Your Psychology Psychology articles and news

Slow breathing with a prolonged exhale made people more willing to take risks by changing heart activity and increasing the brain’s sensitivity to rewards. The findings suggest that something as simple as controlling your breath can directly influenc…

UCLA researchers have discovered two powerful influences that help guide how the human brain forms before birth. Radial glia, stem cells responsible for producing much of the cerebral cortex, change their behavior depending on how they process glucose …

A long-standing picture of brain evolution as newer, rational layers stacked on top of an ancient “lizard brain” may be deeply misleading. Researchers found that evolution instead appears to balance two competing styles of brain wiring, expanding o…

Adults aged 40 and older performed about 12% faster on a test of executive function after using a HEPA air purifier at home for one month. The findings suggest that cleaner indoor air could offer a simple way to help protect the brain from the effects …

Early-life stress may physically alter how DNA is packaged in the brain, leaving stress-related genes primed to activate more easily years later. In mice, researchers were able to block this effect, preventing the heightened anxiety and stress sensitiv…

A neuroscientist is challenging the idea that the brain contains a central system that actually “makes” our decisions. What we experience as choosing may instead emerge from the continuous interaction of perception, movement, the body, and the worl…

A major study found that adults with depression show disrupted production of new neurons in the hippocampus, potentially weakening the brain’s ability to separate new experiences from painful memories. The researchers also identified broad molecular …

Both too little and too much sleep may be linked to faster aging throughout the body. Researchers analyzing 23 biological aging clocks found the lowest aging levels among people sleeping about 6.4 to 7.8 hours per day. Short or long sleep was also asso…

Researchers have uncovered a possible reason why the Alzheimer’s risk gene APOE4 can disrupt the brain long before memory problems begin. In mice, APOE4 increased a protein called Nell2, shrinking neurons and making memory circuits unusually active. …

Specialized brain scans reveal that schizophrenia is linked to widespread loss of the synapses that connect brain cells, with the left side of the brain hit especially hard. The damage follows a surprisingly organized pattern tied to the brain’s chem…