Can you feel my pain? Middle-aged women sure can

Looking for someone to feel your pain? Talk to a woman in her 50s.

According to a new study of more than 75,000 adults, women in that age group are more empathic than men of the same age and than younger or older people.

"Overall, late middle-aged adults were higher in both of the aspects of empathy that we measured," said Sara Konrath, assistant research professor at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and co-author of an article on age and empathy forthcoming in the Journals of Gerontology: Psychological and Social Sciences.

"They reported that they were more likely to react emotionally to the experiences of others, and they were also more likely to try to understand how things looked from the perspective of others."

Konrath and colleagues Ed O’Brien and Linda Hagen of U-M and Daniel Grühn of North Carolina State University analyzed data on empathy from three separate large samples of American adults, two of which were taken from the nationally representative General Social Survey.

They found consistent evidence of an inverted U-shaped pattern of empathy across the adult life span, with younger and older adults reporting less empathy and middle-aged adults reporting more.

According to O’Brien, U-M doctoral student in social psychology, this pattern may result because increasing levels of cognitive abilities and experience improve emotional functioning during the first part of the adult life span, while cognitive declines diminish emotional functioning in the second half.

But more research is needed in order to understand whether this pattern is really the result of an individual’s age, or whether it is a generational effect reflecting the socialization of adults who are now in late middle age.

First ever UK based language tool to decode baby talk

A tool which could radically improve the diagnosis of language delays in infants in the UK is being developed by psychologists.

A £358,000 grant to develop the first standardised UK speech and language development tool means that for the first time, researchers will be able to establish language development norms for UK children aged eight months to 18 months.

The tool will plug an important gap which has left UK researchers, education and health professionals at a disadvantage.

Until now, UK language experts have been forced to rely upon more complicated methods of testing child language development, or on methods designed for American English speakers which can lead to UK babies being misdiagnosed as being delayed in language development.

The two-and-a-half year project funded by the ESRC will also look into the impact of family income and education on UK children’s language development, as well as examining differences between children learning UK English, and other languages and English dialects.

The project is expected to make a major contribution to language development research as well as to the effectiveness of speech and language therapy and improved policy making.

In-brain monitoring shows memory network

Working with patients with electrodes implanted in their brains, researchers at the University of California, Davis, and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) have shown for the first time that areas of the brain work together at the same time to recall memories. The unique approach promises new insights into how we remember details of time and place.

"Previous work has focused on one region of the brain at a time," said Arne Ekstrom, assistant professor at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience. "Our results show that memory recall involves simultaneous activity across brain regions." Ekstrom is senior author of a paper describing the work published Jan. 27 in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Ekstrom and UC Davis graduate student Andrew Watrous worked with patients being treated for a severe seizure condition by neurosurgeon Dr. Nitin Tandon and his UTHealth colleagues.

To pinpoint the origin of the seizures in these patients, Tandon and his team place electrodes on the patient’s brain inside the skull. The electrodes remain in place for one to two weeks for monitoring.

Six such patients volunteered for Ekstrom and Watrous’ study while the electrodes were in place. Using a laptop computer, the patients learned to navigate a route through a virtual streetscape, picking up passengers and taking them to specific places. Later, they were asked to recall the routes from memory.

Correct memory recall was associated with increased activity across multiple connected brain regions at the same time, Ekstrom said, rather than activity in one region followed by another.

However, the analysis did show that the medial temporal lobe is an important hub of the memory network, confirming earlier studies, he said.

Intriguingly, memories of time and of place were associated with different frequencies of brain activity across the network. For example, recalling, “What shop is next to the donut shop?” set off a different frequency of activity from recalling “Where was I at 11 a.m.?”

Using different frequencies could explain how the brain codes and recalls elements of past events such as time and location at the same time, Ekstrom said.

"Just as cell phones and wireless devices work at different radio frequencies for different information, the brain resonates at different frequencies for spatial and temporal information," he said.

The researchers hope to explore further how the brain codes information in future work.

The neuroscientists analyzed their results with graph theory, a new technique that is being used for studying networks, ranging from social media connections to airline schedules.

"Previously, we didn’t have enough data from different brain regions to use graph theory. This combination of multiple readings during memory retrieval and graph theory is unique," Ekstrom said.

