Bacteria in the Gut Influences Thoughts and Moods

from Scientific American Mind

The thought of parasites preying on your body or brain very likely sends shivers down your spine. Perhaps you imagine insectoid creatures bursting from stomachs or a malevolent force controlling your actions. These visions are not just the night terrors of science-fiction writers—the natural world is replete with such examples.

Take Toxoplasma gondii, the single-celled parasite. When mice are infected by it, they suffer the grave misfortune of becoming attracted to cats. Once a cat inevitably consumes the doomed creature, the parasite can complete its life cycle inside its new host. Or consider Cordyceps, the parasitic fungus that can grow into the brain of an insect. The fungus can force an ant to climb a plant before consuming its brain entirely. After the insect dies, a mushroom sprouts from its head, allowing the fungus to disperse its spores as widely as possible.

Medical Hypnosis: You Are Getting Very Healthy

from wsj.com

On the mornings she undergoes chemotherapy, Jeanne Safer hypnotizes herself en route in the taxi.

She starts by closing her eyes, then rolling them up to the top of her head and down, all the while breathing deeply. "As I'm doing that, I'm saying to myself, 'This is a procedure that will save my life. I'm not going to fight it. I'm going to make it as easy on my body as possible,' " she says.

Dr. Safer, a New York psychologist who has a rare but curable form of leukemia, started out as a skeptic, but found that hypnosis helped put her at ease before biopsies, MRIs and several surgeries. She now uses it with some of her patients as well. "It's an excellent self-management technique," she says. "It gives me a feeling of mastery, a sense that I am participating in my own care rather than just being passive."

Hypnosis has been the subject of fascination, intrigue and ridicule for centuries. Now, researchers are getting closer to understanding why and how it can work. The mechanism may be similar to the placebo effect—in which patients' expectations play a major role in how they feel. Hypnosis, in turn, can help patients adjust those expectations to minimize pain, fear and disability.

The image of a stage hypnotist swinging a stopwatch and commanding a volunteer to squawk like a chicken has led to misunderstandings, experts say. Real hypnosis for therapeutic purposes gives subjects more control over their minds and bodies, not less.

"We can teach people how to manage pain and anxiety, " says David Spiegel, a psychiatrist and director of the Center for Health and Stress at Stanford University who has studied hypnosis for 40 years. "There's been this mistake in medicine that if you have a certain amount of tissue damage, you should feel this amount of pain. But many things can alter how much pain you feel."

Indeed, scientific evidence is mounting that hypnosis can be effective in a variety of medical situations, from easing migraine headaches to lowering blood pressure, controlling asthma attacks, minimizing hot flashes and diminishing side effects from chemotherapy.

read the rest of the story at wsj.com

Why Interacting with a Woman Can Leave Men "Cognitively Impaired"

from scientificamerican.com

Movies and television shows are full of scenes where a man tries unsuccessfully to interact with a pretty woman. In many cases, the potential suitor ends up acting foolishly despite his best attempts to impress. It seems like his brain isn’t working quite properly and according to new findings, it may not be.

Researchers have begun to explore the cognitive impairment that men experience before and after interacting with women. A 2009 study demonstrated that after a short interaction with an attractive woman, men experienced a decline in mental performance. A more recent study suggests that this cognitive impairment takes hold even w hen men simply anticipateinteracting with a woman who they know very little about.

Sanne Nauts and her colleagues at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands ran two experiments using men and women university students as participants. They first collected a baseline measure of cognitive performance by having the students complete a Stroop test. Developed in 1935 by the psychologist John Ridley Stroop, the test is a common way of assessing our ability to process competing information. The test involves showing people a series of words describing different colors that are printed in different colored inks. For example, the word “blue” might be printed in green ink and the word “red” printed in blue ink. Participants are asked to name, as quickly as they can, the color of the ink that the words are written in. The test is cognitively demanding because our brains can’t help but process the meaning of the word along with the color of the ink. When people are mentally tired, they tend to complete the task at a slower rate.

After completing the Stroop Test, participants in Nauts’ study were asked to take part in another supposedly unrelated task. They were asked to read out loud a number of Dutch words while sitting in front of a webcam. The experimenters told them that during this “lip reading task” an observer would watch them over the webcam. The observer was given either a common male or female name. Participants were led to believe that this person would see them over the web cam, but they would not be able to interact with the person. No pictures or other identifying information were provided about the observer—all the participants knew was his or her name. After the lip reading task, the participants took another Stroop test. Women’s performance on the second test did not differ, regardless of the gender of their observer. However men who thought a woman was observing them ended up performing worse on the second Stroop test. This cognitive impairment occurred even though the men had not interacted with the female observer.

In a second study, Nauts and her colleagues again began the experiment by having each participant complete the Stroop test. Then each participant was led to believe they would soon be taking part in the same “lip reading” task similar to the first study. Half were told that a man would observe them and the other half were led to believe that a woman would observe them. In reality, participants never engaged in the task. After being told about it, they completed another Stroop test to measure their current level of cognitive functioning.

Once again, women’s performance on the test did not differ, regardless of whether they were expecting a man or woman to observe them. But men who had been told a woman would observe them ended up doing much worse on the second Stroop task. Thus, simply anticipating the opposite sex interaction was enough to interfere with men’s cognitive functioning.

