What I can say is that the MBSR program has been
around for 30 years and there have been hundreds of clinical trials indicating that
it is effective for reducing stress and many (though not all) clinical symptoms.
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shared by Randolph Hollingsworth on 13 May 12
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Second Life®: A New Strategy in Educating Nursing Students - 7 views
www.nursingsimulation.org/...abstract
virtual world clinical patient simulations Second Life review nursing strategy
shared by Randolph Hollingsworth on 13 May 12
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Abstract The purpose of this article is to discuss how the University of Michigan School of Nursing designed and implemented a virtual hospital unit in Second Life® to run virtual simulations. Three scenarios were developed about topics that represent areas that contribute to patient safety, as well as key student learning challenges. Fifteen students completed a 6-question survey evaluating their experience. Comments indicated students did identify the potential benefits of the Second Life® simulation. The Second Life® platform may also provide avenues for learning in the clinical arena for a multitude of health care professionals. The opportunity to simulate emergent, complex situations in a nonthreatening, safe environment allows all members of the team to develop critical communication skills necessary to provide safe patient care.
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Evidence of changes to children's brain rhythms following 'brain training' - 17 views
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New research questions the strong claims that have been made about the benefits of 'brain training' - enhanced mental skills, a boost to education, improved clinical outcomes and sharper everyday functioning. This new study found evidence that 'brain training' changed brain signalling but no indication of other benefits...
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Meditation Research FAQ - 1 views
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All the participants in our study went through the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course (MBSR) developed at the Center for Mindfulness
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I can't stop thinking/my mind won't calm down/"Unusual phenomena" bother me when I meditate/I can't meditate—what should I do? OR When I meditate, I experience "unusual phenomena". What is going on? Is this an advanced state?
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The Buddha compared the mind to the strings of a lute (a guitar-like instrument): the lute can not be played if the strings are too tight or too loose. Similarly when attention is either too tight or too loose, you can't properly meditate. When attention is too loose, the mind wanders and you get lost in thought. Try narrowing your focus in different ways (e.g. just inhales instead of the whole breath, focus on a smaller area around your nose). Some people do a few minutes of yoga or loving kindness (metta) practice at the start of their meditation period to focus the mind, before switching to breath awareness meditation. Some people find focusing on sounds easier than focusing on breathing.
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The goal is not to try to change anything, but to be aware of the desire to change it and then see if we can just relax and be ok with it even if it doesn't change. Are we trying to quiet the storm, or are we trying to find peace within the storm?
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Music performance skills: A two-pronged approach - facilitating optimal music performan... - 1 views
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music performance anxiety (MPA)
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The concept of “flow”, describing the subjective psychological state in which a person is completely immersed and fully concentrated in an activity which is enjoyable and rewarding, is often associated with optimal functioning
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Anxiety is generally regarded as having an antithetical relationship with flow
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The clinical implications of this negative association between MPA and flow suggest that a two-pronged approach focusing on facilitating flow and positive functioning as well as reducing pathological MPA may bring about improvements in the performer’s subjective performing experienc
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Seligman’s (2011) most recent model of well-being, from the field of positive psychology, understands well-being as comprising five elements: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Achievemen
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There is a substantial body of Music Performance Anxiety (MPA) research providing evidence that MPA is a debilitating phenomenon (Kenny, 2011) which can affect musicians at any stage of their careers, from highly experienced professional performers (Fishbein, Middlestadt, Ottati, Straus, & Ellis, 1988; Kenny, Driscoll, & Ackerman, 2014) through to child beginners
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Anxiety is often described as having an antithetical relationship to the experience of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975), and it has been suggested that fostering techniques for facilitating flow may provide a powerful tool for reducing MPA and encouraging optimal performance
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“when performance anxiety was highest, flow was lowest and vice versa … the presence of one minimises the magnitude of the other” (Fullager et al., 2013, p. 251), and a recent study found evidence of a strong, significant negative association between flow and MPA amongst 200 professional orchestral musicians (Cohen & Bodner, 2018), supporting Kirchner et al.’s (2008) earlier findings with music students
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Investigations of the efficacy of existing methods for treating MPA indicate that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy based interventions are most effective (for an overview, see Burin & Osorio, 2016).
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However, evidence suggests that pharmacological methods, particularly beta-blockers, are most commonly used, often in the absence of medical supervision (Cohen & Bodner, 2018; Kenny et al., 2014) and that the subject of MPA is still stigmatised, with many musicians and teachers unwilling to talk openly about it
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Csikszentmihalyi’s nine dimensions of flow as follows
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Although there was an increase in flow over time, this was not significant, F(1, 20) = 4.27, p > .05, η2 =.18, and there was no evidence of a significant interaction between group and time, F(1, 20) = 0.56, p > .05, η2 = .03, indicating that the hypothesis that there would be an increase in self-reported levels of flow in the intervention group, was not supported.
