5 – Neuro Forest

Our decisions are of free will when we can carefully, consciously weigh their pros and cons.

This of course never happens after last call at the bar.

Oxygen deprivation or carbon monoxide can cause memory loss.

So can dollar beer night at the bar.

Antipsychotic/neuroleptic drugs: Category of drugs tend to relieve schizophrenia and similar conditions.

Aka these are the drugs to avoid if you want to be a reality TV star.

Experiments show that using a cell phone while driving increases the likelihood of an accident by four times.

That increases to 8 times as likely if the phone is being used to play a driving game.

Semantics are the rules that govern the meaning of words and sentences.

Hateful speech towards those rules is called anti-semantic.

Moral decisions are seldom made rationally.

Just watch any episode of “Judge Judy.”

Anxiety makes it genuinely harder to hold conversations and concentrate.

Just ask any guy trying to talk to a pretty girl in a bar.

Social support from a loved one helps to reduce stress.

Though staying home for the holidays in an election year does the exact opposite.

Deceptive Expressions: Sincere and insincere expressions may ‘leak out.

Or as Nicolas Cage calls it: Acting.

Humans are a social species.

That is, until they’re on social media.

Testosterone increases touch sensitivity in the penis.

Unfortunately it doesn’t increase sensitivity in regards to women’s feelings.

An experiment tested to see when/if participants would stop eating if their bowls of soup were “bottomless.”

AKA as the Olive Garden Experiment.

Eight in 10 Americans speak only English.

The other two say they speak American.

Vagal tone: parasympathetic strength of the Vagus nerve.

However, “What happens in the Vagus nerve, doesn’t stay in the Vagus nerve.”

The Exhaustion stage: occurs after prolonged stress; individual no longer has energy to sustain responses.

This is why students stop raising their hands the week after midterms.

Overarchingly, the brain is like a tree.

If a brain falls in the forest…

Stimulus takes two routes simultaneously — the fast pathway and the slow pathway.

To experience a fath pathway emotional response, try buying your wife an anniversary present from Walgreen’s.

Females do not have the SRY gene.

Which is why they have a tough time saying they’re sorry. Except in texts.

The secret to improving memory is:

Just give me a minute.

The elderly face rising health costs.

Those tennis balls that go on the bottom of walkers aren’t free.

Men have higher rates of heart disease than women.

But at least it proves men in fact do have hearts.

Panic attacks are marked by intense sympathetic nervous system arousal (rapid heartbeat, fast breathing).

Like the feeling you get when you know your crush has received and read your text but just isn’t replying.

Antagonist: Drug that blocks a neurotransmitter. Agonist: Drug that mimics or increases an effect.

Protagonist: Person that gets you to stop taking drugs.

Experienced chess players thusly know it also helps to look away from the board.

Otherwise they would never get a date.

Neolithic Period: 10,000 to 5,000 years ago, animals and plants domesticated.

However, people didn’t start dressing up their dogs or making macrame plant hangers until the mid-20th century.

Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units of language.

Unlike memes that are meaningless units of language.

Grammar: Set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce meaningful messages.

You can also lose meaningful friendships by correcting people’s grammar.

One in 15 high school seniors smokes cannabis on a daily or near-daily basis.

The other 14 prefer the more traditional definition of high school.

Memories are resurrected as milestones that punctuate the personal past with episodes.

Or, in the case of Facebook memories, a reminder of what you had for dinner one year ago.

Consciousness relates to and is produced by when different parts of the brain work together.

To see the opposite of this definition, just look to modern politics.

The quality of sleep declines with age.

Mostly due to fear of the dank.

Why are humans especially hard to study?

Can’t get us to look up from our phones.

The ear bones we have now were by evolution what fish used to breathe in water.

So basically, when you put your ear up to a shell and hear the ocean, it’s you not the shell.

The breath may give us more information than we realize.

Probably not more information that Facebook gives advertisers but it gives a lot of info.

