Pondering the science of Happiness! Learning tingles!
             
The happiness of people in our social networks is much more significant than you think.  Our friends influence what we think of as normal, and that influences our habits, feelings, and behavior, which, in turn, make us happy. Or unhappy. As Christakis and Fowler have found in their research in "Connected"  only 50% of happiness is genetically based, 10% about life circumstances and the rest from our social network. research shows  that our colleague's next-door neighbor's best-friend or office mate --someone we have never met... influences how happy we are!   Isn't that amazing?

“Changes in individual happiness can ripple through social connections and create large-scale pattern in the network,” write Christakis and Fowler, “giving rise to clusters of happy and unhappy individuals.” 3 degrees of separation.

 Dr. Christine Carter from UC Berkeley sums it up really well:
"Research suggests that happiness is a set of skills we can teach and practice with our children. But, it turns out, the people in our social networks—in schools, especially, because proximity plays a role—are also teaching and practicing things that influence how happy our kids are.
Think about your friends. Are they a little weak in the happiness department? Are they super-busy and talking obsessively about our country’s leadership problems? Are they always complaining about how they hate their boss and how their son’s teacher is an idiot? Are they burdened by a classmate’s peanut allergy or whiny about a hubby who never gets his socks in the hamper?
Or maybe you have friends with excellent happiness habits. Perhaps they are more grateful for what they have than whiny about what they don’t. Maybe your friends get lots of exercise, and enough sleep, have tight connections to friends and family, and these things make them frequently cheerful.
Our habits make us happy—or not. And our habits are influenced, in large part, by our friends’ habits. What do we see as normal? Busyness and cynicism? Or gratitude and mindfulness? Materialism and fancy vacations? Or time with close friends and dinner at home? 
Make no mistake: Our social connections influence our happiness. While all three of those choices in the above pop quiz do affect how happy we are, the one we often overlook is the invisible ties we have to everyone in our social networks. This means that increasing your own happiness, and the happiness of your children, is a great way to contribute to the greater good.  And encouraging happiness habits among your friends has positive ripple effects throughout their social networks, your family included. I hope you will join our discussion about this!
"© 2011 Christine Carter, Ph.D  Greater Good the science of a meaningful life."

Surprise, I am still alive!

         Checked my pulse this morning.  Still alive on this birthday, wow...Really? It has been too rough in my head, brain bruise you know,  too many questions bouncing about,  too many raised eye brows when  I would constantly ponder  the meaning of life, the future of humanity.... why are we so violent, why do we destroy others, why and why .... tiring..blablabla.. too many this and thats. 
I mean it.  

        You ask how I made it this far?  I do too,  quite often..
I have made it because of  the loving people in my life without whom I would not exist. Thanks for all of your love and good wishes. I am so deeply grateful......

        but left to my own devices, humm,  
looking to the right, to the left, index finger to chin,  
index finger to temple, .............pretty questionable.

        I think I am figuring it out .... Curiosity does kill the cat, but, CURIOSITY , LEARNING & REFLECTION has kept me alive. 
Literally, alive... so I would like to share one small example with you.

          This morning as is my inner 24/7 ritual even during my sleep, I was occupied by the incredible process of evolution, the human condition... blabla...this computer that is built out of a bunch of outdated refurbished parts belonging to other brands....an outdated operating system,  a primitive fight or flight software contained in a fancy high tech state of the art cortex package, lugging around ten or more different body parts that not only unnecessary, but causes of terrible misery, high medical expenses and tons of antibiotic usage... have you had a sinus infection lately? Appendicitis? Tonsillitis? Strep Throat?  

             Up and off to work, I noticed so much activity in my email boxes... just to find out that my own email accounts were beeping me, notifying me of my birthday and wishing me a happy birthday... having many accounts, this was a mess... 

             Then dozens of seemingly loving birthday notes from any entity that I had ever purchased from, written to, talked to, or barely checked out.. So, the fascinating part is that Godaddy, Amazon, Microsoft, Aol , the local Pilate studio, the local Dermatologist, ... etc.  can actually become your friends & make you feel special....  Think about it, you can definitely count on them like a secure and stable parent.  They never ever forget your birthday, they always provide you money as a birthday gift, I could be a rich woman if I could cash out all the gifts I got today!   they are very validating and appreciative of your attachment and loyalty.  Most importantly, they never judge or criticize you. .........

            So, for today, I  am speculating that evolution is taking us to new human condition frontiers of secure attachment, love and safety. May be a few thousand years from now, anxiety and depression will be no longer since we can feel noticed, adored, mirrored, remembered, gifted, talked to, appreciated, validated, on every special occasion or every day for that matter... that would be interesting to ponder!  Here I go pondering and speculating yet again.  I bet tomorrow another evolutionary matter will come up. Keep u posted.

Before DADT Repeal, Gay Soldier Comes Out on YouTube

Randy Phillips, you are a star:   “Dad, I’m gay. I always have been. I’ve known for … forever.Will you still love me?”  Dad: " I will always love you."

Dear Randy, You have known it forever because just as you have light color eyes, blonde hair and a are of a certain height, you were born with your sexuality. Not only Your dad loves you, your country loves you and those kids who were also born gay love you forever.   I know, love and deeply admire and respect many gay individuals. You are also now on my list of favorites, great job, very courageous, well done Randy. 

The U.S.Air force should be so proud & lucky to have you on their team.

 

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ABC News’ Elizabeth Kreutz reports:
Just hours before the official end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the policy prohibiting gays from serving openly in the military, a U.S. solider decided to come out in perhaps one of the most open ways imaginable: YouTube.
In the video he posted Monday, 21-year old, Randy Phillips, under his handle “AreYouSurprised,” calls his father to tell him — as the video description says — “the hardest thing that gay guys will ever have to say.”
“You promise you’ll always love me? Period?” he asks his father, his voice shaking.
He takes a beat, and then says it: “Dad, I’m gay. I always have been. I’ve known for … forever.”
But this video is not his first. The “faceless soldier,” currently serving in the Air Force in Germany, has been garnering Internet fame since April, when he first began chronicling his experiences coming out, while serving abroad.
Six months ago he wouldn’t even reveal his face. But with last night’s midnight appeal of DADT, he’s slowly revealing much more.  And using the power of the Internet as his guiding tool.
If there’s one thing he hasn’t been secretive about though, it’s his mission online, openly describing himself on Twitter as a “military member in the closet, using social media to build up the courage to come out to family, girlfriend, friends, and coworkers.”
“I am tired of hiding this,” he says.
And while he no longer has to, his story — and courage —  has already touched thousands along the way. And as of 2 p.m. today, his video already had more than 3,000 likes and 30,000 views. And counting.

SHOWS: World News

Want to know what you think?

Question:  What color is your brain?     Does your brain get more wrinkled with age or are you born with wrinkles?

Lerning Rocks!Evolution and useless body parts we are stuck with, Did you know?

Hey everyone, just like our funny brains, our body is also a mess of an evolutionary process. Our brain is layered with a primitive fight or flight system super imposed with a cortex of a rational thinking human. On an hourly basis we are completely and utterly conflicted between primitive emotional overwhelm and what we know to be the fact.  Yet we cannot reconcile the two systems because the operating mechanism is build with old refurbished parts that don't communicate too well yet, may be in a couple of million years it will get better. Anyway, here are some useless body parts we are still stuck with and suffer from, just four reflection and fun:

Erector Pili: Body hair sticking up to intimidate others but now just irritating goose bumps

Wisdom Teeth: Yanking meat off the bone and losing them through time with rough usage

but now every poor college student spends one summer vacations recuperating from

wisdom teeth removal...

Appendix: Early roughage processor, can burst and kill you

Male nipples:   Have no idea?

Plica semilunaris - Third eye lid:  Left over from the lizards, just to get red and irritated

Body hair: Just to make human miserable. Men and women lasering, tweezing, shaving and  waxing their legs, faces, backs, private parts, arms, faces etc…

Sinuses:  Purely for painful sinus infections, otherwise not needed any longer

and of course, Tonsils,  Coccyx, adenoids and many more.....

