Today you’ll learn about a new blood test that’s been developed to assess anxiety, what’s really happening neurologically that causes “mommy brain”, and how a spy may be trying to contact you on Linkedin.
Today you’ll learn about a new blood test that’s been developed to assess anxiety, what’s really happening neurologically that causes “mommy brain”, and how a spy may be trying to contact you on Linkedin.
Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/anxiety-blood-test-mommy-brain-linkedin-spy
Anxiety Blood Test
Mommy Brain
Linkedin Spy
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[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today you’ll learn about a new blood test that’s been developed to assess anxiety, what’s really happening neurologically that causes “mommy brain”, and how a spy may be trying to contact you on Linkedin.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Scientists have developed a blood test that can detect anxiety.
NATE: I have some questions.
CALLI: Go on.
NATE: Do we need a blood test for anxiety? Like, if someone's at the point where they're getting a blood test for anxiety, wouldn't they probably already know that they are suffering from it.
CALLI: Those are great questions. And the answer is yes to both. Anyone suffering from a general anxiety disorder certainly knows the pain and distress they're feeling is not right. But this blood test is actually a huge deal.
NATE: All right. I'm intrigued.
CALLI: All right. Before we talk about the test, let's talk about anxiety. It's been reported that nearly 800 million people around the globe live with a mental health disorder and around 284 million of them are suffering from an anxiety disorder. Now, this is different than just regular old anxiety. Anxiety disorders can be anything from phobic disorders to social anxiety disorders to OCD, PTSD, or just to generalized anxiety disorders. But what they all have in common is that they are so severe they can totally derail your life.
NATE: So are these disorders genetic or biological, or are they caused by regular stressors like life?
CALLI: Well, both. Stress can certainly trigger anxiety disorders. Post-Traumatic stress, for example, is triggered by a terrifying experience. For most people, traumatic events linger, but eventually they're able to cope. But those who suffer from the disorder, the severe anxiety from the event just won't go away and can get even worse. And to make matters even more worse, treatment for anxiety disorders isn't always so great.
NATE: I think I see where you're going here. And somehow a blood test can improve treatment.
CALLI: Ooh, You're really on your game today.
NATE: Oh, thanks.
CALLI: The senior author of the study, Alexander Niculescu, a professor of psychiatry at Indiana University School of Medicine, has developed similar blood tests in the past to diagnose pain, depression and other disorders. He says that the current treatment plans for these conditions really boils down to just asking someone how they're feeling and then making an educated guess about what medications might or might not work.
NATE: That sounds like a lot of trial and error.
CALLI: And that can create new problems like addictions to medications that don't work or dangerous side effects or an ineffective treatment can simply add to the anxiety someone suffering from a disorder already feels. So there is urgency here.
NATE: How does the blood test work?
CALLI: Niculesu and his team were looking for biomarkers in the blood. They studied changes in RNA, which are the cells that carry messages to the DNA in individuals taking part in the study, those who suffered from anxiety disorders and also those without disorders. And they found that anxiety can be detected in a blood sample. It was so effective that they're already developing tests to distribute to doctor's offices.
NATE: What are the implications of something like this?
CALLI: The sky's the limit, honestly. The tests are simple and cost effective. Not only can they measure current levels of anxiety to help target treatments, they can even predict future risk. Which means.
NATE: Prevention.
CALLI: Exactly. Doing something as simple as getting a blood test at your annual checkup can potentially save you from needlessly suffering from a crippling anxiety disorder in the future. Doctors can more accurately match patients to medications that will work more effectively without all those knock on negative effects. And as if that's not good enough.
NATE: There's more.
CALLI: Yeah. This could lead to new medications that are even more effective at preventing these disorders and the people who are likely to suffer.
NATE: Okay. I'm convinced this actually is something we need. You are very persuasive.
CALLI: Thank you. Thank you. All in a day's work.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Have you ever heard of Mommy Brain?
CALLI: I think I've heard of momnesia.
NATE: That's the one.
CALLI: Yeah, I've. I've heard about this, and it's all over my social media right now. New moms say that they forget everything. They get confused, they get brain fog. It sounds lovely. Have they found a cure for momnesia?
NATE: No. And they don't need to wait.
CALLI: Are you saying it doesn't exist?
NATE: No. No, it does. It does. It's real. In fact, pregnancy actually shrinks parts of the brain.
CALLI: Okay. Are you sure that brain shrinkage isn't something that might need some attention?
