When people dream that they are performing a particular action, a portion of the brain involved in the planning and execution of movement lights up with activity. The finding, made by scanning the brains of lucid dreamers while they slept, offers a glimpse into the non-waking consciousness and is a first step toward true "dream reading," according to a report published online in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on October 27.
"Dreaming is not just looking at a dream movie," said Martin Dresler of the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry. "Brain regions representing specific body motions are activated."
Lucid dreamers are aware that they are dreaming and can deliberately control their actions in dreams. The researchers realized that this learned skill presents an opportunity for studying the neural underpinnings of our dreams.
"The main obstacle in studying specific dream content is that spontaneous dream activity cannot be experimentally controlled, as subjects typically cannot perform predecided mental actions during sleep," study coauthor Michael Czisch explained. "Employing the skill of lucid dreaming can help to overcome these obstacles."
The researchers instructed participants to make a series of left and right hand movements separated by a series of eye movements upon entering a lucid dream state while their brains were scanned. Those eye movements served as a signal to the researchers of what was happening in the dream.
Those studies show for the first time that neural activity observed in the brain's sensorimotor cortex can be related to dreamed hand movements.
The discovery suggests that lucid dreaming in combination with neuroimaging and polysomnography (a more common form of sleep monitoring) may allow the transfer of more sophisticated "brain reading" tasks to the dreaming state, the researchers say. In other words, it might eventually be possible to predict dreamed content by analyzing patterns of brain activity.
Dresler says it will also be interesting to investigate brain activity at the moment a dreamer becomes lucid.
"The lucid dreamer gains insight into a very complex state: sleeping, dreaming, but being consciously aware of the dream state," he said. "This may inform us about concepts of consciousness."
Viewing TV coverage of terrorism has more negative effect on women. This has been shown in a new study from the University of Haifa. "It is possible that the differences between men and women are founded in gender socialization: 'teaching' women to respond to terrorism with more anxiety than men," said Prof. Moshe Zeidner, one of the authors of the study.
Exposure to television coverage of terrorism causes women to lose psychological resources much more than men, which leads to negative feelings and moodiness. This has been shown in a new study, conducted at the University of Haifa and soon to be published in Anxiety, Stress & Coping, that examined the differences between men and women in a controlled experiment environment.
An earlier study conducted by Prof. Moshe Zeidner of the Department of Counseling and Human Development at the University of Haifa and Prof. Hasida Ben-Zur of the University of Haifa's School of Social Work, has shown that viewing television coverage of terrorism causes viewers to lose psychological resources, such as the sense of significance or success, and causes a feeling of being threatened. The current study set out to examine whether there are differences between men and women in the levels of psychological resource loss.
According to the authors of the new study, earlier research dealing with gender differences in the effects of traumatic events examined data based on questionnaires relating to past experiences. The present study is now taking a new step as it is examining these differences in a controlled experiment environment in which all of the participants are exposed to the same events and report on their feelings immediately following the events.
In order to create such a controlled environment, men and women were shown news video clips reporting on terrorist attacks that took place over the past few years and which resulted in serious casualties. In parallel, two other groups of men and women were shown news coverage of "regular", everyday news events.
The results of this study show that the women who viewed terrorism coverage testified to higher levels of feeling threatened and lower levels of psychological resources compared to the men who viewed the same news reports. These gender differences were not found amongst the control groups. The study has also found that the feeling of being threatened and loss of resources has an effect on the senses and lead to a higher level of negativity, such as hostility and moodiness.
"It is possible that the differences between men and women are founded in gender socialization, 'teaching' women to respond to terrorism with more anxiety than men," said Prof. Moshe Zeidner.
(Medical Xpress) -- Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it’s good for the student. That’s the conclusion of a new study published in Perspectives in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The authors show that curiosity is a big part of academic performance. In fact, personality traits like curiosity seem to be as important as intelligence in determining how well students do in school.
