In an animal study, researchers found that decaffeinated coffee may improve glucose utilization in the brain, reducing the risk for Type 2 diabetes and the brain dysfunction associated with some neurological disorders.
Divorce at a younger age hurts people’s health more than divorce later in life, according to a new study by a Michigan State University sociologist. Hui Liu said the findings, which appear in the research journal Social Science & Medicine, suggest older people have more coping skills to deal with the stress of divorce…
In a cross-sectional analysis of WHO-AIMS data published in this week’s PLoS Medicine, Ryan McBain of Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, USA and colleagues investigated the associations between health system components and access to psychotropic drugs in 63 low- and middle- income countries (LAMICs)…
School-age children whose mothers nurtured them early in life have brains with a larger hippocampus, a key structure important to learning, memory and response to stress. The new research, by child psychiatrists and neuroscientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St…
Testosterone makes us overvalue our own opinions at the expense of cooperation, new research has found. Higher levels of testosterone were associated with individuals behaving egocentrically.
New research might help explain how a gene mutation found in some autistic individuals leads to difficulties in processing auditory cues and paying spatial attention to sound.
Neuroscientists and surgeons have recorded electrical activity in the temporal lobe — the seat of the auditory system — to discover how the brain encodes sound. Their model allows them to predict what a person heard based solely on temporal lobe activity. If, as studies suggest, internal “imagined” conversations activate similar areas of the temporal lobe, it may be possible to hear the internal verbalizations of people who cannot talk because of paralysis or stroke.
Holding information within one’s memory for a short while is a seemingly simple and everyday task. We use our short-term memory when remembering a new telephone number if there is nothing to write at hand, or to find the beautiful dress inside the store that we were just admiring in the shopping window. Yet, despite the apparent simplicity of these actions, short-term memory is a complex cognitive act that entails the participation of multiple brain regions. However, whether and how different brain regions cooperate during memory has remained elusive. Researchers in Germany have now come closer to answering this question. They discovered that oscillations between different brain regions are crucial in visually remembering things over a short period of time.
In the US alone, at least 500,000 people suffer from Parkinson’s disease, a neurological disorder that affects a person’s ability to control his or her movement. New technology lets researchers observe the development of the brain cells responsible for the disease.
For those with few social advantages, college is a prime pathway to financial stability, but it also unexpectedly lowers their odds of ever marrying, according to a new study.