Consciousness lags behind external world by 1/3 of a second.

I would repeat that but that would be wasting 2/3 of second and we don’t have the time.

The human brain is asymmetrical.

That’s why few people find a smart person attractive.

Dunbar’s number…

Discounted by Facebook?

Incidentally, the heartbeat is also this way, according to multiple recent peer-reviewed scientific publications – the heart beats fractally, with sub-beats inside the larger beats.

Basically, your heart digs Bach.

Productivity: the ability to improvise new combinations of signals to represent new ideas.

So when someone tells you to stop using so many emojis, tell them you’re just trying to stay productive. In fact, tell them in emojis; they’ll be so proud!

Two or more emotions can be present in a single facial expression. Context and gestures important.

A middle finger is also an important gesture for noting anger.

Attack behaviors depend on the individual and the situation.

For example, the size of the other guy and how much you’ve had to drink.

Newer models view evolution to positively feed back upon itself, to alter or improve ability to future changes.

So DNA might be the only thing that pays attention to its Yelp reviews.

Hypo-egoism: A state in which one is not thinking about the self.

It’s pretty much the opposite of Los Angeles.

Neurotransmitter serotonin decreases sexual activity by blocking dopamine release.

Neurotransmitter serotonin is at its strongest when a man asks a woman to “cover the check just this once.”

Though patients are still often described by the organ: I saw an incredible kidney. today

Or, check out the liver to your right at 3 o’clock.

Grammar is special.

Or is it “are special”?

Effects of meditation have been seen in the: Cortex: Senses Action, Thinking, Planning.

And often the way people dress.

Many brain structures are ancient: dating back to sharks, and proto-fish.

And some of this country’s gun laws.

Measurement requires defining the property to be measured and finding a way to detect it.

For example, establishing your bathroom scale is correct because it shows you weigh six pounds less than at the doctor’s office.

It’s not just men who are funny.

In fact Freud thought that only women could be hysterical.

Raccoon poachers know well that the raccoon will clutch onto a coin with its paw even if having a closed paw takes too much space to be removed from the log.

There’s no change.

Human language is a complex form of communication.

Just ask our president.

The hypothalamus makes up less than 1% of brain mass, yet perhaps the most important 1%.

The other 99% of the brain was responsible for the occupy hypothalamus movement a few years ago.

Semantics:

Why she’s always right and you’re always wrong.

Language may have evolved from communication by gestures.

We have all experienced the evolution of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics to Emojis

Eastern Psychology might offer removing desire for each of the passions as a way to remove the thoughts created by those emotions, as created by desire (i.e., hypothalamus).

Western Psychology achieves this with psychotropic drugs.

Both men and women prefer a romantic partner that is healthy, intelligent, honest, physically attractive, and kind.

Nowadays, most people figure that out by their third marriage.

Buddhist monks do not attempt to only sit around being “mindful.”

Although it’s gotta be easier to meditate in those robes than in skinny jeans.

Music has many parallels to language.

For starters, pop culture has ruined both.

Attraction: Females go for more masculine features in short-term, less masculine features in the long-term.

That’s why for tonight, we use Tinder, and for retirement, we use Tender.

Psychophysicists

The scariest people to run into in the lab.

Axons from different neurons compete with each other to form synapses.

When neurons compete, they should be vigorously screened for doping.

Everyone experiences periods of low self esteem.

Some experience a never ending ellipsis.

The U.S. has a higher rate of poverty than some other industrialized nations.

That’s right, the US isn’t just winning in obesity rates, we have poverty locked down too.

Evidence suggests that people are sexually active well into their 80s and 90s.

Depending on your age, this news will either give you hope. Or nightmares.

Self-consciousness often remains in the background, even amidst other types of consciousness.

Turns out your self-consciousness is very self-conscious.

When researchers analyzed 52 depictions of The Last Supper that were painted between the years 1000 and 1800, they found that the average plate size increased by 66%.

