Mind, features and articles | Educational Science

Jan 20, 2020

Here's What Scientists Know About 'Screen Time' and Your Health

There's a lot of talk about digital media. Increasing screen time has created worries about media's impacts on democracy, addiction, depression, relationships, learning, health, privacy and much more. The effects are frequently assumed to be huge, even apocalyptic. Scientific data, however, often fail to confirm what seems true based on...

Feb 21, 2020

Your brain waves could predict if an antidepressant will work for you

For patients seeking relief from depression, it can take months to pin down an effective treatment. But brain wave patterns could potentially help to predict how individual patients would respond to an antidepressant before treatment even begins, according to a new study published Feb. 10 in the journal Nature Biotechnology....

Mar 28, 2020

Why is it so hard not to touch your face?

As the new coronavirus spreads across the globe, people are staying 6 feet (1.8 meters) apart, washing their hands and avoiding touching their faces. Or at least they're trying to. Ignoring an itchy nose or hair in your eyes is easier said than done. Even professionals who should know better...

Jun 3, 2020

How does ketamine work as an antidepressant? It’s complicated.

The anesthetic ketamine shows promise as a rapid treatment for difficult-to-treat depression, but scientists don't know exactly how it works. Now, a small study hints that, among other effects, ketamine may activate a specific receptor in the brain that interacts with serotonin, a brain chemical implicated in many mood disorders....

Aug 14, 2020

Depression and anxiety are skyrocketing in young adults amid pandemic

Anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts are skyrocketing amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study suggests. The study, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), found that young adults were particularly prone to these increases. The study researchers analyzed information from more than 5,400 U.S. adults ages 18 and...

Oct 7, 2020

Orthorexia: Causes, symptoms and treatment

Orthorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by an obsession with the perceived purity of food. People with orthorexia might restrict themselves to eating only unprocessed or organic foods, cut out whole food groups from their diet or restrict themselves to eating raw foods only. The condition goes beyond a...

Nov 5, 2020

Earwax may reveal how stressed you are

How stressed are you? Your earwax could hold the answer. A new method of collecting and analyzing earwax for levels of the stress hormone cortisol may be a simple and cheap way to track the mental health of people with depression and anxiety. Cortisol is a crucial hormone that spikes...

Feb 15, 2021

Giant hair ball tears through teen's stomach, requiring surgery

A teen in the U.K. who compulsively ate her own hair ended up developing a massive hair ball in her stomach that tore a hole through her stomach wall, according to a new report. The oval-shaped hair ball was 19 inches (48 centimeters) long and completely filled her stomach, according...

Mar 31, 2021

How stress stops hair growth (in mice)

When faced with incredible stress, people sometimes shed hair by the handful, but scientists don't know exactly why that is. Now, a new study in mice offers a clue: Stress hormones may put hair growth on pause. Follicles, the specialized organs that sprout hairs, cycle through growth and rest stages,...

Apr 14, 2021

'Magic mushroom' compound may work just as well as antidepressants, small study finds

Psilocybin, the hallucinogen found in magic mushrooms, may work just as well as a common antidepressant drug at treating symptoms of depression, a small new study suggests. The study found that people who took psilocybin twice under the supervision of psychiatrists showed similar reductions in depression symptoms — based on...

Jun 9, 2021

Laughing gas may treat depression, small study suggests

Laughing gas doesn't just make people giggle, it can also induce a feeling of euphoria. Now, a new study suggests that laughing gas, or nitrous oxide, may relieve depression in patients who are resistant to other treatments. Two weeks after inhaling a mixture of laughing gas and oxygen for an...

Sep 4, 2021

Why do we grind our teeth?

Take a moment to recognize the tension in your body. Are your shoulders hunched? Are your eyes squeezed tight? Are your teeth clenched shut? The latter, teeth clenching, is a medical condition called bruxism. And for some people, it can cause real problems, such as headaches, jaw pain and damaged...

Oct 4, 2021

A 'pacemaker' for brain activity helped woman emerge from severe depression

After all available treatments had failed, a patient with severe depression found relief from an implanted device that delivers short pulses of electricity to specific spots in her brain. The battery-powered device, called the NeuroPace RNS System, not only stimulates the brain but also monitors electrical activity from inside the...

Nov 11, 2021

Hallucinogen in 'magic mushrooms' relieves depression in largest clinical trial to date

Psilocybin, the hallucinogen found in magic mushrooms, helped to relieve symptoms in people with hard-to-treat depression in the largest clinical trial of its kind to date, the trial's organizers announced Tuesday (Nov. 9). Earlier this year, a small study suggested that psilocybin might work as well as the common antidepressant...

Dec 13, 2021

What is the 'call of the void'?

Have you ever stood on a balcony, leaned over the edge and unexpectedly thought, If I wanted to, I could just jump? Or perhaps you've been at a cliff's edge, with the intention of doing nothing more than enjoying the view and fleetingly considered how easy it would be to...