Brain

There is a wonderfully simple way to realize your professional goals. At times, achieving our goals seems so far off or slow that we get discouraged, procrastinate or just give up. We fall back into old, comfortable habits that lead nowhere.

There is a method that has been used by many successful business people and advocated by many great thinkers.

SAN FRANCISCO -- It's no big secret that alcohol makes most people feel pretty good, but scientists have for the first time found evidence that liquor triggers the release of pleasure-inducing endorphins in the brain -- and that heavy drinkers are especially influenced by those endorphins.

Can't calculate a tip or even balance your checkbook?

Take heart; maybe you can blame your brain -- specifically, the parietal cortex in the top back part of the head. And it could be a problem that has roots not in a failed arithmetic or "new math" lesson, but even earlier.

PARIS -- A large study in older veterans raises fresh concern about mild brain injuries that hundreds of thousands of troops have suffered from explosions in recent wars. Even concussions seem to raise the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease or other dementia later in life, researchers found.

Combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder are more likely to have dementia, cardiac problems and structural changes in the brain as they get older than veterans without PTSD, according to new research.

The findings, which for the most part resulted from research at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, raise concerns about the overall health of aging veterans, but hold promise for the potential of helping to treat these diseases.