May I wish each and all a very prosperous 2008. If I may paraphrase my husband: May 2008 be better than 2007, but not as good as 2009 will be!
Here is the first newsletter for 2008 and it is a long one. For ease of reference, I grouped the articles via category: Brain, Evolution, Psychology, and Health. One of my New Year's resolutions is to become more organized - I hope the newsletter format achieves that goal. Please send me your feedback on that :-)
TIDBITS
Body Position Affects Your Memory: Can't remember your anniversary, hubby? Try getting down on one knee. Memories are highly embodied in our senses. A scent or sound may evoke a distant episode from one's childhood. The connections can be obvious (a bicycle bell makes you remember your old paper route) or inscrutable. A recent study helps decipher some of this embodiment. An article in the January 2007 issue of Cognition reports that episodes from your past are remembered faster and better while in a body position similar to the pose struck during the event.
Though it makes up only 2 percent of our total body weight, the brain demands 20 percent of the body's oxygen and calories. To keep our noggin well-stocked with resources, three major cerebral arteries are constantly pumping in oxygen. A blockage or break in one of them starves brain cells of the energy they require to function, impairing the functions controlled by that region. This is a stroke.
Just as watching someone yawn can induce the behavior in yourself, recent evidence suggests that laughter is a social cue for mimicry. Hearing a laugh actually stimulates the brain region associated with facial movements. Mimicry plays an important role in social interaction. Cues like sneezing, laughing, crying and yawning may be ways of creating strong social bonds within a group.
VIDEOS
Maximise the Power of Your Brain - Tony Buzan MIND MAPPING
Tony Buzan talks about MindMapping.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlabrWv25qQ
Jeff Hawkins: Brain science is about to fundamentally change computing
To date, there hasn't been an overarching theory of how the human brain really works, Jeff Hawkins argues in this compelling talk. That's because we still haven't defined intelligence accurately. But one thing's for sure, he says: The brain isn't like a powerful computer processor. It's more like a memory system that records everything we experience and helps us predict, intelligently, what will happen next. Bringing this new brain science to computer devices will enable powerful new applications -- and it will happen sooner than you think.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/125
Dan Dennett: Can we know our own minds?
Philosopher Dan Dennett makes a compelling argument that not only don't we understand our own consciousness, but that half the time our brains are actively fooling us. As he puts it, our bodies are made up of 100 trillion little robots, none of them with an individual consciousness. So what makes us feel we have one? Or that we're in control of it? Dennett's hope is to show his audience that "Your consciousness is not quite as marvelous as you may have thought it is." He uses thought experiments and optical illusions to demonstrate to the TED audience that even very big brains are capable of playing tricks on their owners.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/102
Spiritual renewal in the New Year – An interview with Dr. Deepak Chopra
See article “Change Your Life in the New Year” with Dr. Deepak Chopra below (in the Psychology section of the newsletter).
http://abcnews.go.com/abcnewsnow/story?id=4062391&page=1
Optical Illusions
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=5250596
ARTICLES
BRAIN
Brain Cells, Doing Their Job With Some Neighborly Help By BENEDICT CAREY
A region deep in the brain called the hippocampus tracks, sorts and stores the onslaught of information pouring through the senses every waking minute. A large question in neuroscience is one a kindergartner would ask: How?
How does a dollop of tissue containing a small fraction of the brain’s neurons possibly absorb and hold so much, even temporarily?
A study published last week in the journal Nature provides the first step toward an answer, as well as a showcase for some of the most advanced methods available to study the brain.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/25/health/25memo.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin
Snorting a Brain Chemical Could Replace Sleep By Alexis Madrigal
In what sounds like a dream for millions of tired coffee drinkers, Darpa-funded scientists might have found a drug that will eliminate sleepiness. ... A nasal spray containing a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin A reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys, allowing them to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests. The discovery's first application will probably be in treatment of the severe sleep disorder narcolepsy.
The treatment is "a totally new route for increasing arousal, and the new study shows it to be relatively benign," said Jerome Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA and a co-author of the paper. "It reduces sleepiness without causing edginess."
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/12/sleep_deprivation
Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike By JANET RAE-DUPREE
IT’S a pickle of a paradox: As our knowledge and expertise increase, our creativity and ability to innovate tend to taper off. Why? Because the walls of the proverbial box in which we think are thickening along with our experience.
