More and more research sug­gests that our brains have dif­fi­culty dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing between observ­ing an action and actu­ally par­tic­i­pat­ing in it. Empa­thy, for exam­ple, seems to hinge in part on our abil­ity to “take on” another’s emo­tions through vic­ar­i­ous expe­ri­ence. I always think of this when watch­ing a come­dian fall flat. I can feel the embar­rass­ment as if I’m stand­ing there on stage look­ing at a room full of blank stares.

A study in the jour­nal Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence inves­ti­gated this dynamic, but from a dif­fer­ent angle: researchers wanted to know if observ­ing some­one else exert self-control boosts or reduces one’s own self-control. Read the rest of this entry »

(Editor’s Note: we are pleased to bring you this arti­cle thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine).

The Evo­lu­tion of Empathy

Empathy’s not a uniquely human trait, explains pri­ma­tol­o­gist Frans de Waal. Apes and other ani­mals feel it as well, sug­gest­ing that empa­thy is truly an essen­tial part of who we are.

Once upon a time, the United States had a pres­i­dent known for a pecu­liar facial dis­play. In an act of con­trolled emo­tion, he would bite his lower lip and tell his audi­ence, “I feel your pain.” Whether the dis­play was sin­cere is not the issue here; how we are affected by another’s predica­ment is. Empa­thy is sec­ond nature to us, so much so that any­one devoid of it strikes us as dan­ger­ous or men­tally ill.

At the movies, we can’t help but get inside the skin of the char­ac­ters on the screen. We despair when their gigan­tic ship sinks; we exult when they finally stare into the eyes of a long-lost lover.

We are so used to empa­thy that we take it for granted, yet it is essen­tial to human soci­ety as we know it. Our moral­ity depends on it: How could any­one be expected to fol­low the golden rule with­out the capac­ity to men­tally trade places with a fel­low human being? It is log­i­cal to assume that this capac­ity came first, giv­ing rise to the golden rule itself. The act of perspective-taking is summed up by one of the most endur­ing def­i­n­i­tions of empa­thy that we have, for­mu­lated by Adam Smith as “chang­ing places in fancy with the sufferer.”

Even Smith, the father of eco­nom­ics, best known for empha­siz­ing self-interest as the lifeblood of human econ­omy, under­stood that the con­cepts of self-interest and empa­thy don’t con­flict. Empa­thy makes us reach out to oth­ers, first just emo­tion­ally, but later in life also by under­stand­ing their situation.

This capac­ity likely evolved because it served our ances­tors’ sur­vival in two ways. First, like every mam­mal, we need to be sen­si­tive to the needs of our off­spring. Sec­ond, our species depends on coop­er­a­tion, which means that we do bet­ter if we are sur­rounded by healthy, capa­ble group mates. Tak­ing care of them is just a mat­ter of enlight­ened self-interest.

Ani­mal empathy

It is hard to imag­ine that empathy—a char­ac­ter­is­tic so basic to the human species that it emerges early in life, and is accom­pa­nied by strong phys­i­o­log­i­cal reactions—came into exis­tence only when our lin­eage split off from that of the apes. It must be far older than that. Exam­ples of empa­thy in other ani­mals would sug­gest a long evo­lu­tion­ary his­tory to this capac­ity in humans.

Evo­lu­tion rarely throws any­thing out. Instead, Read the rest of this entry »

Encephalon (brain & mind blog car­ni­val, edi­tion ) finally meets Grand Rounds (health & med­i­cine blog carnival).

What a nice sur­prise. Hello. Nice to meet you!

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Note: Chronic Babe wins a com­pli­men­tary copy of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness for basi­cally invent­ing cog­ni­tive sleep ther­apy. Con­grats!

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Life and Death

Mind­Hacks dis­cusses an unex­pected surge in brain activ­ity when blood pres­sure drops to zero.

In Sick­ness & In Health suf­fers a death in the fam­ily. Adam shem tov. A man of good name.

Brain­Blog­ger won­ders, is reli­gion a “nat­ural” phe­nom­e­non?

Mind and Empathy

Behav­ior­ism & Men­tal Health finds that every­one can have a men­tal ill­ness — take a look at “Adjust­ment Dis­or­der”.

ACP Internist rein­forces the impor­tance of empa­thy. Novel Patient encour­ages patients to dream big, Flo­re­cen­dot­com high­lights how patients them­selves con­tribute to patient safety. The Hip­po­cratic Oaf dis­cusses the feel­ings of a med­ical stu­dent. Clin­i­cal Cases won­ders what doc­tors  in train­ing carry in their white coats.

Advances in the His­tory of Psy­chol­ogy exam­ines an impor­tant early step in the jour­ney to con­cep­tu­al­ize cog­ni­tion and emo­tion from a neural point of view.

The Fit­ness Fixer empathizes with her feet.

Brain

How to Cope With Pain dis­cusses a con­tro­ver­sial treat­ment for severe pain.

Neu­rophiloso­pher shows how vision (view­ing one’s body) can mod­u­late the senses of touch and pain. Fun exper­i­ments  included. Neu­r­o­critic takes things one step fur­ther, and takes us to the poten­tial future of tat­too removal.

