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October 24, 2008 - Google Tech Talks June 16, 2008 ABSTRACT Explore the brain's amazing ability to change throughout a person's life. This phenomenon-called neuroplasticty-is the science behind brain fitness, and it has been called one of the most extraordinary scientific discoveries of the 20th century. PBS had recently aired this special, The Brain Fitness Program, which explains the brain's complexities in a way that both scientists and people with no scientific background can appreciate. This is opportunity to learn more about how our minds work-and to find out more about the latest in cutting-edge brain research, from the founder of Posit Science and creator of the Brain Fitness Program software, Dr. Michael Merzenich. Speaker: Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. Michael M. Merzenich, PhD: Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Merzenich leads the company's scientific team. For more than three decades, Dr. Merzenich has been a leading pioneer in brain plasticity research. He is the Francis A. Sooy Professor at the Keck Center for Integrative Neurosciences at UCSF. Dr. Merzenich is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including the Ipsen Prize, Zulch Prize of the Max Planck Institute, Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award and Purkinje Medal. Dr. Merzenich has published more than 200 articles, including many in leading peer-reviewed journals, such as Science and Nature. His work is also often covered in the popular press, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time and Newsweek. He has appeared on Sixty Minutes II, CBS Evening News and Good Morning America. In the late 1980s, Dr. Merzenich was on the team that invented the cochlear implant, now distributed by market leader Advanced Bionics. In 1996, Dr. Merzenich was the founding CEO of Scientific Learning Corporation (Nasdaq: SCIL), which markets and distributes software that applies principles of brain plasticity to assist children with language

Free downloads of the top articles from Wiley's psychology and psychoanalysis journals

Roger Ariew (South Florida) has kindly supplied some additional detail about the European initiative to rank journals, to which we alluded before. Professor Ariew writes:The ERIH (European Reference Index for the Humanities) is an attempt by the European Science Foundation...

"In the August issue of the journal, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Park shares the results of a series of studies with college-age women in which she finds that when women think about romance, they become less interested in studying STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields. College-age men, however, can get interested in romance without any impact on their engagement with math and science..."

ScienceDaily (Jan. 12, 2011) - Scientists have found that the pleasurable experience of listening to music releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain important for more tangible pleasures associated with rewards such as food, drugs and sex. The new study from The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital -- The Neuro at McGill University also reveals that even the anticipation of pleasurable music induces dopamine release [as is the case with food, drug, and sex cues]. Published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, the results suggest why music, which has no obvious survival value, is so significant across human society.

Uploaded by UCtelevision on Feb 15, 2008 Renowned mindfulness meditation teacher and best-selling author Jon Kabat-Zinn speaks at UCSD Medical Center on the topic of "Coming to Our Senses", which is also the name of his new book, subtitled "Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness". A pioneer in the application of ancient Buddhist practices to healing in modern medical settings, Kabat-Zinn expounds upon the value of "resting in awareness" not only to facilitate clarity in ourselves, but also as a means of relating to and healing the "dis-ease" in politics, society and the world. Series: "Health Sciences Journal" [11/1999] [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 9375]

When we've got a problem to solve, we don't just use our brains but the rest of our bodies as well, researchers at the University of Wisconsin have determined. The researchers recruited 86 American undergraduates, half of whom were prevented from moving their hands using Velcro gloves that attached to a board. The others were prevented from moving their feet, using Velcro straps attached to another board - but had their hands free. From the other side of an opaque screen, an experimenter asked questions about gears in relation to each other. For example: "If five gears are arranged in a line, and you move the first gear clockwise, what will the final gear do?" The participants solved the problems aloud and were videotaped. The videotapes were analyzed for the number of hand gestures the participants used (hand rotations or "ticking" movements, indicating counting); verbal explanations indicating the subject was visualizing those physical movements; or the use of more abstract mathematical rules, without reference to perceptual-motor processes. The researchers then repeated the experiment and analysis with 111 British adults. The researchers found that the people who were allowed to gesture usually did so, and they also commonly used perceptual-motor strategies in solving the puzzles. The people whose hands were restrained (as well as those who chose not to gesture even when allowed), used abstract, mathematical strategies much more often. Their work will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

19-01-2011 Medical evidence has shown that long-term solitary confinement is a form of torture. Dr Joost J den Otter, Medical Director at the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT), adds that while there is no doubt about the damage caused by long periods of isolation, solitary confinement for a short period may also cause psychological harm. Dr den Otter highlights the fact that many qualitative and quantitative scientific studies have documented how solitary confinement in prison has damaging health effects. He asserts that the scientific debate on solitary confinement as a method of torture has been settled for many years, but that it seems there is still confusion among policy makers, prison authorities, and the general public. A recent commentary published by the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law about solitary confinement and mental illness in U.S. Prisons, the authors, Jeffrey L. Metzner and Jamie Fellner, support Dr den Otter's judgment. "Isolation can be psychologically harmful to any prisoner, with the nature and severity of the impact depending on the individual, the duration of confinement, and particular conditions (e.g., access to natural light, books, or radio). Psychological effects can include anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis". In August 2010, Physicians for Human Rights published a report (Experiments in Torture) which added to the growing body of evidence that solitary confinement causes psychological harm consistent with torture. In an interview with 'Life's Little Mysteries', Dr Scott Allen, one of the authors of the paper, said that solitary confinement "can lead to anxiety, depression, certainly disorientation, [and] it can even lead to thought disorders including psychotic thoughts." He added "The consequences can be significant." This backs up researcher Peter Scharff Smith, of The Danis

