In this twenty-first century, we have arrived at an age, a time in the human calendar, where we have the ability, the intelligence, the science and the common sense to decide by ourselves if an idea, an ideology, a theory or a concept is real or a pile of garbage.
Here’s the Baloney Detection Kit to enhance our minds and lives. Enjoy!
Send us your links! Email: webmaster@onegoodmind.com
New research from Vanderbilt University indicates the way our brain handles how we move through space - including being able to imagine literally stepping into someone else’s shoes - may be related to how and why we experience empathy toward others.
The research was recently published in the online scientific journal PLoS ONE. Read here the research.
Empathy involves, in part, the ability to simulate the internal states of others. The authors hypothesized that our ability to manipulate, rotate and simulate mental representations of the physical world, including our own bodies, would contribute significantly to our ability to empathize.
“Our language is full of spatial metaphors, particularly when we attempt to explain or understand how other people think or feel. We often talk about putting ourselves in others’ shoes, seeing something from someone else’s point of view, or figuratively looking over someone’s shoulder,” Sohee Park, report co-author and professor of psychology, said. “Although future work is needed to elucidate the nature of the relationship between empathy, spatial abilities and their potentially overlapping neural underpinnings, this work provides initial evidence that empathy might be, in part, spatially represented.”
(Via Medical News Today.)
Send us your links! Email: webmaster@onegoodmind.com
Researchers have what they say is the first direct proof of a very old idea: that when we use a tool—even for just a few minutes—it changes the way our brain represents the size of our body. In other words, the tool becomes a part of what is known in psychology as our body schema, according to a report published in the June 23rd issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.
“Since the origin of the concept of body schema, the idea of its functional plasticity has always been taken for granted, even if no direct evidence has been provided until now,” said Alessandro Farnè of INSERM and the Université Claude Bernard Lyon. “Our series of experiments provides the first, definitive demonstration that this century-old intuition is true.”
In the new study, Farnè, Lucilla Cardinali, and their colleagues reasoned that if one incorporates a used tool into the body schema, his or her subsequent bodily movements should differ when compared to those performed before the tool was used.
Indeed, that is exactly what they saw. After using a mechanical grabber that extended their reach, people behaved as though their arm really was longer, they found. What’s more, study participants perceived touches delivered on the elbow and middle fingertip of their arm as if they were farther apart after their use of the grabbing tool.
People still went on using their arm successfully following after tool use, but they managed tasks differently. That is, they grasped or pointed to object correctly, but they did not move their hand as quickly and overall took longer to complete the tasks.
It’s a phenomenon each of us unconsciously experiences every day, the researchers said. The reason you were able to brush your teeth this morning without necessarily looking at your mouth or arm is because your toothbrush was integrated into your brain’s representation of your arm.
The findings help to explain how it is that humans use tools so well.
“We believe this ability of our body representation to functionally adapt to incorporate tools is the fundamental basis of skillful tool use,” Cardinali said. “Once the tool is incorporated in the body schema, it can be maneuvered and controlled as if it were a body part itself.”
(Via EurekAlert!.)
Send us your links! Email: webmaster@onegoodmind.com
Those pesky graying hairs that tend to crop up with age really are signs of stress, reveals a new report in the June 12 issue of Cell, a Cell Press publication.
Researchers have discovered that the kind of “genotoxic stress” that does damage to DNA depletes the melanocyte stem cells (MSCs) within hair follicles that are responsible for making those pigment-producing cells. Rather than dying off, when the going gets tough, those precious stem cells differentiate, forming fully mature melanocytes themselves. Anything that can limit the stress might stop the graying from happening, the researchers said.
“The DNA in cells is under constant attack by exogenously- and endogenously-arising DNA-damaging agents such as mutagenic chemicals, ultraviolet light and ionizing radiation,” said Emi Nishimura of Tokyo Medical and Dental University. “It is estimated that a single cell in mammals can encounter approximately 100,000 DNA damaging events per day.”
Find out more about this article here
(Brought to you via Medical News Today.)
By Simon Hooper - CNN
LONDON, England (CNN) — When Nina Temple was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2000, then aged 44, she quickly became depressed, barely venturing out of her house as she struggled to come to terms with living with the chronic condition.
“I was thinking of all the things which I wished I’d done with my life and I wouldn’t be able to do. And then I started thinking about all the things that I still actually could do and singing was one of those,” Temple told CNN.
Along with a fellow Parkinson’s sufferer, Temple decided, on a whim, to form a choir. The pair placed notices in doctor’s surgeries inviting others to join them and advertised for a singing teacher.
By 2003, with the help of funding from the Parkinson’s Disease Society, the resulting ensemble “Sing For Joy” was up and running, rehearsing weekly and soon graduating to public performances.
