Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Phantom Tunes Shed Light on the Brain

BY CARL ZIMMER


In 2011, a 66-year old retired math teacher walked into a London neurological clinic hoping to get some answers. A few years earlier, she explained to the doctors, she had heard someone playing a piano outside her house. But then she realized there was no piano.

The phantom piano played longer and longer melodies, like passages from Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto number 2 in C minor, her doctors recount in a recent study in the journal Cortex. By the time the woman – to whom the doctors refer only by her first name, Sylvia – came to the clinic, the music had become her nearly constant companion.

People with such musical hallucinations usually are psychologically normal – except for the songs they are sure someone is playing.

Scientists were able to compare Sylvia’s brain activity when she was experiencing hallucinations that were both quiet and loud – something that had never been done before. By comparing the two states, they found important clues to how the brain generates these illusions – clues that may also shed light on how our minds make sense of the world.

The study was based on a simple idea. Sometimes people with musical hallucinations say that hearing real music can quiet the imaginary tunes.

It turned out that Sylvia found that music by Bach sometimes eased her hallucinations. When Sukhbinder Kumar, a staff scientist at Newcastle University in England and one of the study’s co-authors, measured the effect, he found a consistent pattern: Once the Bach stopped, Sylvia had seconds of relief from the hallucinations. Then the hallucinatory piano returned, reaching full strength about a minute and a half after the Bach ended.

For the experiment, Sylvia put on earphones and sat with her head in a scanner that detects the magnetic field produced by the brain. On the day of the study, she was hearing selections from Gilbert and Sullivan’s “H.M.S. Pinafore.”

Every few minutes the scientists switched to Bach for 30 seconds, to tamp down the hallucination. When the real music stopped, Sylvia used a keyboard to rate the strength of her hallucinations while the scanner recorded her brain activity.

Dr. Kumar and his colleagues found that a few regions of Sylvia’s brain consistently produced stronger brain waves when the hallucinations were louder.

It turned out that they are regions that we all use when we listen to music. One region becomes active when we perceive pitch, for example.

Dr. Kumar argues that these results support a theory developed by Karl Friston of the Wellcome Trust Center for Neuroimaging. (Dr. Friston is a co-author of the new study.) Dr. Friston has proposed that our brains are prediction-generating machines.

Our brains, Dr. Friston argues, generate predictions about what is going to happen next, using past experiences as a guide. When we hear a sound, particularly music, our brains guess at what it is and predict what it will sound like in the next instant. If the prediction is wrong, our brains quickly recognize that we are hearing something else and make a new prediction.

Scientists have long known that people with musical hallucinations often have at least some hearing loss. Sylvia, for example, needed hearing aids after getting a viral infection two decades ago. Dr. Kumar’s theory could explain why some people with hearing loss develop musical hallucinations. With fewer auditory signals entering the brain, their error detection becomes weaker. If the music-processing brain regions make faulty prediction, those predictions only grow stronger until they feel like reality. “There is nothing from the senses to constrain them,” Dr. Kumar said.

Dr. Kumar and his colleagues are now using their experimental method on more people with musical hallucinations. If the theory holds up, it could explain why real music provides relief for musical hallucinations: The incoming sounds reveal the brain’s prediction errors. And it may also explain why people are prone to hallucinate music.

“Music is more predictable,” said Dr. Kumar. “That makes it more likely as a phenomenon for hallucinations.”


Taken from TODAY Saturday Edition, March 8, 2014


Thursday, December 11, 2014

Lessons in How to Age With Wisdom

Septagram illustrating disciplines which compr...
Septagram illustrating disciplines which comprise cognitive science (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
BY PHYLLIS KORKKI


Since ancient times, the elusive concept of wisdom has figured prominently in philosophical and religious texts. The question remains compelling: What is wisdom, and how does it play out in individual lives?

Vivian Clayton, a geriatric neuro psychologist in Orinda, California, developed a definition of wisdom in the 1970s that has served as a foundation for research on the subject ever since. After scouring ancient texts, she found that most people described as wise were decision makers. So she asked a group of law students, law professors and retired judges to name the characteristics of a wise person. She determined that wisdom consists of three key components: cognition, reflection and compassion.

