tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53180716190010962072024-02-20T04:27:03.990-08:00Brainlandia: musings about mind and spiritWim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.comBlogger70125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-72565931956750046032023-12-05T01:55:00.000-08:002023-12-05T01:55:33.230-08:00Brain Implants for people with serious brain damageA New York Times article "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/04/health/traumatic-brain-injury-implants.html">Brain Implants Helped 5 People Toward Recovery After Traumatic Injuries</a>" discusses the brain stimulation for people who had serious brain damage but didn't fully recover.
They stimulated the central lateral nucleus, it is a thin sheet of neurons about the size and shape of an almond shell. <i>The human brain has two such structures, one in each hemisphere. They seem to help the brain quiet itself at night for sleep and rev up the brain in the morning. Stimulating the neurons in these regions can wake up a sleeping rat, Dr. Schiff’s research has shown. These studies raised the possibility that stimulating the central lateral nuclei might help people with traumatic brain injuries regain their focus and attention.</i>
Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-6561939929634865872022-05-22T12:22:00.003-07:002022-05-22T12:22:58.350-07:00Dealing with psychosisMany people hear voices that are only in their head. For example when they are about to do something stupid they hear a warning voice that might come from a parent.
But for only a minority of them it becomes a problem and those voices start to dominate their life. They can become psychotic - a stage where the input from the voices becomes so important that the input from the outside world is largely ignored. In psychiatry the main treatment is anti-psychotic medicine. However, there is also an approach that stresses accepting the voices without letting them dominate.
The New York Times has an article (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/magazine/antipsychotic-medications-mental-health.html">Doctors Gave Her Antipsychotics. She Decided to Live With Her Voices</a>) on the subject. Some quotes:
<p>
<i>Hearing Voices Network originated in the mid-’80s after a Dutch psychiatrist, Marius Romme, worked with a client, Patsy Hage, who was hallucinating and suicidal. Hage insisted that Romme pay attention to the content of her voices instead of dismissing what they said as meaningless. Romme went on to study hundreds of people like Hage, and in a 1989 paper in Schizophrenia Bulletin, he argued that practitioners should “accept the patient’s experience of the voices”; that “biological psychiatry” may not be “very helpful in coping with the voices because it, too, places the phenomenon beyond one’s grasp”; that practitioners should “stimulate the patient to meet other people with similar experiences”; and that patients benefited when they could “attribute some meaning to the voices.” Romme’s paper was mostly ignored, but Hearing Voices support groups cropped up, especially in Britain and across Europe. In the United States, it took much longer; some of the first were started by the alliance around 2008, four years before Mazel-Carlton began working there.
<p>
The idea is that peers can better win the trust of people who are struggling. In Hoyoke, Mass., Mazel-Carlton went to work for a fledgling peer-run organization that is now called the Wildflower Alliance, with a three-room headquarters above a desolate downtown street and a goal of transforming the way our society understands and treats extreme mental distress. Mazel-Carlton also worked as a sometime staff member at Afiya house, a temporary residence run by the alliance as an alternative to locked wards. The people who stay at Afiya are in dire need; many are not only in mental disarray but also homeless. Many are suicidal. There are no clinicians on staff, no security personnel, only people who know such desperation firsthand.
<p>
For Mazel-Carlton, one of the groups’ most essential tenets is that there must be no disabusing anyone of a personal reality. Unlike on a psych ward or in many a psychiatrist’s office, unusual beliefs are not monitored, corrected, constrained. Mazel-Carlton’s motto is, “If I’m controlling, I’m not connecting” — and connection, for her, is everything. It defines hope.
<p>
“The first time I came to this group,” the woman went on, “and said something about what happened that day with my grandma, I looked at the screen and people were nodding their heads, and I thought, holy [expletive], people get what I’m talking about. And when people talked about feeling like they’re Jesus Christ, I was like, Oh, my God, I’m not the only one? In group, I don’t feel alone, and feeling alone is like something crushing my chest.” She began to cry minimally. “Group is a place to be vulnerable,” she said. “In my everyday life, I don’t feel safe. I have to put on my armor.”
<p>
a foundational pact is that no one will be reported, not to any hotline, not to the police or any practitioner, no matter what he or she expresses an intent to do. To comprehend how thoroughly this defies dominant practice, take the policy of the country’s most-called — and heavily federally funded — suicide hotline. It advertises confidentiality but covertly scores risk and, each year, without permission, dispatches police cars and ambulances to the doors of thousands. From hotline to psych hospital, the focus is on risk management. It is on exerting control.
<p>
One woman, a mother, told Mazel-Carlton that a voice was commanding that she cut off her hand; if she didn’t, the voice would harm her child. Mazel-Carlton listened and eventually wondered aloud to the woman what the voice might be straining to communicate beneath its horrifying terms. She drew her into thinking about the voice’s underlying meaning, that it could be expressing something about the pressures and conflicts of motherhood, especially during Covid, how caring for a child sometimes feels like a commandment to give up too much of oneself.
<p>
The W.H.O. report features another innovative approach, temporary residences called Soteria Houses. In Israel, Pesach Lichtenberg has founded two of a handful of such houses now operating around the world.</i>
Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-67431778970863748002022-05-01T08:20:00.002-07:002022-05-01T08:20:18.235-07:00Virtual reality against chronic painAccording the article "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/26/magazine/virtual-reality-chronic-pain.html">Can Virtual Reality Help Ease Chronic Pain?</a>" chronic pain is often a function of the brain. You can see that in brain scans. Acute pain activates areas connected to the parts of the body where the pain happens but when the pain becomes chronic often see different parts of the brain activated.
