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The father acts as an intermediary for dentist fear between both mother and children.

Fear of visiting the dentist is a frequent problem in paediatric dentistry. A new study confirms the emotional transmission of dentist fear among family members and analyses the different roles that mothers and fathers might play.

A new study conducted by scientists at the Rey Juan Carlos University of Madrid highlights the important role that parents play in the transmission of dentist fear in their family.

Previous studies had already identified the association between the fear levels of parents and their children, but they never explored the different roles that the father and the mother play in this phenomenon.

América Lara Sacido, one of the authors of the study explains that "along with the presence of emotional transmission of dentist fear amongst family members, we have identified the relevant role that fathers play in transmission of this phobia in comparison to the mother."

During a trance-like session of psychography, experienced mediums in Brazil allow themselves to become receptive to spirits or dead souls. Then they write automatically, channeling the voices of those they believe to be speaking to them.

As these mediums communicate with the dead, found a new study, parts of their brains involved in language and purposeful activity shut down, alongside other patterns of increased and decreased activity.

The findings add to our limited understanding of how the spiritual brain works, though for now, science cannot speak to the existence of the spirit world.

"I don't think this does anything to make (the experience) less real or less profound or to make it less important in the moment," said Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

"At some point, maybe we will design the perfect study that can prove there were not spirits there and this is just a fascinating way that the brain works," he added. "At the moment, all we're really doing is saying that this is what happens in the brain when you do this particular practice."

In an attempt to understand how the human brain experiences spirituality, Newberg and colleagues have studied a range of practices, including yoga, meditation, prayer and speaking in tongues.

This time, he turned to psychography, one of a variety of practices associated with mediums, who lose their own sense of self as they connect with external souls.

If you've ever watched ABC's hit TV show Dancing with the Stars, then you know that dancing is hard work. Dance has long been known as being an excellent way to stay physically fit. But could there be mental and cognitive benefits to dancing as well?

Recently, a major study from Albert Einstein College of Medicine published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that dance can be a powerful way to improve brain health. Research focused on the effect of dancing on the brain. It measured factors such as memory, sense of well-being, serotonin, and stress levels.

The study showed that while exercise is good for your overall health, only one exercise (the study included other exercise like swimming and biking and cognitive exercise like crossword puzzles) had the biggest impact when it came to improving overall cognitive skills. That exercise - you guessed it - is frequent dancing.

Your Brain Should Tango!

Scientists found that dancing combines many beneficial facets as we age including recreational benefits and creative thinking. Dancing holds clues to health benefits such as stress reduction, increased serotonin level, and a love of life.

It turns out dancing incorporates several simultaneous brain functions like rational thinking (keep in step with your partner), music, and an emotional sense of well being.

Scientific studies have suggested that a mind that is present and in the moment indicates well-being, whereas shifting our energy to the past or future can lead to unhappiness. Now, a preliminary UCSF study shows a link between mind wandering and aging, by looking at a biological measure of longevity within our DNA.

In the study, telomere length, an emerging biomarker for cellular and general bodily aging, was assessed in association with the tendency to be present in the moment versus the tendency to mind wander, in research on 239 healthy, midlife women ranging in age from 50 to 65 years.

Being present in the moment was defined as an inclination to be focused on current tasks, while mind wandering was defined as the inclination to have thoughts about things other than the present or being elsewhere.

Many practitioners of spiritual health tell us not to deny the problems we are facing, but to also not get lost in them either. Psychological sciences have shown us that being present brings us greater alertness and inner security, allowing us to face challenges more objectively and with greater calm.

According to the findings, published online in the new Association for Psychological Science journal Clinical Psychological Science, those who reported more mind wandering had shorter telomeres, while those who reported more presence in the moment, or having a greater focus and engagement with their current activities, had longer telomeres, even after adjusting for current stress.

The human genome is packed with at least four million gene switches that reside in bits of DNA that once were dismissed as "junk" but it turns out that so-called junk DNA plays critical roles in controlling how cells, organs and other tissues behave. The discovery, considered a major medical and scientific breakthrough, has enormous implications for human health and consciousness because many complex diseases appear to be caused by tiny changes in hundreds of gene switches.

Albert Einstein is widely regarded as a genius, but how did he get that way? Many researchers have assumed that it took a very special brain to come up with the theory of relativity and other stunning insights that form the foundation of modern physics. A study of 14 newly discovered photographs of Einstein's brain, which was preserved for study after his death, concludes that the brain was indeed highly unusual in many ways. But researchers still don't know exactly how the brain's extra folds and convolutions translated into Einstein's amazing abilities.

The story of Einstein's brain is a long saga that began in 1955 when the Nobel Prize-winning physicist died in Princeton, New Jersey, at age 76. His son Hans Albert and executor Otto Nathan gave the examining pathologist, Thomas Harvey, permission to preserve the brain for scientific study. Harvey photographed the brain and then cut it into 240 blocks, which were embedded in a resinlike substance. He cut the blocks into as many as 2000 thin sections for microscopic study, and in subsequent years distributed microscopic slides and photographs of the brain to at least 18 researchers around the world. With the exception of the slides that Harvey kept for himself, no one is sure where the specimens are now, and many of them have probably been lost as researchers retired or died.

Over the decades, only six peer-reviewed publications resulted from these widely scattered materials. Some of these studies did find interesting features in Einstein's brain, including a greater density of neurons in some parts of the brain and a higher than usual ratio of glia (cells that help neurons transmit nerve impulses) to neurons. Two studies of the brain's gross anatomy, including one published in 2009 by anthropologist Dean Falk of Florida State University in Tallahassee, found that Einstein's parietal lobes - possibly linked to his remarkable ability to conceptualize physics problems - had a very unusual pattern of grooves and ridges.

