the BRAIN =
by Robert Hedges ©
The child's brain | The principle of brain-pruning | language | hearing | voices | neuronal growth | emotions | Creative individuals | Achievers | E Quotient | clashes | Oxford | Nuclear USSR | intellect | FDR said: | quotes | Yor are: | Stroller | Power | Education | Solve a problem | Success | Failure | Pesistent | Millionaries | Eccentric | The eyes | Laughter | Dreams | Inferiority | The Future | Psychics | Alzheimers | Brain 2 page |


Most knowledge available about the brain has been discovered in the last 10 years. The brain is a new frontier.

The brain is an expensive item in nature; They require a long period to mature and acquire knowledge, and they demand blood that might otherwise go to muscle.

if you were capable of making new neurons these new cells would have no memory or skill; primogenitor cells may become neurons when exposed to "growth stimulating hormone"

Brain size has been stable in human primates for 100,000 years. It probably is limited by the female pelvis size. The brain is 25% of it's full size (1350 ml) at birth, (about 27% of adult weight) whereas the body is only 5% of full size. Women have a physically smaller brain but have 11% more neurons. Perhaps 50% of the available neurons die before the baby is born.

the child


The child's brain uses increased glucose until age 5, then reduces the glucose needs due to an event called neural pruning which results in circuit reduction. Overpruning may result in high intelligence, frequently associated w/ creativity & hyperpruning may result in psychopathology (madness).



Growth of neuronal tissue.


Emotion


Gifted and Creative Individuals
Characteristics of creative individuals :
  • smart people have more complex, more efficient, neural highways for transmitting info.

  • geniuses are more adept at bringing disparate images, thoughts and phrases together.

  • Einstein's brain had 4x the oligedendroglia (helper cells which speed communications). Was this cause or effect?

  • temperament which seeks arousal may lead to a drive to create prolifically.

  • seeking risk is a defining-quality of genius. Novelty seekers - chromosome 11 - an extended gene causes a more extreme reaction - long version of D4 DR - dopamine regulator - how the need is acted out depends on the environment.

  • creating minds - Howard Gardiner; Harvard; 464 pgs - Basic Books - describes Einstein, Freud, Picasso, Stravinsky, TS Eliot, Ghandi, Martha Graham.

  • The permutations of 'mental elements' are images, phrases, snippets of memory, abstract concepts, sounds, rhymes. intelligence fills the brain w/ more of those elements, like the child w/ a full pail of legos.

  • consciousness is like a TV show broadcast, seen in B/W or color depending on the sophistication of the "set" you have. The highly intelligent person has a greater chance of forming the novel combo of ideas, images, or symbols that constitute a masterpiece than does someone with a mere starter set.

  • Geniuses are geniuses because they form more novel combinations than the merely talented.

  • Introversion, another trait common to scientific as well as artistic geniuses, may attune them better to the inchoate musings of their neurons. They can hear themselves think.

  • Iconoclasm disposes geniuses to entertain permutations of images and memories that more mundane thinkers toss out as too loopy.

  • Similarly creative geniuses are willing to take intellectual risks by merging disparate ideas.

  • The beliefs of a scholar will define and determine the area of possibility.

  • Some have an ability to combine different modes; visual, colors as music, numbers as patterns, rather than as symbols of quantities.

  • Influential Frames of Mind, The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, by Howard Gardiner describes seven distinct intelligences.

  • Higher SAT scores correlate with the ability to put off rewards. The delay of gratification is a master skill, a triumph of the reasoning brain over the impulsive brain. This is a sign of high EQ or a high emotional intelligence.

  • a study of 2036 scientists showed that the most respected produce more good and also more bad.

    • They found a child-like delight in their work.

    • They tend to return to the conceptual world of childhood.

    • They link the most advanced to the wonder-filled child.

  • time and experience are non-congenial to any innovations.

  • intellect becomes organized and hardened in the mind; thus the spontaneous and novel combinations are reduced . This is the self-defeating aspects of creativity. Ed Wilson - Harvard Biology - genes control culture.

  • Academic and professional credentials places value on competitive achievement like books published, screenplays produced, products launched, elections won.


    There is a high level of ambition and arrogance among academics, which CD called the Oxford disease. Colin Dexter, Oxford writer famed for crime novels. Oxford England has the greatest concentration of historic buildings in England.

