‘Human life is beyond comprehension.’ There are literally hundreds of these seemingly benign, brain-teasing quotes I could have picked. Hundreds of pithy-sounding wisdoms taking stabs at poorly unpacked concepts that are given transcendent reverence be …
“Indeed, the quantum theory implies that consciousness must exist, and that the content of the mind is the ultimate reality.” Your intuition can fail you on what is genius and what is asinine. Good thinking strives, almost as its prime directive, to cl …
“Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity.” – T.S. EliotWhat does it mean, for anxiety to be the handmaiden to creativity? Reading this quote from T.S. Eliot, my mind wandered to think about Shae and Sansa. For those less obsessed …
The author’s dad, Yogaman Bill, letting go of anxiety and creating beauty on the beach. “Work done with anxiety about results is far inferior to work done without such anxiety, in the calm of self-surrender…” ~ The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 41 …
A study published in PLOS ONE looked at 100 films that featured a dog as a main character from 1939 to 2003 along with the number of registrations with the American Kennel Club by breed in the 10 years before and after each film
“What is the grandmother statement?” My undergraduate thesis advisor used to ask this a lot during lab meetings. He emphasized that psychological research should be presented in a way such that anyone could effectively understand your research goals an …
The fact is we all stare at screens more than we would like and many of us rely on these tools to communicate with others, even during times when we should be spending quality time with our families and friends. So does all this time staring at screens …
Solomon Asch may be best known in social psychology for his 1951 Conformity Studies in which he brought participants into a room with seven confederates—actors pretending to be other participants—and had them recount the length of a line. Before …
“This post is co-written by Michael Sun and guest writer Rachel McCrystal, both authors contributed equally.” Sam Davis* is a 20 year old sophomore at UCLA. He attends class every day, and by and large, Sam lives a relatively normal college student lif …
“You can never climb the same mountain twice, not even in memory. Memory rebuilds the mountain, changes the weather, retells the jokes, remakes all the moves.”– Lito Tejada-Flores, Extreme Skiier, Climber and Author …
“O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;But O heart! heart! …
It’s well-known that toxin-producing bacteria in food, such as E. coli, can affect your belly — often not for the better — but research by UCLA’s Naomi Eisenberger, Michael Irwin, and others now indicates that food toxins may influence your mood …
Here’s a walk down memory lane for those who made it to our 2014 annual interdisciplinary symposium in May, and a taste of it for those who didn’t make it. Enjoy! Symposium 2014 (12) Speaker gifts Programs Symposium 2014 (3) Our guest host Symposium 20 …
Jason Silva – Shots of Awe Have you ever gazed up at the starry sky and felt amazed by its vastness? Or have you looked over the abyss of the Grand Canyon and found your breath catch in your throat? If so, you probably felt awe, a “feeling of wond …
Roses are red, Violets are blue,And you probably thinkThat the sky is blue too. Color, however, exists only in the mind: Color is our experience that maps onto the physical luminance properties of visible light and visible-light reflectance proper …
Yoga can make you feel good emotionally, but can it also help your immune system? Our research group recently completed a randomized controlled trial looking at the effects of a yoga intervention on inflammation. Inflammation is a hot topic in both hea …
When I first saw the movie “You’ve Got Mail” at the ripe old age of 8, the idea of developing a relationship through online chatrooms seemed novel, unconventional and even…creepy? Fast-forward 15 years later, where one in ten people are using an o …
why do the romances that start out so hot and heavy on TV fizzle out once the cameras stop rolling?
At 10:00 P.M. every night, I receive an email update from Google Alerts listing all the news articles from the day containing the word “bully”. Some of these are inspiring stories of victims who have spoken up and made a difference, others are heartbre …
The prevalence of adult obesity in the United States has nearly doubled since 1980, and over two-thirds of American adults are currently overweight or obese. Weight bias (stereotyping or discrimination directed at an individual related to his/her weigh …
It is probably a cliché to say that no two days are alike for a graduate student. For me, this variety makesthe hard work and long hours of graduate student life worth it. What makes up those long hours? It varies from student to student and as your pr …