Feed aggregator

The 23rd Congress of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology covered a wide variety of issues of critical public health concern, such as depression, schizophrenia, addiction, chronopsychiatry and neurodegenerative disorders, including multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. The program specifically emphasized the translation of new knowledge on fundamental disease mechanisms into clinical practice, paving the way for improved pharmacological and non-drug treatments for the prevention and treatment of all mental disorders and disorders of the brain in general.

Patients who choose to spend their last days at home with specialized care and monitoring can safely be given opioids to control pain and other symptoms without reducing survival time, according to a new study.

A subset of children with asthma suffers from severe, treatment-resistant disease associated with more illness and greater allergic hypersensitivity, according to the results of the National Heart, Blood, and Lung Institute's Severe Asthma Research Program.

As children in Western cultures grow, they learn to place numbers on a mental number line, with smaller numbers to the left and spaced further apart than the larger numbers on the right. Then the number line changes to become more linear, with small and large numbers the same distance apart. Children whose number line has made this change are better at remembering numbers, according to a new study published in the journal Psychological Science.

Johns Hopkins researchers have determined why certain stem cells are able to stay stem cells.

A new study by Pat Penfield of the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, and René Germain of the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, reveals that the low LEED point for use of FSC wood, coupled with both a shortage of FSC-certified sawmills and a shortage of FSC wood in New York state, may cause a bottleneck for green construction.

People are more likely to remember specific information such as faces or words if the pattern of activity in their brain is similar each time they study that information, according to new research from a University of Texas at Austin psychologist and his colleagues.

New analysis of a landmark health survey by the University of Ottawa Heart Institute shows that 70 percent of Ontario adults are either overweight or obese, and have a strong prevalence of high blood pressure that could lead to heart attack or stroke.

Researchers have published what is believed to be the first detailed examination of robot deception. They developed algorithms that allow a robot to determine whether it should deceive and designed techniques that help the robot select the best deceptive strategy to avoid getting caught.

A recent study analyzed water quantity and quality in plots of Miscanthus, switchgrass, corn and soybeans and found that Miscanthus used substantially more water, but reduced the potential for nitrogen pollution to water bodies.

Computer vision systems can struggle to make sense of a single image, but a new method devised by computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University enables computers to gain a deeper understanding of an image by reasoning about the physical constraints of the scene.

There is new evidence that people can learn to control the activity of some brain regions when they get feedback signals provided by functional magnetic resonance brain imaging.

A new study looking at the effects of the 2006 Massachusetts Health Reform on access to care, health status and ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in health care, shows that the legislation has led to improvements in insurance coverage as well as a decline in financial barriers to care. However it has not increased people's access to a personal physician or improved their self-rated health. The study is published online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Diagnostic errors are the most important causes of avoidable harm to patients in hospitals, warns a senior doctor on bmj.com today.

People who are better at simple physical acts such as gripping, walking, rising from a chair and balancing on one leg are more likely to live longer, according to a new study published on bmj.com today.

New research reveals how the brain deals with real and impossible actions.

In our dynamic 3-D world, we can encounter a familiar face from any angle and still recognize that face with ease, even if the person has, for example, changed his hair style. This is because our brain has used the 2-D snapshots perceived by our eyes (like a camera) to build and store a 3-D mental representation of the face, which is resilient to such changes.

New research into how music conveys emotion could benefit the treatment of depression and the management of physical pain.Using an innovative combination of music psychology and leading-edge audio engineering the project is looking in more detail than ever before at how music conveys emotion.

Health and social services are facing a new challenge, as many illicit drug users get older and face chronic health problems and a reduced quality of life. Researchers interviewed people aged 49-61 in contact with voluntary sector drug treatment services. The study, plus wider research, suggests that older people who continue to use problematic or illegal drugs are emerging as an important, but relatively under-researched, international population

The complex fracture pattern created by the earthquake in Concepción (Chile) on Feb. 27, 2010, was to a certain extent predictable. GPS observations from the years before the earthquake showed the pattern of stresses that had accumulated through the plate movements during the past 175 years in this area.