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Tag: Psychology and Psychiatry

  • Student researchers explore Creighton University’s COVID experience

    Student researchers explore Creighton University’s COVID experience

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    Newswise — Documenting “lessons learned,” a staple of military after-battle analysis, found a useful civilian expression last year when a coalition of students reviewed Creighton University’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    They wanted to learn how those students fared during the 2020-2021 academic year who were required by pandemic protocols to quarantine or otherwise self-isolate, what concerns they experienced, how they rated Creighton’s COVID policies, and how those policies might be improved.

    The investigation emerged from the recruitment of social work students by Creighton’s Student Health Services to work as contact tracers.

    Cathy Fox, MSW, assistant professor in the Department of Cultural and Social Studies, says social work undergraduates possess skills pertinent to reaching out and monitoring psychosocial needs, so they were natural participants.

    “Student Health was interested in learning more about the experience of quarantine and isolation, so we signed on and then enlisted our colleagues in medical anthropology to help with the research piece,” she says.

    The research was led by six interdisciplinary students under the direction of Fox; Laura Heinemann, PhD, associate professor and director of the medical anthropology undergraduate program; Angela Maynard, then-associate director of student health education; Alexander Roedlach, PhD, professor in the Department of Cultural and Social Studies; and Monica White, MSW, assistant professor of cultural and social studies and director of Creighton’s social work program.

    “Seeing this research come together before my own eyes has been a one-in-a-million chance.” — Megan Loh, neuroscience senior

    Titled “Learning from Times of Restriction: College Student Experiences of Stressors and Supports in COVID Quarantine/Isolation,” the project demonstrated the importance of bringing students together from different disciplines — in this case, social work, medical anthropology, neuroscience and health administration and policy.

    “Students learned if you want to succeed in life you have to collaborate with people who have a different academic and professional background,” Roedlach says. “We are all good at something, and we have to bring these things together.”

    The collaboration found that quarantined students were concerned about their personal health and well-being but also that of their peers. Some worried that online learning might impair their academic progress, while others regretted missing the social experiences that are an important part of university life.

    Others, in contrast, valued the opportunity to catch up on sleep or to pursue their studies quietly without interruption by a roommate.

    “Just the experience of being isolated and having to be in a space by yourself, or with just a small number of people, in itself became a source of stress for some students,” Heinemann says. “But for those who were able to quarantine or isolate in their own homes, who mentioned having good support from their family, friends, and professors, for them it was sometimes an opportunity to recharge.”

    While understanding that pandemics can arrive without warning, the survey nonetheless found that future response planning could benefit from greater student involvement.

    Alissa Jeffrey (pictured above), a junior in medical anthropology, and Anna Kotula, a senior in biology and medical anthropology, were among six students involved in the project, the others being Chloe Cassens, BA’22; Jamaica Dulluog, a junior in health administration and policy; Megan Loh, a senior in neuroscience; and Thea Pflum, BA’21. Others lending a hand were Chelsea Riediger, BSW ’21 and Holly Stokes, BSW ’21.

    Jeffrey and Kotula presented a research poster summing up their findings at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association held in Seattle in November 2022. Presenting at the largest conference of anthropologists in the United States was a weighty challenge, and although Roedlach stood ready to assist, he says the students fared well without him.

    Jeffrey, in partnership with Heinemann, also gave an oral presentation.

    “Going to the American Anthropological Association Conference in Seattle was inspiring,” she says. “I was captivated by the variety of projects there, and I loved being able to meet fellow students and professional anthropologists.”

    For Loh, whose classes in biology taught her about the mechanisms of the COVID-19 virus, the opportunity to explore the pandemic’s social impact was a rare opportunity.

    “Seeing this research come together before my own eyes has been a one-in-a-million chance to learn more about the communities I belong to as well as the communities I wish to serve in the near future,” she says.

    For Kotula, the opportunity to attend a major professional conference proved ample reward for time invested.

    “I highly valued networking opportunities, listening to other presentations, and engaging with other students from various universities,” she says. “Seattle also had many cultural and educational opportunities to experience. I am forever thankful for this opportunity with my classmates and professors.”

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    Creighton University

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  • Gun Violence: Can Research Help?

    Gun Violence: Can Research Help?

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    Newswise — The problem of gun violence in America can at times seem utterly intractable.

    The horrific frequency of mass shootings (almost 300 in the first six months of 2022, according to the Gun Violence Archive), the tragic daily toll of firearm-related deaths (124 per day on average, according to the CDC), and the inability of politicians to implement effective gun control measures have had devastating personal consequences for individuals and families and pose a significant public health challenge for the nation.

    The CDC reports that firearm-related injuries rank among the five leading causes of death for people ages 1 to 44 and are now the leading cause of death for children and adolescents, killing more people ages 1 to 19 than car accidents, drug overdoses, or cancer.

    But for epidemiologist and gun violence expert Charles Branas, PhD, the Gelman Professor of Epidemiology and chair of the Department of Epidemiology in the Mailman School of Public Health, the scope and recalcitrance of the problem only heighten the urgency of answering one basic question: “What do you do about it?”

    Toward that end, in 2020 Dr. Branas helped launch the Columbia Scientific Union for the Reduction of Gun Violence, or SURGE, a coalition of faculty, students, and alumni from across the university dedicated to finding creative scientific solutions to gun violence.

    The need for such interventions is especially pressing given the difficulty of enacting gun control at the state and national levels, despite research by Dr. Branas and others showing that stricter gun control laws do in fact reduce gun violence. (The bipartisan gun safety legislation passed by Congress in June supports some existing evidence-based measures, but in limited fashion.)

    Efforts to find solutions have been hindered by a lack of government funding for scientific research into gun violence. Federal funding dried up in 1996 after Congress passed the Dickey Amendment, which barred the CDC, and later the NIH, from spending money to promote gun control and dissuaded many young scientists from pursuing careers in gun violence research.

    Recently, however, SURGE and other groups persuaded Congress to renew federal funding. And Dr. Branas hopes that fresh grants from the CDC and the NIH, coupled with opportunities for networking and collaboration provided by SURGE, will encourage a new generation of researchers to develop innovative, evidence-based interventions to prevent gun violence. 

    Dr. Branas sees signs that this is already happening.

    Junior faculty, including Ashley Blanchard, MD, a pediatric emergency physician at VP&S, are investigating novel interventions with the support of fellow SURGE members. And the coalition is helping senior faculty like Dr. Branas and Paul Appelbaum, MD, the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine and Law, engage with like-minded colleagues from a variety of disciplines. Other SURGE members are from Columbia’s schools of law, nursing, and social work and from Teachers College and Barnard College.

    “I remember walking into the room during our first meeting and just being in awe that there was this larger campus consortium of people interested in doing this type of work,” says Dr. Blanchard, assistant professor of pediatrics (in emergency medicine). “As a junior investigator, I can’t navigate the path to a firearm-related research career without having that mentorship. Having that room, and those groups of people, has really been incredible.”

    DEEP ROOTS

    If SURGE represents a new path to novel solutions to gun violence, it builds on decades of work by VP&S physicians. SURGE member Danielle Laraque-Arena, MD, a pediatrician and professor of clinical epidemiology and pediatrics at the Mailman School and VP&S, helped pioneer place-based gun violence interventions while working at Harlem Hospital from 1986 to 2000, a period that coincided with a national spike in gun violence.

    During that time, Dr. Laraque-Arena and Barbara Barlow, MD, then chief of pediatric surgery at Harlem Hospital, partnered with city agencies and community members to reduce injury rates among children and adolescents in central Harlem.

    Data collected through the Northern Manhattan Injury Surveillance System, a population-based survey developed by the Mailman School to tally severe injuries, indicated that adolescents represented 89% of gun-related deaths. Many of the deaths involved unintentional firearm injuries or individuals caught in crossfire, and the vast majority of fatalities occurred before hospitalization, which suggested that only prevention could significantly reduce firearm fatalities among young people in the area. 

    Dr. Laraque-Arena and her colleagues focused on implementing programs designed to create safe spaces and activities for children and adolescents, including several locations that involved rehabilitating and greening public spaces such as parks and playgrounds. The goal was to reduce the risk of intentional and unintentional injuries alike; an analysis showed that such broad-based, environment-oriented projects did significantly reduce firearm injuries.

