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Expressing variety of emotions earns entrepreneurs funding -- ScienceDaily

The study showed that those who used a variety of three emotional expressions -- happiness, anger and fear -- had the most fundraising success. The only emotion that had a negative effect on funding was sadness.

'Emotional' reviews predict business success, new study shows: That five-star rating? It doesn't say what you think it does -- ScienceDaily

In one study, they looked at the movie industry and examined 13 years of Metacritic reviews from 2005 to 2018. Star ratings, they found, were a significant negative predictor of box office success. Emotionality, however, was a significant positive predictor. The researchers also were able to predict the success of books on Amazon using the same model based on 20 years of data from 1995 to 2015. They found that 91% of books received a positive rating (four or five stars). The average star rating was an unreliable and sometimes even negative predictor of purchases; however, greater emotionality was predictive of more sales in 93% of genres.

Seasonal variation in daylight influences brain function -- ScienceDaily

"In the study, we observed that the number of opioid receptors was dependent on the time of the year the brain was imaged. The changes were most prominent in the brain regions that control emotions and sociability. The changes in the opioid receptors caused by the variation in the amount of daylight could be an important factor in seasonal affective disorder," says Postdoctoral Researcher Lihua Sun from the Turku PET Centre and the University of Turku.

Data Mining Reveals the Six Basic Emotional Arcs of Storytelling - MIT Technology Review

The idea behind sentiment analysis is that words have a positive or negative emotional impact. So words can be a measure of the emotional valence of the text and how it changes from moment to moment. So measuring the shape of the story arc is simply a question of assessing the emotional polarity of a story at each instant and how it changes. Reagan and co do this by analyzing the emotional polarity of “word windows” and sliding these windows through the text to build up a picture of how the emotional valence changes. They performed this task on over 1,700 English works of fiction that had each been downloaded from the Project Gutenberg website more than 150 times.

People with schizophrenia experience emotion differently from others, 'body maps' show -- ScienceDaily

The outcomes differed radically between groups, with the control group showing distinct maps of sensations for 13 different emotions, indicating specific patterns of increased arousal and decreased energy across the body for each emotion. However, in individuals with schizophrenia, there was an overall reduction of bodily sensation across all emotions. The study also found that individuals with schizophrenia don't differentiate on their body maps for varying emotions. That may pose a problem for them in identifying, recognizing and verbalizing their emotions or trying to understand the emotions of others. Torregrossa said the research will allow the team to move forward in developing ways to help people with schizophrenia process emotions, which, in turn, could improve interpersonal relationships. "The main outcome of this research is that we have a better understanding of why people with schizophrenia might have trouble interacting with others," she said. "What we can do now is help them learn to attend to physiological sensations arising from their bodies and use them to process emotions."

ADHD drugs do not improve cognition in healthy college students -- ScienceDaily

Results of the new study, published last month in the journal Pharmacy, show that the standard 30 mg dose of Adderall did improve attention and focus -- a typical result from a stimulant -- but that effect failed to translate to better performance on a battery of neurocognitive tasks that measured short-term memory, reading comprehension and fluency. Weyandt has a theory about why working memory would be adversely affected by the medication. Brain scan research shows that a person with ADHD often has less neural activity in the regions of the brain that control executive function -- working memory, attention, self-control. For people with ADHD, Adderall and similar medications increase activity in those regions and appear to normalize functioning. "If your brain is functioning normally in those regions, the medication is unlikely to have a positive effect on cognition and my actually impair cognition. In other words, you need to have a deficit to benefit from the medicine," Weyandt said. Participants in the study also reported their perceived effects of the drug and its impact on their emotions, with students reporting significant elevation of their mood when taking Adderall. In contrast to the small, mixed effects on cognition, the drug had much larger effects on mood and bodily responses, increasing positive mood, emotional ratings of the drug effect, heart rate and blood pressure. "These are classic effects of psychostimulants," said White. "The fact that we see these effects on positive emotion and cardiovascular activity, in the same individuals for whom cognitive effects were small or negative in direction, is important. It indicates that the cognitive and the emotional impact of these drugs are separate. How you feel under the drug does not necessarily mean that there is an improvement in cognition; there can be a decrease, as seen here in young adults without ADHD."

