Psychology News and Research

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Psychology is the study of human mental functions, behavior and processes.

Estradiol fluctuation may enhance emotional sensitivity to psychosocial stress during menopausal transition

If you're feeling a little blue during the transition to menopause, there's good reason, according to a new study being reported online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS). The study from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill suggests that the estradiol (a form of estrogen) fluctuation that is common during the menopausal transition may enhance emotional sensitivity to psychosocial stress.

4 Nov 2015

Brain's hippocampus essential for recognizing previously encountered events

The hippocampus, a brain structure known to play a role in memory and spatial navigation, is essential to one's ability to recognize previously encountered events, objects, or people - a phenomenon known as recognition memory - according to new research from the departments of Neurosurgery and Psychology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

4 Nov 2015

Couples who share household work have satisfying sex life

Looking for more and better sex? If you're a man, you might consider doing the dishes once in a while. A new study out of the University of Alberta reveals that couples enjoyed more frequent and satisfying sex for both partners when men made a fair contribution to housework. The same study also found there's no relationship between the amount of housework male partners completed and the sexual functioning of a couple.

3 Nov 2015

Preschoolers' working memory can predict later dropout risk

Preschoolers who score lower on a working memory task are likely to score higher on a dropout risk scale at the age of 13, researchers at Université Sainte-Anne and the University of Montreal revealed today.

3 Nov 2015

Violence and conflict in war-affected areas can have devastating effect on children's mental health

Violence and conflict in areas affected by war, such as Gaza, can have a devastating effect on the mental health of the children exposed to it, according to research at the University of Leicester.

3 Nov 2015

Charles Bonnet syndrome: an interview with Dr. Dominic ffytche

Charles Bonnet syndrome is the name we give to the visual hallucinations associated with eye disease. There are lots of different causes of visual hallucinations. Many different medical problems and medications can cause them, but, when the cause is eye disease, it's referred to as Charles Bonnet Syndrome after Charles Bonnet, who was a natural philosopher in the 18th century.

2 Nov 2015

Personal anxiety, mass media coverage interact to determine what people remember about specific disease

The health facts presented by mass media in the midst of a disease outbreak are likely to influence what we remember about the disease -- new research suggests that the same mass media coverage may also influence the facts that we forget.

2 Nov 2015

Hormone decline provides window into men's parenting skills

As they age, men often get concerned about their testosterone levels dropping. And rightfully so--it affects their sex drive and other health factors.

31 Oct 2015

New study lays out a case for recognizing nonsuicidal self-injury disorder

Self-injury so often occurs in private, an important reason why solid statistics are hard to come by. But researchers estimate between 10 and 40 percent of adolescents, and up to 10 percent of adults, harm themselves physically - usually by cutting or burning their skin.

31 Oct 2015

Chronic pain sufferers may benefit from therapy to help them sleep better, study finds

Research conducted at the University of Warwick indicates that chronic pain sufferers could benefit from therapy to help them sleep better.

31 Oct 2015

Study sheds light on mechanism of neuronal activity

Neurons communicate by passing electrical messages, known as action potentials, between each other. Each neuron has a highly specialized structural region, the axon initial segment (AIS), whose primary role is in the generation and sending of these messages.

30 Oct 2015

University of Leicester hosts sports event to raise awareness of Nystagmus

The University of Leicester will be hosting an event to introduce sports for people with reduced vision and to raise awareness of the eye condition Nystagmus on Sunday 1 November.

29 Oct 2015

Older adults better than young counterparts at correcting mistakes

Findings from a new study challenge the notion that older adults always lag behind their younger counterparts when it comes to learning new things. The study, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that older adults were actually better than young adults at correcting their mistakes on a general information quiz.

29 Oct 2015

New research shows that using e-cigarettes related to problematic drinking

Using e-cigarettes is related to problematic drinking, according to new research published in Addictive Behaviors. In a study involving around 1400 people, researchers also found that more women than men use e-cigarettes socially, opposite to patterns seen in regular cigarette smoking.

29 Oct 2015

Your job may be having effect on your waistline

Your job could be having an effect on your waistline, suggests new research published in Social Science & Medicine - and it could be bad or good news depending on the sort of control you have over your work.

28 Oct 2015

Babies remain calm twice as long when listening to song compared to speech

In a new study from the University of Montreal, infants remained calm twice as long when listening to a song, which they didn't even know, as they did when listening to speech. "Many studies have looked at how singing and speech affect infants' attention, but we wanted to know how they affect a baby's emotional self-control," explained Professor Isabelle Peretz, of the university's Center for Research on Brain, Music and Language.

28 Oct 2015

UCLA launches second Grand Challenge to reduce health and economic impacts of depression

In an effort to place depression front and center on the national and international research agendas, UCLA has launched the Depression Grand Challenge, which aims to reduce the health and economic impacts of depression by half by the year 2050.

28 Oct 2015

Weight and physical activity level matter in kids' ability to think

Weight and physical activity levels are both factors in a child's ability to acquire and use knowledge, a new study finds.

28 Oct 2015

Learning detailed navigation information causes hippocampal brain changes

Fifteen years ago, a study showed that the brains of London cab drivers had an enlargement in the hippocampus, a brain area associated with navigation. But questions remained: Did the experience of navigating London's complex system of streets change their brains, or did only the people with larger hippocampi succeed in becoming cab drivers? Now, Carnegie Mellon University scientists have determined that learning detailed navigation information causes the hippocampal brain changes.

28 Oct 2015

New Rice University study explores connections between fatal bereavement and cardiovascular risk

Medical professionals know that when a spouse dies, the surviving partner is at increased risk of suffering early mortality - but they don't entirely understand why. A new Rice University professor has received a $3.765 million R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health to embark on a five-year study of the connection between psychological and physiological responses to such extraordinary stress.

27 Oct 2015