Science of the SpiritS


Sherlock

Nasty comments change what we think

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In the beginning, the technology gods created the Internet and saw that it was good. Here, at last, was a public sphere with unlimited potential for reasoned debate and the thoughtful exchange of ideas, an enlightening conversational bridge across the many geographic, social, cultural, ideological and economic boundaries that ordinarily separate us in life, a way to pay bills without a stamp.

Then someone invented "reader comments" and paradise was lost.

The Web, it should be said, is still a marvelous place for public debate. But when it comes to reading and understanding news stories online - like this one, for example - the medium can have a surprisingly potent effect on the message. Comments from some readers, our research shows, can significantly distort what other readers think was reported in the first place.

But here, it's not the content of the comments that matters. It's the tone.

Rose

Through the nose: The 'growth of knowledge' is one breath away

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© Sioux City Journal photo by Tim HyndsCorey Schink demonstrates Eiriu Eolas, a meditation program he will teach at Western Iowa Tech Community College as part of the Sioux City school's lifelong learning program. He is shown Monday, Feb. 4, 2013.
Corey Schink found forgiveness in the form of his late stepfather who appeared to him in a dream.

"My stepdad Jim was a big bear of a man," the Smithland, Iowa, native recalled. "We got into a fight right before he died."

Schink carried that guilt for months, along with feelings of aimlessness in life.

One night, his stepfather appeared in a dream, telling Schink that he would be all right and that all was forgiven.

"It was as if a wave of emotions flooded over me," Schink said. "I don't think I would've gotten to that point without Eiriu Eolas."

An Irish Gaelic term that means "growth of knowledge," Eiriu Eolas (pronounced Aye-Roo Oh-lahs) is a breathing and meditation program which combines modern neuroscience with ancient wisdom.

The attributes of Eiriu Eolas is that it detoxifies one mind and body while liberating one's heart.

Comment:

Try it out for yourselves!


Bulb

Amazing scientific facts about lists

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A typical list, of a format that is very familiar to the author of this blog
If you visit any popular text-based site on the internet, you'll find articles that are lists of things. People like lists, but why? Here are 10 cool facts about lists that may explain the fascination

People like lists of things. They're everywhere on the internet. You name any subject matter you can think of, odds are there's a list about it. Nowhere is safe. Even here, on the Guardian Science section, one of the most popular articles in recent months is a list. But why are lists so popular? Well, here are 10 astonishing facts about lists that may help explain it.

Mars

The first humans on Mars will spend 501 days cooped up in a tiny space... So a 'tried and tested' male-female partnership would be best

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An artist's conception of a spacecraft envisioned by Inspiration Mars, a private group funded by Dennis Tito
Research suggests a man and a woman working and living together may be better than two people of the same sex on millionaire's mission to the Red Planet

The first humans on Mars could be a married couple, after organisers of an ambitious manned mission to the Red Planet said that only a "tried and tested" male-female partnership could cope with the close confinement of a return trip.

Dennis Tito, the multi-millionaire financier and former rocket scientist behind the planned 2018 mission, said he was confident of raising the estimated $1.5bn to $2bn (£1bn- £1.3bn) needed to send a two-person mixed crew to Mars - but admitted that the total funding has yet to be found.

Mr Tito, who once worked for Nasa, promised to fund the Inspiration Mars mission for the next two years, and will ask other wealthy individuals and charitable foundations to contribute to the final cost of building and launching the manned space craft.

"I will come out a lot poorer because of this mission, but my grandchildren will come out a lot richer in terms of inspiration," Mr Tito said at a press conference in Washington DC.

In addition to charitable and personal donations, Mr Tito said that he expected to raise money from television and media rights. The choice of a mixed crew of one man and one woman would heighten media interest, he said.

Info

Neurons in the brain switch identity and re-route fibres

Neurons
© Cajal/ Wikicommons Media "Like the entomologist in search of colourful butterflies, my attention was drawn to the gardens of the grey matter, which contained cells with delicate and elegant forms, the mysterious butterflies of the soul, whose beating of wings may one day reveal to us the secrets of the mind" – Santiago Ramón y Cajal.
These drawings by Santiago Ramón y Cajal show the cellular structure of three different areas of the human cerebral cortex. The cortex is the seat of higher mental functions such as language and decision-making, and contains dozens of distinct, specialised areas. As Cajal's drawings show, it has a characteristic layered structure, which differs somewhat from one area to the next, so that the layers vary in thickness according to the number of cells they contain.

Cells throughout the cortex are arranged in a highly ordered manner. Those in layers 2 and 3, for example, send fibres to the other side of the brain, whereas those in layers 5 and 6 send theirs straight downwards. This organization is under genetic control and, once established, was thought to be fixed. Now, though, researchers at Harvard University report that fully matured neurons in the intact brain can be made to switch identity and re-route their fibres to acquire the characteristics of cells in other layers.

Cortical neurons are generated in vast numbers during the earliest stages of development, when the nervous system is nothing more than a hollow tube running along the back of the embryo. The inner surface of the neural tube is lined with stem cells called radial glia, which have a single fibre that comes into contact with the tube's outer surface. These cells divide to produce immature neurons, which then climb onto their mother's fibre and migrate outwards. At the front end of the tube, neurons migrate away in waves, and those produced early on form the inner-most layer of the cortex. Subsequent waves of cells migrate past the earlier ones, so that the layers form from the inside out.

