Can you actually hear 'inaudible' sound?

July 10, 2015
Science Daily/Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB)
Limits of human hearing (infrasound and ultrasound) examined
Are wind farms harmful to humans? This controversial topic makes emotions run high. To give the debate more objectivity, an international team of experts dealt with the fundamentals of hearing in the lower limit range of the audible frequency range (i.e., infrasound), but also in the upper limit range (i.e., ultrasound).
http://images.sciencedaily.com/2015/07/150710123506_1_540x360.jpg

If there is a plan to erect a wind turbine in front of someone's property, many an eager supporter of the "energy transition" quickly turns into a wind energy opponent. Fear soon starts spreading: the infrasound generated by the rotor blades and by the wind flow might make someone ill. Many people living in the vicinity of such wind farms do indeed experience sleep disturbances, a decline in performance, and other negative effects. Infrasound designates very low sounds, below the limit of hearing, which is around 16 hertz. The wind energy sector and the authorities often try to appease the situation, declaring that the sounds generated are inaudible and much too weak to be the source of health problems.

Christian Koch knows for sure, "Neither scaremongering nor refuting everything is of any help in this situation. Instead, we must try to find out more about how sounds in the limit range of hearing are perceived." This expert in acoustics from PTB is the manager of the international project in which metrology experts from several metrology institutes and scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin investigated the fundamentals of the hearing of "inaudible" sounds for 3 years. Very low sounds (i.e. infrasound, below approx. 16 hertz) or very high sounds (i.e. ultrasound, above approx. 16,000 hertz) occur in numerous situations of daily life: infrasound is not only produced by wind turbines, but also sometimes when a truck thunders past a house, or when a home owner installs a power generator in his basement. Ultrasound can, for example, originate from commercial ultrasonic cleaning baths that are sometimes used, e.g., to thoroughly clean a pair of glasses. It can also be generated by a device used as a deterrent against martens (to keep them from gnawing on the wiring of cars). A particular variant of such devices has been developed to keep young people away from certain places -- an internationally controversial topic from an ethical viewpoint. These devices, which produce very high-pitched sounds that can only be heard by children and young people, are sometimes used by adults who want to enjoy some peace and quiet. "In all these areas, we have to deal with considerable levels of loudness in some cases," Christian Koch adds.

An audible loud sound may damage hearing -- as well as getting on your nerves. But what exactly is an "audible" sound? And what does a human being really hear? In order to find out more, an infrasonic source which is able to generate sounds that are completely free from harmonics (which is not as trivial as it may sound!) was constructed within the scope of this project. Test persons were asked about their subjective hearing experience, and these (also quantitative) statements were then compared by means of imaging procedures, namely by magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The results have shown that humans hear lower sounds -- namely from 8 hertz on -- which, after all, is a whole octave than had previously been assumed: an excitation of the primary auditory cortex could be detected down to this frequency. All persons concerned explicitly stated that they had heard something -- whereby this perception had not always been tonal. In addition, the observations showed a reaction in certain parts of the brain which play a role in emotions. "This means that a human being has a rather diffuse perception, saying that something is there and that this might involve danger," Christian Koch says. "But we're actually at the very beginning of our investigations. Further research is urgently needed." An application for a follow-up project has already been filed. In this project, the investigations will be focused on the question why some persons feel disturbed by "inaudible" sound, whereas others are not even bothered: many a home owner is left cold by having a wind turbine next to their homes. And we need to take another effect into account: namely, that some people become really ill because they imagine risks which, in reality, might not even exist. This is the reason why it makes sense to involve psychologists as well.

But the researchers see a great need for further research also in the other extreme -- the ultrasound. Although the measuring instruments used are among the most precise in the world (PTB is the world leader, especially for MEG), the researchers were not able to measure whether humans can hear above the previously assumed upper threshold of hearing, and if they can, what they then perceive. Since, however, what applies to other ranges, also applies to high-pitched sounds -- namely that a very loud sound may damage the hearing -- here too, there is a need for further research.

The results of the international research project might lead to the introduction of uniform -- and binding -- protection provisions for these limit ranges of hearing within Europe, since there have been none to date.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150710123506.htm

New compounds may treat depression rapidly with few side effects

July 13, 2015
Science Daily/University of Maryland School of Medicine
New approach could revolutionize treatment
A new study has identified promising compounds that could successfully treat depression in less than 24 hours with few side effects. The compounds could offer significant advantages over current antidepressant medications.

The research, led by Scott Thompson, PhD, Professor and Chair of the Department of Physiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM), was published this month in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

"Our results open up a whole new class of potential antidepressant medications," said Dr. Thompson. "We have evidence that these compounds can relieve the devastating symptoms of depression in less than one day, and can do so in a way that limits some of the key disadvantages of current approaches."

Currently, most people with depression take medications that increase levels of the neurochemical serotonin in the brain. The most common of these drugs, such as Prozac and Lexapro, are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. Unfortunately, SSRIs are effective in only a third of patients with depression. In addition, even when these drugs work, they typically take between three and eight weeks to relieve symptoms. As a result, patients often suffer for months before finding a medicine that makes them feel better. This is not only emotionally excruciating; in the case of patients who are suicidal, it can be deadly. Better treatments for depression are clearly needed.

Dr. Thompson and his team focused on another neurotransmitter besides serotonin, an inhibitory compound called GABA. Brain activity is determined by a balance of opposing excitatory and inhibitory communication between brain cells. Dr. Thompson and his team argue that in depression, excitatory messages in some brain regions are not strong enough. Because there is no safe way to directly strengthen excitatory communication, they examined a class of compounds that reduce the inhibitory messages sent via GABA. They predicted that these compounds would restore excitatory strength. These compounds, called GABA-NAMs, minimize unwanted side effects because they are precise: they work only in the parts of the brain that are essential for mood.

The researchers tested the compounds in rats that were subjected to chronic mild stress that caused the animals to act in ways that resemble human depression. Giving stressed rats GABA-NAMs successfully reversed experimental signs of a key symptom of depression, anhedonia, or the inability to feel pleasure. Remarkably, the beneficial effects of the compounds appeared within 24 hours -- much faster than the multiple weeks needed for SSRIs to produce the same effects.

"These compounds produced the most dramatic effects in animal studies that we could have hoped for," Dr. Thompson said. "It will now be tremendously exciting to find out whether they produce similar effects in depressed patients. If these compounds can quickly provide relief of the symptoms of human depression, such as suicidal thinking, it could revolutionize the way patients are treated."

In tests on the rats' brains, the researchers found that the compounds rapidly increased the strength of excitatory communication in regions that were weakened by stress and are thought to be weakened in human depression. No effects of the compound were detected in unstressed animals, raising hopes that they will not produce side effects in human patients.

