Scientific News
Are forests a natural treatment for stress?

More than half of the world’s population currently resides in cities. Numerous studies have established that leading an urban lifestyle has a significant impact on anxiety and mood disorders. On the other hand, living in a rural area, or regularly spending time in ...
Let’s take a walk in the woods...

Can empathy improve creativity?

For the past two ...
The third thumb: how do our brains adapt to "augmented body" technology?

It’s an important question indeed: if body augmentation devices can advance in great strides, it is important, even ...
Shall we sing?

Various research has already suggested that music can be a source of pleasure, learning and well-being. As the authors point out in their study’s introduction, musical training can also have positive repercussions on cognition through transfer effects on executive ...
Do we choose our friends more wisely as we age?

Research has already shed light on the importance of social bonds throughout our lifetime; and, in particular, how they can help improve cognitive health. In humans, aging is characterized by an increased focus on pre-established positive and close ...
What's the best gift for kids? The latest video game or a family outing?

Lan Nguyen Chaplin, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Illinois, Chicago and her colleagues at HEC Paris, and the Universities of Michigan and Minnesota set out to determine whether children and adolescents (ages 3 to 17) felt greater joy when receiving material gifts or by sharing an experience. Over the course of ...
How do our choices influence our preferences?

We make choices on a daily basis (even if it is just deciding what to eat). Sometimes, we choose things we like, but other times, we like things because we have chosen them. According to L. Feigenson, who co-authored the article, this inverse reasoning could explain these unconscious inferences that we all make: the first: "I chose this so I must ...
Can kindness improve our well-being?

Generally, research on prosocial behaviors has suggested that people who engage in these behaviors are likely to have better mental and even physical health than those who spend less time ...
Can we control dreams?

The research led by Adam Haar Horowitz (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT) aimed to demonstrate the possibility of manipulating people’s dreams during the first phase of sleep via an electronic device. This first phase ...