Good habits, and other memes

Meme: “The term “meme” (rhyming with “theme”), coined in 1976 by the biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins, refers to a “unit of cul­tur­al infor­ma­tion” which can prop­a­gate from one mind to anoth­er in a man­ner anal­o­gous to genes. If you haven’t read Dawkins’ clas­sic book The Self­ish Gene…it is nev­er too late to enjoy it! There are some “memes”…

Read More

Brain gyms’ tone minds and reduce stress

Fun arti­cle in the San Fran­cis­co Exam­in­er today on how High-tech ‘brain gyms’ tone minds, reduce stress. Quotes: “Sharp­Brains and Posit Sci­ence are just two of a grow­ing num­ber of start-up com­pa­nies lead­ing the way in the area of pack­ag­ing and devel­op­ing suites of soft­ware they call “brain gyms.” “Sharp­Brains offers a suite of products…

Read More

Stress Management Workshop for International Women’s Day

Today is Inter­na­tion­al Wom­en’s Day 2007. Glob­al con­sult­ing com­pa­ny Accen­ture orga­nized a series of events, and I was for­tu­nate to lead a fun work­shop on The Neu­ro­science of Stress and Stress Man­age­ment in their San Fran­cis­co office, help­ing over 125 accom­plished women (and a few men) learn what stress is, its impli­ca­tions for our brain…

Read More

Heart Rate Variability as an Index of Regulated Emotional Responding

Con­tin­u­ing with the theme of a Week of Sci­ence spon­sored by Just Sci­ence, we will high­light some of the key points in: Appel­hans BM, Lueck­en LJ. Heart Rate Vari­abil­i­ty as an Index of Reg­u­lat­ed Emo­tion­al Respond­ing. Review of Gen­er­al Psy­chol­o­gy. 2006;10:229–240. Effec­tive emo­tion­al reg­u­la­tion depends on being able to flex­i­bly adjust your phys­i­o­log­i­cal response to a chang­ing envi­ron­ment moment by moment.Heart rate vari­abil­i­ty (HRV) is a mea­sure of the con­tin­u­ous inter­play between sym­pa­thet­ic and parasym­pa­thet­ic influ­ences on heart rate that yields infor­ma­tion about auto­nom­ic flex­i­bil­i­ty and there­by rep­re­sents the capac­i­ty for reg­u­lat­ed emo­tion­al responding.

Read More