Lisa Find Love

Making a cup of coffee and remembering to turn off the coffeemaker. Driving to the grocery store and not getting lost. Remembering anniversaries, birthdays, and where you were supposed to meet your friend for lunch. All of these activities require the seamless workings of the brain, and while we often take them for granted, there are even more activities that go undetected within the brain every single day.

In his new book, Understanding the Brain: From Cells to Behavior to Cognition, which is an updated version of his earlier book, Dowling offers a comprehensive look at how the brain functions — from how vision occurs and how neurons within the brain communicate, to the neuroscience underlying disease states, phenomena, consciousness, and even emotions.

Dowling explains, “The brain consists of hundreds of areas, each carrying out a specific task. Many areas possess neurons unique to those specific parts of the brain. And within each area, the neurons connect with one another, and some project to other areas often considerable distances away.”

But how is the brain able to maintain such a complex web of activity?

“All neurons have characteristics of sensory receptors in that they possess specialized membrane proteins that respond selectively to specific chemicals — the neurotransmitters or neuromodulators,” Dowling writes.

One feature that is unique to all receptors, however, is the process of adaptation. Over time, and with sustained stimulus, all receptor potentials decline — often distorting how we perceive the world around us.

Dowling writes, “Sensory adaptation is a distortion of the real world in the sense that receptors do not provide a faithful representation of the stimuli impinging on the organism.”

Memory is also not entirely reliable. Short-term memory, especially when describing traumatic events, is often quite fragile and subject to amnesia. Long-term memory, on the other hand, is much more stable.

Dowling writes, “One notion is that short-term memories reflect ongoing neural activity whereas long-term memories reflect structural changes in the brain — the formation of new synapses, or the structural alteration of existing synapses.”

Like the formation of memory, we are largely unaware of the sensory input coming into the brain, but when the ability to detect sensory input coming from the body is lost, the effects are dramatic.

Dowling quotes Christina, a 27-year-old woman who had lost all proprioceptive input, which allows the brain to “sense” the body: “I lose my arms. I think they are in one place and I find they are in another.”

Christina’s condition was due to a selective inflammation of the proprioceptive axons all along the spinal cord and brain, and sheds light on just how essential proprioception is to make purposeful movements and achieve bodily control.

How sensory processing is achieved, and how neurons begin to differentiate, form synapses, and ultimately wire the brain, is a process that is now known as chemoaffinity.

Dowling writes, “The proposal is that as neurons differentiate they become chemically specified; they make specific proteins on their surfaces that enable other neurons to recognize them.”

Influenced by experience and the environment, brain plasticity and the development of new neural connections is now understood to occur in some regions of the brain throughout life.

However, only during critical periods can fundamental alternations in the brain be induced. One example is children who are amblyopic because of crossed eyes. In this case, the child becomes overly reliant on the dominant eye, which leads to decreasing acuity in the opposite eye.

Similarly, cases like the young girl, Genie, who was locked in a darkened room by her psychotic father for more than ten years, or Victor, “The Wild Child of Averyron,” who was abandoned in the woods as a young child but managed to survive, highlight the importance of critical periods for the learning of language.

While both children were able to learn some words, they never developed normal language skills.

Dowling writes, “By the age of 6-12 months, neural circuits have been formed to discriminate and make all possible language sounds and to acquire grammar. If the circuitry is not used, it is rearranged to accommodate the native language(s) or perhaps even lost.”

While critical periods can influence brain development, environmental factors throughout the life cycle can influence brain functioning. One example is exposure to chronic stress, and consequent elevated levels of cortisol.

“Serious disorders have also been linked to high levels of cortisol in the bloodstream, including gastric ulcers, colitis, high blood pressure, impotency, and even excessive loss of neurons in the brain. It has even been suggested that prolonged stress can lead to premature aging of the brain and other organs,” writes Dowling.

Clearly, our rich mental life depends on the adequate development, function, and preservation of our brains. Emotional processing, visual acuity, proprioception, and even the ability to detect the intentions of others — a process that relies on mirror neurons — all depend on our dynamic and ever evolving brains.

From the source of emotions to the possible absence of mirror neurons in people with autism, Dowling’s book is a marvelous and fascinating journey through the human brain.

