Does your dog have social skills?

A study suggests that viewing the owner’s face works as a positive social reinforcement for dogs. Learn more about this and other surprising results about “man’s best friend”.

Dispositional mindfulness and startle reactivity

Veena Kumari, principal investigator of the research project 92/18 – Attending mindfully: A psychophysiology study of sensory processing in meditators, supported by the BIAL Foundation, examined possible associations between dispositional mindfulness and alexithymia and found a negative association. In addition, it was assessed the eye-blink startle responses to acoustic stimuli of varying intensity and observed a positive association between startle response habituation and dispositional mindfulness (i.e., more habituation in individuals with a high level of naturally-occurring mindfulness). Similar results were also obtained by long-term mindfulness practitioners engaging in mild-to-moderate meditation practices, suggesting similar sensory information processing styles. These findings are reported in the paper Dispositional mindfulness, alexithymia and sensory processing: Emerging insights from habituation of the acoustic startle reflex response published in International Journal of Psychophysiology.

A multi-laboratory replication of a precognition experiment

The paper Raising the value of research studies in psychological science by increasing the credibility of research reports: the transparent Psi project was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science in the scope of the research project 122/16 - A fully transparent pre-registered replication study of precognitive detection of reinforcement using an expert consensus design, supported by the BIAL Foundation. It was devised a multi-laboratory replication of Daryl Bem's Experiment 1 on precognition, in which the participants were presented with two curtains on the computer screen and had to guess which one hides a picture. The target side (left or right) was determined randomly by the computer after the participant's guess. Data collection was carried out in 10 laboratories from nine different countries, involving 2115 participants. Bem's findings were not replicated, since it was obtained 49.89% successful guesses, while Bem reported 53.07% success rate, with the chance level being 50%.

Neurostimulation of the cerebellum improves episodic memory

In the scope of project 495/14 - Episodic memory enhancement in aging: the role of cognitive training combined with (bilateral) tDCS in the medial-temporal cortex and cerebellum on episodic memory performance in the elderly, supported by the BIAL Foundation, the research team published the paper The cerebellum is causally involved in episodic memory under aging in the journal GeroScience. The study demonstrated that, when participating in a 12-day neurostimulation program delivered to the right cerebellum, healthy elderly individuals showed episodic memory improvement both immediately after the intervention program and in a 4-month follow-up.