January 7, 2009, 11:58 PM CT

Restoring Trust is Harder

In relationships built on trust, a bad first impression can be harder to overcome than a betrayal that occurs after ties are established, a newly released study suggests.

While betraying trust is never good for a relationship, the results show that early violations can be especially devastating, and plant seeds of doubt that may never go away, said Robert Lount, co-author of the study and assistant professor of management and human resources at Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business.

"First impressions matter when you want to build a lasting trust," Lount said.

"If you get off on the wrong foot, the relationship may never be completely right again. It's easier to rebuild trust after a breach if you already have a strong relationship".

While the importance of first impressions may seem obvious, Lount said there is still a common theme in popular culture that suggests a number of great relationships start off badly.

"Our results fly in the face of this Hollywood notion of hating someone at first sight but then developing a wonderful, passionate relationship," he said. "The likelihood of that happening in real life is pretty low".

The study appears in a recent issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

January 7, 2009, 11:54 PM CT

Genetic Determinants of ADHD

A special issue of American Journal of Medical Genetics (AJMG): Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics presents a comprehensive overview of the latest progress in genetic research of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The issue covers major trends in the field of complex psychiatric genetics, underscoring how genetic studies of ADHD have evolved, and what approaches are needed to uncover its genetic origins.

ADHD is a complex condition with environmental and genetic causes. Typically it is characterized by developmentally inappropriate levels of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity that has an onset in childhood. It is one of the most common psychiatric diseases, affecting between 8-12 percent of children worldwide. The drugs used to treat ADHD are highly effective, making ADHD one of the most treatable psychiatric disorders. However, despite the high efficacy of ADHD medications, these therapys are not curative and leave patients with residual disability. Because ADHD is also has one of the most heritable of psychiatric disorders, scientists have been searching for genes that underlie the disorder in the hopes that gene discovery will lead to better therapys for the disorder.

Among the a number of studies in the issue are two from the first genomewide association study of individual ADHD patients. The study examined more than 600,000 genetic markers in over 900 families from the largest genetic study of ADHD, the International ADHD Multicenter Genetics (IMAGE) project led by Stephen V. Faraone of SUNY Upstate Medical Center. The authors have made these data publicly available to scientists who are interested in pursuing further studies......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

January 2, 2009, 10:55 AM CT

Getting better results from anxiety treatment

A network of emotion-regulating brain regions implicated in the pathological worry that can grip patients with anxiety disorders may also be useful for predicting the benefits of therapy.

A newly released study appearing online Jan. 2 reports that high levels of brain activity in an emotional center called the amygdala reflect patients' hypersensitivity to anticipation of adverse events. At the same time, high activity in a regulatory region known as the anterior cingulate cortex is linked to a positive clinical response to a common antidepressant medication. The study will appear in an upcoming issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry

For individuals with anxiety disorders, the anticipation of a bad outcome can be worse than the outcome itself, says Jack Nitschke, assistant professor and clinical psychology expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health and main author of the newly released study. Some individuals spend so much time worrying about getting into a negative situation or having a panic attack, he says, that the condition becomes debilitating. "In an extreme situation, they might not even leave their home," he says.

To study how the brain responds to anticipation, scientists at the UW-Madison Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) as they viewed a set of negative and neutral images. Patients were shown pre-image cues several seconds before each picture so they would know what to expect: a circle before a neutral image and a minus sign before an aversive image......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 30, 2008, 7:11 AM CT

How your facial expressions are formed?

Facial expressions of emotion are hardwired into our genes, as per a research studypublished recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology The research suggests that facial expressions of emotion are innate rather than a product of cultural learning. The study is the first of its kind to demonstrate that sighted and blind individuals use the same facial expressions, producing the same facial muscle movements in response to specific emotional stimuli.

The study also provides new insight into how humans manage emotional displays as per social context, suggesting that the ability to regulate emotional expressions is not learned through observation.

San Francisco State University Psychology Professor David Matsumoto compared the facial expressions of sighted and blind judo athletes at the 2004 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games. More than 4,800 photographs were captured and analyzed, including images of athletes from 23 countries.

