New study reveals anxiety’s influence on the chances of developing Alzheimer’s.
New study reveals anxiety’s influence on the chances of developing Alzheimer’s.
People who suffer from moderate to severe anxiety have double the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, a new study finds.
Canadian researchers examined 376 people between the ages of 55 and 91 with ‘mild cognitive impairment’, and their chances of going on to develop Alzheimer’s disease (Mah et al., 2014).
Participants were followed over three years and their progress was monitored every six months.
The results showed that for people with mild anxiety symptoms, the chances of developing Alzheimer’s increased by 33%, for those with moderate anxiety it was 78% and for those with severe anxiety, the risk increased by 135%.
While depression has already been identified as a risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s, this is the first study to implicate anxiety separately.
People with mild cognitive impairment — which can turn into dementia — are regularly screened for depression, but not for anxiety.
Dr. Linda Mah, who led the study, said:
“Our findings suggest that clinicians should routinely screen for anxiety in people who have memory problems because anxiety signals that these people are at greater risk for developing Alzheimer’s.”
Greater levels of anxiety were also linked to shrinkage in areas of the brain that are crucial for the formation of memories (the medial temporal lobe regions).
Dr Mah speculated that treating the anxiety might also reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s:
“While there is no published evidence to demonstrate whether drug treatments used in psychiatry for treating anxiety would be helpful in managing anxiety symptoms in people with mild cognitive impairment or in reducing their risk of conversion to Alzheimer’s, we think that at the very least behavioural stress management programs could be recommended.
In particular, there has been research on the use of mindfulness-based stress reduction in treating anxiety and other psychiatric symptoms in Alzheimer’s –and this is showing promise.”
Alzheimer’s study finds that one ounce (30g) of this per day was enough to decrease anxiety and boost memory and learning.
Alzheimer’s study finds that one ounce (30g) of this per day was enough to decrease anxiety and boost memory and learning.
A new study finds that a diet which includes walnuts may delay the onset, progression and even the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
The animal study, which is published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, found that a walnut-rich diet increased memory, learning skills and even reduced anxiety in mice (Chauhan et al., 2014).
The research was inspired by previous findings about the protective effects of walnuts on cognition.
In the study, mice that had been genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer’s were fed diets supplemented with either 6% or 9% walnuts.
In humans this is equivalent to eating around 1 ounce (6%) or 1.5 ounces (9%) per day (30g and 45g resepectively).
After a year, the mice that were fed walnuts — along with a comparison group that had a walnut-free diet — were given a series of mouse-style cognitive tests.
They had to solve mazes, do tests which involved learning and gaining motor skills.
Both groups of mice fed walnuts showed improvements in learning ability, memory, anxiety and motor development compared to the control group.
The effects of the walnuts may be down to the high antioxidant content of walnuts, which is greater than other types of nuts.
Dr. Abha Chauhan, who led the study, said:
“These findings are very promising and help lay the groundwork for future human studies on walnuts and Alzheimer’s disease — a disease for which there is no known cure.
Our study adds to the growing body of research that demonstrates the protective effects of walnuts on cognitive functioning.”
Currently, one person is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s every 67 seconds in the United States.
By 2050 the number of people over 65 with the disease may have tripled, up to 16 million.
The total cost of the disease to the healthcare system is thought to be $214 billion.
At the emotional level, reading literary fiction has been shown to increase our ‘theory of mind’: our ability to simulate the minds of others and empathise with them (Kidd & Castano, 2013).
Now, here is philosopher and popular author Alain de Botton, exploring four psychological benefits of reading.
Here is an edited transcript of the video:
“1. It saves you time
Of course, it looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is ultimately the greatest time-saver, for it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly.
Literature is the greatest ‘reality simulator’, a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you could ever directly witness.
It lets you – safely: that’s crucial – see what it’s like to get divorced.
Or kill someone and feel remorseful.
Or chuck in your job and take off to the desert.
Or make a terrible mistake while leading your country.
It lets you speed up time: in order to see the arc of a life from childhood old age.
It gives you the keys to the palace, and to countless bedrooms, so you can assess your life in relation to that of others.
2. It makes you nicer
Literature performs the basic magic of showing us what things look like from someone else’s point of view.
