Can’t sleep? Street lights may be keeping you awake

March 1, 2016
Science Daily/American Academy of Neurology (AAN)
If your neighborhood is well-lit at night, you may not be sleeping well, according to a new study.

"Our world has become a 24/7 society. We use outdoor lighting, such a street lights, to be more active at night and to increase our safety and security," said study author Maurice Ohayon, MD, DSC, PhD, of Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. "The concern is that we have reduced our exposure to darkness and it could be affecting our sleep."

For the study, 15,863 people were interviewed by phone over an eight-year period. They were asked about sleep habits, quality of sleep as well as medical and psychiatric disorders. Then, with nighttime data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, the researchers looked at how much outdoor light those people were exposed to at night. People living in urban areas of 500,000 people or more were exposed to nighttime lights that were three to six times more intense than people living in small towns and rural areas.

The study shows that nighttime light affects sleep duration and was significantly associated with sleep disturbances. People living in more intense light areas were six percent more likely to sleep less than six hours per night than people in less intense light areas. People living in more intense light areas were more likely to be dissatisfied with their sleep quantity or quality than people in less intense light areas, with 29 percent dissatisfied compared to 16 percent.

People with high light exposure were also more likely to report fatigue than those with low light exposure, with 9 percent compared to 7 percent. People with high light exposure also slept less per night than those with low light exposure, with an average of 412 minutes per night compared to 402 minutes per night.

In addition, people with high light exposure were more likely to wake up confused during the night than people with low light exposure, with 19 percent experiencing this compared to 13 percent. They were also more likely to have excessive sleepiness and impaired functioning, at 6 percent compared to 2 percent.

"Light pollution can be found in any sizable city in the world. Yet, excessive exposure to light at night may affect how we function during the day and increase the risks of excessive sleepiness," said Ohayon. "If this association is confirmed by other studies, people may want to consider room darkening shades, sleep masks or other options to reduce their exposure."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160301175008.htm

Shedding light on the day-night cycle Scanning fruit fly brains helps understanding of neural signaling involved in some circadian behaviors

March 2, 2016
Science Daily/Washington University School of Medicine
New research sheds light on how the rhythms of daily life are encoded in the brain. Scientists have discovered that different groups of neurons, those charged with keeping time, become active at different times of day despite being on the same molecular clock.
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/03/160302132538_1_540x360.jpg
Living fruit flies' brains were scanned every 10 minutes for 24 hours to help understand the master circadian clock in the brain and how it helps coordinate body rhythms.
Credit: Taghert lab/Washington University

The findings are published Feb. 26 in Science.

Life on Earth follows the rising and setting of the sun. Daily cycles have been found in animals, plants, fungi and even bacteria. For humans, sleeping and waking as well as hormone levels, body temperature and cognitive performance, follow a daily cycle.

"The influence of our circadian rhythms can be substantial -- for example, some of us are night owls and others are morning larks," said senior investigator Paul Taghert, PhD, professor of neuroscience. "It's important to understand how such fundamental timing information is translated into actual neuronal signals in the brain that control daily rhythms, including rhythmic behavior."

The biological control for these daily cycles is known as the circadian clock. In animals, a master circadian clock in the brain helps coordinate most of these body rhythms, including the sleep-wake cycle.

The biochemical basis of the circadian clock has been conserved through evolution. It involves a small number of "clock proteins" whose levels go up and down in a controlled manner once a day.

But scientists long have puzzled over how some circadian-controlled behaviors and physiological changes that occur two or more times a day correspond to the once-daily rise and fall of clock proteins. The fruit fly Drosophila, for example, is behaviorally active twice a day, in the morning and evening.

Taghert, along with graduate student Xitong Liang and Timothy Holy, associate professor of neuroscience, asked how one biochemical peak in clock proteins could lead to two distinct peaks of activity at different times of day. They wondered whether the neuronal time-keeping circuit produces a single daily signal or generates multiple signals throughout the day.

To answer that question, Liang performed whole brain scans of living fruit flies every 10 minutes for 24 hours. Fruit flies are widely used in circadian research because the clock in each fly's tiny brain is represented by only 150 time-keeping or so-called pacemaker neurons, making it much easier to dissect than the clock in larger animals. Even in mice, for example, the circadian system involves about 20,000 pacemaker neurons in a part of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus.

The experiments measured calcium levels inside pacemaker cells to assess the cells' activities -- higher calcium levels indicate higher levels of neuronal activation. Unexpectedly, each pacemaker group displayed a distinct phase of activity. These activity patterns were sensitive to environmental signals, such as day length, and also to the circadian clock. The researchers found that one specific group of pacemaker neurons was active about four hours before the fly's morning peak in activity, and another specific group was active about four hours before the fly's evening activity.

"Essentially, groups of neurons decide to take different parts of the clock," explained Holy. "One group says, 'We'll be active in the morning, to make the fly active that time of day,' and this other group of neurons says, 'Even though our molecular clock is peaking here in the morning, we're going to wait to be most active until later on in the day.'"

Studying the genes of mutant fruit flies, the research team identified a chemical signal called pigment-dispersing factor (PDF). This neuropeptide is secreted by the morning pacemakers to help diversify the timing of pacemakers that control behaviors at other times of day.

"PDF is secreted by cells that are most active at dawn," Liang said. "In the flies with a mutation in the PDF receptor, we found that two other groups of neurons normally active at other times of day instead become active at dawn." The activity of the pacemaker neurons become more synchronous in the mutant flies, and the regular morning-evening pattern of fly activity is thrown off, the researcher said.

Previously, scientists had thought that cellular activity was closely coupled to the peak levels of the clock molecules.

"The idea was, as the clock goes, so goes the activity," Taghert said. "But here, we're suggesting that there may be a disconnect in some cells, and the reason for that disconnect is to space out the timing signals.

"We would never have been able to measure this activity 10 years ago," he said. Until a few years ago, it would not have been possible to monitor the activity of groups of neurons in a living animal in distant parts of the brain over extended time periods.

"One of the important new tools in neuroscience is the ability to measure brain activity with light," Holy explained. "However, too much light can be damaging to brain cells, especially if you're imaging for a long time. A few years ago, my lab developed a microscope that can illuminate the brain very gently, yet still get very high-quality pictures of what's happening over time. The trick is to shine light on just the part of the brain that's in focus so you avoid damaging any part you're not looking at. After snapping one picture, you move the microscope and take another picture of a different part of the brain. By doing that very quickly, you can cover the whole brain of the fly in a second or less."

"This is very much an example of techniques allowing you to answer questions that weren't answerable before," Taghert added.

Because many principles of circadian time-keeping are conserved across distant species, this neuronal mechanism discovered in Drosophila also may indicate a general clock principle. Naturally, time will tell.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160302132538.htm

Brain tune-up may aid self-motivation Allowing people to see their own brain activity might help them motivate themselves

March 3, 2016
Science Daily/Duke University
Volition powers us through innumerable daily tasks. Could we lead healthier, more productive lives if we could learn to control the parts of our brain most essential to volition? A new spin on a technique called 'neurofeedback' has allowed scientists to take the first step in understanding how to manipulate neurotransmitter circuits involved in volition using thoughts and imagery. The methods may one day inform the treatment of depression or ADHD.
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/03/160303132957_1_540x360.jpg
This illustration shows an experiment in which subjects received real-time feedback during an MRI scan that showed activity in a reward center of their brain. Without feedback, they were unable to reliably increase activity in the Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA, in red), but the fluctuating thermometer helped them learn and adopt effective strategies by thinking about motivating themselves. Their self-generated boosts in VTA activation then worked even after the thermometer display was removed.
Credit: Jeff MacInnes, Duke University

If we could learn to control the motivational centers of our brains that drive volition, would it lead us toward healthier, more productive lives? Using a new brain imaging strategy, Duke University scientists have now taken a first step in understanding how to manipulate specific neural circuits using thoughts and imagery.

