You don't think you're hungry, then a friend mentions how hungry he is or you smell some freshly baked pizza and whoaaa, you suddenly feel really hungry. Or, you've had surgery and need a bit of morphine for pain. As soon as you hit that button you feel relief even though the medicine hasn't even hit your bloodstream.
These are two examples of the oft-studied placebo effect that demonstrate the amazing and still somewhat confounding powers of the human brain.
Nailing the diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder may not be important in prescribing effective treatment, according to Mark Zimmerman, M.D., a clinical researcher at Rhode Island Hospital. His opinion editorial was published online today in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
The over 50s who are 'successful agers'--healthy, active, sociable, and well off--are more at risk of harmful drinking than their less successful peers, concludes research published in the online journal BMJ Open.
Harmful drinking is a "middle class phenomenon" which may be a hidden health and social problem in otherwise successful older people, warn the researchers, who call for explicit guidelines on alcohol consumption for this group.
A new University of Michigan study finds that teens using marijuana for medical reasons are 10 times more likely to say they are hooked on marijuana than youth who get marijuana illegally.
The study is the first to report on a nationally representative sample of 4,394 high school seniors and their legal or illegal medical marijuana use as it relates to other drug use. In the study, 48 teens had medical marijuana cards, but 266 teens used medical marijuana without a card.
The U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling legalizing marriage between same-sex couples in all 50 states follows on the heels of national polls showing rapid cultural changes in attitudes toward lesbian and gay people. A new University of Virginia study confirms that, by using a test designed to find that people have unconscious biases.
A group of 118 academics have drafted a prescription for reducing the high cost of cancer drugs and voiced support for a patient-based grassroots movement demanding action on the issue. Their recommendations and support are outlined in a commentary, co-authored by the group, in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Is your favorite grocery store making you fat? According to new findings, a Grocer Retailer Scorecard may be an effective, healthy shopping tool that benefits both grocers and shoppers. "Grocers can benefit from encouraging healthy shopping practices because they can sell more perishable items like fruits and vegetables rather than tossing them in the dumpster after a few days," says lead researcher Brian Wansink, PhD, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University.
In recent years, government assessments have raised concerns about the nation's science workforce. Writing in an article for BioScience, Gregory T. Rushton and a team of researchers looked for clues in the National Center for Education Statistics' Schools and Staffing Surveys from 1987 through 2007. These results, combined with those from prior studies, reveal some patterns with serious implications for the future of science pedagogy.
The greater than three-fold increase in autism diagnoses among students in special education programs in the United States between 2000 and 2010 may be due in large part to the reclassification of individuals who previously would have been diagnosed with other intellectual disability disorders, according to new research. In a paper to be published online in the American Journal of Medical Genetics on July 22, 2015, scientists at Penn State University report their analysis of 11 years of special-education enrollment data on an average of 6.2 million children per year.
Gerber announced this week that they are offering parents an open enrollment in the digitally created "Chew University," an online experience that celebrates the chewing milestone with daily prizes and resources for parents. Chew U was founded in partnership with Gerber's newest product launch, 3rd Foods® Lil' Bits™ recipes, which are made with perfectly sized soft pieces of fruits or veggies to help babies learn how to chew.
People aren't the only ones who perform better on tests or athletic events when they are just a little bit nervous -- dogs do too. But in dogs as in people, the right amount of stress depends on disposition.
A new study by researchers at Duke University finds that a little extra stress and stimulation makes hyper dogs crack under pressure but gives mellow dogs an edge.
The findings appear online in the journal Animal Cognition.
According to an idea in psychology called the Yerkes-Dodson law, a little stress can be a good thing, but only up to a point.
If there's one thing advertisers (and media outlets) think they know, it is that sex and violence sell.
A new analysis, however, provides some of the best evidence to date that this widely accepted adage just isn't true.
Researchers analyzed the results of 53 different experiments (a so-called meta-analysis) involving nearly 8,500 people, done over 44 years. All of these experiments examined some facet of the question of whether sexual or violent media content could help sell advertised products.
All those leftover pizza crusts you snatch from your kids' plates add up. Men gain weight after they become fathers for the first time whether or not they live with their children, reports a large, new Northwestern Medicine study that tracked the weight of more than 10,000 men from adolescence to young adulthood.
In a new study, women considered the position and shape of the urethral opening to be the least important aspects of a penis' appearance.
They also perceived the genitals of men who underwent surgery to treat distal hypospadias--a congenital condition in which the opening of the urethra is on the underside of the penis--to be as normal-looking as nonaffected, circumcised genitals.
"The information may help prevent the development of shame or impaired genital perceptions about penile appearance," said Dr. Norma Ruppen, lead author of the study.
Over the past 24 hours, Gawker, the controversial gossip blog owned by Gawker Media, has earned some extraordinary and entirely justified opprobrium. It brought this on itself by posting a prurient and cruel story about the alleged sexual conduct of a finance executive employed by rival media company Condé Nast.