Reading the brain’s map: coordinated brain activation supports spatial learning and decision-making

NIH-supported study finds that spatial “replay” in neurons may help rats learn how to navigate toward goals.

Specialized brain activation “replays” the possible routes that rats can take as they navigate a space, helping them keep track of the paths they’ve already taken and choose among the routes that they can take next, according to a National Institutes of Health-funded study published in the journal Neuron.

“These findings reveal an internal ‘replay’ process in the brain that allows animals to learn from past experiences to form memories of paths leading toward goals, and subsequently to recall these paths for planning future decisions,” said Shantanu Jadhav, Ph.D., assistant professor at Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, and senior author of the study. “These results help us better understand how coordinated activation at the level of neurons can contribute to the complex processes involved in learning and decision-making.” 

The hippocampus, a structure located in the middle of the brain, is critical to learning and memory and contains specialized “place” cells that relay information about location and orientation in space. These place cells show specific patterns of activity during navigation that can be “replayed” later in forward or reverse order, almost as if the brain were fast-forwarding or rewinding through routes the rats have taken.

In previous research, Jadhav and colleagues had discovered these replay events, marked by bursts of neural activity called sharp-wave ripples, lead to coordinated activity in the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain just behind the forehead that is involved in decision-making.

But how these forward and reverse replay events influence actual learning and decision-making over time remained unclear. To find out, Jadhav and co-first authors Justin D. Shin and Wenbo Tang continuously recorded the rats’ brain activity as the rats learned how to navigate a special W-shaped maze over the course of one day. This allowed the investigators to see how neural representations changed as the rats were learning.

The researchers trained the rats over eight sessions to follow paths according to two rules – a simple rule and a complex rule – giving the rats a reward whenever they reached the correct destination. The simple rule required remembering the start and end locations of the maze paths. The complex rule depended on working memory, requiring that the rats remember the previous path in order to choose the next destination.

The scientists focused their analyses on moments of transition when the rats had paused in between completing one path and choosing the next one. As the researchers expected, replay events in the hippocampus showed reactivation of past paths in a reverse order, as if on rewind, and showed reactivation of the possible future paths in a forward order, as if on fast forward.

The forward and reverse replay patterns were so robust that the researchers could use the recordings to predict where the rats had paused in the W-shaped maze. Continuous recordings of brain activity throughout the entire task revealed shifts in activation patterns as the rats learned the simple rule. At different stages of learning, the researchers could use reverse replay and forward replay patterns to predict the path the animals had just taken and where they were about to go next, respectively. These shifts indicated that reverse replay was important for learning from the previous path, especially in the early stages of learning, while forward replay was important for planning for the next route, especially in the later stages of learning.

Activation patterns related to learning the complex working-memory rule were more consistent over time: Reverse replay events reactivated all possible past choices and forward replay events reactivated all possible future options throughout the learning process.

However, when the researchers looked at coordination between replay events in the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, they found that the coordinated reactivation in the two brain areas was correlated with the rats’ actual choices – that is, reactivation was stronger for replay of paths that the rats took than for the paths they didn’t take.

Together, the findings suggest that coordinated replay across the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex serves an important function in spatial learning and memory-guided decision-making. Specifically, the results suggest that reverse replay is likely to support the ability to reflect on and evaluate paths that have led to goals in the past, whereas forward replay seems to support the ability to think ahead and plan choices that will lead to goals in the future.

“The involvement of ‘replay’ in memory processes has been observed across many species, including humans, and this study establishes that replay serves as a key neural substrate underlying an internal dialogue across multiple brain regions to support our ability to learn, plan, choose, and deduce,” Jadhav concluded.

Grants: MH112661

This news release describes a basic research finding. Basic research increases our understanding of human behavior and biology, which is foundational to advancing new and better ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease. Science is an unpredictable and incremental process — each research advance builds on past discoveries, often in unexpected ways. Most clinical advances would not be possible without the knowledge of fundamental basic research.
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Excess body fat increases the risk of depression

A new study from Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark, shows that ten kilograms of extra body fat increases the risk of depression by seventeen percent.

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Carrying ten kilograms of excess body fat increases the risk of depression by seventeen per cent. The more fat, the greater the probability of developing depression. This is the main conclusion of a new study carried out by researchers from Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark.

"Our study also indicated that the location of the fat on the body makes no difference to the risk of depression. This suggests that it is the psychological consequences of being overweight or obese which lead to the increased risk of depression, and not the direct biological effect of the fat. If the opposite was true we would have seen that fat located centrally on the body increased the risk the most, as it has the most damaging effect in biological terms," says the study's last author Dr. Søren Dinesen Østergaard. 

He is professor at the Department of Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University and affiliated with the Department of Affective Disorders at Aarhus University Hospital. 

Prior studies in the field have predominantly used Body Mass Index (BMI) to measure obesity. BMI is calculated solely on the basis of body weight and height and is therefore a fairly crude measure, that does not, for example, take build and muscle mass into account.

