Category: Mental Health

The research involved 700 people who had schizophrenia and donated their brains for research after their deaths.

Scientist have made a major breakthrough in the understanding of schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a very serious mental health condition which tends to run in families.

It’s long been suspected that there is a strong genetic component (it’s about 90% inherited).

Now scientists have discovered the genes that cause problems with a process called synaptic pruning.

Synaptic pruning is the process by which unneeded connections between brain cells are destroyed during childhood.

In normal development this helps speed up the brain — we don’t need the incredible number of neurons and connections we grow as infants.

In schizophrenia, though, it looks like this process of pruning goes into overdrive.

Dr Thomas Lehner, a director at the National Institute of Mental Health, explained:

“Normally, pruning gets rid of excess connections we no longer need, streamlining our brain for optimal performance, but too much pruning can impair mental function.

It could help explain schizophrenia’s delayed age-of-onset of symptoms in late adolescence/early adulthood and shrinkage of the brain’s working tissue.

Interventions that put the brakes on this pruning process-gone-awry could prove transformative.”

The research involved 700 people who had schizophrenia and donated their brains for research after their deaths.

This and other genetic data was compared with people who did not have schizophrenia.

Finding the gene that is responsible, at least in part, is a major breakthrough.

However, it will be years before new treatments or preventative strategies can be developed from this information.

Dr Steve McCarroll, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Since schizophrenia was first described over a century ago, its underlying biology has been a black box, in part because it has been virtually impossible to model the disorder in cells or animals.

The human genome is providing a powerful new way in to this disease.

Understanding these genetic effects on risk is a way of prying open that block box, peering inside and starting to see actual biological mechanisms.”

The study was published in the journal Nature (Sekar et al., 2016).

If the hallucination is irritating, there could be a way to reduce its effect.

Phantom vibration syndrome is when it feels like your phone is vibrating in your pocket…

…but actually there’s no incoming call, text message or other alert.

It’s a hallucination that 90% of people with mobile phones say has happened to them.

Dr Robert Rosenberg, author of a new study on the modern phenomenon, said the hallucination is easily produced:

“[The] phone sifts around in your pocket, “I’m getting a call.”

Your pant leg rustles, “I’m getting a text.”

You have a muscle spasm in your leg, “I’m getting another call again.”

But the whole time, just a phantom vibration.”

Phantom vibration syndrome was first identified in the era of pagers.

The hallucination could be down to a kind of bodily habit, Dr Rosenberg said:

“Think about wearing a pair of glasses.

If you’re accustomed to your glasses and they almost become a part of you, you can forget that you’re even wearing them sometimes.

The phone in your pocket is like this.

Through bodily habit, your phone actually becomes a part of you and you become trained to perceive the phone’s vibrations as an incoming call or text.

So, due to these kinds of habits, it becomes really easy to misperceive other similar sensations.”

There is no reason to be concerned by the hallucination but if it’s irritating there could be a way to reduce its effect.

Dr Rosenberg suggests moving the phone around to different pockets.

This should help stop the bad habit forming — or at least slow it down.

Watch the accompanying video from Georgia Tech:

The study was published in the journal Computers In Human Behavior (Rosenberg, 2015).

Puffing man image from Shutterstock

The diet may also help combat side-effects of drugs used to treat schizophrenia.

A diet favoured by body-builders could help treat schizophrenia.

The research is based on a study of mice, who were fed a so-called ‘ketogenic’ diet.

The diet is high in fat but low in carbohydrates.

Dr Zoltan Sarnyai, who led the study, said:

“Most of a person’s energy would come from fat.

So the diet would consist of butter, cheese, salmon, etc.

Initially it would be used in addition to medication in an in-patient setting where the patient’s diet could be controlled.”

In the research, the mice displayed fewer animal behaviours related to schizophrenia, compared with a control group.

Dr Sarnyai said the diet may also help combat side-effects of drugs used to treat schizophrenia:

“It’s another advantage that it works against the weight gain, cardiovascular issues and type-two diabetes we see as common side-effects of drugs given to control schizophrenia.”

The study was published in the journal Schizophrenia Research.(Kraeuter et al., 2015)

Mental illness image from Shutterstock

The average time some people use their phones each day is twice what they guess.

Young people use their smartphones for an average of five hours per day, a new study finds.

That’s one-third of the time they are awake.

Along the way they check their phones fully 85 times per day.

The study asked people to guess how much they used their smartphones.

This was compared with data from an app installed on the phone which measured their actual usage.

The study included 23 people between the ages of 18 and 33.

Most of the usage came in small bursts lasting as little as 30 seconds.

