the evolving mind

Could you imagine making a walk in space?! Using a wrench in zero gravity?! And with a view like that! [photo thanks to NASA]

I wonder if what makes an experience valuable is, in part, the uniqueness. I once rode a seat suspended over snow-covered ground one mile and 3000+ feet upward in a blizzard. Then I got off an slid all the way down to join my family again using a pair of fat, slippery sticks attached to my boots.

Yah, I skied a big mountain in a blizzard. Big deal? No. Largely because it is not rare. Countless thousands of others have done it and will. But man, what an experience.

If a $100 ticket and a few hundred bucks worth of equipment could get you onto the International Space Station — how valued an experience would that be?

Disney World, done it. Paris in springtime, done it . . . If anyone can do it, how precious is it?

Social values influence our experiences. Sometimes that’s a good thing. But if you can’t get excited about taking a chair lift to the top of a mountain in a blizzard, I’m not sure how much how deep your appreciation of a trip into “outer” space would be.

Technorati Links: culture, psychology

In a post I wrote roughly two weeks ago, The Link Between Bullying and Psychosis I mentioned a new scientific finding that linked, well, you can read. I warned that because two variables are linked does not mean that one caused the other.

But does the bullying outright cause these symptoms to develop? Possibly. There is another possibility, however. Rather than bullies creating future psychotic individuals through their abusive behavior, it is possible that in choosing their targets bullies are picking up on the earliest signs of mental health problems to come. So the link is not causal but merely predictive. Being picked as the target of bullying might be little more than a sign of psychological health starting to go wrong.

Yesterday I encountered a new study that supports my reasoning.

Children with more depressed and anxious symptoms in first and second grade were more likely to be victimized by third grade.

Author of the study, Bonnie J. Leadbeater, said,

“Children’s early mental health problems can set the stage for abuse by their peers.”

So five points for me. But back to the original question. Does bullying cause psychosis or predict it? My now-a-little-more-informed answer, “Outright cause, no; contribute to, yes.”

Technorati Links: critical thinking, mental health, mental illness

I learned something new yesterday. Now I’m a bit ashamed I didn’t “get off my posterior” and fill that gap sooner. What I didn’t know about had to do with the birds and the bees. Well, blossoms and insects, really. Specifically, once pollen grains are transported from one flower to the next, how do they make their way to the plant’s female gamete?

In the article Sex Life Of Plants Reveals Conflicts Between The Sexes I encountered a sentence that changed my life.

Pollen grains need to have a pollen tube that can quickly penetrate the surface of the pistil and grow down to the ovule.

Oh cool!

Okay, that one fact won’t change my life significantly. But it did bring a “so that how it works!” moment and a new piece of information to add to my grey-matter databank. Also, as I think about it now, there are probably scores of other basic science topics that my education is incomplete on.

So to the library I go. Later today. And I’ll come home with a stack of books about science. Which is to say about the world I live in. I can’t wait to get started.

Technorati Links: science

I feel like I should be walking around today wearing a snorkel mask and breathing tube. It is wet and dark outside. Darker inside because of it. And perhaps because my desk sits squarely in front of a large window looking out on flowers, trees and birds, all soaked, I am feeling a bit water-logged myself. And there, just now, baritone ripples of sound from a distant electro-meteorological event.

Rather than say, Scotty, beam me out of here! maybe I check Expedia for vacation deals to Caribbean islands. Islands surrounded by reefs and colorful fish. Sadly, the trip itself would not come for a couple months. Alas.

In any regards I should be grateful that our drought appears over. We’re three days into rain with three more to come. That’s something to smile about.

And maybe more than the rain, it is Monday.

Technorati Links: fish, snorkeling

Does watching adult television-programming cause teens to become sexually active earlier? Maybe. But maybe not. Research has recently shown a link. But that link might be more predictive than causal: Not A causes B, but where you find A you are likely to find B, perhaps later in time.

That is why the opening sentence of the news release includes a crucial word couplet.

Early onset of sexual activity among teens may relate to the amount of adult content children were exposed to during their childhood, according to a new study released by Children’s Hospital Boston.

“May relate.”

As for the relevant data, it is this -

The study found that for every hour the youngest group of children watched adult-targeted content over the two sample days, their chances of having sex during early adolescence increased by 33 percent. Meanwhile, the reverse was not found to be true–that is, becoming sexually active in adolescence did not subsequently increase youth’s viewing of adult-targeted television and movies.

