Obese adults at higher risk of getting occasional migraines
Obese people are 81 percent more likely to have occasional migraines as compared to people of normal weight, according to a new study. Study author B. Lee Peterlin, DO, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD said that as obesity is a risk factor that can potentially be modified and since some medications for migraine can lead to weight gain or loss, this is important information for people with migraine and their doctors. For the study, 3,862 people with an average age of 47 filled out surveys with information on height, weight and migraines. A total of 1,044 participants were obese and 188 of the participants had occasional, or episodic, migraine. “These results suggest that doctors should promote healthy lifestyle choices for diet and exercise in people with episodic migraine,” Peterlin said. Peterlin said the results also indicate that the link between episodic migraine and obesity is stronger in those under the age of 50, the years when migraine is most prevalent, as compared to people older than 50. The study is published in the journal of Neurology. (ANI)
Aerobic exercise boosts memory
A new study has revealed that physical fitness can boost learning and memory in 9-10-year-old kids, particularly when initial learning on a task is more challenging. Researcher Lauren Raine along with his colleagues from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, asked 48 children aged nine to ten to memorize names and locations on a fictitious map, either only by studying the information or being tested on the material as they studied. Half the children were in the top 30 percent of their age group on a test measuring aerobic fitness, while the other half scored in the lowest 30 percent. When asked to recollect the information studied, children who were fitter performed better than those who were not as fit. The difference between the high-fitness and low-fitness groups was also stronger when the initial learning was performed by studying alone than when testing and study were interspersed. Previous studies have suggested that combining testing and study improves later recall in children, and is less challenging than studying alone. Based on these results, the authors suggest that fitness levels may influence learning differently when the study method used is more challenging, and that higher levels of aerobic fitness can benefit learning and memory in school-age children. The research also suggested that these findings may be important from an educational policy perspective. (ANI)
Righty or lefty? It’s all in your genes
Scientists have identified a specific network of genes that influences whether a person is right-handed or left-handed. Scientists at the Universities of Oxford, St Andrews, Bristol and the Max Plank Institute in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, found correlations between handedness and a network of genes involved in establishing left-right asymmetry in developing embryos. “The genes are involved in the biological process through which an early embryo moves on from being a round ball of cells and becomes a growing organism with an established left and right side,” said first author William Brandler, from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Functional Genomics Unit at Oxford University. The researchers suggest that the genes may also help establish left-right differences in the brain, which in turn influences handedness. Humans are the only species to show such a strong bias in handedness, with around 90 per cent of people being right-handed. The cause of this bias remains largely a mystery. The researchers, led by Dr Silvia Paracchini at the University of St Andrews, were interested in understanding which genes might have an influence on handedness, in order to gain an insight into the causes and evolution of handedness. The team carried out a genome-wide association study to identify any common gene variants that might correlate with which hand people prefer using. The most strongly associated, statistically significant variant with handedness is located in the gene PCSK6, which is involved in the early establishment of left and right in the growing embryo. (PTI)
Proteins vital to long-term memory identified
Scientists have identified a group of proteins essential to the formation of long-term memories.
Researchers from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in Florida studied a family of proteins called Wnts. These proteins send signals from the outside to the inside of a cell, inducing a cellular response crucial for many aspects of embryonic development, including stem cell differentiation, as well as for normal functioning of the adult brain. “By removing the function of three proteins in the Wnt signalling pathway, we produced a deficit in long-term but not short-term memory,” said Ron Davis, chair of the TSRI Department of Neuroscience. “The pathway is clearly part of the conversion of short-term memory to the long-term stable form, which occurs through changes in gene expression,” Davis said. The findings stem from experiments probing the role of Wnt signalling components in olfactory memory formation in Drosophila, the common fruit fly – a widely used doppelganger for human memory studies. In the new study, the scientists inactivated the expression of several Wnt signalling proteins in the mushroom bodies of adult flies – part of the fly brain that plays a role in learning and memory. The resulting memory disruption, Davis said, suggests that Wnt signalling participates actively in the formation of long-term memory, rather than having some general, non-specific effect on behaviour. “What is interesting is that the molecular mechanisms of adult memory use the same processes that guide the early development of the organism, except that they are repurposed for memory formation,” Davis said. “One difference, however, is that during early development the signals are intrinsic, while in adults they require an outside stimulus to create a memory,” he said. (PTI)