Want To Feel Better? Talk About Yourself. /  by Anne Kreamer

As a species, it appears that we've been primed to want to talk about ourselves. Adrian Ward reports in Scientific American humans are social animals and spend about 60 per cent of our time talking about ourselves.  But if we're social why the emphasis on self?    Because it feels good. "Human beings are social animals. We spend large portions of our waking hours communicating with others, and the possibilities for conversation are seemingly endless—we can make plans and crack jokes; reminisce about the past and dream about the future; share ideas and spread information. This ability to communicate—with almost anyone, about almost anything—has played a central role in our species’ ability to not just survive, but flourish.

How do you choose to use this immensely powerful tool—communication? Do your conversations serve as doorways to new ideas and experiences? Do they serve as tools for solving the problems of disease and famine?

Or do you mostly just like to talk about yourself?

If you’re like most people, your own thoughts and experiences may be your favorite topic of conversation.  On average, people spend 60 percent of conversations talking about themselves—and this figure jumps to 80 percent when communicating via social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook.

Why, in a world full of ideas to discover, develop, and discuss, do people spend the majority of their time talking about themselves? Recent research suggests a simple explanation: because itfeels good.

In order to investigate the possibility that self-disclosure is intrinsically rewarding, researchers from the Harvard University Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This research tool highlights relative levels of activity in various neural regions by tracking changes in blood flow; by pairing fMRI output with behavioral data, researchers can gain insight into the relationships between behavior and neural activity. In this case, they were interested in whether talking about the self would correspond with increased neural activity in areas of the brain associated with motivation and reward.

In an initial fMRI experiment, the researchers asked 195 participants to discuss both their own opinions and personality traits and the opinions and traits of others, then looked for differences in neural activation between self-focused and other-focused answers. Because the same participants discussed the same topics in relation to both themselves and others, researchers were able to use the resulting data to directly compare neural activation during self-disclosure to activation during other-focused communication.

Three neural regions stood out. Unsurprisingly, and in line with previous research, self-disclosure resulted in relatively higher levels of activation in areas of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) generally associated with self-related thought. The two remaining regions identified by this experiment, however, had never before (to read more....)

What Differentiates Ideas That Bomb From Ideas That Go Viral? /  by Anne Kreamer

How do ideas spread? What messages will go viral on social media, and can this be predicted? Stuart Wolpert from the UCLA Newsroom shares the findings from new brain mapping research. UCLA psychologists have taken a significant step toward answering these questions, identifying for the first time the brain regions associated with the successful spread of ideas, often called "buzz."

The research has a broad range of implications, the study authors say, and could lead to more effective public health campaigns, more persuasive advertisements and better ways for teachers to communicate with students.

"Our study suggests that people are regularly attuned to how the things they're seeing will be useful and interesting, not just to themselves but to other people," said the study's senior author, Matthew Lieberman, a UCLA professor of psychology and of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and author of the forthcoming book "Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect." "We always seem to be on the lookout for who else will find this helpful, amusing or interesting, and our brain data are showing evidence of that. At the first encounter with information, people are already using the brain network involved in thinking about how this can be interesting to other people. We're wired to want to share information with other people. I think that is a profound statement about the social nature of our minds."

The study findings are published in the online edition of the journal Psychological Science, with print publication to follow later this summer.

"Before this study, we didn't know what brain regions were associated with ideas that become contagious, and we didn't know what regions were associated with being an effective communicator of ideas," said lead author Emily Falk, who conducted the research as a UCLA doctoral student in Lieberman's lab and is currently a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for

Communication. "Now we have mapped the brain regions associated with ideas that are likely to be contagious and are associated with being a good 'idea salesperson.' In the future, we would like to be able to use these brain maps to forecast what ideas are likely to be successful and who is likely to be effective at spreading them."

In the first part of the study, 19 UCLA students (average age 21), underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans at UCLA's Ahmanson–Lovelace Brain Mapping Center as they saw and heard information about 24 potential television pilot ideas. Among the fictitious pilots — which were presented by a separate group of students — were a show about former beauty-queen mothers who want their daughters to follow in their footsteps; a Spanish soap opera about a young woman and her relationships; a reality show in which contestants travel to countries with harsh environments; a program about teenage vampires and werewolves; and a show about best friends and rivals in a crime family.

The students exposed to these TV pilot ideas were asked to envision themselves as television studio interns who would decide whether or not they would recommend each idea to their "producers." These students made videotaped assessments of each pilot.

