http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. (Medical Xpress)—It's a familiar sight at the fairground: rows of people gaping at curvy mirrors as they watch their faces and bodies distort. But while mirrored surfaces may be fun to look at, new findings by researchers from the Universities of Birmingham, Cambridge and Giessen, suggest they pose a particular challenge for the human brain in processing images for 3D vision. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-uncovering-secrets-3d-vision-glossy.html Neuroscience Tue, 22 Jan 2013 06:23:28 EST news278058189 The prevalence of type 2 diabetes is low in countries where consumption of black tea is high, suggests a mathematical analysis of data from 50 countries, published in the online journal BMJ Open. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-prevalence-diabetes-regular-black-tea.html Diabetes Wed, 07 Nov 2012 18:30:01 EST news271524624 When a person is sick, there is a tell-tale sign in their blood: a different mix of the various types of immune cells called leukocytes. A group of scientists at several institutions including Brown University has discovered a way to determine that mix from the DNA in archival or fresh blood samples, potentially providing a practical new technology not only for medical research but also for clinical diagnosis and treatment monitoring of ailments including some cancers. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-technique-disease-immune-cell-dna.html Medical research Mon, 09 Jul 2012 12:58:21 EST news261057419 (Medical Xpress) -- Regardless of an organism’s biological complexity, every encephalized animal continuously makes under-informed behavioral choices that can have serious consequences. Despite its ubiquity, however, there’s a long-standing question about its neurological basis – namely, whether these choices are made through probabilistic world models constructed by the brain, or by reinforcement of learned associations. Recently, however, scientists in the Department of Psychology at Rutgers University found that reinforcement cannot account for the rapidity with which mice modify their behavior when the chance of a given phenomenon changes. The researchers say this indicates that mice may have primordially-evolved neural capabilities to represent likelihood and perform calculations that optimize their resulting behavior – and therefore that such genetic mechanisms can be investigated and manipulated by genetic and other procedures. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-mice-mental-neuroscientific-implications-risk-optimized.html Neuroscience Fri, 25 May 2012 08:50:01 EST news257104913