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Launcher Update
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8B8A3DF0-DD15-42CB-9992-A6831AD86681 is what it says to reference
last time i got these you guys updated the next release to include fixes for those of us with an 8 processor machine
is this another case of those?
This looks to be video-related. I'd recommend uninstalling the current video drivers along with anything related to Nvidia video such as their 3D components, and then reinstalling the latest drivers using the custom and clean install options. De-select any of the optional components they offer to install, leaving just the graphic drivers.
Omrakos, that's a great scripted response.
1. Why wouldn't your messaging system say that? Obviously you know that this code is video-card/driver related, why would I have to post a ticket to get that info?
2. I haven't updated anything with my video card, or video drivers in months. I also haven't seen that error before or since. Is it plausible to think that maybe, just maybe, it was a one time conflict with the video?
There's nothing scripted at all about my response. It's based entirely on the log info you submitted. Keep in mind, I'm NOT a programmer and I can NOT just glance at a log file meant to be seen by programmers and tell you what the cause is.
The code itself is not used for anything other than to identify it uniquely. The crash info is associated with it, that's all. I enter the code in an internal database and up pops the info you submitted.
This is the main portion of what I see:
***** UNHANDLED EXCEPTION: ACCESS_VIOLATION (c0000005)
Stack Crawl:
709C0F40 d3d9.dll Direct3DCreate9Ex 82539
709C0E95 d3d9.dll Direct3DCreate9Ex 82368
709EE7FC d3d9.dll Direct3DShaderValidatorCreate9 62029
709C11D5 d3d9.dll Direct3DCreate9Ex 83200
709C109D d3d9.dll Direct3DCreate9Ex 82888
709C1EA7 d3d9.dll Direct3DCreate9Ex 86482
709C1E3F d3d9.dll Direct3DCreate9Ex 86378
709C1E26 d3d9.dll Direct3DCreate9Ex 86353
00000000009FBA00 Diablo III.exe GFXD3D::sCloseWindow+64 (d3dcore.cpp,1659)
000000000080DFA4 Diablo III.exe _WinMain@16+20 (mainwindows.cpp,413)
10 frames dumped
It points to being video-related in my opinion and for that, my recommendation stands. If you aren't crashing any more, I wouldn't do anything until it does.
No need to get defensive, I am just saying given your recommendation -
" I'd recommend uninstalling the current video drivers along with anything related to Nvidia video such as their 3D components, and then reinstalling the latest drivers using the custom and clean install options. De-select any of the optional components they offer to install, leaving just the graphic drivers."
And my verification that I don't even have a single 3d component installed with the drivers, or enable in the Nvidia panel, indicates a bad error message, imho.
Threats of violence. We take these seriously and will alert the proper authorities.
Posts containing personal information about other players. This includes physical addresses, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and inappropriate photos and/or videos.
Harassing or discriminatory language. This will not be tolerated.


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America is getting sextier: according to a report released this week by the Pew Research Center, nine percent of Americans with cellphones have used them to send a "sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude" photo or video, while 20 percent of cellphone owners have received a similar type of image. (Apparently some sexters are more prolific than others.)
That's a jump from 2012, when only six percent of cellphone owners had sexted and 15 percent had received. Although Americans are consuming more crotch shots than ever, we've seen no similar uptick in the number of people who are sexting non-consensually. According to Pew, six percent of cellphone users have forwarded a sext to a third party, the same percentage that had done so in 2012.
Could we be entering an era where using technology for titillation doesn't mean opening ourselves up to exploitation?
In 2003, New Jersey made it a felony to distribute sexual photos of another person without his or her permission, but it took a decade for the campaign against non-consensual pornography to begin to gain traction around the world.
Last year, California made forwarding a sext without consent a misdemeanour crime. Steubenville, Ohio, football player Trent Mays was convicted in juvenile court of raping a 16-year-old girl but also of distributing images of the assault after the fact; his text messaging doubled his sentence from one year to two.
Just last month, American revenge-porn king Hunter Moore was busted by the feds for allegedly hacking into email accounts to steal sexual photos, and Israeli legislators passed a bill banning the dissemination of sexualised images without the subject's explicit consent. There, distributors now face five years in prison.
It used to be that revenge porn's unwitting stars were reflexively blamed for being exposed against their will. In 2010, Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams wrote: "If you are actually dumb enough to make a sex tape and think it won't get leaked, you are too dumb to ever have sex again."
But in recent years, the law has stepped in to make the distribution of non-consensual sexual material an even dumber move than the consensual production of it, which is just how it should be. And looking at Pew's new numbers - which show that at least 44 percent of 18-to-24-year-old Americans participate in sexting - it's increasingly clear that dialling up sexual experiences doesn't come with the expectation that those experiences will migrate to a group text. Most people who receive sexts don't share them with the class, and it's not stupid to expect your sexting partners to keep your privates private. It's simply humane.
According to the published script of Pew's telephone questionnaire, interviewers were instructed to leave the awkward sext question for the end of the discussion. Before getting to that, Pew also asked online Americans whether the Internet has had a "major" or "minor" impact on their intimate relationships, and most responded that it hasn't had an effect at all. That may seem like an understatement, but I'm hoping it means that most people agree that our online connections should be held to the same standard as our offline lives - where sex is fine, as long as all partners are willing.
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Do long-distance relationships work?Related story: (See story)

subset: commoncrawl


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Triad's Fast 50 2012 — No. 5: All State Express Inc.
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Description: Nationwide expedited and truckload transportation and logistics firm
Founded: 1996
Top executive: Sherri Squer, CEO; Spencer Squier, president
Address: 121- I Shields Park Drive, Kernersville 27284
Phone: (877) 742-5875
Website: www.allstateexpress.com
Facebook: facebook.com/All-State-Express-Expedited-Service
2011 revenues: $19.5 million
No. of Triad employees: 27
No. of employees total: 33
Locations in the Triad: One (Kernersville)
Offices outside Triad: Four (Texas, South Carolina, Ohio, Michigan)
Primary reasons your company grew between 2009 and 2011? We grew because of our loyal, dedicated and hard-working staff. Also, our operating fleet of cargo vans, straight trucks and tractor trailers grew 250 percent from 2009 to 2011. Our outstanding relationship with Southern Community Bank was also a primary reason.
"We would have grown even faster..." if we could have established a field sales force prior to 2011. We were not able to establish a constant sales presence in key areas such as Michigan, Ohio and Texas until recently due to other organizational priorities, such as increased staffing and management of our 24/7/365 Coordination Center.
Share some examples of recent growth. Have you...
Added locations or broadened service territory? Purchased land in Union Cross Business Park in Winston-Salem as a future site for our corporate headquarters; Sales offices in South Carolina, Texas, Ohio and Michigan.
Added employees? 15 employees in our operations, sales, recruiting, accounting and safety departments
Describe your strategic position right now versus your competition: With regard to the expedited trucking sector, we estimate that our fleet is the seventh-largest nationally.
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Bill at INDC Journal, pit-bull blogger extraordinaire who nabbed interviews with CBS News staffers over their scare-mongering draft story, is all over this. Check his blog for frequent updates if you haven't already. Jeff at Protein Wisdom adds more here.
