{{outline}} {{b_secret //{{layout rollout,title:¥á¥â {{memo}} //}} }} !!!²òÀâ {{b_secret {{youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgOfsuD0y34&feature=youtu.be}} }} !!1 Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III is the pilot who landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River after a flock of geese struck and disabled the plane's engines. ½Ðŵ: http://med.stanford.edu/news.html http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/one-to-one/2012/sully-sullenberger-takes-on-patient-safety.html !!2 The placebo effect remains one of the most baffling mysteries in medicine. ½Ðŵ: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/nov/06/placebo-effect-is-there-something-in-it {{b_secret {{layout rollout,title:¢£ The placebo effect: is there something in it after all? A study of the sometimes positive effects of taking drug-free pills suggests a biological factor at work Steve Connor Sun 6 Nov 2016 07.00 GMT Last modified on Fri 16 Mar 2018 10.17 GMT Shares 710 Comments 19 Several studies are suggesting there is a biological basis to the placebo effect. Several studies are suggesting there is a biological basis to the placebo effect. Photograph: Alamy The placebo effect remains one of the most baffling mysteries in medicine. The idea that a useless sugar pill or harmless saline injection could result in a measurable improvement in a patient¡Çs symptoms, sometimes as good as taking an active drug, has been so hard to explain that some have even doubted whether it can be real. However, there is now evidence showing some people, known as ¡Èplacebo responders¡É, do feel or get better after unwittingly, or even wittingly, taking a placebo – and it¡Çs not just psychosomatic. Several studies are pointing to a biological basis for the placebo effect, with the latest research focused on a region of the brain known as the mid-frontal gyrus, which runs along the frontal lobes just above the eyes. The study, carried out by Marwan Baliki and Vania Apkarian at Northwestern University in Chicago, involved a small number of chronic-pain patients with osteoarthritis of the knee. It is a rare example of a placebo study based on real patients rather than healthy volunteers who are just exposed to pain-inducing experiments to see how they feel when given a placebo. We pinpointed a brain region, a hotspot or seat, that can predict the propensity of a patient¡Çs response to a placebo Marwan Baliki, Northwestern University, Chicago Baliki used an MRI scanner to observe in real time how the brain of patients responded to a placebo – in this case a sugar pill instead of a painkiller. In short, he found that an area within the mid-frontal gyrus lit up or, in his own words, ¡Èshowed a higher functional connectivity¡É in patients who responded to the placebo, compared with non-responders. He concluded that this brain region seemed to be quite separate from another region of the brain known to be involved in responding to the effects of real painkilling drugs. In other words, Baliki appeared to have found the ¡Èseat¡É of the placebo effect within the brain. ¡ÈIn simple terms, we pinpointed a brain region, a hotspot or seat, that can predict the propensity of a patient¡Çs response to a placebo within the wider patient population suffering from chronic pain,¡É Baliki says. ¡ÈWe also examined the specificity of our results by testing whether this hotspot can predict pain analgesia to an active drug. We found that it does not, suggesting that this brain region is specific for placebo analgesia.¡É The findings suggest a biological basis for the placebo effect and raise the prospect of tests to see if individuals are going to be good placebo responders or not. For those who are responders, it could mean targeting them with placebo pain treatments that might work specifically for them. Or it could result in identifying placebo responders so that they don¡Çt get included in clinical trials, which have long been thought to be compromised by them. Advertisement It is not, however, the first time that scientists have identified a brain region involved in the placebo effect. In 2007 for instance Jon-Kar Zubieta, now at the University of Utah, suggested that the nucleus accumbens, which lies at the top of the brain stem, plays a role in moderating pain after injections of a placebo composed of harmless saline solution – at least in healthy volunteers. Science Weekly podcast: Jim Al-Khalili on the wonders of quantum biology Other researchers, meanwhile, have focused on identifying the genetic basis of the placebo effect. This is based on the idea that certain signalling pathways in the brain, especially those involved in the ¡Èreward¡É network, help to mediate the placebo effect. The idea is that these signalling pathways are under genetic control and that some people may be blessed with certain combinations of genes that make them more or less responsive to a placebo effect. Certainly, the more that scientists investigate the placebo, the weirder the effect seems to be. One study earlier this year found that taking a placebo for chronic lower back pain can work effectively for some people even when they are told that the treatment is just a ¡Èpowerful placebo¡É. ¡ÈOur data suggests that harnessing placebo effects without deception is possible in the context of a plausible rationale,¡É explained Claudia Carvalho of the ISPA-Instituto Universitario in Lisbon. She found that this kind of ¡Èopen¡É placebo reduced initial pain and disability by about 30%. Another study in 2011 on asthma patients found that placebo inhalers had no effect on increasing lung function. But asthma patients nevertheless reported that they felt significantly better after using a ¡Èuseless¡É inhaler – a baffling result to say the least. But if this is difficult to explain, then what about the ¡Ènoncebo¡É, the evil twin of the placebo, where a sugar pill actually makes people feel worse because