"BMI is an inaccurate way of measuring overweight and obesity. Many elite athletes with a large muscle mass and a low body fat mass will have a BMI above 25, which is classified as overweight according to the common definition. This obviously doesn't make much sense. Therefore, one of the strengths of our study is that we've been able to zoom in and look at the specific relationship between the amount of body fat and the risk of depression," explains Dr. Østergaard.

In the study, which has been published in the journal Translational Psychiatry, the researchers have analysed data from two large genetic data sets: the UK Biobank, which contains data on the correlation between genetic variants and physical measurements (including body fat mass distributed around parts of the body); and the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, which contains information on the correlation between genetic variants and depression.

Dr. Østergaard also highlights his research group's choice of the 'Mendelian randomization' method as the main reason why the study was successful. He also emphasises that the findings are particularly significant in light of the fact that almost 40 per cent of the world's adult population is overweight. 

"In addition to the known physical consequences of obesity such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, there is also a significant and now well-documented psychological component, which needs to be dealt with as well. This is yet another argument for resolving the obesity epidemic," he says, before emphasising that it is important to have a balanced approach to the issue: 

"As it appears to be the psychological consequences of obesity, such as a negative body image and low self-esteem that is the main driving force behind the increased risk of depression, society's efforts to combat obesity must not stigmatise, as this will probably increase the risk of depression even further. It is important to bear this in mind so we can avoid doing more harm than good in the effort to curb the obesity epidemic," says Dr. Østergaard. 

FACTS ABOUT MENDELIAN RANDOMIZATION:

Mendelian randomization (named after the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel, who was the father of modern genetics) is a method which in recent years has helped researchers to overcome a major challenge associated with observational studies - namely that of making causal inference. In observational studies researchers often find correlations between two conditions - e.g. between obesity and depression - where it is difficult, or rather impossible, to determine whether there is indeed a causal effect going from obesity to depression - or vice versa. Mendelian randomization may solve this challenge.

Mendelian randomization can be described as nature's version of the randomised controlled trials that are carried out when testing whether a new drug has the desired (causal) effect in the treatment of a disease. In the clinical trials of drugs, lots are drawn to determine whether individual participants will receive the active drug or a placebo, without them knowing which treatment they have been assigned to. Instead, Mendelian randomization takes advantage of the fact that a completely natural randomization takes place during the formation of the sex cells (egg cells and sperm cells), which represent the origin of all human beings. When sex cells are formed, the parents' genetic variants - including those that give rise to increased body fat- are randomly distributed. Therefore, some individuals will have received many of these variants and others less. In the study in question, the researchers have utilised this natural and random source of variation to determine whether people who have received many genetic variants for increased body fat have an increased risk of suffering depression.

THE RESEARCH RESULT - MORE INFORMATION

Genetic epidemiological study utilising data from the UK Biobank (with information on the association between genetic variants and fat mass based on a study of 330,000 people) and the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (with information on the association between genetic variants and depression based on a study of 135,000 people with depression and 345,000 control subjects).

The research group comprises Maria S. Speed, Oskar H. Jefsen, Anders D. Børglum, Doug Speed and Søren D. Østergaard - all from Aarhus University.

Crisis and suicide prevention services struggle with demand after celebrity suicides NIH study identifies importance of support for critical suicide prevention services.

Thoughts about this article? "The United States may lack the resources needed to meet increases in demand for suicide prevention services that occur after celebrity suicides, according to a recent study of crisis mental health services. The study, conducted by a team of researchers, which included scientists from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health, highlights the need for suicide prevention hotlines to procure additional funds, allocate existing funds more efficiently, and develop contingency plans to accommodate increases in call volumes, particularly for the first two days after a celebrity suicide. The findings appear in the journal Psychiatric Services. “Suicide prevention is a significant public health concern and a top priority for NIMH,” said Joshua A. Gordon, M.D., Ph.D., director of NIMH. “This study highlights the importance of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and other crisis mental health services, and the need to build surge capacity of these services that could help save lives.” 

