Exposure to airplane noise increases risk of sleeping fewer than 7 hours per night

May 1, 2023

Science Daily/Boston University School of Public Health

A new study has found that people who were exposed to even moderate levels of aircraft noise were less likely to receive the minimum recommended amount of sleep each night, and this risk increased among people living in the Western U.S., near a major cargo airport, or near a large water body, and among people with no hearing loss.

As major airline officials predict another record summer air travel season, a new analysis by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) and Oregon State University has found that exposure to even moderate levels of airplane noise may disrupt sleep, building upon a growing body of research on the adverse health effects of environmental noise.

Published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, the study found that people who were exposed to airplane noise at levels as low as 45 dB were more likely to sleep less than 7 hours per night. For comparison, the sound of a whisper is 30 dB, a library setting is 40 dB, and a typical conversation at home is 50 dB.

Sleep is essential to overall health and well-being, including daily physical and mental functioning, and a lack of adequate sleep can lead to increased risks of cardiovascular disease, depression, diabetes, cancer, and numerous other health conditions. Health experts state that most adults need seven to nine hours of sleep each night for healthy functioning.

This study is the first large-scale analysis of aircraft noise and sleep duration that accounts for the disruptive effects of multiple environmental exposures in communities, such as greenery and light at night (LAN).

Despite how common exposure to noise from aircraft is for many people, little is known about the health effects of aircraft noise, particularly in the U.S., according to study lead author Matthew Bozigar, assistant professor of epidemiology at OSU, and study senior author Junenette Peters, associate professor of environmental health at BUSPH.

"This study helps us understand the potential health pathways by which aircraft noise may act, such as through disrupted sleep," Peters says.

For the study, Dr. Peters, Dr. Bozigar and colleagues from BUSPH, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health examined airplane noise exposure and self-reported sleep disturbance among more than 35,000 participants living around 90 of the major US airports. The participants were selected from the Nurses' Health Study (NHS), an ongoing, prospective study of US female nurses who have completed biennial questionnaires since 1976.

The team examined aircraft noise levels every five years from 1995 to 2015, focusing on two measurements: a nighttime estimate (Lnight) that captures airplane noise occurring when people sleep, and a day-night estimate (DNL) that captures the average noise level over a 24-hour period and applies a 10 dB adjustment for aircraft noise occurring at night, when background noise is low. The DNL is also the primary metric that the FAA uses for aircraft noise policies, and the threshold for significant noise impacts is above DNL 65 dB. The team linked these measures at multiple thresholds with the nurses' geocoded residential addresses.

After accounting for a range of factors, including demographics, health behaviors, comorbidities, and environmental exposures such as greenery and light at night (LAN), the results showed that the odds of sleeping less than seven hours rose as airplane noise exposure increased.

Short sleep duration was also more likely among nurses who lived on the West Coast, near a major cargo airport or a large body of water, as well as among nurses who reported no hearing loss.

"We found surprisingly strong relationships for particular subgroups that we are still trying to understand," Bozigar says. "For instance, there was a relatively strong signal between aircraft noise and both dimensions of disrupted sleep, short sleep duration and poor sleep quality, near major cargo airports. There is likely more going on to this story, as cargo operations tend to use larger, older, heavily laden, and therefore noisier aircraft that often fly through the nighttime hours. And the quantity of cargo shipped by air has been steadily increasing over the last couple of decades, possibly linked to more e-commerce. If the trends continue, it could mean more aircraft noise impacts to more groups of people."

While the results suggested a clear link between airplane noise and sleep duration, the researchers observed no consistent association between aircraft noise and quality of sleep.

"Though we cannot recommend policy changes from the results from a single study, our study around 90 U.S. airports did reveal a connection between aircraft noise and getting less than the recommended amount of sleep," says Dr. Bozigar. "Current gaps in knowledge could be filled in the future by including additional demographic groups -- such as children, men, minority groups -- and more detailed metrics of aircraft noise rather than a nightly or 24-hour average in studies. There are also more detailed ways of measuring sleep than from self-reports, such as wearable activity monitors, like a Fitbit, that researchers are incorporating more frequently in studies. And we still need to design studies that include other common sources of transportation noise, such as from cars and trains, to determine the impact of each type on health."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/05/230501143012.htm

Slowing down in your old age? It may be a dementia warning sign

It's generally accepted we will lose muscle strength and slow down as we age, but new research indicates this could also be a sign on a more sinister health concern of ageing.

May 1, 2023

Science Daily/Edith Cowan University

It's generally accepted we will lose muscle strength and slow down as we age, making it more difficult to perform simple tasks such as getting up, walking and sitting down.

But new Edith Cowan University (ECU) research indicates this could also be a signal for another sinister health concern of ageing: late-life dementia.

To investigate the relationship between muscle function and dementia, the research teams from ECU's Nutrition & Health Innovation Research Institute and Centre for Precision Health used data from the Perth Longitudinal Study of Ageing in Women to examine more than 1000 women with an average age of 75.

In collaboration with the University of Western Australia, the team measured the women's grip strength and the time it took for them to rise from a chair, walk three metres, turn around and sit back down -- known as a timed-up-and-go (TUG), test.

These tests were repeated after five years to monitor any loss of performance.

Over the next 15 years, almost 17 per cent of women involved in the study were found to have had a dementia event, categorised as a dementia-related hospitalisation or death.

The team found lower grip strength and slower TUG were significant risk factors for presenting with dementia, independent of genetic risk and lifestyle factors such as smoking, alcohol intake and physical activity levels.

Relationship established

The women with the weakest grip strength were found to be more than twice as likely to have a late-life dementia event than the strongest individuals.

A similar relationship emerged between TUG performance and dementia, with the slowest in their TUG test more than twice as likely to experience dementia than the quickest.

When researchers looked at the changes in grip strength and TUG test results after five years, a decrease in performance was also linked with greater dementia risk.

Those who had experienced the biggest decline in grip strength and TUG speed were approximately 2 and 2.5 times more likely, respectively, to have had a dementia event, compared to those in the group who recorded the smallest decline in performance.

Women with the biggest drop in TUG performance were found to be over four times more likely to have a dementia-related death than the fastest.

An early warning

Senior researcher Dr Marc Sim said grip strength, which can be easily measured using a handheld device known as a dynamometer, may be a measure of brain health due to the overlapping nature of cognitive and motor decline.

"Possibly due to a range of underlying similarities, grip strength may also present as a

surrogate measure of cardiovascular disease, inflammation and frailty, which are known risk factors for dementia," Dr Sim said.

Dr Sim said the findings from the study could help health professionals to identify dementia risk in patients earlier.

"Both grip strength and TUG tests aren't commonly performed in clinical practice, but both are inexpensive and simple screening tools," he said.

"Incorporating muscle function tests as part of dementia screening could be useful to identify high-risk individuals, who might then benefit from primary prevention programs aimed at preventing the onset of the condition such as a healthy diet and a physically active lifestyle.

"The exciting findings were that decline in these measures was associated with substantially higher risk, suggesting that if we can halt this decline, we may be able to prevent late-life dementias. However, further research is needed in this area."

Centre for Precision Health Director Professor Simon Laws said there has been encouraging progress in identifying early warning signs of dementia.

"We are now starting to see a number of simple yet indicative screening assessments that could be combined with other biological and clinical measures to provide a holistic risk-profile for individuals presenting to their GP with, for example, memory concerns," he said.

