Brain 'hyperconnectivity' linked to depression

February 23, 2012 By Sharon Jayson in Neuroscience

People with depression have hyperactive brain activity, according to a study published online Tuesday that offers new insight into the brain dysfunction that causes depression.

Researchers at the University of California-Los Angeles studied the functional connections of the brain in 121 individuals, ages 21-80, who had been diagnosed with depression. They used quantitative electroencephalography to measure the synchronization of brain waves (electrical signals from the brain) to study networks among the different brain regions.

"All the depressed patients showed increased connectivity," says psychiatrist Andrew Leuchter, lead author of the study, published in the international online journal PLoS ONE. "We know from brain science studying normal individuals that the connections are turning off and on all the time. If you take a snapshot of a depressed person's brain, you're going to find the connections turned on at any given time."

Similar research with fewer individuals, and using a different measurement tool, was published in 2010 in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Psychiatrist Yvette Sheline, director of the Center for Depression, Stress and Neuroimaging at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, found that depressed subjects had increased connectivity to one specific brain region she studied.

"Any time you use a larger sample you have much more reliable data," says Sheline, whose work used fMRI to study brain connectivity in 24 people. The UCLA research studied a range of brain regions and, with 121 participants, is considered the largest of its kind.

Leuchter says the brain needs to be able to process lots of different types of information and regulate many different processes.

"What our research shows is that the depressed brain appears to be less versatile. It's connecting all the regions all the time and is not able to shut down those connections in a normal way," says Leuchter, who also directs UCLA's Laboratory of Brain, Behavior and Pharmacology. "We don't know whether this hyperconnectivity is responsible for the symptoms."

Among symptoms associated with depression are anxiety, poor attention and concentration, memory issues and sleep disturbances.

(c)2012 USA Today
Distributed by MCT Information Services

(http://medicalxpress.com)

How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy

The parasite T. gondii, seen here, may
be changing connections between our
neurones, altering how we act & feel. 
(Dennis Kunkel Microscropy, Inc./
Visuals Unlimited/Corbis Imag.)

Jaroslav Flegr is no kook. And yet, for years, he suspected his mind had been taken over by parasites that had invaded his brain. So the prolific biologist took his science-fiction hunch into the lab. What he’s now discovering will startle you. Could tiny organisms carried by house cats be creeping into our brains, causing everything from car wrecks to schizophrenia?

By Kathleen McAuliffe

No one would accuse Jaroslav Flegr of being a conformist. A self-described “sloppy dresser,” the 63-year-old Czech scientist has the contemplative air of someone habitually lost in thought, and his still-youthful, square-jawed face is framed by frizzy red hair that encircles his head like a ring of fire.

Certainly Flegr’s thinking is jarringly unconventional. Starting in the early 1990s, he began to suspect that a single-celled parasite in the protozoan family was subtly manipulating his personality, causing him to behave in strange, often self-destructive ways. And if it was messing with his mind, he reasoned, it was probably doing the same to others.

The parasite, which is excreted by cats in their feces, is called Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii or Toxo for short) and is the microbe that causes toxoplasmosis—the reason pregnant women are told to avoid cats’ litter boxes. Since the 1920s, doctors have recognized that a woman who becomes infected during pregnancy can transmit the disease to the fetus, in some cases resulting in severe brain damage or death. T. gondii is also a major threat to people with weakened immunity: in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, before good antiretroviral drugs were developed, it was to blame for the dementia that afflicted many patients at the disease’s end stage. Healthy children and adults, however, usually experience nothing worse than brief flu-like symptoms before quickly fighting off the protozoan, which thereafter lies dormant inside brain cells—or at least that’s the standard medical wisdom.

But if Flegr is right, the “latent” parasite may be quietly tweaking the connections between our neurons, changing our response to frightening situations, our trust in others, how outgoing we are, and even our preference for certain scents. And that’s not all. He also believes that the organism contributes to car crashes, suicides, and mental disorders such as schizophrenia. When you add up all the different ways it can harm us, says Flegr, “Toxoplasma might even kill as many people as malaria, or at least a million people a year.”

