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Santa Fe in August: "Interpersonal Neurobiology: Integrating Body, Mind and Spirit"

On August 24 - 28, 2011, at the 30th Annual Transformation and Healing Conference, 18 workshops, plus keynotes will be presented. The venue is beautiful and unique Santa Fe, New Mexico.

One of the featured programs will be Dr. Bonnie Badenoch's day-long presentation titled "Building a Therapeutic Pathway with the Brain in Mind." I have attended a two-day program by Bonnie and therefore believe this one would certainly be worth your time. From the conference Web page:

We are at a stage in our awareness of the discoveries of neuroscience that we have acquired a basic knowledge of the brain’s structure and function, the processes of regulation and neural integration, and the principles of neuroplasticity. Now we find ourselves at a crossroads that challenges us to translate this knowledge into a guide for the moment-to-moment experiences unfolding within our therapeutic relationships. Building on the work of innovators like Daniel Siegel, Allan Schore, Stephen Porges, Marco Iacoboni, and others, we can create a brain-informed map of therapy from first

Web site with many conflict resolution resources

Click to access the resources page of the Collaborative Development Network site: Resource Guides to Careers, Networking, Funding (and more) in Development, CR, and Related Fields.

"'Sleep On It' Is Excellent, Science-Based Advice, UMass Amherst Sleep Study Finds"

New release (University of Massachusetts, Amherst):

AMHERST, Mass. - In recent years, much sleep research has focused on memory, but now results of a new study by University of Massachusetts Amherst psychologist Rebecca Spencer and colleagues suggest another key effect of sleep is facilitating and enhancing complex cognitive skills such as decision-making.

In one of the first studies of its kind, Spencer and postdoctoral fellow Edward Pace-Schott investigated the effects of sleep on affect-guided decision-making, that is decisions on meaningful topics where subjects care about the outcome, in a group of 54 young adults. They were taught to play a card game for rewards of play money in which wins and losses for various card decks mimic casino gambling.

Subjects who had a normal night’s sleep as part of the study drew from decks that gave them the greatest winnings four times more often than those who spent the 12-hour break awake, and they better understood the underlying rules of the game. Psychologists believe rule discovery is an often hidden yet key factor that is crucial to making sound decisions.

"This provides support for what Mom and Dad have always advised," says Spencer. "There is something to be gained from taking a night to sleep on it when you’re

Book on quiet leadership: Watch for it this summer

Last night I had a delightful, delicious dinner in Virginia with a stimulating group of people, including Professor Tojo Thatchenkery. Many of you have probably read his book Appreciative Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn about which I interviewed him here. I am happy to report that he has a new book coming out soon, and that he agreed to let me interview him about this latest book which is on quiet leadership.

The book looks at a style of leadership very important to organizations, but which is often not classified as leadership because it may not include stereotypical attributes of leaders, such as visibility or charisma. Although it is titled Making the Invisible Visible: Understanding Leadership Contributions of Asian Minorities in the Workplace, Tojo says the book has much more general application than the title would indicate.

From Amazon:

Spies metaphors—and the force met spies: May the metaphors be with you!

This article will be of interest to all of us who are metaphor afficionados. From "Why Are Spy Researchers Building a 'Metaphor Program'?" (Atlantic):

A small research arm of the U.S. government's intelligence establishment wants to understand how speakers of Farsi, Russian, English, and Spanish see the world by building software that automatically evaluates their use of metaphors.

That's right, metaphors, like Shakespeare's famous line, "All the world's a stage," or more subtly, "The darkness pressed in on all sides." Every speaker in every language in the world uses them effortlessly, and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity wants know how what we say reflects our worldviews. They call it The Metaphor Program, and it is a unique effort within the government to probe how a people's language reveals their mindset.

"The Metaphor Program will exploit the fact that metaphors are pervasive in everyday talk and reveal the underlying beliefs and worldviews of members of a culture," declared an open solicitation for researchers released last week. A spokesperson for IARPA declined to comment at the time.

Click to read the rest.

Senior US District Judge John Kane advises brand new lawyers on how to have long, fruitful careers

Excerpt from Judge Kane's speech to the newest members of the Colorado Bar (thanks to Law Week Colorado):

Many lawyers become steeped in the belief that justice is irrelevant and present even morally based decisions as if they were products of a mechanical and value-neutral process over which they have no control. They are known to say to clients, “I don’t know whether you should say this or that. My job is to tell you what the law says and leave the right or wrong decisions up to you.” Some judges slink off the bench saying, “Right or wrong, this is the law.” My suggestion is that if you presently find yourself accepting that position, move on to another line of work now before it is too late, and if you haven’t accepted that position, don’t go there or you will find yourself condemned to a life of mediocrity.

