Brain

Students are stigmatized for a variety of reasons, with youths from ethnic-minority backgrounds often feeling devalued in school. New research on young children from a range of backgrounds has found that even elementary school children are aware of such stigmatization and, like older youths, feel more anxious about school as a result. Children who are stigmatized are more likely to have less interest in school, yet ethnic-minority children in this study reported high interest in school in the face of stigma.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Many wonder why bullies bully, but a new study looks at the other side of the equation: How do children respond to bullying and why? The answer, researchers say, may lead to more effective interventions to reduce the negative consequences – and perhaps even the frequency – of bullying.

The study appears in the journal Child Development.

Second and third graders who are bullied react in a variety of ways—from discussing the problem or striking back to seeking emotional support. A new study in the journal Child Development has found that the types of goals children set in their relationships help determine how they respond to being bullied—and whether they choose responses that are effective.

The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

During childhood and adolescence, children develop the ability to remember not only past events but the origin of those memories. For example, someone may remember meeting a particular person and the context in which he or she met that person. New research from Germany has found that the ability to remember the origin of memories is a relatively long process that matures during adolescence but isn't fully developed until adulthood.

Children with difficult temperaments are often the most affected by the quality of their relationships with their caregivers. New research suggests that highly irritable children who have secure attachments to their mothers are more likely to get along well with others than those who aren't securely attached.

Relationships between mothers and their sons change during childhood and adolescence. However, not all relationships change in the same way, and how the relationships change may affect boys' behavior when they become teens.

Those are the findings of a new longitudinal study of low-income families by researchers at Wayne State University, Oklahoma State University, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Montreal, and the University of Oregon. The study appears in the journal Child Development.

The aroma of roasted cocoa beans, the key ingredient in chocolate, is actually a jumble of substances that individually smell like potato chips, cooked meat, peaches, raw beef fat, cooked cabbage, human sweat, earth, cucumber, honey and a whole lot of other distinctly un-cocoa-like aromas.

Death following severe traumatic brain injury is associated with a highly variable incidence of withdrawal of life support at the end of life, finds a new study in CMAJ. Rates of withdrawal of life support vary between hospitals, and caution should be used in making this decision, states the study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/site/embargo/cmaj101786.pdf.

AMES, Iowa -- Effective memory is a key ability for independent living in later life, and a new Iowa State University study is among the first to report that social partners can help extend memory. The study also found that the collaboration that helps middle-aged couples with memory tasks doesn't seem to be as effective for couples older than 70.

ITHACA, N.Y. — Losing weight without a grumbling stomach or expensive liquid diet can be as simple as eating a lighter lunch, finds a new Cornell University study to be published in the October issue of the journal Appetite.

Participants who ate portion-controlled lunches did not compensate by eating more calories later in the day, leading researchers to believe the human body does not possess the mechanisms necessary to notice a small drop in energy intake.

Who hasn't forgotten someone's name, misplaced their glasses or walked into a room and not remembered why they entered? Normal age-related memory decline affects more than half of all seniors, and those over 80 are the most vulnerable.

A new UCLA study has found that a memory fitness program offered to older adults in their senior living communities helped improve their ability to recognize and recall words, benefitting their verbal learning and retention.

As politicians know, repetition is often key to getting your message across. Now a former physicist studying linguistics at the Polish Academy of Sciences has taken this intuitive concept and incorporated it into a mathematical model of human communication.

Remember when your little league football team lost the game because someone ran the ball back into their own end zone? Take heart, one University of Alberta researcher says it may be the player's unfamiliarity with perceiving transitional cues and not a reflection on their playing skills.

Research from North Carolina State University shows that utilizing a freely available literacy tool results in significant advances in fundamental reading skills for elementary school students, without requiring schools to drastically overhaul existing programs. The research focused on children who were characterized as "struggling readers" at risk for a learning disability in reading.

Short-term energy storage in animal cells is usually achieved through the accumulation of glucose, in the form of long and branched chains, known as glycogen. But when this accumulation happens in neurons it is fatal, causing them to degenerate. This neuronal deterioration and death associated with glycogen accumulation is the hallmark of an extremely rare and progressive type of epilepsy known as Lafora disease (LD).