Living In La-La Land

Sit in reverie and watch the changing color

of the waves that break upon

the idle seashore of the mind.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—

If all humans daydream, why is it seen in such a negative light? Why is something so easy and natural seen as a waste of time? How can something so universal to the average human be considered pathological?

It appears that daydreaming can have real benefits:

• It can make us feel active and energetic by relieving boredom.
• It can be similar to meditation by activating our parasympathetic nervous system.
• It might help us be more aware of who we are.
• It may be a key for researchers in understanding consciousness.
• It can organize our conflicts into meaningful solutions.
• It helps to enhance social skills and relationships.
• It appears to be a wellspring for creativity.

I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.
—Steven Wright—

One of the first psychologists to scientifically study daydreaming is a retired Yale professor. Dr. Jerome Singer surveyed many different groups of people and found that most people’s daydreams are quite ordinary and not at all unusual. Dr. Singer’s book, The Inner World of Daydreaming, discovered that often daydreaming was a way for the brain to map out goals and doubts. Daydreaming as mental rehearsal can actually help you to be more effective in dealing with what is to come in the days ahead.

I remember years ago working with a woman whose husband was an NFL quarterback playing for a team that had surprisingly made it to the Superbowl. The other team was odds on to win the game easily. However, just the opposite happened. The underdog won the Superbowl game much to everyone’s amazement. Much of the credit went to this quarterback who had the best game of his career. He later told me that he had spent about twenty-four hours prior to the game thinking about nothing but throwing perfect passes. His "perfect" passing, which was not one of his strong points, carried his team to victory.

Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my
accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway
from sunrise till noon, rapt in reverie.
—Henry David Thoreau—

The amount of daydreaming varies a lot from person to person. Some people daydream as seldom as 5 times a day while others might daydream over 175 times a day. One finding of researchers is that people who daydream more than the average person tend to remember more content from their dreams at night.

Creative people also tend to daydream more than the average person. Daydreaming is usually a stream of consciousness that randomly moves from topic to topic. This randomness combined with high frequency is one of the determinants of creativity.

Every child knows how to daydream.
But many, perhaps most,
lose the capacity as they grow up.
—Dov Frohman—

It seems that daydreaming happens more often when we are bored or have no need to focus on the task at hand. How does this information apply to the real world? Some psychologists believe that we might be stifling creativity in our children by over programming their time. One study found that children who watch television at least three hours a day are less imaginative than children who watch only one hour a day. Of course, this study does not tell us which is the chicken and which is the egg.

The increasing use of drugs for children decreases daydreaming. For example, children with ADHD who are taking Ritalin are less creative than ADHD children who are not taking Ritalin. On the other hand, people with severe ADHD may daydream so much that they cannot focus on simple but necessary tasks.

"If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician.
I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music.
I see my life in terms of music.
... I get most joy in life out of music."
—Albert Einstein—

What drives the brain to daydream. It seems that daydreaming and night dreaming have something in common. It is a time when the brain assimilates the millions of data bits it continually receives. It must make sense of this chaotic, rambling information and does so during sleep and daydreaming. As with night dreaming, daydreaming helps the brain to solve problems and connect seemingly unconnected pieces of information. This latter function is what creativity is all about — finding the new by connecting pieces of the old. Various studies have shown that highly creative people from Albert Einstein to Walt Disney spent a lot of time daydreaming.

Active daydreaming can help us overcome personal problems. I had a therapy client who came to me because he had become sexually impotent in his marriage. This was before Viagra so we had to find a non-medical solution to his problem. His job was demanding and also involved a lot of daily driving. We found that during these drives, he spent a lot of time daydreaming about this problem and the negative effect it was having on his marriage. Wondering if changing the focus of his daydreaming would work, I asked him if he would like to spend his mental down time daydreaming about seducing and making love to his wife. His answer was not surprising. After doing this assignment not only faithfully but with gusto, he called me back in two weeks and told me he and his wife were having the best sex of their lives.

Reverie is not a mind vacuum.
It is rather the gift of an hour
which knows the plenitude of the soul.
—Gaston Bachelard—

It appears that there is a place in the brain called the "executive network." This area of the brain acts like a switchboard by combining the activity of different brain structures. This network is more sophisticated in adults than in children because it is not fully formed and operational until the early to mid-twenties. Neuropsychologist Dr. Karen Spangenberg Postal claims that we now know enough about this area of the brain so that parents can actually learn how to increase their children’s academic performance.

You can also use daydreaming to help yourself. Since you may already daydream, on average, about one-third of your waking day, why not use it to your advantage? The first step is to reinterpret the value of daydreaming. Instead of seeing it as a sign of laziness or time-wasting, view it as a way to enhance the quality of your life. Once you have given yourself permission to daydream, you no longer have to feel guilty for doing so. After this, you can anticipate and look forward to times of daydreaming. Some people actually schedule daydreaming times – these times can be as short as a few minutes to as long as you want. One final word. Let yourself get lost in your daydreams so that you are the passenger, not the driver. Some research has found that people who are not aware of the daydreaming content can be more creative than people who actively monitor their daydreams.

