Why emotions are attention-getters

Nerve cells from the brain’s emotion hub talk directly to a region that doles out attention, a study of monkeys shows. The connection, described in the April 11 Journal of Neuroscience, may help explain how people automatically focus on emotional events.
“I’m really excited to see this in press,” says neurologist Helen Mayberg of Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. “This provides an anatomical explanation for why an emotionally salient event always bumps the board.”
A clearer description of how emotions influence attention is important for understanding and treating psychiatric disorders such as anxiety and depression, both of which may involve perturbed attention systems.
Although scientists knew that emotionally significant events quickly capture attention, it wasn’t clear how the process works. To find out, Basilis Zikopoulos and Helen Barbas, both of Boston University, started with a likely suspect — the amygdala.

In humans, the amygdala is made up of two structures the shape and size of almonds, one on each side of the brain. Best known for its role in processing fear, the amygdala helps process other emotions, too, including pleasurable ones.
The researchers injected dyes deep into the brains of 10 rhesus monkeys. The dyes traced individual neurons and their long, information-carrying tendrils called axons. This technique captured details that even the best human imaging techniques miss. “In humans, we just look at the major highways, so we don’t see the side streets,” Zikopoulos says.
Axons from the amygdala converge on an attention hub in the brain called the thalamic reticular nucleus, the scientists found. These axons form a straight shot to attention’s command central, directing the mind’s focus where it needs to go.
The axons from the amygdala to the reticular nucleus appeared to be unusually strong, the team found. “When they talk, they shout,” Zikopoulos says. “They have veto power. They can override signals.”
It makes sense for this connection to be strong, the scientists say. If something in the external environment, such as a giant snake, elicits a strong emotion, the brain should stop what it’s doing and pay attention to the threat. “You need a system that interrupts you because it might save your life,” Mayberg says.
In some psychiatric disorders such as anxiety and depression, attention to emotions may be out of balance. Anxiety disorders are often marked by hypervigilance to potential threats — real or, more often, perceived — in the outside world. In contrast, people with severe depression can often have trouble paying attention to anything outside of their head, Mayberg says. “They say, ‘I can’t get outside of myself to pay attention to you.’”

Emotional Abuse In the Name of Academic Success in Indian Schools

Child abuse is a very serious matter in western schools and any teacher, parent and school involved in child abuse have to face the law. In spite of serious steps we still see some cases of child abuse here and there, but majority of children are safe from abuse. This is not the case when it comes to developing and under developed countries.

Many countries didn’t address child abuse because of their culture and lack of awareness about the issue.  Some countries officially announced child abuse as illegal, but they are not serious in enforcing the law. India is one of those countries that made child abuse illegal, especially in schools but doesn’t enforce the law strictly. This is causing an enormous physical and emotional damage to the younger children. 

In recent years there is no more canning of students in schools, especially in private schools. Parents are not at all tolerating their children being canned or spanked by teachers. This is a very good sign of change, but abuse is still predominant at homes. However, there is a different form of abuse that is happening in every private school in the name of academic requirements and student success. I call it as “emotional abuse” What is so sad is educated parents are also supporting the idea without even noticing that the excessive workload on students is causing an enormous ‘emotional damage’ to the younger minds.

Private schools are very attractive to parents because they offer quality education to students, and they provide special coaching to students to prepare them for professional courses like Engineering, Medicine, and IIT (Indian Institute of Technology), highly reputed engineering and technology institute.  While it is a good concept to prepare students to do well in school exams and also in entrance tests, it is sad that children are excessively burdened with school work and preparation. 

For example, none of the private schools allow their students leave the school before 6 hours. They are at school almost 9 hours, instead of recommended 5 ½ hours. In addition to this many students attend before and after school tuition's, and still have to finish their 2-3 hour homework after all these sessions, irrespective their grade levels.

When I look at school children in India my heart bleeds. Parents want the best education for their children, which is fair enough, but they are not noticing that with an excessive workload children are at abuse. This abuse of children must be stopped for the welfare of their physical and psychological well being. Since schools want to offer what parents demand, parents must take initiative in stopping this kind of abuse. On the other hand, teachers and educational experts must also make an effort to educate parents about this type of bad practice in schools. This I call a step toward a positive change, and perhaps an indicator of developing nation.

