Brain

Drinking excess alcohol during pregnancy can cause fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) due to the damaging effects of alcohol on a developing baby's brain. Despite its harmful effects, pregnant mothers continue to drink alcohol – up to 3 in every 1000 babies are born with FAS, which causes intellectual disabilities, behavioural problems, growth defects and abnormal facial features. How alcohol causes these effects is unclear, but researching the problem is difficult because of ethical barriers to studying human fetuses.

A diet, high in fats, sugars, and processed foods in early childhood may lower IQ, while a diet packed full of vitamins and nutrients may do the opposite, suggests research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

The authors base their findings on participants in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), which is tracking the long term health and wellbeing of around 14,000 children born in 1991 and 1992.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Numerous studies have shown that the brain molecule neuropeptide Y (NPY) helps to restore calm after stressful events. A team of University of Michigan-led researchers has now found that people whose genes predispose them to produce lower levels of NPY are more responsive to negative stimuli in key brain circuits related to emotion – and are therefore less resilient in the face of stress and may be at higher risk for developing a major depressive disorder.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — As loved ones with dementia disappear into symptoms of aggression, agitation or delusions, families are left with few good medical solutions. A new generation of antipsychotic medications gained popularly in the 1990s because they avoided side effects such as Parkinson's syndrome associated with conventional antipsychotic medications used to treat dementia.

Cannabis use appears to be associated with an earlier onset of psychotic illness, according to a meta-analysis of previously published studies posted online today that will appear in the June print issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Patients with schizophrenia who take antipsychotic medications appear to lose a small but measurable amount of brain tissue over time, according to a report in the February issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Language may play an important role in learning the meanings of numbers, scholars at the University of Chicago report.

A study based on research on deaf people in Nicaragua who never learned formal sign language showed that people who communicate using self-developed gestures, called homesigns, were unable to comprehend the value of numbers greater than three because they had not learned a language containing symbols used for counting.

WASHINGTON — When people think unpleasant events are over, they remember them as being less painful or annoying than when they expect them to happen again, pointing to the power of expectation to help people brace for the worst, according to studies published by the American Psychological Association.

In a series of eight studies exposing people to annoying noise, subjecting them to tedious computer tasks, or asking them about menstrual pain, participants recalled such events as being significantly more negative if they expected them to happen again soon.

Arnhem, The Netherlands, 7 February 2011 -- In the February 2011 issue of European Urology, Jean-Nicolas Cornu and colleagues reported the evaluation of the efficacy of prostate cancer (PCa) detection by trained dogs on human urine samples.

PHILADELPHIA — The more allergies one has, the lower the risk of developing low- and high-grade glioma, according to data published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Binge drinking is often considered to be a problem of towns and cities but new research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Public Health shows that binge drinking in rural areas is more of a problem than previously thought.

Ms. K. is vision-impaired and can't get around very well any more. Still, the 80-year-old, who lives alone, has no intention whatsoever of moving to a retirement home. Most elderly people think the same way. They want to stay in their accustomed surroundings as long as possible, where they can lead an autonomous life.

NEW YORK (February 4, 2011) – Researchers at the NYU Child Study Center demonstrated that a brief program for families of Pre-Kindergarten students attending schools in disadvantaged urban communities improved children's behavior at school. The study, called "Promoting effective parenting practices and preventing child behavior problems in school among ethnically diverse families from underserved, urban communities," was published in the February 2011 issue of Child Development.

Mice know fear. And they know to fear the scent of a predator. But how do their brains quickly figure out with a sniff that a cat is nearby?

It's a complex process that starts with the scent being picked up by specific receptors in their noses. But until now it wasn't clear exactly how these scent signals proceeded from nose to noggin for neural processing.

The link between deficits of omega-3 poly-unsaturated fatty acids (AGPO-3) and the onset of depressive disorders is not new in the medical field. However, what has not been known until now is the brain mechanism by which diet can condition mental health to a certain extent. Research undertaken by scientists in Bordeaux (France) and at the Faculty of Medicine and Odontology of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and published in Nature Neuroscience, provides new clues to understanding this phenomenon.