‘Power nap’ prevents burnout

Evidence is mounting that sleep – even a nap – appears to enhance information processing and learning. New experiments by NIMH grantee Alan Hobson, M.D., Robert Stickgold, Ph.D., and colleagues at Harvard University show that a midday snooze reverses information overload and that a 20 percent overnight improvement in learning a motor skill is largely traceable to a late stage of sleep that some early risers might be missing. Overall, their studies suggest that the brain uses a night’s sleep to consolidate the memories of habits, actions and skills learned during the day.

Reporting in the July, 2002 Nature Neuroscience, Sara Mednick, Ph.D., Stickgold and colleagues demonstrate that “burnout” – irritation, frustration and poorer performance on a mental task — sets in as a day of training wears on. Subjects performed a visual task, reporting the horizontal or vertical orientation of three diagonal bars against a background of horizontal bars in the lower left corner of a computer screen. Their scores on the task worsened over the course of four daily practice sessions. Allowing subjects a 30-minute nap after the second session prevented any further deterioration, while a 1-hour nap actually boosted performance in the third and fourth sessions back to morning levels.

Recordings of brain and ocular electrical activity monitored while napping revealed that the longer 1-hour naps contained more than four times as much deep, or slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep than the half-hour naps.

CO2 ‘highest for 650,000 years’

This morning I have been reading these news. It is not like I haven’t been aware of the bad situation of our planet, it’s just that we have been submerged by news like that, and what surprises me the most is the reaction: feeble indeed I’d say. I mean, this should be the top priority of every single intelligent person in the world, after all this is the only place we have to live.

We don’t have other places to go when this will be gone, and we don’t know when the process will start being irreversible (if it hasn’t already happened). Nevertheless, there is still people who seem careless about the problem, and not only don’t actively do anything to settle it, to try to find a solution, but it even not welcome the proposals made by the others (like USA did with the Kyoto protocol).

People do not realize the situation, I don’t know whether it is because they are basically selfish, or because they are unable to think large-scale, to see the whole world like their own house and not only like their neighborhood; unable to think in terms of centuries and of humanity, not in terms of years and individuals. Maybe this is a limit of the human being, a thing which will inevitably lead him to his own destruction.

Coincidence

Our day-to-day life is bombarded with fortuities or, to be more precise, with the accidental meetings of people and events we call coincidences. “Co-incidence” means that two events unexpectedly happen at the same time, they meet. We do not even notice the great majority of such coincidences. [...] Human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion. They are composed like music. Guided by this sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual. [...] Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.

It is wrong, then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences, but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty.

- The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 1982, by Milan Kundera

Juggling ‘can boost brain power’

Learning to juggle can cause changes in the brain, scientists have found. Using brain scans, the researchers from the University of Regensburg, Germany, showed that in 12 people who had learnt to juggle, certain brain areas had grown. But three months later, during which time people stopped juggling, the brain had gone back to its normal size.

The team studied 24 people who had no juggling ability. They were scanned using voxel-based morphometry, a technique which measures concentrations of brain tissue. Half were then asked to teach themselves to juggle for at least 60 seconds using the traditional three-ball cascade routine, and given three months to practise.

All 24 were then scanned again. There was no change in the brains of the non-juggling group. But brain scans of those who had learnt to juggle showed two areas had increased in size. Jugglers had more grey matter – which consists largely of the nerve cells – in the mid-temporal area and the left posterior intraparietal sulcus, which both process visual motion information.

But after a further three months, in the people who had stopped juggling, the increase in grey matter had reduced. The scientists, led by Dr Arne May, said the changes could have been caused by an increase in cell production or by changes in the connections between cells.

Dr Vanessa Sluming, a senior lecturer in medical imaging at the University of Liverpool, UK, has previously studied musicians and found they retain more brain cells than non-players. She said the juggling research was interesting because it had been carried out amongst adults learning a new skill, rather than looking at people who had learnt a skill as a child.

- BBC News

Repetita iuvant

Psychological studies have shown that rehearsal of the same information again and again in the mind accelerates and potentiates the degree of transfer of short-term memory into long-term memory and therefore accelerates and potentiates consolidation. The brain has a natural tendency to rehearse newfound information that catches the mind’s attention. Therefore, over a period of time, the important features of sensory experiences become progressively more and more fixed in the memory stores. This explains why a person can remember small amounts of information studied in depth far better than large amounts of information studied only superficially. It also explains why a person who is wide awake can consolidate memory far better than a person who is in a state of mental fatigue.

One of the most important features of consolidation is that new memories are codified into different classes of information. During this process, similar types of information are pulled from the memory storage bins and used to help process the new information. The new and old are compared for similaritiesand differences, and part of the storage process is to store the information about these similarities and differences, rather than only to store the new information unprocessed. Thus, during modification, the new memories are not stored randomly in the brain but are stored in direct association with other memories of the same type. This is necessary if one is to be able to “search” the memory store at a later date to find the required information.

