Much research has been done on how "fear-conditioning" affects brain circuitry, but what about the flip side: "safety conditioning?" Now, researchers led by Michael T. Rogan and Eric R. Kandel of Columbia University Medical Center have discovered in mice how the brain responds to external stimuli that signal safety. Their findings, say the researchers, could aid in treating psychiatric disorders involving a feeling of loss of safety, as well as understanding why some people respond more resiliently to trauma than others. In their experiments, the scientists first safety-conditioned mice by teaching them to associate a series of beeps with the absence of a mildly uncomfortable foot shock. They found that the beeps reduced the classic "freeze" defensive response in the trained mice. They also found that when the safety-conditioned mice, compared to control mice, heard the beeps, they would increase adventurous exploration of an open space--abandoning their normal, protective, wall-hugging behavior. The mice showed the same adventurous behavior when exposed to an instinctive safety signal--dimmed light--indicating that the same neural response mechanisms were at work, said the researchers. When the safety-conditioned mice were given the choice of two rooms--one in which their entry triggered the safety signal--they overwhelmingly chose the "safety" room. Electrophysiological studies of the animals' brains revealed that the safety tones depressed activity in a region of the amygdala--the brain structure that processes emotions and that is activated in fear responses.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 7229 - Posted: 04.21.2005

Boston, MA – Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) recently discovered that cigarette smoking may contribute to the progression of multiple sclerosis (MS), suggesting that quitting smoking could limit or delay central nervous system deterioration. This is the first time that a modifiable risk factor for MS progression has been identified, providing a new strategy for patients hoping to control neurological damage from the disease. Study results appear in the March 9, 2005 issue of Brain. Miguel Hernán, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of epidemiology at HSPH, noted that "the findings are interesting because no modifiable risk factors for the progression of MS are known. This was the first prospective study that identified a potential intervention (quitting smoking) for reducing the risk of progression of MS." Analyzing over 2,000 medical records in the General Practice Research Database (GPRD), researchers identified 179 British patients who were originally diagnosed with relapsing-remitting MS, a form of the disease in which symptoms fade and recur in unpredictable patterns. Patients who were current or past smokers were 3.6 times as likely as patients who had never smoked to develop secondary progressive MS, a later stage of the disease marked by steady deterioration of the central nervous system. This disease progression also occurred more quickly in patients who were identified as current or past smokers. The study also supported earlier research showing that smoking may increase the risk of initial MS diagnosis. Current and past smokers were 30% more likely to be diagnosed with MS than those who had never smoked.

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 7228 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA--People with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM)—the most common and aggressive form of primary brain tumor—nearly double their survival time after surgery and radiation treatment if they carry a version of a gene involved in cell immortalization, according to a new study. The findings could pave the way toward individualizing treatment for the cancer, say the researchers. Cancer cells achieve immortality in part by turning on production of the enzyme telomerase, which lengthens structures called telomeres that protect the ends of chromosomes. Telomerase is encoded by the hTERT gene, which is not active in most normal mature cells. Previous research has shown that a genetic variation in hTERT, known as MNS16A-S, increases the gene's activity, leading molecular biologist Luo Wang of the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas in Houston to ask whether such variations affect survival rate in patients with GBM. To test the hypothesis, Wang and his team analyzed the available DNA samples of 301 GBM patients, ages 20 to 73, who had undergone surgery and radiation treatment at the same hospital between 1994 and 2003. Only 11 percent carried the MNS16A-S variation, while the rest carried longer versions of the gene known as MNS16A-L or MNS16A-LL. After analyzing the medical records, the researchers found that the S carriers survived for an average of 25 months after therapy, but the L and LL-allele carriers only lived an average of 14 months. The findings, presented here on April 18 at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, still held true when the researchers controlled for severity of surgery and the fact that some patients had also received chemotherapy. Copyright © 2005 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 7227 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jeff Wheelwright Pecos Road runs due west along the southern boundary of Phoenix. On the city side of the road, new subdivisions of retirement homes are pushing up their tile roofs like mushrooms that sprout with no rain. On the other side of the road lies the flat scrub of the Gila River Indian Community, some 600 square miles, most of it empty. The reservation shimmers out of the reach of the builders like a desert mirage. This land was no good to anyone in 1859, when it was allocated to the Pima Indians. Today it has 13,000 Native American residents, living in squat cinder-block houses in scattered, dusty hamlets; three casinos that have boosted the tribal income to $100 million annually from $4 million; irrigated cotton, alfalfa, and citrus, for Pimas were always farmers; and a hospital and two kidney-dialysis clinics, with another medical clinic in the planning stage. Kidney failure is a deadly complication of diabetes, and Pimas, so far as scientists can tell, have the world’s highest rate of type 2 diabetes. The Pimas have grown to hate this superlative perhaps more than the disease itself. Mary Thomas, the 60-year-old ex-governor of the tribe and presently its lieutenant governor, drove me around the community. A few miles south of Pecos Road, we came to the St. Johns Mission, a quiet, whitewashed church. There was once a Catholic boarding school for Indian children on the grounds. Thomas said that when she was 17 and in school here, she went for an eye test and was told she had diabetes. © 2004 The Walt Disney Company. All rights reserved

