Psychology News and Research Briefs Category Archive:
Cognitive Psychology
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Brain Scans Show Sparks Don't Have To Fade Both scientists and relationship experts say the rush of early love only lasts somewhere between three months and three years. However, new research finds that for some couples, this phase can last longer than 20 years. Continue reading Brain Scans Show Sparks Don't Have To Fade
Brain Scans Show Relationship Between Guilt, Depression As if feeling guilty wasn't bad enough, a new study by the National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has confirmed a deep, cognitive association between guilt and depression. Continue reading Brain Scans Show Relationship Between Guilt, Depression
Stress In Early Pregnancy Linked to Schizophrenia Mothers who experience severely distressful events such as a natural disaster, war-related events or the loss of a loved one early in pregnancy may have offspring with increased predisposition to schizophrenia. Continue reading Stress In Early Pregnancy Linked to Schizophrenia
Background Television May Impair Attention In Young Children A new study published in the journal Child Development shows homes with a T.V. always on may harm a young child's ability to focus--even if they're not actually watching it. Continue reading Background Television May Impair Attention In Young Children
Gestures May Reveal Innate Linguistic Structure An English speaker kicks a ball, but a Turkish speaker ball kicks--at least if you're following the grammatical order of his or her language. However, a new study shows that without words, speakers of these two language order things in the same way. Continue reading Gestures May Reveal Innate Linguistic Structure
Chronic Pain Alters Brain Function Chronic pain is often only the start of the problem for sufferers, who also suffer high rates of depression, anxiety and sleep disorders. Continue reading Chronic Pain Alters Brain Function
PsychBriefs: January 13-19, 2008 Our weekly wrap-up of news, interesting research, and noteworthy happenings in the worlds of psychiatry, psychology, and social work. Continue reading PsychBriefs: January 13-19, 2008
MRIs Show Culture Influences Brain Functions Where you were raised can affect the parts of your brain used to perform different tasks. Researchers at MIT studied 10 American and 10 East Asian patients using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to find out whether their respective cultures aff... Continue reading MRIs Show Culture Influences Brain Functions
Estrogen Linked to Anorexia High levels of estrogen in the womb may increase risk of anorexia, shows new research published in the Archives of General Psychiatry. Continue reading Estrogen Linked to Anorexia
Foster Children Experience Marked IQ Gains Over Institutionalized Orphans Abandoned children who receive foster care receive an average eight- to ten-point IQ boost over those who enter orphanages, shows a new study on abandoned Romanian children. Continue reading Foster Children Experience Marked IQ Gains Over Institutionalized Orphans
Anorexic Brain Set on Planning, Not Pleasure Women who recover from anorexia show notably marked differences in brain patterns one year after recovery, states a report in this month's American Journal of Psychiatry. Continue reading Anorexic Brain Set on Planning, Not Pleasure
ADHD Brains Mature Three Years Later Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder delays development of certain regions of the brain by an average of three years shows a study of 446 youth with and without the disorder. Continue reading ADHD Brains Mature Three Years Later
That's My Choice and I'm Sticking To It Researchers at Yale University have found that cognitive dissonance, the psychological state in which an individual's beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors are at odds, is a mind state that not only appears in adults but in children and other primates as well. Continue reading That's My Choice and I'm Sticking To It
Researchers Identify False Memories with Brain Scans Patterns of electrophysiological activity in the brain may be used to distinguish false memories from real ones, shows a report published in November's Psychological Science. Continue reading Researchers Identify False Memories with Brain Scans
Conscience or Cognitive Science? When the moral compass fails, the threat of punishment for wrongdoings is always there keep people in line. And yet, every day people transgress social mores despite knowledge of personal or even legal consequences. Now, psychologists are one step closer to... Continue reading Conscience or Cognitive Science?
Republican vs. Democrat: A Matter of Brain Chemistry? Research by New York University and UCLA researchers appearing in Nature Neuroscience shows that liberal or conservative leanings may come down to cognition rather than conviction. In the experiment college students across the political spectrum were instr... Continue reading Republican vs. Democrat: A Matter of Brain Chemistry?
