Comment

Comment by Michel on June 13, 2012 at 9:39am

Well, I've never heard of that: young people heeding what the old say about getting old...

Comment by Adriana on June 13, 2012 at 9:19am

Yes, I agree, it should be its own discussion. It could be useful for young people to realize what will happen if they don't learn to move on. 

Comment by Neal on June 13, 2012 at 9:13am

That should be a discussion so I can find it. I've seen this in my own family, some are happy as they age, some fight depression. And though only a personal observation, those that are depressed are the ones who hold onto ever horrid event or loss; they never move on.

Comment by Adriana on June 13, 2012 at 7:40am

I couldn't agree more! Those "if only" thoughts need to be combated like the plague. Unfortunately I have people very dear to my heart who can't let go of past "missed opportunities" or even past unlucky turns and by constantly dwelling on them, and bringing them back, they make their lives miserable. We can't change the past, we need to learn to live with what we have, and love what we have, focus on the positive aspects of our lives.

Comment by doone on June 13, 2012 at 6:48am

HOW TO AGE WELL

From Scientific American:

The poem “Maud Muller” by John Greenleaf Whittier aptly ends with the line, “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’” What if you had gone for the risky investment that you later found out made someone else rich, or if you had had the guts to ask that certain someone to marry you? Certainly, we’ve all had instances in our lives where hindsight makes us regret not sticking our neck out a bit more. But new research suggests that when we are older these kinds of ‘if only!’ thoughts about the choices we made may not be so good for ourmental health. One of the most important determinants of our emotional well being in our golden years might be whether we learn to stop worrying about what might have been.

In a new paper published in Science, researchers from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany, report evidence from two experiments which suggest that one key to aging well might involve learning to let go of regrets about missed opportunities. Stafanie Brassen and her colleagues looked at how healthy young participants (mean age: 25.4 years), healthy older participants (65.8 years), and older participants who had developed depression for the first time later in life (65.6 years) dealt with regret, and found that the young and older depressed patients seemed to hold on to regrets about missed opportunities while the healthy older participants seemed to let them go.

More here.

Posted by Azra Raza at 06:19 AM | Permalink

Comment by doone on June 12, 2012 at 7:02pm

The Brains Of Liars, Ctd

Alex Knapp warns against over-interpreting this research:

[W]hile there may be a correlation between pathological lying and more white matter in the prefrontal cortex, it doesn’t necessarily follow that more white matter is the cause of pathological lying. In fact, the opposite could be true. Thanks to the plasticity of the brain, it may well be that the practice of frequently lying causes underlying structural changes in the brain.

Comment by doone on June 11, 2012 at 9:38am

The Brains Of Liars

Are wired differently:

One experiment measured the brain structure of pathological liars, and compared it to normal controls — more specifically, the ratio of gray matter (the neural tissue that makes up the bulk of our brains) to white matter (the wiring that connects those brain cells). Liars, it turned out, had 14% less gray matter than the controls but had 22-26% more white matter in the prefrontal cortex, suggesting that they were more likely to make connections between different memories and ideas as increased connectivity means greater access to the reserve of associations and memories stored in gray matter. “Intelligence,” it turned out, wasn’t correlated with dishonesty — but creativity, which we already know is all about connecting things, was.

Comment by doone on June 10, 2012 at 11:21am

Comment by doone on June 9, 2012 at 1:38pm

SOCIAL NEEDS HELP SCULPT PRIMATE FACES

In a written exchange, associate professor Michael Alfaro and postdoctoral scientist Sharlene E. Santana described their investigation with American Scientistsenior editor Catherine Clabby.

Catherine Clabby in American Scientist:

What inspired your research into primate faces?

When you see the faces of primates, you see an extraordinary diversity of shapes, colors and patterns, so we wondered what were the factors behind this diversity. Social behaviors seemed to be a very likely candidate underlying the diversity of primate faces, so that drew us in to further explore how behaviors can shape the evolution of anatomy in these mammals. Neotropical primates were ideal to start our studies of facial diversity because they are a single evolutionary radiation spanning a wide variety of habitats and social systems, and they have an extraordinary variation in their facial features.

Are the faces of primates really that different from the faces of other mammals?

What is particular about primates is their high reliance on facial cues to interact socially, more so than many other mammals. Primates use characteristics of their faces and facial expressions to recognize individuals in their groups and to assess each other’s behaviors. Related to this, primates have evolved a very well-developed visual system and neural centers for facial recognition. Such an important role in communication has shaped the evolution of primate faces, along with ecological and physiological functions.

More here.

Posted by Abbas Raza at 01:31 PM | Permalink 

Comment by doone on June 7, 2012 at 7:16am

Shooting the Neural Curl

Jun. 7, 2012

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