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Suppressing traumatic memories can cause amnesia, research suggests
The Guardian: Suppressing bad memories from the past can block memory formation in the here and now, research suggests. The study could help to explain why those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other psychological conditions often experience difficulty in remembering recent events, scientists say. Writing in Nature Communications, the authors describe how trying to forget past incidents by suppressing our recollections can create a “virtual lesion” in the brain that casts an “amnesiac shadow” over the formation of new memories.
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What Research Says about Defeating Terrorism
Scientific American: Terrorism is as old as history and almost certainly older. In 68 B.C., for instance, the Roman city of Ostia, a vital port for one of the world's earliest superpowers, was set on fire by a band of thugs. They destroyed the consular war fleet and, rather embarrassingly, kidnapped two leading senators. Panic ensued—the same panic that has now been recapitulated down the centuries, courtesy of such terror groups as the Irish Republican Army, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the African National Congress, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, al Qaeda and, most recently, ISIS. ...
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Why Virginia Basketball Will Make You Yawn
The Wall Street Journal: Everyone in the NCAA tournament has a pre-game routine, and they’re willing to entertain almost anything if it has the right psychological effects. Virginia guard Malcolm Brogdon, though, prepares for the opening tip in what may be the strangest way possible. “I’ve never met a player,” said teammate Marial Shayok, “who yawns on a consistent basis.” This is how one of college basketball’s best players gets ready for games: He yawns. It’s a habit that Virginia fans have begun anticipating and some of Brogdon’s teammates have seen so often that they barely notice anymore. The first time Shayok witnessed it, however, he couldn’t believe his eyes.
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Not All Mind Wandering Is Created Equal
Mind wandering—sometimes seen as daydreaming or “zoning out”—has been shown to facilitate creative thinking and problem solving, but in the wrong context it can become distracting or even dangerous. Inattentive students can get behind in class, and drivers who aren’t paying attention to the road are far more likely to end up in accidents. And for some professions, like surgeons or air traffic controllers, zoning out on the job can lead to disaster.
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Handling Money Appears to Sway Helpfulness
The cold touch of a nickel may be enough to keep people from helping each other, new research suggests. In a new set of experiments in Poland, a team of researchers found that priming children with money by having them sort coins into their different denominations, as opposed to sorting different colored buttons, influenced how they behaved afterward when tasked with helping experimenters gather crayons. The children who handled money helped the experimenters significantly less than the children who sorted buttons.
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Greenery (or Even Photos of Trees) Can Make Us Happier
The New York Times: A growing body of research shows that people who spend time outside in sunny, green and natural spaces tend to be happier and healthier than those who don’t. A study from Stanford last year, for example, found that young adults who walked for an hour through campus parkland were less anxious afterward and performed better on a test of working memory than if they had strolled along a busy street. Precisely what is going on inside our bodies as we move through the greenery is largely unknown, however.