Info

Coming back from the brink of death is possible, says doctor


When people describe seeing tunnels, white lights and deceased family members after their hearts stop, they're dead - but they can come back, believes Dr. Sam Parnia.

Parnia, a critical care doctor and the director of resuscitation research at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, writes in his new book, Erasing Death: The Science That is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death, that a person can now be resuscitated long after they previously would have been considered clinically dead.

"The advances in the last 10 years have shown us that it's only after a person dies that they turn into a corpse, that their brain cells start to die,'' Parnia told Savannah Guthrie on TODAY Tuesday. "Although most people think this takes place in only four or five minutes, we now know that actually brain cells are viable for up to eight hours."

He continued, "We now understand that it's only after a person has turned into a corpse that their cells are undergoing death, and if we therefore manipulate those processes, we can restart the heart and bring a person back to life."

Bulb

Memory strategy may help depressed people remember the good times

New research highlights a memory strategy that may help people who suffer from depression in recalling positive day-to-day experiences. The study is published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Previous research has shown that being able to call up concrete, detailed memories that are positive or self-affirming can help to boost positive mood for people with a history of depression. But it's this kind of vivid memory for everyday events that seems to be dampened for people who suffer from depression.

Researcher Tim Dalgleish of the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and colleagues hypothesized that a well-known method used to enhance memory - known as the "method-of-loci" strategy - might help depressed patients to recall positive memories with greater ease.

The method-of-loci strategy consists of associating vivid memories with physical objects or locations - buildings you see on your commute to work every day, for instance. To recall the memories, all you have to do is imagine going through your commute.

In the study, depressed patients were asked to come up with 15 positive memories. One group was asked to use the method-of-loci strategy to create associations with their memories, while a control group was asked to use a simple "rehearsal" strategy, grouping memories based on their similarities.

Info

Mysterious muscle disorder appears rooted in brain

Brain Disorder
© StockxpertIndividuals with mysterious psychological and muscular disorders with no clear physical cause show abnormal brain activity, a new study finds.
A mysterious illness in which people experience painful muscle cramps or paralysis with no apparent physical explanation may be rooted in the brain. New research suggests the brains of such people do in fact function differently from normal brains.

Psychogenic diseases - once referred to as "hysterical" illnesses - have severe symptoms that strongly resemble nervous system illnesses caused by nerve or muscle damage or genetics, but show none of these characteristics.

As a result, such diseases are very difficult to diagnose and treat. But sufferers of these diseases show unique patterns of brain activity, researchers report today (Feb. 25) in the journal Brain.

Many of the traditional brain-scanning tests show normal results in psychogenic diseases. "It has been extremely difficult to show these patients are abnormal," study author and neuroscientist James Rowe of the University of Cambridge told LiveScience. Understanding the brain mechanism behind these diseases will enable them to be diagnosed and treated sooner, Rowe said.

Rowe and his colleagues studied people with two different forms of dystonia, a movement disorder that causes muscles to contract painfully and involuntarily. One group had normal dystonia resulting from a gene mutation, whereas the other group had psychogenic dystonia with no obvious cause.

Info

Women more talkative than men because their brain is designed that way

Talkative
© Photos.com
We've all heard the oft-repeated statistics about women talking more than men. And to back up those statistics, one previous study has shown that a part of the brain responsible for processing communication is simply larger in a woman than a man. Now, a new study adds to those claims by moving a step further, showing that the female brain is actually designed with communication in mind.

Performed by doctors at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, this study has linked being talkative with a particular protein found in the brain called FOXP2. Women have been found to have more of this protein in their brains, leading the researchers to believe this is why women are more vocal than men.

The results of this study have been published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

"This study is one of the first to report a sex difference in the expression of a language-associated protein in humans or animals," explained the study's co-author Margaret McCarthy, PhD, in a prepared statement. "The findings raise the possibility that sex differences in brain and behavior are more pervasive and established earlier than previously appreciated."

Science, it seems, has been forever curious about a female's tendency to be more communicative and has been looking for this answer for years. The link between FOXP2 and speech was first discovered at the turn of the century and was found to connect vocalization in a host of different animals, such as bats, mice and rats. This latest study started off by observing this correlation in rats before moving on to young children.

Magic Wand

How human language could have evolved from birdsong

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© Unknown
Linguistics and biology researchers propose a new theory on the deep roots of human speech.

"The sounds uttered by birds offer in several respects the nearest analogy to language," Charles Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man (1871), while contemplating how humans learned to speak. Language, he speculated, might have had its origins in singing, which "might have given rise to words expressive of various complex emotions."

Now researchers from MIT, along with a scholar from the University of Tokyo, say that Darwin was on the right path. The balance of evidence, they believe, suggests that human language is a grafting of two communication forms found elsewhere in the animal kingdom: first, the elaborate songs of birds, and second, the more utilitarian, information-bearing types of expression seen in a diversity of other animals.

"It's this adventitious combination that triggered human language," says Shigeru Miyagawa, a professor of linguistics in MIT's Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, and co-author of a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

The idea builds upon Miyagawa's conclusion, detailed in his previous work, that there are two "layers" in all human languages: an "expression" layer, which involves the changeable organization of sentences, and a "lexical" layer, which relates to the core content of a sentence. His conclusion is based on earlier work by linguists including Noam Chomsky, Kenneth Hale and Samuel Jay Keyser.