All about how our perceptions affect our realities.
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@aboutthebrain
All about how our perceptions affect our realities.
Study participants were also found to have increased brain function after drinking cold water immediately after waking up, but levels were much higher for those who had ice cream.
Most parents would consider it a crime to give a child ice cream for breakfast. But they might rethink allowing their kids to have a scoop of the cold, sweet treat first thing in the morning, if they knew it could make them smarter. Although an early morning sugar rush may be parents and teachers worst fears, a new study recently found eating ice cream first thing in the morning can actually be beneficial for the brain. The study, published by Kyorin University professor Yoshihiko Koga, said eating ice cream right after waking up can result in improved instances of alertness and mental performance.
(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zafiGBrFkRM) Dyslexia affects up to 1 in 5 people, but the experience of dyslexia isn't always the same. This difficulty in processing language exists along a spectrum -- one that doesn't necessarily fit with labels like "normal" and "defective." Kelli Sandman-Hurley urges us to think again about dyslexic brain function and to celebrate the neurodiversity of the human brain. Lesson by Kelli Sandman-Hurley, animation by Marc Christoforidis.
(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMmOLN5zBLY) It’s obvious that knowing more than one language can make certain things easier — like traveling or watching movies without subtitles. But are there other advantages to having a bilingual (or multilingual) brain? Mia Nacamulli details the three types of bilingual brains and shows how knowing more than one language keeps your brain healthy, complex and actively engaged.
Never underestimate http://ift.tt/1HK4qQW
Black Boys Viewed as Older, Less Innocent Than Whites, Research Finds
Police likelier to use force against black children when officers ‘dehumanize’ blacks, study says
WASHINGTON — Black boys as young as 10 may not be viewed in the same light of childhood innocence as their white peers, but are instead more likely to be mistaken as older, be perceived as guilty and face police violence if accused of a crime, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.
“Children in most societies are considered to be in a distinct group with characteristics such as innocence and the need for protection. Our research found that black boys can be seen as responsible for their actions at an age when white boys still benefit from the assumption that children are essentially innocent,” said author Phillip Atiba Goff, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles. The study was published online in APA’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology®.
Researchers tested 176 police officers, mostly white males, average age 37, in large urban areas, to determine their levels of two distinct types of bias — prejudice and unconscious dehumanization of black people by comparing them to apes. To test for prejudice, researchers had officers complete a widely used psychological questionnaire with statements such as “It is likely that blacks will bring violence to neighborhoods when they move in.” To determine officers’ dehumanization of blacks, the researchers gave them a psychological task in which they paired blacks and whites with large cats, such as lions, or with apes. Researchers reviewed police officers’ personnel records to determine use of force while on duty and found that those who dehumanized blacks were more likely to have used force against a black child in custody than officers who did not dehumanize blacks. The study described use of force as takedown or wrist lock; kicking or punching; striking with a blunt object; using a police dog, restraints or hobbling; or using tear gas, electric shock or killing. Only dehumanization and not police officers’ prejudice against blacks — conscious or not — was linked to violent encounters with black children in custody, according to the study.
The authors noted that police officers’ unconscious dehumanization of blacks could have been the result of negative interactions with black children, rather than the cause of using force with black children. “We found evidence that overestimating age and culpability based on racial differences was linked to dehumanizing stereotypes, but future research should try to clarify the relationship between dehumanization and racial disparities in police use of force,” Goff said.
The study also involved 264 mostly white, female undergraduate students from large public U.S. universities. In one experiment, students rated the innocence of people ranging from infants to 25-year-olds who were black, white or an unidentified race. The students judged children up to 9 years old as equally innocent regardless of race, but considered black children significantly less innocent than other children in every age group beginning at age 10, the researchers found.
The students were also shown photographs alongside descriptions of various crimes and asked to assess the age and innocence of white, black or Latino boys ages 10 to 17. The students overestimated the age of blacks by an average of 4.5 years and found them more culpable than whites or Latinos, particularly when the boys were matched with serious crimes, the study found. Researchers used questionnaires to assess the participants’ prejudice and dehumanization of blacks. They found that participants who implicitly associated blacks with apes thought the black children were older and less innocent.
In another experiment, students first viewed either a photo of an ape or a large cat and then rated black and white youngsters in terms of perceived innocence and need for protection as children. Those who looked at the ape photo gave black children lower ratings and estimated that black children were significantly older than their actual ages, particularly if the child had been accused of a felony rather than a misdemeanor.
