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Flashback Bullies May Enjoy Seeing Others in Pain: Brain Scans Show Disruption in Natural Empathetic Response


The University of Chicago
Fri, 07 Nov 2008 03:00 UTC
Bully
© Jupiter Images CorporationIn the study, researchers compared eight 16- to 18-year-old boys with aggressive conduct disorder to a control group of adolescent boys with no unusual signs of aggression. The boys with the conduct disorder had exhibited disruptive behavior such as starting a fight, using a weapon and stealing after confronting a victim.
Unusually aggressive youth may actually enjoy inflicting pain on others, research using brain scans at the University of Chicago shows.

Scans of the aggressive youth's brains showed that an area that is associated with rewards was highlighted when the youth watched a video clip of someone inflicting pain on another person. Youth without the unusually aggressive behavior did not have that response, the study showed.

"This is the first time that fMRI scans have been used to study situations that could otherwise provoke empathy," said Jean Decety, Professor in Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Chicago. "This work will help us better understand ways to work with juveniles inclined to aggression and violence."

Decety is an internationally recognized expert on empathy and social neuroscience. The new research shows that some aggressive youths' natural empathetic impulse may be disrupted in ways that increase aggression.
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Health

Disruption Of Circadian Rhythms Affects Both Brain And Body


Science Daily
Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:07 UTC
A new study has found that chronic disruption of one of the most basic circadian (daily) rhythms -- the day/night cycle -- leads to weight gain, impulsivity, slower thinking, and other physiological and behavioral changes in mice, similar to those observed in people who experience shift work or jet lag.
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Beer

Alcohol activates cellular changes that make tumor cells spread

Sharon Butler
Rush University Medical Center
Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:57 UTC
Alcohol consumption has long been linked to cancer and its spread, but the underlying mechanism has never been clear.

Now, researchers at Rush University Medical Center have identified a cellular pathway that may explain the link.

In a study published in the current issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, the researchers found that alcohol stimulates what is called the epithelial - to - mesenchymal transition, in which run-of-the-mill cancer cells morph into a more aggressive form and begin to spread throughout the body.

"Our data are the first to show that alcohol turns on certain signals inside a cell that are involved in this critical transition," said Christopher Forsyth, PhD, assistant professor of medicine and biochemistry at Rush University Medical Center and lead author of the study.
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Alarm Clock

Tweens Challenged by Grown-Up Malady: Breast cancer

Madison Park
CNN
Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:46 UTC
Hannah Powell-Auslam of La Mirada, California, had surgery this month to check her lymph nodes, just in case the breast cancer had spread.

Taylor Thompson of Little Rock, Arkansas, also had an aggressive form of breast cancer, one that has a 98 percent chance of returning. It required surgery in June.

They're two young women fighting breast cancer. Or rather, two girls: Hannah is 11. Taylor is 13.

While Taylor and Hannah's cases are rare, they're extreme examples of a troubling trend emerging with breast cancer, medical experts say. Younger women are getting a disease that usually strikes around menopause -- and no one knows why.
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Attention

Hold the MSG: Food Triggers for Epilepsy and Other Neurological Illnesses

Alison Rose Levy
Huffington Post
Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:43 UTC
Image
Last week, 60 Minutes reported on David and Susan Axelrod's search for a cure for epilepsy prompted by their two decade plus experience of the ailment, which their adult daughter has suffered since infancy. But while Katie Couric admiringly covered the researchers seeking to find "the Cure," ie. new anti-convulsive drugs, once again proactive, preventive health care strategies that might help to reduce incidence of epileptic attacks were overlooked.

How ironic it is that in the midst of the health care reform debate, Axelrod, a key Obama aide, is so poorly informed about integrative strategies that could help his own daughter.
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Syringe

Does the Vaccine Matter?

Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer
Atlantic Monthly
Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:33 UTC
Whether this season's swine flu turns out to be deadly or mild, most experts agree that it's only a matter of time before we're hit by a truly devastating flu pandemic - one that might kill more people worldwide than have died of the plague and aids combined. In the U.S., the main lines of defense are pharmaceutical - vaccines and antiviral drugs to limit the spread of flu and prevent people from dying from it. Yet now some flu experts are challenging the medical orthodoxy and arguing that for those most in need of protection, flu shots and antiviral drugs may provide little to none. So where does that leave us if a bad pandemic strikes?
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Heart

Flexibility Exercises Like Pilates and Yoga Could Prevent, Treat Stiff Arteries

S. L. Baker
Natural News
Sat, 24 Oct 2009 16:26 UTC
From a sitting position, how far can you reach past your toes? Especially if you are middle-aged or older, the answer could indicate how flexible you are -- and also how flexible your arteries are. However, if you are stiff and can't reach too far, don't despair. New research suggests stretching exercises that increase flexibility could prevent or reverse stiffening of arteries.

In a study entitled "Poor trunk flexibility is associated with arterial stiffening", just published in the October edition of the American Journal of Physiology, researchers found that how well people age 40 and older performed on a sit-and-reach-past-their-toes test was an accurate way to assess the flexibility of their arteries. So, because arterial stiffness often precedes cardiovascular disease, this simple, non-drug, non-invasive test could become a quick measure of a person's risk for early death from heart attack or stroke.
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Cheeseburger

The Axis of Food Evil: Fat, Sugar and Salt


CBS News
Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:10 UTC
Foods
© CBS NewsIt's hard to stay thin when all around us are fried, sugary, salty treats advertised wherever we turn.
Ex-Surgeon General Says restaurants overload foods with ingredients we crave, but they're just selling what we desire

The next time you come down with a case of the munchies, consider calling on Dr. David Kessler.

He and Altschul recently made a take-out run to some of America's most popular dining spots - the ones whose ads promise total tastebud-overload, like Chili's, Friday's, and Applebee's.

We brought back loads of goodies, but Dr. Kessler provided the real food for thought.

"The fat, the sugar and salt have been layered and loaded into this food," he said. "If I just gave you a package of sugar and say, 'Go have a good time' - "

"I'd pass," said Altschul.
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Scientists Discover Link between Older Dads and Genetic Diseases

Mark Henderson
Times
Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:00 UTC
Scientists have moved a step closer to understanding why older fathers are more likely to have children with certain genetic diseases.

They have discovered a surprising genetic link between the formation of benign testicular tumours called spermocytic seminomas and several rare growth disorders, which are more common among the children of older fathers.

The abnormal testicular cells that form these rare tumours also produce sperm carrying mutant genes that cause serious inherited diseases, research at the University of Oxford and Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark has shown.

The findings offer important new insights into the origin of several rare genetic disorders, including a cause of dwarfism called achondroplasia, and also promise to illuminate more common conditions such as autism, schizophrenia and breast cancer.
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Why Sleeping On It Helps

John M Grohol
Psych Central
Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:00 UTC
Sleep
© Unknown
We're often told, "You should sleep on it" before you make an important decision. Why is that? How does "sleeping on it" help your decision-making process?

Conventional wisdom suggests that by "sleeping on it," we clear our minds and relieve ourselves of the immediacy (and accompanying stress) of making a decision. Sleep also helps organize our memories, process the information of the day, and solve problems. Such wisdom also suggests that conscious deliberation helps decision making in general. But new research (Dijksterhuis et al., 2009) suggests something else might also be at work - our unconscious.

Previous research suggests that sometimes the more consciously we think about a decision, the worse the decision made. Sometimes what's needed is a period of unconscious thought - equivalent to "sleeping on it" according to the researchers - in order to make better decisions. Here's how they study this phenomenon:
[... In a] typical experiment demonstrating this effect, participants choose between a few objects (e.g., apartments), each described by multiple aspects. The objects differ in desirability, and after reading the descriptions, participants are asked to make their choice following an additional period of conscious thought or unconscious thought. In the original experiments, unconscious thinkers made better decisions than conscious thinkers when the decisions were complex.
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