Late preterm birth may subtly influence brain maturation into early adolescence, a new study using the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study reports. Researchers found no broad differences in behavior or cognition, but brain imaging revealed regional volume differences and more pronounced differences in white matter microstructure. Some white matter measures also changed differently over 2 years between late preterm and full-term children, suggesting subtle differences in brain development. 

Kyoto, Japan -- Many owners will enthusiastically attest that their cat has improved their quality of life. Some studies support this common claim that caring for a feline friend has positive effects on human health and wellbeing. However, the evidence is inconsistent, and other studies have even reported possible negative effects of cat ownership.

This led a team of researchers at Kyoto University to question the idea that simply owning a cat provides intrinsic health benefits. Instead, they wondered whether any benefits or drawbacks to keeping a cat come from the quality of the relationship between the human and cat, particularly how owners interact with their cats in everyday life.

To investigate, the team conducted a one-month study of the daily lives of a group of 29 cats and their 19 owners, recruited through flyers and social media. In each household, the researchers conducted hormonal analysis through urine samples, attached Small Bluetooth Low Energy -- BLE -- beacons to the cats' collars to measure daily physical proximity, assessed the owners' mood through questionnaires, and observed the cats' behavior toward their owners and unfamiliar people.

Dogs spontaneously follow the walking direction of a human figure represented by just a few moving dots, yet show no such directional bias when the dots depict another dog. In a study published in Cognitive Science Research, researchers found that dogs respond to directional cues from human biological motion as readily as they do to human head turns, suggesting that domestication may have tuned canine social perception to human movement.