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Figure 4. Judge-rated musical performance quality and signs of performance anxiety in the intervention group.
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These results support the fourth hypothesis that there would be an increase in judge-rated PQ and a decrease in judge-rated SPA.
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Results showed evidence of a significant negative association between MPA and flow, and three out of the four study hypotheses were supported: the music performance skills intervention was found to be effective in reducing pre-/post-test MPA in the intervention group compared to the wait-list control group; there were significant improvements in positive and negative affect and state anxiety associated with the performance situation in the intervention group; and there were significant improvements in judge-rated PQ and behavioural signs of performance anxiety. However, there was no significant change in pre-/post-test measures of flow. These findings will now be discussed in more detail.
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This supports the understanding of MPA as a specific type of anxiety, where the performer suffers from MPA without necessarily being generally anxious or impaired in any other areas of his/her life (Clark & Williamon, 2011; Hoffman & Hanrahan, 2011) and corresponds to Kenny’s (2011) description of the first and most mild of three types of MPA (for full coverage of this issue, see Kenny, 2011).
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Thus, the absence in improvement in levels of flow in the current study could also be due to the low average hours of daily practice reported
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The increases in participants’ positive affect and decreases in negative affect after the second simulated performance compared to the first indicate that the intervention was effective in facilitating positive emotion, the first component of Seligman’s (2011) PERMA model of well-being
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Evidence of improvements in judge-rated performance quality indicate that the intervention was also effective in facilitating the fifth (Achievement) component of the PERMA model.
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“Ironically, it may be that the last people to receive some benefit from the therapeutic value of music may be the musicians themselves” (Brodsky, 1996, p. 95).
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Hopefully, such an approach will enable developing musicians to acquire the skills necessary to enjoy satisfying, successful and healthy lives as performing musicians, in which the threat of debilitating MPA and the need to recourse to beta-blockers are a thing of the past.
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Cohen, S., & Bodner, E. (2019). Music performance skills: A two-pronged approach – facilitating optimal music performance and reducing music performance anxiety. Psychology of Music, 47(4), 521–538. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735618765349
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Music for anxiety? Meta-analysis of anxiety reduction in non-clinical samples - Yulia P... - 2 views
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Panteleeva, Y., Ceschi, G., Glowinski, D., Courvoisier, D. S., & Grandjean, D. (2018). Music for anxiety? Meta-analysis of anxiety reduction in non-clinical samples. Psychology of Music, 46(4), 473–487. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735617712424
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Anxiety affects up to 28.8% of the population in Western countries
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nxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental illnesses worldwide
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Moreover, in the last decade, there has been a growing interest in an evidence-based approach to studying the impact of music listening on anxiety, as measured by self-report measures (subjective reactions toward a stressful situation) or psychophysiological markers (objective indicators of anxiety, such as increasing heart rate).
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The Irascible Professor on "The SAT that isn't (the death of aptitude.)" - 2 views
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It used to be that the SAT was distinguished from its competitor the ACT by the fact that the former was seen as measuring aptitude and being effectively un-coachable, while the latter was a gauge of achievement in learning.
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At the risk of sounding pejorative, I'd say that I was expecting the test to be a measure of who I was, while some of my fellow students and their parents treated it more as a test of how they could present themselves to admissions officers. And while I wouldn't suggest that people tend to think of it in these terms, I believe that the latter perception relies on the academically damaging belief that an individual student's capabilities need not matter to what goals he sets for himself. That perception leads people to believe that there is something inherently unfair about a test that you can't study for.
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And if after four years of high school they haven't developed much skill for reasoning, that's okay – they can take preparatory courses to learn how to fake it for an exam, and let that be their stepping stone toward academic accomplishment. As a society that values the promise of formal education more than the satisfaction of actual learning, we have precipitated the death of aptitude. We are afraid to acknowledge that it exists, because aptitude, whether the product of inborn talent or effective rearing, makes some people better suited than others for certain goals.
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Lori Gottlieb, writing in The Atlantic last year, claimed that child-rearing in the current generation has been excessively focused on preserving self-esteem. As an illustration of one symptom of this, Gottlieb quoted clinical psychologist Wendy Mogel as saying that parents are actually relieved to be told that their struggling children are learning disabled, so that today "every child is either learning disabled, gifted, or both – there's no curve left, no average." To claim a learning disability is the only way to set legitimate lower benchmarks for performance. Kids are never just bad at anything anymore, because that's seen as being more harmful to self-esteem.
