G.A.S. Spells Stress
As with so many wondrous discoveries of science and medicine, it was by chance that Hungarian-born Hans Selye (1907-1982) stumbled upon the idea of the General Adaptation Syndrome (G.A.S.), which he first wrote about in the British journal Nature in the summer of 1936. The G.A.S., alternately known as the stress syndrome, is what Selye came to call the process under which the body confronts "stress" (what he first called "noxious agents").
How Concerned About Brain Injury Should We Be?
Scan the vitamin aisle in your local supermarket and you'll find plenty of products promising to improve brain function. With names like "Memory Complex," "Neuro Optimizer," "Brain Elevate," and "Sharp Thought," they tout the remarkable powers of compounds from phospholipids and omega-3 fatty acids to acetyl-L-carnitine, citicoline, and Gingko biloba. 
In the 1970s, researchers Paul Ekman, Wallace Friesen and Carroll Izard became interested in whether emotions differ across cultures, so they showed photographs of emotional expressions to people around the world to determine if a smile means the same thing in San Francisco as it does in Samoa. They found that everyone recognized an upturned mouth as the universal sign of happiness, and there was similar agreement about expressions of surprise, anger, disgust, sadness and fear.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of times a year a young athlete takes a hard blow to the head in the course of a high school, college, or an amateur sporting event. When this occurs, how do trainers and coaches determine if the athlete has received a concussion? If he or she has a concussion, is it cause for concern? And how is a decision made to return an athlete to playing contact sports? Over the past several years, a number of studies have shown that many different factors need to be considered in assessing sports-related concussions at all levels, from young children involved in Little League to professional athletes.We are excited to share this video news report about a schizophrenia study we have been working on for the past few years. The e-CAeSAR Study is being conducted in partnership with the Schizophrenia Trials Network at ten top-tier research centers nationwide. The trial tests a unique online cognitive training program (called “PACR”) designed for [...]
I woke up in a cheerful mood this morning because yesterday the results of a scientific study were published and they once again demonstrated that very strong benefits can be achieved through only 10 hours of Posit Science brain training. The cognitive benefits were not just seen in the tasks themselves, but in measures of [...]
What is your earliest memory? A frightening fall down the stairs? Blowing out candles on your third birthday? Or perhaps it is a trip to the hospital to visit a newborn sibling? Whatever the content, it is probably short and rather hazy. Adult recollections of infancy and early childhood are typically fragmentary. We forget so [...]
Do we really use only a small portion of our brain? If the answer to this question is yes, then knowing how to access the “unused” part of our brain should unleash untapped mental powers and allow us perform at top efficiency. Let’s examine the issue and attempt to get at the truth behind the [...]
Phineas Gage began the day of September 13, 1848 as a man remarkable only to those who knew him personally. He worked as the foreman of a railway construction gang in Vermont, where his group was preparing the bed for the Rutland and Burlington Rail Road. At just twenty-six years old, Gage was already a [...]
