Scientists Discover Mice's Hearts Can Heal Themselves, Are Other Mammals Next?

New research published online today in the journalScience found that newborn mice can regenerate working heart tissue.

So what's the big whoop? Scientists already knew that certain amphibians and fish could regenerate cardiac tissue.

Well that, it turns out, is what inspired researchers at the Southwestern Medical Center in Texas to consider the possibility that mammalian hearts could also regenerate. Given the similarities in the hearts of adult zebrafish -- which can regrow tissue -- and immature mammals, researchers wondered if they couldn't "conserve," as they put it, the same mechanisms of regeneration in mice.

The results? Within 21 days of scientists surgically removing a portion of the left ventricular apex from newborn mice, the tissue had completely regenerated. The problem, though, is that researchers found mice lost the capacity to regenerate cardiac tissue by the time they were seven days old.

The potential implications, the scientists report, is this: "For a brief period after birth, the mammalian heart appears to have the capacity to regenerate." Which means, according to The Guardian, potentially very good things for heart attack sufferers.

"Now that we know that the mammalian heart indeed possesses the potential to regenerate, at least early in life," Eric Olson, one of the study's authors told The Guardian, "we can begin to search for drugs or genes or other things that might reawaken this potential in the adult heart of mice and eventually of humans."

Shared from: The Huffington Post

Whole Grain Fiber Linked to Longer Life

Eating a diet rich in fiber—especially the kind of fiber found in whole grains—reduces the risk of dying at an early age from a range of causes, a new government study suggests.

Fiber’s beneficial effects on heart health have been known for decades, so it wasn’t surprising that eating a lot of fiber was associated with a lower risk of death due to heart attackand heart disease. But fiber intake also appears to lower the risk of dying from respiratory diseases (such as pneumonia and chronic bronchitis) and infectious diseases, the study found.

“The benefits of fiber are broader than what had been anticipated or previously studied,” says Frank Hu, MD, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, who co-authored an editorial accompanying the study. Both were published today on the website of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The source of the fiber appears to be critical. Consuming fiber from whole grains was most strongly linked to a lower risk of dying during the study, while fiber from vegetables and beans appeared to have a minimal impact on death risk. The fiber in fruit seemed to offer no protection at all.The study, which was funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), also found a link between fiber consumption and a reduced risk of death from cancer, but only in men.

“We only see significant effects from whole grains,” says the lead author of the study, Yikyung Park, a researcher in the NCI’s nutritional epidemiology branch. “But we don’t know how this fiber works to improve health.”

This unexpected finding suggests that the antioxidants and other nutrients in whole grains—not just the fiber—may be partly responsible for promoting health and long life.

“Is the fiber in whole grains truly different? Or are you getting the benefits from [the other nutrients]?” says David Frid, MD, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic who was not involved in the study. “We don’t know.”

Park and her colleagues analyzed data on more than half a million AARP members between the ages of 50 and 71 who answered survey questions about their eating habits as part of a nine-year study on diet and health.

The participants who reported eating the most fiber—about 30 grams a day for men, and 25 grams a day for women—were 22% less likely to die from any cause during the study than those who consumed the least (about 13 grams and 11 grams for men and women, respectively).

Published at: health.com

Good Conversation Can Boost Brain Power, Study Finds

Friendly discussions with other people can help you solve common life challenges, but conversations that are competitive in tone aren’t helpful, finds a new study.

“This study shows that simply talking to other people, the way you do when you’re making friends, can provide mental benefits,” lead author Oscar Ybarra, a psychologist and researcher at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, said in a university news release.

In this study of 192 undergraduates, the researchers examined the effect that brief episodes of social contact had on a type of cognition called executive function, which includes working memory, self-monitoring, and the ability to suppress external and internal distractions. These mental processes are essential in dealing with day-to-day problems.