“The evidence shows that perceptions of the essential nature of children can be affected by race, and for black children, this can mean they lose the protection afforded by assumed childhood innocence well before they become adults,” said co-author Matthew Jackson, PhD, also of UCLA. “With the average age overestimation for black boys exceeding four-and-a-half years, in some cases, black children may be viewed as adults when they are just 13 years old.”
Article: “The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published online Feb. 24, 2014; Phillip Atiba Goff, PhD, and Matthew Christian Jackson, PhD; University of California, Los Angeles; Brooke Allison, PhD, and Lewis Di Leone, PhD, National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Boston; Carmen Marie Culotta, PhD, Pennsylvania State University; and Natalie Ann DiTomasso, JD, University of Pennsylvania.
Phillip Atiba Goff, PhD, can be contacted by phone at (310) 206-8614 (preferred) or by email. If Goff is unavailable, contact Matthew Christian Jackson, PhD, by phone at (814) 574-9781 or by email.
Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice
There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.
The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.
"Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood," he said.
Controversy ahead
The findings combine three hot-button topics.
"They've pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics," said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. "When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it's bound to upset somebody."
Polling data and social and political science research do show that prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals that those of other political persuasions, Nosek told LiveScience. [7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You]
"The unique contribution here is trying to make some progress on the most challenging aspect of this," Nosek said, referring to the new study. "It's not that a relationship like that exists, but why it exists."
Brains and bias
Earlier studies have found links between low levels of education and higher levels of prejudice, Hodson said, so studying intelligence seemed a logical next step. The researchers turned to two studies of citizens in the United Kingdom, one that has followed babies since their births in March 1958, and another that did the same for babies born in April 1970. The children in the studies had their intelligence assessed at age 10 or 11; as adults ages 30 or 33, their levels of social conservatism and racism were measured. [Life's Extremes: Democrat vs. Republican]
In the first study, verbal and nonverbal intelligence was measured using tests that asked people to find similarities and differences between words, shapes and symbols. The second study measured cognitive abilities in four ways, including number recall, shape-drawing tasks, defining words and identifying patterns and similarities among words. Average IQ is set at 100.
Social conservatives were defined as people who agreed with a laundry list of statements such as "Family life suffers if mum is working full-time," and "Schools should teach children to obey authority." Attitudes toward other races were captured by measuring agreement with statements such as "I wouldn't mind working with people from other races." (These questions measured overt prejudiced attitudes, but most people, no matter how egalitarian, do hold unconscious racial biases; Hodson's work can't speak to this "underground" racism.)
As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias.
People with lower cognitive abilities also had less contact with people of other races.
"This finding is consistent with recent research demonstrating that intergroup contact is mentally challenging and cognitively draining, and consistent with findings that contact reduces prejudice," said Hodson, who along with his colleagues published these results online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science.
A study of averages
Hodson was quick to note that the despite the link found between low intelligence and social conservatism, the researchers aren't implying that all liberals are brilliant and all conservatives stupid. The research is a study of averages over large groups, he said.
"There are multiple examples of very bright conservatives and not-so-bright liberals, and many examples of very principled conservatives and very intolerant liberals," Hodson said.
Nosek gave another example to illustrate the dangers of taking the findings too literally.
"We can say definitively men are taller than women on average," he said. "But you can't say if you take a random man and you take a random woman that the man is going to be taller. There's plenty of overlap."
Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that strict right-wing ideology might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world.
"Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order," Hodson said, explaining why these beliefs might draw those with low intelligence. "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice."
In another study, this one in the United States, Hodson and Busseri compared 254 people with the same amount of education but different levels of ability in abstract reasoning. They found that what applies to racism may also apply to homophobia. People who were poorer at abstract reasoning were more likely to exhibit prejudice against gays. As in the U.K. citizens, a lack of contact with gays and more acceptance of right-wing authoritarianism explained the link. [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked]
Simple viewpoints
Hodson and Busseri's explanation of their findings is reasonable, Nosek said, but it is correlational. That means the researchers didn't conclusively prove that the low intelligence caused the later prejudice. To do that, you'd have to somehow randomly assign otherwise identical people to be smart or dumb, liberal or conservative. Those sorts of studies obviously aren't possible.
The researchers controlled for factors such as education and socioeconomic status, making their case stronger, Nosek said. But there are other possible explanations that fit the data. For example, Nosek said, a study of left-wing liberals with stereotypically naïve views like "every kid is a genius in his or her own way," might find that people who hold these attitudes are also less bright. In other words, it might not be a particular ideology that is linked to stupidity, but extremist views in general.