Specific patterns in the nasal passageway that determine which olfactory neurons are associated with which particular odors have remained a mystery for scientists. The human nose has millions of these olfactory neurons grouped into hundreds of different neuron types. And each of these neuron types expresses only one odorant receptor in one region of the brain, allowing that specific odor to be sensed.

Now, researchers from UC Riverside and Stanford University have identified a braking mechanism in these olfactory neurons that helps generate an astonishing diversity of sensors in the nose.

As an example, the researchers said when a person smells a rose, only the neurons that express a specific odor receptor for the chemical emitted by the rose are activated. This in turn activates a specific region in the brain, allowing the person to sense the odor. Each smell activates a different group of neurons and also a different area of the brain.

In their study, the researchers focused on the olfactory receptor for detecting carbon dioxide in the fruit fly (Drosophila). Doing so, they identified a large multi-protein complex in olfactory neurons, called MMB/dREAM, that plays a role in selecting the carbon dioxide receptors to be expressed in specific neurons.

New research shows that people can process short sentences and solve equations before they're aware of the words and numbers in front of their eyes. The study suggests we might not actually need full consciousness to perform rule-based tasks like reading and doing math problems.

In a series of experiments at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, more than 300 student participants were unconsciously exposed to words and equations through a research technique known as Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS). With this method, a static image appears in front of one eye while rapidly changing pictures flash in front of the other eye. The changing pictures dominate awareness at first, letting the still image register subliminally before popping into consciousness.

In the first part of the study, one eye was presented with a static phrase or sentence, which was "masked" by changing colorful shapes flashing in front of the other eye. The students were instructed to press a button as soon as they became aware of the words. It usually took about a second, but negative phrases like "human trafficking" and jarring sentences such as "I ironed the coffee" typically registered quicker than positive expressions and more coherent phrases such as "I ironed clothes," the study found.

The researchers say these results suggest that the sentences were fully read and comprehended subconsciously, and certain phrases broke out of suppression faster because they were more surprising.

Watching another person scratch an itch can cause you to do the same, and scientists have figured out the basis of this peculiar "itch contagion." It's all in your brain.

Merely seeing someone else scratch activates brain centers involved in the itch response, suggesting the observation makes one itchy.

But this response doesn't apply to everyone. Those study participants who were more neurotic (a tendency toward negative emotions) were more likely to experience itch contagion. Surprisingly, the researchers found empathy (a willingness to take another's viewpoint) did not correlate with the phenomenon.

"Before it was only anecdotal that people experience contagious itch," lead study author Henning Holle, a research fellow at the University of Sussex, told LiveScience. "There's a general tendency for people to experience contagious itch."

Catching an itch

To see where this happens in the brain, Holle and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machines to scan the brains of participants who watched silent videos of people either scratching or tapping themselves. (MRI scans show blood flow to active areas of the brain.)

Several regions of the brain already known to be involved in the itch response (both in "feeling itchy" and the related scratching behavior) lit up during the scratching videos. These included the premotor cortex, which influences motor activities, and the insula, a region behind the temples that activates when people experience empathy. However, during the tapping videos, these same brain centers didn't light up.

The researchers included psychological tests for the 51 study participants and found that empathetic people did not have heightened levels of itch contagion. Past research has suggested another contagious behavior, yawning, may be heightened for friends and family, suggesting contagious yawns may stem, in part, from empathy.

A certain level of excitement and anticipation exists when a conductor takes to the stage and taps his baton on the stand. Each member of the orchestra stiffens, ready to follow his timing, each playing their part when directed. While the conductor is clearly in control of the timing of the evening, there is nothing to stop one individual performer from stepping out on his own and causing complete chaos. One early strike by the percussionist throws the rhythm of the entire body off. This is an analogy proposed by researchers regarding how and why we might struggle with potential obesity.

Our fat cells are necessary because they store excess energy. These cells signal the brain, letting them know of their current energy storage level. It was in a study, published this week in the journal Nature Medicine that Georgios Paschos PhD, a research associate in the lab of Garret FitzGerald, MD, FRS director of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, showed that the removal of the clock gene Arntl, which also goes by the name Bmal1, in the fat cells of mice caused them to become obese. This occurred as a result of shift in the timing when this species, nocturnal in nature, would typically consume food. The researchers believe that this information could translate to the epidemic of obesity in humans, as well.

This Penn study is particularly surprising for two reasons. "The first is that a relatively modest shift in food consumption into what is normally the rest period for mice can favor energy storage," according to Paschos. "Our mice became obese without consuming more calories." Even without removing the clock gene from the fat cells, the researchers were able to replicate obesity in the normal mice simply by altering the timing of their food consumption

The realm of sleep and dreams has long been associated with strangeness: omens or symbols, unconscious impulses and fears.

But this sometimes disturbing world of inner turmoil, fears and desires is grounded in our day-to-day experience, sleep researchers say.

"The structure and content of thinking looks very much like the structure and content of dreaming. They may be the product of the same machine," said Matthew Wilson, a neuroscientist at MIT and a panelist at the New York Academy of Sciences discussion "The Strange Science of Sleep and Dreams" on Friday (Nov. 9).

His work and others' explores the crucial link between dreams and learning and memory.

Dreams allow the brain to work through its conscious experiences. During them, the brain appears to apply the same neurological machinery used during the day to examine the past, the future and other aspects of a person's (or animal's) inner world at night. Memory is the manifestation of this inner world, Wilson said.

"What we remember is the result of dreams rather than the other way around," he said.