Keeping Your Brain Healthy: Brain-FX

Smile, and Your Whole Body Smiles

I read this great post over on Robert I. Sutton's blog, describing the research behind the smile-get happy-smile some more processes. Most people think they smile in reaction to a happy feeling; but research shows that you can bring on a happy feeling by just smiling.

At this time of year, why not just smile then? Heck, at any time or place: smile your face off and see what happens. To understand the brain mechanisms, visit Sutton's blog, he's researched and written about Zajonc and others who have studied this and it is worth the read.

Your Face and Your Brain

I just discovered a new blog about the brain called Sharp Brains. This post on human faces intrigues me. Since the face is the window into how someone is feeling and thinking, it is worthy of study. Here's an excerpt:

Paul Ekman has conducted extensive research on identifying emotions through facial expressions. As part of that research, and as part of the power of discipline and training, he learned how to consciously manipulate 42 facial muscles, including many that in most of us are beyond our control, and even awareness.

Based on primary and secondary research, he found that there are seven emotions expressed in the face in universally consistent ways:

1. Sadness
2. Anger
3. Surprise
4. Fear
5. Enjoyment
6. Disgust
7. Contempt

Even more interesting: according to his research, feelings and facial expressions influence each other. This is, not only a sad person will naturally look sad, but a person who intentionally smiles will feel more content than a person who doesn’t.

Coincidently, I just got the 2-part series called Faces on DVD from Netflix to watch. Part documentary, it is narrated by John Cleese, one of the funniest men in Britain. I'll let you know what I learn from that.

How good are you at picking up clues from a person's face?

Negative People Are Bad for Your Brain

I read a great post over on Kathy Sierra's Passionate Users blog April 17, about how negative people are bad for your brain. It's worth the read.

An interesting section in the post cites research about "mirror neurons." Evidently the old saying "monkey see, monkey do" has scientific relevance. We learn from seeing other people, then copying them. As a survival tool, this served us well, back in the day.

It does not serve us well when we are around angry, negative people. Sometimes our brains pick up on things best left not repeated or mirrored. This resonates with the research in organizations that shows emotions are contagious, and the mood of the leader permeates the culture of the group.

When's the last time you became aware, as your mood was changing, that you might have picked up some 'bad vibes' in your environment?

Well, sometimes we generate our own bad moods ourselves, and the only negative person around is...ourself! Just remember, you can spread positivity just as easily as negativity, and it's a lot more fun.

Your Brain & Shopping

News Flash: Science is now discovering what consumers have known all along: Shopping makes you feel good.

Don't you just love it when science makes these big discoveries, like, "sex makes you feel good." I mean, for us women, we've known about shopping highs and shopping for stress relief for a long time. When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.

I guess what they mean is that they are now mapping out in the brain what happens when you go shopping. They've discovered that the dopamine receptors get activated.

Here's what the Wall Street Journal Health Editor Tara Parker-Popes reports:

Much of the joy of holiday shopping can be traced to the brain chemical dopamine. Dopamine plays a crucial role in our mental and physical health. The brains of people with Parkinson's disease, for instance, contain almost no dopamine. Dopamine also plays a role in drug use and other addictive behaviors.

Dopamine is associated with feelings of pleasure and satisfaction, and it's released when we experience something new, exciting or challenging. And for many people, shopping is all those things.

But MRI studies of brain activity suggest that surges in dopamine levels are linked much more with anticipation of an experience rather than the actual experience -- which may explain why people get so much pleasure out of window-shopping or hunting for bargains.

I guess that is like anticipating sex, or a victory on the playing field, or many other things. The anticipation can be as much or maybe more exciting than the actual event. It's all about our expectations. The mind is a wonderful thing, isn't it?

Now what would really be interesting is to map the brains of men and women while shopping, to see if there are any differences.

All I want for Christmas is a little dopamine...

