I watched in horror as a little boy of about five was whacked - hard - across his face on the subway. His mother began to berate him, calling him names ("retard" was one of the ones I remember), ridiculing him. He didn't cry. He just stared straight ahead, as if he wasn't in his body.

I desperately wanted to do something, but there was only a subway worker in uniform and me on the train and she just looked the other way. Plus, it looked like the mother had some kind of weapon stuck in the top of her jeans.

At the next stop, I got off and asked another woman what to do. She, too, told me it's not a crime to smack your kid. But this mother didn't just "smack" him. She put all her force into the blow. I knew I couldn't identify her (I mainly looked at the little boy and then turned away in case I would incite her anger against him.) I didn't know what else to do. I felt defeated.

This was quite a while ago. But, if you live in New York, and you take public transportation, this is not all that unusual.

Only a tiny fraction of the brain is dedicated to conscious behavior. The rest works feverishly behind the scenes regulating everything from breathing to mate selection. In fact, neuroscientist David Eagleman of Baylor College of Medicine argues that the unconscious workings of the brain are so crucial to everyday functioning that their influence often trumps conscious thought. To prove it, he explores little-known historical episodes, the latest psychological research, and enduring medical mysteries, revealing the bizarre and often inexplicable mechanisms underlying daily life.

Eagleman's theory is epitomized by the deathbed confession of the 19th-century mathematician James Clerk Maxwell, who developed fundamental equations unifying electricity and magnetism. Maxwell declared that "something within him" had made the discoveries; he actually had no idea how he'd achieved his great insights. It is easy to take credit after an idea strikes you, but in fact, neurons in your brain secretly perform an enormous amount of work before inspiration hits. The brain, Eagleman argues, runs its show incognito. Or, as Pink Floyd put it, "There's someone in my head, but it's not me."

For so many important outcomes in life - applying for jobs, waiting for medical test results - there comes a point when you just have to sit back and hope for the best. But that doesn't mean we always behave that way. New research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that even when an outcome is out of our control we often act as though we can still get on the good side of fate by doing good deeds.

According to lead researcher Benjamin Converse, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Psychology at the University of Virginia, the research was inspired by the kinds of deals many of us seem to make in which we promise ourselves that, if we can just make it through some trying situation, we'll be better citizens in the future. Converse and co-authors Jane Risen and Travis Carter, both of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, wondered if these kinds of deals might be part of a more general phenomenon in which we intuitively bargain with 'the universe,' however we might define it.

"Everyone is familiar with the basics of reciprocity, the idea that if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. We wondered if people think this way even when they aren't dealing with another person at all, but rather with the universe," says Converse.

We tend to think of anger as a wild, negative emotion, but research finds that anger also has its positive side.

There are all sorts of good sensible, civilised reasons to avoid getting angry.

Not only does it make you feel bad, it makes you do stupid things without noticing the risks and it can be self-destructive.

As a result civilised people do their best to suppress, redirect and mask their anger. Most of us treat our anger as though it's unreasonable, unshowable and unmentionable.

But like all emotions anger has its purposes, which can be used to good effect.

Researchers decode a molecular mechanism that sheds light on how trauma can become engraved in the brain.This release is available in German.
Feelings of anxiety very effectively prevent people from getting into situations that are too dangerous. Those who have had a terrible experience initially tend to avoid the place of tragedy out of fear. If no other oppressive situation arises, normally the symptoms of fear gradually subside. "The memory of the terrible events is not just erased." states first author, PD Dr. Andras Bilkei Gorzo, from the Institute for Molecular Psychiatry at the University of Bonn. "Those impacted learn rather via an active learning process that they no longer need to be afraid because the danger has passed." But following extreme psychical stress resulting from wars, hostage-takings, accidents or catastrophes chronic anxiety disorders can develop which even after months don't subside.

Body's own dynorphin weakens fears

Why is it that in some people terrible events are deeply engraved in their memory, while after a while others seem to have completely put aside any anxiety related to the incident? Scientists in the fields of psychiatry, molecular psychiatry and radiology at the University of Bonn are all involved in probing this issue. "We were able to demonstrate by way of a series of experiments that dynorphin plays an important role in weakening anxiety," says Prof. Dr. Andreas Zimmer, Director of the Institute for Molecular Psychiatry at the University of Bonn. The substance group in question is opiods which also includes, for instance, endorphins. The latter are released by the body of athletes and have an analgesic and euphoric effect. The reverse, however, is true of dynorphins: They are known for putting a damper on emotional moods.

All psychopaths are not killers, but there is still reason to fear them, reveals author Leah Giarratano.