    Decades later, Dr. Branas tested the power of place-based interventions through citywide experiments conducted in Philadelphia, Detroit, and New Orleans. Among other things, he and his colleagues showed that rehabilitating abandoned buildings and vacant lots, which function as storage lockers for illegal firearms, can reduce gun violence by as much as 39%.

    Dr. Branas is in talks with the parks department and other city agencies to bring similar programs to New York City. Together with SURGE member Sonali Rajan, PhD, an associate professor of health education at Teachers College, Dr. Branas leads a nationwide case-control study of firearm violence prevention tactics and policies in K-12 schools. The study, which is funded by the NIH, will examine 650 schools, comparing the safety measures (metal detectors, active shooter drills, armed school personnel) in place at schools that have experienced shootings with those that have not.

    RIGOROUS SCIENTIFIC APPROACH

    Dr. Appelbaum, who has for many years explored the relationship among mental health, gun violence, and gun policy, and Dr. Blanchard bring a similarly rigorous scientific approach to understanding—and preventing—gun violence.

    In a series of studies examining the relationships among gun ownership, gun violence, and mental illness, Dr. Appelbaum has debunked the notion, often floated by politicians in the wake of mass shootings, that such events can be prevented by addressing serious mental illness.

    “As human beings, we have a natural inclination when we see an act that is incomprehensible to assume that the person who did it must be, in lay terms, crazy,” Dr. Appelbaum says. The data suggest that most of those who commit these acts are not mentally ill. “They’re angry, they’re isolated, they’re frustrated, but they are not suffering from psychosis or other severe mental disorders.”

    Dr. Appelbaum points out that the situation is different for suicide. Depression, substance use, and other mental disorders are strong risk factors for self-harm. As a result, efforts to identify and treat people suffering from such disorders can indeed prevent suicides if done effectively.

    Nonetheless, he says, the most effective way to prevent gun violence, whether directed at others or at oneself, is to limit access to firearms.

    REDUCING ACCESS

    Measures aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of high-risk groups include red flag laws that allow the authorities to temporarily confiscate firearms from individuals who represent a threat to themselves or others; safe storage options, such as gun safes and trigger locks; and child access prevention laws that penalize adults for failing to store firearms safely and allowing children access to them.

    Such measures have been shown to reduce firearm injuries and deaths and could play a particularly important role in preventing suicides. Studies show that most people who attempt suicide do so on impulse, moving from decision to action in less than an hour.

    “There’s good evidence to show that especially in adolescents, the transition from contemplating suicide to action is very short-lived and transient and therefore utilizes whatever means are easily available,” Dr. Blanchard says. 

    The extraordinary lethality of guns means that someone who decides to commit suicide and has access to a firearm is much more likely to succeed than someone who does not. Research indicates that acts of suicide involving a firearm are fatal 90% of the time, compared with 13.5% for self-poisoning.

    “The gun doesn’t give you a second chance,” says Dr. Laraque-Arena.

    As a result, taking firearms out of the equation immediately reduces the likelihood that a suicide attempt will succeed. In keeping with that logic, Dr. Blanchard is conducting a pilot feasibility study of a tablet-based tool called Lock and Protect intended to increase safe storage or removal of guns and other lethal means by parents whose adolescents are at increased risk of suicide.

    The tool is being studied in the pediatric emergency department at NewYork-Presbyterian’s Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, where Dr. Blanchard and her colleagues often see patients who engage in predictors of suicide such as suicidal ideation and self-harm. The primary goal of the study, which involves experts from the departments of emergency medicine and psychiatry and the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research’s Implementation Science Initiative, is to determine the feasibility of implementing the tool and expanding a trial for a larger emergency department population.

    Patients and their parents enroll in the study together. The tool evaluates suicide risk using questionnaires such as the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale and guides parents through the process of identifying the lethal means in their homes (guns, medications, ligatures) and understanding how they can best keep their children safe.

    The tool was designed to take into consideration factors such as the cost of safe storage and the values of parents, including those who feel strongly about gun ownership. At tool completion, a safety plan is provided to parents to implement at home. Dr. Blanchard and her team follow up with parents at two weeks and with patients and parents at four weeks, with the long-term objective of understanding if the tool helps change home storage of guns and other lethal means.

    Lock and Protect is precisely the kind of innovative gun violence intervention that Dr. Branas hoped SURGE would produce, and he is certain that more will be developed as the coalition continues to grow.

    “We are two years into this,” he says. “We’ve done quite a bit, but we’re still building.”

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    Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons

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  • Music Therapy: Relief for Chronic Pain Sufferers

    Music Therapy: Relief for Chronic Pain Sufferers

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    Newswise — In Sörmland, Sweden, music therapy is offered as a method of treatment for people living with chronic pain. Currently, the effects of what is known as the FMT method are being investigated through a research project at Mälardalen University (MDU).

    In the FMT method, (Functionally oriented Music Therapy), music experiences and movement are combined with the purpose of contributing to a person’s well-being and recuperation. During the treatment, a therapist assesses what basic functions the participant needs to develop, and with the help of musical instruments such as drums and cymbals in various formations, different movements in the body are stimulated. Today, the treatment is given through a healthcare agreement in Sörmland.

    In a current research project which has been launched at MDU, researchers wish to investigate whether it is possible to find scientific evidence that the FMT method is effective in increasing well-being, improving quality of life, and if and in what way it can relieve suffering and pain in people who live with chronic pain.

    “I believe it is essential to evaluate health-promoting alternative methods in the area of chronic pain, as many people in society suffer from this. This project aims to explore and evaluate an up until now unexplored treatment method for people living with long standing pain,” says Helena Lööf, Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in Health Sciences at MDU.

    The method contributed to recovery
    The backdrop to the project is a pilot study which showed that the FMT method helped people affected by stroke and Parkinson’s disease to recover better.

    “Pain is the most common reason for seeking primary care services. Therefore in this way, many people are affected and from a societal standpoint it is good to have a variety of support efforts. This is in line with person-centred healthcare.”

    Scientific evaluation needed
    “Through a care agreement with a FMT treatment centre in Eskilstuna, this method is already being used in primary care in Sörmland. But the method is not evidence-based, which is why a scientific evaluation is needed. We will evaluate the effects of FMT in people suffering from chronic pain in comparison with the standard care that is provided in local healthcare. We also wish to create a deeper understanding of the importance of music and movement in recovery.”

    Today, FMT is used in habilitation, rehabilitation and psychiatric healthcare.

    “If the results of the project are positive, that is, if evidence can be found that various aspects of health are affected or improved, these can be used as evidence-based support for health promotion purposes for people suffering with chronic pain.”

    “And on the other hand, if the results show that FMT has no or only a minor effect, this is in itself an important contribution to new knowledge about treatment and recovery for these people. Our research team is looking forward to investigating this over the next few years,” says Helena Lööf.

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    Malardalen University

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  • Alarm theory: an explanation of consciousness

    Alarm theory: an explanation of consciousness

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    Newswise — Humans possess consciousness. But is it merely a by-product of evolution or does it fulfil a fundamental function? Professor Albert Newen from Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, and Professor Carlos Montemayor from San Francisco State University, USA, have developed a new theory on this question. In the Journal of Consciousness Studies of 1. January 2023, they distinguish two levels of consciousness, both of which also have two different functions.

    The first stage of consciousness is basic arousal the second is general alertness. “These two stages are linked to two basic functions that build on each other,” says Albert Newen from the Bochum Institute for Philosophy II, explaining why he doesn’t consider consciousness to be an accidental by-product of evolution. According to the alarm theory, basic arousal first emerged in the course of evolution in order to put the body into a state of alarm so that the organism’s life could be preserved. This happens, for example, when core functions of life such as breathing, food supply or temperature regulation suddenly become unbalanced and survival is at stake.