The kind of virtual reality discussed is in the woods or on the beach.Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-59949180306391118132021-07-29T02:54:00.002-07:002021-07-29T02:54:54.061-07:00Happy memories against depression<p> A Medium article "<a href="https://elemental.medium.com/the-power-of-positive-memories-86c2441ffe07">The power of positive memories</a>" discusses how happy memories help against depression and how depression often is accompanied by a failure to remember happy times:</p><p> - A <a class="dm gs" href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0093" rel="noopener nofollow">2017 study</a> used t<span class="mq"></span><span class="mq">he famo</span><span class="mq">us hand-in-cold-water test for stress generation. Before the test people had been asked to list a number of memories - both positive and neutral. When during the test they were asked to focus on positive memories they produced less cortisol during the test. Brain scans showed that this was accompanied by increased activity in </span><span class="mq">the brain’s prefrontal cortex — areas involved in emotion regulation and “cognitive control”.</span></p><p class="jt ju gw jv b if pi jw jx ii pj jy jz ka pk kb kc kd pl ke kf kg pm kh ki kk gg id" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="8eb8"><span class="mq"> - It brings us in CBT territory: </span><i><span class="mq">Over
time, the activation of these negative mental pathways strengthens
them; meanwhile, positive mental pathways grow weaker as they lie
dormant. </span>Based
on this competitive memory theory, some researchers have explored
whether positive memory training can help protect people who are at high
risk for depression. <a class="dm gs" href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3287517" rel="noopener nofollow">A 2018 study</a>
from a group of U.K. researchers found that training people to recall
happy memories led to a significant drop in depression scores. The
people in the study first learned to identify their negative
self-appraisals, such as thoughts of worthlessness. Next, they recalled
specific occasions when they’d demonstrated worth, or when their
behavior otherwise refuted their negative self-talk. Over time, reliving
these positive memories seemed to reduce the brain’s tendency to fire
up its negative thought pathways.</i></p><p class="jt ju gw jv b if pi jw jx ii pj jy jz ka pk kb kc kd pl ke kf kg pm kh ki kk gg id" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="8eb8"> - Positive thinking helps too: <i> <a class="dm gs" href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jclp.22020" rel="noopener nofollow">Multiple studies</a>
have found that taking time each day or week to think about the things
in life for which one is grateful can improve mental health outcomes and
well-being. “Whether stemming from our own internal thoughts or the
daily news headlines, we are exposed to a constant drip of negativity,”
says Robert Emmons, a gratitude researcher and professor of psychology
at the University of California, Davis. Recalling happy memories — and
creating new ones through positive experiences — can fuel feelings of
gratitude and turn off the spigot of negativity, he says.</i></p><p class="jt ju gw jv b if pi jw jx ii pj jy jz ka pk kb kc kd pl ke kf kg pm kh ki kk gg id" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="8eb8"> - The old wisdom that buying experiences is more helpful than buying things comes along too. <br /><i></i></p><p><em class="mq"></em></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-58130051365273555802021-07-23T11:44:00.004-07:002022-05-22T02:41:38.968-07:00How A New Therapy Helps People with Delusions Feel Safe Again<p>This time an article from Vice.com: <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyv577/feeling-safe-program-oxford-persecutory-delusions" target="_blank">How A New Therapy Helps People with Delusions Feel Safe Again</a></p><p>During a first episode of psychosis, over <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4108844/" target="_blank">70% of people</a> have a persecutory delusion. This article discusses a therapy - "Feeling Safe" - that specifically addresses that delusion. It does that by addressing aspects that underlie that delusion: worrying, low self-confidence, sleeping troubles, and safety-seeking behaviors. The
treatment helps people re-enter situations that made them previously
feel unsafe, alongside targeting those other negative side effects. The
therapy also provides a large amount of autonomy to the participants;
it’s modular and people can choose which treatment focuses they’d like
to take on first, guided by clinical psychologists. </p><p></p><p>The study by Daniel
Freeman, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Oxford,
and his colleagues was published in <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(21)00158-9/fulltext" target="_blank">The Lancet Psychiatry</a> earlier this month. It is the result of 15 years of study. The study claims a great effect compared to treatment with CBT.<br /></p>Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-9531476960215757332020-08-06T06:48:00.003-07:002020-08-06T06:48:34.677-07:00Live longer: avoid stressThe original discussion was about "blue zones" a decade ago. At that time I missed it. Now there is some Medium post on the subject (<a href="https://medium.com/illumination/weve-known-how-to-combat-dementia-for-years-we-re-just-not-listening-4aa9fa9b757a">We’ve Known How to Combat Dementia For Years — We’re Just Not Listening</a>).
<p>
Some extracts: <br /></p><p><i>In 2010, <a class="cq ic kp kq kr ks" href="https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/133/8/2217/385486" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">researchers </a>concluded that chronic stress significantly increased women’s likelihood of developing dementia. In 2013, <a class="cq ic kp kq kr ks" href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130314085049.htm" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">researchers</a> found that chronic stress quickens the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. In 2017, a <a class="cq ic kp kq kr ks" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2012/06/29/could-stress-lead-to-dementia-yes-but-read-this-before-you-panic/#7c4daf9e6f02" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">meta-analysis</a> pointed to stress as a likely contributor to dementia. In 2017, another <a class="cq ic kp kq kr ks" href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27986873/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">study</a> successfully used measures of stress to predict dementia onset.</i></p><p><i>In 2009, Dan Buettner published his book, <em class="lz">The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest, </em>which
covered the lifestyle of a collection of communities across the globe
with especially long life expectancies. In addition to longer life,
these communities have significantly reduced rates of depression,
dementia, cancer, and heart disease. Buettner’s book became a bestseller
and was quickly followed by a series of books on how to live like a
member of the blue zones. The blue zone people became a cultural
phenomenon. They were the key to living longer, and we wanted to mimic
them — almost.</i></p><p></p><p class="io ip as iq b ir is it iu iv iw ix iy iz ja jb jc jd je jf jg fp eh" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="b8e1"><i>Two years after <em class="lz">The Blue Zones</em>, a group of <a class="cq ic kp kq kr ks" href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3051199/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">researchers </a>at
the University of Athens published a study on the sociodemographics and
lifestyles of these people. While diet, sleep, and other healthy habits
contributed to their longevity, the study concluded that long life in
the blue zone is a product of regular socializing, a sense of purpose,
and low-stress levels as much as it is a product of physical health.</i></p><p class="io ip as iq b ir is it iu iv iw ix iy iz ja jb jc jd je jf jg fp eh" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="c204"><i>The
lifestyle of the blue zone people vastly differs from the rat race
culture pervasive in Western society. They live simply and emphasize
community. In fact, microbiologist and health coach <a class="cq ic kp kq kr ks" href="https://roguehealthandfitness.com/truth-blue-zones/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">P.D. Mangan</a>
points out that “the factor that unites all of these [blue zone people]
is either being less touched by modernity, or actively rejecting it.”</i></p>Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-48060314475632211322020-08-03T23:41:00.001-07:002020-08-03T23:41:21.482-07:00internal family systems therapy (IFS)On Medium I found <a href="https://elemental.medium.com/inside-the-revolutionary-treatment-that-could-change-psychotherapy-forever-8be035d54770">some nice post about internal family systems therapy (IFS)</a>, a kind of therapy developed by <a href="https://ifs-institute.com/about-us/richard-c-schwartz-phd">Richard C. Schwartz</a>.
