Legion of Angels News Archive

The study of anxiety is fast merging with the science of memory. No longer focused just on symptoms like social isolation and depressed mood, scientists are turning to the disorder’s neural roots, to how the brain records and consolidates in memory the frightening events that set off long-term anxiety. And they are finding that it may be possible to blunt the emotional impact of even the worst memories and fears.

The war in Iraq has lent a new cultural urgency to this research. About one in eight of the troops returning from combat show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, or P.T.S.D., which is characterized by intrusive thoughts, sleep loss and hyper-alertness following a horrifying experience. Many are so traumatized that they fail utterly to respond to antianxiety medications, talk therapy and other conventional treatments.

P.T.S.D. is one of the most worrisome of the generally recognized anxiety disorders. There are four others: generalized anxiety disorder (G.A.D.), obsessive-compulsive disorder, phobias and panic disorder. G.A.D. is the most common, but all are familiar complaints in doctors’ offices: more than 20 million Americans will suffer one of these during his or her lifetime.

Genetics and the environment play roles in the development of anxiety disorders, but the point where these influences intersect is clearly the brain. The biology of anxiety has been very difficult to untangle in part because it is so familiar, so integral to our survival.

Most people can and do cope with many causes of anxiety, including demanding jobs, rocky relationships, second mortgages and even combat. Every day uncounted millions are beset by the sudden, heart-pounding dizziness of panic. It is normal, even necessary, to feel fear and stress. The brain’s anticipation of threats is an invaluable survival tool. The question for scientists is: Why can’t some people turn down the voltage?

When mammals sense threat, at least two important brain circuits swing into action. One pathway runs through the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex, the layer of the brain that regulates consciousness, thinking and decision-making functions.

The other circuit is more primal, running deep into the unconscious brain and through the amygdala, a pair of lozenge-sized nubs of neural tissue (one on each side of the brain) specialized to register threats. This unconscious circuit is “quick and dirty,” a primal survival instinct that increases blood pressure, heart rate and alertness well before the thinking cortex is fully aware of what is happening.

The difference between the two may be crucial to understanding how an irrational fear forms. The amygdala records sights and sounds associated with a harrowing memory, and it is capable of sending the body into high alert before a person consciously processes the stimuli.

Most drugs currently prescribed for anxiety, like benzodiazepines and antidepressants, work to ease the symptoms of anxiety and have little effect on the underlying trigger. But scientists are now taking tentative first steps toward altering the brain’s age-old dynamic.

Researchers have been experimenting with a heart disease drug called propranolol, for instance, which interferes with the action of stress hormones like epinephrine. Stress hormones are central to the human response to threat; they prime the body to fight or run, and appear to deepen the neural roots of a terrifying memory in the brain. When the memory returns, these hormones flood again into the bloodstream.

But in one series of studies, people with P.T.S.D. who took propranolol reacted more calmly — on measures of heart rate and sweat gland activity — upon revisiting a painful memory than did similar subjects who took a dummy pill. By blocking receptors on brain cells that are sensitive to stress hormones, experts theorize, the drug may have taken the sting out of the frightening recollections.

Propranolol has not been proved to reliably ease the effects of trauma, but the investigation of such drugs is only beginning. Another candidate, an antibiotic called D-cycloserine, may help severely anxious patients alter the way they think about and react to current everyday concerns.

In one experiment, 28 people who were terrified of heights received so-called exposure therapy, including computer simulated rides in a glass elevator. The therapy helped all the subjects cope with their anxieties. But the participants who also took D-cycloserine learned to override their fears far more quickly than those who did not.

The drug may speed up a process that researchers call fear extinction, the unlearning of frightening associations. In theory, a successful fear-extinguisher might even complement analytic talk therapy in which patient and therapist work to understand how symptoms might be linked to loss, poisoned relationships or childhood traumas. The anxieties that flow from these events flourish deep in the brain, but now there is evidence that they can be rooted out — a chance for balm in an increasingly harrowing world.

Source — The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) – From climate change to volcanoes and earthquakes, the world’s growing challenges have leaders in earth science proposing a merger of agencies that study the planet.

Creation of a new Earth Systems Science Agency is urged in this week’s edition of the journal Science, by merging the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey.

Included in the group making the proposal are former heads of both agencies as well as others who have held science policy positions in government.

“The United States faces unprecedented environmental and economic challenges in the decades ahead.

