Born to be wild? Thrill-seeking behavior may be based in the brain

Born to be wild? Thrill-seeking behavior may be based in the brain: "(Association for Psychological Science) What draws some people to daredevil behavior while others shy away from it? The results of a new study in Psychological Science show that high sensation seekers respond very strongly to arousing cues, but have less activity in brain areas associated with emotional regulation. These findings may indicate the way by which sensation seeking results in negative behaviors, including substance abuse and antisocial behavior."

So, is this as non-surprising a result for anyone else?

True or false? How our brain processes negative statements

True or false? How our brain processes negative statements: "(Association for Psychological Science) Previous research has suggested that including negative words in the middle of a sentence can throw off our brains and make it more difficult to understand. A new study reveals that the way negative statements are processed in the brain depends on the structure of the sentence itself. This indicates that negation, when it is useful and informative, does not make it more challenging for the brain to understand the negative meaning of the statement."

Good information for all of you assessment writers out there.

Computer exercises improve memory and attention

Computer exercises improve memory and attention: "Large-scale study is the first to link a commercially available software program to improvement on unaffiliated standard measures of memory and to better performance on everyday tasks."

There are lots of programs out there that supposedly increase your intelligence, but research shows that isn't so much the case. However - if you could increase the ability to focus your attention and remember what you wanted, that would be easy to conflate with intelligence.

But really....ask any hard-core gamer and they could easily tell you the same results.

A good primer on which types of games have the desired affect here.

Guess what? It can also improve your vision! [sarcasm]Surprise![/sarcasm]

Adolescents involved with music do better in school

Adolescents involved with music do better in school: "A new study in the journal Social Science Quarterly reveals that music participation, defined as music lessons taken in or out of school and parents attending concerts with their children, has a positive effect on reading and mathematic achievement in early childhood and adolescence."

This article makes me feel that much better that my son is so interested in music at a young age (well, all my kids actually). Very cool.

More from Deric Brown here.

The unconscious psychology of color.

The unconscious psychology of color.: "When I first started the vision research laboratory I ran for 30 years at the University of Wisconsin, I experimented with the color spectrum of the fluorescent lights used over the laboratory benches. Those that had more blue and green, more like natural sunlight, clearly made my students feel more relaxed and creative. This was consonant with psychological studies that had shown reds to have more arousing and blue more calming effects humans as well as other animals. Mehta and Zhu have made some fascinating further observations reported in Science and noted in a NY Times article by Belluck which gives examples of similar studies. Work done against the background color red is relatively more accurate, while with blue it is more creative. Here is a clip from the Mehta and Zhu abstract, followed by a graphic from the NY Times article.

We demonstrate that red (versus blue) color induces primarily an avoidance (versus approach) motivation and that red enhances performance on a detail-oriented task, whereas blue enhances performance on a creative task. Further, we replicate these results in domains of product design and persuasive message evaluation, and illustrate that these effects occur outside of individuals’ consciousness . We also provide process evidence suggesting that the activation of alternative motivations mediates the effect of color on cognitive task performances.

"

I wonder if this is one of the reasons why blue lighting is so prevalent in sci-fi shows? Does the blue lighting spark some creative thinking and bring in a little imagination so that the plot-lines are more believable (or possibly more accessible if not believable)?

Mulder and Scully - we demand an investigation.

Buying experiences, not possessions, leads to greater happiness

Buying experiences, not possessions, leads to greater happiness: "Can money make us happy if we spend it on the right purchases? A new psychology study suggests that buying life experiences rather than material possessions leads to greater happiness for both the consumer and those around them. The findings will be presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology annual meeting on Feb. 7.The study demonstrates that experiential purchases, such as a meal out or theater tickets, result in increased satisfaction and well-being."

Good news indeed. Now if I can just convince my family of this.....

More here. And here. And a slightly humorous, but still very accurate take here.

Negative Emotions Decrease Memory Accuracy?

Negative Emotions Decrease Memory Accuracy?: "Cornell University professors Valerie Reyna and Charles Brainerd find that people do a poorer job of remembering negative experiences. 'You may not remember the specifics of what happened to you,..."

Are determinists evil?

Are determinists evil?

Excellent article that strikes at the heart of a number of current debates in both psychology and the larger philosophy of science/religion.

Personally I actually see that science cannot help but come down solidly into the Determinist's camp. Which is really the problem with the debate between religion and science. If you are an atheist/materialist and believe in the ultimate triumph of science over all things then by default you would be a determinist. Science (in the general philosophical sense) simply doesn't have the tools to prove/disprove the existence of something as vague and ephemeral as consciousness or free will (terms which are redundant in the philosophy of a humanist/religionist), so the reduction of all things to empirical proof negates the ability to believe in (or prove the existence of) free will. I'm simplifying the argument considerably in this context, but I think the basic message is clear enough.

It is an interesting argument to have and one that I'm rather enjoying watching. I haven't searched hard enough, but I'd really like to find an atheist/materialist that believes in the concept of free will and listen to their arguments against religion. It just seems like it would be a rather difficult rhetorical about-face to make.

More thoughts on the difficulty of using science (and neuroscience in particular) to measure something as difficult to pin down as free will here.

And more thoughts about who is actually in control here.

And look: there's even a DARPA project to prove determinism! Although how that precicely relates to the overall mission of the DARPA folks is kind of lost on me.

Fair warning....

I've been busy with a lot of things recently: teaching at MCC, trying to get my PhD (not very successfully I might add), kids, work, etc.

Anyway, I have a backlog of over a year's worth of blog posts that I wanted to put up on my site and comment on. Didn't happen.

