Ever heard of the idea that for some illnesses and disorders to develop, you need to have an inherited risk factor plus environmental stress? It’s known commonly as the diathesis-stress model (diathesis basically means predisposition), and it’s a common explanation for a large range of phenomena, from schizophrenia to serial murder. Both diathesis [...]
Archive for the ‘The Mind’ Category
Differential Susceptibility – Are some brains more plastic than others?
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010Why 88% of New Years’ resolutions fail
Thursday, December 31st, 2009Jonah Lehrer wrote an excellent article for the Wall Street Journal on why New Year’s resolutions fail.
Quick overview of reasons:
The more overloaded our brain is with ’stuff’ (including resolutions we need to keep track of), the weaker its willpower is. We need to spread our resolutions across the year.
Just like a muscle, our will-power [...]
The Buddhist Brain
Thursday, November 5th, 2009What happens to the brain if you spend 44,000 hours in focused meditation?
This is a question Richard Davidson and his neuroscience team asked. To answer it, they took experienced Tibetan monks to their lab at the University of Wisconsin, and took various scans of their brains. Is the Buddhist brain fundamentally different than [...]
Happiness Music
Monday, September 21st, 2009Music has a remarkable ability to conjure up strong emotions in people. It can cheer you up, bring you down, and in the case of boybands, cause severe anger and disgust. And it’s old; some scientists believe music even predates language, this based on flute-like instruments dug up in France, believed to be over 50,000 [...]
Brain Rules
Monday, July 13th, 2009I found an interesting site with free info on the brain, called Brain Rules. It’s by John Medina, and is basically promoting his DVD/Book of the same name. Medina is a developmental molecular biologist who has put together this product based on research into the brain and how it works.
It’s meant to be both interesting [...]
Divided Minds
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009Have you ever started a diet or exercise program, and quit after a week? Have you ever lied in bed too long when you know you should get up? Ever woken up next to the missing link? Everyone has taken actions that they didn’t consciously plan to do. The reason for this is that different [...]
