Brain | Page 1359 | Science Codex

Hope gets in the way of happiness for chronically ill, doctors say

Ann Arbor, Mich. — Holding on to hope may not make patients happier as they deal with chronic illness or diseases, according to a new study by University of Michigan Health System researchers.

"Hope is an important part of happiness," said Peter A. Ubel, M.D., director of the U-M Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine and one of the authors of the happily hopeless study, "but there's a dark side of hope. Sometimes, if hope makes people put off getting on with their life, it can get in the way of happiness."

Cataract surgery helps AMD patients; steroid improves DME; online eye health forum

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--- This month's Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (Academy) reports on a national study that finds cataract surgery is likely to benefit patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) at all stages of the disease, on a clinical trial showing that the steroid triamcinolone may be effective in advanced diabetic macular edema (DME) patients when standard treatment fails, and on the public's use of two Academy-sponsored online eye health forums.

Sleep deprivation impacts information processing, study finds

Westchester, Ill. —A study in the Nov.1 issue of the journal Sleep shows that sleep deprivation causes some people to shift from a more automatic, implicit process of information categorization (information-integration) to a more controlled, explicit process (rule-based). This use of rule-based strategies in a task in which information-integration strategies are optimal can lead to potentially devastating errors when quick and accurate categorization is fundamental to survival.

This is your brain on fatty acids - better

Saturated fats have a deservedly bad reputation, but Johns Hopkins scientists have discovered that a sticky lipid occurring naturally at high levels in the brain may help us memorize grandma's recipe for cinnamon buns, as well as recall how, decades ago, she served them up steaming from the oven.

You may just have an angry face: research suggests link between facial structure and aggression

Angry words and gestures are not the only way to get a sense of how temperamental a person is. According to new findings in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, a quick glance at someone's facial structure may be enough for us to predict their tendency towards aggression.

Sight gone, but not necessarily lost?

Like all tissues in the body, the eye needs a healthy blood supply to function properly. Poorly developed blood vessels can lead to visual impairment or even blindness. While many of the molecules involved in guiding the development of the intricate blood vessel architecture are known, only now are we learning how these molecules work and how they might affect sight.

For gay and straight men, facial attraction operates similarly

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., October 30, 2009 – A new study from a researcher at Harvard University finds that gay men are most attracted to the most masculine-faced men, while straight men prefer the most feminine-faced women.

The findings suggest that regardless of sexual orientation, men's brains are wired for attraction to sexually dimorphic faces—those with facial features that are most synonymous with their gender.

Unlocking mysteries of the brain with PET

Reston, Va.—Inflammatory response of brain cells—as indicated by a molecular imaging technique—could tell researchers more about why certain neurologic disorders, such as migraine headaches and psychosis in schizophrenic patients, occur and provide insight into how to best treat them, according to two studies published in the November issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

INTUNIV demonstrated symptom reduction on oppositional subscale Conners' ADHD rating scale

HONOLULU - October 29, 2009 – Shire plc (LSE: SHP, NASDAQ: SHPGY), the global specialty biopharmaceutical company, announced new study results on INTUNIV™ (guanfacine) Extended Release Tablets, at a major psychiatric medical meeting today. The primary objective of this study was to assess the change from baseline on the oppositional subscale of the Conners' Parent Rating Scale-Revised: Long Form (CPRS-R:L) in patients ages 6 to 12 with a primary diagnosis of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) with the presence of oppositional symptoms at baseline.

Stress-induced changes in brain circuitry linked to cocaine relapse

Stress-evoked changes in circuits that regulate serotonin in certain parts of the brain can precipitate a low mood and a relapse in cocaine-seeking, based on mouse studies published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Widely used cholesterol-lowering drug may prevent progression

(CHICAGO) –Simvastatin, a commonly used, cholesterol-lowering drug, may prevent Parkinson's disease from progressing further. Neurological researchers at Rush University Medical Center conducted a study examining the use of the FDA-approved medication in mice with Parkinson's disease and found that the drug successfully reverses the biochemical, cellular and anatomical changes caused by the disease.

A heat sensor for body-clock synchronization

New research on the fruit-fly brain points to a possible mechanism by which temperature influences the body clock, according to scientists from Queen Mary, University of London.

Although much is known about how light affects the body clock - also known at the circadian clock - it is not well understood which cells or organs sense daily temperature changes or how temperature signals reach the part of the brain that contains the circadian clock.

No pain, no gain: why mastering a skill is worth the short-term stress it causes

No pain, no gain applies to happiness, too, according to new research published online this week in the Journal of Happiness Studies. People who work hard at improving a skill or ability, such as mastering a math problem or learning to drive, may experience stress in the moment, but experience greater happiness on a daily basis and longer term, the study suggests.

Seeing your pain can relieve it, neuroscientists find

An f1000 evaluation examines how pain relief improves greatly when the sufferer can actually see the area where the pain is occurring.

In an Anglo-Italian study, thirty healthy subjects were invited to look at either their own hand, the experimenter's hand, or an object, while their hand was subjected to laser-induced pain.

Multicultural education focus of new UOG publication

University classrooms around the world are becoming more like the highly diverse classrooms that prevail at the University of Guam. This trend has led UOG professors Thomas Marler and Seyda Turk-Smith to coauthor a journal article covering some of the unique features of teaching to a group of learners with a range of cultural value systems. "Dr. Marler is a horticulture educator, and learning more about how my psychology research can be put into practice in the horticulture classroom was a sincere motivator for me," said Turk-Smith.