In-the-news: March 21, 2007

  • A Ph.D. in Positive Psychology program in announced! Starting with the most exciting news, finally a Ph.D. program in Positive Psychology is launched. It will be at Claremont Graduate University. “The Claremont Graduate University researchers involved—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jeanne Nakamura—will begin the program in the university’s School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences this fall semester.” The press release is here, and the AP story is here.
  • Eat Less, Remember More: Smartkit site. Caloric restriction can reverse memory loss? (Older news, but new to me). Check out other articles for executives here.
  • Mind Over Matter: Fitness Business Pro. “New findings appearing in the February issue of Psychological Science suggests that many of the beneficial results of exercise are due to the placebo effect. Harvard Researchers studied 84 female housekeepers from seven hotels. Women in four hotels were told that their regular work was enough exercise to meet the requirements for a healthy, active lifestyle (Senia note: you think it’ll wokr if I just tell myself that?), whereas the women in the other three hotels were told nothing. … Four weeks later, the researchers returned to assess any changes in the women’s health. They found that the women in the informed group had lost an average of two pounds, lowered their blood pressure by almost 10 percent, and were healthier as measured by body-fat percentage, body mass index and waist-to-hip ratio.”
  • Will Neuroscientists Be Involved in Increasingly More Court Cases?!: New York Times. This is a crazily in-depth article about what’s happened so far and what may happen in the future as criminals may be tested through fMRIs and other expensive techniques to view their brain make-up before filing their defense. This is a super-distrubing article – on all levels.