By Natalie Wolchover
Life's Little Mysteries

Our brains balk at the thought of four-dimensional hypercubes, quantum mechanics or an infinite universe, and understandably so. But our gray matter is generally adept at processing sensory data from the mundane objects and experiences of daily life. However, there are a few glaring exceptions.

Here are five common things that unexpectedly throw our brains for a loop, revealing some of the bizarre quirks in their structure and function that usually manage to slip under the radar.

Doors
Do you ever walk into a room with some purpose in mind — to get something, perhaps? — only to completely forget what that purpose was?  Turns out, doors themselves are to blame for these strange memory lapses.

Why you forgot what you were just doing

Psychologists at the University of Notre Dame have discovered that passing through a doorway triggers what's known as an "event boundary" in the mind, separating one set of thoughts and memories from the next, just as exiting through a doorway signals the end of a scene in a movie. Your brain files away the thoughts you had in the previous room, and prepares a blank slate for the new locale. Mental event boundaries usually help us organize our thoughts and memories as we move through the continuous and dynamic world, but when we're trying to remember that thing we came in here to do… or get… or maybe find… they can be frustrating indeed.

Beeps
Which bugs you more: the whine of a digital alarm clock, the sound of a truck backing up, or the shrill reminders that your smoke detector is running out of batteries? Fine, they're all terrible. Beeps are practically the soundtrack of the modern world, but they're extremely irritating because each one induces a tiny brain fart.

We didn't evolve hearing beeps, so we struggle to grasp them. Natural sounds are created from a transfer of energy, often from one object striking another, such as a stick hitting a drum. In that case, energy is transferred into the drum and then gradually dissipates, causing the sound to decay over time. Our perceptual system has evolved to use that decay to understand the event — to figure out what made the sound, and where it came from. Beep sounds, on the other hand, are like cars driving at 60 mph then suddenly hitting a wall, as opposed to gradually slowing to a stop. The sound doesn't change over time, and it doesn't fade away, so our brains are baffled about what they are and where they're coming from. 

Photos
Just as we didn't evolve hearing beeps, we also didn't evolve seeing photographs. Like your grandmother learning to use the Internet but never developing an intuitive feel for it, we consciously "get" photographs, but our subconscious brains can't quite separate them from the objects or people pictured.

Case in point: Studies show that people are much less accurate when throwing darts at pictures of JFK, babies, or people they like than when throwing darts at Hitler or their worst enemy. Another study found that people start to sweat profusely when asked to cut up photographs of their cherished childhood possessions. Lacking millions of years of practice, our brains fail when it comes to separating appearance from reality.

Phones
Do you ever feel your phone vibrating in your pocket or purse, only to retrieve it and be met by eerie, black-screened lifelessness? If, like most people, you occasionally experience these "phantom vibrations," it turns out it's because your brain is jumping to wrong conclusions in an attempt to make sense of the chaos that is your life.

Brains are bombarded with sensory data; they must filter out the useless noise, and pick up on the important signals. In prehistoric times we would have constantly misinterpreted curvy sticks in the corny of our vision for snakes. Today, most of us are techno-centric, and so our brains misinterpret everything from the rustle of clothing to the growling of a stomach, jumping to the conclusion that we're getting a call or text, and actually causing us to hallucinate a full-on phone vibration.

Wheels

Ever noticed how car wheels can look like they're spinning backwards in the movies? This is because movie cameras capture still images of a scene at a finite rate, and the brain fills in the gaps between these images by creating the illusion of continuous motion between the similar frames. If the wheel rotates most of the way around between one frame and the next, the most obvious direction of motion for the brain to pick up on is backwards, since this direction suggests the minimal difference between the two frames. [Why It Took so Long to Invent the Wheel]

However, wheels can also appear to spin backwards in real life, too, which is weirder. The leading theory to explain the "continuous wagon wheel illusion," as it is known, holds that the brain's motion perception system samples its input as a series of discrete snapshots, much like a movie camera. So our brains are effectively filming their own movies of the external world, but not always at a fast enough frame rate to perceive the wheels in the scene spinning the right way. 

For scientific explanations of five more brain farts, click here .

More from Life's Little Mysteries:

• 15 Weird Things Humans Do Every Day, and Why
• Top 10 Inventions that Changed the World
• Why Aren't We Smarter?

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• Myth, busted: You only use 10 percent of your brain
• Why it's hard to remember two new things
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By Jeanna Bryner
LiveScience

When your head hits the pillow, for many it's lights out for the conscious part of you. But the cells firing in your brain are very much awake, sparking enough energy to produce the sometimes vivid and sometimes downright haunted dreams that take place during the rapid-eye-movement stage of your sleep.

Why do some people have nightmares while others really spend their nights in bliss? Like sleep, dreams are mysterious phenomena. But as scientists are able to probe deeper into our minds, they are finding some of those answers.

Here's some of what we know about what goes on in dreamland.

1. Violent dreams can be a warning sign

As if nightmares weren't bad enough, a rare sleep disorder — called REM sleep behavior disorder — causes people to act out their dreams, sometimes with violent thrashes, kicks and screams. Such violent dreams may be an early sign of brain disorders down the line, including Parkinson's disease and dementia, according to research published online July 28, 2010, in the journal Neurology. The results suggest the incipient stages of these neurodegenerative disorders might begin decades before a person, or doctor, knows it.

2. Night owls have more nightmares

Staying up late has its perks, but whimsical dreaming is not one of them. Research published in 2011 in the journal Sleep and Biological Rhythms, revealed that night owls are more likely than their early-bird counterparts to experience nightmares.

In the study 264 university students rated how often they experienced nightmares on a scale from 0 to 4, never to always, respectively. The stay-up-late types scored, on average, a 2.10, compared with the morning types who averaged a 1.23. The researchers said the difference was a significant one, however, they aren’t sure what's causing a link between sleep habits and nightmares. Among their ideas is the stress hormone cortisol, which peaks in the morning right before we wake up, a time when people are more prone to be in REM, or dream, sleep. If you’re still sleeping at that time, the cortisol rise could trigger vivid dreams or nightmares, the researchers speculate. [ Top 10 Spooky Sleep Disorders ]

3. Men dream about sex

As in their wake hours, men also dream about sex more than women do. And comparing notes in the morning may not be a turn-on for either guys or gals, as women are more likely to have experienced nightmares, suggests doctoral research reported in 2009 by psychologist Jennie Parker of the University of the West of England.

She found women's dreams/nightmares could be grouped into three categories: fearful dreams (being chased or having their life threatened); dreams involving the loss of a loved one; or confused dreams.

4. You can control your dreams

If you're interested in lucid dreaming, you may want to take up video gaming. The link? Both represent alternate realities, said Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada.

"If you're spending hours a day in a virtual reality, if nothing else it's practice," Gackenbach told LiveScience in 2010. "Gamers are used to controlling their game environments, so that can translate into dreams." Her past research has shown that people who frequently play video games are more likely than non-gamers to have lucid dreams where they view themselves from outside their bodies; they were also better able to influence their dream worlds, as if controlling a video-game character.