Engaging in a short, 10-minute conversation in which they got to know another person helped boost the participants’ performance on a variety of cognitive tasks. But when the conversations had a competitive tone, the participants showed no improvement on the cognitive tasks.

The study will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

“We believe that performance boosts come about because some social interactions induce people to try to read others’ minds and take their perspectives on things,” Ybarra said. “And we also find that when we structure even competitive interactions to have an element of taking the other person’s perspective, or trying to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, there is a boost in executive functioning as a result.”

The findings suggest that having a friendly talk with a colleague before a big test or presentation may prove beneficial, according to the researchers.

More information

The U.S. National Center for Learning Disabilities has more aboutexecutive function.

– Robert Preidt

SOURCE: University of Michigan, news release, Oct. 28, 2010

Last Updated: Nov. 04, 2010

Copyright © 2010 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Happiness Is a Focused Mind

By Jenifer Goodwin
HealthDay Reporter

If you want to be happy, try to stay focused.

New research shows that when people’s minds drifted from the task or activity at hand, they reported being less happy than when they were fully engaged in whatever they were doing.

The human mind is uniquely capable of wandering — that is, to ponder things that have happened, to anticipate things that will happen, and to plan for things that might happen, explained study author Matthew Killingsworth, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Harvard University. The ability is one of the traits that makes human beings human, he noted.

Yet, cognitive wandering comes at a cost, which is that when people are thinking about something other than what they’re doing, they feel less happy, the researchers discovered.

“Human beings seem to have this unique capacity to focus on the non-present. They have the ability to reflect on the past, plan for the future and imagine things that might never occur,” Killingsworth said. “But at the same time, human beings are clumsy users of this capacity and it tends to decrease, rather than increase, happiness.”

In the study, 2,250 participants were prompted at random times throughout the day using an iPhone Web application. They were asked how they were feeling, what they were doing, if they were thinking about something other than what they were doing and whether whatever they were contemplating was pleasant (say, daydreaming about a vacation), unpleasant (perhaps worrying about a relationship or finances) or neutral in nature.

According to the study, participants spent nearly 47 percent of their waking hours with their mind in a wandering state. “This study shows that our mental lives are pervaded, to a remarkable degree, by the non-present,” Killingsworth said.

That is, with one notable exception. When describing what they were doing, participants could choose from 22 activities, including walking, eating, shopping, watching TV, commuting and working.

The only activity during which people seemed to be quite good at staying on task mentally was while making love. During sex, only 10 percent of people reported wandering thoughts.

Generally, people also reported being the happiest when making love, exercising or conversing. They said they were least happy when resting or sleeping, working or using a home computer.

When it came to what they were thinking about, 42.5 percent thought of pleasant topics, 26.5 percent thought of unpleasant topics, while 31 percent were thinking neutral thoughts.

And while people who were thinking of pleasant things were happier than people thinking of unpleasant things, even those thinking happy thoughts were less happy than people who were fully engaged in whatever they were doing.

The study is published in the Nov. 12 issue of Science.

In some ways, the research provides scientific evidence of what many self-help books and some religious traditions espouse, which is that being in the “here and now” is critical for happiness, Killingsworth said.

Participants were from 83 counties, a wide range of occupations and ranged in age from 18 to 88.

Barbara Becker Holstein, a psychologist and “happiness coach” in Long Branch, N.J., said the findings speak to the importance of doing things that provide a sense of purpose and meaning. Such activities make it easier to stay focused, Holstein explained.

“This research is fabulous and fascinating,” Holstein said. “But long before the research, psychologists and many educators recognized that in order to feel a sense of well-being, you need to feel you have purpose and meaning in life. That means you are containing the mind around certain projects and activities, and are forcing the mind not to be all over the place all day long.”

If you feel your mind starting to head down a “dark tunnel” of worry and anxiety, try to snap yourself out of it by bringing your thoughts back to the present, she said.

