Scots doctors are to embark on a pioneering trial of technology similar to that used to manage depression and epilepsy in an attempt to 'rewire' the brains of stroke victims.

Clinical researchers at Glasgow University are aiming to help patients overcome some of the physical disabilities caused by a stroke.

The team from the university's Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences will undertake the world's first in-human trial of vagus nerve stimulation in stroke patients.

Strokes, which affect 280 per 100,000 people in Scotland annually, can result in the loss of brain tissue and negatively affect various bodily functions from speech to movement, depending on the location of the stroke.

The study, which will be carried out at the Western Infirmary in Glasgow, will recruit 20 patients who suffered a stroke around six months ago and who have been left with poor arm function despite receiving the best available treatment.

Each participant will receive three one-hour sessions of intensive physiotherapy each week for six weeks to help improve their arm function.

Half of the group will also receive an implanted Vivistim device, a vagus nerve stimulator, which connects to the vagus nerve in the neck. When they are receiving physiotherapy to help improve their arm, the device will stimulate the nerve.

Troublesome colleagues are likely to harbour a "dark triad" of psychopathic tendencies, Machiavellian cunning and narcissistic selfishness, according to a new study.

If you feel your colleagues are out to get you, it turns out you could be right.

A study of office politics suggests that workplaces are a jungle of awkward personalities vying for domination.

Oliver James, the psychologist and broadcaster, identified three types of dysfunctional personalities among white collar workers: psychopath, Machiavellian, and narcissist.

These are the colleagues who have no compunction about trampling over others, or like nothing more than to plot and scheme, or who drone on endlessly about themselves.

Most terrifyingly, the author concluded that there was fourth dysfunctional type: a "triadic person" who is a combination of all three. Such staff, James warns, have a dangerous, yet effective mix of a lack of empathy, self-centredness, deviousness and self-regard which can propel them to the top of the organisations.

They say money can't buy happiness, and a new study suggests that's true for even the most materialistic.

Instead, the study found, these folks seem to be happiest right before they buy a coveted item. Once they have the purchase in hand, their joy fades quickly.

The findings may not be all that surprising, experts say. But the notion that you're a lot happier before a big buy than after - particularly if you're on the more materialistic side - had not been "empirically tested" before, said Brent McFerran, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who was not involved in the new research.

In real life, you might be able to think of times when you've anticipated an important purchase, then felt let down after buying it. But whether you learn from that, and stop putting so much stock in "stuff" is another matter, McFerran said.

The "empty nest" of past generations, in which the kids are grown up and middle-aged adults have more time to themselves, has been replaced in the United States by a nest that's full - kids who can't leave, can't find a job and aging parents who need more help than ever before.

According to a new study by researchers at Oregon State University, what was once a life stage of new freedoms, options and opportunities has largely disappeared.

An economic recession and tough job market has made it hard on young adults to start their careers and families. At the same time, many older people are living longer, which adds new and unanticipated needs that their children often must step up to assist with.

The end result, researchers suggest, are "empty nest" plans that often have to be put on hold, and a mixed bag of emotions, ranging from joy and "happy-to-help" to uncertainty, frustration and exhaustion.

"We mostly found very positive feelings about adults helping their children in the emerging adulthood stage of life, from around ages 18 to 30," said Karen Hooker, director of the OSU Center for Healthy Aging Research.

"Feelings about helping parents weren't so much negative as just filled with more angst and uncertainty," Hooker said. "As a society we still don't socialize people to expect to be taking on a parent-caring role, even though most of us will at some point in our lives. The average middle-aged couple has more parents than children."

People suffering from chronic inflammatory conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and asthma - in which psychological stress plays a major role - may benefit from mindfulness meditation techniques, according to a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientists.

Mindfulness-based stress reduction, originally designed for patients with chronic pain, consists of continuously focusing attention on the breath, bodily sensations and mental content while seated, walking or practicing yoga.

A class in stress reduction can be beneficial in many ways, some of which have little to do with mindfulness, according to Melissa Rosenkranz, assistant scientist at the center and lead author on the paper, which was published recently in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity. For example, learning to manage stress by engaging in regular physical activity may be therapeutic.

"We wanted to develop an intervention that was meant to produce positive change and compare the mindfulness approach to an intervention that was structurally equivalent," Rosenkranz says.