"My speculation is that it's not as simple as their model presents it," Nosek said. "I think that lower cognitive capacity can lead to multiple simple ways to represent the world, and one of those can be embodied in a right-wing ideology where 'People I don't know are threats' and 'The world is a dangerous place'. ... Another simple way would be to just assume everybody is wonderful."
Prejudice is of particular interest because understanding the roots of racism and bias could help eliminate them, Hodson said. For example, he said, many anti-prejudice programs encourage participants to see things from another group's point of view. That mental exercise may be too taxing for people of low IQ.
"There may be cognitive limits in the ability to take the perspective of others, particularly foreigners," Hodson said. "Much of the present research literature suggests that our prejudices are primarily emotional in origin rather than cognitive. These two pieces of information suggest that it might be particularly fruitful for researchers to consider strategies to change feelings toward outgroups," rather than thoughts.
3D Models of The Human Body: Interactive Online Tool
Hi,
Healthline.com recently launched a free interactive “Human Body Maps” tool. I thought your readers would be interested in our body map of the Hypothalamus: http://www.healthline.com/human-body-maps/hypothalamus
It would be much appreciated if you could include this tool on http://aboutthebrain.tumblr.com/post/60226776603/aging-really-is-in-your-head and / or share with friends and followers. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thank you in advance. Warm Regards,
Maggie Danhakl- Assistant Marketing Manager p: 415-281-3124 f: 415-281-3199
Healthline Networks, Inc. * Connect to Better Health 660 Third Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 www.healthline.com
How Stress Affects The Body
Hi,
I hope all is well with you. Healthline just published an infographic detailing the effects of stresson the body. This is an interactive chart allowing the reader to pick the side effect they want to learn more about.
You can see the overview of the report here: http://www.healthline.com/health/stress/effects-on-body
Our users have found our guide very useful and I thought it would be a great resource for your page: http://aboutthebrain.tumblr.com/post/56746836895/booze-binging-and-the-devil-you-dont-know
I would appreciate it if you could review our request and consider adding this visual representation of the effects of stress to your site or sharing it on your social media feeds.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
All the best, Maggie Danhakl • Assistant Marketing Manager
Healthline • The Power of Intelligent Health 660 Third Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 www.healthline.com | @Healthline | @HealthlineCorp
About Us: corp.healthline.com
Valuable information for Inside the Brain
Hi,
I thought you might find this interesting. Healthline has compiled a list of the Effects of Caffeine on the Body in a visual graphic and I thought you and your readers would be interested in seeing the information.
You can check out the information at http://www.healthline.com/health/caffeine-effects-on-body We’ve had good feedback about the article and we think it will benefit your readers by giving them med-reviewed information in a visual way.
If you think this information is a good fit for your audience would you share it on your site, http://aboutthebrain.tumblr.com/post/73487422081/study-finds-later-school-start-times-improve-sleep , or social media?
Let me know what you think and have a great week.
All the best, Maggie Danhakl • Assistant Marketing Manager p: 415-281-3100 f: 415-281-3199
Healthline • The Power of Intelligent Health 660 Third Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 www.healthline.com | @Healthline | @HealthlineCorp
Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant. It can temporarily make you feel more awake and energetic, but it can also give you the jitters. Withdrawal or overdose can cause a range of problems.
Can You Feel Two Emotions at Once?
Indecision, vacillation, procrastination—they’re all driven by bipolar emotions.
Have you ever felt happy and sad at the same time? Or experienced an emotion as bittersweet? Or had feelings so mixed that you were compelled to vacillate between two courses of action—or reaction? Or maybe torn between two (or more) emotions? If you can relate to any of these possibilities, this piece should help you better understand how having contrasting feelings can manifest as uncertainty, confusion, or ambivalence.
Being somehow “trapped” in a conflicting emotional state might seem rather strange. After all, rationally considered, how can you love and hate somebody at the same time? Or at once be attracted to, and repulsed by, one and the same event? Yet, however paradoxical, such experiences are universal. For at one time or another, we’ve all found ourselves in a push/pull situation. Or one that, in its multi-dimensionality, simultaneously left us with the ambiguous impulse to approach an object—yet, at the same time, avoid it.
