21 APR 2017 by ideonexus
Law, Education, Religion are Names We Give to Adaptation
The changes in the conditions of human life during the last twenty or thirty thousand years have been mainly brought about by the acceleration of invention through increasing co-operation and the release of material and social power. There have been no doubt climatic and geographical changes, but their share has been relatively less important. The essential story of history and pre-history is the story of the adaptation of the social- educated superstructure of the animal man to the novel pro... 1 
notes
notes21 APR 2017 by ideonexus
A Cerebral Cortex Makes Animals Programmable
As we ascend the scale of cerebral development the possibility of teaching increases. It becomes possible to domesticate and train these higher-brain animals in just the measure that their brains are developed. You can teach very little to a fish or a reptile, but directly you come to the higher cerebral mammals you are confronted by the new possibility of establishing an artificial, taught, motive system to control, supplement or altogether replace natural instinct. You must catch them young...Folksonomies: plasticity higher thinking
Folksonomies: plasticity higher thinking
1 notes
notes08 JUL 2016 by ideonexus
5 ways to maximize your cognitive potential Andrea Kuszewski
1. Seek Novelty
There is only one trait out of the "Big Five" from the Five Factor Model of personality (Acronym: OCEAN, or Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) that correlates with IQ, and it is the trait of Openness to new experience. People who rate high on Openness are constantly seeking new information, new activities to engage in, new things to learn—new experiences in general [2].
2. Challenge Yourself
Efficiency is not your friend when it co... 1 notes
notes30 MAY 2016 by ideonexus
LSD Mimics a Baby's Brain
So let's think. What is it like to be a baby? What's it like to be a child? Our emotions go up and down. We might be in a sort of happy, sort of ecstatic state one minute, giggling, finding everything funny and silly - similar things happen on psychedelics - and then the next minute there's a sudden shift and we're bawling our eyes out, you know? Similar kind of emotional sensitivities and hyper-imaginative processes occur with a psychedelic.
Also something quite intriguing is that sense of ...Folksonomies: cognition plasticity
Folksonomies: cognition plasticity
1 16 AUG 2014 by ideonexus
Orwell Notes Hitler's Rigidity of Mind
It is a sign of the speed at which events are moving that Hurst and Blackett’s unexpurgated edition of Mein Kampf, published only a year ago, is edited from a pro-Hitler angle. The obvious intention of the translator’s preface and notes is to tone down the book’s ferocity and present Hitler in as kindly a light as possible. For at that date Hitler was still respectable. He had crushed the German labour movement, and for that the property-owning classes were willing to forgive him almost...
1 He notes that Hitler's ideas did not change at all over 15 years and that is a mark of madness.
03 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
Specialization is the Way to Extinction
Now let us examine more closely what we know scientifically about
extinction. At the annual Congress of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, as held approximately ten years ago in
Philadelphia, two papers were presented in widely-separated parts
of the Congress. One was presented in anthropology and the other
in biology, and though the two author-scientists knew nothing of
each other's efforts they were closely related. The one in
anthropology examined the case histories o... 1 notes
notesSpecialization comes at the cost of general adaptability. So when the environment changes, the highly-specialized go extinct.
02 JUL 2013 by ideonexus
Cognitive Neoteny in Modern Humans
The boy-genius can be seen as a specific instance of psychological neoteny which is apparently adaptive in modernizing cultures, and it occurred early in science because science is one of the most ‘modern’ and advanced social systems [2]. ‘Neoteny’ refers to the biological phenomenon whereby development is delayed such that juvenile characteristics are retained into maturity. It represents a relatively fast and simple way of evolving adaptations – for instance modern humans in Weste...Perpetual education and change has pushed humans into a perpetual state of youthful cognition. Our brains remain childlike in order to continue to learn and adapt to our ever-changing modern environment.
28 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
Cognitive Benefits of Bilingualism
In stark contrast to early suspicions that bilingual children were at risk of retardation or at best, “mentally confused” (Bialystok, 2005), recent research links bilingualism to cognitive reserve and suggests it may offer protection against dementia in old age. Cognitive reserve describes a kind of resilience which appears to mediate the relationship between brain pathology and the clinical expression of that pathology; it is thought that this resilience derives from more efficient use o...It protects against the onset of dementia in old age and produces numerous sensory and executive cognitive benefits in life.
29 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
The Growth Mindset
In a recent study, a group of
psychologists decided to see if this
differential reaction is simply behavioral,
or if it actually goes deeper, to the level of
brain performance. The researchers
measured response-locked event-related
potentials (ERPs)—electric neural signals
that result from either an internal or
external event—in the brains of college
students as they took part in a simple
flanker task. The students were shown a
string of five letters and asked to quickly
identify the midd...Folksonomies: intelligence plasticity
Folksonomies: intelligence plasticity
1 notes
notesUnderstanding that intelligence is plastic and improvable increases performance on certain tests.
22 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
NgR1 Improves Brain Plasticity in Adult Mice
Experience rearranges anatomical connectivity in the brain, but such plasticity is suppressed in adulthood. We examined the turnover of dendritic spines and axonal varicosities in the somatosensory cortex of mice lacking Nogo Receptor 1 (NgR1). Through adolescence, the anatomy and plasticity of ngr1 null mice are indistinguishable from control, but suppression of turnover after age 26 days fails to occur in ngr1−/− mice. Adolescent anatomical plasticity can be restored to 1-year-old mice ...The plasticity lost from our youth is revived in mice by deletion of Nogo-A ligand.