It allows us to consider the consequences of our actions on others in a way we otherwise wouldn’t.
And it shows us examples of kindly, generous, sympathetic people.
Literature typically stands opposed to the dominant value system, the one that rewards money and power.
Writers are on the other side, they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but that can’t afford airtime in a commercialised, status-conscious and cynical world.
3. It’s a cure for loneliness
We are weirder than we’re allowed to admit.
We often can’t say what’s really on our minds.
But in books, we find descriptions of who we genuinely are and what events are actually like, described with an honesty quite different from what ordinary conversation allows for.
In the best books it’s as if the writer knows us better than we know ourselves.
They find the words to describe the fragile, weird, special experiences of our inner lives: the light on a summer morning, the anxiety we felt at the gathering, the sensations of a first kiss, the envy when a friend told us of their new business, the longing we experienced on the train, looking at the profile of another passenger we never dare to speak to.
Writers open our hearts and minds – and give us maps to our own selves so that we can travel in them more reliably and with less of a feeling of paranoia and persecution.
4. It prepares you for failure
All of our lives, one of our greatest fears is of failing, of messing up…
Every day, the media takes us into stories of failure.
Interestingly, a lot of literature is also about failure.
In one way or another, a great many novels, plays and poems are about people who’ve messed up, people who slept with mum by mistake, who let down their partner, or who died after running up some debts on shopping sprees.
If the media got to them, they’d make mincemeat out of them.
But great books don’t judge as harshly or as one-dimensionally as the media.
They evoke pity for the hero and fear for ourselves based on a new sense of how near we all are to destroying our own lives.
[…]
Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others: because it’s a tool to help us live and die with a little more wisdom, goodness and sanity.”
2. Why some people only need five hours’ sleep a night
While most people can get by with less than six hours sleep, the majority will suffer physically and psychologically, especially if sleep deprived over the long-term.
However, a gene mutation which means a person can function normally with only five hours’ sleep a night has been identified by a new study of 100 pairs of twins.
Those carrying the target gene variant slept, on average, for five hours, which was one hour shorter than their twins without the gene.
When the twins were given cognitive tests after sleep deprivation, those with the gene variant did better, making 40% fewer errors.
Not only that, but the carriers recovered more quickly from sleep deprivation, only requiring 8 hours recovery sleep, compared with their twins who needed 9.5 hours.
Just believing that you’ve slept better than you really have is enough to boost cognitive performance the next day.
The findings comes from a study of 164 people who were given a lecture on how important sleep quality is and told they would be given a new test of how well they had slept the previous night.
After the test, some were told they’d slept well the previous night, others that they’d slept badly.
This had no relationship to how they had actually slept and were just made up to try and convince one group they’d slept better than the other.
Those told they’d slept better scored higher on tests of attention and memory than those told they’d slept poorly.
How you slept last night isn’t just about how you actually slept, it’s also about how you think you slept.
This study suggests that tweaking your mindset a little could be enough to boost your performance.
Failing to get enough sleep causes low mood in teenagers, along with worse health and poor learning.
But it’s not all down to late night video gaming or TV: the part of the brain which regulates the sleep-wake cycle — the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus — changes in puberty.
Teenage brains also secrete less melatonin so their ‘sleep drive’ reduces.
As a result, being forced to rise the next day at 6am for school or college means teens find it hard to get the 8 to 10 hours sleep that they need.
Although hormonal changes are partly to blame for teenage angst, being short of sleep significantly contributes to lack of motivation and poor mood.
We all know that lack of sleep affects our memory, along with other cognitive abilities.
But now new research shows that not getting enough sleep increases the chances your mind will actually create false memories.
In the study, one group of participants were allowed to get a full nights’ sleep, while another had to stay up all night.
In the morning they were given a load of information about a crime — some true, some false — that had been committed.
The results showed that those who’d missed out on their sleep were the most likely to regurgitate the false information, rather than remembering the ‘true’ crime-scene photos they’d been shown moments beforehand.
The lack of sleep had messed with their heads to the extent that all the evidence — right and wrong — had got mixed up.
A new study has found evidence for a long-suspected danger of sleeping pills: an increased risk of death.