Below is the graph showing people’s smartphone usage in black blocks over two weeks.

Time of day runs along the bottom of the graph and each day of the two weeks runs vertically.

The lines running across indicate the two Saturdays.

People were checking the time, their email, social media alerts or playing music.

Dr David Ellis, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Psychologists typically rely on self-report data when quantifying mobile phone usage in studies, but our work suggests that estimated smartphone use should be interpreted with caution.”

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Andrews et al., 2015).

Phones and relationships image from Shutterstock

A serious psychological condition that affects over 3 million Americans.

Anorexia nervosa may be partly related to a bacterial imbalance in the gut, a new study finds.

There are trillions of bacteria in the gut — these have been increasingly linked by scientists to brain function.

This new frontier of research has been dubbed the ‘gut-brain axis’.

Anorexia a serious condition that affects over 3 million Americans.

It also has the highest risk of death of any psychological disorder.

Dr Ian Carroll, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Other studies have linked gut bacteria to weight regulation and behavior.

Since people with anorexia nervosa exhibit extreme weight dysregulation, we decided to study this relationship further.”

The study compared fecal samples of women with anorexia before and after treatment.

Before treatment the women had gut bacteria with much lower diversity.

Low diversity is a sign of poor health.

After treatment, with their weight restored, bacterial diversity had increased, but it was still not as high as healthy individuals.

Dr Carroll said:

“We’re not saying that altering gut bacteria will be the magic bullet for people with anorexia nervosa.

Other important factors are at play, obviously.

But the gut microbiota is clearly important for a variety of health and brain-related issues in humans.

And it could be important for people with anorexia nervosa.”

Nevertheless, this could offer hope for a new type of treatment, said Dr Cynthia Bulik, another study author:

“Currently available treatments for anorexia nervosa are suboptimal.

In addition, the process of weight gain and renourishment can be extremely uncomfortable for patients.

Often, patients are discharged from the hospital, and within months and sometimes weeks they find themselves losing weight again and facing readmission.

If specific alterations in their microbiota could make renourishment less uncomfortable, help patients regulate their weight, and positively affect behavior, then we might see fewer readmissions and more cures.”

The study was published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine (Kleiman et al., 2015).

Anorexia image from Shutterstock

Study reveals how spiritual beliefs affect physical and mental health.

People who believe God loves them and forgives them have better mental health, a new study finds.

In contrast, those who hold negative spiritual beliefs tend to have worse mental health.

Negative spiritual beliefs include believing that God is punishing you or feeling abandoned.

Professor Brick Johnstone, one of the study’s authors, said:

“In general, the more religious or spiritual you are, the healthier you are, which makes sense.

But for some individuals, even if they have even the smallest degree of negative spirituality — basically, when individuals believe they’re ill because they’ve done something wrong and God is punishing them — their health is worse.”

Almost 200 people with a variety of health conditions were included in the study.

Amongst the ailments, some had cancer, some brain injuries, while others were healthy.

Everyone was divided into two groups:

• Positive spirituality: felt loved and accepted by a higher power.
• Negative spirituality: felt abandoned or punished by a higher power.

Those with negative spirituality reported being in more pain and having worse mental health.

Even small amounts of negative spirituality were linked to lower levels of health.

Professor Johnstone said:

“Previous research has shown that about 10 percent of people have negative spiritual beliefs; for example, believing that if they don’t do something right, God won’t love them.

That’s a negative aspect of religion when people believe, ‘God is not supportive of me.

What kind of hope do I have?’

However, when people firmly believe God loves and forgives them despite their shortcomings, they had significantly better mental health.”

The study was published in the Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health (Jones et al., 2015).

Holding sun image from Shutterstock

First study to show a positive effect of this supplement on serious mental illness.

Omega-3 fatty acids have been shown for the first time to reduce the long-term risk of developing psychotic disorders.

The conclusion comes from a study of 13-25 year-olds in Australia.

The young people in the study were all deemed at risk of developing psychotic disorders later in life.

Half took a 3-month course of omega-3 and the remainder took a placebo.

They were originally followed up for over a year.

In the omega-3 group only 2 of 41 young people had developed a psychotic disorder in comparison to 11 of 41 in the placebo group.

In the study’s latest instalment, the two groups have been followed up 7 years later.

The results are still encouraging.

Just four people originally in the omega-3 group have gone on to develop a psychotic disorder in the intervening 7 years.

In the control group, 16 have developed a psychotic disorder since the study began.

Early treatment of psychotic disorders like schizophrenia is key.

