Science of the SpiritS


Shoe

Walk off your depression! Exercise often works better than medication to improve mental health

Jeremy Dean
PsyBlog
Sat, 17 Mar 2018 00:00 UTC
walking, exercise
Two-thirds of people with major depression were no longer depressed after this treatment.

A brisk walk three times a week can actually beat antidepressant medication in treating major depression, research finds.

The results come from a study on three groups of elderly people with major depressive disorder.

One group were given the exercise, another given antidepressant medication and the third both.

The results showed that all three groups improved the same amount.

Comment: Walking may be the new superfood - it can increase your life span by improving cardiovascular health and also improves cognitive abilities. More helpful information to combat depression:

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Treasure Chest

Does mind-wandering spur creativity?

Julia Christensen, Guido Giglioni & Manos Tsakiris
Aeon
Tue, 05 Dec 2017 15:07 UTC
mind wandering
© Courtesy Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, WikimediaDetail from The Red Balloon by Paul Klee, 1922.
The Renaissance painter Albrecht Dürer was regarded by his friends as a master in the art of mind-wandering. He could become 'enwrapped' in his own pleasant reflections, wrote the German humanist Willibald Pirckheimer, at which times Dürer 'would seem the happiest person on Earth'.

Many of us are familiar with mind-wandering in a number of guises: procrastination, reflection, meditation, self-flagellation, daydreaming. But while some mental meandering seems fruitful, on other occasions it has the unmistakeable bite of a bad habit, something that holds us back from reaching our full potential. Reverie can be a reprieve from reality and a font of inspiration, yes. But equally familiar is the mind's tendency to devolve into sour and fruitless rumination when left to its own devices, especially when we're in the grip of depression, anxiety or obsession.
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SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: The Health & Wellness Show: Is anybody home? Dissociation and ......oh, I forgot


Sott.net
Fri, 16 Mar 2018 16:00 UTC
Image
© Jared Rodriguez / Truthout
Everyone dissociates whether it be through daydreaming, watching movies, playing games, reading and meditation. The ability to dissociate seems to be hard-wired in humans and is especially prevalent in children during play as one of their primary modes of learning. Dissociation can range from mild forms of disengagement from the surrounding environment to a more severe detachment from physical and emotional experiences. Flights of fancy can be a great wellspring of creativity or a maladaptive escape from reality.

How much dissociation is too much? How can it be used for good? Join us for this episode of The Health and Wellness show for a lively discussion.

Stay tuned for Zoya's Pet Health Segment where the topic is animal spies and how our pet companions have been used for espionage.

Running Time: 01:27:01

Download: MP3

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Hourglass

Who's got the time? Why time seems to fly - or trickle - by

Michael Flaherty
The Conversation
Thu, 18 Jan 2018 23:16 UTC
Time
No one is born with an innate understanding of time, and babies must learn to synchronize and coordinate their behavior with the rest of the world. Until then, they demand attention at all hours of the day and night, completely upending their parents' schedules. And for all of us, travel can be disorienting and disruptive, especially if we visit a place where time is organized quite differently from what we're used to (like in Spain, with its afternoon siesta).

But we're all able to eventually adjust - babies included - by adapting to a system of standard temporal units: minutes, hours and days of the week.

Despite the effectiveness of this system, there's still a big difference in how we perceive the passage of time - how fast or slow time seems to go by. A few minutes may seem to last "forever" when we're waiting for a light to turn green, or we may be shocked to realize that the year is almost over.
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2 + 2 = 4

Taking ownership of your problems: From blame to responsibility

Moshe Ratson, MBA, MS, LMFT
Good Therapy
Fri, 16 Mar 2018 11:24 UTC
plant soil
© Pexels/Pixabay
I, like many other people, grew up in a less-than-ideal environment. The circumstances got in the way of my personal development. At the same time, that environment contributed to and shaped the person that I have become.

I could assign blame for my problems and unhealthy decisions on my childhood or my parents or my teachers. However, any such statement would be unrealistic and untruthful. The fact is my parents did the best they could considering their limitations (challenges, information, copying skills, abilities, etc.). My parents provided me with many of the values I possess today and will always be my greatest teachers. Yes, my parents have made some decisions I wish they wouldn't have, but to blame them demonstrates a narrow and limited perspective-and, more importantly, takes away any personal responsibility on my part.

