So I was thrilled to hear this short talk by neuroscientist Professor V.S. Ramachandran –who by the way will be presenting at Mind & Its Potential in October – in which he describes the truly amazing functions of mirror neurons. If you heard Professor Marco Iacoboni speak at last year’s Happiness & Its Causes conference, the term ‘mirror neurons’ is probably familiar to you. Iacoboni pioneered the research on mirror neurons in humans and their role in imitation, empathy, social cognition and its disorders.

Ramachandran begins by explaining that ordinary motor command neurons in the front of the brain have been known over 50 years, and that these fire when we perform a specific action, say, reach for a piece of chocolate. More recently, scientists have discovered that a subset of these neurons, about 20%, fire when we watch somebody else reach for a piece of chocolate. “It’s as though these neurons are adopting the other person’s point of view … as if they’re performing a virtual reality simulation of the other person’s action,” says Ramachandran.

That’s not all. Just as there are these mirror neurons for action, it appears there are also mirror neurons for touch. You would expect the neurons in the sensory region of your brain to fire when someone touches you. But did you know that a subset of these neurons fire when you watch someone else being touched? And no, you don’t feel that touch sensation because receptors in your skin can tell the difference between your body and another person’s and message the brain accordingly.

But – and this is where it gets kind of freaky in a wonderful way – if your arm is anaesthetised and you watch your neighbour’s arm being touched, you too will literally feel it!

“In other words, you dissolve the barrier between you and other human beings,” says Ramachandram. “I call them ‘Gandhi neurons’ or ‘empathy neurons’. All that’s separating you from him is your skin. Remove the skin [and] you experience that person’s touch in your mind. You dissolve the barrier between you and other human beings. This, of course, is the basis of much eastern philosophy, that there’s no real independent self aloof from other human beings … you’re quite literally connected by your neurons.”

Like I said, I’m always delighted when scientists report findings that confirm what mystics and sages have been saying for millennia.

Yet apart from being able to remark on its obvious feel good quality, how many of us can actually describe the physical mechanism of laughter, the brain activity associated with it or the important role it plays in our interactions with each other? Certainly I’m no expert when it comes to the science of chortling so I was fascinated to hear what neuroscientist Sophie Scott has to say on the topic.

After beginning her presentation by playing a recording of two radio sports presenters in hysterics to the point of speechlessness (try not to giggle yourself while listening), Scott proceeds to explain that laughter is “in direct opposition to speech.” This is because as we speak, we exercise considerable breath control using the muscles between our ribs and diaphragm. But when we laugh, these muscles spasm big time and voila – we can barely talk. We just make those crazy noises called laughing as air is forced out uncontrollably.

And yes, we ALL make ‘those crazy noises’, no matter where we come from. One thing that intrigues scientists is the extent to which emotions are culturally determined. Turns out laughter – as an emotional response – is universal.

To demonstrate, Scott shares some video footage of a himba tribesman in the southern African country of Namibia who’s been asked to imagine he’s killed a leopard and to sound triumphant. But because the idea of having killed a leopard is so preposterous, within a few moments the fellow bursts out laughing. What’s interesting is the himba people live a semi-nomadic stone-age existence and have no contact with the west. Yet there’s no mistaking this chap’s eruptions of mirth. In contrast, before he starts to laugh and is pretending to exclaim triumphantly, we only know that’s what he’s doing because Scott tells us so.

Humans aren’t the only creatures that laugh. Other mammals including chimps, gorillas and rats cackle too, especially when they’re tickled. Yes, apparently rats are ticklish! In fact, Scott suggests tickling sits at the heart of laughter since “you first see laughter emerging when babies are tickled by caregivers.”

Moreover, laughter is the social glue that binds us. Consider its role in play during which we exhibit what scientists call our ‘play face’, characterised by a loose open-jawed smile. Or when we’re in conversation, which is apparently when we do most of our laughing. What do both these pastimes have in common? They involve other folk.

As for what’s happening in the brain when we laugh, Scott shares some interesting research including the fascinating finding that hooting with hilarity is behaviourally contagious. That is, it triggers a response in the region of the brain that prepares the muscles in the face to move in a way i.e. smile, that corresponds to sound.

Our brains can also tell the difference between real laughing and the fake variety, such as the polite titter you contrive when your father-in-law tells an unfunny joke, although it too has that contagious quality.

