[A well-presented depiction of PTSD using illustrations.]
Coming back to life after losing my first child.
Category: behavior
It’ll be alright on the night: how musicians cope with performance stress
Jonas Kaufmann was 26 when he forgot how to sing. Kaufmann, who headlines at the Last Night of the Proms on Saturday alongside soprano Danielle de Niese and pianist Benjamin Grosvenor, is today a hugely acclaimed and in-demand tenor, described by the New York Times as one of the most versatile performers of his generation. But 20 years ago, he experienced a bout of stage fright so crippling it almost ended his career.
Kaufmann was singing in Richard Wagner’s Parsifal. With Act III approaching its climax, his voice simply deserted him. He stood paralysed, unable to utter a single sound, as the orchestra repeated his cue and the conductor gestured to him in increasing bemusement.
Kaufmann’s moment of paralysis was a common symptom of extreme performance anxiety, a physiological reaction to nerves which manifests itself as hoarseness and, at worst, losing the ability to sing altogether. He was, of course, able to overcome it after working with a vocal coach who helped him rebuild his technique so he felt completely secure in it, and thus confident on stage.
Kaufmann’s experience is more common among professional musicians than you might think. While some seem apparently immune to the pressures of a crowd, many of the greatest soloists in history.
Map: These are the world’s least religious countries
The survey of 65 countries, conducted by Gallup International and the WI Network of Market Research, is based on 63,898 interviews. China tops the list of the world’s least religious nations by far; it’s followed by countries in Europe — about three fourth of all Swedish and Czech also said that they were either atheists or not religious.
The demographics and politics of gun-owning households
Americans with young children in their home are just as likely as other adults to have a gun in their household, according to newly released survey data from the Pew Research Center.
Overall, about a third of all Americans with children under 18 at home have a gun in their household, including 34% of families with children younger than 12. That’s nearly identical to the share of childless adults or those with older children who have a firearm at home.
Here’s What Breaking Up Does to Your Brain
When the love of your life dumps you, you’re going to go a little nuts. But it’s a very specific form of crazy: There are actually conflicting neural systems active inside your brain. It’s like you’re falling in love all over again, only in reverse. Here’s how neuroscience explains it.
How Americans can lose a lot of weight without giving up a single calorie
You’ve heard for years that the French and Japanese are much thinner than Americans because their diets are so much better than ours. A new mathematical model assesses why that is and how much thinner Americans could be if they changed their eating habits.
How a Human Scream Uniquely Activates the Fear Response in Your Brain
We know human screams are jarring. They’re loud, occasionally shrill, and tend to make us feel stressed, or even fearful. What’s unclear is why they elicit anxiety. But a new study suggests this response may have something to do with the acoustic quality of human screams, and how they trigger the brain’s fear response.
Men and women reveal on secrets app why they DON’T like having sex
Men and women from around the world have taken to an anonymous secret-sharing app to reveal why they don’t like having sex.
In posts released by Whisper, reasons include being too body-conscious to enjoy being intimate with a partner, to finding doing the deed boring.
The best age to get married if you don’t want to get divorced
Conventional wisdom has it that the older you are when you get married, the lower your chances for divorce. But a fascinating new analysis of family data by Nicholas H. Wolfinger, a sociologist at the University of Utah, suggests that after a certain point, the risk of divorce starts to rise again as you get older.
Reason Our Brains Love to Procrastinate
Sometime around 2006, two Harvard professors began to study why we procrastinate. Why do we avoid doing the things we know we should do, even when it’s clear that they are good for us?