Frequent viewing of selfies through social network sites like Facebook is linked to a decrease in self-esteem and life satisfaction, report Penn State researchers. Ruoxu Wang, graduate student in mass communications, said: “Most of the research done on social network sites looks at the motivation for posting and liking content, but we’re now starting to…
Category: Psychology
Telling Lies Desensitises Your Brain To Self-serving Dishonesty
Telling small lies desensitises your brain to the associated negative emotions and may encourage you to tell bigger lies in the future, suggests new research at University College London. The research provides the first empirical evidence that self-serving lies gradually escalate and shows how this happens in our brains. The team scanned volunteers’ brains while…
When Does A Benign Experience Become Psychotic?
When “L” was diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, it hardly came as a surprise, even to her. She had been experiencing subtle but distressing symptoms of psychosis, such as thought interference, for years before she received an accurate diagnosis in the schizophrenia spectrum and started effective treatment. It took so long mainly because of previous…
Overcoming Self-centeredness Increases Self-control
The mechanism we for overcoming egocentricity also leads to increased self-control, new research shows. The finding opens up new possibilities for therapeutic interventions. Should I buy a new car now or save the money for retirement? Such situations require self-control in order to resist the immediately tempting offer for the sake of more important outcomes…
Hearing Voices Is More Common Than You Might Think
Hearing voices that other people can’t is a meaningful experience. Like dreams, they can usually be understood in terms of one’s life experiences. Within mental health services, however, the prevailing medical model means some practitioners pay attention only to their presence, not their meaning. Psychiatry’s diagnostic bibles, the American DSM-5 and the World Health Organisation’s…
Communication In Children With Autism Helped By Folinic Acid
Folinic acid, a reduced form of a B vitamin known as folate, could help improve the language and communication skills of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to preliminary findings from a placebo controlled trial. The study, in which children were randomized to receive either high-dose folinic acid or a placebo, also identified a…
Sleep Spindles Reduced In Schizophrenia
A review of the growing body of evidence linking a reduction in sleep spindle activity to schizophrenia suggests that a better understanding of this sleep abnormality’s genetic underpinnings opens the door to new treatments for the psychiatric disorder. Visible on an electroencephalogram (EEG), a device which measures the brain’s electrical activity, sleep spindles are bursts…
Anti-cytokine Drugs Could Help Treat Depression Symptoms
Anti-inflammatory drugs similar to those used to treat conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis could someday be used to treat certain cases of depression, concludes a review led by the University of Cambridge. The finding adds evidence for the involvement of our immune system in mental health disorders. Researchers from the department of psychiatry…
People With Autism Make More Logical Decisions
Decisions are based on the way choices are framed. This is because people use emotion when making decisions, leading to some options feeling more desirable than others. For example, when given £50, we are more likely to gamble the money if we stand to lose £30 than if we are going to keep £20. Although…