stuffmomnevertoldyou:

stufftoblowyourmind:

torteen:

picadorbookroom:

In honor of Children’s Book Week, here’s a photo of an awesome kid.

Every kid should have this picture taken of them.

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Go out of your way to read banned books. As if you could resist…

a) this is awesome.

b) Cristen wrote “How does banning a book work?” for HowStuffWorks in case you want to give your lit brain a present.

(Source: unapproachableblackchicks)

neuromorphogenesis:

Rare, Lethal Childhood Disease Tracked to Specific Protein

For the first time, a defective protein that plays a specific role in degrading intermediate filaments (IF), one of three classes of filaments that form the structure of nerve cells, has been discovered by an international team of researchers. 

Presented by postdoctoral fellow Saleemulla Mahammad, PhD, at the American Society for Cell Biology Annual Meeting, the research discusses how the defective protein, gigaxonin, was first identified in children with a rare and untreatable genetic disease known as giant axonal neuropathy (GAN). 

The knowledge of gigaxonin’s specific role explains why a failure in protein degradation would lead to massive aggregations of IF in the neuronal cells of GAN children, said Mahammad, who works in the laboratory of Robert Goldman, PhD,chair of cell and molecular biology. 

Mahammad and other members of the Goldman Laboratory collaborated with Puneet Opal, MD, PhD, associate Professor in the Ken and Ruth Davee Department of Neurology and cell and molecular biology, along with researchers in the laboratory of Pascale Bomont at the INSERM neurological institute in Montpelier, France, and the laboratory of Jean-Pierre Julien at the Université Laval in Quebec, Canada. 

The GAN gene was first identified in 2000 by the Bomont Laboratory, reporting that it encoded for the protein gigaxonin. Based on sequence homology, gigaxonin is involved in the normal turnover of proteins by the well-studied ubiquitin-proteasome system. But it wasn’t clear why a failure in protein degradation would lead to massive aggregations of IF in a patient’s neuronal cells. 

Because it is not possible to study nerve cells experimentally from patients, Mahammad and collaborators instead used fibroblasts from skin biopsies of children with GAN because previous studies have revealed that other classes of IF are also altered in GAN patients. In particular, the IF vimentin expressed in fibroblasts of children with GAN also forms abnormally large aggregates. These cells can readily be obtained from skin biopsies and grown in lab cultures. 

When the researchers introduced the gigaxonin gene into both control and patient fibroblasts, the results were dramatic. In the fibroblasts cultured from GAN patients, the complex network of vimentin filaments and abnormal aggregates disappeared. The vimentin filaments in the control cells also disappeared following the overexpression of the gigaxonin protein. Boosting gigaxonin to higher levels in normal cultured nerve cells also led to a degradation of neuronal forms of IF. However, the cytoskeleton’s two other major systems, microtubules and actin filaments, were not affected by this treatment. 

These findings point to a central role for gigaxonin in regulating the normal turnover of IF proteins. When gigaxonin is defective, neurofilaments, the specific type of IF located in nerve cells, pile up to form aggregates that eventually disrupts the normal functioning of neurons in GAN. 

Gigaxonin is the first factor to be identified that plays a specific role in the degradation of several types of IF proteins, including neurofilaments, according to Mahammad. This discovery may have implications for more common types of neurodegenerative diseases that are also characterized by large accumulations of IF proteins, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies, Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, neuronal intermediate filament inclusion disease, and diabetic neuropathy. 

GAN is an extremely rare genetic disorder that strikes both the central and peripheral nervous systems of children. The leading GAN disease foundation, Hannah’s Hope Fund, currently knows of 31 cases worldwide, 19 in the United States alone. But its rarity doesn’t dull its severity in children. Although, there are no symptoms at birth, by age three the first signs of muscle weakness usually appear and progress slowly but steadily. With increasing difficulty in walking and coordinating hand movements, children with GAN are often wheelchair-bound by age 10. Over time, they become dependent on feeding and breathing tubes; only a few will survive into young adulthood. The pathological markers for GAN are swollen (thus “giant”) axons, filled with abnormal aggregates rich in neurofilaments. 

Image: In the fibroblasts derived from the skin biopsies of giant axonal neuropathy (GAN) patients, the vimentin intermediate filaments (green) form large abnormal aggregates (indicated by arrow). In some cases these abnormal aggregates are larger than the nucleus (blue). Presented by postdoctoral fellow Saleemulla Mahammad, PhD, at the American Society for Cell Biology Annual Meeting, new research discusses how the defective protein, gigaxonin, was first identified in children with the rare and untreatable genetic disease known as GAN.

stufftoblowyourmind:

Click on the image to learn more! This is your chance to seriously upgrade your school’s science lab! /Robert

Parents, if you’ve got a kid in kindergarten through 8th grade, check out this contest that STBYM is running. We’re looking forward to you all teaching us stuff.

pbsparents:

Our thoughts go out to the victims and those injured at the Boston Marathon, as well as their families and friends. Such a horrible tragedy. Here are some tips for talking to kids about scary news:

1. Mister Rogers on scary news: http://www.pbs.org/parents/rogers/special/scarynews.html

2. Dr. Rosemarie Truglio, VP of Research and Education at Sesame Workshop on how to answer children’s questions about scary news: http://www.pbs.org/parents/theparentshow/how-to-handle-childrens-questions-about-scary-news/

3. Strategies for talking to kids about the news: http://www.pbs.org/parents/talkingwithkids/news/talking.html

(via coolchicksfromhistory)

neuromorphogenesis:

Mom’s love good for child’s brain

School-age children whose mothers nurtured them early in life have brains with a larger hippocampus, a key structure important to learning, memory and response to stress.