"This work underscores the importance of basic research to our clinical future," said Dean E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, who is also the vice president for Medical Affairs, University of Maryland, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and Dean of the School of Medicine. "Dr. Thompson's work lays the crucial groundwork to transform the treatment of depression and reduce the tragic loss of lives to suicide."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150713131349.htm

Losing half a night of sleep makes memories less accessible in stressful situations

July 13, 2015
Science Daily/Uppsala University
It is known that sleep facilitates the formation of long-term memory in humans. Researchers now show that sleep does not only help form long-term memory but also ensures access to it during times of cognitive stress.

It is well known that during sleep newly learned information is transferred from short-term to long-term memory stores in humans. In the study that is now being published in the scientific journal SLEEP, sleep researchers Jonathan Cedernaes and Christian Benedict, sought to investigate the role of nocturnal sleep duration for this memory transfer, and how long-term memories formed by sleep remain accessible after acute cognitive stress.

Following a learning session in the evening during which 15 participants learned 15 card pair locations on a computer screen, in one experimental session subjects slept for half a night (4-hr) and in the other for a full night (8-hr). The next morning subjects were asked to recall as many card pair locations as possible. What the researchers found was that half a night of sleep (4-hr) was as powerful as a full night of sleep (8-hr) to form long-term memories for the learned card pair locations.

However, the study also revealed that stress had an impact on the participants' ability to recall these memories. The men were acutely stressed for 30 minutes in the morning after a half or full night of sleep (for example by having to recall a newly learnt list of words while exposed to noise). Following short sleep this stress exposure reduced their ability to recall these card pair locations by around 10 percent.

In contrast, no such stress-induced impairment was seen when the same men were allowed to sleep for a full night.

"On the basis of our study findings, we have two important take home messages: First, even though losing half a night of sleep may not impair memory functions under baseline conditions, the addition of acute cognitive stress may be enough to lead to significant impairments, which can possibly be detrimental in real-world scenarios. Second, interventions such as delaying school start times and greater use of flexible work schedules, that increase available snooze time for those who are on habitual short sleep, may improve their academic and occupational performance by ensuring optimal access to memories under stressful conditions," says Jonathan Cedernaes, researcher at the Department of Neuroscience, Uppsala University.

"An important next step will be to investigate how chronic sleep loss and or more chronic stress may interact to impair the ability to retrieve memories that are consolidated during sleep," says Jonathan Cedernaes.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150713150822.htm

The sleep-deprived brain can mistake friends for foes

July 15, 2015
Science Daily/University of California - Berkeley
If you can't tell a smile from a scowl, you're probably not getting enough sleep
A new study shows that sleep deprivation dulls our ability to accurately read facial expressions. This deficit can have serious consequences, such as not noticing that a child is sick or in pain, or that a potential mugger or violent predator is approaching.
http://images.sciencedaily.com/2015/07/150715103516_1_540x360.jpg

"Recognizing the emotional expressions of someone else changes everything about whether or not you decide to interact with them, and in return, whether they interact with you," said study senior author Matthew Walker, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at UC Berkeley. The findings were published today in the Journal of Neuroscience.

"These findings are especially worrying considering that two-thirds of people in the developed nations fail to get sufficient sleep," Walker added.

Indeed, the results do not bode well for countless sleep-starved groups, said study lead author Andrea Goldstein-Piekarski, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, who started the study as a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley.

"Consider the implications for students pulling all-nighters, emergency-room medical staff, military fighters in war zones and police officers on graveyard shifts," she said.

For the experiment, 18 healthy young adults viewed 70 facial expressions that ranged from friendly to threatening, once after a full night of sleep, and once after 24 hours of being awake. Researchers scanned participants' brains and measured their heart rates as they looked at the series of visages.

Brain scans as they carried out these tasks -- generated through functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) -- revealed that the sleep-deprived brains could not distinguish between threatening and friendly faces, specifically in the emotion-sensing regions of the brain's anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex.

Additionally, the heart rates of sleep-deprived study participants did not respond normally to threatening or friendly facial expressions. Moreover, researchers found a disconnection in the neural link between the brain and heart that typically enables the body to sense distress signals.

"Sleep deprivation appears to dislocate the body from the brain," said Walker. "You can't follow your heart."

As a consequence, study participants interpreted more faces, even the friendly or neutral ones, as threatening when sleep-deprived.

"They failed our emotional Rorschach test," Walker said. "Insufficient sleep removes the rose tint to our emotional world, causing an overestimation of threat. This may explain why people who report getting too little sleep are less social and more lonely."

On a more positive note, researchers recorded the electrical brain activity of the participants during their full night of sleep, and found that their quality of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) or dream sleep correlated with their ability to accurately read facial expressions. Previous research by Walker has found that REM sleep serves to reduce stress neurochemicals and soften painful memories.

"The better the quality of dream sleep, the more accurate the brain and body was at differentiating between facial expressions," Walker said. "Dream sleep appears to reset the magnetic north of our emotional compass. This study provides yet more proof of our essential need for sleep."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150715103516.htm

Sleep makes our memories more accessible

July 26, 2015
Science Daily/University of Exeter
Sleeping not only protects memories from being forgotten, it also makes them easier to access, according to new research. A new study tracked memories for novel, made-up words learnt either prior to a night's sleep, or an equivalent period of wakefulness. Subjects were asked to recall words immediately after exposure, and then again after the period of sleep or wakefulness.
http://images.sciencedaily.com/2015/07/150726200036_1_540x360.jpg

In two situations where subjects forgot information over the course of 12 hours of wakefulness, a night's sleep was shown to promote access to memory traces that had initially been too weak to be retrieved.

The research, published in the journal Cortex, tracked memories for novel, made-up words learnt either prior to a night's sleep, or an equivalent period of wakefulness. Subjects were asked to recall words immediately after exposure, and then again after the period of sleep or wakefulness.

The key distinction was between those word memories which participants could remember at both the immediate test and the 12-hour retest, and those not remembered at test, but eventually remembered at retest.

The researcher found that, compared to daytime wakefulness, sleep helped rescue unrecalled memories more than it prevented memory loss.

Nicolas Dumay of the University of Exeter explains: "Sleep almost doubles our chances of remembering previously unrecalled material. The post-sleep boost in memory accessibility may indicate that some memories are sharpened overnight. This supports the notion that, while asleep, we actively rehearse information flagged as important. More research is needed into the functional significance of this rehearsal and whether, for instance, it allows memories to be accessible in a wider range of contexts, hence making them more useful."

The beneficial impact of sleep on memory is well established, and the act of sleeping is known to help us remember the things that we did, or heard, the previous day. The idea that memories could also be sharpened and made more vivid and accessible overnight, however, is yet to be fully explored.

Dr Dumay believes the memory boost comes from the hippocampus, an inner structure of the temporal lobe, unzipping recently encoded episodes and replaying them to regions of the brain originally involved in their capture -- this would lead the subject to effectively re-experience the major events of the day.