Who Needs Emotions? The Brain Meets the Robot

What a great title for a book, and a great subject: the brain, emotions and artificial intelligence. But at a $60 price tag, I'll hold out for Santa...or maybe my husband if he actually reads this blog.

I first heard about this book from Zack Lynch over at the Corante Brain Waves Blog. Here's an excerpt from his post:

My book review of Who Needs Emotions? The Brain Meets the Robot is published this month in the Lancet Neurology. While copyrights hold me back from publishing the review here, I will say that the 499 page book is an important contribution to the field of emotional neurotechnology. It contains a stimulating collection of chapters from some of the most prominent neuroscientists and artificial intelligence experts around.

One of my favorite chapters was written by Ann E Kelley and focused on understanding how the brain processes emotions, how emotions evolved and the neurobiological substrates of emotions. I write, "Within the space of a few dozen pages, Kelley traverses evolutionary time and looks at the neurochemical networks encoding emotion and motivation. The role of dopamine in reward and plasticity, serotonin in aggression and depression and opioid peptides in pain and pleasure are discussed as critical neuromodulators that have given rise to an extraordinary amount of behavioral flexibility."

"So what about the robots? Researchers in artificial intelligence are interested in leveraging emotions to build systems that can perform unanticipated tasks in unpredictable environments. Despite the progress being made in these systems, most AI researchers concede that improved outcomes (of their models) will need better models of how human beings respond (in their emotional state) to new situations."

At the end of the day, I highly recommend the book for searchers and graduate students across neuroscience and computer science. - Zack Lynch

I'm drooling just reading the Amazon description:

Who Needs Emotions?: The Brain Meets the Robot (Series in Affective Science) (Hardcover)
by Jean-Marc Fellous (Editor), Michael A. Arbib (Editor)

The idea that some day robots may have emotions has captured the imagination of many and has been dramatized by robots and androids in such famous movies as 2001 Space Odyssey's HAL or Star Trek's Data. By contrast, the editors of this book have assembled a panel of experts in neuroscience and artificial intelligence who have dared to tackle the issue of whether robots can have emotions from a purely scientific point of view.

Don't Worry, Be Happy...

Perhaps the most important thing you can do for your brain – and for your life! – is to be happy. And yet, many Americans who are living in the highest economic standards of the world are only marginally satisfied. They are on the treadmill chanting, “if only I had more time…more money…” etc.

Well, you do have more time, if you choose how you spend it. Making pleasure a priority seems to go against our hard-working goal-oriented culture. Yet, in the end, the time you spend in pleasurable activities will be your most treasured memories.

Which brings me to this thought: who’s in charge here? You have your brain and your mind. Your brain may be focused on basic instincts, which can be briefly stated as the four F’s: feeding, fighting, fleeing and fornicating. Those instinct may be highly refined and disguised as other activities. But we are not really far removed from our primitive ancestors. We are still seeking food, our place in society, pleasure and freedom from control, and a basic desire to extend our genes through having children.

The mind is your higher self, and can choose which basic instincts to follow and which ones to suppress for the moment. You can direct your mind to focus on priorities and make choices. But you can’t separate your brain from your mind, or your mind from your brain.

Paul Pearsall, who authored the book The Pleasure Prescription, explains that we have selfish brains driven by survival instincts. “We need to counteract our ‘delight deficiency’ and ‘toxic success syndrome’ with some balanced healthy pleasure. We need a prescription to slow down, rediscover the joy in daily living, and reconnect with people.”

This then is the secret to having a truly healthy brain: good physical and mental environments on  molecular, chemical, and social levels.

You can contribute to your brain's capacity to serve you well in having a happier life.
Whatever you do, whatever your job, wherever you live, and whatever your beliefs, you can choose to help out your genetic DNA through healthy diet, supplements, exercise and social activities. Your brain will love you for this.

Having a healthy brain will allow you to stretch yourself to achieve more than you ever thought possible, and you will have greater satisfaction and quality of life well into your later years.