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Young adults who used marijuana only recreationally showed significant abnormalities in two key brain regions that are important in emotion and motivation, scientists report. The study was a collaboration between Northwestern Medicine and Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. This is the first study to show casual use of marijuana is related to major brain changes. [...]
Most of us science nerds vividly remember episodes of bullying that took place throughout our childhood, but a new study has found that the popular kids are victimized by bullies too. In fact, the study, published in the American Sociological Review, found that becoming more popular actually raises the risk of getting bullied. “Most people [...]
Millions of high school and college algebra students are united in a shared agony over solving for x and y, and for those to whom the answers don’t come easily, it gets worse: Most preschoolers and kindergarteners can do some algebra before even entering a math class. In a recently published study in the journal [...]
Learning can only occur if certain neuronal "brakes" are released. As the group led by Andreas Lüthi at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research has now discovered, learning processes in the brain are dynamically regulated by various types of interneurons. The new connections essential for learning can only be established if inhibitory inputs from [...]
Atrocities in English are committed every day. Here are three of the worst. You may be surprised, but hopefully you won’t literally explode with anger. When we talk of words, even if we don’t know it, we tend to divide ourselves into two schools of thought - the descriptivists and the prescriptivists. Prescriptivists tend to [...]
Australia seems to be becoming a more polarised society. This is the simple conclusion from recent research undertaken for SBS, which looked for answers to how Australians think the country has changed over the past 20 years, and where they think it may be in another 20 years. A more “traditionalist” group perhaps as high [...]
Men who report watching a lot of pornography tend to have less volume and activity in regions of the brain linked to rewards and motivation, says a new German study. The results provide the first evidence for a link between pornography consumption and reductions in brain size and brain activity in response to sexual stimuli. [...]
Over the past few weeks I’ve been speaking at the Generation Next seminars lamenting the fact that in today’s society, it seems every kid needs to get a prize! Indeed I’ve heard of teachers being berated by over-zealous parents because their child didn’t receive a fifth place ribbon. Why do we feel the need to [...]
Parents may not always see it, but efforts to limit their children's screen time can make a difference. A new study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, found children get more sleep, do better in school, behave better and see other health benefits when parents limit content and the amount of time their children spend on the [...]
Over the last fortnight it’s been interesting to read the reporting about the release of a couple of key pieces of alcohol data in Australia. The Australian Bureau of Statistics released its Apparent Consumption of Alcohol, Australia, 2012-13 report, which shows Australians are drinking less alcohol overall than any time in the previous 15 years. [...]