Learning Rocks!! Did you know?

Hello my friends, I have been so obsessed about our brain, the funny layering of the old brain, the frontal, the pre-frontal, and the amygdala,  the fight and flight verses the rational human and on and on and on that I have neglected to share some basics of life matters.

For example:   I just learned something very important. I had never heard of this before, and could not believe how ignorant I am.  Ok,  ready ? here we go:  Do you know how often you need to change your tooth brush? Now, do you know why?  Forget bacteria build up from your own mouth......but focus and please listen carefully:  just think of fecal matter on your tooth brush! YES THAT IS WHAT I SAID.

OMG, have never thought of that. Have you? Here are your choices, do not every flush the toilette without closing the lid, keep your tooth brush in a sealed box or get a new one every 3 months. With this knowledge, I think we are all going to get one every day, you think?
 

A few amazing facts about your Brain!

Your brain uses less power than your refrigerator light
The brain uses 12 watts of power. Over the course of a day, your brain uses the amount of energy contained in two large bananas. Curiously, even though the brain is very efficient, it's an energy hog. It is only 3 per cent of the body's weight, but consumes 1/6 (17 per cent) of the body's total energy. Most of its energy costs go into maintenance; the added cost of thinking hard is barely noticeable.

You can't tickle yourself
When doctors examine a ticklish patient, they place his or her hand over theirs to prevent the tickling sensation. Why does this work? Because no matter how ticklish you may be, you can't tickle yourself.
This is because your brain keeps your senses focused on what's happening in the world; important signals aren't drowned out in the endless buzz of sensations caused by your actions. For instance, we are unaware of the feel of a chair and the texture of our socks, yet we immediately notice a tap on our shoulder.
To accomplish this goal, some brain region must be able to generate a signal that distinguishes our touch from someone else's. The cerebellum, or “little brain”, may be the answer. It is about 1/8 of our total brain size - a little smaller than our fist - and weighs about 4oz (113g). It is also the best candidate that scientists have for the part of the brain that predicts the sensory consequences of our own actions.
The cerebellum is in an ideal location for distinguishing expected from unexpected sensations. If a prediction matches the actual sensory information, then the brain knows that it's safe to ignore the sensation because it's not important. If reality does not match the prediction, then something surprising has happened - and you might need to pay attention.

Man is deeply FLAWED, let us just stop fooling ourselves.

"Arnold, Chaney, Water Boarding VS. Human used as Guinea Pigs VS. a child left to die without water for a week?" and millions of other examples, all proof of the human flaw.The following article is true just as is the Tuskegee and there are hundreds more.


U.S. scientists knew Guatemalan STD studies were unethical, panel finds
Washington Post By Rob Stein, Published: August 29

U.S. government researchers who purposely infected unwitting subjects with sexually transmitted diseases in Guatemala in the 1940s had obtained consent a few years earlier before conducting similar experiments in Indiana, investigators reported Monday.

The stark contrast between how the U.S. Public Health Service scientists experimented with Americans and Guatemalans clearly shows that researchers knew their conduct was unethical, according to members of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, which is investigating the experiments.

“These researchers knew these were unethical experiments, and they conducted them anyway,” said Raju Kucherlapati of Harvard Medical School, a commission member. “That is what is reprehensible.”

At least 5,500 prisoners, mental patients, soldiers and children were drafted into the experiments, including at least 1,300 who were exposed to the sexually transmitted diseases syphilis, gonorrhea and chancroid, the commission reported. At least 83 subjects died, although the commission could not determine how many of the deaths were directly caused by the experiments, they said.

“This is a dark chapter in our history. It is important to shine the light of day on it. We owe it to the people of Guatemala who were experimented on, and we owe it to ourselves to recognize what a dark chapter it was,” said Amy Gutmann of the University of Pennsylvania, the commission’s chairwoman.

The revelations came on the opening day of a two-day hearing the commission convened to review the findings of its investigation. President Obama ordered the probe when the experiments were revealed in October. Investigators reviewed more than 125,000 documents from public and private archives around the country and conducted a fact-finding trip to the Central American nation.

The Guatemalan government is conducting its own investigation. The experiments were approved by some Guatemalan officials.

“Actually cruel and inhuman conduct took place,” said Anita L. Allen of the University of Pennsylvania. “These are very grave human rights violations.”

In one case described during Monday’s two-hour hearing, a woman who was infected with syphilis was clearly dying from the disease. Instead of treating her, the researchers poured gonorrhea-infected pus into her eyes and other orifices and infected her again with syphilis. She died six months later.

The ultimate goal of the Guatemalan research was to determine whether taking penicillin after sex would protect against syphilis, gonorrhea and chancroid. The question was a medical priority at the time, especially in the military. The Guatemalan experiments, carried out between 1946 and 1948, aimed to find a reliable way of infecting subjects for future studies.

The research included infecting prisoners by bringing them prostitutes who were either already carrying the diseases or were purposely infected by the researchers. Doctors also poured bacteria onto wounds they had opened with needles on prisoners’ penises, faces and arms. In some cases, infectious material was injected into their spines, the commission reported.

The researchers conducted similar experiments on soldiers in an army barracks and on men and women in the National Mental Health Hospital. The researchers took blood samples from children at the National Orphanage, although they did not purposely infect them.

In the studies conducted in Indiana, researchers exposed 241 inmates in Terre Haute to gonorrhea in 1943 and 1944. But there, the researchers explained the experiments in advance in detail and experimented only on the prisoners who volunteered. In contrast, many of the same researchers who began experimenting on Guatemalans a few years later actively hid what they were doing and never tried to obtain permission, the commission found.

About 700 of the Guatemalan subjects were treated for the sexually transmitted diseases, but it remains unclear whether they were treated adequately or what became of them. Gonorrhea can cause a variety of complications, including infertility. Chancroid can cause painful ulcers. Syphilis can cause blindness, major organ damage, paralysis, dementia and death.

Susan M. Reverby, a historian at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, discovered the Guatemalan experiments while doing research for a book on the infamous Tuskegee studies in Alabama. Reverby found papers from John C. Cutler, a doctor with the federal government’s Public Health Service. Cutler had participated in the Tuskegee experiment, in which hundreds of African American men with late-stage syphilis were left untreated to study the disease between 1932 and 1972. Cutler died in 2003.

After sending Obama a report in September, the commission will meet again in November to discuss whether current protections are adequate for research subjects internationally and in the United States and will issue a final report in December.

USA is too young to loose its edge!

Please help change our educational system. There are reasons why the concept of "math anxiety" is non existent in Europe, the middle east, India and China. We can change the system, our educational system is a problem, who is in charge? Soon, we may have a situation that only private school kids get to go to college, to function in society or to compete in the world. That would be about 1 or 2% of the us population! A very sad day for this nation that was and is the land of my opportunities, that gave me the chance to build on what I was taught as a child, that provided me with possibilities I would have never had in any other country. What has happened?

U.S. must improve math grade to retain global edge

Dave Schechter
Senior National Editor

The 7th-grader was struggling with a homework project, creating a PowerPoint presentation on the origins of mathematics. One requirement was to note similarities between Babylonian and Chinese math. I helped him research this question, all the while assuming that his teachers had good reason for its inclusion.

But it did make me think about what math skills are being taught and remember my own less-than-stellar math grades.

Math may have been my least favorite subject. I concurred with a yearbook entry that mocked a slogan on our high school’s walls: “Two years of mathematics is not a service to mankind.”

I suffer from “math anxiety,” a malady that affects not only students, but also some teachers and clearly parents who squirm when their children ask for help with math homework. “People are very happy to say they don’t like math,” said Sian L. Beilock, a University of Chicago psychology professor and the author of “Choke,” a 2010 book on brain responses to performance pressure. “No one walks around bragging that they can’t read, but it’s perfectly socially acceptable to say you don’t like math.”

