Shuvam Kabir Writing Sample Medical News (Correlation between Sleeplessness and Psychiatric Problems in Children)...........1 Medical News (Irregular Sleep Doubles Risk of CVD in Elderly) .................................................3 Medical News (Smells Increase Learning) ......................................................................................5 Op-Ed (What do Black Lives Matter for Brown Folk) ....................................................................7 Abstract Proposal (Steampunk Aesthetics and Victorian Excess) ...................................................9 Interview (Christopher Ruocchio, Editorial Asst. and Author) .....................................................10 1 Medical news: Large Scale Study Finds Strong Correlation between Sleeplessness and Psychiatric Problems in Children A study of over 11,000 children found that less sleep was associated with depression, anxiety, impulsiveness, and small or underdeveloped regions of the brain. A group of international researchers published their findings in February, using data from the ambitious Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, a massive brain development study conducted worldwide by the National Institutes of Health. The research was headed by Wei Cheng, Edmund Rolls, and Weikong Gong. Their team charted how dimensional measures of psychopathology changed as the amount of sleep decreased in their child subjects. Dimensional psychopathology holds that personality disorders and psychiatric problems can be measured numerically, rather than just categorically. In practice, these numerical measures are typically the result of a battery of personality tests. In measuring how severe the subjects’ psychiatric issues were, Cheng et al cited “depression, anxiety, and impulsive behavior” specifically. They found consistently that the child subjects displayed more psychiatric problems when they had lower amounts of sleep. The study was also longitudinal, taking measurements up to a year apart. In that regard, the researchers found that the relationship between sleep and psychiatric problems persisted over time. Lower levels of sleep correlated to more psychiatric problems, in the same subjects, across long periods of time. Cheng et al also looked at the relationships psychopathology and sleep might have with brain structure, finding that parts of the brain were physically larger when children were able to get more sleep. Some of those same parts (prefrontal, temporal, and medioorbital frontal cortexes) were also associated with higher scores on cognition tests. A mediation analysis found that the presence of depression altered those brain regions’ effect on sleep activity. Taken together, Cheng et al posited an interrelated web of connection between brain size and structure, sleep, thinking ability, and mental health. However, the problems associated with low sleep didn’t stop at the children themselves. A secondary finding was that less sleep in children was also associated with greater psychopathology in parents. Cheng et al indicate this could have important implications for public health. It should be noted that the study looked only at correlations and associations, so it is possible that sleep deprivation causes psychiatric issues, psychiatric issues cause sleep deprivation, or both at the same time. Throw in the issue of brain structure abnormalities, and it becomes truly difficult to determine the root cause of any of these problems. Jianfeng Feng, a researcher working on the study, pointed out in a press release to the University of Warwick that it is becoming increasingly difficult for young children to reach their recommended 9-12 hours of sleep a night regardless of mental health, highlighting the growing urgency of sleep problems, and the need to further chart the causal relationships between sleep, psychopathology, and brain structure. 2 Referenced study: Cheng, Wei, Edmund Rolls, Weikong Gong. et al. “Sleep duration, brain structure, and psychiatric and cognitive problems in children.” Molecular Psychiatry. Feb 2020. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-020-0663-2 3 Medical news: Irregular Sleep Doubles Risk of Cardiovascular Disease In Adults Aged 45+ In an analysis of data from nearly 2000 subjects, Drs. Tianyi Huang, Sara Mariani, and Susan Redline found that irregular sleep durations and schedules were associated with considerable increase in risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD). The analysis sourced data from the Multi Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). Overseen by the National Heart, Lung, Blood Institute (themselves a subsidiary of the National Institutes of Health), MESA studied an older group (aged 45-84) of racially diverse (38% white, 28% African-American, 22% Hispanic, and 12% Asian) individuals. The study tracked cardiovascular disease development. The MESA subjects all initially lacked the sympoms of cardiovascular disease, and MESA tracked them over time to observe which subjects developed CVD and determine the risk factors leading up to it. Using that data, Huang et al looked specifically at sleep irregularity, an area largely overlooked compared to sleep duration. The researchers also focused on more typical instances of sleep irregularity in individual subjects, as opposed to the extreme shifts that outliers like night-shift workers would see. In their analysis, irregularity was measured simply by determining the standard deviation (SD) of a subject’s various sleep durations over a period of time. Standard deviation is the most common measure of the spread of a sample. A sleeper with an average sleep duration of 8 hours and an SD of 10 minutes, would be expected to sleep between 7 hours 40 minutes and 8 hours 20 minutes, 95% of the time. A sleeper with the same average sleep duration but an SD of 60 minutes would be expected to sleep 6 hours to 10 hours, 95% of the time. A lower standard deviation indicates more regular sleep schedules. In the analysis, an standard deviation of 60 minutes or less in sleep duration was considered the baseline; subjects in this category were considered to have a ‘normal’ risk of CVD. The other categories were SDs of 61-90 minutes, 91-120 minutes, and greater than 120 minutes. The authors then compared the number of subjects developing CVD in each category to the baseline. The analysis found considerable increase in CVD development as sleep irregularity increased, with most irregular (SD>120) sleepers having more than double the risk (hazard ratio of 2.14) compared to regular (SD</60) sleepers. Sleep irregularity was also measured a second way, by looking at the irregularity of sleep onset (i.e. what time the subject went to sleep), once again via standard deviation. In this case, an SD of 30 minutes or less was established as the baseline, and then ranges of 31 to 60 minutes, 61 to 90 minutes, and greater than 90 minutes were compared. As with the sleep duration analysis, the subjects with the most irregular sleep onset (SD>90 minutes) were found to have more than double the risk of CVD (hazard ratio of 2.11 times) compared to subjects with most regular sleep onset (SD</30 minutes). In their introduction, the authors posit a causal relationship between CVD and sleep irregularity. The cardiovascular system conforms to circadian rhythms and sleep irregularity is a common 4 disruption of circadian cycles. The analysis found a correlation between irregularity in sleep schedule/duration and risk of CVD, though it does not unearth a causal mechanism. Nevertheless, the study indicates that such irregularity may serve as additional risk markers for CVD, alongside sleep quality and quantity. Referenced Study: Huang, Tianyi, Sara Mariani, and Susan Redline. “Sleep Irregularity and Risk of Cardiovascular Events: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis.” Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Vol. 75, no. 9, pp. 991-999. March 2020. https://doi.org/10.1161/circ.139.suppl_1.007 5 Medical news (a more accessible style): Smells Increase Learning and Memory Formation during Sleep It has long been known that sleep is essential to processing and learning new information. Observe the average college student and you’ll find that listening to recordings of notes the night before a heavy exam is a common method of cramming. Although these strategies rarely pay off, a study published in Current Biology shows that the targeted usage of scents during learning and sleeping can improve one’s ability to memorize specific information. The researchers theorize that memories are initially formed in the hippocampus, but during sleep can be transferred to the neocortex for stronger, long-term recall. This involves a process of activating the cortex, the thalamus, and then the hippocampus, while sleeping. That is, during sleep, activating brain waves in those parts of the brain would speed up a process that transfers memories to the cortex for long term storage; at the same time, the thalamus would be activated to increase the plasticity and receptivity of the cortex’s neurons, allowing it to be more effective at forming and consolidating new memories. Researchers in turn believe that they can stimulate this process to strengthen one’s memory, a method they call Targeted Memory Reactivation. The general idea is that by playing sounds or scents when a subject first learns information, and then replaying that while they sleep, the cortex-thalamus-hippocampus process above is more strongly stimulated, and the information will be recalled more effectively when they wake. Essentially, one can