Being Human

in their book "The Scientist In the Crib,Minds Brains, and How Children Learn", the authors talk about one facinating phenomenon. Up to about 7 months of age babies from any country can differentiate sounds like l and r. At ten months the American babies still could hear the difference but the Japanese babies could not tell the difference! The mom's and care givers of these babies had laid down a biased, native language tract for these children. I speculate what if all babies were taught multi-language to hard wire for all intonations. Also in the book they talked about an experiment that had a baby kitten's one eye covered for a period of time. Even tho this eye was fine the kittens brain would not "see" out of the covered eye when the eye was uncovered. How crazy is that. We talked in seminar about how our brain networks inside itself. I guess you use it or lose it.

The question was asked in seminar " Why do people continue with behaviors that are bad for them?"

There exists in us times of cognitive dissonance. For example people that smoke. There is a lot of data that tells you it causes heart disease, cancer, emphasima, etc. yet people still smoke. They know smoking is bad but in their mind they are a good person. A good person does not do bad things. This is the mental fight that goes on so we justify our smoking by saying things like: I exercise, I only smoke one pack a day, I could quit if I wanted to and I only smoke outside. We lessen the internal fight and so continue the behavior. This is also why we are a fat and sugar, french fry nation, always on a diet. It takes a real cognative shift to change our misregulated behaviors. I have been on a one week cleanse and keep sugar, dairy, bread and red meat out of my diet. My sugar craving has gone down, I have more energy that is constant and not sugar/caffine driven spikes and feel better. This is why it is important that the person is ready to change their behavior for something like quitting smoking to work. If it is someone else's plan for you it usually don't work.

I could also go into the need for a level of emotional intelligence that Daniel Goldman in his book "Emotional Intelligence" explains as necessary for this process to work. We start out with our lizard brain that gives us fight or flight. Latter as we mature our frontal brain filters the automatic reflexes of our amygdala, lizard brain. If a person has not been taught how to stop and not just fly off the handle and react, misregulation happens. In our relationships this is what allows us to have positive social engagement. There is a course here at Evergreeen, "Transforming Relationships" that teaches under the Imago Therapy umbrella and sets this process in motion.

I decided to start reading "The Ape and the Sushi Master" before the quarter started because of its captivating title. I have a friend who continually ridicules me for 'humanizing' my animals and this book continually refers to anthropomorphism, which is projecting our complex human emotions onto other animals, some animals who simply don't have the brain power to feel complex emotion. I couldn't help but incorporate my reading into my relationships with my pets even getting offended that the book dare to doubt my pet's (a 4' green iguana) brain capacity. I would never have thought a lizard could have so much personality and attitude. Then again, am I making all of this up because I'm projecting these personality traits onto her? If we so often do this inadvertently with animals, who says we aren't doing it to each other? Aren't we just a sophisticated, cultured animal? I often wonder if I really 'know' who someone is or if I'm making them out to be who I want them to be? Who hasn't dated someone and then looked back and asked, 'what was I thinking' or 's/he turned out to be totally different than I thought'? I'm also curious as to what pets other people have and if they too see their pets as more than just animals? Does each one seem to have different, distinguishing characteristics? My pets include the previously mentioned iguana, a 5 month old golden retriever, and 4 tree frogs. When thinking about my frogs, which even I can admit have limited brain function, I notice each one stands out individually in my mind. When I really think about the distinction between them, my analysis doesn't really go beyond feeding habits. Okay, I will wrap up. I can talk about my pets like other people can talk about their children. See you all tomorrow morning!

Mind Hacks

Science News reports on research that suggests that breastfed babies show measurable benefits in terms of action control and coordination.

The coordination of movement relies heavily on good general brain function. If you ever visit a neurologist for a neurological examination, you'll notice the majority of tests are to do with balance, muscle tone, movement and reflexes.

Hence, the examination of these functions can give a clue to how well the brain is developing.

A research team led by Dr Amanda Sacker set out to use these sort of tests to compare how breastfed and non-breastfed babies were developing.

To the researchers' surprise, [research collaborator] Kelly notes, children "were about 50 percent less likely to have a [developmental] delay if they had prolonged, exclusive breastfeeding when compared to those who were never breastfed." They defined breastfeeding as prolonged when it had lasted at least 4 months. Even babies receiving mother's milk for a short while—2 months or less—were 30 percent less likely to have a developmental delay than those who received solely infant formula, beginning right after birth.

The same team also recently reported results from another study that suggested that breastfeeding is linked to resilience in the face of psychological stress.

Link to Science News story.

