(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Some people may excel at riding a bike, tying a tie, or playing the piano, but those same people may find it difficult to explain or teach those skills to someone else.
Brain
RIVERSIDE, Calif. – To reduce the toxicity of cigarette smoke, tobacco companies have introduced "harm reduction cigarettes," often marketed as safer than conventional brands.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The JC polyomavirus doesn't strike very often, but it's a mean bug that preys on people with weakened immune systems, including people with AIDS, and almost always kills them. Now an international team of scientists at Brown University, the University of Tübingen in Germany, and Imperial College in London has found a potential Achilles Heel and painted a target on it: The virus must bind to a very specific sugar molecule dangling from the side of the brain cells it attacks.
WASHINGTON — Motherhood may actually cause the brain to grow, not turn it into mush, as some have claimed. Exploratory research published by the American Psychological Association found that the brains of new mothers bulked up in areas linked to motivation and behavior, and that mothers who gushed the most about their babies showed the greatest growth in key parts of the mid-brain.
Montreal, October 20, 2010 – Daily sleeping and eating patterns are critical to human well-being and health. Now, a new study from Concordia University has demonstrated how the brain chemical dopamine regulates these cycles by altering the activity of the "clock-protein" PER2. Published in the Journal of Neuroscience, these findings may have implications for individuals with Parkinson's Disease with disrupted 24-hour rhythms of activity and sleep.
Over the last few decades, the dramatic rise in pediatric obesity rates has emerged as a public health threat requiring urgent attention. The responsibility of identifying and treating eating and weight-related problems early in children and adolescents falls to health care providers and other professionals who work with the child, according to Professor Denise Wilfley and colleagues from the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in the US. Furthermore, the key to successful treatment is a team effort involving providers and parents.
Chronic depression is an adaptive, reparative neurobiological process gone wrong, say two University of California, San Diego School of Medicine researchers, positing in a new theory that the debilitating mental state originates from more ancient mechanisms used by the body to deal with physical injury, such as pain, tissue repair and convalescent behavior.
The eating disorder anorexia nervosa causes potentially serious eye damage, suggests a small study published online in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.
In developed countries, anorexia nervosa affects up to 3% of affluent women. Although the condition also increasingly affects men, around 10 women will be affected for every one man.
Anorexia nervosa is the third most common chronic disease among teenage women, up to one in 10 of whom will die from it.
A study published Oct. 19 in the open access journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) ONE, shows that not just human memories fade. Scientists from Arizona State University and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences examined how aging impacts the ability of honey bees to find their way home.
Athens, Ga. – When we make decisions based on what we think someone else will do, in anything from chess to warfare, we must use reason to infer the other's next move—or next three or more moves—to know what we must do. This so-called recursive reasoning ability in humans has been thought to be somewhat limited.
But now, in just-published research led by a psychologist at the University of Georgia, it appears that people can engage in much higher levels of recursive reasoning than was previously thought.
DALLAS – Oct. 20, 2010 – New findings by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers suggest a novel role for the brain in mediating beneficial actions of the hormone leptin in type 1 diabetes.
DENVER (October 19, 2010) - Long derided as mere entertainment, new research now shows that organizations using video games to train employees end up with smarter, more motivated workers who learn more and forget less.
A University of Colorado Denver Business School study found those trained on video games do their jobs better, have higher skills and retain information longer than workers learning in less interactive, more passive environments.
AUSTIN, Texas — Because of impairments in their insulin sensitivity, obese individuals demonstrate different brain responses than their normal-weight peers while completing a challenging cognitive task, according to new research by psychologists at The University of Texas at Austin.
The results provide further evidence that a healthy lifestyle at midlife could lead to a higher quality of life later on, especially as new drugs and treatments allow people to live longer.