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Nearly four years after September 11, 2001, an abstract was published online. Its title: The Impact of Terrorism on Brain and Behavior: What We Know and What We Need to Know. This abstract was based on papers presented by Paul Slovic, Rachel Yehuda, Edna Foa, Daniel Pine, Matthew Friedman, John Krystal, and Robert Ursano at the ACNP meeting in December 2003 (Yehuda & Human, 2005). This article draws attention to how terrorism continues to terrorize us so many years later. [More]

It seems to be common sense that having someone to lean on in a time of need would be a good thing. And, not surprisingly, social psychological and clinical psychological research has confirmed that. But, in delving into the scientifically based questions of how, why, when and what kind of social support is most beneficial to people in times of stress, mental illness or well-being, social scientists have identified the truly important role that our relationships with others play in our psychological and physical health. When it comes to health, who we know is just as important, if not more so, than what we know. [More]

On March 24, 2015, tragedy changed the lives of everyone who had a friend or loved one on Germanwings flight 9525 that was en route from Barcelona, Spain to Dusseldorf, Germany. In the initial phase of the investigation and recovery effort, most evidence points to the flight’s Co-pilot thoughtfully and methodically locking the cockpit door when the Captain went to the restroom, and purposely steering the plane into a mountain in the French Alps at 400 miles per hour. [More]

In recent years, however, the safety of the sport is being scrutinized as there’s a growing body of research evidence suggesting a clear link between football and brain injury. Specifically, repeated head concussions endured by many professional football players have been found to cause a brain disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). According to Wikipedia, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is described as a form of progressive degenerative disease. Currently, this brain condition can only be diagnosed definitively postmortem, which means that it cannot be diagnosed in living people. [More]

On Wednesday April 8th, the jury reached a verdict on the tragic Boston Marathon bombing case. They decided to convict 21-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. It comes as no surprise given that Dzhokhar has admitted to participating in the April 15, 2013 bombing. His defense team claimed that while he did participate in the events that led up to the bombing, his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was ultimately responsible for the attack, which killed two adults and a child and injured 264 people. [More]

Sasha enters the waiting room of her psychologist trembling. Her heart is racing as she struggles to breathe. She has heart palpitations and the room is spinning. She feels as if she is about to die. The psychologist rushes out to console and comfort her. Sasha is having a panic attack. Why? Prior to her therapy appointment, she watched countless hours of a local news network covering the recent events centering police brutality. Sasha has a similar story. She was assaulted by police several years prior. As a result, she developed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. [More]

Recently The Today Show spent a segment of its programming on the topic of reincarnation. It reported the case of a boy named Ryan who, starting at the age of 4 years old, began to have nightmares and vivid recollections of being a 1930s Hollywood agent and movie extra by the name of Marty Martyn. [More]

Dove’s new campaign #ChooseBeautiful is challenging women across the globe to rethink what it means to be beautiful and acknowledge their own beauty. Dove’s most recent inspirational advertising placed a “beautiful” sign and an “average” sign above two adjacent doors of buidlings in San Francisco, Shanghai, London, Delhi, and Sao Paulo. The cameras were then rolling to see what women of all ages would do when faced with the decision to walk through the “average” door or the “beautiful” door. The large majority of women chose to walk under the “average” door, some with hesitation, others seemingly without thought. [More]

As if inscribed today, the crisp etching “James Cockburn 8th Durham, L.I.” followed by the inscribed date “April 1, 1917” was discovered on the walls of the cave like tunnels in Naours, France. The date provided clues to the World War I time period in which thousands of soldiers left such markings in the stone walls. Archaeologist, Gilles Prilaux, made the surprising discovery while studying the Naours tunnels as a lens into the middle ages. The Naours tunnels are far from the front lines of the WWI battlefields, yet 1,821 soldiers from the U.S., Australia, Britain, and Canada made their way into the underground tunnels for reasons that are now being further explored by historians. [More]

Eating her own carpet padding is a typical behavior for one child in England. Meet four-year old Jessica Knight of Cambridgeshire. Little Jessica has been struggling with a psychological condition known as Pica; a condition in which an individual craves and ingests non-nutritional substances, such as mud, chalk, paint, glue, etc. Parents Kelly and Chris Knight were interviewed and reported that they were unaware of their daughter’s unusual habits at until Jessica was around 2 years old and was discovered eating her faux-leather chair. In response to her most recent Pica activity, Kelly expressed shock at the amount of Jessica’s carpet padding that was eaten away. [More]