Violent video games alter brain function in young men

A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analysis of long-term effects of violent video game play on the brain has found changes in brain regions associated with cognitive function and emotional control in young adult men after one week of game play. The results of the study were presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).  The controversy over whether or not violent video games are potentially harmful to users has raged for many years, making it as far as the Supreme Court in 2010. But there has been little scientific evidence demonstrating that the games have a prolonged negative neurological effect.  "For the first time, we have found that a sample of randomly assigned...

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Eating fish reduces risk of Alzheimer's disease

People who eat baked or broiled fish on a weekly basis may be improving their brain health and reducing their risk of developing mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease, according to a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).  "This is the first study to establish a direct relationship between fish consumption, brain structure and Alzheimer's risk," said Cyrus Raji, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. "The results showed that people who consumed baked or broiled fish at least one time per week had better preservation of gray matter volume on MRI in brain areas at risk for Alzheimer's...

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Dieters should eat foods rich in protein, mostly from dairy, to protect bones during weight loss

New research suggests that a calorie-restricted diet higher in protein—mostly from dairy foods—and lower in carbohydrates coupled with daily exercise has a major positive impact on bone health in overweight and obese young women.  The study, published online in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, found bone health improvements were particularly evident due to the high density of bone-supporting nutrients such as calcium, vitamin D and dairy-based protein.  For 16 weeks, three groups of overweight and obese, but otherwise healthy, premenopausal women each consumed either low, medium or high amounts of dairy foods coupled with higher or lower amounts of protein and carbohydrates. Calcium and vitamin D levels...

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Environment and Diet leave their prints on the heart

A University of Cambridge study, which set out to investigate DNA methylation in the human heart and the "missing link" between our lifestyle and our health, has now mapped the link in detail across the entire human genome.   The new data collected greatly benefits a field that is still in its scientific infancy and is a significant leap ahead of where the researchers were, even 18 months ago.  Researcher Roger Foo explains: “By going wider and scanning the genome in greater detail this time – we now have a clear picture of the ‘fingerprint’ of the missing link, where and how epigenetics in heart failure may be changed and the parts of the genome where diet or environment or other external factors may affect outcomes.”  The...

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Study debunks stereotype that men think about sex all day long

Men may think about sex more often than women do, but a new study suggests that men also think about other biological needs, such as eating and sleep, more frequently than women do, as well.  And the research discredits the persistent stereotype that men think about sex every seven seconds, which would amount to more than 8,000 thoughts about sex in 16 waking hours. In the study, the median number of young men's thought about sex stood at almost 19 times per day. Young women in the study reported a median of nearly 10 thoughts about sex per day.  As a group, the men also thought about food almost 18 times per day and sleep almost 11 times per day, compared to women's median number of thoughts about eating and sleep, at nearly...

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Original Thinkers More Likely to Cheat, Study Finds

Creative people are more likely to cheat than less creative people, possibly because this talent increases their ability to rationalize their actions, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.  "Greater creativity helps individuals solve difficult tasks across many domains, but creative sparks may lead individuals to take unethical routes when searching for solutions to problems and tasks," said lead researcher Francesca Gino, PhD, of Harvard University.  Gino and her co-author, Dan Ariely, PhD, of Duke University, conducted a series of five experiments to test their thesis that more creative people would cheat under circumstances where they could justify their bad behavior. Their research was...

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Scientists ID ‘Morning Person’ Gene

Napoleon Bonaparte, Margaret Thatcher, Leonardo da Vinci … history is full of  names of famous figures who accomplished historical feats on reportedly few hours of sleep. Now, new research suggests they may have had a  certain genetic advantage.  Scientists at Germany’s Ludwig Maximalians University of Munich have found that one gene, called ABCC9, influences sleep duration and could explain why certain people seem able to operate on limited amounts of shut-eye. The researchers studied responses to a sleep survey from more than 4,000 Europeans in seven different countries and also scanned their genomes. They found that people who had two copies of a particular variant of the ABCC9 gene generally reported sleeping for shorter...

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A Vaccination Against Social Prejudice

Evolutionary psychologists suspect that prejudice is rooted in survival: Our distant ancestors had to avoid outsiders who might have carried disease. Research still shows that when people feel vulnerable to illness, they exhibit more bias toward stigmatized groups. But a new study in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science suggests there might be a modern way to break that link.  “We thought if we could alleviate concerns about disease, we could also alleviate the prejudice that arises from them,” says Julie Y. Huang of the University of Toronto, about a study she conducted with Alexandra Sedlovskaya of Harvard University; Joshua M. Ackerman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology;...

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Study Looks at the Nature of Change in Our Aging, Changing Brains

As we get older, our cognitive abilities change, improving when we're younger and declining as we age. Scientists posit a hierarchical structure within which these abilities are organized. There's the "lowest" level -- measured by specific tests, such as story memory or word memory; the second level, which groups various skills involved in a category of cognitive ability, such as memory, perceptual speed, or reasoning; and finally, the "general," or G, factor, a sort of statistical aggregate of all the thinking abilities.  What happens to this structure as we age? That was the question Timothy A. Salthouse, Brown-Forman professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, investigated in a new study appearing in an upcoming issue...

