13 junho 2015
“Beautiful Mind” John Nash’s Schizophrenia “Disappeared” as He...
“Beautiful Mind” John Nash’s Schizophrenia “Disappeared” as He Aged
The Princeton mathematician, who along with his wife died in a car crash last month, claimed that aging as opposed to medicine helped improve his condition
Mathematician John Nash, who died May 23 in a car accident, was known for his decades-long battle with schizophrenia—a struggle famously depicted in the 2001 Oscar-winning film “A Beautiful Mind.” Nash had apparently recovered from the disease later in life, which he said was done without medication.
But how often do people recover from schizophrenia, and how does such a destructive disease disappear?
Nash developed symptoms of schizophrenia in the late 1950s, when he was around age 30, after he made groundbreaking contributions to the field of mathematics, including the extension of game theory, or the math of decision making. He began to exhibit bizarre behavior and experience paranoia and delusions, according to The New York Times. Over the next several decades, he was hospitalized several times, and was on and off anti-psychotic medications.
But in the 1980s, when Nash was in his 50s, his condition began to improve. In an email to a colleague in the mid-1990s, Nash said, “I emerged from irrational thinking, ultimately, without medicine other than the natural hormonal changes of aging,” according to The New York Times. Nash and his wife Alicia died, at ages 86 and 82, respectively, in a crash on the New Jersey Turnpike while en route home from a trip on which Nash had received a prestigious award for his work.
Studies done in the 1930s, before medications for schizophrenia were available, found that about 20 percent of patients recovered on their own, while 80 percent did not, said Dr. Gilda Moreno, a clinical psychologist at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami. More recent studies have found that, with treatment, up to 60 percent of schizophrenia patients can achieve remission, which researchers define as having minimal symptoms for at least six months, according to a 2010 review study in the journal Advances in Psychiatric Treatment.
It’s not clear why only some schizophrenia patients get better, but researchers do know that a number of factors are linked with better outcomes. Nash appeared to have had many of these factors in his favor, Moreno said.
People who have a later onset of the disease tend to do better than those who experience their first episode of psychosis in their teens, Moreno said. (“Psychosis” refers to losing touch with reality, exhibited by symptoms like delusions.) Nash was 30 years old when he started to experience symptoms of schizophrenia, which include hallucinations and delusions.
In addition, social factors—such as having a job, a supportive community and a family that is able to help with everyday tasks—are also linked with better outcomes for schizophrenia patients, Moreno said.
Nash had supportive colleagues who helped him find jobs where people were protective of him, and a wife who cared for him and took him into her house even after the couple divorced, which may have prevented him from becoming homeless, according to an episode of the PBS show “American Experience” that focused on Nash. “He had all those protective factors,” Moreno said.
Some researchers have noted that patients with schizophrenia tend to get better as they age.
“We know, as a general rule, with exceptions, that as people with schizophrenia age, they have fewer symptoms, such as delusions and hallucinations,” Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, a psychiatrist who specializes in schizophrenia, said in an interview with “American Experience.”
However, Moreno said that many patients will get worse over time if they don’t have access to proper medical care and are not in a supportive environment.
“When you have a schizophrenic who has had the multiple psychotic breaks, there is a downward path,” Moreno said. Patients suffer financially because they can’t work, physically because they can’t take care of themselves, and socially because their bizarre behaviors distance them from others, Moreno said.
It may be that the people who have supportive environments are the ones who are able to live to an older age, and have a better outcome, Moreno said.
Still, there is no guarantee that someone will recover from schizophrenia—a patient may have all the protective factors but not recover, Moreno said. Most patients cope with their symptoms for their entire lives, but many are also able to live rewarding lives, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.
Future research into the causes of the disease may lead to better ways to prevent and treat the illness, NIMH says.
mars & solar flare, photographed by soho, 11th-12th june...
mars & solar flare, photographed by soho, 11th-12th june 2015.
mars is the bright dot moving right toward the sun. 27 images over 12 hours.
image credit: nasa/soho. animation: ageofdestruction.
age
Genetic mutation blocks prion disease Scientists who study a...
Genetic mutation blocks prion disease
Scientists who study a rare brain disease that once devastated entire communities in Papua New Guinea have described a genetic variant that appears to stop misfolded proteins known as prions from propagating in the brain.
Kuru was first observed in the mid-twentieth century among the Fore people of Papua New Guinea. At its peak in the late 1950s, the disease killed up to 2% of the group’s population each year. Scientists later traced the illness to ritual cannibalism, in which tribe members ate the brains and nervous systems of their dead. The outbreak probably began when a Fore person consumed body parts from someone who had sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a prion disease that spontaneously strikes about one person in a million each year.
Scientists have noted previously that some people seem less susceptible to prion diseases if they have an amino-acid substitution in a particular region of the prion protein — codon 129. And in 2009, a team led by John Collinge — a prion researcher at University College London who is also the lead author of the most recent analysis — found another protective mutation among the Fore, in codon 127.
The group’s latest work, this month in Nature, shows that the amino-acid change that occurs at this codon, replacing a glycine with a valine, has a different and more powerful effect than the substitution at codon 129. The codon 129 variant confers some protection against prion disease only when it is present on one of the two copies of the gene that encodes the protein. But transgenic mice with the codon-127 mutation were completely resistant to kuru and CJD regardless of whether they bore one or two copies of it.