The new research, by child psychiatrists and neuroscientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is the first to show that changes in this critical region of children’s brain anatomy are linked to a mother’s nurturing.

Their research is published online in theProceedings of the National Academy of SciencesEarly Edition.

“This study validates something that seems to be intuitive, which is just how important nurturing parents are to creating adaptive human beings,” says lead author Joan L. Luby, MD, professor of child psychiatry. “I think the public health implications suggest that we should pay more attention to parents’ nurturing, and we should do what we can as a society to foster these skills because clearly nurturing has a very, very big impact on later development.”

The brain-imaging study involved children ages 7 to 10 who had participated in an earlier study of preschool depression that Luby and her colleagues began about a decade ago. That study involved children, ages 3 to 6, who had symptoms of depression, other psychiatric disorders or were mentally healthy with no known psychiatric problems.

As part of the initial study, the children were closely observed and videotaped interacting with a parent, almost always a mother, as the parent was completing a required task, and the child was asked to wait to open an attractive gift. How much or how little the parent was able to support and nurture the child in this stressful circumstance — which was designed to approximate the stresses of daily parenting — was evaluated by raters who knew nothing about the child’s health or the parent’s temperament.

“It’s very objective,” Luby says. “Whether a parent was considered a nurturer was not based on that parent’s own self-assessment. Rather, it was based on their behavior and the extent to which they nurtured their child under these challenging conditions.”

The study didn’t observe parents and children in their homes or repeat stressful exercises, but other studies of child development have used similar methods as valid measurements of whether parents tend to be nurturers when they interact with their children.

For the current study, the researchers conducted brain scans on 92 of the children who had had symptoms of depression or were mentally healthy when they were studied as preschoolers. The imaging revealed that children without depression who had been nurtured had a hippocampus almost 10 percent larger than children whose mothers were not as nurturing.

“For years studies have underscored the importance of an early, nurturing environment for good, healthy outcomes for children,” Luby says. “But most of those studies have looked at psychosocial factors or school performance. This study, to my knowledge, is the first that actually shows an anatomical change in the brain, which really provides validation for the very large body of early childhood development literature that had been highlighting the importance of early parenting and nurturing. Having a hippocampus that’s almost 10 percent larger just provides concrete evidence of nurturing’s powerful effect.”

Luby says the smaller volumes in depressed children might be expected because studies in adults have shown the same results. What did surprise her was that nurturing made such a big difference in mentally healthy children.

“We found a very strong relationship between maternal nurturing and the size of the hippocampus in the healthy children,” she says.

Although 95 percent of the parents whose nurturing skills were evaluated during the earlier study were biological mothers, the researchers say that the effects of nurturing on the brain are likely to be the same for any primary caregiver — whether they are fathers, grandparents or adoptive parents.

The fact that the researchers found a larger hippocampus in the healthy children who were nurtured is striking, Luby says, because the hippocampus is such an important brain structure.

When the body faces stresses, the brain activates the autonomic nervous system, an involuntary system of nerves that controls the release of stress hormones. Those hormones help us cope with stress by increasing the heart rate and helping the body adapt. The hippocampus is the main brain structure involved in that response. It’s also key in learning and memory, and larger volumes would suggest a link to improved performance in school, among other things.

Past animal studies have indicated that a nurturing mother can influence brain development, and many studies in human children have identified improvements in school performance and healthier development in children raised in a nurturing environment. But until now, there has not been solid evidence linking a nurturing parent to changes in brain anatomy in children.

“Studies in rats have shown that maternal nurturance, specifically in the form of licking, produces changes in genes that then produce changes in receptors that increase the size of the hippocampus,” Luby says. “That phenomenon has been replicated in primates, but it hasn’t really been clear whether the same thing happens in humans. Our study suggests a clear link between nurturing and the size of the hippocampus.”

She says educators who work with families who have young children may improve school performance and child development by not only teaching parents to work on particular tasks with their children but by showing parents how to work with their children.

“Parents should be taught how to nurture and support their children,” Luby says. “Those are very important elements in healthy development.”

(Image: The hippocampus (highlighted in fuchsia) is a key brain structure important to learning, memory and stress response. New research shows that children who were nurtured by their mothers early in life have a larger hippocampus than children who were not nurtured as much. Credit: Washington University Medical School from press release)

(Source: news.wustl.edu)