In other news

Picks and interviews from ResearchBlogging.org [Cognitive Daily]

sb admin — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:24:27 +0000

Picks and interviews from ResearchBlogging.org [Cognitive Daily]

Here's this week's list of notable posts from Psychology and Neuroscience at ResearchBlogging.org.

Is autism really surging? Michelle Dawson wonders whether the recent rise in autism rates can be traced to methodological differences in studies tracking autism rates.
We know many men are attracted to younger women, but what does it mean to look younger? Wayne Hooke looks at a recent study and concludes that looking younger may be a matter of looking less masculine.
Ever had a song that you just can't get out of your head -- an "earworm"? You'd think that psychologists would be all over explaining why that happens. Actually, says Christian Jarrett, there has been little research into the phenomenon. Jarrett discusses one of the few studies shedding light on the phenomenon
Bronwyn Thompson, the pain-management expert, has recently undergone surgery. Now she's blogging about her own experiences managing pain during recovery. And as a bonus, she's discussing a fascinating study about women's experiences with self-pain-management.
Finally, Scicurious gives us a holiday-themed post about a fascinating phenomenon: A patient who can remember and work with some numbers, but not others. What's the difference? Read When Dec 25th Isn't Christmas Day to find out.

Also, over on Seedmagazine.com, I interview four of our content editors to find out how they select notable posts in each of their areas of expertise. They also look back at their favorite posts of 2009, and give some insight into the future of science online.

Click here to read the whole interview on Seedmagazine.com.

sb admin Wed, 01/06/2010 - 10:24

Tags

Face perception

film

In other news

Language

Movement and exercise

Video Games / Technology

Picks and interviews from ResearchBlogging.org

dmunger — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:24:27 +0000

Picks and interviews from ResearchBlogging.org

Here's this week's list of notable posts from Psychology and Neuroscience at ResearchBlogging.org.

Is autism really surging? Michelle Dawson wonders whether the recent rise in autism rates can be traced to methodological differences in studies tracking autism rates.
We know many men are attracted to younger women, but what does it mean to look younger? Wayne Hooke looks at a recent study and concludes that looking younger may be a matter of looking less masculine.
Ever had a song that you just can't get out of your head -- an "earworm"? You'd think that psychologists would be all over explaining why that happens. Actually, says Christian Jarrett, there has been little research into the phenomenon. Jarrett discusses one of the few studies shedding light on the phenomenon
Bronwyn Thompson, the pain-management expert, has recently undergone surgery. Now she's blogging about her own experiences managing pain during recovery. And as a bonus, she's discussing a fascinating study about women's experiences with self-pain-management.
Finally, Scicurious gives us a holiday-themed post about a fascinating phenomenon: A patient who can remember and work with some numbers, but not others. What's the difference? Read When Dec 25th Isn't Christmas Day to find out.

Click here to read the whole interview on Seedmagazine.com.

dmunger Wed, 01/06/2010 - 10:24

Tags

In other news

The post on autism is essential reading. great resource thanks. the same topic was just discussed by the keynote speaker at a recent autism conference a full interview of which was posted on the ABC radio national website.

regards joanna

TV's unintended consequences -- good and bad [Cognitive Daily]

sb admin — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 11:26:59 +0000

TV's unintended consequences -- good and bad [Cognitive Daily]

Television can have a huge influence on our lives. But the most important influences may be the ones we don't even notice. I discuss several fascinating studies about television in my latest column on Seedmagazine.com. Here's a snippet:

Travis Saunders, a PhD student at the University of Ottawa who studies the impact of sedentary lifestyles, questions whether a little exercise can make up for hours of inactivity. He refers to a study led by G.F. Dunton of the University of Southern California and published in October in the International Journal of Obesity. The researchers conducted a phone survey of 10,000 Americans who ranged from normal weight to obese. As you might expect, people who engaged in a lot of physical activity tended to weigh less than those who did not.

