Science of the SpiritS


People 2

Are we all PSYCHIC? Scientists believe that animals - including humans - have a collective consciousness

Victoria Woollaston
The Daily Mail, UK
Tue, 19 Nov 2013 05:51 UTC
  • Behaviours found to spread throughout species seemingly telepathically
  • These behaviours were adopted among groups that had never met
  • This led scientists to believe they're spread via a collective consciousness
  • Blue tits and macaques among species that share behaviours this way
  • Report in 2010 claimed to have proved humans have similar psychic skills
  • However, these claims have been dismissed some scientists in more recent reports
Some may call it coincidence, while others call it a sixth sense but why do people think about someone right before they call, for example, or 'have a feeling' something is about to happen before it does?

It may be due to something called collective consciousness - a term used by certain scientists to describe the practice of humans, and animals, sharing behaviours and ideas with each other telepathically.

Image
Some call it coincidence, while others call it a sixth sense but why do people think about someone right before they call, for example? It may be due to something called collective consciousness - a term used by some scientists to describe the practice of humans, and animals, sharing behaviours and ideas telepathically
A report in 2010 claimed to have proved the presence of this consciousness and, by default, psychic abilities in humans.

But these claims divided opinion and more recent reports dismiss them as nonsense.

The idea of a collective consciousness was first presented by French sociologist Émile Durkheim in 1893.
Read More...
Laptop

How Google is rotting our memories: Young people today have 'worse memories than their parents'

Nick Mcdermott
The Daily Mail, UK
Tue, 19 Nov 2013 05:32 UTC
  • People's reliance on the Internet has caused growing levels of forgetfulness
  • Many people now see Google as an extension of their intelligence
  • We are now much worse at remembering facts we know are available online, such as as geographical details
It provides us with instant answers to almost any question imaginable.

But our reliance on Google for fact-checking and finding basic information has made us forgetful, say scientists.

It was also found that many individuals view internet search engines as an extension of their own intelligence, rather than a separate tool.

As a result they still regard themselves as being clever even when they need the internet to find answers.

Image
Our growing reliance on the Internet for fact-checking and other basic information has resulted in growing levels of forgetfulness, according to scientists
In a series of tests, researchers found that participants were more likely to recall information if they believed it had been erased from a computer.
Read More...
Rainbow

10 remarkable ways meditation helps your mind

Jeremy Dean
PsyBlog
Sun, 10 Nov 2013 11:45 UTC
Image
© Andy RamdinStudies find meditation provides lasting emotional control, cultivates compassion, reduces pain sensitivity, boosts multitasking and more…
Meditation is about way more than just relaxing.

In fact, if I listed the following mental benefits from a new pill or potion, you'd be rightly sceptical.

But all these flow from a simple activity which is completely free, involves no expensive equipment, chemicals, apps, books or other products.

I've also included my own very brief meditation instructions below to get you started.

But first, what are all these remarkable benefits?

1. Lasting emotional control

Meditation may make us feel calmer while we're doing it, but do these benefits spill over into everyday life?

Desborders et al. (2012) scanned the brains of people taking part in an 8-week meditation program, before and after the course.
While they were scanned, participants looked at pictures designed to elicit positive, negative and neutral emotional responses.
After the meditation course, activation in the amygdala, the emotional centre of the brain, was reduced to all pictures. This suggests that meditation can help provide lasting emotional control, even when you are not meditating.

Comment: For a comprehensive and effective meditation technique, visit our Éiriú Eolas program.

Read More...
Arrow Down

Study: Students who cheat more likely to want government jobs

Larry Clifton
Digital Journal
Mon, 18 Nov 2013 15:25 UTC
high-tech listening devices
© National PoliceSpain's National Police caught up with a gang who supplied high-tech listening devices to students in exams, giving them the answers.

Bangalore - A new study released by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that people who cheat are more likely to want government jobs. The study by researchers from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania included hundreds of students in Bangalore, India. Study results suggest that one of the contributing forces behind government corruption could be who gets into government work in the first place, according to an LA Times report.

"If people have the view that jobs in government are corrupt, people who are honest might not want to get into that system," said Rema Hanna, an associate professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. To combat that problem, governments may need to find new ways to screen people seeking jobs, she said.

One experiment during the study involved more than 600 college seniors in India. Students were asked to roll a die in private and report what number they got. Each participant rolled the die 42 times and got paid more for higher numbers. Researchers could tell whether the numbers each person reported were significantly different than equal amounts of random die rolls. Those who reported consistently high numbers were allegedly cheating.

Cheating was unbridled as more than a third of students claimed scores that fell in the top 1% of the predicted distribution, said researchers. However, "students who apparently cheated were 6.3% more likely to say they wanted to work in government," according to the report.
Read More...
People

Do different languages confer different personalities?


The Economist
Tue, 05 Nov 2013 14:41 UTC
Image
© Alamy
Last week, Johnson took a look at some of the advantages of bilingualism. These include better performance at tasks involving "executive function" (which involve the brain's ability to plan and prioritise), better defence against dementia in old age and - the obvious - the ability to speak a second language. One purported advantage was not mentioned, though. Many multilinguals report different personalities, or even different worldviews, when they speak their different languages.

