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Here’s the disappointingly low level of alcohol consumption associated with reduced risk of dementia

One drink a day (or less) for women and 1-2 drinks (or less) for men reduces the risk of developing dementia, a study has found.

It works out to between 8 and 14 drinks per week.

The study is one of the largest — and longest — to look at the connection between alcohol and dementia.

Dr Kaycee Sink, one of the study’s authors, said:

“As of yet, we still have no cure for Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, so it is important to look for things that might help people prevent the disease.

Moderate alcohol intake has been linked to lower risk of heart attacks, stroke, dementia, and death in middle-aged adults, but there is still controversy about alcohol intake in older adults.”

Over 3,000 people aged 75 or over took part in the research, which followed them for over six years.

The study found that those who drank moderately had a 37% reduction in the risk of developing dementia compared with those who did not drink at all.

In this study there was no link between the type of alcohol people drank and the benefits.

Dr Kaycee Sink

“We were excited to see that even in older adults, moderate alcohol intake decreases the risk of dementia,.

It is important to note, however, that our study found a significantly higher risk of dementia for heavy drinkers who started the study with mild cognitive impairment.”

The study can’t tell us whether people should abstain until they are in their 70s, but it seems likely the results reflect steady habits.

Dr Kaycee Sink said:

“The participants in this study self-reported their alcohol intake at the start, but it is unusual for people to start drinking in their 70s, so we assume that the habits they reported at the start of the study reflect stable drinking habits.

Without scientific data showing that it is beneficial, I wouldn’t recommend that non-drinkers start drinking in their 70s.”

Dr Kaycee Sink explained:

“Our results suggest that older adults who are normal cognitively and drink moderately do not need to change their drinking behavior.

If you have mild cognitive impairment however, it might benefit you to restrict your drinking and certainly not exceed one drink a day for women and two drinks a day for men.”

The study was published in the journal Alzheimer’s and Dementia (Sink et al., 2009).

Read the original post on PsyBlog

Stimulate your brain with a murder mystery

THE CASE OF THE DEFUNCT ADJUNCT

Filed under: PsyBlog, Science, Science! Tagged: alcohol, dementia, disappointing, health, mental health, PsyBlog
from Here’s the disappointingly low level of alcohol consumption associated with reduced risk of dementia

Feeling stressed? Try doing something nice for someone else.

Feeling seasonal stress? Try doing a small favor for someone else. A study in Clinical Psychological Science found that

prosocial behavior moderated the effects of stress on positive affect, negative affect, and overall mental health. Findings suggest that affiliative behavior may be an important component of coping with stress and indicate that engaging in prosocial behavior might be an effective strategy for reducing the impact of stress on emotional functioning.

» Read the summary on PsyBlog: A Surprising Way To Cope With Everyday Stress

NOW AVAILABLE: THE CASE OF THE DEFUNCT ADJUNCT

Filed under: APS, PsyBlog, pychology, Science, Science! Tagged: Jeremy Dean, PsyBlog, stress
from Feeling stressed? Try doing something nice for someone else.

Sinful Science, A Miss Fortune Kindle Worlds Novella, is now available on Amazon.

A graduate student from Hawaii comes to Sinful, Louisiana to finish his fieldwork. He’d planned to spend a peaceful few weeks studying swamp rats. Instead, he discovers something that leads to Sinful’s darkest secret.

I hoped my protective feelings toward Deputy Sheriff Carter LeBlanc weren’t too obvious. Against all of my training and better judgment, I’d done the one thing an undercover operative is never supposed to do: I’d gotten romantically involved. Things hadn’t progressed very far yet. Just a couple of dates, an innocent kiss, and me saving his life once or twice. On the plus side, Carter was handsome, goodhearted, and apparently attracted to me. On the minus side, I was living in Sinful under someone else’s identity, so our entire relationship was founded on a lie.

I’m grateful to Jana DeLeon for opening her hilarious Miss Fortune world to other authors via Kindle Worlds. I had a lot of fun in Sinful, Louisiana and I’m already planning to go back.

