A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
iStock photos Domestic violence statistics in Australia are horrifying. In the past year one in six women has experienced violence from a current or former partner, 63 women have been killed by family violence and childhood exposure to partner violence increases the likelihood of intergenerational violence [1]. The effect that domestic violence exposure [...]
Preparation of an EEG recording. It is used for a Microstate analysis in order to depict processes in the brain temporally and spatially. Credit: University of Bern / Adrian Moser A soccer fan needs more time to associate a positive word with an opposing club than with his own team. And supporters of [...]
Credit: Amanda Summerlin A path-breaking new study on how we seek similarity in relationships, co-authored by researchers at Wellesley College and the University of Kansas, upends the idea that "opposites attract," instead suggesting we're drawn to people who are like-minded. The study could lead to a fundamental change in understanding relationship formation—and it [...]
Credit: Maliz Ong/public domain The current epidemic of obesity in developed countries should be a warning for health officials in the developing world with newly opened markets. Food manufacturers, restaurant franchising companies, food supply chains and advertisers collaborate to create environments in which extremely palatable, energy-dense foods and their related cues are readily [...]
Tom Wolfe: his 1996 predictions foreshadowed dubious media stories of neural circuits for infidelity and political orientation. Photograph: Jim Cooper/AP Perhaps Wolfe’s most astute observation was cultural: how the collapse of Freud and Marx had pushed people into using the language of cognitive science for explanations of human behaviour. He also noticed that [...]
PHOTO: A man shows off his body art, including eyeball tattoos, at a tattoo festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2014. (Flickr: Augusto dos Santos) The Baird Government has been criticised for recently regulating the practice of eyeball tattooing, as the New South Wales Opposition calls for a ban on the procedure. The [...]
Shutter stock If you want to strike up a new relationship, simply smile. It works because people are much more attuned to positive emotions when forming new bonds than they are to negative ones such as anger, contempt or sadness. Don't try to fake it, however, because people can recognize a sincere smile [...]
People who misuse prescription pain relievers all have one thing in common, University of Georgia researchers have discovered: a history of recent illicit drug use. How they acquire such drugs varies according to age, however. The findings, published in the journal Addictive Behaviors, may help health care providers and others curb painkiller misuse. In a [...]
Interdiscplinarity forces us to think in new ways. Photograph: Helen Pynor/GV Art Due to its incredible complexity, the brain is an immensely challenging subject of study. The average human brain has about 90 billion neurons that make 100 trillion connections or synapses. Scientists believe this staggering number of neurons is responsible for the [...]
Stan Grant delivers a speech on racism When journalist Stan Grant stepped onto the podium in a large Sydney hall on a cold October evening to address a crowd of about 100, he had only an idea of what he wanted to say. What emerged has gone viral online. Grant has been compared to [...]
