Social Cognition in Schizophrenia and Cognitive Disorders - A New Study

It is possible that the thinking skills required for social interactions (known as "social cognition") manifest themselves differently in people with chronic schizophrenia and people with cognitive disorders as compared with healthy people.

Hui-Minn (Minn) Chan is currently researching this fascinating area as part of her candidature to gain a Doctorate of Psychology (Clinical Neuropsycholgy), and needs the help of healthy volunteers aged between 30 and 65.

And YOU can help by getting involved.

"WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME...?" (I hear you ask)

Aside from your selfless contribution to the scientific community that will no doubt earn you some bonus karma credits to be cashed in when you most need them, you will also receive a $50 Coles Gift Card for your trouble.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO...

BE:

• aged between 30 and 65
• relatively healthy
• able to speak English

HAVE:

• lived in Australia for a good chunk of your life
• no significant medical or psychiatric history

Otherwise, you just have to watch a few videos, answer questions based on those videos, complete some questionnaires, and undergo some pen and paper tests. This can all be completed in a single session of 4 hours, or two sessions of 2 hours each, and can take place at either Monash University in Clayton or at Royal Melbourne Hospital in Melbourne - whichever suits you best. (Sounds like a piece of cake, really.)

HOW TO GET INVOLVED...

Email Minn at huiminn.chan@monash.edu or call/text her on 0404 211 957 for an initial chat, and she will sort out the rest!

One of the key barriers to conducting clinical research - and the primary obstacles facing honours, PhD and doctoral candidates - is being able to find willing study participants generous enough to give up their time and get involved. Those of you able to give up a few hours of your time to participate in Minn's study will be helping further research into an extremely complicated area of neuropsycholiogy and a very worthwhile area of science.

I hope to see you there, and happy volunteering!

Live until you're 150 and go out drinking with your great-grandparents...

Prof Peter Smith, Dean of Medicine at the University of New South Wales, caused a stir in the mainstream media this week when he commented that, due to advances in medicine, lifestyle and public heath, a girl born in Australia today could reasonably expect to live until the age of 100.

Prof Smith also indicated that a number of drugs in the development pipeline would be able to “extend human life by some decades further”, with the aim of people living healthy,  happy and active lives until the ripe old age of 150. Without the degeneration that usually accompanies the aging process.

Live to the age of 150?

Without arthritis.

Without neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons causing you to lose your memory or the control of your limbs.

Is it possible?

Emerging stem cell therapy research holds out hope for the future, and general advances in the science underlying the way we eat and look after ourselves has seen the average life expectancy of the baby boomers and every generation since then march inexorably forward.[1] But a family of proteins known as “sirtuins” may represent the most immediately exciting therapeutic target in the field of ageing science.

What are Sirtuins?

Sirtuins are a family of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD)-dependent deacetyleases that have been shown to regulate mammals’ physiological responses to two of the most important factors in the process of ageing: metabolism and stress.[2]  Specifically, the activation of these molecules has been shown to extend the lifespan of several model organisms by shutting down the expression of certain gene products associated with stress that would otherwise cause organisms to age when those organisms are faced with extreme situations such as food scarcity and a resultant low calorie diet.[3]
To write this as an equation:

↑ STRESS (eg. Due to food scarcity) = ↑ “STRESS GENE PRODUCTS” = ↑ AGEING

BUT

ACTIVATION OF SIRTUINS = ↓ “STRESS GENE PRODUCTS” = ↓ AGEING

So, figuring out how to activate sirtuins is clearly important ;-)...

Where to now? Therapies for the Future...

David Sinclair, an Australian professor based at Harvard University and world leader in ageing science, has demonstrated that resveratrol, a plant -derived sirtuin-activiating compound found in red wine, can increase the life expectancy of yeast, worms, fruit flies and fat mice, by activating sirtuins.[4]

The company he founded was bought by GlaxoSmithKline for US$720 million in 2008.

Clinical trials are currently underway to assess the effects of treating people with a variety of diseases associated with ageing, including type-2 diabetes and Alzheimers Disease, with synthetic sirtuin-activating molecules – some of which are up to 1000 times more potent than resveratrol.  “And [they] are showing early signs of efficacy,” says Prof Sinclair.

What does that mean?

Living until you’re 74 could soon be a thing of the past. 74 might be the age at which you start thinking about your second career. Or the age to take up surfing. People could otherwise go out drinking with their great-grandparents. Now that would be really cool...

---

[1] Harvard Medical School. ‘Average Life Expectancy: Measuring Yours.’ Harvard Health Letter: Boston, MA (July 2006). (http://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/average-life-expectancy) 

[2] Satoh A, Stein L, Imai S. ‘The role of Mammalian sirtuins in the regulation of metabolism, aging, and longevity.’ Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology, 206: 125-62 (2011).

[3] Guarente, L. ‘Sirtuins, Aging, and Medicine.’ New England Journal of Medicine, 364: 2235-2244 (2011).

[4] Guarente, L. ‘Sirtuins, Aging, and Medicine.’ New England Journal of Medicine, 364: 2235-2244 (2011).

Food and Pheremones: Nature's Way of Turning You On...

PHEREMONES. Probably something you've heard of before, but for many of us out there, not necessarily a word we could define. We may be vaguely aware that they have something to do with smells, possibly something to do with girls' hair, and potentially something to do with sex.

And then there's food. It's probably not a pheremone, but there are definitely those among us who swear that the taste of chocolate, the scent of a mango, or even eating oysters, can pique our libidos and turn us on.

Strictly speaking, pheremones are chemical messengers that are transported outside of the body and have the ability to induce hormonal or behavioural changes in others.[1] It has long been postulated that animals attract their partners by releasing sex pheromones which elicit intuitive courtship and mating behaviours from their recipient.[2] However, a study conceived by Yael Grosjean and Richard Benton of the Center for Integrative Genomics at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and published in this month’s edition of Nature [3] has demonstrated for the first time that certain receptors found in the olfactory (“smell-related”) sensory neurons of male drosophila fruit flies (ionotropic gluatamate receptor 84a, to be exact, or IR84a for short) are not activated by fly-derived pheromones, but by the aromatic odours phenylacetic acid and phenylacetalydehyde – both of which are commonly found in fruit and plant tissues.

Benton, Grosjean and their colleagues were able to show that male courtship behaviour in drosophila flies is markedly increased when IR84a receptors are activated by the above fruit-derived odours. Conversely, in drosophila whose IR84a receptors are mutated, courtship behaviour is significantly reduced.

Interneurons forming part of the same messenger systems as IR84a receptors innervate the pheromone processing centre in the brain.

What does this mean?

In short, the smell of certain fruits is genuinely eliciting a physiological response to turn male fruit flies on. And there is no reason why similar messenger systems couldn’t apply in humans.

Now where did I put that mango...?

---

[1] Kohl, J., Atzmueller, M., Fink, B. & Grammar, K. ‘Human Pheromones: Integrative Neuroendocrinology & Ethology’. NEL 22, 309-321:  2001.

[2] Wyatt, T.D. ‘Pheremones and Animal Behaviour: Communication by smell and taste. Oxford University Press: 2003.

[3] Grosjean, Y., Rytz, R., Farine, J.-P., Abuin, L., Cortot, J., Jefferis, G.S.X.E. & Benton, R. ‘An olfactory receptor for food-derived odours promotes male courtship in Drosophila’. Nature 478, 236-240: 2011.