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Mind Matters - March 2, 2010
By John Kelley, Scientific American
Answer: Yes!
In my view, both these statements are true: Antidepressants do work. And antidepressants don’t work. Not to put too fine a Clintonian point on it, but determining whether antidepressants work depends on the definition of the word “work.”
A controversial article just published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that antidepressants are no more effective than placebos for most depressed patients. Jay Fournier and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania aggregated individual patient data from six high-quality clinical trials and found that the superiority of antidepressants over placebo is clinically significant only for patients who are very severely depressed. For patients with mild, moderate, and even severe depression, placebos work nearly as well as antidepressants.
There have been at least four other review articles published in the last eight years that have come to similar conclusions about the limited clinical efficacy of antidepressants, and one of the study authors, psychologist Irving Kirsch, has recently published a book on the topic, provocatively entitled The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth.
The recent review articles questioning the clinical efficacy of antidepressants run counter to the received wisdom in the psychiatric community that antidepressants are highly effective. Indeed, it wasn’t so long ago that psychiatrist Peter Kramer wrote in his best-selling book Listening to Prozac that this miracle drug made patients “better than well.” Prozac was a Rock Star. Its extraordinary success even led to a photograph of the green and white capsule on the cover of Newsweek Magazine in 1990.
The essential facts about antidepressant efficacy are not in dispute. In double-blind, randomized controlled trials – meaning that patients are randomly assigned to receive either drug or placebo, and neither patient nor clinician knows who gets what – antidepressants show a small but statistically significant advantage over placebos. The debate is over the interpretation of these findings, and it revolves around the distinction between clinical significance and statistical significance. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Mental Health, News Articles, Recent Posts, Science on March 3, 2010 - י"ז אדר תש"ע at 7:29 am
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This is a single stem cell-derived neuron that has migrated away from the transplantation site in the cortex and grown into a mature neuron. The blue stain shows the nuclei of the endogenous neural cells in this part of the brain. (Credit: Courtesy, with permission: Weimann et al. The Journal of Neuroscience 2010.)
ScienceDaily (Jan. 24, 2010) — Transplanted neurons grown from embryonic stem cells can fully integrate into the brains of young animals, according to new research in the Jan. 20 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.
Healthy brains have stable and precise connections between cells that are necessary for normal behavior. This new finding is the first to show that stem cells can be directed not only to become specific brain cells, but to link correctly.
In this study, a team of neuroscientists led by James Weimann, PhD, of Stanford Medical School focused on cells that transmit information from the brain’s cortex, some of which are responsible for muscle control. It is these neurons that are lost or damaged in spinal cord injuries and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). "These stem cell-derived neurons can grow nerve fibers between the brain’s cerebral cortex and the spinal cord, so this study confirms the use of stem cells for therapeutic goals," Weimann said.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Mental Health, Recent Posts, Science on January 24, 2010 - ט' שבט תש"ע at 3:16 pm
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By Health News Digest, Jan 20, 2010
(HealthNewsDigest.com) – ANN ARBOR, Mich.—School psychologists, counselors and social workers are often the first line of support for children with behavioral, emotional or family problems. Problems can range from attention deficit disorder and homelessness to depression and bullying all of which can make academic success a challenge.
The C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health asked nearly 1,100 parents across the United States to grade their children’s public schools on how well they support children with behavioral, emotional or family problems.
Thirty-seven percent of parents gave primary schools an A for support for children with ADHD and other behavioral problems, and 34 percent gave an A for support for children with emotional or family problems. Twenty-two percent of parents gave secondary schools an A for support for children with behavioral, emotional or family problems.
In contrast, for overall education 52 percent of parents gave primary schools an A and 38 percent of parents gave secondary schools an A.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Mental Health, News Articles, Recent Posts, Special Education on January 21, 2010 - ו' שבט תש"ע at 4:36 am
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By Sid Slivko, Israel 21C
November 10, 2009
For Irishman Captain Gerry Casey, now serving with the UN, a year of service in Israel proved a lifesaver for his Down syndrome child.
Earlier this month Jerusalem’s quiet, Orthodox neighborhood of Har Nof became the center of international attention as representatives of UNTSO (United Nations Truce Supervision Organization) and members of the diplomatic corps representing the United States, Finland, Venezuela, Uganda and more, came to the headquarters of Shalva, the Association for Mentally and Physically Challenged Children to honor its service to the international community.
