Conserved aspects of sex-biased brain development in humans and mice

It is a pity that in our current political environment any scientist adding to the abundant evidence of brain differences between the sexes runs the risk of being "cancelled" as an unredeemable sexist by the "woke" intelligentsia. Mostly, however, work of the sort described by Liu et al. remains under or outside of their radar, and is consumed only by fellow scientists and the scientifically literate. I pass on their summary statements, and here is a link to a neat movie showing their data, which is also downloadable as an mp3 file. The caption to the video: "Movie of continuous coronal slices shows overlapping significant sex differences in human GMV (gray matter volume) - with male larger than female shown as cyan, and female greater than male shown as yellow.)

Significance

Sex differences in brain organization are theoretically important for our understanding of sex differences in human cognition and behavior. However, neurobiological sex differences have been easier to characterize in mice than in humans. Recent murine work has revealed a highly reproducible spatial patterning of gray matter volume (GMV) sex differences that is centered on systems for socioreproductive behavior and correlated with regional expression of sex chromosome genes. We integrate neuroimaging and transcriptomic data to establish that these same characteristics also apply to GMV sex differences in humans. These findings establish conserved aspects of sex-biased brain development in humans and mice, and update our understanding of the consistency, candidate causes, and potential functional corollaries of sex-biased brain anatomy in humans.

Abstract

Humans display reproducible sex differences in cognition and behavior, which may partly reflect intrinsic sex differences in regional brain organization. However, the consistency, causes and consequences of sex differences in the human brain are poorly characterized and hotly debated. In contrast, recent studies in mice—a major model organism for studying neurobiological sex differences—have established: 1) highly consistent sex biases in regional gray matter volume (GMV) involving the cortex and classical subcortical foci, 2) a preponderance of regional GMV sex differences in brain circuits for social and reproductive behavior, and 3) a spatial coupling between regional GMV sex biases and brain expression of sex chromosome genes in adulthood. Here, we directly test translatability of rodent findings to humans. First, using two independent structural-neuroimaging datasets (n > 2,000), we find that the spatial map of sex-biased GMV in humans is highly reproducible (r > 0.8 within and across cohorts). Relative GMV is female biased in prefrontal and superior parietal cortices, and male biased in ventral occipitotemporal, and distributed subcortical regions. Second, through systematic comparison with functional neuroimaging meta-analyses, we establish a statistically significant concentration of human GMV sex differences within brain regions that subserve face processing. Finally, by imaging-transcriptomic analyses, we show that GMV sex differences in human adulthood are specifically and significantly coupled to regional expression of sex-chromosome (vs. autosomal) genes and enriched for distinct cell-type signatures. These findings establish conserved aspects of sex-biased brain development in humans and mice, and shed light on the consistency, candidate causes, and potential functional corollaries of sex-biased brain anatomy in humans.

Cats associated with early human farming long before their domestication

As the herd of Abyssinian cats in my has grown, now numbering two 12 year olds and two kittens, I've become more curious about the origins of this breed and of domestic cats in general. It turn out, as shown in recent work by Jrahcarz et al., that cats were predators feeding on rodents in grain stores in Neolithic farming settlements for at least a thousand years before their domestication as house cats.

Most of today’s domesticates began as farm animals, but cat domestication took a different path. Cats became commensal of humans somewhere in the Fertile Crescent, attracted to early farmers’ settlements by rodent pests. Cat remains from Poland dated to 4,200 to 2,300 y BCE are currently the earliest evidence for the migration of the Near Eastern wildcat to Central Europe. Tracking the possible synanthropic origin of that migration, we used stable isotopes to investigate the paleodiet. We found that the ecological balance was already changed due to the expansion of Neolithic farmlands. We conclude that among the Late Neolithic Near Eastern wildcats from Poland were free-living individuals, who preyed on rodent pests and shared ecological niches with native European wildcats.

As regards the origins of my Abyssianians, I have always passed on the story that all of the current registered purebreds derive from a male brought to England by a British solider in the late 19th century. A quick google look, however, shows their origins to be far from clear.