Even with my math deficiency, I recognize the truth of the following statement, drawn from a report on how American students compare with their counterparts in other nations: “Maintaining our innovative edge in the world depends importantly on developing a highly qualified cadre of scientists and engineers. To realize that objective requires a system of schooling that produces students with advanced math and science skills.”

Based on the proficiency of the high school graduating class of 2011, the United States ranked 32nd out of 65 industrialized countries. “Performance levels among the countries ranked 23rd to 31st are not significantly different from that of the U.S. in a statistical sense, yet 22 countries do significantly outperform the United States in the share of students reaching the proficiency level in math. Six countries plus Shanghai and Hong Kong had majorities of students performing at least at the proficiency level, while the United States had less than one-third.”

Of the individual states, only Massachusetts had more than half (51 percent) of its students score at or above the proficient mark. Minnesota was second (43 percent), followed by Vermont, North Dakota, New Jersey and Kansas. [Note: Massachusetts also topped the states in reading proficiency.]

How to improve this situation? There are debates over how much math students need to know, what parts of the subject should be given more emphasis and how fast students should be allowed to progress. There are some who say the current teaching methods are inadequate to the task.

In some states, including the one in which my children attended public schools, test results prompted discussion of whether students are being taught more forms of math than reasonable and more in later grades than they will need for their futures, aside from those who will go on to study math or other fields in which advanced knowledge is critical. Is a class that includes algebra, geometry and statistics of greater value than one that focuses solely on algebra?

An interesting perspective from John W. Myres, a former teacher and superintendent in California schools: “No doubt, algebra is a steppingstone to higher mathematics and quite necessary in professions that require extensive knowledge of math. Too, it offers insights not only into numbers, but also into general problem-solving separately. It is also reasonable for most students to have some experience with it before they leave school. The difficulty, however, is assuming that algebra, in itself, will greatly increase everyone's ability to do the kind of mathematics that most people do in ordinary life. Most people add, subtract, multiply, and divide, using whole numbers, fractions, decimals, and percentages. They purchase food and clothing, balance checkbooks, create budgets, verify credit card charges, measure the size of rooms, fulfill recipe requirements, and even understand baseball batting averages or horse-racing odds. These activities don't require a real knowledge of algebra,” Myres wrote in Education Week.

The debate over how much math to teach how fast took root earlier this year in Montgomery County, Maryland, when the state’s largest (and a well-regarded) public school system stopped advancing elementary and middle school students past their grade level in math. “Parents had questioned the payoff of acceleration; teachers had said students in even the most advanced classes were missing some basics.”

And if learning math is hard, teaching it can be difficult, as well. Interestingly, research shows that majoring in math in college may not of itself make a graduate qualified to teach. Math teachers need to “know the subject matter well and how to teach it,” said Deborah Loewenberg Ball, dean of the University of Michigan school of education, who has studied math education extensively. “The problem is that the math major is not a good proxy for that.” A report released last year by The National Mathematics Advisory Panel, on which Ball served, found no evidence of a link between teachers’ degree attainment in college and student academic gains in elementary and middle grades and a slightly stronger connection between math majors and students’ high school performance.

But there may be a link between math knowledge and future well-being. “. . . math appears to be the subject in which accomplishment in secondary school is particularly significant for both an individual’s and a country’s economic well-being. Existing research, though not conclusive, indicates that math skills better predict future earnings and other economic outcomes than other skills learned in high school,” reports a study titled “U.S. Math Performance in Global Perspective,” prepared by Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance and Education Next.

The EducationNext/Harvard study calculated that improving the math proficiency of American students could, over time, increase the U.S. Gross Domestic Product by 2 percent to 3 percent annually and, an 80-year period, be worth $75 trillion to the nation’s economy. “Even if you tweak these numbers a bit in one direction or another to account for various uncertainties, you reach the same bottom line: Those who say that student math performance does not matter are clearly wrong,” the report affirms.

And if math comprehension is that indicator of future well-being then it also may be worth noting a divide along racial lines. “While 42 percent of white students were identified as proficient in math, only 11 percent of African American students, 15 percent of Hispanic students, and 16 percent of Native Americans were so identified. Fifty percent of students with an ethnic background from Asia and the Pacific Islands, however, were proficient in math.”

A history of African-American students performing below their white counterparts has spurred discussion of math education as a civil right.

Earlier this year the government released data from more than 7,000 districts, representing at least three-quarters of American students. In 3,000 high schools, math classes went no higher than Algebra I, and in 7,300 schools, students had no access to calculus. Schools serving mostly African-American students were twice as likely to have inexperienced teachers as schools serving mostly whites in the same district. “These data paint a portrait of a sad truth in America’s schools, that the promise of fundamental fairness hasn’t reached whole groups of students that will need the opportunity to succeed, to get out of poverty, to ensure their dreams come true, and indeed to ensure our country’s prosperity,” Russlynn Ali, assistant secretary for civil rights in the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, told the Christian Science Monitor.

Robert Moses was years ahead in recognizing this issue. A veteran of the 1960s civil rights movement (as field secretary for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee), Moses’ experience teaching in an inner city school convinced him that mathematics literacy is as important for inner city and rural poor students as the right to vote was to sharecroppers and laborers in Mississippi in the 1960s. “Math illiteracy is not unique to Blacks the way the denial of the right to vote in Mississippi was. But it affects blacks and other minorities much, much more intensely, making them the designated serfs of the information age just as the people that we worked with in the 1960s on the plantations were Mississippi’s serfs then,” Moses wrote in “Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project.” In the mid-1980s, Moses used the proceeds from a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant to develop the Algebra Project, aimed at addressing the racial disparity.

As for my son’s PowerPoint project, should he eventually go into a field requiring an intimate knowledge of mathematics, knowledge of similarities between ancient Babylonia and China indeed may be valuable. As for me, since my years in school I’ve kept my use of math fairly basic, pleased to have avoided story problems or “unknown” numbers.

The simplicity of life! Join in.

http://youtu.be/0eB3ISAYE-I

why say " I am in so much pain" when depressed? Is it mind or body?

Why Does Feeling Low Hurt? Depressed Mood Increases the Perception of Pain

ScienceDaily (June 7, 2010) — When it comes to pain, the two competing schools of thought are that it's either "all in your head" or "all in your body." A new study led by University of Oxford researchers indicates that, instead, pain is an amalgam of the two.

Depression and pain often co-occur, but the underlying mechanistic reasons for this have largely been unknown. To examine the interaction between depression and pain, Dr. Chantal Berna and colleagues used brain imaging to see how healthy volunteers responded to pain while feeling low.

Their findings revealed that inducing depressed mood disrupted a portion of the participants' neurocircuitry that regulates emotion, causing an enhanced perception of pain. In other words, as explained by Dr. Berna, "when the healthy people were made sad by negative thoughts and depressing music, we found that their brains processed pain more emotionally, which lead to them finding the pain more unpleasant."

The authors speculate that being in a sad state of mind and feeling low disables one's ability to regulate the negative emotion associated with feeling pain. Pain, then, has a greater impact. Rather than merely being a consequence of having pain, depressed mood may drive pain and cause it to feel worse.

"Our research suggests depressed mood leads to maladaptive changes in brain function associated with pain, and that depressed mood itself could be a target for treatment by medicines or psychotherapy in this context," commented Dr. Berna. Thus, the next step in this line of research will be to examine this mechanism in individuals who suffer from chronic pain, as these individuals also commonly experience depression. The ultimate goal, of course, is to develop more effective treatments. This is good news for the millions of individuals around the world who suffer from chronic pain and depression.

Use Rumination to Cope with Depression. Empowering!

