Categories
Cardiovascular
Diagnostics
Endocrinology
Health Insurance
Medical Devices
Mental Health
Nutrition
Oncology
Public Health
Sexual Health
Popular Articles

California Warns Consumers Not To Eat Seng Chen PiMei Candy
Dr. Mark Horton, director of the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), warned consumers not to eat SENG Chen PiMei Candy, after tests by CDPH found unacceptable levels of lead. Consumers in possession of the candy should discard it immediately.
generic viagra online
New York Times Examines Program To Help Orphans Survive 'Fragile Days Of Infancy'
The New York Times examines a program being offered at an orphanage in Tanzania that provides emotional and physical support for newborns and young children who are at a high risk of death after losing their mothers in infancy. "Africa is full of at least 50 million orphans, the legacy of AIDS and other diseases, war and high rates of death in pregnancy and childbirth," the newspaper writes. "With the numbers increasing every day, Africans are struggling to care for them, often in ways that differ strikingly from the traditional concept of an orphanage in the developed world."
News of the day
Editorials Discuss Reform, Taxation Of Health Benefits
USA Today: It is "gratifying" that Republicans last week introduced a health care proposal because "the simple fact that it exists might improve chances" for bipartisan negotiations, a USA Today editorial states. According to the editorial, the plan -- which would replace the current tax exemption of employer-provided insurance with a refundable tax credit for all families and individuals, regardless of their employment status -- is "no cure-all," but is a "serious proposal that merits serious consideration." The editorial states, "For all those who say the Republican Party is out of ideas, on the issue of health coverage, at least, its proposal is bolder than what the Democrats have offered." However, the editorial notes that both Republicans and Democrats "have identified more groundbreaking ideas, and they are not entirely incompatible." The editorial concludes, "[L]et the debate begin. The only unacceptable approach is the status quo" (USA Today, 5/29).
Nutrition

Brain Detects Happiness More Quickly Than Sadness

Our brains get a first impression of people"s overriding social signals after seeing their faces for only 100 milliseconds (0.1 seconds). Whether this impression is correct, however, is another question. Now an international group of experts has carried out an in-depth study into how we process emotional expressions, looking at the pattern of cerebral asymmetry in the perception of positive and negative facial signals. The researchers worked with 80 psychology students (65 women and 15 men) to analyze the differences between their cerebral hemispheres using the "divided visual field" technique, which is based on the anatomical properties of the visual system. "What is new about this study is that working in this way ensures that the information is focused on one cerebral hemisphere or the other", J. Antonio Aznar-Casanova, one of the authors of the study and a researcher at the University of Barcelona (UB), tells SINC. The results, published in the latest issue of the journal Laterality, show that the right hemisphere performs better in processing emotions. "However, this advantage appears to be more evident when it comes to processing happy and surprised faces than sad or frightened ones", the researcher points out. "Positive expressions, or expressions of approach, are perceived more quickly and more precisely than negative, or withdrawal, ones. So happiness and surprise are processed faster than sadness and fear", explains Aznar-Casanova. The two faces of the brain This research study adds to previous ones, which had revealed asymmetries in the way the brain processes emotions, and enriches the international debate in cognitive-emotional neuroscience in terms of how to define the exact way in which human beings process these facial expressions. People make deductions from the expressions on people"s faces. "These inferences can strongly influence election results or the sentences given in trials, and have been studied before in fields such as criminology and the pseudoscience of physiognomy", the neuroscientist tells SINC. Two theories are currently "competing" to explain the pattern of cerebral asymmetry in processing emotions. The older one postulates the dominance of the right hemisphere in the processing of emotions, while the second is based on the approach-withdrawal hypothesis, which holds that the pattern of cerebral asymmetry depends upon the emotion in question, in other words that each hemisphere is better at processing particular emotions (the right, withdrawal, and the left, approach). "Today there is scientific evidence in favour of both these theories, but there is a certain consensus in favour of the lateralisation of emotional processing predicted by the approach-withdrawal hypothesis", concludes Aznar-Casanova. Plataforma SINC


Add your comment:
Name:
Site address: http://
Your message:
Enter today\\\\'s date, 2 digits
(spam protection):

© Copyright 2009