Blood plasma is associated with white matter microstructure following traumatic brain injury. Credit: Brain (2024). DOI: 10.1093/brain/awae255
Monash University-led research, believed to be the first of its kind, has used blood tests and MRI scans to show that the effects of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) can last decades.
Published in Brain, and involving researchers from the University of Melbourne and Austin Health, the Monash-Epworth Rehabilitation Research Center (MERRC) TBI Aging Study integrated a range of techniques to understand the enduring consequences of moderate to severe TBI.
The team included imaging to measure the integrity of the brain microstructure, blood biomarkers to determine ongoing brain pathology, and cognitive tests to understand how blood markers might be linked to a person’s cognitive health and clinical condition.
It’s one of few global studies on participants with moderate-severe TBI due to a single incident that have also been living with their injury for an average of 22 years, as opposed to experiencing repetitive injury.
Senior author Professor Sandy Shultz, from the Monash School of Translational Medicine, said, “Our finding of chronic pathology in the brains of traumatic brain injury survivors, andMonash University-led research, believed to be the first of its kind, has used blood tests and MRI scans to show that the effects of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) can last decades. the ability to identify this with imaging and blood tests, not only provides us with methods to detect these changes but also a foundation to develop treatments that might prevent or slow evolving pathology and improve recovery.”
While TBI is a potential risk factor for neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease, there is a critical need for comprehensive knowledge about long-term impacts.
This involves delineating the biological and clinical characteristics of any lasting neurodegeneration and identifying who is at risk, and then using this information to develop long-term management strategies.
First author Dr. Gershon Spitz, from the Monash-Epworth Rehabilitation Research Center (MERRC), the Monash School of Psychological Sciences, and the School of Translational Medicine Department of Neuroscience, said the findings supported the hypothesis that the effects of a moderate-severe TBI could be felt decades following the initial injury.
“We found that elevated levels of blood biomarkers are related to poorer brain microstructure and poor cognition,” Dr. Spitz said.
“Traditionally, TBI was viewed as an isolated event with a fixed recovery trajectory. Over the last decade, TBI has been redefined as a chronic, ongoing health condition.
“This redefinition is a crucial first step in overhauling our health care models, which presently allocate the bulk of resources to the immediate post-injury phase and leave long-term symptoms inadequately treated.”
Dr. Spitz said further work was needed on the connection between blood biomarkers and symptoms/improvement. “We need to see whether the biological signatures of possible ongoing neuropathology can also tell us about people who may be at higher risk of experiencing progressive decline in functions like memory,” he said.
More information: Gershon Spitz et al, Plasma biomarkers in chronic single moderate–severe traumatic brain injury, Brain (2024). DOI: 10.1093/brain/awae255
Israel’s Biden-backed war machine is once again bearing down on defenseless Lebanese people. Hostilities on the Israeli/Lebanon border have been occurring since the establishment of Israel and the dispossession of Palestinians and their land in 1948. But last week’s war-crime-laden escalation by Netanyahu stunned the world.
It started with bombings followed by the simultaneous booby-trapped “red button” explosion of thousands of pagers and two-way radios inside Lebanon on September 17, 2024, and September 18, 2024, held by or near Lebanese militants, and civilian men, women, children, health workers, storekeepers, etc. Thirty-seven people were killed and 3700 others were injured – losing hands, eyes, and fingers. Many also suffered internal organ damage.
Such an attack at this scale is unprecedented in human history. While the ambulances and overwhelmed hospitals were taking in the casualties, Israeli F-16s (provided by the U.S.) struck throughout Lebanon, killing over 700 people and injuring thousands, many of them women and children – a staggering total of 1600 targets in two days.
International law experts condemned the mega-raid.They pointed to the war crime of booby-trapping a product, and the vast disproportionate harm to innocent civilians compared to Israel’s military objective to destroy Hezbollah’s militia that has been exchanging unequal missiles with Israel since October 8, 2023.
As has been the case for decades, Lebanese casualties were vastly greater than Israeli casualties.Israel has a modern air defense system that shuts down most of the incoming missiles. Hezbollah’s military might has been long exaggerated by its Israeli adversary to justify regularly bombing Syria, attacking Iran, and getting more weapons from the U.S.
In reality, Hezbollah – a political party and social service organization, has a militia greatly outnumbered and overpowered by the Israeli military in soldiers, destructive weaponry, and money from the U.S.
