The Simonyi Professorship

Fall head-over-heels for someone and you're more likely to show signs of broodiness, particularly if you're a man

Researchers are looking at a potentially fatal heart condition that results from sudden intense emotions such as grief

Can you die of a broken heart? It can certainly feel that way, and anyone who experiences intense grief after losing a loved one may wonder whether they will survive.

Dr Alexander Lyon, who is a consultant cardiologist at the Royal Brompton, the specialist heart and lung hospital, is working with researchers at Imperial College to understand why some people die in the few days after a sudden, devastating loss.

A rush of overwhelming fear or extreme pain are the types of shock he says might also lead to catastrophic heart failure. But it's not just "bad" emotions that can trigger a condition known as "broken heart syndrome", Lyon says – it could equally be the shock of intense, unexpected happiness, such as winning the lottery.

The trigger for the syndrome – also called stress cardiomyopathy or Takotsubo cardiomyopathy – is the body's sudden, massive release of adrenaline, which can "stun" the bottom half of the main pumping chamber of the heart, in effect paralysing it and requiring the top portion of the chamber to work much harder to compensate.

This, says Lyon, can be confusing to someone attempting a diagnosis, as doctors are taught that adrenaline is the "fight or flight" hormone that makes hearts pump faster and stronger. Broken heart syndrome is a condition in which adrenaline causes weakness instead. In his research Lyon is trying to find out why this type of acute stress causes the heart to get weaker, why just one part of the heart is affected by the adrenaline surge, and what factors make some people particularly susceptible – or resilient – to the hormone rush. To expand his research sample, he's inviting anyone who thinks they may have experienced Takotsubo cardiomyopathy to contact him (a.lyon@rbht.nhs.uk).

Interestingly, survival rates for anyone discharged from hospital having suffered the condition are pretty much 100%. Although, he says, the condition is little known and many of the typical symptoms indicate a standard heart attack caused by a blockage to a coronary artery. This means the patient may be misdiagnosed initially.

Reliable numbers of cases are hard to come by as there is currently no official tag for logging stress cardiomyopathy as a diagnosis on relevant databases. Lyon, however, has lobbied to get the syndrome added as a datapoint, so proper statistics will soon become available. He is also setting up a European network of doctors interested in the condition, who will pool their results to increase understanding of this newly emerging condition.

Current figures suggest that in the UK about 2% of the 300,000 "heart attacks" each year will in fact be broken heart syndrome. Over 10 years, that could be up to 60,000 cases. And Lyon suggests that rather more people may be dying suddenly of the condition before arriving at hospital, without an accurate diagnosis ever being made either pre- or post-mortem. Dying of a "broken heart", therefore, may be more common than imagined.

"Humans have always been exposed to these kinds of stresses," says Lyon. "The only reason we know about the syndrome now is because people presenting with heart attack symptoms can have coronary angiograms very soon after their chest pain begins.

"To a cardiologist, a heart attack means a blocked coronary artery, but in this condition we find the coronary arteries are open and the blood supply is fine. We then look at the pumping chamber and it's paralysed, plus it's taken on a unique and abnormal shape; it looks like a Japanese fisherman's octopus pot, called Takotsubo, hence its name."

About 90% of diagnosed broken heart syndrome cases are in post-menopausal women – which begs the question, why aren't men getting it? Lyon suggests that men may in fact be suffering from the condition – but collapse and die before reaching hospital and medical attention.

"Our current hypothesis is that men drop down dead if they have a big stress, whereas women recover," he says.

"There is one guaranteed, huge, stress in everyone's life; their birth. But for many women there is another stress, childbirth, which may happen multiple times. It would be odd if these repeated stresses gave rise to a life-threatening heart condition, so we think women have a protective factor, which, after menopause, may drop off."

Lyon believes that when men are hit with a stress overload and very high adrenaline levels, there may be instances in which they die very suddenly. The real cause of death may not be obvious to the pathologist, he says. "The pathologist opens the heart, sees some signs of coronary artery disease, because in western society pretty well all adult men will have evidence of it, and so records coronary heart disease as the cause of death," he says.

Sudden deaths in otherwise healthy young men in custody, young men who are high on drugs and have been forcibly restrained, and deaths under restraint in psychiatric hospitals, are all situations in which Lyon says stress cardiomyopathy should be considered.

"Restraint is a very provocative stressor, not least if you have a loss of insight because you're high on drugs or have a psychiatric illness," he says. "And with deaths in custody, we know that hearts are very often normal when examined, so this syndrome becomes relevant. It may be happening far more often than is reported."