Research shows that cognitive functioning slows as people age. But a recent study in Topics in Cognitive Science pointed out that older people have much more information in their brains than younger ones, and the quality of the information in the older brain is more nuanced.

According to Dr. Clayton, one must take time to gain insights and perspectives from one’s cognitive knowledge to be wise. Then one can use those insights to understand and help others.

Monika Ardelt, an associate professor at the University of Florida, felt a need to expand on studies of old age because of research showing that satisfaction late in life consists of things like maintaining physical and mental health, volunteering and having positive relationships with others. But this isn’t always possible. Wisdom, she has found, is what can help even severely impaired people find meaning, contentment and acceptance in life.

She developed a scale consisting of 39 questions aimed at measuring three dimensions of wisdom. People responding to statements on Professor Ardelt’s wisdom scale were not told they were being measured for wisdom. Respondents later answered question about hypothetical challenges, and those who showed evidence of high wisdom were also more likely to have better coping skills.

An impediment to wisdom is thinking, “I can’t stand who I am now because I’m not who I used to be,” said Isabella S. Bick, a psychotherapist who, at 81, still practices part time in Sharon, Connecticut. She has aging clients who are upset by a perceived worsening of their looks, sexual performance and abilities. For them, an acceptance of aging is necessary for growth, but “it’s not a resigned acceptance; it’s an embracing acceptance,” she said.

Professor Ardelt’s research shows that when people in nursing homes score high on her wisdom scale, they also report a greater sense of well-being. “If things are really bad, it’s good to be wise,” she said.

Wisdom is characterized by a “reduction in self-centeredness,” Professor Ardelt said. Wise people try to understand situations from multiple perspectives, and they show tolerance as a result.

Daniel Goleman, author of “Emotional Intelligence,” said an important sign of wisdom was “generativity,” a term used by the psychologist Erick Erikson, who developed an influential theory on stages of the human life span. Generativity means giving back without needing anything in return, Dr.Goleman said.

He interviewed Mr. Erikson, along with his wife, Joan, in the late 1980s, when both were in their 80s. Mr. Erikson’s theory of human development had initially included eight stages, from infancy to old age. When the Eriksons themselves reached old age, though, they found a need to add a ninth stage of development, one in which wisdom plays a crucial role. “They depict an old age in which one has enough conviction in one’s own completeness to ward off the despair that gradual physical disintegration can too easily bring,” Dr.Goleman said.

“Even the simple activities of daily living may present difficulty and conflict,” Joan Erikson wrote in an expanded version of her husband’s book, “The Life Cycle Completed.”

The book adds: “One must join in the process of adaption. With whatever tact and wisdom we can muster, disabilities must be accepted with lightness and humor.”


Taken from TODAY Saturday Edition, March 29, 2014

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Parent-Child Journeys Present a Few Pitfalls

"Under the horse chestnut tree", 1 p...
"Under the horse chestnut tree", 1 print : drypoint and aquatint, color ; (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There's a time to teach, to show, to model... and then a time to let go...
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TOM BRADY


The parent-child bond is fraught with emotional and physical trials every step of the way. But what happens to the parent nearing those final days of nurturing?

Madeline Levine spent her career as a psychologist and a writer – and mother – with the belief that her job was to prepare her three sons to live independently and enthusiastically move into adulthood.

But now that the youngest of her three sons is out of college, and the older two are doing just what she wanted for them all along, her reaction surprised her.

“How odd that I should be blindsided by a sense of loss as my sons move fully into lives of their own,” she wrote in The Times.

“Some part of me must have known that each move toward independence – from zipping a jacket to hanging out at the mall to driving a car – meant not only that my sons were more capable, but also that I was less necessary,” Ms. Levine wrote. “And I meet this reality with far more ambivalence than I had anticipated.”

For those in the process of coaching their children on the path toward a meaningful life, the best advice may be that less is more. That’s the evidence from several recent studies that indicate the more parents are involved in their children’s lives – the more helicopter parenting they do – the less responsible children are likely to be, The Times reported.

A paper published in February in the American Sociological Review found that the more money parents spend on their child’s college education, the worse grades the child earns.

A separate study published the same month in the Journal of Child and Family Studies reported that the more parents are involved in schoolwork and selection of coursework, the less satisfied college student feel.

