I've had a fairly high number of friendships with men over the past few decades, so I found an article I recently came across which discusses whether men and women can truly be friends - as opposed to romantic or sexual partners - to be of interest. I wanted to see how my experiences stacked up against what the so-called experts had to say about the matter. What I am going to do here is simply highlight some of the answers to a (quite unscientific) survey contained in the article from over 1,450 members of the Match.com dating site.
When asked whether individuals believed that men and women can be platonic friends, 83 percent said yes while 62 percent stated that they had had a platonic friendship which ended up crossing the line and becoming romantic or sexual.
Sixty-four percent of the men surveyed as opposed to 25 percent of the women were more likely to misinterpret the intimacy of friendship for sexual desire.
Ninety-four percent of respondents answered that it was possible to fall in love with someone who was a friend, first and foremost. Only 4 percent said it wasn't possible for them to do so.
Seventy-one percent of respondents hoped that when they did fall in love, their partner would have started out as a friend.
And, finally, respondents thought that women were better than men at keeping sex out of a platonic relationship: 67 percent thought women were better at this aspect of the friendship while only 13 percent thought men were.
D.
From "Can Men and Women Be Friends?", Camille Chatterjee, www.psychologytoday.com, September 1, 2001
About Me
- Deborah K. Hanula
- Deborah K. Hanula has a year of Journalism training from Humber College, a Political Science degree from the University of Waterloo, and a Law degree from the University of British Columbia. In addition, she has Diplomas in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Child Psychology, and Psychotherapy and Counselling as well as a Family Life Educator and Coach Certificate and Certificates in Reflexology, Assertiveness Training, and Mindfulness Meditation. She is the author of five cookbooks, primarily concerned with gluten-free and dairy-free diets, although one pertains to chocolate. As an adult, in the past she worked primarily as a lawyer, but also as a university and college lecturer, a tutor, editor, writer, counsellor, researcher and piano teacher. She enjoys a multi-faceted approach when it comes to life, work and study, in order to keep things fresh and interesting. Check out her new book: A Murder of Crows & Other Poems (2023).
Thursday, December 8, 2011
To Sleep, Perchance to Dream (And Possibly Solve a Problem or Two)
While you sleep, you enter an altered state of consciousness, a different biochemical state than while awake, and progress through a series of stages. I will highlight stage 2 sleep in this article.
Stage 2 is described as 'light' sleep. It comprises anywhere from 40 to 50 percent of your time asleep. During this stage, Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep occurs: a period of rapid eye movement accompanied by heightened brain activity that is almost at the level of that which occurs while you are awake. REM sleep usually begins about 90 minutes after falling asleep, although depressed/anxious people are thought to enter this stage much more quickly once they are asleep. A session of REM sleep can start out by lasting only 5 minutes, but as sleeping progresses, it may become longer and can eventually last up to 60 minutes. I'm sure that most of you are aware that it is during REM sleep that dreams occur. You have an average of five dreams per night though you may not remember most of what you dream. If you awaken while experiencing a dream, or right at its conclusion, you may remember some or all of its details. As the day progresses, most memories of dreams tend to fade away.
For centuries, people have wondered why people dream and what dreams mean. Theories abound. Sigmund Freud believed that dreams expressed repressed wishes - usually impulses of an infantile sexual and/or aggressive nature. Other psychoanalysts have theorized that dreams have more to do with narcissistic strivings or are compensation for feelings of inferiority. More recently, psychologists have uncovered that it is during dreaming that information is processed, memories are fixed/set, and the nervous system is restored.
Though these theories may encompass some of your dreams, they can't account for every type of dream you may have. Just as thought while you are awake can drift through everything and anything, the process of dreaming, too, can cover similar types of thought, albeit during an altered biochemical state. Simply put, the physiological demands of sleep alter the way the brain functions. The sleeping brain makes sense of things very differently than the awake brain does, but as you sleep you continue to focus on issues/problems you may be facing, circumstances and events of your day, week, months - your life in general. Simple triggers that determine some of the content of a dream can be something you noticed in an advertisment or television show, a conversation you had with someone, or some circumstance that happened during the day. Dreams can tackle problems, or deal with deep-seated longings or desires. Dreams may seem bizarre or nonsensical because the chemistry of the sleeping brain affects perception of thought, but as mentioned, the mind continues to drift through the same types of thoughts as it has during the waking hours: problems encountered, fears, worries, goals, desires, reminiscents, plans, people, ruminations or regrets.
