Gym steroid use has impact on memory

https://goo.gl/vl1BIL

He assessed almost 100 males aged 18-30 who were regular gym users. Half of the group used steroids and half did not.

The results, which are published in The Open Psychiatry Journal, revealed that those using steroids had significantly more deficits in their prospective and retrospective memory functioning, as well as their mental executive function, compared to non-users.

Steroid users were 39% more forgetting in terms of prospective memory – the process of remembering to do something you had planned to do in the future, such as remembering to pay a bill before it is due or to take medication at a certain time.

They were also 28% more forgetting when recalling past memories or previous facts, known as retrospective memory, and demonstrated a 32% difference in their mental executive function compared to non-users. Executive functioning is a term used to describe a number of cognitive processes that help an individual to pay attention, coordinate information and plan and execute tasks. A compromised executive function is likely to lead to confusion and poor planning, while reduced prospective memory ability leads to forgetfulness.

While a previous study from Harvard University found deficits in visuo-spatial memory in long-term steroid users, this is the first study to explore the impact that steroid use in a sporting context has on memory for everyday activities.


Kids of Helicopter Parents Are Sputtering Out

http://goo.gl/3OxslR

In a 2013 survey of college counseling center directors, 95 percent said the number of students with significant psychological problems is a growing concern on their campus, 70 percent said that the number of students on their campus with severe psychological problems has increased in the past year, and they reported that 24.5 percent of their student clients were taking psychotropic drugs.

In 2013 the American College Health Association surveyed close to 100,000 college students from 153 different campuses about their health. When asked about their experiences, at some point over the past 12 months:

  • 84.3 percent felt overwhelmed by all they had to do
  • 60.5 percent felt very sad
  • 57.0 percent felt very lonely
  • 51.3 percent felt overwhelming anxiety
  • 8.0 percent seriously considered suicide

The 153 schools surveyed included campuses in all 50 states, small liberal arts colleges and large research universities, religious institutions and nonreligious, from the small to medium-sized to the very the large. The mental health crisis is not a Yale (or Stanford or Harvard) problem; these poor mental health outcomes are occurring in kids everywhere. The increase in mental health problems among college students may reflect the lengths to which we push kids toward academic achievement, but since they are happening to kids who end up at hundreds of schools in every tier, they appear to stem not from what it takes to get into the most elite schools but from some facet of American childhood itself.


Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can now be identified, say researchers in largest neuroimaging study

http://goo.gl/B3w6no

After comparing more than 20,000 brain scans, researchers have identified differences between Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) despite both conditions sharing common symptoms.

"This discovery is breakthrough information for anyone diagnosed with either TBI or PTSD or both," said Theodore Henderson, MD, PhD, a co-author of the study, published in PLOS One. "Now that we can tell the difference between TBI and PTSD, clinicians can apply more targeted and appropriate treatments, and achieve advances with their patients."


Emotional awareness training 'reduces severe crime reoffending rates'

http://goo.gl/jjLEAs

Previous research has shown that adolescents who exhibit antisocial behavior have problems with recognizing emotion - particularly fear and sadness in people's faces.

In facial affect training, participants take part in a series of tasks that include identifying the emotional expression of a face, describing an event that they connect to that emotion and mimicking the emotion using a mirror.

The participants were shown 150 slides on a laptop that displayed a variety of facial expressions - such as happy, sad, angry, afraid and disgusted - with varying degrees of intensity.

Following the intervention, the researchers found that both groups exhibited significant reductions in reoffending rates. However, the participants who took part in the emotion training also showed a significant reduction in the severity of the crimes they committed.

High severity crimes usually involve more physically aggressive behavior and interpersonal violence compared with less severe crimes, such as theft and criminal damage. The authors think, therefore, that because the emotion training worked on improving recognition of anger, sadness and fear, the offenders who took part in this training may have increased their understanding of the emotions of their potential victims, which dissuaded them from being physically aggressive or committing more severe crimes.


