Life Stories: More Truthy than True

Could your life story stand up to a fact-checker?

Published on March 10, 2012, by Jonathan Gottschall, Ph.D. in The Storytelling Animal

In The Lifespan of a Fact (Norton 2012), John D'Agata and James Fingal have produced a wonderfully bizarre book with a gripping psychological angle. Here are the particulars. D'Agata wrote an article about a Las Vegas teenager who leapt from the Stratosphere Hotel and pinwheeled one thousand feet to the concrete below. Harper's Magazine rejected the report over rampant inaccuracies. D'Agata then offered the essay to a literary magazine called The Believer. That magazine's fact-checker-James Fingal-was astonished to find warped or invented facts in most of the article's sentences. D'Agata, a writing professor at the University of Iowa, told Fingal that he was an artist, not a reporter, and artists sometimes had to lie to get to the truth (at one point, D'Agata tells his fussy fact checker to back off, saying, "It's called art, d---head."). Fingal countered that D'Agata's piece read like journalism, so he owed his readers accuracy or at least a disclaimer. After years of debate, the two men turned their argument into a book, with D'Agata's original essay printed on the centre of each page and excerpts from their testy email exchanges cramming the margins.

D'Agata's radical defence of an essayist's right--or obligation--to re-sculpt mundane truth in the service of artistic truth has been greeted with bewilderment and anger. The response faintly echoes the outrage accompanying the memoir scandals of James Frey (A Million Little Pieces), Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea), and others ("faintly" because D'Agata, unlike the sham memoirists, has made no secret of his views, and because he defends them with mad vigor; D'Agata won't be rolling over-Frey-style-to get spanked by Oprah or anyone else).

But before we stone D'Agata or Frey for how they tell their stories, we should look more closely at how we tell our own. We all live crafting a story that makes us the noble-if flawed-protagonist of a first-person drama. A life story is about who we are deep down, where we come from and how we got this way. They are our identity. But how would your life story hold up to the scrutiny of a relentless fact-checker like James Fingal? Probably not very well. As I describe in my forthcoming book The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, fact-checking psychologists have demonstrated that our life stories--like D'Agata's essays--are only based on true stories.

Page view from The Lifespan of a Fact

Memory is the foundation of identity, and researchers like Beth Loftus have discovered that the memory system is alarmingly prone to inaccuracies. We constantly and confidently remember the details of our lives, small and large. Moreover, as the psychologists Carol Tavris and Eliot Aronson point out, we misremember with an agenda: "[memory is an] unreliable, self-serving historian...pruned and shaped by an ego-enhancing bias that blurs the edges of past events, softens culpability and distorts what really happened." This egocentric bias isn't limited to memory; it extends to nearly all our self-assessments. Most of us are deeply prone to The Lake Woebegone Effect: we think we are above average regarding any positive quality a psychologist can name--even immunity to it.

This is not to suggest a moral equivalence between how ordinary people embroider their life stories and how some writers purposefully mislead readers. Ordinary people fictionalise their stories mainly to deceive themselves, not others. According to psychologist Shelly Taylor, a healthy mind tells itself flattering lies. And if it does not lie to itself, it is not healthy. Why? Because, without self-aggrandisement, we might find it hard to live with the bleakness of the truth: most of us are not that special.

This may be why, even in the age of Prozac and Zoloft, one of the most common ways of dealing with depression is by talking with a psychotherapist. According to psychologist Michelle Crossley, depression frequently stems from an "incoherent story," an "inadequate narrative account of oneself," or "a life story gone awry." A psychotherapist can, therefore, be seen as a kind of script doctor who helps a patient revise his life story so he can play the role of protagonist again- a suffering and flawed protagonist, sure, but a protagonist who is moving toward the light.

Sources:

Crossley, Michele. Introducing Narrative Psychology: Self, Trauma, and the Construction of 

Meaning. Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000.

Tavris, Carol, and Eliot Aronson. Mistakes were Made but Not By Me: Why we Justify Foolish. 

Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. New York: Harcourt, 2007.

Taylor, Shelley. Positive Illusions: Creative Self-Deception and the Healthy Mind. New 

York: Basic Books, 1991.

Source: Psychology Today

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-storytelling-animal/201203/life-stories-more-truthy-true

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Chemists develops origami-inspired paper sensor for malaria, HIV test

 by Biomechanism 

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“Sensors can be printed out on an office printer, and take less than a minute to assemble”

Inspired by the paper-folding art of origami, chemists at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a 3-D paper sensor that may be able to test for diseases such as malaria and HIV for less than 10 cents a pop.

Inspired by the paper-folding art of origami, chemists at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a 3-D paper sensor that may be able to test for diseases like malaria and HIV for less than ten cents a pop. Credit: Photo by Alex Wang

Such low-cost, “point-of-care” sensors could be incredibly useful in the developing world, where the resources often don’t exist to pay for lab-based tests, and where, even if the money is available, the infrastructure often doesn’t exist to transport biological samples to the lab.

