Psychological trauma leaves a trail of damage in a child's brain, say scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. Their new study gives the first direct evidence that children with symptoms of post-traumatic stress suffer poor function of the hippocampus, a brain structure that stores and retrieves memories. The research helps explain why traumatized chil ...

Scrambled connections between the part of the brain that processes fear and emotion and other brain regions could be the hallmark of a common anxiety disorder, according to a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine. The findings could help researchers identify biological differences between types of anxiety disorders as well as such disorders as depression. ...

David Perlman, a neuroscience graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, presents a comedic reminder of the dangers of false positives in fMRI data. The researcher conducted an fMRI of a deal salmon's brain as it was "shown a series of photographs depicting human individuals in social situations with a specified emotional valence." Moreover, "the salmon was asked to determine what emotion the individu ...