Brain

STANFORD, Calif. — People with generalized anxiety disorder, or GAD, have abnormalities in the way their brain unconsciously controls emotions. That's the conclusion of a new Stanford University School of Medicine study, and the study authors say the findings could open up new avenues for treatments and change our understanding of how emotion is regulated in everyday life.

The work is published online in this month's American Journal of Psychiatry.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- More than 55 percent of multiple sclerosis patients participating in the initial phase of the first randomized clinical study to determine if persons with MS exhibit narrowing of the extracranial veins, causing restriction of normal outflow of blood from the brain, were found to have the abnormality.

The results were reported today by neurology researchers at the University at Buffalo.

Milan, Italy, 10 February 2010 - You stop at a shop window and wonder why someone inside is blatantly staring at you — until you realize this person is you. Scenarios like this are impossible for us to imagine, but quite common for sufferers of acquired prosopagnosia (AP), a condition which can occur after brain damage, hindering the ability to recognize faces.

PHILADELPHIA (February 10, 2010) – New research from the Monell Center reports that children's response to intense sweet taste is related to both a family history of alcoholism and the child's own self-reports of depression.

The findings illustrate how liking for sweets differs among children based on underlying familial and biological factors.

ARLINGTON, Va. (Feb. 10, 2010) – The American Psychiatric Association today released the proposed draft diagnostic criteria for the fifth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The draft criteria represent content changes under consideration for DSM, which is the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health and other health professionals, and is used for diagnostic and research purposes.

While lower intelligence scores - as reflected by low results on written or oral tests of IQ - have been associated with a raised risk of cardiovascular disease, no study has so far compared the relative strength of this association with other established risk factors such as obesity, smoking and high blood pressure.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown once again that "ready, fire, aim," nonsensical though it may sound, can be an essential approach to research.

DALLAS – Feb. 10, 2010 – Many clinicians believe that depression goes hand in hand with cognitive difficulties such as memory problems or difficulties concentrating and paying attention, but a recent review of nearly 20 years of literature conducted by researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Center has found that depression does not always lead to such impairments.

A sick or sad child might cling to mom's leg. But that same child – fed, rested and generally content – will happily toddle off to explore every nook and cranny of the known world. Or: You're chipper and you decide to check out the new restaurant across town. You're blue and you turn to comfort foods.

TORONTO--A study by York University researchers reveals that infants as young as six months old know when we're "playing" them – and they don't like it.

Researchers in York's Centre for Infancy Studies examined six-and nine-month-old babies' reactions to a game in which an experimenter was either unable or unwilling to share a toy. Babies detected and calmly accepted when an experimenter was unable to share for reasons beyond her control, but averted their gazes and became agitated when it was clear she simply wouldn't share.

Exeter, UK—February 9, 2010—Leadership positions in business have proven to be precarious for women. Female business leaders are more likely to be appointed to powerful leadership positions when an organization is in crisis or high-risk circumstances. Researcher Dr. Michelle Ryan, who is publishing her research in a forthcoming issue of Psychology of Women Quarterly, proposes that this scenario of "the glass cliff" extends to the political arena.

DURHAM, N.C. -- In a novel study that used historical tape of a thrilling overtime basketball game between Duke and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, brain researchers at Duke have found that fans remember the good things their team did much better than the bad.

It's serious science, aimed at understanding the links between emotion and memory that might affect Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and how well people recall their personal histories.

As if there are not enough reasons for obese people to lose weight, a new research report published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), adds several more. In a study involving rats, researchers from Duke University found that obesity in mothers causes cellular programming in utero that predisposes offspring to inflammation-related disorders (such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, and more) from the day that they are born, regardless of whether or not the offspring are obese themselves.

We know exactly where an object is when we say it is "within the reach of our hand." But if we don't have a hand, can we still see the object just where it is?

Ever get a buzz from eating chocolate? A study published in the open access journal BMC Neuroscience has shown that chocolate-craving mice are ready to tolerate electric shocks to get their fix.

Rossella Ventura worked with a team of researchers from the Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy, to study the links between stress and compulsive food-seeking. She said, "We used a new model of compulsive behavior to test whether a previous stressful experience of hunger might override a conditioned response to avoid a certain kind of food-– in this case, chocolate".