All posts tagged: identify

Scientists identify distinct brain patterns linked to mental health symptoms

Scientists identify distinct brain patterns linked to mental health symptoms

Published by José

A new study published in Nature Mental Health has found that patterns of brain activity can help predict different types of mental health symptoms, and that these brain-based predictors are more similar within symptom categories than between them. In other words, the brain features linked to behaviors like anxiety or depression are more alike with each other than they are to behaviors like aggression or rule-breaking—and vice versa. This pattern held true in children, adolescents, and adults, suggesting that brain connectivity plays a consistent but distinct role in different types of mental health issues across development. Researchers conducted this study to address a long-standing question in mental health: whether internalizing behaviors and externalizing behaviors are supported by shared or unique patterns in the brain. These categories are often used in psychiatry to help understand a wide range of psychological problems, but little is known about how the brain’s network architecture relates to each one. “Mental health symptoms can be classified into two broad categories: internalizing and externalizing problems,” explained study authors Yueyue Lydia Qu and …

New groundbreaking AI helps identify patients at risk for suicide

New groundbreaking AI helps identify patients at risk for suicide

Published by skeptic

Suicide remains a major public health crisis, claiming the lives of approximately 14.2 per 100,000 Americans annually. Despite its prevalence, many individuals who die by suicide have interacted with healthcare providers in the year leading up to their death, often for reasons unrelated to mental health. This underscores a critical gap in routine risk identification and the need for innovative solutions to enhance suicide prevention efforts. A recent study conducted by researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center offers promising insights into how artificial intelligence (AI) can bridge this gap. Published in the journal, JAMA Network Open, the research focused on the Vanderbilt Suicide Attempt and Ideation Likelihood model (VSAIL), an AI system designed to analyze routine data from electronic health records (EHRs) to calculate a patient’s 30-day risk of suicide. By leveraging AI-driven clinical decision support (CDS) systems, the study aimed to improve suicide risk assessments during regular healthcare visits, particularly in neurology clinics. The study was a randomized controlled trial (RCT) involving 7,732 patient visits over six months across three neurology clinics at Vanderbilt. …

How to identify tree species in the winter

How to identify tree species in the winter

Published by skeptic

acronym: A word made by combining some of the starting letter or groups of letters from a number of words. For instance, STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. Radar is an acronym for RAdio Detection And Ranging. Even laser is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. anxiety: A nervous reaction to events causing excessive uneasiness and apprehension. People with anxiety may even develop panic attacks. app: Short for application, or a computer program designed for a specific task. archive: (adj. archival) To collect and store materials, including sounds, videos, data and objects, so that they can be found and used when they are needed. The term is also for the process of collecting and storing such things. People who perform this task are known as archivists. ash: (in biology) A group of deciduous trees in the olive family that are popular in landscaping and for timber. attention: The phenomenon of focusing mental resources on a specific object or event. beetle: An order of insects known as Coleoptera, …

Best of ‘How To’: Identify What You Enjoy

Best of ‘How To’: Identify What You Enjoy

Published by Sam

Listen and subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Pocket Casts This episode, from our first season, called How to Build a Happy Life, features host Arthur Brooks in conversation with the psychotherapist and Atlantic contributing writer Lori Gottlieb about how the first step in making room for more joy in your life is learning how to identify it. The following is a transcript of the episode: [Music] Megan Garber: Hey, it’s Megan Garber, one of the co-hosts of How to Know What’s Real. We’re excited to share with you a special series drawn from past seasons of the How To series. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been revisiting episodes around the theme of winding down. This episode is from our very first season, How to Build a Happy Life, and is called “How to Identify What You Enjoy.” It first published in 2021 during the pandemic, even though that was a really challenging time. This is still one of my favorite episodes to this day. Host Arthur Brooks explores how the …

I Don’t Identify With Infertility—Or Do I?

I Don’t Identify With Infertility—Or Do I?

Published by skeptic

Have you ever felt invisible, as though life was moving forward for everyone else while you stood still? Perhaps you have felt unsure about the future, caught in the endless cycle of comparing yourself to others, or that you don’t fit in. Or maybe you have carried a pain so complex and deep that explaining it felt impossible, so instead, you smiled and said, “I’m good,” even though nothing could be further from the truth. What’s your story? Source: Cast of Thousands/ Shutterstock If any of this resonates, you may already understand the emotions that define infertility. Infertility is often marked by feelings that are universal. Longing for something that seems just out of reach, mourning the loss of a life you thought you would have, and struggling with the frustration of being out of sync with the milestones others seem to achieve so easily. These are feelings that most people encounter in one form or another during their lives. The emotional weight of infertility reflects the quiet struggles many of us face. It challenges …

