LAZINESS EXPLAINED

Science is trying to unravel why some people do not have the drive to meet the minimal demands of daily life.

There’s a neurological reason for apathy and laziness, according to new research. Inefficient connections between certain areas of the brain may make it harder for some people to decide to act.

Although inefficient neural connections don’t explain away everyone’s laziness, new research could shed some light on the kind of pathological, extreme apathy that sometimes plagues people with Alzheimer’s disease or recovering from certain types of stroke. 

To understand the neurological basis of apathy, neurologists at Oxford University looked for differences in the brains of young people who appeared motivated (based on a questionnaire) and those who appeared more apathetic. Participants played a decision-making game while researchers watched what happened in their brains, using an MRI.

In each round of the game, the researcher offered the subject a reward in return for some effort. Participants had to decide whether to accept the offer, based on whether the reward as worth the effort. Predictably, the participants who had already been identified as apathetic were much less likely to accept offers that required effort, even if the reward was large - but when apathetic subjects did choose to accept an offer, their MRIs showed much more activity in the pre-motor cortex, an area of the brain involved in taking actions, than in more motivated participants.

That was the opposite of what researchers expected. They had assumed that lazy people’s pre-motor cortices would show less activity when deciding to take action.

“We thought that this might be because their brain structure is less efficient, so it’s more of an effort for apathetic people to turn decisions into actions,” said lead researcher Masud Husain, a professor of neurology and cognitive neuroscience at Oxford University.

 After further investigation, it turned out that people who identified as apathetic had less efficient connections between the anterior cingulate cortex, a part of the brain involved in making decisions and anticipating rewards, and the supplementary motor area, a part of the brain that helps control movement.

“The brain uses around a fifth of the energy you’re burning each day. If it takes more energy to plan an action, it becomes more costly for apathetic people to make actions,” explained Husain. “Their brains have to make more effort.” Husain said.

What motivates people used to be tied to environmental upbringing and the need to feed any or all of the Seven Deadly Sins. But the Oxford research seems to explore that there may be a physical neurological basis why certain people are slackers while others are motivated Type A personalities.

Even brilliant people can be apathetic in certain areas of their daily lives. Take for example, Jack. He was a brilliant surgeon, but he failed to put in the time and effort in his social relationships. He had no friends, only distant colleagues at work. He had no real social life; his marriage failed from jealousy and rage because he failed to work on his communication with his spouse. 

In fact, most of the main characters had a clear lack of attitude toward being social animals. They were basically loners. They shied away from commitment or change for fear of rejection. 

Of characters like Shannon used their spoiled, rich upbringing to conclude that they did not have to put themselves on the line in order to get what she wanted from men. Even when she was rejected or abandoned, she did not have the mental strength to change or adapt to the island circumstances.

If one looks at LOST as an experiment in human neurology, did the base line of the island trauma and need for survival override the inherent physical neurological deficits that cause them to be normally apathetic? It would seem that despite the need for the characters to change their behavior, very few did except to form loose friendship bonds. A lazy friend is a bad friend.

HAPPY NEWS TO MARRIED COUPLES

The reaction of happy married couples to news is now news.

New York Magazine report sunder the heading of this question:

Have you ever waited with excitement to share some amazingly good news with your partner, only to experience a surge of frustration and resentment when he or she barely reacts to your announcement?

As a society, we place a huge amount of emphasis on being there for each other when we’re in need, but past research has actually shown that relationship satisfaction is influenced as much, if not more, by how we react to each other’s good news. Whereas emotional support from a partner when we’re down can have the unfortunate side-effect of making us feel indebted and more aware of our negative emotions, a partner’s positive reaction to our good news can magnify the benefits of that good fortune and make us feel closer to them.

An unusual brain scan study,  published recently in Human Brain Mapping, has added to this picture, showing that the relationship satisfaction of longtime married elderly women is particularly related to the neural activity they show in response to their husbands’ displays of positive emotion, rather than negative emotion.

