Therapist Unlimited Blog

 

The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) is an academic society that promotes rigorous research directed toward understanding the nature, function, and underlying mechanisms of consciousness.
The ASSC includes members working in the fields of cognitive science, medicine, neuroscience, philosophy, and other relevant disciplines in the sciences and humanities.

 

Membership
 

 

There are three categories of membership. Please note the minimal requirements for membership in each of the categories when submitting your application.

    * Student Member - The applicant is a student currently enrolled in a degree in an accredited program. The applicant’s research interests and major project matches with the general research areas promoted by the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness. In addition to the member benefits below, student members are eligible for various ASSC programs and scholarships, including student activities at annual meetings and such.
    * Regular Member - without voting privileges - The applicant has a degree from an accredited University and an interest in the promotion or pursuit of the scientific study of consciousness as defined by the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness.
    * Full-Voting Member - The applicant has a graduate degree in a relevant discipline and at least two articles published in internationally recognised peer reviewed journals or the equivalent in scholarly output particular to the applicant’s discipline. These articles should relate to the scientific, clinical, or philosophical study of consciousness. In addition, members meeting these criteria will be entitled to vote on official ASSC matters such as Board elections and other issues presented to the membership as they arise.

 

 

Get to know more the organization by visiting their official website at http://www.theassc.org/.

Those persons who wish to avoid depression when they reach middle age better start eating healthy diet now.
A recent study from the United Kingdom has shown that eating healthy foods such as  high proportion of fruits, vegetables and fish, protects middle aged people against depression compared to a processed food diet containing a high proportion of high fat dairy
food, processed meat, fried food, refined grains and sugar-laden desserts.
The research was made possible through the effort of researchers from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London (UCL), UK and the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), and University of Montpellier, France.
Based on their study, the researchers revealed that much research on diet and depression tends to focus on individual nutrients so they thought they would look at links between overall dietary patterns and depression.
To get the data, the researchers looked at 3,486 participants of average age 57 years (nearly three quarters were men) who were part of the Whitehall II study.
The Whitehall II study was created by co-author and UCL Professor Sir Michael Marmot to investigate links between disease and social class, psychosocial factors and life style. It began by looking at the health of working people, and is now also looking to answer questions about how previous and current circumstances affect health and quality of life in an ageing group of participants.
The data allowed the researchers to identify two dietary patters: a whole food diet and a processed food diet. The whole food diet comprised mainly fresh fruits and vegetables and fish, while the processed diet comprised mainly sweetened desserts, fried foods, high fat
dairy foods, processed meat and refined grains.
To assess depression, the researchers used self-reported data that had been gathered five years after the dietary data using the CES-D scale. CES-D, short for Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale, is a commonly used self-report questionnaire for assessing depression.
It asks a series of multiple choice questions about how the participant has been feeling over the past week, covering topics such as concentration, loss of appetite, worry, how well they have been able to shake off depressive moods, quality of sleep, feelings of
loneliness, self-worth, energy levels, and so on.

 

 

 

To avoid depression in middle age it is time to engage in a healthy diet now.

 

 

 

When they analysed the results and ruled out potential confounders such as age, gender, education, smoking, exercise, and chronic diseases, the researchers found that:
* Participants in the top 33 per cent (top tertile) of the whole food diet pattern, ie whose diet most closely matched the whole food diet, had a 26 per cent lower risk of receiving a CES-D depression assessment five years later (odds ratio 0.74, with 95 per cent probability of this being in the range 0.56 to 0.99) compared to the bottom 33 per cent (bottom tertile), ie whose diet least closely matched the whole food diet.
* In contrast, participants whose diet was high in processed foods had a 58 per cent higher risk of receiving a CES-D depression rating five years later.
The researchers concluded that:
"In middle-aged participants, a processed food dietary pattern is a risk factor for CES-D depression 5 years later, whereas a whole food pattern is protective."
According to BBC News, co-author Dr Archana Singh-Manoux, who works at UCL and INSERM, suggested there was a possibility that the finding could be explained by a lifestyle factor they had not accounted for.
In other words the study does not prove that a processed food diet causes depression: it could be that people destined to become depressed become inclined to eat more processed foods, that there is a yet undiscovered factor behind both.
However, when results as strong as these emerge, and a consistent pattern linking diet and depression is found by several studies, it would tend to suggest that a healthy diet does protect against mental ill health.
The Chief Executive of the UK-based Mental Health Foundation, Dr Andrew McCulloch told the BBC that:
"This study adds to an existing body of solid research that shows the strong links between what we eat and our mental health."
He said major studies like this were crucial in helping us understand more about how diet contributes to mental illness. He said people in the UK were increasingly adopting unhealthy diets, and eating less nutritious and fresh food and more saturated fats and sugars.

