“Researchers from CCARE [at Stanford University] have studied the use of neuroscientific models to understand how people make decisions about altruistic giving. They have analyzed the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging and other psychological measures to determine the effects of compassion training. Among the researchers are Buddhist and Catholic contemplative practitioners.

While CCARE’s interests may sound technical and complicated, the problems they hope to solve are not: How can we prevent caregiver burnout? Why do some kids become bullies? Can we teach people to be more compassionate?”

2. Are Only Humans Good Samaritans? by Vanessa Woods, evolutionary anthropologist from Duke University

“Comparisons between chimpanzees and humans have led to the hypothesis that only humans voluntarily share their own food with others. However, it is hard to draw conclusions because the food-sharing preferences of our more tolerant relative, the bonobo (Pan paniscus), have never been studied experimentally.”

3. Study confirms: What doesn’t kill us can make us stronger.

“We’ve all heard the adage that whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, but until now the preponderance of scientific evidence has offered little support for it.

However, a new national multi-year longitudinal study of the effects of adverse life events on mental health has found that adverse experiences do, in fact, appear to foster subsequent adaptability and resilience, with resulting advantages for mental health and well being.”

4. Nice guys usually get the girl in the end

“Psychologists believe that traits such as selflessness and altruism have become part of our genetic make-up because they were attractive to mates. They believe that as humans evolved, qualities such as being fittest and strongest were usurped by other qualities – such as offering a helping hand in bringing up the children.

‘The expansion of the human brain would have greatly increased the cost of raising children so it would have been important for our ancestors to choose mates both willing and able to be good, long-term parents,’ said Dr Tim Phillips and colleagues from the University of Nottingham and Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, London. “

5. Bilingualism Good for the Brain

“Bilingual education is controversial in the United States, but a growing body of research shows that regularly speaking two languages comes with certain types of improved mental performance.

In a Perspective article appearing today in the journal Science, Jared Diamond of the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ highlights studies of bilingualism that show this effect.”

6. Psych Majors Aren’t Happy With Options

“Only 26% of psychology majors are ‘satisfied’ or ‘very satisfied’ with their career paths, the lowest in a sampling of popular majors included in a Wall Street Journal study. The psychology majors the survey captured had a satisfaction rate 14 percentage points lower than the next lowest majors, economics and environmental engineering.”

7. Need a study break to refresh? Maybe not, say Stanford researchers

“In a paper published this week in Psychological Science, the researchers challenge a long-held theory that willpower – defined as the ability to resist temptation and stay focused on a demanding task – is a limited resource. Scientists have argued that when willpower is drained, the only way to restore it is by recharging our bodies with rest, food or some other physical distraction that takes you away from whatever is burning you out.

Not so, says the Stanford team. Instead, they’ve found that a person’s mindset and personal beliefs about willpower determine how long and how well they’ll be able to work on a tough mental exercise.

‘If you think of willpower as something that’s biologically limited, you’re more likely to be tired when you perform a difficult task,’ said Veronika Job, the paper’s lead author. ‘But if you think of willpower as something that is not easily depleted, you can go on and on.’”

8. The Empathic Civilization

“Bestselling author, political adviser and social and ethical prophet Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society.”

9. Brains hard-wired to connect with friends

“Our brains seem to be hard-wired to identify and ‘get’ our friends, a phenomenon that likely evolved to help ensure the survival of such a social species, research suggests. The brain-imaging study showed that increased activity in a network of brain regions took place when participants viewed pictures of themselves and thought about themselves as well as when they thought about friends (regardless of their similarities to each other).”

The article was rather short (and not too informative), but one excerpt suggests a compelling parallel:

“Staff at Blair Drummond Safari and Adventure Park in Stirlingshire used video cameras to document the death of a terminally ill female named Pansy, believed to be more than 50 years old.

When she became lethargic in the days leading up to her death, other members of the group became quieter than usual and stayed with her at nights, grooming her more than they did normally.

After her death, her daughter stayed near the body for an entire night, even though she had never slept on that platform before.

All of the group were subdued for several days afterwards, and avoided the place where she had died, spending long hours grooming each other.”

Visit here to see two excerpts of some of this footage: the first video reveals a moment of death in a chimps life with surrounding family, and the bottom video shows a young chimp playing with a dead one until the mother takes it away.

Primal Empathy: Your Suffering Is My Suffering

When a chimp notices a family member is dying they become more attuned to that member’s needs (in the same way a mother becomes attuned to the needs of her baby). Like chimps, our brains “sync up” (as Daniel Goleman puts it in his book “Social Intelligence,”) and we feel what another being is experiencing. In social neuroscience this is referred to as primal empathy or “the ability to sense the non-verbal emotional signals of others and to feel what they are feeling.” Evolutionary psychology tell us that we are biologically driven to respond to those needs; in other words: they are instinctual.

