Consumers spend substantial proportions of their expenditures on products they had not intended to buy. Correspondingly, marketers spend billions of dollars every year trying to create moments of purchase serendipity.

Severe stress can damage a child's brain, say researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. The researchers found that children with post-traumatic stress disorder and high levels of the stress hormone cortisol were likely to experience a decrease in the size of the hippocampus - a brain structure important in memory processing and emotion.

Empathy is well known to be an important component of the patient-therapist relationship, and a new study has revealed the biology behind how patients and therapists "connect" during a clinical encounter. In the February Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) report the first physiologic evidence of shared emotions underlying the experience of empathy during live psychotherapy sessions.

Advertisements for financial planning services and medications often employ mixed emotions in their advertising. They may begin by raising concern about one's future and end in vignettes evoking positive emotions. Or they may start with strong, positive feelings and then induce worry. Does it matter which sequence of emotions advertisers apply in their messages?

Nicotine addiction depends on a healthy insula, say researchers from the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC

Walking a mile in another person's shoes may be the best way to understand the emotions, perceptions, and motivations of an individual; however, in a recent study appearing in the December 2006 issue of Psychological Science, it is reported that those in power are often unable to take such a journey.