nybg:

The next time you’re walking through the Forest enjoying the symphony being trilled from the trees, remember this: The birds are having an emotional response, too! According to a new study, birds respond to the songs of their fellows in much the same way we respond to Beethoven’s “Pastoral” or the theme song the “Twilight Zone.” So much for bird brains … ~AR

(via Birds Found to Have Emotional Reactions to Song - NYTimes.com)

(via scinerds)

scinerds:

Chronic Stress: Fight or Flight System Gone Wrong

Stress is the way the body reacts to outside stimuli. Circumstances, events and situations can bring on the stress response. The stress response is also known as fight or flight.

The body prepares itself to react to the situation at hand. The sympathetic nerve system takes over releasing adrenal and other chemicals into the blood stream while heartbeat and respiratory rate increase. Our body becomes prepared to fight or flee. In survival situations the fight or flight response is useful but when we suffer from chronic stress our body suffers because it is preparing for fight or flight even when such a response is not necessary.

Image via flickr

Types

We all deal with stress in our daily lives. We sometimes worry needlessly which may cause various levels of anxiety. We often worry about future events and envision negative outcomes which can keep us in a constant stressed state until the event is finally over. The point is that we can’t totally escape stress since we deal with some form of it every day. We have to learn to deal with stress because if we don’t we may end up suffering ill health from the effects of severe stress.

Effects

Severe stress can cause a variety of physical symptoms. Some of the most common symptoms include migraine headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, fatigue, high blood pressure, loss of appetite, insomnia and restlessness. Long-term stress can cause conditions such as stomach ulcers and heart disease. It can also exacerbate conditions such as asthma. If other health conditions already exist stress the added stress can cause symptoms to worsen. Severe stress takes its toll on the immune system by causing it to become weakened. When the immune system is weak the body becomes susceptible to infections such as colds, flu and pneumonia.

Significance

In some ways stress can be likened to a domino effect. When it is so severe that it causes physical health conditions it also affects the mental and emotional state. When a person doesn’t feel well physically he tends to become irritable. Such irritability may affect one’s life in aspects of relationship, family, work and other areas. People may attempt to relieve feelings of stress by overeating, alcohol consumption or smoking, all of which can adversely affect one’s health.

Considerations

Severe stress can be associated with anxiety and may lead to panic attacks. People suffering severe stress may become withdrawn, less social and experience moments of extreme anxiety bordering on panic. They may start to avoid situations that they perceive to be stressful. People who suffer from such high levels of stress may experience physical symptoms such as chest pain and/or difficulty breathing.

Prevention/Solution

It is important to learn to manage stress effectively in order to prevent unnecessary health problems. Don’t take on more than you can handle. When people are overworked and pressed for time they are stressed. Avoid taking on new projects when you already have a full schedule. Be realistic about what you can do. People who are perfectionists and/or workaholics often have a high level of stress in their lives because they try to do too much and do it all perfectly. It also helps to relieve stress by eating properly, getting plenty of sleep and learning to relax.

Everyone needs to have some time to just sit back and relax. A positive attitude can help eliminate stress. People often worry about what may happen. If we stop trying to live in the future and just be in the present moment we can remove that unnecessary stress from our lives. If you must worry about future events then try to imagine a positive outcome. Life may have its stressful moments but we don’t have to be victims of stress.

scinerds:

When Depression Drugs Don’t Help, Talking Might

Talk therapy may be a helpful supplemental treatment for people with depression who have not responded to medication, a new study from the United Kingdom suggests.

Researchers found that people with depression who had not improved despite taking antidepressants were three times more likely to experience a reduction in their depression symptoms if talk therapy was added to their treatment regimen compared with those who continued to take only antidepressants.

The study is one of the first large trials to test the effectiveness of talk therapy given in tandem with antidepressants, the researchers said.

Up to two-thirds of people with depression don’t respond fully to antidepressant treatment, and the findings suggest a way to help this group, the researchers said.