Thought is the labor of the intellect,
reverie is its pleasure.
—Victor Hugo—

Happy dreaming.

Sleep Deprivation: Part 2

Continued

Sleep Deprivation and Women
For some reason women are more prone to sleep deprivation than men. Twice as females than males say they struggle with insomnia. Furthermore, it appears that seventy-five percent of women do not get the recommended eight hours of sleep each night.

Most modern women would not be surprised by these findings. After all, a woman’s brain and body are much more complicated than a man’s. It seems as if women’s bodies never stop making complex biological changes — changes that can keep a good night’s sleep elusive. These changes include menstrual periods, pregnancy and menopause. Women have had to deal with this since the dawn of time. Now modern women can add contemporary life that might include single motherhood and demanding, stressful jobs.

When we look at the life cycle of a woman’s life we tend to see a pattern. During the early years, the 20s and 30s, pregnancy, childbirth and just being a mom can make sleep deprivation a constant companion. Later on, during the 40s and 50s women are beginning to struggle with hormonal changes. This is also the time when family concerns can become problematical: children leaving home – or coming back, possible separation or divorce, an awakening that life has to be more than it is, the search for one’s self. After 60 it is easy to decrease daily activity. In addition to making the body more lethargic, some scientists think that a change in outdoor activity for older people may decrease exposure to sunlight. This, in turn, can mess up a person’s internal clock

What can we do to overcome sleep deprivation?
I suppose the easy answer would be, "Well, just get more sleep." As is often the case, such simplistic responses are useless. Perhaps one of the most common responses to sleeplessness is medication. Over fifty million prescriptions are being written for sleeping pills every year.

This sounds like a simple and effective solution but it really isn’t. Most experts agree that taking medication to overcome continuing sleep problems should always be a last resort. As a temporary fix, it is probably benign. The problem with such an approach is the side effects issue. Consumer Reports found out that "Sixty-three percent of those who took sleep medications experienced side effects; 24 percent said they became dependent on the medication they used; and 21 percent said that repeated use reduced the drug's effectiveness."

Many drugs have a dramatic effect on different stages of sleep. One of the side-effects is somnambulism mentioned above. One woman found out she had eaten an entire box of chocolates during the night with no memory of having done so. Dommon effects of sleep medication are trouble waking up, headaches or nausea, feeling tired or dizzy. Some people say they feel as if their head is full of cotton in the morning and they can’t really think clearly. Even newer drugs like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants can significantly reduce REM sleep for months or years. Most sleep specialists believe that long term use of sleeping medication can mask the real causes of sleep deprivation which, aside from real medical causes, are almost always life style issues.

If personal issues are serious, the best results occur when a person sees a psychologist skilled in cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). This approach offers the most effective remedy for sleep problems. At the beginning of such treatment, temporary use of medications can help to kick-start CBT.

How much sleep do we really need. It depends on age and here is the consensus:

• Newborns and infants may need as much as 16-18 hours of sleep (including naps) each day.


• Toddlers between the ages of 3-6 should have 10 to 12 hours every 24 hours.


• Children who are between the ages of 6 and 9 are at their best with about 10 hours of sleep.


• Beginning at age nine and continuing through adolescence kids need a minimum of about 9 nighttime hours.


• Adult sleep is generally supposed to run between eight and nine hours. A few adults are wired to live on four to five hours sleep with no detrimental effects.


• Some experts think seniors may find they need as much sleep as children, including naps.

Now that you know how much sleep you are supposed have, let’s look at how to get it. At the top of most lists is the need for regular exercise. A study at Stanford University corroborated this — especially for senior citizens. When they would exercise consistently, they "fell asleep more quickly, slept longer and felt more rested when they awoke than did their sedentary counterparts."

A comfortable environment can contribute much to a good night’s sleep. Although often difficult to do, going to bed at the same time every night, including weekends, can help your brain find a helpful sleep rhythm. One often overlooked issue is the pillow and/or mattress. If your mattress is more than ten years old, you may want to consider checking out a new one. Many sleep problems go away with a better mattress.

Many people find that predictable and soothing rituals about thirty minutes prior to bedtime can help make the transition to a sound sleep. Each person needs to find their own pattern but here are some suggestions that have helped others: a hot bath can lower your body temperature helping you to enter the first sleep stage more easily; using relaxation/meditation techniques; drinking a cup of hot tea or a glass of milk; reading something interesting that takes concentration and effort. Read until your eyes begin to close or until you find yourself reading the same sentence over and over. Some people set a clock radio to soothing music that will turn itself off in about a half hour. If you try this and are still awake when the music shuts off, look at the suggestions in the next paragraph. Whatever works for you, do the same thing every night.

