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Glad you're here, to share thoughts about neurobiology and behavior. This isn't a place for polished writing or final words. Its a place for thoughts in progress: questions, ideas you had in class (or afterwords), things you've heard or read or seen that you think others might find interesting. Think of it as a public conversation, a place to put things from your mind/brain that others might find useful and to find things from others (in our class and elsewhere) that you might find useful. And a place we can always go back to to see what we were thinking before and how our class conversations have affected that. Looking forward to seeing where we go, and hoping you are too.
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A Random Walk
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I read that New York Times
I read that New York Times article as well, and have some of the same doubts. On one level, some of the ideas presented in it are very practical; I, for one, would be very much in favor of lining up children in class by sneaker color instead of gender. But in the end, how much is that really going to help anything? Even if you take every possible step to discourage gender stereotypes in the classroom, kids who identify strongly with the opposite gender (or don't identify strongly with either gender) will still feel left out, because the world outside that small classroom is still very much divided in binary gender. I'm reminded here of a case from the 1960's where a boy who acccidentally had his penis cut off as an infant was raised as a girl for a time-the common belief then was that gender was a social construct and completely malleable for 18 months or so. But this "girl," Brenda, never felt "right" in a female body, was teased and had severe depression throughout childhood and adolescence, and eventually chose to live as a man again. Clearly in this case there was some sort of biological factor at work-if gender were completely socially constructed, "Brenda" should have had little trouble adjusting to female life. But how much of this identity is biologically based? And what specific biological factors are involved? There are probably people in the world who would reduce the gender identity issue to hormone and brain chemical imbalances, but I'm positive there's more than that. (I was definitely a Descartes supporter in class). How did "Brenda" instinctively know that she didn't belong in a female body? And for other children in that position...would medications to delay puberty or adjust hormones relieve the problem or only add to the confusion?
How much of "me" is my choice?
I just had a long conversation that got me thinking.
I possess a unique character, or at least I hope so for everyone else’s sake. I have some things that I am just awful at, and some things that I will admit I am good at. For example, if you give me a pencil I can draw a pretty handsome stick figure, but I can barely plunk out “heart and soul” on a piano. I’m just not “a natural” pianist. I think most people would agree that the fact that piano doesn’t come easily to me is a genetic trait (but feel free to contradict that statement). Now, if I wanted to, I could practice piano every day for 15 years and I’ll bet you that eventually I’d be good at it. With time and work, I can teach myself a skill that I don’t intrinsically possess. In other words, though I didn’t inherit a talent for piano, I can force my brain to learn it. Truthfully however, I’m still not “a natural” pianist, so, did I really change anything about my inherited character? I certainly did not change my genes. Can we really change our characters, or is it the most we can do to make choices to act out of accordance with them?
This was a silly example, but you can see that it could be applied to more serious topics as well. Take someone who gets addicted to things really easily. That person could fight their tendency toward addiction and not ever actually be addicted to anything, but does that change the fact that he or she has that character trait? Then again, maybe that’s just the point: You can’t change your genes, but you have the ability to act against your natural tendencies from them, which is an interesting idea in itself.
Always love to hear feedback~
re: How much of "me" is my choice?
Hi, Eden. I'm glad you brought up the topic of effort vs. ability, however, I cannot unreservedly agree with your assertion. I agree that with practice we can learn skills that we do not have an innate knowledge of or ability for, as this is the nature of learning. Though I disagree with you when you argue that with 15 years of practice you could become a good pianist. Maybe you could, I don’t really know you, but the point I’m trying to make is that while one would certainly improve with 15 years of practice and, as Leigh pointed out, they would develop muscle memory thus altering their consciousness, they could never become the next Franz Liszt. Effort is certainly important for improving one’s skills, but ability is imperative. If success were only a matter of effort, maybe I wouldn’t have to watch Peyton Manning play in the super bowl.