Hence it really is no surprise that laughter, which is free, in endless supply and always available, has been described as “the shortest distance ever between two people.”

One of my favourite pics is of her daddy strumming the ukele while she sits on his lap, her doll-like hand reaching out to touch the strings. My pal and I joke that with musical influences like these, how could she not grow up and join either an indie rock band or a symphony orchestra? But even if my goddaughter is not the next Lady Gaga, the amount of stimulation and positive reinforcement this little baby girl is getting from her mum and dad augers very well for her future.

Dr Judy Willis is an authority on the neuroscience of how the brain learns best and will be presenting at Young Minds in June. Here in a recent interview on the ABC Lateline program, Dr Willis explains why educational engagement with children like Coco, virtually from the time they are born, is so worthwhile in terms of their later life. The following is an edited version of that conversation.

“The earlier the brain experiences the opportunity to hear words, to develop patterns of what’s familiar, what goes together, the better … the more efficiently it will learn later.

“[So] the earlier the better in terms of parents talking with their children, making eye contact, giving them experiences, because the brain … from the time it’s born [is] organising the world into patterns and categories. And it’s those that get stored as networks in the brain, so later in school and in life, new information, if it doesn’t find anything in the brain to link up with, to code with, it doesn’t really stay.

“As an alternative to parents, who already have good bonds … and because certainly the bond of love and affection and trust and one-on-one is ideal with parents, but … if parents can’t provide the mental manipulation and stimulation and encouragement … then having an outside opportunity like a preschool or a daycare centre with people who will provide that stimulation is the next best thing.

“What’s most important to a child is the sense that they are safe and can experiment and can be curious and will be taken care of in a learning environment … if a child feels ‘I’m in a place where I can explore, try things out, say things that I think could be right, but it is all right to make mistakes,’ in that type of learning environment with the trust it can build, that’s going to cause the most positive brain changes.

“Just think of a child’s curiosity, right? When you give a child a big present and it’s in [a] box … they love the box, right? They have this wonderful imagination and curiosity. They can take things all over their imagination, which literally means the information is stimulating lots of places in the their brain. That’s the type of brain preparation that’s great for school and it’s great for life.

“The brain is very plastic and the more we start building those categories of structures, those neuronal networks and patterns the better … Kids may not have equal educational experiences once they get to school. They may not have the same attendance as other classmates. But the background that they’ve constructed, the brain that they’ve built, with early experiences, will be there and can be picked up on in later years … That network is there.”

I confess I feel just a little smug doing neither. Instead, I gaze dreamily out the window or read my latest library book. Or catch the eye of any other unplugged renegades on board and exchange a knowing look.

So I’m always interested to hear from those who have studied the impact these communication technologies are having on people’s lives. One such person is social scientist Sherry Turkle who explains in this presentation just how psychologically powerful – read: harmful – our pocked-sized devices can be.

For one thing, it doesn’t matter if we’re in a work meeting or having coffee with a friend, or even attending a funeral. It gets harder and harder to resist checking our phone in case someone – anyone! – has sent us an email or a text, or ‘liked’ our latest status update on Facebook. Perhaps more alarming still, it has become socially acceptable to do so.

According to Turkle, “we’re getting used to a new way of being alone together. We want to be with each other but also elsewhere” and the technology makes this possible. Not only that, our tendency to image-build in a virtual world (who doesn’t use social media to present a more idealised version of themselves?) means we actually “end up hiding from each other even as we’re constantly connected to each other.”

Yet human relationships are often messy and demanding. What makes them ultimately so rich and worthwhile is our willingness to navigate the bumpy bits together, including having real conversations in which we reveal our true selves, instead of merely exchanging discrete bites of information. Surely texting to a pal ‘I am ;-(’ when, in fact, you’re in the throes of an existential crisis, is the antithesis of deep and meaningful.

Why then is this technology so popular? Turkle argues that it appeals to us where we’re most vulnerable. “We’re lonely,” she says, “but we’re afraid of intimacy.” The attraction of having, say, squillions of Facebook friends is that it creates the illusion of companionship minus all the demands real mateship entails.

Turkle proposes that constant connection is changing the way we think about ourselves. “The best way to describe it is, ‘I share therefore I am’.” The result? If we’re not connected we don’t know who we are. So we connect more and more but in the process feel even more isolated.