Intelligence is important to academic performance, but it’s not the whole story. Everyone knows a brilliant kid who failed school, or someone with mediocre smarts who made up for it with hard work. So psychological scientists have started looking at factors other than intelligence that make some students do better than others.
One of those is conscientiousness—basically, the inclination to go to class and do your homework. People who score high on this personality trait tend to do well in school. “It’s not a huge surprise if you think of it, that hard work would be a predictor of academic performance,” says Sophie von Stumm of the University of Edinburgh in the UK. She co-wrote the new paper with Benedikt Hell of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic of Goldsmiths University of London.
von Stumm and her coauthors wondered if curiosity might be another important factor. “Curiosity is basically a hunger for exploration,” von Stumm says. “If you’re intellectually curious, you’ll go home, you’ll read the books. If you’re perceptually curious, you might go traveling to foreign countries and try different foods.” Both of these, she thought, could help you do better in school.
The researchers performed a meta-analysis, gathering the data from about 200 studies with a total of about 50,000 students. They found that curiosity did, indeed, influence academic performance. In fact, it had quite a large effect, about the same as conscientiousness. When put together, conscientiousness and curiosity had as big an effect on performance as intelligence.
von Stumm wasn’t surprised that curiosity was so important. “I’m a strong believer in the importance of a hungry mind for achievement, so I was just glad to finally have a good piece of evidence,” she says. “Teachers have a great opportunity to inspire curiosity in their students, to make them engaged and independent learners. That is very important.”
Employers may also want to take note: a curious person who likes to read books, travel the world, and go to museums may also enjoy and engage in learning new tasks on the job. “It’s easy to hire someone who has the done the job before and hence, knows how to work the role,” von Stumm says. “But it’s far more interesting to identify those people who have the greatest potential for development, i.e. the curious ones.”
Globally, increasingly vigilant and vocal civil society groups—important actors in the new multilateralism—are demanding that companies publish what they pay in revenues, aid agencies publish what they fund, and governments publish what they spend. In middle-income and poorer countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, less well resourced, but equally passionate, local advocacy groups are demanding that governments formally enshrine their right to access government information in law. In the United States, technology visionaries are emphasizing a new paradigm of collaborative governance, and “civic groups are taking advantage of new technologies to shine the light of greater transparency on government from afar.”
These, and many similar initiatives around the world, reflect a renewed and heightened focus on openness, transparency, and citizen participation in the discourse and practice of governance. This idea of open government stresses information sharing and participation, rather than discretion and secrecy, as foundations of good and effective governance. Development aid agencies are also increasingly responsive to these trends. For instance, the World Bank Group’s Governance and Anticorruption Strategy, launched in 2007 and now being updated, provides that the Bank will “…scale up its work with interested governments to strengthen transparency in public policy making and service provision.”
For work on international development, a few key issues stand out:
One, the momentum of technology, and shifting boundaries of power between states and citizens creates new demands on governments, on all governments, not only in rich countries, to be inclusive and open.
Two, mirroring an earlier generation of social monitoring tools, innovative technology-enabled tools for openness are emerging in developing countries, highlighting the need to catalyze innovations in local settings, rather than transplanting ready-made solutions.
Three, the push for open government is coming from civil society advocacy, but is fundamentally about the way the government functions, and will require government systems to integrate principles of transparency and voice.
PARADIGM SHIFT
Innovations in technologies for managing, communicating, and sharing information have been powerful drivers of social change. Print and broadcast media made democracy possible at the scale and size of modern nation states. And the new wave of computing innovations—unprecedented in their speed and global reach—are enabling citizens to take on a much more active role by connecting globally, accessing new ideas, and harnessing the power of networking. Some commentators had characterized these trends as a “power shift” as early as the 1990s—well before Facebook andTwitter. While the magnitude and contours of this shift can be debated and researched, it is clear that monopoly and control over information by governments is increasingly under threat.
