Neuroscience

A quirky psychological phenomenon known as “grapheme-color synaesthesia” describes individuals who experience vivid colors whenever they see, hear, or think of ordinary letters and digits. A hallmark of synaesthesia is that individuals seem to be idiosyncratic in their experiences. That is, most synesthaetes will consistently see the same colors accompanied with specific graphemes, but few of these experiences appear to be shared with other synesthetes.  But new research appearing in the April issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, adds to…

Is fairness simply a ruse we adopt only when we see an advantage in it for ourselves? Many psychologists have moved away from this utilitarian view, dismissing it as too simplistic, but recent advances in both cognitive science and neuroscience now allow psychologists to approach this question in some different ways, and they are getting some intriguing results. UCLA psychologist Golnaz Tabibnia, and colleagues Ajay Satpute and Matthew Lieberman, used a psychological test called the “ultimatum game" to explore fairness and self-interest in the laboratory. In this particular version of the…

Married men do less of it than live-in boyfriends but they do twice as much as they did 20 years ago and now it's linked to mental health. What is this magical creation? Housework. Not just housework, but really any 20 minutes of physical activity, including the housework we all have to do anyway, is enough to boost mental health, reveals a large study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. While regular exercise is known to be good for mental health, no one seems able to agree on how much, or what type of activity, is best. But housework might be that common denominator.…

‘Mother cells’ which produce the neurons affected by Parkinson’s disease have been identified by scientists, according to new research published in the journal Glia. The new discovery could pave the way for future treatments for the disease, including the possibility of growing new neurons, and the cells which support them, in the lab. Scientists hope these could then be transplanted into patients to counteract the damage caused by Parkinson’s. The new study focuses on dopaminergic neurons – brain cells which produce and use the chemical dopamine to communicate with surrounding neurons. The…

Reshaping of the DNA scaffolding that supports and controls the expression of genes in the brain may play a major role in the alcohol withdrawal symptoms, particularly anxiety, that make it so difficult for alcoholics to stop using alcohol. DNA can undergo changes in function without any changes in inheritance or coded sequence. These "epigenetic" changes are minor chemical modifications of chromatin -- dense bundles of DNA and proteins called histones. "This is the first time anyone has looked for epigenetic changes related to chromatin remodeling in the brain during alcohol addiction," said…

Here's a myth many men are happy has been debunked - contrary to popular thinking about the need for hours of sexual activity, a survey of U.S. and Canadian sex therapists says satisfactory sexual intercourse for couples lasts from 3 to 13 minutes. Penn State Erie researchers Eric Corty and Jenay Guardiani conducted a survey of 50 full members of the Society for Sex Therapy and Research, which include psychologists, physicians, social workers, marriage/family therapists and nurses who have collectively seen thousands of patients over several decades. Thirty-four, or 68 percent, of the group…

Boxing at the amateur level is less harmful to the brain than previously assumed, says a new study. Obviously the brain is a sensitive instrument so few statements on repeated blows to the head can be truly conclusive and whether or not a professional boxer like Muhammad Ali contracted Parkinson’s disease at age 40 due to injuries sustained in the ring may always remain unclear. In the Heidelberg Boxing Study(1), high-resolution MRI data were used to search for tiny changes in the brains of amateur boxers and a comparison group of non-boxers. These changes are most likely precursors for…

Can physical symptoms in depression be a consequence of low energy production rates? A report in the March issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics introduces a new hypothesis regarding the mechanisms of physical symptoms in depression: it states that energy production rates toward the lower end of the spectrum may predispose the individuals to develop depression and its physical symptoms. The Authors hypothesized that decreased ATP production rates in mitochondria underlie depressive disorder with very high levels of somatization. They assessed muscle mitochondria in depressed patients as…

The vision system used to process color is separate from that used to detect motion, according to a new study by researchers at New York University’s Center for Developmental Genetics and in the Department of Genetics and Neurobiology at Germany’s University of Würzburg. The findings run counter to previous scholarship that suggested motion detection and color contrast may work in tandem. Whether motion vision uses color contrast is a controversial issue that has been investigated in several species--from insects to humans. In human vision, it had been widely believed that color and motion…

'War is Hell' the saying goes and its stresses are great. That is why post-traumatic stress is most often associated with returning veterans of combat. But those are just the high profile cases, say a group of researchers in a new study. The new study says a recent traumatic event is much more likely to result in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among adults who experienced trauma in childhood – and certain gene variations raise the risk considerably if the childhood trauma involved physical or sexual abuse, scientists have found. “Untangling complex interactions between genetic…