January 10, 2012
jennernyneuro: HowStuffWorks “How Love Works”: There are a lot of chemicals racing around your brain and body when you’re in love. Researchers are gradually learning more and more about the roles they play both when we are falling in love and when we’re in long-term relationships. Of course, estrogenand testosterone play a role in the sex drive area (see How Sex Works). Without them, we might never venture into the “real love” arena. That initial giddiness that comes when we’re first falling in love includes a racing heart, flushed skin and sweaty palms. Researchers say this is due to the dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine we’re releasing. Dopamine is thought to be the “pleasure chemical,” producing a feeling of bliss. Norepinephrine is similar to adrenaline and produces the racing heart and excitement. According to Helen Fisher, anthropologist and well-known love researcher from Rutgers University, together these two chemicals produce elation, intense energy, sleeplessness, craving, loss of appetite and focused attention. She also says, “The human body releases the cocktail of love rapture only when certain conditions are met and … men more readily produce it than women, because of their more visual nature.” Researchers are using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to watch people’s brains when they look at a photograph of their object of affection. According to Helen Fisher, a well-known love researcher and an anthropologist at Rutgers University, what they see in those scans during that “crazed, can’t-think-of-anything-but stage of romance” — the attraction stage — is the biological drive to focus on one person. The scans showed increased blood flow in areas of the brain with high concentrations of receptors for dopamine — associated with states of euphoria, craving and addiction. High levels of dopamine are also associated with norepinephrine, which heightens attention, short-term memory, hyperactivity, sleeplessness and goal-oriented behavior. In other words, couples in this stage of love focus intently on the relationship and often on little else. Another possible explanation for the intense focus and idealizing view that occurs in the attraction stage comes from researchers at University College London. They discovered that people in love have lower levels of serotonin and also that neural circuits associated with the way we assess others are suppressed. These lower serotonin levels are the same as those found in people with obsessive-compulsive disorders, possibly explaining why those in love “obsess” about their partner.

jennernyneuro:

HowStuffWorks “How Love Works”:


There are a lot of chemicals racing around your brain and body when you’re in love. Researchers are gradually learning more and more about the roles they play both when we are falling in love and when we’re in long-term relationships. Of course, estrogenand testosterone play a role in the sex drive area (see How Sex Works). Without them, we might never venture into the “real love” arena.

That initial giddiness that comes when we’re first falling in love includes a racing heart, flushed skin and sweaty palms. Researchers say this is due to the dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine we’re releasing. Dopamine is thought to be the “pleasure chemical,” producing a feeling of bliss. Norepinephrine is similar to adrenaline and produces the racing heart and excitement. According to Helen Fisher, anthropologist and well-known love researcher from Rutgers University, together these two chemicals produce elation, intense energy, sleeplessness, craving, loss of appetite and focused attention. She also says, “The human body releases the cocktail of love rapture only when certain conditions are met and … men more readily produce it than women, because of their more visual nature.”

Researchers are using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to watch people’s brains when they look at a photograph of their object of affection. According to Helen Fisher, a well-known love researcher and an anthropologist at Rutgers University, what they see in those scans during that “crazed, can’t-think-of-anything-but stage of romance” — the attraction stage — is the biological drive to focus on one person. The scans showed increased blood flow in areas of the brain with high concentrations of receptors for dopamine — associated with states of euphoria, craving and addiction. High levels of dopamine are also associated with norepinephrine, which heightens attention, short-term memory, hyperactivity, sleeplessness and goal-oriented behavior. In other words, couples in this stage of love focus intently on the relationship and often on little else.

Another possible explanation for the intense focus and idealizing view that occurs in the attraction stage comes from researchers at University College London. They discovered that people in love have lower levels of serotonin and also that neural circuits associated with the way we assess others are suppressed. These lower serotonin levels are the same as those found in people with obsessive-compulsive disorders, possibly explaining why those in love “obsess” about their partner.

