Science of the SpiritS


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A magnetic trick to define consciousness

Kelly Servick
ScienceNow
Wed, 14 Aug 2013 15:45 UTC
Consciousness
© Adenauer G. CasaliEchoes of awareness. Scientists can perturb the brain with a magnet and analyze its electrical response to measure consciousness.
Consciousness isn't easy to define, but we know it when we experience it. It's not so simple to decide when someone else is conscious, however, as doctors must sometimes do with patients who have suffered traumatic brain injury.

Now, researchers have come up with an approach that uses the brain's response to magnetic stimulation to judge a person's awareness, reducing it to a numerical score they call an index of consciousness.

"You're kind of banging on the brain and listening to the echo," says Anil Seth, a neuroscientist at the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom who was not involved in the work.

Faced with an unresponsive patient, clinicians do their best to determine whether the person is conscious. Through sound, touch, and other stimuli, they try to provoke verbal responses, slight finger movements, or just a shifting gaze. Yet some conscious patients simply can't move or speak; an estimated 40% of those initially judged to be completely unaware are later found to have some level of consciousness.
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Magic Wand

Visualized heartbeat can trigger 'out-of-body experience'

Anna Mikulak
Association for Psychological Science
Wed, 14 Aug 2013 15:08 UTC
A visual projection of human heartbeats can be used to generate an "out-of-body experience," according to new research to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The findings could inform new kinds of treatment for people with self-perception disorders, including anorexia.

The study, conducted by Jane Aspell of Anglia Ruskin University in the UK and Lukas Heydrich of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, is novel in that it shows that information about the internal state of the body - in this case, the heartbeat - can be used to change how people experience their own body and self.

Volunteers in the study were fitted with a head mounted display (HMD), which served as "virtual reality goggles." They were filmed in real time by a video camera connected to the HMD, which allowed them to view their own body standing two meters in front of them.
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Info

Why some remember dreams, others don't

Bahar Gholipour
LiveScience
Tue, 13 Aug 2013 15:00 UTC
Dreams
© DreamstimeWhat is the difference between people who always recall their dreams and those who rarely do?
People who tend to remember their dreams also respond more strongly than others to hearing their name when they're awake, new research suggests.

Everyone dreams during sleep, but not everyone recalls the mental escapade the next day, and scientists aren't sure why some people remember more than others.

To find out, researchers used electroencephalography to record the electrical activity in the brains of 36 people while the participants listened to background tunes, and occasionally heard their own first name. The brain measurements were taken during wakefulness and sleep. Half of the participants were called high recallers, because they reported remembering their dreams almost every day, whereas the other half, low recallers, said they only remembered their dreams once or twice a month.

When asleep, both groups showed similar changes in brain activity in response to hearing their names, which were played quietly enough not to wake them.

However, when awake, high recallers showed a more sustained decrease in a brain wave called the alpha wave when they heard their names, compared with the low recallers.

"It was quite surprising to see a difference between the groups during wakefulness," said study researcher Perrine Ruby, neuroscientist at Lyon Neuroscience Research Center in France.

The difference could reflect variations in the brains of high and low recallers that could have a role in how they dream, too, Ruby said.
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People 2

Women still less likely to commit corporate fraud

Matthew Swayne
Penn State
Tue, 13 Aug 2013 14:44 UTC
Women are less likely to take part in corporate crime and fraud even though more women now work in corporations and serve at higher levels of those organizations, according to a team of sociologists.

The researchers examined a database of recent corporate frauds and found that women typically were not part of the conspiracy. When women did play a role, it was rarely a significant one.

"There has been this view for awhile that women are no more moral than men and that once there was more gender equality in the workforce, there would be more females involved in corporate crime," said Darrell Steffensmeier, professor of sociology and criminology, Penn State. "That view goes back a long time but, at some point, we should get the point that something else may be happening."

Steffensmeier said that about three out of four conspiracies to commit corporate fraud were all-male, and there was no report of an all-female conspiracy. In most cases when women do take part in corporate crime, they tend to play minor roles in the overall conspiracy, according to the researchers, who reported their findings in the current issue of the American Sociological Review.

Steffensmeier said the findings suggest that placing more women in executive leadership positions in corporations may raise ethical standards. Women are socialized to take fewer risks for business advantage and may feel they are under greater surveillance so they self-censor more, he added.
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Magic Wand

Electrical signatures of consciousness in the dying brain

Shantell M. Kirkendoll
University of Michigan Health System
Mon, 12 Aug 2013 18:12 UTC
Image
© University of Michigan Health SystemUniversity of Michigan researchers George Mashour, M.D., Ph.D., and Jimo Borjigin, Ph.D., form the foundation for investigating mental experiences occurring in the dying brain, including seeing the light during cardiac arrest.
A University of Michigan animal study shows high electrical activity in the brain after clinical death.

The near-death experience reported by cardiac arrest survivors worldwide may be grounded in science, according to research at the University of Michigan Health System.

Whether and how the dying brain is capable of generating conscious activity has been vigorously debated.

But in this week's PNAS Early Edition, a U-M study showed shortly after clinical death, in which the heart stops beating and blood stops flowing to the brain, rats display brain activity patterns characteristic of conscious perception.

"This study, performed in animals, is the first dealing with what happens to the neurophysiological state of the dying brain," says lead study author Jimo Borjigin, Ph.D., associate professor of molecular and integrative physiology and associate professor of neurology at the University of Michigan Medical School.

