Music reduces anxiety in cancer patients

August 10, 2011

Science Daily/Wiley-Blackwell

Cancer patients may benefit from sessions with trained music therapists or from listening to music. A new systematic review shows using music can reduce anxiety in cancer patients, and may also have positive effects on mood, pain and quality of life.

"The evidence suggests that music interventions may be useful as a complementary treatment to people with cancer," said lead researcher Joke Bradt of the Department of Creative Arts Therapies at Drexel University in Philadelphia, US. "Music interventions provided by trained music therapists as well as listening to pre-recorded music both have shown positive outcomes in this review, but at this time there is not enough evidence to determine if one intervention is more effective than the other."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110809212424.htm

Increased light may moderate fearful reactions

August 12, 2011
Science Daily/University of Virginia
Biologists and psychologists know that light affects mood, but a new study indicates that light may also play a role in modulating fear and anxiety.

"We looked at the effect of light on learned fear, because light is a pervasive feature of the environment that has profound effects on behavior and physiology," said Wiltgen, an assistant professor of psychology and an expert on learning. "Light plays an important role in modulating heart rate, circadian rhythms, sleep/wake cycles, digestion, hormones, mood and other processes of the body. In our study we wanted to see how it affects learned fear."

"The implications of this in humans is this: that being diurnal, the absence of light can be a source of fear," Wiltgen said. "But increased light can be used to reduce fear and anxiety and to treat depression. If we can come to understand the cellular mechanisms that affect this, then eventually abnormal anxiety and fear might be treated with improved pharmaceuticals to mimic or augment light therapy."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110810153707.htm

Brain waves control the impact of noise on sleep

September 6, 2011
Science Daily/University of Liège
During sleep, our perception of the environment decreases. However the extent to which the human brain responds to surrounding noises during sleep remains unclear. Researchers have now used brain imaging to study responses to sounds during sleep. They show that brain activity in the face of noise is controlled by specific brain waves during sleep. Researchers found that perception of the environment is not continuously reduced during sleep, but rather varies throughout sleep under the influence of particular brain waves.

They show that brain activity in the face of noise is controlled by specific brain waves during sleep. In particular, waves called sleep 'spindles' prevent the transmission of sounds to auditory brain regions. Conversely, when sounds are associated with brain waves called 'K-complexes', activation of auditory areas is larger. Our perception of the environment is therefore not continuously reduced during sleep, but rather varies throughout sleep under the influence of particular brain waves.

Conversely, sounds can induce the production during sleep of brain waves called 'K-complexes'. The results brought by this new study demonstrate that production of K-complexes by sounds is associated with a larger activation of auditory brain areas. While spindles prevent the transmission of sounds, K-complexes reflect a more important transmission of sounds to the sleeping brain.

The effects of noise on sleep are therefore controlled by specific brain waves. In particular, the human brain is isolated from the environment during sleep spindles, which might allow essential sleep functions to operate such as the consolidation of memory for previously acquired information. These brain waves thus play a crucial role in sleep quality and stability in the face of noise.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110906121014.htm

Sleep disorders affect 40 percent of Canadians

September 8, 2011
Science Daily/Université Laval
Sleep disorders affect 40% of adult Canadians according to a study conducted by Université Laval researchers under the supervision of Dr. Charles M. Morin. The work of Dr. Morin and his colleagues will be presented at the 4th World Congress on Sleep Medicine which runs September 10-14 in Quebec City, Canada.

Although many respondents experienced at least one symptom of insomnia, only 13% said they had consulted a healthcare professional about it. The survey data revealed that Canadians use prescription medicine (10%), natural products (9%), over-the-counter drugs (7%), or alcohol (5%) to treat their sleep problems.

Surprisingly, the researchers observed that 9.5% of French speakers suffered from insomnia compared to 14.3% of English speakers. However, French speakers take more prescribed sedatives (13% vs. 9%) and natural products (16% vs. 7%) than English-speaking Canadians.

"Many people who suffer from insomnia try to treat the problem themselves rather than consulting a healthcare professional," said Dr. Morin, a professor and researcher at Université Laval's School of Psychology. "This is not a good idea because we don't know the risks and benefits of products that have not been approved by government health agencies," he explained.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110908104005.htm

Brain study reveals stress code

October 9, 2011
Science Daily/University of Leicester
Neuroscientists investigating the 'brain code' claim to have made a significant step forwards in understanding how the brain deals with stress- and mitigates its impact.

