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POPSFeeling Low Up High: the Lonely Astronaut James Carter, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School, is working on an interactive computer program called Virtual Space Station. With help from 13 American astronauts who have flown on long-duration flights, Carter's team is designing the program so that if an astronaut is suffering from depression or anxiety, or having a conflict with a crewmate, he or she can use the computer for therapy. But doctors have learned, they say, since the days when cosmonaut Lebedev hated to look out the window at home. "The best outcome," says Shepanek, "is that you never hear about any serious problems."
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POPSCultural Neuroscience I do believe this attention to culture as every bit as important as brain activity, indeed inseparable from it, is crucial for the way we think about thinkinfg and how we think we think we are.
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POPSBody Language of Winners and Losers Could be Innate "In the end, it’s all about evolution. The discovery by psychologists suggests that these gestures of pride and shame are hard wired into the human brain, probably because they were universal signs of dominance and submission among our ape relatives and ancestors . So when you see arms raised in victory at the Beijing Olympics, you might really be seeing an symbol of dominance that humans developed long ago."
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POPSNeurobiologists Discover Individuals Who 'Hear' Movement "We might find that motion processing centers of the visual cortex are more interconnected with auditory brain regions than previously thought, even in the 'normal' brain," Saenz says. "At this point, very little is known about how the auditory and visual processing systems of the brain work together. Understanding this interaction is important because in normal experience, our senses work together all the time."
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POPSHumans' response to risk can be unnecessarily dangerous, study The results of Lotem's research may also be used by economists, politicians and psychologists, who need to know when people will take risks, says Prof. Lotem. A wider understanding of this phenomenon can affect business decisions, the economy ― and, hopefully, the number of road accidents in America each year.
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POPSScientists Reveal Magicians Secrets A new study, detailed in the current online issue of the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, reveals how elements of human cognition, such as awareness and perception, could be explained by the success of some techniques commonly used by magicians. "What people actually saw was not related to where they were looking," Kuhn told LiveScience. "Several participants who were looking at the object being dropped failed to see how it was done." Even though their eyes were focused on the objects, their attention was elsewhere, he said. More mental tricks For example, a vanishing ball illusion indicates that anticipation plays a factor in what we see, and our minds fill in the blanks. In this trick, the magician tosses a red ball into the air two times and on the third throw, instead of releasing the ball, the magician holds onto it. However, study participants reported seeing the magician toss the ball into the air three times before the ball "disappears."
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POPSFormer Alaskan charged in spy case. Lindauer could face up to 25 years in prison if convicted. She asked U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska in August 2007 to let her challenge the psychologists' findings so she could go to trial to "prove that my story is entirely accurate."
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POPSJuly 18 - Full Moon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_moon July Hay Moon Buck Moon Thunder Moon, Mead Moon Guru Poornima Folklore ======= Full Moons are traditionally associated with temporal insomnia, insanity (hence the terms lunacy and lunatic) and various "magical phenomena" such as lycanthropy. Psychologists, however, have found that there is no strong evidence for effects on human behavior around the time of a full moon. They find that studies are generally not consistent, with some showing a positive effect and others showing a negative effect. In one instance, the December 23, 2000 issue of the British Medical Journal published two studies on dog bite admission to hospitals in England and Australia. The study of the Bradford Royal Infirmary found that dog bites were twice as common during a full moon, whereas the study conducted by the public hospitals in Australia found that they were less likely. Many neopagans hold a monthly ritual called an Esbat at each full moon, while so
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POPSMen and women are programmed differently when it comes to temptation "One interpretation of these studies is that men are unable to ward off temptation. We do not subscribe to this. Instead, we believe men simply interpret these interactions differently than women do," said Lydon. "We think that if men believed an attractive, available woman was a threat to their relationship, they might try to protect that relationship."
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POPSHow Your Brain Controls Time
Warren Meck of Duke University argues that the brain measures long stretches of time by producing pulses. But the brain does not then count the pulses in the way a clock does. Instead, Meck suspects, it does something more elegant. It listens to the pulses as if they were music. At Humboldt University of Berlin in Germany, scientists have been building a model of how memory may store time. When neurons produce a regular cycle of signals, some signals come a little sooner and some come a little later. The researchers propose that as neurons pass these signals along, they can add tiny advances, some bigger than others. With these tiny wobbles, the brain can compress memories of time from several seconds down to hundredths of a second—a small enough package to store for later retrieval. As it stores time in memories, the brain may alter it in another way that is even more radical. It may record time so that our brains recall events in backward order. Scientists at MIT discovered re
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POPSMoney makes the heart grow less fond... but more hardworking Specifically, those participants who were exposed to money spent less time helping a person who needed it, sat farther away from another person and preferred solitary activities. In addition, they showed preferences for working alone and asked for help less frequently. On the other hand, participants also revealed an increased desire to take on more work and showed greater persistence in difficult tasks. Very interesting. I wonder if there is a way to disturb this relationship, or more to the point, an easy way to do so. Additionally, what would be the impact of doing so?
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POPSSugar News "In a separate study, the researchers tested blood triglyceride levels after people consumed a meal with 25% of the calories from HFCS, sucrose, fructose or glucose. All sugars except for glucose caused elevated levels 24 hours after the meal." from ScienceBlogs 6/11: Artificial Sweeteners Sodas sweetened with artificial sweeteners have long been the go-to drink for dieters looking to cut back on calories, but a new study from Purdue psychologists suggests that high consumption of such beverages is linked to obesity. Rats fed a sugar substitute gained significantly more weight during the course of the study than those fed regular glucose.
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POPS“Therapist Needed” Therapists needed: American psychotherapists, psychologists. Counselors, mental health workers and psychiatrist, are all being urged to sign up FREE for a brand new directory. A directory that will offer a chance to increase their client base. Therapist will have the opportunity to have greater exposure within the area and expertise that they work. Offering people that need therapy the invitation to find therapists much easier and stress free. Creating a win/win situation.
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POPSCan we change? I saw this article at PsychologyToday.com and found it very interesting. I'm convinced that major changes in personality are not possible, but I do believe some modification of our outlook and reactions is possible. What do you think?
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