It may be a less than romantic question on Valentine's Day, but can you, quite literally, die of heartbreak after being dumped, or from the emotional pain of a loved one's sudden demise?

The answer, it seems, is that during the few days after experiencing extreme stress of this nature, it is possible – a thought that might prompt GPs to consider how to support people in such situations. A recent study shows that the risk of dying suddenly from a cardiac arrest is 16 times higher the day after losing a spouse.

A cheery thought for Valentine's Day lovers looking forward to a long and happy life together…

Contact Dr Lyon at a.lyon@rbht.nhs.uk Hear him at the free Valentine's Day Mending Broken Hearts seminar, 6-8pm 14 February at the Pathology Museum, London E1

• Research
• Higher education
• Medical research

Louise Tickle
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Two must-see films about memory and memory loss

I was at the Clapham Picture House yesterday afternoon for CineSci6, a series of events exploring the science behind films. In the last of the current series, we watched Christopher Nolan's 2000 film Memento, and this was followed by a question and answer session with UCL spatial memory researcher Hugo Spiers, science writer and editor Simon Frantz (who organized the entire series) and myself. (A podcast of the question and answer session will be available here shortly.)

Amnesia, or memory loss, is a popular plot device in films, but as clinical neuropsychologist Sallie Baxendale of the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery notes in this 2004 British Medical Journal article it is almost always depicted inaccurately. We chose to screen and discuss Memento because it is one of a tiny handful of films that depict the condition accurately.

In her article, Baxendale lists over 50 films that use amnesia as a plot device, almost all of which contain common misconceptions about the condition. Typically, a character will incur some sort of head injury causes them to lose their memories of earlier events (clinically, this is referred to as retrograde amnesia). Amnesic characters often undergo personality changes, too, as well as a loss of identity, but go on to lead an otherwise normal life. Usually, the character's memory is restored towards the end of the film, as a result of another bang to the head.

In the 1987 film Overboard, for example, Goldie Hawn plays a rich and spoilt socialite who loses her memory after falling from her yacht and bumping her head. This causes a dramatic personality change - she becomes warm-hearted and loving and is duped into raising the children of Kurt Russell's character, who rescues her after the accident, as her own. Her memory loss is subsequently reversed by another bump on the head.

In the 2004 romantic comedy 50 First Dates, Adam Sandler plays a vet who falls for a character played by Drew Barrymore after meeting her in a cafe one morning. The two hit it off, and arrange to meet again. The following day, Roth returns to the café to meet her, but she claims to have no recollection of him. As he leaves, the owner of the café takes him to one side, and explains that Whitmore "lost her short-term memory" after a "terrible car accident". We also learn that she can form new memories during the day, which are then wiped clean during her sleep, so that she wakes up to a "clean slate" every morning.

This type of scenario appears in dozens of other films, but bears little resemblance to real cases of amnesia. Almost all cases of amnesia occur not because of a head injury but because of viral infections, chronic alcoholism or neurosurgical procedures in which critical memory-forming brain regions are removed. Real amnesic patients rarely experience a loss of identity; this confuses amnesia with a poorly understood condition called dissociative fugue. And there is not a single documented case of an amnesic patient forming new memories during the day only to have them wiped clean overnight.

Memento is, according to Baxendale, one of just three films that depict amnesia accurately (the other two being Finding Nemo and Se Quien Eres). Based partly on the famous amnesic patient H.M., it stars Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby, who incurs severe amnesia after an attack in which his wife is killed, and then sets about to track down the killer. Unlike most amnesic characters, Leonard retains his identity and the memories of events that occurred before the attack, but loses the ability to form new memories.

The fragmented narrative of the film powerfully depicts how difficult everyday life must be for a severely amnesic patient - Leonard spends much of the film frantically scribbling scraps of information onto pieces of paper and, once he has he believes he has established something to be a fact, has it tattooed onto his body as a permanent reminder.

In an early scene, Leonard is sitting in a bar, telling another character that memory is unreliable at the best of times. We've known, since the work of psychologist Frederick Bartlett in the 1920s, that memory is reconstructive, and not reproductive, in nature, and that we do not remember things exactly as they occurred, but according to our biases and expectations. More recently, the work of Elizabeth Loftus has shown that our memories of events can easily be manipulated and distorted, with subtle leading questions or doctored photographs. All of this has profound implications for the use of eye-witness testimonies in the courtroom.

