Mom's lasagna. Homemade chocolate chip cookies straight from the oven. Steak sizzling on the grill. Roasted turkey and stuffing. Flame-broiled hamburgers. Good-quality dark chocolate.

Is your mouth watering at the very thought of some of these foods? Sorry to break it to you, but a recent study found that humans are not able to salivate at the thought of food.

"We are not like dogs -- in particular, we're not like Pavlov's dogs -- and don't have conditioned salivary reflexes," says lead author Guy Carpenter.

In the small study, published in the Journal of Texture Studies, British researchers tried to determine if a mouthwatering sensation exists in humans at the suggestion of food. They rounded up 5 healthy people and first showed them pictures of different foods -- from pizza and Thai curry to grilled chicken and baked pasta.

Using cotton pads inside the cheeks and suction devices under the tongue, scientists collected saliva samples from participants as they viewed this visual feast.

Looking at photographs, which simulates thinking about food in real life, didn't increase the amount of saliva flowing from any of the major salivary glands, before or after eating a meal. In other words, a "mouthwatering sensation" wasn't seen in the participants whether they were hungry or not. 

Although food advertisers may want consumers to believe that pictures of food can have a mouthwatering influence, this study found it wasn't the case.

In another experiment, researchers observed how much moisture the mouth produced when volunteers could see and smell a bowl of hot noodles. And a third test, gathered saliva samples before, during, and after participants ate their lunch.

Smelling food's aromas increased saliva secretions more so than holding food or looking at pictures of it. But the largest quantities of spit flowed when participants actually tasted and chewed food.

"This study reinforces the idea that merely thinking of food doesn't cause a faster rate of saliva into the mouth," says Carpenter, a senior lecturer in oral and mucosal biology at King's College London Dental Institute.

Mouthwatering, he says, is not a true salivary reflex, meaning a stimuli that can increase saliva secretion for prolonged periods. Instead Carpenter proposes the mouthwatering sensation "is due to small squirts of saliva entering the mouth when facial muscles squeeze on dilated salivary ducts."

Carpenter says "to increase the anticipation and mouthwatering aspect" of a meal, "increase the smells." 

Readers, tell us what are the food smells that always make your mouth water?

Related:

Can eating too much make your stomach burst?

Myth or fact: The 5-second rule

Can eating too much spicy food kill you?

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

For most of us, it's harder to think of anything less threatening than kittens. But for one woman on Animal Planet's "My Extreme Animal Phobia," encountering the little furballs was the stuff of nightmares.

In a clip, the show's host, Dr. Robin Zasio, a clinical psychologist, walks with Sandra into a room of cat and kitten cages at an animal shelter. Immediately Sandra starts to cry, and says "I can't take this." She admits she knows the cats are behind glass walls but she's still afraid they're somehow going to hurt her.

Another woman, Shereese, who accompanies Sandra and the doctor, is less than sympathetic, "Right now I think Sandra is just going ballistic," she says. "The cats are behind the cage, it's not like they can get to her. It's like when she hear 'Meow!' she start crying. I'm like, 'Are you serious?'"

Dr. Zasio tries to calm Sandra by asking her what she thinks one of the cats is thinking. "He would get me if he could," is Sandra's reply.

Shereese, however, should perhaps not be so judgmental. Another clip from the show reveals her own irrational fear -- stuffed animals. Once attacked by a dog, she now can't even stand to be around the toy versions.

The "Petrified of Pets" episode of "My Extreme Animal Phobia" airs Dec. 2 at 10 p.m. ET on Animal Planet.

Do you have any animal phobias? Tell us on Facebook.

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Wondering if that fabulous man you've been chatting with online is really a mountain-climbing astronaut fluent in six languages, including Latin?

According to a new study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, chances are he's simply one of the many people who can't help stretching the truth when they hit the keyboard.

"I wouldn't say that human beings are a big pack of liars," says Robert S. Feldman, professor of psychology and dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "But I would say that it's very easy to lie."

This is especially true when we go online, according to Feldman's research.

In a new paper entitled "Liar, Liar, Hard Drive on Fire:  How Media Context Affects Lying Behavior," Feldman found that the closer people are to each other, the more difficult it is to lie to each other. And the further apart we are, the more the lies fly.

In his most recent study, Feldman (who's studied deception for about 30 years) put together 110 same-sex pairs of University of Massachusetts students, asking them to "get to know each other" for approximately 15 minutes. One group of students talked face-to-face, another chatted via IM and the last emailed back and forth. Then Feldman asked the students to go over a transcript (or recording) of the conversation and identity each time an untruth -- even a white lie -- was told.

"At first, almost everybody said there are no cases where [they weren't] being truthful," he says. "So we said, humor us. Eventually, what happened was that 70 percent of the people found something they said was not accurate. It was a lie. And the rate of lying was about three times greater for email than it was for face-to-face conversation."

Why is it so much easier to lie via email (or even IM) than it is to fib face-to- face?

"It's easier to lie online primarily because the psychological distance between the two people communicating is greater," he says. "When you're face-to-face, you see the person, you see their reactions to what you're saying, you know they can see you. But when you're online, you're talking to a disembodied person. You don't see their reactions to what you're saying and I think it gives you a kind of freedom to be more deceptive."

Feldman says that in his study, most of the falsehoods were of the "little white lie" category, like agreeing with someone that you liked a movie that you didn't really like. But other lies were more ambitious.

"Some would say they'd been to a certain place they'd never been or say they were a captain of their high school track team and they weren't," he says. "The lies varied in terms of how profound they really were. Some were small lies, but others were total whoppers."

Rebecca Price, a 34-year-old development officer from Seattle, admits she practiced some heavy duty online deception back in her college days.

"When AOL chat rooms were popular, I used modeling shots of Meg Ryan as my profile picture," she says. "And not one of [the guys I wrote to] ever noticed. All that mattered was that the girl in the picture was hot. I also used tell them that I was a retired model. Or sometimes I would tell them I was a single mom working at the local Dairy Queen or Whataburger. This was my favorite story."

Feldman says that lying not only comes easily to human beings, we almost come to expect -- and want it.

"We don't necessarily want to hear the truth," he says. "A lot of the time, there's almost a kind of conspiracy between people. If someone says you did a terrific job on a presentation, you don't want to question them. You totally accept it. You might have suspicions that it wasn't such a great presentation, but why delve into that?"

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Miami Gardens Police via NBC Miami

Oneal Ron Morris, shown after her arrest, is accused of injecting a victim's buttocks with a mixture of cement, Fix-A-Flat, mineral oil and Superglue.

News that Oneal Ron Morris was arrested for injecting a woman’s buttocks with a combination of cement, Fix-A-Flat, mineral oil and Superglue stunned readers. But even more shocking are the photographs of the alleged perpetrator that reveal the incredible size of her rear end. Her curves would make Jessica Rabbit blush! While the vast majority of the population inquiring about buttock enhancement would refuse treatment by an fake physician, photos reveal that Morris likely acted as a walking advertisement for her illegal practice.