The technique, which is described in the March 16 issue of the journal Neuron, is part of a larger approach called 'neurofeedback,' which gives participants a dynamic readout of brain activity, in this case from a brain area critical for motivation.

"These methods show a direct route for manipulating brain networks centrally involved in healthy brain function and daily behavior," said the study's senior investigator R. Alison Adcock, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and associate director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience in the Duke University Institute for Brain Sciences.

Neurofeedback is a specialized form of biofeedback, a technique that allows people to monitor aspects of their own physiology, such as heart rate and skin temperature. It can help generate strategies to overcome anxiety and stress or to cope with other medical conditions.

Neurofeedback has historically relied on electroencephalography or EEG, in which patterns of electrical activity are monitored noninvasively by electrodes attached to the scalp. But these measures provide only rough estimates of where activity occurs in the brain.

In contrast, the new study employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures changes in blood oxygen levels, allowing more precisely localized measurements of brain activity.

Adcock's team has been working on ways to use thoughts and behavior to tune brain function for the past eight years. In this time, they've developed tools allowing them to analyze complex brain imaging data in real time and to display it to participants as neurofeedback while they are in the fMRI scanner.

This study focused on the ventral tegmental area (VTA), a small area deep within the brain that is a major source of dopamine, a neurochemical well known for its role in motivation, experiencing rewards, learning, and memory.

According to Adcock's previous research, when people are given incentives to remember specific images, an increase in VTA activation before the image appears predicts whether the participants are going to successfully remember the image.

External incentives like money work well to stimulate the VTA, but it was unclear whether people could exercise this area on their own, said co-author Jeff MacInnes, a postdoctoral researcher in Adcock's lab.

In the new study, the team encouraged participants in the scanner to generate feelings of motivation -- using their own personal strategies -- during 20-second intervals. They weren't able to raise their VTA activity consistently on their own.

But when the scientists provided participants with neurofeedback from the VTA, presented in the form of a fluctuating thermometer, participants were able to learn which strategies worked, and ultimately adopt more effective strategies. Compared to control groups, the neurofeedback-trained participants successfully elevated their VTA activity.

Participants reported using a variety of different motivational strategies, from imagining parents or coaches encouraging them, to playing out hypothetical scenarios in which their efforts were rewarded, said co-author Kathryn Dickerson, a postdoctoral researcher in Adcock's group.

The self-generated boost in VTA activation worked even after the thermometer display was removed. Only the participants who had received accurate neurofeedback were able to consistently raise their VTA levels.

"Because this is the first demonstration of its kind, there is much still to be understood," Adcock added. "But these tools could offer benefits for everyone, particularly those with depression or attention problems."

The neurofeedback training also activated other regions involved in learning and experiencing rewards, confirming that, at least in the short term, the brain changes its activity more broadly as a result of neurofeedback, Dickerson said.

Adcock said one caveat of the study is that the team has not tested whether the neurofeedback drove changes in behavior. The group is working on those studies now and also plans to conduct the same study in participants with depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160303132957.htm

Light exposure improves depressive symptoms among cancer survivors

March 10, 2016
Science Daily/The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Light therapy decreased depressive symptoms and normalized circadian rhythms among cancer survivors, according to researchers, who add that those exposed to a dim red light experienced no change in symptoms.

Researchers from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Northwestern University in Chicago, University of Iowa, University of California in San Diego and Reykjavik University in Iceland randomly divided 54 cancer survivors into a bright white light or a dim red light group. Participants were provided with a light box and asked to use it for 30 minutes every morning for four weeks. Depressive symptoms and circadian activity rhythms were measured before, during and three months after completing the light exposures to determine the effectiveness of light therapy.

"Depressive symptoms are common among cancer survivors even years after treatment has ended," said Heiddis Valdimarsdottir, PhD, Associate Professor of Oncological Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and lead author of the study. "This interferes with overall quality of life and puts survivors at risk for poor outcomes including death."

Patients exposed to the bright light experienced improvement in depressive symptoms while those exposed to the dim red light experienced no change in symptoms.

"Our findings suggest light therapy, a rather non-invasive therapy, may provide an innovative way to decrease depression among cancer survivors," said William Redd, PhD, Professor of Oncological Sciences at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and co-author of the study.

Most patients face some degree of depression, anxiety, and fear when cancer becomes part of their lives. According to the American Cancer Society, 1 in 4 people with cancer have clinical depression.

"The good news is that depression can be treated, and bright light therapy is a potentially effective new treatment option," said Dr. Valdimarsdottir.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160310214145.htm

Healthy heart equals healthy brain

March 16, 2016
Science Daily/American Heart Association
Achieving the metrics that define a healthy heart may translate to healthier brain function as people age. More ideal cardiovascular health measures meant less decline in brain processing speed and, to some extent, thinking ability and memory.
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/03/160316194211_1_540x360.jpg
Image of the human heart.
Credit: Copyright American Heart Association

Researchers studied a racially diverse group of older adults and found that having more ideal cardiovascular health factors was associated with better brain processing speed at the study's start and less cognitive decline approximately six years later.

The researchers from the University of Miami and Columbia University used the American Heart Association's "Life's Simple Seven®" definition of cardiovascular health, which includes tobacco avoidance, ideal levels of weight, physical activity, healthy diet, blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose.

"Achieving the health metrics of Life's Simple 7® is associated with a reduced risk of strokes and heart attacks, even among the elderly. And the finding that they may also impact cognitive, or brain function underscores the importance of measuring, monitoring and controlling these seven factors by patients and physicians," said Hannah Gardener, Sc.D., the study's lead author and assistant scientist in neurology at the Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, in Florida.

At the beginning of the study, 1,033 participants in the Northern Manhattan Study (average age 72; 65 percent Hispanic, 19 percent black and 16 percent white), were tested for memory, thinking and brain processing speed. Brain processing speed measures how quickly a person is able to perform tasks that require focused attention. Approximately six years later, 722 participants repeated the cognitive testing, which allowed researchers to measure performance over time.

The researchers found:

Having more ideal cardiovascular health factors was associated with better brain processing speed at the initial assessment.
The association was strongest for being a non-smoker, having ideal fasting glucose and ideal weight.
Having more cardiovascular health factors was associated with less decline over time in processing speed, memory and executive functioning. Executive
function in the brain is associated with focusing, time management and other cognitive skills.
While this study suggests achieving ideal cardiovascular health measures is beneficial to brain function, future studies are needed to determine the value of routinely assessing and treating risk factors, such as high blood pressure, in order to reduce brain function decline.

Gardener said similar studies in race and ethnically diverse populations, with different profiles of educational attainment, literacy and employment status, are needed to generalize the findings to other populations.

"In addition, further study is needed to identify the age ranges, or periods over the life course, during which cardiovascular health factors and behaviors may be most influential in determining late-life cognitive impairment, and how behavioral and health modifications may influence cognitive performance and mitigate decline over time."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160316194211.htm

Sleep suppresses brain rebalancing

March 21, 2016
Science Daily/Brandeis University
Why humans and other animals sleep is one of the remaining deep mysteries of physiology. One prominent theory in neuroscience is that sleep is when the brain replays memories "offline" to better encode them ("memory consolidation").

A prominent and competing theory is that sleep is important for re-balancing activity in brain networks that have been perturbed during learning while awake. Such "rebalancing" of brain activity involves homeostatic plasticity mechanisms that were first discovered at Brandeis University, and have been thoroughly studied by a number of Brandeis labs including the lab of Brandeis professor of biology Gina Turrigiano.

