In the latest edition of the medical journal Lancet: Infectious Diseases, an article details the detection of a new superbug. The culprit is a gram-negative Enterobacteriaceae which has shown resistance to most known antibiotics so far with the exception of tigecycline and colistin.

Enterobacteriaceae is not a single bacterium but a family of bacteria which includes some bugs that people are more familiar with like Salmonella and E.coli. Gram negative refers to the reaction of the bacteria to a staining procedure sometimes called Gram’s method but most widely called Gram staining. Gram refers not to a unit of measurement but the name of the Danish scientist who developed the technique, Hans Gram.

Tigecycline was approved by the FDA in 2005 and was developed in response to antibiotic resistance bacterial strain prevalence. Colistin is an antibiotic and another drug targeted at resistant bacteria but is not approved for use in the U.S.

The bacteria apparently gained their resistance from a particular gene which was given the name New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase 1 or NDM-1. The researchers analyzed samples from areas in Southern and Northern India and cases referred to the U.K.’s national reference laboratory.

The researchers identified 44 isolates which carried the NDM-1 gene in India, the U.K. and Pakistan. The NDM-1 gene was found mostly in E. coli and K. pneumoniae. However, the really troubling part is that the gene was found in most of the isolates to be carried on plasmids. Why is this troubling? Let me explain.

Plasmids are “rings” of DNA found naturally within bacteria and a few other microorganisms. Plasmids can replicate independently in a viable host and are often transferred between bacteria. Since the NDM-1 gene is found mostly on plasmids this means the motility of that gene and the possibly of it spreading quickly is a great concern.

The CDC released a short statement about NDM-1 in their Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report back during the last week of June warning of the detection of the NDM-1 gene here in the U.S.:

“Antimicrobial resistance in Gram-negative bacteria is a well-recognized problem, and a new resistance mechanism found in three U.S. Enterobacteriaceae could compound this challenge. This new mechanism, New Delhi Metalol-beta-lactamase (NDM-1), is linked to receipt of medical care in India or Pakistan, where it is common among enteric bacteria. NDM-1 is an enzyme that destroys many commonly used antibiotics, rendering them ineffective. It is carried on a mobile element that can readily spread to other bacteria. In order to prevent transmission of bacteria possessing NDM-1 in the U.S., CDC is alerting clinicians to be aware of NDM-1 in patients who have recently received medical care in India or Pakistan and requesting that carbapenem-resistant enteric bacteria from these patients be sent to CDC for further investigation. Also, CDC is reiterating the importance of implementing CDC recommendations to prevent the spread of these highly resistant organisms.”

What makes this article remarkable? Well, the Korean research team which published the article seem to have found a gene which changes the mating affinity of female rats. Some interesting neurobiological finds were made as well.

The research created a line of mutant rats lacking a particular gene – fucose mutarotase (FucM). Those female mice without this gene displayed a preference for female urine as well as mounting a normal female partner.

The team noticed that the -/- mutants also had a reduced number of tyrosine hydroxylase neurons of the anteroventral periventricular nucleus compared to the control rats. The AVPv region and the hormonal receptors there are heavily involved in development of mating behavior. Tyrosine hydroxylase neurons are involved in dimorphic mating behavior as well.

However, this may all be the result of a developmental change, specifically a reduction of fucosylated serum alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) in the embryo. AFP isn’t necessary for the embryo to develop normally however, it is important in regard to female fertility.

Taken together the evidence seems to point to the possibility of the FucM gene in the development of a brain which prefers the same sex. However, as is par for the course in science, reproducibility of these findings will go a long way to validate this research. We shall wait and see.

Prisons are so-called breeding grounds for the recruitment of new individuals into radical movmements. According to the study, prisons “provide near-perfect conditions in which radical, religiously framed ideologies can flourish”. Furthermore the report states:

“Prisons are highly unsettling environments in which individuals are more likely than elsewhere to explore new beliefs and associations. Confronted with existential questions and deprived of their existing social networks, prisoners with no previous involvement in politically motivated violence are vulnerable to being radicalised and recruited into terrorism”.