<br />
<br />
<i>It took a long time for Schwartz to break out of family systems orthodoxy and ask his patients about their interior lives. What he noticed in their responses was a surprising echo of the conflicted interpersonal relationships he had been trained for: They tended to talk colloquially about warring “parts” of them. One part of them wanted to be skinny; another part didn’t care what people thought. One part felt shy and introverted; another part liked parties. One part sometimes seized control and ate and ate in a numb haze; a colder, more punitive part then took over and made them purge.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>Schwartz found that one after another of his patients were able to identify regular voices in their heads that got into repetitive arguments with each other, often just below the level of language. At first, Schwartz was alarmed. He almost wondered if he was seeing undiagnosed dissociative identity disorder. But the symptoms didn’t quite add up. For those with DID, the switch between “alters” meant a discontinuity in consciousness and memory, but switches between “parts” were usually more subtle than that. As one early patient put it, “In the course of 10 minutes I go from being a professional who has it all together, to a scared, insecure child, to a raging bitch, to an unfeeling, single-minded eating machine.” Was it possible that parts were just a normal part of conscious experience — that everyone had parts?
</i><br />
<br />
<i>Schwartz spent a while looking inside himself. Sure enough, his own inner conflicts separated out into distinct perspectives which voiced coherent points of view. In stressful situations, one or another of them would often hijack his consciousness to impose its own distorted perspective on the world, a process Schwartz came to call “blending.” It seemed that Schwartz himself, like his patients, had parts. He considered coining a technical name for them, but eventually decided “parts” worked just fine.</i><br />
<br />
<br />
How to deal with those parts?
<br />
<br />
<i>He soon learned that [] parts tended to be trapped in desperate situations they had encountered years before, using strategies to cope which had long since ceased to be adaptive. Schwartz got to know anxious achiever parts and depressed caregiver parts, super-efficient manager parts and flirtatious social butterfly parts, five-year-old parts which covered up pain with temper tantrums and 40-year-old parts which covered it up with drinking, parts which had never gotten over a small playground slight from a friend and parts which were trapped in horrifying scenes of child abuse or of war.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>To this day, when a young therapist attending one of Schwartz’s workshops comes up to the mic to ask whether a suicidal part is just seeking attention or a comedic part is covering for shame, the answer Schwartz generally gives is, “You’d have to ask it,” invariably provoking a wave of nervous laughter from the room at his failure yet again to act like a guru.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>Eventually, Schwartz did come up with names for the most common roles he saw parts taking on in their relationships with each other. Parts that he called protectors used a vast array of coping strategies, sometimes very extreme ones, to manage the emotional pain of deeply buried parts that Schwartz called exiles. Exiles were often very young and lived in a nightmarish limbo, interpreting even minor adult pain through the lens of the childhood memories they were trapped in. Because they were so vulnerable, exiles were hard to access. You had to go through protectors to get to them, and protectors could be tough customers. To speak to a seven-year-old exile carrying the pain of a father’s abusive criticism, for example, you might have to reckon with a blustering 40-year-old protector of a different exile who thought the seven-year-old was just as much of a pussy as his father used to call him — and that you were too, for taking his concerns seriously.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>Luckily, it turned out there was an easier way of negotiating with protectors than having patients blend with them. If a patient simply closed their eyes and asked a part to “step back” a pace, they could often get enough emotional distance from it to speak for the part rather than from the part: “My defensive part is jumping up and down with rage that you would say something like that,” rather than “fuck you.” In this unblended state, the patient could ask questions of the part, listen to it, even bargain with it. If the part felt that its concerns were being taken seriously, it was often willing to step aside completely for a while, entering a visualized “waiting room” with the door closed behind it so that the patient could begin work on whatever part came up next.</i><br />
<br />
<br />
When all parts step aside what is left is the Self:
<br />
<br />
<i>If a patient got all their parts to step aside, protectors and exiles alike, something curious happened. They entered a state of mind far clearer and more joyful than any they seemed able to maintain in day-to-day life: calm, confident, curious, compassionate.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>“What part is this?” Schwartz asked, amazed, the first few times it happened. He always got the same answer: “This doesn’t feel like a part. It just feels like myself.”
</i><br />
<br />
<i>So Schwartz decided to call it Self: a unified mode of consciousness that seemed to lie just beneath all the sound and fury of parts, surprisingly reminiscent of the clear mental waters that Buddhists sought with mindfulness meditation. </i><br />
<br />
There are other therapies that work with parts:
<br />
<br />
<i>The Italian Freudian analyst Roberto Assagioli called them
“subpersonalities” and developed a psychoanalytic school of thought
known as <a class="co gc gd ge gf gg" href="https://www.psychosynthesis.org/about/what-is-psychosynthesis/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">psychosynthesis</a>
at the beginning of the 20th century that sought to integrate them into
a harmonious whole. Half a century later, husband-and-wife team John
and Helen Watkins developed <a class="co gc gd ge gf gg" href="https://bestpracticesintherapy.com/egostatetherapyintensive/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">ego-state therapy</a> in the United States with different terminology but much the same goal.</i><br />
<br />
<i> Patients can find IFS therapists in all 50 U.S. states through the IFS Institute’s <a class="co gc gd ge gf gg" href="https://ifs-institute.com/practitioners" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">online directory</a> or on <a class="co gc gd ge gf gg" href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/internal-family-systems-ifs/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank"><em class="ko">Psychology Today</em></a>. Many have also done<strong class="js kp"> </strong>“parts work” on their own using psychologist Jay Earley’s popular guide <a class="co gc gd ge gf gg" href="https://personal-growth-programs.com/products/self-therapy/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank"><em class="ko">Self-Therapy</em></a><strong class="js kp">.</strong></i><br />
<br />
<br />Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-73334688635530927052020-01-12T13:15:00.000-08:002020-01-12T13:15:03.033-08:00The old have a good memory tooThe NY Times has an article by a neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/opinion/sunday/age-memory.html">"Everyone Knows Memory Fails as You Age. But Everyone Is Wrong"</a> that claims that the idea that when you get old you forget more is wrong.
Yes, there are illnesses like Alzheimer that seriously affect memory. But often we fool ourselves by attributing forgetfulness of the young to irresponsibility, lack of sleep or stress and blaming the same happening to the old on dementia.