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Obesity
Link ID: 7226 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A new study published online April 21, 2005 in the American Journal of Medical Genetics Part A examines whether the recent decline in neural tube defects in Chile was due to the addition of folic acid to wheat flour in that country or to pre-existing decreasing trends. The journal is available online via Wiley InterScience at http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/ajmg. Recent data in Chile have suggested that the incidence of the neural tube defects spina bifida and anencephaly (a fatal condition that results in malformation of the brain) have significantly declined since January 2000, when wheat flour began to be fortified with folic acid. In that time, Chile has been fortifying its foods at double the rate of the U.S. In order to determine if the decrease was directly attributable to the addition of folic acid as opposed to an independent trend, the study examined historical data from before the fortification and compared it to data from a two-year period after fortification began. Led by Eduardo E. Castilla, of the genetics department at the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, researchers performed a survey of maternity hospitals in the ECLAMC (Latin American Collaborative Study of Congenital Malformations) network in Chile between the years 1982 and 2002. The data were divided between the pre-fortification years 1982-1989 and 1990-2000 to provide a baseline, and 2001-2002, the period during which flour was fortified. While the prevalence rates of neural tube defects did not significantly change between the two pre-fortified periods, the rate of spina bifida decreased by 51 percent and the rate of anencephaly decreased by 46 percent in the 2001-2002 period. Because different hospitals might experience different rates in neural tube defects at different times, the study examined only those hospitals with data for two consecutive periods.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7225 - Posted: 04.21.2005

Amazonian ants rig up gruesome traps to snare prey before stinging them to death and carving them up to eat, a new study reveals. Allomerus decemarticulatus is a tiny tree-dwelling ant which lives in the forests of the northern Amazon. Researchers examining the relationship between different ant species and their host plants noticed that this particular ant lived on only one plant - Hirtella physophora - and that they built galleries hanging under its stems. Many ant species build these galleries as hideouts to act as sanctuaries between their nests and foraging areas. But the team, led by Jérôme Orivel at the University of Toulouse, France, spotted that A. decemarticulatus were using these galleries as traps for prey. The traps are woven together using hairs stripped from the ants’ host plant and reinforced with fungus, producing a platform with pitted holes. “The ants are always hiding just under the holes, waiting with their mandibles open. When an insect arrives they immediately grab the legs and antennae,” says Orivel. This pulling immobilises the victim, stretching it out as though being tortured on a mediaeval rack. Worker ants then clamber over their helpless prey, biting and stinging until the victim is paralysed or dead. The carcass is then chopped into small pieces while still on the rack or, more likely, carried back to the leaf pouch where the ants nest to be devoured. The surprise-attack traps are “like something out of Edgar Allan Poe”, says Mike Kaspari, an ant expert at the University of Oklahoma, US. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Intelligence
Link ID: 7224 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Shares in GW Pharmaceuticals rose nearly 9.5% after the UK biotech firm's prescription cannabis drug was approved for use in Canada. Sativex is used to treat the central nervous system and alleviate the symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS). The Salisbury-based company said this was the world's first approval of a medicine derived from cannabis. Delays in development of the product - its first to come to the market - has hit GW's stock price in the past. Shares in GW shares closed up 11.5 pence at 132.5p on the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday. Sativex, administered by a mouth spray, will be marketed in Canada by German company Bayer. GW said it hoped to launch Sativex in Canada in late spring. "The approval of Sativex reflects the urgent need for additional treatment options in the field of neuropathic pain in MS," said Dr Allan Gordon of Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, in a statement issued by regulators Health Canada. Some MS patients already smoke cannabis to relieve their symptoms. Satifex consists of a cannabis extract containing tetrahydrocannabinol and cannabidiol. GW had originally hoped to win UK approval for Sativex in 2003. (C)BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 7223 - Posted: 04.20.2005

