I was born a procrastinator. I hate to say it, but I love putting things off to the last second and then rationalizing how “little” time it will take me to get my work done. It never ends up working in my favor — never. So, why do I keep doing it? Why do I push things back until I’m left writing my last blog post at 4:09 a.m. (this one’s for JoePa). Well, Andrew, you were right — I totally regret not doing these sooner. But as long as I’m here, I figured a little research would help be kick this nasty habit. Why do we have the urge do procrastinate, even when we know it won’t end well?

I always thought that procrastination was “human nature”, that it happened to the best and the worst of us. According to research from the University of Colorado Boulder, however, some people are more affected by the procrastination bug than others. Researchers found that some people are more “predisposed than others to take the bait when a new temptation or distraction enters the picture. Likewise, some people are more likely to display impulsive tendencies.” It is believed that those who are more impulsive focus on short-term goals and pleasures, such as watching three episodes of Grey’s Anatomy before finishing a 4,000 words paper, therefore leading to procrastination. Researchers say that while that impulsivity does not cause procrastination, there is a correlation between the two. Correlation need not equal causation, because correlation between the two could arise from direct causation (impulsivity –> procrastination), reverse causation (procrastination –> impulsivity), a third variable (ADHD could cause both procrastination and impulsivity), or chance.

More research, this time from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, also shows that procrastination is a meltdown of sorts, and the loss of self-control. Studies conducted by researchers at the university show that a lack of self-control “links to specific types of procrastination.” These studies found that people who procrastinate and have trouble avoiding temptation are more likely to delay going to bed. The question is: Is this evidence of a lack of self-control, or are people going to bed later because they are trying to complete work that they procrastinated? Both direct and reverse causation are still in play, so we can assume that it’s one or the other, or maybe even both for those over-procrastinators.

Yet, there are some that argue that procrastination can be good for you, to a certain extent. Professor and author of Wait: The Art and Science of Delay Frank Partnoy says that when it comes to decision-making, we should wait until the last second to make our decision. Smithsonian Magazine writes, “Partnoy claims that when faced with a decision, we should assess how long we have to make it, and then wait until the last possible moment to do so.” While this may be beneficial and could help us way our options and think a decision through, is it considered procrastination? Procrastination is the act of delaying or postponing something, but it could also be considered a deliberate and thorough choice-making process.

This would be a tough call, if it weren’t for something that Andrew has drilled into our brains since the first time we stepped into class — YOUR INTUITION IS LOUSY. Because my intuition is to procrastinate, I know that maybe I should try to get things done a little sooner. For those people who aren’t as tempted by short-term pleasures, maybe give yourself some time think things through and really plan. Our intuitions are lousy, and this is why humanity needs science.

I love, love, LOVE, make-up. I use it pretty regularly, especially when I want to get spruced up for a night out. I see make-up as a way to enhance your natural features, not as a way to cover up imperfections. Recently, I’ve noticed a large number on women on social media encouraging others to stop using make-up because it creates unreal expectations of what women should look like. While I agree that some magazines and product lines airbrush their models to the paint where they don’t even look real anymore, I think make-up is awesome. It’s fun, it’s artistic, and from what I’ve learned, it creates complex reactions in the brain that can release positive chemicals into the body. Instead of researching how make-up affects the face, I wanted to find out how using make-up goes much further than just sculpting a pretty face.

In 2007, Kanebo Cosmetics began conducting a study with Japanese neuroscientist, Ken Mogi. They called the project “Cosmetics, Beauty and Brain Science,” and made several discoveries about a woman’s brain when she uses make-up. Their first discover was that make-up allows a woman to see herself in a “social context.” In this study, fMRI’s revealed that “the same part (the fusiform gyrus) of the brain lights up when a woman sees her own face with makeup and when she sees the faces of other people.” When she sees herself without make-up on, an entirely different part of her brain lights up, maybe because she sees herself as an individual, and not part of a social group. The fMRI’s are shown below:

It’s clear to see how some people might mistake this as bad for women’s self-esteem: when women have make-up on, they conformist, and when they don’t have make-up on, they don’t see themselves as part of a social group. However, several studies show that social interaction and feeling included in a social group is linked to feel-good chemicals, like dopamine, being released into the body. of mammals. One study showed that the ability for a female rat to have access to her children is more powerful than cocaine in her body, and that dopamine in certain parts of the brain is related to typical mating behavior and social interactions. It is part of our mammalian nature to want social interaction, and make-up helps women achieve that. According to research, make-up can also foster communication and make her more approachable and receptive.