Anything you've seen, heard, smelled, sensed that day, week, month, or anytime during your life may become tangled up in the seemingly nonsensical scenes in a dream. It's amazing how people in dreams can start out as one person, then become someone so completely different as the dream progresses, or how you know the person in your dream to be a certain individual, but he/she looks completely different than in 'real life'. You can also quickly move from place to place, desperately trying to escape something or someone, or deliver an envelope or brightly-wrapped package that suddenly morphs into a cello or cake. You can find yourself at school or work or public speaking in your pyjamas, or perhaps in the nude. You can soar through the sky, you can run and lift off the ground, you can swim for miles underwater without oxygen, and you can get lost. You can have anxious dreams about missing tests, or about trying to telephone for help only to find you keep getting the dialing wrong, or the phone doesn't work, or you can't properly explain to the person answering your call what your problem is. You can have recurring dreams or nightmares. On occasion, you can even break through the 'paralysis' of sleep and scream or cry out, waking yourself (and others). On and on it goes... Dreams can so often seen incoherent, bizarre - even simplistic at times.
The altered state of consciousness as you sleep gives rise to fertile ground for solving problems or finding solutions to things you couldn't quite achieve while awake because it helps you find solutions beyond your normal thought patterns. To provide just a few examples: Friedrich August Kekule came up with the structure of benzene while dreaming, Dimitry Mendeleyev came up with his final form of the periodic table of the elements and Otto Loewi devised the neuroscience experiment that won him a Nobel Prize in medicine, both while dreaming. "Modern engineers Paul Horowitz and Alan Huang dreamed designs for laser-telescope controls and laser computing, respectively. Innumerable artists and filmmakers have depicted images that came to them in their sleep. Mary Shelley dreamed the two main scenes that became Frankenstein, and Robert Louis Stevenson did the same with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Ludwig van Beethoven, Paul McCartney and Billy Joel all awoke to discover new tunes ringing in their minds. Mahatma Gandhi's call for a nonviolent protest of British rule of India was inspired by a dream." (1)
Over the past twenty years, "positron-emission tomography (PET) scans have allowed researchers to see which brain areas are involved in dreaming. Parts of the cortex associated with visual imagery and the perception of movement become activated even more dramatically than while one is awake, as do some deep brain areas associated with emotion. In contrast, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is less engaged during dreaming: this area is associated with volitional action and the evaluation of what is logical and socially appropriate. These PET results fit the characteristics of dreams well; dream reports almost always contain visual imagery and often involve movement. The prefrontal findings fit neatly with the fact that dreams have long been associated with less 'censorship' - not only in the Freudian sense of uninhibited sex and aggression, but also in terms of filtering out scenarios that are illogical or abnormal. " (2)
While you sleep, your senses continue to monitor the environment: you can smell smoke, hear intruders or a dog bark, sense temperature changes and feel actual pain. All of these may wake you up. You can also feel 'imaginary' pain inflicted on you in a dream, taste something that you are eating in a dream, or hear voices from a dream. These things, too, can wake you up. Though it is normal for a person's body to be 'paralyzed' while dreaming, sometimes individuals break through this paralysis by screaming or jumping up in order to escape whatever is happening in the dream. Some people walk around while asleep while others suffer from night terrors in which they can become agitated, violent or act out in some way as the circumstances of the dream break through the paralysis, but not the sleep.
Memory and learning are reinforced during REM sleep as the same circuits which were activated while awake continue to remain active during REM strengthening the circuits and, therefore, the memory and learning.
Let's now think back to Kekule who understood the structure of benzene only after dreaming of a snake made of atoms taking its tail in its mouth. (Benzene is a closed ring.) Many studies of creativity suggest that disinhibition is a crucial component of creative thought and the brain areas that usually restrict our thinking to the logical and familiar are much less active during REM sleep. As well, the "high activity in the visual areas of the sleeping brain allow it to visualize solutions more readily than in waking thought." (3) Dreams, therefore, can be quite helpful for problems that require creativity or visualization to solve. How do you take steps before you sleep to solve problems or come up with new ideas while sleeping? Thinking about them just prior to sleep can increase the chance that a solution will become apparent while dreaming.