Now, a study from the lab just published in the journal Cell shows that these homeostatic mechanisms are indeed gated by sleep and wake, but in the opposite direction from that theorized previously: homeostatic brain rebalancing occurs exclusively when animals are awake, and is suppressed by sleep.

These findings raise the intriguing possibility that different forms of brain plasticity -- for example those involved in memory consolidation and those involved in homeostatic rebalancing -- must be temporally segregated from each other to prevent interference.

The requirement that neurons carefully maintain an average firing rate, much like the thermostat in a house senses and maintains temperature, has long been suggested by computational work. Without homeostatic ("thermostat-like") control of firing rates, models of neural networks cannot learn and drift into states of epilepsy-like saturation or complete quiescence.

Much of the work in discovering and describing candidate mechanisms continues to be conducted at Brandeis. In 2013, the Turrigiano lab provided the first in vivo evidence for firing rate homeostasis in the mammalian brain. Lab members recorded the activity of individual neurons in the visual cortex of freely behaving rat pups for 8 hours per day across a nine-day period during which vision through one eye was occluded.

The activity of neurons initially dropped, but over the next four days, firing rates came back to basal levels despite the visual occlusion. In essence, these experiments confirmed what had long been suspected -- the activity of neurons in intact brains is indeed homeostatically governed.

Due to the unique opportunity to study a fundamental mechanism of brain plasticity in an unrestrained animal, the lab has been probing the possibility of an intersection between an animal's behavior and homeostatic plasticity. In order to truly evaluate possible circadian and behavioral influences on neuronal homeostasis, it was necessary to capture the entire 9-day experiment, rather than evaluate snapshots of each day.

For this work, the Turrigiano Lab had to find creative computational solutions to recording many terabytes of data necessary to follow the activity of single neurons without interruption for more than 200 hours.

Ultimately, these data revealed that the homeostatic regulation of neuronal activity in the cortex is gated by sleep and wake states. In a surprising and unpredicted twist, the homeostatic recovery of activity occurred almost exclusively during periods of activity and was inhibited during sleep. Prior predictions either assumed no role for behavioral state, or that sleeping would account for homeostasis.

Finally, the lab established evidence for a causal role for active waking by artificially enhancing natural waking periods during the homeostatic rebound. When animals were kept awake, homeostatic plasticity was further enhanced.

This finding opens doors onto a new field of understanding the behavioral, environmental, and circadian influences on homeostatic plasticity mechanisms in the brain. Some of the key questions that immediately beg to be answered include:

What it is about sleep that precludes the expression of homeostatic plasticity?

How is it possible that mechanisms requiring complex patterns of transcription, translation, trafficking, and modification can be modulated on the short timescales of behavioral state-transitions in rodents?

And finally, how generalizable is this finding? As homeostasis is bidirectional, does a shift in the opposite direction similarly require wake or does the change in sign allow for new rules in expression?
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160321200439.htm

Is moderate drinking really good for you? Jury's still out

March 22, 2016
Science Daily/Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/03/160322080515_1_540x360.jpg
We analyzed 87 published studies on alcohol and death from all causes. This research suggests we should be skeptical of claims that alcohol consumption offers health benefits.
Credit: University of Victoria, Centre for Addictions Research of BC

Many people believe a glass of wine with dinner will help them live longer and healthier--but the scientific evidence is shaky at best, according to a new research analysis. The findings, published in the March 2016 issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, may sound surprising: Countless news stories have reported on research tying moderate drinking to a range of health benefits--including a lower heart disease risk and a longer life.

But the new analysis took a deeper look at those studies, 87 in all. And it found that many were flawed, with designs suggesting benefits where there were likely none.

A key issue is how studies have defined "abstainers," explained Tim Stockwell, Ph.D., the lead researcher on the analysis and director of the University of Victoria's Centre for Addictions Research in British Columbia, Canada.

Most often, studies have compared moderate drinkers (people who have up to two drinks per day) with "current" abstainers. The problem is that this abstainer group can include people in poor health who've cut out alcohol.

"A fundamental question is, who are these moderate drinkers being compared against?" Stockwell said.

When his team corrected for those abstainer "biases" and certain other study-design issues, moderate drinkers no longer showed a longevity advantage. Further, only 13 of the 87 studies avoided biasing the abstainer comparison group--and these showed no health benefits.

What's more, Stockwell said, before those corrections were made, it was actually "occasional" drinkers--people who had less than one drink per week--who lived the longest. And it's unlikely that such an infrequent drinking would be the reason for their longevity.

"Those people would be getting a biologically insignificant dose of alcohol," Stockwell said.

In addition, he noted, studies have linked moderate drinking to an implausibly wide range of health benefits. Compared with abstainers, for instance, moderate drinkers have shown lower risks of deafness and even liver cirrhosis.

"Either alcohol is a panacea," Stockwell said, "or moderate drinking is really a marker of something else."

The study did not look at whether certain types of alcohol, such as red wine, are tied to longer life. But if that were the case, Stockwell said, it would be unlikely that the alcohol content itself deserved the credit.

"There's a general idea out there that alcohol is good for us, because that's what you hear reported all the time," Stockwell said. "But there are many reasons to be skeptical."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160322080515.htm

Is there a link between oral health and the rate of cognitive decline?

April 1, 2016
Science Daily/Wiley
Better oral hygiene and regular dental visits may play a role in slowing cognitive decline as people age, although evidence is not definitive enough to suggest that one causes the other. New findings come from the first systematic review of studies focused on oral health and cognition -- two important areas of research as the older adult population continues to grow, with some 36 percent of people over age 70 already living with cognitive impairments.

Researchers have questioned whether an association exists between oral health and cognitive status for older adults. "Clinical evidence suggests that the frequency of oral health problems increases significantly in cognitively impaired older people, particularly those with dementia," said Bei Wu, PhD, of Duke University's School of Nursing in Durham, NC. "In addition, many of the factors associated with poor oral health--such as poor nutrition and systemic diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular disease--are also associated with poor cognitive function."

To look for a link between oral health and cognitive status, Dr. Wu and her colleagues analyzed relevant cross-sectional (data collected at one specific point in time) and longitudinal (data collected over an extended period of time) studies published between 1993 and 2013.

Some studies found that oral health measures such as the number of teeth, the number of cavities, and the presence of periodontal disease (also known as "gum disease") were associated with an increased risk of cognitive decline or dementia, while others studies were unable to confirm any association. Researchers were also quick to note that findings based on the number of teeth or cavities are conflicting, and limited studies suggest that periodontal conditions such as gingivitis are associated with poorer cognitive status or cognitive decline.

"There is not enough evidence to date to conclude that a causal association exists between cognitive function and oral health," said Dr. Wu. "For future research, we recommend that investigators gather data from larger and more population representative samples, use standard cognitive assessments and oral health measures, and use more sophisticated data analyses."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160401073706.htm

Choir singing boosts immune system activity in cancer patients and carers Singing in a choir for just 1 hour causes physiological changes in people affected by cancer

April 4, 2016
Science Daily/ecancermedicalscience
Singing in a choir for just one hour boosts levels of immune proteins in people affected by cancer, reduces stress and improves mood, which in turn could have a positive impact on overall health, a new study has found.

The research raises the possibility that singing in choir rehearsals could help to put people in the best possible position to receive treatment, maintain remission and support cancer patients.

The study tested 193 members of five different choirs. Results showed that singing for an hour was associated with significant reductions in stress hormones, such as cortisol, and increases in quantities of cytokines -- proteins of the immune system -- which can boost the body's ability to fight serious illness.