Psychologist Raluca Petrican at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto and her colleagues at the University of Toronto recruited 14 women with an average age of 72 who’d been married for an average of 40 years. The researchers scanned these women’s brains as they watched some carefully prepared videos.

The silent ten-second videos showed each woman’s husband or a stranger displaying an emotion that mismatched the way the video clip was labeled in a one-sentence description on the screen. For example, the clip might show the husband smiling or laughing about a happy memory (such as the first house they bought), but the video was labeled misleadingly to suggest that the man was showing this emotion while talking about a sad memory (such as the time he got fired). Other videos showed the reverse mismatch: a negative emotional display, ostensibly shown while talking about the memory of a happy event.

Essentially, the videos were designed to make the women feel like they were seeing their husband or the stranger display a surprising emotional reaction that didn’t match their own feelings. The real-world equivalent would be a situation in which a husband is happy about something that his wife doesn’t “get”; and the questions are whether she will notice, and whether she is she more sensitive to this in congruent emotion in her husband than she would be in a stranger.

The first important finding to emerge from this setup was that the women showed enhanced overall brain activity — which suggests more mental and emotional neural processing  — when watching the videos of their husbands compared with videos of the strangers, but only when the videos showed displays of surprisingly in congruent positive emotion. During the other types of videos (when the men appeared to display strangely negative emotion), the women’s brains showed just as much overall activity when watching a stranger as when watching their husband. In other words, their levels of whole-brain activity betrayed a special sensitivity to their husband’s (versus a stranger’s) unexpected positive emotion.    

This jibes with the past research that’s shown it’s our response to our partners’ positive news that is all-important for relationship satisfaction. Remember that these women had been married for decades, so it’s likely that they and their husbands have been doing something right relationship-wise. The brain-imaging data suggest part of the reason might be that the women are acutely tuned to when their husbands are showing happiness that’s personal to them (rather than common to both partners).
This specific interpretation trips up a little with another main result: The women’s levels of marital satisfaction (according to a questionnaire) correlated with the amount of neural processing they showed in response to their husbands positive and negative emotion.

However, the special importance of how we respond to our partners’ positive emotion was supported by another key finding. Namely, women who scored higher on relationship satisfaction showed more brain activation in regions thought to contain mirror neurons (neurons that are considered important for empathy) when watching their spouses than they did when watching a stranger. Moreover, this enhanced mirror-neuron activity was especially present for the videos showing their husbands’ positive, rather than negative, emotion. Again, this appears to support the idea that marital happiness goes hand in hand with sensitivity to our partners’ positive emotion (though the researchers acknowledge a different or complementary interpretation that people in happy relationships have a suppressed response to their partners’ in congruent negative emotion).

We need to interpret these preliminary and complex findings with caution. And the exclusive focus on wives’ reactions to their husbands’ emotions does lend the study a slightly retro ’70s vibe — what about the way that husbands respond to their wives’ emotions, and the importance of that for the marital happiness of both parties? But that said, the results are tantalizing in suggesting that at a neural level, people in a long-term, committed relationship are especially sensitive to their partners’ positive emotion, and particularly so when this emotion is different from their own. This neatly complements other research showing, for example, that people who are unable to differentiate their partners’ emotions from their own (they assume they’re the same), tend to be viewed by their partners as more controlling and smothering.

As a whole, this entire body of research gives pause for thought. How do you react when your partner arrives home on an emotional high? Would you only notice if you were feeling happy too?

Positive responses to positive emotions makes a married couples more positive toward each other. It also goes to show that when a partner is "indifferent" to their significant other's news or needs, the relationship can quickly turn toxic. There is a probability of negative reinforcement that will gradually build between couples because they think since they are together, they should each feel the same toward each other. In most cases, that is probably true. But in every relationship, there is a roller coaster ride of highs and low points. Listening, respect and trust are the most important factors to get through any rough times. If one can try to mine a nugget of positive out of a negative situation, it is better for everyone.

