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Absurdist Literature Stimulates Our Brains
"Does absurdist literature make you smarter? Giraffe carpet cleaner, it does!"
Neuromodulation and Neural Plasticity
Neuromodulatory synaptic transmission differs from classical chemical synaptic transmission in both mechanism and function. The function of a classical synapse is to convey information rapidly from the presynaptic neuron to its target cell, producing a short-term effect. The neuromodulatory synapse may do the same initially, but its primary function is to transmit information that will have long-lasting effects on the postsynaptic neuron's metabolic activity, and on its response to subsequent input. These effects are fundamental to the development and adaptation of the nervous system, and are believed to be the basis of such higher functions as learning and memory.
Edge: HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? By Lera Boroditsky
I have described how languages shape the way we think about space, time, colors, and objects. Other studies have found effects of language on how people construe events, reason about causality, keep track of number, understand material substance, perceive and experience emotion, reason about other people's minds, choose to take risks, and even in the way they choose professions and spouses.8 Taken together, these results show that linguistic processes are pervasive in most fundamental domains of thought, unconsciously shaping us from the nuts and bolts of cognition and perception to our loftiest abstract notions and major life decisions. Language is central to our experience of being human, and the languages we speak profoundly shape the way we think, the way we see the world, the way we live our lives.
Cogito ergo sum, baby | Salon
"Toddlers have amazing philosophical minds that work like computers and can teach us a world about ourselves" - fascinating (looking) new book by Alison Gopnik "The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life"
Born believers: How your brain creates God - science-in-society - 04 February 2009 - New Scientist
That's not to say that the human brain has a "god module" in the same way that it has a language module that evolved specifically for acquiring language. Rather, some of the unique cognitive capacities that have made us so successful as a species also work together to create a tendency for supernatural thinking. "There's now a lot of evidence that some of the foundations for our religious beliefs are hard-wired," says Bloom.
The End of Alone - The Boston Globe
"It's hard to imagine a Henry David Thoreau emerging from this millennial generation, someone motivated to log two years and two months alone in the woods around Walden and wax about how he "never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude." He'd have no time to observe the bullfrogs or water his bean plants. He'd be too busy searching for a Wi-Fi signal.
DESCARTES, NEWTON, LOCKE, Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard -- they share the distinction of having been some of the greatest thinkers the world has known. They also share this: None of them ever married or had their own families, and most of them spent the bulk of their lives living alone. In his provocative 1989 book Solitude: A Return to the Self, British writer and psychiatrist Anthony Storr made a persuasive case for the value of deep, uninterrupted alone time. He found it in ample supply in the lives of not just philosophers and physicists, but also some of the greatest poets, novelists, painters, and composers."
Backbone Magazine - This is your brain on technology
But students aren't the only ones who appear to be a little ADD when it comes to paying attention to a task. Almost anyone who works on a computer every day is subject to such "seductive distractions."
Attention and dissonance in the age of social media at melanie mcbride online
This makes a lot of sense to me. Resonates with my philosophy and creeping technological determinism...
Tool Use Is Just a Trick of the Mind -- Balter 2008 (128): 2 -- ScienceNOW
Interesting... "monkey tool use involves the incorporation of tools into the body schema, literally as extensions of the body"
The Autumn of the Multitaskers
Suggested by George Siemens-- I don't know that the issue is this simple. I'm not even sure I wholly believe the basic premise.
Culture Fundamentally Alters the Brain - Yahoo! News
Interesting at first glance... where are the source materials?
To Cognate or Metacognate - Which is Smarter?
Connectivist learning theory certainly puts a new emphasis on metacognition
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