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If you ever hear a rat sigh, don’t worry it’s not because they’re getting impatient, rather it’s because they’re relieved, a behaviour that probably evolved as a safety signal to other rats. That’s according to Stefan Soltysik and Piotr Jelen at the Limbic System Laboratory of the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology in Warsaw. Over hundreds of trials, Soltysik and Jelen trained 16 rats to expect an electric shock to [ Read More ]
Cognitive therapy for depression could be improved by the therapist focusing more on the therapeutic process itself. That’s according to Jonathan Kanter (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and colleagues who compared the effectiveness of therapy given by four expert cognitive therapists before and after they were given special training in this kind of therapy-focused technique. “…sessions with more therapy-focused utterances were associated with better reports of perceived progress in weekly feedback from [ Read More ]
Whereas countless studies have examined the effect of negative psychological states on levels of cortisol – a corticosteroid hormone that is associated with stress and ill-health – few, if any, have looked at the effect of positive psychological states on the hormone, a fact that Julian Lai (City University of Hong Kong) and colleagues see as part Western society’s disease-oriented view of health that “places disease and health on two [ Read More ]
A series of articles in the November issue of Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica explores the link between trauma and schizophrenia. “Earlier trauma plays a causal role in schizophrenia, it’s argued, because it can leave people prone to finding…psychotic symptoms distressing” One suggestion is that some people would not have developed schizophrenia if they hadn’t had an earlier traumatic experience. According to this argument, psychotic experiences (for example, hearing voices; having paranoid [ Read More ]
A growing body of evidence suggests that we understand other people’s actions and intentions by simulating their movements in the motor pathways of our own brain. Now a study suggests that peripheral sensation and proprioception – the sense of where our limbs are in space – also play a role in this process, specifically when it comes to inferring other people’s expectations from the way they move. Simone Bosbach (pictured) [ Read More ]
People who are unable to find satisfactory work after being forced to retire early experience feelings of worthlessness and loss of self-esteem, just as younger unemployed people do, but they also experience unique pressures because of their age, including fearing that they will not be financially prepared for their final retirement, and a greater complexity of family responsibilities. “this ‘lost generation’ of mature-aged unemployed people needs particular help…” The findings [ Read More ]
It’s the excuse you’ve always needed to work outside on sunny days – researchers have shown that pleasantly warm, sunny weather can improve people’s mood and mental ability, but not if they’re stuck indoors. Matthew Keller and colleagues tested the mood, short-term memory and open-mindedness of 97 people on various Spring days in Michigan, USA. Nicer weather, indicated by higher temperature and barometric pressure, was associated with better mood, memory [ Read More ]
Diagnostic labels such as dyslexia and dyscalculia tend to highlight the separateness of various mental capabilities from general intelligence. But a new study has shown that most of the genes that influence young children’s mathematics ability also influence their reading and general intelligence. According to Robert Plomin and colleagues at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at King’s College in London, this is probably because “a great variety of [ Read More ]
Research has shown that most of us suffer from a kind of ego-saving delusion that renders us hopelessly poor at recognising our own incompetencies. For example, people who are incompetent will tend to rate their own performance at a task only slightly lower than their more competent peers. Now Deanna Caputo and David Dunning have suggested there’s a simple explanation for this – we’re bad at judging our own ability [ Read More ]
People who have suffered from serious depression or who have attempted suicide could be at increased risk of developing epilepsy. That’s according to a team of American and Icelandic researchers who said more work was needed to explain the link, which they speculated could be related to levels of the neurotransmitters noradrenalin and serotonin. “…patients presenting with a new onset unprovoked seizure should be evaluated for a history of suicide [ Read More ]