Science of the SpiritS


Newspaper

US: 9 Year Old North Carolina Girl Survives 2 Days in Car Wreckage

Cove City - A 9-year-old North Carolina girl pinned in a wrecked car for almost two days ate Pop-Tarts and Gatorade to help her survive the single-car crash that killed her father, police and relatives said on Monday.


Jordan Landon of Cove City was airlifted to a hospital Sunday night after rescue teams cut her out of the 1995 Chevrolet Monte Carlo that had been upside down in a culvert since Friday night, the North Carolina Highway Patrol said. Killed was 39-year-old Douglas Landon, police said.

Sgt. David Clifton called the girl "heroic" and that she was able to stay calm despite being trapped in the dark and cold. He says the girl was talkative and is expected to fully recover.

Bulb

Exceptional Memory Linked to Bulked-Up Parts of Brain

Brain image
© Unknown
People who can recall life's events in detail have enlarged region linked to obsessive-compulsive disorder

Like the fictional detective Carrie Wells on the TV show Unforgettable, some real-life people can remember every day of their lives in detail. Those superrememberers have more bulk in certain parts of their brains, possibly explaining the remarkable ability to recall minutiae from decades ago, researchers said November 13 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

One brain region involved in such incredible recall has been implicated in obsessive-compulsive disorder, hinting that OCD and superior memory might have a common architecture in the brain.

Scientists have long studied people with memory deficits, but there haven't been many studies on people with exceptional memories. "Looking at memory from a deficit gave us a lot of insight into memory," said study coauthor Aurora LePort of the University of California, Irvine. "Looking at memory from a superior perspective gives us a new tool. It may just broaden our knowledge and ability to know what's going on."

People

Psychologists Defend The Importance Of General Abilities

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© Unknown
"What makes a great violinist, physicist, or crossword puzzle solver? Are experts born or made? The question has intrigued psychologists since psychology was born - and the rest of us, too, who may secretly fantasize playing duets with Yo Yo Ma or winning a Nobel Prize in science. It's no wonder Malcolm Gladwell stayed atop the bestseller lists by popularizing the "10,000-hour rule" of Florida State University psychologist K. Anders Ericsson. Using Ericsson's pioneering work - but omitting equally prominent, contradictory, research - Gladwell's book Outliers argued that given a certain level of intelligence and a bit of luck, virtually anybody can get to Carnegie Hall - provided they practice, practice, practice.

In a new paper in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, psychologists David Z. Hambrick of Michigan State University and Elizabeth J. Meinz of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville disagree strongly. "We don't deny the importance of the knowledge and skill that accrue through practice," says Hambrick. "But, we think that for certain types of tasks, basic abilities and capacities - ones that are general, stable across time, and substantially heritable - play an important role in skilled performance. " Such basic capacities are a component of talent, Hambrick and Meinz believe.

Butterfly

The Greatest Epidemic Sickness Known to Humanity


Comment: We are reposting this insightful series on the nature of evil after discovering that Paul Levy had written a third part, 'Let's Spread the Word: Wetiko', which is now included below.


Part One
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© Creative Commons licenseImage by Armigeress - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kathycsus/

In the book Columbus and other Cannibals, indigenous author Jack D. Forbes lucidly explores a psychological disease that has been informing human self-destructive behavior that Native American people have known about for years. After reading his book, it was clear to me that he was describing the same psycho-spiritual disease of the soul that I wrote about in my book, The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis. I introduce the idea that from the dawn of human history our species has fallen prey to a collective psychosis which I call malignant egophrenia. Speaking about this very same psychic epidemic, Forbes writes, "For several thousands of years human beings have suffered from a plague, a disease worse than leprosy, a sickness worse than malaria, a malady much more terrible than smallpox."[i] Indigenous people have been tracking the same 'psychic'[ii] virus that I call malignant egophrenia for many centuries and calling it "wetiko," a Cree term which refers to a diabolically wicked person or spirit who terrorizes others. Professor Forbes, who was one of the founders of the Native American movement during the early sixties, says, "Tragically, the history of the world for the past 2,000 years is, in great part, the story of the epidemiology of the wetiko disease."[iii] Wetiko/malignant egophrenia is a 'psychosis' in the true sense of the word as being a 'sickness of the soul or spirit.' Though calling it by different names, Forbes and I are both pointing at the same illness of the psyche, soul and spirit that has been at the root of humanity's inhumanity to itself.

