Certain brain regions in people with major depression are smaller and less dense than those of their healthy counterparts. Now, researchers have traced the genetic reasons for this shrinkage.

A series of genes linked to the function of synapses, or the gaps between brain cells crucial for cell-to-cell communication, can be controlled by a single genetic "switch" that appears to be overproduced in the brains of people with depression, a new study finds.

"We show that circuits normally involved in emotion, as well as cognition, are disrupted when this single transcription factor is activated," study researcher Ronald Duman, a professor of psychiatry at Yale University, said in a statement.

Transcription factors are proteins that help control which genetic instructions from DNA will be copied, or transcribed, as part of the process of building the body's proteins.

Research done at Pitt shows that decision-making memories are stored in a mysterious area of the brain known to be involved with vision and eye movements.

The sought-after equanimity of "living in the moment" may be impossible, according to neuroscientists who've pinpointed a brain area responsible for using past decisions and outcomes to guide future behavior. The study, based on research conducted at the University of Pittsburgh and published today in the professional journal Neuron, is the first of its kind to analyze signals associated with metacognition - a person's ability to monitor and control cognition (a term cleverly described by researchers as "thinking about thinking.")

"The brain has to keep track of decisions and the outcomes they produce," said Marc Sommer, who did his research for the study as a University of Pittsburgh neuroscience faculty member and is now on the faculty at Duke University. "You need that continuity of thought," Sommer continued. "We are constantly keeping decisions in mind as we move through life, thinking about other things. We guessed it was analogous to working memory, which would point toward the prefrontal cortex."

Sommer predicted that neuronal correlates of metacognition resided in the same brain areas responsible for cognition, including the frontal cortex - a part of the brain linked with personality expression, decision making, and social behavior. Sommer worked with Paul G. Middlebrooks, who did his research for the study at Pitt before he received his Pitt PhD in neuroscience in 2011; Middlebrooks is now a postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt University. The research team studied single neurons in vivo in three frontal cortical regions of the brain: the frontal eye field (associated with visual attention and eye movements), the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (responsible for motor planning, organization, and regulation), and the supplementary eye field (SEF) involved in the planning and control of saccadic eye movements, which are the extremely fast movements of the eye that allow it to continually refocus on an object.

Many of the long term goals people strive for - like losing weight - require us to use self-control and forgo immediate gratification. And yet denying our immediate desires in order to reap future benefits is often very hard to do.

In a new article in the August issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researchers Kentaro Fujita and Jessica Carnevale of The Ohio State University propose that the way people subjectively understand, or construe, events can influence self-control.

Research from psychological science suggests that categorizing things abstractly into broad categories (called high-level construal) allows us to psychologically distance ourselves from the pushes and pulls of the immediate moment. This, in turn, makes us more sensitive to the broad implications of our behavior and leads us to show greater consistency between our values and our behavior.

We're often told to 'count our blessings' and be grateful for what we have. And research shows that doing so makes us happier. But will it actually change our behavior towards others?

A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that thinking about what we've given, rather than what we've received, may lead us to be more helpful toward others.

Researchers Adam Grant of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Jane Dutton of The Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan wanted to understand how reflection, in the form of expressive writing, might influence prosocial behavior. They observed that when we reflect on what we've received from another person, we might feel an obligation to help that person, but the motivation to help doesn't necessarily extend to other people. And reflecting on what we've received from others may even cause us to feel dependent and indebted.

The researchers wondered whether thinking about times when we have given to others might be more effective in promoting helping. They hypothesized that reflecting on giving could lead a person to see herself as a benefactor, strengthening her identity as a caring, helpful individual and motivating her to take action to benefit others.

Stressed and non-stressed people use different brain regions and different strategies when learning. This has been reported by the cognitive psychologists PD Dr. Lars Schwabe and Professor Oliver Wolf from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in the Journal of Neuroscience. Non-stressed individuals applied a deliberate learning strategy, while stressed subjects relied more on their gut feeling. "These results demonstrate for the first time that stress has an influence on which of the different memory systems the brain turns on," said Lars Schwabe.

