The brains of Black adults in the U.S. age more quickly than those of white and Hispanic adults, showing features linked to Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias as early as mid-life, according to a new study.

The study, published Monday in JAMA Neurology, analyzed the MRI scans of nearly 1,500 participants from two racially and ethnically diverse cohorts. It found that Black adults in mid-life — on average, in their mid-50s — were more likely than white or Hispanic adults of the same age to have a higher prevalence of white matter lesions, markers of cerebrovascular disease that are associated with cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease.

Previous research has established stark racial disparities in Alzheimer’s disease, which affects more than 6 million Americans. Hispanic people are 1.5 times more likely to have the disease than white people, while Black people are twice as likely to have the disease compared to those who are white. The new study strengthens the case that vascular disease may be especially detrimental to brain health in Black populations, and may start to affect the brain far earlier in life than previously thought.

https://www.statnews.com/2022/11/14/aging-black-adults-brains/

The lifespans of honey bees living in laboratory environments has dropped about 50% over the last 50 years, hinting at possible causes for the worrisome trends across the beekeeping industry, according to new research by University of Maryland entomologists.

The study published today in the journal Scientific Reports is the first to show an overall decline in honey bee lifespan that is potentially independent of environmental stressors. The findings hint that genetics may be influencing problems like increased colony loss and reduced honey production.

Colony turnover is an accepted factor in the beekeeping business, as bee colonies naturally age and die off. But the higher rates of the past decade mean U.S. beekeepers have to replace more colonies to keep operations viable. In an effort to understand why, researchers have focused on environmental stressors, diseases, parasites, pesticide exposure and nutrition.

When scientists modeled the effect of today’s shorter lifespans independent of environmental factors on beehives, however, the results corresponded with real-world observations of U.S. beekeepers.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-21401-2?ez_cid=CLIENT_ID(AMP_ECID_EZOIC)

Four new long-COVID studies reveal that 10% of French patients infected early in the pandemic still had symptoms 1 year later, SARS-CoV-2 can profoundly damage the brain for months, and very stressful events exacerbate persistent symptoms.

For some, a long road to recovery French researchers published a new study in JAMA Network Open on 1-year rates of long COVID among 53,047 adults in three population-based groups who took a nationwide survey from Apr 1 to Jun 30, 2020. The researchers obtained blood samples for serologic confirmation of infection from May 1 to Nov 30, 2020, and fielded an online follow-up questionnaire from Jun 1 to Sep 30, 2021. Average participant age was 50.9 years, and 63.7% were women.

In total, 3,972 people had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, with 2,647 (66.6%) of them reporting at least one symptom during their infections. Of the 2,647 participants, 32.5% said they had at least one COVID-19 symptom for 2 months or longer.

The estimated proportion of participants who had at least one lingering symptom was 18.4% at 6 months, 10.1% at 12 months, and 7.8% after 18 months. Among participants who had symptomatic infections, an estimated 33.6% had more than five symptoms 1 week after infection, falling to 2.8% at 2 months.

An estimated 97.5% of participants with weakness, 94.2% of those with impaired attention or concentration, and 77.5% of those with memory loss reported symptom resolution at 1 year.

The most common long-COVID symptoms were shortness of breath (26.5%), joint pain (26.9%), loss of smell or taste (27.0%), weakness (20.6%), impaired attention or concentration (22.3%), memory loss (40.0%), and sleep disorders (36.6%)

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2798224

Major political and societal events can have dramatic impacts on psychological health and impact sleep and emotional well-being. While conventional wisdom suggests these highly anticipated events, such as elections, can cause stress and disrupt well-being, little research has been published exploring this relationship.

Now, researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and colleagues show how major sociopolitical events can have global impacts on sleep that are associated with significant fluctuations in the public’s collective mood, well-being, and alcohol consumption. The findings, published in the National Sleep Foundation’s journal Sleep Health show that divisive political events negatively influenced a wide variety of factors related to public mood.

“It is unlikely that these findings will come as shock to many given the political turbulence of the last several years,” said corresponding author Tony Cunningham, PhD, director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at BIDMC. “Our results likely mirror many of our own experiences surrounding highly stressful events, and we felt this was an opportunity to scientifically validate these assumptions.”

