Brain

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Could eating grapes help fight high blood pressure related to a salty diet? And could grapes calm other factors that are also related to heart diseases such as heart failure? A new University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center study suggests so.

The new study, published in the October issue of the Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences, gives tantalizing clues to the potential of grapes in reducing cardiovascular risk. The effect is thought to be due to the high level of phytochemicals – naturally occurring antioxidants – that grapes contain.

Although we know quite a bit about the lifestyle of dinosaur; where they lived, what they ate, how they walked, not much was known about their sense of smell, until now.

People's ability to recognise abducted children is impaired when they view a photo of a smiling, clean child, but come into contact with the same child whose appearance is very different because he or she is upset, crying, dishevelled or unkempt. This is the key finding of a study published today in Applied Cognitive Psychology.

People who view pictures of someone they hate display activity in distinct areas of the brain that, together, may be thought of as a 'hate circuit', according to new research by scientists at UCL (University College London).

Do "undecided" voters actually make their choices before they realize?

That is a question University of Virginia psychology professor Brian Nosek and his colleagues are trying to answer.

"Many people, especially early in the political process, declare themselves as undecided," Nosek said. "But while they have consciously said that they are undecided, they unconsciously may have already made a choice."

And in a close election, undecided voters may determine the outcome the moment they make their decisions known on Election Day.

Although videoconferencing has become a billion-dollar substitute for flying business people to meetings, it leaves distant participants less likely to make sound judgments about speakers being viewed over a screen, according to a study published in a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®).

Each year, some 29,000 adults and 2,000 children are diagnosed with leukemia, a form of cancer that is caused by the abnormal production of white blood cells in the bone marrow. Current treatments rely primarily on killing the cancer cells, which also destroys normal cells. But what if a way could be found to reprogram cancerous cells back into normal cells? A team of Syracuse University researchers believes it may have found a way to do just that.

PHILADELPHIA – University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine researchers have discovered how the expression of the Sonic hedgehog gene is regulated during brain development and how mutations that alter this process cause brain malformations. The results appear online this month in Nature Genetics.

Sonic hedgehog (Shh) plays a key role in regulating many aspects of embryonic development including, growth of digits on limbs and organization of neurons in the brain. It controls cell division of adult stem cells and has been implicated in some cancers.

If Barack Obama had taken his mother's surname and kept his childhood nickname, American voters might literally see "Barry Dunham" as a quite different presidential candidate, a new study suggests. A name significantly changes our perception of someone's face and race, according to research in the journal, Perception.

Recent studies hint that exposure to the toxic chemicals, such as methylmercury can cause harm at levels previously considered safe. A new analysis of the epidemiological evidence in the International Journal of Environment and Health, suggests that we should take a precautionary approach to this and similar compounds to protect unborn children from irreversible brain damage.

Quebec City, October 28, 2008—A team of Université Laval researchers has shown that the main neurological markers for Alzheimer's disease are exacerbated in the brains of mice fed a diet rich in animal fat and poor in omega-3s. Details of the study—which suggests that diets typical of most industrialized countries promote the development of Alzheimer's—are outlined in the latest online edition of Neurobiology of Aging.

Neuroscientists at The University of Queensland have discovered a new way to explain how emotional events can sometimes lead to disturbing long term memories.

In evolutionary terms, the brain's ability to remember a fear or trauma response has been crucial to our long term survival.

However, in the modern world, when a similar type of fear response is triggered by a traumatic event such as being in combat; being exposed to abuse or being involved a major car accident, we do not want to repeatedly re-experience the episode, in vivid detail, for the rest of our lives.

#7710IRREGULAR HEARTBEAT MAY DEVELOP AFTER LUNG TRANSPLANTATION(Tuesday, October 28, 10:30 AM EST)

#7720PATIENTS' HOME PHOTOS HELP IDENTIFY ASTHMA TRIGGERS(Monday, October 27, 10:30 AM EST)

MONDAY, OCTOBER 27

#7720PATIENTS' HOME PHOTOS HELP IDENTIFY ASTHMA TRIGGERS(Monday, October 27, 10:30 AM EST)