Mental Health

Addicts may be seeking relief from emotional lows more than euphoric highs
In a study published today online in Psychopharmacology, Rutgers University Behavioral and Systems Neuroscience Professor Mark West, and doctoral student David Barker in the Department of Psychology, in the School of Arts and Sciences, challenge the commonly held view that drug addiction occurs because users are always going after the high. Based on new animal studies, they discovered that the initial positive feelings of intoxication are short lived – quickly replaced by negative emotional responses whenever drug levels begin to fall. Rutgers

Neuroscience-driven discovery and development of sleep therapeutics
The brain as both the generator and main object of sleep is obviously of particular interest, which makes a neuroscience-driven view the most promising approach to evaluate clinical implications and applications of sleep research. Polysomnography as the gold standard of sleep research, complemented by brain imaging, neuroendocrine testing, genomics and other laboratory measures can help to create composite biomarkers that allow to maximize the effects of individualized therapies while minimizing adverse effects. Here we review the current state of the neuroscience of sleep, sleep disorders and sleep therapeutics and will give some leads to promote the discovery and development of sleep medicines that are better than those we have today. Dresler M, Spoormaker VI, Beitinger P, Czisch M, Kimura M, Steiger A, Holsboer F. Pharmacol Ther. 2013 Nov 1. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 24189488

Anxiety help comes, eventually, via primary care
A study of anxiety sufferers who were engaged with primary medical care found that over a five year period seven in 10 received “potentially adequate” care, but it sometimes took years. Minorities were less than half as likely as whites to receive care. Brown

New method predicts time from Alzheimer's onset to nursing home, death
A Columbia University Medical Center-led research team has clinically validated a new method for predicting time to full-time care, nursing home residence, or death for patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The method, which uses data gathered from a single patient visit, is based on a complex model of Alzheimer’s disease progression that the researchers developed by consecutively following two sets of Alzheimer’s patients for 10 years each. The results were published online ahead of print in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. Columbia University Medical Center