Home > Weekly Newsletters > General

WEDNESDAY, April 30 (HealthDay News) -- Alcohol can make people frisky, chatty and, as any bouncer knows, feisty.

Now, a new brain scan study shows drinking actually dampens the biological ability to feel fear.

When people drink, these lowered fear levels can lead to liquor-fueled courage that can ultimately make people more aggressive, explained study co-author Dr. Daniel Hommer.

"You're less likely to feel afraid, and you're also less likely to run away or to avoid conflict," said Hommer, chief of the section on brain imaging at the National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse.

Using a technology known as functional MRI, researchers scanned the brains of 12 subjects as they received alcohol or a saline solution intravenously.

All the subjects -- an average age of 26 -- were social drinkers, meaning they typically drank every week but not every day. They drank an average of 1.9 days a week and 3.6 drinks per day on the day they drank.

Seven of the subjects were women and five were men; all were healthy. Each volunteer received both alcohol or the saline solution, on two separate occasions.

The subjects looked at images of human faces. Some images had neutral expressions, while others had scary looks designed to provoke a natural fearful response.

The threatening faces "are a cue that something is dangerous going on," Hommer explained.

The fMRI scanner, meanwhile, tracked the levels of activity in parts of the brain where emotions are processed.

The researchers found that alcohol boosted activity in the parts of the brain that deal with rewards, but it also dampened activity in areas devoted to fear.

"This helps us understand a little more about how the brain works, and how alcohol functions as a drug in the brain," Hommer said.

The findings were published in the April 30 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.

Aaron White, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Duke University who studies alcohol abuse, said the study is "excellent" and smartly relies on intravenously administering alcohol, a technique that allows easy adjustments of the subjects' blood-alcohol levels.

In similar studies, White added, "researchers should be able to learn a great deal about how the effects of alcohol on the brain change with both age and increasing years of use."

Other scientists could also study what happens in the brain when alcoholics and nonalcoholics look at images associated with alcohol like beer cans, bars and alcohol ads.

Hommer said researchers are thinking about other possible studies. "The one thing that might immediately be useful is that you may be able to use this as a way to test out drugs designed to decrease people's tendency to abuse alcohol."

The researchers are already testing their approach in people who are heavy drinkers to see if there is any difference in how they react to alcohol, Hommer said. "People become tolerant to some of the effects of alcohol with repeated use, and we want to see if we can see that" in the brain.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention has more on alcohol use.

MONDAY, April 28 (HealthDay News) -- For those with the most severe depression, a novel therapy may offer new hope.

The treatment is deep brain stimulation (DBS), which is used for some people with Parkinson's disease, and researchers found that it cut depression symptoms by 50 percent for about half of those treated.

"This is a new therapy for patients with severe, intractable depression. There's a lot of promise for this approach," said study author Dr. Ali Rezai, director of the Center for Neurological Restoration at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

Deep brain stimulation requires minimally invasive surgery to place electrodes into specific parts of the brain that are believed to be malfunctioning. Once in place, the electrodes emit tiny, adjustable, electrical pulses that block dysfunctional activity in the brain. It's been used for about 20 years in the treatment of Parkinson's disease. Rezai added that the current group working on DBS and depression, which includes researchers from Brown University and Massachusetts General Hospital as well, has also had success using DBS to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Severe depression occurs in about 10 percent to 20 percent of depression cases, according to Rezai. Antidepressants, and even electroconvulsive (ECT) therapy, often fail to bring about improvement in depressive symptoms for those with this severe form, leaving them at an increased risk of suicide. The suicide rate in people with major depression may be as high as 15 percent, according to the researchers.

In the current study, 15 people suffering from severe depression for at least five years who weren't helped by other forms of treatment received DBS implants. Six months later, 47.1 percent had at least a 50 percent reduction in their depressive symptoms, based on a commonly used depression scale. At one year, that number was 50 percent.

Even patients who didn't meet the 50 percent reduction criteria used as an endpoint in this study still experienced some symptom reduction, according to Rezai, who added that all of the participants said they would undergo DBS again.

The procedure was well-tolerated, and just one patient had a brief seizure in this study.

"This is not for everyday depression, but for those who have failed everything else, hope is on the way," said Dr. Kathryn Holloway, a professor of neurosurgery at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center in Richmond. "There are new treatments being developed that are having success where no medication has," she noted. Other treatments that have shown promise include vagal nerve stimulation and transcranial magnetic stimulation. The problem, she said, is that many insurers won't cover these procedures for depression.

Rezai was expected to present the findings April 29 at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons annual meeting, in Chicago. He said that his DBS group is now conducting a larger, controlled study.

Another depression study being presented Monday at the meeting found that people on medications for clinical depression who underwent surgery for a malignant brain tumor, called an astrocytoma, had an increased risk of death after the surgery.

Depression prior to surgery upped the odds of death after surgery by about 40 percent, according to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine study. At 12 months after surgery, just 15 percent of those who were depressed before their operation were alive, compared to 41 percent of those who weren't depressed. At 20 months, none of the depressed patients were still alive, yet 21 percent of the non-depressed were still alive. The authors concluded that effectively treating depression before surgery might help improve outcomes.

More information

To learn more about deep brain stimulation (DBS), visit the American Association of Neurological Surgeons  .

FRIDAY, April 25 (HealthDay News) -- They say the eyes are a window into the soul, but scientists have been reporting for some time now that "microexpressions" -- lightning-fast, almost imperceptible facial expressions -- tell the real story of what people are thinking.

Now, new research suggests that people have a lot more trouble hiding their emotions than they think.

