Month: February 2016

Using an epigenetic clock with children

gettingwell4 4-5 stars Advanced knowledge, Brain development, Epigenetics , ,

This 2015 UK human study by many of the coauthors of What’s the origin of the problem of being fat? applied the Horvath epigenetic clock method to the same UK mother-child pairs and a Danish cohort:

“There has been no investigation on prenatal and antenatal factors that affect AA [age acceleration] in children. It is possible that the detrimental consequences of a higher AA may accrue over time, initiating in childhood. Conversely, it could be postulated that having a positive AA during early life and childhood is developmentally advantageous. To reflect this, we could refer to AA as an epigenetic measure of development in children.

We found associations between AA and sex, birth weight, caesarean section delivery and several maternal characteristics, namely smoking in pregnancy, weight, BMI, selenium and cholesterol level.

Offspring of non-drinkers had higher AA on average at birth, but this appeared to resolve during childhood. Offspring of smokers had higher AA on average and this difference became larger during childhood and adolescence.

The lack of correlation between AA and several clinical variables may also indicate that AA reflects an ‘intrinsic’ aging rate that is independent of various aging factors.

The observation that the estimated genetic component of AA increased in older study participants may indicate that the AA measure is more biologically meaningful in adults rather than children, though alternatively it could be a reflection of a decreasing environmental influence on DNA methylation patterns over time.

This accords with our finding of strengthening within subject correlation over time, which suggests the period of rapid early life changes in methylation affects epigenetic age during development to a greater extent than adulthood changes in methylation.”

The heritability of age acceleration was analyzed:

“The heritability estimate from our study (h = 0.37) is lower than that reported Horvath (h = 1.0), which was based on a small number of cord blood samples from twin pairs. Both of these heritability estimates were based on relatively few samples. Future large scale studies will be needed to arrive at precise estimates of the heritability of AA in newborns and minors.

While our heritability estimate may seem low, empirical evidence has suggested that fitness related traits tend to have lower heritability than morphological traits because selection acts to purify deleterious genetic variation, and one might consider age accelerated residuals in the former category.”

Like the coauthors’ follow-on study, causality couldn’t be definitively determined:

“Assessing the causal relationship between exposures and AA (through Mendelian randomization) is underpowered in our current data.”

Epigenetic age acceleration at birth seemed to be overall “developmentally advantageous” for offspring of non-drinking mothers. That age acceleration continued for the offspring of smokers at the second and third measurement times (ages 7 and 15-17) seemed to have “detrimental consequences.” I’d guess that the methylation state of specific CpG sites would be more informative than the overall rate in these cases.

The point about “AA..is independent of various aging factors” was similar to one made in Using an epigenetic clock to distinguish cellular aging from senescence:

“Cellular ageing is distinct from cellular senescence and independent of DNA damage response and telomere length.”

The study was a step toward establishing the Horvath epigenetic clock for widespread usage. The Hannum method was also compared and contrasted.

http://hmg.oxfordjournals.org/content/25/1/191.full “Prenatal and early life influences on epigenetic age in children: a study of mother-offspring pairs from two cohort studies”

What’s the origin of the problem of being fat?

gettingwell4 4-5 stars Advanced knowledge, Brain development, Epigenetics , , ,

This 2016 UK human study attempted to replicate the DNA methylation and adiposity associations found by studies on a long-term longitudinal UK cohort:

“We tested for replication of associations between previously identified CpG sites at HIF3A [the hypoxia inducible factor 3 alpha subunit gene] and adiposity in ∼1,000 mother-offspring pairs from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.”

The researchers had sufficient data to test the unidirectional and causal findings of previous studies:

“Availability of methylation and adiposity measures at multiple time points, as well as genetic data, allowed us to assess the temporal associations between adiposity and methylation and to make inferences regarding causality and directionality.”

The analyses didn’t replicate the previous studies’ findings, and a new finding was indicated:

“Our results were discordant with those expected if HIF3A methylation has a causal effect on BMI [body mass index, derived from height and weight] and provided more evidence for causality in the reverse direction i.e. an effect of BMI on HIF3A methylation.

These results are based on robust evidence from longitudinal analyses and were also partially supported by Mendelian randomization analysis, although this latter analysis was underpowered to detect a causal effect of BMI on HIF3A methylation.

Our results also highlight an apparent long-lasting inter-generational influence of maternal BMI on offspring methylation at this locus, which may confound associations between own [offspring] adiposity and HIF3A methylation.”

A person’s parents contributed all of their genetic material and the prenatal environment, and usually almost all of their postnatal and childhood development environment. If a person has a health problem that may have genetic and developmental origins, this is where to look for causes and preventive actions.

