Monetary gain stimulates activity in the brain. Even the mere possibility of receiving a reward is known to activate an area of the brain called the striatum.
A team of Japanese researchers report in the January 2010 issue of Cortex, published by Elsevier, the results of a study in which they measured striatum activation in volunteers performing a monetary task and found high-risk/high-gain options to cause higher levels of activation than more conservative options. They also found levels of activation to increase with the amount of money owned.
Dr. Tadashi Ino and colleagues, from the Department of Neurology at the Rakuwakai-Otowa Hospital and the Research Center for Nano Medical Engineering at Kyoto University, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study hemodynamic changes in the brains of 17 healthy volunteers performing a monetary task.
The volunteers were given an initial stock of money and then required repetitively to press one of two buttons, which resulted in either an increase or decrease of the money stock, depending on whether their choice agreed or disagreed with a number that appeared randomly after the button had been pressed. One button was a low-risk option and the other involved high-risk, so that more money was gained or lost when choosing the high-risk option. The volunteers were also able to keep track of the total money stock throughout the task.
Health & Wellness
© Unknown
Research in Chile in the 1970s also showed fluoridation caused an increase in infant death rates. Chile stopped fluoridation as a result.
A baby born at least 3 weeks early is classified as premature - accounting for about 12 percent of US births.
President Obama and his top health officials are engaging in a major public relations effort to divert attention away from whether its swine flu vaccine is effective and safe by focusing attention on whether there is enough of it to go around. And the media is cooperating fully.
Increasing numbers of scientists and doctors are issuing harsh criticisms of the government's plan to vaccinate virtually the entire U.S. population with a poorly tested vaccine that is not only ineffective against swine flu, but could cripple and even kill many more people than it helps.
The CDC's public relations campaign has been running "scare" ads that portray swine flu as a full-blown "pandemic" responsible for snuffing out countless lives. But scientists and health officials throughout the world have called the governments claims unjustified and deliberately misleading.
Global Research, October 29, 2009
Increasing numbers of scientists and doctors are issuing harsh criticisms of the government's plan to vaccinate virtually the entire U.S. population with a poorly tested vaccine that is not only ineffective against swine flu, but could cripple and even kill many more people than it helps.
The CDC's public relations campaign has been running "scare" ads that portray swine flu as a full-blown "pandemic" responsible for snuffing out countless lives. But scientists and health officials throughout the world have called the governments claims unjustified and deliberately misleading.
Global Research, October 29, 2009
© Unknown
Professor Victor Bachinsky
Professor Victor Bachinsky
Based on autopsies, we have come to the conclusion: it's not pneumonia, but cardiopulmonary insufficiency and cardiogenic shock... The virus enters directly into the lungs, there is bleeding... Antibiotics should not be used...
Why do we have such a high mortality rate in the country?
Because people are going to pharmacies to get medicine instead of going to their doctors to be treated... No it is not pneumonic plague. It's all nonsense... antibiotics do not help... Those with strong immune systems will survive. People with weak immune systems will succumb to the illness... Face Masks provide 30% extra protection. Wearing glasses gives an additional 10% protection, that is 40%, because the virus penetrates the mucose membranes.
Dr. Mark Hyman
A new field of medical science is showing that nutrition may eliminate disease by changing our very biochemistry. PARADE asked Dr. Mark Hyman - a leading practitioner in nutrigenomics, which studies the relationship between food and genes - to explain how four common conditions can be cured before they cause lasting damage.
In the future, a drop of your blood placed on a special DNA chip will predict the diseases that lie dormant in your genes. Your doctor will then suggest a personalized set of lifestyle and dietary changes, as well as pharmaceutical recommendations. These changes will "turn off" the genetic trigger in your cells that begins the process of disease. Medicine will be able to deal with disease at the roots, rather than at the branches.
© SPL
Hypnosis can be used for overcoming anxiety and addiction
Hypnosis can be used for overcoming anxiety and addiction
An imaging study of hypnotised participants showed decreased activity in the parts of the brain linked with daydreaming or letting the mind wander.
The same brain patterns were absent in people who had the tests but who were not susceptible to being hypnotised.
One psychologist said the study backed the theory that hypnosis "primes" the brain to be open to suggestion.
Hypnosis is increasingly being used to help people stop smoking or lose weight and advisers recently recommended its use on the NHS to treat irritable bowel syndrome.
© SPL
Ulcerative Colitis
Ulcerative Colitis
The disorder causes ulceration of the rectum and the colon, but its exact cause has yet to be pinned down.
The latest study links the condition to four genes which all play a role in keeping the intestine lining healthy.
The Nature Genetics study is based on an analysis of the genes of 12,700 people.
It is twice as large as any previous study - giving the results far greater robustness.
Ulcerative colitis (Colitis ulcerosa) is a life-long, incurable condition, which can cause diarrhoea, fever, abdominal pain and swelling and weight loss. It affects approximately one in 1,000 people.
© Kevin Van Paassen/The Globe and Mail
At a rate of more than 466,000 doses a day, Canadains pop more painkillers (like Oxycontin, shown here) per capita than almost any other country (topped only by the United States and Belgium).
At a rate of more than 466,000 doses a day, Canadains pop more painkillers (like Oxycontin, shown here) per capita than almost any other country (topped only by the United States and Belgium).
"There are good and bad types of stress. The bad kind is chronic and uncontrollable, like the tension caused by an unhappy marriage or a sick relative," says Edward Calabrese, Ph. D., a toxicologist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "But there are a lot of positives associated with short bursts of stress that ease up quickly," such as being stuck in a snarl of traffic or sweating through a presentation at work.
In a recent Ohio State University study, mice that experienced brief but intense stress were better able to fight the flu. And a smattering of research has linked acute short-term stress to a reduced risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer's.
In developing nations, two-thirds aren't diagnosed until disease has spread
Washington- Nurses were training women in rural Mexico to examine their breasts for cancer when one raised her hand to object. If she lost her breast, Harvard public health specialist Felicia Knaul recalls the woman saying, "My man would leave me" - and with him, the family's income.
International cancer specialists meet this week to plan an assault on a troubling increase of breast cancer in developing countries, where nearly two-thirds of women aren't diagnosed until it has spread through their bodies.
Adding to the problem, some worrisome data suggests that breast cancer seems to strike women, on average, about 10 years younger in poor countries than it does in the U.S. No one knows why.
Washington- Nurses were training women in rural Mexico to examine their breasts for cancer when one raised her hand to object. If she lost her breast, Harvard public health specialist Felicia Knaul recalls the woman saying, "My man would leave me" - and with him, the family's income.
International cancer specialists meet this week to plan an assault on a troubling increase of breast cancer in developing countries, where nearly two-thirds of women aren't diagnosed until it has spread through their bodies.
Adding to the problem, some worrisome data suggests that breast cancer seems to strike women, on average, about 10 years younger in poor countries than it does in the U.S. No one knows why.