On the other hand, the Kanebo Cosmetics study found that seeing oneself without make-up on “activates the reward system of the brain.” A series of experiments show that the body releases once again releases dopamine and the caudate nucleus, or the “reward-prediction” area begins to light up when a woman sees her bare face before applying make-up. This is because the brain knows that a woman is about to apply make-up and senses that it will help in a social context. That release of chemicals makes a woman feel “a mix of expectation, encouragement, and ambition,” which are all positive emotions in this context.

This topic of research certainly doesn’t suffer from the file-drawer problem — there are dozens of studies out there that say that make-up can hurt your self-esteem. One New York Times writer claims that “makeup can provide a fleeting confidence boost to some.” She writes “grooming rituals can be temporary confidence boosters, and studies suggest that the confidence they inspire is attractive itself…research suggest that women can feel objectified by make-up, and for such women, any potential advantage may be offset by the emotional labor of wearing it.”

To some extent, I agree with her. Some of the affects, like the pleasure felt by the release of dopamine, are temporary. But even more of the affects, like the improvements in social and communication skills can last a lifetime.

Weighing the advantages against the disadvantages is tricky because this then becomes a battle between emotional harm and scientific benefits. Some people may continue to fight again make-up, which is ultimately good for science — like Andrew said on the first day, science is subject to deep, skeptical scrunity. In order to get better, there needs to be a fine error detection system to find the mistakes in research. Thanks to our friend who won $100 in class, we know that it IS possible for scientists to be corrected by people who are not scientists, which is what our journalist friend of the New York Times is doing, and what many others are doing across the world.

My freshman seminar revolves around music as communication — how we can comminucate with each other through music, how music is used to  convey messages to the public, how music is used in advertising. Most importantly, we talk about how a song can get stuck with you: whether its forever, or just stuck in your head for a little while. I often find myself humming tunes that I heard playing down the hall all day, and I wonder why. I feel the urge to sing the same phrase over and over and over… and over. So, HOW DO WE GET RID OF THEM?

According to Scientific American, “92% of the population regularly experience earworms.” For a long time, no one was really sure how to get rid of them. A new study published in October 2015 from the University of Reading in England are looking at the problem from a new angle, however: researchers at the university found that college students who chewed gum when they heard a catchy song reported less earworms than those who didn’t chew gum. According to the study, “the act of chewing gum, as with silently reading, talking or singing to yourself, engages the tongue, teeth and other parts of the anatomy used to produce speech, called subvocal articulators. These subvocalizations lessen the brain’s ability to form verbal or musical memories.”

According to Victoria Williamson, a music psychologist at the University of Sheffield in England, says that chewing gum is just part of a larger technique that she calls “distract and engage.” Surprisingly, the one of the best “distractions” for an earworm is… more music. Doing things like switching the song or playing an instrument can help get rid of that pesky earworm. The next best thing you can do isn’t far off from music. Reciting a poem or repeating a “mantra” can also help you out. Williamson says that they work by “activating the component of working memory involved in earworms, a storage and rehearsal cycle called the phonological loop.” If you occupy that part of your brain with a different activity before the earworm gets lodged in there, then you can avoid it all together.