I've specialised in assessing and treating psychological trauma for the past 17 years. Sadly, one can't work in this area without coming to understand the impact of terrible events upon babies and children - upon developing personalities. Some children will survive such events and go on to live happy, fulfilled lives. Others will develop any of a range of psychiatric disorders, including depression, anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder. And a very small group who are harmed during early childhood will nurture the violence in their minds, fantasising upon it, biding their time, waiting for the opportunity to unleash all of that hate upon others.

The psychopath

I always wanted to meet a psychopath. Until I did.

I spent my doctoral placement in Long Bay Jail, studying inmates with severe personality disorders. It wasn't fun. But at least the experience prompted me to write my first crime novel - Vodka Doesn't Freeze - I used it as a type of catharsis to rid the demons from my mind. Four crime novels later, I've expelled some of the poison, but not so much that my latest book - Disharmony - a young adult, urban fantasy series, doesn't also include a psychopath.

Beloved of spiritualists and bored teenagers on a dare, the Ouija board has long been a source of entertainment, mystery and sometimes downright spookiness. Now it could shine a light on the secrets of the unconscious mind.

The Ouija, also known as a talking board, is a wooden plaque marked with the words, "yes", "no" and the letters of the alphabet. Typically a group of users place their hands on a movable pointer , or "planchette", and ask questions out loud. Sometimes the planchette signals an answer, even when no one admits to moving it deliberately.

Believers think the answer comes through from the spirit world. In fact, all the evidence points to the real cause being the ideomotor effect, small muscle movements we generate unconsciously.

That's why the Ouija board has attracted the attention of psychologists at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Growing evidence suggests the unconscious plays a role in cognitive functions we usually consider the preserve of the conscious mind.

New to meditation and already thinking about quitting? You may have simply chosen the wrong method. A new study published online July 7 in Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing highlights the importance of ensuring that new meditators select methods with which they are most comfortable, rather than those that are most popular.

If they do, they are likely to stick with it, says Adam Burke, the author of the study. If not, there is a higher chance they may abandon meditation altogether, losing out on its myriad personal and medical benefits. Burke is a professor of Health Education at SF State and the director of SF State's Institute for Holistic Health Studies.

"Because of the increase in both general and clinical use of meditation, you want to make sure you're finding the right method for each person," he said. Although meditation has become significantly more popular in the U.S., Burke said, there have been very few studies comparing multiple methods head to head to examine individual preference or specific clinical benefits.

Interacting with a person really is different from interacting with a computer - and the brain knows it.

Researchers have discovered that a region of the brain known to be important for understanding others' minds only gets active when people have to make decisions about social situations, but not when they have to make similar decisions without other human involvement.

"Basically, it's triggering the brain to play by different rules," said study researcher Scott Huettel, a neuroscientist at Duke University.

Making decisions

A long line of economics and psychology studies have found that humans tend to make different decisions when they're interacting with people than when they're interacting with a computer, Huettel told LiveScience. People are usually very good at weighing social information in decision-making: They focus on key players when making group decisions, they can tell the different between someone employing a strategy and someone acting randomly, and when they need to compare themselves to others, they tend to draw conclusions based on similar people.

Huettel and his colleagues wanted to understand how the brain differs when it has to make decisions in a social context versus a non-social one. To find out, they arranged for 18 volunteers to play a series of simplified poker games with both computers and a human opponent.

In both cases, the decision to make was the same. Participants were given either a high or low card and had to decide whether to bet against their opponent. If their card beat out their opponent's, or if they bluffed with a low card so that their opponent folded, the participant won money. Otherwise, the opponent got paid.

Before the experiments, the participants met their opponent and shook hands, making the situation as obviously social as possible, Huettel said. They were also told which games would be against a person and which were against a computer. The games then took place as participants rested inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (fMRI). The fMRI measured blood flow to various brain regions in real time. An increase in blood flow to a specific region is a sign that region is becoming more active.

As each day passes, the pace of life seems to accelerate -- demands on productivity continue ever upward and there is hardly ever a moment when we aren't, in some way, in touch with our family, friends, or coworkers. While moments for reflection may be hard to come by, a new article suggests that the long-lost art of introspection -- even daydreaming -- may be an increasingly valuable part of life.

In the article, published in the July issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychological scientist Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and colleagues survey the existing scientific literature from neuroscience and psychological science, exploring what it means when our brains are 'at rest.'

In recent years, researchers have explored the idea of rest by looking at the so-called 'default mode' network of the brain, a network that is noticeably active when we are resting and focused inward. Findings from these studies suggest that individual differences in brain activity during rest are correlated with components of socioemotional functioning, such as self-awareness and moral judgment, as well as different aspects of learning and memory. Immordino-Yang and her colleagues believe that research on the brain at rest can yield important insights into the importance of reflection and quiet time for learning.