EVIL IS IT'S OWN REWARD
Exciting studies have come out over the last few years that seem to show that being a monster from hell is self-destructive in that, the body chemistry and the psychological health of people who bring harm to others starts to deteriorate almost immediately. In fact, it begins with the first stroke of evil against another.
Here's the proof.
Dr. Wayne Dyer’s Power of Intention on PBS. He highlighted some interesting medical research on the health benefits of performing acts of kindness. Apparently researchers have studied the effects of acts of kindness on the giver, the receiver and the witnesses, and have concluded that preforming acts of kindness increases serotonin levels and strengthens immune function in both the giver, receiver and witnesses of acts of kindness
Dyer also says, “Conversely, unkindness weakens the body and puts us into a state of dissonance. So extend acts of kindness; ask for nothing in return.”
www.hayhouse.com. The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-create Your World Your Way (Hay House).
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Inner Workings of the Magnanimous Mind ...
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/news_and_events/news_articles/brain_activity_during_altruism.htm
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
One study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, involved about 20 people, each of whom had the potential to walk away with a pot of $128. They also were given a separate pool of funds, which they could choose to distribute to a variety of charities linked to controversial issues, such as abortion and the death penalty. A computer presented each charity to the subjects in series, and gave them the option to donate, to oppose donation, or to receive a payoff, adding money to the pot. Sometimes, the decision to donate or oppose was costly, calling for subjects to take money out of the pot.
It turned out that a similar pattern of brain activity was seen when subjects chose either to donate or take a payoff. Both types of decisions were associated with heightened activity in parts of the midbrain, a region deep in the brain that is known to be involved in primal desires (such as food and sex) and the satisfaction of them. This result provides the first evidence that the "joy of giving" has an anatomical basis in the brain – surprisingly, one that is shared with selfish longings and rewards.
Jordan Grafman, Ph.D., the scientist who led the work, was more interested by what happened when subjects donated, or opposed donation, at a cost to themselves. In either case, an area of the brain toward the forehead, known as the anterior prefrontal cortex, lit up. When Dr. Grafman and his team asked subjects to rate their charitable involvement in everyday life, he found that those with the highest ratings also had the highest level of activity in the prefrontal cortex.
"There’s a lot of controversy about what the prefrontal cortex does," said Dr. Grafman, a senior investigator in the intramural research division of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). "We’re interested in how this uniquely human part of the brain represents and processes information."
Studying how the prefrontal cortex influences altruistic behavior is likely to yield insights into other kinds of complex decision-making "where the end-result is not going to be immediately apparent," he said.
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Meanwhile, a study in Nature Neuroscience...
connects altruism to the posterior superior temporal cortex (pSTC), an area in the upper rear of the brain that’s known to enable us to perceive goal-directed actions by someone or something else.
About 45 subjects were asked to play a computerized reaction time game or, on some trials, to simply watch as the computer played it. Faster reactions earned money for the subject or for a charity, and subjects were told at the beginning of each trial where their earnings would go. They also completed assessment scales designed to measure their altruism in real-world situations.
Among subjects who scored high on the altruism scale, the pSTC became more active during "watching" sessions and less active during "playing" sessions. Moreover, this link between pSTC activation and watching was strongest when the charity, not the subject, was designated to receive the game's winnings. Among low-altruism subjects, pSTC activation was not significantly altered by the conditions of the game – that is, whether the subject played or watched, and who received the winnings.
The results suggest that altruism depends on – and may have evolved from – the brain's ability to perform the relatively low-level perceptual task of attributing actions to others, said senior author, Scott Huettel, Ph.D. "Our findings are consistent with a theory that some aspects of altruism arose out of a system for perceiving the intentions and goals of others," said Dr. Huettel, a neuroscientist and NINDS grantee at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. "To be altruistic, you need to see that the people you’re helping have goals, and that your actions will have consequences for them," he said.
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Allan Luks, executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters in New York City and former executive director of The Institute for the Advancement of Health, has spent his career collecting data on good deeds.
In his book, The Healing Power of Doing Good: The Health and Spiritual Benefits of Helping Others, Luks studied acts of kindness. He said, “Helping contributes to the maintenance of good health, and it can diminish the effect of diseases and disorders, both serious and minor, psychological and physical.”
Helping others: on the website, www.actsofkindness.org, Luks’ findings from his book are condensed as follows:
• A rush of euphoria, followed by a longer period of calm after performing a kind act is often referred to as a “helper’s high,” involving physical sensations and the release of the body’s natural painkillers, the endorphins. This initial rush is followed by a longer-lasting period of improved emotional well-being.
• Stress-related health problems improve after performing kind acts. Helping reverses feelings of depression, supplies social contact, and decreases feelings of hostility and isolation that can cause stress, overeating, ulcers, etc. A drop in stress may, for some people, decrease the constriction within the lungs that leads to asthma attacks.
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Bill LeVasseur & Michelle Stanley
Just Imagine...
A revolution of good deeds positively changing the planet. In a groundbreaking experiment, researchers at the National Institutes of Health have discovered that humans are hard-wired to be unselfish. During functional MRI brain scans, scientists learned that altruism makes people feel good, lighting up a primitive part of the human brain that usually responds to food, receiving money, and even sex.
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