Canadian Researchers reveal Toddlers value helpful people

Even very young children value people that help them and they are motivated to return the favour, according to a new study in the journal Plos One, out of Queen's University, Ontario.

The study revealed that those children, when asked to pick one person to help, most often choose the person who was helpful to them.

Valerie Kuhlmeier

"Children can identify helpful individuals and will be helpful toward those people," says study author Valerie Kuhlmeier (Psychology).

"As early as the age of three, children already appear to be engaging in a variant of the golden rule: 'do unto others as they have done unto you."

In the study, children were presented with a puzzle that consisted of a picture covered in such a way as to allow only a small section to be seen.

The children could not see what was in the picture but could interact with two puppets. Puppets are used in studies like this one because children treat them as peers.

One puppet announced that it knew what the picture was and proceeded to tell the child. The second puppet said that it also knew the picture, but was not going to tell.

Both puppets spoke in happy, friendly tones, and looked alike; they only differed in their willingness to provide information.

Children were able to determine which puppet was helpful and, when the one puppet needed help reaching a far-way toy or solving a puzzle of their own, the children were quick to identify which puppet had helped them and returned the favour.

"There is a growing body of research demonstrating that toddlers spontaneously help others in many situations," says Dr. Kuhlmeier, director of the Infant Cognition Group at Queen's.

"What we are also finding is that they pick out the helpers around them, even when the helpful act is as simple as teaching them something new about their world, and they return the favour with their own helpful acts."

Anorexia Nervosa: Deep Brain Stimulation offers Hope

Scientists have raised the prospect that deep brain stimulation could help people suffering from severe anorexia nervosa.

In the small Canadian study three people were able to gain weight and had improvements in their overall mood after undergoing the procedure.

The researchers say larger trials are now needed to show whether this therapy could provide a last resort for people with difficult-to-treat anorexia.

The study is published in the Lancet.

Researchers from the Krembil Neuroscience Centre and University Health Network in Canada conducted the study primarily to find out whether this procedure is safe in people with severe cases of the eating disorder anorexia nervosa.

Deep brain stimulation - which involves implanting electrodes into the brain - has previously been used for people with Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and obsessive compulsive disorder.

'Flipping a switch' 
But this is the first time researchers have implanted the device into brains of people with such severe forms of anorexia.

They treated six women, aged between 24-57, for whom most conventional therapy had failed.

The researchers chose to implant the electrodes in an area of the brain which influences how people regulate their mood and anxiety.

They then switched on the device to deliver continuous electrical stimulation over the nine months of the study.

Lead author of the research, Dr Nir Lipsman, said this was not a study about simply flipping a switch to make people eat more.

"Anorexia nervosa has many layers and we need to address the root causes. In many people with the condition this is related to difficulties in regulating mood and anxiety.

"So we wanted to see if influencing this area of the brain could help people with the condition," he said.

And after nine months three of the women felt their quality of life had improved and they had gained weight.

Crucially they were able to stick to this weight - something they hadn't been able to do since developing the condition, the researchers said.

Kim Rollins, who took part in the study and has suffered from anorexia nervosa for 20 years said: "It has really turned my life around. It has lifted my mood and lowered my anxiety... and lessened the compulsion I had to almost destroy my body.

"But it is not a miracle - I have to put a lot of work into changing my thinking and I go to therapy and see a dietitian. But it has enabled everything to be much easier for me."

Dr Lipsman said: "We think deep brain stimulation may have helped people view their illness in a different way and meant they felt more encouraged to engage in other therapy."

But the procedure was not without serious and unwanted effects.

'Unwanted effects' 
One person involved had a seizure two weeks after the device was implanted and another suffered a panic attack during the operation to insert the device.

And for one person there were no improvements in mood, anxiety levels or weight by the end of the study.

The authors caution this procedure is not suitable for everyone.

"We worked very hard to identify a group of patients who had reached the limits of conventional treatment - for whom there is currently no effective therapy and therefore are at the greatest risk of death from the condition," Dr Lipsman said.

Prof Janet Treasure, of the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, who was not involved in the study but wrote a linked comment, said: "What we know is that if you can get effective treatment within three years of diagnosis, the chances of short and long-term recovery are much increased, but it is more difficult as time goes on. This is what makes this study so interesting."

She said the findings of the small study must be interpreted with caution, however.

Susan Ringwood, the chief executive of the national organisation, Beat, said: "When treatments fail to work, people with eating disorders can feel it is their fault, and that can make them very more reluctant to accept the help desperately they need.

"We are learning so much more about the brain and its role in eating disorders, and this study indicates an important new aspect that may lead to improved treatment."

• Krembil Neuroscience Centre
• beat
• National Centre for Eating Disorders

Children Exposed to Mercury, Lead at High Risk of ADHD - Canada study

Young children exposed to certain heavy metals are at higher risk for problems with attention and behaviour later in life, a new study shows.

The study followed nearly 300 Inuit children who were born in northern Quebec, Canada.

One of the main sources of protein in the Inuit diet is beluga whale meat, which can be high in mercury.

Inuit children are exposed to lead when they eat shot pellets that are used to kill geese and ducks.

Lead and mercury are potent toxins, and the developing brains of young children are vulnerable to their effects.

Mercury Poisoning
Studies of kids with mercury poisoning show they have trouble with language skills, attention, and coordination, as well as other problems.

Mercury poisoning can result in several diseases, including acrodynia (pink disease), Hunter-Russell syndrome, and Minamata disease.

Lead Poisoning
Lead poisoning also affects learning and memory.

Lead interferes with a variety of body processes and is toxic to many organs and tissues including the heart, bones, intestines, kidneys, and reproductive and nervous systems.

It interferes with the development of the nervous system and is therefore particularly toxic to children, causing potentially permanent learning and behaviour disorders, such as ADHD/ADD.

Researchers tested a sample of Inuit children's umbilical cord blood at birth for a range of environmental contaminants and nutrients.

Years later, when the children were between the ages of 8 and 14, researchers asked their teachers to complete questionnaires about their behaviour.

Roughly 14% of the children in the study had inattentive behaviours of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A similar percentage of the children had hyperactive-impulsive behaviours of ADHD.

Mercury and Lead Linked to More Symptoms of ADHD
Children with the highest concentrations of mercury in their cord blood had more trouble paying attention than those with lower levels.

They were also about three times more likely to be flagged by their teachers as having these symptoms of ADHD.

That was true even after researchers accounted for things linked to ADHD, like low birth weight and whether or not the mother used tobacco during pregnancy.

Researchers say the mercury levels seen in the study were extremely high. Most women of childbearing age in the U.S. have blood levels of mercury that are about one-third as high, according to the CDC.

Certain groups of people, like Asian-Americans born in China, who eat traditional diets rich in large fish like shark, tuna, and swordfish, have been found to have blood levels of mercury that are in the same extreme range as found in this study, says researcher Gina Muckle, PhD, of Laval University in Quebec, Canada.

In contrast, Inuit children with even low to moderate blood levels of lead -- closer to levels measured in some U.S. children -- were more than four times more likely to have problems with hyperactivity than kids with lower lead levels.

"The effects we are seeing are at very low levels of exposure. In [the] U.S. and Canada, for example, we estimate that 10% of children would be exposed to these blood lead levels," says Muckle.

U.S. children can be exposed to lead when they eat tiny chips of lead-based paint, which can be found in homes built prior to 1978.

The study (Prenatal Methylmercury, Postnatal Lead Exposure, and Evidence of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder among Inuit Children in Arctic Québec) is published in Environmental Health Perspectives. It was paid for by government grants from the U.S. and Canada.