The large study looked at data from over 100,000 patients who had been to their family doctors across seven years.
It found that taking sleeping pills, like zolpidem/Ambien, doubled the risk of death.
Professor Scott Weich, who led the study, said:
“That’s not to say that they cannot be effective.
But particularly due to their addictive potential we need to make sure that we help patients to spend as little time on them as possible and that we consider other options, such as cognitive behavioural therapy, to help them to overcome anxiety or sleep problems.”
9. Sleep drunkenness disorder affects one in seven
As many as one in seven people may be affected by ‘sleep drunkenness disorder’ soon after they’ve woken up or during the morning.
Sleep drunkenness disorder involves severe confusion upon wakening — way more than just the usual morning grogginess — and/or inappropriate behaviour: things like answering the phone instead of turning off the alarm.
Confused awakenings can happen to people when very short of sleep or jet-lagged, but are regular occurrences for those with the disorder.
Researchers have found that 15% of people had experienced at least one episode of sleep drunkenness in the last year.
People who realise they are in a dream while they are dreaming — a lucid dream — have better problem-solving abilities, new research finds.
This may be because the ability to step outside a dream after noticing it doesn’t make sense reflects a higher level of insight.
Around 82% of people are thought to have experienced a lucid dream in their life, while the number experiencing a lucid dream at least once a month may be as high as 37%.
Dr Patrick Bourke, who led the study, said:
“It is believed that for dreamers to become lucid while asleep, they must see past the overwhelming reality of their dream state, and recognise that they are dreaming.
The same cognitive ability was found to be demonstrated while awake by a person’s ability to think in a different way when it comes to solving problems.”
Cannabis study provides insight into how to treat serious mental disorders.
Cannabis study provides insight into how to treat serious mental disorders.
Cannabis causes short-term paranoia and it’s not related to memory problems, a comprehensive new study has found.
The researchers discovered that after being given the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, THC (Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol), participants became anxious, developed low self-esteem and experienced unsettling changes to their perceptions (Freeman et al., 2014).
The study’s lead author, Professor Daniel Freeman, said:
“The study very convincingly shows that cannabis can cause short-term paranoia in some people.
But more importantly it shines a light on the way our mind encourages paranoia.
Paranoia is likely to occur when we are worried, think negatively about ourselves, and experience unsettling changes in our perceptions.”
There were 121 people taking part in the study, none of whom were suffering from mental illness, but who had used cannabis before.
Two-thirds of them were injected with THC, while the remainder were injected with a placebo.
The amount was equivalent to a strong joint.
Half the people who were given the drug experienced paranoid thoughts, compared with 30% in the control group.
On top of this there were a variety of other psychological effects of the THC:
thoughts echoing,
altered perception of time,
anxiety,
various changes in perception such as sounds being louder than normal and colours brighter,
lowered mood,
negative thoughts about the self,
and poorer short-term memory.
When they looked at the results statistically, they were able to estimate what was causing the paranoia.
It turned out that it wasn’t a poorer memory:
“The increase in negative affect and in anomalous experiences fully accounted for the increase in paranoia.
Working memory changes did not lead to paranoia.
Making participants aware of the effects of THC had little impact.”
The scientists think the study of how cannabis causes paranoia will help the treatment of mental disorders which included delusional states, like schizophrenia:
“The clear clinical implication is that reducing negative emotion in patients with delusions, eg, by reducing the tendency to worry, testing out anxious fears, and increasing self-confidence, will lead to improvements in paranoia.
Also, the identification, normalization, and reduction of subtle anomalies of experience (eg, by reducing triggers and learning to tolerate the confusing sensory experiences) are clinically warranted.” (Freeman et al., 2014).
Fascinatingly, some people in the control group who were given a placebo also acted stoned, and it was difficult to tell the difference Freeman explained:
“…the placebo produced extraordinary effects in certain individuals.
They were convinced they were stoned, and acted accordingly.
Because at the time we didn’t know who had been given the drug, we assumed they were high too.”
Brain region involved in reward, learning, pleasure and impulsivity may be affected by light marijuana use.
Brain region involved in reward, learning, pleasure and impulsivity may be affected by light marijuana use.
