PHOTOGRAPH: STEVE GSCHMEISSNER/S CIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY


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SELFLESS TO DE-STRESS Tense doctors take note. Helping others can mitigate the impact of daily stressors, according to research published in Clinical Psychological Science journal. Even small gestures like holding open a door can increase positive emotions and help you cope with stress. Those less inclined to assist others were found not to handle stress as well.


SAD APP What’s more depressing than being depressed? Well it could be relying on your smartphone to tell you so. Researchers in Chicago have developed an app that detects possible signs of depression. These include spending excessive time on your phone or being always at home or in fewer locations. Having a less regular daily schedule is also suspect. It’s thought the app could be used to monitor people at risk and even offer help or to “deliver the information to their clinicians”. Coming soon: the paranoia app.


TESTOSTERONE-FUELLED TRADING An experiment involving financial traders has found elevated testosterone levels led to more risky investing. Traders given doses of either cortisol or testosterone invested in more risky assets than a control group. Spanish researchers concluded that hormonal changes may explain reckless behaviour among traders in periods of financial instability.


Pick: DVD - Still Alice


Directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. Starring Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart.


THIS critically-acclaimed drama tackles the emotive issue of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, exploring the toll it takes on linguistics professor Alice (Moore) and her family, including husband John (Baldwin) and daughter Lydia (Stewart). Moore’s engaging (and Oscar-winning) performance is at the heart of this film’s appeal. Opening


Book Review: NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity


Allen& Unwin; £11.89 paperback


Review by Jim Killgore, publications editor, MDDUS


IN the introduction to his book NeuroTribes, science writer Steve Silberman admits that prior to embarking on his research: “Everything I knew about autism I had learned from Rain Man, the 1988 film in which Dustin Hoffman played a Savant named Raymond Babbitt who could memorize phonebooks and count toothpicks at a glance.” The genesis of the book – which has won the 2015 Samuel Johnson


Prize for Non-Fiction – was an assignment to cover a “Geek Cruise” for Wired magazine, in which Silberman spent a week sailing up the Alaskan coast with a group of top software coders or “digital natives with their own history, rituals, ethics, forms of play, and oral lore”. In the course of writing the article he encountered a curious phenomenon – an apparent “epidemic” of autism among children in Silicon Valley near San Francisco, the so-called cradle of the information


the story at the height of her career, a forgotten word signals the beginning of a sharp mental deterioration. The film’s understated approach perfectly avoids slushy sentimentality or melodrama, instead offering an often bitingly honest and painfully sad portrayal of a woman forced to confront the loss of her very self. Alice’s wealth conveniently side-steps stickier issues over palliative care costs, but it does offer some interesting insights into the effects of this cruel and devastating disease.


technology industry. It had become cliché to joke that many of the programmers and engineers working at companies like Adobe or Intel were “on the spectrum”. Indeed one supervisor at Microsoft told Silberman: “All my top debuggers have Asperger syndrome.” Was there a connection between these observations and the higher


incidence of autism among children in the Valley? This question is the starting point for a fascinating and amazingly


comprehensive overview of more than 70 years of autism research starting in the early 1940s when the syndrome was “first” identified serendipitously by two doctors on opposite sides of the Atlantic: Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger. The book also explores the desperate and heroic efforts of frustrated


parents of autistic children looking for cures or simply the means to manage a debilitating condition among a morass of confusing research findings and often dubious theorising. A central and recurring theme in the book is the notion that autism need


not be regarded as a condition to be cured but as a naturally occurring “cognitive variation” with “distinctive strengths that have contributed to the evolution of technology”. Surveying the history of science Silberman considers numerous examples of individuals who today would no doubt be diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, including the eccentric English physicist Henry Cavendish, who in 1797 used an ingenious apparatus of rods and lead balls to determine the mass of the Earth. At the book’s core is the idea that, given the right circumstances and support, many people “on the spectrum” can live happy, productive lives.


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