Developmental cognitive neuroscience
A child whose amygdala grows unusually rapidly during the first two years of life tends to have more anxiety at ages 6 to 12 than do children with typical growth, regardless of diagnosis or family history of autism.
Source: sciencedirect.com
Dementia-friendly tourism
Research shows that travelling gives people living with dementia the continued opportunity to enjoy life, anticipation and plan, re-gain confidence and trigger past memories and create new ones. Watch for new dementia friendly tourism guides to pop up following the examples of UK, Canada, Australia who seem to have taken the lead.
Source: National Geographic
Autism research
Autistic men reading scripts for emotional scenes have less pitch variation in their speech than do non-autistic men, a difference that identified participants with autism with 90 percent accuracy in one study.
Source: Autism Research
Women more resistant to anesthetic
Unintended awareness under general anesthetic has been reported by women but previously overlooked. In a recently published study analyzing the influence of sex and sex hormones in mice and humans males showed higher sensitivity
to anesthetic than females. When measuring while brain activity, male mice displayed heightened levels in the hypothalamic regions known to promote sleep which researchers felt could be related to testosterone levels.
Source: Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences
Stomach cancer rising in younger women
Worrisome stats are showing that aggressive and advanced tumours in women under age 55 are on the rise. Twice as common in young women than men, stomach cancer is pervasive and the fourth leading cancer killer globally. The leading causes are germs, (helicobacter pylori), genes and diets that include smoked, salty and prepared foods, obesity and a history of smoking.
Source: National Geographic
