Science of the SpiritS


Boat

Finding Purpose After Living With Delusion

Benedict Carey
The New York Times
Fri, 25 Nov 2011 22:27 UTC
Meaning in Madness: Milton Greek, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, believes that decoding the messages in delusions can help some people recover.


She was gone for good, and no amount of meditation could resolve the grief, even out here in the deep quiet of the woods.

Milt Greek pushed to his feet. It was Mother's Day 2006, not long after his mother's funeral, and he headed back home knowing that he needed help. A change in the medication for his schizophrenia, for sure. A change in focus, too; time with his family, to forget himself.

And, oh yes, he had to act on an urge expressed in his psychotic delusions: to save the world.

So after cleaning the yard around his house - a big job, a gift to his wife - in the coming days he sat down and wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, supporting a noise-pollution ordinance.
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People

Are Doing Harm and Allowing Harm Equivalent? Only After Deliberative, Careful, Controlled Thinking

David Orenstein
Brown University
Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:34 UTC
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© Cushman Lab/Brown UniversityLooking at a moral choice Test subjects who feel that doing active harm is morally the same as allowing harm to occur will show more brain activity. The notion that active harm is worse appears to be automatic, a psychological default requiring less thought.
Individuals and courts deal more harshly with people who actively commit harm than with people who willfully allow the same harm to occur. A new study finds that this moral distinction is psychologically automatic. It requires more thought to see each harmful behavior as morally equivalent.

People typically say they are invoking an ethical principle when they judge acts that cause harm more harshly than willful inaction that allows that same harm to occur. That difference is even codified in criminal law. A new study based on brain scans, however, shows that people make that moral distinction automatically. Researchers found that it requires conscious reasoning to decide that active and passive behaviors that are equally harmful are equally wrong.

For example (see below), an overly competitive figure skater in one case loosens the skate blade of a rival, or in another case, notices that the blade is loose and fails to warn anyone. In both cases, the rival skater loses the competition and is seriously injured. Whether it is by acting, or willfully failing to act, the overly competitive skater did the same harm.
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Attention

Maltreated children show same pattern of brain activity as combat soldiers


University College London
Mon, 05 Dec 2011 10:24 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Children exposed to family violence show the same pattern of activity in their brains as soldiers exposed to combat, new research has shown.

In the first functional MRI brain scan study to investigate the impact of physical abuse and domestic violence on children, scientists at UCL in collaboration with the Anna Freud Centre, found that exposure to family violence was associated with increased brain activity in two specific brain areas (the anterior insula and the amygdala) when children viewed pictures of angry faces.

Previous fMRI studies that scanned the brains of soldiers exposed to violent combat situations have shown the same pattern of heightened activation in these two areas of the brain, which are associated with threat detection. The authors suggest that both maltreated children and soldiers may have adapted to be 'hyper-aware' of danger in their environment.

However, the anterior insula and amygdala are also areas of the brain implicated in anxiety disorders. Neural adaptation in these regions may help explain why children exposed to family violence are at greater risk of developing anxiety problems later in life.
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Magnify

Tuning Out Daydreaming: How Brains Benefit from Meditation

Bill Hathaway
YaleNews
Mon, 21 Nov 2011 00:00 UTC
Experienced meditators seem to be able switch off areas of the brain associated with daydreaming as well as psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, according to a new brain imaging study by Yale researchers.

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© Google Images
Less day dreaming has been associated with increased happiness levels, said Judson A. Brewer, assistant professor of psychiatry and lead author of the study published the week of Nov. 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Understanding how meditation works will aid investigation into a host of diseases, he said.

"Meditation has been shown to help in variety of health problems, such as helping people quit smoking, cope with cancer, and even prevent psoriasis," Brewer said.

The Yale team conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging scans on both experienced and novice meditators as they practiced three different meditation techniques.
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Stormtrooper

Chaplains Wanted For Atheists In Foxholes


National Public Radio
Sun, 04 Dec 2011 13:21 UTC
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© Associated Press/Julie JacobsonSoldiers pray with a chaplain in Afghanistan. Jason Torpy says military chaplains are assigned many secular advising duties that atheist service members need, too.
Jason Torpy says military chaplains are assigned many secular advising duties that atheist service members need, too.

Retired Army captain and Iraqi war veteran Jason Torpy says the chaplains employed by the U.S. military can't relate to people like him. He's an atheist.

He's also the president of a group that's trying to get the armed forces to become more inclusive by hiring atheist chaplains. The Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers wants the military to provide for the estimated 40,000 atheists, agnostics and humanists who serve in U.S. forces.