By PETER D. KRAMER Shortly after the publication of my book ''Listening to Prozac,'' 12 years ago, I became immersed in depression. Not my own. I was contented enough in the slog through midlife. But mood disorder surrounded me, in my contacts with patients and readers. To my mind, my book was never really about depression. Taking the new antidepressants, some of my patients said they found themselves more confident and decisive. I used these claims as a jumping-off point for speculation: what if future medications had the potential to modify personality traits in people who had never experienced mood disorder? If doctors were given access to such drugs, how should they prescribe them? The inquiry moved from medical ethics to social criticism: what does our culture demand of us, in the way of assertiveness? It was the medications' extra effects -- on personality, not on the symptoms of depression -- that provoked this line of thought. For centuries, doctors have treated depressed patients, using medication and psychological strategies. Those efforts seemed uncontroversial. But authors do not determine the fate of their work. ''Listening to Prozac'' became a ''best-selling book about depression.'' I found myself speaking -- sometimes about ethics, more often about mood disorders -- with many audiences, in bookstores, at gatherings of the mentally ill and their families and at professional meetings. Invariably, as soon as I had finished my remarks, a hand would shoot up. A hearty, jovial man would rise and ask -- always the same question -- ''What if Prozac had been available in van Gogh's time?'' Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 7222 - Posted: 04.20.2005

Forgetting is bad. Remembering is always good. Or so I thought until I met patients with unexpected benefits of memory loss. "It will be a blessing if I lose my mind," one patient said. "I'll probably be happy not knowing I owe anybody!" Andy Rooney wrote, in his 1982 book, And More by Andy Rooney, "Sadness is one of the principal ingredients of memory, and there's just so much of that [that] anyone wants to bring on himself on purpose by sitting around remembering." All this raises an important question in my mind. Is forgetfulness nature's way of enforcing forgiveness, the letting go of past wrongs and sorrows, the memory of which can only sadden the ageing mind, with little chance for reconciliation and closure? In pondering this question I wonder whether the evolutionary reason for the high prevalence of Alzheimer's disease among those aged 80 or older is to shield ageing minds from the vagaries of the past, the company of friends and family severed, the sadness that comes with dreams unfulfilled. Was I being too picky in correcting the medical student who introduced his 91 year old patient as being "pleasantly demented with no complaints"? My premise—that there is nothing pleasant about Alzheimer's disease—conflicts with occasional sightings of apparently happy patients living with the disease. Maybe the medical student is right after all. Will memory enhancement therapy make these patients happier or more agitated and less functional? © 2005 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 7221 - Posted: 06.24.2010