An evolutionary biologist at Charles University in Prague, Flegr has pursued this theory for decades in relative obscurity. Because he struggles with English and is not much of a conversationalist even in his native tongue, he rarely travels to scientific conferences. That “may be one of the reasons my theory is not better known,” he says. And, he believes, his views may invite deep-seated opposition. “There is strong psychological resistance to the possibility that human behavior can be influenced by some stupid parasite,” he says. “Nobody likes to feel like a puppet. Reviewers [of my scientific papers] may have been offended.” Another more obvious reason for resistance, of course, is that Flegr’s notions sound an awful lot like fringe science, right up there with UFO sightings and claims of dolphins telepathically communicating with humans.

But after years of being ignored or discounted, Flegr is starting to gain respectability. Psychedelic as his claims may sound, many researchers, including such big names in neuroscience as Stanford’s Robert Sapolsky, think he could well be onto something. Flegr’s “studies are well conducted, and I can see no reason to doubt them,” Sapolsky tells me. Indeed, recent findings from Sapolsky’s lab and British groups suggest that the parasite is capable of extraordinary shenanigans. T. gondii, reports Sapolsky, can turn a rat’s strong innate aversion to cats into an attraction, luring it into the jaws of its No. 1 predator. Even more amazing is how it does this: the organism rewires circuits in parts of the brain that deal with such primal emotions as fear, anxiety, and sexual arousal. “Overall,” says Sapolsky, “this is wild, bizarre neurobiology.” Another academic heavyweight who takes Flegr seriously is the schizophrenia expert E. Fuller Torrey, director of the Stanley Medical Research Institute, in Maryland. “I admire Jaroslav for doing [this research],” he says. “It’s obviously not politically correct, in the sense that not many labs are doing it. He’s done it mostly on his own, with very little support. I think it bears looking at. I find it completely credible.”

What’s more, many experts think T. gondii may be far from the only microscopic puppeteer capable of pulling our strings. “My guess is that there are scads more examples of this going on in mammals, with parasites we’ve never even heard of,” says Sapolsky.

Familiar to most of us, of course, is the rabies virus. On the verge of killing a dog, bat, or other warm-blooded host, it stirs the animal into a rage while simultaneously migrating from the nervous system to the creature’s saliva, ensuring that when the host bites, the virus will live on in a new carrier. But aside from rabies, stories of parasites commandeering the behavior of large-brained mammals are rare. The far more common victims of parasitic mind control—at least the ones we know about—are fish, crustaceans, and legions of insects, according to Janice Moore, a behavioral biologist at Colorado State University. “Flies, ants, caterpillars, wasps, you name it—there are truckloads of them behaving weirdly as a result of parasites,” she says.

Read more here.

Autism & cutting hair

So I did something today that if you would of told me four years ago That I would do this, I would of told you that you were nuts. So what did I do? I got highlights in my hair I know that's know big deal for most people but for me hair cuts have always been a big deal. Today as I was getting my hair cut in the chair I was thinking of being younger and like most verbal people with autism I always complained about how my hair hurts when it gets cut. But the more I thought about it today the more I realized it didn't and doesn't when they cut my hair. Think of it like a young kid who tells you his foot hurts when its actually his toe. My hair never really hurt when the stylist was cutting it. It hurt when the stylist put there finger in my hair and pulled slightly before they cut it. But that sensation trickles through your body when they are snipping at your hair. I think the same thing would happen with barber sheers. The pulling of the hair well it cuts your hair. So what is the solution, well in one of my classes at my school the teacher played us old infomercials and one of them stood out to me Of course the whole class laughed at it but I thought I would love to try it. It was called the flowbee and it was a Vacuum and sheers together. I always loved the feeling of a hair dryer in my hair and I know a lot of other people with autism that like the sensation too. So why not try some thing like the flowbee that sucks your hair gently and cuts it just the length you want it. I have now over come the sensation i feel in my hair thanks to a lot of work. I think the fact that I straighten it, brush it, put it in ponytails and really manipulate it everyday helped me over come that feeling. But for some boys/guys this feeling might stay for a longer time and might be hard to cope with. So why not try the flobee! Here’s a big shout out to the hair stylists at civello’s and I want to say thank you for making me look beautiful.

(Carly Fleischmann on FB)

Can These Household Products Cause ADHD in Your Kids?

There is mounting evidence associating chemicals and products found in the home to ADHD in children. Here are the most common culprits - and alternatives to try instead.