All of us, at times, ruminate or brood on a problem in order to make the best possible decision in a complex situation. But sometimes, rumination becomes unproductive or even detrimental to making good life choices. Such is the case in depression, where non-productive ruminations are a common and distressing symptom of the disorder. In fact, individuals suffering from depression often ruminate about being depressed. This ruminative thinking can be either passive and maladaptive (i.e., worrying) or active and solution-focused (i.e., coping).
New research by Stanford University researchers, published in Elsevier's Biological Psychiatry, provides insights into how these types of rumination are represented in the brains of depressed persons.

The interactions of two distinct and competing neural networks, the default mode network (DMN) and the task positive network (TPN), are particularly relevant to this question. Whereas the DMN supports passive, self-related thought, the TPN underlies active thinking required for solving problems, explained study author J. Paul Hamilton.

Using brain imaging technology, Hamilton and his colleagues found that, in depressed patients, increasing levels of activity in the DMN relative to the TPN are associated with higher levels of maladaptive, depressive rumination and lower levels of adaptive, reflective rumination. These findings indicate that the DMN and TPN interact in depression to promote depression-related thinking, with stronger DMN influence associated with more worrying, less effective coping, and more severe depression.

"It makes sense that non-productive ruminations would engage default-mode networks in the brain as these systems enable the brain to 'idle' when humans are not focused on specific tasks," commented Dr. John Krystal,editor of Biological Psychiatry. "Better understanding the factors that control the switch between these modes of function may provide insights into depression and its treatment."

Tongue Twisters? It is a brain matter not the tongue!

Contrary to what we think, tongue twisters are as a result of the speed of our brain not the muscular structure of our tongue, mouth, nor the lips or facial features. If you read this passage twice or three times, the similarities of the sounds confuse the speed of our brain activity to make proper connections on the path to produce clear complex repetitive sounds. Try it for yourself.

Betty Botter bought some butter,
"But," she said, "this butter's bitter.
If I bake this bitter butter,
It will make my batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter -
That would make my batter better."
So she bought a bit of butter,
Better than her bitter butter,
And she baked it in her batter,
And the batter was not bitter.
So 'twas better Betty Botter
Bought a bit of better butter.

Notes from the gratitude journal: Greater Good Science of a Meaningful Life-UC Berkeley

A gratitude journal is a must for us all. Here are some entries from the UC Berkeley Greater Good Site. It is a valuable reminder to be grateful for all the gifts that life offers us, no matter how small. Start yours today.

I’m grateful for some time up north in the woods. Finally out in nature!
City Girl

I’m happy that my husband is going to take care of the kids for a whole week so that I can go to a writing workshop.
Writing Mama

I am very happy that the money I gave a girl for her hostel(stay) to study for her master’s is doing very well and enjoying her lectures in the college.
Rahul

I’m grateful for my husband; who makes room in his busy schedule to take over with kids so I can have several days away, alone!
Momom

I am so thankful for the generosity of good friends, just when I needed help.
Texas Neighbor

I am thankful for an extended family that is willing to be “on-call” when my family is going through a hectic time.
Carly Brown

I am very grateful for libraries. I’m especially grateful for Laura, a very helpful librarian at our neighborhood library.
A Reader

I’m grateful to have a great mechanic and body shop experts. They help me extend the life of my car.
Happy Driver

I’m grateful that when I had to relieve myself of some stressful job obligations, the people who need to understand understood and supported me in my decisions.
Janine Kovac

Math Aptitude? An American Illusive Handicap! I promise you, everyone has it.

So many studies confuse the public about math aptitude and too many American children end up believing that they are bad at math. Math phobia is a national disaster and an unhealthy phobia allowed by early education. I promise you it is not true. This study is confirming that math concepts exists in all people including infants and people with no formal education.

By SINDYA N. BHANOO
Published: August 11, 2011

Children as young as 3 have a “number sense” that may be correlated with mathematical aptitude, according to a new study.

Melissa Libertus, a post-doctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University.

Melissa Libertus, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins University, and colleagues looked at something called “number sense,” an intuition — not involving counting — about the concepts of more and less. It exists in all people, Dr. Libertus said, including infants and indigenous peoples who have had no formal education.

The researchers measured this intuition in preschoolers by displaying flashing groups of blue and yellow dots on a computer screen. The children had to estimate which group of dots was larger in number. Since the display was fleeting, they had to use their number sense rather than count the dots.

Children with a better number sense were also better at simple math problems the researchers posed. The children were asked to count the number of images on a page out loud, read Arabic numbers and make other simple calculations.

Previous studies have shown that there is a connection between number sense and mathematical ability in adolescents. But this is the first study to explore the connection in children with little formal education.

“We were interested in the earliest math abilities that children have, from before they enter school,” Dr. Libertus said. Understanding this could help level the playing field in mathematics among children.

Dr. Libertus hopes that, with more insight, games or training programs could be developed for children to improve their number sense.

The research is reported in a recent issue of the journal Developmental Science.

Evolutionary accident? larger brain, due to deletion of 583 genomes half a million years agao??

Most male mammals wield a penis covered with spines made of keratin, the same material that forms fingernails, to sweep out competitors' sperm and irritate a female into ovulating. You can add humans' lack of penile spines to the list of ways we are misfits among primates, along with our absence of tails and fur. Even chimpanzees, our closest relatives, have penile spines. A new study suggests that this feature disappeared due to a chunk of DNA that went missing after our evolutionary divergence from chimps. The researchers have identified another DNA deletion that may have contributed to humans' bigger brains.

The question of what makes us distinctly human is hardly a new one, of course, but developmental genomicist Gill Bejerano and developmental geneticist David Kingsley, both of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, decided to look at the issue from another angle. Maybe humans don't have an advantage over chimps genetically, as we often like to think we do—maybe we've actually lost something. Bejerano and Kingsley compared the chimp genome with the human genome, looking for DNA regions that chimps had but humans did not. And rather than looking at genes, as most research in the past has done, they examined DNA regions that don't code for genes but instead regulate how nearby genes are expressed.

They found 583 deletions in the human genome, and Bejerano says choosing which to study first was a tough decision. "Each region could be its own adventure," he says. They ended up choosing two: a deleted region near a gene for male hormone response and a region close to a gene involved in brain development. The Neandertal genome also lacks these regions, indicating that these deletions occurred more than half a million years ago.

Wow Bacteria can come to our rescue!

Suicide-Bombing Bacteria Could Fight Infections
by Sara Reardon on 16 August 2011, 11:15 AM |
Like any good military unit, infectious bacteria have access to numerous weapons and efficient communication systems. But like soldiers in the field, they're also susceptible to suicide bombers. Researchers have used the tools of synthetic biology to create an Escherichia coli cell that can infiltrate foreign bacteria and explode, killing off the pathogens along with itself.

Anyone still questioning the power of mother child biological attachment? Positive or Negative!

" A mother’s encouraging words heard over the phone biologically aid her stressed-out daughter about as much as in-person comforting from mom and way more than receiving instant messages from her."

Moms talk, daughters' hormones listen
A comforting voice packs a biological punch that instant messages lack
By Bruce Bower, Friday, August 12th, 2011

That’s consistent with the idea that people and many other animals have evolved to respond to caring, familiar voices with hormonal adjustments that prompt feelings of calm and closeness, say biological anthropologist Leslie Seltzer of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and her colleagues. Written exchanges such as instant messaging, texting and Facebook postings can’t apply biological balm to frazzled nerves, the researchers propose in a paper published online July 29 in Evolution and Human Behavior.

Seltzer’s group found that 7- to 12-year-old girls who talked to their mothers in person or over the phone after a stressful lab task displayed drops in levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, accompanied by the release of oxytocin, a hormone linked to love and trust between partners in good relationships. Girls who instant messaged with their mothers after the lab challenge showed no oxytocin response and their cortisol levels rose as high as those of girls who had no contact with their mothers.

“At least in our subjects, instant messaging falls short of the endocrine payoff of speech or physical contact with a loved one after a stressful event,” Seltzer says.