Andrew S. Grove, the co-founder of Intel, put it well in 2005 when he told an interviewer from Fortune, “When everybody knows that something is so, it means that nobody knows nothin’.” In other words, it becomes nearly impossible to look beyond what you know and think outside the box you’ve built around yourself.
This so-called curse of knowledge, a phrase used in a 1989 paper in The Journal of Political Economy, means that once you’ve become an expert in a particular subject, it’s hard to imagine not knowing what you do. Your conversations with others in the field are peppered with catch phrases and jargon that are foreign to the uninitiated. When it’s time to accomplish a task — open a store, build a house, buy new cash registers, sell insurance — those in the know get it done the way it has always been done, stifling innovation as they barrel along the well-worn path.
EVOLUTION
Science advisers give fresh boost to evolution: New report assails intelligent design amid continuing debate By Nancy Zuckerbrod
WASHINGTON - In a newly published report, scientific advisers to the government emphasize the importance of teaching evolution in public schools.
The report by the National Academy of Sciences and its Institute of Medicine follows up on similar past publications, the last of which came out in 1999. The new document, titled "Science, Evolution and Creationism," includes recently discovered evidence supporting evolution — including the 375 million-year-old "Tiktaalik" fossil, which researchers say blends characteristics of a crocodile and a fish.
The report released Thursday also takes swipes at creationism and other anti-evolution theories. "Despite the lack of scientific evidence for creationist positions, some advocates continue to demand that various forms of creationism be taught together with or in place of evolution in science classes," the report says.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22493865/
Evolving with our stomachs: We no longer have to hunt our food; is that a good thing? By Jon Bonné
Sometimes progress really does appear in the numbers. Consider what we spend to fill our tables. ... Since 1929, the percentage of disposable income that the typical American spends on food has been steadily dropping from about one-quarter of our available cash to just 10 percent. Quite simply, it takes less for us to feed ourselves than virtually any other people on Earth.
Technology has been revolutionary in its ability to help us obtain and store food. But essential tools like refrigeration and long-haul transit have only been feasible for the past 150 years, barely a speck in the long view of human history.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7270028/
Einstein and Darwin: A tale of two theories
Q&A with ‘Origins’ astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson By Alan Boyle
SEATTLE - One scientist came up with a new way of explaining how biology works. A generation later, the other one came up with a new way of explaining how physics works. Today, after a century of scrutiny, both explanations still pretty much hold up. But in popular culture, physicist Albert Einstein is idolized, while biologist Charles Darwin's legacy is clouded with controversy.
Why do Darwin's theories on the origin of species, put forth in 1859, hold a status so different from that of Einstein's theories on relativity, published between 1905 and 1916? Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of New York's Hayden Planetarium and co-author of the book "Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution," reflected on that question during a recent interview at the University of Washington.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7159345/
PSYCHOLOGY
Change Your Life in the New Year: Dr. Deepak Chopra With Some Advice For A New You in the New Year By TERENCE KENNY
With our bellies full of holiday cheer, many of us are looking for salvation in the new year. Salvation from ourselves and from our destructive habits. And who do we look to for comfort? Baby New Year, of course.
Every year, January brings with it a time-honored tradition. The resolution. But while some say New Year's resolutions are a waste of time and impractical, Deepak Chopra is not one of them. Appearing on ABC News NOW's "All Together NOW," the prolific author and founder of the Chopra Center for Wellbeing said that the new year is a good time to make resolutions. He just thinks our ideas about happiness are backward.
While most of us believe that weight loss, money or career success will bring happiness, Chopra says, "It's the other way around. If you're happy, you're likely to achieve all of the things that you want."
http://abcnews.go.com/abcnewsnow/story?id=4062391&page=1
Also watch the video on this same page, entitled “Spiritual renewal in the New Year”.
Scents and Sensibility By: Elizabeth Svoboda
"Sexual chemistry" is more than just a way of talking about heated attraction. Subtle chemical keys actually help determine who we fall for. But here comes news that our lifestyles may unwittingly undermine our natural sex appeal.
