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isaac Mao

The Human Brain - Exercise - 13 views

  • Only recently have scientists been able to learn how the neural network of the brain forms. Beginning in the womb and throughout life this vast network continues to expand, adapt, and learn.
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  • Plasticity is the basic mental drive that networks your brain, giving you cognition and memory – fluidity, versatility, and adaptability.
  • Before birth you created neurons, the brain cells that communicate with each other, at the rate of 15 million per hour! When you emerged into the world, your 100 billion neurons were primed to organize themselves in response to your new environment – no matter the culture, climate, language, or lifestyle.
  • A healthy, well-functioning neuron can be directly linked to tens of thousands of other neurons,
  • A healthy, well-functioning neuron can be directly linked to tens of thousands of other neurons, creating a totality of more than a hundred trillion connections – each capable of performing 200 calculations per second!
  • Many neuroscientists believe that learning and memory involve changes at neuron-to-neuron synapses.
  • Travel is another good way to stimulate your brain. It worked for our ancestors, the early Homo sapiens. Their nomadic lifestyle provided a tremendous stimulation for their brains that led to the development of superior tools and survival skills. In comparison, the now-extinct Neanderthal was a species that for thousands of years apparently did not venture too far from their homes. (Maybe they were simply content with their lives – in contrast to the seldom-satisfied sapien.)
  • Exercise is a natural part of life, although these days we have to consciously include it in our daily routine. Biologically, it was part of survival, in the form of hunting and gathering or raising livestock and growing food. Historically, it was built into daily life, as regular hours of physical work or soldiering. What is now considered a form of exercise – walking –was originally a form of transportation.
isaac Mao

Free will - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 1 views

  • It is claimed by some that quantum indeterminism is confined to microscopic phenomena.[54] The claim that events at the atomic or particulate level are unknowable can be challenged experimentally and even technologically: for instance, some hardware random number generators work by amplifying quantum effects into practically usable signals. However, this only amounts to macroscopic indeterminism if it can be shown that microscopic events really are indeterministic.
  • Hard incompatibilism is defended by Derk Pereboom, who identifies a variety of positions where free will is seen irrelevant to indeterminism/determinism, among them the following: Determinism (D) is true, D does not imply we lack free will (F), but in fact we do lack F. D is true, D does not imply we lack F, but in fact we don't know if we have F. D is true, and we do have F. D is true, we have F, and F implies D. D is unproven, but we have F. D isn't true, we do have F, and would have F even if D were true. D isn't true, we don't have F, but F is compatible with D. Derk Pereboom, Living without Free Will,[13] p. xvi. Pereboom calls positions 3 and 4 soft determinism, position 1 a form of hard determinism, position 6 a form of classical libertarianism, and any position that includes having F as compatibilism. He largely ignores position 2
  • Compatibilist models of free will often consider deterministic relationships as discoverable in the physical world (including the brain). Cognitive naturalism[118] is a physicalist approach to studing human consciousness in which mind is simply part of nature, perhaps merely a feature of many very complex self-programming feedback systems (for example, neural networks and cognitive robots), and so must be studied by the methods of empirical science, for example, behavioral science and the cognitive sciences like neuroscience and cognitive psychology.[101][119] Cognitive naturalism stresses the role of neurological sciences. Overall brain health, substance dependence, depression, and various personality disorders clearly influence mental activity, and their impact upon volition also is important.[113] For example, an addict may experience a conscious desire to escape addiction, but be unable to do so. The "will" is disconnected from the freedom to act. This situation is related to an abnormal production and distribution of dopamine in the brain.[120] The neuroscience of free will places restrictions on both compatibilist and incompatibilist free will conceptions. Compatibilist models adhere to models of mind in which mental activity (such as deliberation) can be reduced to physical activity without any change in physical outcome. Although compatibilism is generally aligned to (or is at least compatible with) physicalism, some compatibilist models describe the natural occurrences of deterministic deliberation in the brain in terms of the first person perspective of the conscious agent performing the deliberation.[7] Such an approach has been considered a form of identity dualism. A description of "how conscious experience might affect brains" has been provided in which "the experience of conscious free will is the first-person perspective of the neural correlates of choosing".[7]
isaac Mao

Golden Swamp » Standards and synapses are very different - 0 views

  • I put the Illinois Learning Standards and the Synapse side-by-side to suggest that we require students to learn subjects inside of little boxes, while students think about them in highly connected networks. The boxes in the Standards are separated from each other in all sorts of ways: living things are in different boxes than processes of the Earth. Different things about the same subject are spread out over five different grade levels. There seems little chance of having a thought that relates an early box in “A” to a late box in “E.”
isaac Mao

Not Exactly Rocket Science : Taking the new out of neurons - 0 views

  • The situation is much the same in primates and rodents, where new neurons only appear in the hippocampus and olfactory bulb. In contrast, fish, reptiles and birds renew the neurons throughout their entire network and throughout their entire lives.
anonymous

50 Incredible Social Sites for Social Change | Clear View Education Blog - 4 views

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    For those who have a greater calling and want to make a difference in the world, these 50 sites have responded by setting up social platforms designed to connect volunteers, charities, entrepreneurs, and individuals.
isaac Mao

Study Shows How The Brain Pays Attention; Neural Circuits That Control Eye Movements Pl... - 4 views

  • "Without regulating your attention, you would orient to everything that appears and moves. An organism that couldn't filter anything just wouldn't work. It would be in a state of constant distraction," said Moore. "This work shows that, whether we are moving our eyes or not, the networks that control eye movements may be a source of that filtering."
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