illnesses are being exploited by some defence lawyers to reduce sentences for people found guilty of serious offences, despite a lack of evidence linking the ailments to criminal behaviour, mental health experts say.

Groups including the Mental Health Council of Australia and beyondblue have urged more rigorous psychological examinations of people charged with crimes when mental illness is claimed in mitigation. They say those with mental health problems are more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators.

Several prosecutors from the Office of Public Prosecutions also told The Sunday Age they were frustrated that depression had become a ”pro forma defence tactic” used to seek leniency.

One senior prosecutor said defence lawyers were exploiting a Victorian Court of Appeal decision in 2007 that reduced the moral culpability, but not legal responsibility, of those diagnosed with mental disorders.

Mental Health Council of Australia chief executive Frank Quinlan said there were doubts about the diagnosis of some mental illnesses. Distinctions between normal sadness and clinical depression were still widely debated in the mental health profession, he said.

”It seems to me, that on the back of the very poor evidence we have, there is no prima facie case of a link between crime and mental illness.”

Mr Quinlan was critical of a recent attempt by a defence lawyer to seek leniency for a client with depression, after the man was found guilty of downloading child pornography.

”Some people who suffer severe psychotic conditions may have an argument about not being able to form intent, but those suffering high-prevalence mood disorders such as acute anxiety and depression have an inability to find motivation and plan, which would obviously impact their ability to commit a crime,” he said.

His claims are at odds with a Corrections Victoria report that found almost half of adults in custody had a history of mental illness and 34 per cent of children in detention centres had psychological disorders. Beyondblue estimates major mental illnesses are up to five times more prevalent among prisoners than in the general community.

Law Institute of Victoria president Michael Holcroft said there was a correlation between mental disorders and a range of criminal behaviour. It was ”totally appropriate” for a lawyer to raise mental health when entering a pre-sentencing plea, Mr Holcroft said.

”People under the influence of drugs and alcohol or suffering from mental health episodes are far more likely to get themselves into trouble than the standard person in the street. And to avoid re-offending, the courts need to address the underlying source of the problem.”

He said lawyers relied on expert medical opinion and had a responsibility not to mislead the courts.

”To say there is no link between crime and mental health is extraordinary. People come before the courts with myriad issues,” Mr Holcroft said.

In 2010, the Magistrates Court set up a specialist court and program to provide extra support for the rising number of accused people claiming to have depression and other mental disorders. At the time, magistrate John Lesser said more than a third of those who appeared before Victorian courts had some form of mental illness.

But Superintendent Spiros Kalliakmanis, of the police prosecutions division, raised concerns about the growing number of cases diverted to the specialist court. ”It is a matter for the court to determine the legitimacy of a plea. However, any abuse of these jurisdictions and services has an impact on the ability to offer quality services to members of the community who are in real need,” he said.

Beyondblue chief Kate Carnell said depression had no bearing on a person’s propensity to commit a crime.

”The reality of mental health issues is people don’t do things that they wouldn’t otherwise do or behave dramatically out of character. Magistrates should listen to the mental health experts and make sure that the information that is being presented in court is evidence based,” she said.

Kristen Hilton, director of civil justice at Victoria Legal Aid, said about 20 per cent of its clients had mental health problems. ”The research and our practical experience shows that someone with a mental health issue is far more likely to come into contact with the criminal justice system.

”I would hope there’s a general community consensus that someone’s mental condition should be taken into account during sentencing,” she said.

A spokesman for Attorney-General Robert Clark said genuine mental illness was relevant in sentencing. ”But claims of mental illness should not be used as an excuse to avoid responsibility for culpable conduct.”

Source: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/courts-under-fire-in-mental-health-row-20120519-1yy0b.html#ixzz1vMoPiXIG

Dana Carter with the Mental Health Movement stopped by to Studio 5 to tell us all about their march today at noon. Carter and her group plan to dress up in hospital gowns.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s home is the Saturday destination for Mental Health Movement protesters ahead of this weekend’s NATO Summit.

The same group that barricaded themselves inside the Woodlawn Mental Health Clinic last month will march on Emanuel’s Ravenswood neighborhood at noon dressed in hospital gowns.

“A lot of people don’t recognize how citizens are being taxed and how rights are being lost,” said N’Dana Carter of the Mental Health Movement. “They don’t know … that two have died and 16 have been hospitalized since the closing of the clinics.”

Carter told NBCChicago the group not only will address the mayor but also his neighbors about how the closure of Chicago mental health clinics adversely affects the city.

