During economic recessions, overall public health improves. Sounds wrong, right? Well, think about it. Less work, less stress. Less people die, fewer heart attacks are reported and general morbidity decreases, according to research from the World Health Organization. On the other hand, a recent study from the University of Georgia shows that mental illness might…
Category: Psychology
5 Good Reasons to Keep a Journal
Keeping a journal is a great idea for everyone, regardless of age. There are many benefits to taking a few minutes each day to record your thoughts in a journal. The costs are minimal and the payback is huge. A journal is a great idea for you and your children. Many life coaches require that…
Vicariously Lowering Fears by Observing Other People
Fear of heights, snakes, open spaces, or you name it, phobias are widespread and can be hard to treat. A new study from Sweden indicates that watching someone else safely interact with the allegedly harmful object can help to quench these conditioned fear responses, and stop them resurfacing later on. The research suggests this type…
How Stress Can Lead To False Confessions
If you were wrongly accused of a crime, would you feel stressed out? Probably you would, but the innocent are often less stressed than the guilty, Iowa State University researchers found. That could leave you at more risk to admit to a crime you didn’t commit. To understand what leads to false confessions, researchers measured…
Auto-Activation Deficit Patients Dream When Minds Are Blank
Case studies of patients with Auto-Activation Deficit who reported dreams when awakened from REM sleep, even when they demonstrated a mental blank during the daytime, have been documented by Isabelle Arnulf and colleagues from the Sleep Disorders Unit at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC). The paper proves that even patients with Auto-Activation Disorder…
Does Texting About Bad Behavior Predict Bad Behavior?
When teenagers send text messages it is mostly as harmless. But when the texting is antisocial, it can actually predict deviant behavior, according to a new study from the University of Texas at Dallas involving more than 76,000 text messages. “We were interested in how adolescents use electronic communication, particularly text messaging,” said Dr. Samuel…
Mindfulness Meditation Anxiety Relief Linked to 2 Brain Regions
Science has known that meditation can reduce anxiety for some time. Now, a study from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center has identified the brain functions involved. Activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex correlated with anxiety relief during meditation. “Although we’ve known that meditation can reduce anxiety, we hadn’t identified the…
Lack of Sleep Increases Anticipatory Anxiety
Lack of sleep is common in anxiety disorders, but it may play a key role in revving up brain regions that contribute to excessive worrying, UC Berkeley researchers have found. Being deprived of sleep, neuroscientists have found, boosts anticipatory anxiety by sparking the brain’s amygdala and insular cortex, areas linked to emotional processing. The ensuing…
Why More Complicated Lies Are Easier To Remember
Everyone lies, whether consciously or not. But if we could put aside moral concerns one moment and watch what happens when you tell a lie, what would we learn about ourselves? What happens in the brain later, when you try to access the memory of your deception? According to a new study from Louisiana State…