We all experience primal empathy in one form or another. Narcissists and sociopaths show weak empathy for others while those who are charitable and compassionate are seen as more empathetic.

Whenever I think about empathy I am reminded of the teachings by Buddha. He emphasized the wisdom of interconnectedness and described loving-kindness and compassion as a logical moral consequence of this insight.

Science is bringing us one step closer to this knowledge. Through neuroscience we are seeing the biochemical effects of brains and minds feeling connected. In evolutionary psychology we are witnessing high-order thinking mammals exhibit empathy and compassion for one another.

Animal Consciousness

Who knows what it’s like to be a bat, or a whale, or even a tyrannosaurus? Each has a completely different sensory system and a completely different way to interact with its environment. If we were to zoom into the consciousness of any animal it would probably be akin to a psychedelic experience. Yet at the same time we are all united by the fact that we live, we breath, and we are all fighting to stay alive and satisfy our desires.

We often like to see animal consciousness as inherently distinct from human consciousness. Some claim animals aren’t even conscious at all (even to the extent that they don’t experience pleasure and pain). But this assumption seems to ignore even a basic commonsense understanding of other living things.

When viewing these videos of these chimps, when looking at animals at the zoo, or even when just observing our own pets, we are peering into the minds of these living creatures. For humans, empathy is inter-species.

Where Is Evolution Heading?

I don’t think anyone is truly qualified to say where nature is heading. Nature is always changing and adapting in unpredictable ways. If empathy proves to be a dominant force in our evolution, then perhaps we can conclude – to some extent – that nature is a scientific, moral, and practical argument to act good? Perhaps, nature is heading toward a direction of less suffering and a greater sanctity for life?

Maybe sometime in the far away future the golden rule can even beat out natural selection and “survival of the fittest.” Maybe nature does have the potential to be divine? Maybe I am also just dreaming, but one can have their suspicions…either way it won’t be in any of our lifetimes.

But what is the best way to improve our attention and our ability to retain information?

So far psychopharmacology has had the most influential impact on how we treat those with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Drugs like adderall are also becoming a common cognitive enhancer amongst college students.

Some doctors believe these psychostimulants are getting abused. Studies have shown how similar drugs such as modafinil boost dopamine levels in the brain, which in return cause a greater chance of an individual getting addicted to the drug later in life.

Surely there can be better ways of improving our brain-functioning than having to depend on pills? Of course there are some individuals who have a chemical imbalance, but that isn’t typically how psychiatrists diagnose a patient with ADHD – it is only their justification for resorting to pills as proper medical treatment instead of probing deeper into why children today are suffering from these poor attention skills.

For example, how do we know the rise of ADHD is not due to the environmental factors of living in an industrialized, overstimulating society? Surely these kinds of factors can affect our brain chemistry, but it doesn’t mean that our brain chemistry was the origins of the disorder.

If I am right – and I am certainly not the first person to bring up this idea nor will I be the last – then changing our living habits and our environment may be a much better and long-lasting cognitive enhancer than resorting to the temporary solutions that drugs typically offer.

One study by Berman, Jonides, and Kaplan (2008) (pdf), tested the effects of different environments on attention and found:

“Attention Restoration Theory (ART) provides an analysis of the kinds of environments that lead to improvements in directed-attention abilities. Nature, which is filled with intriguing stimuli, modestly grabs attention in a bottom-up fashion, allowing top-down directed-attention abilities a chance to replenish. Unlike natural environments, urban environments are filled with stimulation that captures attention dramatically and additionally requires directed attention (e.g., to avoid being hit by a car), making them less restorative. We present two experiments that show that walking in nature or viewing pictures of nature can improve directed-attention abilities as measured with a backwards digit-span task and the Attention Network Task, thus validating Attention Restoration Theory.”

PsyBlog reports that when participants went for a nature walk they did 20% better on a memory test then participants who took a walk through a busy city.

With knowledge like this why wouldn’t we try changing some of our living habits? These studies have implications that can affect everyone: students, those with ADHD or Alzheimers disease, and even your regular Joe and Jane. It is important that we find some space and time to spend with nature, especially if we are typically accustomed to the busy reality of our industrialized world.

Why not visit a local park one afternoon, do your homework in the nature preserve, or spend the weekend hiking in the Catskill Mountains? For some of us winter is right around the corner so we should have a good incentive to go outside while it is still nice. Your Xbox 360 and Macbook will still be there when you get back.