Robust evidence for bisexual orientation among men

It is interesting that debate over whether genuinely bisexual men actually exist has continued for so long. In the current issue of PNAS Jabbour et al. appear to settle the issue:  

Significance

There has long been skepticism among both scientists and laypersons that male bisexual orientation exists. Skeptics have claimed that men who self-identify as bisexual are actually homosexual or heterosexual. (The existence of female bisexuality has been less controversial.) This controversy can be resolved using objective, genital responses of men to male and female erotic stimuli. We combined nearly all available data (from eight previous American, British, and Canadian studies) to form a dataset of more than 500 men, much larger than any previous individual study, and conducted rigorous statistical tests. Results provided compelling evidence that bisexual-identified men tend to show bisexual genital and subjective arousal patterns. Male sexual orientation is expressed on a continuum rather than dichotomously.

Abstract

The question whether some men have a bisexual orientation—that is, whether they are substantially sexually aroused and attracted to both sexes—has remained controversial among both scientists and laypersons. Skeptics believe that male sexual orientation can only be homosexual or heterosexual, and that bisexual identification reflects nonsexual concerns, such as a desire to deemphasize homosexuality. Although most bisexual-identified men report that they are attracted to both men and women, self-report data cannot refute these claims. Patterns of physiological (genital) arousal to male and female erotic stimuli can provide compelling evidence for male sexual orientation. (In contrast, most women provide similar physiological responses to male and female stimuli.) We investigated whether men who self-report bisexual feelings tend to produce bisexual arousal patterns. Prior studies of this issue have been small, used potentially invalid statistical tests, and produced inconsistent findings. We combined nearly all previously published data (from eight previous studies in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada), yielding a sample of 474 to 588 men (depending on analysis). All participants were cisgender males. Highly robust results showed that bisexual-identified men’s genital and subjective arousal patterns were more bisexual than were those who identified as exclusively heterosexual or homosexual. These findings support the view that male sexual orientation contains a range, from heterosexuality, to bisexuality, to homosexuality.

Inflammaging and COVID-19

I pass on the first paragraph from a Science Perspectives article by Akbar and Gilroy, and suggest that you have a look at the whole article.

Aging is associated with increased morbidity arising from a range of tissue dysfunctions. A common denominator of age-associated frailty is increased baseline inflammation, called inflammaging, that is present in older individuals. Recent studies have shown that the presence of excessive inflammation can inhibit immunity in both animals and humans and that this can be prevented by blocking inflammatory processes. This finding has important implications for the immunity of older individuals who are infected with pathogens such as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that induce overwhelming inflammation, which can be fatal, particularly in older people. Reducing inflammation may be a therapeutic strategy for enhancing immunity in older people.

Stepping backwards enhances cognitive control.

From Koch et al., some interesting work on the role of body locomotion in the recruitment of control processes.:

In the most fundamental and literal sense, approach refers to decreasing, and avoidance to increasing, the physical distance between the self and the outside world. In our view, body locomotion most purely taps into this fundamental nature of approach and avoidance. In everyday life, individuals typically approach desired stimuli by stepping forward and avoid aversive stimuli by stepping backward

...The idea that body locomotion may trigger approach and avoidance orientations has, so far, not been tested...we expected that stepping backward would increase the recruitment of cognitive control relative to stepping forward. To test this prediction, we gauged cognitive functioning by means of a Stroop task immediately after a participant stepped in one direction. The Stroop task requires naming the color in which stimulus words are printed while ignoring their semantic meaning, which is actually processed more automatically than the color. Cognitive control is required to override the tendency to respond to the semantic meaning and instead respond to the color.

...our study showed that stepping backward significantly enhanced cognitive performance compared to stepping forward or sideways. Considering the effect size, backward locomotion appears to be a very powerful trigger to mobilize cognitive resources. Thus, whenever you encounter a difficult situation, stepping backward may boost your capability to deal with it effectively.

Are you holding your breath?

Note; This is a repeat of a post that I did on Jan. 28, 2008. Its theme led me to develop a lecture titled "Are you holding your breath - Structures of arousal and calm." which is posted on my dericbownds.net website.  The contents of the lecture are relevant to understanding the stress we are all feeling during the current COVID-19 pandemic.  

