26. October 2010 by John Schinnerer.

From ScienceDaily.com….

Peace of Mind Closes Health Gap for Less-Educated, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Oct. 25, 2010) — Psychological well-being is powerful enough to counteract the pull of socioeconomic status on the long-term health of the disadvantaged, according to a study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Lack of education is a powerful predictor of future poor health and a relatively early death. But among people whose formal education ended with a high school diploma or less, positive psychological characteristics such as meaningful relationships with others and a sense of purpose have a strong connection with lower levels of an inflammatory protein connected to an array of potentially deadly health problems.

“If you didn’t go that far in your education, but you walk around feeling good psychological stuff, you may not be more likely to suffer ill-health than people with a lot of schooling,” says Carol Ryff, UW-Madison psychology professor and co-author of the study, which appears in the current online edition of the journal Health Psychology. “Low educational attainment does not guarantee bad health consequences, or poor biological regulation.”

The researchers measured levels of Interleukin-6 in participants in the Survey of Midlife in the United States, a now 10-year-long study of age-related differences in physical and mental health.
“High levels of IL-6 are associated with many kinds of cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, some cancers and other health problems,” says Jennifer Morozink, a UW-Madison psychology graduate student and lead author of the study. “These positive psychological characteristics all moderate the level of IL-6 for people without much education.”

Less-educated people who scored high on measures of general happiness or self-acceptance or who felt that the circumstances of their lives were manageable showed levels of the inflammatory protein comparable to similarly satisfied, but highly-educated peers.

The results are significant, according to Ryff, because they reinforce a new angle on eliminating the wide gap in overall health between the well-to-do and the socioeconomically disadvantaged.

“Other research shows that these psychological factors respond well to intervention,” Ryff says. “Therapies exist that give people the tools to keep all these psychological characteristics working in their favor. They’ve been shown to keep people from falling back into depression and anxiety, which we know means bad things for their health.”

The study, which was funded by the National Institute on Aging and included UW-Madison psychology professor Chris Coe and Institute on Aging scientist Elliot Friedman, melds two new directions in research: a focus on why socioeconomic inequality has such detrimental health effects for have-nots, and a shift toward scrutinizing the health impacts of positive psychological attributes, in contrast to decades of research linking psychological disorders and maladjustment to poor physical health.

“There’s a far richer understanding of how people get these strong psychosocial characteristics than there was not that long ago,” Morozink says. “There are studies of the brain showing people with higher levels of well-being react differently to negative situations.”

Environmental factors are also important in developing resiliency in the face of trying circumstances.

“Attentive parents, strong role models and feeling engaged in and important to their community could contribute a great deal to these psychological characteristics,” Ryff says.
Journal Reference:
1. Jennifer A. Morozink, Elliot M. Friedman, Christopher L. Coe, Carol D. Ryff. Socioeconomic and psychosocial predictors of interleukin-6 in the MIDUS national sample.. Health Psychology, 2010; DOI: 10.1037/a0021360

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26. October 2010 by John Schinnerer.

From Science Daily…

ScienceDaily (Oct. 24, 2010) — Seeing a child or a dog play is not a foreign sight. But what about a turtle or even a wasp?

Apparently, they play, too.

In fact, according to Gordon Burghardt, a psychology professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, many animals — not just dogs, cats, and monkeys — need a little play time.

“I studied the behavior of baby and juvenile reptiles for many years and never saw anything that I thought was play. Then I had an epiphany when I saw Pigface, a Nile softshell turtle, batting around a basketball at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. I realized reptiles play, too,” said Burghardt.

Burghardt’s findings are discussed in the October issue of The Scientist. To read the article and view Burghardt’s videos of various animals playing, visit http://www.the-scientist.com/2010/10/1/44/1/.

The article, entitled “Recess,” highlights Burghardt’s five criteria for play. Burghardt is one of the first researchers to define “play” in people and also in species not previously thought capable of play, such as fish, reptiles and invertebrates. Topics raised in the article appeared in Burghardt’s book, “The Genesis of Animal Play — Testing the Limits.”

