Brain

Adding flashing lights and music to gambling encourages risky decision-making -- even if you're a rat.

In research published today in the Journal of Neuroscience, scientists at UBC discovered rats behaved like problem gamblers when sound and light cues were added to a "rat casino" model. What's more, the researchers were able to correct the behaviour by blocking the action of a specific dopamine receptor, laying the groundwork for possible treatment of gambling addiction in humans.

Soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are more 'tuned' to perceive threatening facial expressions than people without PTSD because of more over-connected brain circuits, according to a new study published in the journal Heliyon. The researchers behind the study, from The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Canada, in partnership with the Canadian Armed Forces, say understanding how this works could help researchers develop better ways to assess when soldiers are ready to be redeployed.

HANOVER, N.H. - Men continue to dominate a number of academic professions such as economics, but a Dartmouth College-University of Pennsylvania study shows the gender gap is shrinking in at least one research field -- vision science.

The findings appear in the Journal of Vision. A PDF is available on request.

As musicians, figure skaters and anyone who takes a driving test will know, the anxiety of being watched can have a disastrous effect on your performance.

Now neuroscientists at the University of Sussex's Sackler Centre and Brighton and Sussex Medical School have identified the brain network system that causes us to stumble and stall just when we least want to.

Social media may seem to be a way to make and maintain hundreds of friendships. But University of Oxford research, supported by Dorset bakers Thomas J. Fudge's, suggests that the constraints that limit the number of friends we have offline also apply online. The study is published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

HANOVER, N.H. - Dartmouth researchers have found the first direct evidence showing how the vestibular system's horizontal canals play a key role in sensing our direction in the environment.

The findings, which appear in the Journal of Neuroscience, shed light on brain activity that helps us to get around and that is impaired by trauma, stroke and neurodegenerative diseases. A PDF is available on request.

While research has already established that B vitamin supplements can help slow mental decline in older people with memory problems, an international team have now found that having higher levels of Omega-3 fatty acids in your body could boost the B vitamins' effect.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Children who participate in collaborative group work to learn about significant social issues become better decision-makers than their peers who learn the same curriculum through teacher-led discussions, a new study finds.

More than 760 fifth-grade students were involved in the study, which compared the efficacy of collaborative group work with conventional direct instruction at promoting students' ability to make reasoned decisions and apply those skills in a novel task.

A new study in rats may provide significant insights into the long-term impacts of over-consumption of sugary foods during adolescence.

The study shows that the enjoyment of such foods later in adulthood is reduced in those who over-consumed early in life. Investigators found that this decrease in reward relates to reduced activity in one of the key hubs of the brain's reward circuitry, called the nucleus accumbens. Such long-lasting alterations could have important implications for reward-related disorders such as substance abuse or eating disorders.

Rockville, Md. - There is good news for frequent public speakers. New research shows that individuals have the ability to quickly and accurately identify a crowd's general emotion as focused or distracted, suggesting that we can trust our first impression of a crowd's mood. The paper, "Mixed emotions: Sensitivity to facial variance in a crowd of faces," was recently published in the Journal of Vision.

ROCHESTER, Minn. - You've likely heard this before: Exercise is good for you. It helps your heart, bones, back and more.

But here's one thing you might not have heard: Ongoing aerobic exercise may slow the progression of Parkinson's disease, a progressive disorder of the nervous system.

"Aerobic exercise means vigorous exercise, which makes you hot, sweaty and tired" says J. Eric Ahlskog, Ph.D., M.D., a neurologist at Mayo Clinic. This could include activity such as walking briskly or using an elliptical machine.

Texting while driving is a significant risk factor for automobile collisions, and cell phone use while driving is especially prevalent among young people. More than half (52%) of a sample of 861 college students surveyed by University of Maryland School of Public Health researchers reported that they had texted while driving at least once in the past month.

When it comes to flight safety, U.S. airlines are pretty good at learning from accidents. But new research shows airlines should be learning more from accidents that never happen.

A new study led by BYU organizational behavior professor Peter Madsen finds that airlines are flying past an opportunity to increase safety by ignoring too many "near misses."

In 2014, product returns totaled about $280 million across all U.S. retailers. New research from UT Dallas examined existing studies on return policies to quantify the policies' effect on consumers' purchase and return behavior.

UT Dallas doctoral candidate Ryan Freling, who is studying marketing in the Naveen Jindal School of Management, conducted the meta-analysis with UT Arlington associate professor of marketing Dr. Narayan Janakiraman and doctoral candidate Holly Syrdal. The study recently was published online in the Journal of Retailing.

People experiencing anxiety and inhibition have more activity in the right side of the brain, causing them to walk in a leftward trajectory.

New research led by Dr Mario Weick of the School of Psychology at the University of Kent has for the first time linked the activation of the brain's two hemispheres with lateral shifts in people's walking trajectories.