 

A recent study done in Japan has shown that cancer can be transferred from mother to unborn child.
The study was the work of first author Takeshi Isoda from the Department of Pediatrics and Developmental Biology at Tokyo Medical and Dental University, and colleagues.
The researchers discovered that cases of mother to offspring transmission of cancer are rare and few have been recorded over the last 100 years, wrote the authors, and there is barely any evidence that shows the mother’s cancer cells match the baby’s.
In the paper, Isoda and colleagues describe a case where a 28-year old mother was diagnosed with leukemia shortly after giving birth to a baby girl who developed similar symptoms when she was nearly a year old.

 

 

 

 

Pregnant women should keep themselves healthy and away from cancer since they can transmit this deadly disease to their kids.

 

Using various methods, Isoda and colleagues were able to show that the cancer cells in the baby were a genetic match to those of the mother.
First they generated clones of the cancer cells from both mother and baby and found that they "shared the same unique BCR-ABL1 genomic fusion sequence, indicating a shared, single-cell origin", and then they showed that "microsatellite markers in the infant cancer were all of maternal origin".
They also found that the baby’s cancer cells had inherited a pattern of missing genes (notably a "major deletion on one copy of chromosome 6p that included deletion of HLA alleles") that probably helped the cells avoid detection and destruction by the placental barrier and the baby’s immune system.

 

 

A recent medical study has shown that doing exercises during pregnancy offers huge rewards to mothers wishing to do some breastfeeding for their children.
Based on the study it was discovered that new mothers who are breastfeeding their babies may need more aerobic and resistance exercise in order to combat temporary bone loss caused by calcium depletion.
Cheryl Lovelady, Ph.D., and her research team measured bone mineral density in 20 women four to 20 weeks postpartum and found that those who didn’t exercise lost around 7 percent of their lower-spine bone density in that time period.
"During lactation, women transfer around 200 milligrams of calcium per day from their own stores to their breast milk," Lovelady said. "Calcium is critically linked to bone density and health, and this depletion can result in loss of bone mineral density. When mothers wean their infants, bone mineral density usually returns to normal levels.
We proposed that weight-bearing exercise would minimize bone losses during lactation and decrease the risk of osteoporosis later in life."
Exercise especially strength training can slow bone loss during lactation, the study found.

 

 

Doing some form of exercises offers huge benefits to pregnant women.

 

Women who combined strength training and aerobic exercise three days a week kept their lower-spine bone mineral density loss to just 4.8 percent highly preferable to the 7-percent loss in the non-exercising group.
In addition, regular weight-bearing exercise has an added benefit for moms trying to shed post-pregnancy weight: the regular exercisers in the study significantly improved their body composition compared to the non-exercisers, lowering their body fat percentage and increasing lean mass, even without dietary intervention. Exercisers increased their one-repetition maximal strength anywhere from 31 to 221 percent.
"Women in our study found themselves overall healthier and stronger after completing the post-partum exercise program, which lasted just 16 weeks," Lovelady said.
"Moreover, implementing this exercise into daily life can help entire families get active and improve their overall health."

 

A popular saying state that the eyes is the windows to the soul.
But recent medical research has shown that eyes is more than just a window for the soul since it can also offer important clues  to your risk of heart disease and stroke.
Researchers of the Centre for Eye Research Australia (CERA) are currently doing an extensive study to prove that blood vessels in the retina at the back of the eye reflect changes in blood vessels in other parts of the body, especially the brain, kidneys and heart.
The team of medical experts believed that that blood vessels in the retina can be photographed and the images analysed by a computer to accurately determine a person’s risk of heart attack or stroke cardiovascular diseases that change the appearance of blood vessels in the eye.
Lead CERA researcher, Professor Tien Wong, explained through their study they wish to show that that combining this non-invasive retinal scan with the results from current risk assessment methods will improve precision and reliability in predicting cardiovascular disease.
Wong and his team has taken thousands of eye images and created a program that recognises common features of conditions that cause damage to be seen on the retina.

 

 

Your eyes is not only the window of the soul but also an indicator if a man suffers from a form of heart disease.

