Psychology in Action is proud to announce the second annual Psychology Interdisciplinary Events symposium, Thursday, May 23rd, 2012, from 5 to 7pm in UCLA’s CNSI Auditorium. The discussion will focus on the intersection of music, psychology, and neuroscience. The event is completely FREE and open to the general public! We hope to see you there! Featuring – Dr. …
Category Archive: Cognition and Perception
Former Israeli Prime Minister’s Significant Brain Activity – How Do We Know?
Israeli scientists and UCLA’s Dr. Martin Monti recently found that former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon demonstrates significant brain activity. Seven years ago Sharon suffered two strokes. The second stroke caused him to lose most of his consciousness. Sharon is in a minimally conscious state, a little more aware than a coma or a persistent vegetative …
New paper by UCLA alums highlights emerging trend in cognitive neuroscience
Psychologists aim to better understand the link between internal and external states, that is, between cognitions and behaviors. Behaviors are often clear enough to measure, but accurately capturing the essence of a cognition can be a much fuzzier task.
The Psychology of Film Music
Have you ever seen a movie which has a great musical score? Wondered how film composers and music directors write and choose music to enhance the images and make the whole experience more powerful? Dr. Roger Kendall, a UCLA Ethnomusicology professor with degrees in music and psychology, studies what makes a “good” match between motion …
Bayes’ Rule and Bomb Threats
Earlier today, I read an article published on Washington’s Blog titled “Fear of Terror Makes People Stupid.” The central claim of the post was that the government purposefully induces fear of a terrorist attack in order to get Americans to relinquish more of their civil liberties (see: Patriot Act), but this fear is silly (so …
Classic Psychology Experiments: Wason Selection Task (Part I)
This post is the first of three on the Wason selection task, and part of our new ongoing series exploring classic experiments in the history of psychological research. In the 1960s, Peter Cathcart Wason introduced a test of logical reasoning that he termed the selection task (1966, 1968, 1969a, 1969b). Almost fifty years later, the …
Finding the motivation to stick with goals
Most of us have gotten loyalty cards at one point or another that treated us to a free item after a certain amount of purchases at that particular establishment. Most of us have also tossed more than one of those cards after realizing they weren’t worth the space in our wallets for the amount of …
Are afternoon naps key to enhancing learning?
Maybe cats and kindergartners are on to something: Recent research out of the University of California, Berkeley suggests that taking an afternoon nap might lead to increases in learning ability throughout the day! Research out of the the Sleep & Memory Lab led by Matt Walker up at UCB shows that, in general, our learning …
Read My Mind! Can new science technology really translate my brain activity into words?
Have you ever wanted to be able to read minds? As children, we are especially smitten with the idea of having special ‘powers’ like these, although we quickly learn that such magical abilities are far from reality. Yet given the new imaging and electrophysiological methods that have allowed researchers to discover even more about the …
Muscles and the Mind — See for Yourself
One of the many reasons I like studying the brain is that its function is so directly tied to all the actions I do every day. As I go through the world it’s easy to forget that my brain is working hard coordinating my muscles and senses, so I like little demonstrative exercises using ones …
Recent Comments