'Impaired muscle function, including its decline, is related to greater long-term late-life dementia risk in older women' was published in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/05/230501085855.htm

New research sheds light on how circadian rhythms work

April 26, 2023

Science Daily/Cornell University

New research from a multidisciplinary team helps to illuminate the mechanisms behind circadian rhythms, offering new hope for dealing with jet lag, insomnia and other sleep disorders.

Using innovative cryo-electron microscopy techniques, the researchers have identified the structure of the circadian rhythm photosensor and its target in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), one of the major organisms used to study circadian rhythms. The research, "Cryptochrome-Timeless Structure Reveals Circadian Clock Timing Mechanisms" published April 26 in Nature.

The research focused on fruit fly cryptochromes, key components of the circadian clocks of plants and animals, including humans. In flies and other insects, cryptochromes, activated by blue light, serve as the primary light sensors for setting circadian rhythms. The target of the cryptochrome photosensor, known as "Timeless" (TIM), is a large, complex protein that could not previously be imaged and thus its interactions with the cryptochrome are not well understood.

Circadian rhythms work via what are basically genetic feedback loops. The researchers found that the TIM protein, along with its partner, the Period (PER) protein, act together to inhibit the genes that are responsible for their own production. With suitable delays between the events of gene expression and repression, an oscillation in protein levels is established.

This oscillation represents the "the ticking of the clock and seems to be fairly unique to the circadian rhythm," said senior author Brian Crane, the George W. and Grace L. Todd Professor and chair of chemistry and chemical biology in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Blue light, Crane said, changes the chemistry and structure of cryptochrome's flavin cofactor, which allows the protein to bind the TIM protein and inhibit TIM's ability to repress gene expression and thereby reset the oscillation.

Much of the hard work of the study went into figuring out how to produce the complex of cryptochrome-TIM so it could be studied, because TIM is such a large, unwieldy protein, Crane said. To achieve their results, first author Changfan Lin, M.S. '17, Ph.D. '21, modified the cryptochrome protein to improve the stability of the cryptochrome-TIM complex and used innovative techniques to purify the samples, making them suitable for high-resolution imaging.

"These new methods allowed us to obtain detailed images of the protein structures and gain valuable insights into their function, said Lin, a Friedrich's Ataxia Research Alliance Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of Technology. "This research not only deepens our understanding of circadian rhythm regulation but also opens up new possibilities for developing therapies targeting related processes."

Co-author Shi Feng, a doctoral student in the field of biophysics, did much of the cryo-electron microscopy work. Cristina C. DeOliveira, a doctoral student in the field of biochemistry and molecular and cell biology, was also a co-author.

One unexpected result from the study sheds light on how DNA damage is repaired in a cell. Cryptochromes are closely related to a family of enzymes involved in repairing damage to DNA, called photolyases. Crane said the research "explains why these families of proteins are closely related to each other, even though they're doing quite different things -- they're making use of the same molecular recognition in different contexts."

The study also offers an explanation for the genetic variation of flies that allows them to adapt to higher latitudes, where days are shorter in the winter and it's cooler. These flies have more of a certain genetic variant that involves a change in the TIM protein, and it wasn't clear why the variation could help them. The researchers found that because of how the cryptochrome binds TIM, the variation reduces the affinity of TIM for the cryptochrome. The interaction between the proteins is then modulated and the ability of light to reset the oscillation is changed, thus altering the circadian clock and extending the period of the fly's dormancy, which helps it survive the winter.

"Some of the interactions that we see here in the fruit fly can be mapped onto human proteins," Crane said. "This study may help us understand key interactions between components that regulate sleep behavior in people, such as how the critical delays in the basic timing mechanism get built into the system."

Another exciting finding, said Lin, was the discovery of an important structural area in TIM, called the "groove," which helps explain how TIM enters the cell nucleus. Previous studies had identified some factors involved in this process, but the exact mechanism remained unclear. "Our research provided a clearer understanding of this phenomenon," Lin said.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230426210428.htm

Almost half of people with concussion still show symptoms of brain injury six months later

April 25, 2023

Science Daily/University of Cambridge

Even mild concussion can cause long-lasting effects to the brain, according to researchers at the University of Cambridge. Using data from a Europe-wide study, the team has shown that for almost a half of all people who receive a knock to the head, there are changes in how regions of the brain communicate with each other, potentially causing long term symptoms such as fatigue and cognitive impairment.

Mild traumatic brain injury -- concussion -- results from a blow or jolt to the head. It can occur as a result of a fall, a sports injury or from a cycling accident or car crash, for example. But despite being labelled 'mild', it is commonly linked with persistent symptoms and incomplete recovery. Such symptoms include depression, cognitive impairment, headaches, and fatigue.

While some clinicians in recent studies predict that nine out of 10 individuals who experience concussion will have a full recovery after six months, evidence is emerging that only a half achieve a full recovery. This means that a significant proportion of patients may not receive adequate post-injury care.

Predicting which patients will have a fast recovery and who will take longer to recover is challenging, however. At present, patients with suspected concussion will typically receive a brain scan -- either a CT scan or an MRI scan, both of which look for structural problems, such as inflammation or bruising -- yet even if these scans show no obvious structural damage, a patient's symptoms may still persist.

Dr Emmanuel Stamatakis from the Department of Clinical Neurosciences and Division of Anaesthesia at the University of Cambridge said: "Worldwide, we're seeing an increase in the number of cases of mild traumatic brain injury, particularly from falls in our ageing population and rising numbers of road traffic collisions in low- and middle-income countries.

"At present, we have no clear way of working out which of these patients will have a speedy recovery and which will take longer, and the combination of over-optimistic and imprecise prognoses means that some patients risk not receiving adequate care for their symptoms."

Dr Stamatakis and colleagues studied fMRI brain scans -- that is, functional MRI scans, which look at how different areas of the brain coordinate with each other -- taken from 108 patients with mild traumatic brain injury and compared them with scans from 76 healthy volunteers. Patients were also assessed for ongoing symptoms.

The patients and volunteers had been recruited to CENTER-TBI, a large European research project which aims to improve the care for patients with traumatic brain injury, co-chaired by Professor David Menon (head of the division of Anaesthesia) and funded by the European Union.

In results published today in Brain, the team found that just under half (45%) were still showing symptoms resulting from their brain injury, with the most common being fatigue, poor concentration and headaches.

The researchers found that these patients had abnormalities in a region of the brain known as the thalamus, which integrates all sensory information and relays this information around the brain. Counter-intuitively, concussion was associated with increased connectivity between the thalamus and the rest of the brain -- in other words, the thalamus was trying to communicate more as a result of the injury -- and the greater this connectivity, the poorer the prognosis for the patient.

Rebecca Woodrow, a PhD student in the Department of Clinical Neuroscience and Hughes Hall, Cambridge, said: "Despite there being no obvious structural damage to the brain in routine scans, we saw clear evidence that the thalamus -- the brain's relay system -- was hyperconnected. We might interpret this as the thalamus trying to over-compensate for any anticipated damage, and this appears to be at the root of some of the long-lasting symptoms that patients experience."

By studying additional data from positron emission tomography (PET) scans, which can measure regional chemical composition of body tissues, the researchers were able to make associations with key neurotransmitters depending on which long-term symptoms a patient displayed. For example, patients experiencing cognitive problems such as memory difficulties showed increased connectivity between the thalamus and areas of the brain rich in the neurotransmitter noradrenaline; patients experiencing emotional symptoms, such as depression or irritability, showed greater connectivity with areas of the brain rich in serotonin.

