There is a link between repeated anaesthesia in children and memory impairment, though physical activity can help to form new cells that improve memory, reveals new research from the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The study has been published in the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism.

Common wisdom tells us that for a successful relationship partners shouldn't go to bed angry. But new research from a psychologist at Harvard University suggests that brain activity -- specifically in the region called the lateral prefrontal cortex -- is a far better indicator of how someone will feel in the days following a fight with his or her partner.

As you read this, you may notice that the word directly in front of you is clear, but all the surrounding words are hard to make out. For most people, this effect -- known as 'crowding' -- is not a problem. However, for the millions of people worldwide who have lost their central vision through eye disease such as macular degeneration, it can make everyday tasks such as reading or recognising friends a challenge.

Think back to your last fight with someone you love. How did you feel afterwards? How did you behave? Conflict with a loved one often leaves a person feeling terrible and then behaving badly. So much so that these scenarios have become soap opera clichés. After an argument, one partner may brood, slam the door, and then drive to a local bar to drown their sorrows in alcohol. These dramas rarely have happy endings. Given these stereotypes, how do people control their emotional reactions and prevent emotional storms and their attendant use of intoxicating substances?

Researchers have successfully reconstructed 3-D hand motions from brain signals recorded in a non-invasive way, according to a study in the March 3 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. This finding uses a technique that may open new doors for portable brain-computer interface systems. Such a non-invasive system could potentially operate a robotic arm or motorized wheelchair -- a huge advance for people with disabilities or paralysis.

Two Spanish psychologists and a German neurologist have recently shown that the brain that activates when a person learns a new noun is different from the part used when a verb is learned. The scientists observed this using brain images taken using functional magnetic resonance, according to an article they have published this month in the journal NeuroImage.

What does the brain look like? What do we really know about our brains? For centuries, we've been telling ourselves time and again that we now have an objective view of our brains. However, objectivity depends on technological developments, human actions and social and cultural factors, to name but a few. This has been revealed by research by Sarah de Rijcke, who will be awarded a PhD by the University of Groningen on 18 February 2010.

The human brain is a big believer in equality -- and a team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, has become the first to gather the images to prove it. Specifically, the team found that the reward centers in the human brain respond more strongly when a poor person receives a financial reward than when a rich person does. The surprising thing? This activity pattern holds true even if the brain being looked at is in the rich person's head, rather than the poor person's.

Scorpion venom is notoriously poisonous -- but it might be used as an alternative to dangerous and addictive painkillers like morphine, a Tel Aviv University researcher claims. Prof. Michael Gurevitz of Tel Aviv University's Department of Plant Sciences is investigating new ways for developing a novel painkiller based on natural compounds found in the venom of scorpions. These compounds have gone through millions of years of evolution and some show high efficacy and specificity for certain components of the body with no side effects, he says.