If you leave people with Alzheimer illnesses aside memory sees only a very minor reduction. And the minor loss in speed can at least partially be explained by the fact that the memory is fuller. Some aspects of memory actually get better as we age. For instance, our ability to extract patterns, regularities and to make accurate predictions improves over time because we’ve had more experience. (This is why computers need to be shown tens of thousands of pictures of traffic lights or cats in order to be able to recognize them). If you’re going to get an X-ray, you want a 70-year-old radiologist reading it, not a 30-year-old one.Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-55969631840425382062019-10-30T13:04:00.000-07:002019-10-30T13:04:41.747-07:00Walking helps sleeping<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/well/move/how-walking-might-affect-our-sleep.html" target="_blank">How walking might affect sleep</a> discusses a study where the more volunteers walked the better they slept.Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-26286989694410635572019-09-16T15:29:00.002-07:002019-10-30T12:59:10.621-07:00Brain damage in Serial killersThe article <a href="https://www.indy100.com/article/this-man-spent-35-years-studying-the-brains-of-serial-killers-this-is-what-he-found-out-7355061" target="_blank">"This man spent 35 years studying the brains of serial killers"</a> reports about a <a class="body-link" data-vars-event-id="c6" data-vars-item-name="BL-7355061-http://www.ted.com/talks/jim_fallon_exploring_the_mind_of_a_killer#t-227988" href="https://www.awin1.com/awclick.php?mid=4878&id=201309&p=http://www.ted.com/talks/jim_fallon_exploring_the_mind_of_a_killer#t-227988" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><i>TED</i> talk</a> by <b>neurologist Dr Jim Fallon from the</b> University of California Irvine, Fallon on the mind of psychopathic killers.<br />
<br />
He found three common elements of serial killers:<br />
- All of the psychopaths that Fallon studied has damage to their
orbitofrontal cortex (above the eyes) and to the interior part of the
temporal cortex. In addition, all of them had some other of brain damage
in a variety of combinations.<br />
- Possession of the high risk violence gene, the MAOA is also common to
psychopathic killers. The gene MOAO is sex linked, and exists in the X
chromosome. This gene causes overproduction of serotonin what causes insensitivity to it. As such, the control of anger and stress relief is impotent in later life.<br />
<br />
- The deciding factor is exposure to extreme violence at a young ageWim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-33317928371828042942019-03-25T04:46:00.001-07:002019-03-25T04:46:25.426-07:00Psychological video games<br />
The NY Times has an article (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/24/technology/personaltech/depression-anxiety-video-games.html" target="_blank">Depressed and Anxious? These games want to help</a>) that discusses a variety of games that aim to inspire people with mental health problems. Some excerpts:<br />
<br />
<div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn">
<div class="css-53u6y8">
<div class="css-1ygdjhk evys1bk0">
<i>In
the coming adventure video game <b>Sea of Solitude</b>, the main character — a
young woman named Kay — navigates a partly submerged city as she faces a
multitude of red-eyed scaly creatures. None
are as terrifying as her own personal demons. As the game progresses,
Kay realizes the creatures she is encountering are humans who turned
into monsters when they became too lonely. To save herself, she fights
to overcome her own loneliness. Kay was modeled after the game’s creative director, Cornelia Geppert of
Jo-Mei Games, an independent game studio, who struggled after a 2013
breakup.</i></div>
</div>
<br />
<aside class="css-17l9gfh"></aside></div>
<div class="css-53u6y8">
<div class="css-1ygdjhk evys1bk0">
<br /></div>
<div class="css-1ygdjhk evys1bk0">
<i>Last year, a game called Celeste
explored depression and anxiety through a protagonist who had to avoid
physical and emotional obstacles. In 2017’s fantasy action-adventure
video game <b>Hellblade</b>: Senua’s Sacrifice, a young Celtic warrior deals
with psychosis.</i></div>
<div class="css-1ygdjhk evys1bk0">
<i>Other games in recent years, including <b><a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/technology/personaltech/coming-to-video-games-near-you-depressed-towns-dead-end-characters.html?module=inline" title="">Night in the Woods</a></b>
and <b>Pry</b>, have delved into self-identity, anger issues and
post-traumatic stress disorder. All followed the 2013 interactive
fiction game <b>Depression Quest</b>, which asked players to step into the
shoes of a character living with depression.</i></div>
</div>
<i><br /></i>
<i>“Mental health is becoming a more central narrative in our culture, with
greater efforts to normalize mental health challenges,” said Eve
Crevoshay, executive director of Take This, a nonprofit that educates
video game developers on best practices around portraying mental health. (Take This was founded in 2013 <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="http://www.takethis.org/2018/10/six-years-ago-today/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="">after the suicide of a video game journalist</a> prompted a debate about the issue.)</i><br />
<br />
<i>she felt a connection to the protagonist of <b>Night in the Woods</b>, Mae, a
college dropout who returns to her hometown but struggles to reconnect
with family and friends. </i><i><br /></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Makers of mental health games said they had seen a similar reaction from other players. After the 2016 <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/29/fashion/pastoral-living-in-stardew-valley-mesmerized-by-a-online-game.html?module=inline" title="">simulation role-playing game <b>Stardew Valley</b></a>
— which does not punish players for not completing tasks and creates a
slow-paced atmosphere where the objective is to take care of a run-down
farm — was released, Eric Barone, the game’s creator, received hundreds
of messages, he said. Players wrote to share their stories of how the
game helped them cope with difficult periods in their lives.</i><br />
<i> </i><br />
<div class="css-1ygdjhk evys1bk0">
<i>Some makers are now developing games to
explicitly promote better mental health. <b>Orpheus Self Care
Entertainment</b>, a start-up that was founded last year, is publishing
virtual reality games in which players practice mindfulness and
meditation through activities like dancing. </i></div>
<div class="css-1ygdjhk evys1bk0">
<br /></div>
<i><b>IThrive Games
Foundation</b>, a nonprofit that aims to improve mental health in teenagers
through games and education, is also working on a new mobile game for
teenagers who suffer from anxiety. </i>Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-66933468887485611432019-03-06T02:48:00.001-08:002021-10-21T01:59:52.031-07:00Liberals and conservativesThis is a copy of a post on my Conflict and Compromise blog.
<p/>
<i>In this post I discuss the campaign speeches of Obama and McCain. I saw these speeches on video. To save time I had to quote them from memory. So the quotes may not always be exact.</i>
<p/>
Not everybody has the same kind of moral. Psychologists have thought up questions like "is it ok to cook and eat your dog after it has died in a traffic incident?" to show this. It appears that liberals and conservatives have a different reaction to such questions that are also very visible on brain scans. Conservatives find the idea disgusting, while liberals are more moderate and reason that nobody is harmed. This article is about how the liberals and conservatives differ in morals (based on the article "<a href="http://edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html">What makes people vote republican</a>" by Jonathan Haidt) and how that works out for the presidential campaigns.
<p/>
Liberals (in the American meaning of progressives) base their morality on two pillars: fairness/reciprocity and harm/care. So they believe in justice and helping and protecting the destitute. Both values are individualistic.
<p/>
Conservatives however have three additional pillars: ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity. These are group values. The last one is not only about religion but can also manifest itself in for example an aversion against homosexuals or eating your deceased dog.
<p/>
While conservatives usually understand liberals (but find them superficial) liberals have serious difficulty understanding conservatives (and find them just irrational with their religion and other "values"). Group values just don't have a place in their thinking.
<p/>
This can nicely be translated to the American elections. Kennedy with his "<i>Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country</i>" was a liberal who did understand. In the beginning it looked like Obama understood it too with his background as a social worker. But he has been unable to generalize his experience and nowadays allows the McCain campaign to cast him as an egoist who has done everything he did just for himself and his career.
