Health, features and articles | Educational Science

Mar 31, 2010

New Implants Mold to Brain Like Shrink-Wrap

New silken brain implants that mold to the organ's grooves and crevices like shrink-wrap could lead to better devices for monitoring and controlling seizures. They can also serve as advanced brain-machine interfaces for control of prosthetics and other devices, said John Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering at...

Mar 31, 2010

What Causes the Munchies?

Scientists have finally begun to understand why smoking pot leads to so many late night trips to Taco Bell. The main culprit for the munchies is a brain pathway known as the endogenous cannabinoid system, said Harriet de Wit, a psychiatry professor at the University of Chicago. This system, which...

Mar 31, 2010

Premature Births Remain a Medical Mystery

After rising for 16 years, the rate of premature births in the United States dropped for the second year in a row, according to a report released this month. Despite the good news, still more than half a million babies are born early in the country, putting them at risk...

Mar 31, 2010

How do we see color?

Roses are red and violets are blue, but we only know that thanks to specialized cells in our eyes called cones. When light hits an object — say, a banana — the object absorbs some of the light and reflects the rest of it. Which wavelengths are reflected or absorbed...

Feb 28, 2010

Solid Find: Natalee Holloway's Body … Or a Rock

A vacationing Pennsylvania couple believe they may have accomplished something that thousands of police, volunteer searchers, and psychics have failed to do: Find the body of missing woman Natalee Holloway. Holloway disappeared May 30, 2005, while on vacation in Aruba. Searches were fruitless, and police finally closed the case on...

Feb 28, 2010

What's Sexsomnia?

Simply put, sexsomnia is the act of having sex while asleep. But for sleep researchers and legal scholars, it's an emerging sleep disorder with far-reaching implications. Sexsomnia, or sleep sex, started popping up in scientific case studies in the late 1990s. Behaviors range from groaning to masturbation to full-on sexual...

Jan 31, 2010

Is 'Water Birth' Safe?

Supermodel Gisele Bundchen made news recently by giving birth to her son Benjamin in an unusual way: at home in her own bathtub. It wasn't an accident or surprise delivery; instead she did it as part of a growing trend called water birthing, considered by some women and midwives to...

Jan 31, 2010

Different Colors Describe Happiness vs. Depression

Are you in a gray mood today? How about a blue funk? Maybe you're seeing red, because you're green with jealousy. The colors we use to describe emotions may be more useful than you think, according to new research. The study found that people with depression or anxiety were more...

Jan 31, 2010

Links to Spirituality Found in the Brain

Scientists have identified areas of the brain that, when damaged, lead to greater spirituality. The findings hint at the roots of spiritual and religious attitudes, the researchers say. The study, published in the Feb. 11 issue of the journal Neuron, involves a personality trait called self-transcendence, which is a somewhat...

Jan 31, 2010

Childhood Obesity Takes Psychological Toll, Too

The ballooning waistlines of children hit the spotlight when Michelle Obama admitted publicly her daughters had an unhealthy body mass index. And while many urge kids to slim down to avoid heart disease and other physical ailments, the emotional consequences from teasing and low self-esteem could be just as debilitating,...

Jan 31, 2010

Tiger Woods and Sex Addiction: Real Disease or Easy Excuse?

Tiger Woods is scheduled to break his months-long silence about the sex scandal that has plagued the world's most famous athlete. It's not clear how he will explain himself, though according to some reports Woods has been attending a private rehabilitation clinic in Mississippi that treats addictions — including sex...

Jan 31, 2010

Hourglass Figures Affect Men's Brains Like a Drug

Watching a curvaceous woman can feel like a reward in the brain of men, much as drinking alcohol or taking drugs might, research now reveals. These new findings might help explain the preoccupation men can have toward pornography, scientists added. Shapely hips in women are linked with fertility and overall...

Jan 31, 2010

Nouns and Verbs Learned in Different Brain Regions

Nouns and verbs may go hand and hand in a sentence, but they are learned in different regions of our brains, a new study suggests. The work could explain why children learn nouns before verbs, and adults also perform better and react faster to nouns during cognitive tests. The researchers...

Dec 31, 2009

Half of Depressed Americans Get No Treatment

About half of Americans with major depression do not receive treatment for the condition, and in many cases the therapies are not consistent with the standard of care, according to a new study. The study also showed that ethnicity and race were important factors in determining who received treatment, with...

Dec 31, 2009

Cell Phone Radiation Might Improve Memory

Amid ongoing claims that long-term cell phone radiation may lead to brain tumors comes a new study suggesting the radio waves may protect and even reverse Alzheimer's disease, at least in mice. And the radiation gave mice without Alzheimer's a boost in brain activity. It surprised us to find that...