Aging baby boomers are using a variety of methods to remain mentally sharp, from brain fitness classes to simply staying social. Newly published research suggests another, admittedly unorthodox approach to promoting brain-cell survival: Changing your religious affiliation. A study published in the online journal PLoS ONE found a key part of the brain atrophied more rapidly in Catholics and born-again Protestants than it did in mainline Protestants. This accelerated shrinkage was also found in people who reported a life-changing religious experience, as well as those with no ... Read More
Study of Emotion: Women’s Brains Are Wired for Compassion
May 9, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Nearly everyone agrees that women, on the whole, are more compassionate than men. In a 2008 Pew research poll, 80 percent of Americans expressed that view. Is this a sexist stereotype? Apparently not. Newly published brain-imaging research suggests that, in this case, conventional wisdom is correct. It finds women’s brains process compassion differently than men’s, apparently due to the distinctive way our respective neural systems evolved. “Our results suggest that compassion mechanisms evolved differentially in women, probably in connection with social skills including ... Read More
Thoreau Was Right: Nature Hones the Mind
January 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
A long line of the world's thinkers — from Immanuel Kant to William James to Deepak Chopra — have recommended we take walks in nature to relieve stress and refocus our thoughts. And nature writers — from Henry David Thoreau to John Muir to Edward Abbey — have extolled the restorative benefits of nature. "Everybody," Muir said, "needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul." Turns out they were ahead of their time. "Attention Restoration Theory" or ART, which posits that a walk in the woods helps refocus the ... Read More
Neuroscience: Is it All in Your Mind?
January 10, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
“Brain’s God Spot Discovered By Scientists.” That’s the headline the Huffington Post ran with after a team of neuroscientists discovered that profound religious and spiritual experiences light up discrete portions of the brain. That the media termed these chunks of mystical gray matter the “God Spot” was both clever and predictable; thus reduced, the research became instantly famous and immediately controversial: People didn’t want to see their deepest beliefs reduced to a simple biological explanation. Neuroscientists are now able to use sophisticated technology to peer ... Read More
I Foresee an Uproar Over an ESP Study
January 6, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
One evening more than a decade ago, I attended a talk by Daryl Bem, a well-known psychologist, at Reed College in Portland, Ore. Bem claimed that humans might be capable of precognition, or the ability to predict the future. As a newly minted Reed psychology graduate, Bem inspired me to write a computer program to test my own precognitive abilities. I happened to tell my boss and mentor at Reed, Allen Neuringer, about my little self-experiment. Allen, a wonderful person and adviser, and a behaviorist interested in hard facts, looked at me, paused for a moment, said "ESP doesn't exist," and ... Read More
Your Brain, Behind the Scenes
January 3, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
We are always moving objects around us. But the seemingly trivial movements that we do all day (reaching for a coffee cup, grabbing a jacket, etc.) turn out to be not so simple after all. Behind the scenes and totally unconsciously, our brains are doing a tremendous number of calculations to establish where we are in relation to objects around us. As our vision is such a primary sense, it had been thought that the first step for the brain in planning movement was to create a visually based map of objects around us — even for objects that we couldn't see. But in a recent paper in the journal ... Read More
Your Brain: A User’s Guide
December 22, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
In light of recent research into the workings of the mind, personal responsibility is threatening to become a casualty of science, and free will is looking like a frighteningly fragile construct. Our carefully considered decisions often turn out to be rationalizations for conclusions we have already come to on an unconscious, emotion driven level. Renowned brain researcher Antonio Damasio and veteran science writer Wray Herbert each address this accountability issue in their newly published books, and both come to the same conclusion: We're not off the hook. Herbert insists "we are capable ... Read More
Listening for the Key to Reverse Aging
August 23, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
"I feel weak today. I felt much stronger yesterday — like Benjamin Button in reverse," remarked a breathless Michael Scott, managerial dimwit from NBC's The Office. This is one of a few recent nods the show has made to academy-award nominated film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; the latest, seen this season, shows Dwight and Angela discussing provisions of a baby contract, with one clause outlining what to do if their child is born an old man. What prompts Button's water-cooler popularity, and much to the chagrin of its tagline writer ("Life isn't measure in minutes, but in ... Read More
ESP Study Suggests Lack of Trust in Science
April 20, 2010 • By • 11 Comments
Scientists wondering just how low faith in their field has fallen will get some uncomfortable answers in a study examining belief in Extrasensory Perception, recently published in the online journal Current Research in Social Psychology. In the experiment, conducted by a University of Maryland research team led by sociologist Heather Ridolfo, 160 participants watched a short video in which an individual is remarkably successful at a card-guessing game. In fact, the film’s star was informed of the answers, but it appeared to the study participants that she was either extremely lucky or had ... Read More
Transcendental Meditation Mitigates Depression
April 13, 2010 • By • 3 Comments
With a plethora of research suggesting otherwise, few would argue that meditation yields no health benefits. But the sheer number of claims regarding meditation's benefits is overwhelming: A quick Google search yields about 26,800 articles suggesting there are at least 100. While arguments that meditation helps you "attain enlightenment" or leads to "increased job satisfaction" are difficult to prove (after all, if it's your job to do something that you're morally opposed to, meditation isn't likely to make it more fulfilling), many of the practice's health advantages have been documented. ... Read More