Another group of 79 UCLA undergraduates (average age 21) was asked to act as the "producers." These students watched the interns' videos assessments of the pilots and then made their own ratings about the pilot ideas based on those assessments.

Lieberman and Falk wanted to learn which brain regions were activated when the interns were first exposed to information they would later pass on to others.

"We're constantly being exposed to information on Facebook, Twitter and so on," said Lieberman. "Some of it we pass on, and a lot of it we don't. Is there something that happens in the moment we first see it — maybe before we even realize we might pass it on — that is different for those things that we will pass on successfully versus those that we won't?"

It turns out, there is. The psychologists found that the interns who were especially good at persuading the producers showed significantly more activation in a brain region known as the temporoparietal junction, or TPJ, at the time they were first exposed to the pilot ideas they would later recommend. They had more activation in this region than the interns who were less persuasive and more activation than they themselves had when exposed to pilot ideas they didn't like. The psychologists call this the "salesperson effect."

"It was the only region in the brain that showed this effect," Lieberman said. One might have thought brain regions associated with memory would show more activation, but that was not the case, he said.

"We wanted to explore what differentiates ideas that bomb from ideas that go viral," Falk said. "We found that (to read more....)

Time is Money, but It May Also Be Shaped By Complexity /  by Anne Kreamer

An interesting new study by psychological scientist, Gabriela Jiga-Boy of Swansea University in Wales, explores the inter-relationship between our perception of time and the effort needed to complete a project.  Does the difficulty of a task expand or compress our perception of time?  The results? The researchers discovered that tasks that were judged to be complex and difficult, like planning a wedding or an elaborate vacation, but without specific deadlines, seemed more distant than less demanding activities.  Their findings suggest that our minds correlate complexity and effort with time.

Conversely, tasks with specific deadlines, even as distant as eight months, were viewed as closer in time.   So if you have multiple simultaneous and significant deadlines:  getting a kid off to college for the first time, planning a family reunion, and organizing a company conference, while also working day-to-day, your stress may be that the way in which your mind camouflages the real time remaining to force you to plan for meeting the challenges on deadline.

Are Kansans More Active Today Than They Were In 1997? /  by Anne Kreamer

The United Health Foundation has created one of the most densely packed and fascinating interactive maps of the United States showing on a color-coded state-by-state level how the activity level of Americans has decreased since 1997.  A sedentary lifestyle is one where adults report doing no physical activity or exercise (such as running, calisthenics, golf, gardening or walking) other than their regular job in the last 30 days.  While it's hard to imagine doing no exercise, check out the map and prepare yourself to be stunned.  To dig deep into the data check out the map below. The ranks are based on the preceding year’s data from CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS).  The 2012 edition is the first edition to include sedentary lifestyle in the Rankings.

Regular physical activity is one of the most important elements of a healthy lifestyle. A sedentary lifestyle increases the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and premature death. [1]-[2] Sedentary lifestyle is responsible for an estimated $24 billion in direct medical spending. [3] Increasing physical activity, especially from a complete absence, can not only prevent numerous chronic diseases; it can also help to manage them. [4] It is estimated that physical inactivity is responsible for almost 200,000 or 1 in 10 deaths each year. [5] Physical inactivity is associated with many social and environmental factors as well including low educational attainment, socioeconomic status, violent crime, and poverty to name a few. [6] Even moderate increases in physical activity can greatly reduce risk for adverse health outcomes. For resources and tips on how to add physical activity to your life, visit the cdc. 

Rats, Strokes And Saving Lives /  by Anne Kreamer

I was riveted by Jill Taylor Bolte's 2008 book, My Stroke of Insight, describing her experience as a 37-year old brain scientist who suffers a stroke.  It was inspiring and transformational, altering my sense of how to interact with anyone who might have had a stroke. "Through the eyes of a curious neuroanatomist, she watched her mind completely deteriorate whereby she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. Because of her understanding of how the brain works, her respect for the cells composing her human form, and an amazing mother, Jill completely recovered her mind, brain and body.  In the book, Bolte shares her recommendations for recovery and the insight she gained into the unique functions of the right and left halves of her brain.  Having lost the categorizing, organizing, describing, judging and critically analyzing skills of her left brain, along with its language centers and thus ego center, Bolte's consciousness shifted away from normal reality.  In the absence of her left brain’s neural circuitry, her consciousness shifted into present moment thinking whereby she experienced herself 'at one with the universe.'”

