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A new study shows that high levels of maternal care during the early post-natal period in rodents can reduce the sensitivity of the offspring to stressful events during adulthood. Maternal care is shown to chemically modify and thereby re-program genes that control stress responses making them less likely to be activated. The findings have important implications for understanding early environment influences on stress-related disorders.
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Patients in a vegetative state are awake, breathe on their own, and seem to go in and out of sleep. But they do not respond to what is happening around them and exhibit no signs of conscious awareness. With communication impossible, friends and family are left wondering if the patients even know they are there.
Now, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Dr. Haggai Sharon and Dr. Yotam Pasternak of Tel Aviv University'sFunctional Brain Center and Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center have shown that the brains of patients in a vegetative state emotionally react to photographs of people they know personally as though they recognize them.
"We showed that patients in a vegetative state can react differently to different stimuli in the environment depending on their emotional value," said Dr. Sharon. "It's not a generic thing; it's personal and autobiographical. We engaged the person, the individual, inside the patient."
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It's the old stereotype: bad boys are better in the sack. Those nice boys just don't put gravy on your biscuit, honey.
Problem is, that didn't really fit with the psychopaths I'd seen in action. Some of them were stellar in bed, almost addictively so. Yet others were really great at the "sweeping women off their feet" part, but turned out to be mediocre or unresponsive in the sack, caring more for their own needs than their partner's. They got by because they manipulated their partners into wanting to please them, but there's a difference between that and actually being good betwixt someone's nethers.
Does everybody lie? We are taught that this is common sense and that most people tell little white lies. But perhaps this isn't true. A recent paper published in Human Communication Research found that many people are honest most of the time, that many are honest about their lying, and that some lie a lot.
Rony Halevy, Bruno Verschuere (University of Amsterdam), and Shaul Shalvi (Ben-Gurion University), surveyed 527 people to find out how often they had lied over the past 24 hours. 41% of the respondents indicated that they had not lied at all, whereas just 5% turned out to be accountable for 40% of all of the lies told.
To find out whether the respondents were honest about the frequency of their lying, they were invited to take part in an additional lab test. They were asked to roll dice and received a sum of money depending on the number they reported having rolled. Because the researchers were unable to see the actual numbers rolled, participants were free to cheat and report higher numbers. Participants who had already admitted to lying more frequently also had higher winnings in this dice test, indicating that participants, who said they lie often, did indeed lie often. Statistically, their scores were so implausible that they are likely to have lied about the numbers they rolled, rather enjoying a series of lucky rolls.
Rony Halevy, Bruno Verschuere (University of Amsterdam), and Shaul Shalvi (Ben-Gurion University), surveyed 527 people to find out how often they had lied over the past 24 hours. 41% of the respondents indicated that they had not lied at all, whereas just 5% turned out to be accountable for 40% of all of the lies told.
To find out whether the respondents were honest about the frequency of their lying, they were invited to take part in an additional lab test. They were asked to roll dice and received a sum of money depending on the number they reported having rolled. Because the researchers were unable to see the actual numbers rolled, participants were free to cheat and report higher numbers. Participants who had already admitted to lying more frequently also had higher winnings in this dice test, indicating that participants, who said they lie often, did indeed lie often. Statistically, their scores were so implausible that they are likely to have lied about the numbers they rolled, rather enjoying a series of lucky rolls.
90% of studies on spanking agree that it’s bad for children.
A new book which includes research on over 7,000 US families plus data from 32 different countries, has found that spanking is ultimately detrimental to children.
The book, by Professor Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire and colleagues, finds that four decades of research is heavily against the use of spanking for children (Straus et al., 2013; The primordial violence: spanking children, psychological development, violence, and crime).
While it may work to correct their behaviour, it doesn't have any advantages over other methods, and also has significant disadvantages.
Professor Straus explained:
According to the research, more than 90% of the studies agree that spanking is not good for children"Research shows that spanking corrects misbehavior. But it also shows that spanking does not work better than other modes of correction, such as time out, explaining, and depriving a child of privileges. Moreover, the research clearly shows that the gains from spanking come at a big cost."
Practice, not innate skill, makes for good mathematicians.
New research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim could have an effect on how math is taught.
If you want to be really good at all types of math, you need to practice them all. You can't trust your innate natural talent to do most of the job for you.
