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Posts tagged with “science”

<p>I always enjoy these examples of the mind's adaptability...however, I believe the assumption on why it works is incorrect. It's not something so simple and unexplanatory as "the mind reads the word, not the letter", but that the mind is constantly checking context, making guesses, testing the guesses, reevaluating. Basically it works off Occam's Razor in a way...the brain is going to go with the simplest solution, which to it, is the most likely candidate based on what it's seen before. </p><p>In other words (no pun intended)...it doesn't look at a single word at all. It looks at that word in relation to the one before and after it...both syntactically and semantically. Some words, taken out of the context of the sentence, could mean many things. We simply assume what it will be based upon the context and move on...if our assumption continues to hold water, then great. If not, we have to stop and reevaluate...but of course this example above is written in a way that is pretty understandable. Your brain's assumptions are correct. But that's because of its constant prediction and evaluation of its predictions. </p><p>Science aside...I could also see it as a neat Vonnegut-ian trick whereby a character or a group decide that words are meaningless and start actually communicating this way to make a point. That makes me chuckle.</p>

09:16 AM | 0 Comments | Tags: inspiration, science

<p>A few very good articles in this issue:</p><p> - A set of interviews on the creative mind, <a href="../2008/06/04/link.284/">previously mentioned</a>.</p><p> - An analysis of split corpus callosum patients. </p><p>The article states it looks at the origins of consciousness, but that's a stretch. It addresses the emergent properties of consciousness, and it suggests that the left-brain's constant hypothesis-formation given sequences catalogued by the right-brain can help explain the singularity, but it drops off there and doesn't go for the gold, which to me would be suggesting that consciousness is simply the relative percentages of activity at each moment, and that even without a left-brain, wouldn't we still experience that as a singularity? I would also be curious to know what a person with only a right brain would feel. </p><p> - A look at epigenetics and mental disease.</p><p> I've never heard the term epigenetics before, but the article was great. Epigenetics looks at the expression of genes that modulate synaptic transmission and hormonal binding, and really, anything else related to the brain's functioning within a single lifetime and subject to changes in experience. In rats, they looked at nurturing and bullying effects on emotional resilience through the modulation of stress and anxiety pathways (hypothalamus > corticotropin-releasing hormone > pituitary > adrenocorticotropic hormone > adrenal gland > cortisol > feedback to hypothalamus to turn off the reaction). </p><p>Epigenetics, at this point, is based on the methylation or acetylation of histones near the genes in question. Since the genes are wrapped tight around the histones, the addition of methyl or acetyl groups prevents or promotes the binding of enzymes that then promote transcription and expression of those genes (which then create the proteins that do the dirty work). They also looked at the nucleus accumbens, which is central in our pleasure pathway, and found that the neuronal branching there was much greater in cocaine addicts, and that the histone at the Cdk5 gene that codes for this had 4x as many acetyl groups as those rats who just snorted saline (or whatever...i'm no scientist).   </p><p>"Future drugs might, for example, be designed to scrube DNA to eliminate the molecular alterations that led to the slide into schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, or drug addiction." A histone deacetylase inhibitor, or something similar. "A methylation antagonist blocker might help reduce the frequency or severity of post-traumatic stress disorder in rape and trauma victims. It might even be able to limit the psychological effects of combat in soldiers. That is awesome in possibility and fictionalization. The future is here, and without a real understanding, we are grasping at incredibly powerful straws. </p>

09:39 AM | 0 Comments | Tags: reading, inspiration, science