Science of the SpiritS


Health

Improving Memory for Specific Events Can Alleviate Symptoms of Depression

Hear the word "party" and memories of your 8th birthday sleepover or the big bash you attended last New Year's may come rushing to mind. But it's exactly these kinds of memories, embedded in a specific place and time, that people with depression have difficulty recalling.

Research has shown that people who suffer from, or are at risk of, depression have difficulty tapping into specific memories from their own past, an impairment that affects their ability to solve problems and leads them to focus on feelings of distress.

In a study forthcoming in Clinical Psychological Science, a new journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychological scientists Hamid Neshat-Doost of the University of Isfahan, Iran, Laura Jobson of the University of East Anglia, Tim Dalgleish of the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Medical Research Council, Cambridge and colleagues investigated whether a particular training program, Memory Specificity Training, might improve people's memory for past events and ameliorate their symptoms of depression.

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Link found between reversible 'epigenetic' marks and behavior patterns

Bee Hive
© Subbotina Anna/Shutterstock
Genetic analysis of different types of worker bees has for the first time demonstrated a link between reversible chemical tags on an organism's DNA and their behavioral patterns.

Andy Feinberg, a professor of molecular medicine and the director of the Center for Epigenetics at Hopkins' Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences, and colleagues used a method they called CHARM (comprehensive high-throughput arrays for relative methylation) to investigate the location of the DNA methylation biochemical process in the brains of both "nurse" bees and "forager" bees.

They chose 21 of each type of worker bee, all approximately the same age, and discovered 155 regions of DNA that had different tag patterns in each of the two bee types, the researchers explained in a Sunday statement. The bulk of those were genes that have been known to affect the status of other genes, they said, and once the differences were identified, Feinberg and his colleagues set out to discover whether or not they were permanent.

Knowing that nurses can switch jobs, so to speak, if there are a lack of foragers in a hive (and vice-versa), they removed all of the nurses and observed for several weeks while the hive restored the balance. Once that was completed, they again studied the DNA methylation patterns to determine whether or not the tags had changed in the foragers that became nurses.

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Male Stroke Survivors Dogged More By Depression Than Females: Study

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© Flickr via Creative Commons / shazwanResearchers speculated that male stroke survivors may be more susceptible to feelings of loss of control due to infirmity.
People that are lucky enough to survive strokes often have another hurdle to clear once they're discharged: depression, which affects about a third of stroke survivors.

Now a small study of 36 stroke survivors suggests that men are more likely to be stalked by the black dog than women. Researchers measured the participants for signs of depression, and found that male subjects were more likely to feel depressed by their precarious health than the female participants.

"Male stroke survivors in the US who subscribe to traditional health-related beliefs may be accustomed to, and value highly, being in control of their health," lead author and University of Cincinnati researcher Michael J. McCarthy said in a statement Wednesday. "For these individuals, loss of control due to infirmity caused by stroke could be perceived as a loss of power and prestige. These losses, in turn, may result in more distress and greater depressive syndromes."

Tackling the problem of male stroke survivor depression is a tricky one. One study from a group of Kent State University researchers found that Web-based intervention methods were helpful for the wives and caregivers of male stroke victims, but had little effect on the survivors themselves.

McCarthy acknowledged that his group's study is a bit limited by its small, non-diverse sample size.

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Making Choices: How Your Brain Decides

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© Tony Anderson / Getty Images
Every day, we face thousands of decisions both major and minor - from whether to eat that decadent chocolate cupcake to when to pursue a new romantic relationship or to change careers. How does the brain decide? A new study suggests that it relies on two separate networks to do so: one that determines the overall value - the risk versus reward - of individual choices and another that guides how you ultimately behave.

"Cognitive control and value-based decision-making tasks appear to depend on different brain regions within the prefrontal cortex," says Jan Glascher, lead author of the study and a visiting associate at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, referring to the seat of higher-level reasoning in the brain.

Study co-author Ralph Adolphs, a professor of psychology at Caltech, explains the distinction by way of a grocery shopping example: "Your valuation network is always providing you with information about what's rewarding around you - the things you want to buy - but also lots of distracting things like junk food and other items popping into your vision off the shelves."

Cognitive control is what keeps this network in check. "To be able to get to the checkout counter with what you planned, you need to maintain a goal in mind, such as perhaps only buying the salad you needed for dinner," says Adolphs. "That's your cognitive control network maintaining an overall goal despite lots of distractions."

People

Feeling stressed by your job? Don't blame your employer, study shows

Work stress, job satisfaction and health problems due to high stress have more to do with genes than you might think, according to research by Timothy Judge, professor of management at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business.

The lead author of "Genetic influences on core self-evaluations, job satisfaction, work stress, and employee health: A behavioral genetics mediated model," published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Judge studied nearly 600 twins - some identical, some fraternal - who were raised together and reared apart. He found that being raised in the same environment had very little effect on personality, stress and health. Shared genes turned out to be about four times as important as shared environment.

"Assume James and Sandy both work in the same organization," Judge says. "James reports more stress than Sandy. Does it mean that James' job is objectively more stressful than Sandy's? Not necessarily. Our study suggests strong heritabilities to work stress and the outcomes of stress. This means that stress may have less to do with the objective features of the environment than to the genetic 'code' of the individual."

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Mystery of How Social Isolation Messes with Brain Solved

Lonely Boy
© Suzanne Tucker | ShutterstockSocial isolation during critical years of maturation can wreak havoc on the brain, scientists report in the Sept. 13, 2012, issue of the journal Science.
Social isolation in youth may wreak havoc on the brain by disrupting a protein crucial to the development of the nervous system's support cells, new research finds.