So just how did Morris’s behind become so massive? I truly doubt that she partook in her own dangerous cocktail of injections. While these substances may work for repaving a road or patching a tire, they are dangerous when injected into living tissue. She would have likely found herself in the hospital (like her alleged victim) with large, festering wounds. In addition, the two traditional techniques of buttock augmentation -- solid silicone implants and fat injections -- are unlikely to have dramatic enough results to create proportions such as hers.

As a cosmetic surgeon making an educated guess, I suspect Morris, a 30-year-old transgender woman, maximally enhanced her buttocks using polypropylene string implants obtained overseas or through the black market.

Polypropylene string implants were used to enhance breasts back in the late 1990s prior to being banned by the FDA in 2001.  These implants consist of yarn-like string that gradually absorbs water and expands in size when surgically implanted into the body.  If these string implants are in place long enough, they can result in a massive, cartoonish enlargement, as can be seen in the breasts of a handful of adult entertainers.

While I’ve never heard of polypropylene being implanted into the buttocks, it’s very possible Morris underwent this procedure. The best treatment for polypropylene string implants is surgical removal.

If Morris does have polypropylene string implants and does not have them removed, she can expect her buttocks to continue to grow until they eventually drag on the ground.

Dr. Anthony Youn is a board-certified cosmetic surgeon in the Detroit area who has been featured on "Dr. 90210" and runs a popular celebrity cosmetic surgery blog. He is the author of the new, irreverent memoir "In Stitches."

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Getty Images stock

Can you actually eat yourself to death?

"I ate so much I'm about to burst!"

Someone at your Thanksgiving table will likely say some version of this tomorrow, after you've all stuffed your faces with turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes and the rest. But how much would you have to eat in order for your stomach to actually burst? Is that even possible?

"Interestingly enough, you can rupture your stomach if you eat too much," says Dr. Rachel Vreeman, co-author of "Don't Cross Your Eyes ... They'll Get Stuck That Way!" and assistant professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine. "It is possible, but it's very, very rare."

A handful of reports over the years document the tales of people who literally ate themselves to death, or at least came dangerously close: Japanese doctors wrote in a 2003 case report that they believed it was a 49-year-old man's "excessive over-eating" that caused his stomach to rupture, killing him. And this 1991 case report describes a similar "spontaneous rupture" in an adult's stomach "after overindulgence in food and drink." 

Normally, your stomach can hold about one or one-and-a-half liters, Vreeman says -- this is the point you may reach if you overdo it tomorrow, when you feel full to the point of nausea. Pathologists' reports seem to suggest the stomach is able to do OK handling up to about three liters, but most cases of rupture seem to occur when a person has attempted to stuff their stomach with about five liters of food or fluid. (One of the reports Vreeman came across described the sad case of a woman whose stomach contained 12 liters of stuff.)

It takes a certain amount of misguided determination to manage to override your natural gag reflex and continue to eat (and eat and eat), which is why, not surprisingly, reports of ruptured stomachs caused by overeating are most common in people with some sort of disordered eating, or limited mental capacity, Vreeman says. 

"They have unusual eating habits to an extent that their bodies’ reflexes no longer respond as they normally do," Vreeman explains. "Their bodies’ reflexes have been ignored or abused for so long that they no longer vomit at the appropriate time. And then once the stomach gets to this extremely distended point, the stomach muscles are too stretched out to be strong enough to vomit the food out."

Speaking of strong stomachs, you'd best have one in order to read this next paragraph. If vomiting isn't happening, all that food and fluid still has to go somewhere. The increasing volume of stuff in the gut puts pressure on the stomach's walls, so much so that the tissue weakens and tears, sending the stomach contents into the body and causing infection and pain, Vreeman says. Surgical intervention is necessary to repair a ruptured stomach and save the patient's life. 

In particular, she says, anorexics or bulimics may be at risk. In fact, Cedars-Sinai, the non-profit hospital in Los Angeles, actually lists this as a "symptom" of bulimia: "In rare cases, a person may eat so much during a binge that the stomach bursts or the esophagus tears. This can be life-threatening."

Other reported cases of spontaneous stomach rupture happen in individuals with Prader-Willi syndrome, a congenital disease that is characterized by, among other things, a kind of disordered eating: an "intense craving for food," resulting in "uncontrollable weight gain and morbid obesity." according to the National Institutes of Health. In a 2007 study examining the deaths of 152 individuals with the condition, 3 percent of those deaths were the result of gastric rupture and necrosis. 

The takeaway here: This really happens, sometimes! Also: This is probably not going to happen to you. 

"Even if you're starting to feel a bit sick or tired and overwhelmed from eating so much at Thanksgiving, you're still far, far away from the scenario where you're going to make your stomach actually explode," Vreeman assures. 

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By Emily Main
Prevention

Redheads may be stereotyped as having fiery tempers, but those tempers may turn to fear and loathing when they walk through the door of a dentist’s office, according to research published in the Journal of the American Dental Association. The study shows that people with a specific gene that often occurs in redheads tend to experience heightened anxiety when they pop in for a regular teeth cleaning.

The details: The study’s authors recruited 144 people for the study, 67 of whom were natural redheads, and 77 who were dark-haired. The participants answered survey questions about any fears or anxieties related to dental visits, and the researchers took blood samples that they later tested for specific gene variants common in people with red hair. People with one specific gene, MC1R, were more than twice as likely to report that they avoided dental appointments because of fear and anxiety than people without that gene. Of the 85 people in the study with MC1R, 65 were redheads.

5 Major Health Threats That Your Dentist Can Predict

What it means: It’s possible, say the researchers, that redheads with the gene in question tend to be resistant to certain pain medications. This could mean redheads are more prone than most to experience a difficult dental visit, affecting their expectations about future appointments. Redheaded or not, most of us have probably had reservations about going to the dentist at some point in our lives. But don’t let fear prevent you from getting your twice-yearly checkups. Recent studies have linked periodontal disease to a wide variety of chronic diseases, including heart disease, strokes, and type 2 diabetes. If it’s been a while since you’ve visited the dentist, you might be pleasantly surprised at the experience. “Things don’t hurt anymore,” says Kimberly A. Harms, DDS, consumer advisor for the American Dental Association. Anesthesia has become much more effective, she says, and patients don’t have to experience the pain that used to be common in dental procedures.

Study: Sour-flavored candies do more damage to tooth enamel than sweet varieties

Here are some ways to ease angst about the dentist’s office:

• Know if you’re an early bird or a late riser. Schedule your appointments during the time of day that’s best for you, recommends Dr. Harms. “Come in the morning if you’re a morning person, or late in the afternoon if you’re an evening person,” she says. You’ll be in a better mood and better frame of mind.

• Prepare the night before. “Get a good night’s sleep,” Dr. Harms adds. If you have trouble sleeping the night before a visit, she suggests calling your dentist’s office and asking if they can provide you with a sleep aid.

• Talk, lots. Make a list of what it is that bothers you about going to the dentist, whether it’s fear of painful procedures or lack of control over what’s going on, and talk about it with your dentist. “The most important thing you can do is communicate with everyone, right from the beginning,” says Dr. Harms. “A lot of people come in with anxiety and fears, and they’re embarrassed,” she says, “but we do this all the time and we understand.” Dr. Harms also suggests developing signals, such as raising your hand, between you and your dentist, in the event that you do start to feel pain or discomfort.

