We have all heard of the infamous “freshman 15” weight gain from the poor eating choices to the binge drinking with friends. Today after countless research we have learned that this weight gain could be from the varying sleep patterns that these students might have.

In the Journal of Behavioral Sleep Medicine a study of 132 freshman students at Brown University kept daily sleep diaries of the times they fell asleep and the times they woke up for about 9 total weeks. At the end of this period, it was found that about half of these 132 students had already gained an average of 6 pounds each; the weight gain could have been caused from their abnormal sleeping patterns.

Researchers were confused what type of sleep these students were getting to cause them to gain this weight. Experts say that students need to be getting an average of 9 hours and 15 minutes of sleep per night, but in the study the students were averaging about 7 hours and 15 minutes per night causing them to be sleep deprived. Sleep deprived students were more likely to reach for sweeter foods due to their lack of sleep, they craved sweeter items to keep them awake and happy.

The amount of time students were spending in bed is only half the battle, the other half if the time that students went to sleep and woke up every night and morning. It was seen that the students that consistently slept and woke at the same time every day, were able to have a lesser change in their weight while the students whose sleep schedules changed on average were the ones to gain more weight. Students whose sleep schedules changed on a daily basis were pretty much dealing with symptoms of jet lag, and the more their sleep varied the more their so called “body clocks” were packing on the pounds.

Unfortunately, in this study the students did not monitor what they consumed so it was hard to pinpoint completely if their sleep was truly the reason as to why many of them gained weight. Though, habits that are developed in the first year of college are habits that stick around for a long time and take a long time to break if the habit was bad.

When the study was coming to an end, Brown University found significant gender differences; for example the highest weigh gain on the women’s side was 11 pounds while on the men’s was 18 pounds. Girls were able to keep more steady sleep schedules while boys usually had a harder time keeping consistent sleep schedules.

The reason that this study was so important was to make an emphasis for parents to create good sleeping habits while they live at home. Whatever habits that these students would make at home, hopefully they would be transferred over when the students would attend college.

Original Article: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/poor-sleep-may-spur-college-weight-gain/?_r=0

Research Article: https://msrc.fsu.edu/system/files/Holm-Denoma%20et%20al%202008%20The%20freshman%20fifteen%20the%20freshman%20five%20actually-%20predictors%20and%20possible%20explanations.pdf

I feel that is was a lot easier to write the article in much fewer words than the original writer wrote in. When the writer wrote the original entry, there was a lot of quotes that were put in and studies that were also added that I didn’t feel the need to be there as they weren’t about the main subject present, they were more there for fillers. I did though have a hard time understanding some parts of the original text in the wording that the original writer used, it took me a while to figure out how to summarize it and understand what it was talking about. It was pretty easy to distinguish between what needed to stay and what needed to be taken out in the summary that I wrote. It was also easy to word the sentences in a way that was easier for me to read, I found that a lot of the sentences in the original article were very difficult to read so when I went to write my version I changed the way that to words things to a way that might be easier for the reader.

Obesity is on the rise in today’s society, especially in our very own country. Whether it be in children or the older generations, there is a mutual agreement that the quality of life of a person is dramatically changed if he/she suffers from obesity.

Various measures are taken to overcome this situation every day. Individuals may go through vigorous sessions of exercise, long durations of dieting, or even extensive methods such as gastric bypass. Even after going through all that, why do so many still suffer from obesity? It may be hard to stick to a long-term plan of diet and exercise in a time when salads are more expensive than a burger and gym memberships cost a lot more money than sitting on the couch. Whatever the reason may be, it is time that we understand that there are internal factors beyond the capabilities of an individual that could potentially affect the risk for obesity.

According to a study conducted at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, internal factors within an individual could be related to the likelihood of obesity. The authors, agreed, that if these factors were identified in children earlier on, there could be a higher chance of preventing obesity later on in their lifetime. Identifying the relationship between resting state functional connectivity and eating behaviors was the primary goal of the study. In order to do so, data was collected from 38 children in the Rockland Sample of Enhanced Nathan Kline Institute, ages 8-13, who were randomly selected. The fact that the Rockland Sample was representative of the U.S. population according to the 2010 census made it possible for the results of the study to be generalized to the whole U.S. population. Child Eating Behavior Questionnaire and MRI scans which assessed the inferior parietal lobe, frontal lobe, and nucleus accumbens were obtained from each child. The results showed that decreased inhibition and increased impulsivity were related to childhood obesity. Therefore, the researchers concluded that an increase in response inhibition and a decrease in impulsivity could lead to a decrease in adiposity, decrease in food approach behaviors, and an increase in food avoidance behaviors.

