Brain

Brain scans of aggressive and antisocial teenage boys with conduct disorder (CD) have revealed differences in the structure of the developing brain that could link to their behaviour problems.

The study, funded jointly by the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council, reveals that the brain differences were present regardless of the age of onset of the disorder, challenging the view that adolescence-onset CD is merely a consequence of imitating badly behaved peers.

Lung cancer death rates in women have fallen for the first time in four decades, according to an annual report on the status of cancer published online March 31 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The drop comes about 10 years after lung cancer deaths in men began to fall, a delay that reflects the later uptake of smoking by women in the middle of the last century.

When an aggressive form of breast cancer strikes a young woman, what kind of stress, anxiety and other psychological and social challenges does she face?

That question hasn't been answered in the published psychological cancer literature, but a new pilot study just launched is gathering data to change that, according to psychologist Georita M. Frierson at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

When fruit flies are hungry, they become especially attuned to the scent of their next good meal, according to a report in the April 1st issue of Cell, a Cell Press publication. That sensory and behavioral shift can be traced to insulin and to a neuropeptide already familiar in humans for its effects on a brain region that controls appetite.

"As humans, we sometimes forget that feeding behavior has two components," said Jing Wang of the University of California, San Diego. "First you have to go out and hunt for food." Actually eating that food is secondary.

Computer programs are incorporating more and more safety features to protect users, but those features can also slow the programs down by 1,000 percent or more. Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a software tool that helps these programs run much more efficiently without sacrificing their safety features.

Most people can read texts reflected in a mirror slowly and with some effort, but a team of scientists from the Basque Centre on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL) has shown for the first time that we can mentally turn these images around and understand them automatically and unconsciously, at least for a few instants.

When we suddenly get the answer to a riddle or understand the solution to a problem, we can practically feel the light bulb click on in our head. But what happens after the 'Aha!' moment? Why do the things we learn through sudden insight tend to stick in our memory?

When we suddenly get the answer to a riddle or understand the solution to a problem, we can practically feel the light bulb click on in our head. But what happens after the 'Aha!' moment? Why do the things we learn through sudden insight tend to stick in our memory?

Results from the first ever European-wide retrospective analysis presented today at the International Liver CongressTM have shown both D-penicillamine and trientine continue to be effective treatments, providing positive survival rates in patients with Wilson disease free from a liver transplant.

Philadelphia, PA, 31 March, 2011 - There is growing evidence that the risk factors for addiction change throughout the lifespan.

DALLAS – March 30, 2011 – Researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Center have described for the first time how the brain's memory center repairs itself following severe trauma – a process that may explain why it is harder to bounce back after multiple head injuries.

For simple sensory events—like turning on a light, for example—the brightness correlates well with the spike probability in a luminance-sensitive cell in the retina. "However, over the last decade or so, it has become apparent that neurons actually encode information about several features at the same time," says graduate student and first author Jeffrey D. Fitzgerald.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia and Union College (Schenectady, N.Y.) have found that people's death anxiety can influence them to support theories of intelligent design and reject evolutionary theory.

Existential anxiety also prompted people to report increased liking for Michael Behe, intelligent design's main proponent, and increased disliking for evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins

Research from Royal Holloway, University of London and the University of Bristol calls into question people's ability to form their own judgements about their preferred election candidate after finding voters could be heavily swayed by 'the worm' - a continuous response tracking measure this is increasingly being used in live election debates around the world.

The study "Social Influence in Televised Election Debates: A Potential Distortion of Democracy" is published today (30 March) in the journal PLoS One.

Research calls into question people's ability to form their own judgements about their preferred election candidate after finding voters could be heavily swayed by 'the worm'. 'The worm' is a continuous response tracking measure that is increasingly being used in live election debates around the world.

The University of Bristol and Royal Holloway, University of London study "Social Influence in Televised Election Debates: A Potential Distortion of Democracy" is published in the journal PLoS One.