DIY dentistry: How to fix six common dental problems yourself...

• Distract yourself. Dentists offices are getting decidedly high-tech these days, providing patients with headphones, MP3 players, and even virtual-reality goggles that distract patients while they’re in a chair. Dr. Harms says her office provides goggles that play movies for patients, which are especially helpful for lengthy procedures like root canals. If your dentist prefers a low-tech atmosphere, bring your own headphones and music. It will help drown out unpleasant sounds like drills, suction tubes, and anything else that can raise your blood pressure.

More from Prevention:

• 5 Excuses That Kill Your Heart
• The Ten Commandments of Cholesterol Control
• Redheads Feel More Pain
• Enter to win one of Prevention's great online sweepstakes

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• Sperm bank: Redheads not wanted
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If Thanksgiving weekend is a time for gratitude, let's make the weekend before the holiday a time for whining. Actually, two studies out this week explore the upside of negative thinking. Sometimes, believing that everything's the worst can ultimately be for the best, the research suggests.

Fun fact 1: Complaining can help inspire people to change a bad situation. “In order to actually change the system, you’ve got to know what’s wrong with it,” says India Johnson, a graduate student at Ohio State University who helped lead a study set to appear in the journal Psychological Science.

Study participants read about a student at the Ohio university who wasn't happy with his experience with the school's freshman orientation. Some of the stories detailed the student's successful attempt to improve the orientation process; others read about the student's failure to do so. Then the volunteers were given an external review of the university from the Department of Education -- they could choose between reading a positive or negative report.

Interestingly, the students who'd read about the successful changes made to the freshman orientation were more likely to choose the negative report. Johnson explains, “In order for people to feel like they can actually affect the world and actually do something, they have to view the world as changeable. If you want people to be able to make that leap, you have to first get them to that point. Then they’ll be willing to seek out the negative information." 

Fun fact 2: The best two words to motivate an expert may be, "You stink!" Newbies thrive on positive feedback, but when you're dealing with a pro, it may be best to give it to him straight, according to a new study appearing in the Journal of Consumer Research.

In one study, researchers Stacey Finkelstein and Ayelet Fishbach, both of the University of Chicago, examined reactions of beginning and advanced French students. Those who were just starting the language were more likely to improve if their instructor gave them gentle feedback, but the old-timers thrived on harsh criticism. Like the Ohio State study, the research suggests that negative words can bring about positive change.

What's bugging you today? Get out your complaints in the comments so you'll be ready to give thanks on Thursday.

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Lisa Poole / AP file

Heavy bags are a real downer.

The charity workers staking out your favorite holiday shopping site with collection cups in hand may have chosen the exact right spot to prick your conscience, a new study suggests.  

It’s not that you feel guilty for your purchasing power.  It’s about the weight of your shopping bags.

Researchers found that when we are physically weighed down, with anything from groceries to gifts, our thoughts inescapably turn to serious -- weighty -- subjects.  Apparently, the wiring in our brain sparks directly from physical weight to psychological weight.

When we’re toting a big haul, we're more likely to be suddenly struck by the importance of current events or issues in the world around us, according to the report published in the Journal of Consumer Behavior.

“We found that carrying a heavy load leads consumers to feel an unrelated event as being more important and more stressful,” said the study’s lead author Meng Zhang, an assistant professor in the department of marketing at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

For the new study Zhang ran a series of experiments on more than 100 people to look at the impact of heavy loads on thinking.

In her experiments, Zhang asked a group of volunteers to carry a shopping bag with bottles of water that weighed about 10 pounds. A comparison group carried bags with empty water bottles. The volunteers were told the experiment was to determine how much weight consumers might be willing to carry while shopping.

Survey: Are your kids spoiled by the holidays?

Later, both groups were asked questions, such as how important it is for people to express their opinions in public, how important it was to read nutrition labels, or how important it was that people stay socially connected.

Sure enough, volunteers carrying the heavy bags tended to score higher on their answers to the societal questions. In other words, people carting around heavy bags were more likely to say lots of stuff was really important.

Perhaps even more intriguing was Zhang’s discovery that people could be nudged to think about the importance of weighty societal issues just by asking them to read narratives that included words such as “heavy,” “tons,” and “loaded.”

Is there an antidote to the psychological consequences of carrying a shopping bag loaded down with holiday loot?

Apparently there is.  In another experiment Zhang determined that the psychological impact of a heavy load could be diminished when people thought about lightweight objects, such as balloons and feathers.      

Read more stories from the Vitals blog. It's good for you!

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By Maren Kasselik
Men's Health

Have you ever walked into a room and realized you don’t remember what you’re doing there? Yeah, us too. Well thankfully science finally explains why: It’s the doorway’s fault, a new study finds.

“When you go from room to room, your brain identifies each room as a new event and sets a new memory trace to capture the new event,” says study author Gabriel Radvansky, Ph.D., a psychology professor at the University of Notre Dame.

Like a chapter marker, doorways end old episodes and begin new ones, as far as your brain is concerned. This makes it difficult to retrieve older memories because they’ve already been filed away, Radvansky says.

Radvansky suggests physically carrying a reminder of what your intent is: “For example, if you want to go from the living room to the kitchen to get a snack, you may forget why you went to the kitchen when you get there because this is a new event, and you may have been distracted. But, it would be easier to remember if you walked into the kitchen with something to remind yourself of what you wanted, such as a bowl.”

Don’t keep bowls in the living room? That’s OK. Form your hand into a bowl shape when you walk to the kitchen. If you’re going from room to room to fetch a pair of scissors, hold your index and middle fingers in a scissor shape to help the memory stay intact.

More from Men's Health:

• Stimulate the brain for better recall through yoga
• Red wine improves your memory
• Never go blank again

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The "five-second rule" goes something like this: Food dropped on the ground is perfectly sanitary and safe to eat -- as long as it's picked back up within five seconds. But is there any truth to the saying? Nadine Wimmer of KSL, the NBC affiliate in Salt Lake City, decided to investigate.

Wimmer took a bunch of pacifiers and graham crackers -- things mothers and their kids drop all the time -- and placed them on the ground in various places -- in a suburban mom's kitchen and driveway, and under the tables and in the walkways of a local diner. She then took the samples to Richards Laboratories in Pleasant Grove, Utah, where the five-second rule was pretty much debunked.

The kitchen was declared least gross of the four floor spaces, as the crackers dropped on on the kitchen floor showed light to moderate amounts of bacteria, and the pacifiers showed light traces of bacteria, along with yeast and mold. The crackers and pacifiers dropped on the pavement picked up bacteria, plus heavy amounts of mold and yeast. As for the stuff dropped at the diner, the tests showed light amounts of bacteria, yeast and mold on those crackers and pacifiers.

None of the tests found any serious stuff, like salmonella or strep, but "even really common bacteria can make you sick if it catches you in the right condition," says Daniel O'Brien of Richards Laboratories. 

