Science of the SpiritS


Bulb

Johns Hopkins study finds: Our brain sabotages all efforts at breaking bad habits


RT
Sat, 13 Feb 2016 16:32 UTC
brain
© Francois Lenoir / Reuters
It hardly comes as a surprise that we're our own worst enemies, but new research appears to conclusively prove that our brain is the biggest saboteur of success, and leads to self-deception on a grand scale. The culprit? Dopamine.

As some may know, dopamine is the chemical that gives us pleasure whenever we receive a reward.

So what if you promised yourself to start getting up earlier, or eating dinner at preset times? According to new research from Johns Hopkins University, none of this really matters, because the memory of something much sweeter always lingers in the brain.

"We don't realize our past experience biases our attention to certain things," Professor Susan M. Courtney at the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences said.

Comment: Why waste time and energy thinking about 'a pharmaceutical way to address this chemical imbalance'?There are many alternative options for dealing with chemical imbalance and stimulating dopamine naturally:
Also known as arctic root or golden root, Rhodiola Rosea has already been clinically shown to stimulate serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine activity, and support healthy neurotransmitter balance, but human trials have now shown the the herb protects against viral infection.


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Heart

Giving is better: Helping others uniquely benefits mental and physical health


Eurekalert
Thu, 11 Feb 2016 00:00 UTC
helping hand
Social support has well-known benefits for physical and mental health. But giving support -- rather than receiving it -- may have unique positive effects on key brain areas involved in stress and reward responses, suggests a study in Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine, the official journal of the American Psychosomatic Society. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

"These results add to an emerging literature suggesting that support giving is an overlooked contributor to how social support can benefit health," according to the report. The lead researchers were Tristen Inagaki, PhD, of University Pittsburgh and Naomi Eisenberger, PhD, of University of California, Los Angeles.

Comment:

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Health

Combining aerobic exercise with meditation can reduce depression & heal the brain

Christopher Bergland
Psychology Today
Thu, 11 Feb 2016 13:33 UTC
Meditation
© KieferPix/Shutterstock
A new study from Rutgers University reports that meditation and aerobic exercise done consecutively can help reduce depression, rumination, and overwhelming negative thoughts. The combination of mental and physical (MAP) training through focused meditation and aerobic exercise is a relatively new concept and clinical intervention for major depressive disorder (MDD).

Depression is estimated to affect approximately 20 percent of the population at some point in their lives. Among other symptoms, the inability to focus your attention in positive ways is a hallmark of depression. Currently, the most common treatment for depression is psychotropic medications and talk therapy.

The researchers at Rutgers wanted to explore the neuroscience behind alternatives to current treatments that would allow individuals to acquire new cognitive skills so they could bounce back more quickly from stressful life events. The team found that learning how-to focus attention through meditation combined with the neurobiological benefits of aerobic exercise created a powerful double whammy for fighting depression.

Comment: Further reading: Overcome depression using your mind

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Horse

Horses can recognize human emotions, study shows


Phys.Org
Tue, 09 Feb 2016 22:26 UTC
horses
© WikipediaTwo young Nokota mares.
For the first time horses have been shown to be able to distinguish between angry and happy human facial expressions.

Psychologists studied how 28 horses reacted to seeing photographs of positive versus negative human facial expressions. When viewing angry faces, horses looked more with their left eye, a behavior associated with perceiving negative stimuli. Their heart rate also increased more quickly and they showed more stress-related behaviors. The study, published today (10 February) in Biology Letters, concludes that this response indicates that the horses had a functionally relevant understanding of the angry faces they were seeing. The effect of facial expressions on heart rate has not been seen before in interactions between animals and humans.
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Family

Pride goeth before a fall: How narcissistic tendencies lead us into disaster

Susan Krauss Whitbourne
Psychology Today
Wed, 10 Feb 2016 00:39 UTC
Narcissus
© UnknownNarcissus
Believing that no harm can come your way, no matter what, can lead you to become a victim of the myth of invincibility. There is a reason for saying that "pride goeth before a fall," and that excessive pride or hubris, commonly regarded as a tragic flaw, will lead to your own undoing. Once you've convinced yourself that you're invincible, you fail to see yourself in an accurate or realistic light. Whatever shortcomings you've avoided coming to grips can then come back to haunt you and if they're serious enough, can lead to your downfall.

