Cerebellar Purkinje cell

...stained using the Golgi method - absolutely amazing.

Neruo images is a fabulous site. I cannot recommend it enough.

How does alcohol work?

They found the ion-channel protein where alcohol (ethanol) seems to impose its effect on the brain. The article mentions that it could lead to new medical treatment paths, but they also fail to mention that there are lots of people that would pay a lot of money to be able to more effectively mimic those effects in drug form.

With the good, comes the bad.

Your moral self-worth

An interesting research study basically saying that in many cases our moral self-worth can be so high (or so low) in some areas that we feel justified in performing actions that would otherwise be considered contrary to our normal actions.

I'd be interested to see how this study looked in the full format. Certainly the famous examples cited by the summary article lend a certain popular credence, but I'm not sure I'm buying it yet. The essence of the conclusion (if I understand them correctly) is that our moral self-worth will tend towards a balance, rather than trying to spend the energy on maintaining the high standards required to commit to actions that support the high moral self-worth domains (either on the good or the bad side). I can get behind the equilibrium idea since that seems to be a natural tendency of the universe, but I would think that the cycles would be, on a whole, less dramatic than the well publicized examples mentioned in the article.

How to persuade people

9 ways to persuade people - this is excellent stuff. Some of it rooted in quite a lot of very good research over long periods of time.

Happiness rules

Apparently your brain recognizes happiness faster than it recognizes sadness.

So, let's just go ahead and interpret that to mean that your brain would rather be happy. I'm totally comfortable making that completely unfounded conclusion.

Sleep....is there anything it can't do?

Sleep research in relation to learning seems to be a pretty hot topic these days.

Personally, I'm a big fan of sleep.

Big fan.

Money doesn't buy happiness

Despite what we think, research continues to show that money does NOT buy happiness.

Which just feels wrong somehow. You can't deny the science, but.....well, frequent trips to Europe and having a nice sled would certainly be fun from time to time.

Cognitive enhancing drugs

Good article that links to a bunch of other articles on current research and current zeitgeist on the use of cognitive enhancers.

As with most psychoactive drugs, I'm very interested in seeing LONG term effects of the drugs. Not just over a period of months or even years, but decades. Sure it helps me while I'm in school, but does it lead to an increased rate of dementia in old age? Does it lead to other side effects that are less predictable?

I'm sorry, but mucking about with the brain for short-term benefits simply does not tickle my fancy very much.

Cocaine Vaccine

...that doesn't really work the way they thought.

So, I take a vaccine that inhibits the effects of cocaine, and then, if my desires are strong enough, I go out and take enough cocaine to kill a medium sized family in an effort to try and get high.

But because the effects are dulled I don't overdose.

Awesome.

The article does point out that for particular cases the vaccine would work to curb addiction, but the limitations are so narrow that it probably works out to only a 1 in 10 or 1 in 15 chance. Not great odds to be sure.

Teach your kids through music

Music therapy can help toddlers learn to communicate, and helps children develop vocal variability at key stages of development.

Seems that the more we look into how music affects our brains, the more we see how it affects nearly every aspect of how we learn. Which isn't really surprising when you consider that music is a very absorbing sensory experience.

Bloviate your way to credibility!

Apparently, if you want to convince people of your viewpoint, you have to have confidence. And that confidence is more convincing that actual expertise.

I actually got in a lot of trouble because of this early on in my marriage. While my approach to stating my opinions has changed over the years (I've learned to express more readily when I don't really know what I'm talking about) - I still have the habit of stating my opinions as though they are factual. Even when I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about and am simply making crap up on the spur of the moment based on my reasoning or best guess.

My mother-in-law hates that.

In my family, growing up, we have a lot of strong opinions and we'd rather fight to the death than admit to being wrong. That was just the way it was done and I didn't know any different. I have since learned to enjoy (to a certain extent) being found wrong as it gives me a chance to learn and then be right the next time. But I still speak with a great deal of confidence on a rather frequent basis and I have learned the myriad kinds of problems that can cause.

Odd how the more I learn the more I find that I shouldn't speak with that kind of confidence or authority.

Sleep your way to a happy marriage!

And by sleep I don't mean sex. I mean actual sleep. Better sleep is related to better relationship satisfaction in men and women, and stable marriages are associated with better sleep in women.

Obviously, those that get better sleep do not have children waking them up at ridiculously early hours in the morning.

Just sayin'.

Are determinists evil?

Discussion of a couple of papers that found that determinists (people that don't believe in free will) are more likely to cheat, be less helpful and be more aggressive.