Canadian researchers found that every one of 41 college students suffered from "emotional leakage," the inability to hide their true feelings when asked to falsify their facial expressions. Some let their emotions out through subconscious expressions that lasted longer than microexpressions.

The findings suggest that "the face has enormous potential to reveal concealed and falsified emotions," said study co-author Leanne ten Brinke, a graduate student in experimental psychology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

"Because the face is less controllable than other aspects of our non-verbal behavior, it is likely particularly important to lie detection," ten Brinke said.

Still, the researchers found that it's difficult even for trained experts to figure out when someone is hiding how they truly feel.

Microexpressions -- defined as lasting between 1/25th and 1/5th of a second -- have gotten attention in the media in recent years, but the study authors said there hasn't been extensive research into their existence. In the new study, published in the May issue of the journal Psychological Science, the study authors tried to coax unconscious expressions out of college students participating in the research project.

The participants -- 35 females and six males -- watched a series of images, with some designed to elicit an emotion from the viewer, such as happiness (puppies playing) or disgust (a severed hand). Some images (like a picture of a truck) were designed to elicit a neutral response.

The researchers videotaped the participants and their reactions, compiled images of about 700 emotional expressions, and assigned "coders" to examine about 100,000 frames.

"While our research did detect several microexpressions, leakage of unintended emotions typically lasted longer," ten Brinke said. "We found that when a lying participant's face revealed unintended emotions, it typically lasted for closer to a second but usually only occurred in either the upper or lower face."

Dr. Daniel Langleben, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, said brief and revealing but unconscious facial expressions do appear to be a real phenomenon, although it's difficult for people to detect them. Computers, he said, may do a better job.

"A computer that looks [at a face] using facial-recognition software doesn't care if it's red, black, white or green or whether it reminds you of your grandmother or if the face is ugly or pretty," he said.

Ten Brinke said the next step is to create research that better reflects real life by studying emotional deceptions that could have serious consequences.

The Canadian researchers have collected about 60 videotaped appeals from family members pleading to the public for the return of their missing relatives. In about half of the cases, the people in the videotapes actually killed the relatives, she said.

"We will be examining the faces of these individuals for cues to deceit in this real-life context," ten Brinke said.

More information

Learn more about facial expressions from Carnegie Mellon University  .

THURSDAY, April 24 (HealthDay News) -- While most public health department officials in the United States take the health threat of global warming seriously, the majority say they aren't prepared to confront the problem, a new survey shows.

Sixty percent of local health department directors said they believed that consequences of global warming -- in the form of heat waves, food and water contamination, increased mosquito-borne illness, and poor air quality -- would ultimately give rise to one or more serious health problems in their locality over the next 20 years.

However, 82 percent said they lacked the know-how to plan for such problems, while 77 percent said they needed more resources to improve their ability to do so.

The survey was co-sponsored by the National Association of City and County Health Officials (NACCHO), the Environmental Defense Fund, and George Mason University in Virginia, and the results were included in a broader report titled Are We Ready? Preparing for the Public Health Challenges of Climate Change. The full report was released Thursday, during a teleconference held by all three organizations.

"While most health directors have programs in existence to protect the public, they still felt they had a long way to go to meet the challenge of climate change," NACCHO spokesman Dr. A. Dennis McBride said during the teleconference. McBride is the director of health for the city of Milford, Conn.

He was joined at the conference by report lead author Dr. John Balbus, the Environmental Defense Fund's director of environmental health programs, and Ed Maibach, professor and director of George Mason's Center of Excellence in Climate Change Communication Research.

All three focused on the need for local health departments to prepare for climate-associated health perils, such as extreme heat, extreme weather (such as hurricanes, floods and droughts), air pollution, and the spread of water, food, and animal-borne infectious disease.

To gauge local preparedness, researchers tapped into the perspectives, programs and resources of public health directors working in 133 health departments in 39 states.

Among the findings: 70 percent of health department directors said they believed climate change had already occurred in their region, and 78 percent thought they would experience more change over the next two decades.

Yet while half of the directors suggested that climate change is, therefore, an "important priority," less than 20 percent said that the issue is currently among their jurisdiction's "top 10" priorities.

Many directors indicated that their lack of readiness stems from increasing demands and strains being placed on limited resources, just as federal and state assistance for public health programs is drying up.

And just 26 percent and 34 percent said that either their state or the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, respectively, had the expertise in place to help their offices design response plans to climate-driven health crises.

Teleconference speakers said they hoped the survey would draw greater attention to the public health need to prepare for the serious risks posed by climate change.

"There should be a sense of urgency around these issues," McBride said.

To that end, the survey sponsors called for the federal government to fund more climate research, strengthen climate surveillance networks, help train more public health professionals in the skills needed to combat climate-associated health issues, and direct more resources toward the development of local rapid response plans in the face of extreme weather.

"Public health departments really do provide the safety net for this country," said Balbus. "They take care of the most vulnerable population and provide medical care for them. And this service is very relevant to the issue of climate change -- in terms of warning about heat waves, preparedness for floods, monitoring and surveillance of vector-borne disease, and food and water safety."

"And in the coming years we're going to see important changes in either the severity of these problems, or where they're happening," he added. "And these changes need to be planned for, or else we could see public health caught back on its heels."

Patrick Libbey, NACCHO's executive director, described the report as a wake-up call.

"We tend to think of problems as large-scale and episodic in timing," he said. "But this is a problem that is developing slowly. It doesn't hit you like a tornado hits you. So perhaps people have not as readily converted the ecological issues of climate changes to what the health implications are. But it is going to affect our health. It's already affecting our health. And this survey shows we have to be better prepared."

More information

To review the full climate change report, visit the Environmental Defense Fund  .