AFTER A CUPPA JOE -A/+A=A

Study: Caffeine Significantly Enhances Problem-Solving Abilities But Not Creativity

Mar 9, 2020 by News Staff / Source

Caffeine increases the ability to focus and problem solve, but it doesn’t stimulate creativity, according to new research published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition.

One cup of coffee contains nearly 100 mg of caffeine. Image credit: Fxxu.

Caffeine is the most widely consumed psychotropic drug in the world, with numerous studies documenting the effects of caffeine on people’s alertness, vigilance, mood, concentration, and attentional focus.

The effects of caffeine on creative thinking, however, remain unknown.

“In Western cultures, caffeine is stereotypically associated with creative occupations and lifestyles, from writers and their coffee to programmers and their energy drinks, and there’s more than a kernel of truth to these stereotypes,” said Dr. Darya Zabelina, a researcher in the Department of Psychological Science at the University of Arkansas.

“While the cognitive benefits of caffeine — increased alertness, improved vigilance, enhanced focus and improved motor performance — are well established, the stimulant’s affect on creativity is less known.”

In the study, Dr. Zabelina and her colleague, Dr. Paul Silvia from the Department of Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, differentiate convergent from divergent thinking.

“The former is defined as seeking a specific solution to a problem, for example, the correct answer,” they explained.

“The latter is characterized by idea generation where a large set of apt, novel or interesting responses would be suitable.”

For the study, 80 volunteers were randomly given either a 200 mg caffeine pill, equivalent to one strong cup of coffee, or a placebo.

The participants were then tested on standard measures of convergent and divergent thinking, working memory and mood.

Caffeine was shown to improve convergent thinking, while consuming it had no significant impact on divergent thinking.

The compound did not significantly affect working memory, but test subjects who took it did report feeling less sad.

“The 200 mg enhanced problem solving significantly, but had no effect on creative thinking,” Dr. Zabelina said.

“It also didn’t make it worse, so keep drinking your coffee; it won’t interfere with these abilities.”

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Darya L. Zabelina & Paul J. Silvia. 2020. Percolating ideas: The effects of caffeine on creative thinking and problem solving. Consciousness and Cognition 79: 102899; doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2020.102899

WHY TRUMP FAILS

New Study Identifies Key Characteristics of Expert Liars

Dec 23, 2019 by News Staff / Source

According to a new study published in the journal PLoS ONE, good liars lean towards telling inconsequential lies, mostly to colleagues and friends, and generally via face-to-face interactions; they may attempt to strategically manipulate their verbal behavior to stay close to the truth and to tell a plausible, simple, and clear story.

Verigin et al found that self-reported good liars (i) may be responsible for a disproportionate amount of lies in daily life, (ii) tend to tell inconsequential lies, mostly to colleagues and friends, and generally via face-to-face interactions, and (iii) highly rely on verbal strategies of deception, most commonly reporting to embed their lies into truthful information, and to keep the statement clear, simple and plausible. Image credit: Ryan McGuire.

“We found a significant link between expertise at lying and gender. Men were more than twice as likely to consider themselves expert liars who got away with it,” said Dr. Brianna Verigin, a researcher at the University of Portsmouth and the University of Maastricht.

The study involved 194 participants (97 females, 95 males, 2 preferred not to say), with an average age of 39.

They were asked a series of questions including how good they were at deceiving others, how many lies they’d told in the past 24 hours, the type of lies they’d told, who to, and whether they’d done so face-to-face or via other means.

“Time after time, studies have shown we are not as good at detecting lies as we think we are. At best, most of us have a 50:50 chance of getting it right when someone is pulling the wool over our eyes,” Dr. Verigin said.

“We wanted to focus on those who are good at lying and try to understand how they do it and to whom.”

The scientists found one of the key strategies of liars is to tell plausible lies that stay close to the truth, and to not give away much information. And the better someone thinks they are at lying, the more lies they’ll tell.

The most commonly used strategy among all those who admitted to lying, whether experts or poor liars, was to leave out certain information.