The group now consists of around two dozen singers, including sufferers of Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis, others recovering from conditions including stroke or cancer, plus their carers, family and friends. Led by acclaimed jazz performer Carol Grimes, the group’s genre-defying repertoire ranges from Cole Porter classics to ethnic punk.
(Via CNN News.)
Send us your links! Email: webmaster@onegoodmind.com
I just came back from a week of training in CT to make the bridge between the original Silva Method Basic Lecture Series and the new Silva Life System (SLS) and Silva Intuition Training (SIT). Silva International notified all instructors that the BLS will be phased out of North America at the end of June and only the new SLS and SIT programs will be taught.
The SLS is for all ages, from 12 to 120. This program gives you an invaluable tool kit of mental techniques with an astonishing range of applications in every field of human activity. The Silva Method is recommended and used by lecturers like Dr Wayne Dyer, Jack Canfield, Shakti Gawain, and many more.
I encourage you to take advantage of the next class and learn the new SLS techniques. The class is scheduled for June 27 and 28 at the La Quinta Inn @ Sunrise (next the Ikea store).
Go visit the website http://SilvaMethodOfFlorida.com to read all about this new program and to register online.
You receive an instant $100 discount when you register online before June 21. After that date, the fee for the SLS is $597.
Late one night in a small Alabama cemetery, Vance Vanders had a run-in with the local witch doctor, who wafted a bottle of unpleasant-smelling liquid in front of his face, and told him he was about to die and that no one could save him.
Back home, Vanders took to his bed and began to deteriorate. Some weeks later, emaciated and near death, he was admitted to the local hospital, where doctors were unable to find a cause for his symptoms or slow his decline. Only then did his wife tell one of the doctors, Drayton Doherty, of the hex.
Doherty thought long and hard. The next morning, he called Vanders’s family to his bedside. He told them that the previous night he had lured the witch doctor back to the cemetery, where he had choked him against a tree until he explained how the curse worked. The medicine man had, he said, rubbed lizard eggs into Vanders’s stomach, which had hatched inside his body. One reptile remained, which was eating Vanders from the inside out.
Doherty then summoned a nurse who had, by prior arrangement, filled a large syringe with a powerful emetic. With great ceremony, he inspected the instrument and injected its contents into Vanders’ arm. A few minutes later, Vanders began to gag and vomit uncontrollably. In the midst of it all, unnoticed by everyone in the room, Doherty produced his pièce de résistance - a green lizard he had stashed in his black bag. “Look what has come out of you Vance,” he cried. “The voodoo curse is lifted.”
Vanders did a double take, lurched backwards to the head of the bed, then drifted into a deep sleep. When he woke next day he was alert and ravenous. He quickly regained his strength and was discharged a week later.
The facts of this case from 80 years ago were corroborated by four medical professionals. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about it is that Vanders survived. There are numerous documented instances from many parts of the globe of people dying after being cursed.
With no medical records and no autopsy results, there’s no way to be sure exactly how these people met their end. The common thread in these cases, however, is that a respected figure puts a curse on someone, perhaps by chanting or pointing a bone at them. Soon afterwards, the victim dies, apparently of natural causes.
(Via New Scientist.)
Send us your links! Email: webmaster@onegoodmind.com
Now you can follow all activities and news from Silva Method of Florida on Twitter! Just link to http://twitter.com/silvaMethodFL
Thank you for your continued support and patronage. See you on Twitter!
Jay Feuillet,
Silva Success Coach and Instructor
New research from the US suggests that losing your job can make you sick by raising your risk of developing new health problems like high blood pressure, heart disease, heart attack, stroke or diabetes, even if you find a new job soon after.
The study was the work of Kate Strully, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Albany, New York, and is shortly to be published in the May 2009 issue of the journal Demography. Strully did the research as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Strully said that in today’s economy anyone could be at risk of losing their job.
A new University of British Columbia study finds that our brains are much more active when we daydream than previously thought.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that activity in numerous brain regions increases when our minds wander. It also finds that brain areas associated with complex problem-solving – previously thought to go dormant when we daydream – are in fact highly active during these episodes.
“Mind wandering is typically associated with negative things like laziness or inattentiveness,” says lead author, Prof. Kalina Christoff, UBC Dept. of Psychology. “But this study shows our brains are very active when we daydream – much more active than when we focus on routine tasks.”
For the study, subjects were placed inside an fMRI scanner, where they performed the simple routine task of pushing a button when numbers appear on a screen. The researchers tracked subjects’ attentiveness moment-to-moment through brain scans, subjective reports from subjects and by tracking their performance on the task.
The findings suggest that daydreaming – which can occupy as much as one third of our waking lives – is an important cognitive state where we may unconsciously turn our attention from immediate tasks to sort through important problems in our lives.
(Via EurekAlert!.)
