It’s been a week full of interesting and useful stories at NewsUCanUse. And as usual we’ve found that the academics who do the research are really accessible.

Ingrid Olson told us that a hat that makes you smarter could be one result of the research she’s been doing. Already she’s improved people’s memory through applying electricity to their skulls.

And Amy Cuddy spoke to us at length about her work on how posture makes a difference to our leadership and stress hormone levels.

Here’s more on those and our other top stories this week.

Transcranial (Brain) stimulation – update

Imagine a hat with a device you could turn on  when you need a boost in your brain power. That’s a wonderful vision of the future that American psychologist Ingrid Olson shared with NewsUCanUse in a recent email. Her just published work on boosting memory through electrical stimulation to the head takes us a step towards that advance in science.

Livening up the brain through small amounts of electricity applied to the skull, (Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation, or tDCS) could have other impressive therapeutic uses. Professor Olson, from Temple University in the US, says it’s being investigated for depression, and language difficulties. The US Military wants to know if it has potential as a stimulus too.

In her just published study  she found that electric stimulation of the right anterior temporal lobe of the brain improved the recall of proper names in young adults by 11 percent.

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What herbal supplements are truly effective in treating anxiety?

 A systematic review of research into the use of nutritional supplements for the treatment of anxiety disorders has found strong evidence for the use of extracts of passionflower or kava and combinations of L-lysine and L-arginine.

Researchers writing in BioMed Central’s open access Nutrition Journal pooled the results of 24 studies involving a total of more than 2000 participants, showing that some nutritional and herbal supplements can be effective, without the risk of serious side effects.

The research was carried out by Shaheen Lakhan and Karen Vieira from the Global Neuroscience Initiative Foundation, a non-profit charity organization for the advancement of neurological and mental health patient welfare, education, and research, based in Los Angeles, USA. Lakhan said, "Our review and summary of the literature on herbal remedies and dietary supplements for anxiety should aid mental health practitioners in advising their patients and provide insight for future research in this field. We found mixed results – while passionflower or kava and L-lysine and L-arginine appeared to be effective, St John’s Wort and magnesium supplements were not".

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Power Posing: Fake It Until You Make It

We can’t be the alpha dog all of the time, writes Julia Hanna for Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge. Whatever our personality, most of us experience varying degrees of feeling in charge. Some situations take us down a notch while others build us up.

New research shows that it’s possible to control those feelings a bit more, to be able to summon an extra surge of power and sense of well-being when it’s needed: for example, during a job interview or for a key presentation to a group of skeptical customers.

"Our research has broad implications for people who suffer from feelings of powerlessness and low self-esteem due to their hierarchical rank or lack of resources," says HBS assistant professor Amy J.C. Cuddy, one of the researchers on the study.

"It’s not about the content of the message, but how you’re communicating it," she says.

In "Power Posing: Brief Nonverbal Displays Affect Neuroendocrine Levels and Risk Tolerance", Cuddy shows that simply holding one’s body in expansive, "high-power" poses for as little as two minutes stimulates higher levels of testosterone (the hormone linked to power and dominance in the animal and human worlds) and lower levels of cortisol (the "stress" hormone that can, over time, cause impaired immune functioning, hypertension, and memory loss).

The result? In addition to causing the desired hormonal shift, the power poses led to increased feelings of power and a greater tolerance for risk.

Read more at Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge.

And hear our interview with Prof Cuddy here.

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Unfriended? The top reasons for being dropped on Facebook

 With over 500 million users worldwide, Facebook has become a global phenomenon, a vast cyber neighborhood where friends meet to share photos, news and gossip. But when those relationships sour, another phenomenon often occurs – unfriending.
 

In what may be the first comprehensive study of its kind, Christopher Sibona, a University of Colorado Denver Business School student has revealed the top reasons for Facebook unfriending, who is unfriended and how they react to being unfriended.
 

After surveying more than 1,500 Facebook users on Twitter, Sibona found the number-one reason for unfriending is frequent, unimportant posts. "The 100th post about your favorite band is no longer interesting," he said. The second reason was posting about polarizing topics like religion and politics.

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