Creativity is often defined as the ability to come up with new and useful ideas. Like intelligence, it can be considered a trait that everyone – not just creative “geniuses” like Picasso and Steve Jobs – possesses in some capacity....
For years, the media have reported that more suicides occur during the holidays than at any other time. Many of these stories, no doubt, are meant to help people cope with the melancholy and nostalgia that some people experience at...
For patients with mild cognitive impairment, don't be surprised if your health care provider prescribes exercise rather than medication. A new guideline for medical practitioners says they should recommend twice-weekly exercise to people with mild cognitive impairment to improve memory...
Punishment might not be an effective means to get members of society to cooperate for the common good, according to a social dilemma experiment. A game to study human behavior has shown punishment is an ineffective means for promoting cooperation...
Callous-unemotional traits have been linked to deficits in development of the conscience and of empathy. Children and adolescents react less to negative stimuli; they often prefer risky activities and show less caution or fear. In recent years, researchers and doctors...
This time of the year brings a lot of changes to the usual day-to-day life of hundreds of millions of people: The weather is colder, trees are naked, snowy days become plentiful and friendly critters are less visible around the...
New evidence from mice suggests why an antidepressant treatment can alleviate depression in one person but not another. The study, publishing December 28 in the open access journal PLOS Biology, was led by Marianne Müller and an international team at the...
Mindfulness training can help support students at risk of mental health problems, concludes a randomised controlled trial carried out by researchers at the University of Cambridge. While the prevalence of anxiety and depression among first year undergraduates is lower than...
All things must come to an end. This is particularly true for neurons, especially the extensions called axons that transmit electrochemical signals to other nerve cells. Without controlled termination of individual neuron growth, the efficient and accurate construction of a...
Simply thinking about potential infection seems to increase people's concerns about their own physical appearance, especially if they are chronic germ worriers, according to new research in Psychological Science. The findings suggest that the possibility of contagion activates the so-called "behavioral...
Being married has a lifelong effect on how content people are. This is according to a study in Springer's Journal of Happiness Studies that investigated people's levels of well-being based on their marital status. Using data from two UK surveys, its authors,...
Parents often receive books at pediatric checkups via programs like Reach Out and Read and hear from a variety of health professionals and educators that reading to their kids is critical for supporting development. The pro-reading message is getting through...
Adolescents who are willing to exploit others for personal gain are more likely to bully and have sex than those who score higher on a measure of honesty and humility. This is according to a study in Springer's journal Evolutionary Psychological...
A chemical found in marijuana, known as tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, has been found to potentially slow the process in which mental decline can occur in up to 50 percent of HIV patients, says a new Michigan State University study. "It's...
One per cent of adults and five per cent of children are unable to achieve what most of us take for granted--speaking fluently. Instead, they struggle with words, often repeating the beginning of a word, for example "G-g-g-g-g-ood morning" or...