But expert liars added to that an ability to weave a believable story embellished with truth, making the lies harder to spot.

In contrast, those who thought they weren’t good at lying resorted, when they did lie, to being vague.

Overall, of the 194 participants, the most common types of deception, in descending order, were ‘white lies,’ exaggerations, hiding information, burying lies in a torrent of truth and making up things.

Most people chose to lie face-to-face, then via text message, a phone call, email, and last, via social media.

Most expert liars lie most often to family, friends or colleagues. Employers and authority figures were least likely to be lied to.

The study showed no link between level of education and lying ability.

“More research needs to be done, particularly on better understanding good liars’ expertise at embedding lies within truthful information, and at using facts that were impossible to check,” Dr. Verigin said.

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B.L. Verigin et al. 2019. Lie prevalence, lie characteristics and strategies of self-reported good liars. PLoS ONE 14 (12): e0225566; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.02255

Music Triggers 13 Key Emotions, Says New Study

Jan 13, 2020 by News Staff / Source

In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of researchers examined the feelings evoked by 2,168 music excerpts in the U.S. and China. Using large-scale statistical tools, the scientists uncovered 13 distinct types of subjective experience associated with music in both cultures: amusement, joy, eroticism, beauty, relaxation, sadness, dreaminess, triumph, anxiety, scariness, annoyance, defiance, and feeling pumped up.

Cowen et al mapped 13 key emotions triggered when we listen to music. Image credit: Cowen et al, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1910704117.

Central to the meaning of music are the subjective experiences that it evokes.

Performers across cultures can convey intense feelings with songs and instruments of different kinds and often do so by relying on acoustic features and associated percepts — such as pitch, loudness, pace — characteristic of the human vocal expression of emotion and of speech.

What is not well understood is how music evokes feelings in listeners

“Music is a universal language, but we don’t always pay enough attention to what it’s saying and how it’s being understood,” said Alan Cowen, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

“We wanted to take an important first step toward solving the mystery of how music can evoke so many nuanced emotions.”

“We have rigorously documented the largest array of emotions that are universally felt through the language of music,” said University of California, Berkeley’s Professor Dacher Keltner.

The study involved more than 2,500 people in the U.S. and China recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk and a multi-institutional participant pool.

First, 111 U.S. participants scanned thousands of videos on YouTube for music evoking a variety of emotions. From those, the researchers built a diverse library of 1,841 music samples.

Next, 1,011 participants from the U.S. and 895 from China each rated some 40 music samples based on 28 different categories of emotion, as well as on a scale of positivity and negativity, and for levels of arousal.

Using statistical analyses, the scientists arrived at 13 overall categories of experience that were preserved across cultures and found to correspond to specific feelings.

To ensure the accuracy of these findings, the team recruited 580 new participants from the U.S. and 363 from China.

The volunteers rated 138 additional Western and 189 traditional Chinese music samples that were specifically intended to evoke variations in valence and arousal. Their responses validated the 13 categories.

Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ made people feel energized. The Clash’s ‘Rock the Casbah’ pumped them up. Al Green’s ‘Let’s Stay Together’ evoked sensuality and Israel Kamakawiwoole’s ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ elicited joy.

Meanwhile, heavy metal was widely viewed as defiant and, just as its composer intended, the shower scene score from the movie ‘Psycho’ triggered fear.

While both U.S. and Chinese study participants identified similar emotions, they differed on whether those emotions made them feel good or bad.

“People from different cultures can agree that a song is angry, but can differ on whether that feeling is positive or negative,” Cowen said.

“Positive and negative values, known in psychology parlance as ‘valence,’ are more culture-specific.

The study authors also translated the data into an interactive audio map, where visitors can move their cursors to listen to any of thousands of music snippets to find out, among other things, if their emotional reactions match how people from different cultures respond to the music.