Young adults who smoked marijuana at least once a week showed changes in two brain regions associated with motivation and emotion, a new study finds.
The study, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, compared the density, size and shape of the amygdala and nucleus accumbens in 20 marijuana users with 20 non-users.
The 18-25-year old marijuana users smoked the drug at least once a week, but were not dependent on it.
The comparisons between the two groups showed that the nucleus accumbens — an area involved in reward processing — was larger and a different shape in marijuana users.
Dr Carl Lupica, who studies drug addiction, commented:
“This study suggests that even light to moderate recreational marijuana use can cause changes in brain anatomy.
These observations are particularly interesting because previous studies have focused primarily on the brains of heavy marijuana smokers, and have largely ignored the brains of casual users.”
This study builds on previous research on animals showing that even relatively low doses of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) — marijuana’s main psychoactive component — can cause structural changes in the brain.
The conclusions of that report were that for those with particular vulnerabilities, like neuroticism and anxiety, marijuana is not as harmless as many assume.
Findings about the connection between marijuana use and very serious mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, have been unclear, with some saying it can be a causative factor in those who are vulnerable while others find little or no evidence.
Unfortunately, what we currently know about the effects of marijuana on the brain is mostly from heavy users of the drug.
This study hints, however, that even relatively causal use of marijuana may cause changes in the brain.
We don’t yet know what the implications of these changes are, but they certainly warrant further investigation.
Early exposure to a hostile environment causes long-standing behavioural problems in mice.
Early exposure to a hostile environment causes long-standing behavioural problems in mice.
Neuroscientists have found that social stress early in life can cause long-term problems with anxiety and aggression.
The conclusion comes from experiments on mice which were exposed to chronic levels of stress at a young age (Kovalenko et al., 2014).
The mouse equivalents of adolescents were placed in a cage with an aggressive mouse for two weeks.
Although the mice were separated from each other, the adolescent was exposed to repeated short attacks from the aggressive adult mouse.
After their experience, the mice’s behaviour was tested.
The stressed mice showed high degrees of social defeatism, a lack of enthusiasm for social interaction and a lower ability to communicate with others.
Their brains also showed less growth in an area of the hippocampus that is affected in depression.
Abnormal aggression
Another group of mice were given a rest period after the exposure to the aggressive adult mice.
During the rest period, these mice recovered in terms of their brain cells and their behaviour.
However, they were still abnormally anxious and aggressive.
One of the study’s authors, Dr Dr. Enikolopov, explained:
“The exposure to a hostile environment during their adolescence had profound consequences in terms of emotional state and the ability to interact with peers.”
A new study finds two ways that genetic factors are important in the fear of math.
A new study finds two ways that genetic factors are important in the fear of math.
The fear of math has a genetic component, according to a new study to be published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (Wang et al., 2014).
The avoidance of mathematical problems and equations by children and adults isn’t just down to bad early experiences with math or poor teaching.
To reach this conclusion, the study looked at the math anxiety of twins to tease out the genetic component.
Zhe Wang, lead author of the study, explained the results:
“We found that math anxiety taps into genetic predispositions in two ways: people’s cognitive performance on math and their tendency toward anxiety.”
In other words people are anxious about math not just because they are generally anxious people and they’re anxious about everything, but also because of genetically poor math/thinking skills.
But anxiety can mean people find it difficult to develop what math skills they do have. Wang continued:
“If you’re anxious, it is often harder to solve problems. The anxiety response actually inhibits some people’s ability. We have to help children learn to regulate their emotions so that the anxiety doesn’t keep them from achieving their best in math.”
The research found that around 40% of math anxiety came down to genetic factors: both generalised anxiety and cognitive ability combined.
The remaining 60% was related to differences in the home environment, at school and elsewhere.
Why twins?
These findings are based on tests of 216 identical twins and 298 same-sex fraternal twins.
Twins are often used in this sort of research because they share similar environmental factors, like parents, family income, neighbourhood and so on.
Identical twins, though, have the same genetic code on top of similar environmental factors, whereas fraternal twins just happen to be born at the same time.
This allows researchers to compare fraternal with identical twins to examine the effects of genes, while keeping environmental effects (parents, siblings, socioeconomic factors etc.) much the same.
