Brain

How women perceive their bodies during pregnancy and how that impacts on their weight gain has been the subject of a new study by University of Adelaide researchers.

Researchers in the University's Robinson Institute and the School of Psychology have studied more than 400 South Australian women to better understand the links between body image and excessive weight gain during pregnancy.

University of Adelaide researchers have made advances in the understanding of one of the world's most common medical conditions, gastric reflux, and how patients experience pain from it.

Gastric reflux affects as many as one in five people in Western countries and is on the increase in Asia. Diet and lifestyle, as well as genetic and hormonal issues, are commonly considered to be major causes of gastric reflux.

In laboratory studies, researchers have identified the nerve pathways in the spinal cord that transmit pain signals associated with gastric reflux to the brain.

The response to common life events may trigger long lasting physiological changes in the brain, say the authors.

They base their findings on 800 Swedish women whose mental health and wellbeing was formally tracked over a period of almost 40 years as part of the larger Prospective Population Study of Women in Gothenburg, Sweden, which started in 1968.

BOSTON (Sept. 30, 2013) — Short-term hearing loss during childhood may lead to persistent hearing deficits, long after basic auditory sensitivity has returned to normal. The processing of sound in the brain is shaped by early experience. New research from Massachusetts Eye and Ear has identified two critical periods occurring shortly after hearing onset that regulate how sounds from each ear are fused into a coherent representation in the brain. Their research is described in Nature Communications.

The logo of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics includes red, white and blue stars, but the white star is not really there: It is an illusion. Similarly, the "S" in the USA Network logo is wholly illusory.

Both of these logos take advantage of a common perceptual illusion where the brain, when viewing a fragmented background, frequently sees shapes and surfaces that don't really exist.

New research shows that humans distinguish the difference between fine textures, such as silk or satin, through vibrations, which are picked up by two separate sets of nerve receptors in the skin and relayed to the brain.

Bethesda, MD—A group of really brainy scientists have moved closer to growing "therapeutic" brain cells in the laboratory that can be re-integrated back into patients' brains to treat a wide range of neurological conditions.

Researchers say it's clear that some cases of autism are hereditary, but have struggled to draw direct links between the condition and particular genes. Now a team at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology has devised a process for connecting a suspect gene to its function in autism.

Perception of NTS are basic cognitive processes for humans to interact with their environment. Whether a common magnitude system exits for NTS processing is such an important question to investigate. Following and guided by previous researchers, Dr. Yalin Chen and Chang Liu, from the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and the School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, China, reviewed present evidence and provided some comments concerning this question.

Researchers report a skyrocketing increase in the number of visits to the emergency department for kids with sports-related traumatic brain injuries (TBI), such as concussions.

The study, conducted by emergency physicians at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, shows that emergency visits for sports-related TBI increased 92 percent between 2002 and 2011.

The use of psychotropic prescription medications to treat ADHD, mood disorders, anxiety and other mental health disorders in very young children appears to have leveled off.

A national study of 2 to 5 year olds shows that overall psychotropic prescription use peaked in 2002-2005, then leveled off from 2006-2009. The researchers also discovered increased use of these medications among boys, white children and those without private health insurance during the 16-year study period, 1994-2009.

(New York, New York) September 27, 2013 - Oxytocin - often referred to as the 'love hormone' because of its ability to promote mother-infant attachment and romantic bonding in adults - could also make us more accepting of other people, as found in new research, "Oxytocin Sharpens Self-other Perceptual Boundary," by Neuropsychoanalysis Foundation research grantee Valentina Colonnello Ph.D. published online today in Psychoneuroendocrinology.

BOSTON - (September 27, 2013) - Joslin researchers have identified immune cells that promote growth of beta cells in type 1 diabetes. This study provides further evidence of a changed role for immune cells in type 1 diabetes pathology. The study appears online today and will also appear in the January issue of Diabetes.

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Infants show strong universals as they acquire their native language, but a recent study with infants acquiring Korean also reveals that there are striking language differences.

Sandra Waxman, Louis W. Menk Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, is senior author of a new study providing the first ever evidence comparing how infants (monolingual, from Korea) acquiring Korean learn new nouns and verbs.

INDIANAPOLIS -- People with mental illness smoke at much higher rates than the overall population. But the popular belief that they are self-medicating is most likely wrong, according to researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Instead, they report, research indicates that psychiatric disease makes the brain more susceptible to addiction.