Breakfast Makes You Smarter

“Coffee may get your body going in the morning, but adding a

bowl of cereal may make you smarter,” reports RealAge.com, commenting upon a study that appeared in Physiology and Behavior.

People who drank only coffee for breakfast tested mentally inferior to those who also had a bowl of cereal. The test involved various information processing tasks. Those who ate cereal also reported an enhanced mood and were more relaxed.

According to RealAge.com, eating breakfast can reduce your “real age” by

1.1 years.

Laughter is Relaxing

“Being weak with laughter is no joke,” reports Reuters Health news service. Laughing causes our muscles to go limp, according to a study published in the journal The Lancet. Researchers at Leiden University used a neurological reflex to study the effect of laughter on muscular activity. Tapping the shin bone causes the calf muscle to reflexively contract. When volunteer subjects were laughing, the reflex disappeared. When they were merely smiling, there was no effect.

One of the researchers, Dr. G.J. Lammers, noted that the phrase, “weak with laughter” exists in several languages. “Up to 15.5% of individuals reported muscle weakness during various emotions,” he said. The researchers speculated that their study might shed new light on a condition known as cataplexy, where strong emotion causes muscle weakness so severe that the person collapses.

For more information, see http://www.thelancet.com/newlancet/reg/issues/vol354no9181/menu_NOD3.html

Spiritual Intelligence Defined

Spiritually intelligent individuals are able, for one thing, to transcend the physical and material. So proposes Robert A. Emmons in his new book, The Psychology of Ultimate Concerns: Motivation and Spirituality in Personality (The Guilford Press). Transcendence requires an intuitive perception that sees beyond the literal to experience synchronicities, unity and a kinship with life. His four other dimensions of spiritual intelligence:

· The ability to experience heightened states of consciousness.

· The ability to sanctify everyday experience. To sanctify is to set aside for a special purpose, setting a spiritual intention to appreciate in a special way one’s relationships, work and personal goals.

· The ability to utilize spiritual resources to solve problems.

· The ability to be virtuous: to show forgiveness, to express gratitude, to be humble and show compassion.

Well Adjusted Moms Produce Healthy Babies

In deciding what steps to take to insure a healthy baby with a wonderous soul, parents might wish to consider suporting the emotional state of the mother. “Women who feel positive about themselves, their futures, and their ability to control important aspects of their lives are likely to bear healthy-weight infants, even under difficult circumstances,” reports the Center for the Advancement of Health.

In a study of 230 pregnant women of varying ethnic status researchers at the University of California, Irvine found that women with these positive psychological resources often experience lower stress, a condition frequently linked with full-term births. Reporting their research in the journal Health Psychology, the researchers concluded that psychological resources and stress, rather than ethnicity, predicted what kind of births the women would have.

For more information, see the web site of the Center for the Advancement of Health, www. cfah.org

Researchers Discover Acupuncture’s Secret

A new discovery reveals insights into the secret of acupuncture’s modus operandi. The finding, reported in the American Journal of Phsysiology, contradicts the assumption that acupuncture functions through the body’s meridians. In a collaborative study between Dr. John Longhurst of the University of California-Irvine and Li Peng of Shanghai Medical University, the ability of acupuncture to lower blood pressure was successfully manipulated by controlling the brain’s ability to produce endorphins. It appears that the power of acupuncture, at least in regulating blood pressure, operates through the endorphin system.

The researchers’ next step, according to a report distributed by the Scripps Howard News Service,  is to determine which nerve cells in the endorphin system are being stimulated by acupuncture and whether any other parts of the nervous system may contribute to acupuncture's effects on the cardiovascular system.

More People Believe in Ghosts

Whether it’s because we’ve become more easily scared, or because the barrier between us and the otherworld is becoming thinner, more people today believe in ghosts than did twenty years ago, according to a report released by the Associated Press.

One third of one thousand people responding to a recent Gallup poll indicated a belief in ghosts. Twenty years ago, the same poll indicated that only one in nine people believed in ghosts. One in five said they believed in witches, which is twice the rate reported twenty years ago.

Native Americans Not Ecologists

The romantic vision of the Native American as living in ecological harmony with nature has been shattered by the scholarly book, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (W. W. Norton) by  Shepard Krech III. Natives practiced a number of habits that we would consider insensitive to the environment. Because of the abundance in which they lived, they had no need to be ecologically aware.

Some of their practices involved mass slaughter of wildlife. The book notes that rather than being concerned that their practices might interfere with the animals’ reproduction cycle, natives were more concerned that the animals might not be able to reincarnate.

Sleeping Patterns Not Universal

Our pattern of sleeping six to eight hours in a row each night is not a universal biological patterns among humans. Anthropologist Carol M. Worthman of Emory University realized that our perspective on sleep is based upon observations primarily of modern western society. Searching for evidence from anthropological investigation, she found that sleep patterns vary widely and reported her findings in Science News.

In many indigenous cultures, for example, sleep is a communal, episodic event, with many people sharing the same bedroom, going to sleep at different times, sleeping for awhile, getting up to perform various activities, then going back to sleep. Communal sleep provides safety from intruders. For many indigenous cultures, episodic sleep prevents the deeper stages of sleep, and dreams, where spirit possession or soul loss is most feared.

Sleep patterns for prehistoric humans is unknown. Research on volunteers kept in total darkness revealed a sleep pattern of two, four to five hour sleep periods each twenty-four hour period, resembling the sleep patterns of many animals. The researchers noted that this pattern resulted in greater dream recall among the participants.

Research Advances on Thought Power

Rats are learning to move objects by thought alone. Actually, it is research on robot control that lends itself to this conclusion. Dr John Chapin, of the MCP Hahnemann University School of Medicine in Philadelphia has shown that it is possible to use a rat’s mere brain cell activity to control a robotic device.

Dr. Chapin trained rats to press a lever to make a robot arm move to deliver a reward, according to a report appearing in Nature Neuroscience. He monitored the rat’s brain to find the nerve cells that were active during that lever pressing. He then used electrodes to link the robot arm to those brain cells. Afterwards, the rats continued to press a lever to move the robot, but soon learned that they need to simply “think” about pressing the lever. This research will lead to the development of improved, and more natural, prosthetic devices.

Monkey See, Monkey Speak

Researchers in animal intelligence and communication continue to make advances suggestive that animals can think and approximate human language skills. The chimpanzees at Georgia State’s famed Language Research Center can now manipulate words to form original sentences according to a report published in the London Sunday Times. A new development allows the chimps to progress beyond sign language.

Communicating in a style like the physicist Stephen Hawking, the chimpanzees use a computer keyboard to select a sequence of symbols. An electronic speech synthesizer then announces the chimpanzee’s statement in electronic English: “It’s hot. I want to go to the pool.” One of the most advanced chimps, “Panbanisha,” has begun to teach her child how to use the keyboard to make simple statements.

Researchers have noted that some chimps have begun copying human speech sounds, contradicting assumptions that their voice box was incapable of creating speech.

One of the researchers commented, “Over time our opinions of apes could change and one day we may have to extend them human rights. Who knows, soon Panbanisha may voice an opinion on that."