A majority of middle-aged people show a high level of mental well-being

February 5, 2018

Science Daily/University of Jyväskylä

A recent study has found a surprisingly high level of mental well-being among middle-aged individuals.

The study examined multiple dimensions of mental well-being, including satisfaction with life and psychological and social well-being. Psychological well-being refers to an individual’s sense of having a purpose in life and personal growth, whereas social well-being is characterized by a sense of environmental mastery and acceptance.

Research Director Katja Kokko from the Gerontology Research Center at the University of Jyväskylä:

“Our analyses provided two new perspectives to the study of mental well-being: First, we included positive dimensions of mental well-being and did not consider it only as an absence of mental distress. Second, while it is common to analyze an average developmental trend of mental well-being over time, we looked for groups of individuals differing in their developmental trajectories.”

Mental well-being was assessed when the study participants were 36, 42, and 50 years old. During this follow-up period, four groups of mental well-being emerged. 29% of the participants were classified as having a high level of life satisfaction as well as psychological and social well-being throughout the study period. Further, 47% had a relatively high and 22% a moderately high level of mental well-being. Conversely, about 3% of the participants had a relatively low score in all the well-being dimensions from age 36 to 50.

“It was a bit unexpected how stable mental well-being was in mid-adulthood and that a majority of the middle-aged had such a high level of well-being,” Kokko explains. “However, it should be noted that the follow-up intervals were rather long, about 6 to 8 years, and it is possible that within those years mental well-being fluctuated but then returned to an individual’s characteristic level.”  

The groups of mental well-being were compared to each other in other areas of functioning as well. The individuals on the trajectories for high, relatively high, and moderate well-being had more satisfying relationships, more favorable working careers, and fewer diseases than those individuals on the low well-being trajectory. Few differences between the groups were observed in physical or cognitive functioning.

“We found that only stable low mental well-being, developed over a lengthy period of time, was a risk factor for unfavorable relationships, working career, and health,” Kokko says. “In older adulthood, mental well-being will possibly also relate to physical and cognitive functioning when there is more variation among the individuals in these areas.”

The present analyses shed light on the development of multi-dimensionally assessed mental well-being in mid-adulthood. They further help identify those groups of individuals who are at the greatest risk. Improving their mental well-being can contribute to functioning in old adulthood.

The article is based on the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development (JYLS), where the development of the same, age-cohort representative, participants (369 initially) has been followed from age 8 to 50.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180205094305.htm

Offbeat brainwaves during sleep make older adults forget

To hit the save button on new memories, slow and speedy brainwaves must sync up at exactly the right moment

December 15, 2017

Science Daily/University of California - Berkeley

Like swinging a tennis racket during a ball toss to serve an ace, slow and speedy brainwaves during deep sleep must sync up at exactly the right moment to hit the save button on new memories, according to new research.

While these brain rhythms, occurring hundreds of times a night, move in perfect lockstep in young adults, findings published in the journal Neuron show that, in old age, slow waves during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep fail to make timely contact with speedy electrical bursts known as "spindles."

"The mistiming prevents older people from being able to effectively hit the save button on new memories, leading to overnight forgetting rather than remembering," said study senior author Matthew Walker, a UC Berkeley professor of neuroscience and psychology and director of the campus's Center for Human Sleep Science.

"As the brain ages, it cannot precisely coordinate these two deep-sleep brain waves," Walker added. "Like a tennis player who is off their game, they're swiping and missing."

In tennis lingo, for example, the slow brainwaves or oscillations represent the ball toss while the spindles symbolize the swing of the racket as it aims to make contact with the ball and serve an ace.

"Timing is everything. Only when the slow waves and spindles come together in a very narrow opportunity time window (approximately one-tenth of a second), can the brain effectively place new memories into its long-term storage," said study lead author Randolph Helfrich, a postdoctoral fellow in neuroscience at UC Berkeley

Moreover, researchers found that the aging brain's failure to coordinate deep-sleep brainwaves is most likely due to degradation or atrophy of the medial frontal cortex, a key region of the brain's frontal lobe that generates the deep, restorative slumber that we enjoy in our youth.

"The worse the atrophy in this brain region of older adults, the more uncoordinated and poorly timed are their deep-sleep brainwaves," Walker said. "But there is a silver lining: Sleep is now a new target for potential therapeutic intervention."

To amplify slow waves and get them into optimal sync with spindles, researchers plan to apply electrical brain stimulation to the frontal lobe in future experiments.

"By electrically boosting these nighttime brainwaves, we hope to restore some degree of healthy deep sleep in the elderly and those with dementia, and in doing so, salvage aspects of their learning and memory," Walker said.

For the study, researchers compared the overnight memory of 20 healthy adults in their 20s to that of 32 healthy older adults, mostly in their 70s. Before going to bed for a full night's sleep, participants learned and were then tested on 120 word sets.

As they slept, researchers recorded their electrical brain-wave activity using scalp electroencephalography (EEG). The next morning, study participants were tested again on the word pairs, this time while undergoing functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans.

The EEG results showed that in older people, the spindles consistently peaked early in the memory-consolidation cycle and missed syncing up with the slow waves.

Moreover, brain imaging showed grey matter atrophy in the medial frontal cortex of older adults, which suggests that deterioration within the frontal lobe prevents deep slow waves from perfectly syncing up with spindles.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171215094515.htm

New school of thought: In-class physical exercise won't disrupt learning, teaching

September 17, 2018

Science Daily/University of Michigan

As childhood obesity rates rise and physical education offerings dwindle, elementary schools keep searching for ways to incorporate the federally mandated half-hour of physical activity into the school day.

A series of recent University of Michigan studies found that two-minute bursts of in-class exercise breaks increased the amount of daily exercise for elementary children without hurting math performance. More importantly, when incorporated into classrooms across southeast Michigan, teachers found the breaks were doable and didn't disrupt learning.

"What we're showing is that we can give kids an additional 16 minutes of health-enhancing physical activity," said Rebecca Hasson, principal investigator and one of the lead authors.

Hasson, U-M associate professor of kinesiology and nutritional sciences, is the director of the Childhood Disparities Research Laboratory, which collaborated on the five studies with the U-M schools of public health, education, and architecture and urban planning, and Project Healthy Schools, a statewide community-Michigan Medicine collaborative.

While 16 minutes doesn't sound like much, it adds up, Hasson said. Kids are supposed to get an hour of exercise a day -- 30 minutes of that during school. Most don't.

"Many kids don't have PE every day but they might have recess, and if they get 10 more minutes of activity there, it would meet that school requirement," Hasson said. "This doesn't replace PE, it's a supplement. We're trying to create a culture of health throughout the entire school day, not just in the gym."

The Active Class Space lab studies examined the effect of activity breaks on mood, cognition, appetite and overall physical activity of 39 children in Hasson's lab. A study done in real classrooms tested the feasibility of implementing inPACT (Interrupting Prolonged sitting with ACTivity), the exercise program Hasson and her colleagues developed.

In the lab studies, kids ages 7-11 completed four experiments: eight hours of sitting, interrupted with two-minute low-, moderate- or high-intensity activity breaks, and eight hours of sitting interrupted with two minutes of sedentary screen time.

Findings show that when the sitting was interrupted with high-intensity activity breaks, children maintained their usual activity levels away from the laboratory, thereby burning an additional 150 calories a day without overeating. Unlike adults, children in the study didn't compensate for the increased exercise by sitting around after school or by eating more, Hasson said.