"Five seconds, one second -- it's all the same," O'Brien says. "As far as bacteria's concerned, it's all the same."

Hmm. Agree? What's your stance on the five-second rule?

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

The hand you use to write, brush your teeth, and throw a ball may also tip people off to your taste in music, a new study reveals.

An Ohio researcher has found that people with a strong preference for using their right hand for most everything they do, seem to like popular types of music and tend to shy away from less familiar genres, especially bluegrass and reggae.

Strong righties, the study suggests, may be less open to new musical experiences and tend to gravitate toward styles they're more familiar with.

The research also found that people who are mixed-handed, meaning they use their non-dominant hand for at least two activities but it does not mean ambidextrous, reported broader musical interests. They showed greater "open-earedness," or a stronger liking of unpopular musical styles and more willingness to listen to them.

Many factors influence our music preferences, so why would hand choice matter? In part, it's affected by what's happening between the ears -- in the brain.

"Mixed-handers are more 'in touch' with a wide variety of right hemisphere processes," says study author Stephen Christman, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio. The right hemisphere of the brain plays a key role in updating thoughts and beliefs and in allowing us to see things in new ways, he explains, while the left hemisphere tends to stick with the tried and true.

Christman notes that about 80 percent of left-handers are mixed-handers while about 60 percent of righties are strong-handed.

The study, published in the journal Psychology of Music, looked at 92 college students who completed a hand preference survey. Forty-nine students were strong right-handers and 43 were mixed-handed.

Four participants were strongly left-handed, too small a group for statistical analysis. But  other studies have found that the taste preferences of strong left-handers tend to resemble strong right-handers more than mixed-handers.

Students were asked to rate how often they listened to 21 different musical genres and their enjoyment of them. Nine were considered "popular" based on recording industry sales figures and the rest were "unpopular." Popular categories included classic rock, heavy metal, country and rap/hip-hop. Unpopular genres ranged from jazz and world to folk and reggae.

The top three musical choices of strong right-handers were R&B, modern pop and alternative rock; mixed-handers favored R&B followed by alternative rock and modern rock.

Although this study looked at college students, Christman suspects his findings would still apply to middle-age and older adults. He says "many of our enduring musical preferences are formed during our high school and college years, and they persist into adulthood."

Still, those interests can expand. Christman advises strong-handed people to keep exposing yourself to new forms of music and listening to unfamiliar genres. "Give the music a little time, and you may find yourself developing a liking for it and rewarded by broader musical horizons."

That's what happened to him. Christman's musical tastes have long favored acoustic/folk-based genres. But when his daughter started bringing home CDs by Eminem and Ludacris, the mixed-hander quickly developed an intense liking for rap and hip-hop.

What's been your experience? Are you right-handed, left-handed, mixed-handed? What kind of music is your favorite?

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Frazer Harrison / Getty Images

The thought of a new "Twilight" movie does this to some people. Others -- not so much.

When the new "Twilight" film opens, fans will be lining up hours before to make sure they get in. Others will be steering clear.

And that won’t have anything to do with movie reviews or the comments of friends. Some folks just aren’t wired to enjoy flights of fantasy, a new study suggests.

It’s all got to do with how we experience fantasy, said study co-author Russell Webster, a doctoral student in social psychology at Kansas State University. Webster’s study was published in the journal Imagination, Cognition and Personality.  

Webster had noticed that while some friends loved to read fantasy novels others just hated them -- and he wondered why. One possibility was that people who hated fantasy just didn’t have good imaginations. Another was that people couldn’t accept the rules of an imaginary world and immerse themselves in it.

So Webster designed some experiments to look at how people experienced fantasy, which he defined as a type of narrative -- such as a book, film, piece of art -- that included supernatural, unreal or impossible aspects. He distinguished fantasy from science fiction because, he says, science fiction tends to come with a logical explanation for the worlds it creates.  

Webster and his co-author gathered up a group of volunteers and asked them to fill out questionnaires designed to ferret out those who had a tendency to fantasize and daydream.

Then the researchers ran two similar experiments.

In the first, volunteers were given one of two narratives to read and think about: one a fantasy, the other realistic. In the fantasy, the writer has acquired the ability to fly and the narrative describes the feeling of soaring over mountains and then coming down and landing on beautiful field of green grass. The realistic narrative describes a sunrise and includes passages that detail the appearance of the sky with colors bursting out from the sun.

In a second experiment, volunteers were shown and asked to dwell upon one of two paintings: a man sitting in a thatched hut or a man meditating while floating in the air above some mountains.

After each experiment, the volunteers were asked to describe the images that the narratives sparked. The researchers were surprised to discover that the intensity and vividness of the images had nothing to do with a person’s proneness to flights of fantasy.

But, there was a clear difference between people who were prone to fantasizing and daydreaming and those who were not. People who were comfortable with fantasy tended to be more absorbed by what they read and saw. They also tended to have an emotional reaction. Many said they felt good after reading the narratives or looking at the paintings.

Another interesting feature of the fantasy prone people was that even when they were confronted with a realistic narrative or painting, they inserted fantastical elements when they mulled things over. “On their own they began to picture themselves flying while watching the sun rise,” Webster said.

Webster isn’t sure why it is that some people aren’t comfortable with suspending the rules of reality so they can lose themselves in a fantasy story. That’s a subject for future research he says.

Do you love the fantasy genre, or hate it? If you love it -- what's your fave?

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Lewis Jacobs / Lewis Jacobs/NBC

We'll miss you most of all, Abed.

If you, like "Community's" Abed, sometimes have a hard time differentiating between TV and real life, we have some sad news for you. 

NBC just announced its midseason lineup -- a schedule that does not include the low-rated but much-loved "Community." (Aaand here's where we must say: Msnbc.com is a joint venture between NBC and Microsoft.)

Fans on Twitter are already freaking out, even though the show is not being cancelled, and will just be shelved briefly, according to The New York Times. But as we reported back in May, recent research suggests that if you're already mourning the loss of your favorite characters, you're likely not the only one. When a favorite TV show goes off the air, even temporarily, its absence has a real psychological impact on its most fanatical viewers. 

"We develop these relationships with certain characters," lead study author Emily Moyer-Guse, who's also an assistant professor of communications at Ohio State University, told me back in May. "We develop them over time -- it's actually part of the normal way we watch and enjoy TV," said Moyer-Guse. "We watch these shows, and we start to think of them like a friend.

"It’s kind of the same things that drive real relationships with people," she explained. Moyer Guse did her study during the TV writers' strike of 2007 and 2008, when so many shows were briefly off the air. These fans knew their shows were coming back, but they were still sad about even briefly losing them. More from our earlier post:

(Study participants) were also asked why they watched TV -- for companionship? To relax? To escape? Finally, the students were asked what they did with their newfound free time, now that their shows were off the air.

People who said they had deeper "friendships" with their favorite TV characters also said they felt lonelier in the characters' absence. And the students who said they watched TV for companionship reported the most distress related to their shows' temporary absences. And, no, people didn't use this break in the TV season to do crazy things like exercise, garden or read -- most said they just watched reruns, or surfed the Internet.

