Laura’s Psychology Blog

Here are some of the stories going on right now! :

• cheaper and better satelites made from toys

“Instead of investing in their own computer research and development, engineers at the NASA Ames Research Center are looking to cellphones and off-the-shelf toys to power the future of low-cost satellite technology.”

• addiction drugs may boost weight loss

“The Lancet reports that Naltrexone, commonly used to treat alcoholics and heroin addicts, and the anti-smoking drug bupropion led to greater weight loss than diet and exercise alone.”

• dopamine determines impulsive behavior

“….serial daters might perpetually be living at the whim of their latest impulse, and now research is getting to the biological basis of their seemingly random behavior. 

• more than a feeling

“…anyone who has felt the sting of tears while listening to a bugler play “Taps,” swooned to a love song or cringed with irritation as a neighbor cranked the heavy metal knows that music can exert a powerful emotive effect.”

• reading terrorists minds

“If the new test used by the Northwestern researchers had been used in such a real-world situation with the same type of outcome that occurred in the lab, the study suggests, culpability extracted from the chatter could be confirmed.”

• the good and the bad in the hands of politicians

“In laboratory tests, right- and left-handers associate positive ideas like honesty and intelligence with their dominant side of space and negative ideas with their non-dominant side,” says Daniel Casasanto of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. To find out whether people link ‘good’ with ‘dominant’ beyond the laboratory, Casasanto and co-author Kyle Jasmin examined spontaneous gestures during positive and negative speech in the final debates of the most recent US presidential elections.”

• Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel holds visuals of brainstem and spinal chord

“Michelangelo, the 16th century master painter and accomplished anatomist, appears to have hidden an image of the brainstem and spinal cord in a depiction of God in the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers reports. These findings by a neurosurgeon and a medical illustrator, published in the May Neurosurgery, may explain long controversial and unusual features of one of the frescoes’ figures.”

My dissertation advisor was fond of repeating a quote attributed to Albert Einstein–”If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.”  One might assume that physics is harder to explain than psychology, but that is not always the case. In spite of over 30 years in the classroom, I occasionally find myself thinking–there has to be a better way to get this across to students.

Enter Wray Herbert, who combines a true love of things psychological and extensive experience in journalism. Not only is Wray a wonderful blogger, who participated as our discussant in our Psychology Blogging symposium at 2008 APS, but he has now ventured into writing books about psychology. His latest is On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind’s Hard-Wired Habits, due out September 14 for Random House. In On Second Thought, Wray tackles the extensive, and often difficult and jargon-infested, literature on decision-making. Although our ancestors obviously had good enough decision-making skills to survive, they left us with some predispositions that lead us in some seemingly crazy directions–launching the Challenger, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and those everyday little things we decide to do that leave us scratching our heads later–What was I thinking?

Time to brush up on those decision-making skills...

We can all brush up on decision-making, and finding out where we go astray is a terrific first step. Wray not only educates with his usual classy clarity, but provides real-world examples that draw you along, learning a lot without really being aware that you’re learning a lot. You can check out an excerpt, in which he applies decision-making theories to a real-life case of backcountry skiers versus an avalanche.  Teaching social is going to be a lot easier this year. Thanks, Wray!

We have a beautiful grape trellis with Concord Grapes running 30 feet or more. This may not sound too unusual, unless you realize what part of California we are in. CLICK on the picture to see what I am really thinking about!

Here are a couple of stories that might be amusing! :

• More foods hinder rather than aid sleep

“The bad news for people trying to talk about food and sleep is that . . . generally it’s hard to find foods that help with sleep,” says Michael Grandner, a sleep researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Sleep and Respiratory Neurobiology.”

• did you give your lemur a contraceptive today?

“Doses of Depo-Provera, a common contraceptive for people, shift the odor secretions of female lemurs so dramatically that their scents no longer give clear cues to kinship, identity and genetic quality”

after 3 monthes of use, I still love the iPad!

Here are a few readings for today:

• can you ask a pig if a glass is half full?

“Experts from the university’s School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development have shown for the first time that a pig’s mood mirrors how content he is, highlighting that pigs are capable of complex emotions which are directly influenced by their living conditions.”

• the real cost of college texbooks!

“Why do new college textbooks cost so much? It’s a perennial complaint, but with the growing concerns over student debt levels and the spiraling costs of higher education generally, students and their parents are not the only ones asking that question.”

No, I only WISH I was golfing at St. Andrews in Scotland! CLICK on the picture to see St. Andrews today!

Here a couple of fun reads for today:

• mind meld enables good conversation!

“Why does human conversation come so easily? A new study chalks it up to a sort of “mind meld” between participants. Researchers have found that the brains of speakers and listeners become synchronized as they converse and that this “neural coupling” is key to effective communication.”

• science of a boxing knockout

“But being on the losing end of a KO punch can damage a lot more than a pugilist’s pride—research suggests that the blows that cause knockouts can be debilitating to a boxer’s short and long-term health”