Psychologists Explain Why 'They All Look the Same' The difficulty some people have distinguishing between members of another race has become something of a joke, with minorities arguing that, in fact, "All white people look alike." Humor aside, many argue that this effect points to prejudice, ignorance or l... Continue reading Psychologists Explain Why 'They All Look the Same'
Reading vs. Doing Produces Different Forms of Thinking In May, we reported on how the "woulda" and "shoulda dones" in life affect decision-making. Now, a new series of experiments by Vittorio Girotto of the University IUAV of Venice, Italy and his colleagues demonstrates how this type of thinking differs betwe... Continue reading Reading vs. Doing Produces Different Forms of Thinking
Putting Feelings Into Words Examined In Brain Scans Why does talking to a friend or writing in a journal make us feel better in troubled times? Simply naming an emotion does nothing to solve our problems, but often makes them feel less intense. A brain imaging study conducted by a group of UCLA psychologists... Continue reading Putting Feelings Into Words Examined In Brain Scans
Your Brain Loves Paying Taxes As Much As It Loves Cheeseburgers Can you get as much satisfaction from paying taxes as you can from eating a cheeseburger? According to a study conducted at the University of Oregon, the answer is yes. The pleasure center of your brain reacts the same way to paying taxes, giving to chari... Continue reading Your Brain Loves Paying Taxes As Much As It Loves Cheeseburgers
Study Finds The Blind Have Superior 'Serial Memory' Remembering the order of things can be key to finding the right doorway, shirt or flavor of yogurt for someone who cannot see. A new study shows that this aspect of understanding and organizing the world may train the minds of the blind to have superior "se... Continue reading Study Finds The Blind Have Superior 'Serial Memory'
Race And The Psychology Of Police Shootings Can training be used to counter potentially deadly racial stereotypes? While the great majority of police shootings are necessary and often heroic, news reports still tell of questionable shootings. Most frequently the victims are young, black men, who man... Continue reading Race And The Psychology Of Police Shootings
MRIs Reveal Highly Distinct Branches Of Anxiety Anxiety is a word used to describe feelings associated with both worry and fear. However, a new study by University of Illinois psychologists provides evidence for that these are actually two types of anxiety so different they take place in opposite hemisph... Continue reading MRIs Reveal Highly Distinct Branches Of Anxiety
How Meditation Changes The Brain's Attention Span The observational capacities of the human brain are limited by a phenomenon known as the "attentional blink." Here, the brain ignores the second of two quickly presented stimuli, having allocated too many resources to the first. For example, when two images... Continue reading How Meditation Changes The Brain's Attention Span
Babies Can Remember--Just Not for Long New research shows that babies can form memories--despite few people being able to recall anything before preschool. The trouble is, they also forget, said Duke University researcher Patricia J. Bauer at the annual meeting of the American Association for t... Continue reading Babies Can Remember--Just Not for Long
Study: Folic Acid May Help Mental Functioning Folic acid, a naturally occurring form of vitamin B-9 necessary for new cell production, may help improve mental functioning in aging adults, shows a Dutch study of more than 800 men and women age 50 to 70 with low levels of homocysteine, a risk factor for ... Continue reading Study: Folic Acid May Help Mental Functioning
Understanding Others Key to Altruism When a team of researchers at Duke University began using fMRIs to study the brain's connection to altruism, they expected to find that selfless acts were linked to reward systems in the brain--but were treated to some surprising findings. They discovered ... Continue reading Understanding Others Key to Altruism
To Buy or Not to Buy: Brain Chemistry May Make the Call Stanford University psychologists are using brain images to learn more about why some people are impulse shoppers and others have an easier time holding on to their dough. Experimental subjects were given $40 and the option to keep the money or to buy vari... Continue reading To Buy or Not to Buy: Brain Chemistry May Make the Call
Instinctive Decisions Most Reliable Under some circumstances following your gut is your best bet, shows research from University College London psychologists. Participants in their study, published in today's issue of Current Biology, were given between zero and 1.5 seconds identify on which ... Continue reading Instinctive Decisions Most Reliable
Without Memories of the Past, Dreams of Future May Be Impossible Brain scans from a Washington University - St. Louis study suggest that our ability to envision the future is impacted greatly by our ability to recall the past. Without memories, doing so may even be downright impossible, results show, helping to explain ... Continue reading Without Memories of the Past, Dreams of Future May Be Impossible
Cognitive Exercise Helps Seniors' Skills Stay Sharp Short-term cognitive training can have lasting affects, a study published in today's Journal of the American Medical Association reports. Almost 3000 seniors participated in the five-year, multi-site trial. Some received no cognitive training while three o... Continue reading Cognitive Exercise Helps Seniors' Skills Stay Sharp
Videogame Violence Affects Brain Function Teens who play violent video games experience decreased activity in parts of the brain associated with control and concentration and increased activity in the areas linked to emotional arousal, a study by Indiana University researchers shows. Comparing two... Continue reading Videogame Violence Affects Brain Function
