̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - mind

Opinion: Exam results: how mindfulness can help you make better life choices

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 14:15:24 +0000

One of the most important events in the British education calendar is approaching: A-level results day. Beyond A-levels, choosing what you want to do, or what you want to study are two of the big decisions in life. And, as such, they are not easy ones to make. You weigh up alternative options, and find a good number of reasons behind each of them. Many in the Twittersphere are already reliving their own results day memories with one user saying: “Aaaah I remember #Alevelresults day. Led me to a glittering English Literature degree which is why I work in IT”.

Philosopher Ruth Chang – who studied law, but then switched to philosophy – has dedicated her life to the study of hard choices. She explains that when it comes to making difficult decisions, it is often not about which alternative is better, because there is no such alternative.

You might be scratching your head at this point, but just bear with me, because Chang’s philosophy is a good one. ̽��ֱ��idea is that if you are free from the illusion of a “correct” and an “incorrect” answer, you can more easily make choices in line with an outcome that is more important to you – enabling you to become the kind of person that you want to be. And it’s in this nebulous space of hard choices, that we can be the authors of our own life.

This doesn’t really make the decision any easier, but at least it makes things much more interesting. Because, it doesn’t really matter what you choose, but how you choose it. And this should be done reflectively, slowly, wholeheartedly. Definitely not as a knee-jerk reaction – not in denial, and I hope not out of panic.

Who do you want to be?

To work out which choice is right for you, you first need to decide who you want to be, and to do that, you need to know who you are – which requires careful self-observation. If you have ever tried to practice meditation or mindfulness you might have noticed how difficult it is to watch your own breath without trying to change it. But difficult as it may be, these types of exercises – which involve paying attention to the present moment on purpose and non-judgmentally – can help with (self) observation.

Recent studies show that mindfulness meditation can be effective at reducing anxiety and depression, because it reduces our tendency to react to situations without thinking, and increases our self-compassion. Mindfulness exercises facilitate our awareness of the space between a “trigger” and our response to it. They also train us in bringing our attention back to the present moment after our mind has wandered, without criticising ourselves.

With lower reactivity and higher self-compassion it is easier to explore chains of thought, emotions and sensations without immediately trying to condemn, suppress, or change them. And this carefree exploration may even help new insights to develop and change your perspective on a situation.

If you get to know yourself better, you’ll find it easier to see which things you value and enjoy most – and what you care most about. You’ll be able to come up with new plans that are aligned with these things, integrating your past, present and future – to create your own meaningful story.

So even if the career you so passionately want to do typically leads to unstable employment, which your parents have warned you off, but you know that you value passion above financial stability and feel able to manage uncertainty, then that career may be your best option. You may instead prefer an easy and predictable professional life. Or you might realise through being a bit more self-aware that your real interests lie outside your career – it’s all there to be discovered.

Mindful living

When I learnt meditation I embarked in a deep inner exploration that helped me to see what was important for me, and gave me the courage to go after my dreams. However, mindfulness should not be viewed as an answer for every problem. It is not easy, it requires regular practice, and not everyone likes it or benefits from it. Indeed, there are other ways of effectively exploring the inner self, managing emotions and maintaining a mindful attitude to life. But, at least for some, mindfulness meditation can be a great ally when it comes to making important decisions.

Developing your career can be a fantastic experience if you have chosen it wholeheartedly, even in spite of all the challenges that lie ahead. Essential to this is living in a less automatic way, reminding yourself of why you have chosen this path, and taking up the challenges with some sporting spirit, even if they end up in a career switch.

̽��ֱ��very fact that some of us are able to choose what to do in life, try a path, and have some degree of support if we fail is still, unfortunately, a rare privilege. So if we don’t take the risk and go after our dreams, who will? After all, as a friend of mine once said: “Life is the art of doing things for which you are never prepared enough.”

Julieta Galante, Research associate at the Department of Psychiatry, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Julieta Galante (Department of Psychiatry) discusses how self-observation can help you choose a career path.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Brain, body and mind: understanding consciousness

lw355 — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 10:27:50 +0000

In 10 minutes, Srivas Chennu can work out what’s going on inside your head.

With the help of an electrode-studded hairnet wired up to a box that measures patterns of electrical activity, he can monitor the firing of millions of neurons deep within the brain. A few minutes later, wheeling his trolley-held device away, he has enough information to tell how conscious you really are.

