Geeky, cheeky, serious or plain? What's the reasoning behind the photo you choose to place on the social networking site Facebook - or the photo you give to friends and family?

It's just one topic to be explored by Judy Weiser, a world authority on the emotional content of photographs, when she visits the University of Derby this month for a public workshop on Phototherapy.

Judy Weiser, a globally renowned psychologist and art therapist, who has been using photos to assist her therapy practice for more than 30 years, is visiting the UK this autumn to take part in a series of international lectures and teach two workshops in this subject area.

There are two types of ingredients in shampoo. One type cleans your hair. The other type strokes your emotions. I'm holding a bottle of Pantene Pro V, one of the world's most popular shampoos. Of the 22 ingredients in this bottle of shampoo, three clean hair. The rest are in the bottle not for the hair, but for the psychology of the person using the shampoo. At least two-thirds of this bottle, by volume, was put there just to make me feel good.

The world spends around $230 billion on beauty products every year. Of this figure, $40 billion go to shampoo purchases. North Americans blow almost $11 billion on shampoo and conditioner each year. So most soap manufacturers aren't willing to rely on a product that merely works. The bigger job is convincing the consumer that their soap is adding value to the consumer's life. So shampoo bottles include extra concoctions aimed at convincing the man or woman in the shower that the soap is more "luxurious" or "effective." Because beautiful hair doesn't just happen.

Dr Nicholas Emler, a social psychologist, said it was fundamental to being human and was the reason we developed our unique ability to talk. He believes it is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.

Speaking at the British Science Festival, he claimed that language was developed to allow us to share social information, effectively to gossip.

But despite its "dismal reputation" this was not a bad thing as it allowed us to build far bigger, richer and complex societies than other creatures.

Researchers from the University of Maine reported in a journal published by the American Heart Association, Hypertension, that mental function is measurably affected by high blood pressure in otherwise healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 83. The study was begun in 1974 by Merrill Elias and David Streeten, Professor of Medicine, of the Health Sciences Center, State University of New York at Syracuse and spanned 20 years.

In the same issue of Hypertension, an editorial from medical researchers in Belgium and the Netherlands said the Maine-Syracuse Longitudinal Study (MSLS) of the last 20 years breaks new ground and has far reaching public health implications. Other studies have measured high blood pressure, hypertension and high pulse pressure in older adults and found worse cognitive performance than those having normal readings, but none had examined both younger and older individuals over an extended time period.

A more recent study conducted on participants over the age of 45 underscores the association between high blood pressure and reduced mental ability. For every 10-point increase in diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number in a blood pressure reading), the odds of mental impairment increase by 7 percent, though it's not clear why.

A new study found that obese people have 8 percent less brain tissue than normal weight individuals, and those who are classified as overweight have 4 percent less brain tissue.

Researchers called this "severe brain degeneration" and they found these brains were not only smaller, but that they had aged prematurely as well. The brains of the obese and overweight looked 16 and 8 years respectively beyond the brain age of normal weight individuals.

Bad diet and an increasing reliance on processed foods were cited as the primary cause of obesity. But, have you ever thought about why a bad diet is a bad diet? Largely, it's due to all of the man-made chemicals in it.

People with Alzheimer's disease who develop an infection need to be treated as soon as possible to prevent it worsening their dementia, according to research conducted by Alzheimer's Society

The research found a link between common infections, such as a cold, stomach bug or urine infection and an increase in inflammation like reactions in the brain which led to an increased rate of cognitive decline.

Researchers at the University of Southampton investigated how inflammatory proteins released during an infection might affect the brain. Results showed that people who got an infection had twice the rate of cognitive decline as people without infections.

The learning ability of mice and their sensitivity to cocaine are influenced by the shape of their brain cells, Yale University researchers report in the Sept. 7-13 issue of the journal of Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.

Researchers had previously shown that cocaine can affect the shape of brain cells in mice, but it was unknown whether the change in the structure of neurons influenced behavior.

They do, according to findings of the Yale team of Jane Taylor, professor of psychiatry, Anthony Koleske, a professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry, and neurobiology and Shannon Gourley, a postdoctoral fellow in psychiatry.

A new study in animals demonstrates that a diet rich in coconut oil protects against 'insulin resistance' (an impaired ability of cells to respond to insulin) in muscle and fat. The diet also avoids the accumulation of body fat caused by other high fat diets of similar calorie content. Together these findings are important because obesity and insulin resistance are major factors leading to the development of Type 2 diabetes.

The study is also interesting because it helps explain human studies showing that people who incorporate medium chain 'fatty acids', such as those found in coconut oil, into their diets can lose body fat.

Dr Nigel Turner and Associate Professor Jiming Ye, from Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research, compared fat metabolism and insulin resistance in mice fed coconut oil and lard based diets. Their findings are now published online in the international journal Diabetes.

In a study of whether neuropsychological changes occur following deployment to war zones, post-traumatic stress disorder appeared to be associated with attention deficits in soldiers one year after returning from Iraq, according to a report in the September issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. In addition, intense combat experiences were associated with faster reaction times regardless of how recently a soldier was deployed.

Previous research has suggested that as soldiers face prolonged stressful and life-threatening situations, changes in their brains direct their cognitive (thinking, learning and memory) resources toward survival, according to background information in the article. For instance, they may respond to dangerous events more quickly while losing the ability to pay attention, learn and remember events not related to combat. "However, it remains unknown whether deployment-related neuropsychological changes persist over time, are associated with stress-related factors (e.g., combat intensity, posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD] symptoms and depressive reactions) or are better accounted for by demographic and contextual variables," the authors write.

Brian P. Marx, Ph.D., of Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System and Boston University School of Medicine, and colleagues studied 268 male and female regular active-duty soldiers who served between 2003 and 2006. All the soldiers were given neuropsychological tests measuring response time, attention and memory before and after deployment. A group of 164 was assessed both immediately and one year following their return, whereas a second group of 104 returned more recently and were assessed before deployment and then a median (midpoint) of 122 days after returning. The assessments also documented demographic and military information, risk factors for neuropsychological disorders and combat intensity and emotional distress.

Childhood bullying and victimization appear to predict future psychiatric problems in both males and females although females appear more likely to be affected regardless of pre-existing psychiatric problems, according to a report in the September issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

"Bullying can be defined as an aggressive act embodying an imbalance of power in which the victims cannot defend themselves accompanied by an element of repetition," according to background information in the article. "Bullying and victimization are associated with poorer family functioning, interparental violence and parental maltreatment" and often result in troubled outcomes for both bullies and victims. Although there have been studies on the effects of bullying, "there are no previous population-based studies that examined late adolescence or adulthood outcomes of childhood bullying among both males and females."

Andre Sourander, M.D., Ph.D., of Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland, and colleagues studied associations between bullying and victimization in childhood (at age 8) and later psychiatric hospitalization and treatment with antipsychotic medication (from ages 13 to 24) in 5,038 Finnish children who participated in the nationwide Finnish 1981 Birth Cohort Study. Information was gathered from parents, teachers, participants' self-reports and a national register of hospital and medication records.