The study used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of a specific area of the brain – the dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) region of the brain.

Way back in the early 1990s magnets were all the rage for everything from curing warts to rapid learning. I recall having all sorts of magnetic devices – that I used unsuccessfully on a number of issues. In the late 1990s several studies debunked the use of magnets for most of the uses touted earlier. I was not surprised.

Now a new study out of the University of British Columbia, Canada, sheds some light on why magnetism was so popular in the first place – it works! At least for rapid skills learning – and done scientifically.

I think the problem with the earlier methods was in their delivery. The Canadian study used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of a specific area of the brain – the dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) region of the brain (see figure). TMS applies an electromagnetic pulse rather than a solid magnetic field. I think the change in magnetic field is perhaps what makes TMS so effective in this regard.

Still, it is fascinating to me that the imaginative people who first envisioned magnetic therapies were on to something and now some equally ingenious people are making some headway into how to make magnetism truly useful therapeutically. Cool.

The study is online at http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2202/10/72/abstract
and in pdf format at http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2202-10-72.pdf

Bruce McNaughton, a professor of psychology and physiology, and his colleague David Euston have shown that, during sleep, the reactivated memories of real-time experiences are processed within the brain at a higher rate of speed. That rate can be as much as six or seven times faster, and what McNaughton calls "thought speed."

If you've had a similar experience, an imagery or concept can be transferred nearly instantly – 6-7 times faster than real-time. This means you can read a book at super speed (called speed reading). You can also do Rapid Eye Technology, which uses a rapid visual and auditory script and process.

Memory stores patterns of activity in modular form in the brain's cortex. Different modules in the cortex process different kinds of information — sounds, sights, tastes, smells, etc. The cortex sends these networks of activity to a region called the hippocampus. The hippocampus then creates and assigns a tag, a kind of temporary bar code, that is unique to every memory and sends that signal back to the cortex. Each module in the cortex uses the tag to retrieve its own part of the activity.

The brain uses this biological trick because there is no way for all of its neurons to connect with and interact with every other neuron. It is still an expensive task for the hippocampus to make all of those connections. The retrieval tags the hippocampus generates are only temporary until the cortex can carry a given memory on its own.

The temporary nature of this tagging system means you can quickly change your mind repeatedly, reinterpret memories, and supercharge learning. Can you read at 25000 words per minute? Yes you can! And your brain will help you do it.

Source: David R. Euston
University of Arizona

There’s just nothing quite like a good massage…

Thomas Gilovich, Cornell University professor of psychology and Travis J. Carter, Ph.D., also from Cornell, studied the relationship between spending and satisfaction with consumer purchases. They found, as is no surprise to many of my readers, is that spending on experiential purchases – like massage or hypnotherapy or Rapid Eye Technology – left consumers feeling happy with their spending choice – and that their happiness grew with time after their purchase in comparison to spending on material goods like flat screen TVs where spending felt good at first but quickly gave way to less happy feelings.

“Buyers’ remorse” often sets in after buying a material good. Consumers ruminate about better deals and more features they may have missed later. However, such feelings rarely come up after spending money on a massage or after doing a Rapid Eye Technology session. Quite the contrary, according to Gilovich and Carter -~ “Consumers found that satisfaction with ‘experiential purchases’ – from massages to family vacations – starts high and increases over time. In contrast, spending money on material things feels good at first, but actually makes people less happy in the end”

It’s fine to purchase items that you can enjoy with use – and, in fact, focusing on the enjoyment of use makes the purchase choice sweeter and so much better emotionally over time.

Still, there’s just nothing quite like a good massage…

Study Paper: “The Relative Relativity of Material and Experiential Purchases,” – Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, American Psychological Association, January 2010.

Can I throw away my many years of training and experience? No – it is part of who I am.

Can being nonjudgmental harm me or my client or someone else? Of course it can, in certain situations and environments.

There are bounds to tolerance. Unconsciously and instinctively I KNOW it is wrong to have sex with a child, for example. To help a pedophile get better at his trade would be unconscionable to me. I CANNOT offer such behavior safe haven in my sessions. On the other hand, if a pedophile wishes to overcome his harmful behavior, I am willing to assist. That is because I have a judgment about that behavior and the erroneous thought processes that produced it. I cannot be nonjudgmental in this case.

I have a list of behaviors I judge incompatible with health and wellness – for the individual and for society in general.
Read the rest of this entry »

Brain regions (shown in green) from which the outcome of a participant’s decision can be predicted before it is made. (Illustration from original press release)

From the Max Planck Institute press release:

Already several seconds before we consciously make a decision its outcome can be predicted from unconscious activity in the brain. This is shown in a study by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, in collaboration with the Charité University Hospital and the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin. The researchers from the group of Professor John-Dylan Haynes used a brain scanner to investigate what happens in the human brain just before a decision is made. “Many processes in the brain occur automatically and without involvement of our consciousness. This prevents our mind from being overloaded by simple routine tasks. But when it comes to decisions we tend to assume they are made by our conscious mind. This is questioned by our current findings.” (Nature Neuroscience, April 13th 2008)

Did I read that correctly? My brain is making a decision a full 7 seconds before I’m aware of the decision? Wait a minute!! What about choice and accountability? That is, how can the universe (“God”) hold me accountable for a choice when I didn’t consciously make it? What the hey!!!??!!!

Read the rest of this entry »