They also found that the last supper is now most likely followed by a midnight snack.

Certain areas of the amygdala may influence sexual preference and orientation.

This part was known to the ancient Greeks as the “Beer Mug of Dionysus.”

Language and music may have arisen together.

Except in jazz music, language is basically “Shoo-be-doo-wop-bee-bop!”

Attractors: are Reproducible patterns of neural activity that remains stable for longer periods of time.

Unlike physical attraction, where the more Attractive and Reproducible are usually the most unstable.

Ontogenesis is how an egg becomes a mind.

Not to be confused wth Torontogenesis, which is how an egg becomes a Canadian citizen.

Hallucinations involve top-down neural pathways.

Or, at least that’s what I was told by a talking pink giraffe.

Lawrence Kohlberg suggests that people pass through a series of stages in the development of moral reasoning and their sense of justice.

In other words if your parents meet an untimely end and you’re scared of bats you’ll become Batman.

For the majority of people the midlife crisis is a myth, transition to midlife is smooth and rewarding.

Corvette dealers might disagree with this statement.

George Miller: Found consistency in capacity limits in memory: he found that attention capacity is, roughly, 7 +- 2 bits of information.

Though I’m willing to argue it’s actually 140 characters, or 280 I can’t keep track anymore.

Sensory buffer: is Storage that holds sensory information for a few seconds or less.

Think of it as the brains own version of Snapchat.

Observer bias: Expectations can influence observations and influence perceptions of reality.

Reappraisal: Changing one’s emotional experience by changing the meaning of the emotion-eliciting stimulus.

For example, “He insulted me, he must like me,” or “how to transform emotional immaturity into a romantic gesture.”

Pareidolia: We may see Jesus in the sky and then just a cloud formation.

Bur if that cloud starts raining wine, you know it’s Jesus.

Still some might argue that this “watering down” of Buddhist practice is not inherently bad, and exports the benefits of certain forms of meditation to popular audiences.

Think of it like they took an Oscar winner and turned it into a summer movie.

Brain death: occurs when all signs of brain activity, as measured by electrical brain waves, have ceased.

This also happens if you watch Fox News.

Alcohol affects GABA receptors responsible for anti anxiety and intoxicating effects.

Too much alcohol makes a person less intoxicating to others.

Higher concentrations of dopamine stimulate the d2 receptors and lead to orgasm.

Which is true for men but still yet to be proven for women.

Exposure to nature has been directly demonstrated in the lab to lead to increased prosocial behavior (generosity).

This generosity does not extend to the squirrels ruining your garden.

Some couples do not plan for children.

And Trojan makes the bank.

The brain is the most complex known object.

A car lease, or IKEA furniture are close second and third.

Sensitivity to prolonged stimulation tends to decline over time as an organism adapts to current conditions.

Unless that stimulation is the sound of your Mother-in-Law’s voice. Then it increases.

Body integration (Health): different organs and systems work together to lead to energy and happiness.

Mine usually just lead to the fridge.

The left hemisphere pays most attention to the ear on the opposite side, and vice versa.

Unlike congress where the left and right side ignore each other.

Those with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex show decreased guilt and trust.

So they would steal the answers to a test and not believe them.

In developing countries most die at home. In developed countries only 20% die at home.

According to Ghost Hunters that means haunted houses will be nonexistent in the near future.

In young adulthood the leading cause of death continues to be accidents.

Followed by suicide, homicide, AIDS, cancer, and last week’s exam.

40% of the world’s population gets by on less than $2 a day.

That could go up to as high as 60%, because Wal-Mart is hiring.

Other experiences that release dopamine in the nucleus accumbens:

Sexual excitement, music, and when your mother-in-law says “Goodbye.”

Amygdala associated with fear learning:

So you can thank your amygdala for everything you memorize an hour before the final.

Meditation has been a mainstay of education and life in the East for millennia.

In the west, it’s treated like a power nap.

