Music during pregnancy, hidden benefits of adult learning, Parkinson disease game-changer, brain death, nix seductive details in slides, ethical skeletons, throat cancer epidemic
Listening to Music During Pregnancy Benefits Baby Brain’s Ability to Encode Speech Sounds
Exposure to music or the sound of the mother singing while in the womb was associated with better neural encoding of speech sounds in infants.
Daily musical exposure during the last weeks of the pregnancy is associated with an improved encoding of low-frequency sound compounds. Credit: University of Barcelona
When pregnant women sing to their babies or listen to music on loudspeakers during their pregnancy, babies are born with a better ability for neuronal encoding of speech sounds.
This is one of the main conclusions of a study led by Professor Carles Escera, head of Brainlab—Research Group on Cognitive Science at the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Barcelona, the Institute of Neurosciences of the UB (UBNeuro) and the Sant Joan de Déu Research Institute (IRSJD).
The results of this paper, published in the journal Developmental Science, provide new perspectives on the effects of prenatal musical exposure about language stimuli using a specific brain response: the frequency-following response (FFR), a neurophonic auditory evoked potential that informs about the appropriate neural coding of speech sounds.
According to the conclusions, daily musical exposure during the last weeks of the pregnancy is associated with an improved encoding of low-frequency sound compounds, which could improve the newborn’s perception of the tone.
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Older Adults May Achieve Same Cognition as Undergrads
Improved cognition was seen in older adults who learned multiple new tasks, and the improvements got better as time passed, a new study reports.
One year after they learned new skills, the older research subjects tested higher for certain cognitive tasks than prior to the learning. Image is in the public domain
A set of recent studies demonstrates for the first time that learning multiple new tasks carries benefits for cognition long after the learning has been completed.
The finding affirms a long-held assertion of the lead researcher, Rachel Wu, who is an associate professor of psychology at UC Riverside. That is, older adults can learn new tasks and improve their cognition in the process, if they approach learning as a child does.
“Our findings provide evidence that simultaneously learning real-world skills can lead to long-term improvements in cognition during older adulthood,” Wu and her colleagues wrote in a recently published paper in the journal Aging and Mental Health. “Overall, our findings promote the benefits of lifelong learning, namely, to improve cognitive abilities in older adulthood.”
Kevin Patton comment→ Do you see applications to our adult A&P students? Or to ourselves? I do!
Sure, we're all life-long learners. But taking an actual college course from time to time throughout our teaching career can have unexpected benefits. And science supports this (see the previous entry in this newsletter).
To listen, click the player (if visible) or go to theAPprofessor.org/117 or find it wherever you listen to audio.
A Parkinson’s ‘game changer,’ backed by Michael J. Fox, could lead to new diagnostics and, someday, treatments
The new findings, published in The Lancet Neurology, are the result of a 1,123-person study that has cost the Fox Foundation hundreds of millions of dollars since it began in 2010. Right now, alpha-synuclein can only be detected by taking a spinal tap, a difficult and uncomfortable procedure. But scientists say they hope that it could be detected in blood, a skin biopsy, or possibly even in a swab of the nose. An editorial in the medical journal called the test “a game-changer in Parkinson’s disease diagnostics, research, and treatment trials.”
The result is convincing in part because of the unique resource of patient volunteers that Fox was able to bring together, said Vikram Khurana, chair of movement disorders at Brigham & Women’s Hospital.
“It is certainly head and shoulders, in my view, the best resource that we have in the Parkinson’s disease research community to really analyze the behavior and molecular and clinical aspects of our patients,” Khurana said.
Fox, who was diagnosed with a very early case of Parkinson’s at age 29, said that he keeps going back to documentary footage of his childhood. At the time, there was no way to know he would develop the disease; soon, he said, a child like that might be able to simply get a nasal swab at 2 or 3 or 4. “It’s all changed. It can be known and treated early on. It’s huge.”
The Uncertain Future of the Determination of Brain Death
Image: PxHere CC0 Public Domain
In 1980, the US Uniform Law Commission (ULC) established the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA), which was subsequently adopted (with some modifications) by all 50 states.1 The law states that death is defined as either (1) the irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions or (2) the irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brainstem. Although the loss of cardiorespiratory function has always been recognized as death, the determination of death by neurologic criteria was seen by some as creating a new way of defining death, one based on the loss of brain functioning rather than the loss of biological functioning.
The framers of the UDDA rejected the claim that this was a new way of defining death.2 Instead, they pointed to evidence at the time suggesting that the brain is necessary for maintaining biological functioning and that when this brain regulation is absent, homeostatic mechanisms fail, with cardiac arrest invariably occurring within 1 to 2 weeks at most. In other words, brain death and cardiopulmonary arrest were seen as equivalent and equally valid criteria for diagnosing the biological death of a patient.