Isolated because all this desperate online activity prevents us from cultivating the capacity for solitude, a prerequisite for actually being able to reach out to others and form authentic attachments. On the contrary, our inability to be alone is what makes staring at a screen so compelling as it allows us to use people – without truly appreciating them – in order to alleviate our anxiety.

Don’t worry, Turkle isn’t proposing we permanently delete our twitter feeds and Facebook accounts. But she is suggesting we “develop a more self-aware relationship with them, each other and with ourselves.”

How? By thinking of solitude as a way of being that’s positive. Also by dedicating spaces at home and in the work place solely to heartfelt discussion and thinking. And – and this is my suggestion not hers – by switching off ALL gadgets while on public transport.

A ‘thinking cap’ was previously known by the appealing name a ‘considering cap’. That term has gone entirely out of use now but was known since at least the early 17th century, as in this example from Robert Armin in Foole upon foole, 1605: “The Cobler puts off his considering cap, why sir, sayes he, I sent them home but now.”

More than 400 years later, imagine what Armin would think about news that scientists may have, in fact, devised such a cap, albeit one wired to pass a weak electrical current to the right or left side of the brain, the result being to either improve the wearer’s creativity and suppress their linear thinking or vice versa?

I recently heard about the cap’s invention on the ABC Radio National Breakfast program. Apparently the scientists who created it, Professor Allan Snyder and Richard Chi, based at Sydney University’s Centre of the Mind (you can peruse their paper here) have for some time been amassing evidence of its effectiveness, including some compelling results from their latest study.

Ever heard of the ‘nine dot problem’? It’s a puzzle that involves connecting a pattern of nine dots – arranged in a 3×3 grid – using four straight lines drawn without lifting the pen from the paper or retracing any lines. Can’t do it? Don’t worry. Neither can most people. Indeed in a lab setting, the expected solution rate for the problem is zero.

But when the researchers recently subjected a group of volunteers to 10 minutes of brain stimulation courtesy of a ‘cap’, during which time a 2 milliamp current passed across each volunteer’s head with the positive electrode applied to the right temple and the negative electrode to the left, the solution rate for the puzzle jumped to 40% (check out the solution here).

According to Snyder and Chi, folk find the puzzle so perplexing because the dominant left temporal lobe uses prior knowledge of shapes to interpret the pattern of dots as a square with imposed rigid boundaries. So even though the solution requires drawing lines outside this shape, most of us persist in thinking ‘inside the box’ and the penny never drops.

A shot of electrical current to the brain, however, boosts activity on the more creative right side of the brain while reducing it in the creativity-suppressing left side, liberating many of us from our existing cognitive biases and allowing us to think more laterally in order to … bingo! … solve the problem.

None of which means the thinking cap will make us smarter. “Its advantage isn’t in acquiring more knowledge quickly. Its advantage is in seeing the world anew,” says Snyder.

“We look at the world through what we know. We have lots of preconceptions that allow us to manoeuvre quickly in the world, but that has a downside. That downside is that we tend to see the world as it was rather than as it is.”

Now ask yourself this: during any of these pursuits did you feel more of the following: connected, optimistic, energised, creative, vital? This is a question that interests Dr Barbara Fredrickson, professor of psychology and world-leading researcher into positive emotions. She is presenting at Young Minds in June and is being interviewed here (click on Parts 1, 2 & 3) about her research into the short and long-term transformative effects such mind states have on a person’s way of being.

Her thesis is that when folk experience positive emotions – not to be confused with merely feeling ‘happy’ which doesn’t come close to capturing all the nuances involved in the many different positive emotional states – they have “a broader scope of attention. This allows [them] to take in more information, see more connections … and be more creative as a result … [This] fundamentally transforms people.”

To prove it, Fredrickson and her team took to the lab. But first they needed to find “a way to induce positive emotions day in day out that wouldn’t grow stale.” In the end, they turned to meditation or mindfulness practices, in large part because there’s an ever-growing body of evidence that being present and attentive to the here and how “actually allows positive experiences to stay fresh.”

Fredrickson et al. then recruited 200 adults, assigning only some to a meditation group. All subjects were then tracked over a three-month period. After just three weeks, there was a blossoming of positive emotions in those meditating every day. More significant, after three months, these subjects “were changed by that experience of having more positive emotions day to day.”