While mood was higher immediately following the screen-time breaks compared to the activity breaks, children reported positive mood during both the sedentary and exercise conditions, and they subsequently rated the activity breaks as more fun.

And, after high-intensity activity, overweight and obese children enjoyed improved moods all day, Hasson said. This suggests children reflected upon the exercise and took more satisfaction in it.

All of the activity breaks elicited the same level of math performance, and when Hasson took the exercise breaks to real classrooms, teachers could do them.

"We got a lot of pushback at first. The fear was that teachers would be overloaded," Hasson said. "Teachers get a lot of stuff thrown at them. Our experience was that teachers were all very positive about exercise. They know it's good for the kids. They were open to the idea but they needed more information on how to do it safely."

U-M's College of Architecture and Urban Planning and School of Education, along with Project Healthy Schools staff, helped design classrooms to accommodate exercise and to safely get kids exercising and then back to class work quickly.

"Teachers were worried it would make kids more rowdy, but 99 percent of kids were back on task within 30 seconds of doing activity breaks," Hasson said. "We even had one teacher who did an activity break in the middle of a math exam -- she realized the benefit of getting them up and moving."

Initially, researchers requested that teachers do 10 three-minute breaks, but most teachers averaged between five and six breaks -- about 15-18 minutes of activity. Schools in disadvantaged districts didn't complete as many activity breaks as schools in wealthier districts. Hasson is currently working to eliminate this disparity by adding elements of game playing -- point scoring, competition, reward system -- to increase physical activity enjoyment in the children.

Based on these studies, Hasson said next they'll try five, four-minute activity breaks totaling 20 minutes, and gauge the impact on mood, activity levels, calorie intake and cognition.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180917114306.htm

Research finds naps plus sleep may enhance emotional memory in early childhood

August 22, 2018

Science Daily/University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Neuroscientists report for the first time evidence that naps and overnight sleep may work together to benefit memory in early childhood.

In a new study by sleep researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, neuroscientists led by Rebecca Spencer report for the first time evidence that naps and overnight sleep may work together to benefit memory in early childhood. Details appear today online in Scientific Reports.

Spencer, with her former doctoral student Laura Kurdziel in the department of psychological and brain sciences, who is now at Merrimack College, North Andover, Mass., and former undergraduate Jessica Kent, report that for children in this study, "Individually, the nap and overnight sleep bouts were not sufficient to induce changes in memory. A significant benefit of napping was observed only when changes across the entire 24-hour period were considered. This supports an interplay between the nap and subsequent overnight sleep in the consolidation of memories in young children."

The researchers say another highlight of their work is finding that naps do contribute to emotion processing in preschool children, which is consistent with parents' and early childhood teachers' observations, though this benefit in emotional memory is delayed, say Spencer and colleagues. This delay may reflect "short-term destabilization of an enriched memory," they add. That is, "there may be measurable benefits in behavior, even if not in memories themselves."

"A common observation of parents and preschool teachers is that children seem either grumpy or giddy when they skip their nap," says Spencer. "Our results are consistent with these observations of caregivers. Naps do contribute to emotion processing at this young age."

As she and colleagues explain, earlier research in adults has shown that emotion processing and emotional memory are enhanced with sleep, and there are suggestions that naps may support emotional regulation and emotional memory for toddlers, as well. But the prevailing "REM sleep hypothesis of emotional processing" says that REM sleep is required for this benefit, and naps lack this sleep stage. Instead, 42 percent of naps in toddlers consist of slow-wave sleep.

Thus the researchers set out to explore whether naps can contribute to memory consolidation for memories with emotional valence -- either good or bad emotional content -- in early childhood. To do this, they presented children ages approximately three to five years (34-64 months) with faces paired with mean or nice word descriptions, but they saw no significant main effects of emotional valence on recognition memory. Change in memory accuracy also did not differ when tested after a nap compared to the change in memory accuracy after an interval awake, they report.

However, when memory was tested again following overnight sleep, the change in memory accuracy was greater if the child had napped the previous day. Further, Spencer and colleagues report, greater nap slow wave activity was associated with greater memory decay during the nap. Yet nap slow wave activity also predicted greater overnight improvement in memory. Together, "these results suggest that sleep bouts can interact to benefit memory in early childhood," they conclude.

Study results were based on the performance of 49 children who were shown emotionally neutral photos of men's and women's faces paired with "mean" or "nice" statements, such as "Lena is always nice. Today she helped us pour milk into our cups at lunch time." Recognition of the familiar face versus an unfamiliar one was tested at three points: immediately after learning, after a delay either with a nap or awake, and again the next day. Children who did not nap were kept awake with quiet play items before the delayed test.

Around their normal bed time, parents brought the child to the sleep laboratory where they were fitted with an electroencephalography cap with electrodes for recording sleep stages during the night. Children awoke naturally from this and went about their normal morning routines before again being tested after 24 hours.

Overall, the authors report, "results of this study are consistent with those in procedural memory consolidation in preschool-aged children." As in observations by others, "both a nap and subsequent overnight sleep was necessary to observe performance benefits."

"This study demonstrates that napping is beneficial to memory processing," they point out. "Given the importance of socio-emotional learning in preschool naps averaging 70 minutes may support the curricular goals of early childhood education. As such, napping remains an important part of the daily preschool schedule and sufficient time for sleep should be protected."

This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and an Honors Research Grant from UMass Amherst's Commonwealth Honors College to Jessica Kent.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180822082559.htm

Math with good posture can mean better scores

Sitting up straight aids performance, researchers find

August 3, 2018

Science Daily/San Francisco State University

A new study finding that students perform better at math while sitting with good posture could have implications for other kinds of performance under pressure

If you've ever felt like a deer in the headlights before taking a math test or speaking before a large group of people, you could benefit from a simple change in posture. As part of a new study by researchers at San Francisco State University, 125 college students were tested to see how well they could perform simple math -- subtracting 7 from 843 sequentially for 15 seconds -- while either slumped over or sitting up straight with shoulders back and relaxed. Fifty-six percent of the students reported finding it easier to perform the math in the upright position.

"For people who are anxious about math, posture makes a giant difference," said Professor of Health Education Erik Peper. "The slumped-over position shuts them down and their brains do not work as well. They cannot think as clearly." Before the study began, students filled out an anonymous questionnaire asking them to rate their anxiety levels while taking exams and performing math; they also described any physical symptoms of stress they experienced during test taking.

According to co-author Associate Professor of Health Education Richard Harvey, slumping over is a defensive posture that can trigger old negative memories in the body and brain. While the students without math anxiety did not report as great a benefit from better posture, they did find that doing math while slumped over was somewhat more difficult.

Peper and Harvey say these findings about body position can help people prepare for many different types of performance under stress, not just math tests. Athletes, musicians and public speakers can all benefit from better posture prior to and during their performance. "You have a choice," said Peper. "It's about using an empowered position to optimize your focus."

That empowerment could be particularly helpful to students facing the challenge called "stereotype threat," said Lauren Mason, one of the paper's authors and a recent SF State graduate. A first-generation college student, Mason can identify with such students, who experience fear and insecurity because of a belief by others -- which can become internalized -- that they won't do as well at math. Mason said she has benefitted personally from using a more empowered posture before taking difficult tests, including math. She believes that adopting a more confident posture could help other first-generation students as well as women entering science and math, who often battle stereotype threat, too.

