Abstract
WHO advises against ‘sedentary screen time’ for babies and toddlers
The WHO has set new guidelines advising that babies and toddlers up to the age of two should not have any sedentary screen time (passively watching TV or other screens), and 2- to 4-year-olds should be limited to no more than 1 h per day, and ideally less. The new advice aims to address child inactivity, which is a key risk factor for obesity-related morbidity and mortality.
Currently, there has been little definitive research into the impacts of screen use and evidence of harms is therefore limited; however, one of the guideline authors, Dr Juana Willumsen, said it is unlikely that very young children gained from passive, sedentary viewing and this time should instead be turned into quality time such as reading to develop language skills.
According to Dr Max Davie from the UK’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), the evidence is not strong enough to indicate a need to set time limits for children’s screen use, but the WHO guidelines ‘serve as useful benchmarks’ for families. Currently, the UK has no plans to update its own guidelines, which do not include time limits.
For more information, please see:
Michelle Roberts. No Sedentary Screen Time for Babies, WHO Says. BBC News, 24th April 2019. Available online at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-48021224 (Last accessed 20th May 2019).
Measles cases increase in Europe as UK health minister targets online anti-vaccination material
Data released by the WHO show that measles cases in Europe tripled between 2017 and 2018, from 25,863 to 82,596, and the number of deaths from measles increased from 42 to 72 over the same period. Dr Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO regional director for Europe, explained that the progress in raising immunisation rates at a regional level has not been at a sufficient pace to prevent measles circulation due to gaps at a local level. While European countries achieved 90% estimated coverage for the second dose of the vaccine in 2017 – their highest ever – there was a record number of people affected and killed by measles in 2018.
Meanwhile, the UK Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock is developing plans for the government to work with Internet companies to tackle misleading information online on vaccinations, including the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella). The volume of anti-vaccination sentiment on social media has been growing in recent years and concerns have been raised regarding the impact of this, particularly following recent outbreaks of measles in parts of the US. In England, the proportion of children receiving both doses of the MMR vaccine by the time of their fifth birthday has fallen over the last four years to 87.2%.
For more information, please see:
BBC News. Measles Cases in Europe Tripled Last Year, WHO Says, 7th February 2019. Available online at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47157020 (Last accessed 26th April 2019).
Hugh Pym. Minister Targets Anti-Vaccination Websites. BBC News, 26th March 2019. Available online at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47699791 (Last accessed 26th April 2019).
Restoring voices: new advances in synthesised speech
Neuroscientists from University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), have developed technology that could one day be used to restore the voices of people who, due to various forms of irreversible neurological damage, have lost the ability to speak, including that caused by stroke, Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis.
Currently, assistive devices do exist and are used by people with severe speech disabilities. They are, however, prone to inaccuracies and laborious for the user as they only allow around 10 words per minute in comparison to the 100 to 150 words per minute of natural speech.
The research, carried out in the laboratory of Edward Chang, professor of neurological surgery and member of the UCSF Weill Institute, has been led by Gopala Anumanchipalli, PhD, speech scientist and Josh Chartier, bioengineering graduate student.
The study has shown that it could be possible to give synthesised speech a more human, emotive quality, controlled by the activity in the brain’s speech centres. Participants of the study were asked to read several hundred sentences aloud, while researchers recorded activity from an area of the brain involved in language production.
Researchers mapped the movement of the lips, tongue and vocal chords with the audio recordings of the participants. This allowed them to create two algorithms that produced synthetic speech of a much higher standard than that produced directly from the participant’s brain activity.
‘We still have a ways to go to perfectly mimic spoken language’, Chartier noted. ‘Still, the levels of accuracy we produced here would be an amazing improvement in real-time communication compared to what’s currently available’.
For more information, please see:
University of California, San Francisco. Synthetic Speech Generated from Brain Recordings. Science Daily, 24th April 2019. Available online at: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190424153558.htm (Last accessed 30th April 2019).
Exercise could help combat memory loss in older people
A study from the University of Maryland has shown that exercise can increase activation of the hippocampus and other neural networks associated with memory. These areas of the brain are known to reduce in size as we get older, with the hippocampus being attacked first by Alzheimer’s disease.
The study involved physically active participants, aged 55 to 85, performing a memory task in which they had to identify famous and non-famous names. The tasks were carried out on two separate days: one 30 min after cycling on an exercise bike and the other after a period of rest.
Brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging and it showed that activation was greater in four brain cortical regions after exercise compared to after the rest period, as well as increased activation of the hippocampus on both sides of the brain.
Dr J Carson Smith, Associate Professor of Kinesiology at the university and the study’s lead author, explained, ‘Just like a muscle adapts to repeated use, single sessions of exercise may flex cognitive neural networks in ways that promote adaptations over time and lend to increased network integrity and function and allow more efficient access to memories’.
For more information, please see:
University of Maryland. Exercise Activates Memory Neural Networks in Older Adults. Science Daily, 25th April 2019. Available online at: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190425104310.htm (Last accessed 30th April 2019).
Won J, Alfini AJ, Weiss LR et al. Semantic memory activation after acute exercise in healthy older adults. J Int Neuropsychol Soc. Epub 2019 April 25. DOI: 10.1017/S1355617719000171.