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The Supernatural OUR BRIEF CANDLE TIME. A Conversation with Richard Dawkins THE MYSTERY of DÉJÀ VU The LOSS of a CHILD

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Frontal Lobes 10

Lucid Dreaming

Call It Conspiracy

Cover 14

Do Humans Have Superpowers?

I Always Knew You Were Telepathic

Peripheral Vision

Ghosts in the Machine

The Mystery of Déjà Vu

contents 6 brainworldmagazine.com

WINTER 2016

Health 36

Loss of a Child

Science 40

Retrocognition

Brain in Focus 44

A Grain of Thought: The Pineal Gland

Personality 48 Francisco Rojas-Aravena, Rector of the University for Peace

Celebrity 54

Our Brief Candle Time: A Conversation with Richard Dawkins

Resources 60

On the Screen: ‘Inside Out’

Book Roundup

Creativity Comic

Events 66

Calendar of Brain-Related Events

The Last Word 68

Resilience from the Heart

Winter 2016

letter from the publisher ■ Imagine yourself standing on the African plateau some 200,000 years ago, watching over a tribe of nomadic hunter-gatherers. The world was a mysterious place: A blood-red sun sinking in the sky meant darkness would soon fall, and a night full of dangerous predators was lurking just beyond the tall grass. Merely picking the wrong berries could have been an agent of death. And until this very day, the finality of death is something that continues to intrigue — and terrify — most people. As we developed language, we tried to come up with words to describe what it was we were afraid of. We told stories that tried to make sense of it all — to avoid crossing the paths of poisonous serpents or to appease the wrath of vengeful spirits. Today, the world might seem less mysterious — many of our fears eliminated or turned benign over the ages. However, our anxiety lingers, as though there’s still a panther lurking in every dark corner. Our fascination with the supernatural has not gone away, whether or not we happen to believe in it. Hardly a day goes by without someone claiming to have seen a ghost: A long-dead relative, or former house occupant, bringing back a cryptic PINEAL GLAND TELEPATHY RETROCOGNITION GHOSTS message from the world beyond. We know that the visible universe is only a small fraction of all those that exist, so what is there beyond what we can see? Is there an afterlife? Is what happened in the past really over — or can we fall into time slips, re-entering the cosmos at a time before we were born? Then there are stories of people who perform acts of seemingly superhuman strength: The Supernatural A mother lifting a car many times her bodyOUR BRIEF weight to save a child, a feat that seems to echo CANDLE TIME. A Conversation with the deeds of mythical strongmen like Samson, 3JDIBSE Dawkins THE MYSTERY or Hercules. So how much do we really know of DÉJÀ VU anyway? Is it possible that we’ve experienced all The LOSS of this before, in some past life? Perhaps it’s all of a CHILD part of a plan — some vast conspiracy that we’re slowly unraveling with our natural gift of recognizing patterns. Of course, however outlandish all of these ideas sound, there’s most likely a very rational explanation to all of it, to be believed at your own discretion, of course. We have dedicated our winter issue to supernatural phenomena — the unreal, why we believe it and what science has to say. It is our sincere hope that you enjoy reading this issue of Brain World. ISSUE 2 VOLUME 7 • WINTER 2016 • $6.99 US/CAN

HUMANITY’S NEW FRONTIER

BrainWorld Winter 2016

Publisher The Earth Citizen Way, Inc.

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Contributors Aeri Shin, Betty Vine, Charlene Smith, Charles Paccione, Dave Beal, Dinsa Sachan, Gerri Miller, James Sullivan, Jeremy Fuscaldo, Mridu Khullar Relph, Nicole Dean, Sarah Weiss, Stephanie Kramer

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Brain World is published by The Earth Citizen

Brain World is published by The Earth Citizen Way, Inc., a New York-based social enterprise supporting brain awareness and Brain Education projects around the world. Visit us online at www.brainworldmagazine.com 8 brainworldmagazine.com

Way, Inc. VOL. 7, NO. 2, Winter, 2016. All contents in BRAIN WORLD are copyrighted to The Earth Citizen Way Inc. and are protected by all applicable laws. BRAIN WORLD is not responsible for the return or loss of any unsolicited manuscripts, artwork, promotional materials or any other unsolicited items. No part of this periodical may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. BRAIN WORLD’s name, logo, and various titles and headings herein, are trademarks of The Earth Citizen Way, Inc. PRINTED IN THE USA.

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Lucid dreaming is the act of dreaming while maintaining consciousness during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep. This type of dreaming allows you to tell yourself

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT LUCID DREAMING

that “you are dreaming” without

BY DENIZ CAM

waking up. Awake consciousness, if used correctly, gives one the opportunity to keep on participating in the dream while defining it to be something else. If you are the type who suffers from nightmares, lucid

Frontal Lobes

dreaming can help you stop that bullet — though probably not as smoothly as Keanu Reeves did in the first “The Matrix” movie.

10 brainworldmagazine.com

For centuries, people have tried to control their dreams. It’s even been considered a semi-supernatural ability that only some can attain. Controlling dreams, or, to use the proper terminology, lucid dreaming, has received significant criticism from skeptics who dismiss conscious dreaming as just speculation, invented by people who want to believe that they have access to a special type of power. While so many people dream, few actually come forth as “lucid dreamers,” being really able to manipulate their dreams into whatever they want, as if flipping through channels of a TV set. Science, however, comes to our rescue to clear the air and prove the reality of lucid dreaming. Many studies show that the phenomenon of “lucid dreaming” not only exists, it’s more common than we think. Although lucid dreaming sounds like a savior and vessel

for sleep-time entertainment, it definitely requires some practice. In 2009, the Goethe University of Frankfurt conducted a study wherein non-lucid dreamers were given zaps of electricity during their REM sleep. Interestingly enough, they reported having experienced lucid dreaming right after their frontal cortex was stimulated. Yet, it is pretty much impossible to always keep some scientists around just to shock you during a specific time of your sleep. But don’t worry, you can still be a lucid dreamer without the electricity! The reason why electricity works as an inducer is because it introduces external stimuli, reminding one of being in a state of dreaming. If you set up a light that goes off approximately around the same time as your REM stage begins, then you will be more likely to remember that you are dreaming. You may also want to try keep-

ing a dream journal close by. Many “lucid dream specialists” suggest that maintaining a dream journal makes you more aware of your sleeping experience, and thus helps you become a lucid dreamer. Even though we tend to forget our dreams later on in the day, these specialists propose that if written right after waking up, dreams can promote lucid dreaming in the long term. These specialists also suggest using “reality checks” regularly while you are awake — if you are committed to taking your lucid dreaming abilities to another level. What does a reality check mean? Well, since you need your awake consciousness while dreaming, it is important to remind yourself of your consciousness during the day. You have to ask yourself whether you are awake or not. By making this a habit, you will find it easier to remind yourself that you are dreaming

throughout your sleep. The same applies to repeating that you are aware of going to sleep before you fall asleep each night. Today, the science suggests that we all experience lucid dreaming at least once in our lives. While seemingly mystical, or maybe even pointless, lucid dreaming actually helps us fight against some anxieties and fears. We can condition ourselves to believe that by controlling our dreams, we can find the power to fight against the phobias and anxieties we suffer from in real life. Still not buying the whole phenomenon? Then I suggest having a relaxed mind right before you go to sleep. Not only will you have a good night’s sleep, but maybe even find yourself having some wonderful dreams. Sweet dreams!

Winter 2016

Call it

CONSPIRACY 9/11, GMOS, THE FEDERAL RESERVE, AND WHY OUR BRAINS BUY IT ALL BY EARL MEAGAN

oomsday is just around the corner — the world’s banks are forging currency, vaccines cause cancer, and don’t even think about drinking the water. Whether you buy into one of the many conspiracy theories that freely float around the Internet, you’ve almost certainly brushed across someone who does: global warming is a hoax, the government planned the 9/11 terrorist attacks, John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA (or the KGB) — or for the more outlandish, Hollywood faked the moon landing, or aliens built the pyramids. It’s more common than you think. According to a recent study, nearly half of all Americans believe in some conspiracy theory or other, although some are more vocal than others. So why is that? Can they all be wrong?

Over a short period of evolution, human brains developed the ability to recognize patterns — something that can also be seen in our closer primate relatives. Our senses take in a wealth of information at a time, and our brains try to put all of it into perspective. Back when our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, a dark storm cloud meant rain, and several days of rain meant that the seasons had changed, and so it was time to relocate. Today, our brains have a great deal more to choose from — the 12 brainworldmagazine.com

reason we see icons of the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, or a demon peering through the smoke of Ground Zero, following the World Trade Center attacks. Ordinary events have no meaning until we put them in a larger context, but that total picture must change to fit with the evidence. The more uncertainty, the more likely people are to believe in a grand conspiracy — thinking that an allpowerful force, like the government or aliens, is actually in control.

Believing in conspiracy theories may satisfy some of our basic psychological needs — namely, the need for security and peace of mind. It might sound contradictory, but being “in the know” gives people reassurance, making them feel they have knowledge of the unknown, while everyone else on the outside is lost. Consequently, those who believe in conspiracy theories tend to be less friendly, interacting with a smaller social network of people. Many parts of conspiracy theories are the result of not understanding how complex social structures like the government or scientific communities actually work. Correspondence between foreign nations following the crash of the Malaysian Flight 370, which was standard procedure, could be taken as evidence of a conspiracy to those who aren’t familiar with diplomatic protocol.

A REASON PROPOSED FOR WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE IN CONSPIRACY THEORIES IS THAT THE SPECULATIONS SATISFY SOME OF OUR BASIC PSYCHOLOGICAL NEEDS. Frontal Lobes

It’s not that conspiracies don’t exist. A small group of sympathizers of the Confederacy did plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, but usually these conspiracies thrive on a smaller scale, and are inevitably revealed once the job is finished. As they say, “Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.” The more people trying to pull off a plot on a larger scale, the greater the odds of the plan being discovered, or someone coming forward and leaking the plot. This is why the government being responsible for 9/11 (or JFK’s death) is rather unlikely. Politicians have to pull strings and compromise (after much heated debate) when passing basic legislation — colliding two Boeing 757s into New York airspace, after having rigged the towers with explosives (as many 9/11 “truthers” claim), would require extreme ambition and organization that even the best lawmakers rarely show on a daily basis. Any number of employees or security personnel working on the morning of September 11 could have called in a bomb threat and foiled their plans.

What’s the motive? Many climate change deniers allege that scientists are working to scam the public and politicians with fraudulent data in an effort of gaining more funding for research, or to get rich off green energy. Similar things are sometimes said of scientists working in research areas related to cancer and AIDS, being influenced by “Big Pharma.” However, the same research and data has been reproduced and confirmed by a number of scientists living in different countries across the world, and, yet, in

many countries regulation of carbon still remains a divisive issue. Scientists could easily make more money working for a policy think tank than as university professors. At the same time, should the alleged conspiracy be uncovered, the consequences could be more severe than what was purportedly to be gained in the first place — the loss of their tenure and professional reputation.

The less in control a person feels, the more likely they are to believe in a conspiracy, as are those who feel their power is being threatened — a reason why so many dictators believed their subjects to be plotting against them. Those less educated are more likely to believe fluoride in drinking water is dangerous, or that human civilization was shaped by extraterrestrials. Education may not always be the cure for believing in a conspiracy theory, however, as the more zealous believers will accuse universities or government organizations of being biased in the numbers they present. Statistics aren’t always airtight, of course, but where’s the evidence that a conspiracy is responsible?

While there are a number of similar conspiracy theories floating around, not all conspiracy theorists are the same. For example, two people may not agree on the scientific consensus of climate change, but one of them may think that global temperatures are dropping, while the other thinks that temperatures are rising due to natural cycles. However, they will come together to rail against the commonly accepted truth before trying to correct each other, thus placing more importance on their emotional connection to the conspiracy rather than relying on an approach based in logic or evidence. You can see the world as it is, or as you want it to be, something to keep in mind when considering the tenets of any grand conspiracy.

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COVER

SUPER-

POWERS? A CLOSER LOOK AT SUPERHUMAN STRENGTH

BY CHARLES ETHAN PACCIONE

Jonathan Shay not only sees the berserker state as a transformative state of heightened awareness and strength, but also as a destructive condition which many returning combat veterans suffer with.

