Health & Wellness

The Mystery of Borderline Personality Disorder

John Cloud
Seattle/Time News
Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:54 UTC

Doctors used to have poetic names for diseases. A physician would speak of consumption because the illness seemed to eat you from within. Now we just use the name of the bacterium that causes the illness: tuberculosis. Psychology, though, remains a profession practiced partly as science and partly as linguistic art.

Because our knowledge of the mind's afflictions remains so limited, psychologists - even when writing in academic publications - still deploy metaphors to understand difficult disorders. And possibly the most difficult of all to fathom - and thus one of the most creatively named - is the mysterious-sounding borderline personality disorder (BPD). University of Washington psychologist Marsha Linehan, one of the world's leading experts on BPD, describes it this way: "Borderline individuals are the psychological equivalent of third-degree-burn patients. They simply have, so to speak, no emotional skin. Even the slightest touch or movement can create immense suffering."

Why So Many Minds Think Alike

Elizabeth Landau
CNN
Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:28 UTC

© National Institutes of Health
Imaging techniques help scientists look at the basis for principles of social psychology in the brain.

You're in a room with 10 other people who seem to agree on something, but you hold the opposite view. Do you say something? Or do you just go along with the others?

Decades of research show people tend to go along with the majority view, even if that view is objectively incorrect. Now, scientists are supporting those theories with brain images.

A new study in the journal Neuron shows when people hold an opinion differing from others in a group, their brains produce an error signal. A zone of the brain popularly called the "oops area" becomes extra active, while the "reward area" slows down, making us think we are too different.

Researchers Detail How Aging Undermines Bone Healing

PhysOrg
Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:14 UTC

Researchers have unraveled crucial details of how aging causes broken bones to heal slowly, or not at all, according to study results published today in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. The research team also successfully conducted preclinical tests on a potential new class of treatments designed to "rescue" healing capability lost to aging.

In the worst cases, an age-related delay in healing keeps the two sides of a fractured bone from ever rejoining (non-union), leaving many confined to wheelchairs, unable to walk or to live independently. Of the estimated 5.6 million fractures in the United States each year, between five and ten percent (up to 560,000) will heal slowly or incompletely. Researchers have known for 30 years that aging interferes with fracture healing, and have been filling in the details since on the complex web of biochemicals, stem cells and genes that bring about healing. The field is now reaching the point where precision designed drugs are in different stages of animal and human trials.

The current study is focused on cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2), an enzyme known from past studies to drive stem cells to differentiate into cartilage, which then matures into bone. Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center 20 years ago discovered the gene in humans that is responsible for producing the COX-2 enzyme and revealed the enzyme's role in causing inflammation, the reason drugs like the painkiller Vioxx were developed to shut down its action. Then about seven years ago another research team here determined that COX-2 also plays an essential role in bone formation during skeletal repair.

DREAM: One Gene Regulates Pain, Learning And Memory

PhysOrg
Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:09 UTC

The DREAM-gene which is crucial in regulating pain perception seems to also influence learning and memory. This is the result of studies carried out by researchers in Seville, Spain, and Vienna, Austria. The new findings could help explain the mechanisms of Alzheimer's disease and yield a potential new therapeutic target.

In 2002, a group of scientists at the University of Toronto was able to identify a gene which they dubbed DREAM (downstream regulatory element antagonistic modulator). The gene's function was highly interesting: it obviously served as a key regulator in the perception of pain. Mice who lacked the gene showed clear signs of markedly reduced sensitivity to all kinds of pain, whether chronic or acute. Otherwise, the mice appeared perfectly normal.

The work leading to these findings was carried out in the lab of Josef Penninger, then principal investigator at the Amgen Institute in Toronto. The publication describing the gene's function was received with great interest (Cell, Vol. 108, 31-43, 11.1.2002) and DREAM was subsequently termed the "Master-Gene of pain perception".

Is it really bad to be sad?

Jessica Marshall
New Scientist
Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:12 UTC

Why be miserable? OK, so it's January and you're feeling fat and broke after the excesses of the holiday season, but there's really no need. Misery is inconvenient, unpleasant, and in a society where personal happiness is prized above all else, there is little tolerance for wallowing in despair. Especially now we've got drugs for it.

Antidepressants can help banish sad feelings - not just the life-sapping black dog of clinical depression, but the rough patches that most people go through sometimes, whether it's after losing a job, the break-up of a relationship or the death of a loved one. So it's no surprise that more and more people are taking them.

But is this really such a good idea? A growing number of cautionary voices from the world of mental health research are saying it isn't. They fear that the increasing tendency to treat normal sadness as if it were a disease is playing fast and loose with a crucial part of our biology. Sadness, they argue, serves an evolutionary purpose - and if we lose it, we lose out.