MADISON -- Unveiling a delivery method that may one day help surgeons treat the deadly neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have inserted engineered human stem cells into the spinal cords of ALS-afflicted rats. Reporting their work today (April 19) in the journal Human Gene Therapy, the scientists directed certain types of neural stem cells to secrete a neuron-protecting protein before injecting them into the rat spinal cord where motor neurons reside. Motor neurons dictate muscle movement by relaying messages from the spinal cord and brain to the rest of the body. ALS causes the neurons to progressively decay and die. Notably, the UW-Madison stem cell researchers did not work with human embryonic stem cells, blank-slate cells that arise during the earliest stages of development and can develop into any of the 220 tissue and cell types in humans. Scientists have long regarded these cells as a crucial ingredient in the quest to cure spinal injuries and neurodegenerative disease. Rather, the scientists worked with more specialized neural stem cells -- known as neural progenitor cells -- that arise from primitive stem cells during the first few weeks of human brain development. Unlike embryonic stem cells, they can only develop into neural tissue and they are incapable of living forever, as embryonic stem cells can.

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease ; Stem Cells
Link ID: 7220 - Posted: 04.20.2005

Although the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish are well known for their health benefits, many fish are also the primary source of mercury in the general population. Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recently completed the first study of mercury and cognitive function in urban, U.S. adults between the ages of 50 and 70 years. They found that blood mercury levels were not consistently associated with adverse performance on a broad range of tests of cognitive function. This study may help policy makers with future decisions about mercury emissions from power plants as well as fish consumption recommendations for older adults. The study is published in the April 20, 2005, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). “Our study provides no evidence to challenge the government’s current recommendations for blood mercury levels, but neither does it indicate that they are safe. The key point is that the aging population may be more sensitive to toxic chemicals and this is the first study to examine mercury exposure in the older U.S. population,” said Megan Weil, MHS, lead author of the study and a PhD-candidate in the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences. © 2005, Johns Hopkins University.

Keyword: Neurotoxins
Link ID: 7219 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The drug memantine can reduce cognitive deterioration and loss of everyday functions in patients with moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease, according to a new review of studies. Memantine's effects are small but "clinically noticeable" after patients take 20 milligrams of the drug daily for 28 weeks, according to Dr. Rupert McShane of the University of Oxford and colleagues. The effect of memantine was measured by a variety of tests that rate a patient's thinking skills, daily activity and mood. While there is no evidence that the drug can treat agitation in Alzheimer's patients, it does appear to prevent the onset of agitation, the review finds. The studies also hint at some cognitive benefits from the drug for patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's and vascular dementia, which occurs when brain cells are starved of oxygen by blocked or diseased blood vessels. However, these changes were not clinically significant, and it remains unknown whether there is a true benefit in mild to moderate cases, McShane and colleagues write. The Food and Drug Administration approved memantine for the treatment of moderate to severe Alzheimer's dementia in 2003. The European Agency for the Evaluation of Medical Products approved the drug for similar indications in 2002. Manufacturers of the drug in Europe and the United States have applied for approval of the drug for mild to moderate Alzheimer's dementia.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 7218 - Posted: 04.20.2005

Newborn babies who gain weight rapidly in the first week of life are more likely to become obese later on, US researchers believe. Babies often struggle to put on weight in the first week as they adjust to their new surroundings. But researchers found for every 100g (3.5oz) gained, the risk of being overweight as an adult rose by 10%. Breastfeeding may minimise the risk, the journal Circulation reported. All 653 people who took part in the study were formula fed when they were born in the 1970s and 1980s, and as such were more likely to put on weight than breastfed babies. Researchers from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Iowa found weight gain in the first week was crucial in determining future levels of obesity. They said the findings could be used to combat the increasing levels of obesity across the world. In the UK adult obesity rates have almost quadrupled in the last 25 years with nearly one in four adults classed as obese. And it is estimated that one in 10 six-year-olds are obese - three times higher than 20 years ago. Report author Dr Nicholas Stettler said: "Normal weight gain is desirable for infants. "Babies double their birth weight during the first four to six months. (C)BBC

