http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. Loneliness often comes with old age. Making new contacts and cultivating old friendships is not always easy for many elderly persons. At the same time, many elderly persons are increasingly losing their shyness of computers. Scientists at Graz University of Technology together with international partners have developed concepts for computer applications to reduce loneliness in old age. The "Virtual Coach Reaches Out To Me" programme, in short – V2me, is meant to help the 65+ generation to find new friends, become more socially active, and stay mobile and mentally fit. In initial tests in homes for the elderly, a draft version of the interactive friendship coach enjoyed great popularity. The final evaluation phase of the prototype commenced in May with a broad user study. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-combating-loneliness-age-virtual-friendship.html Health Fri, 31 May 2013 10:17:47 EST news289214261 Media reports about substances that are supposedly hazardous to health may cause suggestible people to develop symptoms of a disease even though there is no objective reason for doing so. This is the conclusion of a study of the phenomenon known as electromagnetic hypersensitivity. Those affected report experiencing certain symptoms on exposure to electromagnetic waves, such as those emitted by cell phones, and these take the form of physical reactions. With the help of magnetic resonance imaging, it has been demonstrated that the regions of the brain responsible for pain processing are active in such cases. "Despite this, there is a considerable body of evidence that electromagnetic hypersensitivity might actually be the result of a so-called nocebo effect," explained Dr. Michael Witthöft of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). "The mere anticipation of possible injury may actually trigger pain or disorders. This is the opposite of the analgesic effects we know can be associated with exposure to placebos." The new study illustrates how media reports about health risks may trigger or amplify nocebo effects in some people. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-nocebo-effect-media-trigger-symptoms.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 06 May 2013 10:33:56 EST news287055193 When children with conduct problems see images of others in pain, key parts of their brains don't react in the way they do in most people. This pattern of reduced brain activity upon witnessing pain may serve as a neurobiological risk factor for later adult psychopathy, say researchers who report their findings in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 2. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-kids-brains-under-react-painful-images.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 02 May 2013 12:00:06 EST news286714692 There is a clear link between children's use of humour and their susceptibility to being bullied by their peers, according to a major new study released today by Keele University. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-humour-styles-bullying-schools.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 02 May 2013 07:00:01 EST news286695368 A smarter, better educated population may help offset the impacts of declining fertility rates in East Asia, and provide lessons for Australia, according to a new report from the Australian National University's Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-offset-impact-fertility.html Health Fri, 05 Apr 2013 09:20:01 EST news284371404 Scientists have long thought that mice might serve as a model for how humans learn to vocalize. But new research led by scientists at Washington State University-Vancouver has found that, unlike humans and songbirds, mice do not learn how to vocalize. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-mice-innate-ability-vocalize-deaf.html Neuroscience Tue, 26 Mar 2013 17:00:03 EST news283522831 Grow it, try it, and you just might like it is a motto many schools are embracing to encourage children to eat more fruits and vegetables. Through community-based kitchen garden programs, particularly those with dedicated cooking components, schools are successfully introducing students to healthier foods. In a new study released in the March/April 2013 issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, researchers found that growing and then cooking the foods that kids grew increased their willingness to try new foods. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-school-based-kitchen-gardens.html Health Thu, 07 Mar 2013 00:00:02 EST news281809683 High school students whose friends' average grade point average (GPA) is greater than their own have a tendency to increase their own GPA over the course of a year, according to research published February 13 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Hiroki Sayama from Binghamton University and his collaborators from Maine-Endwell High School in Endwell, New York, including four high school student researchers. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-gpa-contagious-high-school-social-networks.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 13 Feb 2013 17:40:01 EST news279997053 A five-year study by researchers at three universities has established that providing tangible assistance to others protects our health and lengthens our lives. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-healthier.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 04 Feb 2013 17:35:41 EST news279221733 A recent study by a researcher at the Centre for Studies on Human Stress (CSHS) at the Hôpital Louis-H. Lafontaine and professor at the Université de Montréal suggests that bullying by peers changes the structure surrounding a gene involved in regulating mood, making victims more vulnerable to mental health problems as they age. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-bullying-childhood-peers-gene-linked.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 18 Dec 2012 04:38:42 EST news275027909 Children of low socioeconomic status work harder to filter out irrelevant environmental information than those from a high-income background because of learned differences in what they pay attention to, according to new research published in the open access journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-family-economic-situation-brain-function.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 28 Nov 2012 10:39:47 EST news273321580 Legal responses to juvenile offending should be grounded in scientific knowledge about adolescent development and tailored to an individual offender's needs and social environment, says a new report from the National Research Council. Accountability practices should not be carried over from criminal courts to juvenile courts; in particular, confinement should be used only in rare circumstances such as when a youth poses a high risk of harming others. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-juvenile-justice-reforms-incorporate-science.html Health Tue, 13 Nov 2012 12:53:45 EST news272033617 Children's parties or activity days, where prospective adopters meet children awaiting adoption, could be part of the solution to the current adoption crisis, according to research that will be showcased during the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Festival of Social Science. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-days-children-families.html Health Fri, 26 Oct 2012 03:10:01 EST news270438758 (Medical Xpress) -- Boys who reach sexual maturity more rapidly than their peers have more problems getting along with others their age and are at a higher risk for depression, according to a Cornell study published in Developmental Psychology (47:2). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-boys-mature-rapidly-depression.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 08 May 2012 06:19:45 EST news255676778 The ranking of a monkey within her social environment and the stress accompanying that status dramatically alters the expression of nearly 1,000 genes, a new scientific study reports. The research is the first to demonstrate a link between social status and genetic regulation in primates on a genome-wide scale, revealing a strong, plastic link between social environment and biology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-social-stress-affects-immune-gene.html Genetics Mon, 09 Apr 2012 15:00:01 EST news253187311 Girls are not as good at playing football as boys, and they do not have a clue about cars. Instead they know better how to dance and do not get into mischief as often as boys. Prejudices like these are cultivated from early childhood onwards by everyone. "Approximately at the age of three to four years children start to prefer children of the same sex, and later the same ethnic group or nationality," Prof. Dr. Andreas Beelmann of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany) states. This is part of an entirely normal personality development, the director of the Institute for Psychology explains. "It only gets problematic when the more positive evaluation of the own social group, which is adopted automatically in the course of identity formation, at some point reverts into bias and discrimination against others," Beelmann continues. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-psychologists-prejudices-children.html Psychology & Psychiatry Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:10:01 EST news246880855 Mild psychotic experiences, such as delusive ideas or moderate feelings of paranoia, regularly occur among adolescents. Of the almost 7700 Dutch young people aged 12 to 16 years who were investigated by NWO researcher Hanneke Wigman during her doctoral research, about 40% reported that they often had such an experience. Wigman will defend her doctorate on Friday 16 September at Utrecht University. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-dutch-teenagers-regularly-mild-psychotic.html Psychology & Psychiatry Fri, 16 Sep 2011 10:30:01 EST news235387009 In the wake of several highly publicized suicides by gay teenagers, a new study finds that a negative social environment surrounding gay youth is associated with high rates of suicide attempts by lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youth. The study, "The Social Environment and Suicide Attempts in a Population-Based Sample of LGB Youth," appears in the April 18 issue of Pediatrics. It was conducted by by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar Mark L. Hatzenbuehler at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-links-social-environment-high-suicide_1.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 18 Apr 2011 04:05:00 EST news222318154