Deep Brain Stimulation Promising For Treatment Resistant Depression
A new biological treatment for Major Depressive Disorder is able to provide improvements for a significant proportion of patients, according to new research published in the online issue of Biological Psychiatry by scientists from the University of Toronto and Emory University School of Medicine.
Psychopathology: Brain Activity Could Be Used To Diagnose OCD
Some new research has been unveiled that adds to a growing body of evidence supporting biological explanations of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; it further supports the link between the functioning of the orbitofrontal cortex and OCD.
Students who will be studying perception for AQA-A Unit 4 might be interested in this new illusion by MIT researchers, which uses touch instead of vision to create the illusion.
Don't like going to the gym? Hate exercise? Now there's an excuse: new studies on mice have shown that the desire to exercise may be largely determined by genetic factors. This suggests that some people may find it easy to increase their activity levels to get healthy, while others will struggle.
Stress has been shown to have a negative effect on the immune system in many studies; for example, Kiecolt-Glaser et al (1984) found that exam stress reduced the function of important immune cells; other studies have shown that wounds are slower to heal when people are suffering from stress. Now new research by Rita Effros, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and a member of the Jonsson
Cancer Center, Molecular Biology Institute and UCLA AIDS Institute may explain how stress ages the immune system.
The Positive Effects of Daycare on Cognitive Development May Only Be Short-Term
Many studies have shown that children who receive non-maternal care have higher cognitive development and language scores than those who do not (e.g., Sylva et al, in press). Nevertheless, studies in the United States have found that children in full-day kindergarten have slightly better reading and math
skills than children in part-day kindergarten, but these initial
academic benefits diminish soon after the children leave kindergarten.
This loss is due, in part, to issues related to poverty and the quality
of children's home environments, according to a
new study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Loyola
University Chicago. Published in the July/August 2008 issue of the
journal Child Development, the study sheds light on policy discussions as full-day kindergarten programs become increasingly common in the United States.
Nature Nurture Debate: Delinquency due to interaction between genes and social factors
New research carried out by sociologists has added to wealth of evidence that nature and nurture cannot be treated as separate factors when explaining human behaviour: human behaviour is the result of interactions between genes and the environment. Whether genes are expressed depends on environmental factors and genes themselves can change the environment.
New research from Lisa Feigenson and Justin Halberda at The Johns
Hopkins University shows that chunking as a method of improving memory may be an inborn, rather than a learned strategy: even 14 months olds in their study showed increases in working memory capacity when toys were grouped in conceptual categories.
Born to be Kind - Is Empathy Hard-wired in the Brain?
Children between the ages of seven and 12 appear to be naturally
inclined to feel empathy for others in pain, according to researchers
at the University of Chicago, who used functional Magnetic Resonance
Imaging (fMRI) scans to study responses in children.
Subtle Reminders of Money Make People More Hardworking, But Less Helpful and Sociable
An article recently published in Current Directions in Psychological Science,
a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, has implications for the Pro-social Behaviour section of the AQA-A A2 specification. It shows how even subtle reminders of money can influence behaviour.
Money is a necessity: it provides us
with material objects that are important for survival and for
entertainment, and it is often used as a reward. But recent studies
have shown that money is not only a device for gaining wealth, but a
factor in personal performance, interpersonal relations and helping
behaviour, as well.
John Bowlby claimed that attachment serves an adaptive purpose: to keep parents and caregivers close to ensure the child's survival. In the early stages of attachment, babies use social releasers, such as crying, grasping, smiling and gazing, to elicit adults' caregiving; Bowlby believed that adults are innately programmed to respond to these signals. Now research using event-related fMRI ,a technique that shows which parts of the brain are activated in response to specific events, has shown that the reward centres of mothers' brains are activated by their own child's smile, but not by the smiles of other children. The report by Baylor College of Medicine
researchers appears in the journal Pediatrics today.
The Role of Context on Pattern Recognition and Perception: Imagination Influences What You See
New research, relevant to the Cognitive Psychology section of the A2 specification, shows that mental imagery can influence perception. For those of you who like lame, obcure jokes that no one else understands - I tried to find a Neisser story...
Biological Therapies: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) effective in treating severe depression
There is significant evidence that
transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is effective in treating
severely depressed patients, a new study has found.
More evidence that intelligence can be affected by nurture, but biological determinism still rules (at least for gerbils)
New research findings published online in The FASEB Journal provide more evidence that if we get smart about what we eat, our
intelligence can improve. According to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientists, dietary
nutrients found in a wide range of foods from infant formula to eggs
increase brain synapses and improve cognitive abilities.
Children between the ages of seven and 12 appear to be naturally
inclined to feel empathy for others in pain, according to researchers
at the University of Chicago, who used functional Magnetic Resonance
Imaging (fMRI) scans to study responses in children.
John Bowlby claimed that attachment serves an adaptive purpose: to keep parents and caregivers close to ensure the child's survival. In the early stages of attachment, babies use social releasers, such as crying, grasping, smiling and gazing, to elicit adults' caregiving; Bowlby believed that adults are innately programmed to respond to these signals. Now research using event-related fMRI ,a technique that shows which parts of the brain are activated in response to specific events, has shown that the reward centres of mothers' brains are activated by their own child's smile, but not by the smiles of other children. The report by Baylor College of Medicine
researchers appears in the journal Pediatrics today.