It makes sense that speech, with ancient evolutionary roots, can trigger biological markers of reassurance, comments psychologist Jeffry Simpson of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Mothers may have expressed support better in speech than in writing, or the tone of their voices could have had a special impact on daughters, Simpson says.

Unfamiliarity with instant messaging, especially among mothers, may have undercut the ability of digital connections to alleviate daughters’ stress in the new study, suggests psychologist Sandra Calvert, director of Georgetown University’s Children’s Digital Media Center in Washington, D.C. Still, “mom’s voice is very important to all of us who are daughters,” Calvert says.

Seltzer’s team studied 68 girls who reported good relationships with their mothers. Each girl spoke about a preselected topic for five minutes and then tried to solve mental arithmetic problems for five minutes in front of two strangers who maintained neutral facial expressions. Youngsters said that these tasks caused them considerable stress. Researchers tracked cortisol in saliva samples and oxytocin in urine samples.

Afterward, girls were randomly assigned to talk with their mothers in person, over the phone, via instant messaging or not at all. Mothers were told to offer as much emotional support to their daughters as possible.

Although this study found no hormonal benefit for instant messaging between mothers and daughters, children may profit biologically when such messages come from peers, remarks psychologist Kaveri Subrahmanyam of California State University, Los Angeles. A 2009 study found that instant messaging with an unknown peer for 12 minutes eased the sting of rejection among teens excluded from a group game in the lab.

The power of your nose! A window to your brain!

“we may find that most neurological conditions are caused by viruses that enter the brain through the nasal passages.”

Common virus may ride up nose to brain
Herpes bug travels in olfactory cells, researchers suggest
By Laura Sanders
Monday, August 8th, 2011


A common virus may slink into the brain through the nose. After setting up shop in people’s nasal mucus, human herpesvirus-6 may travel along olfactory cells right into the brain, researchers report online the week of August 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Most people’s first bout with HHV-6 comes at a tender age: It causes the common childhood infection roseola, marked by a chest rash and a high fever. “Everyone is exposed to this,” says study coauthor Steven Jacobson of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Md. “You have it. I have it.”

Despite its ubiquity, very little is known about the virus. HHV-6 may live in tonsils and shed in saliva, some studies suggest. And in some people (researchers don’t know how many), the virus can infect the brain, where some researchers believe it may contribute to neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis, encephalitis and a form of epilepsy.

Other viruses such as herpes simplex, influenza A and rabies can invade the brain by shooting through the nose, so Jacobson and his team wondered whether HHV-6 could do the same trick.

The researchers found high levels of HHV-6 in the olfactory bulb, a smell-related part of the brain, in two of three autopsy brain samples. The team then looked at nose mucus and found the virus in 52 of 126 different samples. “We were surprised to find so much in the nasal mucus,” Jacobson says.

And in a lab dish, the team found, specialized cells that help connect nerves to the brain were susceptible to HHV-6 infection. These cells might be a route of entry for the virus, Jacobson says.

“Viruses take advantage of whatever they can,” says neurologist Avindra Nath of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, who was not involved in the study. “They’ll try to gain entry any way they can, so it’s not surprising that they’d use nasal mucosa to do so.”

Yet the results should be interpreted cautiously, says neuroimmunologist Robyn Klein of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Since the study presents correlative data on a small number of samples, it’s hard to say whether HHV-6 really travels along olfactory pathway into the brain. “Am I convinced that this is how it gets in? No,” she says. “Is it a possibility? Sure.”

Confirming the nose-to-brain passage is important, Klein says, because a virus’s entry point to the brain may have a big impact on the infection’s outcome. Because each part of the brain is distinct, an infection in one part could cause very different outcomes than infection in another part.

Virologist Dharam Ablashi, who codiscovered HHV-6 and now is scientific director of the HHV-6 Foundation in Santa Barbara, Calif., says the results may be just the tip of an iceberg. “As research techniques improve,” he says, “we may find that most neurological conditions are caused by viruses that enter the brain through the nasal passages.”

Bigger brain does not mean smarter! what size are your brain & eyeballs?

"The eyeball size across all primates has been found to be associated with when they choose to eat and forage -- with species with the largest eyes being those that are active at night."

Study Finds: Northern Humans Had Bigger Brains, to Cope With the Low Light Levels.
The farther that human populations live from the equator, the bigger their brains, according to a new study by Oxford University. But it turns out that this is not because they are smarter, but because they need bigger vision areas in the brain to cope with the low light levels experienced at high latitudes. Science Daily (Aug. 5, 2011)

Scientists have found that people living in countries with dull, grey, cloudy skies and long winters have evolved bigger eyes and brains so they can visually process what they see, reports the journal Biology Letters.

The researchers measured the eye socket and brain volumes of 55 skulls, dating from the 1800s, from museum collections. The skulls represented 12 different populations from across the globe. The volume of the eye sockets and brain cavities were then plotted against the latitude of the central point of each individual's country of origin. The researchers found that the size of both the brain and the eyes could be directly linked to the latitude of the country from which the individual came.

Lead author Eiluned Pearce, from the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology in the School of Anthropology, said: 'As you move away from the equator, there's less and less light available, so humans have had to evolve bigger and bigger eyes. Their brains also need to be bigger to deal with the extra visual input. Having bigger brains doesn't mean that higher latitude humans are smarter, it just means they need bigger brains to be able to see well where they live.'

Co-author Professor Robin Dunbar, Director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary, said: 'Humans have only lived at high latitudes in Europe and Asia for a few tens of thousands of years, yet they seem to have adapted their visual systems surprisingly rapidly to the cloudy skies, dull weather and long winters we experience at these latitudes.'

That the explanation is the need to compensate for low light levels at high latitudes is indicated by the fact that actual visual sharpness measured under natural daylight conditions is constant across latitudes, suggesting that the visual processing system has adapted to ambient light conditions as human populations have moved across the globe.

The study takes into account a number of potentially confounding effects, including the effect of phylogeny (the evolutionary links between different lineages of modern humans), the fact that humans living in the higher latitudes are physically bigger overall, and the possibility that eye socket volume was linked to cold weather (and the need to have more fat around the eyeball by way of insulation).

The skulls used in the study were from the indigenous populations of England, Australia, Canary Islands, China, France, India, Kenya, Micronesia, Scandinavia, Somalia, Uganda and the United States. From measuring the brain cavity, the research suggests that the biggest brains belonged to populations who lived in Scandinavia with the smallest being Micronesians.

This study adds weight to other research that has looked at the links between eye size and light levels. Other studies have already shown that birds with relatively bigger eyes are the first to sing at dawn in low light. The eyeball size across all primates has been found to be associated with when they choose to eat and forage -- with species with the largest eyes being those that are active at night.

Human Generosity, Is it Evolution ?

Sometimes we forget how primitive & driven by survival we truly are. Just imagine why would a person tip someone or help a person generously knowing they will never encounter them again? It is based in the dynamic of cooperation and survival. We seem to plan for our survival every step of the way. Giving generously to people across your path, even to ones you may never see again and without any expectation of gain could create a sense of safety and security in the human psyche. A self soothing calm that comes with a sense that survival is insured. That may explain why spiritual leaders who are about giving to others have an aura of peace.

Sciencedaily Aug. 1, 2011
Krasnow and Delton co-authored the paper with Leda Cosmides, professor of psychology and co-director of the Center for Evolutionary Psychology; and John Tooby, professor of anthropology and also co-director of the Center for Evolutionary Psychology.

"There are two errors a cooperating animal can make, and one is more costly than the other," noted Cosmides. "Believing that you will never meet this individual again, you might choose to benefit yourself at his expense -- only to find out later that the relationship could have been open-ended. If you make this error, you lose out on all the benefits you might have had from a long-term, perhaps life-long, cooperative relationship. This is an extraordinarily costly error to make. The other error is to mistakenly assume that you will have additional interactions with the other individual and therefore cooperate with him, only to find out later that it wasn't necessary. Although you were 'unnecessarily' nice in that one interaction, the cost of this error is relatively small. Without knowing why, the mind is skewed to be generous to make sure we find and cement all those valuable, long-term relationships."

