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How Our Brains Grasp Faces
Podcast: In this episode, cognitive scientists Rebecca Saxe of MIT and Heather Kosakowski join host Scott Sleek to discuss their groundbreaking findings about the development of the brain’s face-processing network.
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Why We Procrastinate On Joy — And How To Stop
But we can also put off things we enjoy — catching up with a friend we haven’t seen in a while, visiting a nearby attraction or opening that expensive bottle of wine. ... However, while this general tendency is “important and interesting,” there may be more than one explanation for why different people procrastinate, said Akira Miyake, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “I think things are much more complex, and we need to start paying attention to idiosyncrasies or adopting more person-specific ways of looking at why this is happening,” he said.
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Turning a Hobby Into a Habit
... The human brain—more specifically, the way it’s wired to enjoy jitters—is partly responsible for how well these shows have been received by viewers. “Our body doesn’t always know the difference between a heart-rate increase associated with watching The Bear versus going for a walk,” Wendy Berry Mendes, a psychology professor at Yale, told me. People have always sought excitement by being spectators; doing so causes, as Mendes put it, “vicarious stress”—a fight-or-flight response that feels good because it involves zero risk.
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How to Break Free From Your Phone
There’s that nagging voice again: “Put the phone away. No, really this time.” But we don’t; 84 percent of Americans say that they are online either several times a day or “almost constantly.” ... Delete the ‘slot machine’ apps Social media and video games apps are designed to hook you. Instead of looking at them on your phone, use a computer instead — one that you don’t carry around with you. Your phone should become like a Swiss Army knife, full of tools that you pull out when you need to get something done. Jonathan Haidt Social psychologist at the Stern School of Business at New York University and author of “The Anxious Generation”
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Here’s Why Teens Don’t Belong On Dating Apps
Teenagers are using dating apps more than we previously knew, according to research published this week in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science. The study found that 23.5% of teens ages 13 through 18 used dating apps over a six-month period, which is more than past estimates. The study is believed to be the first to track how teens use dating apps by recording their keyboard activity rather than relying on self-reports, according to the researchers. The study found that teens who used dating apps didn’t generally have more symptoms of mental health challenges after six months than those who didn’t.
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Why You Are Not As Selfish As You Think
Whenever I fly, one line jumps out from the pre-flight safety briefing. Somewhere between "welcome aboard" and "use this whistle for attracting attention", we're reminded to "put on your own oxygen mask before helping others". ... The very structure of our brains might help dictate our predisposition towards altruism. Abigail Marsh, a neuroscientist at Georgetown University in the US, and her team have used brain scans to look for differences between people who had donated a kidney to a stranger and those who hadn't.