This makes a lot of sense, but I see one new variable coming into play: What if the recognition of the impending earworm helps you avoid getting it altogether? According to Williamson’s theory, you have to recognize that a tune might get stuck in your head before you have to choose to get rid of it. So why couldn’t the realization that song might get stuck in your head and your ability to say that you don’t want it be the reason you rid yourself of the earworm? It’s a complicated thought process that would ultimately mean that playing an instrument or reciting a poem don’t really do anything, except maybe increase your chances of not getting the earworm. While Williamson’s research make a lot of sense, it definitely proves that you have to be careful when deciding which variable is the putative causal variable and which is the putative response variable.

Earworms are annoying. We all know that. But what I now know is that the common earworm affects more than just your ears. It gets lodged in part of your brain, and that’s where things get complex. While looking at different studies, I wondered if there was a way to scan the brain of someone in different stages of the “distract and engage” technique — when someone first hears a catchy tune, when someone decides they don’t want to have a jingle stuck in their head, and when they are actively doing something else — and compare them to the brain scans of someone who has a song stuck in their head. It would be an interesting sight to see what lights up where, or if anything lights up at all. Either way, it’s a complex system once it becomes a matter of the brain, which makes variables a lot harder to determine.

Break-ups: We’ve all been through them. Even Adele has. I once broke up with a guy because kissing him was like kissing a bucket of water. Two years later, I got dumped two weeks before my junior prom (and even worse — he took another date with him). It took me weeks to get over that guy, and I’m sure my freshman year boyfriend took a little time to move on, too. But is there a science behind getting over an ex? Is there a method to the madness that is the break-up? Some romantics may say “no way, it’s all just sweatpants and Ben & Jerry’s,” but I disagree.

Before we look at the science of the healing process, we need to look at the break-up itself. It turns out that when you’re suffering from heart-ache, you may actually be experiencing pain. A 2011 study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looked at the relationship between “social rejection” and physical pain. Researchers tried to prove a link between the two “by having people who recently experienced an unwanted break-up view a photograph of their ex-partner as they think about being rejected.” Through a series of MRI’s, they found that the secondary somatosensory cortex and dorsal posterior insula, the parts of the brain that are normally associated with physical pain, lit up. Maybe this is why break-ups are so hard to get over: it’s a physical healing as well as an emotional one.

For all of you heartbroken people out there, you’re going to want to pay attention to this next part: studies show that you shouldn’t spend too much time wallowing. A little dwelling on the past is okay,  but it’s often better to calmly reflect — one study conducted at Northwestern University showed that reflection can help people “sort through their emotions and build a stronger sense of who they were as single people.” They arrived at this conclusion by gathering up people who had gone through a break-up in the last six months and splitting them into two groups. The first group completed an initial questionnaire at the beginning of a nine week period, and then completed a final questionnaire with no reporting in between. The second group, however, continuously reported their emotion status and coping mechanisms for the course of nine weeks, which included interviews and monitoring their heart rates. After nine weeks, the researchers concluded that the second group, who were consistently forced to face their emotions, “had a better overall recovery from their break-ups.” While dwelling on the break-up helps one recreate their self-concept, too much of it can inhibit our ability to move on.

It can be hard not to dwell on the past, especially when you’re coming out of a long, emotional relationship. Despite all this, there is still hope: another study from Northwestern shows that people often overestimate how long it will take to get over your ex. Researchers from the university ask the question, “how accurately can people predict the magnitude of this post-breakup distress?” 69 Northwestern freshman were chosen to be part of the study, and were asked to fill out an initial questionnaire where they stated the length of their current relationship. Every two weeks after that, each participant had to report if they were still involved in their previously mentioned relationship. If they reported that they weren’t, they then had to rate if they agreed or disagreed with certain statements such as “In general, I am pretty happy these days,” or ‘‘I am extremely upset that my relationship with [name] ended.” These questionnaires were meant to predict “actual distress.” To find “predicted distress” among the participants, they were asked questions like “If your relationship were to end in sometime within the next two weeks, to what degree will you agree with this statement in two [four, eight, twelve] weeks?” After a series of calculations and further questioning, it was found that on average, the participants’ predicted distress was significantly longer than their actual distress.

