Evaluating the happiness of an entire society is tricky–after all, the traditional survey-based method of collecting data doesn’t work for such a huge population. But now scientists say they have come up with a way to quantify the well-being of a society: by analyzing song lyrics and blog posts for emotionally charged words, according to a study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies. Among their findings, researchers determined that bloggers in their 50s and 60s are most content, and that popular music has become increasingly less happy since the 1960s.
To evaluate the overall happiness of the public, researchers pulled data from nearly two-and-a-half million blogs and 230,000 song lyrics. With the aid of their own computers, the researchers scanned the texts for more than 1000 emotionally charged words that a 1999 psychology study had ranked on a scale from 1 (miserable) to 9 (ecstatic). “Triumphant” and “love” topped the list with average scores greater than 8.7, whereas “disgusted” was one of the lowest at 2.45. The researchers then calculated an average happiness score for each text based on the words’ scores and frequencies [ScienceNOW Daily News]. They found that although certain days of the year always show fluctuations in the blog world (Christmas and Valentine’s Day show a spike in happiness, while September 11 shows a dip in well-being), overall happiness among the bloggers since 2005 has increased about 4 percent.
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For six years, psychiatrists thought they had found a genetic clue as to what makes some people more prone to depression when they’re hit with an emotional blow: a single gene. A 2003 study created a sensation among scientists and the public because it offered the first specific, plausible explanation of why some people bounce back after a stressful life event while others plunge into lasting despair [The New York Times]. But now a broader analysis of 14 studies has found no link between the gene and the risk of depression, and researchers argue that the 2003 findings were prematurely heralded as a breakthrough. “I think what happened is that people who’d been working in this field for so long were desperate to have any solid finding” [The New York Times], says Kathleen R. Merikangas, one of the authors of the new study.
The so-called “depression gene” that researchers focused on in the 2003 study helps regulate levels of serotonin, a brain chemical that plays a major role in depression and is a key target of antidepressant drugs. Researchers … found from a long-term study of 847 people in New Zealand that those with a short version, or allele, of the serotonin transporter gene were more likely to become depressed by adverse life events than were those with only long alleles [ScienceNOW Daily News].
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Inserting a “pacemaker” into the brain to emit regular pulses of electricity and quell disordered neural activity may sound like a therapy of last resort, but if current experiments show beneficial results the brain surgery may one day be commonplace. But some scientists are cautioning that research on so-called deep brain stimulation may be pressing ahead too quickly, and warn that long-term effects of the surgery are not yet clear.
A growing number of psychiatric researchers are testing the method’s effectiveness on a host of psychiatric disorders. Until recently, deep brain stimulation was approved in the U.S. only to treat certain movement disorders, primarily those of Parkinson’s disease, for which it diminishes tremors and rigidity and improves mobility. To date, more than 60,000 patients worldwide have had the devices implanted [Los Angeles Times]. But now large clinical trials are in the works that will test the use of deep brain stimulation for obsessive compulsive disorder, epilepsy, and depression. Smaller experiments are beginning to assess the therapy’s effectiveness on a wide range of disorders including anorexia, drug addiction, obesity, traumatic brain injury, and Alzheimer’s.
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Tumors may physically trigger depression by producing chemicals that induce negative mood swings, according to a new study. The research, conducted in rats, allowed for the isolation of “just the physiological effects of the tumors from the psychological effects…. The tumors themselves are sufficient to induce depression” [The Scientist], says lead researcher Leah Pyter.
The new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed first that rats who had cancer exhibited several behavioral symptoms associated with depression. The researchers gave a forced swimming test to 100 rats, some healthy and some with cancer, and found that the sick rats did not try as hard to escape—a behavior similar to that seen in humans with depression. The sick rats were also less interested in sugar water, which is the the clear preference for healthy rats.
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The Saturday Night Live character who famously recited the mantra: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me” may have been setting a valuable example for schoolkids. A new study asked middle school students to do short, self-affirming writing exercises, and found that the simple task boosted the grades of some students for two years afterward. The students who benefited most were blacks who were doing poorly, the study found; the exercises made no difference for white students, or for black ones who were already doing well [The New York Times].
The result is exciting, lead researcher Geoffrey Cohen says, because it suggests that even modest interventions, when done early, can interrupt a downward achievement spiral. “Small changes to an individual’s psychological state can have surprisingly large effect over time if they alter the angle of people’s performance trajectory,” he said, adding that the early benefit is compounded over time [Reuters].
