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Targeting metacognition-our beliefs about thoughts-might alleviate mood disorders and even schizophrenia

The size of a small cauliflower, the human brain is the most complex organ in your body. It squeezes out 70,000 thoughts a day. But where does it store information? And how does it generate flights of fancy? Explore the inner workings of your personal ideas factory

Psychology is a relatively new science which gained popularity in the early 20th century with Wilhelm Wundt. In the zeal to learn about the human thought process and behavior, many early psychiatrists went too far with their experimentations, leading to stringent ethics codes and standards. Though these are highly unethical experiments, it should be mentioned that they did pave the way to induct our current ethical standards of experiments, and that should be seen as a positive

By leading the Americans in his audience step by step through the thought process, sociologist Sam Richards sets an extraordinary challenge: can they understand - not approve of, but understand - the motivations of an Iraqi insurgent? And by extension, can anyone truly understand and empathize with another?

When Qi Wang, PhD, began her graduate studies at Harvard, she thought she had a broad knowledge of psychology research. After all, she had graduated with high honors in psychology from Peking University. But as she began working with her new advisers, Wang realized that she'd never even heard of their research area: autobiographical memory.

Using only the power of their imaginations, children can transform a box into a boat, or a living room into a peril-fraught jungle. But while many famous theorists, including Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, have posited that pretending fuels children's intellectual and creative development, that may not be the case, suggests University of Virginia psychology professor Angeline Lillard, PhD, online in Psychological Bulletin.