2:46pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZUkivwEXceDF
(Notes: 560)
  
January 10, 2012
sciencecenter: Sticklers for punctuality, prepare yourself for the upcoming leap second Surely everyone has heard of the leap year, in which every fourth year is extended by a day to compensate for Earth’s slightly irregular orbit around the sun. But you probably haven’t heard of the leap second. Mark Brown of Wired UK has the scoop: The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) in Paris — the grand arbiters of time on our big blue marble — has declared that a leap second will be introduced on 30 June, 2012. […] We used to use the Earth’s dutiful rotation as a way of measuring time. It pirouettes on its axis once every 24 hours, which can then be divided into minutes and seconds. But the Earth’s rotation is annoyingly irregular, with some days ending up being a tiny bit longer or shorter than others. There’s nothing science hates more than unpredictability, so in the 1950s atomic clocks were introduced to keep time. By measuring the regular atomic vibration in the element cesium (which oscillates exactly 9,192,631,770 times a second), we ended up with a clock that can be used to score off seconds with remarkable accuracy. Multiple atomic clocks work in unison to precisely calculate world time. But that leaves a problem. If we lived on atomic time it’d very slowly gravitate away from the Earth’s actual time. In a few years we’d be a second out of sync, in hundreds of years we’d be a minute out and after several hundred thousand years we could be eating lunch in the middle of the night. So time-keepers introduced the leap second. As the atomic clock’s perfect accuracy (known as International Atomic Time, or TAI, from the French name Temps Atomique International) veers farther and farther away from the Earth’s clumsy rotation (called Solar Time), the IERS introduces a leap second to bring them back into perfect parity (known as Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC). Click here to read the rest.

sciencecenter:

Sticklers for punctuality, prepare yourself for the upcoming leap second

Surely everyone has heard of the leap year, in which every fourth year is extended by a day to compensate for Earth’s slightly irregular orbit around the sun. But you probably haven’t heard of the leap second. Mark Brown of Wired UK has the scoop:

The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) in Paris — the grand arbiters of time on our big blue marble — has declared that a leap second will be introduced on 30 June, 2012. […]

We used to use the Earth’s dutiful rotation as a way of measuring time. It pirouettes on its axis once every 24 hours, which can then be divided into minutes and seconds. But the Earth’s rotation is annoyingly irregular, with some days ending up being a tiny bit longer or shorter than others.

There’s nothing science hates more than unpredictability, so in the 1950s atomic clocks were introduced to keep time.

By measuring the regular atomic vibration in the element cesium (which oscillates exactly 9,192,631,770 times a second), we ended up with a clock that can be used to score off seconds with remarkable accuracy. Multiple atomic clocks work in unison to precisely calculate world time.

But that leaves a problem. If we lived on atomic time it’d very slowly gravitate away from the Earth’s actual time. In a few years we’d be a second out of sync, in hundreds of years we’d be a minute out and after several hundred thousand years we could be eating lunch in the middle of the night.

So time-keepers introduced the leap second. As the atomic clock’s perfect accuracy (known as International Atomic Time, or TAI, from the French name Temps Atomique International) veers farther and farther away from the Earth’s clumsy rotation (called Solar Time), the IERS introduces a leap second to bring them back into perfect parity (known as Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC).

Click here to read the rest.

2:46pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZUkivwEXccws
(Notes: 317)
  
January 10, 2012
Wide Eyes: Big ways the internet is changing our brains

mega-mix:

  1. THE INTERNET IS OUR EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE

    We don’t have to remember phone numbers or addresses anymore. Instead, we can just hop on our email or Google to look it up. According to a study by Science Magazine, “the Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where…

2:41pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZUkivwEXbdCt
(Notes: 901)
  
January 10, 2012

 Every morning we wake up and regain consciousness — that is a marvelous fact — but what exactly is it that we regain? Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio uses this simple question to give us a glimpse into how our brains create our sense of self.

(Source: hypna)

2:30pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZUkivwEXZCCa
(Notes: 98)
  
January 10, 2012
Neuropsy: Why some of us are better at remembering what really happened?

The University of Cambridge scientists found that normal variation in a fold at the front of the brain called the paracingulate sulcus (or PCS) might explain why some people are better than others at accurately remembering details of previous events -such as whether they or another person said something, or whether the event was imagined or actually occurred.