Dr Stamatakis, who is also Stephen Erskine Fellow at Queens' College, Cambridge, added: "We know that there already drugs that target these brain chemicals so our findings offer hope that in future, not only might we be able to predict a patient's prognosis, but we may also be able to offer a treatment targeting their particular symptoms."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230425205339.htm

Study links nutrients, brain structure, cognition in healthy aging

April 25, 2023

Science Daily/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau

In a new study, scientists explored the links between three measures known to independently predict healthy aging: nutrient intake, brain structure and cognitive function. Their analysis adds to the evidence that these factors jointly contribute to brain health in older adults.

Reported in the Journal of Nutrition, the study found that blood markers of two saturated fatty acids, along with certain omega-6, -7 and -9 fatty acids, correlated with better scores on tests of memory and with larger brain structures in the frontal, temporal, parietal and insular cortices. Watch a video about the research.

While other studies have found one-to-one associations between individual nutrients or classes of nutrients and specific brain regions or functions, very little research takes a comprehensive look at brain health, cognition and broad dietary patterns overall, said Aron Barbey, a professor of psychology, bioengineering and neuroscience at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who led the study with postdoctoral researcher Tanveer Talukdar and psychology research scientist Chris Zwilling. The three co-authors all are affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the U. of I.

"Our findings reveal that we can use nutrient biomarkers, cognitive tests and MRI measures of brain structure to account for much of the variation in healthy aging," Barbey said. "This allows us to better understand how nutrition contributes to health, aging and disease,"

The researchers collected data from 111 healthy older adults with MRI structural scans, blood-based biomarkers of 52 dietary nutrients and cognitive performance on tests of memory and intelligence. By combining these measures using a data-fusion approach, the team found associations between dozens of features that appear to work in tandem to promote brain and cognitive health in older adults.

Data-fusion allows researchers to look across multiple data sets to map traits or features that have common patterns of variability, said Talukdar, who tailored this method to incorporate the nutrition, cognition and brain volumetric data.

"We're looking at relationships among all of these together," he said. "This allows us to identify certain features that cluster together."

This overcomes some of the limitations of analyzing individual factors, Barbey said.

"If we just look at nutrition as it relates to brain structures and we don't study cognition, or if we look at nutrition as it relates to cognition and we don't study the brain, then we're actually missing really important pieces of information."

The most obvious features that clustered together in the new analysis involved the size of gray-matter volumes in the frontal, temporal and parietal cortices; performance on tests of auditory memory and short- and long-term memory; and blood markers related to consumption of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids. Study participants who scored higher on the memory tests tended to have larger gray-matter volumes and higher levels of markers of omega-6, -7 and -9 fatty acids in their blood. Those who did more poorly on the cognitive tests also had smaller gray-matter volumes in those brain regions and lower levels of those dietary markers, the analysis revealed.

While the study only reveals associations between these factors and does not prove that dietary habits directly promote brain health, it adds to the evidence that nutrition is a key player in healthy aging, the researchers said.

"Our work motivates a more comprehensive picture of healthy aging," Zwilling said. This gives insight into the importance of diet and nutrition and the value of data-fusion methods for studying their contributions to adult development and the neuroscience of aging."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230425205326.htm

Is there a common path to the psychedelic experience?

April 25, 2023

Science Daily/Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan

A new study takes a closer look at the neurobiology of psychedelic experiences caused by nitrous oxide, ketamine and LSD.

Nitrous oxide, colloquially known as laughing gas, has been used clinically as an anesthetic to dull pain since the 19th century. However, in smaller amounts, it can induce mind-altered experiences, including feelings of bliss, spirituality, and the feeling of being outside of one's body -- much like those induced by the psychedelic substances LSD and ketamine.

A study led by George Mashour, M.D., Ph.D. and Richard Harris, Ph.D., of the recently founded Michigan Psychedelic Center at the University of Michigan Medical School takes a closer look at the neurobiology of psychedelic experiences.

Using fMRI, the team examined the brain activity of healthy people who were administered nitrous oxide and compared that activity to data collected from participants in different studies who were given ketamine and LSD to see whether the neurobiology of the psychedelic experience was similar.

In addition, this data was compared to a control group comprised of participants administered propofol, a commonly used anesthesia drug, to distinguish between brain changes not related to the psychedelic experience.

The team noted that participants under the influence of each psychedelic drug had decreased connectivity within a particular network but increased connectivity across various networks. Although there were notable differences, each psychedelic increased connectivity between the right temporoparietal junction and intraparietal sulcus in both hemispheres of the brain and between precuneus and left intraparietal sulcus.

These nodes, they note, are located in the so-called cortical "hot zone" of the brain, an area proposed to be critical for determining the content of conscious experience. This could help explain the altered states of consciousness described by people administered these psychedelic substances.

The fact that the patterns of activity associated with nitrous oxide, ketamine, and LSD overlapped hints at common underlying biology, they add. Further research to determine the specifics of this biology could help researchers determine how best to use psychedelics as therapeutics.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230425111218.htm

Poor air quality linked to cognitive problems in babies

April 24, 2023

Science Daily/University of East Anglia

Poor air quality could be causing cognitive deficits in babies and toddlers, according to new research from the University of East Anglia.

A new study published today reveals an association between poor air quality in India and impaired cognition in infants under two.

Without action, the negative impact on children's long-term brain development could have consequences for life.

Lead researcher Prof John Spencer, from UEA's School of Psychology, said: "Prior work has shown that poor air quality is linked to cognitive deficits in children, as well as to emotional and behavioural problems, which can have a severe impact on families.

"Very small particulate fragments in the air are a major concern as they can move from the respiratory tract into the brain.

"Until now, studies had failed to show a link between poor air quality and cognitive problems in babies, when brain growth is at its peak and the brain may be particularly sensitive to toxins. Our study is the first to show this association.

"We worked with families in rural India to see how in-home air quality affects infants' cognition."

The team collaborated with the Community Empowerment Lab in Lucknow, India -- a global health research and innovation organization that works with rural communities to engage in science collaboratively.

They worked with families from a range of socio-economic backgrounds in Shivgarh, a rural community in Uttar Pradesh -- one of the states in India that has been most strongly impacted by poor air quality.

They assessed the visual working memory and visual processing speed of 215 infants using a specially-designed cognition task from October 2017 to June 2019.

On one display, the tots were shown flashing coloured squares that were always the same after each 'blink'. On a second display, one coloured square changed after each blink.

Prof Spencer said: "This task capitalises on infant's tendency to look away from something that's visually familiar and towards something new. We were interested in whether infants could detect the changing side and how well they did as we made the task harder by including more squares on each display."

The team used air quality monitors in the children's homes to measure emission levels and air quality. They also took into account and controlled for family socio-economic status.

"This research shows for the first time that there is an association between poor air quality and impaired visual cognition in the first two years of life, when brain growth is at its peak," said Prof Spencer.

"Such impacts could carry forward across years, negatively impacting long-term development.

"Reversely, our research indicates that global efforts to improve air quality could have benefits to infants' emerging cognitive abilities.

"This, in turn, could have a cascade of positive impacts because improved cognition can lead to improved economic productivity in the long term and reduce the burden on healthcare and mental health systems.

One key factor the team measured was the cooking fuel commonly used at home.

"We found that air quality was poorer in homes that used solid cooking materials like cow dung cake," he added. "Therefore, efforts to reduce cooking emissions in homes should be a key target for intervention."

