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Some studies have documented troubling declines in empathy during medical training -- the steepest of which are believed to occur between the second and third years of medical school, when students begin clinical training and empathetic communication is critical. But a new study by social neuroscientists at the University of Chicago, published Sept. 7 in  Medical Education , challenges the common perception that empathy declines during medical training. The authors point to the interaction of two facets of empathy: cognitive and affective. "Cognitive empathy is the ability to recognize and understand another person's experience, to communicate and confirm that understanding, and to act in an appropriate and helpful manner without necessarily sharing his or her emotions," said Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology and Psychiatry, and lead author of the new study. "Affective, or emotional, empathy is being attuned to someon...

Aggression and anger are among the most common emotional and behavioral symptoms experienced by traumatic brain injury patients -- often resulting in poorer rehabilitation outcomes and negatively affecting patients' relationships with family and friends and their ability to live at home and maintain steady employment. The team of researchers, led by Flora Hammond, MD, chair of the IU School of Medicine Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Covalt Professor of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, found that in multiple studies of patients with chronic traumatic brain injury and moderate-severe aggression, taking 100 miligrams of the drug Amantadine twice daily appeared to be beneficial in decreasing aggression, from the perspective of the patients. Their findings were published in the newest issue of the  Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation , for which IU School of Medicine associate professor Dawn M. Neumann, PhD, served as topical issue editor focusing ...

In a new study published in  eLife  and funded by the National Institute for Health Research and the Medical Research Council, the researchers found that a specific brain region called the insula plays a major role in the generation of the spontaneous neuronal bursts. The researchers say the spontaneous brain activity is essential to strengthen brain connections which will serve as 'scaffolding' that will then develop further with life experience. Other studies have found that infants whose brains don't display this activity are more likely to develop cerebral palsy or have poor cognitive skills later in life. "While we don't yet know what causes these neuronal bursts, we know that in healthy babies, they are present preterm and disappear at full term. It's a bad sign if they are absent in preterm or present still after full term," said one of the study's lead authors, Dr Lorenzo Fabrizi (UCL Biosciences ). "The brain of a preterm baby is no...

Absence seizures cause a short period of "blanking out" or staring into space, due to brief abnormal electrical activity in the brain. In this new study, even after the seizures in the mice were treated, the abnormality that was previously seen between seizures persisted. This may provide a potential explanation for why some children with absence epilepsy may have continued deficits in cognitive performance, despite successful treatment of their seizures . EEG, a test that measures electrical activity in the brain, has thus far been primarily used to detect seizures, rather than identifying cognitive impairment. This study suggests that looking at EEG activity between seizures could help physicians diagnose and monitor cognitive and other attentional deficits in epilepsy. Jeffrey Noebels and his team at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas used two genetic mouse models of absence epilepsy and compared them to unaffected mice. They analysed the EEG when the mice ...

Traumatic brain injury (TBI), which accounts for more than 2.5 million emergency room visits every year in the United States, often triggers inflammation and other harmful processes in the brain, causing further damage and cognitive deterioration long after the initial injury. Ordinary heparin has anti-inflammatory properties and has been shown to protect various organs after injury, but its blood -thinning effect makes it problematic for use in injured brains, where a bleed could be fatal. ODSH has only a small fraction of heparin's anticoagulant effect, and thus seemed a good bet as a safer alternative. Prior studies in animal models of heart attack, stroke, and pneumonia have found evidence that ODSH has a heparin-like anti-inflammatory effect, without the risk of hemorrhages. "When I first presented a heparin- TBI study, experts in treating these injuries laughed, and said 'that'll be the day, when we give heparin to TBI patients'," said study senior ...

For many students, college involves a lot of socializing at parties and at bars, and alcohol is a common factor in these social environments. Excessive alcohol use, in the form of binge drinking, is extremely common among college students, and one study has estimated that as many as one third of young North Americans and Europeans binge drink. So, what defines binge drinking? The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism describes a binge as drinking five or more drinks for men and four or more for women within a two-hour period, and for many college students, these limits wouldn't equate to a particularly heavy night. Previous research has linked binge drinking to a variety of negative consequences including neurocognitive deficits, poor academic performance, and risky sexual behavior. While numerous studies have shown that the brains of chronic alcoholics have altered brain activity, there is also evidence that bingeing can change adolescents' brains. Eduardo ...