Can a ray of sunshine help the critically ill?

Scientists have long believed that vitamin D, which is naturally absorbed from sunlight, has an important role in the functioning of the body's autoimmune system. Now Prof. Howard Amital of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Sheba Medical Center has discovered that the vitamin may also affect the outcomes of patients in intensive care.

In a six-month study, Prof. Amital and his colleagues found that patients who had a vitamin D deficiency lived an average of 8.9 days less than those who were found to have sufficient vitamin D. Vitamin D levels also correlated with the level of white blood cells which fight disease.

The study, which was published in the journal QJM: An International Journal of Medicine, demonstrates further research into giving patients vitamin D could confirm that it will improve their survival outcomes.

Adding days of life

To measure the impact of vitamin D levels on the survival of critically ill patients, the researchers designed an observational study. Over the course of six months, 130 patients over the age of 18 admitted to an intensive care unit of a TAU-affiliated hospital and requiring mechanical ventilation were admitted to the study. Patients who had taken vitamin D supplements prior to admittance were excluded from the study population.

Upon admittance, patients were divided into two groups based on vitamin D concentration: those who had 20 nanograms or more of the vitamin — the amount defined as the National Institute of Health as sufficient — and those who were vitamin D deficient based on the same criteria. In total, 107 patients suffered from vitamin D deficiency.

Survival curves indicate that while patients with sufficient vitamin D survived an average of 24.2 days, those who were deemed to be deficient in vitamin D survived an average of only 15.3 days — patients with sufficient vitamin D levels survived an average of 8.9 days longer. They were also found to have a better WBC count.

Seek out sun — or supplements

These findings merit further investigation, Prof. Amital says. He suggests that the effects of vitamin D supplementation in critically ill patients be further assessed in future studies. The initial results indicate only that vitamin D concentration may be an indicator of survival, he says.

But don't wait until you're in poor health to start taking vitamin D, suggests Prof. Amital. Vitamin D appears to enhance the function of the immune system in numerous ways, and it's becoming clear that it does have an impact on overall health and well-being.

According to research, including an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, the majority of those who live in North America and other Western countries are known to be vitamin D deficient due to limited exposure to the sun. But even if the springtime skies are gray, supplements from the pharmacy shelf will have the same benefits, Prof. Amital says.

Provided by Tel Aviv University

"Can a ray of sunshine help the critically ill?." April 3rd, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-ray-sunshine-critically-ill.html

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Being ignored online or in person, it's still exclusion

People who are excluded by others online, such as on Facebook, may feel just as bad as if they had been excluded in person, according to researchers at Penn State and Misericordia University.

"If you've ever felt bad about being 'ignored' on Facebook you're not alone," said Joshua Smyth, professor of biobehavioral health and of medicine at Penn State. "Facebook -- with its approximately 800 million users -- serves as a place to forge social connections; however, it is often a way to exclude others without the awkwardness of a face-to-face interaction. Most people would probably expect that being ignored or rejected via a remote source like the Internet would not hurt as much as being rejected in person. Yet, our studies show that people may experience similar psychological reactions to online exclusion as they do with face-to-face exclusion." Smyth and Kelly Filipkowski, assistant professor of psychology at Misericordia University, conducted two studies examining the perceptions of and reactions to face-to-face and online chat room exclusion. In the first study, the team asked more than 275 college students to anticipate how they would feel in a hypothetical exclusion scenario in which they were ignored during a conversation. The participants said they expected that they would feel somewhat distressed and that their self-esteem would drop, regardless of whether the rejection occurred in a chat room or in person; however, they expected the in-person exclusion to feel worse. According to Smyth, such anticipated reactions are important as they may help determine how people make decisions about situations that they perceive as holding some risk of rejection -- attending a party where they do not know anyone or participating in an online dating event. In the second study, Smyth and Filipkowski set up two scenarios in which 77 unsuspecting college students were ignored during a staged "get to know each other" conversation. Half of the participants were excluded in person, while the other half were excluded in an online chat-room setting.

The students operating face to face believed they were participating in a study on the formation of impressions in casual settings. They thought they would briefly interact with two other student participants and then supply the researchers with their impressions of themselves and the others.

The students involved in the chat-room conversation believed they were participating in a study to investigate the formation of impressions when individuals do not receive visual cues from one another. In reality, the researchers set up both scenarios -- the in-person conversations and the chat-room conversations -- so student participants would be ignored by student research assistants trained to pose as study participants.

