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Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain - Nature
Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain - Nature

Claude summary: This research provides new insights into how psilocybin affects large-scale brain activity and connectivity. The key finding is that psilocybin causes widespread desynchronization of brain activity, particularly in association cortex areas. This desynchronization correlates with the intensity of subjective psychedelic experiences and may underlie both the acute effects and potential therapeutic benefits of psilocybin. The desynchronization of brain networks may allow for increased flexibility and plasticity, potentially explaining both the acute psychedelic experience and longer-term therapeutic effects.

Psilocybin acutely caused profound and widespread brain FC changes (Fig. 1a) across most of the cerebral cortex (P < 0.05 based on two-sided linear mixed-effects (LME) model and permutation testing), but most prominent in association networks
Across psilocybin sessions and participants, FC change tracked with the intensity of the subjective experience (Fig. 1f and Extended Data Fig. 4).
·nature.com·
Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain - Nature
The Free-Time Gender Gap - Gender Equity Policy Institute (GEPI)
The Free-Time Gender Gap - Gender Equity Policy Institute (GEPI)
Women spend twice as much time as men, on average, on childcare and household work. All groups experience a free-time gender gap, with women having 13% less free time than men, on average. Mothers spend 2.3X as much time as fathers on the essential and unpaid work of taking care of home and family Young women (18-24) experience one of the largest free-time gender gaps, having 20% less free time than men their age Working women spend 2X as many hours per week as working men on childcare and household work combined Mothers who work part-time spend 3.8X as much time on childcare and household work as fathers who work part-time Married women without children spend 2.3X as much time as their male counterparts on household work Among Latinos, mothers spend more than 3.6X as much time as fathers taking care of children and doing household work
The unequal division of unpaid work in the home, such as cooking, cleaning, and shopping for food and clothing, is a powerful testament to the tenacity of old gender norms. Women do significantly more of this work than men do, even when there are no children living in the home. This holds true for women regardless of their marital status, their employment status, or their level of education.
Among all adults without children, women do twice as much household work as men, dedicating 12.3 hours per week to these tasks, on average, compared to 6 hours for men. Similarly, among all single people without children, women do nearly twice as much household work as men, spending 10.6 hours per week on household tasks compared to 5.7 hours for men.
getting married seems to exacerbate the burden of household work on women. Married women do substantially more household work than their single women peers, while married men spend just a few minutes a day more than their single peers. Married women without children do 2.3 times as much household work as their male counterparts (14.3 hours per week versus 6.2 hours).
Working women spend significantly more time than working men on unpaid work in the home. This is the case whether they work full-time or part-time. It is the case whether they have children or not. Take household work like cooking, laundry, and the like. Women who work full-time do 1.8 times as much as men who work full-time; they spend 9.7 hours per week on it compared to 5.4 hours for men. Women who work part-time do 2.5 times as much household work as men who work part-time.
Across every group studied, men spend more time than women socializing, watching sports or playing video games, or doing similar activities to relax or have fun. Women overall have 13% less free time than men, on average. The gap balloons among some groups, with women having up to one-quarter less free time than men.
Women overall have 13% less free time than men, on average. The gap balloons among some groups, with women having up to nearly one-quarter less free time than men.
there is a wide gulf between our ideals and our realities, as we have seen in this report on how Americans divide the work of taking care of home and family. One reason for the persistence of these gender disparities is that the U.S. has failed to modernize its public policies to fit 21st century economic realities. Even though 78% of American women are in the labor force, the nation’s social infrastructure is still largely premised on the assumption that mothers will be at home with children.
Every high-income nation in the world provides for paid leave for new parents—except the United States. Most provide ample financial and institutional support for childcare and preschool. Our peers devote a substantial share of public spending to family benefits, but the U.S. invests only minimally in supporting families. For instance, family benefits account for 2.4% of GDP in Germany compared to 0.6% in the United States.
Even when young children enter school, typical American school hours are grossly misaligned with the workday, forcing families to either spend money on after school care or reduce their work hours.
Public policy alone will not entirely eliminate these deeply rooted gender disparities. Cultural change is needed too. But smart policy can nudge along positive behavioral change that ultimately advances equity and equality. For example, several countries include mechanisms in their family policy to encourage fathers to take paid parent leave. Many Nordic nations have a ‘use it or lose it’ provision for fathers. Other countries, like Canada, provide extra paid weeks of leave to families if both parents use the time.
The unequal division of care work, particularly, affects women’s opportunity and well-being in ways that cannot be measured solely in dollars and cents.
One way Americans deal with the housing affordability crisis is to move to distant suburbs and exurbs, where housing is cheaper than it is in central cities and job hubs. The tradeoff, however, is typically a long commute to and from work. But for women who are caring for children or elderly relatives, long commutes are often not feasible. Children and elderly parents get sick and need to get to doctors in the middle of a workday. School hours begin too late and end too early to accommodate a commute to a 9-to-5 job.
when schools close due to climate-driven events, mothers might have to take unpaid time off of work or pay for childcare. As Americans experience more dangerous heat waves, wildfires, and floods driven by climate change, the caregiving demands on women can increase, as they are more likely to be the ones responsible for helping children and elderly adults stay out of harm’s way.
·thegepi.org·
The Free-Time Gender Gap - Gender Equity Policy Institute (GEPI)
Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain - Nature
Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain - Nature
  • Scientists studied how psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) affects the brain using advanced brain imaging techniques.
  • They found that psilocybin causes widespread disruption in how different brain areas communicate with each other, especially in regions involved in complex thinking and self-reflection.
  • This disruption, called "desynchronization," was much stronger than the effects of a stimulant drug or normal day-to-day changes in brain activity.
  • The intensity of the psychedelic experience reported by participants matched the degree of brain desynchronization observed.
  • Some brain changes lasted up to 3 weeks after taking psilocybin, particularly in areas involved in memory and emotion.
  • These findings help explain how psilocybin might work to treat mental health conditions and offer new insights into how the brain functions during altered states of consciousness.
In animal models, psilocybin induces neuroplasticity in cortex and hippocampus
·nature.com·
Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain - Nature
Can You Know Too Much About Your Organization?
Can You Know Too Much About Your Organization?

