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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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Jumpstarting the Talking Cure
The “talking cure” originally referred to psychoanalysis, the brand of therapy made famous by Sigmund Freud and his followers. Today the phrase describes a very wide range of psychotherapeutic approaches, including psychoanalysis, that begin with clients, well, talking about themselves—their experiences, relationships, thoughts and feelings. Frank disclosure is considered the cornerstone of a trusting therapeutic alliance—and thus key to psychological healing and well-being. But people don’t always want to disclose their inner lives, even when they seek help, and one of a therapist’s most difficult challenges is to nudge clients who are guarding their privacy.
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Crash! Collisions in the Mind’s Eye
The Huffington Post: My son was involved in a serious motorcycle accident some months ago. He was driving on a major avenue in Washington, D.C., going the posted speed, when a taxi pulled out from a side road, directly into his path. My son hit the brakes, but the cab was too close to avoid, so he deliberately took a spill. Both he and the bike slid under the cab, which mercifully stopped, inches before running over him. ... DeLucia writes about the practical implications of this lab work in a paper that will appear in a future issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science.
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Thinking Clearly About Personality Disorders
The New York Times: For years they have lived as orphans and outliers, a colony of misfit characters on their own island: the bizarre one and the needy one, the untrusting and the crooked, the grandiose and the cowardly. Their customs and rituals are as captivating as any tribe’s, and at least as mystifying. Every mental anthropologist who has visited their world seems to walk away with a different story, a new model to explain those strange behaviors. This weekend the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association will vote on whether to adopt a new diagnostic system for some of the most serious, and striking, syndromes in medicine: personality disorders.
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Exam success makes children happy, argues Michael Gove
BBC: In the speech, the minister is expected to refer to the work of the American cognitive scientist Daniel T Willingham whom he cites as one of his biggest influences. Quoting from Mr Willingham's book Why Students Don't Like School Mr Gove says he agrees that students are motivated to learn if they enjoy "the pleasurable rush that comes from successful thought". Mr Gove is set to say this is what exam success provides: "There is no feeling of satisfaction as deep or sustained as knowing we have succeeded through hard work at a task which is the upper end, or just beyond, our normal or expected level of competence.
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Soldiers’ stress may start early
The Philadelphia Inquirer: Childhood abuse and previous exposure to violence may raise a soldier's risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a new study says. Researchers followed 746 Danish soldiers before, during, and after deployment to Afghanistan; 84 percent of them showed no PTSD symptoms or recovered quickly from mild symptoms. The soldiers who developed PTSD were much more likely to have suffered emotional problems and traumatic events at some point in their lives before they went to war.