Despite what studies may show, there are plenty of anecdotal cases out there. Dwelling in the past with buckets of ice cream and sweatpants that are so big they fall off may work for some people, and there are plenty of people who end a relationship and hop right into another, no questions asked. It depends on what works best for you, and just like a lot of the cases we learned about in class, there could be third variables at play when it comes to predicting how long you’ll be heart-broken for or feeling physical pain from a break-up. A break-up could be the result of a lot of outside stress from a job, family problems, or personal issues, which could all also cause physical pain. Not only that, but other issues could make getting over your ex a lot harder. There can always be other variables at play, as well as chance — but if you’re looking to get over a break-up, you can always turn to science for the answer.

College kids, in my opinion, are like toddlers. We need a good amount of naps, tend to cry a lot, and have strange diets. We also try to have fun and have some laughs as much as we can, because who doesn’t love to laugh? From day one, it has been instilled in us that laughter is the best medicine — whether we fell off our bikes or got our hearts broken, a good laugh could cure anything. Is there any science behind this, though? Is laughter purely a psychological placebo, or is there some sort of chemical reaction in our bodies that actually makes us feel better? As a laugh enthusiast, I set out to find if laughter really is the best medicine.

According to the Mayo Clinic, laughter can have both short- and long-term benefits, such as improved mood and a stronger immune system. However, researchers at Loma Linda University in California recently published a study where they measured the stress levels and short-term memory in 20 healthy older adults, aging around 60-70. In this experiment (it’s an experiment because they variables were manipulated and the subjects were asked to do something. See, Andrew, I do listen!), one group was asked to sit silently without doing anything for 20 minutes, and the other group watched funny videos for the same amount of time. Both groups then gave saliva samples and took a short-term memory test. Turns out, the group that watched the funny videos performed much better than their silent counterparts, with a much larger improvement in memory recall abilities from the first time they took the memory test. The “humor” group performed 43.6% better, while the “non-humor group” performed 20.3% better than the “non-humor group.” So that’s it, right? The answer is clear?

Wrong.

Another group of investigators from the United Kingdom conducted a meta-analysis of nearly 5,000 studies, dating back to 1946, that were related to effects of laughter, and concluded that laughter isn’t totally beneficial for the body. According to the meta-analysis, “the force of raucous laughing-out-loud may dislocate jaws, trigger asthma attacks, and pop hernias. The physiological response to mirth might also kickstart Pilgaard-Dahl and Boerhaave’s syndromes, rare but dastardly conditions known to man.” The analysis also looked at findings that say “infectious laughter can disseminate real infection,” as well as lead to stroke, epilepsy, and multiple sclerosis. 5,000 studies sure seems like a lot, and those harmful effects seem to out weigh the benefits. So that’s it, right? The answer is clear?

Wrong again.

There must be thousands, if not tens of thousands of studies on the effects of laughter to the body, and in choosing to compare these two studies, I had to keep an open mind about the many possibilities out there. The first study that I chose included a somewhat well-conducted experiment with a control variable and a manipulated variable. That was all great, but why was the saliva sample taken? What are the odds that the people who watched the funny videos just happened to have better memory recall abilities than those who sat silently? What is there was a third variable at play? All of these questions were left unanswered, and while the study had the basic components of a good study, it was not conducted well enough to rule out chance or third variables. The meta-analysis, on the other hand, included several thousand studies that seemed to lead to the conclusion that laughter was more harmful than it was beneficial. The side effects that were listed, however, seemed pretty far-fetched  some of the time, and what’s worse is that we have no idea about the studies that were included in the analysis. Were they anecdotes? How often did people actually suffer a stroke when they laughed too hard? Were certain studies not published to make it look like there were more harmful effects than not (otherwise known as the file-drawer problem)? Did third variables come into play? Were studies that weren’t measuring the same thing inappropriately combined, altering results? These questions were left unanswered as well, proving that even meta-analyses with thousands of studies can often be misleading.

