Brain, Mind, Consciousness and Learning

Heribert Watzke: The brain in your gut

2011-11-24T12:08:00.001-08:00

Apes and Human | Are we Different from Chimps? Not Much

2011-02-26T04:12:00.000-08:00

Neurologist professor Robert Sapolsky from Stanford talks about the similarities between Humans and Chimps.

Similar idea is explored in this article

For additional information the hour long talk of Professor Sapolsky on this topic is available at FORA TV here

Professor George Lakoff on Non-Conscious Mental Processing

2010-12-30T12:02:00.000-08:00

Prof. George Lakoff - Reason is 98% Subconscious Metaphor in Frames & Cultural Narratives. The rational actor model is not how human make decision.

Brain Sex | Why We Fall in Love

2010-12-05T12:36:00.000-08:00

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

Neuroscience meets Magic

2010-12-05T06:37:00.000-08:00

The riddle of experience vs. memory and its effect on happiness

2010-03-07T00:22:00.000-08:00

Dr. Daniel Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Memorial prize in 2002 for his work with Tversky, who died before the award was bestowed. In a lovely passage in his Nobel biography, Kahneman looks back on his deep collaboration with Tversky and calls for a new form of academic cooperation, marked not by turf battles but by "adversarial collaboration," a good-faith effort by unlike minds to conduct joint research, critiquing each other in the service of an ideal of truth to which both can contribute.

via ted.com

Why Do We Think Alike

2010-02-13T00:50:00.000-08:00

Thinking Perception Attention Memory

2009-12-11T19:39:00.000-08:00

Chris Atherton at TCUK09

View more documents from Chris Atherton.

Harvard Profesor Dan Gilbert asks, Why are we happy?

2009-10-02T22:02:00.000-07:00

Simulated Brain in a Super Computer

2009-09-06T21:25:00.001-07:00

Blue Brain Image from Switzerland

In the microscopic, yet-uncharted circuitry of the cortex, Henry Markram is perhaps the most ambitious -- and our most promising -- frontiersman. Backed by the extraordinary power of the IBM Blue Gene supercomputing architecture, which can perform hundreds of trillions of calculations per second, he's using complex models to precisely simulate the neocortical column (and its tens of millions of neural connections) in 3D. Source

Sir Ken Robinson on Education and Creativity

2009-08-09T17:06:00.000-07:00

Sir Ken Robinson is a creativity expert.

He challenges the way we're educating our children, and champions a radical rethinking of our school systems to better cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence. His latest book, The Element, looks at how we find our creative passion.

Janine Benyus: Biomimicry in action

2009-08-07T15:27:00.000-07:00

Art, Music, Emotions, Love and Human Evolution

2009-08-04T17:10:00.000-07:00

University of California TV presents a talk by the three world-renowned researchers

1. Antonio Damasio: University of Southern California and Author of several popular books inluding

The Feeling of what Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness‎

2. Helen Fisher Rutger University and author of book

Why we love: the nature and chemistry of romantic love

3. Isabelle Peretz University of Montreal

The Handbook of Cognitive Neuropsychology: What Deficits Reveal about the ...‎ - Page 519

Music Perception and Recognition Isabella Peretz All human societies have music.
As far as we know, they have always had. Unlike other widespread human.

These scientists share their insights and research work into the neural basis of art, creativity, emotions and music and the powerful roles they play in human evolution.

Richard O. Brown: The Neuroscience of Nothing

2009-08-03T20:03:00.001-07:00

Psychologically Speaking What Does "Free Will" Really Mean

2009-08-02T02:31:00.000-07:00

Dr. John Bargh is a Professor of Psychology at Yale University. His work is in the area of "Automaticity" where he investigate about our Automatic Behavior. His Laboratory at Yale:

The ACME (Automaticity in Cognition, Motivation, and Emotion) Lab at Yale focuses on nonconscious or automatic influences on psychological and behavioral processes. In one way or another, all of our studies address the issue of free will, and how much of it do we as individuals really have. We are interested in the extent to which all social psychological phenomena -- attitudes and evaluations, emotions, impressions, motivations, social behavior -- occur nonconsciously and automatically. Currently, our research is actively exploring how social goals such as to cooperate, achieve, become friends, and so on, are triggered and operate without the person's awareness. We also are looking at the potential sources of these nonconscious motivations in real life settings, for example, the significant others in our lives can be one major source. A related question is how these various sources of nonconscious influence interact with each other, and how much of our 'real life' experience is governed by them. We are also starting to look at emotional experience as a potential internal trigger of goals and future intentions. That all of these effects occur without the person's intention and awareness, yet have such strong effects on the person's decisions and behavior, has considerable implications for the nature and purpose of consciousness. By discovering those domains of social life in which conscious, deliberate processes are not necessary, we can shed more light on what consciousness is needed for -- that is, what its true purpose is. Source

He gave a talk discussing the issue of "Free Will" during a symposium at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Convention in Tampa, FL.

Our Behavior are not as free as we would like them to be.

Prof Richard Davidson: Be Happy Like a Monk

2009-07-26T19:16:00.000-07:00

Professor Richard Davidson describes the brain activity of a monk.

What is Unique about Human

2009-07-20T21:08:00.000-07:00

Robert Sapolsky is currently a professor of Biological Sciences, and Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University. He is also a big time primatlogist who studies Baboons in Africa.

In this lecture he talks about what is unique about human.

Terence Mckenna - Culture is your operating system

2009-07-19T13:08:00.000-07:00

Terence Mckenna, a self taught ethno-botanist uses interesting metaphor of operating system to appeal to the sensibilities of technical types who insist on modeling real life phenomenon.

Left Brain vs. Right Brain

2009-07-11T17:50:00.001-07:00

Source
Click on the image for a bigger picture.

Does Money Affects Happiness

2009-07-09T19:25:00.000-07:00

CBS MoneyWatch talks to Stanford Professor Jennifer Aaker about the psychological toll of ups and down in economy including tips for creating a stress-free life style.

Using Visual Perception in Problem Solving

2009-07-08T20:41:00.000-07:00

Visual Perception is one of the most used cognitive function. It helps us in moving around without running into other objects. It also helps us in finding our position and orientation in space. It is also instrumental in visual problem solving.

Dan Roem wrote a book "The Back of Napkin: Solving Problem and Selling Ideas" The book explains how images and pictures can be used to solve our complex problems and explaining ideas. Here is an example where he describes the difference in finding information between Google and Alltop information aggregator. "How You Find your Information Nuggets" According to him we do not need artistic talent to draw comlex pictures. Simple sketches as shown in this ewample will do the job of visual problem solving.

Dr. Robert Horn is a visiting scholar at Stanford university. He work in the area of Visual Language and wrote a book "Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century" His web page at Stanford University illustrates his approach of Information Modeling using Visual Language. An optimum combination of pictures and words can create a very strong communiaction script. It can even help in developing visual information slides that can communicate across culture and disciplines.

In the video below Information Designer Tom Wujec talks about three areas of brain that are used in word, image and emotion processing. He gives an approach of using visual perception for solving problems using three steps:

1. Creating images that helps us in visualizing problems
2. By allowing interaction with the images
3. By making the results of all the first two steps persistence

He shows an example on how people at Autodesk use this for their internal tasks.

We spend a big part of our time in watching video screens that is constantly refreshed through a computer. With increased computing power and increased video screen resolution and size it will become possible to use icons and imagery to communicate ideas, concepts and collaboration for problem solving among teams. This will allow us to tackle some of the complex problems that seems unsolvable at this time. It will also reduce the over emphasis on the written words we currently have, reducing the burden on verbal part of the brain brain.

Watch Your Musical Brain

2009-07-02T18:08:00.000-07:00

Jon Stewart of the daily show interviews Neurologist Oliver Sacks who is the author of the book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (2007) -- Revised & Expanded (2008). He has appeared on PBS program "Musical Instinct"

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Oliver Sacks

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Jason Jones in Iran

How Chaos Drives the Brain

2009-06-30T22:08:00.000-07:00

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.