Are you already sad about "Community's" hiatus? 

Related: 

• Sources: 'Community' isn't canceled
• Losing 'Oprah' may lead to lots of lonely ladies
• Watching 'Jersey Shore' will make you dumber

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Adam Taylor / ABC

On this season of "Dancing with the Stars," fashion expert and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" star Carson Kressley was certainly one of the nicest male contestants -- unfortunately, that didn't stop him from being eliminated!

By Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience

Men who hit the dance floor may be revealing more than their ability to cut a rug, according to a new study that finds women judge men with conscientious and agreeable personalities as better dancers.

The study builds on previous research that found women judge the dance movements of stronger men as more attractive and more assertive, and that risk-taking men also get pegged as better dancers. The new research suggests that the information conveyed by dance is even broader, according to study researcher Bernhard Fink, of the University of Göttingen, in Germany.

"We argue that personality is — to some extent — signaled via body movement (dance in particular, as it is the most complex body movement)," Fink wrote in an email to LiveScience. "If that were true, it would explain why dance is such a prominent topic in almost all human societies."

Fink and his colleagues of Northumbria University in the U.K. had previously found thatladies love certain dudely dance moves, particularly a variation of movements in the neck and the torso. Their studies use motion-capture technology much like that used in computer-animated movies to record men's dance moves and transfer them onto featureless avatars. That technique ensures that the women watching the dance moves won't be distracted by the guys' attractiveness or other features.

The findings that women seem able to pick up on factors like strength and risk-taking  from watching just a few seconds of dance moves prompted the researchers to look at otherpersonality traits. They focused on the "Big Five" traits, five basic attributes that describe the spectrum of human personality.

Those traits are openness (a willingness to explore new things), conscientiousness (a tendency toward self-discipline), extroversion (social exuberance), agreeableness (compassion and care for others) and neuroticism (a tendency to experience negative emotions).

The researchers asked 48 men between the ages of 18 and 42 to fill out personality questionnaires that would show where they fell on the spectrum of each trait. Then the men danced to the drumbeat of Robbie Williams' 1997 song "Let Me Entertain You." The music and lyrics were cut out, to prevent the men's love or hatred of the song from influencing their enthusiasm to dance. 

"Dancing in front of cameras is not easy for many people, and some 'support' from a drumbeat usually helps them in the laboratory setting," Fink said.

Next, 53 women between the ages of 17 and 57 watched 15-second clips of the men's dance moves transposed onto a computer-generated avatar. Each woman judged each man's dancing ability on a scale of 1 to 7.

The results revealed that the more conscientious and socially agreeable a man's personality, the more likely women were to view him as a good dancer.

The researchers also found patterns suggesting that extroverts might be better dancers, while people who scored high in neuroticism or openness were seen as worse on the dance floor. But those patterns were not statistically significant, meaning they could have been the result of chance.

Fink says he believes a larger study sample would provide the statistical oomph needed to prove that those nonsignificant traits are linked to a guy's ability to break it down. But put together with old findings, he said, the new study suggests that women are sensitive to discerning personality traits that would be important for both short-term and long-term relationships.

"The significant correlations of conscientiousness and social agreeableness suggest that dance movements signal particularly aspects of 'long-term' partner qualities," Fink said.

Likewise, he said, the earlier study on risk-taking suggests that women are impressed by the dancing of men who are bold sensation-seekers — maybe not the guy you can trust to stick around and help you raise a baby, but one who would likely contribute a healthy set of genes to his offspring.

Of course, the research hasn't yet established how, if at all, women use judgments of dance quality to decide whether to pursue a potential mate. Future studies will need to ask women to watch men's dance moves and then decide whether the guy would make a good long- or short-term partner, Fink said. He and his colleagues are also interested in turning the tables to find out what sort of information female dance moves might communicate.

As for whether you can tune your dance moves to look more consciousness and agreeable, it turns out that Shakira was right: Hips don't lie.

"If one would like to 'fake' a certain (positive) personality in order to attract women, this is probably doomed to fail," Fink said. "An individual's body movement pattern is characteristic and any attempt to fake it would result in less positive judgments of that person."

The research is set to appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

More from LiveScience:

• Busted! 6 Gender Myths in the Bedroom & Beyond
• 10 Things Every Woman Should Know About a Man's Brain
• Top 10 Things that Make Humans Special

More from The Body Odd: 

• Dance party craze presses 'mute' on speakers
• Can't dance? Brain chemical throws off your groove
• Terrible dancers may be 'beat-deaf'

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Dave Hogan / MTV via Getty Images

Redfoo of LMFAO knows exactly what it takes to get a song permanently stuck in your head. Now, researchers are getting a clue, too.

When I take my early morning spinning classes, my weary brain is in a vulnerable state. Maybe that's one reason why the chorus of a particular tune, like LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem" or Katy Perry's "Firework," played during the workout gets trapped inside my head for the rest of the day -- and night -- and the next day. 

Known as earworms, these random snippets of songs or melodies pop into our minds repeating themselves again and again like a broken record. For me, another one was that silly jingle from the McDonald's filet-of-fish commercial, which undoubtedly would delight advertisers but I found both amusing and mildly annoying.

So it helps to know that earworms are an incredibly common experience: Studies suggest that 90 percent of people get them at least once a week. Over the last decade, researchers have spent time collecting data to learn who gets earworms, how often they occur, how long they last and which songs won't budge from our brains.

Now, a new British study in the journal Psychology of Music has tried to understand their origins. They looked at how earworms, which psychologists call involuntary musical imagery, get started in the first place.

Researchers collected data from 604 people who completed an online survey. After analyzing the responses, they identified four main triggers for earworms. The most common one was music exposure, either recently hearing a tune or repeatedly hearing it. A second reason was memory triggers, meaning that seeing a particular person or word, hearing a specific beat, or being in a certain situation reminds you of a song.

The third reason for earworms your emotional frame of mind, or "affective states."  Feeling stressed, surprised or happy when you hear a song may make it stick in your head. And a fourth cause was "low attention states."  A wandering mind, whether from daydreaming or dreams at night, can set off this involuntary musical imagery. 

"I was initially surprised by the sheer number of idiosyncrasies within the earworm surveys -- the number of different tunes people heard and the number of unique circumstances where earworms popped up," says study author, Victoria Williamson, a music psychologist at Goldsmiths, University of London.

But it makes sense, she says, since "these spontaneous mental tunes appear to be a typical everyday consequence of the way that our brains process music."

And these "sticky songs" can be a tune you hear often or a brand new one. "Earworms are likely to be as individual as we are in both our musical tastes and music listening habits," explains Williamson.

Asked what to do when you get one, Williamson says she'll be trying to find out how people control them in her next research project." But in the meantime, she offers up this advice: "I find that occupying my mind with a task helps -- reading a book, doing a puzzle or talking to a friend."

What about you? Tell us what song has stuck in your head recently and what may have triggered it. 