And now....well, Google has added a marvelous "Send To:" feature to their RSS aggregator (Google Reader) - and I'm just beside myself with glee. I can finally clear out my "Starred Items" list.

So - if you are subscribed to this blog....I appologize in advance for the next 100 or so posts you'll be receiving. There will also be little to no commentary on the posts. I am just trying to get them to where I want them.

Sorry.

You may now return to what you refer to as "normal"....

The Straight Dope on Learning Styles

The Straight Dope on Learning Styles: "

The glorious truth is that people think and learn differently. Some people like words, but not pictures, some like movements rather than sounds. Why are people different? Who knows, perhaps because Allah loves wondrous variety.

A funny thing is that we have the tendency to ignore this fact. Perhaps because empathy is difficult, perhaps because learning makes itself invisible. I have a dear friend, Cat, who doesn't have visual imagery. When she thinks of a dog, for example, she doesn't see one in her mind's eye. She doesn't see anything. When she dreams she rarely has pictures --- she just knows what is happening in the dream. People often don't believe this. They think that everyone must experience their inner world in pictures, the way they do. Sorry. People are just different. Some always see things when they imagine them, some don't. Some people have a sense of pitch, some don't. So it goes.

So the idea of learning styles makes a lot of intuitive sense. Surely if we know that people think and learn differently, we should be able to design our teaching to take advantage of different learning styles. Right?

This is where we hit problems. Are learners either primarily visual, auditory, kinesthetic (as claimed in NLP)? Or are they primarily analytic, creative or pragmatic (as proposed by Robert Sternberg). Is the world made of Convergers, Divergers, Assimilators and Accomodators? Maybe instead we should use the Myers-Briggs categories of Sensers, Intuitors, Thinkers and Feelers?

Faced with these possibilities an academic psychologist has a standard set of questions they would like answered: can you really divide people up into a particular set of categories? Are the tests for these categories reliable; if you take the test twice will you come out the same both times? Are the categories you are trying to use related to how people learn? If you use a theory of learning styles, do people learn better? Can you use learning styles to predict who will benefit most from particular styles of instruction? Does using a learning styles system - any system - for teaching have other effects on learners or teachings, such as making them more confident or making them expend more effort?

These questions stem from the way academic psychologists systematically approach topics: we like to establish the truth of psychological claims. If someone comes to us with a theory about learning styles we want to know (a) if learning styles really exist, (b) if they really are associated with better learning and also (c) if, when learning styles are taken into account, learning is better because of something about the specific learing style theory rather than just being a side effect of an increase in teacher confidence, effort or somesuch.

So, what have academic psychologists found out about learning styles? We know that some of the supposed categories of learning styles are actually dimensions that vary continuously across the population. For example visual imagery: it is not that some people are visual thinkers, it is that most people have some visual imagery and a few have very strong imagery and a few, like my friend Cat, have less than average. We also know that people can change their learning styles over time, for different tasks and in different contexts. We also know that it is very difficult to prove that teaching that uses learning styles is better because of the particular theory of learning styles used, rather than merely because a learning style theory, any learning style theory, is being used and this makes people pay more attention to what they are doing.

Learning styles seem intuitively sensible. Having thought about learning styles helps teachers improve their teaching and also helps increase their confidence and motivation. But there is no strong evidence that any one theory of learning styles is the best, or most true, compared to the others. Learning style theories can be useful without being true, and it isn't clear that knowing the truth about the differences in how people learn will be immediately useful or produce a more useful theory of learning styles. This difference between truth and utility is a typical dilemma of psychology.

Sadly, the headlines for this conclusion aren't snappy. It is easier to say that 'Some people are visual thinkers and others are auditory thinkers' than it is to say that 'Thinking about presenting information in different sensory modalities will make your teaching more varied and help those you are teaching who have different preferences to yourself'. Using a learning style theory is great, but you lose a lot of flexibility and potential for change if you start to believe that the theory is based on proven facts about the way the world is, rather than just being a useful set of habits and suggestions which might, sometimes, help guide us through the maze of teaching and learning.

Cross-posted at schoolofeverything.com

Part of a series:

• #1 Learning Makes Itself Invisible


• #2 Learning Should Be Fun

Image: jelly belly by House of Sims

"

Surprising discoveries contribute to memory research

Surprising discoveries contribute to memory research: "Neuroscientists around the world knew Henry Gustav Molaison, or H. M., well -- his story of undergoing experimental brain surgery that controlled his epilepsy but left him unable to form new and lasting memories. Molaison's experience pointed scientists interested in understanding learning and memory to the temporal lobe, particularly the hippocampus. In a new study Northwestern University researchers report discovering a cellular mechanism that could be critical to the formation of memories in the hippocampus."

Milgram Replication in American Psychologist

Milgram Replication in American Psychologist: "

The long-awaited publication of the replication of Stanley Milgram’s famous obedience experiment, conducted by Santa Clara University (CA) psychologist Jerry Burger, has finally hit the pages of the American Psychological Association’s flagship journal, American Psychologist (unfortunately, only the abstract is freely available on-line).

In the experiment, participants were told they are in a learning experiment in which they will ask questions of another participant (who is really a confederate), and deliver shocks of increasing strength for every incorrect answer received. The shocks were fake and the experiment was really about the willingness of people to obey the orders of an authority figure such as a scientist, even when asked to do what appeared to be extreme harm to another person .

