Latest news with #brainresearch
Daily Mail
25-06-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
Study finds nightmares TRIPLE the risk of dying early - are you in danger?
A new study suggests that nightmare sufferers could be three times more likely to die a decade earlier than the average person. Weekly nightmares were also found to be a stronger indicator of an early death than smoking, obesity, poor diet, and little physical activity. Children and adults with frequent nightmares also showed faster biological ageing, which accounted for approximately 40 per cent of the explanation for the increased risk of early death. Even monthly nightmares were linked to faster ageing and increased mortality, compared to those who rarely or never have them. Scientists behind the study, from Imperial College London, said the link is likely due to the harmful effect of disrupted sleep and nightmare-induced stress on our body's cells. Dr Abidemi Otaiku, a brain science research fellow at Imperial College London (ICL), who led the team, said: 'This stress reaction can be even more intense than anything we experience while awake. 'Our sleeping brains cannot distinguish dreams from reality. 'That's why nightmares often wake us up sweating, gasping for breath, and with our hearts pounding—because our fight-or-flight response has been triggered.' He added: 'Nightmares lead to prolonged elevations of cortisol, a stress hormone closely linked to faster cellular ageing. 'They also disrupt sleep quality and duration which impairs the body's ability to repair itself and restore cells throughout the night.' Otaiku shared 'simple measures' the public can take to prevent nightmares in the first place. He said: 'Avoiding scary movies, maintaining good sleep hygiene, managing stress, and seeking treatment for anxiety or depression can be effective.' The expert also recommended a special type of psychological treatment called image rehearsal therapy. This involves re-writing and rehearsing a nightmare into a less frightening version and can be done from your own home. However, those suffering from frequent night terrors that affect their quality of life may benefit from seeing a sleep specialist. In particular, he suggested trying another type of talking therapy for insomnia sufferers called CBT-I, which has been shown in studies to reduce nightmares and slow the ageing of brain cells. The technique aims to help people with insomnia address underlying thoughts and behaviours that contribute to their sleep problems. Recent studies have shown a lack of sleep increases the risk of heart disease, obesity, and death by 83 per cent, 82, per cent, and 40 per cent, respectively. However, the researchers from Imperial and the Dementia Research Institute in London are the first to show that nightmare frequency is an indicator of an early death. The team analyzed data from 2,429 children aged eight to ten and 183,012 adults aged 26 to 86 over a period of 19 years. Nightmare frequency in adults was self-reported at the start of the study, with participants monitored for up to 19 years. Childrens' nightmare frequency was reported by their parents at the beginning of the study. The team's findings were presented at the European Academy Of Neurology (EAN) Congress 2025, on June 23. The researchers revealed that those who reported an average of one nightmare a week, over the course of a decade, were three times more likely to die before the age of 70 compared to those who do not experience night terrors. The new findings follow a recent study that revealed daytime napping was linked to a higher risk of early death. The discovery was made by researchers who tracked the sleep habits of more than 86,000 healthy middle-aged adults. They found that those who regularly napped - particularly in the early afternoon -were more likely to die prematurely than those who did not. The study, presented at the SLEEP 2025 conference, found the risk of death rose by up to 20 per cent among frequent nappers. Experts said daytime sleepiness may be a warning sign of disrupted or poor-quality night-time rest, and could point to underlying health problems such as sleep disorders, dementia, or heart failure. Professor James Rowley, from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, who was not involved in the research, said the findings should influence how doctors ask patients about sleep. Speaking to Medscape Medical News, he said: 'The major take-home message is that if a doctor asks about a patient's sleep habits, they should also be asking about napping. 'In other words, doctors should be asking their patients, "do you nap in the day?"'
Daily Mail
24-06-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
The common sleep problem that TRIPLES the risk of dying early - are you in danger?
