Scientific Research

Major or clinical depression seems to alter the genes that regulate sleep and waking

May 14, 2013

Disrupted sleep is so commonly a symptom of depression that some of the first things doctors look for in diagnosing depression are insomnia and excessive sleeping. Now, however, scientists have observed for the first time a dysfunctional body clock in the brains of people with depression.

People with major depression, also known as clinical depression, show disrupted circadian rhythms across brain regions, according to a new study published today (May 13) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers looked at post-mortem brain samples from mentally healthy donors and compared them with those of people who had major depression at the time of their death.

They found that gene activity in the brains of depressed people failed to follow healthy 24-hour cycles.

Read the full article at Scientific American »

Finding of disrupted brain gene orchestration gives first direct evidence of circadian rhythm changes in depressed brains, opens door to better treatment

May 13, 2013

Every cell in our bodies runs on a 24-hour clock, tuned to the night-day, light-dark cycles that have ruled us since the dawn of humanity. The brain acts as timekeeper, keeping the cellular clock in sync with the outside world so that it can govern our appetites, sleep, moods and much more.

But new research shows that the clock may be broken in the brains of people with depression — even at the level of the gene activity inside their brain cells.

It’s the first direct evidence of altered circadian rhythms in the brain of people with depression, and shows that they operate out of sync with the usual ingrained daily cycle. The findings, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, come from scientists from the University of Michigan Medical School and other institutions.

Read the full article at UofMHealth.org »
Read the publication abstract at PNAS »

April 11, 2013

Combining neuroscience and chemical engineering, researchers at Stanford University have developed a process that renders a mouse brain transparent. The brain remains whole — not sliced or sectioned in any way — with its three-dimensional complexity of fine wiring and molecular structures completely intact and able to be measured and probed at will with visible light and chemicals.

This interview with Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, explains the work and how it fits into neuroscience research and other research applications.

Watch the interview on YouTube

March 26, 2013

Giving residents less time on duty and more time to sleep was supposed to lead to fewer medical errors. But the latest research shows that’s not the case. What’s going on?

Since 2011, new regulations restricting the number of continuous hours first-year residents spend on call cut the time that trainees spend at the hospital during a typical duty session from 24 hours to 16 hours. Excessively long shifts, studies showed, were leading to fatigue and stress that hampered not just the learning process, but the care these doctors provided to patients.

But the latest data, published online in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that interns working under the new rules are reporting more mistakes, not enough sleep and symptoms of depression. In the study that involved 2,300 doctors from more than a dozen national hospitals, the researchers compared a population of interns serving before the 2011 work-hour limit was implemented, with interns working after the new rule, during a three-month period.

Read the full article at TIME »

Shortening shifts for first-year interns often doesn’t cut workloads and can cause more problematic patient ‘handoffs,’ researchers say.

March 25, 2013

It’s been 15 years now, but Dr. Sanjay Desai remembers the brutal hours he worked as a young medical intern and how he struggled with fatigue while treating patients.

“There were days we were easily working 36 hours straight and you couldn’t remember how you got home — if you got home,” Desai said. “It wasn’t safe.”

Times have changed. Regulations now demand that teaching hospitals limit first-year trainees to 16-hour shifts. By reducing work hours, medical authorities reasoned, interns would get more sleep, suffer less fatigue and commit fewer mistakes.

But a pair of studies published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine suggest this may not be the case. Researchers concluded that interns were making more mistakes and learning less after the shift restrictions.

Read the full article at Los Angeles Times »