Science of the Spirit

Researchers: People more likely to tell secrets during post-sex conversation

CBS Connecticut
Wed, 25 Dec 2013 08:59 UTC

The findings of a recent study indicate that people are far more likely to disclose secrets during "pillow talk," or post-sex conversation.

According to an article that appeared in a recent edition of UConn Magazine, relationship researchers have learned why some people are inclined to feel more trusting post-coitus - and why others might still clam up.

"When individuals experience orgasm, profound physiological changes occur as a hormone called oxytocin floods their bodies," the article, written by assistant professor Dr. Amanda Denes, indicated. "Increases in oxytocin have been linked to many pro-social behaviors - hence the hormone's nicknames, 'love hormone' and 'trust hormone.'"

She continued, "While men as well as women experience the post-climax oxytocin surge, testosterone is thought to dampen the effects of oxytocin, which may mean fewer warm, fuzzy feelings post-sex for individuals with more testosterone, such as men."

The Virgin Birth: Why we believe

Tia Ghose
LiveScience
Mon, 23 Dec 2013 07:46 UTC

© joyart/Shutterstock
Here, a copy of William Bouguereau's L'Innocence painting, depicting the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus.

About three-quarters of Americans believe in the Virgin Birth, according to a recent Pew survey.

That's not surprising, experts say.

Belief in Jesus' immaculate conception isn't such a leap once you accept the possibility of miracles and the supernatural. And from a cognitive perspective, the human brain is primed for a belief in God and the supernatural.

Those polls are "evidence that most people know scientific knowledge is not the only kind of knowledge," said Stacy Trasancos, a popular blogger on science and Catholicism and the author of "Science Was Born of Christianity" (Amazon Digital Services, 2013). "People find it reasonable to believe in the reality of the supernatural."

Brain connections may explain why girls mature faster

Science Daily
Thu, 19 Dec 2013 16:27 UTC

© Newcastle University
This is a colored image illustrating the brain connections for one of the 121 subjects (male, 4 years old)

Newcastle University scientists have discovered that as the brain re-organizes connections throughout our life, the process begins earlier in girls which may explain why they mature faster during the teenage years.

As we grow older, our brains undergo a major reorganization reducing the connections in the brain. Studying people up to the age of 40, scientists led by Dr Marcus Kaiser and Ms Sol Lim at Newcastle University found that while overall connections in the brain get streamlined, long-distance connections that are crucial for integrating information are preserved. The researchers suspect this newly-discovered selective process might explain why brain function does not deteriorate -- and indeed improves - during this pruning of the network. Interestingly, they also found that these changes occurred earlier in females than in males.

Explaining the work which is being published in Cerebral Cortex, Dr Kaiser, Reader in Neuroinformatics at Newcastle University, says: "Long-distance connections are difficult to establish and maintain but are crucial for fast and efficient processing. If you think about a social network, nearby friends might give you very similar information -- you might hear the same news from different people. People from different cities or countries are more likely to give you novel information. In the same way, some information flow within a brain module might be redundant whereas information from other modules, say integrating the optical information about a face with the acoustic information of a voice is vital in making sense of the outside world."

Meditation can 'debias' the mind in only 15 minutes

Jeremy Dean
PsyBlog
Fri, 20 Dec 2013 09:32 UTC

The research, published in the journal Psychological Science, tested the effects of meditation on a well-established mental bias called the 'sunk cost' bias (Hafenbrack et al., 2013).

The sunk cost bias refers to the fact that people find it difficult to give up on a goal into which they've already made a large investment.

Even once the goal has gone stale or proven unworkable, there's a tendency to throw good money (or effort) after bad, simply because a significant investment has already been made.

"Well," people say to themselves. "We've come this far..."

The effects of the 'sunk cost' bias can be seen in public projects that go way over budget and in military campaigns which continue long after their objectives have proven unworkable.

Thinking clearly

One of the strengths of meditation is that it shifts mental focus into the present moment.

Comment: Learn about this and other benefits of mindful meditation with Eiriú Eolas here.

False memories occur even among those with superior memory

Rick Nauert, Ph.D.
Psych Central
Wed, 20 Nov 2013 00:00 UTC

Some people have the unique talent of being able to remember daily details of their lives from decades past.

But surprising new research finds that even among this select group of memory experts, false memories occur at about the same frequency as among those with average memory.

False memories are the recollection of an event, or the details of an event, that did not occur. UC Irvine psychologists and neurobiologists created a series of tests to determine how false information can manipulate memory formation.

In their study they learned that subjects with highly superior autobiographical memory preformed similar to a control group of subjects with average memory.

"Finding susceptibility to false memories even in people with very strong memory could be important for dissemination to people who are not memory experts.

"For example, it could help communicate how widespread our basic susceptibility to memory distortions is," said Lawrence Patihis.

"This dissemination could help prevent false memories in the legal and clinical psychology fields, where contamination of memory has had particularly important consequences in the past."

Happiness is overrated: It's better to be right says study

Karen Kaplan
LA Times
Tue, 17 Dec 2013 15:48 UTC

© Beth Nakamura / The Oregonian
The secret to a happy relationship? It's not simply a matter of one partner agreeing with the other all the time, researchers say.

It is better to be right than to be happy - at least for one husband on the cutting edge of science.