I notice - if I am maintaining awareness of my breathing - that the breathing frequently stops as I begin a skilled activity such as piano or computer keyboarding. At the same time I can begin to sense an array of unnecessary (and debilitating) pre-tensions in the muscle involved. If I just keep breathing and noticing those tensions, they begin to release. (Continuing to let awareness return to breathing when it drifts is a core technique of mindfulness meditation). Several sources note that attending to breathing can raise one's general level of restfulness relative to excitation, enhancing parasympathetic (restorative) over sympathetic (arousing) nervous system activities. These personal points make me feel like passing on some excerpts from a recent essay which basically agrees with these points: "Breathtaking New Technologies," by Linda Stone, a former Microsoft VP and Co-Founder and Director of Microsoft's Virtual Worlds Group/Social Computing Group. It is a bit simplistic, but does point in a useful direction.

I believe that attention is the most powerful tool of the human spirit and that we can enhance or augment our attention with practices like meditation and exercise, diffuse it with technologies like email and Blackberries, or alter it with pharmaceuticals...but... the way in which many of us interact with our personal technologies makes it impossible to use this extraordinary tool of attention to our advantage...the vast majority of people hold their breath especially when they first begin responding to email. On cell phones, especially when talking and walking, people tend to hyper-ventilate or over-breathe. Either of these breathing patterns disturbs oxygen and carbon dioxide balance...breath holding can contribute significantly to stress-related diseases. The body becomes acidic, the kidneys begin to re-absorb sodium, and as the oxygen and CO2 balance is undermined, our biochemistry is thrown off.

The parasympathetic nervous system governs our sense of hunger and satiety, flow of saliva and digestive enzymes, the relaxation response, and many aspects of healthy organ function. Focusing on diaphragmatic breathing enables us to down regulate the sympathetic nervous system, which then causes the parasympathetic nervous system to become dominant. Shallow breathing, breath holding and hyper-ventilating triggers the sympathetic nervous system, in a "fight or flight" response...Some breathing patterns favor our body's move toward parasympathetic functions and other breathing patterns favor a sympathetic nervous system response. Buteyko (breathing techniques developed by a Russian M.D.), Andy Weil's breathing exercises, diaphragmatic breathing, certain yoga breathing techniques, all have the potential to soothe us, and to help our bodies differentiate when fight or flight is really necessary and when we can rest and digest.

I've changed my mind about how much attention to pay to my breathing patterns and how important it is to remember to breathe when I'm using a computer, PDA or cell phone...I've discovered that the more consistently I tune in to healthy breathing patterns, the clearer it is to me when I'm hungry or not, the more easily I fall asleep and rest peacefully at night, and the more my outlook is consistently positive...I've come to believe that, within the next 5-7 years, breathing exercises will be a significant part of any fitness regime.

“Design fiction” skirts reality to provoke discussion and debate

I want to suggest that readers have a look at David Adams Science and Culture essay in the June 16 issues of PNAS. Here is its beginning:

In October 2015, researchers presented an unusual paper at a computer science conference in London. The paper described the promising results of a pilot project in which a local community used surveillance drones to enforce car parking restrictions and to identify dog owners who failed to clean up after their pets. Controlled by four elderly retirees, the drones buzzed around the city and directed council officials on the ground.

The paper and its accompanying video generated lively discussion about the ethics and regulation of drone use among delegates at the CHI PLAY conference. But there was a catch: The paper, the video, and the pilot scheme were fictional, as the researchers admitted at the end of both the paper and the presentation.

The researchers had invented the scenario as a way to focus attention on how drone technology—a topic of study for some of the people in the room—could shape and change society. The team thought that presenting the idea as if it were real—for example, showing familiar street signs in the video warning drivers about a drone-controlled zone—would provoke discussion about a future in which such use of technology was considered mundane.

The practice is called design fiction. Originally used in product design, the approach is finding increasing use in scientific and medical fields as a way to explore the possible consequences of technological development. These projects are not so much experiments designed to test a hypothesis as they are orchestrated scenarios designed to provoke forward-thinking discussion and debate. From climate science and artificial intelligence to wearable technologies and healthcare, researchers are creating and sharing often dystopian tales about the near future. And they’re tracking people’s reactions to these scenarios to help reshape the way researchers conceive the technology they are developing.