As part of a larger study exploring the sleep and psychological repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the team surveyed 437 participants in the United States and 106 international participants daily between October 1–13, 2020 (before the election) and October 30–November 12, 2020 (days surrounding the November 3 U.S. election). Participants reported on their duration and quality of sleep, alcohol consumption and subjective experience of overall stress. Their responses revealed reduced sleep quantity and efficiency coupled with heightened stress, negative mood and alcohol use in the period surrounding the election. While these results were observed at a lower level in non-U.S. participants, worsening health habits were significantly correlated with mood and stress only among U.S. residents.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352721822001498?via%3Dihub

Self-reported psychological distress, defined as symptoms of depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or perceived psychosocial stress, was associated with a 28% greater risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, a meta-analysis finds.

Investigators from Yale and Brown University conducted a review using research published between 2017 – 2022 from over 600,000 patients and 28 studies on the association between psychological distress and the first diagnosis of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Psychological health screening may significantly reduce CVD risk and improve quality of life for patients at-risk for cardiovascular disease.

The study appears Nov. 7 in the Journal of Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation.

“Our investigation demonstrates the importance of psychological distress in cardiovascular risk, and that implementing routine psychological health screenings and clinical decision support should be a healthcare priority,” said Allison E. Gaffey, PhD, instructor of medicine and clinical psychologist, and the study’s lead author.

Current evidence suggests that women are more likely to not receive treatment for depression.

https://journals.lww.com/jcrjournal/Abstract/2022/11000/Screening_for_Psychological_Distress_and_Risk_of.4.aspx

Ceasefires are agreements by which one or more parties to a conflict agree to stop hostilities. Although they usually do not solve the problems underlying a conflict, they are always an important step towards ending civil wars.

But why do parties to a conflict decide to lay down their arms in the first place? And when are they more likely to do so? To answer these questions, researchers from the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zürich, the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in Norway and Uppsala University in Sweden have created the external pagefirst comprehensive dataset on ceasefires in all civil wars between 1989 and 2020call_made. They examined 2,202 agreements concluded during 109 civil conflicts across 66 countries.

Their study, published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, shows that the reasons for ceasefires in civil wars are more multifaceted than previously thought and that there are a number of conditions that favour them. The authors focus on intra-​, rather than inter-​state wars, as the later were the exception during the period under review.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00220027221128300

Microplastics are not just tiny particles that can be ingested, they can also carry viruses, a University of Queensland study has revealed.

The study, led by Associate Prof Jianhua Guo and Dr Ji Lu from UQ’s Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology (ACWEB), investigated if microplastics have the ability to harbour viruses, including the one found inside E. coli bacteria.

“We often hear about the human and environmental harm caused by microplastics in water, but there is little known about whether the tiny microplastic particles can carry viruses,” Dr Guo said.

“What we found is that viruses can hitchhike on microplastics and prolong their infectivity, which means there could be an increased risk of virus transmission throughout waterways and the environment.”

Dr Lu said they used the E. coli bacteriophage in the study, which is a virus that infects and replicates within the bacteria itself and is not harmful to humans.

“By testing polystyrene particles of varying sizes, we found that more than 98 per cent of the virus we used was found on the microplastic, and over half of the viruses could still be detected 10 days later – much longer than if the virus particles were free-floating in the water,” Dr Lu said.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0043135422010612?via%3Dihub

New research from the University of Vermont finds the most viewed content on TikTok relating to food, nutrition and weight perpetuates a toxic diet culture among teens and young adults and that expert voices are largely missing from the conversation.

Published today in PLOS One, the study found weight-normative messaging, the idea that weight is the most important measure of a person’s health, largely predominates on TikTok with the most popular videos glorifying weight loss and positioning food as a means to achieve health and thinness. The findings are particularly concerning given existing research indicating social media usage in adolescents and young adults is associated with disordered eating and negative body image.