"When you find something this deeply in us biologically, you presume that it was selected because it had some advantage, otherwise we wouldn't have been burdened with it," says Jerome Wakefield, a clinical social worker at New York University and co-author of The Loss of Sadness: How psychiatry transformed normal sorrow into depressive disorder (with Allan Horwitz, Oxford University Press, 2007). "We're fooling around with part of our biological make-up."

Researchers Discover A Protein That Amplifies Cell Death

PhysOrg
Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:53 UTC

© Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Expression of a small fragment of p115 (green) leads to Cytochrome C (red) release in cells causing cell death.

Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have identified a small intracellular protein that helps cells commit suicide. The finding, reported as the "paper of the week" in the January 16th print issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, could lead to drugs for combating cancer and other diseases characterized by overproduction of cells. The research was led by the late Dennis Shields, Ph.D., a professor in Einstein's Department of Developmental and Molecular Biology for 30 years, who died unexpectedly in December.

In response to stress or as a natural part of aging, many cells undergo programmed suicide, also known as apoptosis. Cancer cells often become immortal and dangerous by developing the ability to suppress apoptosis.

A decade ago apoptosis was thought to be directed solely by the nucleus and mitochondria of cells. Dr. Shields' laboratory was the first to show that a cellular organelle known as the Golgi apparatus also plays a role in apoptosis.

Study links some antipsychotic drugs with fatal heart failure

Benedict Carey and Roni Caryn Rabin
New York Times
Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:10 UTC

The popular drugs known as atypical antipsychotics, prescribed for an array of conditions, including schizophrenia, autism and dementia, double patients' risk of dying from sudden heart failure, a study has found.

The finding is the latest in a succession of recent reports contradicting the long-held assumption that the new drugs, which include Risperdal, Zyprexa and Seroquel, are safer than the older and much less expensive medications that they replaced.

The risk of death from the drugs is not high, on average about 3 percent in a person being treated at least 10 years, according to the study, published today in The New England Journal of Medicine. Nor was the risk different from that of the older antipsychotic drugs.

Chaos Begets Chaos: State of Surroundings Can Influence Behavior

Sheila Prakash
Seed Magazine
Fri, 09 Jan 2009 02:21 UTC

Last month social scientists in the Netherlands empirically demonstrated a phenomenon observed by policymakers and law-enforcement officials for years. When an envelope visibly containing a five-euro note was left hanging out of a mailbox on a sidewalk, 13 percent of the passersby snatched it up. When the same mailbox was covered in graffiti, however, more than double the number of the pedestrians (about 27 percent) stole the envelope.

Graffiti was not the only misdemeanor that fostered a cavalier attitude toward theft. When the ground near the mailbox was covered in litter, 25 percent of the subjects stole the envelope. These results are significant for both social and statistical reasons. Is a disorderly environment responsible for disorderly conduct?

Early Childhood Diet May Influence Future Health

PhysOrg
Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:00 UTC

If you have trouble keeping weight off and you're wondering why - the surprising answer may well be the cheeseburgers you ate - when you were a toddler.

Surprising new research by University of Calgary, Faculty of Kinesiology researcher Dr. Raylene Reimer, published in an international journal, indicates a direct connection between an adult's propensity to put on weight and our early childhood diet.

Reimer is a leader in a growing field of study that examines the developmental origins of health and disease. Researchers in this area believe our pre-natal and early childhood environment influences our future risk of developing conditions like cardio vascular disease, obesity and diabetes.

Brain Mechanisms of Social Conformity

PhysOrg
Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:47 UTC

New research reveals the brain activity that underlies our tendency to "follow the crowd." The study, published by Cell Press in the January 15th issue of the journal Neuron, provides intriguing insight into how human behavior can be guided by the perceived behavior of other individuals.

Many studies have demonstrated the profound effect of group opinion on individual judgments, and there is no doubt that we look to the behavior and judgment of others for information about what will be considered expected and acceptable behavior.

"We often change our decisions and judgments to conform with normative group behavior," says lead study author Dr. Vasily Klucharev from the F.C. Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging in The Netherlands. "However, the neural mechanisms of social conformity remain unclear."

We must believe lies as truth or face the consequences. I am not sure if I can assimilate into the Brave New World.

nuggatron

This figure is such an obvious parody and insult of the voters, I don't know why the whole deepfake administration was not court-martialled and...

codis

Only space aliens or pedojewzskies would abuse a child at school: [Link]

Jibrish

Good luck to them, to us all.

Demore

.. .. Here's (3) typical, (and they all look alike) jewzskies jewzskiing: [Link]

Jibrish

Health & Wellness

The Mystery of Borderline Personality Disorder

Why So Many Minds Think Alike

Researchers Detail How Aging Undermines Bone Healing

DREAM: One Gene Regulates Pain, Learning And Memory

Is it really bad to be sad?

Researchers Discover A Protein That Amplifies Cell Death

Study links some antipsychotic drugs with fatal heart failure

Chaos Begets Chaos: State of Surroundings Can Influence Behavior

Early Childhood Diet May Influence Future Health

Brain Mechanisms of Social Conformity

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