Understanding the Brain: From Cells to Behavior to Cognition
W.W. Norton & Company, October 2018
Hardcover, 256 pages

from Psych Central http://bit.ly/2DQaoFR

I know very few readers, especially women, who don’t have a special place in their heart for Jane Austen’s work. Perhaps few authors can develop the kind of cult following that Austen has enjoyed over the years.

Love for Austen’s classic encouraged Pakistani born author Soniah Kamal to reinterpret Pride and Prejudice in modern day Pakistan, giving readers insight into the culture, as well as showing another side of Austen. The result is Unmarriageable, which made me think deeply, as well as laugh.

I caught up with Kamal to chat about her new book and why Jane Austen is still such a staple, especially for single women.

Tell me about your book?

I describe it as a story about five sisters, their friends, frenemies and enemies and too many marriage obsessed mothers, set in contemporary Pakistan where drinking chai seems the national pastime and eating good food a full-fledged sport.

What gave you the idea of setting Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan? What were you particularly interested in exploring there?

As soon as I finished reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time at age sixteen, I knew I wanted to set it in Pakistan. In Pakistan I studied in an English medium school system meaning I studied British literature and for fun read Enid Blyton, a hugely prolific British author, as known to post colonial kids of a certain era as J.K. Rowling is to kids these days. I also attended an International School in Saudi Arabia for a while which had a library with a wide selection of books. I read Judy Blume, S.E. Hinton, L.M. Montgomery, etc. As such, I was eager to read stories which reflected my own culture, however there were no stories set in Pakistan in English for kids that I was aware of. It became second nature for me to convert what I was reading into ‘Pakistan’, so scones would turn into chicken patties and ginger beer into R. C. Cola. In retrospect, wanting to reset Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan was quite normal for me. The concerns in Austen’s classic comedy of manners such the importance of social status, keeping up appearances, marrying well for both men and women though the criteria is different, are still very much reflected in contemporary Pakistan and I wanted to explore these more fully.

What do you think makes Jane Austen and her work still so beloved and relevant for today?

Jane Austen is a very modern writer. She doesn’t get bogged down by preaching or authorial asides. Her novels are fast paced and the way she captures social absurdities is so funny and that keeps her beyond relevant today. Look around you anywhere and you will recognize one of her creations. Austen is still one of the most astute observers of human nature ever and I’m sure she would have made a fantastic psychologist. Each of her novels is about women, the choices they make and the way they navigate relationships with each other.

Pride and Prejudice, and Jane Austen’s work in general, have long been favorites of single women. Why do you think that is, and what are you hoping your book brings to those readers and that discussion?

Jane Austen’s novels are favorites of many and not just single women. I really admire the fact that Austen chose to stay single. One evening she was proposed to by a rich man, Harris Bigg-Wither, but the next morning she said no. In Austen’s time, women of her particular class had few options to earn their own living other than being a governess really, a prospect Austen tells us is not that lovely as per Jane Fairfax in Emma, and so for her to have refused the financial security Mr. Bigg would have offered is a big deal. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet refuses two proposals and I think women everywhere love her for saying no to just marrying anyone for the sake of marriage. In Regency England, as in contemporary Pakistan, marriages were arranged on criteria other than love, so to have her heroines hold out for love was bold and brave. Unmarriageable has a heroine who is not only adamant that she does not want to marry simply for the title of ‘Mrs.’ but also that she doesn’t want to have children. I think while our world has begun to accept single women, we are still taken aback by women who do not want to be mothers.

As you send your book into the world, what are you hoping for your readers?

To bring a smile to their faces as well as forge connections across cultures, countries, readers worldwide. After all, as much as we read books by ourselves, the whole purpose is to step into someone else’s shoes and live a different life through the pages. This particular quote from Unmarriageable sums it up and is resonating with readers everywhere “O’Connor, Austen, Alcott, Wharton. Characters’ emotions and situations are universally applicable across cultures, whether you’re wearing an empire dress, shalwar kurta, or kimono.”

Cara Strickland writes about food and drink, mental health, faith and being single from her home in the Pacific Northwest. She enjoys hot tea, good wine, and deep conversations. She will always want to play with your dog. Connect with her on Twitter @anxiouscook.

The post Pride and Prejudice Set in Pakistan: an Interview with Unmarriageable author Soniah Kamal appeared first on eharmony Advice.

from eharmony Advice http://bit.ly/2HJkNqI

In his new book, Simply Human: Reflections on the Life We Share, Alan Bodnar takes us inside the lives of people with mental illness, providing the keen insight and discernment of a clinical psychologist to show that their stories are all part of a much larger human experience.