The complete article is here.

Twitter in The Classroom

2009-06-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

Changing Mathematics Education

2009-06-30T03:08:00.000-07:00

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.

Chimpanzee Learning to Eat Japanese Food

2009-06-28T22:20:00.000-07:00

Philip Zimbardo on Time and Temptation

2009-06-24T17:14:00.000-07:00

Philip Zimbardo bio

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.

What Makes Us Happy

2009-06-21T16:49:00.000-07:00

Humans have been searching for happiness since they became human.

The US "Declaration of Independence" document mostly authored by Thomas Jefferson in 1776 explicitly mentions it in the following famous phrase:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

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.

Daniel Kahneman on Behavioral Economics

2009-06-12T20:43:00.000-07:00

Dr. Daniel Kahneman is a professor of Psychology at Princeton University. He is one of the few psychologhists who received nobel prize for economics. He questioned the assumption of rationality behind the human decision making process. He also showed that human decisions are not rational.

He is the speaker at the Georgetown University at the graduation ceremony.

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.

Steve Pinker with Richard Dawkins On Charles Darwin

2009-06-12T20:17:00.000-07:00

Richard Dawkins interviews Steve Pinker for "The Genius of Charles Darwin". Steve Pinker bio

Steven Pinker is Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Until 2003, he taught in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. He conducts research on language and cognition, writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time, and The New Republic, and is the author of seven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules, The Blank Slate, and most recently, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature.

The interview was done for the Channel 4 UK TV program which won British Broadcasting Awards' "Best Documentary Series" of 2008.

Parrot Messages a Cat's Head

2009-06-09T21:40:00.000-07:00

Animal Consciousness

Loving Lions

2009-05-22T16:47:00.000-07:00

Lions are known for their ferociousness and killing. They also have a soft affectionate side where they remember their human rescuers. On meeting them they show extreme love and affection towards them.

Lion rescued in Columbia kisses rescuer (via Rehan)

London Lion Reunion in Africa

Watch Seth Godin on Tribes

2009-05-11T20:08:00.000-07:00

Seth Godin talks about Tribes and how to be instrumental in bringing about change in the future.

Source

Obedience: Phil Zimbardo on Colbert Report

2009-05-04T18:55:00.000-07:00

Dr. Zimbardo is a professor at Stanford. He wrote a book titled "Lucifer Effect" that goes into obedience behavior, when it is appropriate and under what conditions it becomes a moral hazard.

He discusses his book here with Stephen Colbert in this video

His expriments are similar to the experiments conducted by Yale Psychologist Stanely Milgram in which he studied the willingness of the subjects to obey the authority figures.

An excerpt from an article by Stanely Milgram

The Perils of Obedience

by Stanley Milgram

Obedience is as basic an element in the structure of social life as one can point to. Some system of authority is a requirement of all communal living, and it is only the person dwelling in isolation who is not forced to respond, with defiance or submission, to the commands of others. For many people, obedience is a deeply ingrained behavior tendency, indeed a potent impulse overriding training in ethics, sympathy, and moral conduct.

The dilemma inherent in submission to authority is ancient, as old as the story of Abraham, and the question of whether one should obey when commands conflict with conscience has been argued by Plato, dramatized in Antigone, and treated to philosophic analysis in almost every historical epoch. Conservative philosophers argue that the very fabric of society is threatened by disobedience, while humanists stress the primacy of the individual conscience.
The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation. Source

Michael Merzenich: Exploring the re-wiring of the brain

2009-05-04T15:57:00.000-07:00

Michael Merzanich studies brain's ability to reconfigure itself also known as Brain Plasticity. He also studies how to use this ability of the brain to help it grow for useful purposes.

His bio

One of the foremost researchers of neuroplasticity, Michael Merzenich's work has shown that the brain retains its ability to alter itself well into adulthood -- suggesting that brains with injuries or disease might be able to recover function, even later in life. He has also explored the way the senses are mapped in regions of the brain and the way sensations teach the brain to recognize new patterns.

Merzenich wants to bring the powerful plasticity of the brain into practical use through technologies and methods that harness it to improve learning. He founded Scientific Learning Corporation, which markets and distributes educational software for children based on models of brain plasticity. He is co-founder and Chief Science Officer of Posit Science, which creates "brain training" software also based on his research.

Merzenich is professor emeritus of neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco.

and his talk

The discovery of Brain Plasticity displaces the old thinking that brain connections get set early in life in life. Once set they can not be altered and in the old age we experience weakening of these connections.

Innovation as Learning Process

2009-04-29T19:53:00.000-07:00

This video describes four style of learners and how they all contribute to the innovation process.

Innovation as a Learning Process from Roger H. Shealy on Vimeo.

Brain Economic and Moral Choices

2009-04-15T20:18:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

The brains is the central organ where most of our decisions are made. It has been a mysterious organ because we could not look inside the brain to observe how we actually make decisions.

There were many old models those divided the decision making mainly into two separate processes. The rational goal oriented decision making process and the irrational emotion based decision making process sometimes referred to as "Animal Spirits". All the attempts that are made to civilize humans were to suppress the irrational decision making and promote rational decision making. The modernity was based upon the ascension of the rational decision making to the highest pedestal while our instinctual urges were considered bad and relegated to the bottom of the pyramid of the needs.

This two part division provided a satisfactory explanation for our behavior in the past. It also provided guidelines for developing suitable methods to train kids to become rational functioning adults. However, the recent advances in non invasive brain scanning techniques such as FMRI allow us to probe inside the brain while it is trying to make decisions. The technique still lacks fine spatial and temporal resolution but it is getting better with time and it provides a glimpse of inside working of human brain.

The neurons inside the brain are interconnected and we do not find a clear cut distinction between two types of decision making. In fact both of them are involved in all types of decision making. This invalidates the "Rational Actor" model of humans used in Economic theory. Human are not purely rational decision making computers.

We now have new disciplines like Neuro-economics and Behavioral Finance. These disciplines have shown that our decisions differ sometimes considerably from a pure rational actor. All decision are value based decisions including the decisions involving money and morality.

Here is a fascinating video that shows some of the experiments in the field of Neuro-economics showing human decision making and a neuroscience based explanation

We can not find a moral center within the brain making moral decisions. Also, we can not find 'Homo Economus nuclei " within the brain making rational informed decisions on money matters purely out of self interest. This conclusion is fairly obvious to common people but the religious authorities and the big name economists so far are not willing to accept these findings in Neuro-economics despite the mounting evidence supporting the idea that brain is an organic unit and it acts as a single unit to perform calculations leading to making decisions.

The Evolution of Religions

2009-04-12T19:40:00.000-07:00

Cover via Amazon

Faith and Religion are still dominant factors in people's lives and in organizing human societies. It is difficult to discuss faith and religion without strong emotional reactions from its adherents. People have faced discrimination and have lost their lives if they happened to belong to wrong faith depending upon the majority view.

Despite all this scholars have studied religion, its evolution including the believers. The scholarly opinions are all over map because it is difficult to study religion as an objective phenomenon because of the subjective faith of the scholars.

Here is a talk by Dr. Jared Diamonds. His bio

Jared Diamond, professor of geography at UCLA, received the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1998 for Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. In 1999, he received the National Medal of Science. His most recent book is Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2004).He studies religion from evolutionary perspective.

He believes that religions evolved along the changes in the human societies.

Professor Diamond argues that religion has encompassed at least four independent components that have arisen or disappeared at different stages of development of human societies over the last 10,000 years.

The video

The talk is long but raises some very interesting points. Especially the religion providing justification for killing other humnas.

How Bacteria Communicate

2009-04-09T17:33:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Bonnie Bassler, a microbiologist at Princeton, who discovered how bacteria communicate with each other describes how they use chemical molecules and enzymes to communicate. More details of her work from here

The research in my laboratory focuses on the molecular mechanisms that bacteria use for intercellular communication. Our goal is to understand how bacteria detect multiple environmental cues, and how the integration and processing of this information results in the precise regulation of gene expression.

