no filter or “flow” : your brain on freestyling, improvization and art in the atlantic
“In other words, in order to turn on their creative flow, the rappers had to switch off their inner critic. And in fact, the researchers believe that when they’re freestyling, the artists are actually occupying an altered state of mind. A closer look at their brain activity reveals that an entire, unique network emerges during the process, one in which motivation, language, emotion, motor function, sensory processing and the representation of the artists’ subject experience all interact in unusual ways to create the flow state.”
addiction to the unpredictable in matters of the heart in the nyt
illustration: jeanne detallante
shifting understandings of the brain and consciousness over time in being human
“Philosophers have wondered for thousands of years how we can be sure whether what we’re experiencing is reality or some shadowy deception. Plato imagined people looking at shadows cast by a fire in a cave. Descartes imagined a satanic genius. Starting in the 1960s, philosophers began to muse about what it would be like to be a brain in a vat, with reality supplied by a computer. ”
the nyt on new thoughts about antidepressants : do they make us act better and then we feel better?
“But the most profound implications have to do with how to understand the link between the growth of neurons, the changes in mood and the alteration of behavior. Perhaps antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil primarily alter behavioral circuits in the brain — particularly the circuits deep in the hippocampus where memories and learned behaviors are stored and organized — and consequently change mood. If Prozac helped Dorothy sleep better and stopped her from assaulting her own skin, might her mood eventually have healed as a response to her own alterations of behavior? Might Dorothy, in short, have created her own placebo effect? How much of mood is behavior anyway? Maybe your brain makes you “act” depressed, and then you “feel” depressed. Or you feel depressed in part because your brain is making you act depressed. Thoughts like these quickly transcend psychiatry and move into more unexpected and unsettling realms. They might begin with mood disorders, but they quickly turn to questions about the organizational order of the brain.”
diane ackerman on the brain and love in the nyt
“Love is the best school, but the tuition is high and the homework can be painful.”
Jonah Lehrer interviews Davi Johnson Thornton on her new book Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Popular Media
“All of the time you have to constantly think “How is this affecting my brain? What is this going to do to my brain, and hence my future self?” and at the same time you also have to think “How is my brain influencing my current mood, behavior, state? Is my brain functioning optimally, or am I failing to live up to my fullest potential–and hence need to work on my brain?” You are always diagnosing your brain based on your mood or behavior, and at the same time always trying to mold your brain by giving it the appropriate inputs. It really seems exhausting.”