The simulations, which are mathematical tools for studying how natural selection would have shaped our ancestors' decision making, show that, over a wide range of conditions, natural selection favors treating others as if the relationship will continue -- even when it is rational to believe the interaction is one-time only. "Although it's impossible to know the true state of the world with complete certainty, our simulated people were designed to use the 'gold-standard' for rational reasoning -- a process called Bayesian updating -- to make the best possible guesses about whether their interactions will continue or not," Krasnow noted.

Delton continued: "Nonetheless, even though their beliefs were as accurate as possible, our simulated people evolved to the point where they essentially ignored their beliefs and cooperated with others regardless. This happens even when almost 90 percent of the interactions in their social world are actually one-time rather than indefinitely continued."

According to Tooby, economic models of rationality and evolutionary models of fitness maximization both predict that humans should be designed to be selfish in one-time only situations. Yet, experimental work -- and everyday experience -- shows that humans are often surprisingly generous.

"So one of the outstanding problems in the behavioral sciences was why natural selection had not weeded out this pleasing but apparently self-handicapping behavioral tendency," Tooby said. "The paper shows how this feature of human behavior emerges logically out of the dynamics of cooperation, once an overlooked aspect of the problem -- the inherent uncertainty of social life -- is taken into account. People who help only when they can see a gain do worse than those who are motivated to be generous without always looking ahead to see what they might get in return."

If you Snooze You Win? The power of sleep.

Young basketball players spend hours dribbling up and down the court aspiring to NBA stardom. Now, new Stanford University School of Medicine research suggests another tactic to achieving their hoop dreams.
ScienceDaily (July 1, 2011) —
In a study appearing in the July issue of Sleep, Cheri Mah, a researcher in the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Laboratory, has shown that basketball players at the elite college level were able to improve their on-the-court performance by increasing their amount of total sleep time.

The study suggests that "sleep is an important factor in peak athletic performance," said first author Mah. In the paper, she and colleagues wrote that "athletes may be able to optimize training and competition outcomes by identifying strategies to maximize the benefits of sleep."

It's no secret that lack of sleep can have negative consequences. Extensive research has shown the impact that sleep debt has on cognitive function, mood and physical performance. But, as Mah and her colleagues point out in the paper, very few studies have looked at the opposite: the effect that sleep extension can have on performance. And few other groups have looked specifically at the effect of sleep on athletes.

While things such as nutrition and physical training are part of an athlete's daily regimen, Mah said competitive athletes at all levels typically do not focus on optimizing their sleep and recovery. They are usually just told to get a "good night's sleep" before a competition.

"Intuitively many players and coaches know that rest and sleep are important, but it is often the first to be sacrificed," she added. "Healthy and adequate sleep hasn't had the same focus as other areas of training for peak performance."

In 2002, Mah conducted a study on sleep extension and cognitive function in Stanford undergraduate students. By chance, several participants were collegiate swimmers and mentioned that they had beaten personal swim records during the portion of the study in which they slept more than normal. A light bulb went off in Mah's head. "We had been investigating the effects of sleep extension on cognitive performance and mood, but I was now curious if sleep extension may also impact physical performance," she said.

Mah began working with sleep expert William Dement, MD, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and they turned their attention to the men's basketball team. Over the course of two basketball seasons, Mah and colleagues worked with 11 healthy players with a goal of investigating the effects of sleep extension on specific measures of athletic performance, as well as reaction time, mood and daytime sleepiness.

The researchers asked the players to maintain their normal nighttime schedule (sleeping for six to nine hours) for two to four weeks and then aim to sleep 10 hours each night for the next five to seven weeks. During the study period, players abstained from drinking coffee and alcohol, and they were asked to take daytime naps when travel prohibited them from reaching the 10 hours of nighttime sleep.

At the end of the sleep extension period, the players ran faster 282-foot sprints (16.2 seconds versus 15.5 seconds) than they had at baseline. Shooting accuracy during practice also improved: Free throw percentages increased by 9 percent and 3-point field goal percentage increased by 9.2 percent. Fatigue levels decreased following sleep extension, and athletes reported improved practices and games.

Using a questionnaire-based sleepiness scale at the beginning of the study, Mah and her colleagues also discovered that many of the athletes had a moderate-to-high baseline level of daytime sleepiness -- indicating that they were carrying sleep debt accumulated from chronic sleep loss. She called this one of the most surprising aspect of the study.

"The athletes were training and competing during their regular season with moderate-to-high levels of daytime sleepiness and were unaware that it could be negatively impacting their performance," she said. "But as the season wore on and they reduced their sleep debt, many athletes testified that a focus on sleep was beneficial to their training and performance."

The findings suggest, Mah said, that it's important for sleep to be prioritized over a long period of time, not just the night before "Game Day." She called optimal sleep an "unrecognized, but likely critical factor in reaching peak performance." She said the findings may be applicable to recreational athletes and those at the high school, semi-pro or professional level.

Mah and her co-authors noted several limitations to their study. The sample size was small and the players' travel schedule made maintaining a strict sleep-wake schedule difficult. (Mah noted, though, that this was an unusual opportunity to study actively competing elite athletes.) It's important to note, also, that the study didn't focus on in-game performance: The team aspect of basketball makes it tricky to do so, she said, but future studies could focus on swimming, track and field, or other sports more conducive to examining individual performance.

Mah has already laid the groundwork for this research. Over the last several years she has investigated sleep extension in other Stanford sports teams including football, tennis, and swimming. She has presented abstracts with preliminary findings on these sports that suggest a similar trend: More sleep led to better performance.

Mah now works with many of the Stanford sports teams and coaches to integrate optimal sleep and travel scheduling into their seasons and also consults with professional hockey, football and basketball teams, in addition to continuing her research. She hopes to next turn her attention to the quality, versus quantity, of athletes' sleep.

Dement was the senior author of the study. Kenneth Mah, MD, a pediatric cardiovascular ICU hospitalist at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, was also involved in the research. The work was funded by the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Laboratory.

Warren Jeff is the prophet of some? A sad story of the human condition.

So many human are still terribly primitive. They consider individuals such as Warren Jeff as their leader and their profit. The police department follows his lead instead of civil rights. Do not forget that the world is made of different types of individuals and that human evolutionary distortions are prevalent in every home, every culture and every place on this planet. Reality is not pleasant, it is a sad state of affairs, the sad state of the human condition.

Hairlessness defense does not work any more1

Arnold Schultz, the Swiss anatomist measured the number of hair follicles per square centimeter on the scalp, back and chest of human, apes and chimps. The winner is the species called human. It is an illusion that we are more evolved than our ancestors since we are hairless. We actually are not. Just a reminder, we are still animals. Our behavior is clearly animalistic and if we do not acknowledge that we will continue our barbaric behavior endlessly.

meet the next generation, our future care givers, ROBOTS!

Since man cannot create human empathy and love in a machine, soon The morning headlines will read: "care giver robot stepped on his master and crushed him, OR care giver robot picked up the wheel chair with the master in it and threw it in the trunk.... " What is with us mortal beings?

With an elderly population in need of nursing care projected to reach a staggering 5.69 million by 2015, Japan faces an urgent need for new approaches to assist care-giving personnel. One of the most strenuous tasks for such personnel, carried out an average of 40 times every day, is that of lifting a patient from a futon at floor level into a wheelchair. Robots are well-suited to this task, yet none have yet been deployed in care-giving facilities.

According to Science Daily (Aug. 2, 2011) — A new robot using high-precision tactile sensors and flexible motor control technology has taken Japan one step closer to its goal of providing high-quality care for its growing elderly population. Developed by researchers at RIKEN and Tokai Rubber Industries (TRI), the new robot can lift a patient up to 80 kg in weight off floor-level bedding and into a wheelchair, freeing care facility personnel of one of their most difficult and energy-consuming tasks.

