Science of the SpiritS


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Yoga And The Brain: A Possible Explanation For Yoga's Stress-Busting Effects

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The health benefits of yoga are far-reaching, with studies demonstrating its effects on easing chronic back pain, aiding sleep and relieving menopausal symptoms, as well as its intriguing role in helping the mind, by bettering mood and taming stress.

A new look at the research, published in the journal Medical Hypotheses, sheds light on just how yoga might have such benefits for the brain.

"Western and Eastern medicine complement one another. Yoga is known to improve stress-related nervous system imbalances," study researcher Dr. Chris Streeter, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry at BUSM and Boston Medical Center, said in a statement. "
This paper provides a theory, based on neurophysiology and neuroanatomy, to understand how yoga helps patients feel better by relieving symptoms in many common disorders."

Comment: Proper breathing techniques are the foundation of all yoga practices. Practicing proper breathing techniques on a regular basis can instantaneously 'better mood and tame stress' as the author has shared. For more information about easy to use breathing techniques that can help reduce stress visit the Éiriú Eolas Stress Control, Healing and Rejuvenation Program website.


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Infants Understand More Of What's Said Than You Think

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© redOrbit

New research suggests that babies as young as 6 months old understand more than their own names, "mommy", and "daddy". By simply being exposed to basic, everyday language, infants are able to pick up and understand much more than previously thought.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published the findings of this new study conducted by Elika Bergeson, a doctoral candidate in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and her co-author, Professor Daniel Swingly, also with the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Since infants are unable to tell us what they know or recognize, scientists look for patterns in what the child is looking at and where the child's attention is focused.

The researchers used a method called "language-guided-looking" or "Looking-while-listening" to study the infants' reactions to two sets of pictures. Working together with the parents, the researchers studied 33 six to nine month old children. The children were shown the two sets of pictures, then a parent would name the items in the picture using sentences like "Look at the banana." The researchers were interested in where the infants attention was focused as the parents spoke to them. Researchers were surprised to find that the majority of the children tested recognized most of the 20 items tested, many of them food or body parts. Researchers then compared these results to tests conducted with 50 babies from 10 to 20 months old.

Magic Wand

Hormones and Ovulation: Women are best at spotting snakes after ovulating, because hormones intensify 'fear reflex'

Women who have just finished ovulating are better at detecting snakes than at any other point during their menstrual cycle.

The bizarre study conducted by scientists in Japan revealed that they were quickest at picking out serpents after ovulating.

The participants reactions were tested at three separate points during their period cycle.

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© UnknownSpotted: Women are quickest at locating snakes after a menstrual cycle
Nobuo Masataka from Kyoto University tested the reflexes of 60 healthy women by measuring how quickly they could spot snakes a series of images that included flowers.

Magic Wand

Anger Management: Using your 'wrong' hand to stir your tea helps train your self-control

People who find themselves on the verge of yelling at queue-jumpers or crafty colleagues could be helped by a simple - if slightly odd - exercise.

Right handers should get into the habit of using a computer mouse, stirring a cup of coffee or opening a door with their left hand - and left-handers should do the opposite.

'Training' yourself to use the 'wrong' hand seems to act as practice for other kinds of self control, such as being polite.

Just two weeks of the exercises reduce the tendency to act on impulse.

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© UnknownTwo weeks of using your 'wrong' hand to stir your tea helps you control your anger: 'Training' yourself to use the 'wrong' hand seems to act as practice for other kinds of self control, such as being polite
Dr Thomas Denson, of the University of New South Wales, said practising self control is no different from getting better at golf or playing the piano.

In studies he showed people who try to use their non-dominant hand for two weeks keep a lid on their aggression better. So if they are right handed, they are told to use their left hand 'for pretty much anything that is safe to do,' he said.

Comment: Read the forum's thread Thinking, Fast And Slow to learn more about developing self-control, and how exercises that require greater awareness assist with engaging System 2 (conscious and deliberate thinking) in contrast to operating with System 1 (adaptive unconscious which produces fast and impulsive thinking.)


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Creativity Explained

The image of the 'creative type' is a myth. Jonah Lehrer on why anyone can innovate - and why a hot shower, a cold beer or a trip to your colleague's desk might be the key to your next big idea.

Creativity can seem like magic. We look at people like Steve Jobs and Bob Dylan, and we conclude that they must possess supernatural powers denied to mere mortals like us, gifts that allow them to imagine what has never existed before. They're "creative types." We're not.

But creativity is not magic, and there's no such thing as a creative type. Creativity is not a trait that we inherit in our genes or a blessing bestowed by the angels. It's a skill. Anyone can learn to be creative and to get better at it. New research is shedding light on what allows people to develop world-changing products and to solve the toughest problems. A surprisingly concrete set of lessons has emerged about what creativity is and how to spark it in ourselves and our work.

