Borderline Personality Disorder and Projected Self-Loathing

  
Individuals with symptoms of borderline personality disorder (BPD) often lash out hurtfully at others. This may be in response to provocation such as frustration, disagreement, or disappointment, or it might seem to be unprovoked. The lashing out often takes the form of saying hurtful things or committing destructive acts toward those they are closest to. Understanding this behavior as an expression of their disorder will offer you tools to relate without being hurt by these episodes.
Hurtful lashing-out behaviors are common in those who suffer from BPD. This typically happens when they become frustrated because they cannot get their way or when others disagree with them, which they experience as being offensive. These episodes are sometimes initiated by the symptomatic person with a phone call, email, or text.
Following is a typical example of seemingly unprovoked lashing out. Tim answers his telephone on Sunday morning and speaks to his mother who has symptoms of BPD.
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Why children perceive time slower than adults

  
Children's perception of time is relatively understudied. Learning to see time through their eyes may be fundamental to a happier human experience.
My household is absorbed in debate over when time goes the fastest or slowest.
"Slowest in the car!" yells my son.
"Never!" replies my daughter. "I'm too busy for time to go slow, but maybe on weekends when we are on the sofa watching movies."
There's some consensus too; they both agree that the days after Christmas and their birthdays dawdle by gloomily as it dawns on them they have to wait another 365 days to celebrate once more. Years seem to drag on endlessly at their age.
It's a feeling I remember well; the summer holidays filled with water play, skipping on the freshly cut lawn, the laundry drying on the washing line whilst the Sun blazed. At moments like that, time really did feel like it moved slowly.
Teresa McCormack, a professor of psychology who studies cognitive development at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland, believes children and time is a hugely understudied topic. Her work has long probed whether there is something fundamentally different about time processes in children, such as an internal clock that functions at a different speed to that of adults. But there are still more questions than answers.
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How Mindfulness Can Help You Become More Humble

There's an old story about a sage who lived in a lofty  mountain hermitage. It was attached to a cave where he often meditated, but his  followers and benefactors had also built him a lovely little building that  housed all his books and provided him with a very comfortable place to sleep  and a dining area with a sweeping view of many valleys below and peaks in the  distance. Also attached to the building was a closet-like dwelling for his  faithful attendant.

One morning the sage declared that he would like to go down  to the village to exchange some of his tattered books for new ones and see what  newly minted works of philosophy he could get his hands on. Reaching the  village required crossing a rope bridge strung high above a gorge. As they  approached the entry to the bridge, the attendant hesitated. He rarely  interrupted his master, who loathed having his contemplative silence broken,  but this time he felt he must speak up, knowing that his master's eyesight had  been weakened by so much reading. "Master," he broke in, "I fear the bridge  needs to be repaired. The rope looks very frayed to me." Perturbed, and eager  to get to the village, the sage responded brusquely, "How would you know? It  seems perfectly fine to me."
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Groundbreaking new study determines the cause of ADHD

According to the World Health Organization, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is estimated to affect approximately 5% of children worldwide and 2.5% of adults. 
This disorder manifests as inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity, and difficulty focusing, and it can greatly influence a person's academic and social functioning. 

Although ADHD has been recognized to have a genetic basis, the specific genes implicated have been challenging to identify.However, recent advancements have brought us closer to unraveling this mystery.
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Strange Illusion Shows The Human Brain Mess With Time to Maintain Our Expectations

 

'I saw it with my own eyes' is something people often say. The implication is that since we perceived something, it must have happened.

But what we perceive can be influenced by a great many things, and a strange new experiment shows just how easily our perceptions can be manipulated by our own expectations and assumptions.

In a new study, scientists discovered a "novel perceptual illusion" that effectively reorders the perceived temporal order of events in a sequence.

"Is our perception of time and temporal order a faithful reflection of what happens in the world (or at least what arrives at our retina) or can seemingly higher-level expectations, such as [presumed] causality, affect the order in which we experience events occurring?" writes a team of researchers led by first author and experimental psychologist Christos Bechlivanidis from University College London.

