Suger ≠ Focus

Sugar Does Not Help Self-Control, Willpower
By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on June 14, 2010

Put aside the candy bar as a self-management tactic to infuse energy, improve attention and help you get down to business.

A new interpretation of a 2007 study challenges the idea that glucose is used to manage self-control and that humans rely on this energy source for willpower.

The investigation by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Robert Kurzban is published in the current issue of the journal Evolutionary Psychology.

The new analysis contradicts results published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology based on “resource” models of self-control, suggesting that when people exert self-control — by, for example, carefully focusing their attention — a resource is “depleted,” leaving less of it for subsequent acts of self-control. This study identified glucose as this resource that gets depleted.

“For this model to be correct, it obviously must be the case that performing a self-control task reduces glucose levels relative to pre-task levels,” Kurzban said.

“Evidence from neurophysiology research suggests that this is unlikely, and the evidence for it is mixed at best.”

By analyzing the portion of the data made available by prior researchers, Kurzban discovered that, in the studies reported, glucose levels did not decrease among subjects who had performed self-control tasks. In short, his reanalysis shows that the researchers’ own data undermine the model they advance in their paper.

Kurzban’s new analysis is consistent with the neuroscience literature, which strongly implies that the marginal difference in glucose consumption by the brain from five minutes of performing a “self-control” task is unlikely in the extreme to be of any significant size.

Further, research on exercise shows that burning calories through physical activity, which really does consume substantial amounts of glucose, in fact shows the reverse pattern from what the model would predict: People who have recently exercised and burned glucose are better, not worse, on the sorts of tasks used in the self-control literature.

“The failure to find the effect predicted by the glucose model of self-control is not surprising given what is known about brain metabolism,” Kurzban said.

“Even very different computational tasks result in very similar glucose consumption by the brain, which tends to metabolize glucose at similar rates independent of task.”

Furthermore, even if exerting self-control did reduce levels of glucose, the cause of the reduction could be factors such as increased heart rate when people perform certain kinds of tasks, rather than consumption by the brain.

Glucose levels are probably influenced, Kurzban said, by a cascade of physical and psychological mechanisms that mediate glucose levels throughout the body.

“The weight of evidence implies that the glucose model of self-control in particular –- and perhaps the resource model in general –- ought to be carefully rethought,” he said.

“From a computational perspective, a ‘resource’ account is the wrong kind of explanation for performance decrements to begin with. No one whose computer is performing slowly would think that the fault lies in not having sufficient electricity –- or that running Excel for five minutes will drain the battery and so make Word slow down –- even though no one would deny that electricity is necessary for computers.”

One way to put the prior data in context, according to Kurzban, is to consider the data in terms of the familiar unit of calories. The brain as a whole consumes about one quarter of one calorie per minute. Obviously, the consumption rate for just the fraction of the brain involved in “self-control” must, logically, be much smaller than .25 calories per minute.

A 1 percent increase across the entire brain would, over the course of a five-minute task, consume .0125 calories. If one assumes an order of magnitude greater effect, a 10-percent increase, the amount of energy consumed would still be much less than a single calorie.

“Even with these extreme assumptions, potentially off by orders of magnitude, the caloric cost would still be well less than .2 calories,” Kurzban said.

“The brains of subjects categorized as ‘depleted’ in this literature, have, relative to controls, used an additional amount of glucose equal to about 10 percent of a single Tic Tac.”

Source: University of Pennsylvania

Bieber Fail.

 I know it's old, but its still pretty sad....

Video

Zombie Thoughts

"Burying thoughts is bad. If you bury them inside, they come back as zombie thoughts. And those are worse than the original ones!"

Is there ever a time where hiding thoughts is good?  Is it good to withdraw from thoughts or emotions because you are not ready to deal with them? Can they ever truly disappear? Or will they always come back worse then the first thoughts?

What do you think?

The Meaning of Wealth

The Meaning of Wealth Translated Around the World

by Robert Frank
Monday, May 24, 2010

provided by
 


We like to think the reasons for seeking wealth are universal. Humans, by nature, like to be comfortable, like to have power and like to have the choices and freedoms offered by lots of stuff and money.
Yet it turns out there are some regional variations in the meaning of wealth around the world.
The new Barclay’s Wealth Insights study, released this morning from Barclay’s Wealth and Ledbury Research, finds that the emerging-market rich view wealth very differently from the older-money Europeans and the slightly less nouveaux Americans.
The study surveyed 2,000 people from 20 countries with investible assets of $1.5 million or more. They shared some common themes: a vast majority of rich people from all regions agreed that wealth enables them to buy the best products and that wealth gives them freedom of choice in their life. Most also agreed that wealth is a reward for hard work.
But the differences are more interesting:
Respect
Asians and Latin Americans were more likely (49% and 47%) to say that wealth "allows me to get respect from friends and family." Only 28% of Europeans and 38% of Americans said respect was a byproduct of wealth.
Charity
About three-quarters of respondents in the U.S. and Latin America said wealth enabled them to give to charity. That compares with 57% in Europe and 66% in Asia.
Happiness
About two thirds of Europeans and Americans said wealth made them happy. But it had a greater happiness affect in emerging markets, with 76% of Asians and Latin Americans saying wealth made them happy.
Role Models
Less than half of Americans and Europeans say the wealthy "set an important example to others to be successful." That compares with 71% of Latin Americans and 61% of Asians.
Spending
Wealthy Europeans are far more likely to spend their dough on travel and interior decorating. Latin Americans seem to put the highest spending priority on education, while the U.S. surges above the rest in philanthropy (which the report counts as spending).
We can read several things into the differences. Most obviously, the U.S. has a more formalized and tax-favorable system of philanthropy than the rest of the world. (It is too sweeping to say Americans are the most "generous.")
What is more, the global financial crisis may have tarnished the image of the wealthy -- even among the wealthy. And finally, the longer a country has wealth, the less it craves the attention and respect wealth brings.

Original Post 

Cleopatra's Atlantis Palace

Divers explore sunken ruins of Cleopatra's palace

 

By JASON KEYSER, Associated Press Writer Jason Keyser, Associated Press Writer – Tue May 25, 2:01 pm ET

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt – Plunging into the waters off Alexandria Tuesday, divers explored the submerged ruins of a palace and temple complex from which Cleopatra ruled, swimming over heaps of limestone blocks hammered into the sea by earthquakes and tsunamis more than 1,600 years ago. The international team is painstakingly excavating one of the richest underwater archaeological sites in the world and retrieving stunning artifacts from the last dynasty to rule over ancient Egypt before the Roman Empire annexed it in 30 B.C. Using advanced technology, the team is surveying ancient Alexandria's Royal Quarters, encased deep below the harbor sediment, and confirming the accuracy of descriptions of the city left by Greek geographers and historians more than 2,000 years ago. Since the early 1990s, the topographical surveys have allowed the team, led by French underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio, to conquer the harbor's extremely poor visibility and excavate below the seabed. They are discovering everything from coins and everyday objects to colossal granite statues of Egypt's rulers and sunken temples dedicated to their gods. "It's a unique site in the world," said Goddio, who has spent two decades searching for shipwrecks and lost cities below the seas.

Click the image to see photos of the excavation of Cleopatra's sunken temple

AP

The finds from along the Egyptian coast will go on display at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute from June 5 to Jan. 2 in an exhibition titled "Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt." The exhibition will tour several other North American cities. Many archaeological sites have been destroyed by man, with statues cut or smashed to pieces. Alexandria's Royal Quarters — ports, a cape and islands full of temples, palaces and military outposts — simply slid into the sea after cataclysmic earthquakes in the fourth and eighth centuries. Goddio's team found it in 1996. Many of its treasures are completely intact, wrapped in sediment protecting them from the saltwater. "It's as it was when it sank," said Ashraf Abdel-Raouf of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, who is part of the team. Tuesday's dive explored the sprawling palace and temple complex where Cleopatra, the last of Egypt's Greek-speaking Ptolemaic rulers, seduced the Roman general Mark Antony before they committed suicide upon their defeat by Octavian, the future Roman Emperor Augustus. Dives have taken Goddio and his team to some of the key scenes in the dramatic lives of the couple, including the Timonium, commissioned by Antony after his defeat as a place where he could retreat from the world, though he killed himself before it was completed. They also found a colossal stone head believed to be of Caesarion, son of Cleopatra and previous lover Julius Caesar, and two sphinxes, one of them probably representing Cleopatra's father, Ptolemy XII. Divers photographed a section of the seabed cleared of sediment with a powerful suction device. Their flashlights glowing in the green murk, the divers photographed ruins from a temple to Isis near Cleopatra's palace on the submerged island of Antirhodos. Among the massive limestone blocks toppled in the fourth century was a huge quartzite block with an engraving of a pharaoh. An inscription indicates it depicts Seti I, father of Ramses II. "We've found many pharaonic objects that were brought from Heliopolis, in what is now Cairo," said Abdel-Raouf. "So, the Ptolemaic rulers re-used pharonic objects to construct their buildings." On the boat's deck, researchers displayed some small recent finds: imported ceramics and local copies, a statuette of a pharaoh, bronze ritual vessels, amulets barely bigger than a fingernail, and small lead vessels tossed by the poor into the water or buried in the ground as devotions to gods. Alexandria's Eastern Harbor was abandoned after another earthquake, in the eighth century, and was left untouched as an open bay — apart from two 20th century breakwaters — while modern port construction went ahead in the Western Harbor. That has left the ancient Portus Magnus undisturbed below. "We have this as an open field for archaeology," Goddio said. ___ Online: The Franck Goddio Society: http://www.franckgoddio.org The Franklin Institute: http://www.fi.edu

Original Post

Is that your phone?

Is that your cell phone ringing? A neuroscience study conforms the human brain seems wired to hear familiar noises, such as a person's name or phone tone, faster than others.

Image from the cover of the current Journal Of Neuroscience depicts a mouse brain cell.

CAPTION

Society for Neuroscience

In the current Journal of Neuroscience, a team led by Anja Roye of Germany's University of Leipzig, tested familiar and unfamiliar ringtone recognition in 12 men and women wearing headphones and brain-wave-reading electroencephalograms.
"The analyzed evoked (electroencephalogram) responses were significantly increased for the personally significant sound," found the researchers.
The study volunteers recognized their own ringer about 40 microseconds sooner than unfamiliar ones. "When a stimulus matches a sound template currently held in short-term memory, i.e., the target sound, it may activate a network of distinct (brain) areas that give rise to a fast allocation of attention and trigger the associated motor-response," says the study. A similar mechanism may explain our ability to hear our own name called amid a din of conversation, the authors suggest.
Analyzing brain-wave patterns, the team suggests a "passive listening" network of brain cells reside in portions of the left side of the brain poised for familiar sounds. Asking volunteers to actively listen for familiar sounds also fired up a right-side part of the brain.
"In sum, this study provides evidence that incoming acoustic information is matched with existing memory templates representing the specific, personally significant, and behaviorally relevant stimulus," concludes the study.
In other words, we are always waiting for someone to call our name, and recognize it faster than anything else.

By Dan Vergano
Original Post

EAS Muscle Commercial

This last week a group of us were at Mike's house watching the game and a commercial was shown which sparked a lively debate. So, at the request of Jonah, I'm putting it up here for continued discussion.

The question up for debate is, "is this commercial sexist?"  The question is not who the commercial is targeted to or if it's a good marketing ploy, that is pretty clear (men, yes).  What do you think?

Here is the commercial under debate.