Suffer from regular nightmares? You could be three times more likely to die a decade earlier than the average person, a new study has suggested. Weekly nightmares were also found to be a stronger indicator of an early death than smoking, obesity, poor diet, and little physical activity. Children and adults with frequent nightmares also showed faster biological ageing, which accounted for approximately 40 per cent of the explanation for the increased risk of early death. Even monthly nightmares were linked to faster ageing and increased mortality, compared to those who rarely or never have them. The scientists behind the study, from Imperial College London, said the link is likely due to the harmful effect of disrupted sleep and nightmare-induced stress on our body's cells. Dr Abidemi Otaiku, a brain science research fellow at Imperial College London (ICL), who led the team, said: 'This stress reaction can be even more intense than anything we experience while awake. 'Our sleeping brains cannot distinguish dreams from reality. 'That's why nightmares often wake us up sweating, gasping for breath, and with our hearts pounding—because our fight-or-flight response has been triggered.' He added: 'Nightmares lead to prolonged elevations of cortisol, a stress hormone closely linked to faster cellular ageing. 'They also disrupt sleep quality and duration which impairs the body's ability to repair itself and restore cells throughout the night.' Dr Otaiku shared 'simple measures' the public can take to prevent nightmares in the first place. 'Avoiding scary movies, maintaining good sleep hygiene, managing stress, and seeking treatment for anxiety or depression can be effective,' he advised. He also recommended a special type of psychological treatment called image rehearsal therapy. This involves re-writing and rehearsing a nightmare into a less frightening version and can be done from your own home. But those suffering from frequent night terrors that affect their quality of life may benefit from seeing a sleep specialist, he added. In particular, he suggested trying another type of talking therapy for insomnia called CBT-I, which has been shown in studies to both reduce nightmares and slow the ageing of brain cells. The technique aims to help people with insomnia address underlying thoughts and behaviours that contribute to sleep problems. Recent studies have shown a lack of sleep increases risk of heart disease, obesity, and death by 83 per cent, 82, per cent, and 40 per cent, respectively. But the researchers from Imperial and the Dementia Research Institute in London are the first to show nightmare frequency is an indicator of an early death. The team analysed data from 2,429 children aged eight to 10 and 183,012 adults aged 26 to 86 over a period of 19 years. Nightmare frequency in adults was self-reported at the start of the study, with participants followed for up to 19 years. Childrens' nightmare frequency was reported by their parents at the beginning of the study. The team's findings were presented at the European Academy of Neurology (EAN) Congress 2025, on June 23. They revealed that those who reported an average of one nightmare a week, over the course of a decade, were three times more likely to die before the age of 70 compared to those without night terrors. The average man in England will live to around 78.8 years, and women 82.8, according to the latest data. The new findings follow a recent study that revealed daytime napping was linked to a higher risk of early death. The discovery was made by researchers who tracked the sleep habits of more than 86,000 healthy middle-aged adults. They found that those who regularly napped—particularly in the early afternoon—were more likely to die prematurely than those who did not. The study, presented at the SLEEP 2025 conference, found the risk of death rose by up to 20 per cent among frequent nappers. Experts said daytime sleepiness may be a warning sign of disrupted or poor-quality night-time rest, and could point to underlying health problems such as sleep disorders, dementia, or heart failure. Professor James Rowley, from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, who was not involved in the research, said the findings should influence how doctors ask patients about sleep. 'The major take-home message is that if a doctor asks about a patient's sleep habits, they should also be asking about napping,' he told Medscape Medical News. 'In other words, doctors should be asking their patients, "do you nap in the day?"'