In addition to what to do, you need to also avoid certain behaviors. Alcohol, caffeine and even food will stimulate your brain and make it harder to get to sleep if taken less than two hours before bedtime. It is helpful to get rid of anything that can stimulate your brain including sounds, light, lively music and pets. Avoid bringing anything work-related to bed. Computers and televisions can also offer too much brain stimulation.

Worry will have the same effect. After you have turned out the light and you find yourself tossing but not sleeping thirty minutes later, it is best to get out of bed and stop trying to sleep. If worry has kept you awake, then make a healthy contribution to your worry diary (Voice Diary). Some people find it helpful to find a room that has soft lighting. While there, do something soothing that is repetitive but not challenging — like knitting or reading. When you feel sleepy, head off to bed. If you’re not worrying but you are physically uncomfortable, you may want to try moving about. Walking or even mild exercise may be able to calm your body.

I hope this information has been helpful and you can soon get a better night’s rest.

Feel free to send me any suggestions of strategies you have successfully used to help get more sleep. You can contact me at this link.

There are many websites devoted to sleep and sleep deprivation. Here are a few to get you started:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation
http://www.sleepnet.com/depriv.htm
http://www.sleep-deprivation.com/
http://www.sleepdisorderchannel.com/stages/index.shtml
http://www.helpguide.org/life/sleeping.htm

Sleep Deprivation: Part 1

Not getting enough sleep is common to all of us. This happens when our body’s natural rhythm gets out of sync for a variety of reasons. This is most dramatic when we cross time zones while traveling by jet. Some nights we have a lot on our minds and will worry for a few hours before falling asleep at our regular time. Inactivity can also contribute to occasional sleeplessness. Studies show that over half of us occasionally experience loss of sleep.

Sleep deprivation refers to a condition that is much more chronic. When loss of sleep interferes with our normal activities it is called sleep deprivation. As you can guess, parts of our brain need to rest during sleep. When your brain sense it needs to rest, it will begin to shut down for very short periods of time which is called microsleep. Microsleep only lasts a few seconds Maybe you have experienced this as your head droops during a boring lecture or when driving late at night. The microsleep is sending you a signal that says "if you don’t give me more sleep soon, I’m going to shut down completely." Many traffic accidents are caused by ignoring this brain message.

Ironically, some people have the mistaken belief they can train themselves to live on less sleep than they normally get. This is different than a few individuals who are somehow born needing less sleep. One disturbing study found that people who consistently get less than four hours of sleep are prone to dying within six years at a rate three times greater than people who get more sleep.

What is Normal Sleep
Before we look further at sleep deprivation, let’s try to understand more thoroughly what sleep really is. Over fifty years ago, sleep researchers discovered that we all go through five different phases when we sleep. The first phase occurs before we actually go to sleep and is called the Waking Stage. It sounds strange that being awake is actually a sleep phase. This occurs when you begin to feel sleepy because your body is preparing itself for falling asleep. Several things happen here. As your body begins to prepare itself, your muscles begin to relax and your eye movement begins to slow down.

Next, your body enters what is called Stage One sleep. This begins when drowsiness sets in and your eyes finally close. This usually lasts about five to ten minutes. Even though this is a sleep stage, if you are awakened you may not feel as if you have really slept. Those of you who practice a muscle relaxation exercise or meditate will recognize this as the stage you experience when you are fully relaxed. Some people in this stage may have a sense of falling followed by sudden muscle contraction.

When your muscles begin to tense and relax (and you are not aware of this) you have entered sleep Stage Two. Now your heart rate slows down and your body temperature drops. This stage gets your body ready for deep sleep.

Stages three and four are similar except stage four is more intense. You may have heard of these stages referred to as delta sleep or slow-wave sleep. It is called slow-wave sleep because your brain patterns on an electromyogram show brain waves that are very slow.

These four stages generally run about ninety to a hundred and twenty minutes. Up to this point you have not yet been dreaming. Interestingly, you don’t immediately dream after stage four. It appears that after stage four you go back to stage three, then two and finally dream sleep. This complete forward-backward cycle occurs several times per night and can take anywhere from ninety minutes to two hours. When you dream your eyes move very rapidly so it is called REM sleep – REM stands for rapid eye movement. This sleep stage was not discovered until 1953.

As the night wears on, most of your sleep stays in the first two stages with some REM sleep thrown in. Some scientists think the brain does this in order "to create the healthiest possible balance to prevent fatigue and irritability during waking hours."

When you begin to dream a lot of changes take place in your brain and body. Even though your brain patterns look like stage one sleep, you will now display the telltale sign of dreaming: rapid eye movement (REM). Prior to this, much of your body functions have slowed down. Now your breathing and heart rate speed up and become irregular. If someone was watching, they might see twitching in your legs, face, or fingers. For most people, REM sleep is experienced about three to five times each night.

Here is the interesting piece about REM sleep: your major voluntary muscle groups become paralyzed. Why is this? Most scientists believe this is a safety factor built into the brain. When your muscles and brain are activated, the likelihood that you will act out your dream increases. As you can imagine people acted out their dreams while asleep (like driving a car) would have less chance of passing on their genes. They would probably take themselves out of the gene pool.

