Brain health is a rapidly expanding field. WHO’s position paper on optimizing brain health across the life course is a technical complement to the recently-adopted Intersectoral global action plan on epilepsy and other neurological disorders 2022–2031. Many determinants are known to affect brain health at different stages of life. The …
Exposure to traffic noise has been associated with adverse effects on neuropsychological outcomes in children, but findings with regard to behavioral problems are inconsistent. The researchers investigated whether residential road traffic noise exposure is associated with behavioral problems in 7 year old children.
Background Phthalates are endocrine-disrupting chemicals that influence thyroid hormones and sex steroids, both critical for brain development. Aim We studied phthalate concentrations in house dust in relation to the risks of developing autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or developmental delay (DD). Methods Participants were a subset of children from the CHARGE …
The researchers sought to assess the relation of dietary trans fatty acid (dTFA) consumption to word-memory. They analyzed cross-sectional data from the 1999-2005 UCSD Statin Study. Participants were 1018 adult men and non-procreative women age ≥20 without diagnosed diabetes, CVD, or extreme LDL-cholesterol. Primary analyses focused on men, as only …
The snack food potato chips induces food intake in ad libitum fed rats, which is associated with modulation of the brain reward system and other circuits. Here, we show that food intake in satiated rats is triggered by an optimal fat/carbohydrate ratio. Like potato chips, an isocaloric fat/carbohydrate mixture influenced …
In 2012, an Indian parliamentary committee reported that manufacturing licenses for large numbers of fixed dose combination (FDC) drugs had been issued by state authorities without prior approval of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) in violation of rules, and considered that some ambiguity until 1 May 2002 about …
Breastfeeding has clear short-term benefits, but its long-term consequences on human capital are yet to be established. We aimed to assess whether breastfeeding duration was associated with intelligence quotient (IQ), years of schooling, and income at the age of 30 years, in a setting where no strong social patterning of …
Pesticides have been associated with Parkinson’s disease (PD), but there are few data on important exposure characteristics such as dose-effect relations. It is unknown whether associations depend on clinical PD subtypes. The researchers examined quantitative aspects of occupational pesticide exposure associated with PD and investigated whether associations were similar across …
Developmental processes in the placenta and the fetal brain are shaped by the same biological signals. Recent evidence suggests that adaptive responses of the placenta to the maternal environment may influence central nervous system development. The researchers studied the association between in utero exposure to fine particle air pollution with …
Here we demonstrate that bisphenol A (BPA) exposure during a time point analogous to the second trimester in humans has real and measurable effects on brain development and behavior. Furthermore, our study is the first, to our knowledge, to show that bisphenol S, a replacement used in BPA-free products, equally …
Long-term memory (LTM) is believed to be stored in the brain as changes in synaptic connections. Here, we show that LTM storage and synaptic change can be dissociated. Cocultures of Aplysia sensory and motor neurons were trained with spaced pulses of serotonin, which induces long-term facilitation. Serotonin (5HT) triggered growth …
Usage of pyrethroid insecticides has increased dramatically over the past decade; however, data on their potential health effects, particularly on children, are limited. The researchers examined the cross-sectional association between postnatal pyrethroid exposure and parental report of learning disability (LD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children 6-15 years of age.
The researchers linked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Air Toxics tract-level data with the Nurses’ Health Study, a prospective cohort of female nurses. Over the course of 18 years of follow-up from 1990 through 2008, they identified 425 incident cases of PD. The researchers examined the association of risk …
A range of animal and human data demonstrates that excessive consumption of palatable food leads to neuroadaptive responses in brain circuits underlying reward. Unrestrained consumption of palatable food has been shown to increase the reinforcing value of food and weaken inhibitory control; however, whether it impacts upon the sensory representations …
The objective of the study was to determine whether low vitamin D concentrations are associated with an increased risk of incident all-cause dementia and Alzheimer disease. Original Source
STEP (STriatal-Enriched protein tyrosine Phosphatase) is a neuron-specific phosphatase that regulates N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) and α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionicacid receptor (AMPAR) trafficking, as well as ERK1/2, p38, Fyn, and Pyk2 activity. STEP is overactive in several neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's disease (AD). The increase in STEP activity likely disrupts synaptic function …
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), organochlorine pesticides, and methylmercury (MeHg) are environmentally persistent with adverse effects on neurodevelopment. However, especially among populations with commonly experienced low levels of exposure, research on neurodevelopmental effects of these toxicants has produced conflicting results. The objective of the study was to assess the low-level prenatal exposure …
One in three cases of Alzheimer's disease worldwide is preventable, according to research from the University of Cambridge. The main risk factors for the disease are a lack of exercise, smoking, depression and poor education, it says. Previous research from 2011 put the estimate at one in two cases, but …
How an individual responds to the environment depends upon both personal life history as well as inherited genetic and epigenetic factors from ancestors. Using a ‘two-hit, 3 generations apart’ model, we tested how F3 descendants of rats given in utero exposures to the environmental endocrine-disrupting chemical (EDC) vinclozolin reacted to …
Brain, oxytocin, and parenting behavior were measured in primary-caregiving mothers, secondary-caregiving fathers, and primary-caregiving homosexual fathers raising infants without maternal involvement. Parenting integrated functioning of two neural networks: subcortical-paralimbic structures implicated in emotional processing and cortical circuits involved in social understanding. Mothers showed greater activation in the emotional processing network …
The objective of the study was to evaluate whether residential proximity to agricultural pesticides during pregnancy is associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) or developmental delay (DD) in the Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and Environment (CHARGE) Study.
