The neoliberal leaning of the neuroscience discourse when it deals with mental health and learning disorders.

Neuroscience attracted increasing attention in mass media during the last decades. Indeed, neuroscience advances raise high expectations in society concerning major societal issues such as mental health and learning difficulties. Unfortunately, according to leading experts, neuroscience advances have not yet benefited patients, students and socially deprived families.

The political leaning of the neuroscience discourse about school education in the French press from 2000 to 2020.

Political actors pay attention to newspapers because they stimulate them to address a topic, reflect public opinion, provide feedback to their decisions, and help them to generate effective messages. Previous surveys showed that this is true for scientific issues. It follows that the newspaper coverage of scientific issues should appear as politically oriented, as observed regarding climate change.

[Citation misuse and its effects on public health].

In order to effectively contribute to scientific knowledge, biomedical observations have to be validated and debated by scientists in the relevant field. Along this debate that mainly takes place in the scientific literature, citation of previous studies plays a major role. However, only a few academic studies have quantitatively evaluated the suitability and accuracy of scientific citations.

Messaging in Biological Psychiatry: Misrepresentations, Their Causes, and Potential Consequences.

Most experts in the field of psychiatry recognize that neuroscience advances have yet to be translated into clinical practice. The main message delivered to laypeople, however, is that mental disorders are brain diseases cured by scientifically designed medications. Here we describe how this misleading message is generated.

[Efficacy of psychodynamic therapies: A systematic review of the recent literature].

Aim: A French governmental institute published, in February 2004, a report assessing the efficacy of psychotherapies in the light of the biomedical literature. It concluded that cognitive psychotherapies effectively cure common mental disorders, while the efficacy of psychodynamic therapies is not proven by scientific studies. Because many French mental health professionals are practicing with reference to psychoanalysis, this conclusion stirred up heated controversy.

Where to find accurate information on attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder? A study of scientific distortions among French websites, newspapers, and television programs.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is the most frequent mental disorder among school-age children. This condition has given rise to a large mediatic coverage, which contributed to the shaping of the lay public's perceptions. We therefore conducted two studies on the way attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder was portrayed in the TV programs and the lay-public press in France between 1995 and 2015, but the growing part played by the Internet required an additional study to analyze and compare the scientific material which is available to the French lay public depending on the source of information used.

Do newspapers preferentially cover biomedical studies involving national scientists?

News value theory rates geographical proximity as an important factor in the process of issue selection by journalists. But does this apply to science journalism? Previous observational studies investigating whether newspapers preferentially cover scientific studies involving national scientists have generated conflicting answers. Here we used a database of 123 biomedical studies, 113 of them involving at least one research team working in eight countries (Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States).

How French media have portrayed ADHD to the lay public and to social workers.

Two models of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) coexist: the biomedical and the psychosocial. We identified in nine French newspapers 159 articles giving facts and opinions about ADHD from 1995 to 2015. We classified them according to the model they mainly supported and on the basis of what argument.

Low statistical power in biomedical science: a review of three human research domains.

Studies with low statistical power increase the likelihood that a statistically significant finding represents a false positive result. We conducted a review of meta-analyses of studies investigating the association of biological, environmental or cognitive parameters with neurological, psychiatric and somatic diseases, excluding treatment studies, in order to estimate the average statistical power across these domains. Taking the effect size indicated by a meta-analysis as the best estimate of the likely true effect size, and assuming a threshold for declaring statistical significance of 5%, we found that approximately 50% of studies have statistical power in the 0-10% or 11-20% range, well below the minimum of 80% that is often considered conventional.

Poor replication validity of biomedical association studies reported by newspapers.

Objective: To investigate the replication validity of biomedical association studies covered by newspapers.

Methods: We used a database of 4723 primary studies included in 306 meta-analysis articles. These studies associated a risk factor with a disease in three biomedical domains, psychiatry, neurology and four somatic diseases.

Replication Validity of Initial Association Studies: A Comparison between Psychiatry, Neurology and Four Somatic Diseases.

Context: There are growing concerns about effect size inflation and replication validity of association studies, but few observational investigations have explored the extent of these problems.

Objective: Using meta-analyses to measure the reliability of initial studies and explore whether this varies across biomedical domains and study types (cognitive/behavioral, brain imaging, genetic and "others").

Methods: We analyzed 663 meta-analyses describing associations between markers or risk factors and 12 pathologies within three biomedical domains (psychiatry, neurology and four somatic diseases).

How Health Professionals Conceptualize and Represent Placebo Treatment in Clinical Trials and How Their Patients Understand It: Impact on Validity of Informed Consent.

Context: Previous studies suggested that many patients, who have given their informed consent to participate in randomized controlled trials (RCT), have somewhat limited understanding of what a placebo treatment is. We hypothesized that the relationship between patients and their health professionals plays a central role in this understanding.