"I always felt insecure about my math abilities even though I excelled at other subjects," said Mason, who helped design the experiment in the study. "You build a relationship with [math] so early -- as early as elementary school. You can carry that negative self-talk throughout your life, impacting your perception of yourself."

Mason said the study results demonstrate a simple way to improve many aspects of life, especially when stress is involved: "The way we carry ourselves and interact in space influences not only how others perceive us but also how we perceive ourselves."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180803160212.htm

Mobile phone radiation may affect memory performance in adolescents

July 19, 2018

Science Daily/Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute

Radiofrequency electromagnetic fields may have adverse effects on the development of memory performance of specific brain regions exposed during mobile phone use, suggests a recent study involving nearly 700 adolescents in Switzerland.

The rapid evolution of information and communication technologies (ICT) goes along with an increase in exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) in our daily life. The most relevant exposure source to the brain is the use of a mobile phone close to the head. Several studies have been conducted to identify potential health effects related to RF-EMF, though results have remained inconclusive.

The research conducted by scientists at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) looked at the relationship between exposure to RF-EMF from wireless communication devices and memory performance in adolescents. The study follows up a report published in the scientific journal Environment International in 2015 with twice the sample size and more recent information on the absorption of RF-EMF in adolescent brains during different types of wireless communication device use. These are the world's first epidemiological studies to estimate cumulative RF-EMF brain dose in adolescents.

Media usage and brain exposure in young adults

The study to be published on 23 July 2018 found that cumulative RF-EMF brain exposure from mobile phone use over one year may have a negative effect on the development of figural memory performance in adolescents, confirming prior results published in 2015. Figural memory is mainly located in the right brain hemisphere and association with RF-EMF was more pronounced in adolescents using the mobile phone on the right side of the head. "This may suggest that indeed RF-EMF absorbed by the brain is responsible for the observed associations." said Martin Röösli, Head of Environmental Exposures and Health at Swiss TPH.

The rapid evolution of information and communication technologies (ICT) goes along with an increase in exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) in our daily life. The most relevant exposure source to the brain is the use of a mobile phone close to the head. Several studies have been conducted to identify potential health effects related to RF-EMF, though results have remained inconclusive.

The research conducted by scientists at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) looked at the relationship between exposure to RF-EMF from wireless communication devices and memory performance in adolescents. The study follows up a report published in the scientific journal Environment International in 2015 with twice the sample size and more recent information on the absorption of RF-EMF in adolescent brains during different types of wireless communication device use. These are the world's first epidemiological studies to estimate cumulative RF-EMF brain dose in adolescents.

Media usage and brain exposure in young adults

The study to be published on 23 July 2018 found that cumulative RF-EMF brain exposure from mobile phone use over one year may have a negative effect on the development of figural memory performance in adolescents, confirming prior results published in 2015. Figural memory is mainly located in the right brain hemisphere and association with RF-EMF was more pronounced in adolescents using the mobile phone on the right side of the head. "This may suggest that indeed RF-EMF absorbed by the brain is responsible for the observed associations." said Martin Röösli, Head of Environmental Exposures and Health at Swiss TPH.

Other aspects of wireless communication use, such as sending text messages, playing games or browsing the Internet cause only marginal RF-EMF exposure to the brain and were not associated with the development of memory performance. "A unique feature of this study is the use of objectively collected mobile phone user data from mobile phone operators." said Röösli. He emphasised that further research is needed to rule out the influence of other factors. "For instance, the study results could have been affected by puberty, which affects both mobile phone use and the participant's cognitive and behavioural state."

The data gathered from the Health Effects Related to Mobile phone usE in adolescentS (HERMES) cohort looked at the relationship between exposure to RF-EMF and development of memory performance of almost 700 adolescents over the course of one year. Participants, aged 12 to 17 years, were recruited from 7th to 9th public school grades in urban and rural areas of Swiss-German speaking Switzerland.

Minimising the risk of RF-EMF exposure

The potential effect of RF-EMF exposure to the brain is a relatively new field of scientific inquiry. "It is not yet clear how RF-EMF could potentially affect brain processes or how relevant our findings are in the long-term." said Röösli. "Potential risks to the brain can be minimised by using headphones or the loud speaker while calling, in particular when network quality is low and the mobile phone is functioning at maximum power."

About the publication

The study was conducted by Swiss TPH in collaboration with the European Union project GERoNiMO, which aims to improve the knowledge of whether and to what extent RF-EMF affects health. The work on dose calculations was conducted in collaboration with Belgian scientists. The project was funded by the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180719121803.htm

Therapy dogs effective in reducing symptoms of ADHD

July 18, 2018

Science Daily/University of California - Irvine

Researchers have found therapy dogs to be effective in reducing the symptoms of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children.

In a first of its kind randomized trial, researchers from the UCI School of Medicine found therapy dogs to be effective in reducing the symptoms of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children. The study's main outcomes were recently published by the American Psychological Association in the Society of Counseling Psychology's Human-Animal Interaction Bulletin (HAIB). Additional new findings were presented at the International Society for Anthrozoology 2018 Conference held July 2-5 in Sydney, Australia.

Titled, "A Randomized Controlled Trial of Traditional Psychosocial and Canine-Assisted Interventions for Children with ADHD," the research involved children aged 7 to 9 who had been diagnosed with ADHD and who had never taken medicines for their condition. The study randomized participants to compare benefits from evidenced-based, "best practice" psychosocial interventions with the same intervention augmented by the assistance of certified therapy dogs. The research was led by Sabrina E. B. Schuck, PhD, MA, executive director of the UCI Child Development Center and assistant professor in residence in the Department of Pediatrics at UCI School of Medicine.

Results from Schuck's research indicate children with ADHD who received canine assisted intervention (CAI) experienced a reduction in inattention and an improvement in social skills. And, while both CAI and non-CAI interventions were ultimately found to be effective for reducing overall ADHD symptom severity after 12 weeks, the group assisted by therapy dogs fared significantly better with improved attention and social skills at only eight weeks and demonstrated fewer behavioral problems. No significant group differences, however, were reported for hyperactivity and impulsivity.

"Our finding that dogs can hasten the treatment response is very meaningful," said Schuck. "In addition, the fact that parents of the children who were in the CAI group reported significantly fewer problem behaviors over time than those treated without therapy dogs is further evidence of the importance of this research."

Guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics for the management of ADHD underscore the importance of both psychopharmacological and psychosocial therapies. Patients who receive psychosocial therapy prior to medications have shown to fare better. Additionally, many families prefer not to use medications in young children.

"The take away from this is that families now have a viable option when seeking alternative or adjunct therapies to medication treatments for ADHD, especially when it comes to impaired attention," said Schuck. "Inattention is perhaps the most salient problem experienced across the life span for individuals with this disorder."

This study is the first known randomized controlled trial of CAI for children with ADHD. It illustrates that the presence of therapy dogs enhances traditional psychosocial intervention and is feasible and safe to implement.

Animal assisted intervention (AAI) has been used for decades, however, only recently has empirical evidence begun to support these practices reporting benefits including reduced stress, improved cognitive function, reduced problem behaviors and improved attention.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180718170258.htm

The scent of coffee appears to boost performance in math

Smelling a coffee-like scent, which has no caffeine in it, creates an expectation for students that they will perform better on tests

July 17, 2018

Science Daily/Stevens Institute of Technology

Research reveals that the scent of coffee alone may help people perform better on the analytical portion of the Graduate Management Aptitude Test, or GMAT, a computer adaptive test required by many business schools.

