Our Family 2014 Card… we hope you have a wonderful season and a Happy New Year!
Here is what I am reading today:
“”Rather than being one of many factors, vitamin D could have a regulative role in the development of SAD,” said Alan Stewart of the University of Georgia College of Education.
An international research partnership between UGA, the University of Pittsburgh and the Queensland University of Technology in Australia reported the finding in the November 2014 issue of the journal Medical Hypotheses.
Stewart and Michael Kimlin from QUT’s School of Public Health and Social Work conducted a review of more than 100 leading articles and found a relationship between vitamin D and seasonal depression.”
““We found that we could tell whether a person has autism or not by the their brain activation patterns when they think about social concepts. This gives us a whole new perspective to understanding psychiatric illnesses and disorders,” said Just, the D. O. Hebb University Professor of Psychology in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences and a leading researcher into the neural basis of autism. “We’ve shown not just that the brains of people with autism may be different, or that their activation is different, but that the way social thoughts are formed is different. We have discovered a biological thought-marker for autism.””
“”This is the first time we have been able to explicitly characterize subtypes of severity in autism spectrum disorder,” said Jorge V. José, Ph.D., vice president of research at Indiana University and the James H. Rudy Professor of Physics in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences. “We also have determined that a pattern exists in the movement variations in some cases between children with autism and their parents, leading us to surmise that genetics plays a role in movement patterns.””
“The research, led by Dr Ben Long and colleagues Professor Sriram Subramanian, Sue Ann Seah and Tom Carter from the University of Bristol’s Department of Computer Science, could change the way 3D shapes are used. The new technology could enable surgeons to explore a CT scan by enabling them to feel a disease, such as a tumour, using haptic feedback.”
““The HPA axis is a complex system with a feedback loop, so that damage to any one of the three areas will affect the others,” said study lead author Thomas M. Malone, B.A., from the Department of Neurosurgery at Saint Louis University School of Medicine in Saint Louis. “It’s suspected of playing an important role in PTSD, but there is limited neuroimaging research in the veteran population.””
“We’re using what we learned in these experiments to try to develop a new tool that would allow physicians to not only examine the eye but also to stimulate specific parts of the retina to determine whether it’s functioning properly,” said senior investigator Vladimir J. Kefalov, PhD, associate professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at Washington University. “We hope that ultimately this discovery will have some very practical applications.”
The findings are published Dec. 1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Online Early Edition. Collaborators include scientists in Cleveland, Poland, Switzerland and Norway,”
9 Comments
ysolano · December 3, 2014 at 12:26 am
Reading the article on 3-D haptic shapes was really interesting because we can relate the findings to our lecture’s discussion on CT scans. Reviewing CT scans and taking into consideration their pros and cons makes this new found research a tool to help surgeons make better assessments and to also help them have a clearer understanding as to what kind of disease or tumor they are dealing with. This new type of 3-D modeling could also potentially prevent surgical difficulties that otherwise might occur. Since CT scans cannot distinguish between a living brain or dead brain, I think it would be interesting to know if the 3-D shapes would also work as a kind of autopsy; giving doctor’s a better insight as to what the cause of death could have been. I think this technique could be really useful because it’s taking the ultrasound and its vibration used in medical imaging to “see” the 3-D shapes in a more efficient way.
michelle.georgette · December 4, 2014 at 1:25 pm
The article about autism based on Carnegie Mellon research was interesting and crucial to autism discoveries. As we know, there are major social restrictions faced by people with autism. The researchers have found a way to pinpoint the exact response to simple concepts about these social restrictions. They conducted an experiment that had a control group and a group of patients with autism. Each participant heard a set of words that promote social interaction. The control group showed brain activation when they heard the work “hug” for example while those with autism did not. This was quite an interesting test because the researchers of the study could narrow it down to the activation in a fraction of the brain as a way to indicate a deficiency in autistic patients.
michelle.georgette · December 4, 2014 at 1:40 pm
In the PTSD and brain scans article, I thought the research was rather groundbreaking. We typically categorize this as a social-anxiety disorder. The fact that research is growing about detecting this disorder through brain activity can help with future cases. This is important to bringing peace to veterans or others who have experienced this horrific anxiety disorder.
ahoatua · December 4, 2014 at 6:58 pm
I was very intrigued by the new findings in the article “Understanding Autism.” There are many steps being taken towards the research of autism and this was a great step because it can not only be useful to autism studies, but it could also potentially help with the understanding of other psychological disorders. The image of the two brains being compared in this article was really cool because it helped me understand visually what the findings were in this research. To me, it captured the uniqueness of the brain pertaining to each person.