Dr. Cowan, from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine stated, “We think mindfulness could recalibrate the imbalance in the brain connections associated with childhood obesity.” One way of preventing obesity from childhood is mindfulness, or being in a state of mind in which the individual can assess personal thoughts or motivations, that lead to actions, from afar. Mindfulness can be a way of increasing response inhibition and decreasing impulsivity which could lead to prevention of childhood obesity. As the saying goes, “nipping it in the bud” will prevent a whole lot of havoc later on.

Sources:

Elsevier. “Brain study reveals mindfulness could help prevent obesity in children: Research links imbalance in brain connections to childhood obesity.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 January 2016. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160121092312.htm>.

Reflection

Summarizing the entire research article to fit under 540 words was pretty difficult. My lack of knowledge in statistics and the vocabulary used in the research made it challenging to accurately portray everything the study wanted to support. In the original news article, I noticed there were many inconsistencies when compared to the study, and thus I wanted to incorporate details from the actual research which made the study a reliable source for the information given.

Compared to the news article, my summary emphasized the random sampling, as well as the ability to generalize the results to the population of the U.S. Also, in the original article, the information tried to explain how mindfulness does lead to lack of obesity. The research study, however, explicitly shows that no causality can be predicted from the results of the study. Therefore, it was my job to summarize that functional connectivity in the brain is related, to some extent, to eating behaviors, but they are not directly connected, which means it is not a direct cause.

After completing this assignment, I truly do appreciate journalists for the time and effort they invest into summarizing research studies. It is clear that they have spent hours trying to decipher the true purpose behind the research studies, but their job is to also attract readers. In order to balance the portrayal true information from the study while also engaging readers within a limited character limit is definitely not an easy job. I also believe that the readers have a responsibility to be mindful when reading such articles to know what to believe and what not to believe. It is crucial, especially in this day and age, to always have a reason why you believe the provided information, and if that means doing some research behind it, then that is what it takes to be an informed reader.

Did you know that the brain is the only organ to name itself?

It has always been known that the brain is amazing. It holds so much information. It learns so fast. To put it simply, the brain is really smart. The big question that scientist have been scratching their chins about is “how much?” Well, a recent study over memory capacity shows us evidence of just that. Researchers at Salk Institute for Biological Studies ran an experiment to measure the memory capacity of the human brain using the hippocampus of a rat.

First, we will explore some background information on the brain before jumping into the experiment. The brain is made up of specialized cells called neurons that can receive and send information. Brain cells are made up of dendrites that receive signals and an axon which sends information through axon terminals to other neurons. Approximately 100 billion neurons make up the entire brain. They form a uniques system of connections known as synapses that encode, store, and retrieve information in the mind.

The experiment began with an interesting finding during the reconstruction of a rat hippocampus, a part of the brain that is deals with memory. Scientists noticed that for some neurons, the axon would form synapses with multiple dendrites of a neighboring cell. This would mean that the message being sent from sender to receiver would be duplicated, leaving the researchers to wonder if the receiving dendrites were of the same size and strength. If they were, then the information being transferred would be strong and the information would be the same. If they were different, then the information would be slightly varied, leading to a complexity of receiving different information from the same axon.

When furthering the investigation, the researchers found an eight percent difference between the dendrites, which is calculated to be approximately twenty-six new synapse sizes. This means that the variation of storage size, a 10-fold increase in storage capacity in the hippocampus, is much greater than once thought. One of the scientist, Tom Bartol, tells of how “It’s an order of magnitude more capacity than we knew was there”.

It is argued that if we can hold so much information in our brains, why do we forget things? It takes longer to store and retrieve info than it does to absorb and interpret events that occur in the world around us. It’s almost impossible to completely measure the exact amount storage space there is because of a few reasons. 1) Each individual has a different amount of space and a different pace of storing and retrieving info. 2) There is so much information absorbed that it is difficult to keep tabs on what all we take in. 3) The synapse process is so insanely quick that technology is not ready to keep up with it yet. As for the future, the Salk institute hopes to run more tests to see if there are similar pathways like the ones in the hippocampus.