Many prevelant conditions in prisons can led to increases in radicalization such as over-crowding and under-staffing – both of which are long running problems in prisons.

However, the report identified some elements which are integral to individiual disengagement and de-radicalization:

• A mix of different kinds of programming, typically combining ideological and/or religious re-education with vocational training.

• Credible interlocutors, who can relate to prisoners’ personal and psychological needs.

• Emphasis on prisoners’ transition back into mainstream society, typically by providing them with the means for a new beginning and by establishing social networks away from extremism.

• Sophisticated methods for locking prisoners into multiple commitments and obligations towards family, community, and the state.

• Material inducements, which – while useful – do not seem to be decisive on their own.

The report also addressed the more complex issue of collective disengagement and de-radicalization which is much more difficult to attain than working on individualized disengagement and de-radicalization.

The study was based out of the University of Maryland by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) in partnership with the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START).

Programs and policies were examined from Afghanistan, France, the Netherlands, Pakistan, the Philippines, Spain, Singapore, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States as well as Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, and Israel.

The full report examines a myriad of program techniques and issues involved in dealing with radicalization in prisons. However, the over-reaching theme which comes from this report is the acknowledgement that prisons are hotbeds for radical movements’ recruiting efforts as well as coordination of outside terrorist efforts. Therefore, assessing and refining operations which seek to curb radicalization in prisons may serve to deal a great blow to organized terrorism and extremist movements.

Perceptual bias in regard to ourselves does not seem limited to just our perceived risk in various situations. An example of this was found by Epley and Whitchurch (2008). As was found in Greening and Chandler’s (2006) study, Epley and Whitchurch also found that, “people’s inferences about their own traits are often enhancing” (p. 1159). The authors utilized a face recognition task in which the participants would attempt to recognize their own face in a line-up of morphed versions of their photo. Their responses to the photos were then gauged against their measured self-worth. They found that the participants were more likely to rate the more attractive morphs as their actual photos. The results indicated that most of the participants indicated that the 20% more attractive morph to be their actual photo. These results also seemed to be related to a person’s perception of self-esteem as well. In subsequent experiments in which the participants were asked to find their faces, a friend’s face and those of an experimenter’s, the participants again showed a self-enhancement bias but also showed similar bias for their friends. The results on the image task were also related to measures of self-esteem.

Weinstein (2003) shows that context is important in risk perception assessments. As the author states:

“A man who says that his risk of heart disease is ‘a little above average’ is giving a somewhat pessimistic risk rating, but if he smokes heavily, even this rating may be unrealistically optimistic. In contrast, a non-smoker with low cholesterol levels, normal blood pressure, and no family history of heart disease may be accurate in claiming that his risk is much below average” (p. 24).

People seem to rate themselves, on average, at a lower risk for health problems and many other situations which is independent of race, age, educational background, and occupation (Weinstein, 2003). This type of “universal” result may indicate a particular bias which has been with humanity for a very long time. Also, the bias’ connection to control would also allude to it being a self-centered or some type of self-preservation process. However, as was evidenced by Epley and Whitchurch (2008), similar results are found for friends as opposed to strangers. This may also suggest a process which holds a social group connection. The anthropologist Robin Dunbar made an interesting discovery in the 1990s in regard to social primate cognition. Dunbar (1992, 1993) proposed that the number of others that we can keep stable relationships with is limited. Utilizing observations from other great apes (chimpanzees and gorillas) and humans, Dunbar calculated that, for humans, this number is approximately 150. Outside of this 150, we tend not to view people as we do those who fall into this group which has been affectionately termed the “monkey sphere”. Such an idea seems to match well with the findings of Epley and Whitchurch as well as alluding to a long evolutionary history of this trait we call self-enhancement.

There is also evidence that this process is effective only in the short term. A study done by Robins and Beer (2001) found that self-enhancement, while it was beneficial in the short-term, may not be adaptive in a longer term. Their study specifically studied college students and beliefs about their academic ability compared to their actual performance and how their actual performance compared to their personal beliefs about their own ability. It was found that self-enhancement did not predict their academic performance nor graduation rates although it was correlated with narcissism, self-serving attributions, ego involvement as well as positive affect. This would seem to indicate that self-enhancement is not truly a reflection of ability or even a slight distortion thereof in that the authors seemed to find no real relationship between self-enhancement and performance academically. Immediacy is something which seems to pop up prevalently in regard to psychological processes of a more basic or primal nature – one which appeared earlier in our evolutionary history as social primates.