Because there are so many studies revolving around laughter and I was only able to look at two, there seems to be only one conclusion that I can make: Laughter is not always the best medicine. While there are major short-term and long-term benefits, there is always the possibility of a harmful side effects. Meta-analyses like the one conducted in the U.K. serve to refute the ideas that are widely thought of as true — laughter cannot be seen as totally beneficial to everyone. But, as we learned by looking at the vaccine problem in class, we know that nothing is truly safe, and there can be small risks to even the tamest of activities. That being said, don’t ever stop laughing, because I think we all want to believe deep down that laughter can cure anything.

I was with a friend hanging out in her dorm the other week when the boy who lived across the hall knocked on the door asking if he could borrow some paper towels. Unfortunately, this was the same boy who had asked her to a formal at his frat, and then told her a few days later that he was taking someone else. The second he showed up at the door, I could see her face become flushed and her cheeks become red. I knew that she was embarrassed and angry. This got me thinking about our emotions and the human body. How was I able to know that my friend was embarrassed just because her cheeks were red? Is this because I felt my face get hot and saw my cheeks get red every time I suffered from the same humiliation? There were so many things that I wanted to know, but my overarching question was simple: Do all humans feel emotion the same way in the body?

Luckily, a new study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences just a few years ago that showed some discoveries about the human body and emotions. Turns out, scientists have known for a long time that common emotions such as anxiousness, shame, or surprise. Researchers from Aalto University in Finland used “a unique topographical self-report method” to gather their data from 701 participants from places like Finland, Sweden, and Taiwan. Having people from different countries was an important strategy — most people would assume that men and women would process emotions in different ways, but it’s also important to understand that different cultures may teach different values, therefore affecting how emotion is shown or processed.

The study went as follows: “In five experiments, participants…were shown two silhouettes of bodies alongside emotional words, stories, movies, or facial expressions. They were asked to color the bodily regions whose activity they felt increasing or decreasing while viewing each stimulus.” Each participant colored the first silhouette where they felt activated when experiencing the given emotion, and the second silhouette was colored where the participant felt deactivated. A third figure combined the two to get a full spectrum on one silhouette. An example of how the participants colored in the silhouettes is shown below:

The study shows that all participants painted their silhouettes the same way. However, when they were averaged out, there were significant patterns throughout. The final results, “averaged” results are shown below, with basic emotions, emotions that are more fundamental and automatic, on the top row and nonbasic emotions, ones that are more complex, on the bottom. The hot colors represent parts of the body that were “activated”, and cool colors represented show part of the body that are “deactivated”:

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Surprisingly, the study found consistent results from all different countries and cultures. Feelings like sadness and depression deactivated the legs and arms, while feelings like love and happiness seemed to cover the majority of the body. Pride was focused towards the head and chest area, and shame was felt most strongly in the cheeks (no surprise there).

While I really enjoyed learning about this experiment, I had some concerns along the way, and I even discovered a few ways that I thought the study could improve. What about participants who haven’t recently felt (or have never felt) emotions like depression or anxiety? People could begin to guess about where they feel what, and even just fabricate results. That’s the problem with the self-report method: you’re never totally sure if got the whole truth. There are some problems with that theory, though — what reason would people have to lie about where they feel their emotions? It’s also likely that most people have felt a majority of the emotions on the list provided to them. According to The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology, “the term basic can refer to the idea that some emotions are more are more basic or fundamental than others. Closely related to this idea this interpretation is the idea that all emotions are the building blocks of more complex emotions.” With this idea in mind, we can say that if all of the participants have felt the basic emotions on the list, then they most likely have felt at least a mild form of the more complex, or “nonbasic” emotions. No experiment is totally perfect, and while there are ways to rationalize the way the data was collected in this study, the possibility of falsities is a lot greater when the data is self-reported. Maybe comparing the self-reported data to scans of brain activity or a some thermodynamic imagery of the body might have made the study more thorough.

