A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
An illustration of the human brain with the hippocampus in yellow. Photo: Supplied People who suffer from depression have long known of the devastation that it can cause in their personal lives. Now scientists have shown the damage that it also wreaks upon their brains. A global study of 9000 people has found [...]
Illustration by Dale Edwin Murry In April 2011, Robert Froemke and his team were reprogramming the brains of virgin mice with a single hormone injection. Before the treatment, the female mice were largely indifferent to the cries of a distressed baby, and were even known to trample over them. But after an injection [...]
Getty Images Grip strength may be a good predictor of the risk for cardiovascular disease. Researchers studied 139,691 people, ages 35 to 70, in 17 high-, middle- and low-income countries. They gathered data on height, weight, blood pressure, physical activity, dietary intake and other health and behavioral factors. Adjusted for age and height, [...]
Members of the first graduation class of Tuscarora High School toss their mortar boards into the air after the completion of the commencement ceremony held in the school's gym Tuesday, June 12, 2012, in Leesburg, Va. How will they age in 20 years? (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) A team of researchers led by Duke [...]
Recovering pokie machine addict Sharon Hollamby. ABC: Ka-Ching! Pokie Nation Science backs up Ms Hollamby's feeling of being "hypnotised" or "hijacked" by pokie machines. Like Pavlov's dog, who learned to salivate at the sound of a bell, pokie machine players learn to associate reward with the sound of the machines, gambling researcher Dr [...]
The prairie vole is capable of consoling behaviour that previously has only been known in humans and a few higher animals, such as chimpanzees. Photo: PA A new study has found that prairie voles will console other voles who are feeling stressed - which researchers have described as evidence of empathy. A study [...]
iStockphoto A new study out today in the journal Nature Communications shows that cells normally associated with protecting the brain from infection and injury also play an important role in rewiring the connections between nerve cells. While this discovery sheds new light on the mechanics of neuroplasticity, it could also help explain diseases like autism [...]
ktsimage/iStockphoto About eight percent of our DNA is viral in origin: remnants of ancient battles between infectious viruses and our ancestors. These so-called endogenous viruses are often perceived as a mere oddity with no clear biological significance. But a new study by scientists at the University of Utah School of Medicine shows that [...]
Photo: colourbox An international team of researchers lead by the University of Granada (UGR) has scientifically proven for the first time that depression is more than a mental disorder—it causes important alterations of the oxidative stress, so it should be considered a systemic disease, since it affects the whole organism. The results of [...]
Credit: © Tatyana Gladskih / Fotolia Depression is a serious mental illness that has many negative consequences for sufferers. But depression among pregnant women may also have an impact on their developing babies. Children of depressed parents are at an increased risk of developing depression themselves, a combination of both genetic and environmental [...]
