Pictures of the Mind by Mariam Boleyn-Fitzgerald

Pictures of the Mind: What the New Neuroscience Tells Us About Who We Are link
By Mariam Boleyn-Fitzgerald
April 17, 2010

Here are some of my favorite passages and opinions on them.


-People who experience less pleasure in response to food might overeat to compensate, whereas people who experience more pleasure stop because they are satisfied. How fascinating! They did fMRI scans that came up with this conclusion, a conclusion that is basically the exact opposite of what we have always thought about the obese.

-Happiness circuits are among the most plastic circuits in the brain. Now isn't that a lovely insight?

-There is something called a "dark network" which is basically a network that is buzzing when we are doing nothing at all and goes dark when figuring out a problem or doing an activity. Its thought to play an important role in learning, memory and in maintaining energy equilibrium in the brain. Isn't that interesting? Even when we think we aren't using our brain, we are. and it turns out to be an important part to our very existence as an intelligent race.

-The larger a persons neural response to increases in the public good the more likely they will give [money] voluntarily. Not that astounding of a discovery, but an interesting study nonetheless.

-Scientists are incredibly close to "erasing" (taking away the emotional aspect of) memories. Most notably this could be used in helping people with PTSD and not having the emotional responses to memories of war, rape, violence, etc. The book talks about scientists who have already been able to achieve this with a drug and other scientists who have serious ethical issues with it. Does this effect the real "you"? By doing this can it make you not learn from your experiences? Personally, I think its a chance for people who are truly suffering from PTSD to have a second chance to live a normal life. This erasing method doesnt actually make them forget the memory, they recall it just fine, they just aren't traumatized by it any longer and that is something that those patients could really use.

-30-40% of people who have temporal lobe epilepsy have intense spiritual experiences. Like talking to god, or feeling connected with the universe, etc. I found this very interesting. It went on to talk about how the left hemisphere, the "logical" side of the brain, often tries to come up with "rational" explanations of things occurring in the right hemisphere that it cant account for, for instance a seizure in the temporal lobe making you feel all these emotions you cant explain, and thus the best explanation for such pleasurable experiences (which are in reality just chemicals being released in your brain) is a connection with god or the universe. There was also a particularly enjoyable quote from scientist Ramachandran, "God is the ultimate confabulation by the left hemisphere".



So there you have it! It is a spectacular book full of tons of really interesting information on a vast amount of different topics (in concerns to the brain of course). The book actually took an unexpected turn towards meditation and mindfulness at the end and how it actually does a lot of good things to our brain, and can produce high-frequency gamma activity, which is believed to be an indicator of neural synchrony. There is a lot of research being done currently on the link between meditation/mindfulness and happiness and other benefits.

Neuroscience is an up and coming field and there really are no limits to what we can study and what we will find. And that's a big reason why I am finding myself jumping in with both feet. Be expecting a lot of neuroscience related books in the future.

Coming next, my thoughts on Mind Wide Open by Steven Johnson and my favorite passages. This book has been my favorite book for at least four or five years, I am rereading it once again to take notes, like Ive always wanted to, and to look at it with fresh eyes and a new-found passion.

An Email to a Friend

This is an email I sent to a good friend that pretty much encompasses everything I have to say about my recent desire to pursue neuroscience:

So call me a nutcase but the last couple of days I've been contemplating pretty heavily going back to school to get a degree in neuroscience. I'm looking up the programs they have at local universities and of course Emory's is by far the best. They are nationally recognized for their program in neuroscience. They also are expensive as fuck. But, aside from the money issue, I was looking at the courses that are required for the four years and as I was reading over the list I literally got tears in my eyes from how excited I was and how interesting all the classes would be. Yeah, chemistry and calculus are mandatory to pursue a BS in neuroscience but I understand the necessity for them. I wont be taking chemistry to just get through chemistry, I'll be taking chemistry because it actually pertains to an interest of mine.  Being able to see the goal ahead of me would, I think, push me to do better in classes that I don't have an immediate interest in. Neuroscience man! It makes me laugh out loud! But it's a topic I've been vastly fascinated by and read books on for years. Since I was in middle school. There is no doubt about it that it has always held my interest. Anyway, I just had to share with someone and I'm not going to go leaping into anything yet (I do tend to get carried away with myself sometimes). I'm just going to continue doing research on it and sit on it for awhile and take it one step at a time and be sure it's what I want to do. It's just so funny because I'm reading this book on neuroscience and I found it so interesting that I started taking notes on it in a notebook and then I found all these lectures from professors on neuroscience online so I'm going to start watching those and taking notes on those and I'm like wtf…if I'm doing this for FUN this is something I must really be interested in enough to go to school for. And what would I do with my degree in neuroscience? I'd be one of the scientists doing research and studies all the time. How fucking cool would that be? I wonder what sort of money those guys make…but at the same time its like who cares?! I would be delving into things no one has ever seen or considered before, completely new territory and also something that we all have right inside our own heads. It's a fascinating prospect that really just excites me to no end!