Science of the SpiritS


Magic Wand

What we can see and hear is affected by imagination

Kelly Fitzgerald
Medical News Today
Fri, 28 Jun 2013 09:09 UTC
Our imagination may affect how we experience the world around us more than was previously thought, for instance, what we imagine seeing or hearing in our head can alter our actual perception, according to new research by a team from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

The finding, published in the journal Current Biology, explores the historic question in neuroscience and biology about how our brains puts together information from all the different senses.

Christopher Berger, doctoral student at the Department of Neuroscience and lead author of the study explained:
"We often think about the things we imagine and the things we perceive as being clearly dissociable. However, what this study shows is that our imagination of a sound or a shape changes how we perceive the world around us in the same way actually hearing that sound or seeing that shape does. Specifically, we found that what we imagine hearing can change what we actually see, and what we imagine seeing can change what we actually hear."
The study included a series of experiments that used illusions in which sensory information from one sense distorts or changes a person's perception of another sense. The experiments consisted of 96 healthy volunteers.
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Laptop

Could quantum brain effects explain consciousness?

Tanya Lewis
LiveScience
Thu, 27 Jun 2013 12:01 UTC
Consciousness
© Ase | ShutterstockA controversial theory suggests the brain acts like a quantum computer.
New York - The idea that consciousness arises from quantum mechanical phenomena in the brain is intriguing, yet lacks evidence, scientists say.

Physicist Roger Penrose, of the University of Oxford, and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, of the University of Arizona, propose that the brain acts as a quantum computer - a computational machine that makes use of quantum mechanical phenomena (like the ability of particles to be in two places at once) to perform complex calculations. In the brain, fibers inside neurons could form the basic units of quantum computation, Penrose and Hameroff explained at the Global Future 2045 International Congress, a futuristic conference held here June 15-16.

The idea is appealing, because neuroscience, so far, has no satisfactory explanation for consciousness - the state of being self-aware and having sensory experiences and thoughts. But many scientists are skeptical, citing a lack of experimental evidence for the idea.
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People 2

How men and women cooperate

Daniel Stolte
University of Arizona
Tue, 25 Jun 2013 05:26 UTC
Image
© Unknown
While men tend to match their partners' emotions during mutual cooperation, woman may have the opposite response, according to new research.

Cooperation is essential in any successful romantic relationship, but how men and women experience cooperation emotionally may be quite different, according to new research conducted at the University of Arizona.

Ashley Randall, a post-doctoral research associate in the UA's John & Doris Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences and the UA's department of psychiatry, has been interested for some time in how romantic partners' emotions become coordinated with one another. For example, if someone comes home from work in a bad mood we know their partner's mood might plummet as well, but what are the long-term implications of this on their relationship?

Randall wondered how the act of cooperating, a beneficial relationship process, might impact emotional coordination between partners.

"Cooperation - having the ability to work things out with your partner, while achieving mutually beneficial outcomes - is so important in relationships, and I wondered what kind of emotional connectivity comes from cooperating with your partner?" she said.

What she found in her recent study - published in SAGE's Journal of Social and Personal Relationships and featured in the journal's podcast series, Relationship Matters - were surprising gender differences.
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Info

10 psychological effects of nonsexual touch


PsyBlog
Sun, 10 Apr 2011 13:52 UTC
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Psychological research on how a simple (nonsexual) touch can increase compliance, helping behaviour, attraction, and signal power.

To get around in the world, we mainly rely on our eyes and ears. Touch is a sense that's often forgotten.

But touch is also vital in the way we understand and experience the world. Even the lightest touch on the upper arm can influence the way we think. To prove it, here are 10 psychological effects which show just how powerful nonsexual touch can be.

1. Touch for money

A well-timed touch can encourage other people to return a lost item. In one experiment, users of a phone booth who were touched were more likely to return a lost dime to an experimenter (Kleinke, 1977). The action was no more than a light touch on the arm.

People will do more than that though; people will give a bigger tip to a waitress who has touched them (Crusco & Wetzel, 1984).

(Stop giggling at the back there!)
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Road Cone

Beard psychology: 4 signals that serious facial hair sends


PsyBlog
Mon, 24 Jun 2013 13:02 UTC
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Are bearded men good with babies? Are beards attractive to women? In a fight, do beards help or hinder?

If you're having trouble telling men from women, here's a clue. Men are the ones with hair sprouting from their faces (alright more hair sprouting from their faces).

Some men attempt to cover up the effect of all those androgens by shaving off their beards. Others prefer to send out manly signals in all directions (well, either that or they can't be bothered to shave).

