Us and Them: Neurobiology of Intergroup Differences and Conflict

Image by John Hain from Pixabay Written by Brett Weiss December 2019 Biology reveals that humans are animals– Old World primates, also referred to as apes (Sapolsky, 2018).  Humans have innate needs and desires to belong to groups, and with these needs comes potential for differences and conflict between groups.  Countless examples throughout human history …

Theory of Mind: Predicting Others’ Thoughts, Intentions, Beliefs, and Behavior

Written by Brett Weiss July 2019 Image by ElisaRiva from Pixabay Our social lives depend upon theory of mind, defined as attributing thoughts, intentions, and beliefs to others. We develop our theory of mind to predict future actions of others based on our past experiences with those individuals. Interestingly, when we have little acquired data …

Creativity: Associated Personality Traits and Potential Link to Psychopathology

Image by Alexandr Ivanov from Pixabay Written by Brett Weiss June, 2019             Creativity facilitates innovation; and innovation breeds original and useful ideas, musical compositions, works of art, medicines, procedures, publications, and products.  In order to consider something creative, the piece of work must have novelty and utility (Kaufman and Paul, 2014).  Bronowski (1972) defined …

Lucid Dreaming: Neural Correlates and Potential Therapeutic Value

Written by Brett Weiss May, 2019             Dreams, like hallucinatory experiences, induce profound effects of perception, visual imagery, emotional activation, along with fear extinction.  One might view lucid dreams as ‘special’ types of dreams in that waking awareness occurs during the dreaming state.  Thus, a dreamer who experiences lucid dreams has the ability to explore …