Suter Science Seminar (2010) - Caring: How We Become Attached

This is an older but fascinating seminar lecture (yes, I am a geek, and I rejoice in my geekiness) on creating healthy (secure) attachments through Care Theory. Dr. Nel Noddings is Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University and a past president of the National Academy of Education, the Philosophy of Education Society, and the John Dewey Society.

Her many books include Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (2003), The Challenge to Care in Schools (2005), and Philosophy of Education (2011).




Suter Science Seminar (2010) - Caring: How We Become Attached

Many educators today express interest in attachment theory. Children who have not formed secure attachments to their early caregivers often experience social problems in school and neighborhood activities. Care theory is useful in explaining how secure attachments are formed. Caring relations are important at every stage of life, and caring teachers can be instrumental in enriching the lives of their students, often well into adolescence. Care theory also offers a powerful approach to moral education.

Dr. Nel Noddings is Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University. She is a past president of the National Academy of Education, the Philosophy of Education Society and the John Dewey Society. In addition to sixteen books—among them, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education, The Challenge to Care in Schools, Philosophy of Education—she is the author of more than 200 articles and chapters on various topics ranging from the ethics of care to mathematical problem solving. Her latest books are Happiness and Education, Educating Citizens for Global Awareness, Critical Lessons: What Our Schools Should Teach, and most recent When School Reform Goes Wrong.

Noddings spent fifteen years as a teacher, administrator, and curriculum supervisor in public schools; she served as a mathematics department chairperson in New Jersey and as Director of the Laboratory Schools at the University of Chicago. At Stanford, she received the Award for Teaching Excellence three times.

The Daniel B. Suter Endowment sponsors the seminar series. The endowment is named for a professor who joined the EMU science faculty in 1948, became head of the biology department and developed the university's pre-med program. He retired in 1985 and died in 2006.

For more information on the Suter Science Seminars, contact Dr. Roman Miller at EMU.

Maria Konnikova - How We Think Is How We Are: The Power of Self-Stereotyping

The Big Think site posted this article by Maria Konnikova on how we define ourselves through own self-identifying stereotypes. She argues that "how we think about our own selves is largely determined by how we think others think of us—how we are perceived, judged, and evaluated by the outside world."

Another way of looking at this is through the lens of attachment theory. When we do not experience healthy mirroring (a Self Psychology term for our need to have caregivers be supportive of our presence, our actions, our uniqueness, and who show this support through smiling, laughter, and joyfulness) during infancy and toddler years, we grow up more dependent on how we are viewed by others as our way of defining ourselves.

The lack of healthy mirroring is the root of a lot of self-identity issues - everything from the ubiquitous "co-dependence" issues of addictive relationships to depression and other mood disorders, to the more extreme borderline personality disorder (or, more accurately, complex PTSD) that can occur when a lack of mirroring is combined with neglect or abuse.

How We Think Is How We Are: The Power of Self-Stereotyping

Maria Konnikova on October 31, 2011

As we make sense of the world around us, our minds often take shortcuts, generalizing, cutting corners, making connections and engaging in inferences as they integrate all of the incoming information into a cohesive whole. And as we make sense of people, we typically engage in the exact same practice: when we meet someone for the first time, we’ve likely formed multiple judgments—often without realizing we have done so—before our new acquaintance has even had a chance to speak a single word. We take a look, and we generalize based on what we know and what we’ve learned through past experience. It’s far easier than having to start fresh every single time.
That process of initial, nearly instantaneous judgment is often driven by prevailing stereotypes, our own as well as those of our society as a whole and our immediate circle in particular. But what is less commonly known—or at least considered—is that we apply the exact same process to ourselves, often without realizing we are doing it: how we think about our own selves is largely determined by how we think others think of us—how we are perceived, judged, and evaluated by the outside world.

Stereotype threat in aging
One area where effects of self-stereotyping play out to quite dramatic effect is aging. It is typically thought that as people age, their memories grow worse and their cognitive abilities suffer a general decline. And unfortunately, that type of thinking seems to actually affect how the elderly actually think and remember. Studies have shown that when aging stereotypes are activated, older adults actually begin to exhibit larger memory deficits and worse performance on tests of cognitive ability. But, the news isn’t all bad: the opposite is also true. When such stereotypes are given less weight, memory and cognitive performance both improve.

A study in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science examined whether older adults would perform better on one of the memory tasks that is most often compromised as a result of aging, item-specific processing. Typically, as we age, we rely more on relational processing than item-specific processing when we make memory judgments. That is, we focus on relationships between words and concepts as opposed to differentiating information for a specific word or concept. And when we do that, individuating item information is less available when we retrieve that item from memory. So, for instance, we may find it difficult to determine if an item was actually shown before or if it’s just similar to one that we’ve seen before—creating, in a sense, a false memory. But what if the age-related stereotypes that relate to memory declines are eliminated?

 Read the whole article.

Secular Buddhist - Episode 95 :: Britta Hölzel :: Mechanisms of Mindfulness

Very cool podcast - The Secular Buddhist Association's Executive Director Ted Meissner interviews Britta Hölzel, PhD, a Research Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Giessen in Germany, on the neural, mechanisms of mindfulness meditation.

Episode 95 :: Britta Hölzel :: Mechanisms of Mindfulness

The Secular Buddhist Podcast

Britta Hölzel

Dr. Britta Hölzel speaks with us about her recent paper about the potential mechanisms of mindfulness.

What are the mechanisms of a mindfulness state? A recent paper suggests, as a starting point of discussion, that four significant components may be Attention Regulation, Body Awareness, Emotion Regulation, and Sense of Self. As we look at the positive benefits of meditation, it is valuable for us to hypothesize about these qualities of the process, as that can help us think creatively about new areas for scientific investigation.

Britta Hölzel, PhD, is a Research Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Giessen in Germany. She received her MA in Psychology from Frankfurt University, and her PhD from Giessen University. She conducts MRI research to investigate the neural mechanisms of mindfulness practice. Her research focuses on the effects of mindfulness practice on attention and emotion regulation as well as on structural changes in the brain. She is a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction instructor, a certified yoga teacher, and has been a dedicated yoga and meditation practitioner for the last 12 years. Recently, she has been involved in projects to adapt mindfulness-based interventions for patients with bipolar disorder.

At the end of this interview, Britta references a brand new study of a colleague, Tim Gard. I’m happy to say that Tim’s work has just been published, and our interview with him about that will be next week’s episode. And on a personal note, I would like to thank our friends in the scientific community for their spirit of collaboration. It is solely due to their open communication and interest that this podcast is able to share their fascinating work in as timely a fashion as we’ve enjoyed. So, Britta, Tim, Katherine, Sara, Cathy, Cliff, Fadel, Philippe, and happily everyone else too numerous to mention by name — thank you for sharing.

So, sit back, relax, and have a nice Chocolate Safari tea.

Podcast: Download

 

:: Discuss this episode ::

Web Links

• Britta Hölzel
• Wildmind Meditation News: Don’t worry, be happy: Understanding mindfulness meditation
• Science Daily: Don’t Worry, Be Happy: Understanding Mindfulness Meditation
• Perspectives on Psychological Science: How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective

Music for This Episode




Shakuhachi

Meditations
The music heard in the middle of the podcast is from Rodrigo Rodriguez’s CD, Shakuhachi Meditations. The tracks used in this episode are:

• Chaniwa

~ Ted Meissner is the Executive Director of the Secular Buddhist Association, and host of the SBA’s official podcast, The Secular Buddhist. His background is in the Zen and Theravada traditions, he is a regular speaker on interfaith panel discussions, and is a guest editor at The Buddhist Dispatch.

Upaya Dharma Podcasts - Rohatsu Sesshin: Exploring the Heart Sutra

Yesterday morning I posted the podcasts from the Thanksgiving retreat at Upaya on the Heart Sutra. This six-part Rohatsu Sesshin (in honor of the enlightenment of the Buddha) explores even deeper into the Heart Sutra - a nice series of talks.

Rohatsu Annual Retreat 2011: All 6 Parts

The 6 part series  Rohatsu Sesshin: Exploring the Heart Sutra is now published. You can access the desired part of the series by clicking on its link below.

Beate Stolte & Enkyo O'Hara & Joan Halifax: 12-01-2011: Rohatsu Sesshin: Exploring the Heart Sutra (Part 1 of 6)

Speakers: Beate Stolte & Enkyo O'Hara & Joan Halifax

Recorded: Thursday Dec 1, 2011

Series Summary Description:

Rohatsu Sesshin marks the enlightenment of the Buddha. It is a powerful gathering of practitioners and friends who are dedicated to realizing the way. Roshis Joan Halifax and Enkyo O’Hara, and Senseis Kaz Tanahashi and Beate Stolte explore the enlightenment of the Buddha, the story and its meaning in our lives today, during this powerful annual retreat.

Roshi Joan Halifax is Co-abbot of Upaya Zen Center with Sensei Beate Stolte. Roshi Enkyo O’Hara is Abbot of Village Zendo, and Sensei Kaz Tanahashi is a Dogen Scholar.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Here are the rest of the links:

• Rohatsu Sesshin: Part 2 of 6
• Rohatsu Sesshin: Part 3 of 6
• Rohatsu Sesshin: Part 4 of 6
• Rohatsu Sesshin: Part 5 of 6
• Rohatsu Sesshin: Part 6 of 6

Philippe Goldin - Cognitive Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation

I suspect I posted this in the past, but it's good, so here it is again.




Google Tech Talks
February, 28 2008

ABSTRACT

Mindfulness meditation, one type of meditation technique, has been shown to enhance emotional awareness and psychological flexibility as well as induce well-being and emotional balance. Scientists have also begun to examine how meditation may influence brain functions. This talk will examine the effect of mindfulness meditation practice on the brain systems in which psychological functions such as attention, emotional reactivity, emotion regulation, and self-view are instantiated. We will also discuss how different forms of meditation practices are being studied using neuroscientific technologies and are being integrated into clinical practice to address symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress.

Speaker: Philippe Goldin 
Philippe is a research scientist and heads the Clinically Applied Affective Neuroscience group in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University.

He spent 6 years in India and Nepal studying various languages, Buddhist philosophy and debate at Namgyal Monastery and the Dialectic Monastic Institute, and serving as an interpreter for various Tibetan Buddhist lamas. He then returned to the U.S. to complete a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Rutgers University. His NIH-funded clinical research focuses on (a) functional neuroimaging investigations of cognitive-affective mechanisms in adults with anxiety disorders, (b) comparing the effects of mindfulness meditation and cognitive-behavioral therapy on brain-behavior correlates of emotional reactivity and regulation, and (c) training children in family and elementary school  settings in mindfulness skills to reduce anxiety and enhance compassion, self-esteem and quality of family interactions.

Professor Brian Cox: A Night with the Stars

Very cool . . . .




Professor Brian Cox: A Night with the Stars

For one night only, Professor Brian Cox goes unplugged in a specially recorded programme from the lecture theatre of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. In his own inimitable style, Brian takes an audience of famous faces, scientists and members of the public on a journey through some of the most challenging concepts in physics.

With the help of Jonathan Ross, Simon Pegg, Sarah Millican and James May, Brian shows how diamonds – the hardest material in nature – are made up of nothingness; how things can be in an infinite number of places at once; why everything we see or touch in the universe exists; and how a diamond in the heart of London is in communication with the largest diamond in the cosmos.

Ken Wilber Offers His Final Statement on Marc Gafni

When the latest Marc Gafni thing blew up in September, Ken Wilber eventually issued a tepid statement of support and said he would make a final statement at a later date. Part of the reason Wilber was drawn into it was because Robb Smith, Diane Hamilton, and several other people all made a public break with Gafni. Integral Life ended its affiliation with Gafni's Center for World Spirituality and several teachers stopped working with him.


Well, for Wilber, the date of his final statement came a week or so ago.

Final Ken Wilber Statement Dec. 2011, Marc Gafni / Center for World Spirituality

Dec 25, 2011

The board of directors of the Center for World Spirituality recently made a public statement, conveying their support for Marc Gafni as a leader and teacher in the Center.

Earlier, in a post on the Integral Life website, I have commented on the situation that developed several months ago in the blogosphere.

I acknowledged in that post that Marc, like most great spiritual teachers and pundits, has great gifts as well as human complexity. I pointed out that everyone must make up their own mind as to whether they want to work with Marc, or to be his student.

I am writing to share that, for myself, I have made up my mind. I am rejoining the Wisdom Council of the Center for World Spirituality, to which I invited many of my colleagues to participate.

I look forward to future work with Marc in articulating and evolving the contours of a World Spirituality based on Integral Principles.

Some of my reasons for wanting to work with Marc are contained in letters I co-wrote with Sally Kempton in 2008. However, there is one piece I want to add. I am not working with Marc despite this last blogosphere explosion but rather because of his reaction to it.

You can read the whole statement at the CWS site (free registration required).

That last paragraph makes the whole statement more than a little suspect to me - Wilber did not co-write those previous letters, he gave Kempton and Gafni permission to use his name. So I suspect the same is true this time, but that really does not matter - he signed off on it.

The "Wisdom Council" of the CWS, which seems to have a lot of different names than it did several months ago, has also issued a statement of support for Gafni.

Gafni also issued his final statement on this issue, in which he still denies having done anything unethical or otherwise wrong - as is always the case, he blames the accusers for making false accusations and misrepresentations of the "truth."

For example:

What I will say here is that a great deal of distortion, misinformation, behind-the-scenes manipulation, and outright untruth appeared in many of the statements and comments posted in some blogs. Active behind the scenes were some of the same folks who, over the years, have supported the ongoing dissemination of false complaints, interpretations and characterizations of my actions. (See Mariana Caplan’s article  on False Complaints which gives some of the background.)  Others used this particular circumstance to accomplish their own “political” ends, always of course under the fig leaf of more virtuous motivations. Shadow can never admit of itself so it always pleads other motives.

And this on the assumed conspiracy he feels has been working against him all these years, and how the internet makes it easy to spread what he considers false information without accountability:

Most of us are aware by now of how Internet discourse operates. As Jurgen Habermaas, Lee Segal, and other discerning readers of culture have noted, the blogosphere is a place where anyone can say anything, with no professional or ethical accountability required. As a result, devastating accusations are routinely and carelessly thrown about. Often, as in this case, no attempt is made to hear all sides, or even to check facts. As Ken Wilber has pointed out, there is often gross confusion between facts and interpretation of facts. Too often, as a way of propagating slander without being held responsible, the identity of someone posting comments on a blog is hidden under a cloak of anonymity or a pseudonym. It is all too easy for one person to post under a number of pseudonyms to create the impression that his or her  opinion is widely shared. This has been the case in many of the blogposts that appear on the web about my personal life. Even when blogging is not anonymous or pseudonymous, the writer’s personal agendas in all four quadrants remain effectively hidden. In short, the blogosphere makes unchallenged character assassination far too easy.

You can read the whole statement at the link above.

As has been the case in all of the previous episodes, Gafni has found a way to spread enough accusations of conspiracies and other nonsense to convince those who did not have any investment in checking the facts to side with him.

It appears to me that these folks (who often claim to be "integral" and not working from a postmodern, relativistic "mean green meme"), are willing to accept that truth has different versions and ethics are all situational, which is the only way I see that Gafni can still be endorsed as a trustworthy teacher.

