Word: nimh
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...study, conducted by researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Georgia State University, begins with a premise that every parent of a tween knows: as kids emerge into puberty, their focus changes dramatically. They care less about their families and more about their peers...
...look at pictures of 40 other boys and girls and judge how much they would like to interact with them online. The kids were asked to rate those in the photos on a scale from 0 ("not interested at all") to 100 ("very interested"). The NIMH scientists told the kids that their ratings would be revealed to the boys and girls in the pictures, and the scientists said they would arrange online chats between the kids and those they liked. The chats were supposed to occur two weeks later. (Read "The Myth of the Math Gender...
...appointed day, the study volunteers were once again brought into the NIMH lab. This time, researchers monitored the kids' brain activity using fMRI while showing them the same pictures. The participants were asked to guess which of the kids in the pictures (the same kids they had rated - and who, they believed, knew those ratings) would like to interact with them...
...authors of the study are reluctant to draw such broad conclusions about the gender disparities. "There are many different possible explanations," says NIMH neuroscientist Daniel Pine, who suggests a much more ordinary reason for the girls' more emotional response. "It might be possible that the girls are trying to remember what they wrote earlier [about the kids in the photos]," he says. "You can imagine a scenario where they say, 'Oh, did I write something bad about that girl?' Boys are simply doing that less." In other words, it may be that boys are cads because they're not wired...
...researchers hope to publish a cost-benefit analysis of the program sometime next year. Part of the equation, however, will be to show that the benefits are lasting. The team has just received NIMH funding to follow the adolescents in the current study through their early...