Science of the SpiritS


People

Trust in your neighbors could benefit your health, study shows

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© Unknown
Here's an easy way to improve your health: trust your neighbors. A new study from the University of Missouri shows that increasing trust in neighbors is associated with better self-reported health.

"I examined the idea of 'relative position,' or where one fits into the income distribution in their local community, as it applies to both trust of neighbors and self-rated health," said Eileen Bjornstrom, an assistant professor of sociology in the MU College of Arts and Science. "Because human beings engage in interpersonal comparisons in order to gauge individual characteristics, it has been suggested that a low relative position, or feeling that you are below another person financially, leads to stress and negative emotions such as shame, hostility and distrust, and that health suffers as a consequence. While most people aren't aware of how trust impacts them, results indicated that trust was a factor in a person's overall health."

In the study, Bjornstrom examined the 2001 Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey. Contrary to expectations, she found that respondents with a higher income, relative to their community, were more likely to be distrustful of their neighbors. Simultaneously, while taking into account factors such as level of education, income, and age, people who reported that "their neighbors can be trusted" also reported better health on average.

Wolf

One in 25 Business Leaders May Be A Psychopath, Study Finds

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© Lambert/Getty Images/Hulton ArchiveThe study says psychopaths are able to gain affection from both their superiors and subordinates at work.
Psychopaths use charm and manipulation to achieve success in the workplace, according to a US study

One out of every 25 business leaders could be psychopathic, a study claims.

The study, conducted by the New York psychologist Paul Babiak, suggests that they disguise the condition by hiding behind their high status, playing up their charm and by manipulating others.

Favourable environmental factors such as a happy childhood mean they can function in a workplace rather than channelling their energies in more violent or destructive ways. Revealing the results in a BBC Horizon documentary, Babiak said: "Psychopaths really aren't the kind of person you think they are.

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SOTT Focus: Freedom of Association, Smoking and Psychopathy

Psychopath advisory
The short video clip below will set the stage for what I am going to write in this article. I also urge all of you who are reading this short piece to please read The New COINTELPRO: Cyberwarfare 'hacktivists' and the Subversion of Anonymous also (and click the links and check some of the evidence!). It looks like agents of all forms and sorts are being activated everywhere and it is not just SOTT that is targeted!

One person commented on the above linked article that they thought it was a waste of time for SOTT to chronicle and expose these sorts of things - it was a "distraction". Sorry, but we don't feel that way about it. From our point of view, exposing the ways and means of 1) conscious, paid government agents; 2) unconscious "useful idiots" that are covertly helped into positions of trust/authority in various movements, is extremely helpful for anyone who is engaged in social activism. It's the pathologicals in power who promote the meme "just ignore it, it will go away" or "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" and "it's not worth your time or effort" etc.

Psychopathology rules our world today; that's the bottom line and that's why everything is as screwed up as it is. But it can only rule if people aren't aware of it and exactly how it operates. That's why we present these "dramas". Besides, it's better than TV!

So, on to the video clip!


As I say in the video above, I've experienced more attacks due to my work to expose psychopathology in modern Western culture than any other topic I have ever researched and written about. Since we have created the Fellowship of the Cosmic Mind, a legally incorporated religion that is based on not believing in anything (or anybody) but rather basing our beliefs on objective reality, and its scientific stress reduction, healing and rejuvenation breathing program/techniques, things have gone absolutely NUTS in this respect. It really makes a person think that we must be on the right track for all the pathological roaches to come out of the woodwork at once! The big question is: are we going to survive it? I guess that depends on our readers and how much support we get and how far and wide they can spread the information that I'm going to share with you today.

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Word Association: Study Matches Brain Scans with Complex Thought

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© Francisco PereiraPrinceton researchers developed a method to determine the probability of various words being associated with the object a person thought about during a brain scan.
In an effort to understand what happens in the brain when a person reads or considers such abstract ideas as love or justice, Princeton researchers have for the first time matched images of brain activity with categories of words related to the concepts a person is thinking about. The results could lead to a better understanding of how people consider meaning and context when reading or thinking.

