Children who have difficulty learning language have a malfunction in part of their brain circuitry that processes different sounds, a Northwestern University researcher has found.
When a child with normal language skills hears “da, da, da, da, ga,” his brain waves will jump at the sound of “ga,” indicating a different sound, Nina Kraus reported in the journal Science. But, when children with language difficulties hear “ga,” there is no change in brain wave activity, indicating that the different sound was not heard.
Measuring brain waves could help identify children who could benefit from new computer training programs that are designed to enable children to distinguish the different sounds that are important for language development, Kraus said.
VIOLENCE TRAPS HOMELESS WOMEN
Nine out of 10 homeless mothers have been victims of sexual abuse and/or physical violence, an astoundingly high rate that is followed closely by low-income mothers on welfare, who have an 82 percent rate of such abuse, a six-year study has found.
Everything seems to be going wrong for these women who are generally in poor health, lack education and job skills, and live in isolation, said Dr. Ellen Bassuk, a Harvard psychiatrist and president of The Better Homes Fund, which conducted the study with the University of Massachusetts.
Thousands of low-income welfare families are just one crisis away from becoming homeless, a situation that will worsen if welfare reform withdraws financial support from these families, Bassuk reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
GRIEVING SPOUSES AT RISK
When a spouse dies, the surviving partner has a significantly increased risk of also dying, according to a five-year study of 1.5 million Finnish people.
There was a 50 to 150 percent greater risk of dying from accidents, violence or alcohol-related causes and a 20 to 30 percent increased risk of dying from heart disease or lung cancer, said Pekka Martikainen of the University of Helsinki. Men had a higher risk of dying than women.
“The results are consistent with the hypothesis that excess mortality after the death of a spouse is partly caused by stress,” Martikainen reported in the American Journal of Public Health. “The loss of social support or the inability to cope with stress may explain why men suffer from bereavement more than do women.”
