Height and body-mass index trajectories of school-aged children and adolescents from 1985 to 2019 in 200 countries and territories: a pooled analysis of 2181 population-based studies with 65 million participants

Summary Background Comparable global data on health and nutrition of school-aged children and adolescents are scarce. We aimed to estimate age trajectories and time trends in mean height and mean body-mass index (BMI), which measures weight gain beyond what is expected from height gain, for school-aged children and adolescents. Methods For this pooled analysis, we used a database of cardiometabolic risk factors collated by the Non-Communicable Disease Risk Factor Collaboration. We applied a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate trends from 1985 to 2019 in mean height and mean BMI in 1-year age groups for ages 5–19 years. The model allowed for non-linear changes over time in mean height and mean BMI and for non-linear changes with age of children and adolescents, including periods of rapid growth during adolescence. Findings We pooled data from 2181 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in 65 million participants in 200 countries and territories. In 2019, we estimated a difference of 20 cm or higher in mean height of 19-year-old adolescents between countries with the tallest populations (the Netherlands, Montenegro, Estonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina for boys; and the Netherlands, Montenegro, Denmark, and Iceland for girls) and those with the shortest populations (Timor-Leste, Laos, Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea for boys; and Guatemala, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Timor-Leste for girls). In the same year, the difference between the highest mean BMI (in Pacific island countries, Kuwait, Bahrain, The Bahamas, Chile, the USA, and New Zealand for both boys and girls and in South Africa for girls) and lowest mean BMI (in India, Bangladesh, Timor-Leste, Ethiopia, and Chad for boys and girls; and in Japan and Romania for girls) was approximately 9–10 kg/m2. In some countries, children aged 5 years started with healthier height or BMI than the global median and, in some cases, as healthy as the best performing countries, but they became progressively less healthy compared with their comparators as they grew older by not growing as tall (eg, boys in Austria and Barbados, and girls in Belgium and Puerto Rico) or gaining too much weight for their height (eg, girls and boys in Kuwait, Bahrain, Fiji, Jamaica, and Mexico; and girls in South Africa and New Zealand). In other countries, growing children overtook the height of their comparators (eg, Latvia, Czech Republic, Morocco, and Iran) or curbed their weight gain (eg, Italy, France, and Croatia) in late childhood and adolescence. When changes in both height and BMI were considered, girls in South Korea, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and some central Asian countries (eg, Armenia and Azerbaijan), and boys in central and western Europe (eg, Portugal, Denmark, Poland, and Montenegro) had the healthiest changes in anthropometric status over the past 3·5 decades because, compared with children and adolescents in other countries, they had a much larger gain in height than they did in BMI. The unhealthiest changes—gaining too little height, too much weight for their height compared with children in other countries, or both—occurred in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, New Zealand, and the USA for boys and girls; in Malaysia and some Pacific island nations for boys; and in Mexico for girls. Interpretation The height and BMI trajectories over age and time of school-aged children and adolescents are highly variable across countries, which indicates heterogeneous nutritional quality and lifelong health advantages and risks

Humor comprehension in healthy people and patients with mental disorders: Cognitive and emotional component

The paper describes the results of a comparative analysis of humor comprehension in healthy people (N=39) and patients with mental disorders (N=31): schizophrenia and schizotypal disorders (N=19) and affective disorders (N=12). A set of seven verbal jokes was administered to the participants individually and followed by in-depth semi-structured interview in order to reveal the levels of cognitive and emotional humor comprehension of each joke. The transcribed protocols of the interviews were assessed independently by four experts (psychologists), who ranked the interpretation of each joke in according with five levels of cognitive (1. fragmentary pseudo-comprehension, 2. pseudo-comprehension, 3. diffuse comprehension, 4. incomplete comprehension, 5. complete comprehension) and three levels of emotional (1. lack of emotional contact: a) complete emotional merging with (one of) the joke’s characters; b) absolute inability to establish emotional contact with the joke’s characters, 2. partial identification, 3. voluntarily regulated partial identification) comprehension. Satisfactory level of expert assessments consistency was obtained in both groups of participants, which confirms the suitability of the chosen research methodology for using in both healthy and clinical populations. The results show incomplete humor comprehension to be common among mentally healthy people. At the same time, it is typical for patients with mental disorders to have a significant decrease in both cognitive and emotional components of humor comprehension. We also revealed some differences between the subgroups of schizophrenia and affective disorders. Overall, in the clinical group, correlation between cognitive and emotional components of humor comprehension was lower in comparison with correlation between these components in the controls. We suggest that, in clinical group, the lower correlation may lead to mutual decompensation of cognitive and emotional components while understanding a joke. A promising next step of the study is to conduct a detailed qualitative analysis of the differences of cognitive and emotional humor comprehension and the strategies of jokes’ meanings reconstruction between healthy people and psychiatric patients

Mind the sequence: Long-term mindfulness meditation training enhances motor sequence performance and representation in older adults