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Best of the Web: Socially-Conservative Value Judgments linked to Anti-Social Personality Traits

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A new study by Marcus Arvan, PhD, appearing in the peer-reviewed research journal, Neuroethics, confirms and extends upon the results of an earlier study linking socially conservative views to three anti-social personality traits: Machiavellianism (deception), narcissism (overinflated sense of self-worth) and psychopathy (absence of guilt or remorse).

Arvan's two studies together suggest that socially conservative views are between 5 to 30 times more likely to be related to anti-social traits than socially liberal views.

Arvan's earlier study ("Bad News for Conservatives? Moral Judgments and the Dark Triad Personality Traits: A Correlational Study," published in Neuroethics) found these three anti-social traits to be related to conservative views on the death penalty, gay marriage, free markets, the right to go to war against UN resolutions and detention of suspected terrorists without trial. The study found no significant relationships for liberal judgments. Because Arvan utilized very stringent statistical tests, the statistical probability that his results were incorrect is less than 1 in 100,000.

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Selfish Kids? Immature Brain Gets the Blame

Babies
© Shutterstock

The next time your little angel yells, "Mine!" or refuses to share, it might help to know that the reason young children behave selfishly could be that a region of their brains remains immature, a new study suggests.

Researchers studied the behavior and brain scan images of children as they played games that involved sharing a reward with another child.

They found that even though young children understood how sharing benefited the other child, they were unable to resist the temptation to make the "selfish" decision to keep much of the reward for themselves. Brain scans revealed a region that matures along with children's greater ability to make less selfish decisions.

The findings will help researchers better understand how social behavior develops, said study author Nikolaus Steinbeis, a researcher at the Max-Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany.

The study is published in tomorrow's (March 8) issue of the journal Neuron.

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Pronounced dead, Miracle baby turning 2

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© TODAYBorn prematurely at 27 weeks, twins Emily and Jamie made a dramatic entrance. Jamie was declared dead shortly after birth, but revived after cuddling skin-to-skin with his mother.
Kate Ogg has an answer ready for the day her son Jamie asks who's older, he or his twin sister:

"Technically, you're two minutes older," she'll tell him, "but Emily's been alive longer."

Shortly after Jamie and Emily were born prematurely at 27 weeks on March 25, 2010, doctors told Ogg and her husband David that Jamie had died. Nurses placed his limp body across his mother's bare chest so she could say goodbye.

But after five minutes, Jamie began to move. The baby's doctor told the Oggs his movements were reflexive and not a sign of life. But as his mother continued cuddling him, Jamie opened his eyes. Kate put some breast milk on her finger, and he eagerly accepted it. Their tiny baby grew stronger and stronger in his mother's arms, and their final goodbye turned into a hello.

Magic Wand

Women happier in relationships when men feel their pain

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© Unknown
Believing your partner is trying to be empathetic more important to relationship than actual empathy, according to new study.

Men like to know when their wife or girlfriend is happy while women really want the man in their life to know when they are upset, according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association.

The study involved a diverse sample of couples and found that men's and women's perceptions of their significant other's empathy, and their abilities to tell when the other is happy or upset, are linked to relationship satisfaction in distinctive ways, according to the article published online in the Journal of Family Psychology.

"It could be that for women, seeing that their male partner is upset reflects some degree of the man's investment and emotional engagement in the relationship, even during difficult times. This is consistent with what is known about the dissatisfaction women often experience when their male partner becomes emotionally withdrawn and disengaged in response to conflict," said the study's lead author, Shiri Cohen, PhD, of Harvard Medical School.

Researchers recruited 156 heterosexual couples for the experiment. Of those, 102 came from the Boston area and were younger, urban, ethnically and economically diverse and in a committed but not necessarily married relationship. In an effort to find couples who varied in the ways they resolved conflicts and controlled their emotions, they also looked for couples with a history of domestic violence and/or childhood sexual abuse. The remaining participants, from Bryn Mawr, Pa., were older, suburban and middle-class married couples with strong ties to the community. In all, 71 percent of couples were white, 56 percent were married and their average length of relationship was three-and-a-half years.

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The psychopaths : Game theory and market democracy

How game theory developed by John Nash (Nobel prize for economics, 1994) was used first to run the economy, and then to justify conservative politics.

Considering the widespread acceptance of the market based social ideals, and the underlying game theory behind these ideals, the simple question begs to be asked: "So... Is that all there is?"


Comment: The psychopathic origins of 'Game Theory' are discussed in Almost Humans, The Wave 7, by Laura Knight-Jadczyk.