Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
THE recent World Health Organization (WHO) report Investing in Health Research and Development predicts that depressive illness will be the single most important cause of disability in the developing world. Many health researchers may be amazed and even skeptical about the validity of this prediction. However, this report is only …
a recent research now says that depression may be as dangerous as high cholesterol in giving you a heart attack. The new study by William W Eaton of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, in Baltimore, us, shows that those depressed were four times more likely to …
Pregnant women often complain of lack of concentration and poor memory. Scientists now offer an interesting explanation for this phenomenon; that a woman's brain size shrinks during late pregnancy and it takes up to six months to regain its full size. Using magnetic resonance imagery, Anita Holdcroft and her colleagues …
Charles Darwin spent 20 years perfecting his ideas on evolution and how it operates. What motivated him to channelise his energy and focus for so long on his work? Thomas J Barloon and Russell Noyes Jr of the University of Iowa College of Medicine, US, have suggested that he suffered …
A safely tested new drug to help septuagenarians remember was disclosed at the recent annual meeting of neuroscience in Washington, US. The drug contains a new class of molecules called ampakines, which accelerate intra-cellular information. In the study, Stockholm-based men aged between 65 and 73, who took the drug scored …
in the last two decades, attention on acquired reading disorders has shifted from neuroanatomical (wherein specific disorders were attributed to specific lesions in the brain) to the general cognitive approach. Now the focus is on the exact manifestation of brain damage, such as visual perception to a more specific task …
CURRENT research in developmental biology largely consists of isolating a gene and trying to guess from its sequence what its functions might be. V Rodrigues of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai and collaborators at the National University of Singapore have chosen to study the working of the nervous …
PREVIOUS studies have shown that the human brain is efficient at using different portions of itself to perform different tasks. Interestingly, there is evidence from neuropsychology that localisation of brain's functions goes further. Thad Polk and Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania, us, have built a thesis around the …
Epilepsy, a neurological disorder characterised by fits, is the focus of a combined drive launched by the World Health Organization and the International League Against Epilepsy, an international NGO. The campaign which began last month, will essentially aim at increasing public and professional awareness of the brain disorder which affects …
realising the need to redress the growing burden of neuro-psychiatric and behavioural disorders, the World Health Organization ( who ) has launched a worldwide inter-agency programme called the
in a new procedure being developed at nasa's Ames Research Centre in Mountain View, us , a robotic probe will learn the brain's characteristics by using neural net software; the same type of software technology that helps focus camcorders. A tiny pressure sensor in the
the origin of schizophrenia, has baffled researchers for a long time. Once attributed to poor communication within families, the condition is now recognised as a disease of the brain, as seen in differences between schizophrenic and normal brains. Foetal development is the time when nerve cells grow and divide, building …
Men lose brain tissue as they age at almost three times the rate women do; this could reduce their memory, concentration and reasoning power, says Ruben C Gur, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, US. His findings are based on a study of the brain functions -measurement …
The'notion that alzheimer's disease -mental deterioration -strikes only the old suffered a severe jolt following a study of nuns by David A Snowdon, professor of preventive medicine at the University of Kentucky; US. David studied old autobiographies of 104 nuns from the School Sisters of Notre Dame. The average age …
Scientists have started using virtual reality (VR) methods for various psychiatric therapies. Proposed by Hans Sieburg, a professor of psychiatry and mathematics at the University of California at San Diego, US, VR cures are being hatched for sex offenders, acrophobia (morbid fear of heights) and flying-phobia. Doctors report maximum success …
BY DISMISSING the irritable attitude of a patient as that of a bad case, a doctor may actually be overlooking a serious underlying malady. Depression, experts recently warned, often goes undiagnosed and untreated while the patient is treated for some evident disease. It may be manifested or masked by other …
A CHANGE of attitudes coupled with doses of a new drug, according to researchers, is all that is required to help nervous stroke victims keep disability at bay. Doctors need to radically change their attitude towards those who show symptoms of a stroke so that the new genetically engineered drug …
DIET to lose those fat contours and you lose your memory too - warn researchers at the Institute of Food Research in the UK. Rejecting poor nutrition or lack of energy as causes for poor mental performance of dieters, scientists conclude that the cause is actually psychological, says a report …
Women are almost twice as much disposed to depression as men, suggests a collection of studies. While hormones and sleep cycles determine mood changes, it is confirmed that genes play no role (Scientific American, Vol 272, No 6). Positron Emission Tomographic scans conducted on equal number of men and women …
