Hot MedFax

Let's admit it.   Talking to yourself may not be such a great thing when you're sitting on a bus, or on a conference call.  But a new study says it can help you not throw your kid through the window when he cracks up the car, or make your husband sleep on the couch when he forgets your birthday. The simple act of silently talking to yourself in the third person during stressful times may help you control emotions without any additional mental effort than what you would use for first-person self-talk – the way people normally talk to themselves, according to newswise.com. A first-of-its-kind study led by psychology researchers at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan indicates that such third-person self-talk may constitute a relatively effortless form of self-control. (I suppose it's what kind of talking to yourself you do!  Swearing, like I do, when I can't find my cell phone, probably isn't what they had in mind.) “Essentially, we think...

How about this?  You may use one part of your head to braid your daughter's hair and another to balance your checkbook. That's right.  You may think of yourself as using the same level of wisdom on each thing you do, but according to a new study, that's not quite right. While we may think some people are consistently wise, we actually demonstrate different levels of wisdom from one situation to the next, and factors such as whether we are alone or with friends can affect it, according to new research from the University of Waterloo.The study defines wise reasoning as a combination of such abilities as intellectual humility, consideration of others' perspective and looking for compromise, newswise.com reports.  "This research does not dismiss that there is a personality component to wisdom, but that's not the whole picture," says Professor Igor Grossmann, from the Department of Psychology at Waterloo and lead author of the paper. "Situ...

Think you understand someone?  It doesn't really help unless you feel it, too. That's the conclusion of some new research is that , in the absence of caring, understanding alone doesn't cut it when stressful situations arise. When stress sets in, many of us turn to a partner to help us manage by being a sounding board or shoulder to cry on. Your odds of actually feeling better are much improved if they're both those things. My partner isn't very good at listening, or understanding.  He just wants to solve it.  I understand that that's men's way of reacting to a crisis.  They want action.  But it would be so much more helpful if they let us feel it, then felt it, too.   New research by psychologists at UC Santa Barbara reveals that simply understanding your partner's suffering isn't sufficient to be helpful in a stressful situation; you've got to actually care that they're suffering in the first place. Now that doesn't mea...

Everyone in my house wears headphones.  Well, that’s only two, if you don’t count me.  But every time I come into the family room, there’s my son, headphones clasped to his head, listening to music or watching YouTube or doing I don’t know what, and in the dining room, my husband sits, hunched over his computer, with these huge padded things covering his ears (he looks like an air traffic controller). Probably I’m just out of it but what is it with headphones, or ear buds, I guess they’re called, for those people out walking the dog or jogging?  Wouldn’t they just like to hear what’s in their head, for once? I jog and the main reason I do is so that I can think.  The greatest ideas come to me out running (like the idea for this essay), and they would stay out in the atmosphere (or somewhere) if I were listening to Barry White (uh oh, I just gave away my age). I believe some people wear them to shut out the world.  Wouldn’t be the first time, I guess...

Not that you don't have enough to fear when your doctor orders an MRI, but now don't go in there thinking he's a jerk for keeping you waiting.  According to a new Cornell study, MRIs can now pick up on what you're thinking. By scanning your brain, it's alleged that doctors can figure out what you think of others.  My mother-in-law comes to mind! David Worthington writes, "Volunteers were asked to consider how specific people might react to situations after studying those individuals’ personality traits. By analyzing the brain activation patterns, researchers were consistently able to recognize which person a volunteer was thinking about." However, it doesn't work on those who have autism or other types of mental illness. Spooky?  You bet.  Worthington adds that MRI technology has "already been deployed in courtrooms as a lie detector, can be used to predict how well someone will learn, and is being used to more accurately map the human b...

Someday soon computers will out-think us. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/science/scientists-see-advances-in-deep-learning-a-part-of-artificial-intelligence.html