Effects of HEPA Air Cleaners on Unscheduled Asthma Visits and Asthma Symptoms for Children Exposed to Secondhand Tobacco Smoke

The goal was to test the effects of high-efficiency, particulate-arresting (HEPA) air cleaners on unscheduled asthma visits and symptoms among children with asthma exposed to secondhand smoke

Impact of Early-Life Bisphenol A Exposure on Behavior and Executive Function in Children

To estimate the impact of gestational and childhood bisphenol A (BPA) exposures on behavior and executive function at 3 years of age and to determine whether child gender modified those associations

Smoking during Pregnancy Affects Speech-Processing Ability in Newborn Infants

BACKGROUND: Tobacco smoking during pregnancy is known to adversely affect development of the central nervous system in babies of smoking mothers by restricting utero–placental blood flow and the amount of oxygen available to the fetus. Behavioral data associate maternal smoking with lower verbal scores and poorer performance on specific language/auditory tests. OBJECTIVES: In the current study we examined the effects of maternal smoking during pregnancy on newborns’ speech processing ability as measured by event-related potentials (ERPs). METHOD: High-density ERPs were recorded within 48 hr of birth in healthy newborn infants of smoking (n = 8) and nonsmoking (n = 8) mothers. Participating infants were matched on sex, gestational age, birth weight, Apgar scores, mother’s education, and family income. Smoking during pregnancy was determined by parental self-report and medical records. ERPs were recorded in response to six consonant–vowel syllables presented in random order with equal probability. RESULTS: Brainwaves of babies of nonsmoking mothers were characterized by typical hemisphere asymmetries, with larger amplitudes over the left hemisphere, especially over temporal regions. Further, infants of nonsmokers discriminated among a greater number of syllables whereas the newborns of smokers began the discrimination process at least 150 msec later and differentiated among fewer stimuli. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicate that prenatal exposure to tobacco smoke in otherwise healthy babies is linked with significant changes in brain physiology associated with basic perceptual skills that could place the infant at risk for later developmental problems

Subclinical Thyroid Disorders and Cognitive Performance Among Adolescents in the United States

Background: Thyroid hormone plays a crucial role in the growth and function of the central nervous system. The purpose of the study was to examine the relationships between the status of subclinical thyroid conditions and cognition among adolescents in the United States. Methods: Study sample included 1,327 adolescents 13 to 16 years old who participated in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III). Serum thyroxine (T4) and thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) were measured and subclinical hypothyroidism, subclinical hyperthyroidism, and euthyroid groups were defined. Cognitive performance was assessed using the subscales of the Wide Range Achievement Test-Revised (WRAT-R) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R). The age-corrected scaled scores for arithmetic, reading, block design, and digit span were derived from the cognitive assessments. Results: Subclinical hypothyroidism was found in 1.7% and subclinical hyperthyroidism was found in 2.3% of the adolescents. Cognitive assessment scores on average tended to be lower in adolescents with subclinical hyperthyroidism and higher in those with subclinical hypothyroidism than the score for the euthyroid group. Adolescents with subclinical hypothyroidism had significantly better scores in block design and reading than the euthyroid subjects even after adjustment for a number of variables including sex, age, and family income level. Conclusion: Subclinical hypothyroidism was associated with better performance in some areas of cognitive functions while subclinical hyperthyroidism could be a potential risk factor

The material soul: Strategies for naturalising the soul in an early modern epicurean context