Interesting findings to be sure, but not one that is worthy of generalizing (as is always the case when discussing psychological literature). It is interesting that the topic of determinism has become so energetic of late. My prediction is that Determinism will grow as a philosophical orientation for the next 5 years, then some research will come out that will cause the popular groundswell to lose a little ground. Popular culture may affect that prediction in unexpected ways, of course, but my prediction is focusing not on popular culture, but in academic acceptance.

New Year's Resolution (sort of)

Looking over my backlog of articles I want to post about and seeing as I find, on average, 3 new articles per day - I have some serious work to do.

So, the goal is to complete 10 new posts per day. It will likely consist mostly of older articles (from the past year) with occasional new articles mixed in, but I try as much as possible to keep the posts in chronological order of when I saw them.....so, we'll see how long this lasts.

The 10 per day should also avoid Blogger's totally lame security catch for posting too many posts in one day.

Surfing the Net is good for you

No, really - we have science to back it up and everything!

The interwebs.....is there anything it can't do?

The Placebo efect

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Placebo effect....including the very odd fact that it seems to be increasing in effectiveness.

Pretty soon all medical treatments will be based on deception! Awesome!

UPDATE: And if that wasn't enough to convince you that placebos will one day rule the world, it looks like the placebo effect is getting stronger over time.

6 falsehoods about psychology

Once again, cracked.com provides a humorous take on the popular perception of psychology. They are dead-on (even if a bit brief and narrow in scope) and despite working somewhat "blue" - as is their unabashed tendency - it is still a pretty stinging critique of the pop-culture understanding of supposedly bedrock assumptions in psychology.

Well worth a read.

Happy People See More

Good news for happy people...I guess...

Happy People See More: "Vision is vision, right? Maybe not. New research at the University of Toronto shows that what we see is actually affected by our mood:
Participants were shown images designed to affect their mood in a good, neutral, or bad way. Then they were shown images, each with a face in the middle and surrounded [...]"

Naps and Creativity

Once again...anything that supports more sleep or more naps is always a good thing.

Naps and Creativity: "Telling your boss you need a nap might not be the smartest thing to do at work, but scientific evidence is now on your side. As this ScienCentral News video explains, sleep researchers just released a new study that says naps over an hour long may boost creative problem solving.

"

What about the boys?

There is a lot of this going on. We've turned a corner - we have paid so much attention to girls and women in education that we've ignored the boys. College and University enrollment is now predominantly female and even the recession has hit men much harder than women (something to the tune of 68% of all layoffs in the last 2 years - I'm a little lazy right now to look up the actual numbers). Some might say this is just a normalization to proper levels after years of male hegemony....but I'm not so sure that it hasn't gone a little too far the other way.

What about the boys?: "According to Judith Kleinfeld, professor of psychology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in the US, issues affecting boys are more serious than those affecting girls, but they have been neglected by policy makers. Her review of issues characterizing American boyhood, how they compare to those affecting girls, and the lack of initiatives in place to address them has just been published in the June issue of Springer's journal Gender Issues."

Longitudinal study on happiness and success

A nice study that fits in with some previous posts about happiness.

Longitudinal study on happiness and success

Language influence on color perception.

The work with the Para tribe in Brazil has a little to do with this as well.

Language influence on color perception.: "Here is an interesting bit of work that shows that our brain's language regions can exert a top down influence on early color processing in the visual cortex. The experiments show that colors from different linguistic categories presented to the right visual field (which projects to the left linguistic cortex) caused much stronger activation of visual areas 2 and 3 than stimuli presented to the left visual field (which projects to the right hemisphere). Here is the abstract:

The effect of language on the categorical perception of color is stronger for stimuli in the right visual field (RVF) than in the left visual field, but the neural correlates of the behavioral RVF advantage are unknown. Here we present brain activation maps revealing how language is differentially engaged in the discrimination of colored stimuli presented in either visual hemifield. In a rapid, event-related functional MRI study, we measured subjects' brain activity while they performed a visual search task. Compared with colors from the same lexical category, discrimination of colors from different linguistic categories provoked stronger and faster responses in the left hemisphere language regions, particularly when the colors were presented in the RVF. In addition, activation of visual areas 2/3, responsible for color perception, was much stronger for RVF stimuli from different linguistic categories than for stimuli from the same linguistic category. Notably, the enhanced activity of visual areas 2/3 coincided with the enhanced activity of the left posterior temporoparietal language region, suggesting that this language region may serve as a top-down control source that modulates the activation of the visual cortex. These findings shed light on the brain mechanisms that underlie the hemifield- dependent effect of language on visual perception.

