Posts tagged psychology
Articles and news from the latest research reports.
Can Games, Puzzles Keep Aging Minds Sharp?
Older adults who enjoy mentally stimulating games may have bigger brains and sharper thinking skills than their peers, new research suggests.
The study looked at the connection between playing games such as puzzles, crosswords, cards and checkers and mental acuity for adults in their 50s and 60s.
Researchers found that people who played those games at least every other day performed better on tests of memory and other mental functions. And, based on MRI scans, they had greater tissue mass in brain areas involved in memory.
(Image: Alamy)
Older adults nearly twice as likely to have memories affected by environmental distractions
Older people are nearly twice as likely as their younger counterparts to have their memory and cognitive processes impaired by environmental distractions (such as irrelevant speech or written words presented along with target stimuli), according to a new study from psychologists at Rice University and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Whereas other studies had found that older adults are distracted by memories of prior similar events, this was the first study to convincingly demonstrate across several tasks an impairment from environmental distractions.
“Cognitive Declines in Healthy Aging: Evidence from Multiple Aspects of Interference Resolution” appeared in a recent edition of Psychology and Aging. The study supported previous research that showed memory accuracy and the speed of cognitive processing declines with age. It also revealed that older people were at least twice as likely as younger to have irrelevant memories intrude during memory recall and also showed twice as much slowing in cognitive processing in the presence of distracting information in the environment.
The study included 102 people between the ages of 18 and 32 (average age of 21) and 60 people between the ages of 64 and 82 (average age of 71) who participated in a series of memory and cognitive tasks.
For example, when the participants were tested on remembering lists of words, individuals in the young test group remembered words on the list with an average accuracy of 81 percent; in comparison, the old test group’s accuracy was only 67 percent. When irrelevant words were introduced that were to be ignored, the young test group’s accuracy dropped to 74 percent, but the accuracy of the old test group’s performance dropped to 46 percent.
“Almost any type of memory test administered reveals a decline in memory from the age of 25 on,” said Randi Martin, the Elma W. Schneider Professor of Psychology at Rice and the study’s co-author. “However, this is the first study to convincingly demonstrate the impact of environmental interference on processing having a greater impact on older than younger adults.”
Martin hopes that the research will encourage further research of how the brain is affected by environmental distractions.
“From our perspective of studying neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to reorganize itself after traumatic injury or neurological disorders) and testing patients with brain damage, this research is very important,” Martin said. “The tests used in this study are important tools in determining how the brain is affected by environmental interference, which is critical information in treating neurological disorders, including stroke and traumatic brain injuries.”
(Source: news.rice.edu)
Virtual humans inspire patients to open up
When we feel down and find ourselves at the doctor’s office for help, the best person to get us to open up about our problems isn’t a person at all. It’s a computer.
A new USC study suggests that patients are more willing to disclose personal information to virtual humans than actual ones, in large part because computers lack the proclivity to look down on people the way another human might.
The research, which was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the U.S. Army, is promising for people suffering from post-traumatic stress and other mental anguish, said Gale Lucas, a social psychologist at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, who led the study. In intake interviews, people were more honest about their symptoms, no matter how potentially embarrassing, when they believed that a human observer wasn’t in on the conversation.
“In any given topic, there’s a difference between what a person is willing to admit in person versus anonymously,” Lucas said.
The study, which will be published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, provides the first empirical evidence that virtual humans can increase a patient’s willingness to disclose personal information in a clinical setting, researchers said. It also presents compelling reasons for doctors to start using virtual humans as medical screeners. The honest answers acquired by a virtual human could help doctors diagnose and treat their patients more appropriately.
The recruitment process
Researchers recruited 239 adults through Craigslist to participate in the study. The adults, whose ages ranged from 18 to 65, were invited to a laboratory to interact with a virtual human as if they were being admitted to a clinic or hospital.
Subjects were interviewed as part of an evaluation of SimSensei, a virtual human application that can be used to identify signals of depression and other mental health issues through real-time sensing and recognition of nonverbal behaviors. It is a research project designed to assess the potential of such technology and is based on more than 10 years of virtual human research and development at ICT.
Some participants were told the virtual human’s responses were fully automated, others were told that the responses were remotely controlled, puppet-like, by a human observer in another room. In reality, all participants were randomly assigned a fully or semi-automated virtual human, regardless of what they were told, and their video interviews were later analyzed by a (human) researcher.
The mere belief that participants were interacting with only a computer made them more open and honest, researchers found, even when the virtual human asked personal questions such as, “What’s something you feel guilty about?” or “Tell me about an event, or something that you wish you could erase from your memory.”
In addition, video analysis of the study subjects’ facial expressions showed that they were also more likely to show more intense signs of sadness — perhaps the most vulnerable of expressions — when they thought only pixels were present.
