Too low. Too slow

Exercise reduces anxty

Princeton scientists have found that mice are less anxious about experiencing stressors, such as entering a pool of cold water, when they are allowed regular exercise. The report, recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience, explains the experiment and how the "[mice's] brains exhibited a spike in the activity of neurons that shut off excitement in the ventral hippocampus, a brain region shown to regulate anxiety." Princeton's Elizabeth Gould said that by helping researchers pinpoint brain cells and regions important to anxiety regulation, the study will work to create a better understanding of human anxiety disorders and help treat them in the future.   Big think

A larger trend demonstrated by the study, according to Gould, is the brain's ability to adapt and tailor its own processes to an organism’s lifestyle or surroundings. "A higher likelihood of anxious behavior may have an adaptive advantage for less physically fit creatures. Anxiety often manifests itself in avoidant behavior and avoiding potentially dangerous situations would increase the likelihood of survival, particularly for those less capable of responding with a 'fight or flight' reaction, she said." Understanding how the brain regulates anxious behavior could yield potential clues about helping people with anxiety disorders. Big think

//////////////////////////////////Meditation may increase our identification with other people in two principle ways: "The first rests on meditation’s documented ability to enhance attention, which might in turn increase the odds of noticing someone in pain (as opposed to being lost in one’s own thoughts)." The other explanation derives from meditation's ability to connect practitioners with the great Oneness of Being, i.e. the sensation that all beings are interconnected. "The increased compassion of meditators, then, might stem directly from meditation’s ability to dissolve the artificial social distinctions — ethnicity, religion, ideology and the like — that divide us."big think 

////////////////////////////////////////idea centre in brain tpj

Scientists have located the specific brain region involved in the spread of ideas, possibly helping to understand why some ideas fall flat while others go viral. Called the temporoparietal junction, or TPJ, the region is most active when we find ideas we want to share with others. "Big think

Modern media bombard us with information almost continually, and thanks to social networks, we can choose to pass that information on, or not. "By further studying the neural activity in these brain regions to see what information and ideas activate these regions more, psychologists potentially could predict which advertisements are most likely to spread and go viral and which will be most effective... Such knowledge could also benefit public health campaigns aimed at everything from reducing risky behaviors among teenagers to combating cancer, smoking and obesity."

///////////////////////////////////idea Darwinism. 

Ideas have to pass a kind of Darwinian fitness test, argues the computer scientist Ramez Naam, who is the author of More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement. It turns out the most useful ideas are the ones that spread, like the wheel that was invented in Egypt and was improved upon in Sumaria by going from a solid disk to spokes.  

Big think

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