Findings: Proteins Anchor Long-Term Memories in Brain A mathematician at University of Utah Brain Institute has published a paper detailing how long-term memories may be stored in the brain. The paper proposes that in a synapse, the junction between neurons, proteins called "AMPA receptors" are held in place b... Continue reading Findings: Proteins Anchor Long-Term Memories in Brain
Myelin 'Internet' Makes Human Brain Unique But Vulnerable, Researcher Says Myelin, the layer of fat and protein insulating neurons and conducting the neuronal impulses in human brains, was called a "recent invention of evolution" which causes man's "unique vulnerability to highly prevalent neuropsychiatric disorders" in a paper pu... Continue reading Myelin 'Internet' Makes Human Brain Unique But Vulnerable, Researcher Says
Social Rejection Hurts Brain Function Researchers have found that being socially excluded causes notceable changes in the brain. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), they monitored 30 subjects' brain activity. After completing a personality inventory half were told their answers indicated they ... Continue reading Social Rejection Hurts Brain Function
Research Suggests New Theory of Memory Storage Brown University researchers have set forth a new theory of memory storage challenging the widely held belief that new memories are transferred by the hippocampus to the neocortex during sleep. Using in vivo recordings, they found that this transfer is rat... Continue reading Research Suggests New Theory of Memory Storage
Researchers Discover How Memories Are Packaged University of California, Irvine researchers have released a report which may help to explain why some memories are more vivid than others. Employing an fMRI to study individuals who experienced and then recalled a complex event, scientists found that thos... Continue reading Researchers Discover How Memories Are Packaged
Cognitive Decline Often Undiagnosed in Older Patients For patients over 65, hospitalization for an acute illness may also be accompanied by a decline in cognitive ability that goes undiagnosed or even unnoticed says research by Sharon Inouye, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Aging Brain Center at Hebrew SeniorLif... Continue reading Cognitive Decline Often Undiagnosed in Older Patients
New Screening Tool Helps Detects Dementia Earlier Scientists at Saint Louis University have developed a new tool for diagnosing dementia believed to work better than the routinely administered Mini Mental Status Examination (MMSE). SLUMS, or the Saint Louis University Mental Status Examination, supplement... Continue reading New Screening Tool Helps Detects Dementia Earlier
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Exercise Prescribed for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome A British review of treatments for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) published in the Journal for the Royal Society of Medicinehas found that cognitive behavior therapy and exercise are the most effective ways to treat the disease. In comparison, antidepressan... Continue reading Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Exercise Prescribed for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
How Close Relationships Affect Healing: A Neuroscientific Overview Research has long shown that people with strong social networks and relationships heal faster than those who do not. Now the emerging field of "social neuroscience" offers several explanations as to why. At the top of the list is the discovery of "mirror n... Continue reading How Close Relationships Affect Healing: A Neuroscientific Overview
High BMI May Lead to Low Cognitive Functioning A longitudinal study of French adults published in Neurology shows that a high body mass index (BMI) is linked to poorer in cognitive function in healthy middle-aged adults. Participants aged 32 to 65 performed four cognitive tests in 1996 and then again 2... Continue reading High BMI May Lead to Low Cognitive Functioning
Multitasking Easy Only When Stimuli Type Differ A study to be published in the October issue of Psychological Science shows that the human brain is quite capable of conducting two tasks at the same time--for example talking while driving--so long as the tasks were of distinct types of perceptual stimuli.... Continue reading Multitasking Easy Only When Stimuli Type Differ
Attraction Based on 'Ease' of Mental Processing Experiments published in the current issue of Psychological Science show that attractiveness depends upon the ease of mental processing a given object has on the brain. Continue reading Attraction Based on 'Ease' of Mental Processing
Columbia Neurologists Discover Neurocircuit of Fear Response Columbia University researchers have discovered the brain's mechanism for keeping frightening or otherwise emotionally intense stimuli from interfering with normal functioning. Continue reading Columbia Neurologists Discover Neurocircuit of Fear Response
Teens Under-Use Empathy Region of Brain Teenagers under-use the region of the brain involved in considering their own and other people's emotions according to a study presented at the BA Festival of Science at University College London. Continue reading Teens Under-Use Empathy Region of Brain
Attractiveness, Trustworthiness Gauged in Milliseconds A study by Princeton psychologists has found that judgments about attractiveness and character traits such as trustworthiness and competence are formed in just one-tenth of a second. Continue reading Attractiveness, Trustworthiness Gauged in Milliseconds
Sunlight Gives Your Brain A Boost Researchers at the Universities of Liege and Surrey have released findings associating exposure to daylight with increased cognitive function. In the study, Daytime Light Exposure Dynamically Enhances Brain Responses, subjects were exposed to bright white l... Continue reading Sunlight Gives Your Brain A Boost |
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