neurontic | February 6, 2006I live with a man who can easily dredge up the names of people who testified in the Watergate hearings, because he watched them on TV--when he was four. He can recite dialogue from movies he hasn't seen since the early '80s. And he can tell you with absolute certainty that Admiral Ackbar, the fish-faced commander from Star Wars, was a member of the Mon Calamari species. I, on the other hand, have trouble remembering high school. I fear that if I don't do something to staunch the flow of data pouring out of my head, he'll spend the autumn of his life reminding me what my name is, while feeding…
neurontic | February 5, 2006Introversion is a loaded word. Just look it up in the dictionary and here's what you'll find:
Introversion: The state or tendency toward being wholly or predominantly concerned with and interested in one's own mental life
(Mirriam-Webster Online)
Doesn't sound so good, does it? Sounds downright narcissistic. And this is no accident. Sigmund Freud coined the term "introvert" to describe one of the traits associated with narcissism. In Freud's view, introverts were neurotics who had taken "a turn from reality to phantasy [sic]." According to Freud, introversion denoted "the turning away of the…
neurontic | February 4, 2006I've never read anything that captures the torment of a bad day of writing as well as the following passage from the preface of Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem:
. . . I sit in a room literally papered with false starts and cannot put one word after another and imagine that I have suffered a small stroke, leaving me apparently undamaged but actually aphasic.
I remember being intensely relieved when I first read this ten years ago. It seemed clear to me that only people of a certain disposition were afraid they were suffering from an undiagnosed embolism at the age of 22. And that I…
neurontic | February 3, 2006Psychology is supposed to be the empathetic science. So, it surprised me to learn that many psychologists believe the entire range of human feeling can be distilled down to a list of ten. On the off chance this list grew too unwieldy, it was subdivided into two categories: primary emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust; and secondary emotions: embarrassment, jealousy, guilt, and pride. (Steven Johnson, Mind Wide Open, 37) Let's say, for the sake of argument, that it was necessary to compile this emotional Top Ten list: who decided that "embarrassment" qualified, but…
neurontic | February 3, 2006Think neuroscience is boring? Think again, says V.S Ramachandran, director of San Diego State's Center for Brain and Cognition. In the coming years, Ramachandran says, neuroscience promises to revolutionize the way "we view ourselves and our place in the cosmos." (BBC Reith Lecture 1) If he sounds less like a neurologist than a new-age prophet, don't let that surprise you. Ramachandran--one of the few scientists just as likely to quote the Upanishads as he is to cite the research of Richard Dawkins--is on a mission to tear down the walls that separate science and philosophy.
According to…
neurontic | February 2, 2006What would you say if I told you that parasites are infesting the brains of half the human population? Or creepier still, that these little buggers have the power to control people's behavior, making some irascible, others docile, and still others certifiably insane? You'd probably say I'd watched one too many X-Files reruns--and you'd be right--but that doesn't change the fact that it could be true.
It's easy to dismiss parasites out of hand. Unless your intestines are playing host to a parasitic colony, they seem fairly benign. But it turns out stomach upset is one of their lesser powers.…
neurontic | January 4, 2006I recently started reading Blank Slate, by Steven Pinker, an MIT psychologist, much lauded for his poetic approach to science writing.
There can be no doubt, the man's a great writer. But he's also far smarter than the average bear (i.e., me) and I occasionally get lost in the dense thicket of his ideas. Still, I'm always drawn to his work, because he's willing to confront the scientific fallacies born from political-correctness. He doesn't shy away from the notion that there are inherent physiological differences between men and women, for instance--differences that may account for men's…
neurontic | January 3, 2006The New York Times Magazine ran a fascinating article by Charles Siebert, The Animal Self, last weekend about a newly minted field of psychology called Animal Personality. The burgeoning psychological school subscribes to the theory that animals, like humans, are born with innate character traits, which are either magnified or diminished by their formative experiences.
Pet owners across the country, no doubt, greeted this news with a resounding, 'Duh.' But in psychology circles, Animal Personality is highly controversial.
To traditionalists, the theory smacks of quackery. But the field's…
neurontic | January 2, 2006Okay, so let's do a quick recap. How exactly do mirror neurons work? And why do they suggest that normally functioning human beings are hard wired for empathy?
Here's my working definition. (Those with a firmer grasp on the specifics will be sure to correct any faulty assumptions.)
Mirror neurons are, in essence, physical and emotional templates that your brain starts hoarding at birth. The first time you throw a Frisbee, for instance, a few mirror neurons are requisitioned. They become the "Frisbee Throwing Templates," encoding all the information you need to repeat the movement with…
neurontic | January 1, 2006The New York Times (Cells That Read Minds) and The Wall Street Journal (How Mirror Neurons Help Us to Empathize) published a couple of articles at the beginning of this month about mirror neurons. Now, I don't generally scour the paper for breaking news on neurons, but I started scanning the Times article and found myself completely riveted.
Here's why you should care about mirror neurons even if your working knowledge of neuroscience is dwarfed by your grasp of, say, Project Runway trivia.
The Strange and Mystical World of Mirror Neurons may help to explain:
*The biological foundation of…