Science of the SpiritS


Alarm Clock

How the brain resets its biological clock

Tanya Lewis
LiveScience
Wed, 05 Jun 2013 11:32 UTC
Clock
© Cema | sxc.huLike an alarm clock, the brain's internal clock can reset itself.
The brain's internal clock keeps time via a synchronized network of cells that is able to reset itself, a new study reveals.

This resetting may be what enables us to change our own daily rhythms with the seasons while the clock itself remains fairly stable, the researchers report.

But this mechanism didn't evolve to deal with modern technologies, such as alarm clocks or air travel. Messing with natural daily cycles can cause jetlag, or more serious effects. Shift work, for instance, has been linked to metabolic disorders such as diabetes, and even diseases like cancer.

"Shift work is now listed as a potential carcinogen by the World Health Organization," said study researcher Erik Herzog, a biologist at Washington University in St. Louis. By understanding how the brain's clock is wired, researchers could develop ways to improve the brain's ability to deal with these kinds of environmental perturbations, so they have fewer detrimental effects on our health, Herzog told LiveScience.

The brain's timing center is called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN. "Each cell is its own little timer," which works by turning on and off a set of "clock genes" that tell the cell to make proteins, Herzog explained. These genes operate on an approximately 24-hour cycle, known as a circadian rhythm. These cycles are important for regulating metabolism, hormone release and sleep/waking cycles.
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Info

Are humans getting smarter or dumber?

Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience
Tue, 04 Jun 2013 06:27 UTC
Intelligence
© Lightspring, ShutterstockWhat, if anything, is happening to humanity's brainpower?
Is humanity getting smarter or dumber with time? The answer may be both.

While IQ scores are rising at a remarkable rate, humans' underlying genetic potential for smarts could be on the decline, a new study suggests. The research found that by one measure of intelligence, the Victorians had modern folk beat.

The findings aren't without controversy - particularly whether or not the measurements used really reveal intelligence. Still, the study highlights the trouble with measuring intelligence over time: Smarts aren't defined as just one thing. What makes a person clever on the African Savannah could be nearly useless in the financial centers of Hong Kong.

"It's not simply that intelligence is going down or going up," said Michael Woodley, a psychologist at Umea University in Sweden who led the new research. "Different parts of intelligence could be changing in lots of different ways."
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Info

Have we all been duped by the Myers-Briggs test?

Roman Krznaric
Management Fortune CNN
Wed, 15 May 2013 23:27 UTC
Myers-Briggs
© Management Fortune CNN
When Frank Parsons opened the world's first career guidance center in Boston in 1908, he began by asking prospective clients 116 penetrating questions about their ambitions, strengths, and weaknesses (and how often they bathed). But then he did something more unusual: He measured their skulls.

Parsons was a committed believer in phrenology. If you had a large forehead, he might recommend you become a lawyer or engineer. But if your skull was more developed behind the ears, you were of the "animal type" and best suited to manual work.

Career advice has, thankfully, come a long way since then. But now, instead of measuring the outside of people's heads, it has become common to measure the inside using psychometric tests. Personality testing has grown into a major industry and is standard procedure in leadership and management courses, as part of job-interview processes, and, increasingly, in career counselling. But should we really trust such tests to deliver scientific, objective truth?

I have some bad news for you: Even the most sophisticated tests have considerable flaws. Take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the world's most popular psychometric test, which is based on Jung's theory of personality types. Over two million are administered every year. The MBTI places you in one of 16 personality types, based on dichotomous categories such as whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, or have a disposition towards being logical or emotional (what it calls "thinking" and "feeling").
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Hearts

How to control your emotional state through breathing

Seppo
Natural News
Wed, 29 May 2013 19:42 UTC
Image
© holistichealthgurus.com
For centuries, the art of breathing has been one of a myriad of tools employed by Yoga masters in order to calm the body and mind, in preparation for meditation, contemplation or simply to remain in control of one's emotions. Long utilized as a spiritual practice, a recent study has now brought the use of breathing as a way to control emotions into the realm of neuroscience. The results are promising and could mean a reduction in the administration of drugs as a form of anxiety, depression and anger management.

The study and its findings

Carried out at the Universite de Louvain by Dr. Pierre Philippot, the research study focused on two groups with the aim of investigating whether breathing can generate and regulate emotions and their intensity.

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Question

Hauntings, ESP and mystical visions: Counselling after paranormal experiences

Alexander De Foe
The Conversation
Thu, 23 May 2013 23:44 UTC
Others
© ShutterstockOnly half of paranormal or mystical experiences are associated with a mental disorder.
Sarah dreads falling asleep. Moments after she closes her eyes, her body becomes paralysed, and she is unable to move no matter how hard she tries.

This has been going on almost every night for three weeks.

Sarah has also noticed a dark, ghostly figure standing over her bed from time to time, which seems to be the cause of the paralysis. It's a frightening, agonising experience.

Sarah is experiencing a phenomenon called sleep paralysis. Although the condition primarily involves a sense of not being able to move prior to falling asleep, it can also include vivid hallucinations and visions. Sometimes people see a ghost or sense a negative presence in the room during an episode. Others report sleep paralysis as a form of alien abduction or other paranormal activity.

