Wednesday, August 10, 2016
Tuesday, August 9, 2016
3 Reasons You Sometimes Have Déjà Vu, According to Science
You know that feeling you get when you step inside a new house or walk around a foreign city—places you know you’ve never been before—and you can’t help but think, I’ve done this already? It’s déjà vu, and if you’ve never had it before, take it from us: It’s kind of creepy.
Déjà vu is French for “already seen,” and about two out of three people have experienced the phenomenon at one time or another, according to a 2003 review in the journal Psychological Bulletin. Despite being fairly common, “it’s not a widely studied subject,” says Alice Medalia, PhD, a professor of medical psychology at Columbia University Medical Center. And because déjà vu is a subjective experience—in other words, it’s difficult to induce in research subjects—testing the theories behind it can be tricky.
That said, researchers have a few guesses about why we experience déjà vu (and no, it’s probably not flashbacks to a previous life):
You’ve been somewhere similar before
Some researchers believe déjà vu is triggered when you enter an environment similar to one you’ve experienced in the past. For example, you could experience it when you enter a hotel lobby where the furniture is configured the same way as your childhood home’s living room.
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Researchers tested that theory in a 2009 study published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. They showed volunteers images that had nothing to do with one another—a fenced-in courtyard, and then later, a locker room—and the volunteers felt déjà vu because the images were composed in a very similar way. The researchers concluded that there was probably a connection between déjà vu and the feelings of “familiarity.”
You travel a lot
People who travel and people who can recall their dreams are more likely to experience déjà vu than those who stay at home or don’t remember their dreams, according to the 2003 review. These people can draw on a wider range of sources (either from, say, their adventures Europe, or just their own imagination), so it makes sense that they should think other environments feel familiar, too.
Something’s up with your brain
Some people who have temporal lobe epilepsy (a type of epilepsy that occurs in the part of your brain that handles short-term memory) experience déjà vu right before they have a seizure—another sign that the phenomenon may be connected with the way memories are activated. Plus, it’s why some experts think déjà vu is triggered by a kind of disruption in the firing of neurons in the brain, says Dr. Medalia.
It could also be the result of your brain struggling to process multiple pieces of information, but for some reason, can’t align them correctly, she says. That lack of “synchrony,” in med-speak, might be responsible for that déjà vu feeling.
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The bottom line?
Regardless of what’s happening (or what’s causing it), for the vast majority of people, déjà vu is pretty harmless. Unless you’re experiencing an epileptic seizure—and in that case, there are plenty of other signs to watch out for—it’s a relatively normal experience.
And you never know—maybe that castle in London looks so familiar because, in your past life, you were Kate Middleton’s great-great-great-great grandmother-in-law. Hey, we can dream, right?
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Women Feel Better About Their Bodies Than They Used To
Though women are still more dissatisfied than men when it comes to their size, a new study reveals that women’s views of their bodies are softening over the years.
The study, presented Friday at the American Psychological Association’s 124th Annual Convention, researchers found that women’s feelings about how thin they are have improved significantly over time. Looking at data from more than 100,000 men and women over 31 years, they found that from 1981 to 2011, on average women’s dissatisfaction dropped 3.3 points.
Though the change may seem small, study author Bryan Karazsia, an associate professor of psychology at The College of Wooster, says that statistically the drop is “substantial.” The researchers also looked at data from over 23,800 men and women over 14 years who were asked about their satisfaction with their muscular build. Men were more likely than women to report feeling dissatisfied with their muscles and that trend remained stable over time.
“If you walk into a store and see mens mannequins, they are really large,” says Karazsia, speculating why the opinion has remained unchanged for men. “Men just don’t look like that.”
What might be responsible for women’s drop in body criticisms? The researchers don’t know for sure, but they have a few theories. One is that Americans in general are getting larger. More than two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese, and Karazsia says “because people are larger, people are seeing what’s around them and feel more normal and less concerned.”
It’s also possible that the depictions of women in media are changing. Karazsia cites the popularity of ads by Dove, a company known for soap and deodorant, which feature women of all different body sizes and races. “You are seeing more images in the media of body diversity,” says Karazsia. “As those ideals are shifting, I think people are becoming a little more critical of the extreme images they see and the media is embracing [the idea] that bodies of all shapes and sizes can still sell products.”