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Alan S. Cowen et al. What music makes us feel: At least 13 dimensions organize subjective experiences associated with music across different cultures. PNAS, published online January 6, 2020; doi: 10.1073/pnas.1910704117

Immune System of Humans, Other Mammals Could Struggle to Fight Extraterrestrial Microorganisms

Jul 23, 2020 by News Staff / Sourc

In a new study published in the journal Microorganisms, a team of researchers from the UK, the Netherlands and Germany tested how mammalian immune cells responded to peptides containing two amino acids that are commonly found in carbonaceous meteorites. The immune response to these alien peptides was less efficient than the reaction to those common on Earth. The findings suggest extraterrestrial microorganisms could pose an immunological risk for space missions aiming to retrieve samples from planets and moons.

This high-resolution scanning electron microscope image shows an unusual tube-like structural form that is less than 1/100th the width of a human hair in size found in the Martian meteorite ALH84001. Image credit: NASA.

“The discovery of liquid water at several locations in the solar system raises the possibility that microbial life may have evolved outside Earth and as such could be accidentally introduced into the Earth’s ecosystem,” said study senior author Professor Neil Gow from the Medical Research Council Centre for Medical Mycology at the University of Exeter and the Aberdeen Fungal Group in the Institute of Medical Sciences at the University of Aberdeen, and colleagues.

“Unusual sugars or amino acids have been found in high abundance on carbonaceous meteorites.”

“It is therefore conceivable that extraterrestrial microorganisms might contain proteins that include rare amino acids.”

“We asked whether the mammalian immune system would be able to recognize and induce appropriate immune responses to putative proteinaceous antigens that include these rare amino acids.”

In the study, conducted in mice, the scientists examined the reaction of T cells, which are key to immune responses, to peptides containing amino acids commonly found on meteorites: isovaline and α-aminoisobutyric acid.

The response was less efficient, with activation levels of 15% and 61% — compared to 82% and 91% when exposed to peptides made entirely of amino acids that are common on Earth.

“Life on Earth relies on essential 22 amino acids,” said study lead author Dr. Katja Schaefer, also from the Medical Research Council Centre for Medical Mycology at the University of Exeter and the Aberdeen Fungal Group in the Institute of Medical Sciences at the University of Aberdeen.

“We hypothesized that lifeforms that evolved in an environment of different amino acids might contain them in their structure.”

“We chemically synthetized ‘exo-peptides’ containing amino acids that are rare on Earth, and tested whether a mammal immune system could detect them.”

“Our investigation showed that these exo-peptides were still processed, and T cells were still activated, but these responses were less efficient than for ‘ordinary’ Earth peptides.”

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Katja Schaefer et al. 2020. A Weakened Immune Response to Synthetic Exo-Peptides Predicts a Potential Biosecurity Risk in the Retrieval of Exo-Microorganisms. Microorganisms 8 (7): 1066; doi: 10.3390/microorganisms8071066

New Study Tests Lucid Dream Induction Techniques

Jul 20, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

A study done by Dr. Denholm Aspy from the School of Psychology at the University of Adelaide provides the strongest evidence to date that Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD) and Senses Initiated Lucid Dream (SSILD) techniques are effective for inducing lucid dreams.

Aspy investigated and compared the effectiveness of five different combinations of lucid dream induction techniques. Image credit: Stefan Keller.

“In a lucid dream, the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming while the dream is still happening,” Dr. Aspy said.

“According to a recent review study, 55% of adults have experienced at least one lucid dream and 23% experience lucid dreams regularly (once per month or more).”

“Recent research indicates that deliberate control is possible in approximately one third of lucid dreams. Examples include changing location and deliberately waking up.”

“Lucid dreaming has many potential benefits and applications, such as treatment for nightmares, improvement of physical skills and abilities through dream rehearsal, creative problem solving, and research opportunities for exploring mind-body relationships and consciousness.”

“However, to date the effects reported in most studies have been weak and inconsistent, and more research is needed into the applications of lucid dreaming.”