For a more elaborate process add these two steps prior to drifting off to sleep: picture yourself dreaming about the problem, waking up, and writing on your bedside notepad. And, arrange objects connected to the problem on your bedside table. (4)
D.
All references noted above are from "Answers in Your Dreams", Dierdre Barrett, Scientific American Mind, November/December 2011, pp. 27 - 33.
Stage 2 is described as 'light' sleep. It comprises anywhere from 40 to 50 percent of your time asleep. During this stage, Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep occurs: a period of rapid eye movement accompanied by heightened brain activity that is almost at the level of that which occurs while you are awake. REM sleep usually begins about 90 minutes after falling asleep, although depressed/anxious people are thought to enter this stage much more quickly once they are asleep. A session of REM sleep can start out by lasting only 5 minutes, but as sleeping progresses, it may become longer and can eventually last up to 60 minutes. I'm sure that most of you are aware that it is during REM sleep that dreams occur. You have an average of five dreams per night though you may not remember most of what you dream. If you awaken while experiencing a dream, or right at its conclusion, you may remember some or all of its details. As the day progresses, most memories of dreams tend to fade away.
For centuries, people have wondered why people dream and what dreams mean. Theories abound. Sigmund Freud believed that dreams expressed repressed wishes - usually impulses of an infantile sexual and/or aggressive nature. Other psychoanalysts have theorized that dreams have more to do with narcissistic strivings or are compensation for feelings of inferiority. More recently, psychologists have uncovered that it is during dreaming that information is processed, memories are fixed/set, and the nervous system is restored.
Though these theories may encompass some of your dreams, they can't account for every type of dream you may have. Just as thought while you are awake can drift through everything and anything, the process of dreaming, too, can cover similar types of thought, albeit during an altered biochemical state. Simply put, the physiological demands of sleep alter the way the brain functions. The sleeping brain makes sense of things very differently than the awake brain does, but as you sleep you continue to focus on issues/problems you may be facing, circumstances and events of your day, week, months - your life in general. Simple triggers that determine some of the content of a dream can be something you noticed in an advertisment or television show, a conversation you had with someone, or some circumstance that happened during the day. Dreams can tackle problems, or deal with deep-seated longings or desires. Dreams may seem bizarre or nonsensical because the chemistry of the sleeping brain affects perception of thought, but as mentioned, the mind continues to drift through the same types of thoughts as it has during the waking hours: problems encountered, fears, worries, goals, desires, reminiscents, plans, people, ruminations or regrets.
Anything you've seen, heard, smelled, sensed that day, week, month, or anytime during your life may become tangled up in the seemingly nonsensical scenes in a dream. It's amazing how people in dreams can start out as one person, then become someone so completely different as the dream progresses, or how you know the person in your dream to be a certain individual, but he/she looks completely different than in 'real life'. You can also quickly move from place to place, desperately trying to escape something or someone, or deliver an envelope or brightly-wrapped package that suddenly morphs into a cello or cake. You can find yourself at school or work or public speaking in your pyjamas, or perhaps in the nude. You can soar through the sky, you can run and lift off the ground, you can swim for miles underwater without oxygen, and you can get lost. You can have anxious dreams about missing tests, or about trying to telephone for help only to find you keep getting the dialing wrong, or the phone doesn't work, or you can't properly explain to the person answering your call what your problem is. You can have recurring dreams or nightmares. On occasion, you can even break through the 'paralysis' of sleep and scream or cry out, waking yourself (and others). On and on it goes... Dreams can so often seen incoherent, bizarre - even simplistic at times.
