A good question is, Why do we use so little of our brain? Could it be that we have lost some of its capacity of use over the thousands of years? Kind of like a bronze that the earliest made is the most authentic. Could it be another sign to creation from the God of Jehovah? I would vote, YES!!

froglipz wrote:So as I am reading all of the carefully crafted descriptions, I am struck by how much this reads like my text books in elementary school. I don't know exactly how he nailed it so well, but the tone, language, etc just sound so much like school in the early '70's I liked school very much then, that is not a bad thing.

Just an observation here, but this title and others from Prometheus Books are released in paperback only. And, indeed—as I am just finding out myself—Prometheus Books was founded by Paul Kurtz, famous skeptic, who founded the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and was editor in chief of Free Inquiry magazine. I would have said Harrison's book has a magazine article vibe to it (complete with breakout quotes and sidebars from other authors). And maybe that's due to Kurtz's background as a publisher and editor of science-oriented periodicals, not to mention a writer of quite a number of articles himself.

According to the company's web site, "Prometheus has been a leader in publishing books for the educational, scientific, professional, library, popular, and consumer markets since 1969."

brother bob wrote:A good question is, Why do we use so little of our brain? Could it be that we have lost some of its capacity of use over the thousands of years? Kind of like a bronze that the earliest made is the most authentic. Could it be another sign to creation from the God of Jehovah? I would vote, YES!!

Well, Popular Science magazine just came out with a list of 10 top brain myths, and the old saw about humans using only 10% of our brains is one of them! We use the whole thing, just not all parts at all times. I confess to a fondness for debunking. I suppose that at times even the debunking can turn out to need debunking--you know, in that way that truths about health and our bodies have a way of reversing themselves over time...But anyway, have a look at them. A few might relieve your minds, such as the myth that alcohol kills brain cells. Whoopee!

http://www.popsci.com/10-brain-myths-busted

And, in matters related to some discussion above:
https://www.braindecoder.com/horror-mov ... 13810.html

It is an interesting site. Lots of real research results, but with hooks the rest of us can appreciate. Like the "Tetris Effect".

Chapter Three, Exploring Your Brain, presents a solid foundation for understanding how brain science relates to good thinking. I want to focus on just one aspect of this chapter, Harrison’s recurring theme that to understand the brain and thought properly we have to consider the brain as a whole. This is a complex idea, not just because wholistic thinking goes against the grain of our tendency to break things up into parts, but also because the human brain is the most complex known entity. Harrison says at the conclusion of this chapter that we should all aim to be a Renaissance person, one who does it all, exercising our whole brain like a muscle, a broad generalist rather than a narrow specialist. This is a way of thought with a strong religious dimension, going back to the central idea of Buddhist and Hindu scripture that all is one, and that recognising the whole is the only way to start understanding the part properly.

Harrison’s attitude of considering the brain as a whole leads him to consider the overall health and fitness of our brain as our most important organ, as meaning we should “nurture, build, protect and enhance” our brain. The brain is plastic, remarkably flexible and adaptable, “more Play-Doh than porcelain”. Good thinking requires constant effort to make our brains more strong and alive.

Harrison provides some really valuable insights into how wholistic thinking is at the centre of this constant enterprise of brain health as like tending a garden. The human brain is a garden of thought that has more moving parts than our galaxy, in terms of neural connections compared to stars. So Harrison says our brains ‘sparkle with electrical energy … a living galaxy’.

The brain has parts, such as the hippocampus, amygdala, cerebellum and cerebrum, but Harrison contends that “we have to avoid giving too much weight to the idea of well-defined borders between brain parts. It’s like looking at the Earth and seeing only two hundred or so separate nations at the expense of the reality of a single planet intimately connected across land, ocean and atmosphere. The brain is an organ built on connections.” (p78)

And later, on p99, “a key lesson [is] that it is necessary to focus conservation efforts on entire natural habitats… the web of life is too complex, the components too intertwined, to approach any other way. This is a good way to think of the brain as well, like a vast ecosystem that will never be understood unless all of it is purposefully investigated.”