<p/>
I checked the acceptance speeches of the two candidates and noticed a few differences in style:
- as usual, McCain tells about his experience in imprisonment in Vietnam. But it is a personal story and he tells about it as a turning point in his life. Obama doesn't have any similar personal story.
- McCain creates more of a "we" atmosphere: "we have to ..", ".. my friends".
- McCain positions himself unashamed as the leader, summing up (and exagerating) his experience. This very probably wouldn't work for Obama.
- McCain puts things in black and white. He devotes a whole section of his speech to comparing Obama's policies and his like "Obama wants to raise taxes; I want to lower them". He does this in an almost ritualistic way: Obama wants ...; I want ... Obama wants ...; I want ..., etc., etc.. He isn't always very truthful but it works in creating an us-versus-them atmosphere. Obama applies the typical liberal trick of describing someone else as not logical. For example (about fighting poverty) "it is not that McCain doesn't care. He just doesn't get it".
- McCain takes more effort to give his talk a personal style. He not only thanks people at the beginning, but also thanks a fellow prisoner in Vietnam when he mentions his name in his biographical story. Sometimes it looks rather artificial. Where Obama talks in general about the people from New Orleans or people who can't afford medical care McCain names one specific person (with name and state) who lost his farm in the real estate crisis and one in another position. McCain is positioning himself in this way as a leader who knows and understands his followers, while Obama positions himself more as the rather anonymous leader who voices the opinion of his followers.
<p/><p/>
So the largest difference seems to be in leadership. Where McCain emphasizes his own responsibility ("I want"), Obama hides behind the collective and logic ("he doesn't get it"). This gives McCain more authority and he exploits that by making broad and often inaccurate statements about Obama's position. Obama's academic reactions mean that most people will remember McCain's position better. Take the example of Palin's statements about war with Russia. If Obama's running mate had made such a statement McCains campaign would have stated that Palin wants World War III. Obama's campaign seems unable to exploit the issue.
<p/>
The Georgia War was a good example of how weak a leader Obama can be. When McCain made a more anti-Russian statement than him he changed his own statement to become more anti-Russian too. This was not only a misjudgment of the situation. It was also a missed chance: Obama needs a case where he can say flatly to McCain that McCain is wrong and this was a good opportunity.
<p/>
If Obama wants to win the election he needs the support from some of the people with a conservative frame of mind. So he will have to show himself a leader who stands for his points and who doesn't hide behind some common opinion.
<p/>
For who wants to check. Here are the acceptance speeches of <a href="http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid900881681/bclid900480414/bctid1764090280">Obama</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrlkcMOMhrQ">McCain</a>
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Postscript 1: <a href="http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/918/2">Here</a> and <a href="http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20061222-000001.xml">here</a> are other scientific article about another differences between liberals and conservatives. According to the first article "<i>Subjects who had expressed a high level of support for policies "protecting the social unit" showed a much larger change in skin conductance in response to alarming photos than those who didn't support such policies. Similarly, the mean blink amplitude for the socially protective subjects was significantly higher, the team reports in tomorrow's issue of Science</i>". It seems that there is a strong heriditary element involved.
According to the second article <i>are more likely to like classical music and jazz, conservatives, country music. Liberals are more likely to enjoy abstract art. Conservative men are more likely than liberal men to prefer conventional forms of entertainment like TV and talk radio. Liberal men like romantic comedies more than conservative men.</i>.
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Postscript 2: According to a <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/102943/Republicans-Report-Much-Better-Mental-Health-Than-Others.aspx">Gallup poll</a>: "<i>Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent</i>".
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Postscript 3: Classical mutual descriptions: "a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged" and "a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested".
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Postscript 4: <a href="http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html">Here</a> is Jonathan Haidt on television. The page also shows an internet discussion.
<p/>
Postscript 5: <a href="http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/lakoff/mp21/">George Lakoff</a> is another scientist with a theory about the difference between liberal and conservative. He notes that "strict parenting" is not supported by science and sees it as a kind of abuse that is transmitted over the generations.
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Postscipt 6: <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/06/conservatives-more-easily-disgusted-than-liberals/">Some Harvard studies</a> showed that conservatives are more easily disgusted.
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Postscript 7: <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/25/red-vs-blue-family-in-black-and-white/?page=1">Red vs. blue family in black and white</a> is a book by Naomi Cahn and June Carbone that deals with the issue. Some quotes:
<i>In blue states, families tend to be well-educated, have high-paying jobs, be tolerant of diversity and be politically liberal. They marry later in life, have children in wedlock and are dedicated co-parents.
<p/>
Red-state families, however, seem to be stuck in a time warp — they tend to be more strict in their religious beliefs and aspire to abstinence until marriage and marriage for life. But they often fall short of these goals: Red states have high rates of teen births, young ("shotgun") marriages and divorce. Red-state families are also less likely to be college graduates, get top jobs or create households where husbands and wives share equally in parenting and chores.
<p/>
This shows that "blue" families have adjusted to the evolution of America's family culture, while "red" families have not, Ms. Cahn and Ms. Carbone said.
<p/>
"The blue paradigm is the other end of the sexual revolution. Its families have been remade and the remaking is a huge success," they wrote. But red families are still trying to live in bygone times, and when children fail to live up to lofty aspirations, these families bear the consequences.</i>
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Postscript 8: <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2300430/">This article</a> about the algorithm of the dating site Match.com mentions that <i>Conservatives are far more open to reaching out to someone with a different point of view than a liberal is." That is, when it comes to looking for love, conservatives are more open-minded than liberals.</i>.
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Postscript 9: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/opinion/kristof-politics-odors-and-soap.html">"Politics, Odors and Soap"</a> by Nicholas D. Kristof discusses how liberals and conservatives differs in values. According to the book “The Righteous Mind” by Jonathan Haidt for liberals morality is largely a matter of three values: caring for the weak, fairness and liberty. Conservatives share those concerns (although they think of fairness and liberty differently) and add three others: loyalty, respect for authority and sanctity. The consequence is that conservatives are capable of understanding liberals but that liberals often have great difficulty understanding conservatives.
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Postscript 10: Also nice is <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/can-drinking-make-you-conservative-and-other-questions-about-the-political-brain-20120326">Can Drinking Make You Conservative? (and Other Questions About the Political Brain)</a>. It discusses a <a href="http://psp.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/03/16/0146167212439213.abstract">scientific study</a> that asked people to consent or dissent to some political statements like "private property should be abolished". It found that the more alcohol people had consumed the more conservative their opinion - independent of their normal political orientation.