Related:

• Song stuck in your head? You've got an earworm
• 'Come on, Irene'? Why we mishear song lyrics
• Blinded by the lyric? Study reveals why we get the words wrong

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Nick Laham / Getty Images file

Feeling relaxed? We thought so.

Exhaust fumes may do more than pollute the air -- in very small amounts, they could be relieving stress in city dwellers.

An Israeli researcher has suggested that breathing in small quantities of carbon monoxide helps relax the frazzled nerves of city folk, making it easier for them to handle the hustle and bustle of urban living.

A study led by Itzhak Schnell, a professor of geography and human environment at Tel Aviv University, found that low levels of the poisonous gas can have a "narcotic effect" on city residents, says a news release. Although breathing in high levels of this colorless and odorless gas has been described as a "silent killer," extremely low levels of it may act as a "silent calmer," the news release claims.

This new study appears in the journal Environmental Monitoring and Assessment.

Schnell and his team tracked 36 young, healthy students who carried micro-sensors as they moved around Tel Aviv, Israel's busiest city. It measured participants' exposure to the typical hassles of city life. Scientists wanted to find out how four environmental stressors -- noise levels, air pollution (carbon monoxide concentrations), crowds and weather (temperature and humidity) -- affected the urbanites aged 20 to 40.

The sensors captured data from participants in indoor and outdoor locations as they walked along busy streets, rode public transportation or shopped. Measurements were taken over a two-day period in all four seasons. Students also completed questionnaires rating their levels of personal discomfort in their surroundings.

Researchers found that urbanite's biggest source of environmental stress was noise pollution from other people, mainly human voices. Participants also reported feeling the most stress in shopping malls, open markets and on main streets, likely because of the hordes of other people in these crowded locations.

According to Schnell, the study's most surprising finding was that participants inhaled much lower levels of carbon monoxide than scientists had predicted. Even though the students took in very low concentrations of the gas, Schnell says it appeared to counteract the stress of the noise and crowds.

The scientists suggest their findings show that for young, healthy people, the daily grind of city life might have fewer negative consequences on health as they had anticipated. Next, they plan to study how these same pressures of urban living affect more high-risk groups, such as babies, older people, and those with medical conditions like asthma.

Perhaps taking several deep breaths of polluted city air several times a day isn't that bad an idea, and may turn out to be a new form of urban Zen.

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Allergic to cats? Then beware of pigs -- or at least, the meat that comes from these sty-dwelling swine. A small number of people who are sensitive to felines may also get allergic reactions to eating pork.

Dubbed "pork-cat syndrome," this food-induced allergic reaction can occur after consuming pork in people who are also allergic to cats, says Jonathon Posthumus, MD, a fellow in the division of asthma, allergy and immunology at the University of Virginia Health System in Charlottesville.

Although this rare syndrome was first recognized in Europe in the mid-1990s, Posthumus and his colleagues recently described the first six documented cases of it in the U.S. He presented his preliminary findings at the annual meeting of the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology.

According to Posthumus, the true allergen in people with pork-cat syndrome is albumin, a protein that's found in both cat dander and in pork meat. When albumin is consumed in a pork-containing meal it can trigger an allergic reaction in sensitive individuals.

But not all people who are allergic to cat dander are sensitive to cat albumin. So, most cat-allergic individuals would probably not have reactions to pork. 

In this research, five out of six cases of pork-cat syndrome were seen in women, and the average age of those with this rare food sensitivity was 28. Blood tests were positive for cat dander and pork antibodies in all six people.

Following a meal containing pork, one person reported having an itchy mouth, three broke out in hives, and two had anaphylaxis, a severe and sometimes life-threatening allergic reaction. 

People with this syndrome may also develop swelling of the mouth, lips or tongue, and these same areas could become itchy after consuming pork products. Posthumus suspects the reaction may be related to how much pork is on your plate, but he says, there is no way to determine the threshold amount that triggers these symptoms.

Those diagnosed with this unusual food hypersensitivity are advised to steer clear of eating pork, and told what signs to look for and treatments to seek if they accidentally slip-up.

The UVA scientists discovered the country's first reported cases while researching people with meat allergies. Perhaps pork-cat syndrome has been under-recognized in the U.S. because "it can easily be missed if the patient is not properly evaluated and the relationship to cat allergy is not appreciated," Posthumus points out.

Readers, if you've ever experienced these strange sensations after eating pork, we have to hear about it. Leave us a comment telling us your story.

Related:

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• Allergic to orgasms? Man's sad story has a happy ending
• The perfect excuse to skip the gym: 'I'm allergic to exercise'

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By Wayne Parry
LiveScience 

The true nature of hypnosis has eluded scientists. It's clear people can be hypnotized, but it's not clear how this happens. New research offers a clue.

By recording the eye movements of a hypnotized woman, and comparing them with those of nonhypnotized people, researchers say they have found evidence that hypnosis involves a special mental state, fundamentally different from normal consciousness.

First some basics: When under hypnosis, a person becomes more capable of hallucinationand susceptible to suggestions, perhaps intended to help him or her stop craving cigarettes, say, or prompt him or her to hear music that isn't actually playing. If no suggestions are given, a hypnotized person will sit still and his or her mind will enter a calm state, like that associated with meditation. After a session ends, the person doesn't remember it, according to study researcher Sakari Kallio, an associate professor at the University of Skövde in Sweden and University of Turku in Finland.  

Some believe these things happen because of a change in brain activity that alters a person's state of consciousness. Another camp believes that under hypnosis, the brain functions just as it would at any other time while awake, and that other, normal processes — like an active imagination — are at work.

Solving this debate by measuring brain activity is dicey, since our brain's electrical activity can vary significantly from moment to moment during its normal state. But the identification of a behavior associated with an altered state of consciousness — something no one could fake — would go a long way to supporting the idea that hypnosis involves a change in consciousness.

And that's exactly what a team of researchers says they have found, by looking at the eye movements of an easily hypnotized Finnish woman.

This woman, identified in the study published in the journal PLoS ONE on Oct. 24 only by her initials TS-H, is 43, an office worker, right-handed, and "as normal as can be," said Kallio, the lead study researcher. TS-H has no history of any neurological or psychiatric illnesses and a normal psychological profile, he and colleagues wrote. [10 Controversial Psychiatric Disorders]

She is, however, also unusually responsive to hypnosis. Kallio said that while TS-H was hypnotized, he could easily induce her to see or hear things that weren't present, and that she forgot the session when the hypnosis ended.

Using three different visual tests, they found that while hypnotized, her pupils became smaller and she blinked more slowly and less frequently — about 10 times less often –- than normally. When moving her gaze to a new point on a screen, her eyes "crept" along, moving in shorter jumps, when normally they would have moved swiftly. And, when watching the middle point of a field of moving bars, her eyes made fewer, smaller, slower movements back and forth.

Because people have little conscious control over these kinds of movements, it is unlikely someone could fake them, according to Kallio.

He and colleagues gave 14 nonhypnotized volunteers the same tasks, and asked the volunteers to perform them naturally, and to try to mimic hypnotized eye movements. While in some instances, such as with blinking, the nonhypnotized volunteers did well, overall, none came close to matching the hypnotized eye movements.

