Very nice video about the differences between the way men and women think and feel. Some very good lessons in there. Men have a box in their brain with nothing in it: The Nothing Box, the favorite box of a man
Exercise boosts brain power is one of the rules of the book: Brain Rules
John Medina’s Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School pulls off a terrific trick: combining popular science with touching personal memoir and a bunch of practical conclusions for improving work, education and personal life.
Besides the book there is also a DVD the author has put the cool companion DVD online for free as an introduction to the paperback release of the book.
More on the book:
Brain Rules takes the brain’s mysteries apart into twelve pieces: Exercise, survival, wiring, attention, short-term memory, long-term memory, sleep, stress, multisensory perception, vision, gender, and exploration. He discusses the best, most current science describing what drives each one, delving into psychology, neurology, evolutionary biology, and practical disciplines like behavioural economics, organizational science, and pedagogy.
Thanks Boing Boing
From Medgadget.nl Videos on the future of human health.
Stanford University has her own video channel on YouTube. It also features a series of 7 videos on the future of human health. It is all about the brain and very interesting.
This is the one I liked most. Incredible efficient the brain.
That is a difficult question for two reasons:
The reactions to humor is a complex reaction comparable to e.g crying and pain. The reaction is mainly described as a two phase response the incongruity theory.
According to the incongruity theory, humor involves the perception of incongruity or paradox in a playful context. For something to be funny, two stages can be distinguished in the processing of humorous material. In the first stage, …..the perceiver finds his expectation about the text disconfirmed by the ending of the joke…..In other words, the recipient encounters an incongruity –the punch-line. In the second stage, the perceiver engages in a form of problem-solving to find a cognitive rule which makes the punch-line follow from the main part of the joke and reconciles the incongruous parts’. Other researchers have called these stages `surprise’ and `coherence’.
A more precise description of humor and laughter is a 5 stage model more appropriate for neurologists and neuroscientists:
This makes the localization of humor and laughter in the brain complex. Humor and laughter is a complicated process. Each of these elements may have its own cerebral substrate.
The perception of humor is dependent on certain faculties of the brain, such as attention, working memory, mental flexibility, emotional evaluation, verbal abstraction and the feeling of positive emotions. Given these involvements, theory dictates that (at least) those regions of the brain associated with these processes should be active in the perception of humor.
Humor and laughter need a neural network in which frontal and temporal regions are involved in the perception of humor. These, in turn, would induce facial reactions and laughter mediated by dorsal brainstem regions. These reactions would be inhibited by the ventral brainstem, probably via frontal motor/premotor areas.
One of the latest publications discusses the results of fMRI research done by three different research groups. They all found the human reward system in the brain involved with humor. This system mainly uses dopamine as it’s neurotransmittor. That’s why everyone loves to laugh. The activation of this system, the mesolimbic regions represents the pleasurable component of humor.
Now, a recent fMRI study has found mesolimbic reward activation associated with humorous cartoons, providing a neurobiological link between theories of humor and hedonic processes in the brain.
More recent research found that both men and women share an extensive humor-response strategy as indicated by recruitment of similar brain regions. They also found a difference between men and women as far as brain activation in a fMRI study was concerned around humor.
Females activate the left prefrontal cortex more than males, suggesting a greater degree of executive processing and language-based decoding. Females also exhibit greater activation of mesolimbic regions, including the nucleus accumbens, implying greater reward network response and possibly less reward expectation. These results indicate sex-specific differences in neural response to humor with implications for sex-based disparities in the integration of cognition and emotion.
Conclusion
We are only starting to understand a small particle of an important subject such as humor and laughter. What is your opinion about this kind of research, a waist of time and money? Important for future therapies? Let me know.
B. Wild (2003). Neural correlates of laughter and humour Brain, 126 (10), 2121-2138 DOI: 10.1093/brain/awg226
G Berns (2004). Something funny happened to reward Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8 (5), 193-194 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2004.03.007
E. Azim (2005). Sex differences in brain activation elicited by humor Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102 (45), 16496-16501 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0408456102
Stunning images of the brain. Online neuroscience photography gallery from an exhibition going on tour in 2009, Enception.org. From Mind Hacks The Fire Within, thanks
In the clip (included in full above), see how a completely paralyzed man, who could otherwise only communicate by moving his eyes, uses his mind to type out thoughts on a computer screen. Of course, the process is very slow going—each letter takes up to 20 seconds to type. Reporter Scott Pelley donned the controller skull cap, and watched a screen of flashing letters to try it out himself. When the letter he was thinking of highlighted, he’d think “that’s it!” and that signal of recognition would type the letter on-screen.
Thanks Lifehacker
While playing video games on a computer men generally exhibit greater activation of the mesocorticolimbic reward circuitry and also greater connectivity. Male were more effective in gaining space and learned the implicit goal faster than females. This was the only observed gender difference in performance.
The mesolimbic pathway is thought to be involved in producing pleasurable feeling, and is often associated with feelings of reward and desire, particularly because of the connection to the nucleus accumbens, which is also associated with these states. Recent research has pointed towards this pathway being involved in incentive salience rather than euphoric mood states.
A possible explanation for this finding is that the goal to ‘‘gain more space” in this game acted as a reward for males relative to females, whether or not it was consciously perceived as rewarding by the subjects. This significant association between goal achievement and learning and brain activation
profile occurs predominantly in males in this study.
The researchers excluded possible confounds due to neuropsychological profiles, lower-level motor performance, and computer and video-game experience.
This study was a functional magnetic resonance imaging study contrasting a space-infringement game with a control condition. The aim was to compare males and females and preform fMRI imaging during active and control situation while playing a video game.
This result could explain why females do not play computer games as much as men.
They don’t seem to find playing video games as rewarding as men.
Other explanations for this gender differences are:
These stereotypes were researched recently in an online survey conducted on women who played computer games and women who used the computer but did not play computer games.
The results:
In conclusion:
Women who played computer games perceived their online environments as less friendly but experienced less sexual harassment online, were more aggressive themselves, and did not differ in gender identity, degree of sex role stereotyping, or acceptance of sexual violence when compared to women who used the computer but did not play video games
Probably there are more women online playing video games than men realize. Maybe using gender neutral aliases.
F HOEFT, C WATSON, S KESLER, K BETTINGER, A REISS (2008). Gender differences in the mesocorticolimbic system during computer game-play Journal of Psychiatric Research, 42 (4), 253-258 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2007.11.010
Norris, K O (2004). Gender Stereotypes, Aggression, and Computer Games: An Online Survey of Women CyberPsychology & Behavior, 7 (6), 714-727 DOI: 15687807
After satiation with chocolate the tasting of chocolate activates different brain areas in men and women.
In men, chocolate satiation was associated with increased taste activation in the ventral striatum, insula, and orbitofrontal and medial orbitofrontal cortex and with decreased taste activation in somatosensory areas. Women showed increased taste activation in the precentral gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, and putamen and decreased taste activation in the hypothalamus and amygdala.
In contrast to men in women the amygdala plays an important role after satiation with chocolate. The amygdala is known to respond to both aversive and pleasant taste stimuli. It was found that amygdala activation in women decreased after chocolate satiation. Having had enough chocolate results in a decrease of activation of the amygdala in women. In men there was no effect of satiation on amygdala activation.
In women in response to satiation the taste activation in the hypothalamus decreased. This could reflect the decrease in hunger, ie, the decreased motivation to eat chocolate.
The sex differences we found suggest that satiation might work differently in men and women similar to how men and women have different tastes for Sex toys. There is supportive evidence for this from other fields that suggests that women are more
affected than men by the hedonic value of food, men not so much, it has been proven that men are much more affected by the need of an increase girth.
Now why is this important?
These results suggest that the sexes differ in their response to satiation. Therefore, sex differences are a covariate of interest in studies of the brain’s responses to tasting food and the regulation of food intake, if anyone has ever learnt how to improve sexual stamina they know chocolate plays a big role.
These results are also supported by a study that explored the preferences for comfort food across age and gender:
Males preferred warm, hearty, meal-related comfort foods (such as steak, casseroles, and soup), while females instead preferred comfort foods that were more snack related (such as chocolate and ice cream). In addition, younger people preferred more snack-related comfort foods compared to those over 55 years of age. Associations with guilty feelings underscored how these different preferences between males and females may extend to areas of application.
In a review of chocolate craving it is indicated that the hedonic appeal of chocolate (fat, sugar, texture and aroma) is likely to be a predominant factor in chocolate craving. This could explain, together with the neuroanatomy data why women prefer chocolate.
Alas chocolate is not an antidepressant.
B WANSINK, M CHENEY, N CHAN (2003). Exploring comfort food preferences across age and gender1 Physiology & Behavior, 79 (4-5), 739-747 DOI: 10.1016/S0031-9384(03)00203-8
Paul AM Smeets,, Cees de Graaf,, Annette Stafleu,, Matthias JP van Osch,, Rutger AJ Nievelstein,, Jeroen van der Grond (2006). Effect of satiety on brain activation during chocolate tasting in men and women American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
Bruinsma, Kristen, Taren, Douglas L. (1999). Chocoalte: Food or Drug? Journal of the american dietetic association, 99 (10), 1249-1256 DOI: 10524390
Sex differences exist in every brain lobe. For instance in the “cognitive regions” such as the hippocampus, amygdala and neocortex. The hippocampus has an important function in memory, the amygdala in mood. Both structures lie deep within the brain. The cortex is the “outside” of the brain. The part you can look at from the outside. Important for instance for stimulation with rTMS.
Red structures that are larger in the healthy female brain, relative to cerebrum size
Blue structures that are larger in the healthy male brain, relative to cerebrum size
Sex differences in the brain can also be relatively global in nature. For example, widespread areas of the neocortex are significantly thicker in women than in men. Ratios of grey to white matter also differ significantly between the sexes in diverse regions of the human cortex or the outermost layer of the brain.
Grey matter (or gray matter) is a major component of the central nervous system, consisting mostly of nerve cell bodies (neurons). White matter is composed of bundles of myelinated nerve cell processes (or axons), which connect various gray matter areas.
These structural differences are not as much fun as differences in functionality. So we will focus in structural and functional sex differences:
Now why is this important?
These are only some structural sex differences in the brain probably resulting in functional differences, specially if the person uses https://memberxxlreview.com/fr/ supplements. Not that women or men are superior in one way or the other when it concerns cognitive tasks. They probably have the same results but the way they get their can be different.
Since many psychiatric and neurological disorders show sex differences in their incidence and/or nature requires us to examine sex influences in both our basic and clinical research to fully understand, and treat, the disorder (e.g. depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease).
It is also important to realize that for instance studying depression in male rats is probably not a very good idea since this disorder affects mostly women.
The next post about: Sex, Chocolate and the Brain or Why Women Prefer Chocolate, will be on Friday October 31.
It seems hard to believe that in this day and age there are still people who think that depression is all in the mind and that all you have to do to get out of it is pull yourself together. This is not only untrue, it is a dangerous misunderstanding. Depression is real and people need to know that. We’re not talking about feeling a bit down in the dumps here, that is a normal part of life, we are talking about clinical depression that causes people to be unable to carry out their normal lives. There can be many reasons why someone will develop depression and another doesn’t, ranging from chemical imbalances, genetics, and environmental toxins to social circumstances and life events. What we do know is that people do not choose to become depressed and that without professional help they are far less likely to get through it. The problem with perpetuating a myth like this is that people who are truly depressed are going to be less likely to seek the help they need.
Researchers are discovering that people who play video games are processing information more rapidly, are more able to multi task and quicker to assess situations and respond to them and are generally more mentally alert.
Not only are these 2 myths brilliantly “demythified”, another 10 very common and very wrong myths about the human brain are discussed in an excellent post on Geek with Laptop
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