In other words, these participants were, overall, much happier and less self-interested than previously. And as we all know – and what has been borne out in numerous studies – being happy and more outward looking benefits you in a myriad of ways: you live longer, you love more expansively, you enjoy better health and you thrive at work.

So what’s Fredrickson’s advice to those of us wanting to habitually experience more positive emotions with a view to changing ourselves for the better? Make the effort to do exactly that. It’s up to us. Either we choose to appreciate what’s right in front of us, to find what’s uplifting and inspiring and beautiful in each and every moment, or we don’t. That decision – which is then multiplied by trillions of moments that make up the rest of our days – makes ALL the difference.

Depending on your answer, you fall into either the introvert or extrovert camp. Note that introversion is not the same thing as shyness, which describes fear of social judgement.

This question, not so much whether you’re more one or the other, but why it is that introverts, who make up one third to one half of the population, so often get a bum rap in our culture, is the subject of this presentation delivered by author Susan Cain. Her main aim is to empower those of us who feel more comfy doing the solo thing than running with the pack.

Cain distinguishes between the two personality types this way: “Extroverts really crave large amounts of stimulation whereas introverts feel at their most alive, most switched on and most capable when they’re in quieter, more low key environments.”

This difference would be neither here nor there if both groups were judged by society as having equal value. Yet according to Cain, many of our most important institutions, schools and workplaces favour extroverts and their need for stimulation.

As proof, she observes that school kids today work far more on group assignments than they did previously, including in subjects like maths and creative writing, traditionally solitary pursuits. Also, that many workplaces are open plan, subjecting employees to the constant noise and gaze of their co-workers.

Cain says the reason for this bias is the belief that “all creativity, all productivity comes from an oddly gregarious place.” Even more alarmingly, research shows that prejudice against introverts tends to translate into more professional success for their counterparts.

Why is this? Cain blames our culture of personality, which she attributes to major social change. Once upon a time, we lived predominantly on farms and worked alongside people we’d known our whole life. These days the majority of us live in cities and work alongside strangers. The upshot, says Cain, is that “qualities like magnetism and charisma, suddenly seem very important.”

Yet who are often the most creative and productive people? You guessed it – the introverts, those who seek out solitude in order to experience what are often profound and paradigm-shifting epiphanies and revelations. Consider humankind’s greatest exemplars of insight and wisdom, the mystics and sages in all the world’s religions. They didn’t discover what it is to be human carousing in a bar.

Cain proposes that as a culture, we need to give introverts far more freedom to be themselves. To this end, she makes the following recommendations:
1) Stop the madness for constant group work.
2) Make it easier for those with yogic leanings to disappear into the wilderness for a while if that’s what they crave, to be with their own mind minus all the usual worldly distractions.
3) Celebrate difference, yours and everybody else’s.

It was a distressing scene made even more so when the other driver, at first cowed, finally snapped himself. He too began screaming expletives, and honking his horn to add to the general toxicity.

So this is how wars start, I thought walking away, while at the same time reflecting on the havoc anger has wreaked in my own life at times. Indeed, few of us can honestly say we never get mad. Which is why I wanted to share with you a recent teaching I saw on You Tube by Lama Surya Das.

Surya Das, who will be presenting at Young Minds in June, is one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars. In this two part segment (click on Part 1 and Part 2), he offers some useful tips on how to “disarm our hearts” as he puts it, bearing in mind that all the world’s hatred, rage and violence can be traced back to a single source: us.

But first, Surya Das is at pains to point out what we all probably already suspect but need to be reminded of again and again. And that is that our anger is our responsibility. Not the bus driver’s for being late, or our partner’s for being imperfect, or the barista’s for serving us an insipid flat white. To paraphrase the Buddha, if there are no seeds of anger in my heart and mind, who can make me angry?

Hence our goal is to uproot these seeds rather than water and fertilise them with our neuroses. Surya Das has proposed five steps to help us do this:

1) Experience the anger. Many people mistakenly believe they never get angry which usually means they’re suppressing it.
2) Feel the anger, which is different to experiencing it. Only then will you discover that anger at its core is just an arising energy, not the hatred and violence it has the potential to become if we fuel it with our “stories” about how we think things are. Feel where it is in the body, in the breath. Doing this helps turn your attention away from whatever it is that’s pissing you off back towards yourself, helping defuse what otherwise might be a blind, knee jerk, and unskilful response.
3) Analyse why you’re angry. What are the different thoughts that make up all your “stories”? Which of your buttons are being pushed? If what’s really going on is more about you – and it often is – why lash out?
4) Remind yourself that anger is a temporary arising and will pass, just like all the other emotions.
5) Respond wisely to your anger. This is where mindfulness practice, which actually informs all these steps, has such a transforming effect. Having stopped to feel your anger as simply an arising energy, it’s easier to then pause, take a deep breath and consciously decide what you’re going to do next: start yet another war or make peace.