But when the researchers considered how much time these individuals spent watching TV and movies, a different pattern emerged. No matter how much TV they watched, if they didn't exercise, they had high BMIs (body mass index--a measure of obesity). But even among people who exercised more than an hour a day, those watching more than an hour of TV per day had significantly higher BMIs than those who did not. In fact, for respondents who watched more than an hour of TV, whether or not they exercised no longer predicted BMI.

And there are many other surprising correlations between TV watching and both detrimental and beneficial results. For more, read the whole article.

sb admin Thu, 12/24/2009 - 06:26

Tags

Movement and exercise

Video Games / Technology

My picks from ResearchBlogging.org

dmunger — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:27:43 +0000

My picks from ResearchBlogging.org

In case you missed them, here are my picks of psychology/neuroscience posts from ResearchBlogging.org from the past two weeks:

The fatter we get, the less we seem to notice. Peter Janiszewski examines changing perceptions of what it means to be "overweight."
Barn owls use feathers to find sounds. A new study confirms that the facial ruff of barn owls is used to locate the origin of sounds.
How to build a criminal line-up. Fake features on the distractors, not the suspect.
Birds do generate new brain cells -- but only in the wild. A fascinating study on wild versus captive birds.
If brain damage causes pedophilia, how should we treat the pedophile? A troubling case study.

Also, my column on SEEDMAGAZINE.COM is now live. Today I'm discussing galaxy clusters, the controversial concept of "dark flow," and how this may point to parallel universes. Here's a snippet:

All this spurs the question of what exactly distant galaxy clusters can tell us about the origins of the universe. What makes such painstaking work worthwhile? Sometimes it can reveal things totally unexpected and of potentially profound importance. Greg Fish, a blogger for Discovery.com and BusinessWeek, tells of a strange new finding called "dark flow." In 2008, a team led by Alexander Kashlinsky of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center found evidence that many galaxy clusters were moving toward a single small section of the vast horizon of our visible universe. Last month, new observations by the team confirmed these unexpected findings and extended them to 1,400 galaxy clusters as far as 3 billion light-years from Earth, again using the SZ effect to help identify and measure the clusters. The velocity of the clusters is as high as a thousand kilometers per second, suggesting that some immense, unknown force is acting upon the galaxies like flotsam caught in an invisible current. This is the dark flow.
Kashlinsky's team doesn't speculate on what might be causing the dark flow, but others have weighed in with their own ideas. The simplest explanation, Fish says, is some massive object or body outside of our visible universe, gravitationally tugging the galaxies toward it. But such a huge discrepancy in what, on the largest scales, otherwise appears to be a very spatially homogenous universe would require a rethinking of some of the fundamental principles of cosmology. Notably, it would require a reconsideration of the prevailing notion that our surroundings, on cosmic scales, are strictly average. If we occupy a cosmological position that is somehow "special," this uniqueness may taint our extrapolations about the conditions in other distant regions and eras of the cosmos. In other words, it would become more difficult to pin down the correct large-scale structure and behavior of the universe.

Here's the link to the whole article.

dmunger Wed, 12/02/2009 - 06:27

Tags

In other news

Deep brain stimulation for clinical depression?

dmunger — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:49:20 +0000

Deep brain stimulation for clinical depression?

This week on SEED, I'm writing about Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), a promising new way to treat clinical depression. Here's a snippet:

In DBS therapy, one or more electrodes the size of a spaghetti strand are precisely positioned in the patient's brain, then connected by wire around the skull and through the neck to a pacemaker-like device, a neurostimulator, just below the collarbone. The neurostimulator is activated and deactivated by a magnet that the patient carries, so if a tremor is beginning to become disruptive, DBS can be self-administered in an instant, with near-instantaneous results. A video provided by the manufacturer of a DBS device shows how it works in ideal cases.

