Do You Have a Happy Brain?This Is Your Brain on Joy: A Revolutionary Program for Balancing Mood, Restoring Brain Health, and Nurturing Spiritual Growthby Dr. Earl Henslin & Dr. Daniel Amen
This Is Your Brain On Joy by Dr. Earl Henslin is a cogent appeal for the use of diagnostic "brain imaging" as a foundational step in understanding and treating mental, emotional, and behavioral problems.
In This Is Your Brain On Joy, Dr. Henslin guides readers through a series of questions designed to uncover potential areas of over-functioning and sub-functioning in any of the five "rooms" of the brain. Then, he outlines how behavior, mood, and relationships are affected by improper blood flow to various parts of the brain.
He suggests that certain brain chemistries make joy, contentment, self-control, and other expressions impossible without physical healing of the brain, which he maintains is often possible through a combination of nutrition, exercise, supplements, and in some cases, medication.
Dr. Henslin includes a series of brain photographs throughout the book, providing a poignant and often gripping representation of minds pocked and dented by injuries and chemical imbalances. He goes on to show the physical changes in the same brains after he used SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography) imaging to design and implement appropriate therapies. Surprisingly readable, the book is full of touching examples of lives profoundly changed, from hateful, abusive geriatrics to raging, inconsolable little girls.
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Index of Articles about Temperaments & Strengths
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Science of the Brain Your heart, lungs, kidneys and digestive tract keep you alive. But your brain is where you live. The brain is responsible for most of what you care about—language, creativity, imagination, empathy and morality. And it is the repository of all that you feel. The endeavor to discover the biological basis for these complex human experiences has given rise to a relatively new discipline: cognitive neuroscience. Fear is a good place to start, because it is one of the emotions that cognitive neuroscientists understand well. It is an unpleasant feeling, but necessary to our survival; humans would not have lasted very long in the wilderness without it. Two deep brain structures called the amygdalae manage the important task of learning and remembering what you should be afraid of. Each amygdala, a cluster of nerve cells named after its almond shape (from the Greek amugdale), sits under its corresponding temporal lobe on either side of the brain. Like a network hub, it coordinates information from several sources. It collects input from the environment, registers emotional significance and—when necessary—mobilizes a proper response. It gets information about the body's response to the environment (for example, heart rate and blood pressure) from the hypothalamus. It communicates with the reasoning areas in the front of the brain. And it connects with the hippocampus, an important memory center. The fear system is extraordinarily efficient. It is so efficient that you don't need to consciously register what is happening for the brain to kick off a response. If a car swerves into your lane of traffic, you will feel the fear before you understand it. Signals travel between the amygdala and your crisis system before the visual part of your brain has a chance to "see." Organisms with slower responses probably did not get the opportunity to pass their genetic material along. Fear is contagious because the amygdala helps people not only recognize fear in the faces of others, but also to automatically scan for it. People or animals with damage to the amygdala lose these skills. Not only is the world more dangerous for them, the texture of life is ironed out; the world seems less compelling to them because their "excitement" anatomy is impaired. Until recently, there was relatively little research showing how the brain processes anger. But that has begun to change. Recent studies indicate that anger may trigger activity in a part of the brain not named as poetically as the amygdala—the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (abbreviated dACC). Like the amygdala, the dACC's function makes sense, given its connections to areas of the brain involved in recognizing an offense (he just stole my iPod), registering a feeling (I'm angry) and acting on it (I'm going to …). It also links to the reasoning centers in the front part of the brain, as well as memory centers, which play a role in angry rumination or stewing after the fact. Researchers, however, have been more focused on one of the consequences of anger—aggression—probably because it can be observed through behavior. It's known, for example, that men are overtly more aggressive than women because of differences in male and female hormones. But the brains of men and women are also different, and some of those differences may affect aggression. In the front of the brain, the orbitofrontal cortex is recruited to help make decisions and temper emotional responses. It lights up when people are making judgments. Adrian Raine and colleagues at the University of Southern California note that, on average, men have a lower volume of gray matter (the bodies of nerve cells) in the orbitofrontal cortex than women. According to their analysis, this brain difference accounts for a healthy portion of the gender gap seen in the frequency of antisocial behavior. Even a neuroscientist can see that murder and mayhem are undesirable. But a neuroscientist can also see why that trait might still be in the gene pool. The gene for sickle cell anemia survived because it provided protection against another disease, malaria. Similarly, aggression is often an advantage. Until recently in historical terms, a readiness to fight and the ability to kill was a way to consolidate control over resources for survival. Fortunately, diplomats have also evolved. Some of our ancestors who understood that aggression carried risks as well as advantages used their creative human brains to devise better solutions for resolving conflicts. Our predecessors also originated symbolic diversions for aggression, like sports and chess. The common emotions of sadness and happiness are a problem for researchers. Depression and mania are core areas of study for a neuroscientist. But everyday ups and downs are so broadly defined that researchers have a hard time figuring out what exactly to study. The authors believe this complicated picture makes sense. The brain regions on their list