Latest HM Stories

PITTSBURGH, April 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- HM Insurance Group (HM) has launched a new website, hmig.com, featuring responsive web design that allows visitors to view the site optimally on the device of their choice - computer, tablet or smartphone. The launch of this responsive site puts HM at the forefront of mobile insurance business interaction with an approach that addresses the astounding growth of Internet traffic on mobile devices, coupled with the increasing movement of...

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Researchers from Indiana University have found that rats have a capacity for “source memory,” a finding that could have implications for both future animal studies and the treatment of human memory disorders. According to the IU team’s report in Current Biology, a rat is capable of remembering how it got a certain food reward. "Researchers can now study in animals what was once thought an exclusively human domain," said...

Our eyes don’t just take in the world around us, they can also reflect our emotional state, influence our memories, and provide clues about the way we think. Here is some of the latest research from the journals Psychological Science and Current Directions in Psychological Science in which scientists show there’s much more to the eyes than people might think. Pupil Dilation Reflects the Creation and Retrieval of Memories Many people know that our pupils shrink when our eyes adjust...

“I’ll meet you at the place near the thing where we went that time,” says the character Aaron in the 1987 movie Broadcast News. He and the woman he’s talking to have a lot of common ground, the shared territory that makes conversations work.  Common ground is why, after you’ve mentioned Great-Aunt Mildred’s 80th birthday party once in a conversation, you can just refer to it as “the party.” In a new study to be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a...

Almost everyone has experienced one memory triggering another, but explanations for that phenomenon have proved elusive. Now, University of Pennsylvania researchers have provided the first neurobiological evidence that memories formed in the same context become linked, the foundation of the theory of episodic memory.The research was conducted by professor Michael Kahana of the Department of Psychology in the School of Arts and Sciences and graduate student Jeremy R. Manning, of the...

High levels of a protein associated with chronic, low-grade inflammation in the brain correlate with aspects of memory decline in otherwise cognitively normal older adults, according to a study led by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco.The study is being reported in a poster session at the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting on Wednesday, April 13, 2011.Inflammation is part of the body's natural immune response to tissue damage. However, chronic inflammation is...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, led by Larry R. Squire, PhD, professor of psychiatry, psychology and neurosciences at UC San Diego and a scientist at the VA San Diego Healthcare System, report that working memory of relational information "“ where an object is located, for example "“ remains intact even if key brain structures like the hippocampus are damaged.The findings, published in the October 13, 2010 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience,...

Computer programs have been able to predict which of three short films a person is thinking about, just by looking at their brain activity. The research, conducted by scientists at the Wellcome Trust Center for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London), provides further insight into how our memories are recorded.Professor Eleanor Maguire led this Wellcome Trust-funded study, an extension of work published last year which showed how spatial memories "“ in that case, where a volunteer...

U.S. researchers linked poor kidney function to a more rapid rate of decline in cognition in the elderly. Dr. Aron Buchman of the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago said the cognitive decline -- not in visuospatial ability or perceptual speed, but in episodic, semantic and working memory -- occurred at a rate of decline equivalent to that of a person seven years older at baseline. Given the dearth of modifiable risk factors for age-related cognitive decline, these results have...

U.S. researchers say elderly who are physically fit tend to have bigger hippocampi -- the part of the brain that deals with memory -- and better spatial memory. The study, published in the journal Hippocampus, found that hippocampus size in physically fit adults accounts for about 40 percent of their advantage in spatial memory. The hippocampus, a curved structure deep inside the medial temporal lobe of the brain, is essential to memory formation. Remove it -- as was done in the well-known...