Examining what they term 'thin' and 'mushroom-like' parts of nerve cells in the brain, which are responsible for learning and remembering, they discovered that it is possible to alter what is remembered -- thereby mitigating the stress of painful memories.

A team from the University of Leicester has identified a particular protein that the brain produces in response to stress. Tests on mice revealed that those without this protein were less 'outgoing' and preferred to 'hide in the dark'.

"We have identified a protein that the brain produces in response to stress in order to reduce the number of mushroom spines and therefore reduce future anxiety associated with stressful events. This protein, lipocalin-2, is normally not produced, but its fabrication dramatically increases in response to stress in the hippocampus. When we added lipocalin-2 to neurons in culture the way it occurs on stress, neurons started losing their "memory spines" -- the mature, mushroom-shaped ones.

"Thus, the brain produces lipocalin-2 in order to protect us from "too much anxiety" and help us cope with various adverse life events. "Identification of lipocalin-2 as a new player the brain uses to help us cope with stress is an important step forward. We are getting closer to deciphering molecular mechanisms of stress that, if not functioning properly, may lead to stress-related psychiatric diseases."

"Stress-related psychological and mental disturbances are extremely common and affect more than 30% of the population. We are keen to investigate whether the mechanisms discovered by us apply to humans and could help inform clinical strategies to deal with anxiety disorders and depression."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111003151826.htm

High to moderate levels of stress lead to higher mortality rate

October 21, 2011
Science Daily/Oregon State University
A new study concludes that men who experience persistently moderate or high levels of stressful life events over a number of years have a 50 percent higher mortality rate. In general, the researchers found only a few protective factors against these higher levels of stress -- people who self-reported that they had good health tended to live longer and married men also fared better. Moderate drinkers also lived longer than non-drinkers.

In general, the researchers found only a few protective factors against these higher levels of stress -- people who self-reported that they had good health tended to live longer and married men also fared better. Moderate drinkers also lived longer than non-drinkers.

"Being a teetotaler and a smoker were risk factors for mortality," said Carolyn Aldwin, lead author of the study and a professor of human development and family sciences at Oregon State University. "So perhaps trying to keep your major stress events to a minimum, being married and having a glass of wine every night is the secret to a long life."

This is the first study to show a direct link between stress trajectories and mortality in an aging population. Unlike previous studies that were conducted in a relatively short term with smaller sample sizes, this study was modified to document major stressors -- such as death of a spouse or a putting a parent into a retirement home -- that specifically affect middle-aged and older people.

Those in the low-stress group experienced an average of two or fewer major life events in a year, compared with an average of three for the moderate group and up to six for the high stress group. One of the study's most surprising findings was that the mortality risk was similar for the moderate versus high stress group.

"It seems there is a threshold and perhaps with anything more than two major life events a year and people just max out," Aldwin said. "We were surprised the effect was not linear and that the moderate group had a similar risk of death to the high-risk group."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111020122441.htm

Evidence for the existence of a hypnotic state? Key may be in the glazed staring eyes

October 25, 2011
Science Daily/Suomen Akatemia (Academy of Finland)
A multidisciplinary group of researchers from Finland and Sweden has found that the strange stare of patients under hypnosis may be a key that can eventually lead to a solution to a long debate about the existence of a hypnotic state

One of the most widely known features of a hypnotized person in the popular culture is a glazed, wide-open look in the eyes. Paradoxically, this sign has not been considered to have any major importance among researchers and has never been studied in any detail, probably due to the fact that it can be seen in only some hypnotized people.

Published in the online journal PLoS ONE, the study was done with a very highly hypnotizable participant who can be hypnotized and dehypnotized by just using a one-word cue. The change between hypnotic state and normal state can thus be varied in seconds.

The researchers used high-resolution eye-tracking methodology and presented a set of well-established oculomotor tasks that trigger automatic eye behavior. They found the glazed stare was accompanied by objectively measurable changes in automatic, reflexive eye behavior that could not be imitated by non-hypnotized participants.

In the field of hypnosis research this result means that hypnosis can no longer be regarded as mental imagery that takes place during a totally normal waking state of consciousness. On the other hand, the result may have wider consequences for psychology and cognitive neuroscience, since it provides the first evidence of the existence of a conscious state in humans that has previously not been scientifically confirmed.

