Fool yourself out of your fear of public speaking

Hey, braniacs!

Once again, I'm over at NBC's The Body Odd blog today. This time, I'm covering a cool new study about how understanding our bodies' stress responses can actually reduce the response itself. In this case, researchers focused on the fear of public speaking, something that is estimated to affect 75% of us.

Check it out here!

How stores trick our senses to make us buy more (Part 3 of 5: Touch)

(Read the previous posts in this series: taste and sight.)

There are few things more satisfying than running your hand over a rack full of cashmere sweaters, right?

My dad teases my mom and I when we're out shopping, asking why we must touch and comment on every garment's texture within arm's reach.

I mean, it just feels good. And many a Christmas has passed where my mom has received an especially fluffy sweater from yours truly, her partner in petting.

Sure, a company can do its job to create an attractive, pleasurable product for us consumers. But—you guessed it—the store does its own part in tricking us, ensuring that the phrase "you touch it, you buy it" often holds true.

Why do we sigh?

I sigh. A lot.

And, I realize, it's only when I feel discontent.

I sigh when I'm frustrated by statistics and can't make sense of the code on my computer screen. When I sit in class for three hours and daydream of all the productive things I could be doing. When I'm confused by the competing research literature on the desk in front of me. When I'm disgruntled by somebody's ignorant comments.

But why do I do it? Does it help regulate my breathing when I'm stressed? Is it a subconscious action I do to express to those around me that I'm anxious or upset? Perhaps a mental reset button, so to speak?

In fact, it may be a combination of all three.

Why we hate the sound of our own voice

Why don't we recognize our own voices when we hear a recording?

Most importantly, why don't we like what we hear?

I'm over at NBCNews.com's The Body Odd blog today explaining why.

Check it out here!

My Neuron (an original sonnet)

If I should think of all things in the world,
A tiny neuron in my brain is you.
Your axon weaves throughout my cortex, twirled—
About my thalamus your dendrites grew.
When not around, chloride ions invade
And inhibit my action potential,
Obstructing second-messenger cascade
And making sodium less substantial.
Occipital lobe neural synapses
Fire when you enter my field of view—
My nervous system instead collapses
As neurites shrug and declare, “I am through.”

For when you're here my whole body goes numb—
My brain can't function—I am so very dumb.

Why that echoey phone feedback drives us nuts

Hey, braniacs!

I'm over at NBCNews.com's The Body Odd blog this week talking about delayed auditory feedback (DAF) and why it makes for such a difficult time speaking...

...and, strangely, why DAF can be used to improve fluency in those who stutter.

Check it out here!

Sleep studies: What's all that stuff they put on me?!

The following is a post written for the upcoming blog run by graduate students at Penn State College of Medicine. The blog will be aimed at high school students and residents of the community. I'll use these posts to introduce you to the research I'm conducting as a graduate student in neuroscience.

Have you ever had a sleep study done?

Perhaps you or a loved one has been referred to a sleep clinic for insomnia, apnea, narcolepsy, or restless legs syndrome. Maybe you’ve participated in a sleep research study—and if you’re in central Pennsylvania, you may even be part of our laboratory’s adult or child general population cohorts!

The hallmark of getting a sleep study done is—well, looking something like this: 

Looks rather scary, right? Fear not—each component has a very simple purpose.

Fainting at the sight of blood

I remember the day so well because the circumstances were so ridiculous.

It was my freshman year of high school, the Friday before homecoming weekend. Football players and cheerleaders wore their respective uniforms to class, I had a blue pawprint painted on my face, and everyone in class was antsy in anticipation of the pep rally at the end of the day.

Our health teacher put on some Red Cross first aid video to appease our restlessness. Halfway through the video, an actor began "bleeding" profusely from the arm. Just as his friend ripped off a bit of his t-shirt to staunch the blood, I saw a flash of blue jersey out of the corner of my eye.

One of the star football players in my class—a pretty massive beast of a human being—slumped down his chair then lay flat on the floor. He was passed out cold.

Do you get woozy when you see blood? It seems like an oddly dramatic physiological response for just seeing a little red liquid, right? As it turns out, fainting at the sight of blood may be a primitive reflex buried deep in our brain.

Smell and memory: Old feelings in a new place

My friend texted me something today that she thought I'd find interesting.

She had a meeting for work in an office she'd never entered before. Immediately as she entered the room, conflicting feelings of happiness and awkwardness washed over her.

The smell. It wasn't necessarily good or bad—just distinctive. And it didn't smell like anything in particular. All she knew was that it had an odor exactly like her boyfriend's dorm room when she was a freshman in college—something she hasn't experienced in five years—bringing back the paired feelings of excitement and nervousness that come with new relationships. And those of, well, being in a boy's stinky dorm room.

We've all experienced this at one time or another: a familiar perfume, a family recipe in the oven, the scent of a bonfire—they all bring back a flood of memories, momentarily whisking us away to re-live our past. But why does this happen?

How stores trick our senses to make us buy more (Part 2 of 5: Sight)

The weekend before Christmas, I was sucked into a giant, enticing vortex of craving and desire, stuck for hours with the inability to leave—my only limitation being my wallet.

In other words, I went to Target.

And—again, in other words—I was like a bull in a China shop.

Back in 2009, Target introduced new gigantic, plastic, Playskool-esque shopping carts. Maneuvering the aisles is like passing a car on a one-lane country road in a Hummer.

Of course they're ridiculously cumbersome, but it's all a trick on the Target executives' part—the bigger your cart, the more you can fit in there. You'll look silly hauling around a couple packages of pens and a box of tissues to the checkout counter, after all. Better head to the appliance section and fill it with a microwave or plasma TV.

In this second installment, we'll explore how stores betray our sense of sight, tricking us to buy stuff we really don't want or need.

How stores trick our senses to make us buy more (Part 1 of 5: Taste)

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

...a bunch of crap I really didn't need.

With just sixteen shopping days until Christmas, it's easy to get roped into buying things we might not actually have on our gift list.

Most times, we're conscious of our impulse purchases—there's a great sale on this! I'll use that later!

But sometimes reasons for our frivolous purchases are not so obvious to us. Don't feel too bad—store chains actually hire researchers to study our shopping patterns and take advantage of our weaknesses.

Our brains are endlessly fascinatingly organs—but sometimes they betray us. The following is the first post in a five-part series on how stores trick our senses into shelling out more money than we may intend.

Why you should give thanks this Thursday—and always

Sometimes our world can be pretty crappy.

There's violence and crazy people. Maybe your candidate didn't win the election. Perhaps you hate your job, and that—on top of life's other personal, familial, and financial burdens—is wearing you down. Maybe you got to your morning coffee after it went cold, and that set off a bad tone for the rest of your day.

If you're celebrating Thanksgiving this Thursday, don't forget the true meaning of the holiday between the stressful hubbub of cooking, shopping, planning, and appeasing Great Aunt Gertie: giving thanks.

As it turns out, expressing gratitude is more than just a nice idea—it's beneficial to your health and happiness.