Constructing A Nervous System Quotes

Indeed, says psychologist Dan Stern of the University of Geneva, the brain is so relational that our nervous system is actually “constructed to be captured by the nervous systems of others, so that we can experience others as if from within their skin, as well as from within our own.

Every animal's perception of the world, constructed by its evolved sensory apparatus and nervous system to take best advantage of its environment, is subjective - there are no colors out there, as we perceive them, waiting for us. There is no sound - only waveforms. And perhaps the strangest fact of all: Outside our bodies, there is no pain. Pain is something we create.

An acting teacher friend of mine readies her students for auditions by telling them to imagine placing all the techniques and tools they’ve acquired into a barrel, and put it on like rodeo clowns do. Not to be glanced at or checked on anxiously, but to be with you and at the ready when the audition demands.

There is a “real” world, out there, but we do not perceive it directly. It is assembled by the sensory and nervous systems of each individual animal, and it is assembled differently by every one of them. What we perceive is a construct. Every animal’s perception of the world, constructed by its evolved sensory apparatus and nervous system to take best advantage of its environment, is subjective—there are no colors out there, as we perceive them, waiting for us. There is no sound—only waveforms.

the universe began fourteen billion years ago with the emergence of elementary particles in the form of primordial plasma, which quickly morphed into atoms of hydrogen, helium, and lithium; a hundred million years later, galaxies began to appear, and in one of these, the Milky Way, minerals arranged themselves into living cells that constructed advanced life, including evergreen trees, coral reefs, and the vertebrate nervous systems that humans used to discover this entire sequence of universe development.

How does the body push the comparatively tiny genome so far? Many researchers want to put the weight on learning and experience, apparently believing that the contribution of the genes is relatively unimportant. But though the ability to learn is clearly one of the genome's most important products, such views overemphasize learning and significantly underestimate the extent to which the genome can in fact guide the construction of enormous complexity. If the tools of biological self-assembly are powerful enough to build the intricacies of the circulatory system or the eye without requiring lessons from the outside world, they are also powerful enough to build the initial complexity of the nervous system without relying on external lessons. The discrepancy melts away as we appreciate the true power of the genome. We could start by considering the fact that the currently accepted figure of 30,000 could well prove to be too low. Thirty thousand (or thereabouts) is, at press time, the best estimate for how many protein-coding genes are in the human genome. But not all genes code for proteins; some, not counted in the 30,000 estimate, code for small pieces of RNA that are not converted into proteins (called microRNA), of "pseudogenes," stretches of DNA, apparently relics of evolution, that do not properly encode proteins. Neither entity is fully understood, but recent reports (from 2002 and 2003) suggest that both may play some role in the all-important process of regulating the IFS that control whether or not genes are expressed. Since the "gene-finding" programs that search the human genome sequence for genes are not attuned to such things-we don't yet know how to identify them reliably-it is quite possible that the genome contains more buried treasure.

To say that simple life-forms without nervous systems have pain is unnecessary and probably not correct. They certainly have some of the elements required to construct feelings of pain, but it is reasonable to hypothesize that for pain itself to emerge, as a mental experience, the organism needed to have a mind and that for that to pass, the organism needed a nervous system capable of mapping structures and events. In other words, I suspect that life-forms without nervous systems or minds had and have elaborate emotive processes, defensive and adaptive action programs, but not feelings. Once nervous systems entered the scene, the path for feelings was open. That is why even humble nervous systems probably allow some measure of feeling.5 It is often asked, not unreasonably, why feelings should feel like anything at all, pleasant or unpleasant, tolerably quiet or like an uncontainable storm. The reason should now be clear: when the full constellation of physiological events that constitutes feelings began to appear in evolution and provided mental experiences, it made a difference. Feelings made lives better. They prolonged and saved lives. Feelings conformed to the goals of the homeostatic imperative and helped implement them by making them matter mentally to their owner as, for example, the phenomenon of conditioned place aversion appears to demonstrate.6 The presence of feelings is closely related to another development: consciousness and, more specifically, subjectivity.

