Women who took part in the study, conducted by the University of Montreal and University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre, suffer from a condition called provoked vestibulodynia (PVD). A condition that affects 12 percent of premenopausal women, PVD can impair sexual functioning as well as diminish sexual desire, arousal, sexual satisfaction, orgasmic capacity and frequency of intercourse.

“An overly concerned partner may lead a woman to avoid sexual intercourse or exacerbate her pain by increasing her anxiety, hyper-vigilance and negative thoughts about the pain, which can in turn increase her pain during intercourse,” says lead author, Dr. Natalie O. Rosen, a University of Montreal post-doctoral fellow in psychology. “If a man avoids sexual intercourse with a partner with PVD, then he may also reinforce her negative pain appraisals and that can lead to increased pain during intercourse.”

At the same time, the researchers found that a more concerned attitude in partners was linked to greater sexual satisfaction in women with PVD. “It’s likely that women interpret the attention from their partner as a greater sensitivity and understanding of her pain during sexual activity and that results in greater sexual satisfaction,” says Rosen.

For couples affected by PVD, the key to decreasing pain and bolstering sexual satisfaction may be to shift the focus away from vaginal intercourse without avoiding sexual activity altogether. “Couples can focus on pleasurable sexual activities other than penetration, or on the emotional benefits of sexual activity such as intimacy and closeness,” says Rosen.

As part of the study, 191 heterosexual couples affected by PVD completed questionnaires about the condition. Following their participation, couples received a 30-minute telephone psychological consultation about PVD.

“This study furthers our understanding of the importance of how couples communicate about PVD in predicting pain and sexual satisfaction in women,” says Sophie Bergeron, a University of Montreal psychology professor. “The more the partner is overly concerned, from the perspective of the woman and her partner, the more her pain intensity may increase during intercourse. Results of our study can help in the development of targeted psychological interventions to assist couples in coping with PVD.”

About provoked vestibulodynia:
Provoked vestibulodynia (PVD) results in significant sexual dysfunction, psychological distress and reduced quality of life. PVD, for which there are no relevant visible findings or clinically identifiable neurologic disorder, is characterized by discomfort or a burning pain specific to the vestibule. The chronic and recurrent condition causes vulvovaginal pain that is triggered mainly through sexual contact, but also via tampon insertion and gynecological examination.

The new study, entitled “The Scope-Severity Paradox: Why doing more harm is judged to be less harmful,” has been published in the current issue of Social Psychological and Personality Science (published by SAGE) and was conducted by Loran Nordgren of the Kellogg School of Management and Mary-Hunter Morris of Harvard Law School. The researchers found that a “scope-severity paradox” exists in which judgment of harm tends to be based on emotional reactions, and thus people have a stronger emotional response to singular identifiable victims rather than to an entire crowd of sufferers.

“We see this time and again on the news, where a missing person is featured as a leading story for months because there is emotional interest wrapped up in that single individual,” said Nordgren, assistant professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School. “But, if you think of current stories such as the Chilean miners or the people affected by the BP oil spill, we find that it’s harder to relate to those victims unless you get to know their personal stories. The bottom line is that it’s difficult for people to connect when there are many faceless victims.”

To test their theory, the researchers conducted a series of three experiments. In the first study, Nordgren and Morris asked participants to read a story about a financial advisor who defrauded his clients. Half the time, the story described how only two or three people were harmed and the other half of the time, dozens of people were harmed. After reading the story, participants were asked to evaluate the severity of the crime and to recommend a punishment for the perpetrator, as well as to describe one of the participants in the case. As predicted, participants in the small-scope condition judged the fraud case more harshly and recommended a longer jail sentence for the perpetrator.

Also, participants could describe an additional three traits in the small-scope condition over the large-scope condition. The researchers noted that this “victim identifiability effect” allows people to form more vivid mental representations of a smaller number of victims.