However, I do think that your main point/question about our ability to go against our natural tendencies is very interesting. How autonomous am I really? Who knows? But I am interested in your point that we do have the ability to go against our natural tendencies. But then how much of our decision to go against these tendencies is really our own choice and how much is ruled by heteronomous factors? I suppose the question doesn't really have an answer.
can practice make perfect?
eden--
i think you answered your own question toward the end of your response when you wrote "you can't change your genes, but you have the ability to act against your natural tendencies." i too, find this a very interesting idea in that it seems to go against all we have been taught about how our dna makes us who we are. as you said, despite your lack of piano viturosity, if you were to practice everyday you would become competent at the piano. although you would not be changing the message from your genes which says that you are not a natural pianist, everyday that you practice you would be building new and stronger connections in your brain which would allow your fingers to respond more and more easily to the messages from the brain telling them what to do. i'm sure as the course goes on we will able to answer more thoroughly how these new connections occur, but for now we must settle with the idea that although your genes cannot change, their must be processes within your brain that are changing to enable your skills to improve.
you also asked whether this practice would change your inherited character and i think that it does to some degree. although your chemical "character" does not change, your starting position from birth told you that you would unlikely be able to play the piano well. by fighting this tendency and becoming a fair musician you have changed your outward character although not chemical.
as a music major and bio minor i am very excited to learn more about subjects like this which can combine my too interests. i hope we can talk more about topics like this.
I think it was John Watson
I think it was John Watson who claimed that if he were given a dozen infants and a specific world to raise them in, he could bring each one up to be any kind of person with any kind of talent and career. I personally think that's impossible to that degree, but there is some truth to it, just as you said about practicing the piano and possibly gaining a skill you don't currently have. I think we do have a certain amount of control when it comes to acting against our "natural tendencies" as you said. I also think that timing has a lot to do with it. We have more opportunities to develop skills when we're younger, though certain skills may come more easily to certain people.
There was a study done a few years ago on perfect pitch and tonal languages. Perfect pitch is a relatively rare gift (at least in our culture), but in countries that speak tonal languages, it is more frequent. In the study, people speaking tonal languages, such as Mandarin, were recorded saying the same things at many different times and in different situations, and each time, they used the same pitches. Perhaps many skills we believe to be "gifts" are actually possible for all people to learn, but we don't exercise them enough or learn them early enough to make use of them.
I'd say more, but I'm about to be late for this class.
Do you believe in magic
After reading the article “Do You Believe in Magic?” in this week’s edition of the Science Times I became overwhelmed with a plethora of unanswered questions. Seeing that I now have a captive audience I would like to draw on your opinions and ideas. The article described magical thoughts as a way of soothing everyday fears and mental distresses; basically a way to relieve insecurity and form simple hypotheses in uncertain situations. Most people are aware that their magical beliefs and rituals are irrational, but there are those whose magical thoughts develop into delusion or psychosis. My question is at what point do these “magical thoughts” or superstitions move from the internal self to the physical self? Is there a point where a thought will manifest itself into a physical hindrance? I then recalled the concept of the evil eye. Many of you are probably not familiar with the evil eye, but coming from a superstitious Italian family I have been forewarned of its consequences and will share them with you. The folklore of the evil eye is present in many cultures and the most basic form is a result of envy elicited by the good fortune of a person eventually resulting in their misfortune. The envious person will unknowingly bestow a curse on a victim with a malevolent stare. In some cases the evil eye will cause misfortune and in others it may result in illness and even death (my grandmother insists it is the cause of her migraines).
The fact that this concept is present in a variety of cultures, in my mind, gives it a certain degree of validity, but that doesn’t make it fact. In my opinion, the wishes or thoughts of one person couldn’t possible effect another in the way described. I’m not saying that if you think about harming someone that it can’t happen because nothing is preventing you from getting up and physically hurting a person. In this case, could the noted physical ailments be the result of the internal anxiety of the fortunate person. It would be much more believable for me to assume that the thoughts of a person can manifest themselves physically in that person, and not in another. But can a thought, anxiety or desire of a person result in an illness? And what about other thoughts and beliefs that are said to manifest themselves physically, like stigmata? Is this further evidence of the idea, or just an easy way to connect two phenomena?