In the new study, Dr. Aspy investigated and compared five different combinations of lucid dream induction techniques:

(i) Reality Testing (RT), a technique that involves checking your environment several times a day to see whether or not you’re dreaming;

(ii) Wake Back to Bed (WBTB) — waking up after five hours, staying awake for a short period, then going back to sleep in order to enter a REM sleep period, in which dreams are more likely to occur;

(iii) MILD, a technique that involves waking up after five hours of sleep and then developing the intention to remember that you are dreaming before returning to sleep, by repeating the phrase ‘The next time I’m dreaming, I will remember that I’m dreaming;’ you also imagine yourself in a lucid dream;

(iv) SSILD, a technique that involves waking up after five hours of sleep and then repeatedly focusing your attention on visual, auditory, and physical sensations for 20 seconds each before returning to sleep; this technique is similar to mindfulness meditation but involved repeatedly shifting your focus;

(v) hybrid technique combining elements of MILD and SSILD — which, like the SSILD technique, involves repeatedly focusing attention on visual, and physical sensations; participants also repeat the phrase ‘The next time I’m dreaming, I will remember that I’m dreaming’ every time they shifted their awareness.

The study involved 355 participants (mean age – 35.3 years) with an interest in lucid dreaming and was conducted entirely via the internet, allowing people from around the world to complete the study at home.

Most participants were employed non-students (71.8%), with 69 (19.4%) students and 31 (8.7%) unemployed or retired.

They completed a pre-test questionnaire and then a baseline sleep and dream recall logbook for one week before practicing the lucid dream induction techniques for another week.

The results showed the MILD technique and the SSILD technique were similarly effective for inducing lucid dreams, while predictors of successful lucid dream induction included superior general dream recall and the ability to fall asleep within ten minutes of completing the lucid dream induction techniques.

The hybrid technique showed no advantage over MILD or SSILD.

In contrast, RT appears to be an ineffective lucid dream induction technique — at least for short periods such as one week in the present study.

“One of the applications of lucid dreaming is that it provides a way to have vivid, life-like and fulfilling experiences while dreaming that are not possible for some people while they are awake,” Dr. Aspy said.

“This could be due to debilitating medical conditions, but also due to circumstances like self-isolation or quarantine when daily habits are disrupted and emotional stressors are high.”

The findings were published July 17, 2020 in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

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Denholm J. Aspy. Findings From the International Lucid Dream Induction Study. Front. Psychol, published online July 17, 2020; doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01746

Two New Cryptic Species of Australian Sugar Gliders Discovered

Jul 21, 2020 by News Staff / Source

A research team led by Charles Darwin University biologists has identified and raised two additional species within what is currently designated as the sugar glider (Petaurus breviceps). The recognition of distinct species is of particular importance given the current climate of biodiversity loss across northern Australia.

The savanna glider (Petaurus ariel). Image credit: Michael Barritt.

The sugar glider, a small, omnivorous, arboreal, and nocturnal marsupial, is the most widespread species of the genus Petaurus, ranging from Tasmania through much of eastern and northern Australia and into New Guinea and several islands of Indonesia.

Its common name refers to its preference for sugary foods such as sap and nectar and its ability to glide through the air, much like a flying squirrel. Its diet also includes pollen, nectar, insects and their larvae, arachnids, and small vertebrates.

“While the discovery of a new mammal species is uncommon and exciting, it also means that the distribution of the sugar glider has been widely overestimated,” said Dr. Teigan Cremona, a researcher in the Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods at Charles Darwin University.

In the current study, Dr. Cremona and colleagues aimed to resolve the taxonomy of Australian gliders currently recognized as Petaurus breviceps.

The scientists examined a 150-year-old specimen from the Natural History Museum, London, more than 300 live and preserved glider specimens from Australian collections.

They found that the sugar glider actually represents three genetically and morphologically distinct species.

These are now formally recognized as the sugar glider (Petaurus breviceps), the savanna glider (Petaurus ariel) and the Kreft’s glider (Petaurus notatus).