Dr Ian Lewis, Director of Research and Policy at Tenovus Cancer Care and co-author of the research, said: "These are really exciting findings. We have been building a body of evidence over the past six years to show that singing in a choir can have a range of social, emotional and psychological benefits, and now we can see it has biological effects too.

"We've long heard anecdotal evidence that singing in a choir makes people feel good, but this is the first time it's been demonstrated that the immune system can be affected by singing. It's really exciting and could enhance the way we support people with cancer in the future."

The study also found that those with the lowest levels of mental wellbeing and highest levels of depression experienced greatest mood improvement, associated with lower levels of inflammation in the body. There is a link between high levels of inflammation and serious illness.

Choir members gave samples of their saliva before an hour of singing, and then again just after. The samples were analysed to see what changes occurred in a number of hormones, immune proteins, neuropeptides and receptors.

Dr Daisy Fancourt, Research Associate at the Centre for Performance Science, a partnership between the Royal College of Music and Imperial College London and co-author of the research, said: "Many people affected by cancer can experience psychological difficulties such as stress, anxiety and depression. Research has demonstrated that these can suppress immune activity, at a time when patients need as much support as they can get from their immune system. This research is exciting as it suggests that an activity as simple as singing could reduce some of this stress-induced suppression, helping to improve wellbeing and quality of life amongst patients and put them in the best position to receive treatment."

Diane Raybould, 64, took part in the study and has been singing with the Bridgend Sing with Us choir since 2010. Diane was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was aged 50. Her daughter was diagnosed with breast cancer at the same time and sadly, passed away from the disease at just 28. Diane said: "Singing in the choir is about more than just enjoyment, it genuinely makes you feel better. The choir leaders play a huge part of course, but so does the support of the other choir members, the inspirational programme and uplifting songs. The choir is a family, simple as that. Having cancer and losing someone to cancer can be very isolating. With the choir, you can share experiences openly and that is hugely important."

Rosie Dow, Head of Sing with Us at Tenovus Cancer Care and co-author of the research, added: "This research is so exciting, as it echoes everything all our choir members tell us about how singing has helped them. I've seen peoples' lives transformed through singing in our choirs so knowing that singing also makes a biological difference will hopefully help us to reach more people with the message that singing is great for you -- mind, body and soul."

Following on from this research, Tenovus Cancer Care is launching a two year study looking in more depth at the longitudinal effect of choir singing over several months. It will look at mental health, wellbeing, social support and ability to cope with cancer, alongside measuring stress hormones and immune function amongst patients, carers, staff and people who have lost somebody to cancer.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160404221004.htm

Insomnia linked to damage in brain communication networks

April 5, 2016
Science Daily/Radiological Society of North America
Using a sophisticated MRI technique, researchers have found abnormalities in the brain's white matter tracts in patients with insomnia, according to a new study.
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/04/160405093052_1_540x360.jpg
Figure 1 shows the distribution of the six whole WM tracts in the brain. ALIC = anterior limb of the internal capsule, ACR = anterior corona radiata, BCC = body of the corpus callosum, PLIC = posterior limb of the internal capsule, R = right side of the brain, SCR = superior corona radiata, SLF = superior longitudinal fasciculus.
Credit: Radiological Society of North America

Primary insomnia, in which individuals have difficulty falling or staying asleep for a month or longer, is associated with daytime fatigue, mood disruption and cognitive impairment. Insomnia can also lead to depression and anxiety disorders.

"Insomnia is a remarkably prevalent disorder," said researcher Shumei Li, M.S., from the Department of Medical Imaging, Guangdong No. 2 Provincial People's Hospital, Guangzhou, China. "However, its causes and consequences remain elusive."

For the study, Li, along with colleagues lead by investigator Guihua Jiang, M.D., set out to analyze the white matter tracts in insomnia patients and the relationship between abnormal white matter integrity and the duration and features of insomnia.

"White matter tracts are bundles of axons--or long fibers of nerve cells--that connect one part of the brain to another," Li said. "If white matter tracts are impaired, communication between brain regions is disrupted."

The study included 23 patients with primary insomnia and 30 healthy control volunteers. To evaluate mental status and sleep patterns, all participants completed questionnaires including the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, the Insomnia Severity Index, the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale and the Self-Rating Depression Scale.

Each participant also underwent brain MRI with a specialized technique called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). DTI allows researchers to analyze the pattern of water movement along white matter tracts to identify a loss of tract integrity.

"We used a new method called Tract-Based Spatial Statistics that is highly sensitive to the microstructure of the white matter tract and provides multiple diffusion measures," Li said.

Results of the analysis showed that compared to the healthy controls, the insomnia patients had significantly reduced white matter integrity in several right-brain regions, and the thalamus which regulates consciousness, sleep and alertness.

"These impaired white matter tracts are mainly involved in the regulation of sleep and wakefulness, cognitive function and sensorimotor function," Li said.

In addition, abnormalities in the thalamus and body corpus callosum--the largest white matter structure in the brain--were associated with the duration of patients' insomnia and score on self-rating depression scale.

"The involvement of the thalamus in the pathology of insomnia is particularly critical, since the thalamus houses important constituents of the body's biological clock," she added.

The study also found that underlying cause of white matter integrity abnormalities in insomnia patients may be loss of myelin, the protective coating around nerve fibers.

The researchers caution that further study needs to be done on a larger sample to clarify the relationship between altered white matter integrity and insomnia.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160405093052.htm

Fresh fruit associated with lower risk of heart attack and stroke Study of 500,000 Chinese adults confirms benefits of eating fruit

April 6, 2016
Science Daily/University of Oxford
People who eat fresh fruit on most days are at lower risk of heart attack and stroke than people who rarely eat fresh fruit, according to new research. The findings come from a seven-year study of half a million adults in China, where fresh fruit consumption is much lower than in countries like the UK or US.
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/04/160406181538_1_540x360.jpg
Fruit is a rich source of potassium, dietary fiber, antioxidants, and various other potentially active compounds, and contains little sodium or fat and relatively few calories.
Credit: © baibaz / Fotolia

Researchers from the University of Oxford and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences conducted a large, nationwide study of 500,000 adults from 10 urban and rural localities across China, tracking health for 7 years through death records and electronic hospital records of illness. The present study was among people who did not have a history of cardiovascular diseases or anti-hypertensive treatments when first joined the study.

Fruit is a rich source of potassium, dietary fiber, antioxidants, and various other potentially active compounds, and contains little sodium or fat and relatively few calories. The study found that fruit consumption (which was mainly apples or oranges) was strongly associated with many other factors, such as education, lower blood pressure, lower blood glucose, and not smoking. But, after allowing for what was known of these and other factors, a 100g portion of fruit per day was associated with about one-third less cardiovascular mortality and the association was similar across different study areas and in both men and women.

Study author Dr Huaidong Du, University of Oxford, UK, said "The association between fruit consumption and cardiovascular risk seems to be stronger in China, where many still eat little fruit, than in high-income countries where daily consumption of fruit is more common." Also, fruit in China is almost exclusively consumed raw, whereas much of the fruit in high-income countries is processed, and many previous studies combined fresh and processed fruit.

Co-author Professor Liming Li, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, said "A recent Global Burden of Disease report put low fruit consumption as one of the leading causes of premature death in China. However, this was based on little evidence from China itself."

The senior author, Professor Zhengming Chen, University of Oxford, UK, said "It's difficult to know whether the lower risk in people who eat more fresh fruit is because of a real protective effect. If it is, then widespread consumption of fresh fruit in China could prevent about half a million cardiovascular deaths a year, including 200,000 before age 70, and even larger numbers of non-fatal strokes and heart attacks."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160406181538.htm

How depression may compound risk of type 2 diabetes Depression, metabolic factors combine to boost risk of developing diabetes, study finds

April 12, 2016
Science Daily/McGill University
Depression may compound the risk of developing type 2 diabetes in people with such early warning signs of metabolic disease as obesity, high blood pressure and unhealthy cholesterol levels, according to researchers from McGill University, l'Université de Montréal, the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal and the University of Calgary.

