After comparing children who had music lessons with those who didn’t, scientists from McMaster University, Canada, found that those who took music lessons had different patterns of brain development.
The children with music lessons had better memories as well as higher literacy and math levels. All the kids in the study were aged 4-6 years.You will be able to read about this study in the October issue of Brain.
Professor Laurel Trainor, team leader, said “This is the first study to show that brain responses in young, musically trained and untrained children change differently over the course of a year.”
While all the children listened to two sounds, a violin tone, and a white noise burst – the scientists used magnetoencephalography to measure their brain activity. All the kids responded more to the violin tone than the white noise burst.
This indicates that the children’s brains are being used more when the sound is meaningful. During the year-long study the researchers also noticed that all the children’s brains gradually responded more rapidly to sounds – indicating brain maturity. Read more.
Anyone who has traveled has experienced jet lag—that groggy realization that while your day is beginning in Washington, D.C., the night you just left in San Francisco is hardly over.
Jet lag is an inconvenient reminder that the body is set to a 24-hour clock, known by scientists as circadian rhythms, from the Latin circa dies, “about one day.” An internal biological clock is fundamental to all living organisms, influencing hormones that play a role in sleep and wakefulness, metabolic rate, and body temperature.
Disruption of circadian rhythms not only affects sleep patterns but also has been found to precipitate mania in people with bipolar disorder (manic-depressive illness). Other types of illnesses also are affected by circadian rhythms; for example, heart attacks occur more frequently in the morning while asthma attacks occur more often at night.
Although biological clocks have been the focus of intensive research over the past four decades, only recently have the tools needed to examine the molecular basis of circadian rhythms become available. Early studies pointed to an area of the brain, the hypothalamus, as the location of the circadian pacemaker in mammals. More findings here.
Using marijuana in adolescence and early adulthood increases the likelihood of psychotic symptoms in later life, a new study suggests. The risk of developing these symptoms is “moderate”, say researchers, though is higher in people with a pre-disposition to psychosis.
A team led by Jim van Os of the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands followed 2437 people aged between 14 and 24. After four years, 21% of cannabis users had experienced psychotic symptoms compared with 15% of non-users. And the more a participant used cannabis, the more likely they were to develop symptoms.
Family history
The risk appears greatest for those with a predisposition to psychosis, as evidenced by mild signs of psychosis at the outset of the study.
Given the wealth of evidence that smoking damages your health, you would have to be stupid not to kick the habit. Now a study suggests this could be a self-fulfilling prophecy, because smoking reduces your IQ.
Lawrence Whalley at the University of Aberdeen and colleagues at the University of Edinburgh, both in the UK, looked at how the cognitive ability of 465 individuals, approximately half of whom were smokers, changed over their lifetime and whether this related to their smoking habits.
Smokers performed significantly worse in five different cognitive tests than did both former smokers and those who had never smoked. When social and health factors such as education, occupation and alcohol consumption were taken into account, smoking still appeared to contribute to a drop in cognitive function of just under 1%. More here.
Psychologists have launched a study to find out why some people who hear voices in their head consider it a positive experience while others find it distressing.
Although hearing voices has traditionally been viewed as ‘abnormal’ and a symptom of mental illness, the Dutch findings suggest it is more widespread than previously thought, estimating that about 4% of the population hear voices. That would be equivalent to 100,000 people in Greater Manchester.
Researcher Aylish Campbell said: “We know that many members of the general population hear voices but have never felt the need to access mental health services; some experts even claim that more people hear voices and don’t seek psychiatric help than those who do. Continues…
People are becoming addicted to mobile phones, causing them to become stressed and irritable, psychologists say.
Some 16% of examinated students were found to have problem behaviour linked to using their phone – either lying about how much they used them, becoming irritable after using them or being overly pre-occupied with them.
Cancer
“Mobile phones have impacted on every aspect of our social world,” Dr Sheffield will say.
The warnings come after years of debate about whether mobile phones increase the risk of cancer.
Childhood is being lost to a dangerous combination of junk food, marketing and video games, experts warned today.
A group of 110 teachers, psychologists, children’s authors and other experts have written to the Daily Telegraph urging the Government to act, warning children are being poisoned by the modern world.
“They need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed “junk”), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen based entertainment), first hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives.
And they need much more than this…
Risk and uncertainty are part of modern life, but why does the possibility of terrorist bombs on aeroplanes, a new generation of nuclear power stations and a flu pandemic trigger public distrust in the powers-that-be?
What can the government do to re-build trust in politicians and scientists?
Risk researchers say the answer lies in emotions, not reason, especially when the perceived risk is related to health, the environment, new technologies and energy.What can the government do to re-build trust in politicians and scientists?
How people handle uncertainties – in relation to topics including unemployment, pensions, GM foods, health care and nuclear power? Read here.
Obesity is not just a problem for the USA, it is not just limited to other developed countries either – it is a problem that has spread throughout the globe, and is now recognised as an insidious killer and the major contributing cause of preventable diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease – according to Professor Paul Zimmet, chairman of the 10th International Congress on Obesity, Sydney, Australia.
Overweight/obesity affects more people on our planet than undernourishment. In other words, there are more fat people in the world than underfed people. Obesity is now the greatest contributor to chronic disease. Not even talking about childhood obesity.
What are the consequences of obesity/overweight?Here are the main ones:
- Coronary heart disease
- Dyslipidemia (high total cholesterol, high levels of triglycerides)
- Gallbladder disease
- Hypertension (high blood pressure)
- Osteoarthritis Sleep apnea and respiratory problems
- Several cancers
- Stroke
- Type 2 diabetes
Mutations in the sperm of older men could be a major contributory factor that leads to a significantly higher risk of having children with autism, say researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, USA.
They found that men over 40 have a much higher chance of fathering children with autism, compared to men under 30.
In most of the developed world the prevalence of autism among children has more than doubled over the last twenty years from about 18 per 10,000 to 50 per 10,000. Many reasons have been given for this, such as the MMR vaccine, pollution and better diagnosis today.
Perhaps a defective gene(s) is being activated as men get older, he said. Here are some of the researcher´s findings.