The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why? by Marcia Angell The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth by Irving Kirsch Basic Books, 226 pp., $15.99 (paper) Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker Crown, 404 pp., $26.00 Unhinged: The Trouble With Psychiatry—A Doctor’s Revelations About a Profession in Crisis by Daniel Carlat Free Press, 256 pp., $25.00 It seems that Americans are in the midst of a raging epidemic of mental illness, at least as judged by the increase in the numbers treated for it. A large survey of randomly selected adults, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and conducted between 2001 and 2003, found that an astonishing 46 percent met criteria established by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for having had at least one mental illness within four broad categories at some time in their lives. What is going on here? The authors emphasize different aspects of the epidemic of mental illness.
Religion May Cause Brain Atrophy -- Science of the Spirit Faith can open your mind but it can also cause your brain to shrink at a different rate, research suggests. Researchers at Duke University Medical Centre in the US claim to have discovered a correlation between religious practices and changes in the brains of older adults. The study, published in the open-access science journal, Public Library of Science ONE, asked 268 people aged 58 to 84 about their religious group, spiritual practices and life-changing religious experiences. Changes in the volume of their hippocampus, the region of the brain associated with learning and memory, were tracked using MRI scans, over two to eight years. Protestants who did not identify themselves as born-again were found to have less atrophy in the hippocampus region than did born-again Protestants, Catholics or those with no religious affiliation. Although the brain tends to shrink with age, atrophy in the hippocampus has been linked with depression and Alzheimer's disease.
Age-Related Memory Loss Reversed in Monkeys It happens to the best of us: you walk into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee but get distracted by the mail, and then forget what you were doing in the first place. Aging makes people particularly vulnerable to this kind of forgetfulness, where we fail to maintain a thought in the face of distractions. New research from Yale University uncovers cellular changes that seem to underlie this type of memory loss in monkeys, and shows that it can be reversed with drugs. By delivering a certain chemical to the brain, researchers could make neurons in old monkeys behave like those in young monkeys. Clinical trials of a generic drug that mimics this effect are already underway. The findings support the idea that some of the brain changes that occur with aging are very specific—rather than being caused by a general decay throughout the brain—and can potentially be prevented.
120 Ways to Boost Your Brain Power Here are 120 things you can do starting today to help you think faster, improve memory, comprehend information better and unleash your brain’s full potential. Solve puzzles and brainteasers.Cultivate ambidexterity. Use your non-dominant hand to brush your teeth, comb your hair or use the mouse. Readers’ Contributions Dance! Contribute your own tip! There are many, many ways to keep our brains sharp. New Alzheimer's Prevention Efforts, And Non-Drug Treatments, Featured At 25th Conference Of Alzheimer's Disease International LONDON, March 4, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Beneficial Alzheimer's therapies that don't use drugs, and an update on prevention efforts, are the focus of the second day's plenary sessions at the 25th International Conference of Alzheimer's Disease International (ADI), March 12, 2010 at the Grand Hotel Palace, Thessaloniki, Greece. Prof. Robert Woods of Bangor University, Gwynedd, United Kingdom, says, Psychological therapies have been used with people with dementia for at least 50 years, aiming to improve or maintain cognition, functional abilities, and quality of life, and reduce distress, anxiety, depression and behavioral difficulties. In his presentation at the conference, titled Psychological Interventions with People with Dementia, Woods will share encouraging findings from recent research, including cognitive stimulation and behavioral approaches. Prof. The day's second plenary session will address the topic of Can We Prevent Alzheimer's. - The Prevention Working Group of ADI. Contacts:
How My New Favorite Game Can Prevent Alzheimer's And Save The World Last week I was introduced to an intriguing little brain game that could very well prevent Alzheimer's disease, with the nice side effect of helping to save the world. The game was demonstrated no less than three times by a commenter on a previous article reading between the lines of some recent science-related news. What is this new Alzheimer's-busting miracle brain game? Before laying out rules, let's look at an example from the comments: "To opponents who insist no pollution can change the atmosphere, it's important to make the example of inserting 'taxes' for pollution and 'economy' for atmosphere." If you're an economic liberal, invert that. Do you see what Hank did there? Got the game yet? Confirmation of preexisting beliefs is mentally rewarding. Another example: Some scientists think growing genetically modified salmon would cause net harm to ecosystems if not done right, so we should never allow any GMO fish. If you want to put rules to the game, try this. ***No, really.