Two contemporary events, different in scope and form, illustrate this dynamic. The first, the Wikileaks controversy, highlights the global reach of even small, relatively modestly resourced virtual organizations in this technology-empowered era. Thomas Friedman calls this phenomenon the “rising collection of superempowered individuals: What globalization, technological integration, and the general flattening of the world have done is to superempower individuals to such a degree that they can actually challenge any hierarchy—from a global bank to a nation state—as individuals.” The second illustration is, of course, the pace and rapid spread of revolutionary movements in the Middle East. Widely labeled as a “social media revolution,” it reflects again the potential that technology creates to shift the balance of power toward individuals and social movements, however amorphous, chaotic, and spontaneous.
The momentum of technology and the rising influence of citizen groups create new demands for all governments, and not only in rich countries, to institute policy and regulatory mechanisms that are inclusive and responsive, and create legitimate spaces and mechanisms for citizen participation in policy- and decision-making processes. The very logic of technology suggests that responses premised on further strengthening of controls, or clamping barriers of secrecy might not work.
DEVELOPING COUNTRY INNOVATIONS
Technology also provides innovative tools for enabling greater disclosure and participation. Many of the earlier generation of social monitoring tools such as citizen scorecards, social audits, and expenditure tracking that enhanced the role of citizens in the governance process, emerged in developing countries, and became important platforms for social action. A new generation of technology-enabled applications and innovations for open government is also being developed in the South. Numerous examples are emerging including the use of mobile phones, SMS (short message service) technologies and web-based platforms for providing feedback on services, reporting on corruption, and accessing services.
Global Voices, a virtual organization of bloggers, tracks and shares many of the more innovative applications, emerging in both middle-income and poorer countries, such as:
Ushahidi, which was developed in 2008 to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout, and has now grown to become an important resource for citizen journalists and advocates in a number of countries,
Databases focusing on corruption in the executive, legislative and judiciary, developed by Mars Group Kenya,
Ishki.com, a complaint brokerage in Jordan, that collects and organizes complaints from local citizens about the public and private sectors,
The Ujima Project in Rwanda that makes budgetary data on governmental and NGO expenditures available online, and
Democrator, an online initiative that enables citizens to send petitions and inquiries to government bodies in Russia.
In some cases, various branches of government have also been proactive in deploying technology for greater openness and participation. The Indian government, for instance, has set up a special advisory body to leverage innovations for better governance, and annually conducts competitions for e-government initiatives. In Brazil, the House of Representatives launched the e-Democracia Project, which is enabling citizens to contribute to the drafting of laws. In Peru, the Constitutional Court is making its judgments available through its website. As technology helps diversify and expand the sources and locations of innovation, development aid agencies can play a vital role as catalysts for domestic systems of innovations and development, rather than carriers of canned solutions from the North to the South.
CHALLENGES
Although the impetus for openness comes from civil society, open government is, at its core, an enterprise ofgovernment transformation. Eventually, citizens will be able to participate actively in the governance ecosystem, if governments create the right enabling environment for transparency through appropriate policies and disclosure rules for making information available, and if it creates the kinds of processes that enable citizens to participate in policy making.
Right to Information (RTI) laws that give citizens the formal right to demand information, and make mandatory the disclosure of a range of information, are a useful regulatory mechanism to discourage the culture of secrecy that has characterized many governments. They also provide a useful tool for regulating the balance between the right of citizens to know, and concerns about security, privacy, and the protection of the deliberative process. A host of other policies and regulations—budget laws, administrative codes, procurement laws—can also integrate disclosure provisions, to create transparency across government functions. But, as evolution in technology makes the traditional limits to transparency harder to enforce—as Wikileaks, for instance, shows—countries adopting RTI and other disclosure laws will also need to consider how to address these new realities, and how to balance the concerns of security with the concerns of openness.
