Who cares if money can’t buy you love? It can still be your BFF.
That’s one of the surprising findings in a new Chinese-American academic research paper, “The Symbolic Power of Money,” published in the journal Psychological Science.
Like any best friend forever, money demonstrated to researchers its ability to soothe us, reduce our sense of social exclusion and even lessen …

Did you ever hide something important – not to lose it, just to forget where you hid it? Well, could using hypnosis help you recall the location of that item? The power of hypnosis can certainly increase focus but, how could it help you remember? The answer to that question rests in the mechanisms of memory, hypnosis and the skill of the hypnotist.
Over the years many clients have come to me asking for hypnosis to find lost jewelry, valuable papers, or items that were simply misplaced. Most of the time …

The research shows men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain function than those who chat to someone they do not find attractive.
Researchers who carried out the study, published in the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, think the reason may be that men use up so much of their brain function or ‘cognitive resources’ trying to impress beautiful women, they have little left for other tasks.
The findings have implications for the performance of men …

Why can’t I cure my own bad habit?
If you have a bad habit – such as comfort eating, smoking or an addiction to gambling or alcohol, for example, then you can probably answer the question for yourself. A lot of us simply can’t kick a bad habit on our own – we tend to say that it’s because we don’t have the willpower to actually carry it through.
The fact is that any kind of bad habit takes hold of you both psychologically and physically. So, when you try to kick …

Period of slumber helps the brain focus on emotionally resonant aspects of a memory while diminishing background details.
As poets, songwriters and authors have described, our memories range from misty water-colored recollections to vividly detailed images of the times of our lives.
Now, a study led by Harvard researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Boston College offers new insights into the specific …

This afternoon I had a (very rare) nap. During that nap I had a lucid dream (most of which I no longer remember). As I was waking up, I was thinking about my dream and thought that it would be a great idea to write a list about dreams for the site. So, here are the top 10 amazing facts about dreams.
10. Blind People Dream
People who become blind after birth can see images in their dreams. People who are born blind do not see any images, but have dreams equally …

THE CITY HAS always been an engine of intellectual life, from the 18th-century coffeehouses of London, where citizens gathered to discuss chemistry and radical politics, to the Left Bank bars of modern Paris, where Pablo Picasso held forth on modern art. Without the metropolis, we might not have had the great art of Shakespeare or James Joyce; even Einstein was inspired by commuter trains.
(Yuko Shimizu for the Boston Globe)
And yet, city life isn’t easy. The same London cafes that stimulated Ben Franklin also helped spread cholera; Picasso eventually bought an …

Functional magnetic resonance imaging of men and women under stress showed neuroscientists how their brains differed in response to stressful situations. In men, increased blood flow to the left orbitofrontal cortex suggested activation of the “fight or flight” response. In women, stress activated the limbic system, which is associated with emotional responses.
There are many books and movies that highlight the psychological differences between men and women – Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus, for example; but now, neurologists say they have brain images that prove male and female …

PROFESSIONAL pickpocket Apollo Robbins has an uncanny ability to control minds. He can manipulate people to an extraordinary degree, drawing their attention away from his thieving hands as he purloins watches and wallets in plain sight. These days, Robbins gives his ill-gotten gains back – he has given up a life of crime to become an entertainer – but most of his victims still have no idea they’ve been robbed until it’s too late.
Watching Robbins at work is like watching somebody with supernatural powers. Yet, like his fellow conjurors, Robbins …

What you think you become.
This is the idea behind Sensory Goal Setting, Creative Visualization, Sports Psychology and the Positive Thinking movement most known for people like Zig Ziglar, Dale Carnagie and Anthony Robbins.
If you picture yourself in negative scenarios you will end up in those scenarios and if you picture yourself in happy, healthy, successful scenarios you will end up happy, healthy and successful.
The popular expression “The Power of Positive Thinking” was first the title of a book by Norman Vincent Peale and later came to be a slogan for …