The altered state of consciousness as you sleep gives rise to fertile ground for solving problems or finding solutions to things you couldn't quite achieve while awake because it helps you find solutions beyond your normal thought patterns. To provide just a few examples: Friedrich August Kekule came up with the structure of benzene while dreaming, Dimitry Mendeleyev came up with his final form of the periodic table of the elements and Otto Loewi devised the neuroscience experiment that won him a Nobel Prize in medicine, both while dreaming. "Modern engineers Paul Horowitz and Alan Huang dreamed designs for laser-telescope controls and laser computing, respectively. Innumerable artists and filmmakers have depicted images that came to them in their sleep. Mary Shelley dreamed the two main scenes that became Frankenstein, and Robert Louis Stevenson did the same with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Ludwig van Beethoven, Paul McCartney and Billy Joel all awoke to discover new tunes ringing in their minds. Mahatma Gandhi's call for a nonviolent protest of British rule of India was inspired by a dream." (1)
Over the past twenty years, "positron-emission tomography (PET) scans have allowed researchers to see which brain areas are involved in dreaming. Parts of the cortex associated with visual imagery and the perception of movement become activated even more dramatically than while one is awake, as do some deep brain areas associated with emotion. In contrast, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is less engaged during dreaming: this area is associated with volitional action and the evaluation of what is logical and socially appropriate. These PET results fit the characteristics of dreams well; dream reports almost always contain visual imagery and often involve movement. The prefrontal findings fit neatly with the fact that dreams have long been associated with less 'censorship' - not only in the Freudian sense of uninhibited sex and aggression, but also in terms of filtering out scenarios that are illogical or abnormal. " (2)
While you sleep, your senses continue to monitor the environment: you can smell smoke, hear intruders or a dog bark, sense temperature changes and feel actual pain. All of these may wake you up. You can also feel 'imaginary' pain inflicted on you in a dream, taste something that you are eating in a dream, or hear voices from a dream. These things, too, can wake you up. Though it is normal for a person's body to be 'paralyzed' while dreaming, sometimes individuals break through this paralysis by screaming or jumping up in order to escape whatever is happening in the dream. Some people walk around while asleep while others suffer from night terrors in which they can become agitated, violent or act out in some way as the circumstances of the dream break through the paralysis, but not the sleep.
Memory and learning are reinforced during REM sleep as the same circuits which were activated while awake continue to remain active during REM strengthening the circuits and, therefore, the memory and learning.
Let's now think back to Kekule who understood the structure of benzene only after dreaming of a snake made of atoms taking its tail in its mouth. (Benzene is a closed ring.) Many studies of creativity suggest that disinhibition is a crucial component of creative thought and the brain areas that usually restrict our thinking to the logical and familiar are much less active during REM sleep. As well, the "high activity in the visual areas of the sleeping brain allow it to visualize solutions more readily than in waking thought." (3) Dreams, therefore, can be quite helpful for problems that require creativity or visualization to solve. How do you take steps before you sleep to solve problems or come up with new ideas while sleeping? Thinking about them just prior to sleep can increase the chance that a solution will become apparent while dreaming.
According to Deirdre Barrett, a psychologist who teaches at Harvard Medical School, you can practice 'dream incubation' in order to try to dream about a particular problem in the hope of finding a solution to it. She suggests the following:
- write a note which outlines your problem and place it by your bed along with a pen, paper, nightlight or flashlight;
- review the problem prior to falling asleep and try to visualize it as a concrete image;
- tell yourself to dream about the problem as you start to drift off to sleep;
- upon waking, lie quietly while trying to recall details of dreams and write as many details down as you can remember. Any answers provided by the dream may not be obvious at first and may take some further thought to uncover.
For a more elaborate process add these two steps prior to drifting off to sleep: picture yourself dreaming about the problem, waking up, and writing on your bedside notepad. And, arrange objects connected to the problem on your bedside table. (4)
D.
All references noted above are from "Answers in Your Dreams", Dierdre Barrett, Scientific American Mind, November/December 2011, pp. 27 - 33.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Midlife Depression in Women
Last week, I wrote exams in a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy course I've been taking. A big component of the course dealt with depression. In fact, I have a very thick text, written by Aaron T. Beck, which outlines everything there is to know about treating depression, utilizing the methods of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy which, I understand, tends to work very well for resolving depression.
