Mindfulness can increase wellbeing and reduce stress in school children

Mindfulness — a mental training that develops sustained attention that can change the ways people think, act and feel — could reduce symptoms of stress and depression and promote wellbeing among school children, according to a new study published online by the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Science News

Too Little Sleep May Trigger the ‘Munchies’ by Raising Levels of an Appetite-Controlling Molecule

June 17, 2013 — Insufficient sleep may contribute to weight gain and obesity by raising levels of a substance in the body that is a natural appetite stimulant, a new study finds. The results were presented today at The Endocrine Society’s 95th Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

ScienceDaily

How To Make Worldwide Brain News (No News And Very Little Brain Required!)

The term “digital dementia” wasn’t widely known until a story originating in South Korea recently broke around the world. According to certain doctors, an alarming percentage of Korean teenagers are suffering from degenerative memory loss attributed to the overuse of smartphones.

Forbes

Psychotherapy Via Internet as Good as If Not Better Than Face-To-Face Consultations

Does psychotherapy via the Internet work? For the first time, clinical researchers from the University of Zurich have studied whether online psychotherapy and conventional face-to-face therapy are equally effective in experiments. Based on earlier studies, the Zurich team assumed that the two forms of therapy were on a par. Not only was their theory confirmed, the results for online therapy even exceeded their expectations.

ScienceDaily

Why You Shouldn’t Trust Internet Comments

The “wisdom of crowds” has become a mantra of the Internet age. Need to choose a new vacuum cleaner? Check out the reviews on Amazon. Is that restaurant any good? See what Yelp has to say. But a new study suggests that such online scores don’t always reveal the best choice. A massive controlled experiment of Web users finds that such ratings are highly susceptible to irrational “herd behavior”—and that the herd can be manipulated.

ScienceMag