Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

Anonymous's picture

On bodies...

I think that is just amazing that men can experience this phenomenon as well. Were talking about how sometimes wanting a baby sooo much can lead your brain (or whatevs you think does it) to manifesting the symptoms of pregnancy in your body by relaseing hormones, but most often it doesn’t. Kinda following the box theory, the 'iwannababy' box gets stimulated somehow and then bam, your body makes hormones and you get this phenomenon (like Stacy was saying). But the fact that men get this as well is the reallly crazy part. I guess I’m kinda thinking that women’s bodies know what to do. We already have these levels of hormones and they already fluxate with our cycle, so falsely increasing the levels although weird, is normal. But mens bodies are in no way prepared to have a baby. For the brain to be convinced that the body can do something that it never ever would normally do is beyond me. I guess I’m just thinking that is okay for women to have the ‘iwannababy’ box but men shouldn’t. I guess the brain is just too powerful for the body.

I think this really ties into the placebo affect (as mentioned by csandrinic above). Its really the same thing going on. Your brain is convincing your body to change without receiving the correct stimulus ie drug (I guess who is to say what is correct tho eh). It like when your sick, if you want to get better, your going to get better faster then when you don’t. Another example of the brain totally controlling the body is in persons with multiple personality disorder (MPD for our use). In MPD each personality can have a different physical manifestation within the patient. For example they will have different blood pressure and heart rate. Even more extreme cases occur where one personality will cause the body to have diabetes and one wont. In this case, one box is definitely causing two different outputs, even though the brain is the same. I really don’t know what to make of this. I think its just amazing that the brain has so much control over your body. I think that if we can train ourselves to control this power, then we truly can control our bodies instead of this façade of command that we think we have now.

Reply

To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
20 + 0 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.