“Each day, millions of teens and young adults are being fed content on TikTok that paints a very unrealistic and inaccurate picture of food, nutrition and health,” said senior researcher Lizzy Pope, associate professor and director of the Didactic Program in Dietetics at UVM. “Getting stuck in weight loss TikTok can be a really tough environment, especially for the main users of the platform, which are young people."

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0267997

For millennia, communities throughout North America have adapted to the ebb and flow of waterways. Water infrastructure provides reservoirs for times of drought and flood control for instances of deluge.

Drought is a way of life in some parts of the United States, said Jeffrey Mount, a geomorphologist and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. “What you worry about is whether you’re picking up a trend.” Long-term shifts in streamflow could signal a fundamental change in climate that scientists believe the country’s infrastructure is not designed to endure.

Unfortunately, such a trend is emerging. In the first comprehensive picture of streamflow in the United States, scientists reported that streams in the South and West have gotten drier in the past 70 years. Though unsurprising to many, the result is worrisome. The finding was published in the journal Water Resources Research.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2022WR031930

“The results indicate that accumulating vigorous activity in short bouts across the week can help us live longer,” said study author Dr. Matthew N. Ahmadi of the University of Sydney, Australia. “Given that lack of time is the most commonly reported barrier to regular physical activity, accruing small amounts sporadically during the day may be a particularly attractive option for busy people.”

A second study, also published today in EHJ, found that for a given amount of physical activity, increasing the intensity was associated with a reduced likelihood of cardiovascular disease.2 “Our study shows that it’s not just the amount of activity, but also the intensity, that is important for cardiovascular health,” said study author Dr. Paddy C. Dempsey of the University of Leicester and University of Cambridge, UK, and the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Australia.

Both studies included adults aged 40 to 69 years from the UK Biobank. Participants wore an activity tracker on their wrist for seven consecutive days. This is an objective way to measure motion, and particularly sporadic activity of different intensities during the day.

The first study enrolled 71,893 adults without cardiovascular disease or cancer. The median age was 62.5 years and 56% were women. The investigators measured the total amount of weekly vigorous activity and the frequency of bouts lasting two minutes or less. Participants were followed for an average of 6.9 years. The investigators analysed the associations of volume and frequency of vigorous activity with death (all-cause, cardiovascular disease and cancer) and incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer after excluding events occurring in the first year

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/969038#:~:text=Sophia%20Antipolis%2C%2028%20October%202022,Society%20of%20Cardiology%20(ESC).

A recently released set of topography maps provides new evidence for an ancient northern ocean on Mars. The maps offer the strongest case yet that the planet once experienced sea-level rise consistent with an extended warm and wet climate, not the harsh, frozen landscape that exists today.

“What immediately comes to mind as one the most significant points here is that the existence of an ocean of this size means a higher potential for life,” said Benjamin Cardenas, assistant professor of geosciences at Penn State and lead author on the study recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. “It also tells us about the ancient climate and its evolution. Based on these findings, we know there had to have been a period when it was warm enough and the atmosphere was thick enough to support this much liquid water at one time.”

There has long been debate in the scientific community about whether Mars had an ocean in its low-elevation northern hemisphere, Cardenas explained. Using topography data, the research team was able to show definitive evidence of a roughly 3.5-billion-year-old shoreline with substantial sedimentary accumulation, at least 900 meters thick, that covered hundreds of thousands of square kilometers.

“The big, novel thing that we did in this paper was think about Mars in terms of its stratigraphy and its sedimentary record,” Cardenas said. “On Earth, we chart the history of waterways by looking at sediment that is deposited over time. We call that stratigraphy, the idea that water transports sediment and you can measure the changes on Earth by understanding the way that sediment piles up. That’s what we’ve done here — but it’s Mars.”

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2022JE007390

An international coalition of researchers says in a report published today that the Earth’s vital signs have worsened to the point that “humanity is unequivocally facing a climate emergency.”

The report, “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency 2022,” published in the journal BioScience, notes that 16 of 35 planetary vital signs the authors use to track climate change are at record extremes.

The report’s authors share new data illustrating increasing frequency of extreme heat events, rising global tree cover loss because of fires, and a greater prevalence of the mosquito-borne dengue virus.