While previous studies have pointed to a link between depression and diabetes, the new findings, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, suggest that when depression combines with metabolic risk factors the risk of developing diabetes rises to a level beyond the sum of its parts.

"Emerging evidence suggests that not depression, per se, but depression in combination with behavioral and metabolic risk factors increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular conditions," said lead author Norbert Schmitz, an Associate Professor in McGill's Department of Psychiatry and a researcher at its affiliated Douglas Mental Health University Institute. "The aim of our study was to evaluate characteristics of individuals with both depressive symptoms and metabolic risk factors."

Over 2,500 adults studied

The four-and-a-half year study divided 2,525 participants in Quebec, aged between 40 and 69, into four groups: those with both depression and three or more metabolic risk factors; two groups, each with one of these conditions but not the other; and a reference group with neither condition.

In a departure from previous findings, the researchers discovered that participants with depression, alone, were not at significantly greater risk of developing diabetes than those in the reference group. The group with metabolic symptoms but not depression was around four times more likely to develop diabetes. Those with both depression and metabolic risk factors, on the other hand, were more than six times more likely to develop diabetes, with the analysis showing the combined effect of depression and metabolic symptoms was greater than the sum of the individual effects.

A vicious cycle?

The researchers believe depression, metabolic symptoms and the risk of developing diabetes interact in a number of ways. In some cases, a vicious cycle may emerge with depression and metabolic risk factors aggravating one another.

Evidence shows people suffering from depression are less likely to adhere to medical advice aimed at tackling metabolic symptoms, whether it be taking medication, quitting smoking, getting more exercise or eating a healthier diet. Without effective management, metabolic symptoms often worsen and this can in turn exacerbate the symptoms of depression.

Beyond these behavioral aspects, some forms of depression are associated with changes in the body's metabolic systems which can lead to weight gain, high blood pressure and problems with glucose metabolism. Meanwhile, some antidepressant medications can also cause weight gain.

Integrated treatment key to prevention

The researchers emphasize that not all cases of depression are the same -- only some people with depression also suffer from metabolic problems. When it comes to improving health outcomes, identifying those patients who suffer from both depression and metabolic symptoms as a subgroup and adopting an integrated treatment approach may be crucial to breaking the cycle.

"Focussing on depression alone might not change lifestyle/metabolic factors, so people are still at an increased risk of developing poor health outcomes, which in turn increases the risk of developing recurrent depression," Prof. Schmitz said.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160412211338.htm

New study illuminates key aspects of how we fall asleep and wake up Discovery could eventually lead to new and better treatments for insomnia and jet lag

April 14, 2016
Science Daily/University of Maryland School of Medicine
Falling asleep and waking up are key transitions in everyone's day. Despite decades of research, how these transitions work -- the neurobiological mechanics of our circadian rhythm -- has remained largely a mystery to brain scientists. Now, however, scientists have identified the workings of a key pathway for these processes. The pathway that appears to play a key role in regulating the 'switch' between wakefulness and sleep.
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/04/160414174410_1_540x360.jpg

Mice sleep during the day, when BK channels should be inhibited. This daytime BK channel inhibition results in high neuronal activity that leads to sleep. At night, BK channels become active, passing potassium (K+) current, and lowering neuronal activity. Lower neuronal activity triggers wakefulness, and activities such as wheel running. The link between neuronal activity and the sleep/wake cycles is similar in humans, with one key difference: humans tend to be daytime animals, awake in the day and asleep at night.
Credit: Andrea Meredith

Now, however, scientists at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM) have identified the workings of a key pathway for these processes. The pathway that appears to play a key role in regulating the "switch" between wakefulness and sleep. This is the first study to elucidate this process in such biophysical detail.

Andrea Meredith, PhD, Associate Professor of Physiology at UM SOM, focused on a particular brain area, the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the hypothalamus. This region acts as the brain's internal clock, determining when we feel like going to sleep, how long we sleep, and when we feel like getting up. Within the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which is known as the SCN, she focused on certain ion channels, proteins that conduct electrical current, relaying information from one neuron to another. She focused on a group of channels known as BK potassium channels, which seem to be particularly active in the SCN.

In the paper, which appeared recently in Nature Communications, Dr. Meredith examined mice, whose schedule is opposite to humans -- they sleep during the day and are awake at night. She found that BK channels are active during waking, which for the mice was at night; during the day the BK channels were inactive. She found that in this daytime context, the role of the BK channels is to inhibit wakefulness.

Prof. Meredith examined normal mice, along with mice that had been genetically altered so that their BK channels could not be inactivated. She then recorded activity in these channels, via electrodes placed in SCN neurons. In the brains of the genetically modified group, the animals that could not inactivate their BK channels, she found lower levels of neuronal activity, which was associated with more daytime wakefulness. This was unusual, because mice generally sleep during the day.

The new findings are surprising, for several reasons. The researchers didn't know of any physiological process in the body that relied on BK channel inactivation as a mechanism. Scientists had known that the channel acted in this way, but didn't know how neurons used this mechanism to regulate information coding in the brain. This is the first study to show that BK channel inactivation is critical for encoding circadian rhythm in the brain.

Previously, BK channels had been known to be important for regulating other physiological functions. They are important for activating muscles, and play a prominent role in controlling blood pressure, heart rate, and bladder function. In the brain, BK channels have been known to be involved in regulating neuronal excitability, and play a role in motor control, learning and memory. In the brain, dysfunction in BK channels is associated with tremors, seizures, addiction, and problems with learning and memory.

"We knew that BK channels were widely important throughout the body," says Prof. Meredith. "But now we have strong evidence that they are specifically and intrinsically involved in the wake-sleep cycle. That's really exciting."

Also, in the past, scientists had thought that the day-night pattern of firing was largely driven by a different mechanism, the number of ion channels that exist on the surface of SCN neurons. The new paper showed that this model is too simplistic. The new study shows that the key is not the number of channels, but the fact that the channels are being activated, and more importantly, inactivated, at specific times of day.

The discovery has clinical implications. Prof. Meredith says the new understanding of the inactivation mechanism could potentially be used to develop drugs that target circadian rhythms. Such a medication could be used to treat sleep disorders, jet lag, and seasonal affective disorder, all of which involve problems with the SCN circadian clock.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160414174410.htm

Finding sleep's sweet spot Study connects early bedtime and 'adequate' sleep with heart healthy choices

April 21, 2016
Science Daily/University of Delaware
A new study shows that when it comes to promoting healthy hearts, it's not a matter of getting more sleep. It's a matter of getting adequate sleep at optimal times, say researchers.

Night owls should take special note of a new study by University of Delaware researcher Freda Patterson and collaborators at the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University and the University of Arizona College of Medicine, who found that the early-to-bed, early-to-rise approach aligns much better with cardiovascular health.

Sleep deficits and poor-quality sleep have been linked to obesity and a myriad of health problems, but this study shows that when it comes to promoting healthy hearts, it's not a matter of getting more sleep. It's a matter of getting adequate sleep at optimal times.

Doing that seems to reduce the kind of behaviors -- smoking, sedentary lifestyles and poor dietary choices -- that put hearts in harm's way.

"There are some who believe that sleep as a physiological function is upstream to these heart-health behaviors," said Patterson, assistant professor of behavioral health and nutrition in the University's College of Health Sciences. "If that is true, the implication would be that if we can modify sleep as a central risk factor, we might be in much better position to leverage or modify some of our most stubborn cardiovascular risk behaviors such as tobacco use."