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Filed under: Buy, Frankie Bow, Fun, Kindle Worlds, Science, Science!, Writing Tagged: fanfic, Jana DeLeon, Kindle Worlds, Miss Fortune
from Sinful Science, A Miss Fortune Kindle Worlds Novella, is now available on Amazon.

Drink to remember?

One to three glasses of champagne each week could slow memory loss from ageing, recent research finds.

Scientists have found that phenolic compounds in champagne can help improve spatial memory.

The phenolic compounds come from the Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier red grapes which are used alongside Chardonnay in the production of champagne.

The compounds affect the signals sent from the hippocampus to the cortex.

The compounds were found to slow the age-related decline in this signalling.

» Continue reading: The Celebratory Drink That Could Improve Memory

from PsyBlog http://bit.ly/1OYl1H5

celebrate the holidays with THE CASE OF THE DEFUNCT ADJUNCT

~~3.99~~ .99 introductory price

Filed under: PsyBlog, pychology, Science, Science! Tagged: Champagne, Pinot Noir, PsyBlog
from Drink to remember?

Today in Whaaa?!? Communicating with direct brain-to-brain connection.

Two human brains have been directly linked to play a game over the internet for the first time.

The experiment, carried out at the University of Washington, allowed people to send signals directly from one brain to the other over the internet.

For the research, two people played a game similar to ’20 questions’ — a parlour game where you have to guess what object the other person is thinking of.

One person wore a cap measuring their brainwaves (EEG) and looked at a screen, on which was displayed an object, such as a dog.

They then responded to questions by focussing on one of two flashing LEDs.

In control experiments receivers guessed the correct object only 18% of the time.

But, when their brains were connected via the internet, the rate jumped to 72%.

» Continue reading: Two Human Brains Directly Connected To Play Parlour Game Over The Internet

from PsyBlog http://bit.ly/1WxZKol
talking brain illustration by Freepik.com

prefer old-fashioned book-to-brain communication? PREORDER THE CASE OF THE DEFUNCT ADJUNCT

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Filed under: PsyBlog, pychology, Science, Science! Tagged: Brains, Jeremy Dean, PsyBlog, science
from Today in Whaaa?!? Communicating with direct brain-to-brain connection.

How To Feel Good About Making Mistakes

Reviewing and revising helps you feel better about mistakes. This might be a good approach to revising writing.

Sometimes we need to make mistakes in order to learn and grow.

The reward areas of the brain activate when people learn from their mistakes, a new study finds.

People normally feel bad about mistakes and try to avoid them in future.

But sometimes we need to make mistakes in order to learn and improve.

Now neuroscientists have found that if people are given the opportunity to reflect, they could feel good about their mistakes.

Dr Giorgio Coricelli, one of the study’s authors, said:

“We show that, in certain circumstances, when we get enough information to contextualize the choices, then our brain essentially reaches towards the reinforcement mechanism, instead of turning toward avoidance.”

So, after reflecting positively on mistakes, people may not be so averse to trying something new.

In the research, people answered questions which they either got right or wrong.

Naturally, people felt bad when they got them wrong and the areas of the brain related to avoidance activated.

Subsequently, though, people were given a chance to review their mistakes.

Scientists found that people’s brain responded positively when reflecting.

Brain scans revealed the ‘reward circuit’ activating during the review.

This suggested that even mistakes can feel rewarding, given time for reflection.

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications (Palminteri et al., 2015).

– See more at: http://bit.ly/1PZHiRU

How To Feel Good About Making Mistakes:

By Jeremy Dean at PsyBlog

Filed under: Science!, Writing Tagged: Jeremy Dean, mistakes, psychology, science, Tumblr
from How To Feel Good About Making Mistakes

Will my book title be a bestseller?

I just found out about Lulu’s title scorer.

The Lulu Titlescorer has been developed exclusively for Lulu by statisticians who studied the titles of 50 years’ worth of top bestsellers and identified which title attributes separated the bestsellers from the rest.

