The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives: Amazon.co.uk: Shankar Vedantam This book by journalist Shankar Vedantam is yet another contribution to the interesting and important genre I like to call "why smart people do dumb things." The basic idea with all of these books is that our minds have conscious and unconscious parts. The conscious mind is rational, analytic, slow, deliberate, evolutionarily more recent, and is the part we most closely associate with our identity. By contrast, the unconscious mind takes heuristic shortcuts (leaps to conclusions), is multitasking and quick, is evolutionarily more primitive, and is inaccessible to introspection, so we're not usually aware of its activity (hence the term "hidden brain"). The heuristics employed by the hidden brain are essential and usually useful, including keeping our behavior in line with moral and legal norms, but they can also cause various inappropriate biases which can lead to serious errors of judgment in all domains of life, both individual and social. If all of this sounds familiar, it should.
Searching the Brain for the Spark of Creative Problem-Solving But who wants to troll? Let lightning strike. Let the clues suddenly coalesce in the brain — “field!” — as they do so often for young children solving a riddle. And now, modern neuroscientists are beginning to tap its source. In a just completed study, researchers at found that people were more likely to solve word puzzles with sudden insight when they were amused, having just seen a short comedy routine. “What we think is happening,” said Mark Beeman, a neuroscientist who conducted the study with Karuna Subramaniam, a graduate student, “is that the humor, this positive mood, is lowering the brain’s threshold for detecting weaker or more remote connections” to solve puzzles. This and other recent research suggest that the appeal of puzzles goes far deeper than the -reward rush of finding a solution. And that escape is all the more tantalizing for being incomplete. “It’s all about you, using your own mind, without any method or schema, to restore order from chaos,” Dr.
The Ego Trick: Amazon.co.uk: Julian Baggini Those of us not entirely unsympathetic to the philosophical enterprise should be reassured by this memorable image, in itself almost all the recommendation this fascinating book needs. Julian Baggini is a practitioner who has evidently managed to retain, despite constant professional exposure to the writings of countless Great Minds, both a sense of humour and a healthy regard for human foibles and the fallibility of philosophers. That this book is both readable and comprehensible by ordinary mortals is no slight on Baggini's philosophical credentials. His intellect is sharper than most, and his verdicts on the self are delivered with a surprising degree of certitude. "The solidity of self is an illusion; the self itself is not. Baggini's surefooted conclusions are of course a million miles away from dogmatic assertion. "On the question of whether we are physical beings or not, the case should be closed."
Out of Our Brains The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless. Where is my mind? The question — memorably posed by rock band the Pixies in their 1988 song — is one that, perhaps surprisingly, divides many of us working in the areas of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Look at the science columns of your daily newspapers and you could be forgiven for thinking that there is no case to answer. There is no limit, it seems, to the different tasks that elicit subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, different patterns of neural activation. As our technologies become better adapted to fit the niche provided by the biological brain, they become more like cognitive prosthetics. But then again, maybe not. Is it possible that, sometimes at least, some of the activity that enables us to be the thinking, knowing, agents that we are occurs outside the brain? The idea sounds outlandish at first. Such an idea is not new. Please don’t get me wrong.
Whoa!! The High Voltage Larry Carlson!! My buddy Max just turned me onto this guy. Dude! I've 'seen' a lot of this stuff on my astral voyages! We used to call this kind of bloke a 'high brother' - check it out if you haven't already heard of him. Stress cuts aging brain's ability to learn new tricks Like the saying, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks," the aging human brain has a tough time learning from new experiences, suggests a study on rats showing tiny brain-cell structures needed for this process get quite rigid in their twilight years. Rats are generally reliable models for human brain studies, so the results should hold for us, the researchers say. The researchers looked at the prefrontal cortex, the brain region that controls various cognitive processes and plays a role in higher learning. For example, stress causes nerve cells to shrink and lose synapses, or the connections between nerve cells where communication occurs. Stressed brain To find out how stress affects this plasticity in aging brains, the researchers exposed young, middle-age and old rats to a stressor known to elicit nerve cell changes in the prefrontal cortex. In the young rats, the brain cells lost many of their spines, which grew back after a stress-free period. Keep Your Mind Sharp
The Master and His Emissary The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World is a 2009 book written by Iain McGilchrist that deals with the specialist hemispheric functioning of the brain. The differing world views of the right and left brain (the "Master" and "emissary" in the title, respectively) have, according to the author, shaped Western culture since the time of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, and the growing conflict between these views has implications for the way the modern world is changing.[1] In part, McGilchrist's book, which is the product of twenty years of research,[2] reviews the evidence of previous related research and theories, and based on this and cultural evidence, the author arrives at his own conclusions. The Master and His Emissary received mostly favourable reviews upon its publication. Critics praised the book as being a landmark publication that could alter readers' perspective of how they viewed the world; A.C. Background and influences[edit]
HEALING THE MIND We may not always get what we want, but we always get what we choose. Therefore, choose wisely Walter Last Our conscious decisions are made on the mental level with our mind. Therefore, all healing and all improvement in our living conditions start at this level. In our society rational thinking and the intellect are worshipped, while feeling and intuition are grossly neglected. Thinking is the most important tool for achieving such external success, while tender feelings are a disadvantage for success in our society. Our mind has truly awesome powers, not only in making as sick or unhappy, but also in making us healthy and happy. An elderly male with huge tumor masses all through the body, according to expert opinion, had been given less than 3 months to live. A few days after his first injections his tumors had already halved in size and continued to reduce until they had virtually disappeared and the man felt completely healthy and well. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 1. 2. 3. Brain and Mind
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies MAPS helps scientists design, fund, and obtain regulatory approval for studies of the safety and effectiveness of a number of controlled substances. MAPS works closely with government regulatory authorities worldwide such as the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) to ensure that all of its sponsored research protocols conform to ethical and procedural guidelines for clinical drug research. Included in MAPS’ research efforts are MDMA (Ecstasy) for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), LSD and psilocybin for the treatment of anxiety, cluster headaches, and depression associated with end-of-life issues, ibogaine for the treatment of opiate addiction, and alternative delivery systems for medical marijuana such as vaporizers and water pipes. History[edit] Psychedelics and Psychotherapy[edit] In the early 1960s, Harvard University was the seat of two landmark experiments involving psilocybin. Founding MAPS[edit]
Functional Neurology Vipassana Meditation Centre All courses are run solely on a donation basis. All expenses are met by donations from those who, having completed a course and experienced the benefits of Vipassana, wish to give others the same opportunity. Neither the Teacher nor the assistant teachers receive remuneration; they and those who serve the courses volunteer their time. Thus Vipassana is offered free from commercialisation. New students - Those who have not completed a 10-day Vipassana Meditation course with S.N. Goenka or his Assistant Teachers. Old students - Those who have completed a 10-day Vipassana Meditation course with S.N. 10-day courses are an introductory course to Vipassana Meditation where the technique is taught step-by-step each day. 10-Day self course at a centre These courses are for students who have completed at least 3 10-day courses with S.N. 10-day courses for Old Students 10-day courses for Old Students have the same timetable and discipline as 10-day courses.