Posted in: Media
The de-personalizing of Obamacare is under way
March 22, 2015 01:38 PM by Doug Powers
Guess what might be to blame for the rise of ISIS
March 4, 2015 09:30 PM by Doug Powers
Proof that Scott Walker's lack of college degree harms him? He couldn't even conform to this NYT columnist's 'fact'
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My fellow bloggers: You will heartily enjoy this best Brian Williams flashback ever
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Beta Testing
It's free to register, to post a question or to start / join a discussion
more beta's
Likes # 0
Posted February 14, 2009 at 6:28PM
anything else in the pipeline?
we got off to a very good start what may be next?
Likes # 0
Posted February 15, 2009 at 12:25AM
We have another beta test in the pipeline, but it's too early to discuss any further at the moment.
We'll announce it in the forum when everything's ready.
Likes # 0
Posted February 15, 2009 at 10:37AM
thanks for the update
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Book your room at Benikea Hotel Oceanside
Standard Double RoomMax Occupancy: 2 guests (up to 1 child, 1 infant)
Deluxe Double RoomMax Occupancy: 2 guests (up to 1 child, 1 infant)
Deluxe Twin RoomMax Occupancy: 3 guests (up to 2 children, 1 infant)
Executive Double RoomMax Occupancy: 2 guests (up to 1 child, 1 infant)
Family RoomMax Occupancy: 4 guests (up to 3 children, 3 infants)
Standard Single RoomMax Occupancy: 1 guest
Art Deco hotel with a restaurant, in Incheon (Eulwang-ri)
This hotel is located in Incheon (Eulwang-ri), near the airport, Silmido Island, and Eulwangri Beach. Area attractions also include Wangsan Beach and SKY72 Golf Club.
Hotel Features
In addition to a restaurant, Benikea Hotel Oceanside features a sauna. Other amenities include a bar/lounge and a coffee shop/café.
Room Amenities
Plasma televisions come with digital channels. Guestrooms also feature complimentary wireless Internet access, refrigerators, and air conditioning.Information missing or incorrect? Tell us!
Hotel Amenities
Hotel Amenities
The hotel offers a restaurant and a coffee shop/café. A bar/lounge is on site where guests can unwind with a drink. Guests can enjoy a complimentary breakfast each morning. A computer station is located on site and high-speed wireless Internet access is complimentary.
This 3.5-star property offers access to a 24-hour business center, limo/town car service, and a meeting room. This Art Deco hotel also offers a sauna, a terrace, and barbecue grills. A roundtrip airport shuttle (available on request) and a shuttle from the airport to the hotel are complimentary for guests. Limited complimentary onsite parking is available on a first-come, first-served basis.
- 24-hour front desk
- Free airport transportation
- Free airport transportation - pickup
- ATM/banking
- Bar/lounge
- Barbecue grill(s)
- Coffee shop or café
- Free breakfast
- Concierge services
- Free newspapers in lobby
- Elevator/lift
- Casino shuttle (surcharge)
- Express check-in
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- Computer station
- Limo or Town Car service available
- Number of floors - 7
- One meeting room
- Multilingual staff
- Total number of rooms - 55
- Parking (limited spaces)
- RV, bus, truck parking
- Terrace
- Porter/bellhop
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- Restaurant
- Safe-deposit box at front desk
- Free self parking
- Long-term parking (surcharge)
- Area shuttle (surcharge)
- 24-hour business center
- Sauna
- Free WiFi
- Year Built 2002
- Number of buildings/towers - 2
Available in all rooms: Free WiFi
Available in some public areas: Free WiFi
Long-term parking (surcharge), Free self parking, RV, bus, truck parking, Parking (limited spaces)
Room Amenities
- Air conditioning
- Free newspaper
- Phone
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- Coffee/tea maker
- Free bottled water
- Microwave (on request)
- Minibar (stocked, free items)
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- Cribs/infant beds available
- Desk
- Hair dryer
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- Free WiFi
- Refrigerator
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- Slippers
- Room service (limited hours)
- Plasma TV
Where to Eat
A complimentary buffet breakfast is served each morning between 6 AM and 9 AM.
Benikea Hotel Oceanside has a restaurant on site.
Room service (during limited hours) is available.
Nearby Things to Do
The recreational activities listed below are available either on site or nearby; fees may apply.
- Golf lessons available nearby
To make requests for specific accessibility needs, complete the "Special or Accessibility Requests" section of "Trip Preferences" when you book your hotel.
- Accessible bathroom
- Accessible path of travel
- Accessible parking
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Hotel Policies
Check-in time ends at Midnight
Minimum check-in age is 18
Check-in time starts at 2 PM
Check-out time is noon
Payment types
You need to know
Extra-person charges may apply and vary depending on hotel policy.
Government-issued photo identification and a credit card or cash deposit are required at check-in for incidental charges.
Special requests are subject to availability upon check-in and may incur additional charges. Special requests cannot be guaranteed.
Only service dogs are allowed
We should mention
This property offers transfers from the airport. Guests must contact the property with arrival details on arrival, using the contact information on the booking confirmation.


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Chicago, ILUSA 60654
March 30, 2014
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by: WALT BOGDANICH — NY Times 25 days ago
Florida State Seminoles
... said, but not always. A Deputy's Daughter Early last October, a 19-year-old Florida State student was studying on a Saturday night while her roommates went drinking. ...
Sports Briefing | College Football: Postseason Ban Is Lifted at Idaho
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Sports Briefing | College Sports: West Virginia on Probation
by: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS — NY Times 1 month ago
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RT @ThayerEvansSI: Youngstown State asst. Carl Pelini files defamation suit vs. ex-asst. www.si.comBeat Writer / Columnist
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Those who expected Gonzaga to choke will have to wait at least another week. Zags on fire here. Dominating Iowa.Beat Writer / Columnist
Someone needs to remind Gonzaga that no one scores in college basketball anymore. 18-29 first half. 7-10 from 3.Beat Writer / Columnist
Gonzaga's Sabonis with monster dunk, channeling inner-Shawn Kemp, who threw down a few (hundred) of those in Key Arena.Beat Writer / Columnist
RT @HolterMedia: Nice to see @asapsports getting attention thanks to @BadgerMBB. Remembering this @GregBishopSI story for NYT:Beat Writer / Columnist
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On the back of this tag, sign your name and phone number where you can be reached today and also the time that you signed this tag. Tear off the bottom portion of this tag and take it to the cashier at the Check Out table. After you have paid for the item and your ticket has been stamped PAID, return it to the Room Chairman so the item may be marked SOLD. After one hour if the Room Chairman does not have a sold Ticket, the item will again be made available for sale.
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Markdowns will be Saturday morning.
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Family Practitioner, Primary Care Doctor, Preventive Medicine / Wellness
38 years of experience
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Pacific Grove, CA 93950 Phone number & directions
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A medical license is required for a doctor to practice medicine in a particular state. Requirements vary by state but most require, at a minimum, post-graduate training in the doctor's specific specialty. An NPI number is a national identifier unique to an individual health care provider and is managed by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
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Family Medicine
17 years experience
Pacific Grove, CA
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Family Medicine
11 years experience
Pacific Grove, CA
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Emergency Medicine
34 years experience
Pacific Grove, CA
Dr. Carla Rosal
Family Medicine
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Monterey, CA
- Additional Information
- Dr. Dale Gene O'Brien MD is a male Family Practitioner, has 38 years of experience and practices in Family Medicine and Public Health.
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- Dr. Dale O'Brien has 1 office location.
Dr. Dale O'Brien practices Family Medicine and Public Health near Pacific Grove, CA.
See Pacific Grove Family Physicians and Pacific Grove Preventive Medicine Specialists.