But new research may point toward new ways our brains can be helped, at the moment the stroke is happening, to short-circuit the damage, and make it more probable that the patient will return to pre-stroke functionality.  Stroke is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States and the leading cause of long-term disability. Ischemic stroke, due to an interruption in blood supply, is particularly prevalent; 87% of all strokes are ischemic. Unfortunately, current options for acute treatment are extremely limited and there is a great need for new treatment strategies. University of California Irvine neuroscientist Ron D. Frostig says that if rats are any guide to human health (and they often are the starting point for new treatments), stroke victims might do a lot better with a quick dose of stimulation instead.

His research, A Rat’s Whiskers Point the Way toward a Novel Stimulus- Dependent, Protective Stroke Therapy, proved that when a rat suffering a stroke had its whiskers stimulated the rat's brain compensated and new pathways were created bypassing the blocked blood flow to the brain.  If applicable to humans this treatment, something as simple as singing to or massaging a stroke victim, could be a very important breakthrough in protection from stroke for two main reasons: 1) This is a drug-free, equipment-free, and side effects–free treatment that could save lives of stroke victims and 2) because “time is brain,” it may be possible, for the first time, to develop a stroke treatment strategy that could be easily initiated anywhere by anyone, including informed family, friends, or first responder when the first signs of stroke appear, long before the ambulance arrives.

So read Jill Taylor Bolte's book and remember to sing to someone who might be experiencing a stroke.

Angry Legos? /  by Anne Kreamer

Nathan Sawaya, a sculptor who works in the medium of Legos, opened an exhibition, The Art of The Brick,  in New York City in June. Sawaya has more than 2.5 million colored bricks in his New York and Los Angeles art studios and his work is obsessively and painstakingly crafted -- elevating an ordinary toy to the status of fine art.

According to journalist Scott Jones,”Sawaya is a surrealist mash-up of forms and artists. Imagine Frank Lloyd Wright crossed with Ray Harryhausen, or Auguste Rodin crossed with Shigeru Miyamoto, and you start to get a sense of where Sawaya is coming from.”

But as the Lego company introduces more aggressive characters, an unintended consequence might be a dampening down of the kind of creativity that inspires Sawaya. Shaunacy Ferro of the website PopSci, posted the following story:

When it comes to criticizing the violent ways our kids play, Legos don't usually get a lot of flack. But according to a recent study led by Christopher Bartneck of New Zealand's University of Canterbury Human Interface Technology Laboratory, Legos are becoming more conflict-oriented, and the human figures featured in Lego sets are getting angrier.

The study found that Lego figures most frequently feature happy or angry expressions, but since their introduction in 1975, the proportion has been tilting in favor of the angry.

"Our cluster analysis shows that toy design has become a more complex design space in which the imaginary world of play does not only consist of a simple division of good versus evil," the researchers write, "but a world in which heroes are scared and villains can have superior smile [sic]."

Through the Amazon Mechanical Turk marketplace, 264 study subjects in the U.S. viewed photographs of 628 different heads that appeared on the 3655 Lego Minifigures released between 1975 and 2010, and evaluated how intense their facial expressions were on scales for anger, happiness, sadness, disgust, and surprise. (They were paid one cent for every evaluation.) The face was then categorized by the expression people rated it as most often.

Starting in 1989, Lego began introducing more variety into their figures' facial expressions. While overall, the Minifigures' expressions featured happiness most often, the characters are increasingly moving toward angrier expressions, and the authors write "it is our impression that the themes have been increasingly based on conflict."

People were more likely to categorize a face as angry if there was a body attached to it, rather than just an image of a floating Lego head, but overall the study found the presence of bodies did not make the facial expressions significantly more distinct, nor did the skin color of the figure.

The paper estimates that on average, there are 75 Lego bricks for every person on Earth. "We cannot help but wonder how the move from only positive faces to an increasing number of negative faces impacts how children play," the researchers write. "The children that grow up with LEGO today will remember not only smileys, but also anger and fear in the Minifigures’ faces."

Check out the whole paper for the intense scientific discussion of Lego theory you've always wanted.

Reading Now /  by Anne Kreamer

Books:7.9.13

In Mindsight:  The New Science Of Personal Transformation, Dr. Daniel Siegel, combines his knowledge of clinical psychology, brain science and mindfulness with original thinking to develop a new concept:  mindsight.  So what is mindsight?  It's learning to change habits of mind to become more flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized and stable.  Here are a few excerpts.

