Posts

March 04, 2013

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4:24 AM | Living in a Large City: A Risk Factor for Bulimia Nervosa?

The link between urban living and mental disorders such as schizophrenia and depression has been known for quite some time (Sundquist et al., 2004). In one study, Sundquist et al found that individuals living in a densely populated area had a 68-77% higher risk of developing psychosis and 12-22% higher risk of developing depression. The question then arises, do eating disorders follow a similar pattern? And if yes, what are some possible explanations? Certainly we know that both genetic and […]

VAN SON, G., VAN HOEKEN, D., BARTELDS, A., VAN FURTH, E. & HOEK, H. (2006). Urbanisation and the incidence of eating disorders, The British Journal of Psychiatry, 189 (6) 562-563. DOI: 10.1192/bjp.bp.106.021378

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3:24 AM | Living in a Large City: A Risk Factor for Bulimia Nervosa?

The link between urban living and mental disorders such as schizophrenia and depression has been known for quite some time (Sundquist et al., 2004). In one study, Sundquist et al found that individuals living in a densely populated area had a 68-77% higher risk of developing psychosis and 12-22% higher risk of developing depression. The question then arises, do eating disorders follow a similar pattern? And if yes, what are some possible explanations? Certainly we know that both genetic and […]

March 03, 2013

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2:39 PM | Researchers Influence Learning with Electrical Stimulation News Roundup: March 2013 1st Edition

Researchers at the Diabetes agency in Italy have undertaken a meta-analysis of longitudinal studies looking at the risk of Diabetes in people with Depression. The researchers looked at 1898 longitudinal studies and after excluding irrelevant studies were left with 23. These 23 studies included 424,557 subjects who were followed up on average for just over [...]

March 02, 2013

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3:04 PM | Explaining the Neurobiology of Illusions: A Talk from Caltech

Professor Markus Meister gives a fascinating talk on the neurobiology of vision as part of a TEDx conference at Caltech. He references two visual illusions both of which involve colour perception. Two very interesting explanations are offered based on sensory processing in the retina and possible cells responsible for these effects are identified. Contrasting Visual [...]

March 01, 2013

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6:16 PM | i’m on double x science today!

I contributed a post to Double X Science’s “I Am Mental Illness” series, and it went live today. You can read my story, “Bipolar brings anxieties beyond mood shifts,” here.

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4:57 PM | Friday Weird Science: Why eat tongue when you can eat testes?

Sci is at Neurotic Physiology today, talking about a trematode that will shrink your gonads and take your penis in the bargain. The tongue eating parasite can, well, eat it. Why eat tongue when you can eat penis? Of course, there’s no proof that the trematodes are EATING the penis…but the shrinkage cannot be denied. [...]

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3:00 PM | Do Music Lessons Make You Smarter?

Practice makes progress, if not perfection, for most things in life. Generally, practicing a skill—be it basketball, chess or the tuba—mostly makes you better at whatever it was you practiced. Even related areas do not benefit much. Doing intensive basketball drills does not usually make a person particularly good at football. Chess experts are not [...]

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11:44 AM | The common ground

Today's post is all about common ground. I'm not necessarily making a plea for common ground to be found in any specific area or community, but rather how the concept of common ground runs through a few important discussions which I recently found interesting.A short while ago the BBC ran with the headline 'Five psychiatric disorders linked' built on the study findings reported by the Cross-Disorder Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium* (et al?) published in The Lancet. The authors […]

Cross-Disorder Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (2013). Identification of risk loci with shared effects on five major psychiatric disorders: a genome-wide analysis, The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(12)62129-1

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February 28, 2013

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9:26 PM | Framing Eating Disorders As “Brain Diseases” Might Lead to More Stigma

Many–myself included–assume that emphasizing the biological basis of mental disorders will reduce mental health stigma. The idea is that it will place less blame and personal responsibility on the affected individual. Still, when it comes to raising awareness and reducing stigma, we need to make sure that our assumptions hold up to the evidence, otherwise we run the risk of playing a game of broken telephone. Given that this is Eating Disorder Awareness Week in the United States, […]

Angermeyer, M., Mnich, E., Daubmann, A., Herich, L., Wegscheider, K., Kofahl, C. & Knesebeck, O. (2013). Biogenetic explanations and public acceptance of people with eating disorders, Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, DOI: 10.1007/s00127-012-0648-9

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2:50 AM | adventures in drug safety during pregnancy

I’m 22 weeks pregnant and I confess: I spend a decent amount of time on pregnancy forums (more specifically, the BabyCenter birth clubs). They’re terrible places. Imagine YouTube comments written exclusively by women who are uncomfortable and hormonal. That’s why it’s … Continue reading →

February 27, 2013

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10:00 PM | MedFest Film Festival 2013

The UK medical film festival MedFest is taking place across the UK in February and March 2, 2013. The festival was founded by psychiatrist Dr Kamran Ahmed. The theme of this year’s festival is ‘The Power of Medicine’. The medfest website can be found here. There is also a video of the 2011 film festival [...]