And yet what a potentially dangerous device, what a terrible opportunity to bury valuable, even vital sensory information beneath the fears and prejudices and suppressions of the higher brain! We absolutely must exercise constant discrimination upon the steady barrage of sensations if they are to take on any meaningful form and direct sequential activities; but what bizarre, even ghastly shapes this discrimination is free to invent. Attitudes, moods, neuroses, fixations, and avoidances of all kinds contribute to the sensitivity of the ascending sensory pathways themselves, so that minor irritations can be magnified to overwhelming proportions, pleasures can be erased or actually turned into torments, serious internal difficulties can be blotted completely out of consciousness. The principle of selectivity is crucial to organized behavior, but the possibilities for its abuse are enormous. The mind is capable of distorting incoming information to almost any degree, and it can actually construct a body image that has very little to do with the bulk of sensory data which the body is providing. These two directions of sensory transmission are both occurring all the time, and we cannot say that our idea of reality is more clearly established by one than by the other. Or, if we have to make a choice, we must admit that it is the descending, centrifugal sensory current that is the more important one: We all receive stimulation from the same external world through identical sensory devices, but it is the process of selection and interpretation which makes us respond differently, makes each of us the unique individuals that we are. In this process, discriminating mind descends into and is active in every synapse of the sensory system. The two processes of transmitting data through the nervous system and of interpreting it cannot be separated. Information is processed at each synaptic level of the afferent pathways. There is no one point along the afferent pathways or one particular level beneath the central nervous system below which activity cannot be a conscious sensation and above which it is a recognizable, defineable sensory experience. Perception has many levels, and it seems that the many separate stages are arranged in a hierarchy, with the more complex stages receiving input only after they are processed by the more elementary systems.13 And the more elementary systems are in turn facilitated or inhibited by the higher, more complex ones. The conclusions towards which these observations push us seems unequivocal. The cognitive, associational processes of the higher brain have just as much to do with our construction of physical reality—both within us and outside of us—as do our sensory devices and their specific stimulations. And remember, it is the perception of this sensory reality which initiates and directs our motor responses, our postures, and our behavior.

Cedar Capital Group Tokyo Review of Stats Shows Decrease in Mortality Rate in Construction Sites Cedar Capital Group in Tokyo Japan construction industry is one of the riskiest industries to work with. Not only do they have to deal with falling debris but workers also have to be aware of faulty wirings, defective equipment and weather warnings. Workers even sometimes have to lose their lives in the midst of construction. These circumstances are inevitable and precautions were already implemented even at the start of training. Yet, it cannot be denied that construction is one of the most lucrative businesses in the world today. Everywhere we go, we see buildings being built and establishments being constructed. We see new structures in developed nations. New York, America, Tokyo, Japan, Beijing, China and Seoul, South Korea are some of the leading cities which feature new construction projects almost everyday. Singapore is also not left behind. Considered as one of the most flourishing countries in the world, the little island-city has prided itself with new infrastructure projects and promise a thousand more to come. It came no surprise that the country’s journey towards urbanization was held liable for the deaths of hundreds of construction workers in the previous years. Just recently, though, Singapore has declared their concern on the number of fatalities there are in a construction project. If not of deaths, accidents resulting to fractures and minor and major injuries are also experienced in other neighboring countries. Cedar Capital Group in Tokyo Japan, one the distributor of heavy capital equipment in the country, reports to have dozens of death in the last 4 years of their operation. This, as they claim, is one of the reasons why there is a large scarcity in job application related to construction. Many companies are also faced with numerous complaints because of these deaths and injuries. According to further review, approximately one-quarter of the deaths result from exposure to hazardous substances which cause such disabling illnesses as cancer and cardiovascular, respiratory and nervous-system disorders. Analysts even warn that work-related diseases are expected to double by the year 2020 and that if improvements are not implemented now, exposures today will kill people by the year 2020. Surprisingly, though, while people are being troubled with the number of casualties in the construction sector, recent studies and statistics show fewer deaths in construction sector in the first half of the year. Specifically in Singapore, Manpower Ministry has announced only 8 death reports compared to the 17 deaths in 2014. Although this is not a reason to celebrate since there are still fatalities, Singapore’s Contractual Association stated that this is an improvement as it shows the effectiveness of the recent awareness programs and training seminars conducted across the island-city. The country aims to clear all fatalities for the next succeeding years.

In the expansive nervous system of this word, white supremacy, patriarchy, and extractivism are faulty codes, the misfiring signals which diconnect me from what is, in fact, happening to me; they construct peripheries and thereby make ancient pain seem brand-new.

