How to Stop Biting Your Nails

“Learn to resist the urge,” says Tara S. Peris, an associate professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is co-director of the Child O.C.D., Anxiety and Tic Disorders Program. Psychiatrists consider nail biting a “body focused repetitive behavior,” along with things like hair pulling and skin picking.…

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Injury patterns may help differentiate between accidents and physical abuse in elderly patients, new study finds

WASHINGTON, D.C.–The signs of physical abuse among elderly people can be challenging for health care professionals to recognize, resulting in as few as one in 24 cases being reported to authorities. However, a new study in Annals of Emergency Medicine explores injury patterns and characteristics to help experts spot key differences between abuse and unintentional…

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Mental fatigue of multiple sclerosis linked to inefficient recruitment of neural resources

East Hanover, NJ. July 28, 2020. Researchers at Kessler Foundation conducted a pilot study comparing the effects of mental fatigue on brain activation patterns in people with and without multiple sclerosis (MS). Their findings indicate significant differences between the two groups in their recruitment of neural resources in response to increased task demands. The article,…

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Solving a DNA mystery

“A watched pot never boils,” as the saying goes, but that was not the case for UC Santa Barbara researchers watching a “pot” of liquids formed from DNA. In fact, the opposite happened. With research partners at the Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU), in Munich, Germany, the team’s findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy…

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Your brain on birth control

They are used by 150 million women worldwide and have been around for over 60 years. Oral contraceptives – like birth control pills – are part of many women’s lives, often starting during puberty and early adolescence. Do they have any impact on brain health? A uOttawa team of researchers has been investigating the question.…

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