In the original experiments, conducted in the 1960s, about two-thirds of subjects (as they were then called) were willing to deliver shocks up to an apparent level of 450 volts, beyond a label reading “extreme shock” to one reading “XXX.” Although the results rocked the world of social psychology, the ethics of the experiment were called into question (due to the stress under which it put the participants) and the experiment was not replicated after the mid-1970s.

Burger modified Milgram’s procedure in ways that made it acceptable to the ethical review committee at his university and carried out the experiment again in 2007. In particular, he used a more elaborate screening process to remove from the participant pool people who were likely to be seriously upset by the procedure, and he cut the experiment off after the participant had reached 150 volts (at which point the confederate yelled from the other room that he refused to go on). Burger argued that this was virtually a point of no return for Milgram’s subjects: 80% who went beyond this point continued on to the very top of the shock scale.

Portions of the replications were shown on an episode of the television news magazine ABC Primetime (see the AHP report here). As reported there, Burger found that 70% of his participants obeyed the instructions of the experimenter up to 150 volts. Because he had more women participants that Milgram had, he was ale to make statistically meaningful comparisons between women’s and men’s obedience to authority. Contrary to what many had predicted over the years, women and men were no different in their willingness to obey the experimenter, women trending slightly higher than men.

These results seem to put to rest the oft-heard argument that people were more obedient and conforming in the early 1960s, and that people today would not behave as Milgram’s subjects had. As Milgram, among others, had claimed, the situation is a very powerful determinant of people’s behavior.

"

Video games do not lead to violence according to researcher

Video games do not lead to violence according to researcher: "A researcher finds no evidence of a link between school shootings and video games:

A researcher at Texas A&M International University has concluded that there is "no significant relationship" between school shootings and playing violent video games.

Writing for the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, Prof. Christopher Ferguson criticizes the methodology used in earlier"

8 insights gleaned from brain science research

8 insights gleaned from brain science research: "

Does political bias distort rational thought? Can we teach ourselves compassion? Is technology overload rewiring our brains? These are some of the questions scientists are pursuing in the quest to understand how and why our noggins do what they do.

"

Another shock for brain imaging research - the signal isn't always linked to neuronal activity

Another shock for brain imaging research - the signal isn't always linked to neuronal activity: "The brain imaging community is about to experience another shockwave, just days after the online leak of a paper that challenged many of the brain-behaviour correlations reported in respected social neuroscience journals.

Now Yevgeniy Sirotin and Aniruddha Das have reported that blood flow changes in the brain - the signal measured by brain scanners - are not always linked to changes in neuronal activity. Experts have known for some time that the relationship between blood flow and neuronal activity might be rather complicated but this is the first time that such an extreme mismatch has been demonstrated.

Sirotin and Das used electrodes to directly record neuronal activity in the vision part of the brains of two awake monkeys, and at the same time they used a camera system and injected dyes to monitor blood flow to that region. This kind of thing couldn't be done with humans because it is too intrusive and physically harmful.

The monkeys were trained to look at a tiny dot when it was one colour and to relax when it was another colour. The dot alternated colours following a predictable rhythm, so the monkeys could predict when they'd need to concentrate and when they could relax. Sometimes, when the monkeys were required to fixate the dot, it was accompanied by intense visual stimuli, whereas on other trials there was nothing, leaving the monkeys in near darkness.

As you'd expect, when there was intense visual stimulation, the researchers observed increased neuronal activity in the visual area of the monkeys' brains and lots of blood flow to that region. But here's the important bit: they also observed increased blood flow to the visual brain even when there was nothing for the monkeys to look at, except for the minuscule dot, and even though neuronal activity was virtually silent. It's as though extra blood was being channelled to the visual cortex, in anticipation that there might be lots of visual material to look at.

There's a chance that this anticipatory blood flow could just reflect an increase in arousal, since the researchers also noted anticipatory changes to heart rate and pupil size just before an active phase of each trial was due to begin. However, Sirotin and Das were able to rule this out using an auditory task. Heart rate and pupil size changed in anticipation of the active phase of the auditory task, but there was no anticipatory blood flow to the visual parts of the brain.

The interpretation of human brain imaging experiments is founded on the idea that changes in blood flow reflect parallel changes in neuronal activity. This important new study shows that blood flow changes can be anticipatory and completely unconnected to any localised neuronal activity. It's up to future research to find out which brain areas and cognitive mechanisms are controlling this anticipatory blood flow. As the researchers said, their finding points to a 'novel anticipatory brain mechanism'.

Writing a commentary on this paper in the same journal issue, David Leopold at the National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, said the findings were 'sure to raise eyebrows among the human fMRI research community.'
_________________________________

Yevgeniy B. Sirotin, Aniruddha Das (2009). Anticipatory haemodynamic signals in sensory cortex not predicted by local neuronal activity. Nature, 457, 475-479.

Image shows blood vessel activation in the brain evoked by visual stimulus. White lightning bolt patterns outline arteries in the contraction phase of the anticipatory response; dark centre is the specific response to the visual stimulus. Credit Sirotin & Das.

"

Pre-emptive blood flow raises big questions about fMRI [Not Exactly Rocket Science]

Pre-emptive blood flow raises big questions about fMRI [Not Exactly Rocket Science]: "

The blood that flows into our heads is obviously important for it provides nutrients and oxygen to that most energetically demanding of organs - the brain. But for neuroscientists, blood flow in the brain has a special significance; many have used it to measure brain activity using a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI.

This scanning technology has become a common feature of modern neuroscience studies, where it's used to follow firing neurons and to identify parts of the brain that are active during common mental tasks. Its use rests on the assumption that the flow of blood ('haemodynamics' to those in the know) is a decent enough stand-in for the firing of neurons - the latter creates a shortage of nutrients and oxygen that is corrected by the former.

