Archives for: July 2009, 08

07/08/09

Permalinkby 03:45:27 pm, Categories: Commentary - OpEd, 380 words   English (US)

Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and ...

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In "Brain detects happiness more quickly than sadness" (Eurekalert), we learn:

The results, published in the latest issue of the journal Laterality, show that the right hemisphere performs better in processing emotions. "However, this advantage appears to be more evident when it comes to processing happy and surprised faces than sad or frightened ones", the researcher points out.

"Positive expressions, or expressions of approach, are perceived more quickly and more precisely than negative, or withdrawal, ones. So happiness and surprise are processed faster than sadness and fear", explains Aznar-Casanova.

The finding doesn't particularly support the famous "left brain, right brain" thesis, that is so embedded in popular culture that even your cousin, who never reads a book, knows about it.
Two theories are currently "competing" to explain the pattern of cerebral asymmetry in processing emotions. The older one postulates the dominance of the right hemisphere in the processing of emotions, while the second is based on the approach-withdrawal hypothesis, which holds that the pattern of cerebral asymmetry depends upon the emotion in question, in other words that each hemisphere is better at processing particular emotions (the right, withdrawal, and the left, approach).
When we are miserable, we should seek out people we believe to be right-brained (chances are they will intuit our needs), and when we are happy, we should go to the races with people who are left-brained. (And get them to help us decide where to place our bets).

Also, just up at The Mindful Hack:

Evolutionary psychology: Why it is on the way out, with last year's magazines

Daydreaming: Neuroscientist calls it key to creativity, unimaginative boss still calls it loafing

Empathy: Hath not a Jew eyes?

Free will: Understanding what it means

Neuroscience and science fiction: Can we cure everything by advanced technology?

The Mindful Hack is my blog on neuroscience and spirituality issues, which supports The Spiritual Brain.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

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    Most guys going through midlife crisis buy a convertible. Austrialian Stephen E. Jones went back to college to get a biology degree and is now a proponent of ID and common ancestry.

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    Complete zipped downloadable pdf copy of David Stove's devastating, and yet hard-to-find, critique of neo-Darwinism entitled "Darwinian Fairytales"

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    Intelligent Design The Future is a multiple contributor weblog whose participants include the nation's leading design scientists and theorists: biochemist Michael Behe, mathematician William Dembski, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, philosophers of science Stephen Meyer, and Jay Richards, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson, molecular biologist Jonathan Wells, and science writer Jonathan Witt. Posts will focus primarily on the intellectual issues at stake in the debate over intelligent design, rather than its implications for education or public policy.

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