That these distant causes can no longer be addressed is a hidden assumption of research and treatment of effects of health problems. Aren’t such assumptions testable here in the current year?

http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2016/02/01/db15-0996.long (pdf) “DNA methylation and body mass index: investigating identified methylation sites at HIF3A in a causal framework”

Epigenetic effects of diet, and reversing DNA methylation

gettingwell4 2-3 stars Required further work, Acetylcholine, Brain development, Cerebellum, Cerebrum, Cortisol, Dopamine, Epigenetics, Hippocampus, Limbic system, Lower brain, Neurochemicals, Stress , , , , , ,

This 2015 French review focused on:

“The role of maternal health and nutrition in the initiation and progression of metabolic and other disorders.

The effects of various in utero exposures and maternal nutritional status may have different effects on the epigenome. However, critical windows of exposure that seem to exist during development need to be better defined.

The epigenome can be considered as an interface between the genome and the environment that is central to the generation of phenotypes and their stability throughout the life course.”

The reviewer used the term “transgenerational” to refer to effects that were more appropriately termed parental or intergenerational. Per the definition in A review of epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of reproductive disease, for the term to apply there needed to be evidence in at least the next 2 male and/or 3 female generations of:

“Altered epigenetic information between generations in the absence of continued environmental exposure.”

The review had separate sections for animal and human studies.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4663595/ “Impact of Maternal Diet on the Epigenome during In Utero Life and the Developmental Programming of Diseases in Childhood and Adulthood”

I arrived at the above review as a result of it citing the 2014 Harvard Reversing DNA Methylation: Mechanisms, Genomics, and Biological Functions. I’ll quote a few items from that review’s informative “Role of DNA demethylation in neural development” section:

“Distinct parts of mammalian brains, including frontal cortex, hippocampus, and cerebellum, all exhibit age-dependent acquisition of 5hmC [an oxidized derivative of 5mC [methylation of the fifth position of cytosine]].

In fact, the genome of mature neurons in adult central nervous system contains the highest level of 5hmC of any mammalian cell-type (~40% as abundant as 5mC in Purkinje neurons in cerebellum). These observations indicate that 5mC oxidation and potentially DNA demethylation may be functionally important for neuronal differentiation and maturation processes.

A comprehensive base-resolution analyses of 5mC and 5hmC in mammalian frontal cortex in both fetal and adult stages indicate that non-CpG methylation (mCH) and CpG hydroxymethylation (hCG) drastically build up in cortical neurons after birth, coinciding with the peak of synaptogenesis and synaptic pruning in the cortex. This study demonstrated that mCH could become a dominant form of cytosine modifications in adult brains, accounting for 53% in adult human cortical neuronal genome.

In mature neurons, intragenic mCH is preferentially enriched at inactive non-neuronal lineage-specific genes, indicating a role in negative regulation of the associated transcripts. By contrast, genic hCG is positively correlated with gene expression levels.”

The link between scientific value and content is broken at PNAS.org

gettingwell4 < 0 Detracted from science, Neurochemicals, Oxytocin, Telomeres

Should we expect content posted on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America to have scientific value?

This 2016 Singapore study was a “PNAS Direct Submission” that claimed:

“This paper makes a singular contribution to understanding the association between biological aging indexed by leukocyte telomeres length (LTL) and delay discounting measured in an incentivized behavioral economic task.

LTL is an emerging marker of aging at the cellular level, but little is known regarding its link with poor decision making that often entails being overly impatient.”

1. Whether measured at the level of a human or of a blood cell, in 2016 there wasn’t incontrovertible evidence to support:

  • “Biological aging indexed by leukocyte telomeres length
  • LTL is an emerging marker of aging at the cellular level”

Using an epigenetic clock to distinguish cellular aging from senescence found:

“Cellular ageing is distinct from cellular senescence and independent of DNA damage response and telomere length.”

If that study was too recent, the researchers and reviewer knew or should have known of studies such as this 2009 study that found the correlation between a person’s chronological age and blood cell telomere length was r = −0.51 in women and r = −0.55 in men.

2. A study of biological aging in young adults with limited findings was cited for evidence that “the seeds of biological aging are widely thought to be planted early in life.” That study didn’t elucidate the point, however, as it didn’t fully link its measurements of 38-year-old subjects with measurements taken during the subjects’ early lives.

F2.large

3. Problematic research with telomere length was cited for evidence that “other factors, such as the early family environment, lifestyle, and stress, also have considerable impact on cellular aging.” The researchers had to be willing to overlook that study’s multiple questionable practices in order to cite it as evidence for anything.

4. Deliberately overlooking abundant disconfirming evidence, the current study used a one-to-one correspondence of telomere length and cellular aging.

The researchers went on to speciously model a relationship between telomere length and the behavioral trait “poor decision making that often entails being overly impatient.” That overreach was further stretched to the breaking point:

“We then asked if genes possibly modulate the effect of impatient behavior on LTL.

The oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) polymorphism rs53576, which has figured prominently in investigations of social cognition and psychological resources, and the estrogen receptor β gene (ESR2) polymorphism rs2978381, one of two gonadal sex hormone genes, significantly mitigate the negative effect of impatience on cellular aging in females.”

The “significantly mitigate” finding was “fun with numbers” that produced false effects rather than solid evidence. Consider that:

  1. The study’s model disregarded the probability that “Cellular ageing is independent of telomere length.”
  2. The researchers provided no mechanisms that plausibly linked performance “in an incentivized behavioral economic task” with telomere length.
  3. The researchers didn’t demonstrate any causal mechanisms whereby two gene variants plausibly affected the task performance’s purported effect on telomere length.

What’s the real reason this poor-quality paper’s reviewer forwarded it to PNAS.org?

http://www.pnas.org/content/113/10/2780.full “Delay discounting, genetic sensitivity, and leukocyte telomere length”

What’s a good substitute for feeling loved?

gettingwell4 0-1 star Wasted resources, Memory, Primal Therapy , ,

A friend of mine sent a link to this TED talk yesterday. The speaker inspired my friend to change their life along the speaker’s guidelines:

“The very act of doing the thing that scared me undid the fear.

That feeling, you can’t help but strive for greatness at any cost.

The more I work to be successful, the more I need to work.”

I wasn’t similarly inspired.

For one thing, a fear memory isn’t undone by behavior that covers it over and tamps it down. Fear extinction is the learned inhibition of retrieval of previously acquired responses provided evidence for what happens with a fear memory.

What I saw expressed in the TED talk was an exhausting pursuit of substitutes for feeling loved.

This February 18, 2016 blog post by Dr Arthur Janov framed the TED talk in the context that I understood the speaker:

“Most of us thought that once we choose a profession and follow it and succeed at it, becoming an expert and well known, that would be fulfilling. We would feel like a success.

Success is not a feeling, loved is.

Fame is other people’s idea of success; it is in a way their feeling…admiration, humbling, important, etc.

And why does the person, even most accomplished, never feel satisfied nor fulfilled?”

What do you feel is the appropriate context of the TED talk?

What do you think are likely outcomes of a person following the speaker’s guidelines?

Using an epigenetic clock to distinguish cellular aging from senescence

gettingwell4 5+ stars Premium, Epigenetics, Telomeres

The 2016 UK/UCLA human study found:

“Induction of replicative senescence (RS) and oncogene-induced senescence (OIS) are accompanied by ageing of the cell. However, senescence induced by DNA damage is not, even though RS and OIS activate the cellular DNA damage response pathway, highlighting the independence of senescence from cellular ageing.

We used primary endothelial cells (ECs) that were derived from the human coronary artery of a 19 year old male.

The fact that maintenance of telomere length by telomerase did not prevent cellular ageing defines the singular role of telomeres as that of a means by which cells restrict their proliferation to a certain number; which was the function originally ascribed to it. Cellular ageing on the other hand proceeds regardless of telomere length.

Collectively, our results reveal that cellular ageing is distinct from cellular senescence and independent of DNA damage response and telomere length.”

The following was the closest the study came to a Limitations statement:

“Although the characteristics of cellular ageing are still not well known, the remarkable precision with which the epigenetic clock can measure it and correlate it to biological ageing remove any doubt of its existence, distinctiveness and importance. This inevitably raises the question of what is the nature of this cellular ageing, and what are its eventual physical consequences.

Admittedly, the observations above do not purport to provide the answer, but they have however, cleared the path to its discovery by unshackling cellular ageing from senescence, telomeres and DNA damage response, hence inviting fresh perspectives into its possible mechanism.”

The epigenetic clock method was the same used by:

http://www.impactjournals.com/oncotarget/index.php?journal=oncotarget&page=article&op=view&path[]=7383&path[]=21162 “Epigenetic clock analyses of cellular senescence and ageing”

What’s the underlying question for every brain study to answer?

gettingwell4 2-3 stars Required further work, Amygdala, Anterior cingulate cortex, Beliefs, Cerebrum, Cortisol, Dopamine, Epigenetics, Glutamate, Hippocampus, Hypothalamus, Limbic system, Memory, Neurochemicals, Primal Therapy, Serotonin, Stress, Testosterone, Thalamus , , , , , ,

Is the underlying question for every brain study to answer:

  • How do our brains internally represent the external world?

Is it:

  • How did we learn what we know?
  • How do we forget or disregard what we’ve learned?
  • What keeps us from acquiring and learning newer or better information?

How about:

  • What affects how we pay attention to our environments?
  • How do our various biochemical states affect our perceptions, learning, experiences, and behavior?
  • How do these factors in turn affect our biology?

Or maybe:

  • Why do we do what we do?
  • How is our behavior affected by our experiences?
  • How did we become attracted and motivated toward what we like?
  • How do we develop expectations?
  • Why do we avoid certain situations?