"The statistical connection between the facial expressions of sighted and blind individuals was almost perfect," Matsumoto said. "This suggests something genetically resident within us is the source of facial expressions of emotion."

Matsumoto observed that sighted and blind individuals manage their expressions of emotion in the same way as per social context. For example, because of the social nature of the Olympic medal ceremonies, 85 percent of silver medalists who lost their medal matches produced "social smiles" during the ceremony. Social smiles use only the mouth muscles whereas true smiles, known as Duchenne smiles, cause the eyes to twinkle and narrow and the cheeks to rise......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 28, 2008, 11:21 PM CT

Use your unconscious brain to make the best bets

Scientists at the University of Rochester have shown that the human brainonce believed to be a seriously flawed decision makeris actually hard-wired to allow us to make the best decisions possible with the information we are given. The findings appear in today's issue of the journal Neuron

Neuroresearchers Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky received a 2002 Nobel Prize for their 1979 research that argued humans rarely make rational decisions. Since then, this has become conventional wisdom among cognition researchers.

Contrary to Kahnneman and Tversky's research, Alex Pouget, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, has shown that people do indeed make optimal decisionsbut only when their unconscious brain makes the choice.

"A lot of the early work in this field was on conscious decision making, but most of the decisions you make aren't based on conscious reasoning," says Pouget. "You don't consciously decide to stop at a red light or steer around an obstacle in the road. Once we started looking at the decisions our brains make without our knowledge, we observed that they almost always reach the right decision, given the information they had to work with".

Pouget says that Kahneman's approach was to tell a subject that there was a certain percent chance that one of two choices in a test was "right." This meant a person had to consciously compute the percentages to get a right answersomething few people could do accurately......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 28, 2008, 11:12 PM CT

Take care of that childhood anxiety disorder

Anxiety disorders in children and adolescents should be recognized and treated to prevent educational underachievement and adult substance abuse, anxiety disorders and depression, says a nationally recognized child psychiatry expert from UT Southwestern Medical Center.

In an editorial appearing in the Dec. 25 issue of New England Journal (NEJM), Dr. Graham Emslie, professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at UT Southwestern, urges awareness that children need to be treated for anxiety disorders and recommends that related empirical evidence be integrated into therapy guidelines.

"Anxiety disorders may cause children to avoid social situations and age-appropriate developmental milestones," said Dr. Emslie. "Further, the avoidance cycle can lead to less opportunity to develop social skills necessary for success during the later part of life. Treatment would help children learn healthy coping skills".

Up to 20 percent of children and adolescents are affected by persistent and excessive worry that can manifest as generalized anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder and social phobia. Research has shown that failure to identify these disorders early leads to educational underachievement and increased rates of anxiety disorders, depression and substance abuse during the later part of life......... Posted by: Scott      Read more         Source

December 28, 2008, 10:58 PM CT

Young People and Alcohol

As the party season approaches, a timely reminder of the issues surrounding the binge drinking culture are again highlighted by research into 'young people and alcohol' a team lead by Professor Christine Griffin, at the University of Bath. The research, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) suggests several considerations for future policy.

Focusing on the role of marketing practices in shaping young people's attitudes to alcohol consumption, the research included analysis of 216 alcohol adverts, both in print and broadcast. While extreme drinking and determined drunkenness appears to be perceived as the norm amongst young people, there is some positive news from the research. Evidence suggests that increases in young people's alcohol consumption is levelling off.

Previously, representations of binge drinking as a source of entertainment, coupled with pervasive coverage of drunken celebrities has increased the social acceptance of binge drinking. Advertising representing the 'coolness' of excessive drinking, along with the increasing use of internet based social networking sites that are used to share images of drunken nights out,, also enable the linkage between alcohol and 'having fun'.

Looking at what steps society may need to take to tackle the scourge of binge drinking, Professor Griffin says, "Top of my list would have to be to stop demonizing and making generalisations about young people and their drinking. We also need to listen and incorporate their views and perspectives." ......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

December 23, 2008, 10:25 PM CT

Family Depression May Have Lasting Effects On Teens

The country's economic crisis could have lasting effects on children from families that fall into poverty, as per a new paper by scientists from Iowa State University's Institute for Social and Behavioral Research.