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for people in the U.S. between the ages of 10 and 34, and the suicide rate continues to rise. Suicide rates generally follow predictable patterns, with increases in the spring and a second, smaller increase in early summer. But certain events, like highly-publicized celebrity suicides, can serve as “shocks” that cause a sudden spike in suicide deaths. To test the ability of crisis mental health services to meet a sudden increase in demand for help, this study looked at increases in suicide rates within 30 days of Robin Williams’ suicide on Aug. 11, 2014. It also looked at changes in help - and information-seeking related to suicide, and changes in the percent of calls the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (NSPL) was able to answer after Williams’ death. Daily calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (including Veterans Crisis Line) initiated and answered, August 3 to September 7, 2014. Daily calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (including Veterans Crisis Line) initiated and answered, August 3 to September 7, 2014. American Psychiatric Association. The researchers used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics’ Compressed Mortality File (link is external) to compare the number of suicide deaths and the method of suicide in the 30 days before and after Aug. 11, 2014, and for the same time period in 2012 and 2013. In 2012-2014, there was an average of 113-117 suicide deaths per day; after Williams’ suicide, the average rate increased to 142 suicide deaths per day, something not observed in 2012 or 2013. Approximately two-thirds of the people who died by suicide immediately after the actor’s death used the same method of suicide as Williams. The study also examined the number of calls placed to NSPL immediately before and after Williams ended his life to measure whether media coverage of his death prompted more people to reach out for help. The day after he died, the number of calls increased by up to 300 percent - from between 4,000 to 6,000 calls per day to 12,972. However, without capacity to respond to this increased demand for crisis services, the fraction of answered calls decreased from an average of 73 percent to 57 percent, which highlights a gap in the ability of the NSPL to respond to surges in calls for help. To measure information-seeking behavior, the study looked at visits to the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SRPC) (link is external) and Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (SAVE) (link is external) websites. In the week before Williams died, the SPRC website averaged 2,315 visits per day. The day after his death, there were 5,981 visits to the site. The SAVE website averaged 4,239 visits per day in the week before he died, and 24,819 visits on August 12. Average daily visits to both sites remained consistently higher for the rest of the month of August. The study suggests that both efficient allocation of existing funds and procuring new funding will be critical to continue meeting the demand for crisis mental health services, including surge capacity.> “Crisis mental health services, such as suicide prevention hotlines and websites, provide effective counseling and vital resources for people in suicide distress. We need to ensure these services have sufficient resources to serve the public 24/7, especially in times of increased demand,” said Jane Pearson, Ph.D., chair of the Suicide Research Consortium in NIMH’s Division of Services and Intervention Research. “Shocking events, like Mr. Williams’ suicide, disrupt normal patterns in suicide rates, and cause an increase in both calls for help and imitative suicides,” said lead researcher Rajeev Ramchand, Ph.D (link is external)., of the Cohen Veterans Network. “This highlights the need for additional and consistent support for crisis mental health services, including hospital emergency departments, law enforcement, poison control centers, and health departments, as well as the mental health resources that serve as referral sources.” " Reference Ramchand, R., Cohen, E., Draper, J., Schoenbaum, M., Reidenberg, D., Colpe, L., Reed, J., & Pearson, J. (in press). Increases in demand for crisis and other suicide prevention services after a celebrity suicide. Psychiatric Services in Advance. https://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ps.201900007 (link is external). For more information on this and other mental health continuing education, please visit, Psychologist Continuing Education

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Early childhood depression alters brain development

What do you think about this article by WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE?

"The brains of children who suffer clinical depression as preschoolers develop abnormally, compared with the brains of preschoolers unaffected by the disorder, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Their gray matter -- tissue that connects brain cells and carries signals between those cells and is involved in seeing, hearing, memory, decision-making and emotion -- is lower in volume and thinner in the cortex, a part of the brain important in the processing of emotions. The new study is published Dec. 16 in JAMA Psychiatry. "What is noteworthy about these findings is that we are able to see how a life experience -- such as an episode of depression -- can change the brain's anatomy," said first author Joan L. Luby, MD, whose research established that children as young as 3 can experience depression. "Traditionally, we have thought about the brain as an organ that develops in a predetermined way, but our research is showing that actual experience -- including negative moods, exposure to poverty, and a lack of parental support and nurturing -- have a material impact on brain growth and development." The findings may help explain why children and others who are depressed have difficulty regulating their moods and emotions. The research builds on earlier work by Luby's group that detailed other differences in the brains of depressed children. Luby, the Samuel and Mae S. Ludwig Professor of Child Psychiatry, and her team studied 193 children, 90 of whom had been diagnosed with depression as preschoolers. They performed clinical evaluations on the children several times as they aged. The researchers also conducted MRI scans at three points in time as each child got older. The first scans were performed when the kids were ages 6 to 8, and the final scans were taken when they were ages 12 to 15. A total of 116 children in the study received all three brain scans. "If we had only scanned them at one age or stage, we wouldn't know whether these effects simply were present from birth or reflected an actual change in brain development," said co-investigator Deanna M. Barch, PhD, head of Washington University's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences in Arts & Sciences. "By scanning them multiple times, we were able to see that the changes reflect an actual difference in brain maturation that emerges over the course of development." The gray matter is made up mainly of neurons, along with axons that extend from brain cells to carry signals. The gray matter processes information, and as children get older, they develop more of it. Beginning around puberty, the amount of gray matter begins to decline as communication between neurons gets more efficient and redundant processes are eliminated. "Gray matter development follows an inverted U-shaped curve," Luby said. "As children develop normally, they get more and more gray matter until puberty, but then a process called pruning begins, and unnecessary cells die off. But our study showed a much steeper drop-off, possibly due to pruning, in the kids who had been depressed than in healthy children." Further, the steepness of the drop-off in the volume and thickness of the brain tissue correlated with the severity of depression: The more depressed a child was, the more severe the loss in volume and thickness. The researchers determined that having depression was a key factor in gray matter development. In scans of children whose parents had suffered from depression -- meaning the kids would be at higher risk -- gray matter appeared normal unless the kids had suffered from depression, too. Interestingly, the differences in gray matter volume and thickness typically were more pronounced than differences in other parts of the brain linked to emotions. Luby explained that because gray matter is involved in emotion processing, it is possible some of the structures involved in emotion, such as the brain's amygdala, may function normally, but when the amygdala sends signals to the cortex -- where gray matter is thinner -- the cortex may be unable to regulate those signals properly. Luby and Barch are planning to conduct brain scans on even younger children to learn whether depression may cause pruning in the brain's gray matter to begin earlier than normal, changing the course of brain development as a child grows. "A next important step will involve determining whether early intervention might shift the trajectory of brain development for these kids so that they revert to more typical and healthy development," said Barch, also the Gregory B. Couch Professor of Psychiatry. Luby said that is the main challenge facing those who treat kids with depression. "The experience of early childhood depression is not only uncomfortable for the child during those early years," she said. "It also appears to have long-lasting effects on brain development and to make that child vulnerable to future problems. If we can intervene, however, the benefits might be just as long-lasting." ### Funding from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institutes of Health Blueprint of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), grant numbers R01 MH66031, R01 MH084840, R01 MH090786, R01 MH098454-S, U54 MH091657, 2R01 MH064769-06A1, PA-07-070 NIMH R01 5K01MH090515-04 and T32 MH100019. Luby JL, Belden AC, Jackson JL, Lessov-Schlaggar CN, Harms MP, Tillman R, Botteron K, Whalen D, Barch DM. Early childhood depression and alterations in the trajectory of gray matter maturation in middle childhood and early adolescence?. JAMA Psychiatry, published online Dec. 16, 2015. http://jamapsychiatry.com doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2015.2356 Washington University School of Medicine's 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient-care institutions in the nation, currently ranked sixth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare." For more information on depression and other mental health related topics,please visit Aspira Continuing Education Online Courses