process conflict, pain, social isolation, memory, reward, attention, body sensations, decision making and emotional displays, all of which can contribute to feeling sad. Sadness triggers also vary—for example, the memory of a personal loss; a friend stressing over a work conflict; seeing a desolate film. In the brain, happiness is as widely distributed as sadness. In his book "This Is Your Brain on Music," Dr. Daniel Levitin (page 58) notes that music simultaneously enlists many parts of the brain. We listen and respond to sounds and rhythms (auditory, sensory and motor cortex, cerebellum). We interpret (sensory cortex) and reason (prefrontal cortex). Music pulls on memories for experience and emotion (amygdala and hippocampus). If the music is working for you, it is probably triggering the reward system (nucleus accumbens). And if you're playing it, as Dr. Levitin does, you also get to throw satisfaction into the mix. Empathy is more than being nice. It is the ability to feel what another person feels, and in its most refined form it is the capacity to deeply understand another person's point of view. The brain's empathic powers actually begin with fear detection. Most of us are extraordinarily skilled face readers. We readily act on the emotions communicated to us through facial expression. And the grammar of facial expression, in some instances, is plain. We are masters at telling when a smile is insincere by the absence of wrinkles (called Duchenne lines) around the smiler's eyes. In a spontaneous smile, the corners of the mouth curl up and muscles around the eyes contract. Duchenne lines are almost impossible to fake. Not surprisingly, love also engages a whole lot of brain. Areas that are deeply involved include the insula, anterior cingulate, hippocampus and nucleus accumbens— in other words, parts of the brain that involve body and emotional perception, memory and reward. There is also an increase in neurotransmitter activity along circuits governing attachment and bonding, as well as reward (there's that word again). And there's scientific evidence that love really is blind; romantic love turns down or shuts off activity in the reasoning part of the brain and the amygdala. In the context of passion, the brain's judgment and fear centers are on leave. Love also shuts down the centers necessary to mentalize or sustain a theory of mind. Lovers stop differentiating you from me. |
Emotional Intelligence: Another Key Factor To Success
Everybody wants to be successful in life. But what is success? How do you go about being successful?
Is success only for people who have high IQ? How come there are intelligent people who are not successful in life? How do you measure success?
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To be able to define success can be the first step in becoming successful. Someone has said that "success is the completion of anything intended." Meaning to say, whatever it is you have planned or intended to do, you've got to finish or bring into completion. That is success.
If you plan to rob a bank and pulled-off the heist, does that make you a successful person? In this case, success should always be related to all things positive. Having this as a yardstick for assessing our lives enable us to say at the end of the day if we have failed or succeeded.
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Aside from academic excellence, researchers believe that certain aspects of intelligence, such as logical reasoning, math skills, verbal abilities, and analytical understanding can predict to a significant degree professional and personal success of an individual. However, why is it that some of those with excellent levels of IQ are not doing successfully in life? A lot of people with so much promise and potential fall into anxiety and depression, and sometimes even end up in suicide? Something could be going wrong in the way they think and behave which hindered their chances to succeed.
According to Daniel Goleman, well-known psychologist and author of the book "Emotional Intelligence", one of the major missing parts in the success equation is emotional intelligence. This concept is based on years of research by numerous scientists, such as Peter Salovey, John Meyer, Howard Gardner, Robert Sternberg, and Jack Block, just to name a few. They all agree that people with high emotional intelligence (EI) tend to be more successful in life than those with lower EI even if their classical IQ is average.
Scientific articles published during '90s highlighted the importance of emotional intelligence, the human mental ability to validly reason with emotions and to use these emotions in enhancing thought patterns. It includes the abilities to accurately perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth. Emotional intelligence improves an individual's social effectiveness. The higher the emotional intelligence, the better the social relations. Emotionally intelligent people can better perceive emotions, use them in thought, understand their meanings, and manage emotions, than others. These people are often the ones we consider to provide a shoulder to cry on. They do not only solve their own emotional problems, but they help others deal with it as well. They require less cognitive effort in solving emotional problems. They tend to be more open and agreeable than others, and are drawn to occupations involving social interactions, such as teaching and counseling, than jobs involving clerical or administrative duties. People with high EI are less likely to develop emotional disorders, such as anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder. They have the ability to avoid self-destructive and negative behaviors, such as smoking, excessive drinking, drug abuse, or violent episodes with others. They are more likely to have possessions of sentimental attachment around the home and to have more positive social interactions. Emotional intelligence is the ability to discern and understand emotional information which is all around us. People communicate basic emotions from one individual to another. But only those with high EI can really appreciate and understand the more subtle messages of these emotions. Emotional intelligence is crucial to help us through our emotionally demanding days. If we are not emotionally intelligent, we need people who have higher EI to rely on and guide us in processing emotional information. Emotional intelligence enables our thinking and behavior to become more focus in achieving our goals and to take hold of the success in life we are dreaming of.
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