 

 

Once a person has symptoms of cardiovascular disease, damage has already been done to the body. So finding and treating high risk people early, even before they have symptoms, could minimise blood vessel damage and potentially avoid heart attack or stroke.
At present, doctors estimate a person’s statistical chance of developing cardiovascular disease by looking at individual factors such as whether they smoke, their family history, weight, blood cholesterol and blood pressure. Once you get symptoms, more extensive and sometimes invasive tests, such as angiogram are needed to confirm the result and assess severity of damage to the arteries of the heart or elsewhere.
Professor Wong said, "Results from the retinal scan would be delivered to GPs for a better picture of their patient’s health.
Dr. Christine Bennett, chair of the MBF Foundation Steering Committee and Bupa Chief Medical Officer*, went on to say, "This early assessment of the likelihood that a person will develop diseases like heart disease, stroke or even type 2 diabetes has the potential to significantly improve quality of life, reduce hospitalisations and the 50,000 deaths each year caused by cardiovascular disease."
Once a person knows their risk they may be able to delay the onset of developing cardiovascular disease by modifying their lifestyle accordingly.
"We know that smoking, too much alcohol, inactivity and poor nutrition are bad for our health but seeing the evidence not with, but in, your own eyes could be the wake-up call that triggers change," Bennett said.
 

If you find yourself more concerned about highly publicized dangers that grab your immediate attention such as terrorist attacks, while forgetting about the more mundane threats such as global warming, you’re not alone.
And you can’t help it because it’s human nature, according to a new study led by University of Colorado at Boulder psychology Professor Leaf Van Boven. That’s because people tend to view their immediate emotions, such as their perceptions
of threats or risks, as more intense and important than their previous emotions.
In one part of the study focusing on terrorist threats, using materials adapted from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Van Boven and his research colleagues presented two scenarios to people in a college laboratory depicting warnings about travelling abroad to two countries.
Participants were then asked to report which country seemed to have greater terrorist threats. Many of them reported that the country they last read about was more dangerous.
"What our study has shown is that when people learn about risks, even in very rapid succession where the information is presented to them in a very clear and vivid way, they still respond more strongly to what is right in front of them," Van Boven said.
With that in mind, Van Boven says one of the take-home messages from the study is that when communicating to the public, people must be mindful of how and when they publicize threats, which is a tall task in the around-the-clock news cycle of today.
"Whatever the threat of the season is can ‘crowd out’ concern about other threats even if those other threats are actually more dangerous," Van Boven said. "Because we are so emotionally influenced when it comes to assessing and reacting to threats, we may ignore very dangerous threats that happen not to be very emotionally arousing."

 

 

 

Be careful with your emotion since it could lead you to astray.

 

 

Human emotions stem from a very old system in the brain, Van Boven says. When it comes to reacting to threats, real or exaggerated, it goes against the grain of thousands of years of evolution to just turn off that emotional reaction. It’s not something most people can do, he said.
"And that’s a problem, because people’s emotions are fundamental to their judgements and decisions in everyday life," Van Boven said. "When people are constantly being bombarded by new threats or things to be fearful of, they can forget about the genuinely big problems, like global warming, which really need to be dealt with on a large scale with public
support."
In today’s 24-hour society, talk radio, the Internet and extensive media coverage of the "threat of the day" only exacerbate the trait of focusing on our immediate emotions, he said.
"One of the things we know about how emotional reactions work is they are not very objective, so people can get outraged or become fearful of what might actually be a relatively minor threat," Van Boven said. "One worry is some people are aware of
these kinds of effects and can use them to manipulate our actions in ways that we may prefer to avoid."
The study, which involved undergraduate students as subjects, was published in the August edition of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Michaela Huber, a doctoral student of psychology and neuroscience at CU-Boulder and Assistant Professor Katherine White of the University of Calgary co-authored the study.
Van Boven said the study would be of particular interest to policymakers.
"If you’re interested in having an informed citizenry you tell people about all the relevant risks, but what our research shows is that is not sufficient because those things still happen in sequence and people will still respond immediately to whatever happens to be in front of them," he said. "In order to make good decisions and craft good policies we need to know how people are going to respond."
 