Forbes
21-06-2025
- Health
- Forbes
2 Ways That ‘Childhood Trauma' Rewires The Brain — By A Psychologist
Research reveals how childhood trauma restructures the brain and immune system in ways that can last ... More well into adulthood. Most well-informed people are aware of how often traumatic childhood experiences are associated with serious mental health conditions later in life. What few people know, however, is how exactly trauma gives rise to these disorders. Some attribute it to emotional scarring, or psychological wounds that live only in the mind. But according to 2022 research from Brain, Behavior, & Immunity - Health, these wounds are in no way metaphorical. To the brain, trauma can be as real and physical as a cut, a burn or a broken bone. Here are two major ways that childhood trauma physically reshapes the brain, essentially rewiring individuals biologically. 1. Trauma Trains The Body And Brain To Stay On High Alert When a child is exposed to repeated threats, their body and brain have no choice but to adapt. And one of the first systems to respond, in such cases, is the immune system. As you may already know, the immune system's primary purpose is to protect us in situations it perceives to be risky. In most cases, this pertains to illness, injury, infections, viruses, bacteria and so on — but also to stressful situations. Should it sense a threat of any of these kinds, it readies itself to respond. But when abuse, neglect or instability are the norm in a child's life, their immune system remains ready and activated. The body cannot afford to respond to these environmental stressors in the way it would to a specific, localized or short-lived threat; constant threats necessitate constant vigilance. As such, since the immune system believes it's permanently at risk, it operates accordingly at all times. It produces chemical messengers — specifically, inflammatory molecules — to protect the body from infection or injury, but in extreme excess. However, without any physical wounds to tend to, this overproduction gives rise to chronic inflammation. Astoundingly, the 2022 study discovered elevated levels of these inflammatory markers years, even decades, after the participants' trauma. Typically, these inflammatory molecules are transmitted via the bloodstream to whichever site they're needed; in healthy individuals, the blood-brain barrier (BBB) usually prevents them from entering the brain. But, with enough exposure to trauma, this barrier can become much easier to bypass. As a result, these molecules begin crossing into the brain, where they're not usually meant to go. Once they cross the barrier, they begin to interfere with key neurological functions. This, in turn, can significantly impact a child's mood, memory or attention. Notably, if the body never gets the message that it's safe — that is, if a child is constantly exposed to trauma without any breaks — this state of hypervigilance can eventually give rise to serious mental health challenges. And, in severe cases, the brain's physical architecture begins to shift in response to the ongoing sense of danger. 2. Trauma Can Cause White Matter To Fray To understand what this chronic inflammation can do, it helps to think of the brain in the same way you would a town, rather than just an arbitrary collection of parts or lobes. This town is built with two primary materials: white and gray matter. In the simplest of terms, white matter is what keeps your brain running smoothly. It comprises billions of long, fibrous threads that allow your most important brain regions (your gray matter) to communicate with one another. In this case, gray matter would be the neighborhoods of the town, where your thoughts and feelings 'live.' White matter, on the other hand, is the highway system they use to travel. According to the 2022 study, individuals with bipolar disorder who had experienced adverse childhood experiences showed clear signs of white matter disruption. Specifically, their brain scans revealed lower levels of fractional anisotropy, which is a measure used to assess how coherent and structured these white matter tracts are. In essence, the aforementioned inflammation can result in lasting damage to an individual's white matter. In most cases, this means the brain's internal communication system will function less efficiently than that of a person without trauma. When white matter is intact and well-organized, it acts much like well-planned and well-looked after roads: information moves quickly and efficiently across the brain. But once white matter connections are lost, tangled or damaged, those signals slow down or get misrouted — much like cars do on a road with potholes, cracks or fading paint. This is exactly what the brain looks like when it's frequently exposed to trauma in early life: a collection of unkempt, interconnected roads, on which cars struggle significantly to travel. And this kind of 'unkemptness' in the brain's highway system has very real, functional consequences. The study notes that damage to the white matter's structural integrity can lead to miscommunication between some of the brain's most essential regions. In turn, it's considerably more challenging for the emotional