The experiment: Stress due to ice-water

The data from 59 subjects were included in the study. Half of the participants had to immerse one hand into ice-cold water for three minutes under video surveillance. This stressed the subjects, as hormone assays showed. The other participants had to immerse one of their hands just in warm water. Then both the stressed and non-stressed individuals completed the so-called weather prediction task. The subjects looked at playing cards with different symbols and learned to predict which combinations of cards announced rain and which sunshine. Each combination of cards was associated with a certain probability of good or bad weather. People apply differently complex strategies in order to master the task. During the weather prediction task, the researchers recorded the brain activity with MRI.

Anyone who has tried to remember a ten-digit phone number or a nine-item grocery list knows that we can only hold so much information in mind at a given time. Our working memory capacity is decidedly finite - it reflects our ability to focus and control attention and strongly influences our ability to solve problems.

In a new article in the August issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Jennifer Wiley and Andrew Jarosz of the University of Illinois at Chicago explore the role of working memory capacity in both mathematical and creative problem solving.

Converging evidence from many psychological science studies suggests that high working memory capacity is associated with better performance at mathematical problem-solving. In fact, decreased working memory capacity may be one reason why math anxiety leads to poor math performance. Overall, working memory capacity seems to help analytical problem-solvers focus their attention and resist distraction.

Having close relationships with friends and family as a child makes people happier in later life, a new study has found.

New research has shown how positive social relationships in childhood and adolescence are key to adult well-being, while academic achievement has little effect.

Scientists do not know much about how aspects of childhood and adolescent development - such as academic and social-emotional function - affect adult well-being.

They define well-being as a mixture of sense of coherence, positive coping strategies, social engagement and self-perceived strengths.

Researchers analysed data for 804 people, followed up for 32 years, who participated in the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study (DMHDS) in New Zealand.

Telling the truth when tempted to lie can significantly improve a person's mental and physical health, according to a "Science of Honesty" study presented at the American Psychological Association's 120th Annual Convention.

"Recent evidence indicates that Americans average about 11 lies per week. We wanted to find out if living more honestly can actually cause better health," said lead author Anita E. Kelly, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame. "We found that the participants could purposefully and dramatically reduce their everyday lies, and that in turn was associated with significantly improved health."

Kelly and co-author Lijuan Wang, PhD, also of Notre Dame, conducted the honesty experiment over 10 weeks with a sample of 110 people, of whom 34 percent were adults in the community and 66 percent were college students. They ranged in age from 18 to 71 years, with an average age of 31. The just-completed study has not yet undergone peer review and has yet to be published.

If people really understood their chances of winning the lottery, they would never buy a ticket.

Yet tickets are bought so frequently that well-run lotteries are, for the organisers, virtually a license to print money.

All lotteries exploit a simple bias in the way the human mind works called the availability bias (that and people's desperation).

This is the tendency to judge probabilities on the basis of how easily examples come to mind.

Since lottery organisers heavily promote the jackpot winners, people are continually hearing about those who've won big. On the other hand they hear almost nothing about the vast majority of people who haven't won a bean.

So people assume they are much more likely to win the lottery than they really are.

Last month, in San Jose, Calif., 21 people were treated for burns after walking barefoot over hot coals as part of an event called Unleash the Power Within, starring the motivational speaker Tony Robbins. If you're anything like me, a cynical retort might suggest itself: What, exactly, did they expect would happen? In fact, there's a simple secret to "firewalking": coal is a poor conductor of heat to surrounding surfaces, including human flesh, so with quick, light steps, you'll usually be fine.

But Mr. Robbins and his acolytes have little time for physics. To them, it's all a matter of mind-set: cultivate the belief that success is guaranteed, and anything is possible. One singed but undeterred participant told The San Jose Mercury News: "I wasn't at my peak state." What if all this positivity is part of the problem? What if we're trying too hard to think positive and might do better to reconsider our relationship to "negative" emotions and situations?

Consider the technique of positive visualization, a staple not only of Robbins-style seminars but also of corporate team-building retreats and business best sellers. According to research by the psychologist Gabriele Oettingen and her colleagues, visualizing a successful outcome, under certain conditions, can make people less likely to achieve it. She rendered her experimental participants dehydrated, then asked some of them to picture a refreshing glass of water. The water-visualizers experienced a marked decline in energy levels, compared with those participants who engaged in negative or neutral fantasies. Imagining their goal seemed to deprive the water-visualizers of their get-up-and-go, as if they'd already achieved their objective.