That level of control may also help gamers turn a bloodcurdling nightmare into a carefree dream, she found in a 2008 study. This ability could help war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Gackenbach reasoned.

5. Why we dream

Scientists have long wondered why we dream, with answers ranging from Sigmund Freud's idea that dreams fulfill our wishes to the speculation that these wistful journeys are just a side effect of rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. Turns out, at least part of the reason may be critical thinking, suggests Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett who presented her theory in 2010 at the Association for Psychological Science meeting in Boston.

Her research revealed that our slumbering hours may help us solve puzzles that have plagued us during daylight hours. The visual and often illogical aspects of dreams make them perfect for the out-of-the-box thinking that is necessary to solve some problems, she speculates.

So while dreams may have originally evolved for another purpose, they have likely been refined over time for multiple tasks, including helping the brain reboot and helping us solve problems, she said.

What's the strangest dream you remember? Tell us on Facebook

More from LiveScience:
Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind

Top Ten Unexplained Phenomena

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Robert Byron / Featurepics.com

Think about steak, eat broccoli. This probably doesn't work for vegetarians.

Do you still act like the kid on the school lunch line who grumbles when he's served a pile of flaccid carrots? Here's a weird trick: Staring at a picture of a T-bone beforehand may make your vegetables more enjoyable, according to a new study in PLoS ONE.

When you view a salivating picture, your orbital frontal cortex, the region of the brain responsible for coding pleasant experiences, lights up and convinces your tongue that the bland food you're eating is tastier than it actually is, explains study author Johannes Le Coutre, Ph.D, head of perception physiology at Nestle Research Center in Switzerland.

We don't expect you to carry around pictures of juicy steaks or blistered pizza, but you can make your own healthy meals look and taste more like caloric feasts. We've recruited food stylist Brian Preston-Campbell, who is also a trained chef, to give us a few tips on how to make the following five health foods more tantalizing.

Related: Takeout That Delivers

1. Broccoli: Salt It
Green vegetables should always be cooked in salted boiling water because it not only seasons the produce, but enhances the color. Then shock them in ice water to halt the cooking process and lock in that emerald beauty.

2. Cauliflower: Add Color
"Steamed white cauliflower is a food stylist's death knell, only made worse when it is paired with steamed chicken breast or baked tilapia in a white butter sauce," says Preston-Campbell. One remedy? Leave some stem on the florets to help to break up the rounded tops of the cauliflower pieces and add a little contrast. Then add some color and texture to the dish with breadcrumbs, herbs, or spices. You can also mix it with colorful vegetables. (Need more great ways to spice up your food? Watch how chef Eddie Huang reinvents junk food.)

3. Yogurt: Strain It
Line a fine mesh strainer with a coffee filter or clean paper towel, and place on top of a bowl to catch the yogurt's liquid. Pour in the yogurt, and drain overnight in the refrigerator. In the morning, you'll be left with a thick, velvety yogurt that can hold a swirled texture (like a spiraling cone of soft serve).

4. Kale: Perfect Its Color
Buy the freshest, most vibrantly green bunch you can find, you want to start with a quality product. Then heavily salt the water to perk up the color and boil for only one or two minutes, just to soften these hardy leaves. Then, saute for about 5 minutes (don't let it brown) with some garlic, pine nuts, bacon or pepper flakes for added color and flavor. Avoid mixing in acids such as vinegar or lemon juice, which will make these leaves wilt in vibrancy and texture. (Start stripping off extra pounds with the newly expanded 2012 edition of Eat This, Not That!)

5. Tilapia: Keep It Moist
Tilapia doesn't look appetizing because it's flat, white, and simply not as exciting as a thick piece of bright red tuna or fresh fillet of salmon. Cooking this fish in a tomato broth will add color and keep the fish moist. Follow Preston-Campbell's recipe: Puree two cored and coarsely chopped tomatoes, the juice of half a lemon, a dash of dried oregano, and a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil in a blender. Salt and pepper to taste. Strain into a saute pan and bring to a simmer. Place the tilapia fillets in the pan and poach the fish (just below a simmer on low heat, don't let it boil!) until they are cooked through, about 8 minutes.

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Make healthy miso-walnut dressing for a kale salad

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Courtesy of Ariana Page Russell

Due to an allergic condition, Ariana Page Russell's skin provides an unexpected canvas for "skin writing." Russell used a stencil to rub this floral pattern on her stomach. Histamines helped create the colorful, raised design.

Ariana Page Russell's skin sometimes has an unusual reaction when she gets a slight scratch: Within minutes, her skin feels warm and the area that was scratched gets red, puffy, and raised like a hive.

Next, it turns white and then a little pink. Twenty minutes later any swelling, itchiness, or markings are gone, and her skin looks normal.

To Russell, it's just "this weird thing my skin does." It wasn't until she sought out a dermatologist that she realized this odd reaction had a name: dermographic urticaria.

Also called dermographism, meaning "writing on the skin," this exaggerated skin reaction is a type of hive, or "urticaria."

Courtesy of Ariana Page Russell

Ariana Page Russell used blunt knitting needles to form the letters on her legs.

If Russell, a 33-year-old New York City artist, scratches the letters of a word on her forearm, upper thigh, or stomach, you'd be able to read it because it will look like she has been writing on her skin.

"This reaction is due to a histamine release," says dermatologist Dr. Joanna Wallengren, who has studied dermographic urticaria. "This is the same response as in spontaneous hives." (Histamine is also what's released in an allergic reaction.)

These hives occur anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes after skin is scratched. First, the skin becomes red, and then a raised welt forms, followed by white hives along the scratch line.

"Often the central part is whiter than the surrounding redness," explains Wallengren, an associate professor in the department of dermatology at Skane University Hospital in Lund, Sweden. "There is often an itching or burning sensation," she adds.

Wallengren says that pressure on the skin is the most common trigger of dermographic urticaria. This can be from the pressure of tight-fitting clothing or from carrying a heavy bag that rubs against the skin. Some people get it after showering and scrubbing their skin.

This exaggerated skin reaction is usually not inherited, and most people with it do not have allergies or sensitive skin, according to Wallengren. Emotions and stress may worsen symptoms, she says.

Although the exact cause of dermographic urticaria is unclear, Wallengren says that people normally respond to treatment with antihistamines taken on a daily basis. "Sometimes one pill is not enough," to relieve itchiness, "and the dose needs to be doubled or tripled," she points out. 

Roughly 5 percent of the population is thought to have dermographism, and it's most common in young adults in their 20s and 30s.

Russell first noticed her skin had this odd reaction when she was in high school. Russell, who says she has a mild form, decided to play around with it and use her skin as a canvas for her artwork. Then she photographed the results.

"This was a unique way for me to make art," she explains. She uses blunt knitting needles to make her designs. Sometimes she draws freehand and other times she creates stencils with intricate patterns that she traces onto her skin.

"It doesn't hurt, but I know other people tell me that dermographic urticaria causes them pain," Russell says.