Schizophrenia is a complex, multidimensional mental disorder that affects numerous lives directly or indirectly. Like for many psychiatric disorders, no cure has been devised, and we know little about schizophrenia as a whole. One study published in the scientific journal Nature, has made an important discovery in understanding and potentially predicting the possibility of inheriting the psychiatric disorder.

In your brain, different genes play different roles in developing brain patterns and assessing the outside environment. The important gene in this study is C4, which has two variants, C4A and C4B, that have the possibility of contributing to developing schizophrenia. The development of this theory began with sampling 245 cadaver’s brain. The samples showed that individuals that had schizophrenia exhibited C4A levels in the brain that were three times as larger as people without the psychiatric disorder. Then 28,799 people with schizophrenia were compared by 35,986 people without schizophrenia. This provided evidence that people’s DNA that corresponded with the C4A protein were more likely to inherit schizophrenia. The third group, 35 schizophrenic patients and 70 without schizophrenia, were compared to measure RNA levels. C4A levels were 1.4 times greater in the schizophrenic group. The last part of the study involved the use of mice and observing the lack of the C4 protein. The lack of this protein creates the absence of another protein, C3. Without these two proteins, synaptic pruning cannot happen regularly in the brain. Synaptic pruning is essentially when the brain takes care of its nerve connections and cells, and makes stronger and healthier connections in order to function and make choices and decisions. It is hypothesized that people with schizophrenia have a type of the C4A protein that takes care of the brain too much compared to “regular brains.” Thus, their synaptic pruning misfires in their brain, and the synaptic pruning becomes too engaged with taking care of the connections and cells.

This a great advancement with schizophrenia, however, it’s one of the few studies concerning the mental disorder, especially the biological part. There haven’t been any follow-up studies, and the study does not list any complications with the work. It’s important to note it is still in no way possible to be able to fully understand or diagnose schizophrenia, for this study is one of the first of its kind, and it’s only a tiny piece on what goes on biologically in a person’s brain. There are more components at play, including environmental aspects of a person’s life. While it’s a tiny step, it’s still a step in the right direction for comprehending a psychiatric disorder that has been stigmatized and ignored for too long.

Sources used:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/28/health/schizophrenia-a-genetic-cause/index.html

http://www.nature.com/articles/nature16549.epdf?referrer_access_token=NUv-JSYSkBIyHjh58E17mtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PL6I_-W62dZdLuYRUahyWrs-967y2G9DY0TYR1ljV7N2PBKDIeLp3tFV1-stxb1PJrfcmop4V6Xk68eLFRuQKzgc6PKimVgpuK2AqP-S114XYAiky59n9URwgb21xWqIALZ0ImiU9rjez7zZH6EvpmbFPEfjGMltfOqG7SvtMOzc7uouxIWIUNZcSWfWWoAMRQX6SQpvIKmtELsu_jsbJM&tracking_referrer=www.nytimes.com

Reflection

I picked probably the worst news article to critique and discuss. The information is important, and I enjoyed learning about it, but the article was actually well-written. The only problem that was evident in it was that the writer put too much emphasis on the mice group instead of each individual group, and the author went into more detail about what schizophrenia is, but other than that, it was a good read. I understand why she chose to do that because more people are interested in the symptoms and the overall experience of schizophrenia. I think it’s mainly because people are curious, but that’s not the point of the study, and it shouldn’t be the point of the article. It explained all over the scientific terms well, and I understood most of what the article was talking about. That being said, reading the scientific study and dissecting what it was actually saying was harder than nitpicking the news piece. There were many technical terms, and I had to touch up on biology and chemistry while reading it. Doing the critiques on both the article and study really helped me write this mock journalist piece because I had analyzed both texts three times, so I had a decent understanding of what needed to be told. This is an important study, but it’s kind of discouraging when the author has to describe the mental disorder extensively in order to get people to read and care about it, and there has to be a video included as well. I didn’t want to take away from the study’s findings with providing too much information over schizophrenia. Overall, I wish I had picked an easier article and study for the sake of my own workload, but this was an incredibly interesting study to review, and it goes to show how much effort goes into true journalism. A good article sells it to the audience, and still gives sufficient information about the study, and the author did a fairly good job of doing both.