16 brainworldmagazine.com

■ Over a late summer dinner this past July, my fiance and I somehow got on the topic of supernatural strength. As a researcher in neuropsychology (and an avid weightlifter), the concept has fascinated me for quite some time. After she took a bite of her baked salmon, she leaned forward in her chair and told me about one experience she had some years ago that still stands out strongly in her mind: “Well, I’m not sure if this has anything to do with it, but, a few years ago, I went on a trip to Cape Town, South Africa, with the family, and I can vividly remember one dreadfully hot afternoon during a heat wave. I was napping on the beach when all of a sudden I heard the shrieking cry of a child.” “I sprung up off my towel and spotted a little girl about 10 meters away from me, alone, sunburnt, and slumped over in fatigue. Without anything to cover my feet, I jumped off my towel and ran over to the little girl. She struggled through her tears to tell me that she had been walking alone for hours along the hot sand looking for her mother. I looked down to see her feet were red and covered with blisters. The temperature that day was about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and the sand must have been at least 115. I felt it already burning through the calluses of my feet after just a few seconds. I instinctively picked up the little girl and decided to run with her in my arms all the way to a service station situated on a sandy dune about 300 meters away inland.” “As I ran, the girl was crying in my ears and I could feel this ‘buzz’ throughout my entire body — there was so much adrenaline pumping through me that I didn’t even feel the burning heat of the sand; in fact, it felt like I was walking on cool, smooth rocks. When I got to the service station, I explained the situation to the beach patrol, and they took care of the little girl and were able to finally locate her mother. Soon the ‘buzz’ wore off. And as I stepped back onto

the beach with my bare feet to make my way back to the towel, I truly felt the heat of the sand. It was scorching. In fact, I had to buy sandals right then and there. I wonder how I was ever able to do that.” She shrugged her shoulders and continued eating her salmon as I leaned back to contemplate what did in fact occur that day. How was her body able to resource the strength, endurance, stamina, and will of mind to carry a child across 115-degree sand and not feel the slightest pain or exhaustion? Does there exist a neural network within the brain associated with producing superhuman strength, and if so, can it be driven by various emotions such as anger, fear, or compassion? Are only certain people — Olympic athletes, soldiers, or in this case, my Norwegian-born fiance — able to engage in such supernatural behaviors? In order to understand the neurobiological framework of superhuman strength I needed to understand the tales, myths, and folklore that have surrounded this phenomenon for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. And what better place is there to begin my research into the production of brute strength than Norway? Tales of superhuman strength, also referred to as hysterical strength, can be found in many

ancient Norse sagas dating from the late ninth century. Elite Scandinavian warriors, known as berserkers (a term derived from the Old Norse berserkr), were known to enter battle with an untamable, trance-like fury resulting in spurts of superhuman strength as they slayed their enemies. The 13th century Icelandic historian and poet Snorri Sturluson refers to berserkers in his “Ynglinga” saga as men who “rushed forwards without armor, were as mad as dogs or wolves, bit their shields, and were strong as bears or wild oxen, and killed people at a blow, but neither fire nor iron told upon them. This was called Berserkergang.” If we fast-forward about 750 years to the work of Jonathan Shay — clinical psychiatrist and an expert in post-traumatic stress disorder — we can see that the onset of superhuman strength caused by berserker behavior is still prevalent among modernday soldiers. In his book “Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character,” Shay not only sees the berserker state as a transformative state of heightened awareness and strength, but also as a destructive condition which many returning combat veterans suffer with: “If a soldier survives the berserk state, it imparts emotional deadness and vulnerability to explosive rage to his psychology and permanent hyper arousal to his physiology — hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder in combat veterans. My clinical experience with Vietnam combat veterans prompts me to place the berserk state at the heart of their most severe psychological and psychophysiological injuries.” The psychopharmacological synthesis of superhuman strength was widely prevalent even during World War II, when both the Allied and Axis forces issued amphetamine and methamphetamine, two potent central nervous system stimulants shown to enhance strength and endurance in soldiers who went on long ex-

cursions in the field. An investigation published in 2013 by Drs. David G. Liddle and Douglas J. Connor of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, titled “Nutritional Supplements and Ergogenic Aids,” describes how low doses of performance-enhancing amphetamines ingested orally can have broad spectrum effects upon various neural networks associated with increased alertness, improved focus, decreased reaction time, and delayed fatigue. But it seems that soldiers either fighting in angry delirium or taking amphetamines are not the only types of people who can produce such extraordinary bouts of superhuman strength. In his book “Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger,” author Jeff Wise describes how fear, not anger, can be an instigator of developing moments of superhuman strength. In the chapter titled Superhuman, Wise tells the story of Tom Boyle Jr., a man from Tucson, Arizona, who, on a warm summer evening in 2006, witnessed a Chevrolet Camaro smash into an 18-year-old cyclist named Kyle Holtrust. The Camaro had hit Holtrust so hard that it pinned his leg and dragged him, along with his bike, nearly 30 feet down the highway. Boyle ran after the Camaro and, upon reaching the wreck, he instantly reached under the frame of the car and lifted it. “With a sound of groaning metal, the chassis eased upward a few inches. ‘Mister, mister, higher, higher,’ Holtrust screamed. Boyle braced himself, took a deep breath, and heaved. The front end lifted a few more inches.” “‘OK, it’s off me,’ the boy called out, his voice tight with pain. ‘But I can’t move. Get me out!’ The driver of the car, 40-year-old John Baggett, pulled Holtrust free. At last, about 45 seconds after he had first heaved the car upward, Boyle set it back down again.” In the book, Wise describes Boyle’s unbelievable feat as the result of what is known as the “fear response.”

Fear response is caused by moments of intense pressure and acute stress. The adrenal glands, located right above the kidneys, can excrete high amounts of cortisol and epinephrine (or adrenaline) directly into the bloodstream. This in turn causes blood to be shunted away from our gastrointestinal system and redirected toward our muscles. As blood pressure levels continue to rise, the heart begins to beat quicker, sending oxygen to the muscles, the brain, and stimulating the breakdown of glycogen into glucose in return for large amounts of energy expenditure in the form of a powerful force. Dr. Vladimir Zatsiorsky — professor of kinesiology at Penn State University, where he is a specialist in the biomechanics of weightlifting — differentiates between the force that our muscles can theoretically apply (known as absolute strength) and the maximum force that they can generate through a trained and skillful exertion of will (known as maximal strength). According to Zatsiorsky, an ordinary person can only summon roughly 65 percent of their absolute power in any given moment, while a trained weightlifter can exceed this percentage. However, under fearful conditions, whether this is stimulated by intense athletic competition or witnessing someone suffering, a trained athlete may perform as much as 12 percent above that figure. The heaviest barbell that Boyle (who weighs 280 pounds and is 6 feet 4 inches tall) has ever lifted weighed 700 pounds. But the Camaro that Boyle lifted and held up for 45 seconds on that warm summer evening in 2006 weighed 3,000 pounds. Mysterious stories similar to Boyle’s have been around for decades and usually consist of panicked mothers lifting cars off their trapped children. In 1982, Angela Cavallo of Lawrenceville, Georgia, is said to have lifted a 3,500-pound Chevrolet Impala off her son’s body after it had slipped off the jack while her

son was working on its suspension. And in 2012, 22-year-old Lauren Kornacki is said to have saved her father’s life by lifting his BMW off his body after it too had slipped off a jack. However fascinating these stories may be, many physiologists and biomechanical researchers are still extremely skeptical. Even though fear may in fact allow us to exert a force closer to our absolute power, there is still no way of physically exceeding this limit. A woman who can lift 100 pounds in the gym may be able to lift 135 pounds in a moment of maternal frenzy, but not a 3,000-pound car. Whether these stories are true or not, scientists are still wondering what hormone or neurotransmitter would be able to even catalyze such enormous bouts of strength in such a small amount of time. Adrenaline, which seems to have powered the sudden feardriven strength of both Mr. Boyle and Mrs. Cavallo, may not be able to reach muscles quickly enough to work these so-called miracles. A study published in The Italian Journal of Neurological Sciences found that it may instead be norepinephrine that is secreted into the bloodstream by the adrenal medulla and which can directly invigorate skeletal muscles over a timescale of seconds. During a stressful event, norepinephrine can be released by an area of the brainstem called the locus coeruleus and be projected out to a wide range of regions, including the cerebral cortex (associated with thought and action) along with the limbic system (associated with emotion and memory construction). When released from the sympathetic nervous system, this chemical plays a key role in facilitating the fight-or-flight response in various body tissues. But one of the most fascinating processes along with the excretion of norepinephrine that may contribute to our ability to exert superhuman strength during stressful situations is called the

analgesic response. Stress-induced analgesia is a process by which the body undergoes a reduced pain response after a stressful situation. A study lead by Dr. Pinar Yilmaz used functional MRI to assess the brain mechanisms associated with SIA in 21 healthy individuals. A mildly painful pressure stimulus was applied to each test subject, and each was given a set of basic mental tasks to perform while noise was increased throughout the room to act as a stressor. The team learned that following a stressful situation pain thresholds and tolerance were in fact significantly higher when compared to pre-stress levels. The fMRI data showed that as the subjects adapted to their fairly unpleasant scenario, they showed increased activity in the primary somatosensory cortex, anterior insular cortex, and secondary somatosensory cortex. The increase in pain tolerance correlated significantly with activation in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, and pain unpleasantness with activation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Even though these findings may help researchers better understand what actually occurs during episodes of superhuman strength, the ethical and experimental limitations of testing such a phenomenon keeps it in the realm of scientific mystery. It would be unethical to comprehensively test such a phenomenon, since superhuman strength seems to come about with extreme stress — moments of compassion-driven fear or anger. Repetitive states of hyper arousal can be detrimental to our immune system and even cause cardiovascular disease. But in order to tap into the superhuman powers that we can sometimes exhibit, we don’t always need to enter battle in a berserk frenzy, or lift a car. Instead, it can sometimes happen in the simplest of ways — like carrying a lost little girl over hot sand back to her mother. Winter 2016

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Winter 2016

Amazingly, the subjects were correct a full 40 percent of the time, which the researchers described as “hugely significant statistically.”

■ Have you ever wondered what a person from the Middle Ages might think if they could spend a single day with you? He or she might think that you’re some sort of sorcerer as they watch you dash off emails, chat on your cell phone, or Skype with someone on the other side of the globe. These are all magical forms of communication that for us have become as natural as talking face-to-face. Yet, despite all these conveniences and advances in communication, people are always looking for more direct ways to exchange information. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just think something and have your ideas or emotions instantly understood by others? Most of us, though, think that telepathy — the ability to communicate with others without speech or any other physical form of communication — is either the stuff of fairy tales or a gift bestowed on a lucky few. But then again, maybe we’re all telepathic. You’ve probably had the experience of thinking of a person just moments before they call. If you’re a parent, maybe you’ve had the experience of “just knowing” when something is wrong with your kid, even if they are miles away. Identical twins have probably told you, “We always know what the other is thinking.”

