The results showed that as participants’ stress levels changed, so did the age they felt.
How to stop meetings destroying productivity.
It is hard to get rid of stuff that has memories attached to it.
Even the oldest brains are still producing new neurons.
The type of people who know the least about politics.
Is 50 old? Young people have the most skewed perceptions about aging.
Left-handed people prone to certain mental illnesses.
Left-handed people prone to certain mental illnesses.
People with psychotic disorders are much more likely to be left-handed, research finds.
Among people with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, fully 40% are left-handed.
Among the general population, around one-in-ten people are left-handed.
People diagnosed with mood disorders, such as depression, are no more likely to be left-handed than the usual rate.
Scientists cannot explain why left-handed people seem prone to certain mental illnesses.
Dr Jadon Webb, the study’s first author, said:
“In general, people with psychosis are those who have lost touch with reality in some way, through hallucinations, delusions, or false beliefs, and it is notable that this symptom constellation seems to correlate with being left-handed.
Finding biomarkers such as this can hopefully enable us to identify and differentiate mental disorders earlier, and perhaps one day tailor treatment in more effective ways.”
The 107 people in the study were simply asked which hand they wrote with.
The participants were all outpatients at a psychiatric clinic.
Dr Jadon Webb said:
“This told us much of what we needed to know in a very simple, practical way.
Doing a simple analysis meant that there were no obstacles to participating and we had a very high participation rate of 97%.
Patients dealing with serious symptoms of psychosis might have had a harder time participating in a more complicated set of questions or tests.
By keeping the survey simple, we were able to get an accurate snapshot of a hard-to-study subgroup of mentally ill people — those who are often poverty-stricken with very poor family and community support.”
The study was published in the journal SAGE Open (Webb et al., 2013).
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The results of 46,034 brain scans are in.
The results of 46,034 brain scans are in.
Women’s brains are more active than men’s, new research finds.
Results from 46,034 brain scans found that women’s brains had, on average, more activity in many regions.
These include the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in impulse control and focus.
Also, women had more activity in the limbic areas of the brain, which are involved in emotion, including anxiety and general mood.
However, the areas involved in vision and coordination were more active in men.
The differences may help to explain why women are better, on average, at empathising and self-control.
Greater activity in the areas related to mood may help to explain women’s greater susceptibility to mood disorders like depression and anxiety.
Dr Daniel G. Amen, the study’s first author, said:
“This is a very important study to help understand gender-based brain differences.
The quantifiable differences we identified between men and women are important for understanding gender-based risk for brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Using functional neuroimaging tools, such as SPECT, are essential to developing precision medicine brain treatments in the future.”
The study used SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography).
People were scanned while at rest and while performing cognitive tasks.
The study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (Amen et al., 2017).
Certain words can reduce both social pain and physical pain.
Certain words can reduce both social pain and physical pain.
Swearing can help to relieve hurt feelings and an aching heart, new research has found.
Swearing aloud helps to quickly reduce various types of ‘social distress’ such as being socially excluded.
The experiment was carried out to test ‘Pain Overlap Theory’.
This is the idea that physical pain is processed in a similar way by the brain as social pain, the kind you get from being rejected or embarrassed.
Dr Michael Philipp, the study’s first author, explained the results:
“The results suggest that socially distressed participants who swore out loud experienced less social pain than those who did not.
Previous research suggests that social stressors, like rejection and ostracism, not only feel painful but also increase peoples’ sensitivity to physical pain.
Pain Overlap Theory suggests that social distress feels painful because both social and physical pain is biologically coupled.
Pain overlap theory predicts that anything affecting physical pain should have similar effects on social pain.”
In the study some people shouted out swear words in response to social pain.
Others shouted out non-swear words.
Swearing reduced the social pain and also reduced people’s sensitivity to physical pain.
This suggests that physical and social pain are related, as the theory suggests.
It means the hurt you feel when someone gives you the silent treatment is, in some sense, similar to that caused by banging your thumb with a hammer.
Dr Philipp said:
“There is still speculation about why swearing aloud has the effect it does on physical pain and social pain.
What’s clear is that swearing is not a completely maladaptive reaction to a sore thumb or a broken heart.”
Dr Philipp was also quick to warn that swearing all the time reduces its power.
So save it up for when you really need it.
The study was published in the European Journal of Social Psychology (Phillip et al., 2017).
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