“Until now, there was little evidence to help clinicians choose the best next step treatment for those patients whose symptoms do not respond to standard drug treatments,” study researcher Nicola Wiles of the University of Bristol’s Centre for Mental Health, Addiction and Suicide Research said in a statement.

The study followed patients for one year. Future studies should examine the effectiveness of this treatment combination over the long term, as patients with depression can relapse after treatment, the researchers said.

In addition, because some patients did not improve substantially when talk therapy was added, further research is needed to find alternative treatments for this group, Wiles added.

The study included about 470 people with depression who had not responded to antidepressants after six weeks of treatment. About half received cognitive behavioral therapy — a type of talk therapy — in addition to their usual antidepressant treatment, and half continued antidepressants without the addition of talk therapy.

After six months, about 46 percent of patients in the talk therapy group experienced at least a 50 percent reduction in their depressive symptoms. By contrast, 22 percent of people in the antidepressant group improved by the same amount. By the 12-month mark, both groups experienced similar rates of improvement.

Often, talk therapy is more difficult to access than medication, the researchers said. And people may not be able to afford the treatment if their health insurance does not cover it. Only about 25 percent of Americans with depression have received talk therapy during the past year, they said.

Pass it on: People with depression who have not responded to antidepressants may benefit from the addition of talk therapy.

ikenbot:

Why Impatience May Hurt Your Heart

Side Note: To keep the attention this blog has somewhat taken towards ‘getting to know yourself the science way’, I wanted to bring up this article from Livescience about how impatience can lead to health complications. I’m sure many of you will reply with the usual “WE’VE ALWAYS KNOWN THAT” but give this article a read so you can have the data that backs up your claims. But what’s more, I feel like actually knowing and having some understanding of how impatience alters our state of mind is also important within the realms of brain control. Because if outside conditions, however minute they could be, alter you into an impatient person, it can also make you less inclined to indulge in the patience required to learn new things. I have a little bit of impatience myself at times, and I notice that for the most part, living ‘the fast life’ of wanting it now can become a habit in itself and that’s when things like attention spans get shortened. Read the article for yourself and make your own judgement, but in any case please share this information with others. Not everyone knows what you know.

Now that the holiday season is here, nearly everyone’s patience will be tested at one time or another. Long lines, crowded malls and unbearable travel delays are among the reasons why some people will lose their cool.

But those episodes of impatience can trigger physiological responses that may sabotage your health. “Being impatient could cause anxiety and hostility,” said Daniel Baugher, dean of graduate programs at Pace University in New York City who has studied personality and social psychology. “And if you’re constantly anxious, your sleep could be affected, too.”

Baugher said living in the hyper-paced, technology-obsessed 21st century has left many people short on patience. “They seem to want everything yesterday,” he said. “People expect things to be done more quickly.”

But some individuals may simply be hardwired for impatience. “Everyone’s tolerance threshold is different,” he said. “We all feel impatient when certain things happen, but some more than others.”

Type A personalities are at high risk

Often high-strung and competitive, type A personalities seem suspended in a constant state of urgency. They’re unable to cope when things don’t go their way, be it snarled rush-hour traffic or the glacially slow line at the grocery store. “People with this personality type are more likely to experience anger when they’re held up,” said Dr. Redford Williams, an internist at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina, who estimates that roughly 25 percent of Americans have a type A personality, which increases their risk for health problems such as high blood pressure and heart disease.

In a 2003 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers reported that the more impatient and hostile the 18- to 30-year-old study participants felt, the more likely they would develop high blood pressure later in life.”High blood pressure is a symptom that the body is going into overdrive,” Baugher said. “The whole body gets geared up for a fight.”

Impatience + hostility = stress

People who frequently become impatient and angry are in a constant state of stress. The body reacts to that stress by releasing hormones such as adrenaline or cortisol which help the body respond to a stressful situation.

“When you’re about to be attacked by a saber-toothed tiger, this response can help you survive, but not when you’re sitting in traffic or waiting in a long line,” Williams said. High levels of cortisol and adrenaline could ultimately lead to weight gain, high blood sugar and high blood pressure.