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People with a family history of depression have an altered brain anatomy, a new study says, even if they themselves have never experienced clinical depression. Brain scans showed a 28-percent thinning in the right cortex — the outer layer of the brain — in people who had a family history of depression compared with people who did not. “The difference was so great that at first we almost didn’t believe it. But we checked and re-checked all of our data, and we looked for all possible alternative explanations, and still the difference was there” [Reuters], said study coauthor Bradley Peterson.
Researchers scanned the brains of 131 individuals ranging in age from 6 to 54, about half of whom came from families with a history of depression. The team was looking specifically for abnormalities in the brain that could signal a predisposition to depression, rather than changes that may be caused by the disease [Reuters]. The cortical thinning seems to fit the definition as a warning flag. Says Peterson: “That’s what is so extraordinary. You’re seeing it two generations later, and you’re seeing it in both children and adults…. And it’s present even if those offspring themselves have not yet become ill” [The New York Times].
The cerebral cortex is largely responsible for reasoning, planning, and mood, and researchers suggest that its thinning may interfere with a person’s ability to interpret social and emotional cues from others. Interestingly, not all of the subjects with depressed family members showed thinning on both sides of their cortices; it was primarily those with thinning in the left hemisphere who had actually developed depression.
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While that headline may overstate the case slightly for comic effect, researchers say the gist of it is true: Stroke patients with impaired vision who listened to their favorite music showed vastly improved visual processing. Says lead researcher David Soto: “One of the patients chose Kenny Rogers, another Frank Sinatra and the third a country rock band. It’s not a particular kind of music that’s important, as long as the patient enjoys it” [Daily Mail].
Participants in Soto’s study had suffered lesions to their brains’ parietal cortex, a region central to visual and spatial processing. This left them with a condition called visual neglect, in which people lose half their spatial awareness. Victims will sometimes eat food from only one side of their plate, shave one side of their faces, or — as tested in the study — fail to perceive visual prompts on one side of a computer screen [Wired].
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Locusts are prompted to band together in enormous, destructive swarms by the same brain chemical that is linked to happiness in humans. A fascinating new study has found that locusts that are about to swarm experience a sudden surge of serotonin, the same neurotransmitter that’s targeted by antidepressant drugs. “Here we have a solitary and lonely creature, the desert locust. But just give them a little serotonin, and they go and join a gang,” observed Malcolm Burrows [AP], one of the study’s authors.
Researchers say the findings may lead to methods to block the formation of locust swarms. These infestations, which can cover hundreds of square miles and involve billions of vegetation-munching insects, can devastate agriculture and cost tens of millions of dollars to control [The New York Times].
Because locusts usually avoid each other, it’s only dire circumstances that bring them together in buzzing hordes. For instance, unpredictable desert rains cause vegetation blooms, which in turn makes locust populations skyrocket. But as the rains abate and fertile land shrivels up, locusts crowd together in the remaining green patches. Eventually, the swarm trigger goes off and the locusts take to the skies—”a strategy of desperation driven by hunger,” [National Geographic News], says coauthor Stephen Rogers. When they make that behavior shift they also change appearance dramatically, going from light green to dark brown.
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Gay young adults who were rejected by their families when they came out as teenagers are much more likely to attempt suicide, have unprotected sex, and have problems with drug use and depression, according to a new study. The findings are based on surveys of 224 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender adults in California who ranged in age from 21 to 25. Gay Latinos were most likely to experience a poor reception from their parents, and had the highest rates of risk factors for HIV and mental health problems, according to the research [Scientific American].
The findings, published in the journal Pediatrics [subscription required], don’t prove that a family’s negative reaction to a child’s sexuality directly causes problems later in life. But it’s clear that “there’s a connection between how families treat gay and lesbian children and their mental and physical health” [HealthDay News] said social worker Caitlin Ryan, the study’s lead author. She found that teenagers who were rejected by their families were eight times as likely to attempt suicide, six times as likely to report serious depression, and three times as likely to have unprotected sex and use drugs.
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Happiness is catching and spreads like the flu, according to a study that followed a whole community of people for 20 years. The effect of one happy person could ripple through three degrees of separation, researchers report. “It is sometimes said that you can’t be happier than your least happy child. It is truly amazing to discover that when you replace the word ‘child’ with ‘best friend’s neighbor’s uncle,’ the sentence is still true,” [Boston Globe] said psychologist Daniel Gilbert, who was not involved in the study. The researchers liken the pattern of happiness transmission to the spread of a virus: those with the most number of happy contacts are the mostly likely to catch the happy bug.