Hypnosis has had a long and controversial history in psychology, psychiatry and neurology. For over 100 years researchers have debated if a special hypnotic state exists or whether it is just about using cognitive strategies and mental imagery in a normal waking state. So far, a hypnotic state has never been convincingly demonstrated, and therefore, many researchers regard the hypnotic state to be just a popular myth in psychology.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111025091559.htm

Dreams activate the brain in a similar way to real actions

October 28, 2011
Science Daily/Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
The ability to dream is a fascinating aspect of the human mind. However, how the images and emotions that we experience so intensively when we dream form in our heads remains a mystery. Up to now it has not been possible to measure dream content. Scientists in Germany have now succeeded, for the first time, in analyzing the activity of the brain during dreaming.

They were able to do this with the help of lucid dreamers, i.e. people who become aware of their dreaming state and are able to alter the content of their dreams. The scientists measured that the brain activity during the dreamed motion matched the one observed during a real executed movement in a state of wakefulness.

The coincidence of the brain activity measured during dreaming and the conscious action shows that dream content can be measured. "With this combination of sleep EEGs, imaging methods and lucid dreamers, we can measure not only simple movements during sleep but also the activity patterns in the brain during visual dream perceptions," says Martin Dresler, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111028113626.htm

How lonely you are may impact how well you sleep

November 2, 2011
Science Daily/American Academy of Sleep Medicine
Study of adults in tight-knit South Dakota community shows lonely feelings associated with compromised sleep -- that is, the stronger the loneliness, the more disruptions during the night, with potentially negative consequences on wellness. Results agree with 2002 study of college students, indicating that individuals young and old, in big towns and small, need to feel secure in their social setting to get a healthy night's rest.

"It's not just a product of very lonely individuals having poor sleep. The relationship between loneliness and restless sleep appears to operate across the range of perceived connectedness," said lead author Lianne Kurina, PhD, of the Department of Health Studies at the University of Chicago.

"Loneliness has been associated with adverse effects on health," Kurina said. "We wanted to explore one potential pathway for this, the theory that sleep -- a key behavior to staying healthy -- could be compromised by feelings of loneliness. What we found was that loneliness does not appear to change the total amount of sleep in individuals, but awakens them more times during the night."

"Whether you're a young student at a major university or an older adult living in a rural community, we may all be dependent on feeling secure in our social environment in order to sleep soundly," Kurina said. "The results from these studies could further our understanding of how social and psychological factors 'get under the skin' and affect health."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111101095302.htm

Dreaming takes the sting out of painful memories

November 27, 2011
Science Daily/University of California - Berkeley
They say time heals all wounds, and new research indicates that time spent in dream sleep can help. Researchers have found that during the dream phase of sleep, also known as REM sleep, our stress chemistry shuts down and the brain processes emotional experiences and takes the painful edge off difficult memories.

UC Berkeley researchers have found that during the dream phase of sleep, also known as REM sleep, our stress chemistry shuts down and the brain processes emotional experiences and takes the edge off difficult memories.

The findings offer a compelling explanation for why people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), such as war veterans, have a hard time recovering from distressing experiences and suffer reoccurring nightmares. They also offer clues into why we dream.

"The dream stage of sleep, based on its unique neurochemical composition, provides us with a form of overnight therapy, a soothing balm that removes the sharp edges from the prior day's emotional experiences," said Matthew Walker, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at UC Berkeley and senior author of the study to be published on Nov. 23, in the journal Current Biology.

For people with PTSD, Walker said, this overnight therapy may not be working effectively, so when a "flashback is triggered by, say, a car backfiring, they relive the whole visceral experience once again because the emotion has not been properly stripped away from the memory during sleep."

The results offer some of the first insights into the emotional function of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, which typically takes up 20 percent of a healthy human's sleeping hours. Previous brain studies indicate that sleep patterns are disrupted in people with mood disorders such as PTSD and depression.

"We know that during REM sleep there is a sharp decrease in levels of norepinephrine, a brain chemical associated with stress," Walker said. "By reprocessing previous emotional experiences in this neuro-chemically safe environment of low norepinephrine during REM sleep, we wake up the next day, and those experiences have been softened in their emotional strength. We feel better about them, we feel we can cope."