“It’s such a natural tendency to go over bad news or things that haven’t worked out, to dramatize the drama we are already experiencing,” she said. “But if we can distract ourselves by getting involved doing something, we get some distance from whatever we were ruminating on and it’s better for us.”

More information

If you’d like to be part of Harvard’s happiness research project, visittrackyourhappiness.org.

SOURCES: Matthew Killingsworth, doctoral candidate, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.; Barbara Becker Holstein, Ed.D., psychologist and happiness coach, Long Branch, N.J.; Nov. 12, 2010, Science

Last Updated: Nov. 11, 2010

Copyright © 2010 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Speaking 2 languages may delay getting Alzheimer's

New studies suggest bilingual ability increases executive control in the brain, which could fight mental disease

Mastering a second language can pump up your brain in ways that seem to delay getting Alzheimer's disease later on, scientists said Friday.

Never learned to habla or parlez? While the new research focuses mostly on the truly long-term bilingual, scientists say even people who tackle a new language later in life stand to gain.

The more proficient you become, the better, but "every little bit helps," said Ellen Bialystok, a psychology professor at York University in Toronto.

Much of the study of bilingualism has centered on babies, as scientists wondered why simply speaking to infants in two languages allows them to learn both in the time it takes most babies to learn one. Their brains seem to become more flexible, better able to multitask. As they grow up, their brains show better "executive control," a system key to higher functioning -- as Bialystok puts it, "the most important part of your mind."

But does that mental juggling while you're young translate into protection against cognitive decline when you're old?

Bialystok studied 450 Alzheimer's patients, all of whom showed the same degree of impairment at the time of diagnosis. Half are bilingual -- they've spoken two languages regularly for most of their lives. The rest are monolingual.

The bilingual patients had Alzheimer's symptoms and were diagnosed between four and five years later than the patients who spoke only one language, she told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Being bilingual does nothing to prevent Alzheimer's disease from striking. But once the disease does begin its silent attack, those years of robust executive control provide a buffer so that symptoms don't become apparent as quickly, Bialystok said.

"They've been able to cope with the disease," she said.

Her work supports an earlier study from other researchers that also found a protective effect.

What is it about being bilingual that enhances that all-important executive control system?

Both languages are essentially turned on all the time, but the brain learns to inhibit the one you don't need, said psychology professor Teresa Bajo of the University of Granada in Spain. That's pretty constant activity.

That's not the only area. University of British Columbia psychologist Janet Werker studies infants exposed to two languages from birth to see why they don't confuse the two, and says bilingual babies learn very early to pay attention better.

Werker tested babies in Spain who were growing up learning both Spanish and Catalan. She showed the babies videos of women speaking languages they'd never heard -- English and French -- but with the sound off. By measuring the tots' attention span, Werker concluded that babies could distinguish between English and French simply by watching the speakers' facial cues. It could have been the different lip shapes.

"It looks like French people are always kissing," she joked, while the English "th" sound evokes a distinctive lip-in-teeth shape.

Whatever the cues, monolingual babies couldn't tell the difference, Werker said Friday at the meeting.

But what if you weren't lucky enough to be raised bilingual? Scientists and educators know that it becomes far harder to learn a new language after puberty.

Partly that's because adults' brains are so bombarded with other demands that we don't give learning a new language the same attention that a young child does, Bialystok said.

At the University of Maryland, scientists are studying how to identify adults who would be good candidates to master a new language, and then what types of training are best. Having a pretty strong executive control system, like the lifelong bilinguals have, is among the good predictive factors, said Amy Weinberg, deputy director of the university's Center for Advanced Study of Language.

But people don't have to master a new language to benefit some, Bialystok said. Exercising your brain throughout life contributes to what's called cognitive reserve, the overall ability to withstand the declines of aging and disease. That's the basis of the use-it-or-lose-it advice from aging experts who also recommend such things as crossword puzzles to keep your brain nimble.

"If you start to learn at 40, 50, 60, you are certainly keeping your brain active," she said.

Published at: Salon