Patients often outlive physicians’ estimates of their survival.

There’s nothing quite like the satisfaction of proving a doctor wrong.

Amnesia is proportional to damage around the hippocampus (medial temporal lobe).

As depicted in the documentaries Overboard and The
Bourne Identity.

Not all of us can move to the forest.

Then we’d be asking what happens if a tree falls in the city.

Studies suggest that women become more sexually responsive during the periovulatory period.

But nothing makes them less responsive than the word “periovulatory”.

Older adults statistically seek relationships low in conflict and high in mutual enjoyment.

Which doesn’t explain why they yell to get off their lawn.

Rule of parsimony: Simplest theory that explains all the evidence is the best one.

While the most complicated theory is the one that Alex Jones makes a living from.

Serotonin increases flexibility, but only in your brain.

Don’t pull a hammy making the same mistake I did.

Emotions Aid in quick decision making.

Which is why some men often propose to strippers.

Freud prescribed cocaine to his patients.

No wonder they’d never shut up.

Old age brings freedom to do things for fun and entertainment.

It also brings the ability to start every second sentence with “In my day…”

Generosity: In lab research on giving to charity, more reward system activation is seen in donating even than receiving money.

So, if you’re looking for a high…I accept cash, credit, or Paypal.

Double-blind: Observation whose true purpose is hidden from both the observer and the person being observed.

Double Blind is also something that happens when both people don’t use their real picture on Tinder.

Freud also prescribed cocaine to his patients.

That explains the lines by his office.

Teenagers may approach or avoid religion as they grapple with identity.

This explains the need for free snacks and foosball at church youth groups.

Just noticeable difference (JND): Minimal change in a stimulus that can just barely be detected.

Like your girlfriend’s haircut.

Divided into left and right hemispheres, Each hemisphere of the brain has different functions. Each controls the opposite.

For example, the right side controls picket signs while the left side controls guns.

We rarely interpret emotion based solely on facial expressions.

It’s like trying to decipher whether our partner really is fine when they say “I’m Fine!”

Damage to the right hemisphere causes difficulty perceiving other’s emotions, failure to understand humor and sarcasm.

And a desire to succeed as a YouTuber.

A theory is an original framework to explain a set of interconnected ideas that inspires further research.

And that’s a fact.

Multitasking involves paying attention to more than one stimulus at the same time.

It’s very useful at orgies.

Resilience is determined in part by: Genes, Social support, Physical health, and Previous stressful experiences.

Also exposure to Adele.

Resilience is determined in part by: genes, social support, physical health, previous stressful experiences.

And how long you’re willing to stay on a blind date with someone who’s really into Scientology.

Introspection and words used may fall short to understand an activity that which is by definition beyond language.

Especially when dancing after a few glasses of wine are involved.

Properties of light waves Length: Determines color Intensity/amplitude: Determines brightness.

The brighter the color, the more likely it is to be found on a pair of yoga pants.

Some experience Burnout, which occurs when highly trained professionals experience dissatisfaction, disillusionment, frustration, and weariness from their jobs.

I’d go into more detail about this but really, what’s the point….

Physicians face high rates of burnout and stress-related challenges at work.

And that’s not even taking into account avoiding pharmaceutical reps.

Reinforcers are Events that increase the probability that the response will occur again.

This is why you hear about husbands doing the dishes when they want to have sex.

Applied research is meant to provide practical solutions to immediate problems.

So basically that never includes politics.

Sexual reproduction between two individuals increases variation in the genetic pool.

Unless of course it’s in the states of Arkansas or Oklahoma.

When giving directions, gay men are more likely to use landmarks.

Or land justins. Or land conners.

It’s not what you say, it’s the way you say it.

Especially if while holdling a weapon.

The ancient cerebellum has 70 billion (80%) of our 86 billion neurons. It automates everything.

It’s like the brain’s brain.