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While these anecdotes have become commonplace, there’s not much evidence that telepathy really exists. Also, it’s difficult to set up convincing experiments to test telepathy, as such events tend to defy repeatability and hypotheses based in scientific fact. Thus, the topic of telepathy remains only on the fringe of scientific investigation, along with the search for alien life forms and the aquatic ape hypothesis. Nevertheless, various forms of brain-to-brain communication have been observed scientifically on many occasions and under circumstances that cannot be dismissed as mere statistical accidents. The phenomenon that so many of us have experienced — knowing who’s going to call on the telephone before they actu-

ally do — has been confirmed to exist in several studies dating back to the mid-20th century. In a recent study published in the Journal of Parapsychology, researchers observed 63 normal subjects (not psychics or mediums) trying to guess which of four callers was going to be calling. The callers were remotely located friends or family of the subject, and, based on random chance, researches expected the subject to be correct 25 percent of the time. Amazingly, the subjects were correct a full 40 percent of the time, which the researchers described as “hugely significant statistically.” Another oft-repeated experiment is called the Ganzfeld telepathy experiment, wherein the test subject is isolated with halved pingpong balls over their eyes in a room bathed in red light. The person keeps their eyes open while listening to white noise played through earphones. After a half hour of this “sensory homogenization,” a “sender” in another room is given randomly chosen visual information, usually a photo or video clip, that they then try to mentally transmit to the subject. The subject describes any mental images they are receiving to researchers. After the session, the subject then attempts to identify which of four choices best fits the mental images they were receiving. Some of these experiments have not shown clear evidence of telepathy, but a majority of them have. Interestingly, the subjects have better “hit” rates when they are emotionally bonded with the sender, have high artistic or creative abilities, or believe they have psychic capacities. As much as rational scientific minds may prefer to disregard this, it seems something real

is producing these telepathic experiences. Somehow, brains have the ability to communicate with other brains in ways that are not yet fully understood. There is no concrete, scientifically valid explanation for how this is happening, but researchers have sought to account for this. Some think that the answer might lie in quantum physics, not biology. In the subatomic quantum world, nature behaves in ways that defies standard Newtonian physics, and it might be that brainwaves somehow access this “supernatural” world. In that realm, a particle can coexist in more than one place in time and space, what Einstein described as spooky action at a distance. In an attempt to explain how telepathy might work, researcher Deborah L. Erickson wrote in the journal NeuroQuantology: “At the quantum particle level, all separateness disappears and everything is connected. Schrodinger described this process as ‘entanglement.’” She goes on to suggest that brainwaves may be “entangled” in a similar way, which allows a kind of commingling of thoughts unimpeded by time and space. Researcher Frederick Myers notes that telepathic connection across people is always strongest between those with a strong emotional connection. Thus, his hypothesis is that telepathy and love go hand in hand. If you find yourself finishing your lover’s sentences, or you know when your kid is hiding something, you could be said to have telepathic communication with them. As My-

ers describes it, “Love is a kind of exalted and unspecialized telepathy.” The explanation for this may lie in the “heart brain.” For a while, neuroscientists have known that the human heart has specialized cells that seem identical to neurons. It could be that the heart has a yet undetermined role in our emotions. The heart is also a bioelectric organ, as is the brain, and it could be that these impulses are connecting to other people in ways that we, as yet, do not understand. For centuries, humans have described emotional connections arising from the heart, even though neuroscientists insist that our brains are the true source. Those “heart strings” that bind us to one another may serve as invisible communication cables that allow us to know each other’s hearts and minds in unfathomable ways — at least when we are open to doing so. Science at the moment is far away from proving the existence of telepathy or explaining how it works. One day, we may take it for granted that brains can talk to each other without the need for language of any kind. Scientists are already harnessing brainwaves to “talk” to other brains, and we may have technology in the future that expands whatever telepathic abilities happen to be natu-

ral to us. In one experiment, researchers were able to send signals over the Internet from one person’s brain to control another person’s hand motions to successfully navigate a video game. It is not too crazy to think that one day we may be “thinking” our emails and be able to “call” our kids to dinner with silent, mental commands. Considering this aspect of the brain’s ability is like glimpsing a distant frontier of brain science. Some scientist, in fact, would rather not look because the facts are still a bit too fuzzy for their comfort. It is highly likely that the ultimate explanations will lie in areas that we are not yet able to observe fully — in the quantum world or undetected energetic fields that emanate from our hearts and minds. But, if we can get to the root of this brain ability we call telepathy, it is likely that we will be peering into a world of possibility once relegated to the realm of fantasy, anticipating potentials for technologies that today seem stranger than the strangest science fiction.

In the subatomic quantum world, nature behaves in ways that defies standard Newtonian physics, and it might be that brainwaves somehow access this “supernatural” world.

Winter 2016

PERIPHERAL

COVER

VISI N MAYBE IT’S MAGIC, MAYBE BY YOU DENIZ WERE CAM BORN WITH IT

■ You are on the subway, thinking about something that happened at work, or pondering what awaits you at home. Maybe you just realized you forgot your mom’s birthday and wonder how you can get out of this notso-pleasant situation. At the peak of your focused state, you instinctively turn your gaze toward your right, and it happens — that moment when you feel that you’re no longer alone with your thoughts. You’ve perhaps heard the expression that you can “feel” someone’s stare, but never thought that it really does happen that way. Your eyes meet the eyes of a total stranger — and you both silently admit the situation to be fairly uncomfortable. In half a second, you are forced to make the ultimate decision: You either immediately move your gaze away, or prolong this unsettling interaction in silence. No matter the outcome, you avoid the stranger until you get off the train, but cannot stop wondering how you knew that someone was looking at you without even seeing them. Was it your inner voice? Was it fate? Was it some celestial power? You might eventually decide that this incident is closely tied to you discovering some hidden supernatural abilities, but you will have to wait a little bit longer for that superhero plot twist in your life. Why? Because our peripheral vision is the factor behind these seemingly psychic encounters.

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What is peripheral vision? It can be described as the precise wonder of evolution that allows your dad to catch you sneaking out without moving his gaze away from the TV. It is scientifically known as the vision that takes place outside the center of gaze. As humans, we use our central gaze for the objects we immediately assume as being important. It helps us recognize visual details: shapes, colors, brightness, and textures. At this moment, your dad is focusing on Tom Brady and his touchdown, but he’s not just receptive of his favorite football player. Peripheral vision helps us detect motion even while we devote all our attention to another subject. Our closer relatives — namely chimps and gorillas — are a bit more adept at peripheral vision,

which helps them to escape lurking predators, or sometimes to find prey. Although this applies to humans, too, our peripheral vision has definitely not developed as much as it has with our other animal friends. With our peripheral gaze, we get a good glimpse of motion, though we lack the necessary anatomical tools to process color and shape. The receptor cells that help the eye capture minute details are organized around the center of our gaze, not leaving that much for the edges of the eye. Since we need and use the edges for peripheral vision, the accuracy of this capacity appears to be substantially low, and yet, this does not create a salient ocular problem. We rarely miss out on important details, because while we clearly are not the masters of peripheral vision, we compensate by utilizing our center gaze most of the time. As such, we are conditioned to not vitally depend on our peripheral vision. In order to appreciate the functioning of peripheral vision, it is necessary to understand the interaction between the light and our eye. Our eye does not directly admit light into its system. It first uses photoreceptors in the retina to process the characteristics of light. These photoreceptors come as two types: rod cells, and cone cells. Cones help us detect color and function in bright light; contrastingly, rods prefer dim light. Rods, therefore, do not necessarily help with either color vision or visual accuracy. Given their nature, cones tend to be more prominent in the center of our gaze — the fovea — while rods mobilize around the edges. As humans, we prefer to use our fovea since it provides us with a higher density of cones.

The more cones there are, the better the visible details, and the better our grasp of visual cues. To maximize their accumulation, the cones in our fovea are significantly small. Their small size helps them exist in substantial amounts, which increases our visual acuity, or, in other words, the sharpness of vision. Though we could assume that our desperate need for cones would require them to be plentiful, the systematic structure of our eye proves the opposite. No matter how crucial visual acuity is, we have considerably less cones than rods: Only 6 million cones compared to 125 million rods. So far, you might be left wondering why we even have the rest of our eye if all we need is our fovea. The fovea is the center of gaze and the heart of visualizing, and we need cones to actualize the potential of this center — but that still does not mean that we do not need our peripheral vision and the rods on the edges. With the help of our peripheral vision, we manage to stay alert as we constantly receive and manage information that is “literally” not in front of our very eyes. Peripheral vision presents critical clues about the focus of other people. When we know the direction of one’s attention, then we can speculate their intent and how we should respond to it. For other animals, peripheral vision provides the opportunity to stay alert in a situation of imminent threat. Acknowledging that we are social creatures, our long-term survival is contingent upon our interactions with each other. Through peripheral vision, we get the chance to transform visual cues into social cues, and through this better ascertain our existence. But how do we do it? Even though peripheral vision appears to be a momentary reaction within which we recognize the other, we essentially distinguish

certain visual patterns before we move our gaze toward someone at a cafe or on the subway. Over time and with more exposure to various kinds of interactions, the brain internalizes the motions corresponding to looking at someone. Without you voluntarily thinking about it, your brain accesses the necessary information related to the gaze and foresees that a head needs to be turned or the eye needs to move within the eye socket. Therefore, the brain notices a simple head tilt, or calculates the location of someone’s pupils in relation to the white area around the pupils. Once the brain decides that someone is looking at you based on these simple, but intricate, estimations, you instinctively turn your head to face the spectator. Maybe a few months after your first uncomfortable encounter on the subway, you find yourself in a crowded urban cafe. Even though you are certain that you are completely immersed in your work, you instantly turn away from your computer screen — only to find the same stranger from the subway looking at you. This time neither of you looks away. You recognize each other, and it is not as uncomfortable as it was the first time. You both start laughing at how peculiar the situation is, but then you really begin to wonder if this is fate. Well, no matter how you want to describe it, we suggest thanking your peripheral vision!

WE COMPENSATE BY UTILIZING OUR CENTER GAZE MOST OF THE TIME. AS SUCH, WE ARE CONDITIONED TO NOT VITALLY DEPEND ON OUR PERIPHERAL VISION.

Winter 2016

COVER

USING SIMILAR TOUCHING PATT TERNS, THE SUBJECTS FELT THEY WERE LOOKING AT THEIR OWN BODIES FROM SIX FEET AWAY, THEIR CORPOREAL SELF AS IF DISCONNECTED FROM THEIR PHYSICAL BODY.

■ Since time immemorial, we’ve seen ghosts. Whether it’s a disembodied voice whispering in the night, the classic lady in white drifting through walls, or even a candle flickering in a room with a closed window, art and culture have made these uncanny episodes as familiar to us as they are to the mystics and psychics who claim to regularly experience them. Maybe they’ve become so indelible for the collective psyche because they represent so much: a warning, the presence of a departed loved one, associations with horror and fear, musings about the afterlife. With a developed, self-aware mind that’s evolved to the task of pursuing and attributing meaning, it’s no wonder we’ve loaded ghosts with millennia of spiritual overtones. But maybe these ghosts haven’t entirely broken their bonds with this life, after all. On the surface, ghosts don’t seem to have much to do with phantom limb syndrome, but recent research suggests a strong link. The clue might be in the name — where phantom limb refers to a body part that doesn’t exist, a phantom apparition might similarly be an image conjured up in our minds. WHEN THE MIND FORGETS THE BODY Our journey starts with a mental construct called the body schema — your constant, unconscious narrative about your body’s relationship to everything around it. Sound and vision, gravity, your nervous system’s response to the environment, the tiny channels of liquid in your ears telling you that you’re standing upright, along with countless of other physical properties whose combination gives us what feels like an unshakable sense of where we are in relation to the world and everything in it.

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But changes in neurology, caused by anything from brain lesions to extreme emotional states, can make our body schema go wrong with surprising (and scary) ease. “Disruption of our networks’ patterns of activity can create sensations of being separated from your own body, perceiving the body from ‘outside,’ and shifts in perception of place and time,” says neuroscientist and neuroethicist Dr. James Giordano, professor of neurology at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, D.C. Simple manifestations of such phenomena might be a feeling of déjà vu, or the lesser-known jamais vu wherein we experience something we recognize but which still seems unfamiliar. So researchers wondered if we might bring about ghost sightings — or similar experiences — by taking experiments that have successfully treated people with

body schema problems (such as those who experience pain or discomfort in a body part that doesn’t any longer exist) and going a step further. In order to generate a wholeof-body illusion, scientists at Ecole Polytechnique Federale in Lausanne, Switzerland, put virtual reality goggles on subjects standing in an empty room. An image of themselves standing six feet ahead was projected into the goggles, and their backs were stroked with a pointed stick at the same time they perceived their virtual self being touched. When the real and virtual touching was synchronized, the subjects reported the sensation of being momentarily in the projected body. A similar experiment using a mannequin dressed in identical outfits as the subjects resulted in the sense of the self being projected onto the mannequin. Subsequent experiments by a neuroscientist from the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden (while visiting the University College London), involved projecting an image of the participating subjects into video goggles from two cameras placed six feet behind them. Using similar touching patterns to those described above, the subjects felt they were looking at their own bodies from six feet away, their corporeal self as if disconnected from their physical body.