Since Memento was made, a number of studies have shown that amnesic patients have difficulty not only rememberign past events but also imagining the future. These studies suggest that our ability to imagine future events is dependent on the reconstructive nature of memory - we simulate events that have not yet taken place by stitching together fragments of memories of past events. Based on these findings, there is now a school of thought which states that this is the main reason that our brain's memory system evolved the way it did, because predicting how a future event might pan out, and determining the best of course of action, could be an important survival tool.

The reconstructive nature of memory is depicted brilliantly in Akira Korosawa's 1950 film Rashômon (above), which undoubtedly influenced Nolan when he made Memento. Set in the 12th century, Rashômon is about the trial of a notorious bandit who is alleged to have raped a woman and killed her samurai husband. In flashbacks, the incident is recalled by four different witnesses - a woodcutter, a priest, the perpetrator and, via a medium, the murder victim. Each of the testimonies is equally plausible, yet all four are in mutual contradiction with each other.

Rashômon examines the nature of reality and compels the viewer to seek the truth. Each testimony is influenced by the intentions, experiences and self-perceptions of the witness. They all tell their own 'truth', but it is distorted by their past and by their hopes for the future. Under Kurosawa's masterful direction, the characters start off happy in the knowledge that they know exactly what happened between the samaurai, his wife and the bandit. One by one, each character begins to doubt their own account of the incident. In the end, both the cast and the viewer are left in a state of confusion and bewilderment.

References: Baxendale, S. (2004). Memories aren't made of this: amnesia at the movies. BMJ, DOI: 10.1136/bmj.329.7480.1480

Squire, L. R., et al. (2010. Role of the hippocampus in remembering the past and imagining the future. PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1014391107

Mo Costandi
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Three key areas of the hippocampus in the brain were smaller in people who reported maltreatment in childhood

Being sexually or emotionally abused as a child can affect the development of a part of the brain that controls memory and the regulation of emotions, a study suggests.

The results add to the growing body of evidence that childhood maltreatment or abuse raises the risk of mental illnesses such as depression, personality disorders and anxiety well into adulthood.

Martin Teicher of the department of psychiatry at Harvard University scanned the brains of almost 200 people who had been questioned about any instances of abuse or stress during childhood. He found that the volumes of three important areas of the hippocampus were reduced by up to 6.5% in people exposed to several instances of maltreatment – such as physical or verbal abuse from parents – in their early years.

"The exquisite vulnerability of the hippocampus to the ravages of stress is one of the key translational neuroscience discoveries of the 20th century," wrote Teicher on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Early clues of the relationship came when scientists found that raising stress hormones for extended periods in rats reduced the number of neurons in the hippocampal areas, a result that has since been replicated in many non-human primates.

Other work has shown that people with a history of abuse or maltreatment during childhood are twice as likely to have recurrent episodes of depression in adulthood. These individuals are also less likely to respond well to psychological or drug-based treatments.

In the new study, Teicher's team scanned the brains of 73 men and 120 women aged between 18 and 25. The volunteers filled in a standard questionnaire used by psychiatrists to assess the number of "adverse childhood experiences".

Overall, 46% of the group reported no exposure to childhood adversity and 16% reported three or more forms of maltreatment, the most common being physical and verbal abuse from parents. Other factors included corporal punishment, sexual abuse and witnessing domestic violence.

The sample did not include people on psychiatric medication or anyone who had been exposed to other stressful events such as near-drownings or car accidents.

Andrea Danese, a clinical lecturer in child and adolescent psychiatry at King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, who was not involved in the study, said Teicher's results took scientists a step closer to understanding the complex relationship between childhood maltreatment and brain development. "The large sample size allows for reliable detection of even comparatively small effects of maltreatment on the brain, whereas the recruitment from the general population allows for a less biased interpretation of the study, which builds on previous research often carried out in psychiatric patients."

The high-resolution brain imaging analysis allowed Teicher to home in on minute areas of the hippocampus and explore the association between maltreatment and this brain region in finer detail than ever before. "This is important because not all areas in the hippocampus are equally sensitive to the effect of stress mediators, such as cortisol and inflammatory biomarkers," said Danese. "Thus, the authors took advantage of this gradient to indirectly test the mechanisms through which childhood maltreatment could affect the brain."

One limitation of the study might be that it required the volunteers to recall their childhood experiences, added Danese. "The findings are based on the perceptions and memories that participants have of their childhood rather than on objective events. This may be problematic because some groups of individuals could be more or less prone than others to report experiences of maltreatment. This 'recall' bias has been described in individuals with a history of depression, who may be more likely to report abuse."