Opening up to a virtual human
One participant who thought the virtual human was automated said the experience was “way better than talking to a person. I don’t really feel comfortable talking about personal stuff to other people.”
In contrast, a participant who thought the conversation was being observed told researchers, “I wish you hadn’t told me that other people were in the other room listening in. It was weird, like, I don’t even know these people. I would have said a lot more stuff if they weren’t there.”
The virtual human named Ellie opened the conversation with questions such as “Where are you from originally?” and incorporated feedback (“I’m sorry to hear that”) and empathetic listening through facial expressions and nodding. Secondly, “her” virtual nature gave participants a sense of anonymity, making them more willing to disclose personal information in a private setting without fear of criticism.
“We know that developing a rapport and feeling free of judgment are two important factors that affect a person’s willingness to disclose personal information,” said co-author Jonathan Gratch, director of virtual humans research at ICT and a professor in USC’s Department of Computer Science. “The virtual character delivered on both these fronts and that is what makes this a particularly valuable tool for obtaining information people might feel sensitive about sharing.”
The researchers were careful to emphasize that the virtual human could supplement — not replace — trained clinicians. Still, the implications of the findings are plentiful both in terms of reducing costs and improving care, and several are being explored in projects being developed at ICT, including virtual humans to help detect signs of depression, provide screening services for patients in remote areas or act as role-playing partners for training health professionals.
In an age where people are increasingly interacting with computers over real people for everything from banking to grocery shopping, the researchers hope that opening up to a virtual character will open the door for people to get the care they need in a variety of health care settings as well.
Why does a relentless stream of subjective experiences normally fill your mind? Maybe that’s just one of those mysteries that will always elude us.
Yet, research from Northwestern University suggests that consciousness lies well within the realm of scientific inquiry — as impossible as that may currently seem. Although scientists have yet to agree on an objective measure to index consciousness, progress has been made with this agenda in several labs around the world.
“The debate about the neural basis of consciousness rages because there is no widely accepted theory about what happens in the brain to make consciousness possible,” said Ken Paller, professor of psychology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Program at Northwestern.
“Scientists and others acknowledge that damage to the brain can lead to systematic changes in consciousness. Yet, we don’t know exactly what differentiates brain activity associated with conscious experience from brain activity that is instead associated with mental activity that remains unconscious,” he said.
In a new article, Paller and Satoru Suzuki, also professor of psychology at Northwestern, point out flawed assumptions about consciousness to suggest that a wide range of scientific perspectives can offer useful clues about consciousness.
“It’s normal to think that if you attentively inspect something you must be aware of it and that analyzing it to a high level would necessitate consciousness,” Suzuki noted. “Results from experiments on perception belie these assumptions.
“Likewise, it feels like we can freely decide at a precise moment, when actually the process of deciding begins earlier, via neurocognitive processing that does not enter awareness,” he said.
The authors write that unconscious processing can influence our conscious decisions in ways we never suspect.
If these and other similar assumptions are incorrect, the researchers state in their article, then mistaken reasoning might be behind arguments for taking the science of consciousness off the table.
“Neuroscientists sometimes argue that we must focus on understanding other aspects of brain function, because consciousness is never going to be understood,” Paller said. “On the other hand, many neuroscientists are actively engaged in probing the neural basis of consciousness, and, in many ways, this is less of a taboo area of research than it used to be.”
Experimental evidence has supported some theories about consciousness that appeal to specific types of neural communication, which can be described in neural terms or more abstractly in computational terms. Further theoretical advances can be expected if specific measures of neural activity can be brought to bear on these ideas.
Paller and Suzuki both conduct research that touches on consciousness. Suzuki studies perception, and Paller studies memory. They said it was important for them to write the article to counter the view that it is hopeless to ever make progress through scientific research on this topic.
They outlined recent advances that provide reason to be optimistic about future scientific inquiries into consciousness and about the benefits that this knowledge could bring for society.
“For example, continuing research on the brain basis of consciousness could inform our concerns about human rights, help us explain and treat diseases that impinge on consciousness, and help us perpetuate environments and technologies that optimally contribute to the well being of individuals and of our society,” the authors wrote.
They conclude that research on human consciousness belongs within the purview of science, despite philosophical or religious arguments to the contrary.
Their paper, “The Source of Consciousness,” has been published online in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
(Image: Shutterstock)
The anatomy of fear: Understanding the biological underpinnings of anxiety, phobias and PTSD
Fear in a mouse brain looks much the same as fear in a human brain.
When a frightening stimulus is encountered, the thalamus shoots a message to the amygdala — the primitive part of the brain — even before it informs the parts responsible for higher cognition. The amygdala then goes into its hard-wired fight-or-flight response, triggering a host of predictable symptoms, including racing heart, heavy breathing, startle response, and sweating.