The bacterial communication phenomenon that we study is called quorum sensing, which is a process that allows bacteria to communicate using secreted chemical signaling molecules called autoinducers. This process enables a population of bacteria to collectively regulate gene expression and, therefore, behavior.

In quorum sensing, bacteria assess their population density by detecting the concentration of a particular autoinducer, which is correlated with cell density. This “census-taking” enables the group to express specific genes only at particular population densities. Quorum sensing is widespread; it occurs in numerous Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. In general, processes controlled by quorum sensing are ones that are unproductive when undertaken by an individual bacterium but become effective when undertaken by the group. For example, quorum sensing controls bioluminescence, secretion of virulence factors, sporulation, and conjugation. Thus, quorum sensing is a mechanism that allows bacteria to function as multi-cellular organisms.

She found that bacteria can effectively use chemicals to communicate and socialize. In her TED talk video she explains her research work in more understandable terms.

She is also attempting to develop effective strategies to fight diseases that have become antibiotic resistant by studying the underlying mechanisms of Bacterial communication.

The Good LIfe

2009-04-01T17:04:00.000-07:00

A parable about life

Hugs with Lions

2009-03-29T22:50:00.000-07:00

A South African trainer playing with his lions. I never imagined lions are such playful creatures.

This is courageous and skilled work.

Also, Riana Van Nieuwenhuizen, a sanctuary worker in South Africa shares her home with four cheetahs, five lions and two tigers. The cats are allowed to roam freely throughout the house. Here she is lying in bed with some of them:

Another picture showing these cats in her kitchen:

Please click on the images for bigger complete sharper pictures of the scene. The entire article with more pictures and detail is here.

Why People Cheat and Steal

2009-03-18T16:29:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Professor Dan Ariely grew up in Israel and holds degrees in many discipline including Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology and Business. He currently teaches Behavioral Economics in Duke University while also holding an appointment at MIT media lab where he is the heads the eRationality research group.

He is author of many books. Most recent one is "Predicatably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions". He talks about our behavior that is anything but rational. Some of the topics are:

The Truth about Relativity: Why Everything Is Relative-Even When It Shouldn't Be
The Cost of Zero Cost: Why We Often Pay Too Much When We Pay Nothing
The Cost of Social Norms: Why We Are Happy to Do Things, but Not When We are Paid to Do Them
The Influence of Arousal: Why Hot Is Much Hotter Than We Realize
The High Price of Ownership:Why We Overvalue What We Have

There are thirteen chapters that describe our decision making habits that are very predictable but does not fit the rational model of decision making. He also highlights the empiricla research that supports all these predicatbly irrational decision making and behavior.

In a way it is good that finally researcher like him is putting real human back into research instead of some idealized human model that assumes that humans are rational decision making machines whose behavior is always directed by looking after the one's best inetest.

He also gave a talk at TED where he explains people's behavior that involves cheating and stealing. How people go about justifying such socially unacceptable behavior.

We are in a transition from modernity to post modernity. Hopefully the transition will use a more accurate model of human decision making and behavior compared to the one we use now.

We Need Wisdom

2009-03-15T20:41:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

We have too much information and knowledge. It is creating a false sense of security that we know enough to deal with any kind of crisis. The current economic crisis prove that knowledge in itself is not enough to anticipate and avert crisis. As a group we seems to act more or less as a reactive mind. We rarely foresee problems and mostly lurch from one crisis to another.

Sir Arthur C Clarke was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist. He is well known for his most famous novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, written in collaboration with director Stanley Kubrick, a collaboration which also produced the film of the same name. In one of his interviews he talked about the relationship between information,knowledge,wisdom and foresight. according to him

The Information Age offers much to mankind, and I would like to think that we will rise to the challenges it presents. But it is vital to remember that information— in the sense of raw data— is not knowledge, that knowledge is not wisdom, and that wisdom is not foresight. But information is the first essential step to all of these.

He advised us to move from knowledge to wisdom and develop foresight, that is anticipation of problem before they occur and taking action to avoid them. We saw some of that in the Movie "Minority Report" with Tom Cruise with a different twist.

Recently ,Professor Barry Schwartz also emphasized about the need for developing wisdom in a recent TED talk. He is a psychologist who is also Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and social action at Swarthmore College. He is a published author with a book titled "The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less".

Here is the video of his talk:

The video is fairly convincing but it raises some interesting issues. First is What is Wisdom? and secondly how do we go about developing it? We certainly do not teach it in our curriculum that is loaded with information and the knowledge of past practices. Wisdom certainly is not common sense that is mostly group think.

It probably will be our next quest to develop wisdom to solve our problems created by having too much information and too much use of knowledge that fails to take into consideration the interconnection of things. Knowledge is developed by chunking relevant data about a topic. The knowledge creation process isolates any information that is not relevant. May be wisdom is the interconnection of several chunks of knowledge that exists in isolation in independent disciplines. It is a hard problem how to accomplish this.

This will be our next project if we want to solve our current crisis. The existing approaches are not working.

How do we learn wisdom? Here is a way outlined by Chinese pragmatic philosopher Confucius

By three methods. We may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

Institution vs. Collaboration

2009-03-14T04:48:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Clay Shirkey is the author of "Here Comes Everybody". He is also an adjunct professor in New York University’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Clay Shirky's consulting focuses on the rising usefulness of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, wireless networks, social software and open-source development. New technologies are enabling new kinds of cooperative structures to flourish as a way of getting things done in business, science, the arts and elsewhere, as an alternative to centralized and institutional structures, which he sees as self-limiting. In his writings and speeches he has argued that "a group is its own worst enemy." His clients have included Nokia, the Library of Congress and the BBC. Source

In his talk he talks about the Institution and collaboration. More specifically the collaborative activity that is difficult to capture in an institutional setting. It is part of the long tail and it can be encouraged in non-institutional setting.

Thinking Visually

2009-02-27T15:32:00.000-08:00

A talk that emphasizes visual thinking

Watch Thinking Visually, David Armano, Critical Mass | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

eLearning must be Social

2009-02-24T21:00:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

Digital Technologies offer new ways of creating learning content. It provides all the options from old media with added power of user interactivity. The digital media also offers zero cost of reproduction and very modest cost for distributing the digital learning content. However, these are not the only benefits because with the introduction of social networking iot is now possible to establish a virtual social learning around this digital learning content.

Jay Cross on eLearning.

He talks about the new learning paradigm. Especially the introduction of Social Learning within the realm of learning.

Science of Presentation

2009-02-21T14:22:00.000-08:00

The Slidecast describes the principles of Cognitive Science and how they can be used in developing effective presentations.

The Science Of Presentations

View more presentations from Kevin Gee. (tags: gee kevin)

Switch to full screen mode of presentation by clicking on the full screen icon at the bottom of the presentation. Also each slide has an associated narration. Use your computer's sound system to hear it.

Leadership and Social Intelligence

2009-02-19T23:30:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

Daniel Goleman is an internationally renowned psychologist. He is the author of one of the best selling book "Emotional Intelligence". This book was instrumental in bringing back the role emotions play in our day to dealing with people. It identified emotional intelligence as one of the keys in promoting harmonious relation among people and groups. Also its role in improving the learning abilities of the troubled kids.

He has extended his ideas to include "Social Intelligence". He talks about the role of leadership and how biology plays an important role in creating effective leaders.

The notion that effective leadership is about having powerful social circuits in the brain has prompted us to extend our concept of emotional intelligence, which we had grounded in theories of individual psychology. A more relationship-based construct for assessing leadership is social intelligence, which we define as a set of interpersonal competencies built on specific neural circuits (and related endocrine systems) that inspire others to be effective.Source: Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership

The studies in Social Neuroscience is revealing the inner working of the human brain. They are also studying the attributes that some one a good leader. It seems that good leaders show a good deal of empathy towards the people. There is a mirroring effect between the good leaders and the followers. This also highlights the role mirror neurons play in establishing emphatic relationships.