As cases of ADHD continue to rise, parents and researchers alike hunt for potential causes and possible links. “Literature and research currently believes ADHD to be an inherited neurodevelopmental-behavioral disorder,” says Frank Barnhill, MD, an expert on ADHD and the author of Mistaken for ADHD. Yet, recent studies have linked ADHD and worsening symptoms to certain chemicals and common household products. Paint, bug spray, and food pesticides are all on the list. Find out some other surprising sources.

Lead Strongly Linked to ADHD

Of all the substances linked to ADHD, lead may have the strongest connection. Although government regulations drastically reduced lead found in automobile fuel and paint ingredients, it is still present in items like children's costume jewelry and toys, imported candles, and soil. “It is well established that lead intoxication leads to a syndrome closely resembling ADHD,” says Edward Hallowell, MD, a board-certified child and adult psychiatrist and author of two books on ADHD, Driven to Distraction and Delivered from Distraction. A recent review study of lead and ADHD seems to confirm this fact, as the study author found multiple studies that linked higher blood levels of lead in children with higher levels of ADHD. If you are concerned about lead in your home, simple test kits are available to check lead levels.

Lead in Your Water Pipes

Most tap water is considered safe, but Barnhill says that, in some cases, water can be contaminated with lead from old pipes. Lead is a known contributor to ADHD symptoms in children, and a recent review article of lead and ADHD showed that in some studies, exposure to lead was more common from tap water than from other sources. To avoid this ADHD risk, you can test your water for lead content or simply filter your tap water to remove the impurities.

Organophosphates in Bugs Sprays and Pesticides

When it comes to pesticides and ADHD, organophosphates are commonly seen as a culprit. Organophosphates are found in some bug sprays, but they also can be ingested through fruits and vegetables that have been sprayed with these chemicals. “Foods treated with organophosphates for insects seem to cause neurologic-based behavior problems that mimic ADHD,” says Dr. Barnhill. A recent study confirmed these suspicions. It found that children with higher levels of organophosphates in their urine were much more likely to develop ADHD. To avoid this issue, feed your children organic fruits and vegetables and choose bug sprays without organophosphates.

Plastics

Plastics are virtually everywhere in our world. Two that have come under scrutiny as potential culprits for ADHD in children are phthalates, found in lotions, shampoos, and cosmetics, and bisphenol A, or BPA, which is used in many containers and in the lining of cans. Several studies that involved exposing rodents to these types of plastics showed neurological changes, including ADHD-like symptoms, as possible outcomes. To avoid these plastics, keep your children away from cosmetics, choose fresh foods over canned foods when possible, and avoid plastic containers that have a “No. 7” on the bottom — these are the ones that often contain BPA and may be linked to ADHD.

Food Colorings and Preservatives

When it comes to ADHD in children, colorings and preservatives in foods might play a role. “I have children in the practice that become very hyper when red dyes or nitrite-based food preservatives are ingested,” says Barnhill. “There are ongoing studies that might show a direct relationship to food dyes and ADHD, but the research will not be available until at least 2012.” In the meantime, the best way to avoid these potential ADHD culprits is to avoid pre-packaged and artificial foods in favor of more natural or organic choices.

Cigarette Smoke and ADHD

If you need another reason to quit, here it is: Cigarette smoke might be one of the causes of ADHD in children. “Cigarette smoke has been directly linked to a higher incidence of ADHD in kids exposed during pregnancy and shortly thereafter,” says Barnhill. A recent review article confirms this belief, stating that ADHD in children has been strongly linked to tobacco smoke exposure during pregnancy.

(everydayhealth.com)

Carly - Autistic Girl Expresses Unimaginable Intelligence

Carly on Facebook.

Carly's book.

This week's ADHD Solution is: Develop self-discipline.

Those of us with ADHD thrive on structure. We rely on having due dates, reminder systems, and daily schedules. But what happens when we lose that structure? When we go off to college, or decide to start a business, or even start our own exercise program when softball season is over? We have to create our own structure. And our success depends largely on our self discipline.

Most of us (myself included!) could use a little work in the self discipline department. We’re impulsive, and we want instant gratification. That’s a dangerous combination! It’s easy to focus on things that interest us, but we procrastinate on things that don’t. And if there’s no one to hold us accountable, chances are that we’ll never do the work that’s needed to further us towards our goals.

