More exercise, rest cut risk in women

Past studies have shown that exercise offers protection against cancer, and other studies have shown that cutting back on sleep can, among other things, compromise immunity. Until now, no one, however, has looked at the effect of inadequate sleep on the benefits of exercise in reducing cancer risk.

A group of researchers funded by the John Hopkins School of Public Health and led by James McClain, a Cancer Prevention Fellow from the National Cancer Institute, followed almost 6,000 cancer-free women for 10 years. The women reported on their levels of physical activity and sleep through questionnaires.

At the end of the study period, researchers found that exercise reduced cancer risk among the most active women. But this benefit was diminished in younger and more active women who tended to sleep less than seven hours a night. The cancer risk in these women increased by 47 percent compared with women sleeping at least seven hours a night or more. No such relation was observed in older women, and sleep alone did not reduce cancer risk.

"Exercise may reduce cancer risk by improving immunity, regulating insulin and glucose levels, and by maintaining normal sex hormone levels," said McClain. "Inadequate sleep, on the other hand, might have the opposite effect."
BOTTOM LINE: The benefit of physical activity in reducing cancer risk is diminished by a lack of sleep among younger women.
WHAT'S NEXT: Confirm these findings in a larger group of women and try to understand how lack of sleep may be increasing cancer risk.
CAUTIONS: This is the first study of its kind and more work is needed to confirm these findings.
WHERE TO FIND IT: The study was presented at the American Association for Cancer Research conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention and can be found at http://www.aacr.org/home/public--media/news.aspx?d=1191

SENA DESAI GOPAL

You're walking around Paris, your first visit to the city. You round a corner, and suddenly you're struck by the sensation you've been in that spot before. What's behind this déjà vu moment? Memory researchers are probing the reasons we experience something as familiar, even if we don't know why. That's different from straightforward "recollection memory" where you realize you've walked into the French postcard scene taped to your fridge.

Colorado State University psychologist Anne Cleary devised an experiment to approximate déjà vu in the lab. Volunteers were given a long list of celebrity names to study. Next, they were asked to identify a sequence of celebrity photos. Half of the famous faces' names were on the list previously studied, half were not.

When volunteers couldn't identify a face, they were asked to rate on a scale of zero to 10 the familiarity of the face and/or the likelihood the celebrity's name was on the list. Here's the interesting part: Among the celebrities they couldn't name, highest familiarity scores were given to celebs whose names were indeed on the list - even though they did not consciously know the celeb's name or identity. In other words, the name on the list may have conjured up a fragment of previous information, allowing the brain to attempt to make the connection when the celeb's face was viewed. That is the same sort of connection that, researchers say, could trigger the déjà vu experience in daily life.

"It seems, on the simplest level, that presenting that name is somehow boosting the familiarity, within the context of the experiment, of that person's face," Cleary said.

In other words, perhaps reading the words "Danny Bonaduce" elicited a fragment of an image of a washed-up child star from the deepest recesses of the brain.
BOTTOM LINE: A form of déjà vu can be recreated in the lab.
CAUTIONS: The studies Cleary has done so far attempted to induce familiarity and deja vu using 2-dimensional stimuli on a computer screen. This is not typically how deja vu occurs in real life.
WHAT'S NEXT: Cleary is studying whether a few familiar elements that are present within an otherwise novel scene can produce déjà vu. She's collaborating with another déjà vu researcher to use virtual reality technology to attempt to induce deja vu experiences in 3-dimensional, lifelike settings.
WHERE TO FIND IT: The October issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal for the Association of Psychological Science.

LEIGH HOPPER OBERHOLZER