Dynamic Views of MindBlog

In my review of old blog posts I've come across mention of a link I placed at the top right corner os this page...Dynamic Views of MindBlog, which disappeared at some point without my noticing it (was Blogger/Google trying to shut it down?, I dunno.), I've put it back in. If you click on the link you have the options of view Deric's MindBlo in Classic, Flipcard, Magazine, Mosaic, Sidebar, Snapshot, or Timeslide formats. Give it a try!

Followup on MindBlog's Istanbul lecture on our subjective "I"

Forgive me for inflicting my nostalgia trip on you as I do the following re-post from Oct. 18, 2010. 78 year old Deric is struck by the more grandiose professory gravitas of the 68 year old Deric.

A previous post has pointed to a web text version of the piano recital and lecture I gave at "Cognitive VII", an international cognitive neuroscience meeting held in Istanbul May 18-20 of this year. The organizers indicated they would send a video of the piano performance and lecture, and after a number of tries, I have finally received, and now posted,  a video. It is missing a short bit of audio just after the beginning, and unfortunately deletes the last part of the talk on emotions and the evolution of music.  Still, it gives you a taste of the setting.

Training internal resilience

I want to point to an interesting article by Eva Holland on relieving trauma, which is very relevant to the potential mental0health fallout from living through our current pandemic. Some clips describing a therapy called E.M.D.R., eye movement desensitization and reprocessing:

E.M.D.R. was developed in the late 1980s and greeted with much skepticism at first. “It sounded like yet another of the crazes that have always plagued psychiatry,” Bessel van der Kolk, a trauma expert, wrote in “The Body Keeps The Score.” But clinical trials and peer-reviewed studies that spoke to its efficacy piled up over the three decades since its invention, and Dr. van der Kolk and many others eventually adopted it as part of their therapeutic practice.

It works like this: A therapist prompts the patient to move their eyes back and forth, rhythmically, behind their eyelids. (Devices that beep or buzz help to encourage and regulate the eye movements.) At the same time, the therapist talks the patient through the traumatic event or events at issue, leading them through a series of questions about how their body is reacting to the discussion. It is a strange, and strangely physical, experience. The precise mechanisms at play are not fully understood, but the theory is that something about the eye motion, combined with the focused discussion, can lay the intrusive memories to rest.

E.M.D.R. taught me an important lesson: that internal resilience can be deliberately cultivated...I had never before thought of resilience as a muscle I could train and strengthen. The idea felt empowering.

In a reversal of this therapy, the therapist asks the client to recall four resources from their memories: a places where they have left safest and happiest, a nurturing figure, a protector, and a source of wisdom. The author reports:

As I held a vibrating pod in each hand, and as my eyes rolled back and forth behind my eyelids in time to their pulsing, following the vibrations from left to right and back again, I thought about my grandmother — my nurturing figure, who had died when I was 18. I pictured her at the open kitchen window of her suburban bungalow....The pods pulsed. My eyes moved from side to side. I felt loved and safe. To my surprise, I felt stronger, too. In the time since, I have sometimes called up those sensory memories of my grandmother when I’m upset, or when I feel in need of support. It always helps.

The article proceeds to discuss further techniques for cultivating resilience that do not involve paying a therapist.

How we get stronger.

Gretchen Reynolds points to studies on weight lifting monkeys that show weight training initially prompts increases in muscle strength by increasing neural input to muscles via the reticulospinal tract. Only later do the muscles actually start to grow.

Significance Statement

We provide the first report of a strength training intervention in non-human primates. Our results indicate that strength training is associated with neural adaptations in intracortical and reticulospinal circuits, whilst corticospinal and motoneuronal adaptations are not dominant factors.