Is this process something which was directly selected for in our evolutionary history or is it simply a by-product of our evolution? With such cognitive processes such as self-enhancement, it may be impossible to tell and our experimentation may be limited to our best guesses and observation of other primates (Evans and Zarate, 1999). However, the question still remains. There are some aspects which may seem to allude to an evolutionary connection in social networks but as Gould and Lewontin (1979) proposed, this process may simply be an evolutionary spandrel. Gould and Lewontin rejected the idea that every aspect of an organism was shaped by natural selection directly; this was the adaptionist program they felt compelled to revise with a seminal paper published in 1979. They compared evolutionary by-products to the architectural spandrels in St. Mark’s cathedral in Venice in that biological spandrels appeared as a by-product or side-effect of a naturally selected adaptation. However, this is not to say that spandrels may not find themselves objects of selection either. Noam Chomsky viewed innate language structures arising as spandrels which eventually became the basis for our complex languages (Chomsky, 1972).

All this seems to beg the question, is this “normal”? From the previously mentioned studies and others as well, it would seem that it is quite prevalent in people. Hymes and Akiyama (1991) found that such self-enhancement may be, in fact, “normal”. The authors showed that the idea that depression has a negative correlation to self-enhancement holds across cultures in their study of Japansese and American students. In both samples, there was a definitive negative correlation between self-enhancement and depression. This would seem to imply that in a state such as depression which involves changes in self-appraisal, that the “normal” process of self-enhancement is impaired as well. This is evident not only in American populations but Japanese as well showing that there it is possibly a trend that transcends culture and race and may be more substantiation for a process arising long ago in our evolutionary history.

While the origin of our tendency to engage in self-enhancement may have arisen long ago in our primate ancestors or even more recently in our closer hominid ancestors, this trait seems to have created some problems for us in the present. As Weinstein (2003) and many other authors in different areas such as contraceptive use, medication adherence and et cetera have found, how self-enhancement effects our perception of risk may impact our decisions to engage in healthy behaviors. As is the nature of evolution in that traits which may have benefited our ancestors at one time may become a detriment to us, their descendants, self-enhancement may have arisen as a short-term “fix” of some sort but now impacts our need to recognize our vulnerability in respect to our health (Renner & Schwarzer, 2003). Effective health programs and theories may have a hard time piercing this barrier and it should be a large consideration in health education and recognition of health risks for all people.

References:

Chomsky, Noam (1972). Language and mind. New York: Harcourt.

Dunbar, R. (1992). Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates. Journal of Human Evolution, 22, 469-493.

Dunbar, R. (1993). Coevolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16, 681-735.

Evans, D. & Zarate, O. (1999). Introducing evolutionary psychology. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Icon Books.

Greening, L. & Chandler, C. (2006). Why it can’t happen to me: The base rate matters, but overestimating skill leads to underestimating risk. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 27, 760-780.

Hymes, R. & Akiyama, M. (1991). Depression and self-enhancement among Japanese and American students. Journal of Social Psychology, 131, 321-334.

Renner, B. & Schwarzer, R. (2003). Social-cognitive factors in health behavior change. In J. Suls & K. Wallston (Eds.). Social psychological foundations of health and illness. Malden: Blackwell Publishers.

Robins, R. & Beer, J. (2001). Positive illusions about the self: Short-term benefits and long-term costs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 340-352.

Weinstein, N. (2003). Exploring the links between risks perceptions and preventative health behavior. In J. Suls & K. Wallston (Eds.). Social psychological foundations of health and illness. Malden: Blackwell Publishers.