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8:48 AM | New research sheds light on 13 ways to gain followers on Twitter

We’ve known for some time that there is a great disparity in the number of followers people have on Twitter – 80% of Twitter users have less than 10 followers, yet some have thousands. A new paper, is the first longitudinal study attempting to correlate features of Twitter users with growth in ...Read More

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5:41 AM | Scicurious Guest Writer! Alcohol and Caffeine: No need to go Loko

Please welcome this month’s Scicurious Guest Writer: Elizabeth Aston! We all enjoy going out for a few drinks, but sometimes, just when the party’s getting started, we feel like passing out! Wouldn’t it be great if we could keep our energy level up so the party could continue? Initially this may seem like a great [...]

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1:51 AM | ESTSS Young Minds Events

Have you got the conference of the European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies in your diary yet? It is a biannual meeting with a great mix of presentations and workshops. This year it takes place in beautiful Bologna, June 6th … Continue reading →

February 26, 2013

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10:11 PM | Updated Links

The site links have been updated. On the right hand side of the screen there is a Blogroll followed by other links to external sites. Broken links have been removed and new links added. These represent a portion of the high quality sites on the web and are not affiliated to this site. Index: There [...]

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3:35 PM | In relation to chelation and autism

OK, just to make sure we're straight on this matter:I am not endorsing chelation therapy for autism in this post.Carry on Private...I might have said it before but a few areas of the autism landscape have been, and still, are a bit of a sticking point when it comes to their discussion. Mention for example bowel issues and autism and, in at least some quarters, you can see the eyebrows raising and the eyes beginning their short rolling journey around the eye socket. This despite the fact that […]

Blaucok-Busch E, Amin OR, Dessoki HH & Rabah T. (2012). Efficacy of DMSA Therapy in a Sample of Arab Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder., Maedica (Buchar), 7 (3) 214-221. Other: Link

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February 25, 2013

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10:52 PM | A Centre for the Emotions? – The Limbic System: Building a Model of the Insular Cortex – Part 10

The Hippocampus In this post we will continue to look at key models of emotions – this time focusing on the Papez circuit and its later development into the concept of the Limbic System. Roxo and colleagues have published an article in the ‘Scientific World Journal’ titled ‘The Limbic System Conception and its Historical Evolution’. [...]

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10:30 PM | Rigid Food Rules in Eating Disorders: Is Perfectionism to Blame?

I remember cutting baby carrots into 6 pieces. Rushing home to eat because I wasn’t “allowed” to eat after 7 pm. Eating the exact portion size–no more, no less. (Oh the rules. I don’t miss them.) Rigid food rules are very common among eating disorder sufferers. These rules can be about anything: the foods you are allowed to eat, how you are allowed to eat them, the time you are allowed to eat them, and so on. But where do they come from? Why do some […]

Brown, A., Parman, K., Rudat, D. & Craighead, L. (2012). Disordered eating, perfectionism, and food rules, Eating Behaviors, 13 (4) 347-353. DOI: 10.1016/j.eatbeh.2012.05.011

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6:07 AM | Of course I’m stressed, I’m in cookie withdrawal.

I don’t know about you guys, but in times of stress, I eat my feelings. And I mean, why wouldn’t I? My feelings are delicious! The taste like popcorn and peanut butter M&Ms and fudge and pepperoni pizza. But then, when the stressful times are over, well, I’ve got to go back to eating salads [...]

February 24, 2013

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2:34 PM | Welcome to the land of the digital refugees

Can't go over it. Can't go under it. Can't go around it. Gotta go through it. Many generations will remember with affection growing up singing the song above. This generation will be the first to have grown up in a world where keygens, crackers, tunnels and firewalls are ...Read More

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12:14 PM | Memantine and autism

As part of their review of autism research in 2012, the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (shortened to the very catchy SFARI) had an interesting blogpost on all things drug development with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in mind.It was an interesting entry insofar as they had categorised the various medicines potentially indicated for some of the symptoms of ASD according to the stage of drug development including some formulations that have previously been fodder for this […]

Chez MG, Burton Q, Dowling T, Chang M, Khanna P & Kramer C (2007). Memantine as adjunctive therapy in children diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorders: an observation of initial clinical response and maintenance tolerability., Journal of child neurology, 22 (5) 574-9. PMID: 17690064

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11:26 AM | Visuospatial Performance Associated with Visual Hallucinations in Dementia : News Roundup: February 2013 3rd Edition

In a longitudinal study by Bobo and colleagues the researchers looked at men aged 50 and over during a 10 year period to identify predictors of alcohol use. The researchers found that 30.7% of the men in the study were classed as moderate drinkers during the study period. The results were complex and dependent on [...]