This study provides one way to help some people who are at high-risk to avoid anti-psychotic medication, which has considerable side-effects.

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications (Amminger et al., 2015).

Heal mind image from Shutterstock

Sometimes we need to make mistakes in order to learn and grow.

The reward areas of the brain activate when people learn from their mistakes, a new study finds.

People normally feel bad about mistakes and try to avoid them in future.

But sometimes we need to make mistakes in order to learn and improve.

Now neuroscientists have found that if people are given the opportunity to reflect, they could feel good about their mistakes.

Dr Giorgio Coricelli, one of the study’s authors, said:

“We show that, in certain circumstances, when we get enough information to contextualize the choices, then our brain essentially reaches towards the reinforcement mechanism, instead of turning toward avoidance.”

So, after reflecting positively on mistakes, people may not be so averse to trying something new.

In the research, people answered questions which they either got right or wrong.

Naturally, people felt bad when they got them wrong and the areas of the brain related to avoidance activated.

Subsequently, though, people were given a chance to review their mistakes.

Scientists found that people’s brain responded positively when reflecting.

Brain scans revealed the ‘reward circuit’ activating during the review.

This suggested that even mistakes can feel rewarding, given time for reflection.

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications (Palminteri et al., 2015).

Mistake image from Shutterstock

How mental and physical stresses interact in the brain’s prefrontal cortex.

Both mental and physical stress can interact to cause fatigue, a new study finds.

The brain’s resources in the prefrontal cortex — an area used for planning and control — are divided during physical and mental activity, the research found.

Dr Ranjana Mehta, the study’s first author, said:

“Existing examinations of physical and mental fatigue has been limited to evaluating cardiovascular, muscular and biomechanical changes.

The purpose of this study was to use simultaneous monitoring of brain and muscle function to examine the impact on the PFC [prefrontal cortex] while comparing the changes in brain behavior with traditional measures of fatigue.”

For the research, participants repeatedly squeezed on a hand-grip while performing mental tasks designed to fatigue them.

At the same time, an area of the brain called the prefrontal cortex was monitored.

The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain at the front above and behind the eyes.

This area is vital to our personalities, how we plan complex actions, and more.

The researchers found that the prefrontal cortex became more ‘tired’ when people were performing both mental and physical tasks.

It appears the brain devotes some of its resources to physical tasks and some to mental tasks.

The research is one of the first to show how mental and physical tasks can interact to fatigue the brain.

Dr Mehta said:

“Not a lot of people see the value in looking at both the brain and the body together.

However, no one does purely physical or mental work; they always do both.”

So, it appears the brain is like a muscle in the sense that work — whether mental or physical — weakens its strength.

The study was published in the journal Human Factors (Mehta & Parasuraman, 2015).

Mental work image from Shutterstock

Treat your gut well and this is why your brain will thank you.

Changes in bacteria in the gut are linked to critical psychological changes, a new mouse study finds.

A high-fat diet could increase the risk of repetitive behaviours, depression and anxiety, researchers have concluded.

Dr. John Krystal, editor of journal Biological Psychiatry, where the article was published, said:

“This paper suggests that high-fat diets impair brain health, in part, by disrupting the symbiotic relationship between humans and the microorganisms that occupy our gastrointestinal tracts.”

As the authors write, this is the…

“…first definitive evidence that high-fat diet-induced changes to the gut microbiome [the community of organisms in the human gut] are sufficient to disrupt brain physiology and function in the absence of obesity.” (Annadora et al., 2015)

In the study, non-obese mice were fed a normal diet.

But they were then given the gut microbiota — the microorganisms which live in the gut — from another mouse which had been fed a high-fat diet.

These were compared with mice who were given gut microbiota from a mouse fed on a normal diet.

Remarkable changes were seen in the non-obese mice that had been given the microbiota from the high-fat mice.

They showed signs of depression, anxiety, memory problems and repetitive behaviours.

There were also signs of brain inflammation.

High-fat diets have long been known to increase the risk of physical problems like stroke and heart disease.

This study is part of a growing body of research showing the link between brain and gut.

For example, the first ever human study of its kind recently found that consuming a prebiotic bacteria can have an anti-anxiety effect.

The authors conclude:

“…these data are in agreement with the extensive body of literature describing the sensitivity of the brain to diet-induced obesity and the growing number of studies linking gut microbiota to central nervous system health and behavior.

For example, there is a reported high comorbidity [overlap] between psychiatric syndromes, including depression and anxiety, with gastrointestinal disorders, while conversely, recent studies link probiotics to positive changes in mood and behavior.”

Eating cake image from Shutterstock