Drinking coffee seems to have its perks. In addition to the physical boost it delivers, coffee may lessen our risk of heart disease, diabetes and dementia. Coffee may even help us live longer. Now, there's more good news: research at Stevens Institute of Technology reveals that the scent of coffee alone may help people perform better on the analytical portion of the Graduate Management Aptitude Test, or GMAT, a computer adaptive test required by many business schools.

The work, led by Stevens School of Business professor Adriana Madzharov, not only highlights the hidden force of scent and the cognitive boost it may provide on analytical tasks, but also the expectation that students will perform better on those tasks. Madzharov, with colleagues at Temple University and Baruch College, recently published their findings in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.

"It's not just that the coffee-like scent helped people perform better on analytical tasks, which was already interesting," says Madzharov. "But they also thought they would do better, and we demonstrated that this expectation was at least partly responsible for their improved performance." In short, smelling a coffee-like scent, which has no caffeine in it, has an effect similar to that of drinking coffee, suggesting a placebo effect of coffee scent.

In their work, Madzharov and her team administered a 10-question GMAT algebra test in a computer lab to about 100 undergraduate business students, divided into two groups. One group took the test in the presence of an ambient coffee-like scent, while a control group took the same test -- but in an unscented room. They found that the group in the coffee-smelling room scored significantly higher on the test.

Madzharov and colleagues wanted to know more. Could the first group's boost in quick thinking be explained, in part, by an expectation that a coffee scent would increase alertness and subsequently improve performance?

The team designed a follow-up survey, conducted among more than 200 new participants, quizzing them on beliefs about various scents and their perceived effects on human performance. Participants believed they would feel more alert and energetic in the presence of a coffee scent, versus a flower scent or no scent; and that exposure to coffee scent would increase their performance on mental tasks. The results suggest that expectations about performance can be explained by beliefs that coffee scent alone makes people more alert and energetic.

Madzharov, whose research focuses on sensory marketing and aesthetics, is looking to explore whether coffee-like scents can have a similar placebo effect on other types of performance, such as verbal reasoning. She also says that the finding -- that coffee-like scent acts as a placebo for analytical reasoning performance -- has many practical applications, including several for business.

"Olfaction is one of our most powerful senses," says Madzharov. "Employers, architects, building developers, retail space managers and others, can use subtle scents to help shape employees' or occupants' experience with their environment. It's an area of great interest and potential."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180717125836.htm

Children with better coordination more likely to achieve at school

July 11, 2018

Science Daily/University of Leeds

Young children with better eye-to-hand coordination were more likely to achieve higher scores for reading, writing and math according to new research -- raising the possibility schools could provide extra support to children who are clumsy.

Just over 300 children aged four to 11 took part in computer tasks to measure their co-ordination and interceptive timing -- their ability to interact with a moving object.

The study, led by researchers at the University of Leeds, is published in the peer-review journal Psychological Science.

The tasks designed to measure eye-to-hand coordination involved steering, taking aim and tracking objects on a computer screen.

In the 'interceptive timing' task, the children had to hit a moving object with an on-screen bat.

This task taps into a fundamental cognitive ability -- how the brain predicts the movement of objects through time and space. The researchers suggest that this skill may have provided the evolutionary foundations for the emergence of cognitive abilities related to mathematics, a theory first proposed by the famous Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget in the 1950s.

After controlling for age, the results revealed that the children who did better at the eye-to-hand coordination tasks tended to have higher academic attainment in reading, writing and maths.

Those with the best performance at the 'steering task' in particular were on average nine months ahead of classmates who struggled.

However, the researchers found that while the children's interceptive timing skills tended to predict their attainment in mathematics, it did not influence reading and writing development.

This was an observational study, identifying statistically significant associations between the ability to process what is happening in the physical world and educational attainment. It does not demonstrate direct cause and effect.

Mark Mon-Williams, Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Leeds who supervised the research, said: "The results show that eye-to-hand co-ordination and interceptive timing are robust predictors of how well young children will perform at school."

This research builds on recent findings from other studies which suggested that the ability of babies aged between six and 13 months to understand the world around them had an impact on their ability to manipulate numbers when they reached the age of four.

Professor Mon-Williams said: "The current thinking among psychologists is that the neural circuitry used to build up a child's understanding of their external environment, the way they orientate themselves spatially and understand their world is also used to process numbers and more abstract thinking. It also raises the question: should schools be identifying those children who are seen as clumsy or not so well coordinated and giving them extra support?

"The study identifies the important relationship between a child's ability to physically interact with their environment and their cognitive development, those skills needed by the child to think about and understand the world around them."

The University of Leeds' study was conducted at Lilycroft Primary School in Bradford, West Yorkshire, where Headteacher Nicola Roth is applying the findings of the research.

The school has remodelled its reception, indoor and outdoor areas to include a space where children can develop their motor skills and the ability to call on large muscle groups to co-ordinate movement.

She said: "As a school we decided to harness the research findings. We have decided that our pupils should be encouraged to develop motor skill and eye to hand co-ordination throughout their time at the school.

"Playing with construction equipment toys used to stop when children reached the ages of five or six but we have decided to continue with that until they are nine years old. This is one of the ways we have implemented the findings, it is a simple step that can have significant benefits for the children's wider education."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180711093224.htmChildren with better coordination more likely to achieve at school

Seeing yourself as Einstein may change the way you think

July 9, 2018

Science Daily/Frontiers

People experiencing Albert Einstein's body as their own through a virtual reality simulation were less likely to unconsciously stereotype older people, while those with low self-esteem scored better on a cognitive test. The results suggest that the experience allowed people with low self-esteem to change how they saw themselves and increase their cognitive potential. The technique could be useful for education, particularly for those with low self-esteem.

"Virtual reality can create the illusion of a virtual body to substitute your own, which is called virtual embodiment," says Professor Mel Slater of the University of Barcelona. "In an immersive virtual environment, participants can see this new body reflected in a mirror and it exactly matches their movements, helping to create a powerful illusion that the virtual body is their own."

Previous research found that virtual embodiment can have striking effects on attitudes and behavior. For example, white people who experienced a virtual black body showed less unconscious stereotyping (called implicit bias) of black people.

"We wondered whether virtual embodiment could affect cognition," says Slater. "If we gave someone a recognizable body that represents supreme intelligence, such as that of Albert Einstein, would they perform better on a cognitive task than people given a normal body?"

To find out, the researchers recruited 30 young men to participate in a virtual embodiment experiment. Prior to the embodiment, the participants completed three tests: a cognitive task to reveal their planning and problem-solving skills; a task to quantify their self-esteem; and one to identify any implicit bias towards older people. This final task was to investigate whether the experience of having an older appearance simulation could change attitudes to older people.

The study participants then donned a body-tracking suit and a virtual reality headset. Half experienced a virtual Einstein body and the other half a normal adult body. After completing some exercises in the virtual environment with their new body, they repeated the implicit bias and cognitive tests.

The researchers found that people with low self-esteem performed the cognitive task better following the virtual Einstein experience, compared with those who experienced a normal body of someone their own age. Those exposed to the Einstein body also had a reduced implicit bias against older people.

