A blog by Prof. Dante Pirouz, a consumer behavior researcher at the Ivey Business School - University of Western Ontario, who specializes in understanding why our brain and body drive us to consume what we do and what we consumers can do about it.
ScienceDaily (2010-08-22) -- The hormone oxytocin has come under intensive study in light of emerging evidence that its release contributes to the social bonding that occurs between lovers, friends, and colleagues. Oxytocin also plays an important role in birth and maternal behavior, but until now, research had never addressed the involvement of oxytocin in the transition to fatherhood. ... > read full article
ScienceDaily (2007-01-07) -- Using brain imaging, researchers from Washington University in St. Louis have identified several brain regions that are involved in the uniquely human ability to envision future events. The study, to be published in the journal PNAS, provides evidence that memory and future thought are highly interrelated and helps explain why future thought may be impossible without memories. Findings suggest that envisioning the future may be a critical prerequisite for many higher-level planning processes. ... > read full article
ScienceDaily (2011-05-23) -- Stem cell researchers have been able to direct embryonic and induced human stem cells to become astrocytes in the lab dish. ... > read full article
ScienceDaily (2010-01-21) -- Researchers can predict your performance on a video game simply by measuring the volume of specific structures in your brain. ... > read full article
ScienceDaily (2011-01-16) -- Researchers report that they can predict "with unprecedented accuracy" how well you will do on a complex task such as a strategic video game simply by analyzing activity in a specific region of your brain. ... > read full article
ScienceDaily (2011-05-10) -- A new article argues that existing video game literature can't be classified in black and white terms. Instead, there's a vast gray area when considering the multiple dimensions of video game effects on kids -- with at least five dimensions on which video games can affect players simultaneously. ... > read full article
ScienceDaily (2010-12-17) -- Scientists have found that sleep helps consolidate memories, fixing them in the brain so we can retrieve them later. Now, new research is showing that sleep also seems to reorganize memories, picking out the emotional details and reconfiguring the memories to help you produce new and creative ideas, according to new research. ... > read full article
ScienceDaily (2010-06-10) -- Prior wakefulness caused the color gray to be classified as having a slightly but significantly greenish tint. Overnight sleep restored perception to achromatic equilibrium so that gray was perceived as gray. The study involved five people who viewed a full-field, homogenous stimulus of either slightly reddish or greenish hue. The observers had to judge whether the stimulus was greener or redder than their internal perception of neutral gray. ... > read full article
ScienceDaily (2011-05-17) -- It seems like everyone wants to be happier and the pursuit of happiness is one of the foundations of American life. But even happiness can have a dark side, according to a new article. ... > read full article
ScienceDaily (2009-12-14) -- "Why is it that men can be bastards and women must wear pearls and smile?" wrote author Lynn Hecht Schafran. The answer, according to a new article may lie in our interpretation of facial expressions. ... > read full article
My son has been trying to convince me for years that video games and computers, which he has an innate love of since the age of 1 1/2 (yes, I let my toddler play on computers...naughty mom!!). He recently wrote an articulate and thoughtful essay for his 7th grade language arts class on how video games can change the world. It included his belief that playing games online or on consoles helps him to meet kids all around the world, learn new languages like Chinese and Japanese, read faster, think better, learn how to solve puzzles, plan and strategize, and the list went on and on...I have spent years yelling at him to turn off the computer, obsessing about how much I suck as a mom because my kid sits sometimes for hours staring at a screen and worried about what he will do as an adult if all he can do is click the mouse really fast.
But my eyes have been opened since I have started to think about what it really means to reach a level of optimized human performance. My husband, who is a big my husband, who is a big proponent of virtual worlds and MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) including WOW (World of Warcraft for those of you non-gamers out there), told me to check out Jane McGonigal's TED video on how video games can change the world...I was impressed with her narrative (it helps that she talks in PhD-speak which I have learned to love)...and maybe I can be convinced that video games can save the world!
Alzheimer's is a tough disease to deal with...how can any of us stand to be without the parts of the brain that make us who we are? My mom is right now dealing with early onset Alzheimer's and since my grandmother and grandfather both died from it, I wonder how long it will be before my absent minded professor habits turn into full blown dementia in my overstressed, sleep-deprived mind...An article in Technology Review from MIT looks at new technologies being developed to help Alzheimer's patients recover cognitive functionality without the use of drugs. One being developed by Neuronix uses transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which researchers I know used in their work, in order to activate or deactivate specific regions of the brain as a way of circumventing neuronal damage. If this can become a way of treating the +5M people who are currently suffering along with all of their caregivers and those who love them, it will be a huge step forward!