ACapanna · December 5, 2014 at 3:24 pm
I think it’s very valuable that they can use brain scans to differentiate PTSD from other disorders. There is so much overlap between symptoms of different mental disorders. When we know what is really going on we can make better treatment choices. People often feel inclined to tell others to “just get over it.” My theory is that having physical evidence will help people to be empathetic and have more patience when helping loved ones who are suffering from PTSD. Also, it may help to alleviate stigma and to protect people from being accused of faking it.
sarahdelossantos · December 5, 2014 at 9:58 pm
I found the article about vitamin D and seasonal affective disorder interesting because I thought this was already common knowledge! SAD is associated with a decrease in sunlight, and vitamin D is usually derived from sunlight (and/or milk). I remember researching SAD in high school during a particularly bleak and grey winter and many advice columns suggested upping one’s vitamin D intake to prevent “winter blues”. It is interesting however that there is now even more quantified data supporting a link between overall health and depression. I did find the comment that those with “greater skin pigmentation” may be at greater risk of “psychological and psychiatric conditions” disturbing. I feel that jumping from “those with darker skin have less vitamin D” to “those with darker skin are more likely to have psychological issues” without more research is quite an irresponsible claim. Jumping to conclusions about people based on skin color isn’t something to take lightly. Frankly, without the research to back up such a claim, the researcher should have kept it to himself. This is especially true in light of the fact that the researcher is from Australia, where racism and prejudice against Aboriginal peoples is still sadly prevalent.
sarahdelossantos · December 5, 2014 at 10:05 pm
I also read the article about brain scans and PTSD. I agree with the above comment that physical evidence may reduce the stigma of PTSD. This is especially true for sexual assault survivors. Since PTSD is usually associated with combat veterans, those who admit to experiencing PTSD after sexual assault are often accused of “faking it” or “overreacting” by people who can’t see that sexual assault can be just as traumatizing as combat (both are near-death situations). It is unfortunate that our society is so predisposed against believing assault survivors without “hard evidence” but it is very positive news that there is new science that may help survivors recover. I am highly interested in law, so I can imagine brain scans being used as evidence in order to determine damages in sexual assault cases. This could have a great impact on how courts determine cases that would normally be considered “grey areas” or “unclear”.
allison.ying · December 6, 2014 at 12:06 am
I read the article about PTSD brain scans. I find it really exciting that we have found a way to physically see this illness. I strongly agree with the commenter above me about the potential for relieving the stigma and increasing empathy from society. People are reluctant to believe in anything that they can’t see.
smorri07 · February 8, 2015 at 5:33 pm
The article linking Vitamin D deficiency with depression was extremely interesting to me because, as a future doctor of naturopathic medicine, my interests lie in finding alternative, natural solutions to some of our most common physical and mental issues. In fact, as the alternative and holistic side of medicine gains ground, I would not be surprised to see more and more doctors using supplements such as Vitamin D to address depression before turing to more extreme, pharmaceutical drug measures. In my opinion, diving deeper into links such as a vitamin D deficiency like we see here is key to getting away from over-prescribing harmful anti-depressants. Also, this article holds a lot of weight for certain geographical areas where the climate may be much more cloudy than elsewhere. A dramatic difference in sun exposure, lessoning vitamin D absorption, will lead to much higher rates of depression in places with these climates than in those without. This means that depression in cloudy areas may need to be addressed differently at first than depression in a sunny climate. So many possibilities to consider! I am excited to see where further studies in the area of natural depression treatments go.