Now new uses for the treatment are being tested. One observed side effect of DBS for Parkinson's is excessive happiness, to the point of uncontrollable elation--the sort of unhealthy, personality-changing reaction that everyone fears when they think of electrodes being implanted in their brain. Tuning the device can minimize this side effect, but its very existence suggests that DBS might be a useful therapy for clinical depression.

For more, read the whole article.

Also, in case you missed it, here are my picks for psychology and neuroscience from ResearchBlogging.org:

Can you tell how strong someone is just by looking at their face? Michael Meadon looks at research suggesting that you can.
What does your genome say about how likely you are to go into debt? Quite a lot, says the Neurocritic.
Think you've finally got control over your weight? Now's about the time you'll probably start putting those pounds back on.
How do you make a non-threatening area seem unsafe? Just put a closed-circuit surveillance camera there.

dmunger Wed, 11/11/2009 - 05:49

Tags

In other news

On a somewhat related note, are you familiar with the work of Daryl Kipke at the University of Michigan? He does some cool work on improving implantable electrodes, and on electrodes that can simultaneously stimulate and record brain activity.

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/daryl.kipke/home

Thanks for the link Dave! IMMD :-)

Can artificial sweeteners really help us lose weight?

dmunger — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:34:05 +0000

Can artificial sweeteners really help us lose weight?

My SEED column this week focuses on artificial sweeteners. Can switching to artificial sweeteners help solve the obesity problem in the U.S.? Here's a snippet:

Saunders says an August report from the American Heart Association (AHA) made it quite clear that excessive sugar consumption is dangerous, and he argues that sugar should be seen as a toxic substance. But how much is too much? The new AHA guidelines suggest limiting added sugar to no more than half of discretionary calories--calories consumed after basic nutritional needs are met. For the average male, Saunders says, this works out to about 150 calories per day: one can of Coke, or one candy bar. No free refills.

Again, the answer seems obvious: Just switch to diet drinks. They taste about the same, but with no sugar and no calories. Not so fast, says BikeMonkey, an anonymous biomedical researcher and former bike racer who blogs at DrugMonkey. BikeMonkey cites a 2008 study published in Behavioral Neuroscience where rats were given either sugar-sweetened or artificially sweetened yogurt in addition to their usual diet of rat chow. The rats who ate artificial sweeteners gained significantly more weight over five weeks than the rats who had sugar-sweetened yogurt.

There's much more to it than that, though. Click here to read the whole thing.

Also, in case you missed them, here are my picks for psychology and neuroscience posts from ResearchBlogging.org:

How much does make-up affect perceived age? The Psychology of Beauty blog looks at a recent study -- and questions its methodology.
Is caffeine just a placebo? The Neuroskeptic looks at recent study -- and questions its methodology.
Do women prefer an attractive outsider or their primary partner during ovulation? Primate Diaries looks at a recent study -- and pretty much agrees with its methodology.
Do food ads actually sell the foods they're advertising, or do they just make us eat more? Lucid Thoughts looks at a recent study -- and doesn't really discuss methodology so much as examine its implications.

dmunger Wed, 11/04/2009 - 06:34

Tags

In other news

When I was diagnosed with diabetes (I've had iffy blood sugar my whole life) and stopped eating sugary and starchy foods, I immediately lost 40 pounds, over a two-month period, with no particular activity increase or decrease in fat intake. Of course, immediately before my diagnosis, I had been in the habit of drinking quite a bit of orange juice, on doctor's orders, because of a potassium-depleting blood pressure medication I was taking (both of which might have contributed substantially to my diabetes, incidentally).

I don't see in your article where you differentiate between different artificial sweeteners, either, or between artificial and natural low- or non-caloric sweeteners. Some artificial sweeteners have significant calories, for example granular Splenda, which is formulated with dextrose. Some natural sweeteners have few or no calories, for example erythritol, which has negligible calories, or stevia, which is used in such small quantities that it effectively has zero calories.