“It seems that certain forms of help can dilute recipients’ sense of accountability for their own success,” Eli J. Finkel and Grainne M. Fitzsimmons wrote. “The college student might think: If Mom and Dad are always around to solve my problems, why spend three straight nights in the library during finals rather than hanging out with my friends?”

Sometimes it’s the children’s actions that can do harm, especially when toddlers are acting out.

Parents routinely suffer concussions, chipped teeth, corneal abrasions, nasal fractures, cut lips and other
Injuries from the aggressive actions of their young children, The Times reported. More than one mother has had an earlobe torn when her baby has grabbed and yanked a dangling earring.

When Sarah Rosengarten was whacked across the face with a toy metal car by her 2-year-old son Carter Roberts, she wound up at the emergency room, where doctors diagnosed a hairline fracture of the jaw.

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Can I look as young as my children?
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“Children,” Ms. Rosengarten, 27, told The Times, “can be dangerous.”

The most daring of parents are willing to tread into that most perilous of territories – their children’s dating lives.

Barbara Weisberg, 64, inspired the development of The JMon.com, a Jewish matchmaking site and one of several Web sites that have arisen to cater to parents, because she thought her own children were missing out.

“They maybe were looking superficially for attraction and they were not looking deep enough to see everything that encompasses a person,” Mrs. Weisberg, who has been married for nearly 40 years and lives in Kentucky, told The Times.

One night, her son Brad allowed her to review online matches for him and she made a list of candidates who she felt would promise a love connection.

But Mrs. Weisberg understands there are limits on how far a parent can and should go in trying to identity a mate for their children. She told The Times: “People have to settle down when they’re ready to.”



Taken from TODAY Saturday Edition, July 6, 2013

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Wanting Privacy, Posting Anyway

Facebook logo Español: Logotipo de Facebook Fr...
Facebook logo Español: Logotipo de Facebook Français : Logo de Facebook Tiếng Việt: Logo Facebook (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

BY KATE MURPHY


Imagine a world suddenly devoid of doors. The controlling authorities say if you aren’t doing anything wrong, then you shouldn’t mind. That’s essentially the state of affairs on the Internet. There is no privacy.

Increasingly, people are coming to understand how their online data might be used against them. You might not get a job, a loan or a date because of an indiscreet tweet. But less obvious is the psychic toll.

“With all the focus on the legal aspects of privacy and the impact on global trade there’s been little discussion of why you want privacy and why it’s intrinsically important to you as an individual,” said Adam Joinson of the University of the West of England in Bristol.

Perhaps that’s because there is no agreement over what constitutes private information. It varies among cultures, genders and individuals. Moreover, it’s hard to argue for the value of privacy when people eagerly share so much personal information.

But the history of privacy is one of status. Those who are institutionalized for criminal behavior or ill health, children and the impoverished have less privacy than those who are upstanding, healthy, mature and wealthy.

“The implication is that if you don’t have it, you haven’t earned the right or aren’t capable or trustworthy,” said Christena Nippert-Eng of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.

So it’s not surprising that privacy research in both online and offline environments has shown that just the perception, let alone the reality, of being watched results in feelings of low self-esteem, depression and anxiety. Whether observed by a supervisor at work or Facebook friends, people are inclined to conform and demonstrate less individuality. Their performance of tasks suffers and they have elevated levels of stress hormones.

A three-year German study ending in 2012 showed that the more people disclosed about themselves on social media, the more privacy they said they desired. The lead author of the study, Sabine Trepte of the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, said the paradox indicated participants’ dissatisfaction with what they got in return for giving away so much about themselves.

“It’s a bad deal because what they get is mainly informational support like maybe a tip for a restaurant or link to an article,” she said. “What they don’t get is the kind of emotional and instrumental support that leads to well-being, like a shoulder to cry on or someone who will sit by your bedside at the hospital.”

And yet, she added, they continued to participate because they were afraid of being left out judged by others as unplugged and unengaged losers. So the cycle continued.

“There’s also this idea in our society that if I just embarrass myself enough I can be the next Snooki or Kardashian,” said Anita L. Allen, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. “There’s a real financial incentive to not care and give it all up.”

