Description: Have you heard of E.M.D.R. therapy? It stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy. This is an unfair oversimplification, but it involves a patient thinking of a past traumatic event while guided by a therapist to engage in some form of bilateral stimulation such as following the therapist’s finger moving from side to… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Neuroscience
Variable Blood Pressure and Whale Brains
Description: I am on an exploratory tour of the West Cost of Canada and have seen a few whales along the way (grizzly bears too but that is another story). Seeing whales is just simply an awe-inspiring experience and perhaps that lead me to pick up on a reference to the article linked below. Its… Read more »
Seeing Brain Plasticity in Real Time
Description: Have you heard of the phantom limb phenomenon? It occurs sometimes in people who have lost a limb but who, at least in the early weeks after the loss feel pain in the limb that is not here anymore. The explanation usually offered is that the areas of the brain associated with receiving pain… Read more »
Can We Treat Depression with De-Magicked Mushrooms?
Description: It is not a big secret so you have likely heard or read references to findings that antidepressant medications do not work for somewhere around 30% of those to whom they are prescribed and that most of those for whom they DO work will find at some point that they no longer work, and… Read more »
When Fat Cells Talk Does the Brain Listen?
Description: The standard introductory psychology account of how our systems maintains consistent levels of food intake used to involve a couple of components. The first involves close areas within the hypothalamus which seem to be implicated in appetite regulation. The most dramatic data involved rats who had one or the other of these areas surgically… Read more »
Remembering Music and Forgetting Everything Else?
Description: Quick! Which of these is easier to remember: a song you heard last week and really liked or what you had for lunch last Tuesday? Unless the lunch was particularly good or unique or special it is most likely you would remember the song and if you think about it you agree with that… Read more »
MRI’s and Replication in Psychological Research
Description: What does the brain of someone diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder look like? How about the brain of someone recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s? How about the brain of a depressed person … a happy person … an introvert … a risk-taker ….? The list could go on and on. For a number of years… Read more »
Mental Health Thermometers
Description: You drop into your doctor’s office and tell them you are not feeling well. Assuming COVID is not the issue (which would likely be picked up at the front desk of the clinic using screening questions) what is one of the first things the doctor will likely do? Take you temperature, right? (Or ask… Read more »
Psychology of Inventory Placement and Impulse Buying
Description: Two large grocery stores near my home have been undergoing renovation for the past few months (though it feels like it has been a year!). Way the long drawn out process? Well the renovations are large and complex but as I wandered around trying to find my “usual stuff” to buy I started to… Read more »
This is Your Brain on Revenge
Description: I have been re-watching Game of Thrones recently and as a result have seen a great many depictions of acts of revenge (if you have not watched the series, you can trust me on this). Now it is a bit of a leap to jump from Game of Thrones to the “real world” but… Read more »
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