The study compared two methods of reducing stress: a mindfulness meditation-based approach, and a program designed to enhance health in ways unrelated to mindfulness.

A new study from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) revealed that "cool" kids in middle school had a tendency to participate in bullying more than others.

Bullying was defined as either "starting fights or pushing other kids around" or "spreading nasty rumors about other kids." The UCLA psychology study found that bullying could help improve an individual's social status and popularity among middle school students. In addition, students who were already considered popular utilized these forms of bullying.

The researchers believe that the findings of the study, which were recently published in the online edition of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, could help school administrators and anti-bullying programs improve their tactics for eliminating school bullying.

"The ones who are cool bully more, and the ones who bully more are seen as cool," explained the study's lead author Jaana Juvonen, a professor of psychology at UCLA. "What was particularly interesting was that the form of aggression, whether highly visible and clearly confrontational or not, did not matter. Pushing or shoving and gossiping worked the same for boys and girls."

In the project, the researchers observed 1,895 ethnically diverse students from 11 Los Angeles middle schools. The students were dispersed across 99 different classes, with investigators conducting surveys at the start of the seventh grade, the fall of eight grade, and the spring of eight grade. During each of the three surveys, the students filled out questionnaires asking them to name the students who were thought to be the "coolest," the students who usually started fights or pushed other students around, and those who spread mean rumors about other students.

In one of three studies, Pia Rosander carried out personality tests on 200 pupils in southern Sweden when they entered upper secondary school at 16. Three years later, when they received their final grades, she was able to observe a strong link between personality and grades.

In personality psychology one talks of "the big five" - the five most common personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. These qualities influence how a person behaves and are relatively stable qualities, which means that they do not change greatly over time or in different situations.

One of the traits is clearly associated with high grades: Neuroticism, where pupils are driven by fear and worry, also led to high grades. Contrary to Pia Rosander's hypothesis, openness, or intellectual curiosity, did not lead to high grades.

"We have a school system in Sweden that favours conscientious and fear-driven pupils", says Pia Rosander. "It is not good for psychological well-being in the long term if fear is a driving force. It also prevents in-depth learning, which happens best among the open personality types who are driven by curiosity."

The moments just before deployment can be highly stressful for those in the military, but a study published in the journal Emotion finds that meditation improved mood and bolstered working memory during this period.

Working memory is the short-term memory system we tap into for managing information, controlling emotions, problem solving, and complex thought - sometimes in crisis situations. You can gain the same benefits when faced with stressful situations, whether planning your wedding, having your first child, preparing to undergo surgery, or getting ready to change jobs, according to lead study author Amishi P. Jha, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Playwright and poet William Congreve once said that "music has charms to soothe a savage beast". That certainly appears to be true, especially if that beast is a person's blood pressure. A pair of studies has found that playing music may lower people's blood pressure and improve their feeling of well-being.

A recent study conducted by researchers from Leiden University Medical Center examined the effect that music may have on blood pressure. According to the Pacific Standard, the study compared 25 musicians and 28 non-musicians between the ages of 18 and 30 years old.

The groups were matched for height, weight, level of physical activity and caffeine and alcohol consumption.

In fact, the only difference was that the group of musicians - which consisted of three guitarists, four flutists, five singers and six pianists - practiced their instruments over an average of 1.8 hours each day.

Emotional smarts and general intelligence may be more closely linked than previously thought, new research suggests.

In a group of Vietnam veterans, IQ test results and emotional intelligence, or the ability to perceive, understand and deal with emotion in oneself or in others, were linked. And in brain scans, the same regions of the brain seemed to perform both emotional and cognitive tasks, the study found. The findings were published in the journal Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience.

"Intelligence, to a large extent, does depend on basic cognitive abilities, like attention and perception and memory and language," said study coauthor Aron Barbey, a neuroscientist at the University of Illinois, in a statement.

"But it also depends on interacting with other people. We're fundamentally social beings and our understanding not only involves basic cognitive abilities but also involves productively applying those abilities to social situations so that we can navigate the social world and understand others."

In the past, scientists believed that emotional intelligence and general intelligence were distinct, and books and movies are rife with depictions of intellectually brilliant but socially clueless nerds.