Featured series 
Tag: psychology and psychiatry
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Health
The links between creativity, intelligence, and mental illness
“Scientists have wondered for a long time why madness and creativity seem linked, particularly in artists, musicians, and writers,” notes Shelley Carson, a Harvard psychologist. “Our research results indicate that low levels of latent inhibition and exceptional flexibility in thought predispose people to mental illness under some conditions and to creative accomplishments under others.” Carson,…
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Campus & Community
What can monks teach scientists?
People tested by Harvard Psychology Professor Stephen Kosslyn and his colleagues have found it difficult to hold a simple image in their minds for more than 10 seconds. However, Buddhists who excel at mental imagery claim that they can hold vivid three-dimensional images of complex objects, like a palace or deity, in their minds for…
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Health
Emotions change with direction
If someone looks directly at you with an angry expression, you usually assume that person is mad at you. If she or he looks away, you become unsure. The person may be angry with someone or something else. In the latter case, the emotional part of your brain shows more activity. With fear, it’s the…
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Health
Researcher studies effects of terrorist attacks on office workers near WTC site
Since 1971, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has conducted 1,200 investigations into indoor air. Last fall, the agency undertook an investigation unlike all the others. Aided by a Harvard School of Public Health scientist, Ashok Nimgade, a NIOSH research team evaluated the physical and mental health problems of office workers near “ground…
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Health
Hypnosis helps healing
“Hypnosis has been used in Western medicine for more than 150 years to treat everything from anxiety to pain, from easing the nausea of cancer chemotherapy to enhancing sports performance,” says researcher Carol Ginandes of Harvard Medical School. A list of applications she provides includes treatment of phobias, panic, low self-esteem, insomnia, sexual dysfunction, stress,…
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Health
Wide variation in physician career satisfaction seen across local markets
Physician career satisfaction levels are relatively consistent from year to year, and a clear majority of physicians nationally are satisfied with their careers. However, a survey showed significant variation in satisfaction levels across local health care markets. It also found that nationally, 18 percent of physicians were somewhat or very dissatisfied. “Physician career satisfaction is…
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Health
Testosterone drives away the blues
In the 1940s, experiments showed that major depression can be relieved by injecting testosterone into men with low levels of that hormone. The treatment never caught on because the shots are painful, and effective antidepressant drugs started coming to market. More recently, however, testosterone patches and gels became available. In June 2000, the United States…
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Health
Patching up depression
In a study, almost half of the people who wore an antidepressant skin patch recovered after only six weeks, and many of them “showed remarkable improvement much sooner,” according to researcher Alexander Bodkin. “The patch worked, and worked rapidly without toxic side effects. The potential is very exciting.” Bodkin and his colleagues, working at six…
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Health
Long-term memory not fixed until after age one
When does long-term memory develop? This was a natural question for Conor Liston, a Harvard senior, and his mentor Jerome Kagan, Starch Research Professor of Psychology. Liston conducted experiments under Kagan’s supervision, and they came up with an answer. “Our findings suggest that children have great difficulty recalling the past before the end of the…
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Health
Starship memories
Psychologists are at odds over the idea that people can forget traumatic events then “recover” intact memories of the trauma years later. On one side are clinicians, who observe that painful memories can be repressed, banished from a trauma survivor’s consciousness until they’re “recovered” with the help of certain psychotherapeutic techniques in adulthood. Memory researchers,…
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Science & Tech
Reserved children more likely to be violent than their outgoing peers
Kurt Fischer from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Brandeis’ Malcolm Watson tracked 440 children and adolescents over seven years to determine what causes children to become aggressive and violent. They found that two characteristics strongly predict the development of aggression. Violence in the home, including physical parental punishment, was the strongest predictor of…
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Health
Alien abduction claims examined
Richard McNally, a Harvard professor of psychology, and his colleagues recruited six women and four men who claimed they had been spirited away by extraterrestrials, some of them more than once.