Speedwell:

The fact is, the research hasn't done much in that regard. There's not a lot out there to clarify the issue. I think it's always just been assumed that artificial sweeteners are better than sugar. The research focused on whether artificial sweeteners were harmful, not whether they were actually effective.

What I get from the studies I discuss in the article is that it's probably best to avoid both added sugar *and* artificial sweeteners.

OK, I understand. I would also, if only because of my orange juice experience, emphasize that any concentrated, refined sweeteners, such as fruit juices, share the same issues.

What does the research say about natural, very low calorie sweeteners like erythritol? Compared to table sugar it has 95% fewer calories and is about 70% as sweet. And there are no safety issues, like with Aspartame or Splenda.

Jeff, I've used erythritol as my exclusive sweetener for almost a year now. I don't like Splenda, can't stand the smallest particle of stevia, and don't trust aspartame or acesulfame-K. Tagatose is sweeter than erythitol, with the same low-glycemic and low-calorie aspects, but just TRY finding any, let alone any that's affordable, in household quantities. Other sugar alcohols have unacceptable digestive effects and/or a higher glycemic effect and/or have significant calories.

Part of the problem of studying the sugar alcohols is that the noise and misinformation tends to drown out the talk about the benefits, so it's hard to get a study funded. The money is in Splenda and NutraSweet at the moment. I just hope that it doesn't get hard to order erythritol; there's a sort of rocket fuel you can make by adding potassium nitrate to oxidise it. And we can't let the poor wittle citizens play with (gasp) dangerous chemicals in this country anymore.

Sugar is only a part of variouse foods we take daily. And still to consider others to loss weight. I don't have experience with artificial sweeteners but honey might help you. buat duit

Lucky for us, humans are not rats, and some of us can do basic math (addition/subtraction). To lose a pound of weight, you must create a deficit of 3500 Calories, either by restricting the number of calories you take in (eating less) or increasing the number of calories burned (exercise more), or (preferably) some combination of the two. If you use artificial sweeteners to help keep your caloric intake below a certain level, you will lose weight. If you simply replace sugary snacks or drinks with those containing artificial sugars and eat whatever else you want, you probably wonât lose weight (unless you were eating *a lot* of sugar before, in which case you might lose someâ¦). Artificial sweeteners are like guns â they are not inherently good or bad, they are tools that can be used or abused.

Hope, artificial sweeteners do have a real effect on your body, though. The question being asked here is whether or not those effects (after all, just about anything you do has biochemical consequences) have any bearing on weight-loss, or on general health. In particular, does drinking water make any difference to your weight loss than drinking diet coke, assuming a calorie restricted diet and suitable exercise in both cases?

Obesity in the US has sky-rocketed while at the same time sugar-free has been marketed like crazy. Generally when I see a sugar-free product, it's in the hands of a fat person. Certainly makes me wonder about its efficacy... heck, maybe its downfall isn't even the substance itself, but our psychology and how we handle the intake of "guilt-free" foods... but does it matter why it doesn't work? It just doesn't.

For many people, being overweight is associated with being uncomfortable in their own skin. To assist with weight control, every time the urge to snack is felt, first drink a large glass of clear water. This simple act will help you to eat less. Water will soon become one of your best friends. The major reason so many people in America are overweight is because we eat too much for comfort! It does not hurt to treat ourselves with something special once in a while, what is necessary is that we limit our portions and do not overeat! It is also necessary to keep our body properly hydrated, so drink a full glass of water with each meal or snack. Being overweight ******, but after reading a book, I lost 85 pounds! Words can not express how good I feel! This is a comment which I recently received about the book Lose Weight Using Four Easy Steps

Placebo hype: Do the facts match the headlines?

dmunger — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:34:54 +0000

Placebo hype: Do the facts match the headlines?

