Stick Or Carrot - Research Could Aid In Diagnosing Neural Development Disorders Such As Autism, ADHD And Personality Disorders

Main Category: Autism
Also Included In: ADHD;  Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 16 Mar 2013 - 0:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Stick Or Carrot - Research Could Aid In Diagnosing Neural Development Disorders Such As Autism, ADHD And Personality Disorders

The stick can work just as well as the carrot in improving our performance, a team of academics at The University of Nottingham has found.

A study led by researchers from the University's School of Psychology, published recently in the Journal of Neuroscience, has shown that punishment can act as a performance enhancer in a similar way to monetary reward.

Dr Marios Philiastides, who led the work, said: "This work reveals important new information about how the brain functions that could lead to new methods of diagnosing neural development disorders such as autism, ADHD and personality disorders, where decision-making processes have been shown to be compromised."

The Nottingham study aimed at looking at how the efficiency with which we make decisions based on ambiguous sensory information - such as visual or auditory - is affected by the potential for, and severity of, anticipated punishment.

Imposing penalties

To investigate this, they asked participants in the study to perform a simple perceptual task - asking them to judge whether a blurred shape behind a rainy window is a person or something else.

They punished incorrect decisions by imposing monetary penalties. At the same time, they measured the participants' brain activity in response to different amounts of monetary punishment. Brain activity was recorded, non-invasively, using an EEG machine which detects and amplifies brain signals from the surface of the scalp through a set of small electrodes embedded in a swim-like cap fitted on the participants' head.

They found that participants' performance increased systematically as the amount of punishment increased, suggesting that punishment acts as a performance enhancer in a similar way to monetary reward.

At the neural level, the academics identified multiple and distinct brain activations induced by punishment and distributed throughout different areas of the brain. Crucially, the timing of these activations confirmed that the punishment does not influence the way in which the brain processes the sensory evidence but does have an impact on the brain's decision maker responsible for decoding sensory information at a later stage in the decision-making process.

Incentive-based motivation

Finally, they showed that those participants who showed the greatest improvements in performance also showed the biggest changes in brain activity. This is a key finding as it provides a potential route to study differences between individuals and their personality traits in order to characterise why some may respond better to reward and punishment than others.

A more thorough understanding of the influence of punishment on decision-making and how we make choices could lead to useful information on how to use incentive-based motivation to encourage certain behaviour.

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our autism section for the latest news on this subject. The paper, Temporal Characteristics of the Influence of Punishment on Perceptual Decision Making in the Human Brain, is available online via the Journal of Neuroscience.
University of Nottingham Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

MLA

University of Nottingham. "Stick Or Carrot - Research Could Aid In Diagnosing Neural Development Disorders Such As Autism, ADHD And Personality Disorders." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 16 Mar. 2013. Web.
3 Jun. 2013. APA
University of Nottingham. (2013, March 16). "Stick Or Carrot - Research Could Aid In Diagnosing Neural Development Disorders Such As Autism, ADHD And Personality Disorders." Medical News Today. Retrieved from
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/257661.php.

Please note: If no author information is provided, the source is cited instead.

'Stick Or Carrot - Research Could Aid In Diagnosing Neural Development Disorders Such As Autism, ADHD And Personality Disorders'

Please note that we publish your name, but we do not publish your email address. It is only used to let you know when your message is published. We do not use it for any other purpose. Please see our privacy policy for more information.

If you write about specific medications or operations, please do not name health care professionals by name.

All opinions are moderated before being included (to stop spam)

Contact Our News Editors

For any corrections of factual information, or to contact the editors please use our feedback form.

Please send any medical news or health news press releases to:

Note: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read our terms and conditions.

Let's Work Together to Treat Autism, Heal Autism, Cure Autism, Defeat Autism Now and Stop Autism Immediately! Autism Proven Solution - Autism Alternative Treatments – Autism Vitamin Therapy - Autism Biomedical Treatments - Autism Cure Revealed - Autism Instant Cure - Autism Improve Instantly - Autism Dramatic Improvement - Autism Improved Dramatically - Stop Autism Now Immediately! http://autismatrix.blogspot.com

View the original article here

Research Breakthrough: Targeting Aggressive Prostate Cancer

The discovery of the HER2 gene in breast cancer led to a targeted therapy, Herceptin, that has dramatically boosted survival in women whose tumors are HER2-positive, an aggressive type of breast cancer that was previously hard to treat. Now scientists at University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center (UMCCC) in Ann Arbor have announced what may be an equivalent discovery for prostate cancer, a gene called SPINK1 that could be a potential treatment target for an aggressive form of the disease.