Asked about the reaction to her skin-related artwork, Russell admits, "Some people think it's weird, strange, or disgusting."

"But then I get hundreds of emails from people with skin issues who are so appreciative that I am putting my skin condition out there," she adds. "They tell me I'm doing something beautiful with a weird condition."

When people with dermographic urticaria see her photographs, it helps them know that they are not a freak, she suggests.

"I'm just trying to show that this is skin, and everybody's skin does different things," Russell says. "There's nothing to be ashamed of."

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Since the dawn of human art-making, the divide has been clear: There are people who can effortlessly sketch an object's likeness, and people who struggle for hours just to get the angles and proportions right (by which point the picture is scarred by eraser marks, anyway). What separates the drawers from the drawer-nots?

Ongoing research is revealing the answer to this longstanding question. It seems that realistic drawing ability hinges on three factors: how a person perceives reality, how well he or she remembers visual information from one moment to the next, and which elements of an object he or she selects to actually draw.

If you're stuck on stick figures, the good news, according to researchers at the University College London, is that people can improve at all these mental processes with practice.

First, people who can't draw well aren't seeing the world as it really is. When we look at an object, our visual systems automatically misjudge such attributes as size, shape and color; research over the past three years shows at least some of these misperceptions translate into drawing errors. Paradoxically, in other circumstances the misperceptions help us make sense of the world. For example, objects appear larger when they are closer than when they are far away. Even so, the visual system practices "size constancy" by perceiving the object as being approximately one size no matter how far away it is. The visual system, "knowing" a distant object is really bigger than it appears, sends false information to the brain about what the eyeball is seeing.

People who have the most trouble judging apparent size, shape, color and brightness may also be the worst at drawing, recent research by Justin Ostrofsky and his colleagues at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York suggests. Those who draw well are better able to override these visual misperceptions and perceive what their own eyeballs are really seeing. [ Red-Green & Blue-Yellow: The Stunning Colors You Can't See ]

However, inaccurately perceiving the image is only part of the story, said Rebecca Chamberlain, a psychologist at University College London. Chamberlain and her colleagues recently conducted experiments investigating the role of visual memory in the drawing process. They believe that drawing skill results in part from an ability to remember simple relationships in an object ― such as an angle between two lines ― from the moment the angle is perceived to the moment it is drawn. Additionally, "drawing seems to involve focusing on both holistic proportional relationships as well as focus on detail isolated from the whole. Perhaps it is the ability to switch between these two modes of seeing that underpins successful drawing," Chamberlain told Life's Little Mysteries.

Furthermore, as detailed in December in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, Ostrofsky and his colleagues found significant evidence that skilled artists are better at selecting which elements of an object need to be included to convey the object's form. And once the artists have selected an important element, they are better at focusing their attention on it and ignoring extraneous details nearby.

The devil is in the details, and the researchers are still working out the interplay between all the factors that affect drawing accuracy. However, they can all be learned. "There is no doubt that practice is an important component of being able to draw," Chamberlain said. While some may be predisposed to be better at perceptual accuracy and visual memory than others, "the rest of us use tricks to emulate this." [ 6 Fun Ways to Sharpen Your Memory ]

In research presented at a recent symposium at Columbia University and soon to be published by Columbia University Press, Chamberlain and her colleagues found practicing drawing significantly improved people's abilities over time, as rated by other people who participated in the study.

Based on their research, the psychologists recommended the following techniques for getting better at drawing: Focus on scaling a drawing to fit the size of the paper; anchor an object in its surroundings by showing how it sits in space; focus on the distance between elements of the object and on their relative sizes; and focus on the size and shape of "negative space," or the empty space between parts of the object. Lastly, they recommend thinking of "lines" as what they really are — boundaries between light and dark areas.

As Chris McManus, a member of the research team, noted, "There are few human skills which don't improve with practice."

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• 10 Everyday Things that Cause Brain Farts
• Slideshow: Scientists Analyze Drawings by an Acid-Tripping Artist
• How Colors Got Their Symbolic Meanings 

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At some point most of us confuse left and right like we’re in a scene from an old Three Stooges one-reeler: “The one in your left hand!” “No, your other left!” Bonk!

It seems silly. After all, it’s not like we’re new to the concept; we’ve been using our left and right hands all our lives. Yet we sometimes flub -- some of us more often than others.

I’m not referring to people who’ve had strokes or suffered some other injury or illness. Then there’s often a clear explanation for what neuroscientists call “left-right confusion.”

But in 1978, researchers polled 364 university faculty, none of whom had any known neurological problems, and all of whom would seem to be smarter than the Three Stooges. It turned out that left-right confusion was common, especially among the women. The question was, why?

It’s now 34 years later and, said Eric Chudler, director of the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering at the University of Washington, whose work depends on knowing left from right, “that’s a difficult question. I don’t know if any answer exists.”

According to M.K. Holder, executive director of the Handedness Research Institute, and an adjunct assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Indiana University, the link between brain “lateralization” -- the way specific functions appear to reside in left or right sides of our brains -- and handedness (or even what we mean when we say “handedness”) is still unclear.

But there does appear to be a link between degree of lateralization and confusion.

For example, left-right confusion may be related to spatial reasoning. If so, it might help explain why it’s more common in women than men; as a group, women tend to underperform on a critical test of spatial reasoning, called mental rotation, that requires subjects to mentally rotate images to tell if they’re identical or mirror images of each other.

In 2011, though, a team of German scientists disputed that connection by testing men and women who were matched in mental rotation ability before subjecting them to two standard tests of left-right confusion. (The tests require people to make a quick decision in response to directional words or symbols.) Their report, which appeared in Brain and Cognition, found that “matched participants showed robust sex differences in favor of men in all [left-right confusion] measurements. This suggests that pronounced sex differences…are a genuine phenomenon that exists independently of sex differences in mental rotation.”

The degree of asymmetry of one’s brain hemispheres, or the degree of lateralization, may be important. In 2009, British scientists found that those whose hearing was more biased toward one ear over another, a sign of asymmetry, were more likely to display confusion. Still, there’s no definitive answer yet.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to test your own degree of left-right confusion, Chudler has a test on his website.  

Brian Alexander (www.BrianRAlexander.com) is co-author, with Larry Young PhD., of "The Chemistry Between Us: Love Sex and the Science of Attraction," to be published Sept. 13.

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Jill, Ann, and Kimberly go off to college with warnings from their parents about sex and the “Freshman 15” ringing in their ears. Months later, Jill has gained 15 pounds and Ann has become a sexual adventurer. Kimberly, on the other hand, has not only maintained her weight, she's been too busy studying in the library stacks to hook up.

What accounts for the differences?

It could be the way each one’s brain reward center responds to food and sexual cues, reports a new study.

According to research out of Dartmouth College, in some people, hyperactivation of the nucleus accumbens, a key reward structure buried within the brain's striatum, predicted the eating and sexual behaviors of people (in this case, a group of freshmen women).

This suggests one’s ability to say “no” is not just a matter of willpower, but brain wiring.  

