Health & Wellness
Sarah Hutcheon
Medical News Today
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:00 EST
Most adolescents who belong to an ethnic minority group wrestle not only with their self-esteem (like most teens), but also with identity issues unique to their ethnic group, such as dealing with social stigma. A new study tells us that young people's ethnic pride may affect their mental health.
The study, carried out by researchers at Northwestern University, Loyola University Chicago, and Walden University, appears in the November/December 2009 issue of the journal Child Development.
The researchers studied more than 250 African American youths from urban, low-income families in an effort to assess the unique effects of racial identity and self esteem on mental health. They found that when young people's feelings of ethnic pride rose between 7th and 8th grades, their mental health also improved over that period, regardless of their self-esteem. Even for those with low self-esteem, the investigators found, a sense of pride in their ethnic group served as a buffer to some mental health problems. Racial identity was a stronger buffer against symptoms of depression for boys than for girls.
Medical News Today
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:00 EST
You may hurt the ones you love but 'forgive and forget' is much more likely to apply in intimate relationships than it is to your friends, according to research results from The Australian National University, being released as part of National Psychology Week.
The study by Clinical Psychology PhD Candidate Jodie Burchell, suggests that although the people that are closest to you have the greatest capacity to hurt your feelings, over time people feel less hurt from events occurring in an intimate relationship than they do from those involving close friends.
Her work aims to build on studies that have suggested evolutionary selection favoured those emotions that increased our ancestors' chances of surviving and subsequently reproducing. Recent research has suggested that hurt feelings have evolved to signal that a person's inclusion in a group or relationship is in danger. Ms Burchell's study is investigating whether the closeness of the relationship with the perpetrator of the hurtful event predicts how hurt a person reports feeling.
"The study found that no matter the event - whether it caused low or high hurt - people felt most hurt by those they were in close relationships with," said Ms Burchell.
Gail Short
Medical News Today
Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:00 EST
In a new study, psychologists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) are able to see in detail for the first time how various regions of the human brain respond when people experience an unexpected or traumatic event. The study could lead to the creation of biological measures that could identify people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or identify PTSD sufferers who would benefit from specific treatments.
In the study, UAB researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to see how activity in the parts of the brain associated with fear, learning and memory respond when research participants were startled by a loud static sound and when they were able to correctly predict when the sound would occur.
"When the noise is unexpected, the brain's response is larger," said UAB psychologist David Knight, Ph.D., principal investigator on the study, which is currently in press online and will appear in the January 2010 issue of the journal NeuroImage. "But when participants are able to predict when they are going to hear the unpleasant static noise, you can see the regions of the brain quiet down so that a smaller emotional response is produced.
ScienceDaily
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:00 EST
University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine researchers have identified the important role a protein plays in the body's first line of defense in directing immune cells called neutrophils toward the site of infection or injury.
Their results are described online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Neutrophils are white blood cells that are activated by chemical cues to move quickly to the site of injury or infection, where they ingest bacteria. When alerted to infection, neutrophils move by changing shape, developing a distinct front and back, sending a "foot" out in front of them, and "crawling" toward the site of infection.
Hoping to better understand the role of a protein called p55 or MPPI that they had previously identified as highly expressed in neutrophils, the UIC researchers bred the first mice that completely lacked this protein.
ScienceDaily
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:00 EST
High blood pressure, evidence of arterial disease and markers of inflammation in the blood in middle age appear more common in individuals whose parents have Alzheimer's disease than in individuals without a parental history of the condition, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Previous twin studies estimate that as much as 60 percent of the risk for Alzheimer's disease is under genetic control, according to background information in the article. Other research has identified several vascular and inflammatory risk factors in midlife that may be associated with the later transition into cognitive decline related to Alzheimer's disease.
Eric van Exel, M.D., Ph.D., of VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, and colleagues compared some of these vascular and inflammatory factors, such as high blood pressure and levels of pro-inflammatory proteins known as cytokines in the blood, between 206 offspring of 92 families with a history of Alzheimer's disease and 200 offspring of 97 families without a parental history. Researchers measured blood pressure; obtained blood samples to assess genetic characteristics and levels of cholesterol, along with cytokines and other inflammation-related substances; and collected sociodemographic characteristics, medical history and information about diet, exercise and stress levels.
ScienceDaily
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:00 EST
Malfunctioning circadian clock genes may be responsible for bipolar disorder in children. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Psychiatry found four versions of the regulatory gene RORB that were associated with pediatric bipolar disorder.
