Earlier this year on SOTT Talk Radio we spoke with Tim McGregor, co-author with Dr Jane McGregor of The Empathy Trap: Understanding Antisocial Personalities. Tim is a health practitioner with more than 20 years' experience in addiction and sociopathy and Jane is an author and lecturer at the Institute of Mental Health, University of Nottingham, UK.

The McGregors prefer the term 'sociopath' over 'psychopath', although their recently published book discusses essentially the same condition, explaining how predators operate, why they're often difficult to spot, and the importance of recognising pathological behaviour for what it is. The Empathy Trap also challenges antisocial behaviour in everyday life and calls for more empathy among normal people, something that can help victims cope with the aftermath of destructive relationships by re-establishing healthy boundaries.

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With evidence growing that training the mind or inducing specific modes of consciousness can have beneficial health effects, scientists have sought to understand how these practices physically affect the body. A new study by researchers in Wisconsin, Spain, and France reports the first evidence of specific molecular changes in the body following a period of intensive mindfulness practice.

The study investigated the effects of a day of intensive mindfulness practice in a group of experienced meditators, compared to a group of untrained control subjects who engaged in quiet non-meditative activities. After eight hours of mindfulness practice, the meditators showed a range of genetic and molecular differences, including altered levels of gene-regulating machinery and reduced levels of pro-inflammatory genes, which in turn correlated with faster physical recovery from a stressful situation.

"To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that shows rapid alterations in gene expression within subjects associated with mindfulness meditation practice," says study author Richard J. Davidson, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A new book by Murray Straus, founder and co-director of the Family Research Lab and professor emeritus of sociology at the University of New Hampshire, brings together more than four decades of research that makes the definitive case against spanking, including how it slows cognitive development and increases antisocial and criminal behavior.

"The Primordial Violence" (Routledge, 2013) shows that the reasons parents hit those they love includes a lot more than just correcting misbehavior. It provides evidence on the effect spanking has on children, and what can be done to end it. The book features longitudinal data from more than 7,000 U.S. families as well as results from a 32-nation study and presents the latest research on the extent to which spanking is used in different cultures and the subsequent effects of its use on children and on society.

"Research shows that spanking corrects misbehavior. But it also shows that spanking does not work better than other modes of correction, such as time out, explaining, and depriving a child of privileges. Moreover, the research clearly shows that the gains from spanking come at a big cost. These include weakening the tie between children and parents and increasing the probability that the child will hit other children and their parents, and as adults, hit a dating or marital partner. Spanking also slows down mental development and lowers the probability of a child doing well in school," Straus says.

"More than 100 studies have detailed these side effects of spanking, with more than 90 percent agreement among them. There is probably no other aspect of parenting and child behavior where the results are so consistent," he says.

When Ryan Hammons was 4 years old, he began directing imaginary movies. Shouts of "Action!" often echoed from his room.

But the play became a concern for Ryan's parents when he began waking up in the middle of the night screaming and clutching his chest, saying he dreamed his heart exploded when he was in Hollywood.

His mother, Cyndi, asked his doctor about the episodes. Night terrors, the doctor said. He'll outgrow them.Then one night, as Cyndi tucked Ryan into bed, Ryan suddenly took hold of Cyndi's hand.

"Mama," he said. "I think I used to be someone else."

He said he remembered a big white house and a swimming pool. It was in Hollywood, many miles from his Oklahoma home. He said he had three sons, but that he couldn't remember their names. He began to cry, asking Cyndi over and over why he couldn't remember their names.

Humans may be hard-wired to feel at peace in the countryside and confused in cities - even if they were born and raised in an urban area.

According to preliminary results of a study by scientists at Exeter University, an area of the brain associated with being in a calm, meditative state lit up when people were shown pictures of rural settings. But images of urban environments resulted in a significant delay in reaction, before a part of the brain involved in processing visual complexity swung into action as the viewer tried to work out what they were seeing.

The study, which used an MRI scanner to monitor brain activity, adds to a growing body of evidence that natural environments are good for humans, affecting mental and physical health and even levels of aggression.

Dr Ian Frampton, an Exeter University psychologist, stressed the researchers still had more work to do, but said they may have hit upon something significant.

Psychiatrist Hyla Cass says most psychiatrists simply label patients mentally ill based solely on symptoms and put them on dangerous and addictive drugs, instead of doing complete physical examinations to find and treat underlying medical conditions which can manifest as psychiatric symptoms. There are numerous non-harmful medical solutions that patients are not being offered. She also discusses the severe withdrawal effects of psychiatric drugs and what patients need to know about safely getting off of these drugs under a doctor's supervision.

If you are constantly on your mobile phone, most onlookers might think you have lots of friends and a busy social life.

However, those attached to the phone are likely to be less happy than those who can resist a ring or a message alert, says a study.

Avid mobile phone users also suffer from higher anxiety while students see their class work suffer with lower marks than those who are able to switch off.

Taking a photo may seem like the most obvious way to remember a special occasion, but it could in fact be causing significant damage to your memory.

Researchers from Connecticut asked a group of students to recall what items in a museum looked like.

Those who had taken photos of the artefacts struggled to describe the objects, while those who hadn't, remembered them more clearly.

Dr Linda Henkel, from Fairfield University, who ran the study, calls this phenomenon 'photo-taking impairment effect'.

Dr Henkel is currently investigating whether the content of a photo, such as whether a person is in it, for example, affects memory.

The most painful experiences in life may come with an eventual upside, by promoting the ability to appreciate life's small pleasures, scientists have said.

A new study suggests that people who have gone through divorce and coped with the death of a loved one, are better equipped to enjoy the little things in everyday life in the long-run.

A total of 14,986 adults were studied to see whether their exposure to life's hardships affected their ability to enjoy positive experiences.

Researchers from the University of British Columbia and Barcelona School of Management, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, first determined participants' exposure to painful experiences, including bereavement and divorce.

This imposed artificial time constraint is a very subtle one, especially when you realize everything depends on perspective. We're clearly experiencing a manipulated, illusory cycle of time with parameters that make us feel contained, limited. And that's the intent. Closing in on your prey is an ingrained predatory behavior. If the subjects feel there's no escape, compliant behavior will eventually follow.

That's pretty clever on the part of the controllers, but it's only effective when you're not awake to what's going on.

Perceived containment has been proven time and again in even popular science to produce certain behaviors. Time is only one factor, but an important one as it is one of the more subtle ways they exert control and amplify fear. We cannot succumb to any of these false paradigms. Humanity is running to and fro in an effort to find solutions, but only within the confines they've been cleverly restricted to. It's a closed system with clearly defined limitations. We look within their constructed time-framed and otherwise controlled system for solutions when there are none to be found. And again, it's all by design.

The only true solution lies in conscious, transcendent awareness of the true big picture.

Playing By the Rules

Herein lies the big "catch". Similar to the obvious political right-left paradigm, we've been injected into a much more complex set of confining rules and regulations. They are adopted by assumption from the parameters we've been given. It's not possible to objectively discern our condition when we think we have all the information we need to make right decisions...when in reality we don't.