Tonight on 20/20 they are looking at the topic of differences between the sexes. Just saw the preview for it and thought if may be interesting for members of the class to possibly check out. ou can check the previews for it at

abcnews.go.com/2020/

It sounds like it will be really informative to check out.

[Brought to front page by Rick]

College for individuals with disabilities is an incredibly specious form of discrimination. For those of us who are in college, conscientious attention to disability loving learning allows us to hear better the arguments of attentive, reasonable colleagues. I’ll ask we don’t refer to disabilities as limitations best eradicated. I am more than my disease and I am just like anyone else. The smart fostering of respectful learning begins here. I am happy to have a thoughtful learning community.

Imaging living in a world where you do not feel pain. I found this article on CNN.com, and found t to be very interesting. Many of us hear of common disorders, but its the disorders that are not common and we do not know much about. I could not imaging what not feeling hot, or cold, or what being in physical pain would be like. Growing up we are all told, do not touch that or you will burn yourself, eventually we do touch something thats hot and we realize, hey that did hurt and we learn. Looking at this there maybe other dangers not only to the person living with the disorder, but those around him. hitting someone else, not possibly knowing how being struck with a hard object may cause physical pain to another. One thing the article leaves me to wonder is, can they feel at all, do these people have the sensory of touch?

Hopefully I did this right this time.  My entry posted somewhere else and I have no idea what I am doing.  Please forgive any screw ups.  I will get this down, hopefully sooner than later.

Billionaire philanthropist Paul Allen unveiled on Tuesday a $41 million computerized atlas of the 20,000 genes that animate the brain of the common mouse.

As the first of its kind, the privately funded atlas encompasses 85 million photos, 250,000 slides and a gigabyte of laboratory data on each gene.

A mouse brain, weighing little more than a teaspoon of sugar, may be hundreds of times smaller than the human brain, yet both require the activity of thousands of genes. Mice and men share almost 90 percent of their genes.

Read more from this article here.

If you are interested in this work, you should check out the website for the Allen Institute for Brain Science. There is a nice little video on the site that quickly explains what they are doing and why they are doing it. There is also a link to the brain atlas.

The thing I find the most interesting is that Paul Allen funded this project mainly out of an interest in determining the difference between organic brains and computers. It will have meaning that far exceeds abstractly comparing computer function to organic brain function, however.

The first thing I personally thought of while reading about this project is how computers and brains are now starting to act together more than ever.

An example of this would be brain implants.

While the EEG contacts the only the patient's scalp, brain implants are surgically implanted directly into brain tissue. Most implants are used in patients with Parkinson's disease or other movement disorders. They work by sending electrical shocks to the brain that result in improved muscle control.

But with a new implant called Braingate, communication moves in the opposite direction. An implanted sensor transmits the brain's electrical signals out to a computer-interface, allowing the patient to operate the computer with thought commands. (See "Hardwired with Braingate" sidebar for information on the first patient.)

Other neuroscientists are developing microchip brain implants to ease the distress of patients with Alzheimer's, strokes and other memory-impairment disorders. While use in human patients is probably 15 years off, the researchers are confident that their chips already accurately mimic the activity of neurons in the hippocampus (a part of the brain that re-encodes short-term into long-term memory).

Like the fMRI and the EEG/computer interface, it's likely that the brain-computer interface will have non-medical applications in future, especially when the wireless technology is perfected.

Just wanted to see if this is where I am supposed to be.  This is my first experience with blogs.  Last quarter is when I first heard of a blog.  I never thought I would ever use one.  Hopefully everything goes ok.

This is my very frist blog so had to give it a try this is just a TEST!!! tHANKS FOR YOUR TIME SMILE.

(AP) -- Boy or girl? Almost half of U.S. fertility clinics that offer embryo screening say they allow couples to choose the sex of their child, the most extensive survey of the practice suggests.

Sex selection without any medical reason to warrant it was performed in about 9 percent of all embryo screenings last year, the survey found.

Another controversial procedure -- helping parents conceive a child who could supply compatible cord blood to treat an older sibling with a grave illness -- was offered by 23 percent of clinics, although only 1 percent of screenings were for that purpose in 2005.

For the most part, couples are screening embryos for the right reasons -- to avoid passing on dreadful diseases, said Dr. William Gibbons, who runs a fertility clinic in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and is president of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, which assisted with the survey.

"There are thousands of babies born now that we know are going to be free of lethal and/or devastating genetic diseases. That's a good thing," he said.

However, the survey findings also confirm many ethicists' fears that Americans increasingly are seeking "designer babies" not just free of medical defects but also possessing certain desirable traits.

Find this article here.