"How we focus our attention shapes the structure of the brain."

"The brain makes what I call a 'me-map' that gives us insight into ourselves, and a 'you-map' for insight into others.  We also seem to create 'we-maps,' representations of our relationships."

"When we are in emotional balance, we feel alive and at ease.  Our feelings are aroused enough for life to have meaning and vitality, but not so aroused that we feel overwhelmed or out of control.  Lacking balance, we move toward either excessive arousal, a state of chaos, or too little arousal, a state of rigidity or depression.  Either extreme drains us of vitality."

"At the core of interpersonal neurobiology is our proposal that mindsight permits us to direct the flow of energy and information toward integration.  And integration...is seen to be at the heart of well-being."

"Picture your mind as a wheel of awareness.  Imagine a bicycle wheel where there is an outer rim and spokes that connect that rim to an inner hub.  In this mind's wheel of awareness, anything that can come into our awareness is one of the infinite points on the rim.  One sector of the rim might include what we become aware of through our five sense of touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight, those senses that bring the outside world into our mind.  Another sector of the rim is our inward sense of the body, the sensations in our limbs and our facial muscles, the feelings in the organs of our torso:  our lungs, our heart, our intestines.  All of the body brings it wisdom up into our mind, and this bodily sense, this sixth sense, if you will, is another of the elements to which we can bring our awareness.  Other points on the rim are what the mind creates directly, such as thoughts and feelings, memories and perceptions, hopes and dreams.  This segment of the rim of our mind is also available to our awareness.  And this capacity to see the mind itself -- our own mind as well as the minds of others -- is what we might call our seventh sense.  As we come to sense our connections with others, we perceive our relationships with the larger world, which perhaps constitutes yet another capacity, an eighth relational sense.  Now notice that we have a choice about where we send our attention.  We can choose which point on the rim to visit.  We may choose to pay attention to one of the five senses, or perhaps the feeling in our belly, and send a spoke there.  Or we may choose to pay attention to a memory, and send a spoke to that area of the rim where input from or seventh sense is located.  All of these spokes emanate from the depth of our mind, which is the hub of the wheel of awareness."

Reading Now /  by Anne Kreamer

Books:6.26.13

I just finished reading Neil Gaiman's, The Ocean At The End Of The Lane -- "soaked in myth and memory and salt water" as  Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus, another favorite of mine.  

Alexandra Alter described it in The Wall Street Journal as follows: "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" is Mr. Gaiman's first novel for adults in eight years. It's also the darkest, most personal and most autobiographical book he's produced in his 30-year career.

The novel is set in the English countryside, where a middle-aged, divorced man returns to his childhood hometown for a funeral. He takes a detour to visit a farm where he used to play. As he stares at a small, scummy pond, a suppressed memory bubbles up. He remembers being seven years old, and the shock of discovering the body of a South African lodger who lived with his family and committed suicide in the family's Mini Cooper. The man's death attracts an evil spirit, a terrifying creature from another world whose body is composed of floating gray rags. The boy confronts the spirit with the help of his young neighbor, the 11-year-old Lettie Hempstock, who turns out to be far older than she looks, and capable of wielding powerful magic. The story manages to be both epic and quotidian, as the boy fights real monsters but also wrestles with more mundane but equally terrifying issues: the death of his kitten, a disastrous birthday party that no one shows up to, and being misunderstood by his family, especially his distant and cruel father.

Mr. Gaiman says he stumbled into the novel by accident. A decade ago, he bought a Mini Cooper, which reminded him of the Mini his family had when he was a boy living in Sussex, England. He asked his father, who has since died, what became of the car. His father told him a secret that he had kept from his son for nearly four decades. Mr. Gaiman's father sold the car because a man who rented a room from the family committed suicide in it after losing all his money gambling.

"I found it so strange that something like this had happened when I was seven, and I had no idea," Mr. Gaiman said. "That little thing sat in my head like a piece of grit and just irritated me."

Several years and many projects later, Mr. Gaiman decided to explore the fragment of family history in a short story. He borrowed the location and other details from his childhood, and created a protagonist that he describes as "very much me." To Mr. Gaiman's surprise, the short story mushroomed into a novel.

"I've never written a novel accidentally before," he said. "When I've written novels in the past they've been absolutely intentional."

Two of his other intentional novels I've loved:  Neverwhere and Mirrormask.  Perfect summer escapes.