Thursday, May 26, 2005

Messing with your Head

1. "'Info-mania' dents IQ more than marijuana"
   <http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7298>
"Far from boosting productivity, a constant flow of email and phone messages
 impairs an office worker's ability to focus, a study suggests"

2. "Going on holiday 'lowers your IQ'"
   <http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_803146.html>
"Fourteen days of complete rest can be enough to bring your IQ down by 20
 points"

3. "Too much knowledge can be bad for some types of memory, study finds"
   <http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-05/osu-tmk051005.php>
"As people become smarter, they start to put things into categories, and
 one of the costs they pay is lower memory accuracy for individual
 differences"

4. "Romance health alert splits sexes"
   <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3334145.stm>
"Researchers found that men who get hitched are more likely to suffer
 mental health problems than those who simply live with their partners.
 The opposite is true for women - but they do best without any relationship"

5. "Marriage may tame genius"
   <http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200307/s898675.htm>
"Creative genius and crime express themselves early in men but both are
 turned off almost like a tap if a man gets married and has children"

6. "Pretty woman ... Yeah, yeah, yeah!"
   <http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/12/10/pretty031210>
"Men's minds may be so rattled by the sight of a pretty woman that they
 behave irrationally, Canadian psychologists have shown"

7. "Researchers say having babies alters mother's brain"
   <http://www.wpmi.com/news/weird/story.aspx?content_id=59CC7D3F-6BA9-
       4FD3-B2CC-43530E09C68A>
"Motherhood doesn't just change your life. It also changes your brain"

8. "Rejection really hurts finds brain study"
   <http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994257>
"The brain scans reveal that two of the same brain regions that are
 activated by physical pain are also activated by social exclusion"

9. "As temperature drops, so does brain function"
   <http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforksherald/news/local/7766944.htm>
"After a while, the blood turns slushy; brain cells become stiff;
 frost forms on the synapses. These changes produce brain numbing,
 followed by dumbing"

10. "Lying makes brain work harder"
   <http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,65871,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2>
"Brain scans show that the brains of people who are lying look very
 different from those of people who are telling the truth"

11 "Mobiles 'make you senile'"
   <http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?
       story=443248>
"Mobile phones and the new wireless technology could cause a 'whole
 generation' of today's teenagers to go senile in the prime of their
 lives, new research suggests

12. "Internet delusions"
   <http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2005/05/internet_delusions.html>
"A report in the medical journal Psychopathology notes that psychotic
 delusions increasingly concern the internet, suggesting high-technology
 can fulfil the role of malign 'magical' forces often experienced in
 psychosis"