But Yevgeniy Sirotin and Aniruddha Das from Columbia University have found that this assumption might not be entirely valid. They used a new technique to independently measure and compare nerve activity and blood flow in the brains of live monkeys. Sure enough, they found a blood flow pattern that reliably matched the activity of the animals' neurons.

But they also spotted something that no one has seen before - a second haemodynamic signal, of equal strength to the first, that didn't correspond to any local brain activity. This second signal was not a sign of parts of the brain that are active, but those that may need to be active in the near future. It seems that if the brain expects a task in the future, it can anticipate which of its regions will be needed and flush them with blood in preparation.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post..."

Learning Should Be Fun

Learning Should Be Fun: "

Learning can and should be fun. This is not just a moral position, but a scientific one too.

When you learn a new thing, or get a surprise, there is a shot of a chemical messenger in your brain called dopamine. Dopamine is famous among neuroscientists for its involvement in the reward and motivation systems of the brain.

You won't be surprised to learn that the reason addictive drugs are addictive is that they hack the reward circuitry that dopamine is intimately involved in. Perhaps the most addictive drug, cocaine, directly increases the amount of dopamine at work in your brain.

Learning something new triggers a chemical release of the same kind as cocaine, albeit in a much more subtle manner. As methods of getting your kicks you can perhaps compare it to the difference between walking up a hill yourself or being strapped to a rocket and blasted up --- slower, harder work, but a lot more sustainable and you're in a better state to enjoy the view when you get there!

The reason for this electro-chemical connection between learning and drugs of reward is that our brains have obviously been designed to find learning fun.

One of the many negative things about the misconception that education is about transmitting content is the idea that any fun you have is taking time away from proper learning, and that 'proper learning' shouldn't be fun.

Rather than fun being a relief from learning, or a distraction from it, for most of our history, before school, learning had to be its own motivation. Brains that learnt well had more offspring, and so learning evolved to be rewarding.

In lots of teaching situations we focus on the right and wrong answers to things, which is a venerable paradigm for learning, but not the only one. There is a less structured, curiosity-driven, paradigm which focusses not on what is absolutely right or wrong, but instead on what is surprising. A problem with rights and wrongs is that, for some people, the pressure of being correct gets in the way of experiencing what actually is.

You can try this for yourself, either in any teaching you do, or any learning. Often we will get blocked at a particular stage in our learning. A normal response is to try harder, and to focus more on what we're doing right, and what we're doing wrong. Sometimes this helps, but sometimes it just digs us further into our rut. The way out of the rut is to re-focus on experiencing again.

I'll give you an example from one of the two things I know best about teaching --- aikido, the japanese martial art. Aikido involves some quite intricate throws and grappling moves. Often a student is so intent on getting through the move, and on trying hard to get it right, that they become completely stuck, repeatedly doing something that doesn't work, and usually too fast. Even if you say or show explicitly the correct movement, they can't seem to get it. In this situation, one teaching technique I use, inspired by the 'Inner Game' writings of Timothy Gallway, is to tell the student to stop trying to do the move correctly, and instead do it deliberately wrong. “Try pushing over this way to the left”, I'll say, “Now try the opposite over to the right. Now try high, or low. Which is easiest?”. By removing the obligation to get the move correct I hope to give permission to the student to just experience the effect they are having on their partner's balance. Once they can tune into this they can figure out for themselves what the right thing to do is, without me having to tell them.

However you do it, if you can get out of the rut of right and wrong you free up a natural capacity for experience-led, curiosity-driven learning. Soon you'll be flying along again, experiencing the learning equivalent of the jogger's high, and all thanks to that chemical messenger dopamine and a brain that's evolved to find things out for itself, and feel good while doing it.

Part of a series. #1 Learning Makes Itself Invisible

Cross-posted at schoolofeverything.com

Image: jogging on the beach by Naama

"

Slumber quality important for learning

Slumber quality important for learning: "It's not just the amount of sleep we get that is so important for learning, but the quality of that sleep. That's according to a new study that made precise use of beeping noises to disrupt deep 'slow-wave' sleep among 13 elderly participants (average age 60 years), without actually waking them up.

The beeping was used in such a way that although the participants' were deprived of deep sleep, their total sleep time and number of sleep stages were unaffected (compared with a comparison night of undisturbed sleep).

After a night of either shallow or deep sleep, the participants had their brains scanned while they viewed 50 images of houses and landscapes. The next day they had to say which of 100 images were repeated from the day before. The participants' performance was superior when a night with deep sleep had preceded the learning of the images, compared with a night of shallow sleep, even though total sleep time was the same in each case (36.6 images correctly identified versus 31.4 images, on average).

Moreover, the brain scans showed that during the initial viewing of images, activity in the hippocampus, the seat of human memory, was reduced after shallow versus deep sleep, but only for those images that were subsequently recalled. This suggests that shallow sleep somehow interferes with the way the hippocampus encodes new, explicit memories.

By contrast, so-called 'implicit memory', appears to be unaffected by sleep quality. Regardless of the kind of sleep they'd had, participants showed superior performance at a sequence learning task when the sequence was fixed rather than random, even though they were consciously unaware of what the actual sequence was.

'The mechanism by which deep sleep affects hippocampal function is unclear,' Ysbrand Van Der Werf and colleagues said, 'but may involve local synaptic changes resulting from slow wave activity.'
_________________________________

Ysbrand D Van Der Werf, Ellemarije Altena, Menno M Schoonheim, Ernesto J Sanz-Arigita, Jose´ C Vis, Wim De Rijke, Eus J W Van Someren (2009). Sleep benefits subsequent hippocampal functioning. Nature Neuroscience. In Press.

