Gene Expression

At one point in life, for a fairly long period, I thought I'd be a psychologist. It seemed so fundamental to understand the nature of the very fabric that we experience life with: our thoughts, emotions, memories, beliefs. Those curious about these areas learn quickly that we are far from a "blank slate" in respect to how we perceive reality.

But what I kept running into, with rare exception, was that psychology was a very young "science"; it sycophantically fawned to be accepted as a rightful sibling to the harder sciences which were more "respectable" and received better funding. It tried to divorce itself from paradigms where mind was something other than a mechanism, where emotions couldn't be explained with limbic regions and neurochemistry.

Hard sciences started pushing the edges of what our models were implying about the *nature* of reality, and started getting really weird with wild implications about parallel universes, the involvement of the human observer in strange quantum entanglements with matter and causality. But Psychology still plodded along, trying to get to the legacy status of Newtonian physics where everything was clockwork, even though physics left that model behind half a century ago. At least for it being the most fundamental level of things.

So I got disgusted with it, it had no backbone as a pioneer of discovery. Even now with fRMIs correlating regions of blood-flow in the brain with mental states, it's missing a fundamental calling, in my not so humble opinion. It may be useful for neuromarketing some day; the quest for the magic "buy" button for manipulating consumer behavior could be worth some research funding. To corporations and government perhaps.

While psychology at large seeks approval with their peers in science (who actually could care less), the more interesting work is being done in fields more secure in their tenure, like biology. Since the body and mind can't truly be separated, we might expect to find some interesting discoveries by delving into the body more deeply while we wait for the mind people to find their courage.

One of the most fascinating areas of this new research is in the ability of the mind to affect the *expression* of genes. From an early, deterministic model of genes dictating all manner of behavior and capability we are starting to discover it's not quite that pat. There are actually powerful layers that make DNA far more interactive with outside signals than we initially assumed. Signals like those coming from our thoughts and feelings.

So that was a long preamble to introduce this article: Meditation, Yoga Might Switch off Stress Genes. Enjoy :-) I have to run to the book store now and get the final edition of a trilogy I got Bright-eyes hooked on (which Mew got me hooked on.) She's had so much fun reading it I'm going to have to re-read it now.