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Health
Study reveals how child abuse can lead to substance abuse
It’s a common-sense notion that those who have been abused as children may became drug abusers later in life. But why is this so? Carl Anderson, a Harvard instructor in psychiatry and a research associate in McLean Hospital’s Developmental Biopsychiatry Research Laboratory and Brain Imaging Center, and his colleagues investigated. They found that repeated sexual…
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Health
Research suggests optimistic attitude can reduce risk of heart disease in older men
Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, working with colleagues from the Department of Veterans Affairs, studied some 1,306 Boston area men who were part of the Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study. In 1986, the volunteers completed a questionnaire that judged whether they were optimistic or pessimistic. They all were healthy individuals with no…
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Science & Tech
Survey shows Americans not panicking over anthrax
In the wake of biological terror attacks perpetrated by unknown persons sending anthrax-laced letters through the U.S. mail, the Harvard School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation launched their Survey Project on Americans’ Response to Biological Terrorism. The first report of the ongoing survey, released on Nov. 8, 2001, found that most…
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Health
Are you an ‘early bird’ or a ‘night owl’?
Harvard researchers working at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have found that whether someone is a morning person or an evening person depends on a basic aspect of the circadian timing system that is known as intrinsic period. The study was published in the August 2001 issue of “Behavioral Neuroscience. “While some have argued that extremes…
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Health
An alternate take on Alzheimer’s
Much of Alzheimer’s research has focused on the role of a protein, amyloid-beta, found at high levels in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients and which coagulates into plaques. Researcher Ashley Bush, a Harvard Medical School associate professor of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, believes that something else causes Alzheimer’s dementia: oxidation of trace metals in…
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Health
Scientists look people in the ‘I’
Harvard researchers seek a scientific answer to a question posed by 16th century philosopher René Descartes: “What is this ‘I’ that I know?” “Understanding the brain essence of self-awareness helps us come closer to understanding what makes us conscious human beings,” says researcher Alvaro Pascual-Leone. “We are able to reflect on ourselves and our actions.…
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Science & Tech
Study confirms that students in “substance-free” dorms drink less
Residents of college housing where alcohol and smoking were banned were less likely to be victims of actions by students who were drinking. Findings from the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study show that substance-free college residence halls are making an impact in the effort to reduce the harms that heavy drinking produces…
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Science & Tech
How we talk can change the way we work
If we want a better understanding of the prospect of change, we first need a better way of seeing into our own powerful inclination NOT to change. Considering every workplace as a language community, psychologists Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey show us how our aspirations for change are undermined by the ordinary language forms…
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Health
Researchers find brain damage linked to child abuse and neglect
Abuse can damage the developing brain. Harvard researchers working at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., have identified four types of brain abnormalities identified with abuse and neglect experienced in childhood. The researchers further believe that early damage to the developing brain may lead to disorders such as anxiety and depression in adulthood. “A child’s interactions…
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Health
A new reason to sleep on it
In findings published in the December 2000 issue of Nature Neuroscience, a team of Harvard Medical School scientists found that people who stay up all night after learning and practicing a new task show little improvement in their performance. That means that school kids who are cutting back on sleep to finish ever mounting piles…
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Health
Treating ills with music
The Web site of the American Music Therapy Association lists 57 pages of research articles published in its Journal of Music Therapy and other publications. The articles chronicle successful use of music, in combination with other therapies, to treat Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, depression, anxiety, chronic pain, pain of childbirth, autism, and other physical and…
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Health
Researchers learn to control dreams
For years, scientists have been stymied in their quest to understand dreams because they are unique events that cannot be replicated.
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Health
Arts-to-smarts link overblown, researchers say
“Arts advocates need to stop making sweeping claims about the arts as a magic pill for turning students around academically,” says Lois Hetland, project manager of the largest, most comprehensive study ever conducted on the effects of arts on education. “Arts teachers should not be held responsible for better test scores in math or history.”…
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Science & Tech
Business professor works to unlock the mysteries of television viewing habits
Media consultants have spent years studying what convinces viewers to watch certain programs. While there are no purely empirical answers why certain programs are more popular than others, a new study led by a researcher at the Harvard Business School (HBS) provides some strong clues — and a surprising conclusion. “What we found is that…
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Health
Hypnosis found to alter the brain
“Hypnosis has a contentious history,” notes Stephen Kosslyn, professor of psychology at Harvard and leader of a study in which people were hypnotized to see color where only shades of gray exist, and to see gray when actually looking at brightly colored rectangles. “Some insist it’s a state of mind that differs from normal states…
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Science & Tech
Men have distorted image of what women find attractive
Asked by researchers to choose the bodies they would most like to have, male college students in a study picked computer images with 30 pounds more muscle than they actually had. Asked to select their most-wanted body from the same computer images, female college students chose men with 15 to 30 pounds less muscle than…