Abstract

Following a program of resistance training, there are neural and muscular contributions to the gain in strength. Here, we measured changes in important central motor pathways during strength training in two female macaque monkeys. Animals were trained to pull a handle with one arm; weights could be added to increase load. On each day, motor evoked potentials in upper limb muscles were first measured after stimulation of the primary motor cortex (M1), corticospinal tract (CST) and reticulospinal tract (RST). Monkeys then completed 50 trials with weights progressively increased over 8-9 weeks (final weight ∼6kg, close to the animal’s body weight). Muscle responses to M1 and RST stimulation increased during strength training; there were no increases in CST responses. Changes persisted during a two-week washout period without weights. After a further three months of strength training, an experiment under anesthesia mapped potential responses to CST and RST stimulation in the cervical enlargement of the spinal cord. We distinguished the early axonal volley and later spinal synaptic field potentials, and used the slope of the relationship between these at different stimulus intensities as a measure of spinal input-output gain. Spinal gain was increased on the trained compared to the untrained side of the cord within the intermediate zone and motor nuclei for RST, but not CST, stimulation. We conclude that neural adaptations to strength training involve adaptations in the RST, as well as intracortical circuits within M1. By contrast, there appears to be little contribution from the CST.

Mindblog does another anti-aging experiment.

This is a repeat of a MindBlog post done Oct. 10, 2010, encountered during an on-and-off review I'm doing of old blog posts. Five comments on the post can be seen by clicking the link to the original post. I'm halfway tempted, it now being roughly 10 years later, to repeat the experiment.

I find myself both spooked and sparked by my second foray into anti-aging chemistry (the first being the unsuccessful resveratrol dalliance described in a previous post.) A colleague pointed me to work of Bruce Ames and collaborators (also here) which has led to the marketing by Juvenon of a dietary supplement containing Acetyl L-carnitine, alpha-lipoic acid, and the B-vitamin biotin. Experiments on rats show that these compounds reverse the age related decay in energy metabolism in mitochondria and also inhibit oxidative damage to mitochondrial lipids. So... the idea is that these supplements might energize and juice you up a bit.  The Juvenon supplement contains (per day) 600 mcg biotin, 2000 mg of acetyl-L-carnitine, and 800 mg of alpha lipoic acid.  I though $40 was a bit steep for a 30 day supply, and so I bought the equivalent supplements from Swanson Health Products for significantly less money.  I decided to take 600 mg of the carnitine/day, 1000 mg/day of the alpha lipoic acid,  and 1000 mcg/day of biotin,  half at breakfast, half at lunch (by the way, this is slightly less than 1% of the levels used in the rat experiments.) From the homework I have done so far, the levels of these supplements being taken have no documented adverse side effects.

The results?  Well.... sufficiently dramatic that I really can't credit that it is all a placebo effect,  because I go into any such experiment as an unbeliever... The first several days I felt a phase change, a  step up in energy level and kinetic energy that made me like a 20-something again, a bit incredulous, as in "whoa.. where did this come from."  With both brain and body feeling like an automobile engine running at 2,000 r.p.m. even when it was not in gear,  I cut the levels of the supplements by a half after three days.   After another three days of energy I didn't know what to do with,  generating what felt like excess brain and body "noise,"  I stopped the supplement,  deciding that my normal fairly robust daily routines (including daily gym work or swimming, running, or weights) apparently had all the energy they needed.

Any experiences or references from blog readers would be appreciated.

Our brain's chemistry of love neutralizes its chemistry of fear.

Arthur Brooks, in his biweekly Atlantic Column, offers some very sane comments on the underlying fear that virtually all of us experience, especially in this time of COVID-19. He notes several surveys that show an increase of 10-20% in fear, anxiety, and stress over the past 10-20 years. There will always be threats to face and things to fear, and his stance is that...

The way to combat fear within ourselves is with its opposite emotion—which is not calmness, or even courage. It’s love...The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching, “Through Love, one has no fear.” More than 500 years later, Saint John the Apostle said the same thing: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

Love neutralizes fear. It took about 2,000 years, but contemporary neurobiological evidence has revealed that Lao Tzu and Saint John were absolutely on the money...Fear is a primary emotion processed in the amygdala, a part of the brain that detects threats and signals to the body to produce the stress hormones that make us ready for fight or flight. This is largely involuntary, and, while necessary for survival, is unpleasant..The fear response is also maladapted to modern life. For example, a friend of mine with a large Twitter following once told me that he felt his chest tighten every day as he clicked on the social media app on his phone. His amygdala was alerting him that dangerous threats lay ahead, and he was getting a dose of adrenaline and cortisol in response—even though nothing was likely going to harm him.

