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1,217 news posts in Mind and body

Neuroscience

27 May 2016

Setting free the words trapped in our heads

By Mônica Favre, Ph.D.,  Frontiers Science Writer Neuroscientists are on their way to turn a person’s thoughts into speech producible by a device, to help victims of stroke and others with speech paralysis to communicate with their loved ones. Professor Robert T. Knight, M.D., and his team at UC Berkeley are working on finding a way to decode speech imagined in the human brain.  “We learned that hearing words, speaking out loud or imagining words involves mechanisms and brain areas that overlap. Now, the challenge is to reproduce comprehensible speech from direct brain recordings done while a person imagines a word they would like to say,” said Knight, who is also the Founding Editor of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Knight says the goal of the device is to help people affected by motor disease, such as paralysis and Lou Gehrig’s Disease. “There are many neurological disorders that limit speech despite patients being fully aware of what they want to say,” Knight said.  “We want to develop an implantable device that decodes the signals that occur in the brain when we think about a word, then turn these signals into a sound file that can be reproduced by a speech device.” […]

Health

26 May 2016

Linking our diets to changes in hormones and cancer

By Monica Favre, Frontiers science writer We’ve heard the phrase, “you are what you eat,” but recent research shows that what we are eating, how much we are eating and how we are living our lives could result in a cancer epidemic. “Our society is moving away from foods that our body has evolved to process, particularly in the western world. The problems come from simple energy balance, really,” said Professor Jeff Holly. “This is the first time in human evolution that we are eating caloric foods at higher frequency along with such sedentary life styles.” A professor of Clinical Sciences at the University of Bristol in the UK and the Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Endocrinology, Holly’s work points to how nutrition is altering the signaling happening within the body. Based on his research and others in the field, the changes are occurring in the hormone molecules and their receptors, which work together to regulate the growth of cells. This could result in breast, prostate, colorectal and other cancers. “Our hormones are changing in relation to our lifestyles and diet.  If you are getting the wrong nutrition, one that is triggering the hormone system to tell cells to […]

Health

26 May 2016

Working together on Public Health education

Throughout the United States, undergraduate programs in public health are rapidly expanding. Dr. Connie Evashwick is involved with Frontiers as co-Editor of Frontiers in Public Health Education and Promotion. Given the growth of the number of programs and students in this field, she and colleagues Dr. Cheryl Addy, Dr. Daniel Gerber, and Dr. David Dyjack suggested creating a Research Topic on Undergraduate Education for Public Health in the United States. “There isn’t a place for faculty from all types of higher education institutions to get together and share common frameworks,” says Evashwick . The four guest associate editors of the Research Topic were pleasantly surprised by its success. Instead of the ten articles they had expected, they received twice as many articles as required to produce an e-book. The e-book, now available, contains 20 articles written by 35 authors. As of March 2016, the Research Topic had received more than 28,250 views on its Frontiers website. To develop this topic further, Evashwick would like to focus more on new programs being developed by universities and colleges that do not currently have schools of public health. She is also interested in doing more analytical analyses, particularly with regard to curriculum and […]

Health

26 May 2016

Drug tolerance a problem for hospitalized babies

By Alice R Jensen, Frontiersin.org Research is underway to stop newborn babies from becoming tolerant and dependent on the pain relief drugs given to them while in intensive care.  Opioids, such as Morphine, Fentanyl and Tramadol, are often used for pain relief in newborn babies. However, tolerance and dependence to these drugs builds quickly. Professor Kanwaljeet J. S. (“Sunny”) Anand, Specialty Chief Editor for Frontiers in Pediatrics, aims to tackle this by finding new ways to prevent tolerance development and treat withdrawal syndrome in infants. “High tolerance and addiction is seen in newly born babies born from mothers with a heroine or methadone addiction, but it is also seen in children who require the drugs because they are critically ill,” explained Anand. “They may be on a breathing machine or undergoing frequent procedures that are painful and stressful, so they are given the opiates to take away the pain.” Infantile pain relief is a largely unexplored field, owing to the fact that medical practitioners denied the existence of pain in newborn babies until late in the last century. This meant that even in the early 1980s, neonatal surgery was conducted with little to no pain relief. However, a wealth of […]

Neuroscience

24 May 2016

Fascination on how the brain works never waives for Idan Segev

By Michelle Ponto, Science Writer The brain and how it works is complex. It weighs only 1.5 kilograms, but inside are 100 billion microchips known as nerves cells.  It’s  how these nerve cells generate everything that we do and feel that has kept Professor Idan Segev captivated with his work for years. “These microchips connect to each other and generate a huge network of physical elements that eventually generate all of our behaviors, all of our feelings, all of our imagination, all our creativity, all our sadness, everything…I was fascinated already when I was a teenager that there were all these microchips that build a machine that can do all these things,” said Segev. Segev works at the Hebrew University where he is the head of the department of Neurobiology.  He’s in charge of brain research there, and says the best thing he did when he started was to understand the single cell as a unit of computation. “This was a little difficult to understand because what does it mean to compute? But the nerve cell is a real microchip that receives input from all of its neighbors and from there something wonderful happens,” he said. Segev says one of […]