The researchers report in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience that they used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify areas of the brain activated when study participants thought about physical objects such as a carrot, a horse or a house. The researchers then generated a list of topics related to those objects and used the fMRI images to determine the brain activity that words within each topic shared. For instance, thoughts about "eye" and "foot" produced similar neural stirrings as other words related to body parts.

Once the researchers knew the brain activity a topic sparked, they were able to use fMRI images alone to predict the subjects and words a person likely thought about during the scan. This capability to put people's brain activity into words provides an initial step toward further exploring themes the human brain touches upon during complex thought.

Book

Best of the Web: Book Review: Women Who Love Psychopaths

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© psychcentral.com
This book has many reasons to recommend it. Two are most powerful. First, its postulation through neuroscientific indications that the psychopath's brain is genetically different from his fellows and so he cannot change is paramount to letting go. Not understanding this, the victim is drawn, over and over again into the "vortex" of his power play. The term psychopath is used in the book to describe most of the "low/no empathy and conscience diagnoses" (p. 19). Further, the author delineates her hypothesis with a nature v. nurture debate regarding whether people become or are born this way. It is compelling.

The second, powerful hypothesis that Ms. Brown asserts is regarding the "Super Traits" (p. 206) of the victim that dovetail with the psychopath's. It would seem that the stronger and more independent the woman is, the more challenge and usefulness she provides for the man behind the mask. The psychopath is an opportunist as well as a sadist (in varying degrees). His parasitic lifestyle depends upon the strength of his victim and oftentimes her wealth. He will have many relationships to be certain that he always has a fresh supply of whatever he feels his needs are. The stronger woman will last longer. And yet, even after he has broken her, victims have reported that they have heard from these men a year or even ten years later. Many a woman will ask herself how this debacle happened; the book will give her a blow-by-blow description. And identifying the issue is a powerful way to begin a healing journey.

Comment: The author of Women Who Love Psychopaths, Sandra L. Brown wrote an excellent article in issue 13 of The Dot Connector Magazine titled The Unexamined Victim: Women Who Love Psychopaths . The article provides the reader with additional information and research about psychopaths and their negative effects on their victims.

In addition the following documentaries provide important information about psychopaths:

Defense Against the Psychopath

Documentary: Psychopath
"There are many psychopaths in society, that actually, we virtually know nothing about. These are the psychopaths who don't necessarily commit homicide, commit serious violence, or even come to the attention of the police. They may be successful businessmen. They may be successful politicians. They may be successful academics. They may be successful priests. They exist in all areas of society. There is a growing awareness that psychopathic behavior is around us in all walks of life."
For an in-depth view of psychopathy please see: Political Ponerology: The scientific study of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes


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Language Speed Versus Efficiency: Is Faster Better?

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© Getty Images
A recent study of the speech information rate of seven languages concludes that there is considerable variation in the speed at which languages are spoken, but much less variation in how efficiently languages communicate the same information. The study, "A cross-linguistic perspective on speech information rate," to be published in the September 2011 issue of the scholarly journal Language, is co-authored by François Pellegrino, Christophe Coupé, and Egidio Marsico. A preprint version is available on line.

Their research sheds new light on the ways in which languages ensure the efficient communication of information. The study is based on 20 short texts (each consisting of five sentences) translated into seven languages (Mandarin Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Italian, and Spanish) and pronounced by about 60 native speakers. Dr. Pellegrino outlined the major findings of the team's research: "Languages do need more or less time to tell the same story - for instance in our study, the texts spoken in English are much shorter than their Japanese counterparts. Despite those variations, there is a tendency to regulate the information rate, as shown by a strong negative correlation between the syllabic rate and the information density." In other words, languages that are spoken faster (i.e., that have a higher syllabic rate) tend to pack less information into each individual syllable (i.e. have a lower information density).

