readings in psychology for december 17th 2010

One of my favorite midday meals is the Spanish Tortilla! CLICK on the picture to read about this wonderful meal!

Here are a few items for today:

• beauty sleep??

“To investigate whether sleep deprived people are perceived as less healthy, less attractive, and more tired than after a normal night’s sleep.”

• during a fight, how do you perceive your partner’s emotion

“Some of the most intense emotions people feel occur during a conflict in a romantic relationship. Now, new research from Baylor University psychologists shows that how each person perceives the other partner’s emotion during a conflict greatly influences different types of thoughts, feelings and reactions in themselves.”

• a brain damaged woman

“She’s not afraid to handle snakes. She’s not afraid of the “The Blair Witch Project,” ”The Shining,” or “Arachnophobia.” When she visited a haunted house, it was a monster who was afraid of her.”

• what makes memories stronger? sleep!

“As humans, we spend about a third of our lives asleep. So there must be a point to it, right? Scientists have found that sleep helps consolidate memories, fixing them in the brain so we can retrieve them later. Now, new research is showing that sleep also seems to reorganize memories, picking out the emotional details and reconfiguring the memories to help you produce new and creative ideas, according to the authors of an article in Current Directions in Psychological Science.”