There is also a possibility that a new body ideal is replacing women’s desire to be thin. Though the researchers didn’t look at the trend specifically, Karazsia said colleagues wondered whether a trend toward being lean and toned rather than thin also had a role.
“I am optimistic that [this study] is good news,” says Karazsia. “I am a dad of young girls so when I saw these findings I thought it was hopeful.”
This article originally appeared on Time.com.
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Saturday, July 30, 2016
Can Virtual Reality Meditation Get You Closer to Mindfulness? I Tried It to Find Out
I’ve been meditating, off and on, for the past 14 years. The technique I learned in meditation class many years ago is old-school and austere: Find a place to sit, close your eyes, feel your feet on the floor, and focus on the in-and-out breath at the tip of your nose. No music, no mantras, just the moment-by-moment struggle of bringing your attention back to breathing every time your mind wanders away (which is just about every time you breathe). The point, and the challenge, is to train your mind to let go of distraction, to detach from thoughts, to simply “be here now.”
Mindfulness meditation is a welcome (some say necessary) respite from the hustle and stress of modern life, and from the incessant pings, buzzes, and chimes of personal technology.
So I was intrigued when I received an invitation from the folks at Oculus, the virtual reality shop at Facebook, to test out the latest application for this booming technology: guided meditation. I wondered: If being mindful requires disengaging from the diversions of modern life, can we truly meditate while mind-melding with state-of-the-art computer processing power? Is it possible to “be here now” if that “here” is a digitally-synthesized someplace else?
At Oculus’ pop-up showroom in New York City, I was first given a quick tour of the capabilities of their high-end Rift system. I was menaced by a life-size Tyrannosaurus Rex (cowering in virtual terror as the beast stomped past/through me) and dropped onto the ledge of an 80-story Times Square skyscraper (dropping reflexively to hands and knees and crawling backwards to safety).
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After the stress test warm up, I strapped on the Samsung Gear VR, for a downshift into Oculus’ meditation offerings.
The Guided Meditation VR app, developed by Cubicle Ninjas, gives you a choice of environment, voiceover, and chill-out music. I picked a fall foliage setting called “Autumnshade” to start, and the “Relaxation” audio track.
The 360-degree view was splendid: Crisp brown leaves floated from trees between shafts of golden sunlight. In the narration, an English woman likened our thoughts to hummingbirds, and indeed, my mind was flitting from voice to scene (with multiple perspectives available at the push of a button) and back again, with nary a thought of my breath.
I switched to a tropical seaside setting (“Costa del Sol”), with waves sloshing on the shore, then toggled again to an icy mountain (“Snow Peak”): Blood red sky reflected in an iridescent blue lake. Somewhere behind me I heard a crunching sound, like the calving of icebergs (or the footfall of a hungry snow leopard). Each time I picked a new setting, the device asked me to press my finger to a sensor to measure my heart rate, part of the app’s biofeedback feature. I started out around 76 beats per minute, and hovered in that range throughout the experience.
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I shifted one last time to a sunny bamboo grove (“Hanna Valley”), leaves swaying in a gentle breeze, a pagoda in the near distance. There was even a pudgy panda dozing on the rocks behind me to add to the snoozy vibe.
Now that I’d found a calm setting, I turned on the lulling “Loving Compassion” voiceover, which was much more conducive to relaxation than the hummingbird talk, and more in keeping with my own experience practicing loving-kindness meditation. A voice urged me to think about a loved one with the following recitation:
May you be safe / May you be peaceful / May you be healthy / May you live with ease and wellbeing.
Good food for thought, yet I still found myself dazzled by the scenery, looking out and around rather than inward.
My Oculus friends urged me to try another app, so I dove into Perfect Beach, developed by nDreams, which offers a choice of four seaside views with an audio track. The most interesting feature here is that the app lets you select a lower torso (customizable by sex and skin tone) as part of your view, presumably to help you locate your floating head in the VR space. That idea makes sense, given that groundedness is one of the starting points of most any meditation practice, though I found it gave me yet one more thing to look at: undulating waves throwing flecks of golden sun, plus a pair of nicely tanned legs and muscular pecs, just below my line of sight.
