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Latest Posts by myletithings - Page 3
The influence of fatherhood on the science of Charles Darwin
There are drawings in Charles Darwin’s papers that defy explanation — until we remember that Darwin and his wife Emma had a huge family of ten (rambunctious) children. Scholars believe that a young Francis Darwin —the naturalist’s son— drew this on the back of Darwin’s manuscript for On the Origin of Species.
UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner has noted that Darwin’s family life may have inspired some of his scientific writing. When his daughter Annie died at age 10, Darwin started to have deep insights about the place of suffering and compassion in human experience.
That led him to argue, in The Descent of Man, that sympathy is our strongest instinct, sometimes stronger than self-interest, and he argued that it would spread through natural selection, for “the most sympathetic members, would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.”
This point was totally forgotten by evolutionary science for quite some time. Well, given all the awful things humans do to each other, how could you make the case that sympathy is our strongest instinct?
The answer lies in the dependence and vulnerability of our children. Little baby chimpanzees eat by themselves; human babies can’t. Baby chimpanzees sit up on their own; you sit up a human baby, and they go, “Watch out, man, my head’s really big!” Boom!
Their heads are so big because their brains are so big. To fit their big heads through the human birth canal—which narrowed as we started to walk upright on the African savanna—our babies were born profoundly premature and dependent upon people to take care of them.
In fact, our babies are the most vulnerable offspring on the face of the Earth. And that simple fact changed everything. It rearranged our social structures, building cooperative networks of caretaking, and it rearranged our nervous systems. We became the super caregiving species, to the point where acts of care improve our physical health and lengthen our lives. We are born to be good to each other.
The vulnerability of our children transformed human relationships and made compassion essential to our survival →
Empathy & Compassion in the brain Empathy is a complicated task for the brain.
Reptiles probably can’t do it and it’s going to occur in pretty simple forms for most mammals. But in humans, it really engages the frontal lobes: these newer regions of the brain that are involved in more complex symbolic processes like language, considering alternatives and imagining the future. Empathy requires that you think: there’s someone else out there who has feelings and thoughts that may be different from mine. That’s a complicated cognitive achievement!
Compassion —the caring instinct— is located down in the center of the brain, near the top of the spinal cord where a lot of our basic instincts are regulated. It’s a very old part of the brain called the periaqueductal gray, which is common to mammals when they take care of their young.
So that’s striking: there’s one kind of thing —empathy— that’s really about understanding people (very complicated!) in the frontal lobes. But caring is is really old in the nervous system.
Learn about the evolutionary roots of compassion & empathy →
#bologna a #view of the red #town
Curiosity: It Helps Us Learn, But Why? By Maanvi Singh
[…] Jolanda Blackwell, like many others teachers, understands that when kids are curious, they’re much more likely to stay engaged. But why? What, exactly, is curiosity and how does it work? A study published in the October issue of the journal Neuron, suggests that the brain’s chemistry changes when we become curious, helping us better learn and retain information.
Our Brains On Curiosity
"In any given day, we encounter a barrage of new information," says Charan Ranganath, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis, and one of the researchers behind the study. "But even people with really good memory will remember only a small fraction of what happened two days ago."
Ranganath was curious to know why we retain some information and forget other things. So he and his colleagues rounded up 19 volunteers and asked them to review more than 100 trivia questions. Questions such as, “What does the term ‘dinosaur’ actually mean?” and “What Beatles single lasted longest on the charts, at 19 weeks?” Participants rated each question in terms of how curious they were about the answer. Next, everyone reviewed the questions — and their answers — while the researchers monitored their brain activity using an MRI machine. When the participants’ curiosity was piqued, the parts of their brains that regulate pleasure and reward lit up. Curious minds also showed increased activity in the hippocampus, which is involved in the creation of memories.
"There’s this basic circuit in the brain that energizes people to go out and get things that are intrinsically rewarding," Ranganath explains. This circuit lights up when we get money, or candy. It also lights up when we’re curious. When the circuit is activated, our brains release a chemical called dopamine which gives us a high. "The dopamine also seems to play a role in enhancing the connections between cells that are involved in learning."
Indeed, when the researchers later tested participants on what they learned, those who were more curious were more likely to remember the right answers
Curiosity Helps Us Learn Boring Stuff, Too
There was one more twist in Ranganath’s study: Throughout the experiment, the researchers flashed photos of random faces, without giving the participants any explanation as to why. Those whose curiosity was already piqued were also the best at remembering these faces. The researchers were surprised to learn that curious brains are better at learning not only about the subject at hand, but also other stuff — even incidental, boring information. […]
Read the article (via npr.org)
Wolf Moon by Miguel Aviles
Walt Whitman "I sing the body electric"
I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough, To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough, To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough, To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then? I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.
#louisebrooks #ilcinemaritrovato #cinema in piazza maggiore #bologna luglio 2012 #romance : ecco la vera Valentina! (presso Piazza Maggiore)
"@lorenzojova: :)))))))))))" #repost #repost+
prrrrrrrrrr
Arresto temporale
#musicians in Bologna #le strade del #jazz
About a year ago, we posted a gif of hover whales. This, however, was our original creation—at the time too big for Tumblr but now able to be posted.
from Suggestions to the keepers of the U.S. life-saving stations, light-houses, and light-ships; and to other observers, relative to the best means of collecting and preserving specimens of whales and porpoises. By Frederick W. True.
Supermoon by cmcneill17 http://ift.tt/1sKa7Wx
I took this 5 seconds ago from my backyard. The sky is amazing tonight.
Follow me for more original travel photography- mbphotograph
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)
The meaning of selfie