Perhaps the most stunning recent discovery in behavioral neuroscience is the identification of mirror neurons in widely dispersed areas of the brain. Italian neuroscientists found them by accident while monitoring a particular cell in a monkey’s brain that fired only when the monkey raised its arm. One day a lab assistant lifted an ice cream cone to his own mouth and triggered a reaction in the monkey’s cell. It was the first evidence that the brain is peppered with neurons that mimic, or mirror, what another being does. This previously unknown class of brain cells operates as neural Wi-Fi, allowing us to navigate our social world. When we consciously or unconsciously detect someone else’s emotions through their actions, our mirror neurons reproduce those emotions. Collectively, these neurons create an instant sense of shared experience.Source: Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership

The leaders and followers almost mirror each others body language when the two are in full agreement over the course of future action to move the organization forward.

Eye Tracking Studies by Google

2009-02-15T21:43:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

Video by Google about eye tracking studies showing how eye tracks the search results on a web page.

Cooperation and Fairness in Monkeys

2009-02-08T23:15:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

The traits of cooperation and fairness are the bedrocks of human social organizations. There has recently been lots of interest in the origin of these traits.

Are these traits are unique to human? Probably not. Here is a BBC video that demonstrate both of these traits in monkeys. The first part of video narrated by famous Richard Attenborough shows cooperation between two monkey subjects while the latter half of the video shows a sense of fair play between two monkeys.

Games for Visual Thinking

2009-02-06T20:20:00.000-08:00

Visual Thinking Games

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How We Decide

2009-02-06T17:30:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

Stephen Colbert talks with Jonah Lehrer, the author of the book "How We Decide". The talk focuses on the issues of rational and emotional decision making. Especially how the two mode of thinking support each other. It is another way of saying that humans are not rational creatures but are rationalizing creatures who use rational decision making as a tool.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Jonah Lehrer

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Funny Political News

Christian Bale Parody
Joke of the Day

Social Networks, Biology, and Emerging Computer Mediated Human Interaction

2009-02-01T15:24:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

What it means to have friends on social networks such as Facebook? It is a new kind of computer mediated human interaction. It is obviously different from the kind of face to face interaction we have been used to in normal social situations.

What is it really when some body you tried to befriend on Facebook and they ask you a question do I know you?

Here is a discussion between Albert-László Barabási and James Fowler on this issue of networks how they develop and what are the limits on these networks.

Click to play the video.

Fun in Functional

2009-01-29T22:59:00.000-08:00

The slideshow describes the use of game design principles to develop interactive social media.

Fun in Functional 2009

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Thinking Visually

2009-01-18T22:04:00.001-08:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Thinking Visually

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Spider on Drugs

2008-12-29T16:42:00.001-08:00

Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious

2008-12-24T13:36:00.000-08:00

Image via WikipediaDr. Gird Gigerenzer is a German Psychologist who studies "Bounded rationality" and produces evidence about the human decision making based upon Intuition.

"Gigerenzer, a leading expert and author on heuristics, won the AAAS Prize for the best article in the behavioral sciences. He is the author of Calculated Risks: How To Know When Numbers Deceive You, the German translation of which won the Scientific Book of the Year Prize in 2002. His books on heuristics include Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox, with Reinhard Selten, a Nobel laureate in economics - UCSD

Acccording to the speaker, human beings tend to think of intelligence as a deliberate, conscious activity guided by the laws of logic. Yet, he argues, much of our mental life is unconscious, based on processes alien to logic: gut feelings, or intuitions. Dr. Gigerenzer argues that intuition is more than impulse and caprice; it has its own rationale. This can be described by fast and frugal heuristics, which exploit evolved abilities in the human brain. Heuristics ignore information and try to focus on the few important reasons. Says Gigerenzer: "More information, more time, even more thinking, are not always better, and less can be more."

Here is his talk on Fora.TV

Complete talk is available at the url

Robert Ornstein:MindReal

2008-12-23T14:17:00.000-08:00

Image by booleansplit via FlickrDr. Robert Ornstein is a famous psychologists who did his research work in hemispheric lateralization of brain functions with Nobel Prize winning Physiologist Roger W.Sperry.

Dr. Ornstein has taught at the University of California Medical Center and Stanford University, and he has lectured at more than 200 colleges and universities in the U.S. and overseas. He is the president and founder of the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge (ISHK), an educational nonprofit dedicated to bringing important discoveries concerning human nature to the general public.

Among his many honors and awards are the UNESCO award for Best Contribution to Psychology and the American Psychological Foundation Media Award "for increasing the public understanding of psychology." Source

He has written many books on topics ranging from meditation to mental health with many different famous authors.

He is best known for his pioneering research on the bilateral specialization of the brain, which has given us the terms "right brain" and "left brain" and firmly established them as important concepts in today's lexicon. But just as significant have been his other contributions, among them:

The pioneering delineation of the close link between the mind and health;
The initial integration of key insights about human nature from traditional cultures into the framework of modern psychology;
The depiction of the mind as composed of multiple processing systems rather than being a unified whole;
The insight that our brain, evolved to suit the conditions of the Pleistocene era, is obsolete in its "software" to meet the formidable challenges of the 21st century and the call for "conscious evolution" to enable the necessary adaptation. Source

In a radio talk he talks about his book mind real and how mind construct his own reality.

SWAY: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior

2008-12-18T18:21:00.000-08:00

Image by turtlemom4bacon via FlickrFor a long time we tried to force people think and act in a logical rational manner but it is becoming very clear that humans are anything but rational creatures. We use rational/logical thought processes to plan, design and construct things but we ourselves are not rational beings.

The work in behavioral Economics/finance shows the irrational side in human decision making.

Why we are attracted to irrational behavior? The question is answered by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman in this video.

Visual Thinking

2008-12-15T19:42:00.000-08:00

An Introduction to Visual Thinking

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Use full screen mode to see bigger slides.

Firewalking in the UK

2008-11-21T21:02:00.000-08:00

The World's First Surfing Mice - The Radical Rodents

2008-11-17T17:38:00.000-08:00

Source

Carl Sagan on Human Brain

2008-11-12T17:39:00.000-08:00

Famous astronomer Carl Sagan describes the triune theory of brain proposed by Paul D. Maclean. In his characteristic style of presentation that he used to popularize Astronomy Carl Sagan goes over the functions of the different parts of brain by walking around a giant replica of human brain.

He concludes his presentation by elevating the role of cerebral cortex which provides us with the flexibility of thinking functions and allows us to override the instinctual programs that are coded into our genes.

Dan Dennett Consciousness Deconstructed

2008-11-08T10:43:00.000-08:00

Dan Dennett discusses the Achilles heel of consciousness.

TED talk Consciousness

Learning

2008-11-06T16:32:00.000-08:00

Learning is not a unique activity practiced by humans only. Here are some examples of learning within primates

A rare photograph showing an Orangutan hunting using a spear

via RichardDawkins.net

Another picture showing a young primate learning to stand up to his dad

Source: Smithsonian Museum

A video showing a Chimpanzee learning to ride a segway

This shows that learning is an activity practiced by all living creatures. The easiest form of learning is accomplished by "Mimicry" and "Conditioning"

Brain Computer Interface

2008-11-04T16:58:00.000-08:00

A fascinating video showing many subjects controlling external objects through brain and computer interface.

Watch CBS Videos Online

Apes and Humans

2008-10-17T13:43:00.000-07:00

The apes are the closest animals to humans. A Gene Study finds that Chimps, Humans 96 Percent the Same.

A video showing a Chimpanzee at Primate Research Institute located in University at Kypoto University in Japan. The Chimpanzee AI beats all the human contestants in short memory task.

Chimpanzee AI from Javed on Vimeo.

Bonobos are another species of Apes. They are known to solve their conflict by having sex.

