Word: braine
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Research suggests that feelings of being out of control characterize the typical patient's response to traumatic life events; consequently, recovery requires the avoidance of coercion. Experts say that pressuring trauma victims to retell their stories against their will tends to increase stress symptoms rather than alleviate them. And brain research associates feelings of shame and humiliation to stress responses that exacerbate depression and anxiety and may contribute to physical illness. In addition, isolation from parents, except in situations where they are abusive, can increase trauma further...
Higher order human emotions, such as compassion and admiration, are often cataloged as artifacts of culture. But a small new study that relies on scans of the brain suggests the opposite: these feelings are rooted deep within the brain, where basic traits like anger and fear reside...
...That same area of the brain is also strongly interconnected with neural networks that regulate some of the body's most basic functions, such as breathing and blood pressure, which indicates that complex social emotions build on systems that evolved early, including those essential to our survival. "It is important to realize that they recruit the brain in a very deep manner," says Antonio Damasio, one of the authors of the study published online this week in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences and the director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at University of Southern California...
...While some previous research has examined how we process empathy for others' pain, this is the first study to trace the brain patterns of admiration, which Damasio notes is critical and commonly exercised. "We're constantly thinking about [whether or not we admire] people's behavior," he says. "How pleased were we when the sharpshooters got the pirates? That is a skill and we feel very proud...
There may be a physiological as well as a psychological process at work here. A leading theory is that exercising self-control is so hard on your brain that, like physical exercise, it depletes glucose levels, making you feel weaker. It's possible that imagining someone who has to exert self-control, and feeling their misery, tricks your brain into believing that your own glucose levels have declined. As the study says, this trick would, "in effect, set one's internal fuel gauge to 'low' [even if] there is still plenty of fuel left in the tank...