By observing the eye movements of schizophrenia patients while they played a simple video game, a University of British Columbia researcher has discovered a potential explanation for some of their symptoms. Schizophrenia is a brain disorder affecting about one per cent of the population that often causes people to hear voices that others don’t hear […]
It seems that oxytocin is two-faced. The hormone that promotes feelings of love, social bonding, and well-being can also cause emotional pain, an entirely new, darker identity for the much studied hormone. The new findings, by researchers from Northwestern University, come from two experiments detailed in the journal Nature Neuroscience. In the first experiment, three […]
Researchers have found that every third person who is diagnosed for the first time with a mood disorder had been admitted to hospital with an infection prior to the diagnosis. The study, appearing in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, is the largest of its kind, following more than 3 million Danes between 1977 and 2010. It […]
In a discovery that carries significant implications for changing brain function through dietary interventions, UCLA researchers say they now have the first evidence that bacteria ingested in food can affect how the human brain works. The study, which focused on women who consumed yogurt containing the bacteria known as probiotics, appears in the journalGastroenterology. Researchers […]
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health say that the number of Americans over-diagnosed and over-treated for depression is “staggering.” Their study examined adults with clinician-identified depression and individuals who experienced major depressive episodes within a 12-month period. It found that when assessed for major depressive episodes using a structured interview, only […]
Sports gamblers frequently see themselves as cleverer than other gamblers, believing that their intimate knowledge of player statistics, coaching styles, and other details will give them an edge. But new research shows that neither betting experience nor knowledge of the details of the game is connected to successful sports betting outcomes. The new findings, say […]
The neurochemical changes that underlie human emotions are still largely unknown, but UCLA scientists have for the first time identified a specific peptide called hypocretin that is released in large quantities when subjects are happy. The finding, reported in Nature Communications, suggests that boosting hypocretin could elevate both mood and alertness in humans. This, according […]
“Likes” or positive comments from close friends on Facebook appear to inflate users’ self-esteem and reduce self-control, resulting in higher body-mass indexes and higher levels of credit-card debt. That’s according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia Business School who have analyzed five separate Facebook studies in the Journal of Consumer Research. “To […]
Researchers are reporting a successful phase IIa clinical trial of GLYX-13, a first-of-its-kind ketamine-like antidepressant that takes effect within 24 hours and delivers double the antidepressant effect of traditional selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI) treatments. Details of the clinical development of GLYX-13 appear in the current issue of the journal Neuropsychopharmacology and the trial results were […]
A study in Nature Neuroscience has found that animals socially isolated for prolonged periods make less myelin (the brain’s white matter) in the region of the brain responsible for emotional and cognitive behavior. Myelin is the fatty material that wraps the axons of neurons and allows them to signal effectively. Normal nerve function is lost […]
