assignment
Mini-Research Project #1 “Post-Op Alzheimers” Your mother calls you but you are super busy on Zoom in an integrative neuroscience seminar so you can’t take the call. She leaves you a voice mail asking you to call her back later tonight because she needs some advice, and that you are probably the best person to give it as you are studying Neuroscience at the University of Sydney. Her message says … “I am really concerned about your Uncle Basil. He has just called to tell me that he should be going to go for an operation next week for a hernia repair, but now he is in two minds about it. Auntie Nadia read recently that having a general anesthetic can cause Alzheimer's disease and she told him about the article. Uncle Basil is now really worried that he will begin to have memory problems like his Dad did before he passed away. Uncle Basil is worried that he won't be able to continue working as a fireman if he gets Alzheimer's and that he should probably just "grin and bear" the pain and discomfort of the hernia. Auntie Nadia wishes she had never read the article and that she had never said anything to Uncle Basil. " Your Mum asks you to have a word with Uncle Basil, but before you do this you manage to track down the news report that Auntie Nadia had read, and you find the journal article that it was discussing ... You telephone your Mum, but this time she is busy, so you draft her an email. In 500 words, can you explain clearly and concisely what the experiments reported in the news article did; what they found and whether the data and conclusions are reliable and robust evidence that anesthetics pose a risk for triggering Alzheimers disease and then advise her what to say to Uncle Basil and Auntie Nadia? Assessment Rubric Your answers will be assessed in four domains: firstly have you described concisely and accurately what was done ?; secondly have you reported concisely and accurately the findings and results ?; thirdly have you evaluated the reliability and robust nature of the findings ?; and finally, have you given your Mum reliable and sound advice? What they Did? Mostly inaccurate descriptions and factually incorrect Mainly inaccurate descriptions and frequent errors Mainly accurate and precise. Some errors Mainly accurate and precise. No errors Accurate and precise. No errors 0% 0.5% 1.5% 2.5% 3% What they Found? Mostly inaccurate descriptions and factually incorrect Mainly inaccurate descriptions and frequent errors Mainly accurate and precise. Some errors Mainly accurate and precise. No errors Accurate and precise. No errors 0% 0.5% 1% 2.5% 3% Your Evaluation? Mostly inaccurate descriptions and factually incorrect Mainly inaccurate descriptions and frequent errors Mainly accurate and precise. Some errors Mainly accurate and precise. No errors Accurate and precise. No errors 0% 0.5% 1% 2.5% 3% Conclusion and Advice Either, questionable conclusion OR bad advice Sound conclusion AND good advice 0% 1% Mini-Research Project Number of Words: 525 words I read the study that was cited in the radio show and I’m going to go through what the scientists did, what they found and how this led to the bold statement that overusing social media is the same as drug addiction’s effect on psychological health. They studied 20 MRI brain scans of young people whose social media use was notable enough to score on a given addiction scale. They used what is called voxel-based morphometry which is a computation analysis tool to compare the images by differences in concentrations of tissue in certain brain areas in order to analyse specific regions known to be related to addiction. They found that the size of the amygdala - which you may have heard of before as the fear centre - was decreased in these participants and the paper attributed this to being part of the mechanism of triggering an impulse that produces a subsequent reward. They also looked at the nucleus accumbens which is the part of the brain traditionally identified as important to addiction as it processes the reward and further, the cingulate cortex which is the part of the brain that is thought to be responsible for self-control and inhibition. There were no significant changes in these two areas. As you might expect, changes in the amygdala like I mentioned depended on the extent of social media use and interestingly, were more prominent in females according to the study. My take on the study is that is pretty reliable based on the fact that its methodology and results were similar to those of studies on addictions to cannabis, alcohol, cocaine and prescription opioids. The researchers took into account factors such as age, gender and overall brain size to make sure these were not the determinants of the analysed results from the recorded data. I thought it was important that they excluded participants who could be classified as mentally ill due to pre-existing conditions as the focus appeared to be the effects of excessive social media use in the young and healthy. This being said, it is only one study and needs a larger sample size and ideally, a longitudinal study with the same test subjects monitored over time. So, a few things to note: this paper suggests that changes arising from excessive social media use are to do with modulatory changes deeper within the brain rather than the frontal lobe which is where we typically look to for addictive behaviours. It showed a possibly more efficient impulsive aspect with no less efficient inhibition effect. The studied individuals were between 18 and 23 years old which corresponds to your son’s age group or a little bit older, but this research used only Facebook and not YouTube, SnapChat, WhatsApp or Discord. I would not say that on its own is enough to warrant banning your son from those platforms as we would need evidence that they produce results alike to this paper. For now, my advice is to try to limit his use as much as possible, in moderation, and suggest for him to practice mindfulness to potentially mediate cognitive and behavioural changes for the better. Anesthetics fragment hippocampal network activity, alter spine dynamics, and affect memory consolidation RESEARCH ARTICLE Anesthetics fragment hippocampal network activity, alter spine dynamics, and affect memory consolidation Wei YangID 1☯, Mattia ChiniID 2☯, Jastyn A. PöpplauID 2, Andrey FormozovID 1, Alexander DieterID 1, Patrick PiechocinskiID 1, Cynthia Rais1, Fabio Morellini3, Olaf Sporns4,5, Ileana L. Hanganu-Opatz2, J. Simon WiegertID 1* 1 Research Group Synaptic Wiring and Information Processing, Center for Molecular Neurobiology Hamburg, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany, 2 Institute of Developmental Neurophysiology, Center for Molecular Neurobiology Hamburg, University Medical Center Hamburg- Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany, 3 Research Group Behavioral Biology, Center for Molecular Neurobiology Hamburg, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany, 4 Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, United States of America, 5 Indiana University Network Science Institute, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, United States of America ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. *