Over at SEEDMAGAZINE.COM, my column discusses the recent flurry of blog posts and media reporting on the placebo effect. Here's a snippet:

This is the primary misconception about placebos: that the placebo itself is somehow "working" to treat a medical condition. You can see it even in the headline for an otherwise well-crafted article that appeared in Wired last August: "Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why." As internist and medical professor Peter Lipson noted on the Science-Based Medicine blog, placebos by definition have no medical effect. The "placebo effect" is due to the subject's (and sometimes, the experimenter's) expectation that a treatment will work. And, of course, a patient sometimes recovers simply due to chance or because his or her immune response handled the problem. Researchers observe an improvement, and this gets attributed to the placebo. In the case of the Wired article, the misconception in the headline is cleared up by the text of the report: The placebo effect may be getting stronger for reasons that are unclear to researchers. Placebos themselves, as ever, remain ineffective.

The anonymous blogger and UK-based neuroscientist Neuroskeptic also addresses the Wired report in a post entitled "Deconstructing the Placebo." Neuroskeptic points out that many of the issues we have with placebos are more properly directed at the medical conditions a placebo could supposedly address. If a placebo is just as effective at reducing anxiety as a drug designed for that purpose, what does that tell us about the nature of anxiety? Is participation in a research study motivating people to do other ostensibly anxiety-reducing activities? How exactly are these additional activities helping the problem? Even if placebos aren't cures, we should be able to learn more about real medical conditions by investigating how people respond to a fictional "treatment."

Also, in case you missed it, here are my picks from neuroscience and psychology posts this past week on ResearchBlogging.org:

Deep brain stimulation for depressed rats. The Neuroskeptic shows how new research demonstrates how the treatment may work--for both humans and rats.
A new kind of brain stimulation. Doctor Shock discusses a new, less-invasive technique that might work the same way as deep-brain stimulation to treat depression.
The upside of depression. Obviously severe depression is bad. But The Psych Student explores how a little depression could actually be a good thing.

One more thing: The Depression Bipolar Support Alliance is sponsoring a video contest, with a prize of $1,000 for the best video. How cool would it be if the winner incorporated some discussion of peer-reviewed research?

dmunger Wed, 10/28/2009 - 05:34

Tags

In other news

The placebo itself does not work by means to make direct biochemical changes in one's organism, but by making the organism's omnipotent nervous system to take action in curing the condition,
The fact that we do not have a systematic and well accepted knowledge of the CNS control over the so called "autonomic" functions of the body does not, however, mean that this is not the case.
A well powered studies in placebo effect would IMHO do a great good for all of us and the medicine.

Virtual reality for mice (the furry kind)

dmunger — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:13:11 +0000

Virtual reality for mice (the furry kind)

In case you missed them, here are my picks from ResearchBlogging.org's Psychology and Neuroscience posts from the past week.

Mice navigate a virtual-reality maze. Go for the amazingly cute video. Stay for the science!
Brain imaging for lie-detection doesn't live up to the hype. Remember all those stories about fMRI lie detectors a couple years back? BPS Research Digest shows why fMRI is no better than an old-fashioned polygraph.
How good are you at trading stocks? Apparently the length of your fingers can do a good job predicting your success as a stock trader. Honest.
Many people (especially men) say they enjoy the occasional sexual banter at work, as long as it isn't outright harrassment. Andrew Patrick looks at a study showing that even "enjoyable" sexual behavior at work isn't a good thing.

Also, if you're a member of ResearchBlogging.org, be sure to check out our new widget (like the one on the right of this blog). Now you can place the widget on your own blog so your readers can see the latest posts in your favorite topics, like "Psychology," "Neuroscience," and "Health."