The myth of pennilessness and the behaviors that follow!

2011- in her monthly news letter, raising happiness, Christine Carter, Ph.D. writes about taking time off: it is a great way to be in life. I am so guilty as charged and have to train myself, a tall order & a difficult task ahead. She notes and I so relate to this:
"I was poisoned by that hypnotic belief, as Wayne Muller writes, that if I didn’t continually push myself, my work would tank and my children and I would be left penniless."

Dr. Carter said: "Here’s what I’ve learned: It is a myth that we succeed through unceasing and tireless effort. Yes, research does find that consistent and deliberate practice leads to elite performance in many fields. But focused work and consistent practice are not the same thing as unending work. Olympic athletes must rest or they get hurt. Fruit trees forced to produce for more than one season lose their ability to bear fruit. And us worker bees can slowly develop sleep debt so deep and burnout so profound that we are left too exhausted to function.

When health problems forced me to dramatically change my work schedule last fall—cutting back 10 hours a week or more—something amazing happened: My productivity actually increased. As a sociologist, I know research shows that rest often does improve productivity. But somehow, I found it very difficult to actually internalize this in my own life; I was poisoned by that hypnotic belief, as Wayne Muller writes, that if I didn’t continually push myself, my work would tank and my children and I would be left penniless."

I am one of those like Wayne Muller wrote, What do you think?

the incredible power of mirror neurons and mentalizing!

When a woman born without limbs watches someone else sew, copycat regions in her brain activate even though she can’t hold a needle herself. Additional brain regions also lend support, demonstrating how flexible the brain is when it comes to observing and understanding the actions of others.

Scientists have known for over a decade about the mirror system, a network of brain regions usually activated by watching and performing an action. But just how the brain smoothly and quickly intuits what other people are doing, particularly when the action isn’t something the observer can do, has been unclear, says study coauthor Lisa Aziz-Zadeh of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

“What’s interesting is that even when she can’t do it, when it’s impossible for her, she still recruits her mirror system, but she additionally recruits these mentalizing regions,” Aziz-Zadeh says.

By suggesting that the mentalizing system kicks in for this woman when she cannot copy an action, the new study helps clarify how these two brain systems work together, says cognitive neuroscientist Marcel Brass of Ghent University in Belgium.

the power of music

The brain feels musical beats, and even makes up its own when interpreting songs. Researchers asked volunteers to listen to a somewhat ambiguous musical beat and then to imagine it as either a march or a waltz while scientists recorded electrical activity in the brain. Listening to the beat as if it were a march (one-two, one-two) caused neurons to fire in a one-two pattern, whereas a waltz triggered a one-two-three pattern of brain activity, researchers from Belgium and Canada report in the July 13 Journal of Neuroscience. —Laura Sanders

Positive parenting

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Concerned about the future of teens? You should be!

Unfortunately, Teens are more influenced by their peers than parents. Teens and Tweens are in touch with their friends and their social network 24/7 and they do engage most of those hours. Having a large audience to speak to is quite intoxicating to their young minds. Reality Television and facebook have become a source of attachment. Fame, power, popularity at any cost has become something to dream of and aspire to which is alarming for the next generation.

UCLA psychologists report in a new study.On a list of 16 values, fame jumped from the 15th spot, where it was in both 1987 and 1997, to the first spot in 2007. Fame is the No. 1 value emphasized by television shows popular with 9- to 11-year-olds, a dramatic change over the past 10 years, From 1997 to 2007, benevolence (being kind and helping others) fell from second to 13th, and tradition dropped from fourth to 15th. The study is published in the July issue of Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, a peer-reviewed journal featuring psychosocial research on the impact of the Internet on people and society.

mindbrainflo: Beware, you could be next: “reparative therapy” co...

mindbrainflo: Beware, you could be next: “reparative therapy” co...: "In an interview last year with a Christian-radio talk show, Marcus Bachmann who runs a faith-infused counseling center here, compared homose..."

Beware: “reparative therapy” coming to your neighborhood !

One's homosexual fantasies & desires could become torturous enough that one would do anything/everything in his/her power to negate their existence. In an interview last year with a Christian-radio talk show, Marcus Bachmann who runs a faith-infused counseling center here, compared homosexuals to “barbarians” who “need to be educated, need to be disciplined.”

I don't know about you but I cannot imagine being in the presence of any human who can refer to others in this fashion let alone sleep next to him every night, yikes. It is quite clear that this type of person only approves of a mirror image of himself and nothing else. So, do not believe that this is about homosexuality, this is about Narcissism, closed mindedness and self adulation. You could be the wrong color, religion, size, shape, or form and you are a target. Bigotry has no bounds. So, no matter what you believe in, if it is different, you are wrong... Keep praying for sanity.

dreams have to do with the dreamers gender! May be evolution?

I often wondered why do I have nightmares? I analyzed the dreams from every psychological school of thought that I could wrap my head around.. then I recounted all the dreams of the hundreds of people who have walked through my doors and realized there is a common denominator, women's dreams are different than men and women have more nightmares than men. Men dream of intercourse, aggression and activities. But, woman not so often. The theme is always about loss and abandonment. I was hoping for some scientific proof and to my amazement, finally, I found it. I found Dr Jennie Parker who having suffered from nightmares, was interested in looking at some aspect of psychology for her PhD study and it was at a lecture about dreams, given by former UWE researcher Dr Susan Blackmore that she had a moment of epiphany.

Dr Parker explains, “My most significant finding is that women in general do experience more nightmares than men. An early study into dreams lead to my discovering that normative research procedures into Dream Research often considered the structure of dreams but that there is a gaping hole in terms of academic study that investigates emotional significance in the analysis of dreams.

Dr. Parker as a result of her research found the following: “I found that women’s nightmares can be broadly divided into three categories, fearful dreams – being chased or life threatened, losing a loved one or confused dreams." It sounds like evolution to me, what do you think?

Not so special? Illusion is part of the human condition!

As much as we want to think that we are independent, self reliant, non conformist, and proud of our unique qualities; we have to sheepishly admit that we have created an idealized illusion of humankind. We are hardly any of the above, we are terribly dependent on each other, very similar to each other, we rewrite our memories every time we recall them, therefore not terribly reliable. We are followers and cannot wait to have some religious or political leader sell us the moon for us to follow them. The me generation has egg on its facade, it did not last long for that reason. The social network world is really who we are. Studies have shown that the decisions we make, or the opinion we have, are strongly influenced by the decisions and opinions of our friends, or more generally, our contacts in our social network. The human problem is that we let ourselves be convinced by the individuals in our social network even if we end up within a Locust plague. We are not infatuated by sameness but by variety. We follow a new trend or a different idea, or a new direction based on our network. Just think of the clothes in your closet to the cars in your garage to the play you saw last week. all about following a group....! your thoughts are welcomed.

In a study published on July 15, 2011, in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society's New Journal of Physics, researchers have shown that swarming, a phenomenon that can be crucial to an animal's survival, is created by the same kind of social networks that humans adopt. Locusts rely heavily on swarming as they are in fact cannibalistic. As they march across barren deserts, locusts carefully keep track of each other so they can remain within striking distance to consume one another -- a cruel, but very efficient, survival strategy. (ScienceDaily July 2011)

What do you think? What is it with humankind?

