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Ch. 3: Exploring Your Brain ("Good Thinking" - by Guy P. Harrison)

#141: Oct. - Dec. 2015 (Non-Fiction)
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Chris OConnor

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Ch. 3: Exploring Your Brain ("Good Thinking" - by Guy P. Harrison)

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Ch. 3: Exploring Your Brain ("Good Thinking" - by Guy P. Harrison)

Please use this thread to discuss the above chapter.
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Re: Ch. 3: Exploring Your Brain ("Good Thinking" - by Guy P. Harrison)

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This chapter seems pretty textbook so far, I am only to the amygdala though.
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Re: Ch. 3: Exploring Your Brain ("Good Thinking" - by Guy P. Harrison)

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He does go to a bit of trouble to liven it up, but - yeah.
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Re: Ch. 3: Exploring Your Brain ("Good Thinking" - by Guy P. Harrison)

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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. :yes:
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Re: Ch. 3: Exploring Your Brain ("Good Thinking" - by Guy P. Harrison)

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that amygdala stuff was fascinating, and so relatable.
A fascinating 2014 report in Neurocase tells the story of a forty-four-year-old businessman who began having seizures that damaged his left amygdala. Doctors removed it, only to discover later that they had extracted a phobia along with it. The man's previously recorded arachnophobia vanished. Not only was he no longer afraid at the mere sight of a spider, but after surgery he said he found them interesting and had no reluctance to touch or hold them.
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Re: Ch. 3: Exploring Your Brain ("Good Thinking" - by Guy P. Harrison)

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What might a small team of assassins or a vast army of soldiers who are incapable of feeling fear be capable of?

Harrison, Guy P. (2015-10-06). Good Thinking: What You Need to Know to be Smarter, Safer, Wealthier, and Wiser (Kindle Locations 1309-1310). Prometheus Books. Kindle Edition.
yeah, there is a drug sports people take that makes 'em like that.

i wondered if it worked by acting in some way on the amygdala.
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Re: Ch. 3: Exploring Your Brain ("Good Thinking" - by Guy P. Harrison)

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Fear is not isolated to the amygdalae. This is a complex emotion that touches multiple spots. What the good thinker needs to be aware of is that the amygdalae and all subconscious fear processing present us with a downside to consider here in the modern world. The unthinking nature of reactive and instinctual fear can make us afraid of things that don't really threaten us and, unfortunately, there is never a shortage of people ready to exploit our fears for their gain. Even though we may be sitting safely in our living rooms, for example, we still can be terrorized by images of violence and disasters that are far away and have little or no chance of harming us. Video news is a master of this kind of fear exploitation. For-profit cable-news companies, for example, know that scaring their viewers keeps them watching.

Harrison, Guy P. (2015-10-06). Good Thinking: What You Need to Know to be Smarter, Safer, Wealthier, and Wiser (Kindle Locations 1316-1321). Prometheus Books. Kindle Edition.
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Re: Ch. 3: Exploring Your Brain ("Good Thinking" - by Guy P. Harrison)

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but do know that the left hemisphere is where most language processing takes place, and the right deals with making connections between bits of information and spatial awareness.
this bit from the cerebrum reminded of Archimedes

He was really advanced in being able to hold complex spatial concepts in mind.
Archimedes developed ingenious techniques for calculating areas and volumes, in many ways anticipating modern integral calculus.
i must get around to reading "the method"
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Re: Ch. 3: Exploring Your Brain ("Good Thinking" - by Guy P. Harrison)

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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.
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Re: Ch. 3: Exploring Your Brain ("Good Thinking" - by Guy P. Harrison)

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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.
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