Comment:

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Brain

Depressed people find it harder to differentiate between similar memories, lack of new cells in hippocampus suspected culprit

Dr. Jeremy Dean
PsyBlog
Wed, 14 Mar 2018 16:16 UTC
sad boy
The cause could be a lack of new brain cells in the hippocampus.

Depressed people find it harder to tell similar memories apart, research finds.

It may be difficult for depressed people to remember who they have told what, or where something happened.

The more depressed people are, the more they seem to forget the details that help to make memories distinct.

The cause could be a lack of new brain cells in the hippocampus, an area vital to memory.

It is not a generalised memory problem, though, the researchers think.
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Info

Cause of synesthesia identified in the brain

Matthew Loffhagen
Outer Places
Wed, 14 Mar 2018 14:17 UTC
Synesthesia
© Unsplash/YouTube/Outer Places
Have you ever looked at the number four and decided that it must, logically, be a red number? Or heard a person's name and instantly associated them with the color blue before even meeting them?

If so, you might have synesthesia, a condition in which the brain color-codes random stimuli in an arbitrary but consistent fashion. People with synesthesia will often tie various senses together, creating colorful images in their heads spontaneously based solely on otherwise intangible concepts ranging from musical notes to emotions.

As far as mental abnormalities go, synesthesia is pretty cool. There aren't any real downsides (beyond the social stigma of course), and you always have something to talk about at parties.

(If you're unsure whether you have synesthesia, it's possible to take an online test, but this can be easily defeated if you have a decent memory for your choices as all the test does is check whether you'll give the same answer multiple times.)

Because synesthesia is so difficult to pin down, scientists have a hard time figuring out exactly what causes it. The condition seems to appear a lot within the same family, which has led to genetic research that has attempted to explain what's going on in a person's brain.
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Eye 1

New study shows psychopaths' disregard for others is not automatic

Bill Hathaway
Yale News
Mon, 12 Mar 2018 19:27 UTC
Psychopathic man
© stock.adobe.com
Psychopaths exhibit callous disregard for the welfare of others, suggesting an inability to understand the perspective of people around them. Yet they can also be extremely charming and manipulative, seemingly indicating an awareness of the thoughts of others. This paradox has perplexed researchers, clinicians, legal authorities, and the lay public.

A new Yale study shows that psychopaths lack the ability to automatically assess thoughts of those around them, a process which underlies the formation of human social bonds. However, if asked to deliberately assess thoughts of those around them, they can process the thoughts of others.

"Psychopaths can be extremely manipulative, which requires understanding of another's thoughts," said Yale's Arielle Baskin-Sommers, professor of psychology and senior author of the study published March 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "But if they understand the thought of others, why do they inflict so much harm?"
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Family

The necessity of proper socialization and shame in society

Daniel Solomon
Sott.net
Tue, 13 Mar 2018 01:35 UTC
Shame
That's a damn, dirty shame.
I recently participated in a conversation about the epidemic of so-called toxic shame in society, and about how it stems from socializing children at a young age. Although it was unclear to me how one caused the other, I disagreed that proper socialization was a bad thing, or that it led to adults becoming paralyzed with chronic, or 'toxic', shame.

Furthermore, depending on one's conduct, a certain level of shame is appropriate, even necessary. If someone were to do something embarrassing, hurtful or harmful, either to themselves or someone else, isn't it appropriate to feel some shame or guilt because of what they did or said? Without shame, there would be no motivation to reflect on past actions and decide to do and be better human beings in future.
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Take 2

'Hold onto your kids' - Dr. Gabor Maté talks about the effects of childhood trauma

Anna Rodgers
Collective Evolution
Tue, 06 Mar 2018 16:19 UTC
Gabor Mate
© The Relationship School
Do you feel like you have a broken heart from your childhood? Do you feel like it's affected your health? Are you struggling as a parent with how you are raising your own children? Or, perhaps you just feel really unhappy with your life and with yourself? If this is you, then you are not alone.

Depression, anxiety and suicide among teens and adults in first world countries, is the highest it's ever been. According to recently published data, 12.7% of USA citizens 12 and older are taking anti-depressant medication and female use is almost double that of males.

Comment: Additional information about trauma and illness:

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