     

    Basic arousal puts organisms into a state of alarm

    “When we go out into the hot summer sun, we automatically start to sweat. Initially, such slow automatic adaptations usually suffice to keep the body temperature stable. They happen unconsciously,” illustrates Carlos Montemayor. “But if we suddenly enter a very hot environment, these slow adaptations are no longer sufficient. The organism is in danger of being damaged, for example because the skin gets burnt. Typically, the body reacts with a pain signal that puts us in a state of alarm, so we do something about it immediately.” When sudden pain occurs, reflexes are set in motion, including an avoidance and escape reflex. Basic arousal thus has the basic function of putting a biological organism into a state of alarm so that it stops all slow adaptation mechanisms such as sweating and initiates a rapid avoidance and flight response that preserves life. Basic arousal by pain continues and guarantees that people care about their body beyond the first reflex reaction.

     

    General alertness enables new behaviours

    According to Newen and Montemayor, humans and many animals have also developed a general alterness based on this mechanism. It enables many forms of learning that go hand in hand with focused attention. If the body is put into a state of alarm, organisms can use general alertness not only to activate some reflexes, but also to initiate new actions. “For example, it helps us learn that a threat of fire can be eliminated not only by fleeing, but sometimes also by using a fire extinguisher,” outlines Newen.

    Newen and Montemayor see evidence for this theory primarily in two animal studies by groups performing experimental studies. In one study from 2020, guided by Yuri Saalmann at the University of Winsconsin, macaques were anaesthetised, just like humans undergoing surgery. In this state of unconsciousness, the researchers selectively activated a specific area in the brain, the central lateral thalamus. As soon as this stimulation took place, the macaques woke up. When the stimulation was stopped, they fell back into unconsciousness. “The stimulation acted like a switch to activate consciousness,” explains Carlos Montemayor. But it triggered only a basic arousal, because the macaques could feel pain, see things and react to them, but they weren’t able – as with normal wakefulness – to participate in learning tasks.

     

    Crucial role of the thalamus

    A second experiment, guided by Michael Halassa at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, additionally proves that mice possess general everyday wakefulness. The animals learned to respond to a sound in a different way than to a light signal. They were also able to interpret a third signal that told them whether to focus on the sound or the light signal. “Seeing as the mice were able to learn this quickly, it is evident that they’ve mastered learning with focused conscious attention and thus possess general alertness,” concludes Albert Newen. Other areas of the thalamus were significantly involved, namely the activation of a core area, the nucleus reticularis. The alarm theory of consciousness has filled in a gap of major rival theories of consciousness – the so-called global workspace theory of the brain and the information integration theory – which attribute only an insignificant role to the thalamus.

    In addition to basic arousal and general alertness, humans also possess reflexive self-consciousness, namely the capacity to reflect on themselves, their past and their future. “The extent to which some animals have basic forms of reflexive self-consciousness is still an open question,” says Newen. “This form of consciousness will be discussed in future work.”

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    Ruhr-Universitat Bochum

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  • Substance use disorder expert available for comment

    Substance use disorder expert available for comment

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    According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 13.5% of young adults aged 18 to 25 had both a substance use disorder and some form of mental illness in 2021. 

    Lokesh Shahani, MD, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavorial sciences at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, has done extensive research on substance use disorder. 

    Shahani’s research and clinical background includes substance use, HIV psychiatry, addiction, adult general psychiatry, and geriatric psychiatry. He is board certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine, the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, and the American Board of Internal Medicine. He has over 45 publications in peer-reviewed journals and presented his work nationally.

    To arrange an interview contact:

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    University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

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  • Psychology Expert: Smartphones Negatively Impact Mental Health

    Psychology Expert: Smartphones Negatively Impact Mental Health

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    This Mental Health Awareness Month, one researcher explains why “unplugging” from your smartphone could improve your psychological well-being. 

    Melissa Huey, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at New York Institute of Technology, studied the impact of smartphones in the college classroom and discovered that the devices were damaging students’ mental health. 

    Huey and a colleague conducted a six-week study to see how college students’ mindfulness, anxiety, and course comprehension were affected when smartphones were removed from the classroom vs. when they were physically present.

    In two classes, students handed in their smartphones at the beginning of the lecture. In two other classes, which served as a control group, students kept their phones and used them with no limitations. At the end of the six-week study, students self-reported scores on course comprehension, mindfulness, and anxiety levels.

    “Students who handed in their smartphones reported much higher comprehension and mindfulness scores. In addition, they reported lower levels of anxiety,” Huey notes. “However, the opposite was true for those who kept their phones. These students reported lower comprehension and mindfulness scores and higher anxiety levels.”

    Huey’s findings, which were published in the journal Innovative Higher Education, make a strong case for taking smartphone breaks.

    This is not the first time that she has explored how technology affects mental health in younger individuals. In 2021, Huey authored an International Business Times op-ed contending that smartphones and social media were eroding Gen Z’s critical thinking abilities. The following year, she commented on a study that found TikTok’s algorithm offered teens psychologically damaging content that promoted self-harm and eating disorders.  

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    New York Institute of Technology, New York Tech

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

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

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    Newswise — 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.”

    Reference

    Woodrow, RE et al. Acute thalamic connectivity precedes chronic postconcussive symptoms in mild traumatic brain injury. Brain; 26 April 2023; DOI: 10.1093/brain/awad056

     

    ENDS

     

    About the University of Cambridge

    The University of Cambridge is one of the world’s leading universities, with a rich history of radical thinking dating back to 1209. Its mission is to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

    Cambridge was second in the influential 2023 QS World University Rankings, the highest rated institution in the UK.

    The University comprises 31 autonomous Colleges and over 100 departments, faculties and institutions. Its 20,000 students include around 9,000 international students from 147 countries. In 2022, 72.5% of its new undergraduate students were from state schools and more than 25% from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

    Cambridge research spans almost every discipline, from science, technology, engineering and medicine through to the arts, humanities and social sciences, with multi-disciplinary teams working to address major global challenges. In the Times Higher Education’s rankings based on the UK Research Excellence Framework, the University was rated as the highest scoring institution covering all the major disciplines.

    The University sits at the heart of the ‘Cambridge cluster’, in which more than 5,200 knowledge-intensive firms employ more than 71,000 people and generate £19 billion in turnover. Cambridge has the highest number of patent applications per 100,000 residents in the UK.

    www.cam.ac.uk

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    University of Cambridge

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  • Columbia University Launches Center for Precision Psychiatry & Mental Health with $75 Million Grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF)

    Columbia University Launches Center for Precision Psychiatry & Mental Health with $75 Million Grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF)

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    Newswise — NEW YORK, April 24, 2023—Columbia University today announced the establishment of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Center for Precision Psychiatry & Mental Health at Columbia University. The center will catalyze the scientific innovation and clinical implementation of precision medicine to advance the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness. The center is being established with a $75 million grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), an international philanthropic organization, as part of SNF’s Global Health Initiative (GHI). 

    The SNF Center is a joint effort of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Columbia’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. It will be embedded within Columbia University’s unique ecosystem of research and clinical services and will draw upon expertise from the Columbia-affiliated New York Genome Center and the New York State Office of Mental Health.

    The increasing sophistication of precision medicine is allowing scientists and health care providers to integrate each person’s unique genomic, physiologic, and health profiles to create optimized prevention and treatment strategies. Columbia University has been at the forefront of recent efforts to elucidate the genetic and biological changes that cause a multitude of severe mental illnesses. The SNF Center for Precision Psychiatry & Mental Health will build upon and expand this knowledge by accumulating massive datasets of genomic sequences and longitudinal medical records.  At the same time, by harnessing interdisciplinary expertise from biologists to clinicians, the center will enable the rapid advent, from bench to bedside, of new therapeutic and prevention approaches based upon defined etiologies shared by distinct subgroups of patients.

    “The insights provided by genomics and precision medicine are proving of tremendous value in improving people’s health and lives,” said Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger. “Through this new center, our researchers will meet an urgent human need by harnessing precision medicine to promote mental health for all. We are enormously grateful to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation for joining with Columbia in meeting this profound scientific and humanitarian challenge.”

    “The significant progress we have made in caring for our physical health in recent decades is apparent, but just as clear is the fact that we have left behind our mental health,” said SNF Co-President Andreas Dracopoulos. “All of us at SNF are proud to support the doctors, scientists, and mental health professionals at Columbia in bringing together deep expertise with an equally deep sense of humanity to address one of the most critical issues of our time.”

