Being Human

Another interesting article from the NY Times: 

 Research on the link between relationships and physical health has established that people with rich personal networks — who are married, have close family and friends, are active in social and religious groups — recover more quickly from disease and live longer. But now the emerging field of social neuroscience, the study of how people’s brains entrain as they interact, adds a missing piece to that data.

The most significant finding was the discovery of “mirror neurons,” a widely dispersed class of brain cells that operate like neural WiFi. Mirror neurons track the emotional flow, movement and even intentions of the person we are with, and replicate this sensed state in our own brain by stirring in our brain the same areas active in the other person.

I remember hearing about these time-out rooms in class.  This is good news:   

OLYMPIA — An independent review of the Olympia School District’s autism program this fall represents a big step in the right direction for autistic children, some parents said at a meeting Tuesday

http://www.theolympian.com/112/story/44632.html

There was an interesting article in the NY Times a couple days ago about Elephants displaying unusual behavior. All across Africa, India and parts of Southeast Asia, elephants have been striking out, destroying villages and crops, attacking and killing human beings, killing other elephants and raping and killing rhinos. They claim that elephant populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma. I found this similar to human society.

The story is long. Below are a couple excerpts - It is attached too.

For a number of biologists and ethologists who have spent their careers studying elephant behavior, the attacks have become so abnormal in both number and kind that they can no longer be attributed entirely to the customary factors. Typically, elephant researchers have cited, as a cause of aggression, the high levels of testosterone in newly matured male elephants or the competition for land and resources between elephants and humans. But in ‘‘Elephant Breakdown,’’ a 2005 essay in the journal Nature, Bradshaw and several colleagues argued that today’s elephant populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma. Decades of poaching and culling and habitat loss, they claim, have so disrupted the intricate web of familial and societal relations by which young elephants have traditionally been raised in the wild, and by which established elephant herds are governed, that what we are now witnessing is nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture.

Everybody pretty much agrees that the relationship between elephants and people has dramatically changed,’’ Bradshaw told me recently. ‘‘What we are seeing today is extraordinary. Where for centuries humans and elephants lived in relatively peaceful coexistence, there is now hostility and violence. Now, I use the term ‘violence’ because of the intentionality associated with it, both in the aggression of humans and, at times, the recently observed behavior of elephants.’’

Has anyone started their Wikipedia project yet? I'd love to hear what others are planning.

I watched this on 20/20 Friday night. From my personal experience I found it was pretty close to the experience I've had with my husband on a few points they made:

Attention to detail: They espoused that men don't pay attention to detail as much as women. They put a woman in a room alone for a period of time and then they put a man in the same room for the same amount of time. They then asked each to recall details of the room. The woman went on and on about every detail of the items in the room. The man had no idea what was in the room. Another point they made was that women process information faster. She asks a man a question and expects an answer right away - this is definitely the case with my husband and me.

Verbal Communication: I can’t recall the numbers, but studies were reported that indicated that women communicated verbally much more than me. My personal experience can attest to that.

Nurture: They talked about how women nurture their babies which drew a comparison to last week’s reading. A mother described her experience while breast feeding as euphoric and even orgasmic. On page 5 of Human Development the author states: “The baby’s obstinate persistence in sucking gives evidence at an early stage of a need for satisfaction which…….should be described as “sexual.”

There was an interview by Ben Barres, a world renowned neurobiologist who used to be Barbara Barres, but underwent a sex change. Barres made the statement that it's easier to be male in the science world. While at MIT Barbara solved a complex equation and the professor told her that her boyfriend must’ve solved it. She was the only one to solve the equation, but didn’t get credit for it.