Bias is based on considering someone to be different from yourself. Being in an older body may have subtly changed the participants' attitudes by blurring the distinction between elderly people and themselves.

Similarly, being in the body of someone extremely intelligent may have caused the participants to think about themselves differently, allowing them to unlock mental resources that they don't normally access.

Crucially, these cognitive enhancements only occurred in people with low self-esteem. The researchers hypothesize that those with low self-esteem had the most to gain by changing how they thought about themselves. Seeing themselves in the body of a respected and intelligent scientist may have enhanced their confidence during the cognitive test.

To further investigate the phenomenon, a larger study with more participants -- and including men and women -- is needed. However, the results so far suggest that the technique could be useful in education.

"It is possible that this technique might help people with low self-esteem to perform better in cognitive tasks and it could be useful in education," says Slater.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180709101200.htm

'Find your passion' may not be the best advice after all

Researchers discover negative implications in suggesting that interests are pre-formed and just need to be 'found'

July 3, 2018

Science Daily/Yale-NUS College

As the world becomes increasingly interdisciplinary, having diverse interests can help people make important connections across fields, such as between the Arts and Sciences. A new study suggests that one's belief about the nature of interests might prevent those insights from happening.

Dr O'Keefe collaborated with Stanford University Professor Carol S Dweck, a psychologist known for her work in fixed and growth theories, as well as Associate Professor Gregory M Walton, also from Stanford. While fixed and growth theories about intelligence -- beliefs about the malleability of intellectual abilities -- have been heavily researched, applying this idea to people's interests is a new area of investigation. The team's research is forthcoming in Psychological Science, in which they examined the implications of fixed and growth theories of interest.

The research is of particular relevance to countries like Singapore, where students typically begin to specialise early in their education. Such early specialisation might discourage a growth theory by limiting the exploration of academic interests. However, since 2006, Singapore's education system began requiring GCE A-level students to take at least one contrasting subject for admission into one of the six local autonomous universities. Research investigating a growth theory of interest will become more important in terms of understanding how to encourage students to explore new or different topics and value them more.

Across five studies, the team showed that a fixed theory, as compared to a growth theory, causes people to be less receptive to topics that are outside their existing interests. For example, in one study, the researchers recruited undergraduates with a well-established interest in either the Arts or the Sciences. Then, they had the students read two academic articles, one appealing to each of the two academic areas. Those led to endorse a fixed theory, as compared to a growth theory, reported less interest in the article outside of their established interest.

The researchers also found that fixed and growth theories influence one's motivational expectations for pursuing their interests and passions. In one study, the researchers sparked students' interest in astrophysics by having them watch a fun, animated video on the topic. Then, participants read a challenging academic article on the same topic. Those with a fixed theory reported losing more interest in the topic once engaging in it became difficult, as compared to those with a growth theory. This is because people with a fixed theory tend to expect that pursuing a newly discovered interest will be relatively easy, and might give up on it when engaging in it becomes difficult. They may come to believe that it was not a true interest after all.

The finding that a growth theory can make people more open to new interests, and that it can help sustain their interest despite difficulties, has important implications. Dr O'Keefe highlighted that in an increasingly complex and interconnected world, viewing interests as developable is important for encouraging innovation as new and interdisciplinary solutions are needed. Believing one's interests are fixed might hinder exploration into other areas.

Instead of finding your passion, the researchers suggest that people should develop their passion.

"Encouraging people to develop their passion can not only promote a growth theory, but also suggests that it is an active process, not passive. A hidden positive implication of a growth theory is the expectation that pursuing one's interests and passions will be difficult at times because people are less likely to give up on them when faced with a challenge," Dr O'Keefe explained.

Dr O'Keefe is currently researching the impact of fixed and growth theories of interest in Singapore schools, as well as how teaching students to develop a growth theory can improve their learning and achievement.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180703110021.htm

'Mindful people' feel less pain; MRI imaging pinpoints supporting brain activity

September 7, 2018

Science Daily/Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center

Ever wonder why some people seem to feel less pain than others? A study conducted at Wake Forest School of Medicine may have found one of the answers -- mindfulness. "Mindfulness is related to being aware of the present moment without too much emotional reaction or judgment," said the study's lead author, Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D., assistant professor of neurobiology and anatomy at the medical school, part of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. "We now know that some people are more mindful than others, and those people seemingly feel less pain."

The study is an article in press, published ahead-of-print in the journal PAIN.

The researchers analyzed data obtained from a study published in 2015 that compared mindfulness meditation to placebo analgesia. In this follow-up study, Zeidan sought to determine if dispositional mindfulness, an individual's innate or natural level of mindfulness, was associated with lower pain sensitivity, and to identify what brain mechanisms were involved.

In the study, 76 healthy volunteers who had never meditated first completed the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory, a reliable clinical measurement of mindfulness, to determine their baseline levels. Then, while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging, they were administered painful heat stimulation (120°F).

Whole brain analyses revealed that higher dispositional mindfulness during painful heat was associated with greater deactivation of a brain region called the posterior cingulate cortex, a central neural node of the default mode network. Further, in those that reported higher pain, there was greater activation of this critically important brain region.

The default mode network extends from the posterior cingulate cortex to the medial prefrontal cortex of the brain. These two brain regions continuously feed information back and forth. This network is associated with processing feelings of self and mind wandering, Zeidan said.

"As soon as you start performing a task, the connection between these two brain regions in the default mode network disengages and the brain allocates information and processes to other neural areas," he said.

"Default mode deactivates whenever you are performing any kind of task, such as reading or writing. Default mode network is reactivated whenever the individual stops performing a task and reverts to self-related thoughts, feelings and emotions. The results from our study showed that mindful individuals are seemingly less caught up in the experience of pain, which was associated with lower pain reports."

The study provided novel neurobiological information that showed people with higher mindfulness ratings had less activation in the central nodes (posterior cingulate cortex) of the default network and experienced less pain. Those with lower mindfulness ratings had greater activation of this part of the brain and also felt more pain, Zeidan said.

"Now we have some new ammunition to target this brain region in the development of effective pain therapies. Importantly this work shows that we should consider one's level of mindfulness when calculating why and how one feels less or more pain," Zeidan said. "Based on our earlier research, we know we can increase mindfulness through relatively short periods of mindfulness meditation training, so this may prove to be an effective way to provide pain relief for the millions of people suffering from chronic pain."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180907110425.htm

Listening to yoga music at bedtime is good for the heart

August 27, 2018

Science Daily/European Society of Cardiology

Listening to yoga music at bedtime is good for the heart, according to new research.

Dr Naresh Sen, study author, Consultant Cardiologist at HG SMS Hospital, Jaipur, India, said: "We use music therapy in our hospital and in this study we showed that yoga music has a beneficial impact on heart rate variability before sleeping."

Previous research has shown that music can reduce anxiety in patients with heart disease. However, studies on the effects of music on the heart in patients and healthy individuals have produced inconsistent results, partly they did not state what style of music was used.

The body's heart rate changes as a normal response to being in "fight or flight" or "rest and digest" mode. These states are regulated by the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, respectively, and together comprise the autonomic nervous system. High heart rate variability shows that the heart is able to adapt to these changes. Conversely, low heart rate variability indicates a less adaptive autonomic nervous system.

