An interdisciplinary team of biomedical researchers from the USC Viterbi School, the College and the Keck School of Medicine of USC has received a $6-million Bioengineering Research Partnership grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to begin designing visual aids for millions of older adults who suffer from significant vision loss.
Are you a terrorist? Airport screeners, customs agents, police officers and members of the military who silently pose that question to people every day, may soon have much more than intuition to depend on to determine the answer, thanks to computer and behavioral scientists at the University at Buffalo.
In today’s hectic world, idiot box may be the main source of home entertainment for many kids. But, if researchers are to be believed, parents need to discourage letting children watch television.
Researchers have uncovered new evidence in mice that may explain how emotionally charged situations can leave such a powerful mark on our memories. Surges of the stress hormone norepinephrine (also known as noradrenaline) that often accompany strong emotions spark a series of molecular events that ultimately strengthen the connections between neurons, the team reports in the Oct. 5, 2007, issue of the journal Cell, a publication of Cell Press.
Both extensive psychological research and personal experiences confirm that events that happen during heightened states of emotion such as fear, anger and joy are far more memorable than less dramatic occurrences. In a report this week in Cell, Johns Hopkins researchers and their collaborators at Cold Spring Harbor and New York University have identified the likely biological basis for this: a hormone released during emotional arousal “primes” nerve cells to remember events by increasing their chemical sensitivity at sites where nerves rewire to form new memory circuits.
Prior research has shown that exposure to business-related objects makes people act more competitively, even though they do not realize it. A fascinating new study by researchers at Stanford extends this research by investigating how different consumers are affected by the same stimuli. The study reveals significant differences between the way men and women subconsciously react after exposure to certain objects.
A University of Western Sydney study which explored men’s experiences of depression has revealed that gender has a significant impact on the success of mental health treatment.
During Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October, The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) calls attention to the 2 million women in the US who are physically or sexually assaulted by an intimate partner each year. Domestic, or intimate partner, violence is an ongoing public health problem that accounts for 22% of all violent crimes against women.
New research is giving scientists fresh insights into how genetics are a prime factor in how we learn. Michael Frank, an assistant professor of psychology and director of the Laboratory for Neural Computation and Cognition at The University of Arizona, headed a team whose results are reported in the Oct. 1 issue of Early Edition, an online site hosted by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers here have linked an increase in two immune system proteins essential for inflammation to a latent viral infection and proposed a chain of events that might accelerate cardiovascular disease. The same process may be involved in a host of other ailments plaguing the elderly.