The second experiment tested whether the researchers could correct this bias by manipulating the identifiability of the victims. The participants read a story about a food processing company that sold tainted food that made people sick. One group was given a basic description of the victims whereas a second group received a photo of one of the victims along with her name and occupation. As in the first experiment, stronger identifiability with the victim led participants to perceive the crime more severely and to recommend greater punishment for the company.

To take this experiment one step further, the second experiment also explored whether participants would act more ethically if they identified more strongly with the victims in the food tainting story. They were asked to imagine that they worked for the company, and if they would blow the whistle on their employer. Consistent with previous results, the participants were less inclined to blow the whistle when more victims were involved, suggesting that making the victim more vivid can partially overcome the scope-severity paradox.

Finally, a third experiment examined the scope-severity paradox in real jury verdicts. The researchers looked at the outcomes of 133 U.S. court cases between 2000 and 2009 in which someone had been negligently exposed to either asbestos, lead paint or toxic mold. They found that total damages decreased as the number of people affected increased.

“In all three studies, we found that increasing the number of people victimized by a crime actually decreases the perceived severity of that crime and leads people to recommend less punishment for crimes that victimize more people,” said Nordgren.

According to Nordgren, the paradox is problematic especially in situations involving mass crimes like genocide in which harm is extreme and widely dispersed among a large population of people. But, he noted that vivid, personalized accounts of individual victims, such as the diary of Anne Frank, can help people grasp the severity of mass crimes.

“To combat this paradox, individuating victims partially helps the problem,” he said. “When there is specific information about one or two victims out of a larger group, there is more sympathy than when there isn’t specific information about anyone.”

Results will be published in the December 2010 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.

“Although alcohol doesn’t contain fat, it contains seven calories per gram, which comes second only to fat, which has nine calories per gram,” said Stefan Gazdzinski, who was a researcher at Northern California Institute for Research and Education in San Francisco when the study was carried out but is now a researcher at Jagiellonian University in Poland. “These calories add up over time. In fact, daily consumption of more than 30 grams of ethanol – the amount of alcohol in two to three 12-ounce beers – is associated with risk for abdominal obesity.”

“Abdominal obesity has higher health risks that fat deposition in other body areas, for example, legs and hips,” added Susan F. Tapert, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego and director of Substance Abuse/Mental Illness in the VA San Diego Healthcare System. “As obesity rates are increasing rapidly among alcoholics and non-alcoholics, these relationships are important to understand.”

“Excessive weight is not only a risk factor for cardiovascular disease or diabetes, but it is also a risk factor for developing dementia,” said Gazdzinski, also the study’s lead author. “Obesity has been shown to be associated with worse decision making and problem solving throughout lifetime. We had previously observed lower concentrations of some brain metabolites, markers of brain injury, in healthy non-alcohol dependent people with BMIs in the overweight to obese range. Knowing that individuals in developed countries who overuse alcohol are usually heavier than individuals enjoying alcohol in moderation – because of the caloric intake – we wanted to investigate if excess weight accounts for some of the brain injury usually observed in alcoholics.”

Gazdzinski and his colleagues retrospectively analyzed data gathered from 54 alcohol-treatment seeking men who had been abstinent from alcohol for about one month. BMI, as well as imaging that assessed volume, blood flow, and metabolite concentrations of the brain were obtained from a 1.5 Tesla magnetic resonance scanner.

“It is commonly believed that it is the large amount of consumed alcohol by itself that leads to brain injury in alcoholics,” said Dieter J. Meyerhoff, professor of radiology at the University of California San Francisco and San Francisco Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center, and the principal investigator of this study. “This is only partly correct. In previous studies, we have shown that alcoholics who smoke cigarettes have greater brain injury than nonsmoking alcoholics. This new study suggests that a high BMI, independent of drinking and smoking, is also associated with brain injury.”

“In other words, weight also is related to brain health among those with alcoholism,” said Tapert. “BMI may be a very important factor to consider when examining other potential consequences of alcohol use. Since individuals who consume substantial amounts of alcohol are at risk for obesity, it is important to understand the influence of body fat deposition on the measures we are examining. It could be that metabolic changes resulting from or causing obesity cause harm to the brain, at least among alcoholics.”