Their study of 485 Iowa adolescents over a 10-year period (1991-2001) observed that early socioeconomic adversity experienced by children contributes to poor mental health by the time they become teens -- disrupting their successful transition into adulthood by endangering their social, academic and occupational attainment as young adults.

"The main finding shows the continuity of family adversity over generations -- from family-of-origin to a young adult's family. In other words, it's the transmission of poverty," said K.A.S. Wickrama, an ISU professor of human development and family studies and the study's lead researcher.

"Other articles have shown intergenerational transmission of adversity, but our study also shows the mechanisms that this influence operates through," he said. "We had the luxury of data to investigate that because we have been following 500 Iowa families since 1989".

Wickrama collaborated with Fred Lorenz, ISU University Professor of psychology; Tony Jung, an ISU graduate student in human development and family studies; and Rand D. Conger, a Distinguished Professor of human and community development at the University of California-Davis, on the study. They authored the paper "Family Antecedents and Consequences of Trajectories of Depressive Symptoms from Adolescence to Young Adulthood: A Life Course Investigation," which was reported in the recent issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, a professional journal......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 22, 2008, 9:24 PM CT

Law Enforcement to Deter Drinking and Driving

Recent data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) revealed that an estimated 2 million drunk drivers with three or more convictions will be on the roads this holiday season. In 2007, approximately 1,500 people nationwide were killed in crashes that involved a drunk driver from Thanksgiving through New Year's Day. Scientists from the University of Missouri and the University of Georgia observed that the most important deterrence factors for high-risk drivers are their perceptions of the likelihood of being stopped or arrested and their support for deterrence laws.

All U.S. states have laws designed to deter impaired driving, but there is little evidence on what works to deter drivers who have a high risk of drinking and driving. The scientists observed that the existence of laws, such as the.08 blood alcohol content and open container restrictions, affect only those less likely to drink and drive, and the actual number of impaired driving arrests in a state has no significant effect on drivers' likelihood of drinking and driving.

"Essentially, law enforcement needs to focus on perceptions; it is important that drivers perceive that they will be caught if they drive impaired," said Lilliard Richardson, professor in the MU Truman School of Public Affairs. "We observed that high-risk drivers are less likely to drink and drive if they perceive they are likely to be stopped or arrested by police. However, the mere existence of laws designed to discourage people from drinking and driving does not impact high-risk drivers. The results provide support for the value of high-visibility enforcement campaigns. Public safety education and media efforts are important components of the overall strategy for reducing impaired driving"......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 19, 2008, 5:18 AM CT

How We Make Proper Movements

When you first notice a door handle, your brain has already been hard at work. Your visual system first sees the handle, then it sends information to various parts of the brain, which go on to decipher out the details, such as color and the direction the handle is pointing. As the information about an object is sent further along the various brain pathways, more and more details are noticed-in that way, a simple door handle turns into a silver-plated-antique-style-door-handle-facing-right. Information about the handle also reaches the part of your brain responsible for planning movements (known as the pre-motor area), and it comes up with a set of motions, allowing you to turn the handle with your right hand and open the door.

However, this is not necessarily a simple process for the brain. For instance, how do we end up turning the door handle with our right hand, instead of just hitting it with our left? During this analysis, the brain is bombarded with a lot of irrelevant information, so it relies on a control system to filter out unnecessary information. In the visual system, this control mechanism is known as center surround inhibition and it works by activating only the neurons that are mandatory for further action. In other words, if any extra neurons are turned on, this control mechanism will shut them off, so that the brain can focus on the relevant information. Eventhough the center surround inhibition system has been well documented in the visual system, it was not known if this type of control mechanism exists in the motor regions of the brain. Psychology expert Daniel Loach from Macquarie University in Sydney and colleagues conducted a set of experiments to explore inhibitory mechanism in the areas of the brain involved in planning movements......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 18, 2008, 10:38 PM CT

Men, Women Give To Charity Differently

To whom would you rather give money: a needy person in your neighborhood or a needy person in a foreign country? As per new research by Texas A&M University marketing professor Karen Winterich and his colleagues, if you're a man, you're more likely to give to the person closest to you ? that is, the one in your neighborhood ? if you give at all.

