Brain-Body Connection 3

Many factors can predispose a person to developing illness, disease, and/or a shortenened lifespan. Many of those factors are lived unconsciously, behaviors that have been passed down from past generations, a lack of knowledge, insufficient awareness, and a failure to live mindfully in the present, to name just a few. Yes, heredity and environmental hazards can and do impact illness and longevity. Not everything can be prevented or fixed. However, identifying family patterns of behaviors and illnesses can give you the option to make healthier choices. Thinking ahead and living a lifestyle that promotes clear thinking and responsible choices can often prevent many environmental hazards. Despite decades of correlation studies that drinking alcoholic beverages and driving make bad bed-mates, 2010 data revealed that one person died every 48 minutes in the USA due to motor vehicle crashes that involve an alcohol-impaired driver.  All of those deaths (to say nothing of injuries that did not result in immediate death) were preventable.  More tomorrow.

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811606.PDF External Web Site Icon

Brain-Body Connection 2

First and perhaps foremost, Western thought typically speaks of brain and body as separate entities. There is no such separation. Dr. Candace Pert talked about the bodymind and others have talked about the mindbody. It is one. Whatever impacts the body impacts the brain; whatever impacts the mind impacts the body. It's true that some choices may impact part of that equation more than another, but both are always impacted. Smoking, for, example. Studies have shown a link between smoking and lung health (including an increased risk for cancer). There is a corresponding impact on the brain, as well, in that the brain has been subjected to decreased amounts of oxygen with every puff. Decreased oxygen levels over time has not been shown to promote brain health over the long term. All things being equal, everyone will eventually experience some illness and eventually death. The more that people learn about mindbody collaboration and the choices they can make to increase their potential for health and longevity, the less likely they are to become, as Dr. Mate put it, "passive victims." More tomorrow.

Brain-Body Connection

As Gabor Mate, MD, put it in his When the Body Says NO, "It is a sensitive matter to raise the possibility that the way people have been conditioned to live their lives may contribute to their illness." Some are now saying that the way people have been conditioned to live their lives also impacts their longevity. If estimates that 70 percent of how long you live and how well you live while you are alive relates to factors that you can at least partially (if not completely) control are accurate, you may play a much greater role that you have perhaps understood. First, blame and contribution are two different things. As Dr. Mate puts it, apart from being  morally obtuse, blaming the sufferer is completely unfounded from a scientific point of view. However, being morally responsible for making healthier choices and instead of just reacting or over-reacting is not only possible for the vast majority of individuals but also impact the link between mind and body and emerging understandings of health.  Human beings need to become aware of the link between mind and body or brain and body, not only for an understanding of illness but also for an understanding of health. More Tomorrow

Eric Jensen's Newsletter

Several have written to ask about newsletter resources specifically related to child gender differences and learning. I just read Eric Jensen's October 14 newsletter and you may find it a helpful resource.

Here is one excerpt by way of example:  "The differences in sex steroid receptors mean that genders are affected differently by stress. Exposure to early-childhood distress adversely affects the male brain more in learning areas and the female brain more in social-emotional areas (Weinstock, 2007). In short, when bad things happen at home, males are worse at learning. Learning deficits, reductions in hippocampal neurogenesis, memory issues and less dendritic spine density in the prefrontal cortex are seen more commonly occurring in prenatally-stressed males. Females are more likely to report more adverse social and emotional events, which increases risk for stress-related outcomes such as anxiety and depression later in life."

I asked Eric Jensen the easiest way for readers to access his newsletter and received this response:

They can sign up for our newsletter by 

1) sending their name to <info@jlcbrain.com>

2) going to our home page at <www.jensenlearning.com>

Automatic Thinking While Asleep, II

Researchers at the University of Cambridge and the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris recorded the EEG (brain waves) on a group of participants while they were awake. They repeated the experiment while participants were sleeping. However, they used different words of animals and objects. Obeservation of sleeping brain activity showed that the participants continued to respond accurately to the words although more slowly than when they were awake. According to researcher Sid Kouider, the study showed that speech processing and other complex tasks can be done without being aware of what you perceive. It may be that such unconscious processing is likely not limited by the complexity of the task but by whether or not it can be performed automatically.

Kouider et al. Inducing task-relevant responses to speech in the sleeping brain, Current Biology, 2014, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2014.08.016 

Automatic Thinking While Asleep

It’s obvious that parts of your brain continue to function while you sleep. After all you keep breathing, your heart keeps beating, and so on. But do you really “think” while you sleep? It probably depends, at least in part, on your definition of “think.” Researchers at the University of Cambridge and the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris recorded the EEG (brain waves) on a group of participants while they were awake. They were instructed to classify spoken words as either objects or animals by pressing a button. They were to use the right hand to press the button for animals and the left hand to press the button for objects. Testing continued while the participants were sleeping. What the researchers found—tomorrow. 

Kouider et al. Inducing task-relevant responses to speech in the sleeping brain, Current Biology, 2014, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2014.08.016

Quantum Physics and Consciousness

I'm sure you know that what constitutes consciousness continues to be highly debated. There are several theories ranging from "mind consciousness is developed by the physical brain," to "mind consciousness develop the physical brain" to "the physical brain and mind consciousness develop simultaneously." Recent discovery of quantum vibrations in microtubules inside brain neurons corroborates a controversial 20-year-old theory of consciousness--which claimed that consciousness derives from deeper-level, finer-scale activities inside brain neurons. According to review authors, EEG rhythms (brain waves) may also derive from deeper level microtubule vibrations, and that from a practical standpoint, treating brain microtubule vibrations could benefit a host of mental, neurological, and cognitive conditions.

Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. Consciousness in the universe: A review of the ‘Orch OR’ theory. Physics of Life Reviews, 2013 DOI: 10.1016/j.plrev.2013.08.002