But at least the truth of so many women (and men) who have been injured by Gafni is out there for others to read and consider before entering into any kind of relationship with him.

Jonah Lehrer - The Psychology of Nakedness

Jonah Lehrer posted this article a while back on his blog, the Frontal Cortex, which is also reposted at Wired. In an very intriguing study, a group of researchers discovered that when we see only a face we make different assumptions and inferences than if we see the same face with a bit of exposed torso.

It sounds like we might be talking about proof that a little skin leads to objectification, but the researchers disagree. Here is a statement from the lead author, Kurt Gray:

The idea that a body focus can lead to both decreased and increased mind stands in contrast to the term “objectification,” because it suggests that people seen as bodies are not seen as mindless objects but, instead, as experiencers: someone more capable of pain, pleasure, desire, sensation, and emotion but lacking in agency. In other words, focusing on the body does not lead to de-mentalization but to a redistribution of mind.

While this seems to be true in the given study, my guess is that the context is crucial. For example, put the same female face and torso on the cover of Maxxim or Playboy and the inferences made about the body would be very different than if she were on the cover of Shape or People. Or more obviously, put a woman in a bikini on a stage at a Spring Break event in Miami or at pool side in a Miami at an Olympic level swim meet - the inferences will be very different.

The Psychology of Nakedness

• By Jonah Lehrer
• November 30, 2011  

The human mind sees minds everywhere. Show us a collection of bouncing balls and we hallucinate agency; a glance at a stuffed animal and we endow it with a mood; I’m convinced Siri doesn’t like me. The point is that we are constantly translating our visual perceptions into a theory of mind, as we attempt to imagine the internal states of teddy bears, microchips and perfect strangers.

Most of the time, this approach works well enough. If I notice someone squinting their eyes and clenching their jaw, I automatically conclude that he must be angry; if she flexes the zygomatic major – that’s what happens during a smile – then I assume she’s happy. The point is that a few cues of body language are instantly translated into a rich mental image. We can’t help but think about what other people are thinking about.

But this intricate connection between mind theorizing and sensory perception can also prove problematic. For instance, when people glance at strangers who look “different” – perhaps they dress funny, or belong to a different ethic group – they endow these strangers with less agency, a fancy term for the ability to plan, act and exert self-control. Or consider a 2010 fMRI experiment that found that when men glance at “sexualized” women they exhibit reduced activation in parts of the brain typically associated with the attribution of mental states. These are obviously terrible habits – a hint of cleavage shouldn’t make us care less about someone’s feelings, nor should a different skin tone – but we mostly can’t help it. We judge books by the cover and minds by their appearance. We are a superficial species.

And this brings me to a fascinating new paper by an all star team of psychologists, including Kurt Gray, Joshua Knobe, Mark Sheskin, Paul Bloom and Lisa Feldman Barrett. The scientists nicely frame the mystery they want to solve:

Do people’s mental capacities fundamentally change when they remove a sweater? This seems absurd: How could removing a piece of clothing change one’s capacity for acting or feeling? In six studies, however, we show that taking off a sweater—or otherwise revealing flesh—can significantly change the way a mind is perceived. In this article, we suggest that the kind of mind ascribed to another person depends on the relative salience of his or her body—that the perceived capacity for both pain and planned action depends on whether someone wears a sweater or tank-top.

In order to understand why sweaters and tank-tops influence the kind of minds we perceive, it’s important to know about the different qualities we imagine in others. In general, people assess minds – and it doesn’t matter if it’s the “mind” of a pet, iPhone or deity – along two distinct dimensions. First, we grade these minds in terms of agency. (Human beings have lots of agency; goldfish less so.) But we also think of minds in terms of the ability to have experience, to feel and perceive. The psychologists suggest that these dual dimensions are actually a duality, and that there’s a direct tradeoff between the ability to have agency and experience. If we endow someone with lots of feeling, then they probably have less agency. And if someone has lots of agency, then they probably are less sensitive to experience. In other words, we automatically assume that the capacity to think and the capacity to feel are in opposition. It’s a zero sum game.