If you're a woman, you're more likely to give ? and to give equal amounts to both groups.

Winterich, who teaches marketing at Texas A&M's Mays Business School, says she can predict charitable behavior to different groups by an individual based on just two factors: gender and moral identity. (Moral identity does not measure how moral a person actually is, but rather how important it is to that person to be caring, kind, fair, honest, etc.).

The research is forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Research. Co-authors on the paper are Vikas Mittal at Rice University and William T. Ross at Penn State University.

The results of Winterich's studies involving American participants have implications for those in the fund-raising arena.

The study examined how people responded to a need within an "ingroup" and an "outgroup." An ingroup has an obvious connection to the potential donor, such as physical proximity or ethnicity, while the outgroup might have nothing more than humanity to relate it to the donor......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

December 17, 2008, 10:31 PM CT

Women Prefer Prestige Over Dominance in Mates

A new study in the journal Personal Relationships reveals that women prefer mates who are recognized by their peers for their skills, abilities, and achievements, while not preferring men who use coercive tactics to subordinate their rivals. Indeed, women found dominance strategies of the latter type to be attractive primarily when men used them in the context of male-male athletic competitions.

Jeffrey K. Snyder, Lee A. Kirkpatrick, and H. Clark Barrett conducted three studies with college women at two U.S. universities. Participants reviewed hypothetical potential mates described in written vignettes. The studies were designed to examine the respective effects of men's dominance and prestige on women's assessments of men.

Women are sensitive to the context in which men display domineering behaviors when they evaluate men as potential mates. For example, the traits and behaviors that women found attractive in athletic competitions were unattractive to women when men displayed the same traits and behaviors in interpersonal contexts. Notably, when considering prospective partners for long-term relationships, women's preferences for dominance decrease, and their preferences for prestige increase.

"These findings directly contradict the dating advice of some pop psychology experts who advise men to be aggressive in their social interactions. Women most likely avoid dominant men as long-term romantic partners because a dominant man may also be domineering in the household." the authors conclude......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 16, 2008, 10:19 PM CT

Experts comment on importance of Christmas dinner

The menu might be different and families might be smaller, but Christmas remains among the most important holidays. "It is sacred," says Universit de Montral Psychology expert Luc Brunet. "It's part of our culture to come together to laugh and eat in a festive setting."

A recent survey showed that half of Canadians will travel over 200 kilometers to be with their families this holiday season, which is indicative of the importance of Christmas. "As a result of the demands of the workplace, this is often the only time families come together other than around the buffet at a funeral," says Brunet.

Marie Marquis is a professor at the Universit de Montral Department of Nutrition. She believes it's crucial to protect family dinners. "Quebecers are losing the habit of eating together," says Marquis. "Everyone eats at their own time and in their own place."

The dinner table is where relationships are forged, where children can express their joys and concerns. Yet Marquis is concerned that esthetics are changing how people get together.

"People are more concerned with how the Christmas table looks than how it brings people together," she says. "Before, Christmas dinner was a reason to get together. People sat around with mismatched china, while people of different generations would come together and talk. Nowadays, people want a Martha Stewart table. Kids are put on a separate table while adults have their own table. It's a shame"......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 15, 2008, 5:20 AM CT

Later school start times may improve sleep in adolescents

A study in the Dec. 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine shows that after a one-hour delay of school start times, teens increased their average nightly hours of sleep and decreased their "catch-up sleep" on the weekends, and they were involved in fewer auto accidents.

When school started one hour later students averaged from 12 minutes (grade nine) to 30 minutes (grade 12) more self-reported nightly sleep. The percentage of students who got at least eight hours of sleep per weeknight increased significantly from 35.7 percent to 50 percent; students who got at least nine hours of sleep also increased from 6.3 percent to 10.8 percent. The average amount of additional weekend sleep, or "catch-up sleep," decreased from 1.9 hours to 1.1 hours. Daytime sleepiness decreased, as reported by students using the Epworth Sleepiness Scale. Average crash rates for teen drivers in the study county in the two years after the change in school start time dropped 16.5 percent in comparison to the two years previous to the change, while teen crash rates for the rest of the state increased 7.8 percent over the same time period.

