Brain neuron constantly fire in response to the internal and external stimulus. Most of the time Brain is stable but there are times when it operates as a chaotic system. The video shows the animation of the brain's behavior
Neuroscientists have long suspected as much. Only recently, however, have they come up with proof that brains work this way. Now they are trying to work out why. Some believe that near-chaotic states may be crucial to memory, and could explain why some people are smarter than others.
In technical terms, systems on the edge of chaos are said to be in a state of "self-organised criticality". These systems are right on the boundary between stable, orderly behaviour - such as a swinging pendulum - and the unpredictable world of chaos, as exemplified by turbulence.
Mathematician and magician Arthur Benjamin talks about changing the Mathematics education by reducing the emphasis on the Calculus curriculum and covering more Statistics to make mathematics curriculum more interesting.
A past president of the American Psychological Association and a professor emeritus at Stanford, Zimbardo retired in 2008 from lecturing, after 50 years of teaching his legendary introductory course in psychology. In addition to his work on evil and heroism, Zimbardo recently published "The Time Paradox", exploring different cultural and personal perspectives on time.
He talks about the two modes of time perspective. The first perspective is about "Here and Now" that is I want everything now. Not much thinking goes on about future consequences of the choices made in present. The second perspective is all about delayed gratification. Some one constantly working for future goals and postponing the gratification indefinitely. He thinks that both perspective are not ideal choices. An optimum approach between the two time perspective will lead to a balanced healthy life choices.
It makes pursuit of happiness a "Natural and Legal" right of every US citizen raising an interesting question "What is Happiness?" It is sort of assumed that we intuitively know what it is. Is it the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure? or "The calm contentedness of a sage?" or a "Hearty laugh at a joke?". It seems that the word "Happiness" may in fact have several meanings and it may refer to many mental states depending upon the context in which it is being used.
Harvard University has a long running study to learn the "Secrets of Good Life". The study is running for seventy years starting in 1937 and follows lives of its participants from the time they studied at Harvard till recent times. It is one of the longest running longitudinal studies.
The Harvard Psychiatrist George Vaillant is managing the work on this research for the last forty years. In the video from Atlantic magazine below he describes the findings of his work:
It is interesting to note from his comments that there is no single recipe that everybody can follow to attain happiness.
The complete article "What Makes Us Happy" from Atlantic magazine here, is worth reading. It is quite humbling in many ways describing how lives of people twist and turn as move through different stages of their lives.
We are also seeing that the efficient market theory for stock market prediction is also being questioned recently. The new thinking is that the markets are not efficient.
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