Psychology
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The "Interpreter" in Your Head Spins Stories to Make Sense of the World | Mind & Brain
The left hemisphere specializes in speech, language, and intelligent behavior, and a split-brain patient’s left hemisphere and language center has no access to sensory information if it is fed only to the right brain. In the case of vision, the optic nerves leading from each eye meet inside the brain at what is called the optic chiasm . Here, each nerve splits in half; the medial half (the inside track) of each crosses the optic chiasm into the opposite side of the brain, and the lateral half (that on the outside) stays on the same side.164 years later, researchers map Phineas Gage's pierced brain
I'm sorry I can't remember the name right now, but there was another character from the American Revolution who had his head "cleaved clean open" by a saber blow. On the battlefield at the time they stuffed milled cotton into the wound, describing clearly how they packed it into the 8 - 10'' gash in his brain, never expecting him to live. Amazingly, he did live - and went on to become a successful merchant and state Senator ( I want to say South Carolina). AND, just in case you're interested, the Army's medical museum has just reopened in DC (actually, it's in Silver Spring, Maryland now). If you're ever out that way you might find some things of interest there. 5/21/12 7:46am <p style="text-align:right;color:#A8A8A8"></p>
How to Give People the Feeling of Déjà Vu
This whole discussion is fascinating, but I find the relative ease with which false memories can be implanted to be kind of terrifying. I have always had poor memory recall (only in relation to personal events, curiously enough) and more than once when trying to recall childhood memories, i've supplanted my siblings' experiences for my own. That said, I have experienced déjà vu quite regularly, and have even had déjà vu about past déjà vu moments.
Jul 22, 2010 Idea repair, called “cognitive restructuring” in the psychological literature, is a powerful tool for feeling better and for making it much easier to make good choices. We may hardly notice it, but it’s human habit to constantly comment about what’s going on around us with thoughts that help us make judgments and put things into a framework we can understand.
All About Broken Ideas and Idea Repair | LucReid.com
My life is fairly crammed, and writing time is hard to come by. Today I got one of those precious blocks of time in which I could write for several hours almost without interruption, yet as I fired up the computer, I felt not excited about the prospect, but worried and on edge. I also felt a little unsure: I had several projects I could be working on and was waffling on which one to choose. I could have just plunged in and begun working on whatever seemed easiest, most obvious, or most attractive, and if I got deeply enough into the writing that I achieved flow , that might have gone well. On the other hand, it’s possible that my concern that I might be working on the wrong thing or my general unexplored discomfort might have seriously interfered with my ability to focus.
Better Writing Through Writing About Writing | Brain Hacks for Writers | Futurismic
Emergency writing motivation techniques | Brain Hacks for Writers | Futurismic
If you want to write right now but just don’t feel motivated, here are some immediate ways to get fired up. Any one of them might do the trick: pick whichever seems most likely or appealing and give it a try. If it doesn’t get you right on track, try another one. No self-motivation trick is sure-fire, and we often tend to feel that if we’re not motivated now, there’s no way to get motivated, but there’s strong evidence in psychological and neurological research that we can change our moods, focus, and motivation–in fact, our emotional and motivational states can change very quickly, given the right setup.
What cannabis actually does to your brain
I was going to give the article a pass on a few things, but calling cannabis addictive has to be addressed. In Biophysiology, J. J. Pinel, 2001, he discusses physiological impact of all drugs on the central nervous system. Cannabis is not physically addicitve, and does not physically alter, permanently or temporarily any part of the brain.