Researchers identify a critical threshold for relationship breakups

Researchers identify a critical threshold for relationship breakups

Published by José

A large longitudinal study of romantic relationships found that relationship satisfaction tends to decline over time, but the decrease is sharper in relationships that eventually break up compared to those that endure. The study also identified a “critical value” for relationship dissolution. The research was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Romantic relationships are a central aspect of most people’s lives. Individuals in fulfilling relationships tend to live longer, be healthier, and experience overall better well-being. This is why most people strive to establish and maintain fulfilling romantic relationships—relationships that bring them happiness. However, studies indicate that satisfaction in romantic relationships tends to systematically decline over the course of life. Some relationships end in dissolution, often those where satisfaction has declined more than usual. After ending a relationship, many individuals start a new one with a different partner. However, this new relationship may also follow the same general pattern of declining satisfaction. Study authors Janina Larissa Buehler and Ulrich Orth note that current knowledge on romantic relationships mainly comes from studies of …

How patterns of conversation could help identify early signs of autism in children

How patterns of conversation could help identify early signs of autism in children

Published by skeptic

Autistic children – and adults – often communicate differently to neurotypical people. Key characteristics of autistic speech can include less eye contact, focusing on the details rather than the overall gist of a conversation, and favouring literal meaning: autistic people may find it more challenging to guess if something is being implied rather than said directly. These differences may make some communication between autistic children and the adults in their lives difficult. But understanding them can help. My research with colleagues has explored how autistic and neurotypical children imitate their parents’ speech during a conversation. Imitation is an aspect of language and communication that starts from birth. When people talk with others, they often repeat what they say, mirror their gestures, align with their tone of voice and even their accent. This takes place as a learning process, but also to conform socially. It displays engagement, signalling to others in the conversation that they are being heard and understood. The kind of imitation we looked at, known as “resonance”, involves re-using the speech of others …

Encrypted services Apple, Proton and Wire helped Spanish police identify activist

Encrypted services Apple, Proton and Wire helped Spanish police identify activist

Published by skeptic

As part of an investigation into people involved in the pro-independence movement in Catalonia, the Spanish police obtained information from the encrypted services Wire and Proton, which helped the authorities identify a pseudonymous activist, according to court documents obtained by TechCrunch. Earlier this year, the Spanish police Guardia Civil sent legal requests through Swiss police to Wire and Proton, which are both based in Switzerland. The Guardia Civil requested any identifying information related to accounts on the two companies’ respective platforms. Wire responded providing the email address used to register the Wire account, which was a Protonmail address. Proton responded providing the recovery email for that Protonmail account, which was an iCloud email address, according to the documents. In the request, which listed “organised crime” and “terrorism” as the nature of the investigation, Spanish police wrote that it wanted to “find out who were the perpetrators of the facts taking place in the street riots in Catalonia in 2019.” Once the Guardia Civil obtained the iCloud email address, the documents show that it requested information …

Researchers identify genetic factors that help some reach 100 years with sharp minds

Researchers identify genetic factors that help some reach 100 years with sharp minds

Published by José

Researchers have discovered that individuals who live to be 100 years old and remain cognitively healthy possess genetic variations that may protect against Alzheimer’s disease. These “protective alleles” are significantly more prevalent among centenarians compared to Alzheimer’s patients and even middle-aged individuals without the disease. This finding could pave the way for new approaches in preventing and treating Alzheimer’s, particularly by focusing on enhancing these protective genetic mechanisms. The new findings have been published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia. Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive neurological disorder that predominantly affects older adults, leading to a decline in cognitive functions such as memory and reasoning. Over time, this can result in a complete loss of independence and eventually death. The risk of developing Alzheimer’s increases significantly with age, and while it is not an inevitable part of aging, it is one of the most common causes of dementia among seniors. The global population of individuals aged 100 years and older is rapidly increasing, with projections suggesting that there will be over 3 million centenarians worldwide by …

Researchers identify dangerous sleep habits that could lead to dementia

Researchers identify dangerous sleep habits that could lead to dementia

Published by skeptic

How long people sleep and when they go to bed could influence their risk of dementia. (CREDIT: Creative Commons) Researchers from China, Sweden, and the United Kingdom found that sleep for more than eight hours increased dementia risk by 69%, while sleeping before 9 p.m. rather than 10 p.m. or later, increased dementia risk by two times. Furthermore, the study found that “cognitive function should be monitored in older adults who report prolonged time in bed and advanced sleep timing, especially in older males aged 60 to 74.” Multivariable-adjusted spline curves for associations of sleep characteristics with incident dementia (n = 1982). (CREDIT: Associations of sleep timing and time in bed with dementia and cognitive decline among Chinese older adults: A cohort study) Research in the future “may clarify whether moderately reducing [time in bed] and delaying sleep timing can help slow down cognitive decline and delay dementia onset in older adults,” wrote Dr. Rui Liu, the lead author of the study, from Shandong University’s Shandong Provincial Hospital in Jinan, China. A total of 97 …