Those Sunday crossword puzzles may not prevent the aging brain from slowing down — but they might protect it in a different way, a new study suggests. Researchers looked at the “use it or lose it” theory on brain health. The concept holds that mentally engaging activities — from reading to crosswords to board games — may help the brain resist dementia later in life. In this study, older adults who said they enjoyed those pastimes were no less likely to show signs of mental decline over time, versus other older folks. But they did, on average, score higher on standard tests of mental sharpness. That means that while they did decline over time, they did so from a higher “starting point,” the researchers explained. “The results indicate that a lifetime of engagement lifts you to a high point from which you decline, and that can be considered as passive cognitive reserve,” said lead researcher Roger Staff, of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. “Starting from a high point,” he said, “will mean that the threshold at which you are considered impaired will be farther into the future.” “Cognitive reserve” can be seen as the brain’s ability to find alternative ways to get things done. In theory, a person with greater cognitive reserve may be able to withstand pathological changes in the brain for a…  read on >

Intimacy plays a larger role in casual sex among college students than previously thought, a new U.S. study reports. Researchers analyzed the results of an online survey that asked several hundred students at a university in the Northeast about their romantic relationships and casual sex. As expected, affectionate and intimate activities — such as cuddling, spending the night, eye gazing and foreplay — were more common in relationship sex than in casual sex, but the rate of these acts in casual sex was much higher than anticipated. While women were more likely to engage in intimate acts, there were no gender differences in terms of eye gazing and foreplay. “We have a stereotype that casual sex [hookups] are just about meaningless sex, but this research shows this is not necessarily true,” said study author Ann Merriwether, a developmental psychologist and lecturer at Binghamton University in New York. The study “shows intimacy is important and desired by many people, especially those who prefer hookups to more traditional relationships,” she added in a university news release. A survey question that asked students if they prefer casual sex or sex in a long-term relationship led to a surprising finding. “Young adults who indicated they prefer casual sexual encounters over relationship sex were more likely to want affection and intimacy from them. This suggests they seek to meet their…  read on >

When a baby starts sniffling and sneezing, the type of bacteria in their nose may predict how long the cold will last, a new study finds. Babies with a wide variety of bacteria in the nose recover faster from their first cold than those with less variety, the researchers said. “It’s well known that different types of bacteria live in our gut. The respiratory tract is also home to a wide variety of bacteria,” said study author Roland Neumann, of University Children’s Hospital of Basel, Switzerland. “We are beginning to understand that the types and numbers of these bacteria, what we refer to as the microbiota, can influence our respiratory health,” he added. For the study, the researchers took nose swabs from 183 babies as soon as they developed symptoms of their first cold, and again three weeks later. On average, the babies’ cold symptoms lasted about two weeks. Babies whose symptoms lasted three weeks or longer had less variety of bacteria in their noses. Also, their nose bacteria was more likely to be dominated by the Moraxellaceae or Streptococcaceae families. Some of those bacteria are known to be linked with respiratory disease. The study was published Dec. 2 in the journal ERJ Open Research. The findings could help improve understanding of the role respiratory tract bacteria plays in infections and long-term conditions such as…  read on >

More than 10,000 nerve fibers — many more than expected — power the human clitoris, according to Oregon researchers who were able to count them for the first time while performing gender-affirming genital surgery. That’s about 20% more than previous estimates, they said. “It’s startling to think about more than 10,000 nerve fibers being concentrated in something as small as [the] clitoris,” said Dr. Blair Peters, a plastic surgeon from the Transgender Health Program at Oregon Health & Sciences University (OHSU) in Portland. He said it’s particularly surprising if you compare the clitoris to other, larger parts of the body, including the human hand. “Even though the hand is many, many times larger than the clitoris, the median nerve only contains about 18,000 nerve fibers, or fewer than two times the nerve fibers that are packed into the much-smaller clitoris,” Peters said in a university news release. The clitoris’ only job is enabling pleasurable sensations. It consists of the highly sensitive glans outside the body and more tissue internally. Internal parts of the clitoris include the dorsal nerve, which is the main one responsible for sensation. Peters collected samples of dorsal nerve tissue from seven transmasculine (assigned female at birth but do not identify as female) volunteers who were undergoing gender-affirming genital surgery. A small amount of the tissue is typically trimmed during phalloplasty, a…  read on >  read on >

A woman’s body appears to go on high alert after she loses her virginity, a new study reports. Specifically, her immune system ramps up activity in her vagina following her first sexual intercourse, researchers found. However, researchers can’t yet say whether these immune changes reduce or elevate a female’s risk of acquiring a sexually transmitted infection. For the study, published recently in the journal eLife, the research team compared vaginal samples collected from 95 young women in Kenya before or after they began having sexual intercourse. They found a sharp increase in proteins that control the body’s immune response within the first year after the women became sexually active. They also found that the changes weren’t due to either a sexually transmitted infection (STI) or pregnancy. Data from two other studies involving 93 young women in Belgium and 19 in the United States confirmed this observation, with those participants also experiencing an immune system spike following their first time having sexual intercourse. But because this was an observational study, the researchers noted that they can’t draw a cause-and-effect link between losing virginity and the increase in immune activity. “The initiation of sexual activity was associated with higher levels of immune mediators, but we don’t know for sure if the start of sexual activity caused the changes,” said co-senior researcher Dr. Florian Hladik, a professor in…  read on >  read on >

A “virtual autopsy” of a mummified 17th century Austrian infant has shed new light on Renaissance childhood — as well as the importance of vitamin D to health. The researchers used CT scans to examine the remains, which had been found in an aristocratic Austrian family crypt containing the perfect conditions for natural mummification. Analysis revealed that the child was a boy approximately 1 year old and overweight for his age, according to the German scientists However, his diet didn’t result in proper nutrition for a healthy body, creating a mystery for scientists. The child had been stricken by severe rickets or scurvy, diseases that are driven by deficiencies in vitamins D and C, the scans revealed. The child’s rickets had caused his ribs to become malformed in a pattern called a “rachitic rosary.” Bone knobs formed at the ends of his ribs, creating the appearance of a chain of large rosary beads under the thin skin over his rib cage. The scans also revealed that the boy had inflammation of the lungs characteristic of pneumonia. Since children with rickets are more vulnerable to pneumonia, the researchers speculate his nutritional deficiency might have contributed to his early death. It appears the aristocratic son was not exposed to direct sunlight, which allows the body to create its own supply of vitamin D, said lead researcher Andreas…  read on >  read on >

Smoking is an incredibly hard habit to break. Anne Levine of Baltimore can attest to that. But Levine, 58, is getting help from a potential new tool: psychedelics. The four-decade smoker has tried to quit a dozen times. But once she became part of a research trial testing a psychedelic drug, quitting became easier. Researchers think they may have found the answer to quitting in a compound called psilocybin, a drug also found in “magic mushrooms.” “There’s several existing treatments, both medications and other therapies, but they all have lots of room for improvement,” Matthew Johnson, a psychedelic researcher at Johns Hopkins Medicine, told NBC News. “None of the medications help a majority of the people long-term. Even six months down the road, it’s pretty small success rates.” Johnson is leading a randomized controlled trial supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. This is the first time in 50 years the federal government has given a grant to study a psychedelic drug as a treatment, NBC News reported. “The fact that the NIH is now interested in these types of studies is a great thing,” said Dr. Charles Nemeroff, chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Texas Medical School at Austin. “It’ll provide us with funding to be able to do these controlled studies,” Nemeroff told NBC. He is not involved…  read on >  read on >