Neurologist and author Oliver Sacks brings our attention to Charles Bonnett syndrome — when visually impaired people experience lucid hallucinations. He describes the experiences of his patients in heartwarming detail and walks us through the biology of this under-reported phenomenon.
Source: TED
September 2009
Check out the latest Psychobabble: When the Unimaginable Happens: Unexpected Job Loss and its Impact on Your Marriage. Written by Dr. Nancy Schlossberg, Professor Emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park.
 
Reading a book by Franz Kafka –– or watching a film by director David Lynch –– could make you smarter!
According to research by psychologists at UC Santa Barbara and the University of British Columbia, exposure to the surrealism in, say, Kafka’s “The Country Doctor” or Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” enhances the cognitive mechanisms that oversee implicit learning functions. The researchers’ findings appear in an article published in the September issue of the journal Psychological Science. [continue reading…]
We are faced with making decisions all the time. Often, we carefully deliberate the pros and cons of our choices, taking into consideration past experiences in similar situations before making a final decision. However, a new study suggests that cognitive stress, such as distraction, can influence this balanced, logical approach to decision making.Psychologists Jane Raymond and Jennifer L. O’Brien of Bangor University in the United Kingdom wanted to investigate how cognitive stress affects rational decision making. [continue reading…]