As if performing a magic ritual, in exploring the entity of wetiko, we first have to invoke its spirit and enter into relationship with it. We must contemplate and engage wetiko as objectively as we are able, as if it exists outside of ourselves, lest we get too 'mixed up' with the object of our contemplation. Due to its unique psychic origin, the epidemiology of wetiko is different than any other disease. An intrinsic challenge to our investigation of the wetiko virus is that it is incarnating in the very psyche which itself is the means of our investigation. Aware of this conundrum, Forbes explains that he is attempting to examine the disease, "from a perspective as free as possible from assumptions created by the very disease being studied."[iv] If we are not aware of the frame of reference through which we are examining the wetiko virus, our investigation will be tainted by the disease, obscuring the clear vision needed to start the healing process. Studying how wetiko disease manifests in others, as well as in the "other" part of ourselves, will help us to see "it" more objectively. Seeing this psychological disease manifesting in the world is the looking glass through which we can potentially recognize this same illness as it arises subjectively within our own minds.

Bacon

Best of the Web: Consciousness: What You Don't Know Might Kill You

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Ever ask yourself, "Where does consciousness come from?" Or, "Can consciousness come from an absence of consciousness?" Albeit, not the subject of your everyday discourse, these are still interesting and relevant questions. When inquiring about consciousness a valid qualifying question might be, "What type of consciousness are we talking about?" For example, dreaming consciousness comes from the REM cycle. A medical coma consciousness comes from pharmaceutical drugs. Enlightenment consciousness comes from meditation or some other practiced ability to observe and focus attention. However, when it comes to your physical consciousness, such as how emotional and mentally astute you are and how healthy you are on a cellular level, the answer might surprise you.

The Eastern sciences, such as Indian or Tibetan Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, have a very clear-cut and direct answer to this last aspect of consciousness. These ancient sources of wisdom say that the food you eat is the foundation upon which your emotional, mental and physical well-being is based upon. Ayurveda has a very succinct term for the physical body. It is referred to as the "Food Sheath." They call the physical body that because it requires a myriad of different types of food. It requires oxygen food, light food, physical "tactile" food, hydrating water food and solid alimentary food, all as sources of nourishment. The "Food Sheath" term eliminates all the "judgment" issues from the physical -- no charges about the butt being too big or small, no painful comparisons or emphasis on beauty of any kind. The body is simply the "Food Sheath."

Comment: Here are some articles that point to the foods that are the human body's and mind's most optimal fuel, the reasons for that, and also the answers as to why you might have never heard about it:

The problem with the Saturated Fat is Bad Message
Fat Head: Big Fat Lies
Saturated Fat is Good for You
Why Is Fattier Grassfed Meat Best?
Why Humans Crave Fat


Wolf

Best of the Web: The "Empowered" Whore Archetype Destroying the Feminine

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© Thomas Sheridan
Mass media is too powerful/invasive and has led to the destruction of the feminine aspect of Western culture - which once represented wisdom and nurturing, and replaced it with "empowering" whore archetypes such as the airbrushed, nymphomaniac dregs on shows like Sex and the City. This has derailed Western society away from notions of feminine wisdom towards a completely superficial narcissistic bling-culture-on-herpes-medication in heavy Max Factor packaging. Because this is how the present psychopathic mainstream considers women to be.

Society should be female - currently, society is a psychopathic male in terms of what it delivers to all of us.