"

Rethinking the genetic theory of inheritance

Rethinking the genetic theory of inheritance: "In the first study of its kind, scientists at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Healt have detected evidence that DNA may not be the only carrier of heritable information; a secondary molecular mechanism called epigenetics may also account for some inherited traits and diseases. The epigenetic heritability may help explain currently unclear issues in human disease."

Doubts raised over brain scan findings

Doubts raised over brain scan findings: "Some of the hottest results in the nascent field of social neuroscience may be inflated or even entirely spurious.

"

Education professor dispels myths about gifted children

Education professor dispels myths about gifted children: "(Florida State University) Though not often recognized as 'special needs' students, gifted children require just as much attention and educational resources to thrive in school as do other students whose physical, behavioral, emotional or learning needs require special accommodations. So says a Florida State University professor who has studied gifted students for years."

On Mastery

On Mastery: "

There is a notion in Japanese that if you are a master of one thing, then you are master of all things. The idea goes back to the thirteenth century where in Rinzai Zen monasteries you sought enlightenment by meditating on koans. A koan is, "a succinct paradoxical statement or question used as a meditation discipline for novices.... The effort to 'solve' a koan is intended to exhaust the analytic intellect and the egoistic will, readying the mind to entertain an appropriate response on the intuitive level. Each such exercise constitutes both a communication of some aspect of Zen experience and a test of the novice's competence" (Micropaedia 1990, Kapleau 1980).

Buddhist scholar D. T. Suzuki's famous example of a koan is, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" To understand it, Suzuki wrote, you should "Devote yourself to it day and night, whether sitting or lying, whether walking or standing; devote yourselves to its solution during the entire course of the [day]. Even when dressing or taking meals, or attending to your natural wants, you have your every thought fixed on the koan. Make resolute efforts to keep it always before your mind."

The value of such an intense focus is that it allows you to master something, even if what you master is infinitesimal. The understanding of mastery can then act as a guide to tackling new tasks. For example, any child can finger paint. To paint well, however, you must learn the rules of the craft, and eventually get those rules down to a science. Japanese students of painting did not begin by trying to paint something as complex as a bamboo shoot. Instead, they began by mastering a very small technique, such as painting a straight line. Zen scholars Omori Sogen and Terayama Katsujo wrote, "The basis of Oriental calligraphy and painting is the line. Traditionally, students of both disciplines were instructed to spend a minimum of three years concentrating on the brushing of straight lines."

Of course, just learning the rules won't make you a true master. Painting by numbers can only take you so far. To paint a beautiful line, you have to know how to break the rules; you have to learn how to get the rules down to an art. Still, even the artful breaking of a few rules, however, does not a true master make. You can only paint an exquisite line when you achieve muga. Muga, concluded American anthropologist Ruth Benedict, is "a state of expertness in which there is no break, not even the thickness of a hair between a man's will and his act." You have mastered painting a line when you have left the rules behind. Or, to stretch the idiom, from first getting the rules down to a science, and then getting them down to an art, you must ultimately get them down to a religion--that is, Zen. Since Zen is the offspring of Daoism and Buddhism, it is perhaps not surprising that the ancient Daoist essayist Zhuangzi once wrote, "What I care about is the Dao, which goes beyond skill."

Once you have reached mastery in the small matter of the straight line, you are ready to practice painting a curved line. But this time you have an advantage. It is easier. Having achieved mastery once, you have a sense of how it feels, and this sense can guide you as you tackle new tasks. When learning to paint a curved line, you know what to look for; you know that you seek muga and that you can accomplish it. You have gained a taste of excellence, a sense of mastery, a nose for expertise. As the eighteenth-century Chinese art essayist Shen Tsung-ch'ien affirmed, "Once this is mastered, the skill so acquired can be freely applied to other objects."

So what? While it is not true that expertise crosses domains or even that excellence in one area makes you smarter in general, it is true that the process of achieving excellence in one area helps you to understand the nature of excellence. This understanding can help you to perceive it in others and act as a guide when you seek to achieve it in new domains.

References
Benedict, Ruth. 1946. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.
Chuang Tzu. The Chuang Tzu. 286 bce / 1964. Translated by Burton Watson. Columbia University Press.
Kapleau, Philip. 1980. The Three Pillars of Zen. New York: Anchor Press.
Micropaedia. 1991. The New Encyclopedia Britannica. Chicago.
Sogen, O, and Katsujo, T. 1983. Zen and the Art of Calligraphy. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Shten t. in Lin, Yutang. 1967. The Chinese Theory of Art. NY: Putnam Sons.
Suzuki, D.T. 1970. Essays in Zen Buddhism. London: Rider and Co.

Excerpted from Tad Waddington's book Lasting Contribution: How to Think, Plan, and Act to Accomplish Meaningful Work. Find out more at http://www.lastingcontribution.com.

© 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

"

Expect Brain Benefits from Humor

Expect Brain Benefits from Humor: "

Have you ever heard laughter that cracks you up even before you hear the joke? Or have you worked alongside people who like to laugh in ways that speed the clock during boring routines? When I taught at McGill University, and worked with Inuit in the most Northern communities on Baffin Island, we laughed a lot when my English smacked up against their Inuktitut in ways that neither language made sense. Laughter crosses over words, melds ages, bridges beliefs, and draws the best from brains, often separated by barriers few can cross well. Have you seen it happen?