February 23, 2013

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1:37 PM | Looking at the Genetics of Bipolar Disorder

The Australian National University Channel features interesting educational videos about numerous subjects including Psychiatry. One of the videos (with a creative commons license) is given by Psychiatry Professor Philip Mitchell (see above). In this video he talks about a study he has initiated looking at the offspring of people with Bipolar Disorder where the researchers [...]

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2:28 AM | Chewing and Spitting: A Neglected Symptom in Eating Disorders?

Dear Science of Eating Disorders readers, please welcome Shelly, our newest contributor! Shelly is a PhD Candidate in Neuroscience at the University of British Columbia. You can find out more about Shelly on the ‘About Shelly‘ page. Check out her neuro(science) blog, Neurorexia and follow her on Twitter. Email shelly@scienceofeds.org to get in touch. Just a note, do keep in mind that I (Tetyana) try to give as much freedom as possible to guest writers and contributors to write […]

Guarda, A., Coughlin, J., Cummings, M., Marinilli, A., Haug, N., Boucher, M. & Heinberg, L. (2004). Chewing and spitting in eating disorders and its relationship to binge eating, Eating Behaviors, 5 (3) 231-239. DOI: 10.1016/j.eatbeh.2004.01.001

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February 22, 2013

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10:59 PM | the battle between my physical and mental health

I’m writing this from week three of my battle with a respiratory infection, which probably turned into pneumonia at one point, but nobody likes to give pregnant ladies chest x-rays (understandable) so we don’t know for sure. Hooray? I’m also … Continue reading →

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10:52 PM | Friday Weird Science: Need more caffeine? Rub it in.

Today’s Friday Weird Science is a response to a question I received, asking if Shower Shock caffeinated soap actually works. And I wondered…well does it? So I looked it up. And it has the potential to give you a jolt…but probably not. For the full story, head over to Neurotic Physiology and check it out!

February 21, 2013

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9:58 PM | Revising the Three Structure Model: Integration in Neuroscience: A Core Problem – Part 8

A Three Structure Model of Neural Activity in Relation to Consciousness and Language In the last post I expended on the three model structure relating unconscious activity,conscious experience and language. In particular I looked at is how unconscious activity could be divided into absolute unconscious activity which would never reach conscious experience and transient unconscious [...]

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7:21 PM | Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) and HERVs

Viruses. Apparently there are quite a lot of them on this old rock we call home and I've started to become quite interested in some of them, or at least how we as a species have, and continue to interact with them down the ages.I must start by thanking Natasa for bringing me into contact with the paper by Kenny De Meirleir and colleagues* (open-access) looking at human endogenous retrovirus (HERV) expression in a small cohort of patients diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). I'm […]

KENNY L. DE MEIRLEIR, SVETLANA F. KHAIBOULLINA, MARC FRÉMONT, JAN HULSTAERT, ALBERT A. RIZVANOV, ANDRÁS PALOTÁS & VINCENT C. LOMBARDI (2013). Plasmacytoid dendritic cells in the duodenum of individuals diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis are uniquely immunoreactive to antibodies to human endogenous retroviral proteins, In Vivo, 27 (2) 177-187. Other: Link

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1:21 PM | The lesson you never got taught in school: How to learn!

A paper published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest has evaluated ten techniques for improving learning, ranging from mnemonics to highlighting and came to some surprising conclusions. The report is quite a heavy document so I’ve summarised the techniques below based on the ...Read More

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2:16 AM | Lifetime Prevalence of Eating Disorders Among Eating Disorder Professionals

How many professionals that treat eating disorders have a personal history of struggling with an eating disorder? It is a crucial question to ask (and answer) because there are important implications for patient treatment and for the health of the afflicted professionals. It is true that many (or most?) individuals who go into mental health do so because of personal experiences–whether due to their own personal history or the experiences of a loved one–so it is useful to ask, just […]

BARBARICH, N. (2002). Lifetime Prevalence of Eating Disorders Among Professionals in the Field, Eating Disorders, 10 (4) 305-312. DOI: 10.1080/10640260214505

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March 04, 2013

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