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Blindsight in Children With Cerebral Lesions
Congenital or acquired damage to the visual processing areas of the brain is often associated with a loss of vision. Despite sustaining damage to these brain areas, some people retain an unconscious ability to respond to visual stimuli — and ability termed blindsight. Although these people are not consciously aware of visual stimuli, they are in many instances able to direct their eyes towards target items and to discriminate the orientation and direction of movement presented in their area of blindness. Studies examining blindsight have found that those who acquire damage early in life retain more visual ability than those who acquire brain damage in adolescence or adulthood.
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Study Identifies Genetic Tie to Marital Satisfaction
Psychological researchers have found, for the first time, a link between a gene variant and marital satisfaction. “An enduring mystery is, what makes one spouse so attuned to the emotional climate in a marriage, and another so oblivious?,” said APS Past President Robert Levenson, a professor at University of California, Berkeley and lead author of the study. “With these new genetic findings, we now understand much more about what determines just how important emotions are for different people.” Specifically, researchers from UC Berkeley and Northwestern University found a link between relationship fulfillment and a gene variant, or “allele,” known as 5-HTTLPR.
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Is Beauty in the Average or the Individual?
The beauty-in-averageness effect stems from research showing that a blended face, a morph of multiple individual faces, is generally rated as being more attractive than its individual component faces.
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Mind Reading: Human Origins and Theory of Mind
Join the live webcast! "Mind Reading: Human Origins and Theory of Mind" is a free public symposium hosted by the University of California, San Diego/Salk Institute for Biological Studies Center for Academic Research & Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA) on Friday, October 18th (1:00 – 5:30 pm Pacific Time), co-chaired by Donald Pfaff (Rockefeller University) and Terry Sejnowski (Salk Institute).
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General Psychopathology Factor May Describe Structure of Psychiatric Disorders
Mental disorders have traditionally been viewed as distinct categorical entities, but the high incidence of comorbid, or co-occurring, disorders challenges this view. As researchers Terrie Moffitt, Avshalom Caspi, and colleagues observe in their new article in Clinical Psychological Science, about half of the people who meet diagnostic criteria for one disorder also meet the diagnostic criteria for another disorder at the same time.
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Recognizing 125 Years of Psychological Research Excellence
Tucked away in a corner of the Philosophy Department, Indiana University’s first psychology laboratory opened in 1888 with humble beginnings. But 125 years later, it now stands as the longest continuing psychology laboratory in the United States. Emphasizing a collaborative and interdisciplinary focus from the start, the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences (PBS) as a whole now stands as a prime example of cutting-edge and multi-faceted research. "The Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences has an enormous worldwide impact," said Lauren Robel, Indiana University Bloomington Provost and Executive Vice President.
