#david robson

[thedissenters]

The Beatles in Newcastle upon Tyne, England | 23 November 1963 © David Robson

[now-winter-comes-slowly]

‘Appreciate winter for what it is, without wishing it were something different’: psychologist Kari Leibowitz on beating the seasonal blues

The researcher spent 10 years studying how attitude affects mood and behaviour, and her new book shares ways in which we can learn to value

[jacobwren]

“According to a recent paper in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry, a woman who has been bullied as a child is 27 times more likely to have a panic disorder as a young adult. Among men, childhood bullying resulted in a 18-fold increase in suicidal ideation and action. "There are all these associations, which are robust and replicated across different samples," says Arseneault. Bullying will also have protracted consequences for people's social lives: many victims find it harder to make friends in later life and are less likely to live with a long-term partner. One possibility is that they struggle to trust the people around them. "Kids who've been bullied, might interpret social relationships in a more threatening way," says Arseneault. Finally, there are the academic and economic costs. Bullying harms people's grades, which in turn reduces their job prospects – meaning that they are more likely to experience financial instability and unemployment in young adulthood and midlife. Arseneault's research suggests that the resulting stress can take a toll on the body for decades after the event. Analysing data from a 50-year-long longitudinal study, she found that frequent bullying between the ages of seven and 11 was linked to markedly higher levels of inflammation at age 45. Importantly, the link remained even after she had controlled for a host of other factors, including their diet, physical activity, and whether they smoked. That's important, since elevated inflammation can disrupt the immune system and contributes to the wear and tear on our organs that leads to conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Taken together, these findings suggest that attempts to eliminate bullying are not only a moral imperative to alleviate children's immediate suffering; they may bring long-term benefits for a population's health.” - David Robson, The Nordic Way To Stop Bullying

[agora-bishoy]

❞ إذا نَشَأْتَ بين أشخاص لا يثقون بالعلماء، فقد تكتسب ميلًا لتجاهل الأدلة التجريبية والوثوق بالنظريات غير المُثبَتة ❝

ديفيد روبسون | فخ الذكاء

[respite-in-god]

Hemholtz suggested that the brain draws on past experiences to tidy up the visual mess and to come up with the best possible interpretation of what it receives, through a process he called "unconscious inference." We may think we are seeing the world unfiltered, but vision is really forged in the "dark background" of the mind, he proposed, based on what it assumes is most likely to be in front of you.

- The Expectation Effect, pg 13 viii, David Robson

I See Only the Past.

This ides is particularly difficult to believe at first. Yet it is the rationale for all of the preceding ones.

It is the reason why nothing that you see means anything.

It is the reason why you have given everything you see all the meaning that it has for you.

It is the reason why you do not understand anything you see.

It is the reason why your thoughts do not mean anything, and why they are like the things you see.

It is the reason why you are never upset for the reason you think.

It is the reason why you are upset because you see something that is not there.

- A Course in Miracles, Key lesson 7, pg. 803

[maaarine]

Physical fatigue is in the brain as much as in the body (David Robson, Psyche, April 06 2022)

“For instance, in one study, researchers used electrodes attached to subjects’ arms and legs to show that only 35-60 per cent of muscle fibres appear to be operating during prolonged or intense exercise. 

If biochemical changes in muscle fibres were the sole cause of physical fatigue, you’d expect many more of the fibres to have been recruited to share the burden before we reach exhaustion. 

But that doesn’t seem to be what happens.

Then there’s the observation that mental activities can lead to greater physical fatigue. 

In 2009, researchers at Bangor University in Wales found that cyclists experienced a 15 per cent reduction in physical stamina after they had performed a gruelling 90-minute test designed to tax their memory and concentration. 

That is hard to explain if exhaustion is simply the result of depleted glycogen and accumulated lactic acid.

For all these reasons, many sports scientists are now coming around to the idea that the brain drives feelings of exhaustion based on many different factors. 

There seems little doubt that the conventional view was partly correct and that the brain is constantly taking note of physical changes using sensors throughout the body. 

But, importantly, it will then combine that information with memories of previous experiences, current mood, social feedback – and its estimates of the challenges to come. 

Based on these calculations, it will determine how many muscle fibres to recruit and the intensity of the movements that the body can sustain. 

If the brain senses that we risk overexerting ourselves, it will create a subjective feeling of fatigue that deters us from further exercise. 

Importantly, the brain’s predictions need to be flexible and sensitive to context, meaning that it is possible to release some of those hidden reserves with small psychological nudges. 

Performance-enhancing placebos might work through this precise mechanism. 

Caffeine, for instance, has long been considered a muscular stimulant that can enhance performance in many sports – yet that is largely a product of our expectations about what it can do. (…)

For instance, sports scientists in São Paolo in Brazil recently asked cyclists to perform two one-kilometre time trials – once as a baseline, and once having received two red-and-white capsules containing flour. 

The cyclists improved their performance, even though they knew that the tablets were chemically inert. 

Interviews suggest that some of the participants attempted to enhance the effects with techniques such as positive visualisation. 

As one participant put it: ‘I remembered the tablets that I had taken, I saw the colour and the shape of them in my head and imagined that they were making me more “powerful”.”

[indizombie]

Lethargy in teens is often mistaken for laziness or apathy, or a stubborn refusal to go to bed at a "reasonable time" (another example of their famous rebelliousness). In truth it is beyond their control; their body clocks are programmed in a way that is simply out of sync with adults' rhythms. We feel sleepy when levels of melatonin rise in the brain at night – and, in the morning, we will wake up feeling alert once it has dropped below a certain level. For teens, melatonin simply rises and falls later in the day than adults – meaning that they will feel alert and active when their parents are ready to hit the hay, and tired and drowsy in the early morning, when their parents may have already been up for hours. "Virtually no adults will have melatonin left in their brains at nine o'clock in the morning," says Coleman, "but around half of teenagers do.

David Robson, ‘The biggest myths of the teenage brain’, BBC

[dk-thrive]

I just go into my head and enjoy it...There was a point where it was like an addiction.

David Robson, “‘I just go into my head and enjoy it’: the people who can’t stop daydreaming” (The Guardian, August 28, 2022)