Kindly React To This Post Quotes

It is in moments such as these—when impulsive feeling overrides the rational—that the newly discovered role for the amygdala is pivotal. Incoming signals from the senses let the amygdala scan every experience for trouble. This puts the amygdala in a powerful post in mental life, something like a psychological sentinel, challenging every situation, every perception, with but one kind of question in mind, the most primitive: “Is this something I hate? That hurts me? Something I fear?” If so—if the moment at hand somehow draws a “Yes”—the amygdala reacts instantaneously, like a neural tripwire, telegraphing a message of crisis to all parts of the brain.

Incoming signals from the senses let the amygdala scan every experience for trouble. This puts the amygdala in a powerful post in mental life, something like a psychological sentinel, challenging every situation, every perception, with but one kind of question in mind, the most primitive: “Is this something I hate? That hurts me? Something I fear?” If so—if the moment at hand somehow draws a “Yes”—the amygdala reacts instantaneously, like a neural tripwire, telegraphing a message of crisis to all parts of the brain.

Third Week of June 2012 The questionnaire arrived via email from Dr. Arius. It read: Good Day, Young! Thank you for agreeing to be a candidate in my survey. As I mentioned previously, let’s conduct this research like our regular correspondence. There is no pressure on your part to answer or not to answer my questions; it’s entirely up to your discretion on the way you like to channel this analysis. There are no fixed rules or regulations on how you answer my queries. Be yourself and treat this study like you are talking with a confidant. Let’s get started and begin from the beginning; * In “Initiation” you said that as far as you can remember; as a baby you disliked your father. What was it that you didn’t like about the man? Did he have a certain smell that repelled you or something conscious or subconscious that repulsed your connection towards him? * Do you think your overly protective mother had an influence on you disliking your father? * When you were wearing pretty frocks and playing with dolls, did you feel less than a boy? How did you feel or react when you saw other boys playing with ‘boyish’ toys; like miniature toy soldiers or train sets, etc.? * Did your mom try distancing you away from your dad? * What did your brothers think of your parent’s relationship? * Did you have any boy pals or friends when you were growing up? If not, why is that? Would you have grown up differently if you had had guy friends? Let’s start with these questions and we’ll proceed further with others, as we continue along in our future correspondence. Now that you, Andy and Oscar have reconnected, I hope your newfound friendships are progressing well with both your ex ‘big brothers and lovers. Keep me posted, as I’m interested to know the outcome. Kind regards, A.S.

Given the demonstrated benefits of interactivity, why do so many of us continue to solve problems with our heads alone? Blame our entrenched cultural bias in favor of brainbound thinking, which holds that the only activity that matters is purely mental in kind. Manipulating real-world objects in order to solve an intellectual problem is regarded as childish or uncouth; real geniuses do it in their heads. This persistent oversight has occasionally been the cause of some irritated impatience among those who do recognize the value of externalization and interactivity. There’s a classic story, for example, concerning the theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, who was as well known for authoring popular books such as Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! as for winning the Nobel Prize (awarded to him and two colleagues in 1965). In a post-Nobel interview with the historian Charles Weiner, Weiner referred in passing to a batch of Feynman’s original notes and sketches, observing that the materials represented “a record of the day-to-day work” done by the physicist. Instead of simply assenting to Weiner’s remark, Feynman reacted with unexpected sharpness. “I actually did the work on the paper,” he said. “Well,” Weiner replied, “the work was done in your head, but the record of it is still here.” Feynman wasn’t having it. “No, it’s not a record, not really. It’s working. You have to work on paper and this is the paper. Okay?” Feynman wasn’t (just) being crotchety. He was defending a view of the act of creation that would be codified four decades later in Andy Clark’s theory of the extended mind. Writing about this very episode, Clark argues that, indeed, “Feynman was actually thinking on the paper. The loop through pen and paper is part of the physical machinery responsible for the shape of the flow of thoughts and ideas that we take, nonetheless, to be distinctively those of Richard Feynman.” We often ignore or dismiss these loops, preferring to focus on what goes on in the brain—but this incomplete perspective leads us to misunderstand our own minds. Writes Clark, “It is because we are so prone to think that the mental action is all, or nearly all, on the inside, that we have developed sciences and images of the mind that are, in a fundamental sense, inadequate.” We will “begin to see ourselves aright,” he suggests, only when we recognize the role of material things in our thinking—when we correct the errors and omissions of the brainbound perspective, and “put brain, body, and world together again.