Brain

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- MIT postdoc Emile Bruneau has long been drawn to conflict — not as a participant, but an observer. In 1994, while doing volunteer work in South Africa, he witnessed firsthand the turmoil surrounding the fall of apartheid; during a 2001 trip to visit friends in Sri Lanka, he found himself in the midst of the violent conflict between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan military.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A newly published paper from Rhode Island Hospital reports on the impact to patients if five personality disorders are removed from the upcoming revision to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 5th edition (DSM-5). Based on their study, the researchers believe these changes could result in false-negative diagnoses for patients. The paper is published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry and is now available online in advance of print.

In cultures that permit men to take multiple wives, the intra-sexual competition that occurs causes greater levels of crime, violence, poverty and gender inequality than in societies that institutionalize and practice monogamous marriage.

That is a key finding of a new University of British Columbia-led study that explores the global rise of monogamous marriage as a dominant cultural institution. The study suggests that institutionalized monogamous marriage is rapidly replacing polygamy because it has lower levels of inherent social problems.

Researchers at the University of Michigan analyzed the tremendous cost of diagnosing peripheral neuropathy and found that less expensive, more effective tests are less likely to be used.

Almost one-quarter of patients receiving neuropathy diagnoses undergo high-cost, low-yield MRIs while very few receive low-cost, high-yield glucose tolerance tests, according to the study that will be published Jan. 23 in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The research was led by Brian Callaghan, M.D., assistant professor of neurology at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Berkeley — A new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, provides even more reason for people to read a book or do a puzzle, and to make such activities a lifetime habit.

Brain scans revealed that people with no symptoms of Alzheimer's who engaged in cognitively stimulating activities throughout their lives had fewer deposits of beta-amyloid, a destructive protein that is the hallmark of the disease.

Children at risk for dyslexia show differences in brain activity on MRI scans even before they begin learning to read, finds a study at Children's Hospital Boston. Since developmental dyslexia responds to early intervention, diagnosing children at risk before or during kindergarten could head off difficulties and frustration in school, the researchers say. Findings appear this week in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Brain scans of people under the influence of the psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, have given scientists the most detailed picture to date of how psychedelic drugs work. The findings of two studies being published in scientific journals this week identify areas of the brain where activity is suppressed by psilocybin and suggest that it helps people to experience memories more vividly.

Graphene is largely transparent to the eye and, as it turns out, largely transparent to water.

A new study by scientists at Rice University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) has determined that gold, copper and silicon get just as wet when clad by a single continuous layer of graphene as they would without.

The research, reported this week in the online edition of Nature Materials, is significant for scientists learning to fine-tune surface coatings for a variety of applications.

An Emory University neuro-imaging study shows that personal values that people refuse to disavow, even when offered cash to do so, are processed differently in the brain than those values that are willingly sold.

"Our experiment found that the realm of the sacred – whether it's a strong religious belief, a national identity or a code of ethics – is a distinct cognitive process," says Gregory Berns, director of the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University and lead author of the study. The results were published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

In the classic film "12 Angry Men," Henry Fonda's character sways a jury with his quiet, persistent intelligence. But would he have succeeded if he had allowed himself to fall sway to the social dynamics of that jury?

Women's emotional responses can vary significantly premenstrually. They may become depressed or grumpy during menstruation or the premenstrual phase, known as premenstrual syndrome (PMS). Roughly 75% of reproductive-age women report premenstrual mood swings or physical discomfort. Brain scans show a significant increase in activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex related to emotional processing premenstrually, even if women's emotional responses do not vary significantly.

Rising human carbon dioxide emissions may be affecting the brains and central nervous system of sea fishes with serious consequences for their survival, an international scientific team has found.

Carbon dioxide concentrations predicted to occur in the ocean by the end of this century will interfere with fishes' ability to hear, smell, turn and evade predators, says Professor Phillip Munday of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University.

Psychological research has found that religious people feel great about themselves, with a tendency toward higher social self-esteem and better psychological adjustment than non-believers and a new study in Psychological Science confirms that, but found it is only true in countries that put a higher value on religion.

MADISON -- Fruit flies don't have noses, but a huge part of their brains is dedicated to processing smells. Flies probably rely on the sense of smell more than any other sense for essential activities such as finding mates and avoiding danger.

UW-Madison researchers have discovered that a gene called distal-less is critical to the fly's ability to receive, process and respond to smells.

A study of a controversial housing project that allows chronically homeless people with severe alcohol problems to drink in their apartments found that during their first two years in the building residents cut their heavy drinking by 35 percent.

For every three months during the study, participants drank an average of 8 percent fewer drinks on their heaviest drinking days.

They also had fewer instances of delirium tremens, a life-threatening form of alcohol withdrawal.

The American Journal of Public Health published the findings Jan. 19.