Brief IN
less with stereotypical masculinity. The
men who said that “real men” don’t
think much about emotions were less
adept at recognizing and coping with
their own, perhaps making them more
vulnerable to PTSD. (Psychology of Men
& Masculinity, April)
n Exposure to violence puts wear and
tear on children’s DNA, finds a study
out of Duke University. Researchers
examined data from the Environmental-Risk Longitudinal Twin Study, which
has followed 1, 100 British families with
twins since their birth in the 1990s.
The findings suggest that children
who’d been exposed to violence showed
prematurely aged DNA, as measured by
the length of the children’s telomeres
— the region of repetitive DNA at the
end of a chromosome that protects
the chromosome from deteriorating.
Emerging evidence suggests that shorter
telomeres are linked to biological age and
predict the emergence of chronic diseases.
(Molecular Psychiatry, online April 24)
n A simple blood test may be able
to help distinguish between people
who are depressed and those who
are not, finds a study by scientists at
Northwestern University. The research
used a test involving a panel of 28
biological markers that circulate in
the bloodstream and found that 11
of them could predict the presence of
depression at accuracy levels that ranged
from medium to large. Researchers
then further tested the predictive value
of these biomarkers with 14 depressed
teens and 14 healthy ones. They found
that the teens with depression had
significantly higher concentrations
of the 11 targeted molecules in their
blood, including Myristoylated alanine-
rich C-kinase substrate (MARCKS)
and proto-oncogene c-Maf (MAF). In
addition, there were 18 biomarkers that
could distinguish between adolescents
with depression and those with
depression and anxiety. (Translational
Psychiatry, online April 17)
n Multitasking may not be so bad for
us after all, finds a small study of 63
participants by scientists at the Chinese
University of Hong Kong. Participants
answered a questionnaire about their
media use and then were asked to search
for something on a page, both with and
without the distraction of an unrelated
noise. Participants who reported they
frequently used different types of media
at the same time performed better at the
task when the noise was present than
when it was absent. Frequent media
users also performed worse than light
media multitaskers in the tasks without
the noise. (Psychonomic Bulletin &
Review, online April 12)
n Playing action-based video
games, even for short times, appears
to improve visual attention, find
University of Toronto psychologists.
Twenty-five participants who had not
previously played video games played
either a first-person shooter video
game or a three-dimensional puzzle
video game for a total of 10 hours in
one- to two-hour sessions. Before and
after the participants played the games,
scientists recorded the brain waves of
participants’ who were trying to detect
a target among other distractions. The
researchers found that those who played
the shooter video game improved
most on the visual attention task and
showed significant changes in brain
activity, indicating the brain’s increased
inhibition of distractors. Those who
had played the puzzle game did not
exhibit differences in visual attention
or brain activity. (Journal of Cognitive
Neuroscience, June)
n Head injuries often impair one’s
ability to make medical decisions,
suggests a study out of the University of
Alabama at Birmingham. Researchers
studied 86 patients with traumatic brain
injury, divided into three classifications
of severity — mild, complicated mild
and moderate/severe — and 40 healthy
controls. They found that the more
severe the injury, the less able patients
were to make decisions about their care.
(Neurology, May 8)
n Women who have experienced
violence are more likely to later engage
in risky sexual behavior, according to
a study with 481 low-income women at
a publicly funded sexually transmitted
disease clinic in Providence, R.I. The
women who’d been exposed to multiple
forms of violence were later more likely
to have unprotected sex, many sexual
partners and use alcohol and drugs
before sex. (Psychology of Violence,
online March 19)
—AMY NOVOTNEY
JULY/AUGUST 2012 • MONITOR ON PSYCHOLOGY
19