Psychology

24 May 2016

Money really does matter in relationships

By Fernando Bolaños, Frontiersin.org Our romantic choices are not just based on feelings and emotions, but how rich we feel compared to others, a new study published in Frontiers in Psychology has found. “We wanted a better understanding of the psychological importance of money in the development of romantic relationships because very little is known about this subject. That way people would have a better perspective of the relationships they are in,” explained Prof. Darius Chan from the Department of Psychology, at the University of Hong Kong. Two experiments were performed on groups of Chinese college students already involved in heterosexual long term relationships. The couples were made to think they were either wealthy or poor to examine their mating behaviour. In the first study they found the wealthy men were less satisfied with their current partners’ physical attractiveness and were more interested in short-term relationships than those who were made to feel that they had less money. However, women who felt wealthy did not make higher demands regarding the men’s physical appearance. All of the wealthy participants in the second study found it easier to interact with an attractive member of the opposite sex than those belonging to a […]

Life sciences

24 May 2016

Can legumes solve environmental issues?

By Alice Rolandini Jensen, Frontiersin.org It’s a win-win situation for the environment and the economy when it comes to introducing legumes into agricultural systems, says new research published in Frontiers in Plant Science, carried out by an international team of scientists as part of the European Union project, Legume Futures. Currently Europe’s crop production is highly specialized in only a small number of plant species, to the detriment of the environment. Cereal crops dominate, meaning Europe imports over 70% of its protein feed stocks to support the meat industry. “The introduction of legumes such as clovers, lupins, lucerne and faba beans can increase the sustainability of agriculture and the supply of protein in Europe,” stated Moritz Reckling of the Leibniz Centre for Agriculture Research (ZALF) in Germany and lead author of this study. Legumes are protein-rich and would provide relief for the deficit; they also increase the amount of nitrogen available to plants through biological nitrogen fixation, reducing the need for fertilisers. With less than 2% of European arable land currently used to grow grain legumes, Reckling and co-workers created a model to determine the effects of integrating legumes into cropping systems. The team set out to evaluate the trade-offs […]

Neuroscience

18 May 2016

Mind your busyness

Are you busy on an average day? Do you often have too many things to do to get them all done? Do you often have so many things to do that you go to bed later than your regular bedtime? If you are over 50 and the answer to these questions is a weary yes, here is some good news: older adults with a busy daily lifestyle tend to do better on tests of cognitive function than their less busy peers, shows a new study in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. The research is part of the Dallas Lifespan Brain Study, one of the most comprehensive studies of age-related changes in cognition and brain function in healthy adults currently underway in the USA. “We show that people who report greater levels of daily busyness tend to have better cognition, especially with regard to memory for recently learned information,” says Sara Festini, a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Vital Longevity of the University of Texas at Dallas and lead author of the study. “We were surprised at how little research there was on busyness, given that being too busy seems to be a fact of modern life for so many,” says […]

Life sciences

13 May 2016

Using precision-genetics in pigs to beat cancer

Because of their similarities to people, using new technology in pigs turns up as a valuable alternative to rodent models of cancer. By Mônica Favre, Frontiers Staff Science Writer The numbers are staggering: more than 40 % is the lifetime risk of developing cancer in the U.S., with only 66 % survival-rates 5 years after diagnosis, for all types of cancer. Trends suggest that in 2015, over 1.6 million new cases were diagnosed in the U.S., with over 580,000 deaths in consequence. These numbers emphasize the need to better understand and treat the various forms of the disease, but mouse models usually used in cancer research have given us limited answers.  However, Senior Scientist Adrienne Watson and colleagues at Recombinetics and the University of Minnesota, say that pigs may turn out to be the best alternative models. “Many organ systems vary so greatly between rodents and humans that certain types of cancer cannot be accurately modelled,” says Watson, despite the major role mouse models have played in our understanding of the disease. The authors conclude that the five deadliest cancers in the U.S. cannot be modeled in rodents, or have ineffective models for identification of treatments that translate to the […]