Welcome to Manuscriptedit.com, your online partner for English language editing, proofreading, medical writing, formatting, design & development and publication support services. We offer a comprehensive manuscript editing service before its submission for publication as well as after acceptance by the peer review process.

If you tend to be hard on yourself, being less critical can make you more creative: Self-compassion is a multifaceted state of potential utility in alleviating the self-critical tendencies that may undermine creative expressions among certain individuals. To investigate this idea, 86 undergraduates were randomly assigned to control or self-compassion conditions, following which creative originality was assessed by a version of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT). The manipulation was hypothesized to facilitate creative originality particularly among individuals who are prone to critical self-judgment, as assessed by a trait measure. This interactive hypothesis was supported: Self-judgmental individuals displayed lower levels of creative originality in the control condition, but equal levels of creative originality in the self-compassion condition. Results are discussed in the context of theories of creative potential, self-compassion, and chronic tendencies toward self-criticism. Source: "Don't Be So Hard on Yourself: Self-Compassion Facilitates Creative Originality Among Self-Judgmental Individuals" from Creativity Research Journal, Volume 22, Issue 3, 2010

A new study suggests that a single dose of psilocybin -- the active ingredient in "Magic Mushrooms" -- can result in improved personality traits over the long term. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine found that individuals who received the drug once in a clinical setting reported a greater sense of "openness" that often lasted 14 months or longer, according to study published this week in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. The study defined openness as a personality trait that "encompasses aesthetic appreciation and sensitivity, imagination and fantasy, and broad-minded tolerance of others' viewpoints and values." It is one of five main personality traits that are shared among all cultures worldwide. Of the 51 participants, 30 had personality changes that left them feeling more open. Other personality traits (extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness and conscientiousness) were not impacted. Only the participants who said they had a "complete mystical experience" while on the drug registered an increased sense of openness. "The mystical experience has certain qualities," lead author Katherine MacLean said. "The primary one is that you feel a certain kind of connectedness and unity with everything and everyone." Because personality traits are generally considered to remain stable throughout a persons lifetime, researchers are excited about therapeutic implications of the study. "[T]his study shows that psilocybin actually changes one domain of personality that is strongly related to traits such as imagination, feeling, abstract ideas and aesthetics, and is considered a core construct underlying creativity in general," study author Roland R. Griffiths told USA Today. "And the changes we see appear to be long-term."     

How connected consumers feel (or don't feel) to their future selves impacts their spending and savings decisions, researchers at Columbia Business School and The University of Chicago Booth School of Business have determined. The researchers conducted a series of experiments that manipulated the degree to which subjects felt connected to their future selves. When discontinuity with the future self is anticipated, people behave more impatiently - speeding up the consumption of utility (in this case, gift cards) - more than when connectedness to the future self is expected. The researchers asked a group of college seniors - three weeks before graduation - to read a passage that described college graduation either as an event that would prompt a major change in their identities or as an event that would prompt only a relatively trivial change. Compared to students who read the passage describing graduation as a small change, those who read a description of the event as a major change were much more likely to make more impatient choices, choosing to receive a gift certificate worth $120 in the next week rather than wait a year for up to $240. Their work suggests that people can be motivated to hold onto their money, or make more prudent decisions by increasing their sense of connectedness to their future selves, the researchers said. Ref.: Daniel M. Bartels & Oleg Urminsky, On Intertemporal Selfishness: How the Perceived Instability of Identity Underlies Impatient Consumption, Journal of Consumer Research, 2011; [DOI: 10.1086/658339]

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Towards a genuinely medical model for psychiatric nosology (Provisional)

Using crowd sourcing to beat the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) bias in psych experiments

Along my mastery journey, over the next 12 months I intend to incorporate key takeaways from orientation and begin applying specific tips from the notes taken in orientation and class from Tim Gregory, Les Brown, Jennie Jarvis, Larry Katz, James Jessup, and Peter Gordon.

Intriguing article but frustratingly vague on the measurements used for intelligence testing. Apparently HARDI (High Angular Resolution Diffusion Imaging) can measure the diffusion of water through the brain, especially myelin. In yet another twin study (n=46 pairs) there appears to be a correlation between diffusion speed and intelligence.