One of the study’s authors, Professor Stephen Petrill, said:
“Genetic factors may exacerbate or reduce the risk of doing poorly at math.
If you have these genetic risk factors for math anxiety and then you have negative experiences in math classes, it may make learning that much harder.
It is something we need to account for when we’re considering interventions for those who need help in math.”
Recent studies suggest that sexual activity causes neurogenesis in the hippocampus.
Recent studies suggest that sexual activity causes neurogenesis in the hippocampus.
In some ways it’s a mystery why exercise is so good for the brain.
That’s because exercise is stressful and stress is, broadly speaking, bad for the brain.
Nevertheless exercise produces a host of benefits, it:
enhancing structural plasticity,
reduces anxiety,
improves learning and memory function,
increases blood flow to the brain…and all the rest…
But perhaps there’s something special about stressful, but rewarding activities, like exercise or, say, sex?
Growing neurons
It’s this connection between sex and brain function that’s been investigated in a series of intriguing studies.
In one, conducted at Princeton University, young adults rats were either allowed to have sex only once in a two-week period, or every day (Leuner et al., 2010).
What they found was that sex was stressful–the rats had elevated levels of stress hormones–but sex also promoted brain cell growth.
The rats that had been having sex for two weeks displayed neurogenesis: the process by which neurons are generated from stem cells in the brain.
The neurogenesis was found in part of the hippocampus, a structure that is thought to contribute to memory formation and other important cognitive functions.
The more sexually active rats also displayed less anxiety.
Middle aged rats
All very well for the younger rat, you might say, but what about the poor, downtrodden middle-aged rat?
He’s losing his looks, his fur and…well…he’s a rat.
When the same research group carried out a similar experiment on older rats, they reached the same conclusions (Glasper & Gould, 2013).
If older rats continued to have sex, neurogenesis in the hippocampus was enhanced.
So there’s hope for the older rats amongst us as well.
The effect did not, however, persist after the rats stopped having sex: they had to keep at it.
Improved memory and learning
Researchers at Princeton are not the only ones to be examining the link between sex and neurogenesis.
In South Korea they’ve been carrying out similar experiments on mice, except they’ve taken them one step further.
If the hippocampus is involved in memory and learning, and sex makes cells there grow, then surely sex should improve memory and learning?
To test this out, Kim et al. (2013) had some male mice locked up with horny females while others sat like monks in their cells.
Once again, sex proved beneficial for the hippocampus. But the mice were also given tests of their memory and learning ability.
The results of this showed that mice that had been having sex aced the task in comparison to their monkish counterparts.
Sex and the brain
Perhaps these studies start to explain why stressful activities like exercise are also so good for the brain, despite being stressful: they encourage the growth of new brain cells.
So, not all stress is bad stress: the right kind can do wonders–even for the older rat.
It takes a fifth-of-a-second for the euphoria-inducing chemicals to start acting on the brain when you are looking at that special someone.
That’s one of the conclusions of Stephanie Ortigue, who has co-authored a review of neuroscience research on love.
The brain imaging studies of love they covered also suggested that 12 different areas of the brain are involved (Ortigue et al., 2010).
When looking or thinking about a loved one, these areas release a cocktail of neurotransmitters across the brain, including oxytocin, dopamine, vasopressin and adrenaline.
The brain gets a similar ‘hit’ from love as it does from a small dose of cocaine.
Types of love
Of course love comes in many varieties.
One common distinction is between passionate love and the companionate kind, with the latter growing between couples over time.
This review of the research found that passionate love activates the areas of the brain involved in reward–after all we have to be motivated to overcome all the obstacles that can get in the way of love.
But it’s not just about motivation: passionate love also makes us think about our body image, about how we appear socially to the other person and it makes us focus our attention.
Passionate love also had the effect of dampening down activity in areas of the brain associated with grieving, fear and anxiety.
The authors conclude:
“Together, these results show that love is more than a basic emotion. Love is also a complex function including appraisals, goal-directed motivation, reward, self-representation, and body-image. Interestingly different types of love call for different brain networks that carry a broad variety of basic and complex mechanisms…”
Falling in love may feel as easy as falling off a log, but your brain is working overtime.
