Psychology news

• After learning new words, brain sees them as pictures

  24-03-2015 23:36
  When we look at a known word, our brain sees it like a picture, not a group of letters needing to be processed. That's the finding from a new study that shows the brain learns words quickly by tuning neurons to respond to a complete word, not parts of it.
  
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• Leaders and their followers tick in sync

  24-03-2015 20:36
  
  Great leaders are often good communicators. In the process of communication, the relationship between leaders and their followers develops spontaneously, according to new research. When a member becomes the group leader, the leader's brain activity in the left temporo-parietal junction, known as representing others' mental states, begins to synchronize with that in the same area of their followers. Based on interpersonal neural synchronization, the researchers were even able to predict who would
  
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• Hormone level predicts how the brain processes social information

  24-03-2015 20:33
  People with higher levels of oxytocin have greater activity in regions of the brain that support social cognition, a psychology study indicates. The study has implications for better understanding how oxytocin interacts with cognition in both healthy people and people with disordered social behavior. For example, low levels of oxytocin have previously been associated with social deficits often found in individuals with autism spectrum disorders.
  
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• Sheila Ernst obituary

  24-03-2015 18:46
  
  Pioneer of radical and feminist psychotherapySheila Ernst, who has died aged 73, was a pioneer of radical and feminist psychotherapy, and a leading group analyst. She worked for many years at the Women’s Therapy Centre in London and also taught at Birkbeck College, University of London.Through her writing and clinical work, she explored the ways in which the social and political world enters into our deepest and most unconscious feelings. She steered a path between the tendency of therapy to r
  
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• Music to the ears of dementia suffers: learning to play saxophone after diagnosis

  24-03-2015 17:07
  Researchers have revealed details of an usual case that offers new insights into frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The story revolves around a patient who, with no prior musical training, learned to play the saxophone after being diagnosed with a behavioural variant of FTD.
  
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• People who suffer migraine headaches may be at double the risk of stroke

  24-03-2015 16:13
  People who suffer migraine headaches with auras are at roughly double the risk of suffering the most common type of stroke. The risk is more than tripled in migraine sufferers who smoke. And migraineurs who smoke and use birth control pills are seven times more likely to suffer strokes.
  
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• Unbound Medicine and Johns Hopkins Extend Digital Publishing Relationship - Unbound™ Platform Used to Create and Distribute the Johns Hopkins Psychiatry Guide

  24-03-2015 16:00 via pr.com
  Unbound Medicine has extended its digital publishing relationship, with Johns Hopkins Medicine through the release of the Johns Hopkins Psychiatry Guide. This new resource was developed by a team of physicians at the world-renowned Johns Hopkins Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic using Unbound’s online authoring system, uPub™, then published to the Unbound Platform for distribution on the Web and mobile devices. [PR.com]
  
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• Crave chocolate? A 15-minute walk will magic those bad feelings away

  24-03-2015 16:00
  Researchers looking at how to regulate snacking behaviors have found that a short, brisk walk reduces cravings for high-calorie sugary snacks.
  
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• Mutations taking place only in brain identified as cause of intractable epilepsy

  24-03-2015 15:14
  
  Brain somatic mutations in the MTOR gene Researchers propose a targeted therapy to lessen epileptic seizures by suppressing the activation of mTOR kinase, a signaling protein in the brain.
  
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• Milk could be good for your brain

  24-03-2015 15:14
  A correlation between milk consumption and the levels of a naturally-occurring antioxidant called glutathione in the brain has been discovered in older, healthy adults.
  
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• Brain tumor cells decimated by mitochondrial 'smart bomb'

  24-03-2015 15:10
  
  An experimental drug that attacks brain tumor tissue by crippling the cells' energy source called the mitochondria has passed early tests in animal models and human tissue cultures, say scientists.
  
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• Tau a driver of Alzheimer's disease, study of thousands of brains reveals

  24-03-2015 13:43
  By examining more than 3,600 postmortem brains, researchers have found that the progression of dysfunctional tau protein drives the cognitive decline and memory loss seen in Alzheimer’s disease.
  
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• The only thing worse than never having a choice is always having to choose | Oliver Burkeman

  24-03-2015 13:15
  
  If it’s paternalistic for people in authority to make choices for me, is it also paternalistic for them to insist that I do the choosing for my own good?Choice can be a mixed blessing – as you know if you’ve ever spent an evening browsing hundreds of titles on Netflix only to repair despondently to bed without watching a movie. One famous if controversial study found that people were much more likely to purchase a jar of jam when faced with a choice of just six flavors than with 24, which
  
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• Psychologists welcome overhaul of children and young people's mental health services

  24-03-2015 10:00
  The British Psychological Society welcomes the announcement of a five-year plan for a complete overhaul of mental health services for children and young people in England.
  
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• Stress management techniques improve long-term mood and quality of life for breast cancer patients

  24-03-2015 09:00
  Women given the opportunity to learn stress management techniques during treatment may benefit well into survivorshipA new study shows that providing women with skills to manage stress early in...
  
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• Power naps produce a significant improvement in memory performance

  24-03-2015 08:00
  Generations of school students have gone to bed the night before a maths exam or a vocabulary test with their algebra book or vocabulary notes tucked under their pillow in the hope that the knowledge...
  
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• Men's preference for certain body types has evolutionary roots

  24-03-2015 08:00
  A psychology study from The University of Texas at Austin sheds new light on today's standards of beauty, attributing modern men's preferences for women with a curvy backside to prehistoric...
  
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