Friday, January 20, 2006
Stress and Sex
A new long-term study indicates that chronic job stress and lower standing are significant risk factors for developing metabolic syndrome. It's an interesting result, but not entirely shocking, as poorer people (who have low job standing) are more likely not to eat very well or exercise properly: I'm stressed out and buried right now at work, and my response has been an almost exclusively bar-food-based diet over the last couple of weeks and a lot of skipping the gym. Which is bad for me, I know, but I just have to keep hoping that eventually this project will end....
Another interesting finding is that sexual orientation affects aspects of facial recognition. Not totally shocking, but it seems that people's brains light up differently when viewing faces of their preferred sex. The 'reward areas' in the thalamus and medial orbitofrontal cortex lit up more when straight women and gay men looked at male faces and when straight men and gay women looked at female faces. Cool.
Another interesting finding is that sexual orientation affects aspects of facial recognition. Not totally shocking, but it seems that people's brains light up differently when viewing faces of their preferred sex. The 'reward areas' in the thalamus and medial orbitofrontal cortex lit up more when straight women and gay men looked at male faces and when straight men and gay women looked at female faces. Cool.