After Graduation: What Next? Keep your Momentum Going

Record numbers of college students will be graduating by the end of the month.  With all these  new job candidates entering the employment pool, what should these new graduates consider when moving into the next phase of their lives?
In this economy, finding a job right out of college is challenging but there are a few things students can do to start the job search on the right foot.
Now is the time to be aggressive, and go into commando mode. Don’t put too much time into your resume, they are overrated.  Resumes should be one page and easy to read. Are you spending days writing a cover letter?  People like me almost never read them.  When you get 100’s of resumes daily, yours must stand out.  Use new tools and technology to help with your job search.  Join LinkedIn, start a Facebook page that focuses on your professional persona.
Here are more tips you can adopt.

• Consider moving back in with your parents. Less stress, less financial demands and more time to look for a job.  Plus a daily dose of advice might be a good source of motivation.  Sorry parents..It is a sign of the times.
• If you can’t find a job, try volunteering or an unpaid internship.  This is a great opportunity to hone your skills and make connections in your field of study.
• Network, network, network.  Don't just rely on the Internet...you must meet people in person. As the old adage goes, ‘sometimes it’s more about WHO you know than WHAT you know.’
• Practice your interview skills! – join a group like Toastmasters and fine-tune your presentation skills.
• Research companies you are interested in.  Don't just send out gobs of resumes to every Tom, Dick & Harry.  Refine your search and make sure you are polished when given the opportunity to make a connection.
• Research the person you are meeting with.  Did you go to the same school or have the same hobbies?  This is a great way to start the conversation and make the interviewer like you.  Remember…people hire people they like, and that person may not be the best person on paper.
• Focus on entry level jobs even if they are not in your field.  You need to add business experience to your resume.  You may also have to get your hands dirty.

Fatty diet leads to fat-loving brain cells

Cheeseburgers pack on the pounds, but in mice a high-fat diet also packs on new nerve cells in the brain. More brain cells may seem like a good thing, but these newly sprouted cells appear to trigger weight gain in the animals, a new study finds.
The results offer insight into how the brain controls weight. If the same thing happens in humans, these nerve cells may be a target for anti-obesity treatments.
“This kind of work will definitely inform how we think about the underlying factors that relate to obesity,” says endocrinologist Jeffrey Flier of Harvard Medical School in Boston. There’s increasing interest, he says, in how long-term changes in brain circuitry — like new nerve cell production — affect eating and hunger. “That is going to be a very interesting frontier.”

 A special brain cell called a tanycyte (green) was caught in the process of giving birth to a new neuron (red, marked with a white arrow) in a brain region called the median eminence. A high-fat diet spurs tanycytes to make new nerve cells in the brain, a new study finds.

With some key exceptions, most regions in the adult brain don’t make new nerve cells. But in a small sliver of brain tissue called the median eminence, new nerve cells are born throughout life, neuroscientist Seth Blackshaw of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and colleagues report online March 25 in Nature Neuroscience. The median eminence is part of the brain’s metabolism hub known as the hypothalamus.
And one signal to step up production in the median eminence, the team found, is a diet high in fat.
In the study, mice that ate the rodent version of a steady stream of Big Macs gained weight. This unhealthy diet also kicked nerve cell production into high gear, the scientists found. After eating a fatty diet for several weeks, adult mice pumped out about four times as many new nerve cells in the median eminence as mice that ate regular chow.
To see whether these newborn nerve cells were up to no good, Blackshaw and his team shut down production with a carefully targeted laser. Even while continuing to gorge on a high-fat diet, these mice started moving around more and didn’t gain as much weight as mice on a high-fat diet that could still make the new nerve cells. Take away the steady stream of new nerve cells, and the pounds didn’t pile on as fast.
The newborn cells’ parents turn out to be a mysterious kind of brain cell that resides in the median eminence. Both mice and people have these cells, called tanycytes, but no one knew what their role was. “There’s been a lot of speculation about what their function may be,” says Blackshaw.
The scientists don’t yet know how these newborn nerve cells can influence metabolism. Other studies, including those by Flier, have found that a high-fat diet actually reduces nerve cell turnover in other parts of the hypothalamus.
Blackshaw cautions that it’s too soon to say whether a similar thing could be going on in people. “This is the very first step in trying to understand this process,” he says. “We’re a long way from realizing whether this is relevant to human obesity.”