A study was recently published in the journal Pediatrics. Specifically the study examined mothers spanking their three year old children and if this showed a relationship with later aggressive behavior in the children. 2,461 children were examined across 20 large U.S. cities. The analysis including controlling for several potential confounds: maternal child physical maltreatment, psychological maltreatment, and neglect, intimate partner aggression victimization, stress, depression, substance use, and consideration of abortion. The study found that mothers’ spanking more than twice in a month showed a significant relationship with increased risk for higher aggression in the children at the age of 5. Therefore it was conlcuded that while CP may be effective in a short-term, immediate situation, there may be consequences for its repeated and extended use.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that parents should not use spanking or more encompassing – corporal punishment. The American Psychological Association also released a resolution on CP but only specifically targeted use in schools and other facilities and made no mention of its use in parenting. In the United States, parental corporal punishment is not restricted as it is in other contries such as Sweden where it is outlawed (outlawed in 1979) along with countries such as Germany, New Zealand, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway et cetera. In some other countries such as in Scotland where CP is legal but using “implements” is illegal.

During the radio show people expressed the usual array of discussion points as is normally heard when discussing the topic:

“I was spanked, I’m fine”

“I spank my kids and they behave”

“What about all the kids in stores who don’t mind their parents? They need a spanking!”

“I think spanking is bad, I never hit my kids”

“I was spanked as a kid and I’d never do it to my kids”

“We use time out with our kids and they behave just fine”

I will have to note that these are more paraphrases from callers’ opinions than exact quotes since I’m working from memory. Being a science-minded person when attempting to assess a topic I tend to stay away from subjective and/or anecdotal evidence which is what most people provide – based on their experiences during their childhood or as a parent. However, even in the scientific arena, with social behavior it can be difficult to be exact and not everything is easily quantifiable.

For instance, a 1996 review of short-term coporal punishment found it could increase desired behavior in children but it didn’t seem to really differ from alternative displine actions in effectiveness.

A later review performed in 2003 concluded that using CP had “inherent risks” for the children both physically and psychologically.

Other research has contested many studies on the grounds of researcher bias and the lack of fully operationalizing terms such as “corporal punishment” and pointing to studies citing its effectiveness in the short term.

However these criticisms are eclipsed by studies such as the one appearing last year in Neuroimage where Harvard Medical School researchers (using fMRI) found harsh corporal punishment – by their criteria as when an object (e.g., belt, paddle and hair brush) was used on occasion for the purpose of disciplining a child, provided it did not extend beyond the buttocks, was not conducted out of anger, and did not result in injury; with a frequency of 12 episodes per year – had a significant effect upon the prefrontal cortex of young adults. These young adults who were exposed to harsh corporal punishment showed reduced volume in sections of their prefrontal cortex (PFC) – the part of the brain which performs the executives functions (such as impulse control and reasoned decisions) and is involved in working memory.

Other studies have found reduction in cognitive abilities and even effects upon I.Q.

Punishment as a means for behavior modification is quick and simple based upon the classical conditioning paradigm – link a beahvior with pain and the behavior ceases. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple – even in behavior modification there can be problems such as generalization or association of pain with the wrong behavior. But parents aren’t given classes in behavior modification and many still rely on punishment as a behavior modifier – many because it was how they were disciplined as children.

While alternatives to punishment and even to the now well-known “time outs” exist, these are more complicated and require more time and effort which may not be on a parent’s list while in the grocery store.

So what are you saying Crobar? Should I spank my kids or not?

Well that’s not for me to say – I’m not one to tell you how you should or shouldn’t deal with your child’s behavior; with the obvious exception of punishment involving harm to the child such as the man in Las Vegas who punched his girlfriend’s 16 month old daughter to death (she suffered from a shattered skull).

I’m not a parent (yet), I’m not a researcher or clinician in this area and therefore not an expert so I have no authority to say what parent’s should and should not do. However, like everyone on the radio show this morning and, I’m sure, here on the website – I’m offering my opinion and sharing what information I have. You make your own decision.

Mirror neurons are neurons which, as with the monkeys, fire when we observe (as some evidence has shown even when hearing) someone performing a particular act. For example when I pick up my cup of coffee a particular set of neurons fire. Some of those neurons fire just as they would when I picked up my cup but when I observed someone else pick up a cup of coffee.