The similarities of fear response in the brains of mice and men have allowed scientists to understand the neural circuitry and molecular processes of fear and fear behaviors perhaps better than any other response. That understanding has spurred breakthroughs in treatments for psychiatric disorders that are underpinned by fear.
Anxiety disorders are one of the most common mental illnesses in the country, with nearly one-third of Americans experiencing symptoms at least once during their lives. There are generalized anxiety disorders and fear-related disorders, which include panic disorders, phobias, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Emory psychiatrist and researcher Kerry Ressler is on the front lines of fear-disorder research. In his lab at Yerkes National Primate Research Center, he studies the molecular and cellular mechanisms of fear learning and extinction in mouse models. At Grady Memorial Hospital, he investigates the psychology, genetics, and biology of PTSD. And through the Grady Trauma Project, he works to draw attention to the problem of inner city intergenerational violence.
"If you look at Kerry’s work, it can seem like it’s all over the place — he’s got so many studies going on, and he collaborates with so many other scientists," says Barbara Rothbaum, associate vice chair of clinical research in psychiatry and director of the Trauma and Anxiety Recovery Program at Emory. "But they are all pieces to the same puzzle. All his work, from molecular to clinical to policy, fits together and starts telling a story." A Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, Ressler was recently elected to the Institute of Medicine — one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine. He was named a member of a new national PTSD consortium led by Draper Laboratory. And he recently appeared on the Charlie Rose show’s brain series.
Panic attacks seem to tie the fear-related disorders together, he explained on Charlie Rose. Everyone experiences fear, which evolved as a survival mechanism, but it only rises to a clinical level when people are unable to function normally in the face of it. For instance, PTSD includes not only intrusive thoughts, memories, nightmares, and startle responses, but also the concept of avoidance, which may extend to other areas of the individual’s life.
"There’s a patient I’ve seen who was attacked in a dark alley," Ressler shared on the show. "Initially it just felt dangerous to go out at night, but after a while she grew afraid of men and couldn’t go to that part of town. Then she couldn’t leave her house, and finally, her bedroom. The world got more and more dangerous."
What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades
Does handwriting matter?
Not very much, according to many educators. The Common Core standards, which have been adopted in most states, call for teaching legible writing, but only in kindergarten and first grade. After that, the emphasis quickly shifts to proficiency on the keyboard.
But psychologists and neuroscientists say it is far too soon to declare handwriting a relic of the past. New evidence suggests that the links between handwriting and broader educational development run deep.
Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. In other words, it’s not just what we write that matters — but how.
Hypnosis: The day my mind was ‘possessed’
I am lying on my back and trapped in a gleaming white tunnel, the surface barely six inches from my nose. There is a strange mechanical rumbling in the background, and I hear footsteps padding around the room beyond. In my mounting claustrophobia, I ask myself why I am here – but there is no way out now. A few moments later, the light dims, and as the man speaks, my thoughts begin to fade.
“The engineer has developed a way of taking control of your thoughts from the inside. He does this because he is fascinated by mind control, and wants to apply the most direct method of controlling your thoughts. He is doing this to advance his research into mind control. You will soon be aware of the engineer inserting his thoughts.”
A strange serenity descends as I realise that soon, my will won’t be my own. Then the experiment begins. I am about to be possessed.
More left-handed men are born during the winter
Men born in November, December or January are more likely of being left-handed than during the rest of the year. While the genetic bases of handedness are still under debate, scientists at the Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, obtained indirect evidence of a hormonal mechanism promoting left-handedness among men. Psychologist Ulrich Tran and his colleagues published their findings in the scientific journal “Cortex”.
Various manual tasks in everyday life require the use of the right hand or are optimized for right-handers. Around 90 percent of the general population is right-handed, only about 10 percent is left-handed. The study of Ulrich Tran, Stefan Stieger, and Martin Voracek comprised two large and independent samples of nearly 13000 adults from Austria and Germany. As in modern genetic studies, where a discovery-and-replication-sample design is standard, the use of two samples allowed testing the replicability and robustness of findings within one-and-the-same study. Overall, 7.5 percent of women and 8.8 percent of men were left-handed. “We were surprised to see that this imbalance was caused by more left-handed men being born specifically during November, December, and January. On a monthly average, 8.2 percent of left-handed men were born during the period February to October. During November to January, this number rose to 10.5 percent”, according to Ulrich Tran, lead author of the study.