centers of the brain to communicate with the areas responsible for logic and regulation. This can lead to dysfunction in: As a result, an individual might feel perpetually on edge without ever really knowing why. Even in situations where they have every logical reason to feel safe, they might struggle to calm themselves down. And despite immense exhaustion or tiredness, they might find themselves lying wide awake at night. Even the smallest, most inconsequential decisions can feel overwhelming, since the mental routes that once effortlessly facilitated those processes can feel as though they're punctuated with delays and detours. Unfortunately, these responses can persist well into adulthood, and well past their years of trauma. That said, this doesn't mean that the brain is 'broken,' nor that it has 'failed.' It just means that the brain has adapted to danger and inflammation in the only way it was designed to: by reinforcing defensive pathways to protect itself. When faced with trauma, the brain makes an executive decision to prioritize survival over flexibility — even if that means day-to-day functioning might be a bit more difficult later on in life. This is a sign of resilience, not failure. The effects of trauma can linger, but so can resilience. Take this science-backed test to find out how you respond to life's challenges: Brief Resilience Scale
Arab News
13-06-2025
- Health
- Arab News
What We Are Reading Today: Elusive Cures
Author: Nicole C. Rust Brain research has been accelerating rapidly in recent decades, but the translation of our many discoveries into treatments and cures for brain disorders has not happened as many expected. We do not have cures for the vast majority of brain illnesses, from Alzheimer's to depression, and many medications we do have to treat the brain are derived from drugs produced in the 1950s—before we knew much about the brain at all. Tackling brain disorders is clearly one of the biggest challenges facing humanity today. What will it take to overcome it? Nicole Rust takes readers along on her personal journey to answer this question. Drawing on her decades of experience on the front lines of neuroscience research, Rust reflects on how far we have come in our quest to unlock the secrets of the brain and what remains to be discovered. 'Elusive Cures' sheds light on one of the most daunting challenges ever confronted by science while offering hope for revolutionary new treatments and cures for the brain.
Globe and Mail
31-05-2025
- General
- Globe and Mail
Beyond ‘burnt toast': Eric Andrew-Gee probes the story of Penfield and Cone in The Mind Mappers
'I can smell burnt toast.' Most Canadians over 30 remember the 1991 Heritage Minute short that celebrated the revolutionary Dr. Wilder Penfield, who experimented on the brain's temporal lobes in the 1930s. Less well remembered is his partnership with the Iowa-born neurosurgeon William Cone. It was this collaboration that enabled Penfield to turn the Montreal Neurological Institute, familiarly known as the Neuro, into a global epicentre for brain research between the late 1920s and late 1950s. In his new book, The Mind Mappers, The Globe and Mail's Eric Andrew-Gee brings the unusually symbiotic relationship between this odd couple compellingly to life, giving due respect to Cone, whose life ended tragically inside the institution to which he had devoted the best part of his career. The partnership of these two neurosurgeons in Montreal seems like one of those perfect alignments of serendipity. How does it come about? Cone and Penfield had these eerily parallel childhoods. They were both raised in the American Midwest in the turn of the 20th century. Penfield's father had abandoned the family after going bankrupt as a feckless doctor in Spokane, Washington. He packed his family up on a train, sent them to live with his wife's family and then never joined them. Cone's father contracted typhoid fever and died when Cone was 2. They both grow up with stories of medical greatness in their families, but also medical failure. When they finally cross paths at Presbyterian Hospital in New York in the 1920s, their heads are in a very similar place. Penfield is one of a couple dozen practising neurosurgeons in the world, and he's basically learning on the fly because there's no one to teach him. That's the state of neurosurgery at the time. It was so rudimentary, so crude, so dangerous for patients, and so heartbreaking for practitioners who were constantly losing patients. Cone arrives as a research fellow. He's interested in the brain from his medical training in Iowa. His grandmother had died of a brain tumour, so he had the brain on the brain. Penfield wonderfully describes this moment when he sees Cone walking down this stairwell in the hospital. In retrospect, he realizes this is the moment that set the course of his life. They immediately realize there's chemistry there, although they're polar opposites. The differences are striking. There seems to have been a kind of symbiosis through opposition. Penfield's this tall, dapper, handsome, athletic guy. Very outgoing, charismatic and well-spoken. Cone is none of those things. He's stocky and socially awkward. He might be diagnosed