The challenges cannot be underestimated. Many countries, especially at the lower end of the income spectrum, have enormous capacity constraints that make transparency difficult. Records management systems, for instance, might be outdated and chaotic, making disclosures difficult. Administrative practices, hierarchical structures, and political considerations could militate against the pull toward openness. Regulatory and policy instruments in such situations can only be effective if incentive systems and capacity constraints are both addressed, and if they are accompanied by sustained efforts to improve skills, provide resources, and monitor impacts. Open government is a principle, not a prototype, and specific contexts and country realities will undoubtedly condition the pace, the form, the sequencing, and priorities for each country.
Anupama Dokeniya is a Governance Specialist in the Public Sector Governance Group at the World Bank.
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“RUB scientists decipher the role of calcium signals”
Bochum’s neurobiologists have found that certain receptors for the neurotransmitter glutamate determine the architecture of nerve cells in the developing brain. Individual receptor variants lead to especially long and branched processes called dendrites, which the cells communicate with. The researchers also showed that the growth-promoting property of the receptors is linked to how much calcium they allow to flow into the cells.
“These results allow insights into the mechanisms with which nerve cells connect during development”, says Prof. Dr. Petra Wahle from the RUB Working Group on Developmental Neurobiology. The scientists report in Development.
It all depends on a few amino acids
“Nerve cells communicate with chemical and electrical signals”, explains Wahle. “The electrical activity controls many developmental processes in the brain, and the neurotransmitter glutamate plays a decisive role in this.” In two different cell classes in the cerebral cortex of rats, the researchers studied the nine most common variants of a glutamate receptor, the so-called AMPA receptor. When glutamate docks on to this receptor, calcium ions flow into the nerve cells either directly through a pore in the AMPA receptor or through adjacent calcium channels. Depending on the variant, AMPA receptors consist of 800-900 amino acid building blocks, and already the exchange of one amino acid has important consequences for the calcium permeability. Among other things, calcium promotes the growth of new dendrites.
Different cell types, different mechanisms
One at a time, the Bochum team introduced the nine AMPA receptor variants into the nerve cells and observed the impact on the cell architecture.
In several cases, this resulted in longer dendrites with more branches. This pattern was demonstrated both for several receptor variants that allow calcium ions to flow directly into the cell through a pore and for those that activate adjacent calcium channels. “It was surprising that in the two cell classes studied, different receptor variants triggered the growth of the dendrites”, says Dr. Mohammad Hamad from the Working Group on Developmental Neurobiology. “In the inhibitory interneurons, only one of the nine variants was effective. Calcium signals are like a toolbox. However, different cell classes in the cerebral cortex make use of the toolbox in different ways.”
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Bibliographic record
Hamad, M. I., Ma-Hogemeier, Z. L., Riedel, C., Conrads, C., Veitinger, T., Habijan, T., Schulz, J. N., Krause, M., Wirth, M. J., Hollmann, M., Wahle, P. (2011) Cell class-specific regulation of neocortical dendrite and spine growth by AMPA receptor splice and editing variants. Development 138, 4301-4313, doi: 10.1242/dev.07107
Despite vast differences in the genetic code across individuals and ethnicities, the human brain shows a “consistent molecular architecture,” say researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health. The finding is from a pair of studies that have created databases revealing when and where genes turn on and off in multiple brain regions through development.
Caption: Our brains are all made of the same stuff. Despite individual and ethnic genetic diversity, our prefrontal cortex shows a consistent molecular architecture. For example, overall differences in the genetic code (“genetic distance”) between African -Americans (AA) and caucasians (cauc) showed no effect on their overall difference in expressed transcripts (“transcriptional distance”). The vertical span of color-coded areas is about the same, indicating that our brains all share the same tissue at a molecular level, despite distinct DNA differences on the horizontal axis. Each dot represents a comparison between two individuals. The AA::AA comparisons (blue) generally show more genetic diversity than cauc::cauc comparisons (yellow), because caucasians are descended from a relatively small subset of ancestors who migrated from Africa, while African Americans are descended from a more diverse gene pool among the much larger population that remained in Africa. AA::cauc comparisons (green) differed most across their genomes as a whole, but this had no effect on their transcriptomes as a whole. Credit: Joel Kleinman, M.D., Ph.D., NIMH Clinical Brain Disorders Branch
“Our study shows how 650,000 common genetic variations that make each of us a unique person may influence the ebb and flow of 24,000 genes in the most distinctly human part of our brain as we grow and age,” explained Joel Kleinman, M.D., Ph.D., of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Clinical Brain Disorders Branch.
