On A Meaningful Life

Given that this blog had the same title as a wonderful book written by Jack Kornfield, in deference to his book I changed the blog title. This URL, however, remains the same. His book is entitled A Path With Heart: A Guide Through The Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life .

In Psychology Today online, a quick easy to read review about bipolar affective disorder and treatment options, especially new approaches is found here .

New Insight On How Lithium Works BioMedNet News (warning: requires registration), in the News Archives July 31, 2003, has a summary of exciting new British research throwing fresh light on how mood stabilizers used in treatment of bipolar affective disorder affects cellular pathways. (Article is entitled: “Slime Mould Gets Moody” by Laura Spinney). Although the organism in the spotlight is Dictyostelium discoideum , the slime mold, the pathways being studied are present in both mammals and slime mold. Adrian Harwood and his lab at the Medical Research Council Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology of the University College London have been focusing on the inositide signaling pathway and the Wnt-signaling pathway in slime mold. The most important implication of this work is stated here: "…Their latest findings add more detail to the picture, indicating that lithium and valproic acid exert their effects at different stages of the inositide-signaling pathway. "Dictyo

Hypnosis in the Scientific American Scientific American online has an easy to read review of hypnosis here . My only disappointment: where are those references? With so many interesting results cited, I’d like to see the sources. And a quick neuropsychology refresher: which part of the brain is activated under hypnosis? According to this article, the answer is this: “…The tests showed that a region of the brain called the right anterior cingulate cortex was just as active while the volunteers were hallucinating as it was while they were actually hearing the stimulus. In contrast, that brain area was not active while the subjects were imagining that they heard the stimulus. Somehow hypnosis had tricked this area of the brain into registering the hallucinated voice as real...”