Burghardt sums up his five criteria in one sentence: “Play is repeated behavior that is incompletely functional in the context or at the age in which it is performed and is initiated voluntarily when the animal or person is in a relaxed or low-stress setting.”

According to Burghardt, by more accurately characterizing play and observing it throughout the entire animal kingdom, humans may better understand themselves.

“In animals we can evaluate more carefully the role of play in learning skills, maintaining physical and mental fitness, improving social relationships and so on than we can in people,” said Burghardt. “We can then develop ideas and apply them to people to see if the same dynamics are at work. For example, the role of play in lessening the effects of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children is being studied based on research in rats.”

Play has already helped therapy with disturbed children. Also, studies are under way on the beneficial role of active and intellectually stimulating leisure for retirees. Similarly, jobs that resemble play are highly coveted by humans.

“Human children and adults often want to do enjoyable self-rewarding activities and will work hard to have the opportunity to do so. For the luckiest people, their work is itself play when it meets the five criteria,” said Burghardt.

Burghardt’s research illustrates how play is embedded in species’ biology, including in the brain. Play, as much of animals’ psychology including emotions, motivations, perceptions and intellect, is part of their evolutionary history and not just random, meaningless behavior, he said.

“Play is an integral part of life and may make a life worth living.”

University of Tennessee at Knoxville (2010, October 24). Even turtles need recess: Many animals — not just dogs, cats, and monkeys — need a little play time. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 25, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101019132045.htm.

For full article, please click here.

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John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Founder Guide to Self, Inc.

Award-winning author, keynote speaker, mental health professional

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21. October 2010 by John Schinnerer.

From PhysOrg.com…

October 20, 2010

Chronic depression is an adaptive, reparative neurobiological process gone wrong, say two University of California, San Diego School of Medicine researchers, positing in a new theory that the debilitating mental state originates from more ancient mechanisms used by the body to deal with physical injury, such as pain, tissue repair and convalescent behavior.

In a paper published in the September online edition of Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Review, Athina Markou, PhD, professor of psychiatry, and Karen Wager-Smith, a post-doctoral researcher, integrate evidence from diverse clinical, biological and behavioral studies to create a novel theory they hope will lead to a shift in thinking about depression.

“In contrast to other biological theories of depression, we started with a slightly different question,” said Wager-Smith. “Other theories address the question: ‘What is malfunctioning in depression?’ We took a step back and asked the question: ‘What is the biology of the proper function of the depressive response?’ Once we had a theoretical model for the biology of a well-functioning depressive response, it helped make sense of all the myriad differences between depressed and non-depressed subjects that the biomedical approach has painstakingly amassed.”

According to the new theory, severe stress and adverse life events, such as losing a job or family member, prompt neurobiological processes that physically alter the brain. Neurons change shape and connections. Some die, but others sprout as the brain rewires itself. This neural remodeling employs basic wound-healing mechanisms, which means it can be painful and occasionally incapacitating, even when it’s going well.

“It’s necessary and normal so that an individual can adapt, change behavior and deal with altered circumstances,” Markou said. Real problems occur only “when these restructuring processes go into overdrive, beyond what is necessary and adaptive, and for longer periods of time than needed. Then depression becomes pathological.”

The theory extends findings made by other researchers that the neurobiological substrates of physical and emotional pain overlap. Just as the body’s repair mechanisms for physical injury can sometimes result in chronic pain and inflammation, so too can the response to psychological trauma, resulting in chronic depression.

Markou and Wager-Smith argue that existing, conflicting views about depression actually describe different aspects of the same phenomenon. Psychoanalytic and sociological theories refer to the psychological transformation that occurs during a productive depressive episode. Biomedical theories relate to the neural remodeling that underlies this psychological change. And neurodegenerative theories account for remodeling malfunctions.

“The big question, of course, is why aren’t all people affected the same way,” said Markou. “Why do some people deal effectively with stress, but others perpetuate a pathological state? This is an interesting question for future research.”

The researchers’ findings may have clinical ramifications as well. If psychological and physical pain responses share similar biological mechanisms, then analgesic agents could be useful in treating at least some symptoms of depression. Similarly, if chronic depression is proven to be a neuroinflammatory condition, then anti-inflammatory treatments should also have some antidepressant effects. Several small trials with depressed patients have already been published that support this possibility, though Markou cautioned that much more specific research and larger clinical trials are required.