Finally, my column is up on SEEDMAGAZINE.COM. This week I discuss the intriguing new findings about Saturn's moons and rings. Here's a snippet:

It seems the more we learn about Saturn's other moons, the stranger they become--Phoebe no longer appears to be the oddest one. Iapetus resembles the Taoist symbol of yin and yang, with one hemisphere covered in dark organic material and the other sheathed in bright white ice. It also has a curious ridge of mountains more than 10 kilometers tall stretched along its equator, making it look like a giant walnut. Titan, by far the largest of Saturn's moons, is the only body in the solar system other than Earth with a dense nitrogen-rich atmosphere. There, it's so cold that water ice is hard as rock, and substances like ethane and methane form their own "hydrological" cycles like water does here on Earth. Scientists suspect Titan might even be capable of supporting exotic forms of carbon-based life.
But Phoebe may not be so easily dethroned. The moon was back in the news recently when an October 7 report in Nature revealed that Saturn has a previously undiscovered ring, vastly larger than all the others but invisible to most telescopes. The next day, Dave Strickland, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University, explained the research on his blog.

Saturn's new ring, spotted in infrared light by the Spitzer Space Telescope, was almost inconceivably large--36 million kilometers in diameter, or a quarter of the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

dmunger Wed, 10/21/2009 - 10:13

Tags

In other news

Blinking, kicking, working, and taking drugs... what could possibly go wrong?

dmunger — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:28:08 +0000

Blinking, kicking, working, and taking drugs... what could possibly go wrong?

In case you missed them, here are my picks this week for psychology/neuroscience posts from ResearchBlogging.org.

Viewers of videos synchronize their blinking. It's true. When people watch videos in a group, they tend to blink at the same time. Steve Genco explains why.
The goal really does seem bigger when you're kicking well. Mo explains the research, which involves an extremely cute miniature adjustable field goal.
People work harder when they believe their work is "meaningful." A cool experiment involving Legos explains why adult video store clerks are the surliest people in the world (or so I've heard).
Placebos have "side effects." Neuroskeptic shows why this may mean that side-effects of real drugs are exaggerated.

dmunger Tue, 10/13/2009 - 09:28

Tags

In other news

Hey, I'll have you know that, yeah, everyone's seen Clerks, but that I am an adult video store clerk and I am just the most helpful, positive, perky lil' thing you'll ever lay eyes on!

But I never knew that I was supposed to be the epitome of "surly", so now me and my 5'4 frame and my high pitched voice will try to be a better example of such! :)

My picks from ResearchBlogging.org

dmunger — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:50:10 +0000

My picks from ResearchBlogging.org

In case you missed them, here are my picks of the week from psychology and Neuroscience from ResearchBlogging.org:

Ever wondered how brain cells manage to form synapses only with other cells, and not with themselves? Neuroskeptic describes a fascinating study demonstrating how neurons avoid getting tangled up in themselves.
Benefits of attending weight-loss camp go beyond losing those pounds. Travis Saunders explains how the psychosocial benefits of weight loss camp are probably more important than losing weight.
Resting state brain networks are stable. BPS Research Digest shows how one of the most common critiques of fMRI research doesn't hold water.
Autism rates in the USA. Are they still rising? Nestor Lopez-Duran offers a nuanced view of the most recent research.

Also, my column on SEEDMAGAZINE.COM this week covers the incessant battles microbes wage with each other -- and how they affect us. Here's a selection:

In 1928, when Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, the antibiotic produced by the bacteria of genus Penicillium, it seemed that a "miracle cure" for many diseases had been found. But rather than being a mere medical triumph, penicillin's discovery revealed more of the fundamental complexity to the microbial world. In fact, we now recognize penicillin's effects as just the latest battle in an evolutionary war that microbes had been waging among themselves for at least hundreds of millions of years.

While it was true that antibiotics like penicillin were effective at treating a variety of diseases caused by bacteria, it was also true that these substances were not effective against all bacteria. Also, bacteria that were not initially resistant to antibiotics were proven capable of developing resistance over time. This was just the beginning. Even now, scientists are still unraveling the many different strategies and tactics bacteria employ in their warfare.

Sound intriguing? Read the whole thing.

dmunger Wed, 10/07/2009 - 04:50

Tags

In other news