Walker said he was tipped off to the possible beneficial effects of REM sleep on PTSD patients when a physician at a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in the Seattle area told him of a blood pressure drug that was inadvertently preventing reoccurring nightmares in PTSD patients.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111123133346.htm

Brain Rhythm Predicts Real-Time Sleep Stability

Mar. 7, 2011 —
Science Daily/Massachusetts General Hospital
A new study finds that a brain rhythm considered the hallmark of wakefulness not only persists inconspicuously during sleep but also signifies an individual's vulnerability to disturbance by the outside world. In their report in the March 3 PLoS One, the team from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Division of Sleep Medicine uses computerized EEG signal processing to detect subtle fluctuations in the alpha rhythm during sleep and shows that greater alpha intensity is associated with increased sleep fragility. The findings could lead to more precise approaches to inducing and supporting sleep.

"We found that the alpha rhythm is not just a marker of the transition between sleep and wakefulness but carries rich information about sleep stability," says Scott McKinney, informatics manager at the MGH Sleep Lab and lead author of the study. "This suggests that sleep -- rather than proceeding in discrete stages -- actually moves along a continuum of depth. It also opens the door to real-time tracking of sleep states and creates the potential for sleep-induction systems that interface directly with the brain."

One of numerous neuroelectrical signals produced by the brain and detected by electroencephalography (EEG), the alpha rhythm was first discovered nearly a century ago. Typically generated when the brain is relaxed but awake, the alpha rhythm fades as consciousness recedes and seems to disappear when sleep begins. However, a mathematical technique called spectral analysis, which quantifies the elemental oscillations that make up complicated signals, reveals that fluctuations in the alpha rhythm persist during sleep at levels that cannot be detected by visual inspection of an EEG.

Since alpha activity is associated with both wakefulness and receptiveness to sensory signals, the researchers hypothesized that it also could indicate a sleeper's sensitivity to environmental stimuli. To test this hypothesis, they monitored EEG rhythms in 13 healthy volunteers who spent three nights in the MGH Sleep Lab. At frequent intervals through each night the volunteers were exposed to 10 seconds of typical background noises like traffic or a ringing telephone. The sounds were repeated at successively louder levels until the EEG reflected that sleep had been disturbed.

Spectral analysis of the EEG measurements revealed that the strength of the alpha signal predicted how easily volunteers could be disturbed at the moment the measurement was taken, with a more intense alpha signal associated with more delicate sleep. The predictive power of alpha activity persisted for up to four minutes after the initial measurement, and the association was seen during both stage 2 and stage 3 non-REM sleep but not during REM sleep.

"We've found a quantitative measure that discloses sleep's momentary fragility," McKinney explains. "This technology may someday allow the development of adaptive sleep-inducing agents that can be guided by real-time feedback from neural activity -- a great enhancement over conventional sleep drugs that act like sledgehammers, inducing a blanket sedation throughout the brain for an entire night."

Jeffrey Ellenbogen, MD, chief of the MGH Division of Sleep Medicine and senior author of the PLoS One report adds, "This finding paves the way toward futuristic sleep treatments in which medication or other therapies are delivered moment-to-moment, only when needed, to protect sleep when the brain is most vulnerable but otherwise let natural brain rhythms run their course. Learning more about the mechanism behind this association between the alpha rhythm and sleep fragility should lead to an even greater understanding of the factors that maintain sleep's integrity in the face of noise and other nuisances."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110303184107.htm

New 'Chemical Pathway' in the Brain for Stress: Breakthrough Offers Hope for Targeted Treatment of Stress-Related Disorders

Apr. 20, 2011 —
Science Daily/University of Leicester
A team of neuroscientists at the University of Leicester, UK, in collaboration with researchers from Poland and Japan, has announced a breakthrough in the understanding of the 'brain chemistry' that triggers our response to highly stressful and traumatic events.

The study found that the emotional centre of the brain -- the amygdala -- reacts to stress by increasing production of a protein called neuropsin. This triggers a series of chemical events which in turn cause the amygdala to increase its activity. As a consequence, a gene is turned on that determines the stress response at a cellular level.

