FRIDAY, April 11 (HealthDay News) -- Stanford researchers report that worrying about something before it happens might do more than just create knots in your stomach.

They found that people who seemed to have higher levels of "anticipatory worry" -- judged by brain scans of activity in a part of the brain known as the anterior insula -- did better in a financial game, said study author Gregory Samanez-Larkin, a psychology graduate student at Stanford.

If the anterior insula was more active, the subjects had "a higher fidelity when it comes to making economic decisions," said Samanez-Larkin. "They were better at predicting what might happen." These volunteers learned to avoid losses when playing the same game months later, he noted.

"I wouldn't call it intelligence," he said. Instead, "it's a sort of expertise."

The anterior insula is a region buried deep inside the brain that's considered an artifact of humans' reptilian heritage. "At the very basic level, it has something to do with sensing danger or monitoring danger," explained Rajesh Miranda, an associate professor at Texas A & M Health Science Center.

But researchers haven't spent too much time on that region, because they prefer brain regions that are easier to access and understand, he said.

In the new study, Samanez-Larkin and colleagues recruited 23 subjects to play a financial game while scanners measured their brain activity. Eight to 10 months later, the subjects returned and played a similar game, although their brains weren't scanned.

The researchers then tried to find links between the brain scans and how the subjects performed in the games. "We looked in the brain for readings that were active while people were anticipating losses" in the game, Samanez-Larkin said.

The results were published in the April issue of Psychological Science.

Miranda said the study doesn't add much to existing knowledge. "It seems like it deals essentially with what's been known," he said.

Still, expanded knowledge about that particular brain region could lead to better treatments for anxiety and help researchers predict who might do a better job of handling stress, Miranda said.

Samanez-Larkin said the research could also be used to detect people who are most likely to get too many credit cards and fall into debt or fall victim to scams, because they aren't adept at processing financial information. "You could identify people who are susceptible to things like this and try to help them," he said.

More information

Check out images of various brain regions at brainexplorer.org  .

THURSDAY, April 10 (HealthDay News) -- Doctor's offices and clinics can help prevent the abuse of powerful narcotic painkillers such as Oxycontin or Vicodin by following a stricter policy -- including urine testing --- before dispensing the medications to patients, new research suggests.

Implementing a user registry and educating medical staff were also part of the procedures used in the University of Michigan/Ohio State University study. The policy helped identify patients using other illicit drugs and also alerted the staff to possible painkiller addicts who could then be directed to treatment facilities, according to the findings. The study was expected to be presented Thursday at the Society for General Internal Medicine annual meeting, in Pittsburgh.

In the study, which took place in a busy multi-physician clinic in Ohio, about 35 percent of the 167 patients in the newly established opioid registry were found to have violated the painkiller policy in some way. The most common violations were learned through a mandatory urine test that showed illegal street drug use, or a check of state prescription records that showed the patient was getting the painkillers from more than one physician at the same time.

Patients who were receiving Oxycontin or another medicine that contained its active ingredient, oxycodone, were twice as likely as other opioid registry patients to violate the clinic policy in some way, the report said.

"Many of us in the clinic were surprised at what we found, because a doctor's job is first and foremost to trust the patient as they tell us about their pain," study author Jennifer Meddings, a clinical lecturer in the Division of General Medicine at University of Michigan Medical School, said in a prepared statement. "But in order to confront this issue, and protect our ability to prescribe these drugs to the patients who truly need them, we need to have a uniform approach for all patients."

Under the policy used in the study, a registry of all patients receiving opioid prescriptions and their prescribing clinic physicians was established. Doctors in the offices were then trained on using the state of Ohio's online prescription database to see whether a patient attempted to get prescriptions for the same drug from several physicians or pharmacies.

Clinic staff began screening patients from the moment they called for an appointment, making them aware that monitoring was routine before they could receive opioid prescriptions. The patients, and also the doctors, were required to sign an agreement listing the standard steps required for patients seeking opioids and what types of behaviors or actions would result in the patient not receiving the meds or even being barred from the office (e.g., being abusive to staff).

