It’s difficult to alter, without use of chemicals, patterns of behavior that chemical use cultivated–so difficult, in fact, that one of the most effective methods relies on the supposition that chemicals are involved. And in an important sense, the supposition is correct. The Placebo Effect, in many cases potent and sustainable, results from a deluge…
Depending on the duration and intensity of what one had involved oneself in, emergence from an Immersive Experience will be accompanied by a Cognitive Transformation Period, lasting hours, days, perhaps weeks. To be clear, the associated neural reconfiguration should be thought of as occurring in addition to rather than instead of the ever-present ebbs and…
There are often many ways of modeling the same thing. Models are inherently inaccurate, but the best are those which combine an acceptable degree of inaccuracy with a significant reduction in complexity. It’s obvious that the theorized output of a system depends on the model used to represent the system, but it’s nonetheless an important…
Following is among the most offensive things I’ve written here. First, some background. Remember in one of the Harry Potter flicks, where Harry is battling Voldemort from a distance? Their respective magic powers are conveniently manifested as sorcerous energy light beams of different color. The beams meet somewhere in the middle, the forces of good…
Drifting on waves towards a solid shore of wakefulness in the early evening, after having let the sleep currents pull me out into the vast open a couple hours prior (read: a nap). Sometimes it is possible to postpone the inevitable waking, just by adjusting oneself into a new arrangement and subsequently sighing for the…
I’m sure that a number of people in the early stages of dementia interpret losing their sense of self as an indication that they’re approaching enlightenment. I wonder if their believing this has any impact on the progress of the disease. If you believe strongly enough that you are someone you currently are not, you…
Section Four: Regarding the classroom environment Tip #12: If you’re scheduled to give a presentation, cut sleep short the night before. Or, even better, forgo the nightly habit altogether and sap the strength of your 2nd wind by running briskly to class. Fatigue calms the nerves. When you’re fighting to stay awake, the prospect of…
IQ is a stupid metric –hold for laughs– It’s arrogant for psychiatrists and others to believe that we’ve learned enough about the workings of the mind to be able to assign a numerical value to something as abstruse as a person’s intelligence. How softly humorous that I should utilize thesaurus.com to augment my vocabulary when…
These past few days I’ve been eating out of habit, not out of hunger. A glance at the clock. A cursory check of short term memory: how long has it been since my mouth was occupied with food and my jaws occupied with the chewing motion? This sort of thing has happened before, I am…
When considering how small a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum visible light constitutes, it’s difficult not to feel cheated. I would like to additionally see ultraviolet and infrared. Technology could give me this ability now, but I’d much rather it manifest itself naturally through evolution, though it’s hard to imagine why such evolutionary developments would…
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