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Postscript 11: <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/06/quick-study-satoshi-kanazawa-intelligence">The disadvantage of smarts</a> is an interview with Satoshi Kanazawa on intelligence. He claims that man originally is conservative and that only in our modern society intelligence has become more important. As he sees it it has lead to liberalism, atheism and consumption of alcohol and drugs. But he thinks it doesn't help - and may actually harm - with traditional human activities like making friends, raising a child and finding a partner.
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Postscript 12: The Atlantic has an article about the link between disgust and conservatism (<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/the-yuck-factor/580465/">Liberals and Conservatives React in Wildly Different Ways to Repulsive Pictures</a>). Some quotes:
<i>Compared with liberals, they’d previously found, conservatives generally pay more attention—and react more strongly—to a broad array of threats. For example, they have a more pronounced startle response to loud noises, and they gaze longer at photos of people displaying angry expressions.And yet even in this research, Hibbing says, “we almost always get clearer results with stimuli that are disgusting than with those that suggest a threat from humans, animals, or violent events.
According to a 2013 meta-analysis of 24 studies—pretty much all the scientific literature on the topic at that time—the association between a conservative ethos and sensitivity to disgust is modest: Disgust sensitivity explains 4 to 13 percent of the variation in a population’s ideology.
<p/>
His own research finds that “disgust influences our political views as much as or even more than long-recognized factors such as education and income bracket.”
<p/>
In one notable experiment, Schaller showed subjects pictures of people coughing, cartoonish-looking germs sprouting from sponges, and other images designed to raise disease concerns. A control group was shown pictures highlighting threats unrelated to germs—for instance, an automobile accident. Both groups were then given a questionnaire that asked them to assess the level of resources the Canadian government should provide to entice people from various parts of the world to settle in Canada. Compared with the control group, the subjects who had seen pictures related to germs wanted to allocate a greater share of a hypothetical government advertising budget to attract people from Poland and Taiwan—familiar immigrant groups in Vancouver, where the study was conducted—rather than people from less familiar countries, such as Nigeria, Mongolia, and Brazil. Familiarity does make a difference.
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Foul odors can be just as effective as a sticky desk. Another experiment involved two groups of subjects with similar political ideologies. One group was exposed to a vomitlike scent as the subjects filled out an inventory of their social values; the other group filled out the inventory in an odorless setting. Those in the first group expressed more opposition to gay rights, pornography, and premarital sex than those in the second group. The putrid scent even inspired “significantly more agreement with biblical truth.” Variations on these studies using fart spray, foul tastes, and other creative disgust elicitors reveal a consistent pattern: When we experience disgust, we tend to make harsher moral judgments.
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As it turns out, what tastes foul to us is typically a sour or bitter substance—which can be a marker of contaminants (think of spoiled milk). Several years ago, Pizarro learned that people vary tremendously in the number of bitter receptors they possess on their tongue, and thus in their taste sensitivity. What’s more, the trait is genetically determined. They recruited 1,601 subjects from shopping malls and from the Cornell campus and gave them paper strips containing a chemical called Prop and another chemical called PTC, both of which taste bitter to some people. Sure enough, those who had self-identified as being conservative were more sensitive to both compounds; many described them as unpleasant or downright repugnant. Liberals, on the other hand, tended not to be bothered as much by the chemicals or didn’t notice them at all.
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The researchers went a step further. Taste receptors, they knew, are concentrated in fungiform papillae—those spongy little bumps on your tongue. The greater the density of papillae, the more acute your taste. So they dyed subjects’ tongues blue (which allows the papillae to be more easily observed), pasted a paper ring on them like those used to prevent pages from tearing out of a metal binder (to create a standard area to be evaluated), and recorded the number of circumscribed papillae. The degree to which subjects’ views tilted to the right was, they found, in direct proportion to the density of papillae on their tongue. This result may have bearing on a puzzling partisan split in food preferences. A 2009 survey of 64,000 Americans revealed that liberals chose bitter-tasting arugula as their favorite salad green more than twice as often as conservatives did. It may also have a bearing on conservative President George H. W. Bush’s famous hatred of broccoli—an unusually bitter vegetable.
</i>
<p/>
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/opinion/conservatives-liberals-happiness.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/opinion/conservatives-liberals-happiness.html</a>Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-82452837123106336692019-02-11T02:15:00.000-08:002019-02-11T02:15:08.417-08:00Rocking gently helps your memory and your sleepThe article <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/10/opinion/sleep-neuroscience.html">The Neuroscience of ‘Rock-a-Bye Baby’</a> discusses the effect of rocking and movement on sleep and performance. Some conclusions:<br />
- people slept better when their beds were gently rocked during the night. And in the morning their recollections of the previous day were better.<br />
- people doodling remembered better what they heard than those who didn't.<br />
- A <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09297049.2015.1044511?journalCode=ncny20" target="_blank">2016 study</a>;showed that children with A.D.H.D. who were allowed to fidget — bouncing around and moving gently in place — performed better on a concentration task the more they moved.Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-83740574814198113762018-04-17T13:15:00.001-07:002018-04-17T13:15:38.709-07:00Friends have similar brainsAnother interesting psychological study, as summarized in the NY Times ("<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/science/friendship-brain-health.html">You Share Everything With Your Bestie. Even Brain Waves</a>").
They asked a class of students how closely they felt connected to each of their fellow students. And then they showed them film fragments and measured how their brains reacted to them. Similarity proved to be a good guide to who were friends and how close.
Of course one shouldn't put too much in this research. They found correlation. But that doesn't mean that that there can't be exceptions. So one might investigate whether there are people who are similar who are not friends - and why. One might also look whether all kinds of traits worked similarly: does having the same sense of humor work the same as being interested in the same fields of science?
Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-66279975432720963672018-02-01T07:02:00.001-08:002019-10-30T13:00:16.268-07:00The power of collaboration: children do betterThe article <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/group-challenge-kindergartners-beat-mbas-every-time-daniel-coyle/">"In this group challenge, kindergartners beat the MBAs every time"</a> by Daniel Coyle discusses an experiment where a group needs to build a tower as high as the can with the following material: Twenty pieces of uncooked spaghetti, One yard of transparent tape, One yard of string, One standard-size marshmallow. The marshmallow must come at the top. In dozens of trials, kindergartners built structures that averaged twenty-six inches tall, while business school students built structures that averaged less than ten inches. (Teams of kindergartners also defeated teams of lawyers [who built towers that averaged fifteen inches] as well as teams of CEOs [twenty-two inches]).
The explanation of the article is that children are really collaborating while the adults are secretly also competing for status and navigating the resulting social minefield. Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-31032164376855869732018-01-07T04:46:00.000-08:002018-01-07T04:46:48.305-08:00Is Your Child Lying to You? That’s GoodIn the category counter-intuitive articles this one may not miss: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/05/opinion/sunday/children-lying-intelligence.html">Is Your Child Lying to You? That’s Good</a>.