THE DECOUPLED MIND But what does this tell us about seeing ghosts? As Peter Brugger, a neuroscientist at University Hospital Zurich explains: “Normal brains can easily be duped about the source of an action at a distance, that they themselves have the agency over actions.” There’s also a direct terminological leap from phantom limb to bigger body schema concepts that could incorporate ghosts. “Phantom limb was frequently described as ‘ghost limb,’” Brugger tells Brain World. “The term ‘phantom body’ was in fact introduced to depict ghostly phenomena as phantom limb-style phenomena.” “The difficulty is that you’re never ‘amputated’ from the whole body, but there are neurological diseases in which such an ‘amputation’ occurs at the highest level of body representation. The consequence is a split between the physical body and its representation, giving rise to many doppelganger [other self ] and ghost phenomena.” Such phenomena can arise when the localization of your body in space is projected somewhere else and no longer matches the physical location of your body. “The experience of a doppelganger has been the most thoroughly and convincingly studied in the ‘projection of body schema’ context,” says Brugger. Researcher James Giordano adds that because we’re spiritual animals, we often interpret such phenomena through emotional lenses. “These [phenomena] can assume spiritually emotional content or be interpreted as ‘supernatural’ for some people,” he says. “It’s not unusual for people

grieving to report they’ve heard or even seen a loved one who’s recently died while falling asleep or drifting out of sleep.” We’re also not limited to a single projected body schema just because we’re limited to one physical body. Brugger reminds us that ghosts are sometimes experienced as more than just singular entities. If a haunted house contains a piercing scream, sounds of footsteps making their way along a dark hallway, or a skeletal figure draped in rags limping across the ground, these various sensations could be a multiplication of the body schema — just like multiple voices tormenting a schizophrenic all belong to a single sufferer. RELATED PHENOMENA The list of supposedly paranormal activities, whose mysteries can be easily explained as one’s skewed sense of their own body awareness, is rather long. Many people claim to have experienced psychography (usually called automatic writing), where they claim a disembodied entity or intelligence from beyond the physical world takes control of their hand to write messages to the living. Maybe it’s indeed the subject doing the writing, but projecting the body schema of their hand, arm, and the content of what they’re writing elsewhere. Brugger interviewed accomplished mountaineers, many of whom had climbed to altitudes of over 27,000 feet, who had reported sensing unusual presences, and sometimes full out body experiences. The common thread was that they’d all made their climbs to such heights without supplementary oxygen, and hypoxia (a shortage of oxygen) is just the kind of radical shift in brain physiology that can turn the body schema on its head. A third party speaking from beyond the body is a widely documented aspect of schizophrenia, and it might simply be the audio version of the phantom limb sensation, along with other body

schema projections. When it comes to the mind’s motor control, simply thinking a thought is enough to make the sufferer feel as if they are “hearing” it voiced by a separate entity. That’s further evidenced by the fact that if you can observe a schizophrenic while he or she is hearing voices, their larynx moves as they subvocalize the thought they’re attributing elsewhere. Today, scientists also know that brain areas associated with motor speech production are activated when a schizophrenic hears voices. It’s not the only giveaway that the body reveals. As long as you’re in your right mind, it’s impossible to tickle yourself, but, as you might expect, people with body schemas projected elsewhere experience the sensation as if a real other person is doing the tickling. It’s also fairly common for people to report having floated in the air looking down onto themselves after a sudden and severe injury, during sleep paralysis, after particularly demanding sports, or during intensive meditation — all phenomena that can cause spikes in levels of oxygen, blood sugar, or neurochemicals. WHY WE SEE GHOSTS The reasons why certain brain states have us experience seeing spirits are as diverse as the variety of brain states themselves, everything from trauma to fatigue. Giordano explains how some cases of temporal lobe epilepsy result in symptoms that are construed or perceived to be spiritual or religious. “They can include bodily sensations like smells, feelings of lightness or the presence of another being and heightened emotions,” he says, “sometimes to the point of rapture.”

“DISRUPTION OF OUR NETWORKS’ PATTERNS OF ACTIVITY CAN CREATE SENSATIONS OF BEING SEPARATED FROM YOUR OWN BODY, PERCEIVING THE BODY FROM ‘OUTSIDE,’ AND SHIFTS IN PERCEPTION OF PLACE AND TIME.”

continued on next page Winter 2016

Ghosts cont’d

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As we’ve already seen, schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders can induce perceptions of the paranormal — although, curiously, auditory and tactile hallucinations are more common under most conditions. Visual hallucinations are more associated with drug-induced states, as many recreational and medical users can attest. There’s also a common religious or spiritual dimension felt by sufferers of delusional disorder, a psychiatric condition associated with either bizarre or nonbizarre delusions of thinking. According to a 2010 study, religious delusions are generally less troublesome to the sufferer than other types, like hypochondria or paranoia, and can be associated with delusions of grandeur. Might that help explain why we think a deceased relative goes to the extraordinary steps of making contact from beyond the grave to impart some serious message? As Giordano explains, there’s a common neurological thread to such disorders. “It appears to involve loss of network integration between the brain pathways that parse imagined thoughts and stream of consciousness from the experience of events out in the external environment.” But as we’ve already seen, far more common occurrences — like profound fatigue or dehydration, and even being in a hypnagogic or hypnopompic state (the scary-sounding scientific terms for falling asleep or waking up) — can prime the brain to hallucinate ghosts and goblins. There are even cases where extremes of emotion can result in ghostly visitations. “It’s somewhat rare,” Giordano begins, “but sudden and intense emotion can alter patterns of activity in neural networks that integrate sensory and emotional processes. That can then cause disconnection, de-realization or other altered sensory percep-

tion. It might produce a feeling of being ‘detached’ or ‘removed’ from your body, hearing voices or experiencing the presence of another person.” In fact, emotions might help explain another commonality to ghost sightings. Along with the fact that they’re often visually unclear, many witnesses report particular feelings associated with these incidents. In cases involving parietal lobe lesions, Brugger wonders if their presence might help explain the appearances of ghosts being reported as pale, transparent, milky, colorless, etc. “Ghosts are often at the verge of vision,” he says. “The parietal lobe is responsible for the spatial extension of a body, localization of your ‘felt’ presence in space.” “In the convergence zones between the parietal and occipital lobes, things are visualized incompletely and appear misty. The color gray is very frequently mentioned. If the irritation was wholly in the occipital lobe, things would be more naturally colored like a typical visual hallucination.” Eliciting extreme emotion in test subjects — ethics notwithstanding — is probably the easiest way to replicate such conditions for experimentation, but, as Brugger adds, explaining ghosts is just one item on a very long list of things we might give account of once we understand how to untangle emotional responses from neural circuitry. “There are a lot of effects emotions have on cognitive processing that we don’t understand,” he says. “A tentative answer might be that emotions are mediated by — among other regions — the limbic system, which is widely

linked throughout the brain, especially to centers that mediate bodily experience.” For now, we might have to rely on methods that — however advanced — are still crude because of our limited understanding about how the brain works. Back in 1999, Giovanni Berlucchi, of the University of Verona, and Salvatore Aglioti, of the University of Rome, published research demonstrating how electrical stimulation of the insula caused illusions of changes in one’s body position as well as induced feelings of being outside the body. Neuroscience has advanced considerably in the subsequent 16 years, but as long as we hide under the covers at night because we hear or see inexplicable things roaming around, instead of switching on some brainwave scanner to reset and reorient our body schema, we have a long way to go.

THE REASONS WHY CERTAIN BRAIN STATES HAVE US EXPERIENCE SEEING SPIRITS ARE AS DIVERSE AS THE VARIETY OF BRAIN STATES THEMSELVES, EVERYTHING FROM TRAUMA TO FATIGUE.

COVER

TIME

BOTTLE THE MYSTERY OF DÉJÀ VU BY STEPHANIE KRAMER

“I could not succeed in reconstructing the place from which they had been as it were detached, but I felt that it had been familiar to me once; so that, my mind having wavered between some distant year and the present moment.”

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■ You’ve probably recently had a moment wherein you’ve stopped and realized that, in some subtle detail, it all seems familiar: the same person waiting in line for coffee, wearing the same shirt, or the same car passing you on the way to work every morning. What’s happening? Many claim they’re having a moment that the English language doesn’t quite have a word for. The term déjà vu — literally meaning “already seen” — was first used by the French philosopher and researcher Emile Boirac in 1876. Ever since, déjà vu has been widely described in music, literature, and films — it could be as subtle as a white rabbit leaping back to its burrow. RELIVING THE MOMENT In his novel, “In Search of Lost Time,” author Marcel Proust described the sensation of déjà vu: “I had just seen, standing a little way back from the hog’s-back road along which we were travelling, three trees which probably marked the entry to a covered driveway and formed a pattern which I was not seeing for the first time. I could not succeed in reconstructing the place from which they had been as it were detached, but I felt that it had been familiar to me once; so that, my mind having wavered between some distant year and

the present moment, Balbec and its surroundings began to dissolve and I wondered whether the whole of the drive were not a make-believe.” The odd sense of disconnect Proust describes is perhaps what makes the scene seem uncanny, eerie, startling, or exciting. About two-thirds of people will experience at least a single episode within their lifetime. It typically lasts only a few seconds, or minutes, but people remember the experience in vivid detail for years afterward. Déjà vu occurs in men and women in equal numbers. It happens more frequently in adolescents and young adults, and then tapers off with age. The recent case of chronic déjà vu was unique, because the man was otherwise healthy, at least so says the co-author of the study, cognitive neuropsychologist Chris Moulin of Pierre Mendes-France University, based in Grenoble. “There was nothing

wrong with his brain or memory,” says Moulin. “There was no neurological damage.” The subject experienced déjà vu on a daily basis, far more than the usual once or twice a year. Sometimes it lasted for up to 30 minutes. The scientists who worked on the study, which was published in December of 2014 in the Journal of Medical Case Reports, believe the cause could have been anxiety. The more he worried about it, the worse the problem became, says Moulin.

A ‘GLITCH’ IN THE SYSTEM? “Déjà vu occurs when people have the sensation of memory without the presence of memory,” says the psychologist Dr. Akira O’Connor of the University of St. Andrews in the U.K. The “mismatch” when something new feels familiar results in a “false familiarity.” An area in the brain called the temporal lobe is responsible for memory. One structure in the temporal lobe stores memories of previous experiences, and another is responsible for determining familiarity. The two normally work together seamlessly. The startling sense of déjà vu is thought to occur when they get out of sync. “We are using memory all the time,” says O’Connor. The brain is constantly creating connections and integrating information, but we are seldom aware of it — until something goes wrong. A “glitch” in the system — misfiring in the temporal lobe — could be the cause. “The brain is signaling that something should be familiar when it is not,” says O’Connor. This is comparable to the neural misfiring that occurs in epilepsy, and it could be that the same mechanism triggers déjà vu in healthy people. O’Connor has experimented with eliciting déjà vu in the laboratory. He has used hypnosis and lists of words to evoke the unsettling feeling that accompanies one’s misplaced sense of familiar-

ity. More recently, he has been using computerized tests and functional MRI. Although it’s still in its early stages, he says the research might allow scientists to reliably pick apart which regions of the brain are actively producing the déjà vu effect. A second hypothesis has been proposed by Dr. Anne Cleary, a cognitive psychologist at Colorado State University. Déjà vu is commonly associated with places, and Cleary believes that cues in a new environment may resemble those in an old one. Thus a genuine sense of familiarity may be caused by similar spatial layouts in different places (e.g., hotels, airports, highways). She has devised a 3-D virtual reality experiment in which people encounter the same structures in various scenes within a village (called a “déjà ville”).

HAVE I DREAMT THIS BEFORE? More than 30 scientific theories have been put forth in an attempt of explaining this puzzling phenomenon. None of them have been proven; nor do they necessarily rule each other out. One obstacle to research is that déjà vu is difficult to produce in a lab setting, says Moulin. Déjà vu is transitory. There is no method for evoking it consistently and reliably. And self-reports are subjective. “When different people say they have déjà vu, it is difficult to know if they are describing the same experience,” says Moulin. A number of memory illusions may be related to déjà vu. Jamais vu, to start off, is the feeling of looking at something for the first time when in fact it is familiar. Déjà entendu refers to the distinct

sense of having heard something already, such as a piece of music or a new voice. Déjà su means something already known (intellectually). Déjà pensee means having thought something. Déjà senti refers to having felt something previously. Given that there is no simple explanation for déjà vu, and other memory phenomena, some people believe in mystical or spiritual causes, such as evidence of past lives or predictions about the future. Scientists generally reject such notions, but that does not mean that déjà vu itself should be dismissed. Déjà vu is often accompanied by a sharpening of the senses and increased awareness. As such, it could be a chance to take note of a situation or place. There could be opportunities for discovery. Or maybe the brain is signaling that there is something worth revisiting. Déjà vu can also be triggered by a dream or imaginary experience. Feelings of intuition can be useful in creativity and problem-solving, too. Finally, déjà vu might serve as a reminder of the human ability to imagine oneself in past or future situations, refine memories, and reconstruct one’s experience of the world.