As Dr. Pellegrino notes, "this result illustrates that several encoding strategies are possible. For instance, Spanish is characterized by a fast rate of low-information syllables, while Mandarin exhibits a slower syllabic rate with more informative syllables. In the end, their information rates are very similar (differing only by four percent)." Furthermore, Dr. Pellegrino concluded, "we discovered a strong relationship between the information density of the syllables and the complexity of their linguistic structure." Pellegrino and colleagues' result confirms the existence of distinct linguistic ways of packing information into syllables which eventually interact with the actual speech rate to result in a tendency toward a uniform information rate.

Magic Wand

40-year follow-up on marshmallow test points to biological basis for delayed gratification

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© Jérôme Magron
Weill Cornell - led study looks at delayed gratification in adults first tested with marshmallows and cookies as pre-schoolers.

A landmark study in the late 1960s and early 1970s used marshmallows and cookies to assess the ability of preschool children to delay gratification. If they held off on the temptation to eat a treat, they were rewarded with more treats later. Some of the children resisted, others didn't.

A newly published follow-up revisits some of the same children, now adults, revealing that these differences remain: Those better at delaying gratification as children remained so as adults; likewise, those who wanted their cookie right away as children were more likely to seek instant gratification as adults. Furthermore, brain imaging showed key differences between the two groups in two areas: the prefrontal cortex and the ventral striatum. The findings are published in the Aug. 29 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This is the first time we have located the specific brain areas related to delayed gratification. This could have major implications in the treatment of obesity and addictions," says lead author Dr. B.J. Casey, director of the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology at Weill Cornell Medical College and the Sackler Professor of Developmental Psychobiology.


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How The Brain Controls Impulsive Behaviour

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© iStockphoto
A new research has contradicted a 40-year-old theory of how the brain controls impulsive behavior.

Impulse control is an important aspect of the brain's executive functions - the procedures that it uses to control its own activity. Problems with impulse control are involved in ADHD and a number of other psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia.

"Our study was focused on the control of eye movements, but we think it is widely applicable," said Vanderbilt Ingram Professor of Neuroscience Jeffrey Schall, co-author of the new study.

There are two sets of neurons that control how we process and react to what we see, hear, smell, taste or touch. The first set, sensory neurons, respond to different types of stimuli in the environment. They are connected to movement neurons that trigger an action when the information they receive from the sensory neurons reaches a certain threshold.

Family

Child Marriage Is 'A Major Psychological Trauma,' New Study Says

Child Marriage
© Thinkstock
For a brief media-saturated minute, child marriage took center stage earlier this summer when then 16-year-old Courtney Stodden and 51-year-old Lost actor Doug Hutchison announced they had wed. Though many expressed shock, Stodden is not alone; according to a 2002 report from the Centers for Disease Control, some 6 percent of American women have entered into their first marriage by age 18. Now, researchers are taking a hard look at such arrangements, conducting one of the first studies to consider their possible mental health effects.

Writing in the journal Pediatrics, researchers found that girls under 18 who get married are more likely to experience mental health problems, including depression, anxiety and bipolar disorders. They are also more likely to become dependent on alcohol, drugs and nicotine.

Dr. Yann Le Strat, the study's lead author, said he was surprised by what he called the "high burden" of such marriages.

"With a 41 percent increased risk of mental disorder, child marriage should be considered a major psychological trauma," he told The Huffington Post.

Sheeple

9/11: Ten Years Later, Americans Still Stupid and Vulnerable

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© UnknownComputer rendering of One World Trade Center
They say everything changed on 9/11. No one can dispute that. But we didn't learn anything.

Like other events that forced Americans to reassess their national priorities (the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, Sputnik) the attacks on New York and Washington were a traumatic, teachable moment.

The collective attention of the nation was finally focused upon problems that had gone neglected for many years. 9/11 was a chance to get smart - but we blew it.

First and foremost the attacks gave the United States a rare opportunity to reset its international reputation. Even countries known for anti-Americanism offered their support. "We are all Americans," ran the headline of the French newspaper Le Monde.

Comment: It is easier to build another monument than to face the truth.