Myth and Motivation: On Dopamine
There are contradicting views and explanations of what dopamine is and does and how much we can intentionally affect it. However, the commonly heard notions of scrolling for dopamine hits,…
Neuroscience
Pirola’s Dominating – Cool, Cool, Cool, Cool, Cool
Does everyone else picture Andy Samberg when they read about Pirola too?? Isn’t everyone reading about the hot new variant, Pirola (BA.2.86/JN.1), these days?? The concern with Pirola is that…
On Hearing Others
Louis Cozolino’s beautifully written book on neuroscience has an explanation near the end about our necessary interconnectedness. Communication from one body part to anther happens when messages throughout our body…
Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence
Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ, was originally published in 1995 but more recently updated in a 25th anniversary edition in 2020. Well, he added…
Faulty Wiring
We’re hard-wired for immediate survival, so we need reminders to help us persevere longterm. Short-Term Wiring For decades I taught a course, the Challenge of Change in Society, which used…
Covid and the Brain
Two slightly different takes from lengthy threads on how the brain operates in such a way that makes it ignore Covid risks as it protects us from the trauma caused…
Menakem’s Somatic Therapy Approach to Anti-Racism Work
Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands came highly recommended. The title refers to the effect that being enslaved had on his grandmother, and Menakem traces the violence of racism through the…
Where is My Mind? On Freud and Neuropsychology
Freud got some things right, and this isn’t a post to slam him. But he understood the whole concept of the unconscious mind upside-down. It’s a lot like Aristotle’s science,…
The Long Read Lost
“What we read, how we read, and why we read change how we think, changes that are continuing now at a faster pace,” wrote Maryanne Wolf, a neuroscientist, in her…
The slow death of reading
To me, one of the most depressing stories to come out of 2018 was posted in The Guardian, last August. Its headline read, “Skim reading is the new normal. The…
The Science Behind How Nature Changes Your Brain
Talking a walk amongst plants is good for you in many ways, but why? This questions recently bothered some neuroscientists and they set out to answer it. It turns out…
Restorative Justice and Neuroscience
In this TED talk, Daniel Reisel examines how neuroscience backs up the (already obvious) reasons that restorative justice works better than punitive justice.
ALEC Climate Change Denial Model Bill Passes in Tennessee
alec-exposed-600x400_0 (2).jpg The month of March has seen unprecedented heat and temperatures. A rational thinking, scientifically-grounded individual could only posit, "Well, hmm, I bet climate change has something to do…