In this sleep stage a couple of interesting things can take place. If your brain doesn’t shut down your muscles, you may begin to sleepwalk (technically called somnambulism). People have done some amazing, silly, and dangerous things while in this state. While sleepwalking takes place when you are fully asleep with fully operating muscles. The opposite can also occur when you become awake while your body is still paralyzed. This experience is called hypnopompic sleep. This paralyzed-awake experience can also occur before fully falling asleep and is called a hypnogogic experience. Both are referred to as an HHE (hypnopompic-hypnogogic experience).

Best estimates are that twenty to thirty percent of the population may experience some form of this HHE brain state. Sometimes it is remembered and sometimes not. When experienced it can be frightening if you don’t know what is happening and why. No matter how scared you are, you cannot move or speak. It is usually fairly short-lived, no more than a few moments. Strange things can happen during these few moments when time seems to stand still. It is common for people to report some kind of "presence" that is threatening or even an "evil" presence. This presence is usually felt to be close by and may seem to be standing near or sitting on the bed watching or monitoring you. Some of the many experiences that accompany this is feeling is one of being strangled, attacked and having vivid hallucinations. Some people even report an out-of-body experience (OBE) like floating near the ceiling of the room. Even after the event is over, there can still be a sense of anxiety. From this description you can now understand how the idea of the incubus became popular in medieval Europe. In more modern times, we now know that alien abductees are those who have experienced an HHE.

So what’s the purpose of this back and forth activity in your brain during sleep. The answers are just beginning to appear. Many studies have lead researchers of sleep to think that one of the major functions of sleep is related to memory processing. Some studies have shown that sleep is responsible for allowing you to keep new memories. During sleep the brain can actually make new synapses and connections between brain cells.

Causes of Sleep Deprivation
So, why are so many people sleep deprived when sleep is so terribly important for health and well-being? It seems there are many reasons. Many people tell researchers their lives are so fast paced that they simply don’t have enough time to get everything done, let alone get enough sleep. Many contemporary societies value productivity. This can put sleep at the bottom of one’s personal priority list. Since most people (especially younger adults) are not aware of the detriment of sleep deprivation, they just accept being tired thinking they will catch up on the weekend and all will be well.

There are also a series of medical reasons for sleep deprivation that are called sleep disorders. One of the most common is sleep apnea. Many people who have this condition don’t even know they have it and just feel tired all the time. My co-author of The Worry Free Life had this condition for most of his life. When we went on a book tour, I was awakened one night in our motel room by the sound of a chain saw. I realized it was Pat snoring. As I listened I guessed the noise was more than snoring because there would be long pauses where it seemed he had stopped breathing. We talked about it the next day and he eventually found a physician and had surgery for the condition. After that, Pat reported he had never felt so refreshed. Sleep apnea is not only annoying but it can be dangerous by raising a person’s blood pressure.

One of the major psychological reasons for sleep deprivation is insomnia caused by worry. Most of us have some insomnia now and then. When it becomes more frequent, it is time to do something about it. Those of you who are using the tools in The Worry Free Life already know how to do this. Most of my clients have learned to sleep well by using a combination of the three stress reduction exercises and Voice Fighting.

Suggestions for combating insomnia include issues like depression, being overweight, or eating and drinking too much prior to sleep. The bottom line for all these suggestions is to change your thinking. If you remember the Domino Effect (page 25) you will also remember that behaviors are usually preceded by feelings that are caused by thought patterns. Worry is just another word for destructive thinking (or as we refer to it, the Voice).

Why is sleep deprivation so bad?
Research has shown that a lack of proper sleep translates to problems of poor concentration, increased irritability, and a decrease in school and job performance. Sleeplessness can also increase your vulnerability to certain illnesses because of a less effective immune system.

We mentioned traffic accidents resulting from sleep deprivation. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that more than 100,000 crashes each year are a result of drivers falling asleep at the wheel. This is because the brain begins to lose its ability to function at an appropriate level: malfunctioning of your brain neurons that have a drastic effect on perception and reaction time.

Being able to use language effectively more difficult as you get less sleep. Severe sleep deprivation can basically shut down all activity in your brain. What happens to your behavior when this condition sets in? The answer is, lots of nasty things. You can begin to slur your speech just as you would if you were drunk. One study found that if someone drives after being awake more than seventeen hours he or she will drive worse than someone who has a blood alcohol level of .05 percent – the legal limit for drunk driving. In addition to slurred speech, you may stutter, speak slower and in a monotone voice. Even if your speech sounded normal to you, you would still have trouble speaking intelligently. Instead of creatively using a rich vocabulary to express yourself, your brain would choose simple phrases that were clichéd and repetitious.