Low heart rate variability is associated with a 32-45% higher risk of a first cardiovascular event. Following a cardiovascular event, people with low heart rate variability have a raised risk of subsequent events and death. Failure of the autonomic nervous system to adapt may trigger inflammation, which is linked to cardiovascular disease. Another possibility is that people with low heart rate variability already have subclinical cardiovascular disease.

This study investigated the impact of listening to yoga music, which is a type of soothing or meditative music, before bedtime on heart rate variability. The study included 149 healthy people who participated in three sessions on separate nights: (1) yoga music before sleep at night; (2) pop music with steady beats before sleep at night; and (3) no music or silence before sleep at night.

At each session, heart rate variability was measured4 for five minutes before the music or silence started, for ten minutes during the music/silence, and five minutes after it had stopped. In addition, anxiety levels were assessed before and after each session using the Goldberg Anxiety Scale. The level of positive feeling was subjectively measured after each session using a visual analogue scale.

The average age of participants was 26 years. The researchers found that heart rate variability increased during the yoga music, decreased during the pop music, and did not significantly change during the silence.

Anxiety levels fell significantly after the yoga music, rose significantly post the pop music, and increased after the no music session. Participants felt significantly more positive after the yoga music than they did after the pop music.

Dr Sen noted that holistic therapies such as music cannot replace evidence-based drugs and interventions, and should only be used as an add-on.

He said: "Science may have not always agreed, but Indians have long believed in the power of various therapies other than medicines as a mode of treatment for ailments. This is a small study, and more research is needed on the cardiovascular effects of music interventions offered by a trained music therapist. But listening to soothing music before bedtime is a cheap and easy to implement therapy that cannot cause harm."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180827080852.htm

Mindfulness is key to tinnitus relief

July 2, 2018

Science Daily/University of Bath

New studies suggest mindfulness-based CBT could significantly help tinnitus sufferers.

Published in the journals Ear and Hearing and Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, the research led by Dr Laurence McKenna from University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) and Dr Liz Marks, from Department of Psychology at the University of Bath, found that Mindfulness based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) helps to significantly reduce the severity of tinnitus compared to relaxation-based treatments, an approach recommended by many tinnitus clinics.

Tinnitus, described as a sensation or awareness of sound that is not caused by an external sound source, affects approximately six million people in the UK -- 10 percent of the UK's population. Approximately 1 in 100 people are very distressed or disabled by it and as many as 1 in 20 people are at least moderately distressed by it. Tinnitus is associated with complaints of emotional stress, insomnia, auditory perceptual problems and concentration problems.

As yet there is no treatment to stop the tinnitus noise but this research, funded by the British Tinnitus Association (BTA), shows clearly that treatment can make it less severe, intrusive and bothersome.

Dr Liz Marks, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Bath, will explore the report's findings in more detail at the BTA's annual conference in Birmingham in September. She said: "We compared MBCT to relaxation therapy, a traditional treatment for people with chronic tinnitus, to determine if MBCT was a better option than the current recommended practice.

"In total 75 patients took part in the trial at UCLH's Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital receiving either MBCT or relaxation therapy. The study found that both treatments led to a reduction in tinnitus severity, psychological distress, anxiety and depression for patients.

"However, the MBCT treatment led to significantly greater reductions in tinnitus severity than the relaxation treatment, and this improvement lasted for longer. In addition, 182 patients who completed MBCT routinely in our clinic showed a similar level of improvement."

Relaxation therapy provides patients with specific skills to reduce stress arousal levels. In contrast, MBCT, taught by highly-trained clinical psychologists, teaches patients to pay purposeful, present-moment attention to experiences, rather than trying to supress those experiences. Practicing mindfulness meditation in this way can cultivate a more helpful way of responding to tinnitus. People learn how to 'allow' and 'accept' tinnitus, rather than having to 'fight it' or 'push it away'. Mindfulness does not aim to change the nature or sound of the tinnitus, but the therapy can lead to tinnitus becoming less intrusive, to a point where it is no longer a problem for people.

Dr Marks added: "MBCT turns traditional tinnitus treatment on its head -- so rather than trying to avoid or mask the noise, it teaches people to stop the battle with tinnitus.

"The mindfulness approach is radically different from what most tinnitus sufferers have tried before, and it may not be right for everyone. We are confident, however, that the growing research base has demonstrated how it can offer an exciting new treatment to people who may have found that traditional treatment has not been able to help them yet. We hope the results of our research will be one of the first steps to MBCT becoming more widely adopted."

David Stockdale, chief executive of the British Tinnitus Association, said: "The results of this research are extremely encouraging particularly for people with chronic tinnitus who find that current treatments are not working for them. We really hope that more people will be able to benefit from this approach moving forward."

"Funding this kind of innovative research is a major part of what we do here at the BTA but as a charity, we rely heavily on the donations made to us. We hope more people will support us as we work tirelessly to grow the understanding and knowledge around tinnitus in order to help people with the condition to manage."

Dr McKenna and Dr Marks are now continuing their research in tinnitus looking at how Cognitive Behavioural Therapy can be used to treat tinnitus related insomnia.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180702094054.htm

Mindfulness helps injured athletes improve pain tolerance and awareness

June 26, 2018

Science Daily/University of Kent

A new study of injured athletes found they can benefit from using mindfulness as part of the sport rehabilitation process to improve their pain tolerance and awareness.

The research, carried out by Dr Warhel Asim Mohammed and Dr Athanasios Pappous (School of Sport and Exercise Sciences) and Dr Dinkar Sharma (School of Psychology) could have major implications in the treatment of sporting injuries at all levels.

Every year there are 29.7 million injuries among athletes in the UK. These have both psychological and physiological effects on athletes and for some it may mean the end of a career in sport.

To understand if mindfulness could play a part in the rehabilitation process of injuries, the researchers conducted tests on 20 athletes (14 male, six female), aged from 21-36 years who had severe injuries, preventing their participation in sport for more than three months.

Both groups followed their normal physiotherapy treatment but, in addition, the intervention group practised mindfulness meditation in one 90-min session per week for eight weeks.

A Cold Pressor Test (CPT) was used to assess pain tolerance. In contrast, the perception of pain was measured using a Visual Analogue Scale. Other measurements used were the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS), Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS), and Profile of Mood States (POMS).

Results demonstrated an increase in pain tolerance for the intervention group and an increase in mindful awareness for injured athletes. Moreover, there was a promising change in positive mood for both groups. Regarding the Stress/Anxiety scores, findings showed a notable decrease across sessions.

The study used a common meditation technique, based on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), as an intervention for utilisation during the recovery period of injured athletes -- this is the first study using MBSR as an intervention for this purpose.

The aim of this research was to investigate the role of MBSR practise in reducing the perception of pain and anxiety/stress and increasing pain tolerance and mindfulness. Additionally, the aim was to increase positive mood and decrease negative mood in injured athletes.

Sport injuries are a considerable public health concern. The impact of the injured athlete extends beyond the individual. Although it may impact on their seasonal and potential career performance, it additionally impacts upon the clubs and organisations for whom they perform. Furthermore, it leads to a greater general burden on the health service.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180626113350.htm

Mindful movement may help lower stress, anxiety

June 21, 2018

Science Daily/Penn State

Taking a walk may be a good opportunity to mentally review your to-do list, but using the time to instead be more mindful of your breathing and surroundings may help boost your wellbeing, according to researchers who found that while students reported being less stressed while they were on their feet and moving, they received an even greater benefit when they reported also being more mindful.