The study, published in the British Medical Journal, followed more than 4,700 people living in Framingham, Massachusetts from 1983 to 2003. The participants answered periodic questionnaires about their emotional well-being and listed the names of relatives, friends, and co-workers, many of whom were also participating in the study. Researchers found that happiness wasn’t scattered evenly throughout the population but instead seemed to spread through social networks. “Happiness is like a stampede,” said [co-author] Nicholas Christakis… “Whether you’re happy depends not just on your own actions and behaviors and thoughts, but on those of people you don’t even know” [AP].
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In a counterintuitive new study, researchers have found that obese women get less pleasure from drinking a chocolate milkshake than average-weight women, and suggest that obese women are therefore more likely to overeat in an attempt to get that high. Researchers used a fMRI brain scanner to record women’s levels of the pleasure-providing brain chemical dopamine while they were sipping milkshakes, and found that obese women had a muted pleasure response.
They also studied a dopamine-regulating gene variant that has previously been linked to obesity, and showed that women with this variant had the lowest dopamine levels and were also very likely to gain weight over the ensuing year. Dopamine expert Nora Volkow says this furthers the research on the genetic component of obesity: “It takes the gene associated with greater vulnerability for obesity and asks the question why. What is it doing to the way the brain is functioning that would make a person more vulnerable to compulsively eat food and become obese?” [AP]
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A new study of the prairie vole, a rodent species famed for its monogamous ways, has shown that the vole’s brain chemistry changes when its mate is taken away, and that it loses some of its vim and vigor. Researchers compared the behavior of males who were separated from either their mates or their siblings, and found that those voles who had lost their loyal mates were passive and unresponsive–maybe even depressed.
Prairie voles are one of the few mammals that are generally monogamous; the mates form life-long bonds and rear their pups together. In the new study, researchers subjected all the male voles to stress tests, like dunking them in basins of water and holding them suspended by their tails, and found that the voles whose mates had been spirited away put up less struggle. In the water, for example, they floated listlessly instead of paddling for their lives. These voles “basically were passive — they gave up,” [study coauthor Larry] Young said. “I would be hesitant to say that these animals were depressed, but their behavior is reminiscent of what you would see in a depressed person” [HealthDay News].
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The little blue pills that have given so many men a sexual boost may be of some use to women as well. A small study looked at women whose sex lives had suffered as a side effect of taking antidepressants, and found that Viagra increased their sexual sensation and orgasms.
However, the pills didn’t boost the women’s sex drive, leading some experts to question whether the medication could help most women. “Viagra is not a desire drug. It dilates the blood vessels, allowing intercourse to occur,” said Rutgers University psychology professor Barry R. Komisaruk, an expert on sexual dysfunction. [Sexual health expert Leonard] Derogatis agreed: “The most prevalent female sexual dysfunction is not arousal but desire. Viagra doesn’t have a direct effect on that,” he said [Baltimore Sun].
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Researchers have the best evidence yet that the brain chemical serotonin plays a role in sudden infant death sydrome (SIDS).
In a new study, researchers genetically engineered mice to have low levels of serotonin at birth, and found that more than half of the mice abruptly died before they were 3 months old. More intriguing, they had erratic episodes where their heart rate would drop and, five to 10 minutes later, so would their body temperature, [study author Cornelius] Gross reported. Sometimes they died in the midst of what Gross calls those crises, other times afterward [AP].
Serotonin is most commonly known as a mood regulator involved in depression, but it also helps control some of the body’s most basic functions, including breathing, heart rate, and body temperature. The mouse study supports earlier data gathered from the autopsied brain tissue of SIDS babies, which showed alterations in brainstem nerve cells that communicate using serotonin.
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Researchers have made a map of the human brain that shows a dense network of connections at the top of the cerebral cortex, suggesting that electrical signals travel through this hub on their way to more specialized regions. “This is just about the coolest paper I’ve seen in a long time, and forward-looking in terms of where the science is going,” said Dr. Marcus E. Raichle, a professor of neurology and radiology… who was not involved in the research. He added, “They’ve found in the brain what looks like a hub map of the airline system for the United States” [The New York Times].
An international team of researchers used a technique called diffusion spectrum imaging to map the connections between different parts of the brain. The technique traces the path of water moving along axons, long fibers that extend from a neuron’s main body and carry electrical signals [Science News]. They found the most connections at the top of the cortex along the crack that separates the brain’s two hemispheres. According to researchers, that area is not only a relay station, it’s also the area that’s most active when the brain is in “default mode,” the activation state present when the brain is not engaged in any specific cognitive task [The Scientist].
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