Beauty Is...?

Beauty is seeing your partner as he is - his best of qualities and his worst of qualities - and loving him for him.

Emotions outlasts memory?

The brain is a wonderful instrument with its many complexities. In a story by NPR, we learn that people who have damaged their hippocampus, the part of the brain that is responsible for storing short-term memory (like people with Alzheimer's disease), can feel emotions brought on by meaningful events despite not having the ability to recall how those feelings came about. An experiment was conducted to test this thesis. Read more

How does our brain change with age?

An article by NPR discusses how our brain change with age. The article states that as we grow older, our brain function does indeed slow down. We are more easily distracted, we are forgetful (because it takes a longer time for our brain to retrieve information, just like a computer processor that has too much information). While our brain show some sign of slowing down in some areas, however, other functions are sharper. For example, the part of the brain that is responsible for seeing connection peak in middle age, enhancing our brain ability to signals to move faster, enabling us to see more connection and the full picture.

The article also suggests that as we age, we should continue to challenge our brain, make sure it doesn't get lazy. "Get your blood boiling," the author suggests. Push yourself to re-think things and seeing the other side, like watching FOX news if you are a liberal and talking to people who disagree with your point of view. Crossword puzzle, it seems, to be not enough to keep the brain active because we may be retrieving information we already know.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126115275&sc=nl&cc=es-20100425

The Rules About How Parents Should Make Rules

In a recent article by NPR, Alix Spiegel cited the work Larry Nucci, a research psychologist at the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley, who delineated four distinct types of rules that parents try to instill in their children:

"There are moral rules: Don't hit, do share.

There are safety rules: Don't cross the street alone, don't run with scissors.

There are rules of social convention: You must say "sir" and "madam."

"And then there is this fourth category, which has to do with what children consider to be their own business and that they consider to be private," says Nucci. "Friendships, playmates, who they want to play with, who they want to be around. Some leisure time activities like what sport they want to do or toys they want to play with. And some ways in which you express yourself through your appearance — clothing, for example."

Read more: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125302688&sc=nl&cc=es-20100425

Our Humanity

Our humanity is pieced together through narratives of ourselves and of each other. Today, I spent a lot of time connecting to old friends, mostly through facebook and emails. It's funny how our idea of connection has changed so much with the advent of facebook and the likes. Virtual communication allow me to maintain narratives and connections to distant friends, but at my own pace and leisure. It's convenient. I spent almost zero time today interacting with friends face-to-face. So what does that say about our humanity?