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Your Mind is Stronger Than You Think: Imagining a Placebo Can Reduce Unpleasant Emotions

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By: Vasundhara Source: đŸȘž femme fatale ♀ on X: “gaslighting myself into being happy https://t.co/D4JZaxrB5I” / X (twitter.com) The Surprising Power of Imagining a Placebo Have you ever been handed a pill by a well-meaning friend or relative, only to later discover it was just a sugar pill, with no real medical benefit? That, my friends, is the intriguing world of placebos in action. But that’s the deal right: even though it’s not real medicine, it can still work wonders. Moving ahead, there’s this interesting thing called open-label placebos (OLPs) – where people knowingly take a placebo, fully aware that … Continue reading Your Mind is Stronger Than You Think: Imagining a Placebo Can Reduce Unpleasant Emotions

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Unveiling the Fairness Gender Gap: A Journey into the Neural Divide

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By Vasundhara Source: Bing Create AI Fairness is in the eye of the beholder – and it seems the beholders have a distinct gender divide – Anonymous Ever been in a situation where you had to decide how to split a sum of money? Maybe it was a work bonus that needed to be divided among your team, or perhaps you came across some extra cash. Turns out, the battle of the sexes on what’s “fair” runs deep in our brains. A new study has pulled back the curtain on the neural mechanisms that make men and women tick quite … Continue reading Unveiling the Fairness Gender Gap: A Journey into the Neural Divide

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Yes, I’m Changing: the effects of reproductive experience on decision-making

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by Hayley Cheok Becoming a mother is a life-changing event – encompassing the journey of pregnancy, the birth process and parenting. It is an experience that brings about remarkable changes to a woman’s self-image and characteristics. Beyond that, it can also change a woman’s brain and consequentially, their behaviours. The short-term effects of reproductive experience on a mother are well-documented and common knowledge. This includes shifts in life priorities and changes in appearance and body. However, there is a lesser known aspect that requires more attention – the long-term impact of reproductive experience on a mother‘s cognitive abilities, such as decision-making.  … Continue reading Yes, I’m Changing: the effects of reproductive experience on decision-making

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Unlocking the Power of Vulnerability: How Sharing Negative Experiences Can Boost Prosociality

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By: Vasundhara Source: Just be there, it’s enough! | /r/wholesomememes | Wholesome Memes | Know Your Meme In the intricate web of human relationships, the way we communicate and connect with others shapes our social landscape. But what if I told you that sharing negative experiences could hold the key to forging deeper bonds and synchronizing our brains with those around us? Have you instantly felt closer to someone after sharing your bad experience with someone? As it turns out, there may be more to this instinct than meets the eye. While prior work has examined the benefits of sharing … Continue reading Unlocking the Power of Vulnerability: How Sharing Negative Experiences Can Boost Prosociality

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Look up and down before you cross: social hierarchies and their impact on decision-making

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by Hayley Cheok “An organisation is like a tree full of monkeys, all on different limbs at different levels. Some monkeys are climbing up, some down. The monkeys on top look down and see a tree full of smiling faces. The monkeys on the bottom look up and see nothing but butts.” – Unknown From school to work, food pyramids to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
 we are constantly navigating hierarchies in our lives. In particular, social hierarchies are pervasive in our society and lucky for us – because we are fantastic at forming and navigating them. Social hierarchies simplify the complex … Continue reading Look up and down before you cross: social hierarchies and their impact on decision-making

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Just do it, or maybe not: do brand logos affect your spending habits?

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by Hayley Cheok Let’s start with a game – how many of these logos do you recognise? How many did you get right?  As you can see, well-designed brand logos hold immense power. They serve as strong ambassadors for brands – conveying attitudes, shaping reputations and perceptions, as well as influencing purchasing decisions
  often without any words [1,2]. Logos transcend mere marketing too – they can become cultural monuments that land on gag gifts perfect for your friends. So, it is not surprising that a decent chunk of marketing budgets go towards creating a damn good logo. But beyond aesthetic … Continue reading Just do it, or maybe not: do brand logos affect your spending habits?

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Backward Conditioning and Dopamine

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By Jun Hyun Choi Introduction The reinforcement learning is closely related to the dopamine. Dopamine operated as the critical factor in temporal-difference learning (TD learning). In TD reinforcement learning, the brain makes predictions to minimise the TD error. Calculating the error uses dopamine (Ludvig et al., 2011). For example, in a representative dopamine study, Schultz`s experiment (1998), an experiment was used in which a cue was given to a monkey, and the experimenter gave a reward such as juice after a certain period had elapsed. As this experience is repeated, the monkey uses the cue, which is an event that … Continue reading Backward Conditioning and Dopamine

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Control the fear with the hippocampus

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By Jun Hyun Choi Introduction Every human behaviour follows reinforcement learning. For example, when people feel happy when they eat. People are easily addicted to food. The fundamental reason for addiction can be dopamine and reinforcement learning. Reinforcement learning allows us to predict the future using the reward which is given by the environment. The subject learns about the environment and the reward progressively and solves the choice problem. The most famous example of reinforcement learning is Skinner`s experiment. Skinner`s experiment (Skinner, 1935) starts with the hungry rat in the container, wanders around the container and presses the lever by … Continue reading Control the fear with the hippocampus

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Prosocial Dopamine

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by Jun Hyun Choi Introduction As many people already know that human being is a social species. In addition, Human beings’ survival progress is highly related to social interaction. Social interaction is essential for surviving. We humans do not have strong power as tigers and lions. We do not have fast speed as horses. Therefore, the pro-social factor is essential for surviving. But which factor made people pro-social? The answer to the above question is still ambiguous, but we can estimate the factors. Some evolutionary biologists say that pro-social choice is inevitable (Sugiura et al., 2020). The human-being who were … Continue reading Prosocial Dopamine