One of the prime times for depression to strike both men and women is during mid-life (ages 40 - 55). I remember reading Dr. Christiane Northrup's book,"The Wisdom of Menopause" many years ago (not that I was there yet, but why not prepare!) and she wrote something which has stayed with me ever since and which in my own life I have found to be true. She stated that women tend to become more introspective during their mid-life years. This can lead to women questioning, among many other things, their choice of career and their choice of life partner. Thinking too hard, evaluating and analyzing life, or 'navelgazing', if you will, can lead some people to evaluate themselves (and where they are at in their lives) too harshly. Children leaving home, aging bodies and minds, and/or losing a life partner or a parent, can prompt us to question what has or not happened in our lives. Individuals are prompted by these and other life events to see their lives in a new light as they face the fact that their lives may not have turned out as planned, or as expected, or that life dreams and goals have been quelled due to some circumstance or another.
Women spend a lot of time at this juncture analyzing how they feel, and if they use what they are thinking and feeling in order to take positive action as a result of their dissatisfaction - great - it can really be an empowering time. If, instead, they ruminate or dwell on what they think is wrong with life, and on how they feel as a result of what they are thinking and experiencing, this can very well lead to anxiety and depression.
According to American psychologist, Dr. Dan Gottlieb, "for some, these thoughts inspire change, but for others they lead to hopelessness, which can turn into depression." (1)
Stress as a factor which leads to depression and anxiety needs to be highlighted here. It is more and more common now for women to still be raising children or teenagers during the mid-life years. The stress of doing so, coupled with unbalanced hormone levels and sleep deprivation, can increase stress tremendously. When a person is tense - and when estrogen is dominant - the level of the stress hormone, cortisol, rises. When cortisol remains chronically high, it affects the balance of mood chemicals in the brain in such a way that makes a person more susceptible to depression and anxiety. It is very important for women to be able to take some time to nurture themselves during these years - any type of activity that promotes health and aids physical and mental relaxation - like a run through a beautiful park, a walk along a river, playing a few tunes on the piano, or some time spent meditating or simply breathing deeply can go a long way towards preventing acute mental and physical stress. As well, reframing thoughts in a more positive direction can also cut stress and counter depression and anxiety.
Anxiety and depression, however, are multi-faceted disorders, with genetic, chemical, physiological, auto-immune, and circumstantial factors like upbringing and other personal events, feeding into both of them. Some women tend for any number of reasons to be more vulnerable to developing either or both of these disorders.
Mid-life, though, can also be a time for enhanced expression and creativity, as new drives are awakened and time is found to develop interests that schedules would not previously allow for. This can lead to an increased self-assurance/self-confidence, and a boldness or more of a 'laissez-faire' attitude where what others think doesn't matter so much anymore. A woman may find a new self-acceptance, a certain peace about who she is with a "I am who I am and if nobody likes it, so be it" attitude. For many women, if they can get the help they need to navigate successfully through mid-life, they can thrive and achieve things they never before thought were possible. And, some women find that the best years of their life began in their fifties.
D.
(1) "Understanding Depression at Midlife", Cheryl Platzman Weinstock, October 5, 2010, www.womansday.com
One of the prime times for depression to strike both men and women is during mid-life (ages 40 - 55). I remember reading Dr. Christiane Northrup's book,"The Wisdom of Menopause" many years ago (not that I was there yet, but why not prepare!) and she wrote something which has stayed with me ever since and which in my own life I have found to be true. She stated that women tend to become more introspective during their mid-life years. This can lead to women questioning, among many other things, their choice of career and their choice of life partner. Thinking too hard, evaluating and analyzing life, or 'navelgazing', if you will, can lead some people to evaluate themselves (and where they are at in their lives) too harshly. Children leaving home, aging bodies and minds, and/or losing a life partner or a parent, can prompt us to question what has or not happened in our lives. Individuals are prompted by these and other life events to see their lives in a new light as they face the fact that their lives may not have turned out as planned, or as expected, or that life dreams and goals have been quelled due to some circumstance or another.
Women spend a lot of time at this juncture analyzing how they feel, and if they use what they are thinking and feeling in order to take positive action as a result of their dissatisfaction - great - it can really be an empowering time. If, instead, they ruminate or dwell on what they think is wrong with life, and on how they feel as a result of what they are thinking and experiencing, this can very well lead to anxiety and depression.