Foremost among them will be climate change, sea-level rise, altered weather patterns, declines in freshwater availability and quality and loss of biodiversity,” the group warned.

D. James Baker, NOAA administrator from 1993 to 2001, said the group felt the divided responsibilities among agencies made it harder to get things done.

“We felt that laying this (idea) on the table would have a lot of positive aspects,” said Baker, who now works on deforestation concerns with the Clinton Foundation.

With a $4 billion budget and 12,000 employees, NOAA, a part of the Commerce Department, studies the atmosphere and oceans.

USGS, part of the Interior Department, with a $1 billion budget and 8,500 workers, focuses on fresh water and the Earth, including such threats as volcanoes and earthquakes, and has a biological arm.

The group proposing the new agency had long been concerned that science programs that are part of regulatory or management agencies tend to be downplayed at budget time, said Charles Groat, a former director of the Geological Survey and now interim dean of geosciences at the University of Texas.

“Given the challenges the country faces in the environment and energy,” he said, the two agencies could make a significant contribution to science, he said.

And the combined agency would provide a strong group on behalf of science, he said, working in collaboration with the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy and National Institutes of Health.

Creation of the new agency also would revive the name ESSA. Before 1970, NOAA was known as the Environmental Science Services Administration.

In addition to Groat and Baker, signing the proposal were Mark Schaefer, former acting director of the Geological Survey; former White House science adviser John H. Gibbons; Donald Kennedy, Food and Drug Administration commissioner from 1977 to 1979; Charles F. Kennel, former associate administrator of NASA and director of its Mission to Planet Earth, and David Rajeski, who formerly served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Council on Environmental Quality.

Source — CNN

WASHINGTON (AP) – With the price topping $4-a-gallon everybody wants to save gas, but depending on those miles-per-gallon ratings may be misleading.

Strange as it may sound, rating cars at gallons-per-mile may be more useful, say a pair of university researchers.

Richard Larrick and Jack Soll got to discussing fuel efficiency while carpooling to work at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

The professors study how people perceive things and decided to look into the auto efficiency ratings and what they tell consumers.

The result is a paper called “The MPG Illusion,” appearing Friday in the journal Science.

In essence, they say, don’t turn your nose up at what may seem like a small gain, for it can still mean big savings at the pump.

Not everyone is a good candidate for a tiny car, Larrick explained, because a family of five or six needs a larger vehicle. But moving to even a slightly more efficient large car can be a big saving, he said.

“We realized improving low mpgs is where the big bang is,” Larrick said in a telephone interview. “But we realized that people were not going to understand that.”

He stressed that they are not advocating buying inefficient cars, but rather pointing out that those are the ones that need to be replaced, even if the extra miles per gallon seem small.

“There are significant savings to be had by improving efficiency by even two or three miles per gallon on inefficient cars, but because we communicate in miles per gallon, that savings is not immediately evident to consumers,” said Soll.

Jack Gillis of the Consumer Federation of America called their paper “extraordinarily profound in its simplicity.”

The report shows that people with inefficient cars, who may feel they have no options, can experience substantial savings by just moderately increasing their fuel efficiency, Gillis said.

“I am convinced that the average, extraordinarily frustrated, owner of a fuel inefficient car has no idea that making a small improvement will save more money and will save the environment” more than a larger improvement in a more efficient car, Gillis said.

So why does it help to look at gallons per mile instead?

Well, that tells you how much gasoline is used or saved over a given distance, say a year’s driving of 10,000 miles.

Gillis calculated that at $4 a gallon, over 10,000 miles, an improvement from 12 mpg to 13 mpg would save $256. For the owner of a 33 mpg car to save that much, mileage would have to go up to 40 mpg, he said.

Here’s how it works.

A couple drives a 25 mpg sedan. They trade it for a 50 mpg hybrid, a 25 mpg improvement.

A family with mom, dad and three kids has a 10 mpg SUV to haul everyone around. They trade it for a 20 mpg station wagon, a 10 mpg improvement.

Sounds like the couple did better, at least in miles per gallon.

But lets look at gallons per miles.

At 25 mpg the couple burned 400 gallons over a year and their new 50 mpg hybrid cuts that to 200 gallons. They save 200 gallons.

At 10 mpg the family’s SUV burns 1,000 gallons of gas a year. At 20 mpg the station wagon burns 500 gallons — they save 500 gallons, much better than the couple.

Would it be better for everybody to switch to the most efficient car? Sure, but not every family will fit in it.

Source — CNN