We usually portray the early modern period as one characterised by the ‘birth of subjectivity’ with Luther and Descartes as two alternate representatives of this radical break with the past, each ushering in the new era in which ‘I’ am the locus of judgements about the world. A sub-narrative called ‘the mind-body problem’ recounts how Cartesian dualism, responding to the new promise of a mechanistic science of nature, “split off” the world of the soul/mind/self from the world of extended, physical substance—a split which has preoccupied the philosophy of mind up until the present day. We would like to call attention to a different constellation of texts—neither a robust ‘tradition’ nor an isolated ‘episode’, somewhere in between—which have in common their indebtedness to, and promotion of an embodied, Epicurean approach to the soul. These texts follow the evocative hint given in Lucretius’ De rerum natura that ‘the soul is to the body as scent is to incense’ (in an anonymous early modern French version). They neither assert the autonomy of the soul, nor the dualism of body and soul, nor again a sheer physicalism in which ‘intentional’ properties are reduced to the basic properties of matter. Rather, to borrow the title of one of these treatises (L’Âme Matérielle), they seek to articulate the concept of a material soul. We reconstruct the intellectual development of a corporeal, mortal and ultimately material soul, in between medicine, natural philosophy and metaphysics, including discussions of Malebranche and Willis, but focusing primarily on texts including the 1675 Discours anatomiques by the Epicurean physician Guillaume Lamy; the anonymous manuscript from circa 1725 entitled L’Âme Matérielle, which is essentially a compendium of texts from the later seventeenth century (Malebranche, Bayle) along with excerpts from Lucretius; and materialist writings such Julien Offray de La Mettrie’s L’Homme-Machine (1748), in order to articulate this concept of a ‘material soul’ with its implications for notions of embodiment, materialism and selfhood

Lower-Level Stimulus Features Strongly Influence Responses in the Fusiform Face Area

An intriguing region of human visual cortex (the fusiform face area; FFA) responds selectively to faces as a general higher-order stimulus category. However, the potential role of lower-order stimulus properties in FFA remains incompletely understood. To clarify those lower-level influences, we measured FFA responses to independent variation in 4 lower-level stimulus dimensions using standardized face stimuli and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). These dimensions were size, position, contrast, and rotation in depth (viewpoint). We found that FFA responses were strongly influenced by variations in each of these image dimensions; that is, FFA responses were not “invariant” to any of them. Moreover, all FFA response functions were highly correlated with V1 responses (r = 0.95–0.99). As in V1, FFA responses could be accurately modeled as a combination of responses to 1) local contrast plus 2) the cortical magnification factor. In some measurements (e.g., face size or a combinations of multiple cues), the lower-level variations dominated the range of FFA responses. Manipulation of lower-level stimulus parameters could even change the category preference of FFA from “face selective” to “object selective.” Altogether, these results emphasize that a significant portion of the FFA response reflects lower-level visual responses

Cigarette Smoking and Cognitive Function in Chinese Male Schizophrenia: A Case-Control study

Schizophrenic patients have higher smoking rates than the general population. Studies show that smoking may be a form of self-medication in an attempt to alleviate cognitive deficits in schizophrenic patients of European background. This study examined the relationships between smoking and cognitive deficits in Chinese schizophrenic patients, which have previously received little systemic study. We recruited 580 male chronic patients meeting DSM-IV criteria for schizophrenia and 175 male control subjects who were matched on age and education. The subjects completed a detailed cigarette smoking questionnaire, the Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND), and the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS). Patients also were rated on the Positive and Negative Symptom Scale (PANSS), the Simpson and Angus Extrapyramidal Symptom Rating Scale (SAES), and the Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale (AIMS). All five RBANS subscales except for the Visuospatial/Constructional index showed significantly lower cognitive performance for schizophrenics than normal controls. The schizophrenic smokers scored lower than the schizophrenic non-smokers on the RBANS total score and the Visuospatial/Constructional and Immediate Memory indices. Similarly, the control smokers scored lower than the control non-smokers on the RBANS total score and the Immediate Memory index . Also, the schizophrenic smokers consistently performed the poorest on the cognitive domains of the RBANS. Among the schizophrenic patients, smokers displayed significantly fewer negative symptoms than non-smokers. Using multivariate regression analysis the following variables were independently associated with the RBANS total score: years of education, PANSS negative symptom score, age at schizophrenia onset, and number of hospitalizations. Our results show that smoking is associated with significant cognitive impairment in both schizophrenic patients and normal controls, but the smokers with schizophrenia had a reduced level of negative symptoms, suggesting that the benefits of smoking for those with schizophrenia may be limited to certain aspects of a given clinical phenotype