“This is about medicine for everybody,” says Richard Crooks, the Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry. Continue reading below…

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The oPAD can be printed on a common office printer. Credit: Photo by Alex Wang

One-dimensional paper sensors, such as those used in pregnancy tests, are already common but have limitations. The folded, 3-D sensors, developed by Crooks and doctoral student Hong Liu, can test for more substances in a smaller surface area and provide results for more complex tests.

“Anybody can fold them up,” says Crooks. “You don’t need a specialist, so you could easily imagine an NGO with some volunteers folding these things up and passing them out. They’re easy to produce as well, so the production could be shifted to the clientele as well. They don’t need to be made in the developed world.”

The results of the team’s experiments with the origami Paper Analytical Device, or oPAD, were published in October in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and this week in Analytical Chemistry.

The inspiration for the sensor came when Liu read a pioneering paper by Harvard University chemist George Whitesides.

Whitesides was the first to build a three-dimensional “microfluidic” paper sensor that could test for biological targets. His sensor, however, was expensive and time-consuming to make, and was constructed in a way that limited its uses.

“They had to pattern several pieces of paper using photolithography, cut them with lasers, and then tape them together with two-sided tape,” says Liu, a member of Crooks’ lab. “When I read the paper, I remembered when I was a child growing up in China, and our teacher taught us origami. I realized it didn’t have to be so difficult. It can be very easy. Just fold the paper, and then apply pressure.”

Graduate student Hong Liu was inspired to develop the sensor after recalling the origami lessons he got as a schoolboy growing up in China. Credit: Photo by Alex Wang

Within a few weeks of experiments, Liu had fabricated the sensor on one simple sheet using photolithography or simply an office printer they have in the lab. Folding it over into multiple layers takes less than a minute and requires no tools or special alignment techniques. Just fingers.

Crooks says that the principles underlying the sensor, which they’ve successfully tested on glucose and a common protein, are related to the home pregnancy test. A hydrophobic material, such as wax or photoresist, is laid down into tiny canyons on chromatography paper. It channels the sample that’s being tested — urine, blood, or saliva, for instance — to spots on the paper where test reagents have been embedded.

If the sample has whatever targets the sensor is designed to detect, it’ll react in an easily detectable manner. It might turn a specific color, for instance, or fluoresce under a UV light. Then it can be read by eye.

“Biomarkers for all kinds of diseases already exist,” says Crooks. “Basically you spot-test reagents for these markers on these paper fluidics. They’re entrapped there. Then you introduce your sample. At the end you unfold this piece of paper, and if it’s one color, you’ve got a problem, and if not, then you’re probably OK.”

Crooks and Liu have also engineered a way to add a simple battery to their sensor so that it can run tests that require power. Their prototype uses aluminum foil and looks for glucose in urine. Crooks estimates that including such a battery would add only a few cents to the cost of producing the sensor.

“You just pee on it and it lights up,” says Crooks. “The urine has enough salt that it activates the battery. It acts as the electrolyte for the battery.”

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Courtesy University of Texas at Austin 

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SAHARA AMBY VALLEY ( INDIA ) LONAVALA (NEAR PUNE)

Knowledge is Power

Understanding Dreams Analysis

Did you know that each night you will have between four and seven dreams and that a total of around ninety to one hundred and twenty minutes will be spent dreaming? That means that over your lifetime something like six years will be spent in the world of your dreams! So don’t you think it would be great to be able to spend that time productively? Well you can, because by learning the techniques that you need to fully understand your dreams you can then use them to achieve all of your goals in life. All you have to do is follow the simple steps that will enable you to uncover your dream secrets. Follow these simple  steps and you will be well on your way: Prepare Your Environment To ensure you dream truly significant dreams you must get a restful night’s sleep. So the environment in which you sleep must be just right. Make sure you are comfortable and are neither too hot nor too cold. Ensure that the room that you sleep in is right for getting a good night’s sleep – a room that is too light for instance will make it more difficult. And try to remove those things that might distract you before you go off to sleep, like TVs and computers. Prepare Your Mind If your mind is still full of the pressures or excitement of your day then it is not going to produce gainful dreams. So try to clear your mind by taking time to relax and wind down before you go off to sleep. Use techniques like visualization to see yourself going off to sleep and becoming absorbed in vivid meaningful dreams. Tell yourself that you are going to dream about something significant. Learn To Remember Your Dreams It’s no good having all those great dreams and then simply forgetting them. Within five minutes of waking it’s reckoned that around fifty percent of your dream content will be forgotten. After ten minutes as much as ninety percent simply can’t be remembered. So you need to learn the steps required to change this. Ensuring that you wake slowly and keeping your eyes shut for a few moments will help to keep the images from your dreams in your mind. Then it’s important to record what you can remember as quickly as you can. Record Your Dreams You should have a notebook and pen by your bedside so that as soon as you wake you can jot down all that you remember about your dreams. Note down the main objects, characters, and events that appear and include things like colors, shapes, sounds, even any smells. There is no need to worry about being grammatically correct just get the details down in the best way you can. This will form your dream journal. Examine What You Have Recorded Start to examine more closely what you have been dreaming about. It is important before you start to try analyzing the symbols, that you ask yourself what the dream could mean to you. Ask yourself what was the location of the dream, what key images or symbols did it contain, how did you feel during it, and what real life experience could it reflect? Record your thoughts on these areas and try to formulate what the theme of the dream is. Highlight the keys points and then leave it and get on with your day.Analyze Your Dream Set some time aside later in the day when you can go back to what you have recorded and start to analyze it. It’s vital that you find a quiet place where you won’t be interrupted. Examine the key symbols in your dreams, maybe using a dream dictionary to find some initial possible meanings. The true picture of what they all mean though will come by looking at your life, both now and in the past, to see what the images mean to you personally. As you think about them you will be able to form associations with aspects of your life. For example the people in your dreams are there to tell you something, possibly about the qualities or skills they possessed. If they are from your past think about conversations you may have had with them or ideas or hopes you had at the time. You will soon get clues about the areas of your life your dreams are prompting you to look at. Define The Interpretation and Act Upon It It may take you a few days but soon you will become accomplished at understanding what the contents of your dreams mean to you personally. You will see themes develop and certain images will start to reoccur. Try giving each dream a title and see how the patterns emerge. Get into a routine of doing your dream work and soon the clues to the actions you need to take in life will be revealed. Then act upon them. These steps are the basics of what you will need to learn to be able to fully understand your own dreams. When you learn to uncover your dream secrets you truly will see the benefits in your life.