    The collaboration between Columbia and SNF arose from a joint vision for helping to reduce the individual and societal toll of mental illness and to combat social inequality, stigma, and discrimination in mental health care. The ecosystem of knowledge and practice at Columbia University brings together research and clinical services and connects the public and private sectors. By driving innovation in mental health research and sharing advances as widely as possible, Columbia and SNF will work to help ensure that improved treatments are equally available to everyone. 

    “Many existing treatments in psychiatry do not get at root causes,” said Katrina Armstrong, MD, Chief Executive Officer of Columbia University Irving Medical Center and Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. “We welcome this opportunity to develop new approaches that focus on disease mechanisms and target treatment based on an individual’s unique genetic makeup and biology for the ultimate benefit of lifting up care for the community at large.”

    Among the major projects of the SNF Center is the Genomic Medicine for Mental Health Advancement (GeMMA) initiative, being conducted in close collaboration with the New York Genome Center (NYGC). Tom Maniatis, PhD, Evnin Family Scientific Director and CEO of the NYGC and Isidore Edelman Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia, said, “The GeMMA initiative will not only provide essential information for individual patients, it will also build upon and expand pioneering work at Columbia University central to establishing ‘causal’ relationships between genetic variation and brain function, which is a critical step in the development of new approaches to diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental illness.”

    The New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) is a major partner of the SNF Center with a renowned reputation as one of the largest and most innovative learning public mental healthcare systems in the nation. OMH Commissioner Ann Sullivan, MD said, “The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for Precision Psychiatry & Mental Health ushers in an entirely new era of mental health care through the unprecedented potential for integration of precision psychiatry into standard clinical practice. OMH is proud to partner with Columbia University on this transformative mission, and we are deeply grateful to SNF for their remarkable commitment to improving mental health worldwide.”

    The center will be co-directed by Sander Markx, MD, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (VP&S) and director of the Center for Precision Neuropsychiatry at the New York State Psychiatric Institute; Steven A. Kushner, MD, PhD, professor of psychiatry at VP&S and a principal investigator at the New York State Psychiatric Institute; and Joseph Gogos, MD, PhD, professor of physiology & cellular biophysics, neuroscience, and psychiatry at VP&S and a principal investigator at Columbia’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, who together conveyed their collective vision for the center: “With this extraordinary support from SNF, we are poised to build on the accelerating progress in psychiatric genomics, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and stem cell biology to revolutionize the treatment of mental illness. Through this new understanding, we are fundamentally committed to helping combat stigma and discrimination against people living with mental illness and realizing improved mental health care for all.”

     

    About the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF)

    The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) is one of the world’s leading private, international philanthropic organizations, making grants to nonprofit organizations in the areas of arts and culture, education, health and sports, and social welfare. SNF funds organizations and projects worldwide that aim to achieve a broad, lasting, and positive impact for society at large, and exhibit strong leadership and sound management. The Foundation also supports projects that facilitate the formation of public-private partnerships as an effective means for serving the public welfare. 

    Since 1996, the Foundation has committed over $3.5 billion through more than 5,200 grants to nonprofit organizations in over 130 countries around the world. The ongoing $750 million-plus Global Health Initiative (GHI) is SNF’s largest-ever grant initiative. It includes the design, construction and outfitting of three new hospitals in Greece, procurement of critical equipment such as air ambulances, training programs for health care providers, efforts to expand access to quality mental health care such as the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Initiative in Greece, and collaborations with institutions like The Rockefeller University, the Child Mind Institute, and the National Children’s Alliance in the United States; Sant Joan de Déu Barcelona Children’s Hospital; King Hussein Cancer Foundation and Center in Jordan; and Yorkshire Cancer Research in the United Kingdom.

    See more at snf.org.

     

    About Columbia University

    Among the world’s leading research universities, Columbia University in the City of New York continually seeks to advance the frontiers of scholarship and foster a campus community deeply engaged in understanding and confronting the complex issues of our time through teaching, research, patient care and public service. The Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons is among the top-ranked psychiatry departments in the nation and has made major contributions to the understanding and treatment of psychiatric disorders. For almost a century, the department has collaborated with the New York State Office of Mental Health’s Psychiatric Institute, an international leader in understanding mental health and mental illness. Columbia is also home to the Zuckerman Institute, a renowned neuroscience research center that pioneers urgently needed insights into mind, brain and behavior that benefit health and society.

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  • Ways to reduce nurse fatigue and errors during night shifts

    Ways to reduce nurse fatigue and errors during night shifts

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    Newswise — Nurses exposed to 40 minutes of bright light before their night shifts feel less fatigued and make fewer errors at work, according to a study led by McGill University. The nurses also slept better after their shifts.

    “Healthcare workers are experiencing high levels of fatigue due to staffing shortages, difficult schedules, and heavy workloads. Further, the cost of medical errors has been estimated at tens of billions of dollars per year in North America,” says Jay Olson, the senior author of the recent study in Sleep Health, who completed his PhD at McGill University and is now a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto. “Our study shows that feasible changes, such as getting light exposure before the night shift, may help reduce fatigue and its effects on performance at work, something which could benefit both the nurses and their patients.”

    Light exposure leads to a significant reduction in errors

    Building on a previous study, the researchers recruited close to 60 nurses at the McGill University Health Centre. The nurses worked schedules that rotated between day and night shifts within the same week.

    During an initial 10-day observation period, nurses in the experimental group made a total of 21 errors, ranging from giving the wrong medication dose to accidental needle pricks. However, when given 40 minutes of bright light exposure from a portable light box before their night shifts, the nurses made only 7 errors — a reduction of 67%. This confirmed the results of a previous feasibility study where the researchers saw a similar 62% reduction in the number of errors at work. In contrast, nurses in the control group who changed their diet to improve their alertness showed only a 5% reduction in errors.

    The researchers also found that nurses who followed the evening light intervention reported larger improvements in fatigue compared to those in the control group. In addition, the nurses who reported higher levels of fatigue made more errors at work.

    Small changes could make a big difference to many shift workers

    “Interventions like the one we studied are relevant to a large population of workers, since between a quarter and a third of the world’s employees do some form of shift work,” adds Mariève Cyr, the first author on the paper, a fourth-year medical student at McGill University. “Although we focused on nurses working rotating schedules, our results may apply to other types of shift workers as well.”

    The researchers are conducting workshops on practical fatigue management at hospitals and other workplaces and have launched a website that shift workers can use to adapt the interventions to their own schedules.

    The study

    “An evening light intervention reduces fatigue and errors during night shifts: A randomized controlled trial” by Mariève Cyr et al was published in Sleep Health.

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    McGill University

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  • How is TikTok affecting our mental health? It’s complicated, new U of M study shows

    How is TikTok affecting our mental health? It’s complicated, new U of M study shows

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    Newswise — With the rise of TikTok, many people have wondered about its potential impacts on society, in particular surrounding mental health. According to a first-of-its-kind study from University of Minnesota Twin Cities computer science researchers, the social media platform and its unique algorithm can serve as both a haven and a hindrance for users struggling with their mental state. 

    The researchers’ study will be published in the proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. They will be presenting their research at the upcoming conference happening April 23-28.

    Through interviews with TikTok users, the University of Minnesota team found that the platform provided many people with a sense of self-discovery and community they were unable to find on other social media. However, the researchers said, the TikTok algorithm also displayed a worrying tendency to repeatedly expose users to content that could be harmful to their mental health.

    “TikTok is misunderstood by people who don’t use the platform,” explained Stevie Chancellor, senior author of the paper and an assistant professor in the University of Minnesota Department of Computer Science & Engineering. “They think of it as the dance platform or the place where everybody gets an ADHD diagnosis. Our research shows that TikTok helps people find community and mental health information. But, people should also be mindful of its algorithm, how it works, and when the system is providing them things that are harmful to their wellbeing.”

    TikTok is different from other social media platforms in that it is primarily run by a recommender system algorithm that displays videos it thinks you will like on your “For You Page” feed, as opposed to mostly showing posts from accounts you follow. While this can be great for showing you more content that you like, it can also lead to a rabbit hole of negative content that’s nearly impossible to escape from, the researchers said. 

