Hot flushes and night sweats linked to 70% increase in cardiovascular disease
July 2, 2020
Science Daily/University of Queensland
New research from The University of Queensland has found that women who have hot flushes and night sweats after menopause are 70 per cent more likely to have heart attacks, angina and strokes.
School of Public Health PhD student Dr Dongshan Zhu has found women of any age who experience hot flushes and night sweats, also known as vasomotor symptoms or VMS, are more likely to experience non-fatal cardiovascular events.
"Until now, it's been unclear if VMS is associated with cardiovascular disease, but now we know it to be true," Dr Zhu said.
"Further, VMS before menopause increases a woman's chance of cardiovascular events by 40 per cent."
Dr Zhu also found that the risk of cardiovascular events was more related to the severity of the hot flushes and night sweats rather than the frequency or duration.
"We found that women with severe VMS were more than twice as likely to experience a non-fatal cardiovascular event compared with women who had no symptoms," he said.
Dr Zhu used data from InterLACE, a major collaboration of 25 studies of more than 500,000 women around the world.
Senior author on the study Professor Gita Mishra said the findings may have important clinical implications.
"This research helps to identify women who are at a higher risk for the development of cardiovascular events and who may need close monitoring in clinical practice," Professor Mishra said.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200702113707.htm
Air pollution's connection to infant mortality
June 29, 2020
Science Daily/Stanford University
The study of sub-Saharan Africa finds that a relatively small increase in airborne particles significantly increase infant mortality rates. A cost-effective solution may lie in an exotic-sounding proposal.
Dust sweeping across the Southeast U.S. in recent days warns of a growing risk to infants and children in many parts of the world. A Stanford-led study focuses on this dust, which travels thousands of miles from the Sahara Desert, to paint a clearer picture than ever before of air pollution's impact on infant mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. The paper, published June 29 in Nature Sustainability, reveals how a changing climate might intensify or mitigate the problem, and points to seemingly exotic solutions to reducing dust pollution that could be more effective and affordable than current health interventions in improving child health.
"Africa and other developing regions have made remarkable strides overall in improving child health in recent decades, but key negative outcomes such as infant mortality remain stubbornly high in some places," said study senior author Marshall Burke, an associate professor of Earth system science in Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. "We wanted to understand why that was, and whether there was a connection to air pollution, a known cause of poor health."
Understanding airborne danger
Children under 5 are particularly vulnerable to the tiny particles, or particulate, in air pollution that can have a range of negative health impacts, including lower birth weight and impaired growth in the first year of life. In developing regions, exposure to high levels of air pollution during childhood is estimated to reduce overall life expectancy by 4-5 years on average.
Quantifying the health impacts of air pollution -- a crucial step for understanding global health burdens and evaluating policy choices -- has been a challenge in the past. Researchers have struggled to adequately separate out the health effects of air pollution from the health effects of activities that generate the pollution. For example, a booming economy can produce air pollution but also spur developments, such as lower unemployment, that lead to better healthcare access and improved health outcomes.
To isolate the effects of air pollution exposure, the Stanford-led study focuses on dust carried thousands of miles from the Bodélé Depression in Chad -- the largest source of dust emissions in the world. This dust is a frequent presence in West Africa and, to a lesser extent, across other African regions. The researchers analyzed 15 years of household surveys from 30 countries across Sub-Saharan Africa covering nearly 1 million births. Combining birth data with satellite-detected changes in particulate levels driven by the Bodélé dust provided an increasingly clear picture of poor air quality's health impacts on children.
Sobering findings and surprising solutions
The researchers found that a roughly 25 percent increase in local annual mean particulate concentrations in West Africa causes an 18 percent increase in infant mortality. The results expand on a 2018 paper by the same researchers that found exposure to high particulate matter concentrations in sub-Saharan Africa accounted for about 400,000 infant deaths in 2015 alone.