What does all this have to do with nakedness? The psychologists demonstrated it’s quite easy to shift our perceptions of other people from having a mind full of agency to having a mind interested in experience: all they have to do is take off their clothes. Take the first experiment by Gray, et al., which showed 159 undergraduates a variety of photos. Some of these photos were of an attractive female named Erin, appearing in either a headshot or a bikini. Other students looked at a handsome man named Aaron, glancing at either his face or sculpted bare chest.
After looking at these pictures and reading a brief description of Erin/Aaron, subjects were asked to evaluate the mental capacities of the person. They answered six questions, which took the form, “Compared to the average person, how much is Erin capable of X.” The X was filled in by various agency-related capacities, such as “self-control,”“acting morally,” and “planning” and a slew of experience-related capacities, such as “experiencing pleasure,” “experiencing hunger,” and “experiencing desire.” Participants answered these six questions on a 5-point scale from 1 (Much Less Capable) to 5 (Much More Capable).

It turns out that a glimpse of flesh strongly influences our perception of Erin/Aaron. When the pictures only showed a face, they had lots of agency. But when we saw their torso, we suddenly imagined them as obsessed with experience. Instead of being good at self-control, they were suddenly extremely sensitive to hunger and desire. Same person, same facial expression, same brief description – but a hint of body changed everything.

Read the rest of the article.

Tao Ruspoli - Being in the World

This looks like an interesting film - If I decide to download it this week, I'll try to get a review posted.

Being In The World

Click to Play

Ten years after graduating with a degree in philosophy from UC Berkeley, filmmaker Tao Ruspoli returned to visit his one-time professor, world-renowned philosopher Hubert Dreyfus. That visit led to meetings with a whole generation of philosophers whom Dreyfus had taught, which subsequently sparked the inspiration for this film. Being in the World raises the question of whether we have forgotten what it means to be truly human in today's technological age, and proceeds to answer this question by taking a journey around the world to meet a whole host of remarkable individuals, including Manuel Molina, the legendary poet and flamenco master; Leah Chase, affectionately known as the Queen of Creole Cuisine; and Hiroshi Sakaguchi, a master carpenter from Japan. By showing how these modern day masters approach life from within their chosen fields, Ruspoli's film celebrates the ability of human beings to find meaning in the world through the mastery of physical, intellectual, and creative skills.

How to Download	$14.95 Download to own and watch the movie with your Mac or Windows computer in high quality computer Standard Definition on QuickTime Player, on iTunes or on your TV using your Apple TV anytime (987.8 MB)
Duration: 01:20:31

Being in the World is now available for download-to-own plus limited edition white label DVD that ships free. Available only from Alive Mind Cinema to US viewers. Tell your friends!

How to Download	$24.95 Download to own and watch the movie with your Mac or Windows computer in high quality computer Standard Definition on QuickTime Player, on iTunes or on your TV using your Apple TV anytime (987.8 MB) plus limited edition white label DVD by mail (free shipping).
Duration: 01:20:31	This offer is available to US cutomers only.

Daniel Stolte - How the Brain Strings Words Into Sentences

This press release from the University of Arizona reveals some new research on how the brain makes sentences from single words. Brain imaging has made this process visible (or possibly visible) for the first time.

How the Brain Strings Words Into Sentences

Using magnetic resonance imaging of the brain, researchers can visualize the two main language processing regions, Broca's region (yellow) and Wernicke's region (purple). (Image: Stephen Wilson)

By Daniel Stolte, University Communications, November 23, 2011

Distinct neural pathways are important for different aspects of language processing, researchers have discovered, studying patients with language impairments caused by neurodegenerative diseases.

While it has long been recognized that certain areas in the brain's left hemisphere enable us to understand and produce language, scientists are still figuring out exactly how those areas divvy up the highly complex processes necessary to comprehend and produce language.

