Silent Partner: Autonomic Function Testing in Research
Like the inner workings of an intricate machine, most of our bodily functions operate with little or no conscious effort. That task falls to the autonomic nervous system, a sort of control system that regulates a wide range of processes, including digestion, heart...
Guilt Trips: Taking Measure of Our Moral Compass
“So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt” —Gertrude, William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” In Act 4 of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, Hamlet’s mother Gertrude points out that the harder one tries to conceal guilt, the easier it is to...
Measuring Moods: Signals for Insight into Emotion
“Do you ever look at someone and wonder what is going on inside their head?” Joy, an anthropomorphized manifestation of happiness, delivers this line at the opening of Pixar’s 2015 animated hit “Inside Out,” a film that explores the emotional struggles of its young...
Baby Blues: Neonatal, Infant, and Toddler Research Challenges
The first five years of a child’s life are marked by considerable change—both physiological and psychological. Young children undergo incremental development in their ability to think and solve problems, their emotions, and their linguistic abilities, to name just a...
Hitting the Mark: Using Event Markers to Improve Data Quality
Life is a series of events—some are planned while others catch us completely by surprise. This holds true in the lab where the quality of experiments and data depend on accurately identifying, tracking, and sorting key events as they occur. Events like the introduction of stimuli and a test subject’s reaction directly impact data.
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