<i>Professor Lewis has found that toddlers who lie about peeking at the toy have higher verbal I.Q.s than those who don’t, by as much as 10 points. (Children who don’t peek at the toy in the first place are actually the smartest of all, but they are a rarity.)
Other research has shown that the children who lie have better “executive functioning skills” (an array of faculties that enable us to control our impulses and remain focused on a task) as well as a heightened ability to see the world through other people’s eyes, a crucial indicator of cognitive development known as “theory of mind.” (Tellingly, children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which is characterized by weaker executive functioning, and those with spectrum disorders such as autism, which are characterized by deficits in theory of mind, have trouble with lying.) Young liars are even more socially adept and well adjusted, according to recent studies of preschoolers.</i>Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-76453854081211655972017-12-31T03:03:00.001-08:002019-03-06T02:16:55.333-08:00The marshmallow test and gratitudeThe Marshmallow test is a famous psychological experiment where children were given the choice between one marshmallow now or two after an hour. Children who chose the latter tended to do better later in life.
I mentioned before <a href="http://brainlandia.blogspot.com/2013/11/delayed-gratification-reconsidered.html">that the marshmallow test has become somewhat controversial</a>. Children who are less inclined to wait for bigger rewards later tend to have also a background where such behavior makes sense. And if you have parents who tend not to keep their promises that will impact your future also in other ways.
Now a NY Times article (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/opinion/sunday/the-only-way-to-keep-your-resolutions.html">The Only Way to Keep Your Resolutions</a>) puts the subject into a new perspective by discussing studies the important role that social bounds play in our ability to makes sacrifices now in favor of wins in the future. Pride, gratitude and compassion are important motivators to better yourself. In one experiment - for example - people were induced to feel neutral, happy or grateful. The latter did best on a kind of marshmallow test.
Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-13907060530540277532016-03-03T12:05:00.002-08:002016-03-03T12:05:55.443-08:00The danger of concussionsIt is becoming increasingly clear that concussions have long term effects - and not only for boxers. The Economist (<a href="http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21693906-science-taking-big-steps-toward-understanding-impact-concussion-bang">Bang to rights: Science is taking big steps toward understanding the impact of concussion</a>) gives an overview.
<i>In recent years the underlying biology has started to become apparent. Mostly, this relates to the release of certain chemicals when axons, the filamentous connections between nerve cells, are damaged. Concussion is different from blunt-force trauma, such as that which results from getting hit on the head by a rapidly delivered cricket ball. Then, the injury is caused by directly transmitted shock from the impact. Concussion, by contrast, is caused by the internal movement and distortion of the brain as it bounces around inside the cranium after an impact. This bouncing, research has shown, stretches and deforms bundles of axons that connect different regions of the brain. The deformation shears some axons directly, releasing their protein contents, including tau, which with time can form abnormal tangles similar to those found in Alzheimer’s disease. It also causes abnormal inflows of sodium and calcium ions in unsevered but damaged axons. These, in turn, trigger a process which releases protein-breaking enzymes that destroy the axon, further disrupting the brain’s internal communications.
Concussive injury also damages the blood-brain barrier. This is a system of tightly joined cells surrounding the capillaries that service the brain. Its purpose is to control what enters and leaves the central nervous system. One consequence of damaging it is to release into general circulation a brain protein called S100B. The body mounts an immune response against this protein, and the antibodies it generates can find their way back into the brain and harm healthy brain cells. Researchers propose that repeated damage could set the stage for a continuous autoimmune-type attack on the brain.</i>
But the long term effects are still unclear. There are efforts to develop a blood test with which you could measure the seriousness of a concussion - by measuring one of chemicals involved.
Finally the harm caused by concussions with children is discussed:
<i>Yet it has been clear since a study published in 2012 by Andrew Mayer at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque that subtle brain changes in children who have sustained a concussion persist for months after the injury, even when there are no longer any obvious symptoms.
Work published last December by Charles Hillman of the University of Illinois found that children who had sustained a single sports-related concussion still had impaired brain function two years later. Ten-year-olds with a history of concussion performed worse on tests of working memory, attention and impulse control than did uninjured confrères. Among the children with a history of concussion, those who were injured earlier in life had larger deficits. This study was small (it involved 15 injured participants) but if subsequent research confirms it, that will be great cause for concern.</i>Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-20471452375788786742016-02-27T04:26:00.000-08:002016-02-27T04:26:00.445-08:00What makes teams successfulAn interesting article (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html">"What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team"</a>) analyzes what makes teams successful.
The article discusses research at Google on what makes teams successful. It starts with the conclusion that many things - like the composition of the group - don't seem to have influence.
Then it turns to group norms. Here it becomes interesting.
<i>To accomplish this, the researchers recruited 699 people, divided them into small groups and gave each a series of assignments that required different kinds of cooperation. One assignment, for instance, asked participants to brainstorm possible uses for a brick. Some teams came up with dozens of clever uses; others kept describing the same ideas in different words. Another had the groups plan a shopping trip and gave each teammate a different list of groceries. The only way to maximize the group’s score was for each person to sacrifice an item they really wanted for something the team needed. Some groups easily divvied up the buying; others couldn’t fill their shopping carts because no one was willing to compromise.
What interested the researchers most, however, was that teams that did well on one assignment usually did well on all the others. Conversely, teams that failed at one thing seemed to fail at everything. The researchers eventually concluded that what distinguished the ‘‘good’’ teams from the dysfunctional groups was how teammates treated one another. The right norms, in other words, could raise a group’s collective intelligence, whereas the wrong norms could hobble a team, even if, individually, all the members were exceptionally bright.</i>
They found some common themes in successful teams:
- <i>on the good teams, members spoke in roughly the same proportion, a phenomenon the researchers referred to as ‘‘equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking.’’ On some teams, everyone spoke during each task; on others, leadership shifted among teammates from assignment to assignment. But in each case, by the end of the day, everyone had spoken roughly the same amount. ‘‘As long as everyone got a chance to talk, the team did well,’’ Woolley said. ‘‘But if only one person or a small group spoke all the time, the collective intelligence declined.’’
- the good teams all had high ‘‘average social sensitivity’’ — a fancy way of saying they were skilled at intuiting how others felt based on their tone of voice, their expressions and other nonverbal cues. One of the easiest ways to gauge social sensitivity is to show someone photos of people’s eyes and ask him or her to describe what the people are thinking or feeling — an exam known as the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. People on the more successful teams in Woolley’s experiment scored above average on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. They seemed to know when someone was feeling upset or left out. People on the ineffective teams, in contrast, scored below average. They seemed, as a group, to have less sensitivity toward their colleagues.
