Study finds link between sexual harassment and 'purging' -- in men

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EAST LANSING, Mich. — Men who experience high levels of sexual harassment are much more likely than women to induce vomiting and take laxatives and diuretics in an attempt to control their weight, according to a surprising finding by Michigan State University researchers.

Enhanced motion perception in autism may point to an underlying cause of the disorder

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Children with autism see simple movement twice as quickly as other children their age, and this hypersensitivity to motion may provide clues to a fundamental cause of the developmental disorder, according to a new study.

Social connections drive the 'upward spiral' of positive emotions and health

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People who experience warmer, more upbeat emotions may have better physical health because they make more social connections, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The research, led by Barbara Fredrickson of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Bethany Kok of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences also found it is possible for a person to self-generate positive emotions in ways that make him or her physically healthier.

Parental addictions linked to adult children's depression

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TORONTO, ON – The offspring of parents who were addicted to drugs or alcohol are more likely to be depressed in adulthood, according to a new study by University of Toronto researchers.

Researchers discover a missing link in signals contributing to neurodegeneration

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In many neurodegenerative diseases the neurons of the brain are over-stimulated and this leads to their destruction. After many failed attempts and much scepticism this process was finally shown last year to be a possible basis for treatment in some patients with stroke. But very few targets for drugs to block this process are known.

Study finds brain system for emotional self-control

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Different brain areas are activated when we choose to suppress an emotion, compared to when we are instructed to inhibit an emotion, according a new study from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Ghent University.

In this study, published in Brain Structure and Function, the researchers scanned the brains of healthy participants and found that key brain systems were activated when choosing for oneself to suppress an emotion. They had previously linked this brain area to deciding to inhibit movement.

Could eating peppers prevent Parkinson's?

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New research reveals that Solanaceae—a flowering plant family with some species producing foods that are edible sources of nicotine—may provide a protective effect against Parkinson's disease. The study appearing today in Annals of Neurology, a journal of the American Neurological Association and Child Neurology Society, suggests that eating foods that contain even a small amount of nicotine, such as peppers and tomatoes, may reduce risk of developing Parkinson's.

Laughter perception networks in brain different for mocking, joyful or ticklish laughter

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A laugh may signal mockery, humor, joy or simply be a response to tickling, but each kind of laughter conveys a wealth of auditory and social information. These different kinds of laughter also spark different connections within the "laughter perception network" in the human brain depending on their context, according to research published May 8 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Dirk Wildgruber and colleagues from the University of Tuebingen, Germany.

Brain, not eye mechanisms keep color vision constant across lifespan

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Cone receptors in the human eye lose their color sensitivity with age, but our subjective experience of color remains largely unchanged over the years. This ability to compensate for age-related changes in color perception rests in higher levels of the visual system, according to research published May 8 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Sophie Wuerger from the University of Liverpool, UK.

Brain anatomy of dyslexia is not the same in men and women, boys and girls

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WASHINGTON — Using MRI, neuroscientists at Georgetown University Medical Center found significant differences in brain anatomy when comparing men and women with dyslexia to their non-dyslexic control groups, suggesting that the disorder may have a different brain-based manifestation based on sex.

Their study, investigating dyslexia in both males and females, is the first to directly compare brain anatomy of females with and without dyslexia (in children and adults). Their findings were published online in the journal Brain Structure and Function.