What Chennu is looking for with his electroencephalogram (EEG) is the brain’s electrical ‘signature’. At any one moment in the body’s most complex organ, networks of neurons are firing up and creating ‘brain waves’ of electrical activity that can be detected through the scalp net.

This isn’t new technology – the first animal EEG was published a century ago – but computational neuroscientist Chennu has come up with a way of combining its output with a branch of maths called graph theory to measure the level of a person’s consciousness. What’s more, he’s developing the technology as a bedside device for doctors to diagnose patients suffering from consciousness disorders (such as a vegetative state caused by injury or stroke) to work out the best course of action and to support family counselling.

“Being conscious not only means being awake, but also being able to notice and experience,” he explains. “When someone is conscious, there are patterns of synchronised neural activity arcing across the brain that can be detected using EEG and quantified with our software.”

So for a healthy brain, the brain’s signature might look like a raging scrawl of lines sweeping back and forth, as integrated groups of neurons perceive, process, understand and sort information. When we sleep, this diminishes to a squiggle of the faintest strokes as we lose consciousness, flaring occasionally if we dream.

“Understanding how consciousness arises from neural interactions is an elusive and fascinating question. But for patients diagnosed as vegetative and minimally conscious, and their families, this is far more than just an academic question – it takes on a very real significance.

“ ̽��ֱ��patient might be awake, but to what extent are they aware? Can they hear, see, feel? And if they are aware, does their level of awareness equate to their long-term prognosis?”

Chennu points to charts showing the brain signature of two vegetative patients. On one chart, just a few lines appear above the skull. In the other, the lines are so many they resemble, as Chennu describes, a multi-coloured mohican, almost indistinguishable from the signature one would see from a healthy person.

Did either of the patients wake up? “Yes, the second patient did, a year after this trace was taken. ̽��ֱ��point is, if you think that a patient will wake up, what would you do differently as a clinician, or as a family member?”

̽��ֱ��research is based on the finding that a patient in a vegetative state could respond to yes or no questions, as measured by distinct patterns of brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging. It was discovered by Chennu’s colleagues in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences and the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (MRC CBSU), led by Dr Adrian Owen.

In 2011, the group found the same attention to commands could be measured using EEG – a less expensive and more widely available technology. Three years later, Chennu and Dr Tristan Bekinschtein from the CBSU, and now in the Department of Psychology, showed that their mathematical analysis of the EEG outputs was enough to measure the ambient amount of connectivity in a patient’s brain.

Chennu hopes that the machine will fill a technology gap: “Misdiagnosis of true levels of consciousness in vegetative patients continues to be around 40% and depends on behavioural examination. In part this is because there is no gold standard for the assessment of a patient’s awareness at the bedside.”

With funding from the Evelyn Trust, he will assess and follow the treatment and rehabilitation trajectory of 50 patients over a three-year period. This will be the first time that a study has linked diagnosis, treatment and outcome to regular real-time assessment of the activity of a patient’s brain.

Meanwhile he is continuing to develop the medical device with industry as part of the National Institute for Health Research Healthcare Technology Co-operative for Brain Injury, which is hosted within the Department of Clinical Neurosciences.

“Medical advances mean that we are identifying subtypes of brain injury and moving away from ‘one size fits all’ to more-targeted treatment specific for an individual’s needs,” adds Chennu, who is also funded by the James S. McDonnell Foundation and works as part of a team led by Professors John Pickard and David Menon.

Intriguingly the device could even offer a channel of communication, as Chennu speculates: “ ̽��ֱ��question that fascinates us is what type of consciousness do patients have? Perhaps we can create systems to translate neural activity into commands for simple communication – interfaces that could provide a basic but reliable communication channel from the ‘inbetween place’ in which some patients exist.

“Moreover, we think that the measurement of brain networks will provide clinically useful information that could help with therapeutics for a larger majority of patients, irrespective of whether they are able to demonstrate hidden consciousness.”

How conscious is my dog? Can robots become conscious? Are people in a vegetative state conscious? Don't miss Philosopher Professor Tim Crane and neuroscientist Dr Srivas Chennu at the Cambridge Science Festival, where they will look into our minds and wrestle with the meaning of what it is to be conscious. 'Brain, body and mind: new directions in the neuroscience and philosophy of consciousness', the Research Horizons Public Lecture, will be on Wednesday 16 March 2016, 8pm–9pm, Mill Lane Lecture Rooms, Mill Lane, Cambridge. Pre-booking required.