So I was interested to stumble on this short interview with Tom Hodgkinson about his recent experience foraging for food – he found myrtle berries, chickweed, dandelion leaves, fat hen and estuary greens – near his home in bucolic Devon. Tom is the author of The Idle Parent and will be presenting at the Young Minds conference in June.

Given his area of expertise is helping parents live happier and stress-free lives, it follows he would be an enthusiastic advocate of foraging where possible. After all, assuming you know what to look for and where to find it, going bush with the kids for breakfast has got to be a more pleasurable and bonding pastime than dragging the family to a noisy, crowded, neon-lit supermarket. Or indeed than even laboring away in your veggie garden.

Tom says himself, “I know what a lot of work it is to grow vegetables you want when you want them, where you want … Clearly from a strictly idle point of view, the much more sensible thing would be to go foraging for what’s already there under your nose.”

Where for centuries, foraged food was a sign of poverty – its pejoratives included “famine food”, or “animal food” – the pursuit of wild consumables has, in the 21st century, become so fashionable a subject there are now endless books with titles like Nature’s Garden and The Wild Table, as well as countless blogs, designed to help enthuse and educate wanna-be gatherers in the art of identifying and preparing wilderness ingredients.

Even those of us living in built-up urban environments need not starve. Once we’re properly versed in the fine art of scrounging, it’s possible to still fill a Tupperware container in plenty of time for supper.

The benefits of gathering goodies that grow are compelling. We save money, we become more resourceful and our health improves. “It feels like a medicine more than the food you get in the shops,” says Tom, “because it’s meant to be where it is. It’s grown up naturally. It’s exactly in the right place at the right time.”

But most important of all, foraging actually teaches us something about the natural world, knowledge we can pass on to our children. Sadly, many young people are so disconnected from nature that according to a recent report, three quarters of Australian kids in their final year of primary school think cotton socks come from animals and yoghurt grows on trees.

Our next event, Young Minds in June, is all about maximising the potential of today’s young people. Indeed, how we raise, educate, influence and inspire today’s youth will shape humanity’s immediate future. A galvanising but equally sobering thought given the myriad problems in store for tomorrow’s generations, most notably around violent disruption of a climate that’s remained stable and relatively benign for the last 10,000 years, the time taken for civilisation as we know it to rise.

That today’s children and teens face certain upheaval due to extreme and unpredictable weather is the reason NASA scientist James Hansen continually speaks out about climate change. You can hear his most recent clarion call to action here. During his talk, while sharing with the audience pictures of two of his grandchildren, Hanson explains his motivation. “Jake is a super positive, enthusiastic boy, here at age two and a half years. He thinks he can protect his two and a half day old little sister (Jake has his arms wrapped around the baby). It would be immoral to leave these young people with a climate system spiralling out of control.”

In this presentation, Hansen describes his career trajectory at NASA, including how he became more interested in studying the effects of global warming on earth (previously he’d been observing the effects of carbon dioxide on Venus) “because a planet changing before our eyes is more interesting and important.”

Ever since, Hansen has been analysing earth climate observations, publishing papers, testifying in congress, and getting arrested for going public about the challenges the global community faces – more drought, the erosion of ice sheets, rising sea levels, mass species extermination – if governments don’t implement appropriate energy policies, including pricing carbon emissions to ensure fossil fuels pay their true societal cost.

Tragically despite the efforts of Hansen and others like him, the response of world leaders has been woefully inadequate. Hence a crisis that could be averted looms ever larger, threatening the very existence of each and every one of us, especially our progeny. Hansen says he doesn’t want his grandchildren in the future to say “Granddad understood what was happening but he didn’t make it clear”. So for decades, he’s been doing everything within his power to help stave off catastrophe.

Which begs the question since there’s so very much at stake: what about the rest of us?