The species is best characterized as female-centered and egalitarian and as one that substitutes sex for aggression. Whereas in most other species sexual behavior is a fairly distinct category, in the bonobo it is part and parcel of social relations--and not just between males and females. Bonobos engage in sex in virtually every partner combination (although such contact among close family members may be suppressed). And sexual interactions occur more often among bonobos than among other primates. Despite the frequency of sex, the bonobo's rate of reproduction in the wild is about the same as that of the chimpanzee. A female gives birth to a single infant at intervals of between five and six years. So bonobos share at least one very important characteristic with our own species, namely, a partial separation between sex and reproduction.

Source: Bonobo Sex and Society: The behavior of a close relative challenges assumptions about male supremacy in human evolution

Even Bonobos' may not be as peaceful as portrayed in that article. Here is one one of the latest article

Bonobos not all peace and free love

Until now bonobos were thought to be very different, living largely peaceful lives and restricting their meat consumption to small forest antelopes, squirrels and rodents.

But the new research has shown that, like the common chimpanzee, bonobos are not above pursuing, killing and eating their primate cousins.

The Susan Savage-Rumbaugh's talk at TED goes further and shows Apes that write, start fires

and play Pac-Man

Also, the work of Primatologists Robert Spalosky among Baboons shows a hierarchical social structure among these monkeys. His publication The Influence of Social Hierarchy on Primate Health" studies the effect of Social Hierarchy on health.

Dominance hierarchies occur in numerous social species, and rank within them can greatly influence the quality of life of an animal. In this review, I consider how rank can also influence physiology and health. I first consider whether it is high- or low-ranking animals that are most stressed in a dominance hierarchy; this turns out to vary as a function of the social organization in different species and populations. I then review how the stressful characteristics of social rank have adverse adrenocortical, cardiovascular, reproductive, immunological, and neurobiological consequences. Finally, I consider how these findings apply to the human realm of health, disease, and socioeconomic status.

What is intereseting is that there are lots of similarities between humans and apes. We have similar genetic make up. We have similar hierarchical social system. We also suffer from similar diseases and have a finite life span.

The major differences between us and them is the use of language that creates a sophisticated cultural environment and extensive use of tools that allows us to create "Engineered Environment" that sets us apart from the nature our source of origin.

The attempt to run away and hide in an "Engineered Environment" supported by inter personal relations mediated through the rules dictated by the prevailing culture, is causing lot of internal conflicts. Where our natural instincts pull us in one direction while the cultural environment pushes us in totally opposite direction.

We are the only species living with an internal conflict on the earth. We can not wish this internal conflict away. No amount of talk about love,peace and compassion will make this conflict go away unless we develop a deeper understanding of this inner conflict and find some creative solution to overcome this inner conflict.

The famous American author Mark Twain, an astute observer of human nature, wrote an essay "What is Man" . He did not publish the essay while he was alive because he thought that that his essay that contained his original insight about the nature of man may not be accepted too well. The essay was published after his death.

O.M. Yes, the half-dozen others are modifications of the extremes. But the law is the same. Where the temperament is two-thirds happy, or two-thirds unhappy, no political or religious beliefs can change the proportions. The vast majority of temperaments are pretty equally balanced; the intensities are absent, and this enables a nation to learn to accommodate itself to its political and religious circumstances and like them, be satisfied with them, at last prefer them. Nations do not THINK, they only FEEL. They get their feelings at second hand through their temperaments, not their brains. A nation can be brought--by force of circumstances, not argument--to reconcile itself to ANY KIND OF GOVERNMENT OR RELIGION THAT CAN BE DEVISED; in time it will fit itself to the required conditions; later, it will prefer them and will fiercely fight for them. As instances, you have all history: the Greeks, the Romans, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Russians, the Germans, the French, the English, the Spaniards, the Americans, the South Americans, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Hindus, the Turks--a thousand wild and tame religions, every kind of government that can be thought of, from tiger to house-cat, each nation KNOWING it has the only true religion and the only sane system of government, each despising all the others, each an ass and not suspecting it, each proud of its fancied supremacy, each perfectly sure it is the pet of God, each without undoubting confidence summoning Him to take command in time of war, each surprised when He goes over to the enemy, but by habit able to excuse it and resume compliments--in a word, the whole human race content, always content, persistently content, indestructibly content, happy, thankful, proud, NO MATTER WHAT ITS RELIGION IS, NOR WHETHER ITS MASTER BE TIGER OR HOUSE-CAT. Am I stating facts? You know I am. Is the human race cheerful? You know it is. Considering what it can stand, and be happy, you do me too much honor when you think that can place before it a system of plain cold facts that can take the cheerfulness out of it. Nothing can do that. Everything has been tried. Without success. I beg you not to be troubled.

The long essay was written by Mark Twain around 1900. That shows that even cultural evolution is a slow process. Human nature has remained unchanged despite the changes in the Engineered tools and Environment around them.

Stressful Life

2008-10-09T00:41:00.000-07:00

Robert Sapolsky author of the book "Why Zebra's don't Get Ulcers" and a professor at Stanford University studies baboons in Africa. He has researched the stress response within pack of baboons for many years in the natural habitat of baboons.

Another video with more details on how to cope with Stress

Additional Information from Stanford University Web site on Stress

Stephen Colbert on Future of Internet

2008-09-27T11:18:00.000-07:00

Stephen Colbert on the future of Internet with Nicholas Carr.

Cognitive Bias

2008-09-26T17:30:00.000-07:00

Leveraging Cognitive Bias in Social Design

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eLearning,Interactive Hypermedia, Neuroscience

2008-08-29T19:10:00.000-07:00

Icalt06presentationforslideshare

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Click on the full screen icon at the bottom of the presentation panel to see a full screen view of this presentation.

Using mind control to talk to machines

2008-08-23T18:08:00.000-07:00

Advancements in neuro-technology

A ZDNnet article with a video demonstration showing the capability of man machine communication.

At the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, the company's Justin Rattner talks to Emotiv Systems President Tan Le about new interface technologies that are making humans more like machines. In a demo for conference attendees, Le shows a headset Emotiv developed that can track electrical signals in the brain and interact with content on a PC.

Jon Kabat-Zinn Talk on Mindfulness Meditation

2008-08-20T18:29:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia Herbert Benson at Harvard school of Medicine studied scientifically the meditation process and discovered the famous phenomenon of "Relaxation Response". It was found to help people in reducing their their stress levels. His brief bio

Dr. Benson is a pioneer in mind/body medicine, one of the first Western physicians to bring spirituality and healing into medicine. In his 35+ year career, he has defined the relaxation response and continues to lead teaching and research into its efficacy in counteracting the harmful effects of stress. The recipient of numerous national and international awards, Dr. Benson lectures widely about mind/body medicine and the BHI's work. His expertise is frequently sought by national and international news media, and he appears in scores of newspapers, magazines, and television programs each year. Dr. Benson's research extends from the laboratory to the clinic to Asian field expeditions. His work serves as a bridge between medicine and religion, East and West, mind and body, and belief and science.

His work on meditation is further enhanced by Jon Kabat-Zinn who is a practicing mindfulness meditation practitioner and educator along with his background in traditional medicine. His brief bio

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., is a scientist, writer, and meditation teacher engaged in bringing mindfulness into the mainstream of medicine and society. He gives public talks and workshops throughout the world on mindfulness and its applications for moving toward greater sanity and balance in today's multitasking, high-speed world. He is professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he was founding executive director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society, and founder and former director of its world-renowned Stress Reduction Clinic.

The video here shows him leading an hour long session of mindful meditation at Google.

Brain Magic and Neuroscience

2008-08-10T15:15:00.000-07:00

Image via WikipediaBrain as a physical organ system serves the role of controller of all the body functions. It communicates with different parts of the body by sending and receiving messages through an elaborate network of interconnected Neurons. This is the fastest communication system human body uses alongwith the slow communication system through hormonal interchange.

