Stress damages critical area of brain
- From: Sam Wormley <swormley1@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:28:58 GMT
Inside Science News Briefs
March 16, 2009
By Jim Dawson
Inside Science News Service
Stress damages critical area of brain
High levels of stress, such as those experienced by soldiers in combat, appears to cause shrinkage of neurons and a reduction in synaptic connections in a key part of the brain that is related to depression and sudden mood swings, according to a new paper by a research group lead by Tibor Hajszan, a scientist at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. Using an animal model for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the researchers found that stress-related reductions in synapses in the hippocampus are directly related to the emergency of depression-like behavior. The stress-related changes bring about an actual shrinkage in the volume of the affected areas of the brain, and the resulting disconnect among synapses in the brain "may have important behavior consequences," Hajszan said. The good news out of the research is that is appears to be possible to restore the synapses in an matter of minutes or hours, "which opens up exciting new avenues for developing rapid-acting antidepressants that may provide immediate relief from depressive symptoms," Hajszan said. His team is conducting further studies to determine the link between affects of stress on the brain and soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who have been diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injury or post-concussive syndrome. The study is in the current issue of Biological Psychiatry.
Children strongly influence parents' in-store purchases
Parents who take their children with them when they go shopping at a supermarket typically underestimate by half the number of items they buy due to the pleas of their kids. Researchers from the marketing department at the University of Vienna, Austria, "unobtrusively" observed 178 parents shopping with children between the ages of 3 and 14 in Austrian supermarkets and found that the parents significantly underestimated the number of child-induced purchases. The researchers noted that more purchase requests were made when the children were at a younger age, when products were placed at children's eye level and when their movement and view were not restricted by being seated in a shopping cart or stroller. Many retailers are aware of the phenomenon, the researchers said, and strategically place candy and small toys on lower shelves. They also found that parents were more likely to give in to the children's demands if the product was consumable in the store and would likely keep a child busy. The best way for parents to reduce the number of purchase requests from their child is to seat the child in the shopping cart facing the parent, thereby restricting the child's field of view, the researchers said. "Children seated in a stroller are also less likely to bug their parents with purchase requests," said marketing researcher Claus Ebster. The study was published in the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services.
Flies can spread drug-resistant bacteria
Houseflies that gather near industrial poultry operations, where antibiotics are heavily used, may contribute to the dispersion of drug-resistant bacteria and increase the potential for human exposure to such bacteria, said scientists at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Previous studies have linked antibiotic use in poultry production to antibiotic resistant bacteria in farm workers, consumer poultry products and the environment around poultry operations. But this study looked at the flies that thrive on the "poultry litter" and found two types of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in both the flies and the litter. "Although we did not directly quantify the contribution of flies to human exposure, our results suggest that flies in intensive production areas could efficiently spread resistant organisms over large distances," said Ellen Silbergeld, the lead researcher of the study. Robert Lawrence, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, said the "increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a major threat to the health of the public, and policymakers should quickly phase out and ban the use of antimicrobials for non-therapeutic use in food animal production."
This news brief column is provided for media use by the Inside Science News Service, which is supported by the American Institute of Physics, a not-for-profit publisher of scientific journals. Contact: Jim Dawson, news editor, at jdawson@xxxxxxxx
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Stress damages critical area of brain
- From: hhc314
- Re: Stress damages critical area of brain
- Prev by Date: Re: New Testable Consequence for the Reality of Expansion
- Next by Date: Re: Simultaneity of Relativit
- Previous by thread: Re: Discovery is in orbit
- Next by thread: Re: Stress damages critical area of brain
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