The new study, combined with previous findings from other regions, makes clear that air pollution, even from natural sources, is a "critical determining factor for child health around the world," the researchers write. Emissions from natural sources could change dramatically in a changing climate, but it's unclear how. For example, the concentration of dust particulate matter across Sub-Saharan Africa is highly dependent on the amount of rainfall in the Bodélé Depression. Because future changes in rainfall over the Bodélé region due to climate change are highly uncertain, the researchers calculated a range of possibilities for sub-Saharan Africa that could result in anywhere from a 13-percent decline in infant mortality to a 12-percent increase just due to changes in rainfall over the desert. These impacts would be larger than any other published projections for climate change impact on health across Africa.
Safeguarding children against air pollution is nearly impossible in many developing regions because many homes have open windows or permeable roofs and walls, and infants and young children are unlikely to wear masks. Instead, the researchers suggest exploring the possibility of dampening sand with groundwater in the Bodélé region to stop it from going airborne -- an approach that has been successful at small scale in California.
The researchers estimate that deploying solar-powered irrigation systems in the desert area could avert 37,000 infant deaths per year in West Africa at a cost of $24 per life, making it competitive with many leading health interventions currently in use, including a range of vaccines and water and sanitation projects.
"Standard policy instruments can't be counted on to reduce all forms of air pollution," said study lead author Sam Heft-Neal, a research scholar at Stanford's Center on Food Security and the Environment. "While our calculation doesn't consider logistical constraints to project deployment, it highlights the possibility of a solution that targets natural pollution sources and yields enormous benefits at a modest cost."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200629120215.htm
Prenatal stress associated with infant gut microbes
June 23, 2020
Science Daily/University of Turku
Mother's chronic prenatal psychological distress and elevated hair cortisol concentrations are associated with gut microbiota composition of the infant, according to a new publication from the FinnBrain research project of the University of Turku, Finland. The results help to better understand how prenatal stress can be connected to infant growth and development. The study has been published in the Psychoneuroendocrinology journal.
Prenatal stress can be associated with infant growth and development. However, the mechanisms underlying this association are not yet fully understood.
"We were able to show that maternal chronic psychological distress and elevated hair cortisol concentrations during pregnancy are associated with infant gut microbiota composition but not diversity," says Doctoral Candidate, Doctor Anna Aatsinki.
The study used hair cortisol analysis which enabled measuring the concentration averages of stress hormone cortisol over several months. In addition, the symptoms of the mother were assessed three times during pregnancy. The infant gut microbiota was analysed early at the age of 2.5 months with next generation sequencing.
Previously, similar studies have focused on animals and two have been smaller human studies making this data consisting of 399 mothers and their infants the largest in the world so far. The received results provide significant new information on the phenomenon. In addition, this study was able to confirm previously made observations.
Studying the Role of Microbes as Mediators of Stress
Both Proteobacteria and Lactobacillus are common infant gut microbes.
"We discovered, for instance, that mother's chronic prenatal psychological distress was linked to increased abundances of Proteobacteria genera in infant microbiota. In addition, chronic psychological symptoms were connected to decreased abundances of Akkermansia genera which is considered to promote health at least in adults," summarises Aatsinki.
According to Aatsinki, it was also interesting that low cortisol concentrations were associated with increased abundances of Lactobacillus in infant gut microbiota. Lactobacillus bacteria are considered to promote health.
However, Proteobacteria also contain species that are able to cause inflammation in the body. Proteobacteria can also be associated with the child's disease risk later in life. Therefore, researchers consider it important to study how the observed changes are connected to later child development.
"Our study does not explain the cause-effect relationship, or whether prenatal psychological stress is linked to differences in microbial metabolic products or e.g. in immune system function. In other words, important questions still need to be answered," notes Aatsinki.
The study is part of the FinnBrain research project and its gut-brain axis sub-project. The sub-project led by Docent, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist Linnea Karlsson studies how prenatal stress affects infant microbiota development and how infant gut microbes affect later brain development.