Nicolas Dumay is an experimental psychologist at the University of Exeter and an honorary Staff Scientist at the Basque Centre for Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL), in Spain.

'Sleep not just protects memories against forgetting, it also makes them more accessible' is published in the journal Cortex.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150726200036.htm

It don't mean a thing if the brain ain't got that swing

July 27, 2015
Science Daily/University of California - Berkeley
New study paves the way for treating brain rhythm disorders
Like Duke Ellington's 1931 jazz standard, the human brain improvises while its rhythm section keeps up a steady beat. But when it comes to taking on intellectually challenging tasks, groups of neurons tune in to one another for a fraction of a second and harmonize, then go back to improvising, according to new research.
http://images.sciencedaily.com/2015/07/150727130821_1_540x360.jpg

These findings, reported in the journal Nature Neuroscience, could pave the way for more targeted treatments for people with brain disorders marked by fast, slow or chaotic brain waves, also known as neural oscillations.

Tracking the changing rhythms of the healthy human brain at work advances our understanding of such disorders as Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia and even autism, which are characterized in part by offbeat brain rhythms. In jazz lingo, for example, bands of neurons in certain mental illnesses may be malfunctioning because they're tuning in to blue notes, or playing double time or half time.

"The human brain has 86 billion or so neurons all trying to talk to each other in this incredibly messy, noisy and electrochemical soup," said study lead author Bradley Voytek. "Our results help explain the mechanism for how brain networks quickly come together and break apart as needed."

Voytek and fellow researchers at UC Berkeley's Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute measured electrical activity in the brains of cognitively healthy epilepsy patients. They found that, as the mental exercises became more demanding, theta waves at 4-8 Hertz or cycles per second synchronized within the brain's frontal lobe, enabling it to connect with other brain regions, such as the motor cortex.

"In these brief moments of synchronization, quick communication occurs as the neurons between brain regions lock into these frequencies, and this measure is critical in a variety of disorders," said Voytek, an assistant professor of cognitive science at UC San Diego who conducted the study as a postdoctoral fellow in neuroscience at UC Berkeley.

Previous experiments on animals have shown how brain waves control brain activity. This latest study is among the first to use electrocorticography -- which places electrodes directly on the exposed surface of the brain -- to measure neural oscillations as people perform cognitively challenging tasks and show how these rhythms control communication between brain regions.

There are five types of brain wave frequencies -- Gamma, Beta, Alpha, Theta and Delta -- and each are thought to play a different role. For example, Theta waves help coordinate neurons as we move around our environment, and thus are key to processing spatial information.

In people with autism, the connection between Alpha waves and neural activity has been found to weaken when they process emotional images. Meanwhile, people with Parkinson's disease show abnormally strong Beta waves in the motor cortex. This locks neurons into the wrong groove and inhibits movement. Fortunately, electrical deep brain stimulation can disrupt abnormally strong Beta waves in Parkinson's and alleviate symptoms, Voytek said.

For the study, epilepsy patients viewed shapes of increasing complexity on a computer screen and were tasked with using different fingers (index or middle) to push a button depending on the shape, color or texture of the shape. The exercise started out simply with participants hitting the button with, say, an index finger each time a square flashed on the screen. But it grew progressively more difficult as the shapes became more layered with colors and textures, and their fingers had to keep up.

As the tasks became more demanding, the oscillations kept up, coordinating more parts of the frontal lobe and synchronizing the information passing between those brain regions.

"The results revealed a delicate coordination in the brain's code," Voytek said. "Our neural orchestra may need no conductor, just brain waves sweeping through to briefly excite neurons, like millions of fans in a stadium doing 'The Wave.'"
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150727130821.htm

Study finds brain chemicals that keep wakefulness in check

July 29, 2015
Science Daily/Imperial College London
Mice that have a particular brain chemical switched off become hyperactive and sleep for just 65 per cent of their normal time, a new study shows. This discovery could help researchers to develop new drugs that promote better sleep, or control hyperactivity in people with the medical condition mania.

This discovery, published in the journal Neuron, could help researchers to develop new drugs that promote better sleep, or control hyperactivity in people with the medical condition mania.

Scientists altered the neurochemistry of mice to help investigate why we need to sleep, what controls our wakefulness, and how a balance between these two states influences brain functions like concentration and memory and our general health.

The chemicals they studied, histamine and GABA, are produced in a primitive part of the brain that is highly similar in mice and humans.

The team of scientists was led by Dr Stephen Brickley, Professor Nick Franks and Professor Bill Wisden from the Department of Life Sciences and the Centre for Neurotechnology at Imperial College London.

Professor Wisden said, "Sleep is essential for health. We have to do it every day. But nobody yet knows why."

Scientists already know the chemical histamine sends signals to the brain to make it awake, which is why antihistamines are associated with drowsiness. The new research suggests that the chemical GABA acts against histamine, like a chemical 'brake' preventing wakefulness being too intense.

The researchers found that GABA and histamine are made in the same brain cells, called histamine neurons, which led the scientists to question its function. They altered the levels of the GABA produced by the mice's brains and measured what changes this had on their brain activity over the day and night.

Mice without the GABA chemical developed characteristics similar to a medical condition called mania, in which patients experience restlessness and sleeplessness. In humans these are often also symptoms of bipolar disorder, which affects around 2.4 million people in the UK.

"Wakefulness stimulated by histamine may be too much of a good thing, and so the brain has a built in brake on histamine's wake-inducing actions," said Dr Brickley.

The scientists found that compared with normal mice, those without GABA ran twice as far and twice as fast, and maintained or even increased their overall activity over a 30 minute period.

The mice also stayed awake much longer in the day, when they would otherwise be asleep. When they did sleep, the mice experienced just 65 per cent of the normal amount of non-REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, a heavy sleep state with no dreaming.

"What particularly surprised us was how little the mice were affected by sleep deprivation," said Professor Franks.

"Normally mice that lose 5 hours of sleep would sleep for longer following this deprivation, and we would see a much lower level of activity. These mice kept up their hyperactive state over the following 16 hours they were awake. They didn't appear to need any recovery sleep at all."

The scientists have begun new work with mice to investigate the link between lack of sleep and memory loss. They hope this will lead to a better understanding of the link between poor sleep and mental health issues in humans.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150729092921.htm

Aquariums deliver health and wellbeing benefits

People who spend time watching aquariums and fish tanks could see improvements in their physical and mental wellbeing

July 29, 2015
Science Daily/University of ExeterViewing aquarium displays led to noticeable reductions in blood pressure and heart rate, a research team found in the first study of its kind. They also noted that higher numbers of fish helped to hold people's attention for longer and improve their moods.

In the first study of its kind, experts from the National Marine Aquarium, Plymouth University and the University of Exeter assessed people's physical and mental responses to tanks containing varying levels of fish.

