Do You Have a Happy Brain?

This Is Your Brain on Joy: A Revolutionary Program for Balancing Mood, Restoring Brain Health, and Nurturing Spiritual Growth
by 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.

Would You Like Help to Determine your Temperament?

      

Do You Have a Happy Brain?
Index of Articles about Temperaments & Strengths

Articles about Temperaments and Strengths

The Basis And Purpose Of Active Parenting by Sam Crowley

What is Active Parenting?Parenting takes a lot of energy, and this is why the matter of active parenting is so truly crucial. Active parenting involves helping your children to learn survival and life...

Stress And Parenting All Too Often Go Hand In Hand by Jeff Foster

There are very few things in life like parenting, and very few things in life that lead to such incredible stress. It seems stress and parenting all too often go hand in hand. But with a little forethought...

 A New Approach to Self-Improvement by Tammy Pratt

Are you frustrated with your business growth? Maybe you are focusing too much energy on improving on your weaknesses and not enough on your strengths. You made a list of your of your strengths and weaknesses....

 Clinical Practice and Temperament by

Temperamental characteristics are important facets of child behavior and can be assessed and used for parent education and guidance by members of many professional groups: Clinical practice using information...

 Discovering Your Strengths by Kathy Paauw

"Most Americans do not know what their strengths are. When you ask them, they look at you with a blank stare, or they respond in terms of subject knowledge, which is the wrong answer." --Peter DruckerMany...

 A Review of Parenting Groups by Morgan Hamilton

Just about any parent knows the joys and challenges raising kid. Many times that parents can use some help from those who have been there. That's where parenting groups come in. They are exactly what they...

 Know Your Personality, Know your Strengths by Shelly Ray

Since decades now personality tests have been used as a tool for recruitment. However this has been limited to only certain types of careers such as the military, government and research organizations....

 Find the Perfect Job by susan Dunn, Coach

I'm using "Now, Discover Your Strengths" by Buckingham and Clifton, for career coaching for clients with marvelous results. It was published this year and based on a survey done by The Gallup Organization...

 Five Ways To Turbo-Boost Your Parenting Skills by Frank McGinty

The 'phone conversation had nothing at all to do with parenting - but it made me think . . .'Hello, Eastbank Football Club. Can I help you?''Good morning, may I speak with the Assistant Coach, please?''Oh,...

 Sell your strengths by Ernie Lonardo

If you don't know who I am, I can't say that I'm surprised. I've been online since 2001 and have designed many websites in that time - but most of them were flops! It wasn't until I used my strengths that...

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.

Temperaments & Strengths of Presidents * Real Definition Of Emotional Intelligence

The Intelligence of Emotions: Will the Real Definition of Emotional Intelligence Please Stand Up   
Joshua Freedman

The most recent NexusEQ Conference included delegates from over 100 disciplines and 37 nations gathered in Holland to see how emotional intelligence improves leadership. On EQ.org, more and more practitioners are appearing from all over the world. Google News has stories about EQ every day. It all goes to show that emotional Intelligence is of interest to a wide and growing audience. But what do we mean by "emotional intelligence" -- is it just a nice way of talking about concepts that have been popular for decades? Or is there really a new concept to explore?


Part of the vision of these world conferences is to find a shared understanding, a common vision, which is challenging in an emerging science. There are many different theorists, many different practitioners, and many different models. So rather than choosing one specific model, the NexusEQ conferences work to bring out research and practice that values the power of emotions as a driving force in our capacity for wisdom. In this view, "Emotional intelligence" is different from "emotional," different from humanism, different from openness, different from caring, different from consciousness, and even different from emotional literacy. While there are many forms of psychology, self-awareness, and personal growth that deal with emotions, that does not mean they are informed by the science of emotional intelligence. One key differentiator is how people define the role and function of emotions. In most of psychology emotions are identified as a symptom, an artifact, an aberration, or a coincidence (even in "emotion-friendly" disciplines such as Positive Psychology, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Emotional Freedom Technique, Constellation Therapy, and Transactional Analysis). Emotion is seen as secondary, sometimes even as dysfunction. Generally speaking, psychological approaches say, "Thinking is King," and emotion is a byproduct (as is behavior). Perhaps this is most clearly visible in Rational Emotive Therapy, which deals with emotions but treats them as artifacts of mistaken beliefs.

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The Effect Of Parenting On Psychological Well-being (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Researchers in the UK looked at the relationship between parenting styles during childhood and adolescence and children's psychological well-being in midlife

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Another whole school of thought focuses on "Behavior is King." This paradigm is almost insidious in the way it creeps into management, parenting, and education. In this view, all we need to focus on is behavior - and if we can "pull the right levers" (rewards and punishments), we can change any behavior.


At the other extreme, some approaches arising from the "self-esteem movement" treat positive emotions and "feeling good" as something magical or transcendental. Somewhere along the road, the current incarnations of EST, Forum, Tea Groups, and Essalon still act like emotions are a barrier that must be "broken through" with intense feeling and catharsis to arrive at true understanding.

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Dr. Phil Is A 'terrible, Terrible Man,' San Diego Judge Says At Sentencing Of Shoplifters (Los Angeles Times)
The San Diego judge in the case of two shoplifters who confessed to Dr. Phil had some unkind words for the TV personality this week when the pair were sentenced.
Personality Test: Artist Kathleen Zimbicki (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)
Kathleen Zimbicki of Collier Township is president of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year with more than 70 exhibits in museums, galleries and other...

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Part of the revolutionary value of EQ is a new perspective on emotions that's truly different from other views. From the EQ perspective, emotions are a functional, adaptive source of information and energy - they are understandable, measurable, and practical. Thinking and feeling are two notes of the same chord. Perhaps behavior is a third note. In this view, emotions are part of intelligence - part of cognition. Both are biological processes and inseparable from our physical selves.


As far back as Darwin (and maybe before), scholars have proposed that emotions help us survive. Going several steps further, we now know emotions are a basis for group interaction, they give us critical information about others and about ourselves, they influence thinking and even create our very consciousness. They cannot be meaningfully isolated from "thinking," and it's meaningless to say one comes first and the other is a result. There are no "bad" or "irrational" emotions, though there are emotions we don't understand and many we express inappropriately. To be intelligent with our emotions, we must recognize and attend to them respectfully and intentionally. Emotional intelligence is an emerging science; we are living on the cutting edge, and this creates some confusion. The plurality of models, theories, and views is a sign of a healthy debate as different scholars and thought-leaders test the boundaries of this new field of study. In the last two decades there have been tremendous advances in our understanding of the intelligence of emotions - and there is still much more to learn.


The task you and I have is to find the jewels of value amidst the bustle of new discovery and the hustle of marketing hype. As you learn about emotional intelligence and as you find practitioners and allies to support your implementation - keep the key principle in mind. If you want the benefits of emotional intelligence, you've got to link up thinking and feeling as two partners building a sustainable and prosperous alliance.

Joshua Freedman is the Chair of the NexusEQ Conferences (http://www.NexusEQ.com ) and the Director of Six Seconds' Institute for Organizational Performance (http://www.EQperformance.com). He works with organizations such as Schlumberger, the US Navy, and FedEx to improve leadership, sales, and organizational performance by increasing emotional intelligence. To learn more about emotional intelligence, see http://www.6seconds.org Index of More Articles about Leadership