[email protected] Abstract General anesthesia is characterized by reversible loss of consciousness accompanied by transient amnesia. Yet, long-term memory impairment is an undesirable side effect. How dif- ferent types of general anesthetics (GAs) affect the hippocampus, a brain region central to memory formation and consolidation, is poorly understood. Using extracellular recordings, chronic 2-photon imaging, and behavioral analysis, we monitor the effects of isoflurane (Iso), medetomidine/midazolam/fentanyl (MMF), and ketamine/xylazine (Keta/Xyl) on net- work activity and structural spine dynamics in the hippocampal CA1 area of adult mice. GAs robustly reduced spiking activity, decorrelated cellular ensembles, albeit with distinct activity signatures, and altered spine dynamics. CA1 network activity under all 3 anesthetics was different to natural sleep. Iso anesthesia most closely resembled unperturbed activity during wakefulness and sleep, and network alterations recovered more readily than with Keta/Xyl and MMF. Correspondingly, memory consolidation was impaired after exposure to Keta/Xyl and MMF, but not Iso. Thus, different anesthetics distinctly alter hippocampal network dynamics, synaptic connectivity, and memory consolidation, with implications for GA strat- egy appraisal in animal research and clinical settings. Introduction General anesthesia is a drug-induced, reversible behavioral condition encompassing uncon- sciousness, amnesia, sedation, immobility, and analgesia [1,2]. Together, these aspects repre- sent a state where surgery can be tolerated without the requirement for further drugs [2]. The PLOS BIOLOGY PLOS Biology | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001146 April 1, 2021 1 / 46 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Yang W, Chini M, Pöpplau JA, Formozov A, Dieter A, Piechocinski P, et al. (2021) Anesthetics fragment hippocampal network activity, alter spine dynamics, and affect memory consolidation. PLoS Biol 19(4): e3001146. https:// doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001146 Academic Editor: Jozsef Csicsvari, Institute of Science and Technology Austria, AUSTRIA Received: June 29, 2020 Accepted: February 15, 2021 Published: April 1, 2021 Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process; therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. The editorial history of this article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001146 Copyright: © 2021 Yang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: The code generated during this study is available at https://github.com/ mchini/Yang_Chini_et_al The datasets underlying the figures are available at: https://github.com/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1052-8808 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5782-9720 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4350-3164 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8935-8612 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9154-4833 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2065-6782 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0893-9349 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001146 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001146&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2021-04-01 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001146&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2021-04-01 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001146&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2021-04-01 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001146&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2021-04-01 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001146&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2021-04-01 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001146&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2021-04-01 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001146 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001146 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001146 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://github.com/mchini/Yang_Chini_et_al https://github.com/mchini/Yang_Chini_et_al https://github.com/mchini/Yang_Chini_et_al/tree/master/Stats_Dataset_(R)/datasets behavioral effects of general anesthetics (GAs) are dose dependent. At clinical (i.e., highest) dosage, they should induce unconsciousness, even though experimental evidence of this phe- nomenon is challenging to collect (in the absence of a verifiable consciousness theory). At lower doses, some GAs cause unresponsiveness and loss of working memory, phenomena that have both been hypothesized to potentially confound the apparent loss of consciousness [3,4]. At much lower doses still, GAs cause profound retrograde amnesia. When general anesthesia fails to induce such behavioral effects, intraoperative awareness ensues, a condition that is associated with long-term adverse health consequences [5]. While loss of memory is required during anesthesia administration, so that no memories of the surgical procedure are formed [1,6], long-term impairment of retrograde or anterograde memories is not desired. Although general anesthesia is generally considered a safe procedure, growing literature points to the possibility of long-term