Being Human

I had to miss Sat. class so can anyone catch me up on the interesting things I missed.Did any great seminar discussion happen? Please keep me in the loop. See you all Wed. and catch up on the info.I think it will be interesting to see how many of you got something different from the class.

Terri 

Please, if you haven't put up a picture on your profile, now is the time. It's important that we be able to know who we're communicating with, and be able to bridge between class and blog. Having a visual really helps this process.

Use this space to discuss the readings on moral development for week 4 such as Kohlberg, Piaget, and Bloom.

Use this thread to discuss the reading from Descartes' Baby for week 4. Also, the material from Non-Western Classics chapter in Diessner & Tiegs.

antropologi.info

Currents online, University of California

In an invited lead article in the current issue of the influential journal Human Development, UCSC psychology professor Per Gjerde challenges his colleagues to reconsider popular ideas about the role of culture in human development.

Much of the trouble stems from the use of nations as proxies for cultural units, said Gjerde. Notions of culture are linked to national boundaries and geographical areas, like “East” and “West,” fueling generalizations about “American individualism” and “Asian collectivism,” said Gjerde.

Gjerde is critical of the fieldwork that forms the basis for most notions of culture, saying it has been conducted in “limited and bounded social contexts” and that the fixation on groups has obscured the exploration of variation and complexity within and between human beings.

Gjerde’s model would take a more interdisciplinary approach to the study of culture, incorporating the writings of anthropology and other fields, and it would consider the influence of power, coercion, and class differences on individual psychological development.

Here's the link to Frontline that we discussed in class.

now that i am FINALLY stunted-no more by this blogging business, i want to say that seminar today was incredibely enlightening. i really enjoy the intensity of our subject matter and the fresh ideas from everyone. i love the feeling of getting something out of the class in its entirety, students and faculty.

i'm also particularly looking forward to further discussing the difference between artruism for kin and mate selection.

over and out,

brea

I have noticed that some of our discussions have mentioned discrimination. Steven mentioned the use of words like "handicapped". In our local Deaf Community there is much talk about the use of words and discrimination. This reminded me of a film done for PBS by Frontline. A teacher (Jane Elliot) in the 70's decided to conduct an experiement with her young students. She seperated them by the color of their eyes, blue vs everyone else. The blued eyed children were then told that they were better than the other children, they were given extra attention, extra time at recess, extra drinks of water, and so on. The way the children acted by the end of the day interesting. The next day the teacher reversed the roles. If you have time check out the video. In the last segment they interview the original children now young adults.

www.pbs.org/frontline/shows/divided/

Here is an excerpt from Daniel Goleman’s new book, Social Intelligence:  The New Science of Human Relationships.  This connects with what Paul Bloom is discussing in Descartes’ Baby on page 115, where he talks about imitation and mimicry and its relevance to our development.  “When a person performs an action, such as grasping some food, certain neurons in the cortex fire, including some known as “mirror” neurons.  The mirror neurons also fire if the person observes another person performing the same action.”  Not only is this one of the major contributing factors in the development of babies it is suggested that we continue through our lives to respond to the thoughts and actions of the people we are surrounded by.

In this book I aim to lift the curtain on an emerging science, one that almost daily reveals startling insights into our interpersonal world.

The most fundamental discovery of this new science: We are wired to connect.

Neuroscience has discovered that our brain’s very design makes it sociable, inexorably drawn into an intimate brain-to-brain linkup whenever we engage with another person. That neural bridge lets us impact the brain—and so the body—of everyone we interact with, just as they do us.

Even our most routine encounters act as regulators in the brain, priming emotions in us, some desirable, others not. The more strongly connected we are with someone emotionally, the greater the mutual force. The most potent exchanges occur with those people with whom we spend the greatest amount of time day in and day out, year after year—particularly those we care about the most.

This website was helpful for me in looking at the difference between Manic (bipolar) and depression:

Two different conditions

Major depressive disorder—what people commonly call “depression”—and bipolar disorder do have some symptoms in common. However, they are two different conditions that require different treatments.

In general, major depressive disorder involves overwhelming feelings of sadness, worthlessness and hopelessness. Bipolar disorder involves episodes of depression but also episodes of mania—symptoms of which can include excessive energy, extreme irritability or “out of control” behavior. (People with depression do not experience manic episodes.)

Depressive symptoms vs manic symptoms

I found this article interesting. Cocaine use while pregnant slows cognitive and speech development as well as affects birth weight and head circumference.

Here is the link:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1337370

University of Colorado at Boulder

A region of the human brain that scientists believe is critical to human intellectual abilities surprisingly functions much like a digital computer, according to psychology Professor Randall O'Reilly of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The finding could help researchers better understand the functioning of human intelligence.

In a review of biological computer models of the brain appearing in the Oct. 6 edition of the journal Science, O'Reilly contends that the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia operate much like a digital computer system.

