The Fox News (7/30, Kwan) website reports that according to a study published online July 29 in the journal Cerebral Cortex, “the brains of children with autism are relatively inflexible at switching from rest to task and this inflexibility is correlated with behaviors characteristic of the disorder.” The study involved 17 youngsters with autism and 17 kids who were developing normally. Both sets of children underwent “social face recognition” testing and functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning.

Related Links:

— “For children with autism, brain inflexibility may explain behavior,” Nicole Kwan, Fox News, July 30, 2014.

HealthDay (7/30, Doheny) reports that according to a study scheduled for presentation at the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior’s annual meeting, “dieting at a young age might set the stage for harmful health habits, including eating disorders.” From 1982 to 2012, researchers surveyed thousands of women of college age. The survey results also revealed an association “between early dieting and later obesity and alcohol abuse.”

Related Links:

— “Dieting at Young Age Often Backfires, Study Says,” Kathleen Doheny, HealthDay, July 29, 2014.

In a USA Today (7/29) op-ed, former congressman Patrick Kennedy warns against the recent trends of legalizing marijuana, saying that the commercialization of the drug “threatens healthy brain development and the mental health of our children.” He applauds President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder for their efforts in reforming the drug laws, to promote drug treatment and other diversion programs for nonviolent drug crimes, but says we should not replace one tragedy, “incarceration,” with another, “a public health crisis.”

Related Links:

— “Patrick Kennedy: Legalizing pot endangers children,” Patrick Kennedy, USA Today, July 28, 2014.

USA Today (7/26, Appleby) carried a Kaiser Health News report on the “limited networks of” physicians “and hospitals” that some people find under their ACA plans. According to the article, across the country, “regulators and insurance agents are inundated with complaints, while lawmakers are considering rules to ensure consumers’ access to” physicians. To address this issue, “for plans being submitted for sale next year, the federal Department of Health and Human Services said it will more closely scrutinize whether networks are adequate.”

Related Links:

— “New health plans’ limitations anger enrollees,” Julie Appleby, USA Today, July 27, 2014.

Medscape (7/26, Jeffrey) reported that investigators “have for the first time described a pathologic role for a third protein in the Alzheimer’s disease process, in addition to the well-described β-amyloid and tau proteins.” Researchers found, “in a postmortem study of 340 brains from participants identified after death as having AD,” that “a protein called TDP-43 correlated strongly with cognitive impairment during life, as well as hippocampal and cortical atrophy, independent of amyloid deposition and at lower Braak stages of AD pathology progression.” The findings were presented at a press conference at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference 2014.

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

The Psychiatry Online (7/25, Watts) reports, “In June, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) called for $4.5 billion in new federal funding over 10 years” for the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative. The story quotes NIH Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, saying, “As the Human Genome Project did with precision medicine, the BRAIN Initiative promises to transform the way we prevent and treat devastating brain diseases and disorders while also spurring economic development.” It is being “led by the NIH, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense, National Science Foundation, and Food and Drug Administration.”

Related Links:

— “NIH Calls for $4.5 Billion for BRAIN Initiative,” Vabren Watts, Psychiatry Online, July 25, 2014.

Medscape (7/25, Phillips) reports that a study published in the August issue of the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia “linking epidural anaesthesia during childbirth to reduced risk for postpartum depression suggests that pain control during labor and delivery may lower women’s risk of developing the serious mood disorder.”

The 214-participant study revealed that “at six weeks postpartum, 14.0% of the [107] women who had opted for epidural anaesthesia during delivery had depressive symptoms, compared with 34.6% of the women who did not choose epidural anesthesia.”

An accompanying editorial called for further research to confirm the study’s findings, “especially in women at increased risk of postpartum depression.” One of the editorialists received partial support from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

USA Today (7/24, Johnson) reports that data supplied by the Federal Bureau of Prisons show that the system “has spent more than $36.5 million on psychotropic drugs to treat thousands of offenders in the past four years.” Data supplied to USA Today demonstrate that nearly 10 percent of the 216,000 Federal inmates “are receiving medications designed to treat an array of illnesses, from depression and bipolar disorder to acute schizophrenia.” The disclosure “comes as government officials have raised questions about the costs of confining such large populations, while advocates for the mentally ill argue that prisons and jails have become the new repository for people with mental illness.”

Related Links:

— “Thousands of prisoners treated for mental illness,” Kevin Johnson, USA Today, July 24, 2014.

The Los Angeles Times (7/24, MacVean) reports in “Science Now” that according to a study published July 17 in the American Journal of Public Health, “trying to maintain their weight helped low-income, overweight African American women stave off depression.” At the beginning “of the study, about 20% of the 185 participants reported symptoms of moderate to severe depression.” But, “among the group in the weight management program, that number fell to about 10% after a year and after 18 months,” whereas no changes were seen in those in the control group.

Related Links:

— “http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-weight-depression-african-american-women-20140723-story.html,” , Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2014.

The Los Angeles Times (7/24, Zarembo) reports in “Science Now” that according to a study published online July 23 in JAMA Psychiatry, “in America’s all-volunteer military, men who enlist are about twice as likely to have had troubled childhoods.”

The AP (7/24) reports that included in the study were “nearly 10,000 current and former service members,” the majority of whom were men, as well as some 51,000 civilians. The study indicated that the “disparities were most striking among men during the volunteer era: More than 25 percent had experienced at least four childhood traumas, versus about 13 percent of civilian men.”

The Stars And Stripes (DC) (7/24, Vandiver) reports that the study findings “suggest that the military could serve as a refuge for those seeking to escape troubled home lives.” In addition, the study, “which was a secondary analysis of data from a 2010 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey,” may “provide the military with added insight into its struggle to curb suicide in the ranks, as people who have experienced severe childhood abuse are at a higher risk of attempting suicide.”

Related Links:

— “Study: Men with troubled childhoods may seek refuge in the military,” , Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2014.