Brain

Negative thinking is a red flag for clinical depression. Stopping such thoughts early on can save millions of people from mental illness, according research study from the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University.

Jaclene Zauszniewski, the Kate Hanna Harvey Professor in Community Health Nursing and associate dean for doctoral education at the school, has developed a brief 8-item survey to help healthcare providers identify depressive thinking patterns that may lead to serious depression if not identified and addressed early.

Early life emotional trauma may stunt intellectual development, indicates the first long term study of its kind, published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

The impact seems to be the most damaging during the first two years of a child's life, the findings suggest.

The US researchers tracked the development of 206 children from birth to the age of eight years, who were taking part in the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. This study, which started in 1975, looks at which factors influence individual development.

JUPITER, FL, April 2, 2012 – Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have shown in animal models that the loss of memory that comes with aging is not necessarily a permanent thing.

In a new study published this week in an advance, online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Ron Davis, chair of the Department of Neuroscience at Scripps Florida, and Ayako Tonoki-Yamaguchi, a research associate in Davis's lab, took a close look at memory and memory traces in the brains of both young and old fruit flies.

CHICAGO – Immunotherapy with the antibody bapineuzumab in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer disease resulted in decreases in a cerebrospinal fluid biomarker, which may indicate downstream effects on the degenerative process, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Neurology, a JAMA Network publication.

PORTLAND, Ore. - According to new research conducted at Oregon Health & Science University, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is more than one disorder. It's an entire family of disorders, much like the multiple subtypes of cancer.

An international team of researchers involving the University of Adelaide and University of Colorado has made a major discovery that could lead to more effective treatment of severe pain using morphine.

Morphine is an extremely important drug for pain relief, but it can lead to a range of side-effects - such as patients developing tolerance to morphine and increased sensitivity to pain. Until now, how this occurs has remained a mystery.

A team of University of Pittsburgh mathematicians is using computational models to better understand how the structure of neural variability relates to such functions as short-term memory and decision making. In a paper published online April 2 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the Pitt team examines how fluctuations in brain activity can impact the dynamics of cognitive tasks.

EUGENE, Ore. -- Bickering spouses may need to clean up their act. New research at the University of Oregon finds that the level of aggression between partners around the time when a child is born impacts how a mom will be parenting three years later.

New research published in the April issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine reveals that systemic inflammation causes an increase in depressive symptoms and metabolic changes in the parts of the brain responsible for mood and motivation. With this finding, researchers can begin to test potential treatments for depression for patients that experience symptoms that are related to inflammation in the body or within the brain.

Neural imaging—maps of brain functions—is a primary tool used by researchers hoping to transform the lives of people living with chronic neurological conditions such as epilepsy. At present, researchers often require several different imaging techniques to fully map brain functions, making research and treatment of these conditions expensive and inefficient.

The surveyed women spend an average of 81 minutes per day on Facebook, whereas men spend 64 minutes. Low educated groups and low income groups who spend more time on Facebook also report feeling less happy and less content with their lives. This relationship between time spent on Facebook and well-being is also salient for women, but not for men. These are some of the results of Sweden's largest Facebook study ever, a project led by Leif Denti, doctoral student of psychology at the University of Gothenburg.

You might get hooked

There is a long-lasting and at times intense debate about the possible link between violent computer games and aggressiveness. A group of researchers from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, are now questioning the entire basis of the discussion. In a recently published article, they present a new study showing that, more than anything, a good ability to cooperate is a prerequisite for success in the violent gaming environment.

Chicago, IL – April, 2, 2012 – One of the most frustrating challenges for some stroke patients can be the inability to find and speak words even if they know what they want to say. Speech therapy is laborious and can take months. New research is seeking to cut that time significantly, with the help of non-invasive brain stimulation.

AMHERST, Mass. – As computer scientists this year celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the mathematical genius Alan Turing, who set out the basis for digital computing in the 1930s to anticipate the electronic age, they still quest after a machine as adaptable and intelligent as the human brain.

Despite a world of opportunities just a click away, there has been no significant shift in the uptake of lifelong learning over the past decade according to new research.

Pronouncements at government level about the creation of 'a learning society' where education is the key to a nation's economic development - the so-called 'knowledge economy'- are not backed by evidence in society, the researchers found.