"Many researchers who create these models shun the computer metaphor," O'Reilly said. "My work comes out of a tradition that says people's brains are nothing like computers, and now all of a sudden as we look at them, in fact, in a certain respect they are like computers."

Digital computers operate by turning electrical signals into binary "on and off states" and flexibly manipulating these states by using switches. O'Reilly found the same operating principles in the brain.

"The neurons in the prefrontal cortex are binary -- they have two states, either active or inactive -- and the basal ganglia is essentially a big switch that allows you to dynamically turn on and off different parts of the prefrontal cortex," O'Reilly said.

Hello Team...I am currently reading Descartes' Baby and am on the chapter about "Good and Evil." I got really excited about how action/movements effect our emotions. It ties into Patty's post about "laugh therapy" and how our actions can change our biology. Ok, the part that I thought was really interesting was the "mirror" neurons that fire off when we watch others actions or when you are doing an action yourself. The neurons that fire off are the same whether you are performing the action or if you are watching the action. It totally makes sense that your brain cannot tell the difference, hence the topic of empathy. As explained in the chapter we mimic the facial expressions of others to empathize with them. Example would be (A) you smile because you are happy (B) I mimic your smile and feel happy as well, in particular I feel your happiness. We in an essence can actually feel each others joys and pains because the neurons do not differentiate whether it is my emotion or your emotion. If you have healthy boundaries you can tell the difference, I am not saying we cannot conceptualize the difference, but our neurons don't. It is crazy, so empathy is a chemical reaction in my brain.

If I got the information correct that is what I took from it at this exact moment in time. I am excited to hear what you all have to say and develop this idea further.

On a side note do you ever feel like the professor from Gilligans Island? You know the episode where they are rescued and he re-invents all these items like Frisbee’s and skateboards, like it is his own original invention. I feel like that with my education, it's like re-inventing the skateboard. I am totally stoked to invent it for myself.

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So I said that for those that left I would post anything that may have been missed following the Identity event.

 Not much, Rick excused us following the dancing segment. For those of us that danced for around awhile kinda of a differant experience, at least for me, could explian why I snuck out of the dancing area and hanged on the side.  Lack of Rum and Coke limits my ability to get jiggy wit it! For those that missed it, Rick has moves if he was a celebrity he would have a chance to win on "so you think you can dance" Take that Mario Lopez!!!

But back to the experience of the world cafe.  Honestly I found it to be pretty interesting, the interactions with other classes and their perspectives on what identity is was very interesting, and some of the discussions led to some random thoughts of my own.  Such as, If I was only five foot tall would I have the same identity I have today?  If I would have stayed in Eatonville and logged would I have the same views on issues of race, religion, politics? 

I would be interested in what others took from the event. So hey share your thougths, thats what this is all about.

Eat or just wish for food?

Eating nourishes and sustains us,

life begins with food.

Hankering accelerates into a hunger inside.

Being an autistic man I try

every day to actualize,

have more of what I desire.

I am simply too famined and

at mealtime I’m weary from starvation.

Eat nothing,

fattened at most by the smell of supper.

Pause, to eat in the company of love.

So last night I caught the first half of True Life on MTV. This week it was about three teenagers/20 somethings who are all living with Tourette's disorder. During middle school I had a subsitute teacher that had a fairly severe case of it. He had the twitches but he also didn't have control of saying curse words and would mutter certain four letter words fairly often. He was an amazing person though and none of my fellow classmates ever made fun of him or anything, but we did always wonder why the school system hired a person who had no control over cussing around 11, 12, and 13 year old kids. This past year I've realized that they maybe looked past it or used it as a tool to make us more tolerant of people who have disorders such as his. I find it pretty amazing though that at the time we didn't make fun of him. The school I went to was pretty intolerant of anyone who wasn't what we considered to be "normal".  Thats enough of my rambling about this. During the show last night one of the girls was having experimental brain surgery and I didn't catch the outcome of that. Does anyone know what exactly this brain surgery is and if it has had any success?

I just finished reading We The People for tonights class and had a hard time following it. I think part of the reason is because its a transcripted radio broadcast and I'm sure it was easier to understand the different people speaking while on air. It did leave me with a few questions though that I am sure will be answered tonight:) I was having a hard time really grasping what Illich's ideas were about school and such. Does he just believe that public and private schools of all levels are part of the reason we have such an emphasis on hierachy in our society? That was what I grasped from it but perhaps I wasn't really understanding it. I can't wait to fully understand after tonight is over though!

Jen

Here is an interesting article that found that we find features of the face to be attractive if they are what we consider the "norm." Apparently, because they are easy for our brain to process because we have seen those kinds of features often, our brain finds them attractive, simply because they are familiar.

 Here is the link:

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/seeing/index.html

This is a new one for me. I have never heard of the hair pulling disorder....

Here is the cite.

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2006/10/the_genetics_of_hair.html