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But my worries about the individual effects of the death of aptitude are dwarfed by my concern for its effect on the institutions of higher learning that those individuals are entering. College is not a one-directional relationship of dispensing knowledge to young people. The entire institution gains or loses value on the basis of what its students put into it. By telling students with low aptitude and low interest that they can, should, and must strive to accomplish the same things as their higher-achieving peers, I fear that we're saturating higher education with people who subtract value from their institutions by committing minimum effort and lowering whatever curve still exists for the measurement of performance.
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We all seem to agree that standards for college readiness need to improve, but you'll hear virtually no one asserting that when those standards are not met, the student ought to leave off college altogether, or to defer it until they have acquired, by sheer will or by natural intellectual growth, the aptitude to be successful at the proper level. Indeed, just as common in criticism of education is the sentiment that we must see to it that more children enter and complete college. But if those children don't have the aptitude to do so, the goal of improving college curriculum contradicts the goal of college-for-all.
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We can't keep pretending that there is no such thing as aptitude and that every child has equal cause to vie for the topmost positions of intellectual esteem. It does a disservice to the student and the school in kind.
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An essay on what the SAT says about society's view of education, accomplishments, aptitude, and self-esteem.
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FinAid | Loans | Public Service Loan Forgiveness - 67 views
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Employment: The borrower must be employed full-time in a public service job for each of the 120 monthly payments. Public service jobs include, among other positions, emergency management, government (excluding time served as a member of Congress), military service, public safety and law enforcement (police and fire), public health (including nurses, nurse practitioners, nurses in a clinical setting, and full-time professionals engaged in health care practitioner occupations and health care support occupations), public education, early childhood education (including licensed or regulated childcare, Head Start, and State-funded prekindergarten), social work in a public child or family service agency, public services for individuals with disabilities or the elderly, public interest legal services (including prosecutors, public defenders and legal advocacy on behalf of low-income communities at a nonprofit organization), public librarians, school librarians and other school-based services, and employees of tax exempt 501(c)(3) organizations. Full-time faculty at tribal colleges and universities, as well as faculty teaching in high-need subject areas and shortage areas (including nurse faculty, foreign language faculty, and part-time faculty at community colleges), also qualify.
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Psilocybin (magic mushrooms) - 0 views
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The biosinthetic path that allow Psilocybin to be produced by mushrooms is as follow:
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The several analogyes with triptophan aminoacid, with whom psilocybin has common origines are probably at the base of psilocybin ability to induced psychedelich alteration on humans.
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Amino acids, including tryptophan, act as building blocks in protein biosynthesis. In addition, tryptophan functions as a biochemical precursor for many compounds like serotonin Serotonin (a neurotransmitter), synthesized via tryptophan hydroxylase. Serotonin, in turn, can be converted to melatonin (a neurohormone), via N-acetyltransferase and 5-hydroxyindole-O-methyltransferase activities
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it's been noticed that psilocyn can indirectly raise dopamine concentration withing the basal ganglia.
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Almost 50% of oral psilocybin is absorbed by stomach and gut; from here is lead to liver, where it's converted in psilocin, pharmacologically active form, that can furtherly be glucoronated and escreted with urine or converted in other psilocinics metabolites.
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In rats, the median lethal dose (LD50) when administered orally is 280 milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg), approximately one and a half times that of caffeine. When administered intravenously in rabbits, psilocybin's LD50 is approximately 12.5 mg/kg
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traces of the compund can be detected in unine even after 7 days.
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Clinical studies show that psilocin concentrations in the plasma of adults average about 8 µg/liter within 2 hours after ingestion of a single 15 mg oral psilocybin dose; psychological effects occur with a blood plasma concentration of 4–6 µg/liter. Psilocybin is about 100 times less potent than LSD on a weight per weight basis, and the physiological effects last about half as long.
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Within 24 hours from administration 65% of the alucinogen is escreted by urine, while another 15-20% is excreted by bile and feces.
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Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOI) have been known to prolong and enhance the effects of psilocybin. Alcohol consumption may enhance the effects of psilocybin, because acetaldehyde, one of the primary breakdown metabolites of consumed alcohol, reacts with biogenic amines present in the body to produce MAOIs related to tetrahydroisoquinoline and β-carboline. Tobacco smokers can also experience more powerful effects with psilocybin, because tobacco smoke exposure decreases levels of MAO in the brain and peripheral organs.
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This could lead to a lower usage o f glucose, but the same study admitted an increase glucose usage by the whole brain cell, meaning a differente use of this sugar while the drug is having effects.
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use of MRI (functional magnetic resounance) showed that the decresed blood flow associate with decreasing in neural activity. A simple explanation for this unexpected situation could be the serotoning agonist action of psilocybin, action that seems to be focused more on 5-HT receptors than on 5-HT2A.
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psilocibyn is able to act as a 5-HT agonist binding directly its receptors.