"It is surprising that high schools continue to set their start times early, which impairs learning, attendance and driving safety of the students," said senior author Barbara Phillips, MD, director of the UK Healthcare Good Samaritan Sleep Center in Lexington, Ky......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 15, 2008, 5:18 AM CT

High blood pressure may make it difficult for the elderly to think clearly

Adding another reason for people to watch their blood pressure, a new study from North Carolina State University shows that increased blood pressure in elderly adults is directly correlation to decreased cognitive functioning, especially among seniors with already high blood pressure. This means that stressful situations may make it more difficult for some seniors to think clearly.

Dr. Jason Allaire, an assistant professor of psychology at NC State who co-authored the study, explains that study subjects whose average systolic blood pressure was 130 or higher saw a significant decrease in cognitive function when their blood pressure spiked. However, Allaire notes, study subjects whose average blood pressure was low or normal saw no change in their cognitive functioning even when their blood pressure shot up.

Specifically, Allaire says, the study shows a link between blood pressure spikes in seniors with hypertension and a decrease in their inductive reasoning. "Inductive reasoning is important," Allaire says, "because it is essentially the ability to work flexibly with unfamiliar information and find solutions".

Allaire says the findings may indicate that mental stress is partially responsible for the increase in blood pressure and the corresponding breakdown in cognitive functioning. However, Allaire notes that normal fluctuations in blood pressure likely play a role as well......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 15, 2008, 5:15 AM CT

Psychotherapy to treat eating disorders

Wellcome Trust researchers have developed a new form of psychotherapy that has been shown to have the potential to treat more than eight out of ten cases of eating disorders in adults, a study out today reports.

This new "enhanced" form of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT-E) builds on and improves the current leading treatment for bulimia nervosa as recommended by the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). CBT-E is the first treatment to be shown to be suitable for the majority of cases of eating disorders.

According to NICE, eating disorders are a major cause of physical and psychosocial impairment in young women, affecting at least one in twenty women between the ages of 18 and 30. They also occur in young men but are less common. Three eating disorders are recognised: anorexia nervosa, which accounts for around one in ten cases in adults; bulimia nervosa, which accounts for a third of all cases; and the remainder are classed as "atypical eating disorders, which account for over half of all cases. In these atypical cases the features of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are combined in a different way.

The three eating disorders vary in their severity, but typically involve extreme and relentless dieting, self-induced vomiting or laxative misuse, binge eating, driven exercising and in some cases marked weight loss. Common associated features are depression, social withdrawal, perfectionism and low self-esteem. The disorders tend to run a chronic course and are notoriously difficult to treat. Relapse is common......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 11, 2008, 5:22 AM CT

Panic attacks linked to higher risk of heart attacks

People who have been diagnosed with panic attacks or panic disorder have a greater risk of subsequently developing heart disease or suffering a heart attack than the normal population, with higher rates occurring in younger people, as per research published in Europe's leading cardiology journal, the European Heart Journal [1] today (Thursday 11 December).

The study observed that people who were younger than 50 when first diagnosed had a significantly higher risk of subsequent heart attacks (or myocardial infarctions, MI), but this was not the case in older people. It also found there was a significantly higher occurence rate of subsequent coronary heart disease (CHD) in people diagnosed with panic attacks/disorder at all ages, but this was more marked in the under 50s.

However, the research also showed that the risk of dying from CHD was actually reduced amongst people of all ages who had been diagnosed with panic attacks/disorder.

The study is the first to look at a very large sample of the UK population of all ages (a total of 404,654 people) selected from a primary care population that can be broadly generalised to other countries with a similar socio-demographic structure. It is also the first to identify that the higher risk of heart attacks with panic attacks/disorder is mainly in younger people (aged under 50 years), and that having a panic attacks/disorder diagnosis is linked to a lower risk of dying from heart conditions......... Posted by: Daniel      Read more         Source

December 11, 2008, 5:09 AM CT

Strategic video game improves critical cognitive skills

A desire to rule the world may be a good thing if you're over 60 and worried about losing your mental faculties. A new study observed that adults in their 60s and 70s can improve many cognitive functions by playing a strategic video game that rewards nation-building and territorial expansion.