Daily dose of beet juice promotes brain health in older adults Researchers for the first time have shown that drinking beet juice can increase blood flow to the brain in older adults -- a finding that could hold great potential for combating the progression of dementia. The research findings are available online in Nitric Oxide: Biology and Chemistry, the peer-reviewed journal of the Nitric Oxide Society and will be available in print soon. "There have been several very high-profile studies showing that drinking beet juice can lower blood pressure, but we wanted to show that drinking beet juice also increases perfusion, or blood flow, to the brain," said Daniel Kim-Shapiro, director of Wake Forest University's Translational Science Center; Fostering Independence in Aging. "There are areas in the brain that become poorly perfused as you age, and that's believed to be associated with dementia and poor cognition." The next day, following another 10-hour fast, the subjects returned to the lab, where they ate their assigned breakfasts.
Alzheimer's and an Arrant Protein (What's the connection?) Sorry..Long - Alzheimer's Disease & Dementia Message Board Dear Natural 4U Thank you so much for your comments. It is a blessing to me to finally know that I am not nuts, and that I am validated in some way that Scarpies in sheep and Mad Cow disease and those holes in the brains of those cannibals and in Alzheimer's patients, are somehow all related. Yes, I have had this pent up now for sometime. Part of the anger is that if I...I as a stupid know-nothing housewife. You say that you are not a "victim yet". The anger that I feel is from the very fact that I do understand. Do you think that this anomoly is restricted to Alzheimer's? Now the point of this little story. So, here I sit. I commend you for your research. If our children, grandchildren and their children are to be protected from many of these heartbreaking diseases, then the world has to change. If you want to know who is the next victim.....Look in the mirror If you want to know who's to blame......Look in the mirror. Or, maybe our children's children will have the brains to.
Time on the Brain: How You Are Always Living In the Past, and Other Quirks of Perception I always knew we humans have a rather tenuous grip on the concept of time, but I never realized quite how tenuous it was until a couple of weeks ago, when I attended a conference on the nature of time organized by the Foundational Questions Institute. This meeting, even more than FQXi’s previous efforts, was a mashup of different disciplines: fundamental physics, philosophy, neuroscience, complexity theory. Crossing academic disciplines may be overrated, as physicist-blogger Sabine Hossenfelder has pointed out, but it sure is fun. Like Sabine, I spend my days thinking about planets, dark matter, black holes—they have become mundane to me. Neuroscientist Kathleen McDermott of Washington University began by quoting famous memory researcher Endel Tulving, who called our ability to remember the past and to anticipate the future “mental time travel.” McDermott outlined the case of Patient K.C., who has even worse amnesia than the better-known H.M. on whom the film Memento was based.
New drug treatment possibilities for Alzheimer's UC Santa Barbara scientists have made a discovery that has the potential for use in the early diagnosis and eventual treatment of plaque-related diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Type 2 diabetes. The amyloid diseases are characterized by plaque that aggregates into toxic agents that interact with cellular machinery, explained Michael T. Bowers, lead author and professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Other amyloid diseases include Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, and atherosclerosis. Amyloid plaques are protein fibrils that, in the case of Alzheimer's disease, develop prior to the appearance of symptoms. "The systems we use are model systems, but the results are groundbreaking," said Bowers. Their work is published in a recent issue of Nature Chemistry. Bowers and his research team used a method called ion-mobility spectrometry-mass spectrometry (IMS-MS). The first author of the paper is Christian Blieholder, a Humbolt Postdoctoral Fellow at UCSB.
heimer's Association - What is Alzheimer's Alzheimer's and dementia basics Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia, a general term for memory loss and other intellectual abilities serious enough to interfere with daily life. Alzheimer's disease accounts for 60 to 80 percent of dementia cases. Learn more: What We Know Today and Understanding Dementia. Get our weekly e-newsletter There is a lot to know about living with Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's is not a normal part of aging, although the greatest known risk factor is increasing age, and the majority of people with Alzheimer's are 65 and older. Sign up for our weekly e-newsletter Learn more about managing the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. Symptoms of Alzheimer's The most common early symptom of Alzheimer's is difficulty remembering newly learned information. Just like the rest of our bodies, our brains change as we age . People with memory loss or other possible signs of Alzheimer’s may find it hard to recognize they have a problem. Alzheimer's and the brain