    “TikTok is a huge platform for mental health content,” said Ashlee Milton, first author of the paper and a University of Minnesota computer science and engineering Ph.D. student. “People tend to gravitate toward social media to find information and other people who are going through similar situations. A lot of our participants talked about how helpful this mental health information was. But at some point, because of the way the feed works, it’s just going to keep giving you more and more of the same content. And that’s when it can go from being helpful to being distressing and triggering.”

    The researchers found that when users get into harmful spirals of negative content, there often is no escape. The TikTok interface includes a “Not interested” button, but the study participants said it didn’t make any difference in the content that appeared in their feeds. 

    The research participants also expressed that it’s difficult to discern when TikTok creators are posting emotional or intense mental health content genuinely, or if they’re just “chasing clout” to gain more followers and likes. Many participants were forced to take breaks or quit using the platform entirely because of the stress it caused.

    According to the University of Minnesota researchers, all of this doesn’t mean TikTok is evil. But, they said, it is useful information to keep in mind when using the platform, especially for mental health purposes.

    “One of our participants jokingly referred to the For You page as a ‘dopamine slot machine,’” Milton said. “They talked about how they would keep scrolling just so that they could get to a good post because they didn’t want to end on a bad post. It’s important to be able to recognize what is happening and say, ‘Okay, let’s not do that.’”

    This study is the first in a series of papers Chancellor and Milton plan on writing about social media, TikTok, and mental health.

    “Ashlee and I are interested in how platforms may promote harmful behaviors to a person so that eventually, we can design strategies to mitigate those bad outcomes,” Chancellor said. “The first step in this process is interviewing people to make sure we understand their experiences on TikTok. We need insights from people before we as computer scientists go in and design to fix this problem.”

    In addition to Chancellor and Milton, the research team included University of Minnesota Twin Cities computer science and engineering Ph.D. student Leah Ajmani and University of Colorado Boulder researcher Michael Ann DeVito.

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    University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering

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  • Time out: We all need a three-day weekend

    Time out: We all need a three-day weekend

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    Newswise — 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.”

     

    Contact for interview: Dr Ty Ferguson E: [email protected] Media contact: Annabel Mansfield M: +61 479 182 489 E: [email protected] 

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    University of South Australia

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  • Increasing availability of non-alcoholic drinks may reduce amount of alcohol purchased online

    Increasing availability of non-alcoholic drinks may reduce amount of alcohol purchased online

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    Newswise — Increasing the proportion of non-alcoholic drinks on sale in online supermarkets could reduce the amount of alcohol people purchase, suggests a study published today led by researchers at the University of Cambridge.

    The team used a simulated supermarket that presented shoppers with varying proportions of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks and asked them to select drinks to purchase for their next online shop. They found that shoppers who were exposed to more non-alcoholic drinks selected and purchased fewer units of alcohol. The findings are published in PLOS Medicine.

    Excessive alcohol consumption is a major risk factor for a number of diseases, including cancer, heart disease and stroke. Encouraging people to change their behaviour could therefore have significant health benefits at both an individual and population level.

    There is increasing evidence that people can be ‘nudged’ towards reducing their alcohol consumption by making small adjustments to their environment. For example, scientists at Cambridge’s Behaviour and Health Research Unit have previously shown that serving wine in smaller glasses – even while keeping the amount of wine in the glasses the same – led to people consuming less alcohol.

    A recent analysis found that reducing the proportion of unhealthy snacks available can reduce how much of these food products people consume, though the evidence included was limited in both quality and quantity. The Cambridge team wanted to see if a similar approach might work to nudge people towards consuming fewer alcoholic drinks.

    The researchers recruited 737 adults living in England and Wales, all of whom regularly purchased alcohol online, to take part in the study. Of these, just over 600 completed the study and were included in the final analysis – 60% were female and the average (mean) age was 38.

    Participants selected drinks from 64 options in a simulated online supermarket designed to look and function like a real online supermarket. Options included a range of beers, ciders, alcohol-free beer and cider alternatives, and soft drinks.

    Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups, each of which was presented with a different proportion of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. 25% of the drinks seen by Group 1 were non-alcoholic. For Group 2, this increased to 50%, and for Group 3 the proportion of non-alcoholic drinks seen rose to 75%.

    Those exposed to the highest proportion of non-alcoholic drinks (Group 3) selected fewer alcohol units, 17.5 units, compared to 29.4 units in those exposed to the lowest proportion of non-alcoholic drinks (Group 1) – equivalent to a reduction of about 41%.

    Participants were then asked to actually purchase the same drinks in an online supermarket, Tesco, the largest national supermarket in the UK. Around two-thirds of participants completed this second stage, with 422 participants going on to purchase drinks. The researchers point out that ‘cart abandonment’ – where people do not purchase items they put in their shopping cart – is common in online shopping contexts.

    The researchers found that amongst participants exposed to the highest proportion of non-alcoholic drinks, 52% of the drinks purchased were alcoholic, compared to 70% of drinks that were purchased by those exposed to the lowest proportion of non-alcoholic drinks.

    Lead author Dr Natasha Clarke said: “We created our simulated supermarket to be as close as possible to an actual online supermarket and found that increasing the proportion of non-alcoholic drinks that shoppers were exposed to made a meaningful difference to their alcohol selection. Though we’d need to confirm these findings using only a real online supermarket, they are very promising.”

    While the current market for alcohol-free beer, wine and spirits represents only a small share of the global alcohol industry, it is rapidly growing. For example, low and no-alcohol beer currently accounts for 3% of the total beer market, but this is forecast to increase by nearly 13% per year over the next 3 years and is the fastest growing drinks segment in the UK.

    Senior author Dr Gareth Hollands said: “Supermarkets typically stock a wider range of alcoholic drinks than non-alcoholic alternatives aimed at adults, but this is slowly changing. Our results suggest that if non-alcoholic options were to become the majority instead, we might expect to see substantial reductions in alcohol purchasing.”

    Importantly, the overall number of drinks that participants selected and purchased remained similar between groups, suggesting that effects were a result of shifting people’s choices. This implies overall drink sales and potentially revenues may be relatively unchanged, dependent on the pricing of non-alcoholic drinks.

    Professor Dame Theresa Marteau, Director of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit, said: “We all know that drinking too much alcohol is bad for us, but we’re often unaware of how much we are influenced by the environment around us. Making changes to this environment – from exposing people to a greater proportion of healthier options through to changing the sizes of the utensils we eat and drink from – can help us cut down on potentially unhealthy habits. Even relatively small changes can make a difference both to individuals and at a population level.”

    Although some of the non-alcoholic drink options in the current study contained no sugar and were generally lower in calories than the alcoholic options – an average of 64 calories per non-alcoholic drink versus 233 calories per alcoholic drink – many soft drinks and alcohol-free alternatives still contain large amounts of sugar and calories. The researchers argue that, given the health risks associated with sugary drink consumption, continued regulation and policies to reduce sugar content and consumption from both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks is needed to mitigate these risks.

    The research was funded by Wellcome and carried out at the Behaviour and Health Research Unit, University of Cambridge. Dr Clarke is now a Lecturer in Psychology at Bath Spa University. Dr Hollands is a Principal Research Fellow at UCL.

    Reference

    Clarke, N et al. Impact on alcohol selection and online purchasing of changing the proportion of available non-alcoholic versus alcoholic drinks: A randomised controlled trial. PLOS Med; 30 Mar 2023; DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1004193

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    University of Cambridge

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  • Imaging brain connections can predict improvements in obsessive-compulsive disorder patients after deep brain stimulation

    Imaging brain connections can predict improvements in obsessive-compulsive disorder patients after deep brain stimulation

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    Newswise — Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a promising therapy for treatment-resistant obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). A first-of-its-kind collaborative study led by researchers at Texas Children’s Hospital, Baylor College of Medicine, and Brigham & Women’s Hospital has found that mapping neural connections in the brains of OCD patients offers key insights that explain the observed improvements in their clinical outcomes after DBS. The study was published in Biological Psychiatry.