Consistent with this aim and with the goal of improving maternal and child health, the Government of India has launched a national-level flagship program called the "Ujjwala Yojana" -- a scheme that brings LPG fuel to women below the poverty line across the entire country.

This research was led by the University of East Anglia in collaboration with Durham University, the Community Empowerment Lab in Lucknow (India) and Brown University (US).

'Poor air quality is associated with impaired visual cognition in the first two years of life: a longitudinal investigation' is published in the journal eLife.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230424223140.htm

Cannabinoids give worms the munchies, too

April 20, 2023

Science Daily/Cell Press

Marijuana (cannabis) is well known for giving people the "munchies." Not only does it make people want to eat more, but it also makes them crave the tastiest, most high-calorie foods. Now a new study in the journal Current Biology on April 20 shows that well-studied nematode worms (C. elegans) react to those chemicals known as cannabinoids in precisely the same way.

"Cannabinoids make nematodes hungrier for their favored foods and less hungry for their non-favored foods," says Shawn Lockery from the University of Oregon in Eugene. "Thus, the effects of cannabinoids in nematodes parallels the effects of marijuana on human appetites.

"Nematodes diverged from the lineage leading to mammals more than 500 million years ago," he added. "It is truly remarkable that the effects of cannabinoids on appetite are preserved through this length of evolutionary time."

Lockery explained that the new study was inspired in 2015, when cannabis became legal in Oregon. "At the time, our laboratory at the University of Oregon was deeply involved in assessing nematode food preferences as part of our research on the neuronal basis of economic decision-making," he said. "In almost literally a 'Friday afternoon experiment' -- read: 'let's dump this stuff on to see what happens' -- we decided to see if soaking worms in cannabinoids alters existing food preferences. It does, and the paper is the result of many years of follow-up research."

Cannabinoids are known to act by binding to cannabinoid detector proteins called cannabinoid receptors in the brain, nervous system, and other parts of the body. Those receptors in the body normally respond to related molecules that are naturally present in the body, known as endocannabinoids. The endocannabinoid system plays important roles in eating, anxiety, learning and memory, reproduction, metabolism, and more.

At the molecular level, the cannabinoid system in nematodes looks a lot like that in people and other animals. It begged the question as to whether the so-called hedonic feeding effects of cannabinoids also would be conserved across species.

In the new study, the researchers first showed that worms react to the endocannabinoid anandamide by eating more. They also ate more of their favorite food. The researchers found that those effects of the endocannabinoids depended on the presence of the worms' cannabinoid receptors.

In further studies, they genetically replaced the C. eleganscannabinoid receptor with the human cannabinoid receptor to see what would happen, and they found that the animals responded normally to cannabinoids. The discovery emphasizes the commonality of cannabinoid effects in nematodes and humans, the researchers say. They report that the effects of anandamide also depend on neurons that play a role in food detection.

"We found that the sensitivity of one of the main food-detecting olfactory neurons in C. elegans is dramatically altered by cannabinoids," Lockery said. "Upon cannabinoid exposure, it becomes more sensitive to favored food odors and less sensitive to non-favored food odors. This effect helps explain changes in the worm's consumption of food, and it is reminiscent of how THC makes tasty food even tastier in humans."

The findings in worms are not only entertaining, Lockery says, but they also have significant practical implications.

"Cannabinoid signaling is present in the majority of tissues in our body," he said. "It therefore could be involved in the cause and treatment of a wide range of diseases. The fact that the human cannabinoid receptor gene is functional in C. elegans food-choice experiments sets the stage for rapid and inexpensive screening for drugs that target a wide variety of proteins involved in cannabinoid signaling and metabolism, with profound implications for human health."

The researchers note that big outstanding questions remain, including how cannabinoids change the sensitivity of C. elegansolfactory neurons, which don't have cannabinoid receptors. They're also curious to study the effects of psychedelics on nematodes.

"Perhaps we can find a new set of similarities between humans and worms, now in the case of drugs that alter perception and psychological well-being," Lockery says.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230420135331.htm

Music for sleeping and music for studying share surprising similarities

A recent study on Spotify data reveals which types of music are used to help listeners focus while studying and fall asleep

April 20, 2023

Science Daily/Aarhus University

What type of music do you use while studying? What type of music would you use to fall asleep at night? Have you ever wondered why you choose certain types of music? It turns out that the music used for both these situations is actually pretty similar.

According to a recent study from Aarhus University, which analyzed data from the streaming service Spotify, music that people listen to while studying and sleeping share more similarities than with music in general.

The researchers used both qualitative and quantitative analysis to compare the two types of music based on tracks, genres and audio features.

The study found that people use similar types of music to accompany these tasks.

"Our study suggest that music used for studying and music used for sleeping share many characteristics in terms of tracks, genres and audio features. This similarity highlights the potential of music to create a pleasant but not too disturbing atmosphere, enabling individuals to focus on studying and relaxation for sleeping," says Rebecca Jane Scarratt, PhD student at the Center for Music in the Brain at Aarhus University.

Relaxing effects on the brain

The researchers analyzed many playlists seemingly used for studying or for relaxation before bedtime and found that these two types of music shared similar characteristics, such as slow tempo and repetitive patterns.

Among the most common genres found in both datasets were pop, lo-fi, classical and ambient music.

According to the study, the similarities could be attributed to their calming and relaxing effects on the brain. The slow tempo and repetitive patterns of the music help to lower heart rate and reduce stress, creating a conducive environment for both studying and sleeping.

The researchers also used statistical methods to compare the audio features between different datasets and determine whether there were significant differences.

They found that there were significant differences between sleep and general datasets in "Loudness," "Energy" and "Valence" which refers to the emotional tone or mood of a piece of music. The same was the case between study and general datasets, but there was no large difference between the study and sleep datasets.

According to Rebecca, the findings are the beginning of a new research trend that compares music used for different activities and could lead to a better understanding of how music affects our cognitive and emotional states. The findings shed light on the difference between how music is assumed to be used in theory and how it is actually used in practice.

"While more research is needed to fully understand the relationship between music and cognitive processes, our study provides a starting point for exploring the impact of music on our cognitive and emotional states, and how it may enhance our daily lives." says Rebecca Jane Scarratt.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230420135404.htm

Impact of maternal stress during pregnancy on child's health

First-of-its-kind research could provide key insight to fetal neurodevelopment

April 20, 2023

Science Daily/University of Cincinnati

New research out of the University of Cincinnati examines the impact that maternal stress during pregnancy has on the neurodevelopment of babies.

The study was published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

Prenatal maternal stress life events are associated with adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes in offspring. Biological mechanisms underlying these associations are largely unknown, but a chemical reaction in the body in which a small molecule known as a methyl group gets added to DNA, called DNA methylation, likely plays a role, according to researchers. These findings could provide new insights into how the fetal environment potentially influences not only neurodevelopment, but metabolism and immunologic functions as well.

More than 5,500 people took part in the study with that population broken down into 12 separate cohorts, according to Anna Ruehlmann, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Environmental and Public Health Sciences in the UC College of Medicine and lead author of the research.

"Our study is the first to look at such a large sample size and examine the entire epigenome, so it's not just looking at the stress control genes as in previous studies, it's looking at all the epigenomic sites available right now that you can study," she says.