 

 

A recent medical study has shown that a great number of prostate patients do not anymore need treatment for their medical condition.
In the largest study of its kind, the international team of pathologists studied an initial 4,000 prostate cancer patients over a period of 15 years to further understanding into the natural progression of the disease and how it should be managed.
The research could be used to develop a blood test to distinguish between aggressive and non-aggressive forms of prostate cancer.
Globally, prostate cancer is the fifth most common malignancy and accounts for 13% of male deaths in the UK. Studies have shown that men with non-aggressive prostate cancer can live with the disease untreated for many years, but aggressive cancer requires immediate treatment.
Pathologists found that the presence of a protein, called Hsp-27, in cancer cells was an indicator that the disease will progress and require treatment. The study showed, however, that in more than 60% of cases the protein was not expressed and the cancer could be managed by careful monitoring, rather than with active invention methods, such as drug treatment or surgery.
The protein normally has a positive function in the body, helping healthy cells survive when they are placed under ’stressful’ conditions, such as disease or injury. If the protein is expressed in cancer, however, it can prevent the diseased cells from dying, allowing the cancer to progress. The team, supported by Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and in collaboration with scientists in London and New York, found that the protein can be used to predict how the disease will behave and could help doctors advise patients on how the disease could affect their daily lives.

 

 

 

A recent study has shown that prostate cancer do not necessarily need medical treatment.

 

 

Professor Chris Foster, Head of the University’s Division of Pathology, explains: "Cancer of any kind is a very distressing disease and has the ability to impact on every aspect of a person’s life. Chemotherapy and surgery can also have a significant effect on health and wellbeing and that is why it is important that we first understand the biological nature of the disease and how it will behave in each individual patient, before determining if and when a person needs a particular type of treatment.
"By studying the disease in a large number of men throughout the UK and over a long period of time, we have been able to get a more complete picture of how to manage the disease successfully, while limiting the negative impact it can have on a patient’s life. The study also demonstrates the role of modern of Pathology, not only in establishing diagnoses but in determining if the subsequent management of individual patients is biologically appropriate for their particular condition.
"The protein  or biomarker we have identified provides us with a signal that the disease will continue to progress. We know that at the point this marker is expressed, medics need to administer treatment to kill the cancer cells. We have shown that in the majority of cases, however, this marker is not expressed and therefore patients do not necessarily need to go through treatment to lead a normal life."

 

 

Although alcohol consumption is known to be associated with chronic pancreatitis, new evidence indicates that a threshold of five or more drinks per day is required to significantly raise risk; however, most patients with chronic pancreatitis do not drink this amount.
In addition, based on the study it was also discovered that smoking is an independent, dose-dependent risk factor.
"Chronic pancreatitis is an inflammatory syndrome of the pancreas characterized by progressive parenchymal fibrosis scarring of the organ, maldigestion, diabetes mellitus and pain," the researchers explained.
"Recurrent acute pancreatitis [acute pancreatitis that occurs on two or more occasions and may become chronic] and chronic pancreatitis are associated with alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking.
The etiology of recurrent acute pancreatitis and chronic pancreatitis is complex, and effects of alcohol and smoking may be limited to specific patient subsets."
Dhiraj Yadav, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues in the North American Pancreatic Study Group examined the current prevalence of alcohol use and smoking and their association with pancreatitis in patients evaluated at U.S. referral centers.
Between 2000 and 2006, 1,000 patients (540 with chronic pancreatitis and 460 with recurrent acute pancreatitis) were  enrolled in the North American Pancreatitis Study 2 (NAPS2), as were 695 healthy controls.
All participants (average age 49.7) reported their alcohol consumption and smoking habits.

 

About one-fourth of both controls and patients were lifetime abstainers. Among those with chronic pancreatitis, 38.4 percent of men and 11 percent of women were very heavy drinkers  (five or more drinks per day), compared with 16.9 percent of men and 5.5 percent of women with recurrent acute pancreatitis and 10 percent of men and 3.6 percent of women in the control group.
"We found the threshold drinking amount for association between alcohol use and chronic pancreatitis to be five or more drinks per day," the authors write. Compared with abstaining and light drinking (half a drink per day or less), very heavy drinking was associated with approximately triple the odds of developing chronic pancreatitis. However, fewer patients with chronic pancreatitis  than expected (about one-fourth) drank at this level. Other factors, including genetic mutations, also contribute to pancreatitis risk.
Although many heavy drinkers also smoked, cigarette use was an independent risk factor for both chronic pancreatitis and recurrent acute pancreatitis. Among smokers, those with chronic pancreatitis tended to smoke more (26.6 pack-years, vs. 19.5 pack-years for those with recurrent acute pancreatitis and 16.2 pack-years for controls; one pack-year is about 7,300 cigarettes  smoked) and had smoked for a longer period of time (a median or midpoint of 30.5 years, vs. 21.9 years for controls and 22.7 years for those with recurrent acute pancreatitis), suggesting a dose-dependent effect.
"In conclusion, only very heavy alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking are independent risk factors for chronic pancreatitis," the authors write. "Risk for chronic pancreatitis from alcohol consumption occurs above a threshold level, while risk due to smoking is dose dependent. Drinking levels in subjects with recurrent acute pancreatitis are similar to controls.
Only a minority of patients with recurrent acute pancreatitis and chronic pancreatitis currently seen at secondary or tertiary U.S. centers could be categorized as very heavy drinkers."