Furtively booby-trapping a consumer product like a pager or two-way radio opens a new phase of warfare. This savagery prompted Leon Panetta, former Director of the CIA and former Secretary of Defense, in an interview on the CBS “Sunday Morning” news show to charge Israel with “terrorism.” No prominent national security figure has ever assailed Israel this way. Herewith his words:
“The ability to be able to place an explosive in technology that is very prevalent these days. And turn it into a war of terror. Really, a war of terror. This is something new,” said Panetta.
“I don’t think there’s any question that it’s a form of terrorism…This is going right into the supply chain, right into the supply chain. And when you have terror going into the supply chain, it makes people ask the question, what the hell is next?” added Panetta.
Panetta would never have uttered these words without the concurrence of the CIA and the Department of Defense. Still no consequences for Netanyahu by the U.S. government.
These officials now fear a new booby-trap era of warfare. Computers, motor vehicles, smartphones, and many other electronic products could become weapons of war. People all over the world now have this Israeli-triggered anxiety, dread and fear. Netanyahu has made the push button a trigger for mayhem and murder – acts of large-scale terrorism. He and his predecessors have always characterized offensive acts violating the laws of war as “acceptable” defensive tactics. The supine Congress and White House regularly rubber-stamp their violations of several U.S. laws on behalf of the Israeli government. (See the letter sent to John Kirby on September 12, 2024).
Consider the aftermath. No denunciation by Biden, Blinken or Austin. No condemnation or calls for public hearings by leading Republicans, or leading Democrats in Congress.The Hill reported that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said, “This attack clearly and unequivocally violates international humanitarian law and undermines US efforts to prevent a wider conflict… Congress needs a full accounting of the attack, including an answer from the State Department as to whether any US assistance went into the development or deployment of this technology,” she added. Representatives Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-MO) were also critical of the attack.
Alarmingly, there were no editorials in the following week criticizing Netanyahu in the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Imagine if Hezbollah did this to Israeli society. The devaluation of Palestinian and Lebanese lives can only be called racist.
Biden’s forked tongue address to the United Nations this week touted peace and democracy while his autocracy funds war. Not a word against what his friend Leon Panetta called Israeli terrorism. Just another feeble fig leaf call for a 21-day truce mocked by the extreme genocidal Israeli regime, funded by coerced American taxpayers.
Hezbollah emerged after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 which lasted 18 years with the Israeli army occupying South Lebanon (and its coveted Litani River) where millions of historically downtrodden Lebanese Shia Muslims lived. They were abused by the Israeli army. Hezbollah was formed in 1982 to defend these impoverished, subjugated people.
In an ocean of lies, starting with his mysterious, still officially uninvestigated collapse of the multi-tiered border security system on October 7, 2023, which opened the door to the Hamas attack, Netanyahu has uttered one truth: “Nothing will stop us.” The nuclear-equipped Israeli regional Empire dominates the Middle East. But it always needs an enemy for its internal domestic politics and for expanding its very advantageous alliance with the United States Empire. Netanyahu is despised by three out of four Israelis but the next election is not until October 2026. Some in the pages of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz have argued that Netanyahu may be scuttling talk of a ceasefire to avoid his pending criminal trial for corruption.
Iran, a poor nation with about 91 million people and a GDP considerably smaller than the GDP of Massachusetts, has been a target of the U.S. since the CIA overthrew the popularly elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. His crime: he wanted to take control of Iranian oil from the foreign Anglo-Iranian oil company.
It was the U.S. government that supported then Iraq ally Saddam Hussein to invade Iran in 1980, which cost Iran hundreds of thousands of lives. It was George W. Bush who called Iran one of the countries making up the Axis of Evil and proceeded to encircle it with the U.S. military from Iraq to the Afghanistan borders. Do you wonder why Iran’s rulers are freaked out over its national security and builds allies in the face of both punishing U.S. sanctions harming civilian lives and recurrent Israeli sabotage and killings inside Iran?
Violently messing around in other weak countries’ backyards, and backing dictators and coups are the touchstones of Empire. Eventually, all Empires devour themselves.
In the meantime, are you surprised that the CIA and Department of Defense have teams studying what they call “Blowback” —a term they coined before 9/11?You know how that attack convulsed our country, deprived our domestic needs and intensified Bush/Cheney’s fury into even more countries (e.g., invading Iraq) pushing ever bigger, draining military budgets?
U.S. blowback analysts are apprehensive about the spread of Israeli-style “red button” explosives and the ingenious, and ever-cheaper armed drones. They see such technologies as potential threats within the U.S.
Such is the peril of nations whose leaders wage constant profitable, preventable wars and decline to wage muscular peace with comparable determination.
Ralph Nader is a politician, activist and the author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!, a novel. In his career as consumer advocate he founded many organizations including the Center for Study of Responsive Law, the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), the Center for Auto Safety, Public Citizen, Clean Water Action Project, the Disability Rights Center, the Pension Rights Center, the Project for Corporate Responsibility and The Multinational Monitor (a monthly magazine).
The Federal Reserve’s recent decision to cut the federal funds rate by 50 basis points to a range of 4.75 percent to 5 percent, despite inflation still exceeding its 2 percent target, bears alarming similarities to the monetary policy missteps of the late 1970s. Back then, under pressure to stimulate economic activity, the Fed loosened monetary policy too soon.
What was the result? Inflation soared as high as, if not higher, depending on the inflation measure. This culminated in Fed Chairman Paul Volcker reining in the money supply, which drove interest rates even higher. The result was necessary though painful double-dip recession before inflation persisted at a lower rate and the economy expanded during what’s been called the “Great Moderation.”
The recent Fed decision comes when inflation, though moderating, remains elevated. According to the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) data, inflation increased by 2.5 percent year-over-year in August, with core inflation (less food and energy) rising by 3.2 percent. The Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, the preferred core inflation measure for the Fed, showed a 2.6 percent year-over-year increase in July, further confirming that inflation is well above the 2-percent average inflation rate target (FAIT).
The risk is clear: repeating the premature rate cuts of the 1970s could ignite inflation once more, forcing even harsher corrective measures later.
The Fed’s Balance Sheet Problem
The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet expanded dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly doubling from $4 trillion in February 2020 to nearly $9 trillion in April 2022. While the Fed has made some progress in reducing its balance sheet, which now stands at $7.1 trillion, this figure remains 75 percent higher than its pre-pandemic level, with potentially risky assets. This massive increase in the money supply has distorted the economy, contributing to inflationary pressures by artificially boosting demand as supply hasn’t kept up.
Rather than relying on interest rate cuts, the Fed should be focused on aggressively reducing its balance sheet. Milton Friedman’s insights remain as relevant today as ever: inflation is “always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”The rapid expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet and the excessive money printing during the pandemic era are key contributors to the inflation we are battling now. Shrinking the balance sheet would help reduce the excess liquidity in the system, curbing inflation more effectively than rate cuts alone.
Distortive Power of Government Spending and Policy
While monetary policy is one part of the equation, we cannot overlook the role of fiscal policy in the current inflationary environment. Government spending has exploded since 2020 during the pandemic lockdowns, with the gross national debt soaring by nearly $13 trillion since 2019 to $35.3 trillion. The House of Representatives, rather than addressing this spending crisis, is set to pass another spending bill ahead of the September 30 deadline. As currently designed, this bill includes little in the way of meaningful spending restraint. Kicking the can down the road without addressing the structural imbalance in government finances only weakens the economy.
When the government spends recklessly by redistributing productive private resources to fund politically determined provisions, this contracts the potential supply of goods and services. And with the Fed printing so much money over the last few years, we have a clear explanation for the persistent general price inflation that reached a high of 9 percent in June 2022. But the inflationary pressures remain in the economy. This creates a vicious cycle, where excessive government borrowing leads to higher interest payments, necessitating further borrowing and money printing by the Fed to keep interest rates near its target. The only way to break this cycle is through fiscal discipline — capping government spending, reducing the deficit, and removing unnecessary programs — and more economic growth.
The government’s heavy-handed interventions in the form of taxes, regulations, and excessive spending distort market signals, stifle entrepreneurship, and create inefficiencies. These interventions raise business costs, leading to higher consumer prices and reduced economic growth. Rather than focusing on rate cuts and temporary relief, policymakers should aim for long-term solutions addressing inflation’s root cause: excessive money printing.
The Fed’s Mixed Messages
The Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) latest statement signals an optimistic view that inflation is making “further progress” toward the 2 percent target. The Committee also highlights that it has “gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably” toward its goal. However, this confidence is misplaced, given the persistent inflationary pressures evident in the data. The energy index has declined 4 percent over the past 12 months, but core inflation remains stubbornly high, and key services sectors continue to experience rising prices.
Cutting rates under these conditions risks reigniting inflation, just as the Fed’s premature monetary policy, including rate cuts, in the late 1970s exacerbated inflation and led to economic instability. The FOMC’s decision to reduce the target range for the federal funds rate while signaling its commitment to further rate cuts, if “appropriate,” creates uncertainty in the markets. This mixed messaging signals that the Fed is willing to sacrifice long-term price stability for short-term gains, which could lead to more aggressive corrective actions. Given the double-dip recession in the early 1980s, there is reason for concern.
The Path Forward: Fiscal and Monetary Solutions
The Fed’s dual mandate is to ensure price stability and maximum employment. With inflation still above target, its focus should be on controlling inflation–its balance sheet and inflation are the only two things it can control.This highlights the need to make it a single mandate to ensure price stability rather than trying to stimulate economic growth. History teaches us that premature rate cuts — like those in the 1970s — lead to higher inflation, more aggressive rate hikes, and economic contraction.
A more prudent approach would involve reducing the Fed’s balance sheet more aggressively, which would help soak up the excess liquidity, fueling inflationary pressures. Moreover, Congress must confront the spending crisis head-on. A balanced approach to fiscal policy, with spending limits tied to a maximum rate of population growth and inflation, would help stabilize government finances and reduce the deficit. Even better is Sen. Rand Paul’s Six Penny Plan, a “federal budget resolution that will balance on-budget outlays and revenues within five years by cutting six pennies off every dollar projected to be spent in the next five fiscal years.” Without these structural reforms, inflation will continue to threaten the purchasing power of Americans.
Furthermore, the government should remove barriers to productivity by cutting excessive regulations and taxes that stifle growth. Allowing the free market to operate efficiently without the distortive effects of heavy-handed government policies will promote sustainable, long-term growth.
Conclusion: A Critical Moment for the Economy
The Federal Reserve and Congress are at a critical juncture. The Fed’s decision to cut rates prematurely risks repeating the costly mistakes of the 1970s, where loose monetary policy fueled inflation, leading to severe economic instability. Simultaneously, Congress’s reluctance to tackle deficit spending driving the ballooning national debt only exacerbates the underlying issues plaguing the economy.
Now is not the time for short-term fixes. The Fed should focus on reducing its balance sheet and controlling inflation, while Congress must enact serious spending reforms to prevent further economic deterioration. If we fail to act now, we risk plunging into an inflationary spiral reminiscent of the 1970s — a government-induced failure the American economy cannot afford.
About the author: Vance Ginn, Ph.D., is founder and president of Ginn Economic Consulting, LLC and an Associate Research Fellow with AIER. He is chief economist at Pelican Institute for Public Policy and senior fellow at Americans for Tax Reform. He previously served as the associate director for economic policy of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, 2019-20.
The American Institute for Economic Research educates people on the value of personal freedom, free enterprise, property rights, limited government, and sound money. AIER’s ongoing scientific research demonstrates the importance of these principles in advancing peace, prosperity, and human progress. AIER is a nonpartisan research and education nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization focused on the importance of markets, with a full range of programs and publications on the social sciences with a primary emphasis on economics.
23andMe, me, me All seven independent directors of the DNA testing company 23andMe resigned last week after its founder, Anne Wojcicki, failed to produce an “actionable” plan to take the company private.
So what? It’s an astonishing motion of no-confidence in Wojcicki and her vision of bringing genetic testing to the masses. Since its inception in 2006, over 14 million people have used the services of 23andMe, spitting into test tubes in the hope of tracing their family trees. The upshot hasn’t always been happy. But horror stories (like finding you were switched with another baby at birth, or have been sleeping with a half-sibling) aren’t the reason 23andMe’s stock has plunged 99 per cent since it went public in 2021. That’s because of an unsustainable business model, a cavalier approach to privacy and regulation, and a headstrong founder who led in accordance with the Silicon Valley mantra of “move fast and break things”.
Bay area Barbie. No one could accuse Wojcicki of lacking self-belief. Raised on the Stanford campus by academic parents, she went on to Yale and several hedge funds before diving into the sink-or-swim world of medical testing. In 2007 she married Sergey Brin and secured funding from Google, which he co-founded. Four years later 23andMe floated for $6 billion, getting free PR from celebrities attending “spit parties”.
Wojcicki’s success followed her sisters’; Janet, who became a paediatrics professor, and Susan, the former CEO of Youtube who died last year. In March 2023, Mattel launched a set of Barbie dolls based on the Wojcicki sisters in celebration of International Women’s Day. At the time, 23andMe was going through its first round of layoffs.
Going it alone. The problem with selling DNA tests is that customers only need to take them once. 23andMe’s plan to sell bespoke subscriptions foundered and its more recent forays into telehealth medicine and obesity drugs have yet to yield results. Fed up with the punishing life of a listed company, Wojcicki, who owns 49 per cent of 23andMe, hatched a plan to take it private. Board members including Roelof Botha, managing partner at Sequoia Capital, and Neal Mohan, the head of Youtube, were initially open to the plan. But Wojcicki’s proposal in late July to buy out at $0.40 a share failed to offer any premium for shareholders. Within two months the board resigned en-masse saying, “after months of work, we have yet to receive from you a fully financed, fully diligenced, actionable proposal.” Wojcicki is now the sole headshot on 23andMe’s directors’ webpage. In response to questions about her plans, a spokesperson for Wojcicki directed Tortoise to a memo she sent to employees in which she said she was surprised and disappointed by the resignations.
Testing, testing. Some of 23andMe’s troubles stem from an insouciant approach to privacy. Last year the company was the victim of a devastating data breach which affected 7 million customers, some of whom were targeted on the basis of their ethnicity when sensitive genetic data was posted on forums on the dark web; took six months to identify and involved a fairly basic hacking technique called “credential stuffing”; and led to a class-action lawsuit which is expected to be settled for $30 million. Some lawyers involved in the suit aren’t satisfied with the proposed settlement and say it doesn’t go far enough in investigating who else has access to 23andMe’s data. The company says around 80 per cent of its customers opt in to let their information be used for genetic research and drug development. This has helped it secure data-sharing deals with GSK and others “We want to know if they’ve given data to other people. We want to know what permission they got to do that,” says Eli Wade-Scott at Edelson PC. He says Wojcicki’s take-private offer is an “indication that the CEO wants to pull this into a place where nobody can have that information anymore”.
What’s more… There’s a risk that 23andMe’s data trove could “time-out” as scientists move to more expansive sequencing of the genome. One immediate option is acquisition: New York-based Nucleus Genomics says it’s considering making a public offer. Wojcicki might be wise to take the Valley approach and move fast.
The flow state: the science of the elusive creative mindset that can improve your life
This article is more than 2 months old
Scientists have long known the mental and creative benefits of the flow state, in which total absorption in an activity banishes anxiety. But what causes it, and how can we achieve it?
As a professional ballet dancer, Julia Christensen knew the flow state well: a total absorption in her body’s movements, without the constant chatter that typically accompanies our waking lives. The hours could fly by without her even registering the time that had passed.
A back injury put an end to her career, and alongside the many other life changes that this brought on, she found herself missing the mental calm that had accompanied her practice and performances. “I became aware that I couldn’t control my thoughts,” she says. “And I’d never had to deal with that before.”
Christensen is now a senior scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt am Main, and her latest book The Pathway to Flow charts her attempts to regain that blissful feeling of being fully immersed in an activity. “It was a sort of quest.”
The outcome of her journey could be of huge benefit to many people. Studies suggest that entering the flow state can enhance our performance in activities such as sports or music, and improve our creativity and wellbeing.The late Hungarian psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, who first coined the term flow, went as far as to call it “the secret to happiness”. So what is it? And how can we enter this sometimes elusive brain state?
They say slow and steady wins the race – but if we are to feel flow, we need to avoid a sense of rivalry altogether
Csíkszentmihályi began his investigations in the 1970s, after interviewing hundreds of participants about the ups and downs of their lives.Contrary to the assumption that we are happiest while resting, he found that the peaks often involved very high levels of mental focus. The specific activity did not seem to matter – it could be swimming, playing the violin or performing brain surgery. What counted was the feeling of immersion and mastery. “The best moments,” he later wrote in his book Flow: The Psychology of Happiness, “usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”
Based on further interviews, Csíkszentmihályi defined the core characteristics that seemed to mark these optimal experiences, leading to the concept of flow.Those elements included a high level of concentration, a sense of control, and decreased rumination or worry, with a clear goal and immediate feedback. It is also accompanied by an altered sense of time, as we fail to notice the minutes or hours flying by.
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi first coined the term flow in 1970. He called it “the secret to happiness.” Photograph: Photo courtesy of Claremont Graduate University
As one mountaineer told Csíkszentmihályi,“When you’re [climbing] you’re not aware of other problematic life situations. It becomes a world unto its own, significant only to itself.” Or in the words of a basketball player: “The court – that’s all that matters… You can think about a problem all day, but as soon as you get in the game, the hell with it!” In everyday life, we might describe this as being “in the zone” or “in the groove”. “It’s when you reach your personal peak,” says Prof Dimitri van der Linden of Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Psychologists have since designed a “flow proneness” questionnaire that measures how frequently people experience this state of total absorption and compared that to factors such as personality. They have found that the more neurotic someone is, the less likely they are to experience flow, perhaps because they struggle to turn off the inner critic that could drive them from the state of heightened concentration.Our tendency to get “into the zone” can be influenced by our DNA, with a study comparing identical twins and nonidentical twins suggesting that genetic differences can explain roughly 30% of the variance between individuals. The rest can be explained by environmental factors, such as our upbringing.
Exactly which genes are involved, and the underlying neural activity associated with flow, is still a matter of scientific investigation. “That’s the holy grail at the moment,” says Christensen.
One theory has been that the flow state arises from reduced activity in the prefrontal regions of the brain, which are typically associated with “higher-order thinking” and self-awareness. The idea was that you go into a form of autopilot without deliberating over every decision. A recent review by Luis Ciria, Daniel Sanabria, and Clara Alameda at the University of Granada, however, concludes that evidence for this theory is distinctly lacking. While some experiments have reported lower prefrontal activity, others have suggested that these regions become more engaged during people’s experiences of flow.
The contradictory results may have arisen from the practical challenges of achieving the flow state while using brain scanners, which tend to be very loud and distracting. Most existing studies have also used small sample sizes, which can produce unreliable results. “The psychological construct of flow is well defined,” says Sanabria. “The problem is finding the neural pathway.”
Van der Linden’s research suggests we have been looking at the wrong parts of the nervous system.He proposes that the experience of flow may be linked to the locus coeruleus in the brain stem. The name means “blue spot” in Latin, and despite its diminutive size, it is widely connected to almost all other brain regions. It is also the main producer of the hormone and neurotransmitter noradrenaline, which helps to put us into a state of mental and physical arousal.
Van der Linden argues that the flow state may arise when thelocus coeruleus has moderate baseline activity. This allows it to raise our alertness and attention, so that the brain can respond quickly to incoming information, without us feeling overwhelmed and overstimulated. “You have deeper and more engaged processing of the things that are relevant, which helps you to perform better.”skip past newsletter promotion
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Rituals can help reinforce the correct mindset for your chosen activity, creating a sense of control
The role of the blue spotin the flow state is still very much a hypothesis. Earlier this year, however, Van der Linden published some tentative evidence for the idea in the journal Scientific Reports. Working with the PhD student Hairong Lu and Prof Arnold Bakker, he asked participants to play a complex memory game in the laboratory, while his team measured the dilation of their pupils, an automatic reaction that is known to reflect activity in the locus coeruleus. Sure enough, he found that people’s feeling of flow corresponded with the expected changes in pupil dilation. “When one is in a flow, average pupil dilation is intermediate, but every time something relevant happens, the pupil quickly and relatively strongly dilates to that event for a short period, and then goes back to baseline again,” Van der Linden says.
We may have to wait years for further evidence to accumulate and settle the debate. For concrete proof of flow’s neural basis, Ciria and his colleagues argue, we need many more studies of people performing their chosen activities in more natural settings, rather than artificially engineered tasks.
Such studies present some practical challenges, but they are by no means impossible to execute. You can fit athletes or musicians with EEG skullcaps, for example, that measure their brain’s electrical activity as they practice their sport or play their instrument. Scientists could also make use of people’s sedentary pastimes, such as video gaming, which are known to provoke a sense of flow. Sadly, these kinds of experiments, with sufficient data to draw reliable results, are few and far between. “We need a paradigm shift,” says Alameda.
Fortunately, this hole in our knowledge need not prevent us from trying to find flow more often, since the benefits are already well established. People who regularly experience flow appear to be less susceptible to depression, for example, even after scientists have accounted for potentially confounding factors such as neuroticism.
There are many reasons why this might be. Engaging in an activity that activates the flow state can enhance our sense of growth and purpose in life, which is known to be beneficial for mental health. As Christensen had observed during her dance practice, it can also calm ruminative thinking, helping us to find greater mental peace long after we have finished the activity. Since her injury, she has found that producing visual art provided the necessary mental absorption. “Almost by chance, I discovered that drawing dancers could take me there,” she says.
Activities that require intense focus are conducive to the flow state. Photograph: Studio CJ/Getty Images
In her book, Christensen offers many practical suggestions to enhance your chances of entering that brain state. Much of her advice involves the management of stress, which can push us out of the sweet spot of deep engagement and into hyperarousal. She advises finding rituals that help to reinforce the correct mindset for your chosen activity, since these can create a sense of control and reduce feelings of uncertainty. This might include ritual movements – a fixed pattern of stretches, for instance – or even a particular piece of clothing that you wear each time you practice your activity. “Those cues will set up new habit loops,” Christensen says.
Along the way, we should avoid becoming overambitious. As Csíkszentmihályi first noted, we should be careful to find exercises that roughly match our current skills but offer the opportunity for learning and growth. In today’s hustle culture, it may be tempting to push ourselves harder, but this is only likely to create frustration and stress, without necessarily improving our performance.
A sense of competition can be similarly disruptive. When we engage in social comparison and fear the judgment of others, Christensen says, we create a “really stressful state for the body and brain to be in, and that will not be conducive to flow”. Taking small steps – and celebrating our progress without looking for others’ validation – will be much more likely to increase our engagement over the long term. They say that slow and steady wins the race – but, if we are to feel flow, we need to avoid a sense of rivalry altogether. “The process is what matters,” says Christensen.
She is adamant that we can all build our ability to enter the flow state. “It’s a skill – you can learn it.” She believes that her own quest to find flow has led to something of a personal transformation. “I have photos from before and after, and I can see the difference,” she says. “I became a new me through this.”
The bells are tolling for the demise of the university classroom – at least its physical manifestation. Administrative barbarians are readying their knives and brandishing their drivel-fed visions about pedagogy, a word they scant define, let alone spell. They find it unseemly that an academic could turn up, in person, to teach students who, likewise, turn up in person, to engage in that rich process known as the acquiring of knowledge.
The acuity of this state of affairs has been notable in Australia. This month, the University of Adelaide gassed unsuspecting believers of such traditional forms of learning with a lethal statement. As of 2026, when a new amalgamated behemoth in South Australia, combining the University of Adelaide and University of South Australia, will emerge, students will no longer be turning up, in person, to classes. This would have hardly shocked those familiar with the University of Adelaide’s effort to do the very same thing in 2015. For years, the university managers have hated the physical classroom.
As is always the case with these pronouncements, a fictional body of evidence, opinion and sentiment is referred to by way of justification. “Universities,” claimed a spokesman for Adelaide University, “have been increasingly responding to student needs for a flexible delivery over the years, and the shift away from face-to-face lectures is not new.” Who are these remarkable, absentee students? What, pray, is the sample size? Answer: there was none.
Then comes the elaborate ground cover masking the undemocratic nature of the decision. The domain lead for curriculum (such positions multiply like fungi) at Adelaide University, Joanne Cys, seemed under the impression that staff had been “comprehensively engaged” in developing the new curriculum.“This collaboration is ongoing … with more than 1,500 staff set to develop the content for Adelaide’s University courses and programs between now and 2026.” Content, in these settings, is a very loose concept, not to mention staff qualifications.
The culling of lectures is part of the “Adelaide Attainment Model,” a slimming program that will see trimesters introduced by 2028. It satisfies a “modular” fetish – the world of learning envisaged as starved catwalk models moving across the stage rather than well fed samples of learning buried in books. As such, these modules can be undertaken in the form of online courses, which offer fleeting flexibility and shallow taste. This is education thinned and skinned, fatless and deprived.
To give a sense of this, the Adelaide document is full of anaemic terms. “These activities will deliver an equivalent learning volume to traditional lectures and will form a common baseline for digital learning across courses, providing a consistent experience for students.” The claims to consistency are certainly accurate, in so far as such an experience will be numbingly mediocre.
The document expresses the view that such “asynchronous activities will be self-paced and self-directed, utilising high-quality digital resources that students can engage with anytime and anywhere.”
Within the temple of desecration, certain devotees are expressing concern. “The best assurance we have is there can still be practicals, tutorials or workshops, yet we cannot really teach content in these,” suggested one lecturer to In Daily. Activities might involve quizzes, readings and “short videos” as substitutes for lectures. “This mode of teaching is almost impossible for STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics], health and medicine degrees.”
Every haughty contrarian will find a cowardly sycophant justifying such decay as the heralding of progress. “We sort of already do what is suggested anyway,” claims one unnamed apologist academic, also quoted by In Daily. Students already see “recordings” to begin with, and only then do they go into “face-to-face sessions that are more interactive”. It might be worth asking the obvious point here: why have the recordings in the first place to excuse your reason to teach?
This unnamed individual adopts a very casual attitude towards the modern mutilations of education. “The silly thing about it all is that’s what we do anyway, and the reality is students often don’t watch the recording before coming to the class winds up a bit like being a lecture anyway to make sure they get through the material.”These are comments that remind any reformer that the last bastion of change will always be the academy.
The move towards abolishing such teaching also suggests that the rotting foundations were already offering much for this change. Funded, slothful ignoramuses were already advancing the idea for some years that the classroom be “flipped”, a convenient way which ignores the rigours of instruction and disciplined learning in favour of convenient schedules best done at home. The flipped classroom became the precursor for extinguishing coherent, disciplined learning, linked to space, people and experiences.
The COVID-19 pandemic provided an accelerant for money-pinching administrative juntas to experiment with eliminating student-teacher classes without providing the experience that supposedly accompanies it. Savings were there to be made, student welfare to be manipulated. Here was a chance to extract the pith from the student orchard without providing an ounce of nourishment. The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is merely the next step in retiring, forever, the human in the classroom, a process that, disturbingly enough, will seek to retire the student as well.
In a stingingly sharp piece, scientist Geoff Davies describes the ball wreckers of university teaching as “managerial digital infidels” who treat education as a matter of harvesting knowledge, a body comprising “a big collection of pieces, factoids that can be served in small bowls for the student to consume.” A bleak, apocalyptic interpretation is offered. “Thus, the neoliberal mindset of isolated, asocial individuals competing through a series of fragmented transactions is carried down to its ultimate subversion of the very knowledge on which our culture and civilisation are built.”
The former Conservative leader William Hague and the Labour peer Peter Mandelson have both warned this week that student tuition fees in the UK will have to rise. So what? They’re probably right.
British universities are in the middle of a slow-motion fiscal car crash as the new term starts: 40 per cent of UK universities are running unsustainable deficits, according to the Office for Students.70 of the country’s nearly 290 higher education providers have announced restructures or redundancies, according to the University and College Union. One of six potential disasters drawn up by Sue Gray, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, involves at least one university going bust.Huddersfield, York, Coventry and Kent currently report severe deficits.
Students. Who cares?With staffing and funding crises in primary education, prisons and the NHS, higher education is not a government priority. But the sector provides around 315,000 jobs including 150,000 in academia. It contributed £265 billion to the economy in the 2021–22 academic year – around 8.6 per cent of GDP, which is more than mining, agriculture, forestry, fishing and defence combined.
Moreover, the UK’s Russell Group universities continue to outperform rivals in every other rich country apart from the US despite the squeeze. Not like this.1998, the Labour government introduced tuition fees of £1,000 per year to fund an increase in the number of university places. A series of tinkering interventions since then has s served mainly to make things worse. 2012: as the number of school-leavers going to university peaked, the government raised the fees cap from £3,000 to £9,000 a year, then left it untouched until 2017 when it rose to £9,250. Inflation hit 11 per cent in 2022. The fees are currently worth £6,500 in 2012 prices. 2014:a cap on student numbers was removed. Top institutions boomed. Smaller ones suffered. 2016: Brexit meant fewer EU students and more reliance on uncapped overseas students’ fees, which can reach £67,000 a year for specialist courses like medicine. From 2023:students starting university will make loan repayments for 40 rather than 30 years, start repaying when their salary reaches £25,000 rather than nearly £30,000 under the previous system, and pay a higher rate of interest. 2024: restrictions on overseas students bringing dependents with them hit older postgrad students. The number of visas granted to Indian students fell by 23 per cent and to Nigerian students by almost half.
If you close it, they will leave: the former US senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said: “If you want to build a great city, create a university and wait 200 years.” The process also works in reverse. First-year chemistry student numbers at the University of Hull fell from 160 in 2012 to fewer than 20 last year.The department will close this year. If the university closes too it could cost one of the most deprived parts of the UK 9,000 jobs and £694 million a year.
Sue Gray’s dilemma: What will the government do if a university runs out of money? How to put the sector on a firmer footing? The signs are the answer to the first will be – not much. Jacqui Smith, the minister for skills, has said “if it were necessary” the government would let a university go bust. As for the second, there are three main proposals offered by interested parties: Taxpayer funding.The government could increase the £1 billion annually it gives in grants to cover fees. A graduate tax. Good for the taxpayer; bad for guaranteed university income. Index linking fees.Currently the favourite of most commentators including Hague and Mandelson; vehemently opposed by the National Union of Students.
You’ll pay for this:Jo Johnson, former universities minister and now chairman of the education startup FutureLearn, urges Starmer to announce index linking of tuition fees, and do it soon. He calculates that in the first-year fees would rise to £9,500; in the second to £9,900. Alex Stanley, vice president of higher education at the National Union of Students says the government currently provides just 16 per cent of funding per student. What’s more. Currently no-one except the body representing students thinks that anyone except students should get universities out of the mess that governments have got them into.
