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anonymous

Divided Minds, Specious Souls - 0 views

seedmagazine.com/..._divided_minds_a_specious_soul

layscience

shared by anonymous on 28 Sep 10 - Cached
  • The evidence supports another view: Our brains create an illusion of unity and control where there really isn’t any. Within the wide range of works arranged along the axis of soulism, from Life After Death: The Evidence, by Dinesh D’Souza, to Absence of Mind, by Marilynne Robinson, it is clear there is very little understanding of the brain. In fact, to advance their ideas, these authors have to be almost completely unaware of neurology and neuroscience.  For example, Robinson tells us, “Our religious traditions give us as the name of God two deeply mysterious words, one deeply mysterious utterance: I AM.” The translation might be, “indoctrination tells us we have a soul, it feels like we are a unified little god in control of our bodies, so we are.” 
  • anonymous on 28 Sep 10
     
    "The experience of a unified mind and the possibility of an everlasting soul are connected. And there is scant evidence to support the existence of either." "For the believers in the soul, let's call them soulists, the soul assumption appears to be only the smallest of steps from the existence of a unified mind. Yet the soul is a claim for which there isn't any evidence. Today, there isn't even evidence for that place soulists step off from, the unified mind. Neurology and neuroscience, working unseen over the past century, have eroded these ideas, the soul and the unified mind, down to nothing. Experiences certainly do feel unified, but to accept these feelings as reality is a mistake. Often, the way things feel has nothing to do with how they are." By David Weisman at Seed on September 21, 2010.
anonymous

The Walking Dead, Mirror Neurons, and Empathy - 1 views

www.psychologyofgames.com/...ead-mirror-neurons-and-empathy

shared by anonymous on 08 Nov 12 - Cached
Erik Hanson liked it
  • Suddenly the researcher noticed that according to the equipment hooked up to the monkey’s brain, neurons were firing that were associated with grasping motions, even though the animal had only SEEN something being grasped. This was odd, because normally brain cells are very specialized and nobody knew of any neurons that would activate both when performing an action or when seeing someone else perform the same action. Yet here the monkey was, blithely firing neurons previously only associated with performing motor actions while just sitting still and watching.
  • Thus was the first observation of a mirror neuron in action, a brain cell set apart from many of its peers and which are also present in delicious human brains. It turns out that many researchers like the aforementioned Dr. Marco Iacoboni, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UCLA, believe that mirror neurons are important for our ability to empathize with things we see, like the plight of poor Lee and Clementine in The Walking Dead.
  • I think this is one of the reasons why The Walking Dead is so good at eliciting emotions: it frequently shows us the faces of the characters and lets us see all the work put into creating easily recognizable and convincing facial expressions. And so it’s not the zombies that elicit dread in us. Instead it’s things like the face that Kenny makes when Lee tells him to make a hard decision about his family.
  • anonymous on 08 Nov 12
     
    "And the amazing thing is that the game gets me to feel all those emotions too. I'm glad that the game comes in monthly installments, because I need the time between episodes to recover. But why is that? By what psychological, neurological, and biological mechanisms do video games like The Walking Dead get us to not only empathize with characters onscreen, but also share their emotions?"
anonymous

In search of perfection, young adults turn to Adderall at work - 1 views

america.aljazeera.com/...dultsturntoadderallatwork.html

shared by anonymous on 04 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Benson (whose name, like all the people in this story who discuss their ADHD drug use, has been changed to protect her identity) is typical of a growing population of young adults who went to college in the 2000s. As they age out into the workplace, they’re taking with them the ADHD med habits they developed in college — and finding the drugs still work.
  • a more complete explanation suggests an environment that encourages stimulant use.
  • what is fast becoming the modern condition: guilt and anxiety over any minute not spent working or promoting that work.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • According to IMS Health, in 2007, 5.6 million monthly prescriptions for ADHD medications were written for people ages 20 to 39.
  • By 2011, that number had jumped to 14 million, a staggering 150 percent increase.
  • The active ingredients in Adderall target the parts of the brain responsible for executive function. In other words, Adderall solves the very problems the modern world creates. Long now uses the drug daily
  • The drugs are so popular because they work. “Adderall opens up time for you,” Collier said, emphasizing that using it enables him to get all his work done and still have time to work on other projects.
  • Essentially, Chatterjee argues that the advances in cognitive neuroscience and neuropharmacology mean the question of to what extent we want to create and live in a drug-enhanced society may no longer be relevant. That way of life is already here, and society must now account for the moral implications it brings.
  • Like cosmetic surgery, cosmetic neurology will likely be available only to those with the disposable income to afford elective medicine, expanding the already wide gap between the haves and have-nots.
  • An added concern is that the growing use of stimulants in the workplace will produce a new work environment in which use of neurological enhancement through pharmaceuticals is just one more thing expected of the perfect worker.
  • “Everyone is in an arms race of accomplishment,” Chatterjee said.
  • anonymous on 04 Dec 13
     
