Have you ever been listening to a great piece of music and felt a chill run up your spine? Or goosebumps tickle your arms and shoulders?

Aside from the sheer joy of being able to bend an imaginary world to your will, there's a range of additional psychological benefits to lucid dreaming. For one, it can help with nightmares: simply knowing that you're dreaming often brings relief during a nasty episode.

Positive scientific results aside, the idea of shinrin-yoku shouldn't be surprising: Who hasn't felt an inner sense of well-being when walking along a forest trail? asks commentator Marcelo Gleiser.

I never got any help, any kind of therapy. I never told anyone.

When I descended into the same sort of madness that I researched, I had no idea what was happening. This is the story of my journey into insanity—and back.

In Part 1 of the special episode on cyber warfare, James Scott talked social media, hacking, manipulation and blackmail. These episodes have a more serious tone from our previous episodes but we hope you keep watching till the end because what he talks about effects us all. This is Part 2 of our interview with James Scott where he talks about information warfare, different actors in the political sphere and personal motivation in this industry. If you haven’t seen Part 1 already, check it out here: https://youtu.be/zaA8bH7wqmg

Meet the scientists finding out how we can defeat our inner trolls and build more cooperative digital societies.

An outpouring on Twitter highlights the acute pressures on young scientists.

Can a cardboard box generate empathy between two strangers? Can it help them to fall in love? By Deenah Vollmer. (May 2014)

Hannah Upp disappears for weeks at a time, forgetting her sense of self. Can she still be found?

“Lower your music, you’re upsetting other passengers.” Without social sanction, society frays at the edges. But what drives someone to intervene against bad behaviour? One cynical view is that it appeals to those who want to feel better about themselves through scolding others. But research putting this to the test in British Journal of Social Psychology has found that interveners are rather different in character.

Beautiful people tend to believe that life is fundamentally fair and just, according to new research conducted with college students. The study, published in the journal Psychological Reports, examined the relationship between physical attractiveness and belief in a just world, meaning the belief that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get.

A new study that monitored children’s brain activity suggests that social anxiety is related to a preoccupation with making mistakes. The research, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, provides insight into the neurological mechanisms underlying social anxiety symptoms.

ANN ARBOR—The link between emotions and eating has been well established but new research from the University of Michigan shows that children as young as 4 who experience stress eat more in the abse

Advice to get you over the hurdles holding you back.

It’s not that they can’t consider other people’s perspectives. It’s that they don’t do so automatically.

Intimate relationships don't last because you love each other. They last because you make–and remake–a choice. If you’re in a relationship, I invite you to ask yourself this question: “Why am I choosing my partner today?” If you can’t find a satisfying answer, dig deeper and find one. It could be as simple as noticing that in your deepest heart’s truth, “I just do. Your loved one deserves to be enthusiastically chosen. Every day. You do, too.

Chances are, your coworkers are better at rating some parts of your personality than you are.

Strokes and hugs are being edged out of our lives, with doctors, teachers and colleagues increasingly hesitant about social touching. Is this hypervigilance of boundaries beginning to harm our mental health?

One researcher shows despite some speculation, 80 percent of mass shooters didn't show an interest in violent video games

The dire existence of young athletes in Madison, Ind.: “You just can’t believe this is all happening in one small community.”

The 17th century philosopher Blaise Pascal is perhaps best known for Pascal’s Wager which, in the first formal use of decision theory, argued that believing in God is the most pragmatic decision. But it seems the French thinker also had a knack for psychology. As Brain Pickings points out, Pascal set out the most effective way to get someone to change their mind, centuries before there was any formal study of persuasion...

What does it mean to have an emotion? It seems obvious that having one means feeling it. If you’re happy but don’t know it, in what sense could you actually be happy? By Jim Davies

A former Hollywood actress, Mack rose up the ranks of the cult Nxivm—whose founder, Keith Raniere, was recently arrested in Mexico—to second in command.

Today’s teens are still bored, often incredibly so. They’re just more likely to experience a new type of boredom: phone bored.

People whose negative emotional responses to stress carry over to the following day are more likely to report health problems and physical limitations later in life compared with peers who are able to “let it go,” according to findings published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

A psychology researcher has found preliminary evidence that poor sleep can actually reduce the risk of depressive symptoms in some people. His findings have been published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. “My research is focused on answering the following question — given the same negative life event, why is it that one person becomes depressed and another person does not?” said study author Gerald J. Haeffel of the University of Notre Dame.

Many of us believe perfectionism is a positive. But researchers are finding that it could be dangerous, leading to a long list of health problems – and that it’s on the rise.

Experts are now looking to the social and environmental causes of the disorder affecting millions.

Your brain on LSD is kind of like jazz improvisation. That’s according to Selen Atasoy, a research fellow at the Center for Brain and Cognition at the Pompeu Fabra University in Spain. She was among the authors of a study published in the journal Scientific Reports that found the psychedelic drug can reorganize your brain in a “harmonizing” way.

Silicon Valley is keen to exploit the brain chemical credited with keeping us tapping on apps and social media

We tend to decry being alone. But emerging research suggests some potential benefits to being a loner – including for our creativity, mental health and even leadership skills.

Your brain needs to forget in order to grow. By Ferris Jabr.

Using sleep deprivation to combat severe depression may seem odd, but for some it’s the only thing that works.

The mainstreaming of lies in the Trump era is hurting our cognitive abilities. Research says satire can save us