Who is most likely to report side effects from taking statins? People who know they are taking statins and have read about side effects. As many as 20 percent of patients may stop taking or refuse the drug due to reported side effects, which include muscle pain, cataracts, memory loss, erectile dysfunction and disrupted sleep.
Yet in clinical trials people who don't know they are taking statins don't report side effects any more than a placebo group.
Swedish and British scientists have shown using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that the hormone oxytocin can inhibit feelings of anxiety in specific individuals. Their discovery might lead to a better understanding and the improved treatment of psychiatric affections in which people feel distressed when meeting others, such as in cases of autism and social phobia.
Two University of Miami (UM) students have received prestigious Graduate Research Fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for their doctoral work on coral reefs. Rachel Silverstein and Nitzan Soffer will each receive three years of support for their work in the laboratory of Dr. Andrew Baker, an assistant professor in the Division of Marine Biology and Fisheries at UM’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. In addition, a third student entering Baker’s lab this fall, Ross Cunning, also received an Honorable Mention in the same national NSF competition.
"I have learnt more about this remarkable industry this evening than I did when I was Minister for the Environment," claimed Gyles Brandreth, the celebrity, author and former politician hosting the inaugural Agrow Awards, held on October 16 in Glasgow.
Unprecedented warm temperatures in the High Arctic this past summer were so extreme that researchers with a Queen’s-led climate change project have begun revising their forecasts.
“Everything has changed dramatically in the watershed we observed,” reports Geography professor Scott Lamoureux, the leader of an International Polar Year project announced yesterday in Nunavut by Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl. “It’s something we’d envisioned for the future – but to see it happening now is quite remarkable.”
Cryptochromes, which fulfill the molecular requirements for sensing the magnetic reference direction, have recently been found in retinal neurons of migratory birds (Mouritsen et al., PNAS, 2004). Furthermore, studies investigating what parts of a migratory bird´s brain are active when the birds use their magnetic compass showed that the cryptochrome-containing neurons in the eye and a forebrain region (“Cluster N”; Mouritsen et al., PNAS, 2005; Liedvogel et al., EJN, 2007) are highly active during processing of magnetic compass information in migratory birds.
A team of researchers, including Herman Pontzer, Ph.D., assistant professor of physical anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, has determined through analysis of the earliest known hominid fossils outside of Africa, recently discovered in Dmanisi, Georgia, the former Soviet republic, that the first human ancestors to inhabit Eurasia were more primitive than previously thought.
Women and men appear to respond differently to the same biochemical manipulation. Major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the most common mental disorders, and it is also one of the most studied. It is already known that reduced serotonin transmission contributes to the pathophysiology, or functional changes, associated with MDD and most of today’s most popular antidepressants block the serotonin “uptake site”, also known as the transporter, in the brain.
A national poll of 2,235 UK adults commissioned by Virgin Active, the largest health club operator of its kind in the UK, reveals that one in five adults are spending over 30 hours a week on their sofa. The results have sparked fears that the British public is spending too much time on the sofa, which could result in what Virgin Active has identified as 'Sofa Bottom Syndrome'. This condition affects postural muscles and can lead to a host of posture-related health and back problems.
Common physical symptoms such as fatigue, chest pain and lower back pain are related to the perception of everyday smells, University of Nottingham researchers will tell delegates at a health psychology conference on campus.
Professor Eamonn Ferguson and Dr Helen Cassaday, with colleague Dr Jane Ward of the University of Loughborough, described their findings to fellow academics from all over the country at a British Psychological Society (BPS) event running from September 12-14.
Why would prehistoric reptiles have needed to develop modern ears? No one can say for sure but it is certain that a new study by Johannes Müller and Linda Tsuji, paleobiologists at the Natural History Museum of the Humboldt University in Berlin, has pushed back the date of impedance-matching hearing by some 60 million years.
The fossil animals they studied, found in deposits of Permian age near the Mezen River in central Russia, possessed all the anatomical features typical of a vertebrate with a surprisingly modern ear.
Mice containing a mutated human gene implicated in autism exhibit the poor social skills but increased intelligence akin to the title character’s traits in the movie “Rain Man,” researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.
The researchers’ study also shows how the mutation affects nerve function and provides an animal model that might allow further study of the debilitating condition.
Our ability to hear is made possible by way of a Rube Goldberg-style process in which sound vibrations entering the ear shake and jostle a successive chain of structures until, lo and behold, they are converted into electrical signals that can be interpreted by the brain. Exactly how the electrical signal is generated has been the subject of ongoing research interest.
It is well established that a child's brain has a remarkable capacity for change, but controversy continues about the extent to which such plasticity exists in the adult human primary sensory cortex. Now, neuroscientists from MIT and Johns Hopkins University have used converging evidence from brain imaging and behavioral studies to show that the adult visual cortex does indeed reorganize-and that the change affects visual perception. The study appears online Sept. 5 in an advance publication of the Journal of Neuroscience.
It’s well known that the child’s brain has a remarkable capacity for change, but controversy rages about the extent to which such plasticity exists in the adult human brain -- particularly, in the part responsible for vision. Now, scientists from The Johns Hopkins University and MIT offer evidence -- derived from both brain imaging and behavioral studies -- that the adult visual cortex (the area of the brain that receives images from the eyes) does, indeed, have the ability to reorganize. Moreover, that reorganization affects visual perception.