ScienceDaily (2009-11-06) -- Common experience tells us that particular scents of childhood can leave quite an impression, for better or for worse. Now, researchers reporting the results of a brain imaging study show that first scents really do enjoy a "privileged" status in the brain. ... > read full article
ScienceDaily -- Radiologists have developed a new device to understand brain activity. It is a collection of fiber optic cables attached to a flexible cap placed atop the head. The cables send near-infrared light through the skull and into the brain, where it is diffused or scattered before it is collected by receiver cables. The device is able to interpret the light to measure blood circulation and the amount of oxygen in that blood, which helps explain brain activity.
ScienceDaily (2011-05-09) -- Visual search is an important task for the brain. Surprisingly, even in a complex task like detecting an object in a scene with distractions, we find that people's performance is near optimal. That means that the brain manages to do the best possible job given the available information, according to researchers. ... > read full article
ScienceDaily (2011-05-09) -- When a group of gamblers gather around a roulette table, individual players are likely to have different reasons for betting on certain numbers. Recently, researchers hedged their bets -- and came out winners -- when they proposed that a certain region of the brain drives these different types of decision-making behaviors. ... > read full article
ScienceDaily (2011-05-05) -- A pianist is playing an unknown melody freely without reading from a musical score. How does the listener's brain recognise if this melody is improvised or if it is memorized? Researchers investigated jazz musicians to discover which brain areas are especially sensitive to features of improvised behaviour. Among these are the amygdala and a network of areas known to be involved in the mental simulation of behaviour. ... > read full article
ScienceDaily (2011-05-06) -- Students have created a system that pairs an EEG headset with a 3-D theatrical flying harness, allowing users to "fly" by controlling their thoughts. The "Infinity Simulator" will make its debut with an art installation in which participants rise into the air -- and trigger light, sound, and special effects -- by calming their thoughts. ... > read full article
ScienceDaily (2011-05-06) -- Computer networks that can't forget fast enough can show symptoms of a kind of virtual schizophrenia, giving researchers further clues to the inner workings of schizophrenic brains, researchers have found. ... > read full article
ScienceDaily (2011-05-04) -- Many people reach toward the back of the fresh-produce shelf to find the freshest salad greens with the latest expiration dates. But a new study by agriculture scientists may prompt consumers to instead look for packages that receive the greatest exposure to light -- usually those found closest to the front. ... > read full article
ScienceDaily (2011-05-03) -- Using simple robots to simulate genetic evolution over hundreds of generations, Swiss scientists provide quantitative proof of kin selection and shed light on one of the most enduring puzzles in biology: Why do most social animals, including humans, go out of their way to help each other? ... > read full article
One of the most important skills anyone can have is one of forecasting...being able to "predict" the future is massively useful but notoriously difficult as any academic article from the International Journal of Forecasting deftly shows. But I personally love trend tracking! I have been dabbling in it since my early days in the ad business at Young & Rubicam NY and while you don't always get it right, it is cool to see which trends hit and which ones miss. On a recent trip to Toronto, I read a magazine article on the founder of www.trendhunter.com Jeremy Gutsche and I was intrigued. This is all about crowdsourcing global trends! What a great way to track everything happening in food, clubs, fashion, design, business then to ask the mob to flash mob the latest! Here are their prediction for 2011:
ScienceDaily (2008-04-19) -- Americans grow happier as they grow older, according to a new study that is one of the most thorough examinations of happiness ever done in America. The study also found that baby boomers are not as content as other generations, African Americans are less happy than whites, men are less happy than women, happiness can rise and fall between eras, and that, with age the differences narrow. ... > read full article
ScienceDaily (2011-05-02) -- People who look at the past through rose-tinted glasses are happier than those who focus on negative past experiences and regrets, according to a new study. The study helps explain why personality has such a strong influence on a person's happiness. The findings suggest that persons with certain personality traits are happier than others because of the way they think about their past, present and future. ... > read full article
Prof. Linda Gratton gives us the story of Fred and Frank as a way to understand how you can learn to glow at work even if you hate it! It is an interesting excerpt from her book Glow...you can either change what you do or change how you do it!
ScienceDaily (2011-04-16) -- Recording people belting out an old Motown tune and then asking them to listen to their own singing without the accompanying music seems like an unusually cruel form of punishment. But for a team of scientists, this exact Karaoke experiment has revealed what part of the brain is essential for embarrassment. ... > read full article
ScienceDaily (2011-04-28) -- Having power over others and having choices in your own life share a critical foundation: control, according to a new study. New research finds that people are willing to trade one source of control for the other. For example, if people lack power, they clamor for choice, and if they have an abundance of choice they don't strive as much for power. ... > read full article
