Neuroscience
- The Empathic Powers Of Those Who Can't Feel Pain
A popular account for how we empathise with other people's physical pain involves the idea that we perform a mental simulation of their suffering, using the pain pathways of our own brain. Support for this comes from research showing that when I see...
- Ouch, That's Expensive!
As well as hurting your wallet, your brain expects an expensive product to cause you pain too. Researchers have found that in terms of brain activity, whether or not we choose to make a purchase is reflected in a trade-off between regions of the brain...
- Brain Scans Reveal Revenge Is Sweet For Men But Not Women
How your brain responds to the sight of someone you don’t like having pain inflicted on them could depend on whether you’re a man or woman. Researchers at University College London have observed increased activity in the reward pathways of men’s...
- Imaging The Brain To Control The Mind
For the first time anywhere in the world, psychologists at California-based company Omneuron and Stanford University have demonstrated that people can be taught how to reduce their experience of pain with the aid of real-time images of their brain activity....
- Hypnosis And Pain Control
Now back to our irregularly scheduled neuroscience programming! It's been so long since The Neurocritic began a plodding series on hypnosis (June 6 to be exact), that the in press articles are now in print in the Journal of Physiology (Paris). The...
Neuroscience
Project Tidbits
It ain't really good practice to blog about the research one is doing in order to avoid the risk of it being stolen from right under your nose, so I'm not gonna spill any details of the project I'm involved in now. Except just to say that it is going to be very exciting to break new ground in a relatively under-researched area of neuropsychology. :-)
Nothing to stop me from dishing out a few tidbits with some details changed though, and here's one:
Nothing to stop me from dishing out a few tidbits with some details changed though, and here's one:
"Neurophysiologically, a recent study by Eisenberger, Lieberman, and Williams (2003) demonstrated that the social pain of ostracism is similar to physical pain at the neurophysiological level ... The exclusion of participants led to increased activity in their anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and the right ventral prefrontal cortex (RVPFC). The ACC is the same region active during physical pain, suggesting that ostracism taps primal reactions of hurt. Self-reports of distress were highly correlated with ACC activity. The activity in the RVPFC moderated feelings of distress for the intentional (but not intentional) ostracism, suggesting that this regulates the ACC activity."
Cool, huh? ;-)
To think that intentionally or unintentionally excluding people from activities activates the same neural pain centres as when you're getting punched. Something to think about there....
To think that intentionally or unintentionally excluding people from activities activates the same neural pain centres as when you're getting punched. Something to think about there....
- The Empathic Powers Of Those Who Can't Feel Pain
A popular account for how we empathise with other people's physical pain involves the idea that we perform a mental simulation of their suffering, using the pain pathways of our own brain. Support for this comes from research showing that when I see...
- Ouch, That's Expensive!
As well as hurting your wallet, your brain expects an expensive product to cause you pain too. Researchers have found that in terms of brain activity, whether or not we choose to make a purchase is reflected in a trade-off between regions of the brain...
- Brain Scans Reveal Revenge Is Sweet For Men But Not Women
How your brain responds to the sight of someone you don’t like having pain inflicted on them could depend on whether you’re a man or woman. Researchers at University College London have observed increased activity in the reward pathways of men’s...
- Imaging The Brain To Control The Mind
For the first time anywhere in the world, psychologists at California-based company Omneuron and Stanford University have demonstrated that people can be taught how to reduce their experience of pain with the aid of real-time images of their brain activity....
- Hypnosis And Pain Control
Now back to our irregularly scheduled neuroscience programming! It's been so long since The Neurocritic began a plodding series on hypnosis (June 6 to be exact), that the in press articles are now in print in the Journal of Physiology (Paris). The...