It happens to everyone: A familiar song comes on the radio, and suddenly you recall every note and every word. Now, new research has pinpointed exactly how long it takes people to recognize that favorite tune — just 0.1 to 0.3 seconds. The study included five men and five women who each provided a list of five familiar songs that they associated with good memories. The researchers then chose one of each participants’ songs and matched it with a song that was similar in tempo, melody, harmony, vocals and instrumentation, but was unfamiliar to the participant. Each participant was randomly played 100 snippets (each less than a second) of both the familiar and unfamiliar song. The researchers monitored the participants’ electrical activity in the brain and their pupil diameter (a measure of arousal) while they listed to the song snippets. Song recognition was first revealed by pupil dilation likely associated with increased arousal triggered by the familiar song, followed by brain activity related to memory retrieval, according to the study published online Oct. 30 in the journal Scientific Reports. A “control group” of people unfamiliar with any of the songs used in the study had no differences in responses to any of the songs, said the researchers at the University College London Ear Institute. “Our results demonstrate that recognition of familiar music happens remarkably quickly,”…  read on >

When parents can no longer get “personal-belief” exemptions from childhood vaccinations, they may get around it by asking for religious exemptions for their kids, a new study finds. Researchers found that after Vermont banned personal-belief exemptions, the number of kindergartners with religious exemptions from vaccination suddenly shot up — from 0.5% to nearly 4%. That kind of increase almost certainly means that many parents who wanted to avoid vaccines simply switched tactics, according to Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatric infectious disease specialist who was not involved in the study. “Either parents in Vermont suddenly became very religious, or they started using religious exemptions as a replacement,” said Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He said the more than sevenfold increase in religious exemptions among kindergartners is worrisome, since vaccination only works as a public health strategy when enough people are immunized. And it’s likely, Offit noted, that exemptions were concentrated within certain communities. With old childhood diseases like measles and mumps making a comeback in recent years, a number of U.S. states have tightened up their laws on vaccine exemptions. Several states that used to allow kids to skip vaccines due to parents’ “personal beliefs” no longer do. Vermont is one, having eliminated its personal-belief exemption in 2016. But parents there can still ask for exemptions based on religious…  read on >

If you’re an obese heart patient, weight-loss surgery might be good medicine for you. New research suggests it significantly reduces the risk of heart failure and fatal heart attack in this vulnerable group. “Our findings suggest, for the first time, that bariatric [weight-loss] surgery can prevent the development of systolic heart failure and remarkably reduce death from recurrent myocardial infarction, or heart attack, in patients with a higher cardiovascular risk than the average population,” said study author Dr. David Funes. He is a research fellow at the Bariatric and Metabolic Institute at Cleveland Clinic Weston, in Florida. For the study, Funes and his team compared severely obese people with heart disease who had weight-loss surgery (8,200) with those who did not have the surgery (79,000). Nearly half of the weight-loss surgery patients also had a history of some form of diabetes, and about 73% had high blood pressure. But those who didn’t have weight-loss surgery had even higher rates of both diseases, which are risk factors for heart disease. Obesity itself is a major risk factor for heart disease. Patients who didn’t have weight-loss surgery were 1.9 times more likely to develop heart failure than those who had the surgery, according to the study. In addition, the investigators found that patients who had weight-loss surgery were 2.5 times less likely to die from a recurrent…  read on >

Unpaid bills, overdrawn accounts, dwindling investments: When seniors begin experiencing fiscal troubles, early dementia or Alzheimer’s disease could be an underlying cause, researchers say. In the early stages of the disease, people with undiagnosed Alzheimer’s are at high risk of making foolish and dangerous decisions about their finances, mostly because families may not know they need help, researchers say. “Individuals often aren’t diagnosed early enough, and it’s a perfect storm,” said study author Carole Gresenz, a professor of health systems administration at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. “They’re vulnerable to large reductions in liquid assets because they’re not making wise decisions about their finances, savings and checking accounts. This can also reduce net wealth,” added Gresenz. Ruth Drew, director of information and support services for the Alzheimer’s Association, pointed out that Alzheimer’s destroys the brain. “As the disease progresses, everyone with Alzheimer’s will reach a point where they need help with their finances and ultimately assistance with daily tasks and around-the-clock care. We have certainly spoken to people whose finances were significantly affected,” she said. In some cases, people responsible for making major financial decisions, either at work or at home, were unaware of their own mental decline, added Drew, who wasn’t involved with the study. “Others around them either did not notice or did not feel they could alert the family until there was…  read on >