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Study finds surprising links between bullying and eating disorders

What do you think of this NIMH article?: "DUKE UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER IMAGE: ILLUSTRATION BY MARK DUBOWSKI FOR DUKE MEDICINE. CREDIT: ILLUSTRATION BY MARK DUBOWSKI FOR DUKE MEDICINE Being bullied in childhood has been associated with increased risk for anxiety, depression and even eating disorders. But according to new research, it's not only the victims who could be at risk psychologically, but also the bullies themselves. Researchers at Duke Medicine and the University of North Carolina School of Medicine were surprised to find that in a study of 1,420 children, those who bullied others were twice as likely to display symptoms of bulimia, such as bingeing and purging, when compared to children who are not involved in bullying. The findings are published in the December issue of International Journal of Eating Disorders. "For a long time, there's been this story about bullies that they're a little more hale and hearty," said lead author William Copeland, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. "Maybe they're good at manipulating social situations or getting out of trouble, but in this one area it seems that's not the case at all. Maybe teasing others may sensitize them to their own body image issues, or afterward, they have regret for their actions that results in these symptoms like binge eating followed by purging or excess exercise." The findings come from an analysis of interviews from the Great Smoky Mountains Study, a database with more than two decades of health information on participants who enrolled at age 9. The data is considered a community sample and not representative of the U.S. population, but offers clues to how children ages 9 to 16 could be affected. Participants were divided into four categories - children who were not at all involved in bullying; victims of bullying; children who sometimes were victims and sometimes were instigators; and children who were solely bullies, repeatedly abusing other children verbally and physically, socially excluding others, and rumor mongering, without ever becoming a victim themselves. The researchers were not surprised to find that victims of peer abuse were generally at increased risk for eating disorders. Children who were victims of bullying were at nearly twice the risk of displaying symptoms of anorexia (11.2 percent prevalence compared to 5.6 percent of children who were not involved in bullying) and bulimia (27.9 percent prevalence compared to 17.6 percent of children not involved in bullying). Children who were both bullies and victims had the highest prevalence of anorexia symptoms (22.8 percent compared to 5.6 percent of the children not involved in bullying) and also the highest prevalence of binge eating (4.8 percent of children as compared to less than 1 percent of uninvolved children) and vomiting as a way to maintain their weight. But the impact of bullying behavior on those who were bullies was also significant, with 30.8 percent of bullies having symptoms of bulimia compared to 17.6 percent of children not involved in bullying. All of these behaviors can have devastating effects on the long-term health of children, said Cynthia M. Bulik, Ph.D., a distinguished professor of eating disorders at the UNC School of Medicine and a co-author on the findings. "Sadly, humans do tend to be most critical about features in other people that they dislike most in themselves," Bulik said. "The bullies' own body dissatisfaction could fuel their taunting of others. Our findings tell us to raise our vigilance for eating disorders in anyone involved in bullying exchanges -- regardless of whether they are the aggressor, the victim, or both." Although many children experience lifelong effects, many appear to cope and succeed after such experiences, Copeland said. He and colleagues are examining myriad factors, including looking at financial and educational outcomes, and even if bullying or being victimized is associated with genetic biomarkers. "We want to do a better job of understanding why some people are able to experience the same things as others and be able to get through them without the same consequences," Copeland said. "We really need to understand the resilience in those who have been bullied. That can help us determine the children who are going to need the most attention, and how we can promote those traits in others to increase their resilience." ### In addition to Copeland and Bulik, study authors include Nancy Zucker; Dieter Wolke; Suzet Tanya Lereya; and Elizabeth Jane Costello. The study was sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health (MH63970, MH63671, MH48085, MH080230); the National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA/MH11301); the William T. Grant Foundation; and the Economic and Social Research Council in the United Kingdom (ES/K003593/1). Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system" For more information mental health topics, please visit our course listing mental health continuing education

