I'm reading this interesting book on how people with brain damage have had their lives transformed by the remarkable discovery that our brains can repair themselves through the power of positive thinking.
Will post brain factoids or other interesting things I uncover along the way as I read the book.
1. The ability to recognise shapes depends on a brain function quite different from those functions required for drawing or seeing colour; it is the same skill that alllows some people to excel at games like Where's Waldo. Women are often better at it than men, which is why men seem to have more difficulty finding things in the refrigerator.
2. In Elizabethan times, lovers were so enamoured of each other's body odours that it was common for a woman to keep a peeled apple in her armpit until it had absorbed her sweat and smell. She would then give this "love apple" to her lover to sniff at in her absence.
3. We now know from brain scans that three parts of the brain are involved in obsessions (chapter on people with obsessive-compulsive disorder).
- We detect mistakes with our oribtal frontal cortex, part of the frontal lobe, on the underside of the brain, just behind our eyes.
- Once the cortex has fired the mistake feeling, it sends a signal to the cingulate gyrus, located in the deepest part of the cortex. This triggers the dreadful anxiety.
- The "automatic gearshift", the caudate nucleus, sits deep in the centre of the brain and allows our thoughts to flow from one to the next, as happens in OCD, the caudate becomes extremely "sticky".
Brain scans of OCD patients show that all three brain areas are hyperactive.
With obsessions and compulsions, the more you do it, the more you want to do it; the less you do it, the less you want to do it.
"The struggle is not to make the feeling go away; the struggle is not to give in to the feeling."
4. How to truly master new skills. After a brief period of practice, as when we cram for a test, it is relatively easy to improve because we are likely strengthening existing synaptic connections. But we quickly forget what we've crammed - because these are easy-come, easy-go neuronal connections and are rapidly reversed. Maintaining improvement and making a skill permanent require the slow steady work that probably forms new connections.
1. The ability to recognise shapes depends on a brain function quite different from those functions required for drawing or seeing colour; it is the same skill that alllows some people to excel at games like Where's Waldo. Women are often better at it than men, which is why men seem to have more difficulty finding things in the refrigerator.
2. In Elizabethan times, lovers were so enamoured of each other's body odours that it was common for a woman to keep a peeled apple in her armpit until it had absorbed her sweat and smell. She would then give this "love apple" to her lover to sniff at in her absence.
3. We now know from brain scans that three parts of the brain are involved in obsessions (chapter on people with obsessive-compulsive disorder).
- We detect mistakes with our oribtal frontal cortex, part of the frontal lobe, on the underside of the brain, just behind our eyes.
- Once the cortex has fired the mistake feeling, it sends a signal to the cingulate gyrus, located in the deepest part of the cortex. This triggers the dreadful anxiety.
- The "automatic gearshift", the caudate nucleus, sits deep in the centre of the brain and allows our thoughts to flow from one to the next, as happens in OCD, the caudate becomes extremely "sticky".
Brain scans of OCD patients show that all three brain areas are hyperactive.
With obsessions and compulsions, the more you do it, the more you want to do it; the less you do it, the less you want to do it.
"The struggle is not to make the feeling go away; the struggle is not to give in to the feeling."
4. How to truly master new skills. After a brief period of practice, as when we cram for a test, it is relatively easy to improve because we are likely strengthening existing synaptic connections. But we quickly forget what we've crammed - because these are easy-come, easy-go neuronal connections and are rapidly reversed. Maintaining improvement and making a skill permanent require the slow steady work that probably forms new connections.
I'm immensely fascinated by psychology, especially abnormal psychology and neurology as well as the nature of geniuses because I like things that deviate from the norm. I'm interested in why and how they deviate from the norm. It's also a study of God's creation in a way. :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment