It made me smile! Assemble the minions!
Here’s what I am reading today:
“”We’re interested in how your brain is able to allow you to navigate in complex social environments,” study researcher MaryAnn Noonan, a neuroscientist at Oxford University, in England, said at a news conference. Basically, “how many friends can your brain handle?” Noonan said.
Scientists still don’t understand how the brain manages human behavior in increasingly complex social situations, or what parts of the brain are linked to deviant social behavior associated with conditions like autism and schizophrenia.”
“Our research showed that playing video games can improve a young person’s mood, help them reduce their stress levels, and promote feelings of competence and autonomy,” said Dr Johnson, from QUT’s Science and Engineering Faculty.
“Playing video games with others in particular increases a person’s brain activity, improves their social wellbeing and helps them feel more connected with others.
“If you’re trying to reach out to the teenager in your house, spending time with them playing a cooperative video game you both enjoy could be the bridge you’re looking for – and you’ll likely feel the same positive impacts on your wellbeing, too.”
“Morality is not just something that people learn, argues Yale psychologist Paul Bloom: It is something we are all born with. At birth, babies are endowed with compassion, with empathy, with the beginnings of a sense of fairness. It is from these beginnings, he argues in his new book Just Babies, that adults develop their sense of right and wrong, their desire to do good — and, at times, their capacity to do terrible things. Bloom answered questions recently from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook. “
“”Currently, interventions consist of training children to look at the other’s face and gaze,” said Chen Yu, associate professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at IU Bloomington. “Now we know that typically developing children achieve joint attention with caregivers less through gaze following and more often through following the other’s hands. The daily lives of toddlers are filled with social contexts in which objects are handled, such as mealtime, toy play and getting dressed. In those contexts, it appears we need to look more at another’s hands to follow the other’s lead, not just gaze.””
“”We were asking the question of whether the brain was processing the meaning of the objects that are on the outside of these silhouettes,” Sanguinetti said. “The specific question was, ‘Does the brain process those hidden shapes to the level of meaning, even when the subject doesn’t consciously see them?”
The answer, Sanguinetti’s data indicates, is yes.”
“”The big message is that your brain is reflecting your current social environment, and your social skills at a wider level. The brain is flexible and reflecting all of these behaviors,” said study author Maryann Noonan, a postdoctoral researcher at Oxford University, who worked on the study while at the Montreal Neurological Institute.
There’s also the question of which comes first. Is the brain pre-programmed to turn certain people into more social creatures? Or does your brain change as a result of whether you’re willing to engage with lots of other people in your life?”
“ARX is among the top four types of intellectual disability linked to the X-chromosome in males. So far, 115 families, including many large Australian families, have been discovered to carry an ARX (Aristaless related homeobox) mutation that gives rise to intellectual disability.
“There is considerable variation in the disability across families, and within families with a single mutation. Symptoms among males always include intellectual disability, as well as a range of movement disorders of the hand, and in some cases severe seizures,” says Associate Professor Cheryl Shoubridge, Head of Molecular Neurogenetics with the University of Adelaide’s Robinson Institute.”
27 Comments
veronicaflesch · November 18, 2013 at 12:22 pm
In response to “The brain of a social butterfly is different”:
I found it interesting how this article leaves the remaining question- are people born with different sized brain structures that cause them to be either more or less socially skilled, or are the larger sizes of certain brain structures in more social people a result of them choosing to be more social? I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that additional research shows that it goes both ways. Since it has already been proven that personality is heritable, and social skills are an aspect of personality, it would make sense for people to be genetically predisposed to be more or less social based on the sizes of certain parts of their brain. But we also know that the brain has great plasticity and ability to adapt/change based on which parts of it are being used, so it would also make sense that regardless of how their brains were upon birth, people who are more frequently engaging in social interaction would be using certain parts of their brain more, and those parts may be larger as a result. So basically I think this will be another example of how it’s neither nature nor nurture, but both working together, that determine a person’s social ability.
veronicaflesch · November 18, 2013 at 1:01 pm
In response to “babies have morals?? who knew?”:
This article happens to be relevant to what we’ve been discussing in my Philosophy class this quarter. It mentioned David Hume, whom we are currently reading, and his idea that morality is a purely emotional thing, devoid of rationality. I agree with the author of this article who argues against Hume; while there are undeniably emotional aspects of morality, there is also a rational aspect. I believe this can be demonstrated by the way that- as children mature into adults, and improve in their ability to use logic and reasoning and be rational, people’s instinctive morality on something like fairness can diverge into many different opinions about, for example, what’s fair. Because as the article mentioned, children are born seeming to think that fair simply equates to equal distribution of goods; but as they mature, they use reasoning to start taking other factors into account, such as whether the distribution of goods one receives should be proportional to how hard they work for the goods, or how badly they need the goods.
This article also makes me wonder about if research has been done to see whether there are specific “morality genes,” and whether or not those genes are mutated/damaged in people with antisocial personality disorder and such. Furthermore, I think it’s a fascinating topic to discuss whether or not the criminal justice system should punish everyone in the same manner regardless of potential proof of genetic reduction in capability to feel empathy/understand morality.
Sarahvais · November 19, 2013 at 4:08 pm
In response to “babies have morals?? who knew?” I enjoyed this article very much. My twin brothers were born when I was 12 so i got to see them grow up. Reading it brings me back to a time when they were young and before they were terrors (kidding…sorda). Anyway, I had always felt as if they knew more than others thought. Yes they cried and were very demanding. But it had always felt to me as if they were much more aware of what was going on around them. They had compassion and understanding at a young age which makes me now think that they would have morals and use this as well. It makes me think that my little brothers had a good sense of right and wrong from a young age. It is curious when if in some individuals this sense of morals is later disrupted and thus when it occurs. Such as in psychopaths and those mentally unstable.
lfarr · November 19, 2013 at 4:52 pm
In response to “The brain of a social butterfly is different”:
This article reminds me of the brain differences in psychopaths versus ‘normal’ people. Of course, the difference between psychopaths and normal people are more obvious and have more supporting research to back it; but I wouldn’t be surprised if researchers discover that more social people have different brain connections. It will be interesting to see if researchers discover what came first, more social opportunities or a different brain structure. I wonder if people who are more social also tend to have more activation in their reward centers versus people who do not enjoy social interaction as much? I hope that researchers will discover the answer posed at the beginning of the article in a few years.
Sarahvais · November 21, 2013 at 7:10 pm
In response to “you see more than you know” I was truly blown away by this article! Since it is something that happens so unconsciously most people are clearly unaware of what their brain is seeing. What further amazed me was that the brain does this so quickly in less than 400 milliseconds. This means that the brain sees the whole image, pulls the meaning out of it, and decides what part of the image is useful in such a a small amount of time! When i looked at the image with the sea horses I was able to see the sillouette but it took a long time and I knew what I was looking for. It makes me curious to see what we see that we don’t actually perceive. There is tremendous visual input each day so clearly we see very little of what our brain picks up. I would be curious to know what percentage of our environment we have no recognition of.
Natasha Mehta · November 22, 2013 at 11:51 am
In response to “How many friends can your brain handle?”: I thought it was interesting to think that the brain is constantly changing according to your lifestyle such that it affects your social activity. I also wonder if there is something that individuals are born with that makes them more of a social butterfly or more reserved, or if connectivity of regions of the brain are more affected by genes rather than environmental factors. I also found it interesting that if someone is more likely to be a social butterfly, then their brain changes to accommodate to spending time in such social environments, and the brain would not be as suitable to becoming proficient at an activity that requires more motor skills.
Natasha Mehta · November 22, 2013 at 12:10 pm
In response to “babies have morals?? who knew?”: I enjoyed this article very much. When babies are born, they are not told how or what to feel during a given situation. They learn from their surroundings. However, I think that it makes sense that babies have an intuition as to whether or not something is considered good or bad. I found it interesting that 3 month old babies respond differently to a character who helps another than to a person who holds back another person. Even very young children have the ability to make moral judgments and they do not even know that they are separating their thoughts into right and wrong. In regards to the section of the article that says morality is heritable, I think there is probably a strong environmental proponent as well, but genes may play a more dominant role in morality.
JuliaSpalding · November 22, 2013 at 3:47 pm
In response to “You see more than you know”:
This article made me think of the brain having the ability to almost keep secrets from me! It’s really interesting to think that your brain could process the meaning of something, but you aren’t consciously aware of this something! My first question raised was why does the brain reject some things as interpretations, making you unaware of them? I liked how in this article they described the different theories to answer this question and they indicated the direction of the researchers’ next study. This article made me realize that my brain and consciousness are not always connected, which is bizarre to me! Although, I have had moments where I think my brain has “fooled me.” For example, when I fail to recognize things like someone waving at me and I see them, but it takes a few seconds for my brain to “wake up.” This could also be because I hadn’t had coffee yet and it was early in the morning haha. I think this study is incredibly interesting and definitely worth looking more into.
chelseadudley · November 23, 2013 at 12:29 pm
In response to “The Moral Life of Babies,” I was first intrigued by the title. As a psychology major minoring in child development, I find this topic extremely interesting. It’s cool that we learn new things about the development of humans every day. I learned in developmental psychology that there are certain age periods where different feelings are developed. For example, we develop shame before we develop guilt because we are more egotistical as children. I like how the article discusses how certain moral principles are innate and certain ones change as we get older, such as the understanding of fairness. Something I learned that I haven’t really thought about before is the fact that babies, soon after birth, show compassion. According to Paul Bloom, babies pat and stroke those who are experiencing pain. This kind of contradicts the developmental idea that children have egotism (only think about their feelings and can’t understand that other people have feelings of their own) until a certain age.
kendra1keith · November 23, 2013 at 12:46 pm
In response to “video games can be good for your children’s health”:
I find it so rare to find an article that supports video game use, especially regarding children. With all the studies out there that look down on video games, it makes sense that many parents restrict their child’s video game use. Personally, I have always agreed with this restriction. After reading this article though, I am more open to the idea that video games have positive effects on the development of children. I think this would be a very helpful article for parents raising children who like to play video games for fun. It is so important to spend time with your child, so why not play a couple of video games with them if that’s what they enjoy? Both the child and the parent will gain the satisfaction of spending quality time together and will connect on a more relatable level. I am glad however that the article recognized the importance of playing in moderation because there’s no doubt that excessive video game use can be harmful.
chelseadudley · November 23, 2013 at 12:48 pm
In response to “Brain Differences in Social Butterflies,” I first wanted to know what three areas of the brain were larger in more social people than in more isolated people. However, they did not state this information, which was kind of disappointing. But the research was very interesting. I now want to know if it’s the brain that changes due to socialization or the other way around. It does make sense that people that are more social and active will have more activity going on in their brain than people that are very isolated from society. Hopefully in the near future we will learn more about this discovery and if brains actually change due to socialization or if people are more social because of how their brain functions.
Kendra Keith · November 23, 2013 at 1:56 pm
In response to “babies have morals?? who knew?”:
I absolutely love the idea of morality being something you’re born with. I find it fascinating that we are born with the ability to distinguish right from wrong and good from bad. For many of us, these words are hard to define; yet, we all know what it means to be righteous and to be good. This article made me realize that these morals truly have been instilled in us since birth, so they become second nature. It does makes sense when you think about it though because animals are all born with instincts. Maybe morality is the human form of instinct. Just because we are born with these “instincts” (such as the ability to help and comfort others) however, doesn’t mean that everyone always practices them. Situations and experiences shape our views over time, potentially altering our moral standards. In other words, the morals we are born with change throughout the lifespan, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.
Will · November 24, 2013 at 5:45 am
In response to “video games can be good for your children’s health”: I love that there is research on video gaming and science. When you hear about video games on the news, it is always a negative aspect. These aspects are not backed up with any sort of evidence. Video games have many great benefits such as this article shows. It is not the type of video games that a child plays that is beneficial for him or her rather, it is the people that i the child plays video games with that increases relationships. This, in turn, is mentally stimulating and helps for developing mental health for children. I find these type of articles interesting and wold appreciate more about video games and their benefits to society.
Will · November 24, 2013 at 6:07 am
In response to “how many friends can your brain handle?”: It is interesting that the human brain puts emphasis on things that we do often. Juggling friends is the activity that this article specifically focuses on. With technology and social networking becoming part of our daily lives, it brings into question on whether we can handle that many relationships. The researches found that our brains go through the process of “mentalization” where we have “the ability to attribute mental states, thoughts and beliefs to another.” In other words, we are able to focus on things we want to improve on proceeds with building better connections in our brains with that associated action. I find this really cool because it reflects how we have evolved as humans to adapt mentally to our environment.
Anewman1188 · November 24, 2013 at 10:43 pm
In response to “how many friends can your brain handle” I like the idea that our brain can adapt to certain things, especially social networking. What I am curious about is if some people are genetically engineered to be more sociable and have more friends. it is not so farfetched. Some people were born to play the guitar, baseball or crunch numbers. Perhaps there is genetic disposition that make people more porne to being sociable and having friends.
Anewman1188 · November 24, 2013 at 10:55 pm
In response to “video games can be good for your childrens health” I was never a passionate gamer but i did enjoy playing video games in my spare time. For me it was a way to escape and relax, like watching a movie, but it was also stimulating as i would play games that required problem solving. Some of the best times I had though were when my sister mom, father and I would play Mario Party together or when my Dad and I would play sports one on one. The healthy competition was something I enjoyed thoroughly and it also made me more motivated to excel. I think video games like most things, if used in moderation and in the right way can be very beneficial.
Alina Parga · November 28, 2013 at 8:45 pm
I really enjoyed reading “How many Friends Can Your Brain Handle?” because it is interesting to hear that being more social might determine different sizes of structures in your brain. I can see how researchers are not sure, “whether social interaction caused these changes in brain structure and connectivity, or whether the brain determined how innately social someone was” but if they find a way to determine this it would be really amazing. If this was possible you would maybe be able to predict how much of a social person your kid might be at a young age. It also really makes sense that if you are a really sociable person, other regions of the brain dedicated to organization or memory may be reduced in size.
Alina Parga · November 28, 2013 at 9:02 pm
In response to “Your brain sees things you don’t”, I was really surprised at the fact that the brain keeps so much information from processing. In a way I feel like this makes sense because there is already so much visual information to process in the first place that the brain only interprets the important stuff; however, I also know feel uneasy that I don’t have the capability to process everything in my visual field at choice. This makes me wonder how the brain even knows what is meaningful and what is not. I am definitely interested in reading more about these types of studies.
JSGraves · November 28, 2013 at 10:34 pm
In response to “babies have morals? Who knew?”:
I thought this article was really interesting. I agree with the idea that morals seem to be something we are born with and that for the most part, everyone knows what is right and what is wrong. It reminds me of some of the discussions my anthropology class has had about egalitarian societies. I wonder if morality is something that has evolved in us and something our ancestors became used to in an egalitarian society. Now, with rapidly growing and complex societies I wonder if we have a harder time coping with unfair access to resources as “our emotions have evolved for simpler times.” Technology seems to be out pacing the time needed for evolution to occur.
maciliff · November 29, 2013 at 12:23 pm
In response to “How Many Friends Can Your Brain Handle” I have wondered the exact same thing. With social media these days it is easier to stay in contact and make new friends. Sometimes I forget that I have certain friends until I get a txt message or some sort of notification. It is interesting that there is a part of the brain that is bigger and there are more white matter pathways in people with more social connections. I have always considered myself a pretty social person so I would be interested to know whether it has something to do with the size of my temporal parietal junction, anterior cingulate cortex, or the rostral prefrontal cortex. Or maybe it has something to do with the connection of white matter tracts. It would be interesting to find out.
Natasha Mehta · November 30, 2013 at 4:23 pm
In response to “video games can be good for your children’s health”: I thought this article was interesting because when I was younger, I remember seeing commercials on TV telling parents to have a game night with their children at least once a week. This was supposed to build bridges between parents and children, bring the family closer together, and ultimately lead to a better quality of life for the children. At that time video games were just becoming popular, so board games, such as monopoly, were found more frequently in households. Now that the next generation has more tech savvy activities for younger children and families, such as the Wii, it is important that parents take the initiative to bond with their children over their generation’s new games. Ultimately, I think that it is important to find ways for both the parents and children to find a bonding activity because it gives children positive experiences which may lead to a happier and healthier lifestyle.
Natasha Mehta · November 30, 2013 at 4:41 pm
In response to “you see more than you are know”: I thought this article was very helpful because it shows that our brain is constantly trying to make sense of the world around us. After reading that throughout the experiment the brain would still recognize background information but just rejects them as interpretations, I thought about how you can recognize someone when you’re not expecting to see them in a large crowd or out of town. Looking at the black and white pictures is similar to being in a crowded space. You see a large group of people (or the main black part of the picture) and you scan over the group and suddenly you do a double take because you think you saw someone you know (or your brain recognizes part of the white area and makes an interpretation). After reading this article, I also wonder if the brains of those with a photographic memory constantly accept interpretations of everything they see, allowing the person to retain very detailed memories of certain visuals.
lfarr · December 3, 2013 at 10:08 pm
In response to ‘How many friends can your brain handle’…
I thought it was interesting that in monkeys, brain size differed based on the amount of socializing they got. I think this relates to the laypeople term of extroversion/introversion. Perhaps people who are more social and have adjusted brain size/gray matter are more tolerant of a lot of external stimulation. Extraverts tend to seek external stimulation, while introverts obtain stimulation internally. The brain of a social butterfly may be more able to take in a lot of stimuli and because it is more used to the stimuli, the person can seek out more and thus, handle more. I hope that the long-term study works out to find a more definitive answer.
JulieLane0116 · December 4, 2013 at 5:56 pm
It’s one thing to say babies are born with morals, but what I think the article is really saying is that babies are born with somewhat of an innate sense of what’s right and wrong. Still equally cool, but I think morals definitely take more of a conscious thought process to develop. I also feel that even if these concepts are there at birth, the environment that the baby is raised in, whether it encourages expression of these ‘morals’ or inhibits them, would definitely affect whether the baby is moral or not. Can you be born with a predetermined immoral baby without a negative un-nurturing environment? Makes me think of temperaments.
hnguye37 · December 5, 2013 at 11:01 am
In response to “Your brain sees things you don’t”: Its fascinating to learn that your brain subconsciously picks up these images. It makes me wonder why some images make it to the conscious thought, while others get discarded because during an “image recognition test”, you’d think it’d be deemed important to consciously recognize as many images as you could. Perhaps it may also involve the higher cognitive regions that weigh out the cost benefit of getting the right/wrong image. I am also interested as to how long each image was exposed to the participants, as I feel like it did take me awhile to recognize the seahorse image. I think it is also very cool that researchers were able to pin point an N400 waveform that associates with recognition and meaning.
JessicaZacarias · December 5, 2013 at 11:51 pm
In response to ” Brain Differences in Social Butterflys”:
I thought it was interesting that being more social may increase brain mass. It makes me wonder if having more social connections creates more connections in the brain therefore increasing brain mass. Since it seems to be a question whether it is brain mass and connectivity that makes you more social or if it is being born more social connect with building a bigger brain. I think that it can easily be both. Can’t you be predisposed to having a bigger cerebral cortex as well as be born as social butterfly. I think more likely then not, these two factors play in with each other.
emfrees · December 6, 2013 at 1:53 pm
In response to “The Moral Life of Babies”. I enjoy the idea that we are all born with a moral code, that we start off good. Paul Bloom stated that even 3-month old babies respond differently to good and bad, which is impressive when thinking of a human’s ability after only being alive for a few months. However, I have some reservations in regard to the claim that there is a genetic aspect of morality. Bloom’s strongest evidence for the genetic component is that humans universally have this gut feeling of right and wrong, but this could also be due to pure environmental influences.
He also lists some traits of the moral code that young children have. They seem quite straightforward, except that there is no acknowledgement to the children that are trouble-makers. There are children that steal others’ toys and don’t follow all the rules, so I would want to know what happened to their intrinsic moral code. There are a lot of children that misbehave, and are not neurologically challenged, so they should also have this morality. I wonder how they controlled for what a baby can learn pre-birth. Since they can hear in utero, they can probably start picking up on morality differences, even if they don’t know how to express them. So it might seem that they are born having a natural knowledge of morals, when it really might just come down to learning. This is an interesting research topic and I think more can be done with it.