Does multitasking affect academic performance? A study done in California has answered this and more! The leading question was how differently do  younger generations task-switch in comparison to older generations and how does this difference play in to student’s performance in school. To figure this question out, a study was created to watch around 300 students from  junior high to college age study in their homes or usual environments and see how often they switched between tasks. There are three things that impact task switching, primary task completion, secondary task completion and resumption lag. A separate study found that if the primary task and secondary task are very similar, you will perform worse on the primary and the more concentration you put into the second task, the longer your resumption lag to the first task is as well.

These were the results of the experiment. First, it was established that each age group had their own different kinds of distractions. For the kids in junior high it was video games, high school students were mostly likely to be distracted by texting, and the college students applied more study strategies. The students who were similar in on-task percentage and run length, tended to use technology in the same ways and their preferences for multitasking were akin. The study pointed out that those who preferred to multi-task had much shorter on-task runs than those who didn’t. As for how this affects students academically, the students who used Facebook at least one time during class or study sessions, had lower grades than the students who applied study strategies. Surprisingly, every student of the study was able to only remain on-task for an average of about 6 minutes before switching to another task.

How do we resolve this generations issues with multitasking? We are given three suggestions to help deal with multitasking while studying. The first is an oldie but goodie, teachers and parents are advised to allow students to listen to music while studying. The more familiar the music, the more minor the impact on resumption lag and task-switching there is. Our second piece of advice is to let students use their phones or other technological devices for a 1 minute “technology break,” then follow that up with 15 minutes of uninterrupted study or lesson time. Because they know that they will be allowed to use their devices in 15 minutes, this will allow the students to remain focused on the task at hand instead of constantly thinking internally about checking their phones. The third and final option mentioned in the study is to sharpen your metacognitive skills. By choosing a time, say during a lecture that you believe less important information is being given, to take a break and check your device, you are less likely to be distracted during something important. Much unlike students who allow themselves to be distracted every time they receive a notification. By applying one or a combination of these tricks to your study sessions or classroom, you can improve learning.

Reflection:

Writing a news piece over a scientific study is quite difficult. Doing this project has made me want to take back everything I said in my news article critique. The hardest part for me was trying to write for an audience that hasn’t read the journal. I really had to think, “Would I understand this if I had not already read about the study?” I’m sure I didn’t catch everything, but I tried to make my piece as accessible as I could without sounding condescending. As you can probably guess, the second hardest part was picking out what information to include and what information to discard without changing the results or fibbing about the study. Although I told myself that I wouldn’t, I decided to leave out the limitations of the study. They take quite a bit away from the results and, in my opinion and like we hear in class, it just makes the news article much less “sexy.” My article is a bit shorter than the original one because I didn’t write about the second study in which psychology students had to answer text messages while watching a video and were tested on the material afterward. That is because the journal, although suggesting that we use our metacognitive skills, barely mentioned this experiment and I felt like I didn’t have enough information about it to put it in my piece. This project has definitely taught me that I should be more cautious about what I read in the news, but I should also give authors a break because their job is not as easy as it seems.

Link to the news article:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rewired-the-psychology-technology/201204/attention-alert-study-distraction-reveals-some

Link to the journal:

http://www.csudh.edu/psych/facebook_and_texting_made_me_do_it-media-induced_task-switching_while_studying-compuers_in_human_behavior-2013-rosen_carrier_cheever.pdf

Fact or myth: happy people live longer than sad/unhappy people? Myth. The Million Women Study, directed by Dr. Bette Liu, wanted to find whether or not happiness has a direct association with mortality. Prior to the research and study, researchers already knew poor health leads to both unhappiness and then to potential death. They knew unhappiness could be a result of other factors which can also cause mortality. After analyzing previous findings and learning of myths regarding happiness and mortality, the researchers’ main goal was to determine if, after consideration for the poor health and lifestyle of people who claim to be unhappy, any strong evidence shows happiness directly reduces mortality rates.

Dr. Liu selected 719,671 to participate in the study and asked them to rate their happiness, stress, feelings of control, and whether or not they felt relaxed. Researchers analyzed the women who died before Jan 1, 2012 from various causes. Using Cox Regression, a method for researching the effect of multiple variables upon the time a specific event happens adjusted for self-rated happiness, mortality rate ratios comparing mortality in women who said to be unhappy with those who said to be happy most of the time were calculated. 39% of the women said they were happy most of the time, 44% said they were usually happy, and 17% unhappy. 10 years after the survey was taken, a follow-up on the women was completed, revealing 4% of the women died. Poor health was strongly associated with unhappiness. But, after consideration for self-rated health and lifestyle factors (smoking, deprivation, and body-mass index) unhappiness was declared to be dissociated with mortality from all causes.