Finally, the clinic implemented annual and random urine screening for all patients requiring opioids for non-cancer pain. This allowed them to monitor for illegal drugs and the unexpected use of other prescribed medications that could have dangerous interaction with the prescribed opioids.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse has more about prescription drug abuse and addiction.

THURSDAY, March 20 (HealthDay News) -- Money can buy happiness, at least when you spend it on others.

That's the conclusion of a study appearing in the March 21 issue of Science. It found that spending on others brings people greater satisfaction than buying things for themselves.

What's more, most people seemed unaware of this hidden key to happiness, the researchers said.

"It's tied to 'pro-social' spending," said Elizabeth Dunn, lead author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

"Most research has looked at the relationship of how much people make and how happy they are," Dunn said. "We examined what they did with it. It's an obvious question but it hasn't been tackled."

Hikes in income can help boost happiness, but the effect is weak, prior studies have found. Research have also found that as the average income rises within a society, people's reported levels of happiness remain relatively static.

So is there something people could be doing with their cash to boost their mental well-being? The authors looked at the question in three different ways.

First they asked a nationally representative sample of 632 Americans (roughly equivalent between genders) to rate their happiness, report their annual income and estimate how much they spend on a typical month on different items, including gifts to others and donations to charity.

Those who had more of this "pro-social" spending were also happier, the team found.

Then they asked 16 employees to rate their happiness both before and after receiving profit-sharing from the company they worked for.

Those who gave away more of their bonus in a pro-social manner were, again, happier and this was true no matter how little or how grand the bonus.

Finally, 46 participants were given an envelope containing either $5 or $20 and asked to spend it that day. Individuals were randomly assigned to spend the money on personal items, or on a gift for someone else, including a charitable donation.

Those who spent their money on others reported greater "post-windfall" happiness than those who were looking out for themselves.

Still, most people spend more money on themselves than others (partly understandable given the influx of bills most households experience), but the authors suggest that as little as $5 may be enough to reap a happiness dividend.

"Reaching out and doing things for other people allows you to kind of create a community," said Dr. Alan Manevitz, a clinical psychiatrist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City. "Social networks, we know, make people happier. It's all about creating social networks and community ties and having a sense of self that you feel is worthwhile so money therefore can be used in service of that."

And money is just one resource that can be used to that end, Dunn said. "All kinds of resources may be beneficial for our well-being," she added.

More information

There's more on happiness at the Pew Research Center  .

THURSDAY, Jan. 31 (HealthDay News) -- Patients admitted to the top-rated hospitals in the United States have an average 27 percent lower risk of dying than patients admitted to other hospitals in the country, a new study shows.

Released Thursday by HealthGrades, an independent health-care ratings organization, the analysis of 27 procedures and diagnoses also found that patients who have surgery at the top-rated hospitals have an average 5 percent lower risk of complications during their hospital stay.

For this study, researchers analyzed nearly 41 million hospitalizations in 2004, 2005 and 2006 at all 4,971 of the nation's non-federal hospitals. If all hospitals had the quality of care of the top 5 percent of those hospitals, 171,424 lives may have been saved, and 9,671 major complications may have been avoided during the three years studied.

The study also found that the top 5 percent of hospitals lowered their in-hospital risk-adjusted death rates over those three years by an average of 15 percent.

The procedures and diagnoses included in the analysis included: cardiac surgery; angioplasty and stenting; heart attack; heart failure; atrial fibrillation; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; community-acquired pneumonia; stroke; abdominal aortic aneurysm repair; bowel obstruction; gastrointestinal bleeding; pancreatitis; diabetic acidosis and coma; pulmonary embolism; and sepsis.

Dr. Samantha Collier, HealthGrades chief medical officer, said, "The data in this year's study clearly indicates that the gap between top-performing hospitals and others persists. This disparity in the quality of care at U.S. hospitals is disappointing."

The top-rated hospitals "have proven that consistently delivering top-notch medical care is possible, and it is time for the rest to follow suit," Collier said in a prepared statement.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services offers Hospital Compare.