However, Teicher's team was able to test whether a history of depression or post-traumatic stress disorder might explain his observed effects of childhood maltreatment on the hippocampus, and showed that the results were independent of these factors.

Danese said future studies would need to clarify further the direction of the effect. "Although the authors report that childhood maltreatment is associated with smaller hippocampus regions, it is possible that these abnormalities pre-dated and possibly facilitated maltreatment exposure. Longitudinal and twin studies will help to clarify this issue."

• Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Mental health
• Children
• Depression
• Health
• Health & wellbeing

Alok Jha
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Brain scans reveal that young adults who were abused as children have a smaller hippocampus, a seat of memory

Nearly half of the US turbines soon to be built in the Atlantic and the Gulf are likely to be destroyed by hurricanes

New findings challenge the widespread view that it all kicked off in the oceans. Life may have begun on land instead – just as Darwin thought

All today's stories on newscientist.com, including: Earth Summit doomed to fail, anti-ageing Chinese medicine, seven equations that rule your world, and more

MarcusduSautoy: @furrygirl enjoyed your use of pears rather than apples to explore gravity at Newton's home in Woolsthorpe Manor.

Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider hope that raising the energy of collisions still further will settle the question of the elusive Higgs particle

MarcusduSautoy: @furrygirl interestingly Sophie G discovered her primes cos there is a straightforward proof of FLT for such p: x^p+y^p=z^p has no solutions

MarcusduSautoy: @furrygirl It is still an open conjecture if there are infinitely many Germain primes p, primes such that 2p+1 is prime.

Keeping track of thousands of fish farms is a slippery task – enter the eagle eye of Google Earth

This Ethiopian mystery bird is known for its intricately woven nests

Rüppell's weaver, Ploceus galbula (synonym, Ploceus flavissimus), Rüppell, 1840, also known as the Rueppell's/Ruppell's weaver or as the canary weaver, photographed in Awash National Park, central Ethiopia (Africa).

Image: Dan Logen, 28 January 2011 (with permission, for GrrlScientist/Guardian use only) [velociraptorize].
Nikon D300s, 600 mm lens, f/8, 1/320 sec, ISO 1250

Question: This Ethiopian mystery bird is part of a group that is known for a remarkable behaviour. What behaviour is that? Can you identify this bird's taxonomic family and species?

Response: This is an adult male Rüppell's weaver, Ploceus galbula, a member of Ploceidae, the weaver family. These small insectivorous passerines are often brightly coloured in yellow or red and black plumage, as is this handsome fellow. Most weavers are found in Africa and many are notable for constructing some of the most elaborate woven nests in the avian world.

Here's a video of a weaver weaving grasses into his partially-completed nest (filmed in Mauritius, uploaded on 28 August 2008):

Visit bagelpap's YouTube channel [video link].

Rüppell's weavers are gregarious, breeding colonially and moving about nomadically in large flocks outside of the breeding season. They occur on the horn of Africa in dry woodlands, bush country, dry acacia, savannah and in gardens.

The male Rüppell's weaver can be distinguished from males of several other similar species by his red eyes and reddish facial mask. The male northern brown-throated weaver, P. castanops, can be particularly confusing, but he differs by having pale eyes and a larger facial mask that extends onto his forehead. Further, these species' ranges don't overlap. Females and juveniles are plainer and therefore, are more challenging to distinguish.

You are invited to review all of the daily mystery birds by going to their dedicated graphic index page.

If you have bird images, video or mp3 files that you'd like to share with a large and (mostly) appreciative international audience here at The Guardian, feel free to contact me to learn more.

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

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GrrlScientist
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Scientists have concluded that an ichthyosaur fossil found head down did not explode into this position

Seagoing dinosaurs did not explode nearly as often as scientists believed, according to a new study called Float, Explode or Sink: Postmortem Fate of Lung-breathing Marine Vertebrates.

The authors, an all-star team of palaeontologists, pathologists and forensic anthropologists from six institutions in Switzerland and Germany, deflated a hypothesis that had for years lain basking in the sun.

They were addressing the underlying question: why are some dino skeletons scattered across an expanse of sea floor, while others remain fairly intact?

The current adventure started with the discovery of an ichthyosaur skeleton, embedded in rock, in northern Switzerland. This skeleton was oriented weirdly, compared with most such fossils: aligned vertically, with its head down, its feet up.