Chomsky and Pinker proposed humans have a language acquisition device, which is a Built-in mechanism for acquiring language.

These days it’s commonly referred to as Google Translate.

Married men or those in a committed relationship generally have lower testosterone levels.

Which explains why after several years of marriage men do not object to going antiquing with their wives.

Older people often have impairments in working memory.

While millennials have impairments with work in general.

Hypo-egoism is a state in which one is not thinking about the self.

Like when you risk your life to run in a burning building to save a stranger. Or take your girlfriend out on her birthday when there’s a playoff game on.

Social Desireability: The tendency to report the way on psychological instruments in a socially acceptable way.

Which is never found on social media sites.

Telagraphic speech: occurs when words not critical to the message are left out.

What it Doesn’t mean is when…

Studies in mice have revealed genes that relate to being more vulnerable or more resilient. Methods to control stress responses: Breathing routines, exercise, and meditation.

Though scientists have had trouble teaching mice how to do yoga poses.

Nesting dolls could contain nested 10 dolls, that each contain 10 dolls, and so on.

People into fractals are pretty full of themselves.

The probability of developing alcoholism is greater than 60%.

But increases to 100% after joining a fraternity.

Conflict of interest: drug companies test their own drugs.

This also breaks the number one rule of drug distribution – don’t get high on your own supply.

According to the James-Lange theory, emotional feelings result from the body’s actions.

And how much prozac you took that morning.

Fluid Intelligence is the ability to deal with new problems and situations.

Not to be confused with drinking certain fluids, the inability to deal with new problems and situations.

The end result of sensation is an emotional response or not.

So maybe she’s just not that in to you.

In developing countries 80% of the population live on less than $6,000 per year.

Or half a shopping trip to Whole Foods.

Humans seek approval and praise.

They do, right?… RIGHT?

Thinking is not modular, but cellular.

If you’re slow, try switching carriers.

Mania: restless activity, excitement, laughter, self-confidence, rambling speech, and loss of inhibition.

In other words, the average radio presenter.

40% of world’s population lives on less than $2 per day

Or as that is known in the US…being a college student.

Both men and women prefer a romantic partner that is healthy, intelligent, honest, physically attractive and kind.

Unfortunately those partners only exist in romantic comedies.

Each hemisphere does pay more attention to the ear on the opposite side.

Proving that even for a hemisphere, the grass is always greener.

In women, the hypothalamus and pituitary interact with the ovaries to produce the menstrual cycle.

The interaction is a real blood bath.

Dunbar’s number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain social relationships.

Until Dunbar’s Wife suggested Dunbar change his number to one.

Psychology, like all sciences, works on the honor system.

Except when you’re a defense attorney using the insanity defense.

There are six universal emotions expressed: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise.

Aka, the typical reaction to take out from Taco Bell.

In Major Depressive Disorder The Absence of happiness is a more reliable symptom than increased sadness.

So it’s better to think of the glass as half empty rather than half full of tears.

Conclusions are based on results that have been statistically analyzed.

Or if you watch cable news, fear.

Perceptions of changes may be attributable to different behavioral manifestations of the same particular constellation of traits over developmental periods.

Or, as Ghandi said, “Once an asshole- always an asshole.”

Rene Descartes (1596-1650): was the French philosopher who argued for dualism between mind and body.

Both must work together, otherwise you would be putting Descartes before the horse.

In an experiment, groups of people were allowed to sleep or were deprived of sleep before a word-pairs test. The sleep group recalled more.

Meanwhile the group that stayed up all night seemed to remember having more fun.

Amnesia is caused by hippocampal damage.

In soap operas, it is caused by a blow to head, and can be resolved by either another blow to the head or the appearance of an evil twin.

The heartbeat is also this way, has heart beats fractally, with sub-beats inside the larger beats.

So, yes, technically we’ve all got a really great mixtape inside of us.

Simplest theory that explains all evidence is the best one:

If I’ve never seen my friend Jack in the daytime, then he’s clearly a vampire.

