Brain

Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are more likely to become obese and sedentary teenagers, according to new research.

Previous studies have suggested a link between ADHD and obesity, but whether one leads to the other is unclear. One way to better understand the link is to follow children through to adolescence.

Rate of change in the thickness of the brain's cortex is an important factor associated with a person's change in IQ, according to a collaborative study by scientists in five countries including researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital – The Neuro, at McGill University and the McGill University Health Centre. The study has potentially wide-ranging implications for the pedagogical world and for judicial cases in which the defendant's IQ score could play a role in determining the severity of the sentence.

LIVERPOOL, UK – 5 March 2014: People who copy their friend's drinking behaviour will deny that their decision has been influenced, researchers at the University of Liverpool have shown.

A new study, conducted in the University of Liverpool's bar laboratory, a lab designed to imitate a bar, brought together pairs of friends. One of the friends was made aware of the experimental aims and was told to drink alcoholic drinks throughout the session or to stick to soft drinks.

Social media may fuel unprecedented civic engagement. Digital networks might make possible mass protest and revolution – think "Arab Spring." But sometimes and maybe even most of the time, a new study suggests, the accomplishments of online activism are much more modest.

A recent study sheds new light on the phenomenon known as "gaydar," or the ability to determine another person's sexual orientation.

The study found that women who identified as lesbians were better at detecting sexual orientation in other women, but that straight women were more attune to detecting emotion and personality in their peers.

Middle-aged adults who suddenly need reading glasses, patients with traumatic brain injuries, and people with visual disorders such as "lazy eye" may have one thing in common --"visual crowding," an inability to recognize individual items surrounded by multiple objects. Visual crowding makes it impossible to read, as single letters within words are rendered illegible. And basic cognitive functions such as facial recognition can also be significantly hampered. Scientists and clinicians currently attribute crowding to a disorder in peripheral vision.

Just like adults, children as young as 3 tend to judge an individual's character traits, such as trustworthiness and competence, simply by looking at the person's face, new research shows. And they show remarkable consensus in the judgments they make, the findings suggest.

Their study is published today (3rd March 2014) in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

The research team have found that a plant pigment called quercetin – present in some fruits, vegetables, herbs and grains – could help to prevent damage to the nerves associated with the childhood form of motor neurone disease, spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- For some parents, the decision of when to enroll their children into kindergarten can result in costly consequences such as another year of daycare expenses. In general, children must be five years old to be eligible to be enrolled in kindergarten. However, the developmental differences between a young kindergartener who barely qualifies for the state-mandated age cutoff date compared to a child who is almost year older, may have implications.

Quebec City, March 3rd, 2014—A team of researchers from Université Laval and CHU de Québec identified unusually high levels of a certain protein in the brains of people suffering from essential tremor (ET), a movement disorder that affects 4% of the adult population. The discovery, the details of which were published in the most recent edition of the journal Movement Disorders, could lead to an effective treatment for this neurological condition, which is 10 times more prevalent than Parkinson's disease.

The young, it turns out, smoke more than any other age group in America. Unfortunately, the period of life ranging from late adolescence to early adulthood is also a time when the brain is still developing.

A team of researchers from National University of Singapore (NUS) have created the first two-photon, small molecule fluorogenic probe that can serve as a useful tool for the rapid assessment of an individual's potential risk for Parkinson's disease. The highly sensitive fluorescence probe can detect with high precision the activity of Monoamine Oxidase B (MAO-B), an enzyme that is found in elevated levels in patients with Parkinson's disease.

• Many people believe that hangovers can either delay subsequent drinking due to pain and discomfort, or hasten drinking to relieve hangover symptoms.
• A new study investigates if a hangover that follows a drinking episode can influence the time to next drink.
• Results indicate that hangovers appear to have a very modest effect on subsequent drinking.

• Studies examining the potential health benefits of moderate drinking generally focus on average levels of drinking rather than drinking patterns.
• A new study shows that, among older moderate drinkers, those who binge drink have a significantly greater mortality risk than regular moderate drinkers.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Veterans exposed to explosions who do not report symptoms of traumatic brain injury (TBI) may still have damage to the brain's white matter comparable to veterans with TBI, according to researchers at Duke Medicine and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

The findings, published in the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation on March 3, 2014, suggest that a lack of clear TBI symptoms following an explosion may not accurately reflect the extent of brain injury.