How do we determine negligence when it comes to parenting? Is it Obesity? Is it the number of hours spent watching TV? Is is emotional neglect? Is it physical abuse?
Is it a parent who shames and humiliates? Is it a parent who does not help with homework? One who is on drugs? It is amazing that obesity has now stirred up the question of loss of custody? We have to have a license to operate motorcycles, cars, drive a truck, and do manicures. Parents, however, have never been required to learn anything or read a book before having a baby. For decades all invisible child abuse have been closeted. Only recently do people dare utter "sexual abuse", "abandonment", "sadistic behavior" and other parental neglect. Even clergy abuse, within the safest construct led by god, is a slippery slope. Now, obesity has brought about such serious discussions lead by the AMA. Including the possibility of loss of custody! Why does our society have to have such tangible deadly proof of neglect before we pay attention to the vulnerable? Do we have to have the pain somatized to 400 pounds at the age 12 before someone pays attention? What about the ones who do not somatize to that level? Do we prescribe more neglect for them? Something to note about the human condition!

Men & Women ! "What no one talks about is endocrine diversity, a diversity of hormones."

This is Important information about factual differences between men and women. We would have a much better world if we could accept ourselves and start benefiting from each others qualities rather than serving our egos ...

Meredith Melnick Tuesday, June 28, 2011 TIMES HEALTHLAND
Recently in the Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch columnist David Weidner noted that women "do almost everything better" than men — from politics to corporate management to investing.

basically, the more women around, the better, as the Journal's Wiedner said. His column referred to a recent book by Dan Abrams called Man Down: Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt That Women Are Better Cops, Drivers, Gamblers, Spies, World Leaders, Beer Tasters, Hedge Fund Managers, and Just About Everything Else.

Abrams notes, women are better soldiers because they complain about pain less. They're less likely to be hit by lightning because they're not stupid enough to stand outside in a storm. They remember words and faces better. They're better spies because they're better at getting people to talk candidly.

What's the problem with men? "There's been a lot of academic research suggesting that men think they know what they're doing, even when they really don't know what they're doing," John Ameriks, the author of the Vanguard study, told the New York Times.

The so-called "winner effect," which has been seen in athletes during competition, also seems to apply to male traders. As the U.K.'s Guardian explained:

This occurs when two males enter a competition and their testosterone levels rise, increasing their muscle mass and the ability of the blood to carry oxygen. It also enhances their appetite for risk. Much of this testosterone stays in the system of the winner of a competition, while the loser's testosterone melts away fast; in evolutionary terms, the loser retires to the woods to lick his wounds. In the next round of competition, though, the winner already has high levels of testosterone, so he starts with an advantage, and this continues to reinforce itself.

"Steroids," Coates explains, "like most chemicals in your body, display what is called an inverted U-shaped response curve." That is to say, when you have low levels of them you lack vitality, and do very poorly at mental and physical tasks. But as the levels rise you get sharper and more focused until you reach an optimum. The key thing is this, however: "If you keep winning, your testosterone level goes past that peak and sliding down the other side. You start doing stupid things. When that happens to animals, they go out in the open too much. They pick too many fights. They neglect parenting duties. And they patrol areas that are too large." In short, they behave like traders on a roll; they get cocky.

Of course, to most women none of this is much of a revelation.

Evolution !

TIME HEALTHLAND: By Bonnie Rochman Friday, June 24, 2011
"Around ovulation, the mind is reallocating its resources in ways that are relevant evolutionarily", A woman develops a sharp "gaydar", has little interest in calling her
father and dials down male testosterone with her tears.... .
" that shows us that the link between body and mind is greater than we often think."

Fact or Fiction? mindURbrain

When It Comes to Intelligence, Does Brain Size Matter?

What does brain size say about a creature's mental abilities?

By Kayt Sukel | April 14, 2009 | 13


brain model SIZE DOESN'T MATTER?: It may not be the size of the brain but its organization that matters when it comes to cognitive function.

Research has shown that lead kills neurons (nerve cells), resulting in smaller brains. It has long been hypothesized that such changes in the brain caused by childhood lead exposure may be behind a higher incidence of poor cognitive performance and criminal behavior. And although it is difficult to disentangle the confounding effects of race, class and economics, a recent study by Kim Dietrich, a professor of environmental health at the University of Cincinnati , found that individuals who suffered from the highest lead exposure as children had the smallest brain sizes—as well as the most arrests.

"That early lead exposure was associated with smaller volumes of cortical gray matter [the parts of the brain rich in neural cell bodies and synapses] in the prefrontal area," he says. "And the fact that we saw both criminal behavior and volume loss in this critical area for executive function is probably more than just a coincidence."

That may be so, however, new scientific studies across several animal species, including humans, are challenging the notion that brain size alone is a measure of intelligence. Rather, scientists now argue, it is a brain's underlying organization and molecular activity at its synapses (the communication junctions between neurons through which nerve impulses pass) that dictate intelligence.

Two years ago, Paul Manger, a professor of health sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, caused quite a stir when he referred to the beloved bottlenose dolphin, owner of a large, nearly human-size brain, as "dumber than a goldfish."

"When you look at cetaceans, they have big brains, absolutely," Manger says. "But if you look at the actual structure of the brain, it's not very complex. And brain size only matters if the rest of the brain is organized properly to facilitate information processing."

He argues that the systems within the brain—how neurons or nerve cells and synapses are organized—are the keys to determining information-processing capacity. Manger speculates that cetacean brains are large not because of intelligence but instead due to an abundance of fatty glial cells (non-nerve cells serving as a supporting tissue), which may be present to provide warmth in cold waters for the information-processing neurons in the brain's interior.

Mark Uhen, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Alabama Museum of Natural History, and Lori Marino, a biologist who studies brain evolution of cetaceans and primates at Emory University's Yerkes National Primate Research Center, disagree. Marino says that Manger's theories discount years of behavioral evidence that show dolphins to be complex thinkers. What's more, she says, the mammals have an unusual brain structure with a different functional map and therefore cannot be compared with other species.

Marino believes that the dolphin's unique brain organization may represent an alternate evolutionary route to complex intelligence—and that molecules released in synapses may provide that alternative path.

A study recently published in Nature Neuroscience by Seth Grant, a neuroscientist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, along with Richard Emes, a professor in Bioinformatics at Keele University School of Medicine in North Staffordshire, both in England, suggests that all species have the same basic proteins that act in the synapses.

"If you look at us and fish, we have very different cognitive abilities," Emes says. "But we have roughly the same number of these synaptic proteins. It is the number of interactions and gene duplications of these proteins that provide the brain building blocks for higher level cognitive function.”

Emes, Grant and colleagues agree with Marino and Uhenthat intelligence and differences between species are due to molecular complexity at the synaptic level. "The basic dogma says that the computational properties of the brain are based on the number of neurons and synapses," Grant says. "But we modify that by saying that the molecular complexity within those synapses is also important."

Grant and Emes looked at where approximately 150 synaptic proteins were released in the nervous systems of yeast, fruit flies and mice. They found that a variation in production and distribution patterns was linked to higher-level brain organization.

"The proteins that you find in yeast are the sort of proteins that are far more likely to be found expressed throughout the brain in uniform quantities," Grant says. "They laid a foundation to make more diverse and different regions of the brain using different combinations and expressions of other, more innovative proteins." He likens these molecular proteins to implements in a toolbox that help to build specialized brain regions. He goes on to say that the different interactions, duplications or deletions of these proteins resulted over time in the evolutionary development of regions like the prefrontal cortex in humans which is involved in higher executive function like planning and goal-directed behavior

Grant says that this finding offers scientists a new way to approach the study of brain evolution and intelligence and, perhaps more importantly, suggests that looking at sheer brain size has very little to offer in understanding cognitive abilities.

"It's clear now that there are wonderful mental abilities in birds even with their relatively small brains, nerve cells and neural connections. But they have complex molecular synapses," says Grant. "My sense is in the next 10 to 20 years our perspectives about the mental capacities of different species will change quite radically."

But the idea that a big brain equals big smarts is not going to go away anytime soon. Though Manger discounts the role of glial cells in intelligence, a posthumous anatomical study of Albert Einstein's brain showed that the scientific genius's brain differed from the brains of other dead scientists only with its greater ratio of glial cells to neurons. But a study of Einstein's brain organization and synaptic molecule configuration still remains to be completed.