The study, published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience, used fMRI brain imaging and pictures depicting food, erotica, landscapes, and people to gauge how the test subjects' accumbens reacted to each stimulus. (The 48 women who completed the study had no idea what it was actually about.)

Six months later, the women returned to the lab where they were weighed and asked to fill out a questionnaire. Those whose accumbens reacted especially strongly to food cues had gained more weight. And those who reacted to sexual cues most strongly were more likely to have had sex and report stronger sexual desire.

Interestingly, their "appetites" did not cross over. The women with hyperactive responses to sex cues did not have a hyperactive response to food and vice versa.

Bill Kelley, associate professor of Dartmouth's department of psychological and brain sciences, says the study shows that the activation of one brain region proved to be a strong predictor of later behavior, demonstrating that the stronger the “liking” response to a stimulus, the less able we are to “hear” our rational brain saying “no.” 

But are we born this way, or do we acquire stronger craving for specific rewards?

“That’s a great question,” said Kathryn Demos, who led the study and is now an assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University.

Kelley thinks that since different women were tempted by different things, their brain wiring has developed through experience, aided by a genetic component.

Luckily, there are tools that can help people blunt the power of their brain wiring. Behavioral therapies, for example, have had some limited success in people who seem strongly stimulated by food. 

People can also try to replace various cravings with something more healthful, for instance, going for a run whenever they're tempted to eat a cheeseburger.

As for the findings, Demos says the idea that all people are equally capable of self-control is naïve.

Reward, she says, “is a very powerful system.”

Brian Alexander (www.BrianRAlexander.com) is co-author, with Larry Young PhD., of The Chemistry Between Us: Love Sex and the Science of Attraction, to be published September 13.

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• All that stress is shrinking your brain, study finds
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Getty Images stock

So delicious, and yet ice cream can be so painful if brain freeze strikes.

By Jennifer Walsh
LiveScience

Most people have likely experienced brain freeze — the debilitating, instantaneous pain in the temples after eating something frozen — but researchers didn't really understand what causes it, until now.

Previous studies have found that migraine sufferers are actually more likely to get brain freeze than people who don't get migraines. Because of this, the researchers thought the two might share some kind of common mechanism or cause, so they decided to use brain freeze to study migraines.

Headaches like migraines are difficult to study, because they are unpredictable. Researchers aren't able to monitor a whole one from start to finish in the lab. They can give drugs to induce migraines, but those can also have side effects that interfere with the results. Brain freeze can quickly and easily be used to start a headache in the lab, and it also ends quickly, which makes monitoring the entire event easy.

The researchers brought on brain freeze in the lab by having 13 healthy volunteers sip ice water through a straw right up against the roof of their mouth. The volunteers raised their hands when they felt the familiar brain freeze come on, and raised them again once it disappeared.

The researchers monitored the blood flow through their brains using an ultrasoundlike process on the skull. They saw that increased blood flow to the brain through a blood vessel called the anterior cerebral artery, which is located in the middle of the brain behind the eyes. This increase in flow and resulting increase in size in this artery brought on the pain associated with brain freeze. [ Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind ]

When the artery constricts, reining in the response to this increased flow, the pain disappears. The dilation, then quick constriction, of this blood vessel may be a type of self-defense for the brain, the researchers suggested.

"The brain is one of the relatively important organs in the body, and it needs to be working all the time," study researcher Jorge Serrador, of Harvard Medical School, said in a statement. "It's fairly sensitive to temperature, so vasodilation [the widening of the blood vessels ] might be moving warm blood inside tissue to make sure the brain stays warm."

This influx of blood can't be cleared as quickly as it is coming in during the brain freeze, so it could raise the pressure inside the skull and induce pain that way. As the pressure and temperature in the brain rise, the blood vessel constricts, reducing pressure in the brain before it reaches dangerous levels.

If other headaches work in the same way, drugs that stop these blood vessels from opening up, or that could make this blood vessel constrict could help treat them, the researchers say. [ Big Headaches: Facts on Migraines ]

The work was presented during a poster session Sunday at the Experimental Biology 2012 meeting in San Diego.

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Mark Kolbe / Getty Images

Are you scared right now? Symptoms of coulrophobia, the fear of clowns, can include sweating, nausea, feelings of dread, fast heartbeat, crying or screaming, and anger at being placed in a situation where a clown is present.

For those infected with the panic, the monsters typically pounce with mammoth feet as high-pitched, almost-joyful squeals emanate from their frightful noses. Scarier still, these creatures tend to travel in tight clusters, often arriving in the same manner.

One teeny-tiny car.

Based on responses to a recent story on the TODAY.com about a 95-year-old clown named "Creeky,” many people harbor the heebie-jeebies for men and women who traipse around in greasepaint, frilly orange wigs and gigantic bowties.

Among the 83 people who commented on the Facebook post about the story, 20 used the word “creepy” and many others admitted to being spooked by clowns, posting confessions such as "clowns freak the hell out of me" and "I hate clowns, ever since I watched 'It' [the movie based on the Stephen King novel]."

“They just look evil to me!” says Sue Molitor, of Valley Park, Missouri, one of people who commented negatively about clowns.

“I honestly do not remember when I began to dislike clowns," she added in an email interview. "I've never encountered one where I turned around and left because I never put myself close enough to one."

Molitor says if she had her way, Ronald McDonald would be out of a job.

"I wouldn't be surprised if he hasn't scared a few children over the years and now they are in therapy," she says. “Also, the commercial from the U.S. Postal Service? Priceless!”

By definition, an irrational fear of clowns is known as coulrophobia, with the prefix "coulro" coming from the ancient Greek word for "one who goes on stilts." Symptoms of coulrophobia can include sweating, nausea, feelings of dread, fast heartbeat, crying or screaming, and anger at being placed in a situation where a clown is present.

According to Rami Nader, a psychologist and director of the North Shore Stress and Anxiety Clinic in North Vancouver, B.C., the psychological roots of the phobia may be traced to the fact that clowns are basically wearing disguises (albeit funny ones) while displaying artificial emotions (even silly ones) that perhaps hide their true feelings.

"You can’t really tell who they are," he says. "You can’t really see their face. You don’t really know what that all means behind the mask.”

Nader says he only rarely sees people with the disorder, however, coulrophobia is common enough to warrant at least one study, conducted by the University of Sheffield in England in 2008.

Researchers asked more than 250 children (ages four to 16) what they thought of the idea of using clown imagery to decorate a hospital children's ward. According to Dr. Penny Curtis, who helped conduct the study, "We found that clowns [were] universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable."

How do you treat a clown phobia?

The same way you treat any other phobia, says Nader, the psychologist

“What we need to do is gradually come into contact with that thing – whether it’s spiders or heights, whatever you’re afraid of – and learn to cope with the anxiety, learn to recognize that what you’re afraid of won’t actually harm you," he says. "You won’t lose control, you won’t panic, you won’t embarrass yourself with other people."

Judy Chessa, LMSW and coordinator at the Anxiety & Phobia Treatment Center in New York’s White Plains Hospital, says she can’t recall ever treating any person with coulrophobia.

