Gifts That Constrain

"Give your gifts in secret, and your Father, who knows all secrets, will reward you." -- Matthew 6:4

Have you ever been given a gift and it felt like it had conditions attached to it? Or have you ever given a gift and found yourself checking (subconsciously of course) to see if the person is using it? These are all conditional gifts. We attach conditions to them. Our actions seem to say, "If you love me, and my gift, you will display it proudly and never give it away!" 

I have known a few unconditional gift givers in my life. My husband's parents were among them. I remember one instance in which they gathered their children and grandchildren in one room and presented each and every person with the gift of money. They looked around the room and said, "This is a gift. We don't care what you do with it. In fact, don't even tell us." And they kept their word. Never once was there an inquiry as to the use of the funds. I want to be that kind of giver. 

Our Heavenly Father is the best giver of all. And in Matthew 6:4, He instructs us to give gifts in secret. Maybe He knows our frame and our bent toward giving conditional gifts.

Today's Prayer: "God, Make me a giver just like you; a giver of unconditional gifts; a giver of secret gifts. Amen."

People who are more aware of their own heart-beat have superior time perception skills

What underlies our sense of time? A popular account claims an internal pacemaker emits regular pulses, which are detected by an accumulator. The amount of accumulated pulses represents the amount of time that's passed.

Trouble is, this is all very theoretical and no-one really knows how or where in the brain these functions are enacted. One suggestion is that the pulses are based on bodily feedback and in particular the heart-beat. Consistent with this is a recent brain imaging study that showed activity in the insular (a brain region associated with representing internal bodily states) rose linearly as people paid attention to time intervals (pdf). Now a behavioural study by Karin Meissner and Marc Wittmann has built on these findings by showing that people who are more sensitive to their own heart-beat are also better at judging time intervals.

Thirty-one participants listened to auditory tones of either 8, 14, or 20 seconds duration. After each one, they heard a second tone and had to press a button when they thought its duration matched the first. Counting was forbidden during the task and a secondary, number-based memory task helped enforce this rule. Heart-beat perception accuracy was measured separately and simply involved participants counting silently their own heart-beats over periods of 25, 35, 45 and 60 seconds.

The take away message is that the participants who were more in tune with their heart-beats also tended to perform better at the time estimation task. A further detail is that physiological measures taken during the encoding part of the task showed that as time went on, the participants' heart-rate slowed progressively, and their skin conductance (i.e. amount of sweat on the skin) reduced. Moreover, the rate of change in a participant's heart-rate (but not skin conductance) was linked with the accuracy of their subsequent time estimates.

'These results suggest that the processing of interoceptive signals [i.e. of internal bodily states] in the brain might contribute to our sense of time,' Meissner and Wittmann concluded.

The new findings add to past research showing that patients with cardiac arrhythmia are poorer than controls at time estimation tasks, and that drug-induced speeding or slowing of the autonomic nervous system (including heart-rate) affects people's under- or over-estimation of time intervals.
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Meissner, K., and Wittmann, M. (2011). Body signals, cardiac awareness, and the perception of time. Biological Psychology, 86 (3), 289-297 DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.01.001

Nicolekiss On The Loose

Just random photos of me in action. I noticed there're lots of tongue actions.

like a pro

horsey... *reminiscing childhood*

this is a little hard to get on

if this wasn't so shaded, I would have made this my fb profile pic.

juggling successfully

My inbox is full. But every so often I make an attempt to play catch up and I stay up late scrolling down and reading the various newsletters and emails that come my way. A recent one from GOOP hit a little too close to home. 40 is creeping up on me. It's sort of nice to have that self-imposed deadline/goal in my mind. Something to give me a kick in the pants...though I wouldn't feel it these days, there's so much padding back there. I want to make some changes, and feel better as a-- well, almost 40 year old. But as a busy mom, I have a hard time letting everyone's needs override my own. About this time, two years ago, I told you about my little mom crush on Tracy Anderson. So, when I saw Gwenyth touting this 90-day "metamorphosis" program, it wasn't too tough a sell.

I needed a framework to get back on track. Really, the biggest glitch is that the eating plan doesn't necessarily jibe with feeding a ravenous husband and two growing children. But I am going to make this work, and I know I am not alone in this effort, so this is going to be the main focus of posts here on Full Plate these next 90-days. For those who are rolling along happily without Tracy's gig, I think you'll still find plenty of inspiration. I mean, really, how can you go wrong with some new wholesome recipes that can do double-duty as healthful sides? And since my limited time to cook is shifting to the recipes in Tracy's eating plan, you'll also catch a glimpse of what prepared foods I am keeping on hand to round out everyone else's three meals a day!

I set aside some time last night to get the cooking done for the first seven days. I am not going to lie: it was a ton of prep. But when I was done, I had everything but the daily juice made for the next seven days and I made extra portions of each recipe so I could serve some to the rest of my family.