Who is right? What signal does the beard really send? Here are four very important beard-related facts that every man, woman and child should know.
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Einstein

Everything you know about longevity is wrong

Jeff Anderson
A Place For Mom
Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:38 UTC
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Researchers who tracked 1,500 people over 80 years have come to some surprising conclusions and the factors linked to longevity. Much of what we've been taught about how to live a long life may be mistaken.

In 1921, just over 1,500 Californian children were selected to participate in a study led by a Stanford University psychologist, Dr. Lewis Terman. An enormous amount of data on the children was collected and archived. More remarkably, the 1,500 individuals were tracked over decades, with every detail about their lives, and their deaths, duteously noted by Dr. Terman's team. Even after Dr. Terman's own death in 1956, the Terman participants continued to be tracked, with the study lasting over 80 years. Dr. Terman's original intention was to explore the nature of intelligence, but modern day researchers realized that this treasure trove of data could provide unusual insight into the factors associated with longevity.

When contemporary researchers, Dr. Howard S. Friedman and Dr. Leslie R. Martin, completed their analysis and number crunching, they came to some extraordinary conclusions. Their findings, outlined in a 2011 book (The Longevity Project: Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight Decade Study), challenge many of our common assumptions about aging.

According to Longevity Project authors, much of what we've been taught about longevity is wrong. Here are seven popular beliefs about longevity that may in fact be misconceptions:
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Snakes in Suits

The successful pathological

Sandra Brown
Sandra Brown MA Blog
Tue, 25 Jun 2013 17:19 UTC
Psychopaths
© SOTT

Pathology Education teaches that pathological partners come in all levels of social and economic success.

Survivors say, "He's a doctor" to which I respond "SO?" So what. Doctors, attorneys, clergy, law enforcement---it's not the job that's pathological--- it's the character and personality disorders underneath.

Pathologicals flock to all types of careers. Those with high levels of narcissism and psychopathy flock to areas where they are experts, heroes, or are able to climb high up the career ladder. These disorders 'want' adoration. You don't get a lot of that on the back end of garbage truck as a worker.

Paul Babiak and Robert Hare wrote about this in their book Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work. The book examines the rise of white collar psychopathy in our country and in the work place. Some forms of pathology hide very well within their careers and success. A subconscious belief system is "If they are successful, they must be ok."

A degree from Yale means he's smart. It doesn't mean he's safe. A doctor that saves 'others lives' doesn't mean he won't take yours. Clergy who will pray for others souls doesn't mean he isn't soul-deadening in a personal relationship.
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People 2

How other people's unspoken expectations control us


spring.org.uk
Mon, 24 Jun 2013 14:31 UTC
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We quickly sense how others view us and play up to these expectations.

A good exercise for learning about yourself is to think about how other people might view you in different ways. Consider how your family, your work colleagues or your partner think of you.

Now here's an interesting question: to what extent do you play up to these expectations about how they view you?

This idea that other people's expectations about us directly affect how we behave was examined in a classic social psychology study carried out by Dr Mark Snyder from the University of Minnesota and colleagues (Snyder et al., 1977). They had a hunch that people automatically sense how others view them and immediately start exhibiting the expected behaviours.
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Eye 1

Research examines the power of a human stare

CARossInst
YouTube
Sun, 23 Jun 2013 16:52 UTC
Paper by Dr. Colin A. Ross explains how to measure the eyes electromagnetic energy

Noted psychiatrist and author Colin A. Ross, M.D., has published experimental data that supports his scientific hypothesis that the eyes emit energy that can be captured and measured. Dr. Ross paper, 'The Electrophysiological Basis of Evil Eye Belief', is published in the current issue of Anthropology of Consciousness, a journal of the American Anthropological Association. The full paper is available here.

Although nearly everyone has experienced the sense of being stared at only to find that a person or animal really was looking, Western science has long rejected that the human eye can emit any form of energy. Dr. Ross says his findings move human ocular extramission, which he also refers to as an eyebeam, from the realm of superstition to science.

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Book 2

Upcoming book: Gladwell believes in the underdog's advantage


Consumer 360
Wed, 05 Jun 2013 18:07 UTC

Malcolm Gladwell has good news for underdogs: There probably is a way to win. But it's definitely not the easy way.

"Most people who are running a weak team would rather do the easy thing and lose than do the hard thing and win," Gladwell said Wednesday at Nielsen's Consumer 360 conference in Phoenix.

The author gave a preview of the themes from his upcoming book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants - in which he finds that advantages in life aren't always ... advantageous.

Case in point: A successful tech executive named Vivek who, in coaching his 12-year-old daughter's basketball team, had several things going against him. First, he was coaching a team of girls who were far from top athletes. And more importantly, he knew nothing about basketball, having grown up in Mumbai.

But Vivek's outsider status made him see basketball in a way most people didn't.

"He decided the way Americans play basketball is completely mindless," Gladwell said.
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