"

The genetics of musical aptitude

Good stuff.

The genetics of musical aptitude: "Ukkola et al. attempt to understand the neurobiological basis of music in human evolution and communication, motivated by the idea that a main function of music is human social communication. They find a correlation between variations in groups of genes associated with social bonding and cognitive functions and musical aptitude and creativity. They suggest that the neurobiology of music perception and production is likely to be related to the pathways affecting intrinsic attachment behavior. (By the way, in the same issue of PLoS ONE, Israel et al. correlate variations the vasopressin 1a receptor gene (AVPR1a) also monitored by Ukkola et al. with prosocial behavior in several game tasks).

"

Cognitive Illusions

More fun illusions.

Cognitive Illusions: "My son Jon pointed me to this engaging TED talk on cognitive illusions by Dan Ariely.

"

Longer Tests Improve Mental Performance?

This is bad news for all the students out there.

Longer Tests Improve Mental Performance?: "Does this seem plausible to you? In the study, 239 freshman college students from the Atlanta area took three different versions of the SAT Reasoning Test. Under conditions simulating the..."

05/18/09 PHD comic: 'Science News Cycle'

Brilliant!

05/18/09 PHD comic: 'Science News Cycle': "

Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham		www.phdcomics.com

Girls Vs. Boys at Math

They're right - there was all kinds of controversy about this a few years back. This research should not, however, be considered the last word on the subject - it is far too broad and there is no way to pin down the effect. There has also been a bunch of research prior to this research that has pointed both ways, so this is far from settled.

Girls Vs. Boys at Math: "Are men naturally better at math than women or is that just an out-dated stereotype? When former Harvard president Larry Summers said publicly in 2005 that men are innately better at math, many women were outraged. So a couple of women scientists decided to research it. This ScienCentral News video explains their report published this week.

"

Your own brain gym.

Pretty cool stuff. Kind of fun if you want to put in the effort.

Your own brain gym.: "Passing on this link emailed to me this morning: Build Your Own Brain Gym: 100 Tools, Exercises, and Games. The blog on this website (which, curiously, is a health care administration career site) contains a veritable orgy of self-help links.

"

The peril of positive thinking - why positive messages hurt people with low self-esteem [Not Exactly Rocket Science]

It's not much of a secret that the whole "positive self-esteem" kick has been pretty well proven to be a full-on crock. Here is some more information on it.

The peril of positive thinking - why positive messages hurt people with low self-esteem [Not Exactly Rocket Science]: "

When the going gets tough, thousands of people try to boost their failing self-esteem by repeating positive statements to themselves. Encouraged by magazine columnists, self-help books and talk-show hosts, people prepare for challenges by chanting positive mantras like 'I am a strong, powerful person,' and, 'Nothing can stop me from achieving my dreams.' This approach has been championed at least as far back as Norman Vincent Peale's infamous book The Power of Positive Thinking, published in 1952.

But a new study suggests that despite its popularity, this particular brand of self-help may backfire badly. Ironically, it seems to be people with low self-esteem, who are most likely to rely on such statements, who are most likely to feel worse because of them. Joanne Wood from the University of Waterloo found that people with low self-esteem who repeated 'I'm a lovable person' to themselves felt worse than people who did neither.

The effect may be counter-intuitive, but the theory behind it is very straightforward. Everyone has a range of ideas they are prepared to accept. Messages that lie within this boundary are more persuasive than those that fall outside it - those meet the greatest resistance and can even lead to people holding onto their original position more strongly.

If a person with low self-esteem says something that's positive about themselves but is well beyond what they'll actually believe, their immediate reaction is to dismiss the claim and draw even further into their own self-loathing convictions. The positive statements could even act as reminders of failure, highlighting whatever gulf someone sees between reality and the standard they set for themselves. In short, someone could repeat "I'm a lovable person" but they'd really be thinking "I'm actually not" or "I'm not as lovable as I should be." Statements that contradict a person's self-image, no matter how rallying in intention, are likely to boomerang.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post..."

Confidence as important as IQ in exam success

My wife and her family tease me all the time about how I always state everything with strong confidence - and apparently that is an affectation I got from my family since apparently we all speak with that kind of authority. It's not that we know better or think we know better, we just don't want to appear like we don't know - so we fake it. It's pretty funny when you think about it. I've had quite a lot of fun with my in-laws since I discovered this particular affectation.

Confidence as important as IQ in exam success: "Positive feelings about your own abilities seem to be in part genetically inherited and can be used to predict school grades, a study of twins suggests
"