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Here's How The Human Brain Reboots Itself After The Deep Sleep of Anesthesia

 

You may well have spent hours wondering what your laptop is up to as it takes its time to boot up. Scientists have asked the same question of the human brain: How exactly does it restart after being anesthetized, in a coma, or in a deep sleep?

Using a group of 30 healthy adults who were anesthetized for three hours, and a group of 30 healthy adults who weren't as a control measure, a 2021 study reveals some insights into how the brain drags itself back into consciousness.

It turns out that the brain switches back on one section at a time, rather than all at once – and abstract problem-solving capabilities, as handled by the prefrontal cortex, are the functions that come back online the quickest. Other brain areas, including those managing reaction time and attention, take longer.

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Meta-analysis suggests psychopathy may be an adaptation, rather than a mental disorder

 

A meta-analysis of 16 studies revealed no differences in the rates of non right-handedness between community individuals who scored high and low in psychopathy, psychopathic and non-psychopathic offenders, and psychopathic and non-psychopathic mental health patients, partially supporting the adaptive strategy model of psychopathy. This research was published in Evolutionary Psychology.

Psychopathy is characterised by “antisocial, impulsive, manipulative, and callous behavior” and was long considered a mental disorder. Today, many of the defining features of psychopathy fall under the diagnostic criteria of Antisocial Personality Disorder in the DSM-5. Despite a widespread belief among the scientific community that psychopathy is a mental disorder, “an alternative, evolution-minded perspective has been proposed: that psychopathy is instead a life history strategy of social exploitation maintained by negative frequency-dependent selection,” write Lesleigh E. Pullman and colleagues.

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DOES COVID-19 CHANGE THE BRAIN? A NEUROSCIENTIST EXPLAINS THE DANGERS

 

RESEARCHERS have been steadily gathering important insights into the effects of Covid-19 on the body and brain. Two years into the pandemic, these findings are raising concerns about the long-term impacts the coronavirus might have on biological processes such as aging.

As a cognitive neuroscientist, I have focused in my past research on understanding how brain changes related to aging affect people’s ability to think and move — particularly in middle age and beyond.

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But as evidence came in showing that Covid-19 could affect the body and brain for months following infection, my research team shifted some of its focus to better understanding how the illness might influence the natural process of aging. This was motivated in large part by compelling new work from the United Kingdom investigating the effect of Covid-19 on the human brain.

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Stress relief: how the “PEACE” method can help manage emotional responses to stressful situations

I have always been a crier. Whether I'm happy or sad, frustrated or shocked, tears have tended to be my go-to emotional response.

But throughout the pandemic, the tears dried up and I found myself turning to other coping mechanisms to deal with the daily stress and anxiety of lockdown.

When put under pressure, we all react in different ways, and some are healthier than others. But according to Amy Saltzman, MD, a holistic physician and mindfulness coach, in times of difficulty, our choices don't always decrease our stress. Sometimes, they actually increase it.

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Our Favorite Neuroscience Stories of 2021

 

From a Nobel prize and photosynthesis-powered brains to neurodegeneration research and controversy over a new Alzheimer’s drug, a look back at some of the biggest brain-related developments of the year.

This year saw innovations in augmenting the brain’s capabilities by plugging it in to advanced computing technology. For example, a biology teacher who lost her vision 16 years ago was able to distinguish shapes and letters with the help of special glasses that interfaced with electrodes implanted in her brain. Along a similar vein, a computer connected to a brain-implant system discerned brain signals for handwriting in a paralyzed man, enabling him to type up to 90 characters per minute with an accuracy above 90 percent. Such studies are a step forward for technologies that marry cutting-edge neuroscience and computational innovation in an attempt to improve people’s lives.

In one of the year’s stranger developments, researchers were able to supply tadpoles with oxygen using photosynthetic microorganisms, allowing for continued brain function even under hypoxic conditions. The team injected photosynthetic algae into tadpoles kept in low-oxygen conditions, and upon exposure to light, the concentration of oxygen in the animals’ ventricles increased and their brain activity resumed. Still, the finding’s applicability to animals where light would not be able to penetrate the skin and reach the brain is limited.

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