Six of the city’s 12 public mental health centers closed last month. Since then, Carter said the group has seen two suicides and found people are getting lost en route to their destinations. Further, therapists aren’t readily available for patients like they were at clinics.

“We chose this weekend to highlight that all of this money is being spent on war when we have people dying,” she said. “If you’ve got $14 million for parties, then you surely have $6 million for healthcare.”

Though the group became known for barricading themselves inside a closing clinic and interrupting Emanuel’s public events to get his attention, Carter said the group wants a peaceful protest today.

“There’s never been a time when the Mental Health Movement was not doing something with peace, because what we recognize is it’s important that people are comfortable with dealing with mental health issues. If we’re erratic, if we’re screaming and shouting, people will ignore us.”

Article source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Mental-Health-Protest-Heads-to-Rahms-House--152142395.html

Mr Humphries said John Harper’s Mate Helping Mate CD promotes the need to maintain good mental health during periods of stress and anxiety by focusing on activities that help build social ties and improve mental health in rural communities.

“John has been a tireless advocate for regional mental health problems over many years and I congratulate him on the work he has done in developing this valuable resource,” Mr Humphries said.

“Mental health problems affect the whole community, and it’s important that the whole community works together to support each other in tough times.

“As we all know, men in regional areas are, for a variety of reasons, often very reluctant to speak out when they are in trouble.

“This CD aims to give men the support they need to reach out for help when they need it most.”

The CD conveys John’s personal battle with depression and recounts how it adversely affected his physical health and business and personal relationships, and how he managed to overcome it and help others along the way.

It has been produced through a funding partnership between the NSW Department of Primary Industries’ Rural Support Program, the Outback Division of General Practice Brolga program and the Rotary Club of South Dubbo.

“The past decade has seen many regional communities throughout NSW suffer from the devastating effects of drought and flood,” Mr Humphries said.

“The damage caused by natural disaster can often have a profound and lingering effect on many people and it is important that mental health support is there when they need it.

“Through this CD John is sending men a message they no matter where they live, there is always someone there looking out for them.”

Article source: http://www.narrominenewsonline.com.au/news/local/news/health/mates-helping-mates-through-unique-cd/2561097.aspx

Source: The Courier-Mail

THE location of new community health centre which opened today on a major road will further help bring mental health care into the mainstream, Premier Jay Weatherill said.

The new Eastern Community Mental Health Centre on Glynburn Rd, Tranmere, is the second of six new purpose-built centres planned across Adelaide.

It is in a busy shopping precinct and is advertised on street signage which includes On The Run, Subway and Brumbys.

The centre has 120 staff across a range of expertise and some said the centre was so “mainstream’ that people had mistaken it for a transport office and had tried to have their car registrations renewed.

Mr Weatherill said he hoped this prominence and welcoming exterior would encourage people who may need its services to drop in.

“Community mental health centres make it easier for people to access services earlier – this reduces the risk of them needing more intensive treatment,” he said.

“The important new feature is that this centre provides a single point of access for the full range of community-based mental health services.

“The system was too heavily skewed towards crisis care, with limited care options and inadequate support for people to live well in the community.”

Health and Ageing Minister John Hill, who joined Mr Weatherill at the opening, said the State Government has committed more than $34 million to build a network of six new community mental health centres across Adelaide as part of the wholesale reform of mental health services.

“The professional services available at these centres will support people closer to home to keep them well and out of hospital,” he said.

“Each centre will provide a range of personalised and responsive services and will be the central port of call for adults wanting to access mental health care in their communities.”

The first of the centres opened as part of the GP Plus Centre at Marion in May 2011 and other centres are planned for the northern, western, north-east suburbs and at Noarlunga.

Mr Weatherill noted other reforms to mental health care underway include the 40 bed Margaret Tobin Centre, a new 30 bed unit at the Repatriation General Hospital, a new 50 bed unit at the Lyell McEwin Hospital, the 129 bed redevelopment at Glenside, 20 bed unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and a 10 bed forensic unit at Oakden.

Article source: http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/lunch-outlets-and-mental-health-support-centre-come-together-at-tranmere/story-e6frea83-1226360917172

Among the voluminous evidence released Thursday in the shooting death of 17-year-old Florida high school student Trayvon Martin is a toxicology report showing that the teen had trace levels of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, in his blood and urine.

