Infants Get Learning Lag from Watching TV
Infants who spend a lot of time in front of the TV may set themselves up for difficulties in learning later on in life, a new scientific research shows. It would appear that even babies under 1 or 2 years of age are capable of “zoning out” in front of the screen, and that this type of behavior may translate into less time spent with their parents, and, possibly, difficulties paying attention and learning when they grow a little older. The investigation was ordered and paid for by the LENA Foundation.
“We’ve known that television exposure during infancy is associated with language delays and attentional problems, but so far it has remained unclear why,” shared for LiveScience University of Washington School of Medicine professor of pediatrics Dimitri Christakis, who was also the lead researcher on the new study. Read more
Why Drunk People Show No Fear
It is clear that alcohol consumption can turn a gentleman into a rude beast. For the first time, a new research study published in The Journal of Neuroscience explains why. Social drinkers intoxicated with alcohol have lowered sensitivity in brain nuclei controlling threat detection, while displaying higher activity in brain nuclei connected to reward.
“The key finding of this study is that after alcohol exposure, threat-detecting brain circuits can’t tell the difference between a threatening and non-threatening social stimulus. At one end of the spectrum, less anxiety might enable us to approach a new person at a party. But at the other end of the spectrum, we may fail to avoid an argument or a fight”, said Dr. Marina Wolf, at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. Read more
Humans Pay for Sex for Millions of Years
We regard prostitution as extremely immoral and as degrading the human beings. But it seems this is much older than we would believe. In our evolutionary history, we could trace this to more than 15 million years ago. A new research reported in New Scientists reveals that even in monkeys males pay for sex. Only that, as macaques do not have money, their currency is grooming. Read more
Top 10 Cunnilingus Tips
It is hard to imagine a phD researcher in the science of cunnilingus. It’s even harder to believe there would be federal funded researches in the issue. And when you think that this issue can make unhappy so many thousands of couples…
In the end, the salvation comes from Internet and specialized sites, where women can pent their frustrations and take the bull by the horns. This is your salvation, dudes!
1.The tongue must be relaxed. Pointed tongues are too harsh and in fact desensitize. Use the whole face and do not be hesitant with the tongue. The chin rubbing on the vagina opening increases pleasure. Read more
More Alcohol, More than 10 Sex Partners
Alcohol is considered by many a sexual stimulant and aphrodisiac. Alcohol “loosens up” a bit, removing inhibitions and making the inter-personal contact a lot easier. Alcohol gives people more (sometimes significantly more) guts to do what they desire, also being less aware of consequences. Frequent bingers engaged in unplanned sexual activity in 41% of the cases compared to just 8% in occasional drinkers and they had unprotected sex in 22% of the cases compared to 4%, as revealed by American studies.
Now a team at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis revealed a direct connection between clinical diagnosis of alcohol dependence in young adults and increased number of sex partners in its research published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. Read more
Addiction to Video Games Is Just Like Drug Addiction
Being addicted to love can be extremely real. In fact, many obsessions such as the one some people have for sex, food or video games act just like drug addictions. You may have noticed some similarities between them, but the reactions taking place in the brain of the people addicted to gambling or video games are similar to those encountered in the brains of the alcoholics and cannabis addicted people.
Parents may helplessly witness how their children change habits becoming, from a normal kid, a miserable, withdrawn person, skipping school, being always angry when confronted, and stealing from family and friends to fuel their obsessions. And this personality and behavioral change can last for years. Any difference from a cocaine addict? Read more
Cold Bastards Sleep Better
Are you going through some stressful situation in your life? In this case, that can ruin your good night’s sleep even 6 months after your problems are solved…This is the result of a five-year long research led by Dr. Jussi Vahtera, of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in Helsinki, Finland, made on a sample of 16,627 men and women with normal sleep and 2,572 with disturbed sleep. At the beginning of the research, each subject was assessed for anxiety, regarded as a general feeling of stressfulness connected with symptoms of hyperactivity.
The team focused on the connection between post-onset life events (like death or illness in the family, divorce, financial difficulty and violence) and sleep impairment during the five years monitoring. The data revealed a strong connection between proneness to anxiety in cases of negative life events and sleep impairment. Read more
What Makes Us Optimistic
Being a shiny happy person has to do with something in your brain. More specifically, with the centers that have just been discovered by a team at the New York University. Generally, humans have great expectations from the future: overcoming the average level of success, living longer and being more successful and healthier, tending to shadow negative thoughts like getting a divorce, having a professional or financial failure, or developing cancer.
The same brain areas impaired in depression have been found to be linked to the boost of optimism. This was determined through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while subjects were analyzing possible future life events (like “winning an award” or “the end of a romantic relationship”).
“When participants imagined positive future events relative to negative ones, enhanced activation was detected in the rostral anterior cingulate and amygdala, which are the same brain areas that seem to malfunction in depression. Read more
Why Are Women More Prone to Addictions?
We know that testosterone makes men aggressive and muscular, while female hormones turn women into protecting “mothers” but also more vulnerable to addictions. But a new Yale research shows that it’s not all about hormones; genes too are involved in shaping the sex-related behavior and the females’ proneness to addiction could be linked to genes located in the sex chromosomes.
“This is the first time that any behavior has been associated specifically with sex chromosomes independent of gonadal hormones,” the lead author Jennifer Quinn of Yale University told AFP.
Female mammals (including women) are known for long to be more likely than males to get habit-forming behavior, including addiction. Sex-specific hormones, secreted by gonads, explain just partially the difference. Read more
What’s The Reflex?
Why does the cat always land on all four legs? Why do we keep on breathing, even if we sleep? This is the result of reflexes – automatic reactions that are not consciously controlled.
Reflexes can be varied, from simple like retreating hand in contact with a hot object, to more complicated ones, that help us maintain the balance. We are born with many basic reflexes, which we forget as we learn new activities. The reflex is triggered unconsciously by a certain stimulus.
A reflex has a three-segment path: analyzer (a sense organ or the skin), a nervous center, and an executer, muscle or gland. Conscious actions are not reflexes, as there is an analysis stage in between, the response being influenced by experience, mood, wishes, and so on. This means that at different moments, a stimulus will induce various reactions, but the same reflex.
A conscious reaction is more powerful than a reflex: we can keep our hand over a hot stove, but only with a conscious effort. Thus, the reflexes are quick methods that protect us against harmful stimuli. Some important reflexes, like breathing, can be consciously impeded just for short periods of time. Read more
