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How Music Can Literally Heal the Heart
In a maverick method, nephrologist Michael Field taught medical students to decipher different heart murmurs through their stethoscopes, trills, grace notes, and decrescendos to describe the distinctive sounds of heart valves snapping closed, and blood ebbing through leaky valves in plumbing disorders of the heart.
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New Research in Psychological Science
A sample of research on aging, meditation and yoga, school punishment, acculturation, face-based judgments, auditory perception, working memory, and immigration.
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Facebook Under Fire Over Secret Teen Research
Facebook-owned Instagram has been criticised for keeping secret its internal research into the effect social media had on teenager users. According to the Wall Street Journal, its studies showed teenagers blamed Instagram for increased levels of anxiety and depression. Campaign groups and MPs have said it is proof the company puts profit first. Instagram said the research showed its "commitment to understanding complex and difficult issues".
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What Kids Feel Entering a Third COVID School Year (And How to Help Them Through It)
Most kids are now in their third year of school during the pandemic. It's been a time of ups and downs; adjustments and re-adjustments. Some have flourished in online school and want to stay home — others have floundered and are excited to go back. NPR spoke to a group of kids ages 6 and up about what the pandemic has been like, and how they're feeling about the new school year. Two experts in childhood education and development explain how the pandemic has challenged kids and what we can do to help them: Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Education; and Katie McLaughlin, a psychologist at Harvard University. ...
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Why A Good Scare Is Sometimes The Right Call
This week is our last with Maddie as a host, so we're spending it with a trip down memory lane. The first episode Maddie invites us to relive and enjoy is our first listener question episode on the science behind thrill-seeking. She talks to psychologist Ken Carter about why some people love to get scared. ...
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How Virtual Reality Therapy Can Help Make Bad Memories More Manageable
Jonathan Tissue, 35, returned home from combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq with invisible wounds. He had been injured twice but was physically mobile. It was his anger at home that made him seem like a different person to his friends and family. Every time he drove by a garbage truck, he became tense, recalling the vehicle-borne improvised explosive device that hit his convoy while overseas. The doctors at Veterans Affairs prescribed traditional talk therapy for his combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder. For five years, he met with psychotherapists but nothing improved. He became more difficult, irritable, anxious, depressed, with occasional angry outbursts.