The FinnBrain research project of the University of Turku studies the combined influence of environmental and genetic factors on the development of children. Over 4,000 families participate in the research project and they are followed from infancy long into adulthood.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200623145346.htm
Childhood trauma affects the timing of motherhood
June 4, 2020
Science Daily/University of Turku
Women who have experienced childhood trauma become mothers earlier than those with a more stable childhood environment shows a new study conducted in collaboration between the University of Turku and the University of Helsinki in Finland. The trauma children experience form living in war zones, natural disasters or perhaps even epidemics can have unexpected effects that resurface later in their lives.
During the Second World War, thousands of Finnish women and girls volunteered to aid in the war effort as part of the paramilitary organisation 'Lotta Svärd' exposing some to the trauma of war. Researcher and lead author of the study Robert Lynch from the University of Turku used extensive data collected on these volunteers to study the effects of childhood trauma on adults.
The study showed that young girls and women who served in the war became mothers earlier and had more children compared to women of the same age who did not participate in the war effort.
"If we can measure the effects of trauma on basic things such as the timing of motherhood, then it almost certainly has major effects on many of our other important behaviours, such as overall aversion to risk, sociality or the pace of sexual development," explains Lynch.
"This study is groundbreaking because it overcomes many of the pitfalls of research on humans that has made it difficult to know whether trauma is actually the root cause of starting a family at a younger age. The extensive dataset made it possible for us to compare women before and after the war and also take family background into account by comparing sisters. This is strong evidence in support of the idea that trauma affects reproductive schedules," adds senior author, Researcher John Loehr from the University of Helsinki.
The study has clear relevance for the millions of children and adults worldwide who experience trauma through wars. However, relevance likely also extends to other sources of trauma, such as natural disasters or even the current COVID-19 epidemic.
Evolutionary theory predicts that individuals experiencing an unstable environment with high mortality are better off reproducing sooner rather than taking the risk of not having the chance later.
"There appears to be a sensitivity window that extends from childhood into early adulthood where behaviour adjusts to match the circumstances experienced. The consequences can be far-reaching even after the situation stabilises. A childhood trauma can influence people's adult lives in ways that they are unaware of, such as the timing of their motherhood," explains Academy Professor Virpi Lummaa from the University of Turku.
Background:
Prior to and during the Second World War, many Finnish girls and women volunteered for the 'Lotta Svärd' organisation that was a major part of the war effort. Tasks within the organisation varied greatly, and many of the women performed duties that exposed them to the trauma of war. Towards the end of the war, girls as young as fourteen years of age were entrusted with some of the more demanding jobs usually reserved for adults. The project was funded by the Kone Foundation with data from Karjala Liitto registers and digitised church register data provided by Karjalan tietokantasäätiö.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200604120546.htm
Study finds exercise increases benefits of breast milk for babies
Even moderate exercise increases compound that reduces risk of heart disease, diabetes and obesity
June 29, 2020
Science Daily/Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
A new study led by researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine finds even moderate exercise during pregnancy increases a compound in breast milk that reduces a baby's lifelong risks of serious health issues such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease.
Findings from the study published online today in the journal Nature Metabolism.
"We've done studies in the past that have shown that maternal exercise improves the health of offspring, but in this study, we wanted to begin to answer the question of why," said Kristin Stanford, a researcher at The Ohio State Wexner Medical Center's Diabetes and Metabolism Research Center and lead author of the study. "Because there is evidence that breast milk plays a major role, we wanted to isolate the effects of breast milk on offspring health."
To do that, Stanford and her team -- including researchers at the University of California, San Diego, Arkansas Children's Nutrition Center, and the Joslin Diabetes Center -- studied mice born from sedentary mothers and fed them milk from mothers who were active throughout pregnancy. They found that the health benefits from fit moms transferred to the pups, proving that they were, in fact, passed through breast milk and not simply inherited genetic traits.
Researchers also followed about 150 pregnant and postpartum women using activity trackers and found that those who had more steps per day had an increased amount of a compound known as 3SL in their breast milk, which they believe is responsible for these health benefits.
"The increase in 3SL were not necessarily related to exercise intensity, so even moderate exercise like a daily walk is enough to reap the benefits," said Stanford, an associate professor of physiology and cell biology at Ohio State's Dorothy M. Davis Heart and Lung Research Institute. "Exercise is also great for your overall health during and after pregnancy, so anything you can do to get moving is going to benefit both you and your baby."