The team found that participants in both scenarios responded similarly to being excluded.

"Contrary to our expectation, the students' responses to rejection were not primarily characterized by severe distress, but rather characterized by numbness and distancing or withdrawal," Smyth said.

Overall, the team showed that the participants expected the exclusion to be much worse than what they actually reported when they experienced the exclusion. The results of both studies appeared in a recent online issue of Computers in Human Behavior.

"What we found interesting is that in the lab setting, the vast majority of participants attributed their exclusion as being no fault of their own, but rather due to the other individuals in the room," Filipkowski said. "In other words, people said, 'it isn't me, it's you.' This may have been a type of protective mechanism in order to buffer their mood and self-esteem."

The results suggest that our culture may not differentiate between in-person and online experiences as much as we might think, according to the researchers.

"Although the meaningfulness of online or remote interactions may seem troubling, these data may also hold a more positive message," Smyth said. "Meaningful online interactions may support the utilization of remote interventions that can enhance physical and psychological well-being, in turn providing increased access to opportunities for people who are in need."

However, the researchers caution that these findings may be related to the types of individuals who participated in their study.

"These studies were conducted with college-aged students who have grown up with the Internet and other related technology," Filipkowski said. "These findings may not apply to individuals who have much less experience with technology and remote communication."

Filipkowski suggests that future studies investigate the applicability of these findings to different populations.

In the future, the team wants to investigate biological reactions to different types of exclusion.

Provided by Pennsylvania State University

"Being ignored online or in person, it's still exclusion." April 3rd, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-online-person-exclusion.html

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Our brains on food: From anorexia to obesity and everything in between

Our brains on food: From anorexia to obesity and everything in between

The brains of people with anorexia and obesity are wired differently, according to new research. Neuroscientists for the first time have found that how our brains respond to food differs across a spectrum of eating behaviors – from extreme overeating to food deprivation. This study is one of several new approaches to help better understand and ultimately treat eating disorders and obesity.

Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. And more than two-thirds of the U.S. population are overweight or obese – a health factor associated with cardiovascular issues, diabetes, and cancer. "This body of work not only increases our understanding of the relationship between food and brain function but can also inform weight loss programs," says Laura Martin of Hoglund Brain Imaging Center at the University of Kansas Medical Center, one of several researchers whose work being presented today at a meeting of cognitive neuroscientists in Chicago.

"One of the most intriguing aspects of these studies of the brain on food," Martin says, is that they show "consistent activations of reward areas of the brain that are also implicated in studies of addiction." However, how those reward areas respond to food differs between people depending on their eating behaviors, according to the new brain imaging study by Laura Holsen of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital and colleagues.

Holsen's team conducted fMRI brain scans of individuals with one of three eating conditions – anorexia nervosa, simple obesity, and Prader-Willi syndrome (extreme obesity) – as well as healthy control subjects. When hungry, those with anorexia, who severely restrict their food intake, showed substantially decreased responses to various pictures of food in regions of their brains associated with reward and pleasure. For those who chronically overeat, there were significantly increased responses in those same brain regions.

"Our findings provide evidence of an overall continuum relating food intake behavior and weight outcomes to food reward circuitry activity," Holsen says. Her work also has implications, she says, for everyday eating decisions in healthy individuals. "Even in individuals who do not have eating disorders, there are areas of the brain that assist in evaluating the reward value of different foods, which in turn plays a role in the decisions we make about which foods to eat."

Kyle Simmons of the Laureate Institute studies the neural mechanisms that govern such everyday eating decisions. His work with fMRI scans has found that as soon as people see food, their brains automatically gather information about how they think it will taste and how that will make them feel. The brain scans showed an apparent overlap in the region on the insula that responds to seeing food pictures and the region of the insula that processes taste, the "primary gustatory cortex."

Simmons is currently expanding this work to better understand the differences in taste preferences between lean, healthy individuals and obese ones. "We simply don't know yet if differences exist between lean and obese participants," he says. "And knowing which brain regions underlie inferences about food taste and reward is critical if we are going to develop efficacious interventions for obesity and certain eating disorders, both of which are associated with enormous personal and public health costs."

More information: The symposium "The Brain on Food: Investigations of motivation, dopamine and eating behaviors" takes place on April 3, 2012, at the 19th annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS). More than 1400 scientists are attending the meeting in Chicago, IL, from March 31 to April 3, 2012.