The research examines five separate categories of stress that expectant moms face during pregnancy. They are financial stress, conflict with a partner, conflict with a family member or friend, abuse (including physical, emotional and mental) and death of a friend or relative, plus a cumulative score that combines all the categories.

"We found that when mom experienced a cumulative amount of stress during pregnancy, there was, in fact, an association with DNA methylation in umbilical cord blood, which is a kind of epigenetic modification in the baby that's developing in the womb," Ruehlmann says. "An epigenetic modification is something that doesn't change the sequence of the DNA, however the DNA is modified which is something that's dynamic and can change in response to environmental exposures. Therefore, it's something that can be turned on or off later in the child's life or something that can maybe not do anything, it's still unknown. It's thought to be a mechanism of gene expression control."

Ruehlmann says another unknown is how this process impacts children once they are born.

"We found five specific locations of DNA methylation with three different maternal stressors during pregnancy," she says. "One was cumulative stress and the stressor specific domains of con?ict with family/friends, abuse (physical, sexual and emotional) and death of a close friend/relative that were associated with DNA methylation in the developing fetus. These were occurring in genes that have shown to be involved in neurodevelopment. The next steps are to do some functional analyses to see how these genes really work and how the DNA methylation affects their expression."

Ruehlmann describes the process as being a huge puzzle.

"Epigenetic modifications are a very dynamic process, there are a lot of changes that can happen in response to environmental factors," she says. "What you're seeing biologically at the beginning of fetal development you might not see the outcome of until later on during a child's development. It's fascinating as a biologist to begin to uncover some of the biological clues to how neurodevelopment is affected during fetal development. There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle that have yet to be connected. It's very exciting."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230420110138.htm

Common infections linked to poorer cognitive performance in middle-aged and older adults

Findings, based on an analysis of 575 study participants, support the hypothesis that infections may negatively affect brain health

April 20, 2023

Science Daily/Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

A new study from a team led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that signs of common infections in a sample of middle-aged and older adults were associated with poorer performance on a test of global cognitive function.

The results add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that infections in mid- and late-life can worsen cognitive performance and may increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias.

For their analysis, the researchers examined antibody levels to five common pathogens in 575 adults, ages 41 to 97. The adults were recruited from East Baltimore in 1981, as part of the Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study started that year by the National Institute of Mental Health. Baltimore study participants donated blood for testing and took cognitive tests during the same study period. Antibody tests for pathogens were conducted, including four herpes viruses -- herpes simplex virus type 1, cytomegalovirus, varicella zoster virus (chickenpox and shingles viruses), and Epstein-Barr virus -- and the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. The latter often spreads to humans from cat feces or from eating undercooked meat.

The research team compared participants' blood test results to their performance on the Mini-Mental State Examination -- a global cognitive test that assesses things like orientation, attention, verbal comprehension, memory, and visual perception -- and on a word recall task, which tested memory for a list of words after a 20-minute delay. The researchers found that elevated antibodies to either herpes simplex virus type 1 or cytomegalovirus were individually associated with worse performance on the global cognitive test. Further, participants with a higher number of positive antibody tests tended to miss a larger number of items on the global cognition test.

The study was published online April 7 in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia.

"The idea that common infections could contribute to cognitive decline and perhaps Alzheimer's disease risk was once on the fringe and remains controversial, but due to findings like the ones from this study, it's starting to get more mainstream attention," says senior author Adam Spira, PhD, professor in the Bloomberg School's Department of Mental Health and a core faculty member of the Johns Hopkins Center on Aging and Health. "After accounting for participants' age, sex, race, and the largest genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, the data in our study showed that a greater number of positive antibody tests related to five different infections was associated with poorer cognitive performance. To our knowledge, this kind of additive effect of multiple infections on performance on a cognitive test has not been shown before."

The cause of Alzheimer's disease remains unclear. Prior research has made the connection with infections, including studies linking herpes simplex virus type 1 and cytomegalovirus to greater Alzheimer's risk. There is also evidence that the protein fragment amyloid beta, which forms insoluble plaques in the brains of people with Alzheimer's, functions as an antimicrobial peptide, and is secreted at higher levels by brain cells in response to infections.

Since the 2003-2004 wave, ECA study researchers at Johns Hopkins have conducted periodic follow-up interviews in Baltimore, including standard cognitive tests and taking blood samples. The two most recent waves of the study, funded by the National Institute on Aging, have focused on Alzheimer's disease and related outcomes.

The pathogens assessed in the study are often encountered in childhood and are either cleared or turned into suppressed, latent infections. As such, the researchers considered significant levels of antibodies against them in the middle-aged and older study participants as likely indicators of their reactivation due to immune system weakening with age.

The study's first author, Alexandra Wennberg, PhD, who completed her doctoral training in Spira's research group, is currently a postdoctoral research associate at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet. The co-authors include faculty in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and collaborating scientists at the National Institute on Aging Intramural Research Program.

Co-author Brion Maher, PhD, a geneticist and professor in the Bloomberg School's Department of Mental Health, also analyzed the results for participants who had a common Alzheimer's risk factor, the Ɛ4 variant of the apolipoprotein-E (ApoE) gene. The link between positive antibody count and cognitive status was present in both the Ɛ4 and non-Ɛ4 groups, but was stronger in the non-Ɛ4 group.

"That was a surprise, finding a weaker link in the Ɛ4 group," says Maher. "It's something that should be followed up with larger studies."

Spira, Maher, and their team, with funding from the National Institute on Aging, are following up with analyses of the Baltimore ECA data from the 2016 to 2022 wave. The researchers will also be collecting another round of data from this cohort.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230420110130.htm

Simple test may predict cognitive impairment long before symptoms appear

Science Daily/American Academy of Neurology

In people with no thinking and memory problems, a simple test may predict the risk of developing cognitive impairment years later, according to a study published in the April 19, 2023, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"There is increasing evidence that some people with no thinking and memory problems may actually have very subtle signs of early cognitive impairment," said study author Ellen Grober, PhD, of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York. "In our study, a sensitive and simple memory test predicted the risk of developing cognitive impairment in people who were otherwise considered to have normal cognition."

The study involved 969 people with an average age of 69 with no thinking or memory problems at the start of the study. They were given a simple memory test and were followed for up to 10 years.

The test includes two phases. For the study phase, people are shown four cards, each with drawings of four items. They are asked to identify the item belonging to a particular category. For example, participants would name the item "grapes" after being asked to identify a "fruit." For the test phase, participants are first asked to recall the items. This measures their ability to retrieve information. Then, for items they did not remember, they are given category cues. This phase measures memory storage.

The participants were divided into five groups, or stages zero through four, based on their test scores, as part of the Stages of Objective Memory Impairment (SOMI) system. Stage zero represents no memory problems. Stages one and two reflect increasing difficulty with retrieving memories which can precede dementia by five to eight years. These participants continue to be able to remember items when given cues. In the third and fourth stages, people cannot remember all the items even after they are given cues. These stages precede dementia by one to three years.

A total of 47% of the participants were in stage zero, 35% in stage one, 13% in stage two and 5% in stages three and four combined.

Of the participants, 234 people developed cognitive impairment.

After adjusting for age, sex, education and a gene that affects a person's risk of Alzheimer's disease, APOE4, researchers found when compared to people who were at SOMI stage zero, people at stages one and two were twice as likely to develop cognitive impairment. People who were at stages three and four were three times as likely to develop cognitive impairment.

After adjusting for biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease including brain amyloid plaques and tau tangles, the SOMI system continued to predict an increased risk of cognitive impairment.