In a 2000 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that young adults who had high hostility levels were predisposed to plaque build-up in their coronary arteries. “Stress hormones stimulate platelets, making them more likely to clot in arteries already narrowed by heart disease, a process that can result in a heart attack,” Williams said. “These hormones also cause the body’s fat cells to release fat into the bloodstream.”

Williams said this fat can be deposited in plaque in the arteries that feed the heart, enlarging the plaques and raising the risk for an artery-clogging clot.

Coping with impatience

Some studies suggest that stress-management programs may help naturally impatient people relax. Teaching people how to head off or control feelings of anger and hostility could reduce blood pressure and lower body weight over time. “The evidence we have on stress training is encouraging, but studies haven’t shown that it can save lives,” Williams said.

The best way for people to handle a situation that taxes their patience and triggers negative responses is to take a deep breath and evaluate what they’re feeling, Williams said. “Ask yourself, ‘Is this important to me? Is it reasonable to be angry over this? Is it worth it?’” Williams advised. “Basically, try to talk yourself out of the anger.”

Pass it on: Being impatient can cause high blood pressure and heart disease.

Animals Are Moral Creatures, Scientist Argues

Until recently, scientists would have said your cat was snuggling up to you only as a means to get tasty treats. But many animals have a moral compass, and feel emotions such as love, grief, outrage and empathy, a new book argues.

The book, “Can Animals Be Moral?” (Oxford University Press, October 2012), suggests social mammals such as rats, dogs and chimpanzees can choose to be good or bad. And because they have morality, we have moral obligations to them, said author Mark Rowlands, a University of Miami philosopher.

“Animals are owed a certain kind of respect that they wouldn’t be owed if they couldn’t act morally,” Rowlands told LiveScience. But while some animals have complex emotions, they don’t necessarily have true morality, other researchers argue.

Moral behavior?

Some research suggests animals have a sense of outrage when social codes are violated. Chimpanzees may punish other chimps for violating certain rules of the social order, said Marc Bekoff, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and co-author of “Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals” (University Of Chicago Press, 2012).

Male bluebirds that catch their female partners stepping out may beat the female, said Hal Herzog, a psychologist at Western Carolina University who studies how humans think about animals.

And there are many examples of animals demonstrating ostensibly compassionate or empathetic behaviors toward other animals, including humans. In one experiment, hungry rhesus monkeys refused to electrically shock their fellow monkeys, even when it meant getting food for themselves. In another study, a female gorilla named Binti Jua rescued an unconscious 3-year-old (human) boy who had fallen into her enclosure at the Brookline Zoo in Illinois, protecting the child from other gorillas and even calling for human help. And when a car hit and injured a dog on a busy Chilean freeway several years ago, its canine compatriot dodged traffic, risking its life to drag the unconscious dog to safety.

All those examples suggest that animals have some sense of right and wrong, Rowlands said. “I think what’s at the heart of following morality is the emotions,” Rowlands said. “Evidence suggests that animals can act on those sorts of emotions.”

Instinct, not morals?

Not everyone agrees these behaviors equal morality, however. One of the most obvious examples — the guilty look of a dog that has just eaten a forbidden food — may not be true remorse, but simply the dog responding appropriately to its owner’s disappointment, according to a study published in the journal Behavioural Processes in 2009.

And animals don’t seem to develop or follow rules that serve no purpose for them or their species, suggesting they don’t reason about morality. Humans, in contrast, have a grab bag of moral taboos, such as prohibitions on eating certain foods, committing blasphemy, or marrying distant cousins.

“What I think is interesting about human morality is that often times there’s this wacky, arbitrary feature of it,” Herzog said. Instead, animal emotions may be rooted in instinct and hard-wiring, rather than conscious choice, Herzog said. “They look to us like moral behaviors, but they’re not rooted in the same mire of intellect and culture and language that human morality is,” he said.

