As far as I'm concerned, the most interesting question about religion isn't whether God exists but why so many people are religious. There are around 10,000 different religions, each of which is convinced that there's only one Truth and that they alone possess it. Hating people with a different faith seems to be part of belief. Around the year 1500, the church reformer Martin Luther described Jews as a "brood of vipers." Over the centuries the Christian hatred of the Jews led to pogroms and ultimately made the Holocaust possible. In 1947, over a million people were slaughtered when British India was partitioned into India for the Hindus and Pakistan for the Muslims. Nor has interfaith hatred diminished since then. Since the year 2000, 43 percent of civil wars have been of a religious nature.

Almost 64 percent of the world's population is Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, or Hindu. And faith is extremely tenacious. For many years, Communism was the only permitted belief in China and religion was banned, being regarded, in the tradition of Karl Marx, as the opium of the masses. But in 2007, one-third of Chinese people over the age of 16 said that they were religious. Since that figure comes from a state-controlled newspaper, the China Daily, the true number of believers is likely at least that high. Around 95 percent of Americans say that they believe in God, 90 percent pray, 82 percent believe that God can perform miracles, and over 70 percent believe in life after death. It's striking that only 50 percent believe in hell, which shows a certain lack of consistency. In the Netherlands, a much more secular country, the percentages are lower. A study carried out in April 2007 showed that in the space of 40 years, secularization had increased from 33 to 61 percent. Over half of the Dutch people doubt the existence of a higher power and are either agnostic or believe in an unspecified "something." Only 14 percent are atheists, the same percentage as Protestants. There are slightly more Catholics (16 percent).

A new study in which participants' brains were scanned before, during and five days after reading a novel has found persistent neurological changes (Berns et al., 2013).

The book - Robert Harris' Pompeii - was given to 19 people to read.

They were scanned every day, over 19 consecutive days, to assess the brain's resting state: in other words, what it's doing when it's doing nothing in particular.

The results, published in the journal Brain Connectivity, showed that there were changes in the brain's resting state that persisted after participants had finished reading the novel.

The lead author, Gregory Berns, explained:

"Even though the participants were not actually reading the novel while they were in the scanner, they retained this heightened connectivity. We call that a 'shadow activity,' almost like a muscle memory."

The heightened connectivity was seen in the areas of the brain associated with receptivity to language: the left temporal cortex. However, these changes in resting brain state were relatively short-lived.

The Polyvagal Theory

The autonomic nervous system is traditionally described as consisting of two antagonistic and balanced branches, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic system. The sympathetic system or the "fight or flight" arousal system kicks into gear when we perceive threats. When that happens your blood pressure increases, your muscles tense, your heart beats faster, and digestion slows down.

The parasympathetic system has been thought to be responsible for "rest-and-digest". Say it is a nice, sunny day and you decide to relax and take in the nice weather in a comfortable chair. In that situation your "rest and digest" response should cause your blood pressure to decrease, pulse rate to slow, and digestion to start.

Something else, however, is happening in this video.

Think models are effortlessly perfect glamour magnets lapping up the good life?

US model Carre Otis lets Vogue in on the truth about airbrushing, starvation, yellow teeth and sexual abuse...

When I was 18 and arriving on the modelling scene in the mid-80s, attention from the public felt sudden and surprising. After working so hard as a teenager in both Europe and the States, after so many rejections and failed "gosees"(castings), after the countless not-so-subtle suggestions from industry professionals that I just might not have "it", I was shocked when others started following my career. When I visited my agents, they'd hand me a stack of letters and I'd look over my shoulder, wondering if it was intended for the actual famous models in the other room. "Carr.," my agent said, her hands firmly planted on my shoulders, "You're a celebrity now. Get used to it." There were some kind letters, praising the art direction or aesthetics of a photo shoot. And there were some filthy ones in which men detailed what they'd like to do to my body and - equally upsetting - what they did to their own while staring at my image. Despite some of the more alarming aspects of the latter type, I was mostly flattered that by posing for a picture I had inspired absolute strangers to take time out and send me their thoughts.

But there was one type of letter that consistently left me uneasy: the type that made up about 80 per cent of my fan mail. It was the one from the young girl in the age range of 10 to 15, seeking my advice about how to become what I was only pretending to be.

I've been a massage therapist for many years, now. I know what people look like. People have been undressing for me for a long time. I know what you look like: a glance at you, and I can picture pretty well what you'd look like on my table.

Let's start here with what nobody looks like: nobody looks like the people in magazines or movies. Not even models. Nobody. Lean people have a kind of rawboned, unfinished look about them that is very appealing. But they don't have plump round breasts and plump round asses. You have plump round breasts and a plump round ass, you have a plump round belly and plump round thighs as well. That's how it works. (And that's very appealing too.)

Woman have cellulite. All of them. It's dimply and cute. It's not a defect. It's not a health problem. It's the natural consequence of not consisting of photoshopped pixels, and not having emerged from an airbrush.

