CHRONIC TONIC posts on Thursdays at 9 p.m. EST, it is a place to share stories, advice, and information and to connect with others with chronic health conditions and those who care for them. Our diarists will report on research, alternative treatments, clinical trials, and health insurance issues through personal stories. You are invited to share in comments (and note if you'd like to be a future diarist).
Tonight's diary by: anonymous
I wanna shut out all the negativity around me... cause it's turning me dark & gloomy.. by Ain Lim
Humor, Neuroplasticity and the Power To Change Your Mind
The latest discoveries into how the brain responds to positive stimuli such as humor could open doors to new therapies for depression, anxiety and other common mental illnesses. Perhaps by somehow stimulating and enhancing the humor processing regions in the brains of the depressed or anxious we can reverse the chemistry of their conditions. Why not use the positive powers of the brain to counter its negative powers?
It is a question that the fields of positive psychology and Gelotology are currently exploring. Gelotologists study the physiological and psychological effects of laughter, and practitioners of positive psychology seek to utilize personal strengths and positive emotions to build resiliency and psychological wellbeing in their clients. Both fields are the source of much research in the use of humor as a coping mechanism.
Unfortunately, researchers have demonstrated repeatedly that negative information has a greater impact on the brain than positive information. As a quick self-test of this concept, imagine that you won a $500 gift certificate to your favorite store. How would that feel?
Now imagine that, instead of winning the gift certificate, you lost $500. Research indicates that the intensity of your response to each of these situations will differ significantly, with the distress of losing $500 far outweighing the pleasure of gaining $500.
The Little Carrot by Vanessa Dualib
Born to Laugh, we learn to cry
EVER wondered how many of our everyday laughs, groans and sighs are instinctive rather than learned from our peers? It now seems that only expressions of laughter and relief are instinctive, whereas other emotional outbursts need to be learned from other people.
To find out which sounds are instinctive, a team led by Disa Sauter of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, asked eight deaf and eight hearing individuals to vocalise nine different emotions, but without words. These included fear, relief, anger, hilarity, triumph, disgust and sadness.
Afterwards, Sauter and her colleagues played back the recordings to a panel of 25 hearing individuals, and asked them to match each utterance to an emotion.
It turned out that the only two easily identifiable emotional sounds made by the deaf participants were laughter and sighs of relief.
Thought actuallly leads to brain changes low of association by simultanaiety, when you experience two things simulatenously, the brain wires them together. Freud.
(snip)
Sauter suggests that laughter and smiling probably both evolved as important communication signals to help avoid confrontation by increasing empathy. "Even other primates laugh, if you tickle a gorilla or orang-utan," she says.
Toaster Mobile Home by Alfred Ng
Iain M. Banks: Upload for everlasting life
The author of the sci-fi "Culture" novels contemplates how and why you might upload yourself to a computer - and the place of torture in his novels
Q.Your latest book, Surface Detail, is based on the tantalising idea that we may one day choose to upload our minds to computers. How would that work?
A. The contents of your brain would be scanned down to the last molecule and electrochemical impulse and then translated non-destructively into digital form, so the essence of "you" is recreated inside a computer - your consciousness, personality and memories.
Q. What would it feel like to exist in this world?
A. It would feel just like real life, or as different as it's possible to imagine
Q. Just how implausible is the idea of creating a digital self?
A. Arguably, it's impossible. But in a sense it is just engineering. Given that the alien civilisations in my books who do this are thousands of years old, I'm assuming they'll have had time to develop it.
Neurons That Fire Together Wire Together
Norman Doidge discusses the thought changing structure of matter, and how in his working with patients who just couldn't get better, he realized that problems had been 'hard wired' into their brains.
City Life and the Brain
Dharavi, Mumbai By Soumik Kar Dharavi - Asia's largest slum, is located in the centre of Mumbai. Studies show that more than 60 percent of population of Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) lives in the slums. These slums lack basic infrastructure and is very low in hygenic and health care.
BOSTON, Mass. (November 9, 2010)—For the first time in history, more people live in cities than in rural areas. According to the United Nations, that urban head count tallies up to more than half of the world’s 6.7 billion people. While city life may offer many benefits—ready access to social and cultural events, more employment opportunities, and the promise of higher living standards, as examples—research does show that city life can have drawbacks. For one thing, it’s hard on the brain.
Scientists who have begun to look at how the city affects our brains have uncovered some surprising findings, including evidence that city life can impair basic mental processes, such as memory and attention. A study conducted by University of Michigan researchers in 2008 found that simply spending a few minutes on a busy city street can affect the brain’s ability to focus and to help us manage self-control.
Brain Sparking
PhotonQ-Hiroki Sato with A Note of Sparking by PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE
"The artwork "A Note of Sparking" consists of egg-shaped objects (we name them "modules"), and each module has a mathematical model of neuron and continue real-time simulation. In this artwork, membrane potential (MP) and neural connectivity in real neuron are replaced by strength of the light and the distance of each module. When the information (sparking of neuron) is communicated from other modules, the modules generate sounds."