Advances in brain imaging made within the last 10 years have revealed that highly complex cognitive tasks such as language processing rely not only on particular regions of the cerebral cortex, but also on the white matter fiber pathways that connect them.

"With this new technology, scientists started to realize that in the language network, there are a lot more connecting pathways than we originally thought," said Stephen Wilson, who recently joined the University of Arizona's department of speech, language and hearing sciences as an assistant professor. "They are likely to have different functions because the brain is not just a homogeneous conglomerate of cells, but there hasn't been a lot of evidence as to what kind of information is carried on the different pathways."

Working in collaboration with his colleagues at the UA, the department of neurology at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and the Scientific Institute and University Hospital San Raffaele in Milan, Italy, Wilson discovered that not only are the connecting pathways important for language processing, but they specialize in different tasks.

Assistant professor Stephen Wilson studies how the brain processes language by combining brain imaging with performance-based language tests. (Photo: D. Stolte/UANews)

Two brain areas called Broca's region and Wernicke's region serve as the main computing hubs underlying language processing, with dense bundles of nerve fibers linking the two, much like fiber optic cables connecting computer servers. But while it was known that Broca's and Wernicke's region are connected by upper and a lower white matter pathways, most research had focused on the nerve cells clustered inside the two language-processing regions themselves.

Working with patients suffering from language impairments because of a variety of neurodegenerative diseases, Wilsons' team used brain imaging and language tests to disentangle the roles played by the two pathways. Their findings are published in a recent issue of the scientific journal Neuron.

"If you have damage to the lower pathway, you have damage to the lexicon and semantics," Wilson said. "You forget the name of things, you forget the meaning of words. But surprisingly, you're extremely good at constructing sentences."

"With damage to the upper pathway, the opposite is true; patients name things quite well, they know the words, they can understand them, they can remember them, but when it comes to figuring out the meaning of a complex sentence, they are going to fail."

The study marks the first time it has been shown that upper and lower tracts play distinct functional roles in language processing, the authors write. Only the upper pathway plays a critical role in syntactic processing.

Wilson collected the data while he was a postdoctoral fellow working with patients with neurodegenerative diseases of varying severity, recruited through the Memory and Aging Center at UCSF. The study included 15 men and 12 women around the age of 66.

Unlike many other studies investigating acquired language disorders, which are called aphasias and usually caused by damage to the brain, Wilson's team had a unique opportunity to study patients with very specific and variable degrees of brain damage.

"Most aphasias are caused by strokes, and most of the strokes that affect language regions probably would affect both pathways," Wilson said. "In contrast, the patients with progressive aphasias who we worked with had very rare and very specific neurodegenerative diseases that selectively target different brain regions, allowing us to tease apart the contributions of the two pathways."

To find out which of the two nerve fiber bundles does what in language processing, the team combined magnetic resonance brain imaging technology to visualize damaged areas and language assessment tasks testing the participants' ability to comprehend and produce sentences.

"We would give the study participants a brief scenario and ask them to complete it with what comes naturally," Wilson said. "For example, if I said to you, ‘A man was walking along the railway tracks. He didn't hear the train coming. What happened to the man?' Usually, you would say, ‘He was hit by the train,' or something along those lines."

"But a patient with damage to the upper pathway might say something like 'train, man, hit.' We found that the lower pathway has a completely different function, which is in the meaning of single words."

To test for comprehension of the meaning of a sentence, the researchers presented the patient with a sentence like, "The girl who is pushing the boy is green," and then ask which of the two pictures depicted that scenario accurately.

"One picture would show a green girl pushing a boy, and the other would show a girl pushing a green boy," Wilson said. "The colors will be the same, the agents will be the same, and the action is the same. The only difference is, which actor does the color apply to?"

"Those who have only lower pathway damage do really well on this, which shows that damage to that pathway doesn't interfere with your ability to use the little function words or the functional endings on words to figure out the relationships between the words in a sentence."

