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Think yourself well
The Economist: The link between mind and body is terrain into which many medical researchers, fearing ridicule, dare not tread. But perhaps more should do so. For centuries, doctors have recognized the placebo effect, in which the illusion of treatment, such as pills without an active ingredient, produces real medical benefits. More recently, respectable research has demonstrated that those who frequently experience positive emotions live longer and healthier lives. They have fewer heart attacks, for example, and fewer colds too. Why this happens, though, is only slowly becoming understood.
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When They’re Grown, the Real Pain Begins
The New York Times: When I was 24 years old, I brought my firstborn son, 3-week-old Jacob, to my childhood home on the Eastern End of Long Island to meet his grandparents. When I arrived, an old family friend and neighbor, Cora Stevens, happened to be sitting in my parents’ kitchen. Cora, a mother to five grown children and grandmother to seven, grabbed tiny Jake, put her face right up to his and started speaking loud baby talk to him. Then, as she bounced him on her knee, she turned to me and said, “When they’re little they sit on your lap; when they’re big they sit on your heart.” Oh, how right she was.
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Read My Hips
Science: On the reality television show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, the lucky recipient gets a first look at his newly renovated home. For a split second, his face contorts with—shock? Joy? During intense emotional experiences, there's a fleeting moment when expressions of pleasure and pain are hard to distinguish. In fact, others read intense emotion more effectively by looking at a person's body language than by watching his facial expressions, a new study suggests. Most studies of facial cues rely on a set of stylized, recognizable expressions—perhaps made by actors in photographs.
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Asperger’s gone, dyslexia stays in first change to psychiatric manual in almost 20 years
The Washington Post: The now familiar term “Asperger’s disorder” is being dropped. And abnormally bad and frequent temper tantrums will be given a scientific-sounding diagnosis called DMDD. But “dyslexia” and other learning disorders remain. The revisions come in the first major rewrite in nearly 20 years of the diagnostic guide used by the nation’s psychiatrists. Changes were approved Saturday. Full details of all the revisions will come next May when the American Psychiatric Association’s new diagnostic manual is published, but the impact will be huge, affecting millions of children and adults worldwide.
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Disgust Makes Dirt More Visible
Yahoo: The feeling of disgust isn't particularly enjoyable, but new research suggests the "ewww" has its role: People who are disgusted are better at detecting impurities. In other words, disgust makes it easier to see dirt and other nastiness that might make us sick, researchers reported online Nov. 5 in the journal Psychological Science. The findings aren't the first example of emotions influencing perceptions. Spiders, for example, look bigger to people who fear them, according to research published in February in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders. Similarly people who are afraid of heights think drops look bigger than they are. Ewww, disgusting!
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Why It’s Easier To Scam The Elderly
NPR: Lots of scams come by phone or by mail, but when the scam artist is right in front of you, researchers say the clues are in the face. "A smile that is in the mouth but doesn't go up to the eyes, an averted gaze, a backward lean" are some of the ways deception may present itself, says Shelley Taylor, a psychologist at UCLA. Taylor wanted to know if older people recognized these visual cues as readily as younger people. She brought 119 adults older than 55 into the research lab along with 24 younger adults in their 20s. Both groups were shown 30 photographs, each depicting either a trustworthy, a neutral or an untrustworthy face.
