The Theory and Mechanics of 'Emotional Contagion'

Emotional contagion is the tendency to catch and feel emotions that are similar to and influenced by those of others. One view developed by John Cacioppo of the underlying mechanism is that it represents a tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize facial expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person and, consequently, to converge emotionally. A broader definition of the phenomenon was suggested by Sigal G. Barsade—"a process in which a person or group influences the emotions or behavior of another person or group through the conscious or unconscious induction of emotion states and behavioral attitudes". Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Via: Wikipedia

External links

• Mirrored emotion from the University of Chicago Magazine.
• Mirror neurons
• You remind me of me in the New York Times.
• Imago Therapy
• Albert Bandura
• BoBo doll experiment
• Amygdala (brain)
• Multiple Intelligences
• Bobo Doll
• http://socialsciences.people.hawaii.edu/faculty/?dept=psy&faculty=elaineh@hawaii.edu
• http://www.alexithymia.info/
• http://psychology.berkeley.edu/faculty/profiles/rlevenson.html
• http://www.psych.uiuc.edu/~ediener/
• Attunement, imputation, and the scope of embodied simulation, Alvin Goldman
• http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/04/reviews/970504.04tavrist.html

A Short Video on the Effectiveness of Intentionally Changing Your Thought Patterns

Our brain is a bunch of plastic ... with lots of ridges, or neural circuits. To read more and comment, go directly to 'Beyond Blue' at http://www.beliefnet.com/beyondblue.

How Music Helps to Heal the Injured Brain Therapeutic Use Crescendos Thanks to Advances in Brain Science

Editor’s note: The use of music in therapy for the brain has evolved rapidly as brain-imaging techniques have revealed the brain’s plasticity—its ability to change—and have identified networks that music activates. Armed with this growing knowledge, doctors and researchers are employing music to retrain the injured brain. Studies by the authors and other researchers have revealed that because music and motor control share circuits, music can improve movement in patients who have suffered a stroke or who have Parkinson’s disease. Research has shown that neurologic music therapy can also help patients with language or cognitive difficulties, and the authors suggest that these techniques should become part of rehabilitative care. Future findings may well indicate that music should be included on the list of therapies for a host of other disorders as well.

 
The role of music in therapy has gone through some dramatic shifts in the past 15 years, driven by new insights from research into music and brain function. These shifts have not been reflected in public awareness, though, or even among some professionals.
Biomedical researchers have found that music is a highly structured auditory language involving complex perception, cognition, and motor control in the brain, and thus it can effectively be used to retrain and reeducate the injured brain. While the first data showing these results were met with great skepticism and even resistance, over time the consistent accumulation of scientific and clinical research evidence has diminished the doubts. Therapists and physicians use music now in rehabilitation in ways that are not only backed up by clinical research findings but also supported by an understanding of some of the mechanisms of music and brain function.
Rapid developments in music research have been introduced quickly into neurologic therapy (see sidebar) over the past 10 years. Maybe due to the fast introduction,  the traditional public perception of music as a ‘soft’ addition, a beautiful luxury that cannot really help heal the brain, has not caught up with these scientific developments.
But music can. Evidence-based models of music in therapy have moved from soft science—or no science—to hard science. Neurologic music therapy does meet the standards of evidence-based medicine, and it should be included in standard rehabilitation care.  Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Via:  The Dana Foundation

Brain Mind Lecture 6: Limbic System, Introductory Overview:

Amygdala, Hypothalamus, Hippocampus, Hallucinations, Memory, Emotion, Sexuality, Amnesia, Flashbacks, PTSD, Brain Mind Lecture 6, Rhawn Joseph,
Ph.D.



Via:  BrainMind.com

Executive Functions of the Human Brain

The executive system is a theorized cognitive system in psychology that controls and manages other cognitive processes.  The executive system is thought to be heavily involved in handling novel situations outside the domain of some of our 'automatic' psychological processes that could be explained by the reproduction of learned schemas or set behaviors. The executive functions are often invoked when it is necessary to override responses that may otherwise be automatically elicited by stimuli in the external environment. For example, on being presented with a potentially rewarding stimulus, such as a tasty piece of chocolate cake, the automatic response might be to take a bite. However, where this behaviour conflicts with internal plans (such as having decided not to eat chocolate cake while on a diet), the executive functions might be engaged to inhibit this response.  Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Via:  Wikipedia

Living with Traumatic Brain Injury

People with traumatic brain injuries may experience physical, cognitive or personality changes that affect their work and relationships. In this program from the University of Washington, hear stories of people who are rebuilding their lives and readjusting to family, careers and everyday life.




Via: University of Washington

About the Brain

The brain has been described as a three pound universe.  It has come to be thought of in those terms because quite literally; we live in our brains. The brain is our personal, private universe.  It is through our brains that we experience ourselves and the environment.  It is though our brains that we understand our relationship to others.  Scientists think of the brain as the organ of reason, language, complex social relations, and morality. It is, after all, what makes us distinctly human.  Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading... 