Laughter’s also the best balancing elixir of the human brain, and yet still tops the missing-medicine-list in most workplaces. Does hilarity hail from your circles? If you’ve felt tensions flee in the wake of a simple joke, hooted over funny faux pas, or cut up over one-liners when least expected to double you up - you’ve likely also seen humor’s upshot to the brain. Humor’s especially effective when people laugh at themselves, in ways that lift morale, reduce tension or communicate differences in side-splitting style.

Not surprisingly, participants consistently rank humorous speakers as most effective, and humorous peers as favorite. Do you? It’s also true that, while research shows how lectures tend to work against human brains, at the same time, humor open minds to learn and retain more.

Unfortunately, some still wield humor to diminish people who differ, yet self-deprecating humor often attracts unity from differences. At its best, humor disarms people from attacking ideas presented, so that comments and questions pop up to replace circular counter arguments that that fail to find conclusions.

You needn’t develop the skills of a successful stand up comedian to see laughter work in your favor. Bantering can also increase a person’s chances for promotion, can ease negotiations in arduous meetings, and can even build trust among colleagues or clients. Have you seen it happen?

Simply because humor involves additional operations and areas of the brain, it can also help people to remember more information, and can aid a person’s transfer from cutting edge theories into highly competitive practices.

Experts recommend humor to release endorphins, trigger health, increase relaxation, and alter brain chemicals in the direction of winning. How so?

1. Release endorphins into the brain so that pain can be reduced, and people appear happily distracted from difficult situations.

2. Trigger health by stimulating the immune system and connecting mind and body exchanges in positive and healthier ways.

3. Increase relaxation through added oxygen to the brain, better air exchange and fuel for deeper thought or learning.

4. Alter chemicals within the brain, in ways that reduce stress, lift emotions and contribute to and sustains a sense of well being.

Check out recent research on laughter’s exilir effects as it ratchets up both emotional and mental health, and you’ll likely set an agenda to bring more deliberate humor into your life and workplace.

"

Skeptical of the Skeptics

Skeptical of the Skeptics: "I have complained -- more than once -- that the media and the public believe a psychological fact (some people are addicted to computer games) if a neuroimaging study is somehow involved, even if the study itself is irrelevant (after all, the definition of addiction does not require a certain pattern of brain activity -- it requires a certain pattern of physical activity).

Not surprisingly, I and like-minded researchers were pleased when a study came out last year quantifying this apparent fact. That is, the researchers actually found that people rated an explanation of a psychological phenomenon as better if it contained an irrelevant neuroscience fact.

Neuroskeptic has written a very provocative piece urging us to be skeptical of this paper:

This kind of research - which claims to provide hard, scientific evidence for the existence of a commonly believed in psychological phenomenon, usually some annoyingly irrational human quirk - is dangerous; it should always be read with extra care. The danger is that the results can seem so obviously true ('Well of course!') and so important ('How many times have I complained about this?') that the methodological strengths and weaknesses of the study go unnoticed.

Read the rest of the post here.

Read the blog: http://coglanglab.blogspot.com
Do the research: http://coglanglab.org

"

Competition [The Frontal Cortex]

Competition [The Frontal Cortex]: "

Here's an interesting finding, which is summarized by Kevin Lewis in the Boston Globe Ideas section:

If you've ever had to take a test in a room with a lot of people, you may be able to relate to this study: The more people you're competing against, it turns out, the less motivated and competitive you are. Psychologists observed this pattern across several different situations. Students taking standardized tests in more crowded venues got lower scores. Students asked to complete a short general-knowledge test as fast as possible to win a prize if they were in the fastest 20 percent completed it faster if they were told that they were competing against 10 people rather than 100. Students asked how fast they would run in a race for a $1,000 prize if they finished in the top 10 percent said they would run faster in a race against 50 people rather than 500. Similarly, students contemplating a job interview or Facebook-friending contest said they would be less competitive if they expected more competitors - even if 'winning' only required finishing in the top 20 percent. The authors conclude that competitiveness was curtailed because the larger the group, the more difficult it is to compare oneself directly to others.

Here's the original paper, which also shows that SAT scores fall as the average number of test-takers at a particular venue increases. I'd suggest that this phenomenon - people are intimidated by too many competitors - is related to another well-documented psychological phenomenon: excessive choice. Consider some of the work done by Sheena Iyengar, of Columbia University. In 2000, she set up a booth in an upscale supermarket with a variety of gourmet jams and jellies, all of which scored about equally well in taste tests. Sometimes, her booth showcased 6 different jams, and sometimes it had 24 different jams. Economists assume that more choices lead to increased consumption, since everyone can try out the different jams and find their favorite. (They can maximize their subjective utility.) But when Iyengar increased the number of jams on display, purchases of jam decreased dramatically. When her booth only had 6 different jams, 30 percent of people who stopped by the both ended up buying one of the varieties. However, when she put 24 different jams on display, only 3 percent of people bought a product. All the possibilities short-circuited the brain.

What does this have to do with competition and the number of competitors? In both instances, the brain is easily overwhelmed and intimidated. It can't figure out which jam is the best, and so it shuts down and moves on. Likewise, when it knows that it won't win the competition - they are just too many competitors - the mind is less willing to put in the effort. (This, of course, contradicts one of the implicit assumptions of modern capitalism, which is that more competition makes everybody better.) We save up our mental energy for a task that we might actually win, and for food products that don't require so much cognitive effort.

But don't despair: Iyengar has recently published a study showing that one way to combat the effects of excessive choice is to group items into categories. It turns out that even useless and arbitrary categories make people happier with their choices.