The recent report of persistent déjà vu may have been rare, but it was followed by a flurry of responses. “People from around the world have contacted us,” says Moulin. “Many say they had the same experience during their 20s and that it resolved spontaneously.” Scientists hope that studying déjà vu will further the understanding of memory and consciousness in general. Knowing how memory is organized and stored in the brain could be useful for retrieval purposes, for instance. Research on the brain and cognitive processes may also yield clues that could be used in treating neurological dysfunctions. “Déjà vu is so complex,” says Moulin. “If we could uncover the difference between déjà vu and other memory experiences, we could gain a better understanding of many other problems along the way.”

The brain is constantly creating connections and integrating information, but we are seldom aware of it — until something goes wrong. A “glitch” in the system — misfiring in the temporal lobe — could be the cause.

NEW UNDERSTANDING? It’s been more than a decade since Moulin first encountered a patient with chronic déjà vu. That patient also had dementia. However, Moulin believes that various sources for the occurrences — not only anxiety — may still be identified.

Winter 2016

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HEALTH

BABY SHOES, NEVER WORN

LOSING A CHILD

BY CHARLENE SMITH

Winter 2016

When discussingg it with other ffriends yyears later, I was astonished at how manyy off those who had lost a child to miscarriage, g or even abortion, believed theyy heard the babyy speak to them.

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■ “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” In these few words — perhaps the earliest source of flash fiction — often attributed to Ernest Hemingway, is encapsulated the pathos of an infant’s death. Except that Hemingway probably never wrote those words. They appeared first in “The Spokane Press” in 1910, when Hemingway was just 10 years old. Authorship aside, those six words reveal the desolation felt after a longed-for child has passed away. Estelle Sobel Erasmus, a New York-based blogger, talks of hearing her son’s voice after she miscarried. Still confused by the experience and the intensity of her mourning, she has been able to find no explanation of why or how she felt such a strong sense of connection to her lost boy. When I asked other friends who had also lost infants before birth, they reported similar incidents. In my case, when I miscarried a baby at three months, I went into a grief so intense I locked myself in a bedroom for a week, wouldn’t answer the phone, and stopped eating. I already had two children. This baby wasn’t planned, and frankly, wasn’t wanted — but I fell apart. When discussing it with other friends years later, I was astonished at how many of those who had lost a child to miscarriage, or even abortion, believed they heard the baby speak to them or had a very graphic concept of the child they had never seen, never held, but always felt connected to in the intense cellular way that only mothers and the child within their wombs communicate.

Every September, I think of my lost daughter. It is the month she would have been born. There is no grief, no morbid reflection — simply persistent remembrance, a sense of “What if?” And in woman after woman who has experienced this, there is a similar story of remembrance. Renowned biomedical researcher, as well as structural and molecular biologist, Dr. Kevin Gardner, working at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center, has found in his research that ambivalent attitudes toward the pregnancy were found to be associated with more intense grief reactions, and loss of an unplanned pregnancy was often responded to in the same way. These findings might be explained by guilt or blame that these women felt after their pregnancy loss. Mothers who had been more invested in their pregnancy — had thought of a name or bought things for the baby — also showed a higher level of grief-related yearning for the loss of the infant. Hearing the baby’s heartbeat or looking over ultrasound scans of a curved, apparently sleeping baby, with its large head and small fingers and toes, as so many expectant parents study intently, augments the mourning in mothers as well as fathers, the difference being that men tend to mourn at a later stage than the women. This grieving can lead to clinical depression and linger for as long as two years, the National Institutes of Health reports. The overall prevalence of miscarriage is 15 to 27 percent in women aged between 25 and 29. Women over 45 years old are at a 75 percent risk. There’s also an increased risk for women who lost a previous pregnancy. The World Health Organization research tells us that 9.6 percent, or 12.9 million, of all births were preterm in 2005 (the most recent global statistics). The highest rates occurred in Africa and North America, where 11.9

and 10.6 percent, respectively, of all births were preterm. In North America, the increasing age of women giving birth, which leads to more maternal complications and Caesarean sections, may partially explain the high rates. The United States, overwhelmingly, has the highest rates of C-sections in the world, which doctors have increasingly criticized as high risk to both mother and child. For those babies lost, there is no doubt that these deaths are very often nature’s way of preventing abnormality from being born, nonetheless, however accurate, this is hard for parents to accept. Premature birth is now the single largest cause of death among babies and young children. Every year, according to a recent report in The Lancet, 1.09 million children under age 5 die due to health complications that stem from being born before week 37 of pregnancy (a 40-week pregnancy is considered full-term). Researchers from the WHO looked at the causes of child mortality in 194 countries from 2000 to 2013. Notably, it’s the first time in history that an infectious disease has not been the leading killer of children under 5. For some of the children who are born, joy is tempered by high emotional, physical, and financial costs. The WHO notes that children born prematurely have higher rates of cerebral palsy, sensory deficits, learning disabilities, and respiratory illnesses. Estimates indicate that in 2005 the costs to the United States alone in terms of medical and educational expenditure as well as lost productivity due to premature births exceeded $26.2 billion — making it clear that the issue deserves further attention. Although psychologists and

psychiatrists interviewed for this article all recorded many cases of grieving mothers and fathers who have lost a child before or soon after birth, there is a paucity of literature around the issue. How do you explain Estelle Erasmus’ claims? Already the mother of one and in a happy marriage, she swears that she kept hearing her unborn child say, “I love you.” And this claim is not unique to her. The most common explanations relate to “disenfranchisement” around the death, because others don’t take it as seriously. There is a sense that if parents haven’t seen a baby, they will not mourn it as much. Anette Kersting, an expert in traumatic prenatal loss observes: “A unique aspect of pregnancy loss is that women feel that their femininity is undermined. Women who have already suffered a miscarriage show higher levels of psychological distress than women who have not experienced perinatal loss.” But nature’s protection of the nurturers goes far deeper. According to professor Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist and psychologist at Bowling Green State University: “Brain evolution has provided safeguards to assure that parents, usually the mother, take care of offspring. Some of the chemistries of sexuality, for instance oxytocin, have been evolutionarily redeployed to mediate maternal care — nurturance and social bonding — suggesting an intimate evolutionary relationship between female sexual rewards and maternal motivations. The shifting hormonal tides at the end of pregnancy (declining progesterone, and increasing estrogen, prolactin, and oxytocin) invigorate maternal urges days before the young are born. This collection of hormonal and associated neurochemical changes also help assure strong maternal bonds with offspring.” When a baby is lost, the cascades of hormones and instructions to the brain bring up powerful

feelings in the woman. Her body essentially loses its programming, and grief ensues. Other research by neuroscientists Naomi Eisenberger and Matt Lieberman, from the University of California, Los Angeles, shows that when the individual experiences distress, the anterior cingulate cortex activates. It acts as a neural alarm system, alerting the rest of the brain that something is wrong. Losing a child may not be all we lose — it’s a moment in which social and physical pain merge together in an almost unbearable way. According to psychologist Sian Beilock, “Evolution’s solution to our need for caretaking has instilled in us a need for social connection and a sense of distress when those connections are severed.” But as Jenna and Bea, Hasfa and Madeline, Kim and Bridgette, and Angus and Olaf, all who were interviewed for this piece, said, in their various ways, for them there is no satisfying explanation for why so many women have a visceral sense of their lost child, why they may feel as if they see him or her, why they remember the anticipated date of birth decades later, and why they can’t sell the baby shoes they bought and keep them carefully folded away in the drawer where their most treasured possessions remain.

It’s the ffirst time in historyy that an infectious f disease has not been the leadingg killer off children under 5.

SCIENCE

BEEN EREH BEFORE?

How much did Allen elaborate, and how was he able to know so many intricate details of places he’d never been to, and never seen?

■ Kirk Allen was a gifted physicist working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory at the end of World War II, where he was involved with the infamous Manhattan Project that brought about the end of the war, and ushered in a new age of paranoia once the world had witnessed what nuclear weapons were capable of. You may be surprised to learn that despite his many accomplishments, and an esteemed reputation among his colleagues, Allen was actually quite bored with his life, something he shared privately with his psychoanalyst, Robert Lindner. Allen was in fact living another life as an interstellar traveler, leaping across remote and distant worlds, several of which he conquered. It was a life he could tap into at will, even if the “adventures” didn’t always please his supervisors at work. While this might just sound like the story of another typical daydreamer, Allen had evidently spent so much time in distant solar systems that he acquired over 12,000 pages of elaborate maps and stories which he shared with Lindner. He even wrote a paper on the mechanics of hyperspace travel. Before long, Lindner also found himself swept away in these cosmic adventures, which he described in his book, “The Fifty-Minute Hour.” Although Allen eventually broke down and confessed that he wasn’t traveling

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to Mars on his lunch hour, questions remain. How much did Allen elaborate, and how was he able to know so many intricate details of places he’d never been to, and never seen? You might say that Allen is one of several (but one of the stranger) cases of retrocognition, a word coined by the self-proclaimed psychic Frederic W.H. Myers to describe knowledge of a past event that cannot be acquired by traditional means (e.g., reading about it, watching a movie, etc.). Many of those who alleged having experienced this report visions that are a bit closer to home, but taking place in a past that they don’t know much about. Perhaps the most famous episode was a vision had by Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain back in 1901. The two British schoolteachers went on holiday in Versailles, where they took a wrong turn and entered the private chateau of Marie Antoinette. They stumbled across a woman in white, sketching leisurely, and realized they had come into the

presence of that famous French queen, who had died in 1793, shortly after being dethroned in the revolution. They published a book about their strange encounter, which was quickly met with ridicule. Perhaps they didn’t travel back to the French Revolution after all, but how could two people experience the same vision? Both Jourdain and Moberly reported the same feelings of dreariness and oppression when they stumbled upon the site. Several months later, they returned to Versailles, and several landmarks were missing — namely a kiosk and a bridge that they remembered crossing. They thought that perhaps (and this has been purported as the real explanation for what happened) they had accidentally stumbled upon a garden party, but no events had been scheduled for that afternoon at the Trianon Palace. Jourdain would continue to report many bizarre supernatural encounters before her death in 1937, including meeting a crowned man at the Louvre that she believed to be the Roman emperor Constantine. One may wonder how many of Jourdain’s experiences were actually true. However, bouts of experiencing unfamiliar times and places tend to be some of the rarest paranormal experiences — much less common than seeing the ghosts of lost relatives or extraterrestrial beings. So are there people who can somehow absorb knowledge of the past, or from other worlds better than everyone else? Or perhaps there’s only a slim minority of a group of people who are aware that they’re taking in information from several times and places at once? Several years ago, I regularly had dreams of visiting the great Hagia Sophia in modern-day Turkey, and staring up at the beautifully illuminated walls that stray birds would sometimes fly over, who curiously seemed to observe the museum’s ban on singing. I first had the dreams in 1999, but wouldn’t learn of the

existence of this great medieval monument — or its mosaics — until months later. While I have yet to find a satisfactory explanation for why they recurred for over a decade, I’m still not ready to chalk it up to retrocognition — perhaps because there’s nothing of the physical really involved, nor anything to suggest a time slip. The Hagia Sophia was at first a cathedral, then a mosque in the days of the Ottoman Empire, before it became a secular museum in the 1930s. Perhaps the most intriguing case is a little-known study recorded by Scottish psychologist Andrew MacKenzie. As with the Jourdain case, the story consists of multiple witnesses — three Royal Navy cadets on what was meant to be a standard training exercise in 1957. They were supposed to report back to base with what they had seen on a five-mile trek — but what they found was more unsettling than anything imaginable. Although it was autumn, the trees seemed to become green again, and the weather unseasonably warm, as they approached the rural English village of Kersey — which was not only quiet, but appeared deserted, with no cars on the street, nor were there any telephone wires, and the cottages had thatched roofs and timber frames. Peering into the windows of one of the shops, they saw the skinned carcasses of three oxen, moldy and rotting. As with the Trianon incident, a general feeling of hostility came over the cadets, and they quickly fled. They wouldn’t speak of the occurrence again for another three decades. Did they really travel back to a bygone century? The building they peered through had actually been a butcher shop since at least the 18th century. Of course, skeptic or not, you might wonder why they traveled back to this particular time and place — why did the seasons change, and why the vague feelings of discomfort? Perhaps all of these episodes of retrocognition are

the result of derealization — a condition in which the real seems unreal. Instances of derealization, in which the individual takes herself away from her surroundings, are actually fairly common — estimated to occur in 31 to 66 percent of the general population. Your sense of place is often colored by specific memories you have of it, or expectations of how it should be. You may have grown up with carpeting in the living room — but take it up or replace it, and you may soon forget what the room looked like during your childhood, or how the furniture was arranged. Look at the house after you’ve moved and you may realize that many memories you have of the house are wrong, and find rooms that you don’t remember at all — perhaps the result of memories being compressed together as a type of shorthand for the brain, as we can only remember so much with accuracy. For someone suffering from longer bouts of derealization — sometimes a symptom of more serious disorders like schizophrenia, but sometimes simply the result of anxiety or constant worrying — much of the world is like looking into that once-familiar house. Occipital-temporal dysfunction in the brain is a common cause. The former deals with the brain’s visual processing, while the latter interprets sensory information delivered to the brain. Sleep deprivation, and even caffeine, can lead to episodes of derealization — and only about 5 percent of people will experience lifelong episodes.

