An interesting new study shows the powerful effect a mother’s voice has on their children.

The research which was conducted at Stanford University found that, on hearing their mother’s voice, children’s brains lit up in less than a second showing that recognition is extremely quick.

The study involved researching the brain activity of 24 normally developing children between the ages of 7 and 12 and used voice recordings of both the mothers of the children and unrelated women. They found that 97 percent of the time, children recognized their mother’s voice within a second despite the mother using random nonsense words, as reported in TIME.

Using brain scan data, the researchers looked at which areas of the brain were most activated in the children and found a significant activity in the area of the brain associated with processing emotional information. This also lead the authors to note that children with more connections in the brain when hearing their mother’s voice are more socially gifted than those who have less.

Study author, Daniel Abrams, an instructor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University explains that these new findings open up the understanding of the deep connection between mother and child.

“Many of our social, language and emotional processes are learned by listening to our mom’s voice. But surprisingly little is known about how the brain organizes itself around this very important sound source. We didn’t realize that a mother’s voice would have such quick access to so many different brain systems.”

The study hopes to further investigate the brain activity of children who are less socially able like those with autism, as children who did less well on recognizing their mother’s voice had particular occurring brain patterns.

The study was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences.

 

The Australian Olympic Committee will be supplying its athletes competing in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro with condoms to help prevent any contraction of the Zika virus.

The mosquito-spread virus has been rife in Central and South America over the last months and people are warned that the areas are high risk if visited. The World Health Organization have issued these areas as experiencing an epidemic – a problem that Olympic athletes will have to face when competing in the Brazilian city this year.

An Australian pharmaceutical company named Starpharma will be providing special condoms created in laboratory studies that have an ultimate protection against the Zika virus. According to The Huffington Post, the contraceptives are lubricated with Starpharma’s own VivaGel product that provides an antiviral protection.

Athletes will also be asked to take part in blood tests upon their return to screen for any possible signs that they have picked up the virus.

Australian team chef de mission Kitty Chiller is keen to protect the health of their athletes and also believes that every precaution is necessary to stop any potential spread of the virus.

“The health and wellbeing of the team comes first and our association with Starpharma will provide extra protection for everyone on the team,” she said, “It is a common sense approach to a very serious problem we are facing in Rio.”

The Zika virus has been spreading out of the Latin American continent with cases showing up in the U.S. and Europe with sexual transmission contributing to this.

Other countries will also be providing their athletes with the Centers for Disease Control contributing to talks for U.S. participants. They will be advising pregnant partners to refrain from travelling to Brazil and ask that partners returning from the Olympics to use extra protection or abstain from sex altogether.

The games in Rio de Janeiro are due to start August 5 and will continue until August 21.

 

A 29 year old mother of two has died after a plastic surgery procedure at a clinic in South Florida.

Heather Meadows had traveled to the south Florida clinic to undergo a liposuction and buttocks augmentation last week but experienced medical complications shortly after the operation. She was taken to a nearby hospital and later declared dead.

The licensed Encore Plastic Surgery clinic has been brought into question after they are currently battling an ongoing medical malpractice case from 2013 but refused to comment on Ms. Meadows death. However, they have recently been offering low prices for plastic surgery procedures compared to other competing clinics – almost $8000 cheaper.

The increasing popularity of plastic surgery procedures including butt augmentation has led to a rise in incidents especially in Florida. The state currently allows any physician with a medical license to open a plastic surgery clinic despite them not having the proper medical experience for these procedures.

Department of Health spokeswoman Mara Gambineri, stated however that they are doing all they can to protect people from malpractice in these clinics.

“We can assure the public that we will be diligent and thorough in protecting them from unsafe or unscrupulous health care practice,” she said. “In any complaint investigation, the department uses its authority to subpoena all relevant records and to conduct interviews that will support the investigation. Every health care licensee is afforded due process rights under the law.”

An autopsy was conducted on Ms. Meadows but the coroners are unable to reveal the results as local police are still completing enquiries.

The first case of microcephaly has been reported in an American woman in Puerto Rico sparking concerns that a Zika outbreak could happen in the U.S.

Puerto Rico’s health department reported the case this week after a fetus, miscarried in the woman’s second trimester, was tested for microcephaly and doctors confirmed that the child did indeed have severe microcephaly and brain plaques associated with the abnormality. The test was carried out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and has estimated that possibly over 20 percent of Puerto Rico’s residents could be affected by the Zika virus this year.

“This case of Zika virus disease in a pregnancy saddens and concerns us as it highlights the potential for additional cases and associated adverse pregnancy outcomes,” the agency said in a statement.

The U.S. has put in place funding to help potential outbreaks of the Zika virus this summer as mosquito levels are thought to rise. The administration recently requested $1.9 billion to aid emergency funding with opposition from the Republicans and so transferred $510 million from the Ebola fund to fight against Zika.

Worries are mounting in Puerto Rico after 925 cases of Zika have now been reported on the island with 128 of those being pregnant women together with its growing economic crisis that has been ongoing for the past ten years. Tourism has taken a huge hit since Puerto Rico was announced as a high-risk area for the Zika virus.

However, Puerto Rico’s health secretary, Ana Rius, believes that the hype is getting out of control after Major League Baseball pulled out of hosting a series this month.

“This is creating an unnecessary chaos,” she said. “If I’m telling you that there are 925 cases of more than 14,000 analyzed tests, we obviously don’t have that big of a chaos that they want to pretend exists.”

Researchers on the island are currently studying data to find help fight future outbreaks.

 

New guidelines from the World Health Organization (WHO) has created new hope for the roughly 480,000 people suffering from drug-resistant tuberculosis.

Currently tuberculosis can involve a lengthy process to treat with many pills and injections lasting as long as two years. However, will side-effects and no guaruntee off success, many people do not finish their course of treatment. As a result, cure rates are as low as 50 percent according to the BBC. However, WHO’s new guidelines will help to cut this arduous process down to create shorter, more manageable treatment times.

According to WHO, the new treatment times will take 9-12 months with a much cheaper price tag at $1000 per patient versus the current price of $2400. The new regime is currently recommended for patients diagnosed with uncomplicated MDR-TB which means they have the disease and is less resistant to the drugs.

WHO undertook studies involving 1200 patients with uncomplicated MDR-TB in ten different countries and are currently undergoing randomised controlled clinical trials to back up further the benefits to this shorter regime.

“This is a critical step forward in tackling the MDR-TB public health crisis,” Dr. Mario Raviglione, Director of WHO’s Global TB Programme, said in the statement. “The new WHO recommendations offer hope to hundreds of thousands of MDR-TB patients who can now benefit from a test that quickly identifies eligibility for the shorter regimen, and then complete treatment in half the time and at nearly half the cost.”

Testing for MDR-TB will also be made quicker – currently patients receiving results will need to wait three months whereas the new plan will have patients only waiting two days.

The International Union against TB and Lung Disease and Medecins Sans Frontieres have also been involved in the trials held in Bangladesh and Africa and has hailed the new plans as “an historic moment.”