It is widely known that the brain perceives information before it reaches a person's awareness. But until now, there was little way to determine what specific mental tasks were taking place prior to the point of conscious awareness.

That has changed with the findings of scientists at Rutgers University in Newark and the University of California, Los Angeles who have developed a highly accurate way to peer into the brain to uncover a person's mental state and what sort of information is being processed before it reaches awareness. With this new window into the brain, scientists now also are provided with the means of developing a more accurate model of the inner functions of the brain.

As reported in a forthcoming (Oct. 2009) issue of Psychological Science, the findings obtained by Stephen José Hanson, psychology professor at Rutgers; Russell A. Poldrack, professor at UCLA, and Yaroslav Halchenko, (now a post-doctoral student at Dartmouth College), have provided direct evidence that a person's mental state can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The research also suggests that a more comprehensive approach is needed for mapping brain activity and that the widely held belief that localized areas of the brain are responsible for specific mental functions is misleading and incorrect.

"Silent" strokes, which are strokes that don't result in any noticeable symptoms but cause brain damage, are common in people over 60, and especially in those with high blood pressure, according to a study published in the July 28, 2009, print issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"These strokes are not truly silent, because they have been linked to memory and thinking problems and are a possible cause of a type of dementia," said study author Perminder Sachdev, MD, PhD, of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. "High blood pressure is very treatable, so this may be a strong target for preventing vascular disease."

The study involved 477 people age 60 to 64 who were followed for four years. At the beginning of the study 7.8 percent of the participants had the silent lacunar infarctions, small areas of damage to the brain seen on MRI that never caused obvious symptoms. They occur when blood flow is blocked in one of the arteries leading to areas deep within the brain, such as the putamen or the thalamus. By the end of the study, an additional 1.6 percent of the participants had developed "silent" strokes.

The most comprehensive analysis yet of the genome of childhood acute myeloid leukemia (AML) found only a few mistakes in the genetic blueprint, suggesting the cancer arises from just a handful of missteps, according to new findings from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

The research appears in the July 27 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Our data raise the possibility that the development of AML may require fewer genetic alterations than other cancers and that a very limited number of biological processes may need to be altered in hematopoietic stem cells, multi-potential progenitors or committed myeloid progenitors to convert them from a normal cell to AML," the authors noted, referring to several types of immature and maturing cells that give rise to this cancer. James Downing, M.D., St. Jude scientific director and the paper's senior author, said the findings highlight questions about what it takes to transform a normal cell into a cancer cell. "The complement of genetic lesions varies across the different genetic subtypes of AML, but there are very few lesions in total. That is surprising. Most cancers have lots of alterations," he explained.

Accumulation of the synaptic protein alpha-synuclein, resulting in the formation of aggregates called Lewy bodies in the brain, is a hallmark of Parkinson's and other related neurodegenerative diseases. This pathology appears to spread throughout the brain as the disease progresses. Now, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea, have described how this mechanism works.

Their findings - the first to show neuron-to-neuron transmission of alpha-synuclein - will appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on July 29.

"The discovery of cell-to-cell transmission of this protein may explain how alpha-synuclein aggregates can pass to new, healthy cells," said first author Paula Desplats, project scientist in UC San Diego's Department of Neurosciences. "We demonstrated how alpha-synuclein is taken up by neighboring cells, including grafted neuronal precursor cells, a mechanism that may cause Lewy bodies to spread to different brain structures."

Anyone interested in healthy and nutritious foods has probably heard that whole grains are far better for you than the processed variety like white bread and sugar-laden cereals. There are several reasons for this, including the fact whole foods tend to be richer in fiber and they also have low glycemic indexes. That means they keep blood sugar and insulin levels steady without wide fluctuations. But a new study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology concludes there's another important reason to avoid high glycemic foods like white bread and corn flakes. For the first time, scientists have documented how eating these foods can directly damage artery walls and cause cardiac problems.

"It's very hard to predict heart disease," Dr. Michael Shechter of Tel Aviv University's Sackler School of Medicine and the Heart Institute of Sheba Medical Center, said in a statement to the media. "But doctors know that high glycemic foods rapidly increase blood sugar. Those who binge on these foods have a greater chance of sudden death from heart attack. Our research connects the dots, showing the link between diet and what's happening in real time in the arteries."

For his study, Dr Shechter and colleagues worked with 56 healthy volunteers who were divided into four groups. One group ate cornflake cereal mixed with milk, a second consumed a pure sugar mixture, the third group ate bran flakes and the last group took water (as a placebo control). Over the course of four weeks, Dr. Shechter applied brachial reactive testing to the research subjects in each group. This test, a clinical and research technique pioneered by Dr. Shechter's laboratory, uses a blood pressure type cuff on the arm that is able to visualize what happens inside arteries before, during and after eating various foods.

Tim Juneman went to a Department of Veterans Affairs psychiatrist in January 2008 to talk about his recurrent thoughts of suicide.

The 25-year-old Washington State University student was an Iraq war veteran who had survived a year of tough fighting that left him with a twin diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury.

His biggest worry, according to notes taken by the VA psychiatrist, was a looming call back to active duty by the Washington National Guard. The order would have sent the specialist back to Iraq.

A VA psychiatrist hospitalized Juneman but never notified the National Guard unit of his patient's distress over redeployment. Juneman was released that month, then missed follow-up appointments.

In early March 2008, Juneman hanged himself in his Pullman apartment. His body was discovered some 20 days later, The Spokesman-Review newspaper reported.

Emotional suppression may cost college freshmen friendships, a co-author of a University of Oregon at Eugene study said Saturday.

"Hiding your emotions is something that is very common but it's something that often is not the right thing to do," Sanjay Srivastava said. "We're not saying never ever do this, but doing it may have negative effects in certain contexts, such as in transitioning into college."

Srivastava, a professor of psychology, said in a press release from the university that suppressing emotions in a new or difficult situation is understandable and may be appropriate, but carrying it too far may result in difficulty trusting and being trusted by others.

The incidence of diabetes has risen from almost nothing a century ago to a level of major concern today. It is now the sixth biggest killer in America. Diabetes not only can cause death but can lead to kidney disease, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, cataracts, nerve damage, hearing loss, and blindness. It is estimated that 45 percent of the population is at risk of developing diabetes.

A scientist who advises the Government on swine flu is a paid director of a drugs firm making hundreds of millions of pounds from the pandemic.

Professor Sir Roy Anderson sits on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), a 20-strong task force drawing up the action plan for the virus.

Yet he also holds a £116,000-a-year post on the board of GlaxoSmithKline, the company selling swine flu vaccines and anti-virals to the NHS.

If you want to lose weight the late comic Gilda Radner used to say, eat your lunch next to a car wreck. But this summer all you have to do is eat the food the FDA approves.

Recent recalls of pathogen tainted milk, meat, chicken and cheese make you wonder if E.coli, campylobacter, salmonella and listeria are the new four food groups.

Of course just because our food harbors harmful microbes doesn't mean it's not also full of antibiotics.