AUniversity of Toronto study shows that when formerly depressed people experience mild states of sadness, their brain’s response can predict if they will become depressed again.
“Part of what makes depression such a devastating disease is the high rate of relapse,” says Norman Farb, a PhD psychology student and lead author of the study. “However, the fact that some patients are able to fully maintain their recovery suggests the possibility that different responses to the type of emotional challenges encountered in everyday life could reduce the chance of relapse.”
Farb and his team showed 16 formerly depressed patients sad movie clips and tracked their brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Sixteen months later, nine of the 16 patients had relapsed into depression. The researchers compared the brain activity of relapsing patients against those who remained healthy and against another group of people who had never been depressed. [continue reading…]
Does Our Personality Affect Our Level of Attractiveness?
Part of what determines how much success you will have in the dating world is whether you have a good sense of whether people find you attractive. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that certain personality traits contribute to being a good judge of whether someone else thinks you’re worth meeting again.
The study is one of a series to come out of a big speed-dating experiment held in Berlin about five years ago. “Most of the prior research had worked with hypothetical scenarios, where people are asked by a questioner, ‘What kind of people would you like to get to know?’ and so on,” says Mitja Back of the Johannes GutenbergUniversity of Mainz, who co-wrote the new paper with Lars Penke of the University of Edinburgh, Stefan Schmukle of Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, and Jens Asendorpf of Humboldt University Berlin. The problem, of course, is that what people say they like—honesty, humor, and so on—may have little to do with what they actually like—for example hotness. [continue reading…]
Praying about health issues dramatically increased among American adults over the past three decades, rising 36 percent between 1999 and 2007, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association.
Researchers analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 1999, 2002 and 2007 National Health Interview Surveys for an article in the May issue of the APA journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. The study primarily focused on comparisons of results between the 2002 and 2007 surveys, which included, respectively, 30,080 adults (over 18 years old) from 44,540 households and 23,393 adults from 40,377 households.
“The United States did have an increase in worship attendance across multiple religious faiths immediately after the 9/11 attack, but that has not stayed elevated. However, people continued to use informal and private spiritual practices such as prayer,” said lead author Amy Wachholtz, PhD, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School. “There is also a greater public awareness of Buddhist-based mindfulness practices that can include prayerful meditation, which individuals may also be using to address a variety of health concerns.” [continue reading…]
With age, most of us will notice changes in our memory or thinking. But while forgetfulness is a normal part of getting older, dementia – and Alzheimer’s disease specifically – is not.
Alzheimer’s disease impacts people from every walk of life. It knows no cultural or social boundaries. The main factor influencing who gets Alzheimer’s is age. One in eight people age 65 and older has Alzheimer’s disease – about 5 million of us – yet only half of these people have actually been diagnosed with the disease. The rest don’t even know they have it! And it’s estimated that by 2050 as many as 16 million of us will have Alzheimer’s.
These are pretty frightening statistics don’t you think? Visit aboutalz.org to view more short films like this and increase your understanding of Alzheimer’s
