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The distinctive ability of mothers to identify the cries of their offspring is widely evident in nature, where it is critical to the survival of these offspring. Particular circuits in the brain, involving several regions in the cerebral cortex and limbic system, are distinctively activated when mothers distinguish the smiles and cries of their own infants from those of other infants.

There is a wealth of scientific literature available on the treatment of adults diagnosed with schizophrenia. However, there is a paucity of data to guide the treatment of children and adolescents with schizophrenia. The researchers discovered that clozapine was approximately twice as likely to produce a treatment response as olanzapine.

Introducing an increased intensity of chemotherapy in children with severe Langerhans cell histiocytosis can reduce the mortality rate for this disorder by as much as 20 percent when the patient demonstrates a rapid response to such treatment. The LCH clinical trial series, of which this study is the second, are the first-ever randomized clinical trials for the treatment of LCH.

Kidney stones are very common -- and painful -- in men. About 3 in 20 men (1 in 20 women) in developed countries develop them at some stage. Mice, however, rarely suffer though the precise reasons are unknown. Now researchers have come up with some answers.

Arsenic linked to a drug that binds to the blood vessels of cancerous tumors provides a powerful imaging agent that could one day allow physicians to detect hard-to-find tumors and more closely monitor cancer's response to therapy.

Treatment with methylphenidate appears to have beneficial effects on sleep parameters in adults with ADHD, including increased sleep efficiency and a feeling of improved restorative value of sleep.

Frustrated by the slow pace of new drug development for a condition that causes pediatric brain tumors, a neurologist decided to try to fine-tune the animal models used to test new drugs. Instead of studying one mouse model of the disease causing the brain tumors, he evaluated three. They "auditioned" the three models to see which was the best match for neurofibromatosis 1, a genetic condition that increases the risk of brain tumors and afflicts more than 100,000 people in the United States.

Children with obstructive sleep apnea have abnormal respiratory-related evoked potentials compared to other children their age. This indicates that children with OSA do not perceive their airway closing to the same degree that normal children do, and may explain why these children do not mount protective responses to upper airway collapse, but instead go on and continue to develop OSA.

The majority of patients with narcolepsy/cataplexy experience a number of symptoms of eating disorders, with an irresistible craving for food and binge eating as the most prominent features.

Loud snoring with breathing pauses is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and increased health-care utilization. Loud snorers had 40 percent greater odds of having hypertension, 34 percent greater odds of having a heart attack and 67 percent greater odds of having a stroke, compared with people who do not snore, after statistical adjustment for age, sex, body mass index, diabetes, level of education, smoking, and alcohol consumption. Quiet snoring was associated only with an increased risk for hypertension in women.