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Steve Bosserman

Every future we think of follows one of four narratives - 0 views

qz.com/...follows-one-of-four-narratives

future adaptation narrative history

shared by Steve Bosserman on 26 Nov 18 - No Cached
  • Journalists can’t see the future, but they are able to peer through the lens of history to better understand the present. It’s a founding principle of Retro Report, the co-producer of this series. The future may be starkly different than the present, but it’ll be easier to understand once you uncover its deep continuity with the past. The social and technical transformations we’re currently living through are profound, but this isn’t the first time rapid, singular change has occurred. Before computer networks disrupted our communications, networks of steel rails and grids of artificial light upended our very concepts of space and time, day and night. Subtract trains and light bulbs from a modern city, and how much of it is even left?
  • The future has a history. And the stories we tell about incoming change—the stories we’ve always told about such changes—fall into consistent patterns. Dator gained some of his stature in future studies with his famous observation that predictions about the future—whether they’re coming from a corporate spreadsheet, a church pulpit or Hollywood—all boil down to roughly four scenarios. Growth that keeps going. Transformation upending the past. Collapse of the present order. And  discipline imposed, in some cases, to hold such collapse at bay.
  • “Most people, through their education, and through their acculturation, are locked into a single view of the future. They have never been encouraged to think about these alternatives, or forced to think about them,” Dator says.
Steve Bosserman

How Neuroscience Can Help Us Treat Trafficked Youth - Pacific Standard - 0 views

psmag.com/...help-us-treat-trafficked-youth

neuroscience youth "human trafficking"

shared by Steve Bosserman on 04 May 18 - No Cached
  • A common misconception is that these youths are choosing to engage in the commercial sex trade. But as recent advances in neuroimaging techniques help scientists unravel the myriad ways that trauma affects the brain, emerging evidence suggests that brain changes resulting from trauma could make young people more vulnerable to exploiters and less receptive to people trying to help. Rather than making a conscious decision to rebel, these kids are simply doing their best to survive, using the adaptive strategies that their brains developed in response to a perilous world.
  • Though the human brain is adaptable throughout life, adaptability is greatest during childhood, as the developing brain responds to the surrounding environment. Survival is the brain's top priority. Young people growing up in dangerous environments will develop brains that are highly responsive to threat cues. In particular, recent studies show that children who have experienced trauma exhibit drastic changes in their amygdala, an area of the brain wired to identify signs of danger.
  • Besides the amygdala, another brain region affected by trauma is the hippocampus, an area involved with contextual learning and memory. The hippocampus takes context into account, so that a person can appropriately respond to the same cues in different situations. For instance, most people would respond differently to hearing gunfire in a shooting range than they would to hearing gunfire in an airport.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • McLaughlin's research shows that youth who have experienced trauma have a smaller hippocampus than those who haven't, and are less able to take context into account when they detect a threat cue. When McLaughlin presented images of faces embedded in real-world scenes to kids, those with a history of trauma exhibited less activity in their hippocampus while viewing angry facial expressions. And when given a memory test afterward, they were less able to remember scenes in which they'd identified people displaying anger.
  • Because the brain remains malleable throughout life, it's never too late to mitigate the effects of trauma, McLaughlin says. There are a variety of evidence-based treatments that have proven effective in alleviating the mental-health consequences of trauma. For example, the technique of cognitive reappraisal, a cornerstone of Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, can help victims better regulate their emotions by changing the way they view a distressing situation. They can try to imagine that the situation is occurring far away from them, or that they are viewing the event from a removed perspective, as though watching a movie screen. When McLaughlin taught such techniques to young people in her lab, they were able to decrease their emotional reactivity as well as their amygdala response to negative stimuli.
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