    The Manhattan-atomic bomb project is described as :
    " There was no way to progress except to rely on a group of geniuses and adjust to their needs, demands, and extravagant behavior." These scientists intentionally gave away the secret of fission and fusion to Stalin, which power escalated into the Cold War era, and major nuclear pollution, still endangering the ecosystem in the old USSR.

    Nagel = Equal Treatment and Compensatory Discriminations = Phil & Pub Affs 348, 362 (1973) fbb at 357.
    The greatest injustice in this society is neither racial nor sexual, but intellectual. I do not mean that some people are more intelligent than others. Nor do I mean that society rewards people differently simply on the basis of their intelligence Usually it does not. Nevertheless, it provides on the average much larger rewards for tasks that require superior intelligence than for those that do not. This is simply the way things work out in a technologically advanced society with a market economy. It does not reflect a social judgment that smart people deserve the opportunity to make more money than the dumb people. They may deserve richer educational opportunities, but they do not therefore deserve the material wealth that goes with it. Similar things could be said about society's differential reward for achievements facilitated by other talents or gifts, like beauty, athletic ability, musicality, etc.

    Franklin D. Roosevelt described Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford, 1752-1814) as the three geniuses in early colonial America.

    fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius
    Isaac D'Israeli

    Genius may almost be defined to be the faculty of acquiring poverty -
    Edwin Wipple


    You, your sorrows, your memories, and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells.
    The Astonishing Hypothesis, the Scientific Search for the Soul - Francis Crick, 62 Nobel & Cristof Koch - California Institute of Technology.

    The proof that there is no self which can be identified as you or but is rather activity spread all over the cortex, is that damage to the cortex, through accident or disease, often results in a permanent change to the person we once believed ourselves to be. When the brain dies, so too dies the self, along with the "personality" and memories.


    inspiration may not come to you - go half-way to meet it.
    unknown

    chance favors the prepared mind -
    Louis Pasteur

    fear gives intelligence, even to fools.


    If you let your business get in the hands of a attorney, you'll go broke - Sylvan Goldman,( . . . . . -1984), inventor of the shopping cart - Forbes 11 Sept 1995 p. 192

    nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity -
    Martin Luther King

    rascality has limits - stupidity has not -
    Napoleon

    strange as it may seem, no amount of learning will cure stupidity; and formal education positively fortifies it.
    Stephen Vizinczey

    one great mistake made by intelligent people is to refuse to believe that the world is as stupid as it is -
    Madam de Tencin


    using a stick to get a banana is not intelligence
    using a stick to get a longer stick to get a banana is intelligence.

    Thus using money to educate ones-self in law, rather than paying a lawyer is using a 'stick'(money) to get a 'longer stick' (knowledge) to get a banana (win) is the intelligence choice.

    [there are] . . qualities which are incapable of objective measurement, but which make for a greatness in law school. Such qualities, to name but a few, include reputation of the faculty, experience of the administration, position and influence of the alumni, standing in the community, traditions and prestige. DeFunis v Odegaard, 416 US 312, (1974)


    Preparation for problem solving is :
    • accumulation of background
    • knowledge
    • incubation
    • illumination
    • verification


    Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
    Talent will not;
    nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
    Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
    Education alone will not;
    the world is full of educated derelicts.
    Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
    Calvin Coolidge
    Millionaires are:
    • risk takers.
    • perfectionists.
    • workaholics.
    • They do not second-guess themselves
    • They build sweat equity. They reinvest - it just does not happen spontaneously.

    There's a fine line between eccentric and geniuses. If you're a little ahead of your time, you're an eccentric; and if you are a little too late, you're a failure, but if you hit it right on the head, you're a genius.
    Thomas J Watson jr.


    Laughter - that which does not match established ways of thinking makes us laugh -a surprise connection of two illogical thoughts causes neural misfiring in the higher (frontal lobes) cortex - creating a unique reaction in the limbic system resulting in an intense feeling of enjoyment - pleasure - 180 degree turns in thoughts make the neuron explosions in the frontal lobe much crisper - neurons pop crisply, or they have built-up an immunity and do not pop.
    The reward center of the brain is the nucleas.

    Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps: for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be - On wit and Humor - Wm Hazlitt - English Essayist -

    Humor holds up a mirror to society to reflect it's foibles and failings - Aristotle

    good mental health is a flexible humor-filled attitude " quote attributed to several noted Psychiatrists"

    The purpose of therapy is to end the purpose of therapy.

    Five joke types are:

    • exaggeration/understatement
    • pun
    • put down
    • silliness
    • surprise

    Dreams are interactions between neurons, when the brain stem bombards the cortex (thinking part), the cortex tries to make sense of it all.
    REM sleep refreshes the cortex by clearing overloaded circuits. New memories are fresher, more accessible, primed by recent activity. The topics change like someone changed channels in the middle of the show. There is low level chaos in the cortex, random firing; we try to tie it all together in a meaningful way.
    The pontine brainstem (pons) --> FTG (giganto cellular field of tegmetum) -> sends electrical signals --> dreams are delusion, clinically insane, wildly hallucinatory.
    Sleep deprivation eases depression, but also spurs mania.
    Sleep evolved to conserve energy for several hours each day.
    Sleep and hibernation have a common origin.


    All victories breed hate and a victory over your "superior" is foolish or fatal.
    Baltasar Gracian

    In our society, to admit inferiority is to be a fool, and to admit superiority is to be an outcast. Those who are really superior in intelligence can be accepted by their fellows only if they pretend they are not.
    Mary Mannes

    The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man -
    George Bernard Shaw


    The future areas of study which are important are :
    • genetic mapping
    • anti-aging therapies, products and services
    • high density energy sources
    • digital high definition TV
    • miniaturization technology - nanotechnology
    • smart manufacturing
    • memory cards
    • ceramics, supermaterials of matrix and molecular composites.
    • hybrid fuel vehicles
    • edutainment
    • creativity in the form of ideas, innovations and inventions, have replaced gold, colonies and materials as the new wealth of nations.
    • human to machine connections -an interface of perfect data recollection, as it were.
    • precision molds of porus biodegradable polymers, seeded w/ human cells, nourished by blood, tucked under the skin

    PSYCHICS and More

    The eyes process an energy source called photons. The human primate cannot realize the existence of photons except by the eyes. (organs which process an energy source called photons). There are fish which do not process photons. Most animals only process black and white shades. Color is not processed without processors. A blind person does not recognize photons at all.
    The brain operates by two different energy sources. The brain utilizes both electrical and magnetic energy types, separately.

    • The ampullae of lorenzini (a shark organ) is an electric receptor so sensitive that it can detect electric fields as weak as 5 billionth/volt/cm.
    • platypus has electric receptors on bill and shrimp make the electric current.
    • birds have two magnetic detection systems: a=polarized light & b=magnetic.
    • eyeless shrimp have dim volcanic hydrothermal light receptors `organs.
    • snakes have infrared sensors on their lips & photos created in mind of heat-target.
    • honey bees see in ultraviolet light spectrum.
    • dolphin "see" with sonar.
    • anarobic thermophilic microbes have lived 3 billion years underground. They must sense their energy source.
    • fish feel electrocurrent in the skin pores
    • elephants hear very low tones, and communicate with them.
    • white noise - wind on a mountain range - low frequency
    • ultraviolet light
    • fluctuations in magnetic field
    • infra-red
    • altitude changes
    • respiration change
    • sonar used by bats
    • 50-500khz are tree sounds; chirps, vibrations at wood surfaces; also tree smells & thermal changes can be detected. USDA Forest Service
    • biogenic magnetite is a ferromagnetic particle present in some animal cells
    Suppose the psychic individual has a processor which recognizes some energy source which the less gifted does not recognize. ?

    The human is acutely conscious of the signs and symbols of other people, which leads the human to believe that he is "conscious of everything".
    Memes are ideas. Bits of consciousness, evolving beliefs. The ability to choose between genes and memes is what distinguishes the human from other creatures.


  • Some Alzheimer's is linked to defects in a gene in the bloodstream, which makes a protein; TAV protein which creates neuron choking tangles; Amyloid - sticky protein which gums neurons.
    Allen D Roses, Neurologist at Duke U - Alzheimer gene.


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    Last modified: October 1996