Another study found that reaction time was significantly impaired. When you are sleep deprived, you lose your creative ability for making logical decisions quickly. No wonder accidents and sleep deprivation are related. This is even made worse because your ability to multitask becomes less efficient. One of the most pernicious accidents occurs in hospitals when residents don’t get enough sleep (working to much with too little sleep has typically been one of the rites of passage for new physicians). Several studies have found out that sleep deprivation increases the number of medical errors in medical settings to increase dramatically. This is why I politely grilled my surgeon before my LASIK eye surgery. "Did you get enough sleep last night?" "Any major stresses with your family?" Only after she answered all my questions to my satisfaction did I let the surgery begin.

If you are person who has difficulty with focusing, attention and impulse control, sleep deprivation will only make these conditions worse. Well, what about stress? This, too, can be a problem because lack of sleep can increase your body’s production of stress hormones.

A sleep deprived body will begin to slow down the facility for metabolizing glucose. This can lead to early-stage diabetes type-2. As you can probably imagine, if the body does not metabolize sugar well, obesity will be more likely. This is exactly what one study found – the research suggested a link between sleep deprivation and weight gain. This problem then becomes a vicious circle because weight gain increases the likelihood of sleep apnea which increases the probability of sleep deprivation, and so on.

Is this the end of the bad news? Nope. If sleep deprivation continues too long you can experience hallucinations, temporary insanity or even death as your system shuts down.

To be continued Friday

The Female Brain: A Book Review

Louann Brizendine is a neuropsychiatrist at the University of California in San Francisco. Her book, The Female Brain, is a must read for every female and any male who wants to understand women. As most of you know, all babies begin life as females and remain that way for eight weeks. At that point if the female brain gets flooded with testosterone the baby gradually turns into a male.

This excessive male hormone has an immediate impact on the developing brain. The part of the brain that processes sex doubles in size. But that is not the only change that takes place. The communication center in the new male brain begins to shrink along with the part of the brain involved in hearing. I can hear most of you women saying, "That makes sense why he never listens to me, can’t carry on a decent conversation and thinks about sex all the time." As Dr. Brizendine puts it,

Just as women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion while men have a small country road, men have O’Hare Airport as a hub for processing
thoughts about sex whereas women have the airfield nearby that lands small and
private planes.

Dr. Brizendine wrote this book to explain why a women’s brain has an impact on what she values and thinks about, how she will communicate and who she decides to fall in love with. This is not only a book for women but men need to understand why women are not just male brains in a female body. Daniel Goleman emphasizes this point when he says, "Louann Brizendine has done a great favor for every man who wants to understand the puzzling women in his life. A breezy and enlightening guide to women — and a must-read for men."

To those people who would rather believe that the real differences between men and women are minor, Dr. Brizendine offers some interesting tidbits. Some of these may ring a bell with you. Women are good at remembering fights with their mates that are totally forgotten by the male. Talk about communication — men typically use about 7,000 words each day while women use almost three times as many (20,000). There is also an enormous gap between how often men and women think about sex — women think about it every couple days while the thought enters a man’s brain about once every minute. Women are highly tuned to the feelings of others. Men are also aware of feelings but only if someone cries or if they are physically threatened.

The Female Brain covers the life cycle of women from conception to after menopause. Dr. Brizendine names these cycles fetal, girlhood, puberty, sexual maturity/single woman, pregnancy, breast feeding, child rearing, perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause. In each of these phases she explains the hormonal changes, specific brain changes, and how reality changes as women move from phase to phase.

Woman’s intuition is real in the sense that women have brain circuits wired for decoding the smallest detail in other people’s reactions. To the dismay and confusion of men, women’s brains are expert at determining emotional nuances. The brain can automatically interpret facial expressions and find meaning in a person’s tone of voice. Research has shown that men are not that good at picking up on emotional nuances. Is this why women are so adept at being psychics? What they do is not supernatural but their success is completely understandable when we comprehend how the female brain works.

Many of my therapy clients tell me about being frustrated in trying to tell males how they feel. When I ask them to give me an example of what they say exactly, it comes across as vague, like a hint. I explain that men’s brains don’t do well at decoding hints. Women who have a lot of girlfriends are surprised to hear this because hinting works so well with their women friends. Then I give my client an example of what they could say to make a male brain hear and understand their message. My example is often met with surprise and disbelief because it seems so obvious. The next step for them is to learn how to talk "male" talk if they really want to get a man to hear them. It’s the opposite for men — I have to teach them "female" talk which is a much harder task.

Because of this male-female emotional disconnect, women are often disappointed when they "expect" men to respond like their women friends. When they don’t get the response they expect they will continue to send out subtle signals (for hours if need be) until there is an explosion. Either she will break down and cry or exhibit some other emotional response. Before this happens, the male may begin to complain about nagging.

For years, people thought these differences were the result of cultural influences and the dissimilar ways we raise boys and girls. Recent research shows these differences with newborns. Day old girls are more responsive to human faces and the crying of other newborns much more than baby boy. Little girls, only a year old, are much better at responding to sadness. This doesn’t change much with age. Another study found that adult women can identify faint signs of sadness in others nine times out of ten while men can only do this four times out of ten. Women are more than twice at good at this skill than men.