This brain variation, which is present in roughly half of the normal population, is one of the last structural folds to develop before birth and for this reason varies greatly in size between individuals in the healthy population. The researchers discovered that adults whose MRI scans indicated an absence of the PCS were significantly less accurate on memory tasks than people with a prominent PCS on at least one side of the brain. Interestingly, all participants believed that they had a good memory despite one group’s memories being clearly less reliable.

(Source: tricitypsychology.com, via b-e-l-l-o)

2:30pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZUkivwEXZ114
(Notes: 117)
  
November 24, 2011
How Mood Has an Effect on How we Retrieve Past Memories The study Maccallum et al. (1999) looks at the impact of hypnotically induced mood on the retrieval of specific autobiographical memories. The subjects were undergraduate students from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Pretested for no clinical depression, 24 subjects (15 females and 9 males) were found to be highly hypnotizable, and 21 participants (12 females and 9 males) lowly hypnotizable. Using the experimental design, for the independent variable, subjects were randomly assigned to either the sad, neutral or happy induced state conditions. To induce the emotional states (sad, neutral, or happy), subjects were told they would begin to feel sad, a neutral or a happy mood state, that they would experience the mood strongly. Then they were read a short passage involving a person receiving a telephone call from their mother that their father had been killed (to induce sad mood), about performing university related tasks (to induce neutral mood), or that they won a lottery (to induce happy mood). The mood before and after mood induction were recorded by asking participants to rate their level of sadness and happiness from a scale of 1 to 100 (0 is not at all happy, 100 is extremely happy, 0 is not at all sad, 100 is extremely sad) and to count from 1 to 10 (the counting were timed and longer length is more sad). For the assessment of the dependent variable, subjects were asked to provide a specific personal memory (any single event that the subjects were directly involved in that lasted less than 1 day) within 60 seconds to each positive or negative cued words. There are five positive (gift, compliment, helpful, friendly, and smile) cued words, and five negatives (disappointed, mistake, argument, angry, and lonely). The Findings The results show that high hypnotizable subjects in the sad condition provided fewer specific memories in response to positive rather than negative words, in neutral condition more for positives than negatives, and in happy similar amount of specific personal memories for both negative and positive cues.  There was no difference across the low hypnotizable subjects across the conditions. The main theme from this study is that emotional states specifically sadness can limit our ability to recall happy memories during hypnosis. The Theory The reasoning behind why it is harder for people to remember happy things when they are sad is because it takes energy. Whereas when people are already happy, they have lots of mental energy and can remember both happy and sad memories.

How Mood Has an Effect on How we Retrieve Past Memories

The study

Maccallum et al. (1999) looks at the impact of hypnotically induced mood on the retrieval of specific autobiographical memories. The subjects were undergraduate students from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Pretested for no clinical depression, 24 subjects (15 females and 9 males) were found to be highly hypnotizable, and 21 participants (12 females and 9 males) lowly hypnotizable. Using the experimental design, for the independent variable, subjects were randomly assigned to either the sad, neutral or happy induced state conditions. To induce the emotional states (sad, neutral, or happy), subjects were told they would begin to feel sad, a neutral or a happy mood state, that they would experience the mood strongly. Then they were read a short passage involving a person receiving a telephone call from their mother that their father had been killed (to induce sad mood), about performing university related tasks (to induce neutral mood), or that they won a lottery (to induce happy mood). The mood before and after mood induction were recorded by asking participants to rate their level of sadness and happiness from a scale of 1 to 100 (0 is not at all happy, 100 is extremely happy, 0 is not at all sad, 100 is extremely sad) and to count from 1 to 10 (the counting were timed and longer length is more sad). For the assessment of the dependent variable, subjects were asked to provide a specific personal memory (any single event that the subjects were directly involved in that lasted less than 1 day) within 60 seconds to each positive or negative cued words. There are five positive (gift, compliment, helpful, friendly, and smile) cued words, and five negatives (disappointed, mistake, argument, angry, and lonely).

