LA FELICIDAD Y LOS GENES >

DOCTORA ELAINE FOXLA FELICIDAD ES GENETICA

Ayer 25 de febrero del 2009, en la Universidad de Essex, la Doctora Elaine Fox, del Departamento de Psicología, informó los resultados de un experimento controlado con 100 personas sanas, en el cual habla de la Felicidad.
Las respuestas de las personas, depende en gran parte del tipo de transportador de Serotonina que tengan. Las que tienen en sus genes el tipo LL, perciben las buenas cosas de la vida y hacen a un lado las cosas negativas.
Anexo el artículo de la Universidad de Essex, el link y la forma en que se pueden comunicar con ella.
En mis Cursos de Alta Dirección, doy una sesión de Mente y Cuerpo, y en ella hablo de la felicidad.
A la pregunta: ¿Para qué estamos en esta vida? , la respuesta absolutamente mayoritaria en todos los cursos es: ¡Para ser felices! Esto me da entrada al tema. Así hablo de la serotonina, de como el biofeedback permite transportar serotonina como un fenómeno conciente que controlamos (El biofeedback es el control conciente de acciones inconcientes de nuestro organismo). Después de ejercicios de biofeedback, los presentes experimentan el estado de paz, tranquilidad, y cero stress. Algunas conclusiones en el curso son:
1.-La felicidad no tiene que ver con la riqueza, ni con el clima.
La felicidad tiene que ver con la salud, el control del stress , la depresión y el enojo.

2.-Hay 54 000 estudios serios sobre la depresión y solo 415 (menos del 1%) sobre la felicidad.

3.-Hay 3 tipos de felicidad:

• La vida placentera:
  Sonreír, sentirse bien, ser
  optimista.
• La buena vida
  Conocer tus fortalezas y usarlas en el amor, la amistad, el descanso, la paternidad, la maternidad
• La vida comprometida.
  Conocer tus fortalezas y usarlas sirviendo a una misión que crees es mayor que lo que eres.
  Churchill y Lincoln son un ejemplo de deprimidos que fueron felices a través de vidas con significado.

Ahora agrego en mi Curso el descubrimiento de la Profesora Elaine Fox.

Y a tí, ¿Cómo te va con tu objetivo de ser feliz?

La etiqueta de esta entrada es Jazz, porque el Jazz es felicidad.

El sitio de Essex es:
http://www.essex.ac.uk/news/event.aspx?e_id=522

El artículo de la Universidad de Essex:

Those who always see the glass half full have a genetically driven tendency to do so, scientists at the University of Essex have discovered.
Research published today (25 February 2009) identifies a genetic variation which is powerfully linked to a tendency to selective avoid negative images and to pay attention to positive information. These findings represent a breakthrough in understanding why some people are highly resilient to stress, which others are susceptible to the negative impact of stressful life events.
The study of almost 100 healthy individuals showed those with a variation in the serotonin transporter gene had a clear bias towards emotionally positive images and away from negative ones. This gene is known to impact on brain levels of serotonin, a chemical which is known to affect mood and well-being. Each of us carries either two short versions of this gene (SS), two long versions (LL), or one of each (SL). Those in the LL group showed the pattern of vigilance for good things combined with avoidance of bad things.
Lead researcher Professor Elaine Fox, from the Department of Psychology, explained: 'We have shown for the first time that a genetic variation is linked with the tendency to look on the bright side of life. This is a key mechanism underlying resilience to general life stress. The absence of this protection in the other forms of this genotype is linked with heightened susceptibility to anxiety and depression.' The study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, involved a standard test of selective attention whereby participants were shown pairs of pictures, one of which was either positive or negative and the other neutral, and researchers measured where their attention was drawn. All the participants gave DNA samples which were genotyped for the three variations of the promoter region of the serotonin transporter genes.
While a smaller study has previously been conducted among psychiatric patients, this study is the first to report gene-related variation in attentional bias in the healthy population. While carriers of the LL version of the gene were vigilant for positive images and clearly avoided negative ones, this protective pattern was completely absent in carriers of the S-allele (either the SS or SL variation).Professor Fox's team is continuing this research by investigating whether by actively modifying people's biases their resistance to negative and traumatic life events can be enhanced.ends
Notes to Editors1. The paper: Looking on the bright side: biased attention and the human serotonin transporter gene by Elaine Fox, Anna Ridgewell and Chris Ashwin is published online on 25 February by Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
2. The Royal Society is an independent academy promoting the natural and applied sciences. Founded in 1660, the Society has three roles, as the UK academy of science, as a learned Society, and as a funding agency.
3. The University of Essex is one of the UK’s leading academic institutions, ranked ninth for the quality of its research, and the top-ranked university for social science research. It has more than 9,000 students, studying at three campuses. Around one third of the students are drawn from more than 130 different countries overseas.
4. To speak to lead author Professor Elaine Fox, please contact Jenny Grinter in the University of Essex Communications Office on 01206 872400, e-mail: comms@essex.ac.uk.

