Struggling Emotionally? Are You In Your Right Mind?

Quick! Whats this guy thinking?

Quick! What's this guy thinking?

Researchers in Europe presented an enlightening study yesterday that shows your ability to decipher another person’s emotions depends on whether you’re in your right mind.

OK, that isn’t exactly what they said. To be totally correct, it was shown that the right side of the brain is more efficient than the left at connecting someone’s facial expressions to their emotions. Further, positive images were determined quicker and clearer than negative ones, which goes against a previous study performed in the US.

When you see a face, you have an impression of what’s going on with that individual in roughly 100 milliseconds (that’s 0.1 seconds, for you non-metric types). Another study I read recently theorized that this is a survival mechanism, allowing you to quickly figure out how much of a threat there is in the environment.

An interesting thought occured to me: Why is it that the positive (“approach”) expressions are handled faster than negative (‘withdrawal”)?

Wouldn’t it make sense to have more sensitivity to the bad than the good? I mean, you need more reaction time to avoid a life-threatening situation, right? (Ignoring, of course, the fact that we’re talking about fractions of a second.) Maybe it’s due to an inborn desire to be able to discern if we can relax first instead of having to mobilize all our resources, which takes a lot more energy.

I think it’s pretty amazing that, even before you blink, you’ve got an idea of what your friend is thinking.

Makes you wonder what else you’re doing before you know it, huh?

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June 18, 2009 | Tags: , , , , | No Comments »

Meat Loaf Was Right: “Let Me Sleep On It”

I’ve told you before how important sleep is and I hope you listened.  In case you have persisted with a pattern of insomnia, I’m going to point your attention toward some interesting findings from last week’s meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, which had to be a total snoozer. (Get it?)

Sleep may be necessary for the processing of emotion
It seems that an adequate amount of REM sleep affects our ability to process other people’s emotions.  Using photographs, researcheers found that people managing to get some REM sleep–where dreams occur–during a nap identified happiness in photographs more than other participants. What’s more, those who had lower-level sleep or none at all were more tuned to negative expressions. Could such a “bad” focus when tired perpetuate more anxiety and less sleep?

Deeper sleep leads to better problem solving
REM sleep helps to create associations between unrelated ideas, meaning that seemingly disparate terms (such as cookie, heart and sixteen) can be joined together by another (in this case from the study, “sweet”). Participants were shown several three-word groups similar to the example, then asked to find a fourth “linking” word during a morning test and another in the afternoon. Those achieving REM sleep improved 40% between the two, while the other groups (non-REM sleep, quiet rest) showed no change.

What does this mean? Well, aside from the fact that sleep enhances memory formation (it’s not the only time you do it) and allows tissues to repair, clearly your brain is at work to make sense of your daily experiences (maybe even comparing them to the past) and possibly even plot a course to your next destination. Maybe you would be more likely to find a new job or better in tune to those you work for or with.

Thomas Edison was known to take catnaps to increase productivity and Dr. John Medina points out in Brain Rules that people squeezing some shut-eye into their day are more effective for the rest of the afternoon.

What difference could a few extra (better) Zs make in your life?

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June 16, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

What’s the matter with meditation?

Feeling uptight and unhappy? Have trouble calming down at the end of the day and getting to sleep? Do you feel unsettled and irritable?

Well, how much time have you spent meditating today?

Much in the same way exercise increases muscle mass, meditation has recently been shown to grow parts of the brain involved with emotional regulation. Measurements of four specific areas were shown to be larger in all meditators, though it’s unknown whether there’s more and/or larger cells or simply a difference in wiring. (My guess would be all three.)

In any situation, a structure in your brain called the amygdala assesses the nature of what’s happening and assigns emotional meaning to it. Whatever conclusion it comes to is then sent to the hippocampus (one of the structures shown to be larger with meditation) and memories are formed or–in the case of a repeated experience–cross-referenced with the past.

The thing is, the amygdala is better at sounding the call to alarm than anything. This means that, even though it is completely capable of transmitting positive messages (and often does), it is like the stereotypical person on an airplane that screams “We’re all going to die!” when you hit a bit of turbulence.

Your hippocampus hears this and, because it is a central structure in memory, takes the information from your amygdala to ask other parts of the brain what they can remember from previous events. Based on the answers, it either says “You’re right” or “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Essentially, what meditation does is allow your hippocampus and other areas to be more discerning in judging events. I believe it gives you a longer time buffer between assessment and conclusion, so you’re better able to determine how challenging something really is.

Think about it this way: the more you’re able to compare the current situation to another from your past, the better the chances you’ll be able to figure out “I’ve beaten things worse than this before.” This allows you to control your emotions, pay closer attention and think more clearly, even after as little as five days.

Take two or three minutes. Clear your mind and focus on your breath passing through your nostrils. Feels better already, huh?

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May 20, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , | No Comments »