When Jourdain met Marie Antoinette, as she claimed, she probably had some expectations of what the queen would be like, and this formed a mental image in her brain. In the Kersey incident, the cadets suspected they were in the Middle Ages — perhaps shortly after the outbreak of the Black Death epidemic, when villagers boarded up their homes for fear of catching the disease. However, glass in rural England would have been rare in the 14th century, let alone a butcher shop. Few peasants could afford to slaughter their animals. Again, the cadets were not so much seeing history unravel as they were seeing what they expected it to have looked like. So, if these episodes can be chalked up to derealization, why are they experienced by more than one person? In nearly every instance, years go by before anyone talks about their experience. It’s almost certain that they have time to iron out the details — landmarks, the season, feelings, people met along the way — and, perhaps, the idea of seeing the French Revolution as it happens makes for a better story than simply getting lost while on vacation. I don’t mean to say that such accounts are deliberately made up — but as stories, they are ones we’d all prefer to believe.

Perhaps they didn’t travel back to the French Revolution after all, but how could two people experience the same vision?

Winter 2016

A GRAIN OF

THOUGHT UNDERSTANDING THE PINEAL GLAND by James Sullivan

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BRAIN IN FOCUS

Winter 2016

The great philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes even called it “the principle seat of the soul,” a sort of throne where the body and the intellect converged.

■ You probably learned in grade school that our brain is hard at work even when we’re asleep — but probably still have a hard time imagining what exactly it’s doing while our bodies are at rest, even when we don’t have to be up for the 9 a.m. shift. It’s tempting to think that the dreams we have (as wonderfully bizarre as they may be), are sort of a way that the brain has fun after spending the entire day processing visual information and relaying these messages back to our nervous system — the puritans even believed that dreams were the places that the human soul wandered at night, and what we recalled were the remainders of distant memories. Until as late as the 1920s, sleep was thought to be the result of a lack of blood to the brain, rather than the result of a unique function of one particular gland — the pineal gland, which lies beneath the two hemispheres, shaped like a pine cone, tucked away by the epithalamus. This is not to say that the importance of the pineal gland went unnoticed for centuries. The ancient Hindus saw it as a region of mystery — the Ajna chakra, acting as some sort of third eye into the world of dreaming. The great philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes even called it “the principle seat of the soul,” a sort of throne where the body and the intellect converged, and thought he had gotten closer than anyone else in understanding the connection between human intelligence and the soul.

This claim might sound absurd, and was attacked even by Descartes’ contemporaries, but it’s easy to understand why he may have thought this. The gland is surrounded by a mass of carotid arteries at its location — and has more profuse blood flow than any other place in the body, besides the kidneys. In fact, it’s one of the few parts of the human brain that is not insulated by the blood-brain barrier wall. It’s only about the size of a grain of rice, and is fully grown by the time you’re 2 years old, although its weight increases steadily from the time of adolescence and onward. Part of this is due to calcium deposits in the pineal gland, which appear more frequently as we get older, known as “brain sand.” It is the body’s producer of melatonin, which it creates in response to nightfall, or more specifically, the onset of darkness — which can cause wintertime depression in some people when the hours of sunlight disappear steadily by the day. When you first open your eyes in the morning, cells in the retinae behind your eyes react, signaling the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which releases fibers that then relay signals of light across the spinal cord and into the pineal gland, effectively throwing our bodies in sync with a 24hour solar day, impacting things like the peak of energy, with our strongest reaction time happening around the 15-hour mark, and experiencing our lowest blood pressure in the early morning hours just before waking. The link between our rate of aging and the amount of daily sleep we get is also well established, and dreams are now believed to function as a means of emotional and mood regulation. An insufficient amount has been linked to hypertension and Type 2 diabetes, but also depression, when levels of melatonin are not optimal. Fluctuations in melatonin impact both the rate at which we age and also the degree continued on page 

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Personality

A Q&A WITH RECTOR FRANCISCO ROJAS-ARAVENA by Samantha Macia and Deniz Cam

■ As the U.N. convened its 70th General Assembly, Brain World talked with Dr. Francisco Rojas-Aravena, the current rector of the University for Peace (UPEACE). We asked him about our world and why UPEACE’s work is significant, given the direction of the U.N. While answering our questions, Rector Rojas-Aravena focused on the importance of sustainable growth and reminded us how we all, as humans, strive for a common goal: A better life. In 2013, Rector Rojas-Aravena was appointed as the next leader of UPEACE — a U.N.-mandated educational institution founded in 1980. Rojas-Aravena holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Utrecht, and a M.Sc. in political science from FLACSO (Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences). But his success cannot be constrained to his academic work. Rector Rojas-Aravena has been actively collaborating with world leaders from various countries to find new ways to resolve conflicts. He is committed to sharing his knowledge with the world and making a difference. continued on next page

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Winter 2016

WITH THE DIGITAL COMMUNICATION REVOLUTION, MOST PEOPLE HAVE GAINED THE OPPORTUNITY TO COMMUNICATE AND PUT FORTH THEIR OWN IDEAS.

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Rojas-Aravena cont’d Brain World: Can you tell us about the history of UPEACE? Francisco Rojas-Aravena: UPEACE is the result of an initiative presented to the U.N. in 1980 by Rodrigo Carazo, the president of Costa Rica at the time. The international context was filled with regional wars including the civil wars in Central America. Carazo’s idea to establish UPEACE was to send a message to the world that a higher-education institution for peace was needed in order to achieve peace. His belief in democracy re-prioritized Costa Rican values and made it a human rights-oriented state, an unarmed country and one of the oldest democracies of the region. Costa Rica was also the country that invited different international organizations to visit, and thus became an international cradle for human rights and home to different international organizations. The proposition for UPEACE moved very quickly within the U.N. and was approved by resolution 3555 on December 5, 1980. Thus, the core structure of the university was created: A postgraduate university to educate and train people on conflict resolution, to teach them the ability to transform conflict and develop peace through education.

BW: What would you say the goal of the university is? FRA: Basically, the university was established with a clear determination to become an international institution of higher education for peace and to promote a spirit of understanding, tolerance, and peaceful coexistence. The university fosters cooperation among people and helps lessen obstacles and threats to world peace by also complying with the aspirations of the U.N. charter. By perceiving education as the main tool for peace, the university started with a variety of courses. The first course was in international relations and international cooperation. By the end of the ’90s, the U.N. decided to change the curriculum to focus more on the initial aim of the university. As a result, all the master’s degrees started being taught in English, and the university broadened the amount of applicants, receiving students from different parts of the world. BW: Would you say that the university has been successful? FRA: Looking back on these 35 years, it is evident that the university has been able to create new leaders in this area with more than 1,650 alumni who work in more than 101 countries, where they are committed to developing our world. One of our most successful alums happens to be the first lady of Costa Rica, who studied at UPEACE during the ’90s, and who, today, thanks in large part to her postgraduate studies, works closely with local and regional governments on matters of cooperation and integration as part of her political agenda. Our alumni generally work with the U.N., international organizations, NGOs, governments, the private sector, and academia.

BW: The academic spectrum of the university is clearly very impressive. Could you elaborate more on the curriculum? FRA: We have one comprehensive area of study on Peace and Conflict, which includes four master’s degrees: International Peace Studies; Gender and Peacebuilding; Media, Peace and Conflict Studies; and Peace Education. We also have master’s degrees in International Law with two specializations: one in Human Rights and the other in the Settlement of Disputes. Environmental Studies is also one of the broader areas, with four specializations related to Environmental Security, Natural Resources Management, Climate Change Policy, and Sustainable Food Systems. We also give students the opportunity to focus on responsible management for sustainable development. BW: Where do you think the U.N. is headed? FRA: The U.N. has recently been making relevant decisions for conflict resolution. This subject is one of the most important issues today, as the conflicts worldwide become more complex. This is an especially crucial year because of U.N.’s 70th anniversary. The U.N. will make decisive choices in four main areas, and peacekeeping is one of the most important. The secretary-general created a special group to redesign and rethink peace and the role of peacekeeping military forces, since political will is more important than military force to resolve conflicts. The people in the field need to be thinking of those in need and view their protection as the main objective. The second and probably most important area is related to sustainable development and growth for the Post-2015 and Development Agenda 2030 programs. We must eliminate extreme poverty all around the world. We also cannot move forward without addressing the need for water in various parts

WE MUST ELIMINATE EXTREME POVERTY ALL AROUND THE WORLD.

Winter 2016

Rojas-Aravena cont’d of the globe. In terms of extreme poverty, there has been important progress. In the case of Latin America, more than 50 million people used to live in poverty, and today, a significant portion of them represent a new middle class. A similar progression occurred in China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia, too. But much remains undone. The third area, which is the most significant threat to the human race, is climate change. At the end of 2015, a conference on climate change will convene in Paris. If countries cannot achieve a specific plan to battle against climate change, we will very likely have to confront an inexplicable humanitarian disaster. Some scientists argue that although the world population is currently at 8 billion people, we could lose at least half of that population if the average temperature goes up by 2 degrees Celsius. The fourth and final area of focus for the U.N. during its 70th anniversary is that of human rights and the strengthening of the Human Rights Council. Presently, each country presents a report to the council, which gives its recommendations, but this is not enough. Today’s challenge is to find ways to improve human rights protection through the U.N. That way, by preventing the violation of human rights in certain parts of the world, we will not have to deal with worse crises in the future. Historically, countries struggling with civil wars or complex conflicts almost always present warning signs about a decade before the conflict, among them polarization and the full violation of human rights.

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BW: What can people do as individuals to support these changes? FRA: In our globalized world, transnational dialogues have become more common and possible. With the digital communication revolution, most people have gained the opportunity to communicate and put forth their own ideas. This revolution could be used in very constructive and productive ways: for building peace, for focusing on human rights, and for accomplishing the dream of happiness for all. However, this possibility could also be abused and used for destruction. For that reason, taking action is crucial, and each individual’s goal should be to create institutions for more permanent actions while using their own ideas and incorporating those of others. BW: If we are to see peace as the absence of tension or stress, are there any meditative courses that focus on the brain and stress resolution? FRA: Well, I think that the university has a variety of courses that focus on inner peace from different perspectives. We see the role of the institution as transforming conflict and creating the space to solve problems in a nonviolent way through education. But although the reduction of stress is important, I think that it’s necessary to have some level of adrenaline/tension in order to undertake action. Otherwise, you might feel too comfortable and less inclined to act. Peace requires courage and a lot of input, which can also lead to great frustration, because sometimes you make progress and realize that there is still a long way ahead. It is important not to forget that this is a permanent process and to ensure that when you look back, you have taken all the necessary steps to achieve the final goal.