Via:  The Brain Injury Resource Center

How to Block a Distressing, Recurring Thought Pattern with Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP)

A distressing and recurring pattern of thought is often difficult to block if you do not have the right strategies. However, with this simple mental conditioning technique from neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), you may be able to eliminate a distressing thought pattern permanently.  Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Via:  wikiHow

Consciousness-Mind Over Matter: A Quantuum Perspective

An Interesting View to the Question of Consciousness

Depression Saps Endurance of the Brain's Reward Circuitry

The study challenges previous notions that individuals with depression show less brain activity in areas associated with positive emotion. Instead, the new data suggest similar initial levels of activity, but an inability to sustain them over time. The new work was reported online the week of Dec. 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Via:  Science Daily

Child Abuse Permanently Modifies Stress Genes in Brains of Suicide Victims

The trauma of child abuse can last a lifetime, leading to a higher risk of anxiety, depression and suicide further down the line. This link seems obvious, but a group of Canadian scientists have found that it has a genetic basis.

By studying the brains of suicide victims, Patrick McGowan from the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, found that child abuse modifies a gene called NR3C1 that affects a person's ability to deal with stress. The changes it wrought were "epigenetic", meaning that the gene's DNA sequence wasn't altered but it's structure was modified to make it less active. These types of changes are very long-lasting, which strongly suggests that the trauma of child abuse could be permanently inscribed onto a person's genes.  Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading.

Via: Not Exactly Rocket Science

Effective psychotherapy with depressed clients is associated with changes at the brain’s cellular level--Jakob Koch

Can therapy really change your brain?

There is increasing evidence to support the potential for true change within the brain via the therapeutic relationship. I’m no expert in neuroscience and relationships – but am excited about the notion that people’s brains can be rewired within their intimate relationships and within the therapist-client relationship. Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Via:  Psych Central

Born to be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life

I will take the audience on a tour of recent evolutionary thought, which suggests that our hyper vulnerable offspring rearranged our brains, genes, and social structures. I will detail new research on the vagus nerve and oxytocin, branches of the nervous system that have evolved to enable cooperation, trust, and caretaking. I detail new signaling systems -- tactile communication and vocalization -- which are critical to the transmission of prosociality across individuals. Throughout the talk I integrate the latest science with the wisdom found in Eastern thought.--Dr. Dacher Keltner



Via:  GoogleTechTalks

Conation: One of Three Parts of the Mind, Along with the Affective and Cognitive

...In short, the cognitive part of the brain measures intelligence, the affective deals with emotions and the conative takes those thoughts and feelings to drive how you act on them.

Erich Fromm in his work on “Human Ethics” discussed the conative nature of man by saying the way man achieves virtue is through the active use he makes of his powers.

"Uncertainty (the cognitive) is the very condition to impel a man to unfold his power. If he faces the truth without panic, he will recognize that there is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by unfolding his powers, by living productively; and that only constant vigilance, activity and effort can keep us from failure in the one task that matters — the full development of our powers without the limitations set by the laws of our existence… “to be himself and for himself to achieve happiness by the full realization of those faculties which are peculiarly his — of reason, love and productive work.”

Fromm’s productive orientation was a fundamental attitude, a mode of relatedness in all realms of human experience. It covers mental, emotional and sensory responses to others, to oneself and to things. Productiveness is man’s ability to use his powers and to realize the potentialities inherent in him ... he must be free and not dependent on someone who controls his powers... he can make use of his powers only if he knows what they are, how to use them and what to use them for... they [must not be] masked and alienated from him.  Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Via:  Wikipedia

Al Seckel, TED Happiness Series: Your Brain Is Badly Wired — Enjoy It!

Al Seckel, a cognitive neuroscientist, explores the perceptual illusions that fool our brains. Loads of eye tricks help him prove that not only are we easily fooled, we kind of like it.

Brain Development

UCSD Cognitive scientist Joan Stiles reveals the latest understandings about the intricate relationship between biology and external influences in the development of the brain.






Via:  UCTV

Brain's Fear Center is Equipped With a Built-in Suffocation Sensor

..."It has been proposed that panic and anxiety disorders involve a suffocation alarm gone haywire," Welsh said. "Now, this work may shed some light on this well-known phenomenon and suggests strategies for further exploration."

The findings raise the possibility that some people may be more prone to anxiety disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder, due to genetic variants they carry in components of this ASIC pathway. They also suggest that new therapeutic strategies for panic and anxiety might target changes in brain pH or the acid-sensing channels.  Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Why You Can’t Help Believing Everything You Read

The argument about whether belief is automatic when we are first exposed to an idea or whether belief is a separate process that follows understanding has been going on for at least 400 years...click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Via:  PSYBLOG

The Ever Elucidating Engaging Eloquent Carl Sagan on the Human Brain

 

Neurons-How They Work

This video takes you on a short, yet very informative tour through the human brain. It goes in to good detail regarding electrical and chemical connections and their relationship with brain neurons.