However, we have a natural modulator of the hyperactive amygdala: the neuropeptide oxytocin, sometimes called the “love molecule.” Oxytocin is often produced in the brain in response to eye contact and touch, especially between loved ones. The feeling it creates is intensely pleasurable; indeed, life would be unbearable without it. There is evidence that an oxytocin deficit is one reason for the increase in depression during the coronavirus pandemic, with its lockdowns and social distancing.

Oxytocin has also been found to reduce anxiety and stress by inhibiting the response of the amygdala to outside stimuli. If you have loving contact with others, the outside world will seem less scary and threatening to you. What Saint John asserted is literally true: Perfect love drives out fear.

Brooks continues by noting many trends that over the past 20-30 years have decreased the amount of love in our lives, leading to an epidemic of loneliness.He then suggests concrete steps to bring more love into our lives by first sharing our fears with someone we trust, and by expressing you appreciation, affection or love for a friend or family member whom you would not normally address in this way.

A calming Brahms Romance for Monday afternoon.

Yet another item I've stumbled upon in my review of old MindBlog posts:

Urgent care for our brains.

I gave a Zoom lecture to the Austin Prime Timers group on May 17 titled "Urgent care for our brains" and thought I might as well point to the lecture text and graphics here on MindBlog. The text is informal, casual, and directed to our current situation with COVID-19.

Mindblog's back office has expanded

I want to introduce two new young MindBlog editorial assistants, Markus and Martin, three month old Abbysinian kittens who are in training to be the next generation after Marvin and Melvin, now 12 years old, who have been noted in numerous posts since their employment in summer of 2008.

Benefits of exercise on aging brain obtained without exercise - by plasma transfer.

There is a large literature on beneficial effects of exercise on brain health in agings adults such as improving memory and cognition. Mouse experiments by Horowitz et al. raise the possibility that affluent human couch potatoes might be able to obtain these benefits by receiving injections of plasma (blood without its cellular components) from people who have exercised. They transferred plasma from regularly exercising adult or aged mice to aged sedentary mice. This increased the formation of new hippocampal neurons, increased the concentrations of neurotrophic factors, and improved cognition in behavioral tests of the sedentary mice. Their abstract:

Reversing brain aging may be possible through systemic interventions such as exercise. We found that administration of circulating blood factors in plasma from exercised aged mice transferred the effects of exercise on adult neurogenesis and cognition to sedentary aged mice. Plasma concentrations of glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)–specific phospholipase D1 (Gpld1), a GPI-degrading enzyme derived from liver, were found to increase after exercise and to correlate with improved cognitive function in aged mice, and concentrations of Gpld1 in blood were increased in active, healthy elderly humans. Increasing systemic concentrations of Gpld1 in aged mice ameliorated age-related regenerative and cognitive impairments by altering signaling cascades downstream of GPI-anchored substrate cleavage. We thus identify a liver-to-brain axis by which blood factors can transfer the benefits of exercise in old age.

We navigate with stereo smell

From Wu et al.:

Significance

The human brain exploits subtle differences between the inputs to the paired eyes and ears to construct three-dimensional experiences and navigate the environment. Whether and how it does so for olfaction is unclear, although humans also have two separate nasal passages that simultaneously sample from nonoverlapping regions in space. Here, we demonstrate that a moderate internostril difference in odor intensity consistently biases recipients’ perceived direction of self-motion toward the higher-concentration side, despite that they cannot report which nostril smells a stronger odor. The findings indicate that humans have a stereo sense of smell that subconsciously guides navigation.

Abstract

Human navigation relies on inputs to our paired eyes and ears. Although we also have two nasal passages, there has been little empirical indication that internostril differences yield directionality in human olfaction without involving the trigeminal system. By using optic flow that captures the pattern of apparent motion of surface elements in a visual scene, we demonstrate through formal psychophysical testing that a moderate binaral concentration disparity of a nontrigeminal odorant consistently biases recipients’ perceived direction of self-motion toward the higher-concentration side, despite that they cannot verbalize which nostril smells a stronger odor. We further show that the effect depends on the internostril ratio of odor concentrations and not the numeric difference in concentration between the two nostrils. Taken together, our findings provide behavioral evidence that humans smell in stereo and subconsciously utilize stereo olfactory cues in spatial navigation.