Not to lose sight of:

  • How do the contexts affect all of the above?
  • What happens over time to affect all of the above?

This 2015 UCLA paper reviewed the above questions from the perspective of Pavlovian conditioning:

“The common definition of Pavlovian conditioning, that via repeated pairings of a neutral stimulus with a stimulus that elicits a reflex the neutral stimulus acquires the ability to elicit that the reflex, is neither accurate nor reflective of the richness of Pavlovian conditioning. Rather, Pavlovian conditioning is the way we learn about dependent relationships between stimuli.

Pavlovian conditioning is one of the few areas in biology in which there is direct experimental evidence of biological fitness.”

The most important question unanswered by the review was:

  • How can its information be used to help humans?

How can Pavlovian conditioning answer: What can a human do about the thoughts, feelings, behavior, epigenetic effects – the person – the phenotype – that they’ve been shaped into?

One example of the unanswered question: the review pointed out in a section about fear extinction that this process doesn’t involve unlearning. Fear extinction instead inhibits the symptoms of fear response. The fear memory is still intact, awaiting some other context to be reactivated and expressed.

How can this information be used to help humans?

  • Is inhibiting the symptoms and leaving the fear memory in place costless with humans?
  • Or does this practice have both potential and realized adverse effects?
  • Where’s the human research on methods that may directly address a painful emotional memory?

One relevant hypothesis of Dr. Arthur Janov’s Primal Therapy is that a person continues to be their conditioned self until they address the sources of their pain. A corollary is that efforts to relieve symptoms seldom address causes.

How could it be otherwise? A problem isn’t cured by ameliorating its effects.

http://cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/8/1/a021717.full “The Origins and Organization of Vertebrate Pavlovian Conditioning”

Use it or lose it: the interplay of new brain cells, age, and activity

gettingwell4 2-3 stars Required further work, Brain development, Cortisol, Epigenetics, Glutamate, Hippocampus, Hypothalamus, Limbic system, Memory, Neurochemicals, Serotonin, Stress, Telomeres, Testosterone , , , ,

This 2015 German review was of aging and activity in the context of adult neurogenesis:

“Adult neurogenesis might be of profound functional significance because it occurs at a strategic bottleneck location in the hippocampus.

Age-dependent changes essentially reflect a unidirectional development in that everything builds on what has occurred before. In this sense, aging can also be seen as continued or lifelong development. This idea has limitations but is instructive with regard to adult neurogenesis, because adult neurogenesis is neuronal development under the conditions of the adult brain.

The age-related alterations of adult neurogenesis themselves have quantitative and qualitative components. So far, most research has focused on the quantitative aspects. But there can be little doubt that qualitative changes do not simply follow quantitative changes (e.g., in cell or synapse numbers), but emerge on a systems level and above when an organism ages. With respect to adult neurogenesis, only one multilevel experiment including morphology and behavior has been conducted, and, even in that study, only three time points were investigated.

In old age, adult neurogenesis occurs at only a small fraction of the level in early adulthood. The decline does not seem to be ‘regulated’ but rather the by-product of many age-related changes of other sorts.

From a behavioral level down to a synaptic level, activity increases adult neurogenesis. This regulation does not seem to occur in an all-or-nothing fashion but rather influences different stages of neuronal development differently. Both cell proliferation and survival are influenced by or even depend on activity.

The effects of exercise and environmental enrichment are additive, which indicates that increasing the potential for neurogenesis is sufficient to increase the actual use of the recruitable cells in the case of cognitive stimulation. Physical activity would not by itself provide specific hippocampus-relevant stimuli that induce net neurogenesis but be associated with a greater chance to encounter specific relevant stimuli.

Adult hippocampal neurogenesis might contribute to a structural or neural reserve that if appropriately trained early in life might provide a compensatory buffer of brain plasticity in the face of increasing neurodegeneration or nonpathological age-related functional losses. There is still only limited information on the activity-dependent parameters that help to prevent the age-dependent decrease in adult neurogenesis and maintain cellular plasticity.

The big question is what the functional contribution of so few new neurons over so long periods can be. Any comprehensive concept has to bring together the acute functional contributions of newly generated, highly plastic neurons and the more-or-less lasting changes they introduce to the network.”

I’ve quoted quite a lot, but there are more details that await your reading. A few items from the study referenced in the first paragraph above:

“The hippocampus represents a bottleneck in processing..adult hippocampal neurogenesis occurs at exactly the narrowest spot.

We have derived the theory that the function of adult hippocampal neurogenesis is to enable the brain to accommodate continued bouts of novelty..a mechanism for preparing the hippocampus for processing greater levels of complexity.”

The role of the hippocampus in emotion was ignored as it so often is. The way to address many of the gaps mentioned by the author may be to Advance science by including emotion in research.