The study, published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, examined the duration and approximate timing of sleep to see what patterns might be linked to the three prime suspects of cardiovascular trouble -- smoking, poor diet and sedentary habits. Those three behaviors have been blamed for about 40 percent of cardiovascular deaths in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The study had an enormous pool of data with which to work, drawing from the United Kingdom's Biobank Resource and a sample of 439,933 adults, between the ages of 40-69.

They found several strong connections, but first, a few notes about definitions and methods.

The study defined short sleep as less than six hours, adequate sleep as seven to eight hours, and long sleep as nine hours or more. Respondents were categorized by their self-reported sleep-timing or "chronotype" -- whether they considered themselves a morning person, more morning than evening, more evening than morning, or an evening person.

Participants were asked about their physical activity, how much time they spent using a computer or watching TV on an average day, how many servings of fruits and vegetables they had each day and how many cigarettes they typically smoked in an average day.

And the bottom line was this -- those whose sleep was either short or long and the night owls who went to bed later were more likely than adequate sleepers and those who went to bed earlier to smoke, remain sedentary and eat fewer fruits and vegetables.

"These data suggest that it's not just sleep deprivation that relates to cardiovascular risk behaviors, but too much sleep can relate as well," Patterson said. "Oftentimes, health messages say we need to get more sleep, but this may be too simplistic. Going to bed earlier and getting adequate sleep was associated with better heart health behaviors."

The American Health Association reports that only 5-10 percent of adults meet ideal standards in diet, physical activity and tobacco use. The rest of us have work to do.

"We know that people who are active tend to have better sleep patterns, and we also know that people who do not get their sleep are less likely to be active," Patterson said. "A pressing question for practitioners and researchers is how do you leverage one to improve the other?"

Data on the population studied were derived from the United Kingdom Biobank Resource, which draws on the UK's national health service. Subjects were between 40-69 years old during the four-year data collection period, which went from 2006-10.

Despite the enormous sample size, the data had some limitations, Patterson said. Population diversity was limited, for example. Ninety-five percent of respondents were white. And the data were largely based on self-report.

Further study is required to determine whether promoting adequate sleep and earlier-to-bed patterns would improve heart health.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141103121020.htm

Asleep somewhere new, one brain hemisphere keeps watch

April 21, 2016
Science Daily/Brown University
Have trouble sleeping on your first night in a new place? A new study explains what's going on in the brain during that 'first-night effect.'
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/04/160421133630_1_540x360.jpg
A rich array of electrodes in the sleep lab allowed for widespread but sensitive sensing of brain activity.
Credit: Michael Cohea/Brown University

The study in Current Biology explains what underlies the "first-night effect," a phenomenon that poses an inconvenience to business travelers and sleep researchers alike. Sleep is often noticeably worse during the first night in, say, a hotel or a sleep lab. In the latter context, researchers usually have to build an "adaptation night" into their studies to do their experiments. This time around, the team at Brown investigated the first-night effect, rather than factoring it out.

"In Japan they say, 'if you change your pillow, you can't sleep,'" said corresponding author Yuka Sasaki, research associate professor of cognitive linguistic and psychological sciences at Brown. "You don't sleep very well in a new place. We all know about it."

Sasaki and lead author Masako Tamaki wanted to figure out why. Over the course of three experiments their team used several methods to precisely measure brain activity during two nights of slumber, a week apart, among a total of 35 volunteers. They consistently found that on the first night in the lab, a particular network in the left hemisphere remained more active than in the right hemisphere, specifically during a deep sleep phase known as "slow-wave" sleep. When the researchers stimulated the left hemisphere with irregular beeping sounds (played in the right ear), that prompted a significantly greater likelihood of waking, and faster action upon waking, than if sounds were played in to the left ear to stimulate the right hemisphere.

In other sleep phases and three other networks tested on the first night, there was no difference in alertness or activity in either hemisphere. On the second night of sleep there was no significant difference between left and right hemispheres even in the "default-mode network" of the left hemisphere, which does make a difference on the first night. The testing, in other words, pinpointed a first-night-only effect specifically in the default-mode network of the left hemisphere during the slow-wave phase.

"To our best knowledge, regional asymmetric slow-wave activity associated with the first-night effect has never been reported in humans," the authors wrote.

To make the novel findings, the researchers used electroencephalography, magnetoencephelography, and magnetic resonance imaging to make unusually high-resolution and sensitive measurements with wide brain coverage.

Despite all that instrumentation, the volunteers did not report any unusual discomfort or anxiety in surveys. They were all screened for general mental health before enrollment in the research to ensure their typical sleep was likely to be normal.

Though the study evidence appears to document and explain the first-night effect, it doesn't answer all the questions about it, Sasaki acknowledged. The researchers only measured the first slow-wave sleep phase, for example. Therefore they don't know whether the left hemisphere keeps watch all night, or works in shifts with the right later in the night.

"It is possible that that the surveillance hemisphere may alternate," Sasaki said.

It's also not clear whether the default-mode network is a lonely watchman. In its day job, which some researchers associate with mind-wandering and daydreaming, it tends to keep running when the brain is otherwise fairly idle. There is evidence from prior studies that it remains more connected to other brain networks than most others during sleep. But because the researchers only measured four networks, they aren't sure what others the default-mode network may work with.

Finally, Sasaki said it's not known yet why the brain only maintains an alert state in just one hemisphere -- whether it's always the left or in alternation with the right. There are many examples among animals, however, of hemispheric asymmetry during slow-wave sleep. Marine mammals exhibit it, Sasaki said, presumably because they regularly need to resurface to breathe, even during sleep.

Now it's been found in humans as a first-night phenomenon.

"The present study has demonstrated that when we are in a novel environment, inter-hemispheric asymmetry occurs in regional slow-wave activity, vigilance and responsiveness, as a night watch to protect ourselves," the study concludes.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160421133630.htm

Smartphones uncover how the world sleeps

May 6, 2016
Science Daily/University of Michigan
A pioneering study of worldwide sleep patterns combines math modeling, mobile apps and big data to parse the roles society and biology each play in setting sleep schedules.
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/05/160506160105_1_540x360.jpg
The researchers examined how age, gender, amount of light and home country affect the amount of shut-eye people around the globe get, when they go to bed, and when they wake up.
Credit: © theartofphoto / Fotolia

The study, led by University of Michigan mathematicians, used a free smartphone app that reduces jetlag to gather robust sleep data from thousands of people in 100 nations. The researchers examined how age, gender, amount of light and home country affect the amount of shut-eye people around the globe get, when they go to bed, and when they wake up.

Among their findings is that cultural pressures can override natural circadian rhythms, with the effects showing up most markedly at bedtime. While morning responsibilities like work, kids and school play a role in wake-time, the researchers say they're not the only factor. Population-level trends agree with what they would expect from current knowledge of the circadian clock.

"Across the board, it appears that society governs bedtime and one's internal clock governs wake time, and a later bedtime is linked to a loss of sleep," said Daniel Forger, who holds faculty positions in mathematics at the U-M College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, and in the U-M Medical School's Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics. "At the same time, we found a strong wake-time effect from users' biological clocks--not just their alarm clocks. These findings help to quantify the tug-of-war between solar and social timekeeping."

When Forger talks about internal or biological clocks, he's referring to circadian rhythms--fluctuations in bodily functions and behaviors that are tied to the planet's 24-hour day. These rhythms are set by a grain-of-rice-sized cluster of 20,000 neurons behind the eyes. They're regulated by the amount of light, particularly sunlight, our eyes take in.