Because many women are unable to breastfeed or experience complications that require bed rest, researchers are examining if they can isolate this beneficial compound found in the breast milk of active moms and add it to infant formula.
"This human milk oligosaccharide had a significant impact on offspring healthy. Being able to add this into formula could provide benefits for babies when women aren't able to breastfeed," Stanford said.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200629120220.htm
Female Gulf War combat veterans have persistent symptoms more than 25 years later
May 26, 2020
Science Daily/Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University
More than a quarter century after the Gulf War, female veterans who saw combat have nearly a twofold risk of reporting more than 20 total medical symptoms, like cognition and respiratory troubles, than their fellow female veterans who were not deployed, investigators report.
A sizeable percentage of the female combat veterans still report neurological symptoms; about two-thirds report difficulty remembering new information and trouble concentrating, investigators report in the Journal of Women's Health.
An association with more headaches among the combat veterans also was reported and there were "strong associations" between deployment status and respiratory symptoms with 39% of combat veterans still reporting difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. More than half also report a low tolerance for heat and cold.
"It's been over 25 years since the war ended and these are very persistent health outcomes," says Dr. Steven S. Coughlin, interim chief of the Division of Epidemiology in the Medical College of Georgia Department of Population Health Sciences. "This tells us that the way the Gulf War illness manifests itself may be different in female than male veterans, so it's important to take gender into account," says Coughlin.
Twenty years ago, female Gulf War veterans were reporting similar problems, investigators say. The newly reported findings indicate the women are showing increased frequency of symptoms over time and above the rate that would be expected with normal aging, the investigators say. Their reported symptoms correspond with higher rates of diabetes, osteoporosis, thyroid problems, asthma and irritable bowel syndrome in this and similar groups.
Additional studies are needed to find biomarkers of Gulf War illness in these former soldiers and effective treatments, they write.
"We think this has a lot of importance for the health of these veterans and hopefully, when combined with information from other studies, it will lead to improved treatment," Coughlin says.
Three hundred-and-one female Gulf War veterans from all military branches participated in the study, including 203 who were deployed and 98 who were not sent directly into a war zone.
Other persistent problems war zone veterans report include about a third saying they frequently cough when they do not have a cold. Many of their reported symptoms fit the definition of Gulf War illness, which includes having at least three of six symptom categories that include fatigue, neurological/cognitive/mood problems, pain as well as respiratory, gastrointestinal and skin problems. Younger, non-white, female Army veterans were likely to report the most symptoms, they say.
Their significant symptom burden would likely impact the veterans' quality of life and require medical evaluation and treatment, Coughlin and his colleagues write.
"We are trying to fill in this gap in the published literature about Gulf War illness among women veterans because they have been greatly understudied," Coughlin says, referencing the first conflict in which the United States included a sizeable female contingent directly in warfare.
The gender differences they are finding are consistent with earlier studies as well as other current ones coming out of Florida-based Nova Southeastern University, for example, where they are conducting a clinical trial to try to reverse some of the ill effects, he says.
The findings also are more evidence that the female veterans of the Gulf War may have more chronic health issues and conditions than other groups of women generally or female veterans specifically.
Coughlin theorizes that females may be more susceptible to some of the wartime hazards because on average their body size is smaller and because of other differences in physiology. "We can only speculate," he adds.
When troops started to come home from the Middle East following the conflict that lasted from August 1990 through February 1991, they reported a constellation of symptoms, including headaches, gastrointestinal complaints, skin ailments, forgetfulness, fatigue, particularly after exertion, and musculoskeletal pain, says Coughlin, who served as a senior epidemiologist with the Department of Veterans Affairs Central Office in Washington, D.C. The leading theory early on was that it was a psychogenic illness, somewhat similar to the PTSD experienced by many Vietnam War veterans. Now the consensus is that much of it results from the neurological impact of neurotoxins soldiers on the frontline were exposed to, Coughlin says.
