Brain

How does the image-recognition technology in a self-driving car respond to a blurred shape suddenly appearing on the road? Researchers from KU Leuven, Belgium, have shown that machines can learn to respond to unfamiliar objects like human beings would.

Imagine heading home in your self-driving car. The rain is falling in torrents and visibility is poor. All of a sudden, a blurred shape appears on the road. What would you want the car to do? Should it hit the brakes, at the risk of causing the cars behind you to crash? Or should it just keep driving?

Parents may have an unexpectedly important role to play in their young children's ability to sustain attention, according to a study reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on April 28. The study shows that infants' attention to objects is extended when their parents pay attention too.

"When parents play with objects with their children, they extend in time the duration of the infant's attention to the object, and the infant then sustains attention after this point, on their own," says Chen Yu of Indiana University, Bloomington.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Caregivers whose eyes wander during playtime -- due to distractions such as smartphones or other technology, for example -- may raise children with shorter attention spans, according to a new study by psychologists at Indiana University.

The work, which appears online today in the journal Current Biology, is the first to show a direct connection between how long a caregiver looks at an object and how long an infant's attention remains focused on that same object.

Researchers at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan have discovered a protein complex that helps direct the growth of axons -- the parts of neurons that make up our nerves, connecting our senses and muscles to the brain and spinal cord. Published in Cell Reports, the study shows how the protein myosin-Va acts as a calcium sensor that tells new pieces of axon where they should go.

MADISON, Wis. -- A University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist has inserted a genetic switch into nerve cells so a patient can alter their activity by taking designer drugs that would not affect any other cell. The cells in question are neurons and make the neurotransmitter dopamine, whose deficiency is the culprit in the widespread movement disorder Parkinson's disease.

Parents' beliefs about whether failure is a good or a bad thing guide how their children think about their own intelligence, according to new research from Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The research indicates that it's parents' responses to failure, and not their beliefs about intelligence, that are ultimately absorbed by their kids.

Imagine your best friend tells you that his girlfriend has just proposed "staying friends". Now you have to accomplish two things: Firstly, you have to grasp that this nice sounding proposition actually means that she wants to break up with him and secondly, you should feel with your friend and comfort him.

Washington, D.C., April 28, 2016 -- A study to be published in the May 2016 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP) reports that use of certain antidepressants during pregnancy can result in offspring depression by early adolescence.

Peppermint tea can improve long-term and working memory and in healthy adults.

This is the finding of a study by Dr Mark Moss, Robert Jones and Lucy Moss of Northumbria University who presented their research thist at the British Psychological Society's Annual Conference in Nottingham.

Multiple Sclerosis affects nearly 2 and a half million people worldwide. It is a highly debilitating autoimmune disease: the condition severely reduces patients' quality of life through symptoms which disrupt motor, cognitive, and sensory systems. The disease, which in its most typical form is characterized by irregular remissions and acute attacks can create a state of increased anxiety in patients, and, according to scientists, can have negative cognitive/emotional effects as well, even influencing moral cognition in patients, as was observed in the recent study.

Neurons in our brain do a remarkable job of translating sensory information into reliable representations of our world that are critical to effectively guide our behavior. The parts of the brain that are responsible for vision have long been center stage for scientists' efforts to understand the rules that neural circuits use to encode sensory information.

People crave fatty and sugary foods when they are bored.

That is the conclusion of research being presented this week at the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society by Dr Sandi Mann from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan).

Dr Mann and her fellow authors, Faye Ibbitson and Ben Edwards, also from UCLan, conducted two studies of boredom and food choices.

Listening to traffic reports on the radio could be bad for your driving - you could even miss an elephant standing by the side of the road.

That is the conclusion of research being presented to the British Psychological Society's Annual Conference this week by PhD student Gillian Murphy of University College Cork and Dr Ciara Greene of University College Dublin.

Amsterdam, April 28, 2016 - A new version of an obesity drug that caused serious psychiatric side effects could help people lose pounds without experiencing the anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts previously associated with it. The research, published in Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry, shows that the new version of the drug can still work without reaching the brain in rats, avoiding the side effects.

New research challenges the belief that touchscreens are worse input devices because they lack physical buttons. The reason is that key press timing in touchscreen input is unpredictable. When timing is made more predictable, performance improves.

A research group at Aalto University, Finland, propose a new theory of computer input explaining for example why serious gamers avoid touchscreens and why playing a piano on a touchscreen is so awkward.