Scratch one more simple explanation for autism off the list. This time it's the idea that children with autism have low levels of oxytocin, often called the "love hormone" because it can make people more trusting and social. "Our data blew that out of...
Carmen Smith remembers the day about a year ago when she gained Medicaid coverage. "It was like Christmas Day, it was like getting a gift from Santa Claus!" she says. "People don't realize how important and how special it is to have insurance to be...
A tiny part of the brain keeps track of painful experiences and helps determine how we will react to them in the future, scientists say. The findings could be a boon to depression treatments. The habenula (pronounced ha-BEN-you-la), a part of the...
Any large scale social problem cannot be solved solely by government action. On the contrary, government solutions are no solutions. Don't confuse my bluntness with those anti-government demagogic rants spewed by militia groups — to the...
You’ve heard about the “school-to-prison pipeline.” Now, add to that the “cradle-to-prison pipeline,” the “poverty-to-prison pipeline” and the “prison-to-poverty pipeline.” Whatever you call the...
A mother who sings to her preterm infant while providing 'kangaroo care,' or holding with direct skin-to-skin contact, may see improvements in both her child's and her own health. The finding comes from an Acta Paediatrica study of 86 mother-infant...
During the period of childhood and adolescence, brain function, working memory and attention performance all rapidly improve, suggesting that this is a crucial time for developing brain networks. To study how prenatal alcohol exposure may alter this...
When parents act warmly and responsively toward young children who exhibit antisocial behavior, the children begin acting more warmly too. That’s according to a new study in the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, in which...
Children diagnosed with depression as preschoolers are likely to suffer from depression as school-age children and young adolescents, new research shows. Depressed preschoolers were 2.5 times more likely to suffer from the condition in elementary and...
“My son has been suspended five times. He’s 3,” headlined one mother’s recent article in the Washington Post that helped kindle the conversation of school suspension rates in the American education system. Gloria...
In August 1988, Jasmine, 16, was two years into gang life in Compton when she shot down another girl. She was sentenced to life in prison and placed with hardened adults at the California Institute for Women. For a few harrowing days, she even ended...
New research has found that people who grew up in a household where a member was incarcerated have an 18 percent greater risk of experiencing poor health as adults. The study, from researchers at Brown University, suggests that the nation’s high...
Children who are vulnerable to abuse could be better protected if procedures for reporting child harm were more standardised across states and territories, and took into account hospital admissions, a study released on Monday says. Variation in...
This time of year, students and parents begin to prepare for the upcoming school year. For students living in poverty, the ability to succeed can be hindered by stress from their home life, a new study suggests. United Way of Central Ohio released a...
As we’ve learned over the past several months, universities’ current practices don’t give students much hope of recourse if they are sexually assaulted. But a bipartisan group of US senators unveiled the Campus Safety and...