The team found that viewing aquarium displays led to noticeable reductions in blood pressure and heart rate, and that higher numbers of fish helped to hold people's attention for longer and improve their moods.

Whilst spending time in 'natural' environments has been shown to provide calming effects on humans, there has been very little research into the role that underwater settings could have on health and wellbeing. Deborah Cracknell, PhD Student and Lead Researcher at the National Marine Aquarium, conducted the study and believes it provides an important first step in our understanding: "Fish tanks and displays are often associated with attempts at calming patients in doctors' surgeries and dental waiting rooms. This study has, for the first time, provided robust evidence that 'doses' of exposure to underwater settings could actually have a positive impact on people's wellbeing."

The researchers benefited from a unique opportunity in order to conduct their study when the National Marine Aquarium refurbished one of its main exhibits -- in a large 550,000 litre tank -- and began a phased introduction of different fish species.

They were able to assess the mood, heart rate and blood pressure of study participants in precisely the same setting as fish numbers in the exhibit gradually increased.

Dr Sabine Pahl, Associate Professor in Psychology at Plymouth University, said: "While large public aquariums typically focus on their educational mission, our study suggests they could offer a number of previously undiscovered benefits. In times of higher work stress and crowded urban living, perhaps aquariums can step in and provide an oasis of calm and relaxation."

Dr Mathew White, an environmental psychologist at the University of Exeter, said: "Our findings have shown improvements for health and wellbeing in highly managed settings, providing an exciting possibility for people who aren't able to access outdoor natural environments. If we can identify the mechanisms that underpin the benefits we're seeing, we can effectively bring some of the 'outside inside' and improve the wellbeing of people without ready access to nature."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150729215632.htm

Could body posture during sleep affect how your brain clears waste?

August 4, 2015
Science Daily/Stony Brook University
Sleeping in the side position, as compared to on one’s back or stomach, may more effectively remove brain waste and prove to be an important practice to help reduce the chances of developing Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases, new research suggests.
http://images.sciencedaily.com/2015/08/150804203440_1_540x360.jpg

By using dynamic contrast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to image the brain's glymphatic pathway, a complex system that clears wastes and other harmful chemical solutes from the brain, Stony Brook University researchers Hedok Lee, PhD, Helene Benveniste, MD, PhD, and colleagues, discovered that a lateral sleeping position is the best position to most efficiently remove waste from the brain. In humans and many animals the lateral sleeping position is the most common one. The buildup of brain waste chemicals may contribute to the development of Alzheimer's disease and other neurological conditions. Their finding is published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Dr. Benveniste, Principal Investigator and a Professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Radiology at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, has used dynamic contrast MRI for several years to examine the glymphatic pathway in rodent models. The method enables researchers to identify and define the glymphatic pathway, where cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) filters through the brain and exchanges with interstitial fluid (ISF) to clear waste, similar to the way the body's lymphatic system clears waste from organs. It is during sleep that the glymphatic pathway is most efficient. Brain waste includes amyloid β (amyloid) and tau proteins, chemicals that negatively affect brain processes if they build up.

In the paper, "The Effect of Body Posture on Brain Glymphatic Transport," Dr. Benveniste and colleagues used a dynamic contrast MRI method along with kinetic modeling to quantify the CSF-ISF exchange rates in anesthetized rodents' brains in three positions -- lateral (side), prone (down), and supine (up).

"The analysis showed us consistently that glymphatic transport was most efficient in the lateral position when compared to the supine or prone positions," said Dr. Benveniste. "Because of this finding, we propose that the body posture and sleep quality should be considered when standardizing future diagnostic imaging procedures to assess CSF-ISF transport in humans and therefore the assessment of the clearance of damaging brain proteins that may contribute to or cause brain diseases."

Dr. Benveniste and first-author Dr. Hedok Lee, Assistant Professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Radiology at Stony Brook developed the safe posture positions for the experiments. Their colleagues at the University of Rochester, including Lulu Xie, Rashid Deane and Maiken Nedergaard, PhD, used fluorescence microscopy and radioactive tracers to validate the MRI data and to assess the influence of body posture on the clearance of amyloid from the brains.

"It is interesting that the lateral sleep position is already the most popular in human and most animals -- even in the wild -- and it appears that we have adapted the lateral sleep position to most efficiently clear our brain of the metabolic waste products that built up while we are awake," says Dr. Nedergaard. "The study therefore adds further support to the concept that sleep subserves a distinct biological function of sleep and that is to 'clean up' the mess that accumulates while we are awake. Many types of dementia are linked to sleep disturbances, including difficulties in falling asleep. It is increasing acknowledged that these sleep disturbances may accelerate memory loss in Alzheimer's disease. Our findng brings new insight into this topic by showing it is also important what position you sleep in," she explained.

Dr. Benveniste cautioned that while the research team speculates that the human glymphatic pathway will clear brain waste most efficiency when sleeping in the lateral position as compared to other positions, testing with MRI or other imaging methods in humans are a necessary first step.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150804203440.htm

How stress can tweak the brain to sabotage self-control

August 5, 2015
Science Daily/Cell Press
A challenging morning meeting or an interaction with an upset client at work may affect whether we go for that extra chocolate bar at lunch. In a study, researchers placed human volunteers in a similar food choice scenario to explore how stress can alter the brain to impair self-control when we're confronted with a choice.
http://images.sciencedaily.com/2015/08/150805140245_1_540x360.jpg

"Our findings provide an important step towards understanding the interactions between stress and self-control in the human brain, with the effects of stress operating through multiple neural pathways," says lead author Silvia Maier, of the University of Zurich's Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research. "Self-control abilities are sensitive to perturbations at several points within this network, and optimal self-control requires a precise balance of input from multiple brain regions rather than a simple on/off switch." She emphasized that much work still remains, however, to fully understand the mechanisms involved.

In the study, 29 participants underwent a treatment known to induce moderate stress in the laboratory before they were asked to choose between two food options. An additional 22 participants did not undergo the treatment, which involved being observed and evaluated by the experimenter while immersing a hand in an ice water bath for 3 minutes, before choosing between the food options.

All of the participants who were selected for the study were making an effort to maintain a healthy lifestyle, so the study presented them with a conflict between eating a very tasty but unhealthy item and one that is healthy but less tasty.

The scientists found that when individuals chose between different food options after having experienced the stressful ice bath treatment, they overweighed food taste attributes and were more likely to choose an unhealthy food compared with people who were not stressed.

The effects of stress were also visible in the brain. Stressed participants' brains exhibited altered patterns of connectivity between regions including the amygdala, striatum, and the dorsolateral and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, essentially reducing individuals' ability to exercise self-control over food choices. Only some of these changes were associated with cortisol, a hormone commonly linked to stress.