Happy head, happy heart: Positive emotions may promote heart-healthy behaviors

What do you think of this article by NIMH? "People with heart disease may benefit from maintaining positive emotions, according to health researchers. Over the course of five years the researchers tracked more than 1,000 patients with coronary heart disease. Patients who reported higher positive psychological states were more likely to be physically active, sleep better and take their heart medications and were also less likely to smoke, compared to patients with lower levels of positive states. "Negative emotions and depression are known to have harmful effects on health, but it is less clear how positive emotions might be health-protective," said Nancy L. Sin, postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Healthy Aging and in the department of biobehavioral health at Penn State. "We found that positive emotions are associated with a range of long-term health habits, which are important for reducing the risk of future heart problems and death." The researchers assessed psychological well-being of participants at baseline and again at a five-year follow-up by asking the participants to rate the extent that they had felt 10 specified positive emotions, including "interested," "proud," "enthusiastic" and "inspired." Physical activity, sleep quality, medication adherence and alcohol and cigarette use were also measured at baseline and again five years later. The researchers report their findings in the today's (Oct. 2) issue of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. "Higher levels of positive emotions were associated with less smoking, greater physical activity, better sleep quality and more adherence to medications" at baseline, said the researchers. They found no correlation between positive emotions and alcohol use. The results took into account patients' demographic factors, depressive symptoms and the severity of their heart conditions. Though positive emotions at baseline did not predict changes in health behaviors five years later, increases in positive emotions across the five-year period were associated with improvements in physical activity, sleep quality and medication adherence. There are a number of reasons why positive emotions are linked to optimal health habits, the researchers suggest. People with greater positive well-being may be more motivated and persistent in engaging in healthy behaviors. They might have more confidence in their abilities to maintain routines such as physical activity and sleep hygiene. Positive emotions may also enable people to better adjust their health goals and to proactively cope with stress and setbacks. "Efforts to sustain or enhance positive emotions may be promising for promoting better health behaviors," said the researchers. This research sets the stage for future work on interventions to improve health habits, Sin noted. Further research with other chronic disease populations and with electronic tracking of health behaviors should be conducted, she said. ### Judith Tedlie Moskowitz, professor, medical social sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, and Mary A. Whooley, professor, medicine, epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco and physician at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, also worked on this research. The National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Mental Health, the department of Veterans Affairs, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the American Federation for Aging Research supported this work. Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system." For more on this and other mental health subjects, please visit our course listing page Continuing Education Online Courses

Long-term memory formation

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NYU scientists find that growth factors that build brains also build memories New York University "A team of New York University neuroscientists has determined how a pair of growth factor molecules contributes to long-term memory formation, a finding that appears in the journal Neuron. "These results give us a better understanding of memory's architecture and, specifically, how molecules act as a network in creating long-term memories," explains the paper's senior author, Thomas Carew, a professor in NYU's Center for Neural Science and dean of NYU's Faculty of Arts and Science. "More importantly, this marks another step toward elucidating the intricacies of memory function, which is vital in the development of cognitive therapies to address related afflictions." The importance of growth factor molecules (GFs) has long been known. They are critical in building brains beginning in utero and until adulthood. Moreover, over time, it's been established that GFs are "recycled" from brain builders to engineers of long-term memories. Less clear, however, is how the wide range of GF families, as well as different members within each family, act to help us create these memories. In working to address this question, the NYU research team, which also included graduate student Ashley Kopec, the study's lead author, and research scientist Gary Philips, focused on two GF families: TrkB and TGFβr-II, which represent two distinct classes of GFs that utilize different types of receptors to exert their actions in the brain. In their study, the researchers examined GFs in Aplysia californica, the California sea slug. Aplysia is a model organism that is quite powerful for this type of research because its neurons are 10 to 50 times larger than those of higher organisms, such as vertebrates, and it possesses a relatively small network of neurons--characteristics that readily allow for the examination of molecular signaling during memory formation. Specifically, to produce a form of "threat memory" called sensitization in a simple reflex system of Aplysia, the researchers presented the sea slugs with a pair of mild tail shocks delivered 45 minutes apart--the first to instill a "molecular context" in the neurons of the reflex and the second to use that context to drive molecular mechanisms that are required to form a long-term memory -- and then examined GF activity at both periods, Time 1 and Time 2. Their results showed differences in the role of these two GF families across two dimensions: time and space. At Time 1, when the context for the memory is first created, TrkB plays a critical role while TGFβr-II is irrelevant. However, at Time 2, when a long-term memory is actually formed, the roles are reversed: TGFβr-II is active, but TrkB is insignificant. In addition, the results showed spatial differences. In Aplysia, the simple neural circuit that mediates the reflex modified by learning is made up of unique sensory neurons and motor neurons. The sensory neurons' cell bodies live in one compartment of the brain while their companion synapses, which pass along signals to other cells, reside in another. In the Neuron study, the researchers found that the TrkB effects are exerted only at synapses while TGFβr-II functions only at the cell body. Overall the study provides new insights into how different GF families play unique roles both in time and in space, thus helping to elucidate the "when," "where," and "how" of memory formation." ### The research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (RO1 MH 041083, F31 MH 100889). For more information on memory, please visit Aging and Long Term Care CE Course

