First-of-its-kind study finds gene variant linked to the symptom in menopausal women
Most women experience hot flashes and night sweats either before or during menopause, but a significant minority don’t have these symptoms. Could our genes be a factor in determining which women get hot flashes? (more…)
Flexible Arbeitszeiten, das Verschwimmen von Grenzen zwischen Beruf und Privatleben oder die Erwartung einer ständigen Erreichbarkeit am Smartphone sowie per Mail – das sind nur einige Faktoren, die Arbeitende in unserer Gesellschaft nur zu gut kennen. Jürgen Glaser, Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologe, versucht Strukturen in der Arbeitswelt zu verbessern. (more…)
Early complaints often precursors to significant decline in later life, UCLA/Gallup study says
If you’re depressed, don’t get enough exercise or have high blood pressure, you may find yourself complaining more about memory problems, even if you’re a young adult, according to a new UCLA study. (more…)
Over the last three decades U.S. parents have committed filicide — the killing of one’s child — about 3,000 times every year. The horrifying instances are often poorly understood, but a recent study provides the first comprehensive statistical overview of the tragic phenomenon. The authors also suggest underlying hypotheses of motives with the hope of spurring research on filicide prevention.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Instances in which parents kill their children may seem so horrifying and tragic that they defy explanation. Published scientific and medical research, meanwhile, doesn’t offer much epidemiological context to help people understand patterns among such heinous crimes. A paper in the March edition of the journal Forensic Science International provides the first comprehensive statistical analysis of filicide in the United States, drawing on 32 years of data on more than 94,000 arrests. The study also explores possible underlying psychiatric and biological underpinnings of filicide. (more…)
The internal circadian clock of a Drosophila (fruit fly) can be synchronised using vibrations, according to research published today in the journal Science. The study suggests that an animal’s own movements can influence its clock.
The circadian clock, which underlies the daily rhythms characterising most of our bodily functions, including the sleep cycle, is mainly set by diurnal changes in light and temperature. (more…)
After brain injury, cells on ‘high alert’ prolong immune response, affecting behavior
COLUMBUS, Ohio – A head injury can lead immune-system brain cells to go on “high alert” and overreact to later immune challenges by becoming excessively inflammatory – a condition linked with depressive complications, a new animal study suggests.
The findings could help explain some of the midlife mental-health issues suffered by individuals who experience multiple concussions as young adults, researchers say. And these depressive symptoms are likely inflammation-related, which means they may not respond to common antidepressants. (more…)
Research by the Universities of Liverpool and Manchester has found that people experiencing depressive episodes display increased brain activity when they think about themselves.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain imaging technologies, scientists found that people experiencing a depressive episode process information about themselves in the brain differently to people who are not depressed.
Researchers scanned the brains of people in major depressive episodes and those that weren’t whilst they chose positive, negative and neutral adjectives to describe either themselves or the British Queen – a figure significantly removed from their daily lives but one that all participants were familiar with. (more…)
Being left-handed has been linked to many mental disorders, but Yale researcher Jadon Webb and his colleagues have found that among those with mental illnesses, people with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia are much more likely to be left-handed than those with mood disorders like depression or bipolar syndrome.
The new study is published in the October-December 2013 issue of the journal SAGE Open. (more…)