- Guyton and Hall, Textbook of Medical Physiology (10th Edition)

Fertility vote collapses

The referendum has failed to reach the 50% turnout figure necessary for it to be valid. Only about 25,9% of Italian voters cast their ballots in the two-day referendum.

Excluded those unable to reach the polling places for external causes, the result has proved that about 74,1% of Italians are either persons who don’t give a damn, or ignorants, or arrogants (those who deliberately didn’t vote to impose their opinion on the others).

This is a clear demonstration Italy has a system which facilitates these kind of persons to rule the destiny of the country; how can there be hopes of progress in such conditions?

Turnout has been affected by a call for abstention made by the Catholic Church. I feel a strong sense of discomfort and also some kind of disgust thinking about it. Taking advantage of the disengagement and the indifference often shown from Italians in occasions like this one to induce the abstension seems deeply immoral to me, especially from an Institution which cannot be regardless about the morality.

Assisted fertility

Italians are being called to the polls on Sunday and Monday (12th and 13th of June) in a referendum on revoking controversial rules on assisted fertility. The ground rules of Italian referendums are that, irrespective of the proportion of “yes” and “no” votes, more than 50% of registered voters have to turn out in order for a ballot to be valid.

What is happening is that those contrary on revoking such rules have been promoting a campaign to boycott the referendum in order to invalidate it so that, joining to those who will not go to vote, they will have better chances to have things on their side.

I believe that for such a delicate and complex topic it cannot be stated what is right and what is wrong, in an absolute way, otherwise there wouldn’t be the need for a referendum. Therefore I think it is right to do what the majority of people believe and hence is very important that everyone will go to vote.

I will do what I consider to be fair and what my conscience tells me is right. I will go to vote not with the claim of being from the right side, nor with the hope to win: I have full respect of both the positions and I will truly and sincerely accept the decision of the majority whatever it will turn out to be.

I totally disapprove the act of boycotting the poll: this attitude is despotic, arrogant and anti-democratic. The people who will act like that will impose their opinion on the others, and this is intolerably unfair, independently on which side will turn out to be the right one.

Reason and Passion

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or our rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.

-The Prophet, 1923, Kahlil Gibran

Rest Your Body

If we want to maintain health, vitality and good cheer, it is essential that we get adequate amounts of deep, restful sleep. The Taoists concur with the old adage “Early to bed, early to rise.” To rise with or before light and to begin to settle down and sleep with nightfall—this is the natural order of things. It is the way human being lived for countless ages. Today, bright electric lights seemingly turn nigh into day. Yet our bodies’ natural rhythms remain tied to the sun and its light. In addition to the lights themselves, modern technology gives us so many things to do with them. Most people spend their evenings with televisions, stereos, computers, video games, or other electronic gadgets that tend to excite the nervous system. This nervous excitement, combined with the general stresses of modern life, may make it difficult for us to go to bed early or even to sleep at all.

Try to wind down your activities so that you are ready to go to sleep between 9 and 10 P.M. I know this advice may seem difficult to follow for some. I was a night owl myself for many years. Especially when I was younger, I thought going to sleep early was boring and staying up late was fun and exciting. However, in more recent years, I find myself retiring early and naturally rising between five and six o’clock in the morning, the time which the ancient Chinese referred to as “the hour of arousal.” Since changing my habits, I find that I feel more rested with less sleep.

The Taoists tell us that every hour we sleep before midnight is worth two hours after midnight. They believe that we do most of our dreaming between the hours of 1 and 5 A.M. we all know that while we are dreaming, our bodies do not reach the deepest levels of rest. Modern sleep researchers have confirmed that sleep becomes lighter as night progresses. Make your bedroom as dark as possible before you go to sleep. The general rule is: the darker the room, the deeper you will sleep. If you are in excellent health, have peace of mind, eat well, and retire early, six hours of sleep is plenty.

Lacking any of these conditions, you will require more. How much more will depend on you. Be aware that you can sleep too much and that quality of sleep is as important as quantity.

Another aspect of getting adequate rest is taking time to do nothing, to just be. If you can find even twenty minutes a day to sit or lie quietly in a yard or park, gaze out a window, or lie down on a bed or couch with your eyes closed (without falling asleep) you will be amazed at the rejuvenating effects these brief interludes can bring. When we are doing nothing, we are resting not only our bodies but our minds and emotions as well. Take time to be still and listen to the quiet.

- The Tao of Abundance, 1999, by Laurence G. Boldt

The 12 Principles of character

The 12 Principles of character:

1. Honesty
2. Understanding
3. Compassion
4. Appreciation
5. Patience
6. Discipline
7. Fortitude
8. Perseverance
9. Humor
10. Humility
11. Generosity
12. Respect

- Kathryn B. Johnson