Mindfulness meditation techniques have been shown to enhance attention, working memory and learning. As such, regular mindfulness training might be effective in reducing motor sequence learning deficits observed in older adults. Learning in the serial reaction time (SRT) task was compared between 15 older adults (6 females, Mage=59.8±4.7 years) with a mean of 2,862 hours (± 3,460.6, range 442.5 – 13,167 hours) of mindfulness meditation experience and 13 healthy control older adults (7 females, Mage = 60.1 ± 54.7 years). Meditators (M= 42.4 ± 4.6) scored significantly higher on the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory than controls (M= 32.8 ± 7.2, p < .001). Across 20 blocks of the SRT with an embedded 12-item, second-order conditional sequence, meditators (M= 480.5 ± 103.8 ms) performed with significantly shorter reaction time than controls (M= 632.4 ± 204.2 ms, p < .001). A significant block main effect (p < .001) and non-significant group x block interaction (p = .17) indicated that both groups demonstrated equivalent rates of improvement. However, meditators (M= 118.0 ± 92.0 ms) demonstrated significantly higher transfer costs than non-meditators (M= 19.2 ± 146.5 ms, p < .05) in a final, novel sequence SRT block. Furthermore, meditators performed significantly higher in recall of the 12-item practiced sequence (47.2% ± 11.6 vs 29.5% ± 12.6, p < .001). Higher transfer costs and sequence recall in meditators indicates that a greater extent of motor sequence learning contributed to SRT improvements in this group. In contrast, the control group’s improvements were based on general practice effects. With respect to motor sequence behavior, these results highlight two important benefits of mindfulness training in older adults. Mindfulness training might reduce response latencies by enhancing selective attention and response inhibition processes. Motor sequence learning in older adults could as well benefit from mindfulness training through enhanced working memory function resulting in better capacity for development of sequential representations

Yoga and exercise for symptoms of depression and anxiety in people with poststroke disability:: A randomized, controlled pilot trial

CONTEXT: Mood disorders are prevalent in people after stroke, and a disorder's onset can exacerbate stroke-related disabilities. While evidence supports the mental-health benefits of participation in exercise and yoga, it is unknown whether such benefits extend to a population with poststroke hemiparesis. OBJECTIVE: The study investigated whether supplementing exercise with participation in a yoga program would provide further improvements in self-reported symptoms of depression and anxiety in a chronic poststroke population, and it also assessed trial feasibility for future studies. DESIGN: The research team designed a randomized, controlled pilot trial that included an exercise-only group (EX, control) and a yoga-and-exercise group (YEX, intervention). SETTING: The study took place at the Centre for Physical Activity in Ageing an exercise rehabilitation and activity center at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in South Australia. PARTICIPANTS: The participants included 14 individuals with chronic poststroke hemiparesis: eight in the intervention group and six in the control group. INTERVENTIONS: The YEX group participated in a 6-week standardized program that included yoga in weekly group sessions and home practice in addition to exercise in a weekly group class. The EX group participated only in the group exercise class weekly for 6 weeks. OUTCOME MEASURES: The research team assessed self-reported symptoms of depression using the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS15) and symptoms of anxiety and negative affect using the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). The team based the feasibility evaluation on recruitment outcomes, retention of participants, participants' compliance with the intervention program, and the safety of the intervention. RESULTS: Changes in depression and state and trait anxiety did not significantly differ between intervention groups (GDS15 P=.749, STAI-Y1, P=.595, STAI-Y2, P=.407). Comparison of individuals' case results indicated clinically relevant improvements in both groups, although members of the intervention group had greater improvements. Participants reported no adverse events, and the study experienced high retention of participants and high compliance in the yoga program. CONCLUSIONS: This pilot study provides preliminary data on the effects of yoga combined with exercise to influence mood poststroke. It is a feasible, safe, and acceptable intervention, and the field requires additional investigations with a larger sample size

Art, Meditation and Cognitive Science: A Framework for Museum-based Community Meditation Programme during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Singapore

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused mandatory lockdowns worldwide, exacerbating mental health issues created by social isolation. To improve museum visitors' mental health and maintain engagement despite the physical closure of museums, the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) rapidly deployed an online programme called Unwind with SAM to engage the public with the museum's contemporary art collection through meditation and contemplation. The programme focused on the positive effect of arts on mental health and well-being, combined with the cognitive benefits of meditation by ‘slow-looking’ at artworks. The programme was a reaction to lockdown conditions; therefore, this practice-based report allows for reflection and consolidation of the processes to explore the intersectional potential between art, contemplation and cognitive sciences in a publicly accessible way. The first section briefly overviews the current landscape of art and wellness approaches in museums. The second section outlines a philosophical framework which explores the intersection of art, meditation and cognitive science to guide the programme, alongside a breakdown of components and design rationale. The final part provides a critical reflection and concludes with recommendations for other museum practitioners, managers and scientists to utilise the framework for designing future programmes with diverse organisations.N

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition)

In 2008, we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, this topic has received increasing attention, and many scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Thus, it is important to formulate on a regular basis updated guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Despite numerous reviews, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to evaluate autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we present a set of guidelines for investigators to select and interpret methods to examine autophagy and related processes, and for reviewers to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of reports that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a dogmatic set of rules, because the appropriateness of any assay largely depends on the question being asked and the system being used. Moreover, no individual assay is perfect for every situation, calling for the use of multiple techniques to properly monitor autophagy in each experimental setting. Finally, several core components of the autophagy machinery have been implicated in distinct autophagic processes (canonical and noncanonical autophagy), implying that genetic approaches to block autophagy should rely on targeting two or more autophagy-related genes that ideally participate in distinct steps of the pathway. Along similar lines, because multiple proteins involved in autophagy also regulate other cellular pathways including apoptosis, not all of them can be used as a specific marker for bona fide autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field