The Findings

The results show that high hypnotizable subjects in the sad condition provided fewer specific memories in response to positive rather than negative words, in neutral condition more for positives than negatives, and in happy similar amount of specific personal memories for both negative and positive cues.  There was no difference across the low hypnotizable subjects across the conditions. The main theme from this study is that emotional states specifically sadness can limit our ability to recall happy memories during hypnosis.

The Theory

The reasoning behind why it is harder for people to remember happy things when they are sad is because it takes energy. Whereas when people are already happy, they have lots of mental energy and can remember both happy and sad memories.

(Source: psych-facts, via psychology2010)

3:43pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZUkivwCKs0EY
(Notes: 1,234)
  
November 24, 2011
The Unconscious Mind is a Great Decision Maker Intro At times, we think that in order to make a better decision, we have to think. But studies suggest that we can actually make great decisions without thinking; in fact, the unconscious mind does most of the thinking for us when the choices we have to make are complex. Research A study by Dijksterhuis looks at whether people make better choices about cars when they think or didn’t think about the attributes they were provided with about the cars to make a decision. The participants were randomly assigned to either a 4 attributes (simple problem) or 12 attributes (complex problem) condition. Then in either conditions they were asked to think about the attributes or were distracted from thinking (by having to solve a puzzle). They found that more subjects choose the better car when they do not think for the 12 attributes. Furthermore, they found that when provided with 4 attributes, the opposite findings (thinking is better) were true.  In summary, it’s better to ‘sleep on it’ and not think when the choices we have to make are complicated while it is better to think when the choices are simpler (involving considering only 4 or fewer factors). Theory Often times when we make choices (regardless of the complexity), we list out the pros and cons without taking into any account the actual importance of each point. In the above study example, we weigh all 12 attributes of the cars equally when we should only be looking at the top 4. Another reason is because our working memory is limited in its abilities to take all 12 attributes into account. However, the unconscious mind can. So when the participants in the study were distracted with the puzzle task, they are actually leaving their unconscious mind to do the thinking for them. And the choices they make turns out to be better ones. Our unconscious mind is much more efficient in thinking about things that involve many other things to consider. Hence, as the article below suggests, ‘sleep on it.’

The Unconscious Mind is a Great Decision Maker

Intro

At times, we think that in order to make a better decision, we have to think. But studies suggest that we can actually make great decisions without thinking; in fact, the unconscious mind does most of the thinking for us when the choices we have to make are complex.

Research

A study by Dijksterhuis looks at whether people make better choices about cars when they think or didn’t think about the attributes they were provided with about the cars to make a decision. The participants were randomly assigned to either a 4 attributes (simple problem) or 12 attributes (complex problem) condition. Then in either conditions they were asked to think about the attributes or were distracted from thinking (by having to solve a puzzle). They found that more subjects choose the better car when they do not think for the 12 attributes. Furthermore, they found that when provided with 4 attributes, the opposite findings (thinking is better) were true. 

In summary, it’s better to ‘sleep on it’ and not think when the choices we have to make are complicated while it is better to think when the choices are simpler (involving considering only 4 or fewer factors).

Theory

Often times when we make choices (regardless of the complexity), we list out the pros and cons without taking into any account the actual importance of each point. In the above study example, we weigh all 12 attributes of the cars equally when we should only be looking at the top 4.

Another reason is because our working memory is limited in its abilities to take all 12 attributes into account. However, the unconscious mind can. So when the participants in the study were distracted with the puzzle task, they are actually leaving their unconscious mind to do the thinking for them. And the choices they make turns out to be better ones. Our unconscious mind is much more efficient in thinking about things that involve many other things to consider. Hence, as the article below suggests, ‘sleep on it.’