"However when the proteins produced by the amygdala were blocked -- either pharmacologically or by gene therapy -- the mice did not exhibit the same traits. The behavioural consequences of stress were no longer present. We conclude that the activity of neuropsin and its partners may determine vulnerability to stress."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110420143614.htm

Sleep Deprivation in Doctors

May 24, 2011 —
Science Daily/Canadian Medical Association Journal
Sleep deprivation is an issue that affects practising physicians and not only medical residents, and we need to establish standards for maximum work and minimum uninterrupted sleep to ensure patient safety, states an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

A recent study indicated that lack of sleep can result in higher rates of surgical complications if a surgeon had less than six hours of sleep the preceding night. Doctors practising post-call may not be at optimal levels as fatigue can effect mental acuity. "We doctors ourselves are part of this problem," write the authors. "We need to shift our professional culture. Long periods on call should not be accepted as routine or a source of pride."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110524124041.htm

The Good Life: Good Sleepers Have Better Quality of Life and Less Depression

June 15, 2011 —
Science Daily/American Academy of Sleep Medicine
People with a "normal" sleep duration of six to nine hours per night had higher self-reported scores for quality of life and lower scores for depression severity compared to short and long sleepers. Among patients who reported having perfect health, there were a higher percentage of normal sleepers, who also had significantly lower scores for depression severity compared to short and long sleepers with perfect health. Data were analyzed from 10,654 patient records.

Getting six to nine hours of sleep per night is associated with higher ratings for quality of life and lower ratings for depression, suggests a research abstract that will be presented on June 14, in Minneapolis, Minn., at Sleep 2011, the 25th Anniversary Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC (APSS).

Results show that people with a "normal" sleep duration of six to nine hours per night had higher self-reported scores for quality of life and lower scores for depression severity compared to short and long sleepers. These differences were statistically significant in all comparisons. Among patients who reported having perfect health, there were a higher percentage of normal sleepers, who also had significantly lower scores for depression severity compared to short and long sleepers with perfect health.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110614101120.htm

Exposure to 'white' light LEDs appears to suppress body's production of melatonin more than certain other lights

September 12, 2011
Science Daily/University of Haifa
Exposure to the light of 'white' LED bulbs appears to suppress melatonin five times more than exposure to the light of high pressure sodium bulbs that give off an orange-yellow light, according to new research.

"White" light bulbs that emit light at shorter wavelengths are greater suppressors of the body's production of melatonin than bulbs emitting orange-yellow light, a new international study has revealed. Melatonin is a compound that adjusts our biological clock and is known for its anti-oxidant and anti-cancerous properties.

The study investigated the influence of different types of bulbs on "light pollution" and the suppression of melatonin, with the researchers recommending several steps that should be taken to balance the need to save energy and protecting public health.

The fact that "white" artificial light (which is actually blue light on the spectrum, emitted at wavelengths of between 440-500 nanometers) suppresses the production of melatonin in the brain's pineal gland is already known. Also known is the fact that suppressing the production of melatonin, which is responsible, among other things, for the regulation of our biological clock, causes behavior disruptions and health problems.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110912092554.htm

Listening to music can be effective for reducing pain in high-anxiety persons

January 9, 2012
Science Daily/American Pain Society
Distraction is a proven pain reliever, and a new study reported in The Journal of Pain concludes that listening to music can be effective for reducing pain in high-anxiety persons who can easily become absorbed in cognitive activities.

Researchers from the University of Utah Pain Research Center evaluated the potential benefits of music for diverting psychological responses to experimental pain stimuli. They hypothesized that music may divert cognitive focus from pain. If true, the key to successful pain control from this method would be the degree of engagement by the patient in the diversion task.

One hundred forty-three subjects were evaluated for the study. They were instructed to listen to music tracks, follow the melodies, and identify deviant tones. During the music tasks, they were given safe, experimental pain shocks with fingertip electrodes.

The findings showed that central arousal from the pain stimuli reliably decreased with the increasing music-task demand. Music helps reduce pain by activating sensory pathways that compete with pain pathways, stimulating emotional responses, and engaging cognitive attention. Music, therefore, provided meaningful intellectual and emotional engagement to help reduce pain.

Among the study subjects, those with high levels of anxiety about pain had the greatest net engagement, which contradicted the authors' initial hypothesis that anxiety would interfere with a subject's ability to become absorbed in the music listening task. They noted that low anxiety actually may have diminished the ability to engage in the task.