From the study the researchers interpreted and concluded good health and well-being can mean both happiness and longer life, as poor health can mean both unhappiness and a shorter life. But, happiness does not directly reduce chances of cancer, cardiac, or mortality in general. The study used a single question with three possible answers to guide their research, while other, similar studies use different methods. Different people researching the same topic can come to various conclusions. Other studies with a different outcome may be confused with cause and effect. In this particular study, poor health was the cause of unhappiness, while in other studies they might believe the cause and effect is the opposite.

Original News Article: http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-happiness-death-20151209-story.html

Scholarly Article: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2815%2901087-9/fulltext

Reflection:

Summarizing the news article was not necessarily challenging for me. In the first assignment, I critiqued Karen Kaplan, author of the news article, somewhat harshly because of her extreme lack of detail and shortness of her post. In my own post I tried to avoid the same issue (lack of detail) by adding more statistics, more information of the process, and more details of the results. Because her article was so short, I was not challenged with meeting the word count, but I had more difficulty staying inside the word count. In order to get the most valuable information, such as statistics, factors going into the study, etc. written, I cut out most of the random sentences she had used in the news article regarding information not pertaining to the results of the study, or the study in general.

The series of projects taught me about the trustworthiness of news reporters or news articles. When I read the news article, I did not have any red flags, nor did I think anything of the lack of detail or information until I read the actual scholarly article. Writing the first two papers allowed me to compare and contrast both pieces in depth, enabling me to see Kaplan missed a large amount of important information which did not allow her readers to be informed of details from the study. I am not sure if other people came across the same realization when looking at their own articles, but when looking at any sort of news article, anyone should use caution.

Georgetown University Medical Center has released a new study in 2016 demonstrating the necessity for rest after incidents regarding head trauma in efforts to prevent long-term brain damage. The study found that more giving the brain more time to recover allowed for inflammation to go down and any percentage of long-term brain damage to decrease. About three days was the minimum amount of time to give the brain for recovery after brain trauma. This information is crucial for athletes and the military, being that they are in situations more frequently that make them more susceptible to these head injuries.

Georgetown University Medical Center worked with rats and mice to study the effects of the brain after given mild head trauma. Two groups of rats were compared, one group receiving head injuries once a day for 30 days, the other receiving once a week for 30 weeks. After examining the effects for each group, it was found that the group receiving the head injuries further apart had enough time to recover and therefore, the inflammation was much lower than the group that received head injuries once a day. The rats were also examined a year after the experiment and the researchers found that the long-term damage was significantly lower on the rats that received the head injuries once a week.

These results can help regulate sports where head trauma is common as well as the average person who gets a head injury, rest is crucial for recovery. It is important for even mild concussions to be acknowledged and cared for before exposing oneself to the possibility for more head trauma. This research also allows for the opportunity to examine how the brain heals itself and under what circumstances it cannot heal itself. As far as the study shows, rest really is crucial for the brain to be able to heal itself for short-term and long-term effects from injuries.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160205100445.htm

http://ajp.amjpathol.org/article/S0002-9440(15)00663-X/fulltext

Reflection:

Summarizing the original study was hard because so much of it I didn’t understand due to the fact that I’m not a scientist. The original news story that I found was also quite good with it’s information and so I didn’t make that many changes to the information it included or didn’t include, I just tried to make it a little clearer. The original journal entry included a lot of technical information about the scientific findings in the brains of the tested rats and since I couldn’t really understand that, I decided not to include it. My goal was to condense this study into something the general public could understand and use, therefore, I did mention the rats because they were crucial to the experiment but I didn’t include how they were traumatized or exactly effected because that doesn’t effect how the public should take care of themselves. I mirrored the news article in that I didn’t include how the rats were injured because it probably would’ve taken away from the information that resulted from the study about our brains. People would’ve surely been upset that rats were used for experiments and were injured but the original journal did include that it got approval from the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the NIH. On the other hand, there are some people who wouldn’t care about the rats at all, they just want the information that applies directly to them so in that sense, it was all around a good idea not to include too much about the test subjects. The important part of the study was about the brain and I think the news article did a good job of presenting those results and I tried to do that same.

