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Fatty Foods Addictive Like Cocaine in Growing Body of Scientific Research
Bloomberg: Cupcakes may be addictive, just like cocaine. A growing body of medical research at leading universities and government laboratories suggests that processed foods and sugary drinks made by the likes of PepsiCo Inc. and Kraft Foods Inc. (KFT) aren’t simply unhealthy. They can hijack the brain in ways that resemble addictions to cocaine, nicotine and other drugs. “The data is so overwhelming the field has to accept it,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “We are finding tremendous overlap between drugs in the brain and food in the brain.” The idea that food may be addictive was barely on scientists’ radar a decade ago. Now the field is heating up.
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How Social Is Social Networking?
I like Facebook. I’ve been signing into the site fairly regularly for a couple years now, and it has become my large extended family’s primary form of communication. It also keeps me connected with friends and former colleagues—people I like a lot but would never stay in touch with otherwise. We share photos, update personal news, comment on politics and pop culture—nothing serious, but it’s still more connection than I would have in a previous era. In that sense, Facebook is certainly a social lubricant for many of its 500 million users, facilitating fast and effortless and widespread connection. But does this innovative technology actually change the quality and texture of relationships?
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How We Create False Memories: Assessing Memory Performance in Older Adults
A study at Tufts University addresses the influence of age-related stereotypes on memory performance and memory errors in older adults.
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5 Ways To Make a Killer First Impression
Forbes: Most people will judge you within the first second of meeting you and their opinion will most likely never change. Making a good first impression is incredibly important, because you only get one shot at it. Princeton University psychologist Alex Todorov and co-author Janine Willis, a student researcher who graduated from Princeton in 2005 had people look at a microsecond of video of a political candidate. Amazingly, research subjects could predict with 70-percent accuracy who would win the election just from that microsecond of tape. This tells us that people can make incredibly accurate snap judgments in a tenth of a second.
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Research: Video games help with creativity in boys and girls
USA Today: Here's another reason to include The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword on those holiday shopping lists: children who play video games are more creative. That finding, thought to be the first demonstration of a relationship between technology use and creativity, comes from a new study of nearly 500 12-year-olds in Michigan, conducted by researchers at Michigan State University's Children and Technology Project. Already published online, the study is expected to be included in the March 2012 issue of the journal Computers in Human Behavior.
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Opting Out or Pushed Out?
Working Mother: Is the American myth of rugged individualism costing women advancement in the workplace? Nicole Stephens, an assistant professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, and Cynthia S. Levine, a doctoral student at Stanford University, argue that because Americans believe that most people’s behavior comes from “personal choice,” they fail to see how real and persistent workplace barriers—including lack of flexibility, unaffordable child care and gender stereotypes—weigh on women’s successes.
