Click here to read “Circumcision benefits outweigh risks, but parents should choose, pediatricians say” by Maggie Fox from NBC News on August 27, 2012.
Circumcising baby boys has clear health benefits and parents should feel free to have it done, but they shouldn’t feel pressured to do so, the top U.S. pediatricians group said on Monday.
Click here to read: Decoding the Brain’s Cacophony by Benedict Carey from The New York Times on October 31, 2011, which tells the story of Michael S. Gazzaniga’s series of studies that revealed the brain’s split personality, the division of labor between its left and right hemispheres.
Dr. Gazzaniga is a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Today, in lectures and a new book, he is spelling out another kind of cautionary tale — a serious one, about the uses of neuroscience in society, particularly in the courtroom.
Click here to read “Father’s Age Is Linked to Risk of Autism and Schizophrenia” by Benedict Carey from The New York Times on August 22, 2012.
Older men are more likely than young ones to father a child who develops autism or schizophrenia, because of random mutations that become more numerous with advancing paternal age, scientists reported on Wednesday, in the first study to quantify the effect as it builds each year. The age of mothers had no bearing on the risk for these disorders, the study found.
Click Here to Read: A Systematic Review of Comparative Efficacy of Treatments and Controls for Depression by Arif Khan, James Faucett, Pesach Lichtenberg, Irving Kirsch, Walter A. Brown in the Plos One Journal website
Click Here to Read: ‘Depression medicine, placebo equally effective’ By Judy Siegel-Itzkovich in the Jerusalem Post on August 16, 2012.
Click Here to Read: Princeton study reveals the brain’s mysterious switchboard operator by Morgan Kelly on the Princeton University website on August 17, 2012.
Princeton University researchers have found that the pulvinar, a mysterious region deep in the human brain, acts like a switchboard operator to make sure that separate areas of the brain are communicating about the same external information most important to our behavior at a given moment. The pulvinar uses electrical impulses to synchronize and allow more effective communication between brain cells in the visual cortex, which processes visual information. The researchers produced neural connection maps that show the pulvinar’s connection to these brain regions. In this scan, the pulvinar communicates with the occipital lobe (yellow) and the temporal lobe (red) individually, and with both (green). Image courtesy of Science/AAAS
Click here to read “Study of Judges Finds Evidence From Brain Scans Led to Lighter Sentences” by Benedict Carey from The New York Times on August 16, 2012.
Judges who learned that a convicted assailant was genetically predisposed to violence imposed lighter sentences in a hypothetical case than they otherwise would have, researchers reported on Thursday, in the most rigorous study to date of how behavioral biology can sway judicial decisions.
