You ≠ Your Brain. What's the Latest Development? Scientists and philosophers alike have begun to realize that our theories of the mind fail to account for how we talk about the world. The metaphors we use to describe our surroundings do not come from a purely mathematical or rational dissection of phenomena. Rather, the way we experience the world informs how we think about it. From an early age, for example, we associate warmth with security—the warmth of mother, warm milk, a warm blanket, etc. What's the Big Idea? Descartes' dualism fell recently to the computational theory of the mind which viewed the brain as a rational calculating machine. Consciousness: The Black Hole of Neuroscience | Think Tank. What's the Big Idea? “By the word ‘thought’ (‘pensée’) I understand all that of which we are conscious as operating in us.” –Renee Descartes The simplest description of a black hole is a region of space-time from which no light is reflected and nothing escapes.
The simplest description of consciousness is a mind that absorbs many things and attends to a few of them. Neither of these concepts can be captured quantitatively. Together they suggest the appealing possibility that endlessness surrounds us and infinity is within. But our inability to grasp the immaterial means we’re stuck making inferences, free-associating, if we want any insight into the unknown. Likewise, consciousness is still such an elusive concept that, in spite of the recent invention of functional imaging - which has allowed scientists to visualize the different areas of the brain - we may not understand it any better now than we ever have before. What's the Significance? Hirsch sees it more practically. Thinking Makes It So: How We Think about Mistakes Affects How We Learn from Them | Artful Choice. I’ve been thinking a lot this week about just how powerful our beliefs about ourselves can really be.
For now, I’m not worried about aging—the subject of Monday’s article—but I am worried about those areas where I may, unbeknownst to myself, be holding back my own development, or at the very least, coloring my experiences in such a way that prevents me from making the most of them. Like, for instance, intelligence and performance: am I learning to the best of my abilities, and improving as best I can? A new study shows that my concern, at least in that area, is well justified.
It seems that how I think about my mind can impact how well it is able to monitor itself and learn from its mistakes. Do you see intelligence as fluid or fixed? For many years, Carol Dweck has been researching two theories of intelligence: incremental and entity. While performance accuracy was generally high, around 91%, the specific task parameters were hard enough that everyone made some mistakes.
How We Think Is How We Are: The Power of Self-Stereotyping | Artful Choice. As we make sense of the world around us, our minds often take shortcuts, generalizing, cutting corners, making connections and engaging in inferences as they integrate all of the incoming information into a cohesive whole. And as we make sense of people, we typically engage in the exact same practice: when we meet someone for the first time, we’ve likely formed multiple judgments—often without realizing we have done so—before our new acquaintance has even had a chance to speak a single word.
We take a look, and we generalize based on what we know and what we’ve learned through past experience. It’s far easier than having to start fresh every single time. That process of initial, nearly instantaneous judgment is often driven by prevailing stereotypes, our own as well as those of our society as a whole and our immediate circle in particular.
Stereotype threat in aging One area where effects of self-stereotyping play out to quite dramatic effect is aging. The benefits of meditation. Studies have shown that meditating regularly can help relieve symptoms in people who suffer from chronic pain, but the neural mechanisms underlying the relief were unclear. Now, MIT and Harvard researchers have found a possible explanation for this phenomenon. In a study published online April 21 in the journal Brain Research Bulletin, the researchers found that people trained to meditate over an eight-week period were better able to control a specific type of brain waves called alpha rhythms. “These activity patterns are thought to minimize distractions, to diminish the likelihood stimuli will grab your attention,” says Christopher Moore, an MIT neuroscientist and senior author of the paper.
“Our data indicate that meditation training makes you better at focusing, in part by allowing you to better regulate how things that arise will impact you.” A 1966 study showed that a group of Buddhist monks who meditated regularly had elevated alpha rhythms across their brains. New Harbinger: What Mindfulness and Acceptance Can Do for Your Self-Esteem. By Sheri Van Dijk, MSW, author of "The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bipolar Disorder" and "Don't Let Your Emotions Run Your Life for Teens" Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), created in the early 1990s by psychologist Marsha Linehan, is one of the newer psychotherapies being used to treat a variety of emotional problems. Similar to Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), which has been used successfully for many years to treat emotional problems including self-esteem issues, DBT adds to this the concepts of mindfulness and acceptance.
Mindfulness is a way of living your life so that you are in the present moment more often, with awareness, and with acceptance. Acceptance in this context doesn't mean that you approve of your experience, but that you simply acknowledge your present experience without judging it. So what does this have to do with self-esteem? Everything! Consider these questions to help you think about how you talk to yourself: Belleruth Naparstek: The Science Behind Guided Imagery.
The past 30 years have seen dramatic, exciting gains in how we use guided imagery with cancer treatment. I remember when I was creating my first batch of audio tapes for various health challenges, back in the 80s. The only docs who would help me were the ones who lived on my block. It was all about the social pressure: They knew if they turned me down, they'd have to look me in the eye when we met on the tree lawn, taking out the trash.
By then, the work of Stephanie and Carl Simonton, Bernie Siegel, Larry LeShan, Jeanne Achterberg and a few others was creating positive press for guided imagery. Some promoted it as a method that could heal cancer. Sidebar: There were other diehard dicta going around back then. Unkind, unfair and untrue. It's also worth mentioning that back then, most imagery experts -- Siegel, Achterberg, Emmett Miller, Shakti Gawain, Larry LeShan and even Louise Hay -- were talking about visualizing, not guided imagery as it's practiced today. We don't know.