This might seem obvious to some, but it goes against the traditional view that if you are good at math, it is a skill that you are simply born with.
Professor Hermundur Sigmundsson at Department of Psychology is one of three researchers involved in the project. The results have been published in Psychological Reports.
The numbers
The researchers tested the math skills of 70 Norwegian fifth graders, aged 10.5 years on average. Their results suggest that it is important to practice every single kind of math subject to be good at all of them, and that these skills aren't something you are born with.
"We found support for a task specificity hypothesis. You become good at exactly what you practice," Sigmundsson says.
New research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim could have an effect on how math is taught.
If you want to be really good at all types of math, you need to practice them all. You can't trust your innate natural talent to do most of the job for you.
This might seem obvious to some, but it goes against the traditional view that if you are good at math, it is a skill that you are simply born with.
Professor Hermundur Sigmundsson at Department of Psychology is one of three researchers involved in the project. The results have been published in Psychological Reports.
The numbers
The researchers tested the math skills of 70 Norwegian fifth graders, aged 10.5 years on average. Their results suggest that it is important to practice every single kind of math subject to be good at all of them, and that these skills aren't something you are born with.
"We found support for a task specificity hypothesis. You become good at exactly what you practice," Sigmundsson says.
Horoscopes may be bad for you as negative readings promote self-indulgent behaviour as people attempt to escape their fate, scientists find
Astrology may seem like harmless fun - but a new study suggests following your star sign could be bad for you.
Consumers who read their horoscope daily were found to be more likely to exhibit impulsive or indulgent behaviour when their zodiac was negative, the research suggested.
This is because reading a poor outcome in your star sign makes you more susceptible to temptation, it is believed.
The study, published in the Journal of Consumer Research, showed that those who believed their fate could change were more prone to erratic decision-making following bad news in their zodiac.
It has long been thought that reading your star sign can improve mood and encourage people to undertake selfless activities.
However, scientists at the University of South Carolina and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, found the opposite effect.
A number of participants were presented with unfavourable star sign readings and asked to choose between either going to a party or cleaning their home
© Alamy
Star signs
Star signs Photo: Alamy
Star signs
Star signs Photo: Alamy
Consumers who read their horoscope daily were found to be more likely to exhibit impulsive or indulgent behaviour when their zodiac was negative, the research suggested.
This is because reading a poor outcome in your star sign makes you more susceptible to temptation, it is believed.
The study, published in the Journal of Consumer Research, showed that those who believed their fate could change were more prone to erratic decision-making following bad news in their zodiac.
It has long been thought that reading your star sign can improve mood and encourage people to undertake selfless activities.
However, scientists at the University of South Carolina and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, found the opposite effect.
A number of participants were presented with unfavourable star sign readings and asked to choose between either going to a party or cleaning their home
© Marley Kass and Michelle RosenthalAn image of the mouse neural response to odors (color) in the brain's smell center, known as the olfactory bulb.
The finding was surprising, said study researcher John McGann, a neuroscientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey. The sensory neurons are at the very beginning of the circuit that enables the perception of smell, far outside of conscious control, and yet they "learn" to tune into scary smells.
"The effects of learning can happen not just on behavior, but on sensory processing," McGann told LiveScience.
The McGregors prefer the term 'sociopath' over 'psychopath', although their recently published book discusses essentially the same condition, explaining how predators operate, why they're often difficult to spot, and the importance of recognising pathological behaviour for what it is. The Empathy Trap also challenges antisocial behaviour in everyday life and calls for more empathy among normal people, something that can help victims cope with the aftermath of destructive relationships by re-establishing healthy boundaries.
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The study investigated the effects of a day of intensive mindfulness practice in a group of experienced meditators, compared to a group of untrained control subjects who engaged in quiet non-meditative activities. After eight hours of mindfulness practice, the meditators showed a range of genetic and molecular differences, including altered levels of gene-regulating machinery and reduced levels of pro-inflammatory genes, which in turn correlated with faster physical recovery from a stressful situation.
"To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that shows rapid alterations in gene expression within subjects associated with mindfulness meditation practice," says study author Richard J. Davidson, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Comment: Improving one's ability to cope with stressful situations can already be achieved by regular practice with the breathing and meditation program Éiriú Eolas. Learn more about the many benefits of Éiriú Eolas here.