One of the functions of the brain is to receive outside information through the five senses of vision, sound, smell,taste and touch and create a worldview for us out of this sensory data. The vision is the most dominant sense and plays a larger role in this process. It helps us in identifying objects. It helps us moving through the space and also to avert any potential dangers. In other words it has served us well. We rely on it.

Is it really hundred percent accurate? We would think that that is the case but that worldview is not hundred percent accurate. The magicians have devised elaborate tricks to deceive our visual sense. They use sleigh of hand to create an illusioray reality that defies our common sense but appears to be true. In most of the cases magicians use the quirks of the human vision system to design the magic tricks beside the older tricks based upon hypnotism. That itself is based upon the highly suggestible nature of human mind.

Here is a demonstration of some of these tricks by Magician Keith Barry at TED talk to show that how easy it is to trick the human mind in making it believe in alternate reality.

First, Keith Barry shows us how our brains can fool our bodies -- in a trick that works via podcast too. Then he involves the audience in some jaw-dropping (and even a bit dangerous) feats of brain magic.

Study of Optical Illusion is a well known area of Psychology. The psychologists have designed all kind of visual illusion to study the property of vision. Here is a list of some of the well known visual illusion designed by Psychologists. From these studies one can draw a general conclusion that our sense of vision is essential but it is not perfect as we would like to think. It could provide us with wrong conclusion and it can be manipulated or tricked into believing something that may or may not be true.

Recently neuroscientists collaborated with magicians and reported their findings in Nature Reviews Neuroscience journal. The article is available online here with the following title:

Attention and awareness in stage magic: turning tricks into research

authors: Stephen L. Macknik¹, Mac King, James Randi², Apollo Robbins, Teller, John Thompson & Susana Martinez-Conde

The article abstract:

Just as vision scientists study visual art and illusions to elucidate the workings of the visual system, so too can cognitive scientists study cognitive illusions to elucidate the underpinnings of cognition. Magic shows are a manifestation of accomplished magic performers' deep intuition for and understanding of human attention and awareness. By studying magicians and their techniques, neuroscientists can learn powerful methods to manipulate attention and awareness in the laboratory. Such methods could be exploited to directly study the behavioural and neural basis of consciousness itself, for instance through the use of brain imaging and other neural recording techniques.

The study is very important in the sense that it brings knowledgeable people from two diverse areas of neuroscience and magic together to solve the riddle of the human cognition.

The last sentence of the study's abstract is I think a bit of a stretch because we are really not sure what constitute consciousness. It will be a while till we piece all the information from scientific studies together to establish a one unified theory of consciousness if possible because there is a very strong possibility that we may end up not one but many consciousnesses fulfilling the demands placed upon us to survive in a dynamic world.

These studies does however, show that we do not possess perfect senses. We need to be extra careful when we are trying to base our decisions on the information we receive from ours senses.

Brain Neurons: How They Work

2008-07-29T15:47:00.000-07:00

Image by azizul hadi via FlickrThe interconnection of Neurons also known as nerve cells creates a massively parallel computer that is responsible for processing all our sensory data. It also holds information in memory cells for later recall.

It is convenient to compare the neural processing of information in the brain to the information processing in a computing device. However, the two of these devices process information in a very different manner. The computer is good at crunching numbers and working with the binary representation of the symbols. The computer can hold massive amount of information on storage devices. Human brain is not very good either at storing vast amount of information or doing quick number crunching. Its main strenght lies in being an excellent pattern recognizer. It can recognize things even if the presented with incomplete information. This observation has lead to the development of an area in computing also known as Neural Computing in which approximate model of neural network are simulated on a computer.

This short video shows a beautiful animation of neurons in the brain. How they are connected and how they function.

Brain Facts

The adult human brain weighs about 3 pounds (1,300-1,400 g).

The adult human brain is about 2% of the total body weight.

The average human brain is 140 mm wide.

The average human brain is 167 mm long.

The average human brain is 93 mm high.

The human brain has about 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) neurons.

The total surface area of the cerebral cortex is about 2500 sq. cm (~2.5 ft²)

Neurons multiply at a rate 250,000 neurons/minute during early pregnancy.

The weight of an adult human cerebellum is 150 g.

There are 12 pairs of cranial nerves.

There are 31 pairs of spinal nerves.

There are about 13,500,00 neurons in the human spinal cord.

The total number of human olfactory receptor cells is about 40 million.There are 1,000 to 10,000 synapses for a "typical" neuron.

The cell bodies of neurons vary in diameter from 4 microns (granule cell) to 100 microns (motor neuron in cord).

Inspiring Last Talk by Randy Pausch

2008-07-27T16:12:00.000-07:00

Image by moominsean via FlickrRandy Pausch, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University died from pancreatic cancer. He gave an inspiring talk titled Achieving your Childhood Dreams. The talk found its way as a video on Youtube. The video has been watched by millions of people. In the video he is has shown extreme courage in facing his upcoming death.

A talk like this forces us to rethink our priorities. We can go to the moon. We can create all kinds of the technological marvels but we still have not gained much control over life and death. None of us really know why we were born or how or when or why we will die. We can create all kind of explanation to answer these questions but the truth of the matter is that answer to these questions is unknowable.

There was an old Indian Movie titled "Anand" in which the lead character played by Rajesh Khanna, was dying of cancer. He also showed a playful side facing his death while everybody around him was sad and upset. However, he was just a fictional movie character. In Randy Paush we have a real human being who faced his death with courage and he will inspire us all to do the same

Professor Dan Arieley author of "Predictably Irrational"

2008-07-11T00:42:00.000-07:00

Image via WikipediaProfessor Dan Ariley

is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT, where he holds a joint appointment between MIT's Media Laboratory and the Sloan School of Management. He is also a researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and a visiting professor at Duke University. Ariely wrote this book while he was a fellow at the Institute for Advance Study at Princeton.

presented a talk at Google about his book "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions." His main thesis refutes the original assumption that humans are "Homo Economus" i.e. rational human beings who always act in their best interest and who always try to maximize their profits. A youtube description of his talk:

In a series of illuminating, often surprising experiments, MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. Blending everyday experience with groundbreaking research, Ariely explains how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities. Not only do we make astonishingly simple mistakes every day, but we make the same types of mistakes, Ariely discovers. We consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. We fail to understand the profound effects of our emotions on what we want, and we overvalue what we already own. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They're systematic and predictable—making us predictably irrational.

and the video
His work in the area of behavioral finance continues the work started by Amos Nathan Tversky, who was a cognitive and mathmatical psychologists. He worked very closely with Daniel Kahnemann a Noble Prize winning researcher to show conclusively about the hidden biases in the human decision making process. Their findings in the area of behavioral finance question the assumption of human beings acting totally in a rational manner.

The picture that emerges out of these findings portrays us more like "rationalizing beings" rather then "rational beings" or we could say that we use reason and logic as tools to create new knowledge but the process that leads to rational self consistent knowledge is not rational itself.

These findings of human behavior as non-rational are also being supported by the work in the area of Cognitive, Affective and behavioral Neuroscience.

Right Brain Left Brain Functions

2008-07-08T18:24:00.000-07:00

Image via WikipediaThe brain consists of two halves connected through the nerve bundles called Corpus Callosum. Both sides of brain work together to help us in creating a comprehensive picture of the world we experience. The brain works through modules that are specialized to perform specific functions. The right side of the brain is holistic and works through the entire pattern. The left side of the brain is analytic and acts as an interpreter of the experience.

The strong evidence to support this came from the studies of split brain patients. These patients were suffering from acute seizures and to stop the seizure from spreading to the entire brain the best course was to split the two halves of the brain through brain surgery.

The surgery was successful as anticipated in reducing the brain seizures but had some side effects. These patients were subjected to many scientific studies to see the effect of the surgery on their brain functioning by pioneering neuroscientist Dr. Michael Gazzaniga. Here is a video where Dr. Gazzaniga is interviewing a split brain patient:

The video clearly shows that the patient despite appearing completely normal has lost some of his ability to relate and interpret external items. Also, it shows how the left side brain acts as a interpreter and creates a story even if the story does not support the facts.

