Ancient volcanic eruptions, and peer pressure —from robots
Several thousand years ago the volcano under Santorini in Greece —known as Thera—erupted in a tremendous explosion, dusting the nearby Mediterranean civilizations of Crete and Egypt in a layer of white ash. This geological marker could be used to tie together many ancient historical events, but the estimated date could be off by a century. Contributing Corres pondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a new study that used tree rings to calibrate radiocarbon readings—and get closer to pinning down a date. The findings also suggest that scientists may need to change their standard radiocarbon dating cal...
Source: Science Magazine Podcast - August 16, 2018 Category: Science Authors: Science Tags: Scientific Community Source Type: podcasts
Ancient volcanic eruptions, and peer pressure —from robots
Several thousand years ago the volcano under Santorini in Greece —known as Thera—erupted in a tremendous explosion, dusting the nearby Mediterranean civilizations of Crete and Egypt in a layer of white ash. This geological marker could be used to tie together many ancient historical events, but the estimated date could be off by a century. Contributing Corres pondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a new study that used tree rings to calibrate radiocarbon readings—and get closer to pinning down a date. The findings also suggest that scientists may need to change their standard radiocarbon dating cal...
Source: Science Magazine Podcast - August 16, 2018 Category: Science Authors: Science Tags: Scientific Community Source Type: podcasts
Ancient volcanic eruptions, and peer pressure —from robots
Several thousand years ago the volcano under Santorini in Greece—known as Thera—erupted in a tremendous explosion, dusting the nearby Mediterranean civilizations of Crete and Egypt in a layer of white ash. This geological marker could be used to tie together many ancient historical events, but the estimated date could be off by a century. Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a new study that used tree rings to calibrate radiocarbon readings—and get closer to pinning down a date. The findings also suggest that scientists may need to change their standard radiocarbon dating calib...
Source: Science Magazine Podcast - August 16, 2018 Category: Science Authors: Science Magazine Source Type: podcasts
Basic Needs: The Maslow-Erikson Mashup
There is some evidence that ontogeny parallels phylogeny as far as cognitive development is concerned. What this means is that the same stages or steps that a species has evolved through also recur when the embryo develops into a fully functioning adult. In other words, developmental stages and states follow the same sequence as evolutionary stages. This may be because the environment is structured in such a way that some stages can only make sense when preceding stages have been already encountered.
To illustrate, if pain was the first sensation that animals could first sense and feel; then probably it will be the first e...
Source: The Mouse Trap - August 7, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: personality erikson Maslow's hierarchy of needs Source Type: podcasts
Academic Excellence Due to Efforts or Intelligence: Curious? Read on
There has been a long standing debate in intellectual circles: what leads to superior performance? Is it due to talent or intelligence or is it due to efforts and hard work? Reams of books have been written on the subject including some of my favorites: ‘Talent is overrated’, ‘Outliers’ etc.
Applied to the classroom the question becomes why did Tom get an A or aced the JEE/GRE , was it because he is smarter that Harry or was it because he studied more and better? Answers to questions like these have profound implications for how children learn and grow- believing that effort matters more (a grow...
Source: The Mouse Trap - July 8, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: education #PosEd character strengths curiosity deliberate practice efforts grit Intelligence Positive Education talent Source Type: podcasts
What Good (and Bad) are Positive Emotions?
There is a seminal article by Barbara Fredrickson titled ‘What good are positive emotions?’ which introduces the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. As per this theory, while negative emotions are associated with specific action tendencies, positive emotions broaden the thought-action repertoire available at that moment and help build physical, social and intellectual resources over the long run.
To take an example, joy is associated with creativity, and more loose associations, etc, all involving a move away from rigidity and fixedness to flexibility and fluency in thinking ; joy is also associate...
Source: The Mouse Trap - June 17, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: emotion adaptations emotions evolution play Source Type: podcasts
The Neural Substrates of Personality
Personality is the study of individual differences, mostly in humans, though some work in animal personality too has happened. While evolution has designed for some universal adaptations, that lead to say human universals, evolution has also maintained some variations which leads to individual differences.
Personality traits are stable and consistent patterns of responding in terms of emotions, behavior, cognition and motivation across different situations. Various methods, both theoretical and empirical, have been used to arrive at the most parsimonious collection of traits; some of these methods include lexical studies t...
Source: The Mouse Trap - June 13, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: personality Big Five Big Five personality traits HEXACO neural substrates Source Type: podcasts
The Pursuit of Happiness
Would we be more happy if we pursued happiness vigorously? Or would we be more happier if we let life flow as it happens and enjoy the journey rather than focusing on a destination where we would be happy? From an abundance of positive psychology research we know that instead of thinking about and planning for being happy in the future, say when we get that coveted promotion, its better to enjoy the process and journey and be present in the moment.
However, many positive psychologists, including myself, do place a high premium on doing things or making choices according to the principle of whether that will lead to more h...
Source: The Mouse Trap - May 31, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: happiness time scarcity Source Type: podcasts
The Pursuit of Happiness
Would we be more happy if we pursued happiness vigorously? Or would we be more happier if we let life flow as it happens and enjoy the journey rather than focusing on a destination where we would be happy? From an abundance of positive psychology research we know that instead of thinking about and planning for being happy in the future, say when we get that coveted promotion, its better to enjoy the process and journey and be present in the moment.
However, many positive psychologists, including myself, do place a high premium on doing things or making choices according to the principle of whether that will lead to more h...
Source: The Mouse Trap - May 31, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: happiness time scarcity Source Type: podcasts
JAMA Internal Medicine : Association Between Psychological Interventions and Chronic Pain Outcomes in Older Adults
Interview with M. Carrington. Reid, MD, PhD, author of Association Between Psychological Interventions and Chronic Pain Outcomes in Older Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis (Source: JAMA Specialty Journals Author Interviews)
Source: JAMA Specialty Journals Author Interviews - May 7, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: The JAMA Network Source Type: podcasts
The complexities of depression in cancer
For many people, cancer is now survivable and has become a long term condition, and depression and anxiety are more common in cancer survivors than in the general population. Despite this, 73% of patients don't receive effective psychiatric treatment.
Alexandra Pitman, consultant liaison psychiatrist at St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and Andrew Hodgkiss, consultant liaison psychiatrist, at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience join us to dispel some of the concern clinicians may have about the complexities of diagnosing depression in cancer - what is biopsychosocial, what is...
Source: The BMJ Podcast - April 26, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: BMJ Group Source Type: podcasts
"Mis-Remembering" -- The Discovery Files
Psychological research suggests that memory confusion in older adults is partly caused by their reliance on schematic memory, which helps people remember the gist of an event, but not necessarily the details. The absence of detail-related memory could lead to difficulty in distinguishing between a memory of something that actually happened and a false memory -- a memory a person thought happened, but didn't. (Source: The Discovery Files)
Source: The Discovery Files - April 9, 2018 Category: Science Authors: National Science Foundation Source Type: podcasts