The researchers found that while students reported being less stressed while they were on their feet and moving, they received an even greater benefit when they reported also being more mindful.

Chih-Hsiang "Jason" Yang, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Southern California who led the study while earning his doctorate at Penn State, said the results suggest a simple way for people to boost their wellbeing throughout the day.

"It can be difficult to ask people to spend a lot of time doing moderate or vigorous activity by going to the gym or out for a run, especially if they feel stressed," Yang said. "But if they don't need to change their everyday behavior, and can instead try to change their state of mind by becoming more mindful, they can probably see this beneficial effect. You don't need to exert a lot of extra effort in order to improve your wellbeing by being more mindful while you're moving around."

David Conroy, professor of kinesiology at Penn State, also said the findings -- recently published in the journal Psychology of Sports and Exercise -- could help people who are not able to engage in strenuous exercise.

"If someone is looking for a way to manage these kinds of feelings, it may be worth trying some sort of mindful movement," Conroy said. "This option may be especially beneficial for people who don't enjoy exercise and would prefer a less intense form of physical activity."

According to the American College Health Association, more than half of college students experience anxiety, sadness or mental exhaustion at least once a year, suggesting a need for a simple way to reduce these negative states. Because students are often moving throughout their days, as they walk to class and go about other activities, the researchers wanted to see if there was a connection between mindfulness, movement and a reduction in negative states.

The researchers recruited 158 Penn State students for the study. For two weeks, a special mobile phone app, called Paco, randomly prompted the participants eight times a day to answer questions about their current activity and states of mind. The prompts included questions about where the participant was, if they were moving, and if they were stressed or anxious, as well as questions designed to assess mindfulness.

After analyzing the data, the researchers found that in the moments when participants were more mindful or active than usual, they showed reduced negative affect. They also found a possible synergistic effect when people were both mindful and active.

"When people were both more mindful and more active than usual, they seem to have this extra decrease in negative affect," Yang said. "Being more active in a given moment is already going to reduce negative affect, but by also being more mindful than usual at the same time, you can see this amplified affect."

Conroy said it was interesting to see patterns emerge within the individual participants, instead of just comparing people who are generally more mindful to people who are generally less mindful.

"Most studies in this area have focused on the differences between people who are more versus people who are less mindful, but we saw that college students often slipped in and out of mindful states during the day," Conroy said. "Developing the ability to shift into these states of mindfulness as needed may be valuable for improving self-regulation and well-being."

To better explore the causal role of mindfulness on lower negative states of being, Yang completed a second study, in which older adults who participated in an outdoor mindfulness activity then reported on their feelings of stress, anxiety and depression. Yang found that the mindful walking was associated with lower levels of these feelings.

The researchers said that in the future, studies that collect more objective data -- like gathering information about physical activity by using accelerometers -- and include more varied populations could be useful.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180621112007.htm

Changes in stress after meditation

June 21, 2018

Science Daily/U.S. Army Research Laboratory

For a thousand years, people have reported feeling better by meditating but there are few systematic studies that quantified stress and how much stress changes as a direct result of meditation, until now.

U.S. Army Research Laboratory researchers spent a year collaborating with a team of scientists from the University of North Texas to develop a new data processing technique that uses heart rate variability as a sensor to monitor the state of the brain. Their findings are reported in a paper published in the June edition of Frontiers in Physiology.

Healthy heartbeats have irregularities built into them with a slight random variation occurring in the time interval between successive beats. The sinus node, or the heart's natural pacemaker, receives signals from the autonomic or involuntary portion of the nervous system, which has two major branches: the parasympathetic, whose stimulation decreases the firing rate of the sinus node, and the sympathetic, whose stimulation increases the firing rate. These two branches produce a continual tug-of-war that generates fluctuations in the heart rate of healthy individuals.

Heart rate variability provides a window through which we can observe the heart's ability to respond to external disturbances, such as stress, said Dr. Bruce West, the Army's senior research scientist for mathematics.

He said it turns out that the HRV time series is very sensitive to changes in the physiological state of the brain and the new data processing system, called dynamic subordination technique, can quantify the changes in HRV and relate these directly to brain activity, such as produced by meditation. Thus, the DST has quantified the level of stress reduction produced by meditation and offers the potential to quantify such things as the inability to concentrate and sustain focus, impatience, impulsiveness and other dysfunctional properties that severely limit a soldier's ability to do his job.

Stress modulates the autonomic nervous system signals, which in turn disrupts normal HRV and therefore the stress level can be detected by processing HRV time series.

Through a new method of processing HRV time series data, the researchers developed a way to measure the change in the level of stress provided by meditation. This measure assigns a number to the level of variability of heartbeat interval time series before and during meditation. This number indicates precisely how much stress is alleviated by control of the heart-brain coupling through meditation.

In the article, Rohisha Tuladhar, Gyanendra Bohara, and Paolo Grigolini, all from the University of North Texas and Bruce J. West, Army Research Office, propose and successfully test a new model for the coupling between the heart and brain, along with a measure of the influence of meditation on this network. Traditional models of biofeedback focus on the coherent behavior, assuming a kind of resonance, however the new approach includes both periodicity and complexity.

The research team compared two schools of meditation and determined that Yoga, over Chi meditation, is more effective in reducing stress and can show by how much. They also found that the long-term practice of meditation has the effect of making permanent the meditation-induced physiologic changes. Moreover that meditators show a stronger executive control, that is, the ability to carry out goal-oriented behavior, using complex mental processes and cognitive abilities.

Many military historians believe battles, even wars, have been won or lost in the warrior's mind, long before any physical conflict is initiated. Learning how to circumvent the debilitating psychological influence of stress requires that we have in hand a way to quantify its influence, in order to gauge the effectiveness of any given procedure to counteract its effects, explained West, who's a Fellow with the American Physical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science and ARL.

Historically, one purpose of meditation has been to reduce stress, however, the Army's long-term goal is to use it to mitigate the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. West said the potential for this to succeed has been dramatically increased with the new ability to quantify the degree of effectiveness in stress reduction using different meditation techniques.

From a physiological perspective, meditation constitutes a coupling of the functionalities of the heart and brain. We are only now beginning to understand how to take advantage of the coupling of the two to measure stress reduction by applying the methods of science and data analysis to HRV time series.

Our research focus is on changes in physiologic processes, such as stress level. It is the most direct measure of the effectiveness of meditation in reducing stress to date and compliments an existing ARL program on determining the efficacy of mindfulness meditation stress reduction, which quantifies the influence on different task performance measures, such as changes in PTSD symptoms, West said.

This early research could guide the design and testing of new interventions for improving warrior readiness and resilience, as well as reducing symptoms of PTSD.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180621111955.htm

Fish-rich diets in pregnancy may boost babies' brain development

September 20, 2018

Science Daily/Springer

Women could enhance the development of their unborn child's eyesight and brain function by regularly eating fatty fish during pregnancy. This is the suggestion from a small-scale study. The research supports previous findings that show how important a prospective mother's diet and lifestyle choices are for the development of her baby.

According to Laitinen, a mother's diet during pregnancy and breastfeeding is the main way that valuable long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids become available to a fetus and infant brain during the period of maximum brain growth during the first years of a child's life. Such fatty acids help to shape the nerve cells that are relevant to eyesight and particularly the retina. They are also important in forming the synapses that are vital in the transport of messages between neurons in the nervous system.