In fact, what’s typically described as procrastination mostly relates to such mixed feelings, or emotional ambivalence. How could you possibly act decisively, or even act at all, if you’re of two minds—or rather, feelings—about something? Unquestionably, the roots of procrastination are embedded in this vexing emotional bipolarity. Not infrequently your undertaking something new may stall out, or be put on hold, because you’re “split down the middle” in how you feel about proceeding with it. You may be eager and excited to start a venture, while at the same time harboring fears about not being able to complete it successfully. And this nagging anxiety will give you pause. For something deep inside you forces you to put on the brakes. In such instances, you’re willing—at least in part—to make yourself vulnerable and take certain risks because of the potential pleasures and rewards your pursuit offers. But these positives may be perfectly counterbalanced by a strong, unshakeable need to protect yourself from possible rejection, failure, or loss.
Heads and tails may be opposites but they’re still two sides of the same coin. And humans, like metallic currency, are also composed of sides (though a lot more than two!), which may not be complementary but nonetheless coexist. Ironically, the tension between these parts creates a stasis (or standoff) altogether dissimilar from any kind of harmonious equilibrium.
Is not the stymying experience of confusion largely about being “taken over” by opposing feelings? (And here I’m not referring to anything attitudinal or intellectual, but emotional.) If you’re confused about a person or event, it’s only to be expected that you’ll cycle between two (or more) emotions. Or be “caught” between such emotions in a manner that leads you to feel them simultaneously.
Of course, at any given moment one feeling may well predominate over the other(s). And this psychological phenomenon is roughly analogous to the purely optical one of eying an optical illusion. In this uncanny (and sometimes spooky) visual experience, the instant one form or object vanishes from view (or goes from figure to ground) the other (going from ground to figure) appears. Yet neither of these perceived forms can be in focus—or dominant—at the same time. Although both have equal valence, it’s only in alternating fashion. They exist equally but only in “rotating sequence” with one another.
Let me provide some real-life examples of the emotional bipolarity I’m seeking to clarify. By my doing so, you may get a better idea of how one emotion can “vie” with another for ascendance, as well as how such relative, fluctuating dominance can shift in a nanosecond. And it’s not really a matter of two different emotions being accessible at any given moment. Rather, it’s a situation in which both feelings constitute your emotional reality but can’t be felt, or experienced, to the same degree simultaneously.
Consider the woeful situation of loving someone who can’t—or won’t—love you back: the age-old dilemma of unrequited love [see my post on this topic]. What’s the “double” (perhaps “triple”) emotion here? The almost indescribable emotion of falling in love, or being in love, has to be seen as one of the most positive, exhilarating emotional states imaginable. It’s been characterized in terms of delight, joy, enchantment—even rapture or bliss. Yet also being aware that such adoration isn’t reciprocated can induce an equally powerful negative emotional state—also difficult to describe in its lamentable intensity. Words that have been employed to depict such vast frustration or disappointment range from sorrow, regret, grief and misery, to heartwrenching agony, anguish, and despair.
These two “sets” of opposing emotions, taken together, can be seen as depicting an experience perhaps best portrayed as (to use a term I introduced at the outset) bittersweet. And, psycho-logically, how could these contrasting emotions not be experienced at the same time—or at least in extremely close proximity? Moreover, it’s also possible that in their pitiable frustration the lover might also experience a third emotion toward the love object—namely, anger. For in their love-altered state of consciousness, it might seem almost cruel to them that the beloved would not somehow share, or be positively influenced by, all the immeasurably adoring love sent their way?
Another example (which goes in a quite different direction) might relate to seeing an individual you deeply dislike—because you’ve observed him bullying younger, smaller, defenseless children—being bullied himself. On the one hand, you may experience a certain gratification at witnessing this bully get what he so richly deserves. Yet, if you have strong, adverse feelings toward bullying in general, you may be repulsed by two or three adolescents older than he savagely ridiculing and beating up on him.
Now he’s the victim—overpowered, helpless, and maybe even crying out in pain. So you find yourself actually feeling compassion for him. Your mixed feelings come not from the situation itself but your views of justice and fair play. In the first instance, you saw the bully as perpetrator; now you can’t help but perceive him as perpetrated against. Earlier you identified emotionally with his younger victims; now, curiously, you find yourself identifying with him. Such emotional ambivalence may have been totally unanticipated, yet it’s completely authentic. Your bipolar feelings make perfect sense, inasmuch as they’re fully in line with your most heartfelt beliefs.
