BALL OF SCRUNCHED-UP PAPER OR METEOR?

"Meteor", series of photos by Thomas Brown.

http://trendland.net/thomas-browns-meteors-series/?utm_source=Trendland+List&utm_campaign=0cf8b2985a-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email

DREAMS AND DREAMING

An interesting article about dreams and dreaming:

http://psychology.about.com/od/statesofconsciousness/tp/facts-about-dreams.htm

ARE BACTERIA IN COMMAND?

According to Scientific American, bacteria that inhabit our gut may shape the way we feel, think and behave.
Sounds creepy but please read:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-neuroscience-of-gut

STRESS AND COUNSELLING

Telomeres start shortening as we age. But stress helps too. Or rather, not manaing stress.
Read this article in The Economist about chromosomes, stress and the importance of couselling.

http://www.economist.com/node/18526881

CONTROL, PROGRESSSION, CONNECTION, BELONGING

From an article by Morgam Housel in The Motley Fool (www.fool.com):

"Money isn't the key to happiness. What really gives people meaning and happiness is a combination of four things: Control over what they're doing, progress in what they're pursuing, being connected with others, and being part of something they enjoy that's bigger than themselves".

Wonderfully put. Food for thought, isn'it?

AGING

Jenny Bowden: our attitude has an effect on our cells. Have a look at:

http://bigthink.com/series/50#!selected_item=4636

BIG THINK MAKES GREAT READING

Bigthink is a most remarkable journal/site (we never know what to call them these days). The articles are about various subbjects going from neurosciences to economy or psychology. The contributors are very very good. Do yourself a favour and subscribe to it.
You'll find it at:

http://bigthink.com/ideas/26676

The link above goes directly to an article about the common assumption that when we've known or been with someone for long we can guess each other's thoughts. It seems it's not quite like that.
Quoting, "Researchers tracked how people in couples read between the lines when listening to their partners, and compared that to how well they understood total strangers. Results: No difference.(...)
To communicate with a stranger, they [the authors] argue, we have to imagine the mind of the other person, and understand how things look in another's eyes. But with people close to us, we "let down our guard": We hope, or expect, or assume (or maybe feel entitled to believe, after all we've done over the years) that the other sees things exactly as we do."
Does it ring a bell?


It's a testimony to our profound similarity, and the power of language, that any one of us can, with a little effort, make herself understood to any other of us on planet Earth. We just have to accept that that kind of mind-reading is a human universal, so love has nothing to do with it.

COMMUNICATING

Being the first time I'm posting in this blog, I feel thrilled but at the same time a bit worried. Do I have interesting ideas or preferences that are worth mentioning? I guess this is a question a lot of us wonder everyday. Am I entitled to questioning? Do I even know what to say and what to say? Is anyone interested in what I think or say?

Ha, communicating. one of the most difficult things in the world.
Isn'it?

Toward a Science of Consciousness: Brain, Mind and Reality

 A conference with Sir Roger Penrose in Stockholm in May. It surely will be very, very interesting

 http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/

DEPRESSION AND ITS EFFECTS ON OUR SENSES

http://discovermagazine.com/2010/dec/01-how-depression-dulls-the-world-literally?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiscoverMag+%28Discover+Magazine%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

This recent study shows how depression really dulls our senses. What a shame some people still think depression is just a "state of mind" that will just go away.

Winter

One of my favorite songs is called "Winter", by Tori Amos. I do like winter, but I notice not all do... Once I heard that the falling leaves were like falling hopes of sunny days... as the sun hides itself and there is rain and grey weather. Some take it as a good opportunity to a hot cup of coffee... And you? How do you see this beginning?

WHITE NOISE

White noise is an expression that designates a kind of noise that is confortable on one hand and one the other masks the other unpleasant noises and may take place in a bedroom, a conference room, etc. It' s sometime used in offices to guarantee some privacy to a phone talk for instance.
The concept is quite intrigring.
I've always about it but this summer, after searching on the internet, I decided to make my own white noise instead of buying a device for that problem(you can order it online). I had a very upsetting noise coming from the street and managed to overcome it by turning on my air conditioning system in the most silent program. Fortunately it worked. But made me wonder about the lack of respect that people show each other and The total impunity that goes with it.
Sometimes we also have to create our personal white noise in psycogical terms. Some people really interfere with our nervous system and we have to be able to muffle their sounds with some protecting inner noise we may produce.
You know what I mean?