A new study in mice finds that when the animals are isolated during a crucial early period, brain cells called oligodendrocytes fail to mature properly. Oligodendrocytes build the fatty, insulating sheathes that cushion neurons, and their dysfunction seems to cause long-lasting behavioral changes.

Research in rhesus monkeys and humans has shown that social isolation during childhood has an array of nasty and lifelong effects, from cognitive and social problems in neglected children to working memory troubles in isolated monkeys. These children and monkeys also show abnormalities in the white matter of the brain, which includes support cells such as oligodendrocytes as well as the fat-covered neural projections that act as the brain's communication system.

But while previous studies had noted a correlation between white matter problems and cognitive struggles after isolation, they could not prove one caused the other. Gabriel Corfas, a professor of neurology and otolaryngology at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues wanted to understand how the relationship works.

They took baby mice from their mothers at 21 days of age, right after weaning. Some of the young mice were put in typical laboratory conditions, living in a cage with three other mice. Another group was given an enriched environment, with lots of mousey company and an ever-changing array of toys. The final group of mice was put in individual isolation for two weeks, never seeing another rodent.

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Have Scientists Defined Consciousness?

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A group of scientists recently gathered at the Francis Crick Memorial Conference and issued the following declaration which as been widely covered in the media:
The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.
Their good intentions duly noted, this is not a declaration of a scientific fact.

Heart

Self-Compassion: A Powerful Motivational Force

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© Loving EarthWe all make mistakes, but should you beat yourself up or show a little mercy?
We all have a kind of virtual policeman living inside us. Amongst other things he's the guy that helps us work towards our goals, whether personal or professional.

When things go wrong and we stray off the straight and narrow, he reminds us what we were supposed to be doing.

But what kind of policeman is he? Is he the kind with a riot shield, a baton and a bad attitude or does he offer a forgiving smile, a friendly word and a helping hand?

People sometimes think of the latter, more relaxed internal policeman, as being weak and ineffectual. The danger, it is thought, with going easy on ourselves, is that it will lead to lower motivation. Surely if we don't use self-criticism to push ourselves, we'll never get anywhere?

So, what stance should we adopt towards ourselves?

People

Study examines thoughts and feelings that foster collaboration across cultures

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© Unknown
The musician Paul Simon came to fame collaborating with his childhood friend Art Garfunkel, yet launched another chapter with his Graceland album, collaborating with musicians from Soweto. Ratan Tata made his name expanding his family's firms in India, yet in recent decades has reached even greater success helping foreign firms such as Daewoo and Jaguar find new markets.

Whether artists, entrepreneurs, or executives, some individuals are especially able to bridge cultural gaps and leverage foreign ideas and opportunities. Why can some people collaborate creatively all around the world while others succeed only with people quite similar to themselves? Are there psychological characteristics that distinguish global collaborators? Do they form different kinds of relationships?

New research by Michael Morris, the Chavkin-Chang Professor of Leadership at Columbia Business School, finds that mindfulness about cultural assumptions is a key driver. People who are habitually aware of their cultural frameworks tend to develop more affectively trusting relationships with people from other cultures, opening the free flow of ideas that is intrinsic to creative collaboration. The paper, published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, is led by former Columbia Business School doctoral student Roy Y.J. Chua (currently an assistant professor at Harvard Business School) and co-authored by current Columbia Business School doctoral student Shira Mor.

The globalization of business is increasingly creating demand for managers adept at working creatively with people from diverse backgrounds. Researchers have drawn attention to individual differences in cultural metacognition, the proclivity to reflect on and fine-tune one's cultural assumptions when interacting with others. In three studies using different ways of measuring cross-cultural collaboration, Morris's research team found that success can be predicted from an individual's cultural metacognition score, assessed with a survey inventory beforehand.

The first study asked business executives for lists of people from other cultures with whom they have worked over the course of their careers. The researchers then tracked down these associates and surveyed them about many aspects of the executive's management style, including the executive's success in collaborating creatively across cultural lines. These scores of intercultural collaboration success (from the vantage of individuals from different cultures) could be predicted by an executive's cultural metacognition score even when personality and other standard individual differences were controlled.

Magic Wand

Self-control may not be a limited resource after all

So many acts in our daily lives - refusing that second slice of cake, walking past the store with the latest gadgets, working on your tax forms when you'd rather watch TV - seem to boil down to one essential ingredient: self-control. Self-control is what enables us to maintain healthy habits, save for a rainy day, and get important things done.

But what is self-control, really? And how does it work?

In a new article in the September 2012 issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researchers Michael Inzlicht of the University of Toronto and Brandon Schmeichel of Texas A&M University argue that the prevailing model of self-control may not be as precise as researchers once thought. Rather than being a limited resource, self-control may actually be more like a motivation- and attention-driven process.

Research on self-control has surged in the last decade and much of it has centered on the resource model of self-control. According to this model, originally proposed by Roy Baumeister and colleagues, self-control is a limited resource - if we exercise a lot of self-control by refusing a second slice of cake, we may not have enough self-control later in the day to resist the urge to shop or watch TV.

Over 100 papers have produced findings that support this model. Research has found, for example, that people who are required to manage their emotions show impaired performance on later tasks, such as solving a difficult puzzle, squeezing a handgrip exerciser, and keeping items in working memory.

But Inzlicht and Schmeichel point out that a newer crop of studies are yielding results that don't fit with this idea of self-control as a depletable resource. Recent studies have shown that incentives, individual perceptions of task difficulty, personal beliefs about willpower, feedback on task performance, and changes in mood all seem to influence our ability to exercise self-control. These results suggest that self-control may not rely on a limited resource after all.