Five Neural Power Goodies

Actually, I couldn’t help myself this week. Call it a lack of discipline – I’m including SIX articles I found pretty compelling below …

Should a President Have to Murder an Innocent Aide in Order to Authorize a Nuclear Strike?

While this may seem like a deterrent for many people, most of us will never have to make such a decision. From a neuroscience perspective I can pretty much tell you that a human brain that makes a decision to murder 100s of thousands of innocent people is not a human brain operating sanely no matter in what person, in what country that brain resides. The question then becomes what response(s) should happen in the wake of such an insane act? How best might an attacked nation respond to such insanity if the best response is one that will ideally return the world to a state of safety for all the world’s citizens?

The Moral Brain

Making moral decisions seems to require a robust network of integrated mirror neurons in the human brain. This is a part of the brain that trauma, ACEs and aging adversely affects in my personal experience. I’d love to see some research designed to determine if my perspective is accurate. This study lays the foundation for beginning the investigation.

Peeking Inside the Brains of Power People

The brains of people who hold power are wired up differently than those of us who hold little. And those differences are telling. Their empathy circuitry tends to be compromised, that’s one difference. Their circuitry tends to make them less generous with others. There are antidotes to these downsides of power, however. Read the article and learn a few.

The Science of Your Racist Brain

Few of the people reading this blog I would guess would not openly admit to being racist. I would, though. But not deliberately. Unconsciously. Because I know how brains respond to real or imagined threat, I know I carry around “implicit” prejudice – my own unique subconscious biases, which can easily be evidenced in controlled psychology experiments. Here’s the research that provides a glimpse into why people who look different than we do activate our threat-detection circuitry whether we want them to or not.

Psychology’s Power Tools

Many of the principles and phrases that psychologists learn and use function primarily to stabilize emotional under-arousal or over-arousal. One such principle is that social support beneficially alters how we perceive the demands of the physical world. Reliable social support can positively impact our complete sensory experience of the world around us. “Caring others” can often work to help us see, hear, taste, touch and smell better together than we are able to by ourselves.

6 Traits of Super Smart People

Naturally, I’m on fully board with Trait No. 6. What most people don’t know about that Trait could fill a book. And actually, it has; six books, in fact. 😉 And remember – if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room!