Why the Man in the Moon is Always 'Looking' at Earth

"The man in the moon came down too soon,
and asked his way to Norwich,
They sent him south and he burnt his mouth
By eating cold pease-porridge."

It's human nature to see shapes and patterns all around us, and ascribe a meaning to what is actually just a random coincidence. The phenomenon is called pareidolia, and includes things like seeing the Virgin Mary in a piece of burnt toast, for example.
But some examples are more persistent than others -- like the Man in the Moon. It's not a real face, of course, just a quirk of how the dark areas (the lunar maria, or "seas") and lighter highlands of the lunar surface are arranged. Yet the illusion is powerful enough to have a Western mythology dating back thousands of years, inspiring all manner of nursery rhymes and literary references.

       
 And there's some interesting physics at work here as well, at least according to a new paper in the journal Icarus. See, the Man in Moon is always staring at us here on Earth -- or, if you want to be all science-y about it, those particular features of the lunar surface always face Earth.
It happens because the moon is locked in what's known as a "synchronous orbit": for every orbit it completes around the Earth, the moon also rotates exactly one time. So we always see that face.
But it didn't necessarily have to be that way; why is this side of the moon, and not the other, the one that faces Earth? There had to be a 50/50 chance of it being one way or the other. Or so astronomers have thought -- until now.

Two Caltech astronomers, along with an Israeli colleague, think that there's a perfectly good explanation why the Man in the Moon always faces us -- and it's not due to the proverbial coin toss. Rather, Oded Aharanson, Peter Goldreich, and Re'em Sari propose that it's due to the fact that the Moon spun around its axis much faster in the past than it does today. And the rate at which it gradually slowed its pace could explain why it eventually became locked in the current orientation.

 ANALYSIS: It's Alive! There's Magma on the Moon
When the moon formed some four billion years ago, it was a blob of hot molten stuff. The Earth's gravitational pull stretched it a bit, elongating it like a football, and that shape stuck when the Moon cooled off. The Man in the Moon is at one of those oblong ends.

Back then -- about a couple billion years ago -- any inhabitants of Earth would have seen varying sides of the moon, not just the fixed face. But that relentless gravitational pull from Earth eventually slowed down the Moon's rate of spin on its axis, and tidal forces created yet another bulge, one that moved around in such a way that it always pointed toward Earth.
And this is where the physics starts to get interesting. So far, so good, but it still seems like a bit of a coin toss when it comes to which side of the moon faces Earth. The Caltech team ran a series of computer simulations, plugging in many different rates of slowing, and found they could "load" the coin however they wanted, so that either side of the moon would always face the Earth when it hit that locking point -- depending on that rotational energy dissipation rate.

ANALYSIS: Today in History: Shepherd Golfs on the Moon
For instance, there really would be a 50/50 chance of the current orientation if the rate of dissipation had been, say, 100 times faster. Instead, that rate was much slower, so there would be two-to-one odds that the Man in the Moon would find himself always facing Earth. This assumes, of course, that the properties of the present-day moon were similar to those in its distant past.
Not every culture sees a Man in the Moon. There are myths and legends based on perceiving a woman, a rabbit, a frog, a moose, a buffalo, or even a dragon in the full moon. But since those illusion arise from the same patterns of light and dark shadows, one assumes the same analysis would apply.

The bulge continued to point toward Earth as the moon rotated through it, causing the moon's interior to squish and flex as the bulge changed position. The internal friction from this flexing acted as a brake that slowed the moon's spinning until its rotation rate matched its revolution rate, when it settled into a synchronous orbit.

In this way, as a result of Earth's gravity, the moon became locked into an orientation with its long axis pointing toward our planet.