Military chaplains, most of whom are Protestant Christians, are assigned many secular advising duties, including marriage, family and suicide counseling, Torpy tells weekends on All Things Considered guest host Rachel Martin. They touch so many parts of service members' lives, he says, they can help improve what he sees as an environment of exclusion.
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Info

Life's Extremes: Atheists vs. Believers

Adam Hadhazy
Live Science
Sun, 04 Dec 2011 07:54 UTC
Praying Woman
© Alexey Fursov | ShutterstockHow often do you pray? Or do you think it's a waste of time?

This December is chock full of "holy days," or holidays. On Dec. 25, Christians commemorate Christmas. For Jews, Hanukkah starts this year on Dec. 20 in the Western and international Gregorian calendar. Shia Muslims, meanwhile, celebrate Ashura today (Dec. 4), the 10th day of the Islamic lunar calendar's first month. Yet others in the Northern Hemisphere will party on Dec. 22 for the winter solstice, as druids might have ritualistically done so at Stonehenge in the U.K. 4,000 years ago.

Religion, it goes without further saying, is a very popular phenomenon. In the U.S., as in much of the world, a majority of people claim to practice some form of it. According to recent surveys, around 80 percent of American adults say they belong to an organized religion.

A minority of that population takes its religion very seriously. These individuals' behaviors and attitudes are largely influenced by what is perceived to conform to their faiths' dogmas. On the opposite end, another, smaller percentage of the population thinks that religion is absolute hooey.

Psychologists, sociologists and neurologists continue to study why some gobble up religion as profound truth while others reject it as superstition.

"This whole area [of research] teaches us something about the human mind and brain," said Andrew Newberg, director of research at the Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University and author of How God Changes Your Brain (Ballantine Books, 2009).

"There are a lot of philosophical and theological implications of this work and about how we understand the world," Newberg added.
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People

Zero Degrees of Empathy

RSA
YouTube
Wed, 06 Jul 2011 18:03 UTC
Professor Simon Baron Cohen presents a new way of understanding what it is that leads individuals down negative paths, and challenges all of us to consider replacing the idea of evil with the idea of empathy-erosion.

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Family

Mental Illness: Early-Life Depression and Anxiety Changes Structure of Developing Brain


ScienceDaily
Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:47 UTC
brain
New research identifies the brain chemicals and circuits involved in mental illnesses like schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety, giving potential new directions to their treatment. In addition, research with children shows that early-life depression and anxiety changes the structure of the developing brain.

The findings were presented at Neuroscience 2011, the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting and the world's largest source of emerging news about brain science and health.

One in 17 Americans suffer from a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, major depression, or bipolar disorder, making it one of the leading causes of disability. Yet science is only beginning to understand the underlying physical causes of these diseases.
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Family

Secure Attachment to Moms Helps Irritable Babies Interact With Others


ScienceDaily
Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:25 UTC
mother child
Children with difficult temperaments are often the most affected by the quality of their relationships with their caregivers. New research suggests that highly irritable children who have secure attachments to their mothers are more likely to get along well with others than those who aren't securely attached.

These findings, from researchers at the University of Maryland, are published in the journal Child Development.

Researchers followed 84 infants from birth to age 2. About a third were characterized as highly irritable, while two-thirds were characterized as moderately irritable. The study also included their mostly low-income mothers. Irritability was measured using a test administered in the home within a month of the babies' births; the infants had to react to a series of events, including being undressed and hearing a bell ringing.
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Palette

The Creative 'Flow': How to Enter That Mysterious State of Oneness

Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D.
The Huffington Post
Sat, 26 Nov 2011 21:47 UTC
creativity flow
© Unknown
Flow -- the mental state of being completely present and fully immersed in a task -- is a strong contributor to creativity. When in flow, the creator and the universe become one, outside distractions recede from consciousness and one's mind is fully open and attuned to the act of creating. There is very little self-awareness or critical self-judgement; just intrinsic joy for the task. Since flow is so essential to creativity and well-being across many slices of life -- from sports to music to physics to religion to spirituality to sex -- it's important that we learn more about the characteristics associated with flow so that we may all learn how to tap into this precious mental resource.

But who enters flow? What are these lucky folks like? Recent research shows that people differ quite a bit from each other in the frequency and intensity of their flow experiences. These differences aren't just found in Western cultures. In a study conducted on Japanese students, those who reported experiencing flow more often in their daily lives engaged in more daily activities, and were more likely to have higher levels of self-esteem, Jujitsu-kan (a sense of fulfillment), life satisfaction, better coping strategies and lower anxiety.
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