High-fructose diet in adolescence may exacerbate depressive-like behavior

What do you think of this article? "Animal study shows that diet alters important pathways associated with brain's response to stress The consumption of a diet high in fructose throughout adolescence can worsen depressive- and anxiety-like behavior and alter how the brain responds to stress, according to new animal research scheduled for presentation at Neuroscience 2014, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world's largest source of emerging news about brain science and health. "Our results offer new insights into the ways in which diet can alter brain health and may lead to important implications for adolescent nutrition and development," said lead author Constance Harrell of Emory University in Atlanta. Harrell is presenting her work Saturday, Nov. 15, Halls A-C, 3-4 pm and participating in an "Unhealthy diet, unhealthy mind"-themed press conference on Tuesday, Nov. 18 at 12:30 pm. Harrell is a graduate student working with Gretchen Neigh, PhD, assistant professor of physiology, psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University School of Medicine. Fructose, a sugar found naturally in fruits and vegetables but also added to many processed foods and beverages, can promote negative cardiovascular effects. It also stimulates neural pathways that affect how the brain responds to stress, which can have important behavioral effects, including the worsening of symptoms related to depression and anxiety. Such effects are of particular concern during the teen years, which is a critical time for the development of the brain's stress response. To determine whether fructose consumption has the potential to create long-term changes in metabolism and behavior during adolescence, Harrell and her colleagues gave both adolescent and adult rats either a standard or a high-fructose diet. After 10 weeks, the adolescent but not adult rats on the high-fructose diet had a different stress hormone response to an acute stressor, which was consistent with their depressed-like behavior. A genetic pathway in the brain that plays a key role in regulating the way the brain responds to stress was also altered. These findings indicate that consuming a diet high in fructose throughout adolescence may exacerbate depressive behaviors and affect the way the body and the brain respond to stress." ### For more mental health topics and Continuing education in 3 easy steps, please visit Online MFT Continuing Education

Teens whose parents exert more psychological control have trouble with closeness, independence

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"For teenagers, learning to establish a healthy degree of autonomy and closeness in relationships (rather than easily giving in to peer pressure) is an important task. A new longitudinal study has found one reason adolescents struggle with balancing autonomy and closeness in relationships: parents' psychological control. Teens whose parents exerted more psychological control over them when they were 13 had more problems establishing friendships and romantic relationships that balanced closeness and independence, both in adolescence and into early adulthood. The study, by researchers at the University of Virginia, appears in the journal Child Development. The researchers looked at whether parents' greater use of psychological control in early adolescence can hinder teens' development of autonomy in relationships with peers. Parents' psychological control involved such tactics as using guilt, withdrawing love, fostering anxiety, or other psychologically manipulative tactics aimed at controlling youths' motivations and behaviors. "These tactics might pressure teens to make decisions in line with their parents' needs and motivations rather than their own," explains Barbara A. Oudekerk, a statistician with the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, who led the study while a research associate at the University of Virginia. "Without opportunities to practice self-directed, independent decision making, teens might give in to their friends' and partners' decisions." Oudekerk and her colleagues found that parents' use of psychological control at age 13 placed teens at risk for having problems establishing autonomy and closeness in relationships with friends and romantic partners that persisted eight years later, into early adulthood. Previous studies have shown that adolescents who fail to develop the capacity to establish autonomy and closeness are at risk for using methods that are hostile or that undermine autonomy in their own relationships, as well as for experiencing depression and loneliness in close relationships in adulthood. The study included 184 ethnically and socioeconomically diverse teens. At ages 13 and 18, the youths reported the degree to which their parents used psychological control. For example, some parents used psychological control by saying, "If you really cared for me, you wouldn't do things to worry me," while others acted less friendly toward their teens when the adolescents didn't see things in the same way the parents did. The study also assessed teens' autonomy (their ability to reason, be their own people, and express confidence) and relatedness (their ability to show warmth and connection) in friendships when the adolescents were 13, 18, and 21, and in romantic relationships at ages 18 and 21. Throughout adolescence, teens became increasingly less skilled at establishing autonomy and closeness in friendships and romantic relationships the more psychological control they experienced from their parents. In addition, teens' abilities (or lack thereof) to express autonomy and maintain close relationships with friends and partners at age 18 predicted the degree of autonomy and closeness in future relationships at age 21. Despite romantic relationships being relatively new in adolescence, the better teens were at establishing autonomy and relatedness with partners at age 18, the better they were at establishing autonomy and relatedness with both friends and partners at age 21. "Parents often fear the harmful consequences of peer pressure in adolescence," says Oudekerk. "Our study suggests that parents can promote or undermine teens' ability to assert their own views and needs to close friends and romantic partners. In addition, teens who learn—or fail to learn—how to express independence and closeness with friends and partners during adolescence carry these skills forward into adult relationships." The study illustrates the importance of intervening early and encouraging healthy relationships between parents and their adolescents. It also documents that adolescent relationships with peers and partners offer opportunities for learning and practicing healthy relationship skills that can shape the quality of adult relationships. ### The study was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute of Mental Health. Summarized from Child Development, The Cascading Development of Autonomy and Relatedness From Adolescence to Adulthood by Oudekerk, BA (now at the Department of Justice, formerly at the University of Virginia), Allen, JP, Hessel, ET, and Molloy, LE (University of Virginia). Copyright 2014 The Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved." For more information on mental health topics, please visit Continuing Education for Counselors