"They were inundated with pesticides, there are a lot of biting flies and pests in that part of the world so they had uniforms infused with pesticides, a lot of them even wore a dog's flea collar for extra protection," he says. Soldiers also were asked to take pyridostigmine bromide, a drug given to patients with myasthenia gravis to improve muscle strength, prophylactically to help protect them from nerve agents in field, but the drug itself is mildly toxic to nerves and there is some evidence that, in combination with some of the insecticides used, it becomes more potent.
"Every time the alarms went off, they would have to take these little white pills," Coughlin says. There were other environmental toxins as well, like blown up munitions factories and low dose exposure to sarin nerve gas and others. "It's similar to what you see among agricultural workers exposed to pesticides," he notes. The veterans also were exposed to hazards such as smoke from oil well fires and burn pits used to incinerate waste, the investigators write.
The new study looked at the frequency and patterns of health symptoms in the female veterans as well as military service and lifestyle. The investigators theorized that symptoms associated with Gulf War illness would be more prominent in the women who saw conflict.
They found the deployed veterans were significantly more likely to report seven symptoms consistent with Gulf War illness, including low tolerance for heat or cold, difficulty breathing or shortness of breath, frequent coughing without having a cold, difficulty concentrating and remembering recent information, feeling down or depressed and anxious, the investigators write. Those deployed were more than twice as likely to report more total symptoms and nonwhites -- including American Indians, Alaska natives as well as Asian Americans and Pacific Islands Americans -- were four times more likely to report symptoms than whites. Older women were less likely than younger women to report symptoms and those enlisted in the Air Force and Navy were significantly less likely to report more symptoms than those in the Army.
Participants in the study were a mean age of early 50s and other demographics, like race, ethnicity and education, were similar, but those who saw combat were more likely to have served in the Army or Navy and less likely to have served in the Air Force.
They were taken from a national cohort of 1,318 Gulf War veterans created from the Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies Program 585 Gulf War Era Cohort and Biorepository pilot study. Outcomes of female veterans in the group have not been reported separately. Women comprised 7% of the 700,000 military personnel to serve in the Gulf War, the largest number of women to serve in a war zone in U.S. military history at that time. The influx of the some 50,000 female Gulf War veterans resulted in the establishment of specialty clinics for them at VA hospitals. Evidence indicates about 19% of women veterans still have delayed or unmet health care needs, possibly because of expanded military roles for women, including increased exposure to combat, the investigators write.
Female veterans who have been involved in conflicts since the Vietnam War report higher rates of poor sleep quality, fatigue, insomnia, chronic pain, including headache and musculoskeletal complaints, respiratory problems and skin problems, as well as cognitive and mood related complaints, Coughlin and his colleagues write.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200526091406.htm
Implicit bias against women: Men more likely than women to be seen as brilliant
New global study finds an unconscious stereotype linked to gender
July 2, 2020
Science Daily/New York University
Men are more likely than are women to be seen as "brilliant," finds a new study measuring global perceptions linked to gender. The work concludes that these stereotyped views are an instance of implicit bias, revealing automatic associations that people cannot, or at least do not, report holding when asked directly.
The research, which appears in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, was conducted by scientists at New York University, the University of Denver, and Harvard University.
"Stereotypes that portray brilliance as a male trait are likely to hold women back across a wide range of prestigious careers," observes Daniel Storage, an assistant professor in the University of Denver's Department of Psychology and the paper's lead author.
"Understanding the prevalence and magnitude of this gender-brilliance stereotype can inform future efforts to increase gender equity in career outcomes," adds Andrei Cimpian, an associate professor in NYU's Department of Psychology and the paper's senior author.
Previous work by Cimpian and his colleagues has suggested that women are underrepresented in careers where success is perceived to depend on high levels of intellectual ability (e.g., brilliance, genius), including those in science and technology.
Less understood are the factors that explain this phenomenon. To address this, the new Journal of Experimental Social Psychologystudy explored the potential impact of stereotypes. For example, perhaps the qualities of genius and brilliance are associated in people's minds with men more than with women -- and, as a result, women are less encouraged to pursue these fields -- or the atmosphere of these fields is less welcoming to women.
