The Research

Singing in groups could make you happier – according to new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA). Researchers examined the benefits of singing among people with mental health conditions including anxiety and depression. They found that people who took part in a community singing group maintained or improved their mental health. And that the combination of singing and socialising was an essential part of recovery because it promoted an ongoing feeling of belonging and wellbeing. Lead researcher Prof Tom Shakespeare from UEA’s Norwich Medical School and his researcher Dr Alice Whieldon worked in collaboration with the Sing Your Heart Out (SYHO) project, based in Norfolk. The grassroots initiative runs weekly singing workshops, aimed at people with mental health conditions as well as the general public. It originally began at Hellesdon psychiatric hospital in 2005, but afterwards moved into the community. Around 120 people now attend four free workshops each we...

Ever sleep poorly and then walk out of the house without your keys? Or space out while driving to work and nearly hit a stalled car? A new study led by UCLA’s Dr. Itzhak Fried is the first to reveal how sleep deprivation disrupts brain cells’ ability to communicate with each other. Fried and his colleagues believe that disruption leads to temporary mental lapses that affect memory and visual perception. Their findings are published online by  Nature Medicine. “We discovered that starving the body of sleep also robs neurons of the ability to function properly,” said Fried, the study’s senior author, a professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Tel Aviv University. “This leads to cognitive lapses in how we perceive and react to the world around us.” The international team of scientists studied 12 people who were preparing to undergo surgery at UCLA for epilepsy. The patients had electrodes implanted in their brains in order to pinpoin...

New research suggests that the micro-organisms known as probiotics, which are normally providing health benefits in the intestines, also have an affect on the brain, or as an actual study at Aarhus University has shown; protect against depression. In the animal study at the Department of Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University, rats were fed with an extra fatty and fiberless compound feed. Some of the rats simultaneously received a mix of micro-organisms, mostly in the form of lactic acid bacteria, in their drinking water. While the rats that lived solely on the fatty diet developed behaviour similar to depression, the rats receiving the probiotics-enriched drinking water remained neutral in their behaviour. In other words, the probiotics offset the consequences of the unhealthy diet, explains medical doctor and PhD Anders Abildgaard. As part of his PhD dissertation, he has investigated the effect of probiotics in combination with an unhealthy diet. The study has been publ...