The discovery has had massive implications for the origins of empathy – a likely basis for our biologically-based social grouping rules which we’d colloquially refer to a “morality” but evolutionary psychobiology of morality would be another blog entirely.

The discovery also has implication for learning and modeling, language and insights into autism spectrum disorders.

However, mirror neurons haven’t been without their critics and research claiming to cast doubt onto even their very existence especially in humans. A recent study in the journal Current Biology has become a game changer for mirror neurons with the first direct observation of mirror neurons in action in human brains. The research confirms the the existence of mirror neurons in humans just as they were found in Macaques.

People have always marveled at the human abilities to learn from simply watching, to imitate, understand intention and even “feel” for another person. The answer to why we possess these characteristics went unanswered for centuries with many tossing their ideas in the ring – God/Supreme Being/Deity, spiritual essences, learned/conditioned behavior and so forth. However, it’s these fun little cells in our brains that are responsible.

I’m sure most of you have heard of the epic poem The Illiad by Homer and its “sequel” the Odyssey. Many of you probably encountered it in high school or even in college or maybe you just watched the movie Troy. I had the pleasure (well at the time it was a displeasure) of reading portions of the tale in high school and later in college I finally got around the reading the entire thing. The story has a lot of things within the backdrop of the war – internal tensions, individual introspection, deities, divine intervention, symbolism, exploration of heroism and sacrifice and much more. A great story right?

After reading the story I began to wonder – just how much of this story is real and accurate?

For a long time it was simply viewed as just another epic poem. Then in the 1800′s something changed that – arcaeologists found Troy. Thanks to the work of amateur archaeologists Frank Calvert and Heinrich Schliemann, Troy was found to be an actual city in what is now modern day Turkey. Also, a 21st century historical/geological study found that the geological/geographic descriptions in the Illiad to be consistent with archaeological and historical geological texts.

Homeric Troy (Troy VII – the city has apparently been destroyed and rebuilt several times) ranges from 13th to the 9th century BCE. Dates for events from historical document and archaeological research seems to agree and jive with the Illiad.

Other various finds seem to support the setting of Homer’s poem and also those in the Odyssey. There is even some evidence that the characters in the poems were based on actual historical figures.

However, we have to pause here a minute and ask ourselves – if there was a Troy; if it was destroyed by a war around the time Homer said, in the same place and records indicate, and a close similarity between actual people and characters in the story, does this mean that there really was an Achilles, half-man half-god and the Pantheon of Greek gods is real?!

That’s where the story crosses from history into fiction. I’m sure many would agree with this assessment – I just wonder why such critical assessment isn’t placed upon other ancient works.

Well, that debate has some new evidence to ponder in the way of new specimens of Australopiths discovered in South Africa. The specimens are thought to represent a new species of Australopiths – Australopithecus sediba. The specimens are very Australopithecine, however also show some traits which are present in Homo habilis. The specimens’ pelvic and dental features set them apart from other Australopiths and these features are closer to those seen in the first human species Homo habilis.

The uranium-lead dating of the flowstone just below the specimens was dated at approximately 2.026 million years old and a palaeomagnetic date of the sediment deposition of the layer containing the specimens between 1.95 and 1.78 million years ago. That would place the specimens close to or right next to (in time) the oldest known specimens of Homo habilis which are approximately 1.8 million years old. Early humans such as habilis more closely resembled Australopiths than AMHs (anatomically modern humans). The advent of more modern morphology and especially the use of tools is what set habilis apart from previous species, however Australopithecus garhi specimens were reported in a paper in 1999 to have been found with tool implements around 2.5 million years ago. Some confusion? Possibly, however such blurring of species lines and overlap in characteristics is exactly what one would expect from evolutionary change.

Palaeoanthropology in the past few decades has seen the human evolutionary lineage go from being possibly unique in its lack of cladistic branching to specimens being discovered to amend that inaccurate conclusion.

Whether A. sediba represents a direct ancestor of the human lineage or not, the discovery of these unique specimens is intriguing nonetheless.