The problem is that if you reveal everything about yourself or it’s discoverable with a Google search, you may be diminished in your capacity for intimacy. This goes back to social penetration theory, one of the most cited and experimentally validated explanations of human connection. Developed by Irwin Altman and Dalmas A. Taylor in the 1970s, the theory holds that relationships develop through gradual and mutual self-disclosure of increasingly private and sensitive personal information.

“Building and maintaining an enduring, intimate relationship is a process of privacy regulation,” said Dr. Altman, now an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Utah. “It’s about opening and closing boundaries to maintain individual identity but also demonstrate unity with another, and if there are violations then the relationship is threatened.”

Thought of another way, information about yourself is like currency. The amount you spend on a person signifies how much you value the relationship. And that person compensates you in kind. That’s why it feels like theft when someone tells your secrets or data miners piece together your personal history –using your browsing habits, online purchases and social networks – and sell it. And it’s also why if you’re profligate with information about yourself, you have precious little to offer someone really special.

“I have to say, too, there’s a certain kind of vanity and self-absorption reflected in giving up everything about one’s self,” Professor Allen said.” To think that somehow everything you do needs to be shared online is conceited and false.”

But privacy researchers said they are starting to see signs of a backlash. People are beginning to exercise a bit more reserve online or are otherwise engaging in subversive tactics to thwart data miners. Such small acts of defiance might include setting up multiple fake identities, using a virtual private network to shield their browsing behavior and not “liking” anything on Facebook or following anyone on Twitter, making their social networks and preferences harder to track.

Professor Nippert-Eng said, “When people want privacy there’s often this idea that, ‘Oh, they are hiding something dirty,’ but they are really just trying to hold onto themselves.”

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Taken from TODAY Saturday Edition, November 1, 2014

How to read a man?

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Was it a wrinkle-free picture you used in your profile?

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Loneliness Can Hurt More Than the Heart

Cover of "Loneliness: Human Nature and th...
Cover via Amazon
JANE E. BRODY


I now know why I gained more than 13 kilograms in my early 20s: I was lonely. I had left for school and a job in the Upper Midwest and I knew no one. I filled my lonely nights and days with food, especially candy, cookies and ice cream. I could not rein in my eating until I returned to New York and my family, and began dating my future husband.

Loneliness, says John T. Cacioppo, an award-winning psychologist at the University of Chicago, undermines people’s ability to self-regulate. In one experiment he cites, participants made to feel socially disconnected ate many more cookies than those made to feel socially accepted.

In a real-life study of a middle-aged and older adults in the Chicago area, Dr. Cacioppo and colleagues found that those who scored high on the University of California, Los Angeles, Loneliness Scale, a widely used assessment, ate more fatty foods than those who scored low.

“Is it any wonder that we turn to ice cream or other fatty foods when we’re sitting at home feeling all alone in the world?” Dr. Cacioppo said in his well-documented book, “Loneliness,” written with William Patrick.

He said lonely individuals tend to do whatever they can to make themselves feel better, if only for the moment. They may overeat, drink too much, smoke, speed or engage in indiscriminate sex.

A review of research published in 1988 found that “social isolation is on a par with high blood pressure, obesity, lack of exercise or smoking as a risk factor for illness and early death,” Dr. Cacioppo wrote.

Even without the presence of unwholesome behaviors, Dr. Cacioppo and others have shown that loneliness can impair health by raising levels of stress hormones and increasing inflammation.  The damage can be widespread, affecting every bodily system and brain function.

Lisa Jaremka of Ohio State University reported in January that people who are lonely have higher levels of antibodies to certain herpes viruses, indicating more activated viruses in their system. In another study, she found higher levels of inflammation-inducing substances in the blood of lonely people.

Chronic inflammation has been linked to heart disease, arthritis, Type 2 diabetes, and even suicide attempts, Dr. Jaremka noted.

Loneliness has also been linked to cognitive decline. A Dutch study published last year in The Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry found that participants who reported feeling lonely – regardless of how many friends and family surrounded them – were more likely to develop dementia than those who lived on their own but were not lonely.

The Dutch study suggests that how people perceive their situation may have a stronger impact on health than whether they live alone and lack social connections. Divorced people have reported feeling lonelier in a bad marriage than they do being single. And people who live alone may still have a large network of friends and family that helps to keep loneliness at bay.