The investigators say that their study indicates that even moderate levels of stress can impair self-control. "This is important because moderate stressors are more common than extreme events and will thus influence self-control choices more frequently and for a larger portion of the population," says senior author Todd Hare. "One interesting avenue for future research will be to determine whether some of the factors shown to protect against structural brain changes following severe stress--such as exercise and social support--can also buffer the effects of moderate stress on decision making," he adds.

There was also a good deal of variation in the degree to which stress affected individuals in the study, so it will be important to investigate why some people are more resilient than others.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150805140245.htm

Rapid eye movements in sleep reset dream 'snapshots' Researchers find eye movements during REM sleep reflect brain activity patterns associated with new images

August 12, 2015
Science Daily/American Friends of Tel Aviv University
Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, the period in which we experience vivid dreams, was discovered by scientists in the 1950s. A new study based on rare neuronal data offers the first scientific evidence of the link between rapid eye movement, dream images, and accelerated brain activity.
http://images.sciencedaily.com/2015/08/150812131924_1_540x360.jpg

A new study based on rare neuronal data offers the first scientific evidence of the link between rapid eye movement, dream images, and accelerated brain activity. When we move our eyes in REM sleep, according to the study, specific brain regions show sudden surges of activity that resemble the pattern that occurs when we are introduced to a new image -- suggesting that eye movements during REM sleep are responsible for resetting our dream "snapshots."

The research, published this week in Nature Communications, was led by Dr. Yuval Nir of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine in collaboration with TAU's Prof. Itzhak Fried, also of UCLA and Tel Aviv Medical Center; Thomas Andrillon of the Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique in Paris; and Dr. Giulio Tononi and Dr. Chiara Cirelli of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Deep down in the brain

"Our goal was to examine what happens deep in the human brain during REM sleep, specifically when rapid eye movements occur," said Dr. Nir. "Prof. Fried's trailblazing research with epilepsy patients at UCLA offered a unique opportunity to collect the necessary data -- the activity of neurons located deep inside the human brain."

The research for the study was conducted on 19 epileptic patients at the UCLA Medical Center, who required invasive monitoring of brain activity prior to potential surgical excision of seizure-causing areas of the brain. Electrodes were implanted deep inside the patients' brains to monitor their brain activity over the course of 10 days. These electrodes were able to provide the rare data needed to prove the link between eye movements, dream imagery, and brain activity.

"We focused on the electrical activities of individual neurons in the medial temporal lobe, a set of brain regions that serve as a bridge between visual recognition and memories," said Dr. Nir. "Prof. Fried's prior research had shown that neurons in these regions become active shortly after we view pictures of famous people and places, such as Jennifer Aniston or the Eiffel Tower -- even when we close our eyes and imagine these concepts."

In addition to monitoring the patients' brain activity via intracranial electrodes, the researchers also recorded scalp EEG, muscle tone, and eye movements to identify periods of REM sleep and detect the precise moment of each rapid eye movement.

Images, awake and asleep

"The electrical brain activity during rapid eye movements in sleep were highly similar to those occurring when people were presented with new images," said Dr. Nir. "Many neurons -- including those in the hippocampus -- showed a sudden burst of activity shortly after eye movements in sleep, typically observed when these cells are 'busy' processing new images."

"The research findings suggest that rapid eye movements represent the moment the brain encounters a new image in a dream, similar to the brain activity exhibited when one encounters visual images while awake," Prof. Fried said.

"How and why eye movements occur are important," said Dr. Nir. "And these moments represent privileged windows of opportunity for the study of brain activity."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150812131924.htm

Crying has its perks

August 24, 2015
Science Daily/Springer
Effect of crying on one's mood
Yes, a good cry indeed might go a long way to make you feel better. These findings were established after a research team videotaped a group of participants while watching emotionally charged films. Afterwards, the participants were asked a few times to reflect on how they felt.

Although humans are the only species able to shed emotional tears, little is known about the function of crying. While some researchers see it as a cry for support, comfort or help, others believe the main role of crying is to relieve emotions. Different types of studies focusing on the latter, however, provide conflicting results. Retrospective self-report studies support claims that crying provides emotional relief and ultimately influences someone's mood for the better. In contrast, laboratory studies using emotional films often show a consistent decrease in mood immediately after an emotional event.

In an effort to understand these discrepant results, Gračanin's team extended methodology used in previous laboratory studies. They examined both the immediate and the delayed effect of crying on mood within a controlled laboratory setting. The two films shown to 60 participants are known to be tearjerkers. Immediately afterwards, the 28 participants who cried and the 32 who didn't shed a tear were asked how they felt. They also had to rate their moods 20 and 90 minutes later.

As expected, the mood of the non-criers was unchanged and unaffected immediately after seeing the films. The mood of the criers, on the other hand, was distinctively low and even took a dip. Within 20 minutes, however, their mood had returned to the level reported before the screening. Finally, after 90 minutes, the criers reported even a better mood than was the case before the films started. Such a mood shift was not tied to the number of times that a person cried during the films.

According to Gračanin, it's this dip and subsequent return of emotions to previous levels that might make criers feel as if they are in a much better mood after they have shed some tears.

However, it seems that criers even experience a general mood increase, but only after a longer period of time.

"After the initial deterioration of mood following crying, it takes some time for the mood not only to recover but also to be lifted above the levels at which it had been before the emotional event," he explains. This pattern is often found in retrospective studies where people are asked to rate their mood levels after having experienced a good cry.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150824101829.htm

The bane of your existence: Smartphones and ‘technostress’

August 26, 2015
Science Daily/Taylor & Francis
If you feel stressed out by your smartphone, it might be down to your personality as well as your phone, a new study suggests.

Writing in the journal Behaviour & Information Technology, Yu-Kang Lee and colleagues explored the relationship between four key personality traits, the types of phones people used and the levels of 'technostress' they experienced.

The first trait they studied was 'locus of control', which the authors defined as 'the extent to which people believe that their actions determine their rewards in life'. As smartphones blur the line between home and work, encourage multi-tasking and constant checking, the authors found them unsurprisingly to be a greater source of technostress than traditional phones. 'This has been called the "helpful-stressful cycle," in which one purchases a smartphone to help manage the workload only to have it induce stress and become the bane of one's existence,' they observe.

The second trait the authors explored was 'social interaction anxiety' (SIA). As people with high SIA are more likely to depend on the internet for social networking, they are also more likely to suffer the negative side effects of excessive use including stress caused by repeated smartphone checking and internet addiction.

The third trait was the 'need for touch', which can be satisfied in many people by constantly fiddling with their smartphone touch screens -- a problem users of traditional phones don't have. However, the fact that touching a smartphone becomes almost compelling is yet another source of technostress for their users.

The final trait, materialism, was the only one that seemed to cause more technostress in users of traditional phones than smartphones. The reason why isn't clear, but the authors suggest that perhaps users of snazzy smartphones have already reached a 'ceiling' in terms of their own material desires and therefore how much stress it can cause them.