For example, from the author’s The mystery of humans’ evolved capability for adults to grow new brain cells:

“Adult neurogenesis is already effective early in life, actually very well before true adulthood, and is at very high levels when sexual maturity has been reached. Behavioral advantages associated with adult neurogenesis must be relevant during the reproductive period.”

When human studies are designed to research how “behavioral advantages associated with adult neurogenesis must be relevant” what purpose does it serve to exclude emotional content?

http://cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/7/11/a018929.full “Activity Dependency and Aging in the Regulation of Adult Neurogenesis”

End draft registration – Now!

gettingwell4 Just me

“The draft is morally wrong: the State doesn’t own us – we own ourselves.

Conscription is un-American, unconstitutional, and inimical to the principles of a free society.

Under no circumstances is it ever justified, period.

If a nation cannot find enough volunteers to defend itself against foreign invasion, then this tells us something about the nature of the regime – that it has lost whatever legitimacy it once had, and therefore doesn’t deserve to exist.”

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/02/11/end-draft-registration-now/

Empathy, value, pain, control: Psychological functions of the human striatum

gettingwell4 5+ stars Premium, Anterior cingulate cortex, Brain hemispheres, Cerebrum, Dopamine, Limbic system, Memory, Neurochemicals, Thalamus , ,

This 2016 US human study found:

“A link between existing data on the anatomical and physiological characteristics of striatal regions and psychological functions.

Because we did not limit our metaanalysis to studies that specifically targeted striatal function, our results extend previous knowledge of the involvement of the striatum in reward-related decision-making tasks, and provide a detailed functional map of regional specialization for diverse psychological functions, some of which are sometimes thought of as being the exclusive domain of the PFC [prefrontal cortex].”

The analysis led to dividing the striatum into five segments:

Ventral striatum (VS):

  • Stimulus Value
  • Terms such as “reward,” “losses,” and “craving”
  • The most representative study reported that monetary and social rewards activate overlapping regions within the VS.
  • Together with the above finding of a reliable coactivation with OFC [orbitofrontal cortex] and ventromedial PFC, this finding suggests a broad involvement of this area in representing stimulus value and related stimulus-driven motivational states.

Anterior caudate (Ca) Nucleus:

  • Incentive Behavior
  • Terms such as “grasping,” “reaching,” and “reinforcement”
  • The most representative study reported a stronger blood-oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) response in this region during trials in which participants had a chance of winning or losing money in a card guessing game, in comparison to trials where participants merely received feedback about the accuracy of their guess.
  • This result suggests a role in evaluating the value of different actions, contrasting with the above role of the VS in evaluating the value of stimuli.

Posterior putamen (Pp):

  • Sensorimotor Processes
  • Terms such as “foot,” “noxious,” and “taste”
  • The most representative study reported activation of this region in response to painful stimulation at the back of the left hand and foot of participants. Anatomically, the most reliable and specific coactivation is with sensorimotor cortices, and the posterior and midinsula and operculum (secondary somatosensory cortex SII) in particular, some parts of which are specifically associated with pain.
  • Together, these findings suggest a broad involvement of this area in sensorimotor functions, including aspects of their affective qualities.

Anterior putamen (Pa):

  • Social- and Language-Related Functions
  • Terms such as “read,” “vocal,” and “empathic”
  • The most representative study partially supports a role of this area in social- and language-related functions; it reported a stronger activation of the Pa in experienced singers, but not when novices were singing.
  • It is coactivated with frontal areas anterior to the ones coactivated with the Pp, demonstrating topography in frontostriatal associations. These anterior regions have been implicated in language processes.

Posterior caudate (Cp) Nucleus:

  • Executive Functions
  • Terms such as “causality,” “rehearsal,” and “arithmetic”
  • The representative study reported this region to be part of a network that included dorsolateral PFC and ACC, which supported inhibitory control and task set-shifting.
  • These results suggest a broad, and previously underappreciated, role for the Cp in cognitive control.

The authors presented comparisons of the above striatal segments with other analyses of striatal zones.

One of the coauthors was the lead researcher of the 2015 Advance science by including emotion in research. The current study similarly used a coactivation view rather than a connectivity paradigm of:

“Inferring striatal function indirectly via psychological functions of connected cortical regions.”

Another of the coauthors was a developer of the system used by the current study and by The function of the dorsal ACC is to monitor pain in survival contexts, and he provided feedback to those authors regarding proper use of the system.

The researchers’ “unbiased, data-driven approach” had to work around the cortical biases evident in many of the 5,809 human imaging studies analyzed. The authors referred to the biases in statements such as:

“The majority of studies investigating these psychological functions report activity preferentially in cortical areas, except for studies investigating reward-related and motor functions.”