Psychologists Rachel Herz and Estelle Campenni were just getting to know each other, swapping stories about their lives over coffee, when Campenni confided something unexpected: She was living proof, she said, of love at first smell. "I knew I would marry my husband the minute I smelled him," she told Herz. "I've always been into smell, but this was different; he really smelled good to me. His scent made me feel safe and at the same time turned on—and I'm talking about his real body smell, not cologne or soap. I'd never felt like that from a man's smell before. We've been married for eight years now and have three kids, and his smell is always very sexy to me."
Everyone knows what it's like to be powerfully affected by a partner's smell—witness men who bury their noses in their wives' hair and women who can't stop sniffing their boyfriends' T-shirts. And couples have long testified to the ways scent-based chemistry affects their relationships. "One of the most common things women tell marriage counselors is, 'I can't stand his smell,'" says Herz, the author of The Scent of Desire.
Sexual attraction remains one of life's biggest mysteries. We might say we go for partners who are tall and thin, love to cook, or have a mania for exercise, but when push comes to shove, studies show, the people we actually end up with possess few of the traits we claim to want. Some researchers think scent could be the hidden cosmological constant in the sexual universe, the missing factor that explains who we end up with. It may even explain why we feel "chemistry"—or "sparks" or "electricity"—with one person and not with another.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20071228-000001.html
A Hormone from Hell: Men with high testosterone levels may wreak havoc on their marriages By: PT Staff
The force behind hairy chests and bald heads should perhaps carry a warning label that reads CAUTION: Testosterone may be bad for your marriage.
Men with greater testosterone production are less likely to marry, but when they do, they are more likely than other men to divorce, reports a Penn State sociologist after examining the hormone levels and relationship histories of 4,462 men. Once married they are more likely to leave home because they have trouble getting along with their wives.
They are also given to having affairs and to hitting or throwing things at their wives. The higher the hormone level, the worse the marriage, according to Alan Booth, Ph.D.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-19931101-000008.html
Study: Monkeys 'pay' for sex by grooming By GILLIAN WONG
SINGAPORE - Male macaque monkeys pay for sex by grooming females, according to a recent study that suggests the primates may treat sex as a commodity.
In primate societies, grooming is the underlying fabric of it all," Dr. Michael Gumert, a primatologist at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said in a telephone interview Saturday.
"It's a sign of friendship and family, and it's also something that can be exchanged for sexual services," Gumert said. Gumert's findings, reported in New Scientist last week, resulted from a 20-month observation of about 50 long-tailed macaques in a reserve in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Gumert found after a male grooms a female, the likelihood that she will engage in sexual activity with the male was about three times more than if the grooming had not occurred.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080105/ap_on_sc/singapore_monkey_sex
Giving Disorganized Boys the Tools for Success By ALAN FINDER
LOS ALTOS, Calif. — “Can we take a look at your backpack?”
Ana Homayoun repeats that question countless times a day. No, she does not screen airline passengers or work security at a basketball arena. Ms. Homayoun is a tutor. She helps teenagers with subjects like math and science, but she particularly specializes in teaching boys how to become more organized.
With girls outperforming boys these days in high school and college, educators have been sparring over whether there is a crisis in the education of boys. Some suggest the need for more single-sex schools, more male role models or new teaching techniques. Others are experimenting with physical changes in classrooms that encourage boys to move around, rather than trying to anchor them to their seats.
But as they debate, high-priced tutors and college counselors have jumped into the fray by charging as much as $100 an hour and up to bring boys to heel. The tutors say their main focus is organizational skills because boys seem generally to have more difficulty getting organized and multitasking than girls do.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/education/01boys.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
Omega-3 Fats and ADHD By Cheryl Sternman Rule
When he was younger, 16-year-old Bennett Jackson of Colorado Springs struggled in school. "He was easily distracted," says his mother, Suzanne. "He'd see a leaf fall outside and want to go chase it." At 7, Bennett was diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)—characterized by an inability to concentrate, impulsivity and increased motor activity. His doctor started him on a stimulant drug, which vastly improved his symptoms. Later Bennett learned he had a cardiovascular condition that rendered his use of the drugs risky.
Still, for people with ADHD who can't (or choose not to) use stimulants, fish oil may offer new hope. "Anecdotally, fish oil, which is very safe, has helped those with ADHD," says Hallowell, who recommends fish-oil supplements to all his patients.