The results don’t come without precedence; a change in the eyes, or a unique sort of stare, has long been associated with hypnosis.

Measurements of electrical activity in TS-H's hypnotized brain taken in separate research also indicate something was going on. In three different experiments, researchers found changes they would not expect in a normal brain, according to Kallio.

In one study, the connections between the frontal area and the rest of the brain diminished dramatically, which typically happens during sleep. Then hypnosis also made her brain's right hemisphere more dominant, although this finding is difficult to interpret, Kallio told LiveScience in an email.

While a bit trickier to interpret, brain measurements further support the idea that something unique happens in TS-H's brain during hypnosis, according to Kallio.

Have you ever been hypnotized? Leave a comment telling us about the experience.

More from LiveScience:

• Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind
• Top 10 Spooky Sleep Disorders
• Eye Tricks: Gallery of Visual Illusions

More from The Body Odd:

• Bossy people can't help starting staring contests
• Will your warts away through self-hypnosis

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No matter your political views, you probably couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for Gov. Rick Perry’s memory hiccup during Wednesday night’s CNBC Republican presidential debate. Sorry and perhaps a little empathetic.

For the life of him, Perry couldn’t remember the name of the third federal agency he’d abolish as president. Commerce, Education, and, and, and. Nothing. Someone suggested “EPA,” and Perry briefly appeared to consider that possibility. By the time reporter John Hardwood asked him what that third agency was, Perry seemed to have forgotten even Commerce.

We might call such incidents “senior moments,” but they happen to people of all ages, says Gayatri Devi, director of the New York Memory and Healthy Aging Services. It’s just that few people experience them on live TV.

“I don’t think we can make too much of it,” says Devi, a board-certified neurologist and psychiatrist. “This is a very human error. I don’t think it’s portentous of any memory problems.”

Perry, who’s 61, probably had several factors working against him, Devi speculates.

Story: Perry's debate brain freeze looms large

For one, she says, the guy is running for president and has tons of stuff to remember. Just because he blanked on the name of that third agency (Department of Energy, by the way) doesn’t mean he’s unfamiliar with the details of his own platform, Devi says. “Haven’t you ever forgotten your home telephone number?” (My hand is up.)

Plus, the stress of everything going on in his life right now probably doesn’t help. While a little stress can keep you on your game, Devi says, too much can hinder your performance.

Perry’s lapse does probably mean that he didn’t rehearse enough, she says. As anyone who’s ever given a talk knows, practice, practice, practice helps get you closer to perfect.

On top of that, you have to figure that Perry, a governor running for the presidential nomination, probably isn’t getting enough zzz’s. As Devi says, “the most important thing for remembering is a good night’s sleep.”

 Catnaps probably aren’t enough, she says, because it’s “slow-wave”-- or deep sleep—that’s needed to help make memories stick. “What your grandmother said is true: Get a good night’s sleep. Especially before a presidential debate.”

Readers, let's sympathize with the guy for a second. When's the last time you had a brain freeze? Leave a comment telling us about it -- if we like your story, we may use it in an upcoming Body Odd post!

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• Want to improve your memory? Oh, forget it
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Some new moms are popping pills made from their dried, ground-up placenta as a way to ease postpartum depression, reports NBC's Renee Chenault-Fattah. Some placenta fans believe it also helps with breast milk production and regulates hormones.

But while there may be nutrients in the placenta, Pennsylvania psychiatrist Dr. Deborah Kim says new moms need to seek a medically proven treatment for something as serious as depression.

Watch the clip and let us know what you think. Would you try it?

Related:

Placenta pizza? Some new moms try old ritual

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Is a competitive eating contest a freak show of gluttony or a weirdly fascinating sport worthy of ESPN coverage? Do participants have stomachs of steel? High-speed digestive systems? Super-sized stomach capacities? Or a screw loose?

Nowadays, this bizarre "sport" has a league of its own, known as "Major League Eating," an international ranking of its top competitors, and it appears to have inspired the reality TV show, "Man Versus Food."

In the annual Nathan's Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest, this year's men's winner polished off a jaw-dropping 62 franks and buns during the 10-minute gorgefest, capturing $10,000 in prize money. A first-ever women's champion wolfed down 40 weiners.

But recently, Taiwan has gotten fed up with these offbeat speed-eating competitions. A government watchdog group has called for curbs on these popular contests.   

"The frequent 'big-stomach' contests not only endanger health but violate the principle of fairness as the contestants who get sick are using the national health insurance resources," said the group, in a statement. 

They issued a report urging government agencies not to sponsor or host eating contests and have recommended that contest organizers pay any medical bills from illnesses caused by participating in them -- instead of Taiwan's national health insurance. In 2008, a graduate student in the country choked to death during a steamed-bun eating contest.

So, what are the health consequences of participating in these food face-offs, which may feature anything from chilies and oysters to pies and chicken wings?

There's been only one small study attempting to find this out. Using various imaging tests, researchers compared the stomach of a top-ranked competitive eater to a male who was not a "gustatory athlete" but had a hearty appetite.

They analyzed both men before and after a 12-minute hot dog eating contest.

The tests revealed that "the stomach [of the competitive eater] adapted by becoming an increasingly compliant sac that could expand to enormous sizes to accommodate the large volume of ingested food," says Marc Levine, MD, a professor of radiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Presumably, this increased capacity is what allows speed eaters to consume so much food in such a short period of time, he explains.

Although the guy with the hearty appetite called it quits after seven hot dogs, saying he'd be sick if he continued, the competitive eater put away 36 franks in 10 minutes. Researchers made him stop as they observed his massively bulging belly and were afraid it might rupture.

"I did not expect the speed eater's stomach to be able to distend to such a remarkable degree, filling most of his abdomen," admits Levine, the study's lead author.

And yet, the speed eater insisted he didn't feel stuffed, bloated, or uncomfortable.

Although only one competitive eater was studied, Levine worries that because participants learn to overcome their "satiety reflex," they can essentially eat as much food as they want without experiencing a sense of fullness. As they get older and possibly lose their willpower, he says, this could result in binge eating and obesity.

"There's no real documentation of the risks and dangers associated with this sport," says Levine.

Readers, have you ever competed in an eating contest? Do you find the "sport" disgusting or entertaining?

Related:

• Can eating too much spicy food kill you?
• To eat, perchance to puke
• The strange eating habits of Steve Jobs

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It’s no secret that high blood pressure ups your risk for heart attack and stroke. But now scientists are saying it could also affect how you perceive emotions.

In a new study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, researchers found that individuals with higher than normal blood pressures not only had a tough time assigning emotions to text passages they read but also had problems recognizing angry, fearful, sad and happy faces when looking at photographs.

The phenomenon is called “emotional dampening,” a kind of reduced response to both positive and negative life events, explains lead author James McCubbin, professor of psychology at Clemson University.

In previous studies, individuals with emotional dampening showed reduced responses to both pain and stress.

According to McCubbin, missing emotional cues is like “... living in a world of email without smiley faces.”