Mental Rest and Reflection Boost Learning, Study Suggests

What do you think of this article supported by the NIH and published by University of Texas at Austin?: "The patterns of brain activity recorded in this fMRI scanner revealed how mental rest and reflection on past learning activities can boost future learning. Photo credit: Jeff Luci. AUSTIN, Texas — A new study, which may have implications for approaches to education, finds that brain mechanisms engaged when people allow their minds to rest and reflect on things they've learned before may boost later learning. Scientists have already established that resting the mind, as in daydreaming, helps strengthen memories of events and retention of information. In a new twist, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have shown that the right kind of mental rest, which strengthens and consolidates memories from recent learning tasks, helps boost future learning. The results appear online this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Margaret Schlichting, a graduate student researcher, and Alison Preston, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, gave participants in the study two learning tasks in which participants were asked to memorize different series of associated photo pairs. Between the tasks, participants rested and could think about anything they chose, but brain scans found that the ones who used that time to reflect on what they had learned earlier in the day fared better on tests pertaining to what they learned later, especially where small threads of information between the two tasks overlapped. Participants seemed to be making connections that helped them absorb information later on, even if it was only loosely related to something they learned before. "We've shown for the first time that how the brain processes information during rest can improve future learning," says Preston. "We think replaying memories during rest makes those earlier memories stronger, not just impacting the original content, but impacting the memories to come. Until now, many scientists assumed that prior memories are more likely to interfere with new learning. This new study shows that at least in some situations, the opposite is true. "Nothing happens in isolation," says Preston. "When you are learning something new, you bring to mind all of the things you know that are related to that new information. In doing so, you embed the new information into your existing knowledge." Preston described how this new understanding might help teachers design more effective ways of teaching. Imagine a college professor is teaching students about how neurons communicate in the human brain, a process that shares some common features with an electric power grid. The professor might first cue the students to remember things they learned in a high school physics class about how electricity is conducted by wires. "A professor might first get them thinking about the properties of electricity," says Preston. "Not necessarily in lecture form, but by asking questions to get students to recall what they already know. Then, the professor might begin the lecture on neuronal communication. By prompting them beforehand, the professor might help them reactivate relevant knowledge and make the new material more digestible for them." This research was conducted with adult participants. The researchers will next study whether a similar dynamic is at work with children. This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation (NSF) through the NSF CAREER Award and the Department of Defense through the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship Program." For more information on mental health topics, please visit CEUs for Counselors

Public feels more negative toward drug addicts than mentally ill

What do you think about this article from NIH? "While both are treatable health conditions, stigma of drug addiction much more pronounced, seen as 'moral failing' People are significantly more likely to have negative attitudes toward those suffering from drug addiction than those with mental illness, and don't support insurance, housing, and employment policies that benefit those dependent on drugs, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research suggests. A report on the findings, which appears in the October issue of the journal Psychiatric Services, suggests that society seems not to know whether to regard substance abuse as a treatable medical condition akin to diabetes or heart disease, or as a personal failing to be overcome. "While drug addiction and mental illness are both chronic, treatable health conditions, the American public is more likely to think of addiction as a moral failing than a medical condition," says study leader Colleen L. Barry, PhD, MPP, an associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "In recent years, it has become more socially acceptable to talk publicly about one's struggles with mental illness. But with addiction, the feeling is that the addict is a bad or weak person, especially because much drug use is illegal." Between Oct. 30 and Dec. 2, 2013, Barry and her colleagues surveyed a nationally representative sample of 709 participants about their attitudes toward either mental illness or drug addition. The questions centered on stigma, discrimination, treatment and public policy. Not only did they find that respondents had significantly more negative opinions about those with drug addiction than those with mental illness, the researchers found much higher levels of public opposition to policies that might help drug addicts in their recovery. Only 22 percent of respondents said they would be willing to work closely on a job with a person with drug addiction compared to 62 percent who said they would be willing to work with someone with mental illness. Sixty-four percent said that employers should be able to deny employment to people with a drug addiction compared to 25 percent with a mental illness. Forty-three percent were opposed to giving individuals addicted to drugs equivalent health insurance benefits to the public at-large, while only 21 percent were opposed to giving the same benefits to those with mental illness. Respondents agreed on one question: Roughly three in 10 believe that recovery from either mental illness or drug addiction is impossible. The researchers say that the stories of drug addiction portrayed in the media are often of street drug users in bad economic conditions rather than of those in the suburbs who have become addicted to prescription painkillers after struggling with chronic pain. Drug addicts who fail treatment are seen as "falling off the wagon," as opposed to people grappling with a chronic health condition that is hard to bring under control, they say. Missing, they say, are inspiring stories of people who, with effective treatment, are able to overcome addiction and live drug-free for many years. Barry says once it would have been taboo for people to casually discuss the antidepressants they are taking, which is often the norm today. That kind of frank talk can do wonders in shaping public opinion, she says. "The more shame associated with drug addiction, the less likely we as a community will be in a position to change attitudes and get people the help they need," says another study author, Beth McGinty, PhD, MS, an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "If you can educate the public that these are treatable conditions, we will see higher levels of support for policy changes that benefit people with mental illness and drug addiction." ### "Stigma, Discrimination, Treatment Effectiveness, and Policy: Public Views About Drug Addiction and Mental Illness," was written by Colleen L. Barry, PhD, MPP; Emma E. McGinty, PHD, MS; Bernice A. Pescosolido, PhD; and Howard H. Goldman, MD, PhD. The study was supported by grants from AIG Inc.; the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01 DA026414); the NIH's National Institute of Mental Health (1R01MH093414-01A1); the National Science Foundation and the College of Arts and Sciences, Indiana University." For more information on mental health topics, please visit Continuing Education for Counselors

