Kimberly Noble, MD and PhD, pediatrician and neuroscientist, has written the article, Rich Man, Poor Man: Socioeconomic Adversity and Brain Development, which is posted at the website of The Dana Foundation, a foundation run by neuroscientists. There is good stuff in the article which has a properly optimistic tone to the idea that we can … [Read more…]
In an interesting article, How Our Brains Go the Distance, Virginia Hughes tells us: People think about distances all day… long. Distance can describe physical spaces (a far-flung city; a nearby store), time (distant past; near future), and social relationships (near-and-dear pals; a quarreling couple needing some space). Researchers have long thought that these various … [Read more…]
This is the second part of an essay in three parts. The first part dealt with an essay by Donald Kagan, Ave atque vale, which provides a highly summarized history of liberal arts education in the West along with a few hints toward a profound understanding of human knowledge and education and, finally, an assessment … [Read more…]
Years ago, I proposed that the immaterial feel of our minds might be the result of fields playing a major role in our thinking. An article, Neurons Talk Without Synapses, discusses recent work that shows neurons `talk’ to each other by way of changes in electromagnetic fields and not just by direct electrochemical contact. I … [Read more…]
In Do We Survive the Major Transformations of Our Lives?, I wrote: In Rewriting the Soul, the philosopher Ian Hacking had speculated that the multiple personality phenomenon is a largely learned strategy of segregating painful memories. Is our sense of a particular individuality tied that strictly to specific memories? But our memories would not seem … [Read more…]
The talents and skills of accurate perception and memory formation are very much higher-level properties of the human being, giving the appearance in past ages that ‘soul-stuff’ or ‘mind-stuff’ is necessary for such acts tied so tightly even to what we would label as virtues, such as honesty. In more recent years, dualists with the … [Read more…]
This article is interesting though hardly surprising: Can PTSD Become Hereditary?. We can pass on to future generations the psychiatric problems we develop during our lifetimes. To simplify a lot: Our genes carry out some very important tasks for the organism of which they are part, such as providing active templates — tiny assembly plants … [Read more…]
[In this essay, I’m suggesting a speculative framework and not any cures for these serious disorders of the human mind and soul. At the same time, this framework — if appropriate — would guide researchers and clinicians in developing palliatives or cures. Mostly, I’m pursuing my goal of understanding the human mind as the immaterial … [Read more…]
I’m so confused. Not long ago, I quickly read an article about a study which cast doubt upon the idea that we have grammatical structures, as conjectured by Noam Chomsky, built into our brains. Didn’t pay much attention, but I think the news article might have been about this study — Evolved structure of language … [Read more…]
There’s a review, Language and spandrels, at the weblog of John Hawks which discusses the question: “How can there be one grammatical structure for all human beings if there is no known way to see selective pressures for the rules of grammar?” As the review notes, the famous linguist Noam Chomsky did a lot of … [Read more…]