    Neuropsychiatric disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder are a result of dysfunction across broad neural networks and typically involve brain domains responsible for cognitive and higher-order decision-making such as the prefrontal cortex.

    “The goal of neuromodulatory therapies like DBS is to restore the functional balance within these networks. Since the extent of functional dysfunction in these networks varies between individuals, it is important to customize DBS surgery for each patient. To do that reliably, we first need to precisely map the neural connections involved in the specific condition and then understand how these connections are affected by DBS,” said co-corresponding author Dr. Sameer Sheth, professor in the department of neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine, director of the Cain Foundation Labs, and principal investigator at the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute (Duncan NRI) at Texas Children’s Hospital.

    In 2020, a seminal study by Dr. Andreas Horn and his team at Brigham & Women’s Hospital identified an ‘OCD response tract’ – a white matter circuit that precisely mapped the specific fiber bundles and brain regions whose modulation by DBS could improve clinical outcomes in OCD patients. The present study is the first one to conduct blind testing of the OCD response tract model with the goal of developing a predictive ‘connectomic’ model.

    Connectomic imaging strategies such as white matter tractography – a three-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique that maps the location and direction of white matter bundles and their constituent fibers within the brain – are becoming increasingly reliable methods to identify these networks that inform surgeons where to implant DBS electrodes in the brain of the patient during surgery. Here, Sheth and colleagues used this approach to rank and conduct ‘blind’ comparison of clinical outcomes in ten OCD patients who had undergone a specific DBS procedure six months prior to the study.

    DBS programming was performed by Dr. Wayne Goodman, Chair of the department of psychiatry at Baylor College, and patient outcomes were periodically assessed by Dr. Eric Storch, Vice Chair of psychology, for changes in the severity of their OCD and mood symptoms.

    Then the Brigham & Women’s Hospital (BWH) team led by Dr. Andreas Horn analyzed the imaging data and provided rank predictions based solely on the neuroimaging data and stimulation parameters. This team was not involved in DBS planning or programming and did not have prior knowledge of clinical outcomes. The outcomes predicted by the BWH team closely matched the actual clinical outcomes that the Baylor team observed in these patients.

    “To our knowledge, this is the first example of such a collaborative ‘blinded’ team effort by two research centers to validate DBS therapy for a brain tract proposed on the basis of retrospective data,” co-corresponding author, Dr. Horn added. “This is also a big step in the continued optimization and improving the efficacy of DBS procedures that target this brain tract to treat OCD, even as efforts are underway to make this therapy more widely available to patients. Finally, this two-center ‘blinded’ approach could serve as a model for validating and optimizing DBS therapies for other neurological conditions in the future.”

    Others involved in the study were Ron Gadot, Ningfei Li, Ben Shofty, Michelle Avendano-Ortega, Sarah McKay, Kelly Bijanki, Megan Robinson, Garrett Banks, and Nicole Provenza. They are affiliated with one or more of the following institutions: Baylor College of Medicine, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany; University of Utah, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. This research was funded by the National Institutes for Health and the McNair Foundation.

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    Texas Children’s Hospital

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  • Study finds higher risk of sleep problems in gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth

    Study finds higher risk of sleep problems in gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth

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    Newswise — Toronto, ON – A new national study, published in LGBT Health, finds that lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youth are twice as likely to report trouble falling or staying asleep than their straight peers. Greater depression, stress, and family conflict contribute to the sleep problems of LGB youth.

    “Young people who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual may face discrimination and negative attitudes because of their sexual orientation. These experiences can make it harder for them to get a good night’s sleep,” says lead author, Jason Nagata, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. “Difficulties getting along with family, feeling sad and hopeless, and being under a lot of pressure could all make it hard for lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth to sleep well.”

    The researchers analyzed data from 8563 youth ages 10-14 years old who are part of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the United States. Data were collected from 2018-2020. The youth and their parents answered questions about their sleep habits and youth were asked about their sexual orientation. Youth who were questioning their sexuality (e.g., who replied “maybe” to being gay, lesbian, or bisexual) also had greater risk for sleep problems compared to their straight peers.

    “Families should provide support by being present and encouraging young people’s exploration of their identity and development of a sense of self,” said co-author, Kyle T. Ganson, PhD, assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. “Adolescent development is a challenging time for many given the social pressures and physical, psychological, and emotional changes that occur. Understanding this process and being present to support it is crucial for positive health outcomes.”

    “Getting enough sleep is crucial for teenagers because it helps their body and mind grow and develop properly,” Nagata says. “To sleep well, teenagers should follow a consistent sleep routine, make sure their sleeping environment is comfortable, and avoid using electronic devices before going to bed.”

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    University of Toronto

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  • Inmates With Opioid Addiction Report Peer Navigators Are Crucial for Successful Community Reentry

    Inmates With Opioid Addiction Report Peer Navigators Are Crucial for Successful Community Reentry

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    Newswise — Recently incarcerated people with opioid use disorder have trust in working with peer support specialists who recovered from addiction and faced similar life experiences, according to a Rutgers study.

    The study, published in the journal Psychiatric Services, found that peer support specialists were most valued for providing emotional and community-based addiction recovery support as well as housing and employment information — crucial when going back into the community.

    More than half of people incarcerated in state prisons have been diagnosed with a substance use disorder, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. They are most vulnerable in the months following their release, when they are at high risk of unemployment, homelessness, recidivism and overdose.

    “The risk of a fatal drug overdose in the two weeks after release is 129 times that of the general population, in part because of the high risk of relapse and the loss of drug tolerance while incarcerated,” said Margaret Swarbrick, associate director of the Center of Alcohol & Substance Use Studies at Rutgers, research professor at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology and an author of the study.

    The researchers interviewed 39 adult inmates diagnosed with an opioid use disorder who worked with peer support specialists upon their release from a New Jersey state prison between July 2020 and April 2021. Thirty completed a follow-up interview about four months later.

    They found that participants appreciated working with someone with a shared life experience with whom they could establish a trusting relationship. However, they reported that policy barriers to recovery and community reintegration presented challenges to meeting certain needs, such as housing, food, employment and access to timely medical and recovery services, even with the peer navigator’s assistance.

    Participants reported the peer support specialists were most valued for providing emotional support and housing and employment information and for navigating barriers to medical and community-based treatment. This was especially true for people with a conviction for drug distribution charges, which precludes access to resources for housing and employment, according to Michael Enich, an M.D.-Ph.D candidate at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, who reported on the findings.

    “Studies have shown that trained peer support specialists who have experienced addiction, incarceration or both, who assist newly released offenders significantly improve the success rates of their reentry into society, especially when it comes to mental health treatment and sobriety,” said Enich. “However, few studies have examined the role of peer services for substance use disorders during the early months after prison release.”

    Many participants viewed their peer navigators as role models who have overcome similar challenges, which was valued especially when they felt at risk of relapse, said Stephen Crystal, director of the Center for Health Services Research at Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research and an author of the study. “Having someone who was there for them ‘no matter what’ and whom they could call at any time was the most important aspect of the program as it gave them a sense of security,” said Crystal, who is also Board of Governors Professor at Rutgers School of Social Work.

    The participants reported the most effective peer health navigators were empathetic, open-minded and good listeners.

    The authors said more research is needed to rigorously examine the long-term impact of peer services on factors such as overdose reduction, treatment engagement and sustained recovery.

    Other Rutgers researchers involved in the study are Peter Treitler, Leigh Belsky and Micah Hillis.

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    Rutgers University-New Brunswick

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  • World’s most comprehensive study on COVID-19 mental health

    World’s most comprehensive study on COVID-19 mental health

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    Newswise — COVID-19 has taken a relatively limited toll on the mental health of most people around the globe, according to a paper published today in the BMJ by a McGill University-led research team involving collaborators from McMaster University, the University of Toronto, and other institutions.

    The team reviewed data from 137 studies in various languages involving 134 cohorts of people from around the world. Most of the studies were from high or middle-income countries, and about 75% of participants were adults and 25% were children and adolescents between the ages of 10-19.