Brain Rules by Dr. John Medina

2008-06-30T19:29:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia"Brain Rules" is a book by molecular biologist Dr. John Medina, who is also a blogger. He gave an interview to Harvard Business review on "The Science of Thinking Smarter".

Dr. Medina uses his expertise and experience he has acquired over the years from his research work in molecular biology dealing with brain's functioning to formulate 12 cardinal rules to succeed in work, school and at home . The rules are:

EXERCISE | Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power.
Evolution SURVIVAL | Rule #2: The human brain evolved, too.
WIRING | Rule #3: Every brain is wired differently.
ATTENTION | Rule #4: We don't pay attention to boring things.
SHORT-TERM MEMORY | Rule #5: Repeat to remember.
LONG-TERM MEMORY | Rule #6: Remember to repeat.
SLEEP | Rule #7: Sleep well, think well.
STRESS | Rule #8: Stressed brains don't learn the same way.
SENSORY INTEGRATION | Rule #9: Stimulate more of the senses.
VISION | Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses.
GENDER | Rule #11: Male and female brains are different.
EXPLORATION | Rule #12: We are powerful and natural explorers.

These rules reinforce the existing common sense rules of good living like exercising, sleeping well and reducing the stress. Some of these rules can act as guidelines for developing successful elearning modules like rule#10.

Here is a beautiful slide presentation emphasizing these rules.

| View | Upload your own

His talk at Google

Ayahusaca, Consciousness and adventure in jungle of Peru

2008-06-08T12:08:00.000-07:00

This articles titled Peru:Hell and Back appeared in National Geographic magazine in the adventure section, deals with the use of psychoactive drug Ayahuasca in Shamanistic practices of tribes living deep in the jungle of Peru.

The author of the article took a trip to Peru and participated in a ceremony that involved ingestion of Ayahausca in a ceremonial setting that lasted several days under the guidance of an experienced Shaman from Peru. Here are some of the quotes from the article describing the experience of the author during the trance state induced by the ingestion of ayahausa

For centuries, Amazonian shamans have used ayahuasca as a window into the soul. The sacrament, they claim, can cure any illness. The author joins in this ancient ritual and finds the worlds within more terrifying—and enlightening—than ever imagined.

Here the author describes her experience using the metaphor of time travel

Now I'm traveling to a realm where I meet my various incarnations from past lives. We are connected to a large wheel; whenever fear energy leaves the top of my head in puffs of dark smoke, it leaves their heads at the same time. Our lives, it seems, are interconnected and dependent. Outside of linear time, all our lifetimes, all our many incarnations, occur simultaneously. "Past life" is really a misnomer; "other life" seems a more accurate way of describing it.

More on the author experience while in trance

All at once, I willed myself to rise. I sailed up through the tunnel of fire, higher and higher until I broke through to a white light. All darkness immediately vanished. My body felt light, at peace. I floated among a beautiful spread of colors and patterns. Slowly my ayahuasca vision faded. I returned to my body, to where I lay in the hut, insects calling from the jungle.

and her recovery from severe depression that she suffered since her childhood

The next morning, I discovered the impossible: The severe depression that had ruled my life since childhood had miraculously vanished.

Here the author goes into the differences between the world views of the western analytic thought processes and the ancient mystical symbolic understanding of the Universe:

And this notion of a spiritual experience marks the very juncture where Western science and analytic thought depart on the subject of ayahuasca and where indigenous culture and mysticism come in. Most ayahuasca researchers agree that, curiously, the compound appears to affect people on three different levels—the physical, psychological, and spiritual—complicating efforts to definitively catalog its effects, let alone explain specific therapeutic benefits. Says Ralph Metzner, psychologist, ayahuasca researcher, and editor of the book Sacred Vine of Spirits, "[Healing with ayahuasca] presumes a completely different understanding of illness and medicine than what we are accustomed to in the West. But even from the point of view of Western medicine and psychotherapy it is clear that remarkable physical healings and resolutions of psychological difficulties can occur with this medicine."

Here is her final thoughts

Me, I'm ready to go home. I sit up with difficulty, as if waking from decades of sleep. It would be easier for me to call it all a dream, a grand hallucination. Then I could have my old world back, in which I thought I knew what was real and unreal, true and untrue. Now the problem is, I don't know anything.

The Shaman practices for inner mental development are designed to show that we can construct a different reality from the same sensory inputs by making our neurons to process the same sensory data differently by influencing the processing abilities of neurons through the use of psychoactive drugs.

These experiments and the scientific experiments with visual illusions where scientists have created pictures that our brain can not process coherently raises a serious issue. That is how much we should actually rely on our senses to find the truth or how much we should really trust the world view constructed based upon our sensory perceptions and experiences.

The physical senses helps us orient ourselves in the world. They helps us navigate through the spatial-temporal space without running into other objects. Also, to identify and avoid dangerous objects. They are definitely an aid without which we can not survive but they also create a phantasm through over active imagination caused by incessant firing of neurons within the brain that do not have any existence in the reality.

This experimentation with Ayahusaca proves that the brain created reality that is also referred to as imagination of minds is a constructed reality and there are several possible constructions of the same reality depending upon how the neurons are conditions or modified to process this sensory input.

In the final analysis it is up to us on how much weight we should assign to this our own brain constructed reality that can very easily be changed by ingesting some psychoactive drug or through other means such as intense religious practices of fasting or meditation involving breathing practices.

Also, no theory of consciousness and mind will be complete unless it provides a satisfactory explanation for the experiences of brain in the altered states.

The article has a small video of the ceremony and the complete article is here

Disclaimer: This article in no way and form is endorsing the use of drugs to achieve altered state of minds. The information provided in this post is for informational purposes only.

Cognitive Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation

2008-05-18T16:24:00.000-07:00

Meditation has shown to bring contentment to its practitioners. Here is a talk at Google that talks about mindfulness and meditation.

Mindfulness meditation, one type of meditation technique, has been shown to enhance emotional awareness and psychological flexibility as well as induce well

Emotion, Arousal, Attention and Flow

2008-05-16T05:28:00.000-07:00

Chaining Emotional States to Improve Human Computer Interaction

An overview of how designing for emotion relates to UX and flow, how the appearance and interaction of products communicate a personality to the user, and how emotions can be "chained" to enhance persuasion and influence behaviour.

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This slide show lays down the ground work for designing user interfaces that provide an emotional user experience. It has been known for a while that learning process requires learner to be in an aroused state but very little attention has been paid on how to design digital user interfaces that are emotionally arousing and gratifying. The role of flow as suggested by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in learning process need more consideration. There is a complete article in Psychology Today describing "Flow" experience.

At this point there are very few guidelines on how to design virtual learning spaces those provide a learning experience that is emotionally gratifying and creates optimal learning conditions by creating a state of flow within the learner.

More from BBC special series "Century of Self"

2008-05-12T10:53:00.000-07:00

More from the BBC series titled "Century of Self" that explores the use of Freud's discovery of human subconscious and its applications in Psychoanalysis, opinion formation and mass persuasion etc.

Part 2 http://video.yahoo.com/watch/517293/2692016

Part 3 http://video.yahoo.com/watch/517142/2691530

Part 4
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1122532358497501036&q=bbc%20century&hl=en

This video series throws light on the irrational side of the humans and how it can be used to shape their behavior.

BBC Public relations, Marketing and advertising

2008-05-09T23:11:00.000-07:00

How brain can be manipulated because of its archaic connectionist structure where billions of neurons inter connect very easily. This tendency of brain also allows to associate totally disjointed things very easily into an associative chain.

