#5ThoughtsFriday
03/09/2018
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Here are the 5 things we thought were
worth sharing with you this week:
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A new study by a pain researcher shows that when a romantic partner holds hands with a partner in pain, their brain waves sync and her pain subsides.
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Reach for the hand of a loved one in pain and not only will your breathing and heart rate synchronize with theirs, your brain wave patterns will couple up too, according to a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The study, by researchers with the University of Colorado Boulder and University of Haifa, also found that the more empathy a comforting partner feels for a partner in pain, the more their brainwaves fall into sync. And the more those brain waves sync, the more the pain goes away.
"We have developed a lot of ways to communicate in the modern world and we have fewer physical interactions," said lead author Pavel Goldstein, a postdoctoral pain researcher in the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab at CU Boulder. "This paper illustrates the power and importance of human touch."
The study is the latest in a growing body of research exploring a phenomenon known as "interpersonal synchronization," in which people physiologically mirror the people they are with. It is the first to look at brain wave synchronization in the context of pain, and offers new insight into the role brain-to-brain coupling may play in touch-induced analgesia, or healing touch.
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Ross Mantle for The New York Times
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In this city with a deep and proud relationship with football, a custody dispute has pushed the debate about the sport’s safety into a new arena: family court.
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A father, John Orsini, has gone to court to prevent the youngest of his three sons from playing high school football because, he said, scientific studies have revealed the perils of repeated blows to the head — especially for an athlete, like his son, who has a history of concussions. The boy’s mother, Mr. Orsini’s ex-wife, believes he should be allowed to continue playing because he understands the risks.
“You always heard it sometimes, when one parent would say I don’t want him doing that because he might get hurt,” said Allan E. Mayefsky, a leading divorce lawyer and the former president of the New York chapter of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. “Usually, we thought the parent was just overprotective. Now, it’s more of a real medical issue.”
In the decade since scientists began to link football to long-term brain damage, the debate over the future of the sport has moved from research laboratories to the halls of Congress, to locker rooms and owners’ suites. Families, too, have grappled with the question of how dangerous the game is — and now parents’ concerns are surfacing in legal battles between divorced couples, leading to an increase in fights over whether to amend custody orders to prevent their children from playing the game.
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American parents have been warning teenagers about the dangers of marijuana for about 100 years. Teenagers have been ignoring them for just as long. As I write this, a couple of kids are smoking weed in the woods just yards from my office window and about a block and a half from the local high school. They started in around 9 A.M., just in time for class.
Exaggerating the perils of cannabis—the risks of brain damage, addiction, psychosis—has not helped. Any whiff of Reefer Madness hyperbole is perfectly calibrated to trigger an adolescent's instinctive skepticism for whatever an adult suggests. And the unvarnished facts are scary enough.
We know that being high impairs attention, memory and learning. Some of today's stronger varieties can make you physically ill and delusional. But whether marijuana can cause lasting damage to the brain is less clear.
A slew of studies in adults have found that nonusers beat chronic weed smokers on tests of attention, memory, motor skills and verbal abilities, but some of this might be the result of lingering traces of cannabis in the body of users or withdrawal effects from abstaining while taking part in a study. In one hopeful finding, a 2012 meta-analysis found that in 13 studies in which participants had laid off weed for 25 days or more, their performance on cognitive tests did not differ significantly from that of nonusers.
But scientists are less sanguine about teenage tokers. During adolescence the brain matures in several ways believed to make it more efficient and to strengthen executive functions such as emotional self-control. Various lines of research suggest that cannabis use could disrupt such processes.
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We Still need Your Help. The Ways and Means Committee
will Hear the TBI Advisory Board recommended Bills
TODAY.
Would you be willing to Contact Committee Members and Voice Your Support?
Click on the Names,
Find their Office Phone Numbers,
Call and ask them to support
HB 1530 and HB 1533.
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HB 1530 - Education - Student Health Screenings - Brain Injury
For Language of the Bill:
HB 1533 - Students With a Disability - Brain Injury Screening - Evaluation for Individualized Education Program
For Language of the Bill:
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Or simply contact your elected officials in Annapolis and ask that they support these two bills.
Don't know how to contact them?
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2) What We're Reading We Think You Might Enjoy
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As the designated Protection and Advocacy system (P&A) for Maryland, Disability Rights Maryland (DRM) has authority under federal law to protect the rights of people with disabilities1 and to conduct investigations of abuse and neglect incidents, including within prisons.2 After receiving complaints related to segregation; inadequate mental health care; use of force; failure to prevent harm; and discrimination against people with disabilities, DRM initiated an investigation into conditions at North Branch Correctional Institution (NBCI). NBCI is a super-maximum prison near Cumberland, Maryland. This report is the result of DRM’s investigation.
To Download a FREE Copy of the Report,
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1) Quote We Are Contemplating...
“We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday’s burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it.”
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Thanks for reading! Have a wonderful weekend.
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