The second part of the finding seems to suggest that the relationship between the two variables is causal. And it indeed may be. But not necessarily. Consider this hypothetical example. A new flu strain appears and in many people who catch it their first symptom is a passing fever. They latter develop a hacking cough. Others progress directly to the hacking cough. In this case we could be fairly confident that the fever does in fact relate to the flu and thus to the cough. Their relationships is not causal, however. The appearance of one will predict the appearance of the other. But they are both caused by a third variable, the flu virus.

So, does watching adult television cause teens to become more sexually active? It might. Yet for a proportion of those teens who become sexually active earlier than others, watching explicit television may simply be the equivalent of a canary in a coal mine: an innocent sign of something to come.

Technorati Links: critical thinking, research, skepticism

Maybe these tiny sparkles only appear at x200. What are the highly reflective surface-bits part of? Another pic and answer below the fold.

Continue Reading »

Technorati Links: microscope, puzzle

A couple decades ago I encountered studies linking a mother’s mental health–anxiety/depression–during a child’s early years to later risk for the child to develop the same. More recently, the mother’s mental health during pregnancy has likewise been associated with the child’s emotional development. Last week I read a science article that proposed an extension of the influence of mother’s mental health even earlier in the child’s development. Earlier than conception even. Before the child was a child.

In, Can happiness be inherited?,

Dr. Halabe Bucay suggests that a wide range of chemicals that our brain generates when we are in different moods could affect ‘germ cells’ (eggs and sperm), the cells that ultimately produce the next generation. Such natural chemicals could affect the way that specific genes are expressed in the germ cells, and hence how a child develops.

Science has already established that potent drugs such as heroin and marijuana do influence reproductive cells: gametes and zygotes. Many brain chemicals are also fairly potent. And they don’t reside in the brain alone. They will circulate in the body and influence other organs, including the ovaries and testes.

A mother’s mood influencing a child’s later mental health and personality? It’s possible. (Although maybe I should have written, influencing a later child’s . . . .) Proven? Not by a long shot. But the potential mechanism of action is there. Which increases the plausibility of a hypothesis.

Technorati Links: genetics, mental health

Just walked around the backyard. Took some photos. Collected sample flower petals to examine with our digital microscope. Read a few football websites (my football fanaticism is a year-round affliction). In a while I’ll have some lunch. No rush. I love Saturdays.

Technorati Links: nature

In an episode of the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, Ray explains to his brother how he knows he is not gay: “Well, you know, I sometimes wonder if I am a bit, but then I see a pair of naked breasts and I walk into a wall” (my paraphrase.)

In thinking about my own sexuality, it seems that when I was a boy it was almost as if a switch were thrown. Yah, from early on girls were attractive to me. But then I got to the age when the girl-peers in my neighborhood starting wearing bikini tops in summer. Arousingly rounded bikini tops. I could hardly keep my eyes off them.

One of my most vivid memories is of a class field trip in junior high school. We went to the beach. A few guys starting grabbing girls to throw them into the water. One very pretty girl struggled to get out of their grip, and in her mad twisting one of her breasts popped out of her top. For just a moment. But in my mind it was like a slot machine coming up triple cheeries. Bing-bing-bing! That experience made my day. No, it just about made my year. (In a small way, of course.)

As tangent, the beach trip was decades ago, during a time that teachers were more likely to think boys will be boys, than that’s sexual harassment! Not that either is completely wrong or right.

When in my early twenties a male relative I looked up to explained that the male fascination with breasts is due to our uptight, Puritanical culture that views sex as dirty and body parts as needing to be covered up. If people walked around naked all day, no breast fascination, he said. I thought he was probably right.

Was he right? Is the male (and female to a lesser or different degree, perhaps) fascination with breasts a result of culture? Is it not human nature but societal nurture that causes boys and men across the land to have brains easily excitable by breasts? I don’t know. But I’m suitably interested in the subject now to do some research.

Speaking of research, the topic came to my attention via a news release of a recent archeological find. A 31,000 to 40,000 year-old ivory “Venus figurine.” And that lady is stacked. I wonder, was the pendant-like object worn by a male or a female? And what did boys growing up around topless girls think of their natural . . . swellings. Did they think they were swell? Or just another body part?

I’m going do some research into this. Really. No, not “research.” Academic research. And I’ll let you know what I find.

Technorati Links: behavior, nature, sexuality

From a mountain top we can see more of the cosmos. And gain perspective or how small humans really are.

And yet, in the stereotypical depiction, a man goes up a mountain for spiritual enlightenment and comes back down with . . . a self-important message. Go figure.

Photo thanks to NASA.

Technorati Links: cosmos, NASA, religion