The methods and results of research with cortical biases influenced the study’s use of:

“Word frequencies of psychological terms in the full text of studies, rather than a detailed analysis of psychological tasks and statistical contrasts.”

http://www.pnas.org/content/113/7/1907.full “Regional specialization within the human striatum for diverse psychological functions”

Which communities deserve your membership?

gettingwell4 2-3 stars Required further work, Epigenetics ,

This 2015 California/Oxford review described the interplay between an individual and their group membership from an evolutionary biology viewpoint:

“Many central questions in evolutionary biology rely on understanding how individual-level and group-level selective processes interact to shape phenotypic variation and specialisation. Individuals can aggregate into groups, and the composition of these groups, populations, or communities (herein group phenotypic composition or GPC) can affect group-level dynamics and self-organisation.

Research across a range of disparate topics will benefit from simultaneously developing an understanding of how GPC affects individual fitness [genetic fitness, not physical fitness] and exerts selection on individual phenotypes, and assessing how individual phenotypes respond to GPC.

GPC can be a function of the phenotypes of its members or an emergent property that is not attributable to any single individual, such as the mating system. GPC is also an emergent property of genotypes and their patterns of expression.

GPC can affect individual fitness by influencing the overall performance of the group on collective tasks, affecting all the members of any given group equally, or by affecting the relative performance of different phenotypes within groups. For instance, a group with more aggressive individuals can be more successful at foraging, but aggressive individuals can have a higher fitness than non-aggressive individuals because they can monopolise a larger share of the total resources.

Individuals can respond to the effect of GPC by altering the phenotypic composition of the group (for example by controlling access to the group) and/or by changing their own phenotype.”

See my Individual evolution page for more on the topic of human individuals “changing their own phenotype.”

The review provided specific examples to illustrate each point of the overall framework. The authors seldom mentioned human examples, although many of the discussion items applied. Two of their points that weren’t necessarily applicable to human groups were:

  • Benefits from reducing competition
  • Altruism wasn’t viewed as an individual trait.

The authors didn’t use human-specific examples in their framework. For example, they mentioned division of labor, which benefits both animals and humans. There was no mention of applying capital to efforts, which is thought to be specific to humans, although reuse of tools by crows and chimpanzees may be animal examples.

I’d guess that the authors didn’t refer to humans often because that may have added the human trait of unforced individual choice. Unlike other species, we have the capability to direct much of our own lives, and choose the communities to which we belong.

A few questions about our group membership decisions:

  • Do we choose group memberships based on how the group recognizes and facilitates the unique individual each of us is?
  • How do we benefit as an individual when we become default members of communities by not making choices?
  • What individual benefits may we receive by opting out of default groups?

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534715001846 “From Individuals to Groups and Back: The Evolutionary Implications of Group Phenotypic Composition”

The mystery of humans’ evolved capability for adults to grow new brain cells

gettingwell4 4-5 stars Advanced knowledge, Brain development, Epigenetics, Hippocampus, Limbic system, Memory , ,

This 2016 German review discussed the evolution of human adult neurogenesis:

“Mammalian adult hippocampal neurogenesis is a trait shaped by evolutionary forces that have contributed to the advantages in natural selection that are associated with the mammalian dentate gyrus. Adult hippocampal neurogenesis in mammals originates from an ectopic precursor cell population that resides in a defined stem-cell niche detached from the ventricular wall.

Neurogenesis in the adult olfactory bulb generates a diverse range of interneurons, and is involved in the processing of sensory input. In contrast, adult hippocampal neurogenesis produces only one type of excitatory principal neuron and plays a role in flexible memory formation.

A surplus of new neurons is generated first from which only a subset survives. And it is exactly these new neuronal nodes that, at least for a transient period, are the carriers of synaptic plasticity.

For a number of weeks after they were born, the new neurons have a lower threshold for long-term potentiation. This directs the action to the new cells and results in a bias toward the most plastic cells in the local circuitry.

It is a highly polygenic trait, and numerous genes have already been identified to ultimately have essentially identical effects on net neurogenesis.

Adult neurogenesis is also an individualizing trait. Even before an identical genetic background, subtle individual differences in starting conditions and differential behavioral trajectories result in an increase in phenotypic variation with time.”

The author continued the penultimate paragraph above to pose a question about adult neurogenesis that’s incompletely answered by evolutionary biology theory and evidence todate:

“How genetic variation in single genes (or many genes) would be able to exert a phenotypic change in neurogenesis that can provide a large enough advantage to be selected for.”

The development of new brain cells throughout our lives helps us continually adapt and learn. The “increase in phenotypic variation with time” helps us maintain the unique individual that each of us is.

The review emphasized to me how “individual differences” should neither be viewed as a mystery, nor explained away, nor treated as an etiological factor as researchers often do. Focusing on what caused the differences may provide clearer information.

http://cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/8/2/a018986.full “Adult Neurogenesis: An Evolutionary Perspective”

A problematic study of oxytocin receptor gene methylation, childhood abuse, and psychiatric symptoms

gettingwell4 < 0 Detracted from science, Brain development, Epigenetics, Neurochemicals, Oxytocin, Stress , , , ,

This 2016 Georgia human study found:

“A role for OXTR [oxytocin receptor gene] in understanding the influence of early environments on adult psychiatric symptoms.