Provided by Cognitive Neuroscience Society

"Our brains on food: From anorexia to obesity and everything in between." April 3rd, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-brains-food-anorexia-obesity.html

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Study identifies point when negative thoughts turn into depression

Negative thinking is a red flag for clinical depression. Stopping such thoughts early on can save millions of people from mental illness, according to research study from the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University.

Jaclene Zauszniewski, the Kate Hanna Harvey Professor in Community Health Nursing and associate dean for doctoral education at the school, has developed a brief 8-item survey to help healthcare providers identify depressive thinking patterns that may lead to serious depression if not identified and addressed early.

Zauszniewski's Depression Cognition Scale (DCS) asks individuals to respond to questions about helplessness, hopelessness, purposelessness, worthlessness, powerlessness, loneliness, emptiness and meaninglessness using a scale that ranges from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree."

"Clinicians need guidelines and measures to know when negative thinking has reached a tipping point and has begun to spiral into clinical depression," she said.

The DCS has been used effectively to screen for more serious depressive symptoms in persons in the U.S. and around the world, but the researchers wanted to take it further and determine the point at which negative thinking establishes a pattern for the onset of clinical depression—even without other emotional expressions or body symptoms associated with depression.

In a study of 629 healthy adults from 42 states who responded to questions through the Internet survey, they found the answer. Participants ranged in age from 21 to 84 years, and 70 percent were women; women make up the majority depression sufferers. The majority of the participants were college educated and had incomes greater than $40,000.

For this study, the researchers compared DCS scores to the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), which is recognized as a "gold standard" measure for identifying clinically significant depressive symptoms. Their goal was to determine a cut score on the DCS that would represent the point at which individuals may benefit from learning ways to change negative thinking in order to prevent serious depression.

They found that a score of 7 on the DCS would be that point at which individuals should begin initiating strategies to change negative thoughts into positive ones. The findings also showed that at this cut score, the DCS accurately differentiated between persons with and without clinical depressive symptoms as determined by the CES-D.

Zauszniewski and Abir K. Bekhet, a researcher from Marquette University in Milwaukee, report their findings in Issue 34 of the Western Journal of Nursing Research article, "Screening Measure for Early Detection of Depressive Symptoms: The Depressive Cognition Scale."

Provided by Case Western Reserve University

"Study identifies point when negative thoughts turn into depression." April 3rd, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-negative-thoughts-depression.html

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Seeing Beyond the Visual Cortex

(Medical Xpress) -- It's a chilling thought--losing the sense of sight because of severe injury or damage to the brain's visual cortex. But, is it possible to train a damaged or injured brain to "see" again after such a catastrophic injury? Yes, according to Tony Ro, a neuroscientist at the City College of New York, who is artificially recreating a condition called blindsight in his lab.

"Blindsight is a condition that some patients experience after having damage to the primary visual cortex in the back of their brains. What happens in these patients is they go cortically blind, yet they can still discriminate visual information, albeit without any awareness." explains Ro.

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While no one is ever going to say blindsight is 20/20, Ro says it holds tantalizing clues to the architecture of the brain. "There are a lot of areas in the brain that are involved with processing visual information, but without any visual awareness." he points out. "These other parts of the brain receive input from the eyes, but they're not allowing us to access it consciously."

With support from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, Ro is developing a clearer picture of how other parts of the brain, besides the visual cortex, respond to visual stimuli.

In order to recreate blindsight, Ro must find a volunteer who is willing to temporarily be blinded by having a powerful magnetic pulse shot right into their visual cortex. The magnetic blast disables the visual cortex and blinds the person for a split second. "That blindness occurs very shortly and very rapidly--on the order of one twentieth of a second or so," says Ro.

On the day of Science Nation's visit to Ro's lab in the Hamilton Heights section of Manhattan, volunteer Lei Ai is seated in a small booth in front of a computer with instructions to keep his eyes on the screen. A round device is placed on the back of Ai's head. Then, the booth is filled with the sound of consistent clicks, about two seconds apart. Each click is a magnetic pulse disrupting the activity in his visual cortex, blinding him. Just as the pulse blinds him, a shape, such as a diamond or a square, flashes onto a computer screen in front of him.

Ro says that 60 to nearly 100 percent of the time, test subjects report back the shape correctly. "They'll be significantly above chance levels at discriminating those shapes, even though they're unaware of them. Sometimes they're nearly perfect at it," he adds.