Wilson said that most previous studies linking neurodegeneration of specific regions with cognitive deficits have focused on damage to gray matter, rather than the white matter that connects regions to one another.

"Our study shows that the deficits in the ability to process sentences are above and beyond anything that could be explained by gray matter loss alone," Wilson added. "It is the first study to show that damage to one major pathway more than the other major pathway is associated with a specific deficit in one aspect of language."

The study was primarily funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and included the following co-authors: Sebastian Galantucci, Maria Carmela Tartaglia, Kindle Rising, Dianne Patterson (both at the UA's department of speech, language and hearing sciences), Maya Henry, Jennifer Ogar, Jessica DeLeon, Bruce Miller and Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini.

Upaya Dharma Podcasts - Thanksgiving Retreat: Form and Emptiness, Exploring the Heart Sutra

This is a very cool 5-part teaching on the Heart Sutra from Upaya Zen Center, given over the Thanksgiving weekend by Beate Stolte and based on a version of the Heart Sutra translated by Sensei Kaz Tanahashi and Roshi Joan Halifax.

Thanksgiving 2011 Retreat: All 5 Parts

Recorded: Sunday Dec 4, 2011

The 5 part series  Thanksgiving Retreat: Form and Emptiness, Exploring the Heart Sutra is now published. To access the entire series, please click on the link below:

Thanksgiving 2011 Retreat: All 5 Parts

Here is part one, with links to the other 4 parts below.

Beate Stolte: 11-23-2011: Thanksgiving Retreat: Form and Emptiness, Exploring the Heart Sutra (Part 1 of 5)

Speaker: Beate Stolte

Recorded: Wednesday Nov 23, 2011

Boundlessness is the nature of all things.
It neither arises nor perishes,
neither stains nor purifies,
neither increases nor decreases.

~from the Heart Sutra

The Heart Sutra, chanted daily in Zen monasteries and practice places throughout the world, contains the central teachings of Buddhism in a very concise form.

In this retreat, we will work with the beautiful rendition of the Heart Sutra used at Upaya, translated by Sensei Kaz Tanahashi and Roshi Joan Halifax.

When we drop into stillness we discover the boundless quality of our hearts and minds. Through zazen (three times a day), chanting, service, oryoki meals, study, and discussion, we will experience for ourselves the wisdom contained in the Heart Sutra.  We will also familiarize ourselves with the other essential related teachings within the sutra.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Thanksgiving 2011 Retreat: Part 2 of 5
Thanksgiving 2011 Retreat: Part 3 of 5
Thanksgiving 2011 Retreat: Part 4 of 5
Thanksgiving 2011 Retreat: Part 5 of 5

Authors@Google: Dario Nardi - Neuroscience of Personality

The other day I posted a short clip of Dr. Helen Fisher (at The Masculine Heart) talking about her theory of four personality types (based on serotonin, dopamine, estrogen, and testosterone) - in this Google talk, Dr. Dario Nardio of UCLA offers a different take based on brain regions and how they work to create personality.

Dario Nardi - Neuroscience of Personality

UCLA professor and author, Dario Nardi, has discovered that people of different personality types don't merely rely on different brain regions -- they use their brains in fundamentally different ways. Using colorful anecdotes and brain imagery, Dr. Nardi shares key insights from his lab. Among these insights: how people of different personalities can find and sustain a state of creative flow. This talk is suitable for a general audience including those who have passing familiarity with the Myers-Briggs types.

Mind and Life XXIII - Session 10 - Discussion among participants and His Holiness's final remarks

This is the final session of Mind and Life XXIII, "Ecology, Ethics and Interdependence" - Session 10: A discussion among participants and His Holiness's final remarks. Mind and Life XXIII conference features His Holiness the Dalai Lama in dialogue with contemplative scholars, activists and ecological scientists who discuss the interconnection between individual choices and environmental consequences. The conference was held at His Holiness's office in Dharamsala, India, from October 17-21, 2011.