objects is more active.

Insel says this study shows that the ESDM form of therapy “not only changes behavior, it changes the brain.”

The exact cause, or more precisely causes, of autism are unknown and there is no cure.

Parents and pediatricians are urged to look for early signs of autism including: little or no eye contact, lack of or delay of spoken language, repetitive use of language and behaviors and persistent fixation on parts of objects.

Since 2007, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that pediatricians screen 18- and 24-month-old toddlers for signs of autism.

When something is wrong in the brain — not just in autism, but also in diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s — what’s causing the disease is occurring much earlier than when symptoms appear, Insel explains.

Based on the new findings, perhaps using EEGs to measure this type of brain activity could be a biomarker for autism, he says. A biomarker is a distinct characteristic that indicates a particular condition.

Measuring a baby’s brain activity as early as 3 and 6 months could identify changes in the brain before changes in behavior are noticed, he says, and therapy could begin even earlier.

The ESDM model could be applied as early as 12 months, say Dawson and Rogers.

More research will probably have to be done to confirm the biomarker. So until there is a definitive test for diagnosing autism, Dawson says this it’s even more important that pediatricians screen children for autism as early as possible.

“The average age of diagnosis is still 4 and 5 and even older in minority groups,” she says. “We really need to close the gap.”

Autism Speaks has many tools on its website to help parents see what a child with autism looks like compared to a typically developing child. There are also many tool kits to help families of children with autism.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/31/health/autism-therapy-brain/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Watching a horror film can burn over 100 calories

On By A.P.In A Nightmare on Elm Street, adrenaline, Alien, horror film, Jaws, LOVEFiLM, Obesity, Paranormal Activity, Popular Culture, Richard Mackenzie, Saw, The Blair Witch Project, The Exorcist, The Shining, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, University of Westminster, weight lossLeave a comment

 

Viewers who put themselves through 90 minutes of adrenaline-pumping terror can use up as much as 113 calories, close to the amount burned during a half-hour walk and the equivalent to a chocolate bar.

The movie top of the list of calorie-burners was found to be the 1980 psychological thriller The Shining, with the average viewer using up a whopping 184 calories.

Jaws took the runner-up spot, with viewers burning on average 161 calories, and The Exorcist came third, with 158 calories.

The University of Westminster study measured the total energy expenditure of ten different people as they watched a selection of frightening movies.

Scientists recorded their heart rate, oxygen intake and carbon dioxide output – and discovered the number of calories used increased by on average a third during the films.

The research also revealed films featuring moments designed to make viewers jump in terror are the best calorie-burners, as they cause heart rates to soar.

Dr Richard Mackenzie, senior lecturer and specialist in cell metabolism and physiology at the University of Westminster, said: “Each of the ten films tested set pulses racing, sparking an increase in the heart rate of the case studies.

“As the pulse quickens and blood pumps around the body faster, the body experiences a surge in adrenaline.

“It is this release of fast acting adrenaline, produced during short bursts of intense stress (or in this case, brought on by fear), which is known to lower the appetite, increase the Basal Metabolic Rate and ultimately burn a higher level of calories.”

Helen Cowley, editor of the movie rental company LOVEFiLM – which commissioned the University of Westminster study – said: “We all know the feeling of wanting to hide behind the sofa or grab a pillow when watching scary or hair raising scenes, but this research suggests that maybe those seeking to burn some calories should keep their eyes on the screen.”

The top calorie-burning frightening films were:

1. The Shining: 184 calories

2. Jaws: 161 calories

3. The Exorcist: 158 calories

4. Alien: 152 calories

5. Saw: 133 calories

6. A Nightmare on Elm Street: 118 calories

7. Paranormal Activity: 111 calories

8. The Blair Witch Project: 105 calories

9. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: 107 calories

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9638876/Watching-horror-films-burns-nearly-200-calories-a-time.html

Verticus gyrata – rare disease makes scalp look like brain

On By A.P.In Brazil, Medicine, New England Journal of Medicine, verticus gyrataLeave a comment

Doctors in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that they diagnosed a case of a rare disease called cutis verticus gyrata, which causes the folds in the scalp to form – specifically, “ridges and furrows resembling the brain’s surface,” write Dr. Karen Regina Rosso Schons and Andre Avelino Costa Beber of Hospital Universitario de Santa Maria in Brazil.

The 21-year-old patient with this condition didn’t display symptoms of neurological or psychiatric conditions, but he did have intellectual or learning impairment.

Doctors did not attempt an intervention because “the patient had no associated disorders and the condition did not bother him cosmetically.”

After a year, the patient was the same, according to the report.

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/19/rare-disease-makes-scalp-look-like-brain/?hpt=hp_c2

Effforts to Combat Diss Information

On By A.P.In autism, belief perseverance, Carrie Arnold, Climate Change, de-biasing, Diss Information, media, Misinformation, Obama birth certificate, vaccine, vaccinesLeave a comment

False information is pervasive and difficult to eradicate, but scientists are developing new strategies such as “de-biasing,” a method that focuses on facts, to help spread the truth.

ByCarrie Arnold

A recurring red herring in the current presidential campaign is the verity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Although the president has made this document public, and records of his 1961 birth in Honolulu have been corroborated by newspaper announcements, a vocal segment of the population continues to insist that Obama’s birth certificate proving U.S. citizenship is a fraud, making him legally ineligible to be president. A Politico survey found that a majority of voters in the 2011 Republican primary shared this clearly false belief.