However, accurately measuring stereotyping is a challenge. People are often reluctant to admit they have stereotypes, so asking directly about these beliefs is unlikely to provide an accurate measure of whether they endorse the idea that brilliance is more common among men than it is among women.
To overcome this methodological obstacle, the researchers adopted a test that is geared to measure stereotyping indirectly. Here, the aim is to capture implicit stereotypes -- or the automatic associations that come to mind between certain traits (e.g., brilliance) and certain groups (e.g., men). This is in contrast to explicit stereotyping, in which we knowingly and verbally ascribe traits to groups of people.
The team employed a long-established tool, the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which measures the degree of overlap between concepts (e.g., brilliant and male) without explicitly asking subjects whether or not they hold stereotyped views.
The IAT is essentially a speeded sorting task. In the study, participants saw a series of stimuli (such as a picture of a woman or the word "brilliant") on a computer screen and were asked to sort them into two categories by pressing either the E or the I key on their keyboard. For example, in some trials participants were asked to press E if they saw a stimulus that is related to either the category male or the trait brilliant. On other trials, the sorting rule was different. For example, the gender categories were swapped such that participants had to press E if they saw a stimulus that is related to either the category female or the trait brilliant.
The logic of the IAT, the authors explain, is as follows: If brilliant is more associated with male than with female in people's minds, then participants will be faster to sort the stimuli when brilliant and male are paired with the same response key -- because the stereotype makes these two concepts seem like they "go together" -- than when brilliant and female are paired.
Across a series of five studies, which included U.S. women and men, U.S. girls and boys (ages 9 and 10), and women and men from 78 other countries, the researchers consistently found evidence for an implicit stereotype associating brilliance with men more than with women. The magnitude of this stereotype was striking as well -- for example, it was similar in strength to the implicit stereotype that associates men more than women with careers (and women more than men with the family), which was identified in earlier work.
The team also gauged explicit stereotypes, directly asking subjects whether they believed that men are more brilliant than women. In marked contrast to the implicit stereotyping measures, subjects reported disagreeing with this idea -- and, in one study, explicitly associated the quality of being "super smart" with women more than with men. The finding is consistent with previous scholarship showing that people are unlikely admit to stereotyping, reinforcing the importance of measuring such perceptions through more subtle means.
Tessa Charlesworth, a doctoral student at Harvard University and co-author of the paper, notes that "a particularly exciting finding from this work is that, if anything, people explicitly say that they associate women with brilliance. Yet implicit measures reveal a different story about the more automatic gender stereotypes that come to mind when thinking about brilliance."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200702100533.htm
Does 'mommy brain' last? Study shows motherhood does not diminish attention
June 23, 2020
Science Daily/Purdue University
"Mommy brain" is a long-held perception that mothers are more forgetful and less attentive.
"In most studies, however, attention and memory tests are given to mothers very early postpartum," said Valerie Tucker Miller, a Ph.D. student in Purdue University's Department of Anthropology department. Miller is studying the effects of motherhood on attention, memory and other psychological processes.
"There are few issues with that," she added. "When you first have a child, you have a cascade of hormones and sleep deprivation that might be affecting attention and memory processes in the brain."
In a new study testing the prevalence of "mommy brain," Miller used a revised version of the Attention Network Test (ANT), called the ANT-R, to compare reaction times among 60 mothers, all of whom were at least one year postpartum, and 70 non-mothers. The results, published online in the journal Current Psychology, show that mothers performed equally as well or better compared with women who had never been pregnant or had children.
"For this particular study, we recruited moms who were past that first year postpartum because we wanted to see the long-term effects of maternity," she said. "Overall, moms did not have significantly different attention than non-mothers, so we did not find evidence to support 'mommy brain' as our culture understands it. It's possible, if anything, that maternity is related to improved, rather than diminished, attentiveness."
