Doorway, what doorway?

So … what am I doing here, anyway?"

Even the most nimble-minded among us have pondered that question after walking into a room with some purpose in mind — to get something, perhaps? — only to blank on what that purpose was. Now a new study suggests that it's the very act of walking through a doorway that causes these strange memory lapses.

"Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an 'event boundary' in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away ," said lead researcher Gabriel Radvansky, a psychologist at the University of Notre Dame. "Recalling the decision or activity that was made in a different room is difficult because it has been compartmentalized."
n our minds, like in the movies, threshold-crossing signals the end of a scene.

As detailed in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, the explanation follows from a series of experiments that probed the relationship between memory and various types of home wandering. First, Radvansky assigned a group of study participants the task of selecting an object from one table and exchanging it for an object at a different table in another room. He then had a second group perform the same task between tables that were an equal distance apart, but in the same room.

The difference in the two groups' performances was "big enough to drive a truck through," Radvansky told Life's Little Mysteries. Despite the simplicity of their task, "people were two to three times as likely to forget what they were supposed to do after walking through a doorway." This suggested that doorways acted as mental blocks, impeding our ability to retrieve memories formed elsewhere.

The finding held true when the participants navigated both real-world and virtual settings.

But was it actually threshold-crossing that caused their memory lapses, or was it simply being in a different environment than the one in which they learned their task? To find out, Radvansky had the volunteers perform another object-exchanging task, but this time, the task required them to pass through several doorways leading back to the room in which they started. As it turned out, their memories failed them in this scenario just as they did in the other threshold-crossing scenarios. "When they went through multiple doorways, the error rate increased," he said. This suggests that the act of passing through doorways, rather than the fact of being in a different environment, kills memory, he said.

So why does this happen? "When we are moving through the world, it is very continuous and dynamic and to deal with it more effectively, we parse things up," Radvansky said. Neuroscientists have begun imaging the brains of people crossing event boundaries and, from these studies, are just beginning to piece together how the brain performs this function. "There are a lot of [brain] areas that light up at different kinds of event boundaries."

Mental event boundaries are useful because they help us organize our thoughts and memories. But when we're trying to remember that thing we were intending to do… or get… or maybe find… they can be annoying.

"I think architects are interested in this research because they want to design spaces that are more effective," Radvansky said. "For example, they might need to consider where you need doorways and where you don't."

Harper attacks on Health care continue

 A must read for people who thought  health care in Canada was safe from Steven Harper's government. Montreal Simon presents a compelling argument about why we have to stop Harper. Here is some of what he has to say about Harper's attack on our Health care. The link to the full post is at the bottom, please read it if you believe that health care in Canada is a right not a privilege.

A shameless surrender to foreign corporations, that will only make it harder for our health care system to deal with the increasing demands of our aging population.   
But of course Stephen Harper doesn't care about that, because he entered politics as the poster boy of the National Citizens Coalition that was founded to destroy medicare. 

And his plan to destroy medicare is by making the provinces too poor to afford it.
That is why he is cutting health care transfers by $36 billion, that's why he is refusing to create any national health programs, that's even the real reason he is sending more prisoners to jail. So the provinces will have to pay more to feed and house them. 
It's his stealth attack on medicare. And although most Canadians are blissfully unaware of this sinister plan, the Health care for Bucks lobby can smell the blood in the air, and all kinds of new organizations are circling Parliament Hill like vultures

http://montrealsimon.blogspot.ca/2012/11/stephen-harpers-stealth-attack-on.html

Sighing is a sign of giving up? Who knew?

Psychology Prize

Despite the commonly uttered phrase, we don't really breathe sighs of relief. Neither do we sigh when we're sad, as dictionary definitions would have you believe. In fact, we sigh when we're ready to give up, as was recently discovered by Karl Teigen of the University of Oslo in Norway.

Realizing that no psychologists had ever studied the emotional cause of sighs before, Teigen and his colleagues investigated participants' breathy exhales in a series of experiments. He found that when people saw someone else sigh, they almost always incorrectly assumed that that person was feeling sad. When people sigh themselves, on the other hand, they said it was because they were ready to throw in the towel. In short, regardless of how socially attuned humans are to the thoughts and feelings of others, people completely misinterpret the reason for sighing.

