Read morePeople who learn the quickest show the least neural activity, a new study finds.
The research flies in the face of the common myth that the key to learning is trying harder and thinking it through.
Instead, quick learners in particular showed reduced brain activity in the frontal cortex, an area linked to conscious planning.
In other words: good learners don’t overthink what they are trying to learn.
Our emotions are powerful, born of countless unknowable forces and planted by childhood events we may never consciously recall. For many of us, they exist as shrouded mysterious urges we mostly focus on managing and suppressing.
But, it doesn’t have to be that way. They are in us for a reason: to be a dashboard that displays the state of our entire being. Learning to listen to and name the read-outs on that dashboard is essential to caring for ourselves and loving other people.
Read moreRead moreNearly 300 study participants self-reported their activity levels, which researchers then categorized as sedentary, mildly active, moderately active or highly active. The subjects also self-reported their sexual function, including the ability to have erections, orgasms, the quality and frequency of erections and overall sexual function.
Results found that men who reported more frequent exercise, a total of 18 metabolic equivalents, or METS, per week, had higher sexual function scores, regardless of race.
Read moreYou don’t need to be a churchgoer to pray. That’s one of the findings of a sweeping new poll on faith from the Angus Reid Institute, conducted in partnership with Dr. Reginald Bibby of the University of Lethbridge. The recent survey of 3,041 Canadians showed that even as our affiliation with organized religion continues to decline we still believe – just in our own, often deeply personal, ways. Here’s a snapshot of how faith shapes our behaviour and our views of one another today.
Read moreAt the heart of Nhat Hanh’s teachings is the idea that “understanding is love’s other name” – that to love another means to fully understand his or her suffering. (“Suffering” sounds rather dramatic, but in Buddhism, it refers to any source of profound dissatisfaction – be it physical or psychoemotional or spiritual.) Understanding, after all, is what everybody needs – but even if we grasp this on a theoretical level, we habitually get too caught in the smallness of our fixations to be able to offer such expansive understanding. He illustrates this mismatch of scales with an apt metaphor:
Read moreThe picture that emerges from these findings is of an older brain that moves more slowly than its younger self but is just as accurate in many areas and more adept at reading others’ moods – on top of being more knowledgeable. That’s a handy combination, given that so many important decisions people make intimately affects others.
No one needs a cognitive scientist to explain that it’s better to approach a boss about a raise when he or she is in a good mood. But the older mind may be better able to head off interpersonal misjudgments and to navigate tricky situations.
Read moreWe weren’t haunted by the ghosts of prior sexual experiences or battling with regrets. We desired to be together free and unashamed, but we were plagued by our inability to stop feeling guilty about fulfilling sexual desires we had trained ourselves to view as wrong and dangerous. While we intellectually believed that sex was a good thing that was intended for enjoyment in marriage, we had spent years conditioning ourselves to respond to sexual feelings with fear, guilt and shame.
NYT –
Read moreThe researchers were looking for young adult identical twins in their early- to mid-20s whose exercise habits had substantially diverged after they had left their childhood homes. These twins were not easy to find. Most of the pairs had maintained remarkably similar exercise routines, despite living apart.
But eventually, the researchers homed in on 10 pairs of male identical twins, one of whom regularly exercised, while the other did not, usually because of work or family pressures, the researchers determined.
Read moreMy last (failed) relationship, it turns out, is a psychological cliché, which is disheartening but at least it gives me plenty of company. If you’d peeked through my windows, you would have seen me-imploring with tears in my eyes or angry with my voice raised-demanding that we address the problems we were having. You’d also have seen my partner, his arms folded across his chest, silent and unresponsive, a dismissive look on his face.
Read moreReviewing some 40 years of research on women with problems of low sexual desire, French sexologist Marie Geonet and colleagues recently concluded (link is external) that negative thoughts play a key role in women’s sexual dysfunction: They distract women from erotic stimulation, produce anxiety and guilt, and diminish sexual arousal and pleasure.
Similar processes appear to operate in men. Recent work from Portugal by Catia Oliveira and colleagues (link is external) has provided evidence that males’ arousal is linked closely to their thinking. In their small sample, distracting thoughts were the best predictor of inhibited genital response.