A study of six high-performing project teams redesigning their organizations' operations revealed:

  • Many organizations lack purposeful, integrated design
  • Systems often result from ad hoc solutions and uncoordinated decisions
  • Significant waste and redundancy in processes

The study challenges the notion that only peripheral employees push for significant organizational change. It highlights the potential consequences of exposing employees to full operational complexity and suggests organizations consider how to retain talent after redesign projects.

Despite being experienced managers, what they learned was eye-opening. One explained that “it was like the sun rose for the first time. … I saw the bigger picture.” They had never seen the pieces — the jobs, technologies, tools, and routines — connected in one place, and they realized that their prior view was narrow and fractured. A team member acknowledged, “I only thought of things in the context of my span of control.”
The maps of the organization generated by the project teams also showed that their organizations often lacked a purposeful, integrated design that was centrally monitored and managed. There may originally have been such a design, but as the organization grew, adapted to changing markets, brought on new leadership, added or subtracted divisions, and so on, this animating vision was lost. The original design had been eroded, patched, and overgrown with alternative plans. A manager explained, “Everything I see around here was developed because of specific issues that popped up, and it was all done ad hoc and added onto each other. It certainly wasn’t engineered.”
“They see problems, and the general approach, the human approach, is to try and fix them. … Functions have tried to put band-aids on every issue that comes up. It sounds good, but when they are layered one on top of the other they start to choke the organization. But they don’t see that because they are only seeing their own thing.”
Ultimately, the managers realized that what they had previously attributed to the direction and control of centralized, bureaucratic forces was actually the aggregation of the distributed work and uncoordinated decisions of people dispersed throughout the organization. Everyone was working on the part of the organization they were familiar with, assuming that another set of people were attending to the larger picture, coordinating the larger system to achieve goals and keeping the organization operating. Except no one was actually looking at how people’s work was connecting across the organization day-to-day.
as they felt a sense of empowerment about changing the organization, they felt a sense of alienation about returning to their central roles. “You really start understanding all of the waste and all of the redundancy and all of the people who are employed as what I call intervention resources,” one person told us.
In the end, a slight majority of the employees returned to their role to continue their career (25 cases). They either were promoted (7 cases), moved laterally (8 cases), or returned to their jobs (10 cases). However, 23 chose organizational change roles.
This study suggests that when companies undertake organizational change efforts, they should consider not only the implications for the organization, but also for the people tasked to do the work. Further, it highlights just how infrequently we recognize how poorly designed and managed many of our organizations really are. Not acknowledging the dysfunction of existing routines protects us from seeing how much of our work is not actually adding value, something that may lead simply to unsatisfying work, no less to larger questions about the nature of organizational design similar to those asked by the managers in my study. Knowledge of the systems we work in can be a source of power, yes. But when you realize you can’t affect the big changes your organization needs, it can also be a source of alienation.
·archive.is·
Can You Know Too Much About Your Organization?
Longitudinal Associations Between Parenting and Child Big Five Personality Traits
Longitudinal Associations Between Parenting and Child Big Five Personality Traits

The provided web page discusses a study on the longitudinal associations between parenting practices and child Big Five personality traits. Here are the key takeaways and findings from the content:

  1. Association Between Parenting and Child Personality:

    • Previous research has explored the associations between parenting and various child characteristics, but less has been done on the longitudinal associations with child Big Five personality traits.
    • Studies have shown both positive and non-significant associations between parental warmth and child personality traits.
  2. Longitudinal Analyses and Changes Over Time:

    • The study utilized longitudinal data with assessments at different grades (5, 6, 7, and 8).
    • Changes in parenting behaviors over time were observed, with a general trend of decreased parental involvement and structure as children entered adolescence.
  3. Measurement Invariance Tests:

    • Measurement invariance tests were conducted to ensure that changes in latent factors represented real changes in constructs rather than changes in relations between factors and indicators across time.
  4. Correlations and Effect Sizes:

    • The magnitudes of correlations between parenting variables and child personality were reported to be small, averaging around 0.05.
    • The study emphasized that small effect sizes should not be dismissed, and the associations were comparable to those found between other environmental factors and child personality.
  5. Practical Implications:

    • The study suggested that the small and non-significant associations should not discourage research on parenting interventions. Modest changes in parenting and child personality, when multiplied by the population, can have meaningful effects.
  6. Changes in Child Personality Over Time:

    • As children got older, they became less conscientious and less open to experience, as indicated by negative slopes in the longitudinal analyses.
  7. Parenting and Child Personality Complexity:

    • The link between parenting and child personality was described as complex, transactional, and dynamic. The study considered theories like Social Learning Theory and Attachment Theory but highlighted the need for a nuanced understanding.
  8. Limitations and Future Directions:

    • The study acknowledged limitations, such as the small effect sizes and the complex nature of personality development. It emphasized the need to consider multiple environmental factors contributing to personality development.
  9. Contributions and Data Accessibility:

    • The authors highlighted contributions to the conception, design, acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of data by various individuals. The study's materials and data are accessible on the Open Science Framework.
  10. Conclusion:

    • Despite small effect sizes, the study suggests that understanding the association between parenting and child personality requires a nuanced approach, and interventions at the population level can still be meaningful.

Overall, the study contributes insights into the complex and dynamic relationship between parenting practices and child personality development, recognizing the importance of considering multiple factors and the potential impact of interventions.

·online.ucpress.edu·
Longitudinal Associations Between Parenting and Child Big Five Personality Traits
The role of religiosity on seeking help
The role of religiosity on seeking help
religiosity, whether manipulated (Study 2) and measured (Study 1 and Study 3), decreases individuals' tendency to seek help from other people or entities. We further propose that religiosity enhances individuals' sense of control, which makes them rely more on themselves and less likely to seek help when encountering difficulties. Three studies across different contexts (i.e., applying government aid, asking for help from other people, and requesting donations from a crowdfunding platform) support our thesis.
·onlinelibrary.wiley.com·
The role of religiosity on seeking help