Patients With Alzheimer's Disease Observed Blunting Of Emotional Expression

Patients With Alzheimer's Disease Observed Blunting Of Emotional Expression.
Patients with Alzheimer's virus often can seem shrinking and apathetic, symptoms frequently attributed to memory problems or tribulation finding the right words. But patients with the progressive brain disorder may also have a reduced knack to experience emotions, a new study suggests. When researchers from the University of Florida and other institutions showed a undersized group of Alzheimer's patients 10 positive and 10 negative pictures, and asked them to berate them as pleasant or unpleasant, they reacted with less intensity than did the group of healthy participants.

And "For the most part, they seemed to empathize the emotion normally evoked from the picture they were looking at ," said Dr Kenneth Heilman, superior author of the study and a professor of neurology at the University of Florida's McKnight Brain Institute. But their reactions were unalike from those of the healthy participants. "Even when they comprehended the scene, their irrational reaction was very blunted". The study is published online in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences.

The examine participants - seven with Alzheimer's and eight without - made a attend on a piece of paper that had a happy face on one end and a sad one on the other, putting the mark closer to the in seventh heaven face the more pleasing they found the picture and closer to the sad face the more distressing. Compared to the robust participants, those with Alzheimer's found the pictures less intense.

They didn't find the pleasant pictures (such as babies and puppies) as gregarious as did the healthy participants. They found the negative pictures (snakes, spiders) less negative. "If you have a blunted emotion, hoi polloi will say you look withdrawn". One important take-home bulletin is for families and physicians not to automatically think a patient with blunted emotions is depressed and appeal for or prescribe antidepressants without a thorough evaluation first.

Scientists Are Exploring The Human Cerebral Cortex

Scientists Are Exploring The Human Cerebral Cortex.
Higher levels of self-professed religious reliance appear to be reflected in increased thickness of a key brain area, a unfamiliar study finds. Researchers at Columbia University in New York City found that the outer layer of the brain, known as the cortex, is thicker in some areas all people who place a lot of significance on religion. The bone up involved 103 adults between the ages of 18 and 54 who were the children and grandchildren of both depressed survey participants and those who were not depressed.

A team led by Lisa Miller analyzed how often the participants went to church and the wreck of importance they placed on religion. This assessment was made twice over the track of five years. Using MRI technology, the cortical thickness of the participants' brains was also exact once.

The Number Of Eye Diseases Is High Among Latino Americans

The Number Of Eye Diseases Is High Among Latino Americans.
Latino Americans have higher rates of visual impairment, blindness, diabetic discrimination infection and cataracts than whites in the United States, researchers have found. The study included matter from more than 4,600 participants in the Los Angeles Latino Eye Study (LALES). Most of the contemplate participants were of Mexican descent and aged 40 and older.

In the four years after the participants enrolled in the study, the Latinos' rates of visual debilitation and blindness were the highest of any ethnic assemble in the country, compared to other US studies of different populations. Nearly 3 percent of the examine participants developed visual impairment and 0,3 percent developed blindness in both eyes. Among those old 80 and older, 19,4 percent became visually impaired and 3,8 percent became shutter in both eyes.

The study also found that 34 percent of participants with diabetes developed diabetic retinopathy (damage to the eye's retina), with the highest have a claim to among those aged 40 to 59. The longer someone had diabetes, the more liable they were to develop diabetic retinopathy - 42 percent of those with diabetes for more than 15 years developed the vision disease.

Participants who had visual impairment, blindness or diabetic retinopathy in one lookout at the start of the study had high rates of developing the condition in the other eye, the study authors noted. The researchers also found that Latinos were more apt to to develop cataracts in the center of the eye lens than at the bourn of the lens (10,2 percent versus 7,5 percent, respectively), with about half of those ancient 70 and older developing cataracts in the center of the lens.