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Can music delay dementia? What new study says
CBS News: Are flats and sharps the keys to mental sharpness? Preliminary research now links music lessons in childhood to greater mental acuity decades down the road. For a study published in the journal Neuropsychology, researchers recruited 70 healthy adults between 60 and 83 years of age and divided them into three groups based upon the extent of their musical background. Those who had studied an instrument or learned how to read music performed better on cognitive tests than those with no musical background.
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Are Dietary Supplements Working Against You?
Do you belong to the one-half of the population that frequently uses dietary supplements with the hope that it might be good for you? Well, according to a study published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, there seems to be an interesting asymmetrical relationship between the frequency of dietary supplement use and the health status of individuals.
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Brain Collector Seeks Trump-Like Donors to Probe How Personality Is Formed
Bloomberg: Jacopo Annese wants Donald Trump’s brain, literally. That’s the example cited by Annese, a 45-year-old neurologist, in describing who might be the ideal candidate for a 1,000-donor campaign being run this year by his University of California San Diego brain bank. The center is seeking people who can supply detailed life histories before they die, and their physical brains afterward. Annese already is working with a former flying monkey from the “Wizard of Oz,” and a woman who can’t feel fear. Trump’s history as a real-estate developer, author and TV star would be a good addition, he said.
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Sad in the spring? Allergy-mood link is real
CNN: You know spring has sprung when hundreds of people daily turn to Twitter to vent about their itchy eyes, dripping nose and uncontrollable sneezing and coughing. And if it's not obvious that allergies can ruin a person's day, watch how many tweets go by that use "allergies" and the f-word in the same sentence. Seasonal allergies, which affect about 36 million Americans, aren't just an annoyance; many doctors agree there is a real connection between allergies and mood. "'Cranky' is really the best word for it," says Katie Ingram, 30, of Alexandria, Virginia, a triathlete who suffers seasonal allergies. "I take a lot of medication for it and that makes me sleepy.
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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The Two Sides of Emotional Intelligence
People often assume that having good emotional intelligence makes you a better person. Not so, say the authors of a study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Emotional skills can be used for good or for evil—for the betterment of the group or for humiliating your coworkers. A popular book on emotional intelligence that came out in the mid 1990s equated emotional intelligence with good character.
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Quantum physicist, social psychologist among this year’s Killam Prize winners
The Globe and Mail: The Canada Council for the Arts calls it this country’s Nobel Prize. And today, the Killam Prize recognized five more of Canada’s finest academics for their devoted work to scientific and scholastic research over their lifetime, from an oft-quoted social psychologist to a humanitarian doctor. Winners of the $100,000 prize, rewarded for research in health sciences, engineering, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences, were announced Wednesday. The prize is one of the country’s most distinguished, its limited number reserving it only for the best minds in Canada. Past winners say the prestige of the award speaks for itself. “It’s not simply an academic prize.
