~ How to Unleash Your Creativity -- "In a discussion with Scientific American Mind executive editor Mariette DiChristina, three noted experts on creativity, each with a very different perspective and background, reveal powerful ways to unleash your creative self.
John Houtz is a psychologist and professor at Fordham University. His most recent book is The Educational Psychology of Creativity (Hamptom Press, 2002).
Julia Cameron is an award-winning poet, playwright and filmmaker. Her book The Artist's Way (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2002) has sold more than three million copies worldwide. Her latest book is The Writing Diet.
Robert Epstein is a visiting scholar at the University of California, San Diego. Contributing editors for Scientific American Mind and former editor in chief of Psychology Today, Epstein has written several books on creativity, including The Big Book of Creativity Games (McGraw-Hill, 2000)."
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~ Of Two Minds When Making a Decision -- "One of the more enduring ideas in psychology, dating back to the time of William James a little more than a century ago, is the notion that human behavior is not the product of a single process, but rather reflects the interaction of different specialized subsystems. These systems, the idea goes, usually interact seamlessly to determine behavior, but at times they may compete. The end result is that the brain sometimes argues with itself, as these distinct systems come to different conclusions about what we should do.
The major distinction responsible for these internal disagreements is the one between automatic and controlled processes. System 1 is generally automatic, affective and heuristic-based, which means that it relies on mental “shortcuts.” It quickly proposes intuitive answers to problems as they arise. System 2, which corresponds closely with controlled processes, is slow, effortful, conscious, rule-based and also can be employed to monitor the quality of the answer provided by System 1. If it’s convinced that our intuition is wrong, then it’s capable of correcting or
overriding the automatic judgments."
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~ Bayesian theory in New Scientist -- "The quest to understand the most complex object in the known universe has been a long and fruitful one. These days we know a good deal about how the human brain works - how our senses translate into electrical signals, how different parts of the brain process these signals, how memories form and how muscles are controlled. We know which brain regions are active when we listen to speech, look at paintings or barter over money. We are even starting to understand the deeper neural processes behind learning and decision-making.
What we still don’t have, though, is a way to bring all these pieces together to create an overarching theory of how the brain works. Despite decades of research, neuroscientists have never been able to produce their own equivalent of Schrödinger’s equation in quantum mechanics or Einstein’s E=mc2 - a powerful, concise, mathematical law that encapsulates how the brain works. Nor do they have a plausible road map towards a “theory of everything”, like string theory in physics. Surely if we can get so close to explaining the universe, the human brain can’t be that hard to crack?"
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~ What's that name? -- "It's estimated that, on average, people have a tip-of-the-tongue moment at least once a week. Perhaps it occurs when you run into an old acquaintance whose name you can't remember, although you know that it begins with the letter "T." Or perhaps you struggle to recall the title of a recent movie, even though you can describe the plot in perfect detail. Researchers have located the specific brain areas that are activated during such moments, and even captured images of the mind when we are struggling to find these forgotten words.
This research topic has become surprisingly fruitful. It has allowed scientists to explore many of the most mysterious aspects of the human brain, including the relationship between the conscious and unconscious, the fragmentary nature of memory, and the mechanics of language. Others, meanwhile, are using the frustrating state to learn about the aging process, illuminating the ways in which, over time, the brain becomes less able to access its own storehouse of information.
"The tip-of-the-tongue state is a fundamental side effect of the way our mind is designed," says Bennett Schwartz, a psychologist at Florida International University who studies the phenomenon."
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~ Put a Little Science in Your Life -- "When we consider the ubiquity of cellphones, iPods, personal computers and the Internet, it’s easy to see how science (and the technology to which it leads) is woven into the fabric of our day-to-day activities. When we benefit from CT scanners, M.R.I. devices, pacemakers and arterial stents, we can immediately appreciate how science affects the quality of our lives. When we assess the state of the world, and identify looming challenges like climate change, global pandemics, security threats and diminishing resources, we don’t hesitate in turning to science to gauge the problems and find solutions.
And when we look at the wealth of opportunities hovering on the horizon — stem cells, genomic sequencing, personalized medicine, longevity research, nanoscience, brain-machine interface, quantum computers, space technology — we realize how crucial it is to cultivate a general public that can engage with scientific issues; there’s simply no other way that as a society we will be prepared to make informed decisions on a range of issues that will shape the future.
These are the standard — and enormously important — reasons many would give in explaining why science matters."
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~ Review: Mirrors in the Brain: How our Minds Share Actions, Emotions, and Experience
by Giacomo Rizzolatti and Corrado Sinigaglia -- "In the early 1990s Giacomo Rizzolatti and his co-workers at the University of Parma discovered that some neurons had a surprising property. They responded not only when a subject performed a given action, but also when the subject observed someone else performing that same action. These results have attracted much attention and resulted in a lot of media hype.
In Mirrors in the Brain, Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia (a young Italian philosopher of science) provide a systematic overview of our knowledge and ignorance of mirror neurons."
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