BIOGRAFIA DE LA PROFESORA ELAINE FOX.-

Estudió psicología en la Universidad de Dublin, donde completó su doctorado en psicología en 1988 . Fué nombrada Lectora en Psicología en la Universidad Victoria de Wellington en Nueva Zlanda. En 1993 regresó a la Universidad de Dublín con el mismo puesto de Lectora en Psicología. En 1994 ingresa a la Universidad de Essex como editor asociado de Conocimiento y Emoción de 1996 a 2001 y permanece en el Consejo Editorial. Ha sido nombrada Editor Consultor del APA del diario Emoción en 2005.

Trabaja normalmente en la ciencia de las emociones,en un libro con el título: Ciencia de las emociones: Una integración de Las Neurociencias y los análisis cognitivos, que se publicó por Macmillan en 2007.

ULTIMAS INVESTIGACIONES DE LA DRA ELAINE FOX

A continuación, en inglés, la Dra explica sus últimas investigaciones sobre:

• A) LA EMOCION
• B) EL IMPACTO DE LOS CAMPOS ELECTROMAGNETICOS EN LA SALUD HUMANA Y EL BIENESTAR.

Research Overview
(A) Emotion.My research programme on human emotion consists of a number of projects at the interface between cognitive psychology, social psychology, clinical psychology and cognitive neuroscience. The research is guided by the principle that psychological theory must be grounded in real-life experiences and that the social context in which behaviour takes place is as important as the evolutionary history of that behaviour. Some illustrative projects are summarized below.Impact of Socially Significant Stimuli: One project in collaboration with Dr Andrew Mathews, Dr Jenny Yiend and Dr Andy Calder (MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge) concerns the nature of gaze processing. Where other people look can reveal where they are attending, and thus indicate sources of potential interest in the environment. Moreover, the human brain may have evolved to be particularly good at detecting these socially significant signals, with cells specialized for processing eyes. We replicated previous findings that the direction of eye-gaze does indeed induce reflexive shifts of attention. However, we extended this in important ways in showing that the emotional expression of the face could modify this effect. To illustrate, the visual attention of people who were relatively anxious was manipulated much more strongly by the direction of eye-gaze of fearful faces, relative to angry or happy expressions. In a separate project with colleagues at the University of Essex we have recently found that the basic mechanisms of human attention can be modified by the social significance of the stimuli being processed. For example, in a simple visual search task it has been found that threat-related facial expressions are detected much more quickly than either happy or neutral facial expressions. Recently, we have found that just the eye-region is enough to produce this effect and that the addition of the full-face does not further enhance this effect. This suggests that the eyes are indeed a critical stimulus for the modulation of human attention.Information Processing Biases in Affective Disorders: I am currently conducting several separate projects investigating the role of information processing biases in determining emotional disorders. This research is largely funded by the Wellcome Trust and examines the notion that fundamental differences in how socially relevant information (e.g., people whispering to each other) is processed may underlie many anxiety disorders. In a number of experiments we have shown that anxious people selectively process threat-related information, especially when this is presented in a socially-relevant context (e.g., public speaking). A particular focus of my work has been the discovery that anxiety may be associated with a delay in the disengagement of attention from threat-relevant stimuli, rather than the faster detection of these stimuli in the environment. Ongoing projects are examining whether these variations in attentional disengagement are correlated with increases in worry and negative rumination.The Neural Basis of Anxiety-related Attentional Biases. I am currently working with Andy Calder and Andrew Lawrence