http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. A report from the University of Freiburg that is published in one of the last issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics address the presence of cerebral abnormalities in eating disorders. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-cerebral-abnormalities-disorders.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:33:37 EST news284204009 (Medical Xpress)—Despite the well known inaccuracies of polygraph lie detectors, they remain in widespread, if selective, use by the criminal justice system. While they are far from truth machines, if the person who is interviewed believes that they have caught in a lie, the prosecutorial sector can turn the thumbscrews so to speak. Predicting future arrest, however, is not something a polygraph can address—if the parolee doesn't even know if he or she might re-offend, how can a yes/no classifier? A study published yesterday in PNAS is the latest in a series of efforts to use fMRI to assign risk to the possibility of repeat offense. They do not claim to have found the repeat offense area of the brain, but rather determine this risk by proxy, namely a measure of impulsivity. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-brain-scans.html Neuroscience Tue, 26 Mar 2013 09:57:55 EST news283509709 Being exposed to arguments between parents is associated with the way babies' brains process emotional tone of voice, according to a new study to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-arguments-home-linked-babies-brain.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:32:06 EST news283437117 Women suffering from sleep apnea have, on the whole, a higher degree of brain damage than men with the disorder, according to a first-of-its-kind study conducted by researchers at the UCLA School of Nursing. The findings are reported in the December issue of the peer-reviewed journal Sleep. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-women-apnea-higher-degree-brain.html Sleep apnea Mon, 03 Dec 2012 15:50:21 EST news273772191 Not everyone is able to be hypnotized, and new research from the Stanford University School of Medicine shows how the brains of such people differ from those who can easily be. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-sleepy-hypnosis-doesnt.html Neuroscience Wed, 03 Oct 2012 16:49:41 EST news268501769 (Medical Xpress)—A new University of Wisconsin-Madison imaging study shows the brains of people with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) have weaker connections between a brain structure that controls emotional response and the amygdala, which suggests the brain's "panic button" may stay on due to lack of regulation. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-brain-imaging-reveals-people-anxiety.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 04 Sep 2012 06:18:35 EST news265958297 Ancient Greek philosophers considered the ability to "know thyself" as the pinnacle of humanity. Now, thousands of years later, neuroscientists are trying to decipher precisely how the human brain constructs our sense of self. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-self-awareness-humans-complex-diffuse-previously.html Neuroscience Wed, 22 Aug 2012 17:06:55 EST news264874007 (Medical Xpress) -- While most of us have been wrapped up in the competitive spirit of the Olympic Games, two University of Otago researchers have been busy teasing out what exactly in the brain drives competitive behaviour. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-glimpse-competitive-brain.html Neuroscience Mon, 13 Aug 2012 04:00:58 EST news264049224 Patients with hoarding disorder exhibited abnormal activity in regions of the brain that was stimulus dependent when deciding what to do with objects that did or did not belong to them, according to a report in the August issue of Archives of General Psychiatry. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-decision-making-brain-patients-hoarding-disorder.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 06 Aug 2012 16:20:10 EST news263488734 (Medical Xpress) -- Every day the human brain is presented with tasks ranging from the trivial to the complex. How much mental effort and attention are devoted to each task is usually determined in a split second and without conscious awareness. Now a study from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers finds that a structure deep within the brain, believed to play an important role in regulating conscious control of goal-directed behavior, helps to optimize behavioral responses by predicting how difficult upcoming tasks will be. The report is receiving advance online publication in Nature. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-brain-behavior-demands.html Medical research Sun, 24 Jun 2012 13:10:05 EST news259758450 New pictures from the University of Iowa show what it looks like when a person runs out of patience and loses self-control. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-mri-images-brain-self-control.html Neuroscience Mon, 18 Jun 2012 12:49:47 EST news259242573 Scientists studying the Chinese mindfulness meditation known as integrative body-mind training (IBMT) say they've confirmed and expanded their findings on changes in structural efficiency of white matter in the brain that can be related to positive behavioral changes in subjects practicing the technique regularly for a month. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-chinese-meditation-ibmt-prompts-positive.html Neuroscience Mon, 11 Jun 2012 15:00:01 EST news258645102 Emotional stress caused by last year's tsunami caused a part of some survivors' brains to shrink, according to scientists in Japan who grasped a unique chance to study the neurological effects of trauma. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-stress-shrank-brain-area-japan.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 22 May 2012 04:30:18 EST news256879807 (Medical Xpress) -- What drives addicts to repeatedly choose drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, overeating, gambling or kleptomania, despite the risks involved? http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-scientists-brain-circuitry-linked-healthy.html Neuroscience Sun, 30 Oct 2011 14:00:31 EST news239200577 When making decisions based on multiple, interdependent factors, we choose based on how these factors correlate with each other, and not based on an ad hoc rule of thumb or through trial and error as was previously thought, according to research funded by the Wellcome Trust. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-hedging-brain-decisions-based.html Neuroscience Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:50:01 EST news235831226 Whether we choose to accept or fight it, the fact is that we will all age, but will we do so successfully? Aging successfully has been linked with the "positivity effect", a biased tendency towards and preference for positive, emotionally gratifying experiences. New research published in Biological Psychiatry now explains how and when this effect works in the brain. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-secret-successful-aging.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 14 Jul 2011 10:00:48 EST news229856357 Birds do it. Bees do it. Even little kids picking strawberries do it. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-deep-seated-brain-function.html Neuroscience Mon, 06 Jun 2011 16:01:05 EST news226594152 On a daily basis, our social life places us in situations where we have to decide whether or not to cooperate with others. However, the motivation that encourages us to behave cooperatively is often not clear. Now, new research published by Cell Press in the May 12, 2011, issue of the journal Neuron suggests that anticipation of the feeling of guilt can motivate us to behave unselfishly and reveals a neural mechanism that may underlie this guilt aversion-driven cooperation. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-good-dont-bad-neural-mechanisms.html Neuroscience Wed, 11 May 2011 12:39:33 EST news224336335 Ostracism or exclusion may not leave external scars, but it can cause pain that often is deeper and lasts longer than a physical injury, according to a Purdue University expert. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-professor-pain-ostracism-deep-long-lasting.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 10 May 2011 15:24:01 EST news224259808 Recording people belting out an old Motown tune and then asking them to listen to their own singing without the accompanying music seems like an unusually cruel form of punishment. But for a team of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco and University of California, Berkeley, this exact Karaoke experiment has revealed what part of the brain is essential for embarrassment. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-neurological-basis.html Neuroscience Fri, 15 Apr 2011 06:00:00 EST news222065986