Teenage Girls Are Exposed to More Stressors that Increase Depression Risk

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"Adolescence is often a turbulent time, and it is marked by substantially increased rates of depressive symptoms, especially among girls. New research indicates that this gender difference may be the result of girls’ greater exposure to stressful interpersonal events, making them more likely to ruminate, and contributing to their risk of depression. The findings are published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. This is a photo of a pensive looking girl sitting on steps.“These findings draw our focus to the important role of stress as a potential causal factor in the development of vulnerabilities to depression, particularly among girls, and could change the way that we target risk for adolescent depression,” says psychology researcher and lead author on the study, Jessica Hamilton of Temple University. “Although there is a range of other vulnerabilities that contribute to the emergence of girls’ higher rates of depression during adolescence, our study highlights an important malleable pathway that explains girls’ greater risk of depression.” Research has shown that cognitive vulnerabilities associated with depression, such as negative cognitive style and rumination, emerge during adolescence. Teens who tend to interpret events in negative ways (negative cognitive style) and who tend to focus on their depressed mood following such events (rumination) are at greater risk of depression. Hamilton, a doctoral student in the Mood and Cognition Laboratory of Lauren Alloy at Temple University, hypothesized that life stressors, especially those related to adolescents’ interpersonal relationships and that adolescents themselves contribute to (such as a fight with a family member or friend), would facilitate these vulnerabilities and, ultimately, increase teens’ risk of depression. The researchers examined data from 382 Caucasian and African American adolescents participating in an ongoing longitudinal study. The adolescents completed self-report measures evaluating cognitive vulnerabilities and depressive symptoms at an initial assessment, and then completed three follow-up assessments, each spaced about 7 months apart. As expected, teens who reported higher levels of interpersonal dependent stress showed higher levels of negative cognitive style and rumination at later assessments, even after the researchers took initial levels of the cognitive vulnerabilities, depressive symptoms, and sex into account. Girls tended to show more depressive symptoms at follow-up assessments than did boys — while boys’ symptoms seemed to decline from the initial assessment to follow-up, girls’ symptoms did not. Girls also were exposed to a greater number of interpersonal dependent stressors during that time, and analyses suggest that it is this exposure to stressors that maintained girls’ higher levels of rumination and, thus, their risk for depression over time. The researchers emphasize that the link is not driven by reactivity to stress — girls were not any more reactive to the stressors that they experienced than were boys. “Simply put, if boys and girls had been exposed to the same number of stressors, both would have been likely to develop rumination and negative cognitive styles,” Hamilton explains. Importantly, other types of stress — including interpersonal stress that is not dependent on the teen (such as a death in the family) and achievement-related stress — were not associated with later levels of rumination or negative cognitive style. “Parents, educators, and clinicians should understand that girls’ greater exposure to interpersonal stressors places them at risk for vulnerability to depression and ultimately, depression itself,” says Hamilton. “Thus, finding ways to reduce exposure to these stressors or developing more effective ways of responding to these stressors may be beneficial for adolescents, especially girls.” According to Hamilton, the next step will be to figure out why girls are exposed to more interpersonal stressors: “Is it something specific to adolescent female relationships? Is it the societal expectations for young adolescent girls or the way in which young girls are socialized that places them at risk for interpersonal stressors? These are questions to which we need to find answers!” Co-authors on the study include Jonathan P. Stange and Lauren B. Alloy of Temple University and Lyn Y. Abramson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This work was supported by NIMH Grants MH79369 and MH101168 to Lauren B. Alloy. Jonathan P. Stange was supported by National Research Service Award F31MH099761 from NIMH." For more information on mental health topics, please visit CEUs for MFTs