http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. A laugh may signal mockery, humor, joy or simply be a response to tickling, but each kind of laughter conveys a wealth of auditory and social information. These different kinds of laughter also spark different connections within the "laughter perception network" in the human brain depending on their context, according to research published May 8 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Dirk Wildgruber and colleagues from the University of Tuebingen, Germany. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-laughter-perception-networks-brain-mocking.html Neuroscience Wed, 08 May 2013 17:00:04 EST news287249589 A specific region of the brain is in play when children consider their identity and social status as they transition into adolescence—that often-turbulent time of reaching puberty and entering middle school, says a University of Oregon psychologist. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-brain-biology-tied-social-reorientation.html Neuroscience Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:00:03 EST news285955011 Do people get caught in the cycle of overeating and drug addiction because their brain reward centers are over-active causing them to experience greater cravings for food or drugs? In a unique prospective study Oregon Research Institute (ORI) senior scientist Eric Stice, Ph.D., and colleagues tested this theory, called the reward surfeit model. The results indicated that elevated responsivity of reward regions in the brain increased the risk for future substance use, which has never been tested before prospectively with humans. Paradoxically, results also provide evidence that even a limited history of substance use was related to less responsivity in the reward circuitry, as has been suggested by experiments with animals. The research appears in the May 1, 2013 issue of Biological Psychiatry. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-brain-future-onset-substance.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 18 Apr 2013 09:44:21 EST news285496969 (Medical Xpress)—The sense of smell remains a mystery in many respects. Fragrance companies, for instance, know it is crucial that chemical compounds in perfumes reach nostrils at different rates to create the desired sensory experience, but it is has been unclear why. Yale researchers decided to interrogate the common fruit fly for answers. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-flies-reveal-melody.html Neuroscience Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:07:45 EST news284807238 Scientists have identified a key molecule responsible for triggering the chemical processes in our brain linked to our formation of memories. The findings, published in the journal Frontiers in Neural Circuits, reveal a new target for therapeutic interventions to reverse the devastating effects of memory loss. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-scientists-brain-molecular-memory.html Neuroscience Thu, 28 Mar 2013 09:36:25 EST news283682136 (Medical Xpress)—The superior capability of experts to rapidly solve problems depends largely on their intuition, and it has long been known that this is related to experience and training. Although many psychological models relating to the development of intuition have been proposed to explain this phenomenon, none have been validated, and the underlying neural mechanisms remain a mystery. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-game-japanese-chess-reveals-experts.html Neuroscience Fri, 22 Mar 2013 11:10:01 EST news283166195 The journal PLOS ONE has recently published a study which provides new data around attention and visual perception. The article "A role of eye vergence in covert attention" was authored by researchers from the Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour (IR3C) the University of Barcelona. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-eye-vergence-visual-attention.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 07 Feb 2013 10:48:02 EST news279456474 (HealthDay)—The neural response in the visual cortex while processing emotional information can predict which patients with major depressive disorder will respond to scopolamine, according to a study published online Jan. 30 in JAMA Psychiatry. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-brain-response-scopolamine.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:20:04 EST news278866957 Using brain scans of children and adults watching Sesame Street, cognitive scientists are learning how children's brains change as they develop intellectual abilities like reading and math. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-brain-big-bird-sesame-street.html Neuroscience Thu, 03 Jan 2013 17:00:05 EST news276434099 (Medical Xpress)—The apparent ease and immediacy of human perception is deceptive, requiring highly complex neural operations to determine the category of objects in a visual scene. Nevertheless, the human brain is able to complete operations such as face category tuning (the ability differentiate faces from other similar objects) completely outside of conscious awareness. Apparently, such complex processes are not sufficient for us to consciously perceive faces. Now, scientists from the University of Amsterdam used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) to show that while visible and invisible faces produce similar category-selective responses in the brain's ventral visual cortex, only visible faces caused widespread response enhancements and changes in neural oscillatory synchronization. The team concluded that sustained neural information integration is a key factor in conscious face perception. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-facts-neural-unconscious-conscious-perception.html Neuroscience Mon, 31 Dec 2012 08:50:01 EST news276156621 (Medical Xpress)—A bird listening to birdsong may experience some of the same emotions as a human listening to music, suggests a new study on white-throated sparrows, published in Frontiers of Evolutionary Neuroscience. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-birdsong-theory-music-uniquely-human.html Neuroscience Thu, 27 Dec 2012 06:24:18 EST news275811850 (Medical Xpress)—When you walk into a darkened room, your first instinct is to feel around for a light switch. You slide your hand along the wall, feeling the transition from the doorframe to the painted drywall, and then up and down until you find the metal or plastic plate of the switch. During the process you use your sense of touch to develop an image in your mind of the wall's surface and make a better guess for where the switch is. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-lot.html Neuroscience Tue, 11 Dec 2012 15:18:45 EST news274461512 (HealthDay)—There is a significant difference in the brain's response to stress among patients with epilepsy who believe stress is an important factor in seizure control compared to those who do not, according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society, held from Nov. 30 to Dec. 4 in San Diego. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-aes-brain-stress-response-differs.html Neuroscience Tue, 04 Dec 2012 17:20:03 EST news273861547 (Medical Xpress)—Chemists and vision scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago have designed a light-sensitive molecule that can stimulate a neural response in cells of the retina and brain—a possible first step to overcoming degenerative eye diseases like age-related macular degeneration, or to quieting epileptic seizures. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-photo-switch-nerve-cells-eye-brain.html Medical research Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:22:21 EST news272128914 Autism is a disorder well known for its complex changes in behavior—including repeating actions over and over and having difficulty with social interactions and language. Current approaches to understanding what causes these atypical behaviors focus primarily on specific brain regions associated with these specific behaviors without necessarily linking back to fundamental properties of the brain's signaling abilities. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-autistic-adults-unreliable-neural-responses.html Neuroscience Wed, 19 Sep 2012 12:00:07 EST news267273970 (HealthDay)—For children with dyslexia, the use of assistive listening devices (classroom frequency modulation [FM] systems) reduces auditory processing variability, with concomitant improvements in reading and phonological awareness, according to a study published online Sept. 4 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-devices-benefit-children-dyslexia.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Wed, 05 Sep 2012 18:10:02 EST news266084710 Experienced ballet spectators with no physical expertise in ballet showed enhanced muscle-specific motor responses when watching live ballet, according to a Mar. 21 report in the open access journal PLoS ONE. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-brains-frequent-spectators-motor-mirroring.html Neuroscience Wed, 21 Mar 2012 17:00:01 EST news251557556 In the classic film "12 Angry Men," Henry Fonda's character sways a jury with his quiet, persistent intelligence. But would he have succeeded if he had allowed himself to fall sway to the social dynamics of that jury? http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-group-diminish-intelligence-women.html Neuroscience Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:00:07 EST news246460131 Eighty-five percent of children's learning is related to vision. Yet in the U.S., 80 percent of children have never had an eye exam or any vision screening before kindergarten, statistics say. When they do, the vision screenings they typically receive can detect only one or two conditions. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-comprehensive-accessible-vision-device.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:30:01 EST news246103732 Auditory working memory and attention, for example the ability to hear and then remember instructions while completing a task, are a necessary part of musical ability. But musical ability is also related to verbal memory and literacy in childhood. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Behavioral and Brain Functions shows how auditory working memory and musical aptitude are intrinsically related to reading ability, and provides a biological basis for this link. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-musical-aptitude-ability.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 17 Oct 2011 05:00:01 EST news238044344 Men and women differ in the way they anticipate an unpleasant emotional experience, which influences the effectiveness with which that experience is committed to memory, according to new research. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-women-negative-differently-men.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 23 Aug 2011 17:28:32 EST news233339296 By taking advantage of a "body swap" illusion, researchers have captured the brain regions involved in one of the most fundamental aspects of self-awareness: how we recognize our bodies as our own, distinct from others and from the outside world. That self-perception is traced to specialized multisensory neurons in various parts of the brain that integrate different sensory inputs across all body parts into a unified view of the body. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-bodies.html Neuroscience Thu, 16 Jun 2011 13:05:24 EST news227448258