Although Sarah reported disturbing hallucinations, she has not been diagnosed with a mental illness. This is not uncommon in accounts of the paranormal; many have a logical explanation, such as perceptual error. In fact, some researchers estimate only half of paranormal or mystical experiences - such as out-of-body experiences, telepathy, intuition and precognition - are associated with a mental disorder.

Paranormal experiences may be very distressing, so it's important people have the opportunity to talk about them. Yet, many psychotherapists and psychiatrists lack adequate training and skills to deal with accounts of the paranormal.
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Info

Hormone levels may provide key to understanding psychological disorders in women

David Weston
University College London
Fri, 24 May 2013 14:58 UTC
Women at a particular stage in their monthly menstrual cycle may be more vulnerable to some of the psychological side-effects associated with stressful experiences, according to a study from UCL.

The results suggest a monthly window of opportunity that could potentially be targeted in efforts to prevent common mental health problems developing in women. The research is the first to show a potential link between psychological vulnerability and the timing of a biological cycle, in this case ovulation.

A common symptom of mood and anxiety problems is the tendency to experience repetitive and unwanted thoughts. These 'intrusive thoughts' often occur in the days and weeks after a stressful experience.

In this study, the researchers examined whether the effects of a stressful event are linked to different stages of the menstrual cycle. The participants were 41 women aged between 18 and 35 who had regular menstrual cycles and were not using the pill as a form of contraception. Each woman watched a 14-minute stressful film containing death or injury and provided a saliva sample so that hormone levels could be assessed. They were then asked to record instances of unwanted thoughts about the video over the following days.

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Butterfly

Brain can be trained to cultivate compassion


Science Daily
Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00 UTC
Image
© byheaven / FotoliaInvestigators trained young adults to engage in compassion meditation, an ancient Buddhist technique to increase caring feelings for people who are suffering.
Until now, little was scientifically known about the human potential to cultivate compassion -- the emotional state of caring for people who are suffering in a way that motivates altruistic behavior.

A new study by researchers at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that adults can be trained to be more compassionate. The report, published Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, investigates whether training adults in compassion can result in greater altruistic behavior and related changes in neural systems underlying compassion.

"Our fundamental question was, 'Can compassion be trained and learned in adults? Can we become more caring if we practice that mindset?'" says Helen Weng, lead author of the study and a graduate student in clinical psychology. "Our evidence points to yes."
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Info

Does practice really make perfect?

Brett Smith
RedOrbit
Tue, 21 May 2013 21:21 UTC
Chess
© Thinkstock.com
Is "practice makes perfect" an age-old adage to live by or just thinking inside-the-box?

According to University of Michigan associate professor Zachary Hambrick, endless hours spent trying to perfect a skill could be a waste of time.

In a new study published in the journal Intelligence, Hambrick and a team of American researchers suggest that "deliberate practice is not sufficient to explain individual differences in performance" among musicians and chess players.

"Practice is indeed important to reach an elite level of performance, but this paper makes an overwhelming case that it isn't enough," Hambrick said. "The evidence is quite clear that some people do reach an elite level of performance without copious practice, while other people fail to do so despite copious practice."

In the study, the team reviewed 14 studies involving chess players and musicians and looked explicitly at how practice routine was related to performance. They found that time spent practicing accounted for only about one third of the measurable skill differences in both music and chess.

Hambrick said that the discrepancy can be explained by other factors such as intelligence, innate ability, or age.
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2 + 2 = 4

'It's not like there's an instinct called mothering'

Wency Leung
Theglobeandmail.com
Thu, 09 May 2013 20:26 UTC
There is far more to mothering than giving birth. Just ask Alison Fleming. The University of Toronto Mississauga psychology professor has spent the past four decades researching the complex neurobiology and psychology involved in motherhood. Through her work, she has learned that while the hormonal changes associated with birthing help prepare females to take care of their young, maternal behaviours don't just come automatically; they develop over time.

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"There's a lot of stuff that comes into play.... It's not like there's an instinct called mothering," Fleming says, noting that fathers also undergo hormonal changes when exposed to their babies, and that women who adopt become every bit as attached and attracted to their children as those who raise their own offspring. "I think it's just a matter of getting the experience and the interaction."

The numerous studies Fleming and her colleagues have conducted over the years have contributed to a greater understanding of why mothering matters, and have provided insight into what drives mothers to nurture their young. A mother's love, support and physical touch (or, in the absence of a mother, the simulation of sensitive parental care) are all critical to the offspring's healthy brain development and social and emotional development, she says. And the greater the exposure a mother has to her babies, the stronger her motivation becomes to care for them.
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Arrow Down

Why bullies still prosper at work


LiveScience
Fri, 17 May 2013 13:29 UTC
Office Bully
© NotarYES, Shutterstock

Even though most companies on paper say they don't tolerate bullying in the workplace, bullies can still thrive in office environments.

This may be explained by a social gift many bullies share: They know how to strategically abuse their coworkers - with belittling comments, deliberate exclusion and the like - while still garnering positive evaluations from their supervisors, researchers say.

"Many bullies can be seen as charming and friendly, but they are highly destructive and can manipulate others into providing them with the resources they need to get ahead," Darren Treadway, associate professor of organization and human resources at the University of Buffalo, said in a statement.

In a new study, Treadway and colleagues measured bullying behavior and career success for by looking at behavioral and job performance data from 54 employees at a mental health organization in the northwest U.S. The researchers found a strong correlation between bullying, social competence and positive job evaluations.
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