Watching movies synchronises brains
When we watch a movie, our brains react to it immediately in a way similar to brains of other people, researchers at Aalto University in Finland have concluded by developing a method fast enough to observe immediate changes in the function of the brain even when watching a movie. They said that by employing movies, it was possible to investigate the function of the human brain in experimental conditions that are close to natural. Viewing a movie creates multilevel changes in the brain function. Despite the complexity of the stimulus, the elicited brain activity patterns show remarkable similarities across different people — even at the time scale of fractions of seconds.
Green tea for brain power
Eager to evaluate claims of green tea’s power to improve memory and to identify the mechanism behind it, researchers in Basel, Switzerland, asked a group of healthy volunteers to consume a soft drink with green tea extract before solving a series of working memory tasks. The test subjects’ brain activity was analysed using an MRI machine. The researchers, led by Christoph Beglinger and Stefan Borgwardt, of the University Hospital of Basel and the Psychiatric University Clinics respectively, observed improved connectivity between the frontal and parietal brain regions in the test subjects who were given green tea extract. This improved connectivity between the two brain regions correlated with enhanced performance of the memory tasks.
Most people have unwanted, worrying thoughts
A new study has found that more than 94 per cent of people have unwanted, intrusive thoughts and impulses. The study involved 19 researchers from 13 countries who surveyed 777 people. The participants were asked detailed questions to gauge whether they experienced intrusive thoughts, such as a feeling of contamination, an image of their house on fire or a sudden urge to hurt someone. Such thoughts are considered different from worries and ruminations about past events. The researchers said they found that 94.3 per cent of people reported at least one type of unwanted, intrusive thought during the last three months. The results show that intrusive thoughts aren’t unique to patients with OCD, said Adam Radomsky, lead author of the study and a psychology professor at Concordia University in Canada.