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All-Nighters Could Alter Your Memories
Scientific American: People who don't get enough sleep could be increasing their risk of developing false memories, a new study finds. In the study, when researchers compared the memory of people who'd had a good night's sleep with the memory of those who hadn't slept at all, they found that, under certain conditions, sleep-deprived individuals mix fact with imagination, embellish events and even "remember" things that never actually happened. Read the whole story: Scientific American
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Attention, please. You will find it rewarding
Wired: We are what we attend to. What we pay attention to drives our behaviour and affects how we feel. We often pay attention to what we think will make us happy, such as new gadgets, rather than to those stimuli that actually do make us happy, such as old friends. This prevents us from having the happiest experiences in life that we can. We've all heard about attention deficit disorder. But the modern world is making us all victims of attention distraction disorder. It is so easy to become addicted to checking emails, Twitter and the Facebook updates of your virtual friends. We just can't seem to help ourselves.
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When It’s Bad to Have Good Choices
The New Yorker: It may not surprise you to learn that healthy, well-fed people in affluent countries are often unhappy and anxious. But it did startle Zbigniew Lipowski when he came to a full realization of this fact. He had emigrated to North America from Dublin, in 1955, and, in the mid-nineteen-sixties, was put in charge of the psychiatry practices at two Montreal hospitals, Royal Victoria and Montreal Neurological. Why, he thought, as he worked there, would so many people living in such good conditions have so much anxiety?
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Are You in Love or Lust? The Secret Lies Within Your Eyes.
Big Think: Burt Bacharach was right; the look of love is in your eyes. A new study validates all the avuncular advice you were given about love and lust, specifically how the way someone looks at you can reveal their romantic (or not-so-romantic) intentions. From Science Daily: "The new study found that eye patterns concentrate on a stranger's face if the viewer sees that person as a potential partner in romantic love, but the viewer gazes more at the other person's body if he or she is feeling sexual desire. That automatic judgment can occur in as little as half a second, producing different gaze patterns." Read the whole story: Big Think
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Healing the Wounds of the Future
Several years ago, the satirical newspaper The Onion ran an article about “Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” based on a “study” by the Department of Future Veterans Affairs. Victims of the disorder, according to the report, experience “vivid, ultra-realistic flash-forwards” of disturbing wartime events that are yet to come. Soldiers who have never experienced a day of battle nevertheless “prelive” the hell of war. The story was irreverent and no doubt offensive to some, but it was funny. It was funny because the whole idea of remembering the future is absurd. Or is it? Well, obviously we don’t recall actual memories of things yet to happen, but we can imagine future events—and vividly.
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How All-Nighters Alter Your Memories
Live Science: People who don't get enough sleep could be increasing their risk of developing false memories, a new study finds. In the study, when researchers compared the memory of people who'd had a good night's sleep with the memory of those who hadn't slept at all, they found that, under certain conditions, sleep-deprived individuals mix fact with imagination, embellish events and even "remember" things that never actually happened. Read the whole story: Live Science
