Brain

A review of euthanasia or assisted suicide (EAS) cases among patients with psychiatric disorders in the Netherlands found that most had chronic, severe conditions, with histories of attempted suicides and hospitalizations, and were described as socially isolated or lonely, according to an article published online by JAMA Psychiatry.

Marijuana use is on the rise, with an estimated 12.5 percent of adults living in the United States reportedly using the drug at least once in 2013, according to a new study that looked at drug usage over the span of a decade.

But that research, from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, also shows that the rate of pot use did not double from 2002 to 2013 -- as had been reported in the fall -- and that the rate of problems related to the drug remained steady.

KNOXVILLE--The whooping crane, with its snowy white plumage and trumpeting call, is one of the most beloved American birds, and one of the most endangered. As captive-raised cranes are re-introduced in Louisiana, they are gaining a new descriptor: natural killer.

A new study from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, suggests Louisiana cranes are faring well thanks in part to their penchant for hunting reptiles and amphibians.

Meditation and aerobic exercise done together helps reduce depression, according to a new Rutgers study.

The study, published in Translational Psychiatry this month, found that this mind and body combination - done twice a week for only two months - reduced the symptoms for a group of students by 40 percent.

Every year, thousands of people lose their way in forests and mountain areas. In Switzerland alone, emergency centers respond to around 1,000 calls annually from injured and lost hikers. But drones can effectively complement the work of rescue services teams. Because they are inexpensive and can be rapidly deployed in large numbers, they substantially reduce the response time and the risk of injury to missing persons and rescue teams alike.

A joint group of researchers from Chuo University, Japan Women's University and Tohoku University has revealed that infants aged between 5 and 7 months hold the representation of color categories in their brain, even before the acquisition of language.

This study is published in the online journal of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A.

BMJ, a global healthcare knowledge provider, has joined forces with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), a world leader in biomedical research, to provide self-study online modules for doctors and healthcare researchers to develop their research skills and become published authors.

Research to Publication is an e-learning programme for doctors, researchers and students everywhere. It will be of particular interest to early career researchers and to institutions in developing countries seeking to build their research capacity.

LYNDEN, WA, Feb. 10, 2016 - Components in red raspberries may have anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidative and metabolic stabilizing activity, according to a comprehensive review of the available scientific literature published in the January issue of Advances in Nutrition. These properties shed light on the potential role of red raspberries in helping to reduce the risk of metabolically-based chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, obesity, and Alzheimer's disease: all of which share critical metabolic, oxidative, inflammatory links.

Pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) patients treated with chemotherapy alone remain at risk for attention and learning problems that persist after treatment ends, according to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators. The research appears online this week in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

They found that it is possible to turn a neuron which previously hasn't responded to placebos (placebo 'non-responder' neuron) into a placebo 'responder' by conditioning Parkinson patients with apomorphine, a dopaminergic drug used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease (PD).

Biologists from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have discovered the genes in starfish that encode neuropeptides - a common type of chemical found in human brains. The revelation gives researchers new insights into how neural function evolved in the animal kingdom.

Publishing in the Royal Society journal Open Biology, the team led by Professor Maurice Elphick at QMUL's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences report 40 new neuropeptide genes discovered for the first time in the common European starfish Asterias rubens.

Child maltreatment could predict a range of negative outcomes in patients with bipolar disorder (BD), according to new King's College London research, which adds to growing evidence on the enduring mental health impact of childhood abuse and neglect.

PHILADELPHIA -- Differences in the neural wiring across development of men and women across ages, matched behavioral differences commonly associated with each of the sexes, according to an imaging-based study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania published February 1 in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

Infant girls at risk for autism pay more attention to social cues in faces than infant boys, according to a Yale School of Medicine study -- the first one known to prospectively examine sex-related social differences in at-risk infants.

Status epilepticus - continuous or rapid sequential seizure activity for 30 minutes or more - is a medical emergency with a high mortality rate in both children and adults. Prompt and effective treatment is key; therefore the American Epilepsy Society (AES) has released a new guideline to help physicians, hospitals, and health systems treat patients effectively. The guideline is published in the January/February issue of Epilepsy Currents, the AES journal.