Here is a fascinating story of Edward Barney, cousin of Sigmund Freud and how he shaped the advertising and public relations.

watch the video here. It will change the way you think about humans.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7369649350186797467

British TV Show - "The Century Of The Self" - 2002 - Part One

Memory and TMS

2008-05-07T00:10:00.000-07:00

Improvement in memory tasks through Trans cranial Magnetic Stimulation

Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm

2008-05-03T23:12:00.000-07:00

"The winter sun sets in mid-afternoon in Kolobrzeg, Poland, but the early twilight does not deter people from taking their regular outdoor promenade. Bundled up in parkas with fur-trimmed hoods, strolling hand in mittened hand along the edge of the Baltic Sea, off-season tourists from Germany stop openmouthed when they see a tall, well-built, nearly naked man running up and down the sand."

the entire Wired Article

Praise and Cash Reward

2008-04-29T13:20:00.000-07:00

Here is a news headline in Reuters "Praise as good as cash to brain: study"

Here are some sections from that article

"NEED TO BELONG'

Both kinds of rewards triggered activity in a reward-related area of the brain. Sadato said the finding represents an important first step toward explaining complex human social behaviors such as altruism."

The article acknowledges the existence of biologically coded reward system in brain.

"The fact that the social reward is biologically coded suggests that "the need to belong ... is essential for humans," said Sadato, whose study appears in the journal Neuron."

The following pssage shows that human brain uses same parts of brain to process and react to different social and environmental inputs and stimuli.

"A similar study in the same journal by Caroline Zink of the National Institute of Mental Health and colleagues found the same brain region was active when people were processing information about social status."

The complete Reuters news article is at.

Brain's reward System and Addiction

2008-04-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

Image via WikipediaNueroscience is discovering the relationship between addiction and brain's reward system. In general human's are very susceptible to the anticipation of rewards. There is lot more in common between gambling,sex, good food, chocolate and other pleasurable activities then we thought originally. They all stimulate the pleasure center of the human brain. Excessive indulgence into pleasurable activities is the leading cause of addiction.

Here is a complete article on Behavioral' Addictions:Do They Exist?

A small excerpts from the article:

Aided by brain imaging advances, scientists are looking for evidence that compulsive nondrug behaviors lead to long-term changes in reward circuitry

People toss around the term "addiction" to describe someone's relationship to a job, a boyfriend, or a computer. But scientists have traditionally confined their use of the term to substances--namely alcohol and other drugs--that clearly foster physical dependence in the user.

That's changing, however. New knowledge about the brain's reward system, much gained by superrefined brain scan technology, suggests that as far as the brain is concerned, a reward's a reward, regardless of whether it comes from a chemical or an experience. And where there's a reward, there's the risk of the vulnerable brain getting trapped in a compulsion.

"Over the past 6 months, more and more people have been thinking that, contrary to earlier views,there is commonality between substance addictions and other compulsions," says Alan Leshner, head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and incoming executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, publisher of Science.

Just where to draw the line is not yet clear. The unsettled state of definitions is reflected in psychiatry's bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV. Addictions, obsessions, and compulsions--all related to loss of voluntary control and getting trapped in repetitious, self- defeating behavior--are scattered around under "substance-related disorders," "eating disorders," "sexual and gender identity disorders," "anxiety disorders," and "impulse- control disorders not elsewhere classified." In that last grab-bag are compulsive gambling, kleptomania, fire-setting, hair-pulling, and "intermittent explosive disorder."

Addiction used to be defined as dependence on a drug as evidenced by craving, increased tolerance, and withdrawal. But even some seemingly classical addictions don't follow that pattern. Cocaine, for example, is highly addictive but causes little withdrawal. And a person who gets hooked on morphine while in the hospital may stop taking the drug without developing an obsession with it.

Now many researchers are moving toward a definition of addiction based more on behavior, and they are starting to look at whether brain activity and biochemistry are affected the same way in "behavioral" addictions as they are by substance abuse. One who endorses this perspective is psychologist Howard Shaffer, who heads the Division on Addictions at Harvard. "I had great difficulty with my own colleagues when I suggested that a lot of addiction is the result of experience ... repetitive, high-emotion, high-frequency experience," he says. But it's become clear that neuroadaptation--that is, changes in neural circuitry that help perpetuate the behavior--occurs even in the absence of drug-taking, he says.

The experts are fond of saying that addiction occurs when a habit "hijacks" brain circuits that evolved to reward survival- enhancing behavior such as eating and sex. "It stands to reason if you can derange these circuits with pharmacology, you can do it with natural rewards too," observes Stanford University psychologist Brian Knutson. Thus, drugs are no longer at the heart of the matter. "What is coming up fast as being the central core issue ... is continued engagement in self-destructive behavior despite adverse consequences," says Steven Grant of NIDA.

Not everybody is on board with this open-ended definition. For one thing, says longtime addiction researcher Roy Wise of NIDA, drugs are far more powerful than any "natural" pleasure when it comes to the amounts of dopamine released. Nonetheless, behavioral resemblances to addiction are getting increasing notice.
The complete articel is at

http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~span/Press/bk1101press.html

Finally the part of the brain that is most active in this is called hypothalamus that sits right below neocortex within the brain. Here is a short movie that describes the role of Hypothalamus and its realtionship with the brains'reward center.

What about learning? It has its own rewards that means it also affects the brain's reward system. It could be addictive.

Does that mean teachers are encouraging an addictive activity??

Eric Kandel on Human Memories

2008-04-25T02:22:00.000-07:00

Image via WikipediaWe all use our memories to remember the old times and perform daily routine tasks. We consider our memories as trusted friends but there are times when our memories fail us. They are not always reliable. Older memories fade with time. The process of memory formation and recall are separate processes. Also, emotional arousal plays important role in formation of memories.

Eric Kandel is a renowned Nobel Prize winning Neuroscientist who specializes in the area of memory functions. He did pioneering research work in identifying short term and long term memories. Here is a twenty minute long interview from Dr. Kandel where he outlines his work about memory functions.

Link: sevenload.com

Derren Brown British Mentalist Paying with Paper

2008-04-23T18:41:00.001-07:00

Derren Brown is a British mentalist. He has performed many mental tricks for British TV programs. This video clip shows how he uses distraction to pay with paper.

More video clips of Derren Brown show.

The Persuaders

2008-04-20T17:56:00.000-07:00

Dr. Paul Maclean has proposed a triune theory of Brain. According to this theory brain structure can be divided into three parts

Click on image for a clear view

reptilian brain
limbic sytem
neocortex

"MacLean, now the director of the Laboratory of Brain Evolution and Behaviour in Poolesville, Maryland, says that three brains operate like "three interconnected biological computers, [each] with its own special intelligence, its own subjectivity, its own sense of time and space and its own memory". He refers to these three brains as the neocortex or neo-mammalian brain, the limbic or paleo-mammalian system, and the reptilian brain, the brainstem and cerebellum (see above diagram). Each of the three brains is connected by nerves to the other two, but each seems to operate as its own brain system with distinct capacities."
http://www.ezls.fb12.uni-siegen.de/mkroedel/paul_maclean.html

This knowledge of brain functions is essential for designing effective teaching methods. In fact most of the teachers are intuitively aware of this. They know that there is short term learning and there is deep learning that involves the whole brain or at least involve the limbic system and the neocortex.

The marketers are already using this knowledge . The PBS did an entire show called "The Persuaders" that included the interviews of some of the best Marketers like Dr. Clotaire Rapaille a child Psychiatrist turned Marketer.

You can watch his video interview by clicking at the menu item "Watch Online" as shown in the clip below on Dr. Clotaire Rapaille interview page on the PBS website and choosing the fourth video titled "The Science of Selling" within the popped up window.

clipped from www.pbs.org

Our primal nature is the boss of the self. It overrides all the thoughtful and deliberate decision making by neocortex if there is a conflict between the limbic system and the cortex. The limbic system make us do things that satisfy our base nature. It is also responsible for our physical survival.

We are not rational beings as logical positivists would make us believe but closer to rationalizing beings who use reason to justify our actions that really are instigated and controlled by the limbic and reptilian parts of our brain.

Brain and Learning Additional Resources

2008-04-17T02:57:00.000-07:00