Placing electrodes inside the skull provides clearer resolution of electrical signals than external electrodes, making the data invaluable for the study of cognitive functions, Tandon said. “This work has yielded important insights into the normal mechanisms underpinning recall, and provides us with a framework for the study of memory dysfunction in the future.”

When food porn holds no allure: the science behind satiety

New research from the University of British Columbia is shedding light on why enticing pictures of food affect us less when we’re full.

“We’ve known that insulin plays a role in telling us we’re satiated after eating, but the mechanism by which this happens is unclear,” says Stephanie Borgland, an assistant professor in UBC’s Dept. of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology and Therapeutics and the study’s senior author.

In the new study published online this week in Nature Neuroscience, Borgland and colleagues found that insulin – prompted by a sweetened, high-fat meal – affects the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the brain, which is responsible for reward-seeking behaviour. When insulin was applied to the VTA in mice, they no longer gravitated towards environments where food had been offered.

“Insulin dulls the synapses in this region of the brain and decreases our interest in seeking out food,” says Borgland, “which in turn causes us to pay less attention to food-related cues.”

“There has been a lot of discussion around the environmental factors of the obesity epidemic,” Borgland adds, pointing to fast food advertising bans in Quebec, Norway, the U.K., Greece and Sweden. “This study helps explain why pictures or other cues of food affect us less when we’re satiated – and may help inform strategies to reduce environmental triggers of overeating.”

The VTA has also been shown to be associated with addictive behaviours, including illicit drug use. Borgland says better understanding of the mechanism in this region of the brain could, in the long run, inform diagnosis and treatment.

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Neuroscientists pinpoint location of fear memory in amygdala

A rustle of undergrowth in the outback: it’s a sound that might make an animal or person stop sharply and be still, in the anticipation of a predator. That “freezing” is part of the fear response, a reaction to a stimulus in the environment and part of the brain’s determination of whether to be afraid of it.

A neuroscience group at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) led by Assistant Professor Bo Li Ph.D., together with collaborator Professor Z. Josh Huang Ph.D., today release the results of a new study that examines the how fear responses are learned, controlled, and memorized. They show that a particular class of neurons in a subdivision of the amygdala plays an active role in these processes.

Locating fear memory in the amygdala

Previous research had indicated that structures inside the amygdalae, a pair of almond-shaped formations that sit deep within the brain and are known to be involved in emotion and reward-based behavior, may be part of the circuit that controls fear learning and memory. In particular, a region called the central amygdala, or CeA, was thought to be a passive relay for the signals relayed within this circuit.

Li’s lab became interested when they observed that neurons in a region of the central amygdala called the lateral subdivision, or CeL, “lit up” in a particular strain of mice while studying this circuit.

“Neuroscientists believed that changes in the strength of the connections onto neurons in the central amygdala must occur for fear memory to be encoded,” Li says, “but nobody had been able to actually show this.”

This led the team to further probe into the role of these neurons in fear responses and furthermore to ask the question: If the central amygdala stores fear memory, how is that memory trace read out and translated into fear responses?

To examine the behavior of mice undergoing a fear test the team first trained them to respond in a Pavlovian manner to an auditory cue. The mice began to “freeze,” a very common fear response, whenever they heard one of the sounds they had been trained to fear.

To study the particular neurons involved, and to understand them in relation to the fear-inducing auditory cue, the CSHL team used a variety of methods. One of these involved delivering a gene that encodes for a light-sensitive protein into the particular neurons Li’s group wanted to look at.

By implanting a very thin fiber-optic cable directly into the area containing the photosensitive neurons, the team was able to shine colored laser light with pinpoint accuracy onto the cells, and in this manner activate them. This is a technique known as optogenetics. Any changes in the behavior of the mice in response to the laser were then monitored.

A subset of neurons in the central amygdala controls fear expression

The ability to probe genetically defined groups of neurons was vital because there are two sets of neurons important in fear-learning and memory processes. The difference between them, the team learned, was in their release of message-carrying neurotransmitters into the spaces called synapses between neurons. In one subset of neurons, neurotransmitter release was enhanced; in another it was diminished. If measurements had been taken across the total cell population in the central amygdala, neurotransmitter levels from these two distinct sets of neurons would have been averaged out, and thus would not have been detected.