Co-author Amanda Veile, an assistant professor of anthropology at Purdue, said the mixed-method study may be the first to investigate the long-term effects of biological motherhood on real-life attention network functioning. Lisa A. VanWormer, a Purdue University alumna and visiting associate professor of psychology at St. Norbert College, also is a co-author.
Researchers used a seven-point scale to measure participants' responses to survey questions such as, "How sleepy do you feel?" and "How do you think your attentiveness is?" Women's perceived attention functioning was strongly associated with their tested attention scores, regardless of motherhood status, Veile said.
"This means that women have accurate awareness of their cognitive state, and that their concerns regarding their perceived attentional functioning should be taken seriously," she said. "We also believe that 'mommy-brain' may be a culture-bound phenomenon, and that mothers will feel the most distracted and forgetful when they feel stressed, overextended and unsupported. Unfortunately, many U.S. moms feel this way, especially now in the midst of economic and political instability and pandemic."
During the computer test, a cue box flashes for 100 milliseconds in one of two possible locations where a target image will appear on the screen. Next, an image of five arrows, each pointing left or right in consistent or conflicting directions, flashes on the screen for 500 milliseconds. Participants are then asked to press a button that corresponds to the direction of only the middle arrow.
Miller said the test measures response times and provides scores for the three main networks of attention: The alerting network helps the brain prepare for incoming stimuli; the orienting network directs the brain's attention to something new; and the executive control network helps resolve conflicting information.
Mothers in the study were, on average, 10 years older than non-mothers. Even after controlling for age, however, the researchers found that mothers had similar alerting and orienting attention, and better executive control attention, compared to non-mothers.
"Moms were not as distracted by those outside, incongruent items," Miller said. "It makes perfect sense that moms who have brought children into this world have more stimuli that needs to be processed to keep themselves and other humans alive, and then to continue with all the other tasks that were required before the children."
Heightened attention isn't always a good thing. It could become amplified with feelings of stress and isolation, which many U.S. moms experience, causing them to develop anxiety, Veile said.
"We plan to do cross-cultural investigations to further examine how narratives of motherhood and social support are associated with maternal tested attention and well-being around the world," she said.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200623145352.htm
Early-life education improves memory in old age -- Especially for women
June 5, 2020
Science Daily/Georgetown University Medical Center
Education appears to protect older adults, especially women, against memory loss, according to a study by investigators at Georgetown University Medical Center, published in the journal Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition.
The results suggest that children -- especially girls -- who attend school for longer will have better memory abilities in old age. This may have implications for memory loss in Alzheimer's disease and other dementias.
The study tested declarative memory in 704 older adults (58-98 years of age). Declarative memory refers to our ability to remember events, facts, and words, such as where you put your keys or the name of that new neighbor.
Participants were shown drawings of objects, and then were tested several minutes later on their memory of these objects. The investigators found that their memory performance became progressively worse with aging. However, more years of early-life education countered these losses, especially in women.
In men, the memory gains associated with each year of education were two times larger than the losses experienced during each year of aging. However, in women, the gains were five times larger.
For example, the declarative memory abilities of an 80-year-old woman with a bachelor's degree would be as good as those of a 60-year-old woman with a high school education. So, four extra years of education make up for the memory losses from 20 years of aging.
"Simply said, learning begets learning" says the study's senior investigator, Michael Ullman, PhD, a professor in Georgetown's Department of Neuroscience and Director of the Brain and Language Lab. Ullman's research on the relationship between language, memory and the brain has been a cornerstone in the fields of language and cognitive neuroscience.
"Since learning new information in declarative memory is easier if it is related to knowledge we already have, more knowledge from more education should result in better memory abilities, even years later," adds the study's lead author, Jana Reifegerste, PhD, a member of the scientific staff at the University of Potsdam, Germany, who worked on this study as a postdoctoral researcher in Ullman's lab.
"Evidence suggests that girls often have better declarative memory than boys, so education may lead to greater knowledge gains in girls," says Ullman. "Education may thus particularly benefit memory abilities in women, even years later in old age."
The study tested individuals in a non-Western (Taiwanese) population. Participants varied in the number of years of education, from none at all to graduate studies. Future research is needed to test whether the findings generalize to other populations, Ullman says.
