Health, features and articles | Educational Science

Sep 30, 2006

Why We Love to be Scared

For all of their stomach-turning gore, horror films and haunted houses attract people in droves. This ability of the human brain to turn fear on its head could be a key to treating phobias and anxiety disorders, according to scientists. When people get scared, their bodies automatically triggers the fight...

Aug 31, 2006

Study: Why Teens Don't Care

If you ever sense teenagers are not taking your feelings into account, it's probably because they're just incapable of doing so. The area of the brain associated with higher-level thinking, empathy, and guilt is underused by teenagers, reports a new study. When considering an action, the teenage medial prefrontal cortex,...

Aug 31, 2006

Hearing Voices: Some People Like It

For some people, hearing voices in their heads is a positive experience, not a sign of mental illness or cause for distress. Researchers at the University of Manchester are aiming to find out why. Traditionally these auditory hallucinations, as psychologists call them, are associated with mental illness. They can be...

Aug 31, 2006

Breast Implants Linked to Higher Suicide Rate

Boosting breast size with plastic surgery has been linked to a significantly higher suicide rate among women in a new 15-year study. While overall risk of health problems did not change, the suicide rate was much higher for women with breast implants compared with the general population, scientists announced today....

Aug 31, 2006

Tall Women More Likely to Have Twins

A researcher who specializes in multiple-birth pregnancies has confirmed that taller women are more likely to have twins. Taller women have more of an insulin-like growth factor that has been linked to height and to the rate of twins in previous work. Dr. Gary Steinman, an obstetrician at Long Island...

Aug 31, 2006

Women Aroused as Quickly as Men

Night vision is not known for helping anyone get better in the bedroom, but infrared cameras reveal that women become aroused as quickly as men. In previous research, sexual arousal was generally detected with instruments that require genital contact and manipulation. One might argue that can spoil the mood. Thermal...

Jul 31, 2006

Study: Cat Parasite Affects Human Culture

A parasitic microbe commonly found in cats might have helped shape entire human cultures by manipulating the personalities of infected individuals, according to a new study. Infection by a Toxoplasma gondii could make some individuals more prone to some forms of neuroticism and could lead to differences among cultures if...

Jul 31, 2006

In 2021, You'll Enjoy Total Recall

Humans naturally have the power to remember almost two bits of information per second, or a few hundred megabytes over a lifetime. Compared with a DVD movie, which holds up to 17 gigabytes, that's nothing. Worse, you might easily recall the 40-year-old dialogue from Hogan's Heroes yet forget your mom's...

Jul 31, 2006

Men with Low Testosterone More Likely to Die

Men with low testosterone levels after age 40 have a higher risk of death over a four-year period than those with normal levels of the hormone, a new study suggests. It's not clear, however, if the two are directly related, and researchers say that it's possible a third unknown factor...

Jul 31, 2006

New Source of Replacement Brain Cells Found

Scientists have found that a common type of human brain cell can transform into other cell types and reproduce indefinitely—tricks once thought exclusive to stem cells. The mature human brain cells were extracted from epilepsy patients and coaxed into other types of brain cells in a lab. The human cells...

Jul 31, 2006

New Research Points to Cancer Drugs in Lower Doses

Amino acids, those not employed in creating protein and life, can improve a cancer therapy protein's activity by more than 30-fold. Scientists say this opens the door to experimenting with these novel compounds throughout proteins and, in the future, in organisms, possibly creating drugs that work better but have fewer...

Jul 31, 2006

Why Fiber is Healthy: Because It Damages Our Insides

Fiber helps keep us regular by banging up against the gastrointestinal tract and tearing cells, which release mucus that helps us, well, go, scientists reported today. The frequent injury of cells and their subsequent repair cause more mucus production, which eases food through the pipes and provides protection for the...

Jul 31, 2006

Scientists Erase Memories in Rat Brains

Scientists have for the first time erased long-term memories in rats and also directly seen how the brain is changed by learning. The research points to potential human benefits. These findings could prove key to understanding how memories can be augmented, for example in diseases that affect memory, like Alzheimer's,...

Jul 31, 2006

Brain Gene May Help Make Us Human

Humans have more copies of a possibly important brain gene in their genomes than other apes, a new study finds. Called MGC8902, the gene is implicated in the function of the neocortex, the region of the brain that, in humans, is responsible for consciousness, language, and other higher cognitive functions....

Jun 30, 2006

Americans Sleep Less than They Think They Do

A new study finds people aren't sleeping as much as they report in other studies. Not wanting to rely just on diaries, researchers attached monitoring devices to 669 middle-age test subjects to record when they actually slept. Though they spent an average of 7.5 hours a night in bed, the...