Pitt research shows NASA sleep-wake scheduling guide may need to be changed
...tronauts are always able to handle their demanding tasks at peak performance. The findings suggest changes ...idelines. "There is always some cost to performing tasks when we expect to be asleep, but by the end of the series of experiments, of which this is the first...Money issues leading cause of holiday stress for Americans
.... Taking small concrete steps to deal with holiday tasks instead of overwhelming yourself with goals that are too far reaching for a busy time. Keep things in perspective. Try to consider stressful situations in a broader context and keep a long-term perspective. Avoid blowing events out of propor...Drug to treat ADHD has similar effect on children with reading disorders
...icipants were given auditory or visual performance tasks to decide whether they saw or heard a real English word or a nonsense word. Their results were compared to a group of 14 healthy adolescents who were not given Ritalin. Although Ritalin did not affect performance, it altered the areas of the br...Thanks for the memories: cinematic portrayal of amnesia is profoundly misleading
...in taking in new information, making many everyday tasks extremely difficult. Movies often portray amnesics as undergoing complete personality changes, with a "startling number of originally 'bad' characters becoming 'good' after the onset of amnesia." In reality however personality and identity are often...Sudden death from stress linked to wonky signals in the brain
...atal abnormal heart rhythms during mentally taxing tasks or emotional events such as family gatherings. T...story of heart disease were given stressful mental tasks while their brain activity was monitored using PET imaging. Electrical waves travelling across their...Shepherds whistle while they work and brains process sounds as language
...brain activity in language center. Data from both tasks showed a common focus of brain activity near the temporal-parietal junction among the silbadores. "Our results provide more evidence about the flexibility of human capacity for language in a variety of forms," said Corina. "These data suggest that ...Faces must be seen to be recognized
...ssing awareness of the face image with distracting tasks such as memorizing images or sounds--a phenomenon called "inattentional blindness." The researchers found that the requirement to pay attention to visual distractors, but not auditory distractors, eliminated the face recognition. Thus, they found, si...Diet, exercise, stimulating environment helps old dogs learn
... cognitive tests and were more likely to learn new tasks when they were fed a diet fortified with plenty of fruits, vegetables and vitamins, were exercised at least twice weekly, and were given the opportunity to play with other dogs and a variety of stimulating toys. The study is reported in the January 2...Thinking of prepositions turns brain 'on' in different ways
... the supramarginal gyrus did not score high on the tasks that evaluated their knowledge of prepositions that dealt with space. In comparison, the fourth patient, who did not have similar damage to this region of the brain, was able to demonstrate complete knowledge of spatial prepositions. Kemm...Hearing aid signal not clear? Then switch frequency to FM, finds UCI study
...study. They were tested on three speech-perception tasks known to be notoriously difficult for cochlear-implant users: speech recognition with a competing voice, speaker recognition and Mandarin-tone recognition. The researchers tested the amplitude modulation (AM) and FM from a number of frequency bands i...Cell phone users drive like old folks
...arch showing that older people performing multiple tasks suffer additional impairment due to aging. The study found that drivers who talked on cell phones regardless of whether they were young or old were 18 percent slower in hitting their brakes than drivers who didn't use cell phones. The drivers cha...NYU psychology researchers show how attention enhances visual perception
...s to that location, enhances performance in visual tasks as well as the neural activity underlying the processing of ensuing images. The results are published in the latest issue of the journal Neuron. A sudden appearance of an object in our visual field will grab our attention--causing an involuntary rea...Nonhuman primate males more susceptible to age-related cognitive decline than females
... of young and elderly nonhuman primates performing tasks that measured spatial memory. The researchers presented each animal with an increasing number of identical disks for which the animals had to identify the disk appearing in a new location. "We saw young adult male nonhuman primates outperform female...Orthodontists must brace against back pain
...because they don't necessarily do heavy lifting or tasks that put an instant load on the back, these disord...erapy at the University of Alberta. "Although the tasks appear to be light and harmless, by virtue of the frequency and duration of their performance, they ...How effective are herbal supplements in reducing illnesses in children?
...sociated with an improvement in performing certain tasks by children who are hyperactive. Ivy leaf is the dried leaf of Hedera helix L., which is native to Europe and Asia. Studies have suggested that ivy leaf may improve airway resistance in children with asthma. Cough tablets with dried ivy leaf may ...Gene for age-related macular degeneration discovered by Yale researchers
...g fine-detail vision, reading, driving and leisure tasks such as playing sports and watching movies and television. As part of the normal aging process, yellowish waste deposits called drusen accumulate around the macula, but in individuals with AMD, the drusen are larger and more numerous, killing cells n...Binge drinking can impair both mood and cognitive performance
...erformed worse on the working-memory and vigilance tasks than did the female non-binge drinkers. "Binge drinking is associated with a negative, [as in] depressive, mood," said Duka. "[It is also associated with] an impaired performance in a working memory task, which tests the ability to hold important i...Treating depression helps slow physical decline in older adults, study shows
...lder adults also improves their ability to perform tasks critical to independent living such as keeping track of medications or managing money. Prior clinical trials of successful treatment of depression in this age group reported improvement in emotional functioning, but had not demonstrated that improved...Brain imaging study may hold clues to onset of schizophrenia in people at high risk
...mes full-blown demonstrate impaired performance in tasks requiring executive function, attention and workin...howed normal brain activity during these executive tasks or whether or not they showed some of the pathology of individuals who already have schizophrenia," ......cognitive performance, for example, performance on tasks that require attention and concentration." The team, based at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital in Edinburgh, seeks 25 people over the age of 55, fluent in English, to take part in the study. Participants will be asked to complete questionnaires about the...