In this study, Laitinen and her colleagues analysed the results of 56 mothers and their children drawn from a larger study. The mothers had to keep a regular food diary during the course of their pregnancy. Fluctuations in their weight before and during pregnancy were taken into account, along with their blood sugar level and blood pressure. Aspects such as whether they smoked or developed diabetes related to pregnancy were also noted.

The team recorded the levels of nutritional long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid sources in the mother's diet and blood serum, and the levels in the blood of their children by the age of one month. Their children were further tested around their second birthday using pattern reversal visual evoked potentials (pVEP). This sensitive and accurate, non-invasive method is used to detect visual functioning and maturational changes occurring within a young child's visual system.

The subsequent analyses of the visual test results revealed that infants whose mothers ate fish three or more times a week during the last trimester of their pregnancy fared better than those whose mothers ate no fish or only up to two portions per week. These observations were further substantiated when the serum phospholipid fatty acid status was evaluated.

"The results of our study suggest that frequent fish consumption by pregnant women is of benefit for their unborn child's development. This may be attributable to long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids within fish, but also due to other nutrients like vitamin D and E, which are also important for development," explains Laitinen.

"Our study therefore highlights the potential importance of subtle changes in the diet of healthy women with uncompromised pregnancies, beyond prematurity or nutritional deficiencies, in regulating infantile neurodevelopment," adds Laitinen, who believes that their results should be incorporated into counselling given to pregnant women about their diets.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180920102207.htm

Mediterranean-style diet may lower women's stroke risk

September 20, 2018

Science Daily/American Heart Association

Following a Mediterranean-style diet (high in fish, fruits and nuts, vegetables and beans and lower in meat and dairy) reduced stroke risk in women over 40, but not in men. The Mediterranean-style diet reduced stroke risk among white adults who were at high risk of cardiovascular disease.

One of the largest and longest-running efforts to evaluate the potential benefits of the Mediterranean-style diet in lowering risk of stroke found that the diet may be especially protective in women over 40 regardless of menopausal status or hormone replacement therapy, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal Stroke.

Researchers from the Universities of East Anglia, Aberdeen and Cambridge collaborated in this study using key components of a traditional Mediterranean-style diet including high intakes of fish, fruits and nuts, vegetables, cereal foods and potatoes and lower meat and dairy consumption.

Study participants (23,232 white adults, 40 to 77) were from the EPIC-Norfolk study, the United Kingdom Norfolk arm of the multicenter European Prospective Investigation into Cancer study. Over a 17-year period, researchers examined participants' diets and compared stroke risk among four groups ranked highest to lowest by how closely they adhered to a Mediterranean style diet.

In participants, who most closely followed a Mediterranean-style diet, the reduced onset of stroke was:

·     17 percent in all adults;

·     22 percent in women; and

·     6 percent in men (which researchers said could have been due to chance).

"It is unclear why we found differences between women and men, but it could be that components of the diet may influence men differently than women," said Ailsa A. Welch, Ph.D., study lead author and professor of nutritional epidemiology at the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom. "We are also aware that different sub-types of stroke may differ between genders. Our study was too small to test for this, but both possibilities deserve further study in the future."

There was also a 13 percent overall reduced risk of stroke in participants already at high risk of cardiovascular disease across all four groups of the Mediterranean-diet scores. However, this was driven mainly by the associations in women who showed a 20 percent reduced stroke risk. This benefit appeared to be extended to people in low risk group although the possibility of chance finding cannot be ruled out completely.

"Our findings provide clinicians and the public with information regarding the potential benefit of eating a Mediterranean-style diet for stroke prevention, regardless of cardiovascular risk," said Professor Phyo Myint, M.D., study co-author and former British Association of Stroke Physicians Executive Committee member, University of Aberdeen, Scotland.

"A healthy, balanced diet is important for everyone both young and old," said Professor Ailsa Welch.

Researchers used seven-day diet diaries, which they said had not been done before in such a large population. Seven-day diaries are more precise than food-frequency questionnaires and participants write down everything they eat and drink over the period of a week.

"The American Heart Association recommends a heart-healthy and brain-healthy dietary pattern that includes a variety of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy products, fish, poultry, beans, non-tropical vegetable oils and nuts and limits saturated fat, trans fat, sodium, red meat, sweets and sugar-sweetened beverages; this dietary pattern reduces risk factors and risk for heart disease and stroke, "said Eduardo Sanchez, M.D., MPH, the American Heart Association's chief medical officer for prevention and chief of the Association's Centers for Health Metrics and Evaluation, who was not a part of this study. "This study provides more evidence that supports AHA's recommendation," said Sanchez.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180920075854.htm

Close ties with fathers help daughters overcome loneliness

Study examined changes in child loneliness over time

August 28, 2018

Science Daily/Ohio State University

Fathers play a key role in helping their young daughters overcome loneliness, a new study has found.

Researchers found that girls tended to report less loneliness as they went from first grade to fifth grade. But loneliness declined more quickly among girls who had a closer relationship with their fathers.

"The bond between fathers and daughters is very important," said Xin Feng, co-author of the study and associate professor of human sciences at The Ohio State University.

"We found that closeness between fathers and daughters tends to protect daughters and help them transition out of loneliness faster."

The study appears online in the Journal of Family Psychology and will be published in a future print edition.

The researchers studied 695 families who participated in the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, initiated and funded by the National Institute on Child Health and Development.

Mothers and fathers rated their relationships (both closeness and conflict) with their child when the child was in grades 1, 3, 4 and 5. In grades 1, 3 and 5 the children rated their levels of loneliness.

Results showed that levels of closeness tended to decline over this time period, while conflict increased. That's not surprising, said Julia Yan, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in human sciences at Ohio State.

"This is a time when children are becoming more independent, developing relationships with friends and spending more time outside the home," Yan said.

"So they become less close with their parents and have more conflict as their need for autonomy increases."

Loneliness also tended to decrease as the kids developed relationships with their peers and felt more comfortable with their social skills.

But the study showed that kids didn't shed their loneliness at the same rate. Daughters did better when they had closer relationships with their fathers.

Relationship closeness did not have an effect on loneliness in boys. The study can't show why, but Yan said it may be because parents don't socialize boys to have particularly close relationships and put less emphasis on them maintaining close ties.

Mothers' relationships didn't have an effect in this study, but that doesn't mean they aren't important, Yan said. One reason for the lack of impact among mothers in this research was that mothers nearly always had close relationships with their kids, so there was less difference to measure.

In addition, Feng noted that fathers have relationships with their children, particularly their daughters, that are different from relationships mothers have.

"In our society, mothers tend to be responsible for everyday care and stability for their children," Feng said. "Fathers have more freedom to interact with their children in different ways, to challenge them and have a wider range of emotional contact. That may be one reason why fathers had more impact on their daughters."

While relationship closeness was tied to changes in loneliness, the study did not find that levels of conflict between fathers and daughters had an effect.

One reason may be that most families didn't have high levels of conflict.

"Normal levels of conflict may not affect loneliness," Yan said. "If there is still communication going on and a good relationship, it may not matter as much."

The results affirm that fathers should nurture their relationships with their children, particularly their daughters, the researchers said.

"Pay attention to their feelings, especially when they are sad or unhappy, and help them cope," Feng said. "Our results suggest it can really help daughters feel less lonely over time."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180828121422.htm