Research News

APA Article - Trauma Division Newsletter by Student Member Konstantinos Papazoglou, PhD Student, HART Lab, UTM American Psychological Association Newsletter, Trauma Psychology, Winter 2013, Vol.8, No.1 Interview with Atle Dyregrov, PhD by Konstantinos Papazoglou, MA: Page 12 http://www.apatraumadivision.org/newsletter.php

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Presentation featuring Professor Judith Andersen available online at the Royal Canadian Institute.

"Severe Stress and Physical Health: The Mind-Body Connection"

Both conventional wisdom and research evidence suggest that severe stress is unhealthy. Serious and sometimes debilitating mental health responses often follow trauma experiences such as combat exposure, assault or a serious motor vehicle accident. More recently, evidence shows that stress can impact our physcial health as well. I examine factors that may change the relationship between stress and health, such as the age of exposure, the type of traumatic experience, and sociocultural supports that may buffer the mind-body effects of stress. [presentation can be viewed at http://royalcanadianinstitute.org/ - click on the webcast tab and scroll to the 'winter 2013' webcasts].

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Article Featured in the National Post citing Prof. Dax Urbszat.

‘The dream sailors’: Training people in lucid dreaming opens way for new therapies. by. Joseph Brean

After decades on the fringes of psychology, with its existence denied by Sigmund Freud, lucid dreaming is now emerging as a natural explanation for out-of-body experiences. It is also being put to therapeutic use to treat nightmares, night terrors and even post-traumatic stress disorder. The problem is that, although everyone dreams, with only the rarest of brain-damaged exceptions, not everyone has the wherewithal to recognize they are dreaming and hold on to this insight for any significant length of time. People can be trained, however, and some are expert, such that they can direct their attention around their own dream world, even bend it to their will. “Yes, I could have sex with any movie star, yes I could do anything … but the feeling of flying is really cool. I wake up after a flying dream and I feel like just a million bucks,” said Dax Urbszat, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Toronto who says he lucid dreams about once a week and even uses the practice to maintain a personal connection to a long-dead friend. [read article...]

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"The mind of a mother"

Thursday, February 21, 2013 - 11:34am Jenny Hall

What makes a mother? Alison Fleming, a behavioural neuroscientist and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, has spent three decades asking this question. She’s carried out dozens of experiments over 30 years, trying to understand what’s on mothers’ minds — literally. Fleming began her career investigating the psychological changes mother rats undergo as a result of pregnancy hormones. She later became interested in identifying which parts of the brain were involved in the psychological changes she observed. [read more...]

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/347664/description/When_hearing_goes_mental_capacity_often_follows 
 

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2013 IBANGS Distinguished Investigator Award.

It is our great pleasure to convey the wonderful news that Prof. Robert Garlai has been chosen to be the recipient of the 2013 IBANGS Distinguished Investigator Award.

The Distinguished Investigator Award honors a scientist who is 7 or more years post first faculty or faculty-equivalent appointment, and whose area of research is in behavioural and neural genetics. Key considerations are the scientific importance of discoveries, record of achievement, mentorship of students, postdoctoral fellows and new faculty, and continued impact on the field.
http://www.ibangs.com/
 

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Article Featured in the New York Times citing Prof. Kathy Pichora-Fuller's Research

Study Links Cognitive Deficits, Hearing Loss

There’s another reason to be concerned about hearing loss — one of the most common health conditions in older adults and one of the most widely undertreated. A new study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine suggests that elderly people with compromised hearing are at risk of developing cognitive deficits — problems with memory and thinking —
sooner than those whose hearing is intact.

The study in JAMA Internal Medicine was led by Dr. Frank Lin, a hearing specialist and epidemiologist who over the past several years has documented the extent of hearing problems in older people and their association with falls and the onset of dementia.
 

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Improving Lives for Canadian Seniors

UTM Psychology researcher Bruce Schneider receives federal funding to study hearing loss;
Minister tours labs
http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/main-news-research-news-general/federal-funding-supports-u-t-mississauga-research-invests-health

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Sunny Days

Does Music Make you Smarter?

MUSIC AND THE BRAIN is a hot topic. Ever since Daniel Levitin's This Is Your Brain on Music and Oliver Sachs' Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain both made the New York Times' best-seller list in 2007, interest has exploded.

So are some people really "musically smarter" than others? (And did all those piano lessons help?) Nearly all the experts agree that studying music makes you smarter- at music. But beyond that, it gets complicated. And it's a tricky topic to even talk about: none of the experts I spoke to were comfortable with the term "musical intelligence;' saying that it's just too vague. They were more willing to discuss musical aptitude and musical cognition. [click to read entire article]
 

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Does arts training  improve social and academic skills?

Published by CQ Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications,  Inc.

“I get pretty consistent effects between music lessons and IQ,” Schellenberg says in an interview. Moreover, he has found music training can improve language. In his study, he concluded:
“Does music make you smarter? The answer is a qualified yes.”  Schellenberg suggests several possible reasons for that. For example, he says, music lessons are “school-like” and have similar benefits. And music training, he says, improves a “constellation of abilities,” among them memorization, expression of emotions, attention and fine-motor skills. Still, he says more research is needed, and he
stresses that to see real benefit, students likely need more music instruction than is possible during the
school day. [click to read entire article]
 

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Award for Outstanding Contribution to Trauma Psychology by an Early Career Psychologist

This award recognizes psychologists in the early stages of their careers who have shown outstanding achievement or who have made outstanding contributions to the study of psychological trauma. Nominees' contributions may be in the areas of clinical practice/research and writing or basic/applied empirical research. Nominees should have earned their degree no more than seven years prior to the year in which they are nominated.

Congratulations to Professor Judith Andersen for receiving the prestigious award.
 

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Hyunji Kim and Ulrich Schimmack, in collaboration with Shigehiro Oishi at the University of Virginia, published a paper (based on Hyunji Kim's Master's thesis) in the April issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, entitled "Cultural differences in self- and other-evaluations and well-being: A study of European and Asian Canadians." The paper used a multi-method approach to examine cultural influences on evaluative biases and to examine the influence of evaluative biases on well-being. The study introduced a novel approach to the measurement of evaluative bias, which allows researchers to distinguish general biases, self-enhancement bias and other-enhancement bias. The research showed that European Canadians have a more positive general bias in self- and other evaluations and higher well-being than Asian Canadians, and this general evaluative bias fully explained cultural differences in self-reported well-being. The paper proposes that the emphasis on hedonism in North American culture contributes to national differences in well-being.
Click here to view a PDF of the article.
 

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