We tend to think of our emotions such as anger, sadness or guilt, as something to avoid at all costs. But negative emotions, anger, in particular, may have an upside. Putting your negative emotions to good use. All emotions are useful, even the ones we tend to think of as negative such as anger, embarrassment, or… The post The upside of anger. appeared first on Dr Sarah McKay ..read more

The Age of Introspection But how do you discover who you are and why you’re here? Pick up any self-help book written in the last few decades and you’ll be told that the best way to learn about yourself is to spend time on introspection or in quiet contemplation. By examining your innermost desires, hopes… The post This is your brain on empathy. appeared first on Dr Sarah McKay ..read more

Imagine this: thinking about exercise strengthens your muscles, even if you don’t move an inch. Mental imagery not only activates the same brain regions as the actual movement but also can speed up the learning of a new skill. Mental imagery and sports performance Mental imagery, mental practice, or visualisation is a technique that has… The post Imagine this: mental imagery strengthens neural circuits. appeared first on Dr Sarah McKay ..read more

Paying attention to the statistics A few years ago, I was invited to speak to a group of teenagers who had been brought together to create innovative road safety solutions for their peers. The statistics they were grappling with were: 88% of young drivers admit to using their mobile phones while driving. Texting is the most prevalent behaviour at traffic lights (50%) and while driving (25%). 25% of drivers check email, social media and the internet at the lights, and 15% do so while driving. They considered the problem in light of the following sobering statistics (data from the Queensland G ..read more

The age-old nature versus nurture debate is alive and kicking in the world of pregnancy and parenting. Is the intuitive ability to nurture infants written into the female genome? Is maternal instinct a patriarchal myth designed to keep women locked in the home? Is oxytocin (literally, the hormone which allows swift childbirth) an absolute requirement for parental empathy? Or can fathers and non-birth mothers learn by doing? Do women forget because pregnancy shrunk their brain? Or are they so frazzled by the demands of trying to do it all that their attention is torn and they’re too tired to n ..read more

You might feel better immediately when you visit your doctor to get a pill to treat a sore back. But how much of your recovery is due to the pill you’ve swallowed? How much of your recovery is ‘in your head’? If your doctor reveals the prescribed pill was a sugar pill, do you feel deceived, or are you impressed by the power of the human brain? In 2015, these questions were explored in a fascinating piece in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, The neuroscience of placebo effects: connecting context, learning and health. Authors Tor Wager, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the Un ..read more

Because we’re social creatures, we tend to synchronise our actions and emotions (or at least the ones we choose to express) with the people we’re surrounded by. Physiological synchrony helps us feel we’re more strongly connected with other people. When people sing in a choir, their heartbeats synchronise. When dancers move together in a troupe, their breathing patterns match (and remarkably, so do the breathing rates of audience members watching the dancers!). Synchrony may be another of Mother Nature’s tricks to ensure we bond and trust other people — it’s like the social glue that holds grou ..read more

Whitewater kayakers and musicians experience it. So do video gamers, rock climbers, and experienced meditators. If you’ve ever experienced losing complete track of time or your sense of self when you are engrossed in a difficult yet satisfying task, chances are you have experienced it too. They call the optimal state of consciousness in which you perform and feel your best ‘flow’. What is flow? The concept of flow was first described by positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi who described it as: “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter ..read more

Emma Saville, The Conversation The more curious we are about a topic, the easier it is to remember not only information about that topic, but also other unrelated information shown at the same time. A study published in 2014 in Neuron shows what happens inside our brains when our curiosity is sparked. Participants in the study were asked to rate how curious they were to find out the answer to a specific trivia question, such as: “What does the term ‘dinosaur’ actually mean?” The participants were then placed in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine that measures brain activity, based on c ..read more

Scientists call the trillions of microbes that inhabit your body the microbiome. They outnumber your own cells ten to one and weigh up to twice the weight of the average human brain. Most of them live in your gut and intestines, where they help to digest food, synthesise vitamins and ward off infection. The microbiome extends its influence to the brain. In November 2014, members of the Society for Neuroscience (SFN) held a symposium titled Gut Microbes and the Brain: Paradigm Shift in Neuroscience. A summary paper of emerging topics covered in the symposium claimed, “…the disc ..read more