Sleep Cherry-picks Memories, Boosts Cleverness. Previous research had shown that sleep helps people consolidate their memories, fixing them in the brain so we can retrieve them later. (Read about secrets of why we sleep in magazine. ) But the new study, a review based on new studies as well as past research on sleep and memory, suggests that sleep also transforms memories in ways that make them somewhat less accurate but more useful in the long run. For example, sleep-enabled memories may help people produce insights, draw inferences, and foster abstract thought during waking hours. (Related: "Dreams Make You Smarter, More Creative, Studies Suggest. " ) "The sleeping brain isn't stupid—it doesn't just consolidate everything you put into it, but calculates what to remember and what to forget," said study leader Jessica Payne , a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. (Also see: "Naps Clear Brain's Inbox, Improve Learning.
" ) (Take magazine's sleep quiz. ) But there are dark sides to such selectivity. Coffee and a sweet treat to think better? Caffeine and glucose combined improves the efficiency of brain activity. The combination of caffeine and glucose can improve the efficiency of brain activity, according to a recent study in which functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to identify the neural substrate for the combined effects of these two substances.
The study, which was published in the journal Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental, is led by the researchers Josep M. Serra Grabulosa, from the Department of Psychiatry and Clinical Psychobiology at the UB and a member of the August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBAPS); Ana Adan, a lecturer from the same department and a member of the UB's Institute of Brain, Cognition and Behaviour (IR3C); and Carles Falcón, a member of the Biomedical Research Networking Center in Bioengineering, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine (CIBER-BBN). Could It Be? Spooky Experiments That 'See' The Future : Krulwich Wonders… Later today you are going to do something, something you don't know about yet. Yet somehow, it's already happened. Somehow, it's already affected you. Huh? One of the most respected, senior and widely published professors of psychology, Daryl Bem of Cornell, has just published an article that suggests that people — ordinary people — can be altered by experiences they haven't had yet.
Time, he suggests, is leaking. The Future has slipped, unannounced, into the Present. And he thinks he can prove it. Already critics are jumping up and down, saying this can't be, time is not porous, the experiments are flawed. Two Very Queer Experiments But while we're waiting, let me tell you what he did. Dr. Experiment Number 1: Who's Got the Porn? The first is a computer quiz. 100 Cornell students, 50 males, 50 females, were invited to sit in front of some computers. This is an experiment that tests for ESP. OK, that's two curtains.
But that is not how it turned out. Sexual Arousal Going Backwards in Time? How Psychopaths Choose Their Victims. Recently my journalistic career brought me in contact with a man who, when I first met him, seemed to be the very embodiment of a charming and well-heeled gentleman. He is a natural raconteur, good-looking, athletic, intellectually curious, financially successful, and wittily self-deprecating.
What few people know about him is that he has left behind a trail of emotional destruction, having spent decades abusing vulnerable individuals for his own twisted purposes. Psychopaths, or sociopaths as some prefer to call them, are well known figures in our culture. We're fascinated by their predatory relationship with the rest of humanity. Their chilling alien-ness makes them convenient villains in books, film, and television. When we encounter them in real life, we think: There really are monsters roaming the world.
But as my own recent experience has taught me, the crimes of the psychopath are not merely a function of the perpetrator. Monkey Business: Can Science Explain Our Celebrity Obsession? Imagine the following situation. You're standing in a crowded checkout line at the grocery store when your eye catches sight of the magazine rack. Each magazine is filled with glossy photos of Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Britney Spears, and other equally attractive and famous celebrities. You pick up a copy of The National Enquirer and start casually flipping through it, only to realize that you could easily move to another checkout line which has just opened up. But for some reason, you don't move. You would rather wait in line looking through your tabloid than move to an open line and therefore leave the grocery store sooner.
With the intention of trying to understand how the brain obtains and processes visual data regarding social status and how this information affects decision-making, neurobiologists have recently provided an answer to this burning question (1). WWW Sources 1) 3) Monkeys Pay Per View. What Mimicking One's Language Style May Mean About the Relationship. Oct. 4, 2010 AUSTIN, Texas — People match each other's language styles more during happier periods of their relationship than at other times, according to new research from psychologists at The University of Texas at Austin. "When two people start a conversation, they usually begin talking alike within a matter of seconds," says James Pennebaker, psychology professor and co-author of the study. "This also happens when people read a book or watch a movie. As soon as the credits roll, they find themselves talking like the author or the central characters. " This tendency is called language style matching or LSM.
"Because style matching is automatic," says Ireland, a psychology graduate student, "it serves as an unobtrusive window into people's close relationships with others. " Ireland and Pennebaker tracked the language used by almost 2,000 college students as they responded to class assignments written in very different language styles. Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our own decisions?