Dreaming takes the sting out of painful memories

 by Biomechanism 

They say time heals all wounds, and new research from the University of California, Berkeley, indicates that time spent in dream sleep can help. 

UC Berkeley researchers have found that during the dream phase of sleep, also known as REM sleep, our stress chemistry shuts down and the brain processes emotional experiences and takes the painful edge off difficult memories.

The findings offer a compelling explanation for why people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), such as war veterans, have a hard time recovering from painful experiences and suffer reoccurring nightmares. They also offer clues into why we dream. Continue reading below…

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“The dream stage of sleep, based on its unique neurochemical composition, provides us with a form of overnight therapy, a soothing balm that removes the sharp edges from the prior day’s emotional experiences,” said Matthew Walker, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at UC Berkeley and senior author of the study published this Wednesday, Nov. 23, in the journal Current Biology.

For people with PTSD, Walker said, this overnight therapy may not be working effectively, so when a “flashback is triggered by, say, a car backfiring, they relive the whole visceral experience once again because the emotion has not been properly stripped away from the memory during sleep.”

The results offer some of the first insights into the emotional function of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, which typically takes up 20 percent of a healthy human’s sleeping hours. Previous brain studies indicate that sleep patterns are disrupted in people with mood disorders such as PTSD and depression.

While humans spend one-third of their lives sleeping, there is no scientific consensus on the function of sleep. However, Walker and his research team have unlocked many of these mysteries linking sleep to learning, memory and mood regulation. The latest study shows the importance of the REM dream state.

“During REM sleep, memories are being reactivated, put in perspective and connected and integrated, but in a state where stress neurochemicals are beneficially suppressed,” said Els van der Helm, a doctoral student in psychology at UC Berkeley and lead author of the study.

Thirty–five healthy young adults participated in the study. They were divided into two groups, each of whose members viewed 150 emotional images, twice and 12 hours apart, while an MRI scanner measured their brain activity.

Half of the participants viewed the images in the morning and again in the evening, staying awake between the two viewings. The remaining half viewed the images in the evening and again the next morning after a full night of sleep.

Those who slept in between image viewings reported a significant decrease in their emotional reaction to the images. In addition, MRI scans showed a dramatic reduction in reactivity in the amygdala, a part of the brain that processes emotions, allowing the brain’s “rational” prefrontal cortex to regain control of the participants’ emotional reactions.

In addition, the researchers recorded the electrical brain activity of the participants while they slept, using electroencephalograms. They found that during REM dream sleep, certain electrical activity patterns decreased, showing that reduced levels of stress neurochemicals in the brain soothed emotional reactions to the previous day’s experiences.

“We know that during REM sleep there is a sharp decrease in levels of norepinephrine, a brain chemical associated with stress,” Walker said. “By reprocessing previous emotional experiences in this neuro-chemically safe environment of low norepinephrine during REM sleep, we wake up the next day, and those experiences have been softened in their emotional strength. We feel better about them, we feel we can cope.”

Walker said he was tipped off to the possible beneficial effects of REM sleep on PTSD patients when a physician at a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in the Seattle area told him of a blood pressure drug that was inadvertently preventing reoccurring nightmares in PTSD patients.

It turns out that the generic blood pressure drug had a side effect of suppressing norepinephrine in the brain, thereby creating a more stress-free brain during REM, reducing nightmares and promoting a better quality of sleep. This suggested a link between PTSD and REM sleep, Walker said.

“This study can help explain the mysteries of why these medications help some PTSD patients and their symptoms as well as their sleep,” Walker said. “It may also unlock new treatment avenues regarding sleep and mental illness.”

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Other co-authors of the study are UC Berkeley sleep researchers Justin Yao, Shubir Dutt, Vikram Rao and Jared Saletin.