Methods: We interviewed 12 patients included in RCTs (nine suffering from Parkinson's disease and three from Huntington's disease) and 18 health professionals involved with RCTs (eight principal investigators, four associated physicians and six clinical research associates).

Does television reflect the evolution of scientific knowledge? The case of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder coverage on French television.

Biomedical findings mature from uncertain observations to validated facts. Although subsequent studies often refute initial appealing findings, newspapers privilege the latter and often fail to cover refutations. Thus, biomedical knowledge and media reporting may diverge with time.

Why most biomedical findings echoed by newspapers turn out to be false: the case of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Context: Because positive biomedical observations are more often published than those reporting no effect, initial observations are often refuted or attenuated by subsequent studies.

Objective: To determine whether newspapers preferentially report on initial findings and whether they also report on subsequent studies.

Methods: We focused on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Misrepresentation of neuroscience data might give rise to misleading conclusions in the media: the case of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Background: There is often a huge gap between neurobiological facts and firm conclusions stated by the media. Data misrepresentation in the conclusions and summaries of neuroscience articles might contribute to this gap.

Methodology/principal Findings: Using the case of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), we identified three types of misrepresentation.

Inhibition of dopamine uptake by D2 antagonists: an in vivo study.

D(2)-like antagonists potentiate dopamine release. They also inhibit dopamine uptake by a mechanism yet to be clarified. Here, we monitored dopamine uptake in the striatum of anesthetized mice.

Stimulation of serotonin2C receptors elicits abnormal oral movements by acting on pathways other than the sensorimotor one in the rat basal ganglia.

Serotonin2C (5-HT(2C)) receptors act in the basal ganglia, a group of sub-cortical structures involved in motor behavior, where they are thought to modulate oral activity and participate in iatrogenic motor side-effects in Parkinson's disease and Schizophrenia. Whether abnormal movements initiated by 5-HT(2C) receptors are directly consequent to dysfunctions of the motor circuit is uncertain. In the present study, we combined behavioral, immunohistochemical and extracellular single-cell recordings approaches in rats to investigate the effect of the 5-HT(2C) agonist Ro-60-0175 respectively on orofacial dyskinesia, the expression of the marker of neuronal activity c-Fos in basal ganglia and the electrophysiological activity of substantia nigra pars reticulata (SNr) neuron connected to the orofacial motor cortex (OfMC) or the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC).

D2 receptor stimulation, but not D1, restores striatal equilibrium in a rat model of Parkinsonism.

In Parkinson's disease dopamine depletion imbalances the two major output pathways of the striatum. L-DOPA replacement therapy is believed to correct this imbalance by providing effective D1 and D2 receptor stimulation to striatonigral and striatopallidal neurons, respectively. Here we tested this assumption in the rat model of Parkinsonism by monitoring the spike response of identified striatal neurons to cortical stimulation.

A mouse juvenile or adult slice with preserved functional nigro-striatal dopaminergic neurons.

The effect of endogenous dopamine on the activity of target neurons recorded with patch clamp or Ca2+ imaging techniques in slices has been studied to date with intra-striatal stimuli. Yet, this approach is severely handicapped by the nonphysiological and nonspecific stimulation of local neurons and fibers within the striatum. We now report a new juvenile and adult mouse slice preparation in which a component of the nigro-striatal dopaminergic pathway is preserved in its entirety, from cell bodies to axon terminals.

The dopaminergic hypothesis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder needs re-examining.

Although psychostimulants alleviate the core symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), recent studies confirm that their impact on the long-term outcomes of ADHD children is null. Psychostimulants enhance extracellular dopamine. Numerous review articles assert that they correct an underlying dopaminergic deficit of genetic origin.

Intratelencephalic corticostriatal neurons equally excite striatonigral and striatopallidal neurons and their discharge activity is selectively reduced in experimental parkinsonism.

Striatonigral and striatopallidal neurons form distinct populations of striatal projection neurons. Their discharge activity is imbalanced after dopaminergic degeneration in Parkinson's disease. Striatal projection neurons receive massive cortical excitatory inputs from bilateral intratelencephalic (IT) neurons projecting to both the ipsilateral and contralateral striatum and from collateral axons of ipsilateral neurons that send their main axon through the pyramidal tract (PT).

Differences in ultrastructural localization of dopaminergic D1 receptors between dorsal striatum and nucleus accumbens in the rat.

Dopaminergic receptors of the D1 type are highly expressed in the dorsal striatum and nucleus accumbens. In the dorsal striatum, they are rarely observed on presynaptic terminals. However, their subcellular localization in the nucleus accumbens core and shell had not been compared to that of dorsal striatum.