Your Health: 'Warm friends' taken literally

Warm friends

Meeting a new acquaintance for coffee might nudge the friendship along in more than one way - as long as you don't add ice.

In a study of 41 volunteers, people were asked to rate a fictional person based on a list of personality traits after being asked to hold either a cup of hot coffee or a cup of iced coffee on the way into the room.

Those holding the hot coffee were much more likely to rate the fictional person as having a warm personality, the University of Colorado researchers found. It turns out that sensations of warmth and feelings of trust and empathy are processed in the same part of the brain, the insular cortex.

Treating stroke

When a stroke strikes, minutes matter. The faster you recognize a stroke and get to the hospital, the faster treatment can begin. Time lost, as they say, is brain lost.

If it's an ischemic stroke, caused by a blood clot blocking the brain, the preferred treatment is a clot-busting drug called tissue plasminogen activator (tPA). But tPA works best when given soon after symptoms start. For years that meant within three hours.

Guidelines from the American Stroke Association say it's now OK to give the drug up to 4½ hours after symptoms in most people.

That doesn't mean you can delay seeking help. The sooner tPA therapy is begun, the better the results, according to Dr. Jeffrey Saver, director of the UCLA Stroke Center and an author of the revised guidelines.

Good for gamers

When 13 people were assigned to spend 50 hours playing video games over nine weeks, they improved their ability to see contrast - a skill we rely on when it's dark.

Contrast perception of people assigned to action games improved 43 percent, compared to 11 percent for those with more sedate games, like The Sims.

Now, some researchers wonder whether gaming could treat amblyopia, which affects contrast perception. Sometimes known as "lazy eye," it affects around 3 percent of people and can be treated in children but often goes undetected until adulthood, when there is no therapy.