Studies and Analyses

Environmental cues associated with prior drug use can provoke a relapse. In a new study, scientists have linked the relapse behavior to specific nerve cells in a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens. The findings may foster further research into what makes long-abstinent drug users prone to relapse and lead the way to new strategies for treating drug addiction.

“The study finds an increase in neuronal activity that persists after the behavioral response of seeking the drug is absen

Local elites in post-communist accession countries have a limited knowledge of the EU and were not engaged in the accession process, according to new research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

“Local officials, business people, the media and the cultural intelligentsia feel that the accession process is relevant only to national decision-makers and has little to do with them,” says Dr. Jim Hughes of London School of Economics, who led the project, which is part of the exte

Blocking the formation of neurons in the hippocampus blocks the behavioral effects of antidepressants in mice, say researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Their finding lends new credence to the proposed role of such neurogenesis in lifting mood. It also helps to explain why antidepressants typically take a few weeks to work, note Rene Hen, Ph.D., Columbia University, and colleagues, who report on their study in the August 8th Science.

“If antidepressants work by stim

Previous Food and Drug Administration approval for use of retinoids to treat another form of childhood cancer, will mean clinical trials in pediatric medulloblastoma patients to begin with minimal delay

Researchers find that vitamin A derivatives may be highly effective and minimally toxic treatments for medulloblastoma, the most common form of childhood brain cancer. Clinical trials of the drugs, known as retinoids, are being planned for children who are at high risk for tumor relaps

For over two thousand years, musicians and scientists have puzzled over why some combinations of musical tones played together sound more harmonious than others. Now, Duke University perception scientists David Schwartz, Catherine Howe and Dale Purves have presented evidence that variation in the relative harmoniousness, or “consonance,” of different tone combinations arises from people´s exposure to the acoustical characteristics of speech sounds. Schwartz and Howe are postdoctoral fellows, and Pur

A study of 137 new product launches in 16 European countries shows the persistence of major regional disparity in the era of the European Union, according to an article in a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®).

“While we expected some differences, we were surprised by the size of the differences,” the authors write. “We were also surprised by the fact that Scandinavian countries tend to have the shortest `time-to-takeoff´ of all E