Hard-wired morality

But Rowlands argues that such hair-splitting is overthinking things. In the case of the child-rescuing gorilla Binti Jua, for instance, “what sort of instinct is involved there? Do gorillas have an instinct to help unconscious boys in enclosures?” he said.

And even if instinct is involved, human parents have an instinctive desire to help their children, but that makes the desire no less moral, he said. Being able to reason about morality isn’t required to have a moral compass, he added. A 3-year-old child, for instance, may not consciously articulate a system of right and wrong, but will (hopefully) still feel guilty for stealing his playmate’s toy. (Scientists continue to debate whether or not babies have moral compasses.)

If one accepts that animals have moral compasses, Rowlands argues, we have the responsibility to treat them with respect, Rowlands said. “If the animal is capable of acting morally, I don’t think it’s problematic to be friends with your pets,” he said. “If you have a cat or a dog and you make it do tricks, I am not sure that’s respect. If you insist on dressing them up, I’m not sure I’m onboard with that either.”

scinerds:

Our Brain Can Do Unconscious Mathematics

What is nine plus six, plus eight? You may not realise it, but you already know the answer. It seems that we unconsciously perform more complicated feats of reasoning than previously thought – including reading and basic mathematics. The discovery raises questions about the necessity of consciousness for abstract thought, and supports the idea that maths might not be an exclusively human trait.

Previous studies have shown that we can subliminally process single words and numbers. To identify whether we can unconsciously perform more complicated processing, Ran Hassin at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and his colleagues used a technique called continuous flash suppression.

The technique works by presenting a volunteer’s left eye with a stimulus – a mathematical sum, say – for a short period of time, while bombarding the right eye with rapidly changing colourful shapes. The volunteer’s awareness is dominated by what the right eye sees, so they remain unconscious of what is presented to the left eye.

In the team’s first experiment, a three-part calculation was flashed to the left eye. This was immediately followed by one number being presented to both eyes, which the volunteer had to say as fast as possible. When the number was the same as the answer to the sum, people were quicker to announce it, suggesting that they had subconsciously worked out the answer, and primed themselves with that number.

In the second experiment, participants were subliminally shown a sensible or nonsensical sentence such as “I drank the coffee” or “I ironed the coffee”. The sentences were presented to the left eye until the people highlighted that they had become aware of any of the words in the sentence. People noticed words in sentences that didn’t make sense more quickly than in those that did, which suggests that the sentences had been unconsciously processed.

“You’re integrating information from lots of different places,” says Hassin. “People thought you needed consciousness for this.”

“This study provides convincing evidence that people can perform complex rule-based operations unconsciously,” says François Ric at the University of Bordeaux, France. “This could change the way we think about how our brains work and what reason is.”

Since arithmetic and reading might work at a level below conscious awareness, the study adds support to the idea that such reasoning may not be a uniquely human trait. “This is consistent with the idea of there being a continuum between animal and human reasoning,” says Ric.

Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1211645109

approachingsignificance:

How Changing Visual Cues Can Affect Attitudes About Weight

Changing negative attitudes about body size might be as simple as changing what you see.

When women in England were shown photos of plus-sized women in neutral gray leotards, they became more tolerant.

When the women were shown photos of anorexic women, attitudes became more positive there, too. “Showing them thin bodies makes them like thin bodies, more, and showing them fat bodies makes them like fat bodies more,” says Lynda Boothroyd, a psychology researcher at Durham University in England, who led the study.

She calls it a “visual diet,” changing what your eyes eat.

The researchers also tested photos of women in designer clothes and found the test subjects thought better of the well-dressed women, fat or thin. The glamour effect existed independent of the change in perception caused by repeatedly seeing the leotard-clad women.

Not terribly surprising results, but the moral of the story summer up pretty nicely: “Perhaps that’s why we’re so obsessed with thinness, even if most of the people around us are found to be larger. We’re constantly fed images of very slim actresses and models, all beautifully dressed.” 

(via ikenbot)