Your brain considers other people’s personal space as your own

Peripersonal space (PPS) is a mental space defined by the brain immediately around body parts used when interacting with people and objects. Recently, researchers have shown that some neurons in the primate brain respond to an infringement of another person’s PPS as if their own space was being encroached upon. To determine how this “PPS remapping” phenomenon affects human behavior, […]

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Children from older mothers more likely to have heart risks

New research published in The Journal of Physiology demonstrates that adult offspring born to older mothers are more susceptible to heart risks in later life. These results could be crucial in developing preventative treatments for children born to older women. Older motherhood is associated with an increased risk of complications during pregnancy with a greater likelihood of delivering a child […]

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Drones a lifesaver for cardiac arrest patients?

Drones, the unmanned aircraft that got its start as part of the U.S. military’s arsenal and is today being used by everyone from photographers to farmers, are now heralded as a solution to a problem that’s bedeviled emergency medical personnel for years: How to deliver lifesaving defibrillators to people suffering cardiac arrest in areas not quickly reached by ambulances. Experiencing […]

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Cattle may spread leptospirosis in Africa, study suggests

The bacterial infection leptospirosis is increasingly recognized as an important cause of fever in Africa. Now, researchers reporting in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases have analyzed the major risk factors for contracting leptospirosis and discovered that rice and cattle farming are associated with acute infection. Leptospirosis, caused by bacteria of the genus Leptospira, causes a wide range of symptoms and can […]

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Uncertainty in a date dampens interest in a mate

According to a new study, those who feel greater certainty that a prospective romantic partner reciprocates their interest will put more effort into seeing that person again, while rating the possible date as more sexually attractive than they would if they were less certain about the prospective date’s romantic intentions. Published in Computers in Human Behavior, the study by researchers […]

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Single neuron consciousness in the binocular brain

In contrast to unpaired organs like the heart, liver or appendix, the brain is recognizable as a roughly symmetrical organ. Consciousness is a seemingly unpaired phenomenon created by this paired organ. One way to explore consciousness is to force it to choose between two paired stimuli in a binocular rivalry experiment. In a paper just published in Nature Communications, Christof […]

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Insurance denials for new hepatitis C drugs remain high nationwide, study suggests

Highly effective drugs that can cure chronic hepatitis C infection in approximately 95 percent of patients first became available in the U.S. in 2014. But both public and private insurers continue to deny coverage for these costly drugs at high rates nationwide, despite efforts to remove treatment restrictions, according to a new study published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases. The […]

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Mobile health technology can potentially transform how patients manage heart disease risk

Mobile health technology has the potential to transform the way we prevent and manage heart disease, but there are unanswered questions about how to optimize this technology and maintain engagement with patients, according to a review of randomized clinical trials published in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. Recently, mobile health (mHealth) […]

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Killing bacteria by silencing genes may be alternative to antibiotics

A new approach to killing C. difficile that silences key bacterial genes while sparing other bacteria may provide a new way to treat the most common hospital-acquired bacterial infection in the United States, according to researchers. While conventional antibiotics treat bacterial infections, they can also cause a condition in the colon called C. difficile infection, due to the drug killing […]

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