We see plenty of examples in the media of celebrities and politicians who think they can do no harm. Most recently, Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton, given the "Superman" designation prior to Super Bowl 50, failed to live up to expectations when the big game came along. Although his team certainly would have gone into that game well-prepared and ready, who knows how much his head, and focus, was turned by the accolades foisted upon him by the media?

Anyone who goes into a competitive situation convinced of his or her own invincibility is liable to suffer a similar fate. Once you see yourself as the inevitable hero or victor, you'll fail to prepare yourself for the reality of what might end up being a very challenging situation. Imagine that you're going into a high-pressure meeting where you need to talk your boss into agreeing to a request or you need to beat out a coworker looking for the same plum outcome. Instead of methodically going through in your mind the rationale of your approach, you gloss over the details, thinking only of how great it will feel to win. When your boss asks for those details, you'll be stumped, and your competitor will carry the day.
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Hearts

Empathy borne of pain and suffering

A Canticle for Lazarus
Information Clearing House
Fri, 05 Feb 2016 00:00 UTC
empathy
I recently underwent a relatively minor - but surprisingly painful - outpatient surgical procedure. I spent the next two days crashed out at my parents house in a haze of Percocet, Zofran, and Ibuprofen. On day three I stopped the narcotics, preparing myself to return to work.

But the pain didn't stop.

I spent day three on the couch, certain that once I got past 72-hours post-op, the swelling would subside and the pain would cease.

But the pain didn't stop.

Days four and five were a complete loss. The incision site, near the base of my tailbone, ached with any movement; I missed two days of work because I couldn't walk without feeling as though someone was stabbing my spine. I couldn't sit upright in a chair without a wave of pain crashing over me with such strength that it made me nauseous.

So I spent those days crashed out on my own couch, still unwilling to take narcotics, curled up with Aleve and a heating pad, guilt-ridden about missing work and generally feeling sorry for myself.

Comment: How awful for human beings that we are so often indifferent to the sufferings of others until we have a visceral experience and knowledge of what it's like to be in another person's shoes.

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Hourglass

PTSD is as old as the hills

Stephanie Pappas
Brain Decoder
Thu, 04 Feb 2016 18:26 UTC
ptsd war
Posttraumatic stress disorder wasn't recognized by psychiatrists until 1980. But soldiers who lived thousands of years ago can give us a deeper understanding of psychological trauma.
There is a story in my family of my grandfather's homecoming from the Korean War. His father, a medic in the German army in World War I, took him into his study. "You saw horrible things over there," he told his son. "But you have to forget them. When you leave this room, you just don't think about it anymore."

I can't say whether my grandfather took this advice, but he kept his memories to himself; my mother didn't know he was a Korean war vet until well into her teen years. Still, whatever he saw in Korea didn't go away. Two years ago, when he was seriously ill in the hospital, my grandfather woke up in tears. Why, he asked my dumbfounded mother, had he lived through the war when all of his buddies had died?

I was stacking frozen corpses like cordwood, he said. Was there a reason I was spared?

Comment: PTSD in war veterans = a normal psychological reaction of people with conscience to being cannon fodder in senseless wars.

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Bandaid

One simple way to better understand how you use your time

Goal Auzeen Saedi
Psychology Today
Sat, 06 Feb 2016 23:27 UTC
woman sun
© Pexels.com
Every so often after finishing a book we may set it down, mentally checking off an outstanding item we've meant to complete. But sometimes our mind continues to process, letting the lessons we've learned percolate long after we've set a title back into our bookshelves or libraries. I had this particular experience upon finishing Lynn Grodzki's Building Your Ideal Private Practice. Interestingly, despite her countless helpful ideas, tips and tricks for business, it wasn't all the practical tools that stuck with me. It was one concept in the final chapter of the book (and discussed only briefly) that made an immense impact on me. Grodzki discussed looking at how our time is organized using 3 simple descriptors: work, spirit, and buffer.