So we now know that certain personality traits can make people more prone to suffer technostress, and health professionals may be able to identify and treat people who fall victim to technostress. And finally, this new work can also help individual users: the authors recommend that people with high levels of technostress -- and the 'attendant psychological characteristics' -- reduce their mobile usage, which
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150826082152.htm

Midday naps associated with reduced blood pressure and fewer medications

August 29, 2015
Science Daily/European Society of Cardiology
Midday naps are associated with reduced blood pressure levels and prescription of fewer antihypertensive medications, according to new research.

"Although William Blake affirms that it is better to think in the morning, act at noon, eat in the evening and sleep at night, noon sleep seems to have beneficial effects," said Dr Kallistratos. "Two influential UK Prime Ministers were supporters of the midday nap. Winston Churchill said that we must sleep sometime between lunch and dinner while Margaret Thatcher didn't want to be disturbed at around 3:00 pm. According to our study they were right because midday naps seem to lower blood pressure levels and may probably also decrease the number of required antihypertensive medications."

He added: "Μidday sleep is a habit that nowadays is almost a privileged due to a nine to five working culture and intense daily routine. However the real question regarding this habit is: is it only a custom or is it also beneficial?"

The purpose of this prospective study was to assess the effect of midday sleep on blood pressure (BP) levels in hypertensive patients. The study included 386 middle aged patients (200 men and 186 women, average age 61.4 years) with arterial hypertension. The following measurements were performed in all patients: midday sleep time (in minutes), office BP, 24 hour ambulatory BP, pulse wave velocity, lifestyle habits, body mass index (BMI) and a complete echocardiographic evaluation including left atrial size. BP measurements were reported as diastolic and systolic BP.

After adjusting for other factors that could influence BP such as age, gender, BMI, smoking status, salt, alcohol, exercise and coffee, the researchers found that midday sleepers had 5% lower average 24 hour ambulatory systolic BP (6 mmHg) compared to patients who did not sleep at all midday. Their average systolic BP readings were 4% lower when they were awake (5 mmHg) and 6% lower while they slept at night (7 mmHg) than non-midday sleepers.

Dr Kallistratos said: "Although the mean BP decrease seems low, it has to be mentioned that reductions as small as 2 mmHg in systolic blood pressure can reduce the risk of cardiovascular events by up to 10%."

The researchers also found that in midday sleepers pulse wave velocity levels were 11% lower and left atrium diameter was 5% smaller. "These findings suggest that midday sleepers have less damage from high blood pressure in their arteries and heart," said Dr Kallistratos.

The duration of midday sleep was associated with the burden of arterial hypertension. Patients who slept for 60 minutes midday had 4 mmHg lower average 24 hour systolic BP readings and a 2% higher dipping status5 compared to patients who did not sleep midday. Dippers had an average of 17 minutes more midday sleep than non-dippers.

Dr Kallistratos said: "Our study shows that not only is midday sleep associated with lower blood pressure, but longer sleeps are even more beneficial. Midday sleepers had greater dips in blood pressure while sleeping at night which is associated with better health outcomes. We also found that hypertensive patients who slept at noon were under fewer antihypertensive medications compared to those who didn't sleep midday."

He concluded: "We found that midday sleep is associated with lower 24 hour blood pressure, an enhanced fall of BP in night, and less damage to the arteries and the heart. The longer the midday sleep, the lower the systolic BP levels and probably fewer drugs needed to lower BP."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150829123659.htm

Short sleepers are four times more likely to catch a cold

August 31, 2015
Science Daily/University of California - San Francisco
Researchers connect sleep loss to higher rates of illness
A new study led by a sleep researcher supports what parents have been saying for centuries: to avoid getting sick, be sure to get enough sleep.

The team, which included researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, found that people who sleep six hours a night or less are four times more likely to catch a cold when exposed to the virus, compared to those who spend more than seven hours a night in slumber land.

This is the first study to use objective sleep measures to connect people's natural sleep habits and their risk of getting sick, according to Aric Prather, PhD, assistant professor of Psychiatry at UCSF and lead author of the study. The findings add to the growing evidence of the importance of sleep for our health, he said.

"Short sleep was more important than any other factor in predicting subjects' likelihood of catching cold," Prather said. "It didn't matter how old people were, their stress levels, their race, education or income. It didn't matter if they were a smoker. With all those things taken into account, statistically sleep still carried the day."

The study, "Behaviorally assessed sleep and susceptibility to the common cold," appears online and in the September issue of the journal Sleep.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention call insufficient sleep a public health epidemic, linking poor sleep with car crashes, industrial disasters and medical errors. According to a 2013 survey by the National Sleep Foundation, one in five Americans gets less than six hours of sleep on the average work night, the worst tally of the six countries surveyed.

Scientists have long known that sleep is important for our health, with poor sleep linked to chronic illnesses, disease susceptibility and even premature death. Prather's previous studies have shown that people who sleep fewer hours are less protected against illness after receiving a vaccine. Other studies have confirmed that sleep is among the factors that regulate T-cell levels.

To learn how sleep affects the body's response to a real infection, Prather collaborated with Carnegie Mellon psychologist Sheldon Cohen, PhD, the study's senior author, who has spent years exploring psychological and social factors contributing to illness. Cohen's group gives volunteers the common cold virus to safely test how these various factors affect the body's ability to fight off disease. For this paper, Prather approached Cohen about investigating sleep and cold susceptibility using data collected in his lab's recent study, in which participants wore sensors to get objective, sleep measurements.

"We had worked with Dr. Prather before and were excited about the opportunity to have an expert in the effects of sleep on health take the lead in addressing this important question," Cohen said.

Researchers recruited 164 volunteers from the Pittsburgh, PA, area between 2007 and 2011. The recruits underwent two months of health screenings, interviews and questionnaires to establish baselines for factors such as stress, temperament, and alcohol and cigarette use. The researchers also measured participants' normal sleep habits a week prior to administering the cold virus, using a watch-like sensor that measured the quality of sleep throughout the night.

The researchers then sequestered volunteers in a hotel, administered the cold virus via nasal drops and monitored them for a week, collecting daily mucus samples to see if the virus had taken hold.

They found that subjects who had slept less than six hours a night the week before were 4.2 times more likely to catch the cold compared to those who got more than seven hours of sleep, and those who slept less than five hours were 4.5 times more likely.

"It goes beyond feeling groggy or irritable," Prather said. "Not getting sleep fundamentally affects your physical health."

The study shows the risks of chronic sleep loss better than typical experiments in which researchers artificially deprive subjects of sleep, said Prather, because it is based on subjects' normal sleep behavior. "This could be a typical week for someone during cold season," he said.

The new data add yet another piece of evidence that sleep should be treated as a crucial pillar of public health, along with diet and exercise, the researchers said. But it's still a challenge to convince people to get more sleep.