The evidence includes abundant new information: conflicting witness statements, an autopsy report showing that Martin, who was black, died from a single gunshot wound to the chest and medical records documenting that Hispanic neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who will stand trial for second-degree murder, had a broken nose the day after Martin’s death. Yet the media is focusing on the marijuana findings.

That’s a mistake that only serves to distort an already contentious case. The levels of THC detected don’t reflect Martin’s character or even his state of mind the night he was shot. For one, they are so low as to almost certainly not be connected to recent intoxication:  1.5 nanograms of THC were found as well as 7.3 nanograms of THC-COOH, a metabolite of THC that can stay in the system for weeks after cannabis has been smoked. Immediately after inhaling, THC levels typically rise to 100 to 200 nanograms per milliter of blood, although there can be a great deal of variation.

“THC in blood or urine tells us nothing about the level of intoxication,” says Carl Hart, associate professor of psychology at Columbia University and author of the leading college textbook on drug use and behavior. “That would be like someone going to have a beer some evening, and when he goes to work the next day, you can find alcohol metabolites in his bodily fluids. That says nothing about his functioning.” (Full disclosure: Hart and I are working on a book project together).

Moreover, even if Martin had been stoned out of his mind, it wouldn’t predispose him to violence. “I have given hundreds of doses of marijuana to people in the lab, and no one has gotten violent ever and everyone has been able to respond to the situation in an appropriate manner, when given low or large doses and single or repeated doses,” Hart says.

The night of the killing, Zimmerman began following Martin, who had gone to a 7-Eleven to get Skittles and an Arizona iced tea during a break in the NBA All-Star game. Zimmerman told a 911 operator that he was worried about Martin because he “looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs.” He was informed that the police would handle the situation and that he should not take further action. Zimmerman didn’t heed that advice; an altercation ended with Zimmerman shooting Martin in what he says was self-defense. He was charged months after the Feb. 26th killing, following widespread public outrage over the perceived lack of an appropriate criminal justice response.

“If people are trying to discount the acts of Zimmerman or excuse him because [Martin may have smoked] marijuana, they need to think about their own marijuana use and think about whether they ever get violent,” Hart says. “More than half the country has used marijuana and they really need to use some common sense.” The drug that has the strongest pharmacological link to violence is the legal one, alcohol.

And despite the fact that black youth are actually equally or even less likely to use — or sell — marijuana compared to whites, they are arrested for drug crimes at a rate ten times higher.  In New York City, a recent analysis found that 80% of those arrested for marijuana were black or Latino, despite whites outnumbering them by far.

As Michelle Alexander points out in her book, The New Jim Crow:  Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, our drug laws have become little more than a pretext for arresting, imprisoning and disenfranchising people of color in a way that is no longer permissible to do based on race alone.  Once someone is charged with a drug crime, liberty, property and voting rights can all be rescinded— in a manner that appears colorblind if you ignore the selective enforcement.

Says Hart: “If Trayvon was a white kid, we wouldn’t be here talking about drugs. George Zimmerman would have long been in jail.”

Article source: http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/18/traces-of-marijuana-found-in-trayvon-martins-body-does-it-matter-2/

In a recent analysis of best-selling teen novels, researchers from Brigham Young University report that young readers encounter about seven instances of profanity per hour — and those characters with the dirtiest mouths are often the richest, most popular and best-looking. As with so many things, surmise the researchers, parents are probably in the dark about the trash their kids are reading.

Brigham Young University professor Sarah Coyne and her colleagues analyzed profanity use in 40 teen novels on the New York Times’ best-seller list of children’s books published in 2008. All the books reviewed targeted children age 9 or older.

The researchers defined profanity as any language considered obscene, offensive, taboo or vulgar by the American public. They categorized profanities into five groups:

1. The Seven Dirty Words: Words the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) considers unspeakable for broadcast television.
2. Sexual Words: Words describing body parts or sexual behavior in a coarse way.
3. Excretory Words: Words that have direct or literal reference to human waste.
4. Strong Others: Words defined as strong based on their level of offensiveness or “taboo-ness.”
5. Mild Others: Words that are mild based on their level of offensiveness or “taboo-ness.”

The researchers found that on average, teen novels contain 38 instances of profanity, which translates to nearly seven curse words per hour of reading. Of the 40 books in the study, 88% contained at least one “bad word.”