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Tamron Hall Named Co-Host of Third Hour of 'Today'
The MSNBC anchor joins Natalie Morales, Al Roker and Willie Geist in the 9 o'clock hour.
MSNBC's Tamron Hall has been named co-host of the 9 o'clock hour of Today.
The frequent Today substitute joins Natalie Morales, Al Roker and Willie Geist, co-hosts of the third hour of NBC's morning show.
STORY: NBC Unveils New 'Today' Set and Mandate Stressing Substance
"We're really excited to officially welcome Tamron into the Today family," executive producer Don Nash said in a statement. "She brings wit, enthusiasm and a keen sensibility to an all-around fantastic team, and I think Tamron, Al, Natalie and Willie will have a lot of fun together hosting the third hour."
Hall has regularly appeared as a substitute host on Today, often filling in for Carson Daly in Today's "Orange Room."
Hall is also the anchor of MSNBC's News Nation and has hosted several special reports for the cable network and NBC News since joining MSNBC in 2007.
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Tennis: Wimbledon '93 / Forgotten Edberg ready to reveal his true identity: Swede prepares to emerge from the shadows as the women's champion reaches another final
Friday 02 July 1993
The information - IBM and the Association of Tennis Professionals could supply a book on him if they thought anyone would want to read it - comes with the compliments of Edberg himself. Eleven days into one of the sporting calendar's most glamorous events he believes he is almost the forgotten man of Wimbledon. Forgotten not by his fellow players but by fans and headline writers alike.
After he had ended the hopes of the Frenchman, Cedric Pioline, in Wednesday's quarter- final Edberg pretended to be put out that he could walk to his local shop in South Kensington unnoticed. Not only that but he would have to search long and hard through the shelves for any reference to his match the previous day. He joked he would have to buy the Swedish editions to catch his name.
For most of the fortnight he has been an after-thought, down the page after Agassi and after Becker. Now, sans Andre, Edberg can at last make himself heard and should he overcome Jim Courier in today's semi-final he can be ignored no longer.
It is not through lack of visibility that Edberg, whose career was transformed when he joined forces in 1983 with his coach, the British Davis Cup captain, Tony Pickard, is not continually surrounded by bodyguards and autograph hunters. He is nearing the end of his 41st consecutive Grand Slam tournament, a remarkable tribute to his fitness and enthusiasm. Nobody does it more consistently and few have so firm a hand on their emotions and that is why some find it hard to warm to him.
When it is Edberg's turn for the interview room many journalists head for the exit. Those who bother to remain frequently return to the subject of how he moves seemingly unnoticed into the final stages of a tournament while the spotlight is trained elsewhere.
They were at it again this time prompting Edberg to say 'I love it when the attention is on Andre's chest. It's great to have guys like him around so I can just go out and do the business and play tennis.' His philosophy on life and fame is a simple one: 'I think ordinary people are much more happy than the jet-setters and celebrities. My parents, whom I respect as my greatest friends, taught me early that happiness is often a modest thing. It has nothing to do with money or fame.'
In Sweden there is resentment at the way Edberg is portrayed as a cold fish in his adopted country. Many Swedes believe the way the British turn away from him in search of more thrills elsewhere reflects poorly on them, although they do concede that even by their standards Edberg is quiet.
In Japan, however, it is a different story. There he is revered for his tennis and admired for his personality. the mention of 'Edbergsan' in the Ginza, Tokyo's busiest street, will guarantee a crowd.
'For the first time for a long while Stefan did not play in the Japan Open in April and although Courier, Sampras and Chang were there he was sorely missed,' Tadahiro Yoshimatsu, of Tokyo's Nikkan Sports newspaper, said. 'The Japanese have a lot of sympathy for him because he is quiet and shows little emotion. Whereas the British see that as boring in Japan it is a very positive trait.'
In today's other semi-final Pete Sampras, another who struggles to elevate his personality on to the same level as his ability, plays Boris Becker, who has super-charged his game while managing to put the brake on his emotions which were threatening to run away with his career. The German is the people's favourite in semi-finals, which, for the first time since 1927, feature the top four seeds.
------------------------------------------------------------------------ MEN'S SEMI-FINALS HEAD TO HEAD ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SAMPRAS v BECKER ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Year Venue Surface Round Winner Score 1990 Stockholm Carpet SF Becker 6-4 6-4 1991 Indianapolis Hard F Sampras 7-5 3-6 6-3 1991 Stockholm Carpet QF Becker 7-5 7-5 1991 ATP Finals Carpet round robin Becker 6-4 6-7 6-1 1992 Indianapolis Hard SF Sampras 6-7 6-2 7-6 1992 ATP Finals Carpet round robin Sampras 7-6 7-6 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ COURIER v EDBERG ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1989 Basle Carpet F Courier 7-6 3-6 2-6 6-0 7-5 1989 Stockholm Carpet QF Edberg 3-6 6-3 6-4 1990 Indian Wells Hard SF Edberg 6-4 6-1 1991 Australian Open Hard last 16 Edberg 4-6 6-0 6-4 5-7 6-2 1991 French Open Clay QF Courier 6-4 2-6 6-3 6-4 1991 US Open Hard F Edberg 6-2 6-4 6-0 1992 Australian Open Hard F Courier 6-3 3-6 6-4 6-2 1993 Australian Open Hard F Courier 6-2 6-1 2-6 7-5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Lucky Diamond, the 15-year-old
Maltese belonging to pet lifestyle expert, animal welfare advocate, founder of
Animal Fair Media and best-selling author Wendy Diamond, has lost her battle with spleen cancer.
Wendy adopted Lucky, who has a wing named after her at the Humane Society of New York, in 1999. The little white pup proved to have an case of intense separation anxiety, leading Wendy to bring her along to dinners, business meetings and star studded parties -- which is how the dog's fame really took off: Lucky holds the Guinness World Record for being the dog photographed with the most famous people. The celebrities -- over 300 -- include animal lovers such as Betty White and Kristen Stewart.
Wendy and Lucky spent over a decade working tirelessly to reduce the number of animals euthanized each year. Their latest effort was to be an unusual fundraiser, a Fair Tail Wedding, that Wendy began planning earlier this year when Lucky was diagnosed with cancer. Although Lucky is no longer with us, Diamond is going ahead with the project in order to raise awareness of canine cancer and other animal-related issues.
The wedding (which includes donated services estimated at a value of over $150,000) will still take place on July 12 at the Jumeirah Essex House in Manhattan to honor the popular pooch's legacy. Wendy is in the process of adopting another dog from a shelter, who will take Lucky's place in the nuptials. If all goes as planned, the Fairy Tail Wedding will set a Guinness World Record for the most expensive pet wedding in history.
She's still searching for the groom, however. Those who think their dog could be the perfect match can submit their pet's picture and heartwarming story on Wendy and Lucky's Facebook page for consideration. Tickets to the wedding can be purchased and donations can be made at Animal Fair.
In the meantime, our hearts go out to Wendy and all of Lucky's friends.
Like this article? Have a point of view to share? Let us know!
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Dr. Katerina Fotopoulou of King's College London, U.K., said, "We were interested in the role of individuals' patterns of seeking or avoiding closeness in their relationships. We wanted to test whether this personality construct, termed attachment style, might determine whether partner support decreases or heightens the experience of pain."
A total of 39 women took part in the study. They were given a moderately painful laser pulse on a finger and asked to rate their pain intensity. The electrical activity in their brains was also measured, to view the strength of the "spike" after each laser pulse. Questionnaires were also completed on the extent to which each woman sought or avoided closeness, or emotional intimacy, in their relationship.
