A new report urges parents and children’s doctors to change their thinking about homesickness among children, to see it as a nearly universal, but highly preventable and treatable phenomenon — rather than an unavoidable part of childhood.
Using brain imaging, researchers from Washington University in St. Louis have identified several brain regions that are involved in the uniquely human ability to envision future events. The study, to be published in the journal PNAS, provides evidence that memory and future thought are highly interrelated and helps explain why future thought may be impossible without memories. Findings suggest that envisioning the future may be a critical prerequisite for many higher-level planning processes.
Patients with posttraumatic stress disorder show reduced pain sensitivity, a pattern that may be related to altered pain processing in the brain, according to a report in the January issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
People who were abused and neglected during childhood have a higher risk of major depression when they become young adults, according to a report in the January issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Undernourished women who take a vitamin and mineral supplement while pregnant may be less likely than women taking only iron and folic acid supplements to have babies weighing less than 2,500 grams, and their newborns may be less likely to have morbidity in the first seven days of life, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins and Yale university medical schools have found that a simple blood test to measure uric acid, a measure of kidney function, might reveal a risk factor for cognitive problems in old age. Of 96 community-dwelling adults aged 60 to 92 years, those with uric-acid levels at the high end of the normal range had the lowest scores on tests of mental processing speed, verbal memory and working memory.
Investigations have not found a link between the deaths of two local pig farmers of a pneumonia-like illnes in the past six months. Centre for Health Protection consultant Dr Thomas Tsang said the men tested negative for SARS.
Dr. Leonard Zon and colleagues at The Children’s Hospital (Boston) have identified a mutated gene in zebrafish that increases susceptibility to epithelial cancers.
Two novel treatments — a basic compound found in every cell in the body and an extract of green tea — may prevent brain damage caused from stroke, according to two studies in rats led by a researcher at the San Francisco VA Medical Center.
In hemophilia, a mutated gene prevents the production of a blood-clotting protein. Treatments for hemophilia and other genetic diseases may consist of risky blood transfusions or expensive enzyme replacement therapy. But what if the body could be induced to begin producing these proteins by transplanting healthy tissue with the abilities that are lacking? The Weizmann Institute’s Immunology Department showed how such a transplant might be made feasible.