"In our busy culture, there's still a fair amount of pride about not having to sleep and getting a lot of work done," Prather said. "We need more studies like this to begin to drive home that sleep is a critical piece to our wellbeing."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150831163729.htm

Timing of sleep just as important as quantity

September 1, 2015
Science Daily/Washington State University
Shifting sleep cycle affects immune response, sleep quality
The timing of an animal's sleep can be just as important as how much sleeps it gets, researchers have discovered.

Ilia Karatsoreos, an assistant professor in WSU's Department of Integrative Physiology and Neuroscience, shifted mice from their usual cycle of sleeping and waking and saw that, while they got enough sleep, it was of poorer quality. The animals also had a disrupted immune response, leaving them more open to illness.

Most sleep research focuses on the effects of sleep deprivation or the overall amount of sleep an animal needs. This is generally referred to as sleep's homeostatic process, which is driven by sleepiness or "sleep pressure."

The work by Karatsoreos and his colleagues--published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity--is a rare look into the circadian process, a brain-driven clock that controls the rhythms of various biological processes, from digestion to blood pressure, heart rate to waking and sleeping. The cycle is found in most everything that lives more than 24 hours, including plants and single-celled organisms.

Research into the system has significant implications for modern living, write Karatsoreos and his coauthors, as "disruption of the circadian clock is nearly ubiquitous in our modern society" due to nighttime lighting, shift work, jet lag and even the blue-tinged light emitted by cell phones and tablets.

Typically, sleep researchers have a hard time studying sleep deprivation and the circadian cycle separately, as a change in one usually affects the other. However, Karatsoreos and his colleagues saw their model did not affect an animal's total sleep, giving them a unique look into the effects on the timing of the sleeping-waking cycle.

The researchers used mice whose body clocks run at about 24 hours - much like our own - and housed them in a shorter 20-hour day. This forced their biological clocks out of sync with the light-dark cycle. After four weeks, the researchers injected the mice with lipopolysaccharide, a molecule found in bacteria that can make an animal sick without being contagious.

The researchers saw that the disrupted animals had blunted immune responses in some cases or an overactive response in others, suggesting the altered circadian cycle made them potentially less able to fight illness and more likely to get sick.

"This represents a very clear dysregulation of the system," said Karatsoreos. "The system is not responding in the optimal manner." Over time, he said, this could have serious consequences for an organism's health.

"Just like you have a car that you're running into the ground--things don't work right but you keep driving it until it stops. That's what could happen if you think of disruption going on for years for somebody who's working shift work," he said.

To his surprise, the mice on the 20-hour cycle were getting the same amount of sleep as they did on the 24-hour cycle. But the sleep wasn't as good. The mice woke more often and the pattern of electrical activity in their brains related to restorative sleep was greatly reduced.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150901113425.htm

Feeling blue and seeing blue: Sadness may impair color perception

September 2, 2015
Science Daily/Association for Psychological Science
The world might seem a little grayer than usual when we're down in the dumps and we often talk about 'feeling blue' -- new research suggests that the associations we make between emotion and color go beyond mere metaphor. The results of two studies indicate that feeling sadness may actually change how we perceive color.

http://images.sciencedaily.com/2015/09/150902112006_1_540x360.jpg
The results of two studies indicate that feeling sadness may actually change how we perceive color.
Credit: © Sasipixel / Fotolia

"Our results show that mood and emotion can affect how we see the world around us," says psychology researcher Christopher Thorstenson of the University of Rochester, first author on the research. "Our work advances the study of perception by showing that sadness specifically impairs basic visual processes that are involved in perceiving color."

Previous studies have shown that emotion can influence various visual processes, and some work has even indicated a link between depressed mood and reduced sensitivity to visual contrast. Because contrast sensitivity is a basic visual process involved in color perception, Thorstenson and co-authors Adam Pazda and Andrew Elliot wondered whether there might be a specific link between sadness and our ability to perceive color.

"We were already deeply familiar with how often people use color terms to describe common phenomena, like mood, even when these concepts seem unrelated," says Thorstenson. "We thought that maybe a reason these metaphors emerge was because there really was a connection between mood and perceiving colors in a different way."

In one study, the researchers had 127 undergraduate participants watch an emotional film clip and then complete a visual judgment task. The participants were randomly assigned to watch an animated film clip intended to induce sadness or a standup comedy clip intended to induce amusement. The emotional effects of the two clips had been validated in previous studies and the researchers confirmed that they produced the intended emotions for participants in this study.

After watching the video clip, the participants were then shown 48 consecutive, desaturated color patches and were asked to indicate whether each patch was red, yellow, green, or blue.

The results showed that participants who watched the sadness video clip were less accurate in identifying colors than participants who watched the amusing clip, but only for color patches that were on the blue-yellow axis. They showed no difference in accuracy for colors on the red-green axis.

And a second study with 130 undergrad participants showed the same effect in comparison to a neutral film clip: Participants who watched a sad clip were less accurate in identifying colors on the blue-yellow spectrum than those who watched a neutral screensaver. The findings suggest that sadness is specifically responsible for the differences in color perception.

The results cannot be explained by differences in participants' level of effort, attention, or engagement with the task, as color perception was only impaired on the blue-yellow axis.

"We were surprised by how specific the effect was, that color was only impaired along the blue-yellow axis," says Thorstenson. "We did not predict this specific finding, although it might give us a clue to the reason for the effect in neurotransmitter functioning."

The researchers note that previous work has specifically linked color perception on the blue-yellow axis with the neurotransmitter dopamine.

Thorstenson points out that this research charts new territory, and that follow-up studies are essential to fully understanding the relationship between emotion and color perception:

"This is new work and we need to take time to determine the robustness and generalizability of this phenomenon before making links to application," he concludes.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150902112006.htm

Link between insomnia, control of emotion

September 8, 2015
Science Daily/British Psychological Society (BPS)
People who are losing the ability to regulate their emotions may be more likely to suffer from insomnia. And if they do, that insomnia is more likely to become persistent, research suggests. Researchers surveyed 2333 adult members of the general public in Sweden. They were asked to complete a series of questionnaires on emotional regulation and a series on insomnia. The researchers found that a reduced ability to regulate emotions was associated with an 11 per cent increased risk of developing a new bout of insomnia or reporting persistent insomnia.

Those are the conclusions of research published in a British Psychological Society journal by a team led by Markus Jansson-Fröjmark from Örebro University, Sweden.

Markus Jansson-Fröjmark said: "These findings are important because, though the effect size is small, they suggest that teaching people strategies for regulating their emotions might help prevent new cases of insomnia to occur and decrease the risk of persistent insomnia."

The researchers, whose work is published in the British Journal of Health Psychology, surveyed 2333 adult members of the general public in Sweden. They were asked to complete a series of questionnaires on emotional regulation and a series on insomnia.

