Professor George Lakoff on Non-Conscious Mental Processing

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

Thinking Perception Attention Memory

Chris Atherton at TCUK09

View more documents from Chris Atherton.

How Chaos Drives the Brain

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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Untangling the Brain (3quarksdaily.com)
• Evolutionary Origins of Your Left and Right Brain
• The Science of Economic Bubbles and Busts
  
• Mirroring Behavior (scientificamerican.com)
• Right and Left Brain Functions
  

Michael Merzenich: Exploring the re-wiring of the brain

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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Michael Merzenich: Brain Plasticity offers Hope for Everyone (sharpbrains.com)
• Brain Plasticity: The Secret to Staying Mentally Young (beyondhorizoncoaching.com)
• The Mind & Brain Neuroplasticity and The Power of Mental Force
  

Robert Ornstein:MindReal

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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Pain Hurts More If The Person Hurting You Means It

Carl Sagan on Human Brain

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

Dan Dennett discusses the Achilles heel of consciousness.


TED talk Consciousness

Brain Computer Interface

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


Watch CBS Videos Online

Brain Neurons: How They Work

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).

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Mirror Neuron Revolution: Explaining What Makes Humans Social [Mind Matters]
• Supercomputer mimics stroke-affected brain
• Monkey's brain controls robot arm
• Why Does the Brain Need So Much Power? [News]
• The Aging Brain: Is It Less Connected? [Mind Matters]
• Neuronal circuits able to rewire on the fly to sharpen senses
• Hypnosis study reveals brain's 'amnesia centers'
• How emotionally charged events leave their mark on memory
• memory is helped by naps at work, studies show
• Carl Zimmer's Dissection: Your Brain is a Mess, but It Knows How to Make Fixes

Right Brain Left Brain Functions

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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Man with Severed Corpus Callosum in his Brain
• Scientist identify brain 'core' that could reveal secrets of thought
• Of Two Minds, One Consciousness [60-Second Psych]
• The Big Similarity & Quirky Differences between our Right and Left Brains
  

Ayahusaca, Consciousness and adventure in jungle of Peru

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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again (NYTimes)
  
• Ecstasy treatment draws rave reviews (news.cnet.com)
• Can illegal drugs help depression?
  
• Bolt from blue triggers bizzare hallucinations
  
• Are Smart Drugs the Answer to Bad Moods—and a Bad Economy?
• Down the Amazon in Search of Ayahuasca (time.com)
• Mysticism and Psychedelic: The Case of the Dark Night
  
• Hallucinogens as Medicine Scientific American

The Paradox of Choice

Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central belief of western societies: that freedom of choice leads to personal happiness. In Schwartz's estimation, all that choice is making us miserable. We set unreasonably high expectations, question our choices before we even make them, and blame our failures entirely on ourselves. His relatable examples, from consumer products (jeans, TVs, salad dressings) to lifestyle choices (where to live, what job to take, whom and when to marry), underscore this central point: Too many choices undermine happiness.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Too Many Choices can Tax the Brain, Research Shows
  
• Wine and The Paradox of Choice (mastergrape.com)
• Ward Sutton: Paying Attention in the Information-Overload Age (huffingtonpost.com)
• Barry Schwartz on our loss of wisdom (dummidumbwit.wordpress.com)