We commissioned a research team to analyse the title of every novel to have topped the hardback fiction section of the New York Times Bestseller List during the half-century from 1955 to 2004 and then compare them with the titles of a control group of less successful novels by the same authors.

The team, lead by British statistician Dr. Atai Winkler, then used the data gathered from a total of some 700 titles to create this “Lulu Titlescorer” a program able to predict the chances that any given title would produce a New York Times No. 1 bestseller.

The fruit of this work is presented here, in the form of the Lulu Titlescorer: a program that you can use to gauge the chances that your own title will deliver you a New York Times No. 1 bestseller.

You can plug in your own book titles here.
This is what I got:

The title The Musubi Murder has a 35.9% chance of being a bestselling title!

The title Molly Barda and the Cursed Canoe has a 14.6% chance of being a bestselling title, but The Cursed Canoe has a 41.4% chance of being a bestselling title!

The title Molly Barda and the Black Thumb has a 34.8% chance of being a bestselling title, but The Black Thumb has a 69.0% chance of being a bestselling title!

Apparently I should leave Molly Barda out of the title.

The title The Invasive Species has a 41.4% chance of being a bestselling title!

The title The Blessed Event has a 41.4% chance of being a bestselling title!

I listed The Black Thumb as a figurative title, and the others as literal. “Figurative” titles score higher, all else being equal.

So what title will catapult my books to the top of the bestseller lists?

The title Fifty Shades of Grey has a 34.8% chance of being a bestselling title! Nope. Can’t use that.

The title Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone has a 14.6% chance of being a bestselling title! Oh dear. Box office poison.

The title Miserable Misery has a 69.0% chance of being a bestselling title! We have a winner.

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THE MUSUBI MURDER Amazon / B&N /Powell’s /Audible / iTunes

Filed under: Fun, Impression Management, Language, Science!, Writing Tagged: bestseller, career advice, funny, judging a book by its cover, Lulu, marketing, science, title analyzer, Writing
from Will my book title be a bestseller?

Bad book reviews = great sales?

Maybe the one-star review, that bane of every author’s ego, isn’t such a bad thing after all.

Stanford Daily reports that the only thing worse than bad publicity is no publicity.

By measuring the size of sale spikes in the week following the release of each book review, the study showed two main points: positive publicity benefited all titles and the bad publicity only helped lesser-known and obscure authors.

Just one more reason to stop fretting about reviews, and sit down and write another, better, book.

The original study is here.

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Filed under: Impression Management, Science!, Writing Tagged: books, business, career advice, context matters, marketing, Reviews, science, Unintended Consequences, Writing
from Bad book reviews = great sales?

New software gizmo will tell you what your skills are, match you with the perfect job

Texas State Technical College, spurred by the fact that one third of its state funding is now tied to its graduates’ starting salaries, has eliminated all majors except petroleum engineering developed software that matches graduates’ skills with job requirements. But why should Texas State Technical College students have all the fun? Anyone can try out the Skills Engine here.

I fed three academic CVs into the Skills Engine. Do academics actually have any transferable skills? See the results over at College Misery.

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THE MUSUBI MURDER Amazon / B&N /Powell’s /Audible / iTunes

Filed under: Author Interviews, Buy, Fun, Higher Ed, Impression Management, Reviews, Science!, Writing Tagged: career advice, employment, Higher Ed, jobs, Texas
from New software gizmo will tell you what your skills are, match you with the perfect job

Can “Extreme Music” Calm You Down? Yes.

Tested: Whether Extreme Music Causes Anger or Calms You Down:

Here are a few examples of the song titles, if you need to ‘calm down’ a little:

Dawn of Battle by Manowar

The Epic Rage of Furious Thunder by Gloryhammer

Dark Days by Parkway Drive

11 Ways To Hate by Five Finger Death Punch

By Jeremy Dean at PsyBlog

Unscientific note: Here’s my pick.