Some books were especially laden with dirty words. For instance, the novel Tweak contained 500 instances of profanities. The “F-word” alone appeared 139 times in Tweak, 50 times in Gossip Girl–The Carlyle and 27 times in the novel Tempted. The novels with the foulest language were typically aimed at older adolescents ages 14 and up. Five of the novels did not contain any profanity, with all but one of those falling in the reading category for 9- to 11-year-olds. “I had no clue there would be that type of content in those books,” says Coyne. “If they were made into movies, they would easily be rated R, and parents have no clue.”

About 50% of the literary profanity was considered “mild.” Words falling under the “seven dirty words” category accounted for 20% of profanities, and “sexual,” “excretory,” and “other strong profanity” each accounted for about 10% of overall profanity. “I was shocked by the books with the most profanities,”  says Coyne. “I could not believe the levels of profanities in Tweak.”

The researchers were also interested in who was cussing. They found that when profanity was used, the characters were most likely to be young, rich, attractive and of high social status.

“A lot of research has shown that viewers tend to imitate the characters with desirable characteristics,” says Coyne. “If adolescents are reading about these characters who are popular and rich — which are desirable characteristics for them — they are likely to imitate their behavior.”

While profanity in TV, movies and video games has been studied at length, Coyne is one of the first to look at its prevalence in books. What’s especially concerning is that unlike other forms of media, there are no content warnings or ratings on teen novels.

“We hold books to a higher standard compared to other forms of media,” says Coyne. “There is not a lot of research on books in this regard, but the amount of profanities was truly eye-opening for me.”

For comparision, according to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), a single use of the “F-word” in a film gives it a PG-13 rating. More than one use requires an R rating, and children under age 17 must be accompanied by an adult to view the film.

“Books are harder to monitor,” says Coyne. “I recommend parents talk to their kids about teen novels as they would any other media form.”

Coyne also recommends the website Common Sense Media, which provides media and literature content information to parents, as a good starting point for monitoring teen literature.

The study was published in the journal Mass Communication and Society.

Article source: http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/18/profanity-in-teen-novels-characters-with-foul-language-are-often-the-most-desirable/

Browning’s latest book is Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put On My Pajamas, and Found Happiness.

There was something to be said for the old-fashioned landline, with a handset so bulky, you had to tuck it between your neck and shoulder to get your hands free. They didn’t — couldn’t — go everywhere with us. Now we’re tethered to our mobiles — addicted, even. They’ve become handy tools for avoidance, and it’s our children who are getting the bad end of the deal.

All around me, I see parents with their babies and toddlers and young kids — but not with them. The grownups are on the phone. The dad pushing his son on the swing set while hands-free on his mobile isn’t really with his child. The mom pushing her baby in a pram while she’s yakking on the phone isn’t really with her child.

The kids aren’t too happy about it. They’re pulling on their parents’ clothes. They’re yanking on their arms. They’re acting out to get attention. I’ve heard them begging their parents to stop, disconnect. I’ve watched children start to whimper the minute the mobile is picked up — off the dinner table. During dinner. The son of a friend of mine recently announced, at age 10, that he hates cell phones. Actually, he will tell you he hates technology. IPads don’t fool him. Neither does texting. He understands that his father can never get away from his work — and the office won’t get away from his father. He sees the phone, and he thinks, I’ve lost my dad’s attention. And that’s what children crave: attention. We all do.

Parents have to break the phone habit before it is too late. I’m not talking about getting extreme here — no phone calls around a child, ever. But I am talking about giving more thought to all the missed opportunities for communicating with a child. For simply being with her. Quietly. I was pleased to find the blog of a young mother from Alabama, Rachel Stafford, who has started an aptly titled campaign called Hands Free Mama, encouraging parents to put away the tech toys and be present with their children.

Is being a parent boring? Sometimes. Lots of times. And guess what. Those boring moments are what you will miss the most once your children are grown. Carpool is when you should be hanging on every word. Walks are when the world unfolds at a child’s feet, in the safety of your company. The parent is the genius who gives names to things and encourages a child’s attention to detail on the path. The tiny accretion of daily routines is dull and divine. Of course there’s always plenty of time for a phone call, or 10 of them. Children are always slowly walking, slowly eating, slowly looking, slowly reading, slowly going nowhere, until suddenly they’re gone.

And giving the kids their own phones in the name of fair play doesn’t cut it. That’s happening all too often; families are together, but each person is in her own bubble of technology. Some of us worry about radiation and the developing brain. But we should be worried about disconnectedness and the developing mind.

One day, sooner than you realize, you will be with your child, wanting to talk. But she’ll be too busy. Talking to someone who isn’t there. And why not? You weren’t there when she was.