"magic"
This is something I toy with a lot, the whole question of whether or not thoughts can influence our external world and those around us. I think yes to some degree, but... It's all such a murky business. Too many variables are involved in this argument. Do fortunate people suffer because others are thinking negative thoughts or is it because the fortunate person is paranoid and projecting their own anxiety onto someone else? How is it possible to measure something like that? It's all so subjective.
Superstitions were a relatively simple way of making sense of the world in a time when not much was known about it. But does that mean that these modes of thought are meaningless in today's world? In a way, we're even more uncertain about the world now than we were a few centuries ago. Physicists in the beginning of the last century thought they had solved all of the world's great mysteries. Then they realized that they really knew nothing at all and we're still not any closer to unraveling our world's secrets. What's to say that the major points we're teaching in science textbooks now won't change in ten years? It's almost guaranteed that they will. What's to say that these superstitions don't reveal something important about ourselves and about the natural world at large?
I know that everyone and their brother has seen this movie and talked about it to death, but this seems like something straight out of What the Bleep Do We Know? And the whole concept does make sense in a way. After all, if thoughts supposedly arise from physical structures (i.e. neural connections) then why can't thoughts influence those physical structures in turn?
What the Bleep...
You know, after watching that movie and reading about the individuals involved in the commentary, I really started wondering about the "truths" that we take for granted concerning our brain and perception of reality . I'm reading this book called " The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot, and he discusses a theory that is more similar to the one involving Dickinson, that everything is a projection of the mind. However, more than that, we have within us the ability to acess everything that ever was and ever will be. He discusses universal conciousness and how it could be possible with a holographic model to be instantaneously connected to everything in the universe.
One of the most interesting examples I read about involved controlled experiments with LSD. Patients who were put on LSD therapy almost unanimously experienced 'memories' of being in the womb, recounting facts about their mother's pregnancy, heartbeats, birth, ,that were amazingly detailed and medically accurate but beyond the patient's education level. Patients also experienced hallucinations in which they relived wars, the lives of their relatives, ancestors, plants and animals. One even hallucinated that she was a female dinosaur and identified a colored patch of scales on the head of male dinosaurs that she thought was particularly sexy. The scientist who conducted the studies researched all of the information in these hallucinations and discovered that it was true, from the materials used in mummification, to battles fought in wars, to even the fact that certain male lizards have bright head patches that females find irresistable. Talbot argues that by changing the brain's chemistry with drugs ( and other, less dangerous methods) it is possible to tap into a collective consciousness that is normally inaccessible.
How cool is that? I mean, it could all be a coincidence, but I'm convinced that there is so much more to the universe than we consider in our day to day lives, and that even though the brain may control a great deal of our physical body, there is something else that we remain ignorant of.
About dreams
Wow. That reminds me a lot of dreams friends have told me about... Dreams of past lives, like of being warriors in feudal Japan for instance, that are amazingly detailed. Although the people I've heard these things from could easily have made these dreams up, I somehow doubt it. It's a recurring theme and I think there might be something to it. The idea that we can access things with our minds that we usually think are impossible to access is just... incredible. But it's just so hard to really look at these things objectively. We're not outside observers, looking at consciousness and how the human mind really works and interacts with the environment. We're very much human and we're stuck inside of the system. I don't see a way in which we could look into ourselves and figure it all out, especially when one gets into metaphysics and starts questioning whether or not what our senses tell us can be trusted.
Not magic but intention; science & periodic paradigmatic changes
Heather, you bring up a two provocative questions. First you questioned the extent to which our thoughts can influence our external world. Non-denominational modern spiritual leaders, such as Dwayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra, have outlined methods by which we can understand how our thoughts can influence our external world. In The Secrets of the Power of Intention: Learning to Co-create the Your World Your Own Way, Dyer demonstrates several ways in which our thoughts contribute to the “realities” or “truths” in the real world. He argues that there is a source energy from which life is created. Essentially, what you focus your attention on taps into the source energy; you will manifest or bring into actuality. Similarly fears and thoughts of scarcity can be created if they are focused on.