The researchers say that the mutation in codon 127 appears to confer protection by preventing prion proteins from becoming misshapen.
“It is a surprise,” says Eric Minikel, a prion researcher at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “This was a story I didn’t expect to have another chapter.”
Collinge and his colleagues are now continuing their work, to figure out the mutant protein’s structure and how it shields against illness.
A pottery figure of an ancestor, from the Zapotec culture (circa...
A pottery figure of an ancestor, from the Zapotec culture (circa 200 BCE to 800 CE). Offering vessels like this one have been found in the tombs of high-ranking Zapotec lords and noblewomen in the Oaxaca Valley in Mexico. Zapotec nobles were buried in tombs set around the central plaza of their capital at Monte Albán, which was founded in the 500s BCE and flourished between the 200s and 600s CE. This imposing site was located on the top of a hill with views of the Oaxaca Valley and surrounding mountains. The non-noble Zapotec population, whose work fed and enriched the nobles, at its height numbered around 25,000. They lived on the terraced slopes in the valley below the mountain.
Royal ancestor worship was the focus of Zapotec belief and ceremonial practice and the powerful figures depicted on offering vessels are thought to represent these ancestors, rather than deities. Ancestry was very, very important to the Zapotec as power and wealth were passed on using genealogy and ancestral lines, similar to the European monarchies we were all taught about in history class. One way archaeologists know ancestry was important was the finding of many figurines of ancestors, like this one. They have been found inside noble tombs, positioned alongside bodies, as well as in niches in the walls. Figurines have also been found buried in the floors of ceremonial centers, seemingly as offerings. This particular example has an interesting chest ornament: a glyph or sculpted symbol of a day in the 260-day Zapotec ritual calendar. (image © Trustees of the British Museum)
O caso de Regina Walters
Como quase todas as raparigas da sua idade, Regina não quereria ser fotografada a não ser que estivesse com uma boa aparência, em primeiro lugar e ela acabou por se zangar com a sua mãe por ela ter tirado algumas fotografias contrárias àquelas que desejava, que resulta quase sempre numa imagem de uma pessoa a avisar que não quer ser fotografada no momento, mas isto acontece com toda a gente, nunca é nada de mal.
No entanto, a imagem acima não tem nada a haver com aquilo que acabaste de ler: a história por trás dela é terrível. Quem está nela é realmente Regina, mas não eram os seus pais a fotografá-la, mas sim o serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades, que tirou a última fotografia de Regina com vida.
Rhoades tinha viajado pelos Estados Unidos com um camião que era usado como um estabelecimento de tortura para os jovens que ele tinha raptado (alegadamente, três a cada mês). Ele revelou também que possuía uma pasta com instrumentos de tortura que eram usados nas suas vítimas. Regina foi uma das pessoas a cair na armadilha de Rhoades. Um fazendeiro descobriu o cadáver da rapariga dentro de um celeiro.
A análise da cena do crime levou a descobrir que o local do homicídio e o sítio onde a fotografia foi tirada são os mesmos. O que vês na imagem acima é uma representação dos últimos segundos de vida de uma jovem aterrorizada por um maníaco, que terminou com a sua vida para o seu prazer.
Adaptado de: whatculture
via @notiun
studydiaryofamedstudent: Seriously, have you seen these? Great...
Seriously, have you seen these? Great way to get an introduction to the CNS, and it so well done. Check out the youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB7rXw_3gVY&list=PL242bEng6nyIdshvi_ZUid_i3YctT75q9
UBC Faculty of Medicine
Think applying sunscreen to your own back is easy? In this...
Think applying sunscreen to your own back is easy? In this video, a UV camera quickly reveals all the spots you can miss, underscoring the importance of asking friends or loved ones for help. #whosgotyourback http://ift.tt/1Fkbshu
A “cruller” is a fried pastry that traditionally looked like...
A “cruller” is a fried pastry that traditionally looked like “small, braided torpedo.” It was considered a staple of the New England diet since the Pilgrims.
June 13th 313: Edict of Milan postedOn this day in 313 the Edict...
Constantine the Great (c.272 - 337)
'The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer' by Jean-Léon Gérôme
'The Vision of the Cross' painting from 1520s by Italian Renaissance artist Raphael and his assistants
June 13th 313: Edict of Milan posted
On this day in 313 the Edict of Milan, establishing religious toleration across the Roman Empire, was posted at Nicomedia. Emperor Constantine was the first to convert to Christianity, a process which was accelerated in October of the previous year when he had a vision of God leading his forces to victory in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. This was a pivotal change in previous Roman policy towards Christians, with pagan emperors like Diocletian leading brutal persecutions of Christians. Movement towards toleration began before Constantine, but his leadership saw this come to fruition. The Edict of Milan was jointly issued by Constantine, who represented the Western empire, and Licinius from the East. This edict paved the way for the acceptance of Christianity within the Roman Empire. After the edict, Christianity spread throughout Europe and gradually became a dominant religion, giving birth to Christendom.
Assinar:
Postagens (Atom)