“But I wonder if that’s because this isn’t a phobia as much as a fear,” she says. “You can put the suffix ‘phobia’ after pretty much anything and define it as a phobia.

“Most likely, people with this fear can just easily avoid situations where they encounter clowns. So it doesn’t become an issue for them. They don’t see clowns during the day or at their jobs – except, I guess, those poor people who work at the circus.”

Do you have any phobias? Tell us on Facebook.

Video: Overcoming extreme animal phobia

Video: Virtual reality to cure phobias?

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Jed Jacobsohn / Getty Images

Dudes become even more dudelike when watching a game because of a spike in testosterone and cortisol, a new study find. Here, fired up Philadelphia Eagles fans cheer before the start of a game.

You see this raging rowdiness in “The Black Hole” – a freakishly fired-up swath of the Oakland Coliseum where Raiders rooters are notorious for needling their football enemies.

You can witness this same ferocity among Philadelphia Eagles fans – so ornery they once booed a man dressed as Santa Claus before pounding Saint Nick with snowballs. Then again, if you are any sort of sports-obsessed guy – (OK, let’s just say, if you’re a guy), you, too, probably talk smack with your buds and vent venom at the flat screen whenever the score gets close.

Well, now we know exactly why – on a chemical level – boys will be boys when a ballgame hangs in the balance.  According to a study published Wednesday, dudes actually become even more dude-like while watching their beloved teams compete.

Blame steroids. The natural kinds, that is. During games, two hormones – testosterone and cortisol – increase within the bodies of sports boosters, especially “dedicated, young, male fans,” writes a study team headed by Leander van der Meij, a PhD at the University of Valencia in Spain and VU University Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

Of course, you hardly need instant replay to feel your testosterone tide rise as the big play unfolds. Your eyes widen. Your pulse quickens. You prepare to holler – or curse. Here’s what you didn’t know: that testosterone stream is part of a hormone secretion dubbed the “challenge hypothesis.” This, the study’s authors say, is how humans internally “prepare for the game.”

The scientists examined 50 Spanish soccer fans (via 5-milliliter saliva samples) as the group viewed the 2010 World Cup finals between Spain and the Netherlands. (Spain won 1-0). Interestingly, “no sex differences” were noted in the testosterone levels of the fans examined, said van der Meij.

(Ladies, speaking for the men, we respect that sports fire.)

But the amount of cortisol was generally much higher in the guys than in the gals, the study found. That sudden gush from the adrenal gland – typically generated by stress and used to boost blood sugar – is consistent with the "social self-preservation theory," the authors wrote. In other words, “young and greater soccer fans … perceived a particularly strong threat to their own social esteem if their team didn't win.”

“Watching the match was probably more stressful for men than for women,” van der Meij said, via email. “Male fans expected a bigger goal difference … and perceived the match as more frustrating than women.”

For senior soccer buffs, meanwhile, their saliva samples showed less coristol than those taken from the younger fans, according to the study.

“A possibility is that older fans may have coped better with the stress of viewing the soccer final,” van der Meij said.

The veteran fans simply had weathered so many sports nail-biters, their adrenals had grown used to on-field tension.

That’s not to say that the oldsters – especially the graying dudes in the stands – didn’t give a spit.

What's the most outrageous thing you - or your guy - have done at a game? Tell us on Facebook.

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After 35 years, woman gets her voice back thanks to jet technology 

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featurepics.com

Actually, 90 percent of your brain is not just languishing, it turns out.

Good news for all those who ever had a teacher or a parent say “If you would just apply yourself you could learn anything! You’re only using 10 percent of your brain!”

All those people were wrong. If we did use only 10 percent of our brains we’d be close to dead, according to Eric Chudler, director of the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering at the University of Washington, who maintains an entertaining brain science website for kids. “When recordings are made from brain EEGs, or PET scans, or any type of brain scan, there’s no part of the brain just sitting there unused,” he said. 

Larry Squire, a research neuroscientist with the Veterans Administration hospital in San Diego, and at the University of California San Diego, pointed out that “any place the brain is damaged there is a consequence.”

Damaged brains may have been where this myth originated. During the first half of the last century, a pioneering neuroscientist named Karl Lashley experimented on rodents by excising portions of their brains to see what happened. When he put these rodents in mazes they’d been trained to navigate, he found that animals with missing bits of brain often successfully navigated the mazes.

This wound up being transmuted into the idea humans must be wasting vast brain potential. With the rise of the human potential movement in the 1960s, some preached that all sorts of powers, including bending spoons and psychic abilities, were laying dormant in our heads and that all we had to do was get off our duffs and activate them.

“That’s a case of something one often sees, of taking something from the world of psychology and in trying to make the idea concrete, bringing in the mechanisms of biology,” Squire explained. “It’s fair to say we can all do better, and we have room for improvement through practice and developing skills, but that has nothing to do with the idea that we use only 10 percent of our brains.”

The brain, Chudler said, isn’t like a disc drive with some set amount of capacity. It’s a dynamic maze of wiring where new connections can be created in response to new stimuli, or lost with disuse. And much of it is constantly occupied not with intellectual thinking, but running our systems.

“That’s why the brain is such an expensive organ,” he explained. “It requires 20 percent of our blood supply, and it’s a real energy hog.” If we used only 10 percent of it, the brain wouldn’t require such high maintenance.

“Besides,” he pointed out, "why would our brains have gotten bigger through evolution if so much of it were going unused?”

 Brian Alexander is co-author, with Larry Young PhD., of "The Chemistry Between Us: Love Sex and the Science of Attraction," to be published September 13.

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By Rita Rubin

The original Yellow Wiggle is back, but he’ll never be free of the disorder that forced him to stop Wiggling five years ago.

Greg Page, 40, a.k.a. Yellow Wiggle, left the "The Wiggles," the wildly popular kids’ singing group he helped found 21 years ago, because of symptoms related to orthostatic intolerance, a little-understood condition. In January, though, The Australia-based Wiggles announced Page had rejoined the group, set to tour the United States this summer.

And that was welcome news for Vanderbilt University cardiologist Dr. Satish Raj, a Wiggles aficionado who also happens to specialize in studying and treating the disorder that forced Page to pass his yellow "skivvy," or t-shirt, on to replacement Sam Moran.

"The Wiggles have not been the same with Sam since Greg left," says Raj, father of a 7-year-old daughter and 2 ½-year-old son. Raj has been known to sing Wiggles songs to his adult patients at the Vanderbilt Autonomic Dysfunction Center.( Autonomic refers to the autonomic nervous system, which controls automatic functions such as heart and breathing rate.) When he read of Page’s illness, Raj says, he emailed The Wiggles through their website to offer his services, but got a "no, thank you" in reply.

Page, who suffered from fainting spells, chronic fatigue and poor balance and coordination, according to The Wiggles website, was tested for a variety of conditions before doctors figured out he had orthostatic intolerance, "a beautifully vague term," Raj says, that describes anybody who has trouble standing up.