However, with improvements in critical care medicine, this equivalency has been called into question. With modern intensive care unit support, some patients can be stabilized and, if provided with mechanical ventilation and tube feedings, their bodies may survive for many years.3 The most highly publicized such case has been that of Jahi McMath,4 who was declared braindead after a after a hemorrhagic complication of a complex surgical procedure in 2013, but whose body continued to survive for almost 5 years after being transferred to New Jersey, the only state that provides full accommodation for families who reject the diagnosis of death by neurologic criteria.
Kevin Patton comment→ It’s worth reading the whole article. Determining whether a person is alive is a central concept in A&P, as it is in the applied healthcare setting that each of our students will one day find themselves.
Decorative animations impair recall and are a source of extraneous cognitive load
Worki
ng memory is critical for learning but has a limited capacity for processing new information in real time.
Cognitive load theory is an evidence-based approach to education that seeks to minimize the extraneous (unnecessary) load on working memory to avoid overloading it. The “seductive details effect” postulates that extraneous load can come from instructional design materials that attract interest but are unrelated to, and impair, learning.
Presentation packages, such as Microsoft PowerPoint, have built-in decorative animated “GIFs” that are designed to make presentations more visually appealing. The aim of the study was to investigate the effect of such “decorative” animations on learning and working memory performance.
We found that students were less able to recall content presented in the presence of a decorative but relevant animation compared with a still image. This effect was found with two different topics (human physiology and enzyme kinetics). Compared with still images, students also found it harder to remember animations themselves, and the self-reported mental workload required to remember them was higher.
These results show that decorative animations are seductive details and are thus a source of extraneous cognitive load.
Kevin Patton comment→ This is a MUST READ article that is also a MUST HEED article. Seriously. (And don’t do what I did with this GIF!)
Anatomists' uses of human skeletons: Ethical issues associated with the India bone trade and anonymized archival collections
Image: PxHere CC0 Public Domain
Concerns have recently been expressed about the continuing availability of human bones from India, obtained originally for educational purposes but lacking the requisite informed consent that would be expected today. More generally, a broader claim is being made, namely, that the practice of using any unconsented bones in educational settings is unethical and should cease.
These calls, in turn, raise broader issues regarding the availability of anonymous archival collections in anatomy museums. Although this debate centers on undergraduate anatomy teaching, much anthropological research utilizes human remains of past populations for which there can have been no consent.
A suggested alternative for undergraduate teaching is the use of 3D images of human bones, rather than the bones themselves. In addressing these issues, the background to the India bone trade is assessed, and the year 1985 is pinpointed as having significant ethical weight. The cultural and ethical interests inherent in studying archival anonymous skeletal material are weighed against indiscriminate reburial. Although any use of unconsented material represents ethical compromise, account should be taken of changing ethical expectations with time.
It is concluded that: there is no justification for repatriation or disposal of all bones for which specific informed consent has not been obtained; continued use of anonymous archival human bones in a professional setting is acceptable, even in the absence of informed consent, with the proviso that there are no culturally relevant groups seeking repatriation; the continued existence of bones in long-standing private collections cannot be justified since it amounts to long-term storage with no identified goals; the notion that 3D images are an ethically superior alternative to actual human bones is unsustainable, since there is an intimate connection between the bones and the 3D images.
Kevin Patton comment→ This is an important article about an important question.
The Silent Teacher – A Conversation with Aaron Fried
Although at some level, I think we all know that the human specimens used in anatomy education are the remains of real people with real lives and real families and friends, I wonder how much that really sinks in. In Episode 29 from the “golden age” of TAPP Radio, Aaron Fried talks about this question (to which he has give a lot of thought).
Throat Cancer Is Becoming an Epidemic, And Our Sex Lives Could Be Behind It
(PhotoAlto/Ale Ventura/Getty Images)
Over the past two decades, there has been a rapid increase in throat cancer in the west, to the extent that some have called it an epidemic. This has been due to a large rise in a specific type of throat cancer called oropharyngeal cancer (the area of the tonsils and back of the throat).
The main cause of this cancer is the human papillomavirus (HPV), which are also the main cause of cancer of the cervix. Oropharyngeal cancer has now become more common than cervical cancer in the US and the UK.
HPV is sexually transmitted. For oropharyngeal cancer, the main risk factor is the number of lifetime sexual partners, especially oral sex. Those with six or more lifetime oral-sex partners are 8.5 times more likely to develop oropharyngeal cancer than those who do not practice oral sex.
