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Norepinephrine is responsible for, among many other things, causing a constriction the nasal vasculature and slowing capillary leakage that would lead to a runny nose. Both the startle response (sympathetic) and the orgasm response (sharp transition between high peak of sympathetic response and descent into parasympathetic) result in large releases of ...

Warmer temperature are shown to raise aggression level (Anderson, et al, 1995). Citing this study, DeWall, 2009 found a similar correlation between words associated with high temperatures and hostile behavior. This could be perceived as a threat to clear thinking. Moss, 1996 shows oxygen administration increases memory. However, intermittent hypoxia on ...

I was shocked at how difficult it was to find systematic scientific research on the psychology of flatulence. The main empirical paper appears to be one by Lippman (1980). It seems to be hard to get a copy of the original. However, the author of the Neurotic Physiology blog discusses the paper at length. Lippman study Lippman asked participants to rank ...

For the purposes of this question, it would likely be useful to consider "pain" as simply a stimulus demanding the attention of the individual. In this light, any decrease in "cognitive abilities"—however you define that phrase—would likely be explainable as resultant from the same cognitive decrease that accompanies multitasking (or "task switching", as it ...

There's literature on temporal expansion with vigilance. Perhaps this might get you started. Tse, P. U., Intriligator, J., Rivest, J., and Cavanagh, P. (2004). Attention and the subjective expansion of time. Perception & Psychophysics, 66(7):1171–1189. In this instance they're looking at how odd, unique, or surprising events might increase the amount ...

Sorry for the delay getting to an answer - the holidays have been super busy for me this year. If you feel up to it, definitely check out the link @ChuckSherrington posted in the comments. That has more information than you'll need for a while. Getting down to business: The answer to your question is both! Since your question assumes that both are ...

Inheritability of facial features Let's start with the origin of specific facial features. Below is a table which shows averaged heritabilities for a range of facial quantitative traits from a large number of studies, from the review by Kohn (1991): where $h^2$ is the narrow-sense heritability. You can clearly see that heritability in majority of the ...

Certain emotions/situations trigger parts of body's self defense mechanism which in turn make the brain release certain chemical compounds. These chemical compounds in turn prepares your body to respond to the situation at hand. For example in case of life threatening situation one experiences an adrenaline rush which prepares the body by quickening the ...

The article by Ranganathan et al (2004) provides some relevant information. The authors discuss how can be increased by two main factors, neural adaptation and muscle growth. They note how the motor skill acquisition literature supports the use of visualisation as an adjunct to actual practice as a means of improving performance: Research on motor skill ...

There is quite a lot of research on self-awakening (see this search on Google Scholar for self awakening). Hopefully someone else more familiar with this literature can add a more authoritative answer about the mechanisms of self-awakening. In the interem I briefly extract some relevant points from Ikeda and Hashi (2012). The study does not directly address ...

It seems that there is a research literature on the topic of the relationship between body temperature and time perception. Weardon and Penon-Voak (1995) present a literature review of the topic which would be worth reading if this interests you. The following quotes their abstract: Experiments investigating timing behaviour in humans under conditions ...

I imagine individual differences in enjoyment derived from horror films would be multifaceted as with most preferences regarding consumption of different media. Some of the research mentions how males, teenagers/young adults, sensation seekers, and those who have a history of exposure to horror films (although this may be both cause and effect) tend to like ...

Paul Ekman has shown definite links between emotions and facial expressions. A Google Scholar search for his name returns many many results. Now, consider how muscles are physically formed; that is, the more we use muscles, the better defined (and usually either stronger or more effective) they become. Alternatively put, form follows function. Put the ...

As far as I know, it has not been shown that a positive attitude has any effect on the immune system (ignoring the less significant placebo effect). What has been shown is that long-term stress has a negative effect on the immune system. Short-term stress actually has a positive effect on the immune system, but long-term stress has been correlated with ...

Yes is does. I know from personal experience that if I have a sinus headache or any other type of pain it hinders my work (software developer). I do not believe gender would make any difference, however I do know studies have been done and have proven that red haired people tend to be able to tolerate more pain. Here is a couple of references for you ...