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 7217 - Posted: 04.19.2005

By BARRON H. LERNER, M.D. When my patient Jackie, who had incurable lung cancer, came to my office, she would regale me with her latest physical accomplishments. "I'm doing great, doctor, right?" she would ask. As I answered this and other questions from her, I struggled to balance the reality of Jackie's prognosis with a hopeful outlook. Now a new book describes another doctor who did the same for his patient, who had a fatal neurological disease. That patient was Lou Gehrig. The Hippocratic Oath and other ethical codes that guided the medical profession for centuries generally omitted the notion of truth-telling. In fact, one of Hippocrates's injunctions, to keep the sick from harm and injustice, encouraged the opposite behavior, deception. Serious illnesses, after all, were bad news. While doctors could give pain medications and other palliatives to patients with widespread cancer or tuberculosis, no cures existed. Faced with such situations, physicians often actively misled their patients, using euphemisms like "tumor" or "growth" when describing cancer. These doctors believed that the unvarnished truth would not only be emotionally hurtful, but it would lead patients to give up and thus die sooner. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 7216 - Posted: 04.19.2005

By David Brown Marc Maurer was born on June 3, 1951, in Des Moines, the second child of a traveling salesman and a housewife. He was two months premature. As is often the case with babies born very early, his lungs were underdeveloped. He spent two months in the hospital. During the first, supplemental oxygen was pumped into his incubator continuously. In the same city three months earlier, Patricia Schaaf was born. Her father was a plumber, her mother was a school cook. Their first child, Patricia was 3 pounds, 10 ounces at birth and two months premature. She, too, got oxygen for at least a month. Today, both Maurer and Schaaf are blind. Maurer is president of the National Federation of the Blind, and his wife -- the former Patricia Schaaf -- is its director of community relations. They work in South Baltimore in a refurbished factory that is the headquarters of the 50,000-member advocacy organization. Marc Maurer, a lawyer by training, has a spacious corner office overlooking the Patapsco River, which he cannot see. The Maurers were part of an epidemic that began in the early 1940s and peaked in 1951, the year of their birth. They were blinded by high concentrations of oxygen, which was routinely given to premature infants in the United States during and after World War II. It took 15 years to discover the link between oxygen and blindness -- 15 years in which a mysterious disease haunted America's best hospitals. This tragic outbreak was not the first time a medical treatment thought to be beneficial was shown to cause harm. Nor would it be the last. © 2005 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Vision; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7215 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By MARY DUENWALD The way the San people of the Kalahari Desert describe it, Hoodia gordonii is nature's hunger buster. Break off a spiny, cucumber-shaped stalk from this succulent plant, feed on its milky center and you will have the energy to set off on a long hunt unencumbered by hunger pangs. Or, if you live far from the arid regions in South Africa, Botswana and Namibia where hoodia grows, simply buy one of many new brands of hoodia supplements. In the past few years, after reports that Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company, had begun looking into hoodia's potential as an appetite-control drug, the market for hoodia that has been dried, powdered and fashioned into capsules has been growing fast. "The demand is very high, and the supply is ridiculously low," said Hugh Lamond, who runs Herbal Teas of Africa, one of a handful of hoodia exporters. "It's like shark-feeding time." One supplement, called Hoodoba, advertises online that it "kills your appetite, ups your mood and gives you waves upon waves of energy." The makers of Pure Hoodia, another brand, boast that the product contains an active ingredient that "fools your brain into believing you are full, making it easier to lose that excess weight." Yet no human studies gauging the effectiveness or safety of the hoodia plant or of supplements made from it have been published. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 7214 - Posted: 04.19.2005