Life sciences

12 May 2016

Gene and tonic: Genetic link in binge-drinking teens

By Abigail Pattenden, Frontiers science writer From minor acts of rebellion such as bunking off school, to the more serious experimentation with illicit substances, the teenage years can be a stressful time for parents. But what if your child goes beyond the odd cigarette behind the bike shed or sneaking sherry from the drinks cabinet? Some teenagers develop riskier behavior, such as binge drinking or drug taking, which can follow them into adulthood with all the health concerns that go with them. New research conducted at the University of Sussex has identified a specific gene that links impulsive behavior to binge-drinking in teens. “Our findings are important because we show that certain variations in the KALRN gene are associated both with alcohol binge drinking and with brain activation during impulsive responding in adolescents,” said Dr. Yolanda Peña-Oliver, who led the researchers under the supervision of Professor Dai Stephens. “These results provide a novel insight into the possible neurobiological and genetic determinants of impulsivity and alcohol abuse. Studies like ours will be instrumental in discovering biomarkers that might be used to predict future vulnerability to develop disorders such as ADHD or drug addiction, in which impulsivity is a core symptom.” The […]

Psychology

11 May 2016

Swedes or Italians: Who is more likely to cheat on their taxes?

By Tania FitzGeorge-Balfour, Frontiers science writer Wide variations can be seen in how far citizens from different countries evade tax. While this can be attributed to how well institutions deter tax avoidance through audits and fines, cultural differences may also play a part. New research, reported in the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology, suggests that two countries, with contrasting reputations for trustworthiness, can show subtle differences in their compliance for paying taxes. “Our experiments demonstrate that Italians on average are just as honest as Swedes.  Interestingly, however, Italians are more likely to ‘fudge’ (cheat a little), whereas if a Swede decides to cheat, he is more likely to go all the way,” says Sven Steinmo, Professor at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Study in Florence, Italy, co-author of this study. Participants for this research were recruited from Italy and Sweden. Swedes think that honesty is a typical national trait, whereas the trustworthiness of Italians is ranked as low, not only by other EU countries, but by Italians themselves. The subjects were asked to perform an experimental task that mirrored features of tax systems used by many countries. Currency units earned at the start of the test were reported voluntarily, […]

Neuroscience

11 May 2016

New brain research may help treat single-sided deafness

  By Abigail Pattenden, Frontiers Science Writer A new discovery could help people suffering with single-sided deafness (SSD) find a treatment quicker – and could potentially lead to a cure. SSD affects around 9,000 people per year in the UK, and around 60,000 per year in the US. It can be caused by a number of things – from viral infections to brain tumours – and is currently incurable and difficult to treat.  Symptoms of SSD include impaired hearing, difficulty filtering out background noise, and difficulty determining sound direction. A major stumbling block to finding the best treatment has been the current lack of biomarkers against which to measure a treatment’s efficacy, but Dr Srikantan Nagarajan – a specialty chief editor of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, along with Dr Steven Cheung, and a group of scientists based at the University of California have been looking at brain plasticity in response to the development of SSD.  Their recent discovery could pave the way to the development of such biomarkers, and potentially, a cure. Brain plasticity is the ability of the brain to modify its own structure and function in response to changes within the body (e.g., disease) or external factors. It is […]

Psychology

10 May 2016

Study shows where you are is who you are

A recent study suggests that who we are might be more integrated with where we are than previously thought. Demonstrating how architects and urban planners might take guidance from disciplines like neuroscience, philosophy and psychology, a paper published in Frontiers in Psychology, reveals that a good built environment might promote well-being and effect our decisions. Contrary to the idea that we are separate from what we experience, the study claims that we ought to think about how the environment we create might, in turn, be used to create us. With this in mind, the scientists investigated how the way we interact with space defines how we identify ourselves and our capabilities. “The built environment can restrict or promote spatial cognition, which can influence one’s self-hood,” the researchers explain. “Our spatial coordinates and our ‘selves’ are intertwined.” According to the researchers, we understand our environment differently depending on our experience of it. For example, learning your way through a space using a map gives a different understanding than through learning your own route. In a mapped environment, the tendency is to think of objects in relation to one another, whereas finding your own way might lead to thinking about the space […]

Health

10 May 2016

Scientist’s dedication in policy creates change for people with intellectual disability

By Daisy Hessenberger, Frontiers science writer Professor Joav Merrick is a busy man. Medical director of the Division for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities with the Ministry of Social Affairs and Social Services in Israel, in his spare time he works as a professor at various other institutions. His appointments span not just continents, but also specialties. He is professor of paediatrics, child health and human development at both the Hebrew University and the University of Kentucky, while also holding a professorship in public health at Georgia State University. From pediatrics to public health “I am paediatrician by trade,” Merrick said, when asked about his astonishing career. After completing medical school in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he grew up, Merrick entered the field of paediatrics, publishing the first Scandinavian textbook on Social and Community Paediatrics. Merrick has received both national and international awards for his extraordinary contribution to child welfare, including the LEGO Prize in 1987 known as “The Children’s Nobel Prize”. So how did an internationally successful career in paediatrics result in a world-renowned career in public health? The shift came about somewhat randomly. “I came to Israel as a paediatrician who wanted to do work in child abuse and neglect, […]