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New research has found that elderly people with higher levels of several vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids in their blood had better performance on mental acuity tests and less of the brain shrinkage typical of Alzheimer’s disease – while “junk food” diets produced just the opposite result. The study was among the first of its [...]

Psychiatric disorders can be described on many levels, the most traditional of which are subjective descriptions of the experience of being depressed and the use of rating scales that quantify depressive symptoms. Over the past two decades, research has developed other strategies for describing the biological underpinnings of depression, including volumetric brain measurements using magnetic [...]

Quantum computing—considered the powerhouse of computational tasks—may have applications in areas outside of pure electronics, according to a University of Pittsburgh researcher and his collaborators. Working at the interface of quantum measurement and nanotechnology, Gurudev Dutt, assistant professor in Pitt’s Department of Physics and Astronomy in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, [...]

A father in Louisiana bludgeoned and beheaded his disabled 7-year-old son last August because he no longer wanted to care for the boy.
For most people, such a heinous act is unconscionable.
But it may be that a person can become callo…

Doctors use similar brain mechanisms to make diagnoses and to name objects, according to a study published in the Dec. 14 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE and led by Marcio Melo of the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil.
Doctors often make diagnos…

Quantitative magnetic resonance imaging measures were associated with prognostic tumor markers, demonstrating the potential of magnetic resonance imaging for prediction of disease prognosis and stratification of patients to appropriate…

Conventional wisdom says that exercise is a key to weight loss — a no-brainer. But now, Tel Aviv University researchers are revealing that life as a couch potato, stretched out in front of the TV, can actually be “active inactivity” — and cause you to pack on the pounds. Such inactivity actually encourages the body [...]

Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and nanoparticle technology, researchers from Yale have devised a way to monitor the growth of laboratory-engineered blood vessels after they have been implanted in patients. This advance represents an important step toward ensuring that blood vessels, and possibly other tissues engineered from a patient’s own biological material, are taking hold [...]

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — March 4, 2011 — Cancer patients are willing to undergo many tests to receive advanced experimental treatment in clinical trials, according to a new study by Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale Healthcare and the Translational Genomics …

Tobacco smoking is the leading preventable cause of death and disease in the U.S., with more than 400,000 deaths each year attributable to smoking or its consequences. And yet teens still smoke. Indeed, smoking usually begins in the teen years, and …

NEW YORK (Feb. 25, 2011) — Using a sophisticated imaging test to probe for higher-level cognitive functioning in severely brain-injured patients provides a window into consciousness — but the view it presents is one that is blurred in fascinating …

EUGENE, Ore. — Mothers who are depressed respond differently to their crying babies than do non-depressed moms. In fact, their reaction, according to brain scans at the University of Oregon, is much more muted than the robust brain activity in no…

Jerusalem, February 22, 2011 — The portion of the brain responsible for visual reading doesn’t require vision at all, according to a new study by researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and France.
Brain imaging studies of blind …

Why do some people fret over the most trivial matters while others remain calm in the face of calamity? Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have identified two different chinks in our brain circuitry that explain why some of us ar…

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Regular exercise improves the ability of overweight, previously inactive children to think, plan and even do math, Georgia Health Sciences University researchers report.
They hope the findings in 171 overweight 7- to 11-year-…

SAN FRANCISCO (February 10, 2011) — In a study to be presented today at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine’s (SMFM) annual meeting, The Pregnancy Meeting ™, in San Francisco, researchers will present findings that showed that in rats, the u…

SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 8, 2011 — Researchers at the University of Utah’s Comprehensive Arrhythmia and Research Management (CARMA) Center have found that delayed-enhancement magnetic resonance imaging (DE-MRI) holds promise for predicting the risks o…

For Immediate Release — February 8, 2011 – (Toronto) — A new study from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) has found evidence suggesting that a variation of a specific gene may play a role in late-onset Alzheimer’s, the disease wh…

New research from University of Michigan says brain scans showing neural reactions can predict behavior change even better than the person whose brain is being scanned.
Emily Falk, director of University of Michigan’s Communication Neuroscience La…

ANN ARBOR, Mich.–Brain scans showing neural reactions to pro-health messages can predict if you’ll keep that resolution to quit smoking more accurately than you yourself can. That’s according to a new study forthcoming in Health Psychology, a peer…