The number of people who suffer from one or more of the adverse complications of obesity, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease is rapidly increasing. Thus far, drugs designed to treat obesity have shown limited efficacy and have been associated with serious side effects. This is largely because we have limited understanding of the effects of obesity on our natural mechanisms of body weight control.
Brain
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Both children and the elderly have slower response times when they have to make quick decisions in some settings.
But recent research suggests that much of that slower response is a conscious choice to emphasize accuracy over speed.
In fact, healthy older people can be trained to respond faster in some decision-making tasks without hurting their accuracy – meaning their cognitive skills in this area aren't so different from younger adults.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research challenges the conventional thinking that young children use language just as adults do to help classify and understand objects in the world around them.
In a new study involving 4- to 5-year-old children, researchers found that the labels adults use to classify items – words like "dog" or "pencil" – don't have the same ability to influence the thinking of children.
Efforts to help people with learning impairments are being aided by a species of sea snail known as Aplysia californica. The mollusk, which is used by researchers to study the brain, has much in common with other species including humans. Research involving the snail has contributed to the understanding of learning and memory.
A research team led by Glenn Rall at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, PA developed a novel mouse model to show that a fatal central nervous system (CNS) disease can be caused by a pathogen that does not replicate in the CNS. The results of this new study are published December 22nd in the Open Access journal PLoS Pathogens.
HOUSTON – (Dec. 22, 2011) – Radiology researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) have found evidence that multiple sclerosis affects an area of the brain that controls cognitive, sensory and motor functioning apart from the disabling damage caused by the disease's visible lesions.
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- The editors of the journal Science have selected a Mayo Clinic discovery as one of their top 10 "groundbreaking scientific achievements of 2011." The Mayo study --the first to eliminate the effects of aging in mice -- received worldwide attention when it was published in Nature in November. Science's international list of achievements featuring scientific breakthroughs ranging from biology to aerospace research was released Thursday afternoon.
Compared to our other senses, scientists don't know much about how our skin is wired for the sensation of touch. Now, research reported in the December 23rd issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, provides the first picture of how specialized neurons feel light touches, like a brush of movement or a vibration, are organized in hairy skin.
A compound produced from fish oil that appears to target leukemia stem cells could lead to a cure for the disease, according to Penn State researchers. The compound -- delta-12-protaglandin J3, or D12-PGJ3 -- targeted and killed the stem cells of chronic myelogenous leukemia, or CML, in mice, said Sandeep Prabhu, associate professor of immunology and molecular toxicology in the Department of Veterinary and Medical Sciences. The compound is produced from EPA -- Eicosapentaenoic Acid -- an Omega-3 fatty acid found in fish and in fish oil, he said.
Teens who more openly express their own viewpoints in discussions with their moms, even if their viewpoints disagree, are more likely than others to resist peer pressure to use drugs or drink.
That's one of the findings of a new longitudinal study by researchers at the University of Virginia. The study appears in the journal Child Development.
Even kindergarteners know that thinking positively will make you feel better. And parents' own feelings of optimism may play a role in whether their children understand how thoughts influence emotions.
Those are the findings of a new study by researchers at Jacksonville University and the University of California, Davis. The study appears in the journal Child Development.
Young children whose mothers talk with them more frequently and in more detail about people's thoughts and feelings tend to be better at taking another's perspective than other children of the same age.
That's what researchers from the University of Western Australia found in a new longitudinal study published in the journal Child Development.
School absenteeism is a significant problem, and students who are frequently absent from school more often have symptoms of psychiatric disorders. A new longitudinal study of more than 17,000 youths has found that frequently missing school is associated with a higher prevalence of mental health problems later on in adolescence, and that mental health problems during one year also predict missing additional school days in the following year for students in middle and high school.
Listeners can learn new vocabulary through hip-hop music, even though the lyrics may be difficult to understand, according to a study published in the Dec. 21 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE. The author, Paula Chesley of the University of Alberta, found that the number of hip-hop artists that a participant listened to was predictive of the participant's knowledge of words and phrases used in hip-hop songs that are not considered to be mainstream, like "road dog" (friend) and "guap" (lots of money).