Infections Increase Risk of Mood Disorders
June 17, 2013—New research shows that every third person who is diagnosed for the first time with a mood disorder has been admitted to hospital with an infection prior to the diagnosis. The study is the largest of its kind to date to show a clear correlation between infection levels and the risk of developing mood disorders.
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Lead Acts to Trigger Schizophrenia
NEW YORK; May 31, 2013—Mice engineered with a human gene for schizophrenia and exposed to lead during early life exhibited behaviors and structural changes in their brains consistent with schizophrenia. Scientists at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine say their findings suggest a synergistic effect between lead exposure and a genetic risk factor, and open an avenue to better understanding the complex gene-environment interactions that put people at risk for schizophrenia and other mental disorders.
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Study Finds Genetic Prediction of Postpartum Depression
Baltimore, MD; May 21, 2013—The epigenetic modifications, which alter the way genes function without changing the underlying DNA sequence, can apparently be detected in the blood of pregnant women during any trimester, potentially providing a simple way to foretell depression in the weeks after giving birth, and an opportunity to intervene before symptoms become debilitating.
"Postpartum depression can be harmful to both mother and child," says study leader Zachary Kaminsky, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "But we don't have a reliable way to screen for the condition before it causes harm, and a test like this could be that way."
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Psychopaths Are Not Neurally Equipped to Have Concern for Others
Chicago, April 24, 2013—Prisoners who are psychopaths lack the basic neurophysiological “hardwiring” that enables them to care for others, according to a new study by neuroscientists at the University of Chicago and the University of New Mexico.
“A marked lack of empathy is a hallmark characteristic of individuals with psychopathy,” said the lead author of the study, Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor in Psychology and Psychiatry at UChicago. Psychopathy affects approximately 1 percent of the United States general population and 20 percent to 30 percent of the male and female U.S. prison population. Relative to non-psychopathic criminals, psychopaths are responsible for a disproportionate amount of repetitive crime and violence in society.
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Google Searches about Mental Illness Follow Seasonal Patterns
San Diego, CA, April 9, 2013—A new study published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine finds that Google searches for information across all major mental illnesses and problems followed seasonal patterns, suggesting mental illness may be more strongly linked with seasonal patterns than previously thought.
"The Internet is a game changer," said lead investigator John W. Ayers, PhD, MA, of the Graduate School of Public Health at San Diego State University. "By passively monitoring how individuals search online we can figuratively look inside the heads of searchers to understand population mental health patterns."
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Differences in Brain Activity in Children at Risk of Schizophrenia Predate Onset of Symptoms
CHAPEL HILL, NC; March 22, 2013—Research from the University of North Carolina has shown that children at risk of developing schizophrenia have brains that function differently than those not at risk.
Brain scans of children who have parents or siblings with the illness reveal a neural circuitry that is hyperactivated or stressed by tasks that peers with no family history of the illness seem to handle with ease. Because these differences in brain functioning appear before neuropsychiatric symptoms such as trouble focusing, paranoid beliefs, or hallucinations, the scientists believe that the finding could point to early warning signs or “vulnerability markers” for schizophrenia.
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Persistent Negative Attitude Can Undo Effectiveness of Exposure Therapy for Phobias
COLUMBUS, February 26, 2013—Because confronting fear won’t always make it go away, researchers suggest that people with phobias must alter memory-driven negative attitudes about feared objects or events to achieve a more lasting recovery from what scares them the most.
Ohio State University psychology researchers determined that people who retained negative attitudes about public speaking after exposure therapy were more likely to experience a return of their fear a month later than were people whose attitudes were less negative. The fear returned among those with unchanged attitudes even if they showed improvement during the treatment.
The scientists also developed a way to evaluate attitudes immediately after the completion of exposure therapy. The tool both confirms their argument that persistent negative attitudes can undo therapy’s effects and offers clinicians a way to assess whether a few more sessions of treatment might be in order.
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Excessive TV in Childhood Linked to Long-Term Antisocial Behaviour
February 18, 2013—Children and adolescents who watch a lot of television are more likely to manifest antisocial and criminal behaviour when they become adults, according to a new University of Otago, New Zealand, study published online in the U.S. journal Pediatrics.
Study co-author Associate Professor Bob Hancox of the University's Department of Preventive and Social Medicine says he and colleagues found that the risk of having a criminal conviction by early adulthood increased by about 30% with every hour that children spent watching TV on an average weeknight.
The study also found that watching more television in childhood was associated, in adulthood, with aggressive personality traits, an increased tendency to experience negative emotions, and an increased risk of antisocial personality disorder; a psychiatric disorder characterised by persistent patterns of aggressive and antisocial behaviour.
The researchers found that the relationship between TV viewing and antisocial behaviour was not explained by socio-economic status, aggressive or antisocial behaviour in early childhood, or parenting factors.
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“Connection Error” in the Brains of Anorexics
January 24, 2013—Researchers at Germany's Ruhr Universität-Bochum (RUB) have found that anorexics have altered connectivity in two brain regions crucial for the perception of body image. The stronger this “connection error” was, the more overweight the respondents considered themselves. “These alterations in the brain could explain why women with anorexia perceive themselves as fatter, even though they are objectively underweight” says Prof. Dr. Boris Suchan of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Ruhr-Universität. The research appears in the journal Behavioural Brain Research.
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Mistaking OCD for ADHD Has Serious Consequences
December 18, 2012, AFTAU —On the surface, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) appear very similar, with impaired attention, memory, or behavioral control. But Professor Reuven Dar of Tel Aviv University's School of Psychological Sciences argues that these two neuropsychological disorders have very different roots—and there are enormous consequences if they are mistaken for each other.
Dar and fellow researcher Amitai Abramovitch, who completed his Ph.D. under Dar's supervision, have determined that despite appearances, OCD and ACHD are far more different than alike. While groups of both OCD and ADHD patients were found to have difficulty controlling their abnormal impulses in a laboratory setting, only the ADHD group had significant problems with these impulses in the real world.
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Mouse Research Links Adolescent Stress to Severe Adult Mental Illness
Baltimore, MD; January 17, 2013—Working with mice, Johns Hopkins researchers have established a link between elevated levels of a stress hormone in adolescence - a critical time for brain development - and genetic changes that, in young adulthood, cause severe mental illness in those predisposed to it.
The findings, reported in the journal Science, could have wide-reaching implications in both the prevention and treatment of schizophrenia, severe depression and other mental illnesses.
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Making Sense of the Insanity Defense
December 1, 2010—Some of the persistent misconceptions people hold about the insanity plea is that it is overused, that it is a defense "tactic," that most people who use it are faking, that it is often successful, and that those who succeed get off "scot-free" and back on the streets. Are these impressions accurate?
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Music on Prescription Could Help Treat Emotional and Physical Pain
September 9, 2010—New research into how music conveys emotion could benefit the treatment of depression and the management of physical pain. Using an innovative combination of music psychology and leading-edge audio engineering the project is looking in more detail than ever before at how music conveys emotion.
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Review Provides New Insights into the Causes of Anorexia
July 21, 2009—New imaging technology provides insight into abnormalities in the brain circuitry of patients with anorexia nervosa (commonly known as anorexia) that may contribute to the puzzling symptoms found in people with the eating disorder. In a review paper published on line in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Walter Kaye, MD, professor of psychiatry and director of the Eating Disorders Program at the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues describe dysfunction in certain neural circuits of the brain which may help explain why people develop anorexia in the first place, and behaviors such as the relentless pursuit of dieting and weight loss.
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