The relationship between alcohol dependence and BMI is complicated, added Gazdzinski. “Alcoholics who drink the most are not necessarily the heaviest,” he said. “In our sample, there was no correlation between drinking severity and BMI. Factors such as availability of funds for drinking may play a role, especially in countries where alcohol is heavily taxed. For example, the drinker may have not enough money to eat properly after drinking.”

“While it is fortunate that tobacco use, violent crime, and some other unhealthy behaviors have declined in recent years, heavy drinking has remained relatively stable, and obesity rates have greatly increased,” said Tapert. “These findings point to another deleterious outcome of becoming overweight: poor brain health. While it may be that poor brain cell functioning has led to the challenges these men faced with overconsumption of food and alcohol, it is also possible that the obesity itself contributed to poor brain health. If so, weight loss, exercise, and improved self-care in addition to stopping drinking could result in improvements to brain health.”

“Depression in parents is associated with adverse behavioral, developmental and cognitive outcomes in their children,” the authors write as background information in the article. “While the maternal depression and child outcome literature is well established, there are fewer studies on paternal depression. There is evidence that paternal depression is not uncommon, with rates higher than those in the general adult male population; however, a wide range of prevalence rates for paternal depression have been reported.”

Shreya Davé, Ph.D., M.Sc., B.Sc., of the Medical Research Council, London, England, and colleagues examined incidence, trends and correlates of parental depression in 86,957 families seen in U.K. primary care facilities between 1993 and 2007. Mothers and fathers with depression were identified using diagnostic codes and pharmacy records.

Overall, between their children’s birth and age 12, 19,286 mothers had a total of 25,176 episodes of depression and 8,012 fathers had a total of 9,683 episodes of depression. The depression rate was 7.53 per 100 mothers per year and 2.69 per 100 fathers per year. The highest rates were observed in the first year after the birth of a child, with 13.93 per 100 mothers and 3.56 per 100 fathers experiencing depression in that period.

“These high rates of depression in the postpartum period are not surprising owing to the potential stress associated with the birth of a baby, e.g., poor parental sleep, the demands made on parents and the change in their responsibilities, and the pressure this could place on the couple’s relationship,” the authors write. “The high rate of parental depression in the first year after delivery may also be partly due to a resumption of antidepressant use following a break during pregnancy and breastfeeding.”

Parents who had a history of depression, who were younger (age 15 to 24, compared with 25 and older) when their child was born and who were more socially deprived were more likely to develop depression. “There is a well-established link between depression and social and economic deprivation both in the general population and among parents. This finding may reflect the stresses of poverty, unemployment, low employment grade and lower social support among people of lower socioeconomic status,” the authors write. In addition, “younger parents may be less prepared for parenthood with more unplanned pregnancies and may be less able to deal with the stresses of parenthood compared with older parents.”

The findings suggest that there is a need for appropriate detection of depression among mothers and fathers, and that clinicians should be aware of the risk factors for depression in parents and assess individuals who possess those characteristics. In addition, the authors note, future research should examine other factors associated with parental depression, such as the couple’s relationship quality and stressful life events, as well as the separate and cumulative effects of maternal and paternal depression on children’s health and development.

Protein linked to mental retardation may be controlling factor in drug’s effect in the brain

Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have identified a protein that may act as the trigger controlling the addictive impact of cocaine in the brain. The findings may one day lead to new therapies to treat addiction.

The study was published on August 15, 2010, in the prestigious journal Nature Neuroscience.

The results from the new study strongly suggest that a protein known as methyl CpG binding protein 2 (MeCP2) interacts with a type of genetic material known as microRNA to control an individual’s motivation to consume cocaine.