(Source: psych-facts, via psychology2010)

3:41pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZUkivwCKrkcd
(Notes: 848)
  
November 16, 2011

(via theluckyones13)

5:07pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZUkivwB-1pk5
(Notes: 29,936)
  
October 11, 2011
honestlyrachel: saradidwhat: bowlingalley-lawyer: davereed: ronniexpunani: STROKE: Remember The 1st Three Letters… S.T..R …During a party, a friend stumbled and took a little fall - she assured everyone that she was fine and just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes. (they offered to call ambulance)They got her cleaned up and got her a new plate of food - while she appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid went about enjoying herself the rest of the evening. Ingrid’s husband called later telling everyone that his wife had been taken to the hospital - (at 6:00pm , Ingrid passed away.)She had suffered a stroke at the party . Had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke, perhaps Ingrid would be with us today.Some don’t die. They end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead. It only takes a minute to read this…STROKE IDENTIFICATION:A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke…totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.RECOGNIZING A STROKERemember the ‘3’ steps, STR . Read and Learn!Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster.The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke.Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions :S * Ask the individual to SMILE ..T * = TALK. Ask the person to SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently) (eg ‘It is sunny out today’).R * Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS .If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call the ambulance and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.NOTE : Another ‘sign’ of a stroke is1. Ask the person to ‘stick’ out their tongue.2. If the tongue is ‘crooked’, if it goes to one side or the other that is also an indication of a stroke.A prominent cardiologist says if everyone who gets this e-mail sends it to 10 people; you can bet that at least one life will be saved.And it could be your own. Spread the word Valuable information. My uncle recently passed be cause of a massive stroke. R.I.P. Tom.  We miss you, every time grandma talks about you she cries. R.I.P Uncle tom. <3. At least in heaven you get to be where you want and do whatever makes you happy. Have fun fishing in the ocean up there, catch a shark or something cool to tell us about when we come up there too!

honestlyrachel:

saradidwhat:

bowlingalley-lawyer:

davereed:

ronniexpunani:

STROKE: Remember The 1st Three Letters… S.T..R …

During a party, a friend stumbled and took a little fall - she assured everyone that she was fine and just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes. (they offered to call ambulance)

They got her cleaned up and got her a new plate of food - while she appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid went about enjoying herself the rest of the evening. Ingrid’s husband called later telling everyone that his wife had been taken to the hospital - (at 6:00pm , Ingrid passed away.)
She had suffered a stroke at the party . Had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke, perhaps Ingrid would be with us today.

Some don’t die. They end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead. It only takes a minute to read this…

STROKE IDENTIFICATION:

A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke…totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.

RECOGNIZING A STROKE

Remember the ‘3’ steps, STR . Read and Learn!
Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster.
The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke.
Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions :

S * Ask the individual to SMILE ..
T * = TALK. Ask the person to SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently) (eg ‘It is sunny out today’).
R * Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS .

If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call the ambulance and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

NOTE : Another ‘sign’ of a stroke is
1. Ask the person to ‘stick’ out their tongue.
2. If the tongue is ‘crooked’, if it goes to one side or the other that is also an indication of a stroke.

A prominent cardiologist says if everyone who gets this e-mail sends it to 10 people; you can bet that at least one life will be saved.

And it could be your own.

Spread the word

Valuable information.

My uncle recently passed be cause of a massive stroke.

R.I.P. Tom.  We miss you, every time grandma talks about you she cries.

R.I.P Uncle tom. <3. At least in heaven you get to be where you want and do whatever makes you happy. Have fun fishing in the ocean up there, catch a shark or something cool to tell us about when we come up there too!

(via dontrush)

11:46am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZUkivwAW-etW
(Notes: 46,684)
  
October 11, 2011

(via heavenly-helll)

11:39am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZUkivwAW_N8D
(Notes: 37)
  
Filed under: bird ornithology crested orange nature animals 
October 9, 2011

(via r-o-a-m)

9:27am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZUkivwARHCAy
(Notes: 482)
  
October 2, 2011
Click here to see the Aurora Borealis in Finnish Lapland

2:01pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZUkivwAATjOE
(Notes: 1)
  
September 28, 2011
neiture: Sunning Mandarins | Image by Alan Shapiro

neiture:

Sunning Mandarins | Image by Alan Shapiro

(Source: ecocides, via craaave)

12:51am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZUkivw9-FRAO
(Notes: 884)
  
Filed under: Mandarins animals birds mpp