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augmented glucose consumption in several brain regions; this lead to the conclusion that psilocybin is some way able to modify the physiological glucosal metabolic rate of our body
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The strong inibition of the PCC is now thought to be most significant action of psilocybin on neural disaccoppiation
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Lower brain glucose metabolism is linked with increased capacity for working memory.
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Psilocybin comprises approximately 1% of the weight of Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms, and so nearly 1.7 kilograms (3.7 lb) of dried mushrooms, or 17 kilograms (37 lb) of fresh mushrooms, would be required for a 60-kilogram (130 lb) person to reach the 280 mg/kg LD50 value.
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psilocybin can cause anxiety and increased heart rate and BP which is very counter- productive for someone on metoprolol and micardis.
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propose the possibility to use psilocybin as a palliative therapy for terminal illness like cancer but also as a real antidepressive active principle available for the family of the patient. The rational is foundable in the fact that we usually administer SSRI as antidepressive agents, so psilocibyn sholud be useful in this purpose for its selective agonist action on 5-HT2A receptors
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Barry Sanders, Matt Biondi, and the Tiger Mom - James Fallows - Culture - The Atlantic - 36 views
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What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it.'"An interesting idea, but is it true? Are activities only fun when we get good at them? And, conversely, does that mean that if we're good at something, it must also be fun--at least at some level?
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research by Mihaily Csikszentmihalyi (of "Flow" fame) regarding what makes an activity fun. "The place where people are most engaged in an activity," McCann says, "and where they're having the most optimal experience, is where the challenge is about equal to your ability."
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"People are motivated by different things," explains Dr. David B. Coppel, a clinical and sport psychologist at the University of Washington. "There are some individuals who are process oriented, and some who are outcome-oriented. Individuals who are absorbed in the experience of being active or competing can have a great experience even if they don't win. But for those who derive their success and pleasure from successful outcomes, winning is more important."
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The best results, McCann says, have to come from an internally motivated sense of fun and love of what you're doing.
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Can Mary Shelley's Frankenstein be read as an early research ethics text? | Medical Hum... - 7 views
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Can Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein be read as an early research ethics text?
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Frankenstein is an early and balanced text on the ethics of research upon human subjects and that it provides insights that are as valid today as when the novel was written.
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Mary Shelley conceived the idea for and started writing Frankenstein in 1816 and it was first published in 1818.1 In its historical context, the earlier 17th and 18th centuries had seen the early signs of the rise of science and experimentation. Francis Bacon (1561–1626) had laid the theoretical foundations in his “Great Insauration”2 and scientists such as Boyle, Newton, and Hooke developed the experimental methods. Sir Robert Talbor, a 17th century apothecary and one of the key figures in developing the use of quinine to treat fevers, underlined this: “the most plausible reasons unless backed by some demonstrable experiments seem but suppositions or conjectures”.3
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The 18th century saw the continued construction of foundations upon which all subsequent medical experimentation has been built.
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Lady Mary Montagu promoted smallpox vaccination; its proponents experimented on prisoners to study its efficacy, and James Jurin, the secretary of the Royal Society, developed mathematical proof of this in the face of ecclesiastical opposition.4 Many of the modern concepts of therapeutic trials were described although not widely accepted. Empirical observation through experimentation was starting to be recognised as the tool that allowed ascertainment of fact and truth. An account of Dr Bianchini’s experiments on “Le Medicin Electrique”, reported to the Royal Society explains that “The experiments were made by Dr Bianchini assisted by several curious and learned men … who not being able to separate what was true … determined to be guided by their own experiments and it was by this most troublesome though of all the others the most sure way, that they have learned to reject a great number of what have been published as facts.”5
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Similarly, Henry Baker’s report to the Royal Society, describing Abbe Nollet’s experiments, outlined the need for comparative studies and that “treatment should not be condemned without a fair trial”6 and a Belgian doctor, Professor Lambergen, describing the use of deadly nightshade for the treatment of breast cancer wrote “Administration of this plant certainly merits the attention of the medical profession; and surely one may add entitles the medicine to future trials … nevertheless the most efficacious medicines are such if its efficacy by repeated trials be approved.”7 In the mid 18th century James Lind conducted the first controlled trial to establish a cure for scurvy and his Treatise on the Scurvy contains what could be seen in modern terminology as the first “review of the current literature” prior to a clinical trial.8
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Her motives for writing Frankenstein are more difficult to define. In her introduction to the 1831 edition she writes that she wanted her work to … speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror—one to make the reader dread to look round. If I did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be unworthy of its name … (p 7, p 8)
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The 1818 preface, written by Percy Bysshe Shelley, indicates a deeper purpose. He wrote that the story recommends itself as it “…affords a point of view on the imagination for the delineating of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield…” (p 11) and that “…I am by no means indifferent to the manner in which ... moral tendencies (that) exist in the sentiments of characters shall affect the reader…”(p 12).
