I've been able to purchase and read several books this past spring and summer.  I will be posting about several of them.  The first summer review is The Human Brain Book by Rita Carter (the subtitle is "An illustrated guide to its structure, function, and disorders).  The book makes for not just a great coffee table book (it's over sized), but also includes a DVD that has some additional features one can use in class. The publisher is D/K, the wonderful publishers whose books are among my favorites. Oh, how I wish I had a book like this when I began teaching psychology.  From a visual learner's point of view, this book hits the jackpot. It begins with a history of studying the brain, landmarks in neuroscience and photos of a series of brain scans.  You know all those pesky little questions that your students ask, but you're not sure of the answer because your neuroscience course was 20+ years ago and the images (I mean drawings) were in black and...

These findings probably won't surprise most teachers, but I wonder if the findings might start interesting classroom conversations. This LifeHacker blog post summarizes research coming out of Seligman's Positive Psychology Center regarding the relative impact of high levels of self-discipline vs. IQ as predictors of success. As teachers, I bet we would have predicted the outcome: Self-discipline wins. But it might be interesting to hear what students would predict, and whether these findings match their experiences/perceptions? The original research article is also available in full text. It also might be interesting to bring Dweck's research about "ability vs. effort" attributions into this conversation about self-discipline vs. intellectual "ability" Posted by Rob McEntarffer

A few years ago, Dove Soap created a campaign for "real beauty" in an attempt to alter cultural attitudes toward what makes women attractive.  This campaign originally featured the video below to make viewers aware of how much change goes into a woman's appearance before and after she is photographed.  Whether it is lighting, makeup, or editing the photo, there is a clear and distinct difference between reality and the images that people see in the magazines.  Below is their effort.  Your students will be amazed if they are not already familiar with this video. Here is a follow-up video showing Photoshop alterations to pictures:

I am not a small man.  BTW, this is Chuck.  You could call me large, big, fluffy (ode to Gabriel Iglesias), husky, bouncer-like, and more.  I am 6'3" 310 pounds.  Large, but proportional.  I've always had a sweet tooth--I love the junk food and sugar in nearly all its incarnations.  This morning, I saw an article on NPR called, "Junk Food Jones Is Wired in Your Brain."  This confirmed what I suspected--I am an addict.  It was shown in a fascinating bit of research which could even diverge into a discussion of ethics and animal research. One quote:  "Inside their little brains, the junk-food eating rats developed a big problem. Just like drug takers, the rats needed a bigger fix of junk food over time to maintain their pleasure. So they kept on eating, and kept on getting fatter. As the scientists explained in their paper, "extended access to palatable high-fat food can induce addiction-like deficits in brain reward function," which...