New research published in Nature Neuroscience reports that our hunger for social contact, made worse by the pandemic, starts in the same part of the brain as our desire for food.

Researchers isolated people in windowless rooms for 10 hours. Later, the people fasted for the same amount of time. After each session, study participants' brains were scanned while they looked at three kinds of images: groups of happy people, food and flowers.

For people and food, the same tiny midbrain structure lit up. "Acute isolation causes social craving, similar to the way fasting causes hunger," the researchers concluded.

What Election?

Consider this news to not really be news. According to a recent Harris Poll, only 17% of Americans surveyed said their stress levels declined after Election Day. Apparently, there are still things to worry about.

Body of Knowledge

One in every 2,000 babies is born with a tooth.

Get Me That, Stat!

New data from Blue Cross Blue Shield estimates that U.S. children will miss roughly 9 million vaccination doses in 2020, primarily measles and whooping cough shots. That's a 26% dip compared with 2019 rates. Almost half of parents polled said the COVID-19 pandemic was the reason for missing scheduled vaccinations.

Counts

17 per 100,000: maternal mortality rate from pregnancy complications in the U.S., the highest among 11 high-income nations

Source: Commonwealth Fund

Doc Talk

Fasciculation: a superficial muscle twitch, visible beneath the skin

Mania of the Week

Haphemania: an uncontrollable obsession with being touched, also known as haptemania

Food for Thought

Xylitol is essentially another type of low-calorie sweetener. It occurs naturally in small amounts in fruits and vegetables. It's absorbed slowly and incompletely, delivering 40% fewer calories than sugar but with comparable sweetness. Xylitol is found in sugar-free mints and gums, some "special diet" baked goods, toothpastes and saline nasal sprays. It's toxic to dogs and ferrets.

Best Medicine

A man goes to a clinic.

"Doc, I think I'm a bit hard of hearing," the man declares.

"Can you describe the symptoms?" asks the physician.

"Sure," says the man. "Marge has blue hair. Homer is fat and bald."

Observation

"A recent survey of North American males found 42 percent were overweight, 34 percent were critically obese and 8 percent ate the survey." — anonymous street artist and activist Banksy

Ig Nobel Apprised

The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate achievements that make people laugh and then think, a look at real science that's hard to take seriously and even harder to ignore.

In 2017, the Ig Nobel Prize in anatomy went to James Heathcote for his medical research study "Why Do Old Men Have Big Ears?" published in the British Medical Journal.

Short answer: No one knows. It's still a mystery. But the researchers did confirm that as people get older, their ears appear to get bigger by an average of 0.22 millimeters, or 0.008661417 an inch, per year.

Med School

Q: Can you reorder these top five medical specialties by current popularity: family medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine, gynecology and general surgery?

A: internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, general surgery and gynecology, followed by psychiatry, anesthesiology, emergency medicine, diagnostic radiology and neurology.

Last Words

"Yes, our life is a misery, an endless misery! Why do we exist? Send me the news." — French poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891). These are the final lines of a letter Rimbaud wrote to his sister as he lay dying of cancer in a hospital.

To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Free-Photos at Pixabay