As part of an unusual experiment, the husband was instructed to "agree with his wife's every opinion and request without complaint," and to continue doing so "even if he believed the female participant was wrong," according to a report on the research that was published Tuesday by the British Medical Journal.

The husband and wife were helping a trio of doctors test their theory that pride and stubbornness get in the way of good mental health. In their own medical practices in New Zealand, they had observed patients leading "unnecessarily stressful lives by wanting to be right rather than happy." If these patients could just let go of the need to prove to others that they were right, would greater happiness be the result?

Enter the intrepid husband. Based on the assumption that men would rather be happy than be right, he was told to agree with his wife in all cases. However, based on the assumption that women would rather be right than be happy, the doctors decided not to tell the wife why her husband was suddenly so agreeable.

Both spouses were asked to rate their quality of life on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being the happiest) at the start of the experiment and again on Day 6. It's not clear how long the experiment was intended to last, but it came to an abrupt halt on Day 12.

Residents of poorer nations find greater meaning in life

Anna Mikulak
Association for Psychological Science
Wed, 18 Dec 2013 14:41 UTC

While residents of wealthy nations tend to have greater life satisfaction, new research shows that those living in poorer nations report having greater meaning in life.

These findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that meaning in life may be higher in poorer nations as a result of greater religiosity. As countries become richer, religion becomes less central to people's lives and they lose a sense of meaning in life.

"Thus far, the wealth of nations has been almost always associated with longevity, health, happiness, or life satisfaction," explains psychological scientist Shigehiro Oishi of the University of Virginia. "Given that meaning in life is an important aspect of overall well-being, we wanted to look more carefully at differential patterns, correlates, and predictors for meaning in life."

Oishi and colleague Ed Diener of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign investigated life satisfaction, meaning, and well-being by examining data from the 2007 Gallup World Poll, a large-scale survey of over 140,000 participants from 132 countries. In addition to answering a basic life satisfaction question, participants were asked: "Do you feel your life has an important purpose or meaning?" and "Is religion an important part of your daily life?"

The data revealed some unexpected trends:

High levels of maternal care has life-long impact on vulnerability to stress, study says

Science Daily
Thu, 12 Dec 2013 11:41 UTC

A new study shows that high levels of maternal care during the early post-natal period in rodents can reduce the sensitivity of the offspring to stressful events during adulthood. Maternal care is shown to chemically modify and thereby re-program genes that control stress responses making them less likely to be activated. The findings have important implications for understanding early environment influences on stress-related disorders.

Comment: Improving one's ability to cope with stressful situations can already be achieved by regular practice with the breathing and meditation program Éiriú Eolas. Learn more about the many benefits of Éiriú Eolas here.

Do patients in a vegetative state recognize loved ones?

Source
Mon, 16 Dec 2013 15:59 UTC

TAU researchers find unresponsive patients' brains may recognize photographs of their family and friends.

Patients in a vegetative state are awake, breathe on their own, and seem to go in and out of sleep. But they do not respond to what is happening around them and exhibit no signs of conscious awareness. With communication impossible, friends and family are left wondering if the patients even know they are there.

Now, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Dr. Haggai Sharon and Dr. Yotam Pasternak of Tel Aviv University'sFunctional Brain Center and Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center have shown that the brains of patients in a vegetative state emotionally react to photographs of people they know personally as though they recognize them.

"We showed that patients in a vegetative state can react differently to different stimuli in the environment depending on their emotional value," said Dr. Sharon. "It's not a generic thing; it's personal and autobiographical. We engaged the person, the individual, inside the patient."

Are psychopaths better in bed?

The Ferret
The Watchtower of Destruction
Wed, 11 Dec 2013 10:06 UTC

So this was startling: On a list called "10 Signs Your Man (or Woman) Is A Psychopath," #5 was "Great Sex." "Those who have been with a psychopath often say it's the best thing they've ever experienced," I was informed. "A psychopath goes out of his way to please you."

It's the old stereotype: bad boys are better in the sack. Those nice boys just don't put gravy on your biscuit, honey.

Problem is, that didn't really fit with the psychopaths I'd seen in action. Some of them were stellar in bed, almost addictively so. Yet others were really great at the "sweeping women off their feet" part, but turned out to be mediocre or unresponsive in the sack, caring more for their own needs than their partner's. They got by because they manipulated their partners into wanting to please them, but there's a difference between that and actually being good betwixt someone's nethers.

And there you have it.... Confirmation of a different sort. Demanding a new baptism to a whole different, but much warmer, afterlife and God.

DeliciousTears

Ignominy plain & evident. Typed with one hand & 1 finger thereof. Ignominy plain and simple obvious. I’ve been indignant for a long time...

Buffalo_Ken

Grandad Adam and Grandma Eve's friendly nieghbours.

Awordinyourear

"One might think that Americans...would be better equipped with suspicion." Obviously some are, or they wouldn't be getting fired.

ReRan

It is high time for a large Solar mass ejection or flare that will cripple information systems world wide.

Baybars

Science of the Spirit

Researchers: People more likely to tell secrets during post-sex conversation

The Virgin Birth: Why we believe

Brain connections may explain why girls mature faster

Meditation can 'debias' the mind in only 15 minutes

False memories occur even among those with superior memory

Happiness is overrated: It's better to be right says study

Residents of poorer nations find greater meaning in life

High levels of maternal care has life-long impact on vulnerability to stress, study says

Do patients in a vegetative state recognize loved ones?

Are psychopaths better in bed?

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