Hot MedFax

So you can't decide.  Pinot or Chardonnay?  A Lexus or a BMW?  The man who makes seven figures a year but likes to stay home and watch home movies or the guy who barely can pay the rent but takes you out on his motorcycle with the wind dancing through your hair? Tough decisions, maybe.  But a small part of your brain is very instrumental in making them, according to newswise.com.  Choosing what shirt to buy, what to order for lunch or whether to go with the hearty red wine or the lighter white all involve assigning values to the options. A small brain structure plays a central role in the many decisions like this we make each day. But it hasn’t been clear how a limited number of neurons in this small part of the brain can support an unlimited number of choices. Now, studying how macaque monkeys choose between juice drinks, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that some of the neurons in a part of the bra...

I once moved across country in my early 20s to a new job, where I knew no one, to get over a broken love affair. Years later, I met a man who was clearly commitment-phobic but I stuck it out for 10 years, ignoring all my family and friends' advice to find someone else, and we've now been happily (mostly) married for 20 years.  Probably the biggest dare of my life was accepting an egg from an anonymous donor to have my son. Yes, I'm a risk taker.  My husband, on the other hand, likes eating in the same restaurant at the same time on the same day every week.  He also likes to keep his money in a savings account (last time I looked, the interest rate was under 1%).  Recently he moved his money to an annuity based on stocks and hasn't been sleeping nights. So some of us take risks, and some of us don't.  But a new study has found that we take risks because we just can't stop ourselves.   According to newswise.com, " A new study correlating brain activity...