Bodnar explains, “I wanted to convey some of the fear, confusion, and betrayal that these people were feeling, and, in some small way, give voice to the distress that policymakers seemed to be ignoring.”

Here, Bodnar is referring to the stigma that so often encompasses people who have mental illness, a stigma that perpetuates society’s misperceptions of what it means to live with mental illness.

And yet people with mental illness share the same daily struggles, frustrations, hopes and dreams that are part of everyone’s lives.

Bodnar writes, “The people I write about are our friends, neighbors, relatives, the wealthy and the poor, some who have achieved and lost much, and others who have never had a chance.”

He goes on to say, “Everything we experience in life is an opportunity and a challenge to develop empathy, to realize that we are more alike than different, and to draw closer together.”

What people who struggle with mental illness offer — if we can listen — is a simple message: we are all heroes together, just everyday people trying to cope with our misfortunes and struggling to live the best lives we can.

Bodnar describes Jimmy, born to an alcoholic and drug-addicted teenage mother, who had been left, lost, overlooked, and misread, and despite all of these things had remained resilient and determined. In this moment, Bodnar wonders about his own role as a psychotherapist with this patient: “When I was a twenty-three year old intern nervously awaiting the arrival of one of my first patients — and attorney twice my age –I wondered what I could possibly offer to a man who had seen so much of life.”

Much like in life, in psychotherapy there is no perfect answer, no perennially accurate description, and no definitive difference between the struggles of the psychotherapist or the patient.

Bodnar writes, “Perhaps the essence of mental health is the ability to recognize that we spend our days ‘muddling through’ life, neither ‘flying high’ with all of the answers nor ‘bogging down’ in the mire of ignorance, fear, and despair.”

While complacency and inertia can keep us all stuck, it is in times of great despair that our empathy is called to rise.

“Empathy is a bridge between worlds,” Bodnar writes, “and whether that bridge spans the lengths of continents to the victims of tsunamis on the other side of the world or the length of the carpet on the therapist’s floor, it marks a route that is not always easy to travel.”

What psychotherapy offers is a place to explore, to look inside the lives of those who are foreign to us, to look inside our own hearts and to journey together.

There is an elusive prize we all search for, a secret wish we hold, and a hope that we dare carry: to be who we are.

And yet when a life is shattered by mental illness and seems to have lost its meaning, Bodnar believes that we as therapists can help our patients find meaning or a new direction on a road that seems to have crumbled beneath them when we “join our patients in their search for answers.”

We all have three lives: the life we live, the life we tell, and the life we understand. While psychotherapy can glamorize analysis, the trick, Bodnar writes, “is to strike a proper balance between life lived and life understood.”

Bodnar describes this transformation using the example of a young patient who has just been diagnosed with schizophrenia is learning to cope with his illness: “As the life he tells becomes the life he understands, he is free to enjoy the life that is there for him to live every day. And so are we all.”

As we look back upon our lives, surprised by the roads we have traveled, the interests we have developed, and the threads that seem to weave our lives together, the task is to watch and wait until something of value appears. “Sooner or later, we find it or it finds us…. It may be true that fortune favors the brave, but most of the time, it’s probably enough just to stay awake,” writes Bodnar.

Simply Human is not just a window into the mind and heart of a practicing psychologist, it is an invitation to uncover our vulnerability, to expand our empathy, to recover our strengths, and ultimately, to find the determination and resilience to live the best life we can.

Simply Human: Reflections on the Life We Share
Alan Bodnar, September 2018
Paperback, 256 pages

from Psych Central http://bit.ly/2HNC41U

The iconic horses will step tall to promote wind power, which creates 100 percent of the electricity used to make Budweiser products.

from HowStuffWorks - Learn How Everything Works! http://bit.ly/2GhKLPD

A lot of people swear by its health benefits. But what do the experts say?

from HowStuffWorks - Learn How Everything Works! http://bit.ly/2D56eYU

A handful of other countries have electoral colleges, but they're very different in function and purpose from the one that decides U.S. presidential elections.

from HowStuffWorks - Learn How Everything Works! http://bit.ly/2BbViIU

Her owners nearly tricked her out of freedom in California but the cavalry rode to her rescue. She later became one of the wealthiest and most generous African-Americans in the state.

from HowStuffWorks - Learn How Everything Works! http://bit.ly/2BdgVsv