Researchers estimated that after 10 years about 72% of those in the third and fourth stages would have developed cognitive impairment, compared to about 57% of those in the second stage, 35% in the first stage and 21% of those in stage zero.

"Our results support the use of the SOMI system to identify people most likely to develop cognitive impairment," said Grober. "Detecting cognitive impairment at its earliest stages is beneficial to researchers investigating treatments. It also could benefit those people who are found to be at increased risk by consulting with their physician and implementing interventions to promote healthy brain aging."

A limitation of the study was that most participants were white and well educated. Grober said more research is needed in larger and more diverse populations.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230419201936.htm

Drinking alcohol while breastfeeding impacts health of newborns

UC Riverside mouse study shows how offspring brain and behavioral development is impacted by early life alcohol exposure

April 19, 2023

Science Daily/University of California - Riverside

Studies have shown that consuming alcohol during pregnancy can alter the brain and behavioral development of gestating offspring. Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises against maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy and state that there is no known safe level of consumption. What are the consequences, however, of mothers consuming alcohol while breastfeeding?

A research team at the University of California, Riverside, performed a mouse study to find out.

Led by Kelly Huffman, a professor of psychology, the team found that infants' exposure to alcohol through breastmilk can have long-lasting effects on their development. Specifically, young mice that were exposed to alcohol during early development show smaller body and brain growth, as well as decreased cortical lengths -- a measure of brain size. The study appears in Frontiers in Neuroscience.

Research shows approximately 36% of breastfeeding mothers in the United States consume alcohol. In Canada and Australia, the numbers are 20% and 60%, respectively. Women who consume alcohol during pregnancy are more likely to drink while breastfeeding. Also, many women who choose to abstain from drinking during pregnancy report beginning to drink again shortly after giving birth.

The researchers focused on lactational ethanol exposure, or LEE, and developed a novel postnatal alcohol exposure model in breastfeeding mice. In this mouse model, offspring were exposed to ethanol via nursing from postnatal day (P) 6 through P20 (weaning), a period equivalent to infancy in humans.

Compared to controls, LEE mice had reduced body and brain weights, as well as decreased neocortical lengths at wean continuing through to early puberty (age P30). Brain weights were reduced in both ages for males, and at P20 for females; however, P30 female brain weights recovered to control levels. This discovery provides evidence towards sex-specific differences due to LEE.

"The reduced body weights in both males and females at P20 and P30 are reflected in human studies in which children exposed to ethanol through contaminated breast milk have lower body weights and growth trajectories," Huffman said. According to her, the reduction of body and brain weights may be explained by the gut's inability to efficiently extract nutrients when alcohol is ingested. A decrease in protein synthesis in the small intestine may block absorption of micro- and macronutrients.

With regard to how the behavioral development of the LEE mice is affected, Huffman said behavioral tests her team performed on LEE mice suggest they engage in higher risk-taking behavior and show abnormal stress regulation and increased hyperactivity.

"Thus, women should refrain from consuming alcohol during breastfeeding until more research can help recommend safe maternal practices in early infancy," she added.

Although researchers also advocate for women abstaining from alcohol consumption also during the prenatal period, Huffman said there are conflicting views about appropriate, safe drinking behaviors during the breastfeeding period.

"We are aware of the disconnect between conclusions drawn from scientific literature and behaviors in many new mothers," she said.

Fetal alcohol exposure, from maternal consumption during pregnancy, has been a subject of investigation for about 50 years. Huffman's laboratory at UCR has made groundbreaking discoveries, including that Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders, or FASD, can be heritable, passing transgenerationally to at least the third generation.

"We hope our work will increase public awareness of safe maternal practices," Huffman said.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230419201925.htm

Older adults may achieve same cognition as undergrads

Learning multiple tasks led to cognition improvements in older adults; improvements that got better as more time passed

April 19, 2023

Science Daily/University of California - Riverside

A set of recent studies demonstrates for the first time that learning multiple new tasks carries benefits for cognition long after the learning has been completed.

The finding affirms a long-held assertion of the lead researcher, Rachel Wu, who is an associate professor of psychology at UC Riverside. That is, older adults can learn new tasks and improve their cognition in the process, if they approach learning as a child does.

"Our findings provide evidence that simultaneously learning real-world skills can lead to long-term improvements in cognition during older adulthood," Wu and her colleagues wrote in a recently published paper in the journal Aging and Mental Health. "Overall, our findings promote the benefits of lifelong learning, namely, to improve cognitive abilities in older adulthood."

One year after they learned new skills, the older research subjects tested higher for certain cognitive tasks than prior to the learning. Consistently, the scores for cognitive functions increased on average by at least two to three times, sometimes more.

The first study had six participants, the second study, 27. The median age of the study subjects was 66 and 69 years old, respectively. To qualify for the study, participants had to be at least 55 years old, fluent in English, have normal or corrected-to-normal vision, and have no prior diagnosis of a cognitive impairment. Participants in this study completed classwork and homework for approximately 15 hours a week for three months, time constraints Wu said limited the number of eligible participants.

For both studies, the participants learned at least three new skills, such as Spanish, using an iPad, photography, painting, and music composition over three months in a UC Riverside classroom for older adults. Cognitive tests were administered in a research lab before the start of the classes, halfway through the classes, and after three months of classes. There were then follow-up tests at three months, six months, and one year after the end of the classes.

"The primary goal of the follow-up assessments was to determine if gains in cognitive abilities… would continue up to one year after the intervention," the authors wrote.

The cognitive measures included attention, inhibition, and short-term memory, which requires remembering small amounts of information needed to perform tasks, such as recalling a phone number or words from a list.

The overall cognitive scores at three months, six months, and one year after the intervention were significantly higher than before the intervention, more than three times higher by many measures. In fact, the more time that passed after the learning had ceased, the higher the scores grew.

"Remarkably, the cognitive scores increased to levels similar to undergraduates taking the same cognitive tests for the first time," Wu said. "Our finding of continuous cognitive growth in older adulthood is unique because most studies show only maintenance of cognitive abilities or cognitive decline over time."

The key to the difference, Wu surmises, is learning multiple tasks simultaneously in an encouraging environment, similar to what children experience.

"The time and energy commitment to do so was similar to a full undergraduate course load," Wu and her colleagues wrote in the paper, titled "One-year cognitive outcomes from a multiple real-world skill learning intervention with older adults."

For Wu, it is further affirmation of her past research, which demonstrated that older adults can learn by emulating the learning behaviors of children. Among other things, it means older adults must approach learning with an open mind, unafraid of criticism and failure, receptive to instruction, willing to learn multiple tasks at once, and with a belief they can improve with effort.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230419162821.htm

How to get your children to eat more fruits and vegetables

Study examines influence of longer family meals on children's eating behavior

April 18, 2023

Science Daily/Max Planck Institute for Human Development

Their experiment shows that children will eat significantly more fruits and vegetables if they on average stay at the table for only ten minutes more -- 30 minutes in total. On average, they ate about 100 grams more fruits and vegetables. This represents about one of the five recommended daily portions of fruits and vegetables and is as much as a small apple or a small bell pepper. The results of the study have been published in the US journal JAMA Network Open.

"This outcome has practical importance for public health because one additional daily portion of fruit and vegetables reduces the risk of cardiometabolic disease by 6 to 7 percent," explains Jutta Mata, professor of health psychology at the University of Mannheim. "For such an effect, a sufficient quantity of fruits and vegetables must be available on the table -- bite-sized pieces are best," the health psychologist adds.