According to American psychologist, Dr. Dan Gottlieb, "for some, these thoughts inspire change, but for others they lead to hopelessness, which can turn into depression." (1)
Stress as a factor which leads to depression and anxiety needs to be highlighted here. It is more and more common now for women to still be raising children or teenagers during the mid-life years. The stress of doing so, coupled with unbalanced hormone levels and sleep deprivation, can increase stress tremendously. When a person is tense - and when estrogen is dominant - the level of the stress hormone, cortisol, rises. When cortisol remains chronically high, it affects the balance of mood chemicals in the brain in such a way that makes a person more susceptible to depression and anxiety. It is very important for women to be able to take some time to nurture themselves during these years - any type of activity that promotes health and aids physical and mental relaxation - like a run through a beautiful park, a walk along a river, playing a few tunes on the piano, or some time spent meditating or simply breathing deeply can go a long way towards preventing acute mental and physical stress. As well, reframing thoughts in a more positive direction can also cut stress and counter depression and anxiety.
Anxiety and depression, however, are multi-faceted disorders, with genetic, chemical, physiological, auto-immune, and circumstantial factors like upbringing and other personal events, feeding into both of them. Some women tend for any number of reasons to be more vulnerable to developing either or both of these disorders.
Mid-life, though, can also be a time for enhanced expression and creativity, as new drives are awakened and time is found to develop interests that schedules would not previously allow for. This can lead to an increased self-assurance/self-confidence, and a boldness or more of a 'laissez-faire' attitude where what others think doesn't matter so much anymore. A woman may find a new self-acceptance, a certain peace about who she is with a "I am who I am and if nobody likes it, so be it" attitude. For many women, if they can get the help they need to navigate successfully through mid-life, they can thrive and achieve things they never before thought were possible. And, some women find that the best years of their life began in their fifties.
D.
(1) "Understanding Depression at Midlife", Cheryl Platzman Weinstock, October 5, 2010, www.womansday.com
Monday, November 21, 2011
Putting the Science into Romance
Helen Fisher is a very famous anthropologist from Rutgers Univeristy who loves to give talks on the science of romance. She has carried out a number of brain scans of people who are newly in love and during the scans, she found that the ventral tegmental areas of the brain are working particularly hard. This area near the base of the brain appears to be running like a little factory, sending dopamine to higher regions in the brain. This creates craving, motivation, goal-oriented behaviour, and an acute feeling of ecstasy.
The ventral tegmental area, however, doesn't work alone. The nucleus accumbens, located slightly higher and farther forward in the brain, converts the exhilaration of a new partner into something akin to an obsession. "Thrill signals that start in the lower brain are processed in the nucleus accumbens via not just dopamine but also serotonin and, importantly, oxytocin, which is one of the chemicals that floods new mothers and creates such a fierce sense of connection to their babies." (1) (In men who become parents, the 'bonding-to-baby chemical" is vasopressin.) When oxytocin is at play between new lovers, it can create an equally strong connection between them.
And, finally, we have the caudate nuclei, a pair of shrimp-size structures on either side of the head which have a seemingly indelible memory. They are the last major stop for love signals in the brain, but are also involved in storing patterns and mundane abilities such as knowing how to ride a bicycle or knowing how to swim - motor skills which tend to stay with us for life (provided no damage occurs to these nuclei.) Apply the same principle to connecting and patterning in love and one can see how passion can turn so quickly into commitment.
Having one part of the brain "involved in processing love would be enough to make the feeling powerful. The fact that three are at work makes that powerful feeling downright consuming." (2) Perhaps we are fooling ourselves to think that we, in fact, have any choice (or free will) in the matter when it comes to who we fall in love with.
D.
(1) and (2), "The Science of Romance", Jeffrey Kluger, Time magazine special edition, "Your Brain: A User's Guide", p. 37.
The ventral tegmental area, however, doesn't work alone. The nucleus accumbens, located slightly higher and farther forward in the brain, converts the exhilaration of a new partner into something akin to an obsession. "Thrill signals that start in the lower brain are processed in the nucleus accumbens via not just dopamine but also serotonin and, importantly, oxytocin, which is one of the chemicals that floods new mothers and creates such a fierce sense of connection to their babies." (1) (In men who become parents, the 'bonding-to-baby chemical" is vasopressin.) When oxytocin is at play between new lovers, it can create an equally strong connection between them.
