With more than 2 million people behind bars, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. This mass incarceration has serious implications for not only the inmates, but their children, finds a new University of California-Irvine study. The study found significant health problems, including behavioral issues, in children of incarcerated parents and also that, for some types of health outcomes, parental incarceration can be more detrimental to a child's well-being than divorce or the death of a parent.

Depression is known to be a common symptom of Parkinson's disease, but remains untreated for many patients, according to a new study by Northwestern Medicine investigators in collaboration with the National Parkinson's Foundation (NPF).

In fact, depression is the most prevalent non-motor symptom of Parkinson's, a chronic neurodegenerative disorder typically associated with movement dysfunction.

"We confirmed suspicion that depression is a very common symptom in Parkinson's disease. Nearly a quarter of the people in the study reported symptoms consistent with depression," said Danny Bega, MD, '14 GME, instructor in the Ken and Ruth Davee Department of Neurology and first author of the study. "This is important because previous research has determined that depression is a major determinant of overall quality of life."

Using the NPS's patient database, the investigators looked at records of more than 7,000 people with Parkinson's disease. Among those with high levels of depressive symptoms, only one-third had been prescribed antidepressants before the study began, and even fewer saw social workers or mental health professionals for counseling.

Do you often think of how you can free up more time to work or become stressed if you are prohibited from working? You may be a workaholic.

A tool that measures workaholism has found that 8.3% of the Norwegian work force is addicted to work to the point where it becomes a health issue.

Researchers from the University of Bergen in Norway used the Bergen Work Addiction Scale (BWAS), a workaholism instrument that is based on core symptoms found in more traditional drug addictions; ie, salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal symptoms, conflict, relapse, problems.

When a great musician like Hélène Grimaud sits in front of a piano and begins a Mozart concerto, something remarkable is happening in her brain. She will go into something like a trance -- you can see it in her face -- and Mozart goes on autopilot.

What is happening is called muscle memory or a flow state, said Alan Hugh David Watson, a reader in bioscience at Cardiff University in Wales, a musician himself. She can do that because of practice -- constant, singled-minded, seemingly endless repetition that only the most dedicated consider.

The best musicians begin playing -- and practicing -- before they are eight, Watson said. The result may be a brain physically different from a non-musician's.

The simplest example of muscle learning may be what happens when you buy a new car, explained Watson. You don't know where all the switches and dials are when you first drive it and have to take your eyes off the road to do anything with the dashboard. But after a while you can turn the heat up or change radio stations without looking. Your brain is wired for the instrument panel. In fact, most people probably drive in a flow state, their minds on something else.

So too is a musician's brain while playing a sonata or a jazz riff.

Beckman Institute researchers have determined a simple and effective emotion-regulation strategy that has neurologically and behaviorally been proven to lessen the emotional impact of personal negative memories.

What's one of your worst memories? How did it make you feel? According to psychologists, remembering the emotions felt during a negative personal experience, such as how sad you were or how embarrassed you felt, can lead to emotional distress, especially when you can't stop thinking about it.

When these negative memories creep up, thinking about the context of the memories, rather than how you felt, is a relatively easy and effective way to alleviate the negative effects of these memories, a new study suggests.

Researchers at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois, led by psychology professor Florin Dolcos of the Cognitive Neuroscience Group, studied the behavioral and neural mechanisms of focusing away from emotion during recollection of personal emotional memories, and found that thinking about the contextual elements of the memories significantly reduced their emotional impact.

Children with sensory processing disorders have different structural brain connections in the sensory regions compared with autism, lending weight to a controversial diagnosis, a new study finds.

The study, which is published in the journal PLOS ONE, is the first to compare the brain structures of those with autism with those who have sensory processing disorders (SPD) (Chang et al., 2014).

Those with SPD have significant problems in organising the sensations they experience from the environment and their body. For example, they may be badly co-ordinated, or under- or over-respond to sensations in the environment, or be inattentive or generally disorganised. The separate nature of the condition has been questioned since over 90% of children with autism also have some degree of problems processing sensory inputs.

SPD is also not currently listed in the official diagnostic manual used by psychiatrists and psychologists, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Nevertheless, some claim that upwards of one in six elementary school children have the condition.

An extraordinary opportunity to study memory and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a group of Air Transat passengers who experienced 30 minutes of unimaginable terror over the Atlantic Ocean in 2001 has resulted in the discovery of a potential risk factor that may help predict who is most vulnerable to PTSD.

The study, led by researchers at Baycrest Health Sciences, is published online this week in the journal Clinical Psychological Science -- ahead of print publication. It is the first to involve detailed interviews and psychological testing in individuals exposed to the same life-threatening traumatic event. By necessity, other trauma studies involve heterogeneous events as experienced in different situations.

This opportunity was enhanced by the fact that one of the researchers, Dr. Margaret McKinnon, was a passenger on the plane. Heading off on her honeymoon in late August 2001, Dr. McKinnon's flight departed Toronto for Lisbon, Portugal with 306 passengers and crew on board. Mid way over the Atlantic Ocean, the plane suddenly ran out of fuel. Everyone onboard was instructed to prepare for an ocean ditching, which included a countdown to impact, loss of on-board lighting and cabin de-pressurization. About 25 minutes into the emergency, the pilot located a small island military base in the Azores and glided the aircraft to a rough landing with no loss of life and few injuries.

"Imagine your worst nightmare -- that's what it was like," said Dr. McKinnon, who initiated the study as a postdoctoral fellow at Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute. She is now a clinician-scientist at St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton and Associate Co-Chair of Research in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences at McMaster University in Hamilton.

Everyone strives to be successful, but it doesn't always come easily. The people who do end up reaching their highest potential always possess certain qualities and habits that allowed them to get there which separate them from those who don't. Here are 10 differences between successful and unsuccessful people!

1. Embrace change vs. Fear change

Embracing change is one of the hardest things a person can do. With the world moving so fast and constantly changing, and technology accelerating faster than ever, we need to embrace what's coming and adapt, rather than fear it, deny it or hide from it.

2. Want others to succeed vs. Secretly hope others fail

When you're in an organization with a group of people, in order to be successful, you all have to be successful. We need to want to see our co-workers succeed and grow. If you wish for their demise, why even work with them at all?

One way to think of the Universe is like a grand resonating drum, reverberating in the field of consciousness. Like a cave that responds to sound waves with an echo, the universe actually responds to thoughts and intentions as well as actions. It's important to realize that more than just echoing these back to you in the precise form you sent them, the Universe collaborates with you.

Open Your Eyes And Expand Your Vision

As your partner in the projects you want to realize, the experiences you want to attract and the goals you want to achieve, the Universe may have different options or interpretations to offer which could differ from what you expect. This is why it is necessary to be open minded and trust in this process. In fact, it can help to consider, what if the Universe has plans for me that are even better than the ones I can imagine? You'll never find out unless you can let go of some of that control and expand your vision.

Many people have a narrow view when it comes to their goals and desires, keeping a tight grip on their initial vision: "My future job/partner/project must look exactly like X, or I will not accept. I met this expectation of myself."

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