Quantum Units Education

Boys with ADHD may be at risk for obesity later in life, according to a new study – which, if confirmed in larger studies, may have implications for the more than 4 million kids in the United States living with the disorder.

Researchers at NYU’s Langone Medical Center have been following more than 200 kids for four decades. They found those who had ADHD in their early years were twice as likely to be obese at age 41.

“This study was started by Dr. Rachel Klein in 1970, and it involved a number of waves of evaluation, during which the results of having hyperactivity in childhood were assessed,” said Dr. F. Xavier Castellanos, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at NYU and one of the study authors.

“We brought back individuals who were 41 years of age, and examined a number of measures, including brain imaging analyses.  But during those brain imaging analyses, we noted that men who had been hyperactive children had a greater difficulty sitting in the scanner – they were too large for the research scanner.”

That’s when the idea took shape to look at all of the subjects’ height and weight.  Castellanos and his team instantly noticed the high levels of obesity – twice as high as those adults who never suffered from ADHD.

Full story of adhd in boys leads to obesity at CNN Health

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Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education

Addiction to drugs, alcohol and tobacco are the most common mental health problems in teenagers, a new government report concludes. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most commonly diagnosed problem overall in youth ages 3 to 17, NBC News reports.

The findings, from a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), found almost 7 percent of children under 18 are diagnosed with ADHD, while 3.5 percent have behavioral problems and 1.1 percent have autism.

An estimated one million teenagers abuse drugs or alcohol, and more than 695,000 are addicted to tobacco, the CDC found. The agency found during 2010-2011, a total of 4.2 percent of teens were dependent on or abused alcohol in the past year. An estimated 4.7 percent of teens had an illicit drug use disorder in the past year.

Full story of teen addictions at DrugFree.org

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Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education

You probably feel pretty attached to your memories — they’re yours, after all. They define who you are and where you came from, your accomplishments and failures, your likes and dislikes.

Your memories help you separate friends from enemies. They remind you not to eat too much ice cream or drink cheap tequila because you remember how horrible it felt the last time you indulged.

Or do you?

One conversation with Elizabeth Loftus may shake your confidence in everything you think you remember. Loftus is a cognitive psychologist and expert on the malleability of human memory. She can, quite literally, change your mind.

Her work is reminiscent of films like “Memento” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” where what you believe happened is probably far from the truth — whether you’re the eyewitness to a crime or just trying to move past a bad relationship.

“She’s most known for her important work on memory distortion and false memories,” says Daniel Schacter, a psychology professor at Harvard University who first met Loftus in 1979 and describes her as energetic, smart and passionate. “It’s made people in the legal system aware the memory does not work like a tape recorder.”

Full story of trusting your memory at CNN Health

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Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education

High school students who acknowledge texting while driving are more likely to engage in other risky behaviors, such as riding with a driver who has been drinking alcohol; not wearing a seat belt; or drinking and driving themselves, according to a new study.

“This suggests there is a subgroup of students who may place themselves, their passengers and others on the road at elevated risk for a crash-related injury or fatality by engaging in multiple risky MV (motor vehicle) behaviors,” wrote the authors of the study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

The study

Researchers analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2011 national Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which asked high school students whether they had texted while driving in the 30 days previous. Nearly half of the 8,505 students aged 16 or older who answered that question reported doing so. The survey also queried participants on behaviors such as wearing a seat belt or riding in a car with a driver who had been drinking.

Full story of teens taking risks at CNN Health

Photos courtesy of and copyright PhotoPin, http://photopin.com/

Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education

Scientists from Royal Holloway University have found that when white Caucasians are under the illusion that they have a dark skin, their racial bias changes in a positive way.

In the study that was funded by the European Research Council and published today in Cognition, the team used the tried and tested Rubber Hand Illusion, where participants are asked to look at a fake hand being touched, while at the same time, the experimenter touches the participants’ own hand which is hidden out of view.

The combination of seeing the touch on the rubber hand and feeing touch on your hand, creates the illusion that the fake hand is now part of your body and has replaced your own hand.

The team was keen to take this method one step further by testing whether people can experience a hand of a different skin colour and whether this would change possible racial biases.

Using Caucasian participants, the scientists tested their implicit attitudes towards people with dark skin before using a dark-skinned rubber hand to make them feel as if this was their own hand. They then tested their racial attitudes again after the experiment.

Full story of skin color and racial bias at Science Daily

Photos courtesy of and copyright PhotoPin, http://photopin.com/

Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education