"What Greg had sounded more like what we call POTS," or "postural tachycardia syndrome," a type of orthostatic intolerance, Raj says. Page is unusual for a POTS patient, Raj says, because four out of five sufferers are women, and only about one in five have fainting spells.

When POTS patients stand for as little as five minutes, their heart rate can jump up to 30 beats per minute, Raj says. They often have high levels of norepinephrine, the stress hormone that underlies the "fight-or-flight" response. And most have decreased blood volume due to low levels of two hormones, regulated by the kidneys,that promote salt retention and increase plasma volume.

Patients frequently report that their symptoms began following stressors such as pregnancy or major surgery, Raj says, and Page has said his got worse after he underwent hernia surgery.

Treatments include small doses of beta-blockers and increased salt and water intake to increase blood volume. That's where a Wiggles song plays a role in Raj's practice. "Gulp, Gulp, Drink Some Water," he'll sing to patients to encourage them to chug the stuff, especially before they get out of bed in the morning.

Page apparently is practicing what he sings. "My health is much better now due to having a greater understanding of the disorder (Orthostatic Intolerance) and how to manage it appropriately. It is not a curable condition and will always be with me," he wrote on his website in February.

"There's no doubt about it," Raj says, "people have good days and bad days."

On top of a much-reduced quality of life, comparable to that of kidney failure patients on hemodialysis, POTS patients have to deal with disbelieving doctors, Raj says. "Doctors often think that they’re crazy."

One of his patients is a medical student who talks to undergraduates about her condition. Raj says the woman tells fellow students:  "The worst part of this is if I didn’t have it myself, I wouldn’t believe me."

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"What would you trade for Internet access?" That's the question the Boston Consulting Group posed to survey participants across the globe. The results from the USA might surprise you:

• 21 percent would stop having sex. It's like saying: "Sorry honey, I would rather read Kim Kardashian's Twitter feed."
• 84 percent would ditch their GPS. Let the "Why don't we just ask for directions?" fights commence.
• 83 percent would say good-bye to fast food. We finally found what would break America's drive-thru obsession.
• 77 percent would cut out chocolate. Which means 23 percent of people are crazy enough about cocoa beans to keep their candy instead of the world wide web.
• 73 percent would skip happy hour for good. Let's toast to the web: Nearly three-quarters of Americans would abstain from alcoholic beverages in order to go on the Internet.
• 43 percent would put an end to exercising. Any excuse to skip the gym, right?
• 10 percent would throw away their car keys. The skyrocketing price of gas doesn't hurt either.

5 Ways to Heat Up Your Sex Life

And the kicker:

7 percent would stop showering. That's right, people are willing to give up basic hygiene for Words With Friends, which we can't help but think might actually limit real life friends.

Bringing The Sexy Back

And it seems that our counterparts across the pond are even more digitally dependent than Americans: A whopping 17 percent of Brits would forego bathing for an entire year in order to get web access. These findings are astounding and a bit disturbing. With a growing number of studies showing how technology can do a number on our health, from messing up sleep patterns to hurting self-esteem, we can't help but wonder…Is it time for a digital detox?

More Links:
40 Things You Should Know About Sex By Age 40
5 Ways Your Job Is Making You Fat
Is Facebook Ruining Your Self-Esteem?
The 8 Best Cities for Singles Over 40

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

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Warning: Yellow journalism alert.

When grown men and little boys urinate, occasionally our entire body is abruptly racked with a mysterious, internal blast of cold that makes us visibly shudder from the shoulders down. It typically occurs near the end of the task, lasting roughly one frigid second.

This chill is not discussed, of course, in polite circles -- or even when we return to our buds in the sports bar. So, at no time will you hear: “Dudes, you’ll never guess what just happened to me in the bathroom?” Well … hopefully never.

Yet, we’ve given this sensation a name: the pee shiver. And as the name suggests, depending on a guy’s aim, it can make for messy results. 

So let’s get right to question No. 1.

Why, in the name of Wiz Khalifa (or, if you like, P. Diddy), does this happen?

No leaks were required to obtain this information. We simply turned to Dr. Anish Sheth, author of “What’s My Pee Telling Me?”

“No one knows for certain what the specific trigger for the shivering is,” says Sheth, formerly director of the gastrointestinal motility program at Yale Medical School. But he points to two generally accepted variables to help solve this riddle.

First, the feeling “mostly” is experienced by males. Second, it “occurs most commonly while voiding large amounts of urine,” he says.

Or, to put it as delicately as possible, the icy jolt seems to hit after we’ve really, really had to go. Never after a tiny trickle.

According to Sheth, our parasympathetic nervous system (responsible for “rest-and-digest” functions) lowers the body’s blood pressure “to initiate urination.” One leading theory behind the shudder is that peeing can unleash a reactive response from the body’s sympathetic nervous system (which handles “fight or flight” actions).

On the cellular level, the body is theoretically flushed with catecholamines (which you know better as chemicals like dopamine or hormones like adrenaline). Those are dispatched to help restore or maintain blood pressure, Sheth says. But the microscopic energy bullets “may also trigger the shiver reflect.”

This theory, the author says, best explains “the gender difference as men pee standing up and, therefore, would be more prone to feeling the effects of a lower blood pressure, thereby triggering this exaggerated sympathetic nervous system response.

“Anecdotally,” he adds, “I don’t believe I have ever experienced the post-pee shivers while sitting down.” This would suggest that women don't tend to get them. (Do you? If so, please let us know.)

“I wouldn't know if it's a guy thing or a girl thing because I've never had a conversation with a girl about this – and it's not likely to happen anytime soon,” says stand-up comedian Dan Nainan

“I always wonder: what is that? … Why is it happening?” Nainan adds. “Obviously there is an evolutionary or natural-selection reason for everything. (But) as I'm trying to picture a caveman urinating out in the open, I'm wondering what the necessity of the shivering is.

“I think it tends to happen more in a public bathroom,” he adds. “Could it be some sort of way to warn off nearby enemies or something?”

Wow, comics must have to endure some pretty rough bathrooms.

Bill Briggs is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com and author of “The Third Miracle.”

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AFP - Getty Images file

Photos of Steven Tyler relaxing on the beach in flip flops surfaced in celebrity tabloids recently -- but what caught our eyes was the rock star's mangled, tangled toes.

“Walk this way,” Steven Tyler wails in the Aerosmith song of the same name, but you might want to think twice about mimicking any of Tyler’s moves. His high-energy stage performances likely caused a foot ailment, deforming his foot.

Photos of Tyler’s foot surfaced recently, showing his second toe crossing over his big toe and the other digits slouching toward it. (Msnbc.com doesn't have rights to the photo, but you can see it here.) After several surgeries he still experiences excruciating pain, one of the reasons he became a judge on American Idol—so he could relax. He says Morton’s neuroma caused his gnarled toes.

The word “neuroma” seems to imply that there is a tumor, says Dr. Allan Boike, a podiatrist and section head of podiatry at Cleveland Clinic, who explains that it’s not a tumor (he says without using his best Schwarzenegger impression). “It’s an irritation or a fibroid.”