Data on 18 OXTR CpG sites, 44 single nucleotide polymorphisms, childhood abuse, and adult depression and anxiety symptoms were assessed in 393 African American adults. The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), a retrospective self-report inventory, was used to assess physical, sexual, and emotional abuse during childhood.

While OXTR CpG methylation did not serve as a mediator to psychiatric symptoms, we did find that it served as a moderator for abuse and psychiatric symptoms.”

From the Limitations section:

  1. “Additional insight will likely be gained by including a more detailed assessment of abuse timing and type on the development of biological changes and adverse outcomes.
  2. The degree to which methylation remains fixed following sensitive developmental time periods, or continues to change in response to the environment, is still a topic of debate and is not fully known.
  3. Comparability between previous findings and our study is limited given different areas covered.
  4. Our study was limited to utilizing peripheral tissue [blood]. OXTR methylation should ideally be assessed in the tissues that are known to express OXTR and directly involved in psychiatric symptoms. The degree to which methylation of peripheral tissues can be used to study methylation changes in response to the environment or in association with behavioral outcomes is currently a topic of debate.
  5. Our study did not evaluate gene expression and thus cannot explore the role of study CpG sites on regulation and expression.”

Addressing the study’s limitations:

  1. Early-life epigenetic regulation of the oxytocin receptor gene demonstrated – with no hint of abuse – how sensitive an infant’s experience-dependent oxytocin receptor gene DNA methylation was to maternal care. Treating prenatal stress-related disorders with an oxytocin receptor agonist provided evidence for prenatal oxytocin receptor gene epigenetic changes.
  2. No human’s answers to the CTQ, Adverse Childhood Experiences, or other questionnaires will ever be accurate self-reports of their prenatal, infancy, and early childhood experiences. These early development periods were likely when the majority of the subjects’ oxytocin receptor gene DNA methylation took place. The CTQ self-reports were – at best – evidence of experiences at later times and places, distinct from earlier experience-dependent epigenetic changes.
  3. As one example of incomparability, the 2009 Genomic and epigenetic evidence for oxytocin receptor deficiency in autism was cited in the Introduction section and again in the Limitations section item 4. Since that study was sufficiently relevant to be used as a reference twice, the researchers needed to provide a map between its findings and the current study.
  4. Early-life epigenetic regulation of the oxytocin receptor gene answered the question of whether or not an individual’s blood could be used to make inferences about their brain oxytocin receptor gene DNA methylation. The evidence said: NO, it couldn’t.
  5. It’s assumed that oxytocin receptor gene DNA methylation directly impacted gene expression such that increased levels of methylation were associated with decreased gene transcription. The study assumed but didn’t provide evidence that higher levels of methylation indicated decreased ability to use available oxytocin due to decreased receptor expression. The study also had no control group.

To summarize the study’s limitations:

  1. The study zeroed in on childhood abuse, and disregarded evidence for more relevant factors determining an individual’s experience-dependent oxytocin receptor gene DNA methylation. That smelled like an agenda.
  2. The study used CTQ answers as determinants, although what happened during the subjects’ earliest life was likely when the majority of epigenetic changes to the oxytocin receptor gene took place. If links existed between the subjects’ early-life DNA methylation and later-life conditions, they weren’t evidenced by CTQ answers about later life that couldn’t self-report relevant experiences from conception through age three that may have caused DNA methylation.
  3. There was no attempt to make findings comparable with cited studies. That practice and the lack of a control group reminded me of Problematic research with telomere length.
  4. The researchers tortured numbers until they confessed “that CpG methylation may interact with abuse to predict psychiatric symptoms.” But there was no direct evidence that each subject’s blood oxytocin gene receptor DNA methylation interacted as such! Did the “may interact” phrase make the unevidenced inferences more plausible, or permit contrary evidence to be disregarded?
  5. See Testing the null hypothesis of oxytocin’s effects in humans for examples of what happens when researchers compound assumptions and unevidenced inferences.

The study’s institution, Emory University, and one of the study’s authors also conducted Conclusions without evidence regarding emotional memories. That 2015 study similarly disregarded relevant evidence from other research, and made statements that weren’t supported by that study’s evidence.

The current study used “a topic of debate” and other disclaimers to provide cover for unconvincing methods and analyses in pursuit of..what? What overriding goals were achieved? Who did the study really help?