By DENNIS OVERBYE - The boys were halfway across a snowfield when the German airplane appeared. Their rifles, clumsily camouflaged, were sticking out of their backpacks. They stood frozen as the plane buzzed in tighter and tighter circles around them, wondering if they should run for the only possible shelter, a large boulder in the middle of the field. It might finally have been curtains for the Kavli boys, Fred and Aslak. "If we'd run, we would have been done for," Fred Kavli, 77, recalled recently, his head thrown back as he communed with memories of an adventurous youth in wartime Norway. "That was very dangerous, yah," he said, recalling expeditions to steal fuel oil from the Germans. Mr. Kavli survived his boyhood, much to the retroactive relief of scientists worldwide. A year ago, Mr. Kavli stood up in front of a group of the nation's scientific elite at a dinner at the Carlyle Hotel in New York and announced that he was in the process of spending $75 million to endow 10 scientific research institutes, all bearing his name, at colleges around the country and the world. Starting in 2008, and every other year afterward, the Kavli Foundation will be sponsoring three prizes worth $1 million each in the fields of astrophysics, neuroscience and nanoscience. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 7213 - Posted: 04.19.2005

The ones that stay and the ones that stray are biological puzzles among Pacific salmon, of whom the vast majority – but not all – travel thousands of miles to sea and back to the streams where they hatched. There are chinook salmon populations in Idaho in which an occasional male stays put and matures when only 6 inches long – that is, he's able to fertilize eggs at even that diminutive size, says Thomas P. Quinn, University of Washington professor of aquatic and fishery sciences and author of a recently released book, "The Behavior and Ecology of Pacific Salmon and Trout." Just picture that tiny male under the belly of a 20-pound adult female that's returned to spawn, Quinn says. He's almost as likely to be a "winner" as the full-size males that are releasing their sperm in a competitive frenzy as the female deposits her eggs. And the tiny male has avoided the harrowing journey taken by most salmon to the ocean and back, bypassing hazards such as dams, sharks and fishermen. "In some species, all or a fraction of the individuals in some populations do not migrate to sea at all," he says. "These fish sacrifice the growing opportunities at sea for the relative safety of freshwater, and males are more inclined to remain than females. This difference is related to the fact that reproductive success in females is linked to the ability to produce numerous large eggs, hence the need for the female to be of a certain size herself. "Small males, however, can sometimes fertilize many eggs by sneaking rather than by fighting," Quinn says in the chapter called, "Downstream Migration: To Sea or Not to Sea?" The evidence for this is in the DNA of the resulting offspring.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 7212 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — Genetically engineered fruit flies have been made to jump, beat their wings and fly on human command, according to a new study published in the journal Cell. The flies are the first creatures that humans have remotely controlled. Someday, a related nerve stimulation process may restore nerve circuits in people with neurological diseases or injuries, such as the spinal cord trauma of the late actor and activist Christopher Reeve. Manipulation of behavior in insects and animals, even humans, has been possible for the past 50 years or so. Most of the studies, however, involved invasive electrical stimulation of specific parts of the brain. Surgeon Wilder Penfield, for example, electrically stimulated the cortexes of neurosurgery patients, who later said that the electricity affected their thinking and memory. Monkeys undergoing brain stimulation also have been tricked into thinking that something was vibrating their hands. "Attempts to manipulate behavior in an active and predictive way have been a focus of the laboratory for several years," explained Gero Miesenböck, who co-authored the Cell paper with Susana Lima, and is an associate professor of cell biology at the Yale University School of Medicine. Copyright © 2005 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 7211 - Posted: 06.24.2010

People who are happier in their daily lives have healthier levels of key body chemicals than those who muster few positive feelings, a new study suggests. This means happier people may have healthier hearts and cardiovascular systems, possibly cutting their risk of diseases like diabetes. Previous studies have shown that depression is associated with health problems compared to average emotional states. But few studies have looked at the effects of positive moods on health. Now, researchers at University College London, UK, have linked everyday happiness with healthier levels of important body chemicals, such as the stress hormone cortisol. “This study showed that whether people are happy or less happy in their everyday lives appears to have important effects on the markers of biological function known to be associated with disease,” says clinical psychologist Jane Wardle, one of the research team. “Perhaps laughter is the best medicine,” she adds. “This is the best data to date that associates positive emotional feelings with good effects on your health,” says Carol Shively, at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, US. “We usually concentrate on things that are either bad or wrong, rather than good or right.” © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Emotions; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 7210 - Posted: 06.24.2010