Morton’s neuroma is a foot condition that most often affects the nerves between the third and forth toes. Two nerves connect there and they can become trapped under the ligament, causing them to move awkwardly when a person walks, runs, or dances. The nerves thicken, leading to pain and swelling. A patient with Morton’s neuroma complains of stinging in the ball of her foot and say it feels like she is walking on a pebble or marble.  

Often, patients link the onset of pain to specific shoes.

“A female will come in and says, ‘When I go to church and wear my good shoes, I have a burning, shooting-type pain in the ball of my foot,’ ” Boike says.  

This is one way doctors diagnose the problem. Physicians also put pressure on the toes to determine the location of the pain or use X-ray or MRI to rule out fractures or soft tissue damage.

The exact cause of Morton’s neuroma remains unknown, but physicians agree that wearing poorly fitting shoes, which are narrow or pointed, increase a person’s chance of developing it (sorry ladies, you might need to ditch the heels). Runners, ballet dancers, basketball players, or volleyball players are more likely to suffer from it and women are 10 times as likely to have Morton’s neuroma as men.

Doctors use several noninvasive methods to treat it. Most podiatrists recommend NSAIDs, such as ibuprofen or naproxen, to reduce swelling and irritation. About 80 percent of patients feel better if they wear custom orthopedic inserts or cushions in their shoes, explain Dr. Diana Werner and Dr. Monara Dini, associate clinical professors and podiatrists at University of California San Francisco. If these solutions fail, physical therapy and corticosteroid injections often provide relief.

Additionally, Werner and Dini say an alcohol injection blocks the nerve channels, reducing the pain. And Boike adds that Cleveland Clinic uses a therapy called radio frequency ablation, a minimally invasive procedure, using radio waves to heat the nerves until they quit working and hurting.

All three podiatrists agree that surgical removal of the nerves -- which Tyler told People magazine he underwent -- should be the final option. Dini says surgery works in more than 85 percent of cases and patients can enjoy normal activity within weeks of the surgery. Surgeons remove the thickened, irritated nerves, which causes numbness in the third and forth toes.

After years of running around on stage and dancing, in poorly fitting shoes, it’s no surprise Tyler suffers from Morton’s neuroma. While none of the podiatrists have treated the rocker, they all suspect his deformity stems from something other than Morton’s neuorma. Werner and Dini imagine Tyler’s second toe sat on his first prior to developing Morton’s neuroma—or the surgery caused the deformity (a rare side-effect). If it’s the latter, they believe his neuroma is between his first and second toes, a less common occurrence.  

More strange celebrity ailments: 

Did a sinus infection cause Ashley Judd's puffy face?

Is that a big toe on Megan Fox's hand?

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Barf bags: They’re not just for kids anymore.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images file

Are we there YET? Adults are often unpleasantly surprised to discover they can develop the queasy stomach, cold sweats, dizziness and headaches of carsickness, even if they never had it as a kid.

In fact, they never were. When we think of motion sickness, the picture that most often comes to mind may be that three-hour car trip to Grandma’s with a heaving child and no change of clothing.

Yet some adults are unpleasantly surprised to find themselves coming down with the unforgettably bad symptoms of queasy stomach, cold sweats, dizziness and headaches, even if they never got them as kids. From vision changes to pregnancy, a number of triggers can upset our finely tuned internal balance system and set sickness in motion, so to speak.

Here how it works: Humans use our eyes, ears and feet to estimate of our location and movement through space. You get a conflict when the signals disagree, which can happen to any of us if the conditions are bad enough.

“Let’s say your eyes are reading in the car, so they think you should be still, but the bouncing of the car tells your ears you’re moving,” says Timothy Hain, M.D., an otoneurologist and professor at Northwestern University Medical School.

Kids may be more prone to motion sickness simply because their ears work better; as we age we lose inner ear function, along with the tendency to hurl on a swaying boat.

Yet other hazards await adults. One often overlooked cause of persistent motion sickness may be a visual disorder -- also known as  “see-sick syndrome,” says Dan Fortenbacher, O.D., who treats the disorder at his practice in St. Joseph, MI. In these cases, an eye problem such as decreased depth perception or muscle control sends miscues to our vestibular system, a part of the inner ear and brain responsible for keeping us in balance as we go about our lives.

In many cases, patients have had vision issues since childhood, but age-related changes make it harder to compensate, Fortenbacher says.  It doesn’t take a car trip to set things off; patients may feel sick watching a movie, scanning the aisles while grocery shopping, even looking at stripes on a shirt.

“Sea sickness wasn’t an issue. My problem was being vertical. I would stand up and have to hold on because I would feel like the room was moving,” says LaReine Gretzky of Bridgman, Mich.

A stroke or bump to the head can also disturb the balance system. For Norman Greene, a television executive producer from New York, a head injury from a bad taxi accident at age 36 led to later miseries in any moving vehicle, particularly the helicopters he flies in to film.

“I discovered this when I took this little, baby roller coaster with my kid at Sesame Place. I had to sit down; I was horribly sick. I felt like I’d been tossed into a burlap bag and thrown off a bridge,” he says.

Inner ear problems like an infection or a circulatory problem can also affect the vestibular system. Seems reasonable, but experts are still puzzled as to why pregnancy and menstruation make women more prone to motion sickness.

Another double-whammy:  Migraine sufferers, who are more sensitive generally to external stimuli, are also about five times more likely to also suffer from motion sickness, Hain says. Peak ages for both maladies are parallel in females: Girls usually start getting migraines around age 12, when puberty kicks in.  There is another peak at age 35, then a second peak at age 52, around the time of menopause.

Treatment for see-sick syndrome involves eye exercises and special lenses.  For the rest of us, avoiding bumpy seats, a pre-trip heavy meal and reading can ward off the occasional travel queasiness.  And if you can, drive.

“Drivers have a big advantage in avoiding motion sickness.  Because they know where they are going, there are fewer surprise motions,” Hain says.

Do you suffer from motion sickness now -- even though you never did as a child? We'd love to hear from you. Leave a comment here or on Facebook; we may use your story in an upcoming msnbc.com post. 

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So you’re watching a ballet performance while simultaneously imagining yourself doing your own little pirouette. New research is showing that your imagination may be enough to get your brain and muscles thinking you’re the newest incarnation of the Black Swan.

In a study published in the open access journal PLoS ONE, researchers found that watching live performances of dance resulted in muscle-specific motor responses in viewers, even when those viewers had no formal training in these movements. Study participants were either frequent dance spectators of ballet, Indian dance, or ‘‘novices’’ who never watched dance.

The researchers tested participants using a technique called single pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to measure corticospinal excitability, or signals in the hand and arm. “We know that if the subject is watching a motor action performed by somebody else, the motor cortex is excited,” explains lead author Corinne Jola, Ph.D., Research Fellow at University of Surrey Guildford, United Kingdom. “Knowing how excited the motor cortex is, we know how ‘tuned-in’ the brain is for actions.”  