Alexander Niculescu from Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, US, worked with a team of researchers at Harvard, UC San Diego, Massachusetts General Hospital and SUNY Upstate Medical University to study the RORA and RORB genes of 152 children with the condition and 140 control children. They found four alterations to the RORB gene that were positively associated with being bipolar. Niculescu said, "Our findings suggest that clock genes in general and RORB in particular may be important candidates for further investigation in the search for the molecular basis of bipolar disorder".
RORB is mainly expressed in the eye, pineal gland and brain. Its expression is known to change as a function of circadian rhythm in some tissues, and mice without the gene exhibit circadian rhythm abnormalities. According to Niculescu, "Bipolar disorder is often characterized by circadian rhythm abnormalities, and this is particularly true among pediatric bipolar patients. Decreased sleep has even been noted as one of the earliest symptoms discriminating children with bipolar disorder from those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It will be necessary to verify our association results in other independent samples, and to continue to study the relationship between RORB, other clock genes, and bipolar disorder".
ScienceDaily
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:00 EST
Most children actively notice and think about race. A new study has found that children develop an awareness about racial stereotypes early, and that those biases can be damaging.
The study, by researchers at Rush University and Yale University, appears in the November/December 2009 issue of the journal Child Development.
This study looked at more than 120 elementary school children from an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse area of the United States. Children were asked questions to determine their ability to understand another person's stereotypical beliefs as well as their own comprehension of broadly held stereotypes. They were also asked about their own experiences with discrimination. In addition, the children's parents completed questionnaires asking about their parenting.
ScienceDaily
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:00 EST
A new study has found that young people feel differently about two types of parental control, generally viewing a type of control that's thought to be better for their development more positively. However, when parents are very controlling, young people no longer make this distinction and view both types of parental control negatively.
The study, conducted in the United States by researchers at Örebro University in Sweden, appears in the November/December 2009 issue of the journal Child Development. Unlike a lot of prior research on parenting that's focused on control, this study looked at how adolescents view and react to parental control.
Scholars tell us that parental control falls into two categories: behavioral control (when parents help their children regulate themselves and feel competent by providing supervision, setting limits, and establishing rules) and psychological control (when parents are manipulative in their behavior, often resulting in feelings of guilt, rejection, or not being loved). It's thought that behavioral control is better for youngsters' development.
ScienceDaily
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:00 EST
Many parents of preschoolers struggle with their children's fears of real and imaginary creatures. A new study offers some ideas on how they can better manage their children's worries.
The study, which was carried out by researchers at the University of California, Davis, appears in the November/December 2009 issue of the journal Child Development.
Researchers studied about 50 4-, 5-, and 7-year-olds in an effort to identify coping strategies that can be carried out by children. The children listened to a series of short illustrated stories. Each story featured a child alone or with another person who came into contact with something that looked like a real or an imaginary frightening creature, such as a snake or a ghost. Children were asked to predict how intensely afraid each of the children in the stories were, to give a reason why each child felt that way, and to offer a way to help the child in the story feel less afraid.
ScienceDaily
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:00 EST
Short-term memory may depend in a surprising way on the ability of newly formed neurons to erase older connections. That's the conclusion of a report in the November 13th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, that provides some of the first evidence in mice and rats that new neurons sprouted in the hippocampus cause the decay of short-term fear memories in that brain region, without an overall memory loss.
The researchers led by Kaoru Inokuchi of The University of Toyama in Japan say the discovery shows a more important role than many would have anticipated for the erasure of memories. They propose that the birth of new neurons promotes the gradual loss of memory traces from the hippocampus as those memories are transferred elsewhere in the brain for permanent storage. Although they examined this process only in the context of fear memory, Inokuchi says he "thinks all memories that are initially stored in the hippocampus are influenced by this process."
In effect, the new results suggest that failure of neurogenesis will lead to problems because the brain's short-term memory is literally full. In Inokuchi's words, we may perhaps experience difficulties in acquiring new information because the storage capacity of the hippocampus is "occupied by un-erased old memories."
206,972 people have viewed this page since Fri, 15 Dec 2006
Emails sent to Signs of the Times, Ark, Laura, or Cassiopaea become the property of Quantum Future Group, Inc and may be republished without notice.
Some icons appearing on this site were taken from KDE-look.org, Afterglow, Mayosoft, Everaldo, IconDrawer, VisualPharm, IconFactory, Klukeart, Icons-land, TpdkDesign.net, and IconShock.com.
Remember, we need your help to collect information on what is going on in your part of the world!
Send your article suggestions to: 
Original content © 2009 by SOTT.net/Signs of the Times. See: Fair Use Policy
![[Valid Atom 1.0]](/images/valid-atom.png?1222505720 "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed")
![[Valid RSS 2.0]](/images/valid-rss.png?1222505756 "Validate my RSS 2.0 feed")