BABIES' FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

Dr. Harriet Oster will be coming to Lisbon in October to lead a workshop on babies's facial expressions:

http://LisbonBabyFACS.blogspot.com/

MOUSE FOR THE MIND

 I'll run the risk of appearing to be advertising for someone else. But I have to tell you about this amazing device which allows disabled people or someone who has arm or shoulder problems to control a mouse with the brain.

Have  a look at:
http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2010/08/24/pour-george-lucas-la-guerre-des-clones-aura-bien-lieu_1402237_651865.html#xtor=EPR-32280229-[NL_Titresdujour]-20100824-[zoneb]

LIVING OTHER LIVES

Which one of us have never thought of being someone else? Living another life, in another country, in another epoch?
To most of us, this is just fantasy. Psychologists, psychotherapists and psychonalysts are somehow made to live other people's lives, if not only out of empathy, that capacity to iamgine what the other person is feeling or thinking.
There is another way of living other lives: reading.
Through books and descriptions we can live what our short lives would never allow.
Do read to your children, a few pages every evening. In time, they´ll want to know more and they'll acquire the habit of reading.
And read with them lots of fairy tales. Don't give in to the nasty modern way of thinking we must protect our chidren from frightful situations the books provide.  They have to live those emotions mediated by reading.
There is a great book that explains wonderfully the importance of fairy tales in children's education: The Psychoanalysis of Fairy Tales, by Bruno Bettelheim.

NEUROSCIENCES AND LIFE

For those who can read Portuguese I strongly recommend the interview Alexandre Castro Caldas, the neuroscientist,  gave to one of our main newspapers. It can be read at:

http://www.ionline.pt/conteudo/60024-alexandre-castro-caldas-tocar-um-instrumento-e-muito-util

VIDEO INSTALLATION: THE ANGUISH OF THE WHITE PAGE

The title is "The anguish of the white page" and it's an amazing video installation, by Ariel Schlesinger. My favourite is the one with the two pages. Have a look:

http://www.todayandtomorrow.net/2010/04/12/the-anguish-of-the-white-page/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+todayandtomorrow_net+%28today+and+tomorrow%29&utm_content=Twitter

MELANCHOLIA AND PAINTING: DEGAS

Degas also painted the state of mind known as melancholia

MELANCHOLIA

I recently gave a conference on Depression and had to search for paintings and poems which could illustrate the condition known as melancholia. The word comes from the old greek black bile and the disease has been known and studied for centuries. Old thinkers, like Aristotle,  connected it to creativity (specially poetry). Robert Burton dedicated to it a magnificent book in the XVI century: The Anatomy of Melancholia.
But melancholia it's a very severe case of depression and can be a rather serious disease, sometimes leading to suicide.
The person has emotionally invested an object (usually a person but it can be also an ideal) and when the latter disappears or fails in any way the result can be catastrophic. The object is already part of the self of the individual, has taken its place in it (as Freud famously said: the shadow of the object fell upon the ego). Being very difficult to let go of the object, the person retreats into itself, indifferent to the rest of the world, not caring about anybody or anything. Apathy and self-recrimination, even self-hate, are a constant symptom.
The best known painting is Durer's Melancholia but I really think Edvard Munch's painting by the same title better represents this awful condition that can border psychosis. Have a look at both of them:

                                     Durer

                                Munch

CAN LOVE POETRY MAKE YOU BLUSH?

Apparently, yes. Scientists used thermal imaging cameras "to investigate whether love poems can really ignite 'instant fires' in every pore", as the Guardian explains.
What's is the emotional and physical impact of tender love, asked the researchers who conducted the experiment for Aberystwyth University .

"With around five terabytes of thermal data to evaluate, a complete scientific explanation is going to take some time, but the idea does have a grounding in literary theory. The Romantic poets believed their inspiration came to them as a burst of heat that gradually dissipated during the writing process. When someone reads a poem, they were thought to experience some of that original heat themselves. Keats described passionate verse as creating "a burning forehead" and "a parched tongue" in the lovestruck reader", says the Guardian.
The experimenters asked six volunteers from each department to silently read 12 love poems, while a less amorous text about thermal imaging served as a control. As the participants read the poems, thermal cameras monitored their faces for any change in temperature.

And which poems did the researchers used? Ha, that's the important question. A good choice they made. Those are two of the most beautiful poems ever written: Bright Star by John Keats and To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell
I'll post them in the 2 next posts.