(By the way, a previous MindBlog post points to work showing binaral rivalry between the nostrils, analogous to the binocular rivalry that has been studied for over a century.)

The enlightenment returns.

 OhMyGawd..... I just came across the following MindBlog post from March 31, 2009, celebrating Obama's statement on restoring government guided by rationality and scientific integrity.  I pray that I can do do a similar post next March with Biden's name replacing Obama's.....

I have been almost reduced to tears of gratitude by Obama's statements on restoring an American government that is guided by rationality and scientific integrity rather than a conservative religious faith that distorts both. Kurt Gottfried and Harold Varmus (see below) write an editorial in Science Magazine that salutes this (Here is the President's memorandum):

The authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were children of the Enlightenment. They understood the power that flows from combining human reason with empirical knowledge, and they assumed that the political system they were creating would thrive only in a culture that upheld the values of the Enlightenment. And thrive it did, in large part because our people and government upheld those values throughout most of U.S. history. Recently, however, the precepts of the Enlightenment were ignored and even disdained with respect to the manner in which science was used in the nation's governance. Dogma took precedence over evidence, and opinion over facts. Happily, as was made clear by two policy announcements by President Barack Obama on 9 March 2009, the break in the traditionally harmonious relationship between science and government is now ending

As the president put it, "promoting science isn't just about providing resources--it is also about protecting free and open inquiry … free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what [scientists] tell us, even when it's inconvenient--especially when it's inconvenient." In using the words "manipulation" and "coercion," the president was not speaking purely in the abstract; he was alluding to recent breaches of a code to which government must adhere if science is to play its proper role in advising the government on such complex issues as public health, climate change, or environmental protection. When the government systematically disregards this code, it undermines the historic role of science as a bulwark of an enlightened democracy.

In the president's Memorandum on Scientific Integrity last week, addressed to the heads of all executive departments and agencies, he directed those officials to neither suppress nor alter scientific and technological findings solicited in the process of policy formulation. He also asked that scientific information developed or used by the government be made readily available to the public. To put these directives in place, the president requested the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop, within 120 days, recommendations "designed to guarantee scientific integrity throughout the executive branch" and to ensure "that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda."

(Kurt Gottfried is a cofounder of the Union of Concerned Scientists and chair of its board of directors. He is professor of physics emeritus at Cornell University. Harold Varmus is president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, a cochair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and a former director of the National Institutes of Health.)

How stress triggers inflammation

Acute stress seems to amplify inflammatory disease despite the fact many stress hormones such as cortisol actually suppress the immune system. Qing et al. show that this is because the rise in adrenaline (epinephrine) and norepinephrine levels during acute stress triggers the release of the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6) by brown fat cells. IL-6 is the signal for liver release of the glucose needed for the fight or flight response, but this comes at the cost of enhancing mortality to a subsequent inflammatory challenge. Here is their abstract:

Highlights

• IL-6 is the dominant endocrine cytokine induced by acute stress in mice

• Stress-inducible IL-6 is produced in brown adipocytes via ADRB3 signaling

• IL-6 is required for stress hyperglycemia and adaptive “fight or flight” responses

• Stress-induced IL-6 decreases tolerance to a subsequent inflammatory challenge

Summary

Acute psychological stress has long been known to decrease host fitness to inflammation in a wide variety of diseases, but how this occurs is incompletely understood. Using mouse models, we show that interleukin-6 (IL-6) is the dominant cytokine inducible upon acute stress alone. Stress-inducible IL-6 is produced from brown adipocytes in a beta-3-adrenergic-receptor-dependent fashion. During stress, endocrine IL-6 is the required instructive signal for mediating hyperglycemia through hepatic gluconeogenesis, which is necessary for anticipating and fueling “fight or flight” responses. This adaptation comes at the cost of enhancing mortality to a subsequent inflammatory challenge. These findings provide a mechanistic understanding of the ontogeny and adaptive purpose of IL-6 as a bona fide stress hormone coordinating systemic immunometabolic reprogramming. This brain-brown fat-liver axis might provide new insights into brown adipose tissue as a stress-responsive endocrine organ and mechanistic insight into targeting this axis in the treatment of inflammatory and neuropsychiatric diseases.