readings in psychology for january 11 2011

It's snowing in Tennessee and Virginia! My Viking daughters seem to thrive in it!

Here are my readings for today:

• if you gesture, it changes your thoughts

“Sometimes it’s almost impossible to talk without using your hands. These gestures seem to be important to how we think. They provide a visual clue to our thoughts and, a new theory suggests, may even change our thoughts by grounding them in action.”

• music is like sex?

“Listening to a favorite pop song or classic rock hit can trigger the same chemical reactions in the body as having sex, eating good food or taking drugs, according to Canadian researchers cited Monday in The Montreal Gazette.”

• babies process language like we do

“Babies, even those too young to talk, can understand many of the words that adults are saying — and their brains process them in a grown-up way.”

• watching t.v. is harmful to the heart

“Spending too much leisure time in front of a TV or computer screen appears to dramatically increase the risk for heart disease and premature death from any cause, perhaps regardless of how much exercise one gets, according to a new study published in the January 18, 2011, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.”

• love can last

“Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) showing group brain activations of individuals recently fallen in love (at left) compared with long-term married and in love individuals shows similar neural activity in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the brain. Long-term married individuals also show activation within another area of the brain (substantia nigra).”

• Fear dentistry, science can help!

“An innovative device which cancels out the noise of the dental drill could spell the end of people’s anxiety about trips to the dentist, according to experts at King’s College London, Brunel University and London South Bank University, who pioneered the invention.”

• fertile women like macho faces

“When their romantic partners are not quintessentially masculine, women in their fertile phase are more likely to fantasize about masculine-looking men than are women paired with George Clooney types.”

• facebook neurons?

“…Like Facebook, these neuronal networks have a small population of highly active members who give and receive more information than the majority of other members,…”