The findings suggest that engaging activities like music listening can be effective for reducing pain in high anxiety persons who can easily become absorbed in activities. They noted that interaction of anxiety and absorption is a new finding and implies that these personality characteristics should be considered when recommending engagement strategies for pain relief.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120105161750.htm

Low vitamin D levels linked to depression

January 9, 2012
Science Daily/UT Southwestern Medical Center
Low levels of vitamin D have been linked to depression, according to psychiatrists.

"Our findings suggest that screening for vitamin D levels in depressed patients -- and perhaps screening for depression in people with low vitamin D levels -- might be useful," said Dr. E. Sherwood Brown, professor of psychiatry and senior author of the study, done in conjunction with The Cooper Institute in Dallas. "But we don't have enough information yet to recommend going out and taking supplements."

Vitamin D levels are now commonly tested during routine physical exams, and they already are accepted as risk factors for a number of other medical problems: autoimmune diseases; heart and vascular disease; infectious diseases; osteoporosis; obesity; diabetes; certain cancers; and neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, multiple sclerosis, and general cognitive decline.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120105131645.htm

Treatment With Light Benefits Alzheimer's Patients

Jan. 11, 2012 —

Science Daily/Wayne State University - Office of the Vice President for Research

In a study published recently in the Western Journal of Nursing Research, LuAnn Nowak Etcher, Ph.D., assistant professor of nursing, reported that patients treated with blue-green light were perceived by their caregivers as having improved global functioning.

Caregivers said patients receiving the treatment seemed more awake and alert, were more verbally competent and showed improved recognition, recollection and motor coordination. They also said patients seemed to recapture their personalities and were more engaged with their environment. Patients' moods also were described as improved.

Etcher's work is inspired by her interest in a phenomenon known as "sundowning," when Alzheimer's patients sleep during the day, wake up later and may be up all night long. Part of her doctoral research was to utilize light, a common intervention for circadian disorders, to regulate the rest-activity patterns of women with Alzheimer's.

This study, Etcher said, was an effort to address disagreement among researchers on the effect of therapeutic light in regulating rest-activity patterns in Alzheimer's patients. The study involved 20 women older than age 65 with Alzheimer's dementia from nursing homes in southeast Michigan. Each patient was assigned randomly to an experimental group receiving blue-green light treatments or a control group receiving dim red light.

A commercially available visor used to treat seasonal affective disorder and jet lag was used to administer the light to patients. Caregivers -- patients' family members and nursing facility personnel -- were not told which type of light was hypothesized to have physiologic effects.

Although blue-green light recipients comprised the active experimental group, Etcher said she was surprised when some recipients of red light -- the placebo group -- also were reported as showing improvements, with caregivers saying their patients were calmer and had reduced resistance to care.

The level of effects varied, Etcher said, noting that while the blue-green group recipients were largely reported by caregivers as showing improvement, a few showed little to no effect from the treatments.

"Some of the rest-activity pattern disruptions that we see associated with Alzheimer's dementia may not necessarily be circadian based," Etcher said. "They may be due to unmet needs, pain or other phenomena, and therefore would not respond to an intervention aimed at regulation of the circadian system."

Calling her study preliminary, she said it now needs to be replicated with a larger sample and different demographics.

In addition to ascertaining which behaviors are circadian based, establishing which methods are most appropriate to analyze data like Etcher's requires exploration, she said. She is proposing further work that uses two different nonlinear analytic methods to examine sensitivity and specificity to detect change in circadian patterns, with a long-term goal of developing interventions to regulate those patterns to the benefit of patients' overall function.

"If they sleep better at night, and are more awake during the day, they can eat, they can interact with other people and they can take advantage of other cueing agents in the environment," she said. "In addition to light during daytime and darkness during the nighttime, smells at mealtimes, food intake, interactions -- all these things in conjunction help regulate our day."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120111154126.htm

Hyperactivity in Brain May Explain Multiple Symptoms of Depression

Feb. 27, 2012 —
Science Daily/University of California - Los Angeles

https://www.sciencedaily.com/images/2012/02/120227162656_1_540x360.jpg
Brain hyperactivity. Maps showing the difference in the strength of brain connections between depressed subjects (left) and controls (right). Depressed subjects show much stronger connections, as evidenced by red colors in their maps.
Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - Los Angeles

Most of us know what it means when it's said that someone is depressed. But commonly, true clinical depression brings with it a number of other symptoms. These can include anxiety, poor attention and concentration, memory issues, and sleep disturbances.