BW: Would you say that you have a role model who shaped your path? FRA: I think various people influenced me in different ways. We are currently using Mother Teresa’s famous quote, “Peace begins with a smile,” around the campus, in hopes that students will remember that change begins with each of us, and so I will say that great leaders like her are my first inspiration. If you smile, this causes a reaction in others to smile back. This is not to say that if you smile in the face of starvation and disaster, it will have any impact. Nevertheless, when it comes to mastering negotiation, smiling is a necessary tool. Professor Roger Fisher (of Harvard University) taught me how to negotiate during my studies through the Harvard Negotiation Project. I also learned so much from my academic studies in Latin America and Europe (the Netherlands). I was always lucky, because I always had the opportunity to meet influential people who inspired me, including several Latin American presidents from different countries. In the case of Costa Rica, president Rodrigo Carazo (1978-1982), president Luis Alberto Monge (1982-1986), Nobel Prize-winner president Oscar Arias (19861990 and 2006-2010), president Laura Chinchilla (2010-2014), and current president Luis Guillermo Solis (2014-2018). More important than the knowledge they gave me is the friendship they provided me with, which helped shape my perception of the world. I get to work with presidents and show them my work and I feel that through these

political dialogues you always learn a lot, because presidents are quite bright people. Many want to believe that most presidents are not smart, that they managed to become heads of states by luck alone, but I have found this to be quite untrue. The presidents I’ve met are visionaries, persistent and perceptive and thus able to create opportunities to present their citizens with a better life. I am grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to work at this university, because I see it as a way to say “Thank you” to all these people, to Costa Rica, to president Carazo, to president Monge, to president Arias, to president Chinchilla, and to president Solis. Thanks to them, my ideas can now be disseminated within the academic world and truly make a difference. I am very pleased to contribute to the development and the relaunch of UPEACE, a leading institution that has been educating leaders for peace for the last 35 years.

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Celebrity

A CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD DAWKINS by James Sullivan

■ “Out, out brief candle! Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player. That struts and frets his hour upon the stage. And then is heard no more,” were the last words of Shakespeare’s tyrant Macbeth, the passage that inspired the title of Richard Dawkins’ new book, this time a memoir, “Brief Candle in the Dark,” in which he reflects on his long, prolific career as an evolutionary biologist and popular science writer, and what he calls “the incredible privilege of being alive — why we’re here, what life’s about, why the world is here, why the universe is here.” The monologue, which Dawkins passionately recited to me over the phone, is also a nod to his friend, the late astronomer Carl Sagan and author of “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark,” who argued the importance of skepticism and the scientific method as the best cure for superstition. continued on next page 54 brainworldmagazine.com

Winter 2016

Photo: Lalla Ward

Dawkins cont’d

“I did well in biology at school, and it was what my father studied, so I followed in his footsteps in a way. I’ve always been drawn to the philosophical aspects of science — those questions like why we’re here, and what life is about.”

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Dawkins, best known for coining the “meme” and for his work on genetic mutation — the way in which genes seem to act in their own interest in the way they replicate, rather than serving to benefit the organism — didn’t really become a household name in the United States until 2006 with his bestseller “The God Delusion,” in which he rebukes organized religion and makes the case that a supreme deity almost certainly does not exist. He continues to be one of the most prominent voices of the New Atheism movement, earning the ire of many fundamentalist Christians and Muslims. In that book, however, Dawkins also discussed the evolutionary advantage that religion may have had: “I think religion is a by-

product of several psychological predispositions, which in themselves have Darwinian survival value, but consequences which probably don’t. It’s probably a good thing for a child to listen to, or believe his parents, when they say not to touch a fire. The brain picks up on this — to believe what your parents or tribal elders tell you, and that could have survival value. The trouble is that at an early age, the child has no way of knowing the difference between the good things and the bad things they are told.” Civilization was only a recent development for humanity, coming about over the last 8,000 years or so, following a number of centuries of tribal living — times at which believing that large and dangerous predators lurked in the tall grass could have meant the difference between life and death. Somehow, this mentality, along with the brain’s tendency to interact with other brains and form new connections, could have eventually given birth to organized religion as we know it today. Not everyone would readily agree, however. Many of Dawkins’ harshest detractors are also critical of the theory of evolution by natural selection, the predominant theory of all biology and one of the most strongly supported scientific ideas that accounts for the vast array of diversity on Earth — a growing concern for professor Dawkins, whose own me-

dia appearances have sometimes been manipulated by creationists that reject evolution for a literal interpretation of the Bible: “I did well in biology at school, and it was what my father studied, so I followed in his footsteps in a way. I’ve always been drawn to the philosophical aspects of science — those questions like why we’re here, and what life is about. If you look at the human eye, it is a beautiful piece of machinery, albeit with many revealing flaws as well. Up until Darwin’s time, its sophistication was taken by many to be evidence of design, and it was a stupendous intellectual feat of Darwin and his successors to find a purely mechanistic explanation for that appearance of design. We live in a time in which science has an answer for it.” Dawkins delivered a memorable explanation of the human eye as the gradual product of evolution from an aquatic ancestor in his first television foray, his 1987 documentary, “The Blind Watchmaker,” which took him to America’s Bible Belt: “Even today [according to the Gallup Poll], more than 40 percent of people in North America consistently believe that life on Earth began less than 10,000 years ago, which is pretty worrying. I don’t notice it when I travel around America when I give talks to large audiences even in the Bible Belt, I usually get very enthusiastic reception, but I assume the polls are not lying, so we’ve got a struggle ahead of us. I like to think we are winning it, I mean, we’ve got the evidence on our side, so I like to be optimistic.”

Dawkins has also had his share of criticism from atheists as well, some of whom are afraid that efforts to unite atheists and other skeptics of religion may cause them to be seen as just another religion, indirectly encouraging the same tribalism they wish to distance themselves from. However, Dawkins believes that atheism is evidence of a healthy and independent mind while religious doctrine is merely a way to justify belief without evidence — the same line of thinking that has allowed things like homeopathy or psychic hotlines to thrive. Consequently, he has endorsed the Brights Movement, which seeks to unite people who share in a naturalistic worldview, and defended the use of the word “bright” to describe likeminded people. “It hasn’t caught on in the way I think they had hoped. I’m not entirely sure why — I think because people think it’s arrogant. It’s meant to be a noun, not an adjective — and many people who hear it think that the opposite of a ‘bright’ is a ‘dim.’ Rather, the opposite of a bright is a ‘super,’ as proposed by Daniel Dennett, someone who believes in the supernatural, which perhaps not many people would find objectionable, being called a ‘super.’ There are those in the skeptic movement as well who like to denounce homeopathy and astrology while giving religion a free pass. I tend to lump them all together.”

His new book is the sequel to “An Appetite for Wonder,” which detailed his youth growing up in Kenya and his days as a student at Oxford and at the University of California, Berkeley. I asked professor Dawkins at what moment in life did he find himself drawn to the sciences, what drives his passion for discovery, but he quickly made me realize I was asking the wrong question. Instead, it should be why aren’t people more deeply invested in the sciences than what we are currently seeing? Why shouldn’t we all be interested in it, at least enough to be scientifically literate citizens? Particularly in an age where technology is rapidly evolving and new discoveries are frequently being made, like NASA’s recent announcement that there’s evidence of flowing water on Mars. In the years since “The Selfish Gene” was published, the meme — or idea spreading from person to person within a culture — has found a permanent place in the lexicon with the advent of Facebook and social media. A generation of people has grown up reading Dawkins’ books. Among those who credit him as an influ-

ence is Elise Andrew, founder of the popular website I Freaking Love Science. I asked Dawkins what advice he had for those who sought to pursue careers in science or technology: “It’s fascinating, it’s enthralling, it’s thrilling to be part of this great, cooperative international enterprise to get to the truth, and I stress cooperative and international because you can’t say that about all cultural and all educational enterprises. Science truly is international. It’s the truth and it’s the same wherever you are, whatever language you speak, and I think there’s something inspiring about that.”

“We have an incredible privilege of being alive — why we’re here, what life’s about, why the world is here, why the universe is here.”

Not only are they present in every species of mammals, but nearly every vertebrate has this gland, leading many evolutionary biologists to suspect that the pineal gland is in fact the remains of a much larger, active organ.

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Pineal Gland cont’d of rest activity necessary for each individual, with the suprachiasmatic nucleus acting as the body’s personal alarm clock, or quite literally, you might say, our biological clock. Melatonin levels first begin to build up around 9 p.m. and act like fatigue toxins that gradually pile up before they bring about sleep. Perhaps this is why we’re hardly the only animals to possess one. Not only are they present in every species of mammals, but nearly every vertebrate has this gland, leading many evolutionary biologists to suspect that the pineal gland is in fact the remains of a much larger, active organ that may have once resided between both halves of the thalamus, this being the line of symmetry between both hemispheres of the brain which focuses primarily on the regulation of sensory motor functions. A vast cortex of nerves stretches out from the thalamus and into the brain, all of them dependent on the functioning of one powerhouse which itself is so small that it can be mistaken for a tumor if placed under a microscope. In some reptiles, such as crocodilians, the gland has already vanished entirely, disappearing over enough generations of natural selection. Although it’s been nearly a century since serious study of the pineal gland commenced, the exact nature of how it releases melatonin is still only partially established, meaning we’ve only come a bit closer to understand-

ing it than Descartes. The substance was first isolated in 1958 by dermatologist Aaron B. Lerner, who was particularly interested in how it might help treat skin conditions. It is believed that the secretions of melatonin are strongest during the hours of sleep, and greater concentrations of melatonin are associated with bouts of more vivid dreaming. Among the more intriguing properties of melatonin is its role as an antioxidant — chemicals that not only benefit the skin, but which can slow the process of aging. By reacting with the skin and breaking down electrons, antioxidants prevent free radicals involved in tissue damage — primarily the type of freeform cells that produce cancers. Four decades after Lerner’s discovery, melatonin was synthesized for the first time as a liquid, to be taken as a sleep aid, as well as a preventive treatment for migraines. Because melatonin is so effective at protecting the state of mitochondrial DNA, it has a wide variety of uses: from guarding against radiation exposure to preventing gallstones, as its presence decreases the amount of cholesterol in the gallbladder. Lerner and his colleagues weren’t so successful in finding a cure for melanoma, but they found something much bigger: The beginning of chronobiology, or rather, the science of how life is affected directly by the moving of the cosmos — namely, the way that living things on Earth have adapted to the planetary orbit around the sun. Just a slight modification could have led to the world today looking very different. While we think of a universe as gravitating toward structures of ever-complex order, it’s also critical to understand the rhythm that brings about that order. We also now know that melatonin contains another very valuable property that keeps the secretions of the pineal gland a constant topic of interest —

protection from the brain against neurodegeneration, the deterioration of brain tissue that is typical in patients suffering with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, which are thought to be the culmination of oxidative stress. With a greater percentage of the population living longer, along with growing evidence that air pollution may play at least a partial role in the spread of Alzheimer’s, the number of cases is expected to grow in the near future. Fortunately, our understanding of dementia is greater than ever before, thanks in part to advances made in neuroscience technology. While we have been successful in isolating the damaged proteins that play a part, and synthesizing byproducts of the brain like melatonin, we are drawing nearer to a full picture of how the brain’s glands function as well. On this journey, who knows how many more treatments are just waiting to be discovered?

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PIXAR’S LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL ‘INSIDE OUT’ (PIXAR, 2015) by Deniz Cam

■ Life-changing events from our childhood remain easily accessible through our memories, no matter how many decades pass. When asked, we can quickly remember the time our parents approached us with a big smile and told us we were moving. Maybe we remember the time we were told we would have to change schools and thought it was the end of the world. We could not understand our parents’ excitement, thinking that they not only had to worry about this serious decision, but should be more concerned about the memories that would be left behind. As a retrospective feast of brilliant animation and narrative, Pixar’s new blockbuster “Inside Out” takes us back to our childhoods, reminding us how we dealt with life-changing events, and showing us that maybe it was not that bad after all. 60 brainworldmagazine.com

Those of us who have seen Pixar’s most recent movies can attest to the fact that the animation studio has successfully been hitting that soft spot in our hearts every single time. The company’s successful “Up” made millions cry. The audience sympathized with the “grumpyold-man-of-the-neighborhood,” who did everything in his power to commemorate that one woman who meant the world to him. With “Inside Out,” we find ourselves on the other side of the age spectrum, looking

at the world from the perspective of 12-year-old Riley. We are admitted into Riley’s brain, wherein reside the emotions running her body and memories. Joy, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust appear as well-developed characters. In the world of “Inside Out,” memories and emotions collaborate within a complex system. When a memory is being made, it enters the brain as a delicate glass ball, colored by the emotion that was mostly involved with the experience. For ex-

AS A RETROSPECTIVE FEAST OF BRILLIANT ANIMATION AND NARRATIVE, PIXAR’S NEW BLOCKBUSTER “INSIDE OUT” TAKES US BACK TO OUR CHILDHOODS.

ample, little Riley’s first successful hockey experience sits in her brain as a yellow ball (this being the color of joy). Each memory is very valuable to the emotion involved, but the human brain has core memories defining the fundamentals of one’s personality. As these colorful memory balls accumulate, Riley’s brain branches off into character islands, namely: hockey, family, friendship, honesty, and goofball. Her complexity is defined by her memories and the emotions they bring out.