Ro observes what happens to other areas of Ai's brain during the instant he is blinded and a shape is flashed on the screen. While the blindness wears off immediately with no lasting effects, according to Ro, the findings are telling. "There are likely to be a lot of alternative visual pathways that go into the brain from our eyes that process information at unconscious levels," he says.

Ro believes understanding and mapping those alternative pathways might be the key to new rehabilitative therapies. "We have a lot of soldiers returning home who have a lot of brain damage to visual areas of the brain. We might be able to rehabilitate these patients," he says. And that's something worth looking into.

Provided by National Science Foundation

"Seeing Beyond the Visual Cortex." April 3rd, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-visual-cortex.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Soft drinks harm future health

THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

Scientists can already see damage in the eyes of children who have been drinking fizzy drinks and eating too many carbohydrates. In a world-first study, researchers from Westmead Millennium Institute for Medical Research, the University of Sydney, have found that 12-year-olds who drink one or more fizzy drinks or cordial a day had narrower arteries in the back of their eyes. This increases their chances of heart disease and high blood pressure in later life. By examining the back of the eyes researchers can see the health of a person's blood vessel system. The study looked at around two thousand 12-year-old children in 21 high schools in Sydney, and is an extension of a study that last year found similar damage to children who watch too much television. The damage does not affect their vision. "Children with a high consumption of soft drinks and carbohydrates had a more adverse microvascular profile compared to those who did not drink so many soft drinks or eat so many carbs," said Dr Bamini Gopinath, lead author and senior research fellow at the Centre for Vision Research at Westmead Millennium Institute. "We measured their total carbohydrate intake over the whole day from things like bread, rice and pasta." Retinal microvascular diameter is a potential marker for future cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure in adults, but this is the first study to show that the effect of carbohydrates and fizzy drinks in childhood is linked to a narrowing of the vessels in the retina. Dr Gopinath said she would be very interested to see whether the damage persisted, once data from the follow-up study on the same children at age 17 was analysed. Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.

Early life emotional trauma may stunt intellectual development

Early life emotional trauma may stunt intellectual development, indicates the first long term study of its kind, published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

The impact seems to be the most damaging during the first two years of a child's life, the findings suggest.

The US researchers tracked the development of 206 children from birth to the age of eight years, who were taking part in the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. This study, which started in 1975, looks at which factors influence individual development.

Every few months they assessed the participating families, using a mix of observing mother-child interactions at home and in the laboratory, interviews with the mother, and reviews of medical and child protection records.

From these data, they rated whether a child was abused physically, sexually or emotionally; endured neglect; or witnessed partner violence against his/her mother at specific time points up to the age of 5+ years.

The children's intellectual development was then assessed using validated scales at the ages of two years, 5+ years, and 8 years, and exposure to maltreatment or violence was categorised according to whether these occurred during infancy (0-24 months) or pre-school (24-64 months).

Around one in three of the children (36.5%) had been maltreated and/or witnessed violence against his/her mother by age 5+.

In just under one in 20 (4.8%) this occurred in infancy; in 13% this was during the pre-school period; and in around one in five (18.7%) this occurred during both periods.

Analysis of the data showed that children who had been exposed to maltreatment and/or violence against the mother had lower scores on the cognitive measures at all time points.

The results held true even after taking account of factors likely to influence IQ development, such as social and economic factors, mother's IQ, weight at birth, birth complications, quality of intellectual stimulation at home, and gender.

The effects were most noticeable for those children who had experienced this type of trauma during the first two years of their lives, the findings showed.

Their scores were an average of 7.25 points lower than those of children without early exposure, even after accounting for other risk factors.

"The results suggest that [maltreatment and witnessing domestic violence] in early childhood, particularly during the first two years, has significant and enduring effects on cognitive development, even after adjusting for [other risk factors]," write the authors.

They go on to say that their findings echo those of other researchers who have identified changes in brain circuitry and structure associated with trauma and adversity in early life.

The early years of a child's life are when the brain is developing most rapidly, they say, adding, "Because early brain organisation frames later neurological development, changes in early development may have lifelong consequences."