    To their surprise, the researchers found that despite the dramatic stories to the contrary, where changes in mental health symptoms were identified compared to before the pandemic, these changes were minimal for the most part. This held true whether the studies covered the mental health of the population as a whole or that of specific groups (e.g., people of particular ages, sex or gender, or with pre-existing medical or mental health conditions).

    Mental health during the pandemic – need for a more nuanced understanding

    “Mental health in COVID-19 is much more nuanced than people have made it out to be,” says Brett Thombs, the senior author, a Canada Research Chair and professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University and senior researcher at the Lady Davis Institute of the Jewish General Hospital. “Claims that the mental health of most people has deteriorated significantly during the pandemic have been based primarily on individual studies that are ‘snapshots’ of a particular situation, in a particular place, at a particular time. They typically don’t involve any long-term comparison with what had existed before or came after.”

    A story of resilience

    By doing an overview of studies from around the world with data about the mental health of various populations, both prior to the pandemic and during COVID-19, the researchers found that there was little change in the mental health of most of the populations studied.

    “This is by far the most comprehensive study on COVID-19 mental health in the world, and it shows that, in general, people have been much more resilient than many have assumed,” says Ying Sun, the first author on the paper and a research coordinator from the Lady Davis Institute.

    The pandemic’s disproportionate effect on women

    Some women experienced a worsening of symptoms–whether of anxiety, depression or general mental health. This could be due to their multiple family responsibilities, working in health care or elder care, or, in some cases, family violence.

    “This is concerning and suggests that some women, as well as some people in other groups, have experienced changes for the worse in their mental health and will need ongoing access to mental health support,” said Danielle Rice, an Assistant Professor at McMaster University and St. Joseph’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. “The Canadian federal and provincial governments along with governments elsewhere in the world have worked to increase access to mental health services during the pandemic, and should ensure that these services continue to be available.”

    Moving forward

    “Our findings underline the importance of doing rigorous science–otherwise, our expectations and assumptions, together with poor-quality studies and anecdotes–can become self-fulfilling prophecies,” says Thombs. 

    The McGill University and Lady Davis Institute team is continuing to update their findings as research accumulates to look at mental health across different time periods in the pandemic. They are also looking at what governments and health agencies can do to ensure that researchers have access to better-quality and more timely mental health data going forward so that our health systems can gather information that will allow them to target mental health resources to people who need them most.

    Some effects:

    • Among studies of the general population, no changes were found for general mental health or anxiety symptoms.
    • Depression symptoms worsened by minimal to small amounts for older adults, university students, and people who self-identified as belonging to a sexual or gender minority group, but not for other groups.
    • For parents, general mental health and anxiety symptoms were seen to worsen, although these results were based on only a small number of studies and participants.
    • The findings are consistent with the largest study on suicide during the pandemic, which included monthly data from official government sources on suicide occurrences from 21 countries between 1 January 2019 or earlier to 31 July 2020 and found no evidence of a statistically significant increase in any country or region; statistically significant decreases did, however, occur in 12 countries or regions.
       

    About the study

    “Comparison of mental health symptoms before and during the covid-19 pandemic: evidence from a systematic review and meta-analysis of 134 cohorts” by Ying Sun et al. was published in the BMJ.

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  • Celebrity sightings have a built-in contradiction

    Celebrity sightings have a built-in contradiction

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    Newswise — RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Their popularity makes celebrities easy to spot. Strangers, however, can also get mistaken for celebrities, resulting in cases of false “celebrity sightings.” In attempting to explain the contradiction, a University of California, Riverside, study reports that celebrity faces are remembered more precisely but less accurately.

    Precision, in this context, refers to how memories for a particular face resemble each other over repeated memory retrievals, which can be likened to the clustering of arrows on a target in archery. Accuracy measures how remembered faces resemble newly encountered faces — or the deviation from the target in archery.

    “What our findings say is that people might accept errors by misidentifying someone as a celebrity in the interest of securing a ‘celebrity sighting,’” said Weiwei Zhang, an associate professor of psychology, who led the study that appears in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. “Our study explains why people are good and bad at spotting celebrities and highlights the importance of assessing both memory imprecision and bias in memory performance.”

    The study tested 52 college students’ memory for morphed faces that looked like the celebrities Anne Hathaway, Brad Pitt, Zendaya Coleman, or George Clooney. The goal was to assess whether and how prior familiarity with celebrities affects participants’ memory performance. 

    The researchers collected a total of eight face stimuli: those of Hathaway, Pitt, Coleman, and Clooney, and four non-celebrity faces. Participants were first briefly presented with a photo of a celebrity or non-celebrity. After a short interval, they were presented with a test face and asked if it was the same face as the studied face (test faces were the same half the time and altered the rest of the time). For instance, if the first photo was 100% celebrity, the test face could be altered to 78% celebrity 50% of the time, Zhang said. The same procedure was followed when participants were first shown photos of non-celebrities.

    “We found that familiarity with celebrities led to sharpened and more precise memories for celebrities as compared to non-celebrities,” he said. “But it also led to impaired memory accuracy, where celebrity lookalikes or morphed faces were misremembered as celebrities.”

    According to Zhang, the findings can help explain a tradeoff in human behavior. 

    “Familiarity with celebrities in our study is key for the variance-bias tradeoff in face recognition for celebrities,” he said. “We don’t seem to do this for anyone else.”

    Bias and variance are prediction errors. The total error is the sum of these two error terms, resulting in a trade-off between the two. In machine learning, bias is the difference between the average prediction and the correct value. Variance is a measure of the spread of data points. The variance-bias tradeoff, as its name suggests, is the tradeoff between variance and bias. Finding a good balance between these prediction errors helps minimize the total error. 

    Zhang explained that human cognition appears to work like machine learning; where cognition is concerned, variance, which is the opposite of precision, and bias, which is the opposite of accuracy, would need to trade off each other to maximize the opportunity to process and represent information. 

    “The conventional wisdom is that we want our memory to be super accurate and precise,” he said. “But such a rigid memory would not be able to accommodate the variance seen in natural stimuli. For instance, with different lighting conditions, makeup, dresses, and hairstyle, a person’s look can vary greatly. Our memories have to be noisy and vague enough — high variance — to support face recognition with all the variance we find in looks. However, when our memory is vague, face recognition can fail from time to time, which is not optimal in celebrity sightings, given that we don’t want to miss encounters with celebrities. So as a solution, we introduce recognition biases in the mix. We start identifying strangers or celebrity lookalikes as celebrities as an overcorrection for vague memories.”

    Zhang is unsure if the findings have applications beyond faces — to objects and places, for example.

    “It is at least theoretically possible that the variance-bias trade off may be extended to objects and places of importance to individuals,” he said. “We think our findings may be related to déjà vu experiences in that we may have inaccurate but subjectively strong memories.”

    Next, the research team plans to conduct research to assess how memory accuracy and precision interact with each other and how these two aspects of memories are encoded in the brain.

    Zhang was joined in the study by Bo‐Yeong Won and Hyung‐Bum Park. Won is now an assistant professor of psychology at California State University Chico. Park is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago. 

    The study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the lead federal agency for research on mental disorders.

    The research paper is titled “Familiarity enhances mnemonic precision but impairs mnemonic accuracy in visual working memory.”

    The University of California, Riverside is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California’s diverse culture, UCR’s enrollment is more than 26,000 students. The campus opened a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual impact of more than $2.7 billion on the U.S. economy. To learn more, visit www.ucr.edu.

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    University of California, Riverside

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  • Diversity Training for Police Officers: One-and-Done Efforts Aren’t Enough

    Diversity Training for Police Officers: One-and-Done Efforts Aren’t Enough

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    Newswise — What explains persistent racial disparities in policing, despite police departments’ repeated investments in bias-training programs? A wide range of data indicate that police in the United States tend to stop, arrest, injure, or kill more Black people than White people. Calvin K. Lai (Washington University in St. Louis) and Jaclyn A. Lisnek (University of Virginia) analyzed the effectiveness of a day-long implicit-bias-oriented diversity training session designed to increase U.S. police officers’ knowledge of bias, concerns about bias, and use of evidence-based strategies to mitigate bias. Their findings, recently published in Psychological Science, suggest that “diversity trainings as they are currently practiced are unlikely to change police behavior.” 