They also note large increases in fossil fuel energy consumption following COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns – despite an upswing in commitments for fossil fuel divestment – and a rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to 418 parts per million, the highest on record.

William Ripple, a distinguished professor in the OSU College of Forestry, and postdoctoral researcher Christopher Wolf are the lead authors of the report, and 10 other U.S. and global scientists are co-authors. The report follows by five years the “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice” published by Ripple in in BioScience and co-signed by more than 15,000 scientists in 184 countries.

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biac083/6764747

It’s the vitamin that we get from the sun, yet despite its ample availability, one in three Australian adults still suffer from mild, moderate or severe vitamin D deficiency.

Now, new research from the University of South Australia gives strong evidence that vitamin D deficiency is associated with premature death, prompting calls for people to follow healthy vitamin D level guidelines.

Published in Annals of Internal Medicine, the study found that the more severe the vitamin D deficiency, the greater the risk of mortality.

Vitamin D is an important nutrient that helps maintain good health and keep our bones and muscles strong and healthy.

First author and UniSA PhD candidate, Josh Sutherland, says while vitamin D has been connected with mortality, it has been challenging to establish causal effects.

“While severe vitamin D deficiency is rarer in Australia than elsewhere in the world, it can still affect those who have health vulnerabilities, the elderly, and those who do not acquire enough vitamin D from healthy sun exposure and dietary sources,” Sutherland says

https://www.newswise.com/articles/vitamin-d-deficiency-linked-to-premature-death

A global study involving 28,000-plus people offers the strongest evidence to date that lowering high blood pressure in seniors can reduce the risk of dementia, researchers said Tuesday.

Without significant treatment breakthroughs for dementia, reducing the risk of developing the disease would be "a welcome step forward," Ruth Peters, associate professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, said in a news release.

"Our study provides the highest grade of available evidence to show that blood pressure lowering treatment over several years reduces the risk of dementia, and we did not see any evidence of harm," said Peters, who is program lead for dementia at The George Institute's Global Brain Health Initiative in Newtown, New South Wales, Australia.

What remains unknown is whether additional blood pressure lowering "in people who already have it well-controlled," or whether starting treatment earlier in life, would reduce the long-term risk of dementia, Peters said.

https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2022/10/25/3871666712659/

Regular physical activity may boost the effectiveness of the COVID-19 jab, with the level of protection afforded against serious infection rising in tandem with the amount of physical activity done, suggests research published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

There’s now convincing evidence that regular physical activity helps ward off the consequences of serious COVID-19 infection, reducing the risk of hospital admission, intensive care, assisted ventilation or death. Similarly, vaccination also minimises these risks.

Previously published research on the additive effects of physical activity on vaccination against various infections, suggests that it enhances the body’s antibody response, but it’s not known if this might also apply to SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19 infection.

To try and find out, the researchers drew on anonymised medical records, and wearable activity tracker data for healthcare workers belonging to a medical insurance scheme as well as a health promotion and behavioural change programme.

Participants were mapped to physical activity categories using their average monthly levels in the 2 years preceding the start of the study: under 60 minutes of a week (low); at least 60-149 minutes (medium); and 150 minutes + (high).

COVID-19 swab test results were analysed for 53,771 participants with low levels of physical activity, 62,721 with medium levels, and 79,952 with high levels.

Complete health, COVID-19 vaccination (mid-February to end of October 2021; Jannsen Ad26.COV2.S COVID-19) and physical activity data were obtained for 196,444 adults who tested negative for SARS-CoV-2.

Vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 among fully vaccinated people in the low physical activity category was 60%. In other words, the risk of hospital admission was reduced by 60% in this group.

Comparable risk reductions for those in the medium and high physical activity groups were, respectively, 72% and 86%.

Those who were fully vaccinated and who clocked up high weekly levels of physical activity were nearly 3 times less likely to be admitted to hospital than those who were vaccinated but in the low physical activity category.

Similarly, those in the medium physical activity category were nearly 1.5 times less likely to be admitted to hospital with COVID-19 infection.

