Music can evoke positive emotions, which in turn can lower the listener's stress levels. Everyday music listening is therefore a simple and effective way to enhance well-being and health, according to a new doctoral thesis in psychology from the University of Gothenburg.

ScienceDaily (July 6, 2011) — A big part of coping with life is having a flexible reaction to the ups and downs. Now, a study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people choose to respond differently depending on how intense an emotion is. When confronted with high-intensity negative emotions, they tend to choose to turn their attention away, but with something lower-intensity, they tend to think it over and neutralize the feeling that way.

In the late 1990s, Jane Anderson was working as a landscape architect. That meant she didn't work much in the winter, and she struggled with seasonal affective disorder in the dreary Minnesota winter months. She decided to try meditation and noticed a change within a month. "My experience was a sense of calmness, of better ability to regulate my emotions," she says. Her experience inspired a new study which will be published in an upcoming issue ofPsychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, which finds changes in brain activity after only five weeks of meditation training.

Every person has some level of alexithymia, as it is the personality trait which keeps people from sharing or even understanding their own emotions. Now, one University of Missouri researcher's latest study indicates that affectionate communication, such as hugging, could help those who have high levels of alexithymia lead more fulfilling lives.

Δυσκολεύεστε να θυμηθείτε τα ονόματα των νέων ατόμων που γνωρίζετε σε ένα κλαμπ; Αν ναι, τότε μάλλον περνάτε πολύ καλά!

Μια νέα μελέτη για την συσχέτιση ψυχικής διάθεσης και μνήμης έδειξε πως όταν είμαστε ιδιαίτερα ευδιάθετοι, μειώνεται η ικανότητα του εγκεφάλου να αποθηκεύει τις νέες πληροφορίες!

Την μελέτη, που δημοσιεύεται στην επιθεώρηση «Cognition and Emotion», πραγματοποίησε η ερευνήτρια Ελίζαμπεθ Μάρτιν, διδακτορική φοιτήτρια Ψυχολογίας στο Πανεπιστήμιο του Μισούρι.

When was the last time you flashed a fake smile at the office?

For some, it may be just another mundane aspect of work life — putting on a game face to hide your inner unhappiness. But new research suggests that it may have unexpected consequences: worsening your mood and causing you to withdraw from the tasks at hand.

In a study published this month in the Academy of Management Journal, scientists tracked a group of bus drivers for two weeks, focusing on them because their jobs require frequent, and generally courteous, interactions with many people.

The scientists examined what happened when the drivers engaged in fake smiling, known as “surface acting,” and its opposite, “deep acting,” where they generated authentic smiles through positive thoughts, said an author of the study, Brent Scott, an assistant professor of management at Michigan State University.

People are social creatures. Robots … not so much. When we think of robots, we think of cold, metallic computers without emotion. If science fiction has taught us anything, though, it's that we crave emotion, even in our robots - think C-3PO or Star Trek's Data. So it stands to reason that if robots are ever going to become a fixture in our society, even becoming integrated into our households, we need to be able to read their faces. But how good are we at reading robot faces?

University of Granada scientists have analyzed the relation between drug abuse and recognition of basic emotions (happiness, surprise, wrath, fear, sadness and disgust) by drug-abusers. Thus, the study revealed that drug-abusers have difficulty to identify negative emotions by their facial expression: wrath, disgust, fear and sadness.

A new study from the McGill University has revealed that listening to music is just as pleasurable as food, drugs and sex. Listening to music releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain important for more tangible pleasures associated with sex or great food.

Ain't love grand? Magnetic resonance imaging of the brains of people who've just fallen in love and people who've been married for decades shows similar activity, according to new research from New York's Stony Brook University. Of particular interest to researchers are long- and short-term couples' similarities in the dopamine-sensitive areas of the brain associated with reward and motivation.

What this proves, scientists say, is that deep romantic love endures through the years, at least in terms of brain processes. The study, reported in the online journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, pioneers the use of brain imaging in trying to measure romantic love.

For more information, go to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21208991.