Other lawyers have worked very hard for years and then quit with what is commonly called “burn-out.” To them, the profession of law no longer seems worth the effort of carrying such great weight of responsibility. Still others, however, practice into their dotage, eager and passionate for the

"Us and Them: Intergroup Failures of Empathy"

Abstract:

People are often motivated to increase others' positive experiences and to alleviate others' suffering. These tendencies to care about and help one another form the foundation of human society. When the target is an outgroup member, however, people may have powerful motivations not to care about or help that “other.” In such cases, empathic responses are rare and fragile; it is easy to disrupt the chain from perception of suffering to motivation to alleviate the suffering to actual helping. We highlight recent interdisciplinary research demonstrating that outgroup members' suffering elicits dampened empathic responses as compared to ingroup members' suffering. We consider an alternative to empathy in the context of intergroup competition: schadenfreude—pleasure at others' pain. Finally, we review recent investigations of intergroup-conflict interventions that attempt to increase empathy for outgroups. We propose that researchers across the range of psychological sciences stand to gain a better understanding of the foundations of empathy by studying its limitations.

Conclusion:

"Two Mechanisms for Simulating Other Minds: Dissociations Between Mirroring and Self-Projection"

Abstract and excerpt:

People often attempt to understand other minds by using their own thoughts and experiences as a proxy for those of others, a process known broadly as simulation. Recent research in cognitive neuroscience has identified the neural bases of two forms of simulation: mirroring and self-projection. Mirroring involves a vicarious response in which a perceiver experiences the same current mental state as that of another person, and has been linked recently to brain regions that “mirror” the experiential states of others. In contrast, self-projection involves imagining oneself in the same situation as another person, predicting one’s thoughts and feelings in that hypothetical scenario and assuming that the other would think and feel the same way. This form of simulation has been linked to a set of regions known collectively as the default network and includes the medial prefrontal cortex, precuneus and posterior cingulate, and lateral parietal cortex. Although most discussions of simulation have conflated these two processes, here we describe the conceptual and empirical reasons to distinguish between self-projection and mirroring and suggest the unique role each plays in understanding others.

Despite never directly perceiving others' thoughts and feelings, humans can use an important source of understanding the internal experience of others: their own minds. This ability—called simulation

Myndology: My newest most-favorite gadget

They are cute, clever, creativity-igniting. I bought four of them yesterday for a total of just over $3.00. (They seem to cost a bit more if ordered online.) What are they? From the myndology Web site:

The Myndology Company was born in mom and dad's garage. Literally.

I came back to my hometown in Wisconsin after living and teaching English in Japan for a few years. While I was in Japan, I noticed that my students used ring bound flashcards. Eventually, I found myself becoming addicted to the ring bound cards as I tried to learn Japanese. How on earth did I ever use those standard flashcards — without a ring to hold them together? They never stay in order and always get mixed up.

Back in the US I forgot all about those ring bound cards...until one day. My friend was studying for law school and had a huge shoebox full of study-cards. Almost in slow motion, I saw her cat jump on the bed, knock the box over and spill the cards all over the floor. Total disaster. That's when I remembered the ring bound cards from Japan.

So I decided to start my own business. ...

They are great. They will help you organize your ideas, and rearrange your thoughts, too. Have you used myndology yet?

Beneficiary/Trustee Positive Story Project: Have any stories to contribute?

My friend and colleague Hartley Goldstone is a lawyer who has worked for decades with both estate beneficiaries and trustees to help make those relationships smooth and strong. As a part of his Navigating the Trustscape, he has been collecting stories of beneficiary/trustee relationships that have worked and satisfied.

If you have stories for his project, he would be happy to receive them. Click to send your story to Hartley.

For more about Hartley's project, read this excerpt from a recent announcement:

I am delighted to let you know that we have made significant progress toward reaching our goal of collecting a sufficient number of stories to move to the next phase of the Beneficiary/Trustee Positive Story Project.  The next phase will be one of informal qualitative analysis: looking for patterns, useful ideas, and best practices that may be instructive to one and all.  The stories are powerful.  We are finding that each story speaks for itself.  Each story conveys it's own wisdom.  When