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Chicken Soup for the Lonely Soul: Why Comfort Food Works
Scientific American: My grandmother was born in Sobrance, in what was then called Czechoslovakia on November 5, 1930. She grew up in ten kilometers away, in a small town called Nagy-Muzsaly. Her father’s family were landowners, something that was very rare for Jewish families at the time, and they used that land to produce wine. My grandmother’s family led simple lives. All that changed, though, when my grandmother was 13 years old. On the last day of Passover in 1944, my grandmother and her family were first deported by the Nazis.
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The lies we email each other
msnbc: Wondering if that fabulous man you've been chatting with online is really a mountain-climbing astronaut fluent in six languages, including Latin? According to a new study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, chances are he's simply one of the many people who can't help stretching the truth when they hit the keyboard. "I wouldn't say that human beings are a big pack of liars," says Robert S. Feldman, professor of psychology and dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "But I would say that it's very easy to lie." This is especially true when we go online, according to Feldman's research.
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A Serving of Gratitude May Save the Day
The New York Times: The most psychologically correct holiday of the year is upon us. Thanksgiving may be the holiday from hell for nutritionists, and it produces plenty of war stories for psychiatrists dealing with drunken family meltdowns. But it has recently become the favorite feast of psychologists studying the consequences of giving thanks. Cultivating an “attitude of gratitude” has been linked to better health, sounder sleep, less anxiety and depression, higher long-term satisfaction with life and kinder behavior toward others, including romantic partners.
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Consistency Of A Mother’s Psychological State Vital To Child Development, New Study Shows
The Huffington Post: Developing infants can sense what their mothers are feeling, but in an unusual twist, authors of a new study suggest it isn't necessarily a woman's mental state that matters -- i.e. whether or not she's depressed -- but rather the consistency of the woman's psychological state before and after she gives birth. The new study, slated for publication in the December issue of Psychological Science, examines how maternal depression impacts babies' mental health and motor skills. Researchers from the University of California, Irvine, followed 221 pregnant women through pregnancy and for a year following birth.
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Beautiful Brains
National Geographic: Although you know your teenager takes some chances, it can be a shock to hear about them. One fine May morning not long ago my oldest son, 17 at the time, phoned to tell me that he had just spent a couple hours at the state police barracks. Apparently he had been driving "a little fast." What, I asked, was "a little fast"? Turns out this product of my genes and loving care, the boy-man I had swaddled, coddled, cooed at, and then pushed and pulled to the brink of manhood, had been flying down the highway at 113 miles an hour. "That's more than a little fast," I said. He agreed. In fact, he sounded somber and contrite.
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Oliver Sacks: What hallucination reveals about our minds
Mainstream society tends to associate hallucinations and delusions with the drug-addled and the mentally ill, but in reality they stem from many different sources and provide some amazing insight into how the brain works. Charles Bonnet syndrome, for example, involves the visually impaired "seeing" some incredibly vivid images that aren't there. Neurological anthropologist Oliver Sacks has studied this phenomenon and discusses his interesting findings regarding perception, cognition and brain activity. Watch the TED Talk here
