geoffrey modest medical blogs

  We seem to be marching forward to trimming the social safety net for people below the Federal poverty level, decreasing their access to adequate food, housing, and medical care. In this light, there was a really important article showing that children in lower income families without necessary social benefits have reduced hippocampal volume in the brain as well as higher internalizing psychopathology. of note, increased access to cash benefits pretty dramatically decreased these disparities (see  poverty adol brain changes NatureCommun2023 in dropbox, or doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37778-1)   Details : -- data were from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study of 10,633 youths aged 9-11 (5115 female) across 21 sites in 17 states in the US     -- ABCD includes lots of self-reported behavioral data as well as neuroimaging findings to assess brain development -- the researchers evaluated several macrostructural characte...

Analysis from the Framingham Study showed that increasing amounts of light-intensity physical activity was associated with increasing MRI-measured total brain volume (s ee  exercise and brain volume jama2019 , or doi:  10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.2745) Details: -- 2354 participants from the third-generation and offspring groups of the Framingham Heart Study were involved, from 2016-2019. -- mean age 53, 54% women, 55% college degree/21% some college/23% high school degree, 6.5% current smokers, 31% stage II hypertension, 6% diabetes, 4% cardiovascular disease, -- median steps/day 7519, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity 20 minutes/day -- All patients agreed to wear an accelerometer, as well as having repeat brain MRI scans -- patients were stratified according to whether they met the US Department of Health and Human Services recommend physical activity guidelines of at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA...

​interesting article on adolescents in the new york times (see  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/opinion/sunday/why-teenagers-act-crazy.html?ref=todayspaper  ). will review briefly:     --adolescent brain functions differently from adult brain         --the amygdala is highly developed (which governs the fear response)         --the prefrontal cortex is pretty underdeveloped (which provides reasoning and executive function), and remains so til the early-to-mid 20's         --the reward center is very developed --Implications         --with the highly developed reward center, teens tend to take lots of risks (the chase for rewards)         --but this is the time for increased issues around fears and anxiety (the amygdala issue) -- often the age w...