Any panhandler will tell you of the importance of staking out the best street corner. But new research suggests that in making the choice to give money to a stranger, the intersection that matters most is one within our brains. It’s called the right temporoparietal junction (or TPJ for short). Along with many other crucial functions, this neural crossroads gives us the ability to understand the perspectives of others—a prerequisite for empathy. Swiss scholars report they have found a strong connection between the TPJ and a person’s willingness to engage in selfless ... Read More
Manic Nation: Dr. Peter Whybrow Says We’re Addicted to Stress
June 19, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Dr. Peter Whybrow is lunching at a sushi bar near his office at the University of California, Los Angeles, but his attention is on the other diners. Even while talking to their tablemates, they are constantly distracted. They text, and repeatedly glance up at the wall-mounted TV screens. Common habits, sure. But to Whybrow, director of UCLA’s Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, those jittery behaviors are prime examples of how modern American culture has outrun the biology of our brains. A British-born endocrinologist and psychiatrist, Whybrow has been fascinated with applying ... Read More
Duets and Diapers: Music Lessons Benefit Babies
May 9, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
When should you start your child on music lessons? New research suggests the answer is somewhere around age six. Six months, that is. In two recently published papers, psychologists Laurel Trainor and David Gerry of the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind report music training can foster babies’ emotional development and communication skills. “The infant brain might be particularly plastic with respect to musical experience,” the researchers write in the journal Developmental Science. “When parents are actively involved and materials appropriate for infants are utilized, ... Read More
Your Brain is Making You Lazy
May 7, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Good news, slackers! It’s not your fault you’re lazy—it’s your brain chemistry that makes you focus on what a hassle it is to accomplish things, instead of on the rewards of doing so. A new study finds that the amount of effort a person decides to expend on a given task seems to depend on which parts of their brain have the highest dopamine levels. If so the so-called ‘pleasure chemical’ is highest in the parts of your brain known as the striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, then you probably focus on rewards, like the hardest workers in this test study by a team at ... Read More
Thinking vs. Knowing: When Facts Get in the Way
March 20, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Thinking is not easy. It requires effort. Whenever possible, all of us seek to avoid it by replacing it with knowledge. Once we know something — 2+2=4, the trash is collected on Tuesdays, or it takes two hours to drive to Chicago when there is no traffic — we don’t have to think about it again. Paradoxically, one of the fruits of thinking is that it leads to the acquisition of knowledge that replaces the need to think, such as thinking in order to answer the question, “When is the trash collected?” leads to knowing always on Tuesday. Even great thinkers clear their mental decks in ... Read More
The Brain-Focusing Power of the Lab Coat
February 28, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Schoolchildren grappling with a tough assignment are encouraged to “put your thinking cap on.” But parents and teachers offering this advice may be focusing on the wrong garment. Perhaps students should instead slip into their thinking jackets. That’s the implication of a newly published study, which found wearing a white lab coat — a piece of clothing associated with care and attentiveness — improved performance on tests requiring close and sustained attention. Importantly, the effect was not found when the garment in question was identified as a visual artist’s ... Read More
A Light Bulb Moment in the Brain
September 12, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
In a clear Plexiglas laboratory cage, a mouse sleeps. A thin fiber optic cable projects upward from the top of its head and out through the cage’s lid. The cable lights with a pulse of blue light. The mouse continues to sleep; the light continues to pulse. After a few more pulses, the mouse wakes up. It rubs its face, stretches its legs and runs over to its food cup and begins to eat voraciously, as though it were starving. It keeps eating as the blue light pulses. The optical fiber that carries the blue light goes directly into the mouse’s brain. It targets a specific group of brain ... Read More
Study: Buddhist Meditation Promotes Rational Thinking
August 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
It's no secret that humans are not entirely rational when it comes to weighing rewards. For example, we might be perfectly happy with how much money we're making — until we find out how much more the guy in the next cubicle is being paid. But a new study suggests that people who regularly practice Buddhist meditation actually process these common social situations differently — and the researchers have the brain scans to prove it. Ulrich Kirk and collaborators at Baylor Medical College in Houston had 40 control subjects and 26 longtime meditators participate in a well-known ... Read More
Addressing PTSD With Surf Therapy
July 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
For the last handful of years, Britain and the United States have done quiet experiments with a new form of therapy for veterans suffering from combat stress, using a resource neither nation lacks along their coasts: surf. "Ocean therapy," or surf therapy, will surprise longtime surfers mainly because of the official-sounding name; the idea that an ocean and a surfboard can be good for the body and mind is otherwise not very new. But recent studies have tried to quantify just what happens in the water. The United Kingdom's National Health Service is still conducting trials in Cornwall, ... Read More
PTSD Brain Studies Look at Hippocampus
July 6, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
“Hippocampal shrinkage,” of all the terrible-sounding human ailments, is a common condition among post-traumatic stress disorder patients. It means a vital part of the brain is too small. The shrinkage helps to explain flashbacks, but what hasn’t been clear until recently is whether a smaller hippocampus leaves a person predisposed to PTSD or whether shrinkage results from the stress (of, say, combat, or a rape, or a natural disaster). “The hippocampus plays a big role in storing memories, but it’s also important in recalling them,” says Ulrike Schmidt, a senior psychiatrist and ... Read More
