Faith found to reduce errors on psychological test

At least for one type of test, be­lief in God can help re­duce mis­takes and anx­i­e­ty, ac­cord­ing to new re­search that al­so shows dis­tinct brain ac­ti­vity pat­terns in be­liev­ers.

In two stud­ies led by Uni­ver­s­ity of To­ron­to psy­cholo­g­ist Mi­chael In­zlicht, par­ti­ci­pants per­formed a Stroop task, a well-known psy­chological test that as­s­eses cog­ni­tive con­trol. Mean­while, elec­trodes meas­ured brain ac­ti­vity in the test-takers.

Com­pared to non-be­liev­ers, In­zlicht found, re­li­gious par­ti­ci­pants showed sig­nif­i­cantly less ac­ti­vity in a part of the brain called the an­te­ri­or cin­gu­late cor­tex. This struc­ture is be­lieved to help mod­i­fy be­hav­ior by sig­nal­ing when at­ten­tion and con­trol are needed, usu­ally as a re­sult of some anx­i­e­ty-producing event like mak­ing a mis­take.

The stronger their re­li­gious zeal and faith, the less cell ac­ti­vity in that zone—and the few­er er­rors sub­jects made, In­zlicht and col­leagues re­ported. They de­tailed the find­ings in the cur­rent on­line is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence.

Source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090306_god

Language of music may really be universal

Africans who have never listened to radio can pick up on emotions in Western music, according to a new report.

Na­tive Af­ri­cans who have nev­er lis­tened to the ra­dio be­fore can none­the­less pick up on hap­py, sad, and fear­ful emo­tions in West­ern mu­sic, ac­cord­ing to a new re­port. The re­sult shows that the ex­pres­sion of those three bas­ic emo­tions in mu­sic can be un­iver­sally rec­og­nized, the re­search­ers said.

“These find­ings could ex­plain why West­ern mu­sic has been so suc­cess­ful in glob­al mu­sic dis­tri­bu­tion, even in mu­sic cul­tures that do not as strongly em­pha­size the role of emo­tion­al ex­pres­sion in their mu­sic,” said Thom­as Fritz of the Max Planck Institute for Hu­man Cog­ni­tive and Brain Sci­ences in Leip­zig, Ger­many.

Source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090320_music

A seat of wisdom in the brain?

Two re­search­ers have com­piled what they say is the first schol­arly re­view of the ba­sis in the brain of wis­dom—once the sole prov­ince of re­li­gion and phi­los­o­phy.

The study by Dilip V. Jeste and Thom­as W. Meeks of the Uni­ver­s­ity of Ca­li­for­nia, San Die­go, was pub­lished in the re­search jour­nal Ar­chives of Gen­er­al Psy­chi­a­try on April 6.

“Defin­ing wis­dom is rath­er sub­jec­tive, though there are many si­m­i­lar­i­ties in def­i­ni­tion across time and cul­tures,” said Jeste, a psy­chi­a­trist and neu­ro­sci­ent­ist. But “our re­search sug­gests that there may be a ba­sis in neuro­bi­ol­o­gy for wis­dom’s most un­iver­sal traits.”

Wis­dom has been de­fined over cen­turies and civ­il­iz­a­tions to en­com­pass nu­mer­ous psy­cho­log­i­cal traits. Com­po­nents of wis­dom are com­monly agreed to in­clude such at­tributes as em­pa­thy, com­pas­sion or al­tru­ism, emo­tion­al sta­bil­ity, self-un­der­stand­ing, and pro-social at­ti­tudes, in­clud­ing a tol­er­ance for oth­ers’ val­ues.

“But ques­tions re­main: is wis­dom un­iver­sal, or cul­tur­ally based?” said Jeste. “Is it un­iquely hu­man, re­lat­ed to age? Is it de­pend­ent on ex­pe­ri­ence or can wis­dom be taugh­t?”


Source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090424_wisdom