Over 100 distinguished guests, together with their spouses and their children enjoyed a tour of Shalva and a casual buffet lunch while being entertained by the Shalva band. Honored guests included James Carroll, special representative (Ireland) to Palestinian Authority and Colonel Timo Rotonen (Finland), deputy chief of staff – UNTSO.
The tribute was arranged by Captain Gerry Casey (Irish Defense Forces working with UNTSO) and his wife Theresa, who hosted their friends and colleagues at Shalva for a celebration of the wonderful year their daughter, Rachel, spent with us. Rachel, now two and a half, spent this past year in Shalva’s Me & My Mommy Program and both she and her parents made friendships that will last a lifetime. The family is scheduled to return to Dublin, Ireland, this coming January and a most fitting ’send-off’ is planned.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education, Health Sciences, Judaism, Mental Health, Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts on November 12, 2009 - כ"ה חשון תש"ע at 6:31 pm
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By Michelle Allison
Let’s start with this: I identify as fat because, well, I’m fat, and also because I don’t think being fat is necessarily a bad thing─it’s just a thing.
But calling myself a nutritionist feels like a fantastic act of audacity. I’m still technically a student, though I’ve completed the work core to my nutrition degree and am now taking a psychology minor.
I initially got interested in nutrition by going on a diet to lose weight when I was 21. I did it to feel better about myself, because I hated my body, hated being fat. What I told everyone, naturally, was that I was losing weight for the good of my health.
Except I didn’t get healthy. I was constantly injured from overexercising, and I came down with a virus that developed into really nasty pneumonia that I couldn’t seem to shake.
What kept me on the diet was the intoxicating sense that, for the first time in my life, I was following the rules. I was doing it right. I was compliant. I was a model eater and exerciser. My habits were above reproach.
In the end, I lost 30 pounds and gained a bunch of disorder behaviors. And I hated my body more intensely than before. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Mental Health, Recent Posts, Women's Health on August 30, 2009 - י' אלול תשס"ט at 5:48 am
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Scientific American Mind - July 1, 2009
How can you stay sharp into old age? It is not just a matter of winning the genetic lottery. What you do can make a difference
By Christopher Hertzog, Arthur F. Kramer, Robert S. Wilson and Ulman Lindenberger
As everybody knows, if you do not work out, your muscles get flaccid. What most people don’t realize, however, is that your brain also stays in better shape when you exercise. And not just challenging your noggin by, for example, learning a new language, doing difficult crosswords or taking on other intellectually stimulating tasks. As researchers are finding, physical exercise is critical to vigorous mental health, too.
Surprised? Although the idea of exercising cognitive machinery by performing mentally demanding activities—popularly termed the “use it or lose it” hypothesis—is better known, a review of dozens of studies shows that maintaining a mental edge requires more than that. Other things you do—including participating in activities that make you think, getting regular exercise, staying socially engaged and even having a positive attitude—have a meaningful influence on how effective your cognitive functioning will be in old age.
Further, the older brain is more plastic than is commonly known. At one time, the accepted stereotype was that “old dogs can’t learn new tricks.” Science has proved that this dictum must be discarded. Although older adults generally learn new pursuits more slowly than younger people do and cannot reach the peaks of expertise in a given field that they might have achieved if they had started in their youth, they nonetheless can improve their cognitive performance through effort—forestalling some of the declines in cognition that come with advancing age. As John Adams, one of the founding fathers and the second U.S. president, put it: “Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.”
The news comes at a propitious time. The proportion of older adults in the U.S. and in other industrial nations continues to grow: in 1900, 4.1 percent of U.S. citizens were older than 65, but by 2000 that amount had jumped to 12.6 percent; by 2030, 20 percent of us will be in that category. From a societal point of view, prolonging independent functioning is both a desirable goal in itself and a way of deferring costs of long-term care. For individuals, maintaining optimal cognitive functioning is worthwhile simply because it promises to enhance quality of life through the years.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Men's Health, Mental Health, Nutrition & Fitness, Recent Posts on July 2, 2009 - י' תמוז תשס"ט at 1:57 pm
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By Robin Nixon, Special to LiveScience, May 26, 2009
Socialites and curmudgeons not only have different party demeanors, they may also have different brain structures, a new study suggests. But what came first — the incentive to charm or the bolstered brain anatomy — is still a matter of debate.
Forty-one randomly selected men filled out a questionnaire assessing their own tendency to, say, "make a warm personal connection." Those who reported being sociable and emotionally demonstrative also tended to have denser cell concentration in two brain structures: the orbitofrontal cortex and the ventral striatum, said the study’s head researcher Graham Murray of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
The research was published in the May 20 issue of the European Journal of Neuroscience.