Small studies uphold the hypothesis. In a randomized, controlled trial, Alex Richardson, Ph.D., a senior research fellow at Oxford, found that fatty-acid supplementation (800 mg per day) for three months significantly improved reading, spelling and behavior in children with attention disorders. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center reported a correlation between higher blood levels of omega-3 fats and fewer impulsive behaviors.
http://health.msn.com/health-topics/adhd/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100159473
HEALTH
Studies show yoga has multiple benefits By C. Vidyashankar, MD
CHANNAI, India (Reuters Health) - Yoga induces a feeling of well-being in healthy people, and can reverse the clinical and biochemical changes associated with metabolic syndrome, according to results of studies from Sweden and India. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of heart disease risk factors such as high blood pressure, obesity and high blood sugar.
Dr. R.P. Agrawal, of the SP Medical College, Bikaner, India, and colleagues evaluated the beneficial effects of yoga and meditation in 101 adults with features of metabolic syndrome. In the study, 55 adults received three months of regular yoga including standard postures and Raja Yoga, a form of transcendental meditation daily, while the remaining received standard care
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071228/hl_nm/yoga_benefits_dc
The Risks and Rewards of Skipping Meals
People often miss meals because they get busy or are trying to lose weight. But how you skip meals, and the amount you eat at your next meal, can affect your overall health.
The scientific data on skipping meals has been confusing. In some studies, fasting has resulted in measurable metabolic benefits for obese people, and in animal studies, intermittent feeding and fasting reduces the incidence of diabetes and improves certain indicators of cardiovascular health. Even so, several observational studies and short-term experiments have suggested an association between meal skipping and poor health.
Jolt delayed in third of cardiac arrests By STEPHANIE NANO
NEW YORK - Just because you're in the hospital doesn't mean you'll quickly get treated if your heart stops beating. About one-third of patients don't get a potentially live-saving shock within the recommended two minutes, a new study found.
Those who don't get prompt defibrillation are more likely to die or end up brain damaged or disabled, the study showed. For every minute of delay, the chances of survival worsens, researchers reported in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.
"It is probably fair to say that most patients assume — unfortunately, incorrectly — that a hospital would be the best place to survive a cardiac arrest," Dr. Leslie A. Saxon, a cardiologist at the University of Southern California, wrote in an editorial in the journal.
Recent attention has focused on getting quicker treatment for heart attacks that occur outside hospitals, and adding defibrillators to public places like airports and schools. The researchers instead looked at what happens inside hospitals and how response time affects survival.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080103/ap_on_he_me/cardiac_arrest
Restless Legs Syndrome May Cause Heart Problems: Study By Amanda Gardner
TUESDAY, Jan. 1 (HealthDay News) -- People with restless legs syndrome face twice the risk of a stroke or heart disease compared to people who don't have the neurological condition, a new study suggests. The risk is greatest in people with the most frequent and the most severe symptoms of restless legs syndrome.
"This shows that restless legs syndrome has salience beyond just symptoms," said Dr. David Rye, a professor of neurology at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. "It's really saying, this disorder is salient, you need to recognize it."
Other experts added a cautionary note to the study's findings.
"This study is very well done, and the conclusions of the study are very measured. In other words, the authors acknowledge that they can't prove that what they're studying actually causes strokes or heart attacks," said Dr. Paul Greene, associate attending physician in the department of neurology at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. "They also could have picked up people with other syndromes, neuropathies and things that could influence strokes and heart attacks. There are a lot of ways in which this study could be misleading.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20080103/hl_hsn/restlesslegssyndromemaycauseheartproblemsstudy
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If your New Year’s resolution consists of giving up pizza and cheeseburgers in favor of flaxseeds and rice cakes, it’s time to reconsider your strategy.
In the hot bestselling book "Eat This, Not That!" co-authors David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding insist you don’t ever have to diet again. You can eat all of your favorite foods and still drop 10, 20, 30 pounds before the ball drops next December.
To do so, though, you must be able to spot the many perilous nutritional traps that continue to plague health-conscious consumers every day. Seemingly nutritious packaged and prepared foods often abound with added sugars, preservatives, and dangerous, belt-breaking fats. To help you slim down in ’08, the Eat This, Not That! guys have identified the nine most punishing health ruses and replaced them with delicious alternatives that will keep you satisfied and give you all the purported nutritional benefits that many of our most beloved foods sadly do not.