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After an admittedly brief tour, I yanked off the headset and defogged my glasses. The verdict: Is virtual reality immersive? Of course. Diverting? For sure. Is it relaxing? It would be, if you had enough time to steep in the experience.
Is it meditative? That’s a tough one, and it depends on one’s definition of meditation. If by “meditation” you mean getting outside of yourself for a few minutes to zone out, decompress, and escape, then virtual reality would do the trick. If you’re new to meditation, and don’t have access to a class or a teacher, and you’re looking to learn some of the basics of a guided practice like loving-kindess, an app like Guided Meditation VR (as a kind of jacked-up audio program) would help.
But if you’re trying to meditate in the more orthodox, hard-way-in style—to tune in rather than out; to be here, right now; to wake up into reality—you run into something of a conundrum. It seems that a technology that pries your eyes and ears wide open to absorb as much sensory input as possible is working at cross-purposes with a discipline that asks you to forgo distraction, to close your eyes and direct your attention inward.
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Oculus’ VR meditation is a fun trip, no doubt, but if I could design a setting, it might look and sound like the classroom where I first learned how to sit: careworn wood floors, mismatched chairs, a rattling air conditioner, with a teacher at the front of the room offering terse instruction and then… silence. Maybe this dazzling technology, confident enough in its verisimilitude, could also be humble enough to slip into the background, so you’d have no qualms about missing out if you just closed your eyes, and tuned in to the real.
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One Big Interviewing Mistake You Should Try to Avoid
Say you’re in the running for your dream job, but it’s on the other side of the country. The higher-ups call you for a final interview, and give you a choice: You can video conference in, or fly out to meet with them face-to-face.
You might be tempted to choose the easier option that doesn’t involve travel or additional expenses. But it may be wise to make the trip: A new study suggests that in-person interviews tend to leave better impressions on both the hiring company and the candidate.
“We live in a world where we increasingly rely on technology, but this study reminds us that personal interactions should never be underestimated,” study co-author Nikki Blacksmith, a doctoral candidate at the George Washington University’s Department of Organizational Sciences and Communication, said in a press release. Blacksmith and her colleagues wanted to see how tools like telephone and video interviewing might affect overall decision making, so they analyzed the findings of 12 studies published between 2000 and 2007.
Their results, published Monday in the journal Personnel Assessment and Decisions, found that overall, technology-mediated interviews resulted in lower ratings—for both parties involved—than face-to-face interviews. Video interviews received the most negative rankings, followed by telephone and computer interviews.
Initially, the researchers assumed that these differences would have lessened over the years, as people became more accustomed to technology in the workplace. But they were surprised to find the opposite: The ratings were actually more negative in the later research. (They do point out, however, that even the most recent study took place seven years ago.)
“Considering the rate at which technology has changed, it is clear that we lack understanding of the modern interview,” the authors wrote.
Senior author Tara Behrend, PhD, director of the Workplaces and Virtual Environments Lab at George Washington University, says the study was not able to determine what, exactly, was wrong with technology-mediated interviews—but does offer a guess.
“On the phone I can’t shrug my shoulders, roll my eyes, wink, or nod my head to show that I understand,” she told RealSimple.com. “That means that the interviewer can easily misinterpret something I say.”
On top of that, she says, taking turns is harder in a video or phone setting. “The chance of accidentally interrupting the interviewer would be much higher,” says Behrend. “If you’re afraid of interrupting, then you might have a long awkward pause instead. Neither option is going to give the perception that you are a strong communicator.”
It’s also difficult to engage in what Behrend calls “impression management”—doing things to make the interviewer like you—when you’re not face-to-face with them. You might not be able to make friendly small talk or show that you’re attentive by smiling and sitting up straight if you’re on the phone or staring into a webcam, she says.
The problem is, many interviewees aren’t given a choice as to what kind of meeting they’ll have. If a company holds all of its interviews for a certain position the same way, the study authors say, then no one has an unfair advantage. But if some candidates are given in-person interviews and others aren’t, results are likely to be skewed. In fact, the study concludes, these findings could potentially open up companies with such hiring practices to lawsuits.
