Need help in remembering a difficult concept? A solution may literally be at your fingertips as new research suggests drawing pictures of information that needs to be remembered enhances memory.

"We pitted drawing against a number of other known encoding strategies, but drawing always came out on top," said the study's lead author, Jeffrey Wammes, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo.

"We believe that the benefit arises because drawing helps to create a more cohesive memory trace that better integrates visual, motor, and semantic information."

Most of us battle with an internal voice of self-criticism. A recent psychotherapy review sheds light on how to listen to your inner critic and respond.

This morning, I accidentally knocked over a can of food that splattered all over the floor. Instantly, a voice in my head rang, "Rina, how could you be so stupid? You've wasted food and time!"

Sound familiar?

This is the voice commonly referred to as our "inner critic." In ancient yoga philosophy the inner critic is considered a manifestation of the ego, or ahamkara. As much as ahamkara is involved with deceptively enjoyable vanity and conceit, it can also be the source of painful self-criticism. Peace of mind and self-love, yoga says, come when none of these "snares" of ego entrap us. According to yoga, it is then that we are truly free.

In research terms, the inner critic is defined as a "well-integrated system of critical and negative thoughts and attitudes of the self that interferes with the individual's organismic experiencing process." In other words, it is the criticism we hear in our minds that gets in the way of life enjoyment.

One area of the brain appears to be responsible for recognizing facial expressions, a new study finds. Ohio State University researchers monitored the brain activity of 10 college students as they were shown more than 1,000 photographs of people making different facial expressions. The expressions fell into several categories: disgusted, happily surprised, happily disgusted, angrily surprised, fearfully surprised, sadly fearful, and fearfully disgusted. The experiments revealed that the area responsible for recognizing facial expressions seems to be on the right side of the brain behind the ear. The area is called the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS).

The researchers also found that nerve patterns within the pSTS seem to be programmed to recognize movement in certain areas of the face. For example, one neural pattern identifies a furrowed brow and another detects the upturned lips of a smile, the researchers said. "That suggests that our brains decode facial expressions by adding up sets of key muscle movements in the face of the person we are looking at," study author Aleix Martinez said in a university news release. Martinez is a cognitive scientist and professor of electrical and computer engineering at Ohio State.

If someone is facing a health emergency or terminal illness, it can be difficult to know the right thing to say. Do you tell them everything will be OK? Change the subject? Share the story of your Aunt Sally, who died of cancer 10 years ago?

The best response is something along the lines of, "I'm so sorry to hear the news. I'll be here to support you in any way I can," sociologists told Live Science. But you'd be smart to tweak this message on a person-by-person basis.

"There are no easy answers to what you should say or what you should do," said Amanda Gengler, an assistant professor of sociology at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.

Mats rolled tightly under their arms, a group of women walk to a secluded Tripoli beach for a seaside yoga session to escape tensions in conflict-stricken Libya.

Under the watch of a solitary police car, each Thursday the 25 aspiring yogis begin limbering up, their bright gym attire outlined against the crumbling concrete security compound that forms the backdrop to their open-air studio.

People often find it harder to adapt to new situations as they age and now a new mouse study may have shed light on why.

A study published today in the journal Neuron has described, for the first time, how activity in a key brain circuit that allows mammals to adapt to change fades with age.

The circuit is critical to developing new strategies to meet goals, said senior author Dr J. Bertran-Gonzalez, a neuroscientist at the Queensland Brain Institute

He and colleagues hypothesised that older mammals find it harder to adapt because of natural deterioration in this brain circuit involving neurones in the striatum, which is located in the brain's core.

To test their ideas, Dr Bertran-Gonzalez and colleagues set up an experiment in which mice were trained to press levers to obtain food pellets.

One lever gave them access to grain-tasting pellets, while the other gave them access to sweet pellets. After training, the animals were then given just one type of pellet to eat, before again being given a choice of pellets.

Because mice prefer variety in their diet, after having gorged on one type of pellet they chose the lever that would give them the other type of pellet.

But then the researchers switched the levers so the lever that used to deliver grain-flavoured pellets now delivered sweet pellets and vice versa.

The younger mice in the group quickly learned which lever to press to get the pellets they wanted, but the older mice repeatedly pressed both levers, apparently confused about what to do.

Further experiments showed the brains of the older mice had less activity in the neurones of the striatum previously identified as being critical to the ability to adapt.

Finally, the study found that young mice in which this brain circuit had been deactivated, were just as confused as the older normal mice when the levers were switched. This confirmed that deterioration in the striatum circuit was responsible for a failure to adapt to change.

It was an ideal British summer festival evening, courtesy of the most desirable star at any outdoors gathering in the Albion - the Sun (the celestial body not the tabloid paper). Though it had already jetted off from the festival grounds, el sol's rare presence was still felt and seen everywhere - precious warmth was lingering in the air and splashes of crimson and gold turned the sky into an abstract painting you'd actually love having on your wall. Cocooned in the refined luxuries of one of the most middle-class festivals in Britain, if not the world, a mix of human content were aggregating politely around the main stage, where a hot new folkotronica band were blasting out their experimental sounds. Slightly away from all the action, my six-year-old son and I were sitting cross-legged on the grass, facing each other, while my husband and our 3 year-old daughter went off to get some food.

Having exposed our urbanite children to a day of telluric activities such as stone-carving, basket weaving and bow making, I felt quite satisfied with myself as a parent. Being more used to scooting alongside busy city streets inhaling exhaust fumes, it was a welcome change to see our children run around a quaint village fête environment. We pretty much gave up on trying to see any bands during the day, so that our kids could craft their hearts out and delight in organic ice-creams, while we praised their creative efforts and hovered nearby, away from all the musical fun, ready to attend to their whims. Sometimes being a parent feels like being someone's slave, only instead of hating your master, you absolutely love them. At the end of the day, all that was required from my son to continue feeding my self-image of a good parent doing the best for him is to just look happy. When you make sacrifices you need to know they are worth it. Unfortunately, to my disappointment my son's expression was not as jolly as I would have expected it to be.

We all face challenging times in this world. Whether it be surrounding our job, a relationship, familial matters, or anything else we tend to encounter in this thing we call life, everything has its rougher patches. While these patches may be inherently difficult to go through, one of the biggest factors in determining just how difficult they are is our response to them.

Many of us are quick to vocalize our trials and tribulations. We may not directly address those involved, but we tend to have a trusted individual (if not several) that we always turn to for advice. But there is also a select group of us that respond differently. Rather than seeking others, we choose to instead internalize our hardship.

Despite being quite vocal when I need to be, I recently realized that when it comes to personal matters, I tend to be quite introverted in my response. At times, it undoubtedly is the better approach, but in most cases that internalization can lead to frustration, loneliness, and ultimately, bigger blow-ups — amongst many other things.

Wanting to correct this, I decided to do some self-reflection and have come up with 4 lies that I have used to convince myself that internalizing is the better response.

Heavily distracted people benefited most from the simple task.

A short breathing exercise is enough to refocus the minds of highly distracted people, new research finds.

Heavy media multitaskers benefited most from simply counting their breaths, psychologists found.

Media multitaskers might typically have a chat session open on the computer while also watching a video and checking their email.

Thomas Gorman, the study's first author, said:

"In general, people perform better after this mindfulness task.

But we found a significant difference for heavy media multitaskers.

They improved even more on tests of their attention."

Although there are six components to a good apology, two are most effective.

There are six components to a really effective apology, according to new research.