Quirky Science
Training your brain to prefer healthy foods
It may be possible to train the brain to prefer healthy low-calorie foods over unhealthy higher-calorie foods, according to new research by scientists at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University and at Massachusetts General Hospital. Published online in the journal Nutrition & Diabetes, a brain scan study in adult men and women suggests that it is possible to reverse the addictive power of unhealthy food while also increasing preference for healthy foods.
“We don't start out in life loving French fries and hating, for example, whole wheat pasta," writes senior and co-corresponding author Susan B. Roberts, PhD. "This conditioning happens over time in response to eating -- repeatedly!--what is out there in the toxic food environment."
The science of breaking-up
Breaking up really is hard to do, and a recent study conducted at Stony Brook University found evidence that it may be partly due to the areas of the brain that are active during this difficult time.
The team of researchers, which included Arthur Aron, professor of social and health psychology at Stony Brook University looked at subjects who had a recent break-up and found that the pain and anguish they were experiencing may be linked to activation of parts of the brain associated with motivation, reward and addiction cravings. The study was published in the July issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology.
"This brain imaging study of individuals who were still 'in love' with their rejecter supplies further evidence that the passion of 'romantic love' is a goal-oriented motivation state rather than a specific emotion" the researchers concluded, noting that brain imaging showed some similarities between romantic rejection and cocaine craving. "The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that romantic love is a specific form of addiction.”
Combining math and music to open new possibilities
Anthony Cheung's formal mathematical training essentially ended with high-school calculus. But as a musician and composer, he has explored mathematical phenomena in new ways, especially through their influence on harmony and timbre.
Composers found new ways of fusing the two musical qualities late last century, said Cheung, assistant professor in music at the University of Chicago.
"Through technology and thinking about acoustics, we can change sounds on the computer in innumerable ways," writes Cheung, whose musical composition earned him a 2012 Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome.
The work of Cheung and others shows the power of mathematics to open new possibilities in music. Modern experiments with computer music are just the most recent example. According to musician-scholars like Eugenia Cheng, a visiting senior lecturer in mathematics and a concert pianist, the history and practice of music would have unfolded much differently without an appreciation of what unites music and math.
No association found between wearing bra and breast cancer
A population-based case-control study found no association between bra wearing and increased breast cancer risk among postmenopausal women, according to research published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.
"There have been some concerns that one of the reasons why breast cancer may be more common in developed countries compared with developing countries is differences in bra-wearing patterns," writes Lu Chen, MPH, a researcher in the Public Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. "Given how common bra wearing is, we thought this was an important question to address.”
"Our study found no evidence that wearing a bra increases a woman's risk for breast cancer. The risk was similar no matter how many hours per day women wore a bra, whether they wore a bra with an underwire, or at what age they first began wearing a bra," writes Chen.
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