"These findings may be important, especially considering the rapidly aging population globally," Reifegerste says. "The results argue for further efforts to increase access to education."
"Education has also been found to delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease," Ullman says. "We believe that our findings may shed light on why this occurs."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200605003035.htm
Exposure to 'good bacteria' during pregnancy buffers risk of autism-like syndrome
Study in rats suggests prenatal microbial exposures influence neurodevelopment
May 27, 2020
Science Daily/University of Colorado at Boulder
Giving beneficial bacteria to stressed mothers during the equivalent of the third trimester of pregnancy prevents an autism-like disorder in their offspring, according to a new animal study by University of Colorado Boulder researchers.
The study, published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, marks the latest in a series of studies in animals and humans suggesting that exposure to certain immune-modulating microbes can dampen inflammation, positively impacting the brain and central nervous system.
It's among the first studies to suggest that such exposures during pregnancy influence neurodevelopment of a fetus and, while far more research is necessary, could open the door to new prenatal interventions.
"It suggests that you could develop microbial interventions that lower the risk of neurodevelopmental syndromes like autism," said co-author Christopher Lowry, an associate professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology.
In humans, research has long shown that maternal stress during pregnancy prompts systemic inflammation in both the mother and fetus and is a risk factor for autism, said senior author Daniel Barth, a professor of psychology and neuroscience.
In a previous study, Barth found that when rats were stressed and given a drug called terbutaline, which is often administered to women to delay preterm labor, their offspring demonstrated an autism-like syndrome -- including the two hallmark features of social deficits and repetitive behavior. They also developed an epilepsy-like seizure disorder.
"Our fundamental question with this new study was whether we could use an immunoregulatory microbe to prevent the long-term consequences of environmental stressors during pregnancy," said first author Zachariah Smith, a post-doctoral researcher in Barth's lab.
For the study, the researchers exposed rats to mild stressors and gave them terbutaline during what would be the equivalent of the third trimester of pregnancy in humans.
Half were also given a series of injections of a heat-killed preparation of a friendly bacterium known as Mycobacterium vaccae (M. vaccae), shown in previous studies to have lasting anti-inflammatory effects on the brain. A third control group of rats got no treatments.
At two and four months, the pups were given a series of tests assessing, among other things, their degree of social interaction and whether they exhibited repetitive behaviors.
As in the previous study, those whose mothers had been stressed and given terbutaline showed autism-like behaviors. But those who had been immunized with M. vaccae did not.
"Immunization with M. vaccae appears to provide some protection against the negative effects of environmental stressors during development, specifically against Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)-like behavior," said Smith.
The inoculation did not appear to protect against development of seizure disorders. But because epilepsy tends to develop later in life, the researchers intend to repeat the experiment with a larger sample size and longer treatment period.
Autism and epilepsy often manifest together in humans, with about 30% of autistic individuals exhibiting epileptic symptoms, such as seizures. Stress-induced inflammation likely plays a role in both, the researchers suspect.
"It could be that if we continue the treatment for longer we could also prevent the development of some cases of epilepsy, but much more research is necessary," said Lowry.
The researchers caution that they are not developing an "autism vaccine" and they are not suggesting that microbial interventions could reverse the disorder in children who already have it. But their study does reinforce the idea that exposure to beneficial microorganisms, sometimes referred to as "old friends," can play a critical role in brain development in utero.
Ultimately, Lowry envisions a day when stressed moms deemed particularly high risk of having a child with a neurodevelopmental disorder could be given a specially formulated probiotic or inoculation to support healthy brain development of their child.
"This is the first maternal intervention that I know of that has been able to prevent an autism-like syndrome, including the behavioral and social aspects," Lowry said. "If this could be replicated in humans, that would be pretty profound."
Meantime, they say, mothers should be cognizant of the potential risks of emotional and environmental stressors, including the drug terbutaline, during pregnancy.
And they should try to expose themselves to beneficial bacteria, through fermented foods like yogurt and sauerkraut and even time spent in nature.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200526173818.htm