This damages both men and women - as most men today expect a woman to be a tart, and many women seek and marry plastic surgeons in the hope of not being discarded. So Western society has become increasingly misogynistic even with the success of women's lib and so. A man can not marry a woman who is intelligent, loving and secure unless she is also "hot" - likewise women are coached to look for men who will finance their media driven delusions of what being beautiful is. The rest of us are discarded for not being superficial enough. Psychopaths control the mass media and this insanity has distorted a lot of the population to emulate this pathology as the new norm.

Info

Hypnosis May Be Altered State Of Consciousness

Eye Movements
© Sakari KallioThe eye movements of a woman, identified as TS-H, were monitored while she was in her normal, waking state (top) and while under hypnosis (bottom). Her pupils constricted, she blinked less often and generally made fewer eye movements while under hypnosis.

The true nature of hypnosis has eluded scientists. It's clear people can be hypnotized, but it's not clear how this happens. New research offers a clue.

By recording the eye movements of a hypnotized woman, and comparing them with those of nonhypnotized people, researchers say they have found evidence that hypnosis involves a special mental state, fundamentally different from normal consciousness.

First some basics: When under hypnosis, a person becomes more capable of hallucination and susceptible to suggestions, perhaps intended to help him or her stop craving cigarettes, say, or prompt him or her to hear music that isn't actually playing. If no suggestions are given, a hypnotized person will sit still and his or her mind will enter a calm state, like that associated with meditation. After a session ends, the person doesn't remember it, according to study researcher Sakari Kallio, an associate professor at the University of Skövde in Sweden and University of Turku in Finland.

Eye 2

Best of the Web: Psychopathy Traits in Children Becoming 'Alarmingly Familiar' to More Parents

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© Jupiterimages/liquidlibrary
Psychopathy is a complex term that is used mostly by researchers to describe antisocial behavior that is impulsive, aggressive, deceitful and with a desire to break all the rules.

More and more, these characteristics are appearing to be "alarmingly familiar" to some parents -- the teen who bullies other children and shows cruelty to animals, never showing a shred of empathy. This is an extremely relevant concern, especially in today's society, where questions are being raised regarding whether to take legal action against bullies, and what are the most effective methods of preventing bullying in schools and over the cybersphere.

Though it would be comforting to assure parents that this behavior is not their fault, unfortunately psychiatric experts say that psychopathy affects three to six percent of the population and is genetically based.

People

Brains Are Wired For Cooperation, Animal Study Suggests

Looking at the singing patterns of plain-tailed wrens sheds light on the human inclination to work cooperatively, a new study suggests.

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© Alamy
The Science study, conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins University, suggests that we're all wired to work together.

Researchers took to the Ecuadorian forests to examine the song patterns of plain-tailed wrens to come to this conclusion. These kinds of wrens sing together in a seemingly unified singing voice in an ABCD pattern -- with the male wren singing the A and C parts, and the female wren singing the B and D parts.

Researchers looked at the activity of the brain region responsible for singing in the wrens. They found that "neurons reacted more strongly to the duet song -- with both the male and female birds singing -- over singing their own parts alone," study researcher Eric Fortune, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins, said in a statement.

"In fact, the brain's responses to duet songs were stronger than were responses to any other sound. ... It looked like the brains of wrens are wired to cooperate," he added.

Butterfly

Meditation Improves the Immune System, Research Shows

meditation
© GettyNow scientists have discovered that regular meditation appears to actually increase the size of the brain
Meditation improves the immune system, reduces blood pressure and even sharpens the mind, according to research.

The practice - an essential part of Buddhist and Indian Yoga traditions - has entered the mainstream as people try to find ways to combat stress and improve their quality of life.

Now new research suggests that mindfulness meditation can have benefits for health and performance, including improved immune function, reduced blood pressure and enhanced cognitive function.

The study, published in the latest issue of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, draws on existing scientific literature to attempt to explain the positive effects.

Comment: Comprised of breathing techniques that stimulate the vagus nerve and a guided meditation that reaches the innermost parts of our being, the Éiriú Eolas program is simple to learn and apply in your everyday life, offering all the benefits described above, and more!