Kleinman and NIMH grantee Nenad Sestan, M.D., Ph.D. of Yale University, New Haven, Conn., led the sister studies in the Oct. 27, 2011 issue of the journal Nature.
“Having at our fingertips detailed information about when and where specific gene products are expressed in the brain brings new hope for understanding how this process can go awry in schizophrenia, autism and other brain disorders,” said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D.
Both studies measured messenger RNAs or transcripts. These intermediate products carry the message from DNA, the genetic blueprint, to create proteins and differentiated brain tissue. Each gene can make several transcripts, which are expressed in patterns influenced by a subset of the approximately 1.5 million DNA variations unique to each of us. This unique set of transcripts is called our transcriptome – a molecular signature that is unique to every individual. The transcriptome is a measure of the diverse functional potential that exists in the brain.
Both studies found that rapid gene expression during fetal development abruptly switches to much slower rates after birth that gradually decline and eventually level off in middle age. These rates surge again as the brain ages in the last decades, mirroring rates seen in childhood and adolescence, according to one of the studies. The databases hold secrets to how the brain’s ever-changing messenger chemical systems, cells and development processes are related to gene expression patterns through development.
Caption: Overall gene expression plummets 5-fold in infancy and 90-fold in childhood from its prenatal peak. The decline levels-off during the middle years, but expression surges again in the last decades of life, as the brain ages. Note: The fetal/infant graph at left is based on a different scale than the lifespan graph at right, so the two are not visually comparable. Credit: Joel Kleinman, M.D., Ph.D., NIMH Clinical Brain Disorders Branch
For example, if a particular version of a gene is implicated in a disorder, the new resources might reveal how that variation affects the gene’s expression over time and by brain region. By identifying even distant genes that may be turning on and off in-sync, the databases may help researchers discover whole modules of genes involved in the illness. They can also reveal how variation in one gene influences another’s expression.
Prefrontal cortex
Kleinman’s team focused on how genetic variations are linked to the expression of transcripts in the brain’s prefrontal cortex, the area that controls insight, planning and judgment, across the lifespan. They studied 269 postmortem, healthy human brains, ranging in age from two weeks after conception to 80 years old, using 49,000 genetic probes. The database on prefrontal cortex gene expression alone totals more than 1 trillion pieces of information, according to Kleinman.
Caption: Males show more sex-biased gene expression. More genes differentially expressed (DEX) between the sexes were found in males than females, especially prenatally. Some genes found to have such sex-biased expression had previously been associated with disorders that affect males more than females, such as schizophrenia, Williams syndrome, and autism. Eleven of the brain areas shown are in the neocortex (NCX), or outer mantle. Credit: Nenad Sestan, M.D., Ph.D., Yale University Department of Neurobiology and Kavli Institute for Neuroscience
Among key findings in the prefrontal cortex:
Individual genetic variations are profoundly linked to expression patterns. The most similarity across individuals is detected early in development and again as we approach the end of life.
Different types of related genes are expressed during prenatal development, infancy, and childhood, so that each of these stages shows a relatively distinct transcriptional identity. Three-fourths of genes reverse their direction of expression after birth, with most switching from on to off.
Expression of genes involved in cell division declines prenatally and in infancy, while expression of genes important for making synapses, or connections between brain cells, increases. In contrast, genes required for neuronal projections decline after birth – likely as unused connections are pruned.
By the time we reach our 50s, overall gene expression begins to increase, mirroring the sharp reversal of fetal expression changes that occur in infancy.
Genetic variation in the genome as a whole showed no effect on variation in the transcriptome as a whole, despite how genetically distant individuals might be. Hence, human cortexes have a consistent molecular architecture, despite our diversity.