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THE MUSUBI MURDER August 2015 Amazon / B&N /Powell’s /Audible / iTunes

Filed under: Fun, Science! Tagged: Five Finger Death Punch, Gloryhammer, Jello Biafra, Jeremy Dean, Manowar, music, Parkway Drive, punk rock, science
from Can “Extreme Music” Calm You Down? Yes.

New BMJ editorial: “How Medicine is Broken, and How We Can Fix It”

Well documented problems exist in the funding and prioritisation of research, the conduct of trials, the withholding of results, the dissemination of evidence, and its implementation with patients. Here we briefly examine six domains where the academy could call for simple practical improvements that would address legitimate concerns.

Publication bias—We conduct trials to detect modest differences, and spend vast amounts of money specifically to exclude bias, yet we allow that bias to flood back in through selective publication.3 4 Eminent bodies writing reports will not fix this, but practical action will. We need new funding for simple systematic work to audit which trials are unreported, to highlight the best and worst performers, and to shine a light on withheld studies.5

Independent trials—A recent cohort study found that 97% of head to head trials sponsored by industry give results that favour the sponsor’s drug.6 Doctors and patients are right to want independent trials. On statins and oseltamivir, there are two clear opportunities, and here we declare our own conflicts. With colleagues, one of us (CH) first proposed a trial of oseltamivir in a pandemic in 2009; the other (BG) first proposed a trial of statins examining side effects over a year ago. In both cases we could have the answer by now.

Cost of trials—Replication will be possible only if the cost of conducting trials is radically reduced. Much of this cost is driven by disproportionate regulation around trials of routinely used treatments.7 The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s guidance on cholesterol argues for head to head trials in low risk populations; this would require over 100 000 participants, followed up for a decade. Such trials can practically be delivered only by reducing the expensive and disproportionate regulatory burden,7 embedding them in everyday clinical care and gathering follow-up data from existing electronic health records.8

Better evidence—Treatments are routinely approved after trials with only surrogate outcomes.9 Drugs are then extensively promoted, at the moment of approval, when evidence on real world outcomes is paradoxically at its weakest. We could encourage better evidence by, for example, compelling companies to follow-up all phase III trial participants until real world benefits emerge, considering routine randomisation for newly approved drugs when benefits are unclear, and bartering with either patent extension or choice of the start date for market exclusivity. These suggestions would come at minimal cost and deliver more comprehensive data on treatment effects.

Shared decision making—Concern over statins has recently been reawakened by the introduction of a financial incentive for general practitioners to prescribe the drugs to low risk patients. This is ill judged because patients’ informed choices vary widely.10 11 An incentive to prescribe a treatment that many adequately informed patients do not want undermines informed decision making and inflicts avoidable reputational harm on the profession. If instead we incentivise shared decision making then—for the same financial outlay—best practice will be recognised, rewarded, and laid down in the everyday templates of what doctors do.12

Declare conflicts of interest—Declaration of conflicts of interest is currently chaotic, inconsistent, and incomplete. We clearly need a central system of declarations, ideally maintained by the General Medical Council.13 Conflicts, however, become particularly salient when evidence is unclear: when decisions about which treatment works best are made on the basis of a speculative, superficially plausible narrative about a drug’s mechanism of action, or on the interpretation of weak, confounded, observational data when randomised trials are feasible. If we are able to generate better evidence and ensure that we see the complete evidence, then competing interests—although they must always be declared—will become less salient.

New BMJ editorial: “How Medicine is Broken, and How We Can Fix It”:

By Ben Goldacre

Filed under: Science! Tagged: Ben Goldacre, medicine, politics, science
from New BMJ editorial: “How Medicine is Broken, and How We Can Fix It”

More proof that cats are out to destroy us.

Exposure to cats in childhood increases the chance of suffering from serious mental health problems like schizophrenia…The parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which is thought to be the cause, is carried in the intestines of cats.

This Childhood Pet Increases Risk of Serious Mental Illness

By Jeremy Dean at PsyBlog

Can’t have a post like this without the Louis Wain cats.

