In families where one child has autism the risk that a younger sibling will also develop it, previously estimated at 3-10 percent, is substantially higher at approximately 19 percent, according to a large, international, multi-site study.
While the study found a combined estimated risk for all participants of nearly 19 percent, it found an even more elevated risk of recurrence of over 26 percent for male infants, and over 32 percent for infants with more than one older sibling with autism.
lthough our eyes record the word as millions of pixels, "the visual system is fantastic at giving us a world that looks like objects, not pixels," says Northwestern University psychologist Steven L. Franconeri. It does this by grouping areas of the world with similar characteristics, such as color, shape, or motion.
People who have experienced maltreatment as children are twice as likely to develop both multiple and long-lasting depressive episodes as those without a history of childhood maltreatment, according to a new study. The research, led by a team at King's College London Institute of Psychiatry also found that maltreated individuals are more likely to respond poorly to pharmacological and psychological treatment for depression.
Many of us go to extraordinary lengths to avoid learning the endings of stories we have yet to read or see. It is common courtesy for book and movie critics to not give away any plot twists or, at least, oblige with a clearly labeled &'spoiler alert.' We get annoyed with friends who slip up and spill a fictional secret.
Milan, Italy, August 11, 2011 – Memory is not a single process but is made up of several sub-processes relying on different areas of the brain. Episodic memory, the ability to remember specific events such as what you did yesterday, is known to be vulnerable to brain damage involving the hippocampus. The question is, what happens when damage to the hippocampus occurs very early in life?
Voluntary movements we make have to be prepared in our brain before they are executed but why we sometimes have perfect timing, a false-start, or a delayed reaction, the neural circuitry underlying movement preparation is not well understood.
A new study provides intriguing insight into how a neural circuit forms a motor plan. The research, published by Cell Press in the August 11 issue of the journal Neuron, uses a new type of analysis to assess the moment-by-moment firing rate of neurons in the brain to accurately predict the reaction time for making an arm movement.
DALLAS – Aug. 10, 2011 – People who frequently use tanning beds may be spurred by an addictive neurological reward-and-reinforcement trigger, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found in a pilot study.
This could explain why some people continue to use tanning beds despite the increased risk of developing melanoma, the most lethal form of skin cancer. The brain activity and corresponding blood flow tracked by UT Southwestern scientists involved in the study is similar to that seen in people addicted to drugs and alcohol.
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Montreal, August 9, 2011 — Constant bitterness can make a person ill, according to Concordia University researchers who have examined the relationship between failure, bitterness and quality of life.
"Persistent bitterness may result in global feelings of anger and hostility that, when strong enough, could affect a person's physical health," says Carsten Wrosch, a professor in the Concordia University Department of Psychology and a member of the Centre for Research in Human Development.
Knowing the right way to handle stress in the classroom and on the sports field can make the difference between success and failure for the millions of students going back to school this fall, new University of Chicago research shows.
Knowing the right way to handle stress in the classroom and on the sports field can make the difference between success and failure for the millions of students going back to school this fall, new University of Chicago research shows.
One decade after receiving implants that stimulate areas of their brains, patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) appear to sustain improvement in motor function, although part of the initial benefit wore off mainly because of progressive loss of benefit in other functions, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Older patients with lower rates of left ventricular ejection fraction (a measure of how well the left ventricle of the heart pumps with each contraction) appear more likely than younger patients to have significantly reduced verbal memory function, according to a report in the August issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center have shown chimpanzees have a significant bias for prosocial behavior. This, the study authors report, is in contrast to previous studies that positioned chimpanzees as reluctant altruists and led to the widely held belief that human altruism evolved in the last six million years only after humans split from apes. The current study findings are available in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
We accept that some people are born with a talent for music or art or athletics. But what about mathematics? Do some of us just arrive in the world with better math skills than others?
Social class is more than just how much money you have. It's also the clothes you wear, the music you like, the school you go to—and has a strong influence on how you interact with others, according to the authors of a new article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. People from lower classes have fundamentally different ways of thinking about the world than people in upper classes—a fact that should figure into debates on public policy, according to the authors.