Results showed that pain was not reduced by having a partner present. In fact, the presence of a partner often made the pain feel worse, especially for the women who said they most avoided closeness. This finding was backed up by both pain ratings and in their brain activity.
For women who did seek closeness in their relationships, having a partner present had no significant effect either way on the pain they felt.
The study is published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Said Fotopoulou, "Overall, this study suggests that partner support during pain may need to be tailored to individual personality traits and coping preferences. Individuals who avoid closeness may find that the presence of others disrupts their preferred method of coping with threats on their own.
"This may actually maintain the threat value of pain and ultimately heighten an individual's pain experience. This hypothesis was further supported by the finding that electrical activity in the brains of these individuals was influenced by partner presence in the same way as their subjective pain report and particularly in areas typically associated with processing bodily threats."
Fotopoulou added, "Previous research has shown that women prefer to have their partners present during childbirth and they make less use of painkillers after labor. The different results of this controlled experiment could suggest that some of the previous results may not necessarily relate to the sensation of physical pain, but the broader meanings and needs associated with childbirth.
"The physical and psychological nature of labor pain may simply be different than other types of pain. Future studies could test how having a partner present during labor affects the pain felt by women who tend to avoid closeness in relationships."
The same research team carried out a review of several other studies on the effect on pain of an observer or "social partner." They looked at 26 studies in which participants were exposed to pain under varying interpersonal circumstances.
This suggested that, overall, "unambiguously positive" verbal and nonverbal interactions or positive interactions reduce pain, while negative, mixed, or ambiguous interactions increase pain. Results also showed that pain was affected by the perception of the social partner as active or capable of being active; the social partner's intentions; the pre-existing relationship with the social partner, and personal coping styles.
"Few studies have focused on the modulation of pain by social factors, despite a plethora of clinical, correlational findings pointing to associations between pain and the social context in which it occurs," they write in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
"Close relationships are beneficial to both mental and physical health, including stress and pain. For example, a wealth of research has shown that support from others is linked to beneficial effects on physiological and psychological well-being, while social isolation and poor quality relationships are detrimental to health.
"However, support from others is not a panacea; rather, the effects of social support on health, such as stress and pain, depend on the facet of social support studied and on factors such as gender or relationship characteristics.
"Here we present the first review of experimental studies addressing how interpersonal factors, such as the presence, behavior, and spatial proximity of an observer, modulate pain."
Based on their findings, they argue that "interpersonal interactions during pain may function as social, predictive signals of contextual threat or safety and as such influence the salience of painful stimuli."
Krahe, C. et al. Attachment style moderates partner presence effects on pain: A laser-evoked potentials study. Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience, 21 January 2015.
Oxford Journals
Krahe, C. et al. The Social Modulation of Pain: Others as Predictive Signals of Salience – a Systematic Review. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 23 July 2013, doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00386
These docusoaps have a huge following among young people, who are in general the most susceptible group to develop body image disturbances and eating disorders.
In these shows, real people are filmed seemingly unscripted as they live out and experience events. Research has found, however, that regular viewers of reality television perceive the heavily edited programming to be highly realistic.
The study is one of the first to closely evaluate how body ideals are depicted on American reality television. The researchers conducted a content analysis of 299 episodes of the popular MTV docusoaps "Jersey Shore," "Laguna Beach," "The Real World," "The Hills" and "Newport Harbor," aired between 2004 and 2011. Each reality star's body type and clothing were noted, as well as how often they showed some flesh on camera.
The findings show that the percentage of lean bodies seen in docusoaps is almost the reverse of the general population.
While two in every three Americans are either overweight or obese, not one docusoap featured an obese person. Instead, two-thirds of the women and three-quarters of the men in them had very little body fat. Half of all participants were either curvaceously thin (females) or muscularly lean (males).
Another unreality was found in how often the stars — and especially those with an ideal body type — walked around partially or fully naked on screen. Nine out of ten women's bodies were at least minimally exposed, and close to one-third were partially or fully undressed. Almost half of the men appeared on screen either partially or fully nude.
Flynn notes that there is a definite shift away from the general acceptance of overweight men on television. When it comes to looks, the bar is now being lifted even higher for men than it is for women.
"Although these shows are labelled as reality-based, the bodies displayed in them are highly idealized," says Flynn. He notes that long-term exposure to MTV docusoaps may have as much, if not greater, impact on the self-objectification of men as it does on women.
Source: Sex Roles]]>
Brown University researchers discovered those early tastes of dad's brewski or mom's merlot appear to increase the tendency for risky behavior by the time the child reaches high-school.
Children who sampled alcohol by or before sixth grade were five times more likely than their non-sipping schoolmates to finish off a full adult beverage while in ninth grade — and four times more apt to have binged or been drunk.
The findings — based on a 10-year study of more than 500 students — should stifle the notion that letting your kids take a swig offers them a "protective factor" against later alcohol abuse.
Parent-assisted experimentation with alcohol is believed to send confusing signals to kids as many parents proclaim "don't drink until you're 21." Indeed, providing kids the opportunity to obtain a small sip can hint that experimentation is acceptable.
"Kids this age are very concrete thinkers. They can't differentiate between a sip or two in the home versus a couple of sips outside the home. So they are getting a message and they're not able to interpret the nuances," said Dr. Kristina Jackson, the author and an associate professor of behavioral and social sciences at Brown.
The results were self-reported by 561 students who were originally recruited for the ongoing survey while attending one of six urban, rural, and suburban middle schools in Rhode Island. They're now in high school.
The youngest first sips in the group came at ages three or earlier. But the most common age for kids to be first handed a bottle or a glass was 10, accounting for 26 percent of the alcohol introductions, the study found.
Wine was the most common type of drink for that inaugural sipping occasion (40 percent), beer was second (35 percent). The kids were typically offered the drinks by a parent or another adult family member (76 percent), but a small share of the teens recalled that their initial imbibing was purely an accident.
"Parents should just make sure that children know when drinking is acceptable and when it's not — however the parent chooses to define it," Jackson said.
"But one thing to be clear about is that kids (who sip) are not doomed," she added. "We're still only talking about a quarter of the sippers reporting a full drink by ninth grade and less than 10 percent are reporting getting drunk."
Researchers, funded by the National Institutes of Health, purposely didn't track any alcohol consumption done as part of a religious service.
They also controlled for factors they expected to lead to teen drinking such as an underlying disposition for problem behavior or their parents' own alcohol habits. Even with those removed, Jackson said, they still saw the same patterns.
"That doesn't surprise me at all," said Dr. Howard Samuels, a licensed therapist with a doctorate in clinical psychology, and founder and CEO of The Hills Treatment Center in Los Angeles.
Parental use and acceptance of alcohol is a common factor toward providing a model of of alcohol use. Allowing children to drink at a young age also shows a lack of family discipline.
"It sort of reinforces what I see on the front lines, which is that most of the people I get into treatment who are alcoholics and drug users usually learn that at a early age from their parents. It's just a reality," Samuels said. "Any family that has structure and discipline isn't going to allow a young child to have a drink."
Then how to explain the social norms of certain European countries? In France, Spain, and Italy, among others, children in some families have for generations been allowed to drink wine at the dinner table along with the adults.
"They look at alcohol very differently in all of these groups. They teach young people in the home how to drink. But they also frown very strongly on abuse of alcohol by anybody," said Dr. David J. Hanson, professor emeritus of sociology at the State University of New York at Potsdam. He has researched alcohol consumption behaviors for more than 40 years.
