neuroscience – Page 2

Magic shrooms calm the brain. From Scientific American:

Researchers have long suspected that the altered perception, kaleidoscopic visions and mood changes produced by psychedelic drugs reflect a jump in brain activity. Not so, say neuroscientists at Imperial College London and elsewhere. They used functional MRI to peek at the brains of 30 participants experiencing a “trip” induced by intravenously delivered psilocybin, a psychedelic found in magic mushrooms. As they reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA online in January, investigators saw psilocybin-related dips in brain activity, particularly in control centers such as the thalamus, the anterior and posterior cingulate cortices, and the medial prefrontal cortex. The more placid these regions appeared in a participant’s brain, the more intense the subject’s self-reported psychedelic experiences. The scientists conclude that psychedelics temporarily flip off cognition-constraining pathways—including some that are overactive during depression. [For more on this study, click here.]

It turns out that what we wear and what we think we are wearing changes how we think in certain situations. From the New York Times:

If you wear a white coat that you believe belongs to a doctor, your ability to pay attention increases sharply. But if you wear the same white coat believing it belongs to a painter, you will show no such improvement.

So scientists report after studying a phenomenon they call enclothed cognition: the effects of clothing on cognitive processes.

It is not enough to see a doctor’s coat hanging in your doorway, said Adam D. Galinsky, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, who led the study. The effect occurs only if you actually wear the coat and know its symbolic meaning — that physicians tend to be careful, rigorous and good at paying attention.

The findings, on the Web site of The Journal of Experimental Social Cognition, are a twist on a growing scientific field called embodied cognition. We think not just with our brains but with our bodies, Dr. Galinsky said, and our thought processes are based on physical experiences that set off associated abstract concepts. Now it appears that those experiences include the clothes we wear.

More here.

GOLLYGEE!

Tag: neuroscience (page 2 of 2)

the psychedelic brain

clothes do make the man