Johns Hopkins’ 2014 study on concussions in former NFL players and the long-term effects was a fine study, not as far as learning about concussions goes, but for testing the usefulness of the newest technology in brain scanning and seeing its limits and advantages.

In the past, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) was only diagnosed and studied during autopsy. The study also focused on the imaging of traumatic brain injury related damages by targeting the translocator protein (TSPO). A translocator protein (TSPO) is a special protein mainly found on the outer mitochondrial membrane of neurons. It interacts with StAR (steroidogenic acute regulatory protein) to transport cholesterol into the mitochondria of other neurons. In other words, TSPO is an indicator of the brain attempting to repair or patch brain damage. The study helps to support the idea that these new machines and new techniques for neural imaging can really advance our understanding of the brain and increase our medical abilities in providing accurate diagnoses for patients, before their dirt nap.

The primary test used for the study involved a positron emission tomography (PET) scan that used (safe) radioactive chemical injections that bind to specific proteins. In this case, the radiopharmaceutical used was [11C]DPA-713 which binds to TSPO. The idea is that the more prevalent this radio-transmitter is in the PET scan, the more brain damage (TBI) there is in in subject. The PET scan would also show a specific location for the damage. MRI scans were also performed on the participants to check for brain atrophy that may have been caused by TBIs. Along with the imaging tests, there were a few paper-and-pen tests performed on the subjects, including the California Verbal Learning Test-II (CVLT-II), the Rivermead Post-Concussive Symptom Questionnaire (RPQ), and an interview focusing on their past NFL career and past concussions. These tests (in order) covered their ability to learn and remember verbal information, the severity of mood, anxiety, and cognitive long-term symptoms of their concussions, and details of their past concussions (how hard were they hit, how long initial symptoms lasted, etc.). These interviews and written tests help the researchers compare the amount of brain damage they found with their scans to the severity of the side effects the players suffer.

In the results, many of the ex-NFL players who participated in the full study scored fairly highly on the RPQ test, scoring 32, 21, and 20 on a scale of 0-52 with a higher number indicating more severe symptoms. The CVLT-II scores where low as well, with averages ranging from 44% to 54%, indicating a struggle in verbal learning and recall. The article also reports evidence of brain atrophy (shrinkage) in multiple areas, which lines up with the test scores.

The study does have a few flaws, however, including [11C]DPA-173 binding differences between two TSPO genotypes (C/C and C/T) and the fact that the study size was in fact very small. To counter act the genotype flaw, however, the researchers used a GMVT method to correct differences produced by the genotype variation.

The study does a pretty good job of supporting the usability of the new methods in analyzing brain damage in living subjects. The brain scans showed high TSPO activity (through the radioactive injection [11C]DPA-173 binding to the TSPO present in the brain) when compared to a control scan on a person without a concussion (see image below). With this new technology and these new techniques, as supported by the Johns Hopkins study, we can make more accurate, lifesaving decisions for patients who are suffering from a traumatic brain injury.

Works Cited

Coughlin, Jennifer M., Yuchuan Wang, Cynthia A. Munro, Shuangchao Ma, Chen Yue,                           Shaojie   Chen, Raag Airan, Pearl K. Kim, Ashley V. Adams, Cinthya Garcia, Cecilia                   Higgs, Haris I. Sair, Akira Sawa, Gwenn Smith, Constantine G. Lyketsos, Brian                         Caffo, Michael Kassiou, Tomas R. Guilarte, and Martin G. Pomper.                                                 “Neuroinflammation and Brain Atrophy in Former NFL Players: An in Vivo                                 Multimodal Imaging Pilot Study.” Neurobiology of Disease 74 (2015): 58-65. Web.                   Mar. 2016.