People are fundamentally social beings who require meaningful connections with others to maximize health and well-being. Dr. Cacioppo suggests reaching out to others with “random acts of kindness”: doing something that helps them physically or emotionally, maybe something as simple as complimenting a stranger‘s outfit or helping an old person cross the street.

“What’s required,” he wrote, “is to step outside the pain of our own situation long enough to ‘feed’ others. Real change begins with doing.”


Taken from TODAY, Saturday Edition, June 1, 2013

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Parents, fret less and sleep more

Cover of Parenting
Cover of Parenting (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Calliope Hummingbird / Stellula calliope - fem...
Calliope Hummingbird / Stellula calliope - female feeding two chicks (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

While I am not agreeing to everything written in this article, there is much to learn from the facts of life, as presented here. I still teach my kids that it's not what they do, or what they achieve that makes them. They are who they are, no matter what. 
Many kids raised in nice environments end up as rascals, criminals, and some kids raised in not nice environments end up being better, more educated. We do our job as parents, and that is where the thin line has to be drawn and adhered to. This article is more for parents, by the way.
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BY PAMELA DRUCKERMAN


I RECENTLY spent the afternoon with some Norwegians who are making a documentary about French child-rearing. Why would people in one of the world’s most successful countries care how anyone else raises kids?

In Norway, “we have brats, child kings, and many of us suffer from hyper-parenting. We’re spoiling them”, explained the producer, a father of three.

I used to think that only Americans and Brits did helicopter parenting. In fact, it’s now a global trend. Middle-class Brazilians, Chileans, Germans, Poles, Israelis, Russians and others have adopted versions of it too.

The guilt-ridden, sacrificial mother – fretting that she’s overdoing it, or not doing enough – has become a global icon.

In Parenting With style, a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, economists Matthias Doepke and Fabrizio Zilibotti said intensive parenting springs from rising inequality, because parents know there’s a bigger payoff for people with lots of education and skills.

Hyper-parenting is also driven by science. People around the world are breeding later in life, when they’re richer and more grateful, so the whole parenting experience becomes hallowed.

Twenty-first century parenting isn’t entirely illogical. Rather than trying to eradicate it, I suggest a strategy of containment: Rein in its excesses and keep it from getting worse.

Based on my own research, here are some key things modern parents should know – Toddlers understand language long before they can talk. This means you can teach them not to pummel you with carrots at dinnertime, making your life calmer.

Seize windows of freedom joyfully, without guilt. Remember that the problem with hyper-parenting isn’t that it’s bad for children; it’s that it’s bad for parents.

The greatest insight to emerge from France since “I think, therefore I am” is that children’s birthday parties should be drop-offs. The other parents get three hours to go off and play.

Don’t just parent for the future, parent for this evening. Your child probably won’t get into the Ivy League or win a sports scholarship. At age 24, he might be back in his childhood bedroom, in debt, after a mediocre college career. Raise him so that, if that happens, it will still have been worth it.

Try the sleeping cure. Most parenting crises are caused by exhaustion. Force yourself to observe the same night-time rituals as your toddlers: Bath, Book, bed.

Have less stuff. Messiness compounds the chaos of family life.

Don’t worry about over-scheduling your child. Kids who do extracurricular activities have higher grades and self-esteem than those who don’t, said a 2006 overview in the Society for Research in Child Development’s Social Policy Report.

Don’t beat yourself up for failing to achieve perfect work-life balance.

Teach your kids emotional intelligence. Explain that, for instance, not everyone will like them.

Transmit the Nelson Mandela rule: You can get what you want by showing people ordinary respect. When Mr Mandela heard that an Afrikaner general was arming rebels to prevent multiracial elections, he invited the general over for tea. Journalist John Carlin writes that Constand Viljoen “was dumbstruck by Mandela’s big, warm smile, by his courteous attentiveness to detail” and by his sensitivity to the fears of white South Africans. The general abandoned violence. Remind your kids that this technique also works on parents.

Don’t bother obsessing about what you think you’re doing wrong. You won’t screw up your kids in the ways you expect; you’ll do it in ways you hadn’t even considered. No amount of hyper-parenting can change that.

NYT
Taken from My Paper, Wednesday, October 15, 2014