Scientific American

Getting Guinea Worm Gone: Report from the AHCJ Conference

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:16:08 EST

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Tetris Shown to Lessen PTSD and Flashbacks

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:00:00 EST

LONDON -- A seemingly trivial task – playing a particular video game – may lessen flashbacks and other psychological symptoms following a traumatic event, according to research presented here at the British Psychology Society Annual Conference.

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The Rue Age: Older Adults Disengage from Regrets, Young People Fixate on Them

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:00:00 EST

"Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret," wrote 19th-century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in his political novel, Coningsby . Hyperbole aside, he may have mixed things up a bit. The latest research suggests that young people tend to fixate on their regrets, whereas older adults generally learn not to waste time wallowing in remorse about past circumstances they cannot change. A new study demonstrates that these cognitive differences manifest themselves in brain scans and physiological responses, revealing that, unlike healthy adults, both depressed adults and young people treat missed opportunities and genuine losses as equally regretful events--even if they were not directly responsible. Taming such ruefulness appears to be crucial to emotional stability and happiness in old age , and related therapies could help adults with depression. For the young, however, a little regret might be useful, motivating them to learn from their mistakes. [More]

A Broken Sense of Self Underlies Eating Disorders (preview)

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 07:00:00 EST

Nell (not her real name) was shivering, but she did not realize she was cold. Only when a colleague pointed out her goose bumps and blue lips did she think to put on a sweater. Nor does she register feelings such as exhaustion. “Sometimes I don’t realize I’m tired until three in the morning,” she says. “I just don’t get those clues correctly.”

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Depression in Teens Could Be Diagnosed with Blood Test

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:00:00 EST

Can a psychiatric disorder be diagnosed with a blood test? That may be the future if two recent studies pan out. Researchers are figuring out how to differentiate the blood of a depressed person from that of someone without depression.

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Gene Hunt Is On for Mental Disabilities in Children

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:45:00 EST

By Ewen Callaway of Nature magazine

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Anxiety Boosts Threat Odor Perception

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 19:04:08 EST

When an animal faces a predator, its senses go into overdrive. So scientists wondered, could human anxiety be an evolutionary legacy to protect us against potential threats? And if so, might anxious people have a heightened sense of smell, presumably to detect predators or disease-carriers.

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Feeling Free

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 12:30:00 EST

At the end of a long day, I flop down on the couch and close my eyes. I burrow my face into a pillow and enjoy a few moments of silence. Yet one thought creeps into my consciousness. Go to the gym. Find your running shoes. It won’t kill you.

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Signs of Psychosis Appear Early (preview)

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:00:00 EST

From the moment he was handed to me in the delivery room, Alex, my firstborn, seemed not happy to be here. His eyes were bottomless, his expression grave. He spent his first three months writhing and screaming inconsolably, the word “colic” wholly insufficient to describe our collective suffering. It wasn’t until his brother, Sammy, arrived that I realized just how different Alex was compared with other babies. Sammy cried only when he was hungry or wet. He made easy eye contact and loved to be stroked, hugged and kissed--all the things Alex recoiled from as an infant.

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Mood Drug Can Both Cause and Relieve Anxiety

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 09:00:00 EST

If you have ever jumped at a loud noise and felt an adrenaline rush, you have experienced the effects of corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH). In the body, this hormone triggers the familiar fight-or-flight response--racing heart, shortness of breath, sweaty palms. In the brain, however, it acts as a chemical messenger, playing a role in anxiety and depression. That role, a new study suggests, is more complex than anyone expected.

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The Doctor Is Way Out

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 08:00:00 EST

This column is not about Newt Gingrich. Nor is it about Chaz Bono. It’s not even about how the thought of them dancing together would make Rick Santorum’s head explode. No, this column is about a psychiatrist named Keith Ablow, who in recent months has taken the time to write about Gingrich and Bono from his unique perspective as a mental health professional.

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Everyday Stress Can Shut Down the Brain's Chief Command Center (preview)

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 10:00:00 EST

The entrance exam to medical school consists of a five-hour fusillade of hundreds of questions that, even with the best preparation, often leaves the test taker discombobulated and anxious. For some would-be physicians, the relentless pressure causes their reasoning abilities to slow and even shut down entirely. The experience--known variously as choking, brain freeze, nerves, jitters, folding, blanking out, the yips or a dozen other descriptive terms--is all too familiar to virtually anyone who has flubbed a speech, bumped up against writer’s block or struggled through a lengthy exam.

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Tropical Depression: Your Saltwater Fish Tank May Be Killing the Ocean

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 10:30:00 EST

Tropical fish tanks in restaurants, hospitals and homes evoke feelings of tranquility and beauty. They even lower stress levels prior to medical procedures and encourage Alzheimer's patients to eat sufficiently . But what's good for humans may be bad for the sea.

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Kids Fail to Get Outdoors

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 19:18:08 EST

It's springtime, and that means mud pies, bug bites and scraped knees--if you're a preschooler. Or at least it used to.

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Decoding the Body Watcher

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:30:00 EST

What's the difference between noticing the rapid beat of a popular song on the radio and noticing the rapid rate of your heart when you see your crush? Between noticing the smell of fresh baked bread and noticing that you're out of breath? Both require attention. However, the direction of that attention differs: it is either turned outward, as in the case of noticing a stop sign or a tap on your shoulder, or turned inward, as in the case of feeling full or feeling love.

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Readers Respond to "The Death of Preschool"--and More

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 10:00:00 EST

DREAM STATES [More]

Gene Therapy Restores Sight to Three Patients

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 EST

After several years of setbacks, gene therapy is once again yielding promising results. One area in which it is proving its potential is in restoring vision to patients who have been losing it since birth.

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How to Use Light to Control the Brain

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:00:00 EST

In the film Amèlie , the main character is a young eccentric woman who attempts to change the lives of those around her for the better. One day Amèlie finds an old rusty tin box of childhood mementos in her apartment, hidden by a boy decades earlier. After tracking down Bretodeau, the owner, she lures him to a phone booth where he discovers the box. Upon opening the box and seeing a few marbles, a sudden flash of vivid images come flooding into his mind. Next thing you know, Bretodeau is transported to a time when he was in the schoolyard scrambling to stuff his pockets with hundreds of marbles while a teacher is yelling at him to hurry up.

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A Neuroscientist's Quest to Reverse Engineer the Human Brain

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:00:00 EST

What makes us who we are? Where is our personal history recorded, or our hopes? What explains autism or schiziphrenia or remarkable genius? Sebastian Seung argues that it’s all in the connections our neurons make. In his new book, Connectome , he argues that technology has now reached a point where it is conceivable to start mapping at least portions of the connectome. It’s a daunting task, he says, but without it, neuroscience will be stuck. He answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook.

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How Hospital Gardens Help Patients Heal

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 07:30:00 EST

To get an inkling of what a well-designed hospital garden can mean to a seriously ill child, watch the home video posted on YouTube last August of Aidan Schwalbe, a three-year-old heart-transplant recipient. The toddler is shown exploring the meandering paths, sun-dappled lawn and gnarled roots of a branching shade tree in the Prouty Garden at Children’s Hospital Boston. “He loves to be out in the garden feeding the birds and squirrels,” wrote Aidan’s grandmother in an August blog entry. “They will all weigh 30 lbs. each by the time we leave here!”

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