C. Diff Infections Are Falling, Thanks To Better Cleaning And Fewer Antibiotics

Sex. Yes or No? How to Know if You Aren’t Quite Ready

Sex: the thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount of trouble.” — John Barrymore

When I was in high school, I dated often. A cute guy would ask me out, and I would pretend to think about it and say I had to make sure I didn’t already have plans. Of course, I never had plans and always said yes. I would wait for Friday to come with great anticipation and spend hours getting ready.

The date would start off fine, General chit chat about school, homework, teachers, and whatnot kept us busy followed by a movie or maybe we’d hang out at the local hang-out spot with friends.

I always had to be home by midnight, and the end of the date was inevitable. Kissing, wandering hands, clothes in disarray, the usual pre-sex stuff was to be expected. I knew the point would come though when I would want to say no, and he would be taking me home.

I always wondered what was going through my date’s minds when they dropped me off. I knew two things for certain. I wouldn’t be asked out on a second date, and he wouldn’t have any conquests to share with the boys on Monday morning at school.

I was happy to wait. I knew I wasn’t ready because the thought of having sex with my date, any of my dates, made me want to run the other way. Then I fell in love and everything changed.

You are Uncomfortable Talking About Sex

If you can’t talk about the ins and outs (no pun intended) of a sexual relationship, the odds are that you are not ready to be in one. If you get anxious and uncomfortable or avoid the topic altogether, then you should wait to have sex.

A sexual relationship requires…….

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The US Library of Congress Just Put 25 Million Records Online, Free of Charge

Set the knowledge free.

Knowledge is power, the old saying goes, but it isn’t much use if it’s hidden away – so we’re excited to learn that the US Library of Congress is making 25 million of its records available for free, for anyone to access online.

The bibliographic data sets, like digital library cards, cover music, books, maps, manuscripts, and more, and their publication online marks the biggest release of digital records in the Library’s history.

“The Library of Congress is our nation’s monument to knowledge and we need to make sure the doors are open wide for everyone, not just physically but digitally too,” says Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden.

“Unlocking the rich data in the Library’s online catalogue is a great step forward. I’m excited to see how people will put this information to use.”

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March for Science, CSU Chico!

Neurons That Distinguish Between Reality and Imagination Discovered

Neurons found to be abnormal in psychosis play an important role in our ability to distinguish between what is real and what is perceived, researchers say.

New Western University research shows that neurons in the part of the brain found to be abnormal in psychosis are also important in helping people distinguish between reality and imagination.

The researchers, Dr. Julio Martinez-Trujillo, principal investigator and professor at Western University’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry and Dr. Diego Mendoza-Halliday, postdoctoral researcher at M.I.T., investigated how the brain codes visual information in reality versus abstract information in our working memory and how those differences are distributed across neurons in the lateral prefrontal cortex region of the brain. The results were published today in Nature Communications.

“Neuronal population coding of perceived and memorized visual features in the lateral prefrontal cortex” by Diego Mendoza-Halliday & Julio C. Martinez-Trujillo in Nature Communications. Published online June 1 2017 doi:10.1038/ncomms15471

Stay Focused, If You Can

What makes some people better able to resist temptation than others? Lucina Uddin and Jason Nomi, cognitive neuroscientists at the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences collaborated with Rosa Steimke, a visiting postdoctoral researcher in the Brain Connectivity and Cognition Laboratory at UM, to explore this question.

Steimke conducted a study as part of her dissertation work at Charité University in Berlin, Germany, in which participants were asked to perform a simple task: focus on one side of a screen where a letter – either an “E” or “F” – would quickly appear then disappear, and press a button indicating which letter they saw.

But before the letter appeared on the screen, an image would pop up to the right, and—this is where it gets interesting—the images were quite sensual and erotic. Not surprisingly, participants’ eyes definitely wandered to the right for a quick peek, which was captured by eye-tracking equipment.

“Using this setup, we were able to challenge participants’ self-control in the face of temptation,” said Steimke.

Adds Uddin, “This study is about individual differences in the ability to control impulses and behavior.”

According to previous research, the brain’s “cognitive control network” is typically involved in behavior that requires self-control. Here, the researchers explored another potential candidate brain system known as the “salience network.” The salience network is a collection of regions in the brain that selects which stimuli are deserving of our attention, such as a driver responding to a pedestrian running across the street or a large billboard along the highway.

The cognitive control network is related to ‘’top-down’’ effortful control of attention while the salience network is related to ‘’bottom-up’’ automatic direction of attention.

“We were interested in comparing the roles of these two networks in self-control behavior,” said Nomi.

Uddin and her team have taken a new approach to studying brain activity and its moment-to-moment variations using a method called “dynamic functional network connectivity.” Using this method, the team was able to examine whether the cognitive control or salience network was more closely linked to participants’ tendency to glance at the sensual pictures when they knew the goal was to focus on the letter.

Surprisingly, they found no links between cognitive control network dynamics and individual differences in performance of the task. However, those individuals whose brains showed a specific pattern of salience network dynamics were better able to perform the task. Specifically, for some people their salience networks were not as well-connected with the visual networks in the brain. Individuals who showed this pattern were better able to resist tempting distractors and perform the task.

“Researchers normally study connectivity using traditional approaches, but we used the dynamic approach, which gave us new insight that traditional connectivity analysis did not reveal,” said Uddin. “When we looked at the moment-to-moment, dynamic measures of connectivity we saw the relationship with individual differences in eye-gazing behavior emerge.”

The study, “Salience network dynamics underlying successful resistance of temptation,” is published in the journal SCAN.

Apacalyptica!

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