The kids and my husband had some of the Sweet Potato Corn Pudding as a side with carrot sticks, roasted pepitas, and Whole Food's brand baked chicken taquitos (found in the freezer section). The kids claimed it was "one of the best dinners ever" and "loved dessert!!" (That would be the sweet potato corn pudding little ones...but I'm not going to argue).

Sweet Potato Corn Pudding

(from Tracy Anderson's Metamorphosis Dynamic Eating Plan)

1 sweet potato, peeled and diced

1 ear white corn*

Steam the sweet potato. Slice the corn off the cob. Combine ingredients in a food processor and puree.

*I quadrupled the recipe, using 4 large sweet potatoes, and a bag of frozen white corn (since you can't get it fresh around here yet). It reheats perfectly and will be a great starch side-- or dessert depending upon who you ask--for a few different meals this week.

Sweaty work in the hunt for the brain basis of social anxiety

Anxiety has overtaken depression to become the most commonly diagnosed psychological disorder in the United States, with social anxiety its most frequent manifestation. Part of the cause of extreme social anxiety is thought to be related to bad experiences - being laughed at in class, blushing in front of friends, choking on a first date - so that a person learns to fear social situations. But that's unlikely to be the whole story. Social anxiety runs in families suggesting some people have an innate predisposition for the disorder. The authors of a new study believe they've identified, for the first time, a neural correlate of this vulnerability.

Wen Zhou and colleagues scanned the brains of nineteen women while they were exposed to the smell of two types of men's sweat, a floral scent, and the human steroid (and putative pheromone) androstadienone. One of the male sweat types was sexual, the other was neutral, and they were collected from men's armpits as they watched either a sexual film or an educational documentary. The women weren't told what the different smells were or where they came from.

Human sweat is known to convey social signals. For example, it's been shown that people can tell a person's emotional state purely from the smell of their sweat. The key findings in this new study are that the two types of sweat, compared to the other odours, led to increased activation in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) of the women's brains, and that the level of this activation was related to the women's amount of self-reported trait social anxiety. The women didn't have any psychiatric diagnoses but the higher they scored on a measure of trait social anxiety (e.g. they said they felt uncomfortable in large groups), the less activation they exhibited in their OFC when exposed to the men's sweat.

It's important to emphasise that most of the women (nearly 90 per cent) didn't realise the smells were from humans, and the smells had no effect on their in-the-moment mood or anxiety levels. Consistent with this, the different smells didn't differentially affect the amygdala, a bilateral subcortical structure associated with fear processing. What the study appears to be showing is that subconscious social signals trigger increased OFC activity compared with nonsocial smells, and that the level of this activity is moderated by trait social anxiety.

Why the OFC? The OFC is heavily interconnected with the amygdala and is known to be involved in the learning of rewards and punishments and in decision-making. Another brain imaging study found that public speaking was associated with increased activation in the amygdala and reduced activation in the OFC. So it makes sense that people with a predisposition for social anxiety may have an OFC cortex that functions differently from those without such a disposition.

'Whether such inherent variations can be directly mapped onto genetic differences or personality traits in both normal and clinical populations, is an important open question and this deserves serious studies in the future,' the researchers said.
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Zhou, W., Hou, P., Zhou, Y., and Chen, D. (2010). Reduced recruitment of orbitofrontal cortex to human social chemosensory cues in social anxiety. NeuroImage DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.12.064

The Special Issue Spotter

We trawl the world's journals so you don't have to:

The role of touch in marketing (Psychology and Marketing).

International perspectives on stalking (Behavioural Sciences and the Law).

Narrative and psychotherapy (Psychotherapy Research).

Threat-Detection and Precaution: Neuro-physiological, Behavioral, Cognitive and Psychiatric Aspects (Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews).

Executive Function (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology).

Personal relationships in late life (Journal of Social and Personal Relationships).

The Contribution of Systematic Case Study Research to Building an Evidence Base for Counselling and Psychotherapy (Counselling and Psychotherapy).

Envy is a stronger motivator than admiration

Admiration is happy self-surrender; envy is unhappy self-assertion. Søren Kierkegaard

Mind Hacks, Not Exactly Rocket Science, The Frontal Cortex ... there are so many successful blogs out there for the Digest to admire. Or envy. In fact envy might be better. Although considered a sin, envy rather than admiration, drives us toward self-improvement. That's according to Niels van de Ven and colleagues who provoked envy and admiration in their Dutch participants and then observed the effects this had.

For a preliminary study, 17 undergrads were asked to describe someone they knew who was better at something than they were. The more 'benign envy' (the person's superior achievements are seen as deserved) provoked by this thought, as opposed to malicious envy (their success is seen as undeserved), or admiration, then the more likely participants were to say that they planned to ramp up their study time in the next semester.

It was a similar story when 82 participants were asked to recall a time they'd felt either benign envy, malicious envy or admiration (there was also a control group who didn't do the recall task). Afterwards, those participants who'd recalled an experience of benign envy performed better at a word association task, compared with the other participants.

For a third study, a further 96 participants read about a fellow student called Hans de Groot, who'd just won a prize for his excellent scholarship. Some of the participants were asked to imagine feeling benign envy towards him, the others malicious envy or admiration. To strengthen the effect, they were asked to ponder how they'd feel and react if they met him. Once again, the participants primed to experience benign envy went on to perform better, and spend longer, on a word association task, compared with the other participants.

Having established the contrasting effects of admiration and envy, the researchers turned to the circumstances that tend to elicit one emotion more than the other. Perhaps the effect a successful person has on us depends in part on whether we think their achievements are beyond our reach. In a final study, van de Ven and his colleagues primed half their participants with an 'effort is futile' mindset by having them read a fictional biography of a successful scientist who'd enjoyed good fortune all his life. The other participants read a version in which the scientist's success was all down to effort, not luck. Next, in what they thought was a separate task, the students read about the prize-winning scholar from the previous study, Hans de Groot. The important finding here was that students primed with an 'effort is futile' mindset were more likely to say they felt admiration towards de Groot, whereas those primed with an 'effort pays' mindset were more likely to say they felt benign envy. Moreover, it was the participants who felt more envy, rather than admiration, who said they planned to work harder in the next semester.

'Is benign envy therefore better than admiration?' the researchers asked rhetorically. 'It might be, but although self-assertion increases performance, self-surrender feels better. So, the answer to the question whether to admire or to be envious might depend on what matters most: feeling better or performing better.'
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van de Ven, N., Zeelenberg, M., and Pieters, R. (2011). Why Envy Outperforms Admiration. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin DOI: 10.1177/0146167211400421

Want to read more about the psychology of sin? Check out the Digest's Sin Week special feature.

Around Dalat

After checking into Hang Nga Guesthouse, met the owner and designer, rested a bit, we got out just as sun hit the horizon line.

It was time to explore Dalat town's evening.

We stumbled across this small restaurant serving local Vietnamese food and decided to have dinner there.

Gerald went to have his wine. Staying in Brunei meant he had little access to alcohol, travelling for him meant drinking.

A little red and a little white.

Then we went to explore the night market.

There were a lot of cheap winter clothes and socks for sale here. Can you believe I got a pair of VERY decent quality socks for only RM2, thick enough for trekking during winter times.

My mom bought a white winter jacket here which she brought it to Korea a month afterwards.

thumbs up for mom in Korea!

Think she only paid RM90, damn cheap! (the jacket, not the korea trip)

There's not a lot to see, just a quiet romantic town; very cooling.

The next day we hired a driver to take us around Dalat for a day tour.

Following will be a quick compilation of places we've been.

We went on the cable.

Went to see a temple on a hill.

It was pretty sunny, so I gave a spare of my sunglasses to my mom.

Walked down to the lake.

Went to see a waterfall, climbed it.

Saw a bear.

LOL

We took a tabogan down to the waterfall, and back up. Business flourished because of lazy people like us.

Tabogan rocks!!

Went to see a pagoda temple that once had a halo on it when looked from a certain angle (some sunlight angle thing which happened totally coincidental, probably once in a few years).

Don't be fooled by the wide angle photo, the pagoda was rather tall.

And very colorful. Spent a lot of time here camwhoring.

i had to snatch the jacket from Gerald because it was too cold for me to bear. Brrr...

mom giving the bell a ring. Go mom!

found on top floor

anyone who's interested in my handsome half-godbrother can send in their resume. keke.

very pretty dalat mountain view

green-house farms. Wonder if they're strawberries inside.

Visited a thread painting showroom. Selling really expensive and intricate thread paintings, hand-stitched.

Some of these paintings cost up to half a million ringgit. All quoted in USD.

I'm terrible at stitching, I can't even sew a button on.

Least to say my name.

whichever tourist sewn this was really good.

Finally, as our last stop, we visited a Love Garden. No wonder they say Dalat is romantic.

did someone say "love"?

We found a tree of fate near the entrance. It was said that if you throw a red ribbon and the ribbon get caught in the tree, your fate of love might just come true.

I didn't know what this meant, but it took Gerald more than once to get that ribbon on the tree. Tee hee.

missed!

The garden's was a bit run-down but there was a lot of things to see.

Like this fake great wall of China.

And terracotta soldiers.

By the time we walked one third of the garden, poor mom was exhausted so we decided to finish the trip then and go back.

At the end of the journey, we saw the beautiful love river where couples can go down and take a love boat out for a romantic "cycle"?

That's the end of our 2D2N journey in Dalat.

Here's a photo of me on my laptop in a Dalat cafe.