"It isn't the fact that alcohol went down their gullet [that caused teen drinking]. It's what meaning the alcohol has to them and what their expectations are about it. These are really important things," Hanson said.
In that sense, he agrees that how kids later handle booze typically comes back to lessons they learned from their own parents. But he disagrees with the belief that kids shouldn't be allowed to sip at all.
"People who learn to drink alcohol [in healthy ways] from their parents tend to have fewer problems later on," Hanson said. "In other words, they learn how to drink, they learn appropriate attitudes."
Source: Brown University/Today Health/EurekAlert!]]>
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is the common name for a group of debilitating medical conditions characterized by persistent fatigue and other specific symptoms, including cognitive dysfunction, that persists for a prolonged period.
As published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, Mady Hornig, M.D., and colleagues from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, used immunoassay testing methods to measure cerebrospinal biomarkers.
They hoped to discover insights into the basis for the cognitive dysfunction or "brain fog" as well as new hope for improvements in diagnosis and treatment.
The researchers assessed the levels of 51 immune biomarkers called cytokines of 32 people who had experienced myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) for an average of seven years.
They also measured markers in 40 individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS), and 19 non-diseased controls.
Investigators found that levels of most cytokines, including the inflammatory immune molecule, interleukin 1, were depressed in individuals with ME/CFS compared with the other two groups.
This finding matched what was seen in a blood study of patients who had the disease for more than three years. One cytokine, eotaxin, was elevated in the ME/CFS and MS groups, but not in the control group.
"We now know that the same changes to the immune system that we recently reported in the blood of people with ME/CFS with long-standing disease are also present in the central nervous system," said Hornig.
"These immune findings may contribute to symptoms in both the peripheral parts of the body and the brain, from muscle weakness to brain fog."
"Diagnosis of ME/CFS is now based on clinical criteria. Our findings offer the hope of objective diagnostic tests for disease as well as the potential for therapies that correct the imbalance in cytokine levels seen in people with ME/CFS at different stages of their disease," said W. Ian Lipkin, M.D.
Source: Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health]]>
These problems could include issues such as depression and psychotic symptoms say a team of researchers at King's College London in England, the Institut Universitaire en Santé Mentale de Montréal (IUSMM), and the University of Montreal.
"We studied the impact of domestic violence on the risk of mental health problems, particularly depression," explained Isabelle Ouellet-Morin, first study author and a researcher at IUSMM.
"We also studied the role of certain factors from the victims' personal history, such as childhood abuse and economic poverty," explained Ms. Ouellet-Morin, who is also a professor at the School of Criminology at the University of Montreal.
Researchers studied 1,052 mothers who participated in the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study — an investigation that lasted over 10 years.
Only subjects with no previous history of depression were considered for the study. Over this decade, the researchers conducted multiple interviews to determine whether the subjects had suffered violence from their spouses and whether they suffered from mental health disorders.
The researchers discovered:
This risk doubled for women who were also victims of childhood abuse.
"Domestic violence is unacceptable because of the injuries it causes. We have shown that these injuries are not only physical: they can also be psychological, as they increase the risk of depression and psychotic symptoms," added Louise Arseneault, a researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College London.
"Health professionals need to be very aware of the possibility that women who experience mental health problems may also be the victims of domestic violence and vice versa. Given the prevalence of depression in these victims, we need to prevent these situations and take action.
"These acts of violence do more than leave physical damage; they leave psychological scars as well," concluded Dr. Arseneault.
Source: University of Montreal]]>
In today's world, the opportunity to be transparent and share information about yourself with others is easy. Be it tweet it, snap it, pin it, post it… there is a method to share information with others, often with an intent of obtaining common ground connectivity.
Given this information ubiquity, should doctors be allowed to access, review, and then take action if they see a problem?
In a new study, University Hospitals Case Medical Center Psychiatrist Stephanie Pope, M.D., examined the impact of social media on mental health care and treatment.
She specifically investigated how the public forums could help diagnoses in clinical practice as well as serving as behavioral predictors.
Her analysis also explored the ethical aspects of patient/doctor relationships that utilize social media outlets.
Study findings were enlightening as Dr. Pope discovered that doctors and patients are communicating via social networks, an interaction that sometimes blur lines of their relationships.
Pope discovered instances where social media research of patients in treatment helped to prevent injury. Although these episodes were documented, she found that definitive, institutional policy, and procedures were sorely lagging causing potential issues in patient care.
Dr. Pope will present the study, "Social Media and Psychiatry" at the American Psychiatric Association Meeting in May in Toronto.
In her research, she surveyed psychiatrists and psychologists to better understand social media significance, impact as well as particular guidelines and ethics associated with patient/doctor relationships.
She also examined the intersection of ethical, professional, and legal considerations on social platforms. The transparency of the communication channel sometimes creates ambiguous and complex interactions between health professionals and patients.
"This study was conducted as an effort to demonstrate the clinical implications of social media and form an understanding of the legal and ethical consequences of social media within practice," said Pope.
"Institutions across the country lack protocols relating to the media forms and professional guidelines need to be established."
The numbers associated with social media usage are staggering. In 2013, Facebook alone had 751 million users while Twitter continued to surge with 555 million accounts that averaged 58 million tweets every day.
The amount of personal information such as photos, hometown information, and cell phone numbers are easily accessible online. Additionally, new mediums continued to surface as well where people share information such as Snapchat and Instagram.
The statistics and data don't necessarily get risky until they enter into the personal health realm where 60 percent of patients are seeking support, knowledge, and information about their own health utilizing social media platforms.
The medical community has followed suit with the trending numbers of social media users.
According to a study in 2008, 64 percent of medical students and 13 percent of residents were active on Facebook and of that percentage only 37 percent of those active kept their profiles private, away from potential patients. Most recently, the data showed a substantial spike in active profiles held by doctors and medical students with almost 90 percent maintaining some sort of social media accounts.
Dr. Pope's research noted that doctors and patients can effectively use the social forums to help their conditions and find support, while selecting the best options for care. Additionally, doctors can use social media for a number of positive aspects, but that clear, definable protocols should be set in place.
Dr. Pope's also focused her research and analyzed social media's impact on her area of expertise and found alarming statistics relating to suicidal ideations, behaviors, and specific illnesses. Most importantly, the validation of social media aiding in treatment and being clinically relevant became obvious.
"We need to understand the magnitude that social media is having on our clinical practice but at the same time we need to develop patient/doctor boundaries," said Dr. Pope.
"When a patient comes to the emergency room and has had thoughts about suicide, social media channels can help… but how, when and if can use this information is at the core of the argument."
Source: University Hospitals Case Medical Center/EurekAlert!]]>
Based on smaller, less rigorous studies, some researchers had previously hypothesized that exploding head syndrome is a rare condition found mostly in people older than 50. The new findings, however, show that nearly one in five, or 18 percent, of college students reported having experienced exploding head syndrome at least once. In fact, it was so bad for some that it significantly impacted their lives.
"Unfortunately for this minority of individuals, no well-articulated or empirically supported treatments are available, and very few clinicians or researchers assess for it," said Dr. Brian Sharpless, a Washington State University assistant professor and director of the university psychology clinic.
Sharpless also discovered that more than one-third of those who had exploding head syndrome have also suffered from isolated sleep paralysis, a frightening experience in which one cannot move or speak upon waking up.
The study is the largest of its kind, with 211 undergraduate students interviewed by psychologists or graduate students trained in recognizing the symptoms of exploding head syndrome and isolated sleep paralysis.
