Brain

While general wisdom says that you look at the eyes first in order to recognize a face, UC San Diego computer scientists now report that you look at the nose first.

The nose may be the where the information about the face is balanced in all directions, or the optimal viewing position for face recognition, the researchers from UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering propose in a paper recently published in the journal Psychological Science.

Life can be stressful, whether you're an individual watching the stock market crash or a commuter stuck in traffic. A new study, forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science, examines how stress affects decision-making and finds that older adults alter their behavior more than young adults when under stress — particularly in situations involving risk.

A groundbreaking study by two University of Rochester psychologists to be published online Oct. 28 by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology adds color—literally and figuratively—to the age-old question of what attracts men to women.

Through five psychological experiments, Andrew Elliot, professor of psychology, and Daniela Niesta, post-doctoral researcher, demonstrate that the color red makes men feel more amorous toward women. And men are unaware of the role the color plays in their attraction.

Patients treated for their prolonged seizures with the sedative propofol may be at high risk for complications and even death. New research presented at CHEST 2008, the 74th annual international scientific assembly of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), shows that the use of propofol as an antiepileptic agent in patients with refractory status epilepticus (RSE), prolonged seizures that do not respond to initial treatment, was associated with significant mortality and morbidity.

Applying electrical stimulation to the scalp and the underlying motor regions of the brain could make you more skilled at delicate tasks. Research published today in the open access journal BMC Neuroscience shows that a non-invasive brain-stimulation technique, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), is able to improve the use of a person's non-dominant hand.

The antibody works against the gastric hormone ghrelin (pronounced "grell-in"), which has been linked to weight gain and fat storage through its metabolic actions. These findings point towards a potentially novel treatment for obesity that would interfere directly with the some of the biological mechanisms determining weight.

The study is being published the week of October 27, 2008, in an advance, online Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

In the first study ever to genetically link the immune system to normal behavior, scientists at Rockefeller and Columbia universities show that mast cells, known as the pharmacologic bombshells of the immune system, directly influence how mice respond to stressful situations. The work, to appear this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and to be highlighted in Science, chips away at the increasingly stale idea that the two most complex systems in the body have entirely separate modes of operation.

EAST LANSING, Mich. —To tackle the growing number of psychiatric cases in Michigan's rural areas, particularly among children and adolescents, a team of Michigan State University doctors from the colleges of Osteopathic Medicine and Human Medicine meet each week with patients from across the state via video conference.

Most individuals' preferences regarding life-sustaining treatment do not appear to change over a three-year period, regardless of declines in physical and mental health, according to a report in the October 27 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Individuals who say they want aggressive care and those without advance directives are most likely to change their end-of-life wishes over time.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – From Barack Obama's controversial pastor to Sarah Palin's "secret religion", religious values have continued to play a dominant role in the presidential election since John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic elected to president in 1960.

PHILADELPHIA – Patients who report receiving written and verbal instructions on the proper way to take the blood thinner warfarin are significantly less likely to suffer the serious gastrointestinal and brain bleeding problems that are associated with misuse of the drug, according to new research from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. The study, published in the October issue Journal of General Internal Medicine, also shows that patients who see only one physician and fill their prescription at a single pharmacy are less apt to experience serious bleeding events.

NEW YORK, October 27, 2008 – A new study by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers found that a high dose of cortisone could help reduce the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The article appears in Biological Psychiatry, Volume 64, Issue 8 (October 15, 2008), pages 708-717.

In an animal model of PTSD, high doses of a cortisol-related substance, corticosterone, prevented negative consequences of stress exposure, including increased startle response and behavioral freezing when exposed to reminders of the stress.

HOUSTON, Oct. 27, 2008 – For those of us trained to read nutrition labels, conventional wisdom tells us that fat isn't good for the heart. But a team of University of Houston researchers has set out to use fat cells to beef up heart muscles damaged by heart attack – and they're using an out-of-this-world device to do it.

A lack of specific brain receptors has been linked with schizophrenia in new research by scientists at Newcastle University.

In work published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team has found that NMDA receptors are essential in modifying brain oscillations – electrical wave patterns – which are altered in patients with schizophrenia.

They now want to investigate whether optimising the function of the receptors, which are already know to be involved in making memories, could lead to a new way of treating the mental illness.

Philadelphia, PA, October 27, 2008 – Is schizophrenia a disorder of glutamate hyperactivity or hypoactivity? While the predominant hypothesis for many years was that schizophrenia was a glutamate deficit disorder, there is growing evidence of glutamate hyperactivity as well. The study by Karlsson et al., appearing in the November 1st issue of Biological Psychiatry, reinforces this point with new data about the impact of deleting the gene for the glutamate transporter EAAT1.