    "Ella Benson was a junior in college the first time she took it. With a class assignment due, she was offered the drug as a means to stay up all night and crank out something respectable by morning. It worked, and Benson now says it was the first time she "really connected" with something she was working on. "It was the first paper I wrote where I felt like I came up with an idea that was meaningful and important," she said. "I got an A on it." An A for Adderall."
anonymous

Experiencing Teen Drama Overload? Blame Biology - 0 views

www.npr.org/...story.php

layscience neurology

shared by anonymous on 16 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Parents wanted higher self-esteem for their kids and closer relationships with them. Fear-based, power-coercive relationships went the way of the rod in classrooms. So it's no wonder that today's teens feel much more free to act out than their predecessors ever hoped. And they do. Just ask any parent of a teenager, who will likely complain about rudeness, ill manners, constant criticism and even being yelled at by their teenager.
  • Teens may actually not be able to help engaging in questionable behavior. And their reactions may be, in large part, due to dramatic changes in their rapidly developing brains.
  • "She's really a beautiful person," says Cregon. "I see her with small children at camp and her little cousins and stuff, and she's fabulous. And she's really sweet with her uncle, her aunt, my mom. It's just me!"
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • "I'm good. You're bad," says Kastner. "And they're both doing that at the same time." Kastner describes it as the worst time in any intimate relationship.
  • About half of the "thinking" neurons in certain regions of the brain, Chattra says, are literally "wiped out."
  • "Sometimes, parents say, 'What were you thinking?' " says Kastner. "And the joke's on us. They weren't thinking. They were running like wildebeests in the canyon. Just go, go, go. You know, they were flooded and excited and not really thinking through the consequences of their actions."
  • "It will be small, medium or large, based on the quality" of the self-critique and how much the parents believe their children learned from the mistake, she says. Parents might even have the teenager suggest their own discipline. And there's an added benefit to the teens' writing. It engages the "thinking" part of the brain, and gets the teenager away from the emotional frenzy of the night.
  • And forget having the last word, she says. "Let them have the last word," Kastner says about the kids.
  • "We need to let that riffraff go," she says, "and cease-and-desist because it's going nowhere." Kastner likens such a cease-and-desist reaction to the protocol exercised by police, firefighters and pilots: Don't think. Just follow protocol, which is — first and foremost — cool down. She says, "We don't want to drive under the influence of alcohol, and we don't want to talk to our loved ones under the influence of extreme emotion."
  • anonymous on 16 Aug 10
     
    "Back in the days of authoritarian parenting in the '50s, obedience and propriety were high values. Digressions from good manners, respect and good behavior were often met with punishment. But then in the '60s and '70s, things changed." By Patti Neighmond at NPR on August 16, 2010.
anonymous

Images capture moment brain goes unconscious - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...science-environment-13751783

layscience neurology

shared by anonymous on 14 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • As the patient goes under, different parts of the brain seem to be "talking" to each other, a team told the European Anaesthesiology Congress in Amsterdam.
  • they caution that more work is needed to understand what is going on.
  • unconsciousness is a process by which different areas of the brain inhibit each other as the brain shuts down.
  • anonymous on 14 Jun 11
     
    "For the first time researchers have monitored the brain as it slips into unconsciousness. The new imaging method detects the waxing and waning of electrical activity in the brain moments after an anaesthetic injection is administered."
anonymous

Is your depression caused by brain inflammation? - 0 views

io9.com/...n-caused-by-brain-inflammation

layscience neurology

shared by anonymous on 05 Aug 11 - Cached
  • anonymous on 05 Aug 11
     
    "Neuroscientists have linked depression to brain inflammation before, and now a new study suggests further evidence for this theory."
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