After my third trip across the county this month, I plan to stay put for another couple of weeks! The APS convention this year was wonderful in Washington, D.C. and our team project ( including 9 or so Cal Poly student researchers) was video interviewed by APS! How cool is that!
Here is what I am reading today:
“In an award address on May 28 at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in Washington, D.C., University of Michigan psychologist John Jonides presented new findings showing that practicing this kind of task for about 20 minutes each day for 20 days significantly improves performance on a standard test of fluid intelligence—the ability to reason and solve new problems, which is a crucial element of general intelligence. And this improvement lasted for up to three months.”
“Recalling painful memories while under the influence of the drug metyrapone reduces the brain’s ability to re-record the negative emotions associated with them, according to University of Montreal researchers at the Centre for Studies on Human Stress of Louis-H. Lafontaine Hospital. The team’s study challenges the theory that memories cannot be modified once they are stored in the brain.”
“Many coaches and physiologists believe that a longer warm up provides an increase in muscle temperature, acceleration of oxygen uptake kinetics, increased anaerobic metabolism and a process called postactivation potentiation of the muscles. However, very few studies have studied if warm ups has a detrimental effect on performance.”
Archaeologists recovered the first anchor from what’s believed to be the wreck of the pirate Blackbeard’s flagship off the North Carolina coast Friday, a move that might change plans about how to save the rest of the almost 300-year-old artifacts from the central part of the ship.
5 Comments
noheli20 · May 31, 2011 at 3:45 pm
Drug may help overwrite bad memories
I know that the this drug metrapone can be used to help some people rid themselves of traumatic memories, but supressing the levels of cortisol which is involved in memory recall, but I don’t know if I find this ethical, how is it known for a fact that it will only supress the negative memories? What if this begins to rid other memories, it would be a drug inducing memory degeneration.
I think people should stick to therapy, and overcome their negative thoughts. I don’t think it would be healthy to try to erase them
noheli20 · May 31, 2011 at 3:58 pm
When it comes to warm- up, less is more,
Speaking from someone who did track for many years, I often saw a lot of my teammates warm up for an hour before a race. I always arrived late so I couldn’t dedicate as much time to warm ups, but it didn’t effect my times. I felt more ready with the little warms up than I did with long tiring ones. I do understand that there needs to be oxygen increase in my muscles, but I agree with this study in the fact the warmups don’t need to be as long as some people do them
“On the basis of this study I would suggest that sprint athletes should start thinking about adopting a shorter and less strenuous warm up for better performance.”
Its good to know that all these years I can prove that I wasn’t crazy when I felt like a better runner with less.
docejvh · May 31, 2011 at 8:26 pm
In lecture today the “remote associate’s test” was introduced to see how quickly someone could respond and find a logically linking word to three separate words. This showed that someone who was more creative could find a connection quicker. There was also a comment about how comedians tend to do well with this test also, and because of their creativity tend to make us laugh because they take a scenario and go a step further than we would expect. So I was wondering, where is the boundary line between that extra step in comedy and schizophrenia where it just isn’t funny anymore? Why aren’t there any schizophrenic comedians if we find humor in crossing the boundaries of normal every day events? Is it that schizophrenics just don’t aspire to be on stage, or have there been attempts but the audinece is just too wierded out? Or are there schizophrenic comedians that I’m just not aware of?
mdean · May 31, 2011 at 9:57 pm
I am a big fan of major cycling races like the Tour de France, and I see videos of these athletes warming up for what seems like ages. I was surprised to find out that scientific studies hadn’t really been done(until now) on the effect of warm-up length on peak performance. I had assumed that science had proved the benefits of long warm ups since many athletes do this, but clearly “less is more”.
Robert Landon · June 5, 2011 at 10:07 pm
I definitely agree with you, noheli20, regarding the effects of metrapone. I think that the clinical use of this drug would be ethically challenged, as changing or “rewriting” memories seems very unnatural, no matter the circumstances they were created in. With that said, I understand how someone with a disorder such as PTSD can be plagued with ill created memories and would want a chance to be free from them. The way I interpreted the article, the drug actually decreases recall from the event, not just changing perception of the memory. That seems to be a big “red flag” to me. I am, however, open to more research in this field, as a variation of this treatment may help many people in need.
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