Day: June 6, 2019

Art, Curiositys, Health, Living, Photography, PsychologyLeave a comment

How photography can heal your life

Fernando Kaskais

‘An image made in a blizzard at the foot of Glencoe, losing myself in abstracting the landscape’. Credit: Doug Chinnery by Geoff Harris Following last year’s feature on how photography can help with mental health, Geoff Harris finds more stories that reveal the therapeutic and healing power of image making Frog Spawn before dawn high on the Long Mynd, focus and exposure stacked Credit: Andrew Fusek Peters Ever since the dawn of photography, people have been trying to figure out exactly what photography is and what it is for. Is it an art, strongly influenced by the aesthetics of painting? … Continue reading How photography can heal your life

Brain, Curiositys, Health, Living, Psychology, ScienceLeave a comment

Why It Pays to Play Around

Fernando Kaskais

image edited by F. Kaskais Play is so important that nature invented it long before it invented us. BY ANDREAS WAGNER The 19th-century physicist Hermann von Helmholtz compared his progress in solving a problem to that of a mountain climber “compelled to retrace his steps because his progress stopped.” A mountain climber, von Helmholtz said, “hits upon traces of a fresh path, which again leads him a little further.” The physicist’s introspection provokes the question: How do creative minds overcome valleys to get to the next higher peak? Because thinking minds are different from evolving organisms and self-assembling molecules, we … Continue reading Why It Pays to Play Around

Brain, Curiositys, Health, Living, PsychologyLeave a comment

Bungee Jumpers’ Cognition Enhanced After A Jump – A Finding With Implications For Professionals Who Have To Make Decisions In Intense Situations

Fernando Kaskais

By Christian Jarrett It’s well-established in psychology that intense emotion and physiological arousal interfere with people’s ability to think straight. Most theories explain this in terms of anxiety consuming mental resources and focusing attention on potential threats. Although it’s tricky to study this topic in the psych lab, a handful of field studies involving parachutists and emergency simulations have largely supported this picture. However, a team at the Autonomous University of Barcelona believe that not enough consideration has so far been given to what they call the “valence” of intense situations – whether or not the person sees the intense experience as … Continue reading Bungee Jumpers’ Cognition Enhanced After A Jump – A Finding With Implications For Professionals Who Have To Make Decisions In Intense Situations