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When errors improve performance: Model describes how experiences influence our perception

During estimation processes we unconsciously make use of recent experiences. Scientists from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich and the Bernstein Center Munich asked test subjects to estimate distances in a virtual reality environment. The results revealed that estimates tended to approach the mean of all previously experienced distances. For the first time, scientists were able to accurately predict the experimental findings using a mathematical model. The model combines two well-known laws of psychophysics with a theorem from probability theory. The study could be of fundamental relevance to research on perception.  Why do we perceive identical distances as long in one situation and short in another? It all depends on...

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Adenoviruses can cause respiratory, eye, and intestinal tract infections, and, like other viruses, must hijack the cellular machinery of infected organisms in order to produce proteins and their own viral spawn. Now an international research team made up of scientists from Chinese and Australian universities has found a way to disrupt the hijacking process by using plasma to damage the viruses in the laboratory environment, before they come into contact with host cells.  The researchers prepared solutions containing adenoviruses and then treated the samples with a low-temperature plasma created by applying a voltage to a gaseous mixture in a syringe. The strong electric field energized electrons that collided with molecules in the...

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3pm slump? Why a sugar rush may not be the answer

A new study has found that protein and not sugar activates the cells responsible for keeping us awake and burning calories.  The research, published today in the 17 November issue of the scientific journal Neuron, has implications for understanding obesity and sleep disorders.  Neurons [Credit: Denis Burdakov] Wakefulness and energy expenditure rely on “orexin cells”, which secrete a stimulant called orexin/hypocretin in the brain. Reduced activity in these unique cells results in narcolepsy and has been linked to weight gain.  Scientists at the University of Cambridge compared actions of different nutrients on orexin cells. They found that amino acids – nutrients found in proteins such as egg whites – stimulate orexin...

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The ethics of smart drugs

Professor Barbara Sahakian, Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology at the University of Cambridge, has been researching cognitive enhancers for over a decade.  Here she discusses the emergence of ‘smart drugs’ and the ethical and practical issues they raise.   There is an increasing lifestyle use of cognitive enhancing drugs, or smart drugs by healthy people. Why might this be? And how will it change our society? Are people using these drugs just realize their potential, or is it that pressures to perform in a globally competitive environment means that individuals’ feel that they cannot afford an ‘off day’ due to lack of sleep or stress?  This is perhaps particularly true of certain professions, where there are issues of...

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Denying mental qualities to animals in order to eat them

New research by Dr Brock Bastian from UQ's School of Psychology highlights the psychological processes that people engage in to reduce their discomfort over eating meat.  This paper will be published in an upcoming edition of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, where Dr Bastian and his co-authors show that people deny mental qualities to animals they eat.  "Many people like eating meat, but most are reluctant to harm things that have minds. Our studies show that this motivates people to deny minds to animals," Dr Bastian said.  The research demonstrates when people are confronted with the harm that their meat-eating brings to food animals they view those animals as possessing fewer mental capacities compared...

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DNA discovery may boost stem cell safety

A region of DNA that can boost the growth of stem cells has been found in the largest ever study of human embryonic stem cells.  Stem cells need to be grown in the best possible way to stop gene mutations [Credit: iStockphoto] The discovery could lead to safer cell therapies, says study co-author Dr Andrew Laslett from CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering.  The research by the International Stem Cell Initiative involved 38 laboratories across the globe studying 125 ethnically diverse cell lines in parallel experiments.  Study findings, reported in today's issue of Nature Biotechnology, uncover changes that arise from how cells are grown.  Embryonic stem cells are powerful for their ability to become any other cell...

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Scientists identify defect in brain cell channel that may cause autism-like syndrome

Neuroscientists at Stanford University School of Medicine have homed in on potential differences in autistic people's brain cells by studying brainlike spheres grown in an elaborate process from skin cells.  The scientists studied cells from patients with Timothy syndrome, a rare genetic condition that is associated with one of the most penetrant forms of autism: In other words, most people with the Timothy syndrome mutation have autism as a symptom, among other problems.  Autism is a spectrum of developmental disorders of impaired social and verbal interaction. Currently, no medication exists to treat its underlying causes, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Understanding what goes awry in autistic brain development...

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Exercise helps us to eat a healthy diet

A healthy diet and the right amount of exercise are key players in treating and preventing obesity but we still know little about the relationship both factors have with each other. A new study now reveals that an increase in physical activity is linked to an improvement in diet quality.  A healthy diet and the right amount of exercise are key players in treating and preventing obesity but we still know little about the relationship both factors have with each other. A new study now reveals that an increase in physical activity is linked to an improvement in diet quality [Credit: SINC] Many questions arise when trying to lose weight. Would it be better to start on a diet and then do exercise, or the other way around? And how much does...

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