WHAT NUMBERS REPRESENT

What do Numbers represent?

A number is an arithmetical value, expressed by a word, symbol, or figure, representing a particular quantity and used in counting and making calculations and for showing order in a series or for identification. It is also a quantity or amount; such as several, in a group, company or order (such as a magazine issue to indicate a position in a series).

In the LOST mythology, the Numbers were the glue that bound many clues.

We really first learn of the power of the Numbers by Hurley hearing them while he was at the mental institution. The Numbers were supposed to have been heard by a patient, who said they were cursed. But despite the warning, Hurley used the Numbers on a lottery ticket. So, the Numbers were at first, lucky. But as Hurley started to embrace his new wealth and fame, the winning lottery ticket became his own curse (with family members being hurt, people dying, etc.)

We also found out that the Numbers were broadcast possibly as an island location beacon to the DHARMA group.  Why the numbers were important to DHARMA has led to speculation that the main purpose of island research was to re-set the Valenzetti Equation, a large doomsday-predicting formula on the demise of mankind.

We also found the Numbers stamped on the Hatch cover. This apparent serial number freaks Hurley out as a bad omen. In some respects, that was true.  The Hatch discovery led to Desmond and the internal workings of DHARMA, and more mysteries and clues (such as the blast door map). Desmond was a lost soul also imprisoned on the island to do unexplained work for an alleged higher purpose.  (One new theory is that the Hatch and electromagnetic fields were being operated by human souls in order to regulate the gateways between life, death, heaven and hell. The operators were not told of their role, least they could interfere and destroy the natural world.)

Finally, the Numbers are the code in which needed to be placed into a computer control every 108 minutes or bad things would happen (an electromagnetic build up would create a lockdown, a purple flash, release of energy, to dangerous explosion-implosion events). Why human beings had to enter the code to regulate the release of an alleged energy build up is unclear, but may take homage to the soldiers who man defense missile silos - - - who have to manually enter launch codes in order to fire destructive nuclear warheads. The idea is that these men and women have the final say on their own fate; and as a check against a computer malfunction.

So the Numbers represented good luck, bad luck, a key, a curse, and tie that bound many different elements of the story together.  But in the end, TPTB merely said that the Numbers were a red herring, with no real significance to the main story. That reveal was one of the major disappointments to serious fans.

THE MAN BEHIND THE ISLAND

This cannot be a viable theory because the character of Ben was not in the original story lines. But it can be viable alternative explanation of the story if one considers the key to unraveling the mysteries is to work backwards from the sideways end.

In the sideways world, Ben went to an island with his father who took a job with Dharma. However, in the sideways story arc, they left the island for an unknown reason. Ben finished his education. He received a doctorate in modern European history and came to be a high school European history teacher.

We can assume in the sideways story arc, everyone is dead because that was what we were told by Christian. The question remains what about the overlap elements and events. Which came first, the chicken or the egg; the island or the sideways realm?

For this discussion, we assume that the sideways world is the true barometer of the series "reality." In this situation, we have Ben actually having a normal single parent childhood (abet with a short detour to the island run by a cult leader), but he is well grounded in a responsible position as a teacher. He lives with his father which means that they got along. However, for whatever reason, sideways Ben may have resented his fate in life; he did not have power or influence nor the character to change his lot in life. 

He is a single man who has devoted his life to learning about history. History is repeat with stories, chilling characters, epic battles and dangerous amorous plots to overthrow powerful rulers. He would have known about all the trials, tribulations, contests, and personalities of historical figures of Europe and the lands of conquest. That information would have been fertile ground for Ben to imagine himself transposed amongst the greats in history . . . to create his own personal fantasy history.

Ben's knowledge of the past is clearly impressed upon the elements contained on the island. It has features from Roman times, to ancient Egyptian temples and rituals, to the grand industrial revolutions of technology and militarism.