NATE: Well, it turns out that these changes are, for the most part, incredibly advantageous for both the mother and the child. Neuroscientist and therapist Jodie Pawluski and colleagues from the University of Rennes in France have published an article in the journal JAMA Neurology, or JAMA Neurology, claiming that pregnancy, brain or mommy brain or momnesia, whatever you want to call it, needs some rebranding.
CALLI: Introducing mother mind, a new, improved kind of mommy brain available at a birthing center near.
NATE: You. It sounds like it's going to be quite the hit.
CALLI: Let's what's back up? How can a shrinking brain be a good thing?
NATE: Researchers have known about this loss of gray matter associated with pregnancy and childbirth for a long time, and new moms often point to that loss as the cause of forgetfulness or fogginess. But the truth is far more fascinating. Consider the decrease in gray matter, a sort of fine tuning.
CALLI: Okay. The brain is making new connections. Maybe to overcorrect for the shrinkage.
NATE: That's right. A study done in 2016, for example, found evidence that some of these changes, even brain reductions, actually helped the mother form attachments to the new baby. They also found that reductions in the volume of the ventral striatum, a part of the brain associated with motivation and reward, led to elevated responsiveness toward their babies. Basically, there's an emphasis on attention to the new baby while other systems fade into the background.
CALLI: What about if there's a dad involved? Like, do their brains change during all of this, or are they off the hook?
NATE: It turns out their brains shrink, too. Although more research is needed to understand the cause and effects of those changes. But there's every reason to believe that these changes are also beneficial to both the father and the child. In fact, the changes that moms and dads brains undergo during the experience of pregnancy and new parenthood is similar to another change in our lives.
CALLI: Like old age.
NATE: The exact opposite, actually. Adolescence. The brain of the pre-teen and the teen is known for its incredible growth and elasticity. And while researchers see comparisons to the brains of new parents.
CALLI: Interesting. All right. Can we still call it momnesia?
NATE: I wouldn't have it any other way.
CALLI: Perfect.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: They’ve got the same face of someone, you know, the same name. They even speak like the person, you know. But it's not them at all. Now, I'm not talking about some kind of Twilight thing happening here. I'm talking about people on LinkedIn trying to hack you.
NATE: Of all the rotten, dirty things I've ever heard. Hackers on LinkedIn, If you're on LinkedIn, you're probably looking for a job, right? What what would someone have to gain by stealing from somebody that doesn't even have a job?
CALLI: Okay, well, even if somebody is not doing well financially. LinkedIn is a little unique in the social media world. People also use it to research topics in journalism, network with other professionals, or even talk to their friends in other parts of the professional world. But unlike most other social media, all of your information is right there in one place and usually very public. This could be the city you live in or which languages you speak. It could be a complete list of the jobs you've held. And it's also everybody, you know, on a professional basis. This means that cyber crime on LinkedIn is quite diverse. It ranges from cryptocurrency scams to pyramid schemes to things a bit more insidious, like identity theft or even international espionage.
NATE: Here, I thought LinkedIn was just a way to connect to opportunity. Turns out everyone on there wants to connect to my bank account.
CALLI: Not everybody. But there's actually way more fraud on LinkedIn than you might expect. Take a recent analysis of the situation by the website Wired, for example. They start off with a story about a freelance journalist named Anahita Saymidinova who was offered a job by a security researcher whose name on the website was listed as Camille Lons. One day, Camille offered Anahita a job and sent her a PDF explaining the project, and that PDF was a little suspicious.
NATE: Did it say something like, Please send me your Social Security number or credit card information and your mother's maiden name, and then I'll hire you.
CALLI: In as well. Have the PDF claimed that the U.S. State Department had given Camille's project over $500,000 in funding. This amount seemed a bit high. So Anahita raised a few concerns over how legit the project was. Camille was adamant that everything was okay and asked Anahita to join her on Zoom for more information and sent her a few links to look over too. But at this point, Anahita was feeling very suspicious about the whole thing. So she stopped responding.
NATE: Why was she so suspicious?
CALLI: Because Anahita works for a Persian language news organization known as Iran International, who have been the target of constant intimidation by the Iranian government. She told one of the staff at her job and they started investigating Camille Lons LinkedIn page, only to discover this wasn't Camille Lons at all. It was a hacker from an Iranian group known as Charming Kitten.
NATE: Well, it's a very cute name for such insidious behavior. What were they trying to accomplish here?
CALLI: We don't know exactly what Charming kitten wanted, but it's very likely they were trying to hack into his computer. It's important to note that Camille Lons is a real person, and this looked like her legit profile with a photo of her speaking in front of an audience and even had over 400 people in her network, as well as a very thorough work history on the profile. This is all part of charming kitten’s usual pattern, though. They create an account that looks like real person. Contact them with an opportunity and attempt to catch someone in a phishing scheme, which is an illegal practice involving the theft of personal information like a credit card or password through an email or a link or some other online form.