Estimating the population attributable fraction for schizophrenia when Toxoplasma gondii is assumed absent in human populations

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THE MUSUBI MURDER August 2015 Amazon / B&N /Powell’s /Audible / iTunes

Filed under: Science, Science! Tagged: cats, our cat overlords, Schizophrenia, science, TOXOPLASMA GONDII, Unintended Consequences
from More proof that cats are out to destroy us.

Alcohol’s Unexpected Effect on Memory and Learning

Alcohol’s Unexpected Effect on Memory and Learning:

Alcohol can actually help some areas of the brain learn and remember.

While it’s true that alcohol is generally bad for conscious memory, it can boost unconscious memory.

This may help explain why alcohol — and other drugs — can be so habit-forming.

Or to put it another way, previous ethanol experience enhances synaptic plasticity of NMDA receptors in the ventral tegmental area.

Alcohol’s Unexpected Effect on Memory and Learning

Alcohol’s Unexpected Effect on Memory and Learning:

Alcohol can actually help some areas of the brain learn and remember.

While it’s true that alcohol is generally bad for conscious memory, it can boost unconscious memory.

This may help explain why alcohol — and other drugs — can be so habit-forming.

Or to put it another way, previous ethanol experience enhances synaptic plasticity of NMDA receptors in the ventral tegmental area.

One Minute Personality Tests – PsyBlog

The Big Five personality framework is well-validated across cultures and popular with researchers, although it’s not as well known at the Myers Briggs. The five factors of personality that emerge with some consistency are

Extroversion/introversion
Neuroticism
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Openness to experience

Looking over this list, you can see why the Big Five hasn’t caught on with HR departments. The terms don’t look value-neutral. If you administer the Myers Briggs and report that someone came out as an INTJ or an ESFP, great! Neither one sounds better or worse than the other. But who wants to tell someone they tested as neurotic and disagreeable?

One dimension that the Big Five has in common with the more popular Myers Briggs is introversion vs. extroversion.

Psychologist Jeremy Dean has posted one-minute measures of introversion and neuroticism, with more to come.

Try it out!

Are You An Introvert, Extrovert or….?

How Neurotic Are You? One-Minute Personality Test

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THE MUSUBI MURDER August 2015 Amazon / B&N /Powell’s /Audible / iTunes

Filed under: Fun, Science! Tagged: Big Five, emotional stability, extroversion, introversion, Jeremy Dean, MBTI, neuroticism, Personality, psychology, science, tests
from One Minute Personality Tests – PsyBlog

BPS Research Digest: 10 hellish psychology studies you’ll be glad not to have participated in

BPS Research Digest: 10 hellish psychology studies you’ll be glad not to have participated in. And in case you’re wondering why Zimbardo and Milgram aren’t on that list, BPS has them here: The 10 most controversial psychology studies ever published Frankie Bow’s first novel, THE MUSUBI MURDER , is available at Audible.com, Amazon.com, andiTunes. BE THE FIRST TO LEARN ABOUT PROMOTIONS, EVENTS, AND […] http://ift.tt/eA8V8J

I’m over on Higher Education’s Premier Online Publication ™ today, blogging about online education.

Disclaimer: I realize that in a sparsely-populated area, online education can be the only option a student has. I also realize that some of my fellow Miserians teach online, and are putting a great deal of effort into making the online experience as valuable as possible for their students. Any ire and snark are properly directed […] http://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Confirming (again) that online classes are not a magical solution: Study finds student success lags online

Study finds student success lags online in California community college students | InsideHigherEd. http://ift.tt/eA8V8J

The Common Painkiller That Also Kills Pleasure – SPOILER ALERT IT’S TYLENOL

The Common Painkiller That Also Kills Pleasure – PsyBlog. http://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Nightmares, insomnia, and drinking. They’re associated, but what’s the cause and effect?

Nightmares are associated with depression, insomnia, and heavy drinking, which might be either the result or the cause. (Sandman et al., 2015. Yes, really.) SLEEP – Nightmares: Risk Factors Among the Finnish General Adult Population. http://ift.tt/eA8V8J