This is the first such study of elderly adults, and it is the first to find such pronounced effects on cognitive skills not directly correlation to the skills learned in the video game, said University of Illinois psychology professor Arthur Kramer, an author on the study.

The research appears this month in the journal Psychology & Aging

Decades of laboratory studies designed to improve specific cognitive skills, such as short-term memory, have found again and again that trainees improve almost exclusively on the tasks they perform in the lab and only under laboratory conditions, Kramer said.

"When you train somebody on a task they tend to improve in that task, whatever it is, but it commonly doesn't transfer much beyond that skill or beyond the particular situation in which they learned it," he said. "And there are virtually no studies that examine whether there's any transfer outside the lab to things people care about".

Kramer and colleagues wanted to know whether a more integrated training approach could go beyond the training environment to enhance the cognitive skills used in every day life. Specifically, the scientists wondered whether interactive video games might benefit those cognitive functions that decline most with age......... Posted by: Daniel      Read more         Source

December 9, 2008, 10:10 PM CT

Genetic markers identified for alcohol response

Researchers at the UCSF Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center have identified a region on the human genome that appears to determine how strongly drinkers feel the effects of alcohol and thus how prone they are to alcohol abuse.

The researchers found that a DNA sequence variation, known as a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), on chromosome 15 is significantly associated with the level of response to alcohol and could signal the genetic factors that affect alcohol abuse, according to findings published in the Dec. 8 online edition of the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences".

The research investigated two sentinel SNP markers - RS1051730 and RS8034191 -that previously had been associated with nicotine dependence and lung cancer and found a strong association with the first marker, according to Raymond L. White, PhD, director of the Gallo Center and senior author on the paper.

"We know that the level of response to alcohol is heritable and think there are genetic factors behind 40 to 60 percent of alcohol dependence, but until now, the chromosomal locations of these factors have not been clear for the most common forms of alcohol use disorders," White said. "By understanding which portion of our genetic makeup influences our response to alcohol, we can begin to understand what type of treatments might be most successful in helping reduce alcohol use disorders"......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 9, 2008, 10:01 PM CT

How Power Affects Complex Decision Making

Presidential scholars have written volumes trying to understand the presidential mind. How can anyone juggle so a number of complicated decisions? Do those seeking office have a unique approach to decision making? Studies have suggested that power changes not only a person's responsibilities, but also the way they think. Now, a new study in the recent issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, indicates that having power may lead people to automatically think in a way that makes complex decision-making easier.

Psychology experts Pamela Smith, Ap Dijksterhuis and Daniël Wigboldus of Radboud University Nijmegen stimulated feelings of powerlessness or power in a group of volunteers by having some volunteers recall a situation when other people had power over them and other volunteers recall a situation when they had power over other people. Then they were given a complicated problem to solve (they had to pick among four cars, each varying on 12 different attributes). The experiment was designed so that there was a "correct" solution-that is, one of the cars had the most positive and least negative attributes, eventhough the optimal choice was not obvious. Both the "powerful" and the "powerless" volunteers chose among the cars, but some spent time consciously thinking about the problem, while others were distracted with a word puzzle......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 9, 2008, 9:25 PM CT

Genetic underpinnings of nicotine addiction

A new study from the Abramson Cancer Center and Department of Psychiatry in the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine shows that smokers who carry a particular version of a gene for an enzyme that regulates dopamine in the brain may suffer from concentration problems and other cognitive deficits when abstaining from nicotine a problem that puts them at risk for relapse during attempts to quit smoking. The findings, newly reported in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, pave the way to identify novel medications to treat nicotine addiction.

"These findings also provide an important step toward personalized treatment for nicotine addiction by clarifying the role of inherited genetic variation in smoking abstinence symptoms that promote relapse," says senior author Caryn Lerman, PhD, the Mary W. Calkins Professor in Penn's Department of Psychiatry and Scientific Director of Penn's Abramson Cancer Center.