50 pairs of parents and 50 children participated in the study. The average age of children in the study was 8 years and the average age of parents was 43 years. An equal number of boys and girls participated. The participants were served a typical German dinner with sliced bread, cold cuts, and cheese, as well as fruits and vegetables cut into bite-sized pieces.

"The duration of the meal is one of the central components of a family meal which parents can vary to improve the diet of their children. We had already found hints of this relation in a meta-analysis on studies looking at the qualitative components of healthy family meals. In this new experimental study, we were able to prove a formerly only correlative relationship," says Ralph Hertwig, Director at the Center for Adaptive Rationality of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.

The study also shows that longer family meals did not lead to the children eating more bread or cold cuts; they also did not eat more dessert. Researchers assume that the bite-sized pieces of fruits and vegetables were easier to eat and thus more enticing.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230418101408.htm

How music can prevent cognitive decline

April 17, 2023

Science Daily/Université de Genève

Normal ageing is associated with progressive cognitive decline. But can we train our brain to delay this process? A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), HES-SO Geneva and EPFL has discovered that practicing and listening to music can alter cognitive decline in healthy seniors by stimulating the production of grey matter. To achieve these results, the researchers followed over 100 retired people who had never practiced music before. They were enrolled in piano and music awareness training for six months. These results open new prospects for the support of healthy ageing. They are reported in NeuroImage: Reports.

Throughout our lives, our brain remodels itself. Brain morphology and connections change according to the environment and the experiences, for instance when we learn new skills or overcome the consequences of a stroke. However, as we age, this ''brain plasticity'' decreases. The brain also loses grey matter, where our precious neurons are located. This is known as ''brain atrophy''.

Gradually, a cognitive decline appears. Working memory, at the core of many cognitive processes, is one of the cognitive functions suffering the most. Working memory is defined as the process in which we briefly retain and manipulate information in order to achieve a goal, such as remembering a telephone number long enough to write it down or translating a sentence from a foreign language.

A study led by the UNIGE, HES-SO Geneva, and EPFL revealed that music practice and active listening could prevent working memory decline. Such activities promoted brain plasticity, they were associated with grey matter volume increase. Positive impacts have also been measured on working memory. This study was conducted among 132 healthy retirees from 62 to 78 years of age. One of the conditions for participation was that they had not taken any music lessons for more than six months in their lives.

Practicing music vs. listening to music

''We wanted people whose brains did not yet show any traces of plasticity linked to musical learning. Indeed, even a brief learning experience in the course of one's life can leave imprints on the brain, which would have biased our results'', explains Damien Marie, first author of the study, a research associate at the CIBM Center for Biomedical Imaging, the Faculty of Medicine and the Interfaculty Center for Affective Sciences (CISA) of UNIGE, as well as at the Geneva School of Health Sciences.

The participants were randomly assigned to two groups, regardless of their motivation to play an instrument. The second group had active listening lessons, which focused on instrument recognition and analysis of musical properties in a wide range of musical styles. The classes lasted one hour. Participants in both groups were required to do homework for half an hour a day.

Positive effects on both groups

''After six months, we found common effects for both interventions. Neuroimaging revealed an increase in grey matter in four brain regions involved in high-level cognitive functioning in all participants, including cerebellum areas involved in working memory. Their performance increased by 6% and this result was directly correlated to the plasticity of the cerebellum,'' says Clara James, last author of the study, a privat-docent at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of UNIGE, and full professor at the Geneva School of Health Sciences. The scientists also found that the quality of sleep, the number of lessons followed over the course of the intervention, and the daily training quantity, had a positive impact on the degree of improvement in performance.

However, the researchers also found a difference between the two groups. In the pianists, the volume of grey matter remained stable in the right primary auditory cortex -- a key region for sound processing, whereas it decreased in the active listening group. ''In addition, a global brain pattern of atrophy was present in all participants. Therefore, we cannot conclude that musical interventions rejuvenate the brain. They only prevent ageing in specific regions,'' says Damien Marie.

These results show that practicing and listening to music promotes brain plasticity and cognitive reserve. The authors of the study believe that these playful and accessible interventions should become a major policy priority for healthy ageing. The next step for the team is to evaluate the potential of these interventions in people with mild cognitive impairment, an intermediate stage between normal ageing and dementia.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230417142520.htm

Kombucha to kimchi: Which fermented foods are best for your brain?

April 13, 2023

Science Daily/Microbiology Society

Many countries around the world have their own staple fermented foods which are ingrained into culture and diet. It can’t be a coincidence that this has happened again and again. It seems logical that fermented foods offer more than a method of preservation.? 

Diet can hugely impact your mental health and previous research has shown that some foods are particularly good at positively impacting your brain. Fermented foods are a source of tryptophan, an amino acid key to the production of serotonin, a messenger in the brain which influences several aspects of brain function, including mood. The foods may also contain other brain messengers (known as neurotransmitters) in their raw form. It’s no surprise then that research has shown that eating fermented foods may have various long- and short-term impacts on brain function, such as reducing stress. But which foods have the biggest impact on brain health?? 

Researchers at APC Microbiome, University College Cork, and Teagasc (Ireland’s Agriculture and Food Development Authority) in Moorepark, Cork, Ireland are currently working on a large study to finally answer this question. Ramya Balasubramanian and the team at APC compared sequencing data from over 200 foods from all over the world, looking for a variety of metabolites that are known to be beneficial to brain health.?? 

The study is still in it’s initial stages, but researchers are already surprised by preliminary results. Ramya explains, “I expected only a few fermented foods would show up, but out of 200 fermented foods, almost all of them showed the ability to exert some sort of potential to improve gut and brain health”. More research is needed to fully understand which groups of fermented foods have the greatest effects on the human brain, but results are showing an unexpected victor. 

“Fermented sugar-based products and fermented vegetable-based products are like winning the lottery when it comes to gut and brain health”, explains Ramya.  

“For all that we see on sugar-based products being demonised, fermented sugar takes the raw sugar substrate, and it converts it into a plethora of metabolites that can have a beneficial effect on the host. So even though it has the name ‘sugar’ in it, if you do a final metabolomic screen, the sugar gets used by the microbial community that's present in the food, and they get converted into these beautiful metabolites that are ready to be cherry picked by us for further studies.”? 

These further studies are what’s next for Ramya. She plans to put her top ranked fermented foods through rigorous testing using an artificial colon and various animal models to see how these metabolites affect the brain.?? 

Ramya hopes that the public can utilise these preliminary results and consider including fermented foods in their diet as a natural way of supporting their mental health and general well-being. 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230413154458.htm

Time out: We all need a three-day weekend

April 13, 2023

Science Daily/University of South Australia

As a four-day work week is trialled in countries across the globe, health researchers at the University of South Australia say they're 'all in' when it comes to a long weekend, especially as new empirical research shows that the extra time off is good for our health.

Assessing changes in daily movements before, during and after holidays, researchers found that people displayed more active, healthy behaviours when they were on holiday, even when they only had a three-day break.

Across the 13-month study period, people generally took an average two to three holidays, each being around 12 days. The most common holiday type was 'outdoor recreation' (35 per cent), followed by 'family/social events' (31 per cent), 'rest and relaxation' (17 per cent) and 'non-leisure pursuits' such as caring for others or home renovations (17 per cent).