A hormonal cause during embryonic development
"Presumably, the relative darkness during the period November to January is not directly connected to this birth seasonality of handedness. We assume that the relative brightness during the period May to July, half a year before, is its distal cause", explains Ulrich Tran. A theory, brought forth in the 1980s by US neurologists Norman Geschwind and Albert Galaburda, posits that testosterone delays the maturation of the left brain hemisphere during embryonic development. The left brain hemisphere is dominant among right-handers, the right brain hemisphere is dominant among left-handers. Intrauterine testosterone levels are higher in the male fetus, because of its own testosterone secretion, than in the female fetus. However, the testosterone level of the mother and external factors may also affect intrauterine testosterone levels. Specifically, more daylight may increase testosterone levels, making a seasonality effect plausible.
Previous studies on the subject provided mixed and inconsistent evidence. There was no clear indication which season has an effect, and whether seasonality affects men, women or both sexes equally. According to the current findings, there is a small, but robust and replicable, effect of birth seasonality on handedness, affecting only men. These results are consistent with a hormonal basis of handedness, corroborating thus an old and controversial theory. However, the exact way of causation needs to be investigated in future studies.
(Source: medienportal.univie.ac.at)
Only 25 Minutes of Mindfulness Meditation Alleviates Stress
Mindfulness meditation has become an increasingly popular way for people to improve their mental and physical health, yet most research supporting its benefits has focused on lengthy, weeks-long training programs.
New research from Carnegie Mellon University is the first to show that brief mindfulness meditation practice — 25 minutes for three consecutive days — alleviates psychological stress. Published in the journal “Psychoneuroendocrinology,” the study investigates how mindfulness meditation affects people’s ability to be resilient under stress.
"More and more people report using meditation practices for stress reduction, but we know very little about how much you need to do for stress reduction and health benefits," said lead author J. David Creswell, associate professor of psychology in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
For the study, Creswell and his research team had 66 healthy individuals aged 18-30 years old participate in a three-day experiment. Some participants went through a brief mindfulness meditation training program; for 25 minutes for three consecutive days, the individuals were given breathing exercises to help them monitor their breath and pay attention to their present moment experiences. A second group of participants completed a matched three-day cognitive training program in which they were asked to critically analyze poetry in an effort to enhance problem-solving skills.
Following the final training activity, all participants were asked to complete stressful speech and math tasks in front of stern-faced evaluators. Each individual reported their stress levels in response to stressful speech and math performance stress tasks, and provided saliva samples for measurement of cortisol, commonly referred to as the stress hormone.
The participants who received the brief mindfulness meditation training reported reduced stress perceptions to the speech and math tasks, indicating that the mindfulness meditation fostered psychological stress resilience. More interestingly, on the biological side, the mindfulness meditation participants showed greater cortisol reactivity.
"When you initially learn mindfulness mediation practices, you have to cognitively work at it — especially during a stressful task," said Creswell. "And, these active cognitive efforts may result in the task feeling less stressful, but they may also have physiological costs with higher cortisol production."
Creswell’s group is now testing the possibility that mindfulness can become more automatic and easy to use with long-term mindfulness meditation training, which may result in reduced cortisol reactivity.
When you have learned words in another language, it may be worth listening to them again in your sleep. A study funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) has now shown that this method reinforces memory.
Reluctant students and sleepyheads take note: a study conducted at the universities of Zurich and Fribourg has shown that German-speaking students are better at remembering the meaning of newly learned Dutch words when they hear the words again in their sleep. “Our method is easy to use in daily life and can be adopted by anyone,” says study director and biopsychologist Björn Rasch. However, the results were obtained in strictly controlled laboratory conditions. It remains to be seen whether they can be successfully transferred to everyday situations.
Quiet playback
In their trial, which has been published in the journal “Cerebral Cortex”, Thomas Schreiner and Björn Rasch asked 60 volunteers to learn pairs of Dutch and German words at ten o’clock in the evening. Half of the volunteers then went to bed. While they slept, some of the Dutch words they had learned before going to bed were played back quietly enough not to awaken them. The remaining volunteers stayed awake to listen to the Dutch words on the playback.
The scientists awoke the sleeping volunteers at two in the morning, then tested everyone’s knowledge of the new words a little later. The group that had been asleep were better at remembering the German translations of the Dutch words they had heard in their sleep. The volunteers who had remained awake were unable to remember words they had heard on the playback any better than those they had not.
Reinforcement of spontaneous activation
Schreiner and Rasch believe that their results provide further evidence that sleep helps memory, probably because the sleeping brain spontaneously activates previously learned subject matter. Playing this subject matter back during sleep can reinforce this activation process and thus improve recall. For example, a person who plays a memory card game to the scent of roses, and is then re-exposed to the same scent while asleep, is subsequently better at remembering where a particular card is in the stack, as Rasch was able to show in another study a few years ago.
Schreiner and Rasch have now observed the beneficial effect of sleep on learning foreign words. A certain amount of swotting is still needed, though. “You can only successfully activate words that you have learned before you go to sleep. Playing back words you don’t know while you’re asleep has no effect,” says Schreiner.