"The new data identify a novel brain-behavior mechanism that plays a role in nicotine dependence and relapse during quitting attempts," says lead author James Loughead, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry. Loughead and Lerman studied groups of smokers with different inherited variations in a gene which influences levels of dopamine in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that governs working memory and complex decision-making. Spurred by their prior findings that carriers of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) val gene variant are more susceptible to smoking relapse, the Penn scientists set out to learn if smokers with this genetic background would be more likely to exhibit altered brain function and cognitive deficits during periods of abstinence from smoking......... Posted by: Scott      Read more         Source

December 9, 2008, 9:22 PM CT

Boy-girl bullying in middle grades common

Much more cross-gender bullying - specifically, unpopular boys harassing popular girls - occurs in later elementary school grades than previously thought, meaning educators should take reports of harassment from popular girls seriously, as per new research by a University of Illinois professor who studies child development.

Philip C. Rodkin, a professor of child development at the U. of I.'s College of Education, said that while most bullies are boys, their victims, counter to popular conception, are not just other boys.

"We observed that a lot of male bullies between fourth and sixth grade are bullying girls - more than people would have anticipated - and a substantial amount of that boy-girl, cross-gender bullying goes unreported," he said.

Rodkin, who along with Christian Berger, a professor at the Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Santiago, Chile, published the paper "Who Bullies Whom? Social Status Asymmetries by Victim Gender" in the most recent issue of the International Journal of Behavioral Development, said cross-gender bullying hasn't been fully explored because of the ways scientists have thought about the social status dynamic of bullying in the past.

"Bullies are generally more popular than their victims, and have more power over their victim, whether it's physical strength or psychological power," Rodkin said. "Scientists have taken it for granted that a bully will also have a higher social status than their victims. Based on our research, that's not necessarily the case"......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 8, 2008, 10:33 PM CT

Are men hardwired to overspend?

Bling, foreclosures, rising credit card debt, bank and auto bailouts, upside down mortgages and perhaps a mid-life crisis new Corvette-all symptoms of compulsive overspending.

University of Michigan researcher Daniel Kruger looks to evolution and mating for an explanation. He theorizes that men overspend to attract mates. It all boils down, as it has for hundreds of thousands of years, to making babies.

Kruger, an assistant research scientist in the School of Public Health, tested his hypothesis in a community sample of adults aged 18-45 and observed that the degree of financial consumption was directly correlation to future mating intentions and past mating success for men but not for women.

Financial consumption was the only factor that predicted how a number of partners men wanted in the next five years and also predicted the number of partners they had in the prior five years, Kruger said. Being married made a difference in the frequency of one-time sexual partners in the last year, but not in the number of partners in the past or desired in the future.

The 25 percent of men with the most conservative financial strategies had an average of three partners in the past five years and desired an average of just one in the next five years. The 2 percent of men with the riskiest financial strategies had double those numbers......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 3, 2008, 5:21 AM CT

Stress-related disorders affect brains processing of memory

Scientists using functional MRI (fMRI) have determined that the circuitry in the area of the brain responsible for suppressing memory is dysfunctional in patients suffering from stress-related psychiatric disorders. Results of the study will be presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

"For patients with major depression and other stress-related disorders, traumatic memories are a source of anxiety," said Nivedita Agarwal, M.D., radiology resident at the University of Udine in Italy, where the study is being conducted, and research fellow at the Brain Imaging Center of McLean Hospital, Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston. "Because traumatic memories are not adequately suppressed by the brain, they continue to interfere with the patient's life".

Dr. Agarwal and his colleagues used brain fMRI to explore alterations in the neural circuitry that links the prefrontal cortex to the hippocampus, while study participants performed a memory task. Participants included 11 patients with major depression, 13 with generalized anxiety disorder, nine with panic attack disorders, five with borderline personality disorder and 21 healthy individuals. All patients reported suffering varying degrees of stressful traumatic events, such as sexual or physical abuse, difficult relationships or "mobbing" a type of bullying or harassment at some point in their lives......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source