Men have silly buttocks. Well, if most of your clients are women, anyway. You come to male buttocks and you say -- what, this is it? They're kind of scrawny and the tissue is jumpy because it's unpadded; you have to dial back the pressure, or they'll yelp.

Chests puffing up with pride - and happiness felt head to toe - are sensations as real as they are universal. And now we can make an atlas of them.

Researchers have long known that emotions are connected to a range of physiological changes, from nervous job candidates' sweaty palms to the racing pulse that results from hearing a strange noise at night. But new research reveals that emotional states are universally associated with certain bodily sensations, regardless of individuals' culture or language.

Once More With Feeling

More than 700 participants in Finland, Sweden and Taiwan participated in experiments aimed at mapping their bodily sensations in connection with specific emotions. Participants viewed emotion-laden words, videos, facial expressions and stories. They then self-reported areas of their bodies that felt different than before they'd viewed the material. By coloring in two computer-generated silhouettes - one to note areas of increased bodily sensation and the second to mark areas of decreased sensation - participants were able to provide researchers with a broad base of data showing both positive and negative bodily responses to different emotions.

Researchers found statistically discrete areas for each emotion tested, such as happiness, contempt and love, that were consistent regardless of respondents' nationality. Afterward, researchers applied controls to reduce the risk that participants may have been biased by sensation-specific phrases common to many languages (such as the English "cold feet" as a metaphor for fear, reluctance or hesitation). The results are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

I once had a friend whose life was being ruined by a powerful and irrational fear. He went to see his doctor about the physical tremors that he had become convinced were the first stages of a nasty terminal condition. The GP recognized the illness as hypochondria but he decided the usual treatment would not work. You see, my friend was too intelligent for cognitive behavioral therapy.

Now before readers who have themselves tried and benefited from CBT protest, let me explain that I tell this story because it reveals several things about how fraught the concept of intelligence is. In many ways, my friend was very far from intelligent. Most obviously, why on earth did he not consider the possibility that nothing more sinister than his huge caffeine intake was giving him the shakes, which did indeed turn out to be the case? And if he was so smart, why the obviously irrational fear in the first place?

When the GP diagnosed excessive intelligence, he clearly had a very specific form of it in mind. Most of us would call it cleverness: the ability to work through very complex and convoluted chains of reasoning, irrespective of whether it leads to truth or not. Cognitive therapy works by challenging our irrational automatic negative thoughts. But if you're clever, this won't work, because all you do is come up with ever more elaborate rationalizations for why they are in fact rational after all.

Political scientists found that Hollywood movies can change attitudes more than advertising and news reports

The researchers noted a leftward shift in attitudes after the participants saw a film with a liberal message

Sentimental films make you more liberal, research suggests.

Political scientists found that Hollywood movies are better able to change attitudes - in a left-wing direction - than advertising or news reports.

Todd Adkins, of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, said audiences seemed to turn off their critical faculties when they reach the cinema.

Viewers come expecting to be entertained and are not prepared to encounter and evaluate political messages as they would during campaign advertisements or network news,' he said. More...

Being pulled into the world of a gripping novel can trigger actual, measurable changes in the brain that linger for at least five days after reading, scientists have said.

The new research, carried out at Emory University in the US, found that reading a good book may cause heightened connectivity in the brain and neurological changes that persist in a similar way to muscle memory.

The changes were registered in the left temporal cortex, an area of the brain associated with receptivity for language, as well as the the primary sensory motor region of the brain.

Neurons of this region have been associated with tricking the mind into thinking it is doing something it is not, a phenomenon known as grounded cognition - for example, just thinking about running, can activate the neurons associated with the physical act of running.

"The neural changes that we found associated with physical sensation and movement systems suggest that reading a novel can transport you into the body of the protagonist," said neuroscientist Professor Gregory Berns, lead author of the study.

Tablet computers are so easy to use that even a 3-year-old can master them.

And that has some pediatricians and other health experts worried.

Since navigating a tablet generally doesn't require the ability to type or read, children as young as toddlers can quickly learn how to stream movies, scroll through family photos or play simple games.

That ease-of-use makes tablets -and smartphones- popular with busy parents who use them to pacify their kids during car rides, restaurant outings or while they're at home trying to get dinner on the table. And many feel a little less guilty about it if they think there's educational value to the apps and games their children use.

The devices are expected to rank among the top holiday gifts for children this year. Gadget makers such as Samsung have introduced tablets specifically designed for kids and many manufacturers of adult tablets now include parental controls. Those products are in addition to the slew of kiddie tablets produced by electronic toy makers such as LeapFrog, Vtech and Toys R Us.

But some experts note there's no evidence that screen time - whether from a TV or tablet - provides any educational or developmental benefits for babies and toddlers. Yet it takes away from activities that do promote brain development, such as non-electronic toys and adult interaction.