Brain

Pediatric golf injuries are rare but can be devastating to the eye and vision system, according to a report in the September issue of Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A new study suggests that entertainment news shows such as The Daily Show or The Colbert Report may not be as influential in teaching voters about political issues and candidates as was previously thought.

Previous studies have reported up to 48 percent of all adults and 60 percent of young voters used fake news shows as a source of campaign news in the 2004 presidential election. But researchers from Ohio State University have found reasons to discount how effective these shows are in informing the general public.

The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) has reported results from its first comprehensive study which focused on the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma.

The findings are reported in the Sept. 4, 2008, advance edition of Nature.

The TCGA team, comprised of more than 100 investigators from seven cancer centers and research institutions throughout the country, analyzed 601 genes in tumor samples from 91 glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) patients.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — All three people who received gene therapy at the University of Florida to treat a rare, incurable form of blindness have regained some of their vision, according to a paper published online today in Human Gene Therapy.

The probability of someone cheating during the course of a relationship varies between 40 and 76 percent. "It's very high," says Geneviève Beaulieu-Pelletier, PhD student at the Université de Montréal's Department of Psychology.

"These numbers indicate that even if we get married with the best of intentions things don't always turn out the way we plan. What interests me about infidelity is why people are willing to conduct themselves in ways that could be very damaging to them and to their relationship."

A nose that's too big, hair that's too curly or a beauty mark in the wrong place – who hasn't focused on a small detail of their appearance while staring at a mirror?

But when these imperfections take over our thoughts, or exist only in our heads, it's a sign that such obsessing is a disorder, according to Université de Montréal psychiatry professor Kieron O'Connor.

While compulsive gambling is only beginning to be addressed by mental health professionals, they must now face a new affliction: Internet addiction.

"The problem isn't widespread but we know of serious cases in which teenagers don't leave the house, don't have interpersonal relationships, and have been isolated in front of their computer screen for the past two or three years, and only speak in the language of the characters they play with in network video games," says Louise Nadeau, a professor at the Université de Montréal's Department of Psychology.

Thinking about adopting a perky little puppy as a friend for your fluffy cat, but worried that they'll fight -- well, like cats and dogs?

Children born prematurely are four times more likely to have emotional problems or behavioural disorders, according to research led by the University of Warwick.

A team led by the University's Department of Psychology and Warwick Medical School examined the behaviour of 200 six-year-old children who had been born below 26 weeks gestation, known as 'extremely pre-term'.

Why do many Canadians get the winter blues? In the first study of its kind in the living human brain, Dr. Jeffrey Meyer and colleagues at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) have discovered greater levels of serotonin transporter in the brain in winter than in summer. These findings have important implications for understanding seasonal mood change in healthy people, vulnerability to seasonal affective disorders and the relationship of light exposure to mood.

What makes a memory? Single cells in the brain, for one thing. For the first time, scientists at UCLA and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have recorded individual brain cells in the act of calling up a memory, thus revealing where in the brain a specific memory is stored, and how it is able to recreate it.

Knowing how precisely a high school freshman can estimate the number of objects in a group gives you a good idea how well he has done in math as far back as kindergarten, researchers at The Johns Hopkins University found.

Good "number sense" at age 14 correlates with higher scores on standardized math tests throughout a child's life up to that point and weaker "number sense" at 14 predicts lower scores on those standardized tests, said Justin Halberda, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences in the university's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

WASHINGTON — There is fresh evidence that people spend less when paying cash than using credit, cash-equivalent scrip or gift certificates. They also spend less when they have to estimate expenses in detail.

These findings appear in the September issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, published by the American Psychological Association.

Researchers have demonstrated that protein levels in urine samples can indicate both the presence and progress of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) disease in cattle. Publishing their findings in BioMed Central's open access journal Proteome Science, the scientists hope that their discovery might lead to the development of a urine-based test that could prevent the precautionary slaughter of many animals as now occurs when the disease is detected.

Most parents and many teachers believe that if middle-school and high-school girls show no interest in science or math, there's little anyone can do about it.

New research by a team that includes vocational psychologists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) indicates that the self-confidence instilled by parents and teachers is more important for young girls learning math and science than their initial interest.