Comparing the association between heavy metals and cognitive status and depression in miners and non-miners: A study from southeast of Iran.

Heavy metal toxicity is a major public health crisis worldwide, especially in mining environments. The association between chronic heavy metals exposure and cognitive impairment has not been studied broadly in adults and mining fields. This study aimed to compare the association between arsenic (As), lead (Pb), and copper (Cu) concentration in blood and cognitive status and depression in copper miners and non-miners.

The Effect of Involuntary Tactile Stimulation on the Creativity and Rey Auditory-Verbal Memory of Young Adults.

Introduction: Recent studies have revealed the possibility of learning skills through alternative methods and repetitive tactile stimulation without explicit training. This study aimed to examine the effect of involuntary tactile stimulation on the memory and creativity of healthy participants.

Methods: A group of 92 right-handed students participated in this study voluntarily.

Cognitive Reactivity: Cultural Adaptation and Psychometric Testing of the Persian Version of the Leiden Index of Depression Sensitivity Revised (LEIDS-R) in an Iranian Sample.

Cognitive reactivity (CR) to the experimental induction of sad mood has been found to predict relapse in recovered depressed patients. The Leiden Index of Depression Sensitivity Revised (LEIDS-R) is a self-report measure of CR. The aim of the present study was to establish the validity and reliability of the Persian version of the LEIDS-R.

Creative mood swings: divergent and convergent thinking affect mood in opposite ways.

Increasing evidence suggests that emotions affect cognitive processes. Recent approaches have also considered the opposite: that cognitive processes might affect people's mood. Here we show that performing and, to a lesser degree, preparing for a creative thinking task induce systematic mood swings: Divergent thinking led to a more positive mood, whereas convergent thinking had the opposite effect.

The (b)link between creativity and dopamine: spontaneous eye blink rates predict and dissociate divergent and convergent thinking.

Human creativity has been claimed to rely on the neurotransmitter dopamine, but evidence is still sparse. We studied whether individual performance (N=117) in divergent thinking (alternative uses task) and convergent thinking (remote association task) can be predicted by the individual spontaneous eye blink rate (EBR), a clinical marker of dopaminergic functioning. EBR predicted flexibility in divergent thinking and convergent thinking, but in different ways.