-- There were other behaviors that seemed important as well — like making sure teams had clear goals and creating a culture of dependability. But Google’s data indicated that psychological safety, more than anything else, was critical to making a team work.
</i>
Together these two concept are called "psychological safety", <i>a group culture that the Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson defines as a ‘‘shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.’’ Psychological safety is ‘‘a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up,’’ <a href="http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?sid=e55fd191-97da-4b52-a54d-d1ae6abb0a6e%40sessionmgr111&vid=1&hid=115&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=2003235&db=bth">Edmondson wrote in a study published in 1999</a>. ‘‘It describes a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves.’’</i>
Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-39964503670641281522016-01-31T04:35:00.001-08:002016-01-31T04:35:47.931-08:00The social life of trees<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/30/world/europe/german-forest-ranger-finds-that-trees-have-social-networks-too.html">According</a> to a very popular book by <a href="http://www.peter-wohlleben.de/">Peter Wohlleben</a> (Das geheime Leben der Baüme) trees have a social life too:
<i> the news — long known to biologists — that trees in the forest are social beings. They can count, learn and remember; nurse sick neighbors; warn each other of danger by sending electrical signals across a fungal network known as the “Wood Wide Web”; and, for reasons unknown, keep the ancient stumps of long-felled companions alive for centuries by feeding them a sugar solution through their roots.
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Reading up on the behavior of trees — a topic he learned little about in forestry school — he found that, in nature, trees operate less like individuals and more as communal beings. Working together in networks and sharing resources, they increase their resistance.
By artificially spacing out trees, the plantation forests that make up most of Germany’s woods ensure that trees get more sunlight and grow faster. But, naturalists say, creating too much space between trees can disconnect them from their networks, stymieing some of their inborn resilience mechanisms.
Intrigued, Mr. Wohlleben began investigating alternate approaches to forestry. Visiting a handful of private forests in Switzerland and Germany, he was impressed. “They had really thick, old trees,” he said. “They treated their forest much more lovingly, and the wood they produced was more valuable. In one forest, they said, when they wanted to buy a car, they cut two trees. For us, at the time, two trees would buy you a pizza.”</i>Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-46143543381978066292016-01-31T01:59:00.002-08:002016-01-31T03:13:17.841-08:00Another look at creativityThe NY Times has an article <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/health/schizophrenia-cause-synaptic-pruning-brain-psychiatry.html">Scientists Move Closer to Understanding Schizophrenia’s Cause</a>. They found a clear correlation between a gene connected to pruning brain cell connections and schizophrenia. This gene is far from the only cause, but the correlation is clear. It also explains why schizophrenia usually start in late adolescence or early adulthood when pruning is strongest.
Now creativity is often correlated with schizophrenia. So it would be logical to assume that this might somehow be correlated with pruning too.
One theory of creativity holds that creative people have so much links in their brain that other people don't have. That would suggest that they have less pruning. However, my view is that the main thing that discerns creative people is not more ideas but less filtering. In that context it looks like that all those extra links in less creative people serve as brakes that make that ideas are rejected at an early stage because some objection is found.
Another article (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/opinion/sunday/how-to-raise-a-creative-child-step-one-back-off.html">How to Raise a Creative Child. Step One: Back Off</a>) gave another clue about creativity - that training hampers our flexibility: <i>First, can’t practice itself blind us to ways to improve our area of study? Research reveals that the more we practice, <a href="http://amr.aom.org/content/35/4/579.short">the more we become entrenched</a> — trapped in familiar ways of thinking. Expert bridge players struggled more than novices to adapt when the rules were changed; expert accountants were worse than novices at applying a new tax law.</i>Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-82143396205294713972015-12-30T03:22:00.003-08:002015-12-30T03:22:38.324-08:00To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do ThisThe NY Times has a piece about falling in love (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashion/modern-love-to-fall-in-love-with-anyone-do-this.html">"To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This"</a>). It builds on research by the psychologist Arthur Aron more than 20 years ago to let two strangers fall in love in his laboratory.
The candidates have to sit opposite each other and ask each other 36 questions of increasing emotional intensity. After that they have to look each other 4 minutes in the eye. It is a quick way to build an emotional connection. And it seems to work - at least sometimes...Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-37691808926152841302015-12-16T01:27:00.001-08:002015-12-16T01:27:38.145-08:00Are religious kids more selfish?A scientific research discussed at Salon: <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/12/13/religious_kids_are_more_selfish_and_science_suggests_they_may_be_more_sadistic_partner/">Are kids from religious backgrounds really more selfish than their nonreligious peers?</a>.
Quote: <i>Here’s the zinger: according to Decety and his colleagues, kids from more religious households are less altruistic, and more apt to deal out punishment, than kids from non-religious households. Corollary zinger: on the punishment front, Muslim kids are even more vindictive than Christians.</i>
The article is critical of this claim and comes with a whole series of arguments, such as the artificialness of the situation, the difficulty to define religiousness and the question whether you can generalize this experiment beyond its setting. I doubt those explanations.
My guess would be that this has to do with group strength. People have only a certain amount of altruism. And when they are in a strong group they will spend more of that altruism inside the group and less outside. Religions bind people in strong groups. And that applies even more to minority religions like Islam and Judaism.
Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-41247983003563679902015-12-13T09:00:00.002-08:002015-12-13T09:00:44.549-08:00iHunchingIn <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/opinion/sunday/your-iphone-is-ruining-your-posture-and-your-mood.html">Your iPhone Is Ruining Your Posture — and Your Mood</a> the effect of iHunching is discussed.
<i>In fact, there appears to be a linear relationship between the size of your device and the extent to which it affects you: the smaller the device, the more you must contract your body to use it, and the more shrunken and inward your posture, the more submissive you are likely to become.
Ironically, while many of us spend hours every day using small mobile devices to increase our productivity and efficiency, interacting with these objects, even for short periods of time, might do just the opposite, reducing our assertiveness and undermining our productivity.
Finally, the next time you reach for your phone, remember that it induces slouching, and slouching changes your mood, your memory and even your behavior. Your physical posture sculpts your psychological posture, and could be the key to a happier mood and greater self-confidence.</i>Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318071619001096207.post-4277941228726626982015-10-17T04:06:00.000-07:002015-10-17T04:06:02.111-07:00The funny thing about adversityIn the article "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/opinion/sunday/the-funny-thing-about-adversity.html">The funny thing about adversity</a>" the question is discussed whether suffering makes people more sympathetic to the suffering of others. The conclusion: in general yes. However, when the other experiences the same kind of problem that the subject once had he will be less understanding than usual.
Possible explanations are that suffering makes the subject more aware of connecting with other people. However, having overcome a specific type of suffering gives him the impression that it is not that bad.Wim Roffelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05950733237377413606noreply@blogger.com0