Could playing computer games reduce unwanted memories?

http://goo.gl/A0YAEu

"Currently, there are recommended treatments for PTSD once it has become established, that is, at least 1 month after the traumatic event, but we lack preventative treatments that can be given earlier," explains senior study author Emily Holmes, of the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in the UK.

Past studies have indicated that people who played the computer game Tetris within 4 hours of watching video footage of traumatic events were less likely to have fewer unwanted memories of those events.

However, Holmes and colleagues note that it is unrealistic to expect people who are involved in a traumatic event to play a computer game in the 4 hours following. But could doing so within 24 hours help reduce occurrence of unwanted memories?

Twenty-four hours after watching the film, half of the participants were shown stills from it as a way of reactivating their memories. They then took part in a 10-minute filler task - allowing time for memory reconsolidation to begin - followed by 12 minutes of playing Tetris. The other half of the participants acted as controls, only taking part in the filler task before sitting quietly for 12 minutes.

Over the next week, all participants were required to keep a diary of any intrusive memories that occurred - defined as "scenes of the film that appeared spontaneously and unbidden in their mind."

The team's findings - published in the journal Psychological Science - revealed that the participants whose memories were reactivated before playing Tetris experienced fewer intrusive memories from the film than the control group.


These 5 Creepy Asylums In Michigan Are Still Standing… And Still Disturbing

http://goo.gl/tLkFU0

The very thought of an asylum conjures up disturbing images of lobotomies, patients wasting away in decrepit cell-like rooms, and the criminally insane mixing dangerously close to depressed housewives. It also has us thinking about the thousands of unfortunate souls who had no chance of ever leaving. Instead they were left to die, their ghosts forever remaining to haunt the halls of their earthly prisons. Here are some such places in Michigan that still keep you up at night with fear.

Rise in numbers of teenagers given antipsychotics

http://goo.gl/GRiw8h

Dr. Mark Olfson, of Columbia University, New York, and coauthors say:

"Age and sex antipsychotic use patterns suggest that much of the antipsychotic treatment of children and younger adolescents targets age-limited behavioral problems."

Youth are more susceptible than adults to the adverse effects of antipsychotics and the increasing off-label prescribing is "worrisome," says an editorial article accompanying the article in the same issue of the journal.

Acute and long-term side effects include weight gain and lipid and glucose abnormalities, say Dr. Christoph Correll of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, Glen Oaks, NY, and Joseph Blader, PhD, of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. They conclude:

"As a field we must accurately identify youth for whom antipsychotic treatment is truly necessary by first exhausting lower-risk interventions for youth without psychosis.

Finally, when required, antipsychotic therapy should be as brief as possible and closely monitored."

The authors of the study conclude:

"In older teenagers and young adults, a developmental period of high risk for the onset of psychotic disorders, antipsychotic use increased between 2006 and 2010.


How the stress hormone cortisol reinforces traumatic memories

http://goo.gl/j2wtqJ

The stress hormone cortisol strengthens memories of scary experiences. However, it is effective not only while the memory is being formed for the first time, but also later when people look back at an experience while the memory reconsolidates. This has been published by cognition psychologists from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology. They suggest that the results might explain the persistence of strong emotional memories occurring in anxiety and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Memories of emotional experiences usually fade over time

Strong memories of stressful experiences occur frequently, but they usually fade away over time. People suffering from anxiety or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, however, are affected by terrifying memories that haunt them again and again. It had been shown that the stress hormone cortisol has a strengthening impact on the consolidation of memories, i.e. the several-hour process in the course of which a memory is formed immediately after the experience.

Cortisol influences the reconsolidation of emotional memories

The researchers from Bochum have demonstrated that cortisol effects memories in humans also during the so-called reconsolidation, i.e. the consolidation of memories occurring after memory retrieval. The stress hormone can enhance this process. "The results may explain why certain undesirable memories don't fade, for example in anxiety and PTSD sufferers," says Prof Dr Oliver Wolf. If a person remembering a terrifying event has a high stress hormone level, the memory of that specific event will be strongly reconsolidated after each retrieval.