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1111/cdev.12493/ “Oxytocin Receptor Genetic and Epigenetic Variations: Association With Child Abuse and Adult Psychiatric Symptoms”

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Early-life epigenetic regulation of the oxytocin receptor gene

gettingwell4 5+ stars Premium, Amygdala, Brain development, Cerebellum, Cortisol, Epigenetics, Hippocampus, Hypothalamus, Limbic system, Lower brain, Neurochemicals, Oxytocin, Stress , ,

This 2015 US/Canadian rodent study investigated the effects of natural variation in maternal care:

“The effects of early life rearing experience via natural variation in maternal licking and grooming during the first week of life on behavior, physiology, gene expression, and epigenetic regulation of Oxtr [oxytocin receptor gene] across blood and brain tissues (mononucleocytes, hippocampus, striatum, and hypothalamus).

Rats reared by high licking-grooming (HL) and low licking-grooming (LL) rat dams exhibited differences across study outcomes:

  • LL offspring were more active in behavioral arenas,
  • Exhibited lower body mass in adulthood, and
  • Showed reduced corticosterone responsivity to a stressor.

Oxtr DNA methylation was significantly lower at multiple CpGs in the blood of LL versus HL males, but no differences were found in the brain. Across groups, Oxtr transcript levels in the hypothalamus were associated with reduced corticosterone secretion in response to stress, congruent with the role of oxytocin signaling in this region.

Methylation of specific CpGs at a high or low level was consistent across tissues, especially within the brain. However, individual variation in DNA methylation relative to these global patterns was not consistent across tissues.

These results suggest that:

  • Blood Oxtr DNA methylation may reflect early experience of maternal care, and
  • Oxtr methylation across tissues is highly concordant for specific CpGs, but
  • Inferences across tissues are not supported for individual variation in Oxtr methylation.

nonsignificance

Individual DNA methylation values were not correlated across brain tissues, despite tissue concordance at the group level.

For each CpG, we computed the Pearson correlation coefficient r between methylation values for matched samples in pairs of brain regions (bars). Dark and light shaded regions represent 95% and 99% thresholds, respectively, of distributions of possible correlation coefficients determined from 10,000 permutations of the measured values among the individuals. These distributions represent the null hypothesis that an individual DNA methylation value in one brain region does not help to predict the value in another region in the same animal.

(A) Correlations based on pyrosequencing data for matched samples passing validation in both hippocampus (HC) and hypothalamus (Hypo). Correlations for individuals at each CpG were either weak (.2 < r < .3) or absent (r < .2), and none were significant, even prior to correction for multiple comparisons.

(B) Correlations for matched samples passing validation in both hippocampus and striatum (Str). Two correlations (CpG 1 and 11) were individually significant prior to but not following correction, and this result could be expected by chance.

Correlations between hippocampus and blood (described in the text) yielded similar results, and no particular CpG yielded consistently high correlation across multiple tissues.”

The study focused on whether or not an individual’s experience-dependent oxytocin receptor gene DNA methylation in one of the four studied tissues could be used to infer a significant effect in the three other tissues. The main finding was NO, it couldn’t!

The researchers’ other findings may have been strengthened had they also examined causes for the observed effects. The “natural variation in maternal licking and grooming” developed from somewhere, didn’t it?

The subjects’ mothers were presumably available for the same tests as the subjects, but nothing was done with them. Investigating at least one earlier generation may have enabled etiologic associations of “the effects of early life rearing experience” and “individual variation in DNA methylation.”

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0018506X1500118X “Natural variation in maternal care and cross-tissue patterns of oxytocin receptor gene methylation in rats” (not freely available)

Does vasopressin increase mutually beneficial cooperation?

gettingwell4 < 0 Detracted from science, Amygdala, Anterior cingulate cortex, Beliefs, Brain hemispheres, Cerebrum, Hippocampus, Limbic system, Neurochemicals, Oxytocin, Vasopressin

This 2016 German human study found:

“Intranasal administration of arginine vasopressin (AVP), a hormone that regulates mammalian social behaviors such as monogamy and aggression, increases humans’ tendency to engage in mutually beneficial cooperation.

AVP increases humans’ willingness to cooperate. That increase is not due to an increase in the general willingness to bear risks or to altruistically help others.”

One limitation of the study was that the subjects were all males, ages 19-32. The study’s title was “human risky cooperative behavior” while omitting subjects representing the majority of humanity.

Although the researchers claimed brain effects from vasopressin administration, they didn’t provide direct evidence for the internasally administered vasopressin in the subjects’ brains. A similar point was made about studies of vasopressin’s companion neuropeptide, oxytocin, in Testing the null hypothesis of oxytocin’s effects in humans.

A third limitation was that although the researchers correlated brain activity with social behaviors, they didn’t carry out all of the tests necessary to demonstrate the claimed “novel causal evidence for a biological factor underlying cooperation.” Per Confusion may be misinterpreted as altruism and prosocial behavior, the researchers additionally needed to:

“When attempting to measure social behaviors, it is not sufficient to merely record decisions with behavioral consequences and then infer social preferences. One also needs to manipulate these consequences to test whether this affects the behavior.”

http://www.pnas.org/content/113/8/2051.full “Vasopressin increases human risky cooperative behavior”