An open-access digital library of research-based information and reflections on psychology, wellness, and culture

Tag: Concept-led

  • What Do We Know about Herbal Medicine?
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    What Do We Know about Herbal Medicine?

    Did you know that the ancient Sumerians used poppy, henbane, and mandrake as remedies over 4,500 years ago? That might be among the earliest uses of herbal medicine in the document. The oldest written evidence of medicinal plant use is a clay tablet from Sumer, listing recipes for drugs from more than 250 plants, including some…

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  • Our Memories of Surprises are Better than the Expected
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    Our Memories of Surprises are Better than the Expected

    Most of our lives are recorded in “Standard Definition.” We remember the gist of our commute, the general flavor of our lunch, and the basic outline of our workday. To save energy, the brain operates as a prediction machine; it guesses what will happen next based on what happened yesterday. When those predictions are right,…

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  • The Way You Describe Something Can Surprisingly Shape the Memory
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    The Way You Describe Something Can Surprisingly Shape the Memory

    Did you know that our memory is more constructive than a perfect playback of a recording? Rather than remembering the past as neutral information, every time we recall an event, the brain reconstructs the story from bits and pieces. That is the nature of memory. But what if the memory is influenced, for example, by…

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  • Attention Works by Turning Distraction Down Not Off
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    Attention Works by Turning Distraction Down Not Off

    Have you ever been deep in conversation at a loud party, only to snap your head around the moment someone across the room whispers your name? This isn’t a glitch in your focus; it’s a sophisticated “backend” antenna at work. That antenna is the attention working at the backend. In the 1960s, psychologist Anne Treisman…

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  • You May Feel Social Rejection as Physical Pain
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    You May Feel Social Rejection as Physical Pain

    We often use physical metaphors to describe emotional experiences, such as “broken hearts,” “gut punches,” or “crushing” rejection. What if “it hurts” might be more literal than we ever imagined? An established fMRI study invited participants who had recently experienced an unwanted breakup to undergo two different types of stimulation. First, they looked at a…

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