Brain

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---When you're upset or depressed, should you analyze your feelings to figure out what's wrong? Or should you just forget about it and move on?

New research suggests a solution to these questions and to a related psychological paradox: Pocessing emotions is supposed to facilitate coping, but attempts to understand painful feelings often backfire and perpetuate or strengthen negative moods and emotions.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — People who hope to keep their age a secret won't want to go near a computer running this software.

Like an age-guesser at a carnival, computer software being developed at the University of Illinois can fairly accurately estimate a person's age. But, unlike age-guessers, who can view a person's body, the software works by examining only the person's face.

DURHAM, N.C. -- The breathy, hoarse voice of senior citizens is often thought to be a normal sign of aging. But doctors at the Duke Voice Care Center say that's a false perception that needs to change. And they've discovered that it may partially explain why seniors who want treatment for the condition aren't seeking it.

That's a problem, added Seth Cohen, M.D., a Duke otolaryngologist and the study's lead author, because voice and swallowing concerns can lead to serious quality of life issues including anxiety, depression and social withdrawal.

Sleep disorders are very common in modern society. Mild forms are familiar to everyone and up to 10 – 20 per cent of adults suffer from related diseases (organic sleep disorders). Diagnosing sleep disorders often requires extensive and expensive sleep recording at a sleep laboratory. At the moment, there are hardly any good screening methods for detecting sleep disorders.

A rare genetic disorder called tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is yielding insight into a possible cause of some neurodevelopmental disorders: structural abnormalities in neurons, or brain cells. Researchers in the F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Children's Hospital Boston, led by Mustafa Sahin, MD, PhD, and Xi He, PhD, also found that normal neuronal structure can potentially be restored.

Exercise could be a useful tool in helping pregnant women to give up smoking, according to new research published today in the open access journal BMC Public Health. Despite the warnings, 17% of women in the UK and 20% of women in the US still admit to smoking during pregnancy. This often leads to lower birth weight, higher infant mortality, and is linked to learning difficulties, problem behaviour and asthma in childhood.

Discovery of a new, previously unknown mechanism of immunity suggests that there may be a better way to protect vulnerable children and adults against Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcal) infection, say researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). The findings, published in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens on September 19, may aid the development of novel pneumococcal vaccines. (The current vaccine, Prevnar, is expensive and covers only 7 of the 91 known pneumococcal strains.)

Why is your mate's rendition of Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get it On" cute and sexy sometimes and so annoying at other times? A songbird study conducted by Emory University sheds new light on this question, showing that a change in hormone levels may alter the way we perceive social cues by altering a system of brain nuclei, common to all vertebrates, called the "social behavior network."

ST. PAUL, Minn. – People with a family history of cancerous brain tumors appear to be at higher risk of developing the same kind of tumors compared to people with no such family history, according to a study published in the September 23, 2008, issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

In consultations with patients with lung cancer, physicians rarely responded empathically to the concerns of the patients about mortality, symptoms or treatment options, according to a study led by a University of Rochester Medical Center researcher.

The study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine and based on 20 recorded and transcribed consultations, found that physicians missed many opportunities to recognize and possibly ease the concerns of their patients and routinely provided little emotional support.

Individuals with Medicaid insurance and those who live in neighborhoods with lower household incomes appear less likely than others to reach the hospital within two hours of having a heart attack, according to a report in the September 22 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

American Indians have a higher incidence of stroke compared to white and black Americans and their first strokes may be more deadly, according to a study published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

CHAPEL HILL – Everyone gets stressed, even babies.

Now, it appears how infants respond to stress is linked to if they have a particular form of a certain gene, according to a new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Just as significantly, researchers say they have also found that good parenting – as early as within the first year of a child's life – can counter the effect the gene has in babies who initially do not respond well to stressful situations.

A team of researchers has identified the active compounds that contribute to the health benefits of pre-germinated brown rice; the healthy components are a related set of sterol-like molecules known as acylated steryl-beta-glucosides (ASGs).

BOSTON - Cancer patients who receive stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and whole brain radiation therapy (WBRT) for the treatment of metastatic brain tumors have more than twice the risk of developing learning and memory problems than those treated with SRS alone, according to new research from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

The findings of the phase III randomized trial were presented at today's 50th annual meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology.