The Seashell HouseThe whimsical architecture makes the Seashell...

The Seashell House

The whimsical architecture makes the Seashell House one of Airbnb’s most striking listings. Designed by architect Eduardo Ocampo, this whitewashed gated property on Isla Mujeres welcomes 4 guests in two ‘conch’ apartments, each with its own king bedroom and private bathroom.

Additionally, there’s a lovely outdoor swimming pool and beautiful views of the Caribbean Sea from most of the terraces and outdoor areas adorning the home.

Just like the shell-shaped exteriors, the interiors pay homage to these marine gems with lots of organic design forms, nautical accents, and conch-shaped furniture pieces.

Hotel VistabellaHovering over the Bay of Roses, on Spain’s wild...

Hotel Vistabella

Hovering over the Bay of Roses, on Spain’s wild and beautiful Costa Brava, Hotel Vistabella combines the timeless charm of the Med with 5-star services.

Individually designed, its contemporary rooms come with furnished outdoor terraces overlooking the blue sea, while the exquisite suites have decadent bathtubs and lavish outdoor daybeds.

Dining options include a delightfully traditional tapas bar, a spectacular terrace restaurant devoted to creative Catalan cuisine, and a lively beach club famed for its seafood and Champagne parties.

Additionally, guests can unwind in the onsite spa, complete with sauna, steam bath, indoor swimming pool, and outdoor whirlpool.

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"art and nothing but art! it is the great means of making life possible, the great seduction to life,..."

“art and nothing but art! it is the great means of making life possible, the great seduction to life, the great stimulant of life.”

- friedrich nietzsche

Monte-Carlo BeachEstablished in 1930s, Monte-Carlo Beach offers...

Monte-Carlo Beach

Established in 1930s, Monte-Carlo Beach offers a taste of the Riviera’s golden era with a glamorous saltwater swimming pool, chic beach cabanas, and a 100% organic restaurant serving Michelin-starred cuisine by the glistening sea.

Beautifully renovated by Iranian-born architect and designer India Mahdavi, the hotel’s Mediterranean inspired rooms and suites are filled with elegant bespoke furnishings, refined murals, and glorious light.

The iconic property enjoys a prime seaside location in Monte Carlo and has its own private beach, water sports club, and luxury 80 square meter spa facility.

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Lack of Sleep Can Tremendously Affect How Our Brains Deal with Emotions

Insomnia is a common but highly irritating problem: the Sleep Health Foundation (SHF) estimates that 1 in 3 people will suffer from mild insomnia at one point in their lives. There are a number of causes for this disorder, including hormonal imbalances, bad sleep habits, some medications, too much caffeine and even pregnancy. And whatever the underlying cause, sleepless nights can cause a range of problems, including fatigue and tiredness, difficulty concentrating and focusing, lack of memory, mood or emotional disorders, and the increased chance of committing an error or getting into an accident.

What is even more surprising is that, according to new research, a person’s emotions can be negatively impacted by even missing just one night’s sleep.

Sleep deprivation led people to lose their neutrality, the ability of the brain to separate the important from the unimportant

This new research was coming out of Tel Aviv University in Israel, where researchers were able to gain a better understanding of the specific effects that sleep deprivation has upon the brain. What they found was that, surprisingly, the negative cognitive effects began after just one night’s sleep.

During the study, 18 volunteers stayed up all night one night and got a good night’s sleep on the other. Brain imaging from MRIs and EEG were done throughout the study in order to better understand the brain activity of the participants. After each night, participants were asked to take the same test which involved tracking and identifying the movement of dots across different pictures, which were either emotionally positive, emotionally negative, or emotionally neutral in content. The combination of this test and the brain imaging was enough to get a good idea of the brain’s cognitive processing ability.

The results showed that lack of sleep negatively impacted the regulatory processing ability of the brain, and the EEG scan revealed little difference in its reaction to positive and negative images. Further testing showed that volunteers were more easily distracted by any kind of image after staying up all night, but that after a good night’s sleep, only the most emotionally charged images registered on the brain.

In short, the researchers noted that sleep deprivation led people to lose their neutrality, the ability of the brain to separate the important from the unimportant. See the brain scans and other images taken directly from the study below.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Before the study, scientists were not certain about just what mechanism in the brain was responsible for emotional impairments which happen when sleep is taken away. Dr. Talma Hadlar, one of the researchers who published this article, noted that:

“We assumed that sleep loss would interfere with the processing of emotional images and….executive functions. We were incredibly surprised to find that it significantly impacted the brain in the processing of both neutral and emotionally charged images.”

The Study in Context

The Tel Aviv research is part of a recent and growing body of evidence that ties lack of sleep or insomnia to emotional and/or cognitive dysfunction. All three studies below were published just this year:

• One study, published in the Journal of Integrative Medicine, found in their review that insomnia “poses a major threat to mental health…. Anxiety and depression are the two most negative emotions impacted by insomnia”.
• An article which appeared in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research found that, for patients suffering from insomnia due to tinnitus (a chronic ringing in the ears), the level of emotional and cognitive distress was directly related to how severe the insomnia was.
• Research published in the Review of Neurology found that the comorbidity between insomnia and depression is high, and that a vicious cycle begins:

Anxiety and depression can cause insomnia and the insomnia in turn can make the emotional problems worse.

In short, those who are suffering from insomnia―even for a very short time―are at an increased risk for emotional and cognitive problems as well. That is why it is important to see a doctor or other healthcare professional about this problem early on to discuss safe and effective remedies for this problem before it gets any worse.

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When You Can Stop Yourself From Multitasking, Your Brain Will Start To Change

“Most of us have action addiction; it’s that dopamine craving. We’re spinning our wheels with insignificant things. You run fast without achieving anything. It’s so widespread, and it’s the main threat to mental effectiveness and productivity.” -Rasmus Hougaard, Co-Author of “One Second Ahead: Enhance Your Performance at Work With Mindfulness”

Multitasking for Instant Gratification

Multitasking is inefficient and unproductive. However, our brains are geared towards this by default. But why? Firstly, we have a wandering mind. Case in point: I’m sitting here on my bed, and as I attempt to write this article, my mind is wandering; I’m thinking about going out for a drink with friends. But, I’m mindful of this distraction – this is crucially important – but more on that later.

Secondly, each time we complete a new task, no matter how trivial – this could be sending an e-mail to answer a work colleague’s question – we receive a reward. This reward takes the form of a dopamine injection – a naturally produced neurotransmitter directly linked to addiction. When released we immediately feel good. We receive instant gratification, despite the sheer insignificance that the task may entail. Our brains learn this, and so, we continue to chase this instant gratification.

How to Stop Multitasking

If we’re able to stop this multitasking, which is very much a part of who we are, our brains will change. How though do we stop multitasking and more importantly how will our brain change? Let’s find out.

For us to stop multitasking and subsequently improve our productivity and focus, we need to work against our brain’s natural inclination to multitask. We need to stop focusing on small insignificant actions and rather focus on important ones. We need to be more mindful. There are two rules of mindfulness training.

Mindfulness Training: The Two Rules

1. We can let go of the majority of distractions

We need to be cognizant that the majority of distractions are negligible and we can consciously choose where we focus our attention. Yes, our brains will wander by default – I mean they’re wandering 46.9% of the time – but the art is to notice these distractions, without getting distracted.

For example, earlier I was being mindful of wanting to have a beer with a friend; I noticed it and re-focused my attention on the article because the article was more important at the time as I have a deadline looming. Always remember we have control over our distraction. They do not control us.

2. Strategically Handling Our Distractions

We also need to strategically handle distractions, either by choosing to let them go totally, dealing with them in the future or diverting our attention to them fully (if they’re more important than what we’re currently doing). For example, if I was faced with a family emergency whilst writing this article I would immediately divert my attention to that, as it’s far more important. Or if I received an e-mail from a work colleague asking me a question about a client meeting that’s happening in a week, I would choose to answer the question sometime in the future. These examples illustrate doing the right thing at the right moment.

How will this change our Brains?

By practicing mindfulness and refusing to give into our brain’s default tendency to wander and multitask, we’re training the prefrontal cortex of our brain. This is the part of our brain that gives us the ability to maneuver at will. We’re also able to better focus on important tasks and gain control over what Hougaard refers to as the “digital weapons of mass destruction.”

On that note, I’m going out for a beer with my friends.

Featured photo credit: medicine.stonybrookmedicine.edu via medicine.stonybrookmedicine.edu

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How Silence Affects Our Brains in A Good Way, Science Explains

In a world that’s increasingly busy and loud, silence sells. Like clean water, silence is a resource, and can, in fact, be used as a selling point. Consider, your laptop that runs without a peep, meditation retreats, holiday getaways to remote locations, or those noise canceling headphones. Silence is the glue that binds them together.

Silence Has Been Studied by Accident

Over the years, research has emphasized how silence can calm our bodies, improve our connection with the world and actually increase the “noise” of our inner thoughts, with the majority of the research focusing on noise when coming to these conclusions, not silence.

Yes, most researchers have studied silence by accident. For instance, in a 2006 Study, where the physiological effects of music were studied, Luciano Bernardi said the following in Nautilus:

“We didn’t think about the effects of silence. That was not meant to be studied specifically.”

Nevertheless, what were the effects of silence on our brains in these studies?

Two Minutes of Silence Heightened Arousal

In the aforementioned study, Bernardi observed physiological metrics for two dozen subjects when they listened to six songs. According to Bernardi:

“During almost all sorts of music, there was a physiological change compatible with a condition of arousal.”

But what was even more surprising, was what happened when there were silent pauses – two minutes of silence proved far more relaxing than peaceful music or a longer silence played before the experiment started. One of his main findings – silence is heightened by contrasts – is supported by Neurological research, in a study by Michael Wehr in 2010.

Silence Affects Our Auditory Cortex

The 2010 study by Michael Wehr who was observing the brains of mice during short bursts of sound produced some surprising results. Whilst a burst of sound causes the auditory cortex (that part of the brain responsible for processing sound information), to light up, silence also causes a change. A separate network of neurons in the auditory cortex fire up. Wehr says:

“When a sound suddenly stops, that’s an event just as surely as when a sound starts.”

What though happens the moment the auditory cortex fires up?

How Silence Affects our Auditory Cortex: Cell Development

This question was examined by a Duke University regenerative Biologist, Imke Kirste. In the 2013 study, she was analyzing the effects sound has on the brains of adult mice. Four groups of mice were exposed to different auditory stimuli: music, baby mouse noises, white noise, and silence.

The silence was the control, and as with many previous studies, its effect was considered negligible. Once again though the findings were an eye-opener. All the sounds had a short-term neurological effect, but what about silence?

Two hours of silence per day led to cell development in the hippocampus – the brain area responsible for memory formation and emotions. This baffled Kirste. But after some thought she came to the following conclusion – the absence of noise was so artificial and alarming that it caused hyper-alertness in the mice.

Whilst new cell development isn’t always good for health, in this instance, the cells were becoming functioning neurons (a specialized cell that transmits nerve impulses; also known as a nerve cell). Kirste went on to say:

“We saw that silence is really helping the newly generated cells differentiate into neurons and integrate into the system.”

Silence Amplifies Self-Reflection

Not only does silence aid in cell generation, but it also aids in self-reflection. We all have what is known as the “default mode” of brain function – found in the prefrontal cortex (located in the front of the brain and responsible for abstract thinking, thought analysis and regulating thinking).

The default mode is always active, receiving and analyzing information. For example, the ability to detect danger happens automatically in this part of the brain. This default mode is also highly active during self-reflection (understanding ourselves) according to Joseph Moran who published a paper titled “What can the organization of the brain’s default mode network tell us about self-knowledge?”

According to Moran and colleagues, when the brain is in this resting mode, it is able to integrate internal and external information into a conscious workspace. When there is silence, your conscious workspace has greater freedom to process the internal and external information, allowing you to better discover your place in the world. Silence amplifies self-reflection.

And perhaps Noora Vikman, an ethnomusicologist (someone who studies music in a cultural context) and silence consultant for Finland’s marketers sums it up best:

“If you want to know yourself you have to be with yourself, and discuss with yourself, be able to talk with yourself.”

Silence then truly is golden. It changes your brain. It changes your life.

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