Prov­i­den­tia announces a new NFL Con­cus­sion Com­mit­tee. 300,000 sports-related trau­matic brain injuries occur in the United States alone each year.

Sharp­Brains answers 15 com­mon ques­tions related to neu­ro­plas­tic­ity.

Med­ical Smart­phones Read the rest of this entry »

(Editor’s note: Daniel Gole­man is now con­duct­ing a great series of audio inter­views includ­ing one with Richard David­son on Train­ing the Brain: Cul­ti­vat­ing Emo­tional Skills. We are hon­ored to bring you this guest post by Daniel Gole­man, thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine.)

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Resources to help stu­dents build emo­tional intelligence

By Daniel Goleman

The scene: a first-grade class­room in a Man­hat­tan school. Not just any class­room this one has lots of Spe­cial Ed stu­dents, who are very hyper­ac­tive. So the room is a whirlpool of fren­zied activ­ity. The teacher tells the kids that they’re going to lis­ten to a CD. The kids quiet down a bit.

Then they get pretty still as the CD starts, and a man’s voice asks the kids to lie down on their backs, arms at their sides, and get a “breath­ing buddy,” like a stuffed ani­mal, who will sit on their stom­achs and help them be aware of their breath­ing. The voice takes the chil­dren through a series of breath­ing and body aware­ness exer­cises, and the kids man­age to calm down and stay focused through the entire six min­utes, which ends with them wig­gling their toes.

“You’ve just learned how to make your body feel calm and relaxed,” says the voice. “And you can do this again any time you want.”

The voice on the CD is mine, though I’m read­ing the words of Linda Lantieri, who has pio­neered pub­lic school pro­grams in social and emo­tional learn­ing that have been adopted worldwide.

Her newest pro­gram adds an impor­tant tool to the emo­tional intel­li­gence kit: mind­ful­ness, a moment-by-moment aware­ness of one’s inter­nal state and exter­nal envi­ron­ment. In a new book, Build­ing Emo­tional Intel­li­gence, which comes with the CD, Lantieri uses mind­ful­ness train­ing to enhance con­cen­tra­tion and atten­tion among kids, and to help them learn to bet­ter calm them­selves. Build­ing Emo­tional Intel­li­gence comes with instruc­tions that explain how teach­ers and par­ents can adapt Latieri’s exer­cises to kids at dif­fer­ent age lev­els (five to seven, eight to 11, or 12 and up) and pro­vides detailed expla­na­tions of each exercise.

Lantieri’s project exem­pli­fies the ways we can build on sci­en­tific insights to help chil­dren mas­ter the skills of emo­tional intel­li­gence. As Richard David­son, founder of the Lab­o­ra­tory for Affec­tive Neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin, explained to me in Read the rest of this entry »

Here you are have the twice-a-month newslet­ter with our most pop­u­lar blog posts. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page.

News and Analysis

Com­put­er­ized Cog­ni­tive Assess­ments: oppor­tu­ni­ties and con­cerns: health com­pa­nies and the mil­i­tary are start­ing to use new tools to assess brain func­tions in con­texts that nei­ther neu­roimag­ing nor tra­di­tional neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal test­ing can reach. This is a crit­i­cal piece of the brain fit­ness puz­zle that is worth keep­ing track of, full of oppor­tu­ni­ties, but also pri­vacy concerns.

Cog­ni­tive Health News Roundup: recent news cov­er­ing stud­ies on men­tal train­ing and DNA, on nutri­tion and the brain, and more. Read the rest of this entry »

A reader (thanks Mike!) sends us this fun arti­cle, titled A mat­ter of train­ing, on how to train our mem­ory. Some quotes:

“It’s a skill, not a tal­ent. It’s some­thing any­one could have picked up … I’m not born with this. It’s about train­ing and tech­nique, he says, explain­ing his unusual abil­ity. Anant holds the Limca Record  the Indian equiv­a­lent of the Guin­ness Record œ for mem­o­ris­ing 75 tele­phone num­bers, along with the names of their own­ers, in less than an hour. He is recog­nised as “the man with the most phe­nom­e­nal mem­ory in India.

“Unfor­tu­nately, most peo­ple think that mem­o­ris­ing is very dif­fi­cult. The moment they see some­one demon­strate some­thing like this, they think it’s out of this world.

If you want to remem­ber some­thing, you have to link it to some­thing you already know. Asso­ci­a­tion is the nat­ural prin­ci­pal. For exam­ple, if you need direc­tions to a place, a land­mark is often used as a point of ref­er­ence. And if you derive plea­sure from some­thing you do, there’s a good chance you’ll remem­ber it. Since the brain already works in this man­ner, why don’t we take con­trol of it?

“To me, an intel­li­gent per­son is some­one who is able to put together more of his skills to solve a prob­lem. Intel­li­gence is about using strategies.

The key con­cept here is that mem­ory, as well as other cog­ni­tive skills, can be trained through Read the rest of this entry »