Both children and the elderly have slower response times when they have to make quick decisions in some settings. But recent research suggests that much of that slower response is a conscious choice to emphasize accuracy over speed. In fact, healthy older people can be trained to respond faster in some decision-making tasks without hurting their accuracy – meaning their cognitive skills in this area are not ...

In childhood, rituals like regular schedules for meal, bath, and bed times are a healthy part of behavioral development. But combined with oral and tactile sensitivities, such as discomfort at the dentist or irritation caused by specific fabrics, these rituals could be an early warning sign of adult Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). ...

Depression may have more far-reaching consequences than previously believed. Recent data suggests that individuals who suffer from a mood disorder could be twice as likely to have a heart attack compared to individuals who are not depressed. This process has been poorly understood — until now. A new study led by Concordia University has found that depressed individuals have a slower recovery time after exer ...

A survey of police officers indicated that about 40 percent have a sleep disorder, which was associated with an increased risk of adverse health, safety and performance outcomes, according to a study in the December 21 issue of JAMA. Sleep disorders, such as obstructive sleep apnea, insomnia, and shift work disorder, affect 50 to 70 million U.S. residents. Most are undiagnosed and remain untreated. The stud ...

A Florida State University clinical psychologist has identified factors that could cause some women with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to have chronic, persistent symptoms while others recover naturally over time. At the conclusion of a two-year study of women from across the nation, Assistant Professor Jesse R. Cougle found that those with PTSD who reported a history of rape or severe childhood phy ...

A new study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet shows that infants with low concentrations of the stress-related hormone cortisol in their saliva develop fewer allergies than other infants. Hopefully this new knowledge will be useful in future allergy prevention. The study is published in the December paper issue of Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. ...

Neuroscience researchers from Tufts have demonstrated, for the first time, that the physiological response to stress depends on neurosteroids acting on specific receptors in the brain, and they have been able to block that response in mice. This breakthrough suggests that these critical receptors may be drug therapy targets for control of the stress-response pathway. This finding may pave the way for new ap ...

Patients with Parkinson disease-related dementia appear to have increased brain atrophy in the hippocampal, temporal and parietal lobes and decreased prefrontal cortex volume compared to patients with Parkinson disease without dementia, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archivesjournals. The study was conducted by Daniel Weintraub, M.D., of the Perelman Sc ...

A major study of recent international data on school mathematics performance casts doubt on some common assumptions about gender and math achievement — in particular, the idea that girls and women have less ability due to a difference in biology. “We tested some recently proposed hypotheses that try to explain a supposed gender gap in math performance and found they were not supported by the data,” says Jan ...

Although there have been cardiovascular safety concerns about attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medications because of their ability to increase heart rate and blood pressure levels, an analysis that included more than 150,000 ADHD users found no evidence of an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, or sudden cardiac death associated with current use compared with non-use or rare-use among yo ...