Circadian rhythms have long been thought to be the primary driver of sleep schedules, even since the advent of artificial light and 9-to-5 work schedules. The new research helps to quantify the role that society plays.

Here's how Forger and colleague Olivia Walch arrived at their findings. Several years ago, they released an app called Entrain that helps travelers adjust to new time zones. It recommends custom schedules of light and darkness. To use the app, you have to plug in your typical hours of sleep and light exposure, and are given the option of submitting your information anonymously to U-M.

The quality of the app's recommendations depended on the accuracy of the users' information, and the researchers say this motivated users to be particularly careful in reporting their lighting history and sleep habits.

With information from thousands of people in hand, they then analyzed it for patterns. Any correlations that bubbled up, they put to the test in what amounts to a circadian rhythm simulator. The simulator--a mathematical model--is based on the field's deep knowledge of how light affects the brain's suprachiasmatic nucleus (that's the cluster of neurons behind the eyes that regulates our internal clocks). With the model, the researchers could dial the sun up and down at will to see if the correlations still held in extreme conditions.

"In the real world, bedtime doesn't behave how it does in our model universe," Walch said. "What the model is missing is how society affects that."

The spread of national averages of sleep duration ranged from a minimum of around 7 hours, 24 minutes of sleep for residents of Singapore and Japan to a maximum of 8 hours, 12 minutes for those in the Netherlands. That's not a huge window, but the researchers say every half hour of sleep makes a big difference in terms of cognitive function and long-term health.

The findings, the researchers say, point to an important lever for the sleep-deprived--a set that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is concerned about. A recent CDC study found that across the U.S., one in three adults aren't getting the recommended minimum of seven hours. Sleep deprivation, the CDC says, increases the risk of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke and stress.

The U-M researchers also found that:

•    Middle-aged men get the least sleep, often getting less than the recommended 7 to 8 hours.
•    Women schedule more sleep than men, about 30 minutes more on average. They go to bed a bit earlier and wake up later. This is most pronounced in ages between 30 and 60.
•    People who spend some time in the sunlight each day tend to go to bed earlier and get more sleep than those who spend most of their time in indoor light.
•    Habits converge as we age. Sleep schedules were more similar among the older-than-55 set than those younger than 30, which could be related to a narrowing window in which older individuals can fall and stay asleep.

Sleep is more important than a lot of people realize, the researchers say. Even if you get six hours a night, you're still building up a sleep debt, says Walch, doctoral student in the mathematics department and a co-author on the paper.

"It doesn't take that many days of not getting enough sleep before you're functionally drunk," she said. "Researchers have figured out that being overly tired can have that effect. And what's terrifying at the same time is that people think they're performing tasks way better than they are. Your performance drops off but your perception of your performance doesn't."

Aside from the findings themselves, the researchers say the work demonstrates that mobile technology can be a reliable way to gather massive data sets at very low cost.

"This is a cool triumph of citizen science," Forger said.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160506160105.htm

A narrow band of green light could improve migraines Findings show that pure green light is least likely to exacerbate migraine

May 17, 2016
Science Daily/Oxford University Press
Most migraine and post-traumatic headache sufferers find their headaches get worse in light, leading them to quit their most fundamental daily tasks and seek the comfort of darkness. A new study reveals that exposing these headache sufferers to pure-wavelength green light significantly reduces their photophobia, or sensitivity to light, and can even reduce the severity of their headaches.

Photophobia, associated with more than 80% of migraine attacks, gives migraine sufferers little choice but to isolate themselves in dark rooms, unable to work, care for their family, or pursue everyday activities.

Although photophobia is not as incapacitating as the pain of the headache itself to migraine sufferers, "it is their inability to endure light that most often disables them," says Rami Burstein, Professor of Anesthesia at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Harvard Medical School, and lead author of the study.

The new study shows that a narrow band of green light exacerbates migraine significantly less than all other colors of light and that at low intensities it can even reduce the headache itself.

Burstein and his colleagues devised a way to study the effects of different colors of light on headache in patients without visual impairment, after discovering that only blue light hurts blind migraine patients

They asked patients undergoing acute migraine attacks to report any change in headache when exposed to different intensities of blue, green, amber and red light. At high intensity of light (as in a well-lit office) nearly 80% of the patients reported intensification of headache -- in all colours but green. Burstein and his colleagues found, unexpectedly, that green light actually reduced their pain by about 20%.

To understand why green light causes far less pain to these patients, the scientists devised experiments in which they measured the magnitude of the electrical signals generated by the retina (in the eye) and the cortex (in the brain) of these patients in response to each colour of light. They found that green light generated the smallest electrical signals in both the retina and cortex.

Next, they used animal models to show that the thalamus, a brain area that transmits information about light from the eye to the cortex, modifies the information in a way that explains why blue and red light are more painful than amber and why amber is more painful than green.

"My hope is that patients will be able to benefit directly from these findings one day very soon," says Burstein, who is trying to find a way to invent a low-cost light bulb that can emit "pure" (narrow band wavelength) green light at low intensity and sunglasses that block all but this narrow band of pure green light. However, he cautions the current cost of one such light bulb, and the technology, is astronomical.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160517083042.htm

Couples study ties anger to heart problems, stonewalling to back pain Study suggests how you argue predicts health problems later in life

May 24, 2016
Science Daily/University of California - Berkeley
If you rage with frustration during a marital spat, watch your blood pressure. If you keep a stiff upper lip, watch your back. New research based on how couples behave during conflicts, suggests outbursts of anger predict cardiovascular problems. Conversely, shutting down emotionally or "stonewalling" during conflict raises the risk of musculoskeletal ailments such as a bad back or stiff muscles.
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/05/160524093159_1_540x360.jpg
How do you react to disagreements? It did not take the researchers long to guess which spouses would develop ailments down the road based on how they reacted to disagreements.
Credit: © kmiragaya / Fotolia

New research from the University of California, Berkeley, and Northwestern University, based on how couples behave during conflicts, suggests outbursts of anger predict cardiovascular problems.

Conversely, shutting down emotionally or "stonewalling" during conflict raises the risk of musculoskeletal ailments such as a bad back or stiff muscles.

"Our findings reveal a new level of precision in how emotions are linked to health, and how our behaviors over time can predict the development of negative health outcomes," said UC Berkeley psychologist Robert Levenson, senior author of the study.

The study, published today in the journal Emotion, is based on 20 years of data. It controlled for such factors as age, education, exercise, smoking, alcohol use and caffeine consumption.

Overall, the link between emotions and health outcomes was most pronounced for husbands, but some of the key correlations were also found in wives. It did not take the researchers long to guess which spouses would develop ailments down the road based on how they reacted to disagreements.

"We looked at marital-conflict conversations that lasted just 15 minutes and could predict the development of health problems over 20 years for husbands based on the emotional behaviors that they showed during these 15 minutes," said study lead author Claudia Haase, an assistant professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University.

The findings could spur hotheaded people to consider such interventions as anger management, while people who withdraw during conflict might benefit from resisting the impulse to bottle up their emotions, the researchers said.

"Conflict happens in every marriage, but people deal with it in different ways. Some of us explode with anger; some of us shut down," Haase said. "Our study shows that these different emotional behaviors can predict the development of different health problems in the long run."

The study is one of several led by Levenson, who looks at the inner workings of long-term marriages. Participants are part of a cohort of 156 middle-aged and older heterosexual couples in the San Francisco Bay Area whose relationships Levenson and fellow researchers have tracked since 1989.

The surviving spouses who participated in the study are now in their 60s, 70s, 80s and even 90s.

Each five years, the couples were videotaped in a laboratory setting as they discussed events in their lives and areas of disagreement and enjoyment.