Nature programs could put a spring in your step: New study shows that watching films set in a natural environment boosts body image -- ScienceDaily

This new study found that similar, immediate improvements in body appreciation could be achieved by watching a film depicting a natural environment. The film showing city streets had no effect, either positive or negative, on participants' body appreciation. Professor Swami said: "There are a number of possible explanations for our results, including the idea that natural environments promote 'soft fascination', which is a state of cognitive quiet that fosters self-kindness and helps individuals have a more compassionate view of their body. Views of rivers and trees are also devoid of any reminders of materialism, and so allows the viewer respite from thoughts of consumption and image. "However, more work still needs to be done to fully understand exactly how exposure to natural environments promotes improvements in body image, as well as how our findings here translate to how people view nature films outside the laboratory. For example, if we watch Springwatch on the sofa whilst at the same time checking our Twitter feed, it's possible the natural scenes might not have the same immersive effect.

Why being left-handed matters for mental health treatment -- ScienceDaily

Since the 1970s, hundreds of studies have suggested that each hemisphere of the brain is home to a specific type of emotion. Emotions linked to approaching and engaging with the world -- like happiness, pride and anger -- lives in the left side of the brain, while emotions associated with avoidance -- like disgust and fear -- are housed in the right. But those studies were done almost exclusively on right-handed people. That simple fact has given us a skewed understanding of how emotion works in the brain, according to Daniel Casasanto, associate professor of human development and psychology at Cornell University. That longstanding model is, in fact, reversed in left-handed people, whose emotions like alertness and determination are housed in the right side of their brains, Casasanto suggests in a new study. Even more radical: The location of a person's neural systems for emotion depends on whether they are left-handed, right-handed or somewhere in between, the research shows. The study, "Approach motivation in human cerebral cortex," is published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. According to the new theory, called the "sword and shield hypothesis," the way we perform actions with our hands determines how emotions are organized in our brains. Sword fighters of old would wield their swords in their dominant hand to attack the enemy -- an approach action -- and raise their shields with their non-dominant hand to fend off attack -- an avoidance action

Towards an unconscious neural reinforcement intervention for common fears -- ScienceDaily

That is, these researchers can tell if a participant's brain is 'unconsciously' thinking of a snake (which happens every now and then without our awareness), based on images acquired using conventional fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging, a measurement available in many hospitals). By giving the participant a small amount of monetary reward whenever this happens, the snake is thus associated with a positive feeling, thereby eventually becomes less frightening and unpleasant.

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In layman’s terms, neuroscientists at NorthWestern University determined that breathing in through your nose lights up brain centers that govern positive and negative emotions. Further, nasal inhalation coordinates those centers with other neural systems that are central to memory and cognition. Exhaling through your nose or mouth-breathing accomplish none of these things.

Researchers 'dismantle' mindfulness intervention to see how each component works -- ScienceDaily

As health interventions based on mindfulness have grown in popularity, some of the field's leading researchers have become concerned that the evidence base for such practices is not yet robust enough. A new study shows how a rigorous approach to studying mindfulness-based interventions can help ensure that claims are backed by science. One problem is that mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) sometimes blend practices, which makes it difficult to measure how each of those practices affects participants. To address that issue, the researchers took a common intervention for mood disorders -- mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) -- and created a controlled study that isolated, or dismantled, its two main ingredients. Those include open monitoring (OM) -- noticing and acknowledging negative feelings without judgment or an emotional secondary reaction to them; and focused attention (FA) -- maintaining focus on or shifting it toward a neutral sensation, such as breathing, to disengage from negative emotions or distractions. "It has long been hypothesized that focused attention practice improves attentional control while open-monitoring promotes emotional non-reactivity -- two aspects of mindfulness thought to contribute its therapeutic effects," said study lead and corresponding author Willoughby Britton, an assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior in the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. "However, because these two practices are almost always delivered in combination, it is difficult to assess their purported differential effects. By creating separate, validated, single-ingredient training programs for each practice, the current project provides researchers with a tool to test the individual contributions of each component and mechanism to clinical endpoints." In the study, the researchers randomized more than 100 individuals with mild-to-severe depression, anxiety and stress to take one of three eight-week courses: one set of classes provided a standardized MBCT that incorporated the typical blend of OM and FA. The two other classes each provided an intervention that employed only OM or only FA. In every other respect -- time spent in class, time practicing at home, instructor training and skill, participant characteristics, number of handouts -- each class was comparable by design. At the beginning and end of the classes, the researchers asked the volunteers to answer a variety of standardized questionnaires, including scales that measure their self-reported ability to achieve some of the key skills each practice is assumed to improve. If the researchers saw significant differences between the FA group and the OM group on the skills each was supposed to affect, then there would be evidence that the practices uniquely improve those skills as intervention providers often claim. Sure enough, the different practices engaged different skills and mechanisms as predicted. The FA-only group, for example, reported much greater improvement in the ability to willfully shift or focus attention than the OM-only group (but not the MBCT group, which also received FA training). Meanwhile, the OM-only group was significantly more improved than the FA-only group (but not the MBCT group) in the skill of being non-reactive to negative thoughts.

