Brain

People who were sexually unfaithful without their partner's knowledge were less likely to practice safe sex than those who had other sexual relationships with their partner's consent. They were also more likely to be under the influence of drugs and alcohol at the time of the encounter.

In a study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, researchers from the University of Michigan, USA, found that condom use for vaginal and anal sex was 27% and 35% lower in sexually unfaithful relationships and drug and alcohol use was 64% higher.

INDIANAPOLIS -- A new study shows that a practical clinical tool developed by researchers from the Regenstrief Institute and the Indiana University School of Medicine to measure severity of dementia symptoms is reliable and valid. The Healthy Aging Brain Care Monitor is simple, user-friendly and sensitive to change in symptoms.

New research from psychologists at the Universities of Exeter and Cardiff shows that people can train their brains to become less impulsive, resulting in less risk-taking during gambling. The research could pave the way for new treatments for people with addictions to gambling, drugs or alcohol as well as impulse-control disorders, such as ADHD.

Character strengths can be defined as traits that are rated as morally positive. That they are positively linked to life satisfaction has already been shown in many studies. That they have a causal effect on life satisfaction and that practicing them triggers an increase in the sense of wellbeing, however, has now been proved by Willibald Ruch, René T. Proyer and Claudia Buschor from the Department of Personality and Assessment at the University of Zurich for the first time.

Practice pays off

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — A new study by researchers at the UC Davis MIND Institute suggests that women who consume the recommended daily dosage of folic acid, the synthetic form of folate or vitamin B-9, during the first month of pregnancy may have a reduced risk of having a child with autism.

Marital discord is a significant social problem for children, sometimes leading to problems in health and well-being. A new longitudinal study finds that the impact of marital problems on children in their kindergarten years is long lasting and can lead to emotional problems that contribute to difficulties in adolescence.

The study, by researchers at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Rochester, appears in the journal Child Development.

The federally funded child care subsidy program is among the government's biggest investments in the early care and education of low-income children. A new study has found that subsidies have the potential to enhance the quality of child care low-income children receive, but parents who use the subsidies aren't necessarily accessing the highest quality of care available to them.

The study, conducted at Georgetown University and Columbia University, appears in the journal Child Development.

A robot analogous to a child between 6 and 14 months old can develop rudimentary linguistic skills through interaction with a human participant, as reported June 13 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.

Most people have intense emotional reactions to traumatizing events like road accidents or combat. But some suffer far longer, caught in the grip of long-term debilitating disorders such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Because doctors cannot predict who will develop these disorders, however, early or preventive intervention is not available. Now, a new project led by researchers at Tel Aviv University seeks to identify pre-traumatic subjects — those who are more susceptible to long-standing disorders if exposed to a traumatic incident.

Rockville, Md. – Viewing Facebook and Flickr photos on a smart phone are becoming common practice. But according to a recently published Journal of Vision study, pictures on the small screen often appear distorted. Vision scientists found that perceptual distortions occur because picture takers do not take their viewing distance into account.

The common ancestor of all jawed vertebrates on Earth resembled a shark, according to a new analysis of the braincase of a 290-million-year-old fossil fish that has long puzzled paleontologists.

New research on Acanthodes bronni, a fish from the Paleozoic era, sheds light on the evolution of the earliest jawed vertebrates and offers a new glimpse of the last common ancestor before the split between the earliest sharks and the first bony fishes — the lineage that would eventually include human beings.

DURHAM, N.C. -- No matter how much time you've spent training your brain to multitask by playing "Call of Duty," you're probably no better at talking on the phone while driving than anybody else.

A study by the Visual Cognition Laboratory at Duke University wanted to see whether gamers who have spent hours in front of a screen simultaneously watching the map, scanning doorways for bad guys and listening to the chatter of their fellow gamers could answer questions and drive at the same time. The finding: not so much.

Each year in the United States about $135 billion is spent in training employees — but those billions do not always improve the workplace because the skills often do not transfer to the actual job.

"Learning is a way of life in organizations," says Eduardo Salas, a psychological scientist from the University of Central Florida. "Everyone gets training. But what matters? What works? What influences learning and skill acquisition?"

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- MIT engineers have developed a fuel cell that runs on the same sugar that powers human cells: glucose. This glucose fuel cell could be used to drive highly efficient brain implants of the future, which could help paralyzed patients move their arms and legs again.

Children who are skilled in understanding how shapes fit together to make recognizable objects also have an advantage when it comes to learning the number line and solving math problems, research at the University of Chicago shows.