Neuroscience

Would you take a pill to save your relationship? Researchers are suggesting that this type of “medicine” might not be too far off.

When you are in love, every cell in your body feels love, too. Find out how love can affect your heart and health, and discover why you don’t need a partner to fall in love.

A recent study shows that chemicals in the brain can alter the way you think about romantic relationships. Find out how and what this means for your next date.

Do you ever get to the point where you feel as though you and your partner have absolutely nothing in common? Read further to find out the one common thread that lies in almost all of us.

Are you as sick of celebrity infidelity news items as I am? Read on to learn how we can take a stand and celebrate the good people around us instead of concentrating on the duds.

Heavy concentration in one area can lead to mistakes in another. Find out how too much self-regulation may be affecting you and your relationship.

“The pill,” one of the most common forms of birth control, is taken by millions of women every year. Because it is so widely used, recent research has examined whether this hormone-altering pill actually affects mating habits. Find out more.

Dr. Bradbury reveals the genetic link to feeling emotionally upset and how men and women perceive these emotions. The blog is part of a series called This Emotional Life for PBS. Read the blog here.

Eye contact may help focus our attention on persons who are expressing interest in us. Or is this answer too simplistic? Read more.

The prevailing idea that as we age our brains turn to mush needs a tune-up. We can prevent or slow the rate of decline through exercise, diet, and a little brain research.

Science proves that men are influenced to risky action by images of scantily-clad women. In other news, the sky is blue!

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but what makes the smell memorable? Would a rose still be sweet if it was paired with a negative experience? Read more to find out.

A new study out of Australia finds that depressed women are more likely to be engaging in sex and sexual activity than their mentally well counterparts. So why aren’t they happy?

Recent research found that socializing could be just as important for the brain as completing more high-minded, intellectual tasks. Read why, then go out with your friends and discuss.

I will admit this blog is a bit selfish in motivation. This has been one of those weeks where the most consistent part of my job has been the number of interruptions. Not only am I trying to juggle about six or eight different tasks there has also been a plethora of personal issues going on. I used to think I was a Zen master when it came to concentration. But this week has challenged that perception; I started feeling like the interruptions were winning. So today I took a few minutes to see if there may be any suggestions in the literature on how to maintain concentration.

A Tokyo-based company offers “heartache leave” after a bad break-up with a partner. Crazy HR staff or appropriate paid time off? New research into using brain imaging techniques show that the areas regulating social and physical pain overlap- meaning experiencing one can lead to feeling the other.

Researchers found a gene variation for rumination.

The general goal of the marketing of products as better, more effective or higher quality is to get us to buy them. However, to what extent do these marketing efforts actually alter our experience to fit our expectations? Does the belief that price and quality are related actually cause people to like things that cost more.. more?

It doesn’t take the proverbial rocket scientist to reach the conclusion that men and women walk differently. The greater pelvic obliquity and less vertical center of mass displacement in women compared with men has long been mentioned as a reason why some men are so distinctly uncool, even rude, staring, etc. as they are wont to do when women walk by.

Results of a new study may help scientists learn how to pinpoint the stress response in humans- helping those coping poorly to increase their resilience.

File this one under extremely obscure cocktail party chatter. Lower body fat, a not so pleasant euphemism for curvy hips, correlates highly with the amount of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid. These fatty acids are being increasingly shown to be essential for brain development. And they may play a large role in how children’s brain develop in the early years.

You may have noticed that Neuroscience seems to be a hot topic these days in the popular press. Neurochemistry is a hot topic across the spectrum of human interest. Whether you’re worried about how to deal with depression, anxiety, weight-loss, cigarette smoking, impending Alzheimer’s, the effects of the modern environment on your children’s brains, or how to attract a mate… the neuroscience industry appears to be working on an answer.

Spending as little as ten minutes talking to others may help improve your memory and intellect. Sound like an infomercial created by teenagers? No, no- it’s real research! Turns out social interaction can provide the same mental-boosting benefits as reading or doing a daily crossword puzzle.

Much of my academic career prior to coming to the vaunted Labs of eHarmony.com was spent trying to determine whether taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) was a good or a bad thing for post-menopausal women, specifically whether HRT may diminish the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease. Over the course of 12 years I had been convinced that HRT did great things, then thought it may possibly even be harmful, then I was simply confused. Now comes an unexpected finding suggesting a positive role for HRT.

eHarmony Labs Scientific Advisor, Dr. John Cacioppo, has been publishing some extremely important papers that have done much to identify the causes and consequences of loneliness. Now Dr. Cacioppo has worked with a group of researchers to show that people with chronically high levels of loneliness show alterations in their pattern of gene expression. This is the first time that a social epidemiological risk factor has been linked to genome wide transcriptional activity.