(I have the article in a Word document i can share via Email, if needed, please let me know and I can send it to you)

Writing this article was actually fairly easy for me. To be honest all I did was edit my scholarly research article a whole lot and provide some more explanations for what things are. I really didn’t need to cut that much information out since my original article was a little over 700 words long, so I easily got everything I wanted into my article. As far as comparisons go, well, I’m still a little unhappy with the first article. The news article I read at the beginning of the semester made the research article sound like it was about studying concussions and how we can catch sports related brain injuries. The title of the article alone is misleading, “Johns Hopkins study of retired NFL players sheds light on concussion-related brain damage” (Hedin, 2015). I think, or at least I hope, that my article more truthfully describes and/or portrays the research article and its intents and findings. I tried to focus on the methods and tests used in the experiment and I hope I explained them and their purposes enough. In my opinion, Maren Hedin’s intentions for her article were probably to make the research look like a more hopeful or productive project to the public masses. I imagine most people would rather hear about research for helping concussion patients than about research on methods of studying the brain in applications like concussions. I understand that sometimes journalists have to decide what is more important and what can be left out so they can stay within their allotted space in there publication. I also see that, depending on what or who a journalist is writing the article for, can change the way they write their article and what they write about. I understand that, while news articles might be shorter, easier, and more convenient to read than original articles, they should not always be completely trusted, however, some might very well be trustworthy. It’s a little confusing, so, I think I’ll stick to trying to find original articles and original statements instead of reading news and other media articles written by journalists whose main interest is usually getting more readers.

Works Cited

Hedin, Marin. “Johns Hopkins Study of Retired NFL Players Sheds Light on Concussion-                     Related Brain Damage.” The Hub. Johns Hopkins University, 26 Jan. 2015. Web. 21                 Feb.  2016.   <http://hub.jhu.edu/2015/01/26/nfl-players-concussion-research>.

Ever wonder why people say that women are better at coping with stress than men? A new study explains why this could actually be true.

Researchers have been saying that men tend to react with the “fight or flight” response, and women are generally less aggressive and turn to the “tend and befriend” response, that is women are more likely to seek out social support instead of lashing out or avoiding the issue completely.

A journal article by State University of New York at Buffalo tells us about a study they created that explains the answer behind the question of why stress responses differ between sexes. The researchers behind this study point out that the Pre-Frontal Cortex region of your brain is the target of stress hormones, cognition, and emotion. This study was tested with 4 weeks old juvenile-adolescent Sprague-Dawley rats, because during this time there PFC region undergoes critical postnatal development.  There were various tests that showed how the PFC region can be tested.

One of the tests compared the impact of repeated stress on cognitive functions in young female and male rats. These animals were exposed to 7 days of repeated stress, and examined every 24 hours. It turns out the male rats that were the control spent more time exploring the less recent object in the test trial, whereas the stressed group lost the preference to the less recent object. In contrast, the control and stressed female rats spent more time looking at the less recent object in the test trial.

In addition to the repeated stress on the rats, another test examined the possibility that estrogen influences the impact of stress. Researchers manipulated the amount of estrogen produced in the brain. At the end of it, they found out that when estrogen signaling in female brains was blocked, stress had negative effects on the brain, and when estrogen signaling was activated in male brain, the negative effects of stress were blocked.

Males and females show different biochemical, cellular, and behavioral effects of stress, and they connect this with the PFC. Their results showed, “In contrast to the impaired cognition in male rodents after chronic stress, female rodents show unaffected or enhanced performance on the same memory tasks after the same stress.” In other words, female rats responded better to the chronic stress than male rats.

This experiment has not only helped to discover new ways of treating stress-related disorders in men, but also how they are now able to see sex differences in mental health more broadly. Another study related to this was found was women may cope with stress in better ways, however they internalize stress to a greater degree, and have higher stress levels than males.  The only difference is the coping mechanisms between them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/11/women-handle-stress-better-estrogen-study_n_3579735.html

http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~zhenyan/MPs-female+stress.pdf

Reflection:

Overall, writing this new journal article was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I re-read both the scholarly article and the news article again and I thought it was going to be easy to combine both of them to create a new one, however the scholarly article holds too much information to where I can pin-point the main details from the study and put them in the new article. I realized that I had to sacrifice a lot of information that I felt was important for readers to know, but at the same time I know that as a reader myself it is very hard for me to get interested in a certain topic if it holds a lot of scientific information with terms that I do not understand or can’t even pronounce, so I knew that finding only the main details was what I had to do. Also, looking at the journal article from Huffpost, I felt that the article was way too broad for people to gain any kind knowledge on why women handle stress better than men. So I needed to figure out a way to create a new article that is not to broad, but not to much information where the people get bored either. I also now understand how difficult it is for journalists to do this for a living. They have to be able to look and analyze scientific research, but also make sure they do not plagiarize the researchers work, and create it as there own. This project gave a brand new perspective on how research/journal articles actually work and how difficult it is to come up with something brand new.