    Immediately after these trainings, police officers have strong intentions to use the strategies they’ve learned, explained Lai in a forthcoming interview on Under the Cortex, the APS podcast. But “one month later there wasn’t that kind of follow through.” 

    In 2020 and 2021, Lai and Lisnek evaluated 251 training sessions (in-person or remote) in which 24 different educators taught the Managing Bias program—developed by the Anti-Defamation League to reduce the influence of biases in the behaviors of police officers, improve the relationship between the community and the police, and increase safety—to different police departments with a history of Black–White racial disparities in policing. This day-long training consists of an interactive workshop, led by two educators, that uses activities to educate officers about the origins and differences between explicit and implicit bias, how biases may affect their behavior, and gaps in understanding between police and the community. After learning about biases, officers were trained on strategies and skills to reduce biased behavior.  

    Lai, a recipient of the APS 2023 Janet Taylor Spence Award for Early Career Contributions, and Lisnek surveyed police officers immediately before the training to establish a baseline, assessing knowledge and concern about bias, usage of strategies to manage bias, and characteristics relevant to police training (e.g., centrality of police identity, expectations of respect from community members). A second survey, administered immediately after the training, evaluated knowledge and concern about bias plus the intention to use the strategies to manage bias.  

    Results indicated that before the training, officers showed low understanding of and concern about bias, but the training immediately increased their knowledge and concern about bias. Right after the training, officers reported feeling empowered and motivated to use the strategies they learned to manage bias. However, another survey one month later found that officers’ concerns about bias had returned to pre-intervention levels and their use of these strategies had declined compared with their reported intentions immediately after training. Nevertheless, their general understanding of biases remained as high as immediately after the training. 

    Future research, Lai said, will attempt “to close that gap between officers really being motivated but not finding ways to follow through using some of these bias mitigation strategies.”  

    The researchers also identified characteristics of diversity training that might affect its efficacy. For instance, previous literature has suggested embedding such efforts with other organizational initiatives, having managers reinforce them, and evaluating expected behavior as a part of job performance. The training examined in this study was implemented and administered by an external organization. Adding booster sessions instead of a one-and-done training model could also increase effectiveness, Lai and Lisnek said.  

    Finally, the strategies taught could have had low applicability outside of a lab in real-world policing, another factor that can also undermine training effectiveness. “One of the things we’re finding is that there might not be these great one-size-fits-all solutions for combating bias at work,” said Lai. It may be necessary “to think very concretely and specifically” about the daily work activities where police officers may be inclined to discriminate—and then provide “super-tailored strategies” to mitigate those behaviors. 

    Journalists: email [email protected] for a copy of this research article.

    Reference  

    Lai, C. K., & Lisnek, J. A. (2023). The impact of implicit-bias-oriented diversity training on police officers’ beliefs, motivations, and actions. Psychological Science. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09567976221150617 

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    Association for Psychological Science

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  • Scientists find that people use emojis to hide, as well as show, their feelings

    Scientists find that people use emojis to hide, as well as show, their feelings

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    Newswise — Have you ever received an unwanted gift and still said ‘thank you’? This choice to hide a negative emotion is a display rule — one of many which define socially appropriate responses to emotions. Although display rules can promote interpersonal harmony, they can also have negative consequences for the person choosing to change how they express emotions. As more social interaction goes online, scientists are investigating how emojis are used to reflect our emotions in different contexts. Are there display rules that apply to emojis, and how do those affect people’s wellbeing?

    “As online socializing becomes more prevalent, people have become accustomed to embellishing their expressions and scrutinizing the appropriateness of their communication,” said Moyu Liu of the University of Tokyo, who investigated this question in a study published in Frontiers in Psychology. “However, I realized that this may lead us to lose touch with our authentic emotions.”

    Emojis and emotions

    Liu recruited 1,289 participants, all users of the most-downloaded emoji keyboard in Japan, Simeji, to investigate how emojis were used to express or mask emotions. Previous research had established that people use emojis as functional equivalents of facial expressions, but not the relationships between emotions expressed and experienced. This is when display rules can prove problematic: if the dissonance between the emotions that you experience and the emotions that you can express is too great, emotional exhaustion can develop, although members of different cultures experience this differently.

    Display rules impact more on negative emotions, which it is usually considered less appropriate to express. It is also often more acceptable to express emotions to someone who is closer to you, and it can be more acceptable for a particular gender to express particular emotions. It can also be considered more acceptable to express negative emotions in more individualist societies.

    Wearing your heart on your screen

    The participants in Liu’s study provided demographic data, answered questions about their subjective wellbeing, and rated how often they use emojis. They were given messages with varying social contexts, responded to them as they would normally, and rated the intensity of the expression of their emotions.

    Liu found that people chose to express more emotions with emojis in private contexts or with close friends. Respondents expressed least emotion towards higher-status individuals. Intense expressions of emotion came with matching emojis, unless people felt the need to mask their true emotions: for instance, using smiling emojis to mask negative emotions. Negative emojis were used only where negative feelings were very strongly felt. Expressing emotions with emojis was associated with higher subjective wellbeing compared to masking emotions.

    “With online socializing becoming ever more prevalent, it is important to consider whether it is causing us to become more detached from our true emotions,” said Liu. “Do people require a ‘shelter’ to express their genuine emotions, and is it possible to break free from pretense and share our true selves in online settings?”

    Liu emphasized that the study should be expanded in the future. The Simeji keyboard is extremely popular among young women, which skewed the sample towards women and generation Z. However, this also reflected the gender imbalance in use of emojis in general and the Simeji keyboard in particular. A broader pool of participants would provide a fuller picture of the display rules around emojis.

    “First, the highly gender-imbalanced sample may have led to stronger results. Future research should explore potential gender differences in emoji display rules and examine the structural issues surrounding the formation of these emotion cultures,” cautioned Liu. “Second, Japanese culture’s emphasis on interpersonal harmony and concealment of negative emotions may have influenced the results.”

    “I would welcome the opportunity to expand this study and investigate the display rules for emojis across different genders and cultures,” added Liu. “Collaboration with scholars from diverse cultural backgrounds would be invaluable in this endeavor, and I am open to any contact.”

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    Frontiers

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  • Democracy depends on the freedom of the press: The latest news on media and journalism

    Democracy depends on the freedom of the press: The latest news on media and journalism

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    “Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.”

    -Walter Cronkite

    According to the Pew Research Center, more than eight-in-ten U.S. adults (86%) say they get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet. Americans say they prefer a digital platform – whether it is a news website (26%), search (12%), social media (11%) or podcasts (3%).* Traditional media remain important even for those people with the most gadgets. However, social media and non-traditional outlets are rising as the main source of how people stay informed. According to a report from the BBC, Instagram is the most popular news source among younger people.

    In this information age, it’s vital to have an open conversation on how the message is delivered. 

    Here are some of the latest stories in the Media and Journalism channel on Newswise. For a more in-depth look at social media issues, check out the Social Media channel.

    Newswise Live Event for March 15: What can we expect from AI and Chatbots in the next few years? 

    (How AI is transforming journalism)

    Study finds political campaigns may change the choices of voters – but not their policy views

    Researchers’ Model for TV Ad Scheduling Reaps Revenue Increase for Networks

    What distinguishes fans from celebrity stalkers?

    The claim that U.S. temperatures are not trending upward is false

    We cannot predict earthquakes with accuracy, despite claim

    Fact-checking the reporting of the explosion in East Palestine, Ohio

    Cinema has helped ‘entrench’ gender inequality in AI

    Experts split on ‘prebunking’ – shifting blame or empowering users?

    Geography, language dictate social media and popular website usage, study finds

    ChatGPT can (almost) pass the US Medical Licensing Exam

    Tweets reveal where in cities people express different emotions

    War tourists fighting on a virtual front, since Ukraine-Russia war

    Media literacy is an important tool in training police officers

    COVID-19 conspiracy theories that spread fastest focused on evil, secrecy

    How do news audiences respond to disclosures of preprint status?

    It isn’t what you know, it’s what you think you know

     

     

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    Newswise

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