And, finally, we have the caudate nuclei, a pair of shrimp-size structures on either side of the head which have a seemingly indelible memory. They are the last major stop for love signals in the brain, but are also involved in storing patterns and mundane abilities such as knowing how to ride a bicycle or knowing how to swim - motor skills which tend to stay with us for life (provided no damage occurs to these nuclei.) Apply the same principle to connecting and patterning in love and one can see how passion can turn so quickly into commitment.
Having one part of the brain "involved in processing love would be enough to make the feeling powerful. The fact that three are at work makes that powerful feeling downright consuming." (2) Perhaps we are fooling ourselves to think that we, in fact, have any choice (or free will) in the matter when it comes to who we fall in love with.
D.
(1) and (2), "The Science of Romance", Jeffrey Kluger, Time magazine special edition, "Your Brain: A User's Guide", p. 37.
Endocannabinoid System and THC Mimics
The endocannabinoid system is an elaborate network of receptors and proteins that operate within the brain, heart, gut, liver, and throughout the central nervous system. The system plays a powerful role in regulating cravings, mood, pain and memory. When bound by cannabinoids, they boost appetite and mood. (1) THC which is acronym for the active ingredient in marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol, binds to these receptors.
Three THC knock-offs are gaining popularity on the black market and are commonly found in illicit products marketed as "Spice". The first mimic is HU-210. It has a similar chemical composition to THC, but is 100 times more powerful. The second mimic is JWH-073. It is one of the easiest to produce. CP 47,497 is the third. It is highly potent and its long-lasting psychological effects make it highly addictive. (2)
D.
(1) and (2), "Tracking the Craving Killer", Discover (November 2011), pp. 12 - 13.
Three THC knock-offs are gaining popularity on the black market and are commonly found in illicit products marketed as "Spice". The first mimic is HU-210. It has a similar chemical composition to THC, but is 100 times more powerful. The second mimic is JWH-073. It is one of the easiest to produce. CP 47,497 is the third. It is highly potent and its long-lasting psychological effects make it highly addictive. (2)
D.
(1) and (2), "Tracking the Craving Killer", Discover (November 2011), pp. 12 - 13.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Notes on Boredom
Most days there are not enough hours in the day for me to pursue everything I would like to, so I seldom suffer from boredom. I can remember as a young child, though, staring out the window come mid-August, wondering what to do with myself, wishing that school was back in session already because I was feeling bored. I was back home from vacationing with my family and had run out of ideas as to how to keep myself busy and entertained after six weeks off of school!
You may find yourself suffering from boredom when you face any one of the following situations:
- when you are prevented from engaging in a wanted activity;
- when you are forced to engage in an unwanted activity; or
- when you are unable - for no apparent reason - to maintain interest in any activity or spectacle (or, I might add, when you can't think of anything interesting or engaging to do.)
Experts can't seem to agree as to whether boredom - a feeling - is a symptom of depression, or whether boredom can lead to depression. So, I won't try to solve that question here.
It is often the case that boredom is trivialized and people suffering from it are often told to "snap out of it" or to "find something to do" (the latter being a common refrain by parents everywhere to a bored child) or "you're bored, I'll give you something to do!" (another common refrain by a parent to a child which was quickly followed by the assigning of one 'boring' chore or another).
"The first laboratory testing of boredom occurred in the late 1930’s and was then deduced to be a form of fatigue which was dissipated through the use of stimulants. In 1951 a book was published claiming that boredom was actually due to the repression of an individual’s natural drives and desires. After this date the research into boredom fell from grace and it wasn’t until 1986 that a psychologist developed the first full psychometric scale called, the "Boredom Proneness Scale (BPS)", as a method to measure boredom as an individual trait." (1)
An ongoing feeling of boredom, however, can fuel a longing for thrills to drive away boredom and may lead people to indulge in destructive, sensation-seeking activities, which include some form of risky behaviour. "A 2005 study of 92 Scottish teenagers, for example, found that boredom was among the top reasons stated for taking drugs." (2) Suffering from any degree of Attention Deficit Disorder (a disorder in which a person has trouble focusing or concentrating on a task or subject) can make an individual feel bored due to the simple fact that it is hard to maintain interest in something that he or she cannot concentrate on.