Browning’s latest book Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put On My Pajamas, and Found Happiness is available at the Book Depository with free delivery to most places worldwide!

Article source: http://ideas.time.com/2012/05/17/why-cell-phones-are-bad-for-parenting/

VICTORIA is lagging behind in mental health and wellbeing promotion, according to an organiser of a Barwon South West conference.

Aspire health promotion and education manager Kim Freeman said while other states were developing policies Victoria didn’t have a strategy in place.

The Victorian Government dismissed the claims, saying the Budget had allocated $1.14 billion to mental health.

But as three leading experts prepare to address Barwon South West’s first mental health and wellbeing conference in Warrnambool on Monday.

Mr Freeman says more needs to be done.

“To date the agenda has been focused on mental health treatment and that is under-funded and under-resourced in Victoria and right across Australia.”

He said there was no focus on prevention, reducing risk factors such as isolation and ensuring people felt connected to their community to make them better equipped to face challenges.

“There’s leadership on obesity and type 2 diabetes but there needs to be the same promotion for . . . mental ill-health,” Mr Freeman said.

“There needs to be investment and it needs to be a whole population approach. The Victorian Government isn’t showing leadership like NSW, Queensland, Western Australia and even Tasmania.

“There’s a whole government approach to increase the awareness of services, promotion and mental wellbeing.

“There’s no statewide strategy or response and we know it is going to be one of the challenges in the near future as a state and a sub-region . . . if we don’t, the road map doesn’t look good with the World Bank saying by 2020 mental illness will be the second largest burden globally.”

A Victorian Government spokesman said the government provided substantial funding to mental health promotion which included $3.5 million to beyondblue and more than $30 million to VicHealth each year.

“Of the states and territories, Victoria is the largest contributor to beyondblue,” he said.

He said both organisations were actively involved in mental health promotion.

Article source: http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2012/05/18/484145_latest-news.html

“In the last several years there have been data suggesting that neurobiological changes are happening — [there are] very brain-specific mechanisms at work here,” says Bucci, an associate professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

From his studies, Bucci and his collaborators have revealed important new findings:

• The effects of exercise are different on memory as well as on the brain, depending on whether the exerciser is an adolescent or an adult.
• A gene has been identified which seems to mediate the degree to which exercise has a beneficial effect. This has implications for the potential use of exercise as an intervention for mental illness.

Bucci began his pursuit of the link between exercise and memory with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), one of the most common childhood psychological disorders. Bucci is concerned that the treatment of choice seems to be medication.

“The notion of pumping children full of psycho-stimulants at an early age is troublesome,” Bucci cautions. “We frankly don’t know the long-term effects of administering drugs at an early age — drugs that affect the brain — so looking for alternative therapies is clearly important.”

Anecdotal evidence from colleagues at the University of Vermont started Bucci down the track of ADHD. Based on observations of ADHD children in Vermont summer camps, athletes or team sports players were found to respond better to behavioral interventions than more sedentary children. While systematic empirical data is lacking, this association of exercise with a reduction of characteristic ADHD behaviors was persuasive enough for Bucci.

Coupled with his interest in learning and memory and their underlying brain functions, Bucci and teams of graduate and undergraduate students embarked upon a project of scientific inquiry, investigating the potential connection between exercise and brain function. They published papers documenting their results, with the most recent now available in the online version of the journal Neuroscience.

Bucci is quick to point out that “the teams of both graduate and undergraduates are responsible for all this work, certainly not just me.” Michael Hopkins, a graduate student at the time, is first author on the papers.

Early on, laboratory rats that exhibit ADHD-like behavior demonstrated that exercise was able to reduce the extent of these behaviors. The researchers also found that exercise was more beneficial for female rats than males, similar to how it differentially affects male and female children with ADHD.

Moving forward, they investigated a mechanism through which exercise seems to improve learning and memory. This is “brain derived neurotrophic factor” (BDNF) and it is involved in growth of the developing brain. The degree of BDNF expression in exercising rats correlated positively with improved memory, and exercising as an adolescent had longer lasting effects compared to the same duration of exercise, but done as an adult.

“The implication is that exercising during development, as your brain is growing, is changing the brain in concert with normal developmental changes, resulting in your having more permanent wiring of the brain in support of things like learning and memory,” says Bucci. “It seems important to [exercise] early in life.”