Dyer states: “Our individual thoughts create a prototype in the universal mind of intention. You and the power of intention are never separate. So when you form a thought within you that is in harmony with spirit or commensurate with spirit you form a spiritual prototype that connects you with intention and this sets into motion the manifestation of all your desires.” (The Secrets of the Power of Intention)
While Dyer’s philosophy has some of the characteristics of magic which you mentioned and may be harder to credit, there are more clearly cut physically measurable to observe this connection. Dr. Chopra mentions a study in The New Physics of Healing. (Unfortunately, I am recalling this from memory and cannot provide more specifics at this time.) Two groups of approximately seventy elderly people were isolated over the course of a week. One group was told to pretend it was 1950. They were given 1950s style clothing, records, and newspapers. For them it was 1950. Another group was told to reminisce about the past and think back to former years. At the end of the week the first group who actively lived in the 1950s showed diminished signs of stress, lower cholesterol levels, and generally in better shape than when they entered the study to outsiders unfamiliar with the study this group looked younger than the second group. Although the second group which merely reminisced about the past demonstrated some improvement, they were not as extensive as the other groups. Once both groups were removed from outside influences dictating that their age was associated with decreasing mental and physical acuity, they became better. Without commercials telling them to expect urinary incontinence, brittle bones and dementia they both looked and felt better.
Regarding your second question about the nature of science, we all recognize (or should) that science will change even its current most fundamental truths may not stand the test of time. This is also why it is critically important for scientists to know history and to be familiar with the history of science. By history, I do not mean the superficial treatment of history which only emphasizes the discovery of developments currently favored—a crime which is often committed. History of both ‘failures’, false leads, temporarily accepted and rejected ideas, must all be considered. An appreciation for the different aspects of civilization must also be appreciated. In this respect the former 1979 television show Connections with James Burke, helped people to think more creative and less linearly about the development of science and technology. Though in and of itself a more simplistic presentation of the scientific, it nevertheless demonstrated how economic, artistic, personal, governmental interested merge together both in the development of new technologies and the in the development of scientific constructs.
We can understand that truths accepted now will soon be rejected. What widely held beliefs will we reject in 30 years? 50 years? The history of science reveals periodic paradigm shifts. In our attempts to ‘unravel our world’s secrets’ we plop down the jig saw puzzle pieces. With each new piece of information we think the puzzle will be fall into place, but some pieces don’t quite fit into place. Soon we realize that the puzzle which we thought was two dimensional is in fact three dimensional—like a rubics cube merged with a Sudoku pattern.
A perhaps more important question to ask: can we only accept truths which we can handle? Are truths already accessible, only revealing themselves when a group is ready to accept them. Or do truths matter? "Untruths" —beliefs judged to be false—are just as influential and powerful if not more so.
science and magic
Talk about mind over matter. I've always wondered how exactly thoughts could influence our physical well-being so directly... Especially stress. How could stress-inducing thoughts fire off the release of certain neurotransmitters that result in the release of particular chemicals that produce physiological/ behavioral evidence of stress? Or are the chemicals resulting in the thoughts? Or is this whole thing worded much too incoherently to be followed? Probably. It's been a long day. In any case, it's amazing what happens when outside stress is taken away.
I love science and the history of it. It's not until you read about the actual theorizing processes behind much of modern science that you appreciate the fact that most scientists are nutjobs. So much of science is driven by competition, individual egos and pride. So much of what has been suggested in the past to explain natural phenomenon seem too ridiculous to believe... But then again, most of what we're taught today seems too ridiculous to believe. Am I really supposed to believe that I'm composed of tiny particles that I can't see? That negatively charged particles are attracted to compact positive centers and that they travel in standing waves? That when I touch a door or sit down, I'm not actually touching anything? I mean, hell... If we're made mostly of empty space, how come we can't walk through walls? How do I know that atoms really exist? I can see "evidence" of them in particle accelerators, but so what? What does it really mean? It's hard to place faith in something that we can't even see, that we have no direct evidence of. Yet we do it all the time, just because authority figures with the right degrees tell us so.
But I guess that's another neat thing about science... It's not really the absolute truth. It's just one systematic way of processing that we impose on the world- another way to label and categorize it. We can have fun changing things around and adopting new explanations of how things really work as we reach dead ends and find new routes to get around them.