News and Announcements

2011 Neal Miller Award from the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research

Cousins Center faculty member George Slavich has been named recipient of the 2011 Neal E. Miller New Investigator Award from the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research. The award is presented for work “imaginatively conceived and carefully conducted prior to the recipient's appointment as an assistant professor or an equivalent rank.” Dr. Slavich received the award for his research on “the interaction between behavior and biological mechanisms in homeostasis, the maintenance of health, the pathophysiology of disease, or the susceptibility to illness.” The award consists of a plaque and a cash award. In addition, Dr. Slavich will give an invited address at the upcoming annual meeting for the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, to be held in Park City, Utah, from June 15th-18th, 2011.

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Previous news and announcements

Tai chi beats back depression in the elderly, study shows

The numbers are, well, depressing: More than 2 million people age 65 and older suffer from depression, including 50 percent of those living in nursing homes. The suicide rate among white men over 85 is the highest in the country — six times the national rate. And we're not getting any younger. In the next 35 years, the number of Americans over 65 will double and the number of those over 85 will triple. So the question becomes, how to help elderly depressed individuals? Researchers at UCLA turned to a gentle, Westernized version of tai chi chih, a 2,000-year-old Chinese martial art. When they combined a weekly tai chi exercise class with a standard depression treatment for a group of depressed elderly adults, they found greater improvement in the level of depression — along with improved quality of life, better memory and cognition, and more overall energy — than among a different group in which the standard treatment was paired with a weekly health education class.

Loneliness triggers unhealthy immune response, study finds

Loneliness is no fun — and now it appears it's bad for you as well. UCLA researchers report that chronically lonely people may be at higher risk for certain types of inflammatory disease because their feelings of social isolation trigger the activity of pro-inflammatory immune cells. In their analysis of 93 older adults, the researchers screened for gene function among different types of immune cells and found that genes originating from two particular cell types — plasmacytoid dendritic cells and monocytes — were overexpressed in chronically lonely individuals, compared with the remainder of the sample. These cell types produce an inflammatory response to tissue damage, and are part of the immune system's first line of defense, which produces an immediate inflammatory response to tissue damage. It's this same inflammatory response that, over the long-term, can promote cardiovascular disease, cancer and neurodegeneration.

UCLA Senior / Cousins Center Staff Member Honored with ABRCMS Award

We'd like to congratulate UCLA Senior, and Cousins Center Laboratory Assistant for Dr. Erica Sloan, for being honored with the Award for Cell Biological Sciences Research: Washington, D.C. (December 21, 2010) – Twenty-seven undergraduate students were honored with awards for cell biological sciences research presented at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS), held November 10-13, 2010, in Charlotte, N.C. ABRCMS, the largest professional conference of its kind in the nation, is designed to encourage underrepresented minority students to pursue advanced training in the biomedical and behavioral sciences, including mathematics; it also provides faculty with resources for facilitating these students’ success.

Summer 2010 Cousins Center Newsletter

In this summer's edition of Mind / Body Connections: Finding Genes that Provide Resilience to Stress Studies Reveal the Biology of Cancer-related Fatigue Inflammation Influences Social Behavior and Depression Risk