Brain

Philadelphia, PA, 30 August 2010 - The notion that cutting or burning oneself could provide relief from emotional distress is difficult to understand for most people, but it is an experience reported commonly among people who compulsively hurt themselves.

Individuals with borderline personality disorder experience intense emotions and often show a deficiency of emotion regulation skills. This group of people also displays high prevalence rates of self-injurious behavior, which may help them to reduce negative emotional states.

Washington, DC, 30 August 2010 – The coming weeks mark the return to school for many of our youngest citizens. Sadly the satisfaction of making new friends and obtaining good test scores may be overshadowed by the prospect of substance abuse for some school-aged adolescents.

Montreal, August 30, 2010 – Canadian teenagers enjoy more freedom than French and Italian peers, according to a new study published in the Journal of Adolescence. The investigation, which examined how parents fashion emotional bonds and exert behavioural control with adolescents, was led by scientists from the University of Montreal, the Université de Rennes in France and the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Italy.

BATON ROUGE – Five years ago, New Orleans was hit by one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history. Three years later – almost to the day – the city survived another major hurricane with barely a scratch. What happened to make the outcomes of Hurricane Gustav so much different from Katrina?

All humans are synchronised to the rhythmic light-dark changes that occur on a daily basis. Rhythms in physiological and biochemical processes and behavioural patterns persist in the absence of all external 24-hour signals from the physical environment, with a period that is close to 24 hours. These rhythms are referred to as ´circadian´, from the Latin ´circa diem´ (´about a day´), and are attributable to internal biological clocks, driven by a major circadian pacemaker in the brain.

Schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders are a chronic and often disabling condition. Despite modern treatment techniques they still present an enormous burden to the patients and their relatives and take a serious toll in terms of human suffering and societal expenditure.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- In the first study of its kind, researchers have found compelling evidence that our best and worst experiences in life are likely to involve not individual accomplishments, but interaction with other people and the fulfillment of an urge for social connection.

GALVESTON – Traumatic brain injury, currently considered a singular event by the insurance industry and many health care providers, is instead the beginning of an ongoing process that impacts multiple organ systems and may cause or accelerate other diseases and disorders that can reduce life expectancy, according to research from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

Adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) who received medication and individual sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) showed greater improvement in symptoms through 12 months compared to patients who did not receive CBT, according to a study in the August 25 issue of .

BOSTON, Aug. 23, 2010 — Scientists today reported the first evidence that eating blueberries, strawberries, and acai berries may help the aging brain stay healthy in a crucial but previously unrecognized way. Their study, presented at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), concluded that berries, and possibly walnuts, activate the brain's natural "housekeeper" mechanism, which cleans up and recycles toxic proteins linked to age-related memory loss and other mental decline.

A specific type of fat present in cell membranes also serves as a cellular pH sensor, a team of University of British Columbia researchers has discovered.

pH is a measure of acidity or basicity. Cells need to maintain pH in order to perform their normal cellular functions. However, the mechanisms by which cells monitor pH were unknown.

Doctors have used the drug disulfiram to help patients stay sober for several decades. It interferes with the body's ability to metabolize alcohol, giving a fierce hangover to someone who consumes even a small amount of alcohol.

More recently, disulfiram was shown to be effective in treating cocaine addiction as well, even though alcohol and cocaine affect the nervous system in different ways.