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VOL. 24. NO.4 OCTOBER 21, 2003

yesterday, today & tomorrow

FEELINGS DO HURT

Two key areas of the brain appear to respond to the pain of rejection in the same way as physical pain, a UCLA-led team of psychologists reports in the Oct. 10 issue of Science. “While everyone accepts that physical pain is real, people are tempted to think that social pain is just in their heads,” said Matthew D. Lieberman, one of the paper’s three authors and an assistant professor of psychology. “But physical and social pain may be more similar than we realized.” Lieberman and Naomi I. Eisenberger, a Ph.D. candidate in social psychology and the study’s lead author, used functional magnetic resonance imaging to monitor brain activity in 13 undergraduates while the students played a computer ball-tossing game designed to provoke feelings of social exclusion.

BIRTH TRENDS AMONG LATINAS

Latina mothers from El Salvador and other Central and South American countries living in California give birth to healthier babies than expected, based on their access to health care and education levels, according to a UCLA study. In addition, while U.S.-born Latinas have a higher level of education, they have a higher teen pregnancy rate than immigrant Latinas from Central and South America, according to the study by the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the David Geffen School of Medicine. UCLA researchers decided to look at trends in the Salvadoran-American community in the state three years ago because very little information has been available, said David Hayes-Bautista, professor of medicine and the center director.

PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE

To help meet the needs of California’s aging population, the University of California has pulled together $12 million in state and private funds to establish six new endowed chairs in geriatric medicine, including one that will be set up at UCLA. The Archstone Foundation in Long Beach, a private, nonprofit foundation whose mission is to prepare society for the growing needs of an aging population, provided $1.5 million for the chair at UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine. With the new initiative, UC hopes to recruit and retain faculty clinicians who are skilled in the art and science of caring for the elderly. California has the largest elderly population in the nation.