Bucci’s latest paper was a move to take the studies of exercise and memory in rats and apply them to humans. The subjects in this new study were Dartmouth undergraduates and individuals recruited from the Hanover community.

Bucci says that, “the really interesting finding was that, depending on the person’s genotype for that trophic factor [BDNF], they either did or did not reap the benefits of exercise on learning and memory. This could mean that you may be able to predict which ADHD child, if we genotype them and look at their DNA, would respond to exercise as a treatment and which ones wouldn’t.”

Bucci concludes that the notion that exercise is good for health including mental health is not a huge surprise. “The interesting question in terms of mental health and cognitive function is how exercise affects mental function and the brain.” This is the question Bucci, his colleagues, and students continue to pursue.

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Dartmouth College. The original article was written by Joseph Blumberg.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

1. M.E. Hopkins, F.C. Davis, M.R. VanTieghem, P.J. Whalen, D.J. Bucci. Differential effects of acute and regular physical exercise on cognition and affect. Neuroscience, 2012; DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2012.04.056

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

“In the last several years there have been data suggesting that neurobiological changes are happening — [there are] very brain-specific mechanisms at work here,” says Bucci, an associate professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

From his studies, Bucci and his collaborators have revealed important new findings:

• The effects of exercise are different on memory as well as on the brain, depending on whether the exerciser is an adolescent or an adult.
• A gene has been identified which seems to mediate the degree to which exercise has a beneficial effect. This has implications for the potential use of exercise as an intervention for mental illness.

Bucci began his pursuit of the link between exercise and memory with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), one of the most common childhood psychological disorders. Bucci is concerned that the treatment of choice seems to be medication.

“The notion of pumping children full of psycho-stimulants at an early age is troublesome,” Bucci cautions. “We frankly don’t know the long-term effects of administering drugs at an early age — drugs that affect the brain — so looking for alternative therapies is clearly important.”

Anecdotal evidence from colleagues at the University of Vermont started Bucci down the track of ADHD. Based on observations of ADHD children in Vermont summer camps, athletes or team sports players were found to respond better to behavioral interventions than more sedentary children. While systematic empirical data is lacking, this association of exercise with a reduction of characteristic ADHD behaviors was persuasive enough for Bucci.

Coupled with his interest in learning and memory and their underlying brain functions, Bucci and teams of graduate and undergraduate students embarked upon a project of scientific inquiry, investigating the potential connection between exercise and brain function. They published papers documenting their results, with the most recent now available in the online version of the journal Neuroscience.

Bucci is quick to point out that “the teams of both graduate and undergraduates are responsible for all this work, certainly not just me.” Michael Hopkins, a graduate student at the time, is first author on the papers.

Early on, laboratory rats that exhibit ADHD-like behavior demonstrated that exercise was able to reduce the extent of these behaviors. The researchers also found that exercise was more beneficial for female rats than males, similar to how it differentially affects male and female children with ADHD.

Moving forward, they investigated a mechanism through which exercise seems to improve learning and memory. This is “brain derived neurotrophic factor” (BDNF) and it is involved in growth of the developing brain. The degree of BDNF expression in exercising rats correlated positively with improved memory, and exercising as an adolescent had longer lasting effects compared to the same duration of exercise, but done as an adult.

“The implication is that exercising during development, as your brain is growing, is changing the brain in concert with normal developmental changes, resulting in your having more permanent wiring of the brain in support of things like learning and memory,” says Bucci. “It seems important to [exercise] early in life.”

Bucci’s latest paper was a move to take the studies of exercise and memory in rats and apply them to humans. The subjects in this new study were Dartmouth undergraduates and individuals recruited from the Hanover community.

Bucci says that, “the really interesting finding was that, depending on the person’s genotype for that trophic factor [BDNF], they either did or did not reap the benefits of exercise on learning and memory. This could mean that you may be able to predict which ADHD child, if we genotype them and look at their DNA, would respond to exercise as a treatment and which ones wouldn’t.”

Bucci concludes that the notion that exercise is good for health including mental health is not a huge surprise. “The interesting question in terms of mental health and cognitive function is how exercise affects mental function and the brain.” This is the question Bucci, his colleagues, and students continue to pursue.

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Dartmouth College. The original article was written by Joseph Blumberg.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

1. M.E. Hopkins, F.C. Davis, M.R. VanTieghem, P.J. Whalen, D.J. Bucci. Differential effects of acute and regular physical exercise on cognition and affect. Neuroscience, 2012; DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2012.04.056

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.