Chicken or egg
Many studies have found correlations between the size of a particular brain structure and physical behavior, such as the classic finding that taxi drivers often have more developed hippocampi, structures associated with spatial memory. Whether the above-average geographic abilities existed before or only developed after the subjects became cabbies is unclear. The burgeoning field of social neuroscience is producing similar findings.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Men's Health, Mental Health, Science on May 27, 2009 - ד' סיון תשס"ט at 9:36 am
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By Shankar Vedantam, The Washington Post, March. 27, 2009
New data from a large federal study have reignited a debate over the effectiveness of long-term drug treatment of children with hyperactivity or attention-deficit disorder, and have drawn accusations that some members of the research team have sought to play down evidence that medications do little good beyond 24 months.
The study also indicated that long-term use of the drugs can stunt children’s growth.
The latest data paint a very different picture than the study’s positive initial results, reported in 1999.
One principal scientist in the study, psychologist William Pelham, said that the most obvious interpretation of the data is that the medications are useful in the short term but ineffective over longer periods but added that his colleagues had repeatedly sought to explain away evidence that challenged the long-term usefulness of medication. When their explanations failed to hold up, they reached for new ones, Pelham said.
“The stance the group took in the first paper was so strong that the people are embarrassed to say they were wrong and we led the whole field astray,” said Pelham, of the State University of New York at Buffalo. Pelham said the drugs, including Adderall and Concerta, are among the medications most frequently prescribed for American children, adding: “If 5 percent of families in the country are giving a medication to their children, and they don’t realize it does not have long-term benefits but might have long-term risks, why should they not be told?”
The disagreement has produced a range of views among the researchers about how to accurately present the results to the public. One e-mail noted that an academic review of the group’s work, called the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children With ADHD (MTA), asked why the researchers were “bending over backward” to play down negative implications for drug therapy.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Health Sciences, Mental Health, Recent Posts, Special Education on March 27, 2009 - ב' ניסן תשס"ט at 7:16 am
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By Health News Digest, Mar 5, 2009
(HealthNewsDigest.com) – TUCSON, Ariz. — One would think it’s a “no-brainer” to study the brain’s role in the relationship among the mind, body, health and disease, but that hasn’t been the case. However, recent advances in neuroscience can — and should — “bring the brain back” to psychosomatic medicine research, says Richard D. Lane, MD, PhD, professor in the Department of Psychiatry at The University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson and colleagues at other institutions across the United States and around the world.
These researchers make the case for studying the brain in two papers, “The Rebirth of Neuroscience in Psychosomatic Medicine, Part I and Part II,” published in the February/March issue of Psychosomatic Medicine, The Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine. The publication is the journal of the American Psychosomatic Society.
According to the researchers, understanding the brain is a critical — and missing — component of research that aims to explain the pathways by which psychological, behavioral and social factors influence health and disease, information essential to optimizing health care.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Mental Health, Recent Posts on March 5, 2009 - ט' אדר תשס"ט at 4:51 pm
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By Jonah Lehrer, Scientific American, December 30, 2008
To celebrate the end of the year at Mind Matters, we’re going to highlight a few of the posts that we featured over the past 12 months. Although our articles have covered a wide variety of subjects, from visual illusions to borderline personality disorder to the limitations of free will, many of our most popular posts dealt with the intersection of neuroscience and everyday life.
This fact is, perhaps, a testament to the increasing relevance of neuroscience and psychology to society. As scientists break open the black box of the mind, and begin to unravel the neural processes that define our behavior, it’s becoming clear that who we are—and what we decide to do—is ultimately shaped by the quirks and constraints of these three pounds of flesh inside the head.
Consider a September Mind Matters article on how the brain responds to calories, and why it can so hard to stop eating even when we’re no longer hungry. The article summarized a recent experiment in which a strain of mice was created that was missing the taste receptor for sweetness. As a result, these mice demonstrated no preference for sugar water, unlike control mice. Something interesting happened when the mutant mice were given sugar water for six straight days, however: they learned to like it, even if they couldn’t taste it. As the scientists note in their Mind Matters post, “There seems to be something inherently pleasurable about ingesting food that contains calories.” This result helps explain why we keep on stuffing our face even when we’re sated and the food isn’t particularly delicious—the brain just likes the taste of energy.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Mental Health, Recent Posts, Science on December 31, 2008 - ד' טבת תשס"ט at 11:22 pm
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