Attention can be thought of as the gatekeeper of consciousness.

And given the prevalence of ADHD, that gatekeeper is out to lunch.

People’s tendency toward anxiety remains fairly consistent over time.

Fortunately the bronze age didn’t have standardized testing.

Research shows that people who hold a pen with their teeth feel happier than those who hold a pen with their lips.

The research also say that people who hold a pen with their hand know the proper way to use a pen.

Hippocampus: top of the sensory hierarchy.

While a hippo on campus just means you stayed at the fraternity party a little too long.

We form vision actually by sculpting away what is not there.

Like an anonymous coworker stealing bites of your sandwich.

Research on meditation has come a long way.

It’s no longer the hippie-dippie stuff of your weird Aunt.

Language, is the systematic, meaningful arrangement of symbols, provides the basis for communication.

And allowed us to unlock the true gift of the “Yo momma so fat” joke.

Alcohol is the most commonly known depressant.

Followed closely by politics.

In the West, we have only recently encountered meditation.

And we had to hear about it from The Beatles.

Each neural column tries to suppress the activity of its neighbors.

Just like that lady in the apartment above me.

The average family size is decreasing.

See, we don’t have an obesity problem.

When behavior is public and visible to others and the target of the help is female, males are more likely to help.

Which explains The Titanic.

Short-term memory has a limited capacity, but long-term memory does not.

Also, short-term memory has a limited capacity.

40% of world’s population lives on less than $2 per day.

Less than a cup of coffee, and 1/10 of a starbucks coffee.

Anxiety is fear in the absence of threat.

Fear in the presence of a threat is called the News.

At some threshold a percept passes into consciousness and there is a point of “global ignition”widely through the brain, eg. an audience after a few handclaps bursting into applause.

Please, hold your global ignition.

Classical conditioning, Pioneered by Ivan Pavlov, states that Pairing two stimuli changes the response to one of them.

If your wife walks in wearing new lingerie while a McDonalds commercial is playing, you’re probably ordering a Big Mac.

Pride gained from group membership is not always beneficial.

Especially with mountain climbers, since pride comes before a fall.

People who start Medical School in contrast to those who finish are perfectly capable of empathy.

The same cannot be said for people who start Law School.

Steel Trap Memory:

Retains every bit of information, however details are mangled.

The Mesolimbic Dopamine System (MDS): The pathway of addiction, every addictive substance relates to it.

Such as alcohol, nicotine, and twitter.

Evolution is the process by which the complexity of all types of biology comes to be.

Creation is the process by which you abandon rational thought and ignore facts.

Anterior cingulate cortex: Ability to act, speak and think.

So that’s what’s missing from most politicians.

DNA is like a piece of string we can pull segments out of without knotting it.

So not made of the same material ear buds are made from.

The hypothalamus makes up less than 1% of brain mass.

Yet is far less influential in Bernie Sanders.

Hypothesis: a knife cut between the two brain areas should abolish the newly learned response. This Hypothesis was disproven.

I lost a lot of good students disproving that one!

Reliability exists when a test measures consistently what it is trying to measure.

The test of me dumping a bucket of water on my wife every morning to make sure she wasn’t replaced with a robot is 100% reliable.

The right DLPC is related to Avoidance, and the left is related to Approach behavior in environments, learning, and engagement.

So being not in your “Right” mind might actually be a good thing.

Neuromodulatory Chemical Pathways: Each begins from tiny clusters of neurons (10s of thousands) yet are able to directly or indirectly influence billions of neurons over the brain.

They’re like YouTube influencers, except they’re not constantly yelling at you to smash that subscribe button (bro).

A human embryo goes through a ‘fish’ stage complete with gill ridges. Gill ridges grow into the bones of our inner ear.

So we have our fish stage to thank for our Phish stage.

Emotionally significant memories form quickly.

Which is why it is important to periodically feel emotion.

Tag: 5