Men tend to do things they are good at; since we don’t do the emotional piece very well, we avoid emotionally charged situations when we can. When we go through difficult times, we often process our emotional pain by ourselves. We are puzzled that women don’t do the same and then want and expect the comfort of as many friends as possible for as long as possible.

Some women have objected to this emphasis on gender differences because it can be the basis for hurtful and unfair discrimination. The research that Dr. Brizendine and others are doing is showing that differences are a biological reality. Women need not be afraid of these differences.

But pretending that women and men are the same, while doing a disservice to both men and women, ultimately hurts women. Perpetuating the myth of the male norm means ignoring women’s real, biological differences in severity, susceptibility, and treatment of disease. It also ignores the different ways that they process thoughts and therefore perceive what is important.

I have covered a very small fraction of the information in this book. I hope you can get a copy and read this most important book to fill in the large gaps left by this short article.

Memory

Some of us have great memories while others of us forget more than we remember. After we reach 40, we begin to wonder why it becomes so much harder to remember where we put the car keys. Is it early onset Alzheimer's or are we slipping toward dementia? As we're beginning to learn this is normal as we age.

But what is memory? Many of us think memory is like a photograph or a recording somewhere in our brain. If only we could find that one place then we could remember what we wanted to remember. Research has shown us that memory is much more complicated than this. Memory is also different from perception because memory deals with events in our past.

Our memory process involves three steps. The first step is called the encoding step because it involves the intake of information and possibly creates what is called a memory trace. This is followed by the storage step. Our brain needs to place the information somewhere so that it can be maintained over time. When we want to recall a piece of information, the brain is involved in the last step called retrieval because we attempt to access the memory traces scattered throughout our brain.

This can sound like a daunting task. Our brain has about 100 billion brain cells. These cells work by being interconnected with many other cells. As they pass on information to these other cells, the number of pathways is astronomical. Amid all this interconnectedness, there is no one place where memory exists. Memory, we have discovered, is scattered throughout many different sites in our brain.

For example, say your brain encodes and stores a memory about a lunch you had with a friend. The memory of who your friend is goes one place for storage, the location of your lunch goes somewhere else. What you ate and the time of day are both stored in different locations in your brain. During the lunch, sights, sounds, smells, tastes are all distributed in separate parts of your brain. To retrieve this information, your hippocampus has to rummage through all these different areas of you brain to put together the memory of "your lunch." Where are these other places?

Although the hippocampus is considered the memory control center, many other parts of the brain are also involved in memory. Memories are distributed among such places as the cerebellum, cerebral cortex, amygdala and striatum. These different parts of the brain have different functions regarding your memory but they also affect each other.

To make things even more complicated, scientists now talk about different kinds of memory. You are probably familiar with the terms "long term" and "short term" memory. Short term memory is often referred to as our "working memory" because it generally lasts about thirty seconds and deals with about seven pieces of information at a time. If we repetitively concentrate on these items in short term memory, it is more likely they will eventually be transferred to long term memory storage.

Long term memory is where we permanently store information. Theoretically, it has an unlimited capacity. Psychologists have found that there are different types of long term memory. Each of these types has a different purpose.

One type is called procedural memory. This type of memory deals with "how" we do things and our skills involving motor patterns. Another is called declarative memory. We use this type of memory when we remember information or knowledge about our world. Examples of declarative memory would be remembering someone's name or when to attend a class you signed up for. Procedural memory would be used for remembering how to play the trombone, fix a table lamp or perform specific movements in aikido.

Declarative memory (remembering information) can be subdivided into episodic and semantic memory. Episodic memory remembers things that have a specific anchor in our past. We know where information came from and maybe the circumstances surrounding its origin. On the other hand, semantic memory is also about knowledge and information but we don't know where the information came from or when we might have learned it.

In 1987 a psychologist by the name of Daniel Schacter at Harvard, identified two other types of memory: explicit memory and implicit memory. He had been studying different types of memory tasks and found that some tasks were very active in recalling information. The person using this type of memory knows and is aware of what is being remembered. He called this explicit memory.

Implicit memory is a bit more difficult to explain. Essentially this memory type also recalls past experiences or information but during this recall, we are not consciously aware of these previous experiences. In a sense, procedural memory is a form of implicit memory. People continually use implicit, procedural memory. You know how to drive your care without having to consciously think about how to do it or remember when and how you learned to do it.

With all these different memory types in the brain and locations where memory is stored, it is now easy to see that our memories are not stored as in a video camera. When we want or need to retrieve a memory, the brain begins searching for these pieces and tries to put them together into a meaningful whole.

You have probably had the experience of trying to remember something like a person's name. You recognize the face, where you've seen the person before, any emotion attached to it, but still have to say, "the name is on the tip of my tongue." When this happens, your brain is searching for that missing piece but is unable to find it. We keep trying to come up with the name and often find that it pops into our head when we have given up trying to remember it.

