Multimodal adaptive optics imaging has revealed photoreceptor and retinal pigment epithelium relationships in eyes with vitelliform macular dystrophy.

 Vitelliform macular dystrophy (VMD) is an inherited genetic disease that causes progressive vision loss through degeneration of the light-sensing retina. Genes implicated in VMD include BEST1, PRPH2, IMPG1, and IMPG2. Depending on the gene and mutation, age of onset and severity vary widely. All forms of the disease have in common a lesion in the central retina (macula) that looks like an egg yolk and is a build-up of toxic fatty material called lipofuscin. VMD affects about 1 in 5,500 Americans and there is currently no treatment for this condition.

A new study may improve the sense of embodiment when using autonomous prosthetic limbs. The work had left and right limbs are controlled by two people simultaneously and revealed that the visual information necessary to predict the partner’s intentions behind limb movements can significantly enhance the sense of embodiment towards partner-controlled limbs during virtual co-embodiment.

An analysis of 5,329 patients across the U.S. who died from medical aid in the 23 years after Oregon became the first state to legalize assisted suicide and predictably found one demographic dominates the group: well-educated, wealthy people with cancer. 

If they are not in a state that allows it, they have the money to travel and to incur the cost of the drugs needed for voluntary euthanasia, which are not covered by insurance. The results: More than 72 percent of patients who died with medical aid had college experience, more than 95 percent were non-Hispanic whites, and nearly 75 percent had cancer. 

Nature is out to kill everything so a newborn animal must learn to walk on its legs as fast as possible to avoid predators. Learning the precise coordination of leg muscles and tendons takes some time and initially baby animals rely heavily on hard-wired spinal cord reflexes. More advanced and precise muscle control lead to the nervous system becoming well adapted to the young animal’s leg muscles and tendons.

No more uncontrolled stumbling – the young animal can now keep up with the adults.

Hangry, a portmanteau of hungry and angry, is widely used in everyday language but the phenomenon has not been widely explored by science outside of laboratory environments. You have probably seen it in television commercials, where someone is irritable, complains a lot, or fatigued until they get a candy bar, when they revert back to themselves.

A new survey finds it is not just clever marketing. 

The team recruited 64 adult participants from central Europe, who recorded their levels of hunger and various measures of emotional wellbeing over a 21-day period.

Why do most people eat dessert after dinner but not before? Culture, or the brain? 

The prevailing belief is that the body often needs protein so only after that is obtained are carbohydrates 'craved', to add to the body’s fat stores. Yet it is not so simple and a new study combines effects to see how the brain's parallel internal states guide behavior.