human-brain

Major scientific insights are characteristically intuitive, and equally characteristically described in scientific papers by linear analytical arguments. There is no anomaly in this: it is, rather, just as it should be. The creative act has major right-hemisphere components. But arguments on thevalidity of the result are largely left-hemisphere functions.

The brain makes up l/50th of our body mass but consumes a staggering 1/5th of the calories we burn for energy. If your brain were a car, in terms of gas mileage, it__ be a Hummer. Most of our conscious activity is happening in our prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain responsible for focus, handling short-term memory, solving problems, and moderating impulse control. It__ at the heart of what makes us human and the center for our executive control and willpower. The __ast in, first out_ theory is very much at work inside our head. The most recent parts of our brain to develop are the first to suffer if there is a shortage of resources. Older, more developed areas of the brain, such as those that regulate breathing and our nervous responses, get first helpings from our blood stream and are virtually unaffected if we decide to skip a meal. The prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, feels the impact. Unfortunately, being relatively young in terms of human development, it__ the runt of the litter come feeding time.

The uncomfortable, as well as the miraculous, fact about the human mind is how it varies from individual to individual. The process of treatment can therefore be long and complicated. Finding the right balance of drugs, whether lithium salts, anti-psychotics, SSRIs or other kinds of treatment can be a very hit or miss heuristic process requiring great patience and classy, caring doctoring. Some patients would rather reject the chemical path and look for ways of using diet, exercise and talk-therapy. For some the condition is so bad that ECT is indicated. One of my best friends regularly goes to a clinic for doses of electroconvulsive therapy, a treatment looked on by many as a kind of horrific torture that isn__ even understood by those who administer it. This friend of mine is just about one of the most intelligent people I have ever met and she says, __ know. It ought to be wrong. But it works. It makes me feel better. I sometimes forget my own name, but it makes me happier. It__ the only thing that works._ For her. Lord knows, I__ not a doctor, and I don__ understand the brain or the mind anything like enough to presume to judge or know better than any other semi-informed individual, but if it works for her_. well then, it works for her. Which is not to say that it will work for you, for me or for others.

So far as I know, childbirth is generally painful in only one of the millions of species on Earth: human beings. This must be a consequence of the recent and continuing increase in cranial volume... Childbirth is painful because the evolution of the human skull has been spectacularly fast and recent.

Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are theemotional hallmarks of our species

Someone should do a study of the human brain and how quickly it can adjust to luxury.