This study also brought some knew questions to light: Were the emotions recorded by the participants evoked by something totally internal and biological, or were there outside forces in play? In an interview with NPR, neuroscientist Antonia Damasio said, “People look at emotions as something in relation to other people…but emotions also have to do with how we deal with the environment — threats and opportunities.” Taking this theory into account, a possibility for a new study could revolve more around who the participants are — comparing the emotional response of someone who suffers from chronic depression to someone who comes from an abusive family or just lost a loved one. By comparing those results, we could fine-tune the study to see if different sources of pain, joy, or envy affects where in the body emotions are felt.

There are still so many things I would have liked to learn about the science behind emotion, and how it links to the body. Even basic questions like “why do we cry when we’re sad?” or “why do we get butterflies in our stomach when we’re nervous?” have a complex explanation behind them. If I learned one thing, though, its this: emotion is a very powerful thing, powerful enough to turn something completely invisible into a physical, recognizable reaction in our own bodies.

One of Andrew’s most recent lessons sought to find the reason behind wrinkly fingers. When he announced the hypothesis of the latest study, it immediately took be back to high school. During my senior year, one of my teachers (oddly enough, my philosophy teacher) told me that the skin on our fingers wrinkle because they are beginning to rot. In the search for the true mechanism behind wrinkly fingers, I wanted to investigate this claim made by my teacher.

My high school philosophy teacher told my class that wrinkly fingers are the beginning of the skin rotting, essentially like trench foot (this refers to trench warefare in World War I, after which many men had to have their feet/legs amputated). According to Merriam-Webster, the medical definition of trench foot is “a painful disorder resembling frostbite and resulting from exposure to cold and wet.” This seems to be consistent with my philosophy teacher’s hypothesis, but in order to find out if it was related to wrinkly fingers, I needed to find out more about trench foot to be able to compare it to wrinkly fingers. In an article from the New England Journal of Medicine, one study showed that trench foot could be replicated in rabbits. The study reported that “lesions resembling trench foot have been reproduced in rabbits by shaving the legs and keeping the animals standing for a number of days in a refrigerated chamber on wet mud at a few degrees above freezing couldn’t find any studies related wrinkly fingers to the rotting skin in trench foot.” The article later states that feet become “swollen and blistered” and look “cadaveric in color.” This didn’t seem to correlate with wrinkly fingers, as wrinkly fingers don’t develop any legions on the skin, don’t get blisters, and certainly don’t swell up. In fact, the skin on your fingers seems to do the opposite of swell, but rather suck inside itself. After finding few other results, I decided to do some speculating of my own and figure out why the heck my philosophy teacher wanted to relate wrinkly fingers to a cold, wet, rotting foot.

I decided to take a step back and think about what I could be missing, and in the same article from the New England Journal of Medicine, I made a discovery of my own. Trench foot was often mentioned hand-in-hand with the term immersion foot. According to Merriam-Webster, immersion foot is “a painful condition of the feet marked by inflammation and stabbing pain and followed by discoloration, swelling, ulcers, and numbness due to prolonged exposure to moist cold usually without actual freezing.” Now, if immersing (hence the term “immersion foot”) one’s foot in cold water causes damage, couldn’t immersing one’s foot in warm water cause just as much damage?

Apparently, yes. After doing some research, I found that warm water immersion foot was studied in U.S. Soldiers during the Vietnam War. Another article from The Lancet , a medical journal from the United Kingdom, stated that warm water immersion foot “is a syndrome characterized by painful, white, wrinkled soles.” My results suddenly became a little bit more clear. Wrinkly fingers could be directly related to the effects of warm water foot immersion, not trench foot.

So, why do the two often get so confused? My theory is that it has something to do with the smell. Think of it like this. Warm water foot immersion is more like putting a band-aid around your finger for a long time, and trench foot is more like getting a bad case of frostbite on your fingers. When you take off the bandage, your fingers (and the bandage) smell pretty bad. When you get frostbite and the flesh on your finger starts to die, it can smell pretty bad too.

When I asked Andrew why there weren’t more studies or compiled works on the cause behind wrinkly fingers, he said it was because there were more pressing issues at hand. Personally, I think that everyone should know whether there fingers are going to rot or not.