The Angry Brain
“Self Control and Aggression” by Brylyn Stacy.
This study explored how the frontal lobes of our brain help us control aggression. Researchers observed activity in the frontal lobes of people who were provoked to anger by being insulted. They found that areas involved in negative emotions and arousal activated, but so did areas involved in the regulation of our emotions and cognitive control, suggesting the important interplay between the urge to get angry and the need to control our emotions. Researchers found that deficits or abnormalities in these frontal lobe structures predict violent-aggressive behaviour. According to the researchers, modern life demands effective self-control, and understanding the neural, psychological, and social mechanisms of aggression can help people control their violent impulses.
The Mustard Seed
One from the old days – when I had time to think!
Certain levels of consciousness exist within ourselves, society and throughout the world. Levels of shame, guilt and apathy to levels of reason, love, joy, peace and enlightenment. Largely society exists within the realm of reason. That is the world of the school; the professor; the university; where life is directed by reason and education. Society stresses education above all else. Education is the road for determining one’s career, one’s income and one’s social status. Levels above reason are beyond Newtonian understanding for if something cannot be weighed or measured then it doesn’t exist in that context, but we all know that’s a naïve absurdity because the universe doesn’t come to a crashing halt with our inability to process complex data.
Man’s destiny is shaped by seemingly small events.
Man’s destiny is shaped by seemingly small events. A phone call that wasn’t made or a flight that was missed. The course is altered rapidly with chaotic, exponential effects in a direction completely different to what one might have intended. In fact, chaos is defined as exactly that: A small variation in initial conditions producing wildly different results. This is an interruption to a pattern due to minuscule change, and new results are only ever achieved by interrupting patterns.
I hardly ever plan these articles, least of all intentionally attempt to script passages from the bible into my work, but the words mustard seed came immediately to the fore when I was considering this topic and I have no idea why. Given that I understood the universe is governed by an organizing intelligence and we all exist as one pervasive consciousness from an early age, I never even listened in bible school. Yet somehow, because there is no such thing as causality, because everything is the result of everything else in its totality, the parable was on my frequency at this moment: Read more
Stress causes brain shrinkage
A new Yale study shows that stress can reduce brain volume and function, even in otherwise healthy individuals.
Researchers from the Yale Stress Centre analysed the effect of experiencing stressful life events. The study, published January 5th in the journal Biological Psychiatry, concluded that stress can decrease the amount of grey matter in the brain and make it more difficult for people to manage stressful situations in the future. It also may aid effects to prevent stress-related disorders through screening and vigilance.
According to Rajita Sinha, program director for the Yale Stress Centre and professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, the study is unique in analysing a healthy human population. While past studies have demonstrated that stress reduces brain volume in animals and psychiatric samples of patients, Sinha said that the study is the first to show the impact of cumulative stress on the brain in otherwise healthy subjects.
Study candidates completed psychiatric and physical health assessments that pre-screened the population for substance abuse and head injuries, among other factors. Each of the 103 healthy participants then participated in a cumulative adversity interview that estimated the degree of stress in their life through questions about “traumatic” and “recent” occurrences, such as as parental divorces and financial crises.
Researchers compared the results of the interview to magnetic resonance imaging scans of participants’ brains and determined that higher levels of cumulative stress were associated with less grey matter in the prefrontal cortex.
“We found that the accumulation of stressful life events was affecting key regions of the brain,” said Emily Ansell, assistant professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and author of the study. “These key regions are the regions we believe regulate our emotions, help us control our impulses and help us process our daily experience. They also control our physiology. These regions have implications for long-term health.” Read more