Brain

San Diego -- Trying to resist that late-night tweet or checking your work email again? The bad news is that desires for work and entertainment often win out in the daily struggle for self-control, according to a new study that measures various desires and their regulation in daily life.

According to one University of Alberta researcher, people looking to further their education through e-learning may want to look carefully at the conditions under which online coursework will give them the biggest academic return on their investment.

San Diego -- Love can bring out both the best and the worst in people. Which way it turns depends on the best way to protect the relationship, say researchers studying the evolution of romantic love.

Pouring at least one glass of milk each day could not only boost your intake of much-needed key nutrients, but it could also positively impact your brain and mental performance, according to a recent study in the International Dairy Journal.1 Researchers found that adults with higher intakes of milk and milk products scored significantly higher on memory and other brain function tests than those who drank little to no milk. Milk drinkers were five times less likely to "fail" the test, compared to non milk drinkers.

Researchers studying a rare, lethal childhood tumor of the brainstem discovered that nearly 80 percent of the tumors have mutations in genes not previously tied to cancer. Early evidence suggests the alterations play a unique role in other aggressive pediatric brain tumors as well.

Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University (http://www.ohsu.edu) have discovered that a molecule critical to the development and plasticity of nerve cells – brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) -- is severely lacking in brainstem neurons in mutations leading to Rett syndrome, a neurological developmental disorder. The finding has implications for the treatment of neurological disorders, including Rett syndrome that affects one in 10,000 baby girls.

In a 2007 episode of the television show Boston Legal, a character claimed to have figured out that a cop was racist because his amygdala activated – displaying fear, when they showed him pictures of black people. This link between the amygdala and fear – especially a fear of others unlike us, has gone too far, not only in pop culture, but also in psychological science, say the authors of a new paper which will be published in the February issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The eyes are the window into the soul—or at least the mind, according to a new paper published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Measuring the diameter of the pupil, the part of the eye that changes size to let in more light, can show what a person is paying attention to. Pupillometry, as it's called, has been used in social psychology, clinical psychology, humans, animals, children, infants—and it should be used even more, the authors say.

KANSAS CITY, MO – Memories in our brains are maintained by connections between neurons called "synapses". But how do these synapses stay strong and keep memories alive for decades? Neuroscientists at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have discovered a major clue from a study in fruit flies: Hardy, self-copying clusters or oligomers of a synapse protein are an essential ingredient for the formation of long-term memory.

How will you feel if you fail that test? Awful, really awful, you say. Then you fail the test and, yes, you feel bad—but not as bad as you thought you would. This pattern holds for most people, research shows. The takeaway message: People are lousy at predicting their emotions. "Psychology has focused on how we mess up and how stupid we are," says University of Texas Austin psychologist Samuel D. Gosling. But Gosling and colleague Michael Tyler Mathieu suspected that researchers were missing part of the story.

EVANSTON, Ill. -- A Northwestern University study has found that the evidence for intuitive physics occurs in infants as young as two months – the earliest age at which testing can occur.

Intuitive physics includes skills that adults use all the time. For example, when a glass of milk falls off the table, a person might try to catch the cup, but they are not likely to try to catch the milk that spills out. The person doesn't have to consciously think about what to do because the brain processes the information and the person simply reacts.

DALLAS – Jan. 26, 2012 – Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have developed what they believe to be the first clinical application of a new imaging technique to diagnose brain tumors. The unique test could preclude the need for surgery in patients whose tumors are located in areas of the brain too dangerous to biopsy.

San Diego, January 26, 2012 - If you want to change how teenagers view bullying, go to the straight to the source of most school trends: the most connected crowd. According to new intervention research, targeting the most influential students in a school could be a key factor in reducing harassment and bullying.

A technique that delivers highly focused beams of radiation, known as Cyberknife, can relieve the stabbing pain of the facial nerve condition trigeminal neuralgia, indicates a small study published online in the Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery.

Trigeminal neuralgia is thought to affect around five in every 100,000 people. It takes its name from the trigeminal nerve, the source of the pain, which is experienced as a sharp, stabbing/burning sensation, affecting the jaw or cheek.