Disappearing mothers. What Is Character? Debunking the Myth of Fixed Personality. Why We Cry: The Science of Sobbing and Emotional Tearing. By Maria Popova Why it’s easier to prevent a crying spell than to stop one already underway. The human body is an extraordinary machine, and our behavior an incessant source of fascination. In Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond (public library), psychology and neuroscience professor Robert R.
Provine undertakes an “analysis and celebration of undervalued, informative, and sometimes disreputable human behavior” by applying the lens of anthropologically-inspired, observational “Small Science” — “small because it does not require fancy equipment and a big budget, not because it’s trivial” — to a wealth of clinical research into the biology, physiology, and neuropsychology of our bodily behaviors. Take, for instance, the science of what we call “crying,” a uniquely human capacity — a grab-bag term that consists of “vocal crying,” or sobbing, and “emotional tearing,” our quiet waterworks. Photograph via Flickr Commons Donating = Loving Share on Tumblr. The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity. Limits Of The Human Body: How Much Sleep Deprivation, Radiation & Acceleration Can We Survive?
By: Natalie Wolchover Published: 08/13/2012 09:21 AM EDT on Lifes Little Mysteries One hears epic accounts of people surviving bullets to the brain, 10-story freefalls or months stranded at sea. But put a human anywhere in the known universe except for the thin shell of space that extends a couple of miles above or below sea level on Earth, and we perish within minutes.
As strong and resilient as the human body seems in some situations, considered in the context of the cosmos as a whole, it's unnervingly fragile. Many of the boundaries within which a typical human can survive have been fully established; the well-known "rule of threes" dictates how long we can forgo air, water and food (roughly three minutes, three days and three weeks, respectively). Other limits are more speculative, because people have seldom, if ever, tested them. For example, how long can you stay awake before you die? How long can we stay awake? But at what point would he have died? How much radiation can we absorb? Study: Proof That We Sexually Objectify Women - Lindsay Abrams. We look at women the same way we look at houses and sandwiches: as composites of attractive parts. Jason Lee/Reuters PROBLEM: Few would argue that the objectification of women is a real thing -- and a real problem -- but as yet there's been no cognitive explanation for it in a literal sense.
Do we really look at women differently than we do men, and are they actually objectified in the eye -- and brain -- of the beholder? METHODOLOGY: Images of average, fully clothed individuals (read: no supermodels in bikinis) were quickly flashed before the eyes of participants. After each one, the participants would then be shown two side-by-side images that zoomed in on one, "sexual" aspect of the individual (for example, a woman's midriff) and asked to identify the version that hadn't been modified.
The experiment was also reversed, so that participants first looked at a specific part and then had to identify it in the context of an entire body. Top five regrets of the dying. There was no mention of more sex or bungee jumps. A palliative nurse who has counselled the dying in their last days has revealed the most common regrets we have at the end of our lives. And among the top, from men in particular, is 'I wish I hadn't worked so hard'. Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives.
She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware: 1.
"This was the most common regret of all. 2. "This came from every male patient that I nursed. 3. "Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. 4. 5. Wired for Culture: How Language Enabled "Visual Theft," Sparked Innovation, and Helped Us Evolve. Benefits Of Early Risers - John Farrell. What Does It Mean to Be Human? By Maria Popova Primates, philosophers, and how subjectivity ensures the absolute truth of our existence.
What does it mean to be human? Centuries worth of scientific thought, artistic tradition and spiritual practice have attempted to answer this most fundamental question about our existence. And yet the diversity of views and opinions is so grand it has made that answer remarkably elusive. While we don’t necessarily believe such an “answer” — singular and conclusive by definition — even exists, today we make an effort to understand the wholeness of a human being without compartmentalizing humanity into siloed views of the brain, emotion, morality and so forth.
So we look at this complex issue from three separate angles — evolutionary biology, philosophy and neuroscience — hoping weave together a somewhat more holistic understanding of the whole. There is a lot more biology to our behavior than we used to think.” ~ Richard Wrangham Share on Tumblr. Millennial Women Are Burning Out At Work By 30... And It's Great For Business. How Emotional Equations Can Change Your Life. How Family Violence Changes the Way Children's Brains Function - Esther Entin - Health. In much the same way that combat affects a soldier, violence causes a kid's natural alarm and response system to become too sensitive. Family violence affects the brains of children in much the same way combat affects soldiers, according to a recent study. The research found that chronic stress in children's lives affects their stress response systems -- in particular, two specific areas of the brain, the amygdala and the anterior insula (AI).
Our body and brain are designed to recognize and react to threats to our well-being. This is an important capacity to increase our survival in adverse circumstances. But what happens when these alarm and response systems become over-sensitized as a result of chronic, or long-term stress? The amygdala is the part of the brain that is involved in emotional responses, memory, anticipation of, and preparation for stress. But it is not just the brains of those exhibiting the symptoms of PTSD that are affected. Image: Ilya Andriyanov/Shutterstock. 7 Essential Books on Optimism. By Maria Popova What the love of honey has to do with ancient wisdom, our capacity for hope, and the future of technology. Every once in a while, we all get burned out.
Sometimes, charred. And while a healthy dose of cynicism and skepticism may help us get by, it’s in those times that we need nothing more than to embrace life’s promise of positivity with open arms. Here are seven wonderful books that help do just that with an arsenal ranging from the light visceral stimulation of optimistic design to the serious neuroscience findings about our proclivity for the positive. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, one of our must-read children’s books with philosophy for grown-ups, is among the most poetic and hopeful reflections on human existence ever penned.
Here is my secret. Published in 1943, translated into 180 languages since and adapted to just about every medium, Exupéry’s famous novella is one of the best-selling books of all time. Reviewed in full, with more images, here. The Quest for the Origin of Altruism: The Tragic Story of George Price. By Maria Popova From Darwin to Skinner, or what vampire bats have to do with amoebas and random acts of kindness. Where does true altruism come from? Does it really exist? These are the questions that occupied the brilliant and troubled mind of population geneticist and author George Price, who developed what’s still regarded as the most accurate mathematical, biological and evolutionary model for altruism before taking his own life at the age of 52.
[I]f the search for the natural origins of goodness has woven a historical tapestry of unusual complexity and color, of strikingly original science and dramatic personalities and events, one important thread has so far been missing. But Harman’s story is less about the tragedy of Price’s demise than it is about the scientific rigor of his work and the complex, profound ideas at the heart of his curiosity. For a taste of this extraordinary story, see Harman’s recent RSA talk: Biology is not destiny — it’s capacity. Image via Flickr Commons. Human Development Index: Deconstructing development. I Married You for Happiness — By Lily Tuck — Book Review. What Is a Person? By Maria Popova What remix culture and philosophy have to do with personhood in the age of synthetic biology. We’ve previously explored three different disciplines’ perspectives on what it means to be human and a neuroscientist’s search for the self. But what, exactly, is a person? That’s exactly what sociologist Christian Smith examines in What Is a Person?
: Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good from the Person Up — a fascinating and ambitious meditation on the grand existential question, the answer to which determines our view of our selves, our expectations of others, and our conception of what makes a good society, arguing that much of contemporary theory and thought on personhood is incomplete, short-sighted, misguided even. Impoverished is he who can predict economic trends but who does not well understand his own self.” ~ Christian Smith (Economic bonus: Amazon has a deal on the Kindle edition, currently available for $4.95 — a sixth of the analog version.)