The so-called “empathic” ability of participants was also tested. Researchers used the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), a standard questionnaire used to measure cognitive empathy. It includes a “fantasy scale,” with questions designed to gauge the ability to immerse yourself into a fictional character, story, or film, for example.

Frequent ballet spectators showed larger responses in the arm muscles when watching ballet compared to when they watched other performances. They also found that that the higher Indian dance spectators scored on the fantasy subscale of the IRI, the larger their readings were when watching Indian dance. “Our results show that even without physical training, corticospinal excitability can be enhanced as a function of either visual experience, or the tendency to imaginatively transpose oneself into fictional characters," says Jola.

Although the researchers didn’t test any health effects, Jola concedes watching dance could potentially to good things for your body, though it would be difficult to prove.

“It may be possible that transposing oneself mentally into the body of a dancer has some beneficial effects for you, as in your somatosensory perception of yourself, such as the imagined feeling (that) you were dancing with somebody else,” she says.  

While the muscle specific movements shown in the study are imperceptible to the eye and won’t help you burn calories, the popularity of dance, especially with shows like Dancing with the Stars, may be enough to get people to get out and get their groove on, which can benefit health. Studies show that dance improves balance and posture as well provides some mental health boosts.

“Hopefully, watching dance on TV instigates a few people to try it out themselves, either at home alone or with their partners or by joining a club,” says Jola.  “We should not ignore the power of dance."

More from The Body Odd:

Your lying eyes: These facial muscles reveal the truth 

The nose knows: Living life with no sense of smell

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We know our faces may give away our fibs -- whether it's shifty eyes, a sweaty upper lip, a slight smirk, or Pinocchio's fictitious lengthening nose.

Now a new study reveals that muscles in the upper face may divulge when people are not telling the truth. Researchers found four different facial muscles that a trained eye can use to separate genuine expressions of emotion from deceptive ones.

"Facial cues are an important, but often ignored, aspect of credibiity assessments where an emotional issue is in question," says study author Dr. Leanne ten Brinke.

"Cues to emotional deception are likely to occur when the underlying emotion a liar is attempting to mask is relatively strong," suggests ten Brinke of the Centre for the Advancement of Psychological Science and Law at the University of British Columbia - Okanagan.

For the study, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, researchers watched the videotaped facial actions of 52 people who made televised pleas for the safe return of a missing relative. As it turns out, half of the pleas were from deceptive individuals who were later convicted of murdering their loved one.

Coders analyzed more than 23,000 frames of video from real-life cases in the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK. They compared the facial actions of 26 genuine pleaders to those of 26 liars.

By looking closely, researchers found some facial muscles "leak" signs of our true feelings during these intensely emotional and pressurized pleas to the public.

Genuine pleaders showed more contraction of two facial muscles related to grief and sadness: corrugator supercilii, one of the three muscles of the eyelid that helps wrinkle the forehead, and depressor anguli oris, a mouth muscle that is associated with frowning. In liars, they detected subtle contractions of the zygomatic major, a facial muscle linked with masking a smile, and full contraction of the frontalis muscle suggestive of a failed attempt to seem sad.

"What was surprising was just how strong these facial failures were able to predict which pleaders were the deceptive murderers compared to the genuinely distressed relatives," points out ten Brinke. She says muscles in the upper face "leak" signs of true emotion because they are under less of our conscious and voluntary control.

Can you use these facial muscles to tell when your teenager or a cheating spouse is lying to you? Some clues may be revealed by asking emotional questions and looking for seemingly out of place emotional expressions particularly in the upper face, suggests ten Brinke.

But it's not a silver bullet.

"Facial analysis does not provide us with a Pinocchio's nose," admits ten Brinke. "Not everyone will leak their true emotions, and some people are better than others at adopting a false face -- like psychopaths," she adds.

Related:

• Why do women smile more than men?
• How to spot a fake smile: It's all in the eyes
• Pants on fire: Scientifically proven ways to catch a liar

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By Life's Little Mysteries staff

Most people who are allergic to chocolate aren't having a reaction to cocoa or any of chocolate's other official ingredients. No, the flare ups are most likely triggered by the ground-up cockroach parts that contaminate every batch.

According to ABC News, the average chocolate bar contains eight insect parts. Anything less than 60 insect pieces per 100 grams of chocolate (two chocolate bars' worth) is deemed safe for consumption by the Food and Drug Administration.

Allergists say most foods contain natural contaminants. Aside from chocolate, cockroach parts also make their way into peanut butter, macaroni, fruit, cheese, popcorn and wheat. The roach bits can affect people with asthma, as well causing migraines, cramps, itching or hives in people who are allergic to them.

The first cockroach allergy was reported in 1943, and skin testing for cockroaches began in 1959. Cockroach allergies can be treated with allergy shots that contain trace amounts of the insect. [Could Edible Bugs Solve World Hunger?] 

According to Morton Teich, an allergist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, contamination by cockroaches and their droppings is unavoidable, because it happens at cocoa beans' source — the farms where they are produced. Preventing them from infiltrating the harvest would require the use of more pesticides, which Teich says are much worse for you than consuming a few extra bug parts.

Avoiding insects in your food is "almost impossible," Teich told ABC. "You probably would have to stop eating completely."

More from Life's Little Mysteries:

• Photographic Evidence: The Grossest Things
• 15 Weird Things Humans Do Every Day, and Why
• Do Bugs Taste Good When You're Starving to Death?

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Funny-but-harmless bodily quirk -- or a sign of something serious? This morning on TODAY, NBC's chief medical editor Dr. Nancy Snyderman discussed some curious symptoms that, in rare cases, can signal a medical condition that needs attention.

Curious Symptom: Unilateral hearing 
You're losing your hearing -- but in only one ear. This can be an early symptom of a benign brain tumor that affects a cranial nerve. This type of tumor, called acoustic neuromas, may be non-cancerous, but they may grow and compress key areas of the brain -- and if the tumor grows so large it begins to press against the brainstem, it can be life-threatening. 

Curious Symptom: Pitted nails
Unhealthy-looking nails is more than a sign you need a manicure -- it's also an often overlooked but important symptom of many diseases. Nails that look like they've been pricked repeatedly with a pin are called "pitted"; this can be the first sign of psoriasis

Curious Symptom: Retina freckles
Retina freckles are black spots with well-defined margins located on the back of the eye. They're usually harmless, but in some cases, they can be a sign of colon cancer.  

Curious Symptom: Bleeding gums
Too-aggressive brushing or flossing can cause bleeding gums -- but in rare cases, bleeding gums can be an early symptom of leukemia, a cancer of the blood in which dysfunctional white blood cells multiply out of control. In children, bleeding gums should be taken especially seriously, because gingivitis usually only occurs in adults.

Curious Symptom: Dry mouth
A persistently dry mouth may not simply mean you're thirsty. Dry mouth coupled with dry eyes is a key combination of symptoms for Sjogren's syndrom, an autoimmune condition where the body's immune system mistakenly attacks the mucus and moisture-secreting glands in the individual's eyes and mouth.