Social Sciences

Recent advances in understanding the behavioral, molecular, and anatomical bases of fear extinction in animals and humans are leading to new knowledge about the nature of fear and new treatments for anxiety disorders that affect millions of Americans.

Although every human being experiences some fear and anxiety during the course of normal life, excessive amounts of fear and anxiety are associated with almost all psychiatric illnesses. In those people who suffer from anxiety disorders like p

In new studies, scientists are discovering the neurobiological underpinnings of romantic love, trust, and even of self. New research also shows that a specific brain area – the amygdala – is involved in the process of understanding the intentions of others, in particular when lying is involved.

Using brain imaging, researchers Helen Fisher, Arthur Aron, Lucy Brown and colleagues find that feelings of intense romantic love are associated with specific activity in dopamine-rich brain regions

People can easily be swayed into believing that they have seen something they never actually did see, say researchers at Ohio State University.

Participants in a study looked at a series of slides portraying geometric shapes. They were later shown a second set of test slides – two of the test slides contained images from the original group of slides, two contained images that were obviously not part of the original set, and one slide contained the lure image – a shape very similar to

Simple semantics may help quell patient’s fears about taking part in medical education, according to a letter to this week’s BMJ.

Surprisingly, patients tend to accept a trainee’s presence in a consultation if they are addressed as student doctor or trainee doctor, as opposed to medical student, writes Dr Hany George El-Sayeh. This may be because of fears about being seen by a scruffy, disinterested youth who may well later report their intimacies in the bar.

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Overweight boys have greater increases in blood pressure in response to stress than their female peers and decreased ability to restore normal pressures, researchers say in the November issue of Hypertension.

A Medical College of Georgia study showed that, despite typically having a greater height/weight ratio, overweight girls’ blood pressures respond less to stress and their natural mechanisms for decreasing blood pressure work significantly better, said Dr. Gregory A. Harshfield,

Elderly Hispanics and African Americans have higher rates of depression than their white counterparts, due largely to greater health burdens and lack of health insurance, a Northwestern University study has found.

The study, published in the November online issue of the American Journal of Public Health, showed that major depression was most prevalent among Hispanics – 10.8 percent — followed by almost 9 percent in African Americans and approximately 8 percent in whites in this age