In today’s society people frequently interact with each other over the phone or online, where the only way to infer somebody’s gender is through their name or voice. Nauts’ research suggests that even with these very limited interactions, men may experience cognitive impairment when faced with the opposite sex. Although the studies on their own don’t offer any concrete explanations, Nauts and her colleagues think that the reason may have something to do with men being more strongly attuned to potential mating opportunities. Since all of their participants were both heterosexual and young, they might have been thinking about whether the woman might be a potential date.

read the rest of the story at scientificamerican.com

Anticipation of Stressful Situations Accelerates Cellular Aging

from sciencedaily.com

In a study of 50 women, about half of them caring for relatives with dementia, the psychologists found that those most threatened by the anticipation of stressful tasks in the laboratory and through public speaking and solving math problems, looked older at the cellular level. The researchers assessed cellular age by measuring telomeres, which are the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes. Short telomeres index older cellular age and are associated with increased risk for a host of chronic diseases of aging, including cancer, heart disease and stroke.

"We are getting closer to understanding how chronic stress translates into the present moment," said Elissa Epel, PhD, an associate professor in the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and a lead investigator on the study. "As stress researchers, we try to examine the psychological process of how people respond to a stressful event and how that impacts their neurobiology and cellular health. And we're making some strides in that."

The researchers also found evidence that caregivers anticipated more threat than non-caregivers when told that they would be asked to perform the same public speaking and math tasks. This tendency to anticipate more threat put them at increased risk for short telomeres. Based on that, the researchers propose that higher levels of anticipated threat in daily life may promote cellular aging in chronically stressed individuals.

read the story at sciencedaily.com

Study Quantifies Stress-Reducing Properties of a Helpful Spouse

from sciencedaily.com

More than 400 working couples, in both blue- and white-collar occupations, participated in a study of spousal support conducted by Wayne Hochwarter, the Jim Moran Professor of Business Administration in the Florida State University College of Business. Those who reported high levels of stress but strong spousal support -- as compared to stressed-out employees without such support -- experienced the following positive benefits:

• 50 percent higher rates of satisfaction with their marriage;
• 33 percent greater likelihood of having positive relationships with co-workers;
• 30 percent lower likelihood of experiencing guilt associated with home/family neglect;
• 30 percent lower likelihood of being critical of others (spouse, children) at home;
• 25 percent higher rates of concentration levels at work;
• 25 percent lower likelihood of experiencing fatigue at home after work;
• 25 percent higher rates of satisfaction with the amount of time spent with their children;
• 20 percent higher views that their careers were heading in the right direction; and
• 20 percent higher level of job satisfaction.

The number of employees who returned to the workplace even more agitated because they were unable to generate coping support at home is particularly distressing to Hochwarter.

"When you're still angry or upset from yesterday's stress, your workday will likely go in only one direction -- down," he said.

Further, Hochwarter identified key factors distinguishing favorable from unfavorable support.

"Some attempts to support your stressed-out spouse can backfire, actually making the situation much worse," he said.

Support that had a deep and far-reaching impact had several common characteristics, which included:

• Awareness of one's spouse's daily work demands (i.e., time pressures, lack of resources, deadlines, and supervisors).
• Not "forcing support."
• Understanding that communication lines are open regardless of the circumstances.
• Recognizing that distancing oneself from the family or lashing out is not a practical way to foster help. In fact, it tends to bring out the worst in others -- and even causes the supporting spouse to become distant and act out as well.
• Being able to bring one's spouse back to the middle -- up when down in the dumps and down when overly agitated.
• Not bombarding the family with complaints about minor workplace irritants.
• Not trying to "one-up" one's spouse in terms of who has had the worse day.
• Not being complacent -- continuing to work at it. Remaining rational and not automatically casting the spouse as the "bad guy."
• Not keeping a running tab on who is giving and who is getting.

"Most important, though, was the ability for a spouse to offer support on days when he or she needs it just as much," Hochwarter said. "In many cases, both return home from work stressed. Generating the mental and emotional resources needed to help when your own tank is empty is often difficult. Successful couples almost always kept a steady supply of support resources on reserve to be tapped on particularly demanding days."

According to one 47-year-old sales manager interviewed for the study, "I had a horrible day, and all I wanted was a home-cooked meal and some time to myself. Instead, I took my wife out to dinner and heard everything about her bad boss and how her co-workers weren't pulling their weight. By the end of the evening, we both felt at least a little bit better."

Hochwarter also noted that the men and women differed by gender in terms of what support behaviors worked best for them. In general, wives appreciated getting "cut some slack" in terms of household activities; feeling wanted; and receiving expressions of warmth and affection. The husbands, meanwhile, were more likely to respond positively to offers of assistance with errands and feeling appreciated and needed.

Both husbands and wives, however, were especially grateful for their spouse's help in getting time away from work and home hassles to simply rest and recharge their batteries.

"When stress enters any relationship, it has the potential to either bind people together or break them apart," Hochwarter said. "Findings strongly confirm this with respect to job tension. What also became obvious was the critical role of communication and trust among spouses; without them, you have a foundation best described as crumbling, even in the best of circumstances."

Affirming that is the view of one 54-year-old administrative assistant in the study. When questioned how job stress can affect a relationship, she responded, "Ask my ex-husband."

The study is being prepared for publication.