Science of the SpiritS


Gear

Five reasons to boost the power of your brain and body with breathing

David DiSalvo
Psychology Today
Mon, 07 Jul 2014 12:45 UTC
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The advice to "just breathe" when you're stressed may be a cliché of Godzilla-sized proportions, but that doesn't make it untrue. The substance behind the saying is research-tested - and not only to manage stress.

Breathing is an unusual bodily function in that it is both involuntary and voluntary. Other major functions - take digestion and blood flow, for example - occur without conscious influence, and for the most part we couldn't influence them if we tried. They are involuntarily managed in the vast processing system of the unconscious mind.

Breathing is also managed in the unconscious, but at any moment we can grab the controls and consciously change how we breathe. We can make our breathing shallow or deep, fast or slow, or we can choose to stop breathing altogether (until we pass out and the unconscious takes over again).

Comment: Stimulation of the vagus nerve through controlled breathing can bring amazing health benefits. Learn breathing techniques that optimize vagal stimulation withÉiriú Eolas, a stress control, healing and rejuvenation program.

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Eye 1

Lies: Why they are so hard to detect and a method

Jeremy Dean
PsyBlog
Sun, 02 Feb 2014 09:51 UTC
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© Juliana CoutinhoIf only detecting lies was as easy as spotting a rapidly lengthening nose.
I've read and heard all kinds of rubbish about how to detect lies. Apparently you should look for sweating, which way people's eyes move, whether they make too much eye contact or too little...and so on.

Ironically advice to look for individual 'tells', like a poker player is supposed to, is a mug's game.

Certainly under laboratory conditions people are very poor at detecting when other people are lying. Across 206 studies people's hit rates for detecting lies was 54%, which seeing as you'd get 50% right by pure chance is not very impressive (Bond & DePaulo, 2006).

So, why is it so difficult to tell when people are lying? That's what Hartwig & Bond (2011) examine in a meta-analysis of dozens of studies. They looked at all kinds of different cues to lying like fidgeting, postural shifts, head movements, gaze aversion and speech rate.
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Footprints

People slow to react are more likely to die prematurely, study finds

Melissa Healy
Los Angeles Times
Fri, 31 Jan 2014 13:34 UTC
reaction time
© Wally Skalij / Los Angeles TimesResearchers measured the range of reaction times across a group
Whether you're naked and hungry on the savannah, driving in traffic or at the controls of your favorite video game, being slow to react can get you eaten, injured or splattered across the screen. While we intuitively know this, a new study offers dramatic evidence of how much speed of response still matters: In men and women from ages 20 to 59, slower than average reaction time turned out to be a pretty good predictor of premature death.

The new research, published this week in the journal PLoS One, was large, simple and highly revealing. Between 1988 and 1994, researchers gave 5,134 Americans adults under 60 a very straightforward test of reaction time: The participants, all part of a large federal study of American nutrition and health, were seated at a computer and told to push a button immediately upon seeing a 0 on the screen in front of them. There was no practice period; a participant's average over 50 trials was computed, and he or she had just a few seconds between those 50 trials.
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People 2

The benefits of 'positive dissociation' and sharing: Divorce rate cut in half for couples who discussed relationship movies

Susan Hagen
The University of Rochester
Sat, 01 Feb 2014 06:56 UTC
A new study finds that watching and discussing movies about relationships is as effective in lowering divorce rates as other, more intensive early marriage counseling programs.

En español: La tasa de divorcio se reduce a la mitad entre recién casados que comentaron cinco películas sobre relaciones de pareja
Discussing five movies about relationships over a month could cut the three-year divorce rate for newlyweds in half, researchers report. The study, involving 174 couples, is the first long-term investigation to compare different types of early marriage intervention programs.

The findings show that an inexpensive, fun, and relatively simple movie-and-talk approach can be just as effective as other more intensive therapist-led methods - reducing the divorce or separation rate from 24 to 11 percent after three years.

Comment: Read the following forum thread to learn more about positive dissociation and its benefits.

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Snakes in Suits

A second look at psychopaths - They're not what you think


Brasscheck TV
Sat, 01 Feb 2014 00:00 UTC
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Polished, professional, and dangerous

It's a body of information that explains a lot.

When you read the actual stories of royalty of ancient times, you're much more likely to come across the stories of raging psychopaths than the "kindly and wise."

Why is that - and how much has really changed since we all became so "modern"?

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Family

Why resisting your emotions actually intensifies them

Marissa Håkansson
MindBodyGreen
Mon, 25 Mar 2013 10:48 UTC
Do you resist your emotions, or do you allow yourself to feel your feelings fully? I used to resist my emotions and only welcomed the good feelings, while fighting back the ones that seemed too much to handle.
Woman, health, happiness, balance
© Shutterstock
However, I came to realize that it was my thoughts about those emotions (not the actual emotions) that I was fearful of. I didn't want to experience an intense emotion because the idea of losing control seemed frightening.

