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How Tetris may reduce traumatic memories
Science Magazine: Playing the computer game Tetris may help reduce the frequency of traumatic flashbacks like the ones that plague sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder, Pacific Standard reports. In the study, participants viewed a 12-minute film of disturbing sequences and had their memories of the film “reactivated” the next day when they looked at stills that showed people in danger, injured, or dying. Those that played Tetris—a highly visuospatial game that may use the same memory resources that scenic, sensory, and traumatic memories use—soon after reported significantly fewer flashbacks to the disturbing images over the next week, the researchers report in Psychological Science.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: How You Get There From Here: Interaction of Visual Landmarks and Path Integration in Human Navigation Mintao Zhao and William H. Warren Humans use both a landmark-guidance system and a path-integration system to help navigate the world; however, it is not known whether people integrate cues detected by these systems during navigation or rely on cues from one system at a time. Participants performed a homing task in a virtual environment in which they had to walk a triangular path and return to a home location.
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For Couples, Time Can Upend the Laws of Attraction
The New York Times: After decades of studying the concept of “mate value,” social scientists finally have the data necessary to explain the romantic choices in “Knocked Up” and “Pride and Prejudice.” The flabby, unkempt Seth Rogen is no one’s dream date, especially when he’s playing the unemployed guy in “Knocked Up” who spends his days smoking pot and ogling naked celebrities. He has none of the obvious qualities that make a mate valuable: good looks, money, social status. Yet somehow this slacker eventually winds up with a successful television journalist, played by the gorgeous Katherine Heigl.
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How Your Brain Remembers Where You Parked The Car
NPR: If you run into an old friend at the train station, your brain will probably form a memory of the experience. And that memory will forever link the person you saw with the place where you saw him. For the first time, researchers have been able to see that sort of link being created in people's brains, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Neuron. The process involves neurons in one area of the brain that change their behavior as soon as someone associates a particular person with a specific place.
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Car dashboards that act like smart phones raise safety issues
Reuters: When it comes to dashboard displays that are more like smart phones, two things are clear: Customers want them, and automakers are intent on supplying them. But are they really a good idea? Car companies answer with an emphatic yes. They say outsized dashboard displays that behave more like smart phones will boost revenue and attract buyers. And they also insist the new screens will make driving less dangerous, because of well-integrated voice controls and large touch screens that will keep drivers from fumbling with more dangerous mobile phones. But the increasingly elaborate screens have also sparked a broad debate about how much technology is appropriate in a car.
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The Work We Do While We Sleep
The New Yorker: It's strange, when you think about it, that we spend close to a third of our lives asleep. Why do we do it? While we’re sleeping, we’re vulnerable—and, at least on the outside, supremely unproductive. In a 1719 sermon, “Vigilius, or, The Awakener,” Cotton Mather called an excess of sleep “sinful” and lamented that we often sleep when we should be working. Benjamin Franklin echoed the sentiment in “Poor Richard’s Almanack,” when he quipped that “there’ll be sleeping enough in the grave.” For a long time, sleep’s apparent uselessness amused even the scientists who studied it. The Harvard sleep researcher Robert Stickgold has recalled his former collaborator J.