The questionnaires on emotional regulation asked about problems like difficulties with impulse control and lack of emotional awareness. Those on sleep problems asked about problems with falling asleep and with waking too early, and also about any difficulties these problems caused during the day.

When the results were analysed the researchers found there was no link between people's ability to regulate their emotions and their experience of insomnia.

But a different picture emerged when follow-up questionnaires were returned six months later by 1887 of the original participants and 18 months later by 1795 of them.

These results showed that participants whose ability to regulate their emotions had diminished since the original survey were more likely to have developed insomnia and that it was more likely to be persistent.

The researchers found that a reduced ability to regulate emotions was associated with an 11 per cent increased risk of developing a new bout of insomnia or reporting persistent insomnia.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150908093953.htm

New technologies can help short circuit chronic pain

September 10, 2015
Science Daily/American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA)
More than 100 million people in this country have pain that won't go away. Many of these chronic pain sufferers fail to get relief from pills, shots and even surgery, while others temporarily trade the pain for side effects such as drowsiness or digestive problems. Unfortunately, too many become addicted to medications while trying to relieve their pain.

As part of a comprehensive treatment plan, a variety of technologies offer new hope to people living with chronic pain.

Used by physician anesthesiologists who specialize in pain management, these techniques ease pain in various ways -- using radio waves, electrical pulses, image-guided injections and special pumps to deliver pain medication. Pain medicine specialists have extensive training and expertise in finding the cause of pain and working in partnership with patients to create a plan for managing pain and improving function.

"Pain is one of the most challenging things to treat because its source can be elusive," said Richard Rosenquist, M.D., chair of the American Society of Anesthesiologists® (ASA®) Committee on Pain Medicine and chairman of the department of pain management at the Anesthesiology Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. "That's why it's vital to see a physician specializing in pain medicine who can help identify the source of the pain and suggest which pain method might work best, including the more recent technical advances."

Pain Relief Techniques

Here are some of the latest high-tech methods for relieving chronic pain:

Radio Waves - Radiofrequency (RF) ablation involves heating a tiny area of nerve tissue, which short circuits pain signals. Using CT imaging as a guide, the pain medicine specialist inserts a needle into the nerve responsible for the pain and zaps it using an electric current created by radio waves. The relief can last for up to a year.

Blocking the Pain - Under X-ray guidance, pain medicine physicians can inject numbing medication that blocks or dampens pain, and might even stop chronic pain from developing. The location of the injection depends on the source and type of pain. For example, pain in the arm or face can be relieved by blocking nerves in the neck. Chronic abdominal pain or pain from cancers such as pancreatic cancer can be relieved by an injection into nerves supplying the abdomen. Relief may require a series of injections and may need to be repeated.

Electric Signals -- Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) can provide short-term pain relief, especially for various types of muscle pain, by sending low voltage electric signals from a small device to the painful area through pads attached to the skin. The patient will feel little pulses when it's on. While researchers aren't sure why it works, they think it may either interrupt the nerve signals to the brain, or stimulate the production of "feel good" endorphins, the body's natural painkillers.

Spinal Cord Stimulation -- When other methods fail, a pain medicine specialist might recommend spinal cord stimulation (SCS), which uses a pacemaker-like device that replaces the pain with a more tolerable sensation, typically tingling or a massage-like feeling. The physician implants the device in the lower back, attaching it to tiny wires that are located in the spinal canal. When the patient feels pain, he or she can use a remote control device to send signals to the painful area. This technique can help with back pain as well as neuropathy -- nerve damage in the legs that causes numbness and pain. Neuropathy is common in people with diabetes.

High Frequency Spinal Cord Stimulation -- A recent study published in Anesthesiology, the medical journal of the ASA, showed that a special high frequency form of SCS provided significantly greater long-term relief for both chronic back and leg pain, compared to traditional low frequency SCS. The high frequency SCS also relieved pain without introducing the tingling or other stimulation-induced sensation that some patients find distracting.

Pumping the Pain Away -- Special pumps can be implanted that allow the patient to push a button and deliver local anesthetics, narcotics and other pain medications to the spinal cord. This can bring relief while avoiding the side effects that often come with taking these drugs by mouth. Patients also get a psychological boost by having direct control over their pain. These spinal drug pumps are most often used by people with cancer pain, but also by patients with other types of pain who had side effects when taking medication.

On the Horizon: Using Our Cells to Fight Pain -- One of the most promising research areas involves harvesting stem cells from a patient's bone marrow and injecting them into an area, such as the lower back, that has become painful because tissue has deteriorated. The hope is that the stem cells will build new, healthy tissue and relieve pain for good.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150910141331.htm

Struggles with sleep may affect heart disease risk

September 10, 2015
Science Daily/American Heart Association
Young and middle-aged adults who get too much or too little sleep or have poor quality sleep are at higher risk for the early signs of heart disease than those who get adequate, good quality sleep, research shows.

Are you getting enough quality sleep? Are you sleeping longer than you should? Poor sleep habits may put you at higher risk for early signs of heart disease when compared to those who get adequate, good quality sleep, according to a study published in the American Heart Association journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology.

"Inadequate sleep is a common problem and a likely source of poor health, including visible signs of disease, such as heart attack," said Chan-Won Kim, M.D., study co-lead author and clinical associate professor in the Center for Cohort Studies at Kangbuk Samsun Hospital, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine in Seoul, South Korea.

Researchers studied more than 47,000 young and middle-aged adults who completed a sleep questionnaire and had advanced tests to detect early coronary artery lesions and measure arterial stiffness. Early coronary lesions were detected as the presence of calcium in the coronary arteries and arterial stiffness was assessed by measuring the velocity, or speed, of the pulse wave between the arteries in the upper arm and ankle.

After measuring coronary calcium, researchers found:

•    Adults who sleep five or fewer hours a day have 50 percent more calcium in their coronary arteries than those who sleep seven hours a day.
•    Those who sleep nine or more hours a day have more than 70 percent more coronary calcium compared to those who sleep seven hours.
•    Adults who reported poor sleep quality had more than 20 percent more coronary calcium than those who reported good sleep quality.
•    "We also observed a similar pattern when we measured arterial stiffness," said Yoosoo Chang, M.D., Ph.D., study co-lead author and associate professor in the Center for Cohort Studies at Kangbuk Samsun Hospital. "Adults with poor sleep quality have stiffer arteries than those who sleep seven hours a day or had good sleep quality. Overall, we saw the lowest levels of vascular disease in adults sleeping seven hours a day and reporting good sleep quality."

The study's findings highlight the importance of adequate sleep quantity and quality to maintain cardiovascular health.

"For doctors, it might be necessary to assess patients' sleep quality when they evaluate the cardiovascular risk and the health status of men and women," Kim said.

The self-reported assessments of sleep duration and quality in the study may underestimate the cardiovascular risk, researchers said.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150910164218.htm