Science of the SpiritS


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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!


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When Our Neurones Remain Silent So That Our Performances May Improve

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© Unknown
To be able to focus on the world, we need to turn a part of ourselves off for a short while, and this is precisely what our brain does.

They demonstrate more specifically that when we need to concentrate, this network disrupts the activation of other specialized neurones when it is not deactivated enough. The results have just been published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

When we focus on the things around us, certain parts of the brain are activated: this network, well known to neurobiologists, is called the attention network. Other parts of the brain, however, cease their activity at the same time, as if they generally prevented our attention from being focused on the outside world. These parts of the brain form a network that is extensively studied in neurobiology, and commonly known as the "default-mode network", because, for a long time, it was believed that it activated itself when the brain had nothing in particular to do. This interpretation was refined through ten years of neuroimaging research that concluded by associating this mysterious network ("the brain's dark energy" as it was called by one of its discoverers, Marcus Raichle) with a host of intimate and private phenomena of our mental life: self-perception, recollections, imagination, thoughts...

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Natural Born Musical Prodigy? Maybe

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© nayukim/Flickr.com

The adage "Practice makes perfect," might inspire people to focus on getting better at a given sport or task, but some research suggests there's more to the equation.

A recent paper, along with other experiments, shows that a person's innate abilities may matter just as much. In other words, some people have qualities that, when combined with practice, make them "naturals."

The paper's authors suggest the idea contrasts with some popular writers' tendencies to de-emphasize individual qualities in determining success.

Also called "working memory capacity," the ability to use knowledge and adapt to new or distracting situations may separate the really good from the best. Another study suggests that people with higher working memory capacity could process information more quickly.

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Flashback Army's New PTSD Treatments: Yoga, Reiki, 'Bioenergy'

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© Associated Press
The military is scrambling for new ways to treat the brain injuries and post-traumatic stress of troops returning home from war. And every kind of therapy - no matter how far outside the accepted medical form - is being considered. The Army just unveiled a $4 million program to investigate everything from "spiritual ministry, transcendental meditation,[and] yoga" to "bioenergies such as Qi gong, Reiki, [and] distant healing" to mend the psyches of wounded troops.

As many as 17 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have some form of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, one congressional study estimates. Nearly 3,300 troops have suffered traumatic brain injury, or TBI, according to statistics assembled last summer. And the lifetime costs of treating these ailments could pile up to as much as $35 billion, a Columbia University report guesses.

Small wonder, then, that the government is looking for alternate means to treat these injuries. The Defense Department "is dedicated to supporting evidence-based approaches to medical treatment and wants to support the use of alternative therapies if they are proven efficacious," notes a recently-issued request for proposals.

Comment: Read the following articles for more information about alternative therapies that are being used to help treat PTSD symptoms in veterans:


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Thoughts of God Make Us Slackers, Study Suggests

Praying
© stock.xchng

No matter if you're a believer, thinking about God and religion may turn you into a slacker, according to a new study.

"More than 90 percent of people in the world agree that God or a similar spiritual power exists or may exist,"study researcher Kristin Laurin of the University of Waterloo in Canada, said in a statement. "This is the first empirical evidence that simple reminders of God can diminish some types of self-regulation, such as pursuing one's goals, yet can improve others, such as resisting temptation."

Even for those without a personal belief in God, U.S. culture is saturated with religious references and imagery that could impact them, Laurin said. The study's results were independent of the participants' religious beliefs. Even without knowing it, these signs and signals can have a psychological effect.

A Gallup poll in May found that more than nine out of 10 Americans believe in God. These numbers drop for groups of younger Americans, liberals, those living in the Eastern United States, those with postgraduate educations and political independents. However, belief in God is nearly universal among Republicans and conservatives and, to a slightly lesser degree, in the South.

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Curiosity Doesn't Kill The Student

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© iStockphoto
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it's good for the student. That's the conclusion of a new study published in Perspectives in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The authors show that curiosity is a big part of academic performance. In fact, personality traits like curiosity seem to be as important as intelligence in determining how well students do in school.

Intelligence is important to academic performance, but it's not the whole story. Everyone knows a brilliant kid who failed school, or someone with mediocre smarts who made up for it with hard work. So psychological scientists have started looking at factors other than intelligence that make some students do better than others.

One of those is conscientiousness - basically, the inclination to go to class and do your homework. People who score high on this personality trait tend to do well in school. "It's not a huge surprise if you think of it, that hard work would be a predictor of academic performance," says Sophie von Stumm of the University of Edinburgh in the UK. She co-wrote the new paper with Benedikt Hell of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic of Goldsmiths University of London.

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Brain Scans Offer Peek Into People's Dreams

Dreams
© Goodluz, ShutterstockCould scientists one day be able to reconstruct dreams?
It's not quite Inception, but new research has allowed scientists to "read" some people as they dream.

Using brain imaging, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Germany said they were able to compare the brain activity of "lucid dreamers" as they entertained the same thoughts awake and asleep. The brain activity was similar, if weaker during sleep, the researchers said.

Lucid dreamers are sleepers who are aware that they are dreaming and can deliberately control their dream actions. According to the researchers, lucid dreaming is a learned skill, one very useful to scientists trying to understand the secrets of dreams.

"The main obstacle in studying specific dream content is that spontaneous dream activity cannot be experimentally controlled, as subjects typically cannot perform pre-decided mental actions during sleep," study researcher Michael Czisch said in a statement. "Employing the skill of lucid dreaming can help to overcome these obstacles."