Our brain, then, constructs memories of past information like trying to find the pieces of a puzzle. Sometimes, when our brain cannot find the missing piece, it will get another piece that is similar but not accurate. Many of us have talked about a childhood event with a parent only to have them say, "but that's not how it happened at all." This frustrates us because we "know" that our memory of the event is the way it really happened.

This is why it is so easy to get into an active argument with someone about what "really" happened in the past that both people were a part of. Each person is absolutely convinced he or she is correct and the other person has to be wrong.

As if this were not bad enough. Elizabeth Loftus, a highly respected psychologist who specializes in memory research, has found that our memories can be manipulated by how our external cues are arranged. In a famous experiment she showed a video clip of a car lightly hitting another car. After watching the clip half the people were asked to estimate how fast the car had been moving when it "smashed" into the other car. The other half of the group were asked how fast the car had been moving when it "bumped" the other car.

The people in the "smashed" group guessed that the car was traveling much faster than the speed estimated by the second "bumped" group. Merely by asking the question with a single different word – smashed vs. bumped – was enough to influence the memories of people in the first group.

Because your memory is an active process, it uses a variety of strategies to retrieve information. It can and often will fill in the missing elements without your permission. As memory research continues, we will probably find even more surprises awaiting us.

Psychology and the Brain

Several of you have written to me and asked for some articles on neuroscience. Well, actually you didn't used that word but you said you were interested in topics on the brain and memory. Although I am not trained as a neuropsychologist, I'm fascinated by the topic. It is also one of the hottest fields in psychology today.

Psychologists studying the brain are some of the most original thinkers in the science of human behavior. The human brain is the most complicated organ in our body. Even though computers have become better at chess than the greatest human players, some of the tasks human children taken for granted and do quite simply are beyond the skill of the most powerful computers.

In addition to what psychologists discover about the brain, I am amazed and have profound admiration for psychologists who find out how the brain works. The "how" in science is called "experimental design." The tenets of designing a good experiment are quite simple and used by all competent scientists in all fields of inquiry.

Designing a good psychology experiment includes comparing the subjects of the experiment with a control group, making certain that the subjects are randomly chosen and using what is referred to as the gold standard, the "double blind" study. This means that neither the subjects nor the experimenters really know who is doing what until the study is finished. Different procedures and the subjects are coded in order to eliminate what is called "experimenter bias." This is the basic outline of a research design; the details are much more complex.

Often when I hear about some research, I often wonder how they do it? For example a psychologist, Dr. Alexandra Lamont in the United Kingdom, determined that 1-yr old babies preferred music that they heard in the womb a year before they were born. Now, you might ask yourself the same question I did. How do we know if a 1-year old prefers one thing to another. It certainly would not do to ask the infant, "which music do you prefer?"

A group of pregnant women were selected to participate in this study. Each mother played a certain kind of music repeatedly during the final three months of gestation. (The auditory system of the fetus is fully functioning about this time). One group of mothers played classical music, another group played Top 40, the third group world played reggae, while the fourth group of mothers played world beat. Each group of unborn babies heard their music over and over.

After birth, the mothers were not allowed to play these songs to their children for one year. At the end of this year the experiment was begun. Dr. Lamont played two pieces of music to each of these four groups of children. Each group of children heard the music that had been repetitively played a year earlier plus other music that matched the womb music in tempo and style. In other words, Dr. Lamont wondered if the children would prefer the music their mothers played instead of something kind of like it.

Here is where it becomes easy to admire the ingenuity of scientists. Before reading on, stop and think for a few minutes how you would have figured out which type of music the child preferred. Did the first group like the classical music better than something sort of like classical music? Were the preferences similar in the other three groups?

Okay, here is what she did. Each infant sat on the mother's lap with two speakers on either side of the child. One speaker would play the music from a year ago, the other speaker would play the similar music. But this still leaves the question open – how would this help to discover which music the babies preferred.

No music came from either speaker until the baby turned its head in the direction of the speaker. Babies are curious and wiggly. When the baby turned left, the left speaker came on; when the baby turned to the right, the right speaker played its music. Eventually, the baby's brain realized that it could turn different music on or off by turning in a specific direction. What Dr. Lamont found is that preference was determined by how much time the baby spent facing in one direction. How clever.

Now, Dr. Lamont didn't invent this procedure. It was already well known by other researchers who studied infant behavior and is called the "infant head turning procedure" (catchy name). The study found that all the infants looked longer at the music that was coming from the speaker that played the music they heard prior to birth.

Dr. Lamont, being the excellent researcher that she was, used a control group of children. These children had not had the same music played to them prenatally. The same experiment was done with them, but it is was found the babies had no preference for any particular style of music.

As a postscript, some of you may be familiar with what is called the "Mozart Effect." When the media got a hold of this study they concluded that babies who listened to Mozart would become smarter than if they did not listen to it. Cottage industries sprang up selling and promoting CDs and programs for "making kids smarter."