Developing self discipline is one of the most effective things you can do to combat ADHD impulsivity. The good news is that it can be done with practice. It’s just like building muscle – it will happen if you work at it regularly. An important first step is to actively decide to change. Commit to becoming more disciplined. Then make developing self discipline a goal of its own.

Any time you don’t feel like doing something, look at it as a perfect opportunity to practice your self discipline skills. Catch yourself in the act of blowing something off. Say to yourself, “I really don’t feel like doing this. But! Because I am working on self discipline, I am going to do it anyway.” Then do it. Savor the feeling of having pushed through the barrier. Share your victory with someone. Relishing your success will help motivate you in the future because you’ll remember how great it felt.

Another thing you can try is scheduling short tasks for yourself once or twice a day for the sole purpose of developing self discipline. It doesn’t really matter what the task is. It should be something easy that only takes a few minutes. You’ll wait for the scheduled time and start the task whether you feel like it or not. The important thing is that you honor your commitment to yourself, not that the task itself got completed. Track your progress so you can see your improvement over time. You might want to note how you felt each time and what mental processes you used to motivate yourself.

It helps to accept the fact that ADHD comes with a tendency towards procrastination. Expect that you will try to avoid your tasks. Allow yourself to feel the resistance. Then take a deep breath, remember your commitment, and do the right thing. Remind yourself that you are building that self discipline muscle. You are developing a habit. It will eventually get easier.

“With self discipline, all things are possible. Without it, even the simplest goal can seem like the impossible dream.” - Theodore Roosevelt

www.adhdsolutions.net

Dr. Hallowell’s Response to NY Times Piece “Ritalin Gone Wrong.”

Regarding the opinion piece “Ritalin Gone Wrong” written by Alan Sroufe, Ph.D., (NY Times, Jan. 29, 2012): As is usually the case when the use of stimulant medications like Ritalin makes it into mainstream media, the piece pushed emotional hot-buttons in a way that would scare the daylights out of uninformed readers and lead them to avoid ever using such medications or allowing their children to, thereby giving up on a class of medications with enormous potential benefits.

Let me offer a different point of view. I’m an M.D., a child and adult psychiatrist who’s been treating children who have what we now call ADHD for over 30 years. I was on the Harvard Medical School faculty for 20 years, and I still see patients in my offices in Sudbury, MA, and New York City every day. I have both ADHD and dyslexia myself. I’ve co-written, with John Ratey, the best-selling books on the topic of ADHD. I know this condition, and its various treatments, inside and out.

While I wince at the inflammatory rhetoric of Dr. Sroufe’s article, I actually agree with much of what he had to say. It is with his scare tactics and wrong-headed assumptions that I take issue. Let me quote and respond to several paragraphs from his article:

“First, there will never be a single solution for all children with learning and behavior problems. While some smaller number may benefit from short-term drug treatment, large-scale, long-term treatment for millions of children is not the answer.”

Who said there would be a single solution? No enlightened clinician offers medication as the single solution. We offer it as one tool that can help, but always as part of a comprehensive treatment plan which also includes other key elements like education of parent, child, and teacher; lifestyle modification, including sleep, diet, exercise, meditation and positive human interactions; coaching on how to better organize life; and ongoing follow up to monitor progress and offer encouragement and various specific tips on managing life with ADHD.

And what Dr. Sroufe cites as “some smaller number” is about 80% of individuals with ADHD who try medication. When these medications work, they do not solve the problem, any more than eyeglasses solve the problem of myopia. But they sure do help!

“Second, the large-scale medication of children feeds into a societal view that all of life’s problems can be solved with a pill and gives millions of children the impression that there is something inherently defective in them.”

It is a statement cited so endlessly as to become an accepted truth that we live in a society that believes all of life’s problems can be solved with a pill. But have you ever met anyone who actually does believe that? I haven’t. Furthermore, 19 out of 20 people who come to me for help for themselves or their child adamantly oppose the use of medication. Only when they fully understand the medical facts do many of them change their minds. Far being predisposed to the use of medication, the people who come to see me are predisposed in precisely the opposite direction.