A bedside device that measures ‘brain signatures’ could help diagnose patients who have consciousness disorders – such as a vegetative state – to work out the best course of treatment and to support family counselling.

̽��ֱ��patient might be awake, but to what extent are they aware? Can they hear, see, feel? And if they are aware, does their level of awareness equate to their long-term prognosis?

Srivas Chennu

Electrical brain 'signatures'. ̽��ֱ��patient to the left is in a vegetative state; the patient in the middle is also in a vegetative state but their brain appears as conscious as the brain of the healthy individual at the right.

New directions in the study of the mind

We know a great deal about the brain but what does it actually mean to be conscious, asks a new research programme in the Faculty of Philosophy.

In what way are newborn babies, or animals, conscious? Why do some experiences become part of one’s consciousness yet others do not?

“It’s sometimes assumed that it’s obvious what consciousness is, and the only question is how it is embodied in the brain,” says Professor Tim Crane. “But many people now recognise that it’s not clear what it means to say that something has a mind, or is capable of thought or conscious experience. My view is that there are lots of assumptions that are being made in order to get to that conclusion and not all of the assumptions are correct.”

Crane leads a new research initiative in the Faculty of Philosophy supported by the John Templeton Foundation that aims to tackle the broad question of the essence of the mind. And to do this they are moving beyond the reductionist view that everything can be explained in terms of the nuts and bolts of neuroscience.

“That doesn’t mean we are interested in proving the existence of the immortal soul, or defending any religious doctrine – we are interested in the idea that the brain’s-eye view isn’t everything when it comes to understanding the mind.

“ ̽��ֱ��nervous system clearly provides the mechanism for thought and consciousness but learning about it doesn’t tell us everything we need to know about phenomena like the emotion of parental love, or ambition or desire. ̽��ֱ��mere fact that something goes on in your brain when you think does not explain what thinking essentially is.”

̽��ֱ��team in Cambridge are also distributing funds for smaller projects elsewhere in the world, each of which is tackling similar questions of consciousness in philosophy, neuroscience and psychology.

“Collectively we want to recognise ‘the reality of the psychological’ without saying that it’s really just brain chemicals,” adds Crane. “It’s important to face up to the fact that we are not just our neurons.”

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Yes

Sibling rivalry and brotherly love

bjb42 — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 09:43:03 +0000

̽��ֱ��finding is one of a host of conclusions which have emerged from a five-year research project by academics at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, examining children’s cognitive and social development between the ages of two and six.

Entitled “Toddlers Up”, the project was conceived after other studies showed that even by the age of four, some children already display the conduct and behavioural problems that hinder progress at school and beyond. This suggests that the causes and symptoms of such problems may emerge even earlier, while they are still toddlers.

̽��ֱ��need to intervene in the lives of vulnerable children at an earlier stage to address this was highlighted in a recent Government report, led by Graham Allen MP, who will publish a second set of recommendations on the subject later this year.

̽��ֱ��findings from the Toddlers Up study appear in a new book, Social Understanding and Social Lives, by Dr Claire Hughes, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Centre for Family Research. ̽��ֱ��book will be launched at an event in Cambridge on Friday, 8 April.

It aims to map out the causes and influences behind children’s “social understanding” – their awareness of others thoughts and feelings – and to explain why that of some children lags behind that of their peers.

In all, 140 children were studied, starting when they were just two years old. ̽��ֱ��group focused on low-income and teen parent families, into which some of the children deemed most at risk are often born. 43% of the children surveyed had mothers who were still teenagers when their first child was born, and 25% of the families involved were living below the poverty line of £12K household income per year.

A wide range of tests were carried out over the course of the five year study. They included video observations of the children interacting with their parents, siblings, friends and strangers; interviews and questionnaires carried out with parents, teachers and the children themselves; and various assessments designed to test the children’s aptitude with language, their planning skills, working memory and inhibitory control.

One of the most striking conclusions concerns siblings, who researchers found can often have a positive effect on a child’s early development, even in cases where the relationship is less than cordial.

Although the project team warn that sustained sibling rivalry can result in behavioural problems and issues with relationship-building later in life, milder forms were shown, in the new study, to have a beneficial impact on development in childhood.

“ ̽��ֱ��traditional view is that having a brother or sister leads to a lot of competition for parents’ attention and love,” Dr Hughes said. “In fact, the balance of our evidence suggests that children’s social understanding may be accelerated by their interaction with siblings in many cases.”