Specifically, it showed that on holiday people:

• engaged in 13 per cent more moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) each day (or five min/day more)

• were five per cent less sedentary each day (or 29 min/day less)

• slept four per cent more each day (or 21 min/day more).

UniSA researcher Dr Ty Ferguson says that the research indicates that people display healthier behaviours when they are on holiday.

"When people go on holiday, they're changing their everyday responsibilities because they're not locked down to their normal schedule," Dr Ferguson says.

"In this study, we found that movement patterns changed for the better when on holiday, with increased physical activity and decreased sedentary behaviour observed across the board.

"We also found that people gained an extra 21 minutes of sleep each day they were on holiday, which can have a range of positive effects on our physical and mental health. For example, getting enough sleep can help improve our mood, cognitive function, and productivity. It can also help lower our risk of developing a range of health conditions, such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and depression.

"Interestingly, the size of these changes increased in line with the length of the holiday -- so the longer the holiday, the better the health benefits."

The study used data from the Annual rhythms in adults' lifestyle and health (ARIA) study where 308 adults (mean age 40.4 years) wore fitness trackers 24 hours a day for 13 months. Minute-by-minute

movement behaviour data were aggregated into daily totals to compare movement behaviours pre-holiday, during holiday and post-holiday.

Senior researcher UniSA's Prof Carol Maher says that the study offers support for the growing movement for a four-day week.

"A shorter working week is being trialled by companies all over the world. Not surprisingly, employees reported less stress, burnout, fatigue, as well as better mental health and improved work-life balance," Prof Maher says.

"This study provides empirical evidence that people have healthier lifestyle patterns when they have a short break, such as a three-day weekend. This increase in physical activity and sleep is expected to have positive effects on both mental and physical health, contributing to the benefits observed with a four-day work week.

"Importantly, our study also showed that even after a short holiday, people's increased sleep remained elevated for two weeks, showing that the health benefits of a three-day break can have lasting effects beyond the holiday itself.

"As the world adapts to a new normal, perhaps it's time to embrace the long weekend as a way to boost our physical and mental health."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230413011820.htm

Sedentary time may significantly enlarge adolescents' heart

April 12, 2023

Science Daily/University of Eastern Finland

In adolescents, sedentary time may increase heart size three times more than moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, a paper published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports concludes. The study was conducted in collaboration between the University of Bristol in the UK, the University of Exeter in the UK, and the University of Eastern Finland. The researchers explored the associations of sedentary time, light physical activity, and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity with cardiac structure and function.

Recent World Health Organization reports and guidelines note that more than 80% of adolescents across the globe have insufficient physical activity per day. Physical inactivity has been associated with several non-communicable diseases in adults such as cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. In the pediatric population, the majority of movement behaviour studies have focused on the effect of sedentary behaviour and physical activity on cardiometabolic health which includes blood pressure, insulin resistance, blood lipids, and body mass index.

There has been a gap in knowledge on the effect of sedentary time and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity on cardiac structure and function in large adolescent populations due to the scarcity of device-measured movement behaviour and echocardiography assessment in the pediatric population. A higher left ventricular mass, which indicates an enlarged or hypertrophied heart, and a reduced left ventricular function, which indicates decreased heart function, may in combination or independently lead to an increased risk of heart failure, myocardial infarction, stroke, and premature cardiovascular death.

The current study, which used data from the University of Bristol study Children of the 90s (also known as the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children) included 530 adolescents aged 17 years who had complete measurements of fat mass, muscle mass, glucose, lipids, an inflammation marker, insulin, smoking status, socio-economic status, family history of cardiovascular disease, echocardiographic cardiac function and structure measures, and accelerometer-based measure of sedentary time, light physical activity, and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity.

On average, adolescents spent almost 8 hours/day sedentary and about 49 minutes/day in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in this new study. It was observed that both sedentary time and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity were associated with higher left ventricular mass. However, the increase in cardiac mass (3.8 g/m2.7) associated with sedentary time was three times higher than the cardiac mass increase (1.2 g/m2.7) associated with moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. This finding was observed in adolescents irrespective of their obesity status, i.e among adolescents who had normal weight and those who were overweight or obese. Importantly, light physical activity was not associated with an increase in cardiac mass but was associated with better cardiac function estimated from left ventricular diastolic function.

"This novel evidence extends our knowledge of the adverse effects of sedentary time on cardiac health. It is known among adults that a 5 g/m2 increase in cardiac mass may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and death by 7 -- 20%. Engaging in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity also slightly enlarged the heart but it seems an acceptable negative side effect considering several other health benefits of moderate-to-vigorous exercise. Hence, public health experts, health policymakers, high school administrators and teachers, pediatricians, and caregivers are encouraged to facilitate adolescent participation in physical activity to enable a healthy heart," says Andrew Agbaje, a physician and clinical epidemiologist at the University of Eastern Finland.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230412131217.htm

Improving your work-life balance can make you a more effective leader at work

April 12, 2023

Science Daily/University of Florida

Silencing your notifications and ignoring your email at the end of the workday could make you a better leader at your job, according to new research.

Managers who disconnected from their jobs at home felt more refreshed the next day, identified as effective leaders and helped their employees stay on target better than bosses who spent their off hours worrying about work.

Less-experienced leaders were especially prone to becoming ineffective if they spent their time focusing on their jobs at home.

The upshot is that the key to effective leadership in the office might be a better work-life balance. Led by scientists from the University of Florida, the University of Arizona and Florida State University, the new study was published April 6 in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

"The simple message of this study is that if you want to be an effective leader at work, leave work at work," said Klodiana Lanaj, a professor in UF's Warrington College of Business who led the research. "This is particularly important for inexperienced leaders, as they seem to benefit the most from recovery experiences when at home. Leaders have challenging jobs as they juggle their own role responsibilities with the needs of their followers, and they need to recover from the demands of the leadership role."

The study surveyed managers and their employees at U.S. businesses in 2019 and 2022. The researchers assessed leaders' ability to disconnect from work when at home the night before and their level of energy and how strongly they identified as a leader in the morning at work. Employees rated their bosses on their ability to lead their teams.

"What we found is that on nights when leaders were able to completely turn off and not think about work, they were more energized the next day, and they felt better connected to their leadership role at work. On those same days, their followers reported that these leaders were more effective in motivating them and in guiding their work," Lanaj said.

"But on nights when leaders reported that they were thinking about the negative aspects of work, they couldn't really recuperate their energy by the morning," she said. "They saw themselves as less leader-like and they weren't as effective, as rated by their followers."

How to improve work-life balance

So how can leaders -- and businesses -- promote this kind of work-life balance to build effective leaders?

"My hope is that this study will give managers data to support their decision to be present at home and to disconnect from work," Lanaj said.

While Lanaj's study didn't ask managers how they relaxed at home, other research points to well-known ways to unwind and reset: Exercise, socialize with friends, spend quality time with family, or engage with TV shows, books or hobbies. What helps one person leave work at the office might not help another. The key, Lanaj says, is to find the methods that let you decompress from work as much as possible.

And businesses that want the best out of their leaders on the job should help them recharge at home. Reducing after-hours emailing and expectations for on-call work is one way to do that.

Tech fuels a lot of this after-hours work, but also might offer a solution. You can set your phone to disable notifications after a certain hour or leave work devices in a dedicated office.

"You can start small," Lanaj said. "Say, 'After this time in the evening, I won't check my work email.' See where that takes you."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230412131136.htm