To prove that sighs are tied to frustration and giving up, Teigen did an experiment in which he asked participants to attempt puzzles that were unsolvable. His results? "They tried and they sighed; they tried and they sighed," he told Life's Little Mysteries. The research, published in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, earned Teigen the 2011 Ig Nobel Prize.

Holiday eating tips

Get Healthy and Lean with Good Fats (Article) written by Abritt Publishing, 

 Some of the most powerful positive habits for a trim and fit body in your arsenal are the positive habits related to replacing bad fats in your diet with good fats. Most people only think of fat as being a bad thing. In fact, for many years the media has been promoting "fat-free" diets as a more healthy diet.

Just take a look around your local grocery store; you will see lots of products labeled fat free. Do you think all those fat-free products have resulted in thinner Americans? Think again. The percentage of obese people in this country has been rising every year. Americans are now the fattest people on the planet.

The media has gotten it all wrong. Fat can be your friend! There are certain types of fats that are bad for you. They can increase you risk for heart disease while making you fatter at the same time. Other fats are good for your health and can actually help you burn fat and lose weight! Here are just some of the benefits that the positive fat replacement habits will provide to you:

·         Increase the rate that your body burns fat

·         Help you lose weight automatically and keep it off

·         Increase your good cholesterol HDL levels and decrease your bad cholesterol LDL levels

·         Help you to curb your appetite and eat less

·         Decrease your risk for heart attack

·         Help balance your insulin levels

·         Help you convert unwanted body fat into energy

·         Help raise your body's metabolic rate (the rate your body burns calories)

The Bad Fats

The fats that are bad for you are saturated fats and trans fats; these are fats that are found in animal products such as butter, cheese, meats, and also in many of the processed foods that we eat. Numerous studies have shown that a diet high in saturated fats may increase blood levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol and total cholesterol, risk factors for heart disease.

Trans fats are the most dangerous dietary fats on the planet. Trans fats are typically produced by applying an artificial process to vegetable oils. These fats are mostly found in fried foods, margarines, and processed foods like potato chips and crackers. Researchers at Harvard University did a study of 85,095 women who had no previous history of heart disease or stroke. During the years that followed, the fifth of the group that had the highest intake of trans fatty acids had a 50% greater risk for heart disease then the fifth that had the lowest intake of trans fatty acids.

A recent study showed that women who ate more than four teaspoons per day of margarine had a 70% higher risk of cardiovascular disease then those women who seldom ate margarine. Despite lobbying by many consumer groups, trans fat is still not listed on nutritional labels. Do yourself a favor and dump your margarine RIGHT NOW! Replace it with olive oil or the new healthy butter substitutes that do not contain trans fats.

Some researchers have said that as many as 30,000 deaths per year can be attributed to the consumption of trans fat. Reducing or eliminating trans fats from your diet will help to improve your health and the positive habits that follow will help you do just that.

The Good Fats

An example of good fats would be monounsaturated fat, and omega-3 fatty acids. You would find these fats in fish, nuts, olive oil and those kinds of foods, the kind of foods that are very prominent in what is called the Mediterranean diet.

Omega-3 fatty acids -- Flaxseed is a great source of omega-3 fat. More than half the fat contained in flaxseed is omega-3 fatty acid type, an essential fatty acid. There have been numerous studies reporting the health benefits of consuming omega-3 fats. Recent studies suggest that Omega-3 fatty acids which are abundant in flax seed can help protect you from coronary artery disease, stroke, high blood pressure, autoimmune and inflammatory disorders. Studies on the effects of flax seed on breast cancer are now under way. Omega-3s can also help boost your metabolism, helping your body to burn calories faster.You can buy raw flax seed and add it to your cereal or flax seed oil which can be mixed in salads or protein shakes. Any good health food store will carry both

Simple Diet Changes That Pack a Fat-Fighting Punch

Texas A&M University researchers conducted a study to determine what dietary changes resulted in the biggest reduction in fat. During two different 24-hour periods, they asked 5,649 adults to list dietary changes they made in an effort to reduce fat consumption. The researchers then calculated the changes that resulted in the biggest reduction of fat. Combine these simple eating habits with other weight loss habits, and you will see that trim body in the mirror sooner then you think. Here are the results of the study

·         Do not add fat to baked or boiled potatoes.

·         Do not eat fried chicken.

·         Do not eat more than two eggs a week.

·         Do not eat red meat.