“We put smiley faces in emails to show when we are just kidding,” he says. “Otherwise some people may misinterpret our humor and get angry.”

Indeed, folks who have a problem putting both verbal and non-verbal cues like expressions into the correct context, can have problems understanding subtleties in conversation, which can lead to poor job performance, communication problems and distrust of others.  Since emotional dampening also applies to positive emotions, these folks may not reap the “restorative benefits” of hobbies, vacations, or even the support of friends and family, McCubbin says.

For the study, the researchers asked 106 African-American men and women, average age 53, to evaluate emotional expressions in faces and sentences using a special gauge called the Perception of Affect Test.

Blood pressure and other cardiac-related readings were measured continuously during the test.

After controlling for medication use, body mass index and mental state, folks with high blood pressure readings scored the lowest when it came to their ability to recognize emotions.

The scientists suspect that higher blood pressure and emotional dampening may have something to do with subtle changes in brain function.

Medications to reduce blood pressure may help people get their emotion-reading meters back on track, says McCubbin, but don’t expect it to happen overnight.  He and his colleagues are now looking at how emotional dampening may influence risk-taking behaviors.

“We believe that people with emotional dampening problems have a harder time appraising threats,” says McCubbin, which could cause people not to follow a doctor’s advice about diet and exercise -- two good ways to help lower blood pressure.

Related:

• This is awkward: Your most insecure pals may save your life
• Why watching 'The Office' makes us cringe
• Four seconds is all it takes for silence to get awkward

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Screeeeeeeech. Even imagining the sound of a person's fingernails scraping down a chalkboard is horrible. Now, new research helps suggest why the noise is such a special kind of awful. 

The frequency of the screechy, scratchy sound ranges between 2000 Hz and 4000 -- and to your ear canal, this is the zone of terror, where the human ear is most sensitive. "Some frequencies are amplified due to the anatomy of the ear canal," write musicologists Christoph Reuter, of the University of Vienna, and Michael Oehler, of the Macromedia University for Media and Communication in Cologne, Germany. In other words: Blame the shape of your ear.

In Reuter's and Oehler's study, they played two unpleasant sounds -- fingernails on a chalkboard and squeaking chalk on a slate -- but before doing so, they told half of their participants that they'd be hearing contemporary music. The other half knew the horror that was coming. Both groups reacted physically to the sounds, which induced a galvanic skin response -- a change in the skin's electrical activity that is often triggered by fright and can be measured, like a polygraph test. Those who thought they were listening to contemporary music judged the sound as slightly less unpleasant -- but they still didn't like it, suggesting psychology plays a role in what makes the noise so noxious. 

Reuter and Oehler presented their finding this week at the Acoustical Society of America meeting. 

Feeling uncomfortable after all this fingernails-on-chalkboard talk? Researchers actually proved in a 1986 study just thinking about nails-on-a-chalkboard can evoke the same psychological reaction as actually hearing the horrible sound.

Can you think of a sound that's worse than fingernails on a chalkboard? (Silverware scraping on plates? Styrofoam rubbing together?) 

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Daylight saving time ends on Sunday, which means there are a few of us asking ourselves, as we do biannually: "It's spring ahead, fall back, right?" and "Which one is the good one?" We're happy to remind our dear readers that a) it's "fall back" (duh) and b) this is the good one.

We'll get an extra hour of sleep Sunday morning, and we'll all enjoy lighter, brighter mornings. That also means longer, darker evenings. 

Your body doesn't know it yet, but this is going to be awesome. 

"Light is the most important timekeeper that signals to our bodies when we're supposed to be awake, so when are clocks are more in sync with the sun, it makes it easier," explains Dr. Anita Shelgikar, a University of Michigan neurologist. "It's certainly easier to adjust than it is in the spring."

Waking up when it's still dark for hours confuses your brain: You're up and going about your morning routine -- but your body and brain think you should still be sleeping. "That's why it's particularly important to expose your eyes to light first thing," Shelgikar says. If you'll still be rising before it's light out after we turn our clocks back, she advises to turn on the lights right after waking up -- don't tiptoe around your house in the dark! 

But because we're "falling back" this weekend, some of us will be tempted to stay up and play for an extra hour on Saturday night. That's not a great idea, Shelgikar says. The important thing is still to stick to a routine -- a preset bedtime and wake time to avoid any sleep deprivation, she explains.

Are you looking forward to turning the clocks back? Leave a comment telling us why -- or why not.

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featurepics.com

The head of a California medical company says he has developed the technology to turn your pretty brown eyes into deep baby blues, like Elijah Wood's.

Gregg Homer, PhD, of Stroma Medical Corporation in Laguna Beach, Calif., says this is possible because everybody has blue eyes already. You just can’t see them. 

“Anyone who has brown eyes has blue eyes underneath,” he says, “and it’s covered by a thin layer of pigment. We’ve developed a laser that can be fired straight through the clear part of the eye, the cornea, and it disrupts the pigment so it initiates a process in the body that digests the pigment and it removes it from the eye.”

The procedure can be done in only about 20 seconds while a person sits down, stares into a tiny animated screen while the other eye is covered. When the alternate eye looks into the animated screen, the process is complete.

The eyes don’t turn blue instantly, though. In fact, they get darker for the first week. They begin turning blue in two weeks, and within four weeks, both eyes are blue.

Homer, Chairman of the Board and Chief Medical Officer of the company, says since he was recently interviewed on a Los Angeles television station, he’s gotten nearly 3,000 requests for the procedure.

But people who want it will have to remain patient, because it won’t be available in the United States for about another three years, and about 18 months in Europe and other parts of the world. It’s expected to cost about $5,000.

“I’m incredibly excited about it,” Homer says. “I have light eyes and I think brown eyes are just as beautiful as blue eyes. But I started doing this because I thought it was a cool technology and I thought it would be nice for people to have a choice. I’m glad other people think it’s cool, too.”

Once you turn your brown eyes blue, you can’t change them back, Homer says.

Scientists from the University of Copenhagen reported that originally, we all had brown eyes until a gene mutation occurring between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago led to blue eyes.

“It’s true that brown eyes are covering up blue eyes underneath,” says Dr. Brian S. Boxer Wachler, an ophthalmologist and director of the Boxer Wachler Vision Institute in Beverly Hills, Calif. “It’s an intriguing concept, but what I’m not sure about is the safety and that’s the big question mark on this technology.”

Boxer Wachler says that cases of eye trauma and inflammation also can disrupt pigment on the iris and cause patches of blue to show through. He says before he would use it, he would have to see studies to show it doesn’t cause increased chances of glaucoma or cataracts because of damage to the eyes’ natural lenses.

If it really works and is safe, Boxer Wachler believes -- judging from the hundreds of people pay $7,000 for an eye-brightening procedure he pioneered -- there will be lots of takers.

“They’re already getting their teeth whitened and if this procedure works, we’ll have the irises lightened in the color of the eyes. We are moving in this direction of changing the appearance of the eyes.”

Related:

• Blue-eyed ballplayer blames batting woes on his peepers
• 'Cat eye syndrome' makes eyes look feline
• The truth behind eye boogers (ew)

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