Mental Health and Behavior Articles

Science Reveals the Power of a Handshake

New neuroscience research is confirming an old adage about the power of a handshake: strangers do form a better impression of those who proffer their hand in greeting

A firm, friendly handshake has long been recommended in the business world as a way to make a good first impression, and the greeting is thought to date to ancient times as a way of showing a stranger you had no weapons. Now, a paper published online and for the December print issue of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience on a study of the neural correlates of a handshake is giving insight into just how important the practice is to the evaluations we make of subsequent social interactions.

The study was led by Beckman Institute researcher Florin Dolcos and Department of Psychology postdoctoral research associate Sanda Dolcos. They found, as they wrote, that "a handshake preceding social interaction enhanced the positive impact of approach and diminished the negative impact of avoidance behavior on the evaluation of social interaction."

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Published in Mental Health and Behavior
Written by Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology

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power of a handshake

Boosting Natural Marijuana-like Brain Chemicals Treats Fragile X Syndrome Symptoms

UCI study points to role endocannabinoids play in common genetic cause of autism

American and European scientists have found that increasing natural marijuana-like chemicals in the brain can help correct behavioral issues related to fragile X syndrome, the most common known genetic cause of autism.

The work indicates potential treatments for anxiety and cognitive defects in people with this condition. Results appear online in Nature Communications.

Daniele Piomelli of UC Irvine and Olivier Manzoni of INSERM, the French national research agency, led the study, which identified compounds that inhibit enzymes blocking endocannabinoid transmitters called 2-AG in the striatum and cortex regions of the brain.

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Benefits of Early Intervention in Addressing Brain Abnormalities

Preemptive cognitive training can help the brain function

Preemptive cognitive training—an early intervention to address neuropsychiatric deficiencies—can help the brain function normally later in life, a team of researchers has found through a series of experiments on laboratory rats. Their findings, which appear in the latest issue of the journal Neuron, hold promise for addressing a range of brain impairments in humans, including schizophrenia.

The study was conducted by researchers at New York University’s Center for Neural Science, the State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center, NYU Langone Medical Center, and the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research.

Researchers have aimed to address human neuropsychiatric impairments, such as schizophrenia, through mental training—for example, executive function exercises that teach patients to focus their attention and selectively recall important information. Historically, these methods, collectively titled cognitive remediation, have been of limited value because they have been applied to patients whose conditions are too advanced to address.

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Autistic Adults Have Unreliable Neural Responses

Autistic adults have unreliable neural sensory responses to visual, auditory, and touch stimuli

This poor response reliability, the study’s authors conclude, appears to be a fundamental neural characteristic of autism.

“We are not suggesting that unreliable sensory — visual, auditory, touch — responses cause autism,” cautioned NYU’s David Heeger, a professor in the departments of psychology and neural science and one of the study’s authors. “But, rather, that autism might be a consequence of unreliable activity throughout the brain during development. We’ve measured it in sensory areas of the brain, but we hypothesize that the same kind of unreliability might be what’s limiting the development of social and language abilities in the brain areas that sub-serve those functions.”

“Within the autism research community, most researchers are looking for the location in the brain where autism happens,” said the study’s lead author, Ilan Dinstein, who graduated from NYU’s doctoral program in 2009 and is now a postdoctoral researcher in Carnegie Mellon’s Department of Psychology. “We’re taking a different approach and thinking about how a general characteristic of the brain could be different in autism — and how that might lead to behavioral changes.”

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