Since the 1950s, political scientists have theorized that political polarization -- increased numbers of "political partisans" who view the world with an ideological bias -- is associated with an inability to tolerate uncertainty and a need to hold predictable beliefs about the world.
But little is known about the biological mechanisms through which such biased perceptions arise.
[UC San Diego study reveals neural circuitry supporting mindfulness-induced pain relief]
For centuries, people have been using mindfulness meditation to try to relieve their pain, but neuroscientists have only recently been able to test if and how this actually works. In the latest of these efforts, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine measured the effects of mindfulness on pain perception and brain activity.
Global scientific team publishes consensus statement and new guidelines
Scientific advances in the 20th and 21st centuries have led to a major evolution in the understanding of death. At the same time, for decades, people who have survived an encounter with death have recalled unexplained lucid episodes involving heightened consciousness and awareness. These have been reported using the popular -- yet scientifically ill-defined -- term "near-death experiences."
A disbelief in human evolution was associated with higher levels of prejudice, racist attitudes and support of discriminatory behavior against Blacks, immigrants and the LGBTQ community in the U.S., according to University of Massachusetts Amherst research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Similarly, across the globe -- in 19 Eastern European countries, 25 Muslim countries and in Israel -- low belief in evolution was linked to higher biases within a person's group, prejudicial attitudes toward people in different groups and less support for conflict resolution.
Tim Wyatt – England
The author
Unseen and unrecognised by the vast majority of people, there is a hidden commonwealth of invisible non-human entities creating, protecting and renewing life-forms in all nature’s kingdoms. These unseen empires are widely referred to throughout esoteric literature but are rarely discussed.
These kingdoms involve vast hierarchies of nature-spirits – or elementals – operating in the four elements of air, earth, fire and water, principally on the etheric and astral planes. At a higher level there are even more powerful creative figures – the devas (translated from Sanskrit as shining ones) otherwise known as the angelic kingdoms which operate on the mental and astral planes.
Water is essential for life on Earth and other planets, and scientists have found ample evidence of water in Mars' early history. But Mars has no liquid water on its surface today. New research from Washington University in St. Louis suggests a fundamental reason: Mars may be just too small to hold onto large amounts of water.
Remote sensing studies and analyses of Martian meteorites dating back to the 1980s posit that Mars was once water-rich, compared with Earth. NASA's Viking orbiter spacecraft -- and, more recently, the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on the ground -- returned dramatic images of Martian landscapes marked by river valleys and flood channels.
More than 80 percent of people around the world consider themselves to be religious or spiritual. But research on the neuroscience of spirituality and religiosity has been sparse. Previous studies have used functional neuroimaging, in which an individual undergoes a brain scan while performing a task to see what areas of the brain light up. But these correlative studies have given a spotty and often inconsistent picture of spirituality.
Ananya Sri Ram Rajan – USA
Many years ago, my son attended a boarding school during his high school years. The school prided itself on the motto “Art Lives Here.” As a mom of a student accepted to a rather prestigious school, I was enamored with this statement. My son was not. Every time we passed a banner or sign that stated, “Art Lives Here” he would say “Such nonsense!” I used to think it was just teenage angst until I finally asked him why he had such annoyance about the statement. His reply was very matter of fact. He said, “Art cannot be contained. It lives all around us. You can’t say “Art Lives Here” and then tell students their ideas are not art. It’s hypocrisy. If art lives here, so do artists and artists have a different way of looking at the world. In general, we don’t like being contained. But there are so many rules here that this where art comes to die.”