In previous studies, Kleinman and colleagues have found that all genetic variations implicated to date in schizophrenia are associated with transcripts that are preferentially expressed in the fetal brain. This adds to evidence that the disorder originates in prenatal development. By contrast, he and his colleagues are examining evidence that genetic variation implicated in affective disorders may be associated with transcripts expressed later in life. They are also extending their database to include all transcripts of all the genes in the human genome, examining 1000 post-mortem brains, including many of people who had schizophrenia or other brain disorders.
Multiple brain regions
Sestan and colleagues characterized gene expression in 16 brain regions, including 11 areas of the neocortex, from both hemispheres of 57 human brains that spanned from 40 days post-conception to 82 years – analyzing the transcriptomes of 1,340 samples. Using 1.4 million probes, the researchers measured the expression of exons, which combine to form a gene’s protein product. This allowed them to pinpoint changes in these combinations that make up a protein, as well as to chart the gene’s overall expression.
Among key findings:
Over 90 percent of the genes expressed in the brain are differentially regulated across brain regions and/or over developmental time periods. There are also widespread differences across region and time periods in the combination of a gene’s exons that are expressed.
Timing and location are far more influential in regulating gene expression than gender, ethnicity or individual variation.
Among 29 modules of co-expressed genes identified, each had distinct expression patterns and represented different biological processes. Genetic variation in some of the most well-connected genes in these modules, called hub genes, has previously been linked to mental disorders, including schizophrenia and depression.
Telltale similarities in expression profiles with genes previously implicated in schizophrenia and autism are providing leads to discovery of other genes potentially involved in those disorders.
Sex differences in the risk for certain mental disorders may be traceable to transcriptional mechanisms. More than three-fourths of 159 genes expressed differentially between the sexes were male-biased, most prenatally. Some genes found to have such sex-biased expression had previously been associated with disorders that affect males more than females, such as schizophrenia, Williams syndrome, and autism.
In addition, BrainCloud, a web browser application developed by NIMH to interrogate the Kleinman study data, can be downloaded at http://www.libd.org/braincloud.
Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have discovered that patients with inherited kidney disease may be helped by a drug that is currently available for other uses. The findings are published in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Over 600,000 people in the U.S., and 12 million worldwide, are affected by the inherited kidney disease known as autosomal-dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD). The disease is characterized by the proliferation of thousands of cysts that eventually debilitate the kidneys, causing kidney failure in half of all patients by the time they reach age 50. ADPKD is one of the leading causes of renal failure in the U.S.
Caption: A polycystic mouse kidney (left) is several times larger than a normal mouse kidney (right). The tissue architecture of the diseased kidney is destroyed by the growth of numerous cysts. Credit: Thomas Weimbs and Erin Olsan
“Currently, no treatment exists to prevent or slow cyst formation, and most ADPKD patients require kidney transplants or lifelong dialysis for survival,” said Thomas Weimbs, director of the laboratory at UCSB where the discovery was made. Weimbs is an associate professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, and in the Neuroscience Research Institute at UCSB.
Recent work in the Weimbs laboratory has revealed a key difference between kidney cysts and normal kidney tissue. They found that the STAT6 signalling pathway –– previously thought to be mainly important in immune cells –– is activated in kidney cysts, while it is dormant in normal kidneys. Cystic kidney cells are locked in a state of continuous activation of this pathway, which leads to the excessive proliferation and cyst growth in ADPKD.
The drug Leflunomide, which is clinically approved for use in rheumatoid arthritis, has previously been shown to inhibit the STAT6 pathway in cells. Weimbs and his team found that Leflunomide is also highly effective in reducing kidney cyst growth in a mouse model of ADPKD.
“These results suggest that the STAT6 pathway is a promising drug target for possible future therapy of ADPKD,” said Weimbs. “This possibility is particularly exciting because drugs that inhibit the STAT6 pathway already exist, or are in active development.”
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