at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge to investigate the neural correlates of individual differences in anxiety and how this relates to the processing of affective stimuli. We intend to use fMRI and EEG to help unravel the role of personality traits as well as mood states in determining emotional reactivity.Role of Positive Emotions in Determining Subjective Well-being: A new project has just begun in collaboration with Dr Andrew Mathews (University of California at Davis) and Dr Kevin Dutton (Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge). This project is using well-established experimental procedures, which have been used previously to modify cognitive biases in anxious people. However, in this case we are investigating the role of positive emotions (gratitude) in determining subjective well-being. This is an interesting collaboration allowing us to investigate the nature of the relations between feelings of well-being and a person’s sense of spirituality. Does feeling grateful (e.g., to God?) really confer benefits beyond simply feeling lucky?Social Cognition: I have recently edited a special issue of the international journal Visual Cognition entitled “Visual Social Cognition”. The aim of this special issue aims to bring together researchers in cognitive neuroscience, neuropsychology, cognitive psychology and social psychology to explore the nature of the neural and cognitive processes underlying the processing of socially-relevant stimuli. The idea is that visual processes modulate many social interactions. For instance, vision provides us with information about the emotional state of the person we are with, it provides us with information about where a companion is attending, it provides us with information that may be used directly to guide imitation. Our understanding about the role of visual processes in social interactions is being advanced by linking work on the basic neural and cognitive mechanisms mediating vision with work on the social and emotional context in which the processing takes place. Bringing these disparate research groups together was a fundamental aim of the special issue, which was published in 2005.(B) Effects of Electromagnetic Fields on HumansImpact of Electromagnetic Fields on Human Health and Well-being: I am currently heading a project funded by the Department of Health under the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme (MTHR). This involves the co-ordination of a multidisciplinary team of experimental and social psychologists, biomedical and electronic engineers, physicists and medical practitioners. There is widespread public concern regarding the health effects of mobile phones and their associated base-stations. The current project will provide scientifically valid evidence on the effect of radio frequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMFs) on physiological, psychological, and health functioning for people who experience hypersensitivity to RF-EMFs and for matched control participants. A new psychometric instrument to measure electromagnetic hypersensitivity will also be developed in order to identify people who may be particularly vulnerable to the effects of RF-EMFs. Thus, the research will provide evidence for the development and preparation of appropriate advice to be given to the general public on the possible health and psychological effects of exposure to electromagnetic emissions from mobile phone base-stations.Impact of Mobile Phone Electromagnetic Fields on Human Memory and Attention. In collaboration with Prof Riccardo Russo, Prof Dariush Mirshekar, Dr Caterina Cinel,and Dr Angela Boldini we are investigating whether mobile phone hand-sets affect cognitive functioning. This project is also funded by the Department of Health under the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme (MTHR). A number of double-blind experiments are being conducted to determine whether standard RF emissions from GSM mobile phones (900 Mhz and 1800 Mhz) influence fundamental mechanisms of human attention and short-term memory

SUS PUBLICACIONES MAS RECIENTES EN TRABAJOS DE INVESTIGACION EN PDF ( Pueden bajarse )