“The study shows that MeCP2 blunts the amount by which microRNA-212 is increased in response to cocaine,” said Paul Kenny, an associate professor in the Department of Molecular Therapeutics at Scripps Florida who led the study. “We have previously shown that miR-212 is very protective against cocaine addiction. Therefore, the conclusion is that MeCP2 may regulate vulnerability to addiction in some people through its inhibitory influence on miR-212. Without this influence, the expression of miiR-212 would be far greater in response to cocaine use, and the risk of addiction would likely be far lower.”

This is the first time that MeCP2 has been shown to play a role in regulating cocaine addiction. Previously, the protein was most linked to Rett syndrome, a progressive neurodevelopmental disorder and one of the most common causes of mental retardation in females.

Interactions Shape Vulnerability

These new findings come on the heels of another cocaine addiction study by Kenny and his Scripps Florida colleagues published in the journal Nature in early July. That study showed for the first time that miR-212 — a type of small non-protein coding RNA that can regulate the expression levels of hundreds or even thousands of genes —influenced response to the drug in rats. Animals with increased miR-212 expression were less motivated to consume cocaine, pointing to the protective effects of miR-212 against cocaine addiction.

“The new findings are a significant advance from this previous study,” Kenny said, “because they clearly demonstrate why microRNA-212 is not always fully protective – because MeCP2 regulates by how much miR-212 levels will increase in response to cocaine. This suggests that our initial findings may be central to explaining the complex process of addiction, and understanding how miR-212 signaling is regulated will be important. This study adds another level of detail to the blueprint.”

A major goal of drug abuse research is to understand why certain individuals make the switch from casual to compulsive drug use and develop into addicts. Periods of easy access to the drug, along with repeated overconsumption, can quickly trigger the emergence of addiction-like abnormalities in animal models.

In the new study, the scientists first looked at the expression of MeCP2 in the brain after exposure to cocaine. They found that expression was increased in those animals given extended access to the drug.

“At that point,” Kenny said, “we wanted to know if this increase was behaviorally significant – did it influence the motivation to take the drug?”

Using a virus to disrupt expression of MeCP2, the scientists found that rats consumed less and less cocaine. Intriguingly, levels of miR-212 were also far higher in those animals. Because increases in miR-212 suppress attraction to cocaine, the disruption of MeCP2, in essence, put miR-212 in charge and reduced vulnerability to the drug.

“We concluded that MeCP2 may play an important role in addiction by regulating the magnitude by which miR-212 expression is increased in response to cocaine,” said Kenny. “In other words, MeCP2 seems to control just how much you can protect yourself against the addictive properties of cocaine.”

Intriguingly, that was not the end of the story. In addition to MeCP2 blunting miR-212 expression, the scientists also found that the opposite was also true – that miR-212 could in turn decrease levels of MeCP2. This suggests that both are locked together in a regulatory loop. Importantly, the two had opposite effects on the expression of a particular growth factor in the brain – called BDNF – that regulates just how rewarding cocaine is.

While the new study fills in an important piece of the puzzle, the Kenny lab is hard at work to further increase our understanding of addiction.

“We still don’t know what exactly influences the activity levels of MeCP2 on miR-212 expression,” Kenny said. “Now we plan to explore what drives it – whether it’s environmentally driven, and if genetic and epigenetic influences are important.”

“This is the first study to examine adult attachment and a range of specific health conditions,” said lead author Lachlan A. McWilliams, PhD, of Acadia University. He and a colleague examined data on 5,645 adults age 18 to 60 from the National Cormorbidity Survey Replication and found that people who felt insecure in relationships or avoided getting close to others might be at a higher risk of developing several chronic diseases.

Ratings of attachment insecurity were positively associated with a wide range of health problems, they found. “Much of the health research regarding attachment has focused on pain conditions, so we were initially surprised that some of our strongest findings involved conditions related to the cardiovascular system,” said McWilliams.

Participants rated themselves on three attachment styles – secure, avoidant, and anxious. Secure attachment refers to feeling able to get close to others and being willing to have others depend on you. Avoidant attachment refers to difficulty getting close to others and trusting others. Anxious attachment refers to the tendency to worry about rejection, feel needy and find others are reluctant to get close to you.