The neuroscience research focused on neurogenesis in the hippocampus of rats – actually a specific portion of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus. They found that neurogensis following a stressor led to persisting social avoidance behavior in the rats (a conditioned response) a month later. However, when the neurogenesis in the Dentate gyrus was inhibited following the stressor or “threat stimuli” as the paper utilized the subsequent behavior was lacking (not completely mind you but a significant difference). The idea on a simple level is that this neurogenesis corresponds to that stress event to promote avoidance – an ancient defense to keep an animal away from threats.

Okay, so why is this interesting? Well, neurogenesis in the DG has been usually found to be decreased by stress (Heine, Maslam, Zareno, Joels Y Lucassen, 2004) by the actions of hormones such as cortisol (Gould, Cameron, Daniels, Woolley & McEwen, 1992). Adult neurogenesis may also play a role in the behavioral aspects of depression (Sahay & Hen, 2007) but cannot be listed as a sole or large contributor to the etiology of the disorder. By contrast antidepressants usually increase neurogenesis (Malberg, Eisch, Nestler & Duman, 2000). The question here would be what role the surviving neuronal survival and the rate of neurogenesis play in the formation of conditioned stress responses such as avoidance.

Some research has found that epigenetic factors (in this case histone modification) may contribute to the complexities of stress response, conditioning and subsequent behavioral manifestations (by deduction) (Chandramohan, Droste & Reul, 2007). Similar research also found that the physiological changes induced by exercising changed the epigenetic influence outcome in relation to novel stress events – that is rats which were forced to exercise responded better to stress challenges than sedintary rats which corresponded to a higher number of specific neurons in the dentate gyrus which was due to the phospho-acetylation of histone H3 and c-Fos (transcription protein) induction (Collins et al., 2009)
Once we better understand the genetic, cellular and molecular processes, we can then better devise ways to inhibit the formation of stress related disorders such as acute stress disorder, PTSD and C-PTSD which are all major problems with deployed forces in hot zones across the globe.

References

Chandramohan, Y., Droste, S. & Reul, J. (2007). Novelty stress induces phospho-acetylation of histone H3 in rate dentate gyrus granule neurons through coincident signalling via the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor and the glucocorticoid receptor: relevance for c-fos induction. Journal of Neurochemistry, 101, 815-828.

Collins, A., Hill, L., Chandramohan, Y., Whitcomb, D., Droste, S. & Reul, M. (2009). Exercise improves cognition responses to psychological stress through enhancement of epigenetic mechanisms and gene expression in the dentate gyrus. PLoS One, 4(1): e4330.

Gould, E., Cameron, H., Daniels, D., Woolley, C. & McEwen, B. (1992) Adrenal hormones suppress cell division in the adult rat dentate gyrus. Journal of Neuroscience, 12, 3642-3650.

Heine, V., Maslam, S., Zareno, J., Joels, M. Y Lucassen, P. (2004). Suppressed proliferation and apoptotic changes in the rate dentate gyrus after acute and chronic stress are reversible. European Journal of Neuroscience, 19, 131-144.

Malberg, J., Eisch, A., Nestler, E. & Duman, R. (2000). Chronic antidepressant treatment increases neurogenesis in adult rat hippocampus. Journal of Neuroscience, 15, 9104-9110.

Sahay, A. & Hen, R. (2007). Adult hippocampal neurogenesis in depression. Nature Neuroscience, 10, 1110-1115.

In a different but equally interesting article (Grayson et al., 2010), researchers at Columbia university have managed to create a temporomandibular joint (part of the jaw) from adult stem cell cultures. Stem cells from embryonic lines have been previously utilized to induce bone growth (Jukes et al., 2008) but now it is possible that this can be done in approximately 5 weeks with adult stem cell lines – something that could avoid the controversy over the use of embryonic lines all together.

References

Grayson, W., Frohlich, M., Yeager, K., Bhumiratana, S., Chan, M., Cannizzaro, C. et al. (2010). Engineering anatomically shaped human bone grafts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 3299-3304.

Jukes, J., Both, S., Leusink, A., Sterk, L., van Blitterswijk, C. & Boer, J. (2008). Endochondral bone tissue engineering using embryonic stem cells. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105, 6840-6845.