 

According to a recent medical study music might also help premature infants learn to suckle better and reduce their pain.
Dr. Manoj Kumar, an assistant clinical professor in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry’s
Department of Pediatrics said if confirmed, this would be a simple, low-cost way to help these tiny babies feed on their own faster and move them out of neonatal units sooner.
Kumar said if you can get them to feed earlier then you can save health-care resources.
Kumar added music also appears to reduce infants’ pain during circumcision and some medical procedures.
He explained music is increasingly being played in neonatal units on an informal basis because parents and caregivers have a perception that it’s beneficial for the infants.
Kumar, a clinical epidemiologist who also has training in health economics and several of his colleagues associated with the Alberta Research Centre for Child Health Evidence (ARCHE) in the Pediatrics Department decided to conduct a rigorous, systematic review of medical literature to see what research has shown.
Of 180 studies the U of A team examined, nine randomly controlled trials published between 1989 and 2006 met the review criteria and were included.

 

 

Those who have premature babies try to play music to improve their feeding and reduce pain at the same time.

 

These nine studies were all so different that the review team says it was not possible to reach any definitive conclusion.
But the team did find much "preliminary evidence that music may have beneficial effects in terms of physiological parameters, behavioural states and pain reduction during painful medical procedures."
"Music may also improve oral feeding among premature infants," the U of A researchers say.
In particular, Kumar notes one 2003 U.S. study reported that feeding rates increased significantly with use of a pacifier-activated lullaby (PAL) system in preterm infants who previously were having difficulty in making the transition to oral feeding. This result warrants further investigation, given its potential implications for health-care budgets, he says.
The PAL system consisted of a soother connected to a pressure transducer which was further connected to a tape recorder.
When the baby sucked on the soother, the pressure activated recorded lullabies.
Another high-quality pilot study, conducted in the U.S. in 2001, looked at whether music could help with pain control during circumcision. It found that playing recorded lullabies and nursery rhymes lowered pain levels as measured by the babies’ heart rate and oxygen saturation, and according to established pain scales that measure infants’ behavioural responses.
Moreover, the researchers said the link between late motherhood and longevity could be something that is not inherited. It could be good nutrition or good living, suggesting that if you are a healthier mom you live longer.
With these findings, women who gave birth late are very happy since they will more opportunities to be with their baby despite their old age.

 

A recent study has confirmed that doing yoga can offer treatment to those patients suffering from back-pain.
Based on the student made by the West Virginia University it was discovered that people with chronic low-back problems who do yoga also do better at overcoming pain and depression than people treated
conventionally for back pain.
According to the the three-year, $400,000 study, those group who did yoga postures showed lifted mood, less pain and
improved function compared with a control group who received standard medical therapy.
Kimberly Williams, Ph.D., research assistant professor in the Department of Community Medicine revealed the yoga group had less pain, less functional disability and less depression compared with the control group.

 

 

Those who wish to find relief in their back-pain can try yoga as treatment.

 

 

Williams added the result were statistically significant and clinically important changes that must be maintained six months after the intervention.
She said 90 study subjects, who experienced mild to moderate functional disability, were randomly assigned to the yoga group or the group that received conventional medical therapy.
She added yoga participants took 90-minute classes twice a week for 24 weeks, doing postures targeted to relieve chronic low-back pain.
Williams said a follow up continued for six months after the end of classes or therapy.
Moreover, Williams said the classes were taught by certified Iyengar yoga instructors.
She said a popular form of yoga in the United States, Iyengar yoga emphasises postures that encourage strength, flexibility and balance.
It is said based on the latest statistics that in the United States, low-back pain represents the largest category of medical reimbursements, with $34 billion in direct medical costs reported annually.