The HER2 and SPINK1 genes have striking similarities, says Scott Tomlins, MD, Ph.D., co-author of the study, published March 2 in Science Translational Medicine, and a pathology resident at UMCCC. “Each defines a specific molecular subtype of cancer.” About 20 percent of breast cancer tumors have multiple copies of the HER2 gene, while the SPINK1 gene occurs in about 10 percent of prostate cancer tumors.

What’s more, adds Tomlins, “both genes are highly expressed on the surface of cancer cells, so they could be targeted through monoclonal antibodies,” the drug category that includes Herceptin. Monoclonal antibodies act like smart bombs, attacking specific targets on cancer cells, while sparing normal cells.

To see if this treatment approach could be effective for SPINK1-positive tumors, the scientists compared the effects of two targeted therapies, using mice and cells from human prostate cancers that had been surgically removed from patients. First, the researchers tested an experimental monoclonal antibody designed specifically to block SPINK1. Since the gene binds to a cellular receptor called EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor) in cells, the scientists also studied a medication that blocks EGFR, cetuximab (Erbitux), a FDA-approved drug for colon cancer and head and neck cancer. Tumors treated with the SPINK1 antibody shrank 60 percent, while those treated with Erbitux dwindled by 40 percent. Combining both drugs cut tumor size in mice and human cancer cells by 74 percent.

Scientists develop genetic-based treatment for prostate cancer.

However, the drugs only worked on tumors that expressed SPINK1—a finding that may explain why a clinical trial using Erbitux to combat metastatic prostate cancer in human patients was a failure, with only 8 percent of participants showing any response, says Tomlins. “That wasn’t enough of an effect to make further clinical trials with this drug seem worthwhile, but our data suggest that the patients who responded may have been those who were SPINK1-positive,” since only 10 percent of tumors contain the gene. Given that 217,730 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year, more than 21,000 of them may fall into this category, putting them at risk for aggressive disease.

Since prostate cancer may behave differently in mice—or in human cells studied in the lab—clinical trials with men whose tumors express SPINK1 are the only way to find out if Erbitux is effective at extending the survival of such patients. If that turns out to be the case, points out Tomlins, cancer doctors could quickly start using the drug as a new weapon against aggressive disease. “The drug is already FDA-approved for other cancers, meaning that its side effects and safety have already been rigorously investigated in clinical trials.” The other drug tested in the UMCCC study, the SPINK1-blocking antibody—is designed for mice, so would require considerable modification and additional tests before it can be studied in humans.

Over a lifetime, one in six men will develop prostate cancer. In most cases, the disease progresses very slowly and may never become life-threatening. However, prostate cancer is expected to kill 32,050 American men this year. It’s crucial for doctors to better identify which men have aggressive disease, both to improve treatment for those who do, and to potentially spare those with non-aggressive disease unnecessary treatment that could put them at risk for such feared side effects as incontinence and impotence. Since the SPINK1 gene can be detected in urine, the discovery of the gene might lead to a simple, non-invasive screening test in the future.  In a previous study involving about 1,500 men with prostate cancer, the researchers found that the gene can be reliably identified in surgically removed tumors, offering another method that might be used in the future to evaluate how aggressive prostate cancer is—and what treatment is most likely to be effective.

The current study represents a breakthrough in understanding aggressive prostate cancer, believes Tomlins. “What’s most important is that prostate cancer, like breast cancer, isn’t a single disease with a one-size-fits all treatment that works for everybody who has it. Finding gene changes that drive specific cancer subtypes, so treatment can be tailored to the right targets is a very hot field in cancer research, and prostate cancer has lagged behind. We hope that our results push forward more investigation into targeted therapies that may bring men with the SPINK1 subtype more benefit.”

View the original article here