they expect to suffer the side effects they have heard about? If the placebo effect has a genuine biological basis, with a seat in the brain and its own set of genes, then it¡Çs plausible the same is true for the noncebo. If that is found to be the case, things could get really interesting. }} }} !!3 Talking to yourself may seem a little shameful. ½Ðŵ: Fernyhough, C. (2016). The Los Angeles Times. December 31,2016 http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-fernyhough-voices-in-head-20161205-story.html {{b_secret {{layout rollout,title:¢£ Talking to yourself may seem a little shameful. If you've ever been overheard berating yourself for a foolish mistake or practicing a tricky speech ahead of time you'll have felt the social injunction against communing with yourself in words. In the well-known saying, talking to yourself is the first sign of madness. But there's no need for embarrassment. Talking to ourselves, whether out loud or silently in our heads, is a valuable tool for thought. Far from being a sign of insanity, self-talk allows us to plan what we are going to do, manage our activities, regulate our emotions and even create a narrative of our experience. Take a trip to any preschool and watch a small child playing with her toys. You are very likely to hear her talking to herself: offering herself directions and giving voice to her frustrations. Psychologists refer to this as private speech: language that is spoken out loud but directed at the self. We do a lot of it when we are young — perhaps one reason for our shyness about continuing with it as adults. Conducting a dialogue with ourselves ... seems to be a particularly good way of solving problems and working through ideas. Share quote & link As children, according to the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, we use private speech to regulate our actions in the same way that we use public speech to control the behavior of others. ("I'm hungry, can you bring me something to eat?" versus "I'm hungry, I should get myself something to eat.") As we grow older, we don't abandon this system — we internalize it. PAID POST What's This? ¼«Âð¤ÇAI¥×¥í¥°¥é¥ß¥ó¥°½¬ÆÀ A message from techacademy ºÃÀÞ¤·¤Ê¤¤³Ø½¬Ë¡¤ò¸ø³«Ãæ SEE MORE Imagine being able to tune in to the thoughts of the person next to you: in the office, on the bus, walking in the park. Much of what you would overhear would take the form of language. "Pick up some coffee." "Remember to phone the plumber." Many people say that they have a little voice up there, guiding them, helping them to think through problems and sometimes chastising them for their mistakes. Psychological experiments have shown that this so-called inner speech can improve our performance on tasks ranging from judging what other people are thinking to sorting images into categories. The distancing effect of our words can give us a valuable perspective on our actions. One recent study suggested that self-talk is most effective when we address ourselves in the second person: as "you" rather than "I." With new neuroscientific techniques, we can even explore what's happening in the brain when inner speech is going on. Mental dialogues draw on some of the same neural systems that underpin the conversations we have out loud and might explain the more unusual experience of "hearing voices" (or auditory hallucinations). We know that inner speech comes in different forms and speaks in different tongues, that it has an accent and emotional tone, and that its special properties mean it can unfold more quickly than speech said aloud. I said that we internalize the private speech we use as children — but we never entirely put away the out-loud version. If you want proof, turn on the sports channel. You're bound to see an athlete or two gearing himself up with a tart phrase or scolding herself after a bad shot. Andy Murray attributed his 2012 U.S. Open victory to a pep talk he gave himself in front of a changing-room mirror. Gymnastics star Laurie Hernandez was caught on camera telling herself "I got this" before a key event in Rio. The athletes are doing it for good reason: Self-talk has been shown to bring benefits in sports as diverse as badminton, darts and wrestling. Those of us who lack the talent of a Hernandez or a Murray are also likely to talk to ourselves aloud, particularly when the task is difficult and the conditions stressful. Researchers have observed high levels of private speech when adults are immersed in attention-demanding tasks like data entry — although, poignantly, many participants deny having talked to themselves when quizzed afterward. That social pressure not to think out loud is very real. Conducting a dialogue with ourselves — asking questions of the self and providing answers — seems to be a particularly good way of solving problems and working through ideas. The to-and-fro between different points of view means our thoughts can end up in expected places, just like a regular dialogue can, and might turn out to be one of the keys to human creativity. Both kinds of self-talk — the silent and the vocal — seem to bring a range of benefits to our thinking. Those words to the self, spoken silently or aloud, are so much more than idle chatter. Charles Fernyhough is the author, most recently, of "The Voices Within: The History and Science of How We Talk to Ourselves." Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook }} }} !!4 Death by chili pepper may mot be a common way to die, but it's certainly a possibility for unlucky souls adventurous enough to try Dragon's Breath, the new hottest pepper in town. ½Ðŵ: Geggel, L. (2017). Live Science. May 19, 2017. https://www/livescience.com/ https://www.livescience.com/59184-how-dragons-breath-chili-peppers-can-kill.html !!5 The very first social media site was created in 1997. !!!»²¹Í {{b_secret {{attach}} }} !!!·Ç¼¨ÈÄ {{bbs2 ¥µ¥Ý¡¼¥È·Ç¼¨ÈÄ,20}} ---- {{b_secret {{category ²áµîÌä}} }} {{counter yourund}}