“One of the key reasons for this seems to be that a sibling is a natural ally. They are often on the same wavelength, and they are likely to engage in the sort of pretend play that helps children to develop an awareness of mental states.”

Transcripts taken from video recordings in which pairs of siblings were involved in pretend play show that this is an arena in which children discuss thoughts and feelings in depth. Often they provide what the researchers refer to as the “emotional scaffolding” around which children construct a story that helps them develop their ideas about, and awareness, of different mental states.

Interestingly, even where sibling rivalry was evident, for example with one child teasing or arguing with the other, the exchanges still meant the younger child was often exposed to emotionally rich language from the older one. As a result, although younger siblings showed low rates of mental state talk than their elder siblings at age three, by the age of six their social understanding had increased rapidly, and they were conversing about emotions on an almost equal footing.

A similar lesson for parents also emerges from the study, which argues that the quality, as well as the quantity of conversations adults have with their children concerning thoughts and feelings, helps children’s social understanding to grow.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that mothers who were adept at developing a connected and constructive dialogue around their child’s thoughts or feelings again built a more effective “emotional scaffold”, which gave these children a consistently higher level of social understanding by the time they reached the age of four.

“ ̽��ֱ��children who performed best on tasks designed to test their social understanding at the age of six came from families where the mother carried out conversations in which they elaborated on ideas, highlighted differences in points of view, or tuned into children’s interests,” Dr Hughes said.

“A lot of attention has been given to the beneficial impact of children being exposed to lots of family conversation. This shows we need to focus on the nature and quality of that conversation as well.”

Social Understanding and Social Lives, by Claire Hughes, is published by Psychology Press.

Siblings, and even sibling rivalry, can have a positive effect on children’s early development and their ability to form social relationships later in life, according to a new study.

Our evidence suggests that children's social understanding may be accelerated by their interactions with siblings in many cases.

Claire Hughes

VA State Parks Staff from Flickr

Children Walking on Trail

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Yes

Extra testosterone reduces your empathy

ns480 — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 15:45:37 +0000

In addition, the effects of testosterone administration are predicted by a fetal marker of prenatal testosterone, the 2D:4D ratio. ̽��ֱ��study has important implications for the androgen theory of autism (testosterone is an androgen) and confirms earlier rodent research that shows that testosterone organizes very early brain development in a way that affects activity of the hormone in later life.

Professor Jack van Honk at the ̽��ֱ�� of Utrecht and Professor Simon Baron-Cohen at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge designed the study that was conducted in Utrecht. They used the 'Reading the Mind in the Eyes' task as the test of mind reading, which tests how well someone can infer what a person is thinking or feeling from photographs of facial expressions from around the eyes.

Mind reading is one aspect of empathy, a skill that shows significant sex differences in favour of females. They tested 16 young women from the general population, since women on average have lower levels of testosterone than men. ̽��ֱ��decision to test just females was to maximize the possibility of seeing a reduction in their levels of empathy.

̽��ֱ��researchers not only found that administration of testosterone leads to a significant reduction in mind reading, but that this effect is powerfully predicted by the 2D:4D digit ratio, a marker of prenatal testosterone. Those people with the most masculinized 2D:4D ratios showed the most pronounced reduction in the ability to mind read.

Jack van Honk said: "We are excited by this finding because it suggests testosterone levels prenatally prime later testosterone effects on the mind."

Simon Baron-Cohen commented: "This study contributes to our knowledge of how small hormonal differences can have far-reaching effects on empathy."

̽��ֱ��new study has several important implications. First, that current levels of testosterone directly affect the ability to read someone else's mind. This may help explain why on average women perform better on such tests than men, since men on average produce more testosterone than women.

Second, that the digit ratio (2D:4D), a marker of fetal testosterone, predicts the extent to which later testosterone has this effect. This suggests testosterone levels in the womb have an 'organizing' or long-range effect on later brain function. Finally, given that people with autism have difficulties in mind reading, and that autism affects males more often than females, the study provides further support for the androgen theory of autism.

A new study from Utrecht and Cambridge Universities has for the first time found that an administration of testosterone under the tongue in volunteers negatively affects a person’s ability to ‘mind read’, an indication of empathy. ̽��ֱ��findings are published this week in the journal Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences.

This study contributes to our knowledge of how small hormonal differences can have far-reaching effects on empathy.

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen

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Our brain

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Yes