Provided by British Medical Journal

"Early life emotional trauma may stunt intellectual development." April 2nd, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-early-life-emotional-trauma-stunt.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Ultra-small laser developed

THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

This is the first time scientists have been able to create a laser that can pulse at very high and flexible repetition rates. Image: nelic/iStockphoto Computing and medicine are among the many fields which could be revolutionised by a new form of ultra-small laser. The innovation was created by an international team of scientists, including Dr David Moss, from the University of Sydney’s School of Physics. Featured on the front cover of the prestigious journal Nature Communications on 4 April, it is the first laser to be mode-locked making it highly precise, ultra-fast and ultra-small. “Our new laser opens up a whole field of possibilities in terms of high precision, ultra-small, integrated lasers,” said Dr Moss, who is based at CUDOS – the ARC Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems – and the Institute of Photonics and Optical Science at the University of Sydney. “It’s the first time we’ve been able to use a micro-cavity resonator to lock the modes of a laser, which is how ultra-short pulsed lasers are created. Lasers that have their modes locked generate the shortest optical pulses of light,” explained Dr Moss. Making lasers that can pulse at very high and flexible repetition rates – much higher than those achieved with electronics – is a field that has been pursued by scientists around the world. Different research groups have proposed a variety of solutions to creating these lasers, but this is the first success.  “Our new laser achieves extremely stable operation at unprecedentedly high repetition rates of 200 Gigahertz, while maintaining very narrow linewidths, which leads to an extremely high quality pulsed emission,” said Dr Moss. The team Dr Moss worked with included scientists from Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique in Canada, the Istituto per i Processi Chimico-Fisici part of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche in Italy and Infinera Ltd in the USA. “As well as being ultra small this new laser is versatile, stable and efficient which offers many exciting applications in a huge range of areas.” “It will have applications in computing, measuring and diagnosing diseases, and processing materials – all areas where lasers are already used. It will also open up entirely new areas such as precision optical clocks for applications in metrology, ultra-high speed telecommunications, microchip-computing and many other areas.”  This work by Dr Moss on the new laser continues his success in computing innovation, for which he won the 2011 Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Innovation in Computer Science. Editor's Note: Original news release will be available here. The journal article is available here.

Brain nerves line up neatly

Imaging study finds neural connections form regular grid.

Helen Shen

 

 

A regular grid of nerve fibres could aid learning and repair in the brain.

MGH-UCLA Human Connectome Project

The nerves in a human brain form a three-dimensional grid of criss-crossing fibres, say researchers who have mapped them.

The regular pattern creates a scaffold to guide brain development and support more complex and variable brain structures, says Van Wedeen, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “The grid structure, by dint of its simplicity and symmetry under deformation, allows for continuous re-wiring,” he says.

The grid is part of the brain's white matter: bundles of nerve fibres, or axons, that allow different brain regions to communicate and coordinate with one another. It was a surprise to find that these bundles form a regular network, rather than a jumbled mass, says Wedeen.

The researchers imaged cubes of the brain a couple of millimetres across in living humans and half a millimetre across in dead animals from four other primate species. They used a technique called diffusion spectrum magnetic resonance imaging, which traces the path of axons by analysing the flow of water through the brain. The results are published in Science today¹.

In all the species studied, bundles of axons crossed the brain in a regular pattern. On a small scale, they run at right angles to one another, from front to back, left to right and top to bottom. On a larger scale, they form curved, meshed sheets.

Wedeen thinks that chemical signals guide axon growth during brain development, creating grids that bend into place as the brain matures and folds. The structure's regularity may aid learning and recovery from injury, he says.

The orthogonal arrangement of nerve fibres in the brain has been noticed before, comments Pratik Mukherjee, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco. “The contribution of this paper is that they looked at it more comprehensively and systematically,” he says.

Primitive pattern

The grids were most regular in deep brain structures, including neural pathways involved in emotion and memory. Wedeen speculates that this pattern represents a bare-bones wiring plan, which becomes more branched and convoluted in the overlying cortex of higher primates, associated with complex behaviours such as language and fine motor skills.

On a large scale, the brain probably is organized like this, agrees David Van Essen, a neurobiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. However, he thinks that the analysis probably underestimates the number of axon bundles that run at oblique angles to the grid, and which are outside the grid altogether.

Irregular wiring is probably especially common near the grey matter at the brain's surface, where the tissue wrinkles and folds. “The story is on more solid ground the deeper [into the brain] you get,” says Van Essen.