The participants answered a questionnaire about their histories of arthritis, chronic back or neck problems, frequent or severe headaches, other forms of chronic pain, seasonal allergies, stroke and heart attack. They also disclosed whether a doctor had told them they had heart disease, high blood pressure, asthma, chronic lung disease, diabetes or high blood sugar, ulcers, epilepsy, seizures or cancer. They were also questioned regarding their history of psychological disorders.

After adjusting for demographic variables that could account for the health conditions, the authors found that avoidant attachment was positively associated with conditions defined primarily by pain (e.g., frequent or severe headaches). Anxious attachment was positively associated with a wider range of health conditions, including some defined primarily by pain and several involving the cardiovascular system (e.g., stroke, heart attack or high blood pressure).

The authors also adjusted for lifetime histories of common psychological disorders and found that people with anxious attachments were at a higher risk of chronic pain, stroke, heart attack, high blood pressure and ulcers.

“These findings suggest that insecure attachment may be a risk factor for a wide range of health problems, particularly cardiovascular diseases. Longitudinal research on this topic is needed to determine whether insecure attachment predicts the development of cardiovascular disease and the occurrence of cardiovascular events, such as heart attacks,”said McWilliams. “The findings also raise the possibility that interventions aimed at improving attachment security could also have positive health outcomes.”

Effect replicated across cultures, new research finds

It’s a symbol of courage and sacrifice, of sin and sexuality, of power and passion – and now new research demonstrates that the color red makes men more alluring to women.

In the United States, England, Germany and China, women found men more appealing when they were either pictured wearing red or framed in red, compared with other colors. The finding is reported in the August issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, published by the American Psychological Association.

“Red is typically thought of as a sexy color for women only,” said Andrew Elliot, PhD, of the University of Rochester and University of Munich. “Our findings suggest that the link between red and sex also applies to men.”

Twenty-five men and 32 women briefly viewed a black-and-white photo of a Caucasian man in a polo shirt, surrounded by a red or white matte. Using a nine-point scale, they answered three questions: “How attractive do you think this person is?” “How pleasant is this person to look at?” and “If I were to meet the person in this picture face to face, I would think he is attractive.”

Red warmed up women only. Women who looked at a man surrounded by red or white rated the man surrounded by red a little over one point higher on a nine-point scale of attractiveness, a statistically significant bump.

Another experiment featured a man in a color photo, dressed in either a red or a green shirt. A pool of 55 women rated the man in red as significantly more attractive — on average, nearly one point higher on the same nine-point scale. They also thought he was more desirable, according to a second, five-item measure that asked viewers to rate, for example, the likelihood that they’d want to have sex with him.

Although red means different things in different cultures, the finding of women (but not men) drawn to men in red was consistent across countries.

And it’s true about red power ties: Women in a follow-up study perceived men wearing red T-shirts to be significantly more likely to be high in status than men wearing blue T-shirts, in addition to the men in red seeming more generally and sexually attractive. Five smaller studies (20-38 participants) comparing women’s responses to men in red or gray, including their sense of the men’s status, established a chain of evidence that red may enhance sexual attractiveness because red is a status symbol, according to the authors.

The power of red holds throughout the primate world. Female primates (including women) are “extremely adept at detecting and decoding blood flow changes in the face,” the authors wrote, “and women have been shown to be more sensitive to the perception of red stimuli than are men.”

Are men aware that red may work in the bedroom as well as the boardroom? The authors suggest red might make men more likely to strut their stuff. “A man who wears red may feel dominant,” they added, “which influences his self-confidence and behavior and in turn may impress women.”

BDD is not a well-known disease: it is characterized by a significant dissatisfaction with one’s appearance, particularly with perceived flaws. Included in the category of obsessive-compulsive disorders, this mental health problem leads to ritual behaviours and social isolation. Although any part of the body may become the subject of these obsessions, those who suffer from BDD most often focus on their skin, eyes, nose, teeth, buttocks, stomach, hair or chest.