The BPS tests people to see how likely their nature is to become bored across a range of different situations. Results have indicated - to no great surprise - that some people are more prone to boredom than others. People who find themselves feeling bored, may simply need more 'healthy' excitement in their lives, whether this is a set of new friends, some new activities or interests, or just a variation of normal routine. Others may need to dig a little deeper psychologically because they suffer from an existential 'ennui' due to a feeling of lack of purpose in life. Boredom that cannot be eradicated in a healthy manner can lead to destructive behaviours like gambling, recreational drug use, smoking, partying/drinking alcohol to excess, over-eating, and risky sexual and other behaviours - especially in teenagers whose brains haven't matured to full reasoning/decision-making/judgment capacity.
(And, here's to hoping that reading "Psyche and Mind" is NOT a contributing factor to any feelings of boredom you may currently be experiencing!)
D.
(1) and (2), "Overcoming Boredom", www.totallybored.co.uk
You may find yourself suffering from boredom when you face any one of the following situations:
- when you are prevented from engaging in a wanted activity;
- when you are forced to engage in an unwanted activity; or
- when you are unable - for no apparent reason - to maintain interest in any activity or spectacle (or, I might add, when you can't think of anything interesting or engaging to do.)
Experts can't seem to agree as to whether boredom - a feeling - is a symptom of depression, or whether boredom can lead to depression. So, I won't try to solve that question here.
It is often the case that boredom is trivialized and people suffering from it are often told to "snap out of it" or to "find something to do" (the latter being a common refrain by parents everywhere to a bored child) or "you're bored, I'll give you something to do!" (another common refrain by a parent to a child which was quickly followed by the assigning of one 'boring' chore or another).
"The first laboratory testing of boredom occurred in the late 1930’s and was then deduced to be a form of fatigue which was dissipated through the use of stimulants. In 1951 a book was published claiming that boredom was actually due to the repression of an individual’s natural drives and desires. After this date the research into boredom fell from grace and it wasn’t until 1986 that a psychologist developed the first full psychometric scale called, the "Boredom Proneness Scale (BPS)", as a method to measure boredom as an individual trait." (1)
An ongoing feeling of boredom, however, can fuel a longing for thrills to drive away boredom and may lead people to indulge in destructive, sensation-seeking activities, which include some form of risky behaviour. "A 2005 study of 92 Scottish teenagers, for example, found that boredom was among the top reasons stated for taking drugs." (2) Suffering from any degree of Attention Deficit Disorder (a disorder in which a person has trouble focusing or concentrating on a task or subject) can make an individual feel bored due to the simple fact that it is hard to maintain interest in something that he or she cannot concentrate on.
The BPS tests people to see how likely their nature is to become bored across a range of different situations. Results have indicated - to no great surprise - that some people are more prone to boredom than others. People who find themselves feeling bored, may simply need more 'healthy' excitement in their lives, whether this is a set of new friends, some new activities or interests, or just a variation of normal routine. Others may need to dig a little deeper psychologically because they suffer from an existential 'ennui' due to a feeling of lack of purpose in life. Boredom that cannot be eradicated in a healthy manner can lead to destructive behaviours like gambling, recreational drug use, smoking, partying/drinking alcohol to excess, over-eating, and risky sexual and other behaviours - especially in teenagers whose brains haven't matured to full reasoning/decision-making/judgment capacity.
(And, here's to hoping that reading "Psyche and Mind" is NOT a contributing factor to any feelings of boredom you may currently be experiencing!)
D.
(1) and (2), "Overcoming Boredom", www.totallybored.co.uk
Eye Strain
If you spend long periods of time looking at a computer screen, you may find that you suffer the following effects: headaches during or after; irritated or dry eyes; blurred vision; slow refocusing when looking from screen to distant objects; difficulty seeing clearly at a distance; double vision; changes in how colours look; and/or frequent changes in eyeglasses prescription.
D.
D.
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