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The Nuts and Bolts of Emotional Sobriety
One of the cornerstones of alcoholism recovery is what’s called “emotional sobriety.” The idea is that alcoholics and other addicts, if they hope to stay sober over the long haul, must learn to regulate the negative feelings that can lead to discomfort, craving and—ultimately—relapse. It’s a lifelong project, a whole new way of thinking about life’s travails. But the recovery literature also says “first things first”—which simply means “don’t drink.” Especially in the early days of recovery, alcoholics are counseled not to analyze why they are addicted, or how they might have avoided alcoholism: “Don’t think and don’t drink” is the maxim.
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Why Does Conflict Arise When Social Identity is Threatened?
Facing news of economic decline in the US and loss of international status may motivate opposition to actions that seem to compromise American group identity.
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Neuroscientist traces roots of his drug addiction
CTV News: Mark Lewis spent 15 years hooked on just about any drug you can think of: alcohol, LSD, cocaine, heroin, opium, prescription painkillers. Today, he is a neuroscientist and professor of applied psychology at the University of Toronto, who had just written a new memoir, entitled "Memoirs of an Addicted Brain." But this is no drug addict tell-all. Instead, Lewis details honestly his life as an addict, while drawing on his knowledge of neuroscience and the brain's workings to try to explain it. Lewis says he wanted to explain why brains get addicted and says it seemed only natural to use his own experience to do so.
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Music Training Improves Verbal Intelligence in Children
Forbes: A new study to be published in the journal Psychological Science shows a simple, yet extraordinarily effective way to improve the verbal intelligence of 4-6 year olds: train them using music. The study focused on 48 4-6 year olds who were divided into two groups. One group was taught the basic fundamentals of music, including pitch, rhythm, melody and other concepts. The other group was taught visual art training in the basics such as shapes, colors, lines, and other concepts. The two groups were taught these lessons twice a day, for one hour session apiece, over the course of 20 days.
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A Moral Gene?
Scientific American: Morality is often considered to be the domain of philosophers, not biologists. But scientists have often wondered what role our genomes play in directing our moral compass. Today, a paper was published in the open access journal PLoS One which found moral decision making was influenced by different forms of a single gene. Picture yourself standing at branching train tracks with a unstoppable train barreling towards you. On one side, an evil villain has tied five people, while on the other, he has tied only one. You’ve got the switch in your hands which chooses which track the train goes down.
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Reading faces an imperfect science
The Vancouver Sun: Millions of dollars may be being misspent on threat-detection methods that rely on facial expression recognition, according to a report this month by a noted Canadian researcher. In the October issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, Lisa Feldman Barrett rebuts the notion of there being six to 10 biologically basic emotions that are encoded - and easily interpreted - on people's faces.