Someone hypothesised that "an explosive release of sewer gas" had "propelled the skull into the sediment". The subsequent research, resulting in this new paper, tried to figure out whether that was at all likely.

In so doing, the scientists confronted an idea proposed in 1976 by a palaeontologist named Keller. Keller, noting that beached whales fester in sunlight until putrefaction gases bloat and finally burst them, suggested that sunken sea animal carcasses also gassify and go kerblam.

This new study summarises Keller's idea: "It was assumed that carcasses which lie on the sea-floor might have exploded or internal organs and bones erupted, and that in so doing, bones as well as foetuses were ejected and ribs were fractured."

The team scoured reams of research about what happens to dead dolphins, porpoises, whales, seals, turtles, and other sea animals. They say that unless such bodies get stranded on a beach, there's little evidence and little reason to expect that they explode.

The team presented an early version of this debunkment in 2004 in St Petersburg, Russia, at the fifth congress of the Baltic Medico-Legal Association. They called their lecture Did the Ichthyosaurs Explode? A Forensic-medical Contribution to the Taphonomy of Ichthyosaurs.

Taphonomy, a word that misleadingly suggests both telephones and tapdancing, is in fact the study of how living things rot and decay. TV crime-scene forensics series present taphonomic adventures week after week, teasing out the likely when, where, and how of one or another winsome corpse. This is better. Real-life scientists– Achim Reisdorf, Roman Bux, Daniel Wyler, Mark Benecke and colleagues – had the opportunity to fawn over a corpse way more glamorous than the TV crime drama standard: a sea-monstrous dinosaur.

This is their take had their own take on what actually happened in the mysterious case of the vertical victim: "The ichthyosaur sank headfirst into the seafloor because of its centre of gravity, as anatomically similar, comparably preserved specimens suggest. The skull penetrated into the soupy to soft substrate until the fins touched the seafloor."

A few people disagree. Creation Magazine made a video explaining that no scientist can explain the existence of that upside-down dinosaur – that it deals "a lethal body blow" to the theory of evolution. Behold their creative reasoning at http://creation.com/creation-magazine-live-episode-53

• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize

• Research
• Higher education
• Dinosaurs
• Fossils

Marc Abrahams
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A nanoscientist and an artist have teamed up for an exhibit that zooms in on the infinitesimal

This North American mystery bird is notable amongst all birds for one of its morphological traits

Mystery Bird photographed at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, Titusville, Florida (USA). [I will identify this species for you in 48 hours]

Image: H Steven Dolan, 11 February 2012 (with permission, for GrrlScientist/Guardian use only) [velociraptorize].
Nikon D90 Sigma 150-500 F5.6-6.3

Question: This North American mystery bird is notable amongst all birds for one of its morphological traits. What trait is that? What are some of the consequences of this trait? Can you identify this bird's taxonomic family and species?

The Rules:

1. Keep in mind that people live in zillions of different time zones, and some people are following on their smart phones. So let everyone play the game. Don't spoil it for everyone else by identifying the bird in the first 24 to 36 hours.
2. If you know the mystery bird's identity, answer the accompanying questions and provide subtle ID hints so others know that you know. Your hints may be helpful clues for less experienced players. Keep in mind that some hints may read like "inside jokes" and thus, may discourage others from participating.
3. Describe the key field marks that distinguish this species from any similar ones.
4. Comments that spoil others' enjoyment may be deleted.

The Game:

1. This is meant to be a learning experience where together we learn a few things about birds and about the process of identifying them (and maybe about ourselves, too).
2. Each mystery bird is usually accompanied by a question or two. These questions can be useful for identifying the pictured species, but may instead be used to illustrate an interesting aspect of avian biology, behaviour or evolution, or may be intended to generate conversation on other topics, such as conservation or ethics.
3. Thoughtful comments will add to everyone's enjoyment, and will keep the suspense going until the next teaser is published. Interesting snippets may add to the knowledge of all.
4. Each bird species will be demystified approximately 48 hours after publication.

You are invited to review all of the daily mystery birds by going to their dedicated graphic index page.

If you have bird images, video or mp3 files that you'd like to share with a large and (mostly) appreciative international audience here at The Guardian, feel free to contact me to learn more.

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

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facebook: grrlscientist
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GrrlScientist
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A group of mathematicians are boycotting publisher Elsevier over the cost of its journals and support for controversial US legislation

Restricted to the battlefield until now, devices that temporarily blind people can now be used by US police

A truly revolutionary equation can change human existence more than all the great leaders of history. Meet the mathematical masters of the universe