Unfortunately, Dr. Lamont's study never came to this conclusion and further studies showed that listening to Mozart – or any other music – did not increase intelligence. Unsurprisingly, the Mozart myth lingers to this day for unsuspecting parents.

The Anticipation of Pain

A study done in 1999 by researchers in England and Canada shows how the brain reacts to pain by showing that the fear of pain is worse than the pain itself. Many of us have learned that anticipating physical or emotional pain can actually make the pain worse. People who worry about having panic attacks are almost certain to have them and the more they worry the worse the attacks are. Similarly, waiting in the dentist’s chair for the drilling to begin can be excruciating for some people. Then, the sound of the highspeed drill can send them over the edge.

The researchers built a "pain machine" that could deliver pain to a person without actually causing harm. It might be noted that the head researcher tried the machine on himself before using it with the research subjects.

When a participant was hooked up to the pain machine, a light came on before the pain was delivered. The light-pain combination was delivered randomly so that the person didn’t know when the light would come on. However, the subject did know that when the light came on, the pain was soon to follow.

The scientists monitored brain activity as the light-pain combination was delivered. What they found was that one part of the brain was activated when the light came on and another part when the pain was actually felt. These two brain areas were very close to each other.

The anticipation of pain caused the brain to respond and may prove that the anticipation of pain is worse than the pain itself. This anticipation is often accompanied by automatic physical reactions such as rapid heart beat, muscle tension, rapid breathing and a racing mind. These reactions often makes the pain worse. Studies have shown that if a person relaxes as a response to pain anticipation, the pain is actually less intense.

What makes this even more interesting is that previous research has shown us that we often become aware of something unconsciously before the awareness hits our consciousness. That means there may be times we will "feel" the anticipation of the pain before it happens but do so at a low level of awareness — the "gut level feeling."

The reason certain medications such as narcotics, alcohol and antidepressants seem to reduce pain is not that they act directly on the pain. By reducing awareness of it and damping the sympathetic nervous system, we just don’t feel the pain as badly.

So what can you do if you have a dental appointment coming up? Or maybe you experience anxiety in closed places. You can check out our blogs on stress management.

These skills are excellent tools for managing pain and stress. You may want to begin with the introduction to stress management. The skills you will need to learn are Natural Breathing, Muscle Relaxation and Mind Calming. As with all skills, how well you can do them will depend on well they work. Some people try to use these skills only when they are in a stressful situation. This is too late — sort of like trying to learn how to swim after falling out of the boat.

Practice these skill now, so that when you need them, you can manage your pain more effectively. Doing so will also increase your self-confidence and well-being.

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Using 10% of Your Brain

Have you ever heard that you only use 10% of your brain? Do you think smarter people use more of their brain? We are all familiar with geniuses like Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton. Child prodigies also amaze us. Mozart could read and write music, play the keyboard and violin when he was only five years old. Savants are people whose brains can do seemingly impossible mathematical calculations at breakneck speeds — like figuring out cube roots faster than the rest of us can do on a calculator. If science could only figure out how the rest of us can use that unused portion of our brain, then maybe all of us could have superhuman mental powers.

Some people even think that mental telepathy and other psychic powers come from the other 90% of the brain. Because of this, these folks believe that we all have potential psychic powers. Bookstore shelves are crowded with books purporting to show people how they can use their latent psychic powers by developed the idling part of their brains.

The truth is this notion of using only a small fraction of our brain is a myth. Nevertheless, it is a strong myth because, to most people, the brain is quite mysterious. We all struggle with the stubbornness of our brains to work like we want them to. We forget simple things like someone's name, where we laid our keys, important meetings and multitude of other things we expect our brains to accomplish.

What scientists have discovered is that we use every part of our brain. In other words, all parts are working most of the time. This does not mean all parts of the brain are working all the time. It is true that when we are sleeping or resting, our brain may only be using ten percent of its capacity. That is like a car engine idling at a red light. There is still plenty of unused power that can be called upon when needed.

Moreever, within a twenty-four period, you will probably use all of your brain at some time. The brain is what drives the rest of our body. It has been determined that the brain consumes more energy per weight than any other part of our body. It only accounts for three percent of our body's weight (it weighs about three pounds). Even so, it consumes twenty percent of our body's energy.

Even when we sleep and are unconscious our brain is highly active. Those parts of our brain that control complex thinking and self-awareness are still on and functioning. Even such a simple act as getting a cup of coffee in the morning creates a tremendous outburst of activity within our entire brain in only a few seconds.

With all of our knowledge and continuing research of our brains, scientists are still puzzled about consciousness. No one area of the brain can be found to be responsible for this amazing feat called consciousness. There are also many other mysteries yet to be solved about how our brain works. As someone has said, it's not that we use ten percent of our brain, the real truth is that we only understand about ten percent of how it all works.

For more information on this topic you can go to the University of Washington website

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