The island also contained the classic elements of history: rulers and followers, conflicts between bands of people; treaties, conflict, war and bloodshed; seizure of territory, to genocide. Ben transposed himself into the island just as a historian would imagine what those times were like in order to understand the motivations and mistakes. 

Ben was an unhappy follower. He found an opportunity to join the enemy. In order to prove his worth, he engineered the Purge. He killed his own father, which in many ancient cultures was the means to confirm and inherit power of the tribe. He began to rule like a dictator. He used fear to balance the politics of his inner circle. As he amassed more and more power, his vision of himself became grander - - - Napoleon in some respects. Instead of conquering other lands, he decided to conquer people: capture them and make them respect him. 

Ben dreamed of a world where he was the center of power; a pharoah like god among men. The imprint of a historian's eye is seen throughout the set and story lines of LOST. Perhaps, it was all Ben's heavenly diversion.

He could have been rewarded in the after life limbo we call the sideways realm with the opportunity to "live" an alternative life. He chose the opposite of his boring school teacher existence; he wanted to live the breathtaking levels of history. And he wanted to share the experience with people around him, such as Arzt, Rousseau and Alex. But at some point, Ben's emotions got ahead of his rational mind and caused many people collateral pain. It was coming to terms with that fictional but seemingly real collateral pain is why Ben decided not to move on with Hurley. 

Could the island events been the captive imagination of after life Ben? No, because the Ben character was never the starting point of the series. But since the series made so many strange twists and turns to lose its original direction, it is possible that the events were the post-death fantasies of a character like Ben.

THE RIGHT TO CHANGE

You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. No, I think there was too rigid a pattern. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a teacher anymore or you're not a painter anymore. It may happen. It has happened. I mean Gauguin decided at a certain point he wasn't a banker anymore; he was a painter. And so he walked away from banking. I think we have a right to change course. But society is the one that keeps demanding that we fit in and not disturb things. They would like you to fit in right away so that things work now. — Anais Nin

There is something to be said about the personal right to change course. The only person who can live your life is yourself.

The main characters of LOST were an unhappy group. They were troubled by their personal problems, career ruts, and family issues.

Was Jack happy being a surgeon? Yes, he was good at it - - - a miracle worker - - - but he did it to get his father's approval, which did not happen.

Was Kate happy as being a runaway criminal? Yes, she was good at it - - - a real Houdini - - - but she she did it to get her mother's approval, which did not happen.

Was Locke happy with his clerk job at a box company? Yes, generally since he had no motivation to do anything more since he was wheelchair bound. But his plight was the direct result of Locke trying to win his father's approval, which did not happen.

Was Sawyer happy being a con man? Yes, he was good at it  - - - a smooth operator  - - - but he did not get what his original objective was, that being to seek revenge on his parents' con man, Anthony Cooper. Sawyer would come to terms with Cooper only after Locke summoned him to the island.

Was Sun happy in her marriage? No, she had planned to flee Jin at the airport, but at the last minute, perhaps because of guilt or family honor, she stayed with her husband, dreading the future with him.

When everyone boarded Flight 815, their lives were pretty much set in stone. They had forgone change in their lives. They would continue to be stuck in a rut. There was no motivation to change the direction of their lives.

Until the plane crash. The island turned into a summer camp experience for the unhappy souls. As Jack stated early on, a person's past was no longer relevant on the island. Everyone had a chance to be someone different.  Second chances don't come along very often. Jack was aware of it. He wanted to make the most of it. And he did, by doing something his father criticized him the most: not being a great leader because he could not make the difficult life and death choices. In the end, Jack did make that ultimate choice, sacrificing himself so a few of his friends could escape the island.

Whether that was true change or a mere diversion is debatable. Even if it was a sidetrack like the sideways world, then at least a part of Jack changed as a result. And maybe that is the simple lesson of the show: any change is possible if you want to change.