Brain Pickings 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. The amygdala is the part of the brain that is involved in emotional responses, memory, anticipation of, and preparation for stress. When a person has been exposed to certain kinds of stressful situations, such as ongoing family violence, the amygdala may become overreactive. But it is not just the brains of those exhibiting the symptoms of PTSD that are affected.
The 100 Most Beautiful Words in English ere are the 100 most beautiful words in English. How do we know we have the most beautiful? They were chosen by Robert Beard, who has been making dictionaries, creating word lists, and writing poetry for 40 years. Dr. The words in this book will decorate your articles, essays, blogs, term papers, memos, love letters-even conversations with those we love. 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. In The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness, Oren Harman tells the fascinating story of Price’s life and his tireless quest, intersecting it with the seminal work of iconic psychiatrist B. [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. For a taste of this extraordinary story, see Harman’s recent RSA talk: Donating = Loving
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. From The Leakey Foundation, which aims to increase scientific knowledge and public understanding of human origins, evolution, behavior, and survival, comes What Makes Us Human? There is a lot more biology to our behavior than we used to think.” ~ Richard Wrangham Dan Dennett is one of today’s most prominent and prolific philosophers. It’s very hard to change people’s minds about something like consciousness, and I finally figured out the reason for that. Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. Share on Tumblr
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. Equal parts critical and constructive, Smith confronts the basic paradox of the social sciences — their preoccupation with describing and analyzing human activities, cultures, and social structures but falling short on the core understanding of the human condition — and tackles the four fundamental flaws of social science in defining personhood. 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.) There is nothing new under the sun. HT my mind on books Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. Share on Tumblr
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.
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. RESULTS: Regardless of gender, participants consistently recognized women's sexual body parts more easily when presented in isolation. CONCLUSION: The cognitive process behind our perception of objects is the same that we use when looking at women, and both genders are guilty of taking in the parts instead of the whole.
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). Experiments over the decades — some intentional, others accidental — have helped stake out the domain within which we, literally, live. How long can we stay awake? But at what point would he have died? They've done it with rats, however.
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. 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. As an adult, you cry much less than when young, and your crying is more often subdued, teary weeping than the demonstrative, vocal sobbing of childhood. . . To better illustrate the physiology of crying, Provine contrasts it with that of laughing, pointing out that the two are complementary behaviors and understanding one helps understand the other. Specialists may argue whether there is a typical cry or laugh, but enough is known about these vocalizations to provide vivid contrasts. One curious feature crying and laughing have in common, which any human being with a beating heart can attest to: Donating = Loving