Children's Health Childhood brain tumors affect working memory of adult survivors ♦Delayed umbilical cord clamping may benefit some high-risk newborns

Babies time their smiles to make their moms smile in return Why do babies smile when they interact with their parents? Could their smiles have a purpose? A team of computer scientists, roboticists and developmental psychologists confirm what most parents already suspect: when babies smile, they do so with a purpose -- to make the person they interact with smile in return. To verify their findings, researchers programmed a toddler-like robot to behave like the babies they studied and had the robot interact with undergraduate students.

Adolescent brain may be especially sensitive to new memories, social stress, and drug use Adolescence, like infancy, has been said to include distinct sensitive periods during which brain plasticity is heightened; but in a review of the neuroscience literature saw little evidence for this claim. However, a small number of studies do support that memory formation, social stress, and drug use are processed differently in the adolescent brain compared to other periods of life.

Emergency department visit provides opportunity to reduce underage drinking Giving youth in the emergency department a short intervention during their visit decreased their alcohol consumption and problems related to drinking over the following year, the results of a five-year trial indicate.

Childhood brain tumors affect working memory of adult survivors, Adult survivors of childhood brain tumors have lower working memory performance compared to healthy adults, according to researchers. The report suggests that adult survivors of pediatric posterior fossa brain tumors performed significantly lower than controls on standardized clinical tests of working memory performance administered in the study.

Delayed umbilical cord clamping may benefit some high-risk newborns Preterm infants with delayed cord clamping had higher blood pressure readings in the first 24 hours of life and needed fewer red blood cell transfusions in their first 28 days than infants whose umbilical cords were immediately clamped.