Not you chewing. The rats. Why chewing, you might ask? The authors of this study are using chewing as a way to induce “active behavioral coping”. And while the idea has merit, the data make me not so sure. (Hey wait! That’s not a stick! Source) Helmreich et al. “Active behavioral coping alters the behavioral […]
It’s been a busy few days around my end, and I wasn’t able to talk up this post like I wanted, but in case you missed it, I was at The Scicurious Brain on Monday, talking about a study showing that antidepressants may do better combined with stress than they do alone! Or at least, […]
…Or unless I did something else you make you disgusted.* We would all like to think that we’re very rational. That our judgements, particularly our moral judgements, arise from things that we’ve carefully considered, whether it be because you follow a holy text or consider the work of Hume or Mill to be the pinnacles […]
I realize this study is SO last week, which is about two months in dog years and a decade in internet years, but seeing as I’m about to lend my dulcet tones and my delicate opinions to Skeptically Speaking on this topic, I feel I must needs blog this paper. That, and it’s about coffee. […]
Does seeing organic make you a self-satisfied jerk? At SciAm today, I’m covering the latest study that made it big over the weekend, on whether seeing organic labels influences your moral judgements. While the authors conclude that seeing organic DOES make you a self-satisfied jerk, I’m not so sure, and think there are too many […]
We all know what this song is trying to tell us: And what about this one? Yes, shocking as it might be to some, a lot of songs, classical, pop, or of any other genre…talk a lot about sex. But not just sex, there are a lot of reproductive messages in music. We might notice […]
Are you trying to get a date? Have you tried it all, cologne, flowers, playing it casual, nice dinners? And have you considered environmental enrichment? What is environmental enrichment? Environmental enrichment is the idea that the brain responds to stimulating environments, with things like decreased anxiety-like responses, decreased cognitive decline with aging, increased coping mechanisms, […]
I’ve got an article up over at Sci Am Mind and Brain today, about recent advances in behavioral and cognitive therapies for ADHD, and how these therapies may be better than medication in the long run. And I have also included, at my Sci Am blog, a list of the references I used for the […]
Sci is at SciAm today, talking about a recent paper showing that exercise can change the methylation of your muscle DNA. What does that mean? How could it work? Head over there to find out.
I was alerted by the Neurocritic to a new paper out in PLoS ONE on research blogs and discussion of scientific information. It’s an analysis of researchblogging.org bloggers, who there are, what they blog about, and who is significant. It’s an interesting ‘state of the blogsphere’ type read (though I don’t feel the significance of […]