There is an update on the passage of the UK Mental Health (Discrimination) Bill in the House of Commons.
One research group in Scotland is piloting a drama based program which portrays the experience of people with young-onset dementia. The vignettes will be available for other researchers.
A recent report has supported the use of the citizen science where volunteers participate in running research trials. There is more here.
One Canadian study by Oh and colleagues showed a benefit for exercise in people following a stroke. 41 study participants underwent a 6 month exercise program and scores were found to improve after training. However it would be interesting to see the results of a larger replication study with a comparator arm in the study.
Mild Traumatic Brain Injury is associated with changes in the activity in the brain’s default mode network in this study.
An American study has looked at the effects of sedentary behaviour and walking on cognition in people with Alzheimer’s Disease. The researchers found evidence of a decline in cognition in people who did not engage in exercise compared to those engaged in over 2 hours of walking per week.
In one study researchers investigated factors that delayed progression to Alzheimer’s Disease in carriers of the apolipoprotein E epsilon 4 allele. They found that an absence of vascular risk factors, educational level and leisure activities all contributed to a delay in progression. This was a large cohort (n-932) followed up over 9 years.
Neuroscience
One recent study published in Frontiers in Neuroprosthetics showed evidence that a visual prosthesis enabled subjects in the study to read visual braille. Essentially a camera and software setup was used to convert text into a visual form of braille. This information was then fed through to a neural prosthesis that enabled the person to interpret the visual braille.
The neural cell community have created a resource for collating research and review papers in their field which may be of interest to other communities.
In this Magnetoencephalography study, researchers found that a slowing of resting state brain activity was correlated with the development of cognitive impairment in Parkinson’s Disease offering the prospect of a biomarker although further research is needed.
Open Science
There is a list of online educational tools for science here.
Frank Spencer has made his reading list of 10,000 books available here. The books are neuroscience and philosophy focused.
There is a very interesting diagram on this page displaying the results of a study investigating the relationship between journals in terms of where articles were submitted to. If an article was not published but instead resubmitted to another journal the relationship between the two was noted. The cumulative total of such links over a large sample set enabled the researchers to display a complex network of Journals. High impact Journals and Journals in related fields showed strong connections to each other.
Evolutionary Psychiatry
The remains of a 10,000 year old settlement reveal life in Scotland at that time and give insights into the evolution of culture.
Appendix
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The Amazing World of Psychiatry: A Psychiatry Blog 