To offer one final example, imagine that you’ve just learned that your alcoholic, abusive, and even despised, father has just passed away. You’ve been alienated from him for many years—the final straw being his “borrowing” your credit card when he temporarily stayed with you as an adult and, unauthorized, running up a debt that took you many months to pay off. So hearing the news of his demise leads you to experience considerable satisfaction and relief, knowing that this cold, manipulative, deceiving sociopath of a father is now out of your life for good.
Yet, to your surprise, you discover that along with your positive feelings of final “emancipation” from him you’re also afflicted with enormous—almost overwhelming—feelings of grief. And these unexpectedly powerful, and totally unwilled, emotions really have nothing to do with his passing but with the irrevocable death of deeply buried hopes and dreams, now unexpectedly resurfacing, that you harbored since childhood for a secure, loving bond with him. You recognize that your unanticipated, almost inconsolable, feelings intimately connect to the never-received approval and acceptance you’d always craved from him—but had to deny because otherwise its absence would have been too painful to bear. Once again, the tension between seemingly incompatible yet co-existent emotions can be understood on the basis of mixed feelings that, given the psychological dynamic giving rise to them, are totally logical
. . . So yes, undoubtedly—though only rarely with the same intensity—you can feel two different things at the same time.
Why we procrastinate.
Amy Robinson is the ultimate collaborator. And you can help her map the human brain.
A game to map your brain
There is a brain mapping project currently being conducted by Amy Robinson. She has created a game to help map your brain; take a look. https://eyewire.org/signup
Study Schizophrenia is 8 diseases: What we know -- and psychiatrists have diagnosed for decades -- as schizophrenia may really be eight separate diseases, research published in The American Journal of Psychiatry suggests.
Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis analyzed the DNA of more than 4,000 people with schizophrenia. They matched any gene variations they found in the DNA with study participants' individual symptoms. In doing so, they found several "gene clusters" that appear to cause eight distinct classes of schizophrenia, according to a statement from the university.
"Complex diseases, such as schizophrenia, may be influenced by hundreds or thousands of genetic variants that interact with one another in complex ways," the study authors wrote in their introduction.
"Genes don't operate by themselves," Dr. C. Robert Cloninger, one of the study's senior authors, explained in the statement. "They function in concert much like an orchestra, and to understand how they're working, you have to know not just who the members of the orchestra are but how they interact."
Schizophrenia is a chronic brain disorder that affects about 1% of the population, according to the American Psychiatric Association. Symptoms can vary from hallucinations to disordered speech to attention and decision-making problems.
Past studies done on twins and families have shown that about 80% of the risk for schizophrenia is inherited, the study authors say. A study published in July showed as many as 108 genes may be tied to the mental health disorder. But scientists have had trouble identifying specific genetic variations that put people at risk.
The Washington University researchers looked at instances where a single unit of DNA was altered, which is known as a single nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP. Then they identified 42 interactive SNP sets that significantly increased people's risk of schizophrenia, according to the study.
In other words, if study participant Bob had Gene Cluster X, he was 70% more likely to have schizophrenia than study participant Fred who didn't have that cluster of genes. In some cases, certain gene clusters were matched with close to a 100% increase in risk.
"In the past, scientists had been looking for associations between individual genes and schizophrenia," co-author Dr. Dragan Svrakic said in the statement. "What was missing was the idea that these genes don't act independently. They work in concert to disrupt the brain's structure and function, and that results in the illness."
The idea that schizophrenia is not one single disorder is not really new, says Dr. Charles Raison, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Arizona. It's similar to the way doctors use the term "breast cancer" to describe several different diseases that cause tumors in the breasts.
"Schizophrenia is probably 80 different diseases," Raison says. "All psychiatric conditions likely share this heterogeneity."
There are only so many ways that certain malfunctions in your genetic code can manifest, Raison says. There may be 10 separate gene mutations, but they might only express themselves as one or two symptoms. So what's causing hallucinations in one person might be different than what's causing them in another.
So why are scientists trying to separate out the different schizophrenia disorders? Two reasons, Raison says: to help predict who might get schizophrenia, and to help treat it more efficiently.
Take, for example, pleurisy, which is a condition where the liquid around your lungs becomes inflamed. Several things can cause pleurisy, including a viral infection, pneumonia or cancer. If you have a drug that treats pneumonia, it's going to help only a certain percentage of patients with pleurisy. But if you know that your patient's pleurisy is caused by cancer, you'll find a different course of treatment.
The same could hold true for schizophrenia and other mental health conditions, Raison says.
"In psychiatry land we're still stuck with pleurisy," he says. "They're descriptions of symptoms, and we only have a vague idea of the underlying causes."