Posts Tagged ‘neuroscience’
The developing human brain and bullying
Monday, November 29th, 2010
At WBI we use physical sciences to complement the “softer” social science research. It is useful to convince all opponents (the courts when involved in legal cases, business lobbyists fighting our anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill, and executives who believe they would be sissies if they stopped bullying in their organizations) that there is a physiological basis to the injuries suffered by bullied targets. A tip of the hat to David Yamada for catching the Boston Globe science writer’s recent coverage of relevant research. Emily Anthes wrote about the impact of being bullied as a child on the developing human brain. Dr. Gabor Maté, appearing on Democracy Now! Nov. 24 spoke about how the bully’s brain may develop in abnormal ways.
Tags: brain development, bullying, Daniel Peterson, David Yamada, Elizabeth Blackburn, Emily Anthes, Gabor Mate, Martin Teicher, neuroscience, Robert Hare, Robert Sapolsky, Tracy Vaillancourt, workplace bullying
Posted in Bullying Tutorials, Science | 5 Comments »
PTSD Diagnosis, A New Tool – MEG
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Prolonged exposure to unremitting stress damages a person’s health. The research is unequivocal (read the science in our Research Library). Mental health impact begins with anxiety. In worst cases, trauma can result. The diagnosis can be elusive because of the strict definition in the DSM-IV-TR (the diagnostic bible) and the reluctance of clinicians to admit what Heinz Leymann knew back in the late 1980′s — work trauma is real. Now comes a potential new neuroscience tool to complement the diagnostic toolkit — MEG. MEG stands for magnetoencephalography. PTSD can be detected with 97% accuracy using this non-invasive, but still experimental, procedure.
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Tags: Georgopoulos, MEG, neuroscience, PTSD
Posted in Bullying Tutorials, Science | 1 Comment »
WBI Recommends Robert Sapolsky, Stress Expert
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
WBI loves his popularization of the neuroscience of prolonged stress and its impact on health. Adult targets of bullying at work should appreciate his insights. His book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: An Updated Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases and Coping a veritable textbook for those of us not in medical school to which we refer in speeches and WBI University. Purchase his book.
Listen to two of his speeches at our Audio library.
Read one of his articles written for general audiences. [The influence of social hierarchy on primate health. Science, 2005, 308, 648-652.]
Tags: coping with stress, neuroscience, Sapolsky, stress, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers
Posted in Bullying Tutorials, Science | 2 Comments »
Difficult to Detect a Broken Heart
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
The Neuroscience of Compassion
Targets of bullying experience rejection by cowardly co-workers, indifference from HR and senior management, and limited tolerance by friends and family. Why aren’t people more compassionate? Why don’t they see the pain and help more? Brand new research suggests that we humans are wired to quickly and empathically react to the physical pain of others. For example, watching someone break an ankle and step on it triggers pain centers in our own brains nearly immediately.
However, social pain or the mental anguish of others takes longer to trigger a response and that reaction requires much more brain work. For example, when a woman with cerebral palsy laments that she has never been kissed and probably will never have a romantic relationship, it should trigger a compassionate response. It does, but it takes time. The latency and location of neurological responses are tracked by fMRI. The research was done by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and Antonio Damasio at USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute. (Paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)
Tags: compassion, fMRI, neuroscience
Posted in Bullying Tutorials, Health Care, Science | 3 Comments »
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