Neurological Correlates

Cruickshank, George, “Suicide” “A young woman has jumped from a bridge; two onlookers are standing on the bridge in upper right corner; ship masts are visible in lower left beneath the arch of the bridge through which shines a full moon.” Regarding suicide – from the US CDC: • Among young adults ages 15 to [...]

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Clin Neurol Neurosurg. 2007 Sep 25; [Epub ahead of print] Striatal dopamine transporter levels correlate with apathy in neurodegenerative diseases A SPECT study with partial volume effect correction. David R, Koulibaly M, Benoit M, Garcia R, Caci H, Darcourt J, Robert P. Centre Mémoire de Ressource et de Recherche, CHU Nice, France. OBJECTIVES: The aim [...]

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I bet this explains why people get worse as they get older.Have you ever wondered why an older person is unduly hostile?Could be trinucleotide repeats. These tri-nucleotide repeat disorders really mess up your brain, probably by shutting down mitochondria (via excess iron, is one hypothesis). See the abstracts below. Pre-Huntington’s, has elevated hostility as well [...]

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“He’s Happier, She’s Less So“, NYT 9/27/07 (David Leonhardt) In a previous post about sloth I wondered about the recent report that women still do more housework than men – and mused that it could be that women and men are equally as lazy once you subtract any maternal bonding influence. In other words, lacking [...]

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Our results support the idea that pride is a self-conscious emotion, requiring the ability to detect the intention of others. At the same time, judgment of pride might require less self-reflection compared with those of negative self-conscious emotions such as guilt or embarrassment.

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“. . .Overall, prosocial motivation is linked to (a) Agreeableness as a dimension of personality, (b) proximal prosocial cognition and motives, and (c) helping behavior across a range of situations and victims. In persons low in prosocial motivation, when costs of helping are high, efforts to induce empathy situationally can undermine prosocial behavior. . . “

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Or, how do you pick customers unlikely to sue you? At least with doctors, there is now a paper:
What patient attributes are associated with thoughts of suing a physician? Fishbain, et al., Arch Phys Med Rehabil. 2007 May;88(5):589-96 (full abstract after the jump).

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Screenshots of (top) on-line gaming, and (bottom) on-line stock trading J Gambl Stud. 2007 Mar 30; [Epub ahead of print] Dopamine Genes and Pathological Gambling in Discordant Sib-Pairs. Sabbatini da Silva Lobo D, Vallada HP, Knight J, Martins SS, Tavares H, Gentil V, Kennedy JL. Laboratory of Medical Investigation (LIM-23)—Psychopharmacology, Department and Institute of Psychiatry, [...]

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The Seven Deadly Sins-a-rama continues with sloth, but first, I’m going to sit on the couch and watch TV. The person of the other gender who lives in my household in Europe will do my housework and take care of my kids. That’s because I have a short-form arginine vasopressin 1A receptor promoter, so what did you expect? Altruism? No way, I’m a born mooch.

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Sardinia! Sardinia, Satellite Photo (Wikipedia, Sardinia entry) Sardinia, a beautiful gem of an island off the coast of Italy, known for gorgeous beaches, glamorous holidays, $2M birthday parties, and lately known for studying the genetics of its inhabitants. The population is considered an isolated one, like Icelandic populations, and therefore presumably more genetically homogeneous than [...]

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