Furthermore, no enlightened clinician prescribes the medication and leaves it at that, allowing the parent and child to imagine they have “something inherently defective in them.” I go to great lengths not only to present the medical facts but also to create a framework of understanding that describes ADHD in strength-based terms.  I tell the child that he is lucky in that he has a race car for a brain, a Ferrari engine. I tell him he has the potential to grow into a champion. I tell him (assuming it is a he, but he could just as easily be a she) that with effort he can achieve greatness in his life, and then I tell him about the billionaires, CEO’s, Pulitzer Prize winners and professional athletes with ADHD I’ve treated over the years. But I also tell him he does face one major problem. While he has a race car for a brain, he has bicycle brakes. I tell him I am a brake specialist, and one of the many tools I can use to strengthen his brakes is medication. I remind him he will have to do much more than take the medication to strengthen his brakes, but, if we’re lucky, the medication will help him in that effort.

The child and parents leave my office full of hope. Far from feeling defective, the child feels like a champion in the making. Which he most certainly can be!

“Finally, the illusion that children’s behavior problems can be cured with drugs prevents us as a society from seeking the more complex solutions that will be necessary. Drugs get everyone — politicians, scientists, teachers and parents — off the hook. Everyone except the children, that is.”

Once again, Dr. Sroufe assumes the clinician, parent, and society at large all buy the notion that “children’s behavior problems can be cured with drugs,” and that such a belief gets us “off the hook,” as if we politicians, scientists, teachers, parents, and heaven knows who all else were so sweetly deluded and so uncaring that we welcome any excuse to get us out of doing the deep probing into the “complex solutions” one is left to presume only Dr. Sroufe and his exemplary colleagues can or will attempt.

No clinician worth his or her salt believes that all problems can be cured with drugs. But neither does a responsible clinician deny the good that medications can do. When people ask me, “Do you believe in Ritalin?” I reply that Ritalin is not a religious principle. Ritalin, like all medications, can be useful when used properly and dangerous when used improperly. Why is it so difficult for so many people to hold to that middle ground?

And yet difficult it is. Ritalin continues to be a political football, a hot-button issue almost on a par with abortion or capital punishment. One is pushed to be for it or against it, while the right and good position is to be for whatever will help a child lead a better life, as long as it is safe and it is legal.

Used properly, Ritalin is safe, safer than aspirin. And it is legal, albeit highly regulated. As to its long-term use, apply common sense. Use it as long as it is helpful and causes no side effects. That may be for a day, or it may be for many years.

Of course we need to address the complex issues that contribute to behavioral, emotional, and learning problems in children. I’ve written extensively about what I call “pseudo-ADHD,” children who look as if they had ADHD but in fact have an environmentally-induced syndrome caused by too much time spent on electronic connections and not enough time spent on human connections, i.e., family dinner, bedtime stories, walks in the park, playing outdoors with friends or relatives, time with pets, buddies, extended family, and other forms of non-electronic connection. Pseudo-ADHD is a real problem; the last thing a child with pseudo-ADHD needs is Ritalin.

But that is not to say that no child needs Ritalin, nor that those who prescribe it are dimwits hoodwinked by drug companies to medicate children who do not need it. Sure, some doctors over-medicate, while other doctors never medicate because they “don’t believe in ADHD” and “don’t believe in Ritalin.”

Above all, children need a loving, safe, and richly connected childhood. The long-term study that Dr. Sroufe cited in his opinion piece does indeed show that over time, medication becomes a less important force in a child’s improvement and that human connections become ever more powerful. It is good and heartening to know that human connection–i.e., love–works wonders over time. Love is our most powerful and under-prescribed “medication.” It’s free and infinite in supply, and doctors most definitely ought to prescribe it more!

But that is not to say, as Dr. Sroufe does, that Ritalin has “gone wrong.” We may go wrong in how we use it, when we over-prescribe it, or when we use it as a substitute for love, guidance, and the human connection.

But as long as we use it properly, it remains one of our most valuable–and tested–medications. Going all the way back to the first use of stimulants to treat what we now call ADHD in 1937, stimulants have served us well as one tool–not the tool–for helping children and adults learn how to strengthen the brakes of their race car brains and become the champions they can be.

(drhallowell.com)

Do not be afraid to be different in opinion

Do not be afraid to be different in opinion with others, every opinion now accepted was once contrary to the prevailing.

Bertrand Russell

Mathematician and philosopher, British writer

(Genius | العبقرية on FB)