Scientific issues can be just as vulnerable to misinformation campaigns. Plenty of people still believe that vaccines cause autism and that human-caused climate change is a hoax. Science has thoroughly debunked these myths, but the misinformation persists in the face of overwhelming evidence. Straightforward efforts to combat the lies may backfire as well. A paper published on September 18 in Psychological Science in the Public Interest (PSPI) says that efforts to fight the problem frequently have the opposite effect.

“You have to be careful when you correct misinformation that you don’t inadvertently strengthen it,” says Stephan Lewandowsky, a psychologist at the University of Western Australia in Perth and one of the paper’s authors. “If the issues go to the heart of people’s deeply held world views, they become more entrenched in their opinions if you try to update their thinking.”

Psychologists call this reaction belief perseverance: maintaining your original opinions in the face of overwhelming data that contradicts your beliefs. Everyone does it, but we are especially vulnerable when invalidated beliefs form a key part of how we narrate our lives. Researchers have found that stereotypes, religious faiths and even our self-concept are especially vulnerable to belief perseverance. A 2008 study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that people are more likely to continue believing incorrect information if it makes them look good (enhances self-image). For example, if an individual has become known in her community for purporting that vaccines cause autism, she might build her self-identity as someone who helps prevent autism by helping other parents avoid vaccination. Admitting that the original study linking autism to the MMR (measles–mumps–rubella) vaccine was ultimately deemed fraudulent would make her look bad (diminish her self-concept).

In this circumstance, it is easier to continue believing that autism and vaccines are linked, according to Dartmouth College political science researcher Brendan Nyhan. “It’s threatening to admit that you’re wrong,” he says. “It’s threatening to your self-concept and your worldview.” It’s why, Nyhan says, so many examples of misinformation are from issues that dramatically affect our lives and how we live.

Ironically, these issues are also the hardest to counteract. Part of the problem, researchers have found, is how people determine whether a particular statement is true. We are more likely to believe a statement if it confirms our preexisting beliefs, a phenomenon known as confirmation bias. Accepting a statement also requires less cognitive effort than rejecting it. Even simple traits such as language can affect acceptance: Studies have found that the way a statement is printed or voiced (or even the accent) can make those statements more believable. Misinformation is a human problem, not a liberal or conservative one, Nyhan says.

Misinformation is even more likely to travel and be amplified by the ongoing diversification of news sources and the rapid news cycle. Today, publishing news is as simple as clicking “send.” This, combined with people’s tendency to seek out information that confirms their beliefs, tends to magnify the effects of misinformation. Nyhan says that although a good dose of skepticism doesn’t hurt while reading news stories, the onus to prevent misinformation should be on political pundits and journalists rather than readers. “If we all had to research every factual claim we were exposed to, we’d do nothing else,” Nyhan says. “We have to address the supply side of misinformation, not just the demand side.”

Correcting misinformation, however, isn’t as simple as presenting people with true facts. When someone reads views from the other side, they will create counterarguments that support their initial viewpoint, bolstering their belief of the misinformation. Retracting information does not appear to be very effective either. Lewandowsky and colleagues published two papers in 2011 that showed a retraction, at best, halved the number of individuals who believed misinformation.

Combating misinformation has proved to be especially difficult in certain scientific areas such as climate science. Despite countless findings to the contrary, a large portion of the population doesn’t believe that scientists agree on the existence of human-caused climate change, which affects their willingness to seek a solution to the problem, according to a 2011 study in Nature Climate Change. (Scientific Americanis part of Nature Publishing Group.)

“Misinformation is inhibiting public engagement in climate change in a major way,” says Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University and author of the Nature article, as well as a commentary that accompanied the recent article in PSPI by Lewandowsky and colleagues. Although virtually all climate scientists agree that human actions are changing the climate and that immediate action must be taken, roughly 60 percent of Americans believe that no scientific consensus on climate change exists.

“This is not a random event,” Maibach says. Rather, it is the result of a concerted effort by a small number of politicians and industry leaders to instill doubt in the public. They repeat the message that climate scientists don’t agree that global warming is real, is caused by people or is harmful. Thus, the message concludes, it would be premature for the government to take action and increase regulations.

To counter this effort, Maibach and others are using the same strategies employed by climate change deniers. They are gathering a group of trusted experts on climate and encouraging them to repeat simple, basic messages. It’s difficult for many scientists, who feel that such simple explanations are dumbing down the science or portraying it inaccurately. And researchers have been trained to focus on the newest research, Maibach notes, which can make it difficult to get them to restate older information. Another way to combat misinformation is to create a compelling narrative that incorporates the correct information, and focuses on the facts rather than dispelling myths—a technique called “de-biasing.”

Although campaigns to counteract misinformation can be difficult to execute, they can be remarkably effective if done correctly. A 2009 study found that an anti-prejudice campaign in Rwanda aired on the country’s radio stations successfully altered people’s perceptions of social norms and behaviors in the aftermath of the 1994 tribally based genocide of an estimated 800,000 minority Tutsi. Perhaps the most successful de-biasing campaign, Maibach notes, is the current near-universal agreement that tobacco smoking is addictive and can cause cancer. In the 1950s smoking was considered a largely safe lifestyle choice—so safe that it was allowed almost everywhere and physicians appeared in ads to promote it. The tobacco industry carried out a misinformation campaign for decades, reassuring smokers that it was okay to light up. Over time opinions began to shift as overwhelming evidence of ill effects was made public by more and more scientists and health administrators.

The most effective way to fight misinformation, ultimately, is to focus on people’s behaviors, Lewandowsky says. Changing behaviors will foster new attitudes and beliefs.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-to-stop-misinformation-from-becoming-popular-belief&WT.mc_id=SA_20121016