Modern scientific definitions show that what we label 'objects' or 'objective' are mere nervous constructs inside our skulls which our nervous system has abstracted electro-colloidally from the actual world of electronic processes on the sub-microscopic level. And so we have to face a complete methodological departure from two-valued, 'objective' orientations to general, infinite-valued, process orientations, as necessitated by scientific discoveries for at least the past sixty years.

This view, which I call the theory of constructed emotion, offers a very different interpretation of the events during Governor Malloy’s speech. When Malloy’s voice caught in his throat, it did not trigger a brain circuit for sadness inside me, causing a distinctive set of bodily changes. Rather, I felt sadness in that moment because, having been raised in a certain culture, I learned long ago that “sadness” is something that may occur when certain bodily feelings coincide with terrible loss. Using bits and pieces of past experience, such as my knowledge of shootings and my previous sadness about them, my brain rapidly predicted what my body should do to cope with such tragedy. Its predictions caused my thumping heart, my flushed face, and the knots in my stomach. They directed me to cry, an action that would calm my nervous system. And they made the resulting sensations meaningful as an instance of sadness.

Stimuli...are given to neural elaboration and translated into a linguistic system of the nervous system. Between the exterior world and the living organism, there is an insertion of a whole that orders, coordinates, and interprets: the nervous system is a mirror of the world...The higher animal thus constructs an Umwelt that has a Gegenwelt, a rejoinder in its nervous system.

And the more we encounter an ideal situation like the one described, the more our inherent design for secure attachment will flourish. It actually gets constructed in an embodied, somatic way that shapes our nervous system, brain, and even our muscles and tissues.

The neural activity patterns that correspond to our surround are first concocted by sensory organs such as our eyes, our ears, or the tactile corpuscles in our skin. The sensory organs work with the central nervous system, where nuclei in regions such as the spinal cord and the brain stem assemble the signals collected by the sensory organs. Eventually, after a few more intermediate stations, the cerebral cortices receive and organize the perceptual signals. Thanks to the pioneering work of physiologists such as David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, we know that the result of this setup is the construction of maps of objects and of their territories, in varied sensory modalities, for example, sight, hearing, touch. The maps are the basis for the images we experience in our minds.1

The reason, I believe, is straightforward: repression disarms one’s ability to protect oneself from stress. In one study, the physiological stress responses of participants were measured by how their skin reacted electrically to unpleasant emotional stimuli, while the patients reported how much these stimuli bothered them. Flashed on a screen were insulting or demeaning statements, such as “You deserve to suffer,” “You are ugly,” “No one loves you,” and “You have only yourself to blame.” Three groups of participants were assessed in this way: people with melanoma, people with heart disease, and a healthy control group. Among the melanoma group there was a consistently large gap between what they reported—that is, to what degree they consciously felt upset by these scornful and disparaging messages—and the level of bodily stress their skin reactions betrayed. In other words, they had pushed their emotions below conscious awareness. This cannot help affecting the body: after all, if you go through life being stressed while not knowing you are stressed, there is little you can do to protect yourself from the long-term physiological consequences. Accordingly, the scientists concluded that repressiveness ought to be seen “as a mind-body, rather than as just a mental, construct.”[8] Some years later, psychologists at the University of California, Berkeley, investigated the physiological effects not of repression, a largely unconscious process, but of suppression, defined as “the conscious inhibition of one’s own emotional expressive behavior while emotionally aroused.” If I know I’m afraid but choose to conceal that from a rabid dog who can “smell fear,” I am suppressing my feelings—as opposed to repressing them, as in compulsively pretending to agree with opinions one finds repellent and not realizing it until later. In the Berkeley study, participants were shown films normally expected to elicit disgust, such as burn patients being treated or an arm being surgically amputated. Some participants were specifically instructed not to reveal emotions when watching, while the control group was free to express emotion by means of facial or body movements. On a number of physiological measurements, the suppression group showed heightened activation of their sympathetic, or fight-or-flight, nervous system: in other words, a stress response.[9] There may be certain situations where a person, for perfectly valid reasons, deliberately chooses not to express how he feels; if one does it habitually or under compulsion, the impact is more than likely to be toxic.