She described work as things that bring you joy and money. Spirit time was something that would rejuvenate your soul, and buffer was everything else. Simple enough. She shared learning about the concept from her coach and using this framework to categorize her own time. She saw that as a busy private practitioner, while her work brought her money, it did not always translate to joy. Weekends involved running errands, extra paperwork, and maybe dinner out and a movie, but not enough to fully re-energize her. As a result, her weeks on end were lots and lots of buffer time.

Comment: Further reading:
We spend a lot of energy looking for shortcuts to save time, and sure, those shortcuts add up. But when I look back, my biggest time regrets aren't spending too much time on Twitter or mismanaging my daily tasks. Those are bad habits, but there are bigger, more systematic time wasters that have really gotten in the way. Fixing these will free up a massive amount of time and energy.

Regrets of the older and wiser: Time wasted on things that don't matter in the long run


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2 + 2 = 4

What if schools taught kindness? Lessons from a "kindness curriculum"

Laura Pinger
greatergood.berkeley.edu
Mon, 01 Feb 2016 16:11 UTC
toddle kindness
Walking to class one day, one of us (Laura) saw a young student crying and waiting for his mother to arrive—he had split his chin while playing. When Laura got to class, the other students were very upset and afraid for their friend, full of questions about what would happen to him. Laura decided to ask the class how they could help him.

"Caring practice!" exclaimed one of the children—and they all sat in a circle offering support and well wishes. The children immediately calmed and they continued with their lesson.

This is what's possible when kids learn to be kind at school.

Comment: Forget Survival of the Fittest: It Is Kindness That Counts
Why do people do good things? Is kindness hardwired into the brain, or does this tendency arise via experience? Dacher Keltner, director of the Social Interaction Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, investigates these questions from multiple angles and often generates results that are both surprising and challenging. In his recent book, Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life (W. W. Norton, 2009), Keltner weaves together scientific findings with personal narrative to uncover human emotion's innate power to connect people with one another, which he argues is the path to living the good life.

DACHER KELTNER: "Born to be good" means that our mammalian and hominid evolution has crafted a species - us - with remarkable tendencies toward kindness, play, generosity, reverence and self-sacrifice, which are vital to the classic tasks of evolution - survival, gene replication and smoothly functioning groups. These tendencies are felt in the wonderful realm of emotion - feelings such as compassion, gratitude, awe, embarrassment and mirth. Recent studies have revealed that our capacity for caring, play, reverence and modesty is built into our brains, bodies, genes and social practices.


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Snakes in Suits

Toxic managers: In corporate culture, workplace bullies use subtle tactics to climb the ladder

Glynis Sweeny
Alternet
Wed, 03 Feb 2016 21:28 UTC
Toxic workplace
© .lakeforestmba.edu
If you think your boss is out to get you, but can't point to any obvious incidents of abuse, you may not be paranoid after all. You may, in fact, be in hot water, and the boss is just being stealthy when alienating and antagonizing you. Most managers — even the bad ones — appreciate the importance of maintaining the facade of professionalism at the workplace, so some have become increasingly skilled at being subtle while abusing employees.

These passive-aggressive managers are often highly valued in the modern workplace because many corporations believe they help weed out undesirable employees. Some corporations even create cultures that foster leadership that is quietly ruthless and devious. Research by the University of Buffalo School of Management finds that it actually pays to be a workplace bully. Those who engage in harassment typically receive excellent reviews from their own supervisors and are exceptional at climbing the corporate ladder.

Comment: Considering the fact that Psychopaths 'flourish' at top of the corporate ladder. The reader might want to read more about psychopaths in the work place:

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