Strollerderby : biology

They Say: Abuse Changes a Child's Brain

Kate Tuttle — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:26:00 GMT

Researchers who had previously studied the relationships between stress responses and maternal nurturing in animals have taken their work into a new arena, looking at how human brains are affected, in adulthood, by abuse and neglect suffered in childhood. The study, carried out at McGill University in Montreal, is very small (it compared the brains of 12 suicide victims who had been abused to 12 suicide victims who had not been, against a control group of 12 non-suicide brains) but, many in the field agree, could lead to larger-scale research into how childhood trauma can cause lifelong damage to a person's ability to handle stress.

Like so many studies of how human beings work, this one seems to only confirm the obvious: who among us wouldn't instinctively know that a terrible childhood leaves permanent scars? And yet it goes further than that -- if a biological brain difference is found, therapies could be developed that would offer some hope of healing those previously unhealable wounds. And just as the researchers' previous work had looked at the multi-generational effect of both good and bad animal parenting, perhaps their ultimate goal would be to figure out how to end the cycle of bad human parenting, one formerly abused or neglected child at a time.

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Should Dads Cosleep?

Miriam Axel-Lute — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Can dads sleep safely with their infants, or should that be left to moms and their "natural protective instincts"? The photo I posted with my report on the British study saying cosleeping doesn't increase risk of SIDS (reposted here) generated some passionate back and forth on this topic in the comments.

On the one hand, the official word from many cosleeping advocates is that it should only be the mom (and only a breastfeeding mom at that, yo). In fact, they even say that a cosleeping baby should not be placed between mom and dad, but between mom and a bedrail. Folks taking this position generally say that breastfeeding mothers are more "tuned in" to their babies, aware of their location, instinctually place them in a safe sleeping position, and wake in tandem with them throughout the night. Ccertainly if you are breastfeeding, one of the points of colseeping is having the breastfeeding mother right there to increase lactation and nursing frequency and duration.

On the other hand, I haven't actually seen any studies of specifically dads and cosleeping, but I've certainly known plenty of dads who describe for themselves perfectly my own experience of being hyper-aware of the presence and location and motion of their infants, even as they sleep. Is it possible that advocates on the defensive against "cosleeping = death" hysteria are being overcautious/biased on this one?

It's worth noting that dads, at least engaged ones, do actually go through hormonal changes themselves as they begin to parent, including modestly increased levels of prolactin, the lactation hormone. (I'd wager this probably also happens for non-bio moms in queer couples.) It's not like we're talking random person off the street here. But it's also not biological motherhood either.

What do you think? Is the only-moms-should-sleep-next-to-baby thing an acknowledgement of basic biology, or just more sexism trying to sneak in under the cloak of science?

Photo by davef3138, via Flickr.

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Palin Mocks Autism Research

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:30:00 GMT

No one should be too surprised at this point to hear that one of McCain’s top advisers referred to Sarah Palin as a “whackjob.” Or that Alaska’s largest newspaper enthusiastically endorsed Barack Obama for president. But it remains fun (in that stomach-churning way) to take a peak at some of the myriad reasons why Palin is widely disliked and distrusted even among her own people.

Take fruit flies, for instance. In Palin’s recent speech on special needs children, one of her more awkward blunders pertained to earmarks:

"Where does a lot of that earmark money end up, anyway? [...] You've heard about, um, these -- some of these pet projects they really don't make a whole lot of sense, and sometimes these dollars they go to projects having little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not!"

As the Huffington Post points out, fruit flies have been essential to autism research, showing that a protein called neurexin plays a huge role in proper brain functioning. Considering that this speech was supposed to be about helping special needs families, it’s truly baffling why Palin would have chosen to bash research that is widely known to be integral to understanding and treating autism.

Furthermore, fruit flies are the basic research tool of modern genetics, as anyone who has taken a biology class knows. To sneer at such research displays either extreme stupidity or a dangerous lack of concern for the opinions of the vast majority of her would-be constituents.

Photo: wizbangblog.com

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Biology is Destiny

Adrienne Martini — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Dear Children,

I'd like to apologize about a couple of things right now. Most of these are beyond what you care about currently -- there will be no confessions about Spongebob or Blue -- but might become important when you're older.

On this list of the Top Ten Worst Hereditary Conditions, my genes will probably be responsible for five of them. Your dad's genetic stuff will be responsible for about four -- but the lists do overlap. So there's that.

My DNA will also be responsible for any weird mental illnesses that crop up and for your freakishly long toes. Since the jury is out on whether it is a nature or nurture issue, I can't yet take full blame for your lack of fashion sense. You might just have to work through that on your own without a scapegoat.

Just thought you ought to know.

Love,

Mom

Photo credit: Britta Kuhnen

Hands-On Anatomy Lessons For Teenagers

Adrienne Martini — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:00:00 GMT

In Oak Ridge, Tenn., high school seniors are getting to put their hands all over other human bodies. Not only are they permitted to do this, it is a requirement.

But the bodies they are touching aren't their own or those of their classmates, which is what teenagers have done since the dawn of time. No, these bodies are preserved in a lab at a nearby community college. And they are most decidedly dead.

Dr. Harry "Whitey" Hitchcock's physiology class at Clinton High School culminates with an opportunity for his students, who are mostly bound for medical school, to translate illustration in a book to structures in situ. Other high schools across the country also offer similar learning demos to motivated students. Some even hold fund raisers to pay for their cadavers.

Parents, for the most part, are OK with this option, even in conservative enclaves like Eastern Tennessee. Some even stop by the lab to watch, according to Emily Voigt's story in the New York Times:

“I’d never seen anything like this before, but I thought if my son can handle it, I can,” Mark Fuhrman said in an interview later. “I start looking at the cadaver closer. It’s got hair. I think: ‘This is not a chunk of meat. This is a person, or what’s left of a person.’ ”

So what do you think? Would you be willing to sell candy bars for a cadaver fund? Would you sign the permission slip for your kids to sink his hands into a body?