Hannibal Lecter's behavior has been confirmed: the brains of psychopaths appear to be wired to keep seeking a reward at any cost, new research from Vanderbilt University finds. The research uncovers the role of the brain's reward system in psychopathy and opens a new area of study for understanding what drives these individuals.
Scientists are asking if we can turbocharge our time perception. In The Matrix,
hero Neo wins his battles when time slows in the simulated world. In
our real world, accident victims often report a similar slowing of time
as they slip unavoidably towards disaster. We've all heard stories of people seeing things happening in bullet time or reviewing their entire about-to-end lives, but if we could toggle this tachypsychian switch by choice it'd be a real-life superpower.
Remember that great Stones' ballad you heard on your first date with
that first great love? Well, despite music's importance to our lives,
very little is known about the memories and emotions that are often
evoked when hearing a piece of music from our past. Does music have a
more powerful effect on memory than other influences, like images,
words, or smells?
In The Matrix, hero Neo wins his battles when time slows in the simulated world. In our real world, accident victims often report a similar slowing of time as they slip unavoidably towards disaster.
Fifty years ago some young MIT scholars delivered a radical notion to
the world. They proposed that it is possible to scientifically study
precise mechanisms and processes of human thought. The movement was the
catalyst for many fields of study.
Now after a generation of productive research, a newer paradigm
shift is taking place. Science is discovering that it is our emotions
that make thought possible, not the other way around. We simply cannot
understand thought without understanding emotion. This is a radical
departure from the traditional perspective, which used to regard
emotion as the antagonist of reason.
For years Albert Einstein had been trying to reconcile two seemingly contradictory theories about space and time. One day while riding a street car home, he was struck by the sight of Bern's famous clock tower. The answer to special relativity was simple and elegant: time can beat at different rates throughout the universe, depending on how fast you moved.
"Conscious thought is better at making linear, analytic decisions, but
unconscious thought is especially effective at solving complex
problems," says Adam Galinsky of the
Kellogg School of Management. "Unconscious activation
may provide inspirational sparks underlying the 'Aha!' moment that
eventually leads to important discoveries." Moments similar to the one Einstein experienced as he watched trains moving into the station past rows of clocks that were synchronized with the one atop the famed Bern tower
“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.”
~From the movie Fight Club, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk
Researchers have found that low self-esteem and materialism are not just a correlation, but also a causal relationship where low self esteem increases materialism, and materialism can also create low self-esteem. The also found that as self esteem increases, materialism decreases. The study primarily focused on how this relationship affects children and adolescents. Lan Nguyen Chaplin (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) and Deborah Roedder John (University of Minnesota) found that even a simple gesture to raise self-esteem dramatically decreased materialism, which provides a way to cope with insecurity.
It’s a given that Earth cannot survive indefinitely, if for no other reason than that the sun will eventually expand and roast the planet. Of course, many scientists believe that by the time that happens, life will have long since disappeared on this planet for other reasons—many of them involving manmade disasters. Are they just being pessimistic, or realistic, or both?
Hannibal Lecter's behavior has been confirmed: the brains of psychopaths appear to be wired to keep seeking a reward at any cost, new research from Vanderbilt University finds. The research uncovers the role of the brain's reward system in psychopathy and opens a new area of study for understanding what drives these individuals.
Scientists are asking if we can turbocharge our time perception. In The Matrix,
hero Neo wins his battles when time slows in the simulated world. In
our real world, accident victims often report a similar slowing of time
as they slip unavoidably towards disaster. We've all heard stories of people seeing things happening in bullet time or reviewing their entire about-to-end lives, but if we could toggle this tachypsychian switch by choice it'd be a real-life superpower.
Remember that great Stones' ballad you heard on your first date with
that first great love? Well, despite music's importance to our lives,
very little is known about the memories and emotions that are often
evoked when hearing a piece of music from our past. Does music have a
more powerful effect on memory than other influences, like images,
words, or smells?
In The Matrix, hero Neo wins his battles when time slows in the simulated world. In our real world, accident victims often report a similar slowing of time as they slip unavoidably towards disaster.
Fifty years ago some young MIT scholars delivered a radical notion to
the world. They proposed that it is possible to scientifically study
precise mechanisms and processes of human thought. The movement was the
catalyst for many fields of study.
Now after a generation of productive research, a newer paradigm
shift is taking place. Science is discovering that it is our emotions
that make thought possible, not the other way around. We simply cannot
understand thought without understanding emotion. This is a radical
departure from the traditional perspective, which used to regard
emotion as the antagonist of reason.
For years Albert Einstein had been trying to reconcile two seemingly contradictory theories about space and time. One day while riding a street car home, he was struck by the sight of Bern's famous clock tower. The answer to special relativity was simple and elegant: time can beat at different rates throughout the universe, depending on how fast you moved.
"Conscious thought is better at making linear, analytic decisions, but
unconscious thought is especially effective at solving complex
problems," says Adam Galinsky of the
Kellogg School of Management. "Unconscious activation
may provide inspirational sparks underlying the 'Aha!' moment that
eventually leads to important discoveries." Moments similar to the one Einstein experienced as he watched trains moving into the station past rows of clocks that were synchronized with the one atop the famed Bern tower
“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.”
~From the movie Fight Club, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk
Researchers have found that low self-esteem and materialism are not just a correlation, but also a causal relationship where low self esteem increases materialism, and materialism can also create low self-esteem. The also found that as self esteem increases, materialism decreases. The study primarily focused on how this relationship affects children and adolescents. Lan Nguyen Chaplin (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) and Deborah Roedder John (University of Minnesota) found that even a simple gesture to raise self-esteem dramatically decreased materialism, which provides a way to cope with insecurity.
It’s a given that Earth cannot survive indefinitely, if for no other reason than that the sun will eventually expand and roast the planet. Of course, many scientists believe that by the time that happens, life will have long since disappeared on this planet for other reasons—many of them involving manmade disasters. Are they just being pessimistic, or realistic, or both?
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