Li’s group found that fear conditioning induced experience-dependent changes in the release of neurotransmitters in excitatory synapses that connect with inhibitory neurons – neurons that suppress the activity of other neurons – in the central amygdala. These changes in the strength of neuronal connections are known as synaptic plasticity.

Particularly important in this process, the team discovered, were somatostatin-positive (SOM+) neurons. Somatostatin is a hormone that affects neurotransmitter release. Li and colleagues found that fear-memory formation was impaired when they prevent the activation of SOM+ neurons.

SOM+ neurons are necessary for recall of fear memories, the team also found. Indeed, the activity of these neurons alone proved sufficient to drive fear responses. Thus, instead of being a passive relay for the signals driving fear learning and responses in mice, the team’s work demonstrates that the central amygdala is an active component, and is driven by input from the lateral amygdala, to which it is connected.

“We find that the fear memory in the central amygdala can modify the circuit in a way that translates into action — or what we call the fear response,” explains Li.

In the future Li’s group will try to obtain a better understanding of how these processes may be altered in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other disorders involving abnormal fear learning. One important goal is to develop pharmacological interventions for such disorders.

Li says more research is needed, but is hopeful that with the discovery of specific cellular markers and techniques such as optogenetics, a breakthrough can be made.

Stroke Survivors with PTSD More Likely to Avoid Treatment

A new survey of stroke survivors has shown that those with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are less likely to adhere to treatment regimens that reduce the risk of an additional stroke. Researchers found that 65 percent of stroke survivors with PTSD failed to adhere to treatment, compared with 33 percent of those without PTSD. The survey also suggests that nonadherence in PTSD patients is partly explained by increased ambivalence toward medication. Among stroke survivors with PTSD, approximately one in three (38 percent) had concerns about their medications. Results of the study, led by Columbia University Medical Center researchers, are published today in the British Journal of Health Psychology.

According to data from the American Stroke Association, nearly 795,000 Americans each year suffer a new or recurrent stroke. Stroke is the fourth-leading cause of death and the top cause of disability in the United States. Survivors of strokes are often prescribed treatment regiments, including antiplatelet agents, antihypertensive agents, and statins, which help reduce the risk of subsequent strokes. Previous research has shown that PTSD triggered by medical events—which affects 18 percent of stroke survivors—may impair recovery.

“Unfortunately, too many stroke survivors are not compliant with these regimens, even though we know that adherence to post-stroke treatment regimens is one of the most important components of reducing the risk of a future stroke,” said Ian M. Kronish, MD, MPH, assistant professor of medicine (Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health) and one of the study’s authors.

“For those with PTSD, this study shows that concerns about medications are a significant barrier to treatment adherence. Stroke survivors should be assessed for concerns about medications and PTSD symptoms, so that interventions may be introduced as early as possible to get patients back on track to avoid future stroke events.”

Children’s complex thinking skills begin forming before they go to school

New research at the University of Chicago and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill shows that children begin to show signs of higher-level thinking skills as young as age 4 ½. Researchers have previously attributed higher-order thinking development to knowledge acquisition and better schooling, but the new longitudinal study shows that other skills, not always connected with knowledge, play a role in the ability of children to reason analytically. 

The findings, reported in January in the journal Psychological Science, show for the first time that children’s executive function has a role in the development of complicated analytical thinking. Executive function includes such complex skills as planning, monitoring, task switching, and controlling attention. High early executive function skills at school entry are related to higher than average reasoning skills in adolescence. 

Growing research suggests that executive function may be trainable through pathways, including preschool curriculum, exercise and impulse control training. Parents and teachers may be able to help encourage development of executive function by having youngsters help plan activities, learn to stop, think, and then take action, or engage in pretend play, said lead author of the study, Lindsey Richland, assistant professor of comparative human development at the University of Chicago.

Although important to a child’s education, “little is known about the cognitive mechanisms underlying children’s development of the capacity to engage in complex forms of reasoning,” Richland said.

