Every activity in the brain involves the transfer of signals between neurons. Frequently, as many as one thousand signals rain down on a single neuron simultaneously. To ensure that precise signals are delivered, the brain possesses a sophisticated inhibitory system. Stefan Remy and colleagues at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases and the University Bonn have illuminated how this system works.

“The system acts like a filter, only letting the most important impulses pass,” explains Remy. “This produces the targeted neuronal patterns that are indispensible for long-term memory storage.”

A new study led by MIT neuroscientists has found that brain scans of patients with social anxiety disorder can help predict whether they will benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy.

Social anxiety is usually treated with either cognitive behavioral therapy or medications. However, it is currently impossible to predict which treatment will work best for a particular patient. The team of researchers from MIT, Boston University (BU) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) found that the effectiveness of therapy could be predicted by measuring patients’ brain activity as they looked at photos of faces, before the therapy sessions began.

The findings, published this week in the Archives of General Psychiatry, may help doctors choose more effective treatments for social anxiety disorder, which is estimated to affect around 15 million people in the United States.

According to ENCODE’s analysis, 80 percent of the genome has a “biochemical function”. More on exactly what this means later, but the key point is: It’s not “junk”.

Scientists have long recognised that some non-coding DNA has a function, and more and more solid examples have come to light [edited for clarity - Ed]. But, many maintained that much of these sequences were, indeed, junk. ENCODE says otherwise. “Almost every nucleotide is associated with a function of some sort or another, and we now know where they are, what binds to them, what their associations are, and more,” says Tom Gingeras, one of the study’s many senior scientists.

And what’s in the remaining 20 percent? Possibly not junk either, according to Ewan Birney, the project’s Lead Analysis Coordinator and self-described “cat-herder-in-chief”. He explains that ENCODE only (!) looked at 147 types of cells, and the human body has a few thousand. A given part of the genome might control a gene in one cell type, but not others. If every cell is included, functions may emerge for the phantom proportion. “It’s likely that 80 percent will go to 100 percent,” says Birney. “We don’t really have any large chunks of redundant DNA. This metaphor of junk isn’t that useful.”

That the genome is complex will come as no surprise to scientists, but ENCODE does two fresh things: it catalogues the DNA elements for scientists to pore over; and it reveals just how many there are. “The genome is no longer an empty vastness – it is densely packed with peaks and wiggles of biochemical activity,” says Shyam Prabhakar from the Genome Institute of Singapore. “There are nuggets for everyone here. No matter which piece of the genome we happen to be studying in any particular project, we will benefit from looking up the corresponding ENCODE tracks.”

Can Videogaming Benefit Young People with Autism Spectrum Disorder?

Individuals with ASD have difficulty with communication and social interaction, but they often have particularly good visual perceptual skills and respond well to visual stimuli. Videogames offer opportunities for successful learning, motivation to improve skills such as planning, organization, and self-monitoring, and reinforcement of desired behaviors without the need for direct human-to-human interaction.

Autism is a growing area of interest for the gamification community, and Games for Health Journal continues to explore various aspects of how videogame technology can be beneficial in treating this complex spectrum of disorders.

When psychology trumps anti-obesity drugs

Patients who fail to lose weight while taking anti-obesity drugs do so because of their beliefs about themselves and about the difficulty of losing weight.

That is the conclusion of research presented by Dr Amelia Hollywood from the University of Surrey at the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Health Psychology. The conference is being held at the Holiday Inn in Liverpool from 5-7 September 2012.

Dr Hollywood interviewed 10 people, who had put on weight over the 18 months after they were prescribed the weight-loss medication Orlistat, about their experiences.

Dr Hollywood and her colleague Dr Jane Ogden found that the women attributed their failure to lose weight to the mechanics of the drug. They highlighted the barriers to weight loss and talked about other weight-loss methods that had not worked for them.

Overall, the researchers found, these people saw their failure to lose weight as an inevitable part of their identity. They felt that it reflected their self-fulfilling belief that they would be perpetual dieters.

Cigarette smoking increases the risk of subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) in a dose-responsive manner, and cessation correlates with a reduction in SAH risk, according to a study published online Aug. 30 in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry.

To examine the risk of SAH in relation to smoking cessation, Chi Kyung Kim, M.D., from Seoul National University Hospital in Korea, and colleagues performed a nationwide multicenter case control study involving 426 SAH patients and 426 matched controls. Structured questionnaires were used to assess lifestyle, medical history, and smoking habits.

The researchers found that 37.4 percent of SAH patients and 24.2 percent of controls were current smokers (adjusted odds ratio, 2.84), after adjusting for potential confounders. The risk of SAH was found to increase in a dose-responsive fashion with cumulative dose of smoking (pack years). There was a significant reduction in SAH to 59 percent with smoking cessation (at least five years). A history of heavy smoking (at least 20 cigarettes per day) correlated with a 2.3-fold increased risk of SAH, compared with participants who had never smoked (P < 0.05).

"We have demonstrated that cigarette smoking increases the risk of SAH, but smoking cessation decreases the risk in a time-dependent manner, although this beneficial effect may be diminished in previous heavy smokers," the authors write. "To forestall tragic SAH events, our results call for more global and vigorous efforts for people to stop smoking."

Results of a study led by researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and the Veterans Affairs (VA) Boston Healthcare System indicate that the proposed changes to the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will not substantially affect the number of people who meet criteria for the disorder.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the handbook that defines psychiatric disorders, has been undergoing revisions for the past decade in advance of the publication of its fifth edition (DSM-5). Included in the proposed revisions are the first major changes to the PTSD diagnosis since its initial appearance in DSM-III back in 1980. These include the addition of new symptoms, revision of existing ones and a new set of diagnostic criteria.

According to DSM-IV, the criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD include exposure to a traumatic event, persistent re-experiencing of the traumatic event, avoidance and emotional numbing, and persistent hyperarousal and hypervigilance. The proposed revisions for DSM-5 involve clarification regarding what constitutes a traumatic event, the addition symptoms such as self-destructive behavior and distorted blaming of oneself or others for the traumatic event and a reorganization of the diagnostic decision rules for establishing a diagnosis of PTSD.

New algorithm can analyze information from medical images to identify diseased areas of the brain and connections with other regions.

Disorders such as schizophrenia can originate in certain regions of the brain and then spread out to affect connected areas. Identifying these regions of the brain, and how they affect the other areas they communicate with, would allow drug companies to develop better treatments and could ultimately help doctors make a diagnosis. But interpreting the vast amounts of data produced by brain scans to identify these connecting regions has so far proved impossible.

Now, researchers in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT have developed an algorithm that can analyze information from medical images to identify diseased areas of the brain and their connections with other regions.

The MIT researchers will present the work next month at the International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention in Nice, France.

It has long been believed that drinking green tea is good for the memory. Now researchers have discovered how the chemical properties of China’s favorite drink affect the generation of brain cells, providing benefits for memory and spatial learning. The research is published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Research.

“Green tea is a popular beverage across the world,” said Professor Yun Bai from the Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China. “There has been plenty of scientific attention on its use in helping prevent cardiovascular diseases, but now there is emerging evidence that its chemical properties may impact cellular mechanisms in the brain.”

Professor Bai’s team focused on the organic chemical EGCG, (epigallocatechin-3 gallate) a key property of green tea. While EGCG is a known anti-oxidant, the team believed it can also have a beneficial effect against age-related degenerative diseases.