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On the brink of a mental health revolution
BBC: One in four of us will suffer some form of mental illness during our lifetimes.Historically, many of these conditions have been beyond our understanding, but now scientists believe we are on the verge of a revolution in how mental health problems are approached. Professor Tom Insel, director of the $1.5bn National Institute of Mental Health in the United States, told Newsnight there is a profound change taking place, and science and technology is key to that change: "We are really facing a tipping point here with research in mental illness. We have gone through a revolution in how we can look at the brain.
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Smile like your happiness depends on it
The Boston Globe: Smile, you’re on Candid Camera! That seems to be the lesson of a new study by psychologists at the University of Virginia. They found that both male and female freshmen who smiled more intensely in their Facebook profile photos were not only more satisfied with their lives as freshmen, but also more satisfied with their lives several years later as seniors, even controlling for freshman-year life satisfaction and extroversion. The connection between smiling and subsequent life satisfaction appeared to be at least partly explained by the quality of one’s social relationships. Read the whole story: The Boston Globe
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Understanding Mindfulness Meditation
MSN News: 現在人工作壓力大，需要更多的紓壓管道，於是有越來越多人開始學習冥想、靜坐等古老的方法。一項發表在《心理科學》（Psychological Science）期刊的研究發現，透過冥想或是靜坐等方式，可以對我們的身體有相當大的助益，其中最重要的就是可以改變免疫系統，降低血壓，並且增強認知 功能。（圖片翻攝自Daily Mail網站） 在東方的宗教或是靈性修練當中，靜坐或是冥想 都是不可或缺的一環，而且逐漸在世界各地蔚為風潮，被很多人用來紓解龐大的生活壓力。哈佛大學跟久斯塔斯李比 希大學（Justus Liebig Univeristy）的研究人員發現，冥想除了可以幫助提升免疫系統外，還可以讓心理健康，證明冥想不是一個空泛的方法，而是一個有效的技巧。 主導這項研究的布麗塔（Britta Hazel）博士表示，之 Read the whole story: MSN News
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Which Way You Lean—Physically—Affects Your Decision-Making
We’re not always aware of how we are making a decision. Unconscious feelings or perceptions may influence us. Another important source of information—even if we’re unaware of it—is the body itself. “Decision making, like other cognitive processes, is an integration of multiple sources of information—memory, visual imagery, and bodily information, like posture,” says Anita Eerland, a psychologist at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. In a new study, Eerland and colleagues Tulio Guadalupe and Rolf Zwaan found that surreptitiously manipulating the tilt of the body influences people’s estimates of quantities, such as sizes, numbers, or percentages.
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Life’s Extremes: Math vs. Language
LiveScience: Do you know what "abecedarian" means? What about the solution to 250 x 11? Most people would agree they are better at verbal or math subjects in school, as grades usually do attest. Highly intelligent individuals often do well in both subjects, and may know the answers to both questions above, lickety-split, while less intelligent people can struggle. But a minority of us excels in the language department and bombs at mathematics, or vice versa. (As an adjective, abecedarian refers to something relating to the alphabet; 2,750 is the solution to the equation.) These extremes in ability speak (or equate) to the very makeup of our brains.
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NIH-Funded Study Finds Dyslexia not Tied to IQ
International Business Times: Research on brain activity fails to support widely used approach to identify dyslexic students Regardless of high or low overall scores on an IQ test, children with dyslexia show similar patterns of brain activity, according to researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health. The results call into question the discrepancy model - the practice of classifying a child as dyslexic on the basis of a lag between reading ability and overall IQ scores. In many school systems, the discrepancy model is the criterion for determining whether a child will be provided with specialized reading instruction.