The new research is reported in the paper “Early Executive Function Predicts Reasoning Development” and follows the development of complex reasoning in children from before the time they go to school until they are 15. Richland’s co-author is Margaret Burchinal, senior scientist at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Learning and Memory May Play a Central Role in Synesthesia

People with color-grapheme synesthesia experience color when viewing written letters or numerals, usually with a particular color evoked by each grapheme (i.e., the letter ‘A’ evokes the color red). In a new study, researchers Nathan Witthoft and Jonathan Winawer of Stanford University present data from 11 color grapheme synesthetes who had startlingly similar color-letter pairings that were traceable to childhood toys containing magnetic colored letters.

Their findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Matching data from the 11 participants showed reliably consistent letter-color matches, both within and between testing sessions (data collected online at http://www.synesthete.org/). Participants’ matches were consistent even after a delay of up to seven years since their first session.

Participants also performed a timed task, in which they were presented with colored letters for 1 second each and required to indicate whether the color was consistent with their synesthetic association. Their data show that they were able to perform the task rapidly and accurately.

Together, these data suggest that the participants’ color-letter associations are specific, automatic, and relatively constant over time, thereby meeting the criteria for true synesthesia.

The degree of similarity in the letter-color pairings across participants, along with the regular repeating pattern in the colors found in each individual’s letter-color pairings, indicates that the pairings were learned from the magnetic colored letters that the participants had been exposed to in childhood.

According to the researchers, these are the first and only data to show learned synesthesia of this kind in more than a single individual.

They point out that this does not mean that exposure to the colored letter magnets was sufficient to induce synesthesia in the participants, though it may have increased the chances. After all, many people who do not have synesthesia played with the same colored letter magnets as kids.

Based on their findings, Witthoft and Winawer conclude that a complete explanation of synesthesia must incorporate a central role for learning and memory.

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Researchers map emotional intelligence in the brain

A new study of 152 Vietnam veterans with combat-related brain injuries offers the first detailed map of the brain regions that contribute to emotional intelligence – the ability to process emotional information and navigate the social world.

The study found significant overlap between general intelligence and emotional intelligence, both in terms of behavior and in the brain. Higher scores on general intelligence tests corresponded significantly with higher performance on measures of emotional intelligence, and many of the same brain regions were found to be important to both. (Watch a video about the research.)

The study appears in the journal Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience.

“This was a remarkable group of patients to study, mainly because it allowed us to determine the degree to which damage to specific brain areas was related to impairment in specific aspects of general and emotional intelligence,” said study leader Aron K. Barbey, a professor of neuroscience, of psychology and of speech and hearing science at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois.

A previous study led by Barbey mapped the neural basis of general intelligence by analyzing how specific brain injuries (in a larger sample of Vietnam veterans) impaired performance on tests of fundamental cognitive processes.

In both studies, researchers pooled data from CT scans of participants’ brains to produce a collective, three-dimensional map of the cerebral cortex. They divided this composite brain into 3-D units called voxels. They compared the cognitive abilities of patients with damage to a particular voxel or cluster of voxels with those of patients without injuries in those brain regions. This allowed the researchers to identify brain areas essential to specific cognitive abilities, and those that contribute significantly to general intelligence, emotional intelligence, or both.

They found that specific regions in the frontal cortex (behind the forehead) and parietal cortex (top of the brain near the back of the skull) were important to both general and emotional intelligence. The frontal cortex is known to be involved in regulating behavior. It also processes feelings of reward and plays a role in attention, planning and memory. The parietal cortex helps integrate sensory information, and contributes to bodily coordination and language processing.

“Historically, general intelligence has been thought to be distinct from social and emotional intelligence,” Barbey said. The most widely used measures of human intelligence focus on tasks such as verbal reasoning or the ability to remember and efficiently manipulate information, he said.

“Intelligence, to a large extent, does depend on basic cognitive abilities, like attention and perception and memory and language,” Barbey said. “But it also depends on interacting with other people. We’re fundamentally social beings and our understanding not only involves basic cognitive abilities but also involves productively applying those abilities to social situations so that we can navigate the social world and understand others.”

The new findings will help scientists and clinicians understand and respond to brain injuries in their patients, Barbey said, but the results also are of broader interest because they illustrate the interdependence of general and emotional intelligence in the healthy mind.