Behrend says that an important next step is finding a way to improve perceptions in video interactions. “There is plenty of popular advice out there about how to do well in a Skype interview,” she says. “For example, making eye contact is very tough online. But, you can configure your computer so that ‘eye contact’ with the camera happens more naturally.” (You can find our expert tips for acing a video interview—and other smart interview tips—here).
She hopes that by studying tips and techniques like these, researchers can help level the playing field—and give remote interviewers gain back a bit of their lost advantage.
This article originally appeared on RealSimple.com.
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This Is What Happens in Your Brain When You’re Hypnotized
THURSDAY, July 28, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Skeptics view hypnosis as a little-understood parlor trick, but a new study reveals real changes occur in the brain when a person enters an hypnotic state.
Some parts of the brain relax during the trance while others become more active, said study senior author Dr. David Spiegel, associate chair of psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
“I hope this study will demonstrate that hypnosis is a real neurobiological phenomenon that deserves attention,” Spiegel said. “We haven’t been using our brains as well as we can. It’s like an app on your iPhone you haven’t used before, and it gets your iPhone to do all these cool things you didn’t know it could do.”
Hypnosis was the first Western form of psychotherapy, but little is known about how it actually works, the authors say.
Hoping to learn more, Spiegel and his colleagues selected 57 people for this study out of a pool of 545 potential participants. Thirty-six of the 57 displayed a high level of hypnotic susceptibility, while the other 21 did not appear to be very hypnotizable.
Using MRI, researchers measured the subjects’ brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow. Each was scanned while resting, when recalling a memory, and when exposed to a message intended to induce a hypnotic trance.
People highly susceptible to hypnosis experienced three distinct brain changes while hypnotized that weren’t present when they were out of the trance, the study reports. These changes weren’t detected in the brains of those with low hypnotic capability.
People in a trance experienced a decrease in activity in an area called the dorsal anterior cingulate, part of what’s called the brain’s salience network. “It helps us compare context and decide what is worth worrying about and what isn’t,” Spiegel said.
Hypnotized people also experienced an increase in connections between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the insula. The prefrontal cortex helps us plan and carry out tasks, while the insula helps the mind connect with the body.
“In hypnosis, we know you can alter things like gastric acid secretion, heart rate, blood pressure and skin conductance,” Spiegel said. “Your brain is very good at controlling what’s going on in your body, and the insula is one of the pathways that does that.”
Finally, people in hypnosis also have reduced connections between the task-oriented dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the brain’s default mode network, a region most active when a person is daydreaming rather than focusing on the outside world.
This decrease in connectivity likely represents a disconnect between someone’s actions and their awareness of their actions, Spiegel said. Such a disassociation allows the hypnotic subject to engage in activities suggested by a hypnotist without becoming self-conscious of the activity.
Taken together, these brain changes match well-known outward effects caused by hypnosis, Spiegel said.
A hypnotized person is intensely focused but not worried about what they’re doing. They are not worried about evaluating instructions, but are simply following those instructions, and they have a more direct connection between their minds and the physical function of their bodies, he noted.
“This is the first time that we’ve shown what’s going on in the brain when a person is hypnotized,” Spiegel said. “This is a natural and normal brain function. It’s a technique that has evolved to enable us to do the routine things routinely, and deeply engage in the things that matter to us.”
Based on this knowledge, doctors might be able to enhance hypnotic response in ways that better help treat medical conditions, he said. Already, hypnosis has been proven to help people quit smoking or cope with pain and stress, the authors noted.
This study provides “important evidence” that could help convince skeptical patients of hypnosis’ potential benefits, said Guy Montgomery, who specializes in integrative behavioral medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Alan Manevitz, a clinical psychiatrist with Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, agreed.
“Hypnosis has been around for a long time, but people have looked upon it as quackery,” Manevitz said. “This demonstrates it’s a legitimate neurobiological phenomenon, by revealing the brain activity that underlies the hypnotic state.”
However, Montgomery added that it will take further research to make this specific knowledge directly useful in daily medicine.
“How would I use this information to enhance procedures for patients?” he said. “I don’t really know.”
The study appears July 28 in the journal Cerebral Cortex.
More information
For more on hypnosis, visit the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.
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