“The savanna glider occurs in the woodland savannas of northern Australia and looks a bit like a much smaller version of a squirrel glider with a more pointed nose,” Dr. Cremona said.

“The remaining two species, the sugar glider and the Krefft’s glider, look similar and may co-occur in some areas of south-eastern Australia.”

“Our findings are not only a significant contribution to science but have important conservation implications,” said Professor Sue Carthew, also from the Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods at Charles Darwin University.

“When considered as one species, sugar gliders were considered widespread and abundant, and classified as Least Concern,” Dr. Cremona added.

“The distinction of these three species means a substantially diminished distribution for the sugar glider, making that species vulnerable to large scale habitat destruction.”

The recent bushfires had incinerated quite a large proportion of the species’ current distributional range.

“Given they are hollow-dwellers and require a diverse habitat with a variety of foods, the bushfires have most likely had a devastating effect on this much-loved species,” Dr. Cremona said.

“Our new species from northern Australia, the savanna glider, occurs in a region that is also suffering ongoing small mammal declines,” she added.

The study was published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

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Teigan Cremona et al. Integrative taxonomic investigation of Petaurus breviceps (Marsupialia: Petauridae) reveals three distinct species. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, published online July 13, 2020; doi: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlaa060

Rulers of Ancient Egypt’s Enigmatic Hyksos Dynasty Were Immigrants, Not Invaders

Jul 16, 2020 by News Staff / Source

New research led by Bournemouth University archaeologists supports the theory that the Hyksos, the rulers of the 15th Dynasty of ancient Egypt, were not from a unified place of origin, but Western Asiatics whose ancestors moved into Egypt during the Middle Kingdom, lived there for centuries, and then rose to rule the north of Egypt.

A man described as ‘Abisha the Hyksos,’ leading a group of Aamu, a painting from the tomb of Khnumhotep II (circa 1900 BCE). Image credit: Macquarie University.

The Hyksos were a foreign dynasty that ruled parts of Egypt between 1638 and 1530 BCE, the first instance of Egypt being ruled by individuals of a foreign origin.

The narrative of how the Hyksos rose to rule is apocryphal. The Ptolemaic priest Manetho was for centuries the only account of their rise, rule, and fall.

Living approximately twelve centuries after the Hyksos dynasty, Manetho described the Hyksos rulers as leading an invading force sweeping in from the northeast and conquering the northeastern Nile Delta during the Second Intermediate Period in a time when Egypt as a country was vulnerable.

Manetho’s account only survived in the works of later historians such as Flavius Josephus and, however biased and unreliable, was the solitary known source of the Hyksos for centuries.

Archaeological evidence does link Hyksos culture with an origin in the Near East, but exactly how they rose to power is unclear.

In a new study, Dr. Chris Stantis and her colleagues from Bournemouth University, the Université de Bordeaux, Durham University, and the Austrian Academy of Sciences Vienna collected enamel samples from the teeth of 75 ancient people from the Hyksos capital city of Tell el-Dab’a.

Comparing ratios of strontium isotopes in the teeth to environmental isotope signatures from Egypt and elsewhere, the researchers assessed the geographic origins of the individuals who lived in the city.

They found that a large percentage of the populace were non-locals who immigrated from a wide variety of other places. This pattern was true both before and during the Hyksos dynasty.

This pattern does not match the story of a sudden invasion from a single far-off land, but of a multi-cultural region where one internal group — the Hyksos — eventually rose to power after living there for generations.

“Archaeological chemistry, specifically isotopic analysis, shows us first-generation migration during a time of major cultural transformations in ancient Egypt,” Dr. Stantis said.

“Rather than the old scholastic theories of invasion, we see more people, especially women, migrating to Egypt before Hyksos rule, suggesting economic and cultural changes leading to foreign rule rather than violence.”

The study was published online in the journal PLoS ONE.

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C. Stantis et al. 2020. Who were the Hyksos? Challenging traditional narratives using strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) analysis of human remains from ancient Egypt. PLoS ONE 15 (7): e0235414; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0235414