Provided by University of California — San Diego

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20. October 2010 by John Schinnerer.

From ScienceDaily.com…

ScienceDaily (Oct. 19, 2010) — Watching violent films, TV programs or video games desensitizes teenagers, blunts their emotional responses to aggression and potentially promotes aggressive attitudes and behavior, according to new research recently published online in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

Although previous research has suggested that people can become more aggressive and desensitized to real-life violence after repeatedly viewing violent media programs, little is known about how the extent of watching such programs and the severity of the aggression displayed affects the brains of adolescents. “It is especially important to understand this because adolescence is a time when the brain is changing and developing, particularly in the parts of the brain that control emotions, emotional behavior and responses to external events,” said Dr Jordan Grafman, who led the research.

Dr Grafman, senior investigator at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, USA), and colleagues recruited 22 boys between the ages of 14-17 to the study. The boys each watched short, four-second clips of violent scenes from 60 videos, arranged randomly in three lots of 20 clips. The degree of violence and aggression in each scene was low, mild or moderate, and there were no extreme scenes. They were asked to rate the aggression of each scene by pressing one of two response buttons at the end of each clip to say whether they thought it was more or less aggressive than the previous video. The boys were positioned in a magnetic resonance imaging scanner that collected data on their brain function while they watched the videos. They also had electrodes attached to the fingers of their non-dominant hand to test for skin conductance responses (SCR). This is a method of measuring the electrical conductance of the skin, which varies with moisture (sweat) levels and is a sensitive way of measuring people’s emotions and responses to internal or external stimuli.

Dr Grafman said: “We found that as the boys were exposed to more violent videos over time, their activation in brain regions concerned with emotional reactivity decreased and that was reflected in the data from the functional MRI and in the skin conductance responses.”

Data from the SCR showed that the boys became more desensitized towards the videos the longer they watched them and also that they were more desensitized by the mildly and moderately violent videos, but not the ones that contained a low degree of violence. Data on brain activation patterns showed a similar effect. In particular, the area known as the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC), which is thought to be involved in emotions and emotional responses to events, showed increasing desensitization over time, and this was most marked for the most aggressive videos (showing moderate violence) in the study.

The researchers also found that boys who had the most exposure to violent media in their daily lives, as measured by screening tests and questions in their initial meeting with the researchers, showed the greatest desensitization.

Dr Grafman said: “The important new finding is that exposure to the most violent videos inhibits emotional reactions to similar aggressive videos over time and implies that normal adolescents will feel fewer emotions over time as they are exposed to similar videos. This finding is driven by reduced posterior brain activation and therefore the frontal lobe doesn’t react as it normally would.

“The implications of this are many and include the idea that continued exposure to violent videos will make an adolescent less sensitive to violence, more accepting of violence, and more likely to commit aggressive acts since the emotional component associated with aggression is reduced and normally acts as a brake on aggressive behavior. No prior study has examined this from the complete perspective we had that included behavior, brain activation, and SCRs in adolescent brains.”

As the study recruited only boys, it is not possible to say whether the same effect would be seen in girls. “The incidence rate of aggression in females, even in female teenagers that are exposed to some of the same biopsychosocial challenges as male adolescents, is low and raises the questions of what brain mechanisms and autonomic differences are associated with this gender difference,” write the authors.

They conclude: “We propose that exposure to aggressive media results in a blunting of emotional responses, which in turn may prevent the connection of consequences of aggression with an appropriate emotional response, and therefore may increase the likelihood that aggression is seen as acceptable behavior.”

Dr Grafman believes that the findings of the study can be extrapolated to the way people would behave in real life situations. “The electronic media concerned with aggression does stimulate structures in the brain that are typically activated when people imagine being aggressive and, we assume, when they actually are aggressive. Most people can distinguish between playing a video game and real live behavior, but given the right circumstances where the rules are a bit more ambiguous (what if a bully provokes me) and provocative (someone is trying to take my lunch money), would an adolescent tend to be more aggressive and accept that aggression as normal behavior given prior exposure to video games? I think so. Particularly if they are a heavy user of games and, in our device-driven world, that will be more and more likely in the future.”