61 college students were led into one of two simulated magazine stores. Each 'store' had the same 144 magazines, but those in the first store were grouped into three categories, using plaques on the shelves. Magazines in the second store were separated into 18 categories, like 'computing,' 'crossword' and 'bridal.' When the students were later asked to estimate the variety of magazines available, those who visited the second store gave higher answers than those who visited the first store.

In another study, students who chose from a coffee menu liked their choices better when the menu grouped the coffees into categories, even if the names were meaningless -- for example, 'Lola's.'

I'd suggest that one simple way to erase the effect of excessive competition is to have people take tests in small rooms, and not great big lecture halls. (I'll never forget the deflating feeling of taking an organic chemistry final in a classroom full of 550 sweating pre-med students.) The subdivisions can be arbitrary and meaningless, but they might make people less frightened by the prospect of all their competitors. Here's the dispiriting takeaway: when the brain gets intimidated - and it can be intimidated by too many jams or too many people - it typically doesn't try harder. It just shuts down.

One follow-up experiment I'd like to see is whether or not professional competitors, be it chess grandmasters or Olympic athletes, are less vulnerable to this effect. Perhaps they're turned on by the prospect of defeating 500 strangers? What do you think?

Read the comments on this post..."

Meditation and the neuroscience of inner peace

Meditation and the neuroscience of inner peace: "

SharpBrains has an interesting interview with neuroscientist Andrew Newberg who discusses his ongoing research into the brain science of meditation.

As we reported last year, research into meditation is really gathering pace and is suggesting that the practice has some immediate and remarkable benefits for our cognitive abilities that are clearly reflected in changes in brain function.

Most of the lab work has focused on how meditation enhances attention while most of the clinical research work on meditation has focused on its ability to prevent relapse in severe depression.

However, Newberg mentions some ongoing work where they're attempting to apply some of the lab work to boosting cognitive function in people who presumably have dementia or age-related cognitive difficulties:

Scientists are researching, for example, what elements of meditation may help manage stress and improve memory. How breathing and meditation techniques can contribute to health and wellness. For example, my lab is now conducting a study where 15 older adults with memory problems are practicing Kirtan Kriya meditation during 8 weeks, and we have found very promising preliminary outcomes in terms of the impact on brain function. This work is being funded by the Alzheimer's Research and Prevention Foundation, but we have submitted a grant request to the National Institute of Health as well.

Also, I just that Time magazine had a special issue on the practice and science of meditation in 2003 which is fully available online, including a funky, if not slightly over-simplified, guide to the neuroanatomy of meditation.

Link to SharpBrains interview with Andrew Newberg.

Link to previous Mind Hacks piece on neuroscience of meditation.

Link to 2003 Time special issue of meditation.

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"Self-efficacy" and sticking with the program [Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge]

"Self-efficacy" and sticking with the program [Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge]: "

Matt Fitzgerald, a senior editor at Triathlete and the author of a number of books on training for endurance sports, is currently hard at work on Racing Weight. Of a chapter called 'Guidelines for Beginners,' Matt notes:

[It] encourages beginning endurance athletes to focus on learning to enjoy their chosen sport (instead of on common beginner goals such as losing weight), because enjoyment is the number-one predictor of long-term exercise adherence. But do you know what the number-one predictor of exercise enjoyment is? It's self-efficacy, or the feeling of activity-specific competence.

Matt goes on to note that 'self-efficacy' (and I had never heard the term, but it has a Wikipedia entry and hence must be both real and important) is chiefly a function of objective aptitude or skill:

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post..."

Kandel on Psychotherapy [The Frontal Cortex]

Kandel on Psychotherapy [The Frontal Cortex]: "

I've written before about the the failure of basic neuroscience research to advance neuropharmacology (at least, it's been a failure so far), but it's nice to see Eric Kandel, my old mentor (and one of my scientific heroes), make the same argument. Kandel began his scientific career as a Freudian psychiatrist - he was soon turned off by the blatant the lack of empiricism - so his recent interest in the biological benefits of talk therapy, and ways of rigorously measuring those benefits, provides an interesting snapshot on the state of neuroscience.

On the one hand, it's sobering that talk therapy remains the most effective treatment for a wide variety of illness, from chronic back pain to depression. Alas, this says more about the failure of pharmacology than it does about the therapeutic value of talk therapy. On the other hand, science is finally beginning to understand the anatomical mechanisms that allow talk therapy to work. We can see how mere words and conversation profoundly influence the activity of the brain. Here's Kandel, writing for the Dana Foundation:

The other thing that has impressed me is that in the last 20 years we've had no advances in pharmacotherapy. We started off with interesting antipsychotic agents, interesting antidepressants, but they really have progressed very modestly. Selective serotonin [re]-uptake inhibitors--each company's copying from the other using exactly the same assays to develop it. Twenty years, and there's general agreement that there is no difference between most of the selective serotonin [re]-uptake inhibitors and no improvement either. A drug sells not because it's any better than any other but because there are major names associated with it.

In schizophrenia, the issue is even worse, because for 45 years there probably hasn't been a better drug. There are drugs that have better side effects, but there have not been major developments in drugs.

The one thing that has become better is the legitimacy of psychotherapy. There are several behavioral therapies out there--interpersonal therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy--that have been shown in rigorous control studies, in depression, for example, to be at least as good as selective serotonin [re]-uptake inhibitors for mild and moderate depression and to be synergistic with drugs in severe depression.