with Asperger's nowadays. He prefers tinkering in his workshop, inventing new surgical tools, and sitting with patients, holding their hands. Penfield is an excellent doctor and cares about patients, but he also has grand philosophical visions of what the study of the brain could be. It's a perfect match because one is very hands-on and practical and one is a silver-tongued orator and scientific visionary. When Penfield is recruited by the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, his one condition is they hire Cone too. You started off researching Penfield, and then stumbled upon this little-known character, Cone, who effectively ends up the hero of your book. Tell me about that discovery. There's an internal history of the Neuro – a coffee-table sort of book – with a chapter on Cone that describes this figure who's probably the greatest neurosurgeon of his generation. The master of masters. Incredible judgment, incredible dedication and the most patient-oriented doctor anyone had ever met. Thanks to his extraordinary gifts as a doctor, he made possible the scientific leaps that had originally gotten me interested in Penfield's work. Then, in his early 60s, he dies suddenly in his office in tragic circumstances that bring the golden age of the institute to an end. I got the sense that this was a great archetypal story, this master-and-apprentice relationship. As a storyteller I was hooked, but as a person I was just so moved by Cone's saintliness, by the fact that this medical hero who was at the heart of one of the great stories in Canadian science was totally forgotten. He really comes to life in the book, which is remarkable given the lack of paper trail. Penfield had a sense of his legacy, so he kept every piece of paper that crossed his desk, and a journal. Cone has virtually none of that. He hated to write because it slowed him down. He wouldn't even write patents for the surgical tools he invented. It could have made him tons of money. People would badger him to write back about a simple, 'Are you coming to this medical conference?' Author John Green became obsessed with tuberculosis – so he wrote a book about it So virtually everything we know about Cone comes from Penfield's archive, from their correspondence, because he did write to Penfield. Their correspondence is extraordinary. Tender longing when they're apart. It was in the clipped style of mid-century Protestant North American men, but it's nonetheless revealing. To that point, there's a strong suggestion that Cone's devotion to Penfield – he turns down the opportunity to run his own institute to stay on as Penfield's second-in-command, for substantially less pay – might have been more than platonic. Male friendships can be as fraught and turbulent as any love affair. I do think Cone's feelings ultimately tipped over into the romantic. I don't know if he ever acknowledged that to himself. Almost certainly not to Penfield. It was illegal to be homosexual in Canada at that time. There's all this circumstantial evidence that his love for Penfield was something more than platonic. He had this bitterly unhappy marriage, had no children. On its own, that doesn't tell you much, but then there's the tone of the letters to Penfield. When Penfield doesn't appoint Cone his successor when he decides to retire, it devastates him. Probably it wasn't the right role for Cone in some way, but the way Penfield went about it felt to Cone like a stab in the back. He has a meltdown. He falls into a deep depression in the years after this rift. And I'm not sure the scale of his reaction makes sense if his feelings for Penfield were merely platonic. What are Cone and Penfield's greatest achievements – either singly or together? Cone made the hospital hygienic, functional, medically sound, so that people wanted to come there and be cured. But it was Penfield's ideas that made their legacy. Penfield had a sister who had a brain tumour in her frontal lobe that caused seizures. In 1928 he and Cone operated on her at the Royal Victoria Hospital and she almost died. Penfield was a little too aggressive and carved out about an eighth of her brain without really knowing what the frontal lobes did. Book Review: Original Sin details Biden's declining health and a cover-up by closest advisers She survived the operation, but the tumour grew back and she died. In the meantime, her personality changed. She became, as he described it, like a lump of putty. Penfield realized he'd been reckless, and that he needed to map the brain if he was going to be an effective surgeon. That's what he and Cone did, and that's their greatest achievement. They were like the early cartographers. They developed this procedure for treating epilepsy that would simultaneously map the brain. In the course of doing this, they were also figuring out what different regions of the brain were responsible for. And this is absolutely crucial, not only for surgeons to know where not to cut, but for the treatment of neurological conditions. It was the mind-body problem that had always puzzled philosophers and scientists: Is there a ghost in the machine, different from our gray matter, that makes us? This interview has been condensed and edited