NATE: Okay. It's a good thing they didn't get that far with Anahita.
CALLI: Definitely. We don't know for sure how successful the group has been in the past, phishing people. But there was at least one time when Charming Kitten got far enough into one of their scams that they had a Zoom call with a scientist and then used screen captures of that Zoom call to make profile pictures on another fake LinkedIn. So this is a very thorough organization that tries to steal information from journalists and other professionals, but it's far from the only attempt. Some of these made like this on LinkedIn.
NATE: How big and widespread is this issue?
CALLI: We see this happen all the time with state sponsored groups from countries like Russia, Iran, China and North Korea. These countries have hackers use LinkedIn to fool targets into providing enough information for them to steal sensitive information, either via phishing or through something worse, like malware and malware being a system designed to mess up your computer. So here's a sobering statistic for you. The UK government identified nearly 10,000 foreign spies and other malicious actors on LinkedIn and Facebook over the span of a year.
NATE: 10,000 seems like a lot. Jeez.
CALLI: Yeah. And yet we'll probably never know how big the problem actually is. Have you ever messed around with LinkedIn's privacy settings for social media? It's pretty cool because instead of just making the content on your page private, you can make your entire page appear invisible to anybody who doesn't share at least one professional connection with you. Great for keeping your business page private, but very bad when trying to figure out just how bad this issue has become.
NATE: I'll be honest, I don't currently have a LinkedIn, so I haven't really explored a lot of that, but it's good to know they have some helpful settings. Is there anything else being done to stop this?
CALLI: Actually, yeah. Throughout 2022, LinkedIn took the initiative to fight back against fake or scam accounts by creating a set of tools that can identify any profile photos made through an AI model as well as a set of. Filters that can identify common scam language. Every now and then, LinkedIn does a transparency report that details how the website is doing. In the report that covers January through June of 2022, they announced that over 95% of the fake accounts they found were blocked by failing some of these tests. Over 16 million didn't even make it past the registration phase.
NATE: And yet there were still enough to sneak 10,000 through. Wow.
CALLI: I mean, no method is going to be perfect when it comes to finding false actors, unfortunately. LinkedIn is trying new things as they get new ideas. For instance, they have an in-house list of things to look for when trying to identify a hoax account. Some accounts will comment faster than a normal human can type, and that's probably a bot. When that happens, LinkedIn will freeze the account until it provides them with a state issued ID. Sometimes that method works like when Wired tried it for their report on LinkedIn's fake accounts, they created a fake profile with an AI generated profile photo and an AI generated resume. It only took one day for LinkedIn to request an ID from the account, which as of now has been shut down.
NATE: Okay, obviously, since we're talking about this, it's not a perfect set of restrictions, though.
CALLI: Exactly. The hardest accounts to catch are the ones who haven't even started messaging people. A good example from Wired study would be when they analyzed their own company's profile on LinkedIn. 577 people said Wired was the place they worked, which is around double the true number of employees. Many of the fake employees had AI generated profile photos, and 88 of them said they were from India, where Wired doesn't have an office.
NATE: Okay, well, good on LinkedIn for trying their best, but what can we do to prevent this?
CALLI: The easiest answer is to be careful what you accept in a conversation over LinkedIn through your messages. If the account doesn't seem legitimate, don't accept the Zoom link. Don't click on any links they send you and don't provide any sensitive information. It's reassuring that LinkedIn has blocked more than 95% of these accounts. But just like anything else you find on the Internet, you've got to be careful with how you engage it.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up.
CALLI: Researchers have created a test to find biomarkers in your blood that signal an anxiety disorder. This new method can make sure that people are able to find the right medication, measure current levels of anxiety and even predict a future risk of an episode.
NATE: Brain fog that many mothers experience after having a child isn’t just “mommy brain,” it’s a very real rewiring of neural circuitry. Parts of the brain shrink during pregnancy but this is actually a good thing for both mom and baby. It allows for more efficient responsiveness and a better attachment to the baby.
CALLI: LinkedIn: a place for professionals… and also hackers? A recent analysis of LinkedIn’s infrastructure has revealed that millions of fake accounts are created every day for purposes ranging from identity theft to state-sponsored espionage; thankfully, LinkedIn has cracked down on over 95% of these accounts with a number of groundbreaking innovations in fraud detection, but just like anything else on the internet, you’re still gonna need to be careful what you click on… even in the job market!