Why do people in medieval art look bored or indifferent when being killed? (cross-post from /r/Art) : AskHistorians

I've been amused by this trait in pre-1600's european paintings all my life; people going through the most horrific injuries imaginable look as if they were bored with life anyway and their killer did them a service. It would have been easier to draw open, panicked eyes and flailing arms than just laconic, Eeyore-like pawns that die on command and without fuss.

Running and emotional regulation

Before watching the film clip, some of the 80 participants were made to jog for 30 minutes; others just stretched for the same amount of time. Afterward, all of them filled out surveys to indicate how bummed out the film had made them. Bernstein kept them busy for about 15 minutes after that, and surveyed them again about how they were feeling. Those who’d done the 30-minute run were more likely to have recovered from the emotional gut-punch than those who’d just stretched — and, her results showed, the people who’d initially felt worse seemed to especially benefit from the run.

REM launders emotion

One of the things that's been emerging over the past five or six years in the literature is that REM sleep seems to serve an almost sort of overnight therapy benefit in terms of our emotional well-being and our mental health. And what's interesting is that REM sleep chemically, in terms of the anuric transmitters that swirl around the brain, REM sleep is perhaps the only time during the 24-hour period where a particular stress neurochemical called norepinephrine or noradrenaline is actually suppressed and it's completely shut down from the brain. And it seems to be that REM sleep is a perfect chemical environment, almost like a therapy session, where you can take emotional events from the prior day and perhaps just smooth the sharp edges off those experiences, and almost like an overnight soothing balm, as it were.

Dreams integrate align experiences and emotional valences?

One proposed purpose of dreaming, of what dreaming accomplishes (known as the mood regulatory function of dreams theory) is that dreaming modulates disturbances in emotion, regulating those that are troublesome. My research, as well as that of other investigators in this country and abroad, supports this theory. Studies show that negative mood is down-regulated overnight. How this is accomplished has had less attention. I propose that when some disturbing waking experience is reactivated in sleep and carried forward into REM, where it is matched by similarity in feeling to earlier memories, a network of older associations is stimulated and is displayed as a sequence of compound images that we experience as dreams. This melding of new and old memory fragments modifies the network of emotional self-defining memories, and thus updates the organizational picture we hold of “who I am and what is good for me and what is not.” In this way, dreaming diffuses the emotional charge of the event and so prepares the sleeper to wake ready to see things in a more positive light, to make a fresh start.

Scientists identify brain circuit that drives pleasure-inducing behavior: Surprisingly, the neurons are located in a brain region thought to be linked with fear -- ScienceDaily

The researchers found that five of these populations stimulate reward-related behavior: When the mice were exposed to light, the mice repeatedly sought more light exposure because these neurons were driving a reward circuit. These same populations all receive input from the positive emotion cells in the BLA.

A man’s best friend: Study shows dogs can recognize human emotions -- ScienceDaily

For the first time, researchers have shown that dogs must form abstract mental representations of positive and negative emotional states, and are not simply displaying learned behaviours when responding to the expressions of people and other dogs.