"I didn't believe the clinical lore that it would only occur in people in their 50s," said Sharpless. "That didn't make a lot of biological sense to me."
As he began reviewing the scientific literature on the disorder for the journal Sleep Medicine Reviews, Sharpless began to wonder if perhaps exploding head syndrome was a lot more common than thought. In that report, he concluded the disorder was a largely overlooked phenomenon that warranted a deeper look.
Exploding head syndrome tends to occur as one is falling asleep. Researchers suspect it is triggered when the brain has trouble shutting down.
When the brain goes to sleep, it's like a computer shutting down, with motor, auditory and visual neurons turning off in stages. But instead of shutting down properly, the auditory neurons are thought to fire all at once, Sharpless said.
"That's why you get these crazy-loud noises that you can't explain, and they're not actual noises in your environment," he said. The same part of the brain, the brain stem's reticular formation, appears to be involved in isolated sleep paralysis as well, which may be the reason why some people experience both problems, Sharpless added.
The phenomenon can be extremely frightening. Although it typically lasts only a few seconds, exploding head syndrome can make people think they're having a seizure or a subarachnoid hemorrhage, said Sharpless.
"Some people have worked these scary experiences into conspiracy theories and mistakenly believe the episodes are caused by some sort of directed-energy weapon," he said.
Some people are so alarmed by the event that they don't even tell their spouse, he said. "They may think they're going crazy and they don't know that a good chunk of the population has had the exact same thing," he said.
The findings are published in the Journal of Sleep Research.
Source: Washington State University]]>
The work is associated with a recent brain imaging study on women at risk for Alzheimer's disease and seeks to flag early symptoms.
In the study, York University researchers discovered deterioration in the pathways that serve to communicate signals between different brain regions needed for performing everyday activities.
Functional declines associated with difficulty in driving a car or using a computer were found to be associated with Alzheimer's risk.
"We observed a relationship between the levels of deterioration in the brain wiring and their performance on our task that required simultaneous thinking and moving; what we see here is a result of communication failure," said Lauren Sergio, Ph.D., in the School of Kinesiology & Health Science.
In an interview, Sergio said the findings also suggest that their computerized, easily-administered task that the study participants performed, can be used to test those at risk for Alzheimer's disease to flag early warning signs.
"The test is a clinically feasible substitute to the more involved braining imaging tasks that people don't, or can't, have done routinely."
Typically, Alzheimer's disease is associated with memory loss, perception, and other aspects of cognition, while debility in complex movements is observed at a much later stage.
The study was recently published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.
Researchers studied 30 female participants of whom 10 were in their mid-20s. The rest were in their 50s or older, with half of them at high risk for Alzheimer's disease.
"We decided to focus this study on women, as there is higher prevalence in this group, and also women who carry the ApoE4 gene are more vulnerable to the degradation of white matter," said Ph.D. candidate Kara Hawkins, who led the study.
This genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease was one of the traits tested for in the current study.
"We scanned the brains of the participants, aiming to see if the impaired cognitive-motor performance in the high risk group was related to brain alterations over and above standard aging changes," Hawkins said.
According to the researchers, the big question ahead is "what can be done to prevent a decline in function of a person's brain showing signs of communication problems."
Investigators hope to develop a proactive training method that uses a game-like cognitive-motor tool to help to maintain the brain pathways that involve thinking and moving tasks.
Source: York University/EurekAlert!]]>
Now, new research has shown that shock treatment or electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), changes certain areas of the brain that play a role in how people feel, learn, and respond to positive and negative environmental factors.
University of California, Los Angeles investigators performed brain imaging of the brain in patients before, during and after undergoing ECT and compared those images to healthy control subjects. They were particularly interested in the hippocampus and amgydalar areas of the brain.
They found that the hippocampus changes, or increases in size, in relation to improved mood in patients with major depression. The brain area changes indicated how well a person was responding to treatment.
Additionally, using leading-edge methods to look at brain shape, the team showed that parts of these structures change more with treatment, providing vital clues to how the connections in the brain may be used to select for patients who will respond well to treatment.
This finding could help to select patients who would or would not respond to therapy. As a result, some patients would be spared from taking of drugs for several months, that ultimately won't work for them, said study senior author Katherine L. Narr, Ph.D., an associate professor of neurology.
"Major depression is common, affects all ages, races, and ethnic groups and has a serious consequence on people's family lives and work," Narr said.
"People with depression also are at higher risk for suicide, which accounts for more deaths than car accidents, natural disasters, and war each year on average. Unfortunately, standard types of medication used to treat major depression take a long time to work, and for at least a third of people, the medication will not work well enough to provide any real help."
The study appears in the early online edition of the peer-reviewed journal Biological Psychiatry.
Although ECT has been used for more than 50 years, it has a certain stigma. However, within the last decade, advances in anesthesia, electrical stimulation equipment, and new evidence about electrode lead placement have improved safety and reduced side effects, said study first author Shantanu H. Joshi, Ph.D., an assistant professor of neurology.
Moreover, further advances in high-resolution MRI now allow the measurement of the induced brain changes with improved accuracy and precision.
"ECT has been shown to be very effective for treating patients with major depression who don't respond well to other treatments," Joshi said.
"During the treatment course, ECT leads to plastic changes in the brain that are linked with improvements in mood. Specifically, we saw the hippocampus and amygdala — important for memory and emotion — are shown to increase in size.
"People with smaller hippocampal size prior to starting treatment are less likely to respond as well to treatment. While our research investigates structural neuroplasticity in depression in response to ECT, our findings are considered to be of much broader interest to the field."
In addition to ECT, the team expects that the effects shown would extend to more standard, less rapidly acting antidepressant treatments and could be used to predict patient response.
In this study, the team imaged 43 patients undergoing ECT at three time points. Initially, before beginning treatment, after the second ECT session and within one week of completing treatment. Researchers performed 129 brain scans comparing the results to 32 healthy controls who were imaged twice.
Major depression affects 350 million people each year and leads to enormous personal suffering, loss of productivity, and is a burden to family, the health care system, and the economy. Finding better ways to select patients for treatments that will alleviate their symptoms would go a long way to reducing that suffering, Narr said.
"Our findings newly show that hippocampal structure prior to ECT may be an important indicator of treatment outcome," the study states.
"That is, patients with smaller hippocampal volumes at baseline are shown to more likely exhibit increases in volume with ECT and to show concomitant improvements in clinical symptoms. Results further indicate that both clinical response to ECT and ECT-induced changes in volume occur rapidly."
Source: University of California, Los Angeles/EurekAlert!]]>
Although the practice is becoming increasingly common, researchers worry that the value of the drugs for anxiety may have been overestimated as a result of publication bias.
Publication bias occurs when only studies that show beneficial effects of the intervention are published.
As reported in JAMA Psychiatry, the new review concludes that studies supporting the value of second-generation antidepressant drugs for the treatment of anxiety have been distorted by publication bias, outcome reporting bias and "spin."
Even though they may still play a role in treating these disorders, the effectiveness of the drugs has been overestimated, say the researchers.
In some cases the medications, which are among the most widely prescribed drugs in the world, are not significantly more useful than a placebo.
The findings were made by researchers from Oregon State University, Oregon Health & Science University, and the University of Groningen in The Netherlands. The work was supported by a grant from the Dutch Brain Foundation.