While the functioning of the brain is captivating enough, the real story starts when Riley’s brain cannot stop reacting to the situation she is in. Although her emotions first interact peacefully, sadness cannot prevent her from touching the core memories, which were all in the territory of joy. Joy and sadness have a fight, sending the core memories into a deep hole in the brain, and we meet the movie’s real villain: Depression. “Inside Out” succeeds in acknowledging mental problems

through a realistic and fairly optimistic lens. The movie explains depression vibrantly without antagonizing it, arguing that you can recognize depression and fight against it with the help of good intentions and some courage. Our growth, according to Pixar, depends on our emotions understanding each other, and this could be done with some initiative to train our brain. Although it is not always easy, if we find the power within our brain, we can always find a way to move forward. Winter 2016

Book Roundup

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OFTEN WHERE MEMOIRS ARE CONCERNED, A SMOOTH AND CONSECUTIVE LINE OF EVENTS IS PRESENTED IN THE CHAPTERS, BUT DAWKINS DEVIATES FROM THIS FORMULA AND INSTEAD PROVIDES QUICK GLIMPSES AND SNIPPETS OF HIS LIFE AND WORK.

‘Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science’ By Richard Dawkins (HarperCollins, 2015) ■ In the sequel to his first bestselling memoir “An Ap-

petite for Wonder,” Richard Dawkins discusses his experiences in the world of science and academia. Hailing Carl Sagan in the title, “Brief Candle in the Dark” is less personal in nature than its 2013 predecessor. Picking up immediately where “An Appetite for Wonder” left off, Dawkins discusses the nuances of human interaction in the academic sphere as well as the professional world of fellow biologists. Dawkins begins with tales from his days as a professor at Oxford, and recalls them with a sense of humor that isn’t so commonly found in scientific publications (but is nevertheless characteristic of Dawkins). Discussing offbeat questions posed to students — like “Why do animals have heads?” and “Why do mirrors reverse from left to right but don’t turn the image upside down?” — questions which illustrate how he and his colleagues posed inquiries that prompted intelligent answers, and as such deviated from what Dawkins describes as “IQ intelligence.” It wasn’t important that the applicants got the answer right — but rather how they came to the answers they gave, to determine whether or not they would benefit from an Oxford education. Often where memoirs are concerned, a smooth and consecutive line of events is presented in the chapters, but Dawkins deviates from this formula and instead provides quick glimpses and snippets of his life and work — interspersed with amusing anecdotes, like actually being held captive during the 1991 Faraday Christmas Lecture he gave on the evolution of the eye (part of a tradition that kept the chosen speaker from backing out at the last minute). In some ways, “Brief Candle in the Dark” doesn’t differ from any of Dawkins’ other works, because the subject matter as well as his approach of discussing it is the same. The most important facts are presented starkly and with a great deal of self-promotion. However, the snapshot experiences he narrates are often framed by excerpts from his other books, and in this way the memoir takes on somewhat of a less original reading experience — something which is uncharacteristic of Dawkins. Nevertheless, the book succinctly narrates the continuous learning experience involved with a career in evolutionary biology, and the pressing need for reason in a world steeped in constant natural and technological change. —Caroline Smith

‘Infectious Madness’ By Harriet A. Washington (Little, Brown and Company, 2015) ■ In her book, “Infectious Madness,” Harriet A. Washington leaves no stone unturned in the search to connect the ailments of the brain to those of the physical body. From Khmer refugees in the United States to children whose spontaneous cases of obsessive compulsive disorder shock their families, Washington suggests that the increase in mental illnesses may not have as much to do with genetic predisposition as scientists previously thought. Washington acknowledges her somewhat controversial claim, while at the same time reiterating throughout the book that the medical field, as well as society at large, cannot advance in understanding mental illness if we all hold to a cognitive bias. In fact, Washington elaborates in the first chapter that physicians are just as guilty of “groupthink” as the American public. She suggests that though biological contagion is universally acknowledged as the reason for physical ailments, it’s almost never acknowledged as being related to mental ailments. Conversely, mental ailments are nearly always attributed to social stimuli, but that social contagiousness is also a very real cause of mental illness. Washington cites conversations with Susan Swedo, M.D. — a pediatrician at the Maryland National Institutes of Health — to elaborate the point. Both had noticed suspicious coincidences between mental and physical health throughout history. Washington is quick to link a surge in schizophrenia cases near the end of the 19th century with a zoonotic infection carried by cats. Coincidentally, the 1870s also saw a surge in the ownership of cats as pets in American households. Washington also cites that Hippocrates treated mania and hysteria by attempting to “correct humoral imbalance” — the very same way physical ailments were treated in ancient Greece. In this way, her theory on “mind/body dualism” is not necessarily new, but certainly explains a socially and scientifically complex predicament. Washington’s research and fluid prose blend seamlessly into a guide where the relationship between the mind and the body is ruthlessly questioned, and advice on protecting oneself from microbial infections is prioritized alongside the latest strides in scientific progress. —Caroline Smith

Winter 2016

Supernatural Power

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by Jeremy Fuscaldo

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January

WINTER 2016

3-9 Obergurgl, Austria FENS Hertie Winter School on Neurobiology of Language and Communication Federation of European Neuroscience Societies

Events Abu Dhabi

10-14 Santa Fe, New Mexico Biology of Down Syndrome: Impacts Across the Biomedical Spectrum Keystone Symposia 11-14 Eliat, Israel 2nd International Conference on Loss, Bereavement and Human Resilience in Israel and the World Eliat International Conference 15-17 Scottsdale, Arizona American Society for Peripheral Nerve Annual Meeting American Society for Peripheral Nerve

Galveston 16-17 Miami Beach, Florida 14th Annual Mild Cognitive Impairment Symposium, The Annual Alzheimerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Early Diagnostic and Treatment Workshop Wien Center for Alzheimerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Disease and Memory Disorders, Mount Sinai Medical Center 16-18 Gros Islet, Saint Lucia 3rd Caribbean Biomedical Research Days International Stress and Behavior Society

Obergurgl

18-22 Beirut, Lebanon Computational Neuroscience by the Mediterranean Association for the Study of Mind, American School of Beirut 19 Ypsilanti, Michigan The Brain and Recovery: An Update on Neuroscience of Addiction Dawn Farm

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23-28 Breckenridge, Colorado Winter Conference on Brain Research WCBR 24-27 Santa Fe, New Mexico Traumatic Brain Injury: Clinical, Pathological and Translational Mechanisms Keystone Symposia 24-27 Santa Fe, New Mexico Axons: From Cell Biology to Pathology Keystone Symposia 31 January-February 4 Keystone, Colorado Neurological Disorders of Intracellular Trafficking The Keystone Symposia

February 3-6 Boston, Massachusetts 44th Annual Meeting of the International Neuropsychology Association International Neuropsychological Society 7-12 Galveston, Texas Alcohol & the Nervous System Gordon Research Conference 9-11 London, U.K. Ageing 2016 Euroscicon 14-21 Fort Lauderdale, Florida Palliative Medicine and End of Life Care Continued Education, Inc. 15-16 Lausanne, Switzerland Life Sciences Switzerland Annual Meeting The LS2

Boston

17-19 Los Angeles, California International Stroke Conference American Heart Association

26 London, U.K. Clinical Update Sleep Guyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and St. Thomasâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; NHS Foundation Trust

19-21 Orlando, Florida LDN 2016 AIIC Conference LDN Research Trust

March

23 Ypsilanti, Michigan Suicide Prevention and Addiction Dawn Farm

7-10 Sonoma, California Annual Meeting of the Intelligent Interfaces Community University of California Santa Barbara, Association for Computing Machinery

25-27 Paris, France 3rd International Conference on Heart and Brain Kenes International, International Conference on Heart and Brain 25-28 Salt Lake City, Utah Computational and Systems Neuroscience COSYNE

11-12 Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates 6th International Neonatology Conference MENA Conference 13-16 Perth, Australia 36th Annual Scientific Meeting Australian Pain Society, DC Conferences

13-18 Galveston, Texas Sleep Regulation & Function Gordon Research Conference 14-16 London, U.K. 5th World Congress on Neurology & Therapeutics OMICS International 16-19 Orlando, Florida Annual Meeting of the Section on Disorders of the Spine and Peripheral Nerves Congress of Neurological Surgeons 17-20 Washington, D.C. New Perspectives on Brain Health and Aging American Association of Geriatric Psychiatry

21-23 San Diego, California Neurological Biomarkers Conference GTCbio 26 March-2 April Fort Lauderdale, Florida Topics in Neurology and Sleep Medicine for Primary Care Providers Continuing Education, Inc. 29 Austin, Texas Chromatin, Non-Coding RNAs and RNAP II Regulation in Development and Disease abcam 31 March-4 April Buzios, Brazil Second World Conference on Personality World Association for Personality Psychology

Buzios

Winter 2016

THE LAST WORD

Thinking with the Heart AN EXCERPT FROM ‘RESILIENCE FROM THE HEART’ by Gregg Braden

■ In November 1997, I was scheduled to take a tour group into Egypt. To say that Egypt is an amazing destination is an understatement — it’s beyond amazing! To actually stand in front of the great Sphinx, looking up at over 400 feet of the oncecovered stones that are now visible to the naked eye, is an experience of a lifetime. And I was under contract to lead a multinational group into the Egyptian desert to have precisely these experiences, and many more. The national media began carrying the horrific images of November 17 in the evening news. Armed terrorists had killed 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians at the temple of Queen Hatshepsut, a popular archaeological site near the city of Luxor. My group was scheduled to leave for our tour the following week. The choices were clear: I could postpone the trip until another time, cancel it altogether, or go forward with it as planned. I felt pulled from all sides. Everyone I spoke with had an opinion, and they all made perfect sense. Through the years of using heart-based intelligence, I’ve learned that the heart works best when it’s given brief phrases to respond to rather than multiple sentences. Our hearts

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THE VALUE OF ACCESSING HEART INTELLIGENCE IS THAT IT BECOMES POSSIBLE TO ASK OUR QUESTIONS WITH NO ATTACHMENT TO THE OUTCOME, THROUGH CHANTE ISTA, THE SINGLE EYE OF THE HEART. don’t need a preface to the question we’re asking, or an explanation of the history behind the decision that’s at hand. The heart already knows all of these things. For some people, the wisdom of the heart comes to them as a feeling. For others, it can be a sense of knowing without question, while for still other people, the answer emerges as a familiar voice that they’ve known throughout their lifetimes. For me, it’s generally all of these. I often hear a subtle voice first, reinforced with a solid feeling of reassurance, safety, and certainty, followed by a sense of resolution and completeness. Before I even finished asking the question, the answer was there for me: complete, direct, and clear. Immediately I felt — I knew — that our journey would be OK. It would be profound, deep, and healing. Most of all, I knew that by allowing intuition to guide us at each step of our journey, we would be safe. My decision was based upon the sensory impressions that I received as the result of a methodical, science-based process. The value of accessing heart intelligence is that it becomes possible to ask our questions with no attachment to the outcome, through chante ista, the single eye of the heart.

I left for Egypt on schedule the next week with 40 amazing people to begin a beautiful adventure and a heartfelt journey that was full of surprises. The president of Egypt at the time, Hosni Mubarak, was a friend of our guide and wrote an official letter giving the Department of Antiquities permission to open rare archaeological sites to us throughout our tour. The bonding between our group and the Egyptian people forged friendships that last to this very day. I’m sharing this story as one example of how the tool of heart-brain coherence has served me in the real world. And while this example was about a big decision involving 40 people and a trip halfway around the world, I use precisely the same technique, sometimes on a daily basis, to help me plan my day, temper relationships, and honor the principles that are important to me when I’m tested in life. What I know with certainty is that we can never go wrong when we honor our hearts. I also know that if heart intelligence works for me, it will work for you as well.

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