Traditionally, depression researchers have sought to identify the individual brain areas responsible for causing these symptoms. But the combination of so many symptoms suggested to UCLA researchers that the multiple symptoms of depression may be linked to a malfunction involving brain networks -- the connections that link different brain regions.

Now, for the first time, these UCLA researchers have shown that people with depression have increased connections among most brain areas. Indeed, their brains are widely hyperconnected. The report, published this week in the online journal PLoS ONE, sheds new light on the brain dysfunction that causes depression and its wide array of symptoms.

"The brain must be able to regulate its connections to function properly," said the study's first author, Dr. Andrew Leuchter, a professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. "The brain must be able to first synchronize, and then later desynchronize, different areas in order to react, regulate mood, learn and solve problems."

The depressed brain, Leuchter said, maintains its ability to form functional connections but loses the ability to turn these connections off.

"This inability to control how brain areas work together may help explain some of the symptoms in depression," he said.

In the study, the largest of its kind, the researchers studied the functional connections of the brain in 121 adults diagnosed with major depressive disorder, or MDD. They measured the synchronization of electrical signals from the brain -- brain waves -- to study networks among the different brain regions.

While some previous studies have hinted at abnormal patterns of connections in MDD, the UCLA team used a new method called "weighted network analysis" to examine overall brain connections. They found that the depressed subjects showed increased synchronization across all frequencies of electrical activity, indicating dysfunction in many different brain networks.

Brain rhythms in some of these networks regulate the release of serotonin and other brain chemicals that help control mood, said Leuchter, who is also the director of UCLA's Laboratory of Brain, Behavior, and Pharmacology and chair of the UCLA Academic Senate.

"The area of the brain that showed the greatest degree of abnormal connections was the prefrontal cortex, which is heavily involved in regulating mood and solving problems," he said. "When brain systems lose their flexibility in controlling connections, they may not be able to adapt to change.

"So an important question is, to what extent do abnormal rhythms drive the abnormal brain chemistry that we see in depression? We have known for some time that antidepressant medications alter the electrical rhythms of the brain at the same time that levels of brain chemicals like serotonin are changing. It is possible that a primary effect of antidepressant treatment is to 'repair' the brain's electrical connections and that normalizing brain connectivity is a key step in recovery from depression. That will be the next step in our research."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120227162656.htm

REM Sleep Disorder Doubles Risk of Mild Cognitive Impairment, Parkinson's

Mar. 13, 2012 —
Science Daily/Mayo Clinic
People with symptoms suggesting rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder, or RBD, have twice the risk of developing mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or Parkinson's disease within four years of diagnosis with the sleep problem, compared with people without the disorder, a Mayo Clinic study has found.

One of the hallmarks of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is a state of paralysis. In contrast, people with rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder, appear to act out their dreams when they are in REM sleep. Researchers used the Mayo Sleep Questionnaire to diagnose probable RBD in people who were otherwise neurologically normal. Approximately 34 percent of people diagnosed with probable RBD developed MCI or Parkinson's disease within four years of entering the study, a rate 2.2 times greater than those with normal rapid eye movement sleep.

"Understanding that certain patients are at greater risk for MCI or Parkinson's disease will allow for early intervention, which is vital in the case of such disorders that destroy brain cells. Although we are still searching for effective treatments, our best chance of success is to identify and treat these disorders early, before cell death," says co-author Brad Boeve, M.D., a Mayo Clinic neurologist.

Previous studies of Mayo Clinic patients have shown that an estimated 45 percent of people who suffer from RBD will develop a neurodegenerative syndrome such as mild cognitive impairment or Parkinson's disease within five years of diagnosis.

RBD, MCI and Parkinson's Disease

"This study is the first to quantify the risk associated with probable RBD in average people, not clinical patients, and it shows that we can predict the onset of some neurodegenerative disorders simply by asking a few critical questions," says lead author Brendon P. Boot, M.D., a behavioral neurologist. Dr. Boot was at Mayo Clinic when the study was conducted. He is now at Harvard University.

•    MCI is an intermediate stage between the expected cognitive decline of normal aging and the more pronounced decline of dementia. It involves problems with memory, language, thinking and judgment that are greater than typical age-related changes.

•    An estimated 500,000 Americans suffer from Parkinson's disease, which is characterized by tremor or shakiness, stiffness of the limbs and trunk, slowness of movement, and impaired balance and coordination.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120314101240.htm