David Kleinfeld, a neurophysicist at the University of California, San Diego, says that the findings are an exciting first step. But he adds that the researchers need to verify the grid-like architecture through tissue staining and three-dimensional reconstructions of small brain samples.

Owing to technical limitations, the study was able to resolve a grid-like structure in only about one-quarter of the human brain, mostly in deep brain structures. Wedeen is currently using more sensitive imaging techniques to search for grids in the more geometrically complex regions of the human cortex, as part of the US National Institutes of Health's Human Connectome Project, which aims to map all the brain's wiring and its relation to mental health.

Eventually, imaging the development of the white-matter network in children could provide insight into neurological conditions thought to involve miswiring, such as autism.

“The functional significance of this is an open question,” says Wedeen, “but I find it hard to believe that it doesn’t have an answer.”

Nature

doi :10.1038/nature.2012.10357

References

1. Wedeen, V. J., et al. Science 355, 1628–1634 (2012).

Source: Nature
http://www.nature.com/news/brain-nerves-line-up-neatly-1.10357?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20120403

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Running Like a Child

“He is looking at the many mountains, vines, rivers and ponds on the way. As part of His childish play, He is running after birds and trying to stop deer.” (Janaki Mangala, 33) thgara tarū beli sarita sara bipula bilokahiṃ | dhāvahiṃ bāla subhāya bihaga mṛga rokahiṃ || Travelling in the forest, the young son of King Dasharatha is having a good time, as any child close to twelve years of age would want. Seeing the birds and tigers, He is trying to catch them, and gazing at the beautiful surroundings, the origin of all life and matter is appreciating His marvelous abilities. At the same time, the boy’s younger brother Lakshmana is accompanying Him, and they are guarded by Vishvamitra, the pious muni. This combination of characters makes for a delightful scene, one which can be contemplated upon again and again. Why was Lord Rama chasing after birds and trying to stop deer? As the father of the creation, all creatures come from Him. It is not that the intelligent species who can understand God slightly through the good fortune of meeting a spiritual master are the only candidates for the Lord’s mercy in the form of His personal association. Even the less intelligent deer, who run out into the road and get mesmerized by the headlights of an oncoming automobile, can delight in seeing Rama’s countenance. When God chases after them, tries to stop them, or shows any attention to them at all, how could they not feel pleasure? Animals have souls? They most certainly do. In fact, all forms of life have the same quality of spirit residing within them. The outer forms may not always have the same appearance, but the makeup of the spirit soul, the spark of life, in the individuals is not different. This shouldn’t be that difficult to understand. A spirit soul resides in a body so helpless that it requires diapers and then stays within that body until it is old enough to drive a car, go to work, and produce offspring. The soul is the constant; it does not move or change in quality. Take the same principle and apply it to every single species and you get the vision known as Brahman realization. Brahman is pure spirit. It is not affected by the changes to the external features. Just as when we might be angry one day and sad another our identity doesn’t change, just because one soul is in the body of a deer and another in the enlightened human being doesn’t mean that there is any distinction in the end. If you gather together every instance of spirit and put it into one collection for observational purposes, you get the concept of Brahman. Obviously, acquiring the Brahman vision is very difficult. The principles of a bona fide religion are meant to bring about the realization of Brahman. In the Vedas, the oldest system of spirituality in existence, strict austerity and dedicated sacrifice coupled with instruction from a spiritual master at a young age sets up the necessary conditions for attaining the enlightened vision of seeing all spirit souls as equal. Yet the vision doesn’t represent the end point, as was proven by Vishvamitra Muni. On the surface Vishvamitra, the son of Gadhi, was a brahmana practicing the principles of the Vedas aimed at seeing all living beings as equal. At the same time, he knew that there was one spiritual force which was superior, which was the source of Brahman. That singular entity, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, happened to appear in the pious Raghu dynasty as the son of King Dasharatha. Known by the name of Rama, this incarnation of the Supreme Lord was loved and adored by all the members of His family, including His three younger brothers: Bharata, Lakshmana and Shatrughna. It was Rama and Lakshmana playfully travelling with Vishvamitra in the forests because the sage was being harassed by night-rangers looking to disrupt the religious practices of the ascetics avowed to following their occupational duties. While all living entities are the same constitutionally, realization of that fact and the connection with the Supreme Lord can only take place through dedication in yoga. Yoga means to link up the individual soul