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Anti-epilepsy drug could stave off Alzheimer’s
The Telegraph: Giving the drug levetiracetam to patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a condition known to foreshadow Alzheimer's, improved their ability to remember. It also reduced overactivity in a part of the brain tasked with remembering called the hippocampus, MRI scans showed. People with MCI who have excess activity in the hippocampus are known to be at the highest risk of being daignosed with full-bolwn Alzheimer's in the following four to six years. Read more: The Telegraph
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Red pill or blue bill: Who cares? Getting to choose is the best part
National Post: Life is about making choices, from the mundane (Should I eat a Kit Kat for breakfast?) to the momentous (Should I accept this new job?). Though we agonize over some decisions, researchers have found that we generally like having choices. And after we choose something, we tend to like it more. However, a new study examining the experience of choice, suggests that it’s not just about the selections — it’s about the selecting. Simply having the possibility to choose is pleasurable.
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Two Faces of Death: Inside the Existential Mind
You’re visiting a friend who lives on the 20th floor of an old, inner city, block of apartments. It’s the middle of the night when you are suddenly awakened from a deep sleep by the sound of screams and the choking smell of smoke. You reach over to the nightstand and turn on the light. You are shocked to find the room filling fast with thick clouds of smoke. You run to the door and reach for the handle. You pull back in pain as the intense heat of the knob scalds you violently. Grabbing a blanket off the bed and using it as protection, you manage to turn the handle and open the door.
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How Media Can Encourage Our Better Side
Violent media—films, TV, videogames—can encourage aggression, and lots of research says so. But psychologists haven’t spent as much time looking at the ways media with more socially positive content help suppress meanness and prod us toward cooperation, empathy, and helpfulness. When and why might a game or a movie mobilize our better angels and squelch our devils? A review of the literature, including his own work, by psychologist Tobias Greitemeyer at the University of Innsbruck in Austria sorts out those questions and proposes a model to explain the cognitive processes underlying their answers.
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Shock Study: U.S. Flag Only Boosts GOP
U.S. News & World Report: Just a brief exposure to an image of the American flag shifts voters, even Democrats, to Republican beliefs, attitudes and voting behavior even though most don't believe it will impact their politics, according to a new two-year study just published in the scholarly Psychological Science. What's more, according to three authors from the University Chicago, Cornell University and Hebrew University, the impact had staying power.
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The Psychology of Retirement
Earlier this year, the first baby boomer turned 65, and from now on, for years to come, 10,000 boomers will pass that milestone every day. That’s every day–which means that more than 69 million boomers will reach this symbolic age by 2030. So at this very moment, millions of working men and women are already wondering how to make the best decisions about retirement, specifically about how to finance the so-called Golden Years. Well, understanding human psychology may help–specifically the heuristic mind and irrational decision making.
