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Feeling Disgust May Enhance Our Ability to Detect Impurities
Disgust – it’s an emotion we experience when we encounter things that are dirty, impure, or otherwise contaminated. From an evolutionary standpoint, experiencing the intense, visceral sense of revulsion that comes with disgust presumably helps us to avoid contaminants that can make us sick or even kill us. But new research suggests that disgust not only helps us to avoid impurities, it may also make us better able to see them. If something looks dirty and disgusting, we typically assume it’s contaminated in some way; when something is white, however, we are more likely to assume that it’s clean and pure.
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Short-term Summer Fellowship for Teaching Neuroethics
Would you or a neuroscience colleague like to develop and teach a course on neuroethics at your institution? The University of Pennsylvania is ready to help, by offering Short-term Visiting Fellowships for Teaching Neuroethics. This summer the Penn Center for Neuroscience & Society will host 16 college and university professors with primary expertise in neuroscience for a week-long intensive course on "neuroethics," that is, the ethical, legal and societal implications of neuroscience.
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Brain Stimulation May Buffer Feelings of Social Pain
Accumulating evidence suggests that certain brain areas involved in processing physical pain may also underlie feelings of social pain. But can altering brain activity in these areas actually change how people experience social pain? Paolo Riva of the University of Milano-Bicocca and colleagues wanted to examine whether there might be a causal relationship between activity in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) – known to be involved in the regulation of physical pain and negative expressions of emotion – and experiences of social pain. Their findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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APS Fellow Nakamura to Direct the NIH’s Center for Scientific Review
National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins announced that APS Fellow and Charter Member Richard Nakamura will be the new director for the NIH’s Center for Scientific Review (CSR). Nakamura has been serving as the acting director since September 2011. Nakamura came to NIH's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in 1976 as a postdoctoral fellow. In the mid-80's he coordinated NIMH’s Biobehavioral Program and later was Chief of its Integrative Neuroscience Research Branch. Between 1997 and 2007, he served as the institute's Deputy Director. From 2007 to 2011 he has been institute Scientific Director.
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Research Explores Markers of Depression From Childhood to Adulthood
A unique longitudinal investigation of Major Depressive Disorder tracks the illness across four critical periods in life, providing new insights into how depression emerges and develops over time.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Mirta Galesic, Henrik Olsson, and Jörg Rieskamp How accurately do people assess characteristics of the general population? Participants answered questions about 10 characteristics related to their love life, financial situation, friendships, health, work stress, and education. They also estimated the distribution of these qualities in their own social group and in the larger population. Although participants were fairly accurate in judging their social group, their estimates of the population were less accurate. In addition, participants showed specific trait-dependent enhancements or deficits in the reporting of their own characteristics.