Current Science

Ronald Kotulak — Inside the Brain
Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism in 1994 for his Chicago Tribune series of articles on the dramatic scientific advances that revealed new understandings about how nature builds the brain and then develops it during early life.

Experience determines how our brains get put together.
Sensory experience is essential for teaching brain cells their jobs, and after a certain critical period, brain cells lose the opportunity to learn those jobs.
Helping children to function effectively in their social environment prevents mental illness in general, and violence in particular.
Threatening environments can trigger seratonin and noradrenaline imbalances in genetically susceptible people, laying the biochemical foundation for a lifetime of violent behaviour.
Weikart set up a trial with 68 children born into poverty.
Preschoolers where teachers told children what and how to learn, were compared with preschoolers who were encouraged to be self starters.

By the age of twenty-three, big psychological and sociological differences began to appear:

By the age of 23:	Direct instruction	Self starters
Treatment for emotional problems Arrested for a felony Married Planned to graduate from college	49% 39% 0% 27%	6% 10% 31% 70%

Bruce Lipton — Biology of Belief
Genes do not control our behaviour - our perceptions and beliefs have the power to alter our inherited genetic code consciously or subconsciously.

Roger Williams — Biochemical Individuality
Biologically, people show wide variability in every respect. Only when they understand and meet their individual needs can they optimise health and personal growth.

Candace Pert — Molecules of Emotion
An internationally recognised psycho-pharmacologist who is a former Research Professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine and Section Chief (of brain biochemistry) at the US National Institute of Mental Health.

Discoverer of the opiate receptor.

The brain doesn’t rule over all systems it is one of the many nodal, or entry, points into a dynamic network of communication that unites all systems – nervous, endocrine, immune, respiratory, and more.
Our bodymind … is designed to perceive, interpret, and alter reality, whether consciously or subconsciously.
Only the information molecules that promote pleasure in our lives can stimulate and enhance the learning process. All other molecules of emotion diminish learning in deference to survival.

The Biology of Transcendence — Joseph Chilton Pearce
If you experience a constant, suppressed state of anger in your bodymind over many years, holding grudges and not forgiving people for incidents that happened in your past, then you’re most likely using energy to make antibodies, keeping yourself in a chronically inflamed state. As a result, you tax your immune system to overreact, aggravating autoimmune disorders.”

“If you’re no longer blaming or carrying a grudge and don’t need a fired-up immune response, the decision will go toward producing more brain cells and opening up the possibility of higher states of consciousness.”
“The reptilian brain gives us our sensory-motor system, with its association with our physical body and a rich heritage of survival and maintenance instincts.”
“Our emotional (mammalian) brain is the seat of all relationship and is involved in memory.”
“Our neocortex introduces language and thinking, to stand aside from a situation and consider all factors rather than to react from instinct alone.”
“The task of our pre-frontal cortex is to turn the unruly [other three] into one civilised mind.”
…failure to develop the highest brain lies most often in a failure to develop its foundations, the old mammalian and the reptilian. Such early failure leads to an unending cycle of breakdown in the dynamics between the neural structures.
When integrated, these three systems [reptilian, old mammalian, neocortex] offer us an open-ended potential, an ability to rise and go beyond all constraint or limitation. But when that integration fails, our mind is a house divided against itself, our behaviour a paradoxical civil war – and we become our own worst enemy.”

Carla Hannaford — Smart Moves (Why Learning Is Not All In Your Head)
Neurophysiologist and educator, with 20 years experience as a professor of biology at the University of Hawaii and 10 years as teacher and counselor for children with learning difficulties. She teaches internationally about the neural basis of learning and educational kinesiology.

A positive emotional state unites, our systems for thought, feeling, and action and allows us to both learn and remember easily.
Any form of fear or anger shifts our attention and energy from our verbal-intellectual brain to our oldest survival brain.
The heart is intimately connected with every facet of the body and brain through its own neural extensions.
The left hemisphere has no direct connections to that central intelligence agency made up of the heart and emotional systems.
The body plays an integral part in all our intellectual processes.
Learning is a highly natural process, invigorated by our interactions with other people through our sensory-motor experiences and sense of connectedness and appreciation. Until we understand this, learning will be preoccupied with survival, difficult and stifled.
In three weeks we can get ten time more proficient at anything if we are emotionally engaged with focused interest.”
As human beings we haven’t even begun to tap into the full mental potential available to us.

In the New York Longitudinal Study, 133 subjects were followed from infancy into adulthood. It was discovered that competency in adulthood stemmed from three major factors in the early learning environment:

rich sensory environments, both indoors and outdoors,
freedom to explore the environment with few restrictions, and
available parents that acted as consultants when the child asked questions.

Martin Seligman — Character Strengths and Virtues — Authentic Happiness Positive Psychology in Practice
Addressing the 1998 General meeting of the American Psychology Association (APA), the then president Martin Seligman, offered a challenge to the field of psychology, to start to focus on what makes life worth living, as opposed to the nearly exclusive focus within the field of psychology on pathology, weakness and damage.

People naturally seek meaning and fulfilment. Many turn to destructive behaviour when this is thwarted. Human well-being and growth requires the development of strengths and virtues, such as the capacity for love and work, courage, compassion, resilience, creativity, curiosity, integrity, self-knowledge, moderation, self-control, and wisdom. Schools, other institutions and policy makers need to pay more attention to well-being and less attention to grade rankings and economic indicators.

In 2004 academically motivated students were compared to students whose priority was to maintain well-being and happiness.

Academically motivated students received better grades and earned more as they left university, but were less satisfied with their jobs and their life.
After 20 years they were earning less than well-being centred people.
Students with well-being as their priority contributed more to their work environment by helping co-workers emotionally and practically, had successful rewarding marriages and lived longer.

The authors argue that schools, other institutions and policy makers need to pay more attention to well-being and less attention to grade rankings and economic indicators. (Seligman and Diener)

Results of a 5 year longitudinal study of 1215 high school students from 33 schools:

To most young people, high school is a dull and uninspiring place.
The lack of interest is linked to depression.
Boredom leads to alcoholism, drug use, vandalism and sensation seeking and anti-social behaviour.
Youth who have high interest, scored significantly higher on self esteem, optimism and locus of control (they originate their actions), overall satisfaction, as well as satisfaction with friends and family.

(Hunter & Csikszentmihalyi, 2003)

Traits present in effective interventions:

Programs should be long term.
The younger the target child, the higher the success.
Directed at risk and protective factors rather than problem behaviour.
Focus on education and instilling positive change, not just the child’s problem.
Target multi domains - individual, family institution, environments.
Integrate with wider community, develop common language etc.

Tom Matthews — “Review of Methodologies and Research on Positive Psychology Interventions” 2004

Reviews on Meditation — BBCNews
Dr Toby Collins, of the Oxford Centre for the Science of the Mind, told the BBC News website: "Meditation is a way of tapping into a process of manipulating brain activity." He said the idea that meditation trained the brain to attend to just one thing at a time fitted in with previous research. Researchers at University of California San Francisco Medical Centre have found the practise can tame the amygdala, an area of the brain which is the hub of fear memory.

They found that experienced Buddhists, who meditate regularly, were less likely to be shocked, flustered, surprised or as angry compared to other people. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison used new scanning techniques to examine brain activity in a group of Buddhists.

Their tests revealed activity in the left prefrontal lobes of experienced Buddhist practitioners. This area is linked to positive emotions, self-control and temperament. Their tests showed this area of the Buddhists' brains are constantly lit up and not just when they are meditating.

Scientists say they have found evidence that meditation has a biological effect on the body. A study suggests it could boost parts of the brain and the immune system.

Scans provided remarkable clues about what goes on in the brain during meditation. "There was an increase in activity in the front part of the brain, the area that is activated when anyone focuses attention on a particular task," Dr Newberg explained. “in addition to a notable decrease in activity in the back part of the brain.”

The complex interaction between different areas of the brain also resembles the pattern of activity that occurs during other so-called spiritual or mystical experiences.

It has also been tried on an experimental basis in Lancaster prison in the UK. Dr Kishore Chandiramani, a lecturer in psychiatry based at the Queen Elizabeth Psychiatric Hospital in Birmingham…found it helped improve inmates' discipline and their willingness to co-operate with prison authorities.

His work also showed that inmates who studied the technique were less prone to depression, feelings of hostility and helplessness and a sense of hopelessness.