"It will form the foundation for future human studies investigating mental experiences occurring in the dying brain, including seeing light during cardiac arrest," she says.
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Books

Fifty Shades of Grey romanticizes sexual violence and emotional abuse of women

Kathryn Ruehle
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News
Mon, 12 Aug 2013 18:02 UTC
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© Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishersJournal of Women's Health, published monthly, is a core multidisciplinary journal dedicated to the diseases and conditions that hold greater risk for or are more prevalent among women, as well as diseases that present differently in women.
Violent and abusive behavior against women, which can be both physically and emotionally harmful, gain societal acceptance when they are glamorized and normalized in popular culture such as books and movies. The main characters' relationship in the best-selling novel Fifty Shades of Grey, for example, helps perpetuate the problem of intimate partner violence against women, according to an article in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. To obtain a copy of the article, press contacts should email journalmarketing1@liebertpub.com.

In "'Double Crap!' Abuse and Harmed Identity in Fifty Shades of Grey," Amy Bonomi, PhD, MPH, Lauren Altenburger, BS, and Nicole Walton, MSW from The Ohio State University, Columbus, conducted a systematic analysis of the novel to elucidate patterns consistent with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) definitions of interpersonal violence and associated reactions known to occur in abused women.

They conclude that the female partner, Anastasia, suffers harm as a result of her relationship with Christian. Specifically, the couple's interactions are emotionally abusive, characterized by stalking, intimidation, and isolation. Sexual violence is pervasive in the novel, including the use of alcohol to impair Anastasia's consent and the use of intimidation. Anastasia suffers stress, altered identity, and disempowerment/entrapment.
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Book 2

Tell me a story: Research examines how parents can use books to have a positive impact on their child's social struggles

Dawn Fuller
The University of Cincinneti
Mon, 12 Aug 2013 17:54 UTC
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© The University of CincinnetiJennifer Davis Bowman
New research explores the positive effects of reading as part of a parental intervention strategy for children struggling with social issues.

A new study out of the University of Cincinnati not only finds that parents feel responsible about taking action when their children struggle with social issues, but also that parents are influenced by their own childhood memories. Jennifer Davis Bowman, a recent graduate of the special education doctoral program at the University of Cincinnati, will present her research on Aug. 12, at the 108th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in New York, N.Y.

Bowman's study examined parents' use of what's called bibliotherapy - using books as interventions for children who experience social struggles that may arise from disabilities such as autism or Down Syndrome.

Bibliotherapy involves books with characters that are facing challenges similar to their reading audience, or books that have stories that can generate ideas for problem-solving activities and discussions. Bowman says previous research found that bibliotherapy can improve communication, attitude and reduce aggression for children with social disabilities.

The adult participants in the study were four caregivers who had concerns about their child's social behavior. One of the participants was raising a grandchild. The other three were biological parents.
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People

Smart enough to know better: Intelligence is not a remedy for racism

Diane Swanbrow
University of Michigan
Sun, 11 Aug 2013 16:14 UTC
Smart people are just as racist as their less intelligent peers - they're just better at concealing their prejudice, according to a University of Michigan study.

"High-ability whites are less likely to report prejudiced attitudes and more likely to say they support racial integration in principle," said Geoffrey Wodtke, a doctoral candidate in sociology. "But they are no more likely than lower-ability whites to support open housing laws and are less likely to support school busing and affirmative action programs."

Wodtke presented his findings at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. The National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health, supported his research.

He analyzed data on the racial attitudes of more than 20,000 white respondents from the nationally representative General Social Survey. He examined how their cognitive ability, as measured by a widely used test of verbal intelligence, was linked with their attitudes about African-Americans, and about different policies designed to redress racial segregation and discrimination.
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Question

Near-death experiences may be triggered by surging brain activity

Tia Ghose
LIveScience
Mon, 12 Aug 2013 14:00 UTC
Tunnel
© VinnyPrime, Stock.xchngA vision of a light at the end of a dark tunnel is sometimes reported by people who have near-death experiences, but studies suggest the sight may be the result of oxygen deprivation.
Near-death experiences could be caused by a surge of electrical firing in the dying brain, new research in animals suggests.

In the study, rats whose hearts were stopped showed a surge of brain waves associated with consciousness, according to a new study published today (Aug. 12) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers measured the animals' brain activity on electroencephalography (EEG) machines.

However, "whether the animals perceive that as a white light or tunnel of light, that's something we can't know," said study researcher Jimo Borjigin, a neuroscientist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Other experts agreed that further study is needed to determine how the study might apply to near-death experiences (NDEs) in people.

There's no way to know what the rats were experiencing while their hearts were stopped, and other studies in dying humans and dogs have found no brain wave activity that was parallel to what the researchers found in the new study, said Dr. Sam Parnia, a resuscitation researcher at Stony Brook University School of Medicine in New York, who was not involved in the study.
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Chalkboard

Religious people are less intelligent than non-believers

Rob Waugh
Yahoo News
Mon, 12 Aug 2013 10:39 UTC
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© ZUMA / Rex FeaturesFamous atheist Richard Dawkins

Religious people are less intelligent than non-believers, according to a new review of 63 scientific studies stretching back over decades. A team led by Miron Zuckerman of the University of Rochester found "a reliable negative relation between intelligence and religiosity" in 53 out of 63 studies

Even in extreme old age, intelligent people are less likely to believe, the researchers found - and the reasons why people with high IQs shun religion may not be as simple as previously thought. Previous studies have tended to assume that intelligent people simply "know better", the researchers write - but the reasons may be more complex.

For instance, intelligent people are more likely to be married, and more likely to be successful in life - and this may mean they "need" religion less.

The studies used in Zuckerman's paper included a life-long analysis of the beliefs of a group of 1,500 gifted children - those with IQs over 135 - in a study which began in 1921 and continues today.
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