with the Supreme Soul, God’s expansion residing within the heart. Yet not all kinds of yoga are the same, though unknowing mental speculators and unauthorized commentators may say otherwise. Through his dedicated practice of asceticism, Vishvamitra was also a yogi, following meditation and also the route of karma, or action, with detachment. Yet his real business was bhakti-yoga, or divine love. If this were not the case, Shri Rama would never have accompanied Him in the forest. To understand why, think of who the people are with whom you currently associate. Are they friends or enemies? Do you purposefully go out of your way to hang around people who hate you? Better yet, do you cherish the association of someone who pretends that you don’t even exist? With the paths of impersonal study of Vedanta, fruitive work with the results renounced, and meditational yoga, the Supreme Lord in His blissful features, the sach-chid-ananda vigraha, is not acknowledged. Therefore, by definition how can anyone following these paths bask in Rama’s company, gaining His divine vision? Not that these paths are illegitimate, for they are mentioned in shastra for a reason. It takes the conditioned soul many lifetimes just to attempt to adopt an authorized system of spirituality in earnest. Therefore those who don’t take to the path of bhakti are not shut out immediately; they are given the chance to progress through other, more difficult paths. Only in bhakti-yoga, the linking of the soul with God through acts of love, can one hear about and relish the activities of the Supreme Lord Rama travelling through the forests with Vishvamitra and Lakshmana. The impersonalist can hear the same above referenced passage from the Janaki Mangala and not get any delight from it. Using only mental speculation and knowledge limited by time, space and logic, the philosopher may think that Rama was foolish for chasing after birds and stopping deer. “Also, why did the mountains, lakes, rivers and vines need to be appreciated? These are all objects of maya, or illusion. The birds are just spirit souls, part of the Brahman energy, so why the need to pay them any attention? Shouldn’t Rama have just sat back and stayed renounced?” The Supreme Lord is always in ananda, or bliss. He derives this pleasure in whichever manner He sees fit, but at the core of any real pleasure is the exchange of emotion. In order for there to be an exchange, there must be more than one party. With the birds and deer, Shri Rama was having a good time with His parts and parcels, spirit souls who would appreciate His appearance. The animals enjoy God’s personal presence, at any time and at any place. It is said that the same Shri Rama, when appearing on earth as the preacher incarnation named Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, would get even the tigers to dance along to the chanting of the holy names, “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare”. Shri Rama as Govinda, one who gives pleasure to the cows and to the senses, was loved and adored by all the animals in Vrindavana. The lower species worship God in the mood of devotion called shanta-rasa, wherein they can’t directly offer obeisances. This mood is known as neutrality, but it is still part of devotion because love for God is present. Shri Rama always plays the part perfectly. Younger children are more energetic and difficult to restrain when let out into the open. A young child doesn’t require a television set or a video game console to be entertained. Simply by running in a field, seeing nature’s creation, a young child can find endless opportunities for excitement, avoiding boredom throughout. Shri Krishna and Balarama used to go out daily with their friends to play and they had such a good time that the dear mother Yashoda had to repeatedly call them to come home and eat. Shri Rama similarly enjoyed travelling through the forests with Lakshmana, staying under the care of Vishvamitra. Ironically enough, the guru had specifically requested Rama’s company for the purposes of protection. Rama and Lakshmana were trained from childhood to be military fighters, and due to their divine natures, they were already expert at fighting at a young age. The most hideous creatures had been attacking the sages in the forests, so Vishvamitra knew that Rama and Lakshmana were the only ones capable of defeating these enemies and eliminating their influence. As the Supreme Lord is Absolute, His fighting and His playing serve the same purpose. He fights with the enemies to protect the innocent and give them pleasure, and He plays with the deer and birds in the forest to enjoy their company. Thanks to the saints like Tulsidas who record these adventures in poetry format, any person can bask in the same sweetness by regularly hearing about the Lord’s activities. Vishvamitra certainly was delighted to have Rama with him, as was the entire population of creatures who called the remote wilderness their home. In Closing: The birds in the wilderness He did chase, Giving them chance to see His beautiful face. As part of His childish play, Rama tries to stop deer in their way. As the brothers with Vishvamitra move along, The rivers, mountains and ponds they gaze upon. Thinking of this scene for mind pleasurable, Rama’s play with His brother for sage delightful. Creatures of this world deserve God’s association, They are souls too, devotees by constitution.

"Shirdi Sai and Tirupati Balaji Earns CRORE" during Ram Navami-TV9