“The findings suggest a possible dose–response where high levels of physical activity were associated with higher vaccine effectiveness,” write the researchers.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/968666

Using the James Webb Space Telescope to look back in time at the early universe, astronomers discovered a surprise: a cluster of galaxies merging together around a rare red quasar within a massive black hole. The findings by Johns Hopkins University and an international team offer an unprecedented opportunity to observe how billions of years ago galaxies coalesced into the modern universe.

"We think something dramatic is about to happen in these systems," said co-author Andrey Vayner, a Johns Hopkins postdoctoral fellow who studies the evolution of galaxies. "The galaxy is at this perfect moment in its lifetime, about to transform and look entirely different in a few billion years."

The work is in press in Astrophysical Journal Letters and available today on the arXiv paper repository.

The James Webb Space Telescope, launched last December by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency, is the largest, most powerful telescope ever sent into space. Its initial general observations were revealed in July, but this quasar imagery is one of just 13 "early look" projects selected through a highly competitive global competition to decide where the telescope is pointed during its first months of operation. https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.10074#

A recent study published in NeuroImage: Clinical used state-of-the-art neuroimaging techniques to determine what brain changes may cause childhood ADHD to go into remission. Christienne Damatac and colleagues looked at brain changes in those diagnosed with ADHD over 16 years. Their findings suggest that improved hyperactivity and inattentiveness symptoms result from increased white matter density in the brain region known as the left corticospinal tract. Additionally, reduced ADHD symptoms were associated with more neural connections in the same region.

ADHD is a common childhood diagnosis. However, some are fortunate enough to grow out of the challenging symptoms by adulthood, and others never do. Understanding why this is so may lead to important innovations in treating the disorder. One hypothesis is that the malfunctioning parts of the brain that result in ADHD symptoms are never able to repair themselves. Instead, for some, as the brain develops, other regions take over the responsibilities of the damaged areas. Dramatic and colleagues were curious if this was so and if these changes would persist over time.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221315822200122X

Stem cell-derived neurons from combat veterans with and without post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) provide insights into how genetics can make someone more susceptible to developing PTSD following trauma exposure, according to a study conducted by scientists from several research institutions, including Yale School of Medicine.

Post-traumatic stress disorder can develop following severe trauma and is an enormous public health problem for both veterans and civilians. However, the extent to which genetic and environmental factors contribute to individual clinical outcomes remains unknown.

To bridge this information gap, the research team studied a cohort of 39 combat veterans with and without PTSD who were recruited from the James J. Peters Bronx Veterans Affairs Hospital. Veterans underwent skin biopsies and their skin cells were reprogrammed into induced pluripotent stem cells.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-022-01161-y

A new University of Alberta study shows how quickly extreme conspiracy theories about monkeypox spread on TikTok in the wake of news about outbreaks this past spring

Timothy Caulfield and Marco Zenone of the U of A’s health law institute analyzed nearly 900 videos about monkeypox posted to the social media platform over a day in mid-May 2022, just after the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a statement about outbreaks of the disease in numerous countries where it isn’t endemic.

https://calgarysun.com/news/local-news/u-of-a-study-tracks-speedy-spread-of-monkeypox-misinformation-on-tiktok/wcm/c03ce40b-05ee-4be1-943a-3d2ac521c3f0

Older people who get five hours of sleep a night or less may face a far greater risk of developing two or more chronic illnesses, such as heart disease, cancer or diabetes, compared to people who sleep longer, a new study suggests.

The research, published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine, tracked the impact of sleep duration on the health of more than 7,000 men and women at the ages of 50, 60 and 70.

This was done via a 25-year follow up of participants in the Whitehall II cohort study involving members of the British civil service.