For example, I used to worry that if I let myself feel sad, I'd spiral into unrelenting sadness. I tried to overlook my emotions, adopt a positive mindset and move on with my life. But it didn't seem to work.

I see now that it can be easy for us to get caught in a loop when it comes to our emotions, which causes us to resist them. Over time, though, resisting our feelings causes them to simmer and intensify.
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Magnify

Brain area found to help spot bad decisions

Ian Sample
The Guardian
Tue, 28 Jan 2014 18:59 UTC
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© CorbisAdam and Eve: possible victims of an underdeveloped lateral frontal pole
Ball of tissue named lateral frontal pole found to be crucial in analysing alternative decisions - and may be unique to humans

A new brain region that appears to help humans identify whether they have made bad decisions has been discovered by researchers.

The size and shape of a large Brussels sprout, the ball of neural tissue seems to be crucial for the kind of flexible thought that allows us to consider switching to a more promising course of action.

While other brain parts keep track of how well, or not, our decisions are working for us, the new structure is more outward-looking, and mulls over what we might have done instead.

Scientists spotted the region, named the lateral frontal pole, after scanning the brains of healthy humans in two different ways. Further scans failed to find any comparable region in monkeys, suggesting the area is exclusive to humans.

"We know there are differences between humans and monkeys. But it is surprising how many similarities there can be, and how a couple of differences can mean our behaviour is so far removed from them," said Matthew Rushworth, a professor of cognitive neuroscience, who led the study at Oxford University.

"There are a few brain areas that monitor how good our choices are, and that is a very sensible thing to have. But this region monitors how good the choices are that we didn't take. It tells us how green the grass is on the other side of the fence."
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Alarm Clock

It's true: Violent video games turn you into a jerk

Jack Flanagan
The Kernel
Thu, 30 Jan 2014 08:33 UTC
ResidentEvil
© Facebook.com/ResidentEvilResident Evil is no Duck Hunt.
Researchers find that gamers are affected by what they play

Media-driven panics about what video games are "doing to our children" are scoffed at by gamers and most technology journalists. But are these haughty dismissals justified? Because studies are now coming thick and fast that find the minds of young people playing video games are affected by what they play. And not always for the best.

In a study titled Remain Calm, Be Kind, a quote from US general Colin Powell, researchers Whitaker and Bushman made the point that, of all media, video games are the most perfectly architected to change our state of mind. They're active: Gamers are indirectly doing things that they'd otherwise imagine or witness in books or film respectively.

They call this "managing our mood states," implying that aggressive actions make us feel short-tempered, while slower-paced games will cause us to feel relaxed.

They set out to demonstrate this. There is a wealth of information that ties aggressive video games to anti-social behaviour. But they wanted to complete the circle: To show that "nice" games make for nicer people too. If we had this information, it would suggest that the link between game and gamer is a strong one and can be both positive and negative.

They gave participants a selection of games to play - violent, neutral and relaxing - and then asked them to compete against each other in competitive games. Those who played high-stakes gaming like Resident Evil were more competitive than those that played less intense games like fishing.
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Life Preserver

Neurofeedback: 6 fascinating effects of watching and shaping your own brainwaves

Jeremy Dean
PsyBlog
Wed, 29 Jan 2014 09:37 UTC
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© Creativity103Calmer, more efficient, balanced and happier. Could watching and shaping your own brainwaves do this?
Neurofeedback training is like looking in a kind of mental mirror, where the 'mirror' is reflecting your brain's electrical activity.

The training, some claim, can make you more centred, efficient, balanced and happier - perhaps dramatically enhancing your life.

While others are more skeptical, it has been the subject of renewed interest in psychological research.

What is neurofeedback?

The training itself typically involves sensors placed on the scalp which pick up electrical activity and display it on a screen.

You then sit in front of the screen and try to change the waveform, just by thinking.

The idea is that you can learn to create specific brain states, like concentration or relaxation - it's a kind of high-tech meditation.

Eventually, the theory goes, you can learn to better control your own brain.

Here are six studies on the effects of neurofeedback...
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Black Magic

A real-life demon possession is being reported in Indiana

Jason Howerton
The Blaze
Mon, 27 Jan 2014 13:50 UTC
ammons house
© Hammond Police DepartmentThe house where Latoya Ammons lived with her family was on Carolina St. in Gary. This is a photo taken by the police. A figure appears to show itself in the window at right.
A terrified mother claims she watched in horror as her demon-possessed 9-year-old son walked backwards up a wall and ceiling. Her claims would be easy to dismiss if a child services case worker and a nurse weren't reportedly there to witness it all.

Latoya Ammons claims all three of her children showed signs of being possessed, including "evil" smiles and strangely deep voices, the Indianapolis Star reports. The mother says she also witnessed her 12-year-old daughter levitating in their Gary, Ind., home.

Strangely enough, the scary-sounding incident is outlined in official documents. Further, Gary police Capt. Charles Austin told the Star that he is a "believer" after making several visits to the home and interviewing witnesses. He first thought the family was making stories up as part of a get-rich-quick scheme.
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