Moreover, we've beginning to identify--particularly in depression--certain areas of the brain that function abnormally. For example, [Emory University psychiatry professor] Helen Mayberg showed that [Brodmann] area 25--the subgenual cingulate cortex--is hyperactive in depression. This area connects to the amygdala; the amygdala also is hyperactive in depression. When patients respond to psychotherapy, those abnormalities reverse. So for the first time we not only have a psychotherapy that works but we have an independent, biological measure, an assay, and we can see to what degree this works.

Thanks Ted!

Read the comments on this post..."

Religion may have evolved because of its ability to help people exercise self-control

Religion may have evolved because of its ability to help people exercise self-control: "(University of Miami) A study by a University of Miami psychologist reveals that religion facilitates the exercise of self-control and attainment of long-term goals.In his study, Michael McCullough, a psychology professor at the University of Miami, finds a strong correlation between religion and self-control, or self-regulation. He explains that religious people may have at their disposal a set of unique resources that makes them better suited to adhering to long term goals."

How Religions Motivate Us

How Religions Motivate Us: "

Basic instincts can shed light on human behavior and safeguard against modern trappings that we did not evolve around. Of all the modern elements that can hijack our evolved machinery, religion is among the most potent.

As you may have read in my first blog, feelings, emotions, pleasures, and pains always serve a purpose tied to basic instincts. That is, feelings evolved to get us to satisfy our basic instincts. Basic instincts, in turn, are tied to evolution. This mechanism has served us well for millions of years, but modern elements can redirect these feelings; modern elements such as processed meats, flavorings, narcotics, alcohol, tobacco, fashion magazines, shopping, and even commercials. Anything that we did not evolve surrounded by for millions of years has the potential to direct us in ways that evolution did not prepare us for. This does not mean that everything modern is bad. It only means we should be aware of their potential side-effects.

Many scientists prefer not to refer to basic instincts, but instead refer only to evolutionary principals. I believe it is often (though not always) easier and more practical to use basic instincts to unravel everyday life, rather than back-tracking to each individual evolutionary force from the annals of primal history. Models are here for our benefit. As the famous statistician, George Box, proclaimed (and Einstein occasionally quoted), "All models are wrong, but some are useful."

This article aims to briefly touch upon one particular aspect of the "religion model"--namely, how it deals with human feelings. A dire contrast between brain science and religion is the very basis or presumption of religion: namely, that feelings are just "there", and that's all there is to it. In a country where battles are raging, metaphorically, between evolution and religion, it could be the conflict between brain science and religion that is most irreconcilable.

Back to my favorite movie quote: "Explain it to me like I'm a ten-year-old." All feelings evolved to get us to act towards our basic instincts. Pleasure and pain are the "carrot and stick". When the promise of pleasure will not get you to eat, there is the pain of hunger. When the promise of comfort will not keep you dressed for the winter, there is the pain of cold. When the promise of intimacy and companionship will not get you to socialize, there is the pain of loneliness. Some of the pleasures and pains get decidedly more difficult to define as we catalogue the wide array of complex human interactions. Religion, occasionally, is very simple.

The motivational elements of the big monotheistic religions involve the promise of heaven and the threat of hell (or other punishment). These represent a fairly clear carrot and stick. If you are good you will go to paradise. If you are bad you will be killed or damned. If you believe you will be saved. If you disbelieve you will burn, suffer, or die. Many of us were taught these principals from such a young age that we may have forgotten, as adults, to go back and review them. Here are some quotes from the various scriptures of the big monotheistic religions to allow us to perhaps see their messages in a new light.

"Whosoever doeth work on the Sabbath, he shall surely be put to death" (Exodus 31:15).
"The Lord thy God is a jealous God, lest the anger of the Lord thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth" (Deuteronomy 6:15).
"Those mine enemies which would not that I should reign over them, bring them hither and slay them before me" (Luke 19:27).
"In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction" (Second Thessalonians 1:8-9).
"Those who disbelieve...will be fuel for Fire" (The Family of Imran 3:10).

In case the message was not clear, the Quran mentions the word "doom" on 221 occasions--typically in relation to non-believers. You can read about a heavy doom, a painful doom, an awful doom, terrific doom, and there's even a special double doom: "For those who disbelieve and debar from the way of Allah, we add doom to doom" (The Bee 16:88).

In the Old Testament, priests have their own special threat in the event they do not teach religion correctly: "And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you. If you will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name, behold, I will corrupt your sperm, and spread excrement upon your faces" (Malachi 2:1-4).

These passages illustrate some of the threats found in the various scriptures. So much for the stick. What about the carrot? What promises of heaven and pleasure are made?

"Verily, for the righteous, there will be a paradise; gardens and grapeyards; and young full-breasted maidens of equal age; and a full cup of wine" (The Tidings 78:31-34).
"He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved" (Mark 16:16).
"Amid gardens and watersprings, attired in silk embroidery, we shall wed them unto fair maidens with wide, lovely eyes" (Smoke 44:52-54).
"God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain" (Revelations 21:4).

The subconscious mind uses feelings to guide our actions. Our feelings are influenced by modern trappings, and indeed religion is modern by evolutionary standards. The mental mechanisms that evolved to get us to satisfy our basic instincts are redirected, somewhat, when the concept of an afterlife is included. As a result, our actions are potentially affected, and perhaps even our beliefs.

Only recently have we understood that feelings are tied to evolutionary forces and basic instincts. In a world where most people are not educated deeply about their feelings from a young age, or perhaps at any age, we may find a great many individuals manipulated by their feelings instead of understanding them. And when satisfying basic instincts is something that happens in an afterlife, it could even become a world in which the meaning of life--as strange as it sounds--becomes death.

* In-depth analysis contained in The Third Basic Instinct.

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