AUSTIN, Texas — Many women with low sex drives reported greater sexual satisfaction after taking a placebo, according to new psychology research from The University of Texas at Austin and Baylor College of Medicine. The study was conducted by Cindy Meston, a clinical psychology professor at The University of Texas at Austin, and Andrea Bradford and they found that opening a new line of communication about sex can have a positive effect in many women with low libidos.
Brain
WASHINGTON, DC—Researchers at the Center for Neuroscience Research at Children's National Medical Center have discovered that the two major types of signaling pathways activated during brain cell development—the epidermal growth factor receptor pathway and the Notch pathway—operate together to determine how many and which types of brain cells are created during growth and repair in developing and adult brains.
People who have used cocaine run a great risk of becoming addicted, even after long drug-free periods. Now researchers at Linköping University and their colleagues can point to a specific molecule in the brain as a possible target for treatment to prevent relapses.
Drugs are addictive because they "hijack" the brain's reward system, which is actually intended to make it pleasurable to eat and have sex, behaviors that are necessary for survival and reproduction.
Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered a new drug target that could improve the effectiveness of radiation for hard-to-treat cancers.
The finding, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, focuses on the role of the enzyme cytosolic phospholipase A2 (cPLA2). This enzyme promotes development and functioning of blood vessel networks that feed malignant tumors, enabling them to overcome the effects of radiation.
Elevated levels of a growth protein in the brains of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients is linked to impaired neurogenesis, the process by which new neurons are generated, say researchers at the University of California, San Diego in today's edition of The Journal of Neuroscience.
September 16, 2010 – (Toronto) – New research from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), both in Toronto, Canada provides further clues as to why Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) affects four times more males than females. The scientists discovered that males who carry specific alterations of DNA on the sole X-chromosome they carry are at high risk of developing ASD. The research is published in the September 15 issue of Science Translational Medicine.
CHAMPAIGN, lll. – Researchers have found an association between physical fitness and the brain in 9- and 10-year-old children: Those who are more fit tend to have a bigger hippocampus and perform better on a test of memory than their less-fit peers.
ST. PAUL, Minn. – New research suggests that old age may not play a role in why older people become forgetful. According to a study published in the September 15, 2010, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, the same brain lesions that are associated with dementia are responsible for mild memory loss in old age.
Simply getting older is not the cause of mild memory lapses often called senior moments, according to a new study by researchers at the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center. The study, published in the September 15, 2010, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, found that even the very early mild changes in memory that are much more common in old age than dementia are caused by the same brain lesions associated with Alzheimer's disease and other dementias.
SALT LAKE CITY—The Intermountain West is renowned for the beauty of its towering mountains and high deserts, but according to new research from an investigator with the University of Utah Brain Institute the region's lofty altitudes significantly influence a deadly problem: the high prevalence of suicides in this part of the country.
Funding from an anonymous wealthy family has been the secret to progress, at long last, in developing drugs that show promise for helping millions of people worldwide with Fragile X syndrome, the most common genetic cause of autism. That's the topic of a fascinating article in the current issue of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine.
Rapid improvements in facial-recognition software mean airport security workers might one day know with near certainty whether they're looking at a stressed-out tourist or staring a terrorist in the eye.
A research team led by Dr. Alice O'Toole, a professor in The University of Texas at Dallas' School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, is evaluating how well these rapidly evolving recognition programs work. The researchers are comparing the rates of success for the software to the rates for non-technological, but presumably "expert" human evaluation.
Pre-kindergartners who spend much of their classroom day engaged in so-called free-choice play with little input from teachers make smaller gains in early language and math skills than children who receive input from teachers in a range of different activity settings. Low-income children benefit particularly when a higher proportion of their time is spent in individual instruction settings.
Those are the findings of a new study that appears in the September/October 2010 issue of Child Development.
Barriers to children's achievement in the areas of science, math, and engineering have become a particular concern as policymakers focus on America's economic competitiveness. A gender difference in girls' spatial abilities emerges very early in development, and researchers have suggested that this difference may be a source of gaps in achievement in math and science for girls. A new study just published in Child Development describes an intervention that is effective in eliminating the gender gap in spatial abilities.
More than 12 million U.S. children under age 6 attend child care or preschool programs. A new longitudinal study of low-income children has found that children in high-quality preschool settings had fewer behavior problems in middle childhood, and that such settings were particularly important for boys and African American children.