Kieron O’Connor, director of the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Tic Disorder Studies Centre at Louis-H. Lafontaine Hospital, said that people coping with BDD seek out in particular plastic surgeons, orthodontists and esthetic professionals to alleviate their suffering. “However, what they really need is psychological support and assistance,” said Dr. O’Connor, who is also a researcher at the University of Montreal Department of Psychiatry and the Université du Quebec en Outaouais Department of Psychology.

To help people struggling with BDD, Dr. O’Connor and Annie Taillon, a doctoral student in psychology, developed a specialized and innovative cognitive behavioural therapy in collaboration with their team at the Fernand-Seguin Research Centre of Louis-H. Lafontaine Hospital. “Our preliminary results are very promising,” explained Ms. Taillon. “We observed a clear decrease in appearance-related fixations among participants and a reduction by more than half in ritualized behaviours. Nearly one third of the depressive symptoms associated with these fixations also disappeared.”

The benefits of this therapy are very real; however, too few people dare to ask for help. By the nature of their illness, these patients are reluctant to go out in public, making a visit to the clinic a significant hurdle.

Kimberly is a woman who has benefited from the program. Speaking under an assumed name, she agreed to share the scope of her daily suffering: “I was ashamed to go out in public; I avoided all social activities. When I heard about this research project, it was a great relief for me. Finally, there was an explanation for my problems and, above all, a solution. This therapy helped me break free of my fixations and go back to work. I highly recommend it. ”

Although BDD is little known, the disease is thought to affect over 350,000 Canadians, all of whom experience the same suffering, fears and turn to the same rituals and cosmetic procedures to avoid addressing the real nature of their illness. Nevertheless, these attempts to solve their problems reflect a true desire to end their suffering. Hair salons, dental offices, cosmetic surgery centres or a psychologist’s chair? For people with body dysmorphic disorder, knocking on the right door is the true challenge.

Lucy Brown, Ph.D., clinical professor in the Saul R. Korey Department of Neurology and of neuroscience at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, is the corresponding author of the study. This is the third publication in which Dr. Brown and her research group demonstrated that primitive reward and survival systems are activated in people who look at their beloved.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers recorded the brain activity of 15 college-age adults who had recently been rejected by their partners but reported that they were still intensely “in love.” Upon viewing photographs of their former partners, several key areas of participants’ brains were activated, including the ventral tegmental area, which controls motivation and reward and is known to be involved in feelings of romantic love; the nucleus accumbens and orbitofrontal/prefrontal cortex, which are associated with craving and addiction, specifically the dopaminergic reward system evident in cocaine addiction; and the insular cortex and the anterior cingulate, which are associated with physical pain and distress.

By tying these specific areas of the brain to romantic rejection, the research provides insight into the anguished feelings that can accompany a break-up, as well as the extreme behaviors that can occur as a result, such as stalking, homicide and suicide.

“Romantic love, under both happy and unhappy circumstances, may be a ‘natural’ addiction,” said Dr. Brown. “Our findings suggest that the pain of romantic rejection may be a necessary part of life that nature built into our anatomy and physiology. A natural recovery, to pair up with someone else, is in our physiology, too.”

Ask Elklit and Daniel N Ditlevsen, from the University of Southern Denmark and Odense University Hospital, Denmark, collected data from 6,548 participants in previous Danish or Nordic PTSD studies in order to investigate the gender difference in the lifespan distribution of PTSD. According to Elklit, “People now live for an increased number of years compared to that of previous generations, and as a result individuals have more years in which they can be affected by the negative consequences that can follow traumatic experiences. It is therefore important to pay attention to the risk of PTSD in relation to different stages in the lifespan”.

The researchers found that the total prevalence of PTSD was 21.3% and, as expected, PTSD was twice as common in women as in men. Most importantly, men and women peaked in the risk of PTSD a decade apart from each other during their respective lifespan. Elklit said, “This difference is of particular interest and needs to be investigated further in future research in order to develop more thorough explanations for the effect”.