Journal Reference:

1. Maren Strenziok, Frank Krueger, Gopikrishna Deshpande, Rhoshel K. Lenroot, Elke van der Meer, and Jordan Grafman. Fronto-parietal regulation of media violence exposure in adolescents: a multi-method study. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2010 DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsq079

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To life, love and laughter,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Founder of Guide To Self

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20. October 2010 by John Schinnerer.

Florida State University issued the following news release:

Americans Rethinking Role of Work Amid Painful Recession, Says Researcher

Widespread layoffs and other job changes associated with the Great Recession have caused workers to question career-related sacrifices, including time away from family, less leisure time and fewer self- improvement activities.

Those are some of the findings of a recent study conducted by Wayne Hochwarter, the Jim Moran Professor of Business Administration in the Florida State University College of Business, and research associates Tyler Everett and Stuart Tapley.

They examined the recession’s role in changing employees’ thoughts about work, commitment to their families, and the pursuit of a more balanced lifestyle.

“The objective of the study was to see if we could identify shifts in thinking, as well as the causes of these changes,” Hochwarter said.

Opinions gathered from more than 1,100 full-time employees, across a range of occupations and career stages, showed the following:

* 48 percent reported that the recession increased their appreciation of family;

* 37 percent reported that the recession promoted thoughts that work isn’t as important as it once was in the grand scheme of things;

* 49 percent admitted that the recession helped them recognize the value of people over things;

Work life balance shifting due to economic times

* 23 percent indicated that the recession increased awareness of an over-commitment to work at the expense of family and recreation;

* 42 percent confirmed that most of what happens at work is out of one’s control regardless of commitment and effort; and

* 43 percent agreed that the recession increased motivation to be a better person rather than just a better employee.

Finally, more than 70 percent of employees acknowledged that most days at work “seem like they will never end” — a commonly held belief in work settings where increasingly more time and output is expected with less support and fewer guaranteed rewards.

The study also indicated that recession-related stress tends to manifest differently in men and women.

“Digging a little deeper into the data, it was evident that men’s reflective, and often remorseful, thoughts were driven by recession-related job insecurity and its subsequent role in encouraging hostile work treatment,” Hochwarter said.

He suggests that it is common for work stress to push employees to places that they would not otherwise go, both in terms of thoughts and actions, when it reaches intolerable levels.

Such stress is apparent in the comment of one study participant, a 48- year-old manager of a production facility who was laid off by his longtime employer.

“I broke my back for this company, missed my kids growing up, and for what?

Nothing!” the man said.

Women’s thoughts, on the other hand, were triggered by conflicts between work and family obligations.

Women reported that job obligations have increased in recent years — both in terms of time and energy — resulting in fewer hours engaged in family life.

The researchers cast these findings in a positive light, however.

“The fact that many employees spent time evaluating the importance of non-work factors may be the first step in reducing the stress associated with imbalanced lives,” Tapley said.

“Many of the people that we talked to felt that having less faith in work afforded them opportunities to direct more faith toward other often-neglected areas of life, and in most cases, it was family and friends,” Everett added.

The balance-seeking trend will likely continue as more Millennial Generation employees — those born roughly between the mid-1970s and the early 2000s — enter, and influence, the work force.

With more than 70 million cohort members, Millennials offer a unique perspective, one in which work shares equal (or lesser) status with other important aspects of life such as friends, family and leisure.

Comments made by a 44-year-old accounting director, who experienced drastic changes in terms of responsibility and pay in recent years, characterize study results and conclusions: “I’ve learned a lot from the younger people we hired here in the past few years. I’ve learned that there is a big world out there away from work where there are fun things to do and people who care about me not because I pay the bills, but because I’m Dad. I wish management around here would take their lead, or better yet, let them run things. Everyone would feel less stressed out!”

For more information on managing emotions during these difficult times, head to www.GuidetoSelf.com for a free PDF copy of John’s award-winning self-help book, Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide to Managing Emotion and Thought.

To life, love and laughter,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Founder, Guide to Self, Inc.

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