The British and French researchers, led by University College London, found that sleeping for five hours or less at the ages of 50, 60, and 70 was linked to a 30% to 40% increased risk of developing multiple chronic diseases versus people who slept for up to seven hours.

https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2022/10/18/five-hours-sleep-disease-risk-study/2071666105265/

Abstract Social soft robotics may provide a new solution for alleviating human pain and fear. Here, we introduce a hand-held soft robot that can be clenched by the wearer. The robot comprises small airbags that can be inflated to provide the wearer with a feeling of being clenched. We then conducted an in-depth study of 66 adults who participated in a pain research protocol using thermal stimulation to investigate the effect of wearing the robot on pain perception and fear of injections. Pain assessment scale scores for perceived pain decreased significantly (p<0.05) when participants wore the robot compared with the baseline condition in which the robot was not worn. In addition, the saliva test results showed a downward trend in oxytocin level when the robot provided the wearer with haptic feedback via the inflation of the internal airbags in response to the wearer’s clench.

Research published today in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association, the team analysed data from the UK Biobank and found impairment in several areas, such as problem solving and number recall, across a range of conditions.

The findings raise the possibility that in the future, at-risk patients could be screened to help select those who would benefit from interventions to reduce their risk of developing one of the conditions, or to help identify patients suitable for recruitment to clinical trials for new treatments.

There are currently very few effective treatments for dementia or other neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. In part, this is because these conditions are often only diagnosed once symptoms appear, whereas the underlying neurodegeneration may have begun years – even decades – earlier. This means that by the time patients take part in clinical trials, it may already be too late in the disease process to alter its course.

https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz.12802

RESEARCH Battery tech breakthrough paves way for mass adoption of affordable electric car Researchers develop new technique that charges EV battery in just 10 minutes a battery on a table This 10-min fast-charging battery was developed for electric cars, with the black box on the top containing a battery management system to control the module. Credit: EC Power. All Rights Reserved.

EXPAND OCTOBER 12, 2022

By Adrienne Berard

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A breakthrough in electric vehicle battery design has enabled a 10-minute charge time for a typical EV battery. The record-breaking combination of a shorter charge time and more energy acquired for longer travel range was announced today (Oct. 12) in the journal Nature.

“The need for smaller, faster-charging batteries is greater than ever,” said Chao-Yang Wang, the William E. Diefenderfer Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State and lead author on the study. “There are simply not enough batteries and critical raw materials, especially those produced domestically, to meet anticipated demand.”

In August, California’s Air Resources Board passed an extensive plan to restrict and ultimately ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars within the state. By 2035, the largest auto market in the United States will effectively retire the internal combustion engine.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05281-0

Under a worst-case scenario, half of coral reef ecosystems worldwide will permanently face unsuitable conditions in just over a dozen years, if climate change continues unabated. That is one of the findings from new research published on October 11, in PLOS Biology by University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa researchers. Unsuitable conditions will likely lead to the corals dying off and other marine life will struggle to survive due to disruptions in the food chain.

“While the negative impacts of climate change on coral reefs are well known, this research shows that they are actually worse than anticipated due to a broad combination of climate change-induced stressors,” said lead author Renee O. Setter, a doctoral student in the Department of Geography and Environment in the College of Social Sciences. “It was surprising to find that so many global coral reefs would be overwhelmed by unsuitable environmental conditions so soon due to multiple stressors.”

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001821

A clinical study conducted by researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center found that, for children who had a major stroke to the left hemisphere of their brain within days of their birth, the infant’s brain was “plastic” enough for the right hemisphere to acquire the language abilities ordinarily handled by the left side, while also maintaining its own language abilities as well.

The left hemisphere of the brain is normally responsible for sentence processing (understanding words and sentences as we listen to speech). The right hemisphere of the brain is normally responsible for processing the emotion of the voice — is it happy or sad, angry or calm. This study sought to answer the question, “What happens when one of the hemispheres is injured at birth?”

The findings appear in PNAS the week of October 10, 2022.

The participants in this study developed normally during pregnancy. But around birth they had a significant stroke, one that would have debilitating outcomes in adults. In infants, a stroke is much rarer, but does happen in roughly one out of every 4,000 births.

The researchers studied perinatal arterial ischemic stroke, a type of brain injury occurring around the time of birth in which blood flow is cut off to a part of the brain by a blood clot. The same type of stroke occurs much more commonly in adults. Previous studies of brain injury in infants have included several types of brain injury; the focus in this study on a specific type of injury enabled the authors to find more consistent effects than in previous work.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2207293119