It's an exciting notion, the idea that one's very self could be broadened by the mastery of two or more languages. In obvious ways (exposure to new friends, literature and so forth) the self really is broadened. Yet it is different to claim - as many people do - to have a different personality when using a different language. A former Economist colleague, for example, reported being ruder in Hebrew than in English. So what is going on here?
Read More...
Info

Despite what you've been told, you aren't 'left-brained' or 'right-brained'

Amy Novotney
The Guardian, UK
Sat, 16 Nov 2013 14:29 UTC
The Brain
© Bbs United/Getty ImagesA new two-year study found no evidence that participants had a stronger left or right-sided brain network.
From self-help and business success books to job applications and smartphone apps, the theory that the different halves of the human brain govern different skills and personality traits is a popular one. No doubt at some point in your life you've been schooled on "left-brained" and "right-brained" thinking - that people who use the right side of their brains most are more creative, spontaneous and subjective, while those who tap the left side more are more logical, detail-oriented and analytical.

Too bad it's not true.

In a new two-year study published in the journal Plos One, University of Utah neuroscientists scanned the brains of more than 1,000 people, ages 7 to 29, while they were lying quietly or reading, measuring their functional lateralization - the specific mental processes taking place on each side of the brain.

They broke the brain into 7,000 regions, and while they did uncover patterns for why a brain connection might be strongly left or right-lateralized, they found no evidence that the study participants had a stronger left or right-sided brain network.

Jeff Anderson, the study's lead author and a professor of neuroradiology at the University of Utah says:
It's absolutely true that some brain functions occur in one or the other side of the brain, language tends to be on the left, attention more on the right.
But the brain isn't as clear-cut as the myth makes it out to be. For example, the right hemisphere is involved in processing some aspects of language, such as intonation and emphasis.
Read More...
Question

Quantum physics proves that there is an afterlife, claims scientist

Victoria Woollaston
The Daily Mail, UK
Thu, 14 Nov 2013 06:31 UTC
  • Robert Lanza claims the theory of biocentrism says death is an illusion
  • He said life creates the universe, and not the other way round
  • This means space and time don't exist in the linear fashion we think it does
  • He uses the famous double-split experiment to illustrate his point
  • And if space and time aren't linear, then death can't exist in 'any real sense' either
Most scientists would probably say that the concept of an afterlife is either nonsense, or at the very least unprovable.

Yet one expert claims he has evidence to confirm an existence beyond the grave - and it lies in quantum physics.

Professor Robert Lanza claims the theory of biocentrism teaches that death as we know it is an illusion created by our consciousness.

Image
Professor Robert Lanza claims the theory of biocentrism teaches death as we know it is an illusion. He believes our consciousness creates the universe, and not the other way round, and once we accept that space and time are 'tools of our minds', death can't exist in 'any real sense' either
Read More...
Info

A neuroscientist's radical theory of how networks become conscious

Brandon Keim
Wired.com
Thu, 14 Nov 2013 06:30 UTC
Neural Circuits
© Human Connectome ProjectA map of neural circuits in the human brain.
It's a question that's perplexed philosophers for centuries and scientists for decades: Where does consciousness come from? We know it exists, at least in ourselves. But how it arises from chemistry and electricity in our brains is an unsolved mystery.

Neuroscientist Christof Koch, chief scientific officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, thinks he might know the answer. According to Koch, consciousness arises within any sufficiently complex, information-processing system. All animals, from humans on down to earthworms, are conscious; even the internet could be. That's just the way the universe works.

"The electric charge of an electron doesn't arise out of more elemental properties. It simply has a charge," says Koch. "Likewise, I argue that we live in a universe of space, time, mass, energy, and consciousness arising out of complex systems."

What Koch proposes is a scientifically refined version of an ancient philosophical doctrine called panpsychism - and, coming from someone else, it might sound more like spirituality than science. But Koch has devoted the last three decades to studying the neurological basis of consciousness. His work at the Allen Institute now puts him at the forefront of the BRAIN Initiative, the massive new effort to understand how brains work, which will begin next year.
Read More...
Bulb

Your brain 'sees' things even when you don't

Anna Mikulak
Association for Psychological Science
Thu, 14 Nov 2013 11:38 UTC
The brain processes visual input to the level of understanding its meaning even if we never consciously perceive that input, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The research, led by Jay Sanguinetti of the University of Arizona, challenges currently accepted models about how the brain processes visual information.

Sanguinetti, a doctoral candidate in the UA's department of psychology in the College of Science, showed study participants a series of black silhouettes, some of which contained recognizable, real-world objects hidden in the white spaces on the outsides.

Working with John Allen, Distinguished Professor of psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience at the University of Arizona, Sanguinetti monitored subjects' brainwaves with an electroencephalogram, or EEG, while they viewed the objects.
Read More...
Info

Sociable people have 'bigger' brains

Heather Saul
The Independent, UK
Wed, 13 Nov 2013 14:06 UTC
Brain
© The Independent, UKUniversity of Oxford study finds people with bigger groups of friends have six brain regions larger than those who are less sociable.
Sociable people have bigger brains, according to research produced by the University of Oxford.

People who possess lots of friends have six parts of the brain which are larger and better connected than those who are less sociable or who have smaller friendship groups, the study found.

Presenting her research on Tuesday, lead researcher MaryAnn Noonan told the Society for Neuroscience annual conference: "Human beings are naturally social creatures.

"Yet we know surprisingly little about how the brain manages our behavior within our increasingly complex social lives - or which parts of the brain falter when such behavior breaks down in conditions such as autism and schizophrenia."

After examining a series of brain scans, Dr Noonan and her team found the more friends a person has, the larger these regions become.

The study asked 18 men and women how many friends they had made contact with in the last month to determine the size of the their social network. The majority of participants had contacted around 20 people, although some had been in touch with more than 40.
Read More...