Living happily in a material world: Material purchases can bring happiness.

Living happily in a material world: Material purchases can bring happiness.A recent study shows material purchases provide more frequent happiness.Researchers have shown that material purchases, from sweaters to skateboards, provide more frequent happiness over time, whereas experiential purchases, like a trip to the zoo, provide more intense happiness on individual occasions. By having people record their thoughts in the weeks following their purchases, as well as one month after their purchases, the researchers showed that material and experiential purchases bring happiness in two distinct flavors. Material purchases bring repeated doses of happiness over time in the weeks after they are bought, whereas experiential purchases offer a more intense but fleeting dose of happiness. Additionally, when people looked back on their purchases 6 weeks after Christmas, they felt more satisfaction about experiential purchases.

Fruit and vegetable consumption could be as good for your mental as your physical health.

Fruit and vegetable consumption could be as good for your mental as your physical health. New research focused on mental wellbeing found that high and low mental wellbeing were consistently associated with an individual's fruit and vegetable consumption. 33.5% of respondents with high mental wellbeing ate five or more portions of fruit and vegetables a day, compared with only 6.8% who ate less than one portion. The research, conducted by the University of Warwick's Medical School using data from the Health Survey for England, and published by BMJ Open focused on mental wellbeing and found that high and low mental wellbeing were consistently associated with an individual's fruit and vegetable consumption.

Self talk and voices in our head.

Self talk and voices in our head.As far our brain is concerned, talking to ourselves/self talk in our heads may be fundamentally the same as speaking our thoughts out loud, new research shows. The findings may have important implications for understanding why people with mental illnesses such as schizophrenia hear voices.

Cerebellum plays a major role in schizophrenia.

Cerebellum plays a major role in schizophrenia.The cerebellum is among the most affected brain regions in schizophrenia, new research has found. Compared to healthy individuals, cerebellar volume was smaller in patients with schizophrenia. The study is the largest brain imaging study to date on the cerebellum in schizophrenia, with important implications for our understanding of the disorder. In a new study, Norwegian researchers have documented that the cerebellum is among the most affected brain regions in schizophrenia.Although the cerebellum (latin for "little brain") occupies only about 20% of the human brain, it actually contains about 70% of all its neurons.The current study included brain scans from 2300 participants from 14 international sites. The researchers used sophisticated tools that allowed them to analyze both the volume and shape of the brain. The results showed that the cerebellum is among the brain regions with the strongest and most consistent differences in schizophrenia.

Brain wiring quiets the voice inside your head.

Brain wiring quiets the voice inside your head. During a normal conversation, your brain is constantly adjusting the volume to soften the sound of your own voice and boost the voices of others in the room. This ability to distinguish between the sounds generated from your own movements and those coming from the outside world is important not only for catching up on water cooler gossip, but also for learning how to speak or play a musical instrument. Now, researchers have developed the first diagram of the brain circuitry that enables this complex interplay between the motor system and the auditory system to occur. The research, which appears in The Journal of Neuroscience, could lend insight into schizophrenia and mood disorders that arise when this circuitry goes awry and individuals hear voices other people do not hear.

How to Use Twitter to Predict Sickness.

How to use twitter to predict sickness.Researchers have showed how Twitter can be used to predict how likely it is for a Twitter user to become sick. They have also used Twitter to model how other factors -- social status, exposure to pollution, interpersonal interaction and others -- influence health. "If you want to know, down to the individual level, how many people are sick in a population, you would have to survey the population, which is costly and time-consuming," said Adam Sadilek, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Rochester. "Twitter and the technology we have developed allow us to do this passively, quickly and inexpensively; we can listen in to what people are saying and mine this data to make predictions." Sadilek also explained that many tweets are geo-tagged, which means they carry GPS information that shows exactly where the user was when he or she tweeted. Collating all this information allows the researchers to map out, in space and in time, what people said in their tweets, but also where they were and when they were there. By following thousands of users as they tweet and go about their lives, researchers also could estimate interactions between two users and between users and their environment.

Tweets can help predict the outcome of soccer matches.

Tweets can help predict the outcome of soccer matches.New research shows that Twitter activity can help predict the result of soccer matches when combined with betting market prices.The tone of Twitter posts can predict when a team is more likely to win and soccer bets are mispriced, the study by the University of East Anglia (UEA) found. Researchers examined 13.8 million tweets -- an average of 5.2 tweets per second -- during an English Premier League (EPL) season. These were compared with in-play betting prices available at the same time on Betfair, the world's largest online betting exchange. They found that if the combined tone of tweets in a given second during a match was positive -- as measured by a micro-blogging dictionary -- then the team was more likely to win than the betting market prices implied. Tweets were particularly informative in the aftermath of goals and red cards, suggesting that social media content is particularly useful in assessing the implications and significance of new information. Social media is used as a forecasting tool by a variety of firms and agencies.