These ideas may seem clear and simple, at least they do to me. But using these insights that all is one as a basis for values and ethics is immensely difficult. In practice we assume that our partial outlook is the whole of reality, and we imagine that the ideology that arises from our partial view is the whole truth. So starting from this principle of the existence of an incredibly complex whole ecosystem where our perception only scratches the surface seems a key insight in epistemology.

I will next consider these ideas in terms of how Harrison's unified model of brain science implies that we should consider any complex system, from a microscopic ecosystem up to our solar system, as a whole entity, to begin to understand it properly, as a basic principle of good thinking.

geo wrote:

youkrst wrote:i thought about games and books and movies etc and how they might be more or less immersive or more or less your cup of tea depending on what your amygdala has loaded up over the years and in the instant, in the case of say "first person shooter" computer games would you even play an FPS if you had no amygdala.

My wife and I were watching trick or treaters coming up to our house (decked out with some spooky Halloween props). Most kids run past the skeleton in our garage window. To the extent that they know the skeleton isn't real, they're not really scared. But that little bit of scared is thrilling. It seems to me the amygdala is one of the more primitive parts of the brain, "designed" to help us respond to danger by triggering a flight-or-fight response. It's thrilling to feel the surge of adrenalin, especially in an environment the intellect knows is really safe. Maybe that's why the immersive type video games are so fun because they trigger some of those brain chemicals that give us a little thrill, while the intellect part of our brains reassures us that this is not real.

My wife (a psych nurse practitioner) was talking about the kids she works with. Most are from small rural towns in western North Carolina. Many are from broken families, poverty, abuse. And these kids don't really enjoy Halloween. Maybe they have to deal with real horror on a daily basis and so there's no thrill of being scared. Indeed, Halloween is genuinely too scary for them. Their brains have to deal with real world problems to the extent that the playful aspect of life gets suppressed. And there's no reassurance from the intellectual part of their brains. Just musing out loud here.

Many veterans have a disease where this very part of the brain shrinks and we do not respond properly to fear at all. Its a tough disease that I will showcase in my first book. I like the example of the kids you use here. There is much truth in what you write. In my case I almost ignore the sensor that would make you run. One can say the the trigger dulls over time with excessive stimulus. Thanks for this example.

Guy Harrison wrote:“to focus conservation efforts on entire natural habitats… the web of life is too complex, the components too intertwined, to approach any other way. This is a good way to think of the brain as well, like a vast ecosystem.”

A series of questions about the nature and evolution of the brain can usefully be explored against the framework of this ecological observation. The first point here concerns the nature of causality. There is sometimes a naïve immediate tendency when we are looking for the reason why something happened to focus on the most obvious cause and effect, not fully taking into account the highly complex web of connections and processes that link everything together through space and time.

Harrison points out that each human brain can be seen as like a separate ecosystem itself. The brain requires vastly more blood and energy than any other organ, and its complex responses somehow integrate processes with a speed and efficiency that is vastly better than technology can yet copy in many ways. For example the ability of sport professionals to react instantly to perceptions such as the position of a ball builds on brain capacities that have evolved over millions of years of predation and avoidance to enable us to respond to adaptive pressures.

There is a whole emerging science of behavioural insight that builds on observation of brain function. One example I found really interesting was that when students were asked to remember either a two or seven digit number, and then were offered chocolate or fruit, those who had to stress their brain by remembering a long number were more likely to choose the comfort food. Their cognitive reserves were depleted by the bigger memory task. The stress meant they chose pleasure over health, consumption over investment, the present over the future. This is explained at http://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevalua ... nd-poverty. This surprising finding makes sense as we consider the brain as a whole ecosystem. Rather than seeing the food choice in isolation, it is part of a mental and physical context. It gives new meaning and power to the old kiss saying, keep it simple stupid.

That issue of unexpected causalities within the brain is an interesting one which is relevant for all sorts of situations. For example the ability of people to contribute to a discussion at booktalk is affected by the stress level in their life. Our ability to step back from immediate personal problems and consider bigger issues is directly affected by the physical stresses on our brains. Often we don't realise we are under stress, as in the example of people remembering long numbers.

At that World Bank blog there are a bunch of other fascinating examples. For example holding a grip for a long time is more a test of will and mental energy than of physical strength alone.