Recent Publications
Eltiti, S.,Wallace, D., Zougkou, K., Russo, R., Joseph. S., Rasor, P. and Fox, E. (2007) Development and evaluation of the electromagnetic hypersensitivity questionnaire. Bioelectromagnetics 28:137-151 (download pdf)
Eltiti, S.,Wallace, D., Ridgewell, A., Zougkou, K., Russo, R., Sepulveda, F., Mirsshekar-Syahkal, D., Rasor, P., Deeble, R. and Fox, E. (2007) Does short-term exposure to mobile phone base station signals increase symptoms in individuals who report sensitivity to electromagnetic fields ? A double-blind randomized provocation study. Environmental Health Perspectives 115 (11) 1603-1608. (download pdf)
Fox, E., Griggs, L. and Mouchlianitis, E. (2007) The detection of fear-relevant stimuli: Are guns noticed as quickly as snakes ? Emotion 7 (4) 691-696. (download pdf)
Fox, E., Mathews, A., Calder, A. J., Yiend, J. (2007) Anxiety and sensitivity to gaze direction in emotionally expressive faces. Emotion 7 (3) 478-486. (download pdf)
Riccardo Russo, Dora Whittuck, Debi Roberson, Kevin Dutton, George Georgiou, and Elaine Fox. Mood-congruent free recall bias in anxious individuals is not a consequence of response bias. Memory 4 (4) 393-99. (download pdf)
Russo, R., Fox, E., Cinel, C., Boldini, A., DeFeyter, M.A., Mirshekar, D., & Metha, A. (2006) Does acute exposure to mobile phones affect attentional processing? Bioelectromagnetics 27. (download pdf)
Fox, E. & Damjanovic, L. (2006) The Eyes Are Sufficient to Produce a Threat Superiority Effect. Emotion, 6 (3), 534 –539 (download pdf)
Fox, E., Russo, R., & Georgiou, G. (2005) Anxiety modulates the degree of attentive resources required to process emotional faces. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 5, 396-404 (download pdf)
Georgiou, G.A., Bleakley, C., Hayward, J., Russo, R., Dutton, K., Eltiti, S and Fox, E. (2005) Focusing on fear: Attentional disengagement from emotional faces. Visual Cognition, 12 (1), 145-158 (download pdf)
Eltiti, S., Keal, D., & Fox, E. (2005) Selective target processing in low perceptual load displays. Perception and Psychophysics, 67, 876-885.(download pdf)
Fox, E., & Georgiou, G. (2005) The nature of attentional bias in human anxiety. In Engle, R.W., Sedek, G., Von Hecker, U., & McIntosh, D. (Eds). Cognitive Limitations in Aging and Psychopathology: Attention, Working Memory, and Executive Functions. Cambridge University Press.
Fox, E (2005) The role of visual processes in modulating social interactions. Visual Cognition, 12 (1), 1-11 (download pdf)
Fox, E. (2004) Maintenance or capture of attention in anxiety-related biases. In Yiend, J. (Ed). Emotion, Cognition, and Psychopathology. Cambridge University Press.
Mathews, A., Fox, E., Yiend, J. and Calder, A. (2003) The face of fear: Effects of eye gaze and emotion on visual attention. Visual Cognition 10 (7) 823-835 (download pdf)
Ortells, J.J., Fox, E., Noguera, C., & Abad, M.J.F. (2003) Repetition priming effects from attended versus ignored words in a semantic categorization task. Acta Psychologica, 114, 185-210.
Ortells, J.J., Daza, M., & Fox, E. (2003) Semantic priming effects from consciously versus unconsciously perceived words. Perception and Psychophysics, 65, 1307-1317.
Mathews, A., Fox, E., Calder, A., & Yiend, J. (2003) The face of fear: effects of eye gaze and emotion on visual attention. Visual Cognition, 10, 823-835.
Gamboz, N., Russo, R., & Fox, E. (2002) Age differences and the negative priming effect: An up -dated meta-analysis. Psychology and Aging 17,530-539
Fox, E., Russo, R., & Dutton, K. (2002) Attentional bias for threat: Evidence for delayed disengagement from emotional faces. Cognition and Emotion, 16, 355-379.(download pdf)
Daza, M., Ortells, J.J., & Fox, E. (2002) Perception without awareness: Further evidence from a Stroop priming task. Perception and Psychophysics, 64, 1316-1324.
Fox, E. (2002) Processing emotional facial expressions: The role of anxiety and awareness. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 2, 52-63.(download pdf)
MacLeod, C.M., Chiappe, D., & Fox, E. (2002) The crucial roles of stimulus identity and stimulus matching in negative priming. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 9, 521-528.
Fox, E., Russo, R., & Bowles, R.J., & Dutton, K. (2001) Do threatening stimuli draw or hold visual attention in sub-clinical anxiety?" Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130 (download pdf)
Fox, E., & De Fockert, J-W. (2001) Inhibitory repetition effects to color and shape: Inhibition of return or repetition blindness? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27, 798-812.
Russo, R., Fox, E., Bellinger, L., & Nguyen-Van-Tam, D.P. (2001) Mood congruent free recall bias in anxiety. Cognition and Emotion, 15, 419-433.
Fox, E., Lester, V., Russo, R., Bowles, R.J., Pichler, A., & Dutton (2000) Facial expressions of emotion: Are angry faces detected more efficiently? Cognition and Emotion, 14, 61-92. (download pdf)
Gamboz, N., Russo, R., & Fox, E. (2000) Target selection difficulty, negative priming and aging. Psychology and Aging, 15, 542-550.Lavie, N., & Fox, E. (2000) The role of perceptual load in negative priming. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 26, 1038-1052.
Fox, E. (1993) Attentional Bias in Anxiety: Selective or Not? Behav. Res. Ther. Vol. 31, No. 5, pp. 487-493, (download pdf)

En febrero 2009 se festejó el 40 aniversario del NEW ORLEANS JAZZ & HERITAGE FEST