Their interactions were rated by expert behavioral coders for a wide range of emotions and behaviors based on facial expressions, body language and tone of voice. In addition, the spouses completed a battery of questionnaires that included a detailed assessment of specific health problems.

In this latest study, the researchers focused on the health consequences of anger and an emotion-suppressing behavior they refer to as "stonewalling." The study also looked at sadness and fear as predictors of these health outcomes, but did not find any significant associations.

"Our findings suggest particular emotions expressed in a relationship predict vulnerability to particular health problems, and those emotions are anger and stonewalling," Levenson said.

To track displays of anger, the researchers monitored the videotaped conversations for such behaviors as lips pressed together, knitted brows, voices raised or lowered beyond their normal tone and tight jaws.

To identify stonewalling behavior, they looked for what researchers refer to as "away" behavior, which includes facial stiffness, rigid neck muscles, and little or no eye contact. That data was then linked to health symptoms, measured every five years over a 20-year span.

The spouses who were observed during their conversations to fly off the handle more easily were at greater risk of developing chest pain, high blood pressure and other cardiovascular problems over time.

Alternately, those who stonewalled by barely speaking and avoiding eye contact were more likely to develop backaches, stiff necks or joints and general muscle tension.

"For years, we've known that negative emotions are associated with negative health outcomes, but this study dug deeper to find that specific emotions are linked to specific health problems," Levenson said. "This is one of the many ways that our emotions provide a window for glimpsing important qualities of our future lives."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160524093159.htm

Chemotherapy and exercise: The right dose of workout helps side effects

June 4, 2016
Science Daily/University of Rochester Medical Center
Researchers discovered something simple and inexpensive to reduce neuropathy in hands and feet due to chemotherapy -- exercise.

The study, involving more than 300 cancer patients, is to be presented this weekend and honored as a "Best of ASCO" among 5,800 abstracts at the world's largest gathering of oncologists, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting 2016. More than a dozen other Wilmot scientists also were invited to present data at the meeting.

Investigators in the exercise study directly compared the neuropathic symptoms in non-exercisers to the pain among patients who took part in a specialized six-week walking routine with gentle, resistance-band training at home.

The exercisers reported significantly fewer symptoms of neuropathy--which includes shooting or burning pain, tingling, numbness, and sensitivity to cold--and the effects of exercise seemed to be most beneficial for older patients, said lead author Ian Kleckner, Ph.D., a biophysicist and research assistant professor in Wilmot's Cancer Control and Survivorship program. Kleckner also won an ASCO Merit Award in the pain and symptom management category, and was invited to give a talk about his work.

Not all chemotherapy drugs cause neuropathy, but 60 percent of people with breast cancer and other solid tumors who receive taxanes, vinca alkaloids, and platinum-based chemotherapies will likely suffer this type of side effect, Kleckner said. Neuropathy is more commonly associated with diabetes or nerve damage. No FDA-approved drugs are available to prevent or treat chemotherapy-induced neuropathy, he added.

Wilmot's specialized exercise program, called EXCAP (Exercise for Cancer Patients), was developed several years ago at the UR by Karen Mustian, Ph.D., M.P.H., an associate professor in the Cancer Control program. In recent years she has copyrighted and evaluated EXCAP in several clinical trials. Last year at ASCO, Mustian presented data from a randomized, controlled study of 619 patients showing that EXCAP reduced chronic inflammation and cognitive impairment among people receiving chemotherapy. Kleckner's study involved a subset of patients from Mustian's trial, which is the largest phase 3 confirmatory exercise study ever conducted among cancer patients during chemotherapy. Their work is funded by the National Cancer Institute and Mustian's PEAK lab.

Exercise--as a cancer prevention tool and potential treatment--is a hot topic among the nation's oncologists and their patients.

Kleckner, a longtime drug-free body builder and former college rugby player, said he's committed to understanding more deeply the benefits of exercise for cancer patients. "Exercise is like a sledgehammer because it affects so many biological and psycho-social pathways at the same time--brain circuitry, inflammation, our social interactions--whereas drugs usually have a specific target," he said. "Our next study is being designed to find out how exercise works, how the body reacts to exercise during cancer treatment, and how exercise affects the brain."

Mustian is also giving two talks at ASCO, about the use of exercise in geriatric cancer patients and how innovation can help exercise investigators reach their goals.

"Our program at the University of Rochester, which now includes more than a half-dozen researchers, is becoming a real powerhouse in exercise oncology," Mustian said. "Twelve years ago when we started this work a lot of people said it was not safe for most cancer patients to exercise. Now we know it can be safe when done correctly, and that it has measurable benefits. But more exercise isn't always better for patients who are going through chemo--so it's important to continue our work and find a way to personalize exercise in a way that will help each individual."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160604051004.htm

Lighting color affects sleep, wakefulness Green light promotes sleep while blue light delays it, find researchers

June 8, 2016
Science Daily/University of Oxford
A research team has shown how different colors of light could affect our ability to sleep. At the same time they have established that the light-sensitive pigment melanopsin is necessary for the substantial wavelength-dependent effects of light on sleep. The results point to a need to understand the effects of artificial lighting's different color balances.

The researchers, led by Dr Stuart Peirson from Oxford's Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute were aiming to understand why exposing mice to bright light caused two -- physically incompatible -- responses.

Dr Peirson explained: 'When we expose mice to light during the night, it causes them to fall asleep. Yet, at the same time, it also increases levels of corticosterone, a stress hormone produced by the adrenal gland that causes arousal -- wakefulness. We wanted to understand how these two effects were related and how they were linked to a blue light-sensitive pigment called melanopsin, known to play a key role in setting our body clock.'

The team exposed mice to three different colours of light -- violet, blue and green. Based on the existing data about the role of melanopsin in sleep, they expected that the blue light would induce sleep fastest as the wavelength of the blue light (470 nanometres -- nm) was closest to the peak sensitivity of the pigment (around 480nm).

However, it was green light that produced rapid sleep onset -- between 1 and 3 minutes. Blue and violet light delayed sleep -- the onset of sleep taking between 16 and 19 minutes for blue and between 5 and 10 minutes for violet.

Dr Peirson said: 'The results meant that mice exposed to blue light had less sleep than those exposed to violet and green light. We confirmed the effect by testing mice using green and blue light at a time when they would usually be less active.'

To investigate the role of melanopsin, the team performed the same test on mice lacking the pigment. For these mice, the colours had opposite effects -- blue caused rapid sleep onset, while green and violet significantly delayed sleep, showing that melanopsin is necessary for the substantial wavelength-dependent effects of light on sleep.

The researchers also found that while exposure to all three colours of light increased the level of corticosterone stress hormone in ordinary mice, blue light caused a much higher rise. In mice without melanopsin, the response to blue light was greatly reduced. Blocking the effect of corticosterone reduced the sleep-delaying effect, suggesting that the production of this hormone in response to light actively inhibits sleep.

Dr Peirson said: 'This study shows that there are different pathways from the eye to the brain -- one directly regulating sleep and the other increasing arousal. Melanopsin has a more complex role than previously thought, affecting both pathways. This is the first time that it has been shown to regulate adrenal stress responses.

'An obvious caveat of this study is that mice are a nocturnal species that are active during the night. As such, green light may be expected to increase wakefulness rather than increasing sleep in humans. We would therefore predict that blue light will further enhance the wake-promoting effects of light by elevating adrenal stress hormones.

'The results also add to our understanding of the effects of light emitting devices on humans, where recent studies have shown that the blue light from these devices delays sleep. However, as we have shown that there are different pathways in the brain, by which different colours of light have different effects on sleep or wakefulness, we need to understand how the overall colour balance of artificial light could affect people's alertness and sleep.'
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160608154233.htm