Publication bias was one of the most serious problems, the researchers concluded, as it related to double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials that had been reviewed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
If the FDA determined the study was positive, it was five times more likely to be published than if it was not determined to be positive.
Bias in "outcome reporting" was also observed, in which the positive outcomes from drug use were emphasized over those found to be negative.
And simple spin was also reported. In this case, some investigators concluded that treatments were beneficial, when their own published results for primary outcomes were actually insignificant.
"These findings mirror what we found previously with the same drugs when used to treat major depression, and with antipsychotics," said Erick Turner, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry in the Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine, and the study's senior author.
"When their studies don't turn out well, you usually won't know it from the peer-reviewed literature."
This points to a flaw in the way doctors learn about the drugs they prescribe, the researchers said.
"The peer review process of publication allows, perhaps even encourages, this kind of thing to happen," Turner said. "And this isn't restricted to psychiatry — reporting bias has been found throughout the medical and scientific literature."
Dr. Craig Williams, a professor in the Oregon State University/Oregon Health & Science University College of Pharmacy, and co-author of the study, said that "most of these drugs are fairly safe and well-tolerated, but if a medication is less effective than believed, this still raises serious questions about its use.
"The level of bias we found did not change the fact that some antidepressants can have value in treating anxiety disorders," Williams said.
"However, there is less evidence for value of these drugs than published studies would have you believe. And these concerns are increased when such medications are frequently prescribed by general practitioners with less training in psychiatry."
In this study, the researchers examined a broad body of the evidence and scientific research that had been presented to the Food and Drug Administration, including studies that had been done but were not published in open scientific literature.
They found that negative data on drug efficacy tended not to get published, or was de-emphasized when it was published.
Conclusions might have been manipulated or exaggerated because positive results receive more scientific attention, are published sooner, and lead to higher sales of a drug, said Annelieke Roest, Ph.D., the lead author of the publication at the University of Groningen.
"Lots of research is funded eventually by the taxpayer, and that's reason enough to say that scientists should publish all their results," Roest said.
The study reiterated this point, and the need to more routinely publish nonsignificant results.
"There is strong evidence that significant results from randomized controlled trials are more likely to be published than nonsignificant results," the researchers wrote in their study. "As a consequence, the published literature . . . may overestimate the benefits of treatment while underestimating their harms, thus misinforming clinicians, policy makers, and patients."
Antidepressants are now widely prescribed for conditions other than depression, the study noted. They are being used for generalized anxiety, panic disorder, social anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other uses.
In both the U.S. and Europe, use of antidepressant drugs has significantly increased in the past two decades, the researchers said, with much of that use driven by non-specialists in primary care settings.
The level of reporting bias in the scientific literature, the researchers wrote, "likely impacts clinicians' perceptions of the efficacy of these drugs, which could reasonably be expected to affect prescription behavior."
Source: Oregon State University/EurekAlert!]]>
While the concept is not new, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Northwestern University scientists envision the peer-to-peer tool as providing a vehicle for individuals to practice therapeutic techniques.
In a study involving 166 subjects who had exhibited symptoms of depression, the researchers compared their tool with an established technique known as expressive writing. The new approach yielded better outcomes across the board and it also had some particular advantages.
Specifically, the tool helped subjects employ a therapeutic technique called cognitive reappraisal. Additionally, the software was found to be more effective in improving the mood of subjects with more severe symptoms.
"We really wanted to see two things," says Rob Morris, who led the work as a Ph.D. student in media arts and sciences at MIT. "Could people get clinical benefits from it? That's hypothesis one," he says."Hypothesis two is, 'Will people be engaged and use this regularly?'" Morris adds.
"There's a lot of great work in building web apps and mobile apps to provide psychotherapy without a therapist in the loop — it's (one of) these self-guided programs."
However, the challenge is often not so much in seeing if the apps work, rather the task is to encourage people to use them. To address this stumbling block, a platform was designed that mimicked some of the interaction paradigms that underlie very engaging social programs, says Morris.
On that score, too, the results of the study were encouraging.
The average subject in the control group used the expressive-writing tool 10 times over the three weeks of the study, with each session lasting about three minutes. As a comaprision, the average subject using the new tool logged in 21 times, with each session lasting about nine minutes.
The study is described in a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
Morris, who had majored in psychology as an undergrad at Princeton University has always been interested in researching the therapeutic potential of information technology.
To fulfill this dream, he applied to do graduate work in MIT's Affective Computing Group, which specifically investigates the intersection of computing technologies and human emotions.
"I was at MIT without an engineering degree and really trying to race to learn computer programming," Morris recalls. He found himself spending a lot of time on a programmers' question-and-answer site called Stack Overflow.
"Whenever I had a bug or was stuck on something, I would go on there, and almost miraculously, this crowd of programmers would come and help me," he says.
"It was just this intuition that, just as we can get people on Stack Overflow to help us identify and fix bugs in code, perhaps we can harness a crowd to help us fix bugs in our thinking."
People suffering from depression frequently exhibit what Morris describes as "maladaptive thought patterns". For example, you lose your job, and you conclude that you'll never find another one; your roommate comes home and shuts herself up in her room, and you assume it's because of something you've done.
Psychologists have sorted these thought patterns into categories. Predicting your future unemployability is an instance of "fortune-telling"; assuming you know your roommate's motivations is "mind-reading." Others include "overgeneralization," "catastrophizing," and "all-or-nothing thinking."
The therapeutic approach called cognitive reappraisal involves identifying the maladaptive thought patterns and then recasting the events that precipitated them in a different light.
That is: The job you lost offered no room for promotion and wasn't aligned with your interests, anyway. Or, your roommate has been having trouble at work and may have just had a fight with a colleague.
A user of the new tool — which Morris calls Panoply — logs on and, in separate fields, records both a triggering event and his or her response to it. This much of the application was duplicated exactly for the expressive-writing tool used by the control group in the study.
With Panoply, however, members of the network then vote on the type of thought pattern represented by the poster's reaction to the triggering event and suggest ways of reinterpreting it.
As users demonstrate more and more familiarity with techniques of cognitive reappraisal, they graduate from describing their own experiences, to offering diagnoses of other people's thought patterns, to suggesting reinterpretations.
"We really wanted to see that people are utilizing this skill over and over again, not only in response to their own stressors but also as teachers to other people," Morris says.
"We can surmise that it's a little easier to practice some of these psychotherapeutic skills for other people before turning them toward themselves. But we don't have data supporting that."
For their study, the researchers recruited subjects who described themselves as under stress, something that correlates highly with depression.
Volunteers were asked to complete three questionnaires. One is a depression measure that's standard in the field. Another assesses perseverative thinking, and the third assesses skill at cognitive reappraisal.
After three weeks using either Panoply or the expressive-writing tool, the subjects again completed the same three questionnaires.
To simulate a large network of users — and ensure that Panoply users would receive replies even if they were posting in the middle of the night — Morris hired online workers through Amazon's Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing application to supplement the comments made by study subjects.
Each Mechanical Turk worker received a brief training in cognitive reappraisal, and about 1,000 contributed to the study.
"It took a lot of time to figure out how to teach people these skills and give them examples of what to do in a way that is easily understood in a handful of minutes," Morris says.
"Some of them wanted to sign up afterwards. They were like, 'Wow, I never knew I had these bugs in my thinking, too.'"
Source: MIT]]>
Mohamed Kabbaj, a professor of biomedical sciences received a six-year grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to investigate the ways in which anxiety affects the sexes differently.
Kabbaj already knew that testosterone tends to protect males from depression and anxiety, just as estrogen and progesterone do in females. He also knew that most testosterone was converted into estrogen in the brain. What he didn't know, however, was that those anxiety- and depression-inhibiting actions couldn't take effect until the testosterone was first converted to estrogen.
"There is an enzyme in the brain that 'mediates' the conversion of testosterone into estrogen," Kabbaj said. "We inhibited that enzyme in a specific brain area implicated in the regulation of mood. And when you do that, you lose the antidepressant effect of testosterone. So the conversion is very important."
His research targeted the hippocampus area of the brain, where testosterone acts through what's known as the MAPK pathway to deliver its antidepressant and anti-anxiety effects.
"But we have to be careful about that pathway," Kabbaj said, "because it's also implicated in cellular growth and cancer. Therefore, we're looking for other pathways that don't have these effects. It's complicated. Nothing is ever simple, but we'll get there."
Women are 70 percent more likely than men to suffer from depression during their lifetime, according to National Institute of Mental Health. So far, the link between testosterone conversion and anxiety/depression has been detected only in laboratory animals. But Kabbaj says the results are potentially promising for humans as well.
"Maybe in the future, when we are trying to develop an antidepressant that works in low-testosterone males, we can target some of the mechanisms by which testosterone acts, since it has numerous side effects," he said.
Testosterone acts on many receptors and pathways in the brain, so the challenge is to develop a drug that delivers only the effect you want.
"A number of treatments are available for depression, but the drugs are not effective in all patients and the side effects can be serious, especially on the heart," said biomedical sciences Professor Pradeep Bhide, director of the College of Medicine's Center for Brain Repair.
"Therefore, there is an urgent need for safer and more efficacious drugs to treat depression.
The findings shed new light on the causes of depression and the role that hormones play in the disorder. Such insights are critical for the development of new drugs and diagnostic tests.
The study is published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.
Source: Florida State University]]>
Researchers at Princeton University, Humboldt University of Berlin, the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, and the University of Milan-Bicocca, found that activity in a region of the brain known as the medial prefrontal cortex keeps focus from becoming too fixed.
Investigators discovered the brain region was involved in monitoring what is happening outside one's current focus of attention and shifting focus from a successful strategy to one that is even better.
The researcher findings are published in the journal Neuron.
"The human brain at any moment in time has to process quite a wealth of information," said Dr. Nicolas Schuck, a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton and first author on the study.
"The brain has evolved mechanisms that filter that information in a way that is useful for the task that you are doing. But the filter has a disadvantage: you might miss out on important information that is outside your current focus."
Schuck and his colleagues wanted to study what happens at the moment when people realize there is a different and potentially better way of doing things.
They asked volunteers to play a game while their brains were scanned with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
The volunteers were instructed to press one of two buttons depending on the location of colored squares on a screen. However, the game contained a hidden pattern that the researchers did not tell the participants about, namely, that if the squares were green, they always appeared in one part of the screen and if the squares were red, they always appeared in another part.
The researchers refrained from telling players that they could improve their performance by paying attention to the color instead of the location of the squares.
Not all of the players figured out that there was a more efficient way to play the game. For those that did, however, their brain images revealed specific signals in the medial prefrontal cortex that corresponded to the color of the squares.
These signals arose minutes before the participants switched their strategies. Amazingly, this signal was so reliable that the researchers could use it to predict spontaneous strategy shifts ahead of time.
"These findings are important to better understand the role of the medial prefrontal cortex in the cascade of processes leading to the final behavioral change, and more generally, to understand the role of the medial prefrontal cortex in human cognition," said Carlo Reverberi, Ph.D., a researcher at the University of Milan-Bicocca and senior author on the study.
"Our findings suggest that the medial prefrontal cortex is 'simulating' in the background an alternative strategy, while the overt behavior is still shaped by the old strategy."
The study design — specifically, not telling the participants that there was a more effective strategy — enabled the researchers to show that the brain can monitor background information while focused on a task, and choose to act on that information.
"What was quite special about the study was that the behavior was completely without instruction," Schuck said. "When the behavior changed, this reflected a spontaneous internal process."
Before this study, he said, most researchers had focused on the question of switching strategies because you made a mistake or you realized that your current approach isn't working.
"But what we were able to explore," he said, "is what happens when people switch to a new way of doing things based on information from their surroundings." In this way, the study sheds light on how learning and attention can interact, he said.
Schuck designed and conducted the experiments while a graduate student at Humboldt University and the International Max Planck Research School on the Life Course (LIFE) together with the other authors.
Experts believe the study is important as it demonstrates how the brain balances the need to maintain attention with the need to incorporate new information about the environment.
In turn, the new insights may eventually help our understanding of disorders that involve attention deficits.
Source: Princeton University/EurekAlert]]>
Music performance is known to induce structural and functional changes to the human brain and enhance cognition. But the molecular mechanisms underlying music performance have been so far unexplored.
In the new study, researchers investigated the effect of music performance (in a two hr concert) on the gene expression profiles of professional musicians from Tapiola Sinfonietta (a professional orchestra) and Sibelius-Academy (a music university).
Investigators discovered playing music enhanced the activity of genes involved in dopaminergic neurotransmission, motor function, learning, and memory. Moreover, some of the genes stimulated, like SNCA, FOS, and DUSP1, are known to contribute to song perception and production in songbirds.
The activation of these genes suggests a potential evolutionary preservation in molecular mechanisms related to sound production across species.
In addition, several of the up-regulated genes are known to be involved in biological pathways. For example, the genes influence calcium ion homeostasis and iron ion homeostasis. These mechanisms are essential for neuronal function, survival, and neuroprotection.
"The findings provide a valuable background for molecular studies of music perception and evolution, and music therapy," said study leader Dr. Irma Järvelä from the University of Helsinki.
The study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Source: University of Helinski/EurekAlert!]]>
University of Warwick researchers In the U.K. reviewed socioeconomic factors related to high mental well-being, such as level of education and personal finances.
The study is published in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
It has been shown that low educational attainment is strongly associated with mental illness. In the new study, researchers wanted to find out if higher educational attainment is linked with mental well-being.
The team found that higher levels of educational attainment had similar odds of high mental well-being as lower levels of education.
High mental well-being was defined as "feeling good and functioning well." People with high levels of mental well-being manage to feel happy and contented with their lives more often than those who don't because of the way they manage problems and challenges especially in relationships with others.
Lead author Professor Sarah Stewart-Brown said, "These findings are quite controversial because we expected to find the socioeconomic factors that are associated with mental illness would also be correlated with mental well-being.
So if low educational attainment was strongly associated with mental illness, high educational attainment would be strongly connected to mental well-being. But that is not the case."
Other surprising results from the study included high levels of mental well-being among Afro-Caribbeans, especially men.
Stewart-Brown said, "Given the well-recognized association between ethnicity and detention under the Mental Health Act and the more general associations between mental illness and ethnicity, we were very surprised to find substantially increased odds of high mental well-being among minority ethnic groups, particularly African and African-Caribbean, Indian, and Pakistani groups."
The team used existing data